Domes of Fire (34 page)

He struggled with it. ‘Your owner’s sins were his own. That’s a matter between him and God. What you did was the proper act of a friend. I find no sin in what you did.’

‘I’m so glad,’ she murmured.

Bevier laughed a bit sheepishly. ‘That was a bit pompous, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s all right, Bevier,’ she assured him. ‘I love you anyway – although you should keep in mind the fact that I have a history of loving some very strange people.’

‘Well said,’ Ulath approved.

Danae returned with a cup of water and offered it to Mirtai. ‘Did you finish telling them the things you didn’t want me to hear about?’ she asked.

‘I think I covered most of it. Thank you for being
so understanding – and for the water.’ Nothing rattled Mirtai.

Ehlana, however, blushed furiously.

‘It’s getting late,’ Mirtai told them, ‘so I’ll keep this short. The Elenian merchant who owned me took me to Vardenais and sold me to Platime. I pretended not to speak Elenic, and Platime misjudged my age because I was very tall. Platime’s quite shrewd in some ways and ignorant in others. He simply couldn’t understand the fact that an Atan woman can’t be forced, and he tried to put me to work in one of his brothels. He took my daggers away from me, but I still had my spoon. I didn’t kill
too
many of the men who approached me, but I
did
hurt them all quite seriously. Word got around, and the business in that brothel fell off. Platime took me out of there, but he didn’t really know what to do with me. I wouldn’t beg and I wouldn’t steal, and he was really
very
disappointed when he found out that I’d only kill people for personal reasons. I
won’t
be a paid assassin. Then the situation came up in the palace, and he gave me to Ehlana – probably with a great sigh of relief.’ She frowned and looked at Engessa. ‘That was the first time I’d ever been given away instead of sold, Father-Atan. Did Platime insult me? Should I go back to Cimmura and kill him?’

Engessa considered it. ‘I don’t think so, my daughter. It was a special case. You might even look upon it as a compliment.’

Mirtai smiled. ‘I’m glad of that, Father-Atan. I sort of like Platime. He’s very funny sometimes.’

‘And how do you feel about Ehlana-Queen?’

‘I love her. She’s ignorant, and she can’t speak a proper language, but most of the time she does what I tell her to do. She’s pretty, and she smells nice and she’s very kind to me. She’s the best owner I’ve ever had. Yes. I love her.’

Ehlana gave a low cry and threw her arms around the golden woman’s neck. ‘I love you too, Mirtai,’ she said in an emotion-filled voice. ‘You’re my dearest friend.’ She kissed her.

‘This is a special occasion, Ehlana,’ the Atana said, ‘so it’s all right just this once.’ She gently detached the queen’s arms from around her neck. ‘But it’s not seemly to display so much emotion in public – and girls shouldn’t kiss other girls. It might give people the wrong sort of ideas.’

‘Hang it all, Atan Engessa,’ Kalten was saying, ‘you heard the story the same as the rest of us. She said she hadn’t even entered training when the Arjuni captured her. Where did she learn to fight the way she does? I’ve been training more or less constantly since Sparhawk and I were fifteen, and she throws me around like a rag doll anytime she feels like it.’

Engessa smiled slightly. It was still very early and a filmy morning mist drifted ghost-like among the trees, softening the dark outlines of their trunks. They had set out at dawn, and Engessa strode along among the mounted Pandions. ‘I’ve seen you in a fight, Kalten-Knight,’ the tall Atan said. He reached out and rapped one knuckle on Kalten’s armour. ‘Your tactics depend heavily on your equipment.’

‘That’s true, I suppose.’

‘And your training has concentrated on the use of that equipment, has it not?’

‘Well, to some degree, I suppose. We practise with our weapons and learn to take advantage of our armour.’

‘And the sheer bulk of our horses,’ Vanion added. Vanion was wearing his black armour for the journey. His choice of wardrobe had occasioned a spirited discussion between him and the woman he loved. Once she had removed herself from the restraining presence of all those Elenes, Sephrenia had become more vocal, and she had shown an astonishing aptitude for histrionics during the course of the conversation. Although
she and Vanion had been talking privately, Sparhawk had been able to hear her comments quite clearly. Everyone in the house had heard her. Probably everyone in Sarsos had.

‘At least half of your training has been in horsemanship, Kalten,’ Vanion continued. ‘An armoured knight without his horse is very much like a turtle on his back.’

‘I’ve said much the same thing to my fellow-novices, Lord Vanion,’ Khalad said politely. ‘Most of them take offence when I say it to them though, so I usually have to demonstrate. That seems to offend them even more for some reason.’

Engessa chuckled. ‘You train with your equipment, Kalten-Knight,’ he repeated. ‘So do we. The difference is that our bodies are our equipment. Our way of fighting is based on speed, agility and strength, and we can practise those without training grounds or large fields where horses can run. We practise all the time, and in the village where she was born, Atana Mirtai saw her parents and their friends improving their skills almost every hour. Children learn by imitating their parents. We see three- and four-year-olds wrestling and testing each other all the time.’

‘There has to be more to it than that,’ Kalten objected.

‘Natural talent perhaps, Sir Kalten?’ Berit suggested.

‘I’m not
that
clumsy, Berit.’

‘Was your mother a warrior, Kalten-Knight?’ Engessa asked him.

‘Of course not.’

‘Or your grandmother, or your grandmother’s grandmother? Back for fifty generations?’

Kalten looked confused.

‘Atana Mirtai is descended from warriors on both sides of her family. Fighting is in her blood. She is gifted, and she can learn much just by watching. She can probably fight in a half dozen different styles.’

‘That’s an interesting notion, Atan-Engessa,’ Vanion said. ‘If we could find a horse big enough for her, she might make a very good knight.’

‘
Vanion!
’ Kalten exclaimed. ‘That’s the most unnatural suggestion I’ve ever heard!’

‘Merely speculation, Kalten.’ Vanion looked gravely at Sparhawk. ‘We might want to give some thought to including a bit more hand-to-hand fighting in our training programme, Preceptor Sparhawk.’

‘Please don’t do that, Vanion,’ Sparhawk replied in a pained tone. ‘You’re still the preceptor until the Hierocracy says otherwise. I’m just the interim preceptor.’

‘All right, Interim Preceptor Sparhawk, when we get to Atan, let’s pay some attention to their fighting style. We don’t always fight on horseback, you know.’

‘I’ll put Khalad to work on it,’ Sparhawk said.

‘Khalad?’

‘Kurik trained him, and Kurik was better at close fighting than any man I’ve ever known.’

‘He was indeed. Good idea, Interim Preceptor Sparhawk.’

‘Must you?’ Sparhawk asked him.

They reached the city of Atana twelve days later – at least it
seemed
like twelve days. Sparhawk had decided to stop brooding about the difference between real and perceived time. Aphrael was going to tamper no matter what he did or said anyway, so why should he waste time worrying about it? He wondered if Zalasta could detect the manipulation. Probably not, he decided. No matter how skilled the Styric magician might be, he was still only a man, and Aphrael was divine. An odd thought came to Sparhawk one night, however. He wondered if his daughter could also make real time seem faster than it actually was instead of slower. After he thought about it for a while, though, he decided not
to ask her. The whole concept gave him a headache.

Atana was a utilitarian sort of town in a deep green valley. It was walled, but the walls were not particularly high nor imposing. It was the Atans themselves who made their capital impregnable.

‘Everything in the kingdom’s named Atan, isn’t it?’ Kalten observed as they rode down into the valley. ‘The kingdom, its capital, the people – even the titles.’

‘I think Atan’s more in the nature of a concept than a name,’ Ulath shrugged.

‘What makes them all so tall?’ Talen asked. ‘They belong to the Tamul race, but other Tamuls don’t loom over everybody else like trees.’

‘Oscagne explained it to me,’ Stragen told him. ‘It seems that the Atans are the result of an experiment.’

‘Magic?’

‘I don’t know all that much about it,’ Stragen admitted, ‘but I’d guess that what they did went beyond what magic’s capable of. Back before there was even such a thing as history, the Atans observed that big people win more fights than little people. That was in a time when parents chose the mates of their children. Size became the most important consideration.’

‘What happened to short children?’ Talen objected.

‘Probably the same thing that happens to ugly children in
our
society,’ Stragen shrugged. ‘They didn’t get married.’

‘That’s not fair.’

Stragen smiled. ‘When you get right down to it, Talen, it’s not really very fair when we steal something somebody else has worked for, is it?’

‘That’s different.’

Stragen leaned back in his saddle and laughed. Then he went on. ‘The Atans prized other characteristics as well – ability, strength, aggressiveness and homicidal vindictiveness. It’s strange how the combination
worked out. If you stop and think about it, you’ll realise that Mirtai’s really a rather sweet girl. She’s warm and affectionate, she really cares about her friends, and she’s strikingly beautiful. She’s got certain triggers built into her, though, and when somebody trips one of those triggers, she starts killing people. The Atan breeding programme finally went too far, I guess. The Atans become so aggressive that they started killing each other, and since such aggressiveness can’t be restricted to one sex, the women were as bad as the men. It got to the point that there was no such thing in Atan as a mild disagreement. They’d kill each other over weather predictions.’ He smiled. ‘Oscagne told me that the world discovered just how savage Atan women were in the twelfth century. A large band of Arjuni slavers attacked a training camp for adolescent Atan females – the sexes are separated during training in order to avoid certain complications. Anyway, those half-grown Atan girls – most of them barely over six feet tall – slaughtered most of the Arjuni and then sold the rest to the Tamuls as eunuchs.’

‘The slavers were eunuchs?’ Kalten asked with some surprise.

‘No, Kalten,’ Stragen explained patiently. ‘They weren’t eunuchs until
after
the girls captured them.’

‘Little girls did that?’ Kalten’s expression was one of horror.

‘They weren’t exactly babies, Kalten. They were old enough to know what they were doing. Anyway, the Atans had a very wise king in the fifteenth century. He saw that his people were on the verge of self-destruction. He made contact with the Tamul government and surrendered his people into perpetual slavery – to save their lives.’

‘A little extreme,’ Ulath noted.

‘There are several kinds of slavery, Ulath. Here in
Atan, it’s institutionalised. The Tamuls tell the Atans where to go and whom to kill, and they can usually find a reason to deny petitions by individual Atans to slaughter each other. That’s about as far as it really goes. It’s a good working arrangement. The Atan race survives, and the Tamuls get the finest infantry in the world.’

Talen was frowning. ‘The Atans are terribly impressed with size, you said.’

‘Well, it’s
one
of the things that impresses them,’ Stragen amended.

‘Then why did Mirtai agree to marry Kring? Kring’s a good warrior, but he’s not much taller than I am, and I’m still growing.’

‘It must be something else about him that impressed her so much,’ Stragen shrugged.

‘What do you think it is?’

‘I haven’t got the faintest idea, Talen.’

‘He’s a poet,’ Sparhawk told them. ‘Maybe that’s it.’

‘That wouldn’t make
that
much difference to someone like Mirtai, would it? She
did
slice two men open and then burn them alive, remember? She doesn’t sound to me like the kind of girl who’d get all gushy about poetry.’

‘Don’t ask
me
, Talen,’ Stragen laughed. ‘I know a great deal about the world, but I wouldn’t even try to make a guess about why any woman chooses any given man.’

‘Good thinking,’ Ulath murmured.

The city had been alerted to their approach by Engessa’s messengers, and the royal party was met at the gate by a deputation of towering Atans in formal attire, which in their culture meant the donning of unadorned, ankle-length cloaks of dark wool. In the midst of those giants stood a short, golden-robed Tamul. The Tamul had silver-streaked hair and an urbane expression.

‘What are we supposed to do?’ Kalten whispered to Oscagne.

‘Act formal,’ Oscagne advised. ‘Atans adore formality. Ah, Norkan,’ he said to the Tamul in the golden robe, ‘so good to see you again. Fontan sends his best.’

‘How is the old rascal?’ Oscagne’s colleague replied.

‘Wrinkled, but he still hasn’t lost his edge.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. Why are we speaking in Elenic?’

‘So that you can brief us all on local circumstances. How are things here?’

‘Tense. Our children are a bit discontent. There’s turmoil afoot. We send them to stamp it out, but it refuses to stay stamped. They resent that. You know how they are.’

‘Oh my, yes. Has the emperor’s sister forgiven you yet?’

Norkan sighed. ‘Afraid not, old boy. I’m quite resigned to spending the rest of my career here.’

‘You know how the people at court like to carry tales. Whatever possessed you to make that remark? I’ll grant you that her Highness’ feet are a bit oversized, but “big-footed cow” was sort of indiscreet, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I was drunk and a little out of sorts. Better to be here in Atan than in Matherion trying to evade her attentions. I have no desire to become a member of the imperial family if it means that I’d have to trudge along behind her as she clumps about the palace.’

‘Ah, well. What’s on the agenda here?’

‘Formality. Official greetings. Speeches. Ceremonies. The usual nonsense.’

‘Good. Our friends from the west are a bit unbridled at times. They’re good at formality, though. It’s when things become informal that they get into trouble. May I present the Queen of Elenia?’

‘I thought you’d never ask.’

‘Your Majesty,’ Oscagne said, ‘this is my old friend, Norkan. He’s the imperial representative here in Atan, an able man who’s fallen on hard times.’

Norkan bowed. ‘Your Majesty,’ he greeted Ehlana.

‘Your Excellency,’ she responded. Then she smiled. ‘Are her Highness’ feet
really
that big?’ she asked him slyly.

‘She skis with only the equipment God gave her, your Majesty. I could bear that, I suppose, but she’s given to temper tantrums when she doesn’t get her own way, and that sort of grates on my nerves.’ He glanced at the huge, dark-cloaked Atans surrounding the carriage. ‘Might I suggest that we proceed to what my children here refer to as the palace? The king and queen await us there. Is your Majesty comfortable speaking in public? A few remarks might be in order.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t speak Tamul, your Excellency.’

‘Perfectly all right, your Majesty. I’ll translate for you. You can say anything that pops into your head. I’ll tidy it up for you as we go along.’

‘How very kind of you.’ There was only the faintest edge to her voice.

‘I live but to serve, your Majesty.’

‘Remarkable, Norkan,’ Oscagne murmured. ‘How
do
you manage to put both feet in your mouth at the same time?’

‘It’s a gift,’ Norkan shrugged.

King Androl of Atan was seven feet tall, and his wife, Queen Betuana was only slightly shorter. They were very imposing. They wore golden helmets instead of crowns, and their deep blue silk robes were open at the front, revealing the fact that they were both heavily armed. They met the Queen of Elenia and her entourage in the square outside the royal palace of Atan, which was in actuality nothing more than their private
dwelling. Atan ceremonies, it appeared, were conducted out of doors.

With the queen’s carriage in the lead and her armed escort formed up behind, the visitors rode at a slow and stately pace into the square. There were no cheers, no fanfares, none of the artificial enthusiasm normally contrived for state visitors. Atans showed respect by silence and immobility. Stragen skilfully wheeled the carriage to a spot in front of the slightly raised stone platform before the royal dwelling, and Sparhawk dismounted to offer his queen a steel-encased forearm. Ehlana’s face was radiantly regal, and her pleasure was clearly unfeigned. Though she occasionally spoke slightingly of ceremonial functions, pretending to view them as tedious, she truly loved ceremony. She took a deep satisfaction in formality.

Ambassador Oscagne approached the royal family of Atan, bowed and spoke at some length in the flowing, musical language of all Tamuls. Mirtai stood behind Ehlana, murmuring a running translation of his Excellency’s words. Ehlana’s eyes were very bright, and there were two spots of heightened colour on her alabaster cheeks, signs that said louder than words that she was composing a speech.