Moving with unbelievable grace, she began to look at frescoes. He felt fleetingly unreal in her presence.
“Astaris, you’ll attend to me,” he shouted.
She turned and looked at him searchingly, though her eyes, as Kathaos had noted, were pools of bottomless dark amber glass.
“I attend,” she said, “to you.”
A late afternoon light was settling on Lin Abissa as Kathaos Am Alisaar crossed from Thann Rashek’s major palace to the guest mansion adjoining it. Such was Am Alisaar’s status as Councilor to the Storm Lord that the entire scope of the latter house had been given over to himself and his household.
Which was as well, Kathaos’s household being of an immodest yet clandestine nature.
Particularly, there was his private guard. Not that this was, in itself, an unusual acquisition; most nobles amassed them. Yet the dimension and ability of Kathaos’s guard would have been found notable had it been investigated. Chosen by Am Alisaar’s agents at random in the thoroughfares of several cities—a method which successfully evaded Amrek’s direct notice—they came from among the ranks of fortune hunters, thieves, malcontents. Once under Kathaos’s yellow blazon, however, they were arbitrarily amalgamated, specifically trained in the fighting techniques of the Imperial Academy in Koramvis and led into collective though no less dangerous modes of living. Not many rebelled or abused their school. Those who did vanished mysteriously, yet suitably, into the dark to which such men were subject. Those who persisted at their new trade did well by it, becoming almost inadvertently part of a large and well-oiled machine. For Kathaos’s aim was to possess at last a defense as traditionally geared, strong, elite, and deadly as the Dragon Guard of a Storm Lord.
Kathaos had, as it were, hereditary reasons for his ambition.
His father had been Orhn, ultimate King of Alisaar. Though it was generally said that by the time that Orhn moved to take Alisaar from the dying grasp of his sire, he had in truth lost all interest in her—for by then the reins of Dorthar were firmly in his hands. He had fathered Kathaos on a minor Zakorian queen during one of his brief forays to Saardos, but he was never away from his regency, or his mistress Val Mala, for long. Only death put an end to his to-ing and fro-ing. And now, ironically, it was Kathaos who was Val Mala’s lover—a pleasant enough situation, for the queen had taken care to age as little as possible and extended favors to those who amused her.
He wondered if Astaris would amuse her, and decided emphatically that she would not.
The junction of the palace and the guest mansion was marked by a pillar forest of crimson fluted glass, which now throbbed with mulberry embers of the low sun and clotted incarnadine shadow.
“Rashek’s architect seems to have had a certain vulgar genius,” Kathaos remarked.
“If you say so, my lord.”
Kathaos’s Guard Lord, Ryhgon, striding half a pace behind him, was not as a rule addicted to long sentences.
A huge Zakorian, his true addiction, which was a form of authoritarian brutality, showed in every line of body and face. His giant’s nose was smashed into unrecognizable shape, and a white scar jumped from jaw to oxneck. A vicious leader for Kathaos’s personal guard, a leader not to be crossed, with the power of six apparent in his abnormally developed sword arm. Kathaos found him excellent.
“There are twenty recruits from Abissa, so I hear,” Kathaos said. “You, of course, will manage them superbly.”
Ryhgon gave a grim smile.
“Trust me.”
At the portico the Zakorian took another smaller entrance and advanced down the corridor of the mansion to that long hall where the recruits were waiting for him. Firelight seeped about the hall, casting up a huge familiar shade behind Ryhgon. The men fell silent at his approach, their facial expressions ranging from nervousness to bravado. This was to be one of the few times when Ryhgon spoke at any length. It was a well-known speech to him. He had used it on several battalions of untried adventurers such as these, and the unpleasant smile was still on his scarred mouth.
“So, this is the latest filth they’ve given me to hammer into men. I say ‘hammer.’ I choose the word with care. You see this arm? This is the arm I hammer with, if I have to.” He moved to a table and poured himself wine, and the silence prevailed about him. “Your profession from today is that of house guard to the Prince Kathaos Am Alisaar. The least witless of you may have gathered already that there’s more to it than that. But you’ll keep your tongues quiet or someone will quieten them for you. I hope you understand me. If it’s gold pieces you’re wanting, there’ll be plenty. If you feel the need to screw a whore, you’ll find those provided, too. If you’ve any other bedroom habits, settle them elsewhere and pray I don’t catch you at it. For the rest, you’ll discover the discipline is savage and I’m not a gentle master. Do as I tell you, and work yourselves sick and you’ll live till Koramvis.” He drained the wine without swallowing and banged down the goblet. “Any of you that find occasion to want a quarrel—seek me out. It’ll be my pleasure to accommodate you.”
Lightly, Ryhgon flipped the short sword at his belt, then turned and left them.
A man at Raldnor’s side said, very low: “Zakorian midden-keeper.”
At dusk the first white birds settled on Lin Abissa. The thaw was ended. Soon the three-month snow would hold all the eastern segment of Vis under its inexorable seal.
The Lord Kathaos’s new recruits ate their meal at a long table, separated from the more seasoned guard. The guard paid them no attention, it being their unwritten law to show no interest until training and probation were done. And there was a deal of sullen silence and covert gossip at the long table. Ryhgon had already established himself as he had chosen to be established—a figure to be hated and inordinately feared.
“That man’s no lover of gentle ways.”
“Zakorian whore’s mistake.”
“Watch yourself. Walls have ears.”
“Did you get a look at that sword arm? And the scar on his face? Gods!”
Later they sought the narrow pallets of a bleak dormitory.
Raldnor lay a long while on his hard bed, listening to their mutterings and to his own thoughts.
Outside the snow fell in silver flickerings. The siege snow.
“So I’ve locked myself in with strangers and with uncertainties, instead of with the known village and its familiar hopeless ways,” Raldnor thought. He recaptured Hamos under the snow, the purple snow nights and the howling of wolves, and he thought of Eraz beneath the white layerings, returned to the stuff of the Plains.
He had paid his debts. He had given back to Xaros all he owed while Xaros protested volubly, but he had told neither Xaros nor Helida of the man in the furrier’s nor, later, of where he was going. And they had respected his silence, probably imagining he would be returning after Orhvan to the Lowlands and the ruined city. He had found a shop in the back streets of Abissa and bought himself a supply of black dye with which he subsequently attended to his body hair. With this bizarre sorcery committed, his life and his soul seemed to slip into a curious interim, a limbo. He had worked a spell of change upon himself, and he had unleashed, like magicians of old, ungauged elemental forces. Now, anything might happen.
Yet there were remnants of ancient magic still clinging. She came, for the first time in many nights, here, to this Xarabian palace in the dark. The white moon shone behind her, and the cracks appeared in the broken vase of her milk-white body, and she blew away like ashes or like snow.