actually do that?’ Scarpa’s harsh voice was hungry.
‘It’s an old custom, Lord Scarpa,’ Ehlana replied in a meek voice, keeping her eyes downcast as they plodded along the muddy path. ‘Emperor Sarabian is planning to discontinue the practice, however.’
‘It will be reinstituted immediately following my coronation.’ Scarpa’s eyes were very bright. ‘It is a proper form of respect.’ Scarpa had an old purple velvet cloak, shiny with wear, that he had dramatically pulled over one shoulder in a grotesque imitation of an imperial mantle, and he struck absurd poses with each pronouncement.
‘As you say, Lord Scarpa.’ It was tedious to go over the same things again and again, but it kept Scarpa’s mind occupied, and when his attention was firmly fixed on the ceremonies and practices of the imperial court in Matherion he was not thinking of ways to make life unbearable for his captives.
‘Describe it again,’ he commanded. ‘I’ll need to know precisely how it’s supposed to be done – so that I can punish those who fail to perform it properly.’
Ehlana sighed. ‘At the approach of the imperial person, the members of the court kneel –’
‘On both knees?’
‘Yes, Lord Scarpa.’
‘Excellent! Excellent!’ His face was exalted. ‘Go on.’
‘Then, as the emperor passes, they lean forward, put the palms of their hands on the floor and touch their foreheads to the tiles.’
‘Capital!’ He suddenly giggled, a high-pitched, almost girlish sound that startled her. She gave him a quick, sidelong glance. His face was grotesquely distorted into an expression of unholy exaltation. And then his eyes grew wide and his expression became one of near-religious ecstasy. ‘And the Tamuls who rule the world shall be ruled by me’,’ He intoned in a resonant, declamatory voice. ‘All power shall be mine! The governance of the world shall be in my hands, and disobedience will be death!’
Ehlana shuddered as he raved on.
And he came to her again as humid night settled over their muddy forest encampment, drawn to her by a hunger, a greed, that was beyond his ability to control. It was revolting, but Ehlana realized that her knowledge of the particulars of traditional court ceremonies gave her an enormous power over him. His hunger was insatiable, and only she could satisfy it. She grasped that power firmly, drawing strength and confidence from it, actually relishing it even as Krager and the others withdrew with expressions of frightened revulsion.
‘Nine wives, you say!’ Scarpa’s voice was almost pleading. ‘Why not ninety? Why not nine hundred?’
‘It is the custom, Lord Scarpa. The reason for it should be obvious.’
‘Oh, of course, of course.’ He brooded darkly over it. ‘I shall have nine thousand!’ he proclaimed. ‘And each shall be more desirable than the last! And when I have finished with them, they shall be given to my loyal soldiers! Let no woman dare to believe that my favor in any way empowers her! All women are only whores! I shall buy them and throw them away when I tire of them!’ His mad eyes bulged, and he stared into the campfire. The flickering flames reflected in those eyes seemed to seethe like the madness that lay behind them.
He leaned toward her, laying a confiding hand on her arm. I have seen that which others are too stupid to see,’ he told her. ‘Others look, but they do not see – but, I see. Oh, yes, I see. I see very well. They are all in it together, you know – all of them. They watch me. They have always watched me. I can never get away from their eyes – watching, watching, watching – and talking – talking behind their hands, breathing their cinnamon-scented breath into each other’s faces. All foul and corrupt – scheming, plotting against me, trying to bring me down. Their eyes – all soft and hidden and veiled with the lashes that hide the daggers of their hatred, watching, watching, watching.’ His voice sank lower and lower. ‘And talking, talking behind their hands so that I can’t hear what they’re saying. Whispering. I hear it always. I hear the hissing susurration of their endless whispering. Their eyes following me wherever I go – and their laughing and whispering. I hear the hiss, hiss of their whispering – endless whisper – always my name – Ssscar-pa, Ssscar-pa, Ssscar-pa, again and again, hissing in my ears. Flaunting their rounded limbs and rolling their soot-lined eyes. Plotting, scheming with the endless hissing whispers, always seeking ways to hurt me. Ssscar-pa, Ssscar-pa, trying to humiliate me.’ His blue-tinged eyeballs were starting from his face, and his lips and beard were flecked with foam. ‘I was nothing. They made me nothing. They called me Selga’s bastard and gave me pennies to lead them to the beds of my mother and my sisters and cuffed me and spat on me and laughed at me when I cried and they lusted after my mother and my sisters and all around me the hissing in my ears – and I smell the sound – that sweet cloying sound of rotten flesh and stale lust all purple and writhing with the liquid hiss of their whispers and –’
Then his mad eyes filled with terror, and he cringed back from her and fell, grovelling in the mud. ‘Please, Mother!’ he wailed. I didn’t do it! Silbie did it! Please-pleaseplease don’t lock me in there again! Please not in the dark! Pleasepleaseplease not in the dark! Not in the dark!’ And he scrambled to his feet and fled back into the forest with his ‘Pleasepleaseplease’ echoing back in a long, dying fall.
Ehlana was suddenly overcome with a wrenching, unbearable pity, and she bowed her head and wept.
Zalasta was waiting for them in Natayos. The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had seen a flowering of Arjuni civilization, a flowering financed largely by the burgeoning slave-trade. An ill-advised slave-raid into southern Atan, however, coupled with a number of gross policy blunders by the Tamul administrators of that region had unleashed an uncontrolled Atan punitive expedition. Natayos had been a virtual gem of a city with stately buildings and broad avenues. It was now a forgotten ruin buried in the jungle, its tumbled buildings snarled in ropelike vines, its stately halls now the home of chattering monkeys and brightly colored tropical birds, and its darker recesses inhabited by snakes and the scurrying rats which were their prey.
But now humans had returned to Natayos. Scarpa’s army was quartered there, and Arjunis, Cynesgans, and rag-tag battalions of Elenes had cleared the quarter near the ancient city’s northern gate of vines, trees, monkeys and reptiles in order to make it semi-habitable.
Zalasta stood leaning on his staff at the half-fallen gate, his silvery-bearded face drawn with fatigue and a look of hopeless pain in his eyes. His first reaction when his son arrived with the captives was one of rage. He snarled at Scarpa in Styric, a language that seemed eminently suited for reprimand and one which Ehlana did not understand. She took no small measure of satisfaction, however, in the look of sullen apprehension that crossed Scarpa’s face. For all his blustering and airs of pre-eminent superiority, Scarpa still appeared to stand in a certain awe and fear of the ancient Styric who had incidentally sired him.
Once, and only once, apparently stung by something Zalasta said to him in a tone loaded with contempt, Scarpa drew himself up and snarled a reply. Zalasta’s reaction was immediate and savage. He sent his son reeling with a heavy blow of his staff, then leveled its polished length at him, muttered a few words, and unleashed a fiery spot of light from the tip of the staff. The burning spot struck the still-staggering Scarpa in the belly, and he doubled over sharply, clawing at his stomach and shrieking in agony. He fell onto the muddy earth, kicking and convulsing as Zalasta’s spell burned into him. His father, the deadly staff still leveled, watched his writhing son coldly for several endless minutes.
‘Now do you understand?’ he demanded in a deadly voice, speaking
