“What did the wise-woman do to you?” Yannul said, trying to grin.
“Removed my blindness, woke me out of sleep. Gave me the purpose I was born to.”
The passionless voice was, nevertheless, filled, like the face before Yannul, with the same vast strength.
“You look as if you’d eat these cities to get what you want—swallow the sea to reach the plains of Vis.”
“A harsh diet. Yet, whatever I have to do, I will do,” Raldnor said.
Yannul let the reins slacken a little. Raldnor’s zeeba moved ahead of him. It had a certain aptness. The white-haired man seemed to have outstripped them all. Yannul drew in a deep breath of the alien summer air. Whatever fire burned in Raldnor had scorched him, too. He knew he was no longer a free man. If any of them were any longer free. Even in the quiet, insect-humming afternoon, he sensed forces of disruption, of retribution, stirring underground. A cataclysm was coming, a leveling, a wind from chaos. They would all be caught in it, like fish in nets. And there, riding before him, was this unknown man, this comrade once called friend, who was to be the fisherman.
18
It was a three days’ journey. They passed first through a scattering of villages and two small towns, all paying tax to the city, which in turn protected them from bandits by means of troops. Though physically resembling the Lowlanders, the yellow-haired people of the Plain were quite unlike them in disposition and intent. They were busy, outgoing and, on occasion, sly. There was no mysterious unvoiced code—they had their robbers and malcontents, and had had their battles, too. Only five years before, the city had been at war with its nearest neighbor. Who knew how many corpses under the soil helped now to nourish the grain?
Raldnor seemed able to speak their tongue fluently. Yannul, by dint of hard labor, began to learn. He learned also, as did Resha, to pull up the hood of his garment when they approached populated areas or passed travelers on the roads. The Plain dwellers did not seem hostile in the least to the strange phenomenon of black hair, but their curiosity and surprise grew irksome. Of their mind speech there was no great evidence. It seemed as if prosperity and worldliness were letting that inner art decay.
They reached the city on the afternoon of the third day: a strong-walled, high-towered pile built on an ancient manmade hill some eighty feet or so above the Plain. It did not have the beauty of a Vis city. There was something crouching and squat about it despite the towers. Vathcri it was called. Various houses and taverns sprawled down the hill and over the Plain beyond its walls, and there were soldiers about in the dark-blue livery they had seen in the towns. Despite this, discipline at the gate was lax. A polite answer to a brief challenge got them through. It was a Justice Day—a day when the king gave public audience, settled disputes and tried offenders in the open-air court before his palace.
“We have such things in Lan,” Yannul said, “and the Am Dorthar call us barbarians.”
The city seemed to rise in terraces toward its citadel, its winding streets clothed with crowds, wine sellers and pickpockets. Resha’s hood slipped away, and an excited babble went up. The girl stared haughtily about and stalked on, the crowd parting to gape at her. Yannul pushed back his own hood at that, and they moved more easily afterward. When they reached the audience place, the press was at its thickest.
“These peasants,” Resha hissed with profound contempt. “What King of Alisaar or Zakoris or Dorthar would demean himself by talking directly to a pack of clods?”
They got down steps and emerged in the bowl of the court. The palace which rose behind it pushed up tall spires, and painted friezes glowed on its red walls. Black shade trees had been planted where the King’s platform stood. The King himself sat in an ivory chair, before him were two kneeling supplicants, all around him the clutter of his court, advisors, clerks and military officers. Something caught Yannul’s eye—the banner held up behind the King’s chair.
“Raldnor,” he said, “do you see—?”
On the light-blue ground, an embroidery of a woman with ice-white skin and golden hair, a woman with eight serpentine arms, her body ending in the coiling rope of a serpent’s tail.
“Is that their King?” Resha asked superfluously.
“I imagine so,” Yannul answered, still staring at the banner.
“And that woman? Would she be his wife?”
Yannul looked again at the platform and saw the reason for her interest. The King was young and very handsome. To his right, a little behind him, half hidden by the drifts of tree shadow, sat a woman in a white robe. About to reply that this was most certainly the King’s favorite and only wife, to whom he had sworn forever to be faithful on pain of inexpressible divine torture, Yannul checked himself, for he saw abruptly that Raldnor was no longer with them. Yannul gazed about him, then swiftly ahead. Even in the blond crowd that salt-white hair was easy to discover.
“By the gods—he’s asking audience of their King.”
Taking Resha by the arm, the Lan pushed his way further forward until he stood at the very fringe of people, looking out across the flagged space at the handsome King. The two supplicants had moved off, one grinning, one sour, as was to be expected. Now a clerk hurried to the King, spoke to him and drew back. The King was frowning. His eyes skimmed over the crowd and found out Raldnor. The King said something. The clerk turned and beckoned.
Raldnor stepped out onto the open space and went forward. There was a burst of exclamations, then total silence. Even in this gathering of racial brothers Raldnor was remarkable. Without seeing his face, Yannul sensed again that incredible, almost physical, emanation of certainty and power.
“Kneel,” the clerk rapped out. In the stillness words carried well.
“In the land I come from,” Raldnor said, “one King does not kneel to another.” His voice was quiet and very level, yet there was not a man there who did not hear it.
The crowd murmured, then became quiet.
“So you claim royal birth,” the King said. “Of what city then are you King? Vardath and Tarabann, I believe, might dispute your rights.”
“There is a land beyond your seas, King. My rights are there.”
The young King smiled.
“Are you a dreamer, I wonder? Or are you mad?”
There was a deeper silence then. Standing behind Raldnor, unable to see his face or his eyes, Yannul nevertheless saw the effect they produced on the King, whose own eyes widened and flinched. His tanned face paled. He snarled through his teeth, midway between shock and anger: “You dare to try magicians’ tricks on me!” And to the clerk in fury: “Who is this man?”
The clerk whispered. The King again looked up; this time he made out Yannul and Resha. The King seemed unnerved. He stared at Raldnor.
“You say you come from another land, a land where there are dark-haired peoples. The man and the woman there—are they your proof?”
“I am my own proof, King. Read my brain. I open it to you.”
The King flinched a second time.
“Such things are for the priests of Ashkar. Do you ask to be examined by them?”
“My lord,” Raldnor said, “my kingdom is a small one. Men there resemble the men of Vathcri. But there is a black-haired tyrant who hates my people simply for their color. Every moment that is wasted between us sees the shadow of their persecution and anguish thrown farther.”