CHAPTER TWO

In Erusabad, Nihim, brother of the Ghen of all the East, sat at his desk and by the light of his oil lamp wrote a letter that he had been planning for some time.

* * * * * * *

To Elad, King of the Athadian People: this from the brother of Agors ko-Ghen of Salukadia: Greetings.

I write to you to explain why that which has happened has come to be. I write to you, Elad King, to tell you why it is that the follies of men lead to their ruin. I write to tell you of your wife, Queen Salia of the Athadians, and of what has occurred here since her arrival in this city.

I believe that, in the eyes of all gods that watch the earth, it is most important for men to speak with one another and not raise arms: to recognize one another as men first and not assume to be evil those things that are in fact dictated by fear or misunder­standing or deception.

Men create evil out of ignorance; but where there is pain, misunderstanding, or prejudice, there is only ignorance and not evil. I hope you will believe me when I tell you these things, for I do not believe that warfare or the decision to raise weapons is the answer we seek. If evil could be destroyed by the sword, then it would have been vanquished long ago: so I say that our two nations are involved in a situation not of evil but of pride and weakness and misunderstanding.

To speak as men with open hearts will eradicate the evil we think we perceive. We are men, my brother is a man, and the gods (whatever you or I might call them privately) have breathed life into both of us, into all people, and I think it would be better to trust to that breath of life rather than to assumptions that might poison our appreci­ation of that fact.…

* * * * * * *

He continued to write, sometimes rambling, but explaining as best he could his feelings on this matter of Salia’s “defection” to the East, her troubled personality and her search for truth, and the pain that people cause when they feel pain themselves. And when he was done, Nihim sealed his letter and ordered a palace courier sent to him. He indicated to that man that he must deliver this package immediately—tonight—to Lord Sirom of the Athadian government in his Authority Building in the city.

Nihim felt assured that this courier, whom he knew by name, would do as he had requested. As soon as the man had gone, Nihim poured himself a cup of tea, sat in a crouch on his woven mat in the center of his chamber floor, and stared at the endless circular maze of the loht tapestry that hung on the opposite wall.

His courier, however, did not leave the building. The man moved through the halls of the palace and, in accordance with proscriptions recently set down by Agors ko-Ghen, placed Nihim’s package into the hands of an official stationed outside the ghen’s office. It was the duty of this official to censor or clear any message or delivery emanating from the Salukadian palace.

Therefore, he opened this letter, read it, and ordered a soldier to guard his closet and desk while he left to approach the ghen.

Agors, as had become his habit late in the evening, was eating supper and drinking wine in one of the large rooms on the third floor. Several courtiers were with him; Salia, however, was not present. She had tended to isolation within the past few weeks. Agors and his ministers were refreshing themselves with food and idle talk and listening to musicians. When the official entered, he was given leave to approach the ghen; moving across the floor, he held his arms wide in a gesture of subservience and peace, bowed before his master, and placed the letter upon Agors’s table.

Agors nodded, and his man exited.

The ghen proceeded to finish a leg of roast fowl before deciding to read what had been brought; when he took it up, his fingers left grease stains on the paper. Agors read the letter without apparent emotion.

From several tables down, bin-Sutus watched him with a careful stare.

Agors finished reading the letter, refolded it, turned his attention once again to the musicians, and idly dropped the parchment into a burning incense brazier close by him on his table.

The letter fanned into flames, produced several long puffs of smoke, and was reduced to charred flakes.

While Agors ko-Ghen reached for another leg of fowl.

* * * * * * *

Restless and frustrated, Adred could not stay in his room; too much of what Orain had said to him had driven too deeply, caused him to reimagine many scenes and episodes. His mind was working as busily as a furious swarm of flies, and he could not calm himself. Irritated, he decided to go out.

What holds it all together? And why? Why?

The night was quite warm, and so he did not even consider putting on his light coat when he left the palace. Sentries in the foyer saluted him as he exited, but Adred was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he did not even notice them. He went out into the west gardens but found no calm in the quiet solitude, and so he followed one walkway out toward the pedestrian gate and left the palace grounds.

He headed west until he came to the Odasian Square, then turned south and strolled briskly past the still open shops and stalls and taverns. Even this far from the docks, he spotted numerous gatherings of soldiers and sailors sporting badges from all the major ports and cities of the empire. Their voices carried in guffaws and friendly yells, some melodious, others inflected and accented. And as he continued south, walking toward the docks on the River Sevulus, Adred noticed larger groups of military personnel seated on the verandahs of restau­rants or crowded inside taverns whose doors and windows were open to the warm night.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow they would all be shipping out, sailing for Erusabad and—what? War? Could this pretentiousness lead to war? Or was it all a bluff or a desperate blunder? Even if Elad didn’t intend for this to lead to war, couldn’t he be setting in motion events that might unpredictably rage out of control?

Adred took a table on the patio of a restaurant and ordered a cup of beer, then sipped it slowly and tried to order the memories that gripped him so strongly—the compounding of events and effects and deliberate actions that must somehow have led to this grim imbalance, this dance with chaos.

“Adred, I see your heart. Do not mourn. Do not look behind. May I entrust you with a philosophy?” “I would be honored, Queen Yta.” “Strive. Aspire. We enter a dark age. I have seen the future, and it is dark, but there is a light.”

“Sire, I’m not asking you to change human nature. All I’m asking is that we appeal to the best in our nature.”

“Oh, she’s all right. She gets into trouble because she wants to do the right thing.” “Everybody wants to do the right thing. But the world’s still in trouble.”

“They had me in a cage, like an animal. I don’t know where. This little village. And there was this priest. Telling stories. He looks at me, he’s watching me, all these people around, and he starts talking about— I’m an evil man and I cause pain to everybody—all this ass shit. I spit in his eye…and then he starts talking about…I don’t know.”

“Let’s face reality, gentlemen. None of us is naive; we all know how the world operates, so let’s dispense with this charade of brotherhood and community and equality.”

“I want to believe in something…anything, even if it’s evil, if it helps explain what’s happened. If it can explain even a little why all of this is happening. I want to believe in something again. I want to trust the world again.”

As he began walking back toward the palace, the tension of the day’s events and the weariness of his worries quickly began to tire Adred. He considered hiring a carriage but, for some obscure, self-demanding reason, refrained. In the Odasian Square, most of the stalls were now closed, and only a few taverns yet echoed with lingering, brawling, heroic sounds.

What holds it all together? What?

Thoroughly exhausted (and glad of it), he at last reached the palace grounds and passed through a gate in the southern wall. Ahead of him, Adred noticed a squadron of troops collected before the south entrance portico; intrigued, he hastened. But the troop had already begun to disperse by the time he reached the steps.

Adred noticed that they had delivered a prisoner to two Khamars, who were escorting the chained man toward the doors of the palace prison, off the eastern wing. When he came into the entrance foyer, Adred paused, nodded to one of the sentries on duty, walked over to him.

“Good evening, Count Adred.”

“Good evening. Could I ask you something? Who was that prisoner I saw those Khamars with just now?”

“Priest of some sort. Brought him in from Hilum tonight.”

“A priest?” Adred rubbed his forehead, remembering some­thing. “A priest from Hilum.” Looking up suddenly: “What’s his name? Do you know his name?”

The sentry shrugged and motioned to a companion seated at a desk near the doors. “What’s the name of that robe they just brought in? Did you hear?”

The Khamar made a noncommittal gesture—who paid attention to such things?—but then guessed, “As—wasas? Asa—wasas. Something like that.”

Adred, raising a hand to his lips, whispered quickly, “Gods…it’s him. He’s the one!”

The sentry overheard. “What’d you say, sir?”

“They had me in a cage, like an animal. And there was this priest. He looks at me, he’s watching me, all these people around, and he starts talking about— I’m an evil man and I cause pain to everybody— I spit in his eye.”

The priest who’d put such fear into Cyrodian that the giant’s hair had turned white.

The one Seraficos had had arrested on charges of sedition and treason.

The one all the people were claiming was a miracle worker and a doomsayer, even that he was Bithitu himself returned to earth.

Asawas.

* * * * * * *

And while the candles and the lamps burned low, still Nihim and Salia sat in her room and sipped tea and spoke occasionally when their stray glances met. Nihim in his plain robe, unadorned by any jewelry or fashionable device. Salia, beautiful yellow rose of the West, in her poverty of spirit and with that unquelled rage against herself unquiet in her heart, barely clothed in her sandals and her brief skirt and her ornaments and shining pendants.

She was sitting on a divan. It was a wide divan, long, and desolate of pillows or cushions. Salia might have stretched herself upon the length of it and been as free as though she were upon a beach; but she did not. She sat huddled in one corner of it, as though the empty space about her were pressing upon her intolerably.

Nihim was seated in a wooden chair across the room, watching her in the silence of the night, more aware of her than Salia was of him.

A stark hollow noise erupted briefly in the hall outside, beyond the hanging curtains. Salia reacted tautly, turning her head like a startled cat.

Nihim hardly moved. “It is not he.”

Salia lent him a cruel look, then intently studied her white arms and began picking at her skin and some of the scabs that had formed on scratches she had done to herself. “I know that,” she admitted. “He never comes here anymore. It’s just as well. I don’t want him to come here anymore.” She looked up and stared into a corner, giving great thought to what she wished to say, how she might phrase it. But what she said was, “I don’t want him to…come here—anymore.”

Nihim, after a long while, rose, clasped his hands behind him, and slippered across the floor to the queen. Salia followed him slyly out of the corners of her eyes but did not move her head: feline and uncertain.

Nihim said to her, “My master Toshin says that it is a good thing to understand others, but true awareness comes only from knowing oneself. I think, Queen Salia, that you do not know others, yet you have suffered from their actions toward you; you have allowed them to make of you something—someone—whom you do not understand. Now, you try to understand yourself, you look for yourself, but no one has given you the light, they have taken the light away. Your search is confusing and endless. You do not know where to begin.”

Now she looked at him. It was not scorn on her face, nor mistrust in her expression, but a relief mixed with questioning—a quivering hopefulness. “Your master…Toshin…is a very wise man.”

“He is indeed.”

“Perhaps you can help me, Nihim, to find myself.”

He shook his head. “How could I succeed where others have failed you? You must do this. But you must forget everything you have been taught. You must look into a mirror and not see yourself; you must force that image out of the mirror. Then you must concentrate on what remains.”

Her brows knitted. “Is this a puzzle, Nihim? If I force the picture of myself—the reflection of myself—from my mirror, I will not be there. What will remain?”

“Light,” he replied. “Light.”

Salia stared at him for some moments; dissatisfied, then, she looked away. “I cannot do that. I can’t.” She shrugged.

Nihim sighed. He began to walk away, to leave her. “If ever you wish to speak with me again or see me, you need only ask.”

Salia waited until he had nearly left the room, then called after him, “Ghen-usu.”

He turned, making a whispering sound.

“Tell me.… There are rumors that my husband prepares to come here and make war upon your brother. Is this true?”

“It is.”

“He does this for me?”

“He does this because of you.”

“And do you think he will actually make war upon this city? Will Agors answer him with war? Will we go to war, Nihim?”

Standing behind her and speaking from where she could not see him, the prince spoke, and his might have been a voice from the Beyond, presenting her with words and ideas as though from a young god or a demon or from some secret part of Salia herself. A voice. Nihim said, “War, as sad a thing as it is, is not so difficult to understand. It is merely the last resort of societies that feel their self-interests threatened; and those societies are merely composed of people who have sworn allegiance to some common idea. The ideas go to war, ideas born of fear or ignorance or prejudice. It seems to me that when you ask me, queen, will your husband and my brother go to war because of you, you see yourself as a fulcrum between two conflicting opposites. Such is not the case.

“Wars are often committed for excuses, not reasons: and those excuses are rooted in fear and ignorance and prejudice and greed. The actual reasons are otherwhere, hidden like the sword in its scabbard or the gold in its purse. Consider this: every living thing in the world is intent first of all upon preserving itself; this is a truth. Yet all things too are born to die, and all their powers to preserve themselves cannot prevail against this natural law. So what is to be done? In the matter of humankind, most of us deny this ultimate fact and make excuses. We entertain ideas that ignore the reality around us. We rely upon token concepts that do not explain but seem to. So…although a person loses his life, still this person assumes that he has ensured the purpose of his life by helping to preserve what gave his life meaning. Doing this, he feels he has conquered death, which he fears is meaningless.

“Animals, Toshin teaches us, preserve their essence by protect­ing their brood. Man, Toshin teaches us, preserves his essence not only by protecting his brood but by endowing his societies with purposes that seem as profound as Nature’s purposes. We institute our ideas, beliefs, and passions into the fabric of our societies. When new life is born, it is welcomed with celebration; yet when new ideas are born, old ideas are seldom relinquished or left to die: and this is because we seldom test the ideas upon which we have based our societies.

“People do not seek the truth that will challenge them but desire only comfort that will sustain them: old, familiar ideas—like old, familiar habits—are the most comfortable. Thus, we may commit ourselves to actions that permit of unfairness or duplicity or evil and still believe these things to be right and correct, for we remain comfortable in a place that is an old habit, and truth must bow to custom, not custom to new truths.

“So, Queen Salia…you ask me if your husband and my brother will go to war. I ask you to reflect on these things I have just told you: that people will preserve themselves or preserve what they identify with themselves, at any cost, and that they will be comforted with lies they have trusted out of habit rather than take responsibility for the truth. Old customs and new ideas will go to war. I remind you that Toshin teaches us that there are three parts to a human being that one must bring into balance within himself. If a person cannot do this—and societies are composed of people, after all—then we may judge that person as being particularly one of three kinds. It is not the different kinds that are important: it is the balance or imbalance that is important.

“So, I now answer your question with another question, Queen Salia. And I ask you to consider ideas, and customs, and self-preservation. Would you say that your husband is an intellectual man?”

“No,” she replied in a dry voice, “he is not an intellectual man.”

“Would you say that he is a passionate man?”

“No more so than other men, I suppose. No…not so passionate.”

“Would you say that he is a moral man?”

Salia replied, “Yes. I do think that he considers himself to be a moral man.”

“I see. Do you consider my brother to be a moral man in his outlook?”

“No, not in the way we in the West regard morality.”

“Do you consider him to be passionate man?”

“Yes,” Salia answered with conviction. “Very much a passionate man.”

“And not an intellectual man?”

“No, not Agors.”

“One a moral man, the other a passionate man. I leave you, Queen Salia, to decide whether we will go to war.”

* * * * * * *

Late that night, unable to resolve Nihim’s words to her satisfac­tion, seeing them as separate and not as pieces of a whole, Salia tried to fit them together mentally as she would physically a puzzle, but she became exasperated and gave it up. Nervous and agitated as she was, however, as the night neared dawn, she stepped before one of her mirrors and stared into it, pressed her fingertips to her reflection, and tried by an act of great will to eradicate the image of herself that was so plainly and distinctly to be seen in the polished silver.

But when she could not, after repeated attempts, focus her mind to accomplish this, she went to her bed, where she wept until she fell asleep, biting on her fingers.

And the only light to be seen in her mirror was the hazy reflection of dawnlight, as it slipped through the shutters of her windows.…