Shadowrise (40 page)

Barrick lifted his hands before him, staring. He had known he would win—he had known it! What a marvel it was to have two strong arms, to be like anyone else! He kicked the smoldering corpse of the silkin and turned his back on it.

He no longer felt any pain. Even the old miseries and the old losses—his sister, his stolen father, his murdered brother—troubled him no more; he had hardly thought of them in days. Just as the pain of his arm had gone, all his painful feelings had vanished, too.

When Skurn at last found the courage to come down again from the trees, Barrick was still laughing quietly.

Because I am whole for the first time,
he thought.
The real Barrick Eddon, at last.

—from “A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand”

 

 

“ I
’MAFRAID I DON’T UNDERSTAND, Golden One.” Pinimmon Vash looked up. He had lowered himself onto his old, aching knees: when the autarch was in one of his unpredictable moods, he had found the conservative approach was safest. “I thought we were bound for . . . I have forgotten the name of the place. Your . . . guest’s little kingdom in the north.”

“Southmarch. And so we are.” Sulepis stretched out a hand to admire the spread of his long fingers, each one tipped in gold as bright as the honey of Nushash’s bees. “But first we are paying a visit to another ruler. May I not pass the time as I wish, Paramount Minister Vash? Surely life is too beautiful to be always hurrying!” The autarch smiled his lazy, crocodilian smile.

“May you . . . of course, Golden One! It goes without saying! Even the stars in the sky pause to know your plans.” Vash squeezed himself a little closer to the floor, despite the pains sparking in his shins and hips. “We all live only to serve you. I just wished to . . . to know more of what you planned . . . so that we might better accommodate your needs.” He tried to laugh, but instead of a knowing chuckle it came out as a shaky wheeze. “May you! You play a trick on your oldest and most dedicated servant, master! I would die to serve your smallest wish.”

“I would like to see that.” Sulepis’ laugh was much more convincing than Vash’s had been. “But not this morning, I think. Arrange boats to go ashore and bearers for the tribute. And tell the antipolemarch he may stand his soldiers down—I will take only the bearers, my carpet servants, and you. Oh, and I think King Olin might find the visit amusing too. Four guards should be enough for him.”

“No soldiers?” Vash realized he was questioning his monarch again, but surely even the autarch was not so mad as to enter a foreign court with only four guards. “I am old, Golden One. Did I mishear you?”

“You did not. Tell Dumin Hauyuz that as long as his men remain on the ship and we remain ready to sail, he may otherwise do as he pleases.”

“For which he will be profoundly grateful, Golden One, I have no doubt.” Vash tried to back out of the cabin without standing up, but he quickly realized he no longer had the flexibility for it. After he had slid himself far enough backward, he clambered slowly to his feet and backed out of the presence of the inscrutable, incomprehensible living god on earth.

 

It seemed that the entire population of Gremos Pitra, capital city of Jellon and Jael, had lined up along the steeply rising road between the harbor and the palace to watch the strange procession. It was a small procession, as Sulepis had directed, with the autarch himself leading the way (except during the moments when the carpet slaves dashed in front of him to lay out the next section of cloth-of-gold carpet so that his sacred feet never touched the ground). Vash walked behind him, trying manfully to move onto the next piece of carpet each time before the sweating slaves snatched up the old one to carry it ahead of the god-king once more. The paramount minister was so terrified that one of the onlookers might do something untoward—what if one of them threw a rock at the autarch?—that his stomach ached.

Olin and his guards came next, walking on ordinary earth as ordinary men should; they were followed by the silent priest Vash had seen on the ship but whose name he did not know. The man had the dark, weathered skin of the deep-desert tribes and was covered with flamelike tattoos, and though he was not old his eyes were gray with cataracts. He carried a staff that clicked and jingled with the dangling skeletons of a dozen serpents. Everything about the priest made Vash fretful; he had been grateful during the voyage that the man had largely stayed belowdecks.

The snake-priest was followed by several dozen muscular slaves, each one carrying a huge tribute basket on his back—heavy baskets, too, from the frozen, uncomfortable grimaces of the men carrying them.

The onlookers crowding along the road watched and whispered in dull astonishment, both at the appearance of the tall southern god-king in his gleaming, golden armor and the almost complete absence of soldiers guarding him. Vash clearly was not the only one to be surprised that the famous enemy of all Eion should walk unarmed through a hostile city.

Pinimmon Vash did not find much chance to pray these days but he prayed now.

He blinked dust from his eyes. At least the scotarch Prusus remained upon the ship, protected by Xixian soldiers. Even if the worst happened the ancient laws would be observed; the Falcon Throne would not go unfilled.

But Prusus is a cripple,
Vash thought.
A drooling lackwit.
Still, it was said that some of the previous autarchs, especially those who reigned before the Ninth Year War, had not been much better. Tradition was what mattered. The scotarch would only rule until the council of noble families met and a new autarch was approved. Sulepis had several sons by several mothers. The line would not die.

The paramount minister was startled out of these gloomy thoughts by a stirring in the crowd. The Golden One’s procession had reached the outer gates of Gremos Pitra and a party of armed soldiers stood waiting for them. Vash hurried forward as fast as his aching legs would carry him. The autarch could not speak directly to underlings. Surely things were not as topsy-turvy as that—not yet, in any case.

“I am Niccol Opanour, gate-herald of Gremos Pitra and of his majesty, Hesper, king of Jellon and Jael,” said the leader of the soldiers, a fox-faced man with a short beard and the look of a good gambler. “State your business with King Hesper and his court.”

“Business?” Vash had been carefully schooled by the autarch in what to say. “Surely a great king like Sulepis needs no petty excuse to stop and greet a fellow monarch? We bring your master gifts from the south—a gesture of goodwill. You would not make my monarch stand in the road like a tradesman, would you? You can see we come with no soldiers. We are at Hesper’s mercy.”

Which, as most of the other kings of this northern continent could attest, was as much as to say “hopeless.” Hesper was only merciful for gain, a friend to other rulers only when it suited him, and everyone knew it.

Gate-herald Opanour frowned. “I mean your king no disrespect, but we were not told to expect this. We are not prepared. As it happens, King Hesper is . . . unwell.”

“That is a pity,” said Vash. “However, I feel certain that the gifts we bring him will cheer him somewhat.” He hadn’t spoke the Hierosoline tongue of the north in a long time, and was pleased to discover its subtleties hadn’t entirely escaped him. He beckoned forward one of the sweating bearer slaves, then swept away the top of the man’s basket. “See the generosity of Xis.”

The handful of soldiers leaned forward in their saddles and their eyes grew round as they saw the gold and gems that filled the basket.

“That . . . this is most impressive,” the gate-herald said. “But we must still ask our king for his permission . . .”

The autarch himself suddenly stepped forward, making the carpet slaves scurry to get another length of cloth-of-gold in front of him before his sandaled foot touched bare ground (which would reputedly cause the world itself to totter and collapse). The horses of the Jellonian soldiers shied away as though Sulepis was a kind of creature they had never seen before—as in fact he was, Vash thought: he was beginning to think the world had never seen anything quite like his master.

“Please say one thing to these men of Jellon for us, Paramount Minister,” Sulepis said in Hierosoline. His voice seemed pitched softly, but it carried a long distance. “Remind them that even a benevolent king has limits. We have a warship full of long guns just outside the harbor, and several more will arrive by tonight.” Sulepis smiled at the Jellonians and folded his arms across his breast, his golden armor clinking gently. “We come in peace, yes, but we would hate to see the spark of suspicion start a fire that would be hard to put out.”

It was quickly decided that one of the soldiers should ride back to the palace to inform Hesper and the court that the autarch was coming.

The palace of Gremos Pitra was perched on a clifftop above the harbor, but in the years of peace the steep, narrow old path leading to it had been rebuilt into a series of wide, gentle switchbacks. Even Vash, old and sore as he was, did not find it too agonizing to climb from the harbor to the palace gates, but he still could not understand why so much time was being spent in such an odd exercise.

The gates swung open as they approached and the full panoply of Hesper’s power appeared, guards on every parapet and a hundred more on either side of the entrance. The autarch walked serenely past them as though they were his own loyal subjects, looking neither to the left nor the right and walking in a measured but not overly slow pace so that the carpet slaves had to scurry to stay ahead of him. The procession crossed a formal courtyard rapidly filling with Jellonian courtiers and servants, those in back standing on tiptoe or trampling the hedges in their determination to get a view of the infamous Mad Autarch of Xis.

Many of the Jellonian troops filed into the great hall behind the parade of basket-hauling slaves, so that the autarch’s party was hemmed in on all sides by armed soldiers wearing ceremonial green tabards bearing the blue rooster and golden rings of Hesper’s Jaelian clan. The king’s tall, canopied chair stood at the far end of the high-ceilinged room, surrounded by dozens of courtiers gaping at the new arrivals, too fascinated even to whisper among themselves. Vash squinted—it was a long room—trying to make out the small figure slumped in the huge covered chair, which looked more like a sack of clothes to be washed than a man. As the herald had suggested the king of Jellon looked old and ill, his skin pale, his eyes blue-ringed and sunken. He was dressed all in white, which had the unfortunate effect of making him appear to be a corpse wrapped in its burial shroud.

Sulepis strode toward him, the carpet slaves hurrying to prepare the way, and then stopped a few yards from the steps leading up to the chair. Vash thought his master might become angry at being forced to stand beneath a less powerful monarch, but if he was, the autarch showed no sign of it. The Jellonian guards fidgeted nervously with their weapons, but their ruler held up a shaking hand.

“So,” Hesper said hoarsely, “the much feared Emperor of the South. You are younger than I supposed, sir. What do you want?”

“I am told you are not well,” Sulepis said in a simple and matter-of-fact tone. “It is kind of you to rouse yourself to meet me.”

“Kind?” Hesper straightened up a little. “You threatened me with your warships if I would not see you. Do not be absurd.” His voice, which should have been forceful, had been robbed by his weakness of all but petulance. Still, Vash could see that he had once been a formidable man.

“Perhaps you are right,” said Sulepis. “Perhaps we should put away our masks. I did not come only to give you gifts—although they are very fine gifts indeed.” He waved his golden fingers toward the slaves, who still held their baskets high on their shoulders, as though the floor of the throne room were too dirty a place to set such down valuable objects. “But also to tell you that I am displeased with you.”

“Displeased with me?” Hesper shook his head irritably. Vash could not stop looking at the man. The king of Jellon was not even sixty years old—much younger than Pinimmon Vash himself—but looked like he had lived a hundred years or more, and hard years at that. “Am I a child that I should care about such things? I am displeased that you disturb my rest. Say your piece and be gone.”

“You promised me something, Hesper.” The autarch spoke with the stern but loving tone of a disappointed father. “You had something I wanted—something I specifically asked you to acquire for me—but you sold it to someone else instead.”

The courtiers began to murmur. Even without knowing what his master intended, Vash guessed they would have much more to wonder about before too long.

“What are you babbling about?” Hesper demanded, but he had the look of a guilty man caught in a lie.

“But you see,” Sulepis said, “I have obtained it despite you.” He clapped his hands and his guards pushed King Olin forward. The courtiers murmured more loudly, but it was clear most of them did not recognize the ruler of the March Kingdoms.

“What . . . what . . . ? ” Hesper stuttered. “What foolishness is this . . . ?”