by David Bell
With that said, Kanesh nodded curtly to Sekara and the Captain of Archers and strode towards the door.
“Can I rely on you to find it?” Sekara called after him, but Kanesh had gone. Sharesh followed him, pausing for a moment in the doorway to look back.
“He found water in the Deshret when we had none, my Lord. Is that not so, Captain?”
The pillars had held. The lintels remained steady and level. He could see no cracks crazing the walls but as there were many fewer lights than there should have been, shadows might be hiding more of them. There was a saying in Kunisu that the long dead builder of this great maze of a palace had had Potheidan’s destructive moods in mind when he drew up his plans, and now it showed. There was some damage: a team of labourers were still at work by torchlight, clearing away the last fragments of a section of parapet with its sacred horns that had fallen into the great courtyard. Kanesh walked past them and climbed the steps to the portico where the doorway opened into the long dark hall he remembered well. Two spearmen stepped forward but the robed and hooded steward appeared and waved them back. He had no need of the man to guide him this time. He knew the way. The empty halls and corridors echoed to the sound of his footsteps. Torches burned low in their bronze holders. The waisted shields and double axes hung awry on the walls. The font of purification held no water. The white cloth for drying hands lay crumpled on the floor. The double doors of the chamber where once the diaphanous screen had hidden the tormented Consort stood open, but in the room was only blackness and silence. The door he sought was open. He followed the corridor beyond it that led into the room of peacocks and swallows. He climbed the stairway of many landings and, as he expected, the door at the top swung open at his approach.
The brazier burned as warmly as before and the room was full of the scent of aromatic herbs. She wore white silk, tinted rose colour on the side nearest the glowing coals. Her breasts were heavier now and the child within her swelled her body below the waist into a soft full curve. She held one arm over the roundness as if protectively, the silver bracelet on her slim wrist gleaming in the brazier’s light.
“Lord Kanesh, welcome. I was expecting you.”
“You are most kind, lady. I have here a small token, hardly the kind of gift your status merits, I fear, but one of some significance, nevertheless.”
She took the glossy dark brown stone from his outstretched hand and turned it in her fingers, watching how the firelight glanced off its many shining faces.
“This is your way of telling me that your enterprise has met with success.”
“We will know that for sure when the ship docks and her cargo is safe in the warehouse. There is some uncertainty at present.”
“How should that be? It seems clear to me that the Lady Mother, Mistress of the Seas, has seen fit to favour you and guide you safely back to port.”
“I suggest the skill of our captain and the strength of our crew had more to do with that; but my concern is with the state of the harbour after the earth-shaking.”
“I was told of some small disturbance. I myself felt a slight trembling of the floor but no more than happens from time to time in a gale of wind. With Atana Potnia as our protection how could such a thing affect the working of the harbour?”
“I see that you have been kept unaware of what has really happened.”
“I seldom leave my rooms but I am always fully informed.”
“Then you will know what we encountered when the ship called in at the Palace harbour of Paitoia, and on our ride through the mountains, past Jaduktas and the temple on its slope, and on the road to Setuja where the conduit carries water from the spring to this, your palace. In the harbour at Paitoia we found more people crowding the port to flee from their wrecked houses than there were ships to carry them. The palace at Paitoia was burning, as were villages on the plain. Looters were at their despicable work. On the slope of Jaduktas there are bodies half-buried in the ruins of the temple. Lord Sekara has told me that the Palace harbour jetty is unusable until carpenters have finished makeshift repairs. A sacred horn and the parapet on which it stood lie shattered to pieces in the great courtyard below us. These are not the results of ‘some small disturbance’, lady.”
Her face showed no sign of alarm. Kanesh could not suppress a grudging admiration for her coolness. This woman, he thought, would stand in the front line with any man and face a chariot charge with the same apparent unconcern.
“Is that all?”
“There is more and you may consider it the worst. The spring deemed sacred at Setuja, that spring which feeds the Palace through its conduit, is dry. The flow ceased after the earth-shaking and the conduit is broken in many places. As Lord Sekara says, without water from the spring, the Palace will die.”
“The Governor, Sukare, must –”
“Lady, you listen but you do not heed. The Governor lies dead with most of his staff in the rubble of his Residence which is quite likely being picked over by looters as we speak.”
Still she kept her composure. “I will have priestesses go to the spring. As you may understand, I cannot go myself but I will make intercession here with prayers and offerings to the Lady Mother. She will hear me.”
“I will try to see this as you see it. A spring sacred to the divinity has ceased to flow; a dedicated temple has been destroyed; even the Palace of the High Priestess herself has been shaken. These and other calamities are signs of divine displeasure, for what cause we do not know, and the way of placating the divinity, styled Atana Potnia, lies through prayers and offerings and processions.”
“Is there another way?”
“I intend to find out. When the ship returns and a certain member of the crew comes ashore, we will ride to the hills above Setuja in search of another spring.”
“Despite great hardship and danger, you have done what you set out to do. The success of your enterprise will not soon be forgotten. We both know that we have worked and plotted against each other. Why should you now endeavour to help the Palace in its time of need?”
“Continuity, lady: I have the same interest in it as do you.”
She placed both hands gently on her roundness and her look softened fleetingly.
“Continuity lies here, Lord Kanesh,” she said. “And only one thing more remains for it to be complete.”
The last few words hinted at what he had thought all along was still in her mind and her next question confirmed his suspicions.
“Lady Akusha’s son: will he assist you in your search?”
“I believe he will. It will not surprise you to know that he was deeply moved by what we found in the ruins of the temple. Unlike yourself, if I may say so.”
“It was necessary,” she said coolly. “He had the temerity to seek his pleasures elsewhere and in any case had served his function here. She broke her vows. I see it as no coincidence that the earth-shaking serves to explain both the well-deserved deaths of the culprits and of the agent sent to dispose of them. A very tidy conclusion, I should say.”
The High Priestess looked levelly at Kanesh and said almost carelessly:
“A temple can always be re-built, Lord Kanesh. You must know that. Why, even the Palace rests on the ruins of another brought down long ago.”
“I will think deeply on all you have said, lady. Now, with your permission, I will leave and seek out Lady Akusha’s son.”
“If I know anything about men, my Lord, young men, that is, and especially when they have been long at sea, I suspect as we speak he lies in the arms of Lady Pasipha. Come now, do not pretend to be shocked. Allow me to offer you some of this wine. As I am unable at present even to taste it, I enjoy the pleasure of seeing the effect it has on others.”
EMERGENCY
“Who is it?” yelled Merida. “Stop that banging! What do you want?”
There was some muffled shouting from outside and more hammering. Merida shoved the boy off the bed and sat up.
“Get under the bed,” he hissed. “I
don’t want them coming in here and seeing you.”
He got up, walked across to the door and opened it. His Keftiu agent stood outside, dishevelled and panting, with his mouth wide open ready to speak again.
“Oh, it’s you. Well, spit it out!”
The man gulped. It was his eyes that were now wide open as he looked down. Merida followed his gaze and remembered he was completely naked, and not only that. Oh, well.
“Come on. Can’t be the first time you’ve seen one of these. What’s it all about?” The man was confused and breathless. “The ship! She’s back!”
“What? Back here, in port? When?”
“No, not in port. Sighted. She’s been sighted! Off Kydona. Yesterday, about sunset. Rider just came in bringing news about damage over there. I was lucky to catch him. He told me about the ship.”
“You sure? Was he the one that sighted her? How does he know it was her?”
“He knows her all right. Says his brother’s one of the crew!”
“Lord Potheidan! She’s coming back! Lord Potheidan, I will offer pigs, no, a bull! My ship, she’s coming back.” He grabbed the agent and danced him round the room.
“Stop, stop, stop. Must think. Off Kydona last night, eh? Potyr will sail her through the night. He will; I’m sure he will. That means, yes, that means she’ll reach Dia before nightfall tomorrow. Lord Potheidan, she could dock tomorrow night if the light’s good enough and the wind’s in the right quarter. No, wait, no: he’ll stand off Dia and bring her in when it’s light. Potyr’s a careful bugger. He won’t want to risk grounding or a collision after all they’ve been through. Lord Potheidan, think of all that tin!”
“There is something.”
“What? What do you mean, there’s something?”
“The jetty is still closed; the work isn’t finished.”
“Don’t stand about bleating! Get back there and hurry them up. Never mind what they say. Find more men. Promise them anything, well almost anything, but get that jetty open before tomorrow night.”
Merida seized the agent by the shoulders and hustled him out of the room. He stood for a moment, looking at the closed door. A big smile grew over his face and he danced a few steps.
“You can come out now,” he said to the feet sticking out from under the bed. “Look sharp. Here, take hold of this. I’m in the mood to celebrate.”
“Sharesh, my dear, you have come a long way since you were last here, have you not? That was quite delicious, so haunting. Where did you learn to play like that? Now, put them away and take a little of this wine. Halaba, you know it? It will moisten your lips and sweeten your tongue and then you can show me what else you learned on that long, long voyage of yours. Oh, my little keepsake; you wore it all that time. How sweet.”
“When I was a girl,” said the priestess of Jaduktas. “We called them the Birds of Death. They fly higher than the great hawks and see death coming from afar. One day, soon I feel, they will spy it seeking me.”
Akusha put her arm round the stooped shoulders of the old woman. They were sitting on a stone bench set there for the weary to rest after the long ascent, and wait until it was their turn to place their offerings in the sacred stone’s deep crevices. High above, the great birds soared and turned on their wide fingertipped wings, black as the charred rags swirling skyward from the fires in Setuja.
“You are tired, Mother,” said Akusha gently. “But you can be sure now that our sisters are safe under the stones from those cruel beaks.”
The priestess seemed not to have heard. Her eyes were closed and her hands lay open in her lap. “When you were last here flowers were in bloom and birds sang,” she said dreamily. Akusha waited for her to go on. After a long time the old eyes opened slowly and painfully, looked about vaguely and finally fixed on Akusha’s face. Her voice was firmer when she spoke again.
“I counselled patience when first you told me of the deception. I said the Lady Mother would assert her will in time. When you came again and explained to me Lord Koreta’s plans, they seemed so certain to restore what had been lost that I was convinced the time had come.” She gave a deep sigh and lowered her head into her hands. “I see now the vanity of believing that what I wanted must also be the Lady Mother’s will. What has happened changes everything, and nothing. Koreta and Sekara cannot now move against the Palace. The people would not follow them. In such a time as this they look to the Palace to save them and while so many things around them have been shaken to destruction they see it stand there, serene and powerful, and they will not desert it. They dare not.”
“There will come another time for making the changes we both know must be made.”
“That may be, but perhaps in ways and with what results we cannot conceive.”
The two women fell silent and each, wrapped in her own troubled thoughts, watched the shadows creep across from the distant mountains as the sun slid down the sky.
“Mother, it is near time for the devotions. You look so tired; perhaps I may be permitted to serve in your place?”
“No, no, I am grateful to you, but now is not the time for weakness. Where is the child? To my shame, I forget her name.”
“Seftria, Mother, that is her name. She is in the sanctuary. She is very frightened.”
“Bring Seftria to me. She will come with us and in her duties she will find comfort and strength.”
The steward was given orders that they were not to be disturbed. Sekara was wearing the same grubby kilt he had on when Kanesh first met him in this room in the port controller’s house near the sea. His old leather jerkin had been thrown into a corner. He looked as tired and dirty as if he had spent the night working in the dockyard. He offered them beer and took a long drink, himself.
“I have good news for you,” he said, looking at Kanesh. “The ship was sighted off Kydona yesterday, near sunset. Hm, you don’t seem too surprised. Well, perhaps this will please you. Work on the harbour has gone faster than I expected. More workers seem to have been found somewhere and it now looks as if the jetty will be ready to admit shipping by tomorrow morning at the latest.”
“Potyr will bring her in then. Whatever we have to do in between times, we must be there when she docks.” He looked at the Captain of Archers and then back at Sekara. “I suggest a section of your men be present when she unloads. There is still some unrest in the town. Any disturbance while this particular cargo is being moved to the warehouse would be unwelcome.”
“Captain, see to it,” said Sekara.
The Captain of Archers rose to his feet, saluted and made to leave the room.
“Stay!” snapped Sekara. “Both of you must hear this.”
Picking his words carefully and watching the others’ faces closely, Sekara told them the contents of Koreta’s despatch that Akusha had delivered, though omitting to disclose in whose hands it had been carried. The archer’s response was characteristically immediate and matter of fact.
“My own men would stand with us; I am sure of that. How many more, and we should need many more, I cannot be certain.”
“And what have you to say, my friend?”
Kanesh did not answer at first. He walked over to the window from where the harbour and port buildings could be seen. It had been hot all day and the afternoon haze was thickening as evening approached. The relentless dry scraping of insects sounded from the tamarisks and the thick air was heavy with the scent of wild thyme.
“It was spring. The campaign in the mountains had gone very well. We had the enemy in full flight and they had lost most of their best troops. What was left of them, including the rebel king we were desperate to take, were beleaguered in makeshift defences on the banks of a river. We camped within sight of them, to rest the horses, confident that we would overrun and slaughter them in the morning. Nothing could go wrong.”
He stopped talking and looked out to sea. Dia was a vague pale shape floating in the haze.
“In the night the very air began to freeze. The water bottles swel
led and split. A man’s hand stuck to the metal of his sword. When dawn came, horses and men alike were white with frost. We watched the enemy limp and hobble from their camp and trudge across the frozen river in a black worm of a column. Some fell and lay fastened to the ice but most reached the other bank. We could do nothing to stop them. The chariot wheels were frozen fast where they were stacked in mud as hard as bronze. The horses would not stir. Bows cracked when the strings were drawn. We waited for the sun to come up, warm our limbs and loosen the chariot wheels from the grip of the mud. Then we would ride after them and cut them down.”
He paused again and looked at the other two.
“The sun rose and warmed us. It was spring again. The ice on the river thinned and cracked before we could ready the horses and hitch on the chariots. We stood on the bank of a river too deep to cross and watched our prey stagger away from us without a backward look.
“There comes a moment, my friends, when anything is possible and another, when something never envisaged happens and turns the first into nothing more than a memory. Your moment would have been the return of the Davina. The earth-shaking has snatched it from you.”
“What would you do now?”
“Everything the deputy commander is expected to do. Impose order. Carry on with the repairs. Open the ports. Restore normality. Bide your time. Change will come. How and when, you will not know until the event. But be assured, it will come.”
“What will you do between now and when the ship comes in?”
“Give me a horse; the mare will do, if you still have her. I have a journey to make. You have more to tell me?”
“Nothing that cannot wait. My orderly will bring the mare to you.”