Emissary

by Fiona McIntosh

  “Go away, Pez, this is not the time,” Boaz said, struggling to loosen the dwarf ’s grip.

  “Trust me, she speaks contemporary courtly Galinsean fluently,” Pez whispered before leaping down and moving away, breaking wind in time with each step, causing the Grand Vizier to snarl in disgust and the two visitors to look at each other uncomfortably.

  “Forgive our palace clown,” Boaz muttered, trying not to show that he was shaken by Pez’s secret. Time was too short to dwell on it; Ana could already be dead. He composed himself. “Lazar, what about Ana? I understand that Ana can speak courtly Galinsean like she belongs in your palace.”

  Lazar didn’t wait for permission. “Where?” he growled over the back of his shoulder, already running for the doors.

  “The River Gate. Hurry! Second Bell marks the moment.”

  18

  Salmeo was right. It was a curious morning, filled with foreboding. The Elim had prayed to Zarab as they escorted Ana behind the enormous eunuch to the region of the palace known as the River Gate. Ana, too, was entranced by the strange, eerie light this morning had brought.

  She had never witnessed such a phenomenon and yet somewhere deep in her memories she knew—in the same strange way that she knew the names of the Stones of Percheron—that this was a rare eclipse when the moon shielded the sun, bringing an odd twilight to the day when it should be brightening to full morning.

  The dark side of the moon seemed to mourn the proceedings and this interpretation was not lost on those gathered—Salmeo had to urge his Elim forward, to fight their fear of this sign from the heavens.

  Ana smiled, convinced now that Lyana was soothing her, showing Ana her command of all things natural. It was a genuine comfort and Ana took it to mean that Lyana would prevail in this battle. Zarab and his followers would not keep winning, would not continue destroying people’s lives. A new era was dawning in Percheron, beginnning with Boaz but at a higher level with Lyana’s triumph. Boaz would bring about the revolution in the palace that would filter through society and perhaps change Percherese life forever, whilst Lyana would restore the age of the priestess and harmony. Salmeo, Herezah, even Tariq, were primitive. Their time and traditions had passed. As these thoughts gave her courage, the sight of Kett gave her intense relief. He was here. They would die together, and quickly, Lyana in their hearts and peace in their minds.

  LAZAR HAD NEVER RUN so hard in his life. He saw none of the people around the palace he encountered, didn’t feel the stone walls he careened off or the toe he broke as he tripped. He ignored the burning in his lungs and the protest from his legs and the harsh breathing at his throat. Speed was all that mattered, speed alone would save Ana’s life.

  Coming behind him were Pez, whooping and screeching—a madman picking up on the lunacy around him—as well as the Zar, also moving swiftly but not so fast as to undermine his dignity. Jumo, who was not permitted freedom through the palace, was at Boaz’s side, eager to break stride into a run. The Galinsean visitors had been left in the care of the Grand Vizier; they would be served refreshments as they waited, confused, in the Throne Room for the next update from the heir to their throne.

  Lazar kept running. Damn the River Gate—the farthest point in the palace from the Throne Room. He knew once the Second Bell was sounded, Ana was as good as dead.

  ANA STOOD, COMPOSED AND demure, in the gently rocking boat. Alongside her boat was a second, and in it, shaking with fear, was Kett and another Elim. Kett looked ghostly in the eerie light cast by the eclipse. Nearby, at the riverbank, on chairs brought especially for the occasion, sat the Valide and Salmeo. Standing yet farther away were the two Elim who had escorted Ana with Salmeo to her place of death. Not far from them, at a table sat a scribe, who served the harem. Witnesses aplenty.

  Before her stood an enormous man. He was Elim, and one she had never seen before. Ana realized that the top of her head barely reached the middle of his chest; he must stand inches higher than even Spur Lazar, who was the tallest man she knew. His solemnity was tinged by dread, and Ana knew it was not only the executioner who was feeling disturbed by the strange twilight.

  Fringing the black disk of the moon was a gossamer halo of sunlight. Again Ana was struck by the notion that this was Lyana talking to her, talking to them all, mocking the killers and uplifting Ana’s spirits. Soon both her body and Kett’s would be safe within their watery graves, whilst their spirits would rise to Lyana’s bosom.

  “Odalisque Ana, this is Faraz. He is the Elim responsible for executions within the harem,” Salmeo explained as lightly as if he were introducing a guest for dinner.

  She nodded at the huge man and he responded in kind, nervously glancing up toward the sun and moon, suddenly a single, glowing, sinister body in the heavens.

  “Ana, you understand why you give your life today?” It was the Valide, attempting to draw out the agony for as long as possible, as usual, but even her voice sounded strained and she, too, uncharacteristically seemed nervous as she looked up to the skies.

  Ana fixed the Valide with a long look. “I’ve worked it out, Valide, thank you.”

  “Perhaps you could explain it to us so we can bear witness that you did most certainly understand the charges brought against you. It is tradition.” The Valide’s voice was perfectly measured and polite.

  “My naïveté led me to make some rash decisions, Valide,” Ana said boldly. “I trusted people I should never have thought capable of honesty. I broke the law of the harem…again. Is that clear enough?”

  “Be careful, Ana,” Salmeo cautioned.

  “Or what? You’ll kill me?” She laughed aloud and it felt wonderful to see all his visible flesh quivering with rage.

  Her triumph was short-lived. Herezah’s cold voice cut through her amusement. “No, but I’m sure you would like to go to your death knowing that the family in the foothills you care about so much will not be punished for your misdemeanors. Your uncle’s death should have been sufficient for your selfish pursuits. I hope that you will be content with two other deaths on your hands—those of Lazar and Kett.”

  Ana’s resolve crumpled. She felt shaken at the threat, knew all her bravado had dissipated at a couple of cutting sentences from Herezah. “Can we just get this done with, I beg you? I have nothing further to add. Forgive my offense, Grand Master Salmeo. You may appreciate that I am trying to find the courage to die bravely.”

  Salmeo’s scar lifted as he smiled, the gap in his teeth looking cavernous, now and then filled with the plump pink tongue that seemed to taste the air like a snake’s. “I accept your apology, Odalisque Ana,” he lisped, “and agree we should get ‘this’—as you put it—under way, for this strangely dull morning is already warm and these dark silks are not breathing as well as they should.”

  Herezah made a tutting sound in sympathy. “You should have changed into the summery lightweight silks already, Salmeo,” she admonished. “Odalisque Ana, you gave me your promise, your absolute word, that you would never attempt to escape from the harem again. Do you remember my warning?”

  Ana hesitated, realizing now how brilliantly this pair had cornered their prey, then played with it before releasing it into that well-constructed false sense of freedom before pouncing again, this time fatally. She had to admit that they were superb manipulators. She recalled the conversation with Herezah well—how cleverly Herezah had led her through the discussion, extracting that promise for this very moment when she would hurl it back against her. Ana dropped her head, feeling completely dispirited. She wished Pez were there so she could at least hug someone good-bye. But, she realized bleakly, he was probably with Lazar. “Yes, I remember giving you that promise.”

  “Which you promptly broke that very evening.”

  “Yes, Valide.”

  “No one helped or encouraged you? This was your own decision?”

  The scribe was busily recording the facts on his tablet of paper, trying not to look above at the halo of ethereal light surrounding the moon
.

  “All of my own doing,” Ana echoed. “I coerced Kett into aiding me. He felt obliged.”

  “That won’t save him, I’m afraid, Ana, but we appreciate your candor.”

  Salmeo looked to the scribe, who nodded. “We are ready, then. Step into the bags, please.”

  The Elim helped the bound Kett into the black velvet sack. To his credit, Kett was stoic, his eyes firmly on Ana. She was sorely reminded of a similar scene of despair not so long ago, during which they had drawn strength from each other.

  “It will be quick, Odalisque Ana, fear not,” Herezah said.

  “The stones at the bottom of your sacks make it so,” Salmeo added.

  “I don’t fear death, Valide,” Ana said. “The thought of remaining a slave to the harem is far more daunting and a worse sentence than drowning—I’m sure you of all people understand.”

  Herezah smiled sardonically. “Well, I suppose you’ll never know the difference between Valide and Odalisque, young Ana. I do, and the worlds are markedly apart. Sleep well in your watery grave.” She nodded toward Salmeo.

  To prevent Ana saying anything further to infuriate his mistress, Salmeo spoke and his tone brooked no interruption. “We await the toll of the Second Bell. You may tie them in.”

  The two men in the boats got busy pulling the bags up around their victims, at which point Kett began to jabber. Ana caught a glimpse of him before she herself was pushed deeper into the darkness of her death bag and it seemed as though her friend had fallen into a trance. Just then the solar eclipse passed; the moon shifted, and blinding, golden sunlight hit them all so ferociously that everyone shielded their eyes. As she stared at Kett, it seemed that he was bathed in his own tunnel of glorious light—and furthermore, he appeared to be fully a bird—a proud raven…the black bird of omen.

  And then she was plunged into the velvet void as Faraz secured her bag with ties. She could hear Kett’s muffled voice. He was jabbering in ancient Percherese, she realized with alarm, a language so different from the language spoken today that no one around them would understand him. It shocked her to hear him speak it. It possessed a harsher quality to it, more like Galinsean, and was delivered with none of the elegant intonation of the contemporary language. Kett spoke in a monotone that seemed to match the trance he had succumbed to. She could not explain how but she understood every word:

  “I am Lyana’s Raven, bird of omen, and bird of sorrows,” he repeated over and again. To hear him quote Lyana frightened her more than she wanted to admit. Pez’s warning that Kett might be a messenger rang in her ears.

  She heard muffled complaining from Herezah and then chilling words from Salmeo: “Stick that knife of yours into him, executioner. We cannot bear the noise.”

  To her relief the Elim executioner refused. “Forgive me, Grand Master Salmeo, but tradition allows a prisoner to pray at any stage during his execution.”

  “That doesn’t sound like prayers to me,” Herezah moaned. “It’s another language.”

  “Nevertheless,” the executioner replied in a stunning show of stubbornness.

  “Kett!” Ana shouted, and then, in the same ancient Percherese that was so annoying Herezah and Salmeo, she bid him farewell. “We shall meet again in Lyana’s arms,” she comforted, and felt hot tears stinging her face that Kett should die so lost and so confused.

  “I am the Raven and you are the Mother,” he suddenly said, frightening Ana to her marrow. “This is my omen. You must live, you must let the Goddess live, and you must help the creatures and the giants to live. Maliz has killed the priestess. Now you must find the Rebel…you must find the Rebel.”

  He kept repeating the final five words, and over his chant, she heard the Second Bell sound and the words “Drop them,” ordered by Salmeo.

  Ana felt herself picked up by the Elim executioner as though she were no weight at all and she heard him whisper a plea for forgiveness through the velvet before he grunted softly and dropped her over the side of the boat.

  Cold hit her like a slap and then she was gasping as the river flooded into the bag and surrounded her as she sank to the depths. She had meant to gulp down the water to aid the drowning, but the shock of it finally happening prompted a primeval desire to hold her breath and live for just a few brief moments longer. Kett’s ominous warning resounded in her mind as the stones dragged her deeper still and her lungs screamed for air.

  19

  Lazar heard the Second Bell and its tolling stopped him in his tracks. He bent down, hands on thighs as he sucked in air, and then he straightened with rage and shouted a mournful howl of despair. He could see the River Gate, could see where an Elim executioner peered down into the depths and where Salmeo and Herezah were turning toward his keening with expressions that were triumphant.

  He was too late. Ana was gone.

  He yelled again his anger but something akin to pain passed through his head and then the voices that he had heard once before came again. Save her! they urged, somehow familiar yet belonging to people he didn’t know.

  Who are you?

  You must save her, they persisted, and then with fury driving their tone: Go!

  Fear, he decided, was the final factor that gave him the impetus once again to hurl himself forward, even though he felt spent. Salmeo, approaching, his face frowning in confusion as to who this stranger running at them was, raised a hand. Lazar ignored him, launching himself headfirst into the river.

  He prayed to Lyana to guide him through the waters. Fortunately this river came down directly from the mountains and was stunningly clear. Now, with the sunlight penetrating the water and the day bright again, he could make out the position of the boats. Lazar swam deeper and deeper, knowing he was running out of time.

  He found one sack, and struggled with the ties. When he opened it at last he was horrified to see Kett’s body float up, the young man’s dead eyes staring sadly back at him. Lazar could not waste another second on Kett and looked around wildly, his body beginning to beg for breath as he spied the other sack crumpled on the riverbed. He reached for it, his fingers fumbling at the ties. Just as he felt his whole body give in to panic, somehow, miraculously, the ties came free on the bag. Lazar let the air in his mouth escape as Ana floated up into his arms, lifeless, her eyes closed, ethereal in death.

  He would not accept it. Closing his mouth over hers, he gave her whatever little was left of the air in his lungs before he pushed up and away from the darkness toward Lyana’s sunlight.

  Lazar burst through the surface, gulping for sweet life; his lungs felt like twin furnaces but he sucked in air and, treading water, blew it into Ana’s mouth again and again, weeping as he did so. Although it had been so many years ago, he could still remember the last time he cried, when as a young man something special had been taken from him. He would not permit it again. He sent a silent prayer to Lyana that if she returned this girl to life, he would never ask any more of the Goddess or her disciple. He would not follow through on his year’s worth of suffering or his promise, made on the island when he was still battling to live, that if he ever saw Ana again he would find a way to show her his love.

  Arms reached for them both but he had no sense of being hauled from the water, or being dragged onto the riverbank by the impossibly strong arms of Faraz. The executioner pushed the gasping Spur aside and pumped Ana’s chest several times before he, too, went through the motions of breathing life from his own lungs into hers.

  In his dazed state, watching the huge black man tenderly kiss Ana with life, Lazar became aware of Salmeo talking at him and Herezah giving orders from afar. But he ignored both. He watched the Zar’s party arrive, Jumo hesitating at the gate whilst Pez showed no such fear, cartwheeling until he arrived at Ana’s side.

  “Let me,” he whispered to the Elim, who sat aside, no doubt stunned by the urgency and authority in the dwarf ’s voice and likely shaken that the mad jester had spoken sense at all.

  Lazar watched as Pez closed his eyes and laid his
hands on Ana’s chest, singing a vulgar song about goat’s udders as he did so.

  Herezah, taking no notice of the dwarf, pointed at Lazar. “And who is this stranger?” she demanded of her son as he arrived, ignoring all protocol in these unusual circumstances.

  Boaz was not given a chance to answer, for Salmeo now joined in the fray with his own frustrations: “My Zar, Ana is dead. She has been executed as you sanctioned and as required by the harem. I—”

  The Zar held a hand up to stop them both as Lazar took over once again, pushing air into seemingly dead lungs and pumping Ana’s chest to expel water and get the heart responding. “Well?” he asked the men fighting for her life.

  “Who is this madman who leaps into the river and brings out an executed odalisque with not so much as a by-your-leave?” the Valide demanded, looking at the dripping stranger who continued to ignore them all. With no immediate answer from her son, who seemed more interested in Ana’s body, she addressed the golden-haired stranger. “You! Who—”

  Ana gave a small retch. Everyone around her became suddenly still and silent. She suddenly spasmed and vomited water, struggling to get that first easy breath. Lazar, holding her, relief flooding him, nonetheless became conscious of the pair of disbelieving and enraged stares focused on Ana. He wanted to hold her, feel her warmth, her life returning as her body warmed against his skin. He did not want to seem too intimate, even though he desperately wanted to kiss those lips, not just breathe life through them. But he must deny himself, keep his promise, for it seemed that Lyana had answered his plea.

  Ana was breathing steadily again now, looking around, dazed, confused.