by Jo Clayton
For Tadar, that was end; he formally renounced his son; Ahzurdan was, after all, only a sixth son and one who had proved himself worthless. His mother wept, but didn’t try to hold him. He was happy enough to get away from the bitterness and rage that flavored the air around her; she kept him tied to her, filled his ears with tales of her noble family and laments about how low she’d sunk marrying his father until he felt as if he were drowning in spite. He blamed her for the way his brothers treated him and the scorn his father felt for him, but didn’t realize how much like her he was, how much of her outlook he’d absorbed. Brann recognized Zuhra’s voice in the excessive respect he had for people like the Envoy and his dislike for what he called rabble.
Settsimaksimin came to Tadar’s House around midmorning. “He scared the stiffening out of my bones,” Ahzurdan said. “Six foot five and massive, not fat, his forearms where they came from the halfsleeves of his robe looked like they were carved from oak, his hands were twice the size of those of an ordinary man, shapely and strong, he wore an emerald on his right hand in a smooth ungraven band and a sapphire on his left; he had thick fine black hair that he wore in a braid down his back, no beard (he couldn’t grow a beard, I found that out later), a face that was handsome and stern, eyes like amber with fire behind it; his voice was deep and singing, when he spoke, it seemed to shake the house and yet caress each of us with the warmth, the gentleness of… well, you see the effect he had, on me. I was terrified and fascinated. He brought one of his older apprentices with him, a Temueng boy who walked in bold-eyed silence a step behind him, scorning us and everything about us. How I envied that boy.”
Tadar paid the bond and sent one of the houseboys with Ahzurdan to carry his clothing and books, everything he owned. That was the last time he saw his family. He never went back.
On the twelfth day out of Jade Halimm the merchanter Jiva Mahrish sailed into the harbor at Kukurul. A few days later, as they waited for a ship heading for Bandrabahr, Settsimaksimin tried again.
5. Silagamatys On The South Coast Of Cheonea, The Citadel Of Settsimaksimin.
SCENE: Settsimaksimin walking the ramparts, looking out over the city and talking at his secretary and prospective biographer, an improbable being called Todichi Yahzi, rambling on about whatever happened to come into his mind.
Soaring needle faced with white marble, swooping sides like the line from a dancer’s knee to her shoulders when she’s stretched on her toes, a merloned walk about the top. Settsimaksimin’s Citadel, built in a day and a night and, a day, an orgy of force that left Maksim limp and exhausted, his credit drawn down with thousands of earth elementals and demon stoneworkers, fifty acres of stone, steel and glass. Simplicity in immensity.
Late afternoon On a hot hazy day. Grown impatient with the tedium of administration and the heat within the walls, Settsimaksimin told Todichi Yahzi to bring his notebooks and swept them both to the high ramparts. Heat waves crawled from the earth-colored structures far below, a haze of dust and pollen gilded the Plain that stretched out green and lush to mountains whose peaks were a scrawl of pale blue against the paler sky, but up here a brisk wind rushed from the open sea and blew his sweat away. “Write,” Maksim said. “You can clean it up later.”
He wound his gray-streaked braid in a knot on his head, snapped a skewer to his hand and drove it through the mass to hold it in place. He opened his robe, spread it away from his neck, began stumping along the broad stone walkway, his hands clasped behind him, the light linen robe fluttering about his bare feet, throwing words over his shoulder at Todichi Yahzi who was a thin gangling creature (male), his skin covered with a soft fur like gray moss. His mouth was tiny and inflexible, he ate only liquids and semi-liquids; his speech was a humming approximation of Cheonase that few could understand. He had round mobile ears and his eyes were set deep in his head, showing flashes of color (violet, muddy brown, dark red) as he looked up from his pad, looked down again and continued his scribbling in spidery symbols that had no like in this world. Settsimaksimin fetched him from a distant reality so he’d have someone he could talk to, not a demon, not an ambitious Cheonene, but someone wholly dependent on him for life and sustenance and… perhaps… transport home. His major occupation was listening to Maksim ramble about his experiences, writing down what he said about them along with his pronouncements on life, love, politics and everything.
“The Parastes… the Parastes… parasite Parastes, little hopping fleas, they wanted to make me their dog, their wild dog eating the meat of the land and they eating off me.”
He charged along the rampart, breasting the wind like some great bull, bare feet splatting on the stone, voice booming out over the city, lyric basso singing in registers so low Todichi had to strain to hear the words.
“They wanted to go on living till the end of time as entitled do-nothings. Bastards of the legion of the Born. Lordlings of the earth. Charter members in the club of eugennistos. Owners of lands, lives and good red gold.”
Todichi Yahzi hoomed and cooed and was understood to say, “For the honesty of my records, sar Sassa’ma’sa, were there no patrikkos among them, no good men who cared for their folk? Among my own…
Settsimaksimin swung round, yellow eyes burning with feral good humor. “My mother was a whore and I’m a half-breed, don’t ask me for their virtues. Not me.” He threw back his head and let laughter rumble up from his toes. “I never saw any. HAH! Go talk to them and see how sweet they are.” He swept an arm around in a mighty half-circle. “Look out there, Todich. Black and bountiful, that old mother, she lays there giving it away to any may who knows how to tickle her right. Who does the tickling, who makes her breed and bear? Not our Parastes. Dirt suits the dirty, not them, not our elegant educated fleas. Pimping fleas, lending her to busy little serfs who fuck her over and get nothing for their labors, it’s the flea pimps who carry off the bounty she provides. They sit down there close enough to smell, Todich; they sit down there in their fancy houses behind their fancy walls with their fancy guards and fancy dogs keeping out the folk they fancy want to get at them; they sit down there and curse me. Let them curse. They go to sleep down there and dream me dead. Let them dream. Hah, who’s dying? Not me. NOT ME,” he shouted and the walls shook with the power of his voice. He wiped at his neck, started walking again, more slowly as if some of the energy had gone out of him with the shout. When he spoke, his voice was softer, more sedate. “I made laws, Todich, you’ve writ them down, good laws, fair to the poor, maybe not so fair to the rich, but they’ve had a thousand years going their way.” He chuckled. “Let them suffer a little, it’s good for the character. Good for the CHARACTER, HA HA,” he twisted his head around, “hear that, old mole? Ah the scorn I got, the righteous indignation. What am I doing? Clodhoppers and bumpkins? School? Land of their own? Whose land? WHOSE LAND! NEVER! Thief! Tyrant! Ignorant idiotic imbecile! You’ll ruin the country. You’ll destroy everything we’ve built. A voice in how they live? Perpetual servitude is the natural state of some men. Free them and you destroy them. Who is going to tell them what to do? They’re lazy and improvident. Haven’t you seen how they shirk their work? Look at how they live, how dirty they are. They drink and fornicate and beat their wives and starve their children. We hammer virtue into them, otherwise nothing would get done. They aren’t men, they’re beasts; if you treat them like men, you are a fool and you are harming them rather than helping. Ah ah ah, Todich, there you have your sweethearts. For those fleas, those bloodsucking fleas, for those swaggering club-wielders, the serfs were just one more tool for working the earth. Plowing procreating digging sticks. Animated hoes. Grubbing the fields of the fiefs, generation unto generation without a day of rest, without a home and fireside, without anything to save their worn-out nothingness until I took them into my hands.
“Two sorts of beings out there on the Plain, Todich. Nay-saying non-doing Parastes and everyone else. Field hands, farmers, ferrymen, watermen and woodmen, rowers and growers of greens, chandlers, craftsmen,
drovers and sellsouls who were armed and charged with defending the fiefs of the Parastes against the claims of the slaves.” Laughter rolled out like thunder. He turned the corner and went charging along the west wall. “They didn’t expect their people to love them, no they did not. Just serve them, Hmm. I tried-and succeeded, Todich, you’ve writ how I succeeded-to bring more equality between the rich and the beggars. And spread confusion with both hands.” He held up huge shapely hands. “Bountiful confusion and I enjoyed it, every moment of it. Why bother my head with such chimeras? they asked me. You can’t do it. The poor don’t want it, they hate change, they want things to go on being the same. They won’t help you. We won’t help you, we’re not inclined to suicide. Your army won’t help you, they despise dirt grubbers more than we do. Be sensible. Power is power. The rule is yours. Enjoy it, don’t wear yourself down.” The massive shoulders went round, he clasped his hands once more behind him and slowed his pace and lowered his voice to a mutter. “There are times when I’m tempted to agree.” He stopped, put his hand on a merlon and stood squinting at the city below. “Then… then I remember begging in the streets. Look, Todich, down there, where the two lanes meet by the end of the market. A Parast had his harmosts beat me because I startled his horses. I left my blood on those paving stones, but you couldn’t find it now, there’s too much other blood over and under it. And there,” he flung his arm up, jabbing his hand at the city wall where it curved to meet the bay, “I can see a hut there still, on that hill just beyond the wall, my mother starved in one like it after she was too old to whore any longer. Do you know why the Citadel is here and nowhere else? When I was six, Todich, a merchant caught me stealing and brought me to the slave market, it was right here, under where we’re standing, and the pleasurehouses were just a step away, when we get round to the north side we’ll be over the House I was sold into. No one should be rich enough to buy another, Todich, and no one poor enough that he’s obliged to let himself be sold. Moderation, Todich, wealth in moderation, poverty in moderation. Pah!” He slapped the stone and stumped on.
“I took into my hands a country where the poor counted for nothing, where scoundrels were everything, so I had to be a greater scoundrel than them all, Todich. They were right, these fleas; no one wanted me to do what I did. I made my laws and sent out my judges with orders to be just and what happened? The poor ran to their masters for justice (ah, the silly men they were) and shunned mine. I had to do it all myself. I sold my soul, Todich. I sold it to the Stone and to Amortis. And I sold Cheonea to Amortis, when you take away one center you have to provide another, Todich; she’s no prize, our Amortis, but she’s less bloody than some; her sacrifices are those all men make without much prodding… hah! no, with a good lot of prodding, if you’ll forgive the pun. I’ve done worse things, Todich, for reasons not half so worthy. I shrank from no evil to ensure my laws were enforced, especially the land laws. Write this, be sure you write this. I distributed the land to the people who worked it, with this condition, they were to pay the former Parastes a small sum quarterly for thirty years, then the land would be paid off and they would have in their hands the deed for it. I did that because I wanted them to value it. I knew them far better than the fleas did, I was one of them, I knew they wouldn’t believe in anything that came to them too easily; I knew once they’d sweated and bled to earn the deed, they would own that land in their minds and in their blood and in their bone and they’d fight to keep it. The title papers have been going out for the past ten years. Lazy clodhoppers, eh Todich? Not anything like. Thrifty frugal suspicious lot, more than half of them paid out early, I think they weren’t all that sure I’d last, they wanted that paper and they got it. And the same day they got it, those deeds were registered at the village Yrons and the Citadel. Ah, how I love them, these bigoted, stubborn, enduring men. They know what I’ve done for them, they’re mine, they’d bleed for me or spy for me; they pray for me, did you know that? I’ve seen them do it when they didn’t know I was watching. It wasn’t for show, Todich, not for show.” A rumbling chuckle filled with humor and affection. “Though they get annoyed with me sometimes. They don’t like me interfering in their lives. They didn’t like it when I put Amortis in their villages; I didn’t like it either, but you have to break the old before you can bring the new, besides, I needed Amortis’ priestcorps to run the country for me until I could get the dicasts and village headmen trained, there’s only so much you can do with soldiers. They didn’t want the schools either, I had to scourge half a village sometimes before they’d let their children come to them those first years. What a change since. Now they’re proud of sons who can read, now they scold their grandsons when the lads want to skip school and forget learning to read, write and cipher, now they go to the passage ceremonies with wonderful pride in their own. Ah ah ah, and I am proud of them. They took the reins from me and built a strong new life on the changes I made. It’d be a foolish tyrant who tried to wrest land and learning from them now.
“There’s one thing I regret, Todich, that’s forcing Amortis on the Finger Vales. Burning their priests. I spit on these torchers, those stinking bloody brainless Servants with their Whore God. I spit on myself for letting it be done, Todich, done in my name. Amortis! Forty. Mortal Hells, I didn’t think even a god would be that stupid, but I NEED her, Todich. A hundred years, I thought I was buying a hundred years so I could set my changes so deeply no man could uproot them. Haaa yaa yaa, I need them but I won’t get them, that greedy bitch has ruined me. HAH! Ruined or not, I’m going to fight, let the Hellhag come, I’m a skin filled with rancor and I’m waiting.”
He stopped in the center of the south side and stood looking out across the Notoea Tha. Todichi Yahzi dropped into a squat behind a merlon and waited with stone patience for Maksim to start talking again.
The ariels came blowing out of the east, swirled in a confusing flutter about him, whispering their reports in their soughing voices, voices that were winds whistling in Todichi Yahzi’s ears, nothing more. “… the woman… alive… Jiva Marish… Ahzurdan… wards… Kukurul…”
Maksim cursed bitterly, using his lowest register, the words tearing from his throat. Leaving Todichi Yahzi to make his own way down, he snapped to his sanctuary deep within the earth, warm dark earth around him, elementals sleeping coiled about him, protecting him, ready to wake if he called them. Lights came on automatically as he materialized there and he strode toward the storage shelves, dragging the skewer from his braid, shaking it down, pulling his robe closed and doing up the fastenings. He thrust his arms into the loose over-robe he wore for working; sleeveless, heavy and soft, it hung about him like woven darkness as he carried the mirror case to his work table. He kneed the chair aside, set the case down and stood with his hands on the double hinged lid, thumbs tapping lightly at the wood as he calmed himself into a proper state to use the mirror. “Little Danny Blue,” he murmured, “Ahzurdan. I wonder how you got tangled in this mess.” His mouth curled into a tight smile. “Tangjii, old meddler, that you sticking your thumbs in?”
He maneuvered the chair back and dropped into it with an impatient grunt, opened the case, took out the black obsidian mirror and the piece of suede he used to polish it. “I know your little tricks, Blue Dan, I know you, Danny Boy.” He wiped gently at the face of the mirror, breathed on it, wiped again. “Did you think of this, Danny Blue? I don’t know her. I can’t reach her.
I found her through the boy the first time, now I’ve got you to guide my sight, is that a piece of luck, Baby Dan, or is that a piece of luck. Haaaa! I’ve GOT you, Blue, nowhere you can hide from me.” He set aside the leather and slid the mirror into its frame. “Ahzurdan in Kukurul,” he intoned and touched the stone oval with a long forefinger.
The stone surface shimmered, then he saw the side of a rambling inn and small sparkles of light writing patterns over a window on the third floor. “Sooo sooo, how much have you learned since you ran off, Ser Ahzurdan? Mmm, interesting, I wonder where you picked that
up? Looks like something Proster Xan was playing with a few years back. That’s a clever twist, now how do I untie it? This… this… ah! cute, touch that one and I’m smoke. Sooo sooo, how do I get round that… here? No, I don’t think so, tempting but… let’s fiddle this loop out a little. Ah, ah ah, now this. Riiight. And now it comes neatly apart. Don’t try fooling your old teacher, boy. Let’s put this aside so we can tie it up again if we want and take a look at what’s happening in there. Mmmmh mmh. So that’s our Drinker of Souls.” He leaned closer, frowning. “That mushhead swore he put the pagamacher in your heart, I suppose he missed his hit. You’re hard to kill, lady. Mmm. No more tigermen… what have I got… mmmmm… what have I got…” The woman was sitting in a chair with her feet up on a hassock; her body was relaxed but her brilliant green eyes followed Ahzurdan with a concentrated intensity as he walked about the comfortable room, his hands moving restlessly, opening and closing, tapping on surfaces, fondling small objects, while he talked in spurts and silences. “Gabble gabble, Danny Blue, you haven’t changed a hair… hmm.” Two children were curled up on the bed, sleeping; he had a vague idea that they were attached to the woman and were a bit more than children. He watched them a moment, became convinced they weren’t breathing. “Dipped in the reality pond, did you, lady? And pulled you out a pair of… of what? Complications, mmm, if I wait until you’re, alone and see you out, saying I can do it this time, those children would be left and what would I have coming at me? I went too fast the first time and missed my hit and unless I mistake me badly. I’ve done myself a mischief by it. Sooo sooo, this time I’ll watch a while. A while? A day or two. Or three. Or more. Until I’m ready, lady.” With a rumbling chuckle, he shoved the chair back and started to stand, stopped in the middle of the move and flattened his hands on the table. “Oh Maksi old fool, senility is setting in, next thing you know, you’ll be drooling in your mush. Sooo sooo.” He reassembled the ward and set it in place outside the window. When he was done, he pushed onto his feet, leaving the mirror focused on the Inn. “Dream your little dreams, Danny Blue, I’ll be with you soon as I finish some cursed clamoring business…” He stretched, groaned as muscle pulled against muscle, pulled off the overrobe and tossed it onto the chair. “AAAH! WHY WHY WHY can’t they SEE? It’s so simple.” He twitched the linen robe straight and with a few quick flowing passes rid it of its wrinkles. “Dignity, give a man his dignity and you’ve increased his value and the land’s value with it.” He rubbed his feet on the pavingstones. “Be damned if I cramp my toes for that son of a diseased toad, that high-nosed high priest of my whore god, that posturing potentate of ignorance, HAH!” He glamoured sandals over his feet, grinned and added tiny grimacing caricatures of Vasshaka Bulan Servant of the Servants of Amortis to the seeming straps of white leather. A touch to the Stone snugged beneath his robe, a twisted tight smile as he felt a tingle in his fingertips, then he snapped to the reception chamber at the top of the west tower, a gilded ornate room that he detested. He knew the effect of his size and the chamber’s barbaric splendor (and the long laborious climb to reach it) and used them when he had to deal with folks like Vasshaka Bulan who needed a good deal of intimidation to keep their ambitions in hand. A desk the size of a small room and a massive carved chair sat on a shallow dais that raised both just enough to give visitors an ache in the neck and a general sense of their own unworthiness. He settled himself in the chair, gave a quick rub to the emerald on his right thumb. “Let the charade proceed,” he muttered. The only object in the vast plateau of polished kedron was a dainty bell of unadorned white porcelain. He rang it twice, replaced it and sat back in the chair, his arms along its arms, his hands curved loosely abOut their finials.