It was all so similar, the dark sunlight, the thick sweating vegetation—breached less and less by squat hutments, barren fields—the rivers and the forest paths where he and the guard and Caal himself worked with knives to get through; even the tortures were similar. Rarmon had long lost track of time. He was aware only that winter must have the Middle Lands and the east. Perhaps they had been two months traveling.
Then there began to be burned clearings in the jungle, wooden towers with guards, river fords patrolled, and narrow dirt roads that were passable. Watchwords came to be needed. The men who demanded them were black or blackly brazen, mostly blow-sculpted of feature and thin-lipped. Caal’s party was approaching the outskirts of Free Zakoris.
Yl son of Igur had got his kingship in the usual Zakorian way, fighting with Igur’s other eldest sons. Yl won the contest by breaking his brothers’ backs. He had taken three hundred wives to his throne with him, and crowned his first queen for slitting the throat, while heavy with his child, of a swamp leopard. So Zakoris had been, and still was, here in the northwest.
When Hanassor had capitulated to Sorm of Vardath, Yl, with some nine thousand men, their women and brats trailing after, had pushed a way through Zakorian swamplands and over the low mountains that bordered southern Thaddra, down into the jungles beyond. He lost three thousand men as they went, in rear-guard battles against Sorm’s harrying troops, or merely devoured by swamp fever or the treacherous variety of landscape. Countless women and children perished, too. In accordance with Zakorian ideology, the sick and the weak were sloughed from their flight.
Thaddra was a lawless land. For centuries she had paid lip service to Dorthar and to Zakoris. What had kept her secure was her lack of riches; she had nothing to offer an invader. Now, however, she acquired other values. The host of petty kings she supported here were too small and too parochial to oppose Yl.
He annexed the coastal region and the great forests adjacent, planning for the future: Timber, and oceanic access to the shores of Dorthar and those lands farther east and south. Zakoris had always been a country of ships. Naval war and piracy were her heritage; the latter had, even in peace, continued.
Between building their galleys and raiding in all directions for things they lacked and for slaves to man the oars, they lay with their women and their slave women and got sons. Every man of Free Zakoris was to fight. From ten years of age they were schooled to it. The daughters they produced had also a task, which was to bear more sons. There were no warrior women now, or women to serve the ships. They were precious vessels, now. In Zakorian tradition, homosexuality, which denied increase, was rewarded by a multitude of appalling punishments. In Free Zakoris currently, the crippled, unless they could prove some use, were slain, and unhealthy babies left in the jungle for wild beasts to cat. Barren women were flogged at the fire-altars of Zarduk, to appease him, until life left them with the blood. But before each major enterprise they would burn alive for him a perfect boy, to show they were in earnest.
The heart of Zakoris-In-Thaddra was a city of wood and stones and mud-brick, westward on the north coast. Ylmeshd had none of the stark grandeur of Hanassor. It stood above the jungle forest, on a sunset smeared with smokes. Beyond, a second forest of spars lay for miles across Ylmeshd’s three deep-water bays, the dying sun crucified on their points.
Caal retrieved the garments of a Dortharian prince from the baggage and Rarmon was requested to put them on, for their entry into Ylmeshd. This necessitated removal of the leg-irons, but escape was out of the question. Rarmon made no attempt at it. Dressed, the irons were fastened on again, the finishing sartorial touch.
Torches burned on the gate-arch which, like the wall, was of piled stones mortared by clay. Whole trees made the gate itself.
Save for its size, Ylmeshd was not like a city. Hovels leaned on hovels like cells in an ant-hill. Hordes of soldiers marched to and fro, in hardened leather—mail was scarce. Forges rang and glared at every intersection. There seemed to be no women out of doors, no children, though babies cried behind hide-curtained doorways.
Acting guide, Caal had called the attention of the two Karmians to a temple of Zarduk and another of Rom, the sea god. Both were no more than caves in the headland, closed by massive doors. The palace dominated on a rocky rise, darkness and sea behind it. It had a stone tower, and stone walls like the city. There was no break in this wall; a ladder was lowered for them to climb once the guards on the wall-top acknowledged their business.
The palace flew the banners of Old Zakoris, the Double Moon and Dragon. But before the entry there was a wooden pole and atop it a leopard of black metal, crudely shaped in the posture of springing: Symbol of the new regime. It rattled dryly in a wind from the sea.
Inside, the palace was dark and guttering from isolated torches. They entered the King’s hall. Wooden trunks, uncarved, held the wooden roof. The floor was dirt flung with skins.
At the far end was a dais with a great ebony chair they said Yl had had brought on his flight from Hanassor. Possibly, the statue had been brought, too. Rarmon had glimpsed a version of the fire god in Ommos, and this was substantially the same. The idol had no body, but was a formless log surmounted by a snarling convulsed face—a mask that could be interpreted as rage, orgasm, or agony. The open belly leaped with red fire. Its energy, and a smell of roasting pelt, indicated some sacrifice had taken place not long ago.
They waited until Yl Am Zakoris came in behind the ebony throne, and down the steps.
For a Zakorian, he was light, bronze-skinned, but he had the threadlike lips and the twisted flattened nose, through the righthand nostril of which a golden chain passed to link a zircon in his right ear. He was a heavy man, ugly and aging, but not tired, and not strengthless. He grinned. It dazzled. His teeth were full of gems.
There was a shadowy group of men behind him. Even in the ill-light you could just see, one shadow was not quite like the rest.
Caal, now all Zakorian, was on his face. The two Karmians kneeled. Rarmon stood. No one had thought to push him down. When the guards who had come in with them took hold of him to do so, Yl called, “No, let him stay as he is. Let me look at him. Is this a king’s son? Ralnar, the scum of the Serpent Woman.” And Yl spat on the floor.
He came slowly to look. He was tall, but no taller than Rarmon. Raldnor, the scum of the Serpent Woman, had given his height, at least, to his sons.
“Do you know,” said Yl to Rarmon, “who sent you here?”
Rarmon said, “I was informed, Kesarh Am Karmiss.”
“Yes. The message I got informed me also, it was Kesr. A friendship token, before we crush Dorthar between us. And I was told you could supply Free Zakoris with the battle plans of your King. The one on the floor there,” Yl said confidentially, indicating the prostrate Caal, “will only have been allowed to learn so much. But you. You were privy to the Storm Lord’s councils, to his heart. If you’re his brother, as Kesr says to me in his letters you are.” Yl stood breathing in his face. Presently Yl said, “I suppose we’ll have to use our Zakorian arts on you, to make you render the strategies of Dorthar?”
“Not at all,” Rarmon said. “I’ll tell you anything. The Storm Lord will know quite well where I’ve gone or been taken, and will alter his military gambits accordingly. Anything from me will therefore be useless.”
In the shadowy group up by the stair, the unlike shadow laughed.
“Yes,” Yl said. “Come here, Kathus. Come and see, too. You knew the Lowland Accursed. Is this his work?”