Танит Ли - Anackire

Now the girl came to her and began to comb her hair.

At once, Safca was soothed, her taut muscles relaxing. She half-closed her eyes, watching the flowing movements of hands and hair in the mirror.

Relaxation did not prevail. Abruptly Safca noticed the amber ring had vanished from the Lowlander’s thumb. The ring had been Safca’s gift, her own possession, yet she so unfitted to wear delicate jewelry. Now it had been lost or snatched—Safca opened her mouth to demand where it had gone— or given in turn to another . Safca closed her lips in a tight thin line.

Had she saved the child from Yalef only to have her make other arrangements for herself?

Jealous and put out of patience by her jealousy, she grew rigid under the soothing caress of the comb.

Next morning, the youthful but august visitor departed, leaving the guardian’s elder daughter sleekly lying late a-bed. Maybe a child would result, to be the boast of Olm.

Safca, who had always had a temper if nothing else, threw a piece of pottery across the room, listened to it smash, then shouted for her litter.

The other man, the friend to Yannul’s son, had been as uninterested in Safca as she would have predicted. Something in her seethed and bubbled. She forgot the night the snake had coiled all about her. She remembered instead her mother’s deathbed, the lack of attendants, the lack of words. The few words which were said. Safca clutched the bracelet on her wrist, and ordered the litter-bearers to a trot, and ran them like kalinxes.

When she returned, Yalef met her in a corner of the outer court. With him was a tall blond man. Filled with dread, Safca did not know him for a moment. Then she did. Her heart quaked.

“The Am Vardath gentleman said you had a girl he’d like to buy.”

“No,” she said.

“Alas,” said Yalef. “I already had her brought and given to him. His servant took her off. She’s gone. She was no use to you, Safca. No real use to anyone.”

The Vardian grinned.

“Your brother’s received what you paid, Vis lady. Twenty parings of patriotic Olmish silver.”

She had no say, no power. What was she? An illegal daughter. Maybe not even the guardian’s work. And if the Am Vardath knew that story from the deathbed—he would spit on her literally, instead of merely by inference.

She tried not to cry. She could not even think why she should be crying. Was it her jealous rage which had lost her something she had not properly acknowledged, could only acknowledge now that she would lose it? But what, after all, was the child? A magician who could call serpents—

“Why,” she whispered, shamed by the Vardian’s sneer, “do you want her?”

“I saw last time her Vis-tan was a fraud, cover for a slave auction. Her skin’s white and her eyes yellow. She’s got a lot of pure Lowland blood. Bleach her hair and she’ll pass as immaculate. There are rewards in the Plains for rescuing their children from wicked Vis slavers, evil Vis owners. The Lowlanders, after all, are the elite race. Like my people, the Chosen of the goddess.”

Yalef, between nervousness, and pleasure in Safca’s discomfort, only beamed.

Safca bowed her head.

I shall never see her again .

There was nothing much at Hliha, save the shipping in the bay which ran in and out, organized from Xarabiss or Lanelyr or Lan. The only built thing, on the upland above the scatter of huts and tents, was a slim dark stone tower, one of the multitude Elyr had raised to gaze upon the heavens. Astrology, magic, mysticism, non-involvement, that was Elyr. She had no Kings. She produced enamels, that was her trade. Her fealty, if she knew the word, was given to Lan. One ascertained her temples, rare as the astrology towers were not, were very old. And black. Lowland style.

The ship put out from Hliha before sunrise, and carved over the sea toward Xarabiss.

Rem was on deck, watching their flight from an ascending sun, when he found the amber ring.

There was a reason. He recalled throwing his clothes on the floor that night at Olm. In the morning he had looked for the ring, also on the floor, and failed to find it. Reason assured him the ring had been caught up in a fold of cloth, dropped into the thief’s habitual knife-pocket of a sleeve—whence now it rolled back into his palm. Thief’s pocket and still a thief, it seemed.

He looked at the ring. There was no sensitization anymore. Just a circle of amber.

He could no longer very well return it to Olm. He would give it to Raldnor to give some girl.

He thought of the amber ring he had given Doriyos.

The amber sun shone over the ship to the water.

That night he awoke with the ring in his hand burning like a live coal. Or thought he woke. But somehow the dream went on. The clamor and the redness, and through it he saw the peaceful deck, the tilted sail, the awning, the other sleepers. At the prow the watch leaned out, and through him and through the Zastis-colored night, blades seared down and up, and great doors rocked, booming.

“What is it?”

Lur Raldnor’s voice, wide awake, came through his skull.

He could not speak.

Suddenly his fingers were being prized open. He heard Raldnor curse, and then the ring was gone.

The night cleared. There was only sea and sky and ship.

“The amber,” said Lur Raldnor, “it’s red-hot.”

“Ankabek,” said Rem. He started to breathe again. He heard himself speak and understood only as if another told him. “Kesarh’s won his battle. The free Zakorians are routed.”

Raldnor said quietly: “How do you know?”

“I saw it. Mind pictures. This has happened, something like this—years—Never quite like this. From my father’s side, maybe.” Rem stared into the merciful, ordinary night. He said, “Zakoris. Routed, turning like a wounded tirr. Not against Lan, Dorthar, Ommos. Ankabek.”

Vodon Am Zakoris had lost the battle and therefore, though he lived, his life.

The thirty-eight ships that had turned for home, heavy with spoils from the southwest rim of Karmiss, last-laden from the rich little Ommos port of Karith they had left alight behind them, had met the navy of the Karmian King lying like a sailed city on the afternoon water.

The ships of Zakoris-In-Thaddra were pirates still, but they had always borne the sigil of Old Zakoris on their canvas. That a king sent out his fleet against them, sigiled in its turn with the Lily emblem of the Karmians, and with, at the prow of all their prows, a ship flying the scarlet Salamander of the King himself— that was challenge for challenge. Kesarh did them the honor of offering them war.

They came together then. The black biremes with terrified slaves at their oars and the leopard-bees of Yl standing ready on their decks. The Karmians’ lighter, Shansarian-modeled vessels, curved like swans, that Kesarh had favored, who favored almost nothing else out of Shansar, were rowed for pay and glory. Fifty-three Karmian ships; a score of whirling flame-throwers; half a score of the giant bows which fired their giant arrows of iron to a range of sixty lengths—capable of splitting timbers and breaking masts, at more intimate range capable of slicing a smaller craft in two; six towering fire-catapults; eleven buffer-shot bombards of oil. And packed on their decks close to five thousand fighting men.

Until this time, such an armament and such a multitude had not been sent against Free Zakoris. Fierce as they were, the Zakorians might yet have stolen victory, or wreaked havoc, or at least won space to win through. But there was not only force, there was deployment and preparation against them. Almost as they closed, they were encircled. As their weapons screamed out incendiaries, defensive shots came from the foremost Karmian galleys, knocking two thirds of the blow away, some of it back on the Zakorians. This was a trick not often mastered, but Kesarh’s men had mastered it. The machines of Karmiss had been perfected and the gangs trained to the job had learned to use these great weights, poised on hair’s breadth slipwires of steel, with the accuracy of deflecting spears. The Free Zakorians’ first rain of arson was dispersed, then, and the second rain came from the Karmian side.