by Judith Tarr
“Perhaps we’re out of the habit,” she said. “It’s been years since king could speak to king. The enemy kept us all within our borders. Common people could travel, but embassies were always prevented in some way: slowed, stopped, killed.”
“They were dividing you,” he said, “the more easily to conquer.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you have spies, lady?” he asked her. “Have you talked to travelers? Do you know what’s happening in your neighbors’ kingdoms?”
She regarded him with those great dark eyes, as if she needed to study him. “I do have spies,” she said. “I do listen. My neighbors are holding their realms together as I am mine. None of them is strong enough yet to think of war, if that’s what you fear—though they may do so before much longer, and knowing that I’ve allowed you to raise and equip an army.”
His stomach tightened. “Lady, that’s for the shadow, not for them.”
“One may hope they understand that,” she said.
“Lady,” he said after a pause, “I came here to ask your leave to mount an embassy, to visit the kings and talk to them. The enemy divided you out of fear—because an alliance was in some way a threat. While the enemy is gone, if you can unite in common cause, he’ll come back to find you much stronger and far more ready to stand against him.”
“That is so,” she said. “I have considered it. But there’s been no one I can trust to send, who has the skill to speak as an envoy. My lords are as closed in upon themselves as my brother kings. We all are—we’ve forgotten how to speak to one another.”
“I haven’t,” he said. “I was raised and trained for this.” As was Estarion, but he did not say that. Estarion did what he chose, as he chose. Daros did not pretend to understand him.
She was still studying him. “You think you can do this?”
“I know I can.” He hoped he did not sound excessively cocky.
“I will give you a boat,” she said, “and boatmen, and a retinue suitable to your rank and station. Waset’s good name will be in your hands.”
“I’ll not harm it,” he said.
“I think you will not,” said the queen.
Later that day, as Daros instructed the latest band of recruits in the rudiments of archery, Estarion happened by with casualness that was just a fraction too studied. He distracted the recruits rather excessively. Their awe of Daros had begun to wear off; he was familiar, if terrifying. The queen’s consort was an eminence so lofty that he stole away their wits.
Daros called a halt to the proceedings before someone put an arrow through his neighbor, and dismissed the recruits. They withdrew with dignity, but well before they were out of sight, they scattered like the boys they still were, whooping and dancing across the field to the city.
Daros would have liked to run with them, but he had an accounting to face. It was taking its time in coming. Estarion had wandered across the field to inspect the line of targets, taking note of the bolts that clustered in the center of one or two. “Good shots,” he observed.
“They grew up hunting waterfowl,” Daros said. He set about retrieving arrows, both those in the targets and those that had flown wide. Estarion lent him a hand.
When every bolt was found and put away in its quiver, they walked slowly back toward the city. Daros almost dared hope that there would be no reckoning after all; that Estarion had come simply for the pleasure of his company.
That was foolish, and he knew it even as he thought it. A moment later, Estarion said, “You’re not a bad general of armies. Will you be trying your hand at diplomacy next?”
“You don’t think I can do it?”
Estarion smiled thinly. “Why, lad. Don’t you?”
“Isn’t that what a prince does?”
“The general run of princes, yes. Is it a custom in your country to conduct the affairs of the realm in brothels and alehouses?”
Daros stiffened. “I haven’t touched a woman of this world since I came to it, nor set foot in a tavern. I’ve been the very model of a prince.”
“So you have,” Estarion said blandly. “It’s a remarkable transformation. I commend you.”
“Yet you have doubts about this venture.”
“No,” said Estarion. “In fact I don’t. I’m jealous. I can’t go—I’m needed here.”
“You want me to stay, so that you can go.”
“No,” Estarion said again. “It’s only …”
Daros waited.
“We can ill afford to lose you. Promise me something. If one or more of the kings is hostile, promise that you won’t try to force an alliance.”
“I won’t do anything dangerous,” Daros said. “I’ll swear to that.” Estarion’s glance was less than trusting. “What you call merely dangerous, the rest of us would call lethal.”
“I’ll pretend I’m my father,” Daros said. “Would that content you?”
“You’re not capable of that much prudence.”
“How do you know?”
Estarion cuffed him hard enough to make him reel. “Curb the insolence, puppy. If you can be wise and circumspect, and speak softly to these kings, then you’ll do much good for this land. But if you grow bored or lose your temper, you may harm it irreparably. Do you understand?”
Daros set his teeth. He deserved this; he had earned it with his years of useless folly. And yet … “Surely I’ve at least begun to redeem myself since I came here. Have I been feckless? Have I been foolish? Have I been anything but dutiful?”
“You have not,” said Estarion, “and that is a matter for great admiration. But one would wish to be certain.”
“What? That I’ll be resentful enough to prove you right?”
“Prove me wrong,” Estarion said. “Because if you don’t, I’ll deal with you as painfully as I know how.”
He was not jesting. Daros was torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to hit him. He settled for a baring of teeth. “I’ll prove you wrong,” he said. “My word on it.”
“Good,” said Estarion.
They were almost to the walls, but their pace had slowed. Daros had meant to be silent about another thing, but he was feeling spiteful. “I know you wish you could go. But your heart wouldn’t be in it, would it? It’s been a long while since you waited on the birth of an heir.”
Estarion stopped short. He did not knock Daros flat, which rather surprised him. The emperor’s voice was mild, almost alarmingly so. “I should have known you’d see that.”
“Should it be a secret?”
“She’s lost ten children, six of them sons, either miscarried or dead at birth. She’s terrified of the omen if she dares celebrate this one.”
“Yes,” said Daros. “But she won’t lose this child. Will she?”
“Not while I live,” Estarion said.
“Nor I,” Daros admitted. “I … laid a small wishing on her this morning, when I went to see her.”
He braced himself, but Estarion only sighed. “Of course you did. So did I. She’s wonderfully well protected.”
“It’s a son,” Daros said. “Have you thought about what he will do to the line of succession in your empire?”
“He will do nothing,” Estarion said. “Daruya will rule after me in Keruvarion and Asanion. This is the heir to Waset, son of the queen and her consort.”
“Do you think Waset will ever understand what blood has come into its royal house?”
“Waset understands that its queen is mated to a god. And maybe,” said Estarion, “this is proof that we will overcome the darkness. Sun-blood continues itself when it’s most needed—always. Even here, it seems, on the other side of the horizon.”
Daros bowed his head to that—not a thing he did often, at all, but he had a modicum of respect for the god who had begotten Estarion’s line. “She is worthy of that blood,” he said.
Estarion was not a jealous man. He smiled, by which Daros knew that he was in the royal good graces again. “Come in to dinner,” he said. “T
hen don’t you have an expedition to plan?”
“By your leave,” Daros said.
“You’d do it regardless,” said Estarion, “but I’ll give it, for my vanity’s sake.” He flung an arm about Daros’ shoulders and pulled him through the gate.
That was when the moon was halfway to the full. When it touched the full, the queen’s own golden-prowed boat waited at the quay of Waset, with her picked men in it, and the best of Daros’ recruits. There was also a deputation from the temples of the city, led by none other than the high priest Seti-re.
Daros would infinitely have preferred another companion, but it seemed that this was to be his first lesson in the art of being politic. Seti-re wore his accustomed slightly sour expression, although he lightened it considerably for Daros’ benefit. For some unfathomable reason, though he did not like Estarion at all, he was in awe of Daros. Almost Daros would have said that he was infatuated, but it was not quite as fleshly a thing as that.
He was not the most comfortable companion for an embassy, but Daros had too much pride to object. He bade farewell to the queen and the queen’s consort, not lingering over it; he hated endless good-byes. They had little to say to him that was not the empty form of royal show. All the things that mattered, they had said to one another in the days before this.
It was a strange sensation to ride the river away from Waset. It was all he knew in this world, and the one man of his own world was there, standing on the bank, unmoving for as long as he was in sight. The shadow of him remained in memory long after the river had curved, carrying the boat away from the city and the people in it.
The current was rapid in this season. The great flood of the river had passed, leaving its gift of rich black earth for the farmers to till, but the river was not yet settled fully into its banks again. Between the current and the oars, the boat seemed to leap down the river.
Daros should have sat under the canopy amidships with the rest of the embassy, but he had no great desire for Seti-re’s company. He found a place near the high prow, leaning on it, watching as they skimmed through the black land. The fields were full of people and oxen, plowing, planting, tilling. Sometimes they paused to stare at the golden boat. Children and dogs ran along the banks, calling in high excited voices.
It was the same cry, as long as the boat sailed through this kingdom: “The god! The god is on the river!”
He thought of hiding, or at least effacing himself on the deck, but it was somewhat too late for that. He smiled instead, and called greetings to those who were close enough to hear. They answered, sometimes incredulous, sometimes delighted.
It was two days’ swift passage to the border between Waset and Gebtu. The first night they stopped and moored near a town that offered them the best of its hospitality: a roasted ox, the inevitable bread and beer, and singing and dancing and a remarkable number of lovely women.
Time was when Daros would have taken his pick of the women. Certainly they were not shy in preferring him to other men. But he had no more desire for these than for the beauties of Waset.
He slept alone on the boat, with the boatmen and the stars, and the moon riding high overhead. He was becoming accustomed to a lone white moon, and no Greatmoon to turn the night to blood. Its cool light bathed him and flowed over the water. There seemed to be no shadow on the stars, but all Gates were still shut. This world was enclosed in a bubble of darkness.
There was still a gate, the gate of dream. He sought it, and her; and found her waiting, asleep in a narrow bed in a small bare room. Those walls needed no ornament but the gold of her hair, spread across the coverlet, and the beauty of her face and body as she woke slowly.
Long before her eyes were open, she was aware of him. Her smile bloomed, rare and wonderful. He bent over her and brushed her lips with his. Her arms enfolded him and drew him down.
Part of him knew that he was mad or worse, besotted with a dream. Yet another part, the part that touched on his magery, insisted that she was real. Dream had brought him to her, but when they joined body to body, they did so in living truth. Certainly after these dreams, he was sated as if he had indeed spent the night with a woman, but there was never any stain of spent seed on bed or body. Yet sometimes there were marks of teeth or nails on his skin.
Tonight they spoke of nothing but one another: her pleasure, his delight in her. They chose to forget the troubles that beset them, the war they both fought, the enemy that threatened both these worlds. There was nothing then but the two of them, and a joy so deep that he woke close to tears.
He was lost, conquered, besotted. He was in love with a dream and a vision, and no woman in the waking world could equal her.
TWENTY-TWO
THE KINGDOM OF GEBTU WAS NOT AS PROSPEROUS AS WASET. The shadow had been no more relentless there, but Gebtu had felt more keenly the loss of its young men and the stripping of its harvests. Beggars in Waset were few; the queen saw to it that the ill and the indigent were given a ration of barley from the royal stores, to bake their bread and brew their beer. Here it seemed the king did no such thing. Gaunt women and swollen-bellied children sat by the roadsides, begging from passersby, and swarmed on boats that ventured within reach of the bank.
And yet the city, when they came to it near the end of the third day out from Waset, was more splendid than that clean and well-fed but rather simple city. The walls were built of stone rather than brick; the gates were inlaid with gold, and the palace was notably more imposing than the palace of Waset.
A high and haughty prince of men received the embassy at the quay. His heavy collar of gold and his gold-sheathed staff proclaimed his rank; his belly was ample and his expression loftily noble. His retinue was large, rich with gold and colored stones, and arranged in meticulous ranks. Every one of them went down in prostration as Daros stepped from the boat to the shore. The nobleman bowed slightly more slowly than the rest, so that it was clear who was the lord and who were the commoners.
Daros kept his face carefully empty of expression. He would wait and watch and see what was to be seen; time enough later to act.
There was a chair waiting, and strong bearers to carry it. For an instant Daros had a fierce, almost painful longing for a senel. But there was no such beast in this world, that any of these people knew: nothing large enough to carry a man, only the tiny gazelle and the antelope of the desert, that were very like the senel in shape, but scarce a fraction the size.
With an inaudible sigh, he folded himself into the chair, which was not made for a man of his size, and suffered the bearers to carry him, rocking and swaying, from the river through the streets of the city.
The king of Gebtu might have kept a mere envoy waiting for days, but a god required more delicate handling. Daros was offered food, a bath, and rest, in that order; he accepted the first two but declined the third. The servants had been terribly cowed when they began, but he wheedled and smiled and coaxed until they could wait on him without collapsing in a fit of hysterics.
As they finished their ministrations, the door-guard announced a guest. Daros’ smile of greeting was genuine. Seti-re was a familiar face, and welcome for that if for nothing else.
The priest was much more at ease here in this palace than he had been in the boat. He dismissed the servants with a flick of the hand, and put in a twist that made their eyes roll white.
“Clever,” Daros said when they had gone. “Now only half of them will spy on us; the rest will hide to avoid the curse.”
“Are you laughing at me?”
The man was quick to his own defense. Daros softened his smile and said, “Oh, no. Not at all. Is there news?”
“Nothing from Waset,” said Seti-re, mollified. His eyes kept wandering to Daros’ face and fixing there. It was beastly uncomfortable and rather distracting. “The king will summon us soon. I knew him long ago; he was a priest for a while in the temple in Waset, sent there by his father to learn the greater arts and the more famous magics. He proved to have some little ta
lent for them.”
“I had heard that,” Daros said, “and that he was meant to be a priest, until his elder brothers were taken by the dark enemy. I’ve been trusting that you will help me with him, help me to talk to him in ways that he’ll most willingly hear. I’m not a priest, you see, and I don’t speak the language.”
Seti-re stood a little taller for that. “My lord, a god can speak any language he chooses. A god such as you … he’ll be captivated. Though he might ask to see some of your arts. Will that be a difficulty?”
“Only if he asks me to do something I can’t or won’t do.”
“That would be true of any god,” Seti-re said.
“Ah,” said Daros. “I hoped I could trust a priest to understand such things.”
Seti-re almost smiled. “My lord, if I may ask a great favor? You need not grant it, of course, in your power and divinity. But I would ask … may I speak as high priest of your cult?”
“You are high priest of the sun in Waset,” Daros said. “Can you be both?”
“If you will allow, my lord.”
Daros looked him in the face. He held steady, though he had gone grey, shaking with fear. “You want power,” Daros said, “but that’s not everything, is it? You think you love me, because I carry the curse of a pretty face.”
“No!” Seti-re had gone from grey to crimson. “May not a man choose the god he wishes to worship?”
“Because he has what men call beauty?”
“You have great beauty,” Seti-re said with dignity, “but that is only fitting for a god. You are a young god; your power is great, but it startles you somewhat still. Yet you carry yourself with grace, and you seldom mock even the great fools of the world. May not a mere mortal find that admirable?”
“How odd,” Daros said half to himself. “I’ve been found admirable twice since I decided on this expedition—and that is twice in my life. Sir priest, if you would worship me, you should know the truth. Where I come from, I’m reckoned a fool and a wastrel. I am—I was—a frequenter of taverns, a lover of loose women. I was caught transgressing great laws, and sentenced to exile and hard servitude. I broke that sentence to come to this world, and for that my exile is now, it seems, irrevocable.”