Танит Ли - Anackire

“Why?”

“Why not? He’d done all that was asked. Lost his humanity for it. He was a god. Gods either transcend or decay. Or vanish. And he’d left a son behind him. Raldanash of Vathcri, now Storm Lord. There was another boy, too; the Dortharians played a trick with that one, or tried to. The mother was a fool and a bitch. It’s in my mind the baby died.”

Something cold passed through Rem. He pictured the wolves, tearing—

“And the last battle under Koramvis,” he said. “Witchcraft, earthquake, the goddess manifesting. Is any of that true?”

“Truth and untruth, woven as one. I’ll tell you something, about the Lowlanders. One can believe they’re not creatures of this earth. Not all come in that mold. Medaci doesn’t, and when we took the ruin back from Amrek’s dragon soldiery, I think she was all that stood between me and a kind of madness. I’d gone there out of pity, hope of justice, quite capable of killing in hot blood, and well-trained to do it. Then I found out the core of the Lowlanders.” Yannul’s eyes were sightless now, looking only back. “I remember passing them on the streets in the snow, after the massacre of Amrek’s garrison, these men, those women I’d come to save from tyranny. They were like silent wolves, eyes gleaming like ice—they looked unhuman. And I was sick to my soul. I’d never seen that in them before, but I saw it after. The second continent men, they’re not in that mold either. They’re blond Vis. But the Amanackire are only themselves. They’re in Xarabiss, Dorthar. You can see some of them, now, physically almost all whiteness—skin, hair, even the yellow eyes get pale—ice in fire and the fire going out.” Yannul smiled. “That last battle, under Koramvis. Through Raldnor, they’d come to know themselves, the Woken Serpent. And at Koramvis, Vis came to know them too. They caused the earthquake by power of will. Or maybe that’s false. It didn’t seem so then. They had to win, and the odds had become impossible. That army out of Koramvis—we should have been obliterated. So, if the victory must come and it couldn’t come from strength of arms or numbers, it had to be strength of another kind. They willed to live. We all did. It was like a prayer, the air so still for miles you could sense it thrumming like a dumb string plucked over and over. The only chance was a miracle. And the miracle happened. Koramvis fell. As for the goddess—yes, that happened, too, but there was a sane explanation for that.”

Along the ridge of the nearest hill there came a drifting whoop and sudden splinters of torchlight.

The hunters were coming home.

“Please finish,” said Rem.

“A statue,” Yannul said, “a colossus from a hidden temple in the uplands above Koramvis. The quake threw her in the air and she was big enough and bright enough to see even from that distance, through the smoke and murk. She sank into a lake below. Another deity wisely gone to ground.”

Half an hour later, Lur Raldnor came out on to the terrace with two wildcat tails, the frisks of the murderers who had been viciously killing but not eating the herds.

Standing with the lamp full on him he looked at Rem with unfeigned pleasure, and said, “I never thought you would agree.”

So glad to get this chance at Dorthar , Rem thought. But he returned the grin.

The fighter’s training was one of the easiest parts of it all. Rem had so trained most of the escort-riders in his employ, and himself kept up the exercise a soldier stuck to, if he was thorough, working out with his men where he could, or alone. And Lur Raldnor, hardy and strong, used to hunting and riding, and taught by Yannul from his childhood any number of acrobatic tricks, took to the work with ability, interest and sense. It was true, Yannul had been trained in Xarabiss, whose Academy of Arms, along with those of Alisaar and Karmiss and Dorthar, was universally respected. His tutor, moreover, had been a Zakorian sadist whose relentless lessons were of the best, when viewed in the long-term. Yannul modestly reckoned himself now past the best age for imparting acumen. But his son came to Rem far from a novice, needing burnish rather than welding.

The rest was easy enough. Too easy. The household accepted Rem like a limpid pool, closing over his head with scarcely a ring formed to mark his entry.

He found himself continuously at home in Yannul’s house, and strove to keep some part of himself aloof from home comforts and home intimacies. But he even liked Medaci. She was demure and unassuming, with a sweet smile. Coming out once on to the terrace, he found her with Yannul, the two of them standing hand in hand, his head bowed so their foreheads touched, like adolescent lovers. Nor, seeing him, did they break away ashamed, but separated gently, amused and friendly toward themselves, the discovered, toward Rem, the discoverer.

For Zastis, there were countless graceful means. The short ride into Amlan was no bother, and her Pleasure City was lively if the Ommos Quarter was slight. It had been simple courteously to put aside Yannul’s offer of the three young servant girls at the villa, all of whom were willing and had eyed Rem since his arrival, with the tidings he had a particular liaison in the city.

Despite that, Rem suspected Yannul knew the pivot of his guest’s subterfuge. That the man did him the extreme politeness of reckoning Rem’s desires aside from Rem’s relations with Yannul’s son was impressive, and, of course, honorably obligatory. But he had promised himself to carefulness in any case.

Lur Raldnor had a girl from the next farm-villa. Her parents probably hoped for marriage with the son of the hero’s captain. The girl and the boy cared only for their nights on the Zastis tinder of the hill.

Now and then, riding back in the dawn from Amlan, Rem would meet him walking back from the hill. Raldnor seemed to consider this a conspiracy of sorts. Those were maybe the easiest times of all, and therefore the most difficult.

The practice bouts, the wrestling, the slamming together of blunted iron or wooden blades—or skin—in the yard, that type of innocent physical provocation Rem was used to. The labor, if it was fierce and difficult enough, brought its own relief. Nor, with the bevy of respectable women about, did they strip to fight. In real combat, as a rule, you had mail on your back and leg and arms; to learn to battle weightless in just a loin-guard could prove a disadvantage later on.

With the end of the Zastis months, Raldnor would be going. It was a long road to Dorthar, traveling via the Elyrian port of Hliha. Things were already half arranged. Letters had gone ahead, straight to the person of the Storm Lord, naturally.

Medaci gazed at her elder son, her citrus eyes more still than frozen tears.

One morning there were wolf tracks round the drying mud of the bis pond. None of the birds was missing. The animals of the farm had set up no warning noise during the night. Nevertheless it was thought advisable to pursue the invader. The wolves of Lan became greedy so close to the city, insolent thieves. One canny enough to avoid audible detection could prove a nuisance.

Yannul, who had been out chopping wood with his servants, now sent two of them to get ready for the hunt. The men were experienced in such affairs, grim but not displeased. Raldnor, seeing them start to saddle up, decided he was hunting that day rather than swinging a practice-sword. “Come with me,” he said to Rem. “You hunted wolves in Karmiss, didn’t you?”

Rem had, one whole long winter in the Istrian hills, hunted and eaten them, too. But for eight years wolves had come to mean something else to him, no longer adversary but terror, nightmare. And he had had the dream again, once or twice, at the villa, or on the pallets of Amlan’s Pleasure City.