Then the light went out. The ring was only the temperature of his skin.
Raldanash stepped away from him.
One of them said, behind him, “You are no liar. You have the atoms of the messiah Raldnor, and through him of Ashne’e. There is more. The goddess has left her mark on your soul.”
Rarmon had no reaction to the words, or very little. He looked at the King.
The Amanackire began to leave. As the cool night air stole in, he knew the chill temple had become very close and warm.
“What now?” he said to Raldanash.
“You are what you said,” Raldanash replied. Nothing else.
They approached the door as if nothing had happened.
“Which brings me what, my lord?”
“Whatever you wish, under my authority.”
Outside, scale plate flashed. Guards with torches were standing on the lawn after all.
“Perhaps,” Rarmon said, “a small gift to start with.” Raldanash paused. Rarmon wondered what Ulis Anet had thought when first she laid eyes on this impossible husband. “Yannul’s son,” said Rarmon. “To some men, my lord, their name means very much. It’s a magic thing, the key to the ego. His father and yours were friends. Why not let the boy keep his given name?”
“He is,” said Raldanash, “no longer in Lan.”
“He found that out. You shamed him. Your implication, sir, is that no man’s fit to bear your father’s name.”
Raldanash, looking almost utterly like a Lowlander, seemed to show his Vis blood then. He glanced toward the soldiers. He said: “You say to me ‘Your father,’ yet you harangue me like a brother.”
“I’m asking a favor. And they told you, those you trust, that I am your brother.”
There was a long, still interval. A drift of scented air brought with it faint singing from the public temple in the forest above, some hymn with cymbals and cries. Truly, Dorthar had made Her theirs.
Raldanash said, “He can’t carry the name of Raldnor in my service.”
“Suppose,” said Rarmon, “I’d claimed it for myself.”
“Do you?” said Raldanash.
“If I did?”
They stared at each other, as in the black stone room. Time passed again. Rarmon came to see the King did not intend to answer him, and what this must mean. A challenge could not, beyond a certain point, be offered or accepted, for they were not equals. And yet, with an inferior, one need only command.
“Yes,” Raldanash said suddenly to him, “I was spoken to in the temple, as you were not, mind to mind. My soul isn’t marked by the goddess. I’m only the King.”
“My lord, I don’t understand.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Rarmon. I have powers in me you lack. I have rights you lack. And I was shown, besides, you were a thief who now steals nothing. But one other thing they showed me. You will be more than I can be.”
Rarmon nodded. “I still fail to understand you, sir. But am I to take it you want me to leave Anackyra?”
Yet Raldanash only walked away. His Chosen Guard, among whom the dark race was represented, went shining after him.
Rarmon was still standing there when a chamberlain came out and found him. The man was eager to discuss the apartments to be opened for Rarmon in the palace, and other such matters.
Over it all, the wind still brought the singing down the hill. He did not know the music was because of him.
“More wine?”
The Thaddrian refused, with great politeness. Intoxication would feel uneasy tonight, even on the juices of the High Priest’s cellar.
Beyond the luxurious chamber—the High Priest’s “cell”—the songs and shouts had finally died away in the body of the forest temple. It was almost midnight. The High Priest, who had sent the servant out long ago, refilled his own cup.
“But,” he said abruptly, “You’re sure?”
The Thaddrian gathered himself. This was the fifth time the Blessed One had asked him. The last occasion had been two hours ago. At least the intervals were extending.
“Virtuous Father, you sent me as your witness and I waited in the hall. The cressets were bright. They entered. I had less than a minute before the King and the Amanackire took him from the room to the Storm Lord’s private temple. Nor did I see him closer than that lamp-stand there, at any time.”
“However,” the High Priest prompted fiercely. He was himself, naturally, a Dortharian. Once, they had been the master race. Filaments yet lingered.
“However, I was myself convinced, as I told you, and as you informed the worshippers, that this man called Rarmon is truly one of Raldnor’s sons.”
“And yet you say he’s unlike him.”
“As Raldnor was when I beheld him—few men could compare with that. As few women could have compared with Her. And yet, the likeness was evident. This Rarmon is a handsome man in his way. The features, from certain angles, are similar to those of the Rarnammon statues. Raldnor himself was said to look like these.”
The High Priest assented, and quaffed his wine.
The Thaddrian had at no time repeated his own inner thought on seeing the King enter the hall, the much darker man at his back. A sudden thought, sheer and quite explicit. It was divided between the two of them, then. The white-haired Vathcrian has the beauty. But the reservoir of strength—the other has that.
He had been a child when he saw Raldnor Am Anackire. Sunrise in a rioting Thaddrian town, flames and smoke and sunshine jostling for the sky. And out of the chaos emerged something so simple and ordinary, a peasant’s wagon making for the jungle forest. And in the wagon two creatures not ordinary in the least. A god and a goddess. Only years after did he learn who they must have been, Raldnor son of Rehdon, and Astaris, the woman he had loved. The clean banality of their exit from the town and the majesty of their supernatural looks combined, essentially, to make a priest of the Thaddrian. To make him argumentative also. Certain aspects of the worship of his goddess bothered him. Mythology should only so far rule the lives of men. The afterlife should be left to itself. Religion would do better to aid mortals in the mortal state, not drug them with hopes of the transcending future. Were they to live only dreaming of death?
“In any event,” said the Blessed One, suppressing a small belch, “the Amanackire will have tested him.”
“No doubt, Virtuous Father.”
“And you were sure?”
Merciful Anack. The intervals were growing less again.
“Most Virtuous, as far as I could tell—”
“Yes, yes.” The High Priest gave signs of impatience with both his Thaddrian and himself. The earthquake escapees would have filled the temple coffers. Maybe he wished to go count the loot. The best donation of all had been from a young Xarabian, the commander of the Princess-bride’s personal guard. He had been stunned by a bolting chariot in the quake, but recovered sufficiently to come up here this evening. The Thaddrian doubted the lord Iros had been thanking Anackire for sparing his life. He had seemed in a rage, but also wept. There were already rumors he was in love with the Princess. That had an inauspicious quality to it. Raldnor Am Anackire had been the lover of his Storm Lord’s betrothed.
“The portents are sound,” said the High Priest, rising. It was time to leave, apparently. “Sons of the heroes meeting here, at the hub of Vis. If war’s coming, we need such tokens.”
The Thaddrian prostrated himself and went.
If war was coming. A child could tell—did tell, for the games of Anackyra’s children had become factious, the lower streets loud with those objecting to playing Free Zakorians. War, that curse of men. And this a war worse than any. Zakoris in exile had become a ravening demon. At length she would try to tear all Vis apart for vengeance, and if she won her battles, not one stone would stand upon another, not one blade of grass remain that was not black with fire or blood.