Soldier of the Mist

Soldier of the Mist Page 31

"Because I came between him and the regent - quite literally, as it happens. When the regent's a hundred leagues away, things will be different; you'll see." With such fluid grace as few women possess, Drakaina rose. "In fact, I think I'll have my first chat with the noble Pasicrates now. He'll be the one who assigns us space on the ship, I suppose. I want the captain's cabin. Would you care to bet I don't get it?"

From the sheen of her dark hair and the grace of her swaying figure, it seemed likely enough she would.

When she was out of sight, Io made a face. "I think if somebody sliced her up the way you said Cleomenes was, she'd wiggle till sunset."

I did not want to punish Io, but I told her I thought that an ugly thing for a child to say, even though Drakaina's name was "she-dragon."

"It used to be Eurykles of Miletos," Io told me. "I know you don't remember, Latro, but it was.

Eurykles was a man, and when we lived with Kalleos, sometimes he spent the whole night in her room.

Drakaina says he changed himself into her by magic. I didn't like Eurykles much, but I liked him a whole lot better than Drakaina. And if you ask me she changed him into her, somehow."

I asked her how this Eurykles had looked. Now that she has described him for me, I know he was the man I saw follow King Cleomenes.

A short time ago, the prince regent's runner came to tell me that he will send for me soon. He said I was to wash and put on my best clothes, which I have done. I asked if he would be present, but he said he would be in the town getting supplies for our expedition to Sestos. A shieldman of the bodyguard - one of those who will not be coming to Sestos with us - will probably be sent for me, he said.

Io reports that according to the gossip of the camp, a ship has brought the regent's sorcerer.

Chapter 34 In the Regent's Tent

There was no one to meet me. "Wait here," said the young shieldman who had brought me. As he turned to leave he added, "Don't touch anything."

I do not believe I have ever been a thief; but for a thief it would have been tempting indeed. There were lamps of silver, gold, and crystal, and many soft carpets and cushions. A long knife in a green sheath with gold mountings hung from one of the tent poles, and an ivory griffin spread its wings upon a peak of ebony.

I was admiring this last when the regent entered, bringing with him a sly little Hellene with a beard.

"This is the slave," the regent said, dropping to a cushion. "Latro - Tisamenus, my mantis."

I did not know the word, and my ignorance must have appeared on my face. Tisamenus murmured,

"A mere consulter of the gods, sir, a humble reader of the omens of sacifice."

"Tisamenus advised me at Clay. Those who know the result know why I think highly of him."

"His Highness has told me of his dream. I wished to see the man. It sometimes amuses His Highness to accede to my little requests. Sir, Latro, I noticed you were admiring that statuette when we entered.

Do you know of those monsters?"

"Do they actually exist? No, nothing."

The regent said, "I'm told they live in the country of those Sons of Scoloti who revolted against the royal branch of their people, and that they hoard gold."

I said, "Which can't be as precious as this carving, Highness."

Tisamenus murmured, "I'd understood they're found north and west of the Issedonians. It's said they put out one eye of any man they find trying to make off with their treasure; but if he's already one-eyed, they kill him. However, I think it likely my information is mistaken, Highness, and yours correct."

The regent laughed. "No, you've the right of it, I feel sure. The best intelligence of such things is always that which puts them farthest from us."

Tisamenus nodded and smiled. "I don't suppose you've seen the creatures, sir?"

I shrugged. "I've no way of knowing. From what I read in my book today, I was already with the regent when we were in Rope. If he's told you about me, he must have told you I don't remember."

"Yet you remembered the monster, sir. I saw that memory in your eyes."

I shook my head. "I don't recall what I learned of them, if I did. Or how I learned it, or where."

The regent chuckled. "Sit down, you two. I'm remiss in my duties as your host. Latro, Tisamenus - "

He turned to the mantis. "Which do you prefer, Tisamenus of Elis, or Tisamenus of Rope?"

"As Your Highness chooses to honor his servant."

"Tisamenus of Elis, then. Latro, Tisamenus got my permission to visit his family after the battle. That was unfortunate, because he wasn't present to interpret my dream when I dreamed about you; but I've told him that dream now, and in general he seems to feel I've caught the meaning without him."

"To visit my sisters and their husbands, sir. I have not been favored in the matter of sons and daughters." The mantis sighed. "And the Inescapable One deprived me of my poor wife at the time of the last Games."

I cleared my throat. I did not think what I was about to say would lose me my head, but the possibility, however slight, lent a chill to my words. "With your leave, mantis. Why is it you call me 'sir'

when the regent has called me a slave?"

The regent said brusquely, "That's just his way."

Almost too softly to be heard, Tisamenus murmured, "Courtesy is never wasted, sir. Particularly courtesy toward a slave. We slaves appreciate it." To me he added, "You will not be able to answer our questions, then. That's a terrible pity, but perhaps you won't object if we beg you to try."

"Fetch some wine," the regent told Tisamenus. "Want a cup, Latro?"

"I can answer that one," I said. "Yes. But Io can tell you more about me than I can tell you about myself."

"I questioned her some time ago," the regent said. "And I was able to pass to Tisamenus all I learned in a few words. She met you in Hill. You were badly wounded. You'd tried to embrace a statue of the River God, and they brought you to the oracle there. It gave her to you and assigned a citizen to guide you to Advent. All three of you were imprisoned in Tower Hill until you were freed by a captain from Thought. In Advent, the goddess came to you in a dream and promised to restore you to your friends.

Then the lochagos I'd sent looking for you found you and brought you to me."

Tisamenus poured the wine, so old and good it perfumed even that perfumed air. "Thank you," I said, accepting the cup.

"You don't look pleased. What's the matter?"

"You told me a lot, Highness, but none of it was what I wanted to hear."

"Which is?"

"Who my friends are, where my home is, what happened to me, and how I can be cured."

"Your friends are here - two of them, at least. I'm your greatest friend, and anyone who stands with me will be your friend as well. Do you know of the promise made me in my dream?"

"Yes. We talked of it this afternoon in the gorge."

Tisamenus murmured, "Then perhaps you also know why it should be so. What makes you a talisman of victory?"

"I have no idea."

The regent said, "My first notion was that we'd been born at the same instant - it's well known such children are linked. Tisamenus?"

The mantis looked doubtful. "I'd guess he's the younger." To me he said, "I don't suppose, sir, that you know the day of your birth?"

I shook my head, and the regent shrugged. "So it might be true. I'm in my twenty-eighth year. Think that might be your age, Latro? Speak up. You won't be beaten."

"Twenty-eight sounds old to me, Highness. So I think I must be less."

Tisamenus had risen. "Shrewdly spoken, sir, and I agree. May I call your attention once more to this admirable carving? Can you perhaps inform me as to the name borne by these monsters?"

"They're the Clawed Ones," I said.

"So," Tisamenus whispered. "The god who took away your memory left you that. What man comprehends their ways?"

The regent drank. "A thousand times I've heard somebody say that: Who understands the ways of the gods? Everybody asks the question, nobody answers it. Now I'm a man and nearly a king - do you know many of our Rope Makers already call me King Pausanias, Tisamenus? So I'll try, Latro. You do."

As cautiously as I could, I said, "I'm not sure I follow you, Highness."

"I called you an idiot once. Since then, I've seen enough of you to know you're anything but."

"Yet there's an idiot here, Highness, if you believe I'm in the councils of the gods."

Tisamenus said, "You're treading on dangerous ground, sir."

"Because if you believe it, Highness, it must be true; and I would be an idiot not to tell you."

The regent gave Tisamenus his twisted smile. "You see what I mean? If this were the pentathlon, he'd win every event."

"Good," I said. "Because if we're linked, Highness, it might be that if I were beaten you'd be beaten too."

"And the chariot race. But Latro, my friend - and I'll call you my friend and not my slave - you know things you don't know you know. You didn't remember the name of the winged monsters until you were asked, did you?"

I shook my head.

Tisamenus murmured, "So it is, perhaps, with the councils of the gods. If we recall them to you, will you tell His Highness?"

I said, "If he wishes it, certainly. But though Io says I once swept floors for a woman in Thought, I don't believe I ever swept the hall of Olympus."

"Then we'll begin with speculations humbler still. You acknowledge that there are many gods?"

I sipped my wine. "All men do, I suppose."

"You once told His Highness, no doubt truly, that you were a soldier of the Great King."

"I feel I am."

"Then you must know something of the barbarians, sir. Indeed, you must have marched through Parsa, for the Great King's army did so on its way here. Are you aware that they hold there's only a single god, whom they call Ahuramazda?"

"I know nothing of them," I said. "At least, nothing I can remember."

"And yet they sacrifice to the sun, the moon, and the earth, and to fire and water. It is possible - I speak now as a sophist, sir - that there is but one god. It is possible also that there are many. But it is not possible that there are one and many. You disagree?"

I shrugged. "Sometimes a word is used for two things. When I loaded the regent's mule, I tied the load with rope."

Prince Pausanias chuckled. "Excellent! But now that you've bested poor Tisamenus, let me play Ahuramazda's advocate. I say that just as there's only one king at Persepolis, there can be only one god.

Why should he tolerate more? He'll destroy them, then there'll be only one. Show me my error, Latro, if you can."

"Highness, if you were truly a magus - I mean a priest of this Ahuramazda - I don't think you'd speak like that. You'd say there can't be a single god, but that just as there are two kings in Rope, there must be two gods also."

The regent held out his cup, and Tisamenus poured him more wine. "Why do you say that, sir?"

"I don't say it, but I think the magi would. They would reason thus: There's good in the world, so there's a good god, a wise lord. But there's evil too, so there must be an evil lord as well. In fact, one posits the other. There can be no good without evil, no evil without good."

The regent remarked, "Here we know that good and evil come from the same gods, having observed that the same man is good one time and evil another."

"Highness, a magus would say, Then I will call the good Ahuramazda and the bad Angra Manyu, evil mind. And if the good is truly good, won't it put the lie from it?"

The regent nodded. "Yet what you say doesn't explain Orith - the other gods. What of earth, fire, wind, and so forth?"

Tisamenus nodded, leaning toward me to listen.

I said, "Now I can speak for myself as well as for the magi. It doesn't seem to me that there can't be good without evil or evil without good. For a blind man, isn't it always night? With no day? It seemed to me that if Ahuramazda - "

A shieldman of the bodyguard entered as I spoke; when I fell silent, he addressed the regent. "The captain has arrived, Highness."

"Then he must wait. Go on, Latro."

"If Ahuramazda exists, Highness, all things serve him. The oak is his; so is the mouse that gnaws its root. Without oaks there could be no mice, without mice no cats, and without cats no oaks. But shouldn't he have servants greater than oaks and men? Surely he must, because the gap between Ahuramazda and men and oaks is very wide, and we see that every king has some minister whose authority's only slightly less than his own, and that such men have ministers of their own, similarly empowered. Besides, the existence of the sun, the moon, the earth, and of fire and water are indisputable facts."

"But the existence of Ahuramazda is not an indisputable fact. Finish your wine."

I did so. "Highness, let us think of a great city like Susa. Within the city stands a palace as great again.

A beggar boy squats outside the palace wall, and I'm that poor boy."

"Is Ahuramazda the king in that palace?"

I shook my head. "No, Highness. Not so far as I, Latro the beggar boy, have seen. The servants are the lords of the palace. Once a cook gave me meat, and a scullion, bread. I've even seen the steward, Highness, with my own eyes. The steward's a very great lord indeed, Highness."

The regent rose. Tisamenus stood at once, and so did I.

"So he is, to a beggar boy," the regent said, "though not to himself, perhaps. We'll speak of this again when you've returned from Sestos. Do you want to see your ship?"

I nodded. "Even if it's the one we came in, I'd like to see it, Highness. I've forgotten it, but Io says we came by ship."

"It's one of those that brought us here," he told me as we stepped from the scented air of the tent into night air that was sweeter still. "But not the one in which you and Io sailed with me. I'm taking that back to Olympia. One of the others is going to carry you and Pasicrates to Sestos."