The King gave a violent cry. He leaped from his ivory chair. Guards ran to him. He thrust them aside. Even the white-gowned women started up in the shade.
“Don’t try to breach my mind with your own sick dreams!” the King shouted. The guards now ran to Raldnor; they came thrusting through the press and seized Yannul also, and the girl.
As the blue-liveried soldiers dragged the Lan across the court, he had one last glimpse of the Vathcrian King, and saw the fury and the terror on his face. Behind, the crowd milled in uproar.
The sands of twilight drifted on the floors of the red palace.
Jarred of Vathcri paced through them, up and down before the great hearth. He was a young king, very young. His father had died in early middle life, abruptly, and left him the ivory chair before he was ready for it. He had ruled half a year; now, confronted by the stranger, he saw it had not been enough.
“Who is this man?” he asked again. “Where does he come from?”
The pale-haired girl in the white dress sitting in the light of the one lamp in the room said gently: “Perhaps he is who he says he is, and comes from where he says he does. Shouldn’t you consider that eventuality, my brother?”
“Impossible,” Jarred snapped. Her demure, uncluttered wisdom angered him.
“Why impossible? There’s always been a legend of another land, a land of dark-haired men. And don’t you remember the maps of old Jorahan the Scholar—the sea routes that lead out of Shansar, in the north?”
“He breached my thoughts. In our father’s time that would have earned him death—to dare speak within to a king—and he did more. I couldn’t shut him out. He thrust aside the barriers—mind-spoke me against my will. How many men can do that?”
“Some of the priests,” she said.
“Some of the priests tell us they can,” Jarred sneered. “How many have you known do it?”
She said musingly: “It was said to be the greatest gift that Ashkar gave us—the ability to speak within. Now few of us use it, or could we use it if we wished?”
“You and I, Sulvian,” he said, “since childhood.”
“Oh, you and I. And we talk with our mouths at this very moment. No. Mind speech has become a hindrance to prosperity, because it’s hard to practice dishonesty when your thoughts are accessible, difficult to steal and murder and grow rich. Only the forest people mind-speak now, my brother. She must pity us.”
“Ashkar is honored daily in the temples of this and every other city. I doubt if she objects to that or to the gifts laid on her altars.”
“Who knows,” Sulvian murmured, “what a goddess would prefer to have from us. Our gold or our integrity.”
The door opened. The High Priest of the order of the Vathcrian Ashkar entered—a thin, straight man in the dark robe of his calling, the violet Serpent’s Eye on his breast. He did not bow or in any manner prostrate himself, his status, in certain aesthetic and still recognized ways, being superior to the King’s.
“Well, Melash, you’ve come in time to rescue me from a lecture by my lady sister. She takes her duties as priestess too seriously.”
“I am delighted, King, that she does. We shall need Ashkar’s guidance in the days ahead.”
“What do you mean, Melash?”
“I mean, King, I have just come from questioning the stranger and his two companions as you asked.”
“And?”
“And, my King, he is all he says. And more.”
Jarred’s face whitened.
“You’re mistaken, Melash.”
“No, King, I am not. I discount the insult you render me in doubting my mental capabilities. I understand the stranger breached your mind and made you afraid.”
“Not afraid!” Jarred shouted.
“Yes, my King. No shame in that. He has made me also afraid. He has been very honest with us. He has shown me that before he reached our land, he had neither purpose nor direction; his mind was closed. Now the capacity of his mind is greater than any I have ever encountered or heard spoken of. And his purpose is likely to upset the balance of our world.”
“Well, tell me what he showed you. The whole story. Let’s see if it’s at all credible.”
Melash told him.
“You’re speaking like a fool, Melash,” Jarred cried when he was done. “Have you lost your reason? This is some romance made up in the bazaar.”
“No, King,” Melash said, “but if you are in doubt, you should question him yourself.”
“Then bring him,” Jarred said stonily.
Behind the priest the door immediately opened. The stranger came through, but only his white hair caught the little lamplight. The rest of him was shadow.
“Did you call him with your mind?” Jarred rasped.
“There was no need,” Melash said quietly. “He can read all our minds, whether we permit it or not.”
Jarred felt himself tremble, and stilled it. He retreated into the aura of the lamp, and sat down in the ivory chair, near Sulvian.
“What are you called, outlander?” he demanded in a dry, harsh voice.
“Raldnor, King.”
“Come here then, Raldnor. Where I can see you.”
The priest bowed his head and stood like an effigy, disclaiming without words the actions of his lord.
The stranger moved up the room. The lamp caught his face and his extraordinary eyes. The eyes fixed on Jarred.
“Melash, the High Priest of Ashkar, has told us everything you told him, Raldnor. I must congratulate your vivid and inventive imagination. You’ve missed nothing, even the goddess has been put in, Ashkar, who you claim to worship in this—other country of yours, under another name. Please tell me now what you hope to gain by such a fantastic mishmash?”
“Help for my people,” the stranger said. “I have learned of the other cities of the Plain, their river outlets and their ships. And there is Shansar in the north.”
“Don’t think you can make a fool of all of us,” Jarred spat at him.
Sulvian’s hand gripped suddenly on his arm.
“Listen.”
Outside a wind had risen; it moaned and sawed about the palace towers. Distant shutters banged in an irregular tempo. The priest raised his head. It was the dust wind of the Plains, but not the time for it. The room seemed suddenly full of omens.
Jarred shut his eyes, but already he saw, and the inner darkness was alive with pictures. He witnessed the smoking ruins, the slaves driven through the snow in chains and the wind blew among the yellow hair of the dead. It came too fast, he could not contain it. There was a black-haired man, with burning madman’s eyes—a man composed of hate and the desires of hate.
Beyond the palace walls the dust wind scoured down the winding streets of Vathcri. Men muttered, children woke and screamed in fright, women hurried to the temples. In the great pillared place of Ashkar, where it overlooked the sacred groves below, the serpents hissed and thrashed in their pit. A gust blew wide the shutters and doused the lamps on the altar. A cry of superstitious terror arose, and sleeping birds clouded up from their sanctuaries on the temple roofs.
Sulvian left her chair.
The lamp had smoked and flickered out, but in the darkness she could somehow find her way. She glimpsed Jarred huddled on the ivory seat and the gray-faced priest. But she saw the stranger, as clearly as if the lamp still burned, not on him but from inside his flesh, behind his eyes.
“You trap our city in a vise of fear,” she said. “Let go.”
“You trap yourselves,” he answered. “Are you afraid, Sulvian, priestess of Ashkar Anackire?”
“No,” she whispered. Then: “Yes. I saw myself dead in your mind. The Black King had killed me.”
“Not you,” he said, “though she resembled you.”