by Tanith Lee
“Majesty, if the Lord Amrek understands I’m working against the princess, he’ll try to stop me, perhaps find some way to remove me. If the investigation were undertaken in your name, I can apprehend whatever treason there is, unhindered.”
She nodded her gold-tiered head in unequivocal assent.
“Do it. What plans have you made?”
Concisely he told her. In a curious way he recalled Amnorh to her then—Amnorh, who had promised her Rehdon’s death and whose reward had been his own. But, as she heard him out, she smiled, for she saw the host of her enemies overthrown, the fall of bright stars and the exorcism of ghosts before her eyes.
• • •
A man bowed to Raldnor on the terrace of the Palace of Peace and slipped into his hand a jewel.
“Do you know this gem, my lord?”
“The Princess Astaris’s seal ring—how did you come by it?”
“No need for anger, my lord. My mistress could assure you of that. She asks you to attend her this evening.”
“Who is your mistress?”
“You know her well, Dragon Lord. Her last servant gave her request no tongue.”
Raldnor stared at the man, and in his heart feared for her. The speech seemed brashly put. She had chosen this time a poor messenger.
“You’re too open. Take care.”
“I beg your pardon, my lord. I only do as I’m bid. Will you go where you found her last?”
“She knows I will.”
“Do you remember the way? This time there’ll be no guide.”
“I remember it.”
“Leave here two hours after sunset then, when she’s left the feast.”
He bowed again and departed.
He himself, being master of a certain trade plied along the river bank, knew the old mansion on Water Street. It seemed they had questioned the princess’s women as to where their own trysts were taken, then wrung from the old imbecile of a caretaker all the rest—the hooded woman and her lover, the priceless jewels that had been given in payment. Then Astaris’s chief lady had stolen her seal ring. It had been easy enough to do, and the villain, as he slunk across the garden, felt scorn for their stupidity, these great ones who had everything and who thought themselves so beloved of the gods they would never come to grief. Well, let them rot, the pair of them.
• • •
Raldnor almost guessed the trap that had been laid for him. Not consciously—it was a prickling in the core of his bones. Yet he neither analyzed nor hesitated, for at that time he seemed to live in a limbo of desire. Besides, he had feared treachery before and found none.
As he left the gate, a figure, cloaked and hooded like himself, slipped out after him, unseen.
In the old unpaved alleys of the city, his dark intuitions came to the fore. When he reached the street of villas, his skin was crawling without apparent reason. He crossed under the arch, his knife drawn, and went through the rustling garden to the portico of the great house. Somewhere ahead the lamp was burning. Yet it did nothing to still his glittering nerves. He paused and reached out for her with his mind through the gloomy, river-smelling palace, and there was no answer.
He experienced an instant’s icy clutching dread that she was no longer living, yet Anici had taught him that this at least he would have known. He went through the shadows and into the salon.
The lamp shone as before, yet more dimly, and the river washed beyond. On the bed there was a dark muffled shape, which rose up suddenly and poked out its scarred and grinning face.
“Not such a dainty repast as you thought, Sarite.”
Ryhgon. He barely noted him. He knew abruptly that the shadows of the hall outside had been full of men. With a single leap he crossed the room and the narrow strip of terrace. Poised in the air, he saw the Okris gape for him, sprinkled with lights, until his passage cleaved them.
• • •
In high summer, in the streams of the Plains, he had swum to wash away the day’s dust. But this water, now, in Koramvis was sluggish and very cold beneath. When he lifted his head for air, he rose against a stone wall, viscous with muddy weeds, where an old cooking pot floated on the scum.
The terrace of the ruined palace lay some way back now, and lights had flared up there. They knew he was in the river, but he had been too quick for them. They had assumed that he had gone the other way, for this was where they pointed. A partially submerged plank had caught their attention, and one man flung a spear at it. He dived again.
Red moonlight filtered down to him, and the river gods hung on his heels.
He rose a second time; the mansion was now far off downstream. A stairway lifted itself brokenly out of the water. He climbed up onto the desolate wharf, and rats scuttled to shelter. Beyond, black alleys opened out. He chose one at random and moved into it.
Soon he heard the sound of men’s voices, the dull chink of scale plate. Then the color of the torches rose behind a row of hovels on his left. They must have recognized the plank for what it was and split their party in two. He gripped the pole of a street light and pulled himself up it to the level of a house roof, then dropped silently and lay flat on filthy clay still warm from the day’s heat.
They passed beneath him with flare-lit faces, thrusting spears into dark areas—doors, alley mouths—but never looked up at the parapet.
“Must have headed for the gate!” a man shouted below.
The hunting party made off northward up the narrow street.
His mind in turmoil, he lay on the roof. Besides himself and them, nothing seemed to be stirring. He lifted his head. He could still see the tawny lurch of their torches, off to the right now, and the hovels standing out like black paper against it. Yet beyond those, thrusting up like a pale marker in the uniform flat of the slums, he made out the battlements of the River Garrison.
The half-formed plan took hold of him, a madman’s plan as once before. Reach Kren’s hold and he could use his rank, perhaps, to commandeer a chariot, then drive across the searchlines to the Storm Palace—who could predict he would run that way? Then he must find some means to get to Astaris. He had had a moment’s chilling leisure now to understand what had happened, and to see what would be done to her. But he would pry her out of whatever imprisonment they had allotted her, however meager his chances or strong the jail. He would sell his life and freedom for hers, if he had to, without thinking, for it was impossible for him to imagine that he might lose her to the fire, and he infinitely preferred to envisage his death rather than her agony. It was a new wine that filled him. As in the garden at Abissa, impulse ruled him and drove him on.
He swung over the parapet and dropped noiselessly to the cobbles.
And saw, too late, the individual patrol lurking in wait for him. As they thrust from cover, the Star painted their eager faces. He doubled back and a shout went up. Torchlight converged behind him.
He sped up the narrow alley, doubled a second time into Date Street and emerged onto the open and unsheltered square that fronted the high Garrison gates. Two red-cloaked sentries stood leaning on their spears on the raised walk before the gate. They were at ease, expecting, until now, nothing special this night. The baying of a hunting pack and the glaring brands jerked up their heads. They leveled spears.
A figure ran below, and after it, into the square, a group of fourteen or fifteen of the Queen’s guard. There came then an abrupt cessation of all movement, each man poised like an actor in a tableau, scoured by the raw light of the flares.
Raldnor stared up at the sentries on the walk. He drew in his breath, hard, and prepared to speak with every shred of his authority. It was to be his throw of the dice against death, but he saw only her in his mind’s eye.
The air parted with a hiss behind him, and he felt something thud against his back. He thought they had flung a stone at him, but there was no pain. He turned hal
f around to face them—it had been part of his earliest training never to turn his blind side to an enemy, and he had forgotten it. In that moment he found he could no longer see. It took him suddenly, too swiftly to make him afraid. His hearing went next and after that, everything. The last conscious thought left him in the void was a woman’s name, shining like a red jewel, but he could no longer recollect to whom it belonged. A moment later there was nothing.
The guard who had driven his knife into Raldnor’s back moved to one side to allow him to fall on to the square. He grinned at the watchers above and bent to wipe his blade on the fallen man’s cloak.
“Do you have the authority to kill?” one of the sentries called.
The guard finished wiping his knife and pointed to Val Mala’s blazon.
“That’s my authority.”
The sentry turned and bellowed back at the gate, and into the courtyard beyond. Almost at once an alarm bell began to toll.
“You can tell the Dragon Kren all about your authority when he comes.”
The guard spat out: “What’s to keep us here?”
But the gates had rolled wide, and a phalanx of Garrison soldiery moved out, fully armed, even to their shields. A man was quickly sent for Kren.
The Dragon Lord followed his officers out into the walk and showed neither displeasure nor irony at being summoned to this brawl. With his steady and appraising eyes he took in the scene and said at last, quite evenly: “Who is this man?”
“Ours,” the guard snarled, “by order of the Queen. Cause us no further trouble, Dragon Lord.”
“No one has answered my question,” Kren said with the utmost politeness, his eyes like polished steel. “I asked you who the man was.”
“The Sarite who calls himself Raldnor. King Amrek’s Commander.”
“And his offense?”
“That, Dragon, is the Queen’s business.”
Kren bent over the man named Raldnor and turned him gently. He had been swimming in the river, this one, and he looked near death. Kren lifted the lid of one eye, then took the limp wrist. He noted with a curious sense of imminence that the man’s smallest left finger was missing. He had heard mention of Amrek’s favorite but not paid a great deal of attention to what was said. There was a look of Rehdon in the face. And Val Mala’s rats were hunting him, were they? Kren had no great love for the Queen’s intrigues, and this piece of Koramvis, after all, lay within his personal jurisdiction. He traced the faintest flicker of pulse bedded in the Sarite’s wrist, but he was losing blood fast.
Kren straightened.
“You’ve done your lady’s work admirably,” he said shortly. “This man’s dead.”
A barely detectable signal drew the phalanx in close about himself and Raldnor. Two Garrison soldiers lifted Raldnor on a shield and carried him quickly in under the gate.
“You’ve no right—” the Queen’s guard cried out.
“I would remind you, gentlemen, that you’re within the limits of the River Garrison. I have every right. But if you’d care to wait on our physician, he’ll no doubt confirm the news I’ve given you.”
They had no choice but to do as he told them.
His hospitality was faultless. He had wine brought for them as they paced, cursing, about the hall. Eventually an old man in a stained robe came nervously in. He glanced at Kren, then murmured: “Quite dead. The blade pierced the lung.”
The guard’s response was immediate.
“There’d be blood on his mouth if the lung took it. Do you think I’ve never seen a man die? You don’t know your trade, Aarl take you!”
An unexpected severity possessed the physician. Lying at Kren’s direction had disconcerted him, but this layman’s lecture drew his temper.
“My trade? I know yours—to damage what the gods made; mine is to patch up what I can after your blasphemies. You butchered your victim, and if you know the method a man employs to live by after his heart’s stopped, I’d be happy to learn it. As to Aarl, he knows more of that place than either of us.”
13.
AMREK TURNED A JEWELED collar in his hands. A beautiful thing, a fitting gift. Yet would it please her at all? She seemed never to notice what she wore. He nodded to the goldsmith and his assistant, his eyes fixed on the gems flashing in the lamp shine. He was troubled and constrained. He had seen her at the feast, at his side, and she seemed to him as remote as ever—and yet, strangely different. He could not be sure of the change, only sensed it. In the anteroom he had embraced her and found on her the hint of a most curious new physical mood, like a scent without substance. Though he had not inspired it; it was neither because of, nor meant for him. He felt he had lost anything he might have achieved with her before. Damn Thaddra. He had craved for this woman every night alone in the mountains. Where must he begin again?
The slightest of sounds came from the open doorway. Amrek glanced up and saw Val Mala standing there.
“My lady mother. An unexpected pleasure.”
“Send these men away,” she said. “What I have to say to you is not for their ears.”
He set down the collar and stood up.
“What’s the matter, madam? Has Kathaos disappointed you tonight?”
She said nothing, but there was a kind of blankness on her face, a mask she held badly; behind it he saw an impossible triumph. He stared at her, and a premonition laid its clammy fingers on his skin. He waved the two men out, and they scurried, bowing, away. He barely noticed.
“Well, madam? What’s your news?”
“My son,” she said, “what I have to tell you concerns your bride.”
He felt the dark roaring of a sea engulf him.
“What’s happened to her? What have you done?”
“A good deal has happened to her, and I’ve done nothing but discover it.”
The hate that boiled up in him disfigured her and made her very ugly. He seized her shoulder. It seemed incredible to him that once he had been curled up inside her, at her mercy—and, now he was free of her, able if he wished to choke the life out of her, still he was mewling and helpless.
“No more games, madam. Tell me what you came here to say.”
Then he saw the smile; she could not keep it back.
“Your Dragon Lord, Raldnor the Sarite, has been teaching your bride bed manners.”
He let her go as if her flesh had burned him.
“Don’t lie to me,” he got out, knowing quite well that even she would never dare lie to him on such a matter, and tasting suddenly, once more, that new, unnamed, scentless perfume on Astaris’s flesh.
Val Mala composed her face and held up the mask again as she told him everything.
While she spoke, his eyes never left her mouth. He seemed to watch the words that came out of it as if watching rats emerging from some stinking crevasse underground. By the time she had finished, his face had become quite fixed and quite empty, like the painted face of an idiot in a carnival.
He turned away, shutting his eyes against the painful light, but her relentless voice followed him down the black corridors of his brain.
“Surely, Amrek, you’d rather discover before your marriage than after it what a whore your princess is. Do you want a slut in your bed, coming to you every night from the couch of one of your soldiers?”
Her eyes glittered, yet something in her flinched slightly, waiting for the lash of his anger, at her spite. She remembered how he had flung himself at her once, when he was a child and she had thwarted some desire of his; he would have killed her then if he had had any weapon to hand. Yet now there was nothing. A sense of the ultimate victory braced her.
“Did you prefer, Amrek, to be deceived?”
“Yes,” he said, and his voice was toneless.
“It seems then that others are more sensible of your honor and the honor of your rank than you. Perhaps, had yo
u taken your betrothal rights, Amrek, she might have been satisfied and not turned her eyes elsewhere. It was a woman they gave you, not a piece of glass.”
He had moved beyond the light of the lamp. She heard his silence in the darkness.
“You fool,” she hissed, “think how this Karmian has slighted your throne. Make sure she suffers for it.”
• • •
He came through the palace, half blinded by the soft light of the lamps. In the anteroom of her apartments, her women, having seen his face, curtsied in terror and fled. He threw open the inner doors and found her facing him, as if she had been waiting for his coming.
He thrust the doors shut after him and stood staring at her.
“I was betrothed to you at Lin Abissa, madam. I’ve come for my betrothal rights.”
“As you wish, my lord,” she said, without either reluctance or readiness. Whatever he did to her now she would accept, for he was superfluous to her existence. The fury rose into his throat like bile. He felt impotent, sexually and in all other ways, before her insane serenity.
“Did he force you?” he said to her.
There was the moment’s briefest response. As once before, he saw a stirring in the depths of her eyes, yet no fear. It was distress for him. She pitied him—she pitied— Did she know what would be done to her?
“No, my lord. I was willing. I’m sorry to cause you pain.”
“Pain? I think you need instruction, Astaris. By the laws of Dorthar you’ll go to the stake for this, and burn.”
“And Raldnor?” she asked, as if not noticing her own fate.
The congestion in Amrek’s throat almost choked him.
“Whatever I order. At least, castration and the gallows.”
She looked at him, but there was no sort of entreaty in her face. She was resigned for both of them. He thought of the men pinning her against the wooden pillar, and the flames eating upward through her feet, cracking her ivory bones like tinder, the uncurling leaves of her golden flesh and the black petals blowing on the morning wind, and the cloud of her hair on fire, which was fire, and he shouted aloud, a great hoarse scream, his hands across his eyes to shut out the million little separate flames of the lamps.
