He was not yet Emperor. He was what they pleased to call the Royal Elect, that is, Hragon-Dat’s functionary. The papers which had been drawn up in the Citadel, and which Hragon-Dat had signed and sealed that rainy morning in the Crimson Palace, had been shown at the court, copies sent among the aristocracy, and finally posted up throughout the city. They declared Hragon-Dat’s voluntary abdication due to humiliation at his own weakness in leaving BarIbithni naked to the Hessek threat. His beloved son Sorem-child of his earlier union with the lady Malmiranet, former Empress of the Lilies-he now recognized as prince and savior of the city, and fit to conduct its affairs in the abdicator’s stead. Of Basnurmon, the Heir, only one brief sentence, scrawled on the parchment in the Emperor’s own hand: This beast abandoned both the city and his Imperial father to die, A pretty touch.

  Thus, Sorem was lord of the Empire in all but title. Masrian titles being weighty things, they must be conferred

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  by priests, the brow smeared with oil, the robes sprinkled with water from some holy vessel, while a white horse is given to the god. Then, and only then, does the Royal Elect become Emperor.

  Meanwhile the messengers rode out, and presently rode back, bringing the letters and the gifts of Empire lands, which swore loyalty to this new master, with cages of white peacocks sent to prove it. The nine outcity jerds, from their border fastnesses, sent their standards rather than peacocks, which, at the ceremony of anointing, their representatives would receive back (a typical Masrian show). There was to be no hint of menace from this far-flung soldiery. They, too, declared wholeheartedly for Sorem. To know the hub of the golden wheel they guarded was rotten wood has often been familiar and foul news to the periphery legions of several kingdoms. Sorem’s rule promised better.

  Seeing yet again how he was admired, his leadership accepted by veterans and novices alike, my mind went back to his outburst in the Citadel, his boy’s heroics and anger, his look of bewilderment and despair as he gazed up at the Heavenly City, imagining his father’s sniveling, letting the precious seconds slip. It was the Masrian way to revere what was beautiful and honorable, every knife in a sheath of fine brocade, that is if you must carry a knife.

  If I had not been with him, what? I thought. With five jerds in the Citadel he could have rescued the city, but would he have ousted Hragon-Dat? More likely he would have been a god for a day and assassinated on the next, and countless thousands of women, and as many men, would have wept as his gilded sarcophagus was borne through the streets. The Royal Necropolis lay on a high southeastern hill, perhaps a fifth city of BarIbithni, sugar-white domes and gildings. They had made a poem of death. Masrians say: The gods slay those they love that the world shall not have them. But Masrians were not always romantics; it took the honey of the south to soften them. And nothing breaks more swiftly than corroded steel.

  A month went by. It was the lush flowering of the summer, the trees of the Garden City still founts in the blue air, and the Palace bathed in its red shadows, and the lions making their lazy thunder from the park. All this has combined into a changeless, never-ending afternoon in my memory. Afternoon when, with the connivance of her women, Malmiranet and I would lie close as garments in some fiery chest while

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  her son was trapped in Palace business with his council. Though there were also nights. At the feasts, each supper being a feast in the Heavenly City, Sorem would occupy the king’s chair, the Royal Elect, I on his right hand and Ms commanders about, and the notables who would expect their places. Malmiranet, Empress of the Lilies, in silk of snow or gold or wine, would sit at the table’s farther end. Exactly where she had sat twenty years back, fifteen years old, Jointress of the Empire, Hragon-Dat’s unwanted consort. They had seen her grow big with child, some of these same old goats and their wives who littered the banqueting hall under the frescoes of tigers, that child who was to become Sorem.

  She had here a queen’s apartments, hung with gauzes and beaded curtains, yet on her wall, too, were an ivory hunting bow and crossed spears burnished by old use. She said she never used them now. There was a tall palm beyond her window. She told me she had climbed it once, when she was six or seven, having seen a slave do it. She told me indeed all about her life, between the milestones of our lust that marked out our nights like shining blades. Her life was as I had supposed it, though not for an instant did she seek pity. She was proud and cruel, having been well taught, but to those she loved, generous and fiercely giving. Between her love for me and her love for Sorem, she was hard put to it to find a remedy. I thought it foolish, this clandestine way of going on, but would not waste our time in persuasion. I thought, Iwill speak it through with him, some evening when he is free of court nonsense, and then she shall see. Still, I put it off.

  In fact, I put off much. It seemed a usual contrivance here. Even Hragon-Dat was left alone in some secluded uaderroom; why not everything else?

  I had grown lethargic in all things but love. It will happen when you have been fighting long, and it had occurred to me I had been fighting most of my days. Now, here was the sunny island in the wild ocean, and I lay upon it, forgetting that the sea encircled me still.

  It is difficult to remember the sea, however, when you can no longer hear it. The threat and the fear had gone, died, as I had intended, on that night of fire.

  BitHessee in ashes, only a few ghost stories to emphasize its passing. It appeared to me, in these amber days, that my nightmares had been purged and would return no more, ev ery nightmare, even those of the white witch.

  True, I had sworn a vow to a shade, or to my own con-

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  science-to my father if I would have it so. But maybe she was gone with BitHessee, Uastis the cat. Yet if she hid and lived, there would be better methods of ending her, with all the resources of the Masrian Empire to help me to it. Vengeance was a dry gourd after all; surely my father would wish greatness for me, even if it delayed her death? There was space for everything.

  Caught in the slow pacing of Masrian court preparations for the Ceremony of Anointing, I came to move slowly also, as if through warm water, the beach always in sight. I, too, had swallowed southern honey.

  So, with a little hunting and riding through the enormous inner parks, and many a bee-buzzing formal council, and the feasting, and the hours of love, this crimson afternoon poured on into a lengthening shadow of night I never dreamed would end it.

  The day of coronation, devised by astrologer-priests for its auspiciousness, was fixed. Into BarIbithni, bright with its fresh paint and brickwork, flooded a concourse of people, anxious to see the show and batten on it where they could. From the outlying townships and minor cities, from the coastal plains and the archipelagoes, from the arid rock castles of the east. Lords and little kings coming perforce to offer homage, peasants to stare, traders to sell, and itinerant robbers to slit purses and drunkards’ throats.

  I knew little enough of the surrounding geography, having spent my days so far in BarIbithni alone. This diversity in peoples and beasts to be observed in the streets took my fancy, more sweets to please my languid hours. Particularly I liked the notion of the eastern tribal clans, whose women veiled their faces in transparent gauze that hid nothing, and went bare-breasted into the bargain; or the black men, traders in ivory and sapphires, who rode in from southern jungle forests on gray angry monsters of pleated skin, which had a horn in the snout, bloodshot eyes, and ugly manners, a sort of misshapen unicorn, prone to defecate without warning. (For this, the poor loved them, dung being useful in a variety of ways. I rarely saw these grunting unicorns without a train of hopefuls, complete with shovel and bucket.) From Seema, too, came magicians with faces muffled in red veils and swords like butchers’ cleavers in their belts, who would dance with ropes that came alive, or seemed to, in the Market of the World, or else fold their bodies into minute packages of

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  knotted bone and hide. I had gone to look at them with some of the Citadel men, and seeing me, the Seemases bowed almost to the earth, an action that amused me, having lost its significance in a drowse of calm. Noting that even foreigners honored me as the sorcerer, the crowd laughed and clapped. They did not offer me the love they offered Sorem, but knowing my part in the crushing of Hessek, there was often a clamor when I went by-though never anymore for healing.

  As I was turning away, one of the magic-men came up to me and twitched my sleeve. I could see only his eyes above the red muffling, but sometimes that is enough.

  “Your power is beyond the power of men,” he said to me, using some outlandish language that would be nonsense to all about us, including the educated aristocratic officers who were my companions. If I had needed a reminder of my powers, this surely was one, to know at once, as ever, what he said and be able to answer as if in my mother tongue.

  “My Power is beyond the power of most men I have met,” I said.

  “Truly. But there is one other. Not man, but woman.” If he had drawn his handsaw weapon to slice off my head, I hardly think I would have started more than I did. “Which woman?”

  “The one you sought, lord of sorcerers. White as the white lynx. Uast.”

  Denades, who was next to me, seeing my face, said, “What does the fellow want, Vazkor?”

  “A personal matter,” I said, “an ancient feud of my forebears.” Denades nodded and stood aside. Secret debts of honor, family feuds, these were understandable Masrian commodities. To the Seemase I said, “How do you know this, and what is your purpose in coming to me with it?”

  “In my own way, lord, I, too, am a magician,” he said somewhat ironically. ‘They relate strange tales here of the burning of the Old City over the marsh, of the ghosts there. Not all are ghosts. I seek no profit, nor to entrap you, lord. If you will come to my sri, I will show you.”

  Denades caught the word “sri”-the Seemase traveling wagon-and said, “If he’s suggesting that you go anywhere with him, I’d advise not.”

  “I have no choice,” I said to Denades. “He has information I want. Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll be safe enough, and so will the red-veil, if he’s civil.” The Seemase understood; I saw from the creasing of his

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  eyes that he smiled. While he was still smiling, I reached out and into his mind, a contact brief as ever, for I would never learn to like such plumbing, but sufficient to reveal his honesty, and a deal of genuine mystic lore besides.

  “We will wait here for you, then,” Denades said, “or shall I, or any of us, go with you?”

  “My thanks, but I’ll go alone.”

  “Sorem will put me to the sword if any harm befalls you,” he said.

  His eyes were playful. He meant me to have all the meaning of that. Denades would follow Sorem into any battle and guard his back like his dog, yet he, too, made jokes, and I was tired of them.

  “Lead me,” I said to the Seemase. He bowed, and we went off across the marketplace, stared at by every pair of eyes that could see, and also by a couple of “blind” beggars.

  The Seemase magicians had made their encampment in a rented field adjoining the horse market. Six black wagons, strung with scarlet tassels and amulets of copper and bone stood in a half-circle on the horse-cropped grass. A small fire burned, covered by an iron grille out of courteous deference to Masrian custom, and two women were cooking the midday meal on it. They were richly dressed, with necklaces of golden coins, their faces bare and only their hair hidden in red turbans. Strange tradition to reveal the woman and mask the man, but I supposed it was to do with their magic.

  Five large white oxen were lying in and out of the shade of a tree, gazed at askance by the horses on the other side of the fence. There had been no horse in Seema till Hragon Masrianes claimed the territory, and the light sri wagons still travel in a chain, two or three at a time, linked together by couplings of brass, and hauled at the front by a yoke of oxen or bullocks. The land route from Seema to Bar-lbithni is long and hazardous, and would have absorbed more days even than are found in a Masrian month, leaving no margin to arrive before the ceremony of coronation, so I concluded that this party had come here by ship-men, women, wagons, animals, and all.

  The women by the fire gazed and giggled softly. One kissed the air at me. My guide seemed unperturbed.

  “You allow your women great freedom,” I said.

  “No,” he answered. “God allows them that, and the men of the Sri do not presume to take it from them. We are not

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  actually of the Seemase race, Lord Vazkor, but an older strain, and our ways are rather different. We have a saying among the Sri: Keep what you can, and what you cannot keep, let go, for it is already gone.”

  We went up into one of the wagons. It was dark, but pleasant smelling from bunches of herbs hung in clusters from the hoops above. He lighted a lamp, then took down a copper disk from a peg and set it on the rugs. We sat, and he drew my attention to the disk, which was highly polished as a girl’s mirror; in fact, I had taken it for that.

  “The lord has seen my mind,” he said, “but the ways of the mind are muddy, even to those who must live in them. Therefore I offer you this means, the copper. This is the way of the Sri, between adepts. Thoughts projected onto the disk by one mage are revealed to the other. There can be no chance of deception, neither any intimate contact of the brain displeasing to both.”

  I sat and looked at him, despite the rest, unsure. Unsure, I believe, because I completely trusted him. For all I could, have mastered him with my powers, he made me feel a boy before a man. From his eyes and his hands, I judged him in his fiftieth year, strong and agile, his wisdom a natural weathering and sharpening such as wind and rain produce upon the rocks of the desert. Sitting before him, I had that same sense of impermanence as I had known on riding from the Citadel on the night of the rising, the sense that far too soon a man is in his grave, and how small are the hurricanes and mountains of his life-vengeance, Jove, might, and conquest-compared to that tiny heap of bone dust at its end.

  At last I recollected what I had come to find, and bowed my head over the psychic copper, and concentrated my will upon it. In a moment my blood ran like ice and my metaphysics left me for sure.

  They had come by sea, as I had reckoned, and their tall galley had passed by the unlighted shore of the night marsh with dipped sails. From the rail, scenting sorcery as the hound scents lions, the man of the Sri beheld this on the shore: A white shape, dwarfed in the distance to the size of his small finger.

  I beheld in the disk, as he beheld it, that whiteness, and I experienced, as he had done, the smoke of force that rose from it. It was the force of hate. He had shuddered to feel it. He had heard of the burning of BitHessee and of the things

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  that haunted there, but this thing he knew to be no phantom. A white woman, with white hair and white hatred growing from her soul like a huge tree. And her Power was as great as mine.

  Scattered near her on that muddy open shore were dark shapes with gray Hessek torches in their hands. The breakers and the creaking of the oars and the sails of the ship hid any sound they made.

  The old miasma came slinking over me.

  The copper was suddenly empty and my host was holding out to me an agate cup with liquor in it.

  I drank and he said, “I knew her name. She had written it on the night for any who could read it. I knew also she had marked you for her evil. The mark is on you like a brand. Yet, lord, this whole city has been marked. Not only the men who razed BitHessee, not only the men who dreamed of razing it. Truly there is a black cloud above the golden towers of BarIbithni, the Beloved of Masrimas. A black cloud Which shall hide his sun.”

  I stood up and my limbs were trembling. I suppose I must have looked like death.

  “How can I match her?” I cried out stupidly, not actually to him. “What Power I use she feeds on. She. I tried, I was rid of her, yet she persists. Whatever I do is turned against me.” My mind was racing. I thought to go straight to that shore, the avenue of dead ships, the blackened ruin, and kill her there. It was what I had vowed to do. Or perhaps 1 should become the quarry. She had marked me, then let her follow me. Leave BarIbithni whole, Sorem its Emperor, and Malmiranet, my woman, on the Lilly Chair of the Crimson Palace, thinking I had fled like a coward….

  He took my arm.

  “I am a messenger,” he said, “no more. I can offer you no counsel. But my name is Gyest, if you should require my services.”

  I wished he might have helped me, but despite his own acumen of strengths, I understood too well he could not. Paradox. My ability towered over his, and I was a shivering baby.