It was a bright day of wind and sun when Prince Cuillioc’s reunited armada sailed into the Bay of Mir—Mir of the sapphire waters and fragrant breezes, of the palm trees and the silvery white beaches—Mir, the gateway to the mines and the cities of the interior, and all their riches.
Cuillioc stood on the deck of his flagship surrounded by the knights of his household, his jeweled armor glittering in the sunlight, and watched the approach of a floating delegation from Xanthipei, the great city on the bay.
As he waited, he had not a shadow of a doubt how this parley would go. First the Mirazhites would demand to know whether he came in peace or in war. When he told them he had come to conquer them and to collect tribute in the name of the Empress, there would be a polite exchange of threats, rapidly degenerating into open hostility, whereupon the ambassadors would retire in a state of high indignation to communicate his demands to their countrymen.
With all this settled in his mind long in advance, he welcomed the envoys on board with his usual grave courtesy, stifled a yawn, and waited for the questioning to begin. Much to his astonishment, they seemed already to know his intentions. More than that, they were ready to comply, ready indeed to welcome him and his armies into their city, even to provide hostages—in token of their respect for the Empress—as a pledge of their good behavior—whatever the Great Prince Cuillioc should decree.
Cuillioc felt the deck dip violently under his feet; the world spun around him. He hardly knew how to reply, this was so unexpected. To prepare for this campaign, he had spent many months poring over antique papyrus scrolls and wax tablets, studying the languages of the east. He considered himself reasonably proficient, yet he feared that he made—he must have made—some odd errors in translation.
They could not possibly have said all that he thought they had said.
Searching for some excuse to temporize, he sent for Iobhar. But the furiádh, his curiosity aroused, appeared rather sooner than might reasonably have been expected, arriving all in a hot impatience to learn more, and a rowboat manned by two of his acolytes. Though he reacted with surprise and no little wonder when Cuillioc explained the situation, the priest made a swift recovery and proceeded to ask a number of shrewd questions, the answers to which at least made the matter somewhat easier to comprehend, if no less remarkable.
It developed that the oracles, haruspicers, soothsayers, and prophets of Xanthipei had, every one of them, foreseen Cuillioc’s coming, to the day and hour. More, they had predicted his ultimate and bloody victory in the event of a battle. Therefore, the great men of the city had agreed to follow the only course which prudence dictated—an immediate and unconditional surrender, thereby avoiding the tumults and alarms of a futile resistance and the resulting bloodbath.
The Prince looked from Iobhar to the noblemen of his household, and back again, still scarcely able to believe what he heard. Never before had he met with people so willing to rely wholly and utterly on the advice of their seers. Yet it seemed that he had no choice but to accept their surrender, accept, too, the offered hostages, and prepare himself to enter his newly conquered city.
He watched his fighting men disembark first, shipload after shipload. When he had seen them safely landed, he, Iobhar, and all the Pharaxion nobles brought their households ashore. Once on land, Cuillioc was escorted to a seat in a howdah on an elephant—a creature he had hitherto considered unlikely, if not strictly fabulous—then, with his senses all awhirl, carried amidst great pomp and gaudy celebration to the great palace, or Citadel, at the heart of the city, where he was soon comfortably ensconced in a suite of sumptuous rooms.
Many days passed, in which the men of Phaôrax sampled the varied delights of that remarkable city. The nights were long and languorous, the wines heady, and the women supremely skilled in the arts of seduction.
While the others caroused, Cuillioc remained always on his guard. He, whose life had been one long series of misfortunes and cruel, unexpected turns, must naturally suspect the ease with which he had taken Xanthipei, the good fortune by which he stood perfectly poised to conquer the interior and make himself master of all Mirizandi.
For many days he hardly dared venture outside his luxurious residence in the Citadel, content to receive visitors and grant audiences, to spend hours in the vast treasuries selecting suitable gifts and tribute to send back to the Empress, or wandering through the shady porticoes and pergolas of the palace, the collonades and the sanctuaries—all built of cool green marble, with a well, a cistern, or a fountain in every courtyard and garden.
“The great men of Xanthipei smile and smile,” he said to Iobhar, “but you have only to look at the faces of the people in the streets. We are not welcome here, we are not wanted. I fear we have walked into a trap.”
Iobhar shrugged. “I have deployed my spies throughout the city—as you no doubt have deployed yours, Great Prince, and the other Great Lords theirs—and not so much as a hint of a whisper of sedition has reached my ears. It seems that the Goddess Ouriána inspires fear and worship even here. It is that fear, I believe, that has influenced the masters of Xanthipei, for all their talk of seers and predictions.”
Cuillioc tried to believe him. He wanted to believe, and was well on his way to doing so when an incident occurred that reawakened all of his former doubts. Quite by accident, he learned that the hostages he kept under constant guard in an isolated wing of the palace were not, as they had been presented, the sons and daughters of noble families. They were, in truth, foreign slaves decked out in the cast-off finery of their young masters and mistresses.
As word of this deception spread through the Citadel, the Pharaxion nobles were soon in an uproar, gathering in the corridor outside the Prince’s chambers to express their dismay. Lord Cado and his brother Armael waxed particularly vociferous.
“They must be taught to fear us utterly. They must tremble at the thought of our just retribution,” said Armael, in his pompous way. “Let those responsible for the imposture be taken and executed; let others be arrested as well, to serve as an example.”
With an effort, Cuillioc managed to keep his temper. All along, he had expected these parasites of the court to seize on some such opportunity to cause him embarrassment, but this passed all bounds. “Arrest and execute men who have welcomed us here with elephants and processions? What sort of example would that be?”
“Yet they have deceived us in the matter of the hostages,” Cado protested. “Worse, they have made fools of us. What more proof do we need that they have intended treachery all along?”
Oddly, it was Iobhar who stepped in to conciliate the two sides.
“Let new hostages be taken from among the great families, now that we know who they are,” said the priest. “Let Lord Cado and his brother do the choosing, but let the noble lords of the Prince’s household make the arrests, so that all may be done fairly and honorably.”
Though Cado and his faction continued to protest, they did so in an undertone, and Prince Cuillioc himself, try as he might (he could never quite trust the furiádh), could find no fault with his plan. He immediately ordered that it should be so, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing it done.
Once he determined to leave the palace and become better acquainted with the life of the streets, Prince Cuillioc spent his first weeks in Mirizandi overwhelmed by the sights and the smells, the colors, and the sounds, at the same time equally intrigued and appalled by the unabashed hedonism of the Mirazhite nobles.
The Goddess knew he was no stranger to luxury, nor to the reckless extravagance of a royal court. And yet—and yet at home in his mother’s capital city there was always a somber undercurrent, a sense that every pleasure would eventually have to be paid for with prayers and penances. Temple spies were everywhere, and just retribution seemed always to be lurking around the next corner, so that even the most dissipated, no matter how reprehensible their lives in between, always turned up sober and subdued for the principle religious festivals.
In Xanthipei, there were no such mitigating factors. Those who could afford to do so reveled in pleasure, became resoundingly drunk, ate until they vomited, gambled, whored, spent a king’s ransom on clothing and trinkets—all with a thoughtless abandon that was as foreign to the Prince’s nature as it was to his experience.
Here, he had seen noble youths, for mere sport, cast pearls into wine, wagering on which vintage would prove the more efficient solvent. In the schools attached to the playhouses, he was told, they castrated young boys to keep their voices sweet. In the gambling houses, they kept a ready supply of comely young virgins for the amusement of their patrons.
He became wary of the food on that memorable day when he discovered that the sweets he was happily devouring were actually a confection of beetles drenched in honey and stuffed with spices. It seemed there was nothing these people did not dip in honey or roll in sugar: fruits, flowers, dragonflies and honeybees, powdered gemstones; the tongues of nightingales and the hearts of hummingbirds. Some things were to be eaten, and some to be sniffed and tasted, as actual consumption was likely to prove harmful and others simply to be admired and wondered at.
The streets were full of fire-eaters, snake charmers, and sword dancers; of beggars juggling delicate glass balls that flashed in the sunlight; old women who cast knucklebones or read portents in wine or water.
Beyond the ten square miles of gardens and ornate villas surrounding the Citadel, there were miles and miles of little clay houses and an infinity of small temples and crazy leaning ziggurats, each with its own mummified deity: a cat or a crocodile, a river horse, a two-headed calf, or a rat with seven tails.
After a time, Xanthipei began to have a strange effect on Cuillioc. There was something in the convoluted patterns of the city, in the teeming life of the slums, in the fantastical architecture of the Citadel, which—when he was under the influence of too much wine or other intoxicants—suggested immensities of time and space, power and possibility, hitherto uncontemplated. At other times, times of greater lucidity, it was simply a place of great squalor and disorder, grotesquely mixed up with luxury and debauchery, like the spiders and winged insects inside their sweetmeats.
Oddly and disturbingly, in both states he was often irresistibly reminded of things he had seen in the cluttered attic of the mad astrologer in Apharos: Maelor’s curious arrangements of bones and potsherds; the symbols he had drawn in ochre and chalk and charcoal. Had the old man ever visited this city? Had his eyes been opened here to Mirazhite mysteries and labyrinthine secrecies he was still pursuing?
Or was it simply that all madmen dreamed alike? In sober truth, his entire sojourn in Xanthipei had many of the qualities of a fever dream.
Of Maelor’s warnings he remained ever mindful. The danger of poisoning or drugging was ever-present, the opportunities endless. But against the stealthy assault, the knife-wielding assassin, the betrayal that came in the form of a smothering pillow, a fall from a balcony, a slip at the top of the stairs—against such perils as those, Cuillioc was always on his guard. If he distrusted the Mirazhites, still less did he trust the majority of his Pharaxion nobles. Though dazed by splendor, giddy with so many new experiences, he was well aware of the plots and whisperings, the secret meetings, all taking place inside the Citadel.
Accordingly, he was not to be seduced by the dubious pleasures of the wine shops, hashish dens, and brothels. He confined himself solely to those diversions he might more safely enjoy in his chambers at the palace, surrounded by a handful of trusted friends.
So it came about that he was lying passed out on his own bed, with one of the palace concubines under him and strong sunlight shining in through his bedchamber window, when his little spy came into the room with an urgent message. Only half awakened by the urchin’s frantic shaking, Cuillioc rolled over, opened a bloodshot eye, and mumbled a barely audible obscenity.
But he was suddenly awake and alert, and on his feet within moments, when he realized what the boy was trying to tell him. “When? Where?” he asked grimly, reaching for his clothes.
The page’s answer convinced him to cast those garments aside, catch up a rich brocade covering from the bed, wrap it around him, and stalk out of the room, bawling out for his attendants as he did so.
On a wide balcony overlooking one of the courtyards, he met with Iobhar. The priest stood gazing down with his white, impassive face at a scene of unbridled carnage and bloodshed. But he turned at hearing Cuillioc’s footstep behind him, and regarded the Prince with an enigmatic look.
“It is too late, Great Prince. There is nothing that we can do; the hostages have already been executed. It would appear that the noble lords of your household did their best to prevent it, but they were overwhelmed and placed under bodily restraint.”
Cuillioc glared at him. “By whose order? If by yours, or with your connivance, my good Iobhar, do not imagine that those scarlet robes of yours will offer you any protection!”
Sliding his hands into his wide sleeves, the furiádh made a deep obeisance. “Not by my order, Great Prince, I assure you. I suggest you direct your questions—and your threats—to Lords Armael and Cado.
“You may see them down in the courtyard now,” he added with a grimace—more for the barbaric crudity of it all than for the violence, Cuillioc assumed, “no doubt admiring their revolting handiwork.”
Sick, shaken, torn between anger and revulsion, the Prince went back to his room, where he dressed and armed himself. Then he marched down to the courtyard.
He arrived just as the last of the hacked and mutilated bodies were being removed, to find his attendants—their freedom and their weapons but recently restored to them—burning with indignation at the rough and humiliating treatment to which they had been subjected, eager to assure him they were in no way at fault. Lords Cado and Armael had already departed.
Cuillioc took only so long as it required to determine that the lords in question had in truth ordered and supervised the executions, before leading his grim-faced followers in search of them.
He had no trouble running them to earth as they refreshed themselves after their morning’s labors with a light repast under a quince tree in one of the gardens.
At the sight of their smug faces, their air of being totally unconscious of having done anything wrong, a sudden mist rose before his eyes, and the blood roared in his ears. Then his sword was hissing out of the scabbard and flashing through the air.
Cado died almost before he knew what was happening, but Armael had scrambled up from his seat and was halfway across the garden before the Prince caught up to him and struck off his head.
Spattered in the blood of his victims, dizzy and shaking with reaction, Cuillioc stood gazing down on Armael’s body. His knees nearly gave out at the thought that he—he! who aspired to chivalry and honor at all times and in all his dealings—had actually executed these men out of hand.
And yet they had impugned his honor, undermined his mission here in other ways, too. He tried to convince himself that he was well rid of them, however it came about.
Could it possibly be over: the plotting, the treachery? Have I convinced the others I am not to be trifled with?
Could anything in his life ever be that simple?
Then he glanced up and caught Iobhar unaware, surprising on the priest’s ghostly face a look of unmistakable satisfaction, almost gloating.
Because he thinks my mother will be pleased? Or because he knows I have made some irredeemable error?