Mistress of the Empire

by Raymond E. Feist

  'The terms are harsh,' the orator finished on a note that might have been sorrow. 'No mages are to be hatched within Tsuranuanni. Cho-ja there are forbidden to wear the markings that show age or rank, but must be colored black in adult life, even as your Tsurani slaves who are human are restricted to garments of grey. Commerce with cho-ja outside your borders is not allowed, exchange of information, news, or magical lore being specifically forbidden. It is our suspicion, if not the sad truth, that the Queens within your nations have been forced to excise from hive memory all record and means of cho-ja magic. Were you Tsurani all to perish, and the Assembly's edict become obsolete, it is doubtful if an Empire-bred Queen could still create the egg to hatch out a mage. And so the sky-cities of our kind are forgotten, reduced by human decree to damp warrens beneath the earth. Our proud brethren are forced to become grubbers in soil, with their arts of spell-building forever lost.'

  By now the sky beyond the arch had darkened under twilight. The tribunal, who had heretofore sat in perfect stillness, arose, while the orator in obedience to some unspoken signal fell silent. A cho-ja sentinel at Mara's back prodded her up from her cushions, and the magician's scribe tilted its head her way in a manner that suggested regret. 'Lady, your time of last testament is now ended, and the moment foi your sentencing is come. If you have any last bequest, you are urged to state it now.'

  'Last bequest?' Wine and sweet fruit had dulled the edges of Mara's apprehension, and the familiarity shared with the orator throughout the afternoon made her bold. 'What do you mean by this?'

  The magician's scribe shifted its weight and became implacably still. The tallest of the tribunal cho-ja delivered her answer. 'Your sentence, Lady Mara of Tsuranuanni. After your last testament is given, it will be formally read that you are to be executed at tomorrow's dawn.'

  'Executed!' A jolt of adrenaline and fear caused Mara to square her shoulders, and ire lit her eyes. She abandoned protocol. 'What are your kind, if not barbarians, to condemn an envoy unheard?' The tribunal members twitched, and the sentinel cho-ja angled forward aggressively, but Mara was already frightened witless and she did not take any note, it was a Queen of your own kind who sent me here to treat with you. She held hope for those cho-ja who are a captive nation within our Empire's borders, and she saw in me the chance to rectify the human misdeeds of the past. Would you execute me out of hand, when I am the opponent of the Assembly, come here to ask aid against their tyranny?'

  The tribunal regarded her with identical sets of gem-hard eyes, unmoved. 'Lady,' rang their spokesman, 'state your last bequest if you have one.'

  Mara closed her eyes. Were all of her efforts to end here, with her life? Had she been Servant of the Empire, wife to a fine Lord, Ruling Lady of the Acoma, and adviser to the Emperor only to die in shame on foreign soil? She repressed a violent shiver, and stayed the hands that itched to scrub the sweat of outright terror from her brow. She had nothing left to her at this moment beyond the dignity of her people. Her honor she no longer believed in, after hearing of what her forebears had done on the battlefield against a peaceful civilisation. And so her voice rang oddly steady as she said, 'Here is my last bequest: that you take this,' She held up the magical token given her by Gittania, which should have been her testimony to these hostile aliens. She forced herself to press on. 'That you take this record, and incorporate it into your hive memory along with the details of my "execution", so that all of your kind to come will recall that humankind are not alone in the perpetration of atrocity. If my husband and my children - indeed, if my family that serves as my hive must lose me in retribution for the treaty of the Assembly, then at least my heart's intentions must survive in the hive mind of my killers.'

  A buzz of noise met her statement. Mara yielded to reckless, icy resolve. 'This is my last bequest! Honor it as my death wish, or may the gods curse your kind unto the ending of time for perpetrating the very injustices you deplore in us!'

  'Silence!' The command rocked the chamber, reverberating off the crystal dome with force enough to deafen. Cringing from the sheer volume of the sound, Mara took a second to realise that the command did not arise from the tribunal but came instead from a cho-ja magician that had materialised out of nowhere at the chamber's center. Its wings were deployed to full extension, and its markings were complex enough to lose the eye in dizziness. It stalked toward Mara, hard turquoise eyes like the ice that sheathed the distant mountains. When it halted before the Lady, its stance was menacing.

  'Give me your token,' it demanded.

  Mara offered the object, certain she could not have done otherwise even had she been of a mind to resist. There was magecraft in the cho-ja's tone that compelled response from her flesh.

  The cho-ja mage scooped up the token with a touch that barely grazed her skin. Ready with an appeal she had no chance to deliver, Mara was startled by a blinding flash. Light enveloped her, densely implacable as suffocation, and when her senses recovered from the shock of spell-craft, the domed chamber of the tribunal was gone, swept away as though it had never been. She found herself returned to the hexagonal cell, windowless and doorless as before, but now the stone floor was scattered with colored cushions and a pair of Tsurani-style sleeping mats. On the nearest of these crouched Lujan, his head resting in his hands, and his mien one of total despair.

  At his Lady's arrival he started to his feet and gave a warrior's obeisance. His bearing might be correct to the last detail, but hopelessness lingered still in his eyes.

  'You have heard what is to become of us?' he asked of Mara. There was a whipsnap of fury in his tone.

  The Lady sighed, too discouraged to speak, and unwilling to believe that she had come all this distance to be summarily consigned to an unjust fate.

  'Did they ask your last bequest before they read your sentence?' Lujan asked Mara.

  Numbly she nodded; and between hopelessness and grief, she thought of one small detail that offered comfort: the cho-ja of Chakaha had not read her sentence. Somehow the token and the disruption caused by the reappearance of the cho-ja mage had interrupted the formal proceedings.

  Unwilling to read hope into that small anomaly, Mara made conversation. 'What did you ask for, as your last bequest?'

  Lujan gave back an ironic smile. As if nothing were wrong, he offered his hand and helped Mara down to a more comfortable seat amid the cushions. 'I did not ask,' he allowed. 'I demanded. As is a warrior's right when condemned by the state for crimes committed by his master, I claimed death by single combat.'

  Mara raised her eyebrows, too sober to be amused, but wildly seizing upon the implications of this development. Right of death by combat was a Tsurani custom! Why should these Chakaha cho-ja honor such a tradition? 'Did the tribunal that judged you grant your bequest?'

  Lujan's crooked grin of irony told her as much, before he answered, 'At least I shall have the opportunity to chop at some chitin before they have my head.'

  Mara stifled an inopportune rise of hysterical giggles at his vehemence. 'Who have the Chakaha cho-ja selected as their champion?'

  Lujan shrugged. 'Does it matter? Their warriors all look the same, and the hive mind most likely ensures that they are of equal ability. The only satisfaction I may have is that I will be chopped to pieces in combat before their headsman gets his chance to cut my neck.' He loosed a bitter laugh. 'Once I would have considered such a death in your service to be a warrior's honor, and the paeans that would have greeted me upon my entrance to Turakamu's halls would have been the only reward I desired.' He fell silent, as if in deep thought.

  Mara ventured conclusion of his statement for him. 'But your concept of honor has changed. Now a warrior's death seems meaningless beside the opportunities offered by life.'

  Lujan turned a tortured glance to his Lady. 'I could not have summed up so neatly, but yes. Kevin of Zun opened my eyes to both principles and yearnings that the Tsurani way can never answer. I have seen you dare to challenge the course of our entire culture, as no male ruler migh
t have done, for fear of ridicule by his peers. We are changed, Lady, and the Empire is poised on the brink of change with us.' He glanced around, as if to savor what life was left to him. 'I care not for my own life; who have I to mourn after me who will not soon follow me into death when we fail?' He shook his head. 'It is the frustration of losing any opportunity to somehow . . . pass along what we have learned, that these insights will not perish with us.'

  Mara spoke insistently to cover her own pang of fear. 'Hokanu will be left, and our children, to carry on after us. They will somehow rediscover what we have, and find a way to act without blundering into this cho-ja trap.' She let out a long sigh. Looking at her old companion, she said, 'My largest regret, most strangely, is that of a wife and a woman. I 'm everlastingly sorry that I cannot return to make peace with Hokanu. He was always the soul of sensitivity and reason before: something of importance must have prompted his behavior toward Kasuma. I maligned him unfairly, I think, by accusing him of a prejudice his nature would not allow. Now it's too late to matter. I must die with the question unasked that could restore our understanding. Why, when I could easily bear another child that is male, did Hokanu act so aggrieved when he learned that his firstborn was a daughter?'

  Her eyes sought Lujan's in appeal. 'Force Commander, you are a man who understands the game between sexes well, or so I have been informed through kitchen gossip. The scullions never tire of describing the serving girls and ladies of the Reed Life who languish for your company.' She gave a wry smile. 'Indeed, if they are to be believed, there are droves of such women. How is it that a husband as wise as Hokanu should not be gladdened by the birth of a healthy, unblemished daughter?'

  Lujan's demeanor softened, very near to pity. 'Lady, did Hokanu never tell you?'

  'Tell me what?'. Mara demanded sharply. 'I was harsh with my husband, and bitterly outspoken. So deeply did I believe his behavior was in the wrong, I drove him from me. But now I regret my hard-heartedness. Maybe Kamlio taught me to listen more carefully. For like these cho-ja of the Thuril territories, I condemned my husband without ever asking his testimony.'

  Lujan stood a moment looking at her. Then, as if reaching some decision, he folded to his knees before her. 'Gods forgive me,' he murmured softly, 'It is not my right to break confidence between a Lord and his wife. But tomorrow we will die, and I have always been your loyal officer. Lady Mara, I would not have you pass this life without the understanding you desire. Hokanu was stricken with a grief, but he would never have spoken of its cause, even had you returned and begged to hear. But I know what sorrow afflicted him. I was in the chamber when the healer of Hantukama informed your husband of what he, in his kindness, swore he would never reveal to you: that after the poisoning by the tong that cost you your unborn babe, you should bear but one more child. Kasuma was your last issue. Hokanu kept the secret because he wished you to hold the hope of another pregnancy. His daughter is a joy to him, never doubt, and his consecrated heir for the Shinzawai mantle. But he knows, and is saddened, that you will never give him the son he longs for in his heart.'

  Mara sat stunned. Her voice came out small. 'I am barren? And he knew?' The full import of Hokanu's courageous resolve struck her, sharp as the most stinging thorn. He had been raised motherless and his blood father had been taken beyond reach by the Assembly of Magicians; Hokanu's whole world had been one of male camaraderie, with his uncle, who became his foster father, and his cousin, who became a brother. This was the root of his longing for a son.

  But he was also a man of rare sensitivity and appreciation for the company of intellectual minds; where another Lord with less heart would have taken on courtesans as his gods-given male right, Hokanu had loved her for her mind. His craving for equality in companionship had become realised in marriage to a woman with whom he could share the most inspirational of his ideas. He spurned the usage of concubines, the company of women of the Reed Life, the pleasures to be found with bought creatures like Kamlio.

  Now Mara understood how he had been faced with a choice abhorrent to him: to take another woman to his bed, one that meant nothing beyond her capacity to conceive and breed, or to go without a son - to forgo the fraternity he had shared with his adoptive father, his brother, and Justin, whom he had given back to Mara for the sake of Acoma continuance.

  'Gods,' Mara all but wept. 'How stone-hearted I have been!'

  Instantly Lujan was beside her, his strong arm supporting her shoulder. Mara sagged against him. 'Lady,' he murmured in her ear, 'you of all women are not insensitive. Hokanu understands why you reacted as you did.'

  Lujan held her as a brother might, in undemanding companionship, as she ran through all the details to the half-painful, half-hopeful conclusion that if she died here, her beloved Hokanu would have Kasuma for his heir, and freedom to take another wife to bear him the son he longed for. Mara clung to that thought. At last, to escape her own woes, she said, 'What of you, Lujan? Surely you do not contemplate the leaving of this life without regrets?'

  Lujan's fingers stroked her shoulder with a rough tenderness, 'I do have one.'

  Mara turned her head and saw that he seemed to be studying the woven patterns of the cushions. She did not press for his confidence, and after a moment he gave a wry shrug.

  'Lady, it is strange how life shows us our follies. Always I have enjoyed the favors of many women, but never held the desire to marry and be content with one.' Lujan stared fixedly, self-conscious, but oddly freed from embarrassment by the fact that with the dawn, he must face an ending of life, an ending of dreams. The nearness of his accounting with Turakamu lent them both the solace of honesty. 'Always, I told myself, my roving ways were the result of my admiration for you.' Here his eyes flashed toward her in a glance of truthful adoration. 'Lady, there was much about you for a man to appreciate, and a toughness that made other women seem . . . if not lacking, then at least smaller of stature.' He made a tight gesture of frustration at the inadequacy of words. 'Lady, our journey into Thuril has taught me to know myself too well, I think, for ease of mind.'

  Mara raised her eyebrows. 'Lujan, you have never been less than the exemplary warrior. Keyoke overcame his distrust of grey warriors to choose you above others to fill his former post as Force Commander. In these late years I believe that you have come to hold as much of a place in his heart as Papewaio did.'

  'Now, there is a tribute.' Lujan's lips quirked toward a smile, and then hardened. 'But I have been less than honest with myself, now that my spirit lies near to its reckoning. I am sorry, this night, that I never found any woman to share my hearth and home.'

  Mara regarded the bent head of her Force Commander. Recognising that in some manner Lujan wished to unburden himself, very gently she said, 'What kept you from starting a family and raising children?'

  'I outlived my master of the Tuscai,' he admitted with a tightness in his throat. 'The misery of a grey warrior cannot be described, for his life is outside society. I was a young man, strong, and skilled in arms. And yet there were moments when I very nearly did not survive. How would a child or a woman fare, were they to be left houseless? I saw the wives and children of my fellow warriors driven away as slaves, forever to wear grey and answer to the needs of a master who cared little for their comfort.' Lujan's voice sank almost to a whisper. 'I see now that I was afraid that someday those children would be mine, and my woman become some other man's to use as he chose.'

  Now Lujan looked his mistress squarely in the face. There was an unnerving depth to his eyes, and a ring to his voice as he added, 'How much simpler it was to admire you from afar, Lady, and guard your life with my own, than to live the possibility of the nightmare that even yet wakens me sweating from my sleep.'

  Mara reached out and touched his hands, then kneaded them until they relaxed their furious grip. 'Neither you nor any unborn child of yours will ever in this turn of the Wheel go masterless,' she said softly. 'For I very much doubt that either of us will escape this prison with our lives.'

 
Now Lujan did smile, a strange serenity to his bearing that Mara had never seen. 'It has been my pride to serve you, Lady Mara. But if we do live past tomorrow's dawn, I ask a boon of you, that you command me to find a wife and marry! For I think that with the magicians as your enemy, such straits as these might easily be repeated, and if I am to die in your service, I should prefer not to face the Death God with the same regret in my spirit a second time!'

  Mara regarded him with a smile of deep affection. 'Lujan, knowing you as I do, I doubt I shall have to command you to do what is clearly in your heart to do. But, we must win past tomorrow's dawn.' Crossing her arms as if to ward off cold, she said, 'We must sleep, brave Lujan. For tomorrow will come.'

  23

  Contest

  Sleep was impossible.

  Since her strangely intimate exchange of confidences with Lujan, Mara felt no urge to converse. The Acoma Force Commander had shown no indication to sleep and settled cross-legged on his mat. The cho-ja had confiscated his armor along with his sword. Left the padded underrobe designed to protect his skin from chafing, he looked both undressed and vulnerable. Battle scars normally concealed by his raiment were exposed, and although he was as fastidious as any Tsurani officer, his last opportunity for a bath had been in an icy river current while enduring Thuril jibes. His clothing was greyed with dirt, and his hair spiked up into whorls from long hours under his helm. Muscled as he was, he seemed somehow diminished without his trappings and officer's plumes.

  Looking at him, Mara was forced to recognise his human side, his maleness that would never know fatherhood, and the incongruously tender comfort he had given with hands better accustomed to the grip of a killing sword. As if his coming fate held no consequence, he meditated peacefully, his soldier's discipline forcing worries aside to husband strength against demands of battle.