The Stolen Throne tot-1

by Harry Turtledove

  "I can't see anyone else wanting to. Can you?"

  "It seems unlikely," Tanshar admitted. "What would you now of me, lord? Have you felt yourself under the influence of this spell? Love magic, like that of the battlefield, is often chancy, because passion reduces the effectiveness of sorcery."

  "I honestly don't know whether the magic has hold of me or not," Abivard said.

  "I won't be able to decide that until I learn who put the tablet there." If it was Roshnani, he didn't know what he would do… No, he did know, but didn't want to think about it. He forced himself to steadiness. "I know you're a scryer. Can you see who did set that thing under my bed?"

  "Lord, I believe I could, but is that truly what you'd have of me?" Tanshar asked. "If I were to look into your bedchamber for the moment in which the tablet was placed there, I would likely find you and the woman who left it in, ah, an intimate moment. Is that your desire?"

  "No," Abivard said at once; he was wary of his own privacy, and even more wary of that of the denizens of the women's quarters. He scowled as he thought, then raised a finger. "The tablet speaks of an image. Can you scry out where that image is hidden? That will help tell me who made it."

  "The domain is lucky to have a man of your wit at its head," the fortune-teller said. "I shall do as you command."

  He set the pieces of the curse tablet down on a stool, then went off into the back room of the little house. He returned a moment later with a water jug and a small, glittering bowl of almost transparent black obsidian. He put the bowl on top of the two pieces of lead and poured it half full of water.

  "We must wait until the water grows altogether still," he told Abivard. "Then, without roiling its surface with our breath, we shall look into it together and, unless the God should will otherwise, we shall see what you seek to learn. When the time comes, remember to think on the image whose whereabouts you'd find."

  "As you say." Abivard waited as patiently as he could. He glanced down into the bowl. The water there looked calm to him. But scrying was not his business. Tanshar did not presume to tell him how to run the domain, so he would not joggle the fortune-teller's elbow.

  When Tanshar was satisfied, he said quietly, "Lay your hand on the edge of the bowl-gently, mind, so as to stir the water as little as you may-and set your thoughts on the God and the Four and what you would learn."

  Abivard wondered how he was supposed to keep two different sets of thoughts in his head. He did his best. The obsidian was glassy smooth under his fingertips, but his touch disturbed the glassy smoothness of the water in the bowl. He glanced over at Tanshar. The fortune-teller nodded back; this, evidently, was expected.

  When the water settled to stillness again, it showed not the reflection of the ceiling, or of Abivard and Tanshar peering down into it, but a little doll of wool and clay, almost hidden in shadows. Four strings were wrapped around it, at head, neck, heart, and loins. Each was made of four threads of different colors.

  "That is a perversion of the reverence due the Four." Tanshar's voice was still low, but full of anger.

  Abivard hissed in frustration. He could see the image, yes, but hardly anything else, so he had no idea where in the stronghold-if it was in the stronghold-it rested. But the thought itself was enough to give him a wider view. He saw the image lay enshadowed because it rested behind a chest of drawers in a chamber he recognized as Roshnani's.

  He jerked his hand away from the bowl as if it burned his fingers. Instantly the scrying picture vanished from the water, which now gave back the reflections it should have. His own face, he saw without surprise, was twisted into a grimace of anguish.

  "The news is bad?" Tanshar asked.

  "The news could not be worse," Abivard answered. To think that what he had imagined to be joy was just sorcery! He still could not believe Roshnani capable of defiling him so. But what else was he to think? There lay the doll in her room of the women's quarters. Who else would have hidden it so?

  When he said that aloud, Tanshar answered, "Would you not sooner learn than guess? The bowl and the water still await your view, if that be your will."

  Almost, Abivard said no. Seeing Roshnani conceal the magic image, he thought, would cost him more pain than he could bear. But he had borne a great deal of pain lately, so down deep he knew that was only cowardice talking. "That is my will," he said harshly. "Let the thing be certain."

  "Wait once more for the water to settle," Tanshar said. Abivard waited in grim silence. The fortune-teller nodded at last. Abivard brought his hand to the bowl again, then had to wait for the water to grow calm after his touch.

  This time he expected to have to wait before a picture formed. When it did, it showed Roshnani's chamber once more, and Roshnani herself sitting on a stool close by the chest behind which hid the image intended to bind Abivard in the ties of sorcerously induced love. She was bent over some embroidery, her pleasant face intent on the delicate needlework.

  Abivard's glance flicked over to Tanshar. The fortune-teller's eyes were closed; he had the delicacy not to gaze upon his dihqan's woman. At the moment, Abivard did not care about that. He peered down into the quiet water, waiting for Roshnani to get up from the stool and conceal the image.

  She looked up from the needlework and rose. Abivard forced himself to absolute stillness, lest he disturb the scrying medium. He stared at the simulacrum of his wife, wondering how far into the past Tanshar's magic reached.

  Whenever it was, Roshnani did not go over to the chest, though it was but a couple of paces away. Instead, she smilingly greeted another woman who walked into the chamber. The newcomer pointed to the embroidery and said something. To Abivard, of course, her lips moved silently. Whatever her words were, they pleased Roshnani, for her smile got wider.

  The other woman spoke again. Roshnani picked up the embroidery from the stool and sat back down. She started to work again, perhaps demonstrating the stitch she had been using. The other woman watched intently for a little while-Abivard wasn't sure time ran at the same rate in the scrying bowl as in the real world-then leaned back against the chest of drawers.

  There! Her hand snaked to the rear edge of the chest, opened for an instant, and then was back at her side. Intent on the needlework, Roshnani never noticed.

  "By the God," Abivard said softly. He took his hand away from the polished obsidian bowl. The scrying picture vanished as if it had never been.

  Tanshar felt the motion of withdrawal and opened his eyes. "Lord, have you that which you require?" he asked.

  "I do." Abivard opened the pouch at his belt, took out five silver arkets, and pressed them into Tanshar's hand. The fortune-teller tried to protest, but Abivard overrode him: "For some things I would not spend silver so, not after the way the famous Murghab robbed the domain in the name of the King of Kings. But for this, I reckon the price small, believe me."

  "Are you then ensorceled, lord?" Tanshar asked. "If it be so, I don't know if I am strong enough to free you from such a perverse enchantment."

  But Abivard laughed and said, "No, I find I am not." He wondered why. Maybe his naturally conceived passion had been too strong for the artificial one to overcome; Tanshar had said love magic was a chancy business.

  "I'm pleased to hear it," the fortune-teller said.

  "I'm even more pleased to say it." Abivard bowed to Tanshar, then took the broken pieces of the lead tablet and headed up the dusty road to the stronghold. He stopped and stooped every few paces until he had picked up three black pebbles.

  * * *

  Roshnani looked up from her embroidery when Abivard stepped into the doorway. The smile she gave him reminded him of the one he had seen in the scrying bowl not long before. "What brings you here at this hour of the day?" she asked.

  Her smile grew mischievous as she thought of the obvious answer, then faded when she got a better look at his face. "Not that, surely."

  "No, not that." Abivard turned to the serving woman who hovered behind him.

  "Fetch my lad
y mother and all my wives to this chamber at once. I know the hour is yet early, but I will have no excuses. Tell them as much."

  "Just as you say, lord." The serving woman bobbed her head and hurried away. She knew something was wrong, but not what.

  The same held for Roshnani. "What is it, husband of mine?" she asked. Now her voice held worry.

  "Just wait," Abivard answered. "I'll tell the tale once for everyone."

  Roshnani's chamber quickly grew crowded. Burzoe looked a question at her son as she came in, but he said nothing to her, either. Some of his wives grumbled at being so abruptly summoned from whatever they were doing, others because they had had no chance to gown themselves and apply their cosmetics. Most, though, simply sounded curious. A couple of Abivard's half sisters peered in from the corridor, also wondering what was going on.

  Abivard brought the flat of his hand down onto the chest of drawers. The bang cut through the women's chatter and brought all eyes to him. He pulled out the two pieces of the curse tablet, held them high so everyone could see them. Quietly he asked, "Do you know what this is?"

  Utter silence answered him, but the women's eyes spoke for them. Yes, they knew. Abivard dropped the pieces of lead onto the chest. They did not ring sweetly when they hit, as silver would have. The sound was flat, sullen.

  He pushed a corner of the chest of drawers away from the wall and bent down to scoop up the image that went with the tablet. It was no longer than the last two joints of his middle finger, easy to conceal in the palm of a hand. He held it up, too. Someone-he didn't see who-gasped. Abivard removed the four cords that bound the image. Then he let it fall to the top of the chest. It broke in pieces.

  He took out one of the black pebbles. He dropped it not onto the chest but onto the floor: the forms here had to be observed precisely. In a voice with no expression whatever in it, he said, "Ardini, I divorce you."

  A sigh ran through the women, like wind through the branches of an almond grove. Ardini jerked as if he had stuck a sword in her. "Me!" she screeched.

  "I didn't do anything. This is Roshnani's room, not mine. If anyone's been in your bedchamber enough to try bewitching you, lord, she's the one, not me. You never want the rest of us, women who've been here for years. It's not right, it's not natural-"

  "In a scrying bowl, I saw you hide the image here," he said, and dropped the second pebble. "Ardini, I divorce you."

  "No, it wasn't me. It was somebody else. By the God I swear it. She-"

  "Don't make your troubles in the next world worse by swearing a false oath." Formal and emotionless as a soldier making his report, Abivard told exactly what he had seen in the still water.

  The women sighed again, all but Ardini. Roshnani said, "Yes, I remember that day. I was working on a bird with the bronze-brown thread."

  "No, it's a lie. I didn't do it." Ardini's head twisted back and forth. Like so many people, she had figured out what her scheme's success would bring, but she had never stopped to think what would happen if she failed. Her voice sank to a whisper: "I didn't mean any harm." It might even have been true.

  Abivard dropped the third pebble. "Ardini, I divorce you." It was done. With the fall of the third pebble, with the third repetition before witnesses of the formula of divorce, his marriage to her was dissolved. Ardini began to wail. Abivard clenched his jaw tight. Casting loose even a wife who had betrayed him was wrenchingly hard. So far as he knew, Godarz had never had to divorce one of his women, and so had left him no good advice on how to do it. He didn't think there could be any easy way.

  "Please-" Ardini cried. She stood alone; all the other women had invisibly contrived to take a step away from her.

  "I would be within my rights if I sent you forth from the women's quarters, from this stronghold, from this domain, naked and barefoot," Abivard said. "I will not do that. Take what you wear, take from your chamber whatever you can carry in your two hands, and be gone from here. The God grant we never see each other again."

  Burzoe said, "If you let her go back into her chamber, son, send someone with her, to make sure she tries no more magic against you."

  "Yes, that would be wise, wouldn't it?" Abivard bowed to his mother. "Would you please do that for me?" Burzoe nodded.

  Ardini began screaming curses. Tears ran down her face, cutting through paint like streams of rainwater over dusty ground. "You cast me out at your peril," she cried.

  "I keep you here at my peril," Abivard answered. "Go now and take what you would, or I will send you away as law and custom allow."

  He thought that would shut Ardini up, and it did. She cared more for herself than anything else. Still weeping, she left Roshnani's room, Burzoe with her to keep her from working mischief.

  Roshnani waited until the other wives, several of them loudly proclaiming undying loyalty to Abivard, had left her chamber. While they, Abivard's half sisters, and the serving women exclaimed in the hallway over the scandal, she told him, "Husband, I thank you for not thinking I set that image when you saw it. I know something of scrying; sometimes I can even make it work myself-"

  "Can you?" Abivard said, interested. So much he still did not know about this young woman who had become his wife…

  "Yes, though far from always. In any case, I know you would first have looked to find the image. When you saw it behind that chest, it would have been easy for you to look no farther and cast me out with the three black pebbles."

  Abivard did not tell her how close he had come to doing just that. She thought better of him because he hadn't, and that was what he wanted. He said, "Tanshar-the town fortune-teller and scryer-said love magic was never sure to work, because it depended on passion. And my passion seems to have turned long since away from Ardini."

  Roshnani cast down her eyes at that, but her face glowed. "I'm very glad it has," she said quietly.

  "So am I." Abivard sighed. "And by now, I think Ardini has had enough time to gather whatever she would, so I shall have the delightful task of escorting her out of the women's quarters and the stronghold and ordering her out of the domain. By the God, I wish she could have been content here."

  "Beware lest she try to stab you or some such," Roshnani said.

  "She wouldn't-" Abivard stopped. He would never have done anything so foolish. But Ardini might indeed think that, with her life ruined, she had nothing to lose. "I'll be careful," he promised Roshnani.

  The women parted before him as he strode down the hall to Ardini's chamber. She looked up from the bulging knapsack she had filled. She wasn't crying any more; such hatred filled her face that Abivard almost made a sign to avert the evil eye. He covered his brief alarm with brusqueness, jerking a thumb toward the doorway that led out of the women's quarters.

  Muttering under her breath, Ardini walked up the hall toward the bedchamber where she had left the lead tablet. Abivard thanked the God it was the last time she would ever go there. He did his best not to listen to whatever she was saying, for fear he would have to take formal notice of it.

  All the same, he watched her while he relocked the door, letting his fingers do the work without help from his eyes: he wanted to make sure she placed no other curses in the chamber. She stood in the middle of the room for a moment, then spat at the bed. "You're not a quarter the man your father was," she hissed.

  That stung. He wanted to hit her. Only the thought that she was deliberately baiting him made him hold back-he didn't care to do anything she wanted him to. As mildly as he could, he answered, "Praising my father will not gain you my forgiveness." The deliberate misunderstanding made Ardini snarl. Even so, it didn't satisfy Abivard; when he flung open the outer door to the bedchamber, he let it slam against the wall with a loud crash.

  A servant in the hallway spun round in startlement. "Lord, you frightened me there," he said, smiling. «You-» He broke off when he saw Ardini beside Abivard. That was a bigger surprise, and one that could not be met with a few glib words. "Is all well, lord?"

  "No," Abivard said. "I have
pronounced divorcement against this woman, for she used sorcery to try to bind me to her. I cast her forth from the women's quarters, from the stronghold, from the domain."

  The servant stared. He nodded jerkily, then retreated almost at a dead run. He'll have gossip to drink wine on for the next fortnight, Abivard thought. He turned to Ardini. "Come along, you."

  Out to the doorway of the living quarters they went, and out through the courtyard. People stopped and gaped, then tried to pretend they had done no such thing. At the gateway, Ardini fell to her knees and clasped Abivard around the thighs. "Let me stay!" she wailed. "By the God, I swear to love you forever."

  He shook his head and freed himself as gently as he could. "You are already forsworn, thanks to your magic," he said. "Get up; go. May you find a life of peace somewhere far from here."

  She hissed a filthy curse at him as she rose, then stalked off down the steeply sloping road. He made a mental note to send word to all the villages in the domain that she had been divorced and expelled. He wondered where she would go; back to her family's stronghold, he supposed. He realized he did not even know who her father was. Have to ask my mother, he thought. What Burzoe did not know about the dihqan's women wasn't worth knowing.

  Abivard sighed, wondering how much trouble the lying tales Ardini was sure to tell would cause him. He resolved to save the tablet, the fragments of the image, and the multicolored cords that had been tied around it, to prove he had indeed been sorcerously beset. Then he sighed again. Nothing ever seemed simple. He wished for once it was.

  * * *

  "'To the dihqan Abivard his loving sister Denak sends greetings. " Abivard smiled as he began the latest letter from Denak. Though he read it with his own voice, he could hear hers, too, and see the way her face would screw up in concentration as she dipped pen into jar of ink before committing words to parchment.