Танит Ли - The Storm Lord

“What are they to each other, those two?” he wondered. Not lovers certainly, even though Ras plainly adored her—or would worship be a more suitable word? And he visualized Ras kneeling at an altar in submissive contentment, never even thinking of touching the image, and another man with dark Vis skin dragging down the white goddess and remaking her into a woman.

An Ommos porter in the vestibule picked his teeth. The ancient stone of the walls had been disfigured with an obscene fresco of Ommish sexual and cannibalistic mores.

Orklos appeared, smiling and heavy-lidded.

“Ah, the Lowland guests. We have been waiting on your arrival.”

He ushered them into the circular hall which was full of the wine-red light of lamps in ruby glass. A Zarok statue towered in the center of the room, a low-banked blare of fire in its open belly.

Orklos sidled to Raldnor’s elbow.

“You gaze on the flame god. It is customary to sacrifice to Zarok, or he may grow angry. It is usually a young woman that we offer him, for in my land, as you may know, they are mostly expendable. But now we are here, we discontinue the practice. The Plains people might find the rite offensive.”

Raldnor discovered himself paling with anger, and only the allegiance he felt he owed Orhvan kept him from violence. He fixed his eyes on nothing and remained silent.

“And Anackire, does not Anackire demand a tribute?”

“Anackire asks nothing because she needs nothing, being everything,” Raldnor said tightly, using a quotation of the temple.

The Ommos laughed gently and shook his head.

“Such undemanding gods.”

There was an obese man in a scarlet robe seated at the low table, already eating and drinking. He snapped his fingers, and Orklos guided Raldnor and also Anici forward to stand before him.

“Like slaves at market,” Raldnor thought, his rage almost unendurable. But in that moment he felt the little tremor of fear that stole from her unguarded mind to his as she stood so close, at last, to him. Not fear of him now but of Dakan. Dakan uttered a low belch and grinned. He was almost bald, and his face and body gave evidence of a hundred debaucheries and misuses. His gelid eyes fastened on Anici, and Raldnor half wished he would reach out and touch the girl, for then he knew his control would entirely snap and he would probably kill the man. But the fatty hands stayed in the plate.

“Welcome, Ralnar. And little Anci.” The Ommos tongue mangled their names in syrup. “You shall sit with me. The young man to my right. And you to my left.”

They were seated, Orhvan and Ras placed opposite and food brought in. Orklos, the steward, moved about stealthily among the Lowland servants, snarling or slapping at them when he considered their work ill done. The Lowland faces were quite blank, but Raldnor wondered what insupportable hardship had brought them to sell their souls.

The dinner was good, doubly good because they were hungry, had always gone without quite enough and were now invited to eat their fill, indeed, to bloat themselves. Through it all, Raldnor was nagged by the question of what payment would be expected.

There was no conversation during the meal. Finally Dakan signaled—another snap of the fingers—and the last dishes were carried out. Two men entered, bearing a semi-opaque bowl on tripodal legs which they set down beside Dakan. Inside the bowl was a dim swirling movement of small water creatures.

Dakan rose, held out a hand. Orklos placed in it a long, thin-bladed knife.

Raldnor tensed with a new and helpless anger. A Lowland man killed animal life only for food or in defense. This live sacrifice, perpetrated before them, was not merely a means of horrifying them but of humiliating them too, for who would protest?

The knife was thrust into the bowl, withdrawn and a speared thing came from the water, doubling and twisting on the blade, and screaming also the screams of a tortured child.

Dakan laughed. He strode to the belly of the flame god and shook his offering into fire. The screams rose and presently stopped.

“My tribute to you, mighty Zarok,” Dakan said, and wiped his knife on his sash.

Orhvan, Ras and Anici were staring at their hands, and Anici’s face was gray. Raldnor rose.

“Lord Dakan, you promised us a permit to cross into Xarabiss,” he said, hard and very cold, noting vaguely that he had included himself in that “us.”

Dakan turned and looked at him, the smile slipping a little on his pudgy face.

“You speak out of turn, young man.”

“Your servant told us that the permit would be given us. Is he the liar, or are you?”

Dakan’s face fell entirely. His eyes narrowed, yet Raldnor glimpsed a fleeting alarm.

“You shall have your permit. There is no hurry.”

“There’s great hurry. There are wolves in the city by night. The sooner we leave the better.”

Dakan waved a hand.

“Fetch what he asks.”

Raldnor felt his pulses thud with triumph. The man seemed unnerved by him—probably no Lowlander had ever insisted on anything before.

Orklos approached Dakan and handed him a slip of reed paper. Resting it on the table, Dakan added his scrawling signature and the imprint of his seal ring.

“There. It’s done. You may still your impatience. Speak, Orklos.”

Orklos smiled at Raldnor.

“My master offers you all the hospitality of his house tonight.”

So there it was. Secured by wolves in the Ommos’s house, the girl would be prey to any scheme the merchant had in mind for her. His lust was all too obvious. And for that matter, his servant seemed interested in Raldnor himself.

“Our thanks, Dakan,” Raldnor said acidly, “but we’ve abused your hospitality long enough.”

He picked up the permit.

“But these wolves—Orhvan, are you in agreement?”

Orhvan had risen, white-faced.

“I think that I am, Dakan. We’ll thank you, and leave.”

Dakan’s countenance grew very ugly.

“Please do. And remember, if you reach Xarabiss, the terms of this contract. I trust your wolves avoid you.”

They passed through the foyer into the cold black night.

A hand brushed Raldnor’s arm.

“Why go with them?” Orklos hissed from the doorway. “You endeavor to act as one of these Lowland serfs on whom the Vis spit, but you—you have the way of a Vis and a face I have seen on the statues of Rarnammon. What do they offer you, these people? Stagnant ruins, filth, poverty. My master can be generous, I assure you, to my friends.”

Raldnor shrugged off the hand.

“I’m not your friend, Ommos.”

The door thudded shut behind him.

At first they traveled the dark streets in silence, the small lamp Orhvan carried casting an erratic pallid light.

Raldnor, walking a little to the rear, stared at the girl’s silver fountain of hair. The Ommos wine and his victory had made him slightly drunk.

“Perhaps you were too brisk with them, Raldnor,” Ras said eventually, not looking back. “It’s not good to fall foul of Yr Dakan.”

“You’d have preferred to stay then, and have your girlfriend taken into the slug’s bed.”

Ras turned and glanced at him: a look turbulent with unreadable yet disconcerting emotion.

At that moment a wolf howled not twenty yards away. It was a peculiarly resonant sound, too big for the silence of the night.

They froze like a tableau.

“That’s the white one. I know his voice,” Orhvan said softly. “He came last winter and killed five men in the streets.”

Raldnor’s hand slid to the hunter’s knife and pulled it free of his belt. He felt a corrosive scorn for the three in front of him, passive with inevitable despair. He went past them and was in front as the white shape ran suddenly out between two crumbling walls, and paused, its eyes intent on him.