Authors: Andre Norton
“My Lord, take pity on our plight. San-san’s Ana has fled into the bushes and will not come out because these two evil ones have pulled its fur. There it lingers crying. Will you rescue the poor thing for us?”
It was Analia who so called to me, Anatan’s younger sister, the daughter of an old and noble military family. Now, at her asking, I dropped my hindering cloak and doffed my helmet before, encouraged by their cries, I pushed into the thick bushes.
The Ana came to me without urging and I brought it out in triumph, my hair sadly ruffled and a couple of long scarlet scratches across my forearm. These Analia was pleased to exclaim over and nothing would do but I must be
borne off into a neighboring glade where there was a fountain and my trifling hurts could be looked to.
In their artless company I forgot something of my ever- present worries. I had never really been young or enjoyed the delights of thoughtless youth. On my fifteenth name day I had assumed the place and troubles of a man, and since that day I had never relaxed for a single hour my vigilance against a world which I knew by hard-won experience to be a difficult place in which to exist. But now, for a short half hour, in the company of the court maidens, I recaptured a slender portion of that unexperienced youth.
It was ended all too soon. But I did not begrudge it because of that ending. Through the slender fronds of the fern trees came one I knew well.
Thrala of the Learned Ones stood smiling at us.
Every ripple of her black hair seemed to net itself about my heart and the wonder of her held me numb. I was content to stand and watch the play of expression on her face as her ladies with cries of joy-filled pleasure gathered about her.
Chapter Three
The Sotan Pleasure Palace
“Greetings, my Lord Garan.” She smiled into my eyes.
“And to you, Flower of Yu-Lac.” I touched the hand she held out to me to lips and forehead.
“You have neglected us, my Lord. Do the cares of your office weigh so heavily upon you that you cannot grant us an hour or two of your company?”
I stood agape, unable to summon my wits in quick reply to this gentle mockery. “I am, as always, at your command, royal Lady,” I stammered.
“Then you will obey me now,” she countered swiftly. “Attend me to the Blue Pool, my Lord. I have need of another pair of hands to aid me there. Nay, little ones, stay you here.”
So dismissing her maids she led me away with her. But instead of following the path to the Blue Pool, she sought a tiny rockery and there took her place upon the stone bench.
“Sit down, Garan; I have much to say and little enough time in which to say it. First — let me look at you. How long? Three years, is it not? I can even tell you the number of hours in the days. Why were you not born — ? But enough! You have done well for yourself, Garan.”
“Only because — “’ I began eagerly, but her soft fingers flew to seal my rebellious lips, barring a rush of rash words.
“Not that, Garan, not that! It is of other things we must speak. You seem to have delved in dangerous pools of knowledge, asked awkward questions of the wrong people. And what have you learned?”
I shrugged. “Little enough. Each path ends at last in a blank barrier.”
She nodded. “Oh, they are clever, clever. But you have made something of a beginning. For that — well, watch behind you of nights, Garan. You walk a rotten bridge; be sure that it does not break to plunge you into a gulf. But
from this hour forth you shall not fight alone, soldier. Do you know one Thran of Gorl?”
“I looked upon him for the first time an hour ago.”
“Thran, like you, has been laying his ear to the ground and so has heard things not meant for him. Twice has his path of secret watching crossed yours and thus he learned that there was another who mistrusted the future. For all of us, Garan, are not idlers and children playing in the sun. Some of us prepare for the coming storm —”
“Then you have some definite idea of what comes?” I broke in eagerly.
“Not yet. There was a new pleasure palace opened in the Sotan district a week ago.”
I frowned, bewildered by her swift change of subject “So my aide told me.”
“It might be well for you to visit it, Garan.”
“But — “ I began a hasty protest.
“Oh, it is well enough known that you enter not into such joys, but allow yourself to be persuaded — tonight. Nay, more I cannot say. Be — careful, Garan. Now go and quickly, before my maids come seeking me. Three years, Garan — “ Her soft voice trailed away as she sent me from her. I dared not look back.
In a daze created by my own unleashed emotions, I sought the landing stage and my flier. The black ship from Koom still rested there, aloof and striking among the brightly-colored craft which now thronged the surface of the platform, but I spared it no more than a single passing glance. My thoughts were all for that interview and what might lie hidden within those two words of hers — “three years.”
I did not come wholly to myself again until my flier landed upon the stage of the defense tower and I saw Anatan’s boyish figure crossing hurriedly toward me. Then I remembered the promise I had so lightly made him that morning. The impossibility had become true.
“Zacat of Ru has come in, my Lord. He is awaiting you in the wardroom,” burst out the young officer almost before my feet had touched the floor of the landing stage.
“Bring him to my private rooms at once!” I ordered.
Ru was the northernmost colony of Yu-Lac’s glittering chain of dependencies. For three months of the year its wind-harried plains were well-nigh uninhabitable. But wealth lay in its stark mountains for the taking so we held it in a
jealous grip. A line of fortified posts, tiny oases of civilization, were the bounds we had laid upon that grim land.
Zacat was an officer of the old school who controlled both men and country with a heavy, but always just, hand. I trusted him above any other of my under officers. An event serious enough to bring him to Yu-Lac was grave enough to shadow the future. It was with a feeling of sudden cold that I paced my inner chamber awaiting his arrival.
“Hail, Lord.” The burly figure in the doorway drew himself up in formal salute.
“Enter, Zacat. I am glad to clasp your hand again. But what fortune brings you out of your snow-rimmed north unheralded?” ‘
“An ill fortune, Garan.” He measured me with his eyes as he replied and then, with an air of relief, he added, “It is well. You are no city-dwelling lordling yet. There is no fat, no quivering hand, no murky eye, to betray you. Are you still the lad who followed me into Ulal in the old days?”
“I have not changed, war dog. Nor, I see, have you. Give me an open fight and I will be glad —”
“An open fight!” He grimaced. “That is what I cannot grant you, by the Hair of the Dark One! What man can battle shadows and win?”
To hear my own thoughts issue from this northern captain was startling.
“What is happening in Ru?”
“Nothing that I can lay my hand upon or it would speedily end, you may be sure,” he said significantly. “But there is a growing uneasiness, whisperings I cannot trace to their source, baseless rumors, mutinous talk. I tell you frankly, Garan, today I stand alone in Ru.”
“You want help?” I hazarded.
He shook his head. “You should know me better than that, lad. When was I ever one to run whining to my masters? Nay, no help in the material sense. But sometimes two heads upon a problem think better than one. I want to talk freely to the one man in the Empire I may fully trust. There is trouble in Ru, and I cannot smell it out For the first time my every support has failed me —”
“There you do not suffer alone,” I cut in harshly.
“What do you mean?”
“Save for you, Anatan of Hol, and one other” — I thought
of her in the garden — “I, too, stand alone today. This morning the Emperor questioned my loyalty.”
“What!” He was on his feet, staring at me in outraged amazement.
“It is true. All because, like you, I have tried to sift to its base this mass of intrigue which grows ever heavier throughout Krand. I, too, have been fighting shadows, Zacat”
“So” — he sank down in his seat again — “that is the way of it, eh? Well, lad, it seems to be Ulal over again, but this time we must fight with our wits — not our fists. Let us exchange tale for tale and discover what has been happening these past years since last we stood together.”
‘Tell me of Ru,” I urged him.
He frowned. “It is hard to put into words the feeling which grips me when I go from post to post. On the surface all is well; there is no trouble. The country is at peace with the barbarians; there is no disturbance at the mines. And yet I feel as if I were passing across a bridge, the undersupports of which had been destroyed. The thought haunts me that the heart of this bad business lies naked to the eye if I were only clever enough to find it It is a demon- conceived business.
“Last month the yield from the Sapit mines was less by ten percent than it should have been. And yet the engineers face me with bland explanations which I have not knowledge enough to question. There have been several hundred suicides within the past three months. The new recruits are in bad condition, mentally, morally, physically. Three beast- men were killed near Headquarter’s Fort and there is nothing to show how they were able to penetrate so far into the settled lands without being sighted. Unnatural lights have appeared in the sky and twice a dump of highly flammable ore has been set afire by mysterious means. There is a new secret religion being practiced by the mountaineers. Little things all but, taken together, enough to make a man think deep.”
“Whom do you suspect?”
He shrugged and then answered me obliquely. “There was a man from Koom who made a journey through the mountains.”
“Koom! Ever Koom!” I brought my fist down on the arm of my chair.
“Aye, ever Koom,” he echoed me heavily. “And now, what phantoms do you pursue to no purpose?”
“Bread riots in the province of Kut, due to an unexplained failure of the peestal crop. There was rain in abundance, the soil is the richest in the Empire, but this year the fields were strangely barren. And the Learned Ones did not explain it, at least to me.
“Then there is this new cult of the Wandering Star or some such nonsense. I have had to discipline four of my men for attending its meetings and inciting disturbances afterward. Someone has been smuggling bottles of portucal into the barracks and I have had one man hung for introducing the practice of inhaling the smoke of the rait leaves. You know what that leads to?” He nodded and I continued: “Like you, I feel an interest in Koom. So much of a one that I have set certain machinery in motion during the past three months.”
“And the result?” There was eagerness in his demand.
“Exactly nothing. And yet I do not think that the investigators I dispatched there were utter fools.”
‘Traitors?” he hazarded.
“Perhaps. But what can I do? Within an hour I have been warned to guard my own person. And then this business of finding secret Koomian documents among my records. The Emperor ordered me to produce the man responsible for their being there or answer for the deed myself.” I went on to explain to Zacat all that had passed when I stood on trial.
“What do you know of this Thran?” I asked in conclusion.
He shook his head. “Nothing. Gorl is insignificant enough, a fish-smelling outcrop of rock in the upper sea. I was on garrison duty there once shortly after I accepted the brand. There were no Learned Ones there then at any rate. But the Lord of Gorl has interested himself in your affairs to some purpose. I would keep him in mind. Also, what is Kepta doing here? In the past he has had litle liking for the company of his caste-fellows.”
“When do you return to Ru?” I asked him suddenly.
“Early tomorrow,” he replied in some surprise. “Why do you ask?”
I smiled. “Then tonight you shall be the traditional soldier on holiday —”
“What do you mean?” he cut in.
“Tonight we shall visit together a new pleasure palace in the Sotan quarter.”
He eyed me with some disgust. Little did I think that Garan of the Fleet would come to the visiting of pleasure palaces — “ he began when I interrupted him.
“We go on a mission. I have reason to believe that there may be certain interesting facts for a discerning man to discover. You should know me better than to doubt me so completely, Zacat.”
The puckered lines on his forehead smoothed out. “Three years of absolute power and soft living often change a man to his hurt, lad. I did not want to believe you were what your words stamped you.”
“Then you will come?”
“And gladly. After all” — there was sly humor in his tone — “I am not adverse to seeing the interior of a pleasure palace at another’s expense.”
“Good, it is agreed then. And now, what do you say to holding morning inspection with me?”
“Done! That is more to my taste than all the pleasure palaces in this hothouse city of yours.”
So with Anatan and Zacat at my heels I set about my daily rounds. And it seemed to my mind, sharpened as it was by the affair of the morning, that I uncovered enough on that tour to arouse suspicion in the mildest of men. A fraction’s delay in carrying out a straight order, a trace of slackness which persisted in spite of my rebukes, a faint beginning of blight upon the crack troops, a certain heady recklessness to be noted in the younger men — I saw it all, and the result brought home to me, as nothing else might, how I, and others like me, stood in the growing shadow of some formless danger.
I knew that Zacat had also seen what lay plain before us and that he too was sifting and weighing impressions gained on the morning tour. We sat together at dinner in the eating hall but there was little talk between us until we had finished and I turned to him.
“Well?”
He shook his head. “What man can discipline shadows? What I have seen here is but what I face in Ru. And what advice have I to give when I cannot put my own house in order? But I swear upon the Sword Hand of On Himself, lad, that in this I am with you to the end, be that what it
may. Now let us go to this palace of yours, since you are so determined upon it.”
We sought my dressing room and there got ourselves into rich but inconspicuous undress uniforms, for I hoped to conceal our identity if I might. Anatan had been warned to do likewise and, after I had fastened a pouch heavy with the bar-like coins of the city to my belt, we found him outside the door, breathing hard through pure excitement.
“Hold in mind,” I cautioned him, “that we must remain unknown if possible and tonight we are on duty. Do not allow yourself to be seperated from us and, above all, keep a quiet tongue between your teeth.”
“To hear is to obey, Lord.”
I took one last look about me. Some inner sense must have warned me that it would be long before I returned down that corridor. “Let us go.”
On the landing stage a plain flier, unmarked by any betraying insignia, awaited us and we climbed in. Anatan took the controls and we arose in lazy spirals from the military quarter. According to my aide, we must land on the public stage adjoining the palace, as only regular and well-known habitues were allowed the privilege of using the private stage on its roof.
Zacat protested this strongly but my desire for secrecy led me to overrule him, to my regret. A few moments later the violet lamps of the public stage were below us and Anatan set the flier down. The attendant approached to wave us into line with the other ships and accept the fee Anatan had ready for his hand. Zacat and I kept in the background, our helmets pulled far down so that their bird-like beaks overshadowed our faces.
Anatan pouched the receipt for the ship and we sought the ramp which led down to the street level. There, without being noticed, we slipped into the throng. Yu-Lac was always at its best after nightfall. Then did the rhythm of its life grow loud and full, an illusion of carefree gaiety cloaking the idle pastimes of the city dwellers.