The Prince shot him a sardonic glance. “La! You yourself sent the Lady Arsala hiChagotiekka to me, good priest! A perfect guardian, you said, one so versed in defenses and wardings and perceptions of the Planes Beyond that I would be swaddled in protections like a Dnelu-tgg in its cocoon— safer than in Lord Vimuhla’s lap!”
“Mighty Prince! That is not fair! I spoke of common sorcery, not of weapons of the gods!”
“Who knows whether this Lady Kai—Jai? —has such a weapon? She may be as addled as a sand-worm too long in the sun!” He pressed big, splay-tipped fingers together until the knuckles cracked. “I will learn!”
Trinesh was horrified to hear his own voice blurt, “Is it that you really desire to look upon this Elara hiVriddi once more, mighty Prince?”
Mirusiya had turned his back to stand before the altar-flame. He did riot seem to notice who had spoken. “So it may be, my friend.”
General Kutume was scowling at Trinesh. Fortunately the door opened.
The woman who stood there was a gaunt, emaciated priestess in the orange-red, ankle-length skirt and short tunic of the Temple of the Flame Lord. A streak of pure white swept back from the parting in her hair to be lost in the graying locks that spilled free over her bony shoulders. The scholars said that the gods put such streaks into the hair of creatures for whom They had special tasks, as a scribe marks an important word in a scroll with colored ink.
“My Lady Arsala,” the Prince said.
“Lord?” She wrinkled her high-curved forehead and drew the dark wings of her brows together. “There are others here.
1 recognize Generals Kadarsha, Kutume, and Karin Missum. Another? Lord Huso. And four more. Them I do not know. And two servants—and yet another. ...”
It dawned upon Trinesh that the woman was blind. Unlike the harper, this was no case of Alungtisa the priestess’s empty eye-sockets were filled with orbs of milky glass!
She came to him and put cool, parchment-dry fingers to his face. He gulped and would have pulled away, but she gentled him with-a smile. “Do not fear, young man—soldier. This blindess is of my own choosing. I gave up my worldly sight the better to perceive the energies of the Many Planes. I see auras, powers, minds, and souls, rather than the veil of sensory illusion that beclouds the vision of you with eyes!” Dineva made some sound, and Trinesh guessed that she was praying. He watched as the sorceress moved to touch Chosun’s plump, sweat-slick cheeks, then Arjasu’s coolly handsome features. From him she swiftly drew away. “Four soldier-folk,” she intoned, “no better and no worse than their fellows: more here, less there, one more kind, one more cruel, one more afraid. ...”
A pent-up pressure in his lungs warned Trinesh that he was holding his breath. He expelled it in a ragged gasp that was as much fear as relief.
The Lady Arsala turned to face the Prince. How she saw him—and what she saw—Trinesh could not imagine. “Mighty Prince, you summoned me?”
The Prince licked his lips. He, too, was obviously ill at ease with this strange seeress. In short, chopped sentences he told her of the Lady Jai and her threat.
“ ‘Flamesong?’ Lord Vimuhla’s blazing sword? Unlikely. I would have said impossible, but I read neither ignorant superstition nor deception in your soldiers here. The young man who tells the tale may be wrong—the girl could have duped him for reasons of her own—but he does not lie.” “Persaude the Prince that this is too perilous a game, my Lady,” Lord Huso urged. “The girl must be seized, exorcised, made harmless!”
“Punished, you mean. Lord Huso. Put to the question, tortured, then sacrificed in Lord Vimuhla’s Flame. I read the real meanings behind your words all too well!”
The priest’s lips worked, and Trinesh wondered if he were casting a spell to bar the woman from his thoughts.
The Lady Arsala smiled.
None of them heard the door open again. The bodyguard named Zaklen cleared his throat, abashed at his intrusion. “Mighty Prince,” he said, “there are two outside who say they must see you—that they bring matters relating to—to your present concerns.”
“Send them in.”
Trinesh recognized Okkuru’s bulk and his slyly obsequious grin even before the translator reached the circle of light around the candelabrum. Tse’e was with him, as diffident as ever.
Damn the slave—and the old renegade! Utter fools! General Kutume’s features took on a bright red flush. “Who let this—these—?”
Tse’e asked gently, “Mighty Prince Mirusiya?”
“lam he.”
The old man narrowed his one good eye. “I had thought that I did not remember you, but I was wrong. You were named Torisu—Torisu hiVriddi.”
Puzzled, the Prince lowered his arm, already half raised to summon Zaklen back. He made a questioning sound in his throat.
“Listen! Hear me out before you call your guards!” Tse’e touched thin fingers to his face as though begging Mirusiya to look closely upon him. “I am your father’s half-brother, Nalukkan hiTlakotani. You are my clan-nephew.”
The Prince opened his mouth, then shut it again. A wild, scraggly, barefoot old dotard, a Milumanayani sand-worm in a ragged desert-cloak!
He burst into peals of delighted laughter.
“Hear me, nephew. Shall 1 name your clan-fathers and mothers? Arinu hiVriddi, Dleriissa hiVriddi—”
The laughter stopped. “You cannot be who you claim.” “I am as I say.” Tse’e extended a hand from beneath his stained and filthy garment. “Call for the sword I surrendered to your soldier at the door.” Something in his tone must have carried the ring of Imperial command, for, rather to his own amazement, the bodyguard found himself laying the weapon on the carpet just inside the threshold.
General Kutume picked the blade up and wordlessly passed it forward. Tse’e—Nalukkan hiTlakotani—pointed, and the Prince himself twisted at the pommel knob. It came free in his hand. The hilt and guard slid off after it, and they all beheld the golden Seal of the Imperium worked upon the tang.
“You see?” Tse’e said simply. He put the weapon back together and laid it by his side.
Trinesh moved through the ensuing confusion to take Tse’e’s hand. “No ‘nobility’ drives you, old man,” he observed sadly. “No high purpose! It is death you seek!”
“A fugitive’s every breath denies nobility, friend. Now it is time for the Weaver to hem my Skein and remove it neatly from the loom.” He brushed aside Trinesh’s restraining touch. “Prince Mirusiya—-Torisu hiVriddi—when last you saw me I stood in the bumed-out shell of the Vriddi clanhouse in Fasiltum. My troops had finished assembling our captives, and you clung to your clan-mother’s skirt, a big-eyed Hu-bat, to watch them go. You spat curses at me and wept for those whom I took away to suffer punishment in Avanthar.”
“I—1 remember,” the Prince husked, it was as though he dug down through layers of stubborn, frozen rock to tap Lord Vimuhla’s smoldering fire-stone beneath.
‘ ‘The rest I will tell you—if you grant me time before you send for the Mrikh and their impaling stake.” He drew the Prince aside toward the altar, but Trinesh could still just hear them.
Mirusiya’s jaw was ridged and white. “I—uncle—if you are my uncle—” He paused for a space of ten heartbeats. Then: “I hated you!”
“So you still must. So you should. It cannot be otherwise. Within you there is a Vriddi; a man does not easily cast aside the nurture he suckles with his nurse’s milk, not even when the emissaries of the Omnipotent Azure Legion come to lay the mantle of the Tlakotani Emperors upon his shoulders and hail him Prince.”
No one spoke. It was long before the Prince himself broke the silence:
“I hated you when you ravaged our city—I was too young to die for Fasiltum then. I despised myself for being a child! I hated you for what you did to Elara and the others. Then I hated those ‘tame’ Vriddi who took me, reared me, and taught me to abandon any hope of reprisal, any retaliation against the Imperiuro—against the omnipotent God-King in Avantha
r!”
“Then you must have hated yourself all the more when you found that you yourself were no Vriddi but a Tlakotani, the son of that very Emperor who had earned your hatred!” “Yes.”
“As did I, boy. As did I, when the Omnipotent Azure Legion came for me, long ago. I, too, found it hard to accept my Skein.”
The Prince could make no reply.
“That is the way the Seal Emperors of Tsolyanu are made. The best of them are smelted from the ore of adversity, forged upon the anvil of strength, tempered in cunning, and quenched in blood. Thus do the Tlakotani ensure the perpetuation of their dynasty and of the Second Imperium. Thus they guarantee a driver who can manage his beasts, a master who has known the whip and hence knows well how to wield it. Such a one rules the better. Thus, too, is the danger of weak heirs lessened: it is harder for a spoiled princeling to take the reins from a stronger parent and mire the cart of the Empire in the mud of decadence. You will see, you will learn.” He bobbed his head in a mock bow. “Ohe, you will make a fine Emperor!”
Mirusiya gave him a black look. “Our Kolumejalim, the ‘Rite of the Choosing of Emperors,’ has never assured Tsolyanu of a brave, kind, or even an efficient emperor. La, the Imperium has rarely lacked for folly!”
The older man shrugged. “No system delivers perfection. Even with sound Chlen-beasts and a sturdy cart, the driver may still be an idiot, a rogue, or a madman, in spite of his clan’s best efforts to teach him otherwise.”
“You are glib, uncle. What was done to the Vriddi cries out for more than excuses!”
“What, then? Tears? Guilt? Self-loathing? Retribution? Punishment—death and more death? Those hold no life for the future! They are withered rootlets, seeds that cannot grow. Alas, this is the lesson we forget first: we think to take vengeance for history, then to expunge it, ignore it, cast it aside, rewrite it, give its mistakes different names and joyously proclaim a newer, better day to come! We relive the stupidities of our ancestors with all the placid equanimity of a C/z/en-beast who thinks each step round the threshing circle takes him on to a fresh pasture!”
“Uncle, I am no philosopher—”
“But you are an intelligent man, one who holds the shaping of the world in his hands. The solution, nephew, is not revenge upon the past but construction for the future. The bricks and beams one uses must come from whatever resources the age provides, but the mortar—the cement that holds the edifice together—is Khomoyi, ‘noble action.’ That— and hard work—are the principles a ruler needs!”
“ ‘Noble action?’ Of course. ... A warrior is immersed in ‘noble action’ from birth! I do not take your meaning.” “Your young soldier there, the Hereksa, thinks nobility consists only of some stern and crusty warrior’s code: iron laws that call for blind heroism and blood in answer to blood.”
“And is he wrong? The Vriddi taught me the same.”
“Not entirely. But Khomoyi—‘nobility’—is more than heroism. The noble being—man, woman, or nonhuman—seeks to learn who he is and where he fits into the Weaver’s tapestry. When he has understood his role, he makes his nature manifest before all without hypocrisy or self-deception, saying, ‘Thus am I, and so be it.’ He prosecutes his beliefs: he acts. The ignoble person is false, indolent, and quick with apologies and alibis; he lacks identity and purpose as an army falters without its standard. He is passive and weak: he accomplishes little that will make him remembered by the centuries to come. The priest of Lord Vimuhla sacrifices victims in the Flame, and this, for him, is noble; it is what he believes with all his heart. Lord Thumis’s gray-robes abhor living sacrifices, pick their gentle Tetel flowers, seek wisdom, and aid all who ask—again a noble Skein. Lady Avanthe’s flock—of whom 1 once was one—yearn for peace and the forging of bonds with nature, with those other life-forms with whom we share this world, and with the cycles of the crops and the rains and the year. The followers of Lady Dlamelish dance and copulate and pursue their transitory pleasures; they are noble as well, as long as they make no pretense otherwise. The Zrne, ‘the Barbed One of the Forests,’ pounces upon its prey and hence is noble according to its own dim understanding. A Zrne who does differently—there are those in the zoological gardens in Avanthar that come peaceably enough to take food from their keeper’s hand—is ignoble; it has surrendered to ease and sloth and a life of being other than its nature.” The old man sighed. ‘‘Your Hereksa is noble, nephew, though not quite for the reasons he thinks.” “Cha! There must be true—honorable, justifiable—-reasons for not doing as one preaches!”
“Of course. But those each Spirit-Soul must examine for itself.”
Prince Mirusiya pondered. “Were you noble, uncle, when you slaughtered the rebels of Fasiltum?”
“No. I had not thought—1 had not yet looked to see who I was. Now I have learned that 1 am no executioner, no follower of grim and blood-stained Chiteng, nor even of Lord Karakan, the Master of Ever-Glorious War. When I was assigned to quell the rebellion at Fasiltum I was only a young man obeying orders, one more blind to himself than your priestess is to the colors of the sky.”
“And would it be noble for you—for another—to do the same again?”
“I have sought within me. Another might act as I did and be noble according to his own nature—a fiercer and more warlike man. But not I.”
“Are you noble now, uncle?”
“I hope to be. —And I am the happier for it.”
The Prince shook his head. “We must thank the gods that few practice nobility in this strict sense of yours, else the smooth running of the Imperium—of any organization—would swiftly become impossible! We would founder in introspection as the Milumanayani tribes do in their endless voting and debating!”
Tse’e sighed and turned his one good eye upon the others in the chamber. “You may be right. Each to his own Skein. Come, no more words now. I am done: your captive—or rather brother Hirkane’s, if he wishes me carried to Avanthar for execution.”
“No ”
The old man laid a hand upon the Prince’s arm, unthinkable to any lesser being. “We can speak more later, when these fine soldiers of yours are elsewhere upon their rounds.” He scratched beneath his desert-cloak and grinned lopsidely. “Ohe, one last matter: this slave, this Okkuru, claims the reward for delivering me to the impaling stake.”
The Prince glanced toward the back of the chamber. “A slave turns you in? A slave?”
Okkuru had the excellent wisdom to fall upon his face and grovel.
“Is there a difference? Would it have been better if this Hereksa here had brought me? Or one of your elegant generals? Okkuru behaves with nobility: he makes no pretense. He is what he is.”
“The Flame melt your nobility! No slave lays hands upon a Prince of the Imperium and lives! Not even a Prince who is a fugitive—not even one who goes disguised as a sand-worm!” “Oh, Chlen-shit, as the Hereksa says!” Tse’e made a wry face. “You are very much a creature of your upbringing, nephew. Think of nobility—”
“I’ll consider your philosophy, uncle; that is the most I promise. In the meantime I obey Imperial law. For now, for me, that is my nobility.” The Prince’s cheeks were suffused with fury, and the snap of his fingers was very loud. “Take this slave out! March him to the perimeter of the camp and turn him loose! His life is his reward!”
Okkuru ground his nose into the scarlet carpet. His hairy haunches quivered in the air, and from someplace underneath his bulk they heard a muffled groan as of a Chlen-beast giving birth.
“He has a cart, only a little cart, full of supplies, nephew,” Tse’e pleaded patiently. “Why not at least let him take that?”
Prince Mirusiya’s eyes were cold lightning. “He may have all he can carry upon his own back. No more! The cart is doubtless army property, as his supplies are assuredly pilfered from our commissary. General Kutume, confiscate whatever the wretch cannot load upon his own shoulders and see him past the sentries. Let no one aid him!”
Okkuru uttered one l
ast bleat of abject despair. The Prince opened his lips to speak, saw Tse’e’s face before him, and shut them again. Zaklen bellowed for an escort, and General Kutume followed the slave out.
Prince Mirusiya returned to the altar to stand ruminating before its ruby flame. Whether he communed with his fierce and implacable God or whether he meditated upon the lesson he had received this night, none but he could say.
23
The giant Milumanayani heid up the fat, pink-white grab, clucked with gustatory anticipation as befitted a true connoisseur, and dropped it into the stewpot. As big as a log of wood, the thing splashed steaming brown gravy up over his wrist. He swore, licked his fingers, and said, “A sand-worm tastes as sweet as human flesh, they say, but only if it’s marinated for three days in Mash-brandy!” Sharp teeth, like a Zrne's, glittered as he grinned. “This bugger’ll delight even the most discriminating palate! You’ll see when it’s served to the Emperor in Avanthar!”
“Not so!” Trinesh’s senior clan-father, old Morudza hiKetkolel, scoffed. He sat with Trinesh beside the fire. “He’ll get off-—Prince Dhich’une is every worm’s friend!” “Not this time! We have him as plain as Thenu Thendraya Peak! The ‘high ride’ awaits. Dhich’une can whine and wheedle and piss his kilt, but he can’t save him.”
The fire sent up a cloud of smoke and sparks, and the scene drifted away upon the breeze. The Milumanayani dwin-died to be replaced by Prince Mirusiya. Trinesh’s clan-father became the Senior General, Lord Kadarsha hiTlekolmu.
Trinesh sat up. The sleep-demons had stolen a march on him: he had dozed—and dreamed—without realizing it! He was surprised to find Chosun’s hand pressed against the backplate of his armor, quietly supporting him so that he might not slump over and embarrass himself before the Prince.
General Kadarsha was saying, Qutmu has friends in the City of Sarku, clansmen, priests—some of the Emperor’s chamberlains in the Court of Purple Robes within Avanthar itself. ...”
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