Rem touched his spurs against the zeeba. That was all it took. It rushed forward pell-mell as the chariot-animals had done.
The chariot raced ahead, the girl holding to the sides. Ghastly addendum, one of the dancers, caught by her own long hair among the spokes of the wheel, was carried some way in tow over the paving. Her silence was due to death. But Ulis Anet made no sound, either.
Before them, the royal panoply of the King. On foot, hemmed in and pressed against the first steps of the hill, they seemed set only to stare, those figurines, until the chariot ran into them.
The bells had stopped tolling.
Rem had been in enough skirmishes. It was familiar in essence if not in exactitude. And he knew what to do.
Only a little thought went mocking through his occupied mind:
Kesarh would have planned this.
Then he was level with the pelting team.
Swinging over, he brought his sword down on the inside animal’s brain, blade and arm with all the strength behind them he could spare. The beast went over at once, taking the sword with it out of his hand. The others were unable to stop, their momentum carrying them in a snarl across their dead fellow, the chariot slewing behind, all in his path. But he had already kneed the zeeba aside, and as she came by, her volcanic hair flying, he caught the girl up and out and across his mount.
They were away even as the chariot went over. Wrapped in a tangle of traces the animals were flung across it, broken-spined in half a second.
It was as well he had kept up the warrior’s training of Karmiss, Rem told himself wryly. He glanced with pity at the dead team. Wryness, pity—that was all. He felt no more than that.
He stayed his mount and slid down from it smoothly, lifting the woman after him.
She stared at him. “Thank you,” she said.
“An honor, madam.”
The inanity struck both of them. Standing on the square, amid spaces of white paving spilled with blood, a broken chariot, dead bodies, they both laughed bitterly.
There was a tremendous soundlessness all about. Then a ragged cheer went up. The Xarabians, having botched the job, were congratulating a foreign stranger on saving precious Xarabian goods.
From the palace end of the square, men were starting toward them.
“Are you hurt?” Rem said to the Princess.
“No. But you’re bleeding.”
“Some fool with a sword. It’s nothing.”
“It seems more than nothing.”
“I, too, was a soldier, madam,” he said for some reason. “I know when I’m hurt or not. But your solicitude is generous.”
“The quake. . . . Is it over?” she asked him. He had become an authority on things, wounds, rescues, earthquakes. He smiled, nodded.
Irrationally, this private conversation in the middle of pandemonium seemed relevant. Though it meant nothing, he could see how beautiful she was, still spear-straight and self-possessed.
But her eyes drifted to the dead dancing girl and away. Her voice faltered now, before she mastered it.
“Perhaps it’s an omen. I’ve heard when my future husband, the King, entered Anackyra as a boy, there was a violent tremor.”
Something happened. It was intangible, invisible, deep as mortal illness.
“What is it?” she said.
But at that moment the group from the palace end of the square had reached them.
Immediately Ulis Anet was encompassed. Rem discovered himself cordoned by a mass of men, Vis, Vathcrians. He could pick out none of the Lowland race. And then there was another man, exactly in front of him. He dressed in white as Ulis Anet had been, and a white cloak roped with a golden snake, the scales laid on like coins. His hair was whiter than his garments, but his skin was tawny as young wood. He had the beauty one had heard of, Raldnor Am Anackire’s looks, like a god. But there was no discrepancy in height. They were as tall as each other. So Rem looked at him eye to eye, and these eyes were the color of the glass in the eyeplaces of the Rarnammon.
There had been muttering: “A Vis hero! Who is he? Who is this man?”
Raldanash the Storm Lord said to him directly:
“Who are you?”
The city, if it had shaken in augury or not, had given the torch into his hand. He could no more quench it now than walk away.
“My name is Rarmon,” he said. “I am your father’s son.”
In the darkness, the eyes of the Rarnammon statue glowed upward from the plain, looking brighter than all the other lights of the city.
“But,” Vencrek asked, “how do we know the Lord Yannul was not mistaken? Or misled?” He looked across at Yannul’s son and smiled. “Hmm?”
“You know, sir,” said Lur Raldnor quietly, “because he tells you through me that he was not.”
“Your loyalties are commendably to your father. But after so many years—”
“My father, sir, is not senile. He spent some time at the side of Raldnor Am Anackire, and knew him well. He saw Raldnor again in this man who is his son. As Yannul’s letter explains, the Lord Rarmon was unaware of his own lineage. The woman had never told him.”
“Yes, the woman. Surely the name ‘Lyki’ is not so uncommon in Visian Karmiss. There might be more than one Lyki with a—forgive me—bastard son.”
“She had waited on Astaris at the Koramvin court.”
“So she said. Or so the—the Lord Rarmon seems to have said that she said.”
Rem, who was now Rarmon, turned from the eyes of his namesake below. He put his hand briefly on Lur Raldnor’s shoulder and said to Vencrek, “Might this discussion be somewhat premature, since the King is not yet here? Unless, of course, the Storm Lord’s belief in me is less important than your own.”
Vencrek let his smile freeze, then dismissed it. As the Warden of Anackyra, his good opinion was to be won or forced, or maybe bought. He was a perfect example, one saw, of what Yannul had called the ‘blond Vis’ of the second continent. A butter-haired Vathcrian; Rem who was Rarmon had seen his kind often enough, fair or dark, at Istris.
The rest of the men in the small attractive chamber were of the council. Tradition had kept it mixed. Two Dortharians, someone from Tarabann, a Shansarian, another Vathcrian. It seemed the Lans and Xarabs who had held honorable places here in Yannul’s time had probably all gone home. There were no Lowlanders in the room.
Except, Rem-Rarmon ironically supposed, for Yannul’s son and himself.
There was the old familiar sound of spear-butts going down on marble. The doors opened, and the King walked through, two guards at his back. He had retained the custom of the Storm Lord’s Chosen, an elite bodyguard. They wore the historic scale plate, too, but it was washed gold and marked with Raldanash’s device, the inexorable snake gripping the storm-cloud.
Raldanash looked immediately at him while the others bowed. Rarmon offered no more than an extremely courteous nod.
The Storm Lord sat down. All around, the council representatives seated themselves. Before Vencrek could resume the floor, Raldanash lifted his hand.
“Son of Yannul.” He spoke Vis, as he had on the square. It must be the fashion here, if not at Karmiss. Even Vencrek used it.
Lur Raldnor went forward, bowed again and was acknowledged. The boy was impressed, but then his King was impressive. His appearance alone was overwhelming, straight out of the myth. He had presence, too. Even doing nothing, something came across. And he did very little, his gestures few and spare, his face almost expressionless, the beauty and the trace of power speaking always for him. He was a year Rarmon’s junior, which gave him anyway inalienable rights in Dorthar.