Танит Ли: Anackire

The gates in the russet brickwork were shut, but hammering brought a porter. It was the same sullen old man Rem recalled from a year ago, the last time he had been here. The house itself looked much the same, a narrow dwelling with no windows facing the street. The vines were a little thicker on the walls.

The porter was difficult. Master was away. Mistress would have to be told. They persuaded him to go tell her. Rem began to laugh. The other soldier was bored and ill-tempered and the wagon gone.

“You can leave me here,” Rem said, leaning on the gate.

“Yes. She’s sure to take you in. Only a bitch’d turn away a man in your state.”

“Then she may turn me away. For she’s the bloodiest of all bitches.”

The soldier shrugged. He went off to find a wineshop, his duty accomplished.

Rem hung on the gate. The heat of midday began to drum down on him and he was starting to faint again when the porter came back and let him in.

He walked across the court and into the house and into the room the old man had specified. The edges of his sight were vague, and so the shabby gaudy chamber made no impression. In the center of his eyes, however, the woman seemed brightly in focus, absurdly just like the bright clarity of the visions. The long youth of the Vis was starting to desert her, but it was her disappointment, her bitterness that had drawn her face into such hard dry lines. She had always been telling him of that bitterness and that disappointment, seldom any details, but a generalized medley of wrongs. How royalty had once loved her in Dorthar. How she had been ill-treated and used by the processes of intrigue, the foul treacheries of the court at Koramvis in the last days of its power. And how his father had deserted her. She had always hated Rem for his father’s sake. She had informed Rem that, even in the cradle, she had known her son would fail to love her.

He felt rather sorry for her. Her dark hair was elaborately dressed by the maid she beat with a rod when the girl displeased her, some old style, of that lost Koramvin court no doubt. The pins were gold-plated, and from her ears swung heavy black pearls, the untrue kind caused by injecting ink with the cultured grit.

She looked at him, the lines deep-cut between her brows, her wizened mouth turned down.

“For more than a year I see nothing of you. Then you come here like this and in disgrace. Am I supposed to care for you? How should I? What will he say when he comes home?”

“Your friend the merchant will say nothing, if he’s sensible. He will, besides, get some money from the coffers of the prince I serve.”

“Yes, he might like that,” she said spitefully.

“Or he can take one of his bits of cord and hang himself.”

Through the shirt they had thrown on him he felt his own blood soaking, scalding. The chamber trembled, and before he could stop himself he fell to his knees and vomited on the floor at her feet.

She jumped away in revulsion, calling him a string of gutter names. At the end of them she employed his given name, with all the searing scorn she could summon.

He spat, and said, “Even kings are capable of vomiting, mother.”

“Rarmon!” she screamed. “Rarnammon —” in a perfect seizure of malice.

He stood up and the pain filled him with despair. Business had fallen off, for the rope merchant, his mother’s recent protector, and two of the three servants had been sent packing. The damp storeroom they had occupied would be empty and Rem could lie up there. Of Kesarh’s bounty, they would feed him and perhaps make sure he stayed alive.

He waited therefore until her railing ran out, knowing it was useless to ask her for compassion. Only as a child had he once or twice uselessly done that, as Lyki slapped his head over and over back against some wall or other, or the day when she had caught him stealing from her and plunged his hands in boiling water.

She had been very pretty once, but how ugly she was now. He was close to vomiting again, but somehow controlled himself, knowing she would take it as one further insult, and all this would then go on much longer.

By mid-afternoon, the traveling-chariot was well advanced on the white road that led from Istris to Ioli, a journey of two days. Thereafter half a day’s riding should see them at the brink of the narrow straits where floated the isle of Ankabek. The nights between the days would be spent at discreet inns warned beforehand. The road was excellent, and in the hot season there was not likely to be anything to delay the party, which was a small one, although their speed was not great. The fine bred racing chariot-animals usual on the Vis mainland were less common in Karmiss, while the horses of Shansar-over-the-ocean did badly during long voyages and were less common still. Therefore thoroughbred zeebas drew the vehicle, capable of galloping, but only in bursts.

The Princess sat reading among her cushions, or else she merely gazed over the chariot rail, into the sun-washed haze. The girl who accompanied her had begun a flirtation with one of the two outriders. With good fortune, the little entourage would get back to the capital before Zastis bloomed in the sky.

The gilded day flushed into fire and a lion-like dusk. They had reached the hilly country that tomorrow would pour down to Ioli, and so to the northern strip of sea. The towered inn appeared with the first stars showing over its roofs.

Val Nardia veiled herself before they entered the courtyard. Her mantle, the escort and maid, were sufficient to command respect, and to avoid excitement. A minor princess, she journeyed simply as a lady. The inn received her as such.

In the private room high in the second tower, she ate some of the meal they had brought her. The wine was yellow—a Lowland vintage. The vines of Karmiss, burned twenty years ago when the ships fell on her coasts, had not yet come back to their fullness. Beer had come to be the drink of this land, and a fierce white spirit crushed from berries.

Beyond the opened shutters, the night possessed the sky.

Val Nardia sent the girl away and was alone.

As she sat in the chair, her book spread before her, her mind vacant and afraid, she heard a wild sweet melody rise from the inn below. A song was being sung, and irresistibly she must listen, trying to follow the words. Only one or two were audible through the floors, out of the open windows beneath. But suddenly she heard a name: Astaris . It was a song of Raldnor, then, the vanished hero of mixed blood, and of the Karmian princess, his lover, red-haired Astaris, said to have been the most beautiful of all women in the world.

Involuntarily, Val Nardia found she had touched her own rich hair.

When the song ended, she went to bed, and lay on the pillows, her eyes wide.

Long after the inn was quiet, Val Nardia watched the night in her window, whispering now and then the ritualistic prayers she had learned. The prayers to Anackire, the Lady of Snakes, who alone stood between Val Nardia and her dreams of terror and lust. But at last she did sleep, and saw her brother standing on a high hill against the flat flawed mirror of the sea, and knew she had called to him and that he would come toward her and she would be lost. And so, in the dream, it was.

They had been hunting, a successful hunt. Coming back at nightfall through the streets in a rumbling of wheels and clack of hooves, the King was easy enough to single out, golden on the amber horse, and laughing. There were cheers, and women, appearing on their balconies, cast down flowers. Suthamun Am Shansar had liked to keep here the informal boisterous roughness of his former court among the marshes and rocks of his homeland. They said that in his youth, for years after he had appropriated the crown of Karmiss, he would go in disguise about her cities, now a beggar, now a potter, now a dealer in livestock, just as gods had been used to do, playing with humanity. Those who were good to him in his pretended role he would afterwards reward—caskets of jewels for accommodating ladies, a stallion horse for some struggling groom who had given the poor beggar a coin. And those who treated him ill in his acting he would summon later to the palace, and there turn their bowels to water with the truth. They would have deserved it, for any who had not recognized their king by his hair or skin should have known him from his heavy accent and difficulty with the Vis tongue.