Mistress of the Empire (58 page)

Beyond lay a maze of corridors, vaulted like tunnels, and lit with rows of cho-ja globes. The floors were marble. The artistry of the fluted pillars took Mara’s breath away: not even the Emperor’s palace held stonework polished to such a lustrous shine. The people who congregated in antechambers and doorways wore beaded costumes, headdresses of feathers, and some the plain kilts of servants. Others in white robes the Kaliane named acolytes of the craft. All without exception bowed to her passage, and Mara felt their stares upon her back like the touch of heated coals. There was magic here, a weight of power upon the air that made even echoes seem oppressive. Fervently Mara wished herself home, surrounded by familiar walls, and by customs she understood.

The Kaliane guided her into a wider hall that led into an echoing antechamber. Thousands of tiers of candles lit the expanse, burning Mara’s eyes with intense light. Beyond lay a yet more immense room, surrounded by pillared galleries carved and pierced in arrays of intricate patterns. There dozens of robed figures crowded landings that circled the room, rising six levels high. Ladders, and successions of narrow, spiral stairs provided access to the topmost floors.

‘This is our archive,’ the Kaliane explained. ‘Here we house all of our knowledge, and copies of all writings upon
the subject of our craft. It serves also as our meeting hall, on those occasions when the magicians of Thuril gather together, which is as close as our kind come to being organised. We have no fellowship such as your Assembly, and keep no formal officers beyond the Kaliane, who is empowered only to act as spokeswoman.’

Mara was led through a gap in a railing on the lowest level. Her elbows brushed against walls inlaid with corcara shell and ebony in spiraling patterns that made her uneasy. The newel posts were carved totems, beaked, clawed, and fierce of expression. The creatures were scaled or winged in feathers, and their eyes were cut with the predatory slant of a snake’s.

The Kaliane ushered Mara across an intimidating expanse of bare floor. There were no furnishings, not even patterns, beyond a circle that lay at the center. Its perimeter seemed to be marked out in golden light, unmistakably the effect of some spell. Aware of the levels above, now crowding with robed forms who all faced her way, the Lady of the Acoma felt like an object of sacrifice before the ritual that would seal her final fate.

‘There.’ The Kaliane pointed at the magical circle. ‘Step in and stand, if you have courage enough to be judged. But be warned, Lady Mara, Servant of the Empire. Lies and deceit are impossible for any who cross that line.’

Mara tossed back her hair, fallen loose over her shoulders in the absence of the accustomed attention of her maids. ‘I do not fear truth,’ she said boldly.

The Kaliane released her restraining grip. ‘So be it,’ she said, a look near to pity in her eyes.

Mara moved toward the line without trepidation. She did not fear truth, in the moment she raised her foot to step across the bar of yellow light. Yet in that instant she felt pierced by a force that negated all of her will, and by the time her foot struck the flooring on the inward side
of the spell, every vestige of her self-confidence was torn from her.

Halfway across the line, she could not retreat. The part of her body that lay within the spell circle was frozen in place as if shackled. She had no choice but to raise her other leg and enter fully, though to do so now terrified her beyond thought.

Helplessness acquired new meaning. Her ears heard no sound, and her eyes saw nothing but the shimmering golden web of force. She was physically unable to move, or sit, or clasp her arms close about her chest to quell the thump of her fast-beating heart. Slavery itself seemed a freedom, before the magic that ringed her into confinement; her very thoughts were held prisoner. Mara fought despair, even as someone high up in the galleries called down a question.

The Kaliane repeated the query in the Tsurani language. ‘Lady of the Acoma, you have come here asking for power. You claim you will use it to defend, to aid the common good. Show us how you came to hold this belief.’

Mara tried to draw breath to answer, and found she could not. Her body would not answer her desire; magic held her from speech. Panic drove her to anger. How could she defend her intentions if the spell prevented her from speaking? The next moment she discovered that her thoughts had also escaped her control. Her mind seemed to overturn, then to spin like a pinwheel toy made for a child’s amusement. Memories sifted past her inward eye, and she was no longer in the chamber of the magicians in Dorales, within any magical circle. She was seated in her study in the old Acoma estates, arguing hotly with Kevin the barbarian.

The illusion of his presence was so real that the tiny part of Mara’s mind that retained separate self-awareness longed to take shelter in his arms. In dawning trepidation, she realised the intent of the Thuril truth spell: that
she would not be permitted to answer any inquiries verbally.

These mages would ask, and take their answers directly from her experience. She would be given no chance to justify, to reconcile the outcome of any event with explanations. These magicians would observe her actions as they happened, and then judge. She was in fact put on trial, her only defense the acts that comprised her past life.

Mara realised this much in the instant before the spell claimed her wholly, and she
was
in the study on that long-past day with Kevin, facing him in heated anger as he cried, ‘You push me about like a chess … shah pawn! Here! There! Now here again, because it suits you, but never one word of why, and never one second of warning! I’ve done as you’ve bid – not for love of you, but to save the lives of my countrymen.’

Then Mara herself replying, in red-faced exasperation: ‘But I gave you promotion to slave master and allowed you charge of your Midkemian companions. You used your authority to see them comfortable. I see they have been eating jigabird and needra steak and fresh fruits and vegetables along with their thyza mush.’

On the memory played, as real as the moment it happened, even to its ending in a flushed entanglement of passion. Mara knew a wrenching moment of disorientation as, one encounter after another, her relationship with Kevin unfolded, each day bittersweet with joys and frustrations, and difficult lessons. Forced to see again in retrospect, she recognised her own narrow-minded arrogance; how miraculous it was that Kevin the slave had seen anything in her apparent hard-heartedness to love and nurture at all! The days unreeled in staggering jumps as the magicians manipulated her recall. Again she endured the horrors as wave after wave of assassins were repulsed from her town apartments on the Night of the Bloody Swords. Again she
stood on a butana-whipped hilltop and exchanged words with Tasaio of the Minwanabi. She saw the Emperor Ichindar break the staff of the Warlord’s power, her assumption of the title Servant of the Empire.

Again she saw Ayaki die.

There followed another question, mercifully, and the scene changed to the fragrant noon heat of a kekali garden where Arakasi abased himself before her, begging leave to take his own life. Again she shared the scented, dry evening air in Lord Chipino’s command tent on campaign against the desert men in Tsubar.

Time whirled, turned, backtracked; and scene overlaid scene. Sometimes she was sent back into childhood, or to the silent halls of meditation in Lashima’s temple. Other times she suffered the brutality of her first husband. Again she faced his grieving father, over the wrapped bundle of a grandson, now dead also, by equally treacherous means.

Wrenchingly, she shared afresh her relationship with Hokanu, and his uncannily accurate understanding. Through the eyes of the Thuril magicians, she came to realise that his rare perceptions were in fact an unfledged aspect of talent. A near miss of fate might have seen him a member of the Assembly, rather than as husband at her side. How much poorer her life would have been without him, she realised. A part of her heart ached for the distance grown between them, and between the manipulations of the truth spell, she vowed she would remedy the misunderstanding that lingered since Kasuma’s birth.

Lastly, Mara saw herself in Hotaba’s long house, delivering a flat refusal to trade her servant Kamlio for freedom to pursue her business in Thuril. A probe like a needle pierced her, but found only sincerity in her heart.

The spell’s reel of memories lagged for a stretch, and words leaked through, spoken by she knew not whom.
They were in Thuril but understanding of their meaning came to her.

Said one voice, ‘She is indeed different from other Tsurani: to see honor in a slave, and to recognise the rights to freedom of a servant, even above her blood family.’

And the Kaliane, replying: ‘I believed so, or I would not have brought her.’

Upon the heels of that first thought came, ‘Yet do we concern ourselves with Tsurani well-being?’

Another voice of the mind answered, ‘Justly governed neighbors are to be desired, and perhaps …’

Yet another mind spoke, ‘But there is an opportunity to put right the great wrong …’

More words that seemed to blur together; someone mentioned risk, and someone else spoke of the cho-ja empire.

Mara’s hearing faded. She felt suddenly weak in the knees. And then the golden ring of light that held her imprisoned melted away, and she felt herself collapse.

The Kaliane’s strong hands caught her. ‘Lady, it is over.’

Weak as a baby, and shamed to discover she had been crying in the throes of the spell, Mara fought to recover from the shambles of her composure. ‘Have I convinced you?’

‘No. That will be argued through the night,’ the Kaliane admitted. ‘Word of our decision will reach you at dawn. For now I will return you to Mirana, who will see you are given a chance to rest.’

‘I would prefer to wait here,’ Mara protested, but she lacked the will to resist. Strength left her, and she knew no more beyond darkness like the night between stars.

Mara awakened.

It was dark; she breathed in the scent of burning beech logs, and the mustier odor of querdidra wool. There were wooden rafters over her head, faintly picked out of shadow by the weak red light from the hearth. Blankets covered her. They constricted her limbs as she rolled over, puzzled as to her whereabouts.

Her head ached. Memory of events returned slowly, and then in a rush, as she saw the basket of carding Mirana had carried from the long house and the council with her Thuril husband. Now Mara remembered the excursion to the bread shop, and the dreamlike visit to Dorales in the company of the Kaliane. Suddenly stifled by the dark warmth and the blankets, she pushed herself erect.

‘Lady?’ ventured an uncertain voice from the shadows.

Mara turned, to see Kamlio’s oval face, alert and watchful with concern. ‘I am all right, little flower,’ she murmured back, unthinkingly using Lujan’s nickname.

This time Kamlio did not flinch at the diminutive. Instead she shed her own bedclothes, and prostrated herself in abject abasement against the sanded boards of the floor.

Mara was not flattered but disturbed, though servants and slaves had made such gestures to her life long. Such was the Tsurani way, to give total loyalty to please one’s master. However, after the experience in the golden spell circle, the tradition left Mara sickened. ‘Get up, Kamlio. Please.’

The girl did not move, but her shoulders spasmed under her river of pale hair. ‘Lady,’ she said miserably, ‘why did
you set me before your very family? Why? I am not worth so much, surely, that you could not trade me to these Thuril to keep your children safe.’

Mara sighed, bent her tired back, and caught Kamlio’s outstretched wrists. She tugged, ineffectively because she was left weak from the truth spell. ‘Kamlio, please, arise. My concern for my children is paramount, truly, but the life of another free individual is not mine to bargain with, even for my loved ones’ survival. You have not taken my honor for your own; you are not obligated to House Acoma.’

Kamlio allowed herself to be coaxed upright. Swathed in a night robe borrowed from the Thuril that was overlarge for her slender curves, she crouched on the edge of her cot. Her eyes were deep as pits in the dimness. Mara saw they sat in what must be Mirana’s sewing room, by the loom frame tucked in one corner, and crates of cloths strewn about. She was still trying to reorient her nerves from the trauma of reliving the past brought on by the truth spell when the ex-courtesan spoke.

‘Arakasi,’ Kamlio said in halting and pitiful certainty. ‘You did this for him.’

Weary to the bone, but compassionate, Mara shook her head. ‘I did nothing of the sort for Arakasi – though he has sacrificed again and again for my family.’

Kamlio did not look convinced. Mara twisted a fold of blanket around her shoulders, and perched on the edge of her own cot, facing the girl. ‘You are not in any way indebted to my Spy Master.’ The Lady of the Acoma gestured emphatically. ‘I’ll repeat this if I must until you are old and deaf, or until you see fit to believe me.’

Silence followed Mara’s stab at humor. The coals in the hearth hissed against the whistle of wind around the eaves. In the Thuril uplands, the breezes played endlessly, dying out only at dawn. The hour of the night could not be determined, but the fact that in Dorales the magicians
and the Kaliane yet debated upon their decision played upon Mara’s nerves. She focused upon Kamlio’s troubles to stave off her own worries.

‘Arakasi,’ the ex-courtesan repeated, a frown marring her forehead. ‘Whatever does he see in me? He is clever enough, surely, to win any woman to his bed.’

Mara considered carefully. ‘I can only offer conjecture,’ she ventured at length. ‘But I believe he sees his salvation in you. A healing, if you will, for certain of life’s disappointments. And I equally suppose that he wishes to give you in return what he could not give his own family: happiness, security, and a love neither bought nor bargained for.’

‘You found such a love with Hokanu,’ Kamlio observed, her tone spiked with accusation.

Mara forced herself not to feel ruffled. ‘Partly. In Hokanu I found near-perfect understanding. He has been my spirit’s companion. In another man I found the love that I believe one such as you might discover in Arakasi. As to any other woman sharing our Spy Master’s bed, I avow not – I honestly do not know his appetites and passions – but he is not a man who shares his feelings or his affections easily. Arakasi offers you a very solemn trust, and would never have done so, as reticent as he is wont to be, if he did not first believe you worthy.’

‘You sound as though you admire him,’ said Kamlio.

‘I do.’ Mara paused in recognition of this truth. ‘For a man of formidable cleverness, who lived his life as a grand game of strategy, I would guess it took great courage to take the step to acknowledge compassion. Though one who knew always where he stood, able to second-guess most of the moves of his fellows, Arakasi now is like a sailor adrift upon an unknown sea. He must draw his own chart to see his way back to familiar harbor. He has thrown away competence for self-discovery. For one such as he, it must be as frightening an undertaking as any he could imagine.
But I have never seen him run from a challenge, even those that other men would consider impossible.’ Looking for a moment into the girl’s eyes, Mara added, ‘These words make a poor substitute for the experience of knowing the man himself.’

Kamlio digested this information slowly. Her small hands worried at her robe, twisting the fabric into wrinkles. ‘I cannot love him,’ she admitted, the words wrung from her as cruelly by circumstances as she herself treated the hapless cloth, ‘nor any man, I think. His hands once gave me pleasure, true enough, but bed sport for me is an empty pastime.’ Her eyes seemed unfocused in distant memory. ‘I grew to hate the hour of sundown, when my master would come to me.’ She paused, then added bitterly, ‘There were times when I felt like a performing dog. Fetch this robe. Rub this place. Turn this way.’ Looking again to Mara, she said, ‘There is nothing of feeling or love in knowing a man’s body, Lady, for one such as me.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I confess, the real attraction in taking a younger lover was in the danger. Arakasi brought me to pleasure, Lady, because he risked death to do so.’ Moisture gathered in her eyes. ‘Gods, Lady, do you see what a twisted thing I’ve become? There were whole months when I considered suicide, except that I felt too low, too honorless, to sully a blade with my blood.’

Tsurani pride, Mara thought. She longed to reach out and reassure the tortured girl; except that to Kamlio, touch of any sort on her body was divorced from emotional contact. Though words alone seemed cold, Mara had no other comfort to offer. ‘Arakasi understands this far better than you think.’ She waited a moment for this to sink in.

Thoughtfully, Kamlio nodded. ‘It is true that he did not once try to touch me since the hour he bought my freedom. Since you told me he was a reed woman’s son, I realise why.
But at the time, I was too furious over the death of my sister to notice.’

Mara took this for encouragement. ‘If you cannot love him, be his friend instead. He has a lively intellect, and piercing wit.’

Kamlio looked up, her eyes sparkling with held-back tears. ‘He would settle for so little from me?’

‘Try him.’ Mara smiled. ‘Love doesn’t demand; it accepts. It has taken me my life to learn this.’ Lowering her voice, she added, ‘And the gift of two exceptional men.’ Looking at Kamlio directly, she took on a conspiratorial tone. ‘I have seen nothing, and no man living, who was capable of shaking Arakasi’s nerve. The challenge of your friendship might teach him some much needed humility.’

Kamlio flung back her glorious light gold hair, her expression turned impish. ‘Are you implying I could get back at him for his presumption where I am concerned?’

‘I am thinking you could learn from each other,’ Mara finished. Then she glanced around the room. ‘But that depends upon us returning from these highlands alive.’

Kamlio’s brief happiness drained away. ‘They could force you to trade me.’

Mara’s insistence came back whip-crack sharp. ‘No. I am a Lady, and Tsurani. I stand by my word. Your life is not mine to bargain away. Either I win my requests upon my own merits, or I face whatever fate the gods intend. If it comes to your continued captivity, Kamlio, hear now that I give you my blessing to take your own life by the blade or to escape into freedom as you can; you are a free woman. Let there be no question that your blood or your desires are any less honorable than Lujan’s, or Saric’s, or those of any other warrior of my honor guard.’ Suddenly overwhelmed by how tired she was, Mara stifled a yawn behind her blankets. ‘But I do not think things will come to that. The later events of my evening cause me to surmise that Hotaba’s offer was a
test. My test. If I won any concessions, we will not know until the morning. Sleep now, Kamlio. For the rest of this night, we can only wait patiently on the outcome.’

Daybreak, and the silence as the winds stilled, found both Lady and courtesan sleeping. Mara lay curled in a tangle of black hair, the blankets twined tightly around her shoulders from restless dreams. She started upright on a sharp intake of breath at the touch of Mirana’s hand.

‘Lady, arise and dress quickly,’ softly urged the chieftain’s wife. ‘The Kaliane has returned to announce the decision made in Dorales.’

Mara threw herself out of the cot and gasped at the chill in the air. The hearthfire had gone out during the night. While she pulled on her ice-cold robes, Mirana rebuilt the blaze with kindling, so that Kamlio might wake up in better comfort. The crack in the shutter showed grey. Clouds or mist obscured the sunrise, and Mara felt stiff in her joints.

There were silver hairs caught in her comb as she finished making herself tidy. Her heart beat too fast in apprehension, and her thoughts circled again and again back to home, and the children, and Hokanu. Would she ever regain the chance to repair her marriage? Gods, she prayed, let me not die on foreign soil. Let Kamlio return home for Arakasi.

For the first time where the girl was concerned, Mara saw hope in the doomed tie to her Spy Master. Thuril captivity had shaken the child from bitter cynicism, made her reexamine her self-worth and those bits of her life that were now her own to control.

‘Hurry,’ Mirana urged quietly, so as not to wake Kamlio. ‘The Kaliane is not known for patience.’

Mara laced her cold feet into her sandals, the leather worn thin now, and stretched out from wetness and sliding on the shale of the mountain paths. One of the toes was frayed
out. Who in the Empire would recognise her for the Good Servant, with her face unpainted, and her robes as plain as a pot girl’s? Rising and walking out the door to meet the Kaliane without even token appearance of her rank took a shameful amount of courage.

Mara strove without success to feign unconcern. But her palms were sweating and her hands trembled, and she had to be grateful to the horrid, clammy mist for hiding the moisture in her eyes.

Her memories brought back within the golden circle troubled her more than she cared to admit. Were Kevin here, he would have commented in atrocious humor, even in so tense a moment. Mara missed his irreverent sense of mistiming that no amount of chiding had ever managed to correct. Long before she was ready, she found herself chivvied by Mirana into the wide main square, where the tatterdemalion person of Hotaba awaited, along with a figure hunched under layers of robes whose person emanated presence more awesome than the Emperor’s.

Mara swallowed her pride and bowed low. ‘I await the Kaliane’s decision,’ she murmured.

Old, clawed hands tugged her erect. ‘Lady, stand upright. Here obeisance is an insult.’ The Kaliane regarded the Acoma Lady with a stare as piercing as the bit of glass Jican used to magnify questionable guild seals to check their authenticity. ‘Lady Mara,’ said the enchantress in her dry crone’s voice, ‘our decision has been made. We have decided to support your cause in this way: you will be granted permission to journey, along with the one of your company that you designate. You will be shown through the high passes, to the gates of Chakaha, the cho-ja city wherein dwell their masters of magic.’

Mara’s eyes widened. The Forbidden! she thought to herself. If cho-ja could breed mages, and the ‘treaty’ with the Assembly forbade them to practice within the borders
of Tsuranuanni, much of the cho-ja Queen’s reticence was explained. Her excitement mounted.

The Kaliane seemed to sense this, for her next words were stern. ‘Lady Mara, know that the cause of the Tsurani people is not our cause. Thuril made war only when our lands were invaded. We do not hold it to be our duty to concern ourselves with the politics of an enemy nation. However, the cho-ja may see their part differently. Their people within Tsurani borders are a captive nation. You will be given your chance to be heard by them, and to win their alliance if you may. But be warned: the cho-ja hive will view you as an enemy. Our people can conduct you in safety to the hive’s borders and no farther. We cannot act as your spokesman. Neither can we intervene to spare you if the cho-ja receive you with enmity. Understand me clearly: you could die for your good intentions.’

This was an uncertain step forward, Mara assessed in the split second that followed, but a step nonetheless. Clearly she said, ‘I have no choice. I must go. I will take Lujan, my Force Commander, and in his absence, my adviser Saric will captain my honor guard.’