by Steven Brust
Meanwhile, some thirty or thirty-five feet above them Grita turned to her band of brigands—now numbering ten or twelve—and said, “We will go down the cliff and kill them all, at once. Do not waste time, nor give them a chance to defend themselves. Do you understand?”
The various bandits indicated that this was clear.
“Are the ropes ready?” said Grita
In answer, the ropes, well secured to certain trees, were shown to her.
“Then,” she said, “let us have at them.”
And it was at this moment that Khaavren, riding toward the small rise near the foot of the South Mountain, suddenly stopped in his tracks, overwhelmed by a feeling that was most peculiar because of its familiarity.
Aerich looked at him, eyes wide, because he felt the same thing, and it is a measure of the magnitude of the occurrence that Aerich was unable to prevent himself from showing astonishment.
Just a score of yards away, and at almost this same instant, Tazendra said, “It has returned, or I’m a norska!”
“What has returned?” said Piro.
“The Orb,” said Tazendra.
“That is not likely,” said Piro.
“Impossible,” said Kytraan.
“Not the least in the world,” said Zerika, emerging from the darkness of the cave, the Orb slowly circling her head and emitting a soft green glow.
Kytraan stared at her, Piro turned around an instant later, then Tazendra, who not only turned, but, upon seeing Zerika, dropped to one knee, eyes wide. Piro and Kytraan, seeing her, did the same an instant later. Lar, for his part, dropped his cooking pan and prostrated himself on the snowy ground.
Some historians have placed this day, the thirteenth of the month of the Jhegaala in the two hundred and forty-seventh year of the Interregnum, and this moment, the fifth hour after noon, as the end of the Interregnum and the beginning of Zerika’s Reign. Others claim that the placing of the cornerstone of the new Imperial Palace is the moment; whereas, to others, it is the end of either the Battle of South Mountain, or sometimes the Battle of Dzur Mountain (that is, the Ninth Battle of Dzur Mountain, or the Tenth as some historians call it). Still others do not consider the Empire to have truly existed until Zerika actually took possession of the Imperial Palace, whereas some think it did not exist until the last of the serious opposition to it was crushed—which, in turn, leads to many debates over what might be considered serious opposition. Volumes have been written defending and attacking these various times and dates.
Of course, there is no question that the dates do matter; the question is more than academic because of the many calculations to be made by seers and oracles that depend on the exact moment at which the Empire existed once more. Therefore, it is worth taking a moment to consider the matter. Be assured, our consideration will be brief, because, in the opinion of this historian, the matter is far less complex than it is often made out to be.
Expressed in the simplest terms: What is the Empire? It is the political and economic organization of states united under the Orb—an artifact that is both symbolic and functional. While the Orb did not function, there was no Empire; or, there was that condition which has come to be called the Interregnum. As to such matters of just how many of these lesser states—principalities, duchies, and so on—must acknowledge and pay homage to the Empire for the Empire to “exist,” this historian will not venture an opinion. It might be that Zerika’s Reign actually began at one of these later dates, or, more likely, at the moment she ascended the “throne” in her temporary palace and began to conduct business there. But, even if this is the case, the Interregnum ended at the instant she emerged from the Paths of the Dead—that is, at exactly the place where we have interrupted our story.
Certainly, it was the opinion of those present at that moment—the first to feel the effects of the Orb—that this was the case. The reader has seen that Khaavren, Aerich, and Tazendra were all aware of it at once—that is, they felt the echoes of the Orb in their minds.
We should add that there has, in fact, been some confusion on this issue over the years: In what manner, and how quickly, were those who had once been citizens aware of, and affected by the emergence of, the Orb? As we are now discussing the moment of its emergence, this would seem to be the most expeditious place to make this regrettable but necessary digression.
The confusion over this question is understandable, and, of itself, a part of the answer: Of millions who still lived who were once citizens, there are thousands of different experiences of its return, these differences based on the individual’s distance from the Orb, and, to a degree, his sensitivity, personality, and attitude toward the Empire in general and the Orb in particular.
To a few, such as Sethra Lavode, it was as if the Orb had never been away: In an instant she had fully assimilated it, along with all of its capabilities and its connections to Zerika. To others, such as Aerich, this connection came, but a little more slowly: he reports that he knew at once what had happened, but there was a period lasting several minutes while it settled itself fully into his mind. For Khaavren, it was a shock, and it took him some seconds to recognize what it was, after which he, too, permitted it, by a conscious choice, to take its place—that familiar, comforting presence that we all know so well that we become aware of it only if it vanishes, or if we deliberately pay attention to it (the reader is invited to do so now, for his own education).
Others became aware of it more slowly, or refused to recognize it, or recognized it but refused its call—this latter including Kâna and his cousin, as well as Tsanaali. If there was one reaction that was most frequent, it seems to have been a certain confusion and disorientation, as those who were once citizens became aware of a peculiar sensation, perhaps a familiar one, but one which left them unable to concentrate for a length of time more or less prolonged.
Those who had been conceived or born after Adron’s Disaster had no experience of the Orb, and were unaware of its return, and so had to recapitulate the experience of those of our ancestors who lived at the time of the formation of the Empire: they had to make a conscious choice to become citizens, and, as they were as yet unaware of it, they could not yet make that choice.
We should add that by using the locution “conceived or born” we have avoided one of the controversies upon which hundreds of magical philosophers have been debating ceaselessly: Where between conception and birth falls the moment when the Orb insinuates itself from a mother who is a citizen to an infant who is to become one? We cannot, in this brief work, take the time to explore this question with the thoroughness it deserves, so we will say only that it seems to be the case that the connection comes somewhere toward the end of the mother’s term of pregnancy. We hope the reader will be satisfied with this explanation, because it the only one we are offering. Our point remains that those who had never known the experience of citizenship would be required, at some point in the future, to make the decision as to whether to accept this connection, and that those who had known it were able to make at the very instant of awareness.
That is, at this moment, the question of citizenship in the Empire was once more up to the individual.
And this, then, is the answer to the question we did ourselves the honor of asking above, and the historian humbly suggests that it is inarguable. The Interregnum ended upon that well-known winter’s day in the two hundred and forty-seventh year, when Zerika emerged from the Halls of Judgment bearing the Orb (not, as many have it, having found it upon the ground after leaving the Halls of Judgment, or, as others have it, having searched the Paths of the Dead far and wide for where it had accidentally fallen after being blasted from the domain of men by Adron’s Disaster, or having been handed it by someone else who retrieved it from the Paths—the candidates for this nonexistent honor being as diverse as Lady Ithanor and Lord Morrolan—or, indeed, having carried it within her all of her life, at last giving birth to it as if to a child, as a few ludicrous mystics have suggested).
That day, that moment, all past and potential citizens of the Empire had the choice to become so again, and, therefore, at that moment the Interregnum ended, and if there are words to mark the event, as there often are in moments of high historic drama, they would have to be Tazendra’s remark, “It has returned, or I’m a norska.”
The proof that these words marked the event, and the beginning of the spread of the influence of the Orb over all of those who had once been citizens of the Empire, is the very fact that no other words have ever been recorded; and it is well known that “historians” of the popular school dearly love to mark great events by the words which accompanied them. What reason would they have for ignoring words to mark the occasion except that these words fail, in their judgment, to convey the proper sense of the occasion?
This does not trouble us for the simple reason that we have set as our goal the reporting of what occurred, not the pandering to public taste that corrupts and defiles the work of some of our fellows.
That the words uttered by the brave Tazendra are not as grandiose and full of pomp as Kieron the Conqueror’s, “The sea has brought our salvation,” or Undauntra the First’s, “Let him who doubts the victory wrest the banner from my hand,” or Sethra Lavode’s, “I speak for the Mountain, and the Mountain speaks for the Orb,” or Lord Kuinu’s, “By all the Lords of Judgment, it is proved at last,” or expressive of the elegant understatement of Tigarrae’s famous “Turn around, my lord; I am behind you,” or Deo’s “Welcome, my lady, to my home”; still they are what was said, and so our duty as historian places before us the necessity of laying them before the reader. “It has returned, or I’m a norska” are the words that ushered in the end of the Interregnum, if not the restoration of the Empire and the reign of Zerika the Fourth.
They also ushered in certain events of more immediate concern to the reader who has done us the honor of following the unfolding of this story; which events we now propose, without further delay, to describe.
Chapter the Forty-Third
How Four Old Friends Met
After Being Apart for a Long Time
Some historians have expressed the belief that Grita would have given the order to halt the attack if she had been able to—that is, if there had been time for her to issue an order of any sort. The author, for his part, has no way of knowing for certain if this is true, but begs to submit that none of his brother historians has any way of knowing either. It must be the case that Grita, having at one time been a citizen, and being, moreover, in close proximity to the emerging Orb, was aware that it had returned; yet, it is worth considering that three hundred years earlier she had shown no especial loyalty to the Empire of which she was a citizen; why, then, should she now?
But, as the matter cannot be proven one way or another, there is no reason to dwell upon it—the moreso as we know, if not how she was thinking, at least what she did. The command had been given, and the two or three ropes went over the bluff, and Grita’s small troop went sliding down these ropes, each holding a weapon at the ready. The surprise was complete: Piro, Kytraan, and Tazendra were all on bended knee, and Lar was actually prostrate upon the ground. The brigands landed with the additional advantage of numbers—there were ten or twelve of them, compared to four of our friends with the addition of a lackey.
It should, from all of this, have been over quickly—a most appalling slaughter.
But there was one thing that changed the entire nature of the battle, and, in the event, determined its outcome: the Orb. That most vital of all artifacts wasted no time in making its presence felt; indeed, it began to play a role in its own defense within seconds of its reappearance. It did so, to begin with, in the simplest possible way: merely by existing.
That is, several of the attackers were old enough to have been citizens before the Interregnum, and, even as they were going down the rope, they, each in his own way, became aware of the sensation of the Orb’s return—a sensation to which each, of course, reacted in his own way. And, when they reached the ground and the first thing they saw was Zerika, with the Orb sedately circling her head, well, the reader can understand that some of them became more than a little agitated. Indeed, two or three of them, upon seeing her, at once dropped their weapons and prostrated themselves, even as Lar, alarmed by the sudden intrusion of briganded ropes, began to rise and reach once more for his cooking pan. Some of the others, while not going so far as to take themselves entirely out of the fight, were, at least for a while, sufficiently discomfited to impair their ability to mount an attack.
Of the remainder, the reader should recall that these were the younger ones—that is, those who had not yet been born at the time of Adron’s Disaster, and so had no connection to the Orb, nor awareness of it; and the reader should understand that Grita, in planning her battle, had placed the older and more experienced brigands in such a position as to land first, on the theory that they had cooler heads, and would thus be better able to handle effectually any unforeseen circumstances. Unfortunately for Grita and her force, the particular unforeseen circumstance that occurred tended to remove from combat those upon whom she had depended to handle any emergencies. With several of these individuals shocked into immobility, the others, coming down the rope, became entangled with them, with the result that, instead of being confronted by an overwhelming force, our friends were, in the event, confronted only by three of their enemy in any condition to pose an immediate threat—a number which very quickly became two when Tazendra, the first to recover, stood up and neatly took the head off the one who was nearest her.
Kytraan and Piro recovered at almost the same instant, which might have been an instant too late, except that their opponents found themselves distracted by observing their companion’s head fly from its shoulders, which delayed them just long enough for the Dragon and the Tiassa to assume their guard positions and engage those who were about to attack them.
Of them, Kytraan struck first, at once giving his opponent a good cut on her sword arm, causing her to drop her sword and retire from the contest in confusion. Piro took a defensive posture and received the attack with good style, first parrying a cut for his shoulder, then leaning back to avoid a cut for his head, and then slipping sideways away from a thrust at his chest, after which, his enemy being slightly off-balance, he gave this worthy a thrust through the upper part of his thigh which left him stretched out on the ground unable to rise, and which forced him to surrender his sword, declaring himself beaten.
Another of the brigands, disentangling himself from the others at the base of the rope, attempted to rise, but was met unexpectedly by a heavy, cast-iron object in the form of a cooking pot, wielding by Lar’s strong right arm; after receiving this, the bandit exercised the only option then available to him: he fell like a dead mass.
Tazendra stepped forward, looking for another—but this was too much for the brigands. One of them, a man named Grassfog, ran past Zerika into the cave, only to emerge a moment later, hands raised in token of surrender. Two or three others dropped their weapons and declared themselves unwilling to continue the contest. The remainder ran, picking the direction away from Tazendra and her greatsword, running to the southeast, leaving, in all, five uninjured prisoners to have their weapons collected, these being, in addition to Grassfog, a woman named Iatha, a woman named Thong, a man named Ritt, and a man called Belly, named for a rather remarkable paunch that he had developed from living a sedentary life and in eating, as his friends said, “Like an Easterner.”
It is worth asking why Tazendra had not, in this battle, used the remarkable powers she had been developing under the tutelage of Sethra Lavode. Alas, we cannot answer this for certain. It is possible that it was her innate sense of fair play that prevented it; that is to say, she feared to take unfair advantage of her opponents. It is also possible that matters developed too quickly for her mind to organize itself into the necessary patterns required by wizardry. In the opinion of this author, the reason is more simple: it didn’t occur to he
r. In any case, the fact remains that she did not, and the reader is welcome to draw his own conclusions as to the reason.
“Well,” said Tazendra, lowering her sword and frowning. “That was hardly worth the trouble.”
“You think not?” said Piro, staring out to the west once more. “But perhaps there is more to come. If all of those horsemen are to attack us, well, I nearly think we will be required to break a sweat in order to defeat them.”
Tazendra looked in that direction and said, “You may be right. But first, while we have the time, I must bow once more to my Empress.”
“With this plan,” said Piro, “I agree. Only, I beg leave to observe that we cannot all do so at once while still maintaining a watch on our prisoners.”
“That is true,” said Kytraan. “But then, in what order shall we go?”
“Tazendra first,” decided Piro. “You next, and I shall go last.”
“But what of Lar?” said Kytraan
“Oh, Lar can make his obeisance after me.”
“Very well,” said Kytraan. “I have no more arguments to make.”
“Nor have I,” said Tazendra, who then, without further delay, made a courtesy to Her Majesty, which salute the Phoenix acknowledged with a grace and aplomb which belied a certain discomfort she felt in accepting such a gesture, not being used to it. Kytraan went next, and then Piro, and finally Lar, while Zerika did her best to accept the reverences, reminding herself that it was to the Orb and to the Empire it represented, not to her, that the honor was being done. The only sign betraying her distress was a slight orange cast that crept into the Orb.
At this point, Zerika cleared her throat, in order to make her first speech as Empress, or, at any rate, to respond to the obeisances done her. She was prevented, however, by a voice saying, “Our arrival appears, on this occasion, to have been rather less timely, but not so urgently required.” We hasten to add that, just as it was the last time we referred to a voice, rather than a person, as if it could speak, the speaker was none other than Aerich. This time, instead of rescuing Khaavren in the company of Tazendra, he was rescuing Tazendra in the company of Khaavren—although, as he himself said, their arrival was not as urgently required as it had been on that day more than two hundred years before to which we have done ourselves the honor to refer.
