The bed was an oval of beaten silver, shaped to resemble an open flower, for, like the procession which had brought her here, it was deemed proper that all things surrounding Amrek’s betrothed should be fantastic.
And in this flower Astaris opened her eyes at midnight.
There had been a dream. An unaccountable dream. A woman blowing in ashes across the face of the moon, all negative whiteness.
Astaris left the bed and crossed the room, throwing open the draperies and shutters, moving out on to the icy, snow-capped balcony. The cold was only a half-felt suggestion at the edges of her thought. Her entire consciousness seemed centered at the core of her brain, more so now than at any time before. She felt herself listening, yet not for any kind of sound.
And then she saw a man lying before her in the dark. Yet she did not exactly see him or even sense him. She felt, but rather, she comprehended. She did not ask: “Who is this?” There was no need. At that moment it was herself.
Instinctively she withdrew, flinched aside from the contact, and the formless image of the man was gone.
The secret of the enigma of Astaris was only this: She lived within herself, and no part of her reached out to commune with others. It was not pride or fear, but simply the most pure, the most unhuman introspection. She could not believe, or barely, in the external world and its characters; she did not even believe in her own physical self. She was an intelligence shut inside an exquisite mummy case of flesh, a creature in a shell. Now, by accident, a note had woken her, a resonance no longer outside her, but within.
Like a citadel invaded, she was at once full of alarm, but there was yielding also. She understood nothing of what had occurred, but did not need to. This was not the sort of questioning she used. She understood merely that, for an instant, the coiled sea creature which lived in the shell of her and was herself had been discovered by the wandering somnambulist impulse of another.
“Something has come near me,” she thought in strange stilted wonderment. “Something has found me out.”
Book Three
The Meteoric Hero
9
Enclosed in the white womb of the cold, the eastern lands waited in their three months’ chrysalis. Pragmatic winter exchanged their contours for a geography of snow marble, wind-stenciled ice, and the inexorable silence of the desert. Nevertheless, the sun waxed as ever, encroached as ever. The sudden, bright, sounding first rains of a Vis spring shocked and cracked the alabaster seals, as they had always shocked and cracked them.
In Lin Abissa the gutters foamed, and the ornate gardens quickened.
Twilight oceaned about the towers of Thann Rashek’s guest palace, bringing an old nostalgia to Yannul the Lan as he sat cleaning his soldier’s gear in the uninspiring and impersonal barracks. Impersonal, despite the fact that in three months Am Alisaar’s recruits had littered it with certain personal things—their blunt but sentimental knives, some girl’s favor, trophies, knickknacks, memories from previous lives. For it seemed to Yannul that they had all been cursorily reincarnated into this soldiering under Kathaos’s yellow cloak, made new men with discarded pasts, about which many were very reticent. Raldnor the Sarite, now. He and Yannul seemed to count each other friends, yet what did they ever really say to each other about their earlier days? Both had been village farm stock to begin with—Raldnor, he said, on the perimeter of Sar, Yannul in the pendulous blue bosom of the Lannic hills. Later, both had made their way to the towns of Xarabiss: Yannul to be a juggler and acrobat in the markets, Raldnor to spend a nebulous time about which he said nothing—until Kathaos’s scouts found both of them and lured them under the yellow blazon. Yannul rubbed a troubled hand across the nape of his neck. Soldiering had meant a barber for the shoulder-blade-long Lannic hair. “No barbarians in this service,” the man had clacked. And “slash” those knives had gone, and a part of his supposedly barbarian pride with them. He saw Raldnor looking at him then, across the shadows, so he set nostalgia aside and said: “Koramvis soon.”
“Yes,” Raldnor said, “the city of Rarnammon, under the protection of the Storm gods of the Am Dorthar.”
It had puzzled Yannul often, the pains Raldnor had apparently taken to discover the bits and pieces of Dortharian religion and myth, for under the curiosity and the lip service there seemed to be another emotion—dislike. There had been, too, an incident once—some low muttering at table about how Kathaos was intent on toppling Amrek the Storm Lord. Men had sat, stony-faced, keeping their own counsel and wary of Ryhgon’s spies. But Yannul had seen Raldnor’s hand clench on his cup until the knuckles went white, and on his mouth there had been a hint of the grimmest and most macabre grin—almost the grin of a madman—before the Sarite had mastered himself.
“It pleases them to say so,” Yannul said lightly. “I think Kathaos fears no divine forces.”
“Then he’s a brave man.”
“Oh, men make their own gods,” Yannul remarked. “I have a god with a fat belly, and a house full of expensive women to attend his every need, and I call him Yannul the Lan in Five Years from This. Well, that’s done,” and he laid aside the knives and other metal duly polished. “What now? Neither of us has watch duty. We could try the wine shops of Abissa.”
Raldnor put down his own gear and nodded.
“Why not?” Like most people confined inside set limits, they were glad enough to get out of them whenever possible and by whatever excuse. “But we’ll need a gate pass, Yannul.”
“No. Lazy Breon’s in charge. Remember, Ryhgon eats at Kathaos’s table tonight. And Kathaos has my profound thanks.”
None of them had much cause to love the Guard Lord. He had proved himself all he had promised to be three months before. Yet he had taught them well. The knowledge of the fighting academies of Dorthar, Alisaar and Zakoris was ingrained in them by now, for Ryhgon had flayed them with it, given it to them in place of bread. And there was a bonus, too, for with his absences, however brief, there came a sense of holiday.
Yet the thaw dusk had laid a strange hold on both of them for all that, and they idled only slowly down toward the outer court.
Kathaos glanced across the lamplit room at Ryhgon and said, with irony far too subtle to offend his guest: “I trust the dinner found favor with you.”
Ryhgon grunted.
“Your lordship keeps a generous table.”
“Good fortune grants I can.”
“Your lordship’s no believer in fortune.”
“Perhaps not, but in this world of euphemisms, you’ll permit me mine.”
“As your lordship likes.”
“Well. And do you have any news of my guard?”
It was customary for Ryhgon, after these excellent dinners, to make some report. Responding to the signal, he laid out his inventory. Things were well enough. The latest recruits from Abissa had shown reasonable aptitude and had been split up among the first and second companies. By the time they reached Koramvis he would have cut them into shape.
“Be careful the knife doesn’t slip,” Kathaos said.
“Your lordship doubts my ability?”
Kathaos smiled.
“You’re a harsh master, Ryhgon.”
“Do I claim otherwise? Don’t worry, my lord. I can sort the metal from the dross. It’s the dross that suffers.”
“There was a man with light eyes—I saw him at drill yesterday,” Kathaos said unexpectedly. “What about him?”
“The Sarite?” Ryhgon gave a short unpleasant laugh. “He’s the unquiet sex of a dragon. The women your lordship supplies have been unusually busy. They seem to like it, too.”