Ritualized. It had become ritualized, stilted, formal, routine! And yet it still enshrined the essential truth, as a little dry seed may hold the form of a great tree …
The harper’s song was dying to a close when the door of the room slammed back and Sir Bavis’ only son, Ambrus, came hurrying in.
“Respect, father,” he said, making a perfunctory bow, and did not wait for the polite answer before charging ahead. “I would know whether what is to be done should be done now or in the morning.”
“What?” said Sir Bavis stonily, looking the youth up and down. He had sometimes wondered about his wife’s constancy, seeing this black-browed fellow with his sullen mouth and his fierce face devoid of subtlety. Himself, though men might say he was strong as a pillar of the fortress and hard as its stones, he had ever been a man who would not strike down what he could undermine, a patient schemer who planned for years ahead if need be.
Nonetheless, he knew how rarely a strain bred true from generation to generation; maybe some ancestor of his or his wife’s had endowed Ambrus with so many faults. It was a burden that had to be borne.
Not understanding his father’s reaction, Ambrus gave a blank stare. He said, “You know what I’m talking about—what has to be done!”
Stifling a sigh, Sir Bavis leaned back in his high-armed chair and extended first one leg, then the other, so that his valets could slip on and lace his ceremonial boots. He said, “Tell me, Ambrus, who do men say stands the best chance tomorrow?”
The youth brightened. At last he was catching on. Sir Bavis prompted him further—though surely only a dummy would have failed to realize that a servant’s mouth could be unlocked where a noble’s could not, and that those who attended him were nonetheless servants, before whom one did not refer even obliquely to secrets of state.
“Do they not,” he pursued, “speak especially highly of Saikmar son of Corrie, of Clan Twywit?”
“Indeed!” Ambrus confirmed, pretending enthusiasm. “It’s said he’s the cleverest seen in forty years!” Unspoken under the words was his private gloss on the remark: Not that that will make any difference to his fate!
“Before the week is out, then,” Sir Bavis muttered, “we may see a new clan ruling in this fortress.” He spoke levelly, watching Ambrus’ face for a reaction. It came: a dark flush of jealousy.
And, a moment later, he himself felt a new stab of pain so acute he had to close his eyes. Another warning from the gods, that was what it must be—like the prick of a graat-goad, harrying an obstinate animal along a path it did not wish to follow.
The subject of this dialogue with his son was a certain porcelain jar that reposed, well-stoppered, in a locked chest in an adjoining room. It held a brew of herbs and fungi of which twenty drops would fuddle the strongest man. Seventeen times at the start of the king-hunt Sir Bavis had sent a luck-cup to the most fancied contenders … spiked with the drug.
And yet this year, whenever he thought of it, the hand of a god squeezed cruelly around his heart.
He opened his eyes and looked harshly around at his servants. “Are you done?” he demanded.
They nodded fearfully.
“Then get goner!”
They went, scurrying like little thievish animals. Only Ambrus remained. Getting to his feet, Sir Bavis began to pace up and down, wishing with all his being that he had never made the boy party to this secret. He had told himself he had done so because it was time for Ambrus to team the skills of statecraft, but that had been a lie. He knew the real reason now: it was because the only thing his son knew how to admire in an older man, father or not father, was a greater degree of duplicity and cunning than he had as yet had time to master.
Abruptly he said, “We will send no luck-cup to Saikmar.”
Ambrus took half a step forward, words boiling to his lips. “But, father, if he does—!”
“Silence!” Like a spear, the command halted Ambrus in mid-rush. Sir Bavis continued, fumbling for words.
“Son, I have perhaps led you to … to an over-light regard for the gods. I have been tempted to … to change matters, to arrange things as I would have them, not as the gods willed. At least, that’s what I thought I was doing. But now I realize it was all illusion, for what the gods will comes to pass, and men they use only as their instruments. We have prospered for a long time—but not owing to any cleverness of mine: on sufferance from them. And their patience has finally run dry.”
He could not express the sense that went deeper than words, the sense of impending death, and beyond death the pit of torment in the Smoking Hills. He had only words to utter.
“Eighteen years, Ambrus, have made the king mighty beyond belief. Perhaps I have helped him. Perhaps but for me, and the—the luck-cups I have sent annually to his challengers, he would have been laid low. But now it is time to make an end of interfering. We must cast our destiny to him, and rely on his strength and cunning.”
He could read the rebellion in Ambrus’ eyes, to which words were no counter. Ambrus was saying, “But that this womanish Saikmar should oust Clan Parradile from ruling—it’s unspeakable!”
“If it happens, it happens,” his father answered heavily.
“It must not!” Ambrus stamped his foot. “Oh, why was I born into Clan Parradile that’s permitted to rule only when others default?”
“You’re greedy!” snapped Sir Bavis. “Envious of power! I’m ashamed for you. Do not men pray as they lie dying to be reborn into this clan you prize so lightly? Do they not hold it an honor to have the noblest of beasts for a clan-sign?”
“Oh, for you to speak is well enough!” Ambrus retorted. “How do you think I feel, seeing hope of such estate as you’ve enjoyed for eighteen years snatched from me?”
“By your words and actions now, you seem ill-fitted for any post of dignity!”
For a moment Ambrus was at a loss for speech. His eyes narrowed. Finding himself before a low table, he planted a balled fist on it for a prop and leaned forward. He said, “How shall I prove you wrong? Shall I arm my glider and go forth tomorrow to contend with the king? Better that I should lay him low than that—that weakling Saikmar!”
All Sir Bavis old strength came back with a sudden torrent of rage and horror. He strode toward his son, snapped his fingers on the youth’s ear like the jaws of a parradile, and used the pain as a lever to bend him from the waist. As he had not done since Ambrus was twelve years old, he clouted him enormously on the seat of his breeches.
“Go!” he said thickly when he had delivered the blow. “Go purify your mouth before you dare speak to me again—or anyone! You must make atonement for your sacrilege!”
As though realizing at last the weight of what he had said, Ambrus’ anger gave way to fear, and he made no move against his father. His mouth working, but not uttering a word, he turned blindly to the door and went out Shocked to the core, Sir Bavis remained alone. That his son should speak of going forth against the king—himself a member of the king’s clan! How far was it from there to talk of killing a cousin … or even his father?
Through his sick dismay an important point gradually worked its way into consciousness. If he was capable of blasphemy, mere disobedience would be nothing to Ambrus—and he knew of the existence of the porcelain jar in the next room.
Sir Bavis stole, guiltily like a thief, to the door and peered both ways along the corridor. No one was in sight. Hastily he located the proper keys among the many which depended from his belt, let himself into the other room and opened the chest. There was the jar, mercifully untouched since last year. He seized it and hastened to the nearest window. Outside it ran a rain-sluice. He spilled the contents of the jar into it, and as the poison trickled away felt a great calmness come over him. With an exultant gesture he hurled the empty jar far into the distance, and heard it smash on one of the lower roofs of the fortress.
He returned to the robing-room moments before the chief acolyte came tapping at its door with his staff of office to say that the
sun would shortly be setting. Sir Bavis, smiling a little, accepted the staff and followed the acolyte to the winding stair that led to the topmost parapet of the highest watchtower. In the distance could be heard the confused noise of the nobles as they arrived for the assembly that would succeed the sunset ritual.
Emerging on the flat stage that circled the top of the tower, he found all in order—robed acolytes, servers, sages, and his kinfolk, who wore the proud symbol of the senior clan, the stylized two-winged shape of the parradile their king. He greeted them stiffly as he went by.
At last he came to the western battlements and stared toward the twin furnaces of the sunset and the Smoking Hills. Already the reddish disc of the sun was misshapen by the hot air rising over the volcanic range. And the wind must be from that quarter, for he could smell—
No. The scent of burning was from close at hand. Glancing down over the city, he could make out a smear of smoke indicating the site of a house afire. Fortunately it was not far from the river, which meant plenty of water was available to protect nearby buildings. From the volume and density of the smoke it was clear there was small chance of saving the house itself.
Out of curiosity he called to one of the young servers standing near him, a boy noted for the keenness of his eyesight “See you there!” he said, gesturing. “Can you discern whose house it is that’s burning?”
The boy hesitated. “It might be Trader Heron’s,” he said doubtfully. “But there’s too much smoke to be sure.”
Trader Heron’s! Why, what a disaster to befall him on the very day of his return to—
Sir Bavis glanced up, and realized that while he was distracted the evening star had come out like a water-white jewel on the dying-coal color of the sky. All else was instantly forgotten except the ritual words; he raised his staff and pointed toward the star.
“Tomorrow it is lawful that the king be killed!”
CHAPTER FOUR
Saikmar son of Corrie moved as in a dream to take his place among the other members of Clan Twywit in the hall of audience. In his veins the blood seemed to rush like a mountain torrent; he felt he was watching his own actions from a distance, as a man does when drunkenness severs the body from the mind’s control without blurring the mind’s awareness. Yet this was in no other way like being drunk, as far as he could tell from his limited experience of that state. It was closer to ecstasy.
Those about him—his mother, his uncle who had stood guardian to him since his father’s death, his sisters, his aunts, and cousins to the third degree—were proud of him, and as he passed by on the way to his seat in the front rank they clapped him on the shoulder or called encouragement to him. But he was not proud of himself. His ecstasy was beyond pride. He was not completely here in the hall. Part of him was out there above the Smoking Hills, riding the turbulent air in a flimsy glider—already lost in tomorrow.
The huge semicircular audience hall was filled with benches arranged in wedge-shaped groups, widening from short ones at the front, where three might without comfort cram side by side, to long ones against the wall adequate for twenty. The order in which the clans sat was determined by lot. As it had fallen out Clan Twywit this year claimed the central wedge, and so when he took his place Saikmar found himself directly facing the throne on which Sir Bavis would preside.
He was dimly aware that most eyes were upon him, but took no notice. Those eyes were seeing a youth as tall as a man, but curiously slim, all his bones even to those of his skull being narrow and light—birdlike, people said. A few years ago none would have foreseen him as his clan’s best contender, for he spent his time studying, dancing, singing, and climbing trees by himself away from the rough-and-tumble of his fellows. Now, though, at eighteen, he had learned to express his dancer’s grace through the medium of a glider, to finger its controls with the same delicacy as a musical instrument, and his light build and nervously quick reactions had marked him out far above the rest.
Limping a little (he had been thrown by a spirited graat and broken a leg which healed short) his uncle, Sir Malan Corrie, chief of the clan, took his place on one side of Saikmar, and his mother on the other. His mother was queenly still, though growing old, and carried herself grandly.
And now there was a clash of gongs and silence followed the dying reverberations as doors behind the dais opened to admit Sir Bavis, surrounded by his acolytes and servers and all his splendid retinue. Saikmar’s eyes fastened on the face above the glossy black beard. Could it be true, as gutter-gossip held, that this noble head of the noblest clan had dragged contenders year by year to ensure that the king would not be killed? Oh, it was past belief! That ringing voice as it uttered invocations to the gods sounded like a bell of sincerity, resonating to the very marrow of Saikmar’s bones …
Then, when the invocations were done, there came the appeal for contenders against the king. Saikmar felt his heartbeat quicken; he turned to look at the first of his rivals as he rose to give his name to the notator for the record. Of course, the contenders had been selected weeks—in some cases months—ago. But for the sake of the ritual the notators had to hear them speak for themselves and write the names down in the honor roll. (For some contenders, lost among the volcanoes, an entry on the roll had to stand as their only memorial.)
In olden days, ancient traditions reported, the pattern was not so rigid as now; contenders were not confined to one from each clan, and even men from outside the Carrig territory had been permitted to attempt the king’s life: Red Sloin, for instance, about whom a famous ballad had been made. Waiting his turn to speak, Saikmar heard a few lines of that song in his memory.
Then his uncle was urging him to rise, and he was recalled to the present with a start. Making his voice as deep as he could—for it was high and clear, and sometimes he was taunted because it had never actually broken, merely slid from a boy’s treble to a youth’s tenor—he announced his name, his clan, and his intention to go forth against the king.
One moment later he had forgotten, and was lost anew in visions of the hunt.
It was not until after the contender from the last clan had been listed that reality broke in on him again, and then in a strange, unlooked-for fashion. The great doors at the rear of the hall had been heard to open, but no one had looked round, assuming that with the approach of darkness servants were coming to light the torches, or attend to some other necessary task. Now, though, from a pool of shadow a bass voice rang out.
“And I! I also would go to hunt your king!”
Startled—Sir Bavis perhaps the most startled of all—the assembled nobles craned to see who had spoken. Emerging from obscurity, he proved to be a man of at least thirty, possibly older, heavy-set, with dark brows. He wore a southland costume of loose belted shirt and flapping breeches, and he hooked his thumbs defiantly into the belt as he confronted the hostile glaring of the company.
After a moment’s silence, indignation against the intruder broke out like floodwater breaching a dam, and Sir Bavis had to command the bearer of the loudest gong to hammer on it before he could cut through the tumult. When he had a semblance of order, he shouted, “Come forward and make yourself known!”
Expressionless, the stranger tramped up the aisle alongside the folk of Clan Twywit, and Saikmar, heart hammering, wondered if he had had some kind of premonition just now, when he found The Ballad of Red Sloin running through his brain.
Sir Bavis was half out of his seat now, staring at the dark-browed man. “Why, you came for audience this afternoon with Trader Heron—I recognize you now. You’re the southerner, the one called Belfeor!”
“Correct,” the stranger said sarcastically. “But please don’t tell me that that prevents me going to hunt the king. Red Sloin wasn’t a Carrig man either, and I ask no more than you accorded him.”
Considering what he had been through since his arrival in the city, Belfeor reflected with grim satisfaction, he felt he had made a most impressive entry. Of all the incredibly bad luck, to fall in with
a Galactic agent—to find themselves in his very house! When there could hardly be a dozen agents on the planet, and probably half as many.
Still, things had not turned out too badly. Though Pargetty was inclined to panic at first he’d had to agree that if Heron—or whatever his real name was—had charged in wearing nothing but a towel, and moreover forgotten himself sufficiently to address them in Galactic, he could have had no previous inkling of his guests’ off-planet origin. Which in turn implied that they had disguised themselves well. And further meant that he had had no chance to report their presence to the authorities. All was not lost, therefore. But they had to move quickly.
The servants had panicked only because of the energy gun. Given a few minutes in which to grow angry at their master’s death, the bravest of them would return. They snatched up the communicator and replaced it in the native wooden case which disguised it as a “shrine”—an obvious cover, because many of the indigenous cults venerated ancestral relics and protected their containers with elaborate curses aimed at thieves and despoilers—gathered what few of their belongings were absolutely indispensable, and hurried out of the room. As he left, Belfeor launched two more bolts at the body of Trader Heron and saw the wooden floor beneath his corpse crackle into a blaze.
“We’ll burn the house!” he snapped at Pargetty. “We’ve a good chance they won’t believe the servants’ story—they may think them crazy at least until tomorrow, and by then we should be out of their reach if what you’ve told me is true.”
Pargetty, pale-faced, gave a nod and fumbled his own energy gun out from beneath his shirt. Sighting to the other end of the long passage, he started a fire there also to block the door of Heron’s private suite. When they had descended the external staircase to the stableyard behind the house, they completed their work with two more shots through windows, and coils of smoke began to pour from the rooftop.