Burning Tower

by Larry Niven

  Blaze the stallion and Boots the gelding stood in harness, their tails braided, red ribbons in their manes. Soon to be gifts to the Emperor. There were escorts in the heavier war chariots of the Empire.

  Arshur led the way. People came out of their houses to cheer, and many followed in a procession to the palace. The sun was two hours high, still low enough to cast long shadows. The cloudless sky promised a hot day, but for the moment there were cool breezes from the west along the river banks.

  “Where does the river go?” Sandry asked.

  “Ten leagues west, it joins another river, the Rainbow,” High Captain Sareg said. “And that flows south and west through a most magnificent canyon. I have been there. It is amazing! I am told that it then turns south and flows into the great sea at Crescent City, but I have never been there. The Emperor’s domains end at the canyons.”

  The road led along the river. The water seemed fresh and cool. “Do all the rivers lead to the great sea?” Sandry asked.

  Sareg shook his head. “We are at the roof of the world. A few leagues into the rising sun, there are other rivers that flow eastward to places no one we know has ever been.”

  Sandry smiled thinly.

  “You are amused?”

  “I am,” Sandry said. “The world is huge even to you. Think how large it is to me. It was only a year ago that I first traveled beyond the borders of Tep’s Town basin!”

  They came to the base of the temple and drove into a tunnel below the great piazza of the palace. They could hear the cheers of the crowd above. Music swelled, trumpets and drums rising to a climax as the crowd sounds grew more frantic.

  “He comes, he comes!”

  There was a long hush, then more trumpets and drums. Then for a long moment there was silence, then the scrambling sounds of thousands falling to their knees.

  “Rise and rejoice, my people! I bring you a king!” There was no mistaking the sound of that voice, or the joy of the people of Aztlan at hearing it. Thousands cheered. The trumpets and drums began again.

  Arshur’s chariot led the way up the ramp to the piazza. A wall of smoke seemed to form ahead of him. Then as his chariot went out onto the piazza, the smoke swirled away and the great voice boomed. “People of Aztlan, Arshur the king!”

  The crowd went frantic. While they were yelling, Sandry drove out behind Arshur onto the piazza. Few seemed to notice. All attention was on the king.

  “This way,” Sareg said urgently. He directed Sandry toward a high dais. It was flanked by two others not quite so tall. The flanking platforms were filled with costumes and masks and guards, cloaks and wizards and priests, a riot of magic and color. The central high dais held only one man. At Sareg’s urging, Sandry left the chariot and went up the stairs onto the raised dais. At the top, he knelt and touched his head to the floor in deference to the Emperor.

  “Get up, Sandry. It’s your wedding day. Stand beside me. Look happy. Rejoice.”

  The Emperor wasn’t wearing armor. He was dressed in silken kilts and a bright blue and green silken tunic that hid his scars. He wore a high crown of intricately carved gold, and a cloak of flowers. Thousands of flowers, all tiny, all woven into silk netting. It flashed in the morning sun as he lifted his arms to show himself again to the crowd. Sandry found the cloak was impressive enough, but disappointing compared to what he had been led to expect. The Emperor moved back into the shade of the dais.

  The crowds continued to cheer as Arshur rode around the piazza in his great heavy chariot.

  “Let them cheer the king,” the Emperor said. “He looks like a king, your giant.”

  “Yes, Supreme One.”

  The Emperor smiled. “Impatient?”

  “I have attempted patience for a year, Supreme One.”

  “And it palls,” the Emperor said. “At my age patience is natural, but I can remember youth.”

  “You look as if you have never lost it, Supreme One,” Sandry said with sincerity.

  The Emperor grinned. “So. It will shortly be your wedding day.”

  “Not precisely as I had foreseen it.”

  For most of his life, he’d known how it would be. “I’ve been to a hundred weddings, Great One,” he told the Emperor. “I knew a dozen girls who might grow up to marry me. Now I’m with a foreign woman in a land strange to both of us, following customs—”

  The Emperor waved dismissively. “Burning Tower told Buffalo Woman the essentials. We’ll follow the woman’s custom. Isn’t that always best? But first, the king must earn his crown. We can’t get animals up to Mesa Fajada,” he said, “so the bird must die down here, and after you’re wedded, we’ll come down again to present the beasts and other gifts.”

  Sandry nodded. There was a good view of the long Valley of Aztlan from the dais. Behind him were the wall and the great Temple Mesa Fajada. Baskets rose and dropped constantly between its base and the wooden platform near its summit. His eyes flicked left, right. Left was the river, broad and shallow, somewhat muddy, cleaner than rivers in Tep’s Town or Condigeo. It flowed on to the west and out of sight. Downstream and across the river was the king’s palace. Not far beyond the bridge to the palace was Flensevan’s shop, now hidden by houses.

  Downstream and to the right, nestled against the walls of the canyon, was the palace where he and Burning Tower would spend their wedding night. They’d been shown all this before, in what wasn’t quite a rehearsal.

  Out on the Great Plaza, Arshur had finished the first of his circuits in his chariot. He was passing by the kraals, carefully separated, but the animals were aware of each other. Spike, alone in his kraal, faced two terror birds. Sandry’s chariot was led over there. The stallion and the gelding stood in harness, but they’d been given food and water and shade. They’d be all right. They seemed very aware of the birds and Spike.

  The crowds were still cheering. Arshur’s driver looked up to the Emperor, got a sign in the form of a minute wave of the ringed and jeweled right hand, and took another turn around the piazza. As he did, the music rose and swelled. Sandry looked for its source, but it was hidden. Magic? Or artists hidden in the kivas let into the piazza? He couldn’t tell.

  The chariot came around to the dais. The Emperor stepped forward again. “People of Aztlan, Arshur the king!” His voice boomed through the piazza and the stands above, through the five hundred rooms of the palace beyond. It wasn’t so much loud as all-pervasive, impossible to ignore, and it seemed to Sandry that it would be heard in Crescent City and Condigeo.

  The Emperor gestured, and priests came forward. They wore cloaks of tiny feathers, and long-billed masks. Hummingbirds, Sandry thought. That should be funny, but there was no humor in this. Arshur, urged by his guards, stepped down from his chariot. One of the priests knelt to him and handed him a golden goblet. Arshur took it impatiently and drank.

  The other hummingbird priest knelt and held out a great bronze sword. Arshur took it and grinned, balanced it on extended fingertips, swung it in practiced moves. His scarred muscles rippled in the sun. They’d dressed him well, leather and silk kilts, leather harness holding a jeweled breastplate more symbolic than protective, a lot of Arshur’s scars and tattoos showing.

  “He’s drunk,” Sandry muttered.

  “Well, of course,” the Emperor said. “He drinks more than any king in my memory.” He stepped forward into the sun and raised his arms. The music stopped and the crowd fell silent, an eerie silence across the entire piazza. One of the stallions nickered.

  Arshur looked around to see that he was alone. He waved the great bronze sword and shouted something Sandry didn’t understand. Ten manlengths away, a cage door swung open and a terror bird came out blinking into the sunlight.

  The bird didn’t look drugged. It looked hungry.

  Arshur shouted and waved his sword. He grinned widely, but he no longer looked drunk. The bird approached him warily, and they eyed each other. Then the bird rushed at Arshur.

  Arshur pivoted on one foot, turning and leaning ju
st far enough that the bird’s gaping teeth snapped on empty air. Then Arshur laughed and struck at the bird with his sword, hitting it on its back just behind the neck. Feathers flew, and blood. As the bird ran past, Arshur leaped after it, slashing at its leg.

  The bird was limping now, and frightened. It looked around the walled piazza. The gates, both those into the kivas and those into the seating stands, were all closed. Men with spears ready stood at the base of each dais. There was no place to run. The bird turned back toward Arshur.

  “Interesting,” the Emperor said.

  “How, Supreme One?”

  “Well, we’ve always had the priests control the birds. This one’s just drugged. Not too well drugged, at that,” the Emperor mused. “Good thing your giant is a warrior.”

  Arshur feinted toward the bird. It dodged, then darted forward to snap at the king. Arshur whooped. The bird ran past as Arshur pivoted again, and when the bird ran on to smash into the wall beyond, it no longer had a head. The crowd went mad with cheering.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Anticipations

  Burning Tower was surrounded by priests and girls and attendants, but she felt alone. Butterflies in my stomach, she thought. This is the day. She forced herself to stand still.

  She stood on the platform at the top of Mesa Fajada and watched as the Emperor, far below on the piazza, showed himself to his people and proclaimed the new king. Arshur appeared in a cloud of smoke, and then rode his chariot around the piazza.

  There was Sandry. She was too high above him to see his face, but his armor twinkled. Everyone was watching Arshur, but Tower kept her gaze on Sandry as he mounted the dais to stand alone with the Emperor. She frowned and turned to Buffalo Woman. “Why Sandry? Why isn’t anyone else with the Supreme One?”

  “Who can know the ways of the great?” Buffalo Woman asked. She was older than Burning Tower’s mother, and said to be very wise. Burning Tower hadn’t seen evidence of her wisdom. But she was kind, and the only friend Burning Tower had up here on this high platform among all these strangers.

  They were in full view of the huge crowd in the piazza. “Will we look enormous, the way the Supreme One did when he welcomed us from up here?” Tower asked.

  “I think so,” Buffalo Woman said. “We haven’t done a wedding from here in a long time. The last time was one of the Emperor’s sons when I was much younger, and yes, they used the vision then.” Buffalo Woman sniffed. “You are being very highly honored.”

  “Yes, I know that,” Tower said. And why? But there was no point in asking; she’d only be told not to question her luck. And they’d be huge! She was aware of every flaw, the tiny blemish on her left cheek, the fading bruise from the combat at Sunfall. There were bruises on her thighs too, but no one would see those. No one but Sandry, and that much later….

  Everything seemed ready. Tower was dressed in thin white silks, so thin and so light that any breeze lifted her sleeves and cloak like wings. She’d admired herself in the mirrors at the palace. She’d never been so beautiful.

  She had been awakened before the sun rose, and in the dark they had come to the Great Plaza. It was just dawn when, under the watchful eyes of Buffalo Woman and her apprentices, Burning Tower had bridled Spike, choking as she realized that she would see him only one more time. Then he would be a present to the Emperor. And after tonight, he would hate her.

  It was early morning when they ascended Mesa Fajada in those flying baskets. Now the sun was high, but not yet noon. It was hot up here, despite the wind that blew through the canyon and billowed her white silks.

  The platform circled the mesa. It was wide and high, as high as she had ever been in her life. It was large enough to have rooms, each room walled in screens of flowers. They were shaded by another flower screen above them. Everything smelled of blossoms and sage. Music welled up from the piazza. Now it was triumphant.

  She couldn’t see Sandry any longer. He was lost in shadows with the Emperor as Arshur rode around the piazza. It was very bright down there, and she looked away.

  Here on the platform, just out of the sun, there was a table, a great wooden slab, on short legs so that the top was at knee height. Bags of sand were lined up around it. Her parents would be here through sand paintings. But where was Clever Squirrel? She hadn’t come back to the palace at all, last night or this morning, and neither had Coyote’s priest. They’d left together, and it was obvious what they’d been doing, but Tower was worried. Where were they? But when she asked, she only got knowing smiles.

  There was more cheering down on the piazza. Arshur had ridden around the Great Plaza and was stopped in front of the Emperor’s dais. A priest knelt to offer him something, a drink, then a sword. A cage opened, and a bird charged out.

  Tower held her breath. The bird was much bigger than Arshur. But the fight didn’t take long, and then the bird was headless, running around the piazza menacing everyone with the great blades that tipped its wings until grooms wrapped its legs with ropes and dragged it away, wings still beating.

  And the crowd was cheering wildly again, and she couldn’t see Sandry and the Emperor any longer.

  “Soon,” Buffalo Woman said. “They come now.”

  Clever Squirrel giggled.

  She was riding in one of the floating baskets. Coyote’s priest rode with her, and he wore a dreamy, tranquil smile. He’d had as much of that stuff as she had, but he must be used to it.

  The basket rose high. She vaguely remembered being brought to the base of Mesa Fajada in a chariot, held up by Coyote’s priest and two of his tattooed assistants.

  In the basket ahead, she could make out Sandry, High Captain Sareg, and the priests of Prairie Dog and Mammoth in their elaborate formal masks. It was accompanied by a basket of four guards.

  Those two baskets rose together, and above those were three baskets all together. One held Arshur the king with his attendants: Sandry’s cousin Regapisk and the Aztlan jeweler dressed in his finest, and a burly young guard or servant. The king’s basket was flanked by two others, each with four guards. And in the basket above that, the Emperor, blazing with magic, with an older man dressed in kilts, and, greatly favored, the Great Mistress Hazel Sky. Beside Hazel was Jaguar’s priest in a towering headdress. The great mask turned down to her for an instant, and Squirrel felt the oppressive mass of tradition settle on her.

  “Great Mistress,” Clever Squirrel giggled. “Does it mean what I think it means?”

  Coyote’s priest snorted. “There was a time when Hazel Sky shared the Supreme One’s couch. Then she was sent to govern his most important possession. Now she returns after a glorious victory and the discovery of treason.” He shrugged. “A bright woman, a woman of power. Who is to say where she spent last night? We know where we were!”

  Squirrel laughed loud, so loud that others in the rising baskets turned toward her. “Too right.” The memories were warm and delicious. Not overrated at all, she thought. I’ll have to tell Blazes. Not overrated at all.

  Baskets traced shadows against the Mesa Fajada. The blazing forenoon sun turned it into a burning tower. Could this be why the Emperor had commanded this wedding be here? Squirrel tried to recall the details of Burning Tower’s naming vision. Her mother had dreamed of those great Burnings in Tep’s Town in the days before Morth of Atlantis drove Yangin-Atep mythical. And Sandry had assisted Morth in that; did the Emperor know?

  Sandry was guarded, and there were two baskets of guards for King Arshur. The Emperor had none at all. “Who is the man with the Supreme One?” she asked.

  “Doentivar. The Grandson of the Sun.”

  “The heir?”

  Coyote’s priest looked around warily. “Perhaps. If the Supreme One continues to choose him. You and I are not concerned with such matters, and it is best not even to think of them.”

  Why? Squirrel wondered. The giggle bubbled up.

  A voice whispered in her head. Coyote? An old memory? “For there to be an heir someone must die. Some dete
st such thoughts.”

  Even the gods?

  “Especially the gods. Gods have gone myth. The Supreme One is no god, but there are gods who are wary of him.”

  Squirrel’s head was whirling, and the higher they rose, the dizzier she became. Up here everything glowed with manna. Power glared from the valley below, from the cheers of the people—she became aware of the music and the shouting and waves of euphoria from ten thousand and more below.

  She could see out onto the piazza now. The crowds in their seats, processions of masked and costumed priests coming from the kivas. Sandry’s chariot standing near a pen where a young girl dressed in bright flowers stood with her arm around the neck of a bridled white one-horn. Spike, stamping in impatience. Another pen held a live terror bird.

  There had been death below, and the manna of sudden death mixed with the excitement of the crowd. Near the kraal a crew was dragging what looked like green rags off through a gate. It trailed blood.

  “The king’s conquest?” she asked.

  Coyote nodded. “I thought it best you stay below.”

  He’s too polite to remind me just how drunk I am, she thought, or too embarrassed.

  Coyote handed her a flask. She sniffed warily. Pulque was wonderful stuff, but she’d had enough. This was water, and she drank eagerly before realizing that it too was suffused with manna, nearly as intoxicating as pulque. She still felt the ecstasy of the pulque, hours later, with a glow of sex and magic in her, and a knowledge that must have been in Coyote’s priest’s mind: something wonderful was going to happen today, even beyond the marriage of Sandry to Burning Tower. All would be put right. If only she could remember what she’d dreamed.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Thundercloud