Mistress of the Empire

by Raymond E. Feist

  Yet even as his trained body responded and on ingrained reflex began the stroke that would end all contention, his mind shied away.

  What was such a death, if not futile?

  Had he learned nothing in his years of service to Mara? Would killing this cho-ja, against whom he had no quarrel, achieve one single, bit of good toward her goal?

  It would not, he saw in a rush of cheated anger. Nothing would be served, except to confirm Tsurani ways in the hive mind of the cho-ja of Chakaha.

  What is my life or my death worth? Lujan thought, trapped in a split second between motion. To become the victorious warrior, no, to kill his opponent out of hand, would serve no living thing: not Mara, not this hive, and not the captive nation of cho-ja within Tsurani borders.

  Gods, he raged in a moment of lacerating inner anguish: I cannot live by the warrior's code alone; and neither can I die by it.

  His hand followed the heresy of his thoughts. Lujan pulled his stroke.

  The move was awkwardly timed of necessity, and it cost him. He gained another slash in the thigh, this one deep enough to cripple.

  Back he stumbled, hopping on his good leg. His cho-ja opponent sensed his weakening resolve. It reared up. A whirling forelimb sliced down from above, and Lujan deflected the cut, barely. His forehead was laid open to the bone, and as blood ran down his face and blinded his eye, he was aware of Mara's stifled outcry.

  He stumbled back. The cho-ja pursued. He felt hot pavement beneath his heel, and knew relief: he had reached the outermost edge of the circle. If he crossed over, he would die.

  He would perish anyway, but perhaps not entirely for nothing. His end could still make a point. Even as his opponent scuttled to finish him, he parried furiously, and cried out to the looming figure of the cho-ja mage who stood yet in judgment over him.

  'I did not come here to kill! You cho-ja of Chakaha are not the enemies of my mistress, Lady Mara.' Chitin rang against his blade as, desperate to be heard, he parried again. 'I will not fight any longer against a being she would have for a friend.' He parried again, lunged to drive his opponent momentarily back, and in that half second of respite, threw down his sword in disgust. On his good leg, he spun, turning his back to the killing stroke.

  Before him glowed the scarlet line of the circle. He was grateful, in that arrested moment of time, that he had got his positioning right: the cho-ja warrior could not cross in front of him without violating the ward spell. If it killed, it must use the coward's stroke, the murderer's cut, and butcher him from behind.

  He drew a shuddering breath, eyes raised to the cho-ja mage. 'Strike my back, who would be your friend and ally, and see your unjust execution done.'

  Lujan heard the whistle of the air parted by the cho-ja warrior's bladed forearm. He braced himself, prepared for the bone-rending finish to its descent. The end was foregone conclusion. At this point, a man with a sword could not curb inertia and snatch back the stroke as it fell.

  But the reflexes of a cho-ja were not human.

  The blade stopped, soundless and motionless, a hairs-breadth from Lujan's neck.

  The cho-ja mage reared back, its sail-like wings upraised as if in alarm. "What is this?' it rang out in what plainly served as astonishment. 'You break the tradition of the Tsurani. You are a warrior, and yet you give up your honor?'

  Shivering now in the aftermath of nerves and adrenaline, Lujan managed a steady answer. 'What is tradition but habit?' He shrugged stiffly, feeling the sting of his wounds. 'Habits can be changed. And as any Tsurani will confirm, there is no honor in killing an ally.'

  Blood dribbled into his left eye, obscuring his vision. He could not see to tell whether Mara approved of his gesture. A moment later, it did not matter, for the blood left his head in a rush. His wounded leg gave way, and he fainted and fell with a grinding crash of armor to the floor. The red circle died in a fizzle of sparks, and the great domed chamber hushed.

  Lujan wakened to a sharp tingle of pain. He gasped, opened his eyes, and saw the head of a cho-ja bent within inches of his own. He lay on what felt like a couch. Pointy, claw-like appendages gripped the wounds in his forearm and thigh, and by the prick of what felt like a needle, he realised he was being sewn up by a cho-ja worker physician.

  While the medicinal skills of the creatures were exemplary, and they did neat, careful work, they had spent little time in the art of practicing upon humans. Lujan stifled a second grimace of discomfort, and judged that their knowledge was decidedly lacking in the area of anesthetics. Even on the field, he would have been given spirits to dull his awareness of the pain.

  So it was that he took a moment to notice the secondary, more pleasant sensation of small, warm fingers gripping the hand of his unwounded arm.

  He turned his head. 'Mara?'

  Her smile met him. She was close to weeping, he saw, but with joy, not sorrow. 'What happened, Lady?'

  Belatedly, he realised they were no longer in the domed chamber of judgment, nor restored to confinement, but were installed in a beautifully appointed chamber high up in a tower. A window behind Mara showed sky and clouds, and left the Lady awash in bright sunlight. She squeezed his hand in youthful excitement, though in truth this trial had aged her. The grey shot through her dark hair had grown more pronounced, and her eyes showed deep crow's-feet from prolonged exposure to the weather. And yet never before had her face seemed more beautiful; maturity had given her depths and mysteries impossible to the trackless face of youth.

  'Lujan, you have won for the Acoma highest honor,' she said quickly. 'By your act in the circle, you proved to these cho-ja of Chakaha that Tsurani tradition is not the all-consuming way of life they believed it to be. For ages they have seen Tsurani demonstrate a lie. They understood all I said, even knowing through their magic that I believed in my convictions, but their own past taught that such displays of peaceful ways were but preludes to more violence and betrayal.'

  She took a deep breath of relief. 'You have won us reprieve, through your courage and innovation. Your actions lived as one with my words and convinced them that perhaps we are different from our ancestors. The cho-ja mage in attendance was astonished by your act, and was convinced to review the memory stone left to us by Gittania. On it were records of my meeting with the hive Queen on the old Acoma estates, and her entreaty made an impression.'

  'Our sentences are rescinded? We're to go free?' Lujan gasped out, as he could when the cho-ja physician paused in its labors.

  'Better than that.' Mara's eyes glowed with pride. 'We are to be given safe passage through Thuril to our ship, and with us when we return to Tsuranuanni will travel two cho-ja mages. The city-state of Chakaha has decided it will aid us, in the hope that the liberation of the Tsurani cho-ja may be accomplished by the Emperor. I have pledged to use my office to intercede; I am almost certain that once I explain to Ichindar the truths we have learned, he cannot say no.'

  'Gods!' Lujan exclaimed. 'Everything we could have asked for has been granted.' He was so excited he forgot his hurts and attempted to move.

  At this, the cho-ja physician said, 'Lady Mara, this warrior's wounds are severe. Excite him not, for he must rest for several weeks if his leg is to heal as it should.' Black, faceted eyes s'wiveled toward Lujan. 'Or would the estimable Force Commander prefer to limp?'

  Lujan felt suddenly flooded with strength, and he laughed. 'I can be patient while my body repairs itself. But not so patient that I can stay in bed for weeks on end!'

  He rolled his head on the pillow, warmed afresh by Mara's smile. 'Rest you easy,' his mistress commanded. 'Never mind the delay. Word will be sent back to Hokanu by way of the Thuril settlements, and from thence, with the traders overseas. For we have time now, Lujan. And while your wounds are knitting, I shall prevail upon our host hive to show us wonders.'

  24

  Homecoming

  The barge left the shore.

  Mara leaned on the rail and drew a deep breath of the warm breeze. The familiar smell of dank ea
rth, fresh lake water, wet planking, and the slight taint of sweat from the slaves who manned the oars made her shiver. Home! In scarcely another hour, she would reach the estates. She savored the heat of the sun on her flesh.

  This was the first glimpse of sky and daylight she had had since a stealthy night debarkation from Coalteca, and weeks of underground travel across the Empire by cho-ja tunnels. For the cho-ja mages had confirmed what heretofore had been her surmise: that the Assembly of Magicians could not spy through the dark earth. What transpired in the cho-ja tunnels lay beyond their ability to scry, a difficult concession at the time of the treaty. And so her band of picked warriors, her servant Kamlio, and the two Chakaha cho-ja had thus proceeded to reenter the Empire in secret.

  This they had accomplished with neither permission nor help from the local cho-ja who dwelt there, lest harboring the Chakaha mages in any fashion void the terms of the treaty. The mages' presence was shunned with scrupulous precision, so that none of the Empire cho-ja could claim to have seen them pass or to have known of their existence. Mara's request that all cho-ja vacate the tunnels before her until after she had passed had been accepted without question by the Tsurani cho-ja Queens. They might suspect, but they could answer truthfully they had no knowledge of what Mara attempted.

  As a result of near-total isolation, Mara felt distressingly uninformed. Only a few scraps of news were given her by those cho-ja workers she encountered while waiting for the answer from the local Queen that she might pass through the hives unobserved; the only important information was that a Great One yet maintained surveillance over the entrance of the Red God's temple in Sulan-Qu, waiting for her to break her seclusion.

  That might have been amusing, had it not revealed her danger. Even after the passage of months, that any member of the Assembly, however minor, still should deem such a watch to be necessary meant her next few actions must be well plotted and executed without flaw; she felt in her bones that only her unique rank was keeping her alive, for certainly some members of the Assembly must be at the end of their patience.

  Mara had dared not pause to establish contact with Arakasi's network of agents along the way. The pace she had set to reach the Empire's heartland had been relentless. As she had not cared to risk her own exposure, or to compromise the hives that gave her shelter, she had no way to determine how Jiro might have spent the months of her absence. She did not even know if her husband had successfully dealt with his dissident cousins and clan rivals who had ambition to upset his inheritance. Mara had learned only moments before from workers on the docks that Hokanu had returned to their lakeside estates, and that the Lady Isashani had teasingly tried to pair him off with a concubine who had in some way failed to please one of her dead husband's many bastards. Hokanu had sent a charming refusal. Although in such social gossip Mara could find no implication of threat, she asked out of caution for the foreign mages to stay closeted within an unused chamber in the hive nearest to the estate. With them she left two warriors to attend their needs, and these bound strictly to secrecy. They would emerge to forage only at night, and would not divulge their duties to any of the Acoma patrols or local cho-ja. Mara gave the soldiers a paper affixed with her personal chop as Servant of the Empire, instructing anyone that the two soldiers should be permitted to go their way without question. Such precaution would give no protection from her adversaries, but it would prevent friends or allies from blundering into her secret.

  Mara leaned into the breeze and faintly smiled. She had much to tell Hokanu! The wonders she had seen during Lujan's convalescence in Chakaha defied rational description, from the exotic flowers the cho-ja workers cultivated that bloomed in combinations of colors not seen anywhere else, to the rare liquors distilled from red-bee honey and other elixirs that they traded with their eastern human neighbors. Within her baggage she had brought medicines, some made of molds, others extracted from seeds or rare mineral springs, that her healers would call miraculous in their curative properties. She had watched the heated forging done in the glass works where they created everything from vases to cutlery to building stone that shone in clear colors like gems.

  She had watched apprentice mages master their first spells, and seen the fine scrollwork of patterns appear on their unmarked carapaces. She had watched the most ancient of the mages, who was lined in a maze of colors, at his work. He had shown her visions of the far past, and one, misty with a haze of unresolved probability, that showed the future as yet unformed. It had looked much like dyes awash in a fishbowl, but sparkling with flecks like golden metal. 'If that is my future,' Mara had said laughingly, 'I shall perhaps die a very wealthy woman.'

  The cho-ja mage had said nothing in return, but for a moment his shiny azure eyes had looked sad.

  Mara could not contain her high spirits. She watched a flock of marsh birds take flight over the reed beds, and remembered the models that had flown like birds in Chakaha, and other living, untamed birds beguiled to sing in counterpoint. She had seen animals grow fur in colors as brilliant as exotic silk. Cho-ja magic held ways for stone to be spun into fibers and woven, and ways for water to be fashioned into braided cable that flowed uphill. Between times she had been feasted with exotic foods and dishes seasoned with spices that were as intoxicating as wine. There existed enough trade possibilities in Chakaha to tempt Jican to commit sacrilege, and with excitement akin to any schoolgirl's, Mara longed for her perilous quandary with the Assembly to be resolved, so that she could resume more peaceful pursuits. Her problems were not ended, yet in her high spirits she could not help but feel that things must work out in her favor.

  That mood of frivolous excitement had over-ruled Saric's more sober advice to remain in the cho-ja tunnels until close to her estate house. Mara was so homesick for the sights and smells of Tsuranuanni that she brought her company aboveground near the lakeshore, and then commandeered a barge from her own Acoma tradesmen to finish her journey by water.

  A shadow fell over her. Musing cut short, Mara looked up. Lujan had crossed the deck and paused at her side. His inspection of her honor guard was complete, and if the armor they wore was unmarked in house colors, their lacquer accoutrements sparkled. Lujan had decked his helm with officer's plumes of Acoma green. He moved yet with a limp, but his wound had healed cleanly under the ministrations of the cho-ja physicians. In time, he would recover fully. At present, his eyes glinted with mischief, and by that Mara knew his excitement equaled her own.

  'Lady,' he greeted, with a salute. 'Your men are ready for their homecoming.' The corners of his mouth bent wryly upward. 'Do you suppose we'll give the dock sentries a fright? We've been gone for so long, they might see our colorless armor and think us all spirits returned from the dead.'

  Mara laughed. 'In a way we are.' A second figure approached and paused on her other side. Sunlight glowed on a mantle of cho-ja silk, patterned by the Chakaha mages with an intricacy that might be the envy of any of the Emperor's wives. Mara saw a fall of gold hair beneath the hood, and her heart warmed. 'Kamlio,' she greeted. 'You look extraordinarily pretty.'

  In fact, this was the first time Mara or any of the warriors who had ventured off into Thuril territory had seen the girl dress other than plainly.

  Kamlio lowered her eyelashes in shy silence. But the building embarrassment caused by Lujan's stare of admiration a moment later gave rise to her reluctant explanation. 'After our experiences with the Thuril, I learned to trust my Lady's word - that I will not be married off or given to any man I do not choose.' She gave a self-conscious shrug that set the colored fringes on her garment flying free in the wind. 'There is no need, here on your estate, to hide in tattered clothes.' She sniffed, perhaps with disdain, perhaps with relief. Lujan received a flickering glance that hinted at temper. 'Our men do not steal their wives by raiding, and if the Spy Master Arakasi chances to be at the docks, I would not wish him to think me ungrateful for the raised station bestowed upon me.'

  'Oho!' Lujan laughed. 'You have come far, little flower,
that you speak his name without spitting!'

  Kamlio tossed back her hood and gave the Force Commander a sultry pout that might have been prelude to a slap. At least Lujan thought it might, for he raised his hand in mock fear to ward off the result of womanly fury.

  But Mara interceded, stepping between her officer and the former courtesan. 'Behave, you two. Or else the dock sentries will not mistake you for ghosts, but for miscreants fit to be sent off for punishment. Doubtless there are enough dirty latrines in the barracks to keep you both cleaning for a week.'

  When Lujan gave no insolent reply to this threat, Mara raised her eyebrows and looked to see what was amiss. She found his levity banished, and his expression as stern as any he might wear in the moment before charging into battle, as his eyes turned to the distant shoreline. 'Lady,' he said in a tone grim as granite, 'something is wrong.'

  Mara followed his gaze, her heartbeat accelerated by sudden fear. Across a narrowing strip of water lay the landing, and the stone walls and peaked cornices of the estate house. At first glance, all seemed tranquil. A trader barge much like the one her party rode upon lay warped to the bollards. Bales and boxes lay piled on the dock from the offloading, presided over by a tally clerk and two stalwart male slaves. Recruits in half-armor were dashing from the practice field, as if they.had just finished sparring. Smoke rose in a spiral from the kitchen chimneys, and a gardener raked fallen leaves off a walkway between courtyard gardens. 'What?' Mara asked impatiently, but the answer became obvious as the sun caught and flashed on a sparkle of gold. The anomaly drew her eye, and she saw the imperial runner who raced away down the lane leading from the great house.

  Mara's unease crystallised into dread, for such messengers rarely brought good news. No longer did the sweetness of the breeze offer comfort, or the beauty of the green hillsides lift the heart.