Танит Ли - Anackire

Why had she never told him, that bitch? Viciousness—or was her hurt, also, too great? It must have hurt her, a woman like his mother, to fare as she had. To be reduced as she had been reduced.

And after all was said and done, Raldnor had willingly let this son be taken from him. Sown without wish, cast off with the woman. Maybe, as Yannul said, his goddess had possessed Raldnor, blotting out humanity that he might do Her will. Even so, he had planted Raldanash in Vathcri with intent and purpose. Lyki’s bastard had been nothing to him.

There was a step on the flags. Rem knew it. His whole body tensed, then relinquished tension. He had ceased fighting, for a little while.

“In one second I can be off the terrace,” said Lur Raldnor.

“Never mind.”

“If you wanted to be alone.”

“Each of us is always alone.”

Lur Raldnor (my father’s namesake) laughed his golden laugh.

“Still Rem, despite everything.” He moved forward, standing parallel with Rem, but some way off. “Do I call you ‘my lord’?” Rem did not answer this sally. Lur Raldnor said, “What will you do?”

“Nothing. Very little has changed.”

“Everything has changed, and you know it.”

“But only I, and your family, do know.”

“I think he almost knew from the beginning, my father,” said Lur Raldnor. “The first evening, riding back here, he said to me, ‘That man’s like Raldnor. The way he was before Anack laid hold of him.’ I think he was waiting for you to give him the key to it, even if he didn’t realize there was one.”

Rem observed the fireflies. He felt young and afraid. Fifteen years old. And it was too late for that. He should have had this from the commencement, or not at all.

“By rights,” said Lur Raldnor, “you’d go to Dorthar, with me. Present yourself to the Storm Lord on my father’s authority, with myself as your witness. Raldanash is your half-brother. Do you even see?”

“Perhaps not,” said Rem.

He moved away along the terrace, and Yannul’s son followed him.

“Come to Anackyra, Rem,” said Lur Raldnor. “It isn’t just the war. It’s everything else. That place is—like no other place on earth, because of what it was, what’s happened there. You have to see it. Walk over it. You were the first-born: by Dorthar’s laws you don’t threaten Raldanash. It wasn’t even legal—forgive me. But you’re part of the legend, still here in the world, as he is.”

Rem damned the legend, garishly.

“In any case,” said Lur Raldnor, “I never did get that knife-to-sword pass as it should be.”

“The passage to Hliha could take a quarter of a month. The crossing to Xarabiss is six days. The land journey to Dorthar is a deal longer than either.” Rem looked round and confronted him. “In all that time, just suppose I can’t keep my hands off you? We may end the most perfect of enemies.”

Lur Raldnor looked quizzical.

“I thought the premise was I didn’t know.”

“If your father knew, he’d make sure you did. So you could be ready, how did he put it? To say ‘No’ loudly enough.”

“I love my father,” said Raldnor, “and I revere him. A lot of the time, he can speak for me. Not all the time.”

“You’re saying you’d lie on your face like my whore?”

“No. I’m not saying that.”

Humiliated by his own responses. Rem looked away. The boy said:

“When my mother was younger than I am now, she killed a man. He—your father—made her do it. By telepathy, willpower. It was when they broke Amrek’s occupation of the ruined city in the Plains. She’s never forgotten.”

“That has something to do with this.”

“This much. None of us know what there is in our blood, or souls, or minds. But what we are, what we can—or cannot—do, these things make themselves known. We don’t need to struggle always toward them. Or away. It’s like breathing. Rem. If we need it, it happens, without thought. Better, without thought.”

The fireflies hung in the bushes, flaming.

Far off, the boy said to him, “Come to Anackyra, Rem.”

The wolf, which had left its prints around the bis pond, and so drawn them to the hills that day, never returned. It was never mentioned. In after years, if they spoke of it, they would recall it as intrinsic to the will of Anackire, Her messenger. Only Rem would never, he knew, speak of it in that way.

In the end, it was still Zastis when the small party for Dorthar left the villa-farm near Amlan.

A scene had ensued on the hill between Lur Raldnor and his recriminatory Lannic girl. The usual sentences were said. They parted, their irritation unassuaged by love-making. Medaci was gentler. She did not weep, though her eyes were fashioned out of tears. It was Yannul whose eyes were wet.

Rem did not overlook any of these things. He had waited for his fellow travelers in the city. Distance both geographical and psychological.

Amlan was buzzing with news before they rode out of it. It seemed to be the one sort of news that did travel fast, since it came straight in off the sea-lanes with such marine traffic as still risked the port. The Black Leopard of Zakoris-In-Thaddra had been prowling the shores of Karmiss and Ommos. Kesarh Am Karmiss had gathered his fleet at Istris, and was preparing to meet the swarm of Free Zakorians. Now thick on the water as a fleet themselves, the pirate vessels were reckoned to be nearly fifty strong, though such assessments were certainly exaggerated. They lay off Karmiss’ southwestern coast, basking in the sack of Ommish Karith, which once Vathcri had tried for and not taken.

Kesarh’s navy, built on past Vis tradition and sound Shansarian knowledge of sea and ships, had also grown in stature and magnitude. It seemed, for the past seven years he had been preparing for such a day, while Dorthar, the hub of Lowland-won Vis, had lain dreaming.

Generally, in the manner of men, these reports were taken as alien to the life of Lan, or else dressed with forebodings. A sea battle of the size now in the wind seemed close to war. Close in other ways. There were dire predictions of the sequel. Karmiss, Ommos, even eastern Dorthar would take the brunt of this, but might not Zakorian strays fare over the water to Lan? Her seas had been unsafe for a long while. Buoyed up with victory or primed to vengeance by defeat, the port of Amlan could prove a tempting titbit with, which the pirates might follow the feast. It was a fact, a convoy of King’s guard had marched out of the city at dawn, making for the port, watchmen rather than defenders. The harbor and the port road had been shut at noon.

Rem got most of this thesis at the inn before he left. He did not discuss it beyond a sentence or so with Raldnor when they met. The boy appeared informed, and so far only mildly troubled to be leaving in the storm-light of such events. He, and even the servant riding with them, claimed to share Rem’s opinion that the battle fleet of Istris would complete its task very ably, and that the routed Free Zakorians were more likely to hit out at the eastern tip of Dorthar in their long flight home, if still capable of hitting out anywhere.

Rem’s conviction, succinctly conveyed, was that Kesarh Am Karmiss would not take on such business unless he was sure of success.

Hearsay had it the King would command his fleet himself.

He had some qualifications for the work.

The storm shadows of war seemed lifetimes away on the incandescent days, high-ceilinged nights of the journey south. As they progressed, the shadows paled altogether. When they entered Lanelyr, the tidings of imminent battle evolved only with the caravan they themselves had joined, more garbled and fantastic than ever by then, and so infinitely less believable.