But the nights, the violet nights. . . then, up on the Palace hill, the delicate dreamers sank into the many-colored deviances, the eldritch pleasures, the past of the City which had been, empires long lost—the past which might have been; the true future and the future which could never be. The City exported dreams. This alone was enough to sustain its nobles, the glittering crowd which attended on the Tyrant. They dreamed; and when it pleased them, they sold those dreams, recorded tapes of a flavor and nature which alone could satisfy the jaded dreamtrippers of the Limb's decadent First Colonies (where law had long ago faded) or the illicit trade on younger worlds elsewhere. They were a commodity unique among expensive vices. . . expensive because they came from Earth, which was remote from important worlds; because they were rare (seldom would the Tyrant consent); and because they were purchased with lives. The Port of the City remained open for this trade alone, bringing in the mere food and drink and precious objects which kept the nobles of the City well-disposed and luxurious—bringing in, more rarely, that prize victim which could open the iron gates of the seventh hill, and secure a tape of such sport as would echo wealth across the stars, enriching the hands through which it passed.
Hence Ginar, who lived in affluence in his mansion by the port, served by countless servants who found tending Ginar more comfortable than toiling for the lords of the City. . . lapped in the luxury of goods he siphoned off from those lords, who hardly missed them. Presidency of such a post had to offer some recompense in luxury, physically, for it meant exile from the civilized worlds, the young worlds, where life was, and some could not have endured that. But there was one luxury Ginar had here, besides his fine foods and his servants: he was himself of one of the First Colonies, and for many years he had been an addict, a dreamtripper, who lived for that pleasure which was nearer here than anywhere—and across the River, out of reach save when some tape could be brought from out of the City, bought at price.
Hence Belat, who made the long ship runs, who had been very long in the trade, and whose well-being presently trembled on the brink.
Belat started now across the bridge, when the sun was still at dawning, and safe—across the bridge which was the oldest and the last of the bridges of the City. On it, monoliths which had been statues stared down, marble pillars deprived by time of all feature, only hints of faces, like wide-mouthed screams and sunken eyes, and handless, outstretched arms.
And beyond that. . . a slow walk through the City itself, through the catacombs, which were ruin piled on ruin, untended, for no one cared to repair what time had always, eternally, destroyed. Workers stared from eyes like those of the statues, pits of shadow, fear-haunted. Sometimes one would dart away, but most would stand wherever they were caught, trying, perhaps, to seem dull—for nightly what time there was no special game, the lords walked out among them and chose one of them for that fate, whatever one the lords judged guilty of imagination, whatever one promised sport.
He never saw one defiant. Those who offered such looks would have been first chosen, most savored.
He walked on, paying no great attention to them, not liking their eyes; he never had, in the many times he had walked this path.
Seven hills, and the centermost was a cloven hill, where lightnings played most frequently in storms, a hill poised above ruins and split by the seam of an ancient fault. Gods had dwelt here once, and now the Tyrant did, at the end of a road which walked the ancient line of destruction, sleeping now, as the City slept, huddled on its hills. In this place had been an ancient ruin, and bits of white marble worked up lilce broken bone from the seam of this old wound, the only bare ground in all the City, surrounded by catacombs, the heaped up ruins of the millennia of the City's old age.
An iron gate began that valley, where a Keeper stood, a lesser lord, on daywatch, with a shelter from the sun when it should rise, a gatehouse of jumbled bits of marble, aged and smooth, and twined about with vines. The Keeper's interest pricked at this visitation—which came but so very seldom, and Belat stood before the gates without touching them, hands folded, matching the hauteur of the guard himself.
"I've a gift," Belat said. The Keeper regarded him a moment more from kohl-rimmed eyes, gave a languid, deadly smile.
And with a touch the young lord loosed the gate. "Go on," he whispered, in that hoarse, hushed tone of the aristocracy of the City. None of the nobles spoke loudly; it was the mark of their peculiar art.
He passed through, walked that way among the ruins. He felt the smile behind his back, a feral smile which followed him with lazy, kohl-rimmed eyes, and lusted for him, in one way or the other.
The road wound on, over that field of broken bits of antiquity, with the catacombs looming down on the left, with a slow tide of them seeming to lap at this valley on his right. The road wound, for no apparent reason, but there might have been, once, in the long ago past, buildings which lay buried now. The Games were very old here. It was told that this place had known man's oldest and most dire vices, the ultimate sport of a species once hunters. . . to hunt itself.
"I've a gift," he informed the Keeper of the second gate, who stood behind the iron grill, before a gatehouse likewise sheltered from the sun. Behind this rose the Way of a Thousand Steps, and the inmost gates. "Then," that one whispered, opening wide the gates, "there will be a good hunt tonight, won't there?"
He climbed on, panting now, and with a weakness in his knees that was not all his lack of exercise, his habitude of ships. Above him the Lotus Dome of the palace loomed against the morning, far, far up the steps worn into hollows by the passage of feet, of the Keepers up and down, and of the victims. . . up.
"I've a gift," he informed the Keeper of the third gate, the very doors. That one merely grinned, showing sharp blue teeth, and let him pass.
Belat walked on, into the long inner halls of lotus-stem columns, which twisted their way up and writhed across vaulted ceilings; and far, into yet another hall, where the stems rose to stone lily pads and marble lotuses on the ceiling, stems behind which coy golden-scaled fishes lurked. . . beneath which a throne like one alabaster lotus flower, and languid golden limbs disposed upon it, and dark, kohl-smeared eyes regarding him. The Tyrant frowned at him, a cloud upon the youthful brow, a sudden quick movement of a jewel-nailed hand, a gesture to begone—mercy now twice given. Twelve years old was Elio DCCLII, petulant, spoiled. . . dangerous. "Go away," the boy whispered, "— foreigner. We sent you away last time. Do you think we forget?
Do you think we forgive?"
"I've brought you a gift," Belat said, and watched the old interest grow unwillingly in the Tyrant's eyes. . . interests like pleasures which quickly came and quickly fled, which made this handsome, golden child the ruler he was—most skilled of dreamers, worker of finesses and deadly dangers the most jaded could not match, a coolness which insulated him from shocks and let him shape the dreams his way. Assassinations had been tried before—in vain.