Empire of the East

by Fred Saberhagen

  On hearing this, Charmian’s many mirror faces marred their foreheads with thoughtful frowns. “Then when I have put my ring of magic through Som’s nose, and led him from his throne, how are we to do away with him? If no weapon can kill him…”

  “There may be one.”

  “Ah.”

  “Though what the weapon is, I do not know. Nor does Som himself know, I believe.” Through the powers that served him Hann had recently heard of recent threats to Som, by some mysterious power of the West, threats implying that the one effective weapon was known and would be used when the time came. “I do not know, but I could quickly learn, if I was given all the tools and wealth I needed for my work.”

  “When I am consort of a new viceroy, you shall have all you need and more. Now what else must I know of Som before I go to him?”

  Hann went on worriedly: “There is sometimes the smell of death upon him; though when he is inclined to deal mildly with those around him, he covers up his stink with perfumes.

  “And—I warn you. When you see him at close range and from the corner of your eye, you are liable to see not a man’s face but a noseless skull. Can you smile and coo at that and not show your disgust?”

  Once more she appeared to be concentrating completely on her reflection, adding a final something to her lips. “I? You do not know me, Hann.”

  “No! I admit that I do not.” He jumped to his feet again and began to pace. “Oh, I know that you are able. But also that you are very young, and from the hinterlands. Inexperienced and untraveled in the world.”

  Her mirrors all laughed at him in light and easy confidence.

  Annoyed, and worried all the more, he pressed on: “I know, back in your father’s little satrapy, men were ruining themselves to win your favor. Some here, also…but remember that not everyone here will be so easily manipulated.”

  She gave no sign that she had heard.

  He raised his voice. “Do you suppose you have enthralled and bedazzled me? I am your full partner in this enterprise, my lady. It is magic that is drawing Som to you; see that you do not forget it.”

  “You do not know me,” Charmian repeated softly. And with that she pushed away her clutter of towels and jars and phials and turned to him from her mirrors. The room seemed brighter, suddenly. Even clothed as she was, in the loose concealing robe…

  “Never have I seen….” said Hann, in a new, distracted voice; and after the four words fell silent, marveling.

  She laughed, and stood up, with a single swaying of her hips.

  Hann said in a blurred voice: “Wait, do not go just yet.”

  Her lips swelled in a pretended pout. “Ah, do not tempt me so, sly wizard. For you know how weak I am, how subject to your every trifling spell and whim. Only the knowledge that I must go, for the sake of your own welfare, enables me to tear myself away.” And with that she laughed again, and vanished behind the screens where her attendants were, and Hann was left with no more than the memory of a vision.

  By the time she had finished dressing and set out, the time of her appointment was near at hand, but she did not hurry; the audience chamber was not far off. On her walk deep into the citadel she was bowed on and escorted by a series of the viceroy’s attendants, some of whom were human. Others were more beastlike or more magical than men, and had shapes not commonly encountered away from the Black Mountains. Charmian no longer marveled at them, like a backwoods girl; twice before she had walked this way.

  At her first audience with Som, nearly half a year ago, the viceroy had told her simply and briefly that it suited his purposes to grant her asylum. At her second audience she had stood silent and apparently unnoticed amid a number of other courtiers as Som announced to them the opening of a new campaign to recover the lost seaboard satrapies, and particularly to crush the arch-rebel Thomas of the Broken Lands; little or nothing had been heard of the campaign since then. On neither occasion had Som shown her any more interest than he might have bestowed upon an article of furniture. She had soon learned from the gossip of the other courtiers that he was dead indeed regarding the pleasures of the body.

  Or so they all thought; what would they say today?

  Looking into Som’s great audience hall from just outside the door, she was vaguely disappointed to see that it was almost empty. Then as she was bidden enter by the chamberlain she saw that the viceroy had just finished talking with a pair of military men, who were now walking backward from his presence, bowing, noisily rolling up their scrolls of maps. Som was frowning after them. Charmian could not discern any change since her last audience in the man who sat upon the ebony throne. Som was a man to all appearances of middle size and middle age, rather plainly dressed except for a richly jeweled golden chain around his neck. He was rather sparely built, and his aspect at first glance was not unpleasant, save perhaps for his rather sunken eyes.

  The soldiers backed past Charmian and she heard them stumbling and colliding with each other at the doorway as they left; but the viceroy’s aspect softened as his eyes refocused on her.

  The chamberlain effaced himself, and Charmian was alone with her High Lord in the great room where a thousand might have gathered—alone save for a few Guardsmen, heavily armed and standing motionless as statues, and for a pair of squat inhuman guardians—she could not tell at once if they were beasts or demons—that flanked his throne at a little distance on each side.

  Som beckoned to her, with a gesture whose slightness she found enviable: that of one who knows he has complete attention. With humility in every move, her eyes downcast, steps quick but modest, she walked toward him. When still at a humble distance, she stopped, and made obeisance deeply, with all the grace at her command.

  All was silent in the vast hall. When she thought it time to raise her eyes to the ebony throne, Som was gazing down at her, solemnly, with the stillness of a statue or a snake. Then like a snake he moved, with a sudden flowing gesture. In his dry, strong voice he said: “Charmian, my daughter—I have come to think of you as in some sense a relative of mine—you have lately begun to assume importance in my plans.”

  She dipped her eyes briefly and raised them again; so might a girl perform the gesture who had but lately begun to practice it before her mirror. A perfect imitation of innocence would never be convincing, here. “I hope these thoughts of me are in some measure pleasing to my High Lord Viceroy.”

  “Come closer. Yes, stand there.” And when he had gazed upon her from closer range for a little while, Som asked: “Is it then your wish to please me as a woman? It is long since any have done that.”

  “I would please my High Lord Som in any way he might desire.” There was perfume in the hall, of high quality certainly but stronger than the delicate scent she had put on herself.

  “Come closer still.”

  She did so, and sank on one knee before him so close that he might have reached out a hand and touched her face. But he did not. For just a moment her nostrils caught a whiff of something else beneath the perfume; as if perhaps a small animal had crawled beneath the viceroy’s throne and died.

  “My daughter?”

  “If you will have me so, my High Lord Som.”

  “Or should I say ‘sister’ to you, Charmian?”

  “As you will have it, lord.” Waiting for the next move of the game with her eyes cast down submissively, she saw (not looking directly at him) that Som had no nose, and that his sunken eyes were black and empty holes.

  “My woman, then; we’ll settle it at that. Give me your hand, golden one. In all my treasure hoard I have not such gold as you have in your hair. Do you know that?”

  The statement gave her a bad moment of suspicion. But when she looked straight at her lord again, she saw an ordinary man’s face, smiling thinly and nodding. However, she could not hear him breathe. And his hand, when she touched it, felt like meat that had been kept somewhat too long in the kitchen of a palace. Her hand did not for a moment tense, or her face change. She would take the fastest, sur
est way to power, though it meant embracing dead meat, and waking in the morning beside a noseless skull on a fine pillow.

  In his dry voice, lowered now, he asked her: “What do you mark about me?”

  Truthfully and without hesitation she replied: “That you do not wear the collar of the Guard, High Lord.” It was a sign that Hann had mentioned, meaning that Som enjoyed some protection better than the valkyries.

  The viceroy smiled. “And do you know why I wear it not?”

  Impulsively she answered: “Because you are mightier than death.”

  He gave a silent, shaking grimace that was his laughter. He said: “You are thinking that it is because I am already dead. But yet I rule, and crush my enemies, and have my joys. Dead? I have become death, rather. No weapon, no disease, not even time, has terrors for me now.”

  She only vaguely understood him, and she could not think what to reply. Instead of speaking, she bowed her head and once more pressed to her lips the sticky tissue of his hand.

  The viceroy said: “And all that is mine, my golden one, I have decided to share with you.”

  With unconcealed joy Charmian rose in response to the viceroy’s tug on her hand. Som’s dead hands pulled her to him, and she kissed him on the lips, or where lips should have been and seemed to be. “As your willing slave forever, gracious lord!”

  Holding her at arms’ length now, and smiling in great pleasure, he said: “Therefore you will become death too.”

  These last words of his seemed to stay circling like birds in Charmian’s awareness, uncertain whether or not they meant to land. When at last they came fully home to her, her new triumph shattered like glass. Not yet did her distress show in her face or voice; her surface was her strength, where terror would reach only when it had already conquered all within.

  She only asked, like a girl expressing sweet wonderment at a reward too great: “I shall become as you are, lord?”

  “Even so,” he assured her happily, patting her hand between his, with faint sticking sounds. “Ah, I could almost regret that such goldenness must perish at its peak, like the beauty of a blossom plucked; but so it must be, for the woman who shares my endless life and power.”

  With a shock of terror as sharp as the pain of blade or fire, she caught herself barely in time from trying to pull her hands away from his. In the back of her mind she was aware that other presences, human she thought, were coming into the audience chamber. But she could pay them no attention now.

  She must express her joyful acceptance of Som’s offer, without the least appearance of hesitation. But moment by moment her understanding of his meaning grew more certain and her fear grew more intense. Never for an instant had she expected this. She would rather die a thousand times, a million times, than become as he was. She could smile without a tremor at his dead face, she could embrace it warmly if she must. But to see the like of it in her mirror was unimaginable, was fear more pure than she had ever known.

  No longer knowing whether she could conceal her horror, faint with the dizziness of it, she whispered: “When?”

  “Why, now. Is anything the matter?”

  “My High Lord—” Charmian could scarcely see. Would not some crevice open in the earth to swallow her? “It is only that I would preserve my beauty for you. That you may continue to enjoy it.”

  He made a gesture of impatience. “As I said, it is annoying that your appearance must be so much changed. But never mind. It is only mortal men who find those superficialities of great importance. What draws me to you is primarily your inner essence, so like my own—now, there is something wrong. What is it? Is the process causing you discomfort?”

  “The process, my High…now? It happens to me now?” She was only half-aware of losing control, of pulling free from him and moving back a step.

  He peered at her in evident astonishment. “Why, yes. I am impatient. Once having decided that you should rule beside me, I had the magicians begin the process of your transformation as soon as you entered the chamber. Already the change is far advanced—”

  There was a rushing passage of the world, and screaming. Vaguely Charmian realized it was herself who screamed, and that the sound of pounding steps on wood and stone came from her own running feet. She had no longer any plan, no thought except to flee the death that moved and spoke and would engulf her with its own decay. A tall shape loomed before her, very near; she had run into it and rebounded before she saw it was a man, and knew his face.

  The living face of Chup.

  Still mad with panic, she tried to run around Chup, but he caught her by the arm. She had never seen his face so hard, not even on that day so long ago when he had slapped her. Now his voice came as if ground out between two stones: “Does it surprise you, Queen of Death, to see that I am still alive?”

  Then Charmian understood what Chup’s presence here must mean, that all her plotting had been discovered, her hopes destroyed. Her fear was so extreme she could not move or speak; she sank down in a faint before attendants came to carry her from the chamber.

  Som, relaxed now upon his throne, spent a little time in the enjoyment of his almost silent, grimacing laughter. Chup waited, standing motionlessly at attention, until the viceroy had composed himself and beckoned him to come nearer.

  “My good Chup, all your warnings to me have been borne out by investigation. The wizard Hann has been arrested. The circlet of the lady’s hair has been found where you left it, in my treasure vault, with no trace visible of how you put it there. Needless to say, my security measures will be extensively revised. Fortunately, I am less susceptible to love-charms than these unhappy plotters thought; so it was shrewd of you to cast your lot with me.”

  Chup bowed slightly.

  Som went on. “Unhappily, the man Tarlenot has departed on a courier’s mission, on Empire business; it may be difficult to get him in our grasp again. But he left behind him his Guardsman’ collar, which shall be yours, along with some substantial military rank.”

  For the first time since entering, Chup allowed himself to smile. “That’s how I’d choose to serve, my High Lord Som. I am a fighter, with little taste for these intrigues.”

  “And you shall have your command.” The viceroy paused. “Of course there is one matter first—your pledging to the East.”

  Ah, said Chup to himself, without surprise. I might have known.

  Som continued: “When you were a satrap in our service, unlike others of your rank, you never came here to make a formal pledge. That has always seemed to us rather odd.”

  There was no satisfying the powers of the East. Always the certainty of great success was one more step away. Chup said, rather wearily: “I have been six months a crippled beggar.”

  “You were a satrap, free to come, for a much longer time than that.” Som’s voice was no longer so relaxed. “Before you lost your satrapy.”

  There was no good answer Chup could give. As a satrap, he had certainly been busy fighting, and he had told himself that he served his masters better in that way than by partaking in mysterious rituals. But they had never seen it exactly that way.

  Now Som was looking at him from his sunken eyes, and Chup thought that he could smell the death. The viceroy said: “This pledging is more important than you seem to realize. There are many who ask to bind themselves completely to the East, to share in its inner powers, and are not allowed to do so.”

  As a soldier long accustomed to orders and the ways of giving them, Chup understood that there was now but one thing for him to say. “I ask to be allowed to make my pledge, High Lord. As soon as possible.”

  “Excellent!” Som took from around his own neck a richly jeweled chain, which he tossed carelessly to Chup. “As a mark of my good favor, and the beginning of your fortune.”

  “Thanks, many thanks, High Lord.”

  “Your face says there is something else you want.”

  “If I may retain for the time being the lodgings of that treacherous woman. And her servants, t
hose who had no part in her plotting.”

  Som assented with a nod. The chamberlain was evidently signalling him that other business pressed, for he dismissed Chup with a few quick words. After backing deferentially from the chamber, Chup hung the chain of Som’s favor around his neck, and made his way to what had been Charmian’s apartment. With the chain around his neck, he was now saluted by soldiers of the common ranks. People of more standing, some of whom had not deigned to notice him before, now nodded or eyed him with respect and calculation.

  When he reached the apartment he found it swarming with men and women in black, each of whom bore a skull insignia upon his sleeve. In the past Chup had noticed only a few of these uniforms and had not thought of their significance. They were searching Charmian’s rooms, thoroughly, leaving casual wreckage in the process. Chup did not attempt to interfere until he found their leader, whose sleeve bore a much larger skull. This woman, though she maintained an air of arrogance, was like everyone else impressed with the chain that hung about Chup’s neck. In answer to Chup’s question, she led him to a service passage in the rear of the apartment. There waited Karen, Lisa, Lucia, Portia, Samantha, and Kath, chained together and huddled against the wall.

  Chup said: “You may release them, on my word. I am to occupy these rooms, and I will require a good staff, familiar with the place, to restore order from this mess that you have made.”

  “They have not been questioned yet,” the leader of the skulls said, finality in her voice.

  “I am somewhat aware of how the plotting went, and who was involved, as our Lord Som can tell you. These were innocent. But they will be here when you want them for your questions.”

  It took a little more argument, but Chup did not lack stubbornness and pride, and there was Som’s favor hanging down upon his chest. When the searchers in black at length departed, the six girls, unchained, were left behind. When they were alone with him the six of them came slowly to surround Chup. They said nothing, did nothing but gaze at him.