The astonishment of it made her, after all, stare at him.
“Yes,” he said, “My first Consort, Chief Queen of Karmiss, Lan, Elyr, and any other ground that’s then in my possession. Did you think I brought you all this way to serve the wine?”
The door was opened and once more firmly shut.
Kesarh had left her alone with the dinner, and with her thoughts.
Far from his estate that night, Raldnor Am Ioli stood in his bedchamber at Amlan, reading dispatches, while a nervous Lannic girl crawled under the bedcovers.
There had been reports of rebels in Lanelyr killing the occupying soldiers, escaping up some mountain and now safe behind a convenient rock-fall. Strange stories had apparently attached to the phenomenon. He supposed he would have to look into it, at some juncture.
He was getting lazy, was Raldnor.
One area, however, where he had remained careful, was the discretion with which he bedded the local girls. This one had been smuggled in and would be smuggled out before sunrise. It would not do for Raldnor’s soldiers to become informed that, though he had brought a favorite mistress all the way from home, he never went to bed with her.
Some, of course, might have liked to. For some, Mella’s sort would always have attractions.
Thinking of his insurance, this most brilliant hazard of his life, Raldnor set the dispatches aside.
Mella.
There must come a time when Kesarh would overreach himself and the heavens crash down. And that would be when Raldnor the King-Maker would lift his gem from the rubble.
The embalmers, who were not embalmers, had got their trade in Ommos and were accomplished. Their covering lies of corruption and poison Kesarh himself had silenced. The child, stupefied with medicines that were not quite those Kesarh had authorized, had slipped into a coma that did not actually preface death. It was an empty box Kesarh had glanced at, sufficiently scented with foulness from a recent and genuine plague-corpse that he did not investigate further. Why should he, anyway? Raldnor had been trusted to perform murder before and seen to it, impeccably. A vacant weighted coffin was buried in the Hall of Kings.
Hygienically and caringly cut, the boy regained consciousness a eunuch. He grew up in the backlands of Ioli, soon female enough to pass for a woman save in the most intimate of situations.
Given intelligent handling, one day the Prince-King Emel might regain the throne of Istris.
Though, being what he was, it was unlikely he could keep it.
The dreadful truth would be found out, and Raldnor, who had waited so long in the wings, could stride across him into glory.
Kesarh had enfranchised Raldnor. Raldnor did not brood on it, but he was no longer the same man who, hearing the slaves shrieking in the blazing galleys at Tjis, had been honorably dismayed. Learning it was workable, a certain latent cruelty had come to Raldnor’s surface. He could now indulge, along with a taste for power Kesarh had taught him by example, the callousness and the infliction of pain which, to Kesarh, were tools not toys.
Raldnor himself enjoyed his sadism, as the Lannic bed-girl was about to discover.
Book Four
The Black Leopard
17
It would be snowing in Dorthar. It did not snow here. The summer lasted longer, here. Winter never came.
They had crossed by the ancient Pass through the mountains. The Dortharian side was well-guarded, the frequent lookout towers hewn from and perched on the rock, bristling with spears. Even coming down into Thaddra there were Dortharian outposts. Caal the Zakorian was known, however; he had been this way before, with a council seal of Anackyra on his person, and all the correct passwords. It was quite true he was a spy for the Storm Lord. In Free Zakoris he was reckoned a spy of King Yl’s. In this way, Caal got about pretty adequately, sometimes alone, sometimes with servants. He had two guards this time, and a slave.
The private guards were of the light Vis darkness most common in Xarabiss or Karmiss. The slave was a little darker, maybe a Dortharian. He was also disobedient or slothful or careless, for he had been recently beaten. His face was a mass of bruises and old blood, and his strong back, where rags of clothing revealed it, showed old whip scars. He was chained at the ankles too, with just enough slack between the chafing irons to plod. He carried the baggage, while the first guard rode ahead. The second guard and Caal rode behind the slave, and now and then Caal flicked him with the starchy-tongued flail generally kept for flies.
Coming off the Pass, they reached Tumesh, then moved roughly westward. The best mode of travel through the jungles of Thaddra was by poled raft along a selection of her several rivers, such roads as there were being half-choked by growing plants. Before Yl and his armies made their strike into Thaddra these roads had been cleared more assiduously, but for a couple of decades, Thaddra had preferred inaccessibility in all directions. Finding rivers and rafts, Caal’s party pressed gradually on.
The sun seemed to come in black through the great trees, the roping creeper and colossal ferns. The water was like treacle, poisonous to drink, and full as a soup of reptiles. Faintly visible sometimes through gaps in the foliage, Vis’ northern mountains drew away.
By day they broiled. The nights were cooler and feverish with nocturnal life.
But in Dorthar it would be cold now, snowing, now.
The initial beating had been allotted for purposes of disguise. “You see, my lord,” Caal said, when they had got up into the foothills above Koramvis, “someone might recognize you. But with your face swollen, blood all over it—well, even your own brother’d have trouble.”
He was already chained, but the five Karmians held him, for good measure. He still used a couple of tricks they had not looked for, and one had fallen over screaming with a shattered kneecap. But the leg-irons told. Eventually Rarmon gave in and let Caal proceed with his beating. It was pointless to put off and so prolong the inevitable.
Caal reminded Rarmon, as he punched and slashed, of the blow Rarmon had awarded him in the palace.
When the camouflaging marks began to fade, the beating was repeated. There were, too, other pastimes later. Each night, making their camp, they would tie Rarmon some distance from the fire. Caal would bring him a share of food, and leave it on the ground just out of reach. After first attempts to take the food, Rarmon desisted and did not bother with it. Since Caal had told him he had been paid to present this captive in Free Zakoris, as Kesarh’s gift to Yl, and since Karmians remained with them to make sure of it, he would have to feed his prisoner sometime, and did.
Caal was disappointed in Rarmon. He resorted to other less subtle tortures. He was limited in this, too, by the need to keep his goods basically unflawed. He hit on the trick of making a shallow cut in Rarmon’s thigh or arm and stanching the blood with salt. When the cut was almost healed, he would open it again, exactly along the line of the original wound. Sometimes, he used vinegar instead of salt.
The Karmians, men Rarmon had never known, sat by the fire dicing, ignoring it all. They had no interest in Caal’s hobby, and no disapproval. They were risking their lives, going into Yl’s kingdom, but Kesarh had ordered it.
“You wish you were untied, I expect. Like to kill me, I expect,” Caal said. As they approached Free Zakoris, his Zakorian slur was slinking back. He no longer called his slave Rarmon, but Raurm. “Like to kill me slowly, eh, Raurm, bit by bit.”
But Rarmon had no desire to kill his tormentor. He felt only the familiar gray hatred and aversion and that terrible acceptance of both, and of pain, in which Lyki had seemed to tutor him. He did not resist anymore, even in his thoughts. For you found that through abnegation, the beating always ended sooner.