Red Country (11 page)

“And you
discussed
me! Talking over my head as if I was a filly you might buy, making my choices for me, giving
my kingdom
away! By the Four, if you weren't aedryx I'd murder the lot of you, even if I'm a woman I'd, I'd—” and then, to my eternal chagrin, I dissolved willy-nilly into tears.

* * * * * *

When I finally resurfaced, Moriana and I were alone. She did not bother with soothing coos and embraces. She gave me a cup and ordered, “Drink this.”

I choked on the wine. My own Everran wine. She sat down with an elbow on the table, studying my face.

“Yes,” she said. “He is infuriating. The most infuriating man alive. Or that may be Zam, in your case.” I was too far gone to erupt. “But you'll never move him, not if you cut both your throats, once he decides something is against Math. And I have reason to be grateful for that, because if he wasn't such a soft-hearted imbecile I'd have destroyed Assharral and killed myself into the bargain. Or been killed by the people I wronged.”

She gave me a flashing smile. “The last thing that you want to hear is ancient history. And it is unjust that you've lost Everran, and we sit here preaching surrender with our every border intact. Unhappily, it's also reality. I loathe having to echo Beryx, but there's no refuting that.”

Her hard common sense revived me. I put by the cup, unearthed a grubby post-Hethrian handkerchief and blew my nose. “Now,” she said crisply, “we'll think what to do next.”

It was there with the vividness, the clarity and instantaneity of a lightning flash. I said, “I know what to do next.”

She looked enquiring. I heard Zam say other aedryx only used Scarthe when they chose, wondered if he was eavesdropping now, challenged him to do his worst, and stood up.

“Thank you for your patience,” I said. “I wish I could stay longer. I should have liked to see more of Assharral—and of you.” For a moment I envied her bitterly, not for her dominions, but for what she had made with Beryx: the integral gaiety born of happiness, of two people safe behind humanity's strongest shield. “Please tell Beryx I beg his pardon for troubling him. And tell Zam he's the vilest, most priggish, most hateful, hypocritical, tyrannical, selfish monster ever born, and I never want to see his face again as long as I live.”

“Oh, oh!” she cried, and giggled most disconcertingly. “What are you going to do?”

“I am going back to Everran” I said. “With the Sathellin. I shall marry Kastir, since there's no other help for it, and I shall get Everran back, whether I'm queen or not.”

As with the days between my father's death and funeral, that next time seems separate, distinct, divorced from everything else. Hard to reassemble now. I recall that the most nerve-wracking part was to actually get clear of Assharral, and that I was obsessed, not with the fear that Zam or even Beryx would try to stop me, but with the thought that a caravan might not leave that day, so I should be forced to ruin my grand exit by creeping pusillanimously back into Etalveth for the night. I had seen enough of Hethria to know I could not cross it alone.

But a caravan had gone that very morning, and the caravanserai keeper, unaware what ravages lay under my gratefully concealing turban, told me quite calmly that, “If you canter along you'll catch 'em this high noon.” I paid my score, savagely disentangled my belongings, and sent Vestar at more than a canter along the wide swathe of hoof-tracks toward the west.

No one tried to stop me. No one pursued me. It made me half-thankful, half miserable. I must have made good use of that new skill in closing the mind on that return journey, for even at the caravan's pace most of Hethria remains a blur. It was easier, of course, because we kept to the Sathel roads this time. The memories were all rooted elsewhere.

The most harrowing part of all, I am still quite sure, began when I rode under the arch at Gebasterne and saw with shock that the gate guards were dressed in Estarian gray. From there to Saphar it grew steadily worse. I never realized how much I had esteemed, taken for granted, needed the past I had been so set on discarding, until it was lost. It was not just the mass of new cultivation, the swollen towns, the babble of strange dialects, the gray Estarian clothes everywhere. It was the pang, over and over, of unconsciously expecting some well-known landmark, a portico, a crested door, an ancient well or long-cursed awkward gate, to find with shock that something new, often better, always rawly assimilated, was in its place.

These repeated blows numbed the major changes: the dispossession of vine and hethel lords whose estates were being cut into scores of tiny holdings, the royal council replaced by an “Assembly” supposedly elected by the people instead of selected by age and competence, the highlands' ample horizons lost under a flood of small settlers still squatted under tent or bark or branch; the town gates and towers that flew, instead of Everran's shield and vine, Estar's white star on gray. I think the only time tears actually came into my eyes was when I rode up through Saphar to the palace gatehouse, and glanced up at the arch to see the crest had been chipped away.

It was older than our dynasty, indeed older than Beryx's. It had been the personal crest of the kingdom's founder, Berrian, not the shield and vine of our standard but a wide unblinking eye. In childhood I had imagined its stony stare rebuffing night-walkers and bogeymen, and taken courage from the fancy. Now it was gone, and some intangible protection seemed to have gone with it, leaving Everran naked, at the mercy of the world and time.

The palace had changed too, of course. At home Estar's real rulers either flaunt or eschew luxury, but abroad its minions are wise to avoid extremes. Kastir had deemed the palace decorations an extreme. The carpets were gone, the queen's mosaic was painted over, scribes had replaced servants, only absolute necessities like the audience hall's rosewood roofbeams had been left alone. The journey had prepared me for that, as it had for soldiers instead of a chamberlain who were ready to bar me at the gatehouse; until I found a savage pleasure in pulling down my turban and saying with the full blast of regal frost, “Kastir will see me. I am the princess Sellithar.”

Kastir did not only see, he came to meet me in person. We eyed each other across the stone gatehouse floor with doubt, awkwardness, awareness of all that lay between us, neither confident enough to begin. Then he bowed deeply.

“Princess,” he began. “Sellithar. . . . There is much you must regret. As I do. I did try to respect your orders. And to . . . divine your wishes. You always wanted to remove the past. I have tried to . . . do what would please you, within my power.”

And he looked at me so beseechingly it was almost easy to forget what he had done to Everran. To answer, “What's done is done, Kastir. Now is now. I came to remind you that you once made me an offer.” His hands jerked. “I told you I needed time to think. But I have done thinking now.”

For a moment he seemed paralyzed. Then he caught his breath. Bowed yet more deeply. After a moment, with great awkwardness, he captured my hand, kissed it, and murmured, “I can only hope I shall make you as . . . happy as you make me.”

* * * * * *

If I was neither happy nor contented in that time, it was not misery. Rather, it seems, I felt very little at all. Everran's changes, Estar's ascendancy, dethronement itself did not seem to touch me, any more than Kastir himself. Our marriage never sank to quarrels, hatred, even loathing. It was always correct, usually calm, often amiable. And cold. Not that Kastir was a poor or clumsy lover. But in bed it is not skill or the body itself that matters. It is the flame, or absence of the flame within.

I did take a kind of bitter pleasure from learning to outplay my teacher on the Estarian political instrument. I played it so well that I won access to that holy of holies, the archives of Estarian intelligencers, and with it, the truth of that ancient supposed conspiracy. And when I knew beyond doubt that a forger had copied my mother's hand, that it was all planned as leverage for a Quarred House faction seeking to rule the Tingrith, then with the patient pressure, enlistment of this one's favor, compulsion of that one's assistance, satisfaction of the other's greed, which passes as the people's consent in Estar, I contrived the return of my family to Saphar; found them a house in the city, and assured Sazan and Haskar of a future, if not that of a royal prince.

I also managed to have a large part of the Estarian army train in Stiriand, where they most effectively buffered the Lyngthirans, while I secured the livings of old retainers like Nerthor, and promoted the careers of those, like Karyx, who still mattered to me. Further, I achieved a diplomatic success that actually drew the Estarian shophet's congratulations, when a compromise with Quarred permitted the annual return of their sheep. In smaller numbers, since the tide of settlement was creeping up the Raskelf hills, but sufficient to restore our balance of trade, which pleased Kastir too. He was ever sensitive to the need for Everran to pay its way. We both knew that if it did not, Estar might replace its governor.

I shut my mind to that threat, just as I shut it to the unruly images that sometimes escaped from memory, glimpses of a red country capricious as the wind, cruel, lavish, austere, beautiful, of a red-gold sunset on the looming rocks of Eskan Helken, of secret waterholes that exploded into jeweled gweldryx flights, of gray eyes in luminous motion against a backdrop of vivid, ephemeral flowers. When one of those caught me unawares I would go down to look at the blank shield over the gatehouse, and tell myself sternly, The aedryx have forsaken Everran. They are no longer any concern of yours.

* * * * * *

It was three years—or four?—to the breaking of the spell. I do recall the season very clearly. In other times it would have been Earth-day, but the Sky-lords' festivals had been phased out as “relics of the past,” “waste of work hours,” a “reduction in productivity.” We seemed to waste far more time and productivity in the strikes which regularly paralyzed our labor force, but I could not bring myself to care overmuch about any of it.

Nevertheless it was the day that should have been Earth-day, blazing and shaking over the dusty swell of Saphar Resh where small farmsteads now outnumbered the vines, over the distant red blur of ranges, over the city which had burst its walls, obliterated the park along Azilien, and lined the roads for five miles in every direction with the small, mean houses where those descending the social scale lived cheek by jowl with those who would one day rise.

Kastir had been away in Gebria, busy with a new irrigation project intended to bring water south from the Kemreswash. I had purposely kept clear of it. The very idea rubbed raw spots in my memory. I had had a difficult day with an Estarian “trade delegation”—which meant an unofficial mission to barter more wine at a lower price—and had retired to the tiny pleasance under what had been the hearthbard's tower, and was now a state orphanage. From there you can see clear to the Tirien foothills and the gray Meldene olive slopes, with the line of the Helkents, like a warrior's shield arm, ringing the south and western sky.

When Kastir appeared I summoned a smile, and he kissed my cheek as usual. But the kiss held an unusual zest. We asked about each other's progress, of course. Superficially, we cared about each other, and I must admit we made an efficient team. But when Kastir finished with his canals and sluices, I noticed his fidgets remained.

“What is it?” I asked.

He rose and paced about. One of the foibles that did irritate me was his habit of addressing me like a public meeting, down to clearing his throat before he began. I was slouched on one seat with my feet on another, shoes off, hair twisted up anyhow for the heat. “My dear,” I remarked, somewhat acidly, “there's only the one of me. You don't need rhetoric here.”

He gave me a perfunctory smile and did not sit down. “I purposely kept this from you until now, Sellithar. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

There was something pathetic about his hopeful look. He had never ceased to search for the magic key that would admit us from a tepid gray world into one of color and delight, and mostly he sought it in schemes that, by improving Everran, might also be a way of pleasing me.

I could not bring myself to pour acid on that hope. I said, “I'm sure it will surprise me, dear.” Insensibly, I had drifted into addressing him as if I were the elder. Indeed, I sometimes felt it. Old as the very hills. “What is it, then?”

“I have already submitted the plans to Estar.” A familiar gleam entered his eye. Another sewerage project, I thought. “The approval was here when I returned. Whenever we like, we can start.”

“Good,” I said. “Start what?”

“For the last two years,” he continued his address, “the east has been much in my mind. I felt we had not fully exploited its potential. Certainly,” as my mouth opened, “Gebria's population has increased tenfold, its production threefold, the new water should improve it again. But. . . .” He shrugged. “On last year's tour, I decided to visit the Gebros towns.”

A tiny prickle of warning went down my spine. “Yes?” I said.

“I actually rode out past the border,” he said, “into Hethria. Sellithar, it's a goldmine out there!” I had never seen Kastir display enthusiasm in my life. “Virgin soil—mostly better than Gebria's—only wanting cultivation to blossom like a rose. Think of the grain we could produce, the sheep we could run—we could double Quarred's wool clip inside five years. Cattle, too. They eat some kind of native weed in the rainy season, but we could import grasses—bind down the sand—improve the soil. We could farm that country for wine, fruit, silk, vegetables—we could make it the cornucopia of the Confederacy!”

My voice sounded oddly flat and loud. “How?”

“Irrigation, Sellithar.” He was positively ablaze with eagerness. “There's a dam on Kemreswash already, my surveyors found and studied it. Inefficient, of course. We'll build a better one, stone instead of logs, not a barrage, a wall with proper spillways, and keep all the flow instead of just a part. Then we can channel it clear down to Gebasterne. There are some channels too, they'll have to be replaced, far too small, but we can re-use the materials. And, my dear, we have the population to practice intensive farming all over that country, on a scale beyond Estar's own. We'll make the place a paradise!”