A Sword for a Dragon (18 page)

“What shall I do?” he begged.

Haruma looked at him with pity. Poor man, his nerves were disintegrating under the pressures. It had been coming for years, but the crisis had grown to such proportions that it was overwhelming him. Lopitoli knew this well and was playing to it. She knew her son’s weaknesses.

“You must put aside your mother’s plotting. If you catch Zanizaru, then dispose of him. You warned him after the last attempt, it is time the crocodiles feasted on Zanizaru. Lopitoli can be left where she is; without Zanizaru she has no heir to work with, not for a few years, until one of your younger cousins grows to maturity. In that time, you can prepare to deal with Lopitoli. At the moment, she is still too powerful.”

“Bah! You say ignore her, but she is ignored at great peril. I know what she is capable of. There are so many tasteless poisons, including slow ones that take effect only after a day or more. My tasters are no good against those, and Lopitoli knows them all. Remember how my father died, he set himself against her, and she killed him. Then she killed my uncles and my brothers and Cousin Aloop. And you say ignore her?”

Haruma sighed. “Her position is not as strong as it was, and you have the proof of Zanizaru’s rebellion. With a civil war on our hands, this is the very worst time for a dowager empress to attempt such a thing. You have the political advantage. The stekirs will all follow you; she has isolated herself.”

“Oh where is Zettila? Why is she not here?”

Haruma frowned. “Zettila plays her own game, you know that. She is not necessarily to be trusted.”

His face grew pinched with pique.

“I trust her, Aunt. She is precious to me.”

“Just be careful, my lord, that is all I say.” Haruma knew that Zettila’s extremism as a daughter of Gingo-La had grown strong. Did the priestesses of Gingo-La really have the best interests of the emperor at heart?

“My mother is the real threat!”

“You must concentrate on the enemy in Dzu, my lord. They are more dangerous to you than anything else.”

“They can have the West. They can do what they like as long as I hold the city and the East.”

“But you are King of Ajmer.”

“Bah! Nothing there but sand and flies. I will make them a gift of Ajmer.”

“But, my lord, why do you assume that they must win? General Hektor defeated them at Salpalangum.”

“Enough!” It was inadmissible that Hektor had won a battle. The emperor had decided the battle was to be lost, he had fled and his army had been beaten and fled as well. It was not possible that that same battle could then have been a victory, for the Argonathi troops.

“My lord, I am just your foolish old Aunt Haruma. I want only what is best.”

“You did not use to want anything, I preferred it that way.”

“My lord, why will you not even listen to the things that General Hektor has discovered from questioning his captives?”

“It will be lies, woman. Don’t you see that this is all a trick, a way to trick me out of what will be left to me. The Argonathi think they can take the East while the Sephisti take the West. They think they can leave me with nothing! But I see through their plot. They will not succeed.”

Banwi’s voice rose an octave.

“General Hektor marches on Dzu. He plans to be there before the enemy can mobilize to meet him.”

“He will be taken and devoured by the serpent. I have seen this in my dreams.”

Haruma rolled her eyes. How could the Argonathi general seize the empire if he was to be devoured by the serpent? Her nephew’s wits are addled.

“My lord, your dreams should be heard by the soothsayer, why do you not go to her now?”

“She is an agent.”

“Myela an agent? Of whom, lord? I have known her all my life, and she is trustworthy.”

“My dream showed me that the foreigners will be destroyed. I will strike a bargain with the Sephisti. They can have the West, and I will hold the East.”

Haruma felt despair grip her heart. How had Banwi wedded himself to this absurd conception?

There was a jingle at the door. A servant popped his head in and whispered to her. She nodded wearily.

“My lord, your cousin is here.”

Banwi straightened up with a smile.

Princess Zettila fluttered in, and she was laughing.

“Oh, my lord, that witch was a sight. When the doors were opened and she walked into the empty room, I thought she was going to turn the monstekirs into dogs for a moment. I watched from the peephole in the wall by the secret panel. She whirled and screeched and uttered a thousand curses against your name.”

Banwi scowled. “Damn the witch! I will not see her. They plan to depose me and take my throne, I will not be fooled so easily.”

Haruma sighed. Banwi was dooming himself. The threat of Sephis was real, and Banwi was unable to face the truth. Haruma wondered if she dared to approach the witch herself. Someone had to.

By nightfall the following day, Ribela’s messenger returned from General Hektor’s army one hundred miles to the north.

Lagdalen received a summons to the balcony.

She found Ribela and a dirty-looking sea gull that was still getting its breath back after beating downriver against the wind all afternoon.

“There is news?” she said, at once hopeful.

Ribela looked at her unsympathetically.

“There is news, for you especially.”

Lagdalen’s heart thumped a little louder in her chest at that. What did she mean? Was Hollein alright? Did he still live? Had he been wounded?

Ribela soured at the expression on the girl’s face. She wondered sometimes what Lessis had seen in this girl. At times she seemed most unsuited for the life of the Office of Unusual Insight.

“General Hektor is marching to Dzu at once. The enemy forces are disorganized and will remain so for days. By then he will be at Dzu, where we shall meet him and together destroy whatever this unholy thing is that the Masters have brought into existence there.”

Lagdalen nodded attentively and took slow breaths to calm her racing heart. It was important to show no emotion, or else Ribela might not even pass on any news about Hollein. Lagdalen understood how Ribela despised human emotions.

Ribela stared at her for a long second, then relented.

“And a certain Captain Kesepton is well and unharmed. General Hektor made a point of adding this information. Considering that I never told him that you were accompanying me, the general seems very well informed, don’t you think?”

Lagdalen flushed at the accusation.

“My lady, I have made no attempt to communicate with him.”

Ribela smiled slightly.

“I don’t doubt that, my dear, you understand the need for secrecy. But some chatterboxes in Marneri apparently do not.”

“Yes, my lady.” Lagdalen looked away, her thoughts far away with that captain of the legion, marching somewhere in the vast interior of Ourdh.

Ribela looked at the girl and felt a sudden stab of self-criticism. This was not something that happened very often. But at this moment, she felt that she was just a withered old hag who had forgotten how to be human. Here was this lovely young woman who had been torn from her first baby, whose husband was engaged in a great battle in an alien land, whose entire life had been turned upside down, and the Great Witch Ribela was utterly unable of feeling any sympathy. It was a wretched performance. Lessis would have handled it more skillfully.

“I am sorry, my dear, you must forgive me. I’m a little rusty on human relations these days. I’ve forgotten so much, you see.”

Lagdalen held her tongue, not knowing what to say.

A messenger was announced by a servant. Ribela questioned him carefully and then admitted the messenger.

It turned out to be a woman in her late middle years, her body grown soft and quite plump from a comfortable Life. She wore a veil and a full-length brown robe that covered every inch of her body and legs. It had a hood that swept up and covered her head.

Ribela sighed. This was the everyday costume of most Ourdhi women in public, unless they were slaves or prostitutes, and even most slaves wore the “garub” of Ourdh. Ribela was not accustomed to such extreme patriarchal social norms. Nor was Lagdalen who found it very strange. Here in Ourdh women were chattels not persons; it was unsettling.

The woman pulled aside the veil and the hood to reveal a fleshy face with thick lips and a broad nose. Her dark eyes were filled with a quiet wisdom that Ribela noticed at once. There was more here than met the eye.

“Greetings,” said the woman. “I bring you word from a person with important information.” The woman looked at Ribela beseechingly. “Perhaps for your ears alone, Great Witch.”

Ribela gave a start. Who was this? How did they know so much?

“My message concerns the emperor.”

Ribela had already reached this conclusion. This had to come from the emperor himself, or from his circle. Perhaps there was some explanation for the farce she’d been made to endure earlier.

“Who are you?” said Ribela in plain voice.

The woman licked her lips nervously. She was bad at dissembling. “I cannot say.”

“Cannot or will not.”

“Alone, only with you. It is not safe.”

Ribela inclined her head to the door, and Lagdalen nodded and left without a word.

The woman took a seat on the terrace, near the edge. She waited for Ribela to join her.

“I am Haruma ba Shogemessar.”

Ribela’s eyes widened. So this was the emperor’s trusted aunt.

“I see,” she said. “Welcome then. And from whom are your messages from?”

“Myself. I did not want to arouse suspicion in your young companion.”

“She will tell no one of your presence here.”

“I must try to explain the reasons for my nephew’s discourtesy yesterday.”

“Indeed?”

“The situation is confused. Banwi is under some kind of spell, I fear. He believes that the Sephisti will accept just half of the empire, and that they will allow him to keep the East. He sees plots and conspiracies everywhere. The Princess Zettila fills his ear with her tales of the family intrigues.”

“As I understand it, he has good reason to fear his family.”

“He eats almost nothing, he goes down to the kitchens in person to fetch bread and pickles. He never trusts any cooked food. He trusts no one, not even the tasters.”

“This is not an enviable position to be in.”

Haruma paused and took a deep breath.

“He will not see you. He thinks you will place him under a spell and engineer a takeover of his realm. He will not cooperate with General Hektor. He will do nothing against the Sephisti. I swear there is some sorcery at work.”

Ribela had already made her decision in this matter. The sea gull’s news would set her in motion now.

“Thank you, sister, for coming to tell me this. I will be leaving the city very shortly, and I will not make any further attempts to see the emperor on this visit.”

Haruma’s eyes clouded. “Oh, my lady, I wish you would see him. Someone has to break this spell that has him. He will not defend himself against the real dangers, he is obsessed with Lopitoli’s plots alone.”

“I cannot see an emperor who refuses to see me. I cannot do battle with the emperor’s guards, I am but a single woman. I cannot see him. My time here is to be short. However, later perhaps, we will be able to investigate this sorcery you detect.”

Haruma wanted to protest, but dared not. Ribela patted her hand.

“Thank you, sister, for your courage in coming here. I speak for the Emperor of the Rose in this, you will be remembered as a friend.”

Haruma rose, resumed her head coverings, and left. Ribela meditated on the situation and attempted to divine the threads of the immediate future. It was time to investigate this thing in the city of Dzu. She had tried to identify it before from a distance and failed. As they were so close now, however, it should be possible to pierce the veils at last.

The legions marched south for three days, swinging along at a steady pace down flat dusty roads through a landscape of palm trees, fields of wheat and mud-brick villages. Occasional vast ziggurats would loom above the plain and then be left behind. And everywhere around them they saw the peasant masses, the fedd, at work. Gangs of men dug ditches, single farmers ploughed with teams of bullocks, others traveled beside their donkeys, heaped with sacks of grain or bundles of firewood. In the villages swarms of ragged little children would follow behind the dragons with awestruck faces. Women peered out of the shadows or from the yards where they worked.

During the first day, they encountered evidence of the passage of the army of Sephis. Villages had been burned, fields scorched, and thousands of people set in motion, fleeing the devastation. On the second day, they glimpsed a few bands of Sephisti soldiers, all of which made haste to put more distance between themselves and the legions.

On the third day, they saw nothing but village after village with no sign of the enemy. Life here went on as it had for millennia, placid and eternal, blessed by Auros who looked on from the tops of the ziggurats.

The towns along the road increased in size as they proceeded south. It was apparent that they were close to a major city, which meant the great conurbation of Kwa.

Eventually the broad straight road became a street lined with buildings. Some of these buildings reached three stories in height. At noon, they passed an enormous ziggurat where a ceremony was in progress. A bull was sacrificed to Auros, and its blood cascaded down the stones of the temple ziggurat while brass horns brayed, flutes whistled, drums thundered. A crowd of men in white tunics covered one side of the ziggurat in dense profusion. They turned from the ceremony to stare at the Argonathi legions with slight surprise. Many Imperial Army formations had passed through here only a few days previously. They had become used to marching armies.

Then the dragons hove into view, and the men reacted with a collective gasp. Many came down to join the children in the road, following along, staring at the huge hulks of brown and green armor plate, as they swung along the road, eating up the miles.