by Jim Grimsley
The house rose out of what would have seemed a ridge of land if such a thing were possible on a river delta; the Smiths built the rock along with the house, which circles the narrow summit, rising to the peak. The lower series of halls are for public ceremony, but above is a well-appointed palace with rooms scrupulously maintained by the city burghers, used for meetings when neither King nor Queen are in residence. Words in three of the Anynae tongues are carved over the main gate to the house, all saying the same thing, “Chunombrae is the heart of the Anynae in this world.” Imral translated for me, since these were languages I did not know.
Our army camped in Chunombrae’s lower halls, smoke from cook-fires passing through hidden places in the intricately carved ceilings. We passed through the commotion of the soldiers settling in, noises echoing on stone walls, camp marshals running from place to place, the burghers’ agents offering all that we could need in terms of firewood, supplies, the like. I dismounted when one of the grooms saw us and I handed Nixva over to her. I said good-bye with a sweet Word that he liked, for his ears only, and he whinnied and pranced away.
Kirith Kirin had claimed the highest of the rooms in the house, an apartment at the top, arches open to the sea air, closed chambers behind, with windows of colored glass. A long climb, sometimes in the open but often under arches of stone carved like slender fish. We found Kirith Kirin standing in one of the galleries gazing over the Bay of Anyn beyond the sea gates of Charnos, gray water stretching out in every direction. I stared myself, never having seen so much water, at least not with the eyes of my body. The real thing, the smell of the salt wind, the taste in the mouth, is different from conceptions of it. Imral dismissed the bodyguard and we stood alone in the salty air. Kirith Kirin said, “This city changes so slowly. It seems exactly the same to me as five hundred years ago.”
“The same to me, too,” Imral agreed, and I stood there for a moment, looking at both of them.
The city was a wonder to me, all brand new. I stared at the masses of buildings of every description, every color, every shape, jammed together, looming over the banks of the canals and waterways, bridges crossing here and there, a maze of a place if there was ever one, a riot of sounds and smells, but rising over that confusion the curve of the Tervan causeway that led from the gate to Chunombrae. The city center stood where the causeway traffic halted, and I watched for as long as I was allowed. We had that view of the southern city that is still my favorite, the Twar Market and the Old Market, the wharves and warehouses along the docks, and the moored ships in the harbor, waiting maybe for a wind to lift their sails.
In view of the circumstances a good deal of ceremony was being suspended; the Succession had never before taken place under force of arms and therefore the Mayor was willing to make allowances. But Kirith Kirin would have to go to the round temple, across a plaza from the main gate of Chunombrae, to meet the burghers and pray. The Anynae are lovers of prayer and pray six times a day when they can. They have come to light the lamps as we do but accompany this with the praying they prefer. Brun explained the kinds of prayer to me, that evening, when she came with the Finru company that would escort Kirith Kirin to the temple. A different style of prayer for waking, for first part of morning, for noon, for afternoon, for evening, for night. Some of the prayers are like the morning and evening songs we sing, quite simple and plain. When I asked if she were praying to YY or someone else, she merely shrugged. “If I had to choose, I would choose the Mother,” she said. But I did not think that was an answer to my question.
By the request of the burghers and the Mayor, I stayed in our rooms at the top of Chunombrae, a pleasant apartment lit with many kinds of lamps. Only because Kirith Kirin insisted had I been allowed in Charnos at all. I had learned a bit of this while Kirith Kirin was dressing to go to the temple, some good clothes that had traveled with the main army’s baggage train. “They’re not great lovers of magicians, the Anynae. They say magic causes all our problems. And most magicians don’t like to come here anyway, because of the Tervan walls.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t invent myself, and I don’t mind missing the temple if I can stay up here and stare at the sky tonight.” The red moon was already rising, a ghost in the late day. He was on the way out as I asked, “But what about the walls?”
“They interfere with magic. A trick the Tervan know.”
He left and the red moon swelled, coloring the whole sky, the city below alive with light, the buildings spilling light onto the canals, the light dancing on the water, boats lit by lanterns sliding past; I could not help but gape at it all, and maybe I used better eyesight than a mortal is entitled to, in looking at it. This was not the first magic I had performed in Charnos; I had been keeping the usual eye on the south, listening for the towers, as had become my habit; and I was still wearing Fimbrel, its magic alive around me. I wouldn’t have thought of it, except that the walls were supposed to hinder me, but I felt no change.
For a while I went into deep trance, to get a good look around. The top of Chunombrae is high enough to be of some use as a device. I took a long look, nothing more. I hovered in the Cloak as if I were really in the air.
To do this work I had chosen the room with the colored lamps that had been spread with Jisraegen carpets and pillows, fire pots and low tables where Kirith Kirin had been reading some document from somebody. I left my body for a while, returning when there was commotion in the room. Kirith Kirin was there, along with King Evynar and Imral. They had dismissed the guard in a hurry when they found me in deep meditation.
“Jessex, what are you doing?” Kirith Kirin asked, alarm in his voice.
“Trying to see. That’s all. Taking a look south.”
“Here? But you can’t.”
“Why?”
He and Evynar were looking at each other. Drii skin darkens easily, at moments of consternation; Evynar’s had done so, and Kirith Kirin was watching me in confusion. “What did you see?” he asked. “Did you have any trouble?”
“No, no trouble.” I told him the Verm army was still waiting for us, that Drudaen’s shadow had reasserted itself around southern Karns and across the bay in places, but that he was still hidden.
Evynar closed his eyes and sat down. “Kehan.” The word for darkness in darkness, the word for the color of a winter night.
“What’s wrong? Do these people have some law against my doing magic here? You should have told me.”
Kirith Kirin’s face had gone grim. “Don’t say any more about this while we’re in the city.” His manner was serious and I became alarmed. He hardly seemed to see me at all. With King Evynar there, I decided it would be better not to ask any more questions. Kirith Kirin signaled that I should stay and so I sat on one of the cushions, near a fire pot, closing my eyes. They conferred in easy voices, a code about armies, double-time marching, terrain, expected obstacles. They were wondering, I guessed drowsily, when Karsten would arrive.
Evynar had gone and Kirith Kirin was leaning over me. He had a sober look. “I think I calmed him down a bit, but this has upset him. And it isn’t easy to upset Evynar.”
“What did I do?”
“Nothing. You didn’t do anything at all.”
He would answer no more questions, so I asked none. After a long while passed, when we were lying together and his arm was draped around me, he said, “Remember what I told you. Do nothing that can be understood as magic.” He was speaking to his court magician now, a voice that was used to being obeyed. I said I would do whatever he wanted, and I could feel the words soften him some, remind him of the sweet space between us. “You’ll understand why I’m asking for this after a while, Jessex. Is it all right?”
“Yes, it’s fine. I’ll get some books and practice my reading. I’ll be very quiet.”
“Drudaen won’t bother you while you’re here, except maybe pay someone to try to poison you.”
“He would know better, no poison he could make would reach me.”
He started to
answer this, but as suddenly stopped himself. “He might try anything, knowing you’re in Charnos.”
2
Early the next morning riders brought word to Kirith Kirin that Karsten was within four days march. They were marching under shadow, which had reasserted itself around Ivyssa and Arsk, and Karsten wrote that nothing had served to cement the determination of the Queen’s soldiers or her own more than the fact of shadow, “As if the world has grown very thin,” she wrote. “This is one experience I had been spared, up until now. The curse of a long life is that sooner or later nearly everything will happen to you.” She went on to give some details, that the blue army was under her command, that Nemort was not building a private army for himself. Kirith Kirin seemed relieved.
He folded up the letter very quietly and looked at me. “You’re not to do anything about shadow. All right? You may do the magics of vigilance but absolutely nothing else unless it’s to save your own life.”
No need to say yes. By now I had guessed at least part of the truth. The Tervan walls actually should have made magic impossible. Not simply difficult, but impossible. I had taken a long look at the walls and knew. But I had felt no difference. I had not speculated aloud about this. Kirith Kirin went on to something else, and I wandered to the open arches to watch the harbor, glad of the peace, the release from work.
But as it happened, the next evening, at supper by myself, I found at the end of the second cup of wine that I had indeed been poisoned, I had drunk acht, a root extract the Svyssn make, used to kill the Husband once a decade. The Sisters had taught me to change acht in Arthen, along with many other such substances, and I made the Words in the kei space and power moved to alter the substance, to render it harmless, to take it within. Quickly, because acht works quickly, and I would have been paralyzed and dead quite suddenly otherwise. The poison was in the wine cup, which had been brought to me by one of Kirith Kirin’s own people. Most of the wine still in the cup. I sent for the bodyguard and asked him to find Gaelex; everyone else was in a meeting with the burghers down in one of the ceremonial halls.
She came at once and I showed her the cup and told her I suspected the wine was poisoned. A few minutes later she came back completely pale to ask who had given me the cup. I told her I had smelled the wine and been suspicious of it, so I had not drunk any. She found that odd, I think, knowing Gaelex. The glass had been half empty.
She brought me some food, water, and wine that she herself knew to be safe, and I thanked her. After that I was alone in those stone rooms again.
Kirith Kirin arrived earlier than I expected. I was reading some poems by Ketol that Imral had told me were very fine, but the language was hard and taxed my knowledge of the formal modes of High Speech. Ketol appeared to have fallen in love a number of times and made a lot of verse about it. I was reading the one about the nightingale when Kirith Kirin came in. I put down the book. “Did Gaelex talk to you?”
His anger was visible. “Of course. She’s questioning a few people. She’s had to involve the burghers, which isn’t good. But they staff this part of the house, the wine came from them. We’ll have our own people in here from now on, after this.”
“She told them I smelled the poison?”
“And that she gave the wine to a dog and the poison killed it almost instantly. One of the burghers suggested you might have put the poison in the wine yourself.” He ground his jaw on that. “You may imagine what I said to that.” He was in fact still raging. “It will be a while before he speaks in my hearing again.”
“I didn’t actually smell it until I had drunk half the glass. I had to do magic to change it. But no one was here.”
He washed completely white. He was near a stool and sat down on it. “Praise God.”
I handed him something to drink himself, he seemed to need it. “Gaelex brought that,” I said, before he could ask. “She brought the food, too. Brought it with her own hands, I mean. So it’s safe.”
He’d had some to drink already, beer, judging by the smell. The Charnos breweries are well-known to be the best in Aeryn, the burghers like to show off what they make. But that hardly explained the sudden flood of tenderness. He acted as though I had really come close to death, when he should know better.
There were no other incidents. The poison was traced to one of the householders in Chunombrae on evidence which nearly everyone except the burghers considered to be dubious, and the man was executed before I could question him. Gaelex talked to him, and she came away believing he might have brought the wine but he was hardly the person to afford acht, which had to be brought all the way from the farthest north country. Stolen, no doubt, since its use among the Svyssn is only for the ritual.
But Drudaen should know that acht could not act on me fast enough, that I would recognize the poison and change it. None of this made sense, unless I was right and the walls were supposed to have prevented me from making magic at all, in which case the poison would have worked and I would be dead.
That explained Kirith Kirin’s reaction, too.
Soon I had something new to think about, though, when I was standing on the arched walkway high above the city. I was keeping an eye on the countryside, as Kirith Kirin had said I could do, and that day Verm troops arrived to reinforce the army hereabouts. Some of them had marched from Turis, but the bulk of them came from south, from Aerfax. That was my suspicion, and Kirith Kirin’s as well. He had posted sentries on the walls, anticipating even an invasion by the sea and drilling the city militia in the closing of the sea gates, about which he knew a lot. He instructed the sentries to keep a careful eye on the Verm battalions, so we were informed right away when the army formed up suddenly and marched across the causeway, taking all the land between it and the bridge across Osar.
“The Verm believe you won’t do magic from the city,” Kirith Kirin said.
“Because of the Tervan walls.”
He nodded, tight-lipped. “It’s well known. So well known I never thought to tell you. No magician comes to Charnos because magic doesn’t work here.”
I blinked. Except it works for me, and that’s a bad sign. For a moment, just a moment, I was angry at him. “I’ll have to go outside. Now.”
The thought made him grim. But he knew as well as I there was no choice.
He sent word for the gate to be opened on my signal. Imral escorted me out of the palace and someone brought Nixva. I was wearing Fimbrel, but kept the color plain and the texture dull, as if it were truly merely a cloak; I did magic in doing even that much, but nobody seemed to notice. We had an escort of a dozen or so, for what purpose I don’t know, since I would go through the gates without any of them, even Imral. The gates were opening as we approached, and our party halted. I gave the signal to open the gate and waited.
I turned Nixva and he walked up the causeway through the gatehouse. On the other side of the gate we stopped, and I gave the signal to close it behind me.
They saw me, the Verm did. They were formed up in battle order maybe a stade away, out of arrow-shot.
Nixva walked slowly toward them.
I made a mist around us and we vanished. Consternation rippled among the Verm, and Nixva stepped easily into their ranks. Today we would make no room for mercy; so I put away my heart for awhile and began the long incantation Dead Hand Moving, as the Verm searched this way and that, maybe feeling the breath of my breeze as I passed, and when the song was ready, I set it loose and moved my hand from place to place, and this one died, and that one, dropped to the ground, each death more, harder, more painful, the Verm groaning, something melting in their chests, a burst of pain and the flesh a puddle there, one by one collapsing, scattered through the ranks, as though I were everywhere at once. Their confusion was complete. They had served Drudaen, not opposed him, they were not prepared for me. I rode through their ranks of infantry and their mounted wings of cavalry and soon the horses were screaming in terror as their riders died on their backs. I spared the horses, not only because it is
unpleasant to kill an animal but because they have a terror of killing magic, they can feel it, and their reaction would create more confusion in the lines. By the time I stayed my hand and turned to look at them, the rear ranks of Verm infantry were edging away from the bridge. They gathered their dead and wounded as best they could and began a general retreat.
I looked into the eyes of a Verm woman as she lay dying at my feet. I released the mist and let her see me, too. Taller than Imral, broad shoulders, her breasts long and slack, the center of her chest dissolved into a kind of gray paste, the light ebbing from her eyes.
At the head of the bridge with the Osar at my back I showed myself again, a burst of light to draw their eyes, stripping the mist away. This time the ones closest drew back in panic, and the panic multiplied through the formations. Their officers, a mix of Verm and gentry, managed to get them in order after a struggle. I waited at the bridge quietly.
