“You requested an audience with me,” he said eventually, “you have it. I understand that you’re oppressed by some problem regarding Raldnor Am Sar.”
“Yes, my lord,” one spoke. The other kept silent, staring at the ground.
“If this is so, why come to me? Should you not seek out the Dragon Lord himself?”
“Dragon Lord!” The man looked ready to spit but remembered where he was in time. “Your pardon, my lord, but I’d not have any doings with him.”
“If you’ve some charge, soldier, you should try the public prosecutor.”
“I thought the matter better brought to you, my lord. As the Lord Amrek is away.”
A cunning look revealed itself. This lout saw personal advantage in backing Kathaos against Amrek.
“Very well,” Kathaos said, “I will listen.”
“My lord, it’s dangerous for me to speak—”
“You should have thought of this earlier. Already you’ve said enough to give me the right to detain you. Proceed.”
“The quake,” the dragon said unexpectedly. There was a mixture of craft and superstition on his face. “The gods were angry. I think, I think I know why. I was with the Storm Lord’s garrison in Abissa, my lord. The Lowland muck still creeps in and out there—Rashek cares more for trade than a clean city . . .”
“Keep to the point, soldier. Your slanders are inept.”
“Pardon, my lord. I’ll be brief. There was a Lowland rat without a permit. He pulled a knife on me, but the damned Xarabians got it off him and swore he never had it. I remembered him after, went looking for him with Igos here. We got his girl, but King Amrek found out about it and took her off our hands—kept her too, I reckon, till he got tired of her. We never had a taste—”
“Are these sordid grievances all you have to tell me?”
The soldier muttered and said: “I had another look for the Lowlander after, my lord. Traced him to a Xarabian’s house—the Xarab said he wasn’t there, only his own brother with a fever. Couldn’t find a sniff of him then—thought he’d scuttled back to his cesspit in the Plains. But I’d know him again, my lord. So would Igos.”
“Indeed. And what has this to do with me?”
“He’s here, my lord. In Koramvis. He calls himself Raldnor of Sar.”
Kathaos’s expression did not for a moment alter. He said: “Such an accusation is as stupid as it is absurd.”
“Oh, no, my lord. I remember him. Same build, same looks—Vis blood somewhere. The Lowlander was missing a little finger on the left hand. And this Raldnor has pale eyes, my lord—that’s rare in a Vis. And easy to dye his hair. At first I wasn’t sure, but he’s been about a lot, since the King took him up. In the end, I was certain, and Igos, too. If the Storm Lord knew it—”
“So you came to me.”
“Your lordship took him on first—not knowing. And he maimed your Guard Lord—”
“Does anyone else know of this?”
“No, my lord, I swear—”
“Very well. The information may be useful to me. Go downstairs, the servant will show you. I’ll see you get a meal. And some form of monetary reward for your time.”
Kathaos’s servant took the grinning dragon and his sullen mate below, having recognized the brief sign his master had given him. The two would be drugged with their drink and then disposed of. They were not the first voluntary spies who had gone that way into the dark, and would not be greatly missed, for soldiers, even dragons, deserted all the time.
Kathaos sat locked in thought. He had killed from caution, for an extraordinary idea had come into his mind. He knew the story: the yellow-haired woman, Ashne’e, who slew her baby, and devoured it, so the rabble believed. In more sophisticated circles, the disappearance of the child had been laid at several doors—Amnorh the Councilor’s, Val Mala’s, even Orhn’s. Yet, if it had lived—
A yellow-eyed man, part Lowlander, part Vis—royal Vis—Rehdon’s blood. . . . How often that resemblance had troubled Kathaos. Could it be that here lay the missing piece of the puzzle?
Raldnor. Raldnor, Rehdon’s bastard by a Lowland witch.
Did he know it? No. Neither his actions nor his demeanor indicated knowledge.
Kathaos reflected upon the ancient law—that law which held that the last child conceived of the Monarch before his death was his heir. He visualized the throne of Dorthar. It had fascinated Kathaos, shining in the distance all his adult life. And now, here was the means of realizing the mirage—an insane yet feasible means, which would use Raldnor as its pivot.
“Even my father,” Kathaos thought, “consented to a regency.”
For the regency was the penultimate step toward the throne itself. And in the end, a King, tainted with Lowland blood, would be easy to be rid of.
12
The long soft sunset of the hot months rested on the mountains and the hills in chalks of red and lavender and gold. Raldnor rode the chariot above Koramvis, using the little-known tracks, the byways. But he was too skillful—the management of the vehicle did not take up all his mind. It left him free to think of her.
Amrek was expected in three days. Raldnor had not been near her since the day of the quake. He had seen her, as before, far off, a moving doll on strings. Sometimes, but not often, he felt the moth flicker of her mind in his, but rarely. She did not trust him among strangers, or else she did not trust herself. Sometimes in the dark he would feel her insubstantial presence close enough to touch. Even in these brief contacts, the speech of their minds had gone far beyond words, into those abstract yet specific concepts which are the soul of the brain.
And he was mad for her, and she for him. He knew this much. The Star tortured both of them. He took no women into his bed now, wanting none of them, only her. He seldom slept. He burned, as once before. “She has made me a Lowlander again,” he thought. She had been a virgin. It had not surprised him once he had so completely known all her life. She had never desired a man before him. Now her passion was as exclusive as his. Yet neither sought the other. They were hemmed in by codes—they, who were unique.
He had driven beyond the lake. The way grew treacherous, then impassable. He tethered the animals and began to walk. Some instinct drove him upward. The sun was almost down, a smudge of savage light on the mountain crests.
He came unexpectedly on a hovel and a wretched field. Behind it a preliminary flank stretched up toward the blackness of a cave mouth. He paused, staring up at it. He had heard of men drawn by the edge of a precipice to leap down into death. Something about the black hole of the cave drew him with a similar chilly compulsion.
A woman came suddenly out of the hut. She seemed to see him; she waved to him and hurried up. She moved in a coquettish way, but, coming close, he saw her dirt, her age and her pathetic idiocy.
“Would you like to come in the house?”
Finding him silent, she pulled down her dress in a dreadful and revolting parody of allure, and he saw the brilliant jewels about her neck. She must have stolen them. Nothing of the hovel or herself proclaimed any wealth and these violet gems—clearly she had no idea of what they could bring her.
“Where did you find your necklace?” he asked.
At once she clutched her throat.
“I have no necklace—no—no—none at all.”
He took half a pace toward her. She began to scream, and out from the hut burst a great brute of a man. As he raced up the slope, the woman caught at him, but he thrust her off and she fell headlong in the withered stubble.