Танит Ли - The Storm Lord

Raldnor felt horror take hold of him. He was made to know abruptly his powerlessness, not only before the armor and the spears, but before such unthinking hate. What did that man hate them for? Only because his Overlord hated? Or was it some old primitive fear ready to ferment in all the Vis, merely because of a difference in pigmentation and the stories that had grown up round it?

Raldnor glanced at Xaros. He seemed to have missed the incident. Was that possible? Or was Xaros, too, a potential enemy?

Finally they found a dilapidated hostel in a narrow alleyway known as Pebble Street. A few Lowlanders sat by the fires in the hall. The dragons did not come here; it was too far from the palace and their King.

Xaros departed into the snow, having arranged to return in the morning with his miser-master’s offer, and they made a drab meal—most provisions in Lin Abissa having gone to feed the Dortharians—and took the creaking stairs to the narrow bedrooms. Raldnor, the old restraint on him again, touched the girl’s hand briefly in the dark and left her, unable to speak. In the night he lay and thought only of her and the thing he had done to her, and regret was mixed now inextricably with lust. Lust was a granite barrier between them. And Anici for her part dreamed confused and terrified dreams of a faceless man with a deformed arm. The talk of Amrek and the curse on him had inflamed ancient horrors, begun when, as a child, she had heard from the old women who drifted with her grandmother about the courts of the bleak palace the brief mentions of his name, his nature and his crippling.

Outside the snow sugared the world with its leveling pallor.

Xaros came back in the morning.

“My master’s beside himself with voracious joy. Can you take the wagon up Slant Street at noon? He has a hole in the wall in Goldbird Walk.”

Orhvan clearly knew the route.

“Hardly a district for holes in walls, I’d say.”

Xaros dismissed this with a shrug.

“Only one item—keep the wolf pelt back. It’s too good to waste. You can try a furrier later.”

It seemed almost prearranged between them that while Anici remained at the inn, Orhvan and Ras—the Lowlanders—should take the wagon, and Xaros and his part-Xarabian brother, Raldnor, should walk together like citizens. Raldnor found himself obscurely troubled by this, yet he was sick enough of wagon riding, and so it was.

“Our poor friends will take at least twice as long,” Xaros remarked as they reached the broad snow-white streets of the upper quarters. “Half the roads are cordoned off, the rest choked with sightseers. There’s a procession route from the Yasmis’s Temple to the palace—the Storm Lord giving his devotions to the goddess of love and marriage. There’s a betrothal in the air, it seems; Amrek and the Karmian, Astaris. You’ve never heard of her, of course.”

“Never.”

“I thought so. One day the earth will crack in half without the Lowlanders noticing. Well, I’ll enlighten your vile ignorance. Astaris is the daughter of the last king of Karmiss, now deceased, her mother being a Xarabian princess of Thann Rashek’s stable. She’s said—said, mark you—to be the most beautiful woman in the world. She’s been in Xarabiss a year, in her grandfather’s house at Tyrai. She came to Abissa, once, since when I and half the city have been unable to call our hearts or loins our own.”

“So she’s beautiful, then?”

“Superb. Have you ever seen a red-haired Vis woman? Oh, no, you head-in-a-bucket Plains man, you wouldn’t have. Well, they’re pricelessly rare. And this one—a mane the color of rubies. Here comes Lamp Street,” he added. “The law here is the law of the wolves. Smile tiredly at the prostitutes and watch your pockets.”

There was a great noise in Lamp Street when Xaros was spotted. Clearly, he was well known. Villainous-looking bearded men, probably robbers or hill bandits, clapped him on the back and whispered chuckling nefarious anecdotes at his ear; madams blew him kisses and invited him to bring his handsome self and handsome friend inside to give the latest batch of virgins a taste for their trade. At the end of the street a snake dancer from the Zor twisted an amber python around her bronze flesh.

“I see a hungry man,” Xaros said. “Tonight, I think, we’ll visit the Pleasure City.”

Raldnor colored slightly. Xaros said: “My unfortunate Lowlander, transparent lust is the hallmark of the Vis. Give in. Your mother has you by the heels and is roasting you over a slow fire.”

“I’ve no money—only a few copper bits.”

“So, I’ll lend you something. The wolf pelt will make you a good deal or I’m very mistaken. Owe me till then.”

“Anici—” Raldnor began, and stopped.

“Anici’s a delicious child who, like all females, will react favorably to a little competition. Tomorrow you can buy her a dress and some jewelry to ease your conscience and ensure her forgiveness.”

“And Ras and Orhvan?”

“My master’s certain to invite them to his house tonight. He likes to show off his liberality and his furniture, and they’ll get a good dinner—he has a splendid cook despite his other numerous failings.”

They arrived at the shop a little after noon, and it was one of the largest and most elegant in Goldbird Walk. The master himself was portly, alert, and as humorously capricious as his offspring. For Raldnor soon discovered from certain intimate references and wild slanders, and the amazing display of affection between the two of them, that Xaros was his son.

It seemed there was a demand for Lowland craft at the moment, and they did on the whole rather well. The dinner invitation was also forthcoming, though Xaros promptly excluded Raldnor from it, declaring that he did not want all his friends poisoned at one sitting.

Xaros remained at the shop, and Raldnor drove the others back in the wagon via byways. Yet he was in a lighter mood than he had been for many days.

There was an incident to mar all this waiting for him on the road.

Trying to avoid the increasing crowds and at the same time to follow Xaros’s directions, he came finally, by a wrong turn, to the great intersection of the Avenue of Kings. Without understanding any of the geography of Lin Abissa, he saw at once that they were on the brink of the processional route the Storm Lord would be taking.

The wide street, with its flanking statuary and pillared buildings and towers flashing like diamonds against the sky, had been swept clear of snow. Banners drooped from a hundred cornices. Spectators milled about, and the wagon was trapped immediately in the press. Ahead he heard the distant pulse of drums and the wail of horns.

There came a voice suddenly from the crowd, yet not of the crowd—a harsh, commanding, terrible voice: “Get your rubbish off the road, hell blast you.”

Raldnor looked down, his guts lurching with a recognizing fear.

A giant in brazen scales, his helm mask and his scarred coppery face all one. He brought his spear butt sharply against the nearest zeeba’s flank.

With a dry mouth and no possible answer, Raldnor pulled hard on the reins. The wagon began to move backward.

“Hurry! Hurry yourself, you brainless Lowland filth.”

Behind, the crowd scattered, cursing.

The soldier chopped with his hand, signaling a halt.

“Far enough. Now. Let’s see your permit.”

“I don’t carry it,” Raldnor said. Before he could explain that Orhvan had it, the soldier had reached up and dragged him from the box. Raldnor felt the jarring impact of the ground and caught the wheel to steady himself. Next came the soldier’s mailed fist aiming for his mouth.

There was a scream from somewhere, and next minute he found that he had ducked the blow and was facing the Dortharian with his hunter’s knife poised in his hand, ready to kill him through all his armor. Then the bizarre happened. A tangle of people swept between them and the blade was plucked from Raldnor’s fingers. The soldier parted the crowd roughly, but he was smiling.