Raldnor flinched involuntarily at this new knife piercing of the old wound. Besides, he had always heard the Lowlanders tried to hide their telepathy from the Vis. He said nothing and Xaros let him be. But his own brain took up the discussion and gnawed on it.
The first flakes of snow were feathering down as they rode through the broad red gate of Abissa. The guards, with the dragon woman of Thann Rashek’s emblem on their breasts, made much of the permit, passing it along their hierarchy to a captain, who finally came out and stood in the snow, examining their faces. At last he called to Xaros: “Will you take responsibility for these people?”
“I will. But what need? As you can see, they’re full grown and out of diapers.”
The captain cleared his throat and with a stony face waved the wagon on.
“Idiot,” Xaros said. “He fears the Dragon King.”
“The Storm Lord?”
“You have it. It’s well known Amrek hates the Lowlanders. There’s always been the story of the curse on him of a Lowland witch, and a prenatal curse at that.”
“A Lowland witch?”
“A temple girl, reputed to have slain the father—Rehdon—with sexual acrobatics, and then set the malignancy of Anackire on the unborn prince. Truly a woman of many talents—one I would like to have met.”
Something moved uneasily in Raldnor’s mind: A Lowland temple girl—someone had spoken of such a one in the city. Or had he dreamed it?
“And of what nature is the curse?” he asked, partly to divert his own unquiet. “Ras spoke of snake scales.”
“Apt, but unproven. Who knows? It gives mothers something to scare their children with.”
The snow was falling thickly, obscuring the towers and marble vistas of the city, laying on all immobile things an anonymous white pall.
“There’s a reasonable inn hereabouts,” said Xaros, but when they reached it, the inn was full.
It began to grow late. Overhead the oil-fired street torches of Vis cities flared and smoked. There were three more inns, all with the crimson flag at their doors to show they were crammed. There were soldiers in the courtyard of the last. Big braziers burned there, lighting up five or six of them laughing about the porch. They were very tall, wide-shouldered, plated with a bizarre reptilian armor—scale on winking black scale, each a cresset of dull flame—the dragon mail of the Am Dorthar. Cloaks of rust color, sprawled with black dragons, roped in the wind. The crests and mask-pieces of their helms made their faces fabulous. Lizard men.
As the wagon trundled by, one of the dragons glanced their way, the laughter still playing round his lips. Carefully and elaborately, he spat.
Raldnor felt horror take hold of him. He was made to know abruptly his powerlessness, not only before the armor and the spears, but before such unthinking hate. What did that man hate them for? Only because his Overlord hated? Or was it some old primitive fear ready to ferment in all the Vis, merely because of a difference in pigmentation and the stories that had grown up round it?
Raldnor glanced at Xaros. He seemed to have missed the incident. Was that possible? Or was Xaros, too, a potential enemy?
Finally they found a dilapidated hostel in a narrow alleyway known as Pebble Street. A few Lowlanders sat by the fires in the hall. The dragons did not come here; it was too far from the palace and their King.
Xaros departed into the snow, having arranged to return in the morning with his miser-master’s offer, and they made a drab meal—most provisions in Lin Abissa having gone to feed the Dortharians—and took the creaking stairs to the narrow bedrooms. Raldnor, the old restraint on him again, touched the girl’s hand briefly in the dark and left her, unable to speak. In the night he lay and thought only of her and the thing he had done to her, and regret was mixed now inextricably with lust. Lust was a granite barrier between them. And Anici for her part dreamed confused and terrified dreams of a faceless man with a deformed arm. The talk of Amrek and the curse on him had inflamed ancient horrors, begun when, as a child, she had heard from the old women who drifted with her grandmother about the courts of the bleak palace the brief mentions of his name, his nature and his crippling.
Outside the snow sugared the world with its leveling pallor.
Xaros came back in the morning.
“My master’s beside himself with voracious joy. Can you take the wagon up Slant Street at noon? He has a hole in the wall in Goldbird Walk.”
Orhvan clearly knew the route.
“Hardly a district for holes in walls, I’d say.”
Xaros dismissed this with a shrug.
“Only one item—keep the wolf pelt back. It’s too good to waste. You can try a furrier later.”
It seemed almost prearranged between them that while Anici remained at the inn, Orhvan and Ras—the Lowlanders—should take the wagon, and Xaros and his part-Xarabian brother, Raldnor, should walk together like citizens. Raldnor found himself obscurely troubled by this, yet he was sick enough of wagon riding, and so it was.
“Our poor friends will take at least twice as long,” Xaros remarked as they reached the broad snow-white streets of the upper quarters. “Half the roads are cordoned off, the rest choked with sightseers. There’s a procession route from the Yasmis’s Temple to the palace—the Storm Lord giving his devotions to the goddess of love and marriage. There’s a betrothal in the air, it seems; Amrek and the Karmian, Astaris. You’ve never heard of her, of course.”
“Never.”
“I thought so. One day the earth will crack in half without the Lowlanders noticing. Well, I’ll enlighten your vile ignorance. Astaris is the daughter of the last king of Karmiss, now deceased, her mother being a Xarabian princess of Thann Rashek’s stable. She’s said—said, mark you—to be the most beautiful woman in the world. She’s been in Xarabiss a year, in her grandfather’s house at Tyrai. She came to Abissa, once, since when I and half the city have been unable to call our hearts or loins our own.”
“So she’s beautiful, then?”
“Superb. Have you ever seen a red-haired Vis woman? Oh, no, you head-in-a-bucket Plains man, you wouldn’t have. Well, they’re pricelessly rare. And this one—a mane the color of rubies. Here comes Lamp Street,” he added. “The law here is the law of the wolves. Smile tiredly at the prostitutes and watch your pockets.”
There was a great noise in Lamp Street when Xaros was spotted. Clearly, he was well known. Villainous-looking bearded men, probably robbers or hill bandits, clapped him on the back and whispered chuckling nefarious anecdotes at his ear; madams blew him kisses and invited him to bring his handsome self and handsome friend inside to give the latest batch of virgins a taste for their trade. At the end of the street a snake dancer from the Zor twisted an amber python around her bronze flesh.
“I see a hungry man,” Xaros said. “Tonight, I think, we’ll visit the Pleasure City.”
Raldnor colored slightly. Xaros said: “My unfortunate Lowlander, transparent lust is the hallmark of the Vis. Give in. Your mother has you by the heels and is roasting you over a slow fire.”
“I’ve no money—only a few copper bits.”
“So, I’ll lend you something. The wolf pelt will make you a good deal or I’m very mistaken. Owe me till then.”
“Anici—” Raldnor began, and stopped.
“Anici’s a delicious child who, like all females, will react favorably to a little competition. Tomorrow you can buy her a dress and some jewelry to ease your conscience and ensure her forgiveness.”
“And Ras and Orhvan?”
“My master’s certain to invite them to his house tonight. He likes to show off his liberality and his furniture, and they’ll get a good dinner—he has a splendid cook despite his other numerous failings.”