The Complete Empire Trilogy (91 page)

The priest paused, then, waiting as quietly as a fish in the depths of a noon-heated pool. ‘Find your strength,’ he murmured, and his voice held a coaxing tone, as though he spoke to a tiny child.

At last, reluctantly, a warming began beneath his fingers. The sensation grew to a glow that brightened softly yellow.

The priest nodded and set his hands over Keyoke’s face. ‘Old warrior,’ he intoned, ‘in the grace of Hantukama, I ask that you give up your senses, vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Your senses are not yours but my god’s, for experiencing the glory that is life. Give up your speech, and walk in joy, and find your senses enhanced and fully vital.’

The glow happened more slowly this time. The priest fought sagging shoulders, while he moved on and laid dry hands over Keyoke’s heart. ‘Old warrior, by the will of Hantukama, I ask that you give up your desires. Your spirit is not yours but my god’s, for reflecting the perfection that is wholeness. Give up your wants, and live in compassion, and find your being filled in full measure.’

The priest waited, huddled into himself like old stone. The assistant watched with folded arms and wide eyes. And when the glow came, it crackled and blazed like a new fire and bathed the sick man from head to foot in curtains of impenetrable brilliance.

The priest withdrew his hands, cupped as though they held something inestimably precious. ‘Keyoke,’ he said gently.

The warrior opened his eyes, stiffened sharply, and cried out at the blinding light that stabbed into his eyes and filled his spirit with awe.

‘Keyoke,’ repeated the priest. His voice was tired but kindly. ‘Fear not. You walk in the warmth of my god, Hantukama the healer. Your Lady has petitioned for your health. If my god grants you life and restored health, how will you serve her?’

Keyoke’s eyes stared straight ahead, into the blazing net of healer’s spells. ‘I serve her, always, as a father does a daughter, for my heart knows her as the child I never had. Sezu I served for honour; his children I served out of love.’

The priest’s weariness fled. ‘Live, Keyoke, and heal by the grace of my god.’ He opened his hands, and the light flashed intolerably, blindingly bright; then it faded, leaving only the dying embers in the brazier, and the played-out smoke of burnt herbs.

On the mat, Keyoke lay quiet, his eyes closed, and his hands as still as before. But a faint flush of rose showed beneath his skin, and his breathing was long and deep, that of a man in sleep.

The priest sat carefully on the cushion Mara had used earlier for kneeling. ‘Fetch the Lady of the Acoma,’ he told his young assistant. ‘Tell her, with joy, that her warrior is an extraordinary man. Tell her that he will survive.’

The boy started up and ran to do the bidding of his master. By the time he returned with the Lady, the priest had packed up his brazier. The ashes and the coals were mysteriously disposed of, and the little man who had brought them the miracle was curled up in sleep upon the floor.

‘The healing was a difficult one,’ the boy assistant confided. Then, as Mara’s servants attended to the needs of his master and brought dishes of food for the boy, Mara went to the pallet and quietly regarded Keyoke.

‘He will sleep for several days, probably,’ the boy explained. ‘But his wounds will slowly close. Do not expect him to be on his feet too quickly.’

Mara smiled wryly. She could see the changes that indicated a return to vitality, and her heart sang inside with gratitude for the gift of the priest and his god. ‘We’re going to require a warrior of extraordinary strength and courage to tell this old campaigner that he must keep to his bed. For as I know Keyoke, he’s going to wake up asking for his sword.’

The days passed in a rushed flurry of activity. Factors arrived and departed at Jican’s direction, settling the sales of needra stock, and incoming shipments of supplies. The sheds that once housed breeding bulls were now half-filled with chests of new armour and swords. Acoma leather-workers stitched tents for barracks in the desert, and the potters fashioned clay hurricane lamps, pierced in patterns, to cradle oiled rags for torches. Dustari was a barren land, and devoid of trees; the woodworkers fired their ovens to make charcoal.

The bustle was not confined to the craftsmen’s compounds. The practice yard lay under a continual cloud of dust as Lujan drilled his soldiers and green, newly promoted officers. He staged manoeuvres in the fields, swamps, and woodlands and came back with chosen soldiers, to walk barefoot, their muddy war sandals in hand, through the main house to the chamber where Keyoke lay recovering. The Adviser for War reviewed their performance, criticized their weaknesses, and praised their strengths. He spent the hours in between poring over maps of the estate and working out strategies of defence; from his mat he held classes for officer training. For no one doubted that Tasaio of the Minwanabi had contrived the Dustari campaign for no other reason than to leave the Acoma vulnerable.

Mara herself was everywhere, overseeing all aspects of the endeavour that prepared her army for departure. On the morning that Nacoya finally contrived to overtake her, with Kevin absent and no servants or advisers at hand, the Lady was seated in her garden by the fountain under the ulo tree. She often used the place for informal meditation, but lately her free time had gone exclusively to her son. Nacoya peered surreptitiously at her Lady’s quiet pose, and the frown that faintly marked the skin between her brows; she measured the hands, which were still, and judged the moment propitious for talk.

Nacoya entered the garden and bowed before her mistress.

Mara bade her rise and sit on the cushions with her. She regarded her First Adviser with eyes that had circles under them and said, ‘I wrote the letter to Hokanu yesterday.’

The old woman nodded slowly. ‘That is well, but not my reason for seeking you.’

Mara’s frown deepened at the tone of her adviser’s voice. ‘What is it, mother of my heart?’

Nacoya loosed a deep sigh and plunged. ‘Lady, I would suggest that you be thinking of choosing my successor. Do not think I dislike my duties, or that I feel the honour of my post as a burden. I serve my Lady gladly in all ways. But I am growing old, and it is in my heart to point out that you have no younger servants in training to assume the mantle of adviser when I am gone. Jican is middle-aged, but he lacks canniness in politics. Keyoke has the perception to take on the role of First Adviser, but he and I are of an age, and there will not always be a priest of Hantukama to defer the Red God’s due.’

A breeze sighed through the ulo leaves, and water splashed in the fountain. Mara’s fingers stirred against the loosened folds of her robe and gathered the fabric about her. ‘I hear you, old mother. Your words are wise, and well
considered. I have thought upon the issue of your replacement.’ She paused and softly shook her head. ‘You know, Nacoya, that too many of our best people died with my father.’

Nacoya nodded. She gestured to the fountain. ‘Life continually renews itself, daughter of my heart. You must find new minds, and train them.’

That was a risky venture, as both of them knew. To take on new servants and raise them to high levels of responsibility invited the chance for an enemy to infiltrate a new spy. Arakasi’s network was good, but not infallible. Yet the necessity could not be denied. Mara needed trusted people around her, or she would be too encumbered by everyday decisions to maintain her status in the Great Game.

‘I will put effort into finding a new cadre of advisers, but after the campaign in Dustari is completed,’ she concluded at last. ‘If I return home, and the natami remains in the sacred glade, then we will search for new talent. But the risk is too great to be taken beforehand. Ayaki must be surrounded only by servants who were born here, and whose loyalty remains beyond question.’

Nacoya arose and bowed. ‘My Lady’s permission to leave?’

Mara smiled slightly at the stoop-shouldered figure of her adviser. ‘Permission given. Take a nap, old mother. You look as if you could use it.’

‘I just got up!’ Nacoya snapped. ‘Take a nap yourself, and without that needra stud of a barbarian for a change. When he’s there you get no sleep, and you’ll be needing thyza powder to cover the wrinkles that come before you’re thirty.’

‘Sex does not make wrinkles!’ Mara laughed. ‘That’s an old nurse’s tale. Don’t you have duties? The day’s messages to sort through?’

‘I do have that,’ Nacoya conceded. ‘You’re getting more inquiries from suitors.’

‘Opportunists,’ Mara said, suddenly annoyed. ‘They think to marry me as consort and inherit if I fall in Dustari; or else they are agents of Desio, thinking to open my gates to his army. Why else petition the Lady of the house that’s entering into peril?’

‘Yes, Lady,’ Nacoya said quickly, and the smugness behind her meek tone betrayed her satisfaction. Mara might be young, and foolish in the bedchamber; but when it came to politics, she had an excellent grasp indeed. What remained to be seen was whether she was gifted with the mind of a general of armies. Dustari and the desert men were going to offer a swift and perilous education.

The journey began.

Mara pulled free of Ayaki’s embrace, trying with all of her will not to cry. She climbed into her litter and looked one last time on the faces of her advisers, whom she might never see again on this side of the Wheel of Life: Nacoya, frowning harder than usual, probably to conceal her grief; Jican, who had a harder time hiding his emotion, since his hands were empty of slates; Arakasi, shadow-still, silent and against his nature looking grim. And Keyoke, dependably expressionless, standing erect on the leg he had left, the crutches leaned unobtrusively against the doorjamb. He wore his sword, but seemed a stranger without armour and warrior’s plumed helm.

‘Guard Ayaki and the natami, and may the Gods of Fortunate Aspect look favourably upon our endeavours,’ Mara said; somehow she managed to finish in the proper firm tone. Her advisers and the house servants arrayed behind them looked on with pride as she waved to Force Commander Lujan to signal her army to march. The tramp of many feet lifted a dust plume over the road, as it had not since Sezu’s time. That army had departed, and only forty had survived to return. An older generation of servants wondered if the past would repeat itself, while the newer generation sensed their fear. They watched three companies in green and a shiny black company of cho-ja march out bravely under the shatra bird banner. The sun burned down through the morning mists and flashed off polished lacquer armour. It caught on the streamered points of spears, and on the feathered crests of Strike Leaders, Patrol Leaders, and officers’ aides.

At Sulan-Qu the Acoma host boarded barges. Naked slaves poled them downriver through the press of commercial traffic, and grain barges, guild boats, and raftsmen pulled aside to let them pass. Southward they floated, through Hokani Province, past the lands of the Anasati, where warriors in red and yellow offered them salute from the shore. Although Lord Tecuma was a reluctant ally, Mara did not stop. He would make no overtures toward social friendship unless Mara returned from Dustari with her family honour intact.

For Kevin, the river offered endless fascination. He spent even the hottest hours by the rail, talking to the barge master and the slaves who manned the poles with equal interest. He studied the water craft, so different from those of his homeworld, and within days became expert at distinguishing guild colours from house crests, hired craft from those privately owned.

Mara’s army drew steadily toward the south, past flotillas of barges bearing market goods, some lashed together into permanent stalls that were patronized by the nobles who used the river as transport between Jamar and Sulan-Qu. Fast messenger boats raced between slower craft, furiously paddled by sweating slaves. Once they passed an imperial barge, bright with gilt and hung with banners, its white and gold colouring a dazzling change from the many-coloured craft of the nobles. Mara travelled in her barge of state, which was green and adorned with a shatra bird figurehead. She sat beneath a feathered shade, fanned by her slaves, and comfortably surrounded with perfumed flowers to mask the less pleasant stinks of sewage and river mud. Kevin saw other Lords travelling in style, attended by musicians, poets, and performers. One even had a troupe of travelling players performing upon a stage for his pleasure. Overflowing baskets of fruit lay before him, and fat lapdogs lounged all over his pillows, like so many beribboned sausages. Unlike
the pets and hunting dogs of Midkemia, the dogs of Kelewan were short-haired and sleek, as a consequence of the climate.

They passed thyza barges, and travelling farm workers, and what looked like the Kelewanese equivalent of travelling gypsy musicians. ‘Khardengo,’ Mara identified, when Kevin mentioned the comparison, giving a brief description of gypsies. ‘It is written in the old chronicles that they were a family that preferred wandering to taking land. They live in barges and wagons, it is true, much like your gypsies of Midkemia. But unlike your barbarians, the Khardengo have honour. They do not steal for their living.’

Kevin laughed. ‘The gypsies have their own culture. By their mores, they do not steal, only –’ he paused, unable to find the right word, and settled for his own language – ‘borrow.’

‘Borrow?’ Mara squinted up at him where he lounged chewing sekka rinds dipped in vinegar. ‘What is that?’

Kevin used other words to explain, and saw her raise her eyebrows in astonishment. Strange, he thought, that the Tsurani concept of honour allowed goods to be exchanged as purchases, gifts, and spoils; but no equivalent to the neighbourly concept of lending a thing between friends existed at all. He prepared himself for another afternoon of talk, as Mara explored the concept exhaustively.