“Where?” Theyn put in at once.
“Don’t interrupt, Melim,” the princess overrode him coolly. “Go on, Chachi. Just an outline remember. I have a state reception to attend at midday.”
“The Renewer is supposed to come from outside the Empire, your Highness. Then there is another well-known prophecy from the Annals of the Vimo sect about 1200 years ago. You may remember they were suppressed as heretics after the Ajeddak Revelation. For some reason their prediction of revenge, 'the Day of Restoration' they call it, has passed into folklore. When the Vimo manuscripts are studied at source, it is quite clear that the ‘Day’ they speak of is fast approaching.”
“I thought Restoration Day was the product of some poet’s imagination,” Shkosta mused. “You’re right, Chachi, it could be dangerous idea in the wrong hands. Go on and make it quick.”
“I will be as brief as possible, your Highness. In one of the oldest prophecies the Talisman of the Gods is mentioned as being due to reappear soon and as usual a Guardian is also predicted to arrive to claim it. In itself this may appear to be just another piece of arcane religious nonsense of the type which produces a regular flow of crackpot ‘saviours’.”
“Talismans and Guardians have always been common currency, Prentex.”
“However this time the legend is backed up by several other prophecies, including the ones I have already mentioned, quite enough to provide some rebel with a convincing platform. With such authentication a Guardian and a Talisman would probably attract an unusual degree of popular support, even if both were in fact false.”
“And is that two threats or one? I mean is this Guardian supposed to be the same person as the Renewer?”
“I regret I do not know the answer to that question, your Highness.”
Shkosta brooded for a moment, then asked abruptly, “Is there more?”
“Yes, your Highness. Much of it saying the same things, but from different sources.”
“Well, thank you for bringing this to my attention, Prentex." The sarcasm was light.
"I'm quite happy for you to go on down this line for the moment. Just remember that my business comes first. And now, gentlemen, I'll have to ask you to leave. I won't slight your intelligence, either of you, with threats about secrecy. Don't disappoint me.”
They bowed out, the Prentex by the anteroom and the colonel by a side door which led through to a different part of the Palace. Once alone, the princess sat very still and let herself go over the meeting as she had been taught, not a precise exercise of the mind, rather the opening of a gentle flow, reliving almost dreamily the whole experience. This way not just the words, but every nuance of tone, expression and posture became available for review. Any anomaly brought her to full alert at once.
She had been aware of Chachi listening outside the door, his strangely alien presence identified to her by his smell almost as soon as her trained intruder sense warned her that someone was in the anteroom.
No harm done: she had been careful to say nothing revealing and it pleased her to have another small advantage over the priest.
He was quick, his mind subtler and more flexible than Theyn’s. He had understood perfectly well the purpose behind her questions about using the Network, and he had observed her casual control of Theyn. That had been foolish of her. Carelessness or vanity? She wasn’t entirely sure. So much for her vaunted self-control, the one area in which she had excelled all her peers. There must be no more slips in the years ahead.
Her instincts told her that however much the Prentex might decry the prophecies as 'religious nonsense’, he himself was among the believers. Of course belief was alright; it was literal belief which was so ludicrous. She smiled. How surprised he would be to learn of the Sword and the Dagun, the real Talisman and the true Guardians, who had long planned to take advantage of the prophecies. The surprise for her had been to hear the priest articulate a religious view of the ‘event’ and then go on to warn against the very possibilities that the Terrechar themselves were intending to exploit.
And of course Chachi was quite right. The prophecies could lend credence to any ambitious rebel. The Leopard Throne had enough opponents already: she had no intention of allowing any more to take root. And besides the immediate political dangers, the Dagun would be unwilling to allow any ‘Guardian’ to gain too much popular support in a role they were reserving for themselves. If Chachi’s investigations turned up someone beyond her reach, she was sure they would be happy to deal with him.
Chapter 12
Linguistically Shattun is of interest as the best example of a language without a primary root. Full of words culled from twenty different sources, it is claimed by many countries as a bastardization of their own tongue. There is no Shattun poetry, no body of literature of any kind, and the expression of emotion or artistic feeling relies almost entirely on words directly imported from other languages. The grammar, such as it is, is a makeshift construction, though one may perceive a distant kinship to the elegant complexity of Shabbatsee.
Looked at historically, if the Faculty will excuse me for making such an artificial distinction, Shattun or some form of it appears to have existed for several millennia. In Pillimon Tarkus one can find trade records written in Shattun which predate the founding of the Quezma Republic, and others which clearly record transactions prior to the city’s Free Trade status.
Although little Shattun is spoken in regions remote from the main trade routes, on a world scale its contribution to communication and commerce cannot be overestimated. It is for this reason, Honourable Members, that I urge you to approve the new Chair of Shattun Studies and humbly request that you appoint me thereto.
Speech to the Faculty of Languages, PCQ (People’s College of QuinQuiya)
Esparan. Suntoren
Next morning the Tinker and Idressin were out when the others got up. They were given breakfast by the mousy woman who seemed to look after the house. She also repeated the same instructions Caldar had heard before; they were not to go out. They were well engaged in exploring every facet of the previous evening's talk when the two men returned, and they looked on with interest as Idressin stripped off the filthy tattered jerkin and breeches he had been wearing.
"The word is that people are still looking for you, Caldar," the Tinker explained, "and there's a vague description of Idressin and Berin too, probably supplied by our friend Grellek. So as a simple precaution Idressin's been acting the part of my poorly paid and unhygienic servant. I think it suits him rather well, don't you? Perhaps we ought to develop that particular disguise."
"Well, you, my dear Tinker, need no practice whatsoever in perfecting the part of a mean, arrogant, domineering . . ." Idressin was unable to finish, his voice drowned by a raucous cheer from the two youths.
"I see." the Tinker said haughtily. "We're feeling rebellious this morning, are we? Be careful, or I’ll apprentice you to a basket-weaver.”
The boys shuddered in mock fear and then smiled at each other in much lighter mood than the night before.
"Enough games." the old man said, as Idressin came back from putting his reeking rags in the yard. "We need to talk practically today. But first I want to ask you before we go any further, are you willing to attempt this task?"
"You mean," began Berin, "that we're to go to the Empire sometime in the next year or two, wait for this Talisman to reappear somewhere within a thousand miles, and then hope that the person who's the right Guardian for it will be able to tell where it is. We hurry along and find it before it vanishes again, learn from it what we're supposed to do to put the world right, and then do so....... with the Talisman's help, of course. It sounds simple enough, when do we start?"
"I detect a certain levity in the air this morning." The Tinker smiled. "That's alright, as long as you understand that the task is real and that my question is serious. Are you willing?"
"Yes, of course." replied Rasscu.
"I feel I’m being asked to jump off a cliff blindfold,
" Berin followed slowly. "But going on what you’ve said so far, yes, I'm willing to give it a try."
Caldar shrugged. He didn’t really understand any of this, except that it sounded dangerous. But of course it was already dangerous; they’d found him and kidnapped him in Norleng, so it wasn’t much use pretending he could hide. The sensible thing would be to go with his friends and get on with it. Why did he feel so reluctant to say yes? Maybe it was the talk of duty and responsibility again: those words were guaranteed to make him feel uncomfortable. “ Yes, I’ll …. I suppose…. I’ll go.” He subsided, his doubts in plain view.
Strangely the Tinker didn’t seem to mind. “It’s alright, Caldar. It’ll do. There’ll be a time for you to come to an answer later. From now on we're going to have to move quickly. I want to be in Razimir by Winterturn and that means reaching Pillimon Tarkus by Midsummer Day.”
Rasscu eyed his companions with amusement as their mouths literally dropped open at the mention of these distant places, exotic names which existed only in their dreams. The Tinker continued, apparently oblivious to their astonishment.
“Kulkin may have the word out on you, Caldar, as far as Tarkus, so we'll conceal ourselves by travelling with one of the Grand Caravans."
"He'll have them watched too, won't he?" asked Berin.
"I'm sure he will. But there are sometimes two thousand people in the larger ones; that's a lot for them to keep an eye on. And smaller groups of travellers are going through all the time."
"They'll still spot us, if they've got our descriptions," Caldar commented. Then he grimaced as the next step occured to him. "Oh, I see. We're going to be disguised, like Idressin this morning. Who gets the rags and the menial jobs?"
"Disguise is more to do with misdirection than clothes." It was Idressin who answered. "They won't expect us to be amongst the normal traders and we’ll be travelling in the party of a merchant we know. We've already arranged our wagons and our trade goods."
"So you assumed we were going to come before you asked us?" Caldar wasn't sure whether to laugh or be annoyed.
"Oh yes, we had no doubt you'd agree."
"Then why did you bother to ask us?"
"Because it was important for you," Idressin said patiently. "It was quite clear that in each of you the decision could only go one way, but you weren't aware of it. The talking flea that sits on the horse's head thinks it decides which way the horse is going, and we spend so much time listening to its chatter that our deepest decisions are made without our knowing."
Caldar looked blank.
“It was exactly the same for Idressin and I when we came to this point, Caldar,” the Tinker put in. “We couldn’t make sense of what was happening to us.”
“Then tell us how you coped with it, ‘cos I’m lost. We’re being asked to decide about something that’s already settled.”
"Rather than tell you about myself, I think it might help if I told you the story of Limmer One-Hand, which Berin dismissed so lightly last night.”
“We know it already, everyone does,” Berin objected.
“No, this is the real story, his own account, told to his grandson, so you can believe it. Limmer was older than any of you when he faced his first real decision. Smart fellow, thought he knew it all, and hard to convince. He could have saved himself a lot of grief.” The old man's eyes were bright with amusement as he surveyed his audience, already rapt and attentive at the prospect of a story.
“He'd trained as a soldier in the army of Queen Hussa of Malefor. What's now the Empire was then a loose alliance of six kingdoms with Malefor top dog and there was trouble on every side. Dendria and its neighbour Naschur had just fought each other to a standstill in a nasty ten year war, while the Fisher people were raiding up as far as Razimir and laying claim to everything south of Karkor. Soldiers were in demand and Limmer by all accounts was a good one: he was a Captain by twenty two, with a reputation of always volunteering for tough assignments.
He was on patrol one day on the fringe of the Great Desert, when he intercepted a slave caravan taking captives to sell in the Fisher Kingdom. The rescued were demonstrably grateful, all except one woman who cursed Limmer roundly for interfering. He listened astonished as she went on to suggest that the least he could do was to make reparation personally for her loss. She continued with this theme until he wearied of it and offered her a few coins to keep quiet. When she gave a contemptuous refusal, he asked in exasperation what she wanted. "You" was the extraordinary reply.
As you can imagine, the ambitious Captain in his fine uniform condescending to converse with the filthy creature by his stirrup was taken aback at the boldness of the demand. He said later that at that moment he looked directly into her eyes and had the strange feeling that something was being offered, something very important to him. For an instant he almost began to ask himself what was it that touched him so deeply, then he became aware of the ludicrous scene he was acting out in front of his men and he laughed. What was he thinking of? It was preposterous. Full marks to her for her brazenness, but he had other plans for his life, including a certain lovely young lady who was waiting for him in Razimir. He rode off and forgot the whole incident.
A year later Limmer himself was captured by Fisher raiders and hauled off to the slave markets. Treatment on the journey was brutal and the pens were worse. To his relief he was bought after two days and led off to a magnificent house, owned by a powerful Lord. His purchaser was apparently the Lord's chief concubine, at whose order he was set to work in the kitchens. His first glimpse of his mistress revealed a woman of extraordinary beauty, whose face was hauntingly familiar. It took him several moments to realise that he was once again in the presence of the woman he had rescued in the desert.
New hope replaced his despair. Despite her peculiar behaviour at their previous encounter, surely she would remember and feel some degree of gratitude. One day, after he had been there a month, he observed the woman in the garden alone, and taking a wild risk slipped out to meet her.
"Don’t you recognise me?" he asked quickly, fearful of discovery. "I’m the Captain who rescued you in the desert. I came to your aid then: won’t you help me now?"
The woman's reply was instant and direct. "I recognise you as the man who caused me considerable trouble and was too proud to apologise, so full of himself in fact that he threw away my gift in contempt. That man needs no help from me."
Limmer was stunned. He was beginning to stammer that she had never offered him a gift, when the sound of approaching feet forced him to flee. For a slave to have been discovered in the garden would have meant instant death. As it was, he found himself sold to another owner the very next day.
For a while he abandoned himself to self-pity. But he was resilient and intelligent and soon set to to make himself an invaluable servant. He no longer had any opportunity to talk to the woman, but her words puzzled and troubled him more and more until he could think of little else.
In the end he realised that he had lied to himself. He had indeed understood that day in the desert that he had been made an offer. It was so far outside his normal terms of reference that he was unable to put words on it even now, but it had been real - too real for him, so like a coward he had not even questioned it, simply turned his back and gone to hide in his safe familiar life. He still didn't know what the woman's gift might be, but he felt compelled to find out.
By now he was a trusted steward to his new master, free to come and go. He made occasion to call at the house of his previous owner, saying that he was bearing a personal message for the Lady Pirami, only to find to his consternation that she had gone. The Lord's steward confided in Limmer that she had grown too shrewish for his master, who had given her some months before to a Trinta trader heading back to the Quezma Kingdom, as it then was.
To shorten the rest of the tale, it was twelve long years later when Limmer finally caught up with her, and not a day had passed without him cursing his own dishonesty and cowardice. He found her
at last selling flowers on the streets of Harath Hok and all he could say was, 'Am I too late?'"
"And........." prompted Caldar.
"Come on, Tinker," Berin joined in. "You can't stop there. Was he too late? Who was she and what was the gift? I've never heard this version of the story."
"I’ve already told you the relevant part. The rest will keep. You see, Limmer was free to choose, just as you are. But there's a price to pay for not listening to your heart. However hard the results of your choice may seem, denying your own true feelings will always cost you more.”
“Alright, you’ve made your point.” Rasscu looked at the boys with a straight face. “Seems we’ve got a choice, hard or even harder. How d’you vote? “ Then without waiting for a reply, he turned to the Tinker, “We’ll take hard. Just tell us how we’re going to do it.”
"We'll be travelling as traders in silk and precious stones," Idressin resumed smoothly as though the Tinker had never interrupted. "There are several Trinta merchants in the Grand Caravan we're going to join and one of them is taking me on as a partner for this trip. He's paying off some of his people in Sand City and we'll make up the numbers. It's straightforward enough, but there are a few things to take care of, if we don't want to stand out as a party from the Lake.
Rasscu, you're no problem. Kulkin knows nothing about you and you can simply be a Tesseri wagon-driver I'm employing, though please cut down on the amorous adventures on this trip: we don't want the complications. It's you two," he sized up Caldar and Berin as he talked, "that need to become less visible. First of all you’ll have to talk Shattun, it's the common tongue of the Great Highway: speaking Esparit would be a mistake. Then you'll need to know something about caravans and the Great Highway too. Rass can help there, he’s been on the Highway before.
That's going to keep us busy enough, until our trader arrives. He's due in Sand City later this month and we'll go down and join him there."
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