“Her brother,” Corlan whispered. “There’s something wrong with him. With his mind. Or he’s possessed, is what some say.”
“Time, time, time, time,” Pietrus echoed, stomping around in a tight square as he did. “Never time, never right, never never!”
Rieve reached her brother and put her hands on his arm. He seemed to melt a little at that, his tensed muscles relaxing a bit. But he glowered at Corlan and Aric, and Aric was afraid he might come over and attack. How would he defend himself against Rieve’s brother, in their own home?
It didn’t come to that, however. Rieve and Solyara flanked him, and then another woman entered the courtyard, this one closer to Tunsall’s age, with long silver hair bound in several places. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just turned around for a moment and he was gone.” She flashed a gracious smile toward Aric and Corlan. “I apologize for the interruption,” she said.
“That’s quite all right,” Corlan said. “It’s good to see you, Sheridia.”
“And you, Corlan. And you, young man,” she said to Aric. There was a calming air about her that seemed to flow across the courtyard in waves.
“I am Aric,” he said. “It’s an honor to visit your home.”
“Come any time,” she said. She moved with brisk efficiency to where Rieve and Solyara had, ever so subtly, pinned Pietrus in. His brow had not lost its wrinkles, and his eyes darted about, but he was more at ease than he had been, and he allowed Sheridia to lead him away. “Come with me, Pietrus,” she said. “Let’s have some cool water.”
“Thank you, Grandmother!” Rieve called after them.
When they had gone, Rieve turned to Aric. “I’m sorry you had to see that, Aric. He is my brother, and I love him, but as you can see, he is … disturbed, you might say. ”
“I’m sure that was not comfortable for you,” Solyara added.
“Think nothing of it,” Aric said. “He lives here, not me. He’s entitled to go where he will.”
“Thank you, boy,” Tunsall said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m afraid we have rather a busy schedule today.” He had procured a small cloth bag from somewhere, and it jingled as he handed it to Aric. Its weight was comforting. “This should cover things.”
“Are you certain?” Aric asked. “It feels like too much.”
“You’ve done excellent work, my son. Take it.”
“My thanks, sir. My great thanks.”
After more goodbyes, and another clasping of hands, soft on rough, with Rieve, Aric found himself hurrying down the Snake Tower with a pleasant bulge in his pocket that hadn’t been there on the way up. He realized halfway down that he had forgotten the blanket he had carried the sword over in. He thought about going back for it, but decided not to. He had been dismissed, without equivocation—invited to return, but clearly they had other things to do at the moment. Anyway, they could burn the thing, for all he cared. He had enough coin now for another several blankets, and then some.
As he headed home through Nibenay’s chaotic streets, he thought about their home, so different from his quiet, often lonely place. The House of Thrace was crowded, bustling with activity and life. The family had its problems, clearly, but while Aric had heard gossip about most of the city’s noble houses over the years, most people spoke well of this one. He’d never heard any discussion of Rieve’s crazy brother, for instance, and that was the kind of thing people couldn’t resist sharing.
Alone, he walked through busy lanes, and he couldn’t help feeling a little sad, and a little envious, that his life was not like the one he had so briefly stepped into.
But he had a bag of coins and no immediate obligations. He thought he could find a way to put that envy and sorrow behind him. He would get busy on that, as soon as he had collected Ruhm.
III
The High Consorts’ Council
As befitted his name, the Shadow King kept to the shadows, even when making a public appearance. To give him his due, Kadya decided, this appearance was only somewhat public, and the idea that Nibenay, king of the city-state that bore his name, would deign to make public appearances at all was a new one. For a thousand years, or so people said, he had stayed out of sight of his subjects, hidden away in the Naggaramakam, the Forbidden Dominion within Nibenay, where only the king’s family, his templar wives, and their slaves were admitted. No free person had ever entered the Naggaramakam—none, at least, who had ever then left it again. And Nibenay had rarely ventured forth.
But Athas was changing, faster than Nibenay found comfortable. Events in Tyr, including the death of that city’s sorcerer-king—at the hands of mortals, no less—had made those changes disturbingly apparent to all. Nibenay had realized he had to make changes of his own, in order to ensure that his own subjects didn’t decide he needed to be assassinated as well.
His plan was to remake his image into someone who was accessible, attentive to the needs and concerns of the populace. At the same time, he meant to build up Nibenay’s already powerful military to the point that anyone considering an attack from without would decide the effort was bound to be suicidal. He was, to be blunt, trying to put a more positive face on his rule … without, in fact, showing his face much at all, while pretending to show it far more than he had in the past.
And the truth was, Kadya thought—although thinking this way frightened her, since it would be no large matter for Nibenay to dip into her mind and see it—he was not the most handsome creature ever to walk Athasian soil. He was striking, in his way. And power had a kind of aphrodisiac effect on many people, making them willing to overlook his physical defects. She included herself in that category. Kadya’s parents had decided, shortly after her birth, that her life would be dedicated to the priesthood. At seven she was enrolled in a state school, run by templars, and by fourteen she was initiated into the priesthood. Shortly after her sixteenth birthday she was married to Nibenay. All of his other templars were also his wives.
Fortunately, since as time passed she found him less and less appealing, he did not summon her to the marriage chamber more than once or twice a year. She was allowed to have slave concubines of her own, to meet her needs, as his needs were met by his vast harem of templar wives.
But Kadya was a woman of ambition, and smarter than her parents had expected, or they’d have kept her back and given one of their other daughters to the cause. So she kept her thoughts to herself, gave herself to him willingly when she was so called, and in the best tradition of Nibenay’s templars, schemed to improve her standing in the hierarchy. That scheming had brought her to this place, the High Consorts’ Council, where those templars who had responsibility for the administrative temples of the government came together to hear pleas from the city’s residents and to pass judgment on issues as needed.
Today, as he did a few times during any given month, Nibenay himself attended the council. The council chamber was a long rectangular room inside the Temple of the King’s Law, with an arched roof, the low points of which seemed to droop to the floor as a series of columns. Torches flickered on each of the columns, but there was a corner, near the back of the room, where those torches had been extinguished. That’s where her king stayed, letting the darkness conceal himself. The golden crown atop his head caught the light from more distant torches and refracted it into the shadowed corner.
The high consorts, the five templars representing the five governing temples, sat in chairs of equal size, arrayed in a half-circle facing the long end of the room. The beseechers sat or knelt on a floor of cool tiles before them, and most knew better than to address the Shadow King directly. The audience, made up of lesser templars like Kadya, sat on the floor around the room’s walls or against its many columns.