The Godspeaker Trilogy (10 page)

R
aklion, son of Ragilik, beleaguered warlord of Et-Raklion, closed his eyes and released a silent sigh as his high godspeaker’s rage scorched his skin like the god’s wrathful breath.

“Nogolor warlord’s insult must not go on breathing, Raklion,” Nagarak thundered. “Et-Nogolor’s Daughter was godpromised to you, not Bajadek. Why do you stand here in your palace, in the sunshine? Why do you not lead your ten thousand warriors to the gates of Et-Nogolor and demand the city’s Daughter as was promised in the god’s eye?”

Raklion swallowed annoyance. Keeping his back turned and his voice calm, because shouting would only inflame the man further, he said, “If I am the one insulted, Nagarak, am I not the one who decides if the insult breathes, or must be smothered by ten thousand warriors?”

Nagarak stood behind him, in the shadowed doorway to the balcony of his private palace apartments. “You think my godspeaker pride is slighted.” The high godspeaker’s displeasure filled the measured space between them. “You think my tongue is dipped in spite.”

Raklion shrugged. “Et-Nogolor’s Daughter is still unblooded, her body cannot yet ripen with child. She has not left her father’s palace, she is not taken by Bajadek warlord. I hear rumors, I am told certain things, but no godpromised oaths are broken, Nagarak. I do not know Nogolor intends to give his girl-child to Bajadek. If I treat rumor as fact and ride with my warriors to Et-Nogolor, to take the Daughter before she is blooded, then I am the oathbreaker. I am the one who shatters the treaty with Nogolor. Surely that is Bajadek’s desire, he desires to provoke me into unwise action. He schemes to make of me a dishonorable man. Should I give him satisfaction? I think I should not.”

Nagarak stepped closer. “What you should do, Raklion, is listen to your high godspeaker. While you stand on your honor Bajadek drips poison into Nogolor’s ear. Nogolor listens, he is a weak warlord.”

Raklion glanced over his shoulder. “Weak or not he is a warlord with his own high godspeaker, who talks to him as you talk to me. My past is no secret, Nagarak. Perhaps his high godspeaker says I am not fit for Et-Nogolor’s Daughter.”

“Not fit?” echoed Nagarak. He sounded baffled. “Warlord, are you ailing? I made the sacrifices. I read the omens. Et-Nogolor’s Daughter is meant for you . Here is mischief brewed by a godspeaker of Et-Nogolor who has lost his way in the god’s piercing eye. He listens to the whispers of earthbound men . . . or demons.”

Moving to the edge of his palace balcony, Raklion looked down at the city sprawled about the Pinnacle’s base. His sunsoaked city, Et-Raklion the glorious, his concubine and his curse. Master of every creature who lived here, in truth he was their slave and slave to the savage demands of his god with no name. The great Raklion warlord: born a fruit of the city’s vine, steeped and pulped in his vinegar history.

Aieee, the god see me . Fingers gripping the balcony’s red stone balustrade till they were bloodless, Raklion bowed his aching head. He was forty-nine and had no son. His past was a shadow, stitched to his heels, it followed him into every corner and was visible in the darkest night.

Three warlords’ daughters have I killed in trying to bring forth a living son. I have sired seven and the god has inhaled them all as smoke. Is it to be wondered the warlords give their women to anyone but me?

He turned, resting his knotted spine against the stone railing, and looked into Nagarak’s cold, hard face. “It is possible you misread the omens.”

Nagarak was young to be a high godspeaker. Barely past forty. He was bones and skin and godbraids, his burning eyes were fixed upon the god. The black scorpion pectoral strapped to his naked chest glowed with flecks of gold and crimson, with the fiery passion of his devotion. Three seasons before he had walked unaided from the godhouse scorpion pit, the god’s choice for its next high godspeaker in Et-Raklion. Eight of his fellow godspeakers had died in that choosing, deluded by demons and lost to hell.

He said, “Raklion warlord, I did not misread the omens. The god intends Et-Nogolor’s Daughter for you. To permit Bajadek to entice her away is defiance of the god’s will. Do not defy it. All warlords are men unto the god. Men are stones, to be blasted to powder with its lightest breath.”

Raklion nodded. He often felt like breath-blasted stone. Long since he’d ceased to ask why the god took his women, took his sons, reduced his future to a crucible of blackened infant bones. All his prayers in the godhouse, the sacrifices he paid for, the tasking of his penitent flesh, none of that had made a difference. The god still refused him, he did not know why. Unless a man was a godspeaker chosen, the god was unknowable. And even then he sometimes wondered . . .

He also wondered if Nagarak understood what it was to be a warlord. Nagarak was wedded to a black stone scorpion, he had no use for fleshly things. “Do you tell me the god desires I should go to war?” he demanded. “Do you tell me I should smite the brother-city treaty with my hammered fist, smash it to shards like a clay pot and send the pieces to Nogolor in a leather pouch? If I do that, Nagarak, he will run to Bajadek like a man runs to his lover. They will kiss and they will fondle, I will have driven him into Bajadek’s eager embrace. Et-Nogolor’s Daughter will slip through my fingers as though the godpromise was never made.”

Nagarak banged his fist on his pectoral. “And if you do nothing , Raklion, Nogolor will take it as a sign of weakness, he will turn to Bajadek warlord’s strength. He and Bajadek do not hide their flirting, they flirt at highsun so you will see .”

“Nagarak, I have said already this is rumor unproven, I cannot —”

“No, not rumor. Truth from Trader Abajai. Do you distrust this Trader now, when for godmoons uncounted you have swallowed his words like wine?”

Raklion turned away, frowning. Trader Abajai was a useful man who dropped information like kernels of corn. Not all had sprouted over the seasons but a wise warlord picked up each one and inspected it, to be safe.

“I do not distrust the Trader,” he said at last. Particularly as, in the four fat godmoons since speaking with Abajai in the palace, others with business in Et-Nogolor had let him know they too had seen Bajadek’s warriors freely riding.

“Abajai has also told you of Mijak’s wide browning,” Nagarak continued, relentless. “Of which we have already spoken, and have many eyewitness reports to confirm. Now I say to you , warlord, the god tells me in the godpool, your brother warlords in their browning lands look on Et-Raklion with hungry eyes and hungrier bellies. If you do not fight for Et-Nogolor’s Daughter they will say you are weak. They will think to feed their bellies on the fat of Et-Raklion, they will call secret treaty in the Heart of Mijak and plot war against you.” Again his fist struck the black scorpion pectoral. His godbraids trembled, so many godbells and amulets it was hard to see the hair. “I tell you this, Raklion. A warning from the god.”

“And what does the god say of Mijak’s browning?” Raklion said. “Anything? Does it tell you why the underground waters slowly recede from my brother warlords’ lands, leaving only my lands green and fertile?”

Nagarak’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Not even a high godspeaker demands answers from the god. When you are meant to know its reasons it will tell me, and I will tell you.”

It was not enough. “I must know the god’s purpose, Nagarak. It seems to me I am punished with a lack of sons, yet favored with green and growing lands. Have I displeased the god or have I not? Tell me! How can I be warlord if I do not know?”

“You undergo a test of faith,” said Nagarak, after a moment. “To be endured without question. To question is to displease the god. A man who questions is food for demons, his godspark will be eaten, his flesh torn apart in the god’s eye.”

Throttling fear, Raklion pressed fingers to his throbbing eyes. I am faithful, I do not question . The browning of Mijak was a problem he must put aside, he had more immediate concerns. “And in the matter of Et-Nogolor’s Daughter. If I ride against Nogolor, spill the blood of a brother warlord without a sin committed against me, if I spill my warriors’ blood in that same spilling, do I not also displease the god? Nagarak high godspeaker, hear my heart. I am a true warlord of Et-Raklion. The scars of my body attest to this. But unless you say to me there is an omen that I must go to war with Nogolor warlord, and you show me that omen, I will not take ten thousand warriors to Et-Nogolor. I will not take so few as ten.”

Nagarak stiffened. “Warlord—”

“How can I, Nagarak?” he persisted. “How can I risk death in a sinful war when no son of mine lives to give his name to this city? Surely the god would strike me down if I flouted its law so openly. If I die with no son, Nagarak, I abandon Et-Raklion and all its rich farmlands, its vineyards, its villages, its rivers, its springs, its cool lakes, its herds of horses and cattle, its wild birds flying, its people, my people, I abandon them to an unknown future. You say the warlords are hungry for Et-Raklion? If I am not alive to protect it, Et-Raklion will be devoured! Is there an omen?”

“There is no omen,” said Nagarak sourly, after a long sunfilled silence. “Yet.”

Raklion felt his clutched belly loosen. “Here is what I will call an omen, Nagarak. Let the god tell you when the Daughter is blooded. If Nogolor warlord does not send her to me, if after her blooding Bajadek’s warriors ride free in his lands or ride with Bajadek warlord to Nogolor’s city, then will I say the god sends me to war. Then will Raklion and his warhost ride to Et-Nogolor and take what was promised, spilling blood if he must.”

Nagarak frowned. “That is an omen from the god.” He nodded sharply. “The god see you, Raklion warlord. The god see you in its eye.”

“The god see you in its eye, Nagarak high godspeaker,” Raklion replied, dismissing him with all formality.

Alone, he paced his balcony for a small time, then struck the hammer to his chamber’s bronze summoning gong. “Send at once to Hanochek warleader,” he commanded the answering slave. “I would see him in my eye.”

When Hanochek came at last into his warlord’s presence he was filthy with dust and sweat. Custom decreed no man might stand before a warlord rank with toil, but Hanochek was rash and sometimes careless of custom.

“Warlord!” he said, his knuckled fist pressed to his leather breast. The godsnake blazoned there winked and leered. “I was thinking you had forgotten my name.”

Raklion smiled. He and Hanochek shared no blood-tie yet so alike were they in thought and feeling they might have slithered from a single womb. Twelve seasons the younger, the difference never noticed, Hanochek was his trusted warleader, they led the warhost side by side. Hanochek was brother to him as his own dead blood brother had never been.

“No,” he said. “But did you forget the purpose of water?”

Hanochek considered his unkempt body, short and muscular and dangerous as a knife. “I did. When the palace slave presented your summons I forgot everything, including how to ride a horse. I ran here till my legs begged for mercy. My stallion waits yet with an empty saddle.” He was grinning, so sure he was in no danger of rebuke. “I thought making you wait was the greater offense.”

“You were training?”

Hanochek nodded. “I was training.”

“How is my warhost?”

“Longing for the sound of your voice, your face in its eye.” Hanochek’s gaze dimmed with shadows. “You have been many highsuns in your palace.”

Raklion gestured at the balcony’s chairs. “Come sit with me in the sunshine, Hano. My old bones need the warmth and it seems an age since we have spoken.”

“Old bones,” scoffed Hanochek. “If your bones are old, then so must mine be, and mine are the bones of a stripling youth!”

“You contradict your warlord?” Raklion teased, dropping onto spotted horsehide cushions. “Brave warrior indeed.” Beside him stood a potted fig tree, drooping with ripe fruit. He plucked four soft sweet figs and held them out to his friend. Hano took them and settled into the balcony’s other chair.

“My thanks,” he said, around a moist mouthful. “Training works up a hearty appetite.”

Raklion plucked four plump figs for himself and let his head fall back, content to hold them for the moment. “I am not that old, Hano. I remember.”

Hanochek ate swiftly, like a greedy boy. When his last fig was swallowed he belched and wiped sticky fingers on his linen training tunic, adding to its stains. “So, Raklion warlord. When do we ride for Et-Nogolor’s Daughter?”

Now it was time to eat a fig. Raklion chewed slowly, letting his hooded gaze rest on the city. The view from his palace was like a woman’s stroking fingers, it never failed to smooth his brow. Et-Raklion city may well be his concubine and his curse but still he loved it, to the very last pebble and drop of spilled ale. He loved its roofs and windows, its alleys and wide streets, its districts and its slaves. It was the city of cities, it deserved his devotion.

“Why should I ride for Et-Nogolor’s Daughter?” he asked, showing no temper. “She will ride to me soon enough, when she is blooded.”

Hano’s gaze sharpened. He had keen eyes, deeply set in his flat, broad face. “Did you summon me to play games, Raklion? You are the warlord, you hear whispers in the dark. I hear them. Your warhost hears them. Even the slaves in the barracks hear them. Your warhost is angry, it feels insulted.”

That word again. “Nagarak high godspeaker reads omens in a lamb’s tongue,” he countered. “Do these whispers of yours shout louder than that?”

“Has the high godspeaker given you an omen?”

He ate a second fig. “No. Like you, Nagarak gives me warlike advice.”

“I am a warrior,” said Hano, shrugging. “I have no other advice to give.”

“I know.” Raklion slid his gaze sideways. “You think we should lead the warhost to Et-Nogolor?”

“I do.” Hano stared. “You disagree?”

Raklion did not answer, brooding. Hano waited, brooding with him. At length he stirred, his troubled gaze lingering on the rich green carpet of grapevines growing beyond the city. “Nogolor is a godpromised husband tempted by a whore. He thinks to fuck the whore and escape his promised wife’s anger.” He looked at Hano. “But thinking is not fucking. A man may think of many things, but until he acts he has committed no sin.”