Anackire

by Tanith Lee

  For a child, no blood was shed, but perfumes. A soaring window of thickly colored glass threw down its lights into the pillars of incense, through which the new heir was now brought, quieted by soporifics, to be shown to the goddess.

  Suthamun stood in the shadow of her four right hands, Uhl and the younger brothers beside him, and near them their sons, the chosen nobles. The Prince Kesarh had by many been expected to stand there with them, close to the King. But Kesarh had effected the same mistake twice. Until now decorous and modest, all at once he had made it plain, as when he had come back from Tjis, that he anticipated favor. Some remark had casually been let slip concerning his placement in the temple. Suthamun, softly this time as velvet, had seen to it the Prince Kesarh was requested to stand farther off.

  The ceremony, which in Shansar would have been conducted on open rock or in some hut before the totem, having gathered clutter, dragged.

  Amid the chants, a dull crack of sound far above went unheard by several. Of the royal party, only Prince Uhl glanced upward, instinctively; those who watched saw Suthamun smile, shaking his head. He, like most others, took the noise for a solitary blotting of the wind against some loose strut of scaffolding. The state of the roof had earlier been viewed by palace officials, and it was safe. Among the scatter of other heads raised, the Prince Kesarh’s did not number. Though he had heard the sound, he knew perfectly well what it was.

  Perhaps five minutes later, another sound began, however, which caused the chanting of the priests to stumble. At first almost inaudible but gradually burgeoning, it was a strange rushing, like that of water. A stream of powder sprinkled down out of the air and across the altar.

  Very few now did not look up. Unblemished, the pale dome above the goddess’ head showed signs only of permanence. Then came a colossal bang. Women wailed. Shouts rang out. And from the square beyond the doors cries arose. A hill of snow had poured down the surface of the temple roof, crashing to the ground. Almost immediately the concourse of people recognized the frightful blow for what it was, although such shifts did not normally occur until the spring thaw. A wave of reaction flowed through the gathering. Suthamun was seen to smile again, as he leaned forward under the goddess’ hands.

  And then another woman shrieked.

  There was just the space for that, and for a sudden veining to appear like a web in the dome. Then the dome cracked like eggshell. In white thunder, the eastern roof dropped into the temple.

  Tons of masonry fell, descending like a driven bolt, and, striking earth, splashed out again in all directions. Missiles hit stone and flesh. The great colored window was riven.

  The cacophony of screams, terror and agony, mingled with a muffled continuous after-rumble. The powder dust stood, a wavering column from floor to sky. Very little could be seen through it, only the blundering of figures, the isolated lick of fire from smashed lamps, and above them a horrible impious thing—the goddess Ashara with half her head torn away, in silhouette against the cold open void now skewered in the broken window.

  It was the Prince Kesarh, his forehead bleeding from a shallow gash, who called his own men into instantaneous action. Suthamun’s slight had set Kesarh well outside the major zone of impact. Now he seemed shocked to life while others about him could only gaze or crawl or invoke their gods, some of whom were not Ashara.

  Kesarh led the twenty of his guard who were in the temple straight into the smothering flour-like dust. Presently, from the corners of the precinct, men ran to help them. Nobles hauled at the smashed enormous debris, bloody, coughing, dusty, with the common soldiers. Kesarh himself worked like one possessed, in an icy fever. Some of the blocks were not to be lifted by men alone, they would require zeebas. Slaves erupted from the temple. A dreadful generalized outcry came from everywhere.

  All they could find at first were dead. Uhl lay on the altar, his skull squashed like a fruit, and the officiating priest next to him. The child, the new heir, had been hammered beneath them.

  Suthamun, when Kesarh’s men lifted away the broken beams which had obscured his face, was still alive.

  Kesarh went quickly to him and kneeled down. An incredible weight lay on the King’s chest. Black blood ran thinly from his mouth. His eyes turned sluggishly toward the Prince.

  “Have courage, my lord. They’re fetching a team of zeebas to raise the stone.”

  The column of powder was lessening now. Through the swirl of it, those uninjured or only slightly harmed were creeping near. The dreadful outcry was sinking to a dreadful anguished murmur without words.

  Kesarh maintained his vigil by the King until teams of beasts were led along the aisles, profaning the sanctuary. Then he rose and assisted in the work of haulage.

  As suspected, no other who had been at the central point under the eastern dome had survived. The four younger brothers of the King were barely recognizable. The scarred half-brother had been struck down by a falling hand of the goddess Herself. Suthamun was uncovered, and seeing his wounds, it was apparent he too could not continue for long. It was actually unapparent how he might still persist.

  They rested his head tenderly on cushions so he might lie and look up at the jagged vault of sky. A sick priest came, and whispered prayers. Kesarh knelt again. The crowd watched, and the window mouthed the snowy wind.

  After a while, Suthamun died.

  If he had guessed anything at all, he had not been enabled to voice it. And Kesarh, anointed with his own blood, kneeling with such grace and such steadfast strength by the man he had killed—not one who saw him forgot how he was, the galvanic rescue attempt, the nobleness inherent in each line of his compassion.

  But beyond everything, the omen loomed.

  It seemed Ashara herself had flung her malediction against Suthamun and his house. It could hardly have been more clear.

  Only the engineers themselves knew the truth. The cavity which had been made beneath the upper roofing, hidden from the eyes of searchers, and the small fire which had been left smoldering with the pot of oil a supported and mathematically devised distance above. It had all been mathematically coordinated, with the skill of men familiar with the values and forms of architecture, and of men knowledgeable in methods of carnage. When the oil exploded, a fire took out the carefully balanced underpinning of the Cupola. The way it had been nurtured, it had needed only that to hold it firm, only the destruction of that to fall. It seemed merely negligence was responsible, and weather, or fate. Or Ashara.

  An interview was, despite superstition, sought with the mason and those men who had worked on the eastern roof. None of them were to be found. It was assumed they had fled, quite sensibly, out of the way of justice.

  • • •

  The council was seated in the map-chamber, under the mosaic.

  Outside, across the city, the funeral bells still clanged, and on the height of the palace the funeral beacon, barely put out it seemed, once more gouged the twilight with its reddened eye. Suthamun’s second wife, the mother of the baby which had died with him, had mortally stabbed herself an hour later. They were brave, the women of Shansar, if impetuous. She had been laid beside her husband on the pyre, the infant in her arms. The brothers were consumed a score of feet away. It was a family affair.

  Now Istris waited, and all Karmiss beyond her walls, to hear who should take up the reins of power. The potential King, of course, was known. It was to be the most mature heir, the seven-year-old Prince Emel. But seeing he was a child, there must be a regent, and all the legal guardians, Uhl and his brothers, and the oldest legal sons of these brothers, had been killed with Suthamun. It was truly a catastrophe of epic proportions. Now the choice stood between a bevy of bastards or lesser sons, men very young in years themselves, and popularly unknown. Men who had never looked for anything and who had made no mark in any sector of the city’s political life.

  There had been argument, some of it heated. It was mooted
that the lord Warden himself might take the traditional step to the regency his position had allowed others in the past. There were instant raucous jeers from the edges of the room, where those men who had bought a place at the council, supporters of this or that faction, objected. But for the most part, these bystanders were partisan noise-mongers and little else. The Warden silenced them, and declared he had no aptitude for a regency, and no appetite either.

  At this point, a figure pushed through the press, signaling he wished to speak.

  Shansarian customs of tribal council had altered the format of the Karmian institution. In Vis times such free-lancing would have been unacceptable. But the Warden beckoned.

  “We grant you the floor, Raldnor Am Ioli.”

  Raldnor stepped out on to it, and looked round. He was used to commanding a ship, when granted one; this doghouse did not bother him in the least.

  “My lord Warden. Gentlemen. At the commencement of Zastis, seven Zakorian pirate galleys were ravaging the Karmian and Dortharian coasts. King Suthamun, a wise and canny master, sent a man he trusted to rid the seas of them. Not aware of the Free Zakorian strength, he gave him for the work three ships, nor of the best. I know. I captained one. When we learned what we were up against, I was for sailing home. But my commander, Kesarh Am Xai, held us where we were, and with ingenuity and valor, the sacrifice of one listing ship, and the loss of five men—five, gentlemen—won us the day.” There was a noise of approval now, scarcely any of it paid for, especially from the Vis in the chamber. “Forgive my enthusiasm,” said Raldnor. “I was impressed. Remain so. The Prince Kesarh is a mature leader, known to Istris by elite report, and by sight. He is, moreover, of royal blood. His father was a Shansarian officer. His mother was a princess of the Karmian royal house, whose roots go back to the time of Visian Rarnammon—”

  Raldnor broke off as a shout went up all around the chamber. It was the old cry—Am Xai. Raldnor mused, standing in the thick of it, hearing dimly behind the racket the screeches of roasting slaves chained to their oars. It was a point to remember. Once you were of no use to him, he would leave you to burn.

  The council was bustling, conferring. They had undoubtedly known, simply been waiting for the proper cue. Three at least had been frankly bought.

  Presently they withdrew to the privacy of another chamber to deliberate.

  Raldnor went on musing, perambulating the corridors without, as others were doing. Even musicians had been called to play in one of the rooms, a deferential lament harmonizing with the bells, still music.

  The stroke of ill-luck which had brought the end to Suthamun’s current dynasty was peculiar. Ashkar’s doing?

  Raldnor, who believed in chance, did not however believe in this chance. That he had been excluded from the astonishing plot annoyed him and left him with a feeling of relief. He had sense enough, he thought, to demonstrate neither emotion.

  The bells had stopped and it was nearly midnight when a train of messengers raced through the halls.

  The loiterers, alerted, crowded back toward the map-chamber. The council filed in. The lord Warden nodded to them all.

  “The Prince-King Emel has been summoned. It’s late for the child, but by the laws of our Sister Continent, his fatherland, he must be present.” There was a pause. “We have also,” said the Warden, “sent for the Prince Am Xai.”

  Not long after, a sleepy blond child, bemused but well-schooled, was led to the doors by his nurses, and from there into the chamber by two of his guard. The Prince-King Emel sat where he was asked to sit, and graciously accepted a sweetmeat from the Warden.

  It was an hour later that Kesarh arrived.

  He walked into the council, the crowd giving way for him, like a creature of silent thunder, his black clothes, his black hair blown from riding, his face distraught. He had remained behind at the site of the King’s pyre with those other mourners who would stand vigil there all night.

  “Your pardon, Prince Kesarh, that we called you from the death-watch.”

  “I can go back,” Kesarh said.

  There was a little whispering. Raldnor of Ioli listened, awestruck despite himself. The man’s theater was incomparable. His entrance, his looks, his voice, had carried them all.

  “Yes, my lord. You can go back. First I must ask you, in the Name of the goddess and by the will of this council of Istris, if you will act regent for Emel son of Suthamun, until he shall be of sufficient years to assume the throne of Karmiss?”

  There was no answer. The stillness went on and on, Kesarh at the center of it like a sword.

  The interval in sound awoke the child, who had fallen asleep on a stool. He raised his lids, and saw across from him a tall man like a shadow. Then the shadow moved. It came toward Prince Emel. At the final instant it kneeled at his feet. Emel recollected, and he got up.

  As the words of assent buzzed in the air, Emel waited to go back to bed, drowsily looking at the shining black mane of the man who would be his death.

  6.

  A MARBLE WORLD.

  As the months of the long snow continued, the landscape was sculpted to them, seeming incapable of change. Windless, white, the silver lace of ice in all her bays, Karmiss lay as if asleep.

  The new lodgings Rem had taken, however, though spacious, were kept warm. There were even nocturnal companions, comely and skillful, who might be hired from a nearby wine-shop, if one felt the need. Rem found himself prey to an intermittent nostalgia for Doriyos. Now and then, Rem visualized returning to the House of Three Cries, but knew he would never do so.

  There had been an alternation of Rem’s status in the Prince Am Xai’s personal guard. In the wake of the Festival of Masks, his pay was splendidly augmented. Then, five days after the wild ride back from Ankabek, too late to be of service, there had come a metamorphosis of position. Rem ceased to be a number. There were thirteen Nines, at this juncture, and he was no longer one of them. He was all at once in charge of fifty men who would, in the name of the Prince, answer solely to Rem. The advancement was welded to, yet apart from, the hierarchy of the guard, the membership of which had currently escalated to over two hundred. The guard sergeant who had lashed Rem now greeted him with respectful equality.

  Rem, acknowledging these novel conditions, was far from complacent. Mostly, he had been required to organize escorts.

  At regular intervals, autonomously, he exercised in the under-palace, sword and shield, body combat, or those coordinating arms it could be fatal to mislay. A couple of times he would find the Prince himself also at exercise. On the first day of the siege snow, Kesarh had called Rem into the court instead of one of the paid masters. Stripped to the minimum, they fought for thirty minutes. The sexual element, forever intrinsic yet forever irrelevant to such contests, angered Rem. In the end the anger won him the bout. He sent Kesarh sprawling, half stunned.

  Kesarh seemed amused. Rem knew the Prince had merely permitted his concentration to flag. Rem had seen how Kesarh could fight even in sham. The victory was a mean one. Almost an insult.

  When the eastern roof of the Ashara Temple crushed Suthamun and his peers, Rem was not in the building, not even on duty in the square outside. He had realized something was prepared, had known there must be something. But the magnitude of it shook him.

  He was ordered to captain a detachment of Kesarh’s guard during the funeral procession and the ghastly Shansarian deathwatch. Slow-striding after the purple-draped chariot through the snow, he had felt the same sort of affront as at the insulting victory in the exercise court. Somehow, it had all been too easy. And when the messengers came floundering over the torch-lit ice to summon Kesarh to the council, Rem stood expressionless, wanting to laugh or curse, something, anything, to acclaim the grandiose and sinister triteness of it all.

  But Am Xai was regent now. His secret guard were official, every one of them. His apartments had once more improved, transmuted to t
he upper palace, with all that implied.

  In a stretch of months, he had traveled a vast distance. Answerable at last only to the predisposed council, and to a seven-year-old child who, if the stories were accurate, worshipped him.

  He would kill the child. That much was obvious.

  How long would he let it exist? A year? Two years? How much of life would the Prince-King Emel be allowed to know, before some unforeseen mishap rendered all valueless?

  Any idea of sentiment for infancy or kindred would be a nonsense, now.

  Since the night he came back from Ankabek, Rem had detected no trace of grief or unease about his master. The public lament for Val Nardia had been perfect and quite false. Yet the anguish Rem had interrupted must still be there, somewhere, surely? The gnawing worm known only to Kesarh’s most private privacy.

  And the weird sorcery at Ankabek—had Kesarh dismissed that, as he had seemed to, as Rem could not?

  For despite all reasoning and explanation, he believed still what the golden woman had told him. That across miles of snow and frigid water, under the frozen ground, in the cold womb of one dead, the first fruit of their incest, Kesarh’s, Val Nardia’s, their incest and their obsessive love, mindlessly swelled toward awakening.

  Waiting in the antechamber of the Prince’s apartments, Rem knew he was here because of Ankabek. He felt a kind of urgency, sifted with oppression, heavy on the air.

  Yet Kesarh did not come in for some while.

  In the interim a physician passed through the room, on his way from the women’s suite. The girl Kesarh had brought from Xai, Berinda, had conceived during Zastis. Rem had seen her about, walking with a proud, bewildered big-belliedness. Yesterday she had begun labor pains long before her time. Gossip said she would lose the baby. It would be stillborn. She was simple, not fit to bear. All this was like some perverse omen, distorted echo—of that other thing, on the island.