The Tears of Sisme

by Peter Hutchinson

  "I know. Without Idressin and the Tinker the future seems a kind of blank. Anyway if our baby guide is still around when we get to the stables, I'd like to get started straight away."

  To their surprise, three horses stood saddled and ready in the stable yard, while the girl arranged light packs on three more behind.

  "Got tired of waiting. We're about ready for off. That is if you've got the five Imperials." She straightened up from tightening a girth, and gave them a challenging stare. "I meant what I said."

  "Yes, we have the full amount, Harol." Rasscu was amused and impressed at the same time; she appeared to know her job and her worth. She didn't bother to count the coins as he handed them over, just turned and put a gentle hand on the large black horse next to her.

  "Who's the better rider? Right then, this one's for you. He's a bit skittish at times, but a real stayer. Mister S’Bissi, is that what that podgy sailor said? Haven't you got a shorter name? That bay's yours, mister, and the grey's mine. Ready in five minutes, so if you want a quick piss, now's the time."

  The little whirlwind they had hired was as good as her word. In five minutes they mounted up and rode out through the outskirts of Sikoon. Once out of town the road was obvious and Harol dropped to the back with the string of pack-horses. After a while savouring the afternoon sunshine that glowed on the rich farmland, Rasscu fell back beside her.

  "You travel light," the girl said with grudging respect, as he came alongside. "Never seen people going so far with so little. And you know how to ride, unlike some of the human pumpkins I have to shepherd along sometimes. Even your mate's making a reasonable show of it. Thought we'd ride till dark and use the nearest inn tonight. There's plenty hereabouts and it's quicker than setting up camp. You got a woman? Or a wife? What do I call you?"

  Rasscu was becoming accustomed to these mercurial changes of direction and replied to the last question, "Call me Rass. Listen, Harol, before we get too far into this journey, what did Stimmot tell you about it?"

  "Not a lot. Two people to take to Karkor. Fairly quick. Money for food and lodging no problem, but not a soft trip - you know, a luxury trip where the client won't camp, always wants a bed. That's it."

  "Well, does your idea of fairly quick mean that we'll reach Karkor before the Equinox?"

  There was a long pause before she replied, which made the Tesserit glance at her in surprise, to find her studying him with a look containing both suspicion and hostility.

  "We'd bloody well better," came out at last from between clenched teeth, and not another word would she say. It was not until they were riding into the bright morning sun the following day that she spoke to either of them again. She had obviously made up her mind about something, and trotted purposefully forward until she caught up the pair in front.

  "Look Rass, and you too Caldy. Sorry I lost my rag. Tell me why you want to get to Karkor for the Spring Festival and I'll ride a lot easier."

  The two friends looked at each other for a moment, then Caldar shrugged and began, "It's not easy to explain, Harol."

  "Oh shit, just my luck. What are you? Government, rebels, smugglers?"

  "Nothing like that."

  "That's alright then. Anything else and you're fine with me. Just don't involve me in any of your dirty deeds. I don't have the time for any clever dodging this trip. By the way, Caldy, what happened? You been worked over by the police?"

  "No, I was robbed in Razimir and sold off to the mate on Dazzak's ship. He hid me in the hold and used to come down and beat me when he had time to spare."

  "Calm about it, aren't you? I'd have put his balls in a meat grinder for that."

  "Good idea, but it's a bit late. Rass tossed him overboard."

  "You mean," Harol spoke quite slowly for once, "those stories that were going round town, about the wizards who saved a ship and the cannibals and all that, that was you two?"

  At their solemn nods, her eyes went wide and bright. This immensely practical girl obviously believed and enjoyed magical stories too. It seemed a shame to bring her back to earth.

  "As you can see," Caldar said, "we are both fifteen feet tall and could easily fly to Karkor if we wanted, but we prefer the discomfort of a long journey on a horse."

  "And although we can converse with trees and thunderstorms," Rasscu added, "we need an interpreter because we just can't get the knack of these tricky human languages."

  "Alright, alright." She eyed them doubtfully, then pronounced with a flashing smile. "I think you are wizards. If you weren't, you'd never admit it; it'd be too good to miss, all these stories about you floating around. It's real wizards who would deny it."

  It was obvious that she had believed her own logic, when they returned to the subject that afternoon. They had just been transported across a wide river by a brawny old ferryman, to whom Harol chattered non-stop in Belugins as he slowly paddled the raft across with a long rear oar. The man's eyes slid their way a few times during the crossing. Once on the other side he had doffed his cap respectfully and refused any payment.

  When they were riding off, Caldar couldn't resist asking, "What did you tell him about us?"

  "That you’re wizards of course."

  "And he believed you?"

  "Not until I said you were in disguise. You are wizards, aren't you?"

  "Not really, Harol …."

  "There, that's exactly what a wizard would say, when he's being secretive." She looked at him doubtfully. "Whose side are you on?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Government or rebels?" At Caldar's blank expression, she raced on. "I can't believe it. Where have you people been? You mean you don't know that half of southern Belugor's up in arms? The government atrocities? Sammar Geth'shul? None of it? Hell, wizards must live in a vacuum. You'd better catch up quick. Some of the rebel areas lie right across the highway, though the army makes a point of keeping it open. You want to know about it?"

  A nod from each of them was sufficient to launch her on an account of Belugor's recent history. There had apparently been discontent for a long time in southern parts of the country, a huge rather backward rural area, which had never fully accepted rule from Karkor and where the Mederro people paid far more attention to their own local chieftains than to Imperial officials.

  In recent years this hatred of the government had been fuelled by a series of unpopular measures from the capital. For example the new gold coins had been completely rejected; people simply hoarded the old ones, and when those had started to run low, the region had begun to stamp out its own coinage. The breaking point had been reached when the Governor of Southern Belugor had introduced new taxes and edicts about land ownership, which would have effectively reduced much of the population to the status of serfs. Where in Dendria similar measures had caused dissatisfaction, here they led to open rebellion. The army had made a savage attempt to crush it quickly, which only served to fan the flames.

  Since then, it had been an inconclusive and nasty affair. Government forces held a number of strong points and did their best to keep the main highways open; for the rest the Mederros did much as they pleased. The greatest setback to the rebel cause had been the recent capture of their most charismatic leader, Sammar Geth'Shul, who was now in prison in Karkor.

  Harol's bias in telling the tale was apparent. Although she made no declaration of it, she obviously supported the southerners against the central government. The Emperor was referred to scornfully by his rebel nickname of The Jackal, and whenever she mentioned Sammar, she positively glowed.

  "And does all this mean we're going to have difficulty getting through to Karkor?" Rasscu asked innocently.

  The girl give him a fierce glance. "Don't worry, Mister Moneybags. I'll get you to Karkor in time to do your deal or whatever."

  With that she rode off ahead, pulling the pack string with her. For the next week she was the model of efficiency and kept them moving fast through increasingly hilly terrain. She was also unusually quiet. Several times, when she
had been about to speak to one of them, she had hesitated, then turned away saying nothing.

  Empire: Karkor: The Imperial Palace

  Fragment by glittering fragment Shkosta built the Sword. It was so hard that she shrank from beginning, knowing the pain-filled exhaustion which would follow, as if the energy had been torn out of her by the very roots. As a child finding the Sword had been enough, a feeling quite unlike anything else. Then she had gradually learned to go further, to build the Sword, to hold the vision, and finally to use the clarity it brought. During her training in retreat it had been so much easier. But that was practice when all the conditions were right; this is how it was for real.

  She laboured on, every fraction of force channelled down to the finest delicate point, the paintbrush of her attention. The image wavered, disintegrated. Patiently for the twentieth time she set about its reconstruction. At last, when she felt that today it was going to be truly beyond her reach, the familiar glow began to flow through her body. The Sword shone clear in the air before her, throwing its silver light to every corner of the room.

  So it remained for one hour, two hours, Shkosta’s kneeling figure so still that she seemed to have stopped breathing with the shining blade reflected in her dark eyes. There were those long ago, so the legends said, who had been able to make the Sword into a weapon they could wield, an invincible spirit blade, though no one knew the truth of that. She herself found it hard to believe that something of such utter purity could be used for violence of any kind.

  After two and a half hours the Sword faded slowly into the darkness, yet still the princess did not move. This was her time, the Shisp, the interval between lives. No thoughts could enter here unbidden, no weakness, frustration or fear. For a brief while she was truly free.

  Three days ago she had used the power of the Sword to listen in to her grandfather’s secret meeting with the Family heads. It had taken every ounce of energy she could gather to pick up the faint vibration from those distant voices, and she had not attempted to ponder what had been said. Until now.

  Reconstructing the meeting she saw with complete clarity that Hexper and the rest of the Barons had underestimated her grandfather. The old fox had summoned her back from Hexper’s castle to neutralise her, to prevent her becoming too valuable a pawn in the Barons’ hands; he had never had any intention of making her his heir. And the Terrechar assassination of Firrimax of Samphe, the only Baron completely loyal to the throne, had confirmed his suspicions. On the face of it Hexper had gambled and lost.

  The Emperor was now planning to put the clock back two hundred years and to reinstate the old system of selecting his successor from any of the Six Families: probably Five Families in this case, since he had already ruled out the only Habbakal candidate. The meeting to make the final choice had been set for the sixth day after the Day of Atonement.

  All this Shkosta registered in one flashing moment as her mind leaped to her bidding at extraordinary speed. A pity she had not been able to see and smell the gathering too; she could always tell so much more about people that way. Now she set herself to reflect on the consequences of what she had heard.

  So far the Emperor had made no firm commitments to the Families; there was still time for him to retract and to declare Shkosta his heir. It was up to her to give him an irresistible reason for doing so. She had already been working towards this for months. But she still needed something to increase the impact of the situation she would deliberately create at the Spring Festival, something dramatic.

  She had Geth-Shul to parade and execute, but that was already old news. Fordosk’s capture and execution would have been the perfect surprise stroke to neutralize the Families, all of them, not just the Attegors. But they had missed Fordosk at the frontier, he had gone to ground and time was running out. If they could pick him up before the festival, well and good. If not, she would have to find something else, intensify some other threat to increase people’s fears.

  For the moment she still needed the Barons. Not their soldiers, whose presence in Karkor would scream insurrection and bring the whole Imperial army out in force. No, it was their money she needed, to pay the mercenaries she would bring in for her coup at the festival. The Barons were still funding her richly in the belief that she would be the heir one day and that eventually their protégée would sit on the Leopard Throne. She had long relished the prospect of their shock when they found out the truth, a future delight she was storing up for herself: the cunning wolves outsmarted. In her present state she viewed the thought dispassionately, weighing how long she might need their help and at what point to cut it off.

  Once the Barons realised that they were unable to control her, she would have to switch tactics and to show her power at once. Force and ruthlessness they understood and respected. Well, with Armen’s help, she would soon be in a position to demonstrate both to a sufficient degree to gain their alliance, if not their allegiance. She would have that too, but all in good time.

  Meanwhile there were other urgent questions. The Prentex. Harmless priest? No, there was more there than religious fanaticism and a bit of trickery. The priests she had set to watch him had reported nothing useful, as she had expected. She didn’t like mysteries, but she could find no way to probe this particular one. Even with the help of the Sword, Chachi and his ugly Stone remained curiously opaque to her examination.

  She was sometimes tempted to remove the enigma altogether, but the unique value of the Network restrained her. The Prentex simply had to be accepted as he was, his cooperation assured by mutual self-interest: she did not believe for a moment his story of a command from Ajeddak. It was certain that he had motives of his own, but she could bind him no closer until she could find out what they were. Another uncomfortable ally she needed for the moment.

  Swiftly she let her mind range through other questions before she finished. Then with the tiniest movement of her third finger she broke the spell. Power and clarity drained from her, a space to be filled with the incoming tide of afflictions.

  Loneliness was the first as always. Surrounded by people every day, she was more alone in Karkor than she had ever been since that terrible journey north to Hexper’s stronghold at the age of seven. True, she was better prepared now, yet it was hard none the less. Harder still as her plans gathered momentum and there were more secrets to keep.

  It would be such a relief to have someone she could trust, really trust. But her training precluded it. ‘Trust is the door to failure’, she could hear Faseki now at the last meeting of the Dagun before they sent her out on this mission. Even among the fesquiv she had been alone, was alone, she reminded herself: they seemed like something from her distant past, but she knew someone would probably be here in Karkor to observe her without making contact. As for the ordinary inhabitants of the capital there were few who could see beyond their own selfish interests, greedy people without the least concern for the kingdom itself. Well, greedy people were easy to control even if there was no pleasure in living with them.

  The Road to Karkor

  The dam burst one night when they were seated around the fire. They had camped two hundred paces off the highway at the mouth of a small ravine. The hill country here was dry and rocky, and the travellers had to admit that Harol knew exactly where to find water, firewood and grass, when there was no inn in the vicinity.

  "What will they do with this Sammar, now they've captured him?" Caldar asked in an attempt to break the ice. Harol glared at him, then all at once to his utter surprise her eyes filled with tears.

  "They’ll murder him, though they’ll probably send him to the Stone first," she got out eventually in a small voice.

  Rasscu was a fraction before his friend with the same query. "The Stone?"

  "Oh, hell, I keep forgetting." The girl sniffed and wiped away tears with an impatient hand. "You two weirdos don't know anything about anything. I'd have thought even you might have heard of the Stone. You know, the Ajeddak Stone? As in 'Stone from the Gods' and
all that crap? Don't believe a bloody word of it myself. It's just another piece of hocus-pocus the Emperors use to keep their bums on the throne. Anyway it's supposed to be the real thing. They keep it in the Temple of Ajeddak and let people see it now and again at big festivals."

  "And what did you mean about ‘sending Sammar to the Stone'?"

  She held back the tears this time, but she had to try twice before she could answer.

  "I don't know exactly what happens. They shut people in with the thing now and again, criminals, rebels, anyone they’ve really got it in for: most of them never come out. When they’re dealing with someone like Sammar who's lined up for a big public execution, they’ll put him in with the Stone for a day and a night, and when he comes out, he'll be completely changed, confess to anything they want. It's horrible.

  They did it last year to a nobleman who was going round Karkor saying Habbakal had no right to the throne and stuff like that. Friend of my father's, thick as two short planks, but brave and honest and nice with it. I've seen him since." She shuddered. "I couldn't believe he was the same man. Timid, head down, mumbles all the time. Hangs round court, agreeing with everything the Emperor and his cronies say. You couldn’t do that to someone in a day, could you, whatever you did to them?"

  "I don't know," Rasscu said slowly. Then he added in Esparit to Caldar, "Another thing we may have to watch out for in Karkor. This Stone’s in the Temple of Ajeddak. You remember? Near where the Talisman’s going to appear. There’s such a lot we don’t know, but it’s no use worrying too much about it before we even get there. There’s a ….”

  "Hey, I don't like being left out," Harol interrupted. "The Stone's really got you interested. First time I've seen either of you spark off. What is it? Come on, give. I've been doing all the talking up to now."

  The two friends exchanged a troubled look. "If she's against the government, she won't betray us," Caldar observed, still in Esparit. “And after we reach Karkor it’s going to be almost impossible for us to find Idressin and the others without help.”