by Tad Williams
Partly human, Vash reminded himself. He must be at least partly human. Even if the autarch’s father Parnad had also been a living god, the autarch’s mother must surely have been a mortal woman, since she had come to the Seclusion as the gift of a foreign king. But whatever was mixed in with the heritage of godlike (although now fairly inarguably dead) Parnad, few mortal traits had made their way down to the son. The young autarch was as brighteyed, remorseless, and inscrutable as his family’s heraldic falcon. Sulepis was also full of inexplicable, seemingly mad ideas, as proved by this latest strange whim—the errand on which Vash now bustled toward the guard barracks.
As he left the guarded fastness of the Mandrake Court and hurried through the cavernous ministerial audience chamber at the heart of the Pomegranate Court , lesser folk scattered from his path like pigeons, as frightened of his anger as he was terrified of the autarch’s. Pinimmon Vash reminded himself he should conduct a full sacrifice to Nushash and the other gods soon. After all, he was a very fortunate man—not just to have risen so high in the world, but also to have survived so many years of the father’s autarchy and this first year of the son’s: at least nine of Parnad’s other high ministers had been put to death just in the short months of Sulepis’ reign. In fact, should Vash need an example of how lucky he was compared to some, he only had to think about the man he was going to see, Hijam Marukh, the new captain of the Leopard guards—or more to the point, think about Marukh’s predecessor, the peasant-soldier Jeddin.
Even Pinimmon Vash, no stranger to torture and execution, had been disturbed by the agonies visited upon the former Leopard captain. The autarch had ordered the entertainment conducted in the famous Lepthian library, so he could read while keeping an eye on the proceedings. Vash had watched with well-hidden terror as the living god danced his gold finger-stalls in the air in rhythm with Jeddin’s shrieks, as though enjoying a charming performance. Many nights Vash still saw the terrible sights in his dreams, and the memory of the captain’s agonized screaming haunted his waking mind as well. Near the end of the prisoner’s suffering, Sulepis had even called for real musicians to play a careful, improvised accompaniment to his horrendous cries. At points, Sulepis had even sung along.
Vash had seen almost everything in his more than twenty years of service, but he had never seen anything like the young autarch.
But how could an ordinary man judge whether or not a god was mad?
“This makes no sense,” said Hijam Marukh. “You are foolish to say so,” Vash hissed at him.
The officer known as Stoneheart allowed only a lifted eyebrow to animate his otherwise inexpressive face, but Vash could see that Marukh had realized his error—the kind that in Xis could swiftly prove fatal. Recently promoted to kiliarch, or captain, the Leopards’ squat, muscular new master had survived countless major battles and deadly skirmishes, but he was not quite so used to the dangers of the Xixian court, where it was assumed that every public word and most private ones would be overheard by someone, and that one of those listeners likely either wanted or needed you dead. Marukh might have been cut, stabbed, and scorched so many times that his dark skin was covered in white stripes like a camp mongrel’s, might have earned his famous nickname by passing unmoved through the worst carnage of war, but this was not the battlefield. In the OrchardPalace no man’s death came at in him from the front or in plain sight.
“Of course,” Hijam Stoneheart said now, slowly and clearly for the benefit of listening ears, “the Golden One must have his contest if he wills it so. But I am just a soldier and I don’t understand such things. Explain to me, Vash. What good is there in having my men fight with each other? Already several are badly wounded and will need weeks of healing.”
Vash took a breath. Nobody was obviously eavesdropping, but that meant nothing. “First of all, the Golden One is much wiser than we are, so perhaps we are not clever enough to understand his reasons—all we can know is that they must be good. Second, I must point out to you that it isn’t your men, the Leopards, who are fighting for the honor of the autarch’s special mission, Marukh. It is the White Hounds, and although they are valuable fighters they are only barbarians.”
Vash had no more idea than the captain of why Sulepis had demanded a contest of strength among his famous troop of White Hounds, foreign mercenaries whose fathers and grandfathers had come to Xand from the northern continent, but as Vash knew better than almost anyone, sometimes gods-on-earth just did things like that. When the autarch had woken from a prophetic dream one morning in the first weeks of his rule and ordered the destruction of all the wild cranes in the land of Xis, it had been Paramount Minister Vash who had called the lower ministers to the Pomegranate Court to make the autarch’s wishes known, and hundreds of thousands of the birds had been killed. When another day the autarch declared that every axhead shark in the city’s saltwater canals should be caught and dispatched, the streets of the capital stank with rotting shark flesh for months afterward.
Vash forced his attention back to the combat. The abruptness of the autarch’s demand had forced them to improvise this arena here in an unused audience chamber in the Tamarind Court, since the autarch’s miners and cannoneers were all over the parade field and could not move their equipment on such sudden notice, even at threat of their lives—some of the artillery pieces weighed tons. Two sweaty men were struggling now in the makeshift ring. One was big by any ordinary standard and muscled like a bullock, but his yellow-bearded opponent was a true giant of a man, a head taller, with shoulders wide as the bed of an oxcart. This fair-haired monster clearly had the upper hand and even seemed to be toying with his adversary.
“Why is it taking so long?” Vash complained. “You said Yaridoras was by far the strongest of the White Hounds. Why does he not defeat his opponent? The autarch is waiting.”
“Yaridoras will win.” Hijam Stoneheart laughed sharply. “Trust me, he is a fearsome brute. Ah, look.” The yellowbearded one had just raised the other man over his head. The huge man held his opponent there just long enough for everyone to appreciate the glory of the moment, then flung him down onto the stony floor. The loser lay, senseless and bloody, as Yaridoras raised his arms above his head in triumph. The other White Hounds hooted in appreciation.
“Is that it?” Vash ached from standing and wanted only to lower himself into a hot bath, to be tended by his young boy and girl servants. He wished he had not been too proud to accept the kiliarch’s offer of a chair. “Is it over? Can we finish with this?”
“There is one more challenger,” said Marukh, “a fellow named Daikonas Vo. I am told he is the best swordsman of the White Hounds.”
“But the autarch ordererd them to prove themselves in bare-handed combat!” Vash shook his head in irritation, surveying the dozens of assembled Perikalese soldiers, perhaps four or five dozen in all. None of them looked big enough to give Yaridoras a contest. “Which one is he?”
For answer, Marukh stood and shouted, “Now the last fighter—step forth, Vo.”
The man who rose was so unremarkable that, discounting his Perikalese heritage—the telltale fair hair and skin that marked him as a foreigner—any man of Xis might have passed him on the street without a second look. He was wiry but slightly built; his head barely reached Yaridoras’ brawny chest.
“That one?” Vash snorted. “The big yellow-hair will snap his back like a twig.’ “Likely.” Marukh turned and bellowed, “You two may bring no weapons into the sacred space. So has our master Sulepis, the god-on-earth, the Great Tent, the Golden One, declared. You will fight until one of you can get up no longer. Are you ready?”
“Yes—and thirsty!” bellowed Yaridoras, making his fellow mercenaries laugh. “Let’s get this over with so I can have my beer.” The thin soldier, Daikonas Vo, only nodded. “Very well,” said the captain. “Begin.”
At first, the smaller man put up a surprisingly good defense, moving with serpentine fluidity to stay out of Yaridoras’ powerful grasp, once even hooking his
foot behind the big man’s heel and throwing him backward to the tile floor, which earned a percussive shout of surprised laughter from the other White Hounds, but the giant was up quickly, smiling in a way that suggested he himself was not very amused. After that Yaridoras was more careful, angling in to cut off his opponent’s retreat, and Vo began to find it increasingly difficult to stay out of his hands. Vo did not give in easily, and several times he landed swift blows whose power was clearly greater than his size would have suggested, one of them opening a cut above Yaridoras’ eye so that blood ran down one side of his face and into his beard. However inevitable the outcome seemed, the bigger man was clearly not enjoying the delay, and in the course of trying to get a finishing hold on his opponent left several long, bleeding weals across the small man’s face and arms. The shouts and rowdy suggestions that had filled the room at the beginning of the bout began to die down, replaced by a murmuring of unease as the match slowly took on the look of something more desperate.
The big man lunged. Vo ducked under the groping arms and put a knee into his opponent’s belly, so that Yaridoras’ surprised gasp sent red froth flying, but the big man’s knobknuckled hand lashed out and caught Vo retreating, smashing him to the floor with an impact like a slaughterer’s hammer. Yaridoras threw himself on top of his opponent before Vo had recovered his wits and for a moment it seemed as though the smaller soldier had been swallowed whole.
It’s over now, thought Vash. But he fought a surprisingly good fight. The paramount minister was more than a little surprised: he had always thought of the Perikalese foreigners as benefiting mostly from their size and barbaric savagery. It was strange, even disturbing, to see one who could think and plan.
For a moment as they grappled on the floor, Yaridoras caught the smaller man’s head between his legs. He began to squeeze, and Daikonas Vo’s face darkened to a bruised red before he managed to elbow his opponent in the crotch and wriggle free. He was injured and tired, though, and he did not get far before Yaridoras caught him again, this time with a massive arm around his throat. The giant rolled his body over on top of his opponent, then began trying to sweep away the bracing arms and legs which were all that kept Vo from being pressed belly-first onto the floor. The big man grinned ferociously through the sweat and blood, while Vo showed his own teeth in a grimace as he struggled to get air.
“He’ll kill him,” Vash said, fascinated.
“No, he’ll just choke him until he gives over,” said Marukh. “Yaridoras won’t kill anyone needlessly, especially another White Hound. He is a veteran of such matches.”
Daikonas Vo’s purpling face was sinking closer and closer to the floor, his elbows bowing outward as the bigger man’s weight overcame him. Then, to Pinimmon Vash’s astonishment, Vo deliberately took one hand off the tiles and, just before he was driven to the ground, brought his elbow down so hard against the floor that a noise loud as a musket shot echoed through the room. A moment later the two of them collapsed in a writhing, grunting heap, and for a moment it was hard to make sense of the tangle of limbs. Then the two bodies lay still.
Face and upper body shiny with blood, Daikonas Vo at last pulled himself out from under Yaridoras, rolling the giant aside so that the long shard of stone floor tile sticking in the yellow-bearded man’s eye rose into view like a sacred object being lifted above a parade of believers. The audience of White Hounds gasped and cursed in shock, then a roar of anger rose from them and several of them moved toward the exhausted, bloody Vo with murderous intent.
“Stop!” cried Pinimmon Vash. When they realized it was the autarch’s chief minister who had commanded them, the White Hounds halted and fell into surly, murmuring attention. “Do not harm that man.”
“But he killed Yaridoras!” growled Marukh. “The autarch’s law was that no weapons could be used!”
“The autarch said that no weapons could be brought into the arena, Kiliarch. This man did not bring a weapon, he made one. Clean him up and bring him to the Mandrake Court.”
“The Hounds will be angry. Yaridoras was popular...”
“Ask them to consider whether keeping their heads will be compensation enough. Otherwise, I’m sure their autarch will be happy make other arrangements.”
Vash shook his robe free of wrinkles and passed from the room.
The Golden One was reclining on the ceremonial stone bed in the Chamber of the New Sun, naked except for a short kilt decorated with jade tiles. On each side of him a kneeling priest bound the cuts in the autarch’s arms, delicate wounds made only moments earlier by sacred golden shell-knives. The small quantity of royal blood, enough to fill two tiny golden bowls which at the moment were on a tray held by the high priest Panhyssir, would be poured into the Sublime Canal just after sunset to assure the sun’s return from its long winter journey apart from its bride the earth.
Sulepis turned lazily as the soldier Daikonas Vo was led in, cradling his elbow as if it were a sleeping child. The man of Perikal had been wiped clean of blood, but his face and neck were still crisscrossed with raw, scraped flesh.
“I am told you killed a valuable member of my White Hounds,” the autarch said, stretching his arms to test the fit of the bandages. Already tiny blooms of red could be seen through the linen.
“We fought, Master.” Vo shrugged, his gray-green eyes as empty as two spheres of glass. There was nothing notable about him, Vash thought, except his accomplishment. He had forgotten the man’s face in the short time since he had last seen him and would forget it again as soon as the man was gone. “At your request, as I understand it. I won.”
“He cheated,” said the captain of the Leopards angrily. “He broke a floor tile and used it to stab Yaridoras to death.”
“Thank you, Kiliarch Marukh,” said Vash. “You have delivered him and nothing more is required of you. The Golden One will decide what to do with him.”
Suddenly conscious that he was drawing attention to himself in a place where attention was seldom beneficial, Hijam Stoneheart paled a little, then bowed and backed out of the chamber.
“Sit,” said the autarch, surveying the pale-skinned soldier. “Panhyssir, bring us something to drink.”
A strange honor for a mere brawler, to be served by the high priest of Nushash himself, thought Pinimmon Vash. Panhyssir was Vash’s chief rival for the autarch’s time and attention, but it was a contest Vash had lost long ago: the priest and the autarch were close as bats in a roost, always full of secrets, which made it seem all the more odd that the powerful Panhyssir should be carrying drinks like a mere slave.
As the high priest of Nushash moved with careful dignity toward a hidden alcove at the side of the great chamber, one of the autarch’s eunuch servants scuttled up with a stool and placed it so that Daikonas Vo could seat himself within a few yards of the living god. The soldier did so, moving gingerly, as though his wounds from the combat with Yaridoras were inhibiting him. Vash guessed that they must be painful indeed: the man did not seem the type to show weakness easily.
Panhyssir returned with two goblets, and after bowing and presenting one to his monarch, gave the other to Vo, whose hesitation before drinking was so brief that Vash could have almost believed he had imagined it.
“Daikonas Vo, I am told your mother was a Perikalese whore,” declared the autarch. “One of those bought and carried back from the northern continent to serve my troop of White Hounds. Your father was one of the original Hounds—dead, now. Killed at Dagardar, I’m told.”
“Yes, Golden One.”
“But not before he killed your mother. You have the look of your people, of course, but how well do you speak the language of your ancestors?”
“Perikalese?” Vo’s nondescript face betrayed no surprise. “My mother taught it to me. Before she died it was all we spoke.”
“Good.” The autarch sat back, making a shape like a minaret with his fingers. “You are resourceful, I understand —and ruthless as well. Yaridoras is not the first man you have killed.”
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“I am a soldier, Golden One.”
“I do not speak of killings on the battlefield. Vash, you may read.”
Vash held up a leather-bound account book which had been brought to him by the library slave only a short while before, then traced down a page with his finger until he found what he sought. “Disciplinary records of the White Hounds for this year. ‘By verified report extracted from two slaves, Daikonas Vo is known to have been responsible for the deaths of at least three men and one woman,’” Vash read. “‘All were Xixians of low caste and the killings attracted little public attention so no punishment was required.’ That is just the report for this year, which is not yet over. Do you wish me to read from earlier years, Golden One?”
The autarch shook his head. A look of amusement crossed his long face as he turned back to the impassive soldier. “You are wondering why I should care about such things— whether you are to be punished at last. Is that not true?”
“In part, Master,” said Vo. “It is certainly strange that the living god who rules us all should care about someone as unimportant as myself. But as to punishment, I do not fear it at the moment.”
“You don’t?” The autarch’s smile tightened. “And why is that?”
“Because you are speaking to me. If you only wished to punish me, Golden One, I suspect you would have done so without wasting the fruits of your divine thought on someone so lowly. Everybody knows that the living god’s judgments are swift and sure.”
Some of the tension went out of the autarch’s long neck, replaced by a certain stillness, like a snake sunning itself on a rock. “Yes, they are. Swift and sure. And your reasoning is flawed but adequate—I would not waste my time on you if I did not require something of you.”
