I appeased my hunger and my wrath with a murmuring, four-limbed, twenty-fingered, double-mouthed goddess of smoky desire, while the window reddened and dissolved in night.
My duet of lovers left me at sunrise. Later, the barber came back with his pots and blades. I looked at the razors, set out and gleaming, and I knew I should not be robbing him of them. The fight was done and no blows struck. The panther was safely locked again in his tasteful cage-if he had ever been out of it.
Erran visited me an hour before noon.
He glanced about, unmasked, smiling as ever, and indicated my untouched breakfast.
“No appetite, Vazkor? I’m sorry to note that.”
I said, “The last meal I ate here had a curious effect on my digestion. I fell asleep and dreamed that five senile old men were probing my body with their unwashed fingers. And when I inquired what they were at, these same perfidious old men declared that you, my lord, had sent them.”
Erran’s smile broadened.
“You are learning to be elegant,” he said. “How entertaining. To make a neat sentence one must control one’s anger. I see you have done so. However, I assure you the food hereafter will be pure.”
“I can forego eating with no trouble,” I said. “I have always needed little. A legacy of my sorcerer father, perhaps.”
“Perhaps. Certainly you are not quite human, my Vazkor. Though human enough, I surmise, to enjoy the other fare. Did the girls entertain you?”
“Ask them. No doubt they also had your leave to study me.”
“That test was rather one for you to set yourself. I want your answer, you see. Do you wish to live well with me, or ill? Agree to my terms, and you can stride about my holding like a free man, though with a bronze or two to guard your
144
person from the other princes of Eshkorek, and also, I must admit, to dissuade you, should you unwisely suffer an urge to leave my court There will be food and fine drink, women in plenty, boys if you’ve a notion for them. You shall break horses for me, the fiery stallions of the Eshkorek valleys. Not mean work for a strong tribal brave. Your rank will be of the bronze, but you shall sit in my hall for your meat. If you are obedient, you may rise to the silver.”
“You do not need a breaker of horses,” I said.
He looked at me.
“What, then, do I need?”
“A pawn for whatever power-game you are mindful to play.” I let him savor that, then I said, “So, my lord. I am your pawn.”
His shrewd blond weasel’s eyes ran over me.
“Your surrender is more swift than I had hoped for. I thought after all you would require some lessoning.”
“I have no better existence to look forward to than this you offer. The day I find one, you shall know of it.”
“Oh, yes, my warrior. I shall know, and never think I shan’t.” He walked to the door, turned, and beckoned me to follow. “You can come and go as you want,” he said, “now that you are in my service.”
When I went up to him, he showed me a silver ring and the slot in the door that it fitted (this being the sort of key they used most often in the cities), then put the ring into my hand.
Accordingly, the son of Vazkor and of the goddess-woman Uastis became the horse-breaker of Erran, leopard prince of the yellow city.
As I had told him, I guessed eventually I should be more than that. I should be his pawn in his game of Castles. Maybe I had some inchoate purpose, some forethought that when he began to use me, I should, in being used, use him, and once ambition and power were close enough, I would slough my mentor and carve for myself. Maybe.
But in truth, I think I was only like the warrior in the antique story the Moi tell, who straying in the cave of the dragon, and finding it too large to slay, lies down before it on the pile of gold, and swears fealty till the moon goes out.
5
The city months were longer than those of the tribal calendar, and possessed of more elegant names. In the early days of the season they called White Mistress, the first of the low mountain snows covered Eshkorek, turning the fulvous city and yellow terrain to leaden white.
All that winter I was a bronze-mask, Erran’s bond soldier and horseman. I perceived that if I had chosen to serve one of the three princes, Erran should have been my choice. For, by the standards of the city, he was rich in many things: slaves, grainfields, horses, and also herds, driven to pasture on the lower slopes all summer, and directed home in autumn. Even their winter feed he had provided for, along with food for his strongholds in Eshkorek. It was not astounding that angry though the princes were at the capture of their prize, myself, they held their wrath in check. More often than not they would need to deal with the leopard during the cold months. Though there were constant clashes between the soldiery of this or that lord, and no man went abroad by night without a goodly company and some measure of sharp steel, Nemarl and Kortis never spoke rough to Erran.
The ancient order was on the wane, this much was sure. Kortis and Nemarl clung to thentraditions, wore their phoenix-faces, spoke of lost greatness, and ate behind screens; Erran the Leopard spoke of the present, which mare was to bear the stallion, which field must lie fallow, which soldier should advance his rank, and every dusk his captains feasted and drank wine in the wide palace hall, among the crimson candles and the half-nude serving wenches.
Most days I would be in the horse-pack. There Was a bronze-mask equerry, an alien from So-Ess-part of the fivecity army that attacked Eshkorek, he had been snared in the fighting, but he was well used to bondage now, and took a
145
146
pride in Erran’s fine stables. This fellow taught me more about horses in a month than I had reckoned to learn, having been on and off them since I could walk. He was known as Blue-Sleeve. Erran, having him wear the blue color of So-Ess, had spiced the dubious privilege with an appropriate title. Blue-Sleeve appeared to accept this pleasantry, indeed, he gave no other name to those who asked.
The horse-park also provided Erran and his court with game and hunting. It had been some long-dead noble’s retreat at the edge of Eshkorek. Erran got it by a trick, and held it currently by weight of numbers. Most of the mansions in this far-flung quarter had missed the cannon blasts and the ensuing sacks, when firstly Purple Valley and next the Alliance of White Desert raped the city, before drawing off to quarrel among themselves.
When I was not with the horses, there were games of dice and chance, or the more cunning variety that entailed checkered boards and pieces of onyx, ivory, and green jade. Books, too, were to be had, bound in fine leather for the lower orders, though the golds stuck their masks into volumes of yellow metal, crusted with gems.
My first book, I thought, might be some trouble to me. I had learned only the crude tribal script, but with my occult gift for the city tongue, I gambled I should master their writing, too. Yet I put it off, only fingering the books, till I saw a man smiling (he was masked, you learned to tell a facial action by the movement of the eyes), and I lifted up the book and opened it, and found I could read, clear as day, what was put down there. I turned about with it, and read out to the sneering bronze a line or two, as it took my fancy. Only later, I wondered. It seemed to me these things were too marvelous. But, having no control over them, I adapted myself once more to my abilities, putting questions and doubts aside, as I had with my new life.
I learned to play music, too, at Eshkorek, and discovered I had some ear for it. Their songs were strange, the melody could go where you did not look for it, yet somehow the effect was pleasing. The girl who taught me this skill taught me other things also. Sometimes, looking at me under her lids, she would fashion chords on the silver-stringed neck of some instrument, winding up the bone pegs, then striking her narrow fingers over the sound box as a cat scratches at a ray of
147
sunlight, to produce a high-pitched, delicate, silver trembling note that was like the music she herself would make in bed. I had much choice in girls that winter, but her I liked very well. Her name meant Sparrow, and she had a little mauve mark on her left breast, like a butterfly.