Raspar raised the cup, and watched us go with slightly narrowed eyes, out into the falling night.
Ten torchbearers, their brands flaring dull gold, the chariot, drawn no longer by Raspar’s blacks, but by three ebony plodders dressed up to look the same, and escorting black horses for Darak’s men.
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“Tonight,” he said to me, “I’ll get Ellak’s brawling fools from the Warden’s dungeons-as a Victor’s boon.”
We were in the chariot, but it no longer had the feel of life to it. Its soul was gone, or asleep. Slowly we wound down the streets to other broader streets, and there linked with other torches and colored lanterns, and the procession of Victors on their mounts. In this glimmering, limping way, we coiled like a serpent, upward toward the fortress-house of the Warden.
More and more people, milling into the open squares before the mansion, and into the gardens at its back.
The laughter and shouts went through my body and brain like knives. I heard them roar for Darak, and the cries, “The tribal-woman!”
It was empty. No longer was I a god in that place.
There were ten pillars at the Warden’s portico, and ten more inside, all marble, gilded at the capitals and bases, and inlaid with blue mosaic. There was a great sense of bright light, smoke, movement, and twanging music from little harps. We reached an upper-story room, enormous, running the length of the whole mansion, open at two ends, where massive pillared balconies leaned out, one over the squares, the other over the gardens. The room was golden-all gold. There were frescoes and paintings on floor and ceiling, but I do not remember them; their figures seemed all mixed in with the people in the room. Beyond the balcony hung the dark blue night, split occasionally by pale blue lightning, and below, a sea of colored lamps, torches, and roasting fires.
There are many victors in the Games at Ankurum; boxers, acrobats, fighters, but the places at the high table, where the Warden sits, go to the winners of the horse races, the chariot races, and the Sagare. The plates are enamel and gold, the cups black jasper set with semiprecious stones. What you eat off is yours to keep, and women in transparent gauze come by from time to time and lay little trinkets at your elbowgold knives and pins-all useless toys, but pretty enough.
Darak was seated at the Warden’s right hand-the place of highest honor. By his side was a beautiful woman with pure golden hair that seemed natural though one could not be sure of such things in Ankurum. On the Warden’s left sat Gillan of Soils in his white, grinning to himself now and again, possibly at the irony of his position. I, as the archer who had taken the classic shot, sat beside Gillan, and Gillan was very wary of me, overgracious in a bluff, rough way, and
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silent for the rest of the while. Other charioteers and racers, and I suppose Gillan’s archer, ranged down the table, interspersed with the beauties of the Warden’s court. I do not remember any of them. To be courteous and appear to eat, while eating as little as possible, was preoccupation enough. I felt ill throughout the courses and was uncertain of the reason. The hall seemed burning and miasmic.
We sat along one side of the table only, and below us the other tables stretched out, noisier and less formal than ours. Barak’s men, the few he had brought with him, were in among that throng, guzzling and gnawing. I hoped vaguely there would be no trouble, for the Warden’s guard, as was usual enough at such a function, were arranged thickly around the walls, particularly at the Warden’s back. I watched his fleshy ringed hands neatly skewering his food. The pains began in my stomach.
/ must leave this place. The thought came sudden and icecold. At once I saw the room as though it had been frozen, paler, almost transparent. I forgot the dictates of etiquette. I was about to get up and sayI was not certain, perhaps I would simply run down among the tables to the door. But the Warden’s jeweled hand went up, a lordly flick, a horn sounded, and he rose. Comparative silence fell. He was about to toast the Victors. Impaled by the moment, I sat still and did not move. A sea of faces, nodding a little, touched gold by light, smiling, laughing, harmonious. The Warden lifting his silver cup again and again as the Speaker cried out the Victors’ names and towns, and the horn echoed him, and the shouts and cheers. And then the trained voice with its slight overemphasis, “Victor of the Sagare: Darros of Sigko.”
The great roar and clapping, the Warden bending smiling toward Darak. And then that fleshy hand, waving the sound gently down.
Still standing, the Warden lowered his cup to the table.
“Darros of Sigko,” he repeated, his rich voice carrying. “We know him well, do we not? The courageous merchant who brought his caravan safe to Ankurum, a feat unparalled -and then rode to win the empress of our races, the Sagare.” Cheers beat up like birds, and gently again he waved them down. Smiling still, he leaned out toward the tables now. “And one more thing our Darros had done. He has deceived us all.” The silence grew closer. The Warden laughed a little. “The Victor of our Sagare is, in fact, nothing more than a thief, a murderer, and a bandit-Darak, the
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gold-fisher, the scum of the northern hills.” He turned to Darak and nodded. “Your little game is over, charioteer.”
The guards started forward from the walls behind us, ten men straight toward Darak. There was uproar below now, and some women were screaming. We had brought no weapons into the hall with us; it was not etiquette to do so. I could not seem to move. I saw Darak standing, leaning back against the table, grinning at the ten who had come to take him. I am not sure how I saw, for Gillan and the Warden were between us. I saw Darak’s hand reach back onto the table and pick up one of those toy golden knives they had given us-useless, it would bend, not bite-yet one of the guard saw that movement. The iron guard-sword licked out and forward. I heard Darak gasp. His hands fell to his sides. He looked at the man, almost lazily, his mouth still curved, not knowing quite yet that he was dead. Two guards caught him between them as he fell, hoisted him, and began to carry him out. They had been very quick, no blood even spilled on this golden table. Two of them had my arms, had had them, I realized now, since the Warden first spoke his accusation. They were pulling me up and away with them. I think they had put something in my cup, in Darak’s too; my legs were like heavy iron as they dragged me. And Darak’s men had been so quickly subdued in the body of the hall. Yet they had not kept it so tidy there. Ellak and another man lay dead. One guard was dying, several bloody. Women’s white faces stared at us as we passed, like a funeral procession, following Darak’s corpse.
His head hung back, the face very still, his mouth firmly closed, solemn now in death. His scarlet cloak trailed behind him.
Scarlet for the vine. Little doll-goddess, you took your offering after all, then-death for death, little goddess of the scarlet vine.
10
“Karrakaz!” I screamed down the black places of the mountain. “Karrakaz, et So! Et So-Sestorra!”
A hand clamped my mouth. I was shaken from one dark to another. Maggur’s eyes, red-shot in the gloom.
“Ssh, Imma, who do you call out to?”
Strange, he did not know the old tongue, yet he seemed to
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know what I had said. I lay quiet on the rank filthy straw of the prison room.
“What time is it, Maggur? How long now?”
He shook his head. “Sun looks low from the grating. Near sunset,”
There were other men in the stone chamber-all they had caught from the hostelry. Those that had been brought here before the feast of Victors, after their brothel brawl, we neither saw nor had any word of.
We had been here two days now, and to begin with they had laughed and jibed at the guard outside, throwing out bones at them front the door hole. They had told stories: “Yes, Slak’s lot got away, took a few pieces of these pigs’ hide with ’em, too.” Now their spirit was burned out in the dank black hole, stinking with their own excrement and fear. We were all to be hanged-publicly. And we were to go to it three a day. You were not sure when they would come for you, or who they would pick. The first time the three had gone with a salute and a swagger. Men climbed up to the grating high in the wall and saw them dangle in the square. The second time it was less bold, that going out. That second day, too, there had been a fourth man strung up. They had hung Barak’s dead body with the rest.