by Judith Tarr
“I believe,” said the priest, “that you will try to keep that promise. Break it even once, however excellent your reasons, and even as weak as we are beside you, we will do our best to exact the price that such betrayal deserves.”
“That is a fair judgment,” said Estarion.
“Good,” the priest said. “Good. This gathering was meant to cow you, of course, and overwhelm you with numbers and power; but I do hope that it helps you to understand: we serve the gods and the city, and the queen’s majesty. As long as you do the same, we are allies.”
The alternative was perfectly clear. “I see we understand one another,” Estarion said. “That’s well. I too am a priest of the Sun. It would be a great grief if we could find no common ground.”
“You must tell us of your rites and your order,” the priest said, “as far as you may, of course. But not this moment. My brothers have duties that they’ve been neglecting in order to put on this show of force, and I don’t doubt that you have things that need doing. May we speak again under less nervous circumstances?”
“Certainly we may,” said Estarion with honest warmth. “Good day, reverend sir, and may your god bless and keep you.”
“And yours,” said the old priest: “may he hold you in his hand.”
Estarion had much to ponder after he left that place. Not least was the plump priest’s expression as Estarion and the old man parted on the best of terms. There would be war in the temple after this, he had no doubt. He had been sorely tempted to stop it with a blast of cleansing fire, but it was neither the place nor the time for such excesses. He must trust that the old man could look after himself, and hope that the city and the queen were not forced to pay for the outcome.
He said as much to her that afternoon when she had taken a few moments’ rest in the garden of her palace. She was dressed for the day in court, in fine linen and a great deal of gold; her face was a mask of artful paint. She still had the loose, free stride of a hunter or a warrior as she walked down the path from the pool to the little orchard that grew along the wall.
“Seti is neither as feeble nor as innocent as he seems,” she said. “He was high priest for more years than I can count; when he handed the staff to his son—yes, that fat fool is the heir of his body—he surrendered no part of his actual power. If he approves you, the rest will follow. Some may snarl and snap, but none of them is strong enough to stand against Seti.”
“Or so you can hope,” Estarion said.
“So I know,” she said, politely immovable.
Estarion bowed to her knowledge of the place and the people. “I’m a difficult guest, I know. I hope I’ve not created factions that will bring you grief.”
“There are always factions,” she said. “This may bring out one or two that we had been needing to know of.”
“There is that,” he granted her.
She passed under the shade of the trees, which was a little cooler than the fierce heat of the sun, and inspected the green fruit clustered on a branch. Her gown clung tightly to her body, so sheer and so delicately woven that it concealed nothing, only made it all the more beautiful. Her blue-black hair was plaited in a myriad small plaits, some strung with beads of gold or lapis or carnelian; they swung together as she moved, brushing her bare shoulders.
He would have loved to touch them, to run his fingers over the sweet curve of them, and know the softness of her skin. He was startled to discover just how keenly he wanted it.
She would not thank him for the liberty. He kept his hands to himself. She seemed to have forgotten him, but he sensed the spark of her awareness. She knew exactly where he was and what he did there.
He wandered back toward the pool, in part to test her, in part to cool his feet. The water was not particularly cool, but it was cooler than the air. He laved his face and arms, and stroked the bright fish that came crowding about him. They slid over his fingers with oiled smoothness, butting him with their heads but offering no insolence.
They seemed content in their captivity. He was not. This world was lovely, even with the heat; its people were well worth knowing. Yet he was not one of them. The shadow’s strength had grown even in the scarce day’s span since he fell out of it onto the harsh red earth. Whatever had held it back through a king’s reign and into the reign of a queen was fading fast. His fault, maybe, for falling through the Gate. Maybe he had drawn the darkness’ attention; maybe he had shown it a clearer way in.
There were no rents in the fabric of the world. The Gate through which he had come was gone, swallowed up in his deepest self. The tide of shadow darkened his sense of the stars, though it did not yet dim the sun.
He withdrew into himself and sighed. He was no nearer than before to knowing what the shadow was. What hope he had of defending this world, he did not know; he did hope that it was not too arrogant to think that he had been sent here, that the gods had given him this task. His own world, however great his fear for it, was as well defended as a world could be. It had hundreds, thousands of mages; it had its godborn rulers. It was a great fortress and deep well of magic. This world had, as far as he could tell, one lone Sunborn mage from beyond the sky, a tribe of small mageborn cats, and no more. Unless a warm heart and a strong spirit could be enough, the people here had no defense.
“If that scowl is for me,” said the queen, “I’d best call my guards.” Estarion blinked and focused. Her face was stern, but her eyes were glinting. He found a smile for her and put away the scowl. “Do please forgive me,” he said. “I was pondering imponderables.”
“It looked as if they might be unthinkable.”
“That, too,” he said. He groaned, stretched, creaked. “Is there a place where a man may go to practice with weapons?”
“The court of the guards,” she said. “I’ll have you taken there. Is there a particular weapon that you prefer?”
“Something strenuous,” he said. “I feel a need to wear myself out.”
“You will certainly do that, at this time of day,” she said. “Will you listen to a simple native, and hear another way? It’s cool and pleasant on the river, and the cooks are always glad of fresh fowl for the pots. Will you come hunting with me?”
“Sitting at leisure in a boat? Lady, you’re very kind, but—”
“You can take an oar if it suits your fancy.”
It was a tempting prospect. Estarion loved boats and rivers and fishing; he was not averse to hunting waterfowl, either. But when he let loose the smile that tugged at his lips, it was for her, the beautiful one, that he said, “Very well. I yield to the royal command.”
Estarion wielded an oar with skill that came back to him as he went on. At first he scandalized the boatmen, but when they saw that he knew what he was doing, they gave way grudgingly to his whim.
The boat was made of reeds, and floated high on the water. There was a high pointed prow and a high stern, and a canopy amidships, beneath which the queen and her escort could take their ease. Estarion chose not to indulge himself. He sweated in the sun with the rest of the oarsmen, pulling in unison to the beat of a drum.
It was good clean work, and it soothed him wonderfully. The tension poured out of him; the knot in his belly loosened. The thoughts and fears that had roiled in his head were quiet for once.
It was better than sleep, that day on the river. They brought back a boatload of waterfowl and the carcass of a young river-beast: a rich hunt and welcome. The river had been kind; they had lost no man or boat, nor even an oar, to crocodiles, and their quarry had been too numerous to count, all but flinging themselves on the hunters’ arrows.
“He brings us luck,” Estarion heard one of the boatmen say. They were all cordial now; he had proved himself to them, though he had done it with perfect selfishness. He had only wanted to lighten the burden that had fallen on him.
They all ate well that evening, but as before, with the coming of dark, everyone fled to the safety of his own walls. Estarion did not linger, either. His arms and s
houlders ached; his hands stung with blisters. Yet he was wide awake, and he felt remarkably well refreshed, as if he had slept a whole night through.
He let himself be put to bed, to mollify the servants. Well after they had gone, he lay where they had left him. The sounds of the palace died one by one. Voices quieted, footsteps ceased. The strains of a flute, which had come and gone since he came in from the hall, slowly faded away.
He rose softly and put on a kilt, and took up the weapons he had brought from the other side of the sky: knife and short sword, bow and quiver, all made with metals that were not known here.
It was still light as he passed through deserted halls and empty streets. He walked without stealth, but with no desire to be seen. Only the cats could see. The two that were with him as often as not had elected to follow him; their cousins and kin flitted through the long shadows, calling softly to one another.
They were weaving wards about this city. It was subtle and rather marvelous, and quite elegant, like the creatures that wrought it. Their weaving tonight laid a path open for him to follow from palace to city gate, then out to the long stretch of fields along the river.
The gate melted before him. A large brindled cat perched atop it until it was gone; then the cat winked out, vanishing into the air with a sound like purring laughter.
The she-cat stopped just outside the gate, but her mate went on with Estarion. The cat had no fear. Estarion would not indulge in it until he had good and sufficient reason. He raised wards of his own about them both, a shield and a mantle wrought of magic.
He walked away from the walls, down the road to the river and then along the bank to a place that would do as well as any. It was far enough from the city to be out of reach of the wards upon it, but near enough that he did not have to walk far in the dusk. A line of boats was drawn up there, huddled together as if they too were afraid of the dark. He settled in one, sitting near the stern, gazing out over the river to the shadow on shadow that was the farther shore.
Every human creature might be shut away in safety, but night birds sang and jackals howled, and far away he heard the roar of a river-beast. The sunset faded to black; the stars came out in their myriads.
The cat curled purring in his lap. He stroked the sleek fur and leaned his head back, filling his eyes with stars.
The shadow came like a mist, a thin dank fog creeping across the river. The sounds of the night died one by one, save for the howling of jackals in the desert. Jackals, people believed here, were the guides and guardians of the dead. By morning, Estarion well might know whether that was so.
It made him almost happy. He would prefer to live, and this world might be the better for it, too, but he was not afraid to die. It was a passage through a gate, but only the soul could make the journey. The body was cast off, useless and forgotten.
The fog had a scent, a mingled effluvium of dust and damp and old stone. It was not itself deadly; plagues had not come with it in any tale that Estarion had heard. It flowed off the river, dimming the air about him, darkening the stars.
He had strong night-eyes; he needed no light to see. He sat still, save that he had, ever so softly, drawn the short sword from the sheath at his side. The cat sat up and yawned and began to wash its face.
The cat’s calm deepened and strengthened his wards. He sat straighter, but did not rise to his feet. The cat finished its toilet and sat staring, still calmly, at the thing that came over the water.
The fog was nothing to be unduly afraid of. There was that about it which hinted of spells and powers embedded in it, enchantments that would feed madness and swell fear into blind panic. Because he had no fear, the spells did not touch him.
Could this alone be what had driven so many people mad, and rent their king limb from limb? Some of the darker spells had that power, but he could not believe that it was as simple as that.
He waited, as the stars wheeled slowly above the shadow. The fog lapped at the walls of Waset, curling tendrils round it but not venturing within. The river murmured to itself.
Something was coming. The cat sprang from Estarion’s lap to the boat’s prow. He rose then, sword in hand, power coiled within the circle of his wards.
They rode over the river as if it had been solid earth: half a hundred shadowy riders on strange beasts. Even to his eyes they were difficult to see, black on black as they were, but from a glint here and a gleam there, he was able to give them shape. They were human, or near enough: two arms, two legs, a head, encased in armor of strange fashion, and armed with weapons, some of which he recognized, some not. Their beasts were like the crocodiles of this river, but much larger, much longer in the leg, and much more agile and quick.
What army they came from, or by what Gate they had entered this world, he could not tell; but they had no scent or sense of this earth. They overran the shore, riding swiftly and with the air of those who knew their way. They struck for a village that had been safe before, as close to Waset as it was; it was nearly in the shadow of the northern wall.
Estarion slipped out of the boat, set his shoulder to the stern and sent it sliding toward the water. It slid smoothly in the rich black mud, but the splash of its launching stopped his heart in his throat.
The army did not pause or turn. He pulled himself into the boat before the current carried it away, found and softly shipped the steering oar, and let the river bear him down toward the embattled village, touching the oar only to keep the boat on its course.
They reached the village before him, riding like a storm in the night, yet eerily, supernaturally silent. They went for the storehouses and the fields. The former they stripped bare and loaded on beasts that they had brought with them, riderless, for that purpose. The latter they swept past, save one, which they raked with a strange dark fire. Then Estarion knew what those shadowy shapes were which the riders carried, which he had not recognized before: they belched forth flame, but flame transmuted into living, searing darkness.
There was nothing random about this raid. They left the villagers’ houses alone, save, as with the fields, for one. That one they cracked open like an egg.
Estarion’s fingers tightened on the steering-oar until surely it would snap in two. For now, he must only watch and learn. Gods, he hated to be wise; but for this world and for his own, he must not betray himself to these marauders until he knew surely what they were.
The villagers cowered in the ruins of their house. Their little bit of fire barely flickered in the gloom. One of the raiders stamped it out. As Estarion’s eyes struggled to adjust to the deeper darkness, something stirred among the raiders. He could swear it had not been there before, but it was incontestably present now: a loom of shadow, with no shape that he could discern. It flowed rather than walked; it poured itself over the huddle of villagers.
The cold that came out of it, the sense of sheer inimical otherness, made Estarion—even Estarion, who feared little in any world—gasp and cower in the flimsy safety of the boat. The cat pressed trembling against his side.
The dark thing sucked the warmth out of them, and the blood, and last of all the souls. It crunched them like bones, savoring every shrieking scrap. When they were gone, it shrank to a point of darkness, sprouted wings, and flittered into the night.
The raiders dismembered the shriveled and bloodless bodies with the skill and dispatch of butchers in a cattle-market, or priests in a sacrifice. Their movements had an air of ritual; they arranged the limbs in a pattern that Estarion could not quite see. When they were satisfied, they turned their beasts, both ridden and laden with spoils, and rode into the deepest darkness.
The earth breathed a sigh. The stars recovered their splendor. The moon shed its pale light again. The raiders were gone, departed from this world—until night came once more, and once more they would rule the darkness.
TWELVE
JUST AFTER SUNRISE, EARLY RISERS FOUND THE GOD FROM beyond the sky in a boat, asleep, with the lord of the palace cats draped purring over his m
iddle. The boat was drawn up on the riverbank beneath the city’s walls; it looked as if he had been there all night. And yet he was whole of limb, and as the boatmen stood over him, murmuring among themselves, he opened eyes that were as bright and sane as they ever were—although one sensitive soul avowed that they were sadder, and touched with a glimmer of godly wrath.
He greeted them with his white smile, and with words that were princely courteous. Those with amulets clutched them for protection, but his wits had not been devoured by the night. He was the same golden-eyed god that he had been the day before.
Tanit had learned that he was missing when a maid roused her at dawn. Her guest’s servant was standing in her antechamber, trembling so hard that he could barely stand. It was a while before she could coax any sense out of him. Even then it came out in gasps. “I was asleep,” he said, “across the door, as I should be. He had to walk over me. I woke up and he was gone. He’s nowhere here, lady. I looked and looked. All night I looked. He’s not in this house. Lady, I failed, I failed miserably. I deserve to die.”
“We shall see about that,”Tanit said—coldly, to be sure, but her heart was so constricted and her breath so shallow that it was the best she could do. She bade the maids look after him, and took her door-guards and braved the sunrise.
She came to the boat not long after the boatmen found him there. It was the only crowd along the riverbank this early in the day, with the sun barely risen and the dark barely put to flight; and he was standing in the middle of it, head and shoulders above the rest, like a pillar of black stone with eyes of hammered gold. She wanted, suddenly, to burst into tears.
She had been queen too long to be a slave to her own foolishness. The boatmen retreated before her; they recognized her even in a simple gown, with no more than eye-paint, and no crown. Their relief was palpable. This god was more than they were prepared to contend with, particularly at this hour of the morning.