In the way of the ancient palaces of Vis, the Council Hall at Zaddath burrowed into the ground. Beneath the upper rooms, with their ledgers, clerks, formalities, and clandestine late sessions, corridors descended into the pit of a dry river-course. Down there, even the insect chorus did not sound. There were other noises, sometimes.
The cell was not cramped, lit by a pair of clay lamps, and with a brazier even, against damp or cold. A clean pallet lay along one wall. The jailer, having detailed the room’s appointments, vowed to bring kindling, oil and food, at logical hours. Wine could also be purchased, even women. “Don’t get low, sir,” said the jailer. “I’ve never known any man to be left here more than six months.” Rehger seated himself, on the pallet, to wait.
He thought, in flowing, sequential degrees, of the passages of experience which had brought him here. The weave of the cloth, a tapestry of chariots and swords, or shouting crowds, of fire bursting from water and metal from its sheath—and the powder of marble. At the hem, in Iscaian dusk, his faceless mother. Through it all a fragile thread recurring, white as the center of the lamp-flames.
Remember me sometimes. This the Amanackire had written to him, before the city perished.
Alive or dead, she drew him on. He remembered. He remembered her.
And, as he was doing this, another man came to the cell’s door and stared in by the grating.
An amber-colored Shansarian eye saw, in the filmy light, the seated statue of a king musing, done in gold-washed bronze.
The Shansarian snapped his fingers, and the jailer made him free of Rehger’s cell.
Rehger did not get to his feet, and thus became a king giving audience from a couch. Plainly, he was not fraught. Not doubting or anxious at himself. Nothing could be done to him, got from him. Besides, he was honest. He had said it all.
The Shansarian prince looked down on the seated king.
“So the Fire Ride stays fresh for you, too? I should have come back, the next year, and beaten you, if your city had stood.”
“Perhaps.”
“Above, in that chamber,” said the Shansarian, “you saw a conclave of allies, who distrust each other and all things. They summoned me from the province of Alisaar. I told them what I’d learned, the famous tale. Will you be told it, too?”
“I came here for that purpose.”
“Expect no embellishment. I’m not a paid spy of Vardath, like their Dortharian kiss-foot, Galutiyh. I worship the goddess. My land over the oceans was the first to swear allegiance to brotherhood with Raldnor, and the Lowlands. (Vathcri claims that. They cheat. It was Shansar.) Now, the Lowlands have become two races, and one of these an enemy. The tale is this. Near the end of the months of the scarlet star, a girl of the Amanackire traveled up through the Alisaarian north. She had two or three servants, who served her as the white ones are always served. A lordling of the Shansarian province who saw her on the street, recalled her beauty from Saardsinmey, where he had gone to attend to some affairs. He sent politely to her house to ask if she was the same lady, and if so, to congratulate her on leaving the city before the disaster, as he had done. The message was returned that she had witnessed the disaster, or its effect. The prince then sought her doors. They shut. Who aggravate the Amanackire? He came away.”
“You were this prince?” said Rehger.
The Shansarian made a flaunting gesture. “I. Kuzarl Am Shansar.”
“You’d met her in Saardsinmey.”
“Beheld her, after the chariots. She was by then yours. Or so it was said.”
“But you saw her, nevertheless, frequently and closely enough, to pick her out this second time, in the north.”
“Do I swear to that? The woman on the street went veiled. Yet, you’ll know, with a woman one fancies ... the carriage of her head, the movement of her frame as she walks, linger in the mind.”
Rehger waited. Kuzarl Am Shansar studied him, and said at length, “Have you missed that she boasted to me? When she sent me a written message to declare she had survived.”
“Not missed.”
“She boasted also before you of the prowess of her people? And that they would bring down a proud city of the black races, to make an example of it?”
Rehger did not reply. In his mind, a hawk fell, and Aztira kneeled and wept in hubris and horror. Not only her people, herself: She also had been divided. From that impetus, it had seemed to him, she had—this cunning sorceress—given herself to a murderer.
“The wild tales now spread like weeds all over Alisaar and the province,” said Kuzarl. “Perhaps at her instigation. A woman of Saardsinmey had plotted to slay her, done it, seen her in her tomb. After the quake and the wave the Amanackire was reborn, in her own body, which healed of death by her magic.”
“The Lowlanders believe life is inextinguishable.”
“Yet not the flesh, which corrupts. There are legends in Shansar, of heroes who re-entered their own corpses in time of need. Raldnor is supposed to have done this during the un-war with the Zakors.”
One of the clay lamps guttered suddenly and turned red.
As if at some signal, the Shansarian seated himself upon the floor opposite to Rehger.
“Now ril reveal the second story. There’s a marvelous city in Thaddra. Or beyond Thaddra, in the forests farthest to the west. Too far, too lost a land even for the Free Zakors to covet. The Amanackire have built the place. Partly by witchcraft, also by the labor of Vis slaves.”
“And who has visited this city?”
“None, maybe. Whispers wend along the rivers. Dorthar says: A makebelieve. Rarnammon’s son is a coward and a libertine. For his personal blazon he has a dragon embracing or struggling with a snake. He will sire geese. Still, he pays hounds like Galut to snuff about. But Galut finds the Vis can only vie with each other for crumbs, and the Lowlands are kept blind, or they hide their eyes. No one has seen the city of the Amanackire—save they themselves.”
“She traveled westward?”
“It’s said so. She was gone like a white smoke. Yet all Var-Zakoris has the tale now, of a resurrected sorceress. In some of the Zakor villages, out in the woods, you come on shrines to her. There’s a new plan. To send men to the west, a doomed mission. The forests are impenetrable. The heart of Thaddra is the land of losings. Even gods and heroes vanish into it forever. The westernmost jungles are deeper than the deepest seas. Who enters needs wings. But then, the Amanackire fly,” Kuzarl said. “Did she inform you?”
The weak lamp faded. The other also, but with no preface, went out.
In the dark, the Shansarian said, “Spirits are eavesdropping. Or else you have Power. Yes, I credit you do. In the race on the cliff, I felt that.”
“The chariots have their own life. Any professional racer would tell you.”
“That’s Power. But you Vis send it always outward. Your gods are sorry but dangerous things, you put such being into them.” Kuzarl leaned forward. His voice was a murmur. “The Vardians might kill you. Such is their fright.”
“I was warned of it.”
“Yet came here? Then she’s called you. At liberty, would you go now to the city—the perhaps-city, in the west?”
Rehger said, after a moment, “If a sorceress called me, presumably I’d have no choice.” Then he said, “But what shall I owe you?”
There came the sound of Kuzarl rising, notified by the clink of the jewelry on his wrists and belt.
“There was a second, when we raced the chariots together. Did you think: Brothers who duel for their birthright.”
“Yes.”
“You have the mind-speech, too. Only a touch. Not enough to send your Vis brain mad. We’re dealing now in the dark. Don’t haggle, Rehger Am Ly Dis. Some things must be. Sorbel’s in a lather up above. But the Warden I’ll persuade. You and I. We’ll journey west.”
The second lamp, which had died, quivered and gave up a hiss of light.