by Tanith Lee
He had driven beyond the lake. The way grew treacherous, then impassable. He tethered the animals and began to walk. Some instinct drove him upward. The sun was almost down, a smudge of savage light on the mountain crests.
He came unexpectedly on a hovel and a wretched field. Behind it a preliminary flank stretched up toward the blackness of a cave mouth. He paused, staring up at it. He had heard of men drawn by the edge of a precipice to leap down into death. Something about the black hole of the cave drew him with a similar chilly compulsion.
A woman came suddenly out of the hut. She seemed to see him; she waved to him and hurried up. She moved in a coquettish way, but, coming close, he saw her dirt, her age and her pathetic idiocy.
“Would you like to come in the house?”
Finding him silent, she pulled down her dress in a dreadful and revolting parody of allure, and he saw the brilliant jewels about her neck. She must have stolen them. Nothing of the hovel or herself proclaimed any wealth and these violet gems—clearly she had no idea of what they could bring her.
“Where did you find your necklace?” he asked.
At once she clutched her throat.
“I have no necklace—no—no—none at all.”
He took half a pace toward her. She began to scream, and out from the hut burst a great brute of a man. As he raced up the slope, the woman caught at him, but he thrust her off and she fell headlong in the withered stubble.
Raldnor drew his knife.
“I’m the Storm Lord’s man. Watch yourself.”
The creature checked. With bewildered accusation he said: “You shouldn’t’ve made her yell.”
“I did nothing. I asked her about her necklace. Did you thieve it for her?”
“I? No, lord. She’s a fool, an insect. I have to beat her . . .”
The woman whimpered as she heard him.
“Ask her where she got it.”
The man lurched to her and pulled her up. He stared at the jewels as she made little sounds of terror.
“Where’d you get this glass, slut?”
“There—up there—a man came out and I took them when he slept.”
Raldnor stared up again, where she pointed, into the solitary, ink-black nostril of the rock. A feverish coldness filled his body.
There had been a legend. Eraz had told it to him when he was a child. The jewel of the goddess, the Serpent’s Eye . . .
He took a coin from his belt and threw it to the man. Then moved on up the slope towards the hole of night.
• • •
Near midnight, certain lovers strolling still in gardens, or human vermin abroad on their various business, heard a chariot pass them on the road. Women glanced from saffron windows and sighed theatrically, for it was the Sarite who drove beneath on the streets of Koramvis.
On the terrace of the Palace of Peace two or three late watch ceased laughing together and stood to attention. When he came, he had a look about him that kept them very quiet. They discussed it after—perhaps some pleasure drug of Xarabiss, or some woman who had at last proved too much even for Raldnor Am Sar . . .
In an inner room an officer of the Queen’s guard was lounging—Kloris. Raldnor’s mind moved sluggishly. He supposed the man had been after Lyki once again, but Kloris bowed with insolent, exaggerated courtesy and said: “Her majesty sent me to relieve you of your post. That is, as guard to the Princess Astaris. Here’s the relevant paper and the Queen’s seal. My men escorted the royal Karmian at dusk—she now occupies a suite in the Storm Palace.” He smiled, promoting conspiracy. “No doubt the Lord Amrek would expect to find her there.”
Raldnor stirred within himself a little way from the stupor of the mountain. He had sensed her gone. He took the ornate scroll, glanced at Val Mala’s seal. Kothon would already have done as much. He had half expected this sudden reverse of tactics because of fright at Amrek’s return. He said what was necessary, but Kloris did not go.
“There’s another matter—I discovered a creature skulking about by your apartments an hour ago, while I was awaiting your return.”
Kloris’s insufferable smile wavered a little as Raldnor looked at him.
“Well,” he said, “I apprehended the man for you. He’s dumb, but your—er—Wolves—ascertained from his signalings that it was you he wanted. They have him now.”
Raldnor gave him the briefest nod and went below to the guard room. Kloris, summarily dismissed, continued to idle about the place with a great show of nonchalance.
• • •
Like a shade come from the dead, the dumb man gazed at him with torpid eyes. He was a beggar, his feet scarred and dusty, yet he held out a little pouch of black velvet. In the pouch was a strand of blood-red silk—hair that could only have come from one woman’s head.
Raldnor, the drug dream of the cave still on him, responded to this new urge like a sleepwalker. Pausing only to wrap about himself a black anonymous cloak and not once to think, he followed the mute out into the midnight city.
They passed behind the Storm Palace, on the broad white boulevards, under a cyclamen moon.
Soon the streets became narrower. Pole lights were infrequent here. At last he grew uneasy. A woman’s lazy voice, calling to him from one of the timbered doorways, brought her for a moment nearer death than she knew.
The dank, foggy odor of the river seeped into the air. Raldnor’s guide turned into a street of villas, on whose tall leaning gates broken escutcheons of ancient houses showed. Water snakes and rats were the present tenants of these crumbling palaces, and probably the robber, cutthroat and procurer.
The dumb man hurried down the pavement and went under the ebony shadow of an arch.
An ideal place for a murder, Raldnor thought, but he followed.
There was a wild garden beyond the high wall. He stared at the overgrown lawns, the pallor of toppled statuary. The dumb man had halted. He stretched out his arm, pointing through a tangled growth of trees toward the ruined hulk of a mansion. It had blind-eyed empty windows, and beyond its ivy-webbed towers lay the iron gleam of the river.
Raldnor’s guide slipped sideways into darkness and was immediately gone.
Raldnor drew the knife from his belt. It had been her silken hair, none other, yet the ruin filled him with a sense of leaden distrust. He went forward through the blowing grasses.
The garden was empty. Whatever shadows proved to be assassins searched for smaller prey than himself.
He passed between the fallen columns. The moon sent spears in intermittent pale hot shafts through the damaged roof. Ahead was a hint of the faint topaz glow of a lamp.
He threaded the dilapidation toward it and came out into a rectangular salon, open on one side to the Okris and the river-sounding night. Across the water temple lights burned on the far bank; here a little bronze lamp flickered on its pedestal. There was a great bed with transparent curtains. He touched them, and a fine powder of dust and rotten gauze fell from his fingers.
He felt a cool, soft, searching question open in his brain.
He turned swiftly. There was a woman in a hooded cloak standing in the doorway. He crossed to her and gently pushed back the hood and slid his hands into the flames of her hair.
“How did you discover this place?”
“I’ve been listening to gossip at last. This has been a lovers’ trysting place for many years. The old caretaker is blind.”
“So he says. You should never have exposed yourself to danger in this way.”
“We have so little time,” she said quietly.
It was an expression of despair, yet not uttered in sadness. It was so unarguable, he answered nothing. Then she touched his face and said: “Your goddess spoke to you.”
He held her back a way and the river silence settled round them.
“No, Astaris.”
Very s
lowly he opened his mind to her and let her see what he had seen. The shock, the numbing fear; the exaltation he lessened for her, partly forgetting that some of its impact on him had sprung from the beliefs of his childhood and the inherited memories of his race. He gave to her the stumbling dark cave, the tingling of the water drops, the singing soundlessness and the inner region where the light swelled from some unimaginable source. And then the soaring whiteness of the giantess with her whorling golden tail. Anackire, the Lady of Snakes. His bones had seemed to melt.
But the awful ecstasy was brief. He saw her for what she was, the magnificent symbol, not the thing itself. Even her serpent tail was damaged, some of its golden plates displaced and lost. Yet She had stood in Dorthar, the heart and hub of Vis, for uncountable centuries, this yellow-haired, white-faced Lowlander. How many other men had found her and fled? Not many. Only one, it seemed, had looted her, and there was no word of her in Dorthar—only those legends of mountain banaliks and demons so common to all lands.
He felt the woman tremble in his arms and drew her closer.
“I thought you had been granted a vision,” she said, “but She, too, was only an image.”
“No, She gave me something, something too subtle for me to understand as yet. But it will come. Besides, you’re all and everything I want. And there’ll be an answer for us. I know it.”
Beyond the terrace Zastis had flushed the river like metallic wine. It brought them the first consolation of passion, and soon a fire to consume them. The mansion was a quiet and secret place; it muffled the whispers and the cries of lovers, and the anguish or the joy which lay between each joining through the long embers of the night.
• • •
Kloris crossed the still garden of the Palace of Peace. He had had a good deal of wine, and it was very late—or early, he supposed—near dawn. By a little ornamental pool sat a girl in a loose pale dress.
He still pursued Lyki simply because he had not yet had her. It had occurred to him, after his fourth cup of liquor, that he now possessed a piece of news which might alter things.
He stumbled on a root. In the tree to which the root belonged, a bird woke and let out a single piercing argent note. Lyki turned.
“What a clumsy spy you are, Kloris.”
He chuckled.
“One day you’ll cut your mouth on your tongue. What makes you think I’ve been spying on you? I don’t need to, do I, to see how your belly’s rounding?”
He was pleased when she flinched and looked away. Reaching her, he slipped an arm about her and fondled her breast. She thrust him off.
“Still hoping your virile Dragon Lord will do that for you, Lyki?” She made no reply. “The Sarite,” Kloris said, very carefully, “has found himself another repast. A strange eccentric lady, who sends mute beggars to conduct him to her.”
He saw he had caught her attention.
“What do you mean?”
“A mute came, and Raldnor followed him out. Where else would they be going on a Zastis night?”
“A dumb man—” she said. She seemed bemused.
He leaned on the tree casually.
“A dumb, tongueless, speechless mute.”
Moving then, he thought, with unexpected speed, he blundered against her and caught her close, but she twisted away and, before he could stop her, raked his cheek with needle-pointed nails. As he shouted and staggered, she shot across the level lawns.
Going back through the garden, Kloris passed the night patrol with their lamps.
When he was barely past, one turned grinning to the other.
“Kloris found a kalinx in the shrubbery tonight.”
• • •
The dawn was cold with the ashes of the Star, as cold as burned-out fire.
Cold eyed, Lyki halted at the gate of the Palace of Peace.
As she had thought, the iron chariot stood a little way up the white road, waiting for her. There was a veil of mist, and the chariot seemed to grow out of it, heavy and black as an old anger. She set her hand on the rail and looked up. He had learned to drive and control his team with his left hand. It must have been hard to do.
“Your little urchin messenger found me, as you see,” he said. “It seems now you’re as anxious to harm Raldnor of Sar, in your woman’s way, as I am. I thought the time might come.”
“I’ll tell you something to make you happy then, Ryhgon. And after that I’m done with it.” She looked down at her hand on the rail, then up again. “Your enemy has spent the past night with the Princess Astaris.”
The scar on Ryhgon’s face seemed to catch light. A grimace of pain or savage pleasure twisted his features.
“Do you know what you’ve said, woman? Are you speaking the truth, or what your wicked tongue suggests to you?”
“The truth. Would I dare make such an accusation otherwise?”
“I remember,” Ryhgon said, “he was never out of the beds of the whores at Abissa. It seems he hasn’t lost the habit.”
“I’d thought for a long while there was something between them,” Lyki continued, venom in her eyes. “Yesterday a man came begging for bread. He was a mute, and she happened to hear of it. She ordered me to fetch him, and then sent me out. That was before the Queen’s escort came to take her to the Palace. When she went with them at dusk, she left all her women behind to see to her clothes and jewels. That was unusual, but she’s always strange. I thought no more of it until I learned that a dumb man came here at midnight and summoned Raldnor away with him, as it’s fancied, to some tryst.”
“You’re a jealous little bitch, Lyki. The gods will see you suffer for it.” But he grinned at her. “Now you’ll come with me and tell the lord Kathaos all this.”
Startled, she drew back from the chariot.
“I said, I’m done with it.”
“You’re not.”
She turned to run in sudden panic, but he caught her up and thrust her in beside him. A jeweled comb fell from her hair on to the road.
The chariot lurched into movement and the sky broke into a fiery race.
They came to Kathaos’s villa, stone-still above the city in the morning.
Ryhgon pulled the chariot to a halt and tethered the animals. He looked back at her only once.
“Stay here. If you run, I’ll come after you, and I can be tenacious.”
He went in through a wall entrance, and the door was shut.
She did not dare flight, though she waited a long while. She recalled too well the angry scar, igniting with its own purple life. Eventually she opened a round of mirror in her bracelet and tried to repair her face paint. The comb she had lost on the road had been worth a good deal; no doubt some thief would find it and be grateful.
At last a servant in Kathaos’s yellow livery came to the wall door and beckoned her in. She followed him through the tasteful and opulent rooms until she found herself facing Kathaos across a length of icy marble.
He was quite expressionless, as usual, but Ryhgon stood on his left, his face congested with impatience.
“Well, madam.” Kathaos’s coldness offset the demoniac elation of the man beside him. “I’ve heard a curious story. I believe you’ve been Raldnor’s mistress.”
“A while since,” she said sharply.
“And now you’re telling tales about your lover.”
“I wasn’t brought here willingly.”
“Were you not? Did you speak unwillingly to Ryhgon, too? What prompted you, madam—your sense or your spite?”
Tightly, and with acid dignity, she said: “I don’t think the gods of Dorthar would spare me if I allowed the Storm Lord’s bed to be soiled.”
“Very well. I’ll hear your story again. I’d advise you to choose your words with care. I wonder if you understand what you’ll be sending Raldnor to. I see you think you do. Then you can bear in mind th
at if you lie to me, you yourself will go to it.”
• • •
Val Mala poised a jewel in the hollow of her creamy throat.
“Poor Kathaos,” she murmured, “I’ve been neglecting you.”
Kathaos smiled.
“That’s your privilege, madam, and my misfortune. But not the reason I’ve sought an audience.”
She raised her eyebrows. Amrek had returned this morning, and any signs of her rumored illness had been put from her. Their meeting, he had heard, had as usual been turbulent. Certainly, Val Mala would not have gone to it in any state of vulnerability.
“I’ve been made the master of some strange information that will doubtless bring you much grief.” He paused only for a fraction. “The information is unfavorable to your son’s bride.” He marked her interest. She did not attempt to disguise it. “Nevertheless, the facts of the matter are uncertain. I require your jurisdiction, madam, to prove them true or false.”
“Tell me what she’s done.”
“I hear that she’s kept an assignation with the Storm Lord’s elected Commander, Raldnor of Sar.”
He was unprepared for the excessive excitement with which she greeted this statement. Eyes burning, she demanded: “You mean she’s given herself to him, made herself his whore?”
He concealed a smile. Ironically he supposed she too had made herself Raldnor’s “whore.” She seemed to guess his thought.
“The Sarite has never been anything to me, Kathaos,” she said. “He’s an ambitious upstart. I shan’t be sorry when Amrek’s rid of him.”
There was no intimation in Kathaos’s face of his own opinion. He would regret bitterly the necessity of Raldnor’s death—Raldnor, who might have been the key to so much. If there had been more time to plan. But the circumstances and the betrayal had been unforeseen. He had been forced to play for the lowest throw—Val Mala’s spite against Astaris—simply because the man he had been prepared to back was a fool. He regretted, too, that nothing better than the fire would sample the exquisite Astaris’s body.
