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Few men, however cynical by day, yearn to incur such postmortem bane. Besides, she was royal, more royal than he, being of the direct Hragon line. He did not dare insult her corpse before the city. So he gave her body to the priests, those men who at her previous orders had sealed me up in her own golden box, and who now placed her in the outer chamber. It occurred to me months after, one sleepless night in fact by the steel-blue breakers of a far shore, that that second entrance of priests may have roused me, that extra vital burst of air when the outer door was opened, leaking hi through the paint-porous wall that divided her resting place from mine. I had been twenty-six or twenty-seven days in a stupor. Who knows? The whole of this world, by its perversity, nourishes one thing upon the downfall of another, but I do not like to believe her death brought life to me.
Basnurmon, in his way, set Bar-Ibithni on its feet. Indeed, I had seen few scars, as I well recalled. Quick-healing wonder of a city, as if the sorcerer had touched it with his hands. For the rest, Sorem’s rebel comrades were courteously offered suicide, Masrian honor and the sword in private, or public disgrace. Only tough Bailgar and five of his Shield captains refused this gloss, daring Basnurmon to show his true colors, and were subsequently tortured for a list of nonexistent crimes, and finally hanged before Winged Horse Gate on the west side of the wall. Denades escaped to Tinsen, so it was said. He had some lover, a rich citizen, who saw to matters. The jerds themselves turned, as any wheel must in the prevailing wind, and swore allegiance to Basnurmon.
Nasmet was imprisoned one day, seduced her jailer, and fled south, where tattle would have it she became a bandit’s doxy in a fort above a lake there, and drove the devil to drown himself in its waters from despair at her loving demands. Isep, meanwhile, hearing of Malmiranet’s death, pried open the lattice of her tower window and threw herself out upon the paving sixty feet below. She did not die at once, and there were tales of this, too, of certain activities among the guards, who disliked her sexual preference. If any of these tales were true, no doubt her curse at least clings firm to the jerds of the Crimson Palace.
Thus they ended, those people, among whom I had moved: the loved, the loving, and the scarcely known. Masrian gossip had always been a marvel, and I had long ago ceased to wonder at its breadth and swiftness. As for its cruelty, its accuracy, they did not wound me then.
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Concerning Gyest’s people, none had died of the flies or of Yellow Mantle. It was as if their god preserved them, or else their sheer trust in immunity made them immune. At length, some of the wagons departed. Gyest and his half-brothers (half since only the mother was clearly known, in accordance with their custom) had remained. Waiting for me, he said, for he had understood I should come, as mundanely as a man with aching joints understands the rain is near. He believed his fate had elected him my helper. I did not even experience shame, but thanked him, and forgot.
That night, in some moment of sleep, I dreamed of Sorem in his own place of death, some princely dome. I regarded his face through the sun-hole, graven as an image, not unlike my own.
Even in the dream, I thought, There is my life, and no more to come.
But the sun rose. It was another day.
2
It was our third day in the Wilderness before I glimpsed our first bandit.
He came bumping along from the south, out of a low line of rock hills there, on the back of a mangy shaggy black pony, and with five of his court bumping after. I saw, with a memory of old nerves, now anesthetized, that they were of obscure Hessek ancestry, though not Bit-Hessian stock, pale skinned and with a clotted wool of hair hanging around them to their backsides, hair which also, in un-Hessek style, sprouted in a scrubby pasture on their entire bodies, as their haphazard garments revealed. I had the impression, that their forebears had sometime mated with some indigenous hairy animal of the wild and here was the result. Still, they were in cheery mood, the leader clapping me on the shoulder as he went by, and yelling-actually in the Sri tongue, though with atrocious accent-for the wagon master.
Gyest, Jebbo, and Ossif emerged, and handed him a crock of meal and a jar of koois. The bandit demanded nothing else, seemed pleased, nodded and bowed repeatedly, and shook Gyest’s hand. Ossif’s white dog, well trained, barked
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and wagged its tail. Then Jebbo’s woman’s daughter came up with fresh firewood for the morning hearth.
Here’s trouble, I thought, for the girl was the child of the wagons, a lissome fourteen, and deer eyed to boot. Sure enough the bandit leader trotted over to her-they appeared hardly ever to get off their horses, save to obey nature in one way or another-lifted her one armed, and was about to nuzzle her, when the girl smilingly produced a little green snake from the fellow’s mouth. I had already learned that Sri women were also adept conjurers, and the little snake was none other than the girl’s pet, but it took the bandit by surprise. He shouted with uneasy laughter, and put her gingerly on the ground. When she slipped the snake between her breasts, his face was a study. The Wilder-men fear serpents, and have never discovered which kinds do no harm. He ordered his men to carry her wood for her, bowed and smiled to Gyest, and soon all six rode off again.
After this, visitations came regularly, with variations.
On the eighth day, ten bandit men took another jar of koois and some dried meat and a bronze chain, which they would melt and re-forge as a spear-head. When they had gone, Jebbo’s woman found two of her bracelets missing. She went off muttering, and that night I saw a green fire burning behind their wagon. Next day one of the bandits caught up to us and returned the bracelets, saying that his comrade, not he naturally, had stolen them, and begging us to release him from the spell that had given him such nightmares. Jebbo’s woman looked smug, though if it was her sending or just the bandit’s superstition I was unsure.
On the nineteenth day, the right foremost wheel of the sister wagon came loose. We made an early camp at one of the rare watering places of the desert. Before dusk, another group of bandits had arrived, exacted their little tribute, bartered new rivets for the wheel, helped fix it, then stayed to share supper, even providing most of their own nourishment from a fat pony-skin of tasteless gummy drink. This horrible substance, which they ferment from rock grasses and probably less happy ingredients, is highly potent. Since they were generous in passing it around, Ossif and Jebbo were soon as drunk as they were, while I, who swallowed a couple of mouthfuls, felt somewhat better than I had. In the end the bandits rolled back on their horses, having taken no advantage of the celebration, and I, for my part, somehow ended in a copse of fig trees, lying over Jebbo’s woman’s daughter. The pleasure
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brought no burden, not being spoken of after either for good or ill. She was knowing for her years, that I remember, but later on we had to find the snake, which had slipped away during our dialogue. When she got it back she covered it with feverish kisses, presumably so I should be cognizant of my place in her world.
Our guests that night had questioned if we would seek the camp of Darg Sih. This miscreant, apparently a robber-overlord of the region hereabouts, had organized, in the grand manner, a tiger hunt to catch a beast that had been eating his horses-thieved in the first instance. In fact, Sri do not hunt as other men. They mesmerize their prey, as the serpent often does, by means of gesture and a curious vocal whining, then kill quickly while the animal is tranced. I have never seen it done, and speak from hearsay among bandits and Sri alike. Also they eat meat rarely, for their creed resists slaughter of any kind except when unavoidable. Still, I never once saw a man of them set out for game and come back empty-handed, and my own offers of hunting for the pot they politely put aside.
In the morning, Gyest told me we should be stopping a night or so at Darg Sih’s camp, not to slay tigers, but to ask use of his smithy, the best in the Wilderness. The bandit clans have become canny at smithing, and can turn anything to anything from long practice. I had already seen a couple of murky but credible alcum knives brewed up from their forges.