by Judith Tarr
“There is no punishment great enough for what they have done.”
“Maybe not,” Daros said, “but I can think of one that they would find rather painful.”
She raised a brow. “And that is?”
“Some of their slaves—born here, or bred of worlds that were destroyed after their capture—have expressed a desire to stay here. Yes? Give the lords to them—men, women, children born and not yet born. Let them be slaves to their own slaves.”
“I had thought of that,” Merian said. “But if they rise again, if they find a way to restore their rule—who knows what devices might be hidden here, or what powers they might call on? They escaped our world once, and even stripped of magic, still succeeded in destroying a myriad worlds before they could be stopped. I will not risk such a thing. Not again.”
“Wise,” he said. “Merciful, in its way. Even just. But I am not in a merciful mood. I would rather they live, and live in suffering, than find relief in death. Unless …”
She waited. All of them did, even the fallen lords: and that was tribute to the power he had over them.
“Give them to healer-mages,” he said. “Let them be made new—the women and children most of all, but the men, too. Set the seeds of light in them, nurture it and let it grow. Teach them to be truly human: to know love as well as hate, awe as well as scorn, humility as well as arrogance. Give them hearts, and let them know the fullness of what they have done. Give them guilt and shame—even redemption, if such is possible.”
The silence was absolute. Even the wind had ceased to blow. It was a terrible, a wonderful solution, but there was no mercy in it whatsoever.
“And if they can’t be made new?” Merian asked, since no one else seemed to have power to speak.
“Then do as you will,” said Daros.
She nodded slowly. “I will grant you this,” she said, “as a gift to you. On one condition.”
He stiffened ever so slightly, but his voice was as calm as ever. “And that is?”
“That you oversee the healing and dispose of those who have been healed, if any of them can be. Likewise those who cannot—their deaths must be at your command.”
He bowed low. It was a prince’s bow, and a prince’s face that he raised to her. “As you will, my lady.”
“You will not leave this world until it is done,” she said. “It will be years; it might be a lifetime. Can you bear that?”
“I understand,” he said, “and I accept it.”
“Then let it be done,” she said.
The camp’s servants had pitched a tent for Daros among the rest of his hunters, between the edge of the camp and the camp in which the captives remained under guard. He did not indulge in disappointment. He had no right, after all, to expect anything of Merian, still less to be housed in her own tent—especially after he had undercut her judgment. It was generous enough of her to let him lay sentence on the dark lords; he could hardly ask her to admit him to her bed as well. He had the rank and the authority of a consort, and that, as useful as it was, was more than he deserved.
The tent was luxurious, for a tent; it was suited to his newly royal rank. It even had a pair of attendants: Menkare and Nefret, who greeted him with expressions that made him ask, “What did you do to the servants?”
“We let them live,” Nefret said, even as Menkare said, “We bribed them to find other masters.”
They stopped and glared at each other. Nefret won the silent fight; she said, “We belong with you.”
“Your people,” said Daros, “the slaves whom you freed—they need you. Whereas I—”
“They’ve been seen to,” Nefret said. “While we were hunting, they were sent home, all of them—they all wanted to go. There’s none left here.”
“Then you can go home,” Daros said. “There’s no need to stay with me. These are my people who are here; my kin, my own kind.”
Her brows drew together. “Are you telling us that you don’t want us any more? That we’re not gods, and not worthy to be seen in your presence?”
“No!” He had almost shouted the word. Menkare winced, but she gazed at him steadily.
“Don’t you want to go home?” he demanded of her. “Don’t you want to see the river again, and go fishing in the reeds, and live among your own people?”
“My people are dead,” she said. “Raiders killed them all. You are my people now. My god, if it pleases you better.”
“You know I am not a god,” he said.
“Close enough,” she said.
“Nefret,” he said. “You honor me, and greatly. But I won’t have you stay just because you have nowhere else to go. Waset would take you, and give you great rank and worship, after what you have done for your world. So would any city along the river, and many a king. You’re a god in your own right. You don’t need me to give you a place in the worlds.”
“I know that,” she said. “I want to stay. Your lady, the golden one—she is even more wonderful than you. I want to see the worlds, and walk under strange suns, and know other rivers than the river of the black land.”
“We can go back, you know,” said Menkare. “Even if we serve you, if you give us leave—we can go home to visit, and if we’re needed. There’s no dark any longer. The Gates are open. The worlds are free again.”
Daros blinked. He honestly had not thought of that. He had been too intent on the fact of their exile; but they did not see it as such at all.
“And your people?” he asked them. “What if they need you to stay?”
“Then we’ll stay,” said Menkare. “But we got on rather well without magic before the dark came. Now that the dark is gone, I expect the world will go on as it always has. Magic is for gods, my lord. Mortals do well enough without.”
“And you? Are you god or mortal?”
“Why, neither, my lord. I’m something between.” Menkare smiled suddenly, and patted Daros on the shoulder. “There—don’t look so stunned. Do I look as if I’m suffering? It’s glorious, this gift you’ve given—even at the price you laid on it. I’ve no desire to give it back.”
Daros, who had been about to ask that precise question, shut his mouth with a click.
“My lord,” said Nefret, reading him as effortlessly as she ever had,
“we stay with you because we love you—and because you so clearly need looking after. Would you even know where to find dinner, let alone remember to eat it?”
He bridled at that. “I’m not that helpless! I’ve fended for myself before. What makes you think I can’t do it now?”
“Princes can’t,” she said with calm conviction. “It’s not allowed. You are a prince of princes. You must have attendants—it’s required. Wouldn’t you rather have us than a flock of strangers?”
“I’m not so sure,” he muttered.
She laughed, which was cruel, but bracing, too. “Of course you would. Now stop your nonsense and let us get this armor off you. Has it even been off since you put it on?”
“I don’t—”
Her nose wrinkled. “Obviously it hasn’t. Menkare, find someone who can put together a bath for him.”
Menkare was already on his way. Daros sighed and submitted. That was a prince’s lot, always: to suffer the tyranny of servants. And these—yes, he would admit it to himself: he was glad that they had stayed. They were more than servants. They were friends.
Still, he said, “If you ever grow homesick, even for a moment, I’m sending you back. Is that understood?”
“Perfectly,” Nefret said without a spark of honest submission—and no glimmer of expectation that he would do as he threatened, either.
Daros lay in his soft and princely bed, scrubbed until he stung. The borrowed armor had not fit as well as it might; there were galls and bruises and a boil or two, at which Nefret had been suitably outraged. It was all gone now, and a light warm coverlet over him, sparing his hurts as much as it might.
He should have been dead asleep, but his stubborn mind per
sisted in keeping him awake. Even closing out all that he had done and would do, he still could not force himself to sleep.
A warm presence fitted itself to his back. Light hands stroked him where it did not hurt overmuch; kisses brushed his nape and shoulders and wandered round to the freshly shaven curve of his jaw. Fingers ran through his cropped hair, ruffling such of it as there was.
“This will not be allowed to endure,” Merian’s voice said in his ear.
He turned in her arms. She was both smiling and frowning—smiling at him, frowning at what the lords had done to him. “What, I’m not pretty any longer?” he asked her.
“You aren’t,” she said. “That’s all gone. But beauty—you have more of that than ever. Will you promise to grow your hair again?”
“If you’ll let me cut it now and then.”
“Now and then,” she said, “I’ll consider it.”
“You do mean it, then. What you said. That I’m your consort.”
“You doubted it?”
“I don’t know what I thought,” he said. “This tent—its not—”
“I need a place to hold councils and be royal. You need a place to rest. As do I. Would you object too strongly if I did my sleeping here with you?”
His heart swelled. He could barely speak. “I would be somewhat … dismayed … if you did not.”
She smiled. The pure golden warmth of that smile nearly reduced him to tears. But those were all burned out of him; he did not know when they would come back.
“This match is approved of,” she said. “My mother has no objections. You know that yours does not. The breeding, as they both say, is impeccable.”
“My father? He approves?” Daros shook his head. “Ah, but he would. Whatever he thinks of me—”
“He loves you,” she said. “He grieves for you. He’s glad beyond measure that you are alive and well and proving your worth in the worlds.”
“And even if he were not, he would still be enormously pleased. Once again at last, Han-Gilen and the Sunborn’s line unite in marriage.”
“He is not as cold as that,” Merian said, “and I am not in the mood for a quarrel. You will have to face him eventually: I gave our daughter into his care until the war was over.”
His breath hissed between his teeth. “Our—Tell me. Tell me how it happened. Why you never told me.”
“You know how it happened,” she said. “You were there, dreamwalking with me. I never told you because there was never time. You were lost to the dark not long after I knew it myself. I didn’t believe it, either, not until there was no escaping the truth.”
“Is that why?” he asked. “Did you name me your consort because it was the honorable thing? Because a child needs a father?”
“Among other reasons,” she said, “yes. But when I chose you, there was no such constraint. I wanted you long before I could admit it to myself. When I understood what our dreamwalking had done, I had already decided that if you came back, if you were alive and still had your wits, I would take you as my lover.”
“But not—”
“I’m Sun-blood,” she said. “My first lover would inevitably be the father of my heir. You know that, surely.”
“Yes, but—”
“If you don’t want the rank or the marriage,” she said, “I won’t force it on you. You will always be Elian’s father. I will not—”
“Elian? Her name is Elian?”
“It seemed appropriate,” she said.
He did not know whether to bellow at her or kiss her. Elian had been a princess of Han-Gilen long ago; she had loved and in time married the Sunborn, and borne his heir. She was Merian’s foremother and his own kinswoman. It was a name of great honor in both their houses.
“Let me see her,” he said: peremptorily, he supposed, but he could not help it.
She took no offense. She opened her mind and showed them the child whom he had seen in dream: the child with his face, whose ancestry none could mistake.
“It was true,” he said in wonder. “All of it—all true.”
“As true as life itself,” she said. “Still, if you don’t want the marriage, the child is still yours. I’ll not forbid you your share in her raising.”
“You’d trust me to raise a child?”
Her smile grew wicked. “There’s no preceptor so strict as a rake reformed, and none so stern as a father who spent his youth in debauching other men’s daughters.”
“Ai!” It was a cry of pure pain, but laughter broke through it. “Lady, you wound me to the heart.”
“Good,” she said: “you have a heart to wound.”
“After all, it seems I do.” He paused. She made excellent use of the silence, but he was not ready yet to give himself up to it. “What you’ve sentenced me to, this task here—it may be long. Are you telling me that when it’s done, my exile is ended? I can go home?”
“You can return to the service to which I swore you,” she said. “Have you forgotten that? I never have.”
“This is all part of—”
She nodded.
“Lady,” he said. “You’ve no need to bind me. I will belong to you if you will it or no, with oaths or without them, wed or unwed, sworn or unsworn, for as long as there is breath in my body.”
“That’s an oath,” she said. “That’s a binding.”
“Yes,” he said. “So it is.”
“Forever and ever?”
“Forever,” he said, “and ever. Unless—”
She slapped him hard. It struck the breath out of him. “No evasions,” she said. “And no grinning at me, either. This is a true binding. Once it’s made, you’ll not be escaping it.”
“Should I want to?”
“Not while I live,” she said.
“Even though I am hopelessly disobedient, reckless, feckless, headstrong, and impossibly insolent?”
“Even so,” she said.
FORTY-TWO
THE LORD SERAMON WAS DEAD.
Tanit had known in her heart when he bade her farewell, that it was not a simple battle he went to, nor a plain rite of the temple. She had her duties, her people to protect, her armies to muster and send forth; that night was most terrible of all, the worst since the shadow came to the black land. Yet the raids stopped abruptly toward midnight. The darkness lingered, but the enemy turned their backs even where they were winning the battle, left captives and carts of grain from the storehouses, and vanished into the air.
It was not over then. Not for her lord, though the world was almost frighteningly quiet. She endured it as long as she could; saw to the wounded and the merely terrified; set her house in order, and last of all before she left it, lingered in the nursery where Menes lay asleep.
He was breathing—she assured herself of that. He dreamed: his brows knit, his lips pursed, his fists clenched and unclenched. Almost she fancied that she could see a play of delicate flame over his skin, but when she peered closer, there was nothing.
She kissed his brow, smoothed his thick dark curls, and left him with tearing reluctance. He was safe: he had his nurse, his guards, the young godling whom the Lord Re-Horus had made before he vanished into the dark. All prayers and protections were laid on him, and the gods’ power, and guardian spells wrought by both of the gods who had come from beyond the horizon to tarry in Waset.
The one who remained lay in the temple. She needed no guide to find him. Her heart knew always where he was.
They had laid him on a bier, surrounded by priests and chanting and the scent of incense. He was alive then, but the spirit in him was far away, lost on the roads of dream.
She knelt beside him. The priests rolled their eyes at her, but none was bold enough to send her away. She made no effort to touch him. It was enough to rest her eyes on the alien beauty of him. Nothing like him was in this world.
How long she knelt there, she did not know. The sun sank slowly toward the western horizon; toward the land of the dead. He never moved, never changed, and yet it
seemed to her heart that he sank with the sun: drifted farther and farther away, more and more distant from the flesh that had contained him.
At long last the sun passed out of sight from within the temple. In a little while it would touch the jagged line of cliffs across the river. It was already dark in this room, but a soft glow shone out of the body on the bier, even before the priests lit the lamps at its head and foot.
The glow faded so imperceptibly that she hardly believed it could have existed. But when it was gone, she knew. He was gone. He had flown beyond the horizon, and left his body behind.
She could not find it in her to grieve, not properly, as a wife should when her husband was dead. She laid her hand on his cheek. It was cooling slowly in the heat. She found herself thinking, not of death, but of a nest from which the bird has flown: a bird of light, spreading wings that stretched from horizon to horizon, soaring into the night.
“I told you,” she said. “You would leave, and I would be left behind. You never believed me. But I knew.”
The priests stared uncomprehending; all but Seti, who though blind had clearer sight than anyone she knew. He was gazing into his private dark, smiling, but as she glanced at him, a slow tear ran down his cheek. “The gods are gone out of the world,” he said.
“They live forever beyond the horizon,” she said.
“So they do,” said Seti, as if he humored a child.
From him she would accept it. She kissed him on the cheek, softly, and said to the priests, “Summon the servants of the dead.”
One or two looked as if he would protest, but she was the queen. Under her steady stare, they all bowed and left, all but Seti. He was an untroubling presence; he comforted her with his silence.
She returned to her lord’s side. Not even the semblance of life was left in him. She took his hand in hers. It was still supple, but its swift strength was gone. She stroked the long fingers, committing to memory the feel of his skin. It would have to last her for long years, until she saw him again.
She had every intention of doing that. It might be impossible; she did not care. This was the half of her self. She would get it back.
