While the men nibbled sweetmeats and drank wine and watched the dancers, Linton scrutinized them narrowly, seeing the avarice in the thin, pinched lips of this lord, the fanaticism in that chieftain’s burning eye, the cruelty that etched deep grooves around another’s hard mouth.
Beside him, the Kahani whispered mischievously: “What think you of my council?”
Guardedly, he replied in a low tone: “I do not know what to say. They seem good men ...”
She laughed lightly.
“Thou great fool, hast thou not learned yet to speak thy mind freely before me? Surely, thou canst see that Lord Albazar, he yonder in the byrnie of gilt steel, joins me only for the gold and the joy of looting—a glance at his fat, greedy lips shouldst tell thee that much! And Prince Narzang Hu, the old man beyond him with the paunch and snowy beard nigh to falling into his wine, he careth for this war only that it may give him new domains to present his two sons on either side of him—the chinless one with the felt cloak, who likes boys, and the other with bulging eyes and mouth sagging open, who is addicted to the death- lotus. And Yorgala of Ailm, the Warlord in scale-armor with the diamonded baton in his waistband, he seeks to spread the cult of Harza, Lord of Battles, into the Inner Worlds, and to overthrow the Temple of the ‘old’ Gods on Omphale.”
Linton digested this information in silence. Then:
“I like the looks of the Nomad yonder, the Dorrhean in black velvet and iron,” he said. She smiled impishly, dimpling.
“Aye, Zarkandu is the only man amongst them all. He desires to marry me.”
Linton started. “To marry you!” he ejaculated, quite involuntarily.
“And why not? Some men have found me … appealing ... despite my youth,” she flashed.
“I … you are beautiful, Kahani, but,” he stumbled over his tongue, “but a . . you were married!” he finished, lamely.
“Do not the vokarthu women sometimes remarry after their husband’s death?” she asked curiously. “With Rilké, it is not the custom to remain in widowhood forever. No, Lin-ton, and besides, the Lord Zarkandu is the third son of a Planet-Prince from the Veil—Dorrhea, as you guessed. As third son, of course, he will inherit nothing—the Dais and title go to his eldest brother, and the family palace and lands to his second brother. The only empire he shall ever gain is that which he carves out for himself with his sword—or that he marries. He has pressed his suit, gently, of course. But, tell me, kazar, I would like your opinion—as a traveled, sophisticated man, do you not think him manly, attractive?”
Was she teasing him, Linton wondered?
“I think he looks like a … a fine person,” he said.
“Why do you sound so grim?” she smiled—and her smile broadened at his burning flush of color that turned his face almost as red as his hair.
Before he could think of something to say, her mood changed abruptly, and she was thoughtful, serious.
“Zarkandu of Dorrhea is one I can count upon for true and faithful service,” she said. “And the tall man with the feather-kilt, the Prince Kasht of Argastra: a brilliant war-leader, who will bring to my cause a well-trained and loyal army and a small fleet of excellent fighting ships. And I think the old Shann of Kartoy, too, will be of good service, for he was devoted friend to my father, and to my husband, as well. He is the grave old gray-beard yonder, in green and black, with the scarred brow.”
For some obscure reason, which Linton would not even admit to himself, he was troubled about the Nomad Prince.
“Kahani, do you intend accepting Lord Zarkandu?” he asked, knowing it to be a breach of good manners, but not caring. Her answer was curiously important to his peace of mind. She crossed her legs, and leaned forward thoughtfully, chin resting in cupped hand, elbow on knee.
“I do not know. I have not yet made up my mind,” she said after a little time.
“But your husband … ?”
“You will hear my marriage described as a true love-match, if you listen to the wrong people, but it was not. We were married before we met—I was daughter to the Prince of the Shykondhanna, the Clan of the White Dragon banner. I was not in love with Chandalar, but I loved his ideas. He was a good man, with a good heart, and we worked beautifully together for our people. We built together—planned together—dreamed our dreams together. It was our common desire to see Valadon become a modem state: and we were united in this purpose and never fell from it. Bridges, roads, schools, hospitals. Oh, we had brave and gallant dreams! Valadon is a fair and hospitable world—green hills and fertile fields and rich forests. The mountains are wealthy in nickel and zinc, cinnabar and copper. The people are healthy and numerous; life is easy. With literacy, with an industrial technology, with a good trading fleet it could be made into one of the most important worlds of the Cluster. Our city, Ashmir, was fair and strong, and well situated. As the hub of an industrial and mercantile civilization, it would grow swiftly—become rich and powerful—send out colonies—become the center of something great, something larger than just Valadon. Something perhaps, like Meridian,” she mused, naming the capital planet of the Galactic Imperium, as one of an earlier age might have named “Rome.”
Raul listened carefully to her words. She spoke to him without using sex as a weapon or a persuader, and he admired her for that. He had expected her to flaunt herself at him, to dangle her body and her beauty as a bauble before him, in an attempt to purchase his loyalty and service. This she did not do. Perhaps she respected him for an intelligent man, mature enough to beware of such enticement.
And as he listened to the warmth, the sincerity, the ring of conviction and note of communicable enthusiasm and devotion to an ideal that rang through her words like fierce music, a wave of unexpected emotion swept over him. For he was a Romantic at heart, although he did not suspect it, and thought of himself as a clear-sighted man stripped bare of all illusions; and he was more than half a poet (though he would have laughed and scoffed at you if you had named him one), and something of the poetry and romance in him awoke and responded fully to words like hers, winged with zeal, and the absurd concept that something fine and strong and worthy can be bulit by far-seeing men and women devoted to something larger than just themselves.
He felt almost dizzy, seized by an aura of personal magnetism such as might have beaten brightly about the person of Alexander, or Caesar, Napoleon or Gandhi, Fuller or Saul Everest, or even Arion the Eternal, who founded the great Imperium upon a dream no less flimsy and romantic than hers. The surge of enthusiasm within him opened doors long closed—pulled him out of habits familiar, and into strange regions where beliefs are shaken, no matter how strongly adhered to, and where golden, glittering impossibilities seemed to hover at the brink of the Possible.
“What happened then?”
She smiled a small, tight, ironic smile.
“What happens to all dreams, at the end, I guess. Your government, you see, wants Valadon ignorant, diseased, dirty, illiterate, and superstitious. Our taxes were raised—too high. The vokarthu experts, professors, teachers, doctors, engineers we had hired among the star-worlds—were impeded in coming to take up new duties with us. Their visas were canceled—they were pressed into service during your war—they were suddenly hired away at higher salaries.”
“And-then?”
Dull-eyed: “He died. He was very young. Shageen, a kind of fever. But I know he died of a rarer, more painful disease, called death-of-dreams. Or broken-heart, if you prefer the truism. And then they set me aside, and put the besotted idiot on the Dais. I would not—truly!—have minded, had his successor chosen to carry on the struggle, to continue the work we had begun. But Hastril is just—a nonentity. All he asks of life is to whip a slave to death now and then, or buy a woman or two more, and always, of course, to have enough viathol about to drug his dull mind into seas of blazing ecstasy. Ah—the waste, the pity, the shame of it all!”