XXI. Spring-Summer 783
The Countess's headache hung on for much of the winter. She couldn't say exactly when it was gone, but one sunny day when the smell of mud was everywhere and the snowpack still gleamed from the heights of Mount Nikolad, she walked out of doors inhaling the sweet air, and realized that she was free of it.
Meanwhile the Rukh and the Siretans continued to intermarry, and Selac's abandoned farms and homesteads were reclaimed. More and more merchants came and went between the Clanish towns of Radun and Hvanar and the lands over the mountains to the north and west. It was said that there was another coastline there, and folk came with wagons full of treasures from the sea, pearls and carven whalebone and shells, brought by people of sorts never before seen in Clane. They were black-haired and soft-featured, black of eye but with brilliant smiles, or blue-eyed with white hair standing out against sun-browned skin, or coppery-skinned, with wide flat faces and narrow eyes and long thin straight hair and skimpy beards. Clane traded cheese for dried fish, beer for spice, iron and steel and horn for silver and amber and oil. Silk was seen in Nikolad for the first time. The County began to look away from the Empire, and the Empire seemed to be responding in kind: its army was preoccupied with Tithean's insolence and its navy tried to fight off the Samarran pirates that bedeviled Imperial traders on the Gulf of Almery.
"He's finally grinding Tithean into the dirt," said Sir Rogier at the April council meeting in the Nikolad dining room. "Maybe it's because the Count there has been harboring the last escaped remnant of the Orzalian ducal family. The Titheanese are offering resistance, of course, but we expect that the resistance will soon be operating from the mountains and the Imperial pennants will be flying over Amalya."
"How many live there?" asked Vivian.
Sir Rogier shrugged. "Twenty thousand, maybe?"
"Amalya," she repeated. "Up in the highlands. I expect it's a beautiful city."
"I expect it is," said Sir Rogier, "but I hope you aren't thinking of doing anything about this. It's further away than Samarra, and a lot smaller as well. Of course, if you decide you want to ride out there with your faithful soldiers, we'll all just hope for the best."
"No, no," she replied. "I'm more interested in the situation along our own frontiers. If he wants to let his attention wander while we set our traps for his next visit, it's fine with me. Only, let us wish dark clouds upon him."
"Speaking of which," said Sigrith, "the weather's a lot better than it was last fall and winter. Did he get tired of plaguing us?"
"He must have," said Vivian, "or else his strength is failing him." In fact, she and her daughters had spent many winter nights testing their powers by putting pinholes in his air masses. She had deciphered a passage of Count Mattas that seemed to say that sustained effort aimed at the weather was rewarded with long-lasting headaches, and this accorded with her experience. So she was trying to go easy--and make the Emperor work. She smiled to herself and said, "Let's hear the scouts' reports."
"I've been down to see the rebels in Amari and Rahavon," said Martin of Auzel. "They're not exactly winning, but they're not hurting too bad either. I guess they number four or five thousand between the two duchies. They're holding down twice that many."
"Farlain's a different story," said Annie de Clatu. "Something bad happened in February--a whole council of the rebel leadership died, and no one knows how."
"I thought we were profiting from that debacle," said Frenerac, "with the four hundred who fled across the border and joined our cause. But the new arrivals are all too scared still to be of much use, even for saying what they're scared of."
"Mysterious deaths are a hallmark of the old Emperors, from what I've read," said Vivian. "Well, how was your trip over the mountains, Ell?"
"Faulk's come to terms," said Ellean. "He's decided to buy everything we ship over the North Pass from Heldvarn. He wants to be middle-man."
"The dauntless warlord," said Sigrith.
"He has plenty of enemies," said Ellean. "The Khzaar, the Nanga, the Fyn, they're all nipping at him. Poor Faulk, it's tough, but he's actually trying to set up a mountain kingdom."
"May the sun shine on him," said Vivian. "It's possible to reason with one who has something to defend. My love?"
"My lady," said Willd, "the Avars are still preparing for their leadership fight. Perhaps one Khan will emerge, or perhaps they will split two or three ways."
"Which way do you suppose it will go? It's the most important thing going right now."
"It's wide open, my lady. If the Emperor intervenes, they might end up as Imperial allies again, but the wild ways still have the strongest pull on them. Or they may choose to settle down and also break the Imperial alliance. Some in western Bazir have built houses and plantations. And they too are lured by trade. But those in Shadewind are more likely to side with the Empire, and those in the north, around Kazuhar's ruins, are said to be faithful to the old ways."
"Hmm. Do you suppose diplomacy would work with them? Some of them?"
"My lady," said Sir Rogier, "for the Avars, poison is the highest form of negotiation. Besides that, it might actually be best for us if they didn't settle their leadership struggle for a year or two. But please feel free; only do not send me, for I have fought them since I was Jack Rain's age. And if you go yourself, please leave Susan here."
"No!" said Suzy. "I get to go."
"We're not going anywhere," said Vivian. "Willd, what do you think?"
"My lady, when I went, I took my own food and wine and water. I would not trust them, even the most friendly ones. Yet I think that the Avar captains chafe under the Imperial collar, and I will say that your name is spoken with respect."
"Now why might that be? How do they speak of the Lady Kersten?"
Three weeks later, after an April blizzard that swiftly melted, the Countess was sitting up late with Sir Rogier and Lady Mirabel, looking over the books. "We're doing better," said Mirabel, "but we don't lack for things to spend our budget on. Revenue for 782 came to sixteen thousand florins. That's the most I've ever had as Treasurer, although I recall from the old books that it used to be twice that."
"Remember, my lady?" asked Sir Rogier. "Everard wanted ten just for forts and the army."
"Like I'd forget that argument. He could've had it, too, if Neil hadn't been hiding loot under his manure pile. Not that a few more forts would've stopped, what, thirty thousand Avars, plus women and children? Or kept the Rukh out. And the Avars haven't even managed to take Skavin, in all these years. They haven't made a permanent conquest within the bounds of Clane since they overran Bazir and Maklos in my first year. Ah, my lost provinces. What do you think is going to become of Skavin? They were pretending I didn't even exist last year. Now that we've embarrassed the Big Guy a couple of times, what do you suppose they're thinking?"
"Send someone to ask," said Sir Rogier. "That seems like a safe enough expedition. I guess Thane Pecham is sitting tight until we come back with a tax bill--and an army."
"I don't even remember this Pecham. Or maybe I do. Would he have been a pimply teenager when we were there?"
"He would've been thirty or so," said Sir Rogier. "You mistook inexperience for youth."
Vivian's eyes flashed. "Hey, is Karlan still alive?"
"Oh, yes. I'm sure he cuts quite the figure at the Duke's court in Calway."
"Another item on my to-do list," she replied.
"My lady," said Mirabel, "I hope you don't forget we exist when you go back home. Admit it, it won't be easy to leave and go back to Vonnis, will it?"
"I'll manage."
"Did you know, my lady, that your mother's mother was born here?"
"Born here? No, I didn't. I really don't know much about my mother's family. You mean, what was her name, Aranel? I knew she was from Westdubbik."
"That's right," said Mirabel. "Her father was an Amarian merchant. I guess he got in trouble down south and had to move to Clane permanently."
"My lady is descended from a merchant?" asked Sir Rogier.
"You don't know the half of it," replied Vivian. "I seem to recall that Aranel married a minor landholder in Westdubbik. Wallwood. Near Dubkarin, I think. Well, maybe this explains why I feel so at home here, or maybe it's just that it's beautiful."
"Maybe a little of both," said Mirabel.
They went back to their books and sheaves of paper. Presently the nightwind through the half-open window brought to them the sound of hoofbeats. Horses crossed the High Bridge and came in at the gate. A few minutes later, the dining room doors opened and Martin of Auzel and Annie de Clatu entered. The three at the table looked up, smiled, then stared at the third figure. Behind the two messengers was a tall young woman with short black hair, dusky skin and night-dark eyes, in dark riding clothes with a long sabre at her side.
"My lady," said Martin, "uh, this is Jinaa, daughter of Temkuz Khan."
An hour later, the available council was considering her story. "Farook, my brother," Jinaa was explaining again in a thick accent, "my full brother," (which sounded on her lips like "fool brother") "he was in threat from Karaghur, and from Memath-Hakeen, who are also sons of the Khan. But he wished peace with the Countess of Clane, and he was no friend of, of he who sits in the sea river city. But Farook, he is dead now, six nights back."
"Poison?" asked Francis Weaver.
"She doesn't think so," replied Vivian. "She thinks it was the Big Guy."
"I saw him," Jinaa explained. "He come to my brother while he is sleeping. I watch over him each night, for fear of assassins. But he was robed in white, and he stand by the bed and--" She fumbled for the English word.
"He strangled him without using his hands," said Vivian. "Is that a fair description?"
"Yes," she said, unsurprised. "It is because Farook was coming to you, Countess."
"How do you strangle someone without using your hands?" asked Angeline.
"It's a special talent of His." Vivian sighed. "My lady Jinaa, our deepest condolences." She received a blank stare from the beautiful Avar, and tried again. "We share your deep sorrow?"
"Oh, thank you, Countess."
"So when's the big meeting of the tribes?"
"The yagash occurs at the full moon nearest high summer," said Jinaa. "You will come?"
"What's this?" Sir Rogier interjected. "You're not. Really, my lady."
"I don't know," said Vivian. He rolled his eyes and shut up. "Full moon nearest midsummer? That'd be, let's see, mid-June or mid-July."
"The night of the thirteenth of July," said Miranda off the top of her head.
"You know," said Vivian, "I think I will come. This was not some poisoning, Rogier, not some bit of Avar politics. He's trying to regain control of the whole Avar nation, and why? Because it comes with an army of something like thirty thousand, including a cavalry without equal in the entire world, outside of our Cataphracts, of course."
"Of course," said Angeline.
"And if anyone among the Avars is capable of surviving a night meeting with the Emperor, that person's probably already working for him. I, on the other hand, being pure of heart and wearing the Medallion of the Countess, seem to have learned the trick of surviving."
"As long as you watch out for the poison, daggers and garrottes," said Lady Mirabel.
"My lady," sighed Sir Rogier.
"Look, what else can I do? Let him have the Avar Nation back again?" Sir Rogier raised his eyebrows, looked away, sighed and drummed his fingers on his pants.
"Take me along," said Miranda. "As you know, I have some knowledge of antidotes to poison, and I've been reading up in Countess Tereza's book. When's it due back at the Library?"
"It's on permanent loan," replied the Countess. "All right, you're coming with me. Who else? Let's see."
"Me," said Susan, age twelve and a month.
"Not me," said Sir Rogier. Me's and not me's came from around the room.
"Here's the way this is going to work," said Vivian. "I'm deciding who's going, and there will be no pleading and no complaints."
There of course ensued much discussion, including many complaints, but some at least Vivian could please, and Angeline was the chief among these: Vivian wanted a non-threatening company, so the only males she brought were Willd and two soldiers of the old citadel guard. That made five; in addition she took Miranda the Brewer, and Annie de Clatu in case they needed to send a fast rider home. The Lady Jinaa made eight.
Sir Rogier she pleased as much as she could without letting go of her main goal. For the moment she thought of it, and more so the more she thought of it, it was clear to her that she had no choice but go. If she didn't, she could forget about prying the Avars from the Emperor's grip. And she thought she had a fair chance of success. It all worried her.
Somehow Tithean worried her as well. There was just something about it. Either that Vivian was having one of her feelings, or it just reminded her of Clane, also a mountainous, sparsely-populated and rebellious county. She had no trouble talking Ellean and Martin into going there, carefully, for a look. "I should know," she said to them as they all worked on their second-to-last pints of ale, "you were waiting for an excuse to ride all the way across the Empire."
"We were, my lady, we were," agreed Martin of Auzel.
That night the moon was at half and waning, and Vivian and her daughters stayed up until midnight to try and pull a little snowstorm out of the mountains onto far-off Tithean. Vivian grabbed her bag of powders and took her daughters up to the little library. Soon they were in trance, stretching out across the map as far as their combined arms could reach and tried to stir up a wee little blizzard far away. Perhaps the scattered showers that night over Amalya were the fruit of their labors, or perhaps they would have fallen anyway.
On 18 May 783, the day after the succeeding full moon, the Countess set out for Tarnhold. Susan and Anne went along that far, and the party spent the last week of May as guests of Thane Hugo. On the morning of 31 May the Countess placed her medallion around her elder daughter's neck, and her company took off into a hazy drizzle.
Then she rode upriver to Grangeon, where she and her companions spent the night. They traveled on up the Tarn River valley on the first two days of June, spreading their tents on farmers' lawns. When they turned to the mountains between Tarnver and Skavin, they found the snow both deep and heavy with melt. They slogged up a steep mountain valley for three days, then took three more crossing over a high pass, then three more slogging back down a valley on the other side, and after this exertion found themselves in a tangled country of rocky ridges and precipices, the trail markings still mostly covered by snow. The scenery was dead gorgeous, but after two weeks Vivian would have eagerly traded it for the flatlands around Dubkarin or Clatu.
At last, on 18 June, the Countess of Clane and her company came down from the highlands. They found themselves on the Count's High Road from Orlad, Skavin's capital, to nearby Wervin. They were in Orlad by evening, and Vivian looked upon the Clanish stretch of the Lavan River, the great river of her childhood, for the first time since she fled Vonnis.
Thane Pecham, it seemed, was up north at the castle of Tyef, checking the defenses,. Everyone in Orlad seemed embarrassed to see the Countess. She felt very uncomfortable about how uncomfortable she was making everyone. Her party was eventually given rooms in the keep and dinner in their rooms, and after sharing several bottles of wine with her companions, Vivian went easily to sleep. She dreamt of the Shadow Figure.
He wasn't exactly pursuing her now, but present at the periphery, one-fourth visible in heavy fog. She walked the flat highlands of Bazir in a moist summer day, the grasses tall and surreally lush. There was not a soul to be seen, and only the merest campfire circle where the town would have been. She looked out and saw storm far off in the south. One came walking across the wide grassland, from south to north. Something attracted her attention: there to the east, over a small river, were mountains, and folk hid there. They were Clanish folk, and they held a perfectly ordinary market, of fruit and grain and beast and tool and garment, but it was all in a rocky cave and out on a scree-slope under a beetling cliff. She looked around and found the figure again, half-hidden in fog. She walked away, down a hall in a keep, and came to a desk in a study. The shadow figure was outside the window. Thane Burley was sitting at the desk, and he looked up at the Countess. "Pecham's my son," said Thane Burley, "but that don't mean I have to like him."
There were more footsteps in the hall, pounding along, three or four sets of booted feet. She turned to look just as fists pounded on the door. She awoke, sitting up in bed in Orlad hold, in the grey light of dawn. The pounding came again.
"I'll get it," said Angeline.
"What are you doing in my room?"
"Sharing Willd. Don't you remember? There weren't enough beds."
"I remember that, but I don't remember sharing Willd," said Vivian. She looked at him sprawled in sleep as if he'd been thrown down unconscious by a large man who'd been carrying him. Angeline went to the door, then fell back as four men pushed into the room. "What's this?" the Countess asked, pulling on a robe over her nightgown.
"My lady," said the eldest. They were two soldiers of late teenage, a youngish aristocrat and a leathery old scout: it was Garrik, old Thane Burley's man. "It's to do with the Thane."
"What? Is he back from Tyef?"
"My lady," said the aristocrat, "he never went to Tyef. He wants me, us, to bring you down to his hall, under guard, if you see what I mean."
"Ohhh." Her heart raced. "And?"
"And we won't do it," said the aristocrat. "It's ridiculous. Who does he think we like better, him or you? It's not even a contest." The other men all nodded eagerly.
"Well, that's music to my ears," said Vivian. "Wants to have me under guard, does he?"
"My lady," said Garrik, "the Thane's been in contact with the, uh, man in white."
"Oh, my goodness. He wants to turn me in for the reward! Well, isn't that ambitious. And you say he's not popular?"
"I'd say not," said the aristocrat.
"And your name is--?"
"Geoffrey. Lord Geoffrey de Bimless."
"Bimless?"
"It's just the other side of Wervin, my lady."
"Well, we'll have to visit there sometime. Is it nice?"
"Very, my lady. We'd be honored. Now--"
"Well, let us get dressed, and then why don't you take us to see Thane Pecham? Or maybe I should say, current Thane Pecham? Under guard, of course."
Twenty minutes later, Vivian and all her seven companions walked, under guard, into the Thane's hall, and found it already rather full of soldiers and aristocrats and officials and servants. In the middle, looking serious, was a rather dignified-looking man of indeterminate middle age. They came to a stop before him.
"Countess," he said, "it causes me great pain to do this, but I fear, since you have rebelled against the rightful Emperor, against your oath, I am compelled to turn you over to--"
"That's enough," said Vivian. "Stop right there." He did, his mouth half-open. "Now, how about the rest of you? Anyone else here like the Emperor?" There was silence. She could see his eyes watering and sweat showing on his brow: for Vivian, this didn't even require much exertion. She plunged ahead. "Does anyone here wish to make a request?"
"My lady," said Garrik beside her, "I think we all would like a different Thane."
"I have been requested by the people of Skavin to give them a new Thane," said Vivian, still holding Pecham in place with one mental hand. "Is this your unanimous opinion?" She was answered, after a moment's hesitation, by Ayes. "None disagree? None think Pecham should remain? You may speak freely, without fear of my anger." There was utter silence. She let him go and he staggered back. She motioned to the guards around her. They took him by the shoulders. "Now, by the ancient charters, the gentlefolk of Skavin here gathered have denied you, Pecham, son of Burley; I say you are no longer a Thane nor even a Clanishman. Honestly, turn me over to--who, Neil? Maybe the Big Guy himself? You ever meet him? You want to make a deal with him, maybe? I'd be scared to, if I were you. Well, now you can be scared of me." She held him breathless for five more seconds. Then she sighed and shook her head. "Your poor, noble, great-hearted father! I dreamt of him last night. He sheds tears of anger in the place where the heroes live forever. You may be glad that you will never go there."
"But, my lady," he said.
"But what, Pecham? Look around. The people you were supposed to serve all have just learned your answer to an important question: is the Emperor your sovereign, or is it the Countess? I don't suppose you recall your oath."
"He never made the oath," said Wolrich, Burley's sister's son, who had spent five years with the cataphracts at Tarnhold.
"That's right," said several others. "He was never confirmed."
"I was remiss," said Vivian, sitting down in the very chair Thane Burley had yielded to her for her council of war on her first visit to Orlad. "I should have come earlier. I should have come to Thane Burley's funeral, but news was slow to reach me and there was the Empire to worry about. But now I'm here. And soon you won't be, Pecham." She gathered a breath. Jinaa watched her with a glitter in her eye. Vivian went on, "You have committed treason by failing your duties to the Countess, and by treating with the enemy. I exile you from Clane, and I further declare that if any Clanishman should meet you in any of the lands ruled by me upon my accession, your life is forfeit." Pecham started to say something, but she cut him off. "And don't go to Bazir. I'm headed that way, and I'll certainly kill you myself if I see you again. I'm starting to think about having you killed right now. Let him go, gentlemen."
The soldiers released him and he wasted no time in leaving the room.
"Whom do you want as Thane, then?" she asked the gathered worthies.
There was a certain amount of shrugging and muttering. Garrik waited a respectful time and said, "What about Wolrich?"
"Yes," said Geoffrey de Bimless, "he's the obvious choice. Keeps it in the family, but he's loyal to the Countess."
"An excellent nomination," said Vivian. "Wolrich?"
"Um, are you sure, I mean--" sputtered Lord Wolrich, a middle-aged scholar warrior.
"We'll confirm you out in the courtyard, on the next sunny day." She stood. "People of Skavin, I will remember this a long time. Oh, and by the way, don't worry about the tithes for a few years yet. You still have your hands full all by yourselves here." She turned and started out of the room, then stopped and turned around. "What a strange morning I've had," she said to Wolrich. "I think I could use some more sleep."
"It's easy, stupid," said Suzy."We just put our card there and light the candle and concentrate. We don't drink the wine for this."
"Mom always does, dummy."
"Mom likes wine, dummy! Now shut up and concentrate."
"All right," said Annie, closing her eyes. She opened her left eye a crack and saw that Suzy's eyes were tightly shut. "Dummy," Annie whispered.
"I heard that," said Suzy. They concentrated, and the left candle flared to life. Then an Eye floated out into the air of Nikolad Hold. Suzy guided it out the window and onto the roof, then over the edge and down into another window. Lady Mirabel was toting up figures, while her daughter Patricia, Annie's age, practiced her letters. Annie's heart went out to her friend, but Suzy pulled her on out the door into the hall. Two serving women mopped up a spill of ale outside the dining room; a handsome young soldier dozed in a chair by the gate; Wulf and Harald checked the horses and then went for a pint before bed; Eliza, the refugee, the Khan-killer, lay on Suzy's bed reading. The girls wandered the castle for an hour and failed to turn up anything more interesting than sixteen-year-old Simone catching and eating moths.
They were about to give up and quit when they happened past Jen and Ellean's bedroom door just as it opened. Out came the blond maid, wearing one of Ellean's dresses and a discreet gold necklace--and clutching a little pouch of Ellean's powder. The dress was even more exciting on Jen than it would have been on the shorter Ellean. The Eye swung around and followed her, and they were not disappointed. She slipped out into the courtyard and headed for the stable--where, upstairs in a little room of his own, she found the Countess's veteran Stephen waiting. The maid and the soldier drank a little brandy and talked softly in the candlelight before setting all distractions aside and giving their observers a lesson their mother had never gotten.
It took several days to tidy things up in Skavin, and it was a full week before they had a really sunny afternoon. On the twenty-second of June, Thane Wolrich spoke the oaths to the Countess and donned the pentagonal felt hat that had been the badge of the Thane of Skavin for three centuries. They celebrated with a genial little dinner involving the entire population of Orlad, several large steers (deceased) and many barrels of wine.
There were several Imperial agents in the town, two of whom were captured: bright young men of Avigon who now found themselves set for life in the clean but cramped cells of the Orlad lockup. The Thane's council cowered before Vivian, and she let them grovel for a few minutes before assuring them that she understood their difficulties, and that things wouldn't be any different from the way they had been in Burley's last years. "We'll just forget Pecham ever ran this place," she advised.
On the twenty-sixth of June the company set out for Bazir, joined by Garrik and two young Skavin soldiers. The men of Skavin had been trading with the Avars for several years. Garrik spoke the language, and even before they left, he and Jinaa tried to teach the Countess enough to impress the claimants to the Khanate. Vivian found the Avar tongue to be both logical and passionate, with an ornate complexity that seemed to belie the nomad lives that gave it birth.
There was still a road from Orlad to Bazir, the remnant of Count Theodred's highway that ran on to Makar in Maklos. The riders camped that night in the low hills that marked the border between the provinces of Skavin and Bazir, and soon found themselves joined by several dozen Avars with a herd of goats and sheep as well as their small, speedy horses. They were a part of Farook's household, now led by the mother of Jinaa and Farook. Her name was Ulut Ulku, and she was one of Temkuz Khan's two original wives. The other one, Tshiraki, was the mother of the Imperial candidate, Memath-Hakeen.
"The sons of Tshiraki are all black evil," said Jinaa, and it was not clear if she was translating for her mother or expressing her own opinion. They were sitting in Ulut Ulku's tent sipping tea. "Memath-Hakeen could never stand against Farook in a fight. That is why my brother was killed in so cowardly a way."
"So who is Karaghur?" asked Vivian.
Mother and daughter exchanged a few sentences that Vivian could not decipher, and then Jinaa said, "He is the son of the Khan by a concubine, but he too is strong, he too is against Farook. He is famous as a warrior, at least."
"So who'll get your support?"
Again they exchanged a few words, and Ulut Ulku called out of the tent. A boy of twelve came in, beardless and skinny and wearing a sabre that nearly trailed on the ground. Ulut Ulku got up and put her arm around the boy.
"It is my nephew," said Jinaa. "Alas, my mother only bore one son, and he is gone, so Gamarr, the son of my sister, is our next."
"So why put your hope on a mere boy? You wear a sword and ride a horse, and you'd be next in line, wouldn't you?"
"No, no," said Jinaa seriously. "A woman khan? No, no." She explained this to her mother, who found it quite amusing.
"Silly me," said Vivian. "Who ever heard of a woman leader?"
"That is just so," said Jinaa, nodding emphatically.
A gathering throng escorted them the next day. It was not a tribe or a clan in the usual sense: all the faction leaders at the yagash would be sons (or wives) of Temkuz Khan, and their followers would be related only by membership in or alliance with the family of the mother of the son who was the faction's candidate. Ulut Ulku was of a powerful family, which was centered near the old Clanish town of Midder, and which had settled down to a greater extent and profited more from trading than most of the Avar groupings had. The fact that the family was led by two women-- Ulut Ulku and Jinaa--was completely hidden for the Avars by the assertion that Gamarr, age twelve, was the rightful Khan. Presumably someone had considered what to do if he were challenged to single combat.
They approached the outskirts of Bazir that evening. The partisans of the late Farook marched down the avenue into the great camp and set up their tents in the space left for them, all under the brooding eyes of Avar warriors. Countess Vivian waved to them and smiled as she rode beside Jinaa. "They know who I am?" she asked.
"They know who you are."
Once they had set up their camp, Vivian took to waiting. She looked out upon the wide blowing grassland and thought of her first year, of old Lord Smeagle, who had been swallowed up by these grasses in the third month of her reign, of her people dead in their thousands. But the Clanish province and the Clanish light cavalry were long gone. There was no deja vu.
It was several days before anyone outside Jinaa's faction admitted they had noticed Vivian. In the meantime, Garrik traded and chatted with the Avar veterans, Miranda tried to communicate with Ulut Ulku's medicine woman, Annie and the soldiers made friends among the young tigers of Jinaa's faction, Vivian and Willd studied the Avar language, and Angeline shopped.
"Gold necklaces, these wonderful scarves, and this dress--isn't it great? And all so cheap, but they hate it if you don't try to bargain." She showed off her purchases, on their fourth night in camp: a long skirt of dark red cloth, a blouse unbuttoned to the navel, half a dozen necklaces and a scarf partly restraining her long ale-red hair.
"Is that how they're wearing their blouses this year?"
"It's how the Avar women wear them. I think it rather suits my figure, don't you? Maybe I'll take to wearing this stuff in Tarnhold."
"It might kill Thane Hugo."
"Well, thank you! Viv, I think that was a compliment! Actually, I fit right in. They're really very friendly. You know, I thought the Avar women didn't have any power, but they talk about everything at the market."
"Oh, really? I knew there was a reason to bring you along. What did you learn? How to say, 'It's not worth half that'?"
"Bakh ny faghatsh narh," said Angeline. "It's easy. Haggling is the universal language. All right, so there are two serious claimants left, along with six or eight lesser sons, and then there's the majeel, the late Khan's officers. They'll either line up behind one of the claimants, or they'll split and there'll be war. The betting is on Karaghur, but everyone's afraid of angering Memath-Hakeen, because of the Big Guy."
"After what happened to Farook, I can't say I'm surprised."
"But it's the only thing Memath-Hakeen has going for him. No one pictures him as Khan. I guess Memath-Hakeen Khan would be less surprising than Jinaa Khan, but not by much."
"Anything else? What about wine?"
"Be sparing with this stuff," said Angeline, swirling half a glass of Skavin berry wine. "The Avars don't drink anything but tea and milk. And fermented milk, but that's only for the men."
"Fermented milk? They can have it."
"Of course, there's the hasheesh. You must've smelled it."
"Have you tried it?"
"Well, yes, just to be friendly. If they offer it to you, don't inhale too deeply, or who knows what you'll start agreeing to."
"I might agree to dress up like that," said Vivian. "Although it really does suit you. I think I'll stick to Clanish grey."
"You look perfect in Clanish grey," replied Angeline, and they clicked cups in a silent toast before downing them and pouring themselves one half-glass more.
Vivian dreamt again and again of the figure fleeing north across the flat country. She also dreamt of an arrow flying, of knives hiding in robes, of a rather sinister plate of rice and vegetables. She dreamt of her father fighting in the plains, of the lords who served her great-great-grandmother Countess Tereza, crossing the empty lands with their cavalry and their peasants, and the tents of the nomads rising up and blowing away like leaves on the wind of autumn. She rode again in the night of her youth with Willd and two others, in the blowing grasses under a billion stars, but when they got to the town it was not dead, and not Bazir, but a bazaar of the Avars, or the refugee market in the mountains of her earlier dream, or the strange carnival in the city on the Other Side.
Then one night Vivian had a different dream. She was skirting Willd's pleasant slumberland travels, when without warning she slipped sideways into a darker vision. It was peculiarly textured, built of the assumptions of a culture not her own. She had once had this very dream--only now it wasn't happening to her. A strong young man, full of honor and courage and pride, stumbled through a misty country of brush and boulders and low woods. He was pursued by something neither he nor she could see, and his pride and confidence were swift evaporating. The branches tore at his robe, at his unkempt dark hair, at his brown skin as he ran. He thought of turning to fight, but his hand went to his belt and found the scimitar gone, the knives missing. He stood in a flat open area by an old ruined house. He ran toward it, but when he came to the door he became afraid and backed away. He had chosen. He would meet his foe in the open, weaponless. He could see little more than a shadow approaching through the mist.
"Ahya! Here!" called a voice in his dream. A small, dark figure stood behind him, beside a tree. It was a woman, clad in grey, and on her breast shone a tiny clear teardrop-shaped gem. She helped him up into the tree, and he found that it was full of people, great blond women warriors, wizened old Thanes, men and women and children of all descriptions and vocations. They looked down. A figure stood below them, dressed in white, his face pale and bony around a majestic nose. He paced like a predator below them, but there they sat drinking tea and sharpening their knives.
The next day, the ninth of July, a trio of warriors of the faction of Karaghur appeared. "They want to speak with you, Countess," said Jinaa. "They bear no weapon." It turned out that the three had come to arrange a meeting between Vivian and the warlord, who had woken up that morning with a sudden and uncharacteristic yen for diplomacy. Everyone else seemed apprehensive, but Vivian was eager.
"Tell him, anywhere he likes, and as soon as possible."
"You can't be serious," said Angeline. "Do you know how many knives there are in this camp?"
"And how many different kinds of poison?" added Miranda.
"Funny," said Vivian, "I thought I'd left Sir Rogier at home. Look, this is not just some robber on the highway, some thug from the Avigon waterfront. And I don't believe that he would invite me into his own tent to kill me. He'd have it done right here, where he could claim he had nothing to do with it."
"Maybe he'd be double-bluffing," suggested Angeline.
"No, the Countess is right," said Jinaa. "Karaghur will not try to kill you in his own tent. It is not the way. Still, you must be very careful and not trusting at all."
"Well," said Vivian, "maybe it'd be better if you made the arrangements, Jinaa. I'll send Garrik with you to represent Clane. Is that all right?"
"Rahkhun, Kontassa, Countess, it is good. We will arrange a meeting."
During the next twenty-four hours, six different delegations of Avar warrior princes paid their respects to the "Kontassa". She met them in the middle of the largest tent of the Farook faction, and each khanling sat in a chair across from the Countess Vivian and took it as a sign he was her peer. They represented all the tribelets that lay between the party of Karaghur and that of Memath-Hakeen, and the striking similarity among them all was that none of them trusted the Emperor's side. Of course, the idea that the Avars might settle down and live in peace between Clane and Inzil was revolting to almost all of the Avars. Farook, with his civilized ambitions, had a better chance at being elected Khan now that he was dead than he ever had while alive. "We mean no threat to you, Countess," they all said in one way or another, but then, "There are many here who do mean you harm."
The next evening, Vivian went to visit Karaghur. With her went Willd and Angeline and Miranda and Jinaa and two of Jinaa's kinsmen as guards; with Karaghur in his great meeting-tent were a dozen or so strapping young princes with great long scimitars. There was a third party, three men of thirty or so, with pale skin and light brown hair. One looked on Vivian without apparent recognition, but she knew him: Count Chalris of Inzil, and he was blacker than ever inside. She knew Karaghur as well. He was the young warrior in her dream.
They sat in the candlelit tent as tea was served--and tasted by several of Karaghur's men before their lord or the guests got a chance. Miranda then took a tiny sip, savored, and nodded. "Only the best, Countess," she said, "and not a trace of arsenic." This ritual recurred for several rounds of food and drink, while Karaghur discoursed with his guests in English.
"We do not ally, we do not make trade agreements, we do not settle border disputes, we do not send a tithe to Avigon and we do not send two tithes to Nikolad," he said, smiling at them through a sparse black beard. "We roam the plains. We take what we need. If we need more, the plains run all the way down to the sea."
"But," said Count Chalris, "there is a power there that is greater than you. You must confirm the old alliances, and then that power will serve you."
"As it served my father? Thank you, no," said Karaghur. "And the old alliances, you say. Those are as old as what, a dozen seasons, or a score perhaps? We did not make alliances of old. We did not fight for the one who sits by the sea, and we did not fight against him, unless he stood in the way of the Avar nation."
"The Avar nation," said Count Chalris patiently, "is mighty and glorious, but it is the right arm of the most glorious body of nations this world has ever known--the Empire, reborn, with the Avars carrying the white banners. That is how it was under Temkuz Khan, though the alliances are older than you are aware. But you could gain even more, for it is the Empire's wish that you take Skavin for your own, and the Lavan valley down to ten miles above Vonnis."
"What?" said Vivian. "Hello?"
"She is powerless in that area," said Chalris. "She could not hold it against as many as four or five thousand Avars, and you could bring thirty as Khan. It is yours, and the Khanate too."
"Very funny," said Karaghur. "All sales pitch, never mention price. No, Count Chalris, if the Avars want Skavin, we will take Skavin."
"I don't think it's such a good idea, myself," said Vivian. "But go ahead and try. Just let me get back to Orlad first, and then we'll see if you have enough thousands to take me. Or, take me here, if you can, and then we'll see if your father's successor likes my daughter any better."
Karaghur smiled a slow, wide smile. "Rahkhun! Now here is one I can talk with as an equal. But you will tell me that I must take up the fight against the Emperor."
"Well, no," said Vivian. "I think it'd be in your best interest to help us, but there are limits to what I can expect. No, I guess I don't want anything from you, Lord Karaghur, I want you just the way you are." Then she said, in rehearsed Avar, "Stubborn and independent."
Karaghur smiled even wider, showing lots of teeth. He turned to Count Chalris. "You wanted me to join your party," he said, "and this Clanish countess gives you your answer. I have no party and ally with no nation."
"Then," said Count Chalris, rising, "we need not waste any more of your time, Lord Karaghur. I am sure you're quite busy conferring with the, ah, former Countess of Clane." He turned and left, followed by his two knights and a sudden headache.
"Lord," said a serving man in the Avar tongue, "the main dish."
"Bring it," replied Karaghur. Then, in English, "I hope this food is not too spicy for your Clanish palates."
"No, no, it's fine," said Vivian, "we've been eating Avar food for a couple of weeks now, and I'm almost used to it." Servants brought dishes around; before her Vivian now found a plate of rice and fried vegetables. She knew it instantly, and stopped Miranda from taking a bite. "I'm not eating this," she said. "No offense, but--"
"But you are saying I poison you?" said Karaghur, rising, suddenly angry.
"No, no," said Vivian. "No big deal. I'll just do without. I'm not that hungry."
"I will have my own taster try your food." At a gesture, the Khan's taster went over to Vivian and bent to reach for her plate. She stopped him, glanced in his eye and pushed him away.
"No, I think your taster should taste yours again."
"What? Mine?"
"Well, why not? If it's fine, you're only short another bite, and I'm sure there are several more courses."
"There are," said Karaghur, in the Avar tongue, smiling suddenly. "Elgu, take this taste." He held out a lump of rice and vegetable in his fingers. The taster looked, thought, stepped up, then turned to run. Two of Karaghur's men grabbed him and turned him around before he could go an inch.
Karaghur rose, his brown eyes shining with anger. "Elgu," he said, slowly enough that Vivian could understand his Avar words, "you have tried to poison me? Your master these ten years? Who paid you?" He tore open the taster's tunic and felt agitatedly around his chest.
"Jabal," said the taster. "Jabal paid me. I am sorry, Lord, please forgive me."
"How much did he pay you?" asked Karaghur, pulling out his favorite dagger.
"Three dozen gold coins!" said the taster with a mite of pride.
"You would betray me, and get so little?" said Karaghur. He slit Elgu open with the dagger. Vivian stepped just outside the tent for a breath of air.
A minute later, Karaghur and Vivian and their companions stood outside the tent in the mist of a muggy evening. "Elgu was my servant these ten years," said Karaghur. "This Jabal he spoke of, he is Memath-Hakeen's tajur, his chief advisor and minister. Yet it is I that am dishonored by this occurrence, and indeed it might be said that I owe you my life two times now."
"Two?" said Angeline. "What's he mean by that?"
"Lord Karaghur," said Vivian, "I respect your position and I don't expect you to do anything you wouldn't do otherwise, just because I saved your life. Twice. And don't let anyone mistake, my lord, my Khan perhaps--that poison was meant for you, and only for you."
"But I thought you said--" Angeline began.
"I'll go back in there and eat mine, if you like."
"Um, excuse me, that won't be necessary," said Miranda. "But you're probably right. The taster was perfectly willing to taste the Countess's food; he presumably knew it was clean. But he added something to yours, Lord Karaghur, after he first tasted it. Something nasty, I'd think, by the way he tried to run. He knew you'd kill him; he apparently had rather be cut open than die of whatever it was."
Karaghur looked back at Miranda in silence. After a few moments, he nodded and said, "It is so, it is all so, but as you say, it cannot change the needs of the Avar people. But be it known, Count Chalris is not to be suffered to walk past our tents except that his neck be slit."
"You read that as well," said Vivian. "The Emperor's party is against you."
"But why not you, Countess? Why should not you have put the poison in my food, and done so through Jabal even, to make us harden ourselves against the One in the South? Then reveal it at the last moment, and save my life! It would be quite clever."
"And quite beyond me," said Vivian. "As you know perfectly well, I think. Beyond the House of Farook, as well. But no, it was Chalris's departure that signaled the poisoning. It would have been whatever was served next after he and his pals left. Unless you had agreed with him."
"You are right, Kontassa," said Karaghur, "and I too am one who remembers his dreams."
The next day, the Countess and her entourage were invited to the great meeting tent, and there explained to all the factions that demanded it exactly what Clane's attitude toward the Avars was. "We're not taking back Bazir," she said over and over, in a fair approximation of the Avar tongue. "Maybe not at all, though I do not now renounce our claim. We take no position on your internal disputes, of course, but we call on you to recognize the deadly threat posed to your people by the Emperor."
Vivian also survived several tests. She had dreamt of an arrow flying out of a blue background and of a knife thrown from a horse. The first to appear was the knife: at midmorning break, a man charged by on horseback and threw his dagger unerringly toward the bridge of Vivian's nose. She recognized the scene a second early, though, and ducked, and the knife wound up stuck in a gourd.
The bluest blue field Vivian saw was the banner of one of the minor claimants, and she watched it all morning. Five minutes after the knife thrower had his chance, Vivian sensed someone behind the blue banner. "Move that," she said suddenly, standing up.
"Move it? You're crazy," was the gist of the reply from many of the Avars.
"Move that," she repeated. "Move it aside. Now!" No one lifted a finger to comply, but the assassin behind the banner grew skittish and acted too soon. All eyes were on him when he leaned out to shoot, and he was easily overpowered. He was of Memath-Hakeen's people. His throat was unceremoniously slit.
The rest of the morning went somewhat quietly, and in the early afternoon the whole assemblage rose to honor the highly civilized Avar custom of napping during the hottest part of the day. Vivian thought she was off the hook, but as she and Angeline were walking out of the meeting tent, she felt a sudden sense of threat. She looked to her right and saw the point of a knife speeding toward her in the hand of an assassin. It cut her arm as she caught the wrist of the attacker. The wrist was limp, as the man behind it fell to the ground dead.
There was a great commotion. Vivian was surrounded by concerned voices. Angeline grabbed her arm and bound it with her new scarf. "Are you all right?" she asked, though she could see the wound was not deep.
"I'm fine," said Vivian. "But this poor man seems to have suffered a brain hemorrhage." She wiped her unhurt hand on her dress, and fidgeted for a moment. Then she turned to the Avars around her and said in their tongue, "May I ask a favor? Might we stop at three?"
"Kontassa," said a smirking Avar warrior, "three failed tries in a day means you get to live."
Whether or not Count Chalris had passed the same ordeal was not said, but he kept out of Vivian's way, and out of the way of the increasingly obvious choice for Khan. Karaghur did not gloat or start making plans for great enterprises, and none of the other claimants, major or minor, dropped out (aside from the retirement by poison of Temkuz Khan's second son by his fourth wife), but the Avar warriors were smiling, anticipating not a grim struggle amongst themselves but a new dawn of external pillage and conquest.
The formal start of the great meeting of the tribes occupied most of the daylight hours of 13 July. There was pageantry of a sort that would have embarrassed the Rukh. There were dancers both male and female, cloaked in flowing robes of many hues, black in mourning for the great Temkuz, cream for the austere life of the nomad, and then a rainbow of colors for the vigorous spirit of their minds and the depth and power of their hearts. There were rituals of opaque symbolism and seemingly random procedure. There were priests in robes of night black, and shamans in loincloths to exhibit their tattooed bodies.
But it was the music that most affected Vivian. The songs, accompanied by many instruments or sung by a single voice alone, pierced the listener's heart even when the words were unintelligible. She wondered if they were singing words at all. Leathery old men sang and harped of the great deeds of the ancient heroes and of the strivings and successes of Temkuz, as well as of his failures. Vivian caught fleeting reference to "the clever lady clad in grey". She fully understood only one canto of the epics, and in a day in which the emotions of the crowd constantly threatened to overwhelm her with their mystery and their vibrance, this one passage moved her to tears. She later tried to translate what she could recall:
"Lost in his own land, the leader led on,
though death hemmed them in, the riders doubted not,
they fell there all, nor ever returned
to Vonnis of stone beneath its stone mountain.
Old soldier of Empire, he fell defending
a place he chose not, nor quarter did he ask,
nor quarter was offered to the Horselord of Clane
who never returned to the lady in grey.
Service he gave, sacrifice made,
his blood spilled out on the plains of Bazir."
It went on in this wise for ten or fifteen minutes, the old harper's voice rising and falling, and suddenly Vivian was hearing the tale of her army's escape and the battle in the cleft. Their admiration was tempered by a certain disdain for trickery; presumably the admiration had increased at the expense of the disdain over the years. She wondered what she would have heard a decade ago. Inzil's Counts, for their part, came in for somewhat rougher treatment, but even they were respected as foes; the full contempt of the victor was reserved for the Farlain knights of Sir Pelleth d'Olari and the utterly defeated armies of the Count of Shadewind. It was all so fascinating to Vivian, what little she could understand. Of all the things she had expected from being among the Avars, the furthest from her mind was that she would feel uncultured and rustic, but she thought she had never heard such beautiful and passionate music, intertwined with a historical sense that the Clanish folk song never attempted.
There was a feast, of course, and the tasters were many and nervous, but no one was poisoned. Hundreds of people crowded the meeting tent, sitting on pillows in little groups. The Clanish contingent were seated together with Jinaa and her allies. Count Chalris was there, with Memath-Hakeen, who disappointed Vivian. She had expected a firebreather, but this was more of a fishmonger; perhaps the Emperor had chosen him for ease of control, or for his lack of weaknesses such as a liking for harlots. But the biggest crowd was around Karaghur, and it included many warrior guards, who failed to deflect only the daggers shot from the eyes of Memath-Hakeen's followers. Jinaa pointed out to Vivian that the majeel, the old Khan's council, were all seated near Karaghur.
The food was varied in appearance, but it all tasted the same to Vivian and her friends: hot. There was still no wine, only tea, and no dessert, but the smoke of hasheesh rose from hookahs after dinner, and dancing girls entertained the claimants and warriors. Vivian and Willd excused themselves and returned to the tents of Jinaa's people. The full moon was well up into the sky.
"My love," said Vivian, "will you watch for me? I need not to be disturbed."
"Of course, my love."
They went into the little curtained chamber that functioned as their bedroom, and while Willd watched, Vivian got out her sack--the same one with which she had fled Vonnis--and fished out a goblet, a flask with a little wine in it, her cards and candles and Count Theodred's tome. She laid out the book and the Priestess, lit the right candle from an oil lamp, and drank the wine with a dash of the Other Crystals. Willd watched with curiosity, and jumped when the left candle burst into flame. By then, Vivian was falling through darkness past the wisps of powerless dead evil.
She alighted inside the Arch. The Lady stood there waiting, and she smiled at Vivian, but before they had time to do more than smile, two more figures appeared in the arch. They were grown women, one blond and one with sandy hair, Vivian's daughters. She hugged them each, which they endured without protest, but then the girls went off with the Lady and Vivian found herself alone. No, not alone: the shadow figure stood a little way off. And then, from a break in the hedge, Vivian saw another person beckoning to her.
It was an old Avar shaman, a little bald fellow in a loincloth, his skin covered with geometric tattoos. He grinned crazily at her, but she followed him, through the hedge and out into a blasted region, in which multicolored cliffs were reflected in ponds of oily water, and vents exhaled a stinking smoke, and here and there flames danced on the black surface of pools of viscous liquid. The moon flew high over the smoky country, and she looked to either side, to south and north, and saw lower and flatter lands. To the south lay a rich wide grassland sparsely peopled, and to the north a colder, drier plain wandered by warlike nomads.
People came to the fertile grassland, people from the great river valley. Far off in a city with stone walls there walked a woman with coal-colored hair and eyes like the summer sea. Even from this far off Vivian could feel her power: it made the shaman cringe. Men rode out from the city of stone and onto the plains and drove off the nomads who lived there and built villages of their own and plantations and even a bustling town in the midst of the flatland. The nomads fled over the pass, over the barren, fiery highland from which the shaman and Vivian watched, fled with their sickly children and their few belongings, and their places were taken by farmers. But something else was happening, far away in the south near the sea, and presently a man just into adulthood came fleeing north across the plain. The new lord of the plains town offered him refuge, but he feared and fled onward. He crossed the pass, his horse passing right below the promontory on which the watchers stood. It seemed to Vivian that she knew him.
The lady with the coal hair faded and a man was in her place, a clever-eyed gent with a thick white beard. There came a rider back over the pass, and he had many young warriors of the Avars with him, not an army but a prodigious escort. It was the man who had fled north, but now he was grown in stature and power, and had learned many secrets and ventured far in strange places, and feared nothing in the daylight. He had cast off his plain raiment and was clad in gleaming white. He swept to the south gathering an army as he went.
There were storms far away by the sea. The old man with the beard died, and now the stone city's walls were walked by a handsome fellow with dark hair and a serious look, a warrior proud and brave but a prudent leader. Vivian gasped: it was her father, long before she was born.
The storm climaxed with a great barrage of lightnings under a black cloud. Many banners fell and an army scattered and a great city was sacked and half burned. Then flying northward came the man in white, all alone. He fled again over the pass, and none marked his journey: except that there, on the other side, a young Avar was undergoing the cleansing ritual in preparation for entering the world of the spirits. The escapee took no notice, in his wrath and his crushing defeat and his pride, and he disappeared among the Avar tribes, who had no love for the folk from the sea lands who were his enemies. Then for more than a generation the tribes multiplied and filled their arid country.
In the plains the peasants of Clane prospered and built. Now the Avars, in need of new pastures, crossed the pass in raids and were driven back again and again. They were defeated in a decisive battle--and returned within a decade. Now a young woman walked the walls of the stone city, and looked out onto the plains, and now the Avars overran the towns and rode right up to the river. Among them there was a new Khan, and all followed him or died, and behind this Khan was a wizened figure, a frightening pale shadow with a hooked nose. And in a far corner of the old country, a revolt arose against the Khan, as happened now and then in the course of Avar governance, and this one like most was put down ruthlessly. Yet some of the rebels escaped to the glens and hollow hills of the pass. Now Vivian found herself walking beside the shaman. There were bodies about on the ground, marked by no wound or disease, but with faces scarred by a terrible fear. One only smiled: laughed, in fact, for he lived yet. She stood above him as he lay chuckling to himself on the black rock, and so saw him die. It was the shaman, and now he was beside her, looking down on his own corpse.
She looked into his eyes and saw there reflected a pale figure: the last thing the eyes had seen. He turned and walked away, and looked back with a smile. She followed him. They stood now in the plains and before her she could see a great camp spread out. In its midst there was a light-skinned man in a dark uniform walking: it was Count Chalris. The night was old and the moon nearly set. He kept in shadow, heading for the tents of Karaghur's people. Beside him, a wraith in the pale light, Vivian could just make out another figure.
She gulped and ran. She reached the Arch and dove through. In moments she was back in the tent. Willd sat in a camp chair reading by the dim candlelight. When she stirred and stood up, he rose too to kiss her. She accepted his embrace, but did not answer his questions: "Stay here, my love," was all she said. She ran outside almost before she regained her waking legs, ran out and down the avenue, which had at the start of her reign been the main street of the town of Bazir.
She reached the tent of Karaghur. There was no one about. The guards were asleep--no, dead. She ran inside, looked around, then followed something like a strong, exotic and unpleasant smell. It was not far to go to find its source: Karaghur lay half-awake among his pillows and blankets, an Avar woman lying beside him asleep. Count Chalris stood before Karaghur's feet, looking down. Beside him, almost merging with him, was a shadowy figure in white.
He had been looking down on the Avar leader, slowly and quietly and patiently strangling him, but now the Emperor knew his true foe was present. He turned on her. Vivian felt Karaghur grab a precious breath, and then felt the Emperor latch onto her neck. She was there in the room and he was not--but he leaned on Chalris. Her power was great, but his was greater, and he wielded it without a pause to gloat. With one hand he held down Karaghur while his other hand's long fingers closed upon Vivian's spirit throat.
She fought back, and his strength was sorely tested, but even here, in her realm as it had been on her accession and far away from Avigon, he was the stronger, and this time he meant to make sure of his kill. She strove to think of pools of hidden power she could tap, but her daughters were too far away. Miranda? No, unless she had some sneezing powder handy and could get here in about ten seconds. Then she remembered another time she had thought herself dead at the hands of this ghost of the Empire. She reached out her spirit's free hand, which had failed to push him away, and felt back toward something familiar. She found Willd in his chair half asleep; she felt him turn and look. She felt his warmth and his love and his unseen strength. It surged back into her while the pale figure tried to squeeze the breath from her lungs.
His face was very close to hers, cold and indeterminate. She brought her spirit's fist around and began pounding him in the nose. The impacts were sudden and rapid and her enemy fell back under the relentless pelting. As he retreated, she advanced and kept on hitting him in the face, until she was sure that big ugly nose would be flattened to the level of his cheekbones. Then he was gone, and Vivian opened her eyes. She found herself standing over Count Chalris, who had fallen to the ground with a bloody nose. Her knuckles hurt.
The Count of Inzil looked up at her in disbelief. She found her contempt for him coming reliably to the fore. "Strange place for a rendezvous, Count," she said to him. "I know why I'm here. What about you?"
"Kontassa," gasped Karaghur. "Do my eyes tell right?"
"They do," she replied in the Avar tongue. "Lie still, khan, and find your strength." She turned back to Chalris, who stared back up her. "Let me explain something to you," she told him. "I don't have anything against Inzil. You're neither here nor there with me: we shared a border once, but we do not now, and may never again. Your father was a big disappointment to me, of course. But you! You say you're for the Empire, but did you ever help your neighbor sovereigns in their times of trouble--Clane, Allor, Shadewind? What good is the Empire if one lord won't aid another when called? What do you have to say for yourself?" Nothing, of course. She went on. "Go, Chalris, fly to your home in Annavil. I believe Lord Karaghur might just blame you for this attack. For my part, if I never hear of you again I shall be well pleased. But I know where Inzil lies, and don't think I can't do to you what your mentor just tried to do to Karaghur Khan. Don't make me come to Annavil and show you the signs. Because I have plenty of signs to show you."
He leapt up and ran out. The Inzil delegation was gone from camp by dawn.
That day Karaghur Khan was acclaimed by the majeel and the Avar tribes in Bazir, though the followers of Memath-Hakeen fled southward into Shadewind with their candidate.
Vivian paid her respects to the new Khan, but evaded Karaghur's questions about the predawn encounter. For his part, Karaghur made no promises of peace or alliance, but treated the Countess as a friend, almost a first in the mutual history of Clane and the Avars. Jinaa bowed before the new Khan, and hugged Vivian before the Clanish party departed on the day after, headed back to Skavin.
They camped that night south of the Grassy River, and filled the air about with Clanish folk music, melodramatic ballads or boisterous drinking songs. Vivian played the lute and sang, but before midnight she and Willd slipped away to their tent. They quietly made love as Angeline's voice rose in one of the Avar songs they had heard at the yagash.
Just after midnight, Willd went outside to relieve himself. He returned and roused his lady: there were riders outside who wanted to see her.
Blinking away the sleep she had just managed to fall into, Vivian went out and found four men sitting at the campfire. They ranged in age from a teenage boy to a bald old man with a major beard, and they all looked as if they were used to sleeping outside. They rose when they saw her.
"My lady," said the old man with a bow. "We heard you were in the plains, and we had to take a chance and try to come to you. I am Archibard."
"Archibard?"
"I'm sorry," he said. "I am Thane Archibard of Maklos. Still at your service."
Two weeks later, it was known in Nikolad that the Countess was at Gorngold, and would return home the next day. It being the night of the new moon, Suzy and Annie were in the little library, and their Eye was blundering about the halls of the castle. They saw Sir Rogier and Lady Alice sitting in bed reading, and Lady Mirabel again doing the books, and Jen knitting socks for the swiftly growing Violet, and Siglind nursing her newborn daughter. The girls knew what they were looking for, and it was none of those, but they hadn't seen Ellean since she and Martin had returned from their long journey a day ago. Now as the Eye passed their mom's bedroom door, it opened, and there was Ellean, in one of the Countess's never-worn little black dresses, along with diamond earrings and a necklace. The Eye swivelled about to follow.
They were behind her as she came out of the back door and crossed to the stable: the usual meeting place, it seemed. But then they forgot all about her.
A pale figure stood beside them. They could smell his desire for spilled blood. Annie shrank back as he sniffed around for lives to take.
But then they were there: Suzy pulled them along the cord of their spirits and there she was, eyes blazing. The figure squared for a fight it thought it could win.
And then there was Annie beside him, her fear conquered. Just her grin was enough for him, for now: he was fatigued and he was far from his body and they were very near theirs. He would be back to--he would be back. And yet--and yet. What was it behind her grin, behind her flashing eyes? Why were these little girls so--what?
"Tithean," said Ellean Rain at the council meeting on 2 August, "has been effectively overrun. He's got ten thousand men in Amalya, which is now a town of oh, ten thousand. Count Teodas and his immediate family are dead, and the head of Alando of Orzali is prominently displayed on a stake. Imperial tactics are a bit different this time: he brought only the ten thousand, but he mainly fights with about two thousand heavy cavalry and horsebows. It's not the Clanish Cataphracts, but they have an effect beyond their numbers. There were three little battles, each against three or four thousand Titheanese militia, and all three times the militia threw down their weapons and ran before battle was joined. Then the cavalry would ride them down and kill as many as they could."
"He was there, wasn't he?" asked Vivian. "The count's family is wiped out, his army routed by the very sight of the enemy. These people have held off the might of the Emperor these nine years, and now all of a sudden they turn and run at the thought of facing two thousand knights. We'd love to face two thousand knights, wouldn't we?"
"Maybe not these ones," said Ellean. "And, yes, he was in Tithean, and he was seen with his cavalry. And yes, they say none could stand against him. As for the remaining resistance, a number of cousins are in the mountains with several hundred of their people. The Greyhead range must have several thousand rebels hiding out somewhere in it, all told, Orzalians and Vendrezans and now the Titheanese."
"It's too bad," said Vivian. "We can't do anything about it, but it's too bad. Still I can't bring myself to grieve terribly, considering what an idiotic blunder our enemy has made."
"How so?" asked Sir Rogier.
"He's shown his full power against this minor opponent," said Vivian. "Now we know what he can do, and we can prepare for it. And meanwhile, he trusted his Avar enterprise to Count Chalris. He could have destroyed us, instead of little Tithean, if he'd pulled together all his strength. For that matter, he could have had me if he'd been concentrating on the North. And while he's distracted down there we're improving our position for the endgame."
"We are?"
"Does my lady refer," put in Sir Francis, "to the Avar invasion of Inzil?"
Vivian smiled. Sir Rogier said, "So that's the diplomacy that you were engaged in. Did I advise you not to go? I take it back. In fact, let me right now take back every bit of advice that you've ever ignored. I'm starting to suspect that you had a plan all along, all the way back to when you and I rode to Bazir together."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," said Vivian, "Besides, Angeline was my diplomatic officer. Give her some credit."
"Thank you, my lady," said Angeline, "and just in case anyone actually thinks any of this was my doing, it wasn't. All I did was bandage her arm after the third assassination attempt."
"The third what?" asked Sir Rogier.
"Angeline! You weren't supposed to tell!"
"All right," said Sir Rogier, "how many were there?"
"Oh, only the three," replied Vivian. "We had to observe local customs. But let's not talk of such things. We may not have anything but bills in the treasury, but we're back to five provinces-- and six Thanes, if you count Archibard."
"Do we expect troops from Maklos now?" asked Thane Sigrith.
"I'm sure they'd be very good," replied Vivian. "Archibard's people only number a few thousand, of course, living in caves up in the mountains along the branches of the Kamakar River. They say they still plan on returning to their homeland, but I think they're staying where they are. I mean, the Thane told me all about his war plans, but then he said something like, 'Of course we have to wait until things change a little,' and then he was talking about his lovely cavern home and his grandkids."
"And they've remained hidden this whole time?" asked Thane Agnes.
"Hidden or just inaccessible, I don't know which," said Vivian. "The Avars don't like fighting in the mountains. But--fifteen years, right? My entire reign, minus the first two months."
"Yes, well," said Angeline, "it seems sometimes like Clane's remained hidden through most of those years. It's surprising how long things can remain concealed, and then come forth in the light of day."
"How long things can remain concealed," repeated Vivian. "I've been thinking about that. But if it's Clane that was hidden, we were always hidden in plain sight."
"There's no hiding now," said Sir Rogier. "After two humiliations in the past two years, he's noticed us. He may even have thought of ignoring us after last fall's debacle, but now that he's lost control of the Avars, he knows we're up to no good."
"May the Sun continue to burn," replied Vivian. "Yet I think he will still not dare to attack us. He will want to prepare more, after, by my count, three humiliations in two years. If we want him to attack before he's completely ready, we're going to have to find some further means of getting his attention."
"Are you sure this is--?" Sir Rogier began, but he stopped, looking Vivian in the eye, and merely echoed her smile.