She stood and gazed on him.
Something did then communicate itself, but the impetus of all the past days was not to be turned in a moment.
“I must speak to Rehger the Lydian,” Chacor said.
Her face went white, “I—they—told me he was here.” Chacor ended, not hearing what he said. He had just realized, after all, what she had been thinking.
In a few instants she lowered her eyes and moved to the table where she had laid the flowers.
“I’m so sorry, Chacor, but he isn’t here. Didn’t Jerish say, Rehger has lodgings near the Academy. If he isn’t with Master Vanek—”
“Elissi,” said Chacor.
She was arranging the flowers in the vase, with quiet steady hands.
“Of course, he does visit father. But father is voyaging.”
“Elissi—”
She paused, looked at him, shook her head as if to say, A silly mistake, no harm has been done.
It occurred to Chacor that, although the prospect of astoundingly surprising both Yennef Am Lan and Rehger Am Ly Dis had been his motive for charging into Moiyah at midday in a thunderstorm, perhaps it was not all the reason. Of course Jerish must have mentioned Rehger lived by the Academy of Arms, where he still took Swordsman’s exercise. Chacor now seemed to recall this. And Vanek’s clerk had also said that Vanek himself would return in half an hour. Chacor might have waited. In fact, the clerk had not, had he, said Rehger was at Arn Yr’s house at all. He had said Chacor should ask there. Superfluous. Yet here, everything muddled, Chacor had rushed.
Destiny had presented itself to Chacor on the Plains in the shape of Rehger’s father, arrived in accordance with a psychic prophesy now almost a year old. Destiny—or call it Anackire—did exist. Maybe he had always supposed so, or wanted it, that sense of being held, however lightly, in a vast cupped hand. Whatever you did, whatever befell you, it was possible at certain moments to cease floundering, to let go. To float, and to fall, through inner space.
There she poised above the flowers, in the shadow a figurine of silver.
Chacor said, “What I told you. That isn’t why I came here. Or, it was, but now is not. If I speak to your father, will he cast me through an upper window?”
“Speak about what?” said she. Her voice was colorless. Had she not felt the levinbolt strike the house?
“You. Isn’t it the custom here? To get permission of a girl’s father?”
She put down the flowers again but did not turn to him now.
“What are you saying, Chacor?”
What was he saying? Before, it was always, I’m dying for you, let me have you. It had even been, now and then, falsely, I love you. Before the billowy bed or the warm hillside accommodated them.
To keep himself in order, not to shame himself with sugary words he could not speak, he spoke instead the ancient marriage oath of a prince of Corhl.
“By the goddess, I will take and have you, now and all my days. You shall be mine as my own flesh is mine. As my necessary bones are mine, so needful you shall be to me. And I will spill my blood for you. I will come together with you to make the magic of lifegiving. The goddess is a woman. She hears what I say. Let me be no more a man if ever I deny these words.”
It was old, the oath, if not as old as the jungles and the swamps, old as the first speaking men who had known themselves Corrah’s. Chacor himself had heard his own father make the oath many times, marrying carelessly this woman and that. In the common mouth of Corhl, the words had become debased. But they remained the Words, and he had given them to her, to this pale girl of the Lowlands. And having said them, burning and proud, astonished and elated, irrevocably fixed now to the course, he added, “By the law of Corhl, I’ve married you, Elissi. But by the law of Moih we must be betrothed, I know. If your father lets me have you. Beautiful Elissi.”
She had waited for him to stop. Now, she picked up another flower and put it into the vase.
The storm was over, and the rain had slackened on the path outside. Chacor sobered. “At least,” he said, “say yes.”
“No,” said Elissi.
Months after, she assured him it was not feminine vengeance. The reverse had been so abrupt, she had not trusted him to know, she said. She had given him doubt’s benefit, in case he might at leisure repent. But in a way, which she did not refer to, it was also her insight. He was a warrior, Chacor, a hunter. The prey had been too readily caught, there was no duel. So she gave him one, a chase and a fight. She let him, now he was sure he wanted her, pursue and battle through the whole of Zastis. And to tangle matters further, there came that afternoon an alarm of Alisaarian pirates back up the coast, and a recall to the fort.
The business with Rehger and Yennef tallied with the rest. A deputy sent to the Amber Anklet on the correct evening either missed the Lan, or the Lan was not there.
It became an affair of, I will tell Rehger when the alert’s off and I catch up to the fellow. Then, alert, over, I’ll keep it to myself. Is anything so pat? Probably the likeness was imagined. For by then, thwarted by Elissi, the sense of destiny was wearing thin.
She consented before winter, when the sintal blooms were dropping with a fermenting perfume, making the fish tipsy in Arn’s tank. Arn, home from a successful trip, had already acquiesced. Rehger was nowhere to be found. And Yennef—he had been an hallucination, an excuse for allowing oneself to acknowledge love.
“Yes, I love you,” she said.
She put her arms about Chacor’s neck and he kissed her, kissed her, thinking there was nothing so sweet and alive and holy on the earth, for she had made him suffer long enough for that. Lovers who love are gods, poets said in Free Alisaar. “Of course,” she said. “That is Anackire.”
And thus Chacor found, despite himself, he had been married to Moih, to the Lowlands, to the Dream of the serpent goddess. A Moiyan wedding indeed.
15
Anackire’s Design
The Raiding Party marched up Amber Street to the thud of drums, clash of cymbals, and whirr of rattles, their torches flapping. All along the sunset avenues, the crowds of Moiyah applauded and donated them fortune, and commented that the bridegroom was a charmer.
Chacor, who had reached the city friendless and lacking occupation almost two years before, was now a captain of one hundred, and included two other captains and a major (Jerish) in his warlike wedding band. They were all barking with laughter and exchanging jests and, as tradition decreed, vowing to put Arn Yr’s house to the torch if he refused them. Caught up in the play, intent on his role, crazy to get his girl that wretched custom had also not allowed him near for seven days, the last thing on Chacor’s mind was Rehger, absently invited to the feast, or a man once met by the Dragon Gate.
The Amber Anklet Inn was busy, and through the open doors, in the courtyard, a host of drinkers saw the Raiding Party and came howling out, offering gratis cups of wine. This likewise was tradition, and while the young men fortified themselves the cries went up: “You make that ruffian give her over! Burn the house down if he won’t.” An inn girl ran to Chacor and kissed him, and when she drew back, he saw Yennef Am Lan standing five feet away, meeting his eyes, but not eagerly.
Chacor gave a louder bark. The Lan immediately shifted, as if to slip aside into the inn.
“Jerish,” said Chacor, “Baed, all of you, there’s a man there I asked to my wedding who wouldn’t come.”
“Must be a friend of her wicked father’s!” shouted Captain Baed, entering farther into things. “Get him!”
Yennef was not quick enough to elude a determined sortie of this kind, with the inn drinkers noisily assisting on all sides.
“Not go to his wedding? Thrash the felon!”
Yennef was brought to Chacor. Yennef was all smiles now.
“Well met again. Am I to understand you’re going to claim a bride, sergeant?”