by Judith Tarr
Something gleamed. Steel. Wealthy assassin, that one, and a fool, to carry bright metal and not black iron or greened bronze.
Move, Estarion willed his body. Must move. Must.
Nothing.
The knife poised over him. No face behind it, nor eyes, hidden in veils.
Fear was gone. There was only the will. To move. To move.
Steel flashed down.
Estarion lurched, floundered, dragged lifeless limbs, but he moved. Away from that glittering death, and up, into the shadow that bore it.
Two shadows. He crumpled bonelessly to the floor. The shadow with the knife locked in battle with a second shadow. That one had eyes and a face, and warrior-patterns thick on it.
Estarion’s body struggled against the spell that bound it. Life crawled back, marking its way in pain. He could move hands, feet.
The shadow-battle swayed toward him. The knife was gone, lost, but its wielder had the strength of desperation. And wanted, still wanted, the life that flopped and gasped on the floor.
The assassin lunged. Hands clawed for Estarion’s eyes.
Godri struck them back. They yielded; one dropped.
Estarion saw the glint of metal, black now, assassin’s iron, curved like a cat’s claw. Something—something he must know—
Godri caught the wrist that bore no weapon. The black knife arced, slashed past the patterns of his cheek, but drew no blood there. It darted at his hand. He seized it.
By the blade, the idiot, the brave, mad, damnable fool. Gods, what it did to his fingers—blood welling, his face blank, unwounded hand twisting, clasping the assassin’s wrist.
Bone snapped. A shriek tore out of the veils, but the assassin would not yield, would not let go of that deadly blade.
Shadow reared up behind the shadow of the assassin.
The veiled one stiffened. If he had had eyes, they would, perhaps, have gone wide. He dropped like a felled tree.
Godri swayed. He had the knife still, fist clenched upon its blade.
Blood dripped. He did not seem to notice. He dropped gracelessly to his knees, who had always been as graceful as a dancer.
“My lord,” he said. Were those tears on his cheeks? “Oh, my lord!”
With all the strength that he had, Estarion shaped words. “Godri. Godri, let go. The knife. Let go!”
Godri stared blankly at his bleeding hand, at the thing that he clutched in it. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I’ll get a bandage—wrap it—”
“It is poisoned,” said a clear cold voice. An Olenyas kicked the assassin’s body out of the way and stood over them both. His eyes were all gold. “You are a dead man, tribesman. Whatever possessed you to take an assassin’s knife by the blade?”
Godri drew himself up on his knees. “You’re talking nonsense, yelloweyes.” His breath caught. He swayed again, steadied, spoke through gritted teeth. “Don’t listen to him, my lord. Did that vermin strike you? Are you hurt?”
“He never touched me,” Estarion said. It was easier now, or would be, if he had not seen how grey Godri was, how his body shivered, his unwounded hand clenched and unclenched.
“Gods be thanked,” Godri said. His voice was thin; he needed three breaths for the three words. “Oh, my lord, I thought you were killed.”
“Spelled,” said Estarion. He struggled to sit up. The numbness was fading. He was clumsy yet, as if half of him was turned to stone, but he could wrap arms about Godri, and know how he shivered and spasmed.
Just as Estarion’s father had. But there was no mage to hunt, no assassin to kill. The Olenyas had done that.
“Fetch a physician,” Estarion said. “Quickly.”
“What use?” asked the Olenyas. “He is dead. Nothing can mend him.”
“A mage can,” said Estarion. He was growing—not angry. No. There was no word for it. It was too perfect, too blackly brilliant. “You are not going to die,” he said to Godri.
Godri did not answer. The poison was strong in him. Estarion could smell it, could taste it in the air. It was vile, cloying-sweet.
He called his power to him. It was slow, it dragged, it trickled where it should have been a thin but steady stream. It was not enough even to fill the cup of his skull.
With sunlight, maybe, it might have been more. There was no moonlight tonight, and no stars. Rain fell like tears.
Estarion gathered up the limp body. It was still breathing. He was sure that it was. It could not have stopped so soon.
“Well for him,” the Olenyas said, “that it was quick poison and not a slow. He had no pain.”
No doubt, for an Olenyas, that was compassion. Estarion found himself on his feet, hands fisted in Olenyai robes, shaking the man within as if he had been a child’s doll. The Olenyas made no move to resist. “Don’t,” Estarion said. “Don’t—ever—”
“I am not to tell the truth?”
“My friend is dead!”
It was a howl. The Olenyas heard it calmly, dangling in Estarion’s grasp. “That is truth,” he said.
Estarion dropped him. He landed lightly, hardly ruffled, no malice in the steady golden stare.
“My friend is dead,” Estarion said more softly, “and I could not make him live. My friend . . . died . . . for me.”
“He died for idiocy. And,” said the Olenyas, “for you.”
“I could kill you,” said Estarion. He was quite calm. “You could have come before. You came too late.”
“I came with the speed I had.”
“You were supposed to guard me.”
“You sent us all away.”
Estarion gasped for breath. He should weep. He could not remember how. “You shouldn’t—have— I’ll kill you. You’ll let me. You’ll all die for me.”
“I will not.”
That stopped Estarion. “You exist to serve me.”
“I exist to serve the throne. That one,” said the Olenyas, tilting his shrouded head toward Godri’s body, “lived and died for you.”
Estarion had him by the robe again. He was not as small as some, Estarion noticed. Maybe he was young. His voice was so dispassionate that it seemed ageless, but it was light, as if it had not long been broken from child’s into man’s.
The skin round the eyes was smooth, unlined, and white as ivory. The brows under the veil were dark gold. Maybe Estarion could see something of the face: straight long line of nose, smooth curve of cheek and chin.
Asanian. Estarion’s belly knotted with disgust. He thrust the creature away, stumbled past Godri, half-fell where the assassin lay.
The man’s bowels had let go in death; he stank. Estarion swallowed bile, and stripped the veils from the face. Round unremarkable Asanian face, nothing to distinguish it from a hundred others.
“He was not of us,” said the Olenyas.
It seemed to matter to him. Estarion stripped the body grimly, quelling the hot surge of hate. Calm, he must be calm. Later he could break. Later he could weep.
The dead man was plump and hairless—so that was true, they grew none save under the arms and between the legs, and shaved or plucked that. Full male; half unexpected, to find him no eunuch. No brands or marks or sigils but the knife that was in Godri’s hand still. Nothing to name him or place him or bind him to anyone but himself.
“How do you know he’s not Olenyai?” Estarion demanded of the one behind.
“No scars,” the Olenyas said.
Estarion did not see how that could matter. He had scars himself. Anyone did, who trained at all for war. “Then what is he?”
“A fool,” said the Olenyas.
“He was clever enough to come into my bedchamber, ensorcel me, and kill—” Estarion’s voice caught. He must be calm. He must. Or he would be no use at all. “And kill my squire. That’s not a fool. That’s a mage, or a man who knows mages.”
“Still,” said the Olenyas, “a fool. He feigned to be of us. He is not. Those who sent him will be dealt with. You can be sure of that.”
“You know—”
“We will.”
Estarion rose. He was shaking again. “You will please,” he said, “dispose of that carrion. And send for—send for Iburan. The priest from Endros. You know him?”
“We know him,” said the Olenyas.
“I’d rather my mother didn’t know. And the ladies. Until tomorrow. Unless . . .” Horror smote him. “If there are more—if they’ve struck at her—”
“I shall see to it,” said the Olenyas.
He was comforting in a strange fashion: so cold and so evidently unmoved, whatever Estarion said or did to him. When he had gone on his errands, the room was suddenly very dark, full of the stench of death.
Estarion went back to Godri. He was growing cold, his body shrunken, all the quick grace gone out of him.
He did not look as if he slept. He looked dead. Cold; empty. Lifeless.
Estarion smoothed the many plaits of his hair and straightened his limbs, as if he could care how he lay. The assassin’s knife was locked in his hand. Estarion left it. Godri would have won the battle, if there had not been poison. He would have taken the small wound, bound it up, gone on unheeding as a warrior should.
“Asanion,” Estarion said. “Asanion killed you. Asanion with its sleights and its poisons. Oh, how I hate this place!”
There were only the dead to hear. No guards. No servants. He had sent the guards away. The servants—and were they dead as well? Or spelled?
He sat on his heels beside Godri. “They should not have been able to do this to me,” he said. “I should have known. My walls should have defended me.”
Maybe they had. Maybe the dreams had been his walls breaking, his power resisting.
And what mage could do it? What mage would dare?
It was a drug, it must have been. A subtle thing, and slow, mixed in his wine or wafted in the air. Then it was a matter for the guards to discover: intrigue of the court perhaps, or a lord with a grudge. Asanion was full of grudges, and not the least of them that Estarion was lord of it and not an emperor of the pure blood.
Estarion’s mind whirled and spun. It was better than weeping. Better than facing himself, and knowing that a man had died for him. A man who was his friend; whom he had loved.
The Olenyas came back alone. Estarion half-rose, braced for battle, and barely eased to recognize the eyes in the veil. “Where is Iburan?” he demanded.
“Coming,” said the Olenyas. “As are the rest. I bade them hold back until I had given you warning.”
“Send them in,” said Estarion. But as the Olenyas turned: “No. Wait. Do you have a name?”
The Olenyas paused. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
The Olenyas turned back to face him. The golden eyes were level. Lion-eyes. So, Estarion thought: the Olenyai bred them, too. Was he a prince of them, maybe? Or simply an accident of nature?
“They call me Koru-Asan,” the Olenyas said. “Korusan.”
Estarion laughed, sharp and short. “Yelloweyes?”
“Golden,” said Korusan. “If you please.”
“They call me that, too, you know,” Estarion said. “I’ve heard them talking.”
“Your ears are keen,” Korusan said.
“And my eyes,” said Estarion with bleak lightness, “are as yellow as butter.”
“As gold,” said Korusan. He bent his head, which was Olenyai obeisance, or subtle mockery, and opened the door to the deluge.
25
Iburan’s presence, massive and quiet, wrought order out of chaos. Estarion could happily have fallen into his arms and howled. But that was not given to a man and an emperor.
He sat wrapped in a robe while guards and servants and a scattering of lordlings fussed and fretted. He watched them bear the assassin away to be hung from the wall with spikes, and Godri to be laid out with honor in the Hall of Glories.
It all went on without him. That was a wisdom he had come to long since. The emperor was necessary. He was the empire in his own person, his strength its strength, his progeny its hope of continuance. But for the workings of its days he was not needed at all, except to set his name to the greater ones, and to suffer the rest to go on as it would.
Iburan loomed over him. “Starion?” the deep voice said.
Estarion stiffened. He had wanted just this; now that he had it, he wanted to wound it, tear it, cast it away. “Godri is dead,” he said.
“I grieve for that,” said Iburan.
“Do you?”
Iburan sat at Estarion’s feet. Easily, lightly, he laid his arm across Estarion’s knees.
Estarion could not escape him without oversetting him. There were shocked expressions among the servants; the lords whispered to one another. An emperor in Asanion was touched by no one but his bodyservants and his women, and by them only as he gave them leave.
Iburan, who knew that very well, looked long into Estarion’s face. “No,” he said at last. “You’re not well at all.”
“Should I be?” Estarion inquired. “Consider where I am.”
“Where we forced you to go.” Iburan sighed. “It would have been worse if you had never come here.”
“Not for Godri.”
“Is one young man, however beloved, worth the breaking of an empire?”
“Tonight,” said Estarion very quietly, very carefully, “I can’t answer that as you wish me to. I can only see that he is dead.”
“You are not,” said Iburan.
“That too I can’t answer as you would like. I’m changing here, Iburan. I don’t like what I’m changing into.”
“What you were in Keruvarion, that was half of you. This is the rest of it.”
“Then the half of me is a cold, hard, cruel thing, and it would gladly see whole ranks of men rent with hooks, if but one of them knew what was to pass this night.”
Iburan did not flinch. “The half of you weeps for the one you loved, and longs to avenge his death. That’s no shame, Starion.”
“You have been a father to me,” Estarion said. “Can you give me no more now than empty words?”
“I give what you will take. What have you done to your magery, child?”
“Asanion has done it,” Estarion said.
“No,” said Iburan. “You do it to yourself. You’ve shut it all away. If you had had your defenses laid properly, this murderer would not have come. And if he had come, and eluded you, you would have known who he was, and who sent him. Now he is dead. His soul is fled. There is nothing for a mage to discover, except that he hated, not you yourself, but what he thought you were.”
“His emperor,” said Estarion, tight and bitter.
“His conqueror. Still they call the Sun-blood that, after a lifetime of years.”
“So I am,” said Estarion with a curl of the lip, “if conquest it must be, to inflict myself upon an empire that does not love me.”
“They don’t hate you,” said Iburan, “who know you. And that’s most of the High Court, these days, and much of the Middle Court.”
“But not the people, who dream of prophets and of conquests undone, and conspire to be rid of me.”
“Self-pity ill becomes you, Starion.”
Estarion could not strike him. Not this man. Not that he was Avaryan’s high priest in Endros, or that he had been a regent in Keruvarion, or even that he had been, in all but name, foster-father. It was simpler than that.
“I know full well,” Estarion said, “that you can break me across your knee. But I will not hear that you find me wanting. I have enough of that in myself.”
“Then what will you hear? Your mind is locked shut.”
“It always has been.” Estarion leaned forward, nose to strong arched nose. “You left me here, Iburan. Why? You could have stayed; you could have been my bulwark. Instead, you left me alone.”
“And how would it look,” asked Iburan, “for the High Court to see me ever at your back, great black bear of a northerner, whispering in your ear? What then would they
call you?”
“Conqueror,” said Estarion. “Emperor.”
“I came when you called me,” Iburan said.
“Of course you did. There’s no heir in the offing yet.”
Iburan rose. The beard hid his expression, but his eyes were hard. “I shall always come when you ask, sire. Now will you ask me to go?”
“Gladly,” said Estarion, all but spitting it.
o0o
Oh, well done, Estarion lauded himself. He had slain his friend with his folly, and lost his lover, and now he had driven away his foster-father. The faces about him now were all Asanian faces. All strangers.
And one that was no face, but a veil and a pair of golden eyes. They watched him steadily, a little fixedly, as if fascinated.
When he drove the others out, that one stayed. “One must guard you,” said the Olenyas.
“They won’t try again tonight,” said Estarion. But he did not order the Olenyas to leave him.
Dawn was coming. He felt it in his bones, both ache and pleasure.
He wandered the rooms with his golden-eyed shadow. No danger hid there, no threat but memory. Here was Godri’s armor on its stand, there his box of belongings, pitifully little to matter so much.
Estarion had no tears for him. He turned away from the memory and the grief and walked swiftly, he cared not where. To the garden in the end, because it had no roof, no barrier to the sky. Rain fell soft, hardly more than mist.
Korusan was still behind him, cat-quiet. “You’ll get wet,” Estarion said.
“I’ll not melt,” said Korusan.
Estarion turned, startled. Wit, in an Olenyas? There was no way to tell. It was black dark, the Olenyas a shadow on shadow. “Why do you hide your face?” Estarion demanded of him.
“Custom,” he answered with no reluctance that Estarion could discern. “Modesty, once. And if one cannot see one’s enemy’s face . . .”
“One can’t tell what he’ll do next,” Estarion finished for him. “That’s not so. It’s the eyes that give it away. And yours,” he added, “more than most. Are you a prince of Olenyai?”
“Olenyai are warriors,” the cool voice said, “not princes.” Then: “When we hunt an enemy to the death, we veil our eyes.”
