The streets were peopled with highlanders in plain kilts and trousers. Most young warriors went bare-chested, despite the evening chill, but a few sported brightly woven shirts. Women wore long skirts and loose-fitting overblouses, the youthful ones offering glimpses of slender arm or rounded bosom to draw admiring glances from passing young men.
'What is this place?' Mara murmured, drawing in a deep breath of incense, and staring upon wonders like a farm yokel on her first trip into town.
'Dorales,' said the Kaliane. 'You are the first Tsurani to see this city, perhaps.' More ominously, she added, 'You could be the last, as well.'
The enchantress's quaint phrasing caused Mara a shiver. She felt as if she were dreaming, so alien was this place, and so vast; like a vision too beautiful to be real. The slender spires, the thousands of brightly lit windows and doorways, the leering totems, and the press and jostle of street life — all lent a feeling of precariousness, as if at any moment she might be swept unconsenting into nightmare. Amazement and uneasiness would have held the Lady frozen in place had the Kaliane not tugged her forward with the same brusque impatience a mother might show a reluctant child.
'Come! The circle of elders expect you, and there is no wisdom gained by making them wait.'
Mara stumbled numbly forward. 'You say I am expected? How?'
But the Kaliane had little patience for what to her ears were aimless questions. She towed Mara through the crowd, drawing much attention in the process. Bystanders stared and pointed, and not a few spat in contempt. Tsurani pride caused the Lady of the Acoma to ignore such insults as beneath her dignity, but she was left in no doubt that these people considered her an unforgiven enemy. Dreadful, creeping doubt plagued her, that imperial Lords should in contemptuous ignorance have dared call the Thuril barbarians; this city with its marvels of engineering most emphatically proved otherwise.
Curious even through shame, Mara asked, 'Why did my people never hear of this place?'
The Kaliane hustled her past a painted wagon pulled by two sour-tempered querdidra, and driven by a wizened man wearing a cloak of patchwork colors. He carried a strange musical instrument, and passersby tossed him coins, or called out cheerful encouragement for him to play. He gave them back colorfully pungent imprecations, his red cheeks dimpled with a smile.
'Those of your people who would hear of this place your Assembly would kill to keep silent,' the Kaliane replied tartly. 'The towers you behold, and all of the carving of the rock, were done by means of magic. Were you to be permitted entry to the City of the Magicians in Tsuranuanni, you might see such wonders. But in your land, the Great Ones keep the marvels their power can create to themselves.'
Mara frowned, silent. She thought of Milamber, and his reluctance to speak of his experience as a member of the Assembly. After witnessing the fearful powers he had unleashed in the Imperial Arena, she was struck by the conclusion that the oaths that bound him to the Assembly must have been fearfully strong, to force one of his stature to keep silence. She knew nothing of the characters of the magicians, but from Hokanu she had come to understand that Fumita was not a greedy man. Powerful, yes, and steeped in mystery, but not one to place selfishness above the common good of the Nations.
As if the Kaliane held uncanny means to read Mara's thoughts, she shrugged under her heavy cloak. 'Who knows why the magicians of your land are so secretive? Not all of them are bad men. Most are simply scholars who wish only to pursue the mysteries of their craft. Perhaps they first formed their brotherhood to ward off some threat, or to suppress the wild, dangerous magic of renegade magicians who refused to be trained to control, or who used their powers for ill. The gods alone might say. But if there were good and cogent reasons for such a course of action in the past, time has seen them corrupted. That thousands of daughters have been murdered to suppress their talents is utterly inexcusable by Thuril law.'
Touched by an unpleasant possibility, Mara asked, 'Am I being held on trial for the injustices of all Tsuranuanni?'
The Kaliane bobbed her head and fixed her with a glance that itself inspired dread. 'In part, Lady Mara. If you wish our help against the Assembly, you must convince us. If we act, it will not be for Acoma survival, nor for your personal gain, nor even to make the Empire a fairer nation. For to us the honor of your ancestors, and even the lives of your children, are as meaningless as dust in the wind.'
Mara might have slammed to a stop at once, for what was more innocent than the lives of her baby daughter and her son? But the crone's grip bound her like fetters and dragged her inexorably toward the looming arch of an imposing, many-tiered building. 'What does move your people, if not the lives of the young?' Despite all effort, Mara's dismay showed through.
The Kaliane's reply stayed as impersonal as the grind of waves on the beach. 'If we mourn, it is for the loss of the mages who died with their talents untried. With each one of them, irrevocable knowledge was lost. And if we despair, it is for the cho-ja, masters beyond our finest initiates of mystery, that in your land are disbarred from the magic that is the glory of their race.'
'The Forbidden!' Spurred to excitement, Mara forgot for a moment to fear. 'Was it arcane power that the cho-ja Queen meant when she spoke of the Forbidden?'
Lost in shadow as she stepped under the massively carved arch, the Kaliane answered obliquely. 'That, Lady Mara, is the secret you must unlock if you are to survive in your contention against the Great Ones. But first you must convince the Elder Circle of Thuril of your worthiness. We will hear and judge. Choose your words carefully, for once you have seen this place, the perils you face are redoubled.'
Beyond lay a maze of corridors, vaulted like tunnels, and lit with rows of cho-ja globes. The floors were marble. The artistry of the fluted pillars took Mara's breath away: not even the Emperor's palace held stonework polished to such a lustrous shine. The people who congregated in antechambers and doorways wore beaded costumes, headdresses of feathers, and some the plain kilts of servants. Others in white robes the Kaliane named acolytes of the craft. All without exception bowed to her passage, and Mara felt their stares upon her back like the touch of heated coals. There was magic here, a weight of power upon the air that made even echoes seem oppressive. Fervently Mara wished herself home, surrounded by familiar walls, and by customs she understood.
The Kaliane guided her into a wider hall that led into an echoing antechamber. Thousands of tiers of candles lit the expanse, burning Mara's eyes with intense light. Beyond lay a yet more immense room, surrounded by pillared galleries carved and pierced in arrays of intricate patterns. There dozens of robed figures crowded landings that circled the room, rising six levels high. Ladders, and successions of narrow, spiral stairs provided access to the topmost floors.
'This is our archive,' the Kaliane explained. 'Here we house all of our knowledge, and copies of all writings upon the subject of our craft. It serves also as our meeting hall, on those occasions when the magicians of Thuril gather together, which is as close as our kind come to being organised. We have no fellowship such as your Assembly, and keep no formal officers beyond the Kaliane, who is empowered only to act as spokeswoman.'
Mara was led through a gap in a railing on the lowest level. Her elbows brushed against walls inlaid with corcara shell and ebony in spiraling patterns that made her uneasy. The newel posts were carved totems, beaked, clawed, and fierce of expression. The creatures were scaled or winged in feathers, and their eyes were cut with the predatory slant of a snake's.
The Kaliane ushered Mara across an intimidating expanse of bare floor. There were no furnishings, not even patterns, beyond a circle that lay at the center. Its perimeter seemed to be marked out in golden light, unmistakably the effect of some spell. Aware of the levels above, now crowding with robed forms who all faced her way, the Lady of the Acoma felt like an object of sacrifice before the ritual that would seal her final fate.
'There.' The Kaliane pointed at the magical circle. 'Step in and stand, if you have courage e
nough to be judged. But be warned, Lady Mara, Servant of the Empire. Lies and deceit are impossible for any who cross that line.'
Mara tossed back her hair, fallen loose over her shoulders in the absence of the accustomed attention of her maids. 'I do not fear truth,' she said boldly.
The Kaliane released her restraining grip. 'So be it,' she said, a look near to pity in her eyes.
Mara moved toward the line without trepidation. She did not fear truth, in the moment she raised her foot to step across the bar of yellow light. Yet in that instant she felt pierced by a force that negated all of her will, and by the time her foot struck the flooring on the inward side of the spell, every vestige of her self-confidence was torn from her.
Halfway across the line, she could not retreat. The part of her body that lay within the spell circle was frozen in place as if shackled. She had no choice but to raise her other leg and enter fully, though to do so now terrified her beyond thought.
Helplessness acquired new meaning. Her ears heard no sound, and her eyes saw nothing but the shimmering golden web of force. She was physically unable to move, or sit, or clasp her arms close about her chest to quell the thump of her fast-beating heart. Slavery itself seemed a freedom, before the magic that ringed her into confinement; her very thoughts were held prisoner. Mara fought despair, even as someone high up in the galleries called down a question.
The Kaliane repeated the query in the Tsurani language. 'Lady of the Acoma, you have come here asking for power. You claim you will use it to defend, to aid the common good. Show us how you came to hold this belief.'
Mara tried to draw breath to answer, and found she could not. Her body would not answer her desire; magic held her from speech. Panic drove her to anger. How could she defend her intentions if the spell prevented her from speaking? The next moment she discovered that her thoughts had also escaped her control. Her mind seemed to overturn, then to spin like a pinwheel toy made for a child's amusement. Memories sifted past her inward eye, and she was no longer in the chamber of the magicians in Dorales, within any magical circle. She was seated in her study in the old Acoma estates, arguing hotly with Kevin the barbarian.
The illusion of his presence was so real that the tiny part of Mara's mind that retained separate self-awareness longed to take shelter in his arms. In dawning trepidation, she realised the intent of the Thuril truth spell: that she would not be permitted to answer any inquiries verbally.
These mages would ask, and take their answers directly from her experience. She would be given no chance to justify, to reconcile the outcome of any event with explanations. These magicians would observe her actions as they happened, and then judge. She was in fact put on trial, her only defense the acts that comprised her past life.
Mara realised this much in the instant before the spell claimed her wholly, and she was in the study on that long-past day with Kevin, facing him in heated anger as he cried, 'You push me about like a chess . . . shãh pawn! Here! There! Now here again, because it suits you, but never one word of why, and never one second of warning! I've done as you've bid — not for love of you, but to save the lives of my countrymen.'
Then Mara herself replying, in red-faced exasperation: 'But I gave you promotion to slave master and allowed you charge of your Midkemian companions. You used your authority to see them comfortable. I see they have been eating jigabird and needra steak and fresh fruits and vegetables along with their thyza mush.'
On the memory played, as real as the moment it happened, even to its ending in a flushed entanglement of passion. Mara knew a wrenching moment of disorientation as, one encounter after another, her relationship with Kevin unfolded, each day bittersweet with joys and frustrations, and difficult lessons. Forced to see again in retrospect, she recognised her own narrow-minded arrogance; how miraculous it was that Kevin the slave had seen anything in her apparent hard-heartedness to love and nurture at all! The days unreeled in staggering jumps as the magicians manipulated her recall. Again she endured the horrors as wave after wave of assassins were repulsed from her town apartments on the Night of the Bloody Swords. Again she stood on a butana-whipped hilltop and exchanged words with Tasaio of the Minwanabi. She saw the Emperor Ichindar break the staff of the Warlord's power, her assumption of the title Servant of the Empire.
Again she saw Ayaki die.
There followed another question, mercifully, and the scene changed to the fragrant noon heat of a kekali garden where Arakasi abased himself before her, begging leave to take his own life. Again she shared the scented, dry evening air in Lord Chipino's command tent on campaign against the desert men in Tsubar.
Time whirled, turned, backtracked; and scene overlaid scene. Sometimes she was sent back into childhood, or to the silent halls of meditation in Lashima's temple. Other times she suffered the brutality of her first husband. Again she faced his grieving father, over the wrapped bundle of a grandson, now dead also, by equally treacherous means.
Wrenchingly, she shared afresh her relationship with Hokanu, and his uncannily accurate understanding. Through the eyes of the Thuril magicians, she came to realise that his rare perceptions were in fact an unfledged aspect of talent. A near miss of fate might have seen him a member of the Assembly, rather than as husband at her side. How much poorer her life would have been without him, she realised. A part of her heart ached for the distance grown between them, and between the manipulations of the truth spell, she vowed she would remedy the misunderstanding that lingered since Kasuma's birth.
Lastly, Mara saw herself in Hotaba's long house, delivering a flat refusal to trade her servant Kamlio for freedom to pursue her business in Thuril. A probe like a needle pierced her, but found only sincerity in her heart.
The spell's reel of memories lagged for a stretch, and words leaked through, spoken by she knew not whom. They were in Thuril but understanding of their meaning came to her.
Said one voice, 'She is indeed different from other Tsurani: to see honor in a slave, and to recognise the rights to freedom of a servant, even above her blood family.'
And the Kaliane, replying: 'I believed so, or I would not have brought her.'
Upon the heels of that first thought came, 'Yet do we concern ourselves with Tsurani well-being?'
Another voice of the mind answered, 'Justly governed neighbors are to be desired, and perhaps . . .'
Yet another mind spoke, 'But there is an opportunity to put right the great wrong . . .'
More words that seemed to blur together; someone mentioned risk, and someone else spoke of the cho-ja empire.
Mara's hearing faded. She felt suddenly weak in the knees. And then the golden ring of light that held her imprisoned melted away, and she felt herself collapse.
The Kaliane's strong hands caught her. 'Lady, it is over.'
Weak as a baby, and shamed to discover she had been crying in the throes of the spell, Mara fought to recover from the shambles of her composure. 'Have I convinced you?'
'No. That will be argued through the night,' the Kaliane admitted. 'Word of our decision will reach you at dawn. For now I will return you to Mirana, who will see you are given a chance to rest.'
'I would prefer to wait here,' Mara protested, but she lacked the will to resist. Strength left her, and she knew no more beyond darkness like the night between stars.
21 — Decision
Mara awakened.
It was dark; she breathed in the scent of burning beech logs, and the mustier odor of querdidra wool. There were wooden rafters over her head, faintly picked out of shadow by the weak red light from the hearth. Blankets covered her. They constricted her limbs as she rolled over, puzzled as to her whereabouts.
Her head ached. Memory of events returned slowly, and then in a rush, as she saw the basket of carding Mirana had carried from the long house and the council with her Thuril husband. Now Mara remembered the excursion to the bread shop, and the dreamlike visit to Dorales in the company of the Kaliane. Suddenly stifled by the dark warmth and the bl
ankets, she pushed herself erect.
'Lady?' ventured an uncertain voice from the shadows.
Mara turned, to see Kamlio's oval face, alert and watchful with concern. 'I am all right, little flower,' she murmured back, unthinkingly using Lujan's nickname.
This time Kamlio did not flinch at the diminutive. Instead she shed her own bedclothes, and prostrated herself in abject abasement against the sanded boards of the floor.
Mara was not flattered but disturbed, though servants and slaves had made such gestures to her life long. Such was the Tsurani way, to give total loyalty to please one's master. However, after the experience in the golden spell circle, the tradition left Mara sickened. 'Get up, Kamlio. Please.'
The girl did not move, but her shoulders spasmed under her river of pale hair. 'Lady,' she said miserably, 'why did you set me before your very family? Why? I am not worth so much, surely, that you could not trade me to these Thuril to keep your children safe.'
Mara sighed, bent her tired back, and caught Kamlio's outstretched wrists. She tugged, ineffectively because she was left weak from the truth spell. 'Kamlio, please, arise. My concern for my children is paramount, truly, but the life of another free individual is not mine to bargain with, even for my loved ones' survival. You have not taken my honor for your own; you are not obligated to House Acoma.'
Kamlio allowed herself to be coaxed upright. Swathed in a night robe borrowed from the Thuril that was overlarge for her slender curves, she crouched on the edge of her cot. Her eyes were deep as pits in the dimness. Mara saw they sat in what must be Mirana's sewing room, by the loom frame tucked in one corner, and crates of cloths strewn about. She was still trying to reorient her nerves from the trauma of reliving the past brought on by the truth spell when the ex-courtesan spoke.
Empire - 03 - Mistress Of The Empire Page 51
