by Tanith Lee
• • •
A woman presented herself at the apartments of the princess. She was tall and sour-faced, her hair, the lifeless black of ebony, caught back in a snood of golden wool.
She answered Lyki’s challenge with an arid smile.
“I am Dathnat, the Queen’s chief woman. I am here to assess your mistress’s personal needs.”
She went about her task with few words, and her looks were as barren as her words and as unwanted as her person. When she was gone, Lyki mimicked her, screwing up her face and compressing her breasts with her hands.
Dathnat was a Zakorian, a strange custodian of the Queen’s beauty. Lyki guessed that Val Mala employed her as much for the service of her sharp ears and her bitter disposition as for her talents as handmaiden.
• • •
A scented lamp burned softly in the Queen’s bedchamber.
Val Mala had retired early. Two attendants worked, one on either side of the couch, painting and shaping toe and finger nails, and the Zakorian, Dathnat, had begun the kneading movements on her flesh. She was a skilled masseuse; the little creeping lines fled before her iron fingers.
Val Mala sighed.
“Who is this man all my women are chattering of?”
“The Dragon appointed by my lord, your son, madam.”
“What excellent hearing, Dathnat. This is the man from Sar? Amrek’s favorite. And what do they say?”
“They prattle about his body and his face. They say he has pale eyes, and a jealous mistress who guards him, though they’ve got from her that he is—” Dathnat paused distastefully, “remarkable between sheets.”
Val Mala gave a drowsy laugh.
“I’ve seen him, Dathnat. I don’t doubt his lady’s estimation.”
When the women were done with her, she sat for a long while by her mirror. It was her glory that she could still do this unafraid. Yes, she was a match for the Karmian, though twice her age. She pondered upon the new Dragon Lord, the upstart—he had had something in his face which reminded her of Orhn. She regretted the loss of Orhn still. She approached sadness when she thought of him. But the power she had given him had made him many enemies. When the grooms had brought his broken, battered body from the hunt, she had had them flayed and pinched with red-hot tongs, but could discover nothing. How should he fall from his chariot and be dragged by it till he was dead, he who had mastered chariots at the age of ten along with his first woman?
Oddly, she thought of Amnorh, too, on this night, for the first time in years. Amnorh the too-clever, whose body lay on the floor of Ibron. She did not regret him. It had amused her, long ago, when she had been told of his death.
Dathnat crouched at a clothes chest, inserting perfumed sachets among the robes. Val Mala had a sudden, strange hallucination; it seemed another woman’s figure—younger, graceful—was superimposed upon the Zakorian’s. Lomandra. Lomandra, who had fled in revulsion when she had completed the Queen’s task and dispatched the Lowlander’s bastard. Lomandra, the soft Xarabian fool.
“Dathnat, you should get yourself a lover,” Val Mala said. It was her pleasure to taunt the woman thus. The expected blood-burn appeared on the averted bony face. “A man like Kren, of the River Garrison, perhaps. A man with the shoulders of an owar.”
• • •
In the dark corridor a woman’s hand snatched his. Raldnor turned uneasily and found Lyki, with a bloodless face, at his elbow.
“Raldnor . . .”
“What is it?”
Her eyes kindled.
“You used not to be so brief with me.”
“There used to be no need. What’s the matter?”
She leaned against the wall.
“There was a message for me—a man waiting by the gate—”
“Did he muss your hair, then, this man? If you wanted a quiet night, you were a fool to go.”
“You!” she flared at him suddenly. “You don’t trouble yourself what happens to me. You put your child into my body and then you’re done with it.”
“By your account, Lyki, the child was as much your doing as mine.”
She would not look at him, or leave him either. She stood immobile, her eyes on the ground. When she raised them, they glittered with sudden spite.
“Am I dismissed, then, Dragon Lord? Would you rather spend your nights alone, dreaming about the little Sarite girl who didn’t want you?”
She had touched him nearer than she knew. Seeing his expression, she fell back a step.
“You delayed me to tell me something, Lyki. Tell it.”
“Very well. The man at the gate caught my arm, and he said: ‘You’re Lyki, Raldnor of Sar’s bitch.’ He had an ugly scarred face, and his right arm ended at the wrist, so I don’t think there’s any need to give you his name. He said: ‘Tell your bedfellow that I’ve something I owe him for my hand. Because of what he did, I’ve nothing better to do in life except watch him, and wait until his gods forsake him. When they do, I will be near. Tell him that.’” Lyki smiled lifelessly. “Then he spat. And let me go.”
She turned and walked away.
She did not come to his bed again, but he found no shortage of lovemaking when he desired it.
11.
IT WAS A VERY SOCIAL LIFE at Koramvis. Raldnor found that he was fashionable, an asset at the supper tables of rich men and beautiful women. His birth in Sar fascinated them. He became a practiced liar. He knew that for the most part it was taken for granted that he was a bastard of the Imperial line—either Rehdon’s work or that of one of Rehdon’s lesser brothers. They amused Raldnor, these nods and fawnings, but he had made Kothon his bodyguard. He, like all men of rank, considered now he had a need of one.
His fame gave rise to weird anomalies.
At a dinner in the Storm Palace he met an officer of the Queen’s guard, Kloris by name—a handsome boastful fool. He made it clear that he detested Raldnor and his meteoric ascent, and also that he coveted everything that was Raldnor’s, from his post to his woman. The man had been wooing Lyki in trite, unoriginal ways for the whole month that they had been in the city, simply because she was Raldnor’s. Raldnor wondered if she would lose her allure for Kloris now they had parted.
After the dinner the Queen made a brief appearance. She wore pleated white linen and a wig of gold silk. From a distance she was white-skinned and golden-haired. He had heard of the enmity between Val Mala and her son—was this some secret jibe at him, something she would not dare in his presence, yet which would be repeated to him in Thaddra?
She moved graciously among the important guests, her ladies drifting after her. The Zakorian was absent, he saw, but then that one was hardly for show.
Behind him, Kothon jerked to attention. Raldnor realized, with some initial surprise, that Val Mala had singled him out.
“Good evening, Dragon Lord.”
He bowed to her.
“Do you guard the princess well?”
He met her eyes then, and words caught in his throat. In her face was a meaning and an invitation quite apparent. Her sexuality breathed out of her, and a burning hot shiver crept along his spine.
“Koramvis is a safe city, madam,” he said presently.
“Not too safe, I trust. I’ve been told you’re something of a hero. A young hero shouldn’t become bored.”
Confronted with her like this, many men had grown afraid, he had heard. She was too potent, perhaps. But not for him. He had reacted to her already and the promise in her eyes. Besides, she was a power in this land, as Amrek was. He decided at once, and a cool, ambitious logic ruled the illogical ambition in his loins.
“One word from Dorthar’s Queen has dispelled any possible boredom forever.”
She laughed, the frivolous false laughter of a woman engaged. How old was she? She seemed only a few years his senior, even this close. She took his
arm lightly. People marked their progress as they walked.
“You invest me with an unfair amount of ability. One woman compared to so many, Dragon. You can pick and choose, I hear.”
“Alas, no. The gods would make me happy if I could.”
“Who is this that you desire, then? This unobtainable one.”
“I wouldn’t dare, madam, to pronounce her name.”
“Well,” she said. She smiled at him, pleased with the little play. “You shouldn’t despair, my lord of Sar, the gods may be kinder than you think.”
Leaving him, she gave him her hand to kiss. He encountered her smooth, scented, painted flesh. Her rings were cold on his lips.
In the guest palace that night he slept poorly. A girl with a red wig shared his bed—half of them wore red wigs since Astaris had come here. He no longer wanted her. He wanted the white-skinned bitch queen. Zastis would be in the sky within a month. How long would she make him wait for her, or would she change her mind? He felt cast back to his uneasy beginnings by this uncertainty, and the palace, which the women said was full of ghosts—more specifically one ghost—oppressed him in the dark.
But Val Mala, as she lay under the Zakorian’s hands, had no intentions of delay.
Dathnat herself could have told Raldnor how brief would be his waiting. She knew this sleekness, this restlessness in her mistress from before. She was a student of Val Mala and had been taught well.
“Tell me, Dathnat,” said the sleepy, throaty voice, “what’s your opinion of Raldnor Am Sar?”
“Your majesty knows I am unqualified to judge.”
Val Mala laughed. Her spitefulness, too, was always at its sharpest before a new affair, and Kathaos had been long away—first in Xarabiss, now in Thaddra.
Dathnat hated the Queen, but her heritage had made her stoical and very patient.
She thought of the Queen’s pet kalinx. Once so beautiful, that creature, and so dangerous. It had lurked about these apartments, Val Mala’s second self, equated with her name in the city. Innumerable lovers had gone in fear of it. Now the cold blue of its eyes was filmed and rheumy, its fur molted, its teeth rotten with age. It smelled. Val Mala could not bear it near her, though neither would she have it killed. Dathnat understood, even if the Queen did not, that to Val Mala the ruined cat represented her own person—age which she had cheated and the deformities of age that would one day invade her body.
In her stony soul, Dathnat smiled. The gods, who had given her nothing, had nothing to rob her of. She was younger than her mistress and would see the ending of her.
She worked upon the Queen’s skin with relish, striving with her iron hands to preserve, her eyes watching greedily for the first signs of Val Mala’s punishment.
• • •
A man came to him, wearing the insignia of the Queen.
“Dragon Lord, Val Mala, the royal mother of the Storm Lord, requests your presence at noon,” he said. His eyes said other things.
The day was very hot. The Storm Palace seemed to burn with dry white fire. A mask-faced girl with glinting eyes took him to a suite of rooms and left him there.
Smoky draperies shut out the harsh sunlight, and incense rose in eddies from ornate bowls. When she came in from behind the heavy curtains, she wore a plain robe, her black hair loose on her shoulders and her breasts. She looked incredibly young and incredibly knowing and certain of what she could do to him, and his eyes blackened for a moment in an irrepressible torrent of desire.
“Please sit,” she said. “No, beside me. How restrained you seem. Have I called you away from some important duty? Some—further heroism?”
“Your majesty must know by now the effect of her loveliness.”
“Do I affect you, then?” She poured wine into a cup and handed it to him. He could not drink it, and set the cup aside. The servility of her gesture had been intimation enough. He lifted her hand to his mouth, caressing it in quite a different way from before. He felt the pulse in her wrist quicken. She said: “Are you daring to insult me?”
Part of his cleverness as a lover was that he had always understood with every woman, except one, her basic needs, her sexual requirements, and had responded to them intuitively. With Val Mala he sensed what she asked him for, and took possession of her mouth before she had finished speaking, and when she stirred, he held her still.
But she was, after all, the Queen. At length he let her go. He had no doubt she would give them what they both wanted, yet the decision was to be hers.
She rose and held out her hand to him.
“A little walk,” she said, very low.
In the colonnade she ran her teeth along the edge of his hand.
“How did you lose this finger, my hero? In some fight?”
He had lied, too, about the circumstances of his birth, as well as the geography. Enough rumors had already accrued. Yet he had kept the falsehoods as near the truth as possible; it was easier that way. He knew nothing of the damaged finger, so he said now, as he had said before to many of the nobility of Koramvis: “I lost it in infancy, madam. I’ve no recollection how.”
The carved door slid open; beyond lay her bedchamber. This symbol struck him—some hint of permanence to come, in that it was not merely a couch he was to have her on. But she had halted in the doorway, and her face, though still smiling, had become suddenly altered, as if the smile were only the garland left behind after the feast. She looked as if—he could not quite be sure—as if she had abruptly glimpsed another person standing in his place.
“In infancy,” she echoed him, and her voice was strangely colorless. “I’ve heard it said you have the blood of my husband. Do you think it likely?”
Her coldness infected him. Desire fell away; his hands grew clammy. He felt himself on the brink of a fear he could not even guess at.
“Most unlikely, madam.”
“You have yellow eyes,” she said. She said it as if she spoke of something quite different, something horrible, obscene—a murder. All at once she seemed to shrink and shrivel. He saw in her face the weight of years which would eventually find her out. He no longer wanted her, she appalled him—why, he was uncertain. But he had been so close to the power she offered, still wanted that—
“Madam, how have I offended you?”
“You have the eyes of a Lowlander,” she hissed.
His blood turned to ice. He found himself trapped, confronted unaccountably by a terrified old woman, and beyond them both, a waiting gold and silver bed of love.
“What did you want from me?” she shrilled. “What? You’ve no hope of anything—anything, do you hear? Reveal yourself and he’ll kill you.”
He felt himself back involuntarily away.
“Yes—go—go! Get out of my sight!”
He turned, he almost ran from her, driven by forces of hate and fear he did not understand.
Val Mala fled inside the door and pushed it shut. The room was full of shadows.
“Lomandra?” she asked them. Nothing stirred. No, it was not ghosts she had to fear. It was the living.
The living.
Strange, she had never doubted, never allowed the intrusion of doubt. She had thought the Xarabian had fulfilled her promise and smothered Ashne’e’s baby. She had not dreamed the finger she had flung into the brazier had come from the hand of a living child. When Lomandra vanished, she had been unsurprised. The woman had been sickened and had run back to Xarabiss. It did not matter, for her work was done.
And yet now, never having doubted, she knew without hesitation, knew that the child had survived and grown into a man. A man with the face, the body, the very stance of a king.
She had thought herself rid of Rehdon.
But it was Rehdon she had found suddenly beside her—Rehdon in his youth, at the peak of his beauty and magnificence, as she had known him in Kuma when he had seemed t
o blind her like a sun. She had always believed the child was her husband’s seed, despite her accusations; the gods had seen fit to prove it to her. And simultaneously he had given her the key to what he was.
Had Lomandra died before she could tell him his history, or had she lived and spoken? It seemed not. Would he be so stupid as to intimate to her in such a forthright way, if he had known? Unless, of course, he had meant to frighten her.
He must be killed. But how? They said Amrek loved him. Raldnor’s curious, swift ascent seemed to uphold this. She would not dare have him assassinated out of hand. Inform Amrek, then, that his favorite was a Lowlander—but that would reveal her part in it, what she had tried to do. She hated her son, yet she feared him. Who could tell which way he would jump? Perhaps she would suffer as much as the bastard.
Sheer terror clutched her heart. What was his purpose here? A yawning gulf seemed to open at her feet. She glimpsed her face in a black mirror beyond the bed, a face for this moment stripped of beauty, and old—old as the mummy dust of tombs.
• • •
Zastis was in the sky, a red wound at the moon’s back. There was a joke abroad in the lower quarters of the city. It concerned Astaris and the star and the color that her hair must be, surely, between her thighs.
There were rumors about Amrek also. He would be home shortly, Thaddra’s barbaric insolence settled. There had been a skirmish or two. A few women would weep for their lost men, but that was nothing besides the prestige of Dorthar. And the worst was past. Kathaos was already in the city, attending to various council duties that must precede the Imperial wedding. The rites would be held at their traditional time—the peak of Zastis.
There was also Kathaos’s personal honor to the bride. He had been ever mindful of this, though not vulgar: two or three expensive, unique gifts, as was fitting. Now he arranged a royal hunt in the hilly forest land—the acres of cibba, oak and thorn to the northwest above Koramvis. Kathaos entertained certain thoughts concerning Astaris. He appreciated the beautiful and the rare. His childhood at the court in Saardos had taught him to admire and value things, and, at the same time, systematically deprived him of them. Now he would pay handsomely for an exceptional piece of enamel work from Elyr, and be prepared to wait anywhere up to a year for a silversmith to achieve the required perfection in some lamp stand or set of plate. He had had to wait a lot of his life—be patient and be slow to get anything he wanted. It had become an acquired skill. So, in the same way that he saw the Karmian as an art object, he was prepared to maneuver, most of all to wait to have her. He had attained several high beds—Val Mala’s not the least. And he had enjoyed the preliminaries as much as the prize—in some cases, more.
