The dark-eyed girls still stared at him. But he was different now, no longer an adventurer from Sar, but now a god in a hero’s body. Their sighing was altered, but no less.
Thann Rashek was at Lin Abissa, in the white palace with the twisted golden pillars. He sent word to the force in his land: “My city lies helpless before you. We open our gates and beg the mercy of Raldnor Son of Anackire.”
That night the Pleasure City did a brisk trade, though not from the Lowland men. It was the Lans and Xarabians who were taken to its erotic breast, and loved and fleeced under the ruby lamps.
“The Lowlanders do not fancy women,” the beautiful daughters of Yasmis complained. “Nor anyone else,” remarked her beautiful sons in the Ommos Quarter. It was a disappointment to discover, as they had always suspected, the sexual reticence of the fair-haired race.
Raldnor dined that night at Rashek’s table.
“Well, we are conquered,” the Xarabian said. “How unfortunate that you should find us so poorly defended.”
He had been very curious. Now he observed, with ironic delight, the Dortharian-taught prince’s manners, but he noted, too, how the soul was drained by what drove it. Yet who could doubt this man was Rehdon’s seed? “He will die, of course, in Dorthar,” thought Rashek. “Amrek’s dragons must outnumber them, in proportions so vast as to make assessment unthinkable. Their luck at Sar is unrepeatable. They will shortly be overwhelmed. And this extraordinary man will be led in gold chains through Koramvis and slaughtered in some unique manner of Amrek’s devising; for who cannot believe that Amrek hates and goes in terror of my elegant guest? Well, Raldnor will follow where she went, perhaps. If the shades are capable of love.”
As the Lowland troops rode away from Abissa in the morning, a man on a black zeeba came galloping after. The Xarabian contingent took him in gladly enough, but in the dusk, when their camp was made once again on the open slopes, the newcomer presented himself at Raldnor’s drab, owar-hide pavilion, the impersonal erstwhile tent of some minor Xarish officer.
He was at pains to get in. The Lan he had heard of and one or two captains from among the mercenaries were drinking wine. Raldnor stood by the lamp, reading a piece of reed-paper.
“Well, my friend,” the Xarabian said, glancing around, “who would have thought it?”
Raldnor turned about. The Xarabian, catching sight of his face for the first time in more than a year, checked himself and his humorous banter.
“Xaros,” Raldnor said. “You are very welcome.”
He held out a hand, his mouth moving in the exercise generally recognized as a smile.
Xaros laughed uneasily.
“Well, I’ve come to swell your number by one. No doubt a stupendous contribution.”
Later, crouched by a smoking fire in the chill late of night, Xaros composed a letter to Helida, who had never for a moment expected him to think of such a thing.
“Oh, by the gods, my love, how he’s changed. I suppose I should have anticipated something, but not this. I had feelings of sentiment toward this man, as you well know. But I might as well grasp the hand of an icon. Oh, he treated me excellently, when I’d have been happy to rough it and grumble, because, as you understand, I was never made to be a soldier. But he’s no longer anyone I know. Look for me back any day, though I’ll stick this fool’s errand if I can. This damned zeeba I robbed your uncle of has devoured half my food as I wrote this. I have told it I shall eat it in return, if ever we reach Dorthar.”
In Koramvis, Amrek had not stirred. There had come a rumor of fire and terror in the west—Saardos sacked by pirates with pale hair. As yet it was only a rumor, like so many of the wild tales born suddenly in the mouths of the fearful.
Again, messengers had ridden to Xarabiss and returned by circuitous routes in fear of the Lowlanders.
Thann Rashek’s answer was, as usual, courteous, but this time with a barb in the tail.
“I exclaim once again that I have no able troops ready to defy the men of the Plains. Though anxious for Dorthar’s honor at all times, I am an old man. Can I be blamed if my cities surrender in terror to the savage Lowlanders, when even your Highness’s own soldiers were forced to fly?”
“He begs for war, and shall have it,” Amrek spat.
The Council were silent. The Lowlanders also begged for war; yet Amrek made no move to arrange it.
“Storm Lord, can all defense be left now to Ommos? Surely some men must be sent—”
“Then see to it,” Amrek rasped. His eyes were fixed upon the letter he still held. He raised it, showing them the crimson wax with its imprint of the woman-headed dragon of Xarabiss.
“Anack,” be hissed.
The Council kept still, their own eyes darting.
“Anack!” Amrek screamed out. “He dares to use the snake goddess as his seal!” He sprang from the chair, pointed at the six personal guards grouped behind him. “A Xarabian—find me a Xarabian in Koramvis and bring him here.”
Without expression, two of the black-cloaked men strode out.
They took a Xarabian tailor in the lower quarter. His wife ran after, screaming and imploring them, as they dragged him up the narrow ways into the wide white streets and under the obsidian dragons of the Avenue of Rarnammon. Amrek’s Chosen grinned, and men laughed on the roads, for the Xarabians, who should have cauterized the running Lowland sore and had failed to do so, were not greatly liked.
The dragons pushed the whimpering tailor into the Council Hall and held him still.
Amrek caught a blade from the nearest belt and slit the tailor’s threadbare shirt.
“Your master, Rashek, the stinking Fox of the Xarab midden, has sent me a certain token, which you will take back to him.”
He slashed with the knife, and blood ran. The tailor screamed, and screamed again as Amrek carved on his back the crude symbol of an eight-armed image with a serpent’s tail.
At last, shivering, Amrek dropped the knife on the flags. The Xarabian had fainted.
“Take the offal out. Whether it lives or dies, send it to Abissa as my promise.”
The hall was thick and close with silence. The face of the Warden Mathon was gray and puckered, for the sight of the blood had made him ill.
Kathaos sat motionless in the shadows.
Surely now there could be no further doubt that Amrek was entirely mad.
There was plague in Ommos.
It came with the summer heat. Men suffered pains in their bellies, turned black and died. Of the garrison force of a thousand Dortharians established in Hetta Para, where the plague was at its worst, only two hundred men survived, and most of them greatly weakened.
The Lowlanders had at this time taken Uthkat, where a battalion of Ommos soldiery fought them on the plain of Orsh, and unaccountably fled in rout. It was reasoned that the ravages of sickness and a certain foolish superstition were responsible. The Ommos had left off burning yellow-haired dolls. Some, it was muttered, burned wax effigies of Amrek instead. The Lowlanders were magicians, in league with hell and the creatures thereof—with banaliks, anckiras, and demons.
News had broken through at last, even to Ommos. Saardos had indeed been gutted, and the Alisaarian king slain at Shaow by white-haired berserkers, who fought screaming and seemed to take no wounds. Alisaar at least could no longer offer troops for Amrek’s expected offensive, though Zakoris had dispatched a generous vassal’s guard of three thousand men—gladly, and with contempt. She had no fear of pirates. Hanassor, inviolable in her rock, laughed at the rabble of the seas, whoever they were: Let them chew up Alisaar and come on. Yet who were they? Ommos knew. Devils conjured from the Waters of Aarl by the sorcerer who infested them with plague.