My back went stiff. I stood like a stock. But in one glance Beryx construed the hesitation, the lack of escort; dropped my cloak, lifted the stool by Axynbrarve beyond armslength, and with a royal gesture invited her to sit.
Slowly, never taking her eyes off him, she advanced. Her eyes were bigger than ever, and dead black. Depthless, motionless. With honest goodwill he smiled at her, and said, “This is my hearth.”
My ingrained fear became stupefaction, turned to rage. She had chained him, slain his mare, nearly killed him twice over, made a guy of him. Now he welcomed her when she had the gall, the effrontery, to risk herself alone within the compass of his powers.
Then, rather bitterly, I thought that she knew him better than I. My hearth. Whatever her perfidy, he would never stoop to foul play against a guest.
He was watching her, openly, as I had never dared, without so much as a shred of wariness. Startled, then resignedly admitting he would always startle me, I decoded his expression. Candid, unoffensive admiration: any decent man looking at a beautiful girl.
She sank onto the stool. The torch-bearer hovered. Not turning, she gave a tiny dismissive nod. Then, tacitly admitting her trust in the host, she looked about her. When her eyes returned to Beryx he held them long enough to make his message clear. Then he sat down in the straw and expectantly raised his brows.
Leaning back, graceful as a browsing deer, she linked both hands about a knee and without warning offered her greatest challenge yet.
“Tell me,” she said, “about this . . . Math.”
The chain clinked as he rubbed his chin. Marshalling thought, not reconnoitering for a trap.
“It began with a vision,” he said, “in Los Velandryxe Thira. The very Well you have. It was seen by our ancestor Th’Iahn.” His eyes crinkled. “Your line began with his grandson Lossian. Mine came six generations later. Your foremother was a mistress, mine a concubine. I can’t tell you about the vision, because that was between the Well and Th’Iahn. It doesn’t show in Phathire, and the Well itself couldn’t reproduce it. I can deduce the bones from what Th’Iahn said and did, but there have been seventeen aedric generations since. Math now is . . . like a building started to Th’Iahn’s design. A great many minds have left their mark on it.”
“But,” I blurted, “I thought the world changed as soon as you saw—”
I bit my tongue. He answered, unruffled, “When the first smith forged an iron sword-blade, everyone else didn’t do it next minute. But once it was forged, that smith had changed the world.”
He turned back to the Lady. “Whatever Th’Iahn saw, he set out to end the Xaira, the separation of aedryx and men. He was a great aedr, but also a practical man, so he didn’t go off to live on locusts in Hethria and hope his idea would travel on the air. He began at the beginning. To spread an idea, you need it to travel. To cause travel, you must offer profit—or expose a need. To carry them, you need an instrument. So Th’Iahn built a road.”
“Eh?” I forgot my place again.
“A road from his keep to his country’s annual market. Then roads all over his lands. So trade improved, and everybody profited, and the market expanded, and they did better still. But they also, both aedryx and men”—his eyes were white-green, crystalline, thought’s combustion made visible—“came in contact with the idea.”
Roads are for carrying ideas. I heard him saying it, in Kemrestan.
“Pharaon Lethar—the land—was jammed with aedryx, most at loggerheads if not open war. Th’Iahn’s arch . . . enemy—rival—other half—was an aedr called Vorn. When he saw what came of Th’Iahn’s roads, he started building too. There’s a saying about that, supposed to be Delostar’s—Th’Iahn’s son. ‘When Ammath seeks, Math finds.’ So Vorn grew rich, but the idea entered his lands. There were other aedryx, especially in the north—Stiriand—who suffered from foreign marauders just as Th’Iahn did from corsair raids. When they came to the market Th’Iahn spoke about alliance, linking shields against enemies. The Stirianns listened. So did Vorn. He knew that to miss trade was crazy, but to be left outside an aedric alliance would be plain suicide. It was all coming together when Th’Iahn’s only daughter eloped with Vorn’s eldest son.”
After a moment I whistled. But the Lady had already laughed, a crystal, cynically delighted peal.
Unaffronted, Beryx gave a sorrowful nod.
“Oh, yes. Th’Iahn was aedric to the marrow. Away went the alliance, into the cupboard went Math, and the feud was on.” He sighed. “There’s a great deal of history, much like any other history. Mistakes and bungles and bloody-mindedness wrecking good intentions, and insults wiped out in other people’s blood. Somewhere on the way Th’Iahn’s idea became a council of the eight aedric lines—the Tingrith. In theory it was to ward Pharaon Lethar without and within. In fact it was always disintegrating in another bout of the feud, invasions, bloodbaths, all but destruction of the aedric race. But the Ruands, the council leaders, always kept the Well, and in it they sought for Math. And some of them were very wise.”
The Lady spoke at last. The tale’s tragedy had left her untouched. “But what is this Math?” she said.
“Um.” He scrubbed at his hair. “Th’Iahn must have meant to end aedryx’ abuse of their powers and men’s fear and hatred of aedryx, but all he ever said was practical arguments for his alliance. That peace brought profit, and so would conserving humans’ lands. That the alliance protected its members, and to protect humans would be profitable too. His son Delostar, first council Ruand, took another step and said aedryx should unite with men—the northern invasions were at their worst in his day. Then Ruands from Stiriand decided aedryx’ power should be used for the good of both aedryx and men. Then somebody decided power should just work for good. And then they tried to riddle out how, and now Math is a chain of precepts, like Respect that-which-is, Do only what you must . . . The full saying is, The fool reasons, and does as he thinks he should. The wise man does only as he must. But the proverbs are all negative. ‘Who sees Math does not speak. Who speaks of it does not see.’—‘The Math that can be named is not the vision of Math.’—‘Math is not Velandryxe. But Velandryxe is Math.’—‘Say, Math, see Ammath.’ The best I can do is that it’s not a thing at all. It’s a way of seeing. Seeing everything.”
“Then what use is it?”
He looked at her under his brows.
“Before Math,” he said evenly, “aedric law was, As I Want, I Will. And they had aedric powers. The greater the power, the greater the risk of corruption. The greater the corruption, the greater the ruin. They ruined themselves. They ruined Pharaon Lethar. Cycle after cycle of wanton cruelty, murder, brutality, wholesale destruction. And they thought it was normal. Natural.”
I said nothing. It was so little time since I had thought nature, normality, was the state of Assharral. But the Lady arched her brows and retorted, “Isn’t it?”
“Certainly. Without Math.”
Her lips parted. And closed again.
“When Th’Iahn brought Math from the Well, he changed the world. He gave aedryx—and humans—a choice. A chance to escape Ammath. Maybe they refused, maybe they misunderstood, maybe they tried and failed. But never again were they doomed to remain below the level of beasts.”
“You cannot,” she said incisively, “choose something that cannot be defined.”
“Oh, that’s much easier. You need only define its opposite. Ammath. Cruelty. Waste. Destruction. Pleasure in misusing power. Math says, Respect that-which-is. Because”—his eyes held hers—“that-which-is is reality. Ammath distorts it. And the greater the distortion, the greater the havoc when reality is restored.”
She was silent.
Very softly, he said, “It does happen, you know.”
Elaborately, insolently, she yawned. “So we’re back at that. You want me to renounce everything for the sake of your ‘Math.’ ”
“Not ‘my’ Math. And not for Math’s sake. For yours.”
“And what good will it do me?”
After a moment he said, “Turn it round. What bad will it do me if I don’t? Sooner or later, the distortion will collapse. And the later the fall, the longer and bitterer the memories of Ammath. Assharral’s a big empire. And only the wise say, ‘Vengeance is sweet. But wisdom chooses salt.’ ”
Inexplicably, her eyes turned to me.
Then she straightened up, that flowing water motion that was so beautiful. Rose. Strolled between the braziers. His eyes followed her, and now the admiration bordered on longing, indeed open desire.
She turned. Watching him under her lids she said sweetly, “Why?”
When he did not answer, she probed, “For love of ‘good’? Because you want to redeem me from my vice? So you can feel righteous and pure, having done your tiny bit for ‘Math’?”
Suddenly he grinned. “Because I hate waste,” he said.
“Or suffer from want.”
“I am rather a bear, yes.”
“More of a bore.”
“I thought you loved your beasts in Assharral?”
This time I recognized that tingle which had informed the air by Los Morryan. Just so Callissa and I had sparred in our first courtship bout.
She stretched. A hint of tantalizing, of display. Lazily, but quite finally, she said, “Poor beast.”
“Poor beauty.”
She raised her brows.
“You are beautiful.” The sparring was done. “Going to waste. Like your powers.” The pity was clear. “An aedric empress. And you twist it into Ammath.”
“Powers?”
“You could have them. Speech, the Sights, the Commands. Mastery of beasts, weather, fire.”
Aghast, I thought, he’s taken her in good faith! Has he forgotten everything he ever knew of war?
“You could have Velandryxe,” he was saying. “Wisdom. Understanding how not to act. The most important of all.” He looked at her as if in pain. “For the Four’s love, Moriana, can’t you see what a waste it is?”
Her head tilted. Sounding half-swayed, I was sure in whole falsity, she said, “And this Well of mine? That brought the vision of Math? That changed the world?”
I shut my eyes. Don’t, I prayed. Show her through your armory, explain your tactics, but you can’t be such a fool as that!
He could. “The Well didn’t bring the vision,” he said. “Th’Iahn and the Well made it between them. In Wreve-lethar, the highest aedric art. To alter the Dream. Change the Universe.”
“Why,” she asked innocently, “did he need the Well?”
“Because it’s the focus. You can’t do Wreve-lethar without it. That’s what the Well’s really for.”
He looked at her eagerly, sure that truth was invincible, she need only hear it to yield. Nothing is so vulnerable as good faith. And she, I thought in blinding fury, she had known it.
Her mouth curled. “Thank you.” The triumph was almost obscene. “Now I see why you called me incompetent. But of course, I didn’t know.”
Horror ripped across his face. He plunged to his feet. And stopped.
She was poised for escape. His eyes were writhing flares of moss, leaf, laurel green, laced with dazzling white. But they were turned inward, upon the forge of thought.
He put a hand to his brow. Very slowly, it dropped.
Making it a prayer, committing all to a wholly unsure gamble, he said, “Imsar . . . Math.”
Then he looked at her.
“Then,” he said, quiet as fate itself, “you know it now.”
For one instant her eyes flickered with what could have been fear. Then they swung on me.
“My trusted captain,” she purred. “Who let a traitor walk out of this prison. Under his very nose.”
“Who had no choice,” he cut in quick as lightning. “I’m an aedr too.”
The meteors flared. “Who ate my bread. Took my wages. Swore my oath of fealty. And schemed to suborn my guard.”
I flinched. Beryx’s voice slashed, “Moriana, let him alone!”
She spun on him. “Why?”
“Because”—and contempt appeared at last—“you’re giving a perfect demonstration of Ammath. From devilry to pettiness. You couldn’t bait a bear, so you want to skin a mouse.”
Her skirts made a white and ruby comet in her wake. She whipped round in the arch. “It may interest you,” she hissed, “to know your smuggling failed. They caught him in Darrior. He’s dead!”
* * * * *
It was a long time before I dared look at Beryx, and when I did, I dared not ask the question that hovered on my lips.
He was still watching the arch. His eyes were quenched, not merely opaque but dulled black, and there was fatigue, discouragement, a poignant sorrow in his face.
At last he turned away. Slowly, he brought the stool in reach and sat down, shoulders bowed. Finally he looked at me and said with that courage which can admit mistakes, “It’s true.”
I could not, did not want to reply. He gazed past me, into a distance beyond my reach.
“They tortured him,” he murmured. The pity was strong as pain. “Poor little fop.”
Into my mind rose a sharp, concrete image of a city gate, shreds of a body dangled on the wheel, morvallin circling for carrion above frustrated dogs. Perhaps it came from his Sight, but it was enough to sting me into speech. Pain for him, Thephor, myself, became wrath that had to be assuaged.
I said harshly, “Why?”
He did not fence. He answered wearily, “Math says, Keep faith even with unfaith. Could I have turned her away?”
“You needn’t have—” The full enormity recoiled on me. “The biggest baboon who ever wrecked an army knows better than to blab like that! And to tell her about the Well—I thought you meant to help Assharral!”
He made a little throwaway gesture. “I don’t think I can make you see.” It was fatigue, not rancor. “When Ammath seeks, Math finds. If you—”
“To the pits with Math! I’m talking plain commonsense!”
“You can’t. Not in this. I—Look, Alkir. She tried to kill me with that fever, and it rid me of Hawge’s sting. That I’ve carried seventy years. She sought Ammath, I found Math. Don’t you see?”
“No—all I see is that you blindly—insanely!—took her on trust, and she rolled you up. Horse, foot and camp!”
He straightened, summoning strength to deal with me among the rest. I should have pitied him, but I could not. “Explain that!” I said.
He sighed. Then he said, “I had to take her on trust. Or break trust myself. I had to tell her the truth. Because lies are Ammath. If you don’t hold to good, you become evil. That’s the real defeat.”
“So she flogs you off every field by using your beliefs against you! You’re hamstrung by the very thing you’re fighting for!”
“Perhaps,” he said heavily. “But she does know, now, about Math.”
“And about the Well! All about the Well!”
“Yes. I . . . I can’t explain.” He sank his head in his hand. “Velandryxe . . . the sayings tell you, over and over, that it seems madness. The supreme wisdom looks like foolishness.”
“The foolishness I see. The wisdom I don’t.”
“I had to tell her about the Well. Or deny truth. And once she knew, I couldn’t wipe it out. Or fight it. And I know it looks like a disaster, so in the end I had to take a monumental risk, and hope Velandryxe will bear it out.”
“How?”
“Ammath has to end. And with such power as the Well—that I can’t master—perhaps the only thing that can end it is the Well itself.”
“What? How?”
“Math fears to act. Ammath doesn’t. Now she knows what the Well can really do, she might try something so vile that—it will be the one thing too much. That will break the Well’s power. It would fit with Velandryxe. The supreme foolishness. Admit the truth, do nothing, allow her to misuse power. So Math refrains, and Ammath acts, and Ammath too great to be destroyed overreaches and destroys itself. Just like the sting and the fever. Do you understand?”
“No!”
His shoulders bent. Quietly, humbly, he said, “I suppose not.”
I looked at him sitting there, worsted in battle, blood on his hands, betrayed by his own good faith, patiently accepting recrimination and abuse and desertion, and a mountain fell on my neck. Gevos, the mare—and now a third time I had upbraided when I should have upheld, wounded when I should have salved, broken faith I should have kept.
In bitter pain I said, “You should know better than that.”
His head came up. The smile was almost tender. “Fylghjos,” he said, “you’re too like me. You blame yourself worse than anyone else.”
I could not speak. He was still smiling, giving the comfort I had refused, ungrudging as if I had never wounded him.
“Yes,” he said, “crazy, and the remotest chance, and pure blind hope. But that’s Velandryxe. Inyx—a friend of mine—used to say, ‘Lose every battle but the last.’ ” The smile became that indomitable laughter. “We’re doing pretty well with the rest.”
* * * * *
Feeling raw, hunted and desperate, I went home to Zem and Zam’s inevitable. “When is Sir Scarface coming back?” then passed a night of fearful dreams in which the Lady flung Beryx from the Morhyrne, or I drowned him for her in Los Morryan, or Callissa chased me with a cleaver for letting him die of cold, or I tried to light the brazier and the entire vault collapsed. It seemed an uncovenanted mercy when I crept out next day to find Zyphryr Coryan apparently unaltered, quite intact. I would have sacrificed, if I still had anywhere to offer it.
Three days passed, by which time I half-wished doom would fall and be done. Third night was my vault sentry-watch. I left after supper, to Callissa’s silent protest, but as I closed the garden gate a woman’s voice hissed, “Captain! Alkir!”
I whipped about. A hand beckoned, the moon sparked on thillians. I backed. A mincing court accent chattered, “It’s all right, quite safe. . . .” In anguish, “Oh, come over here!”
Hand on sword, I sidled cross-street. The moon flashed on eyes painted like targets, a grotesque pole of hair. “It’s me, Klyra. You know me. I have to talk to you!”
Instinctively we both looked behind. She gabbled under her breath, “You’re in with him and you’ll be able to tell him, straighten it out . . . if she knew she’d—I don’t know what she’d do, you mustn’t breathe a word—”
“Don’t babble,” I muttered. “What am I supposed to tell who?”
“Him. The wizard.” Her hand twittered on my arm, I felt the talon-like nails. “About the Lady. These last three days she’s been impossible. . . .”
“Come to the Treasury,” I said, “and tell him yourself.”
Before shifting a woman I had sooner try to dislodge Phaxian skirmishers. We compromised, amid squeals and frou-frou to wake the Morhyrne, on a bench under the garden keerphar. When she finally subsided, I asked, “What is it I’m to say?”
“The Lady.” She clutched for thoughts flyaway as her frivolous gold-mesh bag. “She’s . . . she’s been summoning all the governors. Poor Havath, he’s Nervia, he was quaking, I had to lend him smelling salts. . . . When he got in, the Lady says, ‘Do you approve my orders? Have I ever given you cause to hate me? Are you happy in your post?’ I ask you! As if you’d dare say otherwise, not that she isn’t a good mistress and I’ll not hear a word against her, but—well, you know what I mean.
“And the chief priests, she had them up yesterday. ‘Do you approve of my worship?’ she says. ‘Of course,’ they say. Or in so many words. ‘You don’t think it’s bad?’ They have conniptions. Well, I mean, they would, wouldn’t they, it’s their life, and can you imagine not worshipping the Lady, I’d not know what to do with myself, and the high days, the people love them—she had them up too. A fish-gutter and a tanner, you couldn’t credit the stink. . . . ‘Do you believe,’ she says, ‘I am immortal? Do you think that’s wrong?’ I tell you, the poor boobies hadn’t a clue.
“And then she calls Mavash and Zabek, and she says, ‘Do you think we need a Council?’— ‘Council?’ they say. ‘So you can advise me,’ she says. I ask you, Captain, have you ever seen a general look faint? Then she gets Kreo and Tamon, Cup-bearer and First below the Throne, and she says, ‘Do you want to go home to your estates?’ And Kreo just appointed, and everyone knows Tamon can’t bear Gjerven, all those swamps. . . . Then I’m watching the dressers, you wouldn’t credit how they treat those gowns if they’re not stood over—she comes up behind me, I’m sure I needed smelling salts that time.
“ ‘Klyra,’ she says, ‘are you happy here?’
“ ‘Happy?” I say. ‘Why, ma’am, whatever—whyever wouldn’t I be? Highest women’s post at court?’—‘You wouldn’t,’ she says, ‘rather be in Darrior?’—‘Darrior!’ I say. ‘You think the court’s worthwhile?’ she says. ‘You don’t think I’m wasting your life?’ Well, really, I could have hugged her, she looked so forlorn. ‘Dear Lady,’ I say, ‘of course not. The court’s my life.’ She gives a sort of nod and goes away. But. . . .”
She paused for extra drama and leant forward. “That’s only the shell of the egg. Yesterday, high banquet, Kreo’s on her right, I was next to him. When the oysters come in, she loves them, she didn’t touch a one—‘Kreo,’ she says, ‘if you wanted to marry me, what would you do?’
“Well, the poor man nearly falls through his chair. Says the proper things, too unworthy, never think of it. ‘But suppose,’ she says, ‘you were—Zass of Phaxia—how would you go about it then?’
“Of course, he has some wits, or he’d not be where he is. ‘Most high,’ he says, ‘I would begin with gifts. The best spices of Eakring Ithyrx, the most precious gems, the rarest rarities. Then poets to hymn your beauty. Musicians.’ He’s getting into the swing of it. ‘Painters. Jewelers with lovely things. I’d ransack Phaxia. Then I’d—I’d make peace, and arrange a court visit. Balls, masques, entertainments, dress up the palace fit for you.’ Dreadful barrack, I’ve heard it is. ‘I would worship at your feet. I might abandon Phaxia, if you were heartless, and become a beggar at your gate—’
“ ‘Yes, yes, that’s enough,’ she says. I’d have been pleased, I’m sure. Then Timya, she’s chief tiring Lady, she told me, when she was taking off the coronal, a proper puzzle that one is—the Lady looks in the mirror like she’s never had one before.
“ ‘Timya,’ she says, ‘I am beautiful. . . .’ Running her hands up through her hair. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ says Timya, wondering if she’s in her wits. Every-body knows she is, she’s never had a thing to fear from anyone that ever came to court.
“But she sort of smiles at herself. Mocking, you’d say. ‘Too beautiful,’ she says, ‘to change.’ —‘Ma’am,’ says Timya, thinking, Sakes, what’s the matter with her? ‘You won’t change, you know that. You’re immortal.’
“ ‘Yes,’ she says after a while. You’d think she’d only just been told. ‘I am.’ Now wait a moment Captain it may sound tittle-tattle but if you knew the Lady like I do. . . . We were up in the bower, I like going there, the difference, only a minute and whoosh! time to change. . . . The Lady, she’s not like I’ve ever seen her. Can’t sit still. Tramping round, really, I couldn’t set a stitch. Then out of the blue she says to me, ‘The wizard. What did you think of him?’
“ ‘Think?’ I say. ‘I think he’s the crudest, most brazen—’
“ ‘Oh, yes.’ And she giggles. ‘It was your scent-ball, I forgot. Phera, what did you think of him?’
“Phera’s chief maid. ‘Ugly,’ she says. ‘That awful scar. Just like you said, ma’am. A bear.’
“ ‘Ugly?’ she says. Sounds quite startled. Phera knots her tongue.
“ ‘Yes,’ the Lady says after a bit. ‘He is. Ugly. Insolent. Arrogant. Preposterous. How dare he!’ Captain, I’ve been at court a dozen years, I’ve seen her rages, but this was all different. Most times nothing shows, you just know. But this time . . . she starts storming round, then she catches up her sleeve—Nervian silk, best Tasmarn work, hazian sewn, oh, that dress was the pride of my heart—in her teeth! Rip! And her face red as lythian leaves and, ‘How dare he? How DARE he? I’ll have him strangled! Crucified! I’ll—’ Rip! I tell you, we didn’t know whether to run or pray. ‘Preach at me!’ Her fan’s on the seat, she snaps it in half, crack! ‘Sanctimonious beggar! Pious fraud! . . . Oh, I might even marry you! How dare he! How dare he! I’ll, I’ll. . . .’ Off down the stairs like a whirlwind, we didn’t know where to look. And Phera—too big for her shoes, that one, someday she’ll trip—she says to me behind her hand, ‘If it wasn’t him, and wasn’t our Lady, I’d say, It’s a case with her.’ ”
She nodded, vindicated, at my speechlessness, and tapped my arm. “Then today it’s ten different dresses and boxing Timya’s ears and a pet to rebuild the loggia, there’s been workmen in all day and none of the designs’ll suit, she tore one to shreds and the architect, well, he’s . . . disappeared. You know? And this afternoon she comes in the wardrobe. Slates this, rips up at that, I thought I’d vanish too, but, ‘Come in the boudoir,’ she says. Makes me sit down. Won’t do it herself. To and fro, to and fro. ‘How,’ she says, ‘can anyone know? Klyra, do you know what’s bad and what’s good?’—‘Ma’am,’ I say, minding the decanter, it’s that lovely Thangrian crystal, ‘what on earth do you mean? Good’s to make the sacrifices and do your duty, like the rest of Assharral.’
“She looks at me, sharp as needles. ‘And what’s bad?’—‘Why, ma’am,’ I say, ‘displeasing you.’
“ ‘Ohh!’ she says and spins like a top. ‘Ma’am,’ I say, all of a creep, ‘if I’ve upset you. . . .’ ‘No,’ she says. She pulls at the drapes, that lovely gold velvet—oh, you wouldn’t know—‘I won’t,’ she says. ‘It’s stupid. Plain insanity.’ She starts to get angry again. Then she spins round and—Captain, if I didn’t know better, I’d think she was scared.
“ ‘Oh, Klyra,’ she says, ‘I don’t know what to do!’
“Well, I’ve been here a dozen years and she still seems a girl. ‘Sit down, pet,’ I say, ‘and drink some of this, and don’t worry. You just do what you want.’
“ ‘I can’t,’ she says. Crying. I’ve never, ever seen her cry. ‘I don’t know what I want! Oh, damn him to the fiery pits, I don’t know!’ And out she goes in tears, Captain, believe me, in tears!
“Then this evening Tannis makes a bear joke and she rends him. He’s disappeared too. Oh, Captain, you just don’t know how it is up there.” She gripped her hands together in genuine distress. “I’ve thought of it all day and I couldn’t bear anymore. I slid out, I thought I’d come to your house, you can tell him—make him stop. He’s got the whole of Ker Morrya in such a turn-out, and the Lady . . . let be I’m terrified, I can’t bear to see her like that. It ought to be stopped!”
She stared with those grotesquely ringed eyes while I tried to muster my wits. All I found was the conviction that Beryx must know. At once.
“I’ll tell him,” I said. “You’d best be off. Be careful.” We both caught our breaths. “I—think he’ll be grateful. But I can’t promise it will stop.”
* * * * *
As I should have expected, Beryx’s reaction was unexpected. At first he did look pleased. The tantrum produced a gleeful chortle. But then he sobered, and by the end there was pity in his face, outright distress.
“Yes,” he said, staring into the brazier. “Yes.”
This time I kept quiet.
At last he said, “If there was hope, this is what I’d expect. But. . . .” He bit his lip. “Math isn’t teaching, or coercion. You have to find it for yourself.” He got up and began to pace. Sounding quite tormented, he said, “There’s nothing I can do.”
Nevertheless I slept better that night, waking in a crystal morning to a sea wind fragrant with salt. As the new guard marched up to Ker Morrya I thought wistfully of bygone days when Callissa and I had sailed a racing dinghy out near the Heads on days like this. . . . We rounded the curve onto the gates. There on a pole before us, bloody and hideous with that bizarre paint over the death scream, was Klyra’s head.
I fought in Phaxia. Yet I cannot blame the guard who toppled in a faint. My belly turned over too. People were everywhere, scuttling by with furtive looks, the duty sentries were fish-white and gulping continuously, my troop lost rank, broke step, never was habit such a lifesaving rope.
Somehow we managed the change. The old guard almost flew downhill, I took one step after them, and stopped. I did not know why. Until a moment later the Lady Moriana swirled in a black whirlwind out the gate.
“Captain.” A true viper’s speech. My eyes shut instinctively, I cringed with eyelids printed by the glare of gold in burning black. Her words pierced, a stiletto, cold, thin, certain death.
“I thought,” she said, “that you would wait.” My feet moved me after her, willy-nilly, down the street.
The crowds melted from our path like dust. She swept them away, a black silk tornado, more fearful than a tornado can ever be, for when it razes and shatters and rends it does not will the ruin. For that you must go to men. Terror pierced even my trance. The Well, I thought. She was evil, and now it was beyond spite, rampaging, out of control.
How Beryx knew I cannot tell, but he was standing before she entered, his face formed, a battle-line. As she whissed into the vault he said, “She did it from loyalty. Because she cared for you.”
She stopped. Her skirts swirled, black froth broken on a rock. Something swept me like a blast of poisoned ice.
He said, “It was embarrassing, yes. She shouldn’t have spoken.” Again pity was in his face. “She wasn’t wise enough not to act.”
She was standing quite still. An immobility more fearful than any paroxysm. Almost gently, he said, “I know how you feel.”
Her back stiffened. The ripple of an adder rising to strike.
His face snapped taut. “Moriana, wait—”
She pivoted on her heel and her eyes traversed like a catapult. My vision shattered in a hail of golden darts, her teeth showed, the grin of a fury, between those perfect lips.
I was moving forward, toward the closest brazier. Its red mouth filled my sight, its bed of coals needed my touch—
The brazier bounced as if struck by a catapult bolt, flew high and crashed in smithereens, spewing a fiery fan of coals. Beryx nearly shattered my head. “No!”
I had staggered half a dozen strides back. It was irrelevant. The other brazier remained.
Something let go, abrupt as a snapped rope. Again I staggered back. They were both on tiptoe, she arched to strike, her eyes black fire that distorted her face, he bowstring taut, and his eyes were white-starred burning green.
“Very well,” he said. It grated like crossed steel. “If that’s what you want.”
How to continue? Words, physical metaphors fail to convey the immaterial, and my memory is crazed by the blast, my own pain. I remember their eyes which seared like branding-irons pressed relentlessly into flesh, that it was like being caught between two suns’ hearts, consumed by both. Images of a sort. Black lava tides that clash with tides of green and white, my mind withered in the turmoil’s heart. Molten black and white sword-blades that snicker in and out my eyes, hurtling gouts of gold-black, green-white fire that explode on collision in my head. Blindness, and the fire still consuming me. Torn apart, not limb from limb but will from will, sense from sense, thought from thought, fragmented in some vacancy, and the fragments re-torn between two wrestling, rending entities that could not win them and would not give them up. You suppose feeling stops, when pain deprives you of wits, but I have known otherwise. I have been a myriad particles spattered in nothing, and each one had its consciousness.
Shattering was nothing to the re-assemblage. Later I found my surcoat plastered with mud, dirt under broken nails, bruises on palms, knees, skull. And that was only the flesh.
When I stopped voicelessly screaming, and pain cast me up on its further beach, I was sitting on the floor. The Lady stood over me. She was panting, each breath straining the black gown at her breast, her face bathed with sweat, still fixed in its battle grimace. Her bracelet had snapped. Thillians lay round me like fallen drops of ice. And in the straw Beryx was on his knees, doubled over, muscle and bone and mind buckling in company, over-matched.
Given free will, the sight might have made me run about and shriek. Instead I stood up. There is no conveying the sensation of your limbs moved by another will.
The Lady smiled. At that too, given liberty, I might have shrieked.
With a fiend’s triumph, she said slowly, lingeringly, “. . . Math.”
Beryx stirred. Twisted. Made a pathetic attempt to rise. Fell prostrate. After two or three trials, wedged an elbow under him. Levered it straight. It shook as if palsied, and when it bent he slid helplessly back into the straw.
Then he simply lay there, for an uncounted time, until some shred of body or mind’s strength returned. Back humped, still trembling in every muscle, he managed to sit up. Raggedly, he wiped at his face.
The Lady waited. Finally, he looked at her.
She said, “You lost.”
He answered, in the whisper of exhaustion, “Yes.”
Her eyes turned to me. In the same thread of a voice, he said, “No.”
I was beside the brazier. Its red heat held my outstretched right hand, my face. Behind me, he repeated, “No.”
She answered, pitiless. “Would you do it yourself?”
My hand poised before the coals. Five, ten, fifteen tallied my heartbeats, in casual interest. That jagged, shaky voice said, “If that’s what you want.”
She did not reply, but I found I had left the fire, turning, able to see them both. She was still grinning. He was looking up at her. Not in a plea for mercy, but with a kind of wonder that such creatures could exist. Then, effortfully, clumsily, he got himself on his feet and shambled, bear-like in his exhaustion, toward the fire.
She watched. He shook his sleeve back, the bizarre action of a man not wanting to wet his shirt. Not the vilest Phaxian torturer would extort such a price, such a voluntary price, from a one-handed man.
He did not hesitate, plead, look back in a last hope of clemency. He walked straight up to the brazier and thrust his left hand in among the coals.
It must have been the aedr’s will. His body flew back like a tight-wrenched bow, his face contorted. And his hand did not stir. He did not make a sound.
The fire crackled, the vault filled with that loathful stench. I heard his teeth grate together. She must have waited to be quite sure she would be denied the final pleasure of screams and writhings and total breakdown, before she said, “Yes.”
As his hand met the air he dropped, with a screech of jerked chains, face down in a tangle on the stone. There was no other sound. When he did not move, the Lady, with a gorged, ghoul’s satisfaction, turned away. And she chose that I should follow her.
* * * * *
As I tore back from the harborside my mind had divided again, one part raging, The last twist of the knife, the filthy whore, she knows about burns, that’s why she sent me so far. . . . I shot across the market, snatched a pot and hethel oil, strewed coins, the other part of my mind cursing, And if you could think when you’re snatched, were prepared for it, could fight. . . . I skidded downstairs, across the vault, and with frenzied haste sloshed oil into the bowl.
It must have been some sort of swoon, but also an aedric art. Or wish. After the first stupor he had thrown himself around. The straw was ploughed, he was wound in an impossible knot, blood on his rasped wrists, the left arm twisted somehow in midair, his face driven into the straw. He was making slow, senseless sounds at each hoarse breath, twisting in time with it, grinding his cheek into the stone. But he was quite unconscious. When I jammed his hand in the oil he only gasped, then whimpered again.
I clung to his wrist, fighting to keep the burn covered and the bowl upright. It was too late, inadequate, I knew what was needed, and could not go for it. . . . It seemed the very incarnation of Math when I looked up to find Sivar hovering cravenly at the door.
“Run to my house!” I yelled. “Someone, anyone, get them to give you the Xhen plant, the whole pot! Go on, man, run!”
He excelled my wildest hopes. When the big clay pot of spiky, dull-lime, cactus-like leaves came bumbling down on Sivar’s legs there was a white, terrified but obdurate Callissa in its wake.
She knew what to do. She threw down a cloth, ripped off one soft foot-long spike and split it to scour out the translucent green jelly within. “Come on!” she snapped at Sivar.
In less than a minute they had a mound of it. She rapped, “Ready!” I took a good grip, whisked his hand across, she scooped the pulp over it, pulled up the cloth, he had barely time to sob before she was saying, “Other rag. Tear a strip. Tie this on.” Then, shoving back her hair. “I’ll hold it. You untangle him.”
By the time we unthreaded him the Xhen jelly was at work. He was still unconscious, but the terrible writhing had eased, muscles shuddering as they relaxed, and he lay back with sheer exhaustion rather than agony in his face. Xhen. Burnt. I have no idea of the herbalist’s name, but in Frimmor it has been Xhen, the burn-plant, time out of mind, and nobody making a garden would leave it out. For soothing and healing burns it is the sovereign remedy.
“Thank you,” I said at large, trying to convey all I felt: for the help and for the courage that offered it.
Callissa said nothing till Sivar, eyes whitened at the clay shards and dead coals and thillians, began to edge away, muttering, “Get ’nother brazier, sir?” Then she reeled off a list of provisions long as my arm. Looked at the head on my knee, said, “Water, too,” and followed Sivar.
When Beryx came round he lay a good while before, eyes still closed, he whispered, “Sorry . . . Alkir.”
“Sorry?” I tried not to explode. “You?”
“My fault.” The lashes lay on his ashy cheek, long and black, as if too heavy to lift. “Had to go and fight her. Act. Blighted fool. And you had . . . worst of it.”
“Not by much.” I had carefully ignored the full import of that defeat. “If I could have fought for myself. . . .”
“Don’t be—idiot. The Well. Nothing you could do.”
Callissa brought the water-bottle in and began, somewhat brusquely, to lave his galled right wrist. Then a thillian made her notice the debris. Her eyes widened. As if we were the twins’ age she demanded, “What on earth have you two been doing?”
“The Lady,” I retorted. “Not us.”
She dropped the bottle. I pointed to his hand. “That should have been mine.”
“But,” she stammered. “Why? Why you . . . ?”
“Hostage,” Beryx whispered. “Should see point . . . Fylghjos. Stayed in the Guard. Why?”
I saw. “You’d do better,” I said grimly, “if I’d stayed on her side.”
The rudiments of a grin emerged. “Get stupider . . . with age, Fylghjos.” At which Callissa, rallying, exploded, “Well, I don’t see! What is this? What do you mean?”
He opened his eyes. “Would you rather,” he said weakly, “burn your own hand, ma’am—or let it happen to the boys?”
She shrank. Then she whispered, “But you. . . .”
His face grew mulish. “Nobody shall suffer . . . in my place.”
“Did it occur to you,” I asked in some indignation, “that I might feel the same?”
His eyes flew wide. “Oh, Four!” And at that Callissa boiled right over.
“Stop being so stupid and heroic and honorable and talk sense, the pair of you! If somebody had to, it’s better that—I mean—at least—” As she foundered, his eyes opened on a quite impish glint.
“Quite right, ma’am. Better me than him. No family . . . for a start.”
She turned so red it could have burnt. Her eyes flinched away. After a moment she began, “I didn’t mean to—I shouldn’t have—” And decidedly but gently he cut her short.
“Then call it a debt from the fever. And leave it at that.”
* * * * *
He refused the soporific of yeldtar juice, declaring, “This stuff’s the best pain-killer of the lot.” Recalling he had been burnt before, I added that to the Lady’s conduct sheet. But even with Axynbrarve he could not fend entirely for himself. The nursing watch re-enlisted, Sivar endured tirades on his barbering, Zyr became an expert bandage-man. I tried to act a Captain of the Guard, and felt the sword poised over us all. But nothing happened, at least in Zyphryr Coryan. About Ker Morrya, it was no longer possible to tell.
Not until I found myself ascending its marble steps.
Panic burst clear through the trance. Never considering it was mere thought, I yelled as ignominiously as any school-brat. Beryx, help me! Stop her! Get me out of this!
And was answered, to my total disbelief.
<I can’t stop her, Fylghjos. But if I can, I’ll help.>
I knew my feet’s direction, and I was right. Los Morryan bubbled mirthfully, uncaring. Never had I loathed beauty before. The Lady Moriana stood beyond its spray. In black again, printed with huge ember-red lythian leaves whose long broad dagger blades clashed across my sight.
No doubt I cowered like the veriest worm. The memory of their handling in the vault was still painfully clear.
She laughed. My spine froze. She came forward, rustling over the flags.
“A big brave sword-swinging soldier.” She flicked a fingernail across my cheek. “Don’t swallow your tongue, Captain. I’ve brought you here to talk.”
My will was released. I leapt back. She laughed again, a cascade of ice. “Do the Phaxians know you’re as brave as this?”
That stiffened my spine on its own account. Almost gobbling with fury I said, with the rudest inflection I could manage, “So talk.”
She strolled beyond the fountain. Round again. Her eyes touched mine and slid away. Gaining bravado, I rasped, “What do you want?”
She dabbled her fingers in the cascade. “How is your bear?”
“Better,” I said through my teeth.
“And does he hate me now?”
“You should know better.” With bitter irony, I used his own words.
“More fool he, you think.”
I did not have to speak. Her lids lifted, swarms of golden motes adrift in night. “Because of himself, or because of his Math?”
“Eh?” I was past manners, and glad of it.
“Because,” she said impatiently, “he’s not allowed to hate me, or because he can’t?”
“Anyone,” I ripped back, “who didn’t hate you now could only be someone crazy enough to follow Math.”
Her fingers stilled in the silver froth. “Oh.”
“Yes, oh.” I merely saw a weakness, and was vengeful enough to charge at it.
After a moment, sounding oddly reduced, she said, “You don’t believe in Math?”
I opened my mouth. Thought of his burnt hand, the coal throwers, the fever, Klyra, Thephor.
“I believe in justice,” I said.
“And your bear only hopes for it.”
Beryx might have matched her. I could not. I said sullenly, “If you know, why ask?”
Her eyes came up, steady, straight. “You’d like to see me dead.”
No doubt mine replied. She smiled, a small, bitter smile. “Were you ever as loyal to me?”
I could not, dared not reply. Restlessly, she moved away.
“What did he say—afterwards?”
“Don’t you know?”
She whirled, her eyes shot an ebony flash, fear melted my bones. “Don’t,” she breathed, “tempt me, Alkir.”
“He said,” I mastered my voice, “that he was a blighted fool.”
“Nothing else?”
“That it served him right.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing important.”
“Nothing about me?”
I answered with satisfaction, “No.”
Again I had an elusive sense of dashed hopes. She was toying with a perridel spray. Gold dust puffed, powdering her hair. She said abruptly, “Why did he tell me about the Well?”
“Because,” I answered wearily, “to lie is Ammath.”
The blossom stilled. She was looking down, a hint of dreariness in the turn of her lips. Truculently, I said, “And why did Klyra have to lose her head for opening her mouth?”
Her eyes came up. Endless, depthless stellar black. “You,” she whispered, “have said more than enough. Walk.”
I fought. That is, my mind kicked and squirmed like a puppy held by the scruff of its neck. My feet continued to advance inexorably toward the parapet and the empty air beneath. Mentally I also screamed with rage and terror more ignobly than before, but I suppose it was an improvement that I could scream at all.
The compulsion broke. A clockwork toy reversed, I ran back almost to the wall, choked a yell, spun for pointless flight—but the Lady Moriana had forgotten me. She was up on the seat, on the back of the seat, skirts clutched high, naked terror in a white naked face. A darre, a full-grown coffin-snake, six satiny pinkish-brown feet of reflexes faster than light and venom that kills within five minutes of the bite, was reared up, its coffin-shaped head weaving as they do when roused, in striking distance of her feet.
Even then I might have helped her. Protective urges in a man, a soldier, any human faced by a serpent, are ingrained deep. But as I wavered Beryx’s voice said in a rush, <Don’t just stand there, get out!>
I ran clean down to the vault, stampeded for the only sure sanctuary. As I burst in, he let out a huge breath and sank back, sweat dripping everywhere, against the wall.
When he could speak, I ventured, “The Lady . . . the snake. . . .”
“Illusion.” He was still breathing hard. “You’d—say. Pellathir. A high art. Had to get you out—somehow.”
But he did not seem relieved. His face was taut, almost bleak. An awful intimation burst on me.
“Don’t,” he said after a minute, more easily. “I couldn’t have put words in your mouth. If she called you there instead of coming here, it was her choice. She had to take the consequence.”
“Consequence! Oh, if I’d thought—remembered—only shut my cursed, useless mouth!”
He said with affection, “Clot.” I groaned. “So you offended her. So she might have come round if you’d said something else. So I jumped right in on your tracks. Come on, Alkir.” I could hear the general, met with disaster, tying a knot, carrying on. “I’ve blundered worse myself.”
But when I looked back from the arch he was staring into the fire with that same braced, bleak expression. A general facing a blunder that will cost more than a battle, more than a campaign, more than an entire war.
* * * * *
As I lay beside Callissa’s softly breathing back, that face looked at me from the dark. Don’t worry, he had said. Shielding me from catastrophe, refusing to allot the blame I deserved, when Assharral, his life, the very world lay in the scales where I had cast the fatal speck. I writhed. Tomorrow, I vowed, I leave. Quit the captaincy, pack the family, tell him he’ll do better without me, it’s justified desertion. Leave Zyphryr Coryan, pull out.
As always, the crystallized decision brought relief. Turning over, I went slowly if not easily to sleep.
And woke with a plunge that made Callissa squeak, his voice in my ear as it had been in Lisdrinos, but this time with a grim, controlled urgency that bit like a lash.
<Alkir, wake up.>