“This is not Kho’s justice!” Taphiru howled. “I saw him murder the king!” “Silence, priest! Do not interrupt me!”

  Two of the queen’s guard moved away from Kwasin and stood beside Taphiru. Kwasin could not hold back his amusement and he haw-hawed loudly.

  “Restrain yourself, Kwasin,” the queen said, “or I may change my mind about how to interpret the oracle’s words.” Weth stepped down from her throne to the empty chair of King Roteka and placed her hand upon its arm. Wetness filled her reddened eyes; then her face hardened.

  “You speak of the just Kho, Taphiru, even while across the land your fellow priests betray the Goddess and conspire to place Resu above Her. Yes, Kho is certainly just...and so She will replace one exile with another.”

  The queen motioned to her guard. Taphiru shouted in protest as the men took him by either arm and dragged him across the chamber toward the great doors.

  “I am a faithful servant of Kho!” the priest yelled as he fought to free himself from the grip of the men. “The wrath of Resu will be on your head if you do this!”

  “Did I not tell you he was fork-tongued?” Kwasin said.

  “Throw the priest outside the walls,” Weth ordered her guards, “and let Minruth’s troops do with him as they will.” She turned to Hahinqo. “General, I’ve kept you long enough.”

  Hahinqo followed behind the men. The golden doors swung open and then closed. Taphiru’s muted cries grew distant.

  Weth ordered the men on either side of Kwasin to leave the chamber, then stepped down from King Roteka’s chair and spoke low so that only Kwasin could hear.

  “Years ago you almost cost me the queenship! But we were young, only eighteen, and we both know the truth of that night. Your mad lust frightened me! I should have known better than to let you into my chambers—I’d had my intelligence check you out, so I knew about your fits. But in the folly of youth, I thought you’d be different with me! So, yes, Kho is fair, as is Her priestess.” Weth’s eyes narrowed. “You, Kwasin, ravisher of priestesses, scourge of women everywhere, are about to be tamed.”

  Before Kwasin could speak, Weth turned from him and addressed the old woman who stood by the throne.

  “Gather the priestesses and tell them to prepare for a wedding in the morning. And clean up this rank-smelling giant of the wilderness! We are at war and the people will need to respect their new king!”

  Then the queen strode from the throne room with the old priestess shuffling behind, leaving Kwasin to stand alone in the hall, for once in his life utterly speechless.

  5

  Preparations for the marriage of Kwasin and Queen Weth proceeded rapidly.

  Royal attendants ushered Kwasin to a luxurious sleeping quarters within the palace, with a large mahogany-framed bed piled high with soft, thick furs and fine linens. Kwasin felt he had just closed his eyes when a bronze gong sounded and three attendants lined up in the doorway to assist their soon-to-be king with his morning toilet.

  Still exhausted from his long exertions and hurting from his many small wounds of battle, Kwasin threw off his coverings and raged against the men, who skittered off down the royal passageway, their faces pale and fear stricken. Though he returned to his bed and tried again to woo sleep, it would not come. His mind whirled with the events of the past few weeks, conjuring up visions of his escape from Minruth’s prisons, his confrontation with the treacherous priest, the murder of the king, and the astounding pardon of his crimes by the beautiful Weth. The faces of the men he had killed in battle also flittered before his mind’s eye, as if their ghosts sought to avenge themselves upon him by depriving him of sleep. When he opened his eyes and once again saw the frightened attendants lining up in the doorway, Kwasin cursed and got out of bed, stretching with a yawning moan that almost sent his royal attendants fleeing for a second time.

  The men led him through a series of passageways and down a short flight of steps before they arrived at a spacious room with bright mosaics tiling the floor, walls, and ceiling, and a great pool of steaming water inlaid in its center. Kwasin took off his kilt and loincloth—which in his fatigue he had slept in—and climbed into the perfumed, salted, and almost scalding water. He hadn’t taken a hot bath since the years before his exile, and the heat and minerals soothed his throbbing aches and sores. If this were a king’s life, he thought, the annoyance of having royal attendants might be worth it after all.

  His bliss did not last long. The chief attendant, bearing the determined yet hopeless look of a man committing suicide, strode up to the edge of the bath holding a large wooden bucket. "I do this by order of the queen!” he cried. Then he cast the bucket’s contents of ice-cold water overtop of Kwasin, turned on his heel, and ran from the chamber. Again, Kwasin raged. He jumped out of the bath and ran after the man; but his feet, made slick from the bathwater, slipped out from under him and he landed hard on his rear. He roared with fury, but by the time he got to his feet, his anger had turned into howling laughter at the thought of the fleeing attendant’s sick-faced expression. A moment later the man poked his head through the doorway, a hopeful half-smile turning his lips at the transformation of his lord’s anger, then emerged fully and signaled the other two attendants to come dry off Kwasin with soft linen towels. Kwasin grabbed a towel from one of the men and brusquely ordered them away. Soon a fourth man appeared bearing a bowl of hot water and an iron razor. When the chief attendant dipped the razor into the water and made to shave off his lord’s long, thick, and still dripping beard, Kwasin grabbed the man’s wrist.

  “It must be done, your majesty-to-be,” the man said. “It is the queen’s decree. Her new king cannot look like a follower of Resu.”

  “King Roteka wore a beard,” Kwasin said, “and yet the queen did not shear off his manhood.”

  “With all due respect, O King-in Waiting, but you are not King Roteka, and...” The man hesitated, either too embarrassed or too frightened to go on.

  Kwasin squeezed the man’s wrist until he continued, “...and there are those within the palace and in the army who question your loyalties. You have been in exile for many years, and in that time your reputation has spread across the empire. Though your sentence has been suspended, the guilt of your crime still stands. The oracle is never wrong.”

  Kwasin cursed and let go the man’s wrist. The doubt among the troops might be due to his sullied reputation. Then again, it could be that Taphiru’s priests had spread lies about Kwasin to foster sedition among the ranks.

  “Shave off my beard,” Kwasin said finally, “but if you so much as nick me I shall cut out your tongue with that razor!”

  Once the remainder of his beard lay in wet clumps on the tiled floor, the men led him into another room where he found a doctor waiting who proceeded to rub healing ointments into his wounds and bandage them. Then the attendants fitted Kwasin with a loincloth, a kilt of fine lion skin, and calf-high antelope-skin moccasins, after which they escorted him to another room with a table on which sat a cask of water, a plate of sautéed termites mixed with assorted greens, and three large baskets filled with pomegranates, sweet mowometh berries, millet bread, and hard-boiled duck eggs. Kwasin devoured almost all of the food before yet another gong rang out. An attendant brought him some minty leaves to chew on and freshen his breath and then Kwasin was led down several more passageways and up a flight of steps.

  They entered a waiting chamber outside the throne room. Here the attendants made him remove his clothing and three priestesses entered to chant prayers of ablution and to brush consecrated papyrus reeds against his naked skin. Two more priestesses entered, bearing earthenware pots containing ochre paint. With a stiff reed brush, one of the women painted the stylized symbol of the Thunder Bear Totem in yellow upon his chest, while the other decorated him in red with assorted geometrical designs. When they were done, another priestess instructed him that, unless prompted, he was not to speak during either the procession to the Temple of Kho or the wedding ceremony. Then she made him memorize his vows, which he did not understand because they were in the secret ritual language of the priestesses. When Kwasin asked what the words meant, he was told, “It is the vow all men must take who assume the queendom’s highest office: ‘I serve at the disposition of Kho. Death comes to all, even the greatest of kings.’” The woman ended Kwasin’s instruction by showing him the particular manner in which he should kneel when ordered, on one knee with his forehead touching the ground and his arms extended palms upward.

  A herald cried out to announce that Kwasin should enter the throne room. The doors swung open and Kwasin strode into the great high-domed chamber, where he stood waiting with his back to the empty throne. A moment later the herald called out again, this time to announce the queen’s arrival. Weth entered from her private waiting room and stood beside Kwasin. She was naked except for a jewel-studded, golden-sheathed dagger belted around her waist by many interlocking gold rings and a circlet of gold with a single large emerald in its center crowning her head and holding back her long and sleek dark hair. Black and green painted spirals of various sizes decorated her face and body, representing her sisterhood among the priestesses of Kho. Kwasin thought her stunning and smiled widely upon seeing her, but Weth met him with a stony expression and looked away.

  With the blaring of bronze trumpets and the throoming of bullroarers, the procession began. Followed by a long line of priestesses, priests, heralds, courtiers, and musicians—and surrounded on all sides by the queen’s guard—they passed from the throne room into the spacious foyer, with its murals of the kings of Dythbeth acting out their many great deeds of heroism. Someday, Kwasin thought, he would be there among them; but then he recalled the ritual words the priestess had made him memorize, and his pride at being king faded. When it came time for his image to be painted upon the palace walls, he would most likely be dead, extinguished, a specter living his hollow afterlife in dread Sisisken’s dark house. Once a year, if he were lucky, the people of Dythbeth would sacrifice a bull to him, as well as to the other fallen kings of the queendom, so that his spirit might quench its thirst on the beast’s blood.

  All the more reason to take from this life what one could, he thought, and as a king, he could take plenty. Beginning with Minruth’s head.

  They walked down the many shallow marble steps that led from the palace and turned north onto the temple road. Before long they passed through the looming bronze gates into the oldest, smallest, and holiest section of the city.

  Spectators thronged along either side of the stone-block road. Some cheered their queen, but a general confusion seemed to mark the crowd. By now, the citizens of Dythbeth would be waking up to the news of King Roteka’s death and of the exiled Kwasin’s return. He heard a scattering of men throughout the crowd cheer out his name. These must have been soldiers who had accompanied him on his mad charge onto the great plain. No insults were volleyed at the infamous outcast—probably out of respect for the queen, and perhaps for fear of her heavily armed guard—but Kwasin could see many dark and doubtful looks cast his way as he passed.

  They approached the Temple of Kho—the very building where Kwasin, drunk and full of lust, had wooed Weth and then killed the temple guards who had come upon hearing her screams. A well-tended and carefully landscaped garden of sculpted trees and shrubbery stretched along the slight rise that led to the temple’s entrance. Here the road ended and a narrow stone path snaked ahead, flanked at its outset by two impressively tall oaks. The building itself was round, dome-shaped, and constructed of great blocks of white, red-veined marble. The temple had been built close to fifteen hundred years ago in response to a rapid growth in population that had made it inconvenient for the multitude of worshipers to travel from the city to the original temple of Kho, which now languished in disrepair in the marshlands between the forks of the Karhokoly.

  Kwasin and Weth entered the temples nine-sided entrance, accompanied by the priestesses and the queen’s guard, with the remainder of the procession expected to wait patiently outside until the newly married couple exited the temple. They passed through three rooms, each larger and with higher ceilings than the last, before passing into the vast, oval-shaped, and most sacred temple chamber. Many colorful mosaic tiles were set into the floor of the large room, forming in their entirety a great spiral representing the chain of time since the creation of the world by Kho. Kwasin had seen such artwork upon the floors in other temples dedicated to the Great Mother, and as with those, a single tile remained unpainted where one of the spiral’s arms reached out to touch a great marble statue of Kho, looming with terrifying beauty in the chamber’s center. What the blank tile meant, no one but the priestesses knew, but it disturbed Kwasin. Was Time itself destined to meet the same fate as every man and woman who had ever lived? Now he lamented that he had not asked Sahhindar, the god of Time, at their chance meeting.

  A priestess, whose shapely figure and shining blonde hair made up for a nose that was a trifle too long and narrow, presided over the ceremony. Even as he prepared to say his vows to Weth, Kwasin knew he would not be able to resist this priestess were she to ask him to bed her. He also knew, however, that he must be careful. Though kings were permitted to take lovers, they did so at the grace of the queen; and if Weth’s cold look meant anything, she would extend little grace to her future husband.

  The ceremony itself was simple. Kwasin and Weth stood before the presiding priestess, who announced herself as Nelahnes, chief keeper of the temple for the queen. While Nelahnes began uttering a long incantation in the ritual language of Kho’s holy order, twelve other priestesses circled about them in a slow gait, carrying small bowls of burning incense. The priestesses stopped walking when Nelahnes bade Kwasin to kneel. He did as the priestess in the temple had instructed him earlier, touching his head to the floor with his arms extended before him, palms facing upward.

  Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a knife drawn from its sheath, and a moment later felt the cold, sharp point of a blade press into the soft flesh on the nape of his neck. Kwasin tensed. Was the wedding but a ploy to lure him to this vulnerable position, so that Weth herself might have the pleasure of killing him? What if Weth had been lying when she said the oracle had yet to be consulted regarding his fate? The old and wizened Voice of Kho might have decreed that Kwasin, his exile ended, should be executed by the woman whom he had wronged.

  A long silence followed, with the blade’s icy point still digging into the back of Kwasin’s neck. Then he remembered the words he had been told to memorize— that death came to even the greatest of kings—and he spoke aloud the strange vow, acknowledging his subservience to Kho and the mortality of kings. Nelahnes spoke again in the ritual language and the knife lifted from his neck. The woman stepped forward and placed a golden crown upon his head. Cautiously, he rose.

  Nelahnes uttered a final pronouncement, again in words he could not understand, and the ceremony was over. The priestesses escorted Kwasin and Weth to the temple’s entrance, where a herald cried out, “Behold, priestess of Kho and of Her daughter the moon, Queen Weth of Dythbeth! Behold, brother of the Klakordeth, son of Khukhaken, the Leopard God, King Kwasin of Dythbeth!”

  The crowd waiting at the end of the temple path cheered and whistled, and again trumpets blared and bullroarers throomed. The dark faces he had seen earlier seemed to have disappeared.

  The queen and her new king reveled before the crowd’s adulations for only a moment. Then Weth took Kwasin by the hand and led him back into the temple.

  At first he thought she might bring him into one of the many rooms off the entry chamber so that they could consummate their marriage. Weth, however, pulled him aside and said, “I have not married you for love, my husband, but because the queen-dom needs you. King Roteka was much adored by all of our people but especially by the men in his military. His death has dealt a severe, possibly fatal, blow to their morale. But your deeds last night have brought hope to many, and the priestesses have already begun to spread rumors that your reappearance in our time of need has been foretold by Kho.” Weth laughed darkly. “Your murderous reputation is being played up as well. The priestesses are spreading the story that you have vowed to make amends for your past crimes by defeating Minruth’s armies. The people see you as a giant and unstoppable mankiller, and in a time of war, that is exactly the type of king they want to lead them. As do I.”

  “Is it true?” Kwasin asked. “Did the oracle foretell my coming at this time? And where is the oracular priestess? I did not see her during the ceremonies.”

  “For her own mysterious reasons, Wasemquth has taken up vigil in the old temple of Kho, and truth be told, not all of her prescience with regard to your doings is known even to me. But the story has its own truth. You have indeed appeared at a time fortuitous for Dythbeth and for yourself. Still, you must visit the oracle and receive her blessing if you are to remain king. General Hahinqo has already been informed that he must provide you safe passage.”

  Weth eyed Kwasin sharply for a moment, then continued. “But before beseeching the oracle, you must review the troops and assert your authority as their commander. Though you are a mighty warrior, your insubordinate action last night could just as well have failed, and I don’t expect you know anything about how to lead men. But don’t worry. Hahinqo is really the one in charge, and unless I command otherwise, you must from now on obey him in all things. Even now he waits for you at the barracks.”

  Kwasin’s face grew hot with anger as the queen turned her back on him and made to leave. Then she stopped and again faced him.

  “I will watch you closely, Kwasin,” she said, “and if I see that reason has finally entered your apish mind, I may grant you small favors. But if you do not control your failings, know that there are consequences, even for kings. Remember well the blade I set upon your neck this day.”

  6