Red Country (5 page)

“To Eskan Helken, no doubt?” I snapped.

He shrugged. “Perhaps,” he said. “Whatever Eskan Helken may be.” And drawing his robe about him, he walked out with the presumption of the licensed charlatan, presuming so far as to give me his back as he went.

* * * * * *

Had there been perfect ease between us, I doubt I would have told Kastir about that interview, let alone the dream. In the light of his outlook they became embarrassing lapses into the irrational. I was doubly glad of the need to concoct a reply that would offer Lyve neither hope nor offence, and let us gloss over everything else.

I had half expected Kastir to press me for his own answer, but to my relief he never did, and the following days slipped by as usual, more raids in Stiriand, knotty law cases appealed to the crown, consultations with wine-lords over a price for the new vintage which was drawing near.

When Fire's day arrived, I had little heart to go out and light a bonfire with the rest on Hazar plain. I retained too clear a picture of Sazan and Haskar dancing with childish glee around the flames; but there was a position to uphold. It was on the way down that evening that I saw the Sathellin.

They seldom enter Everran, though they are partly of Gebrian stock and we are their principal western trading-stop. Usually they unload their caravans in the bustling border depots of Penhazad or Gebasterne, consign their exotic seeds and beasts and the inimitable eastern silk into their agents' hands for the exchange to filter where it will, take on a fresh load of wine and expensive portable curiosities, and disappear back into the red wastes of Hethria, across which, in perpetual motion, they live their lives. As a child, I once asked a Sathel where they went. “Over there,” was his unblinking reply.

Their blue desert robes and black turbans made such a striking sight in the market square of Saphar that I would have looked at any time. But it was the influence of the dream that made me halt my escort and beckon one up to me.

He came without hesitation, a slight wiry man, so far as I could tell for the robe, instinctively pulling up his turban as they do with strangers, to show only a pair of bright hazel eyes webbed in line upon line of crows-feet that the desert sun had bitten deep into an originally swarthy skin. But he looked me in the face with neither timidity nor fawning. In the best sense, a masterless man.

“Tell me,” I said, “what is to the east of Hethria?”

His eyes did not change, yet I sensed barriers lowered, bringing blank impassivity. He said, “Assharral.”

I had heard the name, swathed in legends too improbable for truth. “And what is Assharral?”

“The empire.”

However slowly, I was getting somewhere. “Who rules it?”

“The emperor.”

No, I was not getting anywhere. On impulse I said, “Do you know what Eskan Helken is?”

The barriers dropped with a thud. He said nothing at all.

“I asked you a question,” I said.

“Ah.”

“Do you mean to answer?” I was less piqued than amused. Clearly he did not understand a monarch's power. Yet I would have been sorry to break that proud, free insolence to my will.

He looked me full in the face and replied, too calmly to be called impudent, “Them that asks no questions doesn't hear no lies.”

“Let it be,” I told the bristling lords behind me. “After all, he's no subject of mine.” But as I descended to the plain, already sown thick with red buds of fire, I had a sense of freedom, of enlargement, as invigorating as I had once found Kastir. There was something more in the east than sand. Perhaps, if need arose, the Phathos' ravings might prove tenable.

* * * * * *

The next crisis, I had expected, would be Lyve's reply. I was wrong. It was a double menace, a Lyngthiran raiding party who instead of hit-and-running had thrown up defenses in the Coesterne hills and showed every sign of founding a colony in Stiriand; and on the same day as that report, another Quarred embassy.

The embroidery was pretty as ever, but the cloth was no longer silk. Quarred wished to inform me that they had given asylum to my wrongly and unlawfully banished brothers, that they recognized Sazan's claim to the throne under Quarred law, where succession passes through the eldest male, that they would back him in winning his rightful place, and that, if necessary, the support would not stop at words.

“It's a pity,” said Kastir, “that the flocks have left.”

It was rare for him to state the obvious, rarer not to seek the remedy rather than diagnose the wound, rarest of all that he should waste time on futile “if's.” The flocks were gone. An effective counter was no longer possible.

When I did not reply, he said, “Princess, there is other news.”

I had no need to ask, is it bad?

“There has been a census in Estar recently. Ever since, the news-talkers have been full of figures on Estar's high population in comparison to Everran's. A new agitation group has formed. They call themselves the Open Spacers, and they preach that Estar must remedy the situation before the country runs out of food. They claim it is unjust for one Confederate to suffer from over-crowding, while another has too much land to use. And they have begun to apply pressure on the Assembly delegates.”

Aghast, I stared at him. I knew the machinery of Estarian government, he had taught it me. The hidden leaders feed the news-talkers, the news-talkers seed public opinion, public opinion sprouts noisy pressure groups who push the Assembly delegates to present a motion demanding such-and-such; the shophets who ostensibly rule the country refer to the guild-leaders or money-lords who fed the news-talkers, and it becomes the people's will. Far, far more lethal than an imposed government policy.

“Four!” I cried. “They won't send troops like Quarred or brigands like Hazghend. It'll be a migration—a folk invasion—a—oh, Kastir, what are we going to do?”

“We can pay anti-Open Spacers,” he said at length. I could hear how hopeful he considered that. “Try to enlist the money-lords. Bribe delegates. Or... as I suggested before, maneuver Estar into a war. With Hazghend. Quarred. Anyone.”

“I won't do that! And as for bribes. . . .”

I could feel my nose wrinkle. He sighed.

“I know how you dislike political chicanery. But once the migration begins, we have no hope at all.”

“No. No.” Slaughter on the borders, Estarian, Everran soldiers massacring each other. Futilely, pointlessly. Slaughter in Everran, when Estar's myriad troops broke through.

The walls of the queen's hall contracted, closing in on me. Hazghend, Quarred, Estar, Lyngthira, converging on Everran like kites on a foundered horse. We had to fight them, and we simply did not have the resources to fight them all.

I stood up, hurriedly, jerkily, feeling my limbs mirror the agitation so ignominiously clouding my wits. Kastir watched in silence. His hopes must have been sinking too. Not even our marriage would stop an Estarian folk invasion. Politics simply would not come into it.

“I have to think,” I said. The royal coronet constricted my head like a band of iron. “Kastir, pardon me. I'll think better alone.”

* * * * * *

The palace was claustrophobic, the very gardens were not open enough, though they were rich with the spice of rivannon bloom and the smoky lavender clouds of terrian trees in flower. In the end I climbed to the summit of Asterne, into the leveled stone circle within its low parapet, where, after the dragon razed Saphar, Harran rebuilt a little rotunda to shelter the bells that make music from the play of Air. It is usually occupied by a watch of mirror signalers, but it was near dusk when I arrived, and the watch had gone. The signal-unit stood alone. I paced to and fro, to and fro, while the bells tinkled faintly, fitfully, as the wind breathed over Asterne's head.

At last I stopped and leant on the parapet. Below me Saphar's streets were blurred with dusk, their structure picked out clearer and clearer as each house kindled its lamps. Away to the west the light clung upon the bellies of a fleet of clouds, lurid scarlet streaks above the Helkents' silhouetted crests. To the south they had already melted into oblivion. Saphar Resh was dissolving too, a shadow dwindling into the dark, but far in the east a last amber ribbon touched the topmost ridge of Saeverran Slief, the high country that goes down to the untrammeled horizons of Gebria, and the wider deserts of Hethria beyond.

And beyond that?

A deep breath filled my lungs, an enlargement like the very air of liberty. Salvation, the Phathos had said. What if it were soothsayer's babble, unproven, unproveable? Assuredly, there was no salvation here. I was not Everran's shield, I had become a focus for its enemies. But if I were gone, Lyve could not try to marry me, Quarred could not use me and Sazan to incite a civil war, and with Estar it would make no difference. Whatever Holym did would hardly matter. If I found nothing in the east, Everran would be no worse off than before. And the vaguer the possibilities the better. By so much might probability undershoot the fact.

I took one last look at the night dimming Saeverran Slief, then walked rapidly to the steps.

* * * * * *

In my own rooms I wrote a letter informing the council I planned to go away and appointing Kastir Regent, then another to Kastir which authorized him to use his judgment in the fix I had left to him, prohibiting only one thing: that he should engineer war in the Confederacy for Everran's sake. I did not have to spell out to the council that he was not merely my long-term right hand, and the best source of advice in any dealings with the Confederacy, but an Estarian born. Whatever his loyalties, that gave him the best chance of staving Estar off till I got back. I knew that Nerthor, my guard officers, and most of the lords would back him, whatever the long-term antipathy of the steward and treasurer. Let them suffer this supreme elevation along with the rest, I thought almost gleefully. It would give them one last innovation to fume about.

I sealed both letters with the royal signet. Then I unearthed my old gray habit and leather forage cap, made a bundle of other necessities, and rang for Finda.

“Bring me some scissors,” I said. “Send to the stables and tell them to saddle Vestar, the bay mare.” Rawhide, the name means, and it was apt. “Then tell Nerthor I want the privy purse.”

Her eyes bulged, but she asked no questions. I do not encourage such liberties.

When Nerthor arrived he took one look at my cap and habit, another at the golden hanks on the tiring table, the crimson cloak tumbled on the floor, and dropped the privy purse. “Your majesty . . . princess . . . what are you—why are you—where are you—” The years fell away from him. “What in the Four's name are you up to, Sellithar?”

I stretched my arms back till the muscles cracked, feeling sovereignty drop away like the cloak, knowing for the first time what it was to have no responsibilities, no kingdom round your neck; no one to rely on you.

“I'm going away,” I said. “I'll tell you where, Nerthor, but it's a state secret and you'll keep it to yourself.”

“Four save us!” he yelled as I counted gold rhodellin from the privy purse. “In those clothes, hair cut off, all alone, not a donkey-boy for escort—and now, you can't go now, not with—!”

“Oh, yes I can. There's never been a better time. And I shan't be gone long, I hope. Just long enough.”

“Just long enough!” He very nearly grabbed me before he remembered himself. “Sellithar, for the Four's sake—long enough for what?”

I slid the royal signet off and held it out and he received it automatically. “For help,” I said.

“Help? What help? All alone and—what help!” It got near a howl but he knew better than to move after me.
“Where?”

“Hethria,” I said.

Travel is ridiculously easy for a private citizen, uncumbered by fifty retainers with their beasts and baggage, as unrestricted by limits of fodder and lodging as by rigid schedules and time-consuming ceremony. I was pleased to find that my rule had also made it safe for a woman to travel alone. In one night I had turned east from the Astil crossroad. In three days I was on the marches of Gebria, seeking a picket for the mare and a bed for myself, and reveling in the simplicity of the thing.

It was in Gebria, in the public room of the little inn at Lynglos, mud-brick walls, beaten earth floor, tarsal-wood stools polished only by countless trouser seats, that I heard of the princess Sellithar's sensational evaporation into thin air. Eyes see only what they expect to see: nobody looked twice at a quiet dusty girl in a gray habit with a leather forager's cap on her cropped blond hair, so I sat quietly over my plate of beans while exclamation and conjecture whirled about my head.

The conjectures were wild and wonderful enough to make me choke on giggles. The conclusions left me first startled, then contending with a lump in the throat. Whatever the Confederacy and the nobles thought, it seemed the folk of Everran persisted in staying loyal. I might be abroad, on tour in Stiriand, subduing a Tirien revolt, or—this made me twitch—traveling in disguise to test the national mood; but wherever I was, I had not deserted them. Suggestions on my whereabouts grew ever wilder, till one gnarled old cripple who had been a gold-miner up north at Deltyr usurped the floor.

“Youse're all cock-eyed, 'n thick as four-be-twos as well. She ain't h'abroad, 'n she h'ain't in h'Everran neither. Don't youse know anything? She's gorn to find a h'answer, same as Beryx did. 'N she's gorn the just-same way. She's gorn to ‘Ethriah.'” A scathing glance withered a would-be dissenter. “Don't youse ever listen to a n'arper? What else'd Everran do?”

Having paid the score, I slipped upstairs to my hard, lumpy pallet bed, wondering at the uncanny intuition of ignorance, and oddly enough for such an absurd enterprise, feeling heartened as well.