Kingdoms of the Night (The Far Kingdoms) (20 page)

“Go on.”

“Modin is afraid of you, Amalric. Afraid of you and afraid of us together. The reason he wants you to go east, without
any
information that Hebrus could’ve possibly told you is he wants you to travel without the armor that’s knowledge. He wants you to die out there, Amalric. To die like he believes all travelers from Irayas have died or been destroyed by demons.”

“Afraid of
me?”
I was trying to work my way through her spattering words idea by idea, trying to keep from wallowing in this sudden flood. “What threat am I to him? Does he think I plan to destroy him? Or am somehow a danger to King Gayyath or to Vacaan itself?”

“He simply doesn’t know. He’s terrified of what you were — you and Janos Greycloak. Somehow the two of you persisted over all odds and came to Vacaan and in the doing shook the world from the Western Islands to Irayas itself. Vacaan was drowsing comfortably before you and Janos came, Amalric, just as Orissa was. Now, you’ve come again with a descendant of Janos’ and he’s panic-stricken at what upsets we might make in the fabric of this world.”

“Obviously,” I said, “he doesn’t buy the tale that we’re simply wanderers looking for new trading opportunities.”

“Of course not,” she said. “I don’t think either one of us thought that — he’s not risen to where he is by being a fool. If we were facing him alone I have no doubt that I could best him in any sorcerous battle he chose. All things being equal. But they are not equal. We are on his ground and he has the resources of all the wizards in Vacaan to support him and strengthen his spells.”

I turned the brandy glass between my fingers, thinking about what she’d said and also finding the precise words for my next question.

“This news is not good,” I said. “But it’s not what’s making you shiver like a fawn who’s just seen its mother killed by hunters.”

“I’m not sure I should tell you more.”

“Why not?”

She took a deep breath. “Because you are a man... and you might let that interfere with your thinking.”

“Janela, you’ve completely confused me. Just tell me what happened, no matter what. We
are
partners and I hope friends, aren’t we? I’ll wager though, that I can guess at least a part of what you’re holding back.”

“Can you?”

“Modin either slept with you or wanted to.”

“Wanted to is all. Thinking about actually doing it with him...” she shivered once more. “But he doesn’t want to have sex with me out of lust; not pure lust anyway.”

My eyes widened as I caught a flash of what would come next.

“I see you may have guessed it,” she said. “A descendant of Janos Greycloak? Sex with her, sex-magic, would bring him great powers, he’s sure.

“I learned tonight he deliberately chose those colors for the Wardens and his house flag out of admiration for Raveline, the man who helped destroy my great grandfather. When we came here it was if he had become Raveline himself and now had another chance to own Janos Greycloak, to possess him utterly and perhaps somehow, in the instant when bodies and souls hang in space together, understand and own the secret Janos sought.

“Your book,” she said, in suddenly calm tones, “has obviously traveled beyond Orissa’s borders.”

I walked to the window and looked out at the night. Janela had been right — part of me responded as a hot-blooded bravo. I wanted to strap on steel, seek out Modin and challenge him, even though Janela and I weren’t lovers. Nor would we ever be. It was not just jealousy I felt, but also the rage that Modin wished to drain Janela and her powers with sexual magic.

I remembered women used by Janos and cast aside and suddenly thought of a night long ago in Janos’ castle here in Irayas when I’d seen a mother huddled in a boat crying bitterly for her loss and the smell of something that might have been burnt lamb but wasn’t and a bowl full of a dark liquid being drunk by a thirsty being, not human.

“So one night of passion was supposed to give him all that,” I finally managed and I think my tone was level.

“No. He wants me to stay on here with him. Amalric, perhaps you weren’t listening closely when I said he fears
us
. He’s more afraid of us, together, than you or I alone.”

“We
are
a most hellacious pair,” I said, trying to bring a bit of cheer into the room and lift the blood-lust from my eyes that kept moving to the sheathed sword on the table. “Heroes of yore and all that.”

“It’s more than that. One of us is the beaten-together billets of iron and steel. The other is the clay-ash. He thinks there is a great sword smith waiting in the east and a fiery forge that will turn us into something that can shake this world to its very roots.”

“Let him be right about that!” I snarled.

“So now you know as much as I.”

I thought hard. “In two days we will climb the Holy Mountain. We might delay our departure for a week after that. I don’t think it would be wise to hurry away the day following the ceremony.
That
would unquestionably send Modin into a frenzy and make him send evil magic and possibly even warships after us. Do we have that kind of time?”

“I don’t know,” Janela said.

“Did Modin give you any sort of ultimatum?”

“No. Not specifically.”

“Then that’s our course. I don’t think we can cancel the ceremony and attempt to depart immediately. So we can only hope Modin remains inactive.”

There was a very long silence in the room.

“There is one thing we might do,” Janela said. I turned to her and she was looking away at the wall. “Modin knows we aren’t... aren’t familiar with each other. Aren’t lovers, I mean. That is one reason he made his offer. He believes that if he sleeps with me before you do... it’s almost as if he thinks I were still a virgin and he could seize all my powers by having me first.”

I felt heat on my cheeks and suddenly the entire situation became a bit funny. “If he is worried about
my
crazed lust and fears the competition, I’m afraid his powers are such he’d be best qualified for a post guarding King Gayyath’s concubines. Isn’t he aware of my age?”

“Will you help me, Amalric?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said. “Tell me how?”

Janela didn’t answer but stood up, went to first one lantern, then the other and turned their wicks down until there was no light in the chamber but the nightlight and the shine of the moon through the windows.

“He may be a sorcerer,” she said. “But he can’t know
everything.
”

She slipped out of her clothes and her body was lovely and gleaming in the dim light. Then she blew out the nightlight and all was darkness. I heard her whispering, the rustle of bedclothes and then the creak of the leather bedsprings.

“Lord Modin has seen all that he can,” she said. “I’ve shielded us with a blocking spell and now he’s certain to think the worst of me.”

I stood there feeling foolish. Janela giggled.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Your virtue is safe. ”

I went to the bed feeling as gawky as a bridegroom and nearly fell over one of her boots. I sat on the bed and wondered if I should try to sleep with the towel around me. Again I saw the humor in my befuddlement, tossed it away and slid under the covers. I did, however, keep very close to the edge of the bed.

It was very quiet in the room. I could hear the lap of the water outside and far away the chime of a gondola’s bell. Janela’s breathing softened and became regular.

I was almost asleep when she moved close, resting her head against my shoulder and sliding an arm across my chest. She murmured something in her sleep and I felt her soft body pressed against my side.

I felt the stirrings of something awkward and unseemly. She could be my
own
great granddaughter, after all. What’s more she trusted me enough to use my bed to befuddle Modin.

Then she sighed again and my own eyes grew heavy. And the next thing I knew the sun’s rays were flaming in the window, jolting me awake.

* * * *

The way up the Holy Mountain was even harder and rockier than I remembered, both in mind and body. The wounds came back, almost as sharp as they’d been those long years ago when I’d cremated Janos’ remains and sent his spirit flashing to the east.

It was just false dawn when we reached the ruins of the Old Ones’ altar. There were four of us, Otavi, Quatervals, Janela and myself. I told the two men to set their packs down and go down the mountain, out of sight. This ceremony needed no adulteration from eyes who didn’t know its meaning.

Janela took six small jars of paint and a brush from her pack and began marking letters on the altar, letters from no language I ever knew.

I just stood, waiting. Perhaps it was cold atop that mountain. If it was, I don’t remember feeling it.

The plateau was deserted. The people of Vacaan were discomforted by the place, reminded of those who’d gone before who had powers beyond their own.

I thought I saw a stain on the altar but I was imagining things — the ashes from the fire that’d set Janos free would’ve been washed away long ago by the storms of winter.

Janela opened the two packs and took out two handfuls of sticks. She positioned them on the altar in an exact pattern. We’d brought these bits of wood all the way from Orissa. I’d gotten a few of them from a jewel case warranted to have been made in Kostroma, Janos Greycloak’s birthplace.

Others came from a door I’d purchased from the Magistrate’s Own Guard and cut apart, a door that’d been to Janos’ room. Another fragment came from one of my father’s chairs that Janos had favored when he sat drinking with him. The last came from the dock of the castle he’d stayed in.

Janela poured oil on the sticks and we waited.

The first rays of the sun broke over the horizon and at that moment Janela said three words and the altar fire caught and roared into life — flame as great as if we were setting a midsummer’s eve bonfire alight.

Just as before the smoke curled above the altar as if waiting. Out of nowhere came a wind into the east and it took the smoke, sending it swirling out over cliff.

But then the plume hesitated and turned back against the wind and curled to the altar and around us, as if embracing Janela and me.

It did not smell of fire, or of aged wood or the varnishes the woods had been coated with but instead the salt of the sea, the touch of tar of a ship’s rope and coming through the other odors strange smells, myrrh perhaps, orange blossoms certainly, honey, juniper, sweet calamus.

I was staring directly into the sun’s rays but wasn’t blinded, didn’t see it but something else.

Once before atop this mountain I’d seen a vision, a vision of a high mountain range, a range that looked like a great clenched fist with snow shining between the fist’s covering of snow. I’d seen a mountain almost like that and crossed it with Janos, thinking I’d found the Fist of the Gods. Then, the day I burnt Janos’ body I’d seen the vision that haunted me until Janela came to explain we had been wrong.

And now I knew for certain that she was quite correct.

I was looking beyond Irayas, beyond the land the river curved through to the Eastern Sea. I saw that ocean stretching beyond man’s reach and then I saw land. I saw the mouth of a huge river, greater even than the one leading to Irayas. Beyond the river’s mouth my vision fogged but I could see still further and it was if I were a bird, flying at incomprehensible speed. Land was below but I did not see it.

My vision was fixed on a high mountain range, a range clenched like a giant’s fist. A giant... or a god.

Now I knew. Yes, I knew to the heart of my soul.

“Look,” Janela whispered and I forced my eyes to the side. She was holding the silver statuette of the dancer and again it became flesh and again she danced in front of an exotic court, a court of beautiful men and women and demons. The king and queen were still on their thrones and that wolf-snouted demon still lusted after the dancer. But my eyes went on to where a window opened on the court with gardens and a city below.

But that is not only what drew eye. Far away in that small tableau against the horizon, I saw mountains, a series of peaks that could only be the other side of the fisted mountain range I’d just envisioned.

In a blink it was gone and my eyes were watering as the sun struck at them.

Neither Janela or I said anything.

Words were not needed.

It was time to leave for the Kingdoms of the Night.

* * * *

Now we were ready for a rapid departure, having accomplished the three things necessary in Irayas — confirming Janela’s beliefs; resupplying our ships; and most importantly securing permission from King Gayyath, no matter how tenuous that permission might be. I’d puzzled on just how to prepare for leaving without word going instantly to Lord Modin and the King through their spy Lienor and the other agents I knew to be part of our household.

I did plan to make formal farewells at court but with such short notice I might forestall whatever Modin might devise against us. I’d come up with the stratagem of announcing an inspection of all my men and women and the ships, all to be travel-ready. Once the packs were together and the ships’ cargoes properly stowed we could leave in actuality on very short notice.