The Seer King: Book One of the Seer King Trilogy (34 page)

He’d sacked the other two instructors in the Military Sorcery Department, one for senility, the other for incompetence, and replaced them with young, eager seers as convinced as he was that sorcery must become the third branch of the army, along with the infantry and cavalry.

At first it was the two of us, but in a few weeks there were other officers, students, younger captains of the Upper Half or dominas, clustering around. At this point, his dissection of his students ceased, obviously. Besides, his pupils were more interested in elaborations of his classroom lectures, accompanied as frequently as not by illustrations on a large sand-table he’d had installed.

I stayed well to the rear of the crowd, listening intently. I was fascinated. On the surface, it seemed all he was talking about was bygone battles, demonstrating how a skilled mage might have changed their outcome with a spell of darkness here, a weather spell there, and so forth.

But there was more to Seer Tenedos’s speeches than just history, and it took me a while to realize it. I think that if I’d not known of his hatred for the Rule of Ten and his absolute conviction that Numantia must be ruled by a king or face doom, I might not have noticed. He’d slyly put in a dig about those who live in the past being strangled by its dead hand in the future or, if one of the battles had occurred during the time of the Rule of Ten, how the commander on the ground was the man who saved the day, not the panicked babblers in the rear.

Tenedos was building a corps of disciples to his philosophy. There was certainly no sign of his being rejected and cast into outer darkness. The Rule of Ten had erred badly in making this appointment, as he’d foreseen.

Since the students all out-ranked me, I was beginning to feel most out of place, when Tenedos announced a new schedule. He would only be available for extra sessions twice a week. The other nights he wished to himself.

“One of them at least,” he said, “I promise you I’ll spend with you, Damastes, assuming you’re not tired of the company of a growling magician. I can feel myself getting stale in this damned office. I want to get out, in the streets, among the people.”

It was well he made his plan firm, because he became a favorite of the lecture halls. One interesting thing about Nicians: They would rather go to a hall and listen to one man spiel his ideas or, better, two flail each other as incompetent, barren-minded baboons than visit a gallery or attend a concert.

A side benefit of being the season’s pet philosopher was the number of women who wished to have a private interchange to, as one lovely said, “make sure I properly understand what you’re saying.” That person must have required considerable explanation, because when I saw Tenedos the next afternoon he was exhausted, and begged off our planned outing for the chance for some sleep.

But that was about the only time I saw him tired. He had vast wellsprings of energy, and never seemed to falter.

When we went out of an evening, there was no telling where we would go, nor whose company we would be in. Sometimes it was an invitation to a party that Tenedos had gotten, or, not infrequently, one that came to the “Lion of Sulem Pass” as one broadsheet had called me, which Yonge never let me forget. We were as likely to dine in the halls of the mighty as in some dockside shanty that happened to have the best oysters in Nicias, or to sit listening to four stringed instruments in a hall as watch naked dancers prance around a single man with a guitar and a voice that could move the dead in a wineshop where we carefully sat with our backs to the wall.

Nicias was a beautiful city, but it was not a happy one. There was something wrong, something amiss. Rich people did not go about without an armed guard or two. The populace openly sneered at the wardens and, in the poorer sections where the men of the law went in squads, were as likely to hurl a cobble at their backs and run as not.

Soldiers were not respected, either, but were the subject of imprecations and sometimes, if the Nician was bold and the soldier drunk enough, waylaid, robbed, and stripped.

This isn’t to say injustice was only on one hand. Every street corner held a shouting orator, as likely to be howling obscene stories of whose beds the Rule of Ten slept in as condemnation of the entire system. They were certainly harmless, even if their numbers were worrisome. But the wardens seemed to single out these blowhards as desperate enemies of the state, and smashed them into momentary silence with their truncheons. And the wardens believed that anyone arrested was automatically guilty, and deserved a merciless hiding on the way to prison.

The beauty of Nicias was there, but no one seemed to want to take care of it. The streets needed sweeping, the sidewalks were generally blocked with trash, and too many of the buildings, public as well as private, needed painting and upkeep.

I remembered what Tenedos had said as we rode through Sulem Pass the previous year: “I can
feel
the unrest in Nicias, in Dara. The people are without leaders, without direction, and they know it.”

I, too, felt this tension, felt as if the city were a great, dry wheatfield, parched by drought, waiting only for a single man with a torch. And I was beginning to believe I rode the streets with that very man.

But very seldom did my thoughts follow those grim tracks.

Laish Tenedos was excellent company. Frequently when he went out he changed into mufti, since, as he said, “wizard’s robes can be off-putting as often as they gain an advantage. I might advise you to follow the same practice.”

Against regulations, I purchased civilian garb, and kept it in Tenedos’s apartments, although I wore my uniform more often than not.

The two of us, sometimes accompanied by Karjan and Yonge, found ourselves in strange byways.

I remember …

… paying a boatman a few coppers to give us a tour of the sewers under the city, roaring along as if caught by rapids in his tiny boat, the curved overhead bricks dank and dripping, rats hissing at us from corners. Yonge got the boatman drunk and we almost lost ourselves for good before discovering an open grating to pry up and get our bearings.

… There was an evening that began quietly, a visit to a small tavern along the river where the first barrel of the famous sweet wine of Varan was available for tasting. Somehow tasting became drinking became guzzling and we ended up in a long snake dance down the riverbank, the Seer Tenedos, in full regalia, roaring drunk at its head, I just behind him drunk only on the laughter and singing, the wardens standing bewildered nearby, hardly stupid enough to club down a magician for being drunk and disorderly.

… We were at a formal dinner party. I was seated next to a pretty, if rather cold-looking, woman about ten years my senior who’d been introduced as the Marchioness Fenelon. Between courses we’d chatted of this and that — I was actually becoming able to make small talk. Then she turned to me, and I saw for the first time the pin she wore on her breast.

It was a solid gold casting of a long cord.

Time froze for me, and I remembered the cavern, another, real, yellow cord of silk around my neck, and the murderous beauty named Palikao.

“What,” I said, my voice as harsh as if I’d been reprimanding one of my men, “is that you’re wearing?”

She started, glanced down at the pin. Then she looked up at me, but her eyes moved away rapidly.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s just … something I saw in a shop and thought looked smart. Just a bauble.”

I knew she was lying.

… We organized an impromptu race among the carriage drivers of Hyder Park, and combed through nearby taverns to find enough passengers to fill them.

The two sleepy wardens screamed and ran as they saw, pelting down on them, a cavalry charge of cabs, filled with drunk noblemen and -women.

By the time the wardens had called out reinforcements we’d done two laps, awarded first prize, which I remember as an enormous stuffed toy, and vanished into the night.

… It was late and I’d gotten lost trying to find the party, riding Lucan up and down the lanes of an expensive part of Nicias, with walled mansions on either side of the road. Finally, I’d found the place described on the ivory card, and rode into its grounds.

I wasn’t that late, I decided with relief, because the drive was still lined with carriages and there were a dozen or more horses being held by grooms. I dismounted, tossed the reins to a retainer, and went up the steps to the main house.

I didn’t know the people who lived there, not even their name, but the card that’d come to me had promised an evening such as “I’d never forget,” and so I took the chance.

A solemn-faced man opened the door, bowed me in, and shut it behind me. I thought it a bit odd for a servitor to remain outside, but shrugged and looked for a cloakroom.

I went through a curtained entranceway into a large room, decorated only in pillows and a rich carpet with the thickest nap I have ever seen. It was well that it was so comfortable, because all of the bodies squirming on it were very naked.

Man-woman, man-man, woman-woman, man-woman-man: It appeared as if every possible combination was being tried.

A very small blond, as nude as the others, came to her feet and came toward me, walking as if she expected the floor to slip away from her. She had milky skin, curly hair, the face of an innocent child, and the perfect body of a young harlot.

“Good evening,” she said. “Would you like to come between my tits?”

I had no idea what the proper response was then, nor do I now.

“Welcome to my party,” she said. “We’re having a
lot
of fun. You look like a big one. Come join us. It’s always good to find a new … face.” She giggled.

“Yes,” I said. “Certainly. In just a moment. But … let me go find a place to hang my cloak.”

“I’ll be waiting,” she said, and began massaging her nipples with her thumbs, moving her breasts against each other in a manner she thought inviting.

I backed through the curtain and went out the door.

“Leaving already, sir?” the retainer asked, his voice completely neutral. I nodded, and started toward my horse, then turned back.

“Excuse me. But whose house is this?”

“This is the residence of Lord Mahal of the Rule of Ten and his wife, sir.”

I mounted and rode off.

When Tenedos said Lord Mahal’s wife embraced the new, untried, and radical, he knew not how well he’d chosen the word.

• • •

Then everything changed.

Seer Tenedos had suggested I attend a gathering in his place, since he had suddenly been invited to attend Lord Scopas on a matter of some urgency. He said I might enjoy it, since it was a regular event most popular among the radical thinkers of Nicias. He said he’d already sent his apologies, and a note that I’d most likely be attending in his stead, so his “suggestion” was, not unusually, more of an order.

“Do I keep my clothes on, sir?”

He colored — I’d told him of the orgy at Lord Mahal’s.

“You’ll no doubt meet some people far stranger than any of those satyrs and nymphs,” he said. “But they’ll keep their clothes on there. Or most of them will, anyway.”

“Who’s sponsoring it?”

“A young woman. Countess Agramónte and Lavedan. The Agramóntes are a very old, very rich family. It’s said they own enough land to have their own state.

“She married well a bit more than a year ago. Count Lavedan has almost as much gold as she does, but she insisted on keeping the family name, and the Lavedans know better than to argue with an Agramónte.

“These are people well worth the knowing, Damastes. Please give them my apologies, although I doubt if you’ll meet Count Lavedan. He’s more interested in his family’s shipping than politics or philosophy.

“Enjoy yourself.”

The house sat on the waterfront, a huge rectangle, five floors high, lit with gas flares at each side of the entrance gates through a tall, wrought-iron fence that was wonderfully sculpted. I dismounted and went inside.

I gave helmet and dolman to a doorman, and went toward the sound of conversation and occasional laughter.

I passed a huge, high-ceilinged ballroom that was empty and dark, and found the party. It was in a circular room, comfortably and expensively decorated. A silver punch bowl sat on a sideboard.

There were possibly thirty or so people inside, and I saw what Tenedos meant. They were dressed in every style imaginable, including at least two I hoped stayed original with the owner, and their wearers came from every class from the richest to the most humble. They were all happily arguing, listening, or waiting to rebut the speaker as an oaf.

“Ah,” a voice came from behind me. “This must be the Lion of the Sulem Pass. Will you growl tonight, O Lion?”

I turned, a smile on my face, ready to comply with the joking request. Then the world shimmered around me as if a god had suddenly changed it to gold.

The woman was quite young, barely eighteen, I found later. She was just five and a half feet tall, her hair was dark blond, worn fashionably long and pulled to fall to one side of her face, ending just above her small, pert breasts. She wore a stylish, daringly filmy gown with thin neckstraps that crossed over her breasts, leaving visible their saucy curves.

Her face was rounded, her eyes sparkled with intelligence, and she had small but sensuous lips. She, too, was smiling.

Our eyes met, and the smile disappeared.

“I … I am Countess Agramónte and Lavedan,” she said, sounding suddenly a bit confused, her voice dropping to a throaty murmur.

I managed to come to some sort of attention, reached out, and took her hand and lifted it, bowing over it.

“Captain Damastes á Cimabue, Countess.”

“You may call me Marán,” she said.

I released her hand, and once more looked into her eyes.

I drowned in them for a million years.

M
ARÁN

Suddenly her expression changed, and I can only compare it to that of a puppy who’s done something wrong and expects to be whipped. “I am sorry, Countess, I mean Marán,” I said quickly. “I did not mean to stare.”