by Tanith Lee
• • •
Four winds howled like demons through the streets of Sar.
On the hill’s head a black bull was slaughtered to appease them. A priestess of the shrine, found thieving from the votary offerings, was taken to the sky-stung hill and whipped. Her blood mingled with the dead bull’s, but the winds continued to rage. The day was blown away.
At dusk the Guardian of the town bowed himself into the chamber where the Storm Lord sat—had sat, in fact, since he had come here. The walls were hung with thick, dull velvets of a miasmic crimson. Shutters were clamped at the windows, yet the wind spat through and the marble candles guttered. The Guardian’s eyes went nervously to his royal guest. Amrek’s face had a waxy, fixed pallor, and the lankness of illness had invaded every part of him. He slouched in his chair like a distorted doll, but his eyes had the vivid dangerousness of an animal looking out of a cage. For the thousandth time the Guardian cursed the fate which had struck down his High Lord in Sar, bringing such anxiety and trouble to a peaceful life.
“My Lord,” the Guardian ventured, “may I humbly ask you how you’re doing? My physician tells me—”
“Your physician is a sour-breathed fool,” Amrek said. “You want me away, do you? Out of this refuse pit you’re pleased to call Sar. Your weather is a foulness. I can’t sleep for the wailing of your filth-laden winds.”
“My physician is preparing a draft to encourage your slumbers, my Lord—rare herbs from Elyr—”
“Damn his potions. Let him take it himself and omit to wake up until I’m gone. Besides which, insomnia has become more pleasant to me than my dreams.” Shadows and the sickly wavering candlelight fluttered up and down his face like ghastly birds. “The gods,” Amrek said, “torture us in our dreams. Has this ever occurred to you, Guardian?”
“My Lord—I—”
“They make sport of us, Guardian. Last night I slept long enough to dream the sky was full of blood. A rain of blood falling on the towers of your wretched little palace.”
The Guardian stood staring at him.
“Shall I send for a priest to read the portent of it, my lord?”
“Portent? There’s no meaning, Guardian, beyond what is obvious. Men don’t dream of what is to come, but of what has been, what’s finished.” His head dropped forward on his chest as if it were too heavy for him. “That’s how the gods make fools of us. By showing us a million times those things we long to forget, those things we aspire to alter and have no power to change. That, Guardian, is how it is done.”
The Guardian of Sar shuffled out of the close chamber. The irony that beset his town had not escaped him—the misfortune that Astaris’s seducer had named it his place of birth, however fallaciously. In the corridor the man caught himself making the old sign against evil intent, and shame filled his sallow cheeks for fear some underling had seen him.
• • •
The yellowish winter dusk filled the city. The bell clanged dismally. Having emerged at dawn, like the little snakes, the Lowlanders vanished with the snakes at the first suggestion of darkness—only the feet and the torches of the Dortharians moved on the empty streets. They played their games of rapine and death less frequently, for now the ruins seldom yielded prey.
Inside the garrison, fires smoked and voices were loud. It was an old palace they had put to their use; the wide halls were well suited as a barracks. Yet age leaned on them in that place—the crushing presence of time and the accumulations of time. Men drank heavily, and dicing led to brawls. Overtaken by boredom, they became the meat for bad dreams. Superstition stirred. How hard must you beat a Lowlander before he would cry out? And their pale women, lying in their own blood with eyes filmed over like the eyes of the blind. By the gods of Dorthar, they would be glad enough to pack the slaves off into the mines and galleys, and be done with them. Fear, the begetter of all hatreds, recalled old tales of Plains witchcraft. They remembered Ashne’e the demoness, and the curse on Rehdon’s line. Here, in a black box, with the keening of the wind as lullabies around the box’s towers, and the icy fingers of drafts stroking their limbs, the dragon men tossed and muttered in their sleep, struck at the whores who shared their couches, fell sick and fell out among themselves.
Three days after a Dortharian had let fall an old woman’s water jar in the northern quarter, a patrol in the eastern sector saw some ten or twelve yellow-haired men talking together on the steps of a roofless house. The Lowlanders had a certain gift, an ability, to slip swiftly and unexpectedly away. Partly, the Dortharians had taught them this art. Only one man failed to elude them. They cuffed him and dragged him to the garrison, and into the presence of Riyul, their commander.
Riyul was a man of Marsak, a soldier fourteen years since, a mercenary by trade to any land that would buy him, until the profits of his homeland army tempted him. The command of the Plains’s garrison had come to him unexpectedly, with Amrek’s illness. It made him both imperious and uneasy. He subdued the city by terror, out of deference to Amrek’s hate, but also because it came easy to him.
He questioned the Lowlander for an hour, between the strokes of the whipman, as first snow drifted by the windows. Meetings of more than two men at a time were prohibited. The restriction had been a matter of course, until now either observed or unnecessary. The Lowlander bled, but said nothing. Riyul had him slung at last into the cellars of the palace which made such an excellent jail, and left him there to rot. There were no further gatherings, at least none the Dortharians spotted. There seemed no need to be troubled. The Plains people were a passive, servile race—everyone knew it—with livers pale as their skin.
There was a Lannic juggler in the hall that night, a clever devil who had struck up an acquaintance with a soldier at the garrison gate and wheedled his way in. Riyul threw him a silver piece.
It seemed he had legitimate business of some kind with the Ommos, Dakan, but the interesting thing about him was the talk he started of Lowland whores. Such a creature had never been seen, either in the city or out of it, yet the Lan claimed he had laid skinny blonde bitches galore, who, for a fee or a false promise of safety, would teach all manner of interesting bed tricks.
Riyul’s curiosity was whetted; his loins began to disturb him at the thought. Had there not been old stories of temple prostitutes?
Riyul’s name day fell in the gray time of the thaw. He had planned to have himself honored then by a makeshift feast in the palace hall, in the manner of a conqueror. He was playing at greatness, a dangerous silly game, in Amrek’s absence. Drunk, and lusting for white flesh suddenly in his smoky chamber, he sent the juggler word that if he valued garrison pickings, he had better make good his boast and provide it with some Lowland whores on the evening of the feast.
• • •
Yannul slept very deeply in the stagnant barracks that night. A cheerful madness had come on him with the continuance of the crazy acts he must commit. Vague thoughts of horror, of blood to come, he set aside. He had no choice. He had known as much when he rode across the alien summer landscape behind Raldnor, and sensed the stirrings of chaos underground.
His head heavy with the garrison wine, his last thoughts had also been of women, though in a temperate vein. Resha, his Alisaarian girl, for one, who had gone with a Vathcrian noble to live an unaccustomed life of order and fine clothes. She, who had initially feared racial enmity, had surprised Yannul by taking complacent refuge in camouflage. The Vathcrian had begun to pay her court in the last month at Vardath, when the nights were red from forge smoke and the roads rumbled with the passage of the great trees felled for ships. She must have learned early to survive and ride her chances aboard the Zakorian pirate. Now, a schooled opportunist, she accepted her suitor despite all obstacles, and the matter of his age, for he was well into his middle years—it made him a safer proposition, clearly. If it was her novelty that attracted him, however, the noble was to be sorely tried, for, once the
ir union seemed likely, Resha had turned like a chameleon. She bleached her hair and began to use a face paint much like Dortharian Val Mala’s famous white unguent. Yannul rendered Resha all applause, and hoped her shaky house would stand. There had been no romance between them but a deal of liking. He only trusted her stout lover could keep pace with her through the dark.
Whatever else, he guessed she might be happier than the pale-haired girl, Jarred’s sister, they had wed to Raldnor at the altar of Ashkar Anackire. She had already the look of a woman who loved deeply and forever, but went unnoticed in return. Raldnor had been gentle with her, no doubt, but it would be an impersonal, automatic gentleness. And once the solitary month was up, he had left her and would probably never go back. A great pity, for she had been worth a second look, had Sulvian of Vathcri.
Asleep, Yannul dreamed of the farm in Lan. Snow thick on the hills, icicles stabbing from the roof. His mother happily heavy with child as she seemed perpetually to be, his sisters singing and squabbling at the loom, or nursing birds which had fallen, half-dead from the cold, beside the door. In the second thaw, three thin large-eyed girls holding out handfuls of wings. White birds soaring up from brown hands without a word of thanks; white birds turning black against the blue sky.
On the narrow pallet, Yannul dreamed of home. The ghosts of the palace left him alone.
• • •
Over the city the snow moon burned like a lamp of blazing ice. Sentries passed on the wall of the garrison, shivering and cursing.
“Do you hear that sound?” one asked the other.
“What sound? I can only hear my guts freezing.”
Yet he sensed also the electric movement of the air, less sound than vibration, a deaf thrumming under their feet, the twanging of a silent harp.
Somewhere, a wolf howled, sharp as a spike.
The sentry grinned.
“Do you remember that old man with the pet wolf—the black bitch Ganlik got with his spear? Lucky devil, Ganlik, with that pelt to wrap up in of a night.”
“I’ve heard Ganlik’s sick,” the other said.
They separated and moved on. A cloud choked out the moon.
• • •
And in Sar, Amrek dreamed of Astaris on the back of a white monster. Her hair bled over her shoulders, and her face was a golden skull.
20.
SNOW FLAMED ON THE wind. The wind was on fire with snow.
When the snow stopped, the Plains lay in unbroken whiteness under an exhausted purple sky.
• • •
The detachment of soldiers wound in a slow black rope across the blank whiteness of the land. Their business—the urgent provisioning of the garrison—was one they cursed in their various fashions. The makeshift pens, originally packed full of Lowland cattle stolen by Dortharians in warmer months, had grown progressively roomier as the occupation dragged on. Now the snow had come, while Amrek still took his ease in Sar, and the second Siege Snow would not be far behind it. There was talk they might even have to spend the winter here in this stinking verminous hole.
The detachment’s captain snarled out his orders and chafed his hands. Frozen to his very bones, he was thinking of a particular woman he had left behind in Dorthar, a bitch he was sure would find other amusements in his absence, and now had all the cold days to catch some filthy disease with which to present him on his return. In addition they had passed one farm holding and a village, both of which had been empty.
The second village showed itself to them two hours after noon, when the sky was already darkening drearily.
The gate in the stockade was wide. They rode through, and up the broad street, the men fanning out, stabbing open doors, peering into the musky gloom of stables and barns. Neither human nor beast remained. Shutters flapped and slapped at windows.
The hooves of the animals pushed the track into mud, and the swinging braziers spat pink phlegm.
A shadow ran suddenly out between the houses, its eyes a leap of flame. With hoarse nervous shouts men leveled spears at it.
“Wolf!”
But the thing vanished like a spirit.
“Ride on,” the captain bawled.
They overtook no one and found no footsteps in the snow.
The next village, the third, was nearer—only a mile or so.
Some plates lay broken in the road, partly covered by snow. A heavy silence welled up to meet them. They searched and found nothing. Once there came the whirr of a wheel on a loom, but it was the wind that turned it.
“They’re running,” the captain grunted. “Where?”
This time a few men slipped aside to see what might be picked up in the way of loot—people who moved in such apparent haste must surely leave valuables behind. They did not find a single metal ring. In the gloomy temple building not a golden scale remained.
Leaving the abandoned village, they strained their eyes for any sign of movement across the aching white waste of the Plains.
A luminous dusk soaked into the sky.
Far off, over the shadowy mirror of land, the captain glimpsed a thing, a shape, that might have been two men on zeebas, or only a trick of the gloaming. Fresh snow began to fall.
The captain sneezed and wiped his nose. He ordered the column back toward the deserted village and a chilly comfortless night’s camp.
• • •
On the scarp the two pale-haired men sat still on their zeebas, watching the Dortharians trample back through the stockade and, presently, the mauve smokes rise up.
The snow did not trouble them. The childhood of each had been spent in some holding of the Plains—their later life in the ruined city. For bread they had become the servants of Dakan the Ommos. They were well used to the raw cold and eternal hunger, and hardship of a hundred sorts.
One man glanced at the other, speaking without words. They turned the heads of their mounts.
The Ommos thought they were at his work, gathering gold for a nonexistent merchant of Xarabiss with Yannul the Lan. The Ommos had therefore provided the pass that enabled them to leave the city and roam the Plains at will. Certainly there was a tiny priceless statue and a heap of gems in their saddlebags as proof of their supposed errand. Yet their mission was a different one.
There had been an old woman, and a single shining thought dropped into dark water. Ripples had spread from that drop, ripples of the mind across the black stagnant well of the city. Only they knew what the golden thing meant to them, but such was its purity that it was totally communicable. At each village, each farm, the two messengers passed on their vision, Raldnor’s vision, unaltered, still perfect, through the unclouded medium of mental speech, passed it like fire from torch to torch, until the whole surface of the Plains would be burning. The change, where it came—and soon it would come everywhere—was entire. A sleeping serpent, coiled in the brain, always present, never until now awake, had been wakened, as if it had been foretold. Promontory slid into recess; groove fitted with groove in a jigsaw of destiny, abruptly engaged.
Through the falling snow, the two Lowland men rode over the scarp and silently on into the night with their invisible fire.
• • •
Under the city’s ancient gateway the host poured, from dawn till dusk. The Lowlanders came with their wagons, their livestock and their belongings piled in carts. The Dortharian wall guard was doubled. They sat their animals in the deadly cold, working off their anger on the Plains people. They snatched bits of amber and thin gold chains off the necks of the women.
They assumed the snow had caused the sudden influx—also fear of the soldiers of the provisioning detachment. Certainly the scum had brought food enough for the garrison with them. If any starved, it would not be the Am Dorthar.
That day, too, Yannul came back to Yr Dakan’s house, the Lowland men riding behind him with their bags of jewels. The Ommos examined the tre
asures greedily. He ran his pudgy fingers over the breasts of the Anckira statue, but their coldness seemed to repel him.
“Little enough in stones,” he said, “but She—She is worth something.”
“So Kios will think,” the Lan answered.
“And when will your employer expect you?”
“Not till the Snow’s done, the spring thaw. There may be other stuff I can lay hands on besides, at the bottom of all those wagons that have come into the city.”
“Don’t forget that I have helped you, Master Lan.”
“Indeed, Lord Dakan, you can rest assured.”
• • •
Under the snow, time paused in the city.
In the white-crusted ruins wagons camped about the stone-ringed fires. Smoke rose more frequently, for the Dortharians seldom now troubled the dark. The cold of the Plains was too bitter for them. Besides, they were sullen, trapped in this tomb with their captives, and discontent robbed them for a while of pleasure in their sadistic sports.
There came a night of iron stars.
Long after the curfew had fallen, a piece of movement came silently through the streets. It was a thing of shadow, like a ghost; avoiding the routes of the Dortharian patrols, it slid at last into the inky porch of Orhvan’s house and sent a mind like a pale blade searching through the walls.
Orhvan soon came and led the shadow into an upper room, where a small fire now burned and flickered. Firelight fell harsh then on the bone-white angles of hands, and fell back from the hooded face. It was a priest.
“Raldnor,” Orhvan said.
Sparks ignited briefly within the hood as the priest’s eyes turned and fixed on what was sitting perfectly still before him—a figure as dark, as enigmatic as his own.
“You call this man Raldnor,” the priest said softly, “who claims to be our King.”
A voice came from the figure.
