“I require the services of your guard, madam. For a war. I can’t spare you fan bearers.”
“Then I’ll take my women and go alone.”
“By all means. I wish you luck with the mob at the city gates.”
Venom came into her eyes now, and into his. Each saw in the other a likeness of the flesh, none of the soul.
“What poor encouragement to the armies of Koramvis, madam—the Queen flying from the back gate while the lord rides from the front.”
“You!” she spat at him. “A lord! A commander! You weren’t made for war, neither for a throne. You should have been a priest, my son, with nothing to do except raise your arms to the gods and entreat their pity.” She paused, and there was more than spite in her voice. “The Lowlander will kill you, Amrek.”
He felt the blood draining out of his heart, not in horror or surprise, but at the perfection of the portent, coming as it did from her lips.
“Yes, Mother,” he said, “I’ve long been aware that he would be my death. I’ve been evading him. Now circumstances have made it impossible for me to escape. Neither, it appears, can you.”
“You coward! You resign yourself to dying and drag as many down with you as you can.”
“It seems to have turned out an unhappy day after all, Mother, that you lay with Rehdon and conceived me.”
He moved away, but she called out to him in a voice that was abruptly wild and fragile with excitement: “Wait!”
He stopped, his back still to her.
“Well, madam. I wait. For what?”
“To hear the truth from me,” she said.
When he faced her, he saw she had again that look, that look she had worn when she told him that the one woman and the one man he loved, had loved each other in despite of him.
“Whatever it is, then speak it,” he said.
Triumph and alarm lit up her eyes. Her words came quickly, one on top of the other.
“Very well. I will tell you. It was said that Raldnor wasn’t Rehdon’s sowing, but the bastard of Amnorh, his Councilor. But which of us doubts that Raldnor comes from Rehdon’s line? It is you, my son, who bear no impression of the sire.”
His mouth moved stiffly.
“I don’t understand you, madam.”
“Don’t you? I must be more explicit then. Rehdon was afraid of me and could give me no child. Without one, I should eventually have lost my high place in favor of a younger, ostensibly more fertile girl. You’ve always called me a whore. Revel in the proof of it. I took Amnorh into my bed, and, unknowing, he got you on me.” Her eyes went blank with old remembered hate. “And then my royal husband, who had no life in his loins for me, mounted a little white bitch-virgin in the Plains and gave her what should have been mine. Can you estimate the irony, Amrek? You, the fool and the cripple, are Amnorh’s distorted seed. Raldnor, not you, Raldnor should have been my son.”
She looked at him, and at that moment her years had caught her up. Cheated of everything, she supposed, she also had been given the power to destroy. But his face showed nothing. His eyes were fixed like the eyes of the blind.
He might have been dead already.
24
From throats of raw bronze the Koramvian trumpets howled—a sound of war unheard in this place for centuries. Every stone of the city answered it. It peeled white layers of birds from their roosts above the Avenue of Rarnammon. Only the clouds kept still—the transparent, shriveled clouds, little flat embryos of unborn rain on an indigo sky that was almost black.
Down the half-empty streets came the soldiers with their drums, rattles and pipes, rank on rank of them; the sun burned on their armored scales, cavalry and chariots, and banners bright as blood. Catapults and other machinery of war passed rumbling on their chains. Men and women peered from windows and galleries, and were heartened. The Lowland magician was outnumbered and greatly outclassed. Here came Amrek’s personal Guard, the white lightning on their cloaks; and there the High King, the Storm Lord in his chariot. Black plate and gold; over that the wide collar and the tall spiked Dragon helm, at which they pointed, as if to remind themselves of Rarnammon, and history itself, which bristled with successful war. A few women flung down garlands, already withered in the heat. Amrek’s face was without expression of any kind, but they noticed mainly his armor. After him came the Zakorians, forgiven now for their indiscretions, striding with their eight-foot maces, and masked in black metal.
At the wide space before the Plain Gate of Koramvis, three bulls were butchered on the marble altar.
Kathaos stood waiting in his armor, his chariot beside Amrek’s. The Lord Councilor had many thoughts to occupy him. He did not know if Lyki had succeeded at her task; it had been a matter of chance, all part of the game, and she, like all the rest, a game piece, one he would not even particularly regret losing. The Council had approved the scheme, though not Amrek—it had been kept from him. If it failed, it would mean little. Confronted by this superior force the Lowlanders could not do much but die, their mercenaries with them. If it had been successful, however, Kathaos would become the hero of the city; it was as simple as that. They still feared the ravages of the pirates, but Dorthar, unleashed, could, they believed, quell such brigands; besides, for this moment, they were the problem of Zakoris and Karmiss, which would perhaps save Dorthar the trouble. Even those who spoke of demons from the sea understood quite well that Raldnor had conjured them—that should he perish, they would perish too. Yes, it was Raldnor they mostly, absurdly feared; his outrageous luck, his reputation and his mother had made him into a figure of ominous brightness.
The last bull bled.
Blue smoke wound upward and whitened on the dark sky.
“And in the coming fight,” Kathaos thought, “if Amrek falls, I carry the Council in my hand.”
He became aware that Amrek was looking at him.
“Where is Kren, my lord?” Kathaos asked immediately. “Do you anticipate the troops of the River Garrison will join us here?”
“I have left Kren to guard the city,” Amrek said. His voice was toneless, empty.
“He has lost hold on life already,” Kathaos thought. “He thinks Raldnor will kill him.”
“But, my lord, there’s some suspicion surrounding Kren. If he were to open the gates to an enemy—”
Amrek’s eyes glittered for a moment with a curious vestige of life.
“You’re blind, Kathaos, as I am. It comforts me to know that.”
They stood under the molten sun, forming a shape dwarfed by the drought-blackened vastness of the plain.
Above, the Dortharians poured from the gate and spread their shining squares across the slope.
Men laughed and swore. If that were the Lowland army, how had they got so far?
A Zakorian roared: “Does it take a grindstone to squash a flea?”
Yet there came no fresh commands. The great mass of soldiery began to move toward the plain, and, from a rise, the first Dortharian catapult jarred and spat. The gobbet of flame fell wide and set the dry trees immediately alight. Smoke obscured the valley. With a sudden cry the foremost lines of Dortharian cavalry broke ranks and galloped down into the fog. Spears leveled, the foot soldiers ran after and the great chariots juddered at the rear.
Amrek felt the vast spasm of movement sweep him up. He was borne along with it, shouting bright men on every side, into the burning darkness of the orchards.
“Aiyah! Aiyah!” The yelling of the charioteers.
The smoke wrapped black across his face like a woman’s veil.
To his left, abruptly, a man screamed and fell dead, an iron shaft through his neck.