“His name is Ridek,” Trinesh added. He could not recall whether he had included that detail in his report.
He was unprepared for the two generals' reaction. “Ridek?” General Kutume cried. “The Baron's eldest son bears that name!” General Kadarsha set down his goblet with an audible clack, almost breaking its stem.
Trinesh said, “The Lady Deq Dimani and her maid showed great deference to the boy.” He was too exhausted to remember more. The scribes had the rest of it down in their Flame-burned, ink-blotted scrolls anyhow.
“Bestir yourself, Dritlan'." the Senior General ordered. “A full watch! And none of your usual army ninnies! Alert the Omnipotent Azure Legion’s people—and the Prince’s!” He rubbed a hand across his lips. “It cannot be. The Baron’s boy is—what?—eleven, thirteen? What would he be doing in Mihallu?” The Dritlan hovered first on one foot and then the other by the door.
“He or some other Ridek. It’s worth discovering.” General Kutume leaned over to inspect Trinesh’s Engsvanyali armor, dusty, scratched, and a little dented though it was. “A line harness, Hereksa. A good specimen of the style of Ssirandar the Twelfth.”
“You—you would know, my Lord,” Trinesh stammered. He could guess what was expected. “I—uh—hoped to offer it as a gift to the Legion.”
“Do so. A noble benefaction. —And then we shall not dock your pay for the Legion armor and weapons you left behind during your heroic wanderings.” The General showed white, even teeth in a pleasant smile. Trinesh wondered whether he was serious. The camp jesters made much of General Kutume's almost sacrilegious devotion to material prosperity.
“The girl—this ‘Flamesong’—an attempt upon our Prince’s life?” Kadarsha muttered. “She has as much chance of success as the Baron has of pissing on the Petal Throne in Avanthar! Yet we should see to it.”
“The Lady Anka’a had her audience yesterday, Sire,” the Dritlan stated. “Prince Mirusiya still lives.”
“The Yan Koryani woman may not have found her opportunity yet,” General Kutume said. He turned away reluctantly from a scrutiny of the armor of Trinesh’s companions. “His Highness is likely still awake. Do we disturb him? The later the hour, the more zealous his Flame-scorched Vriddi guards.”
“Let the Vriddi be, Kutume. We have to settle with them if ever we hope to see Prince Mirusiya ascend the Petal Throne! East and west, we make up our quarrels, or we all go down tangled in their snares like a Zrne in a hunter’s net!” This was clearly a recurring and unhappy topic. Trinesh’s clan-elders had expressed these same yearnings for unity within the Flame Lord’s faith piously and often—while at the same time decrying the haughty intransigence of the Vriddi clan. The struggle between the eastern Vriddi and the great clans of the western Empire was older than the Second Impe-rium itself, but now the winds of politics bore just the faintest scent of reconciliation: Prince Mirusiya had been raised among the Vriddi but his army friends were mostly westerners. If anyone could bring the clans together it would be he.
“Up!” General Kadarsha commanded. “Kambe, see to the physician. Bring him and any women and boys who call upon him to the Prince’s quarters at once.” He stripped off his night-robe and shouted for body-servants to aid him with his dress armor.
They tramped past campfires, tents filled with sleeping troops, and dumps stacked high with sacks and bales and kegs, the grist of the army’s mill. Sentries challenged and saluted; scribes and functionaries stood back to bow and ogle after them; and throngs of soldiers and camp-followers pointed and whispered. The pinnacles of power were not entirely pleasant, Trinesh decided. To be a perpetual cynosure for all eyes would soon grow tiresome indeed.
The fallen walls of Kankara swept by, jumbled stones and sharp-angled silhouettes in the night. The ugly little gatehouse was roofless now, but there were torches and troopers on watch upon its ramparts, men of mighty Vimuhla’s favored Legion of the Lord of Red Devastation. Other than these, the Flame Lord’s elite, few still dwelt within the town. They passed the Prince’s ceremonial palanquin in the central square, itself as big as some looming, fanciful castle, its lacquered and gilded wooden daises shimmering green with Gayel’s eldritch moonlight. Three reliefs of eighty porter-slaves apiece were needed to carry it, and these now slumbered in huddled clumps beneath its sculptured, beast-headed carrying-poles like corpses upon some chaotic battlefield.
Then there were more lamps, torches, guards, and attendants as the>' clattered up the steps of the dismal mud-brick “palace” that had once housed all there was of Kankara’s city government.
General Kadarsha wasted no time with the Prince’s staff. A sketched salute, a greeting or two, and they entered the hall the Imperial entourage had commandeered for a temporary headquarters. It was very like Fortress Ninu’ur; this place was bigger, and someone had made attempts at murals and dadoes upon its crude mud-brick pilasters, but it still stank of animals, smoke, and straw in spite of all the household slaves could do with their brooms, mops, perfumes, and incense. Whatever happened, however long Trinesh might live, those smells would forever remind him of wretched Milumanaya.
The Senior General conferred with the hawk-nosed Vriddi guards at the foot of the circular staircase leading to the story above. An aide appeared, and they were allowed up.
The antechamber at the top of the stairs had but one tiny, round-headed window. It was stuffy with the mingled odors of candle smoke, oiled weapons, leather, and Hruchan-reed paper. A bevy of scribes crouched over their inkpots along one wall, and three more Vriddi warriors slouched by the inner door, resplendent in Imperial blue but with the symbol of Lord Vimuhla’s Holy Flame emblazoned upon their steel cuirasses.
“Tlangtekh, Te’os, Zaklen,” General Kadarsha addressed each bodyguard by name. The last of these stepped forward, consulted a scroll, and gestured at the three officers in the liveries of other Legions who squatted there upon the carpet-daises to await the Prince’s pleasure. The Senior General made some curt reply Trinesh could not hear, and the soldier bowed.
“He’s with Karin Missum,” Kadarsha told Kutume. “Still, he’ll see us.”
The inner chamber had originally been the sanctum of some petty city-official. It measured perhaps eight paces wide by twelve long and was completely windowless, as breathless and hot as a baker’s oven. The Prince’s furnishings were richer in quality but sparser and more austere than those of General Kadarsha’s pavilion. Before his Vriddi patrons had proclaimed Mirusiya a Prince, he had been a soldier’s soldier, the gossips said, and his tastes would forever bear the stamp of army regimen.
Two servants puttered about silently at the rear of the room, and a silver-haired harper sat crosslegged in one corner. Trinesh was surprised to see that this last man was a Milumanayani nomad from the deeper reaches of the desert. The harp the man was tuning was not of Tsolyani manufacture but was the tasselled, gaud-bedecked instrument of the tribes. The fellow was blind, his eyes almost invisible beneath a thick crust of scar tissue, the final stages of Alungtisa, the horrible eye-malady so common in the Desert of Sighs. Folk said that the Prince collected legends and epics of the gods; if he listened to the nomads’ caterwauling for musical rather than historical reasons, then the musicians of Tsolyanu would have to shut up shop should he become Emperor!
They made obeisance, faces pressed into the lush scarlet pile of the Khirgari carpet just inside the door. General Kutume snapped his fingers softly, and they rose to kneel before the man who might one day sit upon the Petal Throne of Tsolyanu.
Three men sat within the circle of warm, yellow light shed by the bronze candelabrum in the center of the room. He who occupied the topmost level of the carpet-dais wore only a soldier’s white kilt, with a dark blue shawl wrapped carelessly about his shoulders for warmth. A gilded replica of the Seal of the Imperium on the patchy plaster wall behind him haloed his shoulder-length black hair with an aptness that was probably unintentional but might have been his advisers’ calculated method of awing visitors. An altar
to Lord Vimuhla stood in a niche below the Seal, a second underscoring of his allegiances.
This was Prince Mirusiya hiTlakotani.
In his mid-thirties, this man could have been a Vriddi indeed, a true scion of the clan that had raised him. The aquiline nose and sharp-cut planes of his cheeks were common enough among all of the old aristocratic clans, but the deep-set, brooding eyes resembled those that looked out from the portraits Trinesh had seen of the Vriddi overlords of Fasiltum, the “City of the Chiming Skulls.” Mirusiya stood a full head taller than Trinesh, the equal of General Kadarsha himself. In other respects the Prince differed subtly from his Senior General: his features were harsh where Kadarsha’s were gentle, stem where the other’s were scholarly, and commanding where Kadarsha appeared determined at best. One might willingly serve either man, Trinesh surmised, but the Prince would command obedience through a charisma akin to that of the heroes of the epics, while Kadarsha would need persuasion and cajolery to hold those who followed him.
There was another comparison to be made. Trinesh had once seen Prince Eselne, Mirusiya’s elder brother, during the annual “Fete of the Might of Heroes,” celebrated by Lord
Karakan’s Temple in Tumissa. Proclaimed a Prince at birth, Eselne had always known what it was to rule, while the Vriddi, for political reasons known only to themselves, had not told Mirusiya until he was an adult and an officer in a Legion with battle experience under his belt. Both were soldiers, both were strong and decisive, and both were noble in the warrior’s sense of the word. Both would govern well. Yet folk said that Eselne relied too heavily upon advisers from the old Military Party and the Temples of the war-gods of Stability, Lord Karakan and His Cohort, brave Lord Chegarra. It was also rumored that he was not overly clever: “the Chlen-beast in azure robes,” as some named him. Should he ascend the Petal Throne, the aristocrats and the priesthoods would pull the strings that made the Empire dance. On the other hand, Mirusiya was perhaps too severe and soldierly: too blunt, too self-reliant, and too quick to answer swords with swords. Both would build armies such as the Imperium had not seen for three hundred years, not since the halcyon days of Emperor Gyesmu, “the Iron Fist.” Eselne’s soldiers would guard his sponsors’ interests and would see battle only if other stratagems failed. Mirusiya’s armies would never sit idle; they would certainly march, and thereafter the frontiers of the Five Empires would be altered, one way or another, for centuries to come. He was the only choice for Trinesh’s clan—for all those who served Lord Vimuhia and His Cohort, Lord Chiteng—and even among Eselne’s current backers there were those who swayed away from him and toward this candidate of the Flame. Trinesh was satisfied with what he saw here tonight; his clansmen had made the right choice.
Trinesh knew one of the two others with the Prince: General Karin Missum, “the Red Death,” who had previously commanded Trinesh’s Legion of the Storm of Fire and was now in charge of the Legion of the Lord of Red Devastation—a fanatic to lead fanatics! He was short, squat, as massive through the chest as a Tsi’il-beast, with a face like some dour icon painted upon rumpled leather.
The third occupant of the dais-pyramid was slender, balding, clean-shaven, and as smoothly urbane as Karin Missum was not. This was a man who kept secrets, dark currents beneath serene water. His bland features were a better mask than any fabrication of wood or metal, and only his hands, stiffly poised and tense in his lap, hinted at what lay within. General Karin Missum wore scuffed battle armor, but this other was attired in the orange-red vestments of a priest of Vimuhla of the middle Circles.
“General Karin Missum you know. Lord Huso hiChirengmai you may not.” The Prince’s features gave nothing away. “Lord Huso is the Preceptor of the Society of the Incandescent Blaze.”
Trinesh started—and felt Chosun and Dineva stir behind him. Lord Huso hiChirengmai was the leader of the faction of zealots within the Flame Lord’s Temple that favored decisive— and sometimes violent—political action. This was Chekkuru hiVriddi’s mentor. Trinesh ought to inform him of poor Chekkuru’s fate, but now was not the time. With any luck, he could put off the telling until the Legion’s ponderous network of scribes and reports made it all unnecessary.
“Mighty Prince,” the Senior General began. “If you would hear this soldier’s story.”
“Stories I have aplenty, Kadarsha.” Mirusiya managed to sound amused, patient, and harassed all at once. He pointed to a heap of glittering stones upon a square of reed matting before him. “I am being instructed in High Cartography. These gentlemen offer a plan for our summer campaign.”
The Prince seemed embarrassed. Karin Missum ought to have cleared any such proposals through the Senior General and his staff first. Here, once again, was the perpetual tug-of-war between moderation and zeal.
Trinesh spared one curious glance for the odd-shaped gem-stones. He had seen the art of High Cartography in the temple school at Tumissa. One stone of appropriate color and texture symbolized each geographical region; this was carved with innumerable tiny lines, grooves, indentations, and protuberances representing the particulars of that place: its contours, cities, roads, rivers, villages, mountains, and much more. An adept could fee! of the stone, “read” it with eyes, fingers, and even the tongue, and know what it contained. Trinesh’s tutors said that the Ancients had made better map-stones, ones that were “alive” with sorcerous power from the Planes Beyond. Those sang in the mind of the one who held them, displayed mental pictures, and provided a thousand other details. Alas, the languages of the Ancients were lost, and the millennia had so altered the face of Tekumel that much of what a “living” map-stone related was as mythical as the paradises of the gods. Still, even the modern map-stones were superior to the paper maps the merchants used: boxes and squares connected with straight lines and annotated with scrib-blings concerning routes, distances, and the minutiae of commerce. A mountain upon a merchant’s map was at best a crude circle; upon a map-stone it was a tiny knob surrounded by incised symbols that an expert could translate into heights, peaks, valleys, ground cover, passes, springs, wells, and habitations. One had a choice: squares upon paper or the difficult art of High Cartography; humankind made no other maps upon Tekumel.
General Kutume said gravely, “My Hereksa's tale concerns your own safety, mighty Prince.”
“Oh ...” Mirusiya sounded more bored than dismayed. “Let him reel it out, then.”
Trinesh told his story yet another time, feeling General Karin Missum’s Unwinking gaze fixed upon him as he spoke. More disturbing, however, were Lord Huso’s eyes, like two assassin’s needles concealed in velvet. He finished, lamely enough, with an account of the Lady Jai Chasa Vedlan’s plot.
He had already made up his mind about that: he could not save the girl, not and remain true to his personal nobility, his
Legion, and his Imperium. She had said that she would not—could not—give up her insane plan, and he saw no way out of the dilemma. He consoled the plangent cries of his little inner voice with one last, faint hope: Senior General Kadarsha might listen to an appeal for mercy. So might General Kutume—there was always Okkuru"s gold. The Prince, also, impressed him as stem but fair. The other two in this room would certainly hand her over to the Company of the Edification of the Soul or sacrifice her out-of-hand in the Flame.
If only he did not have to make his plea before General Karin Missum and this ice-eyed fanatic, Lord Huso hiChirengmai!
“A girl?” The Prince picked up a map-stone of delicate-veined rose quartz from the pile and rubbed a hand over its striations. Those callused fingers could probably no more read the minute symbols of High Cartography than an Ahoggya could sing! “A gift from the Lady Anka’a hiQolyelmu?” He sighed. “I api so tired—I forget—I have no time for women now, not even to honor the gifts every temple, clan, and petty lordling within a thousand Tsan thinks vital to bestow upon me. One would think a Prince did naught else save populate the Empire with his own seed!”
“Ah—mighty Prince—she said yo
u—you would know her . . .” This was the hard part, and he stumbled over the formal Tsolyani pronoun employed solely for heirs to the Petal Throne.
The Senior General helped him. “The Hereksa reports that the woman resembles one whom your Highness knew in childhood: the rebel, Elara hiVriddi.”
“Who? Elara? I—I recall her well.” The Prince strove visibly to shift from the present to the past, to another identity and a Skein of Destiny that had belonged to a different lifetime.
“She—the Lady Jai—said you would be—uh—attracted, mighty Prince.” Trinesh had no idea how to phrase this tactfully.
“I would—I was. At the time.” Prince Mirusiya looked through him, past him, at a world that was gone.
“The girl must be stopped.” General Kadarsha’s tone was sharp. “If she’s a danger, we’d best—”
“—Put her where she does no harm,” General Karin Missum finished for him. Lord Huso’s higher, mellower voice chimed agreement.
The Prince hesitated. “There’s little likelihood of peril. This chamber is defended by more enchantments than Avanthar itself. Not even Subadim the Sorcerer could cast a spell here, though he had Origob the Prince of Demons and all his hosts to aid him!”
“Still. ...” Lord Huso was on his feet, turning round and round, eyes shut and lower lip clenched between his teeth. “I sense nothing now.”
“Te’os!” the Prince called. The bodyguard appeared in the doorway, and Mirusiya beckoned him over. “See that the Yan Koryani girl gifted me by the Temple of Dlamelish is brought hither. Gently. Do not alarm her.” Over the babble of protest the Prince said, “We shall never know what fine threads the Baron and the Lady Deq Dimani would weave into my Skein unless we see her. And, Te’os, send my house-sorceress, the Lady Arsala, to me!”
“Is this wise, mighty Prince?” General Kutume objected. “This is no battle between honest warriors!” Lord Huso was still more vehement. “You risk your life—the Imperium— your Temple—for naught! ”
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