The Thousand Cities ttot-3

by Harry Turtledove

  Tatul disappeared from the wall. Abivard wondered whether that meant the nakharar was coming down to admit him or had decided he was witstruck and so not worth the boon of a Vaspurakaner noble's conversation. He had almost decided it was the latter when, with a metallic rasp of seldom used hinges, a postern gate close by the main gate of Shahapivan swung open. There stood Tatul. He beckoned Abivard forward.

  The gate was just tall and wide enough to let a single rider through at a time. When Abivard looked up as he passed through the gateway, he saw a couple of Vaspurakaners peering down at him through the iron grid that screened the murder hole. He heard a fire crackling up there. He wondered what the princes kept in the cauldron above it, what they would pour down through the grid onto anyone who broke down the gate. Boiling water? Boiling oil? Red-hot sand? He hoped he wouldn't find out.

  «You have spirit, man of Makuran,» Tatul said as Abivard emerged inside Shahapivan. Abivard was wondering what kind of idiot he'd been to come here. Hundreds of hostile Vaspurakaners stared at him, their dark, deep-set eyes seeming to burn We fire. They were quiet, quieter than a like number of Makuraners, far quieter than a like number of Videssians. That did not mean they would not use the weapons they carried or wore on their belts.

  A bold front seemed Abivard's only choice. «I am here as I said I would be. Take me now to Hmayeak, your priest.»

  «Yes, go to him,» Tatul said «Here, by yourself, you shall not be able to serve him as Vshnasp served so many of our priests: you shall not cut out his tongue to keep him from speaking the truth of the good god, you shall not break his fingers to keep him from writing that truth, you shall not gouge out his eyes to keep him from reading Phos' holy scriptures, you shall not soak his beard with oil and set it alight, saying it gives forth Phos' holy light None of these things shall you do, general of Makuran.»

  «Vshnasp did them?» Abivard asked. He did not doubt Tatul; the nakharar's list of outrages sounded too specific for invention. «All—and more,» Tatul answered. A servitor brought him a horse. He swung up into the saddle. «Come now with me.»

  Abivard rode with him, looking around curiously as Tatul led him through the narrow, winding streets of Shahapivan. Mashiz, the capital of Makuran, was also a city sprung from the mountains, but it was very different from the Vaspurakaner town. Though of the mountains, Mashiz looked east to the Thousand Cities on the floodplain of the Tutub and the Tib. Its builders worked in timber and in baked and unbaked brick as well as in stone.

  Shahapivan, by contrast, might have sprung directly from the gray mountains of Vaspurakan. All the buildings were of stone: soft limestone, easily worked, took the place of mud brick and cheap timber, while marble and granite were for larger, more impressive structures.

  The princes had not done much to enliven their town with plaster or paint, either. Even coats of whitewash were rare. The locals seemed content to live in the midst of gray.

  They were not gray themselves. Men swaggered in caftans of fuller cut than Makuraners usually wore and dyed in stripes and dots and swirling patterns of bright colors. Their three-pointed tasseled hats looked silly to Abivard, but they made the most of them, shaking and tossing their heads as they talked so that the tassels, like their darting hands, helped punctuate what they said.

  Peasant women and merchants' wives crowded the marketplaces, dickering and gossiping. The sun sparkled from their jewelry: polished copper bracelets and gaudy glass beads on those who were not so wealthy, massy silver necklaces or chains strung with Videssian goldpieces on those who were. Their clothes were even more brilliant than those of their menfolk. Instead of the funny-looking hats the men preferred, they wore cloths of linen or cotton or shimmering silk on their heads. They pointed at Abivard and let loose with loud opinions he could not understand but did not think complimentary.

  Amid all those fiery reds, sun-bright yellows, vibrant greens, and blues of sky and water, the Vaspurakaner priests stood out by contrast. Unlike Videssian blue-robes, they wore somber black. They did not shave their heads, either, but gathered their hair, whether black or gray or white, into neat buns at the napes of their necks. Some of their beards, like Tatul's, reached all the way down to their waists.

  The temples where they served Phos were like those of their Videssian counterparts in that they were topped with gilded globes. Otherwise, though, those temples were very much of a piece with the rest of the buildings of Shahapivan: square, solid structures with only upright rectangular slits for windows, having the look of being made much more for strength and endurance than for beauty and comfort. Abivard noted how many temples there were in this medium-size city. No one could say the Vaspurakaners did not take their misguided faith seriously.

  They were in general a sober folk, given to minding their own business. Swarms of Videssians would have followed Tatul and Abivard through the streets. The same might have been true of Makuraners. It was not true here. The Vaspurakaners let their nakharar deal with Abivard.

  He had expected Tatul to lead him to the finest temple in Shahapivan. When the nakharar reined in, though, he did so in front of a building that had seen not just better days but better centuries. Only the gilding on its globe seemed to have been replaced at any time within living memory.

  Tatul glanced over to Abivard. «This is the temple dedicated to the memory of the holy Kajaj. He was martyred by you Makuraners—chained to a spit and roasted over coals like a boar—for refusing to abjure the holy faith of Phos and Vaspur the Firstborn. We reverence his memory to this day.»

  «I did not kill this priest,'' Abivard answered. «If you blame me for that or even if you blame me for what Vshnasp did, you are making a mistake. Would I have come here if I did not want to compose the differences between you princes and Sharbaraz King of Kings?»

  «You are a brave man,» Tatul said. «Whether you are a good man, I do not yet know enough to judge. For evil men can be brave. I have seen this. Have you not also?»

  «Few men are evil in their own eyes,» Abivard said.

  «There you touch another truth,» Tatul said, «but not one I can discuss with you now. Wait here. I shall go within and bring out to you the marvelously holy Hmayeak.»

  «I had thought to go with you,» Abivard said.

  «With the blood of Vaspurakaner martyrs staining your hands?» Tatul's eyebrows leapt up toward the rim of his helmet. «You would render the temple ritually unclean. We sometimes sacrifice a sheep to the good god: its flesh, burned in fire, gives Phos' holy light. But for that, though, blood and death pollute our shrines.»

  «However you would have it.» When Abivard shrugged, his corselet made small rattling and clinking sounds. «I await him here, then.»

  Tatul strode into the temple. When he returned shortly afterward, the black-robed priest he brought with him was a surprise. Abivard had looked for a doddering, white-bearded elder. But the marvelously holy Hmayeak was in his vigorous middle years, his thick black beard only lightly threaded with gray. His shoulders would have done a smith credit

  He spoke to Tatul in the throaty Vaspurakaner language. The nakharar translated for Abivard: «The holy priest says to tell you he does not speak your tongue. He asks if you would rather I interpret or if you prefer to use Videssian, which he does know.»

  «We can speak Videssian if you like,» Abivard said directly to Hmayeak. He suspected that the priest was trying to annoy him by denying knowledge of the Makuraner tongue and declined to give him satisfaction by showing irk.

  «Yes, very well. Let us do that.» Hmayeak spoke slowly and deliberately, maybe to help Abivard understand him, maybe because he was none too fluent in Videssian himself. «Phos has taken for his own the holy martyrs you men of Makuran have created.» He sketched the sun-circle that was his sign of piety for the good god, going in the opposite direction from the one a Videssian would have used. «How now will you make amends for your viciousness, your savagery, your brutality?»

  «They were not mine. They were not those of Mikhran marzban.
They were those of Vshnasp marzban, who is dead.» Abivard was conscious of how much he wasn't saying. The policy of which Hmayeak complained had been Vshnasp's, true, but it also had been—and still was—Sharbaraz'. And Vshnasp was not merely dead but slain by the Vaspurakaners. For Abivard to overlook that was as much as to admit that the marzban had had it coming.

  «How will you make amends?» Hmayeak repeated. He sounded cautious; he might not have expected Abivard to yield so much so soon. To him Vaspurakan was not just the center of the universe but the whole universe.

  To Abivard it was but one section of a larger mosaic. He answered, «Marvelously holy sir, I cannot bring the dead back to life, neither your people who died for your faith nor Vshnasp marzban.» If you push me too hard, you'll make me remember how Vshnasp died. Could Hmayeak read between the lines?

  «Phos has the power to raise the dead,» Hmayeak said in his deliberate Videssian, «but he chooses not to use it, so that we do not come to expect it of him. If Phos does not use this power, how can I expect a mere man to do so?»

  «What do you expect of me?» Abivard asked. Hmayeak looked at him from under thick, bushy bristling brows. His gaze was very keen yet almost childlike in its straightforward simplicity. Maybe he deserved to be called marvelously holy; he did not seem half priest, half politician, as so many Videssian prelates did.

  «You have come to me,» he replied. «This is brave, true, but it also shows you know your people have done wrong. It is for you to tell me what you will do, for me to say what is enough.»

  Almost, Abivard warned him aloud against pushing too hard. But Hmayeak sounded not like a man who was pushing but like one stating what he saw as a truth. Abivard decided to accept that and see what sprang from it «Here is what I will do,» he said. «I will let you worship in your own way so long as you pledge to remain loyal to Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase. If you for your priesthood make this pledge and if the nakharars and warriors of Vaspurakan abide by it, the rebellion here shall be as if it had never been.»

  «You will seek no reprisals against the leaders of the revolt?» That was not Hmayeak speaking, but Tatul.

  «I will not,» Abivard said. «Mikhran marzban will not. But all must go back to being as it was before the revolt. Where you have driven Makuraner garrisons from towns and fortresses, you must let them return.»

  «You ask us to put on once more the chains of slavery we have broken,» Tatul protested.

  «If it comes to war between Vaspurakan and Makuran, you will lose,» Abivard said bluntly. «You lived contentedly under the arrangement you had before, so why not go back to it?»

  «Who will win in a war among Vaspurakan and Makuran—and Videssos?» Tatul shot back. «Maniakes, I hear, is not Genesios—he is not altogether hopeless at war. And Videssos follows Phos, as we do. The Empire might be glad to aid us against your false faith.»

  Abivard scowled for a moment before replying. Tatul, unlike Hmayeak, could see beyond the borders of his mountainous native land. If the past offered any standard for judgment, he was liable to be right, too—if Videssos had the strength to act as he hoped. «Before you dream such dreams, Tatul,» Abivard said slowly, «remember how far from Vaspurakan any Videssian soldiers are.»

  «Videssos may be far.» Tatul pointed toward the northeast «The Videssian Sea is close.»

  That made Abivard scowl again. The Videssian Sea, like all the seas bordering the Empire, had only Videssian ships upon it. If Maniakes wanted badly enough to send an army to Vaspurakan, he could do so without fighting his way across the Makuraner-held westlands.

  Hmayeak held up his right hand. The middle finger was stained with ink. The priest said, «Let us have peace. If we are allowed to worship as we please, it is enough. Videssos as our master would try to force what it calls orthodoxy upon us, just as the Makuraners try to make us follow the God and the Prophets Four. You know this, Tatul; it has happened before.»

  Grudgingly, the nakharar nodded. But then he said, «It might not happen this time. Maniakes is of the princes' blood, after all.»

  «He is not of our creed,» Hmayeak said. «The Videssians could never stomach an Avtokrator who acknowledged Vaspur the Firstborn. If he comes to drive away the men of Makuran, be sure he will be doing it for himself and for Videssos, not for us. Let us have peace.»

  Tatul muttered under his breath. Then he rounded on Abivard again. «Will the King of Kings agree to the arrangement you propose?»

  If he has a drop of sense in his head or concealed anywhere else about his person. But Abivard could not say that. «If I make the arrangement, he will agree to it,» he said, and hoped he was not lying.

  «Let it be as he says,» Hmayeak told Tatul. «Vshnasp excepted, the Makuraners seldom lie, and he has made a good name for himself in the wars against Videssos. I do not think he is deceiving us.» He spoke in Videssian so that Abivard could understand.

  «I shall do as I say,» Abivard declared. «May the Prophets Four turn their backs on me and may the God drop me into the Void if I lie.»

  «I believe you will do as you say,» Tatul answered. «I do not need the marvelously holy Hmayeak to tell me you are honorable; by your words today you have convinced me. Would Vshnasp have misted himself among us? It is to laugh. No, you have honor, brother-in-law to the King of Kings. But has Sharbaraz honor?»

  «He is the King of Kings,» Abivard declared. «He is the font of honor.»

  «Phos grant it be so,» Tatul said, and sketched his god's sun-sign above his heart.

  Roshnani stood, hands on hips, outside the wagon in which she had traveled so many farsangs through the Videssian westlands and Vaspurakan. Facing her might have been harder than entering Shahapivan. «Husband of mine,» she said sweetly, «you are a fool.»

  «Suppose I say something like No doubt you're right, but I got away with it?» Abivard answered. «If I do that, can we take the argument as already over? If I tell you I won't take such chances again—»

  «You'll be lying,» Roshnani interrupted. «You've come back, so we can argue. That takes a lot of cattle away from the stampede, if you know what I mean. But if you hadn't come back, we would have had a furious fight, let me tell you that.»

  «If I hadn't come back—» Abivard was tired. He got a quarter of the way through that before realizing it made no logical sense.

  «Never mind,» Roshnani said. «I gather the Vaspurakaners agreed. If they hadn't, they would have started sending you out in chunks.» When Abivard didn't deny it, his principal wife asked the same question the nakharar Tatul had: «Will Sharbaraz King of Kings agree?» Abivard could be more direct with her than he had been with the Vaspurakaner. «Drop me into the Void if I know,» he said. «If the God is kind, he'll be so happy to hear we've brought the Vaspurakaner revolt under control without getting tied down in endless fighting here that he won't care how we did it If the God isn't kind—» He shrugged.

  «May she be so,» Roshnani said. «I shall pray to the lady Shivini to intercede with her and ensure that she will grant your request»

  «It will be as it is, and when we find out how that is, we shall deal with it as best we can,» Abivard said, a sentence dismissing all fortune-telling if ever there was one. «Right now I wouldn't mind dealing with a cup of wine.»

  Roshnani played along with the joke. «I predict one lies in your future.»

  Sure enough, the wine appeared, and the world looked better for it. Roast mutton with parsnips and leeks improved Abivard's attitude, too. Then Varaz asked, «What would you have done if they'd tried to keep you in Shahapivan, Father?»

  «What would I have done?» Abivard echoed. «I would have fought, I think. I wouldn't have wanted them to throw me into some cell in the citadel and do what they wanted with me for as long as they wanted. But after that your mother would have been even more upset with me than she really was.»

  Varaz thought that through and then nodded without saying anything more; he understood what his father meant. But Gulshahr, w
ho was too young to follow conversations as closely as Varaz could, said, «Why would Mama have been upset, Papa?»

  Abivard wanted to speak no words of evil omen, so he answered, «Because I would have done something foolish—like this.» He tickled her ribs till she squealed and kicked her feet and forgot about the question she'd asked.

  He drank more wine. One by one the children got sleepy and went off to their cramped little compartments in the wagon. Abivard got sleepy, too. Yawning, he walked with neck bent—to keep from bumping the roof—down to the little curtain-screened chamber he shared with Roshnani. Several carpets and sheepskins on the floor made sleeping soft; when winter came, he and Roshnani would sleep under several of them rather than on top.

  There was no need now. Vaspurakan did not get summer heat to match that of Vek Rud domain, where Abivard had grown to manhood. When you stepped out into the sunshine on a hot day there, within moments you felt your eyeballs start to dry out. It was warm here in the valley of Shahapivan, but not so warm as to make you wonder if you had walked into a bake oven by mistake. Abivard would have rolled over and gone to sleep—or even gone to sleep without rolling over first—but Roshnani all but molested him after she pulled the entry curtain shut behind her. Afterward he peered through the darkness at her and said, «Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but what was that in aid of?»

  Like his, her voice was a thread of whisper: «Sometimes you can be very stupid. Do you know that I spent this whole day wondering whether I would ever see you again? That is what that was in aid of.»

  «Oh.» After a moment Abivard said, «You're giving me the wrong idea, you know. Now, whenever I see a hostile city, I'll have an overpowering urge to go into it and talk things over with whoever is in command»

  She poked him in the ribs. «Don't be more absurd than you can help,» she said, her voice sharper than it usually got.

  «I obey you as I would obey Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his years be many and his realm increase,» Abivard said with an extravagant gesture that was wasted in the darkness. He paused again, then added, «As a matter of fact, I'd sooner obey you. You have better sense.»