by Judith Tarr
“Had she been one of us,” said the lightmage who stood beside him, gently enough but with an edge of impatience, “she would have been known, found, brought among us before ever the Sun-cult had her.”
“There are few of our order in the Isles, and those hard pressed by Sun-magic and sea-magic. She could easily have escaped them. As,” the darkmage said, “she has escaped you even yet.”
“Hush,” the lightmage said, with a glance at Korusan. The darkmage looked stubborn but held his tongue. He would take up the battle again later, his expression promised.
Korusan wondered if this one would go the way of the lightmage who had been too honest in the face of his questioning. “Who is this woman you speak of? Is it anyone whom I should fear?”
“No, no one,” the Guildmaster said, even as the darkmage said, “A priestess, a mage—she was the emperor’s lover, they say she is that no longer, she—”
Mages closed in on him, silencing him, easing him out of the circle and the room. It was smoothly done. Korusan observed it with interest and a glimmer of pity. Outspokenness was never a virtue in an Asanian, whether he be mage or prince.
“My prince,” said the Guildmaster when the importunate one was gone, “you are welcome here as always, but perhaps you would choose to rest from your journey in greater quiet than we can offer.”
“I have rested,” Korusan said. “My Master bids you attend him.”
The master of the mages did not look pleased to be so summoned, even by the Lion’s cub. Korusan was prepared for his resistance, and mildly disappointed when he acquiesced. “I will come,” he said, “when I am done here.”
Korusan inclined his head, all courtesy. “I wait upon your pleasure.”
“You may go,” the mage said, “my prince.”
“I am bidden to accompany you,” Korusan said.
“You accept a master’s bidding?”
Korusan smiled in his veil. “I choose to accept it.”
He took the stance of the guard at rest, hands resting lightly on swordhilts, and set himself to wait. He was precisely in the path of any mage who wished to leave the room—fools, they, for trapping themselves where was but a single door. They must brush past him or walk around him if they would go about their duties.
They made no more workings while he watched, nor spoke unless it were from mind to mind. One of them covered the terrible beauty of the glass. Others cleared away the tools of their trade, odd small things that made Korusan’s skin quiver.
Their master watched and said nothing. When the last of it was done and its doer had departed past Korusan, the Guildmaster still did not move.
Korusan was in comfort, now that the glass was hidden. He could fight patience with patience.
The mage spoke abruptly. “Have you looked upon your enemy?”
“No,” said Korusan. His voice was sharper than he liked.
“He is here. You know that, surely. They enthroned him these three days past.”
Korusan had known. He was being tested again as always, his temper tried to see if it would break. “It is not the throne that makes the king,” he said.
“There are many who would dispute you,” said the mage. “The throne, the power, the backing of the courts and the armies—all those, he has.”
“But I,” said Korusan, “have you.”
“Do you, prince? You like us little, you trust us less. If you could dispose of us, you would do so and be glad of it.”
“But I cannot, and I will not, while your purposes serve mine. You have wagered all on this last cast of the bones—my bones, frail as they are. Only remember: you have called me your prince. As your prince I may command you. And I will look ill upon your disobedience.”
“We will obey you,” the Guildmaster said, “while you show yourself our ally.”
That would do, thought Korusan. It must. He stepped aside, and bowed slightly. “Come. The Master of the Olenyai waits.”
o0o
The two masters of their orders conspired at nothing that Korusan had not heard before. It had chiefly to do with Olenyai deployed here, mages deployed there, and rebellions fomented through the satrapies of Asanion. Of the emperor in this palace they said nothing.
And yet it was the emperor who mattered. Korusan left them, gaining a glance from the Olenyas and no apparent notice from the mage. Perhaps they thought that he went to the cell that had been given him. He thought of it, would have been glad of it, but his mind would not let him rest. It leaped and spun, driving him through this stronghold within a stronghold, this chief of the postings of the Olenyai.
Inevitably it drove him out into the palace. His robe and his veils granted him passage wherever he wished to go, except perhaps the harem; but that he did not approach. It was empty, he had been told, for the Sunlord had no woman but the priestess who knew Magegates, and she had left his bed.
The queen’s palace, which was occupied, tempted Korusan slightly, but the guards there were women, and some had magic. He veered away from them.
He was circling, he knew that. Round and round about, narrowing slowly to a certain center.
The emperor of Asanion had lived for time out of mind like a prisoner in his own palace. He had his chambers, and they were many; his courts, and they were broad; his wonted ways and his expected duties. But he did not pass the walls. He did not walk free in the world. That was the price and the sacrifice with which he bought his power.
The outland savage was shut up as tightly as any son of the Lion. Korusan half expected to hear him roaring somewhere deep within, but the halls were quiet, the chambers cool in the heat of the day. There were foreigners about, black men and brown men, even a few women; priests with their torques, guards in alien livery, a lordling or two eyeing the splendors of the palace as if he had a mind to buy.
None of them ventured to question the lone Olenyas. They were afraid of him, he thought, catching their glances and watching them shrink aside. Wise fools. It was not his robe that they needed to fear, or even his swords. All his body was a weapon.
Of the Olenyai here, some were strangers. Many were not. One greeted him with Olenyai effusion: eyes that smiled, voice that called softly in battle-language for there was no one near to hear. “Brother! How did you come here?”
Korusan moved smoothly into position on the other side of the door that Marid guarded, and permitted a smile to creep into his voice. “I rode,” he said. “And you?”
Marid slapped his right-hand swordhilt, half in mirth, half in exasperation. “You know what I meant. I thought the mud-robes would never let you loose.”
“I let myself loose,” said Korusan. “Whose door is this?”
“I think you know,” said Marid.
“He is within?”
Korusan must have sounded more eager than he meant to: Marid raised a hand. “Down, lad! You can’t have his blood yet. We’re all under orders. We’re to guard him as if he really were the emperor, and show ourselves loyal, and not a thought out of line.”
“Have you seen him?” Korusan asked.
Marid’s answer was cut off before it began. Footsteps approached them. They froze in the stillness of sentries, eyes schooled to blankness. The one who passed wore scarlet and gold, and his face—Korusan labored not to stare.
“What in the worlds—” he began when the creature had gone within.
“That is the emperor’s body servant,” Marid said. “Lovely, isn’t he? He’s a savage from the desert. He’s killed a dozen men, they say, and he maimed a thirteenth to win his place by the emperor’s side.”
Korusan widened his eyes at that. “Truly? And was he born with such a face?”
“Oh, no. Those are his manhood-marks and his killing-marks, and some of them are for a prince. He’ll talk to us sometimes. He’s almost human under the devil-mask.”
How strange, thought Korusan. How utterly foreign. His stomach was tight, but for once it did not want to empty itself. Perhaps it understood that he was her
e, at last, where he needed most to be.
He set hand to the door’s latch. Marid frowned at him. “You aren’t going to. Are you?”
Korusan answered by opening the door. Marid did not stop him. Duty bound the other to keep his post, but Korusan had no orders yet, and no ban upon him.
He knew these chambers within as if he had dwelt there all his life. They were the heart of his teaching, the place to which he had been born, in which he hoped to die. He walked in them like a shadow, faceless, unregarded: simply another of the Olenyai.
They were trusting in Keruvarion. That too Korusan had been taught, with some degree of incredulity; but his teachers averred that it was true. Now he saw the reality of it. All these open chambers, unquestioning guards, servants walking in and out; no locks, no bars in any place but one.
That one room had been the emperor’s bedchamber. The bar was new, the lock still bright from the forging. It did not yield to Korusan’s touch.
“You! What do you there?”
He turned carefully, and not too quickly. The voice was sweet for all the barbarousness of its accent, speaking a rough but comprehensible Asanian patois. The speaker was half-expected, the tattooed savage in Varyani livery. He looked alarming, but his challenge held little hostility.
Korusan answered him in the same patois that he had spoken. “Do you hold his majesty prisoner?”
The emperor’s servant looked narrowly at him, then shrugged. “What, are you new here? Of course we don’t. That’s where his father died. He won’t go in, or let anyone else go in, either.”
Such innocence. Korusan almost admired him for it. “The last emperor died these ten years past. Surely he does not bear the grief still.”
“He can’t forget. It almost killed him, too. He still has the black dreams.”
“He is as weak as that?”
The savage’s eyes glittered. “Only look at him, and you’ll know that for the lie it is.” He calmed himself visibly. “There now. You people don’t know him; and mages are different, and Sunlords most different of all.”
“It is clear to see,” said Korusan, “that his servant loves him.”
“So do all who know him.”
Someone called from down a passage. The savage snapped alert. “There! He’s looking for me. Do your duty, blackrobe, but don’t try to do it in there. He’ll have your hide for a kilt.”
Korusan followed the emperor’s servant quietly, with steps that slowed, the deeper he went into the maze of chambers. Still he was not challenged. There were more of his own kind here, but they would reckon that he came under orders. And so he did if he was truly their prince, with authority to command himself.
The black king was in a chamber that had been meant for guests, but that he seemed to have claimed for his own. He must have come from High Court: his servant was divesting him of the robes.
Korusan had seen northerners since he came to Kundri’j. There had been enough of those in the palace, and others in the city and on the road. He had grown inured to black faces, arched noses, blue-black hair; he was prepared for towering height.
This was not a giant as his kind went. He was only a head taller than Korusan, and narrow, almost slight. He was long-legged like a colt, with some of a colt’s awkwardness, as if he had not quite come to his growth; and maybe he would grow into the shoulders that seemed so wide against the rest of him.
No beauty, no. Ugly indeed, with that sooty skin, that blade of a nose, that long mobile mouth half-hidden in curling beard. His eyes were as keen a shock as Korusan had been warned to expect. They were all of the Lion, clear deep gold, no rim of white to lessen them, until he widened them at something that his servant said.
Korusan was braced for them, and for the coal of anger that burned his belly at the sight of them. He was prepared for strangeness, even for revulsion. But he had not expected to be captivated.
There was grace in that long body, something like beauty in the way the head turned, looking over his shoulder at the servant, who was struggling with the heavy masses of his hair. He smiled, white in that dark face, and said something in a tongue that Korusan did not know, that made the servant laugh. And Korusan was angry; no, Korusan was jealous, because neither of them had seen him, or cared that he watched.
He should have taken himself away, but he could not will his feet to move. This was the enemy of all that he was. This, taking its ease in these chambers that should have been Korusan’s, casting off with patent contempt the robes to which Korusan was born. Holding Korusan rooted with the purity of a line, long straight back, long plait down the center of it, long hand outstretched to touch the servant’s shoulder, to rest lightly on it.
“There, don’t fret, I’ll be well,” the Sunlord said in Gileni. Korusan understood: he had been taught that tongue, the better to know his enemy.
Likewise in Gileni the servant said, “How can I not fret, my lord? You keep to yourself too much these days; and you left court so suddenly, as if you were ill, or worse. Won’t you come out to the training ground? Won’t you do a round with the swords?”
“Later,” the Sunlord said, as if he humored a child. His voice was deep, like a lion’s purr, but it had an odd clarity. The servant seemed troubled, opening his mouth as if to speak, seeming to think better of it. He withdrew slowly, giving his master ample time to call him back.
His master did not take it. Korusan, unmarked and undismissed, watched the outlander decide that he was alone.
He stretched first, languidly, as a cat stretches, and yawned. His teeth were whiter than an Asanian’s, sharper, the eyeteeth long and narrow and perceptibly curved.
He dropped the robe that still covered him. He was lean, skin stretched over smooth muscle, long bone. There was no softness to him. He was all planes and angles.
So strange. Hardly like a human creature at all. Korusan saw the glare of gold as the right hand came up, the impossible thing, the brand the priest-mages made when one of Sun-blood was born, swearing solemnly that it was bred there. But no living thing grew gold in its flesh.
The Varyani emperor wandered toward a curtained wall, caught at an edge, hurled back the hangings with vehemence that made Korusan start. Sun flooded the room. Through the dazzle of it Korusan realized that this was a bank of windows, and they looked down on the gardens.
One by one the outlander flung them open, letting in heat as well as light. He leaned on a windowframe, seeming to care not at all if anyone below should see his nakedness, and said to the hot golden air, “Sometimes I think that my dreams are real, and the Golden Palace all the world, and Keruvarion the delusion of a fevered brain. Sometimes I imagine that I’ve never breathed any air but this, never walked on ground not smoothed before me, never worn less than the nine robes of a high prince. Was I bred for this after all, do you think, and not for that other world?” He was speaking Asanian, not perfectly but well enough. “Hound,” he said, still to the air. “Patient, silent guardhound. What do you think of me?”
Korusan went very still. It was foolish: his presence was known. But instinct had its own logic.
The Sunlord was dripping light. It ran down him in streams like water, pooling on the floor.
Impossible. Sorcerous. Magic wrought to overawe the credulous, to frighten the yellow-faced spy.
But there was no denying the sight of it. Korusan slid toward it, essayed it with a fingertip. It burned and stung. He drew back carefully, keeping the comer of his eye on the barbarian. Emperor he would not call him, not naked and shameless, head fallen back, eyes closed, wallowing in his puddle of sun.
When the creature turned, Korusan was taken by surprise. He was cat-quick, and not above malice. “There, my hound. Run at my heel. See what I do, faithful slave that I am, and obedient emperor.”
Pure insolence. Korusan would teach him manners. He smiled behind his veils, and followed the black king, not for obedience, but to see what he would do.
22
Estarion had won a few sma
ll skirmishes. Lord Firaz was winning the war.
He had had a bellyful of High Court this morning, walked out of it before he did something more unfortunate; and now he went back, dragging robes. He could not even say why he did it. Sun’s heat, maybe, addling his brain while it made his body stronger. Or a pair of yellow eyes in a swathing of veils, and a subtle shimmer of contempt as they looked at him.
It had not gone away when he commanded the Olenyas to play body-servant, which the bred-warrior did, and did well, with mute obedience. It was still there as Estarion made his second entrance of the morning, breaking in upon a court that was doing very well without him, throwing it into an exquisitely restrained flurry. He lost sight of the guardsman thereafter among all the rest, but he fancied that he could feel those eyes upon him still, judging him and finding him wanting.
High Court was excruciating as always. The emperor did not speak; his Regent spoke for him—as coolly now as ever, no shadow of rebuke, and chiefly in platitudes, greeting this lord who had come from the far western provinces, well-wishing that princeling for his taking of a new wife. His seventh, Lord Firaz murmured under cover of the man’s prostrations, and a great heiress; which was well, for his properties were insufficient to support the tribe of his sons.
Estarion bit his tongue. Lord Firaz was revealing a surprising store of wit, much of it wry. His aplomb, Estarion knew too well, was unshakable, even for an emperor who fled and then came back, breaking every dictate of propriety.
The next petitioner to be presented wore five robes to the princeling’s three. It was, Estarion realized, a child. He had thought it was a very small man: the infant carried himself so haughtily, refusing to bow beneath the weight of his robes, wearing an expression so rigid that surely it would shatter.
His name was almost longer than himself, with three princely houses in it, and one royal connection. “He is come,” said Lord Firaz, “to beg your majesty’s indulgence, and your forgetfulness of his father’s sins.”
Estarion raised a brow.
