I woke in the morning. The birds were singing in their cages under the tree boughs. I was in a daze, so far gone in not knowing what to do I no longer bothered with it, and lay abed, watching the sky beyond the windows. Each window was latticed with iron, a memento of Eshkorek and my stately prison there. And, as once in Eshkorek, I faced my death with morbid languor, almost laziness.
All remedies were valueless. Even that duel of sorcery I had planned could end only one way. I would not go to the marsh to get my demise when I could wait more comfortably for it here.
I dozed.
A man, one of the Crimson Guard, brought me food at noon. He was afraid of me, and at some pains to show me there were five of his fellows outside the door. I swung off the couch, and he lumbered backward and unsheathed his sword.
“Be at peace, my friend,” I said. “The teeth of the sorcerer are drawn.”
But he rushed out, and they thrust home bars to lock me up again. If I had felt free to set my Power on those bars, they would have been in a delicate mess.
The food was excellent, and I ate some of it and drank some water, the memory of wine making my belly gripe.
I did not believe that Sorem would have meted out to Malmiranet any of the bitter judgment he had vented on me. All the while I had been reckoning that it was his anger, suspicion of me poured in his ears by others, his jealousy of her, fear of my strength and how I had been before him on that night of fire.
This was the day he was to fast and pray in the Masrimas Temple. No doubt his honorable heart was full of much besides tomorrow’s anointing. All at once it made me sorrowful, the drunkard’s sadness, to recall that brief comradeship of ours. Sorem the one man at last to whom I could trust my back.
I had found a three-stringed eastern viol, along with the other commodities of the room, and had set about the work
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of retiming it, having nothing better that I might put my hand to in that prince’s tower.
Just before midnight, the bars scraped up from their sockets and Sorem came into the chamber.
He was dressed in the yellow robe of an acolyte, the hood of which he now pushed back. He motioned them to shut the door, and when it was done, stood in the lamplight alone with me, staring at my occupation with the viol. I thought, By my soul, has he come to beg my pardon yet again?
“I am not actually here, Vazkor. I am in the Temple, before the Altar of the Kings. You understand?”
I looked up at him and said, “I understand I’m past joking with you.”
He spread his hand, that gesture of his, magnanimous, at a loss.
“I don’t know what I should do with you, and that’s a fact I don’t mean to kill you,” he added. I must have smiled at the absurdity of his rescinded threat under that sword hanging in the sky. He caught his breath, and said, “Don’t laugh at me, Vazkor. You deceived me and you’ve made me nothing in my own eyes. You’ve done enough.”
“Prince,” I said, “I am weary.”
“Listen, then. Tomorrow at dusk, provision will be made for you to leave the city. Your wealth and your portable property shall go with you. I’ll retract no measure of your just earnings.”
“At dusk, then. And so farewell.”
His lip curled. Probably he had seen some actor do it.
“Since you entreat me for news of her, my mother is unharmed, and keeps her apartments with every recompense I can give her.”
“Why should I entreat for news, Prince, when you say I took her only as a means to the Emperor’s Chair? As for recompense, Prince, I should guess she’ll scarcely notice it.”
He crashed his fist down upon the table, so the wine cup spilled its draft of water.
“Tomorrow,” he grated out, “you ride with my cortege to the Temple. The people expect to see you there. You will be guarded, and there will also be priests in case you should try sorcery. After the ceremony, you’ll wait till sunfall, when you Will be escorted from Bar-Ibithni.”
“Very well,” I said. “What’s one day more or less?”
“You speak as if the world will end tomorrow,” he said
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acidly. “I assure you it won’t, despite any machinations of yours.”
The lamp was burning low, the room nearly in darkness. He suddenly shivered, then came over to me and set his hand on my shoulder.
“Vazkor,” he said very softly, “this enmity is ridiculous. If you will swear to me, by your own gods, that you have never plotted against me-”
I met his eye, and I said, “I am finished with your kingdom, Sorem. And I have no gods. Do as you wish.”
His eyes blurred and his hand gripped my shoulder as if he could not stand without it, and then he walked away. But I had seen what I had been too blind to see before-I think perhaps because I had not wanted to.
“I will grieve for this for many years,” he said, “that you would not swear and cleanse yourself of suspicion.”
Then he rapped on the door and they let him out.
I tightened the last peg of the viol. Somewhere nightingales sang, but it is possible to tire even of nightingales.
Part IV
The Cloud
1
The flies came with the morning. I woke, and the air of my chamber buzzed with them. They flickered across the panes of the windows inside the lattice and crawled along the table-ten flies, or twelve, or more; it was hard to be certain, for they were forever in motion. Their noise and agitation disturbed me, so I turned slayer of flies till the rooms were quiet again.
A girl brought me a Masrian breakfast, fruit stewed in honey, sugarbread, and similar stuff. She did not seem afraid of me as my male guard had been; perhaps she did not know who I was. Then, as she set down the silver platters, she saw the corpses of the flies and cried out.
“What is it?” I said. I felt sorry for her; I seemed to see only decaying bones where she stood, emblem of approaching death. The whole city had such a look for me that day.
“The flies-” she said, “everywhere. In the Horse Market the herds are mad with flies. One woke me at sunrise, crawling hi my ear.”
“The summer heat, no doubt,” I said, but she put her hand to her lips and said, “The blind priest who begs by Winged Horse Gate-he said it is the god of the Hessek slaves, the dark one they call Shepherd of Swarms. His vengeance-a plague of flies.”
“Well, there could be worse things,” I said. “See, I’ve killed them.”
I could eat nothing when she had gone.
The bells were ringing in the Palm Quarter. The sun shone bright as a dagger on this day of coronation.
An hour later they brought my ceremonial robes, creamcolored linen embroidered with gold and silver, the kilt diago-
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nally fringed with indigo, the boots of white bull hide studded with red bronze. There was a heavy collar of gold and alcum set with blue gems, and the border of the looped cloak of scarlet silk depicted a whole boar hunt, done in silver, green, and blue thread. Nothing had been omitted, even the theatrical sword with its soft golden blade and hilt warted with pearls. I was to be shown favor before the people, Sorem’s brother, the sorcerer. He did not lack cunning in his own way. What tale did he mean to give them to account for my abrupt departure tonight? Not that he would need to give it. Not now.
The invisible sword above the city would fall today.
I felt as sickly numb and as deadly indifferent as only a man can who is going to his execution.
Bales of crimson silk had been set down all along the tracks and the roads that led to the great southern Masrimas Temple. They bloomed like a river of poppies before us; after we had passed they were in rags from the booted feet, the wheels, and the trampling of horses, but still the people ran to them, and ripped the rags into smaller rags, and bore them away as trophies of this imperial moment. Even before we got outside the gate, I could hear the cheering and cries of the crowd. They had filled the groves, hanging in the trees to watch. Men had even climbed the ancient cedar that leaned above the secretive well. As the tracks bore around and descended into the terrace streets, the throng stood in a crush so thick they could barely move their arms. They gaped and shouted as if we were their sustenance, a vicarious show that made them all kings for a day.