Thrown forward, the sorcerer grasped the table, dropping his cup; blood shot from his chest and dripped from the bronze-tipped arrow that protruded from his leather jerkin.
Snarling, he turned, his yellow eyes burning brightly, seeking out the archer. Footsteps came, and a tall man dressed in wool and leather walked forward; he lifted the bow he carried and dropped it to the floor. It clattered loudly.
Thameron held himself erect. He whispered: “Fool.”
“I had to attempt it.”
“You know better than this…Eromedeus.” Grunting, Thameron grasped the shaft where it pushed from his chest and snapped it; he threw the pointed end away from him, then reached behind with his right hand to remove the feathered half. The splintered wood made a moist sucking sound as it was pulled free, and fresh drops of blood erupted as it came out. Thameron held it before his eyes, frowning: runes had been carved into the shaft, ancient symbols of death. With a grunt, he discarded it; the broken arrow skipped on the flags, making hollow noises.
“Stupid.”
“I was certain that those signs would destroy you the moment the arrow pierced your heart,” Eromedeus confessed.
“Use evil to slay evil? You are wiser than that.”
“I had to try.”
Thameron shook his head and smeared the blood on the front of his jerkin; already the wound had stopped dripping. “I am now as deathless as you, Undying One—until the hour of unmercy comes down on us.” His eyes were smoky lamps. “Why did you come here?”
“Not to stay. I won’t let you lay your hands on me again, evil one. Cursed I may be—but I won’t allow myself to be damned. I will wander on and warn the world what a king rules in fallen Emaria.”
“The world will not listen to you, Eromedeus; they’ll ask only if the rumors of this country’s greatness are true. They wait to be persuaded. ‘Is there grain enough in Emaria to feed everyone?’”
“Is there, Thameron?”
“Be certain of it; evil always satisfies immediately. I create grain from dust; I make wine from water, from spittle.”
“While people beg you for more. Always—more.”
Thameron grinned. “They are only being human. I am Evil, spiritless one—I am the Evil. I am two spirits in one flesh. I understand what they wish, and why, and I supply it. You are vacant.” He grunted with disgust. “Shall we discuss these things more? How will you warn them of my evil? They will not heed; they are hungry; they do not want honesty, and they are afraid of the truth, ever afraid of the truth. Watch and see. For when their bellies are full again, and their minds strong once more and certain, they will become proud and vainglorious: they will ask me to give them the world.”
Eromedeus turned away. “Time hastens.…”
“Begone from here!” Thameron warned him. “Begone from me, now. I’ll excuse you one stupid, noble gesture, Eromedeus—but go now, or I’ll chain you down. Undying one, I’ll torture you so foully you’ll wish you had a screaming soul to comfort you.”
“Aye. I am going.”
Thameron laughed. “The man in me is gone,” he said simply, easily. “Who was that mortal child? Do we live by our decisions, Eromedeus, or by our associations?—our convictions, or our stations? Listen—you can hear them now. Yes, time hastens; it hastens with the pull of its own tidal end. There are not many dawns left for you to travel, Wandering One. Do you feel the footsteps of humanity hurrying…hurrying?”
“I feel them.… They may yet pause in their tread and step away from the chasm, step away from the abyss that lures them.”
“Then go, and warn them if you can, for the things of mankind outstrip mankind itself. They stare into the abyss…and that abyss stares back at them. Humanity will not listen to you, Eromedeus. Go—find the soul that will free you at last. And as you are freed, listen to the thunder of the old night as it comes down for humanity: for it will be the thunder of your birth and your death, all in one moment.”
“Your death, too, Thameron.”
“Thameron is dead already, and the thing that holds him—it is deathless.”
* * * *
In Hilum, a manacled Asawas was brought up from his cold lightless cell and led by his guards into the presence of Seraficos, the inquisitor. As he stood before the prelate, the prophet’s demeanor was relaxed, almost ambivalent. This irritated the richly robed Seraficos, this attitude more arrogant than even a defiant posture might have been.
“I have received word from the government in Athad, rabble-rouser. The king’s high minister wishes to question you and bring you before the seat of the king himself. I want you removed from my city as quickly as possible. Therefore, passage has been arranged on board a cattle ship leaving Hilum this morning.”
Asawas looked at him.
“Have you anything to say to me on your own behalf, or in your own defense, before you’re taken out of this city? Speak up, if you have a mind to; every paper will be forwarded to King Elad’s office.”
Asawas was silent for a moment; then he spoke simply, reminding the inquisitor, “When at last you realize the truth, Seraficos, it will terrify and astonish you with its completeness. You will not be damned, false one—you will be embraced.”
The grand inquisitor colored. “We shall see,” he growled, “who is damned and who is embraced, lawbreaker.” To Asawas’s guards: “Take him out. Lord Abadon waits with a coterie of troops to escort him to the docks.”
The soldiers saluted and turned Asawas around, led him clanking and shuffling out the door, down the wide winding stairs of the Temple, and out into the hot day and bright sunshine.
Blinded by this after his prolonged imprisonment in the cellars, Asawas blinked and bent his head to one side until he became accustomed to the daylight. Before the Temple, he was turned over to Lord Abadon, who was seated on a tall white stallion. Abadon immediately dismissed the guards and, handing a thick bundle of papers to the captain in charge of the escort, saluted the dozen mounted soldiers and watched silently as they undid the heavy chains at Asawas’s ankles and positioned him in the center of their horses. Then, with six on each side of the prophet, they began walking him through the streets.
Abadon, evincing no emotion, watched the brown robe as it disappeared in the confusion of horseflesh and glittering armor.
Asawas, head bent, arms heavy, thought at first that he was ill or suffering because of his sudden expulsion from the cold dampness into the warm day. But then he realized that he was not ill; he realized that the sounds he heard were not only those of his own beating heart and not only the noise of horses’ hoofs striking cobblestones and bricks.
They were the sounds of the earth.
Groaning…moving…breathing…changing.…
Asawas took in a long breath, listened, and heard. Around him, crowding the horses as the soldiers passed down the street, people began jeering and taunting him. The people of the city…the people of the earth itself.…
As the earth itself, to Asawas’s senses, groaned and moved and breathed—changed.…
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Early in the month of Isku the Fish, the Athadian diplomats who had come to the Holy City with Queen Salia finalized certain terms and agreements with the Salukadian court regarding the general responsibilities to be shared by the two empires. The bankers and businessmen who, following the occupation of Erusabad, had initiated trade agreements and business rights, conferred with the queen’s diplomats to reach comprehensive accords with the eastern government. Thus, as a hot summer filled the ancient city with bright sweltering days and humid nights, the lamps burned late, wine cups were emptied and replenished, lighthearted jests were traded, and two empires that had been divided, and had divided the world between them, came to mutually agreeable accommodations.
Queen Salia had done all that had been required of her, and bin-Sutus had assured her that her presence had been most welcome in the court. Still, when she sat alone in her apartment and stared at the vase of yellow ro
ses—one for each day since her arrival—the queen felt her discomfort grow, and she did not feel relieved at the thought that soon, within a few days, she would take leave of the Holy City and the eastern ghen who, almost wordlessly, almost magically, had come to dominate her thoughts.
Queen Salia was frightened.
Frightened by feelings strong within her, urges and curiosities that she did not quite wish to quell.
* * * *
In an early hour of the afternoon, with her servants away, dressed in a light gown that allowed breezes to cool her, Salia of Athadia admitted Agors ko-Ghen into her apartment. He was all leather and bronze, and dark-eyed; and his attitude anticipated her own inclinations.
“Perhaps,” Agors told her, staring at her from where he sat on a cushioned divan, “it would be necessary for you to remain in Erusabad a while longer, after your ministers and diplomats have gone.”
“That would argue some pretext, honored Ghen.”
“I am an emperor: what I command will be done.”
“What purpose could there be in my remaining in Erusabad even a day longer than necessary?” Salia stood by a long window; the light of the afternoon was bright about her.
“That depends, does it not, on what one considers a necessity? My capital, Ilbukar, for instance, is a beautiful city, full of colors and noise. It is not old, like this city: it is new, fresh, and alive. There is much trade there, much coming and going. Perhaps you would care to witness that—visit my world, before returning to yours.”
“Perhaps.”
The light of the window revealed the young queen’s body beneath her gown. Agors noticed; he rose, walked to Salia, and stood beside her. She did not face him as he came; indeed, she seemed to tense, her figure tightening visibly as he stepped toward her.
The young ghen noticed, too, her nervous hands; he remarked on her coloring cheeks; he interpreted how intently she scrutinized whatever she was regarding outside the window.
“Why,” Salia asked, still not facing Agors, “have you sent me roses every day?”
“I do so with respect. You are beautiful and strong; the yellow rose is beautiful and strong.”
“I think you mock me.”
In answer, Agors lifted a hand and touched her hair. Brushed her neck. Reached to stroke Salia’s face.
She turned then, alarmed, frightened—perhaps shamed. Her voice was bitter as she repulsed him. “Do not touch me, honored Ghen!”
“Have I misread you? Do I not understand what speaks between us?”
“There are many things between us.”
“Forgive me.” There was a note of disappointment in his voice, edged with that promise of anger that was always a part of him.
Salia swallowed and frowned. “No. No. I…should ask your forgiveness. But do not misread my confusions, please.”
“Queen of Athadia…,” Agors muttered. “Yellow…rose. I salute you.” He slapped his chest in a mockery of Athadian custom. “You have conquered this city and my court, Queen Salia. Surely you realize that? What an insult it was to learn that the West would send a woman as their representative to the endless empire! Yet you came, you have—”
“Do not presume, Agors—”
“Presume?” He grinned at her. “It is you who presume, beautiful woman. How many have been lost to you? How many have pledged their hearts to you! Yet I see in you an errant spirit; you are a prisoner of emotions, Salia, that you cannot express. Or will not express. Am I wrong? What do you fear? Indiscretion only? Many emotions, perhaps? There are indeed many things between us: but at this moment, not much more than a space of air.”
“You do not see me as a queen, even less as a woman who—”
“Very much as a woman. You understand yourself as a woman, too. But let me tell you that here our women are as disciplined as our men—as our animals are, as our society is. With discipline comes freedom, Queen Salia; but freedom itself will never create discipline. You of the West—what do you know of all this? What poetry do you have? How many hours do you spend staring at sunsets, or watching the flow of water or the lives of insects? What do you understand? For you, everything is obvious and apparent—and not mysterious.”
She stared at him, and now her eyes were wide and her breath, anxious. Was he lying? Or was it that truth, in the East, seemed to be a lie only to western eyes?
“I apologize for desiring you; you are very desirable. Return then to your cold West, where flesh and money are everyone’s excuses. I apologize for not worshiping you, for looking upon you as a woman. Return to this king who claims to love you. Because I do not love you; I do not know what love is. But…you are very desirable.”
Salia tried to calm herself. “Now you are extremely flattering.”
“Who is pretentious now?” Agors laughed at her. “You speak Hasni to me, you speak the words of my language to tell me how pretentious I am? You have no discipline; you have only illusions.” He glanced at the vase of roses. “Were I to pluck but one petal from Athadia’s rose,” he commented, “would that diminish the beauty of the rose, or enhance it? Would it then lack, for losing one petal—or would it gain more than it lost?”
Still standing beside her, staring at her, his dark eyes filling her, Agors commanded Salia: “Tell me.”
Trembling, worried, confused but letting something inside her decide, she answered him: “Its beauty…would not be diminished. The flower that remained…would grow stronger…with the lack of one petal.…”
“What sorcery is this,” Agors grinned at her, “that I command the queen of Athadia?”
“You do not command,” she replied quietly, staring at him. “She commands you, by all that she is. Understand that, Agors. You are commanded by the thing you seek to possess. If one petal will not come loose, then you own the rose itself, entire.”
* * * *
An early hour in the afternoon.
Just beneath the surface of her pale pink-white flesh he saw the bright coursings of blue veins, thin and fragile. It seemed to him wonderful that he could witness the veins beneath her skin, as though he were looking through sunlit water and spying on some secret process just beneath its surface. Spying on some secret life within Salia that defined her or had possessed her.
Yet when he made love to her, he began to wonder who and what she was, and who and what he had himself become.
Her aroma was that of wild ripe flowers combined with animal moisture: a thick field, fragrant, after a rainfall. The urgency of her made him tremble. The bestialness of her poses challenged him. With tightened muscles and flesh that moved in waves, she moaned like a small animal, thrashed, yelped like a puppy, was one moment trapped and clinging, the next freed and thrown. But her love did not reward him with himself: it swallowed him like some voracious new form of life. It was not her identity that did this, but her elemental spirit: as if her spirit, escaping through her body, had necessarily to create new forms of communication—savoring and exploring. Her spirit—a web, lost in its own tangles, sometimes burned by light, sometimes hidden by darkness. Even when she laughed, the laughter following moans or gasps or pulling suctions of breathless delight—even when she laughed, her laugh was only nonsense. Her body’s demands and desires seemed more than she herself could withstand—palpitating, flowing, constantly coming—and confused him; and her quick pauseless laughs, followed by arching moans before he had time to laugh in answer, vexed him.
Agors did not find this entirely pleasurable, having his curiosity and his pride compromised by a woman who had seemed pretentious and aloof, moody and yet playful, but who in his arms was transformed, her inner quarrels with herself undone by her passions. Was it not true that still water grows brackish, where flowing water is full of life and vibrant?
This woman of the West…what was she, within herself?
Her beauty was enhanced in the afterglow of desire and release: her smile a thing in itself of smeared red lips and white diamonds…her eyes deep pools, content and sated…warm hon
ey in a woman’s shape lying still as though moulded, resonant and damp…the movement of her breathing like everything in nature sharing breath together. The mystery of her was not removed by passionate release, but was deepened.
Agors, lying beside her, feared that he had not accomplished this miracle himself. He wondered, indeed, if he had commanded the thing he sought to possess. Or did not she, in her sudden freedom, in her sudden release, the flowing water, command—
He watched her.
Salia turned her head on her pillow and smiled at him, laughed.…
* * * *
That evening, drawn back to her, Agors visited Salia again.
“People don’t take me seriously,” she had told Elad. “They don’t think I’m the queen, or even a woman. They think I’m just, that I’m just here.”
And again, the following morning, in the cool dawn, he returned to her.
“You’ve tried to make me into some other kind of you! You don’t know me well enough to hurt me, Father!”
She spent that day inside, in her apartment. Watching from the window…thinking…staring at yellow roses, thinking of candles burning.…
“I don’t like spending all my time inside the palace when I know the whole world is out there, and I want to do things and be part of everything.”
Again that night she and Agors made love. Their attitudes had changed. The challenges they had initially brought to each other had been overcome; love was not there between them, but there remained a kind of freedom—a defiant freedom, a freedom of nots and nevers: they did not speak of a future; they did not speak of being together.
“I wonder if I’ll ever love anybody that much,” she had said to Orain. “I’ve never thought of myself that way. Loving someone that much.”
Agors pronounced his feelings as though he were announcing a verdict: he delivered his thoughts as though commanding a trained animal. Salia spoke as if she were a child acting against her parents’ counsel. And beyond all this, she told him, “When we tire of each other, Agors, I intend to leave. Not to return to Athadia as their queen, but simply to go into the streets as a woman.”
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