Kingdoms of the Night (The Far Kingdoms) (51 page)

No one could enter this region, they boasted, even if they wished to pay tribute. It was the will of the gods they remain as they had been created. None of The People, for so they called themselves, needed any more than the animals, water and sheep they’d been granted when the gods created them and it would be terrible sacrilege to allow anyone to farm here, let alone build villages or cities.

I asked Sa’ib how they would find her father’s tents and she told me, with some of surprise, that of course they’d know where they’d be and go straight to them. Janela later said perhaps the tribal shamans had given their people a homing spell or perhaps it came naturally over the centuries as a survival trait.

My main interest was the Kingdoms of the Night — Tyrenia. They didn’t know it by either name. They said there were gods living in the mountains and pointed toward the cloud-obscured peaks that were our goal. They told me there was a road not a day’s journey south that ran due east like a spearcast that had been built by these gods. Naturally they never used the road.

Janela asked why and Ziv explained that it did not pay to deal too closely with the gods or their works. It was best that they were worshipped from afar.

“So,” Janela said, “none of the Res Weynh have ever seen any of these gods of yours?”

“Of course not. Except our shamans and they say the vision is too terrible to ever talk about.”

So the Old Ones who dwelt in Tyrenia held to themselves and had nothing to do with these nomads but used them as unknowing guardians.

I asked Ziv if Suiyan would object to our passage through his kingdom and he said he did not think so. Naturally, he added hastily, he could not deem to speak for such a great monarch as Suiyan but no doubt the service I’d rendered him by saving his daughter from that pig Ismid would make him grant us such a boon.

I noted that both Ziv and his son were looking increasingly worried as they considered what Suiyan might think of them for nearly allowing his daughter to be kidnapped or even killed. If Suiyan was as other nomad leaders I’d encountered I fancied their chances of seeing another birthday was exceeding slender. But that was not our concern.

They offered us anything we wished from their goods but we took little except some sweetmeats, some unfamiliar spices that Maha said would enliven the menu and some dried delicacies.

We helped them reassemble their horses and cargoes and make ready to leave. I pitched in on this. One of my great areas of expertise, and one I unutterably loath, is loading unruly, biting, neighing bastardly pack animals for a journey so the ropes don’t slacken, the hitches come untied or the most creative bucker manage to send his burden flying in all directions.

While I was doing this I heard a shrill voices and looked across to see Sa’ib arguing with Tanis. She ended the debate conclusively by slapping the old woman.

I’d been remembering Deoce, my first love. On our initial attempt to find The Far Kingdoms we’d saved her, a young nomad woman, from slavers. In the journey she’d become my lover and when we returned to Orissa my wife. Save for spirit there wasn’t much resemblance between her and this nomad princess who now came stamping toward me.

As she approached her face smoothed and she spread a smile across it. Her walk became more seductive and I noted that she’d rearranged her clothing so more of her bosom was bared.

“Lord Antero,” she greeted me. “You might make one of us, working with your hands like you are. I’ve never heard of a great lord who actually labored.”

“Titles are given by other people,” I said, again feeling like a stodgy old man in the face of youth. “I’m really just a merchant, a caravan owner.”

“I’ll wager,” she said, “that you have many caravans in your land and your tents reach for days, although I know you live in those cold, bare fearsome buildings of stone like those in Tacna. I know you have other wives but that doesn’t matter.”

I didn’t answer. She came much closer, put her hand on my arm and leaned so there was no way I could not see the rise of her breasts and the erect roseate nipples. Her breath smelt sweet, of cardamom and spice.

“You know,” she said, voice throaty, “when I realized I was your slave I felt a thrill go through me.”

“Ah?”

“I doubt my father will find me such a fine-looking man as you, a warrior who always leads.”

“I’m sure he’ll do well for you if he went to all the trouble to have you, um, so well-schooled.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “Or perhaps not.”

She touched my beard with the back of a finger.

“I’ve always preferred older men,” she said. “They have more staying power. Young men... boys... it’s in, out and gone. They’re like rabbits playing in their burrows. And older men have other ways of giving pleasure.” She smiled, dreamily. “I know. And I like them all.”

She opened her mouth and ran the pointed tip of her tongue over her lips. Then she said, “I too know some ways of love even a great warrior and traveler like yourself might be pleasured to learn.”

She reached between her breasts and took out a silk cord, knotted at intervals. She ran it through her fingers, smiling at me. “In my tribe,” she said, “a man or woman might choose to be bonded to a greater one. For safety, for happiness, for... love. All that she has to say is ‘I take thee for master’ three times.”

Sa’ib waited for my response. I was trying to find the right words and looked around. I saw Janela, busy helping Otavi reload a horse. Sa’ib saw who I was looking at, hissed with rage and I looked back at her pretty little fox face, lips now pressed together.

“I understand,” she said, and the coo was gone from her tone. “You’re in thrall to the sorceress. I should have guessed!”

She actually stamped her foot, something I’d never actually seen anyone do other than in a pantomime.

“Yes,” I said hastily. “That’s it.”

She nodded twice, jerkily, turned and bustled away.

Half an hour later, Ziv had his riders ready. The caravan moved off, following the trail. Sa’ib glanced at me once, quickly, then away, her face cold with anger.

We waited until they were no more than dots on the horizon, then set out. For the first hour we traveled on a false azimuth in a direction we’d told Ziv we were heading before changing back to our real track. There was no harm in being overly cautious.

We fell back easily into the rhythm of the march. Janela came up beside me. I saw a sparkle of merriment in her eyes.

“Amalric,” she said sadly. “How could a great chieftain such as you turn down a sweet-meat like that?”

She’d guessed what the exchange must have been. Some women might have been angered. Janela thought it was funny.

“You’re right,” I agreed. “Someone like that would add sparkle to my life. At least until I didn’t give her whatever bauble she wanted and found myself suddenly qualified for a post guarding someone’s harem.”

“I do pity,” Janela agreed, “whoever Suiyan finds for her husband. No doubt he’ll discover reason, once the first pleasures of the couch wear away, to make many great raids. As far away from her as it’s possible to ride.”

She turned serious. “I do have a question, though. I was reminded you were the prime cause for Orissa freeing its slaves. Now there’s been a generation, perhaps two, of freeman who remember you as their liberator.”

“Possibly,” I said. “Although they probably think I’m long-dead, made into some kind of minor deity with a statue on the Street of the Gods that’s covered with pigeon droppings.”

“You could have used that popularity to seek office, couldn’t you?” she asked. “There’s no reason you couldn’t have become a Magistrate. Perhaps even Chief Magistrate.”

I looked at her in honest bewilderment and blurted, “Now why in all the name of the gods would I want something like that?”

Her laugh pealed like temple chimes across the windy plains.

“That, Amalric Antero, is one reason I love you.”

She took hold of my beard, pulled me closer and kissed me.

The men marching beside us cheered.

As for me?

I blushed like a schoolboy.

It was just dawn when Modin came to us.

I’d been sleeping fitfully, my blankets spread next to Janela’s when a roaring voice brought me to my feet. I was still half-asleep, but as I rose my blade came whipping from its sheath where it had lain beside me.

Modin loomed over our campsite. He stood almost twenty feet high and one foot rested, unscathed, in the ruins of our fire.

Janela rolled up, her dagger in her hand, and my brain came aware enough to decipher the last of Modin’s voice:

“...summon you, my own, my prey. You must obey. You must call me to you.”

For an instant I thought Modin had used sorcery to sneak up on us. But if that were so, how did he get so huge?. Then I realized I could dimly see the plain’s grass through his legs and knew he was but a projection — although I didn’t knew what powers he could have in such a form.

“I must obey no one but myself,” Janela said. “Don’t waste time prattling. If you’ve cast some sort of summoning spell, save your powers. It isn’t working.”

“I cast no spell,” Modin said. “I need none and am using my sorcery merely to ward off your feeble attempts to slay me.”

Janela looked startled, then quickly covered her puzzlement. Then I noticed Modin’s arm was bulky, as if bandaged, and I saw he held his arm very stiffly.

“I am using,” the sorcerer went on, “the real powers of my Warders and my new-found friend and ally Cligus’ own soldiers to hunt you down, with but small aid from my seeing.

“You think you’ve eluded us but actually I’ve let you run and run, letting your blood run hard and fresh. Don’t you know game is sweeter when it’s been tormented before the kill?”

“What happened to your arm, Modin?” I shouted up at him.

“The demon you sent down among us tried his best but was no contest for my powers, Janela Greycloak,” he said, trying to ignore me. “It took less than an hour for me to kill him.”

Now it was both our turns to puzzle before we realized Modin thought the Mithraik-demon was Janela’s creation. For a moment I wondered if it might shake Modin’s arrogance to tell him the demon came from another place, from the
real
Far Kingdoms of Tyrenia. But then I thought better — in spite of his bluster it must have shaken him to think Janela could summon such a creature — even I knew there were few Evocators who could not only call up such a creature but force its bidding. Best we allow him to continue to believe in the greatness of her powers.

Evidently Janela reached the same conclusion because she laughed, mockingly.

“An hour, Modin? How many Wardens did my pet kill before you brought him down?”

“We still have more than enough to deal with your poor party, Janela,” he said. “In a few days I’ll have ripped apart those puny concealment spells and will be on you. Just from their presence I have sensed the area where you and Antero lie, licking your wounds.” Again a perplexing statement.

I noted a change in his behavior from the time we’d met him in Irayas. Then there’d been at least the pretense he was King Gayyath’s most loyal servant and no more. I decided to put in another barb.

“We, Modin? Is that the royal we? Didn’t King Gayyath live through the riots?”

“Antero,” he said, “you were not supposed to be awakened by my presence but to slumber on like the others were commanded. But I see you have a bond more close with Greycloak than I knew. No matter that. It matters but little when I bring her to my bed how many lovers she’s taken.

“Perhaps it’ll even increase the potency, being where an Antero has been.” He smiled.

“You did not answer my question about King Gayyath, wizard,” I said. “Or perhaps you did by not doing so.”

“King Gayyath still sits the throne quite easily,” Modin hissed. “The serfs who dared question his rule have been destroyed. Gayyath’s dynasty will continue, even if I have to obliterate every man and woman in Irayas and repopulate the city from the outermost provinces.”

“Spoken,” I said, “like a true patriarch.”

All that elicited was a glower and I wished that I’d been able to devise a better insult, having determined to use this appearance of Modin’s to our advantage, hopefully to anger him, knowing an enraged man sees poorly through the mist of his own blood-fury.

“What do you hope to gain, Modin?” Janela said. “You pursue us hard, even unto our destination. What bodes it for you if those ahead of us, those in the
real
Far Kingdoms, sense your presence and find it unwelcome?”

“I doubt that,” Modin said. “I’ve heard much about what lay beyond the Eastern Ocean, but when I found it necessary to cross I found nothing but savages and beasts. If there is anything ahead, which I doubt, it will be mere barbaric shamans, practicing by rote what they learned epochs ago. The Old Ones are long, long gone from this plane.

“No, Janela, you are in for disappointment when you realize the real power of sorcery rests in only one place — Vacaan.”

“Is that why your little kingdom-model doesn’t work,” I said. Not waiting for a response: “Is that why the people are crying their woes, willing to rise up against the only rule they’ve known, choosing anarchy over order? Is that why your gods-damned river spells don’t work like they used to? Is that why the power that Gayyath’s father Domas wielded with never a questioner is bursting at the seams?”