When Karis came down to announce nightfall, I was still there. That first relapse had proved neither of the others was capable of reaching, let alone calming him. I lost count of the times I said, “It’s all right. I’m here.” I still feel his fingers, a red-hot manacle, clamped with terror’s force as he fought whatever had invaded his mind this time. One of us only had to move to make him go rigid, then start to shake instead of merely shivering.
The fever was still there too. We had tried cooling the braziers, fanning, drenching him, pouring water down his neck in bottlefuls, then in desperation we reefed blanket and cloak away, but he shivered so frightfully I feared it would exhaust him altogether. I had sent Amver, Sivar, Karis, Krem, Zyr, Wenver for smith’s tools, only to have them return in empty-handed bafflement. After his third attempt, Sivar paused by me, and at last asked, “Captain . . . what is it?”
By then I was past considering the risk if he ran shy, if they all deserted me. “The Lady,” I said flatly. “That’s what it is.”
He put his knuckles to his mouth like a frightened child. Then, like me, he swallowed hard. Then he said with false bravado, “Guess I’m already in no-man’s-land. Gimme that fan, Krem. You couldn’t raise a breeze on a windy day.”
I did get a message to Evis, deputizing him as commander. He came down at some stage. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you wanted to keep out of this.”
He eyed me, crouched in the straw, Beryx twisted up against my knees with a stranglehold on my wrist as he wrestled whatever had been conjured by a strange voice. “Looks,” he said wryly, “like I’m in whether I want or not.” He took the water-bottle. “This needs filling.” And vanished up the stairs.
Around second night watch the delirium grew patchy, leaving him conscious for five minutes at a time. In one such spell he said in that thready voice, “You’d best go home, Alkir. While you can. Math knows what’s coming next.”
My heart sank. Then I said, “Very well.” I had purposes of my own to pursue.
* * * * *
A lamp burnt low in the hall. In the living room Callissa sat red-eyed over her sewing. She did not run to welcome me. Just said dully, “You’re all right. I kept some supper. . . .”
I ate it, reflecting there was need of strength. Then I said, “Callissa . . . I want to ask a favor of you.”
Her eyes were full of fear. I said, “We can’t get a physician. And I’m only a field-butcher. I need help.”
She put the needle by. Her look grew almost accusatory.
“If we weren’t allowed down there. . . .” I did not want to pursue where that thought led. “If he was meant to die, none of us could get near him. So he might live—if he were only well enough nursed.”
She bit back words. I said, “You’re the only one I can ask.”
Her eyes went to the door. Returned. Sounding spent and listless she said, “I suppose Rema would mind the boys. What must I bring?”
Her entrance routed Sivar and Amver outright. Karis tried to don four garments at once, Zyr dropped the water-bottle by Beryx’s head, and Beryx himself wound his chains in a cocoon it took five minutes to undo. By then she had absorbed the impact of our sick-room, and like any woman in authority was throwing her weight around.
“Alkir, I want those clothes off. You, fetch this honey you should have used. You, tear this sheet for poultices. You, get some more water. Phew!” She took the fan and began energetically stirring fetid air. “Come on, Alkir. Never mind the fever. The wound.”
Detaching two blankets, I eyed his over-robe. “Cut it,” she ordered. Beneath was a buttoned, once-white shirt. “Pull that back,” my commander bade. Dragging it off his shoulders, I caught my breath. “Sit him up.” Then she also caught her breath.
The dingy yellow of scar-tissue covered his right side from waist to armpit, almost from spine to breastbone, pitted with cavities I knew meant a surgeon seeking splinters after the main wound closed, gnarled and knotted where flesh had healed and bones knit awry. One rib in the middle could never have knit. It was severed by the biggest pit of all, a livid plum-red crater deep in swollen flesh, deep enough to plumb beyond the bone. I have had broken ribs. With such inflammation, every breath must have been agony.
Callissa recovered first. She bent closer, reaching carefully; but not even fever, delirium and exhaustion could erase the reflexes that wound had taught. Her hand was six inches away when his midriff and belly muscles stiffened. The rib cage shrank, his face clenched. Callissa withdrew, saying, “I’ll wait till the poultice goes on.”
We put one poultice on. Another. A third. Upstairs, night was cooling into dawn. Callissa’s face had grown sharp. When we lifted the fourth one she looked from the wound, more inflamed than ever, to his rigid face, and said, “We’re paining him for nothing. We’d best stop.”
“Then what,” I asked rather desperately, “are we going to do?”
My words must have touched some deep chord, for Beryx opened his eyes. Glazed, deep-sunken, colorless, they wandered over our faces. Reached Callissa’s. His muscles twitched, he tried to sit up.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am.” His voice was thick, vague, but full of open dread. “I am going. I—it was just for a moment.” He strove to get a hand under him, the wound pinched, he caught his breath. “. . . know this is a respectable house. But I don’t have plague. I’m not drunk.” His head must have spun, he tried to clasp it and prop himself and ended in a heap with a silent gasp as the wound quite winded him. In despair, he dragged the good arm over his head. The words came from under it. “Only a wound . . . promise. If you could wait . . . just a moment more.”
Over him Callissa’s eyes met mine. My feelings must have been plain, for she ducked her head. Wondering savagely what woman had thrown him out of her “respectable house,” I took him by the shoulder and said as gently as I could, “You don’t have to go. You don’t have to go anywhere.”
After a while he relaxed, or at least lay loose in the chains. I said rather wildly, “That’s something we can do. I’m going for that key.”
* * * * *
I set out up the hill, I clearly remember that. The pure light of false dawn on the first three streets, early workers going by, I saw all that. I am not precisely sure where fact and perception diverge. The fact is that the sun rose to find me, empty-handed, back at the Treasury gate.
I tried again. I think I tried five times in all, before I gave in and went raving back downstairs, to find Beryx raving too.
To me it is fever’s most loathsome aspect, worse than the physical indignities, because it breaks the locks of the mind and breaches the last privacy, leaving you without so much as awareness’ censorship. Beryx was no exception. He tossed and turned and cried out at the wound’s stabs and tumbled his life out before us whether we would or no.
Some was incoherent. Some was unintelligible. Some was history. I caught names I knew, Th’Iahn, Lossian. But most centered round Everran, the dragon, his wife, and someone called Harran who had been involved with them. His wife’s name was Sellithar. Sometimes he called Callissa that, sometimes Thassal, sometimes he thought she was the innkeeper who had thrown him out sick. A woman of Everran. That was what had burnt it in. Sometimes he thought I was Harran, sometimes a certain Inyx who must have been the phalanx-commander, for Beryx had still not forgiven himself for letting the dragon massacre Inyx’s men. Sometimes he thought I was the dragon itself, and that was worst of all, for he confused Everran and Assharral and tried to bargain with me to save us from Everran’s fate.
Three days it went on. The wound was still swelling, big as an apple now, and Callissa wadded his armpit, for if his arm brushed the swelling he would scream uncontrollably. The watchers came and went, and gradually they assumed the look I knew I must be wearing. A grim, unresigned despair.
* * * * *
The third night he was still tossing, muttering, shivering, as he had when we covered him, cooled him, fanned him, tried to feed him broth, to speak to him. But words and movement were little more than intention now. Callissa sat on her heels over him a long time, her haggard, sharpened face a copy of his. Then she muttered, “It can’t be worse,” and looked up at me.
“Alkir.” Her tone scared me. I had heard commanders go into a lost battle sounding like that. “Boil water. A lot of it. Get some clean cloths. Send somebody for linseed oil and oatmeal, and find me a knife. A very sharp knife.”
I gulped. She snapped, sharper than her face, “I’ll draw it up with hot poultices. Then cut it.” Her voice assumed the common note of repressed despair. “It won’t stop the fever. But it’s all I can do.”
For the linseed oil and oatmeal I went myself, expecting to be turned back before I raided our own house. It felt alien, part of another life. I regained the vault to that sound most evocative of battle mornings, the whit! whit! whit! of someone whetting a knife.
Sivar’s dagger had been selected as the thinnest. Krem was watching a big pot on the brazier while Karis tore up cloths. Callissa mixed the meal and oil, directing us in curt, brittle sentences to drag the brazier closer. “He’ll kick,” she warned. We ended with me kneeling on his wrists, Sivar, the heaviest, clutching his ankles, and the rest twisted somehow in between.
Tight-lipped, Callissa took the cloths from Zyr. Plunged them in the boiling pot. Wrung them out, wrung her hands. Slapped one on Karis’ shield, turned the oil and oatmeal onto it, whipped the other atop, came swiftly across, and more swiftly pulled the steaming bundle tight over the tumor of the wound.
Given time, no doubt he would have kicked. Luckily for us all, he fainted instead. The first time, that is. And by the last he was too spent to struggle much. With open nausea Callissa hurled away the poultice, rapped at Amver, “Knife,” and knelt at his back, frowning thunderously, hand trembling as she positioned it for the stroke.
The blade shivered in the shaky light. Her brow came out in sweat, the frown became a grimace. I thought she had lost her nerve. But then she drew a long breath and slashed.
It was a good cut. Horizontal, plumb from the swelling’s forward edge to end plumb with the other side, dead center across the pit, with the rib to stop it going dangerously deep. I remarked all this later. At the time all I saw was a thick yellow jet that spurted up in the firelight before Beryx’s convulsion all but threw me off his wrists.
Callissa dropped the knife to fling her weight on his shoulders, Amver landed on his hip. When the brunt of it passed she panted, “Turn him . . . flat.”
It would have been easier to turn him inside out. Then she made us bend him to and fro till I thought we would break his back. But every twist sent another ooze of yellow matter into the straw and made her growl with relief, so I kept quiet. And at last one particularly noisome clot vomited something black and she fairly squeaked, “That’s it!”
Everyone but me deserted their posts. I knelt panting on Beryx’s wrists while she extricated it from the pus, gripping it in a scrap of cloth. Long as a thumb-joint, it was wickedly serrated, the blunt end jagged like a snapped arrowhead, coated in some secretion grainy as lizard-skin.
“That’s it.” She was hushed this time. “It must be . . . the dragon-sting.”
There was a pause filled only by the braziers and deep-drawn breaths. If we never saw a dragon, we had had an illustration of their powers. Now, here, tangible, was part of the thing itself.
* * * * *
After the cleaning up I went outside. It was second watch, almost midnight. Tramping across squeaky marble floors to the gate I looked down on Zyphryr Coryan, idyllic under a full-blown moon, tranquilly asleep. Only from the Morhyrne’s shoulder stared a single, unblinking light.
“He’s asleep,” Callissa greeted my return. I hugged her, starting to babble, and she cut me short. “The fever hasn’t changed.”
I recall feeling insulted, outraged, incredulous. “It must have!”
“It hasn’t.” Her hair was wet strings, her face sagged, she was almost trembling with fatigue. “I can’t help it.” Tears were very near the surface. “I’ve tried everything I know.”
He was doubled up under a blanket, motionless, but his face was a death-mask, and I needed no touch to feel he was still burning unquenchably as his own mirth. Around me was silence. Hope deferred is not so sickening as victory snatched from between your very hands.
I said stubbornly, “We’ll wait a while.”
I think I slept, for I was sitting in the straw when Sivar’s touch recalled me to a muted, “Sir? Morning watch.” His tone told the rest.
I stood up, looking to the roof as men do when earthly resorts fail. Where, I thought, is this Math? Or his own Sky-lords? Will nothing, nobody give us any help?
I turned to find Callissa at my elbow, a fanatic glare in her eyes.
“The witch. Fengthira.” He had raved of her as well. “She might be able to do something. She must!”
Looking at Beryx, I thought, This is surely a Must? Then I remembered.
“She’s in Hethria.” I was too tired to snap. “Too far.”
“Then think of something!” she nearly screamed at me. “Think!”
I rubbed a thumb over my brows. Something nagged in my mind’s depth. Thinking. Speaking. Lathare. Mindspeech. He had spoken to her from Assharral. But he was an aedr. We were not.
Callissa’s stare was a needle-point. “You have,” she said fiercely. “You’ve thought.” The others clustered behind her, tense and mute, but only she knew me well enough to read by expression alone.
“It won’t work,” I said. “He could speak to her. We can’t.”
“Oh, rot you, Alkir!” She stamped her foot, tears on her cheeks. “Try it! Try at least!”
Helplessly, I scanned the vault. “I don’t,” I said feebly, “know how. . . . What to say.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say!” She could not have been more passionate were it Zem or Zam’s life at stake. “Ask what we do, how we break the fever, will she come, anything! Just get through to her!”
My eyes returned to the roof. Then I shut them. “To speak you have to be taught.” Despairingly, I thought it, a forlorn signal into space: Fengthira, how do we break the fever? What do we use?
Amver shrieked and spun like a top, Beryx almost left the floor. Karis and Sivar fell writhing, clawing their ears, Callissa dropped as if heart-shot, the night burst open on a cacophony of screaming children, dogs, fowls, birds, horses, cattle, cats, the very city tottered, my head exploded and I had no perception of what might have been a very Sky-lord’s signal, only a residue of meaning as the aftermath resonated shatteringly in my skull: <SALGAR, THA DOLT!>
Groaning, gasping, praying, we picked ourselves up. My mouth had not shut before Callissa was shaking me, reeling drunkenly, babbling unmindful of all else.
“Salgar, she said! The trees down by the harbour, at Tyr Cletho, you know, you know! Alkir, wake up! The clethra bark, you know! You told me about using it in Phaxia! Oh, wake up, you great gawping clot!”
No doubt I woke. I must have, for later there was horse-sweat on my trousers and salt mud to the top of my boots. So I must have been to Tyr Cletho, the tiny inlet where no boats moor because of the knotted, ever-encroaching arches of the clethra roots which clamber out over the reeking mud under their mushrooms of olive-green foliage and slippery, splintery, mud-gray trunks. Clethras which are the only trees to grow in fresh water or salt, whose bark was accidentally found to be a swamp-fever cure during the last months of the war. Too late, for most of us.
I have an image of Callissa babbling to a breathless audience as she stews it on the brazier, the bitter reek that infiltrates the sweat and smoke and fever-rancid air. Of our first tussle with Beryx, when we tried to make him drink, and with the dregs of his strength he kept whispering, “Yeldtar. No,” and pulling his head away until Sivar held his nose, waited for the gasp and tipped the cupful down his throat. Which nearly ended it all when some found the windpipe as well.
At some time I see Evis enter with a face steeled to confront death, saying, “Second day-watch.” Remaining to watch, on tenterhooks with the rest. And then Callissa weeping quietly in my arms while Sivar and company hover grinning stupidly, patting her back, saying, “There, there,” and Beryx lies in the straw behind us, wraith-like and limp as ever, but with the first dew of sweat beading his skeletal face.
* * * * *
His recovery was nothing short of supernatural. Conscious that evening, eating like a young morval in two days, on his feet in a week, back to health long before we had regained normality. I thought it was his aedric will, for what he had survived would have killed a normal man. But when I knew him better I found I had been misled by his maiming, and the impression he gave of a big man past his flower of strength. If he was thin, he had been honed by the very arts which demanded such fearful physical exertion. The thinness of the triple-tempered sword-blade, which can dispense with mass.
After two days of behaving like a wildcat with a litter, Callissa calmly abandoned us, saying, “You won’t kill him now.” I rediscovered my troops. The watch dwindled to a night sentry and daily visitors, the bonds forged by crisis gradually relaxed. Only I was uneasily aware that, however we scattered, we had become a cadre of sedition in Assharral’s docile midst.
It did not keep me from the Treasury, if I waited my turn on watch. I remember that night he had shaved himself for the first time, and was ridiculously prideful over this small feat. When we settled down I asked one of the many questions simmering in my mind.
“Who was the real Fylghjos?”
His eyes stilled, midnight green. Presently he said, “An aedr. Of the Stiriand line. Th’Iahn’s time. One of the first followers of Math.”
When he did not continue, I said, “You thought I was him.”
His eyes went quite blank. No doubt it was pastsight, for he revived with a little grin.
“I was out of my mind, after all. And coming in without that surcoat, you looked the image of him.”
Not sure I relished that, I prodded, “How . . . why—”
“Did I say he was murdered? He was. Killed by raiders at Ker Stiriand’s gate. He made a tactical error. Sent his troops after raiders across the range, and another lot stormed his citadel. Why were the Heagians to blame?” I sensed an abridgement. “Because he believed in Math, he tried to protect others before himself. And Th’Iahn was the bringer of Math.”
“Oh.” More of that awesome accepted responsibility. “But why should I look like a—a Stiriand?”
“Coincidence, perhaps.” His manner told me he was withholding something. But before I could ask, he answered the rest in his old style.
“You didn’t remember bitter-bark because Moriana stopped you. More abuse of the Well. And for the same reason Fengthira couldn’t tell you till you asked. There’s a virtual Ruanbraxe over Assharral. We have to bawl to hear each other, and she had to bawl harder for you.” His eyes crinkled. “And she was a little—er—anxious. Which is why she deafened the whole town. You didn’t actually use Lathare. She was reading your thoughts. On stand-by, so to speak.” He grinned. “If your dignity’s sore at being called a dolt, be easy. She’s called me a lot worse.”
For the first time I grew curious about the being herself. “What is she like, this Fengthira?”
“Sounds short-tempered and has the patience of sand. Prefers animals to men, because men’s bungles tempt her too much. I know how she feels. That’s why she lives in Hethria.”
“And what does she look like?”
“Gray eyes. Gray hair. Face. . . .” He considered something and abandoned it. “Oh,” he said blandly. “If you meet her, you’ll know.”
He was a good convalescent. “Practice,” he told me. “I was hot-headed before, and I had a vile time paying for hotheadedness.” Nor did the continued confinement fret him. He spent hours absorbed in farsight, to confound me with remarks on parts of Zyphryr Coryan I never knew existed, let alone the rest of Assharral. Its races gave him unending delight. “All those peoples under the one roof.” When I thought uneasily of the future, he just quirked a brow. “Strategic offense, tactical defense. I’m here. She has to attack. All I need do is wait.”
She did not make him wait for long.
* * * * *
It was a high day, so the Guard turned out to help control the temple crowds. Having seen off the first reliefs I had set out to check the guard change at Ker Morrya when the court met me in the street.
They came with the usual fanfaronade, beadles with silver staves to clear the way, then the ensign-bearers’ huge black silk pennons almost sweeping the stones, the censers who swung perfumed smoke from silver bowls, the road-sweepers, the court-jesters, then the advance guard tricked out in their ridiculous regalia and sporting badges of office more ridiculous still. Warden of the Perfume. Keeper of the Soaps. Scullion-commander. Bath-master. Jewel-holder. Lord of the Plate. Ruler of the Cups. I noted a dull corselet among the puff-chested guards, rainbow heads amid the Lady’s escort of notables, Chamberlain, Mistress of the Maids, Steward in Chief, Holder of the Chair, Carver, First below the Throne. I saluted as the Lady herself approached.
She was in red again, a superb wine red in some fluent cloth that made a second skin down to her hips, then flared into a monstrous plume of train that needed six small pages to keep it from the dust. The thillians on her wrist and throat sparked brilliantly, but they were dull to the gold meteors in her eyes, and warm to the malice in her bell-cool voice.
“How timely, Captain.” She was smiling. “Now you can show off your handiwork.”
My throat dried. Dumbly I fell in as that curved finger bade, behind the potentates. Our destination I already knew.
The court made outcry at the dark, the tunnels, the filth and wet. There was much wielding of scent balls and shielding of sleeves and raising of skirts and shrieks at mention of rats. There was more surreptitious simpering and whispered mockery when they had crowded into the vault and formed a ring at a safe distance behind the braziers.
Beryx must have been very far away indeed. He had risen, but when the whole court had deployed and the Lady herself swayed into the forefront opposite him, his eyes were still quiescent, wells of tourmaline, bent on something far removed from her.
Her own eyes widened, slowly, black as the vault’s lightless upper dark. A tiny smile strung her lips. In that limpid voice she remarked, “Manners to match your palace, I see.”
The court giggled. Beryx’s eyes woke. Then he inclined his head. A royal courtesy, unburlesqued. Throwing the onus for chains, wet and rats straight back on her.
“And quite recovered too.”
He did not accept the false sacrifice and retort, No thanks to you! He did not poker up. He grinned openly and bypassed the attack with one quicksilver thrust. “This audience will have to hear what you mean.”
Her eyes gave a tiny flare. Cooled. She turned to the court.
“This,” she cooed, “is an aedr. A sort of magician. They have great powers.” One graceful hand swept the vault. “As you can see.” The court hurried to laugh. “You’ll have to excuse its looking rather like a . . . a . . .”— she studied Beryx with elaborate distaste—“sort of ragamuffin. Or is it a scarecrow?” Callissa had replaced his ruined clothes with a calico gown sewn up on him. Certainly, it was not elegant. “Perhaps a bear. Yes, I think it might be a tree-bear. It looks as if it should go on all fours. Only, of course, it doesn’t have four legs.” The court thought this hilarious. “And it’s rather ugly too. Not—quite—one’s taste in a pet, hmm, Klyra dear?”
This was a creature at her elbow, got up in strips of gold and ruby tinsel that revealed fishing net hose, and a headdress like a fairground guy. It tittered. I felt a hot ball of rage in my throat. After one swift glance at Beryx, the Lady pursued her assault.
“It comes from a place called Everran. Somewhere in the west. A little smaller than Axaira, I believe, and much more primitive. But we must allow for vulgarity over there. And once . . . once . . .”—the tone said, Would you believe it?—“it called itself a—king.”
But for face-paint the court would have laughed itself to tears. Those who could trust the costume-seams slapped their thighs, others held each other or their own ribs. The Lady’s silver peal overrode it all.
“And,” she called as they subsided, “it couldn’t even keep its little kingdom. You see, it’s barren, my dears.”
My teeth snapped together. I looked at Beryx, in dread.
He was leaning on the wall. He had folded his arms. I looked, and looked again, and then rubbed my eyes. For his eyes were dancing with what I incredulously realized was enjoyment, and his mouth had curved, a grin that widened as I looked.
“So,” the Lady proceeded, “it was expelled by a dragon. And it fled to Hethria. Into dudgeon, if not dungeon, you might say.”
My mouth opened in ungovernable rage. You lying bitch, I wanted to howl, you know, you know he killed the thing! My breath went in and a general’s bawl chopped it in my throat.
<Keep quiet!>
I fairly shot to attention. <Hold rank!> he rasped. I had just recognized mindspeech when the Lady began again.
“Hethria being a desert, it was quite apt. Barren to barren, you see.” They did. “It even found a mate. But our gethel grew restless. Though not for trees. It came to Assharral. It wanted—listen my dears—it wanted to see the sea!”
This time several of the more advanced sycophants had to be held off the floor. One actually rolled on it, to the great detriment of his balloon-shaped cloth-of-gold breeks.
“And when it arrived. . . .” The Lady elaborately wiped a tear from one perfect cheek. “Dears, do wait a moment, you haven’t heard the cream. When it arrived, do you know what it did? It fell in love—no, only wait a moment! It fell in love . . . give me the fan, Klyra. . . . And it wanted to marry—you’ll never imagine—It wanted to marry—me!”
I hoped those in need of smelling salts would choke on them. I memorized several faces for an alley some dark night. I solaced myself by noting how like a zoo they looked. A bedlamite, boot-licking zoo. I acknowledged, with chagrin, the masterly way she had converted a mortal insult to a prime weapon of offense. Do something! I raged at Beryx. Say something! Finally, with shame and reluctance, I looked at him.
The grin had fairly split his face. He might have been handed a whole battle on a plate. When the uproar sank to speaking level he said with quite fiendish glee, “Do go on . . . dear.”
For one glorious moment I thought she would lose control. A red spot rose on each cheek, furnaces burnt in her eyes. Then she turned back to the hiccupping crowd.
“So I thought this—exhibit—might amuse you a little. Being demented, it has to be chained up, but it could still be quite diverting. Come, Thephor, don’t you know how to bait a bear?”
Thephor was the favorite. In scarlet today, with a preposterous feathered hat, he had kept his ox-goad stave. He smiled gaily at the Lady, at a total loss. With honeyed venom, she smiled back.
“I’m sure,” she cooed, “you’d all like to see a magician’s powers?”
This was much more to Thephor’s taste. He clapped as enthusiastically as the rest. “Don’t worry, darling,” she assured him. “It can’t hurt you, I’ve seen to that. Why don’t you wake it up?”
My spine went cold. Remembering that catapulted coal, I wondered, Does she know what she’s fooling with?
Thephor had entire faith in her. He minced past the braziers, hove his staff up two-handed, and made to prod with it.
Beryx did not move. But the staff head veered aside and grated down the wall by his left hip.
The crowd laughed. A couple jeered the bad aim. Thephor tried again. This time it was a distinct thrust, impelled by most of his scanty muscle, I should think. The staff end shot up past Beryx’s motionless face, described a slow circle, and dropped to earth with Thephor clinging as if it were too heavy for him to the middle of the haft.
Into the hiatus came the Lady’s tinkling laugh. “Dear me, Thephor!”
Thephor had lost his smile. He re-hefted his weapon. This time he swung it cudgel-wise, sidelong at Beryx’s chest.
The staff twisted from his hands, described a graceful parabola over the audience and disappeared into the dark. From somewhere down the vault came a heavy, thudding crash.
Beryx looked at his assailant. His eyes were not roused. After A’sparre, I had seen that. There was just a crystal whitening, an intimation of power roused.
Then it became something like pity. He said, “Take someone your own weight, Thephor.”
Thephor half-backed, glancing round. The Lady’s eye made me pity him too. In the pause the woman Klyra gave a shrill laugh, then pulled the gilded scent-ball from her wrist.
Wonderfully for a woman, the throw would have been straight. But six inches from Beryx’s face it rebounded, sailed lazily back to Klyra, turned a loop and vanished with diabolical accuracy between her amply exposed breasts.
He burst out laughing at her leap. The court laughed too, but with malice. A moment later missiles sailed from every side, scent-balls, hand-mirrors, fans, bracelets, smelling salt phials, ivory engagement books, the kind of play that verges on blood-sport and needs a feather to tip the scales.
Beryx’s eyes shot a salvo of white flashes so fast they seemed continuous. The missiles sprayed away from him, not back to the thrower now, they were too thick for that. The crowd laughed, the Lady’s smile stopped my breath. The bombardment dwindled. In the lull Beryx gazed blandly back at her, and cocked a brow.
“Did you ever,” she cooed, “try juggling for your bread?”
He gave her a dazzling smile. Then he said in absolute earnest, “Moriana, give it up.”
“You’ve forgotten your audience.”
“It’s the last thing I’d forget. Look at them. You—Thephor—heir to Climbros’ first house. If you were one of my nobles you’d be governor of the province now. Instead you’re a bed-boy headed for the chopping block. You—Klyra—Mistress of the Wardrobe, aren’t you? Wife to the biggest cattle-lord in Darrior, and you wouldn’t know a stud bull if it kicked you in the face. You—Femos—your flocks graze half Kemrestan. What’s your wool worth? All you can tally is the Cups. You—Kreo—your land marches with Phaxia. Have you seen one border fort? When the raiders cross you’re squabbling with the Jewel-keeper over privy precedence and paid soldiers die to save your loot. You—Ashon—the biggest merchant bank in Assharral. You’d be my Treasurer, not keeping my soaps. You—Hazis—own half the merchant fleet. Ever inspected your books? You—any of you—do you manage your estates? Lead your army? Govern your provinces? Guide Assharral? No. Do you know why?”
His eyes whipped round them. For one moment I saw awareness of his point, vision of what they should have been. Then, from the right horn of the circle, commanded or voluntarily, someone hurled a chunk of coal.
Whoever it was had a good eye and hate to power his arm. It took Beryx under the ear with a sickening thud. He staggered, his head jerked, and instantly the whole court was screaming like a pack of foxhounds on the scent of blood.
I sprang into the rear. A surge of sickly-sweet satin bowled me away as they rushed the coal. I charged again. The press was solid. I dropped a shoulder and smashed into backs, and something brushed my mind, feather light. Next moment I was over by the arch, watching as if the whole abomination had nothing to do with me.
Even in my trance I wondered why Beryx did not resist. He could have repelled the projectiles. He could have struck down the throwers. Instead he staggered to and fro under that brutal, battering rain and made no attempt to fight. He only tried to shield his head. Then his body. Then he dropped in the straw and made to curl up, while the coal kept thudding into his ribs, shoulders, neck, head, with that vile sound of a catapult load striking flesh, and the screams grew less human with every hit.
By the end they were all quite rabid. The women danced up and down while the men ran round and round seeking more ammunition, and I stood, and Beryx lay horribly unmoving in the straw. And the Lady watched, immobile, with a small, gloating smile.
“Dears, dears,” she chimed at last. “We don’t want to demean ourselves, do we?” They ran down, and stood gawping, their finery thick with coal dust, stupid, sated bloodlust in their eyes. The pages wheeled her train. The court fell in. Passing me, she murmured with a daggerish smile, “It seems, Captain, you’ll have to pick up the pieces all over again.”
* * * * *
They must have left the building before she turned me loose. This time I did not rage or puzzle, simply tore across to grab his wrist, and when the pulse throbbed, I gasped in relief.
The worst blow was the original, under the left ear. The rest were bruises, except one splendid purple graze on his right cheek, but the first was already egg-sized, oozing blood into the straight black hair, and when I tried to swab it he flinched so badly I stopped. But then he groaned, wriggled, and tried to sit up.
Propped against my shoulder, he said thickly, “Ow.”
I was still too furious to speak. He felt the nape of his neck. More strongly, he said, “Blighted idiot.” I gasped. “Not you. Me.”
He fingered his cheek. I kept silent, since I agreed. He said with asperity, “You ought to know better. I’d have ended by killing them. Or worse.”
“Eh?”
“Gave her the battle. She diverted me to them. And I went. Through instead of Round.” He grimaced. “And she nearly trapped me into fighting for command of them. Then she’d have used the Well and . . . it would have got right out of hand. Fengthira’ll rake me like a garden bed. Ouch—and she’ll be right.”
A movement caught my eye’s edge. I jerked my head up and the boy Thephor was standing over us.
Beryx’s grip pinned me. He did not speak. Just looked up at the fair, shallow, handsome face, the incongruous finery, the fidgety be-ringed hands, until the boy spoke with a jerk, mixing defiance and defensiveness.
“I didn’t throw it. It wasn’t me.”
Beryx wore an attentive, neutral look. He said, “I know.”
The boy eyed the coal-strewn straw, the overset braziers. Again it came with a jerk.
“What did you mean—your nobles would be provincial governors?”
Gravely, positively, Beryx said, “That’s what you’re for.”
The boy fidgeted anew. Argument, uncertainty, distrust, yearning fleeted across his face.
Beryx shifted. Met a coal lump, grunted, “Four!” With complete naturalness he used Axynbrarve to toss all the coal back into its heaps, plucked up the stool, set it by Thephor’s leg, and said, “What are you shying for? You had the prodding stick. Sit down.”
Thephor sat, thump. Beryx watched him as if he were a raw battle-line.
Then he said, “The lords of the land are not bred to fritter themselves away at court. They are the ruler’s shield. Sword. Eyes. Hands. They have obligations. Did you ever hear the word?”
After a moment, Thephor shook his head.
“Fealty to the ruler,” Beryx said quietly. “Duty to your folk. They make you a lord. They keep you a lord. You owe them. Just like a king. If you were one of my lords, you’d be taking that responsibility.”
For a moment naked yearning was in the boy’s eyes. Then he averted them. With hostility he demanded, “What was all that about a chopping block?”
“Don’t they have morsyrs in Climbros? How long have you been favorite? How long did the one before you last?”
This time it was plain fear, growing to despair. He said, “This is Assharral.”
Beryx’s eyes flickered like schooling fish. I could not guess what calculations passed in that flash. But when he spoke, I guessed how much hung on the words.
“Do you want to get out?”
Thephor turned up his hands.
“You can.”
I looked at Beryx then and could not look away. His eyes were in flux, swirling, gyring, a vortex of green upon green upon green that sucked like earth itself. Yet his mind was not even bent upon me.
“Think carefully.” His voice was low. “No money, no rank, no comforts, no servants, friends, kin. Mortal danger on the way, and a rough welcome at the end. Not Thephor, the Lady’s favorite. Nobody. In somebody else’s world.”
Thephor had straightened. Now his shoulders slumped again. “So what? It can’t happen . . . anyway.”
Beryx squared his own shoulders. His face daunted me. He said softly, “If you want it, it can. Do you want it?”
The vault seemed to have grown still. Thephor twisted his hands. At last, just audibly, he answered, “Yes.”
Beryx said, “Look here.”
Thephor’s eyes rose. Flickered. Widened. Emptied like those of the dead. Beryx exhaled, driving the breath till his stomach went concave and his back arched like a bow. His lips drew back. The inhalation lasted forever. Sweat did not spring, it ran in rivulets down his face. His eyes were blind, incandescent. I thought to see sparks shower from them as when the smith strikes red-hot iron. They were furnaces, sun-cores, searing, blinding, burning my own eyes away.
Vision revived. Amid dancing red spots I found Beryx, a hand pressed to his side, breath whooping as he tried to regain his lungs’ control. The calico gown was plastered to him, making barrel staves of his ribs. And Thephor, staring in bewilderment, sat limply on the stool, intact.
“ ’S . . . it.” A grass-scrape whisper. “You . . . can go.”
He recovered before either of us had managed to move. “Don’t just sit there.” He sounded irritable. “Get some proper clothes. Make up a message, anything that’ll get you post-horses. Then ride for the Hethrian border like Lossian’s on your trail. Find the Sathellin. Say Thorgan Fenglos sent you. Go on, boy!” Thephor shot to his feet like a twitched puppet. “I’ve broken the Command. She can’t hold you now.”
It seemed a long time before the patter of the boy’s feet died away. It was far longer before Beryx’s eyes awoke and he lay back, with a soundless sigh, into the straw.
“He’s out of the city.” He sounded quite weak. “On his way.”
I set up a brazier, kindled it. Fetched the water-bottle. I would not have asked, but he answered anyway.
“Not worth it? Nor is anybody, if you judge like that. Why? A Must. At least, to me.” He pushed limply at his hair. “Math knows, I’m no Velandyr, but sometimes it’s like war. You have to go on your own judgment and hope for the best. What did I do?” A wry smile. “Broke that permanent half-Command of yours. Yes. Took on the Well. Don’t start a victory dance, it was only one weak mind. Then I gave him a Command of my own to shield him. But it’s a long road to Hethria. And they’ll be waiting all the way.”
His face grew bleak. “Maybe I’ve killed him. But . . . I had to give him a chance.”
I heard myself say, or rather croak, “All anyone could ask.”
His eyes turned to me, tired, trusting, indeed reliant, and I thought: You can take on the Well, breach your strategy, expose your flank to a deadly enemy, all but kill yourself, for a fribble. And then have courage great enough to admit you might be wrong. Sometimes the fixing of a loyalty can feel palpable as if it were done with nails. I knew then, with perfect certainty, that my choice of masters had been made.
* * * * *
After that internal defection it surprised me to find myself still Captain of the Guard next day. Returning from parade I was more surprised by a figure in the crowd, a tall man with a magnificent snowy curling beard, a blue velvet robe worked with golden symbols, and a rod topped by the sign of Axvyr, infinity, a horizontal 8.
Phathryn come from Tasmar and seldom visit Zyphryr Coryan. Thinking of Beryx, like the escort with their bulls and butterflies, I made haste after Dismissal to catch the seer before he set up his pavement booth.
It took a high price to halt and double price to lure him, but at last he made his stately way downstairs. I said, “Beryx,” for the first time using the name easily, “this is how we foresee in Assharral.”
Beryx glanced up sharply. Then his face became a mask. Politely, he rose, while the Phathos eyed his surroundings askance. I said, “It’s not what you’re used to, but I can settle that. Will you make a forecast now?”
At length he deigned to seat himself on the stool, with my cloak spread for table on the straw. Feeling in his robe he drew out the cards, and Beryx’s eye showed something close to distaste.
“Ystir,” the Phathos intoned. Beryx twitched. “Imsar Losvure. Pharyn, latharyn, ystryn.” He abandoned priestliness. “Is this reading for you, Captain, or”—his nostrils curled—“for him?”
“Him,” I answered before Beryx could object, and took the tendered pack.
“Cut and shuffle three times,” the Phathos ordered, eyes closed, hands on knees. “Hand me the top card. That will be the Seeker’s sign.”
I shuffled the heavy cards with their cryptic, haunting images. The four corps, Cups, Stars, Vines, Staves. The ruand cards, Priestess, Empress, Wise-man, Hung-man, Devil, Sun, Star, Wheel, Chariot, World. Without looking I handed over the pack. He took it, started, gave me a bristly stare. “I am not,” he said, “amused. Again.”
The Emperor, Fortitude, Judgment, Moon, Destruction, the High Priest. I handed it back. He glared and rose. “But wait,” I stuttered. “What have I done?”
“That”—he held it distastefully by a corner—“is the Sage. Not a Seeker’s card. You have given it to me twice. I can only suppose you have your own reasons for this knavery.”
“But it just came up! On my word! Wait—let me try once more. Watch, this time.”
After another price rise I shut my eyes and shuffled again. He watched like a basilisk. I held out the pack. There on top, standing at his altar, clad in his red-and-blue cloak and white gown, holding his staff crowned with infinity, was the Sage.
He looked at me. Then at Beryx. His eyes narrowed. Rather dryly, Beryx said, “Ystir. Truth indeed.”
The Phathos drew a breath. Beryx said, “Your cards don’t cover that?”
As if flurried, the Phathos flicked them out. Above, Beneath, Behind, Before, Cross, Crown, Hope, Fear, House, Gate. They stared up from the black velvet, an omen that lifted the hair on my neck.
There was not a corps card in the cast. It was pure ruands. Above: the Moon, triple-faced, shining blandly between her towers. Beneath: the Hung-man, pendant upside down. Before: the Devil, cloven-hooved, horned and hideous. Cross: the Priestess, veiled, enchanting, inaccessible. Crown: the Lovers, hand in hand beneath the Tree. Hope: Justice, blindfolded, holding her naked sword. Fear: Destruction, the lightning-riven tower. House: Death, cackling from his ass beside the noble knight. Gate: the Fool, dancing blithe and blindly to the precipice, eyes full of empty air.
Beryx was shaking with silent mirth. “Your face!” he spluttered at me, and the Phathos rose in affront. “The Ystryn,” he thundered, “show the truth! They are not a matter for jest!”
Beryx controlled himself. “Of course,” he agreed solemnly. “If I d-don’t . . . laugh again . . . will you say what they mean?”
“The Moon,” the Phathos began dourly, “is your present influence. It means crisis, deception, enemies and risk.” He sounded pleased. “The World is behind you. You have lost supreme happiness, the achievement of a life. Before you is the Devil. Bondage, insensitivity, revolution, carnal desire. Also dishonest wealth. You have no cause to laugh. Beneath is the Hung-man. The meaningful past. Sacrifice, renunciation, abandonment.” I too saw no cause to laugh. “The Lovers, the Crown, are future events. They show trials ending in success. Marriage. A problem solved by wisdom’s light.” I started. “The Cross, opposition, is the . . . Priestess. . . .”
He looked at me, at the chains. His hand crept out to the pack. Beryx said wickedly, “Go on. If the Gate’s what I think, she’s more likely to make you rich.”
After a splutter the Phathos snapped, “The Priestess signifies enlightenment, wisdom’s quest. In opposition she is a blighted future, bewilderment.” He eyed Beryx with sour pleasure. “Your hope is Justice. It means just that. Your fear is Destruction. Patterns snapped, unexpected shock, catastrophe. Your House, your nature, effect and function, is Death.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I struck in hopefully, and the Phathos snorted.
“It symbolizes the soul’s death. And,” he added reluctantly, “its regeneration. It means,” he revived, “the death of kings. Also revolution.” He gazed balefully at me. “As you sow, you will reap.”
Beryx had grown thoughtful. Now, hunched forward over his knees, he glanced at the Fool and his eyes lit with vivid hilarity. “And,” he asked demurely, “the Gate?”
“The outcome,” the Phathos almost snarled. “The Fool symbolizes divine wisdom ignoring the lower world. It means a vital choice requiring”—his eye sneered—“great wisdom. But the Fool also contains elements of anarchy, recklessness—and improper levity.”
Beryx crowed with delight. The Phathos tore the cards to his bosom, kicked my cloak, hissed, “Your silver is accursed!” and took the steps like a cavalry charge with me plucking vainly at his elbow while Beryx rolled in the straw, quite gagged by mirth.
“Did you have to?” I asked ruefully, coming back. “I thought you might be interested. And—and some of it seemed to fit.”
“Oh, dear, I’m sorry, Alkir.” He wiped his face. “But . . . ! The Moon, the Devil, Death, the Fool!” He calmed. “It’s like a bad mirror. Real things made unreal. I suppose they inherit it? Some must have known Velandryxe once. Ystir. Truth it is. That’s the Great Tales’ opening. And Imsar Losvure. In the Sky-faces’ name. But—Alkir, he’s a charlatan! He uses pictures! Four! Now I know why Th’Iahn would say ‘bastard sorcerers’ and kick them out of the house.”
I kept silent. I am an Assharran, raised with the cards. To me a pure ruand cast was portentous enough, without the recurrent Sage, that sinister Cross, and the still more ominous Fool jigging in the Gate.
“Never mind.” He twitched up my cloak. “Math does say, ‘The wisest mirror shows a fool.’ So you can console yourself by—” He broke off.
I spun round. The Lady Moriana, in a ruby-red gown marbled with white striations, a gold coronet on her ebony hair, a single torch-bearer at her elbow, had halted just within the arch.