“Cha! What good will they do when your troopers here bring evidence of undead soldiers at Pu’er? The law forbidding that is as solid as the Petal Throne itself! Qutmu has broken that law—on Dhich’une’s orders or of his own will, it makes no difference.”
‘‘We knew of his undead before—”
“I was not officially in command of our eastern armies then—nor was I at Kankara, just a few Tsan away from Pu’er, with agents and emissaries who can be sent down to catch the worm-sucking monster in the very act! General Kutume’s troopers here are witnesses; I shall speedily have a dozen more—and maybe a captive Mrur or Shedra—ox even a Jajqi—to dance at Qutmu’s trial as well! The trap springs shut! I have the authority to impale Qutmu hiTsizena on the spot.”
“Yet you said you’d send him to Avanthar . . . ?” “Exactly. I shall not impale him here. He goes to my Imperial father at Avanthar for two good reasons: first, though 1 have jurisdiction, I won’t punish a General of the Empire without obeying every last cantlet of legal protocol. Secondly, I want the entire nation to see Qutmu dragged to the stake, a shame to his patron—my youngest half-brother, Prince Dhich’une! La, he’ll wriggle like one of his own worms and crawl to the bottom of Lord Sarku’s deepest hell to escape the disgrace! We’ll get the credit for exposing this flagrant breach of law and tradition, and our credibility among the Temples— those of Change and of Stability alike—will ascend to the heavens like the sun! Eselne will never catch up after this, not even if he captures Ke’er and roasts the Baron Aid on a spit before the gods and all their creation!”
Trinesh looked muzzily around. The room was the same: the Senior General and the Prince near the candelabrum, Karin Missum and Lord Huso with their heads together in one comer, and Tse’e—the familiar name would not go away—in communion with the blind priestess before the Flame Lord’s altar. As he watched, the old man’s skinny hand reached up past her shoulder to lay another twig of long-burning Tiu-wood upon its fire.
The Prince and his uncle had certainly struck mutually sympathetic chords here tonight; it could thus be a long time before Mirusiya got around to sending Tse’e to Avanthar. An heir who neither relinquished the Gold nor took part in the Kolumejalim—nor perished gracefully if he lost—had to be punished, Trinesh knew; this was one of the perils of Imperial glory. Yet a prisoner might die of old age—and in very pleasant circumstances—before his case was heard, particularly if a strong-minded Prince such as Mirusiya hiTlakotani kept muddying the bureaucratic waters.
General Qutmu hiTsizena’s Skein of Destiny was more predictable; it was also shorter and much less to be envied!
Trinesh hunched around to peer behind him and discovered that his legs had gone to sleep. Dineva and Arjasu squatted against the back wall. La, those two were probably as numb as his own feet, paralyzed with awe at their proximity to all these puissant lords! A servant knelt beside them to offer a tray containing a clay jug of Churned and a pewter pitcher of wine. The harper was still in his comer, silent and unnoticed, his pot-bellied instrument across his scrawny knees.
It had been the creaking of the door that had awakened Trinesh. The Dridan, Kambe, stood there.
Kadarsha beckoned, and the young officer said in a hushed tone that still carried to every ear in the chamber, “Sire, we have the woman and the boy.”
Heads turned, garments whispered, and armor scraped and rattled. Trinesh shook himself to clear away the last webs of sleep.
It was indeed the Lady Deq Dimani, the Yan Koryani princeling with her. The woman’s head lolled, and her body dragged limply between the two soldiers in the Senior General’s livery who dumped her down upon the scarlet carpet. For a moment Trinesh thought she had been beaten; then he saw the bloated ruin of her face.
They had not bothered—had not needed—to bind her. Trinesh had seen her wounded by Arjasu’s bolt in Ninue, but the ghastly disease that now turned her beauty into horror had nothing to do with that. Both eyes were swollen nearly shut, her temples and cheeks showed blue-black beneath her damp, sticky tresses, and wherever the ulcerations had not yet spread her skin was flushed bright with fever.
“The boy'put up a nice fight,” Kambe reported in his most militarily correct voice. “We have the physician, too, if you want him, Sire. And I sent over to General Kaikama’s headquarters for the Mihalli.”
The Lady Arsala gave a soft cry and went to the prisoners. The boy’s wrists had been tied with a length of Daichu-fibre cord. She touched him upon the forehead, just between the eyes, and he relaxed.
“A knife, please, General Kadarsha. He will make no trouble.” She took the proffered dagger and cut the boy free. “Ridek?” the Senior General said. “Ridek?”
The boy raised his head. “I am Dokku Khessa Tiu.” He glanced at the priestess, then at the Lady Deq Dimani. “No. The blind woman reads minds? So?”
“She is a seeress, yes. Deception is useless.”
“Then you know us.” He straightened up and continued, proudly and distinctly, in his broken Tsolyani. “I do not shame my lineages further. I am Ridek—Ridek Chna Aid, eldest son of the Baron of Yan Kor. I will not ask to be ransomed. If my father offers it, I shall refuse. Sacrifice or slavery: those are your choices for me.”
“An honored captive, then.” Kadarsha smiled at him. “One whose noble word is acceptable as his parole.”
“See—see to her,” the boy rasped. He trembled, and his thin features were pasty with sweat, yet he managed to hold his head high. Trinesh marveled at him—and wondered how he himself might have behaved at his age in a similar situation.
The Lady Arsala had already taken the Lady Deq Dimani’s unprotesting face between her hands. She shut her eyes and said, “Fevered. Hot. A foreign thing within her. Not a wound, not an arrow—that was there, but it is healing. ...” The blind, glassy orbs swung up to seek Kadarsha. “Herbs, medicaments, bandages. All in my chambers—one of you!” The Senior General pointed, and the servant set down his tray and hastened off.
Kambe stood aside to admit two soldiers. Between them, manacled, gagged, and blindfolded, was the alien Trinesh had last seen in the Ochuna in Ninue.
General Kaikama’s soldiers had not treated the Mihalli thus because of any delight in cruelty. Some enchantments required gestures, substances and words, but others could be cast with the mind alone. A skilled mage needed only to see the target to hurl a psychic spell. Trinesh also caught the gleam of a metal collar about the creature’s neck: a sorcerer could not wear metal or carry it upon his person unless it had been appropriately constructed to act as a conductor for the energies of the Planes Beyond. Other metal objects randomized those forces and caused malfunctions or even the death of the spell-caster. No, the Mihalli had been bound in this fashion out of fear—and the utmost respect for the danger he posed.
The creature made himself as comfortable as he could upon the carpet. The boy slid over and murmured something in
Yan Koryani into his pointed, short-furred ear. Lord Huso would have intervened, but the priestess waved him back.
“He has no spells to cast,” she chided. “Only words of consolement.” She could not see the look of baffled rage upon the priest’s sleek countenance, but it required no psychic power to guess its presence. “The woman, too, is defenseless, my Lord. Yet if you are afraid, 1 can lay an enchantment of immobility upon her . . . ?”
Lord Huso glared and retired, discomfited.
Kadarsha came to stand before the Lady Deq Dimani. “Will she recover? Can you cure that—whatever it is?”
“I think it likely. It is some manner of parasite, a fungus. I have both medicines and spells that may succeed.”
The Lady Deq Dimani spoke for the first time. Her jaw was so badly puffed that it was hard to recognize her words as Tsolyani. The blackness had begun to envelop even her gums and tongue.
Kadarsha leaned closer.
“Who? Aluja?” He glanced at the Lady Arsala and followed her nod. “He is here. He is—as well as can be.”
The servant returned with the priestess’s own serving girl and a brass tray heaped high with a jumble of vials, jars, and rolls of white F/rya-cloth strips.
The Lady Arsala held the woman, embraced her, murmured softly, and applied her arts. The others gathered behind to watch. There was no visible change, but the Lady Deq Dimani sighed and sank down upon the figured carpet.
“Do all that is needful for her comfort,” Kadarsha ordered. Trinesh wondered at his tone: he had mentioned meeting her before, had he not?
“If this be truly the Matriarch of Vridu, then Tsolyanu’s omens are auspicious indeed, mighty Prince!” Karin Missum said. He spoke with growing jubilation. “Her Gurek of Vridu— and her brother’s Fishers of the Flame—will think long before attacking when she’s shackled to a hurdle before our Legions! Why, we may even see Vridu’s troops retire from the war—break their alliance with the Baron—start an exodus of other city-states that will decimate his ranks like an earthquake!” He made a shaking gesture with both brawny hands. “We shall march to Ke’er through the crumbling towers of his empire, a ruin which his petty clan-chiefs and town-govemors will scurry to abandon before the roof falls in completely!”
“You rejoice before the building has quivered even once, my Lord!” Kadarsha retorted dryly. “She is but one: her clan will quickly select some younger sister, a niece or other kinswoman. Vridu belongs to Yan Kor, and naught can change that—saving this wondrous earthquake of yours!”
The Lady Deq Dimani leaned forward as though to speak, but words refused to come. Her long tresses swung down to curtain her face. The seeress pushed them back again and began snipping away her stained under-tunic to get at the crossbow wound in her shoulder. After a moment the Lady sagged against the physician’s arm.
“She sleeps,” the Lady Arsala whispered. “We can hope for some improvement when she wakes again.”
The Prince himself cut short the babble of argument that arose to fill the room. “You all presume too much! First she is made well. Then she goes to Avanthar, as is customary for any captured Yan Koryani general. There she may choose ransom, sacrifice, imprisonment—or she may follow their ‘Way of Nchel’ and become as limp as a dead eel! Those decisions are hers—and my Imperial father’s.”
Undaunted, Karin Missum sat back down, Lord Huso behind him. The Incandescent Blaze Society could bring many pressures to bear, even upon an Imperial heir. Especially upon one whose support stemmed from the Temple of the Flame.
“Mighty Prince,” Kambe said from the doorway. “Te’os is here with the Yan Koryani girl. He begs forgiveness for the delay, but you ordered that she not be alarmed. The chamberlains understood that you wished her for your bed tonight, and they took their time adorning her.”
“Bring her in.”
“My Lord!” Karin Missum and Lord Huso protested again in unison.
“Let her come. We have better sorcery in this room than anywhere outside of Avanthar, and I would rather take the risk myself than see her demon-sword scything down my army! —Not that I think she can.”
“You are well defended—” Lord Huso began.
“Precisely. I shall meet her on her own terms—”
“As a noble warrior feels he must,” Tse’e flung in sarcastically. “Yet you carry your blind nobility too far! This is foolhardiness!”
“Should I then submit myself to a painful death, as you would do, uncle?” the Prince shot back. “A hero’s code or a suicide’s—is there so much difference?”
“Mighty Prince.” Kadarsha went to whisper in Mirusiya’s ear. The laker frowned, seemed to consider, and then made a slashing gesture of frustrated acquiescence.
“Oh, very well, I yield to your concession,” the Prince groaned. He removed his blue shawl and wrapped it about Kadarsha’s shoulders. “Let us see if Flamesong can tell a prince from a general. You—” he pointed at Trinesh “—keep the boy from giving our little masquerade away. I doubt whether he understands all we say, but I want him kept quiet. Here, take my uncle’s sword.”
“She—Flamesong—may know!” Lord Huso remonstrated fiercely.
“How? When the Lady Anka’a presented her to me I was twenty paces away, attired in Imperial regalia, a plumed helmet as high as a Tiu-tree on my head, and surrounded by two hundred officers and courtiers! Kadarsha is as tall as I am, and he can play the part. I doubt she could recognize either of us face to face! La, as I recall, during the entire ceremony she did not raise her eyes to me even once—I
thought she was a meek little clan-girl, as bland and unentic-ing as Aao-squash pudding. . . .” He ended on a softer note,
. . I did not think to look for Elara hiVriddi.”
“She may see minds!”
“If she has all the powers you fear, then we had best flee Tsolyanu or hide our heads in the cesspits beneath Avanthar! Is she then Lord Karin Missutn’s mighty, metaphorical earthquake? Cha!”
“Clear the chamber of these others, then!” Lord Huso pleaded.
“And thereby alert her? The Lady Arsala stands ready—as do you and my bodyguards.” He signed to Kambe. “Now,”
The Dritlan opened the door. Te’os hiVriddi entered, followed by the Lady Jai.
By their own flamboyant standards, the Lady Anka’a’s costumers had made her beautiful indeed. The Lady Jai’s tresses were lacquered and looped about with silver links, her cheeks touched with copper-red At/ttw-pollen, and her eyes lengthened with dark Tsunu-paste. Powdered gold had been sprinkled over designs painted upon her limbs with an adhesive made from the Vo^M’o-plant to cover her skin with arabesques and traceries from her bare shoulders and high-nippled breasts down to the silver girdle clasped about her waist. Streamers of translucent Thesun-gauze hung from a collar of emeralds to tangle with the tabards of her sweeping, panelled skirt of rippling green Giidru-cloth, the finest fabric made in the Five Empires since the days of Engsvanyali splendor. Her legs displayed more gilded patterns, all the way from her silver-lacquered sandals to her thighs and the one sleek hip visible beneath her gown. Turquoises, beryls, opals, and malachite dripped from her wrists and throat, her ears, her ankles, and every finger and toe.
The Goddess Dlamelish’s Temple had expended much wealth upon this peace-offering to the Flame Prince. Trinesh found the effect elegant but florid and overdone.
The girl glided forward to halt before the tall candelabrum.
She kept her eyes demurely fixed upon the carpet a pace or so in front of her.
Trinesh was struck with sudden dismay. She had only to turn her head to recognize him, Chosun, Dineva, and Arjasu!
How stupid! He had not thought to remind the Prince of this, and none of the others had remembered either! It was too late to warn anyone now, and he signaled unobtrusively to Dineva and Aijasu to keep well back in the shadows by the door. There was no way to hide himself and Chosun, however: they were as conspicuous as two Chlen-beasts in a meadow! He could only pray that the Lady Jai would remain as diffident as he had known her—that she would not look up!
“The Lady Jai Chasa Vedlan,” Te’os announced in over-formal tones.
Kadarsha spoke from the highest carpet-dais: “You look upon Prince Mirusiya hiTlakotani.” He made a sweeping gesture that she would interpret as pointing to himself. To his right behind him, the true owner of that name stood in watchful silence.
The girl saw the Lady Deq Dimani curled beside the blind priestess, then Ridek beyond. Her eyes traveled up past the boy’s head to Tse’e’s glittering sword, then over to Trinesh’s appalled face.
She knew him at once.
The Lady Jai smiled, a tender and loving smile, full of yearning and enticement, temptation and promise and desire. Trinesh had seen her so only twice before: once after Balar died, and then again when she had descended from Prince Tenggutla Dayyar’s apartments in Ninue.
“I see that you already have been told of me, mighty Prince,” the Lady Jai said.
She did not change, did not transform herself into the colum
n of ravening flame Trinesh had both expected and dreaded. She only smiled, glowed with all of the charm of a maiden in love, and advanced a pace.
“No!” the Lady Arsala shrieked. She leaped to her feet. Karin Missum was before her, sword raised. Lord Huso clenched his teeth and made diagrams in the air. The others fell prone or scuttled aside.
“It profits nothing,” the Lady Jai murmured. “Mighty Prince, we shall not lie together tonight—no embrace of joy, no union of our bodies. Yet we shall at least touch lip to lip.”
Kadarsha seemed frozen. He stared, struggled, and lifted one hand. He held some device, an “Eye,” probably. Trinesh fumbled in his belt-pouch for the one Prince Tenggutla Dayyar had given him.
“No spells, no magic, no machines, no swords,” the girl crooned. “They are futile against Flamesong. Lord Vimuhla’s weapon is mightier than all.” She held out her hands to Kadarsha.
The gauzy draperies smoked, flared, and dropped from her arms in a swirl of gray ash. The collar, the girdle, her bracelets and rings, melted and dribbled away to become white-hot lumps upon the carpets. Fire sprang up there in a score of places. The silver chains in her hair became bright rivulets that trickled down over her naked shoulders. Her tresses fell free about her but did not bum. Trinesh felt heat like that of a smith’s forge: a sustained, growing, roaring conflagration. It was hot but not unbearable: its energies were somehow contained and fed back again out of the room into the Planes Beyond. Flamesong consumed only those things which were in direct contact with the girl’s body. From Trinesh’s distance—three paces—its burning was more of a passion, a tide of sensual fervor within himself, than the blazing calefaction of any mortal fire. He sensed his loins thickening, his manhood rising.
Naked, the Lady Jai went forward, a lover eager for her beloved.
Karin Missum slashed at her, struck, and stood amazed as his fine steel sword disappeared in a spray of molten silvery dew. Some of that deadly rain fell upon Lord Huso, and he screamed and lurched aside.
The Lady Arsala mouthed the words of some spell. The Lady Jai shrugged, turned, and touched a single, slim finger to the woman’s tunic. Cloth crackled and burst into red tongues of flame. The priestess jerked backward, rolled, doubled up, and beat at her breast like a Qasu-bird who blunders into a watchfire.
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