Narrion shook his head. “They have no books of magic.”
“Ah. Books of magic. As to that, you just came from the greatest collection of wizards’ books in all the world. Or is the library at Tobol An less than legend says?”
Narrion said nothing. He had no desire to explain how he had run afoul of the librarian of Tobol An.
“Duke Talenor had a library,” Noddo said.
“Talenor,” Narrion said. “We heard that he turned traitor.”
“Aye, he did. Tried to offer the Shai a pageant—he thought he was still a courtier, poor man. They killed him, of course.”
“Is his library still in the palace?”
“It should be. But the Shai guard the palace at all times—Mariel is still there.”
“And Callia? Mariel said that she died—that she was killed.”
“Yes. That was bad, very bad. On the streets you can sometimes hear the Shai sing what sounds like a counting rhyme.” Suddenly Noddo began to sing; like all members of the Society he had a beautiful, evocative voice. “‘One is for Gobro, he was poisoned they say. Two is for Arion, his men led astray.’ They mean to imply that soon all the royal family will be dead.”
Narrion shook his head. “It’s worse than I thought. We hear none of this in Tobol An.”
“The news is not all bad. Folks say that King Tariel left an heir, a legitimate heir. That a king will come to free us.”
Narrion made an impatient gesture. “That’s nonsense. What else do they say—that he’ll come walking through God’s Gate, locked since Queen Ellara’s time? No one will free us but ourselves.”
“They also say that the hero Andosto is alive, hidden somewhere in Etrara.”
“Alive? Where?”
Noddo shook his head. “I don’t know. Someone was killing Shai soldiers, secretly and at night, but then the Shai executed ten citizens for every man dead and the killings stopped.”
“Andosto,” Narrion said. Suddenly he smiled. “I think I know how to get to the palace. Can you find Andosto for me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought the Society knew everything that happened in Etrara.”
“We did, once. Things have changed beyond recognition since you left. But I’ll try to find him for you.”
Taja and Val rode along the southern outskirts of Thole Forest. None of the maps in the library had showed them Wizard’s Hill but they had decided to leave anyway; Taja felt certain that she could find her way once they reached Shai.
Sbona fashioned us for finding, she thought. The proverb was meant to refer to the first man and woman, created to help the goddess find her lost dead sons, but Taja understood now that it also spoke of the power of the poet-mages and their gift for finding. She had discovered the right invocation when Narrion had raised his destructive magic, and she had seen immediately which words to use as her keystones. Soon, she thought, she would be able to feel the pull from Wizard’s Hill.
She repeated the proverb to Val, hoping to cheer him. He laughed. “Aye, but did even Sbona think to see two idiots walking recklessly toward their enemy?”
When dusk fell they dismounted near Soria to eat and make camp. Taja took out her tinderbox; they built a fire and cooked some of the fish and vegetables they had brought. After the meal they moved their blankets closer to the fire to get warm. Stars burned overhead, hard and sharp in the crystalline air.
“Is it strange to be returning?” Taja asked.
“Stranger than I can tell you,” Val said. “It almost seems as if the young man who went off so cheerfully to war is dead. I’ve seen so much since then.… I’ve seen that Callia was wrong to war with the Shai, that we were unprepared. Gobro, of all people, was right. We should have never broken the treaty.”
“The people wanted war, though,” Taja said.
“Aye,” Val said. “And what can a king or queen do then?”
He sounded thoughtful; Taja marveled at how much he had changed from the frivolous courtier she had known. Suddenly she desired him, his warmth, the laughter in his voice. What would he do if she moved her blanket next to his? There were probably rules governing that as well in Etrara; the courtiers seemed to make everything far more complicated than it needed to be. And in all the sonnets she had ever read she had never come across a simple description of a man and a woman lying together. He would probably be horrified.
She reached out for him in the dark. Her hand found his, and he drew her toward him. They embraced, holding each other for warmth and comfort as much as for desire. “Taja,” he said, kissing her. “Taja.” She ran her fingers through his hair.
The next morning they went into Soria to buy food and heavier clothing. His manner toward her had not changed; he was still easy, companionable. She wondered what would happen to them when they returned to Etrara, wondered if Val’s fine courtier friends would call him a fool for lying with a daughter of fisher-folk. But for the moment it was enough to know that she had a friend on the road.
A few days later they crossed the weathered bridge over the Darra River. They continued on. Several mornings after that they topped a rise and saw the Teeth of Tura to the east, a dark shape against the gray-black light of dawn. Taja looked up at the mountain range and shivered. “Did you really climb that?” she asked.
“Twice,” Val said, grinning. “And we did it to the north of here, where it’s steeper.”
The sun rose slowly above the Teeth, and they rode on. The next day they came to the foot of the mountains and began to climb.
As they went Val told her a little about the apparitions he had seen in the mountains. Taja looked around uneasily, wondering if she would be forced to battle with monsters appearing out of the snow. She was not yet a poet-mage, she knew; she understood very little about sorcery. But no wizard’s sendings disturbed their climb, and a few days later they reached the crest of the mountain.
The snow stopped as they descended; probably, Taja thought, they had traveled even south of Tobol An. But somehow she knew that they were headed in the right direction. Whenever they stopped to eat she could feel the pull of Wizard’s Hill, and if she closed her eyes she saw the outline of the mountain, stark against the sky, and two small figures making their way up the side.
As they traveled down toward Shai they saw a town the size of Tobol An lying near the Teeth. “I don’t know where we are,” Val said. “I’ve never been this far south before.”
Without discussing it they began to take paths leading south, hoping to skirt the village. Anyone coming from Etrara would be an object of suspicion, they knew, especially in a town as small as the one that lay before them.
They reached the flatland. The land around them looked like a desert, parched and wan, the only growing things a few grasses and stunted shrubs. Taja thought that in summer it must be hideously hot, but in this unending winter it was cold, a chill wind blowing constantly from the mountains. No rain fell; the shrubs looked starved for water.
They continued east. During their first day in Shai they met no one on the road, but on the second day Taja, who was in the lead, saw a straggling line of people walking toward them. She pulled her hood closer to her face and motioned Val to do the same. The people of Shai were taller and fairer than those of Etrara, and it would not be wise to pass them uncovered.
As the file came toward them, though, Taja saw that these men and women were citizens of Etrara. Their hands were tied with rope to their neighbors’ hands, and their feet hampered by a sort of hobble. Slaves, Taja thought, feeling cold. Slaves from Etrara.
She and Val rode off the path as the line passed. Shai guards with whips rode among the slaves, but only one man spared them a glance. Probably they had been told to do their job and not dawdle, Taja thought; Val had said the Shai had little ambition or initiative of their own.
She let out a breath after they had gone. “Lord Varra,” Val said, whispering as if the Shai could still hear them.
“What?” she said, urging her ho
rse along the path, away from the Shai.
“Lord Varra, the Queen’s Pen. I saw him among the slaves. He didn’t leave Etrara in time.”
She shivered. What would the Shai do to one of Queen Callia’s advisors? Worse, what would they do to a king, the rightful king of Etrara?
She realized, startled, that she had almost forgotten Val’s birthright. The king of Etrara. She remembered how she had desired him, and she felt hot with shame. What would he want with her, a simple woman from Tobol An? All his poems and protestations had been part of an elaborate game, something to occupy him now that Tamra had married; he would forget her as soon as they reached Etrara.
“I never saw him without his finery before,” Val said. “He seemed almost naked.”
“He might have said the same about you,” Taja said.
Without discussing it they began to ride faster, hoping to put as much distance between them and the slaves as they could. Her sense of where Wizard’s Hill lay was strong now, as if it were a magnet and she a piece of iron it pulled.
As evening fell they saw more people on the path, all of them traveling east. One man dropped back to ride with Val and Taja. “Are you riding to see the king?” he asked.
At first Taja could not understand his accent. But Val said, nodding, “Oh, aye. The king.”
“Where are you from?” the other man asked. “Your accent is strange.”
“North.”
“North? Did you see the barbarians from Etrara? Did you fight?”
“Aye, I fought.”
“I heard they were a weak and decadent people. And I heard that their poet-mage was no match for Kotheg.”
“No,” Val said. “No, he was not.”
The other man would have said more, but Val urged his horse on ahead. When they had gone far enough he turned to Taja. “The barbarians from Etrara,” he said, laughing. “He little knew how close he came to a barbarian from Etrara.”
“What did he mean about the king?” Taja asked.
Val shook his head. “We’ll find out, I’m sure.”
The number of people on the road continued to swell; there were soon dozens of men and women traveling with them. When night fell the Shai left the path and pitched tents on level ground. Taja and Val joined them, spreading their blankets on the hard desert floor.
That night she and Val slept apart; none of the folks they traveled with showed much affection toward each other, and they thought it best not to do anything that would call attention to themselves. But for a long time Taja could not get to sleep; as the land around them grew stranger she found herself desiring Val more. She missed the closeness they had shared.
The Shai called to one another in their harsh alien accents; they lit cookfires and prepared their meat with strange-smelling spices. As she drifted off to sleep she heard them start to sing, a ballad in a minor key about the deeds of their heroes. Their wavering voices and laughter were the last things she heard that night.
The Shai rose early the next day. Taja and Val remained wrapped in their blankets, hoping no one would draw them into conversation. But the man who had questioned Val the evening before had been unusual for one of the Shai; even among themselves they did not seem to talk much. Taja noticed that they stayed in the same groups as the day before, and that each group had a different-colored tent, red and black or purple and silver. She thought that they must travel in clans or tribes.
More caravans thronged the roads; they found it impossible to avoid one clan or another. She wondered what they thought of her and Val, two people traveling alone and without a clan, but for the most part the Shai did not even glance at them.
They passed fields that stretched to the horizon on either side of the road. Ancient twisted vines climbed supports built of wood. Vineyards, she thought; the good Shai wine must come from here. But the vines looked as dead as their supports, showing no bloom of leaves or grapes. Even here, so far from Etrara, the spring had not returned.
By midday they came to a few straggling houses. The road widened, became a small street paved with cobblestones. People at the front of the line began to call out in excited voices. Finally she could make out what they had seen; ahead of them stood a city that seemed even larger than Etrara.
The houses were low, one story or two at the most, with sloping roofs; they looked a little like the tents the clans had pitched on their journey. Colored mosaics in dizzying, intricate patterns surrounded the doors and windows, but as the travelers walked through the crooked streets Taja noticed that the same two or three designs repeated themselves over and over. Mirrors set among the tiles winked in the sun as they passed. Caged men and women hung overhead; that at least was no different.
She saw no fountains, no parks. There were no statues or images of any kind, and she remembered from her dream that the Shai had hidden or destroyed the beautiful murals in the palace, covering the walls with patterned rugs and tapestries, and that they had hammered their iron lamps into the painted ceilings.
The street widened again. The travelers stopped, their way blocked by a massive crowd. From her seat on the horse, above the heads of the people, Taja could see a huge low building almost completely covered with designs in gold and silver and black—a temple of some sort, she thought.
A man came out of the temple and stood on the stairs above the crowd. He blew a long wailing note on an instrument made of horn, and the people fell silent. More men came out of the temple, and then a woman, dressed in white with a crown of massy gold on her head.
The horn sounded again. Another man joined the people on the stairs. He wore white as well, and the jewels on his crown were clustered together as thickly as melon seeds.
The king, Taja thought, remembering what she had read in the library about the Shai. He had wed the queen, the woman in white, at Callabrion’s feast, and he would be killed a half year later, at the feast of Scathiel.
People bowed their heads. Beside her she saw Val do the same, and she quickly imitated him. When she looked up the king moved near his queen. He was young and muscular, Taja saw now, and she was at least fifty, and very plain. He took the queen’s face in his hands and kissed her.
The crowd cheered. Taja shivered, wondering what the two people on the stairs thought of this ceremony. The queen might have wed and bedded these young fine-looking men for thirty years or more, and lived with each of them for six months, only to see them go off at the end to be killed. And the king—although he had great power, his every desire satisfied, he had to know that he would die in a few short months.
But perhaps they didn’t think of it that way. Perhaps they had taken on the roles assigned to them, so that the woman became Sbona, creator-goddess, mother of light, and the man her son and consort, the god Callabrion. The king and queen raised their hands over the crowd in blessing. The people cheered again, and the horn blew, and the ceremony ended.
The crowd dispersed. For the first time since she had come to Shai Taja heard groups of people speaking at once. Several of the Shai looked around as if fearing to be overheard, and they lowered their voices when they saw Taja and Val. Still, she managed to catch fragments of their conversations: “… should have killed …” “… the old ways …” “… bought him time, at least.”
What did they mean? Did they want the priests to kill the young summer god now, before the Feast of the Descending God? Why?
The people they had traveled with now journeyed west, going home, but Taja and Val joined another caravan heading east. At night, after they had unrolled their blankets and settled down to sleep, Taja heard the day’s discussion continue around her. “It’s clear the man’s not Callabrion,” one of the Shai said. “Scathiel rules still in the heavens.”
“Aye,” another man said. “I heard that Scathiel did not die an easy death at the sacrifice last year. It was a warning—Callabrion did not ascend.”
“They should have killed this man now. If Scathiel rules still then he mocks us, mocks the gods.”
> “They should have performed the old wedding rites, there on the steps. No one’s seen him take Sbona as his bride. Perhaps he hasn’t—perhaps that’s what keeps Callabrion from returning to the heavens.”
“Aye, the old ways are best.”
“I hear that he is not unblemished, this king. That he’s deformed in some way.”
“They should have shown him to us naked, as in the old days.”
“They should have killed him, I say. And they will, if the days continue to darken. Mark my words—this ceremony did nothing but postpone that day.”
The voices swirled around her. Then the heavy scent of meat and spiced tea thickened her senses. The hill she had seen in dreams rose behind her eyes, steep and sharp, and she slept.
She managed to draw Val a little apart from the main body of the caravan the next day. “Did you hear what they said last night?” she asked, whispering. “They want to kill the king.”
Val nodded. “I heard that magic is loosed with the shedding of royal blood.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” she said, frowning. She felt the presence of the hill at every step now, and dreamt of it at night; it was like a nagging thought that would not leave her. “I think the power of their wizards comes from their hill, nothing more. But what has happened to Callabrion? The days continue to grow shorter—he did not ascend at the feast.”
“I don’t know.”
“Narrion tried to summon him—I told you that. But he’s no poet-mage. I wonder if he’ll try again.”
“Probably. Nothing can change his course once he decides to do something.”
“I hope he doesn’t. He knows nothing about the power he unleashed—it would be dangerous for him to meddle in magic.”
Some of the Shai joined them then, and she fell silent.
By midday most of the Shai had returned to their homes, to villages and vineyards and pasture. Taja rode easier, feeling freer with every traveler who left them. By the time they stopped for the evening meal only a dozen men and women remained.
The men built up the campfire and sat to eat. They passed carafes of their hot spiced wine—“king’s blood,” they called it—over the fire, and laughed and sang while they drank.
Summer King, Winter Fool Page 19
