Sometimes, on the upper plains, thunder came cantering across the skyline, a storm of wild zeebas, shearing away at the last instant from the campfires.
Rem, walking beyond the tents along the rim of a hill in the dusk, glimpsed a man and a woman entwined oblivious amid the fern. Raldnor and his girl. Noiselessly, unseen, Rem avoided them.
Zastis was done, and maybe it was only that which made this distancing in him. The urgent frustration of Lan had become like another’s memory, not his own. Yannul’s son seemed far off, a pleasing sight, amiable companion, a hundred years younger than Rem and scarcely recognized.
Ommos, the ill-famed.
They saw Uthkat on the plain of Orsh, where Raldnor Am Anackire had routed the Vis, and later the ruins of Goparr which Raldnor Am Anackire had razed for treachery. History still moved. Less than a month before, Karith had been burnt by the Free Zakorian fleet, and troops were toiling across the landscape, skirting the caravan once its mission was ascertained. The indigenous Ommos were dark, inclined to flesh, their accent so thick as to create almost another language from familiar words. Other than soldiery, the whole kingdom seemed bare and deserted, and the towns looked dark by night.
At Hetta Para they were received. The capital had been cast down in the War. The new city was something else again, little more than a town on the outskirts of a wreck.
There was no king in Ommos now, but a man who named himself Guardian, a Lowlander. The court, if such it might be termed, was Lowland, too.
The betrothed of Raldanash was austerely and publicly entertained some three or four hours, with a group of her followers. Then they were all consigned to cramped apartments, or to anything the area might be thought to offer.
Those who investigated the spareness of the new Hetta Para and the shambles of the old, came back with stories of an Anackire temple of black stone, its portals patrolled by Lowland guards, of the immemorial fire-dancers in taverns of the ruin, boys or women, scorching their clothing from them with lighted torches, and of a Zarok fire god flung down in a pit. Lowland work, on whom the Ommos came ritualistically and fawningly to urinate, making all the while partly hidden religious gestures for mercy to the god.
There were countless delays between Hetta Para and the border.
It was not for another five days that they came to the river and saw the repaired garrison outpost the War had once destroyed, while the bowl-topped Dortharian watchtower belched out blue purple smolder to welcome them.
Dorthar.
My father came here, not knowing then, as I know mine, his line or dubious rights or heritage. Insolent, ill-at-ease, in danger, in love with the land and hating the land for its symbols and its shadow.
Rem looked about him: earth, mountains, sky.
What’s Dorthar, then, to me?
For the entry into the city of Anackyra, Lur Raldnor had been granted a chariot, and a team of thoroughbred animals, and his best clothes had come out of the traveling chest.
“What do you want to do?” he inquired of Rem.
“What we agreed. You’ll be presented. When the moment is suitable, you give him Yannul’s letters. At some point he’ll read them.”
“From what I’ve heard he may not.”
Rem had also, here and there, picked up Xarabian evaluations of the Storm Lord.
“Then politely stress them, indicating the Koramvin seal.”
“But you’ll follow me into the presence chamber.”
“If allowed.”
“Where are you placed for the entry?”
“Behind the chariots, somewhere.”
Lur Raldnor appraised him and eventually said, “You do know this indifference isn’t humbleness on your part, don’t you? It’s pride. You’re already saying: I know who I am. Let him find out.”
The conversation was held by the old white road which had led across the plain under Koramvis. It was dusk and the tents were up. Tomorrow they would be going in to the new metropolis, and down the valley above the ancient watchtower the smoke plume still hung, one tone darker than the darkening sky.
“It’s possible,” said Rem, “that even when he does find out, he may not care to know.”
“Whatever we’ve heard of him, he wouldn’t risk that. He needs you as a friend, not an enemy. Think of the harm you could do him if estranged.”
“I’ve thought. And Raldanash may think. He might consider me worth a tactful murder.”
Lur Raldnor grinned.
“This isn’t Karmiss.”
Rem was taken aback. Had he implied so much about Kesarh’s service?
Across the long slope of the valley plain, where the ground rose up to the hills which, before the quake, had been of a different shape, the night-fires of the new city began to gleam.
When the boy had gone off to share the Princess’ tent-court, Rem stayed, looking toward the city.
There had been groves of fruit trees and cibba here, burned long ago or cut down. The last battle had begun on this earth. All day, he had noted the superstitious mutter as they approached.
He wondered suddenly if men here alone at night fancied they heard the cries of war and pain, and felt the land start to shudder. He half expected one of the visions to seize on him. But nothing came, and only the lighted lamps of Anackyra shone two miles off, no sheen of ghosts.
The Princess Ulis Anet was dressed in white. Rem, after the first startlement had lessened, had observed her skin was darker than Val Nardia’s had been. Clad in the whiteness intended to symbolize her fitness for a High King of the fair races, she looked darker yet, but arrestingly so, like an icon of pale gold. Her ruby-colored hair was appropriately veiled in an openwork mesh of rubies.
Before and behind her chariot came Iros’ men, blinding with polished metal. The banners of Xarabiss and the blazon of Thann Xa’ath swayed glittering from their poles.
The caravan had sprouted into the usual elements of show.
Dancing girls clothed only in brilliant body-paint with disconcerting mirrors at their groins, acrobats, and magicians producing globes of radiance from the air. Twelve milk-white kalinxes had been found—or bleached—to draw three gilded carts from which sweets, flowers and small pieces of money might be thrown to the crowds by girls dressed in the carmine robes of Yasmis, the Xarabian love-goddess. Before the rule of Anackire, a statue of Yasmis would have been carried in any betrothal and bridal procession that could afford one. No longer.
Musicians played. The chariots rolled.
Where the new road went between the fields and orchards, it was lined by peasants, holding their children up to see, and young girls casting petals and looks at the soldiery.
A quarter of a mile from the gates, Raldanash’s envoy met them, with a further escort.
For the first time Rem saw the white goddess banners of Anackyra, and carried amid them the device of his half-brother, the hero Raldnor’s legal son. Raldanash’s emblem was a brazen serpent coiled about a black thunder-cloud, gripping the might of it surely in immovable coils. The understanding was there for any with eyes to see.
Koramvis had been reckoned the wonder of the north. Anackyra, going up fast on the back of her ruin, had had something to beat.
Yannul had left before the city was completed. The post-War council, mixed of Vis and Lowlanders and men of the Sister Continent, had held together reasonably well under the original Koramvin Warden, Mathon. An old man then, initially chosen for his post just because he was old and therefore considered safe, the earthquake had spared him and he had gone on to watch the city reborn over the plain beneath and the forested western hill-slopes. He had outlived Yannul’s defection, and the death of another who had been, in his way, a friend to the hero Raldnor, the Dragon Lord Kren. Kren had died the year the boy King entered Anackyra. Mathon, though, had lived to one hundred and twelve, an age not unheard of among the Vis, but spectacular considering the upheavals of his era. He had seen the commencing years of Raldanash’s reign. He had seen the city finished. To the end, Mathon had kept his wits and, they said, his uselessness. Now the Warden of Anackyra was a Vathcrian, a cousin of the King’s from home.