The Complete Empire Trilogy (90 page)

‘Mara,’ he said gently, and opened his robe and wrapped one side of it around her, bundling her against his warmth.

‘I’m worried about Keyoke,’ she admitted, snuggling against him. ‘You’ve been a great comfort.’ She rested her head against his forearm and tickled a playful hand down his groin.

Kevin considered sweeping her up and carrying her back to the bed; but once again her thoughts carried her away from him, and after a moment she pulled clear of his embrace and clapped her hands sharply.

Servants invaded the chamber, clearing away sleeping mat and cushions, and hustling to assemble Mara’s wardrobe. Kevin retired to a screened-off corner to dress. When he emerged, he was surprised to see a breakfast tray laid with fruit, chocha, and bread, but untouched; and although a staff of three remained standing by to serve, Mara was no longer in the room.

‘Where is the Lady?’ Kevin inquired.

The house servant in charge regarded him with no sense of humility; no matter how fine the embroidery on Kevin’s Midkemian-style shirt, he was still a slave, inferior in station, and not worthy of courtesy from a free man. ‘The Lady has gone to the front entrance.’ He fell silent, and a small battle of wills ensued. At last, seeing that Kevin would neither demean himself further by speaking, nor go about his business, but would stand staring down from his immense height with unblinking blue eyes, the servant sniffed. ‘A messenger has arrived.’

‘Thanks,’ Kevin muttered with dry irony, wishing as always that the Tsurani caste system were less rigid, and that someone in the whole bowing and scraping lot had thought to inform him of the arrival. Even Mara, but she had worries enough. He pulled on his sandals in hopping leaps through the door and hurried down the corridor to join her.

The messenger proved to be one of Arakasi’s, dust-covered and travel-worn. A boy in his teens, he had plainly run through the night, and from a distance much farther than Sulan-Qu.

‘We are committed to three shrines,’ he was saying as Kevin drew close. ‘One must be stone. And we must also build a prayer gate on your estate, to the Gods of Fortunate Aspect.’

This meant Chochocan, Lashima, Hantukama, and half a dozen others Kevin could not separate, their names and their qualities being strange to one of foreign origins. In
Kelewan there was even a god who governed the concept of honour.

‘The facing must be of corcara,’ the messenger ended, in pointed reference to the prayer gate.

The promised structure would become a costly undertaking, Kevin realized, as he sorted through his growing Tsurani vocabulary and identified corcara to be a shell resembling abalone.

But matters of finance and debt left Mara surprisingly unconcerned. ‘When will the healer priest arrive?’

The messenger bowed. ‘Noon today, Lady. Arakasi’s man arranged for hired bearers and paid the premium for haste.’

Mara closed her eyes, her face delicately pale in the thinning mists of dawn. ‘Pray to the Gods of Fortunate Aspect that we have that long.’ Then she seemed to notice the messenger’s weariness as if for the first time. ‘Rest and refresh yourself,’ she said quickly. ‘You have done well, and your master’s pledge to Hantukama shall be met. I will speak to Jican at once, and by the time the priest arrives we will have artists at work on drawings for the shrines and prayer gate.’

She would need to sell some outlying holdings to pay her account to the healer priest, but that was of decreased concern, with the Dustari campaign in the offing. Some of the outlying properties must be sacrificed, anyway, and their garrisons brought home to deter any threat to the estate. But although Mara usually attended to such important matters personally, this time she delegated responsibility to Jican. She heard and granted a list of requests from Lujan concerning immediate outfitting needs for her soldiers. Then, without a thought for the breakast she had forgotten, she continued onward to the chamber where Keyoke lay, surrounded by candles and eased by servants, but unconscious beyond recall, and breathing so shallowly that it
seemed impossible he was alive. Kevin waited respectfully in the doorway while Mara crossed the lit expanse of the floor and fell to her knees on the cushion by Keyoke’s side.

‘Honoured one, stay with us,’ she murmured. ‘Help will be coming by noon today. Arakasi has found a priest of Hantukama, who travels even now to aid the Acoma.’

Keyoke lay utterly still. Not even his eyelids flickered, and his skin remained white as nut paste.

Inescapably, he was a man at death’s door. Kevin had observed enough battle wounds and their aftereffects to recognize the facts. In pity, he left the doorway and crouched down behind his mistress. His hands locked solidly around her waist, and he said, ‘Dear one, he cannot hear you.’

Mara shook her head stubbornly, and her unbound hair filled his nostrils with its scent. ‘We believe differently. The Wheel of Life is many-sided, so say our priests. Keyoke’s fleshy ears may not hear, but his spirit, resting within his wal, never sleeps. His spirit will know I have spoken, and will take strength from Hantukama to hold Turakamu at bay.’

‘I hope your faith bears fruit,’ Kevin murmured. But he looked at Keyoke’s wasted flesh, and the hands upon which past sword scars showed like a white intaglio design, and he felt his own hope falter. His hands tightened upon the Lady to share comfort, and also sadness, and a fear he lacked the courage to face. Should he lose her, he thought – and banished the idea at once. An uneasy discovery followed, that should he be offered the chance for free return to his homeworld, he might not wish to leave her side.

‘Live, Keyoke,’ he said. ‘You are needed.’ And whether or not the wal of the warrior could hear him, the tall Midkemian spoke the words equally for himself.

The healing priest of Hantukama arrived just past the hour
of noon, with such marked lack of ceremony that his presence came as a surprise.

Mara had not left Keyoke’s chamber. She had answered the questions of her advisers there, and turned away servants who offered food. When noon came, she arose and began to pace, her brows drawn in a frown. Occasionally she would turn a concerned glance at the too still figure amid the cushions. Kevin, sitting quietly to one side, observed his Lady’s agitation, but knew better than to speak or offer sympathy. She might appear to be wholly absorbed in her worry, but the distance in her eyes warned otherwise. Her thoughts were very far from this sickroom, enmeshed in rituals of prayer and meditation learned in Lashima’s temple. There was rhythm to her movements, a dancelike adherence to forms that bespoke purpose rather than an aimless burning of energy. She finished one such pattern, blinked like a dreamer roused from sleep, and found a plainly robed figure standing beside her.

Dust-streaked, slender to the point of fragility, he wore robes that were almost as coarse as a slave’s. His hands were dark from the sun, and his face like a wrinkled, dried fruit. He did not bow, but looked upon the Lady of the Acoma with dark eyes that burned with a tireless energy.

Mara started slightly. Then she made a holy sign with one hand. ‘You serve Hantukama as healer?’

The man did bow, then, but not to her. ‘The god walks in my presence.’ His brow furrowed. ‘I did not interrupt your do-chan-lu?’ he inquired, referring to the exercise of walking meditation.

Mara waved the apology aside. ‘I welcome your presence, holy one, and would gladly suffer interruption, had there been one.’ With no apparent strain, and not even a glance at the comatose form of Keyoke, she went on to offer the little priest refreshment, and food, if he required.

He looked at her, considered, and then smiled, a startling
expression that radiated a warmth of compassion. ‘The Lady is gracious, and I thank her, but my need is not so great.’

‘Hantukama bless you, holy one,’ Mara said, and relief showed plainly in her voice as she indicated the sick warrior upon the mat. ‘There is one here in grave need of healing.’

The priest nodded once and moved beyond her. The back of his head was shaved in a semicircle that began just behind the ears and ended at the nape, where the hair had been allowed to grow long in a lustrous tail of intricate braid. ‘I will need basins, water, and a brazier,’ he said, not looking around. ‘My assistant will bring in my herbs.’

Mara clapped for a servant, while the priest bent and, with neat economy of movement, removed his dirty sandals. At his request, a servant washed his hands and feet, but he refused the use of a towel. Instead, he laid his damp fingers upon Keyoke’s forehead and stood for an interval, not moving. His breathing slowed to match that of the injured warrior’s. For a long minute nothing happened. Then he ran his fingers lightly down Keyoke’s jaw and neck, and on, over the coverlet and bandages that clothed the warrior’s sinewy body. Over the site of each injury the priest paused, profoundly still, then at last moved on. When he reached the warrior’s one foot he stopped, slapped the sole gently with his palms, and said a word that seemed to ring with echoes.

He turned at last to Mara, and now his face looked grey and worn and weary. ‘The warrior is at the gates of the halls of Turakamu and holds back his entrance only by great force of will,’ he said sadly. ‘He is nearly beyond recall. Why do you wish him to live?’

Mara stepped backwards into the unyielding wood of the doorframe, and wished that Kevin’s arms were there to support her now. But she had sent the barbarian off, out of fear that his outworld beliefs might unwittingly offend the priest. She looked at the ragged little man, whose hands
were heavy with calluses, and whose eyes saw far too much. She weighed his question carefully, aware that much depended upon her answer. She sorted through her memories of Keyoke, from the strong hand that lifted her when she fell and scraped her knees as a child, to the sword that had never faltered in defence of her father in the face of his enemies; how greatly the Acoma name depended upon Keyoke’s expertise. The reasons she should want him back were myriad, too many to say in one breath. She considered her former Force Commander, for himself, his loyalty and his honour, a shining inspiration to all of the soldiers he had led. She opened her mouth to say that he belonged at the head of her army, but something Kevin had once observed jostled the words from her mind.

Swayed by this markedly foreign concept, Mara blurted something very different from what she had initially intended. ‘We wish Keyoke among us because we love him.’

The priest’s critical expression broke into a surprised but heartwarming smile. ‘Lady, you have answered well and wisely. Love by itself is the healer, not honour, not need, not duty. For love alone will my god Hantukama answer summons, and lend your warrior the strength to live.’

Mara felt weak in the knees. In an overwhelming rush of relief she heard the priest excuse her from the room, that he have solitude to invoke his sacred rituals.

Alone except for his assistant, a boy with shorn hair and a loincloth not so very different from a slave’s, the priest of Hantukama set up his brazier. All the while he worked, his voice intoned a chant that rose and fell, like poetry, like music, but not; the guards beyond the closed screen felt the hair prickle at their napes, and they sweated, aware of powers beyond their understanding being summoned beyond the wall.

The priest opened a voluminous satchel and set forth
small bundles of herbs, each one painstakingly blessed, and tied with threads spun in a ritual known only to a handful of his brethren who wandered the Empire in Hantukama’s service. Each little bundle had a packet attached, labelled with holy symbols and sealed with scented wax. Not even the assistant knew what ingredients made up the fine powders inside. Out of respect, the boy had never dared to ask.

The priest sorted through his sacred remedies, lifting them, weighing them’, sensing to the depths the viruses imbued within each. He discarded the ones made for coughs, and others ensorcelled to encourage fruitful childbirth. He laid others, for blood loss, and infections, and fevers, and proper digestion, in a neat array to one side. To these he added still more, for reinstatement of the spirit, and restoration of circulation, and the knitting of injured bone and sinew. He deliberated a moment, touched Keyoke’s hand, and added another, for strength. Over the leg, he clicked his tongue. He could not restore tissue that had been severed and discarded. Had the cut limb been saved in turpentine, he might have managed; but maybe not. The belly wound offered difficulty enough.

‘Old warrior,’ murmured the priest between invocations, ‘let us hope that you love yourself enough to transmute the shame of bearing a crutch into the pride of wearing a badge of honour.’

His wizened hands rearranged the remedies into patterns, and blessed them, again and again; at one point Keyoke’s body lay ringed with little bundles of herbs. At another, he wore them in rows down the nerve centres of his torso and abdomen. Then the boy assistant lit the brazier, and one by one, with the appropriate song of praise to Hantukama, the bundles were lit and consumed. The packets of powder were dusted in the air above Keyoke, with murmured exhortations to breathe deep, breathe in the strength of the earth and the regenerative powers of the god.

The last of the herbs went up in smoke, and the chamber swirled with incense. The priest gathered his inner energies into a tight knot and became a channel for the glory of his god. He bent over Keyoke and touched the chilly hands that lay unmoving on the coverlet. ‘Old warrior,’ he intoned, ‘in the name of Hantukama, I ask that you give up your sword arm. Your hands are not yours but my god’s, to work for peace and harmony. Give up your striving, and walk in love, and find your strength returned in full measure.’