“Some upstart from Sar. He crippled a man and got made a Dragon Lord. That’s how it is nowadays.”
“He has the look of the royal line,” said the messenger.
“Perhaps. He can handle his men—his division’s the crack division they tell me. He gave ’em a name, like in the old days—the Wolves. Ryhgon trained him, Kathaos’s dog, before his pupil turned on him. But the Dragon Guard spit on his shadow. He gave them a shaking up at Abissa—”
And across the lanes, in the owar-hide pavilion, Raldnor sat—at ease in the King’s tent.
The surprise of power had long since left him. He had been too busy that month and a half at Abissa, busy with the network of bribes and threats and preferments that ensured those of his new rank their safety. And he found himself a leader, too, as he had boasted he could be. There had been a rebirth on that night in the garden. He had talked his way into the trust of a man he hated, had spoken to that man as if he honored him, and as if he himself were a Vis. And yes. He had become a Vis in that dark garden.
Sitting here in the tent of the King, he thought back over that scene for only the second time. The first had been in the delirious aftermath, when he had felt an exhilaration mixed with panic. He remembered coolly now Amrek’s accusation: “You had the same father as I,” and how his pulses had leaped and pounded in an insane moment of total confusion. For, having momentarily forgotten his Plains blood, it seemed his unknown father, too, might be a Vis, any Vis—even a king.
It amused him now to wonder where his looks came from—some past venture in his ancestry, he surmised, showing itself, as sometimes happened, several generations later. After all then, the Xarabian woman had left some birthright—royal blood—to pass on to him.
Amrek, his King and patron, sat brooding. The news from Koramvis had irritated him. The Council demanded that he leave his bride to travel alone, and ride posthaste to the Dortharian border of Thaddra, that wild and mountain-locked land, source of constant dispute and foray. There was fresh trouble there, and the Storm Lord must be seen as an ever-present power, not dallying with his woman in Xarabiss. So it was. He was the ultimate ruler of a continent, yet he must obey his Council. And he did not want to leave his scarlet-haired girl, Raldnor could see. Did he then love her? Raldnor, observing her in the distance of his life, acknowledged her beauty was astounding, but she seemed like a waxwork, a puppet moving very gracefully on strings. He had never been near enough to hear her speak, but he could imagine her voice—perfect, and quite without tone.
The question came suddenly to Raldnor, as he watched the King’s dark, empty face: “This man I’ve allowed to give me every scrap I have; do I hate him as implacably as ever?” The white ghost sprang up into the tent but could not entirely materialize for him. Raldnor had lost half his blood, half his soul. The schism of divided race had finally resolved itself, and the Lowlander was eclipsed by the black-haired man. It was hard to hate now, and the pale girl who came in the night, still came, even between the silky sheets of Lyki’s bed, was only a dismal dream, no longer accompanied by meaning.
“If an assassin ran into this place seeking Amrek’s life,” he thought with sudden surprise, “I’d kill him.”
“Well, Raldnor Am Sar,” Amrek said, “I’ll leave the charge of this entourage with you.”
“I’m honored, my lord.”
“Honored? You and those Wolves of yours will die of boredom on the road. But my Karmian—keep her safe for me. Remember, I’m not a fair man. If she wants the moon, get it out of the sky for her.”
He rose and put his hand on Raldnor’s shoulder. It was unmistakably a gesture of knowing, not ownership. The King was at ease with him, and he at ease with the King. But then, there had been a strange sort of ease between them from the first.
“You can trust me,” Raldnor said, and knew it to be true. “When does your Lordship leave?”
“Tomorrow, first light.” One of the lamps flickered and went out. Amrek gazed at it and thought: “In a tent like this my father died on the Plains. A white woman with yellow hair killed him, and left her marks on my body before I was born. It always meant a great deal to me. Now less. Why is that, I wonder? Has she done it, the Karmian enchantress? I seem to see everything from behind cool dark glass. I vowed to erase the yellow scum from the face of Vis, but now I see only shadows, not devils. . . .”
He glanced at Raldnor.
“In your hands then. And be glad I didn’t take you away from your own woman.”
Lyki’s body lay stretched in the black sheets like a star. A shaft of moonlight pierced the tent and blanched her flesh to fiery snow, bleached her hair to a negative without color.
“I think you never sleep,” she murmured.
“I prefer to lie and look at you.”
“Does Amrek still permit you to be insolent to him?”
“Amrek guesses, I think, who led me to him in Thann Rashek’s garden. What lover were you coming from then?”
“A man I abandoned for you.” She lay still, then said: “So Amrek rides to Thaddra. My lady will be even more difficult then, no doubt. I’m sure that she’s deranged; sometimes she moves like a sleepwalker. She says the oddest things—” Lyki always spoke of Astaris in this way.
“You’re very intolerant of the woman who provides your bread.”
“Oh, what a banal statement. Such a betrayal of your peasant origins,” Lyki said tartly.
But presently she said other things to him as he caressed her in the dark.
A storm rolled over the slopes near dawn. He woke from the dream and could not for a moment remember where he was. The dark girl was sitting up combing her hair, and she turned a pair of cool gem eyes on him in the half light.
“Astaris has dreams, too,” she said with asperity. It was part of her character that she was sometimes sharp with him, particularly when he was vulnerable, as now: she knew of his recurring nightmare, though not the content.
“Does the princess, then, discuss her dreams with you?”
“Oh no. But she left a paper lying by her bed, and she’d written on it very clearly.”
“And you read the paper.”
“Why not? It said: ‘I dreamt again of the white woman blown to ashes.’ That was all. I remember very well.”
He felt a cold wind pass over him, and the hair rose on his neck. He sat up.
“When was this?”
“Let go my shoulder. You’re hurting me. It was a day or so ago. I forget. Is it Astaris you want now, instead of me?”
He shook the icy tendrils off him and pulled her down.
“You, you faithless bitch.”
And tried to lose the incredible sense of fear in the core of her golden limbs.
There were partings at dawn—a private parting between the King and his bride, a public one among the tents. Troops presented arms; the Wolves showed well.
Raldnor had been drunk in his way when he had asked for a command among the Dragon Guard—his well-established enemies—but sober enough afterward. He had picked his men with care, his captains with more than care, and not from among the Guard. Kathaos’s halls had taught him other lessons besides those of combat. He took his levy from the general bulk of the army—raw recruits, still young and inexperienced. It had interested and pleased them to learn they had been singled out from the mass; it was easy enough to have these newly enlisted molded to his specification, and to impress them. For he possessed, like Ryhgon, a reputation, and he used it better. They saw what he could do with sword, ax and spear, and when Kothon, promoted from the Chariot Corps, had taught him the ways of the flimsy Dortharian vehicles, they saw that here was a charioteer also. His veterans he selected cunningly. Like Kothon they were soldiers, intelligent in their particular trade, but in little else; limited men, who were contented with the good food and pay he saw they got and did not mind his increasingly long shadow cast over them. For he had walked by Amrek a great deal in Abissa and accomplished, in various ways, an admirable amount in the brief time he had there. He never questioned his abilities. His life had been inactive once; now he made up for those lost and useless years in a surge of judgment and power.