Anackire

by Tanith Lee

  He heard them talking below. A man with a mote of flame in his eye, touched Kesarh’s feet, gently, like a caress.

  “Kesr, do you live, still? The fourth day, Kesr Am Karmiss. I never knew any to last so long.” And then, “He’s bleeding from the mouth. Blood from the lungs.”

  Kesarh turned his head. The sky was crimson and light split the sail. Something came and tapped his face. It was a bowl, pushed up on a stick. Water. He turned to put his lips to the bowl.

  “No,” said a girl’s voice, softly, against his ear, or in his brain. “Don’t drink it. Kesarh, don’t drink.”

  “Go away,” he said. His tongue found the water. “Bitch.”

  “No,” she said. “Don’t drink.”

  The water had no taste and he did not want it, though his thirst raged. His body tried to cough. Lances ran through his ribs. Then her hands came and held him. Cool, fragrant, better than the water.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “Since we were children, whom did we have to trust save each other?”

  “I must live, Val Nardia,” he said. “Get back what they took from me. And if you want me to live, I can. For you. Poison, disease, the wound of any battle—nothing. I’ll run through flood and fire and thunderbolt—Val Nardia,” he said. “I am here.”

  “I shall live,” he repeated. A strand of her red hair moved against the red sky as she held him. It was Val Nardia, and no other. No alter image. His head was on her breast.

  “Live then,” she said. “Let go, and live.”

  Below, Dhaker stirred, fingering the opal eye. The man who held up the bowl said, “He doesn’t take the water.”

  “He’s dead,” said Dhaker.

  • • •

  They gave him neither to Rorn nor to the fire-burial of the yellow races. They left him to rot on the pole, or for the seabirds to feast on. Long before they came to Thaddra, only bones remained of him, which might have been the bones of any man who had died.

  Book Five

  Morning Star

  25.

  HIGH ON A GOLDEN STONE in the furnace of noon, the woman sat looking across the river. Behind her the black walls of a ruin went up. The sun of the hot months had burned her nearly as black, all but the silver bracelet on her left wrist—which, drawing close, you saw was not a bracelet, but a ring of bright scales native to her flesh.

  Yannul, having come out of the ancient city of the Zor, stood under the boulder. The farther shore was occupied, as usual, with its normal uneventful business. For almost a month it had been so. Since that night, that sunrise, of Power, when the world had seemed to chime like a bell. Easy with supernatural things, the villages across the river had soon put magic aside, a commonplace.

  “Safca,” he said, after a while.

  “Yes,” she said, “I know. You’re going home.”

  “The villa-farm at Amlan,” he said. “Medaci thinks we should go back. She says our elder son will get there. We don’t know where he is. But—safe, she says.”

  “Oh yes,” said Safca. “Yes, your son is safe and well.” Her voice was remote, and beautiful. He had never realized, in the beginning, she had a beautiful voice. Perhaps it was a legacy of royal blood. For she had that, too, did she not? “Yes,” she said again, “I have that, too.”

  “I shall never,” he said, “get used to having my mind read.”

  “I’m sorry. Your secret thoughts are secure enough. But some things burst out, barking like dogs. I still don’t know, Yannul, if it’s true.”

  “That you’re Amrek’s daughter? You aren’t like him. But the mark on your wrist—”

  “The curse of Anackire.”

  Yannul said, “Maybe it wasn’t a curse. Only an emblem. It hasn’t harmed you. Could Amrek have misunderstood?”

  She looked down at him. Her eyes were black Vis eyes—the Storm Lord Amrek’s eyes? She had altered a great deal. If she had the heritage of that line did not really matter anymore. She could reign here if she wanted. The Lans who had followed her would make her a queen, without being asked. But she was a priestess too, and possibly temporal rule meant nothing. Zastis fell late this year, and was almost due. The small camp in the ruined city was restive, eager, and you saw the same in the villages over the river. Even he, finding Medaci had not changed, returning from the inferno no winged avatar but a woman. . . . Silly as adolescent lovers, they had coupled in a wild orchard under the walls, and scolded each other after, grinning.

  But Safca, walking with a dozen male eyes scorching on her, gave no indication. Up on her rock now like a lioness, she watched the sky or a man with equal complacence, and no haste at all.

  And if she had caught that thought, she did not answer it.

  “Will you stay here,” he said eventually, “the city?”

  She said: “All places are one.” He perceived she reckoned this to be so. “But for others—the town we came by. Or Lan under the mountains. Since Lan is accessible again. The passes are open.”

  “I know it.”

  “But there were no messengers,” she said, her innocent eyes far away. “How could you know this?”

  “Telepathy rubs off.”

  Safca smiled. “I see your son,” she said, “Lur Raldnor, riding from the Lowlands. You must be proud of such a son.”

  Something wrenched at Yannul. He said, “What else do you see?”

  “Many things.”

  She would not tell him. Only what it was his right to be told. That night, that morning, were distant as the stars, but he tried, if reluctantly, to conjure them.

  “Do you,” he said, “frequently see Anackire?”

  “We are all Anackire. Anackire is everything.”

  “Then, no record. It was a dream—the war, the breaking of the sword.”

  “In Elyr,” she said, “the towers are watching for a star.”

  “They’ll see one, too.” He grinned again.

  “No, not Zastis, Yannul. Not an evening star of desire. A morning star of peace.”

  Yannul glanced over the river.

  “I remember,” he said slowly, “Koramvis.”

  But the woman on the rock said, “The past is the past.” And then he too saw, her mind focusing for his, Lur Raldnor riding under the sun. There was a second black ruin behind him, the length of the Plains and the little land of Elyr between, but Lur Raldnor was singing, some antique song Yannul half recalled, so he found he also began to form the words of it, noiselessly.

  • • •

  “Yes, father,” said Lur Raldnor. “I know you hear me.” He laughed at the sky. This was something he had yet to get used to. Having formed part of a mental colossus, he still had not mastered the everyday techniques of mind speech. It was like starting to make love and looking through the velvet surface to the skeleton.

  One could fathom why the Sister Continent, growing mercantile, had begun to suppress its telepathy.

  There were Sister Continent ships at Moiyah now, and over in Shansarian Alisaar. Some made on for Vardian Zakoris, for Dorthar and for Karmiss. It seemed they had held assembly down there in the south, and decided to reserve judgment on the war in Vis. So the old alliances stood after all. Now they ventured in as warlike friends, to an area less tumultuous than expected. Although in Karmiss, Shansar’s comradeship would be welcome enough. Istris had suffered. Word had it she was wrecked. The Warden had seized authority, of course. But Shansarian autocracy would be reestablished before the year turned, the Lily thoroughly eclipsed by the goddess with the tail of a fish. Ashyasmai would be Ashara, once more. As for the banner of the Salamander—it was burned, ironic fate for a fire-lizard. Kesarh’s ending was not so efficiently tabulated.

  Which reminded one of Rarmon. But then again, one knew about Rarmon, too, what had chanced, and what was to come. Destiny, like the metaphorical girl’s flesh, translucent and to be looked throug
h.

  There had been no problem that way with the Xarabian girl, who was not naturally a telepath. She had wept when Lur Raldnor bade her farewell, and told him she would call her son by his name. But Lur Raldnor, though he had not disillusioned her, had foreseen she would not bear his son.

  He went back to singing the song of the Lannic hills his father had taught him long ago. Magic had its place. There were other things. He knew he was young and the earth was beautiful. And that anyway he, and everything, lived forever. But he had known that since Medaci told him, when he was three years of age.

  • • •

  “And it’s farewell on Thaddra, now, is it? To me, who risked his fine skin under that damned tower,” said Tuab Ey in the wine-shop at Tumesh. “Dorthar. What can Dorthar offer you? Soft living and the King’s favor, and rich food and good liquor—what’s that to the healthy life you could lead with us, eating raw orynx in the jungle in the rain?”

  “Come with me,” said Rarnammon. “You earned whatever I can get you.”

  “Humble thanks. I’m a lord here. Among lords I’d be scum, and I know it.”

  Tuab Ey stirred the stew with his dagger. “As for the tower. Some god passed over us. I heard his wings. Now I credit gods. But I lived through it. Galud says the tower raged as if it was alight.”

  “Galud may be wise.”

  “Then there were the lepers, apparently all cured. Even Jort verified that.”

  “Jort may be—”

  “Wise, too? Hmm. So you’re some god’s golem,” said Tuab Ey. “Priest-king. Hero. Come and be human with me.”

  The man with the black hair and yellow Lowlander eyes looked at him, until Tuab Ey dropped his gaze, entertained to be bashful.

  “Fare well and prosper in Thaddra,” said Rarnammon eventually.

  “And you in Dorthar, you bastard of a king’s bastard.”

  Outside the sun seared on an old marketplace. Slaves were being sold under an awning. For a moment Rarnammon, in the shadow of the shop door, saw a red-haired woman in with the lot. But Astaris’ hair had been dyed black, they said, when Bandar put her up for sale here.

  Galud glared at him as he brought over the zeeba. Rarnammon rode away through the town and up into the foothills, his mind crowded by different things. Somewhere Yannul’s son was riding too, and somewhere that woman he had met in Olm sat on a rock. Safca, Amrek’s daughter—the revelatory visions had failed him there, or else been masked by some stronger will.

  The city of Rarnammon dwindled behind Rarnammon son of Raldnor, a drumbeat fading over the miles.

  The drumbeat of Dorthar lay ahead.

  Sometimes, he wished he did not hear it. At others it alerted him. The time of the miracle had gone by; one could not remain at such a pitch. And had he not once brooded in Lan that there was nothing for him, that he was not enough in himself to ask anything of existence. The visions, which had revealed so many things, had left him oddly nearsighted in other ways. It was foolish now to balk or to step aside. There had always been witchcraft in Dorthar.

  Raldnor had fled his own legend. But that was Raldnor.

  The blueness of the mountains poured down and the forests curled away. There was no trace of Free Zakoris, only a broken machinery of siege abandoned on a slope.

  They were raising a mighty stonework seven days along the Pass, to mark the visitation of the dragon the Dortharian soldiery had seen. The sculpture was homegrown, crudely if earnestly done. That might account for its curious shape. It was not like a dragon, more an enormous turtle, jaws and fins extruded from the discoid carapace.

  He did not question the soldiers about it. They in turn did not recognize him—he did not allow them to. When he was gone, only then, rumor moved among them. But they pointed out to each other that the man they took him for in retrospect had betrayed Dorthar to the Leopard, and would not dare to be coming back.

  Rarnammon was still on the Pass when Zastis began. The Star slunk up behind the moon, and dippered the mountains with its soft red flame. He was alone, and trying to sleep out the dreams that came, tinged like the mountains by the Star; he recalled a story that Zastis had been a palace the gods made for themselves in the clouds, a love-palace, which caught fire. Being a thing of the immortals, it burned on, unquenchable. And rising at certain seasons, inspired men, now, with lust.

  The dreams themselves were uncharactered. Awake, he dredged up memories. But these also seemed to have no true relevance. He had been through a greater whirlpool now than pain or pleasure or sex.

  The sentry posts on the Pass, as it cut into Dorthar, were Zastis-lax. The miracle had disorganized them, too. Some had grown authoritarian, or they had turned religious.

  Finally, he came down from the mountains, through the huge boulders that had collapsed into fresh attitudes after the great earthquake, and settled there to seeming permanence.

  He was on the path above that lake they called Ibron, no company, he thought, but the floating birds, when a glowing whiteness was suddenly against the curve of the hillside before him.

  A man had fallen here, from a racing chariot, to the lake. Rarnammon beheld a spinning shape, and looked through it to the Amanackire who stood beyond.

  There was an interim, then. They did not move or communicate. He did not try the mind speech with them, nor let them probe him, he was strong enough to prevent it now. Such things remained an intrusion to Rarnammon. At length he lost patience. He said aloud: “I’m not my father, as you understand. Tell me what you want, or get out of the way.”

  He disliked them, so cold, so pale. Unearthly impure purity. Not Lowlanders anymore, but something novel and quite alien. The white eyes met his and were lowered unwillingly. They did not care for him, either, or that he, not they, had wedded the psychic storm. They jealously wanted to be gods, gods in the ancient manner: Men who were paranormally superior to, and held sway therefore over, other men.

  “Son of Raldnor,” one of them said, “are you on the road to Anackyra?”

  “Where else?” he said.

  “Raldanash is ours,” they said, for all of them seemed to speak as one now, some mental overlay not to be avoided. “Raldanash we accepted, though his skin is the dark man’s skin.”

  “This is a warning of some sort?”

  “Yes,” they said.

  “Explain it.”

  “You are not ours. Nor will we be yours.”

  “Then, I’ve heard you out. Where’s Ashni?”

  “She went away over the hills. Some are with her.”

  “But not you,” he said. “That must rankle.”

  As he spurred the zeeba, they seemed to smoke into the flank of the hill. It might be a trick, but he did not think so. Maybe they had learned that art of projecting the image from elsewhere.

  Riding on, he made sure no other recognized him en route to the city. He met no more Amanackire.

  He used the random “Merchant’s Road” through the ruins to the river. Some thief was operating a ferry and poled him across.

  When he got in at one of Anackyra’s white gateways, entering the heat and rush of the metropolis, it seemed as if a pane of clear glass enclosed him. It was not only the cloaking anonymity he kept about himself. He was removed.

  The city, which had been reprieved from devastation, was everywhere discussing the wonders of gods and sorcery, and everywhere ignoring them. Trade and commerce flourished. Men argued and hassled in the dust. Two girls fought shrieking by a wine-shop. Incense and the rasp of gongs rose from the temples. Five of the sacred prostitutes, the Daughters of Anackire, crossed an avenue, guarded by temple soldiers. These women were bare-breasted, their nipples capped and rimmed by gilt, gold in the yellow veils of their skirts, their hair bleached, topaz in their ears and navels.

  Rarnammon turned to look after them, dully amazed. Not only at the absurdity of the world.

&n
bsp; • • •

  Vencrek, Warden of Anackyra, said, “You’re here, as he mentioned you would be. Your disguise must have been a nice one to get you through the streets.”

  “And Raldanash?” Rarnammon asked.

  “He lies at Moiyah, with the fleet. There are Vathcrian ships there now, from the Homeland.”

  The Storm Palace was cool, and perfumed with shrubs and trees and the unguents of costly women. The languid gestures of Zastis, the scents of Zastis, breathed about them, everywhere.

  “The council will be convened in the hour, my lord,” said Vencrek. “You have that much time. The royal apartments were opened and made ready. As he ordered it.”

  “What is the council to be told?” Rarnammon said.

  “What the city’s to be told. That you were ordered to Zakoris-In-Thaddra on a secret mission, at the wish of the Storm Lord. That this mission was accomplished with honor, and should the war have proceeded to its logical ends, your valor would have placed you at Raldanash’s side, his chief commander.”

  “Did you agree to this?”

  “He’s written to me,” said Vencrek. “I have the letters and the proclamation here, the latter still under his unbroken seal. He reposes utter trust in you. I can’t do otherwise.”

  “But you can,” said Rarnammon, “do precisely otherwise.”

  “Yes, you would have got that from Kesarh, no doubt. Yl’s pirates fed the fish with him, I gather.”

  Rarnammon did nothing, waited. After a time, Rarnammon said, “Do I assume Raldanash informed you of all his plan?”

  “I take it he informed you, my lord.”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  Rarnammon shrugged, deliberately. He said. “I thought that in Vathcri mind speech between brothers was not unusual.”

  Vencrek paled under his pale skin’s tan. One could not ascertain why; it could be from many reactions.

  “Yes, then,” he said, “you and I both know that Raldanash means to give up the crown of Dorthar. Means to abdicate and wander the backhills of Vathcri instead, as some starveling priest.”