The Stolen Throne tot-1

by Harry Turtledove

  The groom nodded in resignation and turned to Denak. "You'll be one of the gentlemen who rode in at night a ways back. I'm sorry, sir, but I've not seen you much since, and I've forgotten which of those horses was yours." He pointed down to three stalls at the end of the stable.

  Before Denak could answer-or panic and not answer-Sharbaraz came to the rescue again. "It was the bay gelding with the scar on his flank, not so?"

  "Yes, lord," Denak said in her sorcerously assumed man's voice.

  The groom sent Sharbaraz a glance full of admiration. "Lord, no one will ever say you haven't an eye for horses." Sharbaraz made the image of Pradtak preen.

  The horse that had belonged to Smerdis' man snorted a little when Denak mounted it. So did Pradtak's horse when Sharbaraz climbed aboard. The horses knew, even if men were fooled. Sharbaraz easily calmed his animal. Denak had more trouble; the only riding she had done since she became a woman was on her wedding journey to Nalgis Crag stronghold. But she managed, and the four riders started down the steep, winding trail to the bottom of Nalgis Crag.

  "By the God, I think we've done it," Abivard breathed as the flat ground drew near. He called ahead to Sharbaraz, who as Pradtak was leading the procession.

  "Lord, uh, your Majesty, how did you come to know so much about the village of Gayy and its qanats? I'd not wager an arket that the real Pradtak could say as much of them."

  "My father set me to studying the realm and its domains before my beard first sprouted, so I would come to know Makuran before I ruled it," Sharbaraz answered. His chuckle had more than a little edge to it. "I got to know Nalgis Crag domain, or its stronghold, better than I cared to."

  "My father was right," Abivard said. "You will make a fine King of Kings for Makuran."

  "Your father-he would be Godarz of Vek Rud domain?" Sharbaraz said, and answered himself: "Yes, of course, for you are Denak's brother. Godarz perished on the steppe with the rest of the host?"

  "He did, your Majesty, with my brother and three half brothers."

  Sharbaraz shook his head. "A victory in Pardraya would have been glorious. A loss like the one we suffered… better the campaign had never begun. But with a choice of strike or wait, my father always preferred to strike."

  His horse reached the flat land then. He kicked the animal up into a fast, ground-eating trot. His companions imitated him: The farther from Nalgis Crag stronghold they got, the safer they would be.

  Abivard said, "The confusion should be lovely back at the stronghold. When Pradtak wakes up in your shape, he'll insist he's himself, and the guards will just laugh at him. They'll say he's gone off to Gayy. And even when he does get his own appearance back, they'll think that's a trick, as you said."

  "The only real problem will be that I won't return to the women's quarters," Denak said. "And the folk at the stronghold won't truly notice I'm missing for some time. Who pays any real attention to women, anyhow?" Her voice was deep and strange now, but the same old bitterness rode it.

  Sharbaraz said, "Lady, a blind man would note your bravery, on a battlefield where no man would ever be likely to find himself. Do not make yourself less than you are, I pray you."

  "How can I make myself less than nothing?" she said. When Abivard protested that, she turned her head away and would not speak further. He did not press her, but wondered what had passed at Nalgis Crag stronghold to make her hate herself so. His left hand, the one not holding the reins, curled into a fist. If he had thought Pradtak was abusing her, he would have served her husband as she had the guard who disgraced himself by helping to confine the rightful King of Kings.

  The pale winter sun scurried toward the horizon. The weather, though cold, stayed clear. When the riders came to an almond grove not far from the edge of Pradtak's irrigated land, Abivard said, "Let's camp here. We'll have fuel for a fine fire."

  When no one argued with him, he reined in, tethered his horse, and began scouring the ground for fallen branches and twigs. Sharbaraz joined him, saying "The God grant we don't have to damage the trees themselves. We should be able to glean enough to keep them intact."

  Behind the two young men, Denak said to Tanshar, "Take your seeming off me this instant."

  "My lady, truly I would sooner wait," Tanshar answered hesitantly. "Our safety might still ride on your keeping the guardsman's face."

  "I would rather die than keep it." Denak began to cry again. Tanshar's magic transmuted her sobs into the deep moaning of a man in anguish.

  Abivard dumped a load of wood on the ground and dug in a pocket of his belt pouch for flint and steel. Tanshar sent him a look of appeal and asked, "Lord, what is your will? Shall I remove the enchantment?"

  "If my sister hates it so, perhaps you had better," Abivard answered. "Why she should hate it-"

  "She has reason, I assure you." Sharbaraz dropped more twigs and branches on top of the load Abivard had gathered.

  His support, instead of cheering Denak, only made her cry harder than ever. Abivard looked up from the slow business of getting a fire going and nodded to Tanshar. The fortune-teller took out the crystal disk he had used to give Denak the appearance of Sharbaraz's guard. Again he suspended it in the air between them. This time his chant was different from before. Where the disk had briefly glowed, now it seemed to suck up darkness from the gathering night. When that darkness left it, Denak was herself again.

  Abivard walked over to her and put his arms around her. "It's gone," he said.

  "You're you, no one else, just as you should be."

  She shuddered under his touch, then twisted away. "I'll never be just as I should be, don't you understand?" she cried. "I left what I should be behind forever at Nalgis Crag stronghold."

  "What, being Pradtak's wife?" Abivard said scornfully. "The cursed traitor doesn't deserve you."

  "That's so," Sharbaraz agreed.

  He started to say something more, but Denak cut him off with a sharp chopping motion of her right hand. "What you say of Pradtak is true, but not to the point. I left more than marriage behind in that stronghold. I lost my honor there, as well."

  "Aiding the King of Kings against those who wrongfully imprisoned him is no dishonor," Abivard said. "You…" His voice trailed away as at last he found a reason why Denak might have kicked Sharbaraz's guard while he was unconscious, why donning his image was almost more than she could bear. He stared at her. "Did he…? Did they…?" He couldn't go on.

  "He did. They all did," she answered bleakly. "It was the price they took from me for letting me in to serve the rightful King of Kings. They cared nothing that I had Pradtak's permission; they were Smerdis' men, they said. And if I spoke a word of it to anyone, Sharbaraz would be dead in his cell one day. I knew, as you did, that he was Makuran's only hope, and so-I yielded myself to them."

  "It's done. It's over." The words came flat and empty from Abivard's mouth. It might be done, but it would never be over. He felt sick inside. No matter why Denak had done what she did, how was he supposed to look at her after knowing of it?

  She understood that, too. Shaking her head, she said, "All the way along the track down Nalgis Crag, I kept wishing I had the courage to throw myself over a cliff. Without my honor, what am I?"

  Abivard found no answer. Nor did Tanshar, who sat by the fire, slumped and numb with fatigue. Nor did Sharbaraz, not at first; he got down on hands and knees and scratched in the dirt for several minutes. At last, with a grunt of triumph, he rose once more and showed what he held in his hands: three black pebbles.

  "As rightful King of Kings, I have certain powers beyond those of ordinary men," he declared. He threw one of the black pebbles down onto the ground from which he'd grubbed it. "Denak, I divorce you from Pradtak." He repeated the formula twice more, making the divorce complete.

  Denak remained disheartened. "I know you mean that kindly, your Majesty, but it does nothing for me. No doubt Pradtak, too, will cast the pebbles against me when he eventually gets free of your shape and your cell. But what good does it do
me?"

  "Lady, not even the King of Kings has the power-though some have claimed it-to ask the hand of a woman wed to another man," Sharbaraz said. "Thus I needed to free you from that union."

  "But… your Majesty!" Denak's words stumbled out one and two at a time.

  "You-of all people-know how I… threw away my honor in the hall in front of your cell."

  Sharbaraz shook his head. "I know you won great honor there, giving without concern for yourself that I, that Makuran, might go on. If you know nothing else of me, know I always aid those who aid me and punish those who do me wrong. When I sit on the throne in Mashiz once more, you shall sit beside me as my principal wife. By the God and the Four I swear it."

  Abivard was never sure whether he or Denak first went down into a prostration before Sharbaraz. His sister was sobbing still, but with a different note now, as if, against all expectation, the sacrifice and humiliation she had endured might have been of some worth after all.

  "Honor lost is honor won," Sharbaraz said. "Rise, Denak, and you, Abivard. We have much to do before I return to my proper place in Mashiz."

  "Aye, your Majesty." As Abivard got back to his feet, he glanced over at Tanshar, who was taking bread and dates from the saddlebag of a packhorse. The fortune-teller's second prophecy echoed within him: honor won and honor lost in a tall tower. He had seen that, sure enough, and more of each than Abivard had imagined.

  Where, he wondered, would he find that flash of light across a narrow sea? And what would it bring with it?

  Godarz had taught Abivard many things: how to ride, how to rule a domain, how to think of next year instead of tomorrow. One thing he had not taught him was how to be a rebel. Abivard didn't think Godarz had ever dreamed-or had nightmares-of opposing Vek Rud domain to the power of the King of Kings in Mashiz.

  Whatever he did, then, he had to do on his own, without his father's advice and warnings echoing in the back of his mind. He missed them. He had grown used to the idea that Godarz had an answer for everything and, could he but find it, all would be well. In the game he played now, that was not so.

  Nor could he simply sit idle and let Sharbaraz bear the whole burden of the war against Smerdis. Not only would that have been unseemly for the King of Kings' brother-in-law-for Sharbaraz had kept his promise and wed Denak as soon as he came into Vek Rud stronghold-but Abivard knew most of the frontier dihqans better than his sovereign did.

  "Old news," Sharbaraz complained one evening, munching bulgur wheat with pine nuts and mutton drenched in a sauce of yogurt and crushed mint leaves. "I know the domains, and I know of the lords they had before our army went into Pardraya, but how many of those lords still live? One here, one there. Mostly, though, it's their sons and grandsons and nephews who carry on for them, men whose ways I never studied. Whereas you-"

  "Aye, I've hunted with some of them and played mallet and ball against others at festivals and the like, but I can't claim to know them well. Most of my dealings with them have been after I made my way back from Pardraya."

  "Those are the important dealings, now," Sharbaraz said. "If we cannot bring the northwest to my banner, you might as well have left me mured up in Nalgis Crag stronghold, for that would prove Smerdis, curse him through the Void, will be the sure winner in our struggle."

  Abivard rose from the bench in the kitchen and paced back and forth. "If we wrote out the lists of opposing forces on parchment, ours would be much smaller and weaker than Smerdis' even if all the northwestern dihqans went over to you," he said. "How do we go about overcoming that advantage?"

  "If all the forces loyal to Smerdis today stay loyal to him, we're doomed," Sharbaraz answered. "I don't believe they will. I think most of them are with him because they believe I gave up the throne of my own free will. When they learn that isn't so, they'll flock to my banner."

  They had better, Abivard thought. Otherwise we'll see how bitter a death Smerdis can devise for us. That, however, was not the sort of notion he could share with the man he reckoned his sovereign.

  Sharbaraz looked up at him. Nothing about his dress proclaimed him King of Kings: he wore one of Abivard's woolen caftans, a good enough garment but hardly a royal robe. A bit of yogurt was stuck in his beard, just below one corner of his mouth. But when he spoke, confidence rang in his voice like a horn call: "When you rescued me from Pradtak's stronghold, you didn't stop to reckon up the cost or what would come afterward-you simply did what was right. We'll go on that way, and the God will surely smile on us."

  "May it be so, your Majesty," Abivard answered.

  "It shall be so," Sharbaraz said fiercely, slamming a fist down on the stone table in front of him. As they had before, his words set Abivard afire inside, made him want to leap onto his horse and charge down on Mashiz, sweeping everything before him by sheer force of will.

  But however much he wanted to do that, the part of him that was Godarz's heritage warned him it would not be so easy. Peroz had charged down on the Khamorth-and look what it got him.

  Frada came in then. One of the cooks handed him a pocket bread filled with the same mutton-and-bulgur mixture Abivard and Sharbaraz were eating. "Your Majesty," he murmured as he sat down beside Sharbaraz. His tone lay somewhere between admiration and hero worship; he had never expected to sit at meat with the King of Kings.

  When he glanced toward Abivard, though, resentment congealed on his face. Abivard hadn't told him of the plan to rescue Sharbaraz; Abivard hadn't told anyone who did not absolutely have to know. He could see Frada wishing he had been along, too.

  Sharbaraz also saw that. He said to Frada, "Secrets must be kept. You shall yet have the chance to show off your courage before me."

  Frada preened like a peacock. Had he had tail feathers, he would have fanned them out in dazzling display. As things were, he had to be content with puffing out his chest, throwing back his head, and, in Abivard's opinion, looking very foolish.

  But perhaps Frada wasn't so foolish after all. No less than Abivard, he was now brother-in-law to the rightful King of Kings. When Sharbaraz regained his capital, both Godarz's sons-and their younger half brothers, too-would be great men in Makuran. That hadn't fully occurred to Abivard till then.

  For the moment, though, Frada was just his little brother. "Get out of here," he said, "before you stroll into the oven from not looking where you're going." The gesture Frada returned was emphatically not one of benediction, but he departed, chewing noisily.

  Sharbaraz chuckled. "The two of you get on well," he said. His voice was wistful. "I grew up distrusting all my brothers, and they me."

  "That happens in a fair number of domains, I've heard," Abivard said. "I can see how it would be worse in Mashiz, with the whole realm as a prize for the one who manages to inherit."

  "Just so," Sharbaraz said. "When word came of my father's fall, I looked for one of my brothers to try to cast me down from the throne." He laughed a laugh full of self-mockery. "And so I paid no heed to my doddering cousin the mintmaster-and paid the price for that. I'd be paying it yet, without your sister and you."

  Abivard dipped his head. Songs said a monarch's gratitude was like lowlands snow on a warm spring day, but he didn't think Sharbaraz typical of the breed. With luck, the rightful King of Kings would remain a man among men even after he gained the throne.

  "How do you and your brothers keep from quarreling?" Sharbaraz asked.

  "Oh, we quarrel-like pups in a litter," Abivard answered. "But Father never let us turn it to feuds and knives in the back. 'The domain is bigger than any one of you, and big enough for all of you, he'd say, and clout us now and again to make sure the lesson got through."

  "My father used to say much the same thing." Sharbaraz shook his head. "He couldn't quite make us believe it. I wish he had."

  "What do you suppose Smerdis will do when he learns of your escape?" Abivard thought it a good time to change the subject. "What would you do, were you in Mashiz and he a rebel in the provinces?"

  "Were I on my th
rone, I would attack any rebel with as strong a force as I could mount, to make sure his men won no battles against forces too weak to do a proper job of rooting them out. That would only give them courage, the last thing I'd want rebel troops to have."

  "Our thoughts travel the same track," Abivard said, nodding. "The next question is, does Smerdis think the same way we do?"

  Sharbaraz stopped with a bite halfway to his mouth. "By the God, Abivard, I have more reason to bless the day I met you than that it was also the day I gained my freedom and claimed your sister as my bride. Do you know, that notion never occurred to me. I assumed Smerdis would set out from Mashiz with his whole host directly he heard I'd escaped, because I would have done as much in his place. But it may not be so."

  "You must have known him at your father's court." Abivard thanked his father for drilling into him that there was commonly more than one way to look at a situation. "What feel do you have for the way he'll act? I've only met him, so to speak, when his men took my money to pay it to the Khamorth. From that, he doesn't strike me as a world-bestriding hero."

  "I never reckoned him one, that's certain," Sharbaraz said, "but then, I hardly had him in my mind at all till he stole my throne from me. He was just a gray man with a gray beard, hardly worth noticing even when he spoke, and he didn't speak much. Who would have guessed such ambition hid behind that blank mask?"

  "Maybe he didn't know it was there himself till he got the chance to let it out," Abivard said.

  "That could be so." With the dainty manners of the royal court, Sharbaraz dabbed at his mouth with a square of cloth-a towel rather than a proper napkin, but as close as Vek Rud domain could come. When Abivard wiped his mouth, he used his sleeve. Setting the towel aside, Sharbaraz went on, "One thing is sure, though: he'll soon learn I'm loose, and then we'll find out what sort of man he is."

  * * *

  The rider from Nalgis Crag domain looked nervous as he waited for Abivard to approach. "Lord," he said, sooner than he should have, "I beg you to remember I am but a messenger here, bearing the words and intentions of Pradtak my dihqan. They are not my words or intentions, and I would not have you blame me for them."