The Usurper

by John Norman

  Nonetheless it is easy to understand, as it must have begun, the terror of the darkening sky, the ships, so many of them, the fire from the sky, the flames, the sounds and roars, the whines and crashings, the collapsing buildings, the leveling of entire areas, the screaming and running, the loosed, startled animals, the frightened, swarming filchen, birds, blackened, burned, falling to earth, the disruption of commerce, the lack of order, the loss of shelter and heat, the contamination of water, the cessation of traffic on the roads, save for refugees, the guttings and emptying of stores, the lootings, the banditry, the fear of anyone not known, and that of some known.

  The storm that was rising over the empire had been long in its brewing. For centuries there had been, here and there, a flash of lightning, far off, a squall, a hint of the rising of wind, a crash of thunder in the distance. These signs were evident, but, we suppose, were commonly ignored. Is that not the way of men? Small objects, a plate, a chair, a table, before one, seem larger than the mountain, so tiny, so far away. A torodont, in the distance, seems smaller than the filch crouching under the table. But the mountain is large, and the torodont is mighty, even far away.

  Clearly the empire was threatened. It was under siege. Walls were weakened, and crumbling. Borders were crossed. Strange ships plied familiar skies.

  But the vi-cat and the arn bear are dangerous, quite dangerous. One enters their lair only at one’s peril.

  This was well known to Abrogastes, the Far-Grasper. He was no more willing, in an era of diminishing resources, where a woman might be exchanged for a cartridge, and a town for a rifle, to risk his Lion Ships than the empire was to risk the imperial cruisers.

  Two parameters might be mentioned, one which favored Abrogastes and his sort, and one which did not. First, dissatisfaction with the empire, fear of its power, resentment of its oppression and tyranny, hatred of its taxes and exactions, were resented on many worlds. Indeed, some had seceded long ago from the empire, secessions often ignored by the empire, given the costs of an attempted reclamation, particularly on worlds regarded as less important. Indeed, alien forces were, on many worlds, welcomed as liberators, until the nature of the new chains became clear. This parameter worked out well for Abrogastes, and many like him, for it enabled him to woo and subvert worlds. Indeed, the industrial complexes of various worlds, some surreptitiously and others more openly, armed, supplied, and trained foes of the empire. On such worlds, Abrogastes, and his sort, could move and recruit, particularly amongst barbarian peoples, with impunity. The second parameter, however, worked muchly in favor of the empire. The empire, at least until the Faith Wars, was largely united, whereas those who would threaten, attack, and despoil it, were often foes of one another, as well as of the empire. No core of civilitas, no shared loyalties or traditions, bound them together as allies in a common cause. Indeed, the longevity of the empire was often understood as having been best explained by its skill in pitting its foes against one another.

  Many were the entangled strands, political, tribal, economic, social, and ideological, which constituted the restless, tumultuous skein of the times in question. Briefly, to facilitate the understanding of what follows, accept that the threat to the empire posed by Abrogastes, and such kings, was perceived as formidable and perilous. No longer was it a matter of subduing sporadic, localized banditry on the frontiers. Certain individuals, some of royal blood, realized the empire was in danger. One such was Julian, of the Aureliani; another was Iaachus, Arbiter of Protocol, in the court of the boy emperor, Aesilesius; another, in his way, was Sidonicus, Exarch of Telnar, whose particular interests seem to have been more his own than those of either the empire or its foes, from both of whom it seemed he might, by judicious arrangements, advance his own ends.

  Chapter Twenty

  “This is Telnar!” said a girl.

  The vehicle, a carrier, rumbled down the street, on its treads. Fuel was more plentiful on Telnaria than in many other sectors of the empire.

  A shadow raced on the street, cast by a passing hoverer.

  “What has happened here?” said another girl.

  Cornhair hooked her small fingers into the chain-link webbing.

  “Fire,” said a girl.

  There lingered, even days later, a smell of smoke.

  Fire, incidentally, was always a hazard in the large cities of the empire, given widely spread poverty, squalor, and crowding. Certain districts, of course, would be more at risk than others. Many streets were too narrow to admit a wagon, scarcely allowing the passage of a sedan chair, should any choose to dare such streets. In some places, leaning forward, a lamp could be handed from a window on one side of the street to a window on the other side of the street. In many areas, there was no running water except in local fountains. Many availed themselves of public latrines. Wastes were often disposed of in the streets. Construction in such areas was often inferior. Buildings were often torn down and rebuilt. A wall, or a floor, might collapse. Repairs were endemic. Interior furnishings, stairs, walls, and such, and roofs, were usually of wood. Most heating was in the form of fire, contained in bowls or braziers. Most individuals lived in apartments, generally small, of a single room, and most windowless, many without smoke holes, on upper floors. The higher the apartment the less the rent. More well-to-do tenants in these buildings lived on the first floor, or that directly above the numerous open-fronted shops which lined many streets. In this way, they could avoid climbing dark, narrow stairwells, where brigands might lurk, and, in the case of fire, had a more immediate access to the street. Many times a building was afire, flames quickly spreading, climbing and raging, through rickety construction, before those on the upper floors became aware of the situation.

  In any event, it seems there had not been so destructive a fire in the capital city in four hundred years. As the annals have it, between a tenth and a fifteenth of the city was destroyed. To be sure, in distant millennia, greater portions of the city, from time to time, had been ravaged by flames. Certainly fire was not unprecedented in Telnar. As the records have it, the fire began in one of the Floonian temples, an Illusionist temple, which doctrine, it seems, was to the effect that Karch, in his benevolence and perfection, in speaking to diverse species, would not have permitted grievous harm, or, indeed, any harm or pain whatsoever, to come to an actual, feeling, living individual doing his will, bearing his message, and such, whether an Ogg, a Vorite, or whatever. That would be unworthy of the goodness of Karch. Accordingly, he had chosen to communicate his word to the many worlds not by an actual person, but, rather, by means of a seeming person, a simulacrum, an image, or illusion. Anything else would be unthinkable, casting discredit on the moral character of Karch.

  In any event, as might be expected, the Illusionists were blamed for the fire. Had it not begun in their temple? What better evidence of the bitter fruits of heresy? Naturally, there were numerous, spontaneous demonstrations against the Illusionists. Many were hunted down by gangs and either beaten or slain. In the senate there were claims that the Illusionists constituted a danger to the state, and should be sought out and sacrificed to one god or another, or be exiled to barren worlds. Nothing came of this, however, first, perhaps, largely, because there was no reason to believe that the traditional gods and goddesses, Orak, Umba, and so on, would welcome such sacrifices, seeming to prefer, at least according to tradition, those of cattle, and small animals and birds, and, second, because most Telnarians were unclear on the doctrinal differences amongst the many sects of Floonians. It is suspected they could not, for example, tell the difference between an Illusionist and an Emanationist. In such a case, any retaliation, state-sanctioned or not, as was pointed out by Sidonicus, Exarch of Telnar, in both public pronouncements and private interviews, might affect not only Illusionists, but, tragically, Floonians in general. In any event, the Exarch of Telnar pleaded for mercy, at least for reformed heretics, and implored their conversion to the true faith, which, it se
ems, was his own. His prayers, it seems, were answered, for the fire, and its consequences, broke the back of the Illusionist doctrine, now generally understood to be mistaken, if not pernicious, and many fled to the more orthodox, or more general, view, the identical-but-different view, so to speak. Some, of course, remained unrepentant, proclaiming their innocence, as one would expect.

  “Smoke,” said one of the girls.

  It is true that the smell of smoke lingers. Indeed, if one were to prod about in the rubble, one might, here and there, even now, have stirred some embers alive, uncovering a dully scarlet residue, a subtle recollection of falling walls and flaming timbers.

  “See the buildings,” said another.

  “It is a whole district,” said another.

  The carrier rumbled on, and soon the blackened rubble, the projecting, half burned ribs of buildings, the trash, and debris, were left behind.

  To be sure, the stink of the fire, given the direction of the wind, would continue to be evident, here and there, for days.

  “What will become of me?” wondered Cornhair, on her knees, unclothed, collared, continuing to cling to the linkage of the chainlike mesh.

  The Telnarians were not noted for their consideration of slaves.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Shall I withdraw, Master?” inquired Elena.

  Iaachus, Arbiter of Protocol, looked up, angrily, from his notes. He cast the notes on the table before him. He turned his curved chair toward the girl.

  “Is Master angry?” asked Elena.

  “Approach,” said Iaachus, irritatedly. “Kneel down, here, before me. Put your head down. Press your lips to my feet. Kiss and lick them, tenderly, and at length. Press your cheek against them. Let your hair fall about them.”

  The girl knelt before him, and put her head down.

  “I must think,” he said.

  “I trust Master is not angry,” whispered the girl.

  “I am angry,” he said.

  “I trust not with Elena,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “Continue.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said, head down.

  “It is restful to have a woman at one’s feet,” he said.

  “It is where we belong,” she said.

  “Continue,” he said, idly.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “Very restful,” he said.

  “A slave hopes to please her Master,” said Elena.

  “Enough,” he said.

  She lifted her head.

  “I would think,” he said.

  He turned a bit away from her.

  “I shall withdraw,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “Stay here, as you are, kneeling here, beside me, at my knee.”

  The slave complied.

  “Let us speak together,” he said.

  “You would speak with me?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I am only a slave,” she said.

  “You are an extremely intelligent woman,” he said.

  “I am a mere slave,” she said.

  “Do you think the locking of a collar on your neck makes you less intelligent?”

  “No, Master,” she said.

  “Intelligent women make by far the best slaves,” he said.

  “Perhaps,” she said, “we are more in touch with our own feelings and needs, more ready to accept ourselves, more sensitive to our desires and depths, more open to, and more ready to acknowledge, what we want, what will fulfill our truest and most profound nature.”

  She pressed the side of her face down, against his knee.

  “Do not dare to love,” he said.

  “It captures one,” she said. “It is stronger than chains.”

  “How far you are from the glory of a free woman,” he said.

  “I do not envy them their freedom,” she said. “Let them not envy me my servitude.”

  “Would you not fear to be seen so, as you are, by a free woman?” he asked.

  “No, Master,” she said, “for I am a slave.”

  “What if a free woman should enter?” he asked.

  “Many free women own slaves, of either sex,” she said. “Perhaps she might enjoy seeing a slave humbled, one of her sex collared, owned, and prostrated before her.”

  “The contrast might much exalt her own freedom, and superiority,” said Iaachus, Arbiter of Protocol.

  “Doubtless,” said the girl.

  “And humiliate you a thousand times,” he said.

  “No, Master,” she said.

  “‘No’?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know some free women have themselves accompanied by leashed slaves, as by apes and monkeys, that their own raiment and beauty, by contrast, will seem all the more dazzling?”

  “Of course, Master,” said Elena. “But I fear this stratagem may be ill-considered, as the attention of men is often the more directed to the ape or monkey.”

  “Do you know that all women are rivals?” asked Iaachus.

  “Of course, Master,” she said. “Collared, I need no longer deny it.”

  “Doubtless there is some gratification for a free woman in finding a rival so helpless, so reduced and vulnerable.”

  “I suspect so, Master,” she said.

  “Particularly,” said he, “if a personal rival, and perhaps one now personally owned.”

  “I would think so, Master,” said Elena.

  “I am angry,” he said.

  “Not with Elena?”

  “No.”

  “Master is tired,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” he said.

  “May I serve Master kana?” asked Elena.

  “No,” he said.

  “Master has worked hard,” she said. “He is weary.”

  “The weight of the empire is heavy,” he said.

  “It need not be borne alone,” she said. “There is the emperor, the empress mother, the ministers, the generals, the admirals, a thousand servants, ten thousand functionaries, on Telnaria alone.”

  “Is the empire eternal?” he asked.

  “Surely, Master,” she said.

  “I wonder,” he said.

  Once again, the girl put her lips to his knee, gently.

  “How precious you are,” he said.

  “I am Master’s slave,” said Elena.

  Again she bent her head to his knee.

  “Cease!” he suddenly cried.

  She drew back, frightened.

  “It is a contagion, a superstition, a plague,” he said, angrily, “an infection. It spreads through the empire like a pestilence!”

  “Master?” said the slave.

  “What do you know of Karch?” he asked.

  “He is one of the many gods,” said Elena.

  “And who speaks for him?” asked Iaachus.

  “Who would dare speak for a god?” she asked. “And what god would be unable to speak for himself?”

  “Are there not a billion gods?” he asked.

  “I have heard, a great many,” she said.

  “I know a hundred sects, with a hundred different gods,” he said, “each of which claims their god is the only god.”

  “How would they know?” she asked. “And if there are so few, perhaps there are none. If most do not exist, perhaps none exist.”

  “And do you know which god is the only god? In each case it is their god.”

  “I am not surprised,” she said.

  “Can you conceive of such colossal arrogance?” he said.

  “It seems a breach of good manners,” she said, “if not of mutual respect and common civility.”

  “What do you know of a prophet, Floon?” he asked.

  “Are there not te
n thousand prophets?” she said.

  “Of one called ‘Floon’,” he said.

  “As others, little or nothing,” she said. “An Ogg, from Zirus. I have heard he preached to all living things, to people, to trees, to insects and dogs. He seems clearly to have been insane.”

  “He preached to the lowliest,” said Iaachus, “to the lazy, stupid, ignorant, and incompetent, to the penurious, to the miserable and failed, to the unsuccessful, to the unhappy, the frustrated, the jealous, resentful, and envious, to the secret haters, to the outsiders, to those who want prosperity by magic, without effort, who feel they are entitled to the fruits of others’ labors, who feel they are entitled to share in what they have not produced, to those who castigate not themselves, but others, for their own miseries, lacks, failures, and shortcomings, men who, having nothing, claim to have been robbed of riches they never possessed, enemies of the better, enemies of the superior, and strong.”