Anackire

by Tanith Lee

  A few minutes after noon, the word of an approach began to fly.

  On the heels of this faultless rabble-rousing forerunner, the Prince Am Xai came through the White Gate from the Ioli road, in the midst of his cavalcade.

  Drummers marched in first, six of them, in black burnished mail, setting a brisk solid tempo. Directly after these came bronze horns and rattles, and then the Lily banner of Karmiss borne high on the music. After the Lily banner prowled two nubile girls, dressed in ribbons and little else, with lilies in their hair. They led by ropes of flowers two black gelded bulls, docile and obliging. The crowd was quick to see the analogous joke, or perhaps they were helped. “Free Zakoris!” the cry went up. Free gelded Zakoris, led by the dulcet Lily. The girls flirted and blushed. They were wenches from the hills, earning money beyond their dreams. The bulls, too, were from the hill farms.

  Ten soldiers rode by, and two soldiers walked in their trotting wake, carrying between them the outspread banner of Kesarh’s blazon, the Salamander in gold on a scarlet ground. The overall approving noise winged into cheering. The crowd started to call his name, as men had on the ships at Tjis: Am Xai! Am Xai!

  They could already see him, standing in the brazen chariot. He wore red today, the color of the wine with which he had made dupes and corpses of the pirates. His team of zeebas was black, black as his hair. Despite the uproar, he held the team in perfect check with one hand. The other rested almost idly on the chariot rail, loosely holding in its grasp a gold-handled whip. The symbols were exact. Not many missed them, though most would not have given them a name. The stance of facile strength and grace, the warlike masculine beauty which seemed to encompass Kesarh, surrounded by his men in their dark mail, in control of all things, so it seemed. The image of a king. A Vis king.

  They were bawling now, and the flowers were coming down like rain.

  He turned now and then, acknowledging them. None of Suthamun’s riotousness, or the heirs’ simpering or smiling contempt. Kesarh was different. His courtesy and his arrogance enthralled them. They felt they had been noticed, as was their right, by a god.

  Such was Kesarh’s presence, which he understood, and used so plainly and so well, having waited so patiently for a chance to use it.

  Behind Kesarh rode twenty more of his men, all the Twos and all the Fives of his one hundred. Altogether, almost forty of his personal guard were on view through the procession.

  The heroes of the ships, who rode after, were more gaudy, and the crowd made a fuss of them, naturally. But they tasted the vinegar on the honey. Even the blond, dark-skinned captain named—along with many others—for his looks: Raldnor, even he on his costly horse knew he was not that day’s darling.

  By the time the Prince reached the Ashara Temple, the crowd was thunderous and the incense of broken flowers hid the fact that no sacred incense rose from the holy terrace.

  People burst across the square as Am Xai reined in. His guard held them back good-humoredly, for they were good-humored themselves, wanting only to come closer to their focal point.

  The black bulls were led by their floral chains across to the temple and up the steps, the Prince and his guard following, and the crowd spilling after.

  The priests, who had been watching from eyelets, were doubtless perturbed. None came forth.

  Kesarh stood, with unflawed poise, calmly waiting, demonstrating that the fault was not his, but he would overlook it. The crowd, however, began to shout and yell at the temple. Eventually a solitary flustered priest scurried from the porch to be greeted by abusive applause. He was a Shansarian, or at least enough of one to fulfill the rigid strictures of the Ashara Temple.

  He hurried to Kesarh, but before the priest could speak, as if he had been asked, Kesarh said, in his carrying actor’s voice: “I’m here to sacrifice to the goddess, in the sight of the people, for my victory at Tjis.”

  The priest looked about him, decided, and ran away.

  The crowd cat-called, protested. Then fell quiet, anxious to see what Kesarh would do.

  What he did was to hesitate an instant, as if in thought, then walk directly up to the marble altar on the terrace.

  He said nothing further, but a motion of his hand brought the pair of bulls to him, a man now at either side, the girls melted away.

  Kesarh drew his knife. The edge was honed to a razor—he had been expecting this.

  With a swiftness that was astonishing, and an atrocious accuracy, he swept his arm across the black taurian necks, slicing both throats before the stroke was ended.

  Blood spouted, gushed. The great heads flopped, the bodies spasmed and sank, almost as one. Drowned in gore, the flowers unwove and streaked the steps with brackish red. But he had been so agile, there was not a splash on his fine clothes: even his hands were unmarked.

  Long ago, in the past of the past, kings had sacrificed in such a way.

  The priest, who had only gone for reinforcements, rushed out with his fellow officiates upon the terrace. Unneeded.

  • • •

  The King was stripped naked, save for the cloth about his loins. He had been at exercise with stave and bow, was en route to his bath, and that it was in this way and this state that he took the audience was significant. The insult was a blatant one. That the young man in the wine-red garments knew himself insulted, what rank he had totally ignored, must be certain.

  “Well,” Suthamun said to him, letting the slave place a mantle at last across his shoulders. “Your explanation?”

  Kesarh Am Xai looked at his King with enormous blankness.

  “My explanation of what, my lord?”

  “Your dance measure through my streets. Of that.”

  “You gave us free entry, my lord. Your people chose to honor us, in your name.”

  “My name? You flounced back into Istris as if you’d re-taken Zakoris herself, instead of a brace of boats.”

  “Seven ships, my lord.”

  Suthamun, wrapped in the robe, sat down and drank wine. None was offered elsewhere. There were a number of others in the room, watching with interest. The oldest son, Prince Jornil, ate figs and stared at Kesarh’s clothing. As the father had coveted kalinxes nearly a month ago, the son now coveted this elegant costume. It irked Jornil that Kesarh, who had, and deserved to have, no revenues, could procure such tailors and such dyes.

  “Seven ships,” said the King. “Or were you seeing more than double the number?”

  There was a long pause. The offensive question apparently required an answer.

  “Seven, my lord,” said Kesarh. “If you fear my reckoning is out, you might ask the captains you yourself appointed, Lios, or Raldnor Am Ioli.”

  “I’ll ask them nothing. They’re disgraced. With you.”

  Another long silence. Kesarh kept his eyes down, knowing what Suthamun might behold in them, should they be raised.

  “You must excuse me, my King. I thought, when you sent me to Tjis, I went with your blessing to gain some renown for myself.”

  “Did you? Then you should have waited for me to tell you so. You were sent, you Visian dog, to burn refuse on the sea. No more.”

  There was a vague murmuring about the room. Suthamun ran his eye over it, daring it to grow louder, and it died.

  The talk had reached the palace, the talk of the streets. Kesarh had been set on in the coastal town by agents of some enemy, some high enemy, who was envious. Only the skills of Ankabek had saved him.

  That the King did not mention the sojourn at Ankabek was also evidential.

  Kesarh waited. He waited for Suthamun to see that regal unfavor toward him now could reek of villainy. But Suthamun did not, or would not, see this.

  “You came in,” said Suthamun Am Shansar, “like a young leopard. You can creep out again like a mouse. You will go at once to your estates at Xai.” Kesarh’s head came up and his eyes flashed
like drawn knives. And Suthamun smiled. “Yes, my Salamander. The fire’s out.”

  • • •

  The ragged man bowed low, the third time he had done so.

  “They’re selling locks of black male hair, saying it’s yours, sir. And the poet made a fine job of the paean; he’s singing it over in the eastern city by now. And the women—women we never funded—mooning over you, refusing their lovers—”

  “All right,” the shadow said from the chair. And then, to another, and to the ragged man’s great relief, “Pay him what I told you.”

  When the paid man had gone out, Kesarh rose and filled a glass goblet with water. This indeed was no hour for wine.

  The mistake had been in not realizing fully he played this game against a dolt. Suthamun, too much an idiot to make the correct move, the move which would have laid brick on brick—

  Kesarh drank the bitter water.

  “What else?”

  His guard sergeant handed him a package. It had been opened, tested for its motive.

  Kesarh examined the contents.

  “Raldnor Am Ioli’s third best ring. A love-token?”

  The sergeant showed his teeth.

  “Better than writing it, my lord.”

  “True. He doesn’t like Suthamun’s response. Rather than blame me, he blames the King. Another fool. This one more convenient, perhaps, if he keeps his promises. Are those men ready to ride?”

  “Yes, my lord. One fifth, as you ordered. The lads we’ve had longest, and most often seem about you.”

  “They won’t like Xai. But then, neither shall I. There’s another man. One of the Nines, Rem. A Karmian with light eyes and friends in the Ommos quarter.”

  “I know him. We put Biter to him not long ago.”

  “Find him and send him there. The King gave me just until sunset to get out of Istris.”

  There was a sound beyond the apartment door, the man on guard there striking the floor with his spear. Next second the door was flung wide.

  A servant stood fluting in Shansarian: “Through the will of Ashara, the First Heir, Prince Jornil of Istris,” while Jornil brushed by him and walked into the chamber.

  Kesarh looked at him. Jornil beautifully returned the look. The light of late afternoon tumbled against him like a loving woman. The door was shut at his back.

  “An honor,” Kesarh said shortly. “You’re here to wave me off.”

  “I’m here to tell you to leave those clothes behind you when you go.”

  Kesarh stared at him, then all at once he laughed, only one harsh note of it.

  He pulled another flagon over and gestured to the sergeant. As the door closed a third time, Kesarh presented Prince Jornil with a drink of wine.

  Jornil put the smoky glass down untasted.

  “Come now,” said Kesarh. “Did you think I put something in it?”

  Jornil beamed. They spoke in the Vis tongue. Despite the announcing servant, Jornil had some difficulty with the language of his fathers.

  “No. But I don’t like your wine.”

  “Karmian grapes.”

  “Quite. The clothes. . . .”

  “Of course, my Prince,” said Kesarh. He put his hand to the fastening of the tunic. “Now?”

  “Oh, you can simply discard them here. I’ll send someone for them.”

  “And do have them well-laundered. I rode at least three miles in them.”

  Jornil picked up the wine, regarded it, put it down again.

  “Is it true what they’re saying? I mean, that my father attempted to have you killed?”

  Kesarh considered.

  “It isn’t true. But I wonder why you should think someone is saying it.”

  “It’s common gossip on the street. A poisonous snake at Tjis—”

  Kesarh now burst out laughing. Jornil, not intending to, laughed with him.

  “A minor wound in battle. No snake. Nor is there any reason on the earth,” said Kesarh, “for Suthamun to have need to kill me. He can send me to Xai, a living death. Much worse.”

  Jornil, who did not like Kesarh, but who was yet vastly drawn to him, and who had been intermittently yet fascinatedly jealous of him since their childhood, snorted with amusement.

  “I may come and visit you there.”

  “Don’t, for the goddess’ sake. A royal progress to Xai would finish it. No. Remember me here. Wear these clothes for me. This dye, they tell me, was mixed with the blood of thirteen virgin girls, to get the color so exact.”

  Jornil, between belief and scorn for Zastis quickening, lifted the cup of sour young wine and drained it.

  • • •

  Xai was situated on the plains of southwestern Karmiss, many miles from the capital. It was a journey of fifteen to seventeen days, mostly due to the poverty or nonexistence of the roads. The inns were also poor, or nonexistent. The land was flat at Xai. Wild zeeba herds galloped across it, as if themselves unwilling to linger. Two small villages crouched on the estate. The villa itself was ramshackle. Patchy jungle-forest, adrift in a swampy lake, gave the house its characteristic aura and odor.

  Kesarh had spent enough of his childhood in this place to know how much he detested it.

  Like a sick lion, he fretted in his confinement. At night, or at odd times during the blazing days, Zastis drove him to couple with the wretched women who were his possessions. He rode, exercised, and tried to hunt the sterile country. The men he had taken with him got drunk on the vile local beer and spewed it up again, cursing Suthamun, or Kesarh, or their gods.

  He had been there a full month before he had any unsolicited word. Then it was from the source he partly anticipated: the half-blood captain, Raldnor of Ioli.

  Twelve days later the man arrived, with an escort only of three. Which boded rather well.

  • • •

  They sat on the roof terrace under awning. As the sun began to set over the forest in the lake, birds rose and fell in screaming clouds.

  “I’ve come to see more and more distinctly,” Raldnor Am Ioli declared with soft persistence, “how we were used. I, my fellow captains, yourself, lord Prince. All to be sacrificed. Then Suthamun to send some favorite and clear the seas, getting glory over our backs. We were the taster at the feast. Meant to die to prove the strength of the bane.”

  Kesarh smiled slightly. At his signal the girl refilled the Iolian’s cup.

  “And so naturally,” Am Ioli said, “instead of reward—punishment. My captaincy retracted. And fined—fined, by Ashkar—for making unsanctioned public spectacle.” He drank. His pale blood was not from Shansar, but out of Vardath, hence his Vardish name for the goddess. That too was useful, in the matter of basic loyalties. “Is Suthamun insane?”

  Kesarh shrugged.

  “The King believes in the supremacy of his own yellow race. Men of mixed blood—even of such favorable coloring as yourself, sir—are a blot on the purity of his people. I didn’t properly understand this, I confess, until Tjis. Now, Raldnor, I wonder how long I shall understand anything.”

  “You’re in fear of your life, still.”

  “If I died at Xai, it would go unremarked.”

  “No. The capital’s alive with your praises, even now.”

  “Till the mob forget, then. After that—another snake, maybe.”

  “He could reach out to all of us.”

  “So he could.”

  They drank. Raldnor Am Ioli banged down his empty cup.

  “Other than fly Karmiss like felons, what solution?”

  Kesarh said, “I could hardly get off the island, having been regally detained here. He’d like me to attempt it, possibly, then invent treason out of it. A lawful execution would follow.”

  “This is Suthamun’s madness.”

  “His obsession. But what hope does any man of dark bloo
d have since the Lowland War?”

  Ruffled, Raldnor intuitively smoothed his feathers. Until recently, the accident of coloring which had earned him his illustrious name, had worked as an aid rather than a drawback. The godlike Storm Lord Raldnor himself had been a mix.

  The sun was in the lake, drowning and burning like one of the Free Zakorian ships. The wine, too, was nearly gone.

  “Berinda,” Kesarh spoke peremptorily to the girl. She looked at him with the soft, wounded eyes of the born-broken slave, then slipped away to refill the jug. “In any case,” Kesarh murmured, “I’m surprised you think me worth your concern, sir. After our discussion at sea.”

  “Those galley-slaves you left to roast?” Raldnor met his eyes coolly. “It was an act I loathed, my lord. But your ruthlessness, while I abhorred it, do abhor it, led me to expect—how shall I put it?—great things of you. A shining future. You’d destroy anything that stood in your way.”

  “And you,” said Kesarh, “would rather risk yourself beside me, than find yourself in my way.”

  Raldnor, with a certain humorousness, nodded.

  He was an audaciously clever and perceptive man. These very qualities would occasionally cause him to behave foolishly and blindly.

  “You asked if there might be a solution to the King’s malice,” Kesarh said. “There may be. Something that will show his hand to the people so openly he won’t dare to try again. Something stamped with such ironic justice that Istris will never forget it. It’ll hurt, too, if you like your revenge with salt on it.”

  Raldnor shifted. He now knew himself in the presence of what he had already sensed he was in the presence of, aboard the Karmian galley. But, opportunist that he was, his eyes were open and his hands steady as he said, “Please enlighten me, my lord.”

  In a couple of sentences, Kesarh obliged.

  “By all the bloody gods,” said Raldnor, whose Vis mother had been a successful whore in Ioli’s Pleasure City.

  Across the roof, against a sky which had lulled to bronze, the girl Berinda was coming back with more wine. She had heard nothing of what was said, nor would it have interested her. Her mind was fixed and held by fundamental things. As she leaned to fill Kesarh’s cup, she remembered how he had lain with her, and she inhaled the male scent of him like some drug.