Rem who was Rarmon was not immune to the incongruousness of it all. He seemed almost obliged to suspend skepticism since the earthquake.
Apparently the damage was slight from that. Six persons had died. In Koramvis it had been thousands. Hordes of people all day pouring to and from the Anackire temples, to offer in thanks or supplication against further activity, were by sunfall the only proof that anything had happened.
But there had had to be some sort of personal proof. Bathed, and clad for form’s sake in mild finery, Rem had taken out the ring of Lowland amber. It would go no farther than the middle joint of the smallest finger on the left hand. The finger which, in his father, had been missing from that same joint since infancy.
He had no sane reason for putting on the ring. A silly woman’s Zastis token, which had turned out to have psychic properties. It had assumed the temperature of his skin, he could not even feel it now.
“I shall inform Yannul,” said the King to Lur Raldnor, “of my pleasure in your arrival here. Tomorrow there will be space to speak with you in privacy. For now, be free in my court and my city. Only one thing I will ask from you.” Diverted from his thoughts, Rarmon looked at the two of them. He guessed—or mentally overheard—what was coming, and braced himself for it. “Yannul the Lan,” said Raldanash, “in all well-meaning, named you for his lord. The name of ‘Raldnor’ is frequent everywhere. But I don’t recognize it, other than as the name of my father. In this place, therefore, and in any place where you serve me, you will relinquish it.” Lur Raldnor’s mouth opened. He stared at the King, then decided to keep silent. “You may use instead the name of your father, which is illustrious and well-remembered. Hereafter, you are Lur Yannul.”
The boy realized that was all. He bowed a third time and stepped away. Under his Lowland tan he had gone white.
Vencrek stirred. Raldanash looked directly at him, to Rarmon.
“And you,” he said.
Rarmon waited, meeting the eyes again. It was too easy to meet them. They were like wells of light, a depthless deep that cast away even as it submerged. Magician’s eyes.
“You said,” Raldanash told him, without inflexion, “and before many witnesses, that by his Karmian mistress, you are my father’s son.”
“His bastard,” Rarmon said plainly.
“Yes. You’re not claiming Dorthar, then?”
“I’m claiming nothing, my lord. Except the truth of who and what I am.”
Raldanash came to his feet.
“You’ll follow me,” he said to Rarmon.
As they moved, the King with his guards, back toward the doors, Vencrek started forward and the others hurried from their seats. Raldanash gazed at them. “Warden Vencrek. Gentlemen. I thank you for your attendance. This matter I shall deal with in my own way. Good night.”
They went through the doors, which the guards outside closed on a stationary staring of faces.
The council chambers lay against the side of the Imperial Hill. A covered bridge, magnificent with carving, ran over a small chasm into the palace courts.
So far, Rarmon had only seen the guest palace. The architecture of the royal domicile was massive and complex, grouped in towers and tiers about endless courtyards. It was modeled, they said, on the previous structure gone to dust and rust in the hills above.
Presently they walked into a long hall. The flaming cressets on the columns lit up the sight he had all this while been waiting for.
There were seven of them, and they looked like incandescence, the pale hair and skin, the white clothing—he realized now to wear white was an affectation with them. Not all were as blanched as the woman in the Xarabian market. And indeed, seated to one side, there was a swarthy Vis, a squat man in the yellow robe of the Dortharian Anackire. He looked as impassive as the rest. He would have some need to be.
The guards withdrew.
Raldanash walked down the hall, Rarmon at his back, among the standing candles of the Lowlanders.
None of them bowed, curtseyed or knelt, as the Vis custom was. Each touched a hand to the brow and then to the breast. It was a noble enough gesture of honor. It had the feel of something ancient, too, which was strange, for it was also the gesture of a proud people, and he knew their story. Shunned, spat on, persecuted, due to be annihilated and unwilling to resist—until Raldnor told them differently. Now—this.
Three were women.
All seven looked at the King, and then beyond the King to Rarmon.
He felt something, heard something, but without hearing. They were speaking with their brains, and presumably the King with them. One trick of the hero-god’s genes that had passed Rarmon by. The eyes never shifted from him. Eyes toning through citrine to ice: the eyes of snakes.
The King spoke to him.
“These are your judges.”
“What’s my crime?” Rarmon said.
“If you gave the truth to me, there is no crime.”
Rarmon dissuaded his skin from crawling. A quarter of my blood is like theirs. It’s the same with him—only a quarter.
“My mind is open to them,” he said.
“You have much Vis blood,” one of them said to him. “You are not to be read.”
The words were so near yet so opposed to his thoughts, he sensed there had actually been some inadvertent communication.
“Your adepts can read the minds of the Vis,” Rarmon said.
The comment was ignored. In a body with Raldanash, they turned and went on through the hall. Rarmon was left to follow, a meaningless demonstration of free-will. The Vis priest did not come after them, but only fell respectfully on his face as they passed. Which was a politeness of Thaddra.
Beyond the doors of the hall, a sloping garden-court stretched gently toward the sky. A building blotted the stars, and as they approached it, the smell of the trees was familiar. A black stone temple, in a sacred grove.
It was no bigger than the shrine of some Plains village. When they entered, a lamp hung alight up in the air. There was no statue, no ornament—nothing but the stone, sweating chill even after the heat of the day.
The door shut.
Raldanash walked to the center of the tomblike place.
“Stand here with me.”
Rarmon obeyed. He felt a peculiar misgiving. All religions had mysteries and deceptions. What was to be done here? The seven Lowlanders stood about the walls, snow figures on black.
There was a sound. A soundless sound, reminiscent of the undercurrent in the air before the tremor struck. But it was nothing so simple as precognition.
Raldanash stood facing him. Rarmon was aware they had adopted, he doubted spontaneously, the selfsame position, feet apart, left arm loosely at the side, right arm slightly advanced. Almost a fighter’s stance. The amber ring commenced softly to burn. There was Power here, then. Matter-of-factly, he accepted that the burning was not uncomfortable, ready to remove the ring if it threatened to grow red-hot, as on the ship from Hliha.
Then a new light seemed to come up from the stone under their feet, a curl of sourceless, colorless energy. It enveloped them slowly, rising like water. Witchcraft.
Through the light he saw Raldanash’s face, partly translucent, but no hint of the skull beneath. Instead, a kind of ghostliness, other faces, all his facets—indecipherable. So, too, Raldanash would see him. The facets that were Lyki, the facets that must be Raldnor’s; the inheritance beyond that, a line of kings and priestesses. And his own many lives in this one, the thief and cutthroat, the captain of Kesarh’s men, the lover of boys.
The ring scalded. It was like molten metal. It should have hurt him and he should have wrenched it off, but somehow the heat brought no pain, fire to a salamander. . . .