by Adam Corby
Sparkling and silent beneath the sun’s embrace, Tarendahardil spread across the land, subtly smudged by the haze of early summer. Kis Halá sidled up to her, and thrust her muzzle over Allissál’s shoulder. Allissál leaned against her, pressing her cheek against that of the heated mare, and kissed her. Kis Halá snorted happily, sniffed at the laol leaves, and daintily deigned to nibble at one. A breeze arose, cool and swelling with the lush greenness of the season and the sea’s freedom. But from the slopes below, it seemed the shades gathered and swarmed like angry bees.
* * *
Not long after Ampeánor returned to Tarendahardil, he summoned the other regents to the Council Hall in the Palace, their first meeting since the first weeks of spring. The five men met round the crescent table for some hours; but little came of it. Arstomenes wore an intoxicated glaze over his eyes, Farnese coughed bitterly and argued all points, and Lornof wore a tunic with a hole in it, laughed too often in too high a voice, and rubbed his hollowed, darkened eyes. Dornan Ural filled the hall with details of taxation and the problems the many refugees had brought to the city. In vain did Ampeánor, alone, try to speak of the menace of the barbarians.
The sixth chair, which was the Queen’s, stood empty in the King’s Light, and taunted Ampeánor who sat beside it. He had seen Allissál only once in the brief time since his return, a meeting that had confused and dismayed him, so that once again he had been constrained to delay his declarations to her of his love. She had promised to attend this meeting, but at the last had sent him word by one of her slaves, that she was indisposed and would keep to her chambers.
* * *
She was there while the five men quarreled round the table: standing in the small arched corner room off her dimchamber that she sometimes used for the first meal. Still was she robed in black, but it was not coarse linen she wore. Her face was beautifully painted, and gold gleamed from her throat and wrists, and her hair was bound with ruby clasps. Above the two dining-couches behind her, lamps of brass and gold burned aromatically, dispelling the larger chamber’s gloom with a light changeable, warm and inviting. At the far end of the chamber, the slave-maiden abased herself and departed through the whispering hangings into the maidens’ chambers.
The man the maiden had conveyed thither walked across the lower floor and up the few steps into the small, raised chamber. She held out her cupped hands before her and presented him with a small pink shell formed with a beautiful symmetry, tiny and delicately curled.
‘From the deeps of Elna’s Sea,’ she said: ‘cast up by a wave.’
He said nothing, but took her in his arms and kissed her yielding mouth so hungrily that she was borne back against the high edge of one of the couches.
When at length the kiss was broken, she whispered to him, ‘Wait.’ Then she drew from her finger her signet ring, and from his neck the slender silver chain supporting a small ring bearing in ivory her likeness, which was the secret device identifying the agents of the Queen. She took the two rings and placed them in a small box in a niche in the wall. Then she turned to him and smiled: a woman’s-smile, fraught with mystery and danger.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘we are free.’
They dined then in the little arched room, reclining in opposite directions upon the couches. The maidens brought the courses from below. There was little talk, but many glances, exchanged between them; it was as if they needed no words. Then they laughed, and went beneath the saffron hangings of her bed.
* * *
The bed was warm and close when she awoke. He was already wakeful, leaning against a cushion and gazing upon her with a look of strange intensity, so that she was minded of Emsha’s words. With a seeming sleepiness she asked him, ‘What other women have you had, Jade?’
‘There was only one other of any importance.’
‘And who was she?’
‘You.’
‘We do not play at swords now, Ennius.’ She sighed happily, and stretched. ‘No doubt you have had many women in your brief exile – one in every city you fled to, perhaps. Met, couched, and lost when the city fell. Perhaps they now serve as slaves in the barbarian’s camp. I know not, nor care. I love you. Promise me now, and vow it before Goddess, that you will not leave me when this city falls.’
He took her hand in one of his, and laid the other upon her breast. ‘Before this Goddess, I vow it.’ But his tones were light and bantering, as hers had been.
‘By how you fulfill this oath, I will know whether you love me. But that is a chance that, Goddess willing, will never come about. Can you not say the words now, as I have done?’
He looked away. ‘Once I loved you, long ago.’
‘And now?’
He leaned over her, and kissed each of her eyes, the end of her nose, and her lips. ‘Now,’ he murmured, ‘you have more of me than I have ever given any other.’
She took his hand, laying her other over his chest to imitate his gesture. ‘Before Elna, I vow none but you will ever be foremost in my love, Jade, no matter what my deeds may be.’
‘But what will your other lovers say to that?’
‘I have had no others, Jade – you know that. Only one there was before you: no charan or courtier, but only Eno, the stablemaster’s son. I beguiled him in anger when I recovered from the sickness that took me in the mountains when I ran away. Eno had kept my secret, but he smiled at me, and that angered me. We met in the stables, where he would lay out cloaks upon the fresh straw. There was earth-scent, horse-scent and mare’s-breath there; my stain was loosed upon the straw of their bedding. So I held him between my legs, but there was no love for him within me; nor did I know his seed had taken root within me until later, when the guardsmen had conducted me here to rule in Tarendahardil. Such was the fine father of godlike Elnavis, who promised fair to be such an Emperor as has not been known for ten generations.’
‘And what has become of Eno?’
‘I granted him a goodly living, but never saw him more. He dwells in his native Eglands now, and has a fat wife and a dozen strong sons, all fine trainers of horses. And still he keeps my secret. But you may be easy, Jade: for I will not treat you so.’
‘That is as well,’ he answered. ‘For did you, then I could not warrant the stillness of my tongue.’
She laughed, a laugh he silenced with his mouth.
It was silent in the hollow chamber afterward, save for the bustle of ever-moving Tarendahardil drifting through the high, narrow window, and the muffled rhythmic rasp of Ennius’s sleep. She arose silently and slithered through the canopy. Through the narrow parting behind her she could see a part of his lean, dark body where it lay, as perfect as a corpse.
In the little arch-room she opened the box and resumed her signet ring. In the niche behind the box was a squat small decanter of brown glass stoppered with a brass draught-cup. Naked but for the heavy ring, her hair in tangles, her long flanks quivering sweetly, she lifted up that vessel. Her perfumed breasts stirred with the rising of her breath. Lichenous and syrupy stirred the herbal potion she had had Emsha mix, to destroy the infant growing in her womb. She unstopped it and drank deep, and the brown glass tumbled tinkling on the floor. She shuddered a bit when the venom took its first bite within her; but after that she was well enough. She wrapped her nakedness in a satin robe and glided out of the room.
* * *
When that fruitless, bitter meeting at last ended, Ampeánor hastened up the steps of the White Tower to learn what it had been that had kept Allissál absent. Yet her women informed him she lay yet abed and could not see him.
Troubled and confused, he returned to the Hall of Rukor, where he gazed again on the portrait of her, which Qhelvin of Sorne had left unfinished, and which the Gerso had presented, for his own strange reasons, to Ampeánor. By now, he had spent so many hours staring into the depths of her painted eyes, it was as if this vision of her had been dyed indelibly into the fabric of his mind. He felt taken by it and emptied, and sickened by a longing at once perilou
s and dear. This dead and perfect image was now Allissál to him; yet what Allissál was he scarcely knew any longer. Qhelvin of Sorne had succeeded better than he knew, when he put those elusive lights in her eyes, and modeled that mocking, bared shoulder. But had he known to what end his labor would be put, he would have chosen instead to burn the board to ashes and curse his own talent.
Ampeánor looked away from the painting, unable any longer to bear its brilliance; and saw before him Allissál herself, or another representation of her. Then (despite his earlier vow) he felt his head grow heavy, and his voice choked in his throat so that he might not even offer her a salutation.
She upon her part smiled, with a faint sourness about her lips. It was much the same smile she wore before the dissolute members of her court when out of duty and policy she felt constrained to flatter them for their vices. She was pale, and her face was drawn. Listlessly she reclined upon a couch. She held her head up strangely, as if even so simple a thing required great effort.
‘I come not to speak of politics or plans, Ampeánor,’ she said, ‘but rather of you and me. Long have I felt it, but it was unseemly to speak of it before the secondary rites for Elnavis were complete. Now, driven and helpless, I come before you. Will you not have me and rule at my side as my consort?’
Astonished at this miraculous stroke of fortune, Ampeánor was at first unable to answer.
* * *
Upon the second pass following, the Charan Ennius Kandi departed from Tarendahardil and rode toward the bright horizon, on a secret mission for the Queen, to meet her allies in Ernthio and gather intelligence on the barbarian’s strength and disposition; for no news had reached them in Tarendahardil of Postio’s defense for some weeks, and it was not even known for sure whether that city stood still or was fallen.
With the next waking the gates to the temples were opened and bells rung over the length of Tarendahardil to celebrate and announce the betrothal of the Empress Allissál nal Bordakasha to Ampeánor nal Torvalen, High Charan of Rukor.
And the people cheered.
XIV
‘The Wandering Outlaw of His Own Dark Mind’
FOR MANY PASSES after Ennius Kandi had departed Tarendahardil, the Gerso’s servant abode alone in his master’s chambers. At the times for the five meals, he would descend below to the eating halls of the Palace slaves. But otherwise he only paced before the deep blue hangings that concealed his master’s few belongings. Deep concerns wrote themselves upon his simple features as he paced. Finally, upon the second waking of the thirteenth pass, he put upon his head a cap such as sailors wore, and went out from the Palace.
Kuln-Holn went down from the Citadel into the city. He walked the wide Way of Kings, beneath the monumental statues, among slaves and merchants and carters and the litters of the highborn. When he reached the steps leading up to the Brown Temple of Goddess he came to a stop and leaned against a pedestal. Against the sky the aged building loomed, its high beacon terrible with the coruscation of Goddess.
‘How goes it with you, voyager?’
Before him on the first step above the level of the street, a little, frail, wrinkled old woman stood, and regarded him from out of the deep wells of her eyes.
‘Oh, lady, call me not by that name,’ Kuln-Holn moaned. Troubled were his brow and lips.
She smiled, and drew back the mantle overshading her face. Goddess caught up the fine sparse hairs upon her sharply rounded skull, and danced along the gleams. ‘Why do you not enter, then? Or is it that you wait for one to come down from sacrifices to lead you again – your master, perhaps?’ But Kuln-Holn shook his head warily. Now he wished he had not come hither.
‘Tell me then,’ she spoke, ‘if a child of yours took your gold and spent it on vile things, yet then repented, would you wish him hang about outside your house in misery, or enter and ask pardon? Do you not think your love could find forgiveness? Do you not think your master has goodness enough for that? How then could you deem Her love any the less, She who forsook the bed of Her own love so that we whom She guards might have light and life?’ But still, Kuln-Holn shook his head.
‘Well, then. You will not enter. But will you help me a little? For I am old, and these steps loom larger than long ago.’ Kuln-Holn, ashamed, took the old woman’s arm and helped her up to the Temple. ‘Nay,’ she said then, ‘only a little ways farther.’
‘But I cannot enter,’ he groaned.
‘Because you are a poor man, and have not golden vessels to offer for your prayers? Why came you hither, then?’
‘But I have done – oh, I thought I did well, and served Her – but a fear has come over me as if I walked along the dusky border, and I know not – I know not what.’
‘Have you no gifts to offer Her? For She is still a woman, and women like well those men who bring them gifts.’
He said, ‘I have only this.’ From his pouch he drew out a little figure fashioned of bronze, of a fish caught in a net. There was a round hole in the fish’s mouth, where once, perhaps, a pearl had been set; but that was gone long since. ‘I bought it in the marketplace,’ Kuln-Holn said, ‘but it is a wretched thing.’
‘Does it hold some meaning for you?’ the old lady asked, handing it back.
‘Nay, it is but a trinket,’ he mumbled, and looked away.
‘Yet a thing born of the heart is finer than all wealth, to a woman. Surely you have known this before? Now you must come within the Temple and offer it Her. For know, all offerings brought upon the grounds of the Temple are Hers by right even before they touch the altar; and he who takes back such a gift, no matter how worthless it is, he is called a thief of Goddess, and plagues overtake him.’
Kuln-Holn’s eyes widened. ‘That I had not known,’ he muttered.
They went forward a little, and all at once Kuln-Holn stood within the Brown Temple of Goddess where he had never thought to be permitted.
Above him the stones towered, ancient beyond memory. Vinelike carvings rose in all the corners of figures and scenes wondrous and strange beyond his understanding. At the upper reaches of the chamber, so far overhead, the walls were sheathed with beaten gold kept scrupulously clean, which dazzlingly reflected the light from the beacon above. Before Kuln-Holn was the raised stone vessel in which the sacred fire was kept burning, pungent with the sacrificial incense. The idol beyond the flames seemed to look down upon Her suppliants with eyes compassionate and unhuman. In the centers of Her carved eyes were gems of cut yellow crystal, changeable with the flames below, and seemingly alive.
Small and weak at the bottom of that high huge chamber, Kuln-Holn felt a stillness within the tiny room of his body, a quelling of all desire, pain, action, and hope. An immense kindliness encompassed him. Slowly he lowered himself to the floor.
The stones beneath his knees and elbows were worn smooth and slightly hollow. Thousands upon thousands had been there before him, and at the thought of all those voyaged multitudes and all their many prayers, his mind quailed. How had he ever dared to think such big thoughts of himself and appoint himself so highly?
The old woman took from his hands his little offering, and placed it upon the stone before the fire. A bell sounded from within the temple. ‘It is the time of the third burning,’ she told him: ‘a propitious time for offerings. Wait you here and make prayer, and I will seek out the priestesses.’
‘Do you know any of the priestesses?’ Kuln-Holn asked – for she had been garbed in a lora, and he remained ignorant of her identity.
‘All of them, I should think,’ she answered with a smile. At that she left him, alone with the image of Goddess.
Thereat he made prayers, such as his untutored heart could fashion. As he gazed upon the carved image of the idol, he was again reminded of its likeness to that of the Empress. For a moment he saw her before him in two pictures: as he had first beheld her, emerging in proud glory among the nobles of her Council, when Kuln-Holn had stood beside his master when first they had arrived at Tarendahardil; and then as
he had last glimpsed her, forlorn and abased here upon these very stones that now touched his own body. Then it was a great weariness, greater than he had ever felt in his life before, swept over him, and he slept as if a stone had felled him there.
* * *
When the High Priestess convened the virgins in the chamber they found him curled before the altar like a faithful old dog lying upon the hearthstones of his master’s hall. They smiled, and exchanged gentle jests at his coarse and ungraceful body; but the High Priestess, once again in her ceremonial robes, suffered him to remain so even as they invoked the ceremony of the third burning – though that was perhaps not strictly lawful. In truth, though she could not have told why, the aged maiden had quite taken this forlorn foreigner into her heart. They understood and knew each other, it may be, upon some level beyond all the bird’s-scratchings of poets. So might two lonely mountains of the gods regard each other from far ends of a valley, weathered and humbled by the usages of the skies and years piling round them.
The priestesses took Kuln-Holn in among themselves and let him sleep and eat in a little chamber removed from theirs. They allowed him to enter all the chambers of the Temple save one: that one was beneath the altar, and they did not speak of it. They asked him no questions, but found his manhood and his simplicity delightful. He told them stories of his tribe, and of fishing upon the Ocean of the Dead. Many passes he stayed among them; it tore at his heart to accept their many kindnesses, yet at the same time he could not bring himself to leave. There were no wars here, and no commandments: but the spirit of Goddess was all around him, to be breathed in with the incense of the altars.
And even so, his stay there was not entirely untroubled. Some of his sleeps were unquiet with a smiling dark countenance and scenes from the fall of Gerso he would as soon have forgotten. There at the side of him was where Kuln-Holn’s duty lay, no matter how pleasing were these hours of calm. But surely, he would say to himself, putting it off, surely his master could not have returned so soon.
