Shannivar

by Deborah J. Ross

  Shannivar’s kinsman Sagdovan nodded to her as she approached. After the ritual that opened that day’s business, and after beseeching the favor and wisdom of Tabilit, Tenoshinakh invited Shannivar to begin.

  “May Tabilit grace your words with wisdom and your jorts with laughter.” Shannivar tapped one fist over her heart and inclined her head. “I bring you greetings from my uncle, Esdarash son of Akhisarak, leader of the Golden Eagle clan.”

  “Esdarash son of Akhisarak is honored throughout all Azkhantia,” Tenoshinakh replied gravely. “Sorrow enters my heart that I do not see him here.”

  “And mine as well, that I must stand in his place,” she answered. Several of the elders nodded in approval of her modesty.

  Another chieftain asked, “What has befallen the clan of the Golden Eagle, that Esdarash sits not among us?”

  Although the Council would have been aware of the rumors flying through the gathering, courtesy demanded a formal question and answer. This way, there could be no misunderstanding based on gossip.

  “He is well, my fathers.” Shannivar explained that the death of Grandmother had caused Esdarash to remain behind. Exclamations rippled through the audience. Shannivar was again moved by the many expressions of grief.

  “If Jannover daughter of Koranit now sits at Tabilit’s right hand, the Sky Kingdom shines all the brighter,” Tenoshinakh said after a moment. Then his gaze shifted again to Shannivar. He nodded, encouraging her to continue.

  “My uncle appointed his oldest son, Alsanobal, to sit among you as his representative,” she said. “On our way here, we came upon a Gelonian fortification. Alsanobal fought bravely and defeated the invaders, but was too badly wounded to continue the journey.”

  Shannivar hesitated for an instant. She had already boasted to Kharemikhar about being leader-by-acclaim of her party. She had earned the honor, as much as any man, but it might not be wise to bring it up now, before the assembled Council. Her present responsibility was to carry through her uncle’s charge, as well as to see the Gelon and his friend safely to this place. Later, when her own future was at stake, she could bolster her position with the honors she had earned.

  With an effort, she set aside her own pride. “In the name of Esdarash son of Akhisarak, I present Leanthos of Isarre and his assistant, Phannus, who have traveled through many dangers to speak with our people. It is by my uncle’s command that they now submit their case before you. He felt the matter could not wait, nor should it be decided by him alone, for it concerns all Azkhantia.”

  Several of the chieftains stared at the strangers, their weathered faces betraying no hint of friendliness. Shannivar’s kinsman bent to whisper to Tenoshinakh. For a few moments, the chieftains deliberated, their words too hushed to be overheard.

  Tenoshinakh said, “We will hear them.”

  Shannivar asked the Council to consider whether the mission of the second pair of outlanders, a Gelon and his companion, might relate to the first, if not in their own intentions, then in the importance of their presence to Azkhantia. Her kinsman had apparently informed the other elders of their conversation the afternoon before, for they speedily confirmed their decision to hear both parties of strangers without delay. She requested and was granted permission to translate the proceedings into trade-dialect for the benefit of the outlanders. No one wanted any unfortunate consequences to arise from a faulty comprehension of language.

  Leanthos began by presenting formal greetings on behalf of his King. He spoke smoothly, advancing a well-reasoned argument for an alliance between his nation and the Azkhantian clans. The long journey and brief rest had impaired neither his tongue nor his determination to gain the advantage for Isarre.

  With a glare at Danar, Leanthos emphasized the growing threat of Gelon. The Ar-King must be stopped, he said, before the world fell beneath his armies, field and city alike burning in Cinath’s wars. For too long, Isarre had stood alone against Gelonian aggression, but now her own borders were vulnerable. Her ships had been captured on the open seas, and the port city of Gatacinne now lay in Gelonian hands.

  Zevaron’s face tightened, and the faint movement drew Shannivar’s notice. Something in the Isarran emissary’s argument had caught him by surprise, had perhaps raked an old, festering wound.

  Gatacinne, port city of Isarre. What could such a place matter to a man from land-locked Meklavar? Yet it did, she would have sworn it. She had not imagined the tightly masked emotion on his face.

  Returning her attention to the argument, she heard rumbles of suspicion in the Council. Fine speeches were all very well, but not worth the price of their own blood. Why should they bind themselves to a weakened nation?

  Leanthos had evidently considered that point. Perhaps he felt, with some justification, that if he described Isarre as too mighty, the Azkhantians might well decide their help was not needed. If too weak, they might think they would do all the fighting for an ally who could not materially contribute to its own defense. He modulated his tone, pausing at the end of each of his points to make sure the audience had time to fully take it in. “If Isarre falls, there will be none to stand against Ar-Cinath-Gelon.” Leanthos pitched his voice so that the exclamations from the audience fell away into silence. “He will direct the fullness of his wrath to Azkhantia. You know he will.”

  He turned, making eye contact with first one and then another of the Council. “This time, however, he will have more than the resources of Gelon to draw upon. He will have the wealth of his many conquests as well. Gelon will be more powerful than ever, and you will have to face them alone.”

  “What is this to us?” said one of the chieftains, a man of the Snake clan. A long-healed scar from a Gelonian spear marked one side of his face from temple to cheek and narrowly missed his eye. “We will throw him back as we have always done.”

  Shannivar translated, although Leanthos, and Danar as well, clearly understood the Snake chieftain’s meaning.

  “No one doubts your skill at arms, your love of your country, or your determination,” Leanthos said. “You alone, of all the peoples of the world, have held fast against the Gelonian horde. But . . .” he let the syllable trail off for dramatic effect, “but you have done so because Gelon was limited in the number of men and swords it could send against you.” He paused once more, letting the words sink in. Even the Snake clan chieftain listened intently, brow furrowed in concentration. Leanthos had made them think, and not only that, in the direction he wished.

  “What if Cinath sends ten times that number?” Leanthos continued. “Twenty times? They will sweep across your plains like locusts, consuming everything in their path. The steppe will run red with the blood of your warriors. If you retreat to your far places, thinking to weather this storm, you will find yourselves encircled and penned there. Starved like animals until you are too weak to fight.”

  Now the listeners raised their voices, laden with scorn and yet with fear as well. Every person there had lost a father, a brother, a sister, or a friend. The Azkhantian tribes had never been numerous, so each loss struck at their strength.

  Leanthos, perhaps sensing the quicksilver temper of the crowd, rushed on before the mood could shift to outright defiance, before they could turn on him as the source and cause of such a dire prediction. “I tell you, your only hope is to join us now and defeat Gelon before it grows too strong.”

  “What would your King have us do?” Shannivar’s kinsman asked, and then paused for her to translate. “Fight his war for him, while he sits on his stones and grows fat?”

  Nervous laughter burst out here and there in the crowd.

  “If we are far from Gelon,” Sagdovan continued calmly, “we are even farther from Isarre. Perhaps Cinath will be so occupied with conquering you that he will forget about us.”

  “What should you do?” Leanthos faced Sagdovan, once the titters had died down. “Act not in defense of Isarre but of Azkhant
ia! Come down from your high plains. Strike at Gelon and carry the war to their own territory!”

  The muttering shifted tone, becoming less disapproving. This sounded more like the stuff of glory, the way of war in the steppe. Here and there, even under the Council pavilion, heads nodded. Only Tenoshinakh and Sagdovan looked unmoved. As for the enarees, they gave no sign of any reaction. Their expressions looked so blank and their gazes so inward, that Shannivar wondered if they were listening to the Isarran’s speech or to the whisperings of the goddess.

  What would Tabilit have us do? What would she say if we were to leave the steppe, the land she created us for, and carry war to the Land of Stones?

  “Meanwhile,” Leanthos went on, “we of Isarre will not be idle. While you draw away the Gelonian armies, we will attack from the sea. Cinath will be forced to divide his forces. Each victory will weaken him further. We will catch him in our pincers like a crab crushing its prey.”

  This did not seem a powerful image, for even a child could snap the claws of a river crab. Shannivar glanced at Danar, curious to see how a Gelon received such a speech. Although Danar held himself with dignity, listening politely, he looked troubled. She could not blame him. He might be an exile, but he loved his country. Why should ordinary people, even Gelon—the good men Zevaron had spoken of—suffer for the greed of one tyrant? And why should she consider the enemy as anything but power mad city-dwellers, to be slain whenever possible?

  Zevaron, however, listened with an expression of dark intensity, almost rapture. His wordless fervor—so different from the moment of quickly masked pain at the mention of Gatacinne—stung her.

  Leanthos ended his speech. There was a short pause, and then Tenoshinakh straightened on his stool. The audience listened even more intently. “We have heard your words, man of Isarre,” the chieftain leader said, using the time honored expression to mean that he recognized the legitimacy of the speaker, “and we will deliver our decision in the fullness of time.”

  Heads bobbed in agreement and, for some, not a little relief. Still the shamans gave no sign of either approval or censure. Bennorakh kept his place among them, his eyes unfocused. He might have been a carven image.

  “Now,” Tenoshinakh continued, “let us hear this other petition. Perhaps, as is often the way of things, one question may cast light upon the other.”

  Leanthos bowed to the chieftains in the Isarran manner and stepped back. If he were displeased by this response, he gave no outward sign.

  Danar moved forward to make his own case. In comparison to the rehearsed, polished phrases of Leanthos, he offered no flowery speeches, no impassioned call to battle. Instead, he spoke of his family, of his father’s studies and love of learning, and how the greater part of the Gelonian people wished only to live in peace with their neighbors.

  As Danar went on, Shannivar saw that his arguments were personal, flowing from his heart. Her people had a long tradition of such discourse. Passionate and quick-tempered, they recognized that men often acted from emotion instead of reason. It was said that Tabilit often guided men through their hearts without them knowing it. The chieftains listened patiently, yet Shannivar sensed they, too, were listening to something deeper and more resonant in Danar’s words.

  Leanthos, on the other hand, appeared to have no patience for listening. Although he was too experienced a diplomat to let his agitation show, his mouth tightened into a thin line. His brows drew together. He stood very still, and his gaze on the Gelonian youth was unwavering and merciless.

  As Danar described how the Ar-King had launched into a campaign of aggression far beyond the territorial aspirations of his fathers, Leanthos could no longer contain himself. He strode forward, placing himself squarely in front of Danar.

  “Enough excuses! Enough fabrications and justifications!” he exclaimed. “Esteemed and worthy judges, I cannot permit this charade—this travesty—to continue. In another moment, this scoundrel—” fixing Danar with a venomous glare, “will have you believe he is only an innocent victim of the Ar-King’s tyranny. Nothing could be farther from the truth!”

  Shannivar drew in her breath at this, as did every clansman there. Danar trembled visibly at the affront and the blood drained from his face, but he held himself with exquisite dignity.

  “Tell them who you are, Danar son of Jaxar!” Leanthos demanded. “Admit that you are the nephew of Cinath, Ar-King of Gelon, their mortal enemy!”

  Exclamations of disbelief and revulsion rippled through the audience. “What!”

  “What did he say?”

  “The Ar-King’s own kin?”

  “You cannot conceal your place in the line of succession!” Leanthos gathered momentum from the crowd’s response. His voice soared above their exclamations. “Tell them the truth! With the death of Thessar-Ar-Gelon, only Cinath’s younger son and your father—an invalid!—stand between you and the Golden Throne!”

  While Leanthos spoke, Phannus glided into position at his shoulder. Shannivar saw the assistant’s fingers encircle the hilt of his sword, ready to draw it forth. He was no mere servant but, as she had suspected from the first, a skilled bodyguard. An assassin.

  “Tell them!” Leanthos repeated, then went on, his voice now calmer but resonant with fervor. “Tell them the real reason you have come here—to convince the clans to support your bid for power. To enlist them as your army so that you can take the throne of Gelon for yourself. The rivers of Aidon will run with Azkhantian blood, but what do you care, so long as it is not yours, so long as you take the prize in the end?”

  Throughout the onlooking crowd, people shifted, hands going to weapons, faces darkening in anger. Shannivar had only the knife tucked into her boot, and she could not match these men in strength or reach. Zevaron, she noted, had moved closer to his friend, balanced with one foot slightly in front of the other, eyes reflecting steady alertness. Although his hands were empty, he looked confident.

  Tenoshinakh surged to his feet, shouting, “Enough!”

  The onlookers hesitated. In that fractional pause, a sound ripped the air. A high-pitched wail accompanied the ghostly clatter of bone and shell, of antler and stone.

  Shannivar stiffened, as if an icy hand had clamped down on the base of her skull. Her breath froze in her throat, and she realized that everyone else in the audience suffered a similar paralysis. The chief of the enarees shook his dream stick once more. Red light glinted from his eyes. Then he lowered the ornamented staff, and Shannivar found she could move again. In the audience, men exchanged dubious glances. Some hung their heads, while others shuffled back to their places.

  “Enough, I say!” Tenoshinakh repeated. “Such charges are easily made, but blood once spilled cannot be recalled. We will take no action until we have considered all sides of this quarrel.” After a moment of stunned silence, he gestured to Danar that he might answer the Isarran’s accusation.

  Danar’s fair skin had turned even paler, but he held himself proudly as he faced the pavilion. “What the Isarran emissary says is indeed true but only in part. The line of succession to the Golden Throne passes by law and custom from Cinath to his younger son, then to my father as his only brother. And then,” with a flicker of those peculiar sky-green eyes, “to me. Beyond those facts, which anyone can learn, the rest is lies.”

  He paused, letting his words sink in. “Do not let your fears deceive you into believing that all Gelon are mad for power,” he went on. “That all Gelon thirst for blood. That all Gelon have no care for justice or honor. My father does not want the throne, and because of his condition, he himself could not rule, as has been the case from his birth. This too is the law.”

  “All the more reason for you to secure the throne for yourself!” Leanthos sneered. “Do you expect us to believe you would refuse it out of some lofty nobility of spirit?”

  Danar frowned, a faint crease between his brows. “Until now, I would have s
aid, Yes, I refuse it. I am not fit to rule.”

  This statement provoked another expression of incredulity from the Isarran emissary, who now made no effort to disguise his contempt. In Shannivar’s eyes, Leanthos appeared so blinded by hatred of his country’s enemy that he could perceive nothing else.

  Danar lifted his head, and something in his earnestness, the simplicity and directness of the movement, touched Shannivar. “At first, I sought only sanctuary,” he said quietly. “I fled my own country on my father’s command when Cinath plotted my death. But after what I have seen . . . I would not refuse the throne. In fact, I now believe that I must become Ar-King.”

  A rush of emotion, shock and disbelief, passed over the chieftains and the assembled clansmen. Even Zevaron looked startled. Two of the enarees huddled together, whispering.

  “There!” Leanthos cried, pointing at the Gelonian youth. “You have it from his own mouth, from the monster who means to drive his soldiers into your lands, even as his fathers have done!”

  “That is not why—” Danar stepped toward Leanthos, one hand outstretched.

  “No more lies! No more Gelonian deceit!” Leanthos cut him off with a sharp gesture of negation. “I challenge you, Danar son of Jaxar, heir to the Golden Throne of Gelon, by honor and by blood, by tide and by moon, until last breath!”

  Shannivar’s first reaction was to intervene as she would have during the journey. The responsibility for maintaining peace had become habit. Now she forced herself to step back. It was no longer any concern of hers how these stone-dwellers behaved toward one another. She had done what her uncle asked. She had fulfilled the requirements of honor.

  “What are you saying?” Danar recoiled, clearly appalled by the Isarran’s challenge. “I cannot—no, you are no swordsman—and we must not become personal enemies!”

  “I make the challenge for my country, not myself,” Leanthos responded, “and my champion stands ready to fight in my stead. As for becoming enemies, that relationship began generations ago and was sealed in blood by the vicious aggression of your own kinsman. You cannot undo what has been done or bring all the fallen Isarrans back to life. Or change who and what you are. I will listen to no more of your lies! Do you expect me to believe that you—of Cinath’s own blood—would swear neutrality—or friendship—with Isarre?”