A figure was standing a few feet away, having just come up the stair.
The Var-Zakor beheld the arrival was above average height, and of more than average physique, and Vis naturally, like nine tenths of the city.
Then there was a blur, a surge of motion and heat—in a terrifying rush the mix found himself high in the air—he punched feebly, with all his strength, against the fearsome stamina that held him there so indifferently.
“Listen to Mud-Hair bleat!”
“Throw him off the roof, Lydian.”
“Do it, Lydian. We’ll say he tripped on his little dangler.”
Roars of mirth and applause were followed by some hoots of disappointment. For, returning to the stair, the tall man they had named a Lydian flung his howling burden straight down into the middle courtyard, a mere dozen steps below. Here the Var-Zakor crashed among some pots and lay groaning.
There was a general move, beneath and round about, to observe his condition. But the Lydian had already set his back to the scene. He was kneeling by the girl, who, her palm over her injured cheek, had sat up to lean on his shoulder.
“Let me see, Velva,” He turned her face with care, examining the bruise attentively.
“Has the bastard disfigured me for my life?” she said fiercely.
“Not at all. Take it from one who knows. Here.” He put money in her hand. “Go to the physician on Sword Street.”
The girl abruptly threw her arms round his neck, kissing him and shawling him with her beautiful hair.
“Let him alone, Velva,” voices cried. “Do you want his mind on that before the race?”
The Lydian now laughed, and gently disengaging himself from the girl, rose to his feet.
“I love you,” she whispered. “It was well worth it, that pig’s fist, to be held in your arms.”
“Ah,” he said, and shook his head at her, before walking away across the roof. There was scarcely a woman in Saardsinmey who had not murmured similar words to the Lydian, if only in her waking dreams.
From midafternoon, the shops along Five Mile Street had firmly closed their doors, while quantities of others in adjacent thoroughfares did likewise. Not only were the usual locks and grills employed: In some cases boards were being nailed to the facades. After the Fire Ride there was often fighting in the streets, and no doubt there would be this year, since three of the competitors were blond free men from Sh’alis.
By late afternoon, a thick honey light spooned down on the districts of the city. A peculiar lull had come with it, the hush before the storm.
From several hundred cornices, balustrades and porticos along the celebrated route, flowers roped and banners stood flat on the serene hot air. The three-tailed dragon was out in force, and the blazons of such innkeepers and merchants whose cash helped mount the seasonal sports. Mostly the colors of the contestants were on display, in swags and swathes, spilled from windows, twined in trees and the hair of girls, the reds of Saardsinmey eclipsing the rest. Luck banners had been tied to the poles of streetlights or hung across the way from building to building. They depicted the god Daigoth, patron of fighters, acrobats and racers, and, closer to the waterfront and all along the harbor wall, from God’s High Gate to the Coast Road, images of the sea deity Rorn.
The spectators had been assembling since midday. As the afternoon wore and flushed, they came in droves, piling up the stairways to their bought benches on rooftops and balconies, and all the upper terraces for the length of fifteen miles.
At the head of Five Mile Street, the vast stadium of Saardsinmey was already packed beyond its limits. There were multitudes who preferred to oversee and make judgments—or merely to emote and scream—along the course. But the rest who could afford the price, high tonight as never elsewhere in the whole year, preferred to witness the birth of glory and its killing finish on the stadium straight, despite the long interim of waiting when all there was to guide them were the flare of distant lights across the city, and far-off shrieking, and occasional panting runners with unreliable bulletins.
By the time the first stars raised their silver torches over New Alisaar, in a clear rouged sky, there was barely a quiet pulse beating in Saardsinmey.
The great mirror of glass, which had once poised in a palace of the old capital, now rested in its clawed frame of gilded ebony in the hall beneath Saardsinmey’s stadium. Here men, burnished to the sheen of its gilding, sometimes scarred as its tarnished face, dressed in magnificence to kill or die, would stand a moment, and stare in. It might be the last sight they would ever have of their looks, their wholeness, or their life. It was thought fortunate to touch the mirror as it held you, and to instruct the reflection: Stay, till I return.
Usually the mirror was taller than any who gazed into it. One man matched it, height for height. The Lydian.
He wore the charioteer’s short open-sided tunic, a garment of linen, ruby-red for Alisaar, strapped with red-dyed leather cuirass, belted by golden scale-work. His calves and forearms were also braced by leather, ringed by gold; his black hair drawn back, for the chariots, into a tube of hollow gold. He was altogether a creature of gold as he stood there, of gold and blood.
The faultless proportions of his body, developed through practice, since earliest boyhood, of every physical skill of the stadium (in each of which he excelled), had formed him, built him, like the endeavors of some genius artisan. As indeed they were: He was his own architect. But the head and face of this man had also their perfect proportion. Though the immaculate features were sculpted to strength, it was strength, too, of mind, and spirit. While the eyes, large and vividly black, dreamer’s eyes, misled opponents long, long ago, until the pride of jaw and mouth, or of a simple deadly sword, put them right. There had already been a saying in Saardsinmey, for five or six years: As bright as the sun and as handsome as the Lydian.
Saardsin professional fighters, whatever their original race or merit, however rich they might become, however much courted, however many contests won, or lost, entered these halls as children and remained as slaves. Barring death, there was no manumission from the courts of Daigoth. But then, to be slave here, in this way, was not like the slavery of others.
As for Rehger Am Ly Dis, standing his moment before the surface that once had mirrored Alisaarian nobility, he did not seem like any kind of slave. He looked a king.
Reaching out, the Lydian briefly touched the glass.
“Stay, till I return.”
It was a fact, the man who owned one of the finest seats at the stadium had almost stayed away.
Katemval had had a premonition. If such it could be called.
Leaving the charming house on Gem-Jewel Street, he had parted the curtains of his litter, looking along the avenue in the sunset. Every shop was bolted and boarded-up as far down as the public fountain, where a phalanx of the Guardian’s soldiery was even now marching smartly across the intersection. Then something else caught Katemval’s eye.
In the warm light and shadow, a cold blank omission.
Katemval turned his head sharply—a woman in a white mantle gleamed against some garden wall. White was not the fashion in New Alisaar, its racial connotations were unpleasing. But then Katemval realized that beneath her white veil, her hair shone paler.
They were past.
Katemval almost shouted for the litter to halt. But ordinary sense prevented him, and he let the curtain fall.
Her face had been young—her hair bright with youngness, and she was white-skinned he was sure. Neither age, nor bleach and cosmetics had made that pallor. An unmixed Lowlander, then, the plains race of southernmost Vis, they who had tumbled a world. One heard tell of such albinos, Amanackire they were named, Anackire’s Own, the Children of the Serpent Goddess.