M A R Barker - [Tekumel- The Empire of the Petal Throne 01]

by Flamesong (v0. 9) (epub)

  Trinesh found this oddly comforting. His illusions about the existence of nobility could remain intact—almost. It would be disheartening indeed if everyone were ignoble: venal, grasping, and unprincipled. Direnja hiVayeshtu had succumbed to Okkuru’s gold, it was true, but only after first suggesting escape on his own, without thought of reward.

  Somehow this did not seem quite so blameworthy.

  “On—out,” Arjasu hissed.

  Their belongings were exactly where Okkuru had promised: their armor and weapons, Prince Tenggutla Dayyar’s “Eye,” everything. These they gathered up and then trotted swiftly between darkened tents and campfires that were only smoldering embers and dim, red coals. A sentry called a challenge, and Okkuru advanced to reply. He returned, and they moved on.

  “Bastard wanted a handful,” the translator grunted ruefully.

  By now Trinesh knew what he meant.

  The edge of the camp was mantled in blackness. An ungainly Chlen-cart waited there; its driver, a pompously efficient man in the livery of one of the carters’ clans, emerged from behind its head-high wheels and bustled over to them. Behind him, a Chlen stirred and groaned like the opening of a gate into hell. Trinesh had had some experience with these ponderous, armored, six-legged monsters before: they could be ridden but were so slow and uncomfortable that no one did so. The carters’ clans therefore employed them to pull the monstrous carts that, along with slaves, were the major means of transport in the Five Empires. Other than Chlen, there were neither riding beasts nor draught animals on Tekumel.

  “A little stop in the hills first,” Okkuru grumbled. “Couldn’t carry all my baggage by myself, you might say.”

  Tse’e came up to Trinesh. “Whither from here, Hereksa? Kankara’s nearest behind us. Or ahead, to Sunraya? Or down to Slankar and back to the Pass of Skulls through Dhair and Fort Omor? You know this region better than I.”

  Trinesh had not had time to think. Now he must decide. “Whatever this—this mad slave says, he’ll not live to wallow in his gold if we go northeast to Sunraya. There's likely fighting there, and without orders and identities, we’d soon be taken. —And,” he added, a trifle hopefully, “not every soldier will accept a bribe.”

  “Of course. Then?”

  Trinesh drew a breath. “My—our—Skein lies with the army, with our Legion. If we do not rejoin it, we are indeed deserters—criminals, felons—”

  “And ignoble. That, I think, is the thing that would trouble you most, Trinesh hiKetkolel.”

  He grimaced. “As you say.” He thought of something. “By the Fiery Flame! We must get to Kankara! The Lady Jai—! She told me of some insane magical assassination plot against our Prince Mirusiya!”

  “Prince Mirusiya—? Ah, people spoke of him in the camp,” the old man said. “One of Hirkane’s litter of brats, suckled by the Vriddi of Fasiltum.”

  “So he is.” Trinesh was not used to this tone when speaking of Imperial Princes.

  “I do not recall the boy. The Vriddi must have concealed him under another name. Some of the children of each Emperor are declared at birth, you know, while others are entrusted to the temples and high clans to be kept secret until their patron^ deem the political climate right to trot them forth. When 1 was last in the City of the Chiming Skulls, the circumstances were—different.”

  Trinesh was embarrassed. He said, “In any case, we may regain our status—a reward—by foiling this stupid plot.” Even as he spoke, he realized that his feelings were woefully confused. He could not just let the Lady Jai try her Flamesong upon Prince Mirusiya. She might have next to no chance of killing him, but any attempt—success or failure—meant an agonizing death for her. If only he could dissuade the girl! But the Lady Deq Dimani had convinced her that she was truly the Flame Lord’s weapon, and he doubted whether sweet reason—or anything short of stunning her with a club— would persuade her to abandon her plan. Damn all fanatics anyhow!

  “The Prince is at Kankara,” Tse’e was saying. “The gossips mentioned certain of his officers with him, possibly your General Kutume. That is where you must go.”

  “Good. But you? Okkuru?”

  Tse’e looked away. “Why, we travel thither with you.” “Why? You risk arrest. And he as well.”

  The old man avoided Trinesh’s eyes. “I no longer care. I promised the slave a reward.”

  “What reward?” He found he already knew. The man who delivered Prince Nalukkan hiTlakotani to the Petal Throne would assuredly live to enjoy his wealth into a pleasant old age.

  “That Skein will not be woven,” Trinesh stated with finality.

  “It must be. It is the price I offered to make the greedy Okkuru spend his gold to save you.”

  “To save us? As the Gods live, WHY?"

  “You were good to me, Trinesh hiKetkolel. You behaved with honor and nobility, and you were wrongfully condemned for desertion.”

  “It means your death!”

  “Should a Tlakotani be less noble than you? You have taught me something, young man. We both belong to warrior clans.”

  Others had made much the same statement before on this same night.

  Again, it gave him no joy whatsoever.

  21

  Six months? It's been six months?”

  “Six months since what, Lady?” The Milumanayani Air officer prodded the charred remains of a sand-clam out of the embers with his spearpoint. It was too hot yet to crack, and he blew upon it heavily.

  “Since the month of Pardan—since we left. . .

  The man glanced at her in puzzlement, then hammered at the shell with a rock, broke it open, and offered Ridek the steaming brown mess inside. “Ai, Lady. It’s Didom now.” He had no idea what she was talking about.

  “The war? The—Gurek of the Fishers of the Flame? Their General, On Nmri Dimani—my clan-brother?”

  “Ohe, you’ve been in the desert a good while, then. The General’s gone, off into the barrens. The Fishers of the Flame had their chance at Mar: caught Mnashu of Thri’il with his finger up his arse. Trapped the Tsolyani between their troops and some of the crossbowmen of Tleku Miriya’s second

  Gurek. Pounded ’em badly, almost destroyed their Shen auxiliaries—almost won.”

  “What happened?” Ridek asked. The clam-thing tasted better than it looked.

  “We emptied Mar to fight Mnashu: General On Nmri Dimani’s folk, some of the Saa Allaqiyani of Siu Kaing’s Gurek, archers from Makhis, some of my Milumanayani irregulars and nomads as skirmishers. We knew the Tsolyani had a relief column moving west along the Sakbe road from Sunraya to Mar, but we didn’t guess how close it was— neither we nor they had any flying Hlaka scouts. The Tsolyani force-marched and came up from behind just as we were dusting Mnashu’s lads. Rather than get hit in the rear. General On Nmri Dimani pulled out and ran for the hills. Mostly we lost just mediums, some of Siu Kaing’s heavies, a batch of useless nomads—”

  “May the Lord of Sacrifice roast my cowardly brother!” Ridek caught the glitter of angry tears on the Lady’s cheeks.

  “No cowardice, Madam.” The officer clacked his tongue reproachfully. “He fought well—until the Tsolyani relief troops arrived to step on his tail.”

  “May he die thrice over for that! No rear scouts! No garrison to hold Mar! No reserve!” She beat her good fist against the gritty boulder upon which she sat.

  “You don’t know where the Yan Koryani have gone?” Aluja changed the subject. Tonight he wore the seamed brown features of an old campaigner, a subaltern of the Lady Deq Dimani’s Gurek of Vridu.

  “Tlekara, Manuker, Valarash maybe. Somewhere in the barrens north of Mar.”

  “And your people?”

  The man scowled and spat into the fire. Two more sand-clams lay cooking there; he turned these over and banked hot sand and coals around their ridged shells. “Mostly we just sit—harass the Tsolyani—skirmish—see to liaison with your

  people north of here. We were part of the Sunraya garrison, Lady. Firaz Zhavendu’s tr
oops. You know what that means.”

  Old Firaz Zhavendu had been fairly loyal to Yan Kor; his son, Firaz Mmulavu Zhavendu, hated his father and coveted the throne of Milumanaya for himself. Firaz the Elder had perished when the Tsolyani took Sunraya last year, and at that time his ignoble son had been on the Tsolyani side. Firaz the Younger then betrayed the Tsolyani at Mar, recanted— enticed by gold and a promise of the governorship of Sunraya when the Tsolyani were done looting it—and had probably switched sides more than once since. This bedraggled officer and the fifty or so dispirited troopers with him in this mountain hideaway were dead men in Sunraya. Only the Baron of Yan Kor could help followers of the elder Firaz now; they had nowhere else to go.

  They could therefore probably be trusted—a little.

  “You can’t make it to Tlekara,” Aluja told her. “The color of th^t hole in your shoulder worries me.” The bruise on her forehead where she had scraped against the Short Tinur in the Ochuna was of growing concern as well. It was becoming darker and uglier. The fungus might be poison to humans, or, worse, it might even thrive in such a wound.

  Ridek reached out and took her hand. It was hot and dry. Too hot and too dry.

  “You need a doctor,” the Mihalli said.

  “Go into Kankara? Will the Tsolyani ask no questions? Will they treat me? Heal me? Smile and bow and let me go again?”

  “You could—”

  “Play the part of a naked captive in chains? A slavegirl? A harlot? I refuse, Mihalli! I’ll act none of those roles! Dignity— nobility—you cannot comprehend!”

  “You prefer to die?” he asked bluntly.

  She set her teeth and stared off into the night.

  “The Lady’s tired,” Ridek murmured to the officer. “She— we—all need a place to sleep.” He was exhausted as well,

  too weary to think any more of the jolting baggage cart, the oven heat of their four days on the road, the pain he had seen the Lady Deq Dimani endure. The trip had been torture, more harrowing, almost, than the trenches of Pu’er!

  “Over here.” The officer raised his stubbled chin and squinted down into the hollow behind their aerie where his followers clustered around their own tiny campfires, concealed by the jagged ridge-crest from the Tsolyani in Kankara on the plain to the south below them. He gabbled in his own tongue. Ridek looked alarmed, and the man smirked. “I told ’em I’d disembowel anybody who touches her.”

  Aluja spread a grimy leather desert-cloak for the Lady beneath an outcrop of crumbling shale and covered her with a borrowed mantle. They heard the hiss of indrawn breath as she lay down: her injuries were more painful than she admitted.

  “What can we do?” Ridek asked when the Mihalli had returned to their fire.

  “Sleep. Tomorrow—”

  Ridek sniffed. He caught the officer’s eye. “Send someone to tell her brother. He may not come himself, but he will surely send a physician or a spell-caster with healing magic.” “It’s too far, boy.” The Milumanayani captain pulled at his drooping moustache. He had a rakish appearance, the look of a man just energetic enough to exert himself for food, animal pleasures—and plunder. “More, the wastelands north of here are too vast and too hot; only an Alash-snake could sniff out water there! —Oh, my tribesmen could reach General On Nmri Dimani, all right, but I don’t trust them any more than the Tsolyani do. We were city-folk in Sunraya, as different from these sand-worms as steel from stone.”

  Aluja came to Ridek’s assistance. “There will be gold. Reward enough to set you up on a farm in Yan Kor—good land, animals, a house.”

  The officer pondered. Then he felt about within his own desert-cloak and withdrew a ring hanging from a chain about his throat. “Hodal will be back soon. He sells Chlen-hide armor and weapons to the Tsolyani in Kankara. The guards know him, and he can pass the three of you through their lines and into the town without trouble. We’ve got some people down there: a magicker, merchants, a few soldiers, nomads, a spy or two. This ring’ll make you known to them. They can get your Lady to a doctor if anybody can. That’ll be quicker than finding her brother. ’ ’

  Aluja took the little gold ring. The dangers of the captain’s plan loomed as large as Thenu Thendraya Peak. The Lady Deq Dimani and Ridek would give themselves away, disguise or no disguise; Ridek spoke only a little Tsolyani, for one thing, and though the woman was better, her harsh, burring accent still smacked of Yan Kor. What made it truly impossible was the ingrained, unconscious, aristocratic arrogance that both his charges had suckled with their mother’s milk. Five sentences, and any half-awake Tsolyani sentry would be bellowing for impalement stakes! The Lady refused to play the part of a captive or a slave, and Aluja could not fault her for that. It was equally unthinkable for him to let Ridek essay such a stupidly perilous role.

  No, he himself must go for help, and he must go alone. The boy and the Lady Deq Dimani would insist on accompanying him if he tried to explain. Aluja therefore resolved to leave while they slept, before first light.

  The conversation began to echo, to wash over Ridek’s head, a monotonous susurrus of waves in some lost cavern of the sea. He was weary to the bone, yet he could not sleep. He left the Mihalli and the captain and went to stand upon the rock spur that overlooked Kankara in the valley beneath their eyrie. Torches and watchfires turned the Tsolyani camp there into a sorcerer’s cabalistic diagram. The entrenchments around the perimeter were concentric orange-red circles within which neat grids of saffron lantemlight marked the streets of the great tent city. Strings of bright-hued lamps, red and green and golden beads upon black velvet, surrounded the makeshift marketplace and beckoned the troops to food, to liquor, to women, to the stalls of the merchants, to the priests and soothsayers and amulet-sellers,—all of the trappings of a mighty army. Off to the southeast, the ruined and despoiled town of Kankara itself was an empty blot of onyx darkness. The only illumination within its shattered walls came from the central administrative buildings; the rest had been destroyed, looted, wasted by both sides, until nothing remained but rubble and the memories of its forlorn ghosts.

  Beyond the camp, two straight lines of watchfires and torches marched away along the course of the Sakbe road, one westward to the Pass of Skulls, Thri’il, and the Tsolyani Empire; the other northeast to Mar and Sunraya and thence to Saa Allaqi and Yan Kor. Ridek’s lessons had had much to say about the Sakbe road network. The forgotten kings of the First Imperium had begun it; later the Engsvanyali had extended it into every comer of their enormous and unwieldy realm; and the masters of the Five Empires, the present-day inheritors of the Priestkings’ magnificence, now maintained most of these thoroughfares, although those in the hinterlands were often no more than overgrown, winding giants’-walls of tumbled stones and debris. A well-maintained Sakbe road was almost a civilization in itself: three tiers of stepped pavements, the lowest and broadest for commerce, the next highest for troops and officials and notables, and the narrow, topmost level for messengers and those aristocrats who preferred walking to the bouncing, jolting, slave-borne palanquins that were the fastest means of travel on Tekumel. Guard towers and garrisons, platforms with accommodations for spending the night, peddlars and hawkers and whores and entertainers of all kinds; one could spend a lifetime on a Sakbe road and never descend to the rutted secondary arteries that joined it to the villages of the countryside.

  This Sakbe road had once carried the goods of the Five Empires past little Kankara. Now the creaking Chlen-drawn wains and the coffles of bearer-slaves who jostled one another upon its lowest tier were laden with the paraphernalia of war rather than the produce of peace; soldiers tramped its second level instead of traders; and the wind-scoured, crenellated topmost walkway knew only the feet of messengers, officials, and generals bent upon the destruction of Yan Kor.

  It was a sobering sight: a runic circlet of glittering flame-opals with two strands of rubies reaching off along the mountain-chain, humped shadows invisible in the night. A collar fit for an Emperor! A collar indeed, but a sl
ave-collar meant to lock around the neck of Ridek’s father, the Baron Aid of Yan Kor.

  Ridek let his gaze slide back to the lights in the midst of the murky emptiness that had been Kankara. Down there, in that lamplit building— “palace” was too high a word for its mud-brick, splotched, and ruinous mediocrity—slept the man who would clamp this collar about his father’s throat: Prince Mirusiya hiTlakotani. He was the enemy, the son and heir of the Seal Emperor of Tsolyanu, the jeweler who had forged that collar, and the slaver who would lead Yan Kor back into the captivity it had known long ago before the Tsolyani Imperium had lost its grip upon the north.

  Ridek would go into Kankara with Aluja and the Lady Deq Dimani. He would bide his time—even accept captivity and slavery again if he must. People spoke of Ridek as a child, a twelve-year-old boy—soon thirteen, if six months had really passed since he had left Ke’er! —yet he was still only a helpless white counter upon the board. The Lady Deq Dimani had said that he was more important than a Gurek of soldiers, but that was only because of his value as the Baron’s son. He might well become a black counter on his own, if he lived to grow up, and if Yan Kor won this war or obtained an acceptable peace.

  He decided that he was not willing to wait.

  He would slay this overweening Mirusiya if he could. Was that not a noble Skein? Was his life not a worthy exchange for that of a Tsolyani Prince, the foe of Ridek’s homeland? Was it not better to become a mighty black counter now when he had the chance? A black counter for perhaps only a moment before the Tsolyani cut him down, but a black counter nevertheless, one the Seal Emperors of Tsolyanu would remember until the gods put final quietus to this cycle of time!

  He would kill Mirusiya.

  Ridek steeled himself, made his vows, and sat gazing down at Kankara until Aluja came to lead him off to sleep.

  Hodal, whoever he was, did not come, but sunrise did bring an unpleasant surprise: Aluja was gone.

  There was no help for it, nothing to do. The Milumanayani captain listened politely, made reassuring noises, and went away. The Lady Deq Dimani cursed and uttered words that Ridek had heard only from serfs and scullions. Nothing availed. They both understood why Aluja had done as he did, but that did not make it any more tolerable. In the evening the captain returned to urge patience and to announce that one of his sand-worms would indeed seek out the Lady’s brother, a journey of many days.