The uproar inside was sharp as an explosion, clashes, crashes, yells, thuds, screams of human terror and of a horse crazy with fear and rage. The gate leaves, half-shut for evening, flew violently open under some impact and the missile came tumbling to my feet, a guard with blood all over his gray Estarian uniform and nothing left of his face. Another pair reeled after him and something burst between them like a hurtling boulder that became a horse’s chest and was gone on a flash of mad white eyes and foamy jaws and bloodied teeth as it flared away into the desert fast as a flung javelin. A gray horse, unsaddled, unbridled. And riderless.
Perception, deduction, reaction burst in me swift and devastatingly as the noise. I must have hurdled half a dozen casualties in the gatehouse passage but my mind retains only a blur of white or bloody faces and nothing at all of the street, the keep gate, the two flights of steps, the inner door that my shove sent crashing back into the wall.
Kastir was backed against the window, looking bewildered, shocked, appalled. On the table stood a wine jug and two cups, one full. The third had rolled across the floor, tracing a crimson ellipse of wine. Zem lay within its arc, face down, twisted half sideways, elbows out and hands under his face, utterly, terribly still.
I think I screamed at Kastir as I ran. “You’ve killed him!” probably. I skidded to my knees, tore a wrist free, groped for the pulse, it was not there, I doubt I could have found it if it were, but my perception needed no proof, any more than my conclusions needed reasoning. I came off the floor and I do know what I screamed that time.
“You filthy treacherous murderer, you poisoned him, you poisoned him with the wine!”
“The wine, I—no, I assure you, it was—I cannot believe this—how can it—” If Kastir was acting it was the most convincing performance imaginable. “Good heavens, this is frightful. Sellithar, I swear I never—how could you think—”
Ozym came through the open door. He was a thin, efficient, taciturn creature so colorless as to be almost invisible. He glanced indifferently at the scene, then addressed Kastir.
“You asked me to say to you, sir, ‘The wine is drunk.’”
He went out softly, closing the door. Dumbstruck, I saw life wake in Kastir’s eyes.
He shook his head a little. Then he saw Zem. Slowly, very slowly, with the utmost satisfaction, he smiled.
“I told you, my dear,” he said, “that my plans for Hethria would go ahead.”
My blood turned, vein by vein, to ice.
“I think you remarked that my plans allowed for every contingency you could think of. Actually, there were a couple you missed.” His satisfaction deepened. “You see, even among the Sathellin, I have my spies. Distasteful, but invaluable. They warned me of the ‘warden.’” As he looked back to Zem’s body he was openly gloating. “So I prepared for that contingency too. I doubted the existence of aedryx, but the wise man allows for the improbable. I read my ‘lore,’ as he noticed. And I spent much time, as much as on my costings, to devise a foil for a creature with such extensive powers.” His look grew almost regretful. “It’s a pity the remedy had to be so drastic, but he himself made it clear that nothing less would do.”
He turned back to me. “Of course you want to know the method?” He was positively pluming himself. “Ozym was my assistant, and a most efficient one. If anything like the—er—immobilization of my guards occurred, he was to prepare a cup of poisoned wine. We chose aspnor root, it’s claimed to be relatively painless. Accurately so. If you told him to bring wine, rather than my summoning him as usual, he was to bring the poisoned cup for the guest.”
He chuckled. “The neatest part, I feel, was the counter for that disconcerting telepathy. Had I known the plan, he would have read it in my mind. So I had myself hypnotized. I erased all thought of the plan, knowing only that if I were bested, I must give him wine before he left. And Ozym had the password to wake me afterward. The final precaution, my dear, was to remove you from the scene. There was no telling what such a creature might do in his final spasms. I was ready to risk myself, but I would not hazard you.”
My stomach turned clean over. I actually clapped a hand to my mouth. He had wanted to protect me. He.
The spasm passed with the speed of thought; the grief’s agony followed it, the shock boiled away, the overpowering fury for revenge was under control. I’ll stab him, I thought coldly. Here and now. Just let me come at a guard, a dagger will do. . . . A couple more minutes, a pretext to summon them, a little more deceit—as I looked down at Zem my throat locked, my eyes went blind. He had been so merry, so gallant, so teasingly charming, so sure of his strength. And he had died so vilely, by treachery, by poison—a new thought touched me like a red-hot iron. What was I to say to Zam?
That nearly undid me altogether. It must have shown, for Kastir stopped smiling and came hastily to take my arm. “My dear, forgive me, you should not have seen this, I know your sensitivity. . . .”
My flesh crept as if he were a poison spider; I never fought such a battle as to refrain from tearing free, or flying at him with nails and teeth.
“It’s not a pretty sight,” I said. My voice’s shake would be put down to sensitivity. “Kastir, how could you do such a filthy thing? To poison someone by treachery, to plan it all, to. . . . It’s despicable, abominable, unpardonable—Kastir, I don’t think I can bear you near me, I—” It was all true, and it was all false, I was using the emotion, thinking coldly through it, Just let me get outside, find a knife. . . .
He frowned. “I told you long ago, Sellithar, there are mistakes no ruler can forgive. He came here alone, putting himself into my power. Naturally, I had to take the chance of a pre-emptive strike.”
“But poison . . . !”
“Your scruples become you. But scruples are not compatible with the exercise of power.” He glanced at me. “I thought of putting the head on a pole outside the gates, as a warning to the Sathellin.” My brain reeled. “But after all, he was not their leader. The midden will do.”
I really did think I would faint. My voice came out jagged, hysterical. “Kastir, the entire civilized world would spit on you! He must be buried or burned or—or something! It’s—you can’t do that! You can’t!”
I had gone too far. He gave me a suddenly wary, piercing stare. “Just what makes you such a partisan of Hethria, my dear?”
“Hethria doesn’t come into it, it’s Everran I’m worried about and us—you.” I babbled it, all of a sudden afraid for myself. “You can’t do such an atrocious thing—not in Everran! It would make us a byword, a—a—”
He shrugged and said coldly, “You’ll allow me to decide this, Sellithar. After all, it will be no more ‘despicable’ than what I’ve already done for Everran. And for you.”
That was too much. My resolution melted, my caution very nearly followed. Pain overwhelmed me. I turned and stumbled from the room.
* * * * * *
It was dark when I came round. The lamps were lit in Penhazad, and I was wandering down an alley, one hand trailed against the wall as if I were blind. I stopped. Then, slowly, terribly, memory reassembled. I screamed aloud, and began to pound my fists against the stones.
Feet ran up, voices, a flare of torchlight and bodies surrounded me, someone was saying in relief, “It’s her, here she is, thank the Four, she’s all ri—ma’am? . . . er . . . Princess? . . . Sellithar?”
I knew the voice. Perhaps it was all that saved me in that moment. I lifted my head and Karyx’s dark, raw-boned face caught the torchlight, anxiety deepened to solicitude, near to panic, in his look.
“Thank the Four,” he repeated on a short gasp. “We’ve been scouring the town for you, the governor’s beside himself—” Nausea boiled up in me and he caught my arm. “Here, steady. Drink some of this.”
A soldier’s flask, and not wine but Saeverran barley spirit, searing clear to my stomach pit, liquid fire. When the coughs eased, I knew what I had to do.
Taking Karyx’s eye, I used a childhood sign that s
aid, I need to talk. Now.
He understood. He jerked his shoulder, the troops backed off a little. How fortunate, how grateful, I was thinking, that I got him the military command of Penhazad, for all I had forgotten it. The only man who can give me what I want.
“You know what happened today?” I said.
His face went hard and cold.
“What did they do with the—the—”
“On the midden.” He said it so viciously I knew my grief was shared. “But for you I’d have thrown up my commission this afternoon. I’m sorry to say it of your husband, but the man’s not fit to hang.”
“I know. Karyx, I want to do it properly. Bury, burn, whatever. And now.”
His reaction was soldier-quick. “Not burn, no fuel in Hethria, it shan’t be done here. Those are my own troop. Pick and shovels, I’ll send two, the rest can be pall-bearers, come on. I’ll open the gate.”
The tool-bringers overtook us at the gatehouse. Karyx said curtly, “Open,” and the guard, a squat, solid Gebrian, gave him a look under his brows and obeyed without a word. We went out into the starlit darkness, along the town wall toward the midden, led by the stench.
The most horrible part was straightening Zem’s body, which had set into the twisted attitude of his death. I think Karyx did it in the end. I had not the strength. Then they made a litter of cloaks—“Estarian color,” I heard one man growl, and spit violently—Karyx laid his scarlet officer’s cloak over all, and we stumbled off, blundering on the broken ground, straight out into the darkness where Hethria waited to receive its own.
Karyx chose the place. I waited a long time by the makeshift bier, hearing the scrape and clank of shovels, the thud of picks, the hard breathing and curious absence of curse or grumble at such work, while the wind blew past me, its desert breath overladen with the smell of the dead fire, under the close sharp desert stars. Then Karyx came back, breathing hard and smelling rankly of new sweat, and said very gently, “Are you ready, Sellithar?”
When they had lowered him into the grave there was a pause, and I knew they expected me to speak the eulogy that, as soldiers, they were used to make do for burial service in the field. But I could not assemble words. It was Karyx who finally stepped up beside me and spoke into the silent dark.
“Whoever you were, whatever you were, we shall remember you. We will remember you with hands, not words.”
The men around me gave a deep, savage, assenting growl. Then sand began to patter on fabric, and Karyx put both hands over my ears and pulled me away.
* * * * * *
A long time later, he asked quietly, “Who was he, Sellithar?”
We had sat down by then. I looked into the dark, and felt sand grains stick to the palms of my hands. I felt drained, calm and empty, with that paradoxical dryness too much weeping brings.
“His name was Zem,” I said. “He was warden of the roads in northern Hethria. He came to make Kastir stop this—business. Kastir agreed. And then poisoned him.” I found bitterness had survived. “He was an aedr. It didn’t do him much good.”
In the darkness men drew soft, careful breaths. I could feel Karyx’s silence ask another question, to which I did not want to reply. I watched the night and thought, Don’t ask me how I know.
After a while he said, “What will you do now?”
The lights of Penhazad lay on the horizon, a bright constellation behind the burial party’s silhouettes. I looked at them a while. Then I said, “I’ll ask you one more favor. Can you lend me a dagger—or a knife?”
He shook me by the elbows. We must have stood up again.
“Listen to me—listen, curse you! Yes, I know he deserves it, I know you want to, I’d have done it myself before I threw six hundred cavalry across Kemreswash, you’re probably the only one who can get close enough, this was your—listen! It won’t stop this. Believe me, Sellithar. I’ve talked to the engineers, the construction men. This is so big all Estar’s involved—contracts, labor, money, people’s opinion, experts’ theories. Guild-masterships. Assembly-places. They’ve all put in more than they can afford to lose. It’s useless to stop Kastir. He—Zem—wanted to save Hethria, and you won’t do that by taking out one petty officer. You have to see the phalanx off. Go in there now like a Lyngthiran berserker and we—Hethria—have lost the three of you for nothing. Do you want to win this war or not?”
After an endless moment I said, “Yes.”
He drew a long, long breath. “Then I’ll ask again. What will you do now?”
I countered with another question. “Who is ‘we’?”
Karyx hesitated, then gave a wry little laugh. “That begins with you.”
“What?”
“Without you, I wouldn’t have this post. The Lyngthirans would have gutted Stiriand. This army’d be Estarian from sweeper to general and we’d be out to beg our bread.” The burial party growled again. “We don’t know what you had in mind when you—ah—married that. But we’re standing to, Sellithar.”
It was a moment or two before I could speak. When I might have done so, I was thinking. And remembering, with painful accuracy, things Zem and Kastir had said.
“There’s one thing I didn’t tell you,” I said, “about Zem. He had a twin brother. Another aedr. And Kastir doesn’t know.”
Someone whistled in the dark. Someone else strangled a gleeful yell. It was unrolling before me now, clear and simple, plain as an open road.
“If this is a war,” I said, “I won’t fight it behind the enemy lines. And I couldn’t bear to see that—that—thing—again. Karyx, I don’t want a dagger, I want a horse. I’m going into Hethria.”
“Good,” said Karyx. “So are we.”
Chapter VII
Nothing I said would dissuade them. I tried orders, pleas, threats and prophecies, I lost my temper, I wept. Karyx said, “You’ll feel better for it,” gave me a handkerchief, and went on exchanging quick, decisive sentences with the men who asserted that it was their war, claimed I was still their sovereign, had no sweethearts or families, were happy to become outlaws, paupers, knew all the perils of Hethria, would live on grubs if Zam could not feed them, would let him “blow them away” if they were superfluous, would go back now for horses, knew how to reach the first dassyk. And after that would follow me wherever I went, whether I wanted it or not.
They also brought back robes, supplies, waterskins, weapons and news that Penhazad was in uproar, Zem’s death a scandal and Kastir bent on finding me, “if he has’ta tear off every roof.” Like Karyx, all six were Stiriand veterans, light cavalrymen, old comrades, who had frequently ventured into Hethria. Their nuggety short-backed Stiriand horses were fit to travel all night, and we did, for they knew how to steer by the stars for the first dassyk.
As we rode along I wondered who else was grieving in the dark. Zam, beyond doubt. If they did not exchange mindspeech, he would use farsight to keep track of his brother. Zem might even have warned him before he died. . . . Again a physical grip seemed to constrict my heart. Gently, I put the memories aside. The time for passive mourning was past.
And if Zam knew, so might Beryx and Moriana. I grieved for their grief, sure Zem too had been like a son to them, before my mind went back to Zam. Perhaps he also was riding as well as grieving in the dark, his mind bent upon the west.
Tentatively, I thought, Zam? But there was no reply.
By the time we reached the dassyk I had the rudiments of a plan. First I told the Sathellin about Zem. Then I said to the dassyk master, “If I were you, I should pass no more westbound caravans, and send the word south to other roads as well. Somewhere or other, Kastir has Sathel spies.”
He was the usual laconic leathery desert-dweller. At this his already grim face grew positively black. Then he said, “Ah.”
“I don’t want him to know where I went,” I said. “And whatever—the other warden plans, it’s better no word reaches the west.” It gave me pause. Once I would have said “Everran” naturally. “The sooner that’s
done the better.” One day saved might be little enough, but I was here, and Zam was not.
The Sathel nodded again, and made an exceptionally long speech. “None’ll hear aught of him or you,” he said, “from us.”
We nodded at each other. Then I went out to my escort, who asked nothing aloud.
“If you’re determined,” I said, “to go on with this, it’s no use wandering round Hethria hoping we might run into Zam. There’s one place that, sooner or later, I think he’ll go. It’s called Eskan Helken.” Three or four faces showed they knew its reputation. “I shall go there now. But I don’t know the way.”
They were taken aback. Then Karyx said, “Directions. Or a guide.”
The dassyk master was reluctant to supply either. “Hethox country ’tween roads. Whyn’t you wait here?”
I said, “We’re no use here. We’re extra mouths. And we’re dangerous.”
At that he said, “Can’t spare a guide. Give you a line, though. Best go at night. Use the stars.”
* * * * * *
It was curiously dream-like, that journey, the long, processional rides under the stars, the continuity of landscape which travelers take for granted become a series of magic lantern appearances at dawn, the settling to sleep while others rose, the light slumber in gorge or hill shadow or by entranced waterholes or under cloaks on sticks over open sand, then rousing at sunset, to breakfast and await the stars. And most of all, perhaps, the distancing from reality that comes with grief.
I hardly believed it when the false dawn first showed a bump on the southeast horizon. It still seemed unreal when sunrise came that last morning and Eskan Helken stood before us, alexandrite towers divided by gulfs of purple, plum and amethyst, less substantial than the red wizards’ castle I had waited for.
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