The passing of the gods, p.15
The Passing of the Gods, page 15
But the ghen continued without acknowledging it. “I do not intend, however, to bring myself down to his place. He has come to me; shall I show respect to him in any way? To a barbarian?” He stopped where he stood and faced his brother sternly. “I know that you, Nihim, sincerely care to ensure peace and maintain talk with these dogs.”
“Do you know this?”
“Letters…and other proposals—”
“I see that, truly, nothing escapes you.”
“I am the ghen. Shall I jeopardize myself, even for one moment? Even for sentiment?” Agors shook his head. “So…knowing how important it is for you to honor this ‘balance’ you so religiously devote yourself to, I intend to allow you to do better than simply address letters to this Elad of Athadia. I will let you speak with him personally.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tomorrow at dawn, when King Elad comes here to this palace to retrieve his wife, you may greet him and act in official capacity to entertain him as you see fit and to apologize in any way that does not dishonor our father and our ancestors. Then you can send him back to his ships and order him away from us. Surely, arbiter, you find this accommodating?”
“I…to meet him,” Nihim repeated slowly, “rather than—the true ghen. When he expects to be greeted, as an equal, by the king of this nation?”
“Precisely.”
Nihim worried his head sadly. “Still, all this pride in you, this anger.… Face him as a man, Agors! Brother, how much anger must fill you that you have so much to spare strangers whom you regard as enemies.” Nihim shrugged and crossed the room to the door, slippers whispering, robes flowing. “I will do as you suggest. And proudly will I do it. For I remind you of one thing more, Agors, that separates us when we should be bound by blood: more than our father, more than our ancestors, more than our empire, I pay homage to the ceaseless Way. And the day will come, my brother, when you will say to me, ‘Save me from myself, for I have been a fool in my pride and false in my anger, and I too wish to place the Way before all else.’“
Agors laughed cruelly. “And what will you do with me, Nihim, when I come crawling to you, begging for your sympathy and your forgiveness?”
“I will open my arms to you and allow you mercifully to place your burdens upon my heart. I will console you and comfort you and treat you with more graciousness than I would allow even myself.”
“Nihim,” Agors told him, “you are weak. Strive to rise above this need to depend on others.”
“And I will treat you,” his brother continued, ignoring the slander, “as you yourself should treat this king and his strangers from the West—not even as strangers, but as some lost part of you returned home at last, with marvelous tales to tell, and richness of experience beyond what we experience. But then—” Nihim sighed, and his voice turned grim with his reprimand “—what else should you do with these men, o ghen, seeing that you regard yourself as one of them?”
* * * * * * *
When he left Agors, Nihim hurried through the palace to the chamber of Queen Salia. She admitted him only after he had knocked repeatedly, but she was pleased (in her way) to see that it was he, for in the past weeks they had become confidantes of a sort—Nihim offering this strange young woman whatever comfort or conversation he could, and she responding to that comfort with speculations and hopefulness.
“So.…” Salia seated herself on a divan and curled against one side of it. “My husband has come for me?”
“He has.” Nihim remained standing in the middle of the room, arms clasped before him, watching her.
“And—” the queen’s voice shivered “—he has come with war ships…and soldiers?”
“He has. But Agors tells me that he does not intend to answer your husband’s challenge with arms.”
“There will be no war, then?”
“No war, Queen Salia.”
Almost silently, so quietly in a whisper that she could not be overheard, Salia muttered, “Good.…” and pressed one hand to her cheek. To Nihim, then: “Agors will not come to tell me this himself? No…no…of course he won’t.”
Nihim crossed to her. Salia’s face tilted upward, her eyes traveling the long length of his robe until she was staring into the young man’s kind, tired expression.
“Your husband has come to take you home,” he told her. “Is this not all that matters? Whatever else has occurred here…well, are we not all on this place to learn? Inevitably, to err—but to learn?”
“How can you always be so optimistic?” Salia asked him in a heavy voice. “How can you always—”
“Not so optimistic,” Nihim corrected her. “Realistic. Hopeful. Experience has taught me this.”
Salia sighed lightly. “One a moral man, the other a passionate man,” she murmured. “Have you ever, Nihim, been tired—tired unto death, almost? So tired and confused, not knowing who you truly are, so frightened that you could—you feel you could reach inside your head and try to force the pieces of yourself into something whole and complete?”
He was somewhat surprised at the lucidity of her observation. He assured Salia, “I have, indeed. It is a feeling familiar to many who have devoted themselves to Wo Ahyat.”
She brightened. “Is it?”
“We refer to it as the Parceling of Selves; what you of the West might call it, I do not know. Remember when I told you about the three selves, the three parts? Yes. And…have you seen any light in your mirror?”
“There is no light in my mirror,” Salia confessed glumly. “No light from me.”
Nihim laughed at her as though he were delighted by her failure. “It will come, it will come,” he promised. He moved slightly; Salia jerked her head and saw that Nihim had reached out a hand.
To touch her? To touch her cheek, perhaps? Or her hair? They looked into one another’s eyes, and Nihim gradually withdrew his hand, clasped it in the other, turned softly and backed away, turned again and eyed Salia almost with tenderness or affection.
Something had happened within him, in that brief moment, and the queen suspected it. But her intuition was lost as Nihim said to her, changing the course of their conversation, “Agors…has determined that you must return to the West with your husband.”
She started.
“Isn’t it best that you do so? Is there any reason for you not to return to your husband and to your throne?”
Salia looked away and began picking nervously at her robe. “No…I suppose not. Whatever reasons I had…I suppose I’ve forgotten them, now.”
Nihim was disturbed; this was not— This woman was perilous, she was lost, she had changed. He had tried, he had worked— “Your king, then—” he breathed to calm himself “—arrives here on the dawn to accept you back to him and to escort you again to your land. If you will be prepared to visit the hall downstairs in the morning—”
“I will be prepared,” Salia answered him in a small voice, in Hasni.
“Excellent. Agors has asked me to preside over this…exchange.”
“He will not be there?” She stopped picking at her robe.
Nihim shook his head.
The queen made no comment to this, and so Nihim, after a pause, decided to leave her. He was in need of sleep.
But as he made his way out, Salia asked after him, “Nihim? Is my father—is the Imbur of Gaegosh with my husband?”
“I am given to understand, Queen Salia, that the imbur is with the armada but that he will not be coming here tomorrow morning.”
“I see.”
“Good night, Queen Salia.”
“Good night. Of course.…”
Nihim left. Salia continued picking at threads in her robe. She did this for a long time, until one of her pet birds began to make noise in its cage. This disturbed the queen; she sat up angrily and strode across the floor, twirled the cage on its hanger, and yelled at her pet, “Quiet, be quiet! What’s the matter with you? Stop it, be quiet!”
Her actions served only to further upset the bird; it chirruped and squawked very loudly. In desperation, Salia tried to undo the latch of the cage door, but she fumbled with it and cracked one of her fingernails. Infuriated, the queen quickly lifted the cage from its hanger, carried it to an open window, and hurled it out.
“Go away, fly away, go away!”
The cage dropped, vanishing into the dark, whistling as it fell.
“Go away, fly—”
It made a distorted, hollow noise as it struck the ground far below. The bird shrilled sharply. The brazen, circular noises of the smashed cage as it rolled still filled the darkness with a metallic echo—an upsetting sound, unfamiliar amid the night’s usual soft whispers.
Salia, not wanting to hear it, slammed closed the shutters of her window, hurried across the room to her divan, and buried her face in her pillow; she chewed on the pillow and stuffed the heavy cloth of it into her mouth, nearly suffocating herself in an attempt to prevent herself from crying.…
Why had she done that (she wanted to ask the light in her mirror) to her bird?
Why had she done that to the favorite of all her pets?
* * * * * * *
In the middle of the night, before the gray that harbingers the dawn, the first of the deaths occurred, heralding that shadowed place on humanity’s path where events begin to move faster than time. A sailor sitting in a tavern down by Kurad Square slumped forward onto a table and did not move. His companions ignored him, thinking him drunk. But before another hour had passed they, too, began to feel nauseous; three of them dropped to the floor and began to writhe and vomit, while the fourth rose to his feet and, in a daze, managed to stagger to the door before falling to his knees in the street outside.
The young man behind the bar, whose father owned the shop, hurried to examine these men, for he suspected that they were not victims of ordinary drunkenness but of something more. His fears were confirmed when he rolled over each of the sprawled three and saw that their faces had already gone white and were breaking open in red pustules. None was awake; yet they shivered terribly, their arms and legs jumping spasmodically, and the sweat came from them in widening puddles.
Terrified, the young man hastened into the street and ran until he came to the door of a leech. Frantic poundings roused the angered physician, but his temper abated when he heard what the taverner’s son had to report.
Soon, in other public houses along the square, other men and women became victims of the same sudden exhaustion and vomiting, the same trembling and discoloration.
In homes throughout the city, lamps were lit and footsteps quickened in the night as husbands and wives, children and parents awoke from sleep shivering uncontrollably, vomiting painfully, sweating as though caught in a rainy downpour.
In the temples, in the wine shops, in the guard stations, and in the homes of food tenders and butchers, dye-makers and chandlers, wood workers and stone cutters and oil pressers, in the houses of prostitution and in gardens where young lovers were hidden in secret trysts—
—the same shivering, the same vomiting, the same death.
And aboard the Crown, as it sat in the harbor of the Usub, Lord Thomo was roused from his slumber by an eager, frightened young officer. Thomo, grunting and swearing, followed him into the hold, where a number of soldiers were lying too still for sleep or were in the violent throes of illness.
“What is it?” Thomo asked, coming fully awake.
“Your honor, I’m too afraid to say!”
“Name of the gods! Not now, please!”
“The king,” whispered the young officer.
Thomo threw a hand to his face. “Elad!” He turned and hurried down the gallery, pounding on the wall as he went, ordering the young officer behind him to summon the Crown’s physician.
“Not here,” he whispered, wiping sweat from his forehead—even as he feared that dampness to be the beginning of it for himself. “Not here…not now, not…Elad.”
PART THREE
WAR
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Galvus was breakfasting alone, sitting on a rooftop patio, when Abgarthis interrupted him. The prince-regent was sifting through reports of damage, tallying the destruction sustained by the brief earthquake on the fifteenth. He had reviewed them once already, cursorily, looking for some word of Omos: Galvus knew that it was too soon for his friend to write him, but he was concerned for his young lover’s safety. When Abgarthis approached, Galvus regarded him expectantly—but realized then that his minister’s visit had nothing to do with Omos.
“If you have a moment.”
“Certainly.” Galvus pushed aside his plate, leaned forward, and took up his tea. He nodded for Abgarthis to take the chair across from him. “What is it?”
“I thought I should tell you about this now so that you can mull it over today. Perhaps discuss it with some of your friends on the council. I’ve been receiving informal reports—gossip, really—about the problems we’ve been running into recruiting these people’s representatives.”
Galvus frowned. “What sort of ‘gossip’?”
“Oh—these, as well,” Abgarthis remembered, placing on the breakfast table a fat package. “The latest dispatches. From the Emarian front.”
“I’ll get to them. Tell me about these rumors, this gossip.”
“I’m afraid,” his minister declared, seating himself, “that leashing Rhin and the others may be only a beginning to your troubles. There are far too many out there who are sympathetic to them. They fear the abrupt change. I don’t think anyone intends to turn against you or challenge you, but you’ve got to bear in mind that Lord Rhin’s influence is extensive because of his business holdings and the offices in which he sits, the acquaintances he—”
“I’m aware of this, Abgarthis.”
“Of course. I remind you, Galvus, to remind myself. For example, his suggestion of the Khilu was eagerly acted on by many city administrators—”
“He set the waves in motion himself.”
“Yes. Precisely. And meanwhile, these same administrators are uncertain about the contradictory edicts coming from the throne, giving them a great deal of freedom in choosing representatives to sit in government.”
“They want to be told what to do.”
“Sadly, yes, to a large degree. It’s the method they’re most familiar with. Things move too quickly for them.”
Galvus sighed heavily. “I know that. I supposed that with my declaration—” He let it go and thoughtfully lifted his tea cup to his lips.
“It’s simply a matter of habit. We can’t sweep away what’s already there and start everything over again. Most of these people respond to authority. It’s that simple. There’s far too much tension in the empire these days. With Elad gone, many of our businessmen and politicians are leery of making any kind of decisive move. They’ll procrastinate, they’ll vacillate— They don’t disrespect you, Galvus—they are simply in the habit of dealing with things as they always have been. The people whom they see every day have much more effect on them than any document issued from the throne—especially from a prince-regent. After all, you command what could be interpreted as a provisional government. So much has happened.…”
“Yes, yes.”
“I’m only saying that you must be realistic. Patient and realistic.”
“What I need to do, then,” Galvus decided, “is not alienate these merchandisers and plutocrats further but come to terms with them.”
Abgarthis nodded sagely. “Yes. Strike a bargain.”
“Compromise.”
“Exactly.”
“And…undermine everything we were trying to accomplish in the first place.”
“No, no, don’t say that,” his minister insisted.
“But that would be the effect of it, wouldn’t it? If I were to go to Rhin and offer him something in exchange for something else, just so everyone would get the impression that the political winds are blowing in the same direction they always have been?”
There was a bitterness to Galvus’s tone that warned Abgarthis not to pursue the topic further. He nodded briefly—“I mention it only because I know you want to be kept informed”—and rose to leave. But then: “There is one thing more. In addition to these.” Once more he tapped the package of war dispatches.
“And what is it?”
“We’ve had reports, some from the city and some from outlying areas, of a sudden outbreak of disease.”
Galvus went cold. “Disease?”
“We don’t have all the details yet. I’m waiting for a report from Sotos to determine exactly what—”
“Plague, Abgarthis?”
The old man stared at him, fear and sorrow apparent in his features.
And what had that prophet Asawas warned them of? “The fifth sign will be a day and a night of plague. This is the sign that the end has begun.…”
“Name of the gods, Abgarthis.”
“We don’t know that it’s the plague. There’s so much poverty…so little food…the summer has been so hot and dry—”
“Asawas.” Galvus grinned sadly. “You remember.”
“I remember.”
“He was wise. I know he spoke the truth as he believed it to be.” Galvus slumped in his seat and nervously pulled at his lower lip. “I know he is probably a man of this one god, yet how can anyone allow himself to trust completely the visions of, of some farmer, some—” He stopped and shook his head. “This isn’t the old days, when people walked around producing miracles, talking to fires and spirits and ghosts.”
“Isn’t it?” Abgarthis asked.
“It’s quite frightening,” Galvus said, looking at him. “To suppose that he has the vision to have foreseen something terrible. Even now.”
Abgarthis said nothing.
Galvus shook his head. “Now I know what Mother meant, and Elad. Sitting here—the gossip and the rumors and the news and the reports brought to me first of all. I can’t rely upon anyone else, and it’s hard to tell the difference between what might be a miracle and what be someone else’s selfish lies. So it all seems as though it’s falling apart. Wars and prophets and plagues and starving people. No one should pretend to be in command of it all. No one can possibly—”
