Red Country (15 page)

Kastir's shoulders seemed to slump. Zem said thoughtfully, “And I don't think I would give my consent, then tell Estar it was extracted under duress, claim it wasn't binding, and continue with the project. Farsight isn't affected by distance. Even when you can't see me, I'll be watching you.”

Kastir bowed his head. Then he sighed deeply. Then he turned both hands upward on the table and Zem nodded approvingly.

“Very wise. No, you needn't make a speech. Remember? I can read your thoughts.”

He stood up. His eyes flicked to me, merry, teasing, saying with perilous clearness,
I told you so.
And Kastir lifted his face and said, “Very well, it is settled. You have my word, whatever value you choose to set on it. However . . .”

He paused. Zem waited.

“Apart from this business of Hethria,” Kastir said, “you see I am interested in all natural facts. You appear to be a most surprising—for want of a better word—fact. Can I not persuade you to stay a little longer, to describe if not to demonstrate your powers?”

Zem's eyes twinkled. “I'd be happy to assist your enquiries, governor—willingly”—it was slightly stressed—“but I have urgent business in Hethria.”

Kastir nodded. “Very well. Then in token of our agreement, will you at least stay long enough to drink a cup of wine?”

There was a long pause, while they probed each other's eyes. Then Zem said lightly, “Oh, yes; I'd be glad to delay for that.”

Kastir turned to me. “My dear, since Ardis is—er—occupied, could you tell Ozym?” The major domo, who had been Kastir's first servant in Everran. “And might I ask you then to go down and just take a look at the second shift's foreman? I'm doubtful of his competence, and I would value your views. It need only take a moment, you'll be back in time to farewell our guest.”

Though astonished, I was so thankful for a pretext to escape I never thought it odd he should speak as if the work would go on. I could see Zem later, less riskily, and I was in dread that if I stayed longer my face would betray something, fear, elation, the merest nuance showing our acquaintance. Kastir's time in Estar had taught him to read facial language like a written page.

“Of course,” I said.

Zem opened the door for me, bowing as I passed, which let him send me a mischievous upward glance as he remarked, “Not only beautiful but intelligent. Governor, I envy you.” So I had to choke down laughter and literally run away.

* * * * * *

Having found Ozym, I went out to the wall. Now I knew this would soon be stopped it was quite easy to assess the foreman impartially, and I took my time, expecting that any moment Zem would emerge from Penhazad's gate, a little nervous that he might recklessly ride over to tease me in earshot of the workmen. But he did not appear. The sun was low, the shift would soon be over, and still he had not come. At last I walked back toward the town.

The uproar inside was sharp as an explosion, clashes, crashes, yells, thuds, screams of human terror and of a horse crazy with fear and rage. The gate leaves, half-shut for evening, flew violently open under some impact and the missile came tumbling to my feet, a guard with blood all over his gray Estarian uniform and nothing left of his face. Another pair reeled after him and something burst between them like a hurtling boulder that became a horse's chest and was gone on a flash of mad white eyes and foamy jaws and bloodied teeth as it flared away into the desert fast as a flung javelin. A gray horse, unsaddled, unbridled. And riderless.

Perception, deduction, reaction burst in me swift and devastatingly as the noise. I must have hurdled half a dozen casualties in the gatehouse passage but my mind retains only a blur of white or bloody faces and nothing at all of the street, the keep gate, the two flights of steps, the inner door that my shove sent crashing back into the wall.

Kastir was backed against the window, looking bewildered, shocked, appalled. On the table stood a wine jug and two cups, one full. The third had rolled across the floor, tracing a crimson ellipse of wine. Zem lay within its arc, face down, twisted half sideways, elbows out and hands under his face, utterly, terribly still.

I think I screamed at Kastir as I ran. “You've killed him!” probably. I skidded to my knees, tore a wrist free, groped for the pulse, it was not there, I doubt I could have found it if it were, but my perception needed no proof, any more than my conclusions needed reasoning. I came off the floor and I do know what I screamed that time.

“You filthy treacherous murderer, you poisoned him, you poisoned him with the wine!”

“The wine, I—no, I assure you, it was—I cannot believe this—how can it—” If Kastir was acting it was the most convincing performance imaginable. “Good heavens, this is frightful. Sellithar, I swear I never—how could you think—”

Ozym came through the open door. He was a thin, efficient, taciturn creature so colorless as to be almost invisible. He glanced indifferently at the scene, then addressed Kastir.

“You asked me to say to you, sir, ‘The wine is drunk.'”

He went out softly, closing the door. Dumbstruck, I saw life wake in Kastir's eyes.

He shook his head a little. Then he saw Zem. Slowly, very slowly, with the utmost satisfaction, he smiled.

“I told you, my dear,” he said, “that my plans for Hethria would go ahead.”

My blood turned, vein by vein, to ice.

“I think you remarked that my plans allowed for every contingency you could think of. Actually, there were a couple you missed.” His satisfaction deepened. “You see, even among the Sathellin, I have my spies. Distasteful, but invaluable. They warned me of the ‘warden.'” As he looked back to Zem's body he was openly gloating. “So I prepared for that contingency too. I doubted the existence of aedryx, but the wise man allows for the improbable. I read my ‘lore,' as he noticed. And I spent much time, as much as on my costings, to devise a foil for a creature with such extensive powers.” His look grew almost regretful. “It's a pity the remedy had to be so drastic, but he himself made it clear that nothing less would do.”

He turned back to me. “Of course you want to know the method?” He was positively pluming himself. “Ozym was my assistant, and a most efficient one. If anything like the—er—immobilization of my guards occurred, he was to prepare a cup of poisoned wine. We chose aspnor root, it's claimed to be relatively painless. Accurately so. If you told him to bring wine, rather than my summoning him as usual, he was to bring the poisoned cup for the guest.”

He chuckled. “The neatest part, I feel, was the counter for that disconcerting telepathy. Had I known the plan, he would have read it in my mind. So I had myself hypnotized. I erased all thought of the plan, knowing only that if I were bested, I must give him wine before he left. And Ozym had the password to wake me afterward. The final precaution, my dear, was to remove you from the scene. There was no telling what such a creature might do in his final spasms. I was ready to risk myself, but I would not hazard you.”

My stomach turned clean over. I actually clapped a hand to my mouth. He had wanted to protect me. He.

The spasm passed with the speed of thought; the grief's agony followed it, the shock boiled away, the overpowering fury for revenge was under control. I'll stab him, I thought coldly. Here and now. Just let me come at a guard, a dagger will do. . . . A couple more minutes, a pretext to summon them, a little more deceit—as I looked down at Zem my throat locked, my eyes went blind. He had been so merry, so gallant, so teasingly charming, so sure of his strength. And he had died so vilely, by treachery, by poison—a new thought touched me like a red-hot iron. What was I to say to Zam?

That nearly undid me altogether. It must have shown, for Kastir stopped smiling and came hastily to take my arm. “My dear, forgive me, you should not have seen this, I know your sensitivity. . . .”

My flesh crept as if he were a poison spider; I never fought such a battle as to refrain from tearing free, or flying at him with nails and teeth.

“It's not a pretty sight,” I said. My voice's shake would be put down to sensitivity. “Kastir, how could you do such a filthy thing? To poison someone by treachery, to plan it all, to. . . . It's despicable, abominable, unpardonable—Kastir, I don't think I can bear you near me, I—” It was all true, and it was all false, I was using the emotion, thinking coldly through it, Just let me get outside, find a knife. . . .

He frowned. “I told you long ago, Sellithar, there are mistakes no ruler can forgive. He came here alone, putting himself into my power. Naturally, I had to take the chance of a pre-emptive strike.”

“But poison . . . !”

“Your scruples become you. But scruples are not compatible with the exercise of power.” He glanced at me. “I thought of putting the head on a pole outside the gates, as a warning to the Sathellin.” My brain reeled. “But after all, he was not their leader. The midden will do.”

I really did think I would faint. My voice came out jagged, hysterical. “Kastir, the entire civilized world would spit on you! He must be buried or burned or—or something! It's—you can't do that! You can't!”

I had gone too far. He gave me a suddenly wary, piercing stare. “Just what makes you such a partisan of Hethria, my dear?”

“Hethria doesn't come into it, it's Everran I'm worried about and us—you.” I babbled it, all of a sudden afraid for myself. “You can't do such an atrocious thing—not in Everran! It would make us a byword, a—a—”

He shrugged and said coldly, “You'll allow me to decide this, Sellithar. After all, it will be no more ‘despicable' than what I've already done for Everran. And for you.”

That was too much. My resolution melted, my caution very nearly followed. Pain overwhelmed me. I turned and stumbled from the room.

* * * * * *

It was dark when I came round. The lamps were lit in Penhazad, and I was wandering down an alley, one hand trailed against the wall as if I were blind. I stopped. Then, slowly, terribly, memory reassembled. I screamed aloud, and began to pound my fists against the stones.

Feet ran up, voices, a flare of torchlight and bodies surrounded me, someone was saying in relief, “It's her, here she is, thank the Four, she's all ri—ma'am? . . . er . . . Princess? . . . Sellithar?”

I knew the voice. Perhaps it was all that saved me in that moment. I lifted my head and Karyx's dark, raw-boned face caught the torchlight, anxiety deepened to solicitude, near to panic, in his look.

“Thank the Four,” he repeated on a short gasp. “We've been scouring the town for you, the governor's beside himself—” Nausea boiled up in me and he caught my arm. “Here, steady. Drink some of this.”

A soldier's flask, and not wine but Saeverran barley spirit, searing clear to my stomach pit, liquid fire. When the coughs eased, I knew what I had to do.

Taking Karyx's eye, I used a childhood sign that said, I need to talk. Now.

He understood. He jerked his shoulder, the troops backed off a little. How fortunate, how grateful, I was thinking, that I got him the military command of Penhazad, for all I had forgotten it. The only man who can give me what I want.

“You know what happened today?” I said.

His face went hard and cold.

“What did they do with the—the—”

“On the midden.” He said it so viciously I knew my grief was shared. “But for you I'd have thrown up my commission this afternoon. I'm sorry to say it of your husband, but the man's not fit to hang.”

“I know. Karyx, I want to do it properly. Bury, burn, whatever. And now.”

His reaction was soldier-quick. “Not burn, no fuel in Hethria, it shan't be done here. Those are my own troop. Pick and shovels, I'll send two, the rest can be pall-bearers, come on. I'll open the gate.”

The tool-bringers overtook us at the gatehouse. Karyx said curtly, “Open,” and the guard, a squat, solid Gebrian, gave him a look under his brows and obeyed without a word. We went out into the starlit darkness, along the town wall toward the midden, led by the stench.

The most horrible part was straightening Zem's body, which had set into the twisted attitude of his death. I think Karyx did it in the end. I had not the strength. Then they made a litter of cloaks—“Estarian color,” I heard one man growl, and spit violently—Karyx laid his scarlet officer's cloak over all, and we stumbled off, blundering on the broken ground, straight out into the darkness where Hethria waited to receive its own.

Karyx chose the place. I waited a long time by the makeshift bier, hearing the scrape and clank of shovels, the thud of picks, the hard breathing and curious absence of curse or grumble at such work, while the wind blew past me, its desert breath overladen with the smell of the dead fire, under the close sharp desert stars. Then Karyx came back, breathing hard and smelling rankly of new sweat, and said very gently, “Are you ready, Sellithar?”

When they had lowered him into the grave there was a pause, and I knew they expected me to speak the eulogy that, as soldiers, they were used to make do for burial service in the field. But I could not assemble words. It was Karyx who finally stepped up beside me and spoke into the silent dark.

“Whoever you were, whatever you were, we shall remember you. We will remember you with hands, not words.”

The men around me gave a deep, savage, assenting growl. Then sand began to patter on fabric, and Karyx put both hands over my ears and pulled me away.

* * * * * *

A long time later, he asked quietly, “Who was he, Sellithar?”

We had sat down by then. I looked into the dark, and felt sand grains stick to the palms of my hands. I felt drained, calm and empty, with that paradoxical dryness too much weeping brings.

“His name was Zem,” I said. “He was warden of the roads in northern Hethria. He came to make Kastir stop this—business. Kastir agreed. And then poisoned him.” I found bitterness had survived. “He was an aedr. It didn't do him much good.”