by Tanith Lee
“Call any man a king; it will not alter him. Call a king by some other name, he is still a king.”
“I speak to you with my mouth,” the priest said, “because your mind is too expressive for my needs, and conveys too much. You have let fall a thought, woken a snake in the brain of our people. They have never seen you, but their minds visualize you as a myth, half king, half god. I dispute nothing of this. Nor the vision of another land, which I too have been shown in that chain of minds which has spread from yours. For all the years of our race, we have been passive, meek, submitting rather than observing the rules of war. The Vis set their heel on our necks for centuries. The heel crushed us, but taught us to endure. You have found out our secret—the serpent coiled in our soul. By this abstract yet entire thought you have implanted, you have said this: They who endure more, are more; they who suffer most can accomplish most. You, who master yourselves, can master others. You who possess the speaking mind should not bow down beneath the yoke of the deaf, the blind and the dumb. You have given us hubris. That was the unborn serpent in our core. You have hatched the serpent’s egg; you have woken us. But it is the double-edged sword. After you have taught us to be cruel, can you teach us to be humble once again, in time, thrust us back inside the broken shell and seal it, before we rend ourselves?”
“We must live for each moment as it comes,” the voice said to him, “neither in our past nor in our future. Should we fail to wake at this moment, we shall be destroyed forever. Those who sleep will die in their sleep. There will be no survivors of Amrek’s scythe.”
“You are the dual child, both bloods. This is very clear.”
“I am an amalgam that had eventually to be formed,” the voice said. “The era has called forth both myself and Amrek, the black tyrant. We are figments of the destiny of our separate peoples. No more.”
“They who said they were your messengers summoned us here from the Shadowless Plains. They said tonight you will speak to us, your mind encompassing every other Lowland mind in the city. Can you do this? I, too, have felt it to be so.”
A coal burst suddenly in the fire. The priest caught the glimpse of a face that seemed cast from dark metal, and two burning eyes of a strangely colorless icy gold. The eyes appeared to be without soul. Only purpose, only power was behind them.
“Indeed,” the priest thought, “you are no longer a human man.”
“I am the golem of the goddess.”
The terrible jest filled the priest’s brain. He lapsed by their fire to wait.
• • •
At midnight there came a peculiar intensity over the city, like the brittle contraction, the unseen shimmer that precedes a storm.
The Dortharians spoke in loud, broken whisperings about the streets. In the garrison, men swore and swilled their wine. The air hummed. Yannul the Lan lay stiff as starch in the Ommos bed, feeling the city moving as though a torrent rushed under its roads.
The rain broke early as the snow had been late. Yet it was an uncertain, fickle thaw; flakes still met in silver spirals, though the gutters ran with mud.
These bright spinnings beat on the shutters of Yr Dakan’s chamber as Ras moved noiselessly across it and swung down the bronze candle wheel and snuffed its lights. On the floor an erotic painting of young men throbbed in the glow of a plum-colored lamp.
Yr Dakan lay in the big bed, eating sweets. Sometimes a girl would lie beside him awaiting his intentions, or a boy, or possibly both. Tonight the space was empty.
Ras crossed to the bed and stood looking down.
“What do you want?” Dakan demanded irritably.
“Lord Dakan,” Ras said softly, “since I came to you I have been an obedient servant.”
Dakan said lazily: “You’d have felt the lash otherwise.”
“Lord Dakan,” Ras whispered, his face unchanging, “tomorrow night, one of this household will kill you.”
Dakan started up, letting fall a nibbled delicacy.
“Who?” he rasped. His eyes glittered with shock. “Who?”
“Any one of us, Lord Dakan. Perhaps Medaci, the girl who bakes your bread. Perhaps Anim, who looks after your stable. Perhaps myself.”
Liverish anger rushed into Dakan’s sickly face.
“Zarok has burnt a hole in your brain. You’re mad. I shall have you whipped tomorrow.”
“A good measure, Lord Dakan. Don’t spare the thong. Beat me senseless. Cut off my hands so I can’t grip a knife to harm you with.”
Dakan caught Ras a blow across the face.
“Tomorrow I will have Orklos deal with you.”
Ras said expressionlessly: “There is talk of a king. Do you remember Raldnor of Hamos? He’s instructed us to murder every Vis in the city, Lord Dakan. Tomorrow, on his signal, at the seventh hour after sunset.”
“Zarok has scorched you,” Dakan repeated, but his heavy face was heavier with fear. Eventually he said: “How do you know all this?”
Ras’s smile was a stillbirth which scarcely altered his mouth.
“My mind. Have you never heard the tale that the people of the Plains talk inside their heads?” He turned and walked to the curtained doorway and looked back. “Kill all your Lowlanders, Yr Dakan,” Ras said. “Kill us before the snake stirs in us. Then bar your door.”
• • •
It was still very cold.
The two soldiers who set out every five days for the gust-battered town of Sar, taking Riyul’s report to the Storm Lord, kicked their beasts into a lather, and damned the mail that clung to them like a second skin of ice. Those who remained in the garrison slept badly at night; by day they hanged Lowlanders in an ancient marketplace.
On the morning of Riyul’s name day the clouds were lined with a thin skim of gold, as if a split wine gourd had spilled over.
Yr Dakan came late to the table.
“I hope you’re in good health,” Yannul said.
Dakan did not look well. He grunted.
“Tell me,” he muttered, “do you think there is something abroad in my house—some conspiracy against me?”
“Who would dare such a thing?”
“My slaves—my Lowland slaves . . .”
Yannul let out a sharp laugh.
“Lord Dakan—you leave me speechless. The lily-livered rubbish are incapable of violence. Besides, how could they escape punishment if they had such a plan? Amrek’s soldiers would be only too glad of the excuse to butcher the lot.”
“One of my servants has told me that there will be an attempt upon my life tonight,” Dakan said.
“Who?” Yannul knew at once his question had been too ready. He added swiftly, “Whoever told your lordship such a thing’s a madman.”
For some reason an instantaneous picture had formed in his brain—of the thin, strange-eyed Lowlander who lit the lamp on his first night in the city. “But no matter,” he thought. “Whoever blurted, there’s no stopping now.”
Dakan’s face relaxed.
“Yes, the man who told me this is mad. I have long suspected it. I will bar my door,” he added to himself, “a mere precaution . . . where will you be beyond sunset?”
Yannul, who had never seen fit to speak of his second role in the garrison, slyly drooped one lid.
“A little Elyrian,” he murmured, carefully not stipulating his invention’s sex, “has offered me entertainment for the night.”
By noon the Dortharians were in the streets, selecting Lowland girls for Riyul’s feast. Their acts of rape had taught them to be generally unafraid of the old reputed sexual magics of the Plains women. They were, it was true, all bones—frigid, unwilling bitches. But part of Riyul’s wine ration had already gone round in the garrison, and the soldiers regarded these skinny makeshift wenches cheerfully enough.
The women collected in the chariots with an expected pathetic docility. Some w
ept—slow tears without sound. The Dortharians did not notice that their eyes held a crystalline hardness in them, like zircons.
The men pulled up their skirts, cuffed them, and laughed at them, and eventually left them to the mercy of the garrison whores, who spat in their faces as they wound ribbons like colored weeds through their hair.
At last they huddled in the dark like dolls made of rags, in their gaudy anklets and glass beads, and with blank faces and trembling bodies. Their hard, cold, wise, and terrible eyes were fixed on the flags.
• • •
Night fell and thickened. A thin layer of snow gilded the streets. In the fifth hour after sunset ice formed like glass.
Inside the palace hall the torches had blazed since dusk, and carcasses turned on the great hearths, spitting fat. Three quarters of the garrison was present, lolling at the tables, steeped now in the plentiful wine and beer. A troupe of dancers, of mixed Elyrian and Lowland blood, had been caught lingering in the city at twilight. Brought in to entertain, they turned somersaults with anxious eyes, while their girls tremulously shook strings of bells. They understood well enough that they might be given money tonight, but flogged into pulp in the morning. Amrek had no mercy for their kind.
Riyul sat in his place in tarnished finery—a couple of defaced gold armlets, loot from an old war in Thaddra, and a grease-spattered scarlet shirt. A soldier had died the night before, and Riyul had appropriated the black wolf pelt from among his belongings, and wore it now on his own back. He was very drunk, as were his men. It was late that he recalled his new lusts.
He looked about for the juggler.
“You there, Lan,” Riyul shouted, catching sight of the man at a lower table, “you’ve been gorging our meat, but have you kept your word, eh?”
“My word, Lord Riyul?”
“These temple trulls you idle with—where are they?”
The Lan grinned.
“Outside, my lord.”
A ragged cheer went up. Men banged their wine cups on the board.
One of Riyul’s aides was sent lurching to the hall’s single entrance. When the big door was opened, into the oppressively close air blew a gust of the vicious night. The torches curled and smoldered.
“Bring ’em here!” Riyul roared.
The silence of curiosity fell on the feasters.
The little Lowland girls, employed until now as servitors, turned their pale faces and stared. The garrison whores muttered spiteful sarcasms.
The three women the tipsy officer now shoved into the hall wore saffron shifts, slit at the sides from ankle to thigh. Their arms and legs were bare gleaming whitenesses, each naked limb painted with the golden rope of a serpent. Their flaxen hair hung down their backs in coils; their lips and the lids of their eyes were stained with gold. They grinned as they came up the room to Riyul and thrust out their breasts. No man there had ever set eyes on a Lowland prostitute. There was an odd wickedness in their paper faces, leering mouths, and shimmering skin.
The Lan had edged over to Riyul’s chair.
“Temple girls,” he murmured. “I told them your lordship might be disposed to save them from the mines if they pleased you sufficiently. Whether you do so is your business, but have no doubt they’ll supply their best tricks for you tonight.”
Riyul gave a low drunken laugh.
“Engaging sluts.”
The first girl had reached Riyul’s place. She set her hands on the table top and vaulted lightly to sit among the gravy-crusted trenchers. Despite her full breasts, she was thin. Yannul saw the sharp bones of her hips stab momentarily through her shift. Curiously, the contrast stirred him, and he also, in that macabre instant, hardened for her core. His lust disconcerted him, knowing, as he did, what was to come.
She sat there, smiling, her eyelids flashing, while Riyul maneuvered his paw under the flap of her skirt. Suddenly she raised her long arms and began a sinuous torso dance, stretching and weaving like a snake. The two other girls drew narrow pipes out of their saffron. A formless, wandering melody came from their fingers and slid about the big room.
• • •
In Dakan’s hall, the Zarok god waited, like a beast that must be fed.
Yr Dakan had taken it into his head to eat in his chamber, and the hall was in darkness save for the coals in Zarok’s belly. Lit by its own flame light, the thing glared through the shadows, the long points of its teeth seeming to drip blood.
Orklos came late with the tray of slops; behind him the slave girl Medaci carried in narrow hands a vase of wine. The glow out of Zarok’s oven stained her hair bright gold, like the glass in a palace window. It showed a bruise mark where someone had struck her across the mouth, and her glistening eyes, boring into Orklos’s back.
With the stone shovel, Orklos replenished the coals and waited until flames sprang and crackled. Then he threw in the rinds of his master’s meal and watched the fire consume them. Orklos turned and took the vase, thrusting the shovel into Medaci’s hands.
He began to pour wine into the fire, lazily, aware of nothing save his task. His back to her, he did not see the sudden shudder that ran over the girl’s body.
She raised the shovel and struck at Orklos’s skull.
Stunned by this first blow, the Ommos staggered and the wine vase shattered at his feet. Raising herself on tiptoe, Medaci struck a second time with all her strength, and again, and again, until blood ran. Then, as the man tottered, she dropped the shovel and pushed at him with both her hands. As he fell, his head went into the oven.
Above, there came a crash and splintering of wood.
• • •
On the table top, the Lowland girl glared down at Riyul with her golden eyes.
Riyul was prepared to be good-natured.
“Look all you want at me, bitch,” he encouraged. “You’ll see more of me later.”
He raised his cup and was drinking deeply when the girl’s hand shot forward and buried a dagger to its hilt in his chest. Riyul grunted at her stupidly while wine spilled out of his mouth; then he fell into her lap, splashing her with crimson.
Yannul moved back from the table. Expectancy had not been enough. He tasted bile, for what he saw was nightmare.
The dragons had brought only women to their feast, planning to use them, when the festivities were at their height, in the orgiastic manner of the ancient feasts of Rarnammon. And these women had struck simultaneously, with daggers, with knives from the table, with heavy stone drinking cups. Thick blood ran on the flags and smeared the walls.
Those men still living were too drunk and too dumbfounded to retaliate. They watched the Lowlanders run toward them and did nothing to prevent the swooping blades, like beaks of thirsty birds. The thing was too sudden, and too terrible and too unlooked-for. In death, their faces were masks of surprise. Those who staggered toward the single door, stumbled on the heaped bodies of their officers and subordinates. Those who reached the corridors beyond the arch screamed out in frustration and fear.
Lowlanders had killed the sentries at the same moment that the women struck inside the garrison and were now bounding through the complexes of the building, seeking further prey.
All through this Yannul stood rooted to the spot. There was something unutterably horrible in the sight of these Lowland girls, their faces blotched, their hair striped with hot blood, killing and killing, without thought or hesitation, like machines with eyes of blanched steel.
Yet their hatred was discriminating. They did not touch him or the group of Elyrians at the center of the hall. They ran round them and past them, as if they were no more alive than other furniture which must be avoided. In honesty, neither he nor the Elyrians moved at all. Dazedly, he watched their own dazedness.
He had never shirked a fight in his life, but this fight was not his. For a long while he would remember every detail and, it seemed, every red
-stippled face.
• • •
The garrison sentries who, unlike the men in the hall, had worn scale plate, lay with their throats open. A new soft snow fell over them and dropped into their wide eyes and mouths.
In the garrison there was a sudden quiet.
In Riyul’s hall, the Dortharians’ whores were too fearful to set up the keening that betokened death. They huddled by the fire pits, idiot-faced from fright.
In the web of streets that stretched away from the gate, dragon soldiers lay on their faces like broken toys under the falling, falling snow.
• • •
Yannul made his solitary way back toward the house of Yr Dakan. Frequently he passed the dead, their torches smoking on the paving, which was marbled with their persistent blood.
Sometimes, but not often, Lowlanders went by him, silent as wolves in the snow. Their eyes gleamed at him like icy moons, but they left him alone.
He was sick, and to his very soul. Not only because of what he had seen, but because of his part in it. He had hated and despised the Dortharians. Now, with an abrupt disintegration of purpose, he discovered a massacre of drunken babies, and discovered, too, the color of his skin and hair in this place of the yellow-haired men. And he had come to fear the Lowlanders, these people he had so pitied—to fear their awful certainty and efficiency, and their union of minds.
When he came to Dakan’s house, the guards were lying under the porch. The doors were wide open, but no lamp burned in the foyer. There was a faint glow seeping out of Dakan’s hall, presumably from the belly of the fire god.
He entered the archway and mounted the stairs to the upper apartment. Another Ommos lay here, a vicious boy whom Yannul recognized as one of Dakan’s playthings.
Dakan’s door, bolted as he had promised, had been forced inward, the iron bar torn out of its socket. Dakan himself lay across the bed, his eyes accusing the ceiling.
Yannul turned, taking with him the small lamp at the bedside. It threw gesturing shadows on the walls. Apart from the dead, the place seemed unoccupied.
Then, in the foyer again, he heard the sound—long retching sobs—and he smelled too, suddenly, the disgusting stench that hung about the entrance to the hall.
