Kesarh showed nothing. He simply continued to meet the King’s eyes.
“You honor me, Sire.”
And the King shook his hand, while the haphazard council congratulated him heartily.
The stinging bees of Free Zakoris sailed in small swarms, but it was sure Suthamun would send an equally small portion of the Karmian fleet against them. It was, besides, a fleet soft from easy times, and mostly Visian, for mainly those Shansars who had wanted to remain under sail had gone home. Add to that unpreparedness and lack of size, indolent ship lords, then place in charge a prince without kudos and with no more experience of a sea-fight than the fire animal of his blazon, the salamander.
It could be phrased to look like an opportunity. It could also be an invitation to disgrace and death.
The long northern sunset was almost finished as the barge came from the pink water and ground on the stony beach of Ankabek. There had been a delay after all, a zeeba casting a shoe, some hours spent in shining Ioli. But the barge had waited, of course, and the crossing was only a matter of hours, the sea all calm, and the mysterious island growing before them from the shadows and the light, so it almost seemed enchanted, blessed. As it was, indeed, must be.
Val Nardia stared toward it with a curious yearning, touched by the beauty of the portents, and the last aching sunglow on its heights.
Above the landing, a village spread along the slope. Men came toward the beach with torches, and with them a woman walking like a ghost as the twilight closed the world.
The court escort was already back in the barge, only the girl stayed fidgeting with the Princess’ belongings, suddenly bursting into tears and kissing Val Nardia’s hand. Val Nardia spoke quietly to her, a reassurance, but her awareness was fixed on the woman walking among the torches. Then she was near, and the servant girl dropped to her knees.
The woman was a Lowlander. There was no mistaking it. Her hair beneath a smoky veil was lighter than a morning sky. Out of her ice-white face her eyes shone, the gold of the torch flames.
She looked at Val Nardia with these eyes, and seemed to pierce her through with them. The Princess did not resist the gaze. She opened herself, eyes, brain, and soul, to it, and so felt no fear, only a great astonishment. Did the Lowland priestess read her mind? It was well. Let all the sin and sadness be known, and then there might come healing.
But the woman merely said, in a low, still voice, “We have expected you, lady.”
The sentence had all the courtesy of one who, being the child of the goddess, could afford to be gracious.
“And I,” said Val Nardia softly, “have longed to arrive.”
The priestess glanced at the torchbearers who now took up Val Nardia’s slight possessions. They walked back, past the village and up the slope.
The priestess went after them without another word, and Val Nardia followed her.
Behind them, the barge dwindled at the edge of the water.
Ahead the dark path darkened further among tall trees. Where the torchlight lit them, their leaves showed red: These were the sacred trees of the Lowland temple groves. Presently, too, the evening breeze began to wake a tinsel sound from among them where discs of thin whitish metal were hung from the boughs. It was an hour’s walk.
The temple of Ashara who was Ashkar who was Anackire stood at the island’s summit. Black stone on the black of night, its windows revealed no lamp, it had no ornament. Only in its size did it differ from the temples of the Plains. The upright slot of the door was very high. No one called to be let in, yet the black doors swung inwards. Beyond, a dull sheen of light was the only hint of the temple’s life.
The men with torches placed their burdens neatly just within the doors, then turned and filed away. They were Vis, or mixed-blood, Karmian with Shansar and Vathcrian, but they had been trained, or had grown, to other ways. They seemed barely human.
The priestess stood within the doorway now.
“You enter here,” she said, “the Sanctuary of the goddess. For all that seek Her, She waits. As, for those who do not seek Her, She is not.”
A note seemed to chime in Val Nardia’s heart; the music of the discs on the trees sounded all at once.
She went swiftly into the Sanctuary, and the doors, without apparent agency, swung shut behind her.
2
The ceremony was conducted on the wide raised terrace before the temple. The building had formerly housed the Karmian love goddess, Yasmais, but she had been cast down and chased away to the little shrines of the Pleasure City. Now the temple was Ashara’s, the watery Anackire. Her smaller image had been brought out and she balanced on her golden fish tail, her eight white arms outspread like rays.
The magician-priest of the King slit the throat of a white bull-calf. In Shansar they had always offered Her blood before a battle.
Above, the sky was clear and innocent, but the Star had already manifested there and at night blazed behind the moon. At this season, all things came to have a sexual underlay, even magic and religion, certainly the acts of war. And it was a bad time to fight, who did not know that? The fair men of the second continent claimed immunity from Zastis, but one noticed they did not seem quite indifferent and had grown less so, those that lived long in Vis. Only the pale people, the Lowlanders, the Amanackire, took no heat from the months of the Red Moon.
Rem shifted in his mail. Other men shifted, the crowd surged and whispered.
The priest cried out his prophecy of victory, and the Karmian cymbals clashed, and the crowd found release in a shout.
So much ceremonial, and so few ships. Three, to be exact. Three ships, undermanned, rowers on double-pay in their unwillingness, and half that in arrears until Kesarh himself had somehow found their wages. They were old ships, also, the cream of the Karmian fleet of thirty years ago, patched up and pretty and liable to take water. The captains were here, and would presently swagger to the harbor and embark. They would make sail around the coast toward the mouth of the straits. The Prince Am Xai and his twenty guard—he had admitted to keeping, shockingly, twice the number permitted him—would ride ahead and await this speck of fleet at Tjis, the town which had sent the latest report of Zakorian activity.
It was a farce, and this religious frill only made it worse.
Rem shifted again, and his new scars gave him a dry little pang, and he thought of Doriyos.
Rem, once called Rarmon, had been six days lying up after his lashing. The physician he had managed to bribe the merchant’s man to fetch, had tended him thoroughly, and he had healed very well and very fast. But sprawled hours long on his belly in the damp heat of the cellar storeroom, listening to the throb of the sea against the wall, he had been filled with a vague hatred for all things. Lyki came to visit him once or twice. She had not been friendly, but she had had the man bring him soup and beer and bread. Thankfully, the beer and the physician’s draughts sent him to sleep more and more often as the pain died down.
On the sixth day, Zastis was visible just before sunrise, a wicked blush. Rem had left the storeroom, used the functional bathing facilities of the merchant’s house, and looked for his mother. She was still in bed. The merchant would be home tomorrow, perhaps. Rem left two silver Karmian ankars for Lyki, lying amid the cheap jewels by her mirror. She would know what that meant.
On the street by the very gate, Rem met one of his fellow soldiers.
“I was sent to fetch you. Our Prince has been selected to murder Free Zakorians at Tjis. I, and you, are picked to die with him.”