“I’m all right,” Telemakos said, embarrassed.
Medraut swallowed again. Telemakos thought he looked tired. He had absorbed the information that could have forfeited both their lives, and turned everyone’s attention away from it, and given Telemakos an alibi for his service to the emperor in Afar. And every word he had spoken had been true. It all appeared effortless, but everything he said was calculated to avoid being cut off by the choking chain, and he must surely guess what a razor’s edge Telemakos walked himself. When Medraut spoke again, his deep, smooth voice rang with challenge.
“I want assurance—” he spoke hesitantly, like a man trying to find his way by throwing his voice in a cavern. “My lord Abreha Anbessa the Lion Hunter, najashi and mukarrib, king of Himyar and federator of South Arabia. Telemakos Meder will not remain in Himyar forever, though you give him another name and raise him in privilege as you would your own children. Give me assurance that he will leave your palace fit for anything his destiny will require of him.”
Abreha got up and crossed the room with his purposeful, loping stride. He stopped at the door. “Give me a minute,” he said. “I’ll make your son a gift, Ras Meder. Wait for me.” Then he addressed his soldiers. “I am going to the kennels. It will take me some little time to descend the stairs and come back. Keep the prince silent while I’m gone.”
Medraut sat taut and motionless, an alabaster statue, with his hands on his knees. After a few moments, when no one moved or said anything, Athena got to her hands and feet and crawled over to the cup where Medraut had thrown his dragon brooch. She pulled herself up to stand at the table and, with a glance over her shoulder to make sure she was not doing anything wrong, tipped up the cup and fished out the pin. She scrambled back to Telemakos on three feet—or anyway on her feet and one hand—holding the dragon carefully in her other hand. Then she sat contentedly to examine it.
Dawit spoke suddenly again. “Before Medraut courted your mother, boy, he courted my daughter Muna.”
“Sir!” Queen Muna cried out.
Dawit sniffed. “It was not secret then. Why should it be secret now you are both married, and not to each other?”
Whatever Telemakos had expected the najashi to be hiding from him, it was not this. He felt as though he had been standing by a dark window, and now a curtain was pulled back so that he could see through to another world, full of a new kind of intrigue that it never occurred to him to watch for.
Medraut’s eyes seethed. He did not move or make a sound.
“There is your reason the najashi did not want Gwalchmei as his ambassador, Morningstar,” Dawit added. “He looks too much like his cousin, your father, and lacked your father’s temperance. Gwalchmei was a captivating libertine.”
“Do not shame me,” Muna said quietly.
“Hah!” Dawit grunted. “The boy is the image of his father. Do you think the najashi will allow him to stay in this palace after his voice breaks?”
When the najashi returned to the room, there were two young salukis pressed close against his legs. Medraut smacked his thigh hard with his fist as a wordless exclamation and broke into a real smile of surprise and delight. Again Athena scrambled to the door on all fours, lionlike. She pulled herself up against the belly of a saluki. The dog turned its head nervously and sniffed at her. “Mine,” Athena said. “Athena’s dog, thank you, najashi.”
That made even the guards’ mouths twitch. Medraut laughed aloud.
“I am sorry, my honey badger,” the najashi apologized, getting down on her level as he always did to talk to children. “But these dogs are for your brother. I am sure he will share them.”
Now Telemakos was completely mystified. He stared at his guardian in frozen disbelief.
“For me?” He was sure the najashi meant some mockery or jest.
“Aye, for you, Morningstar. Your father bids me give him assurance of my good intent toward you, and we all know you could use assistance in the hunt. These will be easier for you to manage than a falcon.”
Telemakos’s mind raced. A pair of hunting dogs? A pair! Two of the najashi’s gazelle hounds for my own? The last one he gave away was a gift for the emperor of Aksum. What is going on?
They were a matched pair, an identical hound and bitch, not a year old and not quite full grown. Their legs and bodies were the pearly golden white of old ivory, or new cream, or Telemakos’s own pale hair. Their long, silken ears and feathery tails were red as copper.
“You cannot possibly …” Telemakos moved to kneel formally before Abreha, with his head turned aside in disbelief as much as humility, and muttered, “My lord najashi, this is a gift for a king. I do not deserve this.” He drew a shaking breath, burning with shame at having to accept such a gift bare minutes after attempting something close to treason. “Never in a thousand years would I deserve such dogs.”
“I do not doubt that you are right on both counts,” Abreha replied dryly. “But they are yours. My gift to you is my pledge to your father.”
Medraut answered him with real warmth and fervor. “Truly, my najashi, you do my son a great honor to gift him so generously. You do us both a great honor. I accept this pledge.”
The najashi strode across the room to join Medraut where he sat. The dogs followed loyally at his heels.
“Touch them, Morningstar. Let them smell you. You are their master now.”
Telemakos had always known he would sell his soul to call one of these dogs his own. He could not restrain himself for one second longer, and his lips were against their feathery copper ears while his roughened fingertips snagged the white silk of their coats. They warmed to the game joyfully, sniffing and butting their heads against him, so that for a moment he forgot everything else.
“Oh, my najashi, thank you!” Telemakos gasped.
Athena was as enraptured as he was.
“Mine, Boy, Tena’s pretty dog,” she argued with him. “Selene, Selene.”
Telemakos laughed. “All right, then, Selene! Selene and Argos! You may share, you selfish thing.”
Does this mean I’m safe? Telemakos wondered, and in his mind felt again the light sting of parchment striking his cheek.
It doesn’t, he decided. The najashi will never trust me. But it is an apology, a payment for that terrible season of discipline and hardship he made me endure.
Overcome with conflicting emotions, Telemakos suddenly threw himself at Medraut and hid his face against his father’s shoulder. He felt Medraut’s arms tighten around him like steel bands. He had never known fear in that harsh embrace, never anything but trust and safety. But Medraut, too, could be merciless. He had whipped Athena’s fingers with strips of hide when, at less than a year old, she had interfered with the sling he was braiding. He had held a knife to his young brother’s throat.
The charm bracelet chattered. Telemakos raised his head. His eyes burned, but he had managed not to weep.
“Give my love to Goewin,” Telemakos reminded Medraut.
IX
MARIB
HE WAS IN A foul mood in the weeks following his father’s visit: one day, that one day being all they had had. It had not even been a day, really, just those few hours in the najashi’s reception room, with Medraut held in chains the whole of their time together.
So the najashi kept his promise and took Telemakos to see the dam at Marib. The journey, Telemakos knew, was meant to console and distract him, and he resisted consolation. But it worked anyway. Telemakos liked traveling. He liked being part of a royal retinue; it was on one of Gebre Meskal’s hunting parties that Telemakos had first met Abreha, when the najashi had come to Aksum to witness Gebre Meskal’s initiation as emperor. The journey Abreha made to Marib now was a routine check on the dam and the dedication of a monument commemorating its rebuilding. But the najashi traveled with all the trappings of an imperial progress, including his wife and his gazelle hounds and Malika the child queen of Sheba, who was heir to the Marib principality. When the silk tents were raised in Marib’s
green fields, it felt like a party.
Athena did not like Marib. The empty windows of the ruined palace there scared her, as did the dark, abandoned pre-Christian temple that was half buried beneath drifting sand. All around the great dam, and the irrigated land that it watered, orange groves stretched so far out on the plains toward the desert that you could not see their borders. But you could not get rid of the sand that blew in from the desert reaches of the Empty Quarter. When the wind blew, Athena rode at Telemakos’s side with her face hidden in his shoulder, or with a length of his shamma pulled over her head, to keep the sand out of her eyes. She spat with vicious disdain when it got in her mouth; you had to filter water before you could drink it. City children were paid to sweep the sand away from the buttresses around the great dam’s sluices.
But Telemakos liked Marib. In part he was honestly impressed at the work Abreha had done here, restoring a piece of engineering a thousand years old, with such painstaking attention that a land of semi-desert was transformed into a green valley that could produce grain throughout the year. And in part Telemakos was simply glad to be out of San’a, and the endless stairways of the Ghumdan palaces.
Telemakos and Athena, and the young salukis Argos and Selene, slept outside the tents on still nights. The tail end of winter was passing; the dry, sandy soil still kept the day’s heat and was warm to the touch throughout the evening. Weaverbirds nested where the grass grew long and insects sang. The wind died after sundown, and you could breathe again without getting sand up your nose. Lines of ancient willow trees radiated outward from the dam, showing where the oldest of the water courses had run, buried now but still nourishing the trees. The warriors and courtiers sat with their dogs beneath the trailing leaves, telling stories and laughing in the dark. Telemakos liked to listen. It was easy to listen to the warriors’ storytelling, and safe.
And he liked the hunting. The najashi had his own hunting grounds here, as well as the right to the wilderness afforded by the principality, and rather than slaughter the local livestock for his retinue, Abreha allowed his men to hunt for themselves. The najashi ran Menelik with the salukis in daily chases across the highland plains. The lion even killed an oryx, which he slunk away from obediently when told to; Menelik was fully grown now, if not as heavy as Solomon had been. Telemakos was happy to let Abreha take mastery over the lion in the hunt, for it left him free to concentrate on his young dogs or his javelins.
He was able to manage the short spears well now, two strapped to his back and a third balanced lightly across his thighs if he was riding, or tilted over his shoulder if he was on foot. Liberated from the exacting work of keeping Menelik in check, Telemakos brought down a splendid ibex, his first kill since before his accident. The great, curved horns were taller than Athena.
“Those will ward off evil and bring rain,” Abreha told Telemakos. “So say our tribesmen. What will you do with such useful talismans?”
“May I send them to my father?”
“May I suggest you send them to Constantine, the high king of Britain?” Abreha said. “Your fatherland is in need of rain. It will make a good impression, and you may send your next trophy to your father.”
Telemakos sighed inwardly; there was no point in arguing if the najashi already had a plan thought out for him. Constantine the high king of Britain was possibly the last person Telemakos would have thought of to honor with a hunting trophy, but he could see the diplomatic sense in the gesture. “Of course,” he murmured judiciously.
The gazelle hounds Argos and Selene came with Telemakos when he hunted. Selene glued herself to his left side, whether or not he was carrying Athena on his hip; the saluki seemed to know by instinct that this was the side of him that lay defenseless. Selene was already intensely loyal, Telemakos knew, to Athena as much as to himself, and would have died to defend either one of them.
He had to fight Athena for possession of the dogs. She screamed and threw a tantrum every time he took them hunting, though sometimes it was just because she wanted to come along, or did not want to leave Telemakos. She would let Muna carry her now, but very few other people. Apart from Telemakos, the najashi was still her favorite. He let her ride on the lion’s back whenever he took her walking around Marib. Her world was so strange Telemakos despaired of her ever becoming reasonable.
“Your choices are: let go of Selene’s neck now, or you may not play with her when I get back from the hunt.”
Athena let go. The dogs were the only thing that made her behave.
The formal dedication of the monument was approaching, but work on the dam continued, and the najashi postponed his return to San’a until the gathering of the Great Assembly. That gave them a full dry season in Marib.
One afternoon, the najashi and his retainers went prowling up the great wadi valley that delivered water to the ancient drainage system above the dam. As the land grew harsher and drier and willow gave way to acacia, the salukis came upon a spoor that excited them. “That’s a male lion, and a big one,” said Tharan, looking up from the tracks.
Telemakos knelt beside him. “There’re two.” The lions were padding in parade, one behind the other. “Look here—they passed this way within minutes of us, and marked this place—can you smell it? They’re marking their territory, not hunting.”
“Two lions prowling this close to the city!” exclaimed Tharan.
“Worse than vermin,” agreed Alim the local governor, Malika’s uncle, who came along as their guide. “Chase them for sport, if you like, Abreha the Lion Hunter. Otherwise it will be a job for the city guard to kill them or drive them off.”
Hunting together, the najashi’s gazelle hounds were said to have taken lions, Telemakos knew. He stood trying to quell his excitement. He had not hunted lions before; at least, not looking for a fight, not with a sharpened spear to call his own, and not with anyone’s permission.
“Will you lead us, Morningstar?” Abreha requested decisively, as though it were a formality, as though there were no one else to ask.
Telemakos’s heart vaulted with gratitude and excitement. “My najashi, of course.”
“Stand steady.”
Abreha refixed the scarf that muffled Telemakos’s charm bracelet, and reached to Tharan, who handed him one of the light spears for Telemakos to take.
“You are better balanced holding a lance. Are those on your back in readiness? Good. Lead on.”
Telemakos held his head up for a few moments, gauging the wind. He breathed deep and choked on sand. He put down the spear for a moment, and kneeling with the neck of his shirt pulled up over his nose, took another deep breath. He was trying to catch the lingering trace of the lions’ bodies beyond the stink of cat that they had left about; but Menelik padded at the najashi’s side, and the only scent Telemakos could make out was Menelik’s familiar smell of oil and honey.
It’s this, he thought, his mouth dry and his pulse beginning to race. I love this. This is my favorite part of the hunt, the tracking, the finding. The kill is nothing to the chase, nothing. If I had never to do anything else but this, I would be happy.
He picked up his spear and set out in the direction pointed by the tracks, falling into a light jog that he could easily check when he needed to confirm the trail. Argos and Selene trotted one on either side of him, and the najashi’s host followed behind. It was not the first time the najashi had let him lead them in their tracking; Telemakos could scent the quarry nearly as well as the dogs and was better at reporting it.
They overtook the lions high in a barren gully carved by years of seasonal rains. Telemakos fell back and let the hounds close in. A dozen of them concentrated their effort on the smaller of the lions, and overwhelmed it, though it put up a furious fight; its heavier companion came snarling to its defense from outside the fray. The bigger lion killed a saluki in one single snap of its jaws, crushing the back of the slender creature’s head and neck. One of the men let out a cry of sorrow then, and the huntsmen waded in among the dogs with their
spears. The defending lion turned tail and leaped silently away among the rocks, trailing blood.
“It’s taken a spear thrust in the thigh,” someone called. “It won’t get far.”
Telemakos heard Abreha give a command, in his gentle speaking-to-the-hounds voice. “Go, my beauty. Take him.” In a flash of tawny gold and black, Menelik loped after the vanished lion.
That thing is a quarter again Menelik’s size, Telemakos thought in alarm, and enraged with a superficial wound.
He ran. He leaped up the gully as lightly and nearly as swiftly as the young lion, leveling himself with the short spear, but he was not quick enough to stop the fight before it started. Menelik and the wild lion were going at each other with abandon when Telemakos arrived. They snapped and bellowed, rolling and whipping their bodies in the sand with such lightning speed Telemakos could not follow their fight.
“Menelik! Menelik! Hold!”
What Telemakos did next he did without thinking. He gripped his short spear tight against his ribs and launched himself at the lions.
The wild one took its teeth out of Menelik’s neck and lunged toward Telemakos; its own momentum carried it right into his spear. Telemakos held the lance fast and thrust it straight back through the lion’s open mouth and down the growling throat. Selene went for its throat also, and clung there with her jaws locked shut, relentless and determined as a mosquito. As the lion fell at his feet, Telemakos hauled his second spear out of its brace, over his back, and threw all his weight into a final blow between the lion’s shoulders. He could feel the blade grinding against that of his first spear as he drove them together inside the terrible neck.
Selene still held on. Telemakos, too, held himself there for a moment, bent over and panting, half expecting the lion to leap up again and devour him. When nothing happened, he dared to look up. Menelik lay choking on blood that streamed from his mouth and nostrils. The wild lion had torn out his throat.
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