Tides of Darkness (22 page)

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Authors: Judith Tarr

BOOK: Tides of Darkness
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Time was when Daros would have taken his pick of the women. Certainly they were not shy in preferring him to other men. But he had no more desire for these than for the beauties of Waset.
He slept alone on the boat, with the boatmen and the stars, and the moon riding high overhead. He was becoming accustomed to a lone white moon, and no Greatmoon to turn the night to blood. Its cool light bathed him and flowed over the water. There seemed to be no shadow on the stars, but all Gates were still shut. This world was enclosed in a bubble of darkness.
There was still a gate, the gate of dream. He sought it, and her; and found her waiting, asleep in a narrow bed in a small bare room. Those walls needed no ornament but the gold of her hair, spread across the coverlet, and the beauty of her face and body as she woke slowly.
Long before her eyes were open, she was aware of him. Her smile bloomed, rare and wonderful. He bent over her and brushed her lips with his. Her arms enfolded him and drew him down.
Part of him knew that he was mad or worse, besotted with a dream. Yet another part, the part that touched on his magery, insisted that she was real. Dream had brought him to her, but when they joined body to body, they did so in living truth. Certainly after these dreams, he was sated as if he had indeed spent the night with a woman, but there was never any stain of spent seed on bed or body. Yet sometimes there were marks of teeth or nails on his skin.
Tonight they spoke of nothing but one another: her pleasure, his delight in her. They chose to forget the troubles that beset them, the war they both fought, the enemy that threatened both these worlds. There
was nothing then but the two of them, and a joy so deep that he woke close to tears.
He was lost, conquered, besotted. He was in love with a dream and a vision, and no woman in the waking world could equal her.
T
HE KINGDOM OF GEBTU WAS NOT AS PROSPEROUS AS WASET. The shadow had been no more relentless there, but Gebtu had felt more keenly the loss of its young men and the stripping of its harvests. Beggars in Waset were few; the queen saw to it that the ill and the indigent were given a ration of barley from the royal stores, to bake their bread and brew their beer. Here it seemed the king did no such thing. Gaunt women and swollen-bellied children sat by the roadsides, begging from passersby, and swarmed on boats that ventured within reach of the bank.
And yet the city, when they came to it near the end of the third day out from Waset, was more splendid than that clean and well-fed but rather simple city. The walls were built of stone rather than brick; the
gates were inlaid with gold, and the palace was notably more imposing than the palace of Waset.
A high and haughty prince of men received the embassy at the quay. His heavy collar of gold and his gold-sheathed staff proclaimed his rank; his belly was ample and his expression loftily noble. His retinue was large, rich with gold and colored stones, and arranged in meticulous ranks. Every one of them went down in prostration as Daros stepped from the boat to the shore. The nobleman bowed slightly more slowly than the rest, so that it was clear who was the lord and who were the commoners.
Daros kept his face carefully empty of expression. He would wait and watch and see what was to be seen; time enough later to act.
There was a chair waiting, and strong bearers to carry it. For an instant Daros had a fierce, almost painful longing for a senel. But there was no such beast in this world, that any of these people knew: nothing large enough to carry a man, only the tiny gazelle and the antelope of the desert, that were very like the senel in shape, but scarce a fraction the size.
With an inaudible sigh, he folded himself into the chair, which was not made for a man of his size, and suffered the bearers to carry him, rocking and swaying, from the river through the streets of the city.
 
The king of Gebtu might have kept a mere envoy waiting for days, but a god required more delicate handling. Daros was offered food, a bath, and rest, in that order; he accepted the first two but declined the third. The servants had been terribly cowed when they began, but he wheedled and smiled and coaxed until they could wait on him without collapsing in a fit of hysterics.
As they finished their ministrations, the door-guard announced a guest. Daros' smile of greeting was genuine. Seti-re was a familiar face, and welcome for that if for nothing else.
The priest was much more at ease here in this palace than he had
been in the boat. He dismissed the servants with a flick of the hand, and put in a twist that made their eyes roll white.
“Clever,” Daros said when they had gone. “Now only half of them will spy on us; the rest will hide to avoid the curse.”
“Are you laughing at me?”
The man was quick to his own defense. Daros softened his smile and said, “Oh, no. Not at all. Is there news?”
“Nothing from Waset,” said Seti-re, mollified. His eyes kept wandering to Daros' face and fixing there. It was beastly uncomfortable and rather distracting. “The king will summon us soon. I knew him long ago; he was a priest for a while in the temple in Waset, sent there by his father to learn the greater arts and the more famous magics. He proved to have some little talent for them.”
“I had heard that,” Daros said, “and that he was meant to be a priest, until his elder brothers were taken by the dark enemy. I've been trusting that you will help me with him, help me to talk to him in ways that he'll most willingly hear. I'm not a priest, you see, and I don't speak the language.”
Seti-re stood a little taller for that. “My lord, a god can speak any language he chooses. A god such as you … he'll be captivated. Though he might ask to see some of your arts. Will that be a difficulty?”
“Only if he asks me to do something I can't or won't do.”
“That would be true of any god,” Seti-re said.
“Ah,” said Daros. “I hoped I could trust a priest to understand such things.”
Seti-re almost smiled. “My lord, if I may ask a great favor? You need not grant it, of course, in your power and divinity. But I would ask … may I speak as high priest of your cult?”
“You are high priest of the sun in Waset,” Daros said. “Can you be both?”
“If you will allow, my lord.”
Daros looked him in the face. He held steady, though he had gone grey, shaking with fear. “You want power,” Daros said, “but that's not
everything, is it? You think you love me, because I carry the curse of a pretty face.”
“No!” Seti-re had gone from grey to crimson. “May not a man choose the god he wishes to worship?”
“Because he has what men call beauty?”
“You have great beauty,” Seti-re said with dignity, “but that is only fitting for a god. You are a young god; your power is great, but it startles you somewhat still. Yet you carry yourself with grace, and you seldom mock even the great fools of the world. May not a mere mortal find that admirable?”
“How odd,” Daros said half to himself. “I've been found admirable twice since I decided on this expedition—and that is twice in my life. Sir priest, if you would worship me, you should know the truth. Where I come from, I'm reckoned a fool and a wastrel. I am—I was—a frequenter of taverns, a lover of loose women. I was caught transgressing great laws, and sentenced to exile and hard servitude. I broke that sentence to come to this world, and for that my exile is now, it seems, irrevocable.”
“Of course you are exiled, my lord,” Seti-re said. “How else would a god suffer himself to live among mortals?”
“A wastrel god,” Daros said. “A useless prince.”
“Not in this world,” Seti-re said.
Since that was true, and since Daros had made much of it to Estarion, he shut his mouth with a click.
For a man who had no humor, Seti-re had a surprising store of wry wit. “You see, my lord?” he said. “There is no escaping the truth: that you are a god, and worthy to be worshipped.”
 
The king of Gebtu was a man of middle years, as Daros had expected. He still kept his head shaved in priestly fashion, but covered it with a wig of numerous plaits, and cultivated an odd small beard on the tip of his chin. His court was extravagant, numerous and visibly rich; Daros the setter of fashion easily recognized his like in these languid nobles.
They were not so languid now, for all their pretense. A god among them was a potent threat to their cult of ennui. They found Daros profoundly satisfying, a truly godlike god. He assisted them by drawing sunlight to him, wrapping it about him like a mantle. They blinked, dazzled, and the less bold dropped to their faces.
The king held his ground, only narrowing his eyes against the figure of living light that was his guest. When Daros halted, Seti-re advanced a few steps more and bowed before the king, and said, “My lord of Gebtu, I bring you the son of the Sun, the god Re-Horus.”
Indaros
, Daros thought, but he held his tongue. People did odd things here to plain Varyani names. Re-Horus he would be, then, as Estarion was Seramon.
He suffered the king's scrutiny as he did everyone else's, standing straight and offering no expression to be judged or found wanting. When he had had enough of it, he let fall his cloak of sunlight. He did not speak. That was for the king to do.
The king seemed inclined to sit still until Daros' image was graven on his brain—or, as they would have said in Waset, on his liver. Daros shifted slightly, easing his stance. At that, the king blinked and came to himself. “I welcome you to Gebtu, my lord Re-Horus,” he said.
Daros inclined his head slightly. “Lord Kamos,” he said. “I thank you for your hospitality.”
“My lord,” said the king, “if a temple would be more to your liking, or the service of priests—”
“No,” said Daros. “No, my lord king. I'm well content.”
That pleased the king: he lightened visibly. “That is well,” he said. “And my sister queen in Waset—she is well?”
“Very well,” Daros said.
“It is true, then? She has taken a consort?”
Kamos knew it was true, but he was not speaking for himself. For the ears of the court, Daros answered, “She has taken my lord to her heart, my master to whom I am sworn, a great lord and king beyond the horizon.”
A long sigh ran down the hall. Fear sparked in it. The gods had come to Waset. Now one of them stood in their hall, looming over the tallest man in Gebtu, with face of bronze and hair as bright as fire.
Daros softened his voice almost to a croon, and set a little magery in it, too, to soothe their fears. “We came for all this world, not only for Waset—to lead your people against the darkness, and destroy it if we can. The enemy fears you, my lords; fears what you can do when joined in alliance. I have come to ask if you will turn that fear to living truth. Will you ally with us? Will you join against the enemy?”
“The enemy is gone,” the king said.
“For a while,” said Daros, “but he will come back.”
“You are sure of this?”
“I am sure,” Daros said. “This is a gift of greater gods than we, this breathing space. I don't doubt you've heard that I've gathered an army in Waset—or that you've wondered whether that army is meant to invade Waset's neighbors. I swear to you, it is not. I've gathered it against the common enemy of us all; and I come now to ask if you will join your army to it, and be willing to make alliance with others of your neighbor kings.”
“There are no alliances,” Kamos said. “There have not been since my father's day. Alliances break; kings fall apart from one another. Only one's own kin and kind may be trusted.”
“So the enemy has taught you,” Daros said. “He separated you, kingdom by kingdom, the more easily to conquer you. If you gather together, if you unite yourselves, you may have strength to oppose him.”
“How can one oppose the dark itself?”
“With light,” said Daros.
“Firelight? Torchlight?”
“Sunlight,” Daros said, “and strength of will.”
“The sun cannot shine at night,” said Kamos.
“No,” said Daros, “but the light of the gods can—the light of magic.”
“We do not have that power,” Kamos said.
“If I give it to you,” said Daros, “will you swear alliance with Waset, and help me unite your neighbors to the north?”
“With Waset,” Kamos said slowly, “we were friends and kin once, when that was possible. We might be so again. But to unite the rest … my lord, your power is great, but can you truly hope to bring together all the kingdoms of the river?”
“I can try,” said Daros. “With your help, I might succeed.”
“Will you make me a god?”
Daros found that his mouth was open. He shut it.
“Gods stand beside the throne of Waset,” Kamos said. “How much stronger would Gebtu be if its king was a very god. Can you do that, my lord?”
“That is not within my power,” said Daros. “I can give you the light. You have the capacity for that.” And that was true. This man was as much a mage as any in this world. It was the feeblest of powers, but enough, just, for the simplest of all arts, the summoning of light.
A thought was waking in Daros' heart. He could not speak of it, not yet; it was not clear enough for words. But soon. He chose silence now, waiting on the king's response.
Kamos answered him after a long and reflective pause. “I will consider what you have said, my lord. Will you rest a while with us?”
“I will remain for three days,” Daros said, “before my duty bids me go.”
“That will have to be enough,” said Kamos, not willingly; he was a king, and kings were not accustomed to observing any strictures but their own. But a god stood higher in rank than a king.
 
The king withdrew to ponder his choices. Daros, after three days on a boat, was restless; he refused to be kept mewed in his rooms, however richly ornamented they might be.
The guards at the gate tried to keep him in. They were terrified of their captain and in great fear of the king, but Daros' presumed divinity
won him passage. He hardly even needed to fling the gate open with a gust of mage-wind.
He was not alone on his ramble through the city. A man had followed him from the palace: not a tall man but sturdy and strong for one of these light-boned people. He was young, younger than Daros; boys grew to manhood early here.
Daros did not confront him, not yet. He was a comfortable enough presence, silent and observant, as a guard should be. He left Daros free to think his own thoughts as he walked those streets, broad and clean close by the palace, but narrow and reeking as he moved outward toward the walls. It was as if, whatever the king could see, he kept in excellent order, but once it was out of sight, it vanished from his awareness.

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