by Judith Tarr
Maybe it was simply that they knew her and acknowledged her failings. Estarion had that look about him. So did Bundur—a quirk of the lip, a glint of the eye.
“How,” Estarion asked, “do you contend with the hottest temper in my empire?”
“As I do with all forces of nature, sir,” Bundur answered: “swiftly, thoroughly, and with great respect.”
“Is it worth the trouble?”
“I married it,” Bundur said. “Sir.”
“Ah,” said Estarion, “but did you think you were going to tame it?”
“Of course not,” said Bundur.
Estarion smiled his sudden brilliant smile. “You’re a wise man, I see. And remarkably courageous.”
“She’s no danger to me,” said Bundur.
“No? Then she must love you for a fact.” Estarion settled more comfortably, stretched out on the cushions, propped on his elbow. “But I was thinking of your courage in standing here, talking to the most foreign of foreigners, and knowing that I’m not, strictly speaking, here at all.”
“You’re not here?” Bundur sounded puzzled. “I can see you, hear you.”
“But I have no bodily substance. I’m a working of magic, a figment of your mind’s eye.”
“Grandfather—” Daruya began, half angry, half afraid.
He ignored her. So did Bundur. Bundur’s vitals were knotted to the point of pain, but he was strong. He held his ground. She dared not touch him, still less ease the pain, for fear he would revolt.
“Tell me,” he said, “O shape of air and darkness, if what I hear is true. Is it magic that they practice in the temples? Are the greatest haters of magic its most devoted practitioners?”
“I’m no oracle,” said Estarion, “but from all I’ve heard and seen, it’s true.”
Bundur’s knees gave way. There was a cushion close enough to fall to; he dropped onto it with something resembling grace, and sat for a moment, simply breathing. At length he said, “I thought I was stronger. I thought I knew what it was to live among mages.”
“Even mages are never quite prepared for everything that can happen,” said Estarion. “And you were taught from childhood to hate mages and to reverence priests. To discover that they’re the same thing . . . that would break most men’s minds.”
Bundur laughed shakily. “I’ve married a demon’s child, I’ve consorted with mages, I’ve seen a dark god in my own sitting room. What’s another terrible truth to that?”
“Not all priests are mages,” Vanyi said, sharp and clear. They listened to her as they would not have done to Daruya: stopped their stallion-dance and stared. She glared back. “No, young Shakabundur, not even in our country, which isn’t half as preposterous a place as you’re coming to think it is. It’s just a few priests and a particular form of prayer, and a fairly universal talent for raising wards. We would be a threat to that, we and our Gates, not least because we can name it for what it is.”
“You think the leaders know,” said Daruya.
“Know or suspect,” Vanyi said, “and believe themselves righteous because their gods answer their prayers. Maybe they didn’t know before they saw us. Who’s to tell, till we can ask them?”
“You’re not going to do that,” Estarion said quickly.
Vanyi’s brows went up. “Why not? Do you think we should cower here till they fall on us and destroy us?”
“I think you could let them come to you.”
“I could,” she conceded. “It’s a decent stronghold, this. Well armed, well guarded; good walls, no easy way in. They’ll come here, of course, before too long. Once their other quarry is hunted out and disposed of.”
“Promise me you won’t do something rash,” said Estarion.
Vanyi looked at him. Simply looked.
He withstood her stare far better than Daruya could have, but even he could not find a grin to set against it. She said, “I won’t do anything that isn’t necessary.”
“That’s not what I asked,” he said.
“That’s what you’ll get.”
“Gods,” muttered Bundur. “And he’s her king?”
“More than king,” Daruya said. “But she’s the Master of Mages.”
“My sorrow,” said Estarion, flashing a glance at them, “that I ever let it be so. Damn you, Vanyi—”
“Damn you, Estarion,” said Vanyi. “Go away and let me work.”
“Not till you promise to be sensible.”
“I’ll be exactly as sensible as I need to be.”
“If you get yourself killed,” he said, low and fierce, “I’ll haunt you till I die myself.”
“The way you’re haunting me now?” Vanyi wanted to know. “Avaryan help us. I’m like to die of it.”
“Don’t,” he said.
“What, you care that much?”
It was mocking, but it was not. Estarion met it with sober certainty. “Always, Vanyi.” He paused. “You didn’t know?”
“I didn’t dare.” She rubbed her eyes. She looked as if she was suddenly, cripplingly exhausted. “Go home, Estarion.”
This time he obeyed her—if anyone could call it obedience. It looked like the yielding of royal will to royal whim. Daruya herself could not have done it better.
29
Vanyi entered the palace without concealment, and with no particular care to be either nameless or faceless. She had had some difficulty escaping House Janabundur—everyone was determined to keep everyone else safe, and never mind how many of them had already rebelled against it—but after all she was the Guildmaster, and the oldest woman in the house besides, which mattered more to the Shurakani. She had her way.
She also had a pair of Olenyai at her back, but that was more help than hindrance. They kept her from having to fret about attacks from behind.
The palace, like the city, was quiet, almost too much so. It was waiting for something, she thought. Her arrival? She would have laughed at herself, but there was cold in her bones.
The Minister of Protocol’s workroom was empty, its table tidy, dusted and clean. He had not been there that day, or the night before, either. She followed the memory of him, brazening her way past guards and chamberlains, going invisible when she must.
She was taking no great care to hoard her magery. This was her gamble, her last cast of the dice. That she knew who had cast down the Gates through the circle of priests. That that one was waiting for her as a spider waits for its prey, crouching in the center of its web.
Fear had no part in it. She had been considering this for a long while now, perhaps since she decided to come to Shurakan in spite of the Gate’s fall. Someone would have to lure the enemy out. Her mere presence in the kingdom had not been enough. She must force the meeting, and the confrontation.
If she had guessed rightly. If the enemy was the one she thought, and not someone else, someone unexpected.
oOo
The palace was a warren. Not as much of one as the Golden Palace in Kundri’j Asan; nor was it as large as Estarion’s palace in Starios. But there was a great deal of it, a great many doors and passages, staircases, rooms that were full of people and rooms that were echoingly empty.
Vanyi followed the thread of presence that was the Minister of Protocol. Either he had been wandering lost for long hours, or he liked to ramble. Or it was yet another aspect of the trap. If she gave in to tedium and retreated, the enemy had won a respite. If she persevered, she was caught. In either event, the enemy won.
Which was exactly what Vanyi hoped for. She pressed on past weary feet and aching head, staring strangers, guards who barred her way and found themselves confronted with the threat of Olenyai swords. Neither bluster nor insults swayed the veiled warriors. They spoke no Shurakani; only the common language of hand on swordhilt and a few fingerbreadths of bared steel.
The trail led her into darker, narrower ways, perhaps older, certainly the province of servants and lesser ministers. Rooms were crowded together here, with larger ones at intervals, full o
f the scents of cooking and the clatter of plates and bowls.
It was the hour for the daymeal. Vanyi had eaten, but not in a while. She regretted not thinking to bring at least a pouchful of fruit or a round of bread to nibble on. She had thought—hoped—to be seized at once and taken to the one she must see.
Foolish of her. An enemy clever enough to hide from mages who were actively hunting a destroyer of Gates had more than enough sense to lead her on a merry chase before going to ground.
Indeed, and it was growing less merry by the heartbeat. She stopped abruptly. The Olenyai drifted past her, halted.
One circled round to guard her back. The other poised just ahead of her, alert, though the corridor was empty.
Think, she told herself. What was this for? Why a trail this long and this convoluted, if they both knew how it had to end?
Subtleties within subtleties. The enemy might be afraid of her. She was a master of mages, after all—and that one knew what the title meant.
Or she might be hunting the wrong quarry. Why then would he run? He should not even know she hunted him.
Unless he ran from someone else.
But who—
oOo
She began to run.
Back the way she came. Back through the twisting, turning passages. She forgot that she was a woman of venerable years, with stiff knees and shortening wind. She ran like the girl she had been.
The Minister of Protocol’s workroom was no longer empty. The Minister of Protocol sat in it, upright at his worktable, smiling. And very dead.
The smile was rictus. Certain poisons induced just that expression, and just that blue cast to the lips. Vanyi was glad, at least, that he had had no pain. She had feared much worse.
She said so, taking a great deal too many breaths to do it, to the seemingly empty room.
“But, lady,” said a gentle voice, “death is death.”
“Some deaths are worse,” she said. “And some, if your sages are to be believed, cast a man lower on the wheel of lives. Is it easier to die if you believe you’ll be reborn?”
“One would think so,” said Esakai the priest of Ushala temple. He had been using no magery to conceal himself, only a fold of curtain over an alcove. He came forward slowly, leaning on a staff.
He looked no different. Elderly, gentle, amiable. No hatred in him, no terror of what she was.
He regarded the Minister of Protocol with honest regret. “I do wish he could have lived,” he said. “But he was obstinate. He would not see reason, even with the authority of the gods behind it.”
“What reason was that, if it was too unreasonable for this of all men?”
“Why,” said the priest, “that truly he was not well advised to ally himself with you. Your magery is difficulty enough. Your Gate is deadly. What is it after all but an instrument of conquest, conceived to destroy our kingdom?”
Vanyi gaped. Of all reasons she had expected, this was the last. Hastily she mustered wits and voice. “That was why you broke the Gate? Because you were afraid of armies invading through it?”
Esakai’s thin white brows rose. “You expected any other reason?”
“It’s too logical,” Vanyi said.
“Lady,” said Esakai sadly. “Oh, lady, how little you must think of us, if you believe that we can only fear you because you possess powers we were all bred to despise. That is no trivial thing, mind, but it’s not all we can think of. We remember what you’ve told us of the empire you come from, how vast it is, how small we are, and how insignificant. It could consume us in an instant. And so it will, unless we resist it.”
“No,” said Vanyi. “That’s not what I meant. You’ve let your mobs destroy half of Shurakan in the name of the gods’ will against mages. If invasion were all you were afraid of, you’d have done none of that. You’d have marched on Janabundur—regardless of the power of the name or the house—and dragged us out and made examples of us.”
“Yes,” said Esakai, “and given your king-above-kings all the cause he would ever need, to fall on us and destroy us.”
“He can’t come through the Gate,” Vanyi pointed out. “It’s broken.”
“And so shall it stay, while we have the power of the gods to help us. But, lady, if he has armies of dragons as the tales say, he needs no Gate, and no long march overland, either. We won’t chance that. We’ll see to it that no mage can ever live safe in Su-Shaklan, and we’ll wield you as we may, to gain your emperor’s promise that he won’t conquer us.”
Vanyi had been aware of the armed men closing in behind her, the drawn swords, the pikes, the hum of chanting that bore magery in it. The Olenyai would have sprung to her defense. She held them back.
“No,” she said. “Hold; be quiet. Get away if you can. This is strategy, and planned for.”
From the roll of their eyes, they knew it already. One might approve. The other might be thinking her a raving idiot. There was no telling; they were shielded against magery.
But they were quiet, which was what mattered. To Esakai she said, “It’s very odd, you know. One of the first things I did when I began building Gates to span this world was to inform the emperor that whatever he did, he was never to think that he could use my Gates to further his conquests. He’d do it the old way or none, foot-slog and senelback. My Gates are not his to use, nor are my mages his servants.
“He honored that agreement,” she said, “though I gave him precious little to sweeten it: promise that he could use Gates himself, to see what was on the other side, and promise to share what we learned. He’d never bring his armies to overwhelm Shurakan.”
“Unless,” said the priest, “he were given what he considered reason. However slight. His heir is here—the one who will rule after him, if the gods ordain. Might she not be the beginning of his invasion?”
“Believe me,” said Vanyi, “Daruya would sooner die than be her grandfather’s puppet.”
The priest shrugged slightly, contemplating the dead man as before, with an expression of honest grief. “So would this man, and we gave him his wish. We cannot endanger our kingdom. Surely, lady, you understand that.”
“I understand that you barely comprehend what you did in breaking the Gate. Your servants don’t comprehend at all that the prayers they chant, the circles they dance in, are workings of magery. What will happen when they learn the truth?”
“The gods defend them,” said Esakai, “and through them this kingdom.”
“All priests are blind,” said Vanyi, who was herself a priestess of the Sun.
He did not know that. He sighed, pitying her. “You thought to be a sacrifice. I name you hostage. Let your people pay the price to gain you back—let them depart from Su-Shaklan and never return.”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” said Vanyi.
She was feeling odd. Her breath had come back, but shallower than before. Her chest was tight. Her arm ached. Had she struck it against a wall somewhere, or strained it careening round a corner?
She was where she needed to be. “Let me send these warriors as messengers,” she said. “They’re safer so; I don’t know how many of yours it will take to subdue them if you let them stay, when your own guards try to carry me off.”
Esakai believed in the Olenyai no more than any other Shurakani; he could only see their small size and their quiet bearing. But it served him to be rid of her guards, however weak they might seem. He agreed to it.
They did not, but she commanded them. “Tell Daruya,” she said. “She’s not to come galloping after me. There are subtler ways to win this war.”
One of them, who was slightly the taller and rather the elder, inclined his head. “I’ll tell her,” he said. “She won’t like it.”
“Of course she won’t,” said Vanyi. “I expect her to control her temper and think, and do what’s sensible. She can do it if she tries.”
“Yes, lady,” said the Olenyas. His voice was perfectly bland.
She was sorry to see them go. Th
ey had been like a wall at her back, visible and tangible protection against the dark. Without them she was utterly alone.
She was bait, and this was the trap: trap within trap. She could only pray that Daruya would understand the message and see what she must do. It was more trust than most would have given that wildest—and many would say least—of the Sun’s brood. But Vanyi had never quite believed that Daruya was as feckless as she seemed.
It was a frail thing to rest her hopes on, but it was what she had. She smiled at Esakai. “So then. Am I to be shut up in a dungeon, or may I have dinner and a bed?”
“You are our guest,” said Esakai, “until we are given reason to think otherwise.”
She bowed, ironic. “My thanks, sir.”
30
Damn that woman, thought Daruya, to all twenty-seven hells.
They were all in the hall, even the children—happenstance, chiefly, since it was evening and the daymeal was past. The women were sewing by lamplight, the children playing on the floor, Bundur reading from a book of old stories. Daruya listened, wondering how any of them could be so calm with Vanyi gone to the palace and not yet come back, and no word from her, no message, nothing.
The mages, who should have been either fretting over their Guildmaster or arming for the fight, were sitting on the edge of the lamplight, Aledi and Miyaz close together, Kadin well apart and utterly silent, and the Gileni Guardian, Uruan, seemingly asleep. Even the exorcist was there, looking surprisingly ordinary, playing with the children.
Hunin and Rahai burst in with signal lack of ceremony, and the rest of the Olenyai after them. The hall seemed suddenly full, and not only with bodies; the air had the scent and the taste of a storm that was ready to break. Daruya stood up with the swiftness of relief, and half-stepped toward the Olenyai. “Where is she?”
“In the palace,” Hunin answered. “She sent a message. You are not, lady, to gallop to her rescue. You are to remember that there are subtler ways; to think, to be sensible. And then do what you must.”
“You let her send you away?” demanded Daruya.
