And Erusabad? Daily—hourly—his advisers and councilors railed against Elad’s decision to allow the Salukadians access to and control of the northern districts of the Holy City. What possible advantage could this serve the empire? To demonstrate to the eastern empire how foolish Athad was? Shall we, asked Elad’s councilors, allow these easterners to tread upon us at their leisure? Shall we answer the clamor of their arms with a meek request for increased revenue? Is this how empires are built? Is this how Athad was made? Has the crown of the sun and the lion truly been eclipsed by these barbarian dogs from the East?
“We have done this for money?” the High Council asked Elad. “If we need money, your crown, if it is revenue we need and capital that we require and profits that must be gained, then by all means, let us do it in the fashion that serves us best! Let us go to war with these dogs! When have we ever drawn the sword and failed in using it? We are Athadians! We are born with swords in our hands! War makes money; therefore, let us make war!”
Each morning during council sessions, more voices than the day before joined in that chorus.
War.
And Elad, moody, staring at them with troubled vision, holding to him memories that hurt, answered them not with words but with thoughts only, dark thoughts. He recalled an evil morning in a cavern in Mount Teplis, and the words of the oracle foreseeing a strange new world—long and long ago, that morning, long ago when this palace was a home and it seemed still innocent and the ambitions in his own heart no more than a fancy.
“You will take the throne, and none other after you, and you will rule to see everything precious destroyed, every hope ruined, every man and woman wailing in torment. You will rule Athadia, and the world will die in anguish.”
That remembrance was answer enough for Elad, and it made his decision for him when his councilors of state and his advisors and the businessmen so dependent on him called for Elad to throw his nation into a war. Should he move forward into a conflict that promised to bring about the end of the world and, no doubt, the end of his life?
So, then. Elad would not see the world die in aguish, and while literally such a thing was impossible, he would not allow himself to be drawn toward any escalating confrontation, nor would he allow any other individual of influence or power to make one move, speak one word, do anything that might push Athadia close to the sword edge.
Whatever the oracle’s words might mean literally, Elad did not know. But she had conferred on him a warning, and that warning King Elad did indeed take literally.
Surely a time of “everything precious destroyed” would not begin with himself or with those he knew.
Surely it would begin in some far part of the world, and—just as surely—if Elad did not breathe on those warm coals to encourage the fire, then certainly no fire would come, and everything precious must remain intact and inviolate.
He did not believe, actually, in what the oracle had said, and yet.…
He was king. King—yes—of insurgents and rebels, madmen and seditionists. But he was also king of everything precious and of every hope, and of every man and woman’s torments.Whether he was truly good, or endangered, or frightened—whatever else he was, Elad dos Evarro edos Yta—
He was king.
* * * *
Sugat.
“Are you not proud, my daughter? Are you not happy?” Ogodis asked Salia, admiring her, touching her cheek gently, touching her as if she were some other-worldly creature, some gift or thing, a gift for him, and not the issue of his flesh.
The ships already were full-laden with clothes, jewelry, cages holding the princess’s animals, casks of wine, foodstuffs, ornamented chairs and fine cloths, tapestries, pillows, plants, birds—everything of hers that had been prepared for the journey to Athad.
“Are you not proud, my daughter?”
“I’m proud, Father, if you are. I can be happy for you.”
“Salia.…” The imbur sat in a couch near an open window of this room of hers and put his hands together, palm to palm, before him in a posture she had seen him assume innumerable times. He held his hands thus when he was preparing to speak of things important to his heart, whether while addressing his councilors or addressing her, his own blood. “Salia…you are to be the queen of the Athadians. I have dreamed of this for you since the day you were born.”
“I know that,” she admitted, looking, not at him, but at a marble bust of her mother—her mother, caught, before the end of her young life, in polished stone at a moment when she herself might have felt as Salia did now. Neither happy nor unhappy. Simply…here.
“Daughter, a thousand poets have spoken of your beauty, and rhapsodes have sung of you to the stars. This is no small thing. Now you are to take the king of the world to husband and sit beside him!”
Poets declaimed, yes, and rhapsodes sang, true, of Salia’s beauty, comparing her to whatever one could imagine as perfect, roses and alabaster, gems and bright suns, bright moons, comparing her even to Saphris herself, the goddess of beauty and love and the arts of love. For the gods had indeed been generous with Princess Salia, but they had also exacted their price for bestowing such perfection: she was cursed with a submissive character that ever obliged her to bend to her father’s whims, yet she had an enquiring mind that wondered endlessly about the world beyond the walls of the imbur’s fortress.
Growing, she had been little more than a pet animal or toy monkey, pampered, pretty, but assumed to have no substance of her own. Her wonder, her desires, her imagination—all remained unrecognized by those around her, who saw only the beautiful child, the young goddess, always at her father’s side and within her father’s reach. From courtiers to crowds, all eyes recognized only the perfect face, the high breasts, the clean limbs, the foaming hair, the rich lips, the deep eyes, and no one ever guessed at the storms within, the restlessness that she held in her heart of sadness. Salia’s was the beauty of a moon overpowered by the bright power of a sun, and the power of the sun was hurtful.
She hurt.
Ogodis himself was never sure why sadness often took hold of his daughter when she had so much available to her and was herself the object of so much of the world’s attention. Now he stood and, going to where she reclined on cushions, Ogodis refilled his cup from a decanter on a nearby table and said, “I understand you, Salia! You must learn to laugh at life! All of this—” his gesture indicated her room and the world beyond her room “—all of this is here for your enjoyment, if you but smile at it. This is a secret I have learned. The gods offer no greater wisdom than to allow us to laugh at the world they have given us. If you laugh at a thing, you control it, Salia! Laugh!”
Should she laugh at him, then, her father, the princess wondered? Laugh at Elad? Where was the difference between these two men, after all? Was she not exchanging one sort of father for another? Ogodis did not know her; certainly Elad did not; no one knew her, and she did not know herself. Did the flowers and pet animals that had been her company all her life know her? Did her servants? Perhaps there was no substance to her, after all. What was she? One must do in order to become. What had she ever done, or been asked to do? Was she even here?
Ogodis was like other men, perhaps more sincere in his earnestness, but still—staring upon her outward beauty, stolen by it, impressed by it, he wanted to accomplish something with it for his own purposes. Her own father, using her for his own gain. Is a man guilty of a crime if he is ignorant of the fact that what he does is a crime? Her marriage was a political act, a maneuver, and even though most marriages, high or low, were political acts and maneuvers, still—she was the daughter of the imbur. Salia desired freedom; her body and her spirit ached for release; she desired poetry and passion, love and thought and creativity. She desired an identity. She was performing her duty for her father…but did she not have a duty to herself, as well as to her parent and to her country?
Or was she always to be a pet animal, a toy monkey, like one of her birds, always in a cage?
Why have wings if life is to be lived in a cage?
Why have beauty if all it gains one is a cage?
She thought of women everywhere. The world as it was at the beginning, Mother Hea’s world, and the lives people had lived in that world, would have been preferable to this world. She wished to be in that old, forgotten world—before swords, before maneuvers, before politics, without anger, when this was a world of trust and even, perhaps, of warmth.
But then, Mother Hea’s world was likely also a myth and had never been at all, as was the case with most good things. Perhaps the world of the Mother had never been true and was just another of the myths and lies Salia had been told throughout her life.
And so she came around again. What am I? Am I even here?
“I am…ready now, Father.” She said the words sadly, and her face was pale. She sat upright on her couch and she was unexcited, uncertain—almost frightened, as though she reckoned that some doom awaited her.
Ogodis, naturally, thought her mood was low because Salia was doting on the misery of her eventual separation from him. Or perhaps she had doubts or concerns about the wedding night. Some women did, he knew.
The imbur could not know that his daughter, Princess Salia, had for many years suffered a recurring dream, a wishful dream, which was this: she imagined herself in some place that she did not recognize, but the air was warm, the day was new, and she was alone. Alone. With no father about, no servants, no palace, no animals. Alone. She was as naked and innocent as a child, with no one present to comment on the milky texture of her perfect skin, no poets yearning for her breasts or her lips—content and happy, Salia, without a care, warm in the sun, and wholly alone.
“My daughter,” Ogodis confided to her, as he reached a hand for her to walk her from the room, “great things will come from this, from our country being married to Athadia. Great things. I know that this must be your dream, as well.”
She looked into her father’s dark, smiling face, looked him in the eyes, and thought of her own dream.…
* * * *
And often, late at night, Elad suffered from more than brooding indecisiveness, from more than cynicism or apprehension. Sometimes, late at night, he awakened trembling and wet with sweat, ready to vomit, desperate with the image of some phantom close by, some nightmare visitation.
Himself in a cavern of smoke, killing a bronze-masked goddess of war and revolution. Her blood jumping along the length of his iron sword. Her blood hanging in the air and forming visible words in the air, and then her blood bursting into flames in the air, flames like small comets or many eyes, and there were words.…
“As each human being has three selves, so do you have three enemies. Your first is a mirror, your second a blade, your third a foreign countenance. Mirrors betray depth while having no depth. Blades have two sides, two edges, and one point. Countenances are masks for the minds beneath.”
And as the flaming words fall away, the masked goddess comes to life again, head is joined to body, and the robe is thrown off. Elad sees her step out from the endless recesses of a smoking mirror. It is Salia, nude and beautiful, blond-haired, gray-eyed, her body ripe and stretched in an amorous pose before him, arms reaching for him, brown-nippled breasts swaying before him, white thighs straining for him, hips hunching and moving because she is a beautiful animal in a spasm of heat.…
Furious, however, knowing that she is false, he rips free his sword once more, jumps at this Salia, and strikes her head again from her shoulders. Her screams break free in waves of flame as blood jumps from her neck, as her breasts explode, as blood courses in long rivers down her straining golden legs, as each of her fingers puffs and fattens like a worm and splits open in rivers of endless blood.
While on the ground, the head, gray-eyed, blond-haired, shrieks with laughter.…
And when this dream came to him late at night, Elad awakened, trembling, hot with sweat, ready to vomit. He crouched alone in his bed and stared at the mirrors placed around his room, stared at the swords and axes crossed decorously on the walls, looked at his shivering hands as though they were a stranger’s hands, and he wondered what personality lay in those shivering hands—wondered what personality lay in those mirrors placed around his room.
Mirrors that, remarkably, did not smoke or scream or explode with blood.…
* * * *
On the twenty-third day of the month of Avru the Sky, in a celebration the grandness of which Athad and the empire had not witnessed in more than a generation, King Elad in the first year of his reign wed Princess Salia of Gaegosh, daughter of the imbur of those lands, in the name of Bithitu the Prophet and the high gods, for the glory ever more of the empire.
The ceremony required hours for its completion, accompanied as it was by choirs from the temple, countless blessings and benedictions, countless supplications and devotions, and praises and promises. When at last King Elad and Queen Salia spoke their final vows to each other and turned upon the golden dais and faced their witnesses—a crowd of aristocrats and ministers, priests and councilors—it was to face a great storm of applause and cheers, of well-wishing and joy. For Elad, whatever else he was or was not, was king, as the gods themselves knew and had just witnessed. And Salia, innocent and pure, the most beautiful woman in the world, was, as the gods themselves also had granted, surely destined for greatness as the bride of the empire.
This was the proud union of two great peoples, and it promised something important, this marriage.
It symbolized a balance; it heralded the completion of a circle, a new beginning.
And it was necessary, in the minds of its witnesses, that it promise these things.
Elad and Salia, leading a train of nobles and courtiers, left the festooned and decorated Temple of Bithitu. Stepping onto the wide front portico, they waved at the collected crowd of citizens in the square below. A ring of Khamars restrained these thousands, while others there ordered the royal coach brought to the front of the stairs so that the king and queen might be escorted to it and begin their journey to Elad’s villa outside the capital.
It was a chilly day. Although thousands of eyes were upon them, Elad nevertheless held Salia closer to him than public decorum might permit, and he looked into her gray eyes as he promised her, “We will come to love one another. There will be love.”
At that moment, many of those in the watching crowd far below cried out and pushed against one another. “Snakes!” someone called out, followed by screams.
Salia stopped and looked at Elad as though he might have some explanation for this.
Elad looked toward Abgarthis, who was standing with the courtiers and retainers to his right.
“Snakes!” came more voices. “From the river!”
Elad and Salia both saw them then, snakes of all sizes and kinds, huge and small, many perhaps poisonous, winding and moving along the bottom of the stairs, making their way, thousands of them, under the feet of those in the square and continuing along the long marble steps until they reached the grounds just beyond, the trees and the flower gardens.
“Incredible,” someone said, one of the courtiers.
And just that quickly, the snakes were gone. A hundred of them were dead, crushed beneath the boots of Khamars or city guards or cut into pieces by their quick swords. Apparently none had bitten persons in the crowd; the snakes had been hurrying to escape, not attack. But escape what?
Salia said to Elad, “We lost birds this way in my city.”
He thought of the wild dogs that had attacked patrols here, in the capital, just a short time ago, when Orain and Galvus were leaving with Count Adred on their trip to Sulos. He told Salia about them and wondered out loud, “What could be behind it?”
He thought of the oracle and of the cave in Mount Teplis.
They started again down the stairs to their coach. One of the Khamars stationed below broke from formation and began moving up the stairs toward Elad. Elad saw him, then glanced beyond him. His initial thought w
as that something more was occurring in the crowd. More snakes, or perhaps dogs, now.
Instinctively, Elad stepped ahead of Salia and, turning to the approaching Khamar, asked him, “What is it now? Not more snakes.”
The three of them—Elad, Salia, and the Khamar—were in that moment isolated in a small area in the middle of the wide stairs. On both sides of them were councilors and courtiers, as well as more Khamars and, at the foot of the stairs, the coach.
Elad looked again at the crowd, concerned, then once more at the Khamar.
The young Khamar’s right hand shifted to the pommel of his short sword, which was in its scabbard at his side. He nodded succinctly, indicating something behind the king.
Elad turned to look. “What—”
The Khamar now stepped as closely as he could to Elad, drew his sword, and lunged.“Die in the name of the people, traitor!”
Salia screamed.
Elad, falling backward in a reflexive attempt to escape the sword thrust, bumped into her and sent his queen to her knees on the stairs. The Khamar’s blade caught him in the right side, slicing through his ceremonial robes and underclothes, and was ripped free on a wide arc of bloody spray.
Salia screamed again and tried to stand. Elad, off balance, dropped to one knee. The false Khamar, aware that his initial thrust had not killed the king, jumped awkwardly on the stairs, steadied himself, and swung again.
Elad fell to one side, and the stroke missed him entirely, but he coughed blood and pressed his right hand over the deep wound he had already suffered.
The young assassin swore and pulled back for a third thrust.
But now ten Khamars, howling with one voice, swooped in from both sides of the stairs.
The crowd below surged forward; the guards there were unable to hold them back.
Ogodis, standing to the left on the stairs with his retinue from Sugat, screamed something incomprehensible and ran forward to reach his daughter.
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