by Judith Tarr
The empress was not angry. Vanyi allowed herself the flicker of a smile. “I’m instructing myself. I have nothing more than a feeling and a fear. I tell myself that even if there is a threat, there’s nothing at all that would suggest the Guild.”
“Except that your uneasiness began in connection with Gates.”
“Yes.” Vanyi rubbed her aching eyes. “And the Guild made the Gates. I’m even hoping it’s they, and not something else—something incalculable. There are a million worlds out there. Who knows what moves in them?”
“And the Olenyai?”
“Maybe there I am jumping at shadows. They’re uncanny enough, and they know it. And that boy has lion-eyes.”
“Everything in Asanion is shadow,” said the empress. “And I am priestess of the dark between the stars, and I—even I—would give heart’s blood to be in my own land again.”
Vanyi would give her sympathy, but she had little enough to spare for herself. “So would we all,” she said. “Lady, if you judge it wise, would you go to your son? Warn him. Tell him not to trust his Olenyai, and least of all the one who clings closest.”
Merian took her time in responding. When she did, it came slow. “I will speak to him.”
30
The messenger caught Estarion as he dressed for the harem. “Majesty, if you please, your lady mother would speak with you.”
He paused. It was late, and Haliya was waiting. He had a new tale to tell her, that he had heard in court, and a song that would make her laugh. He was eager for her already; he had had to call off the servant who would have eased him when he thought of her.
“Tell my mother,” he said to the messenger, “that I’ll see her in the morning. I’ll break my fast with her, if she will.”
The messenger bowed to the floor. “Majesty, she said that it was urgent.”
“And I have urgent business,” said Estarion with a flash of temper. “In the morning. Tell her.”
The messenger was Asanian. He could not argue with his emperor.
When the eunuch was gone, Estarion drew a breath. He should go, he knew that. But he was feeling contrary tonight. He wanted, needed, what Haliya could give. He would only embarrass his mother, or lose his temper, or say something they would both regret.
o0o
He approached the harem with a clear enough conscience. Haliya was not ready for him: the room in which they met was empty. He settled there with the wine and sweets that waited, drinking the wine, toying with the sweets. He had arrayed a whole army of sugared nuts, with banners of dried starfruit and a honeycake general, before the door opened.
It was not Haliya. He half-rose. “Ziana. Is she—”
Ziana made obeisance with grace and composure. “My lord,” she said.
“Is Haliya ill? Has something happened?”
“Oh, no,” said Ziana. “She’s quite well.”
Annoyance made his voice sharp. “And she sent you to keep me busy while she sees to more important matters?”
Ziana raised her eyes to him. He would not call it hurt, what was in them, but he had not pleased her. “Nothing is more important than you, my lord.”
“Then why—” He stopped. At long last his mind had caught up with the rest of him. She was wearing what a woman wore when she came to her lord in the evening. It covered her voluminously, but it was made to come off of a piece.
“My lord,” said Ziana, “we talked about it, Haliya and I. We thought that you might not know. There are courtesies, you see. And prudences. Since the harem is as it is, and women are as they are, their lord cannot afford the luxury of a favorite. Oh,” she said as if he had spoken, “he may have one, of course. But he can’t see her and only her. It isn’t fair to the others.”
Estarion was speechless.
She went on bravely. “So, my lord, we decided that since you likely might not know, and since you have never had a harem before, that we would help you. It’s not strictly proper, mind. You should have had us all in together, and chosen one of us again, but not the same one as before. A truly dutiful lord would do that every night; we don’t expect that, or even want it. Once in every hand of days is more than ample.”
And he had spent every night with Haliya for a Brightmoon-cycle and more. “You must think me a perfect boor,” he said.
“Oh, no, my lord,” said Ziana. “You don’t know, you see. And you do mean well. Haliya is very, very pleased with you. She’s told me everything that you like, and I’ve thought of more that may delight you.” She moved closer, which was great boldness, and dared to touch his cheek.
Her hand was soft and cool. He shivered. “I don’t—” he said thickly. “I don’t think—I’m made for this.”
“Of course you are, my lord.” Her gaze was kind. “Haliya said you could be shy. Who’d have thought it? So tall as you are, and so proud.”
“I’m not tall inside,” he said.
“But you are.” She laid her hand over his heart. “We’ve decided, all of us, that you are beautiful. The canons deny it, of course. They call for ivory, not ebony; gold, not raven; smooth sleekness, not nerves and bone and angles. The lion in a cage, not the panther in his lair.”
“You are beautiful,” he said dizzily, “by any canon.”
“I was bred to be,” she said. “Haliya’s colors are better than mine, but I have the bones. And amber is permitted, even preferred in some of the poets.”
“I don’t know that I want to choose,” Estarion said.
“You don’t need to. You have us both. And all the rest, too. Eluya looks like a tigress, but she has the softest touch in the world. And Ushannin learned the high arts from a great master in Ishraan, who named her her best pupil. And—”
He silenced the rest of her recital with a finger on her lips. “I’m not ready to think of more than one woman at a time,” he said. “Even two are more than I know what to do with.”
“You’ll learn,” said Ziana. “It’s not so hard. And you’re certainly man enough to master it.”
She was not speaking in figures. Asanians were half appalled, half fascinated by northerners’ size as by everything else about them. And while Estarion was not a large man as his mother’s kin would reckon it, that was still rather more than an Asanian could lay claim to.
The swift heat rose to his cheeks, but never as swift as what rose below. He stood abruptly and turned his back on her. “I can’t do this,” he said.
“Of course you can, my lord,” said Ziana. From the sound of it, she was trying not to laugh. “You do want me. And I want you. Very much,” she said.
The honesty of that, and the plea clothed in pride as in fine silk, made him turn to face her again. “Do you really? And why?”
“Because you are ours,” she said. “You belong to us as we belong to you. And because you are beautiful. And because . . . I like the way you talk to me. Even when you are being rude.”
“I’m rude?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “It’s refreshing. You always say what you think, you see. And we almost never do.”
“Haliya does,” said Estarion. “I think you do, too.”
“It’s our besetting flaw,” Ziana said.
“Don’t mend it,” he said. “I forbid you.”
“As my lord wills,” she said demurely, but her eyes were laughing.
She was, in her way, as enchanting as her sister. He had known that before. He had not properly comprehended the wit that inhabited the amber beauty.
His body decided for him. It stepped forward; it found the fastening of her robes.
He paused. She was trembling, but not with fear. She did want him. Goddess knew why, goddess knew how, but there could be no mistaking it.
He had taken Haliya, and she had been glad of it, and had accepted it. Ziana took him. She was honey and fire and swift intelligence. Such splendor as that was, to be lost in the body’s pleasure, and to look into eyes that knew and cherished every moment of it, and every inch of him.
&nb
sp; “I don’t understand,” Estarion said somewhere in the night, when his body rang like the bell after the peal, but his mind was wide awake. “I don’t see how a man can love three women at once, and equally, and treasure them all.”
“How does a father love his children?” Ziana asked. “He may have a dozen or a hundred. But there is enough of him for all of them.”
“That’s different,” said Estarion.
“In its way,” she said, “yes.” His hand cupped her breast. She laid her own over it, lacing her slender ivory fingers with his long thin ebony ones. “I’m glad you say ‘equally,’ my lord. It’s a great honor.”
“It’s you who honor me.” He kissed the top of her head.
Her hair smelled of honey and of ailith-blossoms. “I don’t think I know myself any more. I wasn’t raised for this, or prepared for it.”
“I think you were,” she said. “Only you didn’t know it.”
“There’s a spell on me. I know that.” He felt it, wrapped about him, swathing his will and his power, smothering them. “It’s in the stones, or in the air. I don’t know which. But it’s not meant to harm me. Simply . . . to bind me here.”
“Isn’t that what honor is, and duty? A binding?”
“Are they always sealed with magery?”
“I don’t know, my lord,” she said. “I know nothing of magic.”
Nor did she. He clasped her to him and made himself laugh. “You have a magic all your own. See, I’m enchanted, enraptured, enspelled.”
“Silly,” she said, but she indulged him. And yet, in a pause: “You won’t always stay here. You’ll go back where you came from.”
“I’m lord in Keruvarion, too,” he said. “I have to travel through my empire.” But not now. Not soon. Not while he could foresee.
“When you go back,” she said, “take me with you.”
“Your sister made me promise the same thing,” he said. “Did you conspire in it?”
She frowned, shaking off his levity. “I know you’ll take Haliya. She rides, and she can shoot a bow. I can’t do either. Will you still take me?”
“Would you be willing to learn?”
“No,” she said, “my lord. I’m afraid of seneldi. I know that makes me a great coward. But I would like to see a place where a woman can rule.”
“Then you shall,” he said.
“Promise.”
“On my right hand,” he said, dizzy again, drunken with her.
She kissed his burning palm, a cool touch, soothing the fire. But not the fire that was in the rest of him.
31
The emperor did not see the empress mother in the morning. First he was late in coming from the harem; then there was a matter of state too urgent to put off; and after that he was expected to sing one of the Sun-cult’s rites in the great temple.
Korusan made certain that no more of her messengers reached him. It was simple enough. The slow wearing of time, the Regent’s persuasions, Godri’s death, Vanyi’s rejection, seemed to have broken Estarion’s resistance. He closed in upon himself.
After his blue-eyed stallion was sent to run the fields and mount the mares in Induverran, he did not go to his riding-court. With autumn the rains had come; there was little pleasure in walking in his gardens. He went to the harem still, but, Korusan noticed, somewhat less often than before.
As the days ran on, he took to sitting in his inner chamber with a book unrolled on his knees, but the pointer never stirred by more than a line. One day he did not even open the book; the next, he left it on the table and sat quiet, staring at nothing, saying nothing.
He was alert enough in court and when he went to the harem. He did not seem to be dying of a broken spirit. He was quiet, that was all. Still. Unmoved and unmoving, neither content nor discontented, neither happy nor sad, simply being.
Korusan hated it. The bright, restless, eternally unpredictable barbarian was gone. In his place sat a poor shadow of an Asanian emperor. He still would not wear the mask, and he still kept his barbarian beard, but that had the air of habit too long ingrained.
On a grey raw morning between the harem and the High Court, Korusan found him in his bath, eyeing the razors in their case. He was testing one of them on his arm.
Korusan had no memory of movement, but the razor was in his own hand, the case clapped shut and his free hand clamped on it. Estarion was quietly amazed—that too so unlike him that Korusan wanted to shake him. “I’m not about to kill myself,” he said.
“No,” said Korusan. “Merely to lose yourself.”
Estarion’s brow went up. He tugged at his beard. “There’s more to me than this.”
“Will you become all Asanian?”
“Is that so unbearable?”
Korusan returned the razor to its case and secreted it in his robes. “I prefer you as you are.”
“Barbarian.”
“Barbarian,” Korusan agreed, “and honest in it.”
That gave Estarion pause. And Korusan: Korusan understood, at last, too much.
o0o
The summons came as he changed guard at midday, while the emperor held court and the grey rain came down. Marid brought it, walking lightly, with a brightness in his eye that was more than simple love for his swordbrother. “The Masters,” he said. “They bid me tell you. It’s time.”
Korusan stood still. Marid stared back at him, amber eyes, black veil, restless fingers on the hilts of his swords.
“At last,” said Marid, “you shall have what is yours.”
Korusan drew a careful breath. “I shall speak with the Masters,” he said. “Guard well, guardsman.”
Marid’s eyes laughed with the irony of it. “I keep his life for you, prince.”
“Hush, brother,” said Korusan. “I am but a guardsman here.”
“Indeed,” said Marid, unrepentant, “guardsman.”
o0o
Korusan prepared himself carefully. He put on his best robes. He armed himself with all the weapons that a warrior might carry: the swords and the dagger that anyone might see, the others that were known only to the Olenyai and to the dead, who had known the bite of them. When he was the perfection of an Olenyas, he went to his Masters.
Korusan passed the guards and the watchers and the hidden ones who made his hackles rise. That he was protected from them was little comfort. They were shadows on the edge of vision, voices on the edge of hearing, movements not quite sensed. His instinct, inevitably, was to hunt them down.
It was quiet in this stronghold within a stronghold. No women or veilless children dwelt in this place. They were all men and warriors here, doing their turn in the emperor’s service; and they were trained to silence.
He found the Masters together in the room behind the hall. There were attendants of the Guild among the Olenyai, robed in violet and grey amid the somber black.
Korusan chose not to notice. He was awaited: he was not challenged at the door, or forbidden entry. He entered with beating heart, chiding himself for a fool. Was he not the son of the Lion? Did they not call him lord and rightful emperor?
He was still but an initiate of two ranks’ standing, and please the nonexistent gods, no mage at all.
A warrior did not trouble with preliminaries unless they served his purpose. Korusan bowed to his own Master for true respect, and to the Master of the Guild for careful courtesy, and said what he had come to say. “It is not time.”
Neither of them betrayed astonishment. The mage seemed about to smile as one smiles at a child who thinks itself a man. Master Asadi lowered his veil, which was a mark of great trust in this company, and said, “We believe that it is time.”
“No,” said Korusan. He did not bare his own face. That was noted, he knew, though no one spoke of it.
“Why?” asked Asadi.
“Because,” said Korusan, “it is not.”
“Are you a seer,” the mage inquired, “or a thaumaturge, to know the art of times and places?”
“I am th
e emperor’s shadow,” said Korusan, “and I hold his life in debt. How fare the rebellions, my masters?”
“Well,” said Asadi, “and prospering. But they need their prince and prophet. They need your conscious presence.”
“Soon,” said Korusan.
“It were best you do it now,” the mage said. “The people are fickle, and the emperor’s mages are not all fools. The more we do, the greater our workings, the closer we come to setting you on your throne, the greater the danger of discovery.”
“I see,” said Korusan, “that you are afraid for your secrecy. Wise, that. Prudent. But the time is not yet come. Your magics are succeeding—they are your magics, I trust?” He received no answer, but he had expected none, nor needed it. “The emperor is mewed in the palace. He stirs forth less with each day that passes. He is learning to be content with his harem and his court and his confinement. He has no knowledge of aught but what he sees and hears, and that is nothing. When he is perfectly closed in, venturing forth no longer even to preside in court, then we may move.”
“Then will be too late,” the mage said.
Korusan studied the man. His face was sleek, complacent, deceptively harmless. His eyes were as cold as ever, as quietly merciless. They did not fall before Korusan’s stare.
Korusan smiled. “You are a worthy opponent,” he said, “but I am the Lion’s cub, and I hold the Sunlord’s life in my hand. I judge that we must wait. Now is too soon.”
“When will it be time?” the mage demanded. “Can you judge that? The Sunlord may have little magery that he can wield at his will, but he casts spells with his simple presence. The light of his eyes can bind worlds.”
“And you dare oppose him?”
The mage did not bridle at Korusan’s mockery. “I have not his native power, but neither have I maimed and squandered what is mine. You, my young lord, have no magery, no power but what guards your mind from intrusion. You are easy prey for the spell that he casts.”
That could indeed be true. There was a remarkable fascination in the black king, more than his oddities might account for.
But Korusan was no fool or child, to be snared by outland magics. “When I am ready, I will kill him. I am sworn to it. His life is mine, mage. Remember that.”
