One of the flankers doubled back to report a large building ahead, just on the outskirts against the mountain face. She thought it might be a barracks, the first sign of a military presence beyond the anchorage. We moved towards it.
It almost certainly was a barracks - a long two-storey structure, with regular buildings and, outside, a guardshack. For the first time I felt a whisper of danger, or of something untoward. 'Sergeant Ismet up!'
In a moment she was beside me. I wanted her at my side and chose six others, all exceptional swordswomen, to accompany us inside. I sent Polillo with the rear element around the side. I put archers out as a screen, with orders to guard in all directions.
We entered the building and found a charnel hell. It had been a barracks, sheltering at least two hundred soldiers. I knew because the building was filled with their bodies. Even my hardened soldiery was taken aback -
I
heard one or two gasps of horror and muttered curses.
The ghastl
y scene reminded me of something, and before I could close my mind, the memory came: once, when very young, I'd been in one of my father's barns, playing with three half-grown kittens. They'd found a nest of field mice that had moved into what they thought was a sanctuary of unbaled hay. The kittens, so friendly and lovable a moment before, hewed true to their duties and with a great yowling and shrieking, slaughtered the entire nest before any of the mice could flee. Not content with killing them, they played with the dead and dying. Some they devoured, some they merely mutilated. Just as someone
...
or something
...
had done to these soldiers. Some had been asleep, some awake and on duty. It didn't matter. I saw shattered javelins, broken swords, fine plate armour that lay burst like potsherds.
Time had passed since that murderous night, but the horror was not lessened. Some of the bodies had rotted to skeletons, but others had dried and mummified, brown lips pulled back over yellowed teeth in horrid mirth. Not one body, though, was whole. Perhaps scavengers or rodents had fed, or carried the bones away for their own usage. Perhaps.
It was just then I heard the music. Flute music. It came from outside. Without orders, we ran out of the barracks, towards the sound.
It came from beyond the barracks, where a large semi-circular wall reared. I started to rush towards it, then caught myself. I motioned and my Guardswomen spread into a hedgehog semi-circle, and advanced. We rounded the end of the wall, and stopped in our tracks. The wall became a high stone balustrade. A matching wall curved towards us on the other side. In the centre, stone steps had been carved, a colossal staircase up the side of the plateau. On either side of the stairs luxuriant vines grew down, their flowers rich with a rainbow of colours.
The music came from the base of those stairs. It came, indeed, from a flute. The flute was being played by a strange creature. He was certainly not a man, for not even the barbarians of the icy south are that hairy, or so I've been told. Nor was he an ape, at least not from any species I've ever seen in the wild or a menagerie. Its face was neither ape- nor man-like. The best I could compare it to was that of a lion, with great fangs, but without whiskers. Around his neck he wore a ribbon with a small jewel on it.
The creature looked at us with calm interest, showing no fear whatsoever and its flute-playing never stopped, a melody that sang of birds over a stormy sea, birds wheeling in search of a home the winds had driven them from, a home they could never hope to find again.
I caught my breath, realizing what the flute had been made from. It was a human femur that had been lovingly pierced and polished. I saw a blur from the corner of my eye. It was Gerasa, my best archer, bringing her bow up, right hand drawing smoothly until the broadhead just touched the arrow rest.
'Stop,' I snapped, and such was the discipline I'd worked into my women that the shaft never flew. But neither was the bow lowered. 'We aren't starting a war here. We don't know who those soldiers were, nor why they were killed. Let alone whether our friend was the killer.'
Gerasa's eyes flicked to the side at me, and I could tell her thoughts: No trooper should be slaughtered in such a manner, nor his or her memory mocked by an ape. But she lowered her bow.
Gamelan was beside me, his two guides just behind. Since the musician showed no sign of tiring, I briefly told him what we were looking at - and what I'd seen in the barracks not far away. Gamelan was silent for a long moment. His head turned back and forth, sweeping the wide base of the staircase as if he were sighted or, better yet, a hunting hound keen on the scent. A smile came and went on his lips.
'I do not know how to describe this. My powers are not returning,' he said, and I could see he was forcing calmness. 'There is
something
here. It is
...
it is like when you have had your eyes shut in absolute dark for a long time and then your thoughts claim you are seeing something. I can sense sorcery all about us
...
Good or ill, I do not know. But it is something we must meet and face.'
The creature's fluting broke off as if it were waiting for those words. It sprang to the railing of the stairs, took hold of a vine, swarmed up and was gone.
I list
ened within myself, to see if I
sensed anything. There
was
something here, I realized - just as Gamelan had said. It was stirring, I felt as if I were a minnow near the surface of a pond and a great pike was moving below me in the mud and the reeds. Yet still, I felt no menace, no threat.
'We climb those stairs,' I decided. I sent a runner and escort back to the beach to inform Cholla Yi of our intent. We started up, keeping six steps between us so if archers or spearmen lay in wait, they could find no target more inviting than a single woman. The steps were carved
perfectly
out of the rock, as if masons by the multitude had all eternity for their task. We reached a landing and turned - the steps becoming a tunnel into the cliff itself, windows cleverly carved to appear like faultlines to anyone below. The stone walls were also carved with bas-reliefs. They told a story, a story of bloody battles and strange cities on even stranger islands. I tried to follow the story, just as one studies a tapestry, but could make no sense of it. The carvings grew more elaborate, and stranger and more violent - and I took my eyes away.
We reached a second landing and now the stairs were in the open once more, going straight into the rock wall's face. There was blue sky overhead and the rock stretched high above us on either side.
I stopped and looked back to check the progress of my Guard. The climb was winding some of us and I swore under my breath, realizing again how much a voyage saps one's strength, no matter how many callisthenics you do, or how many times you're chased around a deck by a leather-lunged training sergeant. Gamelan passed me. His escorts were panting a little, but the old Evocator was tapping along with the speed of a man a third his age. I hurried back to the head of the column and we continued up.
'I think I liked it better,' Polillo said, from where she climbed not far behind me, 'when we were in that damn tunnel with some overhead cover. That clifftop would sure be suggesting things to somebody who doesn't think I'd make a boon drinking companion
...
and who had a rock or six handy.'
I fell in beside her and we climbed on in silence, trying not to count the steps and then we were at the top and in the open.
The plateau was one great meadow. Low rolling hillocks carried the eye from side to side. There were groves of trees set here and there among them and I could see the blue of ponds and creeks. But this wasn't any natural paradise - in the middle of this plateau sat a great villa, with outbuildings scattered around. It was marble, and must have been that flash of white I saw while yet outside the island's bay. The building itself was multiple-storeyed. There were two polyhedron domes at the building's centre, connected by an enclosed archway. This was an estate as grand as the finest Antero horse farm-and more.
I saw movement coming from the house. My Guardswomen deployed out into a vee-formation at the head, of the stairs, archers on the flanks, spearwomen guarding them, and swordswomen in the centre.
The movement became a horse with rider. But the sight became more fabulous the closer it got. The horse was no common domestic, but a black-and-white-striped zebra, such I had seen but once when a ship laden with exotic animals bound for a king's court had docked in Orissa. Riding bareback on it was yet another of the beast-men. This one was even more grotesque than the musician, because it wore red knee breeches and a green jacket. The zebra stopped without command and its rider slid off.
The creature looked ar
ound curiously, then came directl
y to me. Then I saw it, too, wore a jewel hung around its neck. The beast-man bowed, took an ivory tablet from inside its jacket and handed it to me. There was but one word on the tablet:
Welcome.
I jolted when I saw the greeting was written in Orissan.
The beast-man did not wait for a response, but vaulted back onto the zebra. Again without command, the animal galloped away, but not towards the great villa, but to a large barn I saw in the distance.
I told Gamelan what the tablet contained and asked if his feelings had grown any stronger.
'No,' he said. 'All I know is that we must go on.'
And so we did. I put my soldiery out in extended formation, with strong skirmishers on the flanks and we marched towards the villa. It was even larger than I'd thought and not nearly as close. In fact, it was almost two miles away. As we came close, I could make out gardens, a maze to one side, fishponds and other lavish outworks. But I saw not one of the vast company of gardeners that'd be necessary to keep these grounds so perfect.
There was a curving drive, wide enough for half a dozen formal carriages, paved with broken white oyster shell. Our boots crunched as we walked towards the villa's entrance - double doors thirty feet high and set in the centre of a colonnaded terrace.
I brought my troops to a halt and without any orders, they automatically formed up in column, as if awaiting inspection by a great prince, never fearing an attack.
After a moment, the doors opened and a man walked out.
'I greet you, and welcome you to Tristan,' he said in Orissan, and his voice sang like a great gong, as welcoming as spiced cider on a winter's night. 'I am The Sarzana and I have waited long for your coming.'
A day has passed since I dismissed the Scribe, telling him I wasn't angered, but needed time to reflect on what words I would choose before continuing my story. I needed the time not because I was afraid to say what happened. We all err and the only sin is committing the same stupidity twice.
It was rather that when you first meet someone great, someone who rocks the earth in his passage, memory has been known to shake a false ivory. Certainly The Sarzana must be considered great, for that word describes both good and evil. I do not want my knowledge of what came later to colour what I saw and felt there on that island, seeing this man for the first time. But now my words are ready.
The Sarzana might have been taken for a merchant prince. He was richly dressed in a wide-sleeved tunic that came close about his neck. He wore pantaloons whose legs flared as fully as his sleeves. Both garments were purple and he appeared born to that imperial colour. I guessed them to be made of heavy silk. He wore a belt of twisted thongs, turquoise in shade. I saw the glossy toes of ebony boots peeping from under his pantaloons.
The Sarzana was a bit under medium height and was full-bodied. It didn't appear as if he'd missed many meals, but neither did he appear to be a piggish feeder like Cholla Yi. He was clean-shaven and his cheeks were powdered. His pomaded hair hung in waves to just above his shoulders and looked to have had the attention of an artist with the curling iron minutes before he stepped out to greet us. His face was roundish, marked by very dark eyebrows and a straight moustache. If you passed him on an Orissan street, you might have thought him a visiting magnate, no more. A man of dignity and wealth.
At that moment I looked into his eyes. I swear this is not my jade of a memory adding something I didn't notice at the time. His eyes were a deep well of expression. They were dark - I can't say whether they were the deepest of greens, blues or blacks now - and they shone with the memory of power. The best I can compare them to is those of a caged eagle, who sits in the mews remembering how his talons ripped all that came before him; or perhaps the glow that comes to my goshawk's yellow eyes when she's unhooded and sees the woodcock in the field.
No. Even on a busy street, in a rich district, The Sarzana would not be casually dismissed - not once you saw those eyes.
The Sarzana stopped when he came off the last step and bowed.
'You are safe,' he said, and I
knew
absolutely that he spoke the truth. 'You may summon the ships you have on guard beyond the headlands to enter the harbour and anchor, and may allow as many as you wish of your sailors to come ashore. There is no harm here. I do not expect you to take me at my word. I sense there are two among
you who have the Talent. One has been badly hurt, I can feel
...
'and I could sense Gamelan stirring from where he stood just behind me,
'...
the other is young, still feeling her way to power.'