by Caleb Carr
“The stream, Stasi,” he murmurs, although he need not; she has known since entering the cave that this is to be their destination. As she turns to go, she immediately slows her former quick pace to an easy, rhythmic gait, one that she knows the old man has always found soothing: her shoulders ripple, her spine undulates just perceptibly, and her chest rises and falls with her heavy panting. Most of all, she continues the throaty purr that she long ago determined to be of such entrancing comfort to the old man, never more so than when he is in distress and astride her, where he can put one ear to the back of her neck and listen to the steady vibration.
And in this manner is the great sorcerer Caliphestros once again brought back from the brink of despair and death by the legendary white panther of Davon Wood. They are the two most infamous beings of their generation, to the people of Broken, the stuff of more than mere parents’ warnings to unruly children, or of those children’s nightmares; for their existence, especially together, strikes fear into the royal and sacred clique of the Kafran kingdom itself. Yet one would be hard-put to find greater tenderness and compassion among any two creatures in the kingdom of the golden god, or, indeed, anywhere on this Earth, than exists between the seemingly very different—yet, in their hearts, not at all dissimilar—enemies of the realm of the Tall …
The panther had been relentlessly hunted by men of Broken even before she rescued the old man from the inexplicable evil to which she had watched his own kind subject him. The panther hunt more generally had, for generations, been the definitive rite of passage into manhood for eldest sons from such Broken families as possessed the wealth and position (to say nothing of the additional male offspring) to allow them the leisure, the horses, and the servants to engage in so vicious, dangerous, and foolhardy a blood sport. And, because exceptional purity and uniformity in the coloration of panthers was believed by Broken hunters as well as by the Bane to imply great mystical powers (despite the teachings of Kafran priests that such was a mischievous remnant of pagan beliefs), a high value was from the first placed on this uniquely hued female. But when it became clear that no human would likely ever prove brave or clever enough to track and kill her, an only slightly diminished value had been placed upon the heads and hides of the four golden cubs she soon mothered.
The family had never been tracked: the unspoken truth among those who survived the encounter that terrible day was that a Broken hunting party, led by the son of the kingdom’s then—Merchant Lord himself, had stumbled upon the young cats at play, under their mother’s watchful eye, in an open dale too close to the Cat’s Paw. The hunters quickly found themselves faced with a far more desperate struggle than they would have expected from one female and four juvenile panthers: the white mother had been able to kill several of the humans, before being wounded herself by a spear that pierced her thigh and glanced off the bone beneath. Thus slowed, she had been forced to watch and lunge desperately, as three of her brave children had been killed, one after another. The body of her eldest male had been taken off toward the city atop the mountain, along with her surviving daughter, who was painfully herded, terrified, into an iron cage; and then all the intruders and their captives disappeared, off toward that mountain, the walls and lights atop which the white panther so often studies, of a night, now in a seeming attempt to try to comprehend what those distant, glittering movements may signify …
Since that fateful battle, sightings of the white panther by hunters of Broken have been few; and she has made certain that fewer still of those brash pursuers have returned to the mountain of lights, and that none have tracked her to her high cave-den. In this way, she has kept secret the location of the sanctuary to which she brought the damaged old man, and in which she has helped him to recover, just as he has warmed her winters, preserved her kills, and healed the wounds of her hunts. And so the old man’s name for her—Stasi, Anastasiya, “She of the Resurrection”—is more than simply an apt description of her; it is a constant testament to their life together, to the challenges they have met and overcome—and to the great challenge each knows they will one day face …
If this tale of dual tragedy and redemption should stir disbelief in any who read it, they may comfort themselves that they are not alone: for, on the very day in question, when the white panther he calls Stasi once again carries the suffering Caliphestros to the cold stream near their cave to soothe him, two observing eyes—hard, tough eyes that have watched from the safety of a tall ash—also widen with incredulity. They are the eyes of a man who, if the white panther had the time, she would gladly dispatch: for she detected his stink, despite the aromas of the old man’s herb garden (newly revived by spring), as well as the “hidden” observer’s attempts to disguise his stench, well before she reached the clearing outside the cave. Although the intruder is clearly of the small tribe in Davon Wood (who have always respected her), the panther likes nothing about the blended stenches of fear and filth, as well as the stolen scents of other creatures, that mark him. Yes, she would steal upon and finish him, had she not another mission of mercy to perform for long-suffering Caliphestros …
High in that ash tree, meanwhile, the man who creates that stench of fear knows full well that the panther would indeed kill him, had she the chance; and he waits a long while, after the beast and her strange rider have disappeared, before he even thinks of returning to the forest floor. He continues to wait, in truth, until that long while has grown a good deal longer, letting the unnatural pair put as much of the Wood as is possible between themselves and his solitary form (which has never felt so small), before he silently makes his way down the ash trunk, and lightly drops to the ground.
Heldo-Bah stands gazing toward the trees and undergrowth through which the panther and the sorcerer Caliphestros have disappeared: and “sorcerer” he must be, thinks the forager, if he not only survived the Halap-stahla, but lives with the most dangerous animal in the Wood! Only after several moments have passed without Heldo-Bah’s wide, amazed eyes catching any further movement in the forest beyond the clearing outside the cave does he dare even murmur, in his sourest tone:
“Perfection …” But Heldo-Bah’s sarcasm lacks its usual conviction. “Most supreme perfection!” he tries again; and then (although he knows he could offer the panther nothing even approaching a fight) he clutches his gutting blade at the ready as he dashes back east, toward the camp that he made with Keera and her brother a few hours earlier.
“Let that fool Veloc explain this to me!” Heldo-Bah says aloud, when he deems such volume safe. “The sorcerer lives—but with the most feared panther in Davon Wood, a creature that most think a phantasm! Oh, this has been well worth three days’ run—we can’t even approach him, with that monster in his thrall!”
More astounded and merely senseless expressions of bewilderment at the ongoing perversity of his life echo about Heldo-Bah, as he runs—and yet his last statement was nothing if not true:
Although he does not yet know it, the strange vision he has witnessed has been more than worth his own and his friends’ desperate dash through Davon Wood over the last several days and nights …
NOVEMBER 3, 1790
Lausanne
It is my hope that you, among all my friends and colleagues, will understand why I contemplate not only publishing this tale, but associating my name with it. It is not simply that, even as I write, grievous abuses of Opportunity (indeed, such Opportunity as History rarely offers to any man or state twice) are being committed by a collection of destructive dreamers, self-serving knaves, and—worst of the lot!—viciously yet brilliantly manipulative men, all of whom now pose as the legitimate legislature of one of our mightiest and most ancient European realms [France]; no, equally tragic are the streams of exiles of every description that are flowing out of that state in all directions. Many have come here, to Lausanne: and I can assure you that they are learning the same lesson upon which you have expatiated so sagely in your Reflections, and which the ruling and mercantile classes of Broke
n also confronted: that wise men, when forced to take up arms against evils that masquerade as “popular” passions, must be careful also to redress such complaints as prove to represent true grievances. Failure to do so will most assuredly lend plausibility to the most absurd and violent rants of the basest scoundrels; indeed, it is by way of this last consideration that we arrive at perhaps the most perplexing philosophical question put by this tale:
How could a human society reach the relative superiority and sophistication evidenced in the great kingdom of Broken, and then, because of a stubbornly and ultimately cataclysmic unwillingness to adapt its religious and political customs to changing realities, disappear so utterly that a millennium would pass before the sole surviving account of its existence would again find eyes and ears capable of understanding it? We are, at this very moment, witnessing the reassertion of this timeless quandary; and while, ten centuries ago, there may have been little or no way of foretelling the horrors to which the unyielding yet flawed rites, dictums, and standards of those who held ultimate power in Broken might lead, we, by virtue of histories and legends such as this one, ought to know far better—and yet there is every sign that WE DO NOT!
—EDWARD GIBBON TO EDMUND BURKE
Water
{i:}
“AND WHAT ARE your feelings today, Sentek?” asks Visimar, as he brings his mare to a halt alongside Sixt Arnem, who is seated atop the great grey stallion known as the Ox, reviewing the fitness of the Talons as they pass along the Daurawah Road, heading east from the base of Broken’s mountain toward the great port. Having had no time to accustom himself to command of his kingdom’s entire army before being ordered to destroy the Bane, Arnem is glad to be at his familiar post as commander of Broken’s most elite legion. Only the endless questions with which Visimar has confronted him since they departed Broken have disturbed his thoughts; for they are of such a nature that the sentek finds it difficult—even, at times, impossible—to give forthright answers. He has tried every way he knows to distract Visimar: he has even told him the details of the attempted poisoning of the God-King. But all to no avail; for it seems that Visimar’s knowledge of that subject, too, somehow exceeds his own.
“Today?” the sentek finally concedes, looking at the bright blue sky that continues to be dominated by a peculiarly hot sun. It is a sky that would rouse little interest in high summer; but during the height of spring, it is unsettling. “Today is no different, old man. This strange heat bodes ill for our undertaking. I should think little of it, had the past winter been a mild one—but such harsh cold has not visited Broken since the winter of the Varisian war. Indeed, we had killing frosts well into early spring. Yet you know all this, Visimar. So, tell me—why does such heat come so early in the year?”
Although evasive, the sentek’s reply is relevant to the business at hand: for on this, the second morning of the expedition’s steady march toward the port of Daurawah, the sun’s continued hammering of the farming dales of central Broken is unobstructed by even the suggestion of a cloud. The sentek (setting, as always, an example) wears his lightest suit of leather armor beneath a wine-red cloak of cotton, not wool, and forgoes either steel cuirass or shirt of chain mail, ordinarily the prudent uniform of the Talons in the field. But the spring morning is too warm for such precautions, and there are still at least two days of safe marching distance between the Talons and the Cat’s Paw—two days that were to have been used to find forage for their horses and supplies for the men in the towns at the rich heart of the kingdom. Arnem does not think his command in true danger of anything more than a skirmishing attack by Bane Outragers, as yet; but his mind is vexed, by the strange weather as well as by the odd gloom of the towns through which the Talons have thus far passed.
There the soldiers have been greeted, not with the gratitude a prosperous people owe their defenders, but with the sullen antagonism (or even open hostility) that a mistreated populace feels for troops who require more food and forage than the townspeople seem able to offer. Arnem, aided by Visimar, has begun to see that the cause of these unhappy confrontations is not ill will toward the soldiers themselves, but resentment of Arnem’s masters in Broken. The anxiety that has crept into the hearts of subjects who have always composed the most secure communities in the kingdom has also meant that these same subjects now angrily refuse to trade the valuable fruits of their various labors in the busy markets of Broken: finding prices for their goods in the great city impossibly low, of late, they are instead hoarding their supplies, not only of grain and other foods, but of fabrics and the handiwork of other craftsmen, as well—all apparently for their own use, despite the considerable and even dangerous loss of profit that they will thereby suffer.
Popular anger over this disruption is fixed not only on the merchants in Broken, but also upon those foreign raiders from the North, now turned “men of commerce,” who bring plundered stores of goods in their longships to Daurawah and other, smaller river ports. In all these places, agents of professedly uncertain employ purchase and transport such wares up the mountain to Broken, that they may be sold again, still for far less than Broken’s own farmers, weavers, and artisans can afford to ask for their goods. It is because of this that the people of the provinces are withholding the fruits of their own labor, and surviving by bartering them locally; and the worry occasioned by this fact, in turn, causes Arnem to sigh at Visimar’s repeated desire to talk of what the sentek calls “irrelevant events from the past”:
“You are aware of the intent behind my question, I think, Sentek,” Visimar says. “Certainly, I do not seek your opinion of the weather.”
Hoping that concession on his part will produce movement on to more pressing affairs, Arnem holds his hands out in resignation and says, “If you are asking whether I have this morning found such words as have eluded me for the last eight years, I can only tell you—as I have for two days, Anselm—that I have not.” Arnem refers to his companion by the latter’s assumed appellation, lest any passing soldier recognize the legendary, indeed the infamous name of Visimar, which, for close on twenty years, has ranked second only to that of Caliphestros in its power to frighten the children of Broken: children who have grown up to become, in many cases, the sentek’s youngest pallins, such as Arnem’s companion on the walls of several nights earlier, Ban-chindo. Such young men are scarcely more than boys, at heart, however powerful their bodies have grown during many months of relentless training. And the faces of those youngest soldiers have appeared ever more boyish still, it seems to Arnem, with every mile that the column has put between itself and home.
“I begin to wonder if my aide was not correct, old man,” Arnem says, half-seriously. “Perhaps bringing your blasphemous old bones along was a mistake.”
“I am not quite so ‘old’ as the suffering inflicted by the priests of Kafra makes me appear, Sentek,” Visimar replies. “And, if I may voice the obvious, you are no devout member of that faith, to speak of ‘blasphemy’ as though you mean it. Was it not your doubts about the absurd faith of the golden god that inspired you to invite me on this march? I believe so—and I believe that you know it, in your heart.”
Arnem’s aspect darkens. “I warn you, Visimar,” he says quietly, after he has made sure that no one else has heard the old man’s words. “Try my patience all you like—but unsettle my men, put doubt into their heads, and I shall pack you off to the merchants and priests in Broken, and let them finish their work.” The sentek turns to watch the last unit of cavalry pass by, two abreast, and then studies the first of the infantry, who march four-wide: a tight formation designed to keep the khotor ready to wheel quickly into the infantry and cavalry quadrates that are their standard defensive battle formation, should the Bane be foolish enough to attack so far from Davon Wood. For all the wise caution of the formation, however, it also makes the words that pass between Arnem and his officers, and especially his conversations with “Anselm,” more audible to his men; and this is why the sentek warns his guest so quietly
, yet so sternly.
For his part, Visimar watches the soldiers pass for a moment; and, having taken their measure, he nods judiciously. “You are right, Sentek,” he says, surprising Arnem. “I shall endeavor to be more careful.” He seems to genuinely regret that he was briefly provocative. “Too many years of playing the madman in back alleys and taverns have, I fear, made me foolhardy. It is the great danger of disguise—if we play our assumed roles too long, we risk never finding our way back. Do you not think so, Sentek?”
Two days ago, the remark would have startled Arnem, who had not known, as he left Broken, exactly what “role” his impetuously chosen companion would play during this campaign, other than (as he told Niksar) the sort of idiot that soldiers are fond of having about camp. Men faced with the reality of death nearly every day (whether from wounds or from pestilence) can be as superstitious as old women; and one of the most popular superstitions among Broken troops is that a madman’s touched mind allows him to make sense of what sane soldiers cannot—the chaos of conflict. It is an ability that transforms such peculiar souls into agents of good fortune, who may increase a man’s, and even an army’s, chances of surviving the shapeless tumult of war.
Such had been Arnem’s outward justification for enlisting “Anselm”; and the older man has played his role well. He has also, more importantly, given not only Arnem, but the sentek’s troops, some explanation for the blackness of mood displayed by the farmers, fishermen, and seksents along the Daurawah Road: for their complaints have been voiced, not only to Arnem and his officers, but to the sentek’s bemused legionaries. The whole of Arnem’s column are now aware that the affairs of the kingdom of Broken are badly out of joint: never a safe thing for soldiers to have gnawing at their minds. The schemes regarding trade might be counted as simply another ploy of the ruthless merchant class of Broken to increase their profits; but such weakening of the kingdom’s own industry by illegal imported goods is forbidden by Kafran law. In addition, if the supposèd men who are plying the rivers in longboats are in fact raiders, Northern or otherwise, and if they are conducting business with anyone in Broken, merchants or otherwise, then it represents a serious violation of Broken law, both religious and secular: for the subjects of the God-King are forbidden from dealing with such men, whose motives are purely material and who are not animated by the golden god’s emphasis on wealth as one of the fundamental paths to righteousness. Most unsettling of all, reports are rife that the authorities who are entrusted with protecting Broken’s commerce from such foreign goods (from the Grand Layzin and the Merchant Lord, all the long way down to local magistrates) are aware of the true origins of many of the shipments of goods with which unscrupulous men line their pockets at the expense of humbler subjects. There are even rumors that these lofty royal servants do worse than ignore these merchant dealings—they profit from them …