by Judith Tarr
She heard the rasp of his breath, but his voice was light. “There is that,” he granted her. “I’m guarded, Vanyi. I’m warned. What more can I do?”
“Show a little sense. Stop entertaining every whore in Asanion.”
“Gladly!” His agreement was so heartfelt that she almost— perilously—smiled. “And?”
“And—” She stopped. He was seducing her. Keeping her there, tricking her with temper, leading to the inevitable, inescapable conclusion. Where was he safest? Under watchful guard. Who could guard him best?
“Not I.” She hugged herself, trying not to shiver. “I’ll speak to the guards,” she said, “send one of them in to watch over you.”
“I don’t want to sleep with a guard.”
“Then summon Ulyai, wherever she is. She’s better for that than a dozen armed men.”
“Ulyai hates cities in Asanion. She won’t come inside the walls.”
“She will if I tell her why.”
“Vanyi—”
She would not hear him. She sent a messenger on the mageroads, a summons and a command. The bright one has need. Come! It touched the mind it sought, fierce cat-mind in the afterglow of a hunt, the rich taste of blood, the memory of the chase.
Some lord’s park was less a deer. Vanyi felt her lips stretch in a grin as feral as Ulyai’s own. This hunt was better, she told the cat. This was a mage-hunt, a man-hunt, ward and guard against the death that came out of the dark.
“She comes,” Vanyi said. No matter that he knew. The words gave it substance.
Leaving him was as hard as anything she had ever done, and as purely necessary. He could not understand. She felt his anger swelling as she passed the door. She locked her mind against it.
13
Korusan did not remember how long he had been lying on this hard narrow bed that had been his since he rose to the second rank, in this cell with its tall thin window and its scrap of curtain for a door. But he remembered that he had been ill, memory that blurred into all the other illnesses.
Most often it was fever, or a demon in lungs or heart or bones. This time it was lassitude that would not lift, and an ache without a source, that made his hands shake when he tried to curve them round a cup, and set him reeling when he would have sat up.
There were, as always, mages. They patched him together with threads of their magic, weaving over the other, older stitchings. He was as threadbare as an old cloak, and as like to fall apart.
He said so to the mage who tended him, when he gained strength enough to speak. It was the lightmage from the night by the gate, the last night he remembered clearly. She did not smile at his bit of wit. “You’ll last as long as you need to.”
“Am I your punishment?” he asked her.
She bent to the task of mixing a potion for him. It smelled less vile than usual.
“I am,” he answered for her, since she would not. “Pity that you should suffer for telling me the truth.”
“You knew it already,” she said. Or he thought she said. The fall of her hair hid her face, and her voice was barely audible.
“Some things, one needs to be told.”
“Some things were better left alone.” She poured a measure of her physic and set the cup to his lips.
He closed his hands over hers. She neither started nor pulled away.
Her hands were cool. Her eyes met his. They did not pity him, which he was glad of, but neither did they warm for him.
So it would be with the women of the Olenyai, once they knew what this woman knew. “I would do very well among the wives of courtiers,” he observed. “No fear of heirs who bear too faint a resemblance to their mothers’ husbands.”
“I suppose you are entitled to be bitter,” said the mage. She wiped the cup with a cloth and laid it back among the jars of medicaments.
“You dislike me,” said Korusan. Weakness made him blunt, and the potion made him bold. It was odd, to know both sides of that, and to know how little it mattered.
“No,” said the mage.
“But I mean nothing to you, beyond the fact of my lineage.”
“That’s but a means to an end.” She smoothed the coverlet over him. “Did you know that you are a legend to the people? They make a promise of you, and call you prophet.”
He had not known. He was surprised that it could make him angry. “Whose idiocy is that? Your Master’s?”
“You should be glad. The people are ripe for your coming. They have no love for the black kings.”
“How can I be a prophet if no one sees my face or hears my voice?”
“Your face is a mystery, as every emperor’s must be. Your voice is the voice of your servants.”
“No servants of mine,” said Korusan.
“We all serve you, my lord, from our hearts’ center. You are the Son of the Lion.”
He had taken joy in that name once, and swelled with pride when it was spoken. “I am the sum of my lineage,” he said. “Which is nothing. How close did I come to death this time, when the old sickness took me?”
“Not close at all,” she said, but she would not look at him while she said it. “You overtaxed yourself, no more. And it was a shock to discover . . . what you discovered.”
Odd that she could not say it, when she could say so much else. “What greater shock will it be to mount the throne as emperor? Will I fall dead upon the dais?”
“Of course not,” said the mage. “You are nowhere near as weak as you imagine.”
“Oh, yes,” said Korusan, “and I am so strong that I faint as easily as a girl, and rather more often.”
“Maybe it suits some people to have you think so. Maybe they think it makes you more tractable.”
He stared at her, speechless.
“You didn’t ever think of that, did you? That maybe you aren’t as feeble as that. An invalid could never be an Olenyas, or pass the tests of wood and steel, or live as a warrior lives, without ease or comfort. Keeping you slave to their mendings and magics—that keeps you slave to their will as well.”
It could be true, he thought. And yet he knew his own blood, his own bones. He knew how brief his years must be.
Whether she read his thoughts, which mages said they could not do to a full Olenyas, or whether his eyes betrayed him, she said, “Oh, you won’t live long. That’s true enough. But you’ll go all at once, not by these slow degrees.”
“Why do you tell me this?”
She shrugged, a lift of a shoulder, a turn of a hand. “Maybe I don’t dislike you. Maybe I feel sorry for you.”
“Maybe you spy for the enemy.”
She laughed. “Maybe I do! He loves our kind, does the emperor in Endros. He dotes so much on us of the Golden Empire that he won’t suffer one of us in his presence.”
“And yet he comes to Asanion. Or is that too a lie?”
“He comes,” said the mage. “His mother drives him, they say, because she knows he’ll lose us else. He loathes every step of the journey.”
“Someone could kill him,” Korusan murmured. “Then we would be rid of him.”
The drug was taking effect. He wondered distantly if it was meant as the mage said, to weaken and not to strengthen him.
But he was too tired to care. He heard her say, “Someone may kill him yet. Or we’ll leave it for you.”
For me, he thought. Yes. That would be proper.
o0o
When he woke again, the lightmage was gone. He had another nurse, a silent Olenyai woman who would not tell him what had become of her. He did not see her again.
In darker moments he wondered if she had been set there to say what no one should say, still less a mage of the Guild that would have wielded him as its puppet. If she had died for it, or if they had stripped her of her power and cast or out. Or if, after all, she had the reward of a gentler posting, away from the terrors of this conspiracy.
The weakness passed—quickly, his nurses said; too slowly for his patience. He was back almost to full du
ties when he was called from one of them into the Master’s presence.
The Guildmaster was with the Master of the Olenyai as Korusan had expected, and no one else but a lone veiled guard. He knew the eyes above the veil, the fret of fingers on swordhilt, Marid’s presence a greater comfort than he might have looked for. Was that friendship, then, this fancy that one man at least was not hungry for his blood?
Before the Master of the Olenyai, Korusan lowered his veil and stood in silence until he should be spoken to. The Master’s own veil was down, his face a little gaunter than Korusan remembered, a little more weary; but it was the weariness of a hard task well begun.
When he spoke, he spoke not to Korusan but to the master of the mages. “He looks well. Will he continue so?”
“Now, I think, yes,” said the Guildmaster.
“Good,” said the Olenyas.
Korusan bit back words that would not have been wise. They could not dispose of him as they had a young lightmage, but they could master him with magic if they chose. Let them think him biddable, if reluctant; let them imagine that he was cowed.
“Prince,” said the Olenyas, “we have somewhat that you should see. Will you come?”
Korusan bent his head, assenting.
He felt their eyes on him, and the cold brush of magic. He was still to them, empty of all but compliance.
The eyes left him. The magic lingered, but after a time that too went away. Still, he kept up his guard and his veil, went where they led, said no word and offered no resistance.
o0o
“This, prince,” said the Master of Mages, “is your empire.”
Korusan regarded it as it lay on a table in a room somewhat less bare than others in this stronghold: it had hangings on the walls, new enough for the figures to be seen, and carpets on the floor, and a chair on a low round dais. That last had been brought in late and in haste, he thought; and likewise the table beside the chair, on which rested a single gleaming thing.
It was a mask of gold. It could not be the one that reposed in the palace treasury in Kundri’j Asan; that would be guarded incessantly.
By Olenyai. They were the trusted guards of emperors. They kept the treasuries, warded the inmost chambers, defended the Son of the Lion with their living bodies.
The mask was heavy as he lifted it. If it was not pure gold, then it was gold sheeted thick over lead.
Its face he knew. It was his own. Its eyes were empty, blank.
“This is the mask of the emperor,” the Guildmage said. “This you are born to wear.”
They had had to remake it, he had heard, when the black kings came. Those were taller men than Asanians, leaner, longer-headed: too large by far to wear a thing made to Asanian measure. But this fit in his hands, seemed shaped for his face.
“Then it is the mask of my ancestors,” he said in wonder. “It is no makeshift or forgery. But how—”
“It was given to us to be destroyed,” said the Master of the Olenyai. “We chose not to obey the commands of kings who were not ours.”
They would have called it treason, those bandit kings from the east of the world. “Yet the first of them was Lion’s Cub himself.”
“He broke faith,” the Master said.
And that, Korusan reflected, was the greatest of all sins to the Olenyai.
He returned the mask to its place. The veil was a burden greater than gold; but that, he had earned. That, he would keep.
Nor did he sit in the chair that so clearly was meant for him. He took it from the dais and set it aside, and sat cross-legged where it had been. “I have as yet no throne,” he said, “and no empire. Now what do you wish of me? To be persuaded to embrace your haste? Is there a purpose in it?”
He did not think that the Guildmaster was pleased. The Master of the Olenyai seemed to have expected this defiance. He raised his hand.
A small company of veiled warriors came quietly from behind a tapestry, where must have been a door, and took station round the room. Guard-station, with Korusan in its center. It felt strange, awry, that he should be the guarded and not the guard; trapped in the center and not on the rim with Marid on his right and a second brother on his left and duty clear before him.
Korusan rested his hands on the hilts of his twin swords. They were solid, comforting. He was being tested, there could be no doubt of it.
It was the Guildmaster’s game, he suspected; Olenyai did not waste training time in trifles. But perhaps the mage was not having all as he would have it. He was alone, no mages with him, surrounded by black-robed warriors.
The Master of the Olenyai took station at Korusan’s right shoulder. “Prince and brother,” he said, “be at ease. No harm will touch you. Only speak as your heart moves you to speak, and be silent as you will to be silent, and remember what we have taught you.”
They had not taught him to sit as a prince in the hall of audience. But they had taught him to speak and to be silent, and to know what was sense and what was folly. He sat as straight as he might, composed his body as one should before battle, and waited.
There were but a handful of them, white-faced and staring, with the dazed look of men who had traveled far and long with their eyes blindfolded. Before that, maybe, they had traveled in curtained litters, taken here and there and round about until even the keenest-witted of them was hopelessly confused.
And here, where they had been brought at last, stood a circle of faceless men. Their eyes leaped to the one face bared among them all, that of the mage; but that was as blank as the mask upon the table. Then, as if reluctantly, they sought the center.
Korusan had leisure to study them. They were all Asanian, as indeed they must be. None bore the marks of rank. They looked like common tradesmen, priests of little temples, one or two in the garb of journeymen artisans, a smith from the look of one burly figure, the other perhaps a juggler or a player, with his long smooth hands and his mobile face.
When the Lion ruled in Kundri’j Asan, such creatures would never have been suffered in the presence of the emperor. But the High Court was all turned traitor, the Middle Court gone over to the enemy, the Low Courts fallen under the rule of the Sun-god’s servants. Only the little people remembered what had been, who had ruled them before the black kings came.
Korusan’s lip curled slightly behind his veil. The Sun-brood made much of its affinity for the common man. But in Asanion the common man despised his outland conquerors and yearned for the rule of his own kind.
Korusan looked at the pallid faces, the fear-rounded eyes, and knew only a weary contempt. He was bred to walk among princes. Not to beg charity from sweaty commoners.
Having ascertained at last that he, seated in the center, must be the one they came for, they flung themselves before him. None of them was clean. But none dared so vastly as to touch him, still less to stare at his hidden face.
Save one, who bowed down patently for prudence’s sake, but kept his eyes on Korusan. “And how do we know,” he demanded, “that this is the one we’ve looked for for so long?”
Korusan did not pause to think. If he had, he would have stopped himself before he went too far. In one hand he took the mask of the emperor. With the other he unfastened his veil. He held the mask beside his face. “Do you know me now?” he asked.
The bold one dropped down flat. But he was bold still, and wild with it. “You’re younger than the one I dream of. And the mask, golden one: it too is older than you.”
“Surely,” said Korusan. “It is a death-mask.”
“Ah! Poor god. He died young.”
“Emperors often do.” Korusan’s arm was growing weary. He set down the mask again and said, “You have seen my face, and I am both Olenyas and Lion’s heir. For that, then, you must die.”
They started. Not one had failed to look up when their fellow spoke, to give way to curiosity that defied even fear.
“But I choose when you die, and how,” said Korusan. “Now I let you live, so that you may serve me.”
“You are the Lion’s son,” said the one who dared to speak, the bold one, the player with his half-trained voice and his half-mad courage. “You are the chosen of the gods. You will rule when the black kings fall.”
But, thought Korusan, there were no gods. “I will rule when my line is restored.” And how briefly that would endure, with no heir to follow him.
They waited, trembling, on their faces. No one else moved, not the Olenyai, not the Guildmaster. He must speak, or the silence would stretch, and turn awkward, and then humiliating, and then dangerous.
There were words in him. Whether they were useful words he did not know, but they were all he had. “Swear to me now, men of the Lion. Swear that you will serve me. If you betray me, you die. If you lose this battle that is before us, you die. If you fail me in anything, for any cause . . .”
He paused for breath that came suddenly short. Their voices rose, finishing what he had begun. “If we fail you, majesty, we die.”
This was power, to sit so, and look down, and know that these lives were his: his to keep, his to cast away.
“I am the emperor who should have been. I am the emperor who is to be. I am the heart of the Golden Empire. They who dream that they conquered me, they dreamed only, and they lied.
“And now he comes, my people: the barbarian, the savage, the bandit king. He jangles in outland gold. He speaks with the tongues of apes and birds. He goes naked, shameless as the animal he is; he wears the fell of a beast. And he dares to boast that he rules us. Will you deny him, my people? Will you refuse him? Will you turn your backs on him?”
“Aye!” they cried.
“We are but the least of the least,” the bold one said. “Our allies are hundreds, thousands strong. Asanion is full of us. Wherever he goes, there he must find us, the false king. Whatever he does, he must run afoul of us. Shall we slay him for you, majesty? Shall we lay his flayed hide at your feet?”
Korusan stiffened. “The usurper is mine. But all that you may do to aid us, you will do. Go; remember me. Fight for me. Take back this empire in my name.”