One man glanced at the other, speaking without words. They turned the heads of their mounts.
The Ommos thought they were at his work, gathering gold for a nonexistent merchant of Xarabiss with Yannul the Lan. The Ommos had therefore provided the pass that enabled them to leave the city and roam the Plains at will. Certainly there was a tiny priceless statue and a heap of gems in their saddlebags as proof of their supposed errand. Yet their mission was a different one.
There had been an old woman, and a single shining thought dropped into dark water. Ripples had spread from that drop, ripples of the mind across the black stagnant well of the city. Only they knew what the golden thing meant to them, but such was its purity that it was totally communicable. At each village, each farm, the two messengers passed on their vision, Raldnor’s vision, unaltered, still perfect, through the unclouded medium of mental speech, passed it like fire from torch to torch, until the whole surface of the Plains would be burning. The change, where it came—and soon it would come everywhere—was entire. A sleeping serpent, coiled in the brain, always present, never until now awake, had been wakened, as if it had been foretold. Promontory slid into recess; groove fitted with groove in a jigsaw of destiny, abruptly engaged.
Through the falling snow, the two Lowland men rode over the scarp and silently on into the night with their invisible fire.
Under the city’s ancient gateway the host poured, from dawn till dusk. The Lowlanders came with their wagons, their livestock and their belongings piled in carts. The Dortharian wall guard was doubled. They sat their animals in the deadly cold, working off their anger on the Plains people. They snatched bits of amber and thin gold chains off the necks of the women.
They assumed the snow had caused the sudden influx—also fear of the soldiers of the provisioning detachment. Certainly the scum had brought food enough for the garrison with them. If any starved, it would not be the Am Dorthar.
That day, too, Yannul came back to Yr Dakan’s house, the Lowland men riding behind him with their bags of jewels. The Ommos examined the treasures greedily. He ran his pudgy fingers over the breasts of the Anckira statue, but their coldness seemed to repel him.
“Little enough in stones,” he said, “but She—She is worth something.”
“So Kios will think,” the Lan answered.
“And when will your employer expect you?”
“Not till the Snow’s done, the spring thaw. There may be other stuff I can lay hands on besides, at the bottom of all those wagons that have come into the city.”
“Don’t forget that I have helped you, Master Lan.”
“Indeed, Lord Dakan, you can rest assured.”
Under the snow, time paused in the city.
In the white-crusted ruins wagons camped about the stone-ringed fires. Smoke rose more frequently, for the Dortharians seldom now troubled the dark. The cold of the Plains was too bitter for them. Besides, they were sullen, trapped in this tomb with their captives, and discontent robbed them for a while of pleasure in their sadistic sports.
There came a night of iron stars.
Long after the curfew had fallen, a piece of movement came silently through the streets. It was a thing of shadow, like a ghost; avoiding the routes of the Dortharian patrols, it slid at last into the inky porch of Orhvan’s house and sent a mind like a pale blade searching through the walls.
Orhvan soon came and led the shadow into an upper room, where a small fire now burned and flickered. Firelight fell harsh then on the bone-white angles of hands, and fell back from the hooded face. It was a priest.
“Raldnor,” Orhvan said.
Sparks ignited briefly within the hood as the priest’s eyes turned and fixed on what was sitting perfectly still before him—a figure as dark, as enigmatic as his own.
“You call this man Raldnor,” the priest said softly, “who claims to be our King.”
A voice came from the figure.
“Call any man a king; it will not alter him. Call a king by some other name, he is still a king.”
“I speak to you with my mouth,” the priest said, “because your mind is too expressive for my needs, and conveys too much. You have let fall a thought, woken a snake in the brain of our people. They have never seen you, but their minds visualize you as a myth, half king, half god. I dispute nothing of this. Nor the vision of another land, which I too have been shown in that chain of minds which has spread from yours. For all the years of our race, we have been passive, meek, submitting rather than observing the rules of war. The Vis set their heel on our necks for centuries. The heel crushed us, but taught us to endure. You have found out our secret—the serpent coiled in our soul. By this abstract yet entire thought you have implanted, you have said this: They who endure more, are more; they who suffer most can accomplish most. You, who master yourselves, can master others. You who possess the speaking mind should not bow down beneath the yoke of the deaf, the blind and the dumb. You have given us hubris. That was the unborn serpent in our core. You have hatched the serpent’s egg; you have woken us. But it is the double-edged sword. After you have taught us to be cruel, can you teach us to be humble once again, in time, thrust us back inside the broken shell and seal it, before we rend ourselves?”
“We must live for each moment as it comes,” the voice said to him, “neither in our past nor in our future. Should we fail to wake at this moment, we shall be destroyed forever. Those who sleep will die in their sleep. There will be no survivors of Amrek’s scythe.”
“You are the dual child, both bloods. This is very clear.”
“I am an amalgam that had eventually to be formed,” the voice said. “The era has called forth both myself and Amrek, the black tyrant. We are figments of the destiny of our separate peoples. No more.”
“They who said they were your messengers summoned us here from the Shadowless Plains. They said tonight you will speak to us, your mind encompassing every other Lowland mind in the city. Can you do this? I, too, have felt it to be so.”
A coal burst suddenly in the fire. The priest caught the glimpse of a face that seemed cast from dark metal, and two burning eyes of a strangely colorless icy gold. The eyes appeared to be without soul. Only purpose, only power was behind them.
“Indeed,” the priest thought, “you are no longer a human man.”
“I am the golem of the goddess.”
The terrible jest filled the priest’s brain. He lapsed by their fire to wait.
At midnight there came a peculiar intensity over the city, like the brittle contraction, the unseen shimmer that precedes a storm.
The Dortharians spoke in loud, broken whisperings about the streets. In the garrison, men swore and swilled their wine. The air hummed. Yannul the Lan lay stiff as starch in the Ommos bed, feeling the city moving as though a torrent rushed under its roads.
The rain broke early as the snow had been late. Yet it was an uncertain, fickle thaw; flakes still met in silver spirals, though the gutters ran with mud.
These bright spinnings beat on the shutters of Yr Dakan’s chamber as Ras moved noiselessly across it and swung down the bronze candle wheel and snuffed its lights. On the floor an erotic painting of young men throbbed in the glow of a plum-colored lamp.
Yr Dakan lay in the big bed, eating sweets. Sometimes a girl would lie beside him awaiting his intentions, or a boy, or possibly both. Tonight the space was empty.
Ras crossed to the bed and stood looking down.