Tides of Darkness (12 page)

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Authors: Judith Tarr

BOOK: Tides of Darkness
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“It looked as if they might be unthinkable.”
“That, too,” he said. He groaned, stretched, creaked. “Is there a place where a man may go to practice with weapons?”
“The court of the guards,” she said. “I'll have you taken there. Is there a particular weapon that you prefer?”
“Something strenuous,” he said. “I feel a need to wear myself out.”
“You will certainly do that, at this time of day,” she said. “Will you listen to a simple native, and hear another way? It's cool and pleasant on the river, and the cooks are always glad of fresh fowl for the pots. Will you come hunting with me?”
“Sitting at leisure in a boat? Lady, you're very kind, but—”
“You can take an oar if it suits your fancy.”
It was a tempting prospect. Estarion loved boats and rivers and fishing; he was not averse to hunting waterfowl, either. But when he let loose the smile that tugged at his lips, it was for her, the beautiful one, that he said, “Very well. I yield to the royal command.”
 
Estarion wielded an oar with skill that came back to him as he went on. At first he scandalized the boatmen, but when they saw that he knew what he was doing, they gave way grudgingly to his whim.
The boat was made of reeds, and floated high on the water. There was a high pointed prow and a high stern, and a canopy amidships, beneath which the queen and her escort could take their ease. Estarion chose not to indulge himself. He sweated in the sun with the rest of the oarsmen, pulling in unison to the beat of a drum.
It was good clean work, and it soothed him wonderfully. The tension
poured out of him; the knot in his belly loosened. The thoughts and fears that had roiled in his head were quiet for once.
It was better than sleep, that day on the river. They brought back a boatload of waterfowl and the carcass of a young river-beast: a rich hunt and welcome. The river had been kind; they had lost no man or boat, nor even an oar, to crocodiles, and their quarry had been too numerous to count, all but flinging themselves on the hunters' arrows.
“He brings us luck,” Estarion heard one of the boatmen say. They were all cordial now; he had proved himself to them, though he had done it with perfect selfishness. He had only wanted to lighten the burden that had fallen on him.
 
They all ate well that evening, but as before, with the coming of dark, everyone fled to the safety of his own walls. Estarion did not linger, either. His arms and shoulders ached; his hands stung with blisters. Yet he was wide awake, and he felt remarkably well refreshed, as if he had slept a whole night through.
He let himself be put to bed, to mollify the servants. Well after they had gone, he lay where they had left him. The sounds of the palace died one by one. Voices quieted, footsteps ceased. The strains of a flute, which had come and gone since he came in from the hall, slowly faded away.
He rose softly and put on a kilt, and took up the weapons he had brought from the other side of the sky: knife and short sword, bow and quiver, all made with metals that were not known here.
It was still light as he passed through deserted halls and empty streets. He walked without stealth, but with no desire to be seen. Only the cats could see. The two that were with him as often as not had elected to follow him; their cousins and kin flitted through the long shadows, calling softly to one another.
They were weaving wards about this city. It was subtle and rather marvelous, and quite elegant, like the creatures that wrought it. Their weaving tonight laid a path open for him to follow from palace to city gate, then out to the long stretch of fields along the river.
The gate melted before him. A large brindled cat perched atop it until it was gone; then the cat winked out, vanishing into the air with a sound like purring laughter.
The she-cat stopped just outside the gate, but her mate went on with Estarion. The cat had no fear. Estarion would not indulge in it until he had good and sufficient reason. He raised wards of his own about them both, a shield and a mantle wrought of magic.
He walked away from the walls, down the road to the river and then along the bank to a place that would do as well as any. It was far enough from the city to be out of reach of the wards upon it, but near enough that he did not have to walk far in the dusk. A line of boats was drawn up there, huddled together as if they too were afraid of the dark. He settled in one, sitting near the stern, gazing out over the river to the shadow on shadow that was the farther shore.
Every human creature might be shut away in safety, but night birds sang and jackals howled, and far away he heard the roar of a river-beast. The sunset faded to black; the stars came out in their myriads.
The cat curled purring in his lap. He stroked the sleek fur and leaned his head back, filling his eyes with stars.
The shadow came like a mist, a thin dank fog creeping across the river. The sounds of the night died one by one, save for the howling of jackals in the desert. Jackals, people believed here, were the guides and guardians of the dead. By morning, Estarion well might know whether that was so.
It made him almost happy. He would prefer to live, and this world might be the better for it, too, but he was not afraid to die. It was a passage through a gate, but only the soul could make the journey. The body was cast off, useless and forgotten.
The fog had a scent, a mingled effluvium of dust and damp and old stone. It was not itself deadly; plagues had not come with it in any tale that Estarion had heard. It flowed off the river, dimming the air about him, darkening the stars.
He had strong night-eyes; he needed no light to see. He sat still, save
that he had, ever so softly, drawn the short sword from the sheath at his side. The cat sat up and yawned and began to wash its face.
The cat's calm deepened and strengthened his wards. He sat straighter, but did not rise to his feet. The cat finished its toilet and sat staring, still calmly, at the thing that came over the water.
The fog was nothing to be unduly afraid of. There was that about it which hinted of spells and powers embedded in it, enchantments that would feed madness and swell fear into blind panic. Because he had no fear, the spells did not touch him.
Could this alone be what had driven so many people mad, and rent their king limb from limb? Some of the darker spells had that power, but he could not believe that it was as simple as that.
He waited, as the stars wheeled slowly above the shadow. The fog lapped at the walls of Waset, curling tendrils round it but not venturing within. The river murmured to itself.
Something was coming. The cat sprang from Estarion's lap to the boat's prow. He rose then, sword in hand, power coiled within the circle of his wards.
They rode over the river as if it had been solid earth: half a hundred shadowy riders on strange beasts. Even to his eyes they were difficult to see, black on black as they were, but from a glint here and a gleam there, he was able to give them shape. They were human, or near enough: two arms, two legs, a head, encased in armor of strange fashion, and armed with weapons, some of which he recognized, some not. Their beasts were like the crocodiles of this river, but much larger, much longer in the leg, and much more agile and quick.
What army they came from, or by what Gate they had entered this world, he could not tell; but they had no scent or sense of this earth. They overran the shore, riding swiftly and with the air of those who knew their way. They struck for a village that had been safe before, as close to Waset as it was; it was nearly in the shadow of the northern wall.
Estarion slipped out of the boat, set his shoulder to the stern and sent
it sliding toward the water. It slid smoothly in the rich black mud, but the splash of its launching stopped his heart in his throat.
The army did not pause or turn. He pulled himself into the boat before the current carried it away, found and softly shipped the steering oar, and let the river bear him down toward the embattled village, touching the oar only to keep the boat on its course.
They reached the village before him, riding like a storm in the night, yet eerily, supernaturally silent. They went for the storehouses and the fields. The former they stripped bare and loaded on beasts that they had brought with them, riderless, for that purpose. The latter they swept past, save one, which they raked with a strange dark fire. Then Estarion knew what those shadowy shapes were which the riders carried, which he had not recognized before: they belched forth flame, but flame transmuted into living, searing darkness.
There was nothing random about this raid. They left the villagers' houses alone, save, as with the fields, for one. That one they cracked open like an egg.
Estarion's fingers tightened on the steering-oar until surely it would snap in two. For now, he must only watch and learn. Gods, he hated to be wise; but for this world and for his own, he must not betray himself to these marauders until he knew surely what they were.
The villagers cowered in the ruins of their house. Their little bit of fire barely flickered in the gloom. One of the raiders stamped it out. As Estarion's eyes struggled to adjust to the deeper darkness, something stirred among the raiders. He could swear it had not been there before, but it was incontestably present now: a loom of shadow, with no shape that he could discern. It flowed rather than walked; it poured itself over the huddle of villagers.
The cold that came out of it, the sense of sheer inimical otherness, made Estarion—even Estarion, who feared little in any world—gasp and cower in the flimsy safety of the boat. The cat pressed trembling against his side.
The dark thing sucked the warmth out of them, and the blood, and
last of all the souls. It crunched them like bones, savoring every shrieking scrap. When they were gone, it shrank to a point of darkness, sprouted wings, and flittered into the night.
The raiders dismembered the shriveled and bloodless bodies with the skill and dispatch of butchers in a cattle-market, or priests in a sacrifice. Their movements had an air of ritual; they arranged the limbs in a pattern that Estarion could not quite see. When they were satisfied, they turned their beasts, both ridden and laden with spoils, and rode into the deepest darkness.
The earth breathed a sigh. The stars recovered their splendor. The moon shed its pale light again. The raiders were gone, departed from this world—until night came once more, and once more they would rule the darkness.
J
UST AFTER SUNRISE, EARLY RISERS FOUND THE GOD FROM beyond the sky in a boat, asleep, with the lord of the palace cats draped purring over his middle. The boat was drawn up on the riverbank beneath the city's walls; it looked as if he had been there all night. And yet he was whole of limb, and as the boatmen stood over him, murmuring among themselves, he opened eyes that were as bright and sane as they ever were—although one sensitive soul avowed that they were sadder, and touched with a glimmer of godly wrath.
He greeted them with his white smile, and with words that were princely courteous. Those with amulets clutched them for protection, but his wits had not been devoured by the night. He was the same golden-eyed god that he had been the day before.
Tanit had learned that he was missing when a maid roused her at
dawn. Her guest's servant was standing in her antechamber, trembling so hard that he could barely stand. It was a while before she could coax any sense out of him. Even then it came out in gasps. “I was asleep,” he said, “across the door, as I should be. He had to walk over me. I woke up and he was gone. He's nowhere here, lady. I looked and looked. All night I looked. He's not in this house. Lady, I failed, I failed miserably. I deserve to die.”
“We shall see about that,”Tanit said—coldly, to be sure, but her heart was so constricted and her breath so shallow that it was the best she could do. She bade the maids look after him, and took her door-guards and braved the sunrise.
She came to the boat not long after the boatmen found him there. It was the only crowd along the riverbank this early in the day, with the sun barely risen and the dark barely put to flight; and he was standing in the middle of it, head and shoulders above the rest, like a pillar of black stone with eyes of hammered gold. She wanted, suddenly, to burst into tears.
She had been queen too long to be a slave to her own foolishness. The boatmen retreated before her; they recognized her even in a simple gown, with no more than eye-paint, and no crown. Their relief was palpable. This god was more than they were prepared to contend with, particularly at this hour of the morning.
She held out her hand to him. “Come,” she said.
He took her hand and let her lead him away from the wide-eyed boatmen. She should have let him go once she was sure that he would stay with her, but her fingers had a mind of their own. They liked to rest within that big dark hand, with its warmth and its quiet strength.
They stayed there all the way to the palace, through the hall of audience and, with complete lack of conscious will, into her chambers. He sat where she bade him, which was more for her comfort than for his: she was not in the mood to crane her neck in order to see his expression. He was glad to be fed bread and cakes and bits of roast fowl that he shared with the cat, and to drink palm wine—the last a surprise, and a
pleasant one, from his expression. She had learned from the servants that he was not fond of beer.
When he had eaten and drunk, she sat across the small breakfasttable from him and said, “Tell me why you're alive and sane. Are you one of the walkers in the night?”
“You know I'm not,” he said, but without apparent offense. “I did see them—or one manifestation of them.”
“And yet you live to tell of it,” she said with careful lack of expression.
“A village almost under the walls was struck in the night. Were you part of that?”
His eyes closed; his face tightened. “I saw it,” he said.
“You did nothing to stop it?”
“I could do nothing,” he said through clenched teeth, “that would have made matters immeasurably worse. I watched; I don't know that I understood, but I will remember what I saw. Lady, may I summon certain of the priests, and such nobles as are familiar with your lore of magic?”
It was polite of him to ask. She considered refusing, because after all she was the queen. But he was a god. “Do as you will,” she said. “I will give you the rod that permits a lord to wield power in my name.”
“That is a great trust,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. Her maid Tisheri, ever wise, had found the rod that Tanit spoke of, a reed staff bound with bands of gold. Tanit gave it into his hand. “Guard it well,” she said.
He bowed low. “My thanks, most gracious lady,” he said. Then after a pause “May I gather them here? Your authority will give my words more weight.”
“Do I want them gathered here?”
He knelt in front of her. She did not know where that snap of temper had come from, and his lack of anger only made her the more crossgrained. When he took her hands—again, gods help her—she lacked the will to pull free. “Lady,” he said, “I am a guest, and here on your sufferance. I ask your pardon if I've overstepped.”
“You haven't,” she said. “I'm being foolish. It's been too long since I yielded my will to a man's. I've forgotten how to do it gracefully.”
“And I,” he said with a glint in his eye, “was a king too long. I give orders without thinking.”
“They are wise orders,” she said. She looked down at their joined hands. He began to draw away, but she held him fast. “My lord, we should agree before we go on, as to how we shall manage this matter of authority. I know I am only a woman, but—”
“Lady,” he said deep in his throat. “I'll hear no more of that. In my country, the regent and ruling heir is a woman; and her heir, in turn, is a daughter and not a son. You are not ‘only' a woman. You are a lady and a queen.”
She had never been so soundly and yet so pleasantly rebuked. “If I am a queen,” she said, “then I may command you and be obeyed. Yes?”
“Yes,” he said gravely, but with a glint in it.
“Then I command you to go, and do what you must, and come back when you are done.”
He bowed over her hands without too terribly much mockery, and kissed the palm of each, and let them go. Long after he was gone, she sat staring at those palms, as if the mark of his lips should be branded there in streaks of fire.
They were only her ordinary, long and thin, cream-brown hands. Whatever memory they held, it was not visible to the eye. Which was well—because if anyone knew what she was thinking, the scandal would keep the court buzzing for days.
She could not stop thinking it. That the command she had wanted to give was not the one she had given, at all. And that if she had bidden him do that other thing … might he perhaps have consented? There had been a look in his eye, that she had thought she could not mistake.
There was no time or place for that, not in this world. She gathered herself together and rose. There was a council to prepare for and a day to begin. It was some little while before she understood what was causing her heart to flutter so oddly. It was not only that beautiful and godlike
man. It was—before the gods, it was hope. For the first time since she was a child, she began to think that the night would not always be cursed; that the walkers in the dark might, at last, be banished from the world.
 
The Lord Seramon had called eight priests and nobles to his council: nine, with the queen. The old priest from the temple of the Sun was there, and his son who could not in courtesy be left out, and the young one who was almost, in his dim way, a mage. There was a priest of their queen of goddesses, too, and the commander of the royal army, and two young lords who had been born at the same birth and were eerily, uncannily alike, and last and perhaps most baffled, the servant whom the chief of the queen's servants had given the Lord Seramon. He was no slave or menial; he was a free man of good family, who won honor for his house by serving in the palace.
Tanit had had them brought to her audience chamber with escort of honor and all due courtesy. They were barely courteous in return. Only Seti the old priest seemed at ease. The rest shifted uncomfortably, and either declined refreshment or hid behind it as if it had been a refuge.
The Lord Seramon was last to appear, accompanied as usual by cats. Their lord rode regally on his shoulder. He bowed to them all, and deepest to Tanit, and took the chair that had been left for him. “I thank you, my lords and lady,” he said, “for coming at my call. I have a thing to ask of you. You may refuse; no shame will attach to it. But if you accept, the night may be a little less dark, and your people a little safer.”
None of them brightened at his words. Seti spoke for them all, gently. “My lord, what can we do that you in your divine power cannot? Surely you can cause the sun to shine all night, and keep the darkness forever at bay”
“If I am a god,” the Lord Seramon said, “then I am a minor one. The Sun is my forefather, not my servant. I could set a dome of light over this city, but I would have no strength left for any other working, or for defense against the attack that would come. The enemy that devours
your children shuns the light. But the enemy's servants can endure it, even wield it if they must.”
“You … saw the enemy's servants?” Seti-re made no effort to conceal his disbelief. “Yet you live; your body is whole. You seem sane. Are you certain that it was not a dream?”
“It was quite real,” the Lord Seramon said. “I saw another thing, too, that interested me greatly. Because of it, I should like to ask that you yourselves, and such of your servants as are both brave and strong of will, may dispose yourselves like an army, and take turn and turn about in the villages.”
“Indeed?” said the priest of the Mother. He seemed no more enamored of the Lord Seramon than Seti-re. “Are we to be a sacrifice? Or will we be given a weapon?”
“You will have a weapon,” the Lord Seramon said, “and a comrade in arms.” He bent his gaze toward the door. The others, as if caught by a spell, did the same.
A company of cats trotted purposefully into the hall. Being cats, they did not march in ranks, nor did they match pace to pace. Yet they were together, there was no mistaking it, and they had about them the air of an army. There were twice nine, and not all palace cats; some had the lean and rangy look of cats from the city.
They advanced two by two, and chose each a lord or a priest, and two gold-earringed beauties lofted lightly into Tanit's lap. She knew them; they were often to be seen about her chambers, and were much spoiled by the servants.
“These are the nobility of their kind,” the Lord Seramon said. “Their cousins and kin will come to those whom you choose to fight in this army. Listen to them, my lords and lady. Let them guide you. They have power against this enemy that besets you.”
The priest of the Mother laughed. “
This
is your great plan? These are your weapons? The gods do love them, lord, but what power can they raise against the walkers of the night?”
“Great power,” the Lord Seramon said. “Did you never wonder why
this city has not been attacked? It has walls, yes, but walls are nothing to this enemy. Your cats guard those walls. They take their strength from the sun, but the night is their mother. They rule on both sides of the sky.”
Tanit shivered lightly. The cat in her lap seemed no more divine than ever, if no less; she was coiled, purring, blinking sleepily at her kin. Lightly Tanit laid a hand on her back. She arched it, bidding Tanit stroke it, yes, just so. Her purring rose to a soft roar. She reminded Tanit suddenly, vividly, of the Lord Seramon.
“I do believe you,” Tanit said. “And yet, my lord, I ask you: If the cats have such power, why have they never defended the villages?”
“Because, lady,” said the Lord Seramon, “they, like me, have limits to their power; and, being cats, they seldom think of gathering forces. It's their nature to hunt alone.”
“Yet they guard our city together,” she said.
“Each protects what is his,” he said. “It happens that, in so doing, they protect all. They've agreed to ally themselves with your people; their power is yours to use. In return they ask for free rein among the mice and rats in the storehouses, and a tribute of milk and fish.”
One of the twins snorted as if he could not help himself. “My lord! Pardon me, but that's absurd. You're a god; you may talk to a cat. What of us? We're only human.”
“Listen,” the Lord Seramon said. One of the cats at Kamut's feet rose on its hindlegs, stretching its long body, and flexed claws delicately, terribly close to his shrinking privates. The cat met his stare with one as golden and as steady, and quite as full of intelligence, as the Lord Seramon's own.
Kamut gasped and stiffened, but it seemed he could not look away. The cat yawned, splitting its face in two, curling its pink tongue, and raked its claws gently, ever so gently, down Kamut's thigh. Four thin lines of red stained the white linen of his kilt.
To his credit, he did not flinch or cry out. The cat sat once more, tail curled about feet.
“I … am only human,” Kamut said after a long pause. “But
she
is a cat.”
The Lord Seramon smiled that white smile of his. “Yes, young lord, you do understand. Will you be a captain in this army? I count a score of living villages within a day's walk of the city. All have been raided; but their houses still stand, and their people are holding on. Even one of you, with your allies, should be able to raise wards that keep the village safe, though the fields may be more than your strength can manage.”

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