She turned her face back to the shadow. “Have of him? Five languages. An experimental pharmacology. Geology, optics, and of course, systems of combat. Plus… the other.”
Both of them looked to me now, but I was not ready to speak. I was thinking of the way you introduced me to my own death, and midwifed me back again, and how I had sat one day, shivering and alone in the autumn rains, under red maple leaves and pale oak, and seen each individual raindrop fall free into its own eternity. I was wondering why that sort of magic communicated so perfectly to me, while Dowln’s bright and horrible dreams put me into a fury of pique.
“What have you learned, Nazhuret?” the king repeated. “Put your offering into the common pot.”
I could think of nothing that the two hadn’t said except that last thing which had reduced them both to silence. I said, “I learned that mirrors mean nothing. That we can only know ourselves by looking at the world—and especially the people—around us. And each of us performs that service for the world in return; we reflect it back to itself.
“That understanding is the root of all science. Of all philosophy…”
“… of all sitting tied in a chair, facing a brick wall,” added Arlin, out of our long common experience.
King Rudof leaned back and put his two long legs and his two large feet on the table. He scratched his carroty beard stubble with both hands and smiled the sweet smile that caused courtiers’ hearts to jump. “With all that on our side, my friends, what chance has the emperor’s cavalry?”
Of course, only minutes after that moment of understanding we were in a bitter quarrel, for two of your three faces, Powl, were of the opinion that the King of Velonya had to ride home at top speed, while the king himself believed that the Bill of Parliamentary Limits, signed after his coronation six years before, made the person of the king expendable in times of war and, therefore, free.
“This is not a chessboard,” he said. Repeatedly. “It is not a game at all, and if it were, it would not end with the death of the king.”
“Not death, sir,” Arlin corrected him. “Capture. In chess it is capture of the king we wish to avoid. In war, also.”
The couriers had gone out: those on horseback and those with wings. Had we been in civilized regions, many hours would have been saved by use of mirror-stations. I regretted sharply not having used my training in glass-grinding to help the Zaquash people install such code-towers. They would have been useful for other things than announcing invasion.
But large mirrors are expensive, and they need regular cleaning and constant protection. Codes need trained operators, and who would pay them?
I let Arlin and the king have at it, and I stood at the south end of Log Street and looked for dust rising from the horizon of the plains.
Once it had taken me three days to walk from here to the border. I wasn’t hurrying, then. I had crossed this much territory between dawn and midday, on the stallion whose body had been hauled off the road while we were at the Coach. I could see the flat track the barrel of the horse had left, and two rounded ruts left by its near-side iron shoes.
No dust on the horizon. The earth was too wet for rising dust. I wondered how much of the earthquake had been felt up here. I wondered whether the infantry had crossed over the border, and whether some horseman or pigeon had been dispatched from the pink city at the same time we had been, to tell the North it was at war.
The horizon was not still any longer, but the movement was singular, and it evolved into the shape of one horse and his rider. The man had dropped the reins and was flapping his arms as though he wished to lift body, saddle, and horse together into the air. On second glance, he was beating his weary mount with sticks in both hands. The animal’s neck was straight as a rod and carried no higher than its chest. I could almost hear its breath blowing.
This apparition came not toward the corduroyed Log Street, but east of it, and a scattering of soldiers on foot ran past the last warehouses to meet with it and stop it. The horse’s hindlegs gave way for a moment, but it did not fall as my horse had. I wanted to know what the man had to tell, but no sound traveled to me, except for the characteristic loping footsteps of King Rudof.
“I have an heir, Nazhuret! Tell her—uh, him, that I have two children, and the oldest of them a son! I am infinitely more replaceable than—than this card-cheating Arlin, for instance!”
I wondered if at this moment I had told the king how Arlin had saved the life of the Sanaur of Rezhmia, he might not have seen her as far more replaceable.
She was equally excited. “And ask him how old this heir is, who is expected to take the reins of power in case of his death?”
I did not “tell” Arlin, nor did I “ask” the king. We all knew that Eythof was six years old. A little skinny boy with brown eyes, red hair, and a stutter.
“Your Powl is regent,” Rudof answered the question I hadn’t spoken.
For a moment I was without speech, seeing my teacher, with his elliptical language and eccentric ways as the pilot at the helm of Velonya, and then I asked a very rude question. “How did you get the queen to agree to that? I don’t believe she… that she approves of the man at all.”
King Rudof blinked and hesitated. He decided not to get offended, but he was stiff in his reply: “There was no legal need for her approval.”
No approval and no knowledge of the plan either, I’d bet. What a situation: a bomb with a long fuse! I swallowed my next question, which was to have been “How did you get Powl to agree to that?” and I pointed beyond them, to where an emissary from the group which had received the rider was stamping through the puddled alleyways toward us.
There were two men I recognized: one being the first minister of the last parliamentary government, whom I had heard was “head of the loyal opposition” in this one. The other man caused Arlin to freeze, then to slip into a position half in front of the king and half in front of me.
King Rudof thought he understood. “Don’t let the colors prejudice you, my friends. This is Maleph Markins, and he is not much like his father.”
Arlin answered calmly, her voice very different from the grate and growl of her argument. “We met young Leoue this summer, sir. Someone had been trying to kill us, you see.”
“I heard you lost…” The king’s green eyes shifted from her face to mine and he fell silent. So I knew you had told him about the baby. Until I saw the young duke in his bumblebee colors, I had almost forgotten that problem myself.
“It may be he… ,” Arlin continued. “We never found out; this war got in the way.”
Young Leoue’s far vision was not the equal of Arlin’s or mine, but his reaction, when he made us out beside the tall king, was at least as noticeable. He stopped so suddenly the excited soldier behind him slammed into his back. His mouth hung open.
The head of the loyal opposition scrambled up onto the road and to the king’s side, completely out of breath and white-faced.
“Terrible news, sir! A vast cavalry is approaching us from the South; ten thousand Red Whip riders, only hours away.”
The king put his hand upon the man’s shoulder and smiled at him with real enjoyment. “You must believe me, sir! They’re coming!” said the parliamentarian.
“But I don’t,” answered Rudof. “I don’t think there are ten thousand Red Whip riders in existence, Minister Pel. I suggest what you see approaching is the army of Rezhmia, bound upon invasion.”
The king got his little moment of satisfaction as he put a hand behind each of us and presented his source of news. It would be the last such moment in a long while, I feared.
The king wasn’t leaving, though he sent a number of civilians flying northward, Minister Pel included. He said he felt that to flee the City of Warvala, leaving the citizenry to possible rapine, would be a wickedness that no political good would be able to erase.
I suggested that it was his own presence in the town which was bringing it into danger, and he agreed, but said a flight now would
be too late to correct matters.
We encountered the messenger at the Yellow Coach. He turned out to be a Zaquashlan who had ridden out to take wild deer or buffalo on the plain, and come within sight of this nightmare encampment without any of them seeing him. He described it as being composed of a few thousand riders, and broken in two separate wings, which if they continued as they had been, would flank the city between them. He had seen no very splendid pavilion, such as one would expect around an eighty-year-old emperor, but he had seen at least two Naiish clan standards: the Boar of Five Horns and the Old Horse. There had been singing, too, and the idiom was Naiish.
This was confusing. Men who glimpse an army and then run almost always overestimate number, and I could not imagine the emperor traveling amid only a “few thousand” troops.
“They’ve tamed the Red Whips!” It was the young duke talking. He had overcome his shock at seeing us and sat at a table by that of the king and shoveled in a supper of bread, greens, and thin beer. I thought either he was the sort who didn’t care what he ate, or his tastes were as monastic as his appearance.
“You can’t tame the Naiish people,” I answered him and the king together. “They claim the plain is neither Velonyan or Rezhmian but Naiish, and who can contradict them? Who has ever displaced them who tried?”
“We didn’t,” said King Rudof, who was eating the best cut off the joint as though nothing awaited him this evening save his pillow nor the next morning save his bath. But he drank thin beer, like the duke.
Arlin had finished her argument, and having lost, she ate with silent intensity; I can’t remember what.
I do remember that I had a piece of the Coach’s famous raisin pie. (Alshie makes an astonishing raisin pie, and when I went to the counter to beg a piece, she acted almost like the woman who had paid my wages, years before.)
“Of course we didn’t, sir,” answered the duke. “They have no affinity toward us. They are Rezhmian.”
It is a universal misunderstanding, at least among Velonyans, that the Naiish and the Rezhmian people are of one bloodstock. Most of my life I had believed so, as well. Yet there was something about the language of young Leoue, about his way of reasoning, that reminded me strongly of his father, who had hated me for the shape of my face and felt no embarrassment for doing so. I felt cold to the bone.
“Don’t say that, my lord, in the presence of a Rezhmian—especially a Rezhmian soldier. Nor to a plains rider. If there is a blood relationship, it is not obvious from within.”
“Sir” was good enough for the king, but Leoue would naturally be called “my lord.” It is a peculiarity of our modern aristocracy that the man of highest respect is called by the title given to every respectable burgher. The nobility, who had less to lose than the king, held on to their privilege more tightly.
It makes of conversation a sarcasm: especially when it was me calling old Leoue’s son “my lord.” Yet I had no choice, save to remain silent, and at this moment, silence was dangerous.
“Forgive me, sir,” I said to Rudof, “but you must take this messenger’s story with some salt.”
“I do,” he said in turn, and glanced sidelong from me to the duke. “… And I’ll salt my food myself, old friend. I need no help.”
My journeys caught up with me; they overtook me in one moment, while I was reflecting that the house of Leoue and I had exchanged roles, and now King Rudof was chiding me for leaping down the young man’s throat.
And Rudof himself was no fledgling anymore. If I had almost thirty years under the belt, then so did he. He had been king for six years and it was all his business. So I fell asleep.
I woke with the king’s jacket thrown loosely over my head, and a feeling I had committed an error. Arlin, across from me, was asleep with her hands wrapped around herself and her eyes open, in the belly of the wolf. I have never met anyone, North or South, that had that trancelike facility, save Arlin.
The duke was still sitting beside her at the table, though he had flung off his woolen jacket with its military colors, and looked more like a student than a great bumblebee. “I think you are mad, sir. Forgive my impertinence, but I think you are God-touched to go into disaster tonight, and I do not wish to encourage you.”
I saw the king’s face: amused, irritated, obstinate. It seemed a very Rudof mood. He noticed I was waking and immediately poked me the rest of the way. “All of Powl’s students are a little mad, aren’t they, Zhurrie?”
I was being seduced by the king, as I had been before, more than once. I resented it. “As far as I know, sir, I am the only mad one. Powl was careful in that way.”
The duke could not like hearing us talk about you, since his own father had considered you the source of all the nation’s degeneracy. (What an accolade!) He said nothing of his feelings, however, but merely asked the king to repeat his plan, for my reaction to it.
Rudof poked me again, and grinned charmingly, but I was not comforted by that grin. “Of course I will, Leoue. But I’d hoped his skills ran to hearing in his sleep. No? Or you don’t want to admit it?”
“No!” I spoke too loud, and tried to wipe my weariness off my face, but the grains of grit were so thick they made a noise, and abraded my skin painfully. “No, I was sound asleep, sir. What? What are you planning?”
He looked down at me with the same air of schoolboys conspiring that had first led me into danger with him, and he said, “I’m going to capture the Sanaur of Rezhmia, Nazhuret. I will negate the entire invasion by capturing the king. Chess—you know?”
I might have answered as the duke did, that this was madness. I certainly agreed that it was madness. I might have decided at that moment that Rudof could not be turned aside, and it was too late to run safely, and that it was better to go out in a spark of brilliance than be hunted into a corner. Both these answers would have been acceptable to the man who was the king. But I chose honesty, and I said, “I think you will fail, sir. I think you will win nothing, and be taken for your trouble. I think if you are willing, there are enough people in this town who will hide you, and see you safely north, regardless of occupation. I myself will stand by—”
“I wanted you with me in this! I am going, not fleeing, Nazhuret of Sordaling! My only question is whether you come with me or not!”
I remember not only the king’s always-memorable anger, but also that Leoue flinched as King Rudof titled me “of Sordaling,” as though he had called me something else entirely.
“Four days ago,” I answered, speaking slowly so as not to be caught by that anger, “Arlin and I saved the life of the Sanaur of Rezhmia against an attempt by his heir, Reingish. Arlin, in fact, killed the min’naur.”
“I guessed as much,” said the king. I don’t know whether he was telling the truth.
“Of course four days ago we had no notion that the old man had decided for war. I don’t know what difference that would have made. You said it; he’s my family. What sort of weapon would that make me in your battle, my king?”
Rudof’s eyes were brilliant as the sun through leaves. “Weapon, Nazhuret? Have I ever asked you to strike a blow against anyone?
“You are what you have been to me for five years—a lucky piece. Pure superstition. I only invoke you when human help seems useless, like now.”
I looked from my mad king to my lady, who was so deep into the belly of the wolf as to look more than mad herself. In fact, Leoue was the only one at the table to show human rationality, for I felt my own reason slipping away.
I swung my feet over the long bench and stood up. “I have to walk a while,” I said, but I ran.
The last time I had been in Warvala, it had been early winter, and Arlin and I had been almost desperate with cold. I had gotten work at the district library, putting in order the Allec and Rayzhia collections, but Arlin had paid most of our keep, with quick fingers and some trained playing cards. For my sake she had avoided the Yellow Coach. Now as I splashed the wet wooden streets, with the familiar wet smell of win
ter closing in, I wished so clearly for that time to be back again that I almost drove myself demented. I stood at the porter’s door of the library—one of the few brick buildings in this half-civilized city—and imagined I was going to work, filing books misfiled for the last twenty years.
I broke out of that delusion with my foot on the bottom stair, and I suddenly knew where I was going.
“I only invoke you when human help seems useless, like now.” I had been horrified by the king’s idea of me, as I was horrified by the reality of Dowln. I was looking for Dowln, because human help seemed useless, and I expected to find him where you would find a jeweler.
The first shop I came to was already boarded up. The second, across the street, had a heavy wagon in front of it, and that was loaded with furniture and children. The burgher driving it looked Zaquash, and in the local dialect I called to him.
He answered me in fine Rayzhia: “He said you might be here. I’m not sure he understands we are leaving. I told him, but I’m not sure he understands.”
“Well, you never know, with Dowln.”
He pointed at the door and gestured I should open it. Then his horses hit their harness with a rattle of bells and the family was off.
Inside the house were a few tables and an empty display case, fronted in very good glass. Upstairs, all the bedding had been stripped from the beds, except for one, within which Dowln was nested. His tall Old Vesting frame was too long for the Zaquash bed, and he was curled like a hedgehog.
He had bathed, and washed his hair. I envied him that, and I envied him his sleep more. His blue eyes were moving behind the translucent eyelids. I felt a great reluctance to wake him, for I was deadly tired myself.
Dowln was looking up at me. I lowered myself beside him. “You were dreaming?” I asked him.
He shrugged out of his blankets. “I’m always dreaming.”
The Lens of the World Trilogy Page 53