‘Not so much flavour from you, girl,’ he mock-growled. ‘It is not for idle women who do nothing all day but put their hair up and down and up again for exercise to criticize those of us who have stern and arduous tasks that shorten our nights and put grey in our hair.’
Dianora laughed. Rhamanus’s thick black curls—the envy of half the saishan—showed not a trace of grey. She let her gaze linger expressively on his dark locks.
‘I’m a liar,’ Rhamanus conceded with untroubled equanimity, leaning forward so only she could hear. ‘It’s been a dead-quiet winter. Not much to do at all. I could have come to visit but you know how much I hate these goings-on at court. My buttons pop when I bow.’
Dianora laughed again and gave his arm a quick squeeze. Rhamanus had been kind to her on the ship, and courteous and friendly ever since, even when she’d been merely another new body—if a slightly notorious one—in the saishan of the King. She knew he liked her and she also knew, from d’Eymon himself, that the former Tribute Ship captain was an efficient and a fair administrator.
She had helped him get the posting four years ago. It was a high honour for a seaman, supervising harbour rules and regulations at the three main ports of Chiara itself. It was also, to judge from Rhamanus’s slightly threadbare clothing, a little too near the seat of power for any real gains to be extracted.
Thinking, she clicked her tongue against her upper teeth, a habit Brandin teased her about. He claimed it always signalled a request or a suggestion. He knew her very well, which frightened her at least as much as it did anything else.
‘This is the merest thought,’ she said now to Rhamanus quietly, ‘but would you have any interest at all in living in north Asoli for a few years? Not that I want to get rid of you. It’s a dreadful place, everyone knows that, but there are opportunities and I’d as soon a decent man reaped them as some of the greedy clutch that are hovering about here.’
‘The taxing office?’ he asked, very softly.
She nodded. His eyes widened slightly but, schooled to discretion, he gave no other sign of interest or surprise.
What he did do, an instant later, was glance quickly beyond her shoulder towards the throne. Dianora was already turning by then, an inexplicable sense, almost an antenna, having alerted her.
So she was facing the Island Throne and the doorway behind it by the time the herald’s staff rapped the floor twice, not loudly, and Brandin came into the room. He was followed by the two priests, and the priestess of Adaon. Rhun shambled quickly over to stand near by, dressed identically to the King except for his cap.
The truer measure of power, Brandin had once said to her, wouldn’t be found in having twenty heralds deafen a room by proclaiming one’s arrival. Any fool in funds for a day could rivet attention that way. The more testing course, the truer measure, was to enter unobtrusively and observe what happened.
What happened was what always happened. The Audience Chamber had been collectively poised as if on the edge of a cliff for the past ten minutes, waiting. Now, just as collectively, the court plummeted into obeisance. Not one person in the whole crowded room was still speaking by the time the herald’s muted staff of office proclaimed the King. In the silence the two discreet raps on the marbled floor sounded like echoing thunder.
Brandin was in high good humour. Dianora could have told that from halfway across the room, even if she hadn’t had a hint from Rhun already. Her heart was beating very fast. It always did whenever Brandin entered a room where she was. Even after twelve years. Even still, and despite everything. So many lines of her life led to or from this man or came together, hopelessly intertwined, in him.
He looked to d’Eymon first, as always, and received the other’s expressionless bow, sketched low in the Ygrathen fashion. Then, as always, he turned and smiled at Solores.
Then at Dianora. Braced as she was, as she always tried to be, she still could not quite master what happened to her when the grey eyes found and held her own. His glance was like a touch, a gliding presence, fiery and glacial both—as Brandin was.
And all this from a look across a very crowded room.
Once, in bed, years before, she had dared to ask him a question that had long troubled her.
‘Is there sorcery involved when you love me here, or when we first meet in a public place?’
She hadn’t known what answer she wanted, or what to expect by way of reaction. She’d thought he might be flattered by the implication, or at least amused. You could never be sure with Brandin though, his mind ran through too many different channels and with too much subtlety. Which is why questions, especially revealing ones, were dangerous. This had been important to her though: if he said yes she was going to try to use that to kindle her killing anger again. The anger she seemed to have lost here in the strange world that was the Island.
Her expression must have been very grave; he turned on his pillow, head propped on one hand to regard her from beneath level brows. He shook his head.
‘Not in any way you are thinking. Nothing that I control or shape with my magic, other than the matter of children. I will not have any more heirs, you know that.’ She did know that; all his women did. He said, after a pause, carefully, ‘Why do you ask? What happens to you?’
For a second she thought she’d heard uncertainty in his voice, but one could never be sure of such things with Brandin.
‘Too much,’ she’d answered. ‘Too much happens.’
And she’d been speaking, for that one time, the unshielded truth of a no longer innocent heart. There was an acute understanding in his clear eyes. Which frightened her. She moved herself—moved by all the layers of her need—to slide over against his body again and then above and upon it that it might begin once more, the whole process. All of it: betrayal and memory mixed with yearning, as in the amber-coloured wine the Triad were said to drink—too potent for mortals to taste.
‘Are you truly serious about that posting in Asoli?’
Rhamanus’s voice was soft. Brandin had not gone to the throne but was making a relaxed circuit of the room—more evidence of his benign mood. Rhun, with his lopsided smile, shambled in his wake.
‘I confess I had never even given it a thought,’ the former Tribute captain added.
With an effort Dianora forced her thoughts back to him. For a second she had forgotten her own query. Brandin did that to her. It was not a good thing, she thought. For many reasons it was not a good thing.
She turned again to Rhamanus. ‘I’m quite serious,’ she said. ‘But I’m not sure if you would want the position—even if it were possible. You have more status where you are, and this is Chiara, after all. Asoli can offer you some chance at wealth, but I think you have an idea what would be involved. What matters to you, Rhamanus?’
It was more bluntly put than courtesy would have deemed appropriate, especially with a friend.
He blinked, and fingered one of his chains of office.
‘Is that what it comes down to?’ he asked hesitantly. ‘Is that how you see it? Can a man not perhaps be moved by the prospect of a new challenge, or even—at the risk of sounding foolish—by the desire to serve his King?’
Her turn to blink.
‘You shame me,’ she said simply, after a moment. ‘Rhamanus, I swear you do.’ She stilled his quick protests with a hand on his sleeve. ‘Sometimes I wonder what is happening to me. All the intriguing that goes on here.’
She heard footsteps approaching and what she said next was spoken as much to the man behind as to the one in front of her. ‘Sometimes I wonder what this court is doing to me.’
‘Should I be wondering as well?’ asked Brandin of Ygrath.
Smiling, he joined them. He did not touch her. He very seldom touched the saishan women in public, and this was an Ygrathen reception. They knew his rules. Their lives were shaped by his rules.
‘My lord,’ she said, turning and sketching her salutation. She kept her voice airily provocative. ‘Do you find me more cynical
than I was when this terrible man brought me here?’
Brandin’s amused glance went from her to Rhamanus. It was not as if he’d needed the reminder of which Tribute captain had brought him Dianora. She knew that, and he knew she did. It was all part of their verbal dance. His intelligence stretched her to her limits, and then changed what those limits were. She noticed, perhaps because the subject had come up with Rhamanus, that there was as much grey in his beard now as black.
He nodded judiciously, simulating a deep concern over the question. ‘I would have to say so, yes. You have grown cynically manipulative in almost exactly the same proportion as the terrible man has grown fat.’
‘So much?’ Dianora protested. ‘My lord, he is very fat!’
Both men chuckled. Rhamanus patted his belly affectionately.
‘This,’ he said, ‘is what happens when you feed a man cold salt meat for twenty years at sea and then expose him to the delights of the King’s city.’
‘Well then,’ said Brandin, ‘we may have to send you away somewhere until you are sleek as a seal again.’
‘My lord,’ said Rhamanus instantly, ‘I am yours to command in all things.’ His expression was sober and intense.
Brandin registered that and his tone changed as well. ‘I know that,’ he murmured. ‘I would that I had more of you at court. At both of my courts. Portly or sleek, Rhamanus, I am not unmindful of you, whatever our Dianora may think.’
Very high praise, a promise of sorts, and a dismissal for the moment. Bright-eyed, Rhamanus bowed formally and withdrew. Brandin walked a couple of paces away, Rhun shuffling along beside him. Dianora followed, as she was expected to. Once out of earshot of anyone but the Fool, Brandin turned to her. He was, she was sorry to see, suppressing a smile.
‘What did you do? Offer him north Asoli?’
Dianora heaved a heartfelt sigh of frustration. This happened all the time. ‘Now that,’ she protested, ‘is unfair. You are using magic.’
He let the smile come. She knew that people were watching them. She knew what they would say amongst themselves.
‘Hardly,’ Brandin murmured. ‘I wouldn’t waste it or drain myself on something so transparent.’
‘Transparent!’ she bridled.
‘Not you, my cynical manipulator. But Rhamanus was too serious too quickly when I jested about posting him away. And the only position of significance currently available is north Asoli and so …’
He let the sentence trail off. Laughter lingered in his eyes.
‘Would he be such a bad choice?’ Dianora asked defiantly. It was genuinely disconcerting how easily Brandin could sound the depths of things. If she allowed herself to dwell on that she could become frightened again.
‘What do you think?’ he asked by way of reply.
‘I? Think?’ She lifted her plucked eyebrows in exaggerated arches. ‘How should a mere object of the King’s occasional pleasure venture to have an opinion on such matters?’
‘Now that,’ said Brandin, nodding briskly, ‘is an intelligent observation. I shall have to consult Solores, instead.’
‘If you get an intelligent observation out of her,’ Dianora said tartly, ‘I shall hurl myself from the saishan balcony into the sea.’
‘All the way across the harbour square? A long leap,’ said Brandin mildly.
‘So,’ she replied, ‘is an intelligent observation for Solores.’
And at that he laughed aloud. The court was listening. Everyone heard. Everyone would draw their own conclusions, but they would all be the same conclusion in the end. Scelto, she reflected, was likely to receive discreet contributions from sources other than Neso of Ygrath before the day was out.
‘I saw something interesting on the mountain this morning,’ Brandin said, his amusement subsiding. ‘Something quite unusual.’
This, she realized, was why he’d wanted to speak to her alone.
He’d been up on Sangarios that morning; she was one of the few who knew about it. Brandin kept this venture quiet, in case he should fail. She’d been prepared to tease him about it.
At the beginning of spring, just as the winds began to change, before the last snows melted in Certando and Tregea and the southern reaches of what had been Tigana, came the three Ember Days that marked the turning of the year.
No fires not already burning were lit anywhere in the Palm. The devout fasted for at least the first of the three days. The bells of the Triad temples were silent. Men stayed within their doors at night, especially after darkfall on the first day which was the Day of the Dead.
There were Ember Days in autumn as well, halfway through the year, when the time of mourning came for Adaon slain on his mountain in Tregea, when the sun began to fade as Eanna mourned and Morian folded in upon herself in her Halls underground. But the spring days inspired a colder dread, especially in the countryside, because so much depended upon what would follow them. Winter’s passing, the season of sowing, and the hope of grain, of life, in the summer’s fullness to come.
In Chiara there was an added ritual, different from anything elsewhere in the Palm.
On the Island the tale was told that Adaon and Eanna had first come together in love for three full days and nights on the summit of Sangarios. That in the surging climax of her desire on the third night Eanna of the Lights had created the stars of heaven and strewn them like shining lace through the dark. And the tale was told that nine months later—which is three times three—the Triad was completed when Morian was born in the depths of winter in a cave on that same mountain.
And with Morian had come both life and death into the world, and with life and death came mortal man to walk under the newly named stars, the two moons of the night’s warding, and the sun of day.
And for this reason had Chiara always asserted its pre-eminence among the nine provinces of the Palm, and for this reason as well did the Island name Morian as guardian of its destiny.
Morian of Portals, who had sway over all thresholds. For everyone knew that all islands were worlds unto themselves, that to come to an island was to come to another world. A truth known under the stars and moons, if not always remembered by the light of day.
Every three years then, at the beginning of each Year of Morian, on the first of the springtime Ember Days, the young men of Chiara would vie with each other in a dawn race up to the summit of Sangarios, there to pluck a blood-dark sprig of sonrai, the intoxicating berries of the mountain, under the watchful eye of the priests of Morian who had kept vigil on the peak all night long among the waking spirits of the dead. The first man down the mountain was anointed Lord of Sangarios until the next such run in three years’ time.
In the old days, the very old days, the Lord of Sangarios would have been hunted down and slain on his mountain by the women six months later on the first of the Ember Days of fall.
Not any more. Not for a long time. Now the young champion was likely to find himself in fierce demand as a lover by women seeking the blessing of his seed. A different sort of hunt, Dianora had said to Brandin once.
He hadn’t laughed. He didn’t find the ritual amusing. In fact, six years ago the King of Ygrath had elected to run the course himself, the morning before the actual race. He had done it again three years past. No small achievement, really, for a man of his years, considering how hard and how long the runners trained for this. Dianora didn’t know what to find more whimsical: the fact that Brandin would do this thing, in such secrecy, or the ebullient masculine pride he’d felt both times he’d made it up to the summit of Sangarios and down again.
In the Audience Chamber, Dianora asked the question she was clearly expected to ask: ‘What did you see, then?’
She did not know, for mortals seldom do know when they approach a threshold of the goddess, that the question would mark the turning of her days.
‘Something unusual,’ Brandin repeated. ‘I had of course outstripped the guards running with me.’
‘Of course,’ she murmured, giving him a
sidelong glance.
He grinned. ‘I was alone on the path part of the way up. The trees were still very thick on either side, mountain ash, mostly, some sejoias.’
‘How interesting,’ she said.
This time he quelled her with a look. Dianora bit her lip and schooled her expression dutifully.
‘I looked over to my right,’ Brandin said, ‘and saw a large grey rock, almost like a platform at the edge of the trees. And sitting on the rock there was a creature. A woman, I would swear, and very nearly human.’
‘Very nearly?’
She wasn’t teasing any more. Within the actual archway of a portal of Morian we sometimes do know that a thing of importance is happening.
‘That’s what was unusual. She certainly wasn’t entirely human. Not with green hair and such pale skin. Skin so white I swear I saw blue veins beneath, Dianora. And her eyes were unlike any I’ve ever seen. I thought she was a trick of light—the sun filtering through trees. But she didn’t move, or change in any way, even when I stopped to look at her.’
And now Dianora knew exactly where she was.
The ancient creatures of water and wood and cave went back in time as far as the Triad did almost, and from the description she knew what he had seen. She knew other things as well and was suddenly afraid.
‘What did you do?’ she asked, as casually as she could.
‘I wasn’t sure what to do. I spoke; she didn’t answer. So I took a step towards her and as soon as I did she leaped down from the rock and backed away. She stopped among the trees. I held out my open palms, but she seemed to be startled by that, or offended, and a moment later she fled.’
‘Did you follow?’
‘I was about to, but by then one of the guards had caught up to me.’
‘Did he see her?’ she asked. Too quickly.
Brandin gave her a curious look. ‘I asked. He said no, though I think he would have answered that way, regardless. Why do you ask?’
She shrugged. ‘It would have confirmed she was real,’ she lied.
Brandin shook his head. ‘She was real. This was no vision. In fact,’ he added, as if the thought had just occurred to him, ‘she reminded me of you.’
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