Harry Turtledove - The Golden Shrine

Hamnet grudged a bow. “Your Majesty,” he said gruffly. Ulric Skakki followed his lead. So did Trasamund. And so did Audun Gilli, the man of least account among those who’d begun this adventure.

Sigvat scowled. He was still as sensitive to slights as he’d always been. “What’s this nonsense about Sudertorp Lake and the Golden Shrine?” he snapped.

“Your Majesty, it isn’t nonsense,” Count Hamnet said. Everyone with him nodded except Gudrid. She would never testify about the Golden Shrine. As quickly as he could, Hamnet told the Emperor what had happened.

Sigvat looked down his nose at him. “You expect me to believe this nonsense?”

“You had better believe it-it is true.” That wasn’t Hamnet: the Emperor wouldn’t have believed him. It was Marcovefa. She stared straight into Sigvat’s watery brown eyes. “Believe it-it is true,” she repeated.

Sigvat obviously didn’t want to. Just as obviously, he found himself compelled to. He looked angry and frightened at the same time. Marcovefa might be sure her sorcery didn’t measure up to that of the Golden Shrine, but it outdid anything Raumsdalians could match.

“All right, then. All right,” Sigvat said furiously. “So you did go inside the Golden Shrine. Well, what kind of message did those people in there have for me?” In spite of everything, he preened a little. “It must be important-I must be important-for them to know about me.”

I must be important . Yes, that usually lay at the heart of Sigvat’s thoughts. “I carry the message, Your Majesty,” Count Hamnet answered. “They told me it was very ancient-not from before this last time the Glacier ground south, but from the time before that.”

“Yes, yes.” The Emperor sounded impatient. “Give it to me, then.”

Whatever kind of seed Hamnet was, he would sprout now. “As you say, Your Majesty, so shall it be.” He took a deep breath, then spoke the first strange word the golden-robed priestess had imparted to him: “ Mene. ”

Suddenly, he no longer seemed to see Sigvat II’s throne room, but another one, one he’d never imagined before, much less seen. And somehow everybody else in this throne room saw that one with him, and saw the fierce, swarthy, curly-bearded man (plainly not a Ruler, even if he had something of their aspect) in the strange robe staring at the writing on the mud-brick wall to the left of the throne on which he sat. Hamnet had never seen those characters before, either, but he knew they said Mene .

As he’d been bidden to do, he said it again: “ Mene. ”

In his vision-if it was but a vision, if he wasn’t really there-he saw the glowing word appear once more. He saw the curly-bearded king or emperor (for surely the man could hold no lower rank) gasp and turn pale under his dark skin.

“Tekel,” Hamnet Thyssen said, slowly beginning to grasp the words he carried.

Tekel sprang into being on the wall to the swarthy king’s left. He gasped and clapped a horrified hand to his forehead. He was beginning to understand, too.

Was Sigvat? Hamnet couldn’t tell. He dwelt more in that other world, that lost and ancient world, than this one. And, he realized, whether Sigvat followed now hardly mattered. The Raumsdalian Emperor would in a moment. Count Hamnet intoned the priestess’ last word: “ Upharsin. ”

What had to be that last word appeared on that wall in fiery letters. Suddenly, Hamnet Thyssen-and, he was sure, everyone else in the throne room-saw that wall and that ancient chamber no more. An enormous set of scales presented itself. In one pan lay a heavy stone weight. In the other stood that curly-bearded king in his odd royal robes.

The scales were free to swing. The one with the weight sank down. The one with the king from those unimaginably distant days rose: he could not measure up to that which tested him.

And then, without warning, the figure on the scale’s rising pan changed. It was no longer the nameless, forgotten king from a bygone age. Instead, it wore Sigvat II’s face . . . and his robe.

Hamnet didn’t doubt what he saw, or what it meant. No one who saw that could misunderstand it. You don’t measure up, either, Your Majesty, he thought. No. Your former Majesty.

As abruptly as it had engulfed him, the vision faded. He was back inside the Raumsdalian Emperor’s throne room with all his senses once more. Along with everyone else in there, he stared at the Emperor.

Under that terrible, merciless scrutiny, Sigvat II went red and then white. A ghastly attempt at a smile played across his face; it flickered and went out like a guttering flame. He opened his mouth to say . . . something. But what could a man say after . . . that? Count Hamnet had never imagined a condemnation straight from God, but that came closer to describing what he’d just witnessed than anything else he could conceive. Sigvat’s mouth stayed open, likely for no better reason than that he’d forgotten to close it.

Without a word, one of the imperial ministers turned away, and then another and another and another. Sigvat did make a sound then, a small one: the sound a wounded man might make when he was trying to hide his pain.

Trasamund walked up to him. With rough sympathy, the jarl set a hand on Sigvat’s arm. “You’d better go now, while you still can,” he said, not unkindly. “You hang around here, somebody’s going to stick a knife in you, and quick.”

“What did I do to deserve- that ?” Sigvat’s wave took in everything everyone had just seen.

Maybe he thought nobody would give him an answer, but Count Hamnet did: “You didn’t do anything to stop the Rulers, but after other people took care of that for you you came back and tried to pick up the reins you’d dropped. Lots of people would have thought you had no right, but the folk from the Golden Shrine did more than think. They went and showed you.”

“They went and showed everybody else, too,” Ulric Skakki added. Did he sound amused? Hamnet thought so.

Sigvat also must have, because he started to reply. Trasamund forestalled him, saying, “If you hustle, you’ve still got a chance to get out of the palace alive. Leave your robe for whoever needs it next, go somewhere a long way off, change your name, and try and pretend you never heard of Nidaros.”

That struck Hamnet Thyssen as good advice: better than he would have given Sigvat. It must have struck the suddenly ex-Raumsdalian Emperor the same way. He slid down off the poor makeshift throne and made his way toward the entrance to the throne room. By the time he got there, he was trotting.

Eyvind Torfinn bowed to Hamnet. “What is your will, Your Majesty?” he asked.

“No!” Hamnet said sharply. “No, by God! You can’t make me wear the crown, and neither can anybody else. If you try, I’ll go up to the tallest tower and throw myself out on my head-or else I’ll just fall on my sword.” He’d tried that before, and failed. He didn’t think he would if he tried again. “I’d rather die than be Emperor of Raumsdalia, and I mean it. If you want the job, Your Splendor, you can have it.”

Hamnet remembered that would make Gudrid Raumsdalian Empress. He couldn’t think of a better reason to go see what the hot countries in the distant south were like.

But Earl Eyvind shook his head, even if Gudrid looked furious when he did. “Thank you, but no,” the scholarly noble replied. “The Emperor should be-in times like these, had better be-a stronger man than I.”

“Maybe we can dice for the crown,” Ulric suggested. “Loser gets it.”

“We should care more about the Empire than that.” Earl Eyvind’s voice was starchy with disapproval, but he said no more. How could he, when he’d just turned it down himself?