Android at Arms (18 page)

The woman left her place at his back, moved out, took up a piece of wood, and thrust it deep into the fire's heart. When it blazed, she lifted it again and held it near enough to Andas so that he jerked his head back, the heat too strong for comfort.

“Strong, young—the rightful Andas, just as the records foretold.” The stranger with Andas's face almost crooned the words, as if he sang a victory song. “An Andas for an Andas! I die—you live to fulfill all the promises—”

“Who are you? This place—where is it?”

“Andas!” But the woman did not look to him as she cried that name aloud, rather to the man on the ground. She whirled the branch around, stirring it to greater burning, and held it before her as she might a spear or sword.

There was a clatter of stone against stone.

“Prince! Give me a lead to find you!” Yolyos's voice came out of the rain and the dark.

He answered, “Here—there is a fire for a guide—”

“There is a fire to kill!” The woman menaced him with her brand so he leaped back and away. But the harper made what was plainly a painful effort, seized the edge of her shapeless outer garment, and put his waning strength into a swift backward jerk, so she staggered, almost losing her balance.

“He is not alone!” she cried. “It is a trick!”

“Not so,” the harper told her. He spoke in a quiet voice, almost as one would soothe a child. “We drew him. There was another who followed, who was with him at that moment when the gate opened. He knows this one, speaks to him as to a friend. Be not so swift to judge, Shara.”

The brand had burned close to her hold. She tossed it into the fire and stood empty-handed. There was an empty look on her face, too. She said nothing more, but dropped in her old place, her hands on the man's shoulders, as if she needed that contact as much as he might need her support.

She no longer even looked at Andas, but kept her head bowed, her eyes ever upon the face of the man whom she now sat beside. Nor did she even glance around as Yolyos came out of the shadows.

But there was surprise on the harper's scarred face as he saw the Salariki. He surveyed the alien with a searching stare, as if he sought to read Yolyos's thoughts and weigh them to see if he were friend or enemy.

“You are not one of us.” He did not speak Basic, and Andas was sure the Salariki did not understand.

“He does not speak our tongue,” he cut in swiftly. “Yes, he is an off-worlder, a Salariki—the Lord Yolyos.”

“Salariki.” The harper rolled the word about in his mouth as if he tasted something strange, beyond his experience. “Off-world—oh!” Once more triumph flamed fitfully in his gaze. “In your world, brother, men still seek the stars?”

“My
world? What world is this—if it is not a dream?”

The man sighed, his hands slipping from his breast and the bandage there as if he could no longer find the strength to hold it so.

“This is Inyanga, part of the Empire of Dingane that was—was—was—” He repeated the verb three times, as if in doing so he tolled some bell signifying the end of a living thing. “But it is not your world, save that in some parts it is a double of perhaps that much happier life. I do not know the rights of this, brother. It would take a man much more learned than I am to explain. I only know that our twin worlds must lie very close, so that in places, or at least one place, there is a touching. Have you no tales of men—yes, and women, too”—as he said that the woman beside him stirred and raised one hand to her lips—“who have vanished suddenly and never returned?”

“Yes.”

“They came here, some of them. That is how Kioga Atabi first thought of this.” His hand lifted and fell upon, rather than pointed to, the harp. “I—I was his student for a short time, before the rebellion. So I knew, or thought I knew, enough to open by intention a gate which before opened only by chance, to open that and draw through the man I needed—my people needed—”

“Me?” Andas was fast losing all belief in the reality of this. Was it another vivid dream? He could not be standing here in the rain and the ruins, listening to the man-wearing-his-face saying such things.

“You because you are who you are—Andas Kastor. Just as in the world I am Andas Kastor. But I am dying, and you are alive and unhurt. You can take up the battle I must leave—carried upon my shield after the right of the royal blood, though there be none now to bear me to the Tomb of the Thousand Spears, nor any to beat the Talking Drums of Atticar at my going. Still there is a war being most bitterly fought, and my people need a leader. Thus, I summoned one they will give allegiance to without—without—” His words slowed, he swallowed visibly once, twice, then coughed, and a dark tricle crept from the corner of his mouth.

The woman exclaimed and would have moved to his aid. But with one hand he waved her back, fighting to speak again.

“I leave you now the cloak of Ugana fur, the sword of the Lion, the crown of the great queen Balkis-Candace—”

Long ago those words had lost their meaning save as a ritual so sacred and old that Andas, without thinking, responded to them. That no one knew what a “lion” was or remembered a great queen Balkis-Candace did not matter. What did was that this man, wounded to his death, invoked something so sacred, so much a part of Andas's breeding, that he went to his knees and stretched forth both his empty hands. It was a gesture he had thought to make one day, but kneeling before the altar of Akmedu, and the man saying that to him would have been a tall and glorious figure in brilliant robes, the Emperor, an old man of his own house accepting him as heir.

The harper raised both hands, though they wavered and shook. And they fell rather than were placed on Andas's hands. They tried to grip Andas's fingers, but had no strength left. It was his hold that kept them linked.

“By the rite of the crown, the spear, the shield, the Lion, the—the—”

“The thorn.” Andas supplied for the faltering voice. “By the water which freshens the desert, the clouds which veil the mountains, the will of Him who is not named by lesser beings, by all these, and the blood of my heart, the strength of my arms, the will of my spirit, the thoughts of my brain, so do I accept this burden and rise under it.”

He spoke steadily, the harper watching him with feverish and demanding eyes, his lips shaping the words he did not say aloud as he followed the great oath with such intensity that it was plain the whole of his being was now centered on hearing Andas intone it to the end.

“Rise under it, to serve those who look to me for bread, for water, for life itself. So rest on me this burden until the end of that time written in the stars for me, when I shall go forth on the road that no man seeth. And this do I promise by the key, which I lay hand upon.” He had dropped those lax hands and fumbled at the breast of the coverall. He drew out the talisman, and the fire seemed to leap higher at that moment, giving fiery life to what lay in his grasp.

The harper looked at it, and his face contorted into a painful smile.

“Well, oh well, have we wrought, Andas Kastor that was, Andas Kastor that will be! Emperor and lord, hold well the key—the key—”

Once more he fought for words, but this time he could no longer hold fast to the last wisp of strength. His eyes closed, and he fell forward, hunching over the harp. His hands tore at it in a last struggle, and in his frenzied grasp the strings broke with a horrible discord.

12

Shara put both fists to her mouth as if to stifle some cry. The Salariki spoke first.

“He is dead. But what did he ask of you?”

Andas still knelt, looking at the huddled body. He answered absently in Basic.

“He put upon me the Emperor's oath, passing to me rule and reign. Though if he had the right to do so—” He glanced about at the ruins. This was no housing for one with the right to pass the oath—which was done only in an atmosphere of great richness and ceremony.

Shara tugged at the body, drawing it back so that the harper's face could be seen. Since his driving will and spirit had departed from it, that face was now a mask of endurance and despair.

“Who was he?” Andas demanded.

“Emperor and lord.” She did not look at him, but continued to pull at the flaccid body, straightening it.

“Of what? By the look of him he—”

“He fought when lesser men lay down and willed the coming of death. He believed and worked for that belief!” She came alive, on fire, facing him across the body, as if she had taken into her own wasted form the energy that had held a dying man to a fearsome task. “He was the only hope of the empire. And when he knew he had taken his death blow, he held off death that he might bring one to stand for him—”

“Stand for him? But how can I do that, woman, unless I know the whole of the tale?”

Though she appeared the poorest of desert nomads, yet this Shara spoke the pure court tongue. Also he was beginning to think she was much younger than she first appeared. What was she to the dead man? Wife, Second Lady? But at least she ought to make some sense now of what had happened to Andas.

She had taken off the piece of rough material she had wound about her shoulders as a shawl, straightening it out gently over the body, covering the face that was a mask of Andas's own.

“You are right. There is a time for mourning and the beat of drums, and a time when such must be forgotten. He knew he had but hours when he came hither, so upon me he laid the burden of remaining alive, of playing guide to the one who would come.

“This is a world twin to your own. I do not know why this is so. But it is true that those from your place have come among us from time to time. It seemed they could do this by chance but could not go back. The Magi Atabi worked to discover the secret. He made many experiments. The last was this—” She pointed to the harp with the now broken strings. “It was his belief that certain sounds could open the gate between. When he was an old man, a very old man, he came to court, to beg of the Emperor a chance to put his invention to the test.

“That was when Andas saw him. His tutor was a pupil of the Magi's and took Andas to meet him. And the old man, fearful of getting no notice from the authorities (which he did not), took much time and trouble to explain to Andas what he wished to do.

“But already the shadow reached over us. He had no listeners—save a prince who was a young boy.”

She paused, and she no longer surveyed the shrouded body or Andas, but rather raised her eyes to the broken wall, rapt in some vision of her own. Andas spoke to her gently and as he might to an equal in rank.

“You speak of a shadow, lady?”

“Yes. And that shadow has a name—a foul name—one to be spat upon! Kidaya—Kidaya of the Silver Tongue!” Her wan face flushed darker. “Kidaya of the House of the Nahrads.”

Andas started, and she must have noticed it.

“Do you know of her then? Is your world also so cursed?”

“Of Kidaya I have not heard. But the House of Nahrad, the Nameless people of the Old Woman—yes, I have heard of them. How came one of the cursed line to your court?”

“You might well ask. Ask it of those who sing the Bones. It was decreed after the rebellion of Ashanti that none of the Nameless were to come within one day's journey of the Emperor. Yet Kidaya came to lie in his bed, to eat from his marriage plate, though she did not wear the crown. Even a man bewitched can be kept from some crimes! He took her into the Flower Courts, but he dared give her no First Honors. And for that Kidaya made him pay, and this whole empire crumbled into what you see about you—ruin and decay.

“Faction was set against faction by her cunning, and one rebel after another arose. She laid memory spells on the Emperor, so he felt hatred toward those who served him most loyally. Houses fell, their heads and all their families slain. Even Andas's life was saved only by a trick—” She laid her hand on the covered body.

“When he was of an age to take shield, he was the only true-line heir. She had seen to that by her web-spinning. The Emperor was too old, too sunk in her dreams, to be reached by those who would still save him and the empire. But she—she did not grow old! The witchcraft of the Old Woman held, so that she grew in outward beauty and in evil power as the years passed.

“But she bore no son—openly. There was a story that in secret she mothered a daughter, dedicated to the Old Woman from the first drawing of her breath, and that daughter Kidaya determined would hold the key—”

At her words Andas's hold tightened upon the talisman. There was nothing to say that a woman could not rule in her own right. Twice over in the past had there been an empress who touched what he now carried. But that anyone tainted with the forbidden knowledge would so aspire—!

“When she thought she was strong enough to move, she wrought upon the Emperor until he turned his face from Andas. There was a silly plot uncovered, so botched a matter that all knew it was but a sham to give the Emperor reason for decreeing the Second Punishment—”

Again she paused, and Andas drew a whistling breath. In his own world the Second Punishment existed only in the dark annals of long past history, though it could still be used by law against any of the royal clans who rebelled. Yet it had not been so for more than a hundred years. To what barbaric state had this twin world sunk that this punishment could be once more invoked against a man?

“But his eyes—” he protested. The dead man's face was hidden, but Andas was sure he had not been mistaken. Those eyes had been normal—he had not been blinded.

“He had friends still, ready to risk their lives and more than the true line not come to an end and that witch sit on the Triple Throne,” Shara said. “But he played a game thereafter such as few men would have the strength to do, for he wore the mask of the Second Punishment, and no man knew that he had not lost his eyes. As a blinded prince he had no chance for the throne. She could contemptuously let him crawl into any hole he chose to hide shame and disgrace. But he lived and so won a small victory, since she would not send against him, blinded, such evil arts as the Old Woman's blood-sworn knew, such as had been turned against others. He was a nothing, a grain of dust she had swept aside and need not remember.”