The king’s eyes squinted as he studied the wall hanging. “That’s northeastern Omeria,” he noted. “But northern Omeria—just below our border?”
“Meadowland, and no real flooding there. It’s protected by the terrain around it.”
“But our farmers in the south aren’t producing enough barley and wheat,” Nutatharis said. “Only half of what we had last year.” He lapsed into silence.
Sir Jors said, “If I may, sire?”
“Say it.”
“I think that we must recall our remaining legions and companies.”
Nutatharis sneered. “We can’t feed them here anymore than they can feed themselves out there. Why should I recall them? So they can starve here, and turn against me?”
“Majesty, no. They will never turn against you.” Sir Jors was stunned by his king’s remark. Why was Nutatharis so distraught over one season’s inclement weather? Floods came every spring. Not to this alarming an extent, true, but still—men who lived close to the earth reckoned on these things occasionally. Emaria’s storehouses should be bursting with grain from previous crops.
“We can’t feed our own in the capital,” Nutatharis growled, leaning forward to pour himself more to drink. “If we purchase any more bread from the Athadians or the Ithulians.…” He shook his head. “We’re nearly bankrupt, minister. I cannot repay my loans, and I’ll increase our difficulties if I devalue our gold even more. The people on our border are bartering with the Athadians. Bartering!”
Sir Jors hadn’t realized that Nutatharis had been this imprudent in building up his armed forces at the expense of food. He swiveled in his chair and regarded the map. A dark thought occurred to him, then—a necessary one—and the moment he considered it, he glanced at Nutatharis. In his king’s eyes, he saw the same decision.
“If our soldiers,” Nutatharis decided, “find it necessary to cross the Athadian border to survive—they will be reprimanded, but they will not be punished. Am I understood, Sir Jors?”
His minister nodded faintly.
“I’m not going to bankrupt my treasury, and I refuse to curtail my nation’s defenses simply because people are hungry. But I’ve never said that I will allow our troops to do what they feel is necessary. Am I further understood, Sir Jors?”
A nod.
“If any complaint is issued from the Athadians, I deny unequivocally any wrongdoing on the part of our people.”
“Of course,” replied Sir Jors. “Emarians would never do such a thing. We know this. We’d rather starve than voluntarily break any treaty with a neighboring state.”
Nutatharis motioned to him. “As you leave, send in to me a scribe. I think it time that we made use of our agreement with the Salukadians.”
Sir Jors rose to his feet, finished his wine in a gulp, and saluted his king.
“Who would begin such a rumor?” Nutatharis asked. “What a vicious slander! Are the Athadians so righteous that they can accuse us of criminal activity without condemning their own first? I won’t allow this sort of talk.”
Sir Jors crossed the room, opened the door, and turned. “When I hear anything further,” he said, “I’ll alert you immediately.”
Nutatharis waved him gone, and Sir Jors closed the door.
* * * *
As Thameron, on horseback, crossed the border into Emaria and followed a road leading toward Lasura, he came upon scenes of devastation, poverty, hunger, and despair. The condition of the people he passed inspired in him neither dread nor generosity. Because he was dressed, however, in rich clothes and was riding a fresh mount, so wanton a display was bound to arouse the tempers of many whom he passed on the road. Hollow-cheeked women holding silent babies to their flat breasts stared at him with no friendliness in their eyes; men in fields so filled with water that they were no better than fens glared at Thameron as he went by them, and they called to him hotly, demanding that he share his wealth with them. One evening at twilight, as he was passing through a dark copse, Thameron found himself surrounded by a dozen hungry men wielding spades and shovels. They promised to take his life if he did not turn over to them any money he had in his pockets as well as his horse. “We’ll allow you your boots,” they told him, “if you don’t fight us.”
He might have slain them all with a gesture: Thameron knew that he could accomplish that. But what would have been the purpose? Secure in his strength, he was not alarmed at the excesses to which these hungry men resorted in their desperation. As he reached into his coat pocket, Thameron transformed the coppers he had into gold pieces and distributed them evenly to the men surrounding him. Had they become greedy at the sight of this largesse, Thameron promised himself that he would, indeed, slay them; but on the contrary, the wealth their victim produced inspired a few of the men to chuckle, and one even thanked the sorcerer and begged his pardon for the inconvenience. Thameron watched them depart as they scurried back into the shadows of the copse; then he continued walking along the road to Lasura.
When he reached the capital city’s walls the following morning, it occurred to the sorcerer that it might be to his benefit to seduce King Nutatharis as he had the highwaymen. With this in mind, Thameron stopped at a hovel that stood in the long shadows of Lasura’s walls, and there, in return for a gold piece transformed from an apple seed, he gained from the old woman who lived in the hut a breakfast of brown bread and thin tea, plus an empty grain sack. When he took his leave of the woman, Thameron waited until he had taken a turn in the road (so that she might not witness, in her suspicion, what he was about) to pause and examine the sack. It was frayed and patched in places, and, as Thameron had expected, it had been gleaned nearly empty of all kernels of wheat. Yet a few had escaped the searching fingers of the hungry old woman. Thameron turned the sack inside out and pulled free from the coarsely woven fiber a total of five kernels. These he held in his left hand for a few moments while he concentrated; when he replaced them in the sack, they immediately caused more kernels to come into being.
Thameron carried the sack over one shoulder, and as he walked toward the southern gate of the capital city, the sack grew heavier and fuller between his shoulders until, as he strode beneath the eyes of sentries on the wall, he carried with him a full sack of fresh grain.
“Who are you and what do you here?” hailed one of the guards.
“I am a wanderer from the south,” Thameron called. “I wish to speak with your king about an urgent matter.”
“What is your ‘urgent matter,’ traveler?”
“I come to give him grain!”
“Grain!” The soldier laughed derisively; two companions nearby him on the wall stepped up to the embrasures and looked down at Thameron.
Thameron hefted the sack he carried.
“Where did you steal that from?” called one of the soldiers.
The sorcerer did not reply. At this, one of the sentries came down from the wall; within a moment, the great gates were pulled open. Thameron strode between their shadows.
In the courtyard, the first guard repeated his question. “Where did you steal that from?” He eyed Thameron accusingly.
“I have a secret field of my own,” was the answer. “Will you escort me now to your lord?”
“It’ll cost you what you carry.”
“Then request this sack from your king, for I bring it to him.”
Other soldiers seated before the barracks at either side of the yard now stood and came over. They asked Thameron many questions but received few answers. Finally, tiring of standing in the hot sun, and thinking it best to do as the stranger requested, a number of them mounted horses and led him out of the yard and down a brick street toward Lasura’s palace.
* * * *
Nutatharis was uncertain what to make of Thameron when the well-dressed young man was brought into his tower room. He was properly astounded, however, when the sorcerer dropped the full sack of grain on the flagstones before the king. So much grain was there that the sack split in two places as it l
anded, and rivers of pouring wheat shot out in dry puddles, trickling still with promises of salvation and pride restored.
King Nutatharis stood slowly and spoke in accusation. “Where did you get this grain, man?”
Thameron failed either to bow to Nutatharis or to diminish himself in any way in this king’s presence. He merely requested, “If we might speak alone.…”
Nutatharis looked from Thameron to the soldiers behind him, and his eyes told his men everything. The guards saluted, backed out, and closed the heavy door. The king’s cold eyes moved again to his visitor. “Now tell me.”
Thameron smiled wisely and lifted his arms; he shook them so that the long sleeves of his coat dropped to his elbows. He showed Nutatharis his hands, palms out.
Nutatharis frowned. “Sorcery.”
Thameron lowered his arms. “You need grain. I need information. Yes, I am a man of accomplishment; but that need not concern you so long as you understand that I am here, not to humble you or provoke you, but to continue upon a path I began long ago.”
Nutatharis sat again, never removing his stare from the stranger. “You ask me to bargain with you? Tell me where you got that grain.”
“I created it. I have many powers and great strength. Know that. Surely you’ve heard of sorcerers and wizards, even if you have never met one before.” To Nutatharis’s silence: “I request of you but one answer, and that to but one question. You are the ruler in this land, and surely nothing can occur within your borders without your being aware of it. I am pulled toward the north by an important vision, and that is the path I follow. If you consent to aid me, insofar as you can, I will not harm you in any way, but I will reward you. I will fill this tower in which we stand to its roof with grain; you may feed your nation for a year. Do you consent, King Nutatharis?”
“I may not possess the answer you seek.”
“If you have no answer, then let that be your answer. Only be honest with me. You are a strong man; I, too, am a strong man. Be forthright with me. Before the day is out, our business can be concluded. Do you agree?”
Nutatharis gave the matter stern thought; he wiped his beard and mustache, which had grown damp, and stared for a long while at the sorcerer. At last: “Upon the terms you have told me—agreed. What is your question?”
“I seek a man of shadows; it is he who calls me to the north. I search, King Nutatharis, for the Undying Man.”
Nutatharis choked and stood quickly again in his surprise. “What have you to do with him?”
“You know him, then? What I wish from him is no concern of yours. I want you to tell me if you know where he is. If you do, speak frankly and without fear.”
Moving slowly, Nutatharis left his chair and began to pace the tower room. He felt the sorcerer’s patient eyes on him. He turned and looked at Thameron. “What foulness is it,” he asked, “that draws creatures like you and—him—to me, here? What foulness is it?”
Thameron appeared to darken, as though a coverlet of shadows had been cast upon him. “No foulness, this,” he told the king. “But time hurries, Nutatharis. We live in days of consequence; the incidents come more and faster: road marks on the path to our conclusion. Do you hear the storms at night? Don’t you see it in the stars, feel it in the twilight at the end of every day? If you listen closely in the silence of the dawn, you can feel it eating at the soul of every man and woman in this nation. The fear. The knowing. The understanding. We live at the end of time, King Nutatharis. Creatures such as the Undying One and I—we have come back, returned from the Dawn to witness this great Dusk: to herald it, and begin it. Do you really suppose that mornings now are as innocent as they were when you were a child, King Nutatharis?”
Nutatharis said in a quiet voice, “You speak as he did.”
“I am a man,” Thameron assured him. “But the shadow has descended on me, and it possesses me. It is eating me alive. On some of us falls the shadow, on others, the light. I quicken with this comprehension, and I turn less and less from what I was to become more and more a power of great truth. Why do you suppose that all truth is good, Nutatharis? We live in the shadow of a mighty Wheel. You do not comprehend it? You believe that the life you live is your own? It is not. Your life is but one of innumerable lives. All of us are sparks from a great furnace, small whispers of a mighty Soul.” He grinned. “I speak as he did? I speak with the voice of eternity, O Nutatharis. You would disbelieve me if I told you of the naive boy I was once—and that, not so long ago.” He looked away, stared at the sack of grain, and looked again into Nutatharis’s disturbed eyes. “We could live a thousand years,” Thameron whispered, “or ten thousand years, as men, and never feel the mystery that grows among us. But times come when that mystery must resolve itself, when many must perish so that many can be reborn. Time tests man as much as man tests time, King Nutatharis. And now we are in an age when the mysteries happen fast. They visit us with cause—and so many in number that humanity doesn’t dare to believe what it sees and hears. Do not see, then. Close your ears. But the sun will vanish soon for all of us; you will see men die in numbers that battlefields have not known; and you will hear the damned scream for God as burning priests never screamed for mercy. We are destroying ourselves, Nutatharis. You are contributing to it, and so am I. The good contribute, as well as the evil, because they are the same. Both are born from fear. But it is too late for the humble and the righteous and the good to alter the course that humanity favors; it is enough, now, that we live, so that we may die, witnessing the end.”
He had announced all of this in a low voice that trembled with suppressed emotion: Thameron, speaking as though another person spoke through him, as though the spirit possessing him were given its voice.
He seemed, then, to awaken from a trance; he shivered slightly, rubbed his forehead, and stared at Nutatharis with wide eyes, stared through him.
The king of Emaria looked down. “I do not want your grain.”
“Nevertheless—”
“North of here,” Nutatharis said quickly, looking up again. “Where, I do not know. But when I learned in truth what he is—that he cannot die, that evil follows him with its shadow—I cast him out. I hoped that the gods would slay him out there…somewhere, far away from me.”
“He cannot die,” Thameron shook his head, “until the world dies.” He bowed sharply. “I will go, then. Thank you.”
“Damn you!” Nutatharis whispered hotly. “Don’t thank me!”
Thameron laughed, moved for the door, and faced the king a last time. “Here is the true horror,” he told Nutatharis. “Do you wish to know the true horror of this? Do you wish to know what eternity is? What humanity is?” His tone became grim and swollen. “Even with the end, Nutatharis, it will continue—this disease of the Spirit we call…humanity.”
Then he went out, closing the door loudly behind him.
Nutatharis, staring at the shadowed space where Thameron had been, realized that his heart was pumping furiously, that he was perspiring, and that he was frightened.
Very frightened.…
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
In Abustad, where soldiers from the eastern Athadian legions came for some civilization and comfort, and where a growing number of Salukadian ships filled the wharves with trade goods bought by speculating western businessmen, the streets were filled with noise, the taverns with carousers, the shops with buyers, and the apartment houses on the lower south side with their patrons. The prostitutes and procurers had seldom before experienced such leniency from city officials; for, although publicly barred from soliciting on the streets, the prostitutes had learned privately that trade of any sort was a welcome thing in Abustad. Governor Sulen, not a corrupt man, had decided to permit certain harmless diversions and vices to flourish as the influx of wealth and trade and visitors grew. For his city, like all cities within the Athadian Empire, was short of money but rich with opportunities to make money. And if, because of the national economy, the throne could not provide for its o
wn, then the people of Abustad would provide for themselves. In this regard, it would have been as foolish for Sulen to disallow the entry of Salukadian ships into his harbor as it would have been for him to discourage the gambling in the back rooms of taverns or to fail to accommodate the consistent need of soldiers, sailors, and weary travelers for an evening of private companionship.
A living economy needs the exchange of monies and the bartering of goods and services to sustain itself; and morality in the marketplace is as rare as ethics in government. Sulen was not corrupt, but neither was he a hypocrite or a fool. If crime and greed and pretense had their place in the capital city, then they certainly were not out of place in Abustad. And the exchange of currencies within his port city’s limits simply encouraged this most practical of attitudes.
In one particular apartment house on the Southside near the docks, late in the month of Seth, sailors and travelers and businessmen made their appearances as they regularly did. But this evening, a rumor had begun to spread along Podis Street, and as a crew of huskies just docked from Hilum made their way into the newly painted house, one of them grabbed a young woman by the hair, swung her about so that he could wind an arm around her, and asked, “What’s this about you shipping out?”
“The first of the month!”
“What?” asked the first one’s companion, leaning back, as the three of them crowded down a hallway making for a spare bed. “Vilis, you’re not moving to another town? Not you!”
She laughed. “Only out to sea!” she answered. “You see that new boat what they’re building?”
The first ruffian, who kept his arm about her waist as he steered her into the room at the end of the hall, asked her, “It’s yours?”
“No, no, no! I’m moving onto it! You’re going to have to swim after me if you want more of what I got! No more of this pissy standing around outside anymore! I’m going to be respectable!”
She leaned back on the bed as the first of her new companions dropped beside her and hurriedly began undressing. His companion closed the door and began undoing his boots.
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