Land of the Burning Sands

by Rachel Neumeier

  “Beguchren Teshrichten,” Tehre said thoughtfully, looking out at the dim street after he was gone. “And ‘trouble’ in the north.”

  “Tehre?”

  “Nothing. I just wonder… nothing, Fareine.” Tehre shut the door on the faint pearly light of the false dawn and went back to her room to dress properly.

  * * *

  The Arobern’s palace was an exercise in the builders’ craft: ornamented nearly, but not quite, to the point of absurdity. As a child, Tehre had loved the sheer extravagant excess of it; even now, she loved the pinnacles and great statues that lined the tops of the walls—especially the shorter walls, of course. She understood now, as she had not as a child, that the higher walls had enough extra weight of their own that they did not need the weight of statues to stabilize them against the sideways thrust of the slanted roofs. But the statues were nice in their own right, and the stonecarvers had no doubt enjoyed making them.

  Tehre’s carriage passed a long colonnade where the columns, otherwise simple, had been painted purple and crimson—except where they had been gilded—and through a marble gate topped by a short, thick architrave. A straight stone lintel such as an architrave was not, of course, structurally stable. This one had cracked exactly as one might have expected: twice symmetrically on the upper surface and once, in the middle, on the lower, thus turning itself into a much more stable three-hinged arch.

  Tehre would simply have suggested constructing an arch in the first place, but it was interesting to think about the way the stone had responded to the stresses it had found unacceptable. An interesting example of why one needed to consider the tensile stresses and thrust lines that bore on any given point within a structure; it was hardly coincidence that the straight lintel had cracked at those precise three points; those were the hinge points of the “arch” ring, of course. There should be a way to represent the relationship of the tensile stresses and the resulting thrust lines to the thickness of the stones used in the construction… One might let thrust t represent the ratio between the strength of the thrust at a given location within the structure and the cross-sectional area of that location, and that might let one calculate… Oh, had they arrived?

  Tehre blinked and gazed out the window; it seemed the trip had gone rather quickly. She wished she had paper and a quill to note down her thoughts about architraves and thrust lines and the forces at work on the stone. She even glanced around the carriage vaguely, as though she might find such supplies on the seat beside her. Of course, there was nothing so useful in the carriage, on the seat, or elsewhere. She ought to put a box of writing things in all her carriages… She had thought of that before, but she never remembered.

  The carriage had drawn up before a massive set of gilded brass doors and her driver hopped off his seat and came around to place a step for Tehre. “Will the honored lady wish me to wait?” he asked.

  “No,” Tehre said absently, studying the doors. “No, I don’t know how long I’ll be. I’ll get a public carriage home.” She wondered if anyone would mind if she examined the door hinges. Hinges on doors that size must be under a great deal of tension. Stresses in metal were very interesting. They would probably fail by shearing, if they failed… She decided reluctantly that she probably should not take time to look at door hinges, no matter how interesting, and simply walked through the doors.

  There were men-at-arms in the Arobern’s livery, and a quite exalted chamberlain. Tehre had met the chamberlain previously; he nodded to her and smiled and said a lot of polite things that all meant, You’ll have to wait while I see if the king wants to disarrange his complicated schedule for you. Tehre allowed him to guide her to an antechamber to wait. It was, at least, a particularly nice antechamber, with chairs that were comfortable as well as expensive and windows that let in plenty of light and air. The chamberlain hadn’t forgotten that, on her previous visit, the Arobern had indeed been pleased to see her.

  Only one other person was in the antechamber: a man Tehre didn’t know at all. He didn’t seem to have any attendants or servants… Well, Tehre hadn’t brought even Fareine with her, so neither did she, and what did that prove? The man was tall, though not anything like as tall as Gereint. But there was something else about him she was not quite able to identify.

  Then the man rose politely to nod to her and murmur a courteous acknowledgment, and Tehre realized that he was not Casmantian.

  How interesting. Probably he was Feierabianden; at least, there were very good reasons a Feierabianden lord might be here in the Arobern’s palace, and Tehre did not know of any reason a lord from Linularinum would be.

  Tehre wished now she had let Fareine accompany her; she did not know how to speak to a foreign lord. Tehre never really knew what to say to anyone. She always seemed to make some perfectly obvious comment that nevertheless offended somebody. Fareine always knew what to say to everybody. Only Fareine was sometimes not willing to be very direct, and this morning Tehre had wanted nothing else but to get at once to the point, or why else bother coming back to the palace?

  Well, but surely it was not polite to sit and pretend she was the only person in the room. Tehre said carefully, in the Terheien she had learned as a girl and had not spoken since, “My name is Tehre Amnachudran Tanshan.” Exactly like a schoolroom lesson. “Be welcome to Casmantium and to Breidechboden. What is your name, lord?”

  The lord of Feierabiand smiled, no doubt recognizing the careful, rote statements and question. He answered in strongly accented Prechen, “Lady Tehre Amnachudran Tanshan, I am Bertaud son of Boudan, Lord of the Delta and servant of Iaor Daveien Behanad Safiad.”

  He was careful and slow with her name, which lilted strangely across his tongue. On the other hand, the unfamiliar Feierabianden names sounded like they belonged in his mouth; Tehre could never have pronounced them as he did. It occurred to her that language was a making; words were like the bricks in a wall and syntax the mortar that joined them together. Pronunciation was like style; the maker’s signature. She smiled.

  “You are a court lady?” the foreign lord asked her. “Forgive me that I do not know your name…”

  “No,” Tehre said, surprised. “I am…” What was the word in Terheien? “A maker,” she said in Prechen, because she could not remember the Terheien.

  “A maker,” said Lord Bertaud, and obligingly repeated the term in Terheien. “The makers and builders of Casmantium are famous even in Feierabiand.”

  “Yes,” Tehre said, happy to strike familiar ground. “Andreikan Warichteier says in his Principia, ‘Casmantium for making, Feierabiand for calling, Linularinum for law.’” Only she could not recall the Terheien for “law” and had to use the Prechen. She gazed at the foreign lord curiously. “Do you call? What is it like, to call?”

  “Call?” he repeated, shaking his head to show he did not understand her. He repeated the word in Prechen: “Call? To call out, is this the term?”

  “Oh—yes. But I mean ‘calling.’ Those who call, mmm.” Tehre searched for the word for “animal,” could not find it, and said carefully, “Dogs, horses, mice. So?” She was amused that she remembered the Terheien for “mice.”

  But the Feierabianden lord frowned and gave a terse shake of his head. “No. I do not call.”

  And she had angered him by asking. Maybe he was ashamed he could not call, if, as Warichteier had implied, almost everyone in Feierabiand could. Tehre did not know whether she should apologize. She had been pleased to meet a man who might call; she had never met anyone who could tell her about that sort of magic, so different from making. At least, she assumed it was very different. An interesting question: Maybe the experience was similar, though the expression of the gift was dissimilar? But she was sorry to have offended the foreign lord. She did not know exactly what she should apologize for, so it seemed safer to say nothing. Probably she should not have spoken to the Feierabianden lord at all…

  But he said, seeming sorry to have frowned at her, “What do you… ah, make?”
<
br />   “Oh…” Tehre was pleased the lord was not irretrievably offended after all. She wondered how to explain the philosophy of making in a language she barely spoke well enough to say, My name is Tehre, what is your name? But she tried to explain. “I think about making. You understand? I study… how to make. How, ah, how things…” She did not know the words for “break” or “fail.”

  But Lord Bertaud was nodding. “You study. Like a mage.”

  “A little like a mage,” Tehre agreed, though she was doubtful about the comparison. Perhaps in Feierabiand the mages were all also scholars. Mages did study things, she supposed. Magical things. She wondered whether there was a philosophy of magic passed along among mages, as there were philosophies of natural materials, and if so what it might comprise.

  “And you—”

  But the lord’s question was cut off because the chamberlain came back just then. Tehre was almost sorry for that; the Feierabianden lord was interesting, even if he did not have the gift of calling.

  “My lord, the Arobern will see you at once,” the chamberlain said to Lord Bertaud, in Terheien much better than Tehre’s. “But,” he added to Tehre in Prechen, “I am sorry, Lady Tehre, the Arobern does not have time to see you now and asks that you make an appointment for an audience at a later time. Perhaps in ten days?”

  “But—” Tehre protested. It had not occurred to her that the Arobern would refuse to see her. She might have gone to see Beguchren Teshrichten himself, if she had gone the previous day. She saw now that she should have done it that way, although it was the Arobern and not his mage she wanted most to see. But the mage might have made time to see her. But now it was too late. She said unhappily, “But…” But then did not know what to say after that. If the king would not see her… She looked doubtfully at the chamberlain.

  “I did give him your name, Lady Tehre,” the chamberlain said gently.

  Lord Bertaud had been watching her face. “Perhaps the lady will walk with me,” he said suddenly. “I am not…” He hunted for a word and guessed, “hurry?”

  “My lord,” began the chamberlain.

  The Feierabianden lord looked sternly at the chamberlain. “I would, ah. Glad. Ah, I would be glad, if the lady would walk with me. I do not mind to wait. The king will not…” He hesitated and used the Terheien word, “Protest.”

  He sounded very certain of that last. Tehre realized—she should have realized it at once—that Lord Bertaud was very probably a representative and agent of the king of Feierabiand. Yes, of course, he’d said, a servant of Iaor Something Something Safiad. Iaor Safiad was the Feierabianden king, Tehre was almost sure. Certainly it was some Safiad or other.

  And after the summer just past, no doubt the Safiad’s trusted representative could say, The king will not protest, and be quite confident. Everyone knew, though no one said in so many words, that the Safiad king had comprehensively defeated the Arobern’s plan to annex part of Feierabiand—that the improvements to the western road across the mountains were a gesture of magnanimity from the victor toward his defeated opponent. That the Arobern had been required to send his little son as hostage to the Safiad court. Tehre wondered suddenly whether this Lord Bertaud had been responsible for arranging that as well. It seemed very likely.

  She said, not glancing at the chamberlain, “I am grateful for your kindness, Lord Bertaud,” and smiled at the dutiful schoolroom phrase. But she was grateful, even if it was merely a whim born of the foreigner’s wish to show a glint of steel beneath his polite court manners.

  “I am glad to help,” the lord answered graciously, and offered her his arm in a gesture just short of flirtatious. Perhaps that was the ordinary court manner in Feierabiand.

  Tehre smiled again, took the lord’s arm, and allowed him to guide her out of the antechamber just as though he knew where in the Arobern’s palace he was going. The chamberlain, suppressing a just-audible sigh, hurried to get round in front of them so he could actually show them where to go.

  Brechen Glansent Arobern was a big, aggressive man; black bearded, his hair cropped very short in the manner of a soldier. He affected a soldier’s style, but if it was an affectation, everyone nevertheless agreed that he was a dangerous man to meet on the field of battle. It was a matter of common astonishment that the Feierabianden king had defeated him—but then, everyone knew the Arobern’s defeat had not exactly come about on any ordinary field of battle. It was said that the Feierabianden king had allied with the griffins, and generally agreed that he would come to regret that dangerous alliance.

  But the heavy gold chain the Arobern wore around his throat was not a soldier’s ornament, and the contained restless power of his presence went well past the simple physical charisma of even the most impressive of soldiers. When he scowled at the Feierabianden lord, the whole room seemed to hum with the power of his displeasure; when he transferred that scowl to Tehre, she felt that disapproval as almost a physical force. She tipped her chin up and tried not to blink in dismay. The king had not been like this before; but then, when she had previously come to see him, she had not come in defiance of his command or in the company of a representative of the Feierabianden king. She tried not to look nervous.

  “Forgive the lady,” Lord Bertaud said, fairly smoothly, considering his awkward Prechen. “She said she wished to see you. I said I did not mind to wait.” He offered a small, deferential bow.

  The Arobern turned his thunderous scowl back to the foreign lord… Then surprised Tehre with a deep, amused chuckle. The humor might have had a hard edge to it, but it did not seem forced. “Well,” he said to Tehre. “If you wish so strongly to see me, perhaps I should make time, hah? As my guest promises that he is patient.” He beckoned to her and turned aside, leading her to the other end of the room where they could speak in semi-privacy.

  It was a large room, but thankfully not one of the great halls with porphyry pillars and marble floors and high, vaulted, echoing ceilings. This was a quieter room, one with thick rugs and comfortable furniture, the sort of room where the Arobern might well prefer to conduct actual business rather than stylized audiences. He waved her to a chair, dropping heavily into another.

  Tehre perched on the edge of the indicated chair and tried nervously to decide whether the king was actually annoyed with her or not. She could not tell.

  “Well?” the Arobern said. “I am grateful you led my attention to Gereint Enseichen, and so I am willing to be patient. But if you have encountered difficulties with Lord Fellesteden’s heirs, that is a matter for the city patrol or for any of my judges, not for me. Or you wish to sue his estate for damages? That, too, is a matter for a judge and not for me.”

  “Of course,” Tehre said, surprised. “That is, Lord King, I didn’t come about Lord Fellesteden at all. I wanted to ask about Beguchren Teshrichten, and whom would I ask except you, since he left the city at dawn? I wondered what the trouble in the north is, and what the lord mage wanted of my friend Gereint. He freed him, I know. But I don’t understand why, and I wonder if he imposed a different kind of bond when he took away the geas?” She paused and looked carefully at the Arobern. Tehre knew she sometimes mistook the effect of something she said, but if the king was angry, she couldn’t see it. He only gazed at her, patiently neutral.

  Tehre went on, “If your honored mage wanted a maker, well, there are many fine makers in Breidechboden. I’m a maker myself, and not the least skilled of all makers, though I know it’s not modest to say so, but it’s true. But I don’t remember hearing that the Lord Mage Beguchren Teshrichten was seeking a maker, so he didn’t just say so and ask for makers to apply to him, did he?

  “And you told me you needed a man who was—who had a great capacity for loyalty. That was what you said. But what you meant was that Beguchren Teshrichten needed a maker who had that capacity, and for some reason he preferred a maker who was geas bound even though the first thing he did was take away the geas. I think that’s odd. I’ve tried and tried to think what the lord mage migh
t have had in mind when he chose Gereint, only I can’t.

  “And then they went north. So there’s something important to do in the north, something to do with the griffins and the new desert because why else would you send your mage? And it’s a problem, or there’s a problem associated with it, or the lord mage expects to have problems when he tries to do it or solve it or handle it. And Gereint’s a good maker, but I don’t know if I would look for a maker on the grounds of a great capacity for loyalty if I had a problem with making in mind: I would look for the best and strongest maker, whoever that might be. But Gereint came from the north, didn’t he? He said Meridanium, but I wonder if maybe it wasn’t really Melentser? So I’m worried that making isn’t exactly what the lord mage had in mind when he specifically wanted Gereint to go north with him—”

  The Arobern lifted a hand, stopping Tehre. He said, sounding a little amused, “You are very direct, Lady Tehre.”

  “People say that,” Tehre admitted. “Sometimes people get angry. If I’ve made you angry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I don’t understand how anybody ever gets anything said or done if they aren’t willing to say what they mean. My family is in the north, you know, and if there’s trouble there, I’m worried for them.” She added belatedly, “Lord King.”

  “Lady Tehre, I am not angry with you,” the Arobern said mildly. “You are right in this respect: There is a problem in the north.” He watched Tehre narrowly. “It is not your concern, however. It is not a matter for makers or builders, you understand? It is a matter for mages. And as you say, I have only one mage, now.”

  “But Gereint—”

  “The man is your friend, you say? Yet you have known him only for days, and not even by his right name, is that not true?”

  “Even so,” Tehre said, she hoped with dignity. She knew she had flushed. It was true she had not known Gereint’s right name until the king had used it himself, but she hoped she had not given this away somehow. She said firmly, “I don’t have many friends, Lord King. But when Gereint Enseichen needed the house of a friend to go to, he came to my house.”