Tyrant Trouble

CHAPTER 16

  With a flaming stick from the fire I burned a circle into Nance's largest wooden table.

  “Scream away, child,” I muttered as I worked. “If I paint my circle, you forget and wash it away. If I mark it in the courtyard soil, you forget and run through it, rubbing it out. Order the servants to build you another table. This one is mine.”

  “But it belongs to the temple! It is sacred!”

  As I had already told her what I had to do, I didn't bother to argue. The difficulty of my assignment helped shut out the noise of her complaints, until she gave up scolding and wandered off to clean her temple lamps.

  Next to the circle I burned rows of straight lines I could use to set up new charts. Couldn't believe it myself, that I was trying to chart stars from their remembered placements last summer, without the aid of an ephemeris or even the simplest of writing materials.

  I sighed and settled to the task. Throughout the past month I had thought I could miss nothing more than I missed the city and my own little house. Now all I wanted was a supply of ink and paper. I'd even be happy with a cup filled with crayolas like they give kids in restaurants.

  I stretched my arms above my head to relieve the tension in my back. Nance watched me, frowning.

  “Nance, tell me this. Why has Tarvik's guard Artur suddenly decided to smile at me?”

  “You saved his life and he knows it.”

  “What!”

  “Artur knows we hid Tarvik here in the temple, saving him from Ober. He doesn't know how we managed it and may not care. What matters to Artur is this. If Kovat returned and found his son dead, Artur would be dead, too. Painfully.”

  The more I heard of their customs, the more my head ached. I bent again over the charts, had another idea.

  “How old is the castle?”

  “I don't know. It's always been here.”

  “What about the temple?”

  “Ah. It was built by Kovat's grandfather for the god of Thunder and I do know how old it is because Kovat said he was cleansing away sixty years of false gods when he dedicated it to the Daughter of the Sun. That was fifteen years ago.”

  “So he didn't build the temple for the Daughter?”

  “No. He added on my rooms. Actually, he originally built them for the Daughter and her consort to live in. And he had those paintings done on the wall. He probably did other things, but that's all I know.”

  Toss in a chart for one seventy-five year old temple, remodeled fifteen years ago, I decided.

  “How long has Kovat's line ruled?”

  “You sound like Kovat. He asks questions like that, to see if Tarvik and I are paying attention.”

  “And the answer is?”

  “About two hundred years.”

  I moved a pebble backwards around Tarvik's horoscope 200 degrees. He was the last of the line and so it might give some small hint. As Erlan and Kovat would be under the same influences, I did the same with their charts. And, oh, yes, I added Alakar, the only other direct descendant.

  And then, after painful hours of concentration, did that ingrate Tarvik thank me? I drew all those horoscopes, did recessions rather than progressions, studied the incomplete information from which I had to work until my head pounded, and finally saw a pattern.

  I told him what I saw.

  “You wish me to do what?” His low voice was more terrifying than Kovat's roar.

  If only I could have delayed the magician long enough to learn a few of his tricks. Nothing less than a magic circle bursting into yellow smoke would impress Tarvik.

  I said, “I can only tell you what the stars say. I can't change their messages.”

  “Then you have heard them wrongly.”

  Talking to illiterates did odd things to my vocabulary and left me with even odder images. No point telling him I read the charts because the word read had no meaning for him. So instead, I was left with this image of myself standing outdoors in the dark of the night chatting with stars.

  He had sent for me and had me escorted to Kovat's private courtyard, one of many tucked between rooms and wings of the sprawling castle. He ordered his guards to wait outside its walls. I wondered if he did that so they would not overhear us or so they would not see him sit on Kovat's raised chair. He hunched forward, his elbows jammed into the fur-padded arms of the chair, his chin propped on his joined hands. Was that how Kovat would have looked with twenty years of battle scars removed?

  I asked him, “What other choices do you have? You don't have enough guards to make up an army. You can't stop Erlan's army.”

  “We can defend the castle.”

  “And let Erlan's men march through the city murdering all those people who live outside the castle walls? What good is that? You would have no one to rule. More than that, with all your servants dead, do you plan to learn to shepherd your flocks and scrub your floors yourself?”

  Tarvik's lower lip jutted out. He blew a sharp breath that lifted his yellow hair from his forehead.

  I continued, “Nance is angry because I drew circles on her table and you are angry because I told you what they say. I think I am going to confine my tasks to templekeeping until Erlan enslaves us all.”

  His expression turned from anger to doubt to sorrow. I waited. He did not want to ask and I did not want to answer.

  “Do your stars say my father is dead?” he asked softly.

  I wished I was a better liar. No matter what I or anyone else thought of Kovat, it was clear Tarvik loved him.

  “I have bent over Kovat's circle until my head aches. All I know is this, his stars and those of his brother cross violently in the House of Death at the winter solstice. It looks like only one of them will return alive.”

  “He should have taken me with him.”

  “And what could you have done? If Erlan can poison Kovat, he can poison you, Tarvik.”

  “So instead, your stars tell you I must move my whole city.”

  “Yes. If we leave while Venus aspects your sun, Jupiter will help. You can settle your people in a far valley. If your father returns, you can bring everyone back safely. If it is Erlan who returns, he needs to find an empty city and empty storerooms.”

  “Am I to run and hide forever from my uncle? The water supply here is good and the winter grazing, too. And these are my lands. No, I will not leave. Search your stars for another answer.”

  There was no other answer. Although we repeated our arguments at each meeting, and I studied the horoscopes again after each argument, Tarvik knew I was right. If Kovat lived, fine. Otherwise, the survival of everyone depended on evacuating the city.

  I sat by candlelight and decided to again touch a chart. Sure, at first my reaction to Ober's chart was maybe caused by my dislike of her. But then she drugged Tarvik and proved me right. The evil in her heart was as bad as bad got, more terrible than any vision I ever imagined. I never again wanted to feel the cold absence of a heartbeat and I didn't want to know what happened to the deathwalker.

  I don't go looking for horror, am not one of those people who watch gross-out films on late night TV. If Kovat's heart was as black as Ober's heart, I didn't want to know.

  I thought of a thousand reasons to avoid seeking truth. Then, with my eyes closed to shut out distractions, I placed the palm of my hand over the sun in Kovat's natal chart.

  Nothing. No warmth, no chill, no heartbeat. Enough. I wasn't going to try again. If Kovat lived, he'd be back before Tarvik had to make a decision.

  As winter moved slowly across the mountains, trailing thin sheets of snow behind cold winds, the people packed up their belongings. They didn't argue and they didn't whine. They just followed Tarvik's orders.

  “They move with their flocks to follow the grasslands,” Nance explained. “They are used to packing up their belongings.”

  Tarvik added, “If Erlan brings his army, he will count on finding us here to resupply his troops. We will leave him nothing but empty storerooms.”

  This was what he said
on his more sensible days. Other days he rushed around our courtyard complaining and waving his hands, then grabbing me to question me, his hard grip leaving bruises on my arms.

  “What good can this do? My uncle will not be fooled by an empty city! He will follow us. Are we to run forever? Stargazer, I would rather stay here and fight.”

  He had grown older, fiercer, his brow constantly drawn forward above his eyes in a scowl that reminded me of Kovat. He was no longer the boy whose hand I'd bitten to teach him manners. All I could do was run away to my room in the temple.

  He sent me a gold bracelet as an apology, which I gave to Nance to add to her temple ornaments. Then I made him wait a day before again opening the courtyard gates to him.

  Although I had little hope, Tarvik was not ready to believe his father was dead.

  He constantly said, “Erlan could never trick Kovat.”

  Waiting was almost unbearable. Each day we watched for a scout from Kovat's army, wishing for good news and expecting bad news. When neither came, patience disintegrated into quick tempers and stupid arguments. I tried to think of ways to calm Tarvik because I didn't want him making snap decisions.

  So I made a point of inviting him to join me, to spend more time talking, less time thinking.

  “Come sit by the fire,” I'd say, and we wrapped ourselves in sheepskins and furs against the winter cold, and I turned the talk to nothing of importance. He needed company and he needed to have some time away from his worries.

  Tarvik liked to sit yoga-fashion, his legs crossed with his feet tucked under his outspread knees, warming his hands around a mug of heated mead.

  “Tell me about this star magic you do. Who are the stars? How do they speak to you? Are they your gods, then?”

  Okay, where could I start to explain Homer’s pantheon plus all the other religions that worshiped the sun and stars?

  Nah. It would take years to get through them all and I was planning on leaving as soon as I figured out where somebody'd hidden the exit.

  Instead I tossed him a bit of palmistry. “I don't know why the stars leave messages, they just do. Here, give me your hand. See that line? That's your heart line and that's your head line and they are so close together, I think your heart rules your head.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  Was there an answer? For a warrior, probably thinking with his head was more important.

  “It makes you a good friend,” I said.

  Once I questioned him about the Daughter and her consort. He said, “They were very clever about some things. They knew how to heal injuries. But they knew nothing about the mountains and kept asking if I could show them the path to the outlands.”

  “Is there a path to the outlands?”

  “That's what death is.”

  “Tarvik! I came from the outlands, you said so yourself. Do I look dead?”

  He touched my hand, grinned. “You don't feel dead.”

  Another time, when his mood was as stormy as the night sky and I could not even interest him in stories, I tried another approach. Although he liked to hear me talk, he liked even better to have a listener.

  “Tell me what you know of the lifedrainers,” I said.

  His brow smoothed and he smiled at my question.

  “Tales. Something to frighten Nance with when we were small.”

  “So there is no such thing?”

  “I didn't say that.”

  “Are there?”

  He set his mug down on the ground, leaned back on his hands and stared into the embers. “Umm. I know of no one who has seen them. But the shepherds believe in them. So does Kovat, who fears nothing, and so does Erlan, who is terrified of them. My father told me once he left Erlan tied to a tree in the forest and told him the lifedrainers would eat him. They were small boys. He did it as a prank. Erlan was so terrified he bit and tore his way free and was covered with scratches and blood by the time he found his way home.”

  “A story to make you glad you never had an older brother. Does Kovat often tell you stories?”

  He frowned. “He is gone often and when he is here, he is surrounded by others.”

  “Okay, explain these lifedrainers to me. Nance believes in them.”

  “Nance believes anything. About the lifedrainers I know little except that they are large and have wings. I always thought they sounded like giant bats. I might believe in giant bats, but in creatures who can change their shape or disappear? I would have to see them to believe them.”

  “I would rather not see them or believe them.”

  “A girl who is afraid of horses isn't going to like giant bats.”

  Now what story could I make up about giant bats, I wondered, and as I hurried through the following day, I let my imagination play with the idea. But I never had a chance to tell him that story.

  Our short but pleasant evenings by the courtyard fire ended in despair.

  Although Tarvik's scouts found a sheltered valley two days walk from the city, in the direction of the high plains where Nance loved to camp on her secret outings, we agreed everyone would stay put as long as possible. There was way too much cold and hunger involved in an evacuation. Until the choice came down to get killed or run, we'd wait.

  Scouts watched from higher ground for the returning army. They could reach the castle on their horses in one day, a distance that would take four days for a marching army. That would give us enough time to evacuate.

  “These plans are for nothing,” Tarvik complained. “My father will return and he will be furious when he finds his whole city disrupted.”

  I hoped he was right and a victorious Kovat, rather than a murdering Erlan, would return.

  “Kovat did ask me to look at the stars of his brother's family. He suspected them. So maybe he was careful around his brother.”

  “But would he suspect poison?” Nance asked.

  We learned the answer to that question a few days later when the scouts spotted the tattered remains of an army approaching. They raced back, slid off their exhausted horses, and collapsed at Tarvik's feet. We waited until one of them could breathe enough to speak.

  “They bear no banners, but we could see them well enough,” the scout reported. “We were above them on a cliff when they made the turning down river. It was Erlan in the lead.”

  “And my father?”

  “We searched. We could not see him. It is Kovat's horse that Erlan rides.”

  “And our army?”

  The scout looked almost afraid to answer, not afraid of Tarvik but afraid of what he had seen and what it meant. “We saw none of our own warriors. It is Erlan's men, less one in four perhaps, but well armed.”

  “Do you think we can hold the castle against them?” Tarvik asked.

  The scout bowed. “For a few days. I would willingly die in battle to serve you, prince, as would all the guard.”

  Tarvik hesitated, still believing that somewhere, somehow, his father was alive. I watched, unable to offer advice. The furies that drove the barbarians' minds didn't make sense to me, but I was the newcomer, didn't have any good ideas. If proof came that his father was dead, I guessed Tarvik would burn with the desire to slash his name and rule across the mountains, a fitting heir to Kovat the Slayer.

  However, in these past weeks he had watched his people drag their small caches of belongings from their tumbledown huts, clutched in protective arms by their owners as though they were the temple jewels. The clothes they wore, a cooking pot and a couple of matted sheepskins made up the entire possessions of most families. They wrapped their pottery communal cups for the journey as carefully as they wrapped their children's feet against the snow.

  Tarvik made his decision. “You are right, Stargazer. The castle doesn't matter. We must lead the people to safety and then stay with them to protect them, in case Erlan follows.”

  Would Kovat have done that? To Kovat every man, woman, child was a possession to be used. He never shared his captured wealth with
them. If their lives stood between him and fame, guess which Kovat would choose. For the first time, I respected Tarvik.

  The barrows led the procession, pulled by workmen, their wooden wheels creaking under the weight of all the stuff from the storerooms, food, oil, candles, bedding. Stripped away also was anything Erlan would want to plunder, metals, jewels and tapestries from both temple and castle.

  They wound down the hill and followed the valley route. Beyond the second row of hills the barrows would head west, following ancient paths through the woods until they reached the safer valleys. A safe valley, I got told, was one with only a couple of narrow entrances. Those could be defended against an army by a very few guards.

  Behind the barrows the families massed and separated among their livestock, the stronger ones carrying lumpy packs of belongings on their shoulders, while the children flapped their ragged hems at the goats to keep them moving. Others carried sacks that jerked in their hands and barely muffled the dismayed squeaks of the chickens. Although the ground was frozen beneath the snow tracings, it smashed apart under foot and hoof, leaving a trail of mud.

  Nance, Tarvik and I rode on horses, our hoods pulled forward to protect our faces from blasts of winter wind. Guards and servants walked around us. At the rear of the line, mounted guards tried to sweep away with leafless branches the tracks of our direction.

  We had gone only a short distance when, looking back, we saw what Erlan would see. The trail could not be hidden. Mud oozed up through the brushed snow.

  “He will follow,” Tarvik said. “If the Daughter herself appeared on the hilltops and shook her fist, Erlan would not stop. We can no more hide in the valley than we can defend the city.”

  He said more, muttered complaints, but I ceased to listen. What he said was true, I knew, but was he completely right? The horoscopes spun through my memory, those of Tarvik and Kovat and Erlan, and then I saw my own horoscope in my mind. I had never been much good at reading it. Still, it was worth a look. And there it was, Mercury, aspecting that degree in my chart that linked deception and strength.

  Maybe the planets denied victory to those other charts. Mine was different. The planets dared me to outwit evil.

  Shivering behind the almost closed gate, I had peered through the narrow slit as the sun set over the western hills night after night, trying to better place Mars and Venus. I couldn't see Mercury but I had it memorized for the year.

  Now it hit me that what I saw in the sun's setting, besides planet locations, would be of greater value to me than any chart. An idea uncoiled in my mind, a mixture of sunset and the comment Tarvik made carelessly about the Daughter appearing on the hilltop and shaking her fist.

  When Tarvik rode away from us to direct the guard, I shouted at Nance. I should have nudged Black toward her. But I had made an agreement with the horse that if it did not try to buck me off, I would sit still and let it choose its own direction.

  When Nance heard me, she turned and rode back to me. “What is it?”

  “No point in me going with them. Tarvik is right, Erlan will follow and murder us all.”

  “What else can we do?”

  “Nance, if we're probably going to die, anyway, will you trust me now with a plan that might save the rest of them?”

  If we had been in the temple, Nance would have wailed her dismay. As it was, she bit her lip and nodded.

  “Find Lor,” I said, knowing he would be walking near her.

  While she circled away to search for him, I pulled on the reins, said the “whoa” thing, and was surprised when Black stopped.

  We stood as an island. The marching guards washed around us. When a mounted guard called to ask if I needed help, I waved him on. With the responsibility of the people, flocks, and possessions on their minds, the last guards passed me with no more than a glance.

  They had traveled some way past when Tarvik whirled his horse and raced back. I’d been afraid he would. Since I had last seen him, he had picked up the old dog and lifted it on to his horse. It was in front of him, stretched like a worn rug across the base of Banner's neck.

  “You will delay us, Stargazer,” he complained.

  “Go on without me, Tarvik. Nance and Lor and I need to return to the temple.”

  “You have left something behind? I will send a servant for it.”

  “No, not that. Tarvik, you are right. Erlan can track you easily in this mud. He's bound to follow to get the supplies. Maybe I have a trick to persuade him to stop.”

  Tarvik squinted out at me from the shadow of his hood. The winter sky reflected in his eyes. “What do you plan?”

  “It's too complicated to explain. I'll tell you later. Go on now and we'll follow soon.”

  The muscles of his jaw hardened. He caught my wrist. “No, if anyone remains to face Erlan, it must be me and my guards.”

  “We've had this conversation. No way can you outfight his army. You'll end up dead.”

  “And what will keep him from killing you?”

  Unless I could come up with a convincing sales pitch, he would halt the procession. The brat refused to drop his gaze from mine or loosen his grasp. I needed something outside his understanding and within the boundaries of his superstition to keep him moving. I knew only one word to do that.

  “Magic. I have magic that will defeat Erlan. I wish I could keep you here to help, but if you hang around, so will your guards. Erlan has to find the city deserted or the magic won't work.”

  Tarvik's hand slid to cover mine, his grip crushing my fingers. For a moment I thought he would pull me off my horse. Tarvik's lower lip jutted out.

  At last he said softly, “Have your way, Stargazer. I know my father believes in your magic. Besides, you aren't going to listen to me, are you?”

  He wheeled off, dashing after the guards on his horse. Its hooves cut moons in the mud path. I wished I could leave as emphatically, in case he glanced back at me. But no matter how I pulled on Black's reins, the horse would not turn. I crossed my wrists on the back of its neck and leaned my forehead against them, unable to go in any direction until Nance and Lor returned to guide the stupid beast.

  It did occur to me that despite my education, I lacked the simple skills required to be an effective barbarian.