Танит Ли - Anackire

Below, Dhaker stirred, fingering the opal eye. The man who held up the bowl said, “He doesn’t take the water.”

“He’s dead,” said Dhaker.

They gave him neither to Rorn nor to the fire-burial of the yellow races. They left him to rot on the pole, or for the seabirds to feast on. Long before they came to Thaddra, only bones remained of him, which might have been the bones of any man who had died.

High on a golden stone in the furnace of noon, the woman sat looking across the river. Behind her the black walls of a ruin went up. The sun of the hot months had burned her nearly as black, all but the silver bracelet on her left wrist—which, drawing close, you saw was not a bracelet, but a ring of bright scales native to her flesh.

Yannul, having come out of the ancient city of the Zor, stood under the boulder. The farther shore was occupied, as usual, with its normal uneventful business. For almost a month it had been so. Since that night, that sunrise, of Power, when the world had seemed to chime like a bell. Easy with supernatural things, the villages across the river had soon put magic aside, a commonplace.

“Safca,” he said, after a while.

“Yes,” she said, “I know. You’re going home.”

“The villa-farm at Amlan,” he said. “Medaci thinks we should go back. She says our elder son will get there. We don’t know where he is. But—safe, she says.”

“Oh yes,” said Safca. “Yes, your son is safe and well.” Her voice was remote, and beautiful. He had never realized, in the beginning, she had a beautiful voice. Perhaps it was a legacy of royal blood. For she had that, too, did she not? “Yes,” she said again, “I have that, too.”

“I shall never,” he said, “get used to having my mind read.”

“I’m sorry. Your secret thoughts are secure enough. But some things burst out, barking like dogs. I still don’t know, Yannul, if it’s true.”

“That you’re Amrek’s daughter? You aren’t like him. But the mark on your wrist—”

“The curse of Anackire.”

Yannul said, “Maybe it wasn’t a curse. Only an emblem. It hasn’t harmed you. Could Amrek have misunderstood?”

She looked down at him. Her eyes were black Vis eyes—the Storm Lord Amrek’s eyes? She had altered a great deal. If she had the heritage of that line did not really matter anymore. She could reign here if she wanted. The Lans who had followed her would make her a queen, without being asked. But she was a priestess too, and possibly temporal rule meant nothing. Zastis fell late this year, and was almost due. The small camp in the ruined city was restive, eager, and you saw the same in the villages over the river. Even he, finding Medaci had not changed, returning from the inferno no winged avatar but a woman. . . . Silly as adolescent lovers, they had coupled in a wild orchard under the walls, and scolded each other after, grinning.

But Safca, walking with a dozen male eyes scorching on her, gave no indication. Up on her rock now like a lioness, she watched the sky or a man with equal complacence, and no haste at all.

And if she had caught that thought, she did not answer it.

“Will you stay here,” he said eventually, “the city?”

She said: “All places are one.” He perceived she reckoned this to be so. “But for others—the town we came by. Or Lan under the mountains. Since Lan is accessible again. The passes are open.”

“I know it.”

“But there were no messengers,” she said, her innocent eyes far away. “How could you know this?”

“Telepathy rubs off.”

Safca smiled. “I see your son,” she said, “Lur Raldnor, riding from the Lowlands. You must be proud of such a son.”

Something wrenched at Yannul. He said, “What else do you see?”

“Many things.”

She would not tell him. Only what it was his right to be told. That night, that morning, were distant as the stars, but he tried, if reluctantly, to conjure them.

“Do you,” he said, “frequently see Anackire?”

“We are all Anackire. Anackire is everything.”

“Then, no record. It was a dream—the war, the breaking of the sword.”

“In Elyr,” she said, “the towers are watching for a star.”

“They’ll see one, too.” He grinned again.

“No, not Zastis, Yannul. Not an evening star of desire. A morning star of peace.”

Yannul glanced over the river.

“I remember,” he said slowly, “Koramvis.”

But the woman on the rock said, “The past is the past.” And then he too saw, her mind focusing for his, Lur Raldnor riding under the sun. There was a second black ruin behind him, the length of the Plains and the little land of Elyr between, but Lur Raldnor was singing, some antique song Yannul half recalled, so he found he also began to form the words of it, noiselessly.

“Yes, father,” said Lur Raldnor. “I know you hear me.” He laughed at the sky. This was something he had yet to get used to. Having formed part of a mental colossus, he still had not mastered the everyday techniques of mind speech. It was like starting to make love and looking through the velvet surface to the skeleton.

One could fathom why the Sister Continent, growing mercantile, had begun to suppress its telepathy.

There were Sister Continent ships at Moiyah now, and over in Shansarian Alisaar. Some made on for Vardian Zakoris, for Dorthar and for Karmiss. It seemed they had held assembly down there in the south, and decided to reserve judgment on the war in Vis. So the old alliances stood after all. Now they ventured in as warlike friends, to an area less tumultuous than expected. Although in Karmiss, Shansar’s comradeship would be welcome enough. Istris had suffered. Word had it she was wrecked. The Warden had seized authority, of course. But Shansarian autocracy would be reestablished before the year turned, the Lily thoroughly eclipsed by the goddess with the tail of a fish. Ashyasmai would be Ashara, once more. As for the banner of the Salamander—it was burned, ironic fate for a fire-lizard. Kesarh’s ending was not so efficiently tabulated.

Which reminded one of Rarmon. But then again, one knew about Rarmon, too, what had chanced, and what was to come. Destiny, like the metaphorical girl’s flesh, translucent and to be looked through.

There had been no problem that way with the Xarabian girl, who was not naturally a telepath. She had wept when Lur Raldnor bade her farewell, and told him she would call her son by his name. But Lur Raldnor, though he had not disillusioned her, had foreseen she would not bear his son.

He went back to singing the song of the Lannic hills his father had taught him long ago. Magic had its place. There were other things. He knew he was young and the earth was beautiful. And that anyway he, and everything, lived forever. But he had known that since Medaci told him, when he was three years of age.

“And it’s farewell on Thaddra, now, is it? To me, who risked his fine skin under that damned tower,” said Tuab Ey in the wine-shop at Tumesh. “Dorthar. What can Dorthar offer you? Soft living and the King’s favor, and rich food and good liquor—what’s that to the healthy life you could lead with us, eating raw orynx in the jungle in the rain?”

“Come with me,” said Rarnammon. “You earned whatever I can get you.”

“Humble thanks. I’m a lord here. Among lords I’d be scum, and I know it.”

Tuab Ey stirred the stew with his dagger. “As for the tower. Some god passed over us. I heard his wings. Now I credit gods. But I lived through it. Galud says the tower raged as if it was alight.”

“Galud may be wise.”

“Then there were the lepers, apparently all cured. Even Jort verified that.”