“Implausible indeed, and more conjecture than reality,” the king replied, “but it has freed me from a difficulty which might have otherwise been without solution.” He turned to Jevan, who had risen to his knees. “This man will be himself the representative I send to the negotiator...”
“Sire!” one of his councilors exclaimed.
“...of course, with my own councilors and representatives to safeguard the unity of our sovereign state. If his story is true, he cannot refuse me. If the bandit party that slaughtered Cashlant’s expedition plans to disrupt the arbitrations similarly, he will be no loss of mine. And if he succeeds, he will be a scribe of Anthirion.” He turned to the crowd and raised his voice. “What two loyal knights and servants of the king will protect and guide this scribe to meet the negotiator at Pathon?”
There was a slight murmur and disorder. In a moment, a white-haired knight with a murry astroid shield stepped forward and bowed, saying, “The general of the city of Taiz’ requests the privilege.”
The king nodded. A page in paly gules and azure ran up and, kneeling, said, “The servant of Torrin, my lord Sir Wayfrain, requests the privilege.”
“Granted,” the king said to both. “May the sun shine on your venture and warm the soil above you, should you die. Your service to Anthirion is noted.” He addressed the crowd at large. “To all the rest, let it be known: a talent of gold and this sapphire silver ring await whosoever should defeat whatever man, elf, goblin, troll, or beast slew my servant Cashlant!”
“Long live the king!” the crowd replied.
The king, with his family and nearest councilors, save those he had marked to accompany Jevan, turned and receded to the palace without a further word. Jevan stood.
“Master Delossan,” said Heao, coming up to him, “what about the doctor?”
“I did not have a chance,” said Jevan. “You go up to the palace guards and ask them about it. Tell them the king’s scribe sends you.”
“Is that true, then?” asked Heao.
“I do not know—what does it matter?” answered Jevan.
High over the river a tiny black shape that had just materialized out of the clear blue sky caught Jevan’s attention and held it. The creature, something like a very small dragon or a large hawk or bat, pirouetted and dived on the breeze, glanced about to the right and left as though amazed to find itself so suddenly in a strange environment alone, where perhaps a moment earlier it had been hunting insects or mice or playing peacefully with its mate on a sultry current of the wind. For a moment he saw it clearly—beady eyes and sharp, needle-like teeth, glittery scales and leathery wings, and a long, spiny tail—and then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished once again.
“Master Delossan?” Heao asked.
“Oh...nothing, nothing: I must have been seeing things,” said Jevan.
“A drake,” the silver-haired knight beside him commented bitterly.
II.ii.
On the outskirts of the city, where the Toris River flowed southward and westward on its meandering course from Torrin and Dell and its source in the highland plains of Sedar, and where the Torrin-Oris Road ran beneath the outer gates of Anthirion City, a company of linen traders leading a nag-drawn millinery cart also spotted the drake. “Xaeland!” exclaimed the blond-haired trader on the off-side of the cart. He reached under a heap of tunics on the cart and drew out the tip of a gnarled, heavy longbow.
The black-cloaked trader at the head of the cart turned quickly and waved his hand in a staying gesture, then turned to watch the drake.
“Whot is it?” asked a large, dark-skinned, dark-haired man who was walking behind the cart.
“Drake,” the cloaked man answered. “It’s gone.” Implicit in that statement was a command to move on, and a fourth trader, a giant man completely shrouded in a dusty brown cloak who was seated on the cart along with a fifth man, a cocky young brown-haired man with largish ears, stylishly dressed with a rapier on his belt, whipped up the bony nag to continue on its way. The sixth member of the party, a fiery red-haired man with an elven short-cloak, a Yllani herder’s dress, and low-cut Ristorian moccasins, ran his long, effeminate hands along the horse’s mane and sighed, saying something barely intelligible to human ears.
As the motley trader band approached the gates of Anthirion City, the gatekeeper called out, “Halt.”
The black-cloaked trader named Xaeland strode up to the sentry calmly, saying, “We are peaceful traders, with an escort of two.”
“Are you the leader?” the guard asked.
“Yes,” said Xaeland.
“Remove your hood,” the guard said.
Xaeland uncovered his head with one hand to reveal a sturdy, almost rough face with pursed lips, a slightly twisted nose, intensely burning eyes, and a broad forehead shaded by a raven shock of hair that reached down to his collar. “May the true light shine on you,” he said simply.
“What, are you a sun priest?” asked the guard, taken by surprise.
“No,” said Xaeland.
“Where are you from?” the guard asked.
“My father was Lantarrev; my mother’s name was Mirias. I was born in the mountain-lands of Brolethiria.”
The guard shrugged and stepped around Xaeland to examine the cart and the other traders. “Which are the escorts?” he asked. The large-eared young man seated beside the driver of the cart tipped his sword toward the guard in acknowledgment, and the big, dark-skinned man at the back of the cart also came forward.
“Where are you from?” the guard asked the dark-skinned man.
“Don’t know,” the answer came.
“Any archers in the group?” he asked.
The blond-haired man on the opposite side of the cart raised his hand. “I’ve played a little with bows and arrows before...when I was a little one.”
“And you?” the guard asked the giant man.
The giant man pulled back his hood. His skin was pink and twisted and his eyes clouded. “He cannot speak,” said Xaeland.
The guard casually fingered over the Yllani fabrics and Therian leathers, then curtailed his search and strode back to his post, saying, “You’re all good. Pass on, pass on.”
Xaeland covered his head and bowed part-way to the guard, then nodded to the driver of the cart and carried on his way.
When they were sufficiently far away inside the city, the large-eared swordsman seated beside the cart driver laughed out loud, and in a mocking voice said, “I’ve played a little with bows and arrows!”
“Donnell—“ Xaeland warned him. A pair of soldiers passed them by, headed in the opposite direction. Donnell scowled and turned his attention to the road, where the helpless and highborn of Anthirion City strode or stumbled down the walks.
The northern quarters of the city were generally wealthy because of the traders that made it their homes, but its markets attracted anyone who could scrounge together something to sell. As they entered Caratha Market, the main center of trade of the city, the capitalistic clamor rose to a fervent pitch, and several times the swordsman or the dark-skinned man had to forcibly prod overly interested customers away.
One particular trader, who was fashionably dressed in a vest and coat and wealthy leather boots and was carrying a belt filled with artifacts and trinkets of various shapes and sizes, attached himself to Xaeland and would not be put off. Xaeland, however, continued on as though ignoring him, or now and then turning his head and muttering something short and wry. At one point, a band of children darted in on a dare and pulled his cloak askew off his shoulder and off his head, revealing a monstrous sword with an intricate golden hilt and hand guard and, to the surprise of the blond-haired archer, a smile.
They stopped in front of an antique shop and Xaeland turned to the others, saying, “This is Nessak Lamartos, an antique trader of our order, who has agreed to relieve us of our goods and show us to a safe haven in the Southern Quarter.”
The trader Lamartos smiled and bowed, ushering his
guests with their cart around the side of his shop. Wordlessly, the shrouded driver tapped the weary nag with the reigns and it lifted its head and plodded the last few steps of its immense journey through the narrow alley between the gaudy silk pavilions and through the curtains into Nessak Lamartos’ store-room.
The room was dimly-lit and warm, the light filtered through the coarse black canvas roof and walls. Crates were stacked up six feet high along each wall, turned sideways for convenient access, and more crates formed a table near the front of the room. The floor was strewn with straw, and a hitching post and manger were already prepared near the entranceway. The entranceway was guarded by a single man, who was dressed in a peasant’s cloak but wearing a dagger and a golden ring. The table, except for a small space where a dirty cup and plate were set, was filled with antiques and alien devices of the most bizarre and wondrous kind. Some metal, some glass, some rigid like metal but dull and malleable like half-cooled iron from the forge. There was an instrument made up of a pair of fat metal tubes covered with a torn grey fabric and bound together by a metal frame. There was a dull black disk, like a compass on a chain except that the needles did not stay in place. There were a few strange box-type apparatuses, some with flip-top lids and glass-like panels, some with cords or wires protruding from the back or front, some with grooves like the grillwork of a helmet, others covered with buttons marked with alien signs and symbols. And there were many long or short, simple or ornately-carved, single or double metal shafts with handles. Xaeland examined these last by hand, at last selecting a somewhat simple-looking but attractive one, flipped it in the air to test its balance (at which Nessak flinched), glanced at Nessak—who nodded approval—and laced the item into his belt. These things came from the Rift out north of Krythar City, a difficult and dangerous corner of the world to get to even if you could afford the required trade license.
“You seem to have made a bit of a stir in the city,” Nessak tried to say lightly.
“Only for the sake of peace,” said Xaeland.
“And yet you have been played into the hand of your enemy,” said Nessak.
“Beware,” said Xaeland. “Whatever is to happen will happen soon.”
The Caratha Market was, in its goods and in its entertainment, a veritable map of the cultural, political, and economic world: pearls and spices from the western isle; silver rings and jewelry from Tryphallia’s Silver Hills; Yllani hides and dresses; beads, pole-axes, and furniture hand-carved in Andel or Ariante; Sedarian spears and pottery; Laran spike-knives and iron ores; Ferrian lumber, compasses, clothes, and wine; Orisian linens, carpets, and armaments, Steedan blankets and bags; Anthirian goods of every kind under the sun; exotic fruits, medicinal herbs and leaves, and snapping plants and flytraps dredged up or hunted down in the waterwoods that began just south of the city in the Impassable Bogs; precious gems dug out of the pits of Narrissor; gold and silks from the sultanate of Sûrthia; rare dragon-teeth and scales from Sûrthia or from Caranis or from the north; hickory and cyndan balms, hunting cloaks and charmed flutes and harps, and bows and arrows of highest craftsmanship from Ristoria; saddles and bits, hammers and pikes, gloves and gyres from Theria; diamonds and jewelry from Aerisia; wool and grapples from Brolethiria; and captured goblin or human swords and armor—scimitars, glaives, battle-axes, swords and greatswords, spiked helmets and gauntlets, chain mail, flails, and breastplates—from Lossia and Tomeria.
From all over, throughout the market, there were bards and musicians, dancers, prophets, poets, psalmists, painters, and psychics, performing or palming their performances in every way imaginable and passably respectable. Day in and day out, when the people of Anthirion had finished their work and wanted to relax, they crowded in droves to the stages set up in the market for the dancers and the bards.
In particular, they loved to gather to hear stories or see plays about the heroes, generals, and emperors of the ancient Ladrian and Midrian Empires, who were in a sense the founders or the predecessors of the Anthirian and Therian nations. Angchose of Ladria and his famous counselor, the magician Xanthia, and the tragic destruction of their empire...the blacksmith Tharnur and the story of the Magic Sword of Shrinnar...the ever-popular tales of King Anther and his dealings with the barbaric Assani, the peoples who had inhabited the Aris River Valley before the arrival of the Ladrian colonists...Galie the Archer and the story of her quest to stop Ligkura the Dragon-seeker...the story of the marriage and love of Emperor Harmace I of Midrion, disguised as a naive herder, to the daughter of the chief of the Therian tribes...the stories—almost lost in the mists of fifteen hundred hears—of Miltius I, the founder of Midrion; of Miltius III, the first emperor of the empire, and his fateful campaign to destroy the barbarian Assani with its untimely end at the spells of the barbarian necromancer, Shaeadan; of Nacil II and the elven treachery—thwarted—at the Battle of Assassin Bay, where, despite the scheming of the elf wizard Camber the Restorer and the heroic death of Nacil and his general, the Ristorian Nation was defeated and shattered, one part retreating southward and eventually working its way back into modern Ristoria after the fall of the Midrian Empire, and the other part scattering to the east never to be seen again.
All these stories moved the people in an inexplicable way, and their actors sang their lines with a solemnity and grace which might well have transcended the heroic virtues or the cultic treachery of their most famous characters.
On that particular day, it happened that a somewhat controversial play by an émigré of half Ristorian, half Therian descent was playing on the main stage. The play was the Camberyximus, a new version of the Assassin Bay epic. It was somewhat controversial mainly because of its “realistic” interpretation of Emperor Nacil II, which was partly an attempt (they author claimed) to reconcile the legendary goodwill and virtue of the Midrian emperor with certain opposing Ristorian traditions, which suggested (lightly) that he was a villain and the instigator if the battle. Camber the Restorer was just giving his (somewhat long-winded) introductory speech—which included a seventeen-generation synopsis of his genealogy from his sire, Caladrion the Wise, and grandfather, Cessua, down to Sailya the Living (who was said to have been resurrected by her husband, Cailan), down to the hero-wizard Caimbrand of the Draco-Goblin Elven Wars of the Tenth Age.
“Here, where of old my sire’s magic wove the Snowfire round the elven capital,” the actor—who was girt in a ragged black robe and bluish-frosted wizard’s cloak—expounded in a noble but slightly sinister elven voice, waving his hands across the imaginary soil of Ristoria, “thrice-besieged and thrice defended by my countrymen in battles strait—here, where cyndans branch into the sky with living balms, and where oft’ bards and children have, upon a time, drop’t melodies from aromatic harps and care-formed flutes, and generals sounded out the sterner war-horn’s tune—where else can my kinsfolk and my fellows stay, except this land, albeit land of exile, cultivated all the time by the regal glow and life-caressing tears of heaven’s heart? Oh, land now trampled by a foreign foot, host to an un-natured horde: I will return your people unto you, as I now summon the thunders from the west. I will restore you as of old, as I call the rain clouds from the east. Thy people I will seek out in the southern ways. Rain, O rain, my children! This world of alien wickedness you’ll purge, though mighty now it stands. You will destroy the north-men and pave the waves that bear thy people back to you.”
Stage hands with buckets showered rain over the backdrop of the stage, and giant cymbals called down the thunders summoned by the elven wizard. Camber continued: “I prophesy! North and south and east, the hidden houses shall arise to rescue you, O Land, from the evil ones, who care nothing for you. Advancing on a path of water the wizard’s heir shall lead his homeless crew against the dragon of the north and shalt prevail. The dragon, though it tear the stars out of the skies and hurl their fires at its foes, shall be cast down as it has cast down all the world. This, then, shall fall: and You shall rejoice over all!”
Then, in one of t
he play’s more controversial moments, Camber fell to his knees and weeping, cried out, “Six hundred twenty years has Ristor wandered, and with her three hundred twelve have I. North, south, east, and west, to all the points and beyond them all, across the wide map of Thy sovereign universe, I’ve traveled and gained experience—such as it is—in arts terrestrial and divine: and now with You who listen from above the heavens I weep, upon this land that You have given up into my children’s hands, for joy. For I know now that You are on the earth, and answer every prayer Your servants bring to You according to Your will. If it be not so, let the rains deluge me dead, and these thunders blast me blind, and these blessed sands be burned up in the sun.”
An instrumental chorus followed, and Camber stood and bowed to the applauding crowd, then exited the stage. After that a few minutes of intermission would come, followed by the first scene of the second act, under the backdrop of the governor’s palace, where the tragic character of the emperor was portrayed through several interactions between him and his seers and general and with the mercenary chieftain of the Brolethirian nomads.
Xaeland and his crew passed by quickly, leaving behind Caratha without a word, and weaving their way southward and westward into the poorer parts of the city, finally coming to a stop beneath the eves of an alley slum erected with a blanket roof and guarded by a brother knight of the Page’s Order cowled in the trappings of a Yllani beggar. “Here,” said the trader Nessak Lamartos to his charges, “you will find what humble haven I have to offer.”
II.iii.
Deran stepped down through the side door of the inn, glanced to the right and to the left across the narrow plaza clogged with afternoon smoke and people, covered his head with the hood of his dark brownish cloak, and hurried across the plaza. Two other darkly cloaked figures heading south through the plaza jostled him as he went; then all three seemed to disappear together into the crowd. A sharp-eyed observer, however, might have noticed the three of them standing in a doorway across the plaza a few minutes later, discussing something briefly before heading back toward the inn.
The Wizard's Heir Page 7
