Танит Ли - Anackire

The Leopard had entered northeastern Thaddra too, via her rivers. There were Free Zakorians in strategic Tumesh, now, under the tall peaks, the dragon’s crest of Dorthar. On the pass above, the Dortharians readied themselves.

Once, the oceans beyond all land southwest and south had been mythologically discounted as the Sea of Aarl. As Raldnor Am Anackire had learned, there were marine volcanoes west and south of Alisaar, the seed of the myth. Other, less lethal, passages to the second continent had since become well known to traders.

The withering of the Aarl-bane had additionally opened sea roads around Alisaar into the Inner Sea; formerly, no ship would risk going farther south than Saardos.

It had also, of course, laid wide the way for Free Zakoris.

Coming south, hugging the western shores of Vis as it must, the great fleet would be more than a month in voyaging. There was no land-route possible. Thaddra melted there into a nameless morass of diseased swamp and jungle ancient as the world, unclaimed by any, offering nothing. Where this slab of hateful earth jutted down toward Alisaar, a high beacon had been inaugurated on a rocky promontory. Small unsigiled vessels paddled about the area, keeping the watches of half the countries adjacent.

The great fleet was already moving. The most current sighting estimated a hundred and sixty-five ships, packed with men as Free Zakoris was proficient at packing—maybe eighteen thousand fighting men.

Their slaves rowed not only chained, but blindfold, in case by some accident they might catch a glimpse of those they met, their own countrymen, and be seized with patriotism, or some fantasy of being saved. A handful of slaves had already mutinied. They were tortured on the decks, as the others, blindfold but not deaf, rowed on. Only when these warning voices could no longer scream, did corpses go into the sea. Huge lizard-creatures slid from the jungle coasts and hastened out to feast.

One sunrise, the foremost galleys sighted a tower of glass flying over the water, an iceberg, driven by eccentric currents and winds to slow dissolving under the dry western sun.

The Free Zakorians did not care for it, this cold clear thing. They said it had the torso and breasts of a woman.

The Dortharian fleet was anchored off Thos.

The Middle Lands had seldom fought by sea. Dorthar’s strength had been chariots and men and mighty walls, since the time of Rarnammon. Even in the Lowland War she had thrust away the ships of the Sister Continent, and engaged in combat on land, until the land moved like the sea and ended the battle.

The shipwrights were Vathcrians, and the ships were Vathcrian in style, high-beaked and beautiful. Their white sails glistened, blazed with the rust and black Oragon of Dorthar, gold and black with the Serpent and Cloud, the white on amber on white of the goddess banners of the Dortharian Anackire. The Vathcrian flotilla had in turn put out the blue regalia of Ashkar, brave as if for celebration. The Tarabine flotilla, already colored for blood, reflected the sea into wine. But the fleet numbered less than a hundred vessels. No reinforcements had come from the homelands, no message. Though the Karmians’ vaunting seemed done, it was too late. Alliances were blowing chaff. The Middle Lands stood alone as, since the snow, they had reckoned to stand.

When Raldanash rode into the port near sundown, Thos turned out to wave and exalt. Enough flowers were blooming that they could fling them to him and his men, the glitter of mail in dying sunlight. Next year there might be, after all, no more flowers, no more sun, for any of them.

In the garrison overlooking the harbor, the guardian, too aged to fight but with two sons down on the ships, bowed and stammered and went away, leaving the King and his commanders to their talk.

After dinner, that too dwindled. Most of them set off to bed with willing febrile Thosian women. Everywhere there was a glut of virgins to be had, girls anxious to lose their maidenheads to a hero or a friend. If Free Zakoris had them, they knew how it would be.

When the moon rose, Raldanash was alone, seated unsleeping in the guardian’s bedroom which, hung with the gaudiest silks, was his for the night.

“My lord,” Vencrek had said at Anackyra, “your place is here, in your capital. Not jaunting to meet Free Zakoris at the mouth of the Inner Sea—”

“Farther west,” Raldanash had corrected absently.

“Wherever. Do you think Yl doesn’t daydream of that? You there , and the Leopard breaking in here from Okris, or out of Ommos. Raldanash, we’re holding Ommos by an inch of skin—it could happen any day.”

“You will defend Dorthar,” said Raldanash, “with distinction and common sense.”

Vencrek used an explicit Vathcrian oath. “Dorthar without a heart. Kingless.”

“The people of Dorthar expect me to go where I am going, to intercept the Leopard in its might, the greater force, at sea. Not idly to wait for them to reach us, a hundred and sixty ships.”

“My lord, I’ve never known you to act in such a precipitate—”

“If Rarmon had been here—”

“If Rarmon had been here he would have snatched the crown and brought Yl galloping in to share it.”

“No,” said Raldanash, “you really shouldn’t listen to Free Zakorian propaganda.”

Vencrek said, moving into the tongue of Vathcri, “Why are you doing this?”

Raldanash, too, changed to the language of home. “I’ve told you.”

“No, my lord, you haven’t told me.”

Raldanash had looked at him then, and Vencrek had suddenly pushed all the military paraphernalia aside, walked across the chamber and flung his arms round him, as if they had been boys again, in the valleys.

To be embraced with such frantic affection, love and anger, shook Raldanash, but he suffered it, was even momentarily comforted. When Vencrek let him go, Raldanash began quietly, “If it were not for your support and kindness—”

But Vencrek, striding back to the papers, said, “There will be twenty Amanackire priests on the King’s galley, I hear.” Raldanash said nothing. Vencrek said: “I wonder why?”

“To invoke Ashkar-Anackire.”

Vencrek said, “My lord, I know some of the legends, too. The lines of energy that supposedly cross Vis. The line shot from the goddess temple above Koramvis—to Vathcri. I hazard you mean to meet the Leopard’s ships on that line of Power, as near as your theologians and cartographers can judge it.”

“Then, that’s your hazard.”

Vencrek turned, posed, had his suavity again. He said in Visian: “I see. Well, I’m probably all error. I know you leaned to the life of a sacerdote when a child, my lord, and still do. But you’ve never been sufficient idiot to throw Dorthar away for it.”

They spoke of military deployments.

Only at the door did Vencrek say, very lightly, “Of course, you’ve left no heir. What’s to become of us all if you go down?”

“Amrek left no heir,” said Raldanash. “The goddess provided one.”

Now, in Thos in the moon brightness, one recollected a workshop in the hills and the making of a crescent bow, and a ten-year-old Vencrek running through the waist-high grasses, yelling, waving the bow. And the terraces up to the temple, the cool enamel of live snakeskin, the shadows, and: “When you’re King of all Vis, what’ll I be?” “My Counselor.” And Vencrek frowning, “But I want to fight, lead your armies.” “The wars are over,” Raldanash had said. They had agreed, that being the case, Counselor was best.

Later Sulvian glided across the moonlight, her white hair blowing, but it had merged with some imagery of his father’s, some telepathic symbol lodged in his brain at birth. For Sulvian crumbled into gilded ashes and blew away along the night.