“He is more than that,” said Talag, motionless. “Some men know exactly what they’re capable of, and set out to achieve it. They have no pretense, because they need none. They choose, and they act. Other men detect this quality in them and want to take shelter in its certainty, its safety. Naturally they find themselves following such men, obeying them willingly. It is the same instinct that makes one hurry to leave a bog for solid ground.”
Taliktrum gave him a sharp look. “Those who believe in me-and it is most of them, you know-believe in me totally. Saturyk has observed them. They stay up late in the night, discussing my chance utterances, trying to catch glimpses of our destiny. It is almost frightening.”
“It is that,” agreed Talag. “And here is something worse. Those who do not believe in you, like Ensyl-they dismiss you utterly, as a weakling and a fraud.”
“I do not like the way they look at me,” said Taliktrum.
“To like or dislike-what is that?” snapped Talag. “Pay less attention to your likes, and more to the content of those looks. Tell me, prophet, what is behind them?”
Taliktrum looked at his hands. “Need,” he said at last.
“That is correct,” said Talag, “need. They believe in He-Who-Sees because they are afraid of their own blindness. Afraid of what may be coming for the clan, in that future they cannot see.”
“Father,” said Taliktrum suddenly, “the hostages are not our only security, are they?”
Talag had been lifting his glass; now he set it slowly on the table.
“If the worst should happen-if we should lose them all-you have another plan, do you not? Something to fall back on as a last resort?”
The old man looked at his son in silence. At last he said, “Would you follow any fool this long if he did not have such a plan?”
“Then why haven’t you shared it with me? You nearly took the secret to your grave!”
Talag just stared at him, unsmiling.
“Do the elders know?” asked Taliktrum.
“Several,” said Talag, nodding, “and chosen others. Ten in all.”
“But I should know as well!”
“Taliktrum,” said his father, “has it occurred to you that if we lose the hostages, the first result may well be your torture? Rose will take you to the galley and jam your leg into Teggatz’s meat grinder, and ask you questions designed to make it easier to kill us all. There are some answers it is better for a commander to be unable to provide. Do not concern yourself with our move of last resort. Devote your energies to seeing that we never need to make it.”
Taliktrum stared at his father, struggling to be still. At last with an anxious twitch he rushed to Talag and leaned close to him, gripping his chair.
“I would follow you again,” he said. “Resume your command, my lord! You need not go out scouting as before. We can do that. You can lead us from right here, until you’re fully yourself again. Just think how the people would rally to you! Their divisions would vanish like a puff of smoke.”
Talag sipped his wine. Then he rose, forcing his son back a step. He stood almost a head taller than Taliktrum. His eyes shone with anger and disgust.
“Would they?” he said. “After I endorsed this ugly cult you’ve built around yourself? Though it profanes the creed that has preserved us for centuries, that no one life must ever be exalted above the needs of the clan? I escape the rats and find my house in ruins, my people so frightened and confused that they would believe in anything-would have ended up kneeling before Mugstur himself, if matters had gone much further. You think I can lead, having declared that I subscribe to this rubbish, that your vision is my own? ‘Ah, but that was yesterday, men of Ixphir House. Today it is not the prophet’s word but Lord Talag’s you must accept. Or some muddled combination of the two.’ No, Taliktrum. You wanted command. You ached for it like a drunkard for his wine. Now it is yours, and you must keep it.”
“I did not always want it,” said Taliktrum, almost pleading. “There was a time before all this, before you and Dri began my training. My flutes, Father, do you recall how well I-”
Talag dashed wine in the face of his son.
“Find the traitor and punish him,” he said. “There was a childhood for each of us. It’s dead and gone, and I will speak of it no further.”
In the Jaws of Masalym
24 Ilbrin 941
Hunger, thirst, loss of blood: such was Dr. Rain’s diagnosis. Fortunately the bleeding proved easy to control; the prince’s wounds were ugly but not deep. A cabin was readied with lightning speed, the bed salvaged from the ample store of first-class wreckage, a new mattress stitched and stuffed, a coal stove mounted on the floor and its chimney pipe routed out through the porthole. “I’m not cold,” the prince mumbled, waking briefly, but Rose took no more chances. He brought his own feather pillows for the invalid, and plumped them as the prince was carried in. Thasha watched his efforts with grim amusement. The captain didn’t mean to be executed at their first port of call.
But was the man truly who he claimed? The other two dlomu certainly thought so. Ibjen said he knew the prince’s face from coins, and even Bolutu declared that he recognized the features of the ruling family.
Olik did wake again, heavy-lidded and weak, but only long enough to seize the captain’s arm and speak a warning. “Hug the shore, as tightly as you dare. That will keep you out of the rip tide. And you must also manufacture a flag in great haste-a leopard leaping a red sun, both on black-or the Masalym cliff batteries will rain down enough iron to sink this ship by weight alone.”
“That is your banner… Sire?” asked Rose.
Olik nodded wearily. “And when you pass safe under those guns, perhaps you will consider yourself repaid for the Karyskans’ assault. Go to Masalym, Captain. Only there can you safely repair your ship. Now, I think-”
He plummeted again into sleep. This time it was profound, and Rose ordered the cabin off-limits to all save Fulbreech and Rain.
About the time of the prince’s collapse a great smoke began to rise in the south. It spread quickly (or they were swept quickly toward it), low and black and boiling over land and water. Beneath the lid of smoke the dark hulks, the weird shimmer of the armada came and went, licked now and then by flashes of fire. Thasha aimed her father’s telescope at the melee. It was still too distant-fortunately-for her to make out individual ships, but even blurred and indistinct the scene was terrifying. Wood and stone, steel and serpent-flesh, water and city and ships: they were all in collision, blending and bleeding together in a haze of fire. Nandirag: that was what Prince Olik had called the city. What would it be called after today, and who would be left to name it?
By nightfall the Chathrand had drawn within a league of the shore. From this distance one could see the effects of the rip tide with the naked eye: a powerful leeway, a slippage, as though the ship were a man walking across a rug while a dozen hands pulled it sideways. How far did it carry us? wondered Thasha, studying the shore through her father’s telescope. How long before it sweeps us right into the fray?
Nearer to the Chathrand, the coast was a line of high, rocky hills, silver-gray and crevassed like the hide of an elephant, crowned with shaggy meadowlands. In the last minutes of daylight Thasha saw dark boulders and sharp solitary trees, a wall of fieldstones that might have marked some pasture’s edge, and here and there an immense clinging vine dangling garlands of fire-red flowers over the sea. Among the flowers, winged creatures, tiny birds or great insects or something else altogether, rose and settled in clouds.
Darkness was falling when they cleared the rip tide. It was unmistakable: a line of churning water and disordered waves, a sudden heaving swell to starboard, a rise in the apparent wind. A scramble ensued: Rose actually spread sail, driving them another half-league shoreward in a matter of minutes. Then he brought the ship about to the north and ordered nearly all the canvas taken in. Until dawn they would creep northward, following a narrow, safe path between the current and the cliffs.