She walked quickly toward him out of the stone where she could not be, all the time getting larger. Her pale hair fluttered as she walked, and the edge of her dress at her ankles.
All at once, she was only a few feet from him, and she held out to him a dish which was filled with water.
She was not tall, a young girl, sixteen, seventeen years old. Her face was grave. Her eyes were suns. She—but she shook her head at him, and lifted the bowl higher.
He was aware of the dirt and fetor, as if she were really there to brave it. He smiled at her, shaking his head in turn. It would be useless to drink the sweet water which was a mirage. But she would not go, and she went on holding up the dish to him. Her arms must ache. Reluctantly, he lowered his head toward the dish; there was room to do this since the wall had given way. Then the water was against his mouth, cool, tangy, tasting as it did from the little falls in the hills above Istris. Chiding himself, he drank. He felt it go down, pure and bright, cleansing him. The dish was empty. He was no longer thirsty, but that had happened before. . . .
“Rarnammon,” said Kesarh’s daughter, Ankabek’s looked-for child.
“I know,” he said, “but you’re only nine years old.”
“No,” she said. “Remember how long I lay in Astari’s womb, and then how long I waited, of the world, but not in the world, to come to term in the womb of Val Nardia. I’m older than you, Rarnammon.”
“Nine,” he said, “and not even here.”
“Here, I am the symbol of your will. You have the power in you to survive all this, but you’ve given the power my shape. As others give the power within them the form of Anackire. But it might be another god. Any that they credit—if the Power is there to raise that god.”
“You’re saying gods are the creatures of men?”
“No. That men themselves are gods. But, fearing their own greatness, they send it from them to a distance, and must give it other names.”
He stood in a chimney of torture in Free Zakoris, waiting to die, and spoke philosophy with a sprite he had imagined, nor did they speak in words. But her eyes—flame and sea and light and shadow, and all things, and Nothing.
“Ashni,” he said.
“I am here.”
He did not argue any more.
“What now?”
“Let go,” she said. “Trust yourself.”
“Yes,” he said. He shut his eyes to rest them, and continued to see her, as he had known he must, behind the lids. “But then.”
“Then. You will bring yourself to yourself again, at the proper hour.”
“Is there any more water?” he asked, not because he needed it. But she was gone.
He opened his eyes. The walls of the chimney were sheer and closed. The stench of waste and illness and fear were thick. But he had no thirst. He was calm. He considered.
Raldnor and Astaris. They had passed from the world into a psychic inferno, blazing, going out. The child in the womb had not been part of that, or it had not wished to be.
Anackire.
Anackire. The island of Ankabek had known. Looking, not for another child in the required image—for the same child.
What was that phrase Berinda had used, in her cot on the hill? “When,” had said her daughter, “did you find me again?” “When my womb swelled.” “But where had I been till then?” “Riding the air,” Berinda said. Riding the air. The third child of Raldnor Am Anackire had not been born from Astaris’ womb. It had been—freed. And then, the spirit of the child had lingered, riding the air, in some dimension of the earth and not of the earth. Until there came about a correct conjunction of race and flesh and of the physical soul—two who were also one.
He could see this, since the restraints of normalcy were gone.
And, what now? he had asked. She had answered explicitly.
He was not thinking of her as a woman, for he would not have trusted a woman. He did not even think that she was, peculiarly, his sister.
The water of illusion or magic had gifted his throat sufficient moisture that it could cry out. At first it was hard to give himself up. The roarings were acted. But even as he heard the guards above begin to stir and shout back at him, he found the courage to let the rational man leave him and the madness which was the god come in.
And light filled his head like a sun.
“Your Alisaarian potions, perhaps, were too rough,” said Yl.
“A purge. Nothing else.” Kathus did not show his exasperation. But Yl, like a beast, could nose such things. “However, lord King, he’ll still do for the display I recommended.”
“Led about Ylmeshd, to be pelted by stones.” Yl picked his jeweled teeth. “You hate him.”
“Not at all. I’m sorry his sanity snapped. I’d never have suspected—but it’s no sham. He’s been thoroughly tested, and the madness is a fact. I begin to suppose Kesarh understood the breaking-point rather than the lack of one.”
“Ah.” The hand that had picked the teeth settled on a bare-breasted concubine kneeling by Yl’s couch. “But he does not die here?”
“The longer he lives in wretchedness, the better an example he provides.”
Yl, his hand between the girl’s legs, said slyly, “And you don’t hate him? Or do you only hate the father, as Free Zakoris does?”
Kathus bowed and took his leave.
At the back of the palace, in an open yard, he could distinguish the awful sounds of the madman. The madness was proven. Weighted chains were needed now. Yl had postulated a scheme. Raurm could be sent to Yl’s pet Southern Road, the interminable track being burned and hacked through to Vardian Zakoris and Dorthar. Fettered in some cart, Raldnor’s son could howl above the slaves, frightening them to nicer efforts. As Yl suggested all this, he watched his Counselor’s face with lazy eagerness: You do not hate him? How much do you not hate him?
Kathus hesitated, listening to the sounds of the madman. Amrek had been unrewarding. Raldnor had cheated Kathus over and over. Now Rarmon cheated him. Only Raldanash was left.
Hate? He did not deign to hate his fellow men. His tastes were refined. But as he had grown older it had set into his bones, partly ignored and always unacknowledged, a sure hatred of this endlessly unfinished game.
18
In the cold months, dawn could walk to Istris over ice in her bay. But under the white mask, the city’s pulse beat loudly; she was not asleep. The snow, in Kesarh’s era, was always a time of refurbishing and preparation. There was nervousness this year, too.
The rabble could be turned like a weather-cock, by gossip, by oratory, or by a sudden dispensation of largesse. The merchant classes could be bribed. The upper echelons could be bribed. But there were the fools, the overly avaricious, and the honorable men who foresaw, in this obscure tack of the Lily toward Zakoris, something to make them shudder. It was only a rumor beyond the palace, for genuine rumor did circulate in the capital along with the paid sort. But even ignorance knew that, ally or enemy, when this spring unlocked the eastern seas, the whole body and ego of the Black Leopard would ride them.
The dispatches from Lan, expectedly, were late. Probably nothing would now get through till the thaw, for Raldnor Am Ioli was proving a lax, ill-organized governor.
To make Raldnor the figurehead of the annexing of Lan and Elyr had served a dual purpose. The eastern lands were to be shown the whip, first. Raldnor at least would do that. Indeed, his dealings had been as harsh, unjust and haphazard as predicted. Presently, a more lenient guardian could be introduced. The conquered would respond, appeased—and lulled—by soothing ointment on the wounds.