Mistress of the Empire (49 page)

Mara now recalled the words of the delegate from Turakamu’s temple who had officiated at the relocation of Desio’s prayer gate. At the time, overwhelming emotions had caused her to dismiss the priest’s remarks as ingratiating flattery. Only years later, did she appreciate his sincerity. The discovery of support in a place she had not expected bolstered her courage. ‘I need to inquire about the nature of magic.’

The High Priest froze with his cup of chocha halfway to his lips. He blinked once, his thoughts distant. Then, as if the Lady’s request had been commonplace, he resumed sipping his drink. He allowed the beverage to linger on his palate before he swallowed, perhaps because he wished to buy time for consideration, or, as Saric’s wicked insight might infer, to forestall an unseemly fit of choking.

Whatever his priestly motive, his manner was calm when he set down his cup. ‘What would you know of magic?’

Doggedly Mara pursued the topic, though it was dangerous. ‘Why are such powers considered the sole province of the Assembly? For I have seen priests who could wield them.’

The High Priest regarded the small, determined woman who was acknowledged to be the second most influential figure in the Empire after the Light of Heaven. His eyes held unfathomable shadows, and a coldness not there the moment before. ‘The sanctions imposed by the Assembly upon your dispute with Jiro of the Anasati are well known, Mara. If you are seeking to arm yourself against the Black Robes, you embark on a ruinous course.’ He did not use
the honorific ‘Great Ones’ and that nuance was not lost upon Mara and her advisers. As with the cho-ja, was it possible the temple hierarchies felt less than enamored of the magicians?

‘Why should you assume that I plot against the Assembly?’ Mara asked with impolitic bluntness.

Father Jadaha seemed unperturbed by her directness. ‘My Lady, service to Turakamu leads my kind to know the darker side of human nature. Men long in power do not care to be shown their vulnerabilities. Few demonstrate wisdom when confronted by change and self-recognition. Sadly, many react in defense of positions that have lost their meaning, simply because they fear to see their security undermined, even for growth, even for the betterment of their lives. They resist change simply because it is outside the comfort they know. You represent luck and hope and good fortune to the folk of these nations. You have been their champion, unwittingly or not, because you opposed tyranny and cruelty when you brought about the abolishment of the Warlord’s office. You have successfully questioned the long-standing power structure that rules this land. That must be interpreted as challenge, whether you will such or not. You have grown to great heights, and those who see you as their rival have felt your shadow fall across them. Two powers such as the Assembly and the Servant of the Empire cannot exist without conflict. Thousands of years in the past, the Black Robes perhaps earned their place outside the law. But now they interpret their omnipotence as their gods-given right, their sacred honor, if you will. You represent change; and they, the very fabric of tradition. They must defeat you to maintain their ascendance. This is the nature of Tsurani life.’

Father Jadaha glanced through the screen, cracked open to admit the outside air. The snap of a carter’s whip drifted in from the street, overlaid by the cry of a fish monger selling
that morning’s catch. As if the intrusive sounds of ordinary life set mortal bounds to his thinking, the priest sighed. ‘Once we who swore service to the gods held influence and great reach, Mara of the Acoma. Once we were able to encourage our rulers for the betterment of all men, or at least use our influence to curb excessive greed and evil.’ He fell silent, his lips thinned with what may have been bitterness. Then he said, ‘There is nothing I can offer that will help you against the Assembly. But I have a small gift for your journey.’

Mara repressed apprehension. ‘Journey?’ Had her subterfuge been so transparent, that even this High Priest in Sulan-Qu saw through the purpose of her pilgrimage? Stiff-faced, silent, and reminded by a touch from Saric that she must not tip her hand through an assumption, Mara watched the priest arise and cross to an ancient wooden chest.

‘To find what you seek you must travel far, Mara of the Acoma.’ He unlocked the catch and raised the lid. ‘I believe you already know that.’ His incongruously graceful hands rummaged through the contents of the chest. Mara caught a glimpse of parchments, and the ribboned edges of seals, through a puff of disturbed dust. The priest muffled a sneeze in his sleeve. ‘Your pardon.’ He flapped an ancient treatise to clear the air, then resumed his train of thought. ‘The gossip mongers on the streets say you carry enough baggage to return to the sandy wastes of the Lost Lands. Anyone with a shell centi can buy that fact from them.’

Mara smiled. She found it difficult to reconcile the priest who had officiated at the morning rites to the most feared god on Kelewan with a man who might buy gossip on the street. Ruefully she said, ‘I had hoped to imply that we carried great tribute to offer the temples where I will pause to pay my respects to the Twenty Gods. In truth, though, you are right. My pilgrimage
will lead me to board ship and travel downriver to Jamar.’

The High Priest straightened from the chest, a smear of dust on his nose and a twinkle in his eyes. He held an ancient parchment, cracked and flocked with age. ‘I would be a poor counselor for the afflicted if I could not read through subterfuge. But we priests do not see through the eyes of rulers. It is our business to interpret with an eye to understanding.’ He offered the document to Mara. ‘Read this. It might yield you some insights.’

Sensitive to the finality in his tone, Mara handed the parchment to Saric to store in his satchel. She pushed aside her cake plate and rose. ‘Thank you, Father.’

The priest held her eyes as Lujan and Saric moved in response to her intention to depart. ‘Do you seek answers in the Lost Land, Mara?’

Wise enough to know when not to be circumspect, Mara said, ‘No. We leave from Jamar for Lepala.’

As if the topic she addressed held nothing more momentous than small talk, the priest waved away a small insect that alit upon the rim of the cake plate; then his hands folded comfortably in his sleeves. ‘This is good, daughter of my god. The shamans of the desert are … unreliable. Many of them treat with dark powers.’

Saric could not restrain a small exclamation at this. The priest responded with a chuckle. ‘Your First Adviser seems surprised.’

Mara nodded her permission, and Saric made hasty apology. ‘Excuse my apparent disrespect, Father, but most would consider … your master a … dark power.’

The High Priest’s face crinkled with silent laughter. ‘Believe me, that misapprehension often has its advantages! But death is just another side of the mystery of the Wheel of Life. Without its portal into Turakamu’s halls, wherein all spirit finds renewal, our current existence would be a
mindless endeavor lacking soul.’ The High Priest moved to usher Mara’s party from his quarters, but he continued speaking. ‘Our magic, as you would call it, is no unnatural power.’ He pointed his finger at the insect that circled over the cake platter. A sharp, almost subliminal shadow seemed to cross the air and the creature plummeted to the floor. ‘We use this aspect of nature sparingly, to ease the suffering of those who are near their end, yet unable to release their own hold upon flesh. The spirit of life is strong, sometimes mindlessly so.’

‘Such could be a powerful weapon,’ observed Lujan in a voice deeper than usual. Mara realised that, though he hid it well, he was as apprehensive of Turakamu’s servants as any one of his warriors.

The priest shrugged. ‘Never that.’ With no more ado, he pointed his finger at Lujan’s breast. The Acoma Force Commander made a visible effort to keep from flinching, and sweat sprang along the band of his plumed helm.

Nothing happened.

Even Mara realised her heart had raced in fear as the priest added quietly, ‘It was not your time to meet the Red God, Force Commander. Mine are the powers of my god. I could not send you to his halls on my own authority.’

Saric, to whom all of life was a puzzle to be solved, was first to overcome his apprehension. ‘But the insect …?’

‘This was its time.’ The priest almost sounded weary. ‘To make a point, I expect.’

Sobered, Mara bade the priest thanks for his advice and good wishes. She and her party were shown from the temple by the one-eyed servant. At the base of the marble stair, they were rejoined by her honor guard. Mara stepped into her litter, lost in thought. She did not at once give the command to her bearers to rise, and in that interval, a ragged street urchin raced from a side alley and crashed squarely into Lujan.

The Force Commander swore under his breath. He righted the youngster, crinkled his nose at the smell of unwashed clothes, then abruptly became expressionless.

Mara stifled her amusement. Under the noise of another street hawker, this one peddling cheap silk scarves and perfumes suitable for women of the Reed Life, she whispered, ‘Another of Arakasi’s messengers?’

Saric pricked up, while Lujan stuffed the note he had palmed into his belt, under pretense of wiping his hands. ‘Vermin,’ he said loudly after the fleeing child. Dropping his voice so only Mara and Saric could hear, he added, ‘Were does the man find such filthy creatures to do his bidding?’

Mara was unwilling to disclose that her Spy Master had once been such a luckless boy, and that his use of them as his message bearers might be twofold: they would not be marked by other men’s spies because they were of little account, and they could not read. Since Arakasi had encountered Kamlio, Mara additionally suspected that pity entered in, since her Spy Master might wish to justify spending the centis to allow those less fortunate youngsters a chance to buy themselves a meal they need not steal. In a noncommittal voice she said, ‘Did he find one?’

Saric gave her a stern look. Aware that she referred to a magician of the lesser path, which Arakasi had set out to find since the misfortune that had ended his search through the archives, the First Adviser snapped Mara’s curtains closed. He said in his most infuriating tone of familiarity, ‘The sooner we move out to find a tavern for your nap, the quicker you will find out.’

‘We will call on the man after dark,’ Mara whispered through the cloth.

Saric and Lujan exchanged glances of fond exasperation. Their mistress seemed giddy as a girl. Plainly, she found the challenge of her pending inquiries into the forbidden
exhilarating after long months of frustration. As the bearers raised the litter, Saric and the Acoma Force Commander fell into step together.

‘Was she like this when you left for the campaign in the desert?’ the First Adviser murmured to the officer who was his cousin.

‘Not then.’ Lujan pushed back his helm with a smile. ‘But Keyoke told me about the wild march cross-country into the territory of the Inrodaka to win the alliance of the cho-ja Queen. By his account, then she was worse.’

‘Gods save us,’ Saric said, making a sign to avert misfortune. But his eyes were laughing, and his stride, like his cousin’s, was springy with excitement.

‘Your curiosity will kill us all one day,’ Lujan murmured. ‘It’s a damned lucky thing for my recruits that you gave up your warrior’s sword for the mantle of an adviser.’

Then the honor guard and litter bearers set off for the tavern where Mara would reside while in Sulan-Qu.

The door flap stirred.

Jamel, the lesser-path magician, started at the sound, his sweaty hand gripped tight to the knife he held to his breast. He had only seconds to act, he knew. His body would take a while to relinquish life after he fell upon his blade. Apprehension for the agony he would suffer made the little man hesitate. He shifted his wet fingers, biting his lower lip. He must summon courage! The Black Robes had spells to command the wal to remain enfleshed. If he was not before the Red God’s divine judgment by the time the magicians arrived, his torments at their hands would be worse than painful death.

For he had defied them, blatantly, in speaking with Lady Mara of the Acoma. The magicians had been direct in their orders concerning the Good Servant. She was not to be told anything of magic, even should she come with bribes in hand to inquire.

Feeling the pouch of metal centis against his skin, Jamel repressed a sour laugh. He would never have the chance to spend them! Much as he might wish for the time to give them into the hands of the street girl down the way who was his friend, fate would not allow him even the grace of generosity. He had chosen his path. Too late, now, to wish words unsaid and resolves undone.

One last time, Jamel ran his gaze around the cluttered hovel that had been his home. Here he had made many marvels to delight the children of the rich; but how much different his life might have been if his powers had not been confined to the fashioning of toys! Hungry for the
knowledge he had been denied, thirsty for the testing of limits that he had never been permitted to attempt, Jamel loosed a bitter sigh.

‘Gods go with you, Lady Servant,’ he said fearfully. ‘And may the curse of Zurgauli, God of Ill Luck, permanently visit the Assembly.’ So saying, he threw himself down onto the floor before the cushions where Lady Mara’s officer had sat.

The knife against his heart bit deep, and his agony, at the end, was brief.

Blood soaked into the dry earth of the floor; the ragged edges of torn cushions showed seeping crescents of scarlet where the warm, wet flow had been dammed, then absorbed, by the fabric. Jamel’s quivering, clenched fingers fell lax, and his opened eyes shone motionless in the glow of the brazier’s coals. The next instant, a stir of air swept the chamber, fanning the curled ash of the parchment that had contained notes to Mara before it burned. The calley-bird feathers in the urn by the clothes chest streamed in the disturbance, and the bells of an unsold child’s toy chimed their priceless song into the stillness. Outside, in the dark of the night, the mongrel dog still howled.

Then over the rush of air came a faint buzzing, and the hovel of a sudden was not empty. Next to the cooling corpse of Jamel appeared two black-robed figures, both of them thin as misers, though one was old, and one young.

Shimone pushed back his hood, his jutting nose outlined in red by the dying coals of the brazier. He glanced around the hovel, taking swift inventory of every item amid the clutter; he paused, and sniffed thoughtfully. His slippers were damp, and the puddle he stood in was warm. The corpse might have been just another item of bric-a-brac for all the reaction he gave. His deep eyes flashed as he glanced to his companion. ‘Too late,’ he said.

Tapek shoved Jamel’s body with his toe, and his thin lips turned down in disdain. ‘By only seconds.’ He spat the words like a curse. ‘If the wretch had not found his nerve for just a minute longer …’

Shimone shrugged. His thinning silver hair caught light like a cock’s comb as he roved the width of the hovel, tracking sticky footprints as he examined the shelves, the bins of faded scrolls, and the battered chests with more care. ‘She was here. That is enough.’ He reached out one finger and jingled the doll with her priceless headdress of metal bells. ‘And anyway, the wretch is dead. He saved us the bother, really.’

Tapek’s heavy, cinnamon-colored brows gathered into a frown. ‘Is it enough?’ He stepped over the unfortunate Jamel and blocked his companion’s restless pacing. ‘What did the dead man tell her? That’s the issue! We know Jamel broke his obedience. He could have said anything before he drove that knife through his heart!’

The slight hiss of the coals was now the only sound in the night. The dog had stopped barking. Even the far off rumble from the dockside ceased. The commonplace noises of Sulan-Qu had quieted for an instant, as if the city held its breath.

Shimone reached out a finger like a twig and touched Tapek on the breast. He moved his hand. No spell arose, but as if it had, the younger magician stood aside. As Shimone moved past to continue his examination of Jamel’s belongings, he said, ‘You want to know what she asked? See, then. But I think we waste our time. She knows, now, what she knows. That cannot be changed, but only acted upon.’

Tapek rolled his shoulders, clearing his wrists from his sleeves. His eyes, pale as oil, threw back the hot light like a fanatic’s. ‘Indeed we will act. But it is proof of Mara’s defiance of our edicts that will move the likes
of Hochopepa off his enormous arse. We need consensus within the Assembly, and he and his faction work to prevent that.’

‘Hocho is not a procrastinator,’ Shimone defended, his voice made faint by the fact that he had stooped to peer into the dusty cranny under a shelf.

‘Well,’ Tapek said hastily, for he was not deaf to subtle chastisement, ‘what lesser-path mage would
not
speak to Mara? She is revered by commoners. They would give her anything she asked, just to win grace in the eyes of the gods. If she corrupted Jamel, what more proof would Hochopepa and you need to condemn her to death?’

Shimone straightened, absently dusting blood and dirt from his sleeve cuffs. ‘Jamel was hardly such a fool. You will see.’

‘I will see!’ Insistently Tapek raised his hands. He flashed a last glare at his colleague, whose behavior had been difficult, if not obstructive. While a long-time friend of Hochopepa’s, Shimone had always seemed reasonable. ‘
You
will see,’ Tapek added. Then he began to murmur the incantation to summon back in spectral form the actions of the immediate past.

Cold seemed to weave through the close atmosphere of the hovel, though the air itself remained still. Shimone stopped his inquisitive poking through the objects on the shelves. He thoughtfully bent and closed the eyes of the corpse. Then, bright in movement as a bird, he stood back against the wall with folded arms to observe the result of Tapek’s spell.

The younger magician’s incantation drew to a sibilant close. His raised hands held steady as if to focus his will and powers. Light glowed beyond the brazier that was not cast by fire or coal. It brightened to an icy silver-blue, then spread into a hazy translucence that slowly sharpened in outline to show the form of Jamel seated, his face turned
expectantly toward the door flap. Moments later, visitors entered: Mara and her two officers. Conversation began between the parties, eerily soundless. Shimone seemed as attentive to the noises outside, in the poor quarter, as to the unfolding of Tapek’s truth spell.

Lipreading showed the contents of the discussion to be petty: Mara’s concern centered on the estrangement of her husband, which had begun months back at the birth of her daughter. An innocent enough tableau; except that Jamel began, most irritatingly for the magicians assigned to this inquiry, to fuss and toy with a length of silk. Conveniently often, it seemed, the cloth obscured sight of his mouth. By the ripple of the silk caused by his breath, it was evident that he hid speech. But no spell of past recall could recover the sound of his words. The imprint of light striking objects in the room could be summoned back into coherent form, to be read for many days after, but sound was too fragile to endure more than seconds.

Tapek swore. Fixed as a relli, he watched as Jamel arose and conducted Mara toward the wall. There they turned their backs to the room, and to appearances, the lesser-path mage proceeded in all seriousness to instruct the Lady in just the sort of fakery – passes in the air with his hands, motions that meant nothing but were intended to impress the ignorant folk who came calling to buy this or that change in their miserable lives – that demeaned the reputation of magicians as a whole, and that Tapek scorned. His hands shook with anger as he maintained the forces that drove his spell, and he said acidly, ‘The Lady seems remarkably stupid, all of a sudden. Is this the fourth repetition of this rubbish, or the fifth?’

To his fury, Shimone appeared to be laughing – not outright, that was never his way, but his deep eyes seemed dancing with light. ‘I warned you, Tapek. Jamel was not an idiot. And the Lady is certainly not stupid.’

The veiled disapproval in his colleague’s tone renewed Tapek’s frustration. Still, out of determination and pique he endured the specters’ charades, until Jamel finished tracing meaningless symbols and resorted to scribbling on a parchment, hunched over it to conceal the writing. Since the spell only recalled the imprint of past events as if the observer were standing in the room, no matter where Tapek moved, Jamel’s writing could not be read. Tapek glared at the brazier, only to realise that Shimone had spied the ashes of the burned parchment already, probably soon after their entry into Jamel’s abode.

‘Indeed,’ observed the older magician in answer to Tapek’s thought, ‘the words were lost before we ever arrived.’

Tapek released his spell the instant that Mara received the carefully folded parchment and took her leave. Unmindful of blood-wet earth or sodden cushions, Tapek stamped in leashed temper around the brazier, every inch of him tense. ‘Gods, but if only I could stand where that wall is, and recast my truth spell, I’d learn much, for you could see by their stances that the Lady and our dead man spoke openly when facing the shelves!’

Shimone, ever the realist, shrugged. ‘We’re wasting time.’

Tapek rounded on his colleague, who stood now like an elderly Lord impatiently suffering the slowness of an inept servant. ‘Mara!’ Tapek exclaimed. ‘We shall ask her!’

As if released from thought into action, Shimone stalked toward the door. He twitched aside the flap of hide and stepped through into the hardly less cloying stink of the alley, saying, ‘I wondered when you’d finally think of that.’

Leaving the corpse of Jamel where it lay, Tapek barged through on the heels of his companion. His red brows jutted in a thunderous frown. If he had dared to speak freely upon
the subject, he would have accused Shimone of obstructing him. The old mage was a companion of Hochopepa, and the two of them often championed strange causes. Together, had they not defended Milamber after that disastrous scene at the Imperial Games? It mattered little to Tapek that Milamber had later proven his worth to the Empire by warning the Emperor and the Assembly of the danger the Enemy presented. His feelings regarding Elgohar, the magician who had imprisoned Hochopepa and tortured Milamber, were mixed; Elgohar had been mad, of course, but he had done as he had thought best for the Empire. But Milamber had destroyed him, and along with his other outrages, had demonstrated the risks brought by radical departures from tradition. Tapek was convinced Mara’s recent actions were, if not proof, then a strong indication she plotted to defy the Assembly. And that was an affront to tradition that made the pale magician tremble with ire.

Deep in outraged speculation, Tapek all but ran into Shimone, who had stopped in the street, and to all appearances was listening to the wind.

‘Which way are you going to look?’ Shimone inquired.

Tapek’s scowl deepened. It demeaned him to act the part of underling, but if he did not summon another spell to recall the past, and left that bit of business to Shimone, plainly the old fellow would meander through the process and contrive to waste half of the night!

There followed several frustrating hours, while Tapek, worn by the effort of sustaining the spell, conjured the phantom image of Mara and her two officers. These, her First Adviser and another wearing the plumes of Acoma Force Commander, escorted their Lady on a meandering ramble through the back streets of the poor quarter. Their path circled, even doubled back! Tapek fumed. Dogged as the possessed, he followed. And was forced to wait, while the Lady paid a business call upon a cloth merchant. Money
changed hands. A package, sealed and wrapped, was passed to her adviser. Then the parade began afresh. At last the Lady returned to the square where her attendants and escort awaited. She got in her litter. To his annoyance, Tapek realised that the town watch called out the hour of three o’clock! Even fat old Hochopepa, he decided, would have wasted less time than the confounded Servant of the Empire.

The spectral image of Lujan paused, reached up to adjust his helm. The set of the feathers seemed not to suit him, and he twisted them this way and that, his wrist obscuring his face while he gave elaborate instructions to the Strike Leader in command of his mistress’s honor guard. Then, at long last, the ghostly, ice-pale replica of the litter rose in the grip of its spectral bearers. The cortege floated on across the darkened streets of Sulan-Qu, with Lujan and the First Adviser taking the wrapped package upon an unspecified errand, their lips moving in a crossfire exchange of doggerel whose content was obscene.

Shimone, in his maddening, obtuse way, was chuckling over the humor, which was straight from the gutter. He almost seemed reluctant to pursue Mara’s litter, which, thought Tapek, steaming, was what they had been sent from the City to do in the first place!

Several times Tapek had to refocus his concentration, as he pursued the phantom image. On the wide boulevards, the surrounding buildings and the busy streets gave back muddled images overlaid with hundreds of others. It took great energy of the mind to track the chosen party. Only because the few people still about in the early hours before dawn immediately gave way to the Black Robes, could Tapek keep the illusion of Mara’s litter in sight. And she was taking the most damnable rambling course. Tapek was nearly exhausted when the spell led at last to the steps of the Temple of Turakamu. There, the phantom figures and
the litter they carried merged outlines as past converged with present and Mara’s slaves lowered their burden to the ground. Tapek waved his hands and dispersed his spell. The blue glow faded, showing Mara’s litter parked on the pavement, empty. He blinked, to dispel the fatigue that slowed the adjustment of his vision. Mara’s guard and servants were gone, presumably to take their ease in some tavern while their mistress attended business within. The stars overhead had begun to pale with false dawn, and Tapek was in a sore mood from stubbing his toes on the cobbles. He scared the wits out of the slave who was sweeping the Red God’s front stair, and sent the wretch scurrying for the High Priest. A Great One was free to move as he chose, but even magicians observed tradition. By custom, no one entered a temple without permission.