The Empty Kingdom

by Elizabeth E. Wein

  I must get rid of this, Telemakos thought. She will soon be clever enough to pull things out of here.

  “It is he!” Malika cried. The queen of Sheba was standing in the door to the nursery, her gown back-to-front. She must have put it on herself, a wonder indeed, in her hurry to be first with the news.

  She called delightedly over her shoulder to the other Scions, “It is, it is the Aksumite prince, the Morningstar is back among us!” Then she threw herself down on the carpet at his side and rattled her fingers through the silver charms he wore.

  “Peace to you, Morningstar, peace and greetings and hurrah! I heard your little bells and I knew you were in here—it sounded so much closer than when you pass in the corridor. Pretty, aren’t these? Look, little Tena, you can make these bells ring.”

  Malika held him still with one friendly hand on his shoulder. She rubbed noses with him as she rattled the silver charms.

  “This is so lovely! You lucky thing. The najashi has never given me such a pretty bauble.”

  Inas and Shadi came in now, laughing and exclaiming in outrage. “Liar! What about your onyx box of facepaints—”

  “—Your cameos, your carnelian earrings? Good morning and good fortune to you, Morningstar!”

  Telemakos knelt, hugging Athena against him, rather stunned, as the nursery filled with Abreha’s fourteen foster children, all clamoring around him in high-spirited welcome. He almost thought they must be teasing him.

  “Look at your brother’s bracelet, Athena bird girl, it’s like yours! You can match now. Rasha, where’s the baby’s silver bracelet? Let her wear it so they can both have one.”

  “Have you heard all your sister’s exploits, how she poured a jar of indigo dye all over the cushions by the window—”

  “And of the time she set free the whole great cage of Indian parrots—”

  “And an owl was eating them, it had taken three that were perching in the walled almond garden, and Shadi caught it with his new bird?”

  The thin, dark boy king gave a proud and quiet smile. “My sparrowhawk, she means. And on another day, Athena pulled two of the strings out of Muna’s lyre and cut her hands on them. And on another day, she tipped two lamp stands over the terrace wall, all ablaze—”

  “My Athena!” Telemakos exclaimed, and kissed her springing bronze hair. “How can so small a girl commit such enormous knavery?”

  “Trees and flowers on fire,” she said proudly. “Birds flying away.” She let Rasha fasten her silver seabird bracelet about her wrist and gave it a shake. “Flying birds!” She gripped Telemakos by the hair with one hand on either side of his head and gazed into his face anxiously. “Stay with Athena.”

  “Yes, stay with us awhile,” said Inas. “Or have you some prince’s duty you must attend to straight away?”

  “Javelin practice.”

  “We’ll come with you,” said Malika. “We can watch. It will stop Athena making a fuss if we all go down together.”

  Telemakos saw, with envy, that they were now wiser in the ways of Athena than he was, and decided not to argue. And anyway, he wanted to take her with him. He did not want to let her go.

  Telemakos pulled the leather straps of her harness over his head and let Athena climb in it herself. The bands were tighter than they had been, and Athena waited impatiently while, with some difficulty, he adjusted the buckles. She kicked at his ribs and thumped his ruined shoulder with her fist.

  “Birds, lion, dogs, goats!” Athena demanded. The Scions all laughed at her.

  “Dictating the itinerary again, bird girl?” Inas teased. “We will visit all your friends.”

  “I want to see the lion and the dogs, too,” Telemakos told his sister. He was aching to see them.

  The najashi himself turned up at the close of that morning’s javelin practice. He stood with folded arms, splendid in his council robes, frowning blackly beneath the rope of gold that bound his headcloth. He looked like God come along to observe the day’s human activities in Eden. He left before the session was finished, without speaking to Telemakos, but he stopped among the Scions for some time, as he always did, and Telemakos could hear his unexpectedly merry laughter break free as they spoke to him.

  Tharan said to Telemakos afterward, “You may forgo the riding ring today. The najashi bids you spend an hour or so in the kennels and see if the lion still remembers you. You may go hawking with the princes Shadi and Jibril, later, if you wish.”

  It was turning into a holiday after all.

  The Scions stuck to him like honey. They could not have made a plainer statement of their loyalty if they had made formal pledges on their knees in the parade ground before the city walls. Shadi and tall Jibril fell into step on either side of him like lieutenants, and at their shoulders came the desert cousins Ibrahim and Nabil and Numair, demon riders all. Numair walked so lightly on his toes he seemed to have springs in his heels. He had been grinning quietly to himself since Abreha’s visit.

  “What’re you so pleased with?” Telemakos asked.

  “We get to see you master the lion. Fabulous show! I’ve missed it.”

  Behind them came the girls, Inas and proud Malika; then Nadia and Nashita, arm in arm and whispering like conspirators as always, with Lu’lu, the spoiled littlest of them, clinging to Nashita’s dress. The four younger boys followed them as rearguard: quarrelsome Haytham and his younger brother Habib; Inas’s younger brother Amir, who was by inheritance king of Ma’in; and Wajih, good-natured and nearly spherical in shape, heir to the great citadel port at Aden and all its lands and riches. Telemakos always thought of Wajih as being three times his age; it was so easy to picture him as the oversized, benevolent king he would be in twenty years, bearded and turbaned and sceptered, being fed like Gebre Meskal’s old aunt Candake by a host of attendants.

  Twenty years. Will they all visit each other, and send each other presents, trade indigo and coffee and grain and frankincense, go to war together, send representatives to San’a every year for the Great Assembly? Will they remember me?

  Telemakos could not imagine what he would be in twenty years.

  The lion was at play in the hounds’ racetrack. Menelik seemed twice as big as he had been a season ago; he was bigger than Telemakos now, though still not anywhere near the impressive weight of his sire, Solomon, who ruled the lion pit in the New palace in Aksum. His mane had begun to grow. There was no length to it yet, but it shimmered like a black film creeping around his golden head and down the fur at the back of his strong neck. He was tossing about a strange rattle made of bones all knotted together with rope; the thing looked like an enormous white spider and made a riotous hollow rattling noise as the young lion worried and shook it. Telemakos stood at the gate to the arena, watching Menelik toss the rattling bones into the air and catch them in his mouth.

  Athena called out, “Lion lion lion lion!” and chirruped deep and loud. It was exactly the sound Menelik himself made in greeting. The lion came bounding over to the gate, the bone rattle in his mouth. He dropped the bones and rubbed his head adoringly against the bolted wood, chirping like an oversized kitten. Telemakos reached over the gate, without thinking, to scratch the lion between the ears, and Menelik began to purr.

  “Oh, still so easily won!” Telemakos laughed, delighted.

  “You throw it, you throw my lion’s toy,” Athena told him.

  “Let’s have it. Let’s see how well they’ve trained you without me. Give me the bones! Give!”

  Menelik picked up the rattle in his teeth and held it up to Telemakos.

  “Good, good—let go! Give!”

  Telemakos took hold of one of the long, scarred bones. They were heavy; the rackety bundle weighed nearly as much as Athena.

  “Bring it back!”

  With a thunder of bone and a sweet shower of silver chimes, Telemakos hurled the rattle with all the strength he would have put behind a javelin cast. The bone spider sailed, clattering across the track. Menelik raced after it, subdued it as it
crashed into the far wall, then picked up the thing daintily by a single bone and came loping back to Telemakos in deadly silence.

  “He’s a good lion,” Athena said approvingly.

  Telemakos stared. The heavy young king Wajih whistled through his teeth.

  “I shouldn’t want to turn my back on him!”

  “Indeed not,” Telemakos agreed, breathless with astonishment. “That’s how I lost my arm, to his father. Give, Menelik, give me the bones.”

  Telemakos threw them again, and again the white sticks stormed through the air, and again Menelik brought them back without a sound.

  Telemakos watched the lion run, his own heart racing with discovery.

  He moves with it, Telemakos thought. He moves with it! Look at him! I can’t pick that thing up without a riot, but when the lion wants to muffle it, there’s not a sound. Yes, I see, he doesn’t let it fall still, he lets the bones shake from side to side, but as long as he keeps moving, they don’t knock against each other.

  “Again again again!” Athena crowed.

  Telemakos shook his bracelet tentatively. He reached toward the lion, thinking only of silencing the bells at his elbow.

  Yes, I can do it. Not well, not yet. But if I practice, if I practice!

  Telemakos collared the lion affectionately by the scruff of its neck. Menelik pushed up his heavy head for kisses, as he had done since he was a starving kit fed on milk from a goatskin.

  “Oh, you baby!” Telemakos exclaimed. He leaned over the gate and gave the required kiss. The young lion smelled warm and familiar, of straw and sun and honey. “Ah, thank you for this instruction,” Telemakos whispered in the lion’s ear.

  “What is a mother?” Athena asked, sitting wide awake in the darkness of the Great Globe Room long after the rest of the palace was asleep.

  “Why, a mother …”

  Telemakos found himself at a loss. Athena did not remember her own mother. He did not want her to think Muna was her mother.

  “A mother makes children,” Telemakos said. “A mother and father together make a child.”

  It made no sense. None of the Scions had a mother or father; they were all dead of plague.

  “Sometimes after the child is made, the mother and father are not able to take care of it. So they have to get help from someone else. Queen Muna takes care of children who have no mother. You have got a mother, but she lives too far away to take care of you, so Muna helps. You have got a father, too.”

  “Are you my father?”

  Telemakos laughed. “I am your brother.”

  “What is a brother?”

  “Oh, save me, Tena, it is time to sleep!”

  She bounced in the cushions and repeated patiently, “What is a brother?”

  “Your brother has the same mother and father as you. They look after you together. Or you and your brother look after each other. Inas has got a little brother, Amir. You know Amir.”

  “Is Menelik my brother?”

  “Of course he is not, you silly thing. Menelik is a lion!”

  They both laughed.

  “You are full of difficult questions tonight, little Tena,” Telemakos said.

  “Menelik is like my brother,” she said.

  “I know,” Telemakos whispered, thinking of the silent bones. “He is like my brother, too.”

  Athena slept pressed tight against his side that night, and every night after that. A semblance of peace fell on the Ghumdan palaces.

  VI

  ALLIANCES

  NOW TELEMAKOS HAD A secret that he took delight in. He was learning to move without making any noise. He practiced when he was alone or when he was working with the lion; nobody ever noticed whether his charm bracelet was ringing, if the lion was there to hold everyone’s attention. He could not throw a spear without rattling the charms, but before long he could walk and run in silence. He could move as quietly as Menelik if he wanted to. And this challenge, more than anything else, finally restored his sense of balance.

  He could not get enough of being outside. He knew he was watched like a goat; he was always minded at a distance by a herdsman, or two or three. He did not pass the city gates without an escort of the najashi’s soldiers. They kept their distance, and if any of the Scions were with him, Telemakos did not see his more formal escort at all, but Telemakos knew he was watched carefully, all the time. People knew who he was. In San’a’s suq markets he once let Athena choose a set of ivory hairpins for their mother, and experimentally tried to send them off with a note dictated through an itinerant letter writer. The old man would not take his message.

  “The Ghumdan palace children should use the Ghumdan palace servants,” the scribe grumbled. “You can have no need of a street writer.”

  “I bought this gift in the street,” Telemakos said. “Why can’t I also send it in the street?”

  “No paid scribe will risk his hands and livelihood in forwarding unapproved messages for foreign princes.”

  “Your pardon, sir,” Telemakos apologized. “I would not compromise anyone’s livelihood.”

  “You may send the gift without a message,” said the writer.

  Telemakos did not care that he was watched. He could go where he liked. The semblance of freedom was even better than his other recent joy: that of running or riding in the chase with the royal saluki hounds, gripping one spear for balance and with two more strapped to his back should he spend the first, and the najashi allowing him to lead the hunt with Menelik at his side.

  Street children and beggars still stared and cringed at his white hair and strange eyes, but the Scions rallied to his defense.

  “Your majesty of Qataban!” the almond pickers called out in greeting to Shadi as they passed through the groves beyond the city gates when Telemakos went hawking with the more senior of Abreha’s collection of royal orphans. “What are you doing in the company of that half-breed Aksumite? Don’t you know those blue eyes can curse you?”

  Another boy in the same tree added, “Aye, and are the najashi’s Royal Scions now set to playing nursemaid, that the Aksumite comes hunting with a baby tied to his back like a woman?”

  Shadi, who was slight of build and cautious of temper, raised the sparrowhawk on his wrist a fraction and stood gazing up at the boys in the tree.

  “I had not judged you such fools, Hujir and Yazid,” he said at last. There was rustling among the leaves as the young workers within earshot stopped to listen. One dropped out of the branches so he could better see the confrontation.

  “The najashi himself is Aksumite, and his Socotran queen is blue eyed,” Shadi said amiably, “so have a care with your insults. As to the Morningstar, he is our guide and a captain among us, and since he has no falcon to fly, he may carry his sister with him if he likes.”

  Shadi turned to Telemakos.

  “Why don’t you make a pledge not to curse anyone with those evil eyes of yours? Swear by your remaining hand.”

  “By this hand,” Telemakos swore solemnly. He had not realized Shadi could be such a performer. He bit his lip and covered his evil eyes, so the local boys would not have to look at them while he swore.

  “You may pass the word along the treetops,” Shadi said.” The Morningstar is one of us. Our guide and captain.” He flung a silver coin into the basket of almond fruits that stood beneath the tree, and added, as a parting shot, “The Morningstar does not have a hawk, but he does not need one. He has his sister, and she is better than a hawk.”

  Athena was, indeed, the bloodiest hunter among them.

  “Bird in the grass,” she would whisper, one finger up by her cheek, pointing carefully to a red-legged partridge shuffling through the tall brush of the savannah. “Fat fat fat! You get that one, Boy.” She would call to it alluringly in perfect imitation of its own chuckling cluck, and then she would hand to Telemakos a stone for his sling. Sometimes he did not even notice her retrieving them from the pockets of her saddle; she was always ready with them when he needed them. She was as
obsessed with accuracy as her marksman father, and judged Telemakos’s shots critically.

  “Too low. That hen is scared now; Shadi can get it with his big bird.”

  Once she was so angry with Telemakos for missing that she began to pound him in the face, brutally, with both small fists. Short of hitting back, he could do nothing to stop her, as they were bound together. The other boys had to come to his aid and prise her off him. They got the buckles of the harness undone and lifted Athena away, kicking and screaming, and set her on the ground. Telemakos found himself shaking like an empty wasp’s nest in the wind. His fingers scarcely obeyed him as he wound up his sling and fumbled to hook it back into his belt. It occurred to him for the first time that, for his own protection, Athena’s wild temper might need to be trained. A few drops of water spilled over his feet could transport him back to Afar as a quivering prisoner; being beaten over the head could do the same or worse.

  “Shadi will carry you home,” Telemakos told Athena as coolly as he could, and tucked his disheveled hair back behind his ears. “Or you can scamper back yourself. I won’t carry such a monster.”

  She wailed in outrage, “Boy! Athena’s boy carry me! No, not Shadi—” She pulled herself up to stand, hugging Telemakos around the legs. But he was still trembling, and it took all his will not to push her away.

  “Listen, Athena, these are your choices,” he said levelly. “Shadi carries you, or nobody carries you. What are you going to choose?”

  “I choose you, Boy,” she said stubbornly.

  “Telemakos,” he snapped in deep and uncontrolled frustration. “Why do you never call me by my name? I am Telemakos.”