Denades and Bailgar had routed out the three thousand in the suburbs. The menace had gone suddenly from them, the soldiers would tell you; as if under a spell, they dropped their weapons and offered themselves to the shafts of crossbows and the blades of longswords. Like rats that had been poisoned. Denades returned with dawn to Pillar Hill to report his success, for the damage was not vast southward, only an inn or two burned, which he dismissed as nothing. In the Palm Quarter the tale was much the same. The slaves’ uprising had been contained in the Fountain Garden, due to the grisly exercises carried out there by the Hesseks on the bodies of the Emperor’s jerd. Aimless, and without any leadership, the slaves had abandoned themselves to the wild orgiastic dream of the slave, and gloried in the mutilation of this symbol of their slavery, nine hundred and sixty Imperial Guards. Dushum’s men had witnessed a feast of blood, of vampires and ghouls, and not one slave in the park was spared.
Of other Hesseks wandering on the terraces, most were brought down on sight. A handful fled to their boats, surprising the jerdiers by their speed and will to survive, for the majority made no protest at retribution.
Northward, Ustorth had mastered the docks and port swiftly, reorganized its police, and commenced cutting the escape path of the Hesseks and forcing them back upon the swords of Sorem’s men. He, too, found Bit-Hessee, however,
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apt to perish. By dawn he had started on the second task, to set chaos in order. Having argued for the sacrifice of certain portions of Bar-Ibithni to add weight to Sorem’s deeds, he had been well prepared. Ustorth had forseen the wreck, and made plans for alleviating it before it even occurred.
Only Bailgar’s Shields sent no word, till a savage streamer in the west spoke for them. Now it was the Rat-Hole’s season of fire, for Bailgar cauterized the wound of Bit-Hessee as he had proposed.
The snarling glare thinned and swelled alternately till the rain and the swamp licked it from the sky.
Nor had Bailgar’s Shields been idle elsewhere. There was something he and I had settled on the day before, that clearly had been effected. A gold cash or two had insured that as we rode back through the Market of the World, with half a jerd behind us, voices began to extol Sorem, yelling his name and authorizing for him the favor of their god. Shortly the whole wretched mob of homeless, shocked, and sick gathered there began to echo these paid praises with weak hysteria. In the Palm Quarter itself, where small harm of any sort had come save to the hapless Imperial jerd, the praise was louder and more definite.
Denades rode out to meet us below Pillar Hill.
“Listen,” he said, grinning through his soot. “I wonder if the Emperor hears it.”
“I wonder if Hragon-Dat hears anything,” I said. “What do we hear of him?”
“A pretty story,” said Denades. “Two or three survivors of the Imperial jerd got back to the Crimson Palace, cowards, no doubt, who spurred their horses at the first rustle of the bushes in Fountain Garden. Learning of the situation, the Emperor instructed his two remaining battalions to the defense of the Heavenly City. Every Hessek slave within the walls, whether inclined to revolt or not, was killed. Following that courageous act, his army has manned the watchtowers and there they have taken thenease for the past two or three hours, letting the city stew in its own blood and fire.”
“I trust, jerdat,” I said, “you’ve found men to spread this saga of the Emperor’s lionheartedness?”
Denades nodded. “By Masrimas, I have. Oh, but there’s also a saga concerning you, sir.”
“What?”
“Sorcery,” he said, shrugging. He was still not sure, this
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Denades, what to make of me. “A thousand or more Hessek rats slain with lightning, a magician-priest gone mad; something of this sort.”
“And the Emperor’s jerds,” I said, “have they got wind of that?”
“You may count on it.”
Sorem had sat his horse beside me all this while, silent, looking away along the sloping terrace streets and between the towers toward that far outline, almost lost in the smoky morning air, of the Heavenly City. He was as filthy and dishelveled as any of us, but no less for that. From the distance at which the vociferous crowds had seen him and even now saw him, he looked only stern and set of purpose. To me, and perhaps to me alone, he looked afraid. Not of any battle or any man, but of circumstances, of this crucial moment which must be grasped before it crumbled. My thoughts had returned to Lion’s Field, where he had wielded Power, a power albeit not a quarter of the force of mine, learned in some priests’ mystery. I had scarcely considered it after; it had not seemed to fit with Sorem. It had become, in fact, strangely difficult to recall him as anything more than an adjunct to this drama, of which, surely, he was the hero.
Then he was turning to me, saying, “Half my jerd left to bring order to the Commercial City, but half here and Denades’ men. We can count on Dushum’s thousand, too, if they are done chasing rats. That should be enough.” He spoke as a man speaks to get the shape of things clear in his mind, but to me it was as if he cried out, “Now tell me what I must do.”
5
We took the Heavenly City, calmly, as I had anticipated, and without a fight of any kind.
The people were in uproar by now, piled up as high as the groves beneath the Imperial Walls, singing out the name of Sorem like a war-cry. For the aristocracy, they had their own code. Their messages came more subtly, not written but in the mouths of servants: “My master, such and such, applauds
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you, prince, as the savior of the city,” and “My master, so and so, pledges his personal house guard, one hundred men, should you have any pressing need of them.”
Also, I had been mistaken to suppose the Emperor’s two surviving jerds had felt no embarrassment at their confinement. To guard one king and his household, ignoring the blazing confusion below, had got them to a state of shivering, dismal fury. They were a pack of boneless fools, who had lived soft for years on the hog’s back. The loss of their brother jerd and the acid, dangerous hate of the Masrian people reduced them to mere jellies. Alarmed at the abuse and threats outside, and sighting some two thousand and five hundred jerdiers with Sorem riding at their head, a group of guards had opened the huge gate, and presently all were on their knees to him. They denied their part, or lack of it. They spit upon the Emperor’s name. Several wept. They were but too glad to hand over to Sorem, a prince of the pure bloodline of the Hragons, the single thing they had been detailed to protect.
I had come in like a thief under the wall, previously. Now I rode through those confections I had only glimpsed in the dark. It was a “city” of gardens, of flowering trees and pavilions. After the smoking wreckage below, it struck on me oddly to see the motionless cochineal flamingos in the shallows of the rain-pitted silver lake, the bending cascades of willows, the toy buildings with their domes of enamelwork polished by water. Only the wild beasts were growling ominously somewhere, scenting dead human meat, and the birds, hung from the boughs in tiny cages, had no melody to offer an uncertain world.
The Crimson Palace stands at the center of the Heavenly City. It resembles a temple to the god, with its piled flights of pink Seemase marble, its great wine-red columns, stouter at their heads than at their bases, its cornices of gold lace, and its windows of bright fire. An avenue of winged horses with the faces and hair of beautiful women, each ten-foot creature a huge lamp of segmented alabaster that glowed at night from the burning torches within, led to the door. Before this mosaic door, which was wide enough to admit twenty riders abreast, was a patch of red blood, nearly as wide, a memory of Old Hessek after all, memento of dead slaves, whose bodies had already lined some pit.
Basnurmon had fled; no surprise in that. He had seen the
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wind change and he was wise in his villainy. The mother, that priest-princess Hragon-Dat had wed in place of Malmiranet, had also gone, with a carriage full of gems and gewgaws.
The Emperor, however, had remained.
He sat in a lower room with two of Ms ten-year-old fancy boys crouched by him, both plainly near witless with terror.