My blood ran like ice. I felt I was choking. The man’s body was painted gold. Where had they got this ritual? Had they remembered it, unknowing? Did the corruption still live in them, the legacy of the lost demons who had bred me?
The dance went on, and they were together now, wrapped in a simulation of pleasure, the snake threading in and out between their bodies.
Then the section of the floor sank, the lights were rekindled. The guests stirred, waking, and began to applaud.
“Such artistry!”
“A triumph of beauty!”
The veneer of culture upon their sickly depravity.
I looked at Barak, but he and Ellak were laughing together slyly at it, aroused, but honestly so, not hiding anything under a cloak of words.
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The agent came toward us, receiving congratulations on every hand as he passed.
“Ah, Darros, there is a man I would like you to meet.”
We got up, and followed him from the hot room onto a cool terrace looking out across the town. Little trees in pots swayed in the night breeze. The moon shone high. Already it was late, though lights still burned in Ankurum.
The man was waiting for us, leaning casually on the balustrade. He wore a long robe, black, and without ornament. His hair seemed the only vanity, oiled and curled and very long, that, and the magnificent ruby on his left hand. It matched the glitter in his eyes. A hard, aging, calculating face. I did not trust him much, but neither did he sicken or amuse me.
“May I present to you Darros of Sigko, our famous merchant trader. Raspar of Ankurum.” The agent fussily bowed himself away, apparently undisturbed at being a superfluity in his own house.
The man nodded to Darak and Ellak. He took my hand and kissed it with routine ceremony. He did not ask who I was, or seem particularly interested in me.
“Did you enjoy our friend’s entertainment?” he inquired of Darak. “Quite ingenious I thought it, for all it was so slenderly composed. However. No doubt you would like to discuss business after such a long wait to do so.”
“I should be glad to discuss business.”
“That’s good. I hear you have several wagon loads of metal and weapons, fine stuff from northern workshops. Possibly”-he smiled indulgently-“you are unaware of the extent of my concern in this matter. I am well-known in Ankurum, I assure you. I would naturally not expect you to believe me without some surety, but I can take all your merchandise off your hands at once, without the use of an intermediary.”
“Indeed.”
“Indeed. But before we go any further with this … I have heard a good many tales about you. You are one of the few men to get a caravan from the north to Ankurum without losing half of it. Did you never encounter any trouble?”
“Trouble?”
“Bandits. I’m told they rule the hills. Not to mention the tribes of the plains.”
Darak indicated me casually.
“You see I have my safeguard against that.”
“Ah, yes.”
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“As for bandits,” Darak said, “I know their minds well enough. And I have my guard.”
“Then you enjoy dangerous work, Darros of Sigko?”
Darak said nothing. He looked Raspar of Ankurum between the eyes, and smiled his hard white smile. It was theatrical, but explicit nevertheless.
“I see you do. And they also tell me that you are a great handler of horses. I hear you mastered a wild unbroken one a day ago in the market.”
“I was bred with horses,” Darak said.
“Good. And were you bred with chariots too?”
The stiffness of suspense fell over all of us. This was so much more than idle talk.
Darak said levelly, “Why do you ask?”
“I’ll be blunt,” Raspar said, he who could never quite be that. “I’ve a mind to extend my business concerns to include the breeding of horses. I have my farm already, a few miles outside Ankurum, and from that farm I have got myself a team of three wild blacks. For the sake of my business name, I want some young man-some danger-loving young man who knows his horses as well as he knows his women-to race my team in the Sirkunix. And, naturally, win.”
Darak laughed, short and sharp. It would have been a contemptuous gesture if his eyes had not shone so brightly. Yes, he could not resist. Already he was on the Straight. When he said, “I know chariots,” I was not sure if it were true or not. Then he added: “Also I know a little of the race. Is it the one I hear most of that you want?”
“It is the one.” Raspar smiled. “Of course, there are many other bouts, and many other races-horse alone, and horse and chariot too. But this one is the empress of the races, and also carries the largest prize.” He glanced at Ellak, thoughtful. “Of course, you’ll need to find an archer too. If they haven’t told you, it will have to be a thin small man, a boy if you have one. Tidy enough to keep his feet, light enough that the horses hardly notice him there. Do you have such?”
Darak glanced at me.
“I have one.”
In anger and bewilderment, I stared back at him. I too had heard a little of this race. Ankurum was full of it, and the men had brought it back to the hostelry. The Sagare they called it, and it was death. Six chariots or more, each with a team of three, each one with driver-and archer-whose mission was to disable the other chariots, while under a hail of arrows from his opponent’s men. By the two laws of the Sagare
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you aimed neither at men nor horses, yet, so easy to misjudge-or judge right if it came to that. And beyond all this were the four obstacles of the course which represented the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water, each one passed through six times in the six laps of the race. Not many lived after the Sagare. And Darak held both of us so light he would throw both of us into it at the whim of this man, simply because he could not resist his own madness.
“No,” I said. “Darros.”
Raspar looked at me, lifted his hands, laughed.
“Forgive me. But a woman?’
“She can use a bow better than any man under me. Arid she has the weight, or lack of it.”
“I will need, of course, proof of all this.”
“You shall have it.”
They were talking as if I had no part in it, I, who had the worst part, the victim of a town’s ancient blood lusts, color for the sand of their arena.
“No,” I said again. “Did you not hear me?”
“Your lady is perhaps wise,” Raspar said. “Possibly she has heard every archer rides bare to the waist behind his shield.”
This stupidity angered me even more. I said nothing.
“Well,” Raspar said, “we can discuss it tomorrow. I will send a man for you in the morning. About the fifth hour after dawn? I’ll show you my farm, Darros; it may interest you. And now I must be on my way.” He bowed to me, nodded to Darak, and went off the terrace, across the candlelit room.
Darak turned to Ellak. “Go and get Maggur and the others out of the brothels. We’ll be leaving soon.”
Ellak grinned and went away.
Darak leaned back on the balustrade, began to pry a plant loose from the marble with his restless fingers.
“You realize,” he said, after a moment, “this man will take all our goods, quickly, and for a high price, if we do what he wants.”
“As his tame dogs would do it,” I said.
“Worth it,” Darak said. “We can’t idle here forever, waiting for some northern messenger to come galloping with news of the ambush at the ford. It would take a while, but thwart Raspar and he might well block our sale long enough for that to happen. Besides, the prize is high. Three hundred gold ovals to the charioteer and two hundred to the archer.”
“The archer should have twice that.”
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“The archer would be nothing without the man who holds the team.”
“Find another,” I said. “If you go to die, go alone. I am not a slave-wife to be burned on your pyre.”
“I could have had Kel,” he said.
I turned away, coldness running through me. After a second or so I felt his hand warm on my arm.
“Listen,” he said. “I’ll find another to do it. But you rode with me before, and fought. I would trust my back to you.” I looked up at him and his face was tense. “I don’t believe you can die,” he said to me. He twisted the curls of my hair around his fingers as I stared at him. And after a time I seemed to stare through him, back to the volcano, back to Shullatt’s knife, back to the lightning which struck me at the pillars and threw me, but did not even burn. Another time I might have shut my ears, but not this time. “We’ll go now,” he said.