The Sea of Time (34 page)

“We’re fresh off duty guarding Krothen’s treasure towers,” said Shrike. “Prince Ton and Master Needham are both advocating that their wealth be distributed throughout the city—this, assuming that either the prince or Master Silk Purse can seize control of said towers. As you can imagine, their claims and promises have attracted a lot of attention.”

“So I’ve heard.”

At the moment, whoever controlled those towers controlled Kothifir. Krothen had gained vast wealth and considerable ill will over the years by claiming the best of the city’s spoils, but out of them came the Host’s pay. Jame could see both why the former god-king wanted his treasures protected and why the Host had a vested interest in their safety. It did seem unfair, though, if the city suffered as a result.

“The word is out to all the guards,” said Shrike. “King Krothen wants to see you.”

That was unexpected.

“Why?” Jame asked, adding, “Oh, never mind,” when the Randir shrugged. “I’d better go. First, a favor: will you escort this man to the Knorth barracks on the way to your own?”

She reached into the shadows and drew out a reluctant Graykin. Shrike regarded him with a curled lip. “Your personal spy? Oh yes, we know who and what this fellow is.”

Not entirely, thought Jame. No one knew or even suspected that Graykin was bound to her. To reveal that would be to expose a major breach of custom, never mind that Rawneth bound Kendar all the time or that Jame herself had just bound Brier Iron-thorn.

It was tempting to touch the thread of their new connection. What was Brier doing now? What was she thinking and feeling? But the Southron’s habitual reticence made Jame hesitate to intrude. She only hoped that she was giving the Kendar the support that she needed, unlike her brother. Tori didn’t seem to realize that some Kencyr required something to lean on. Ancestors knew, Jame herself would sometimes have liked such support. It was hard to stand alone. At least, there had been no repetition of Brier’s excesses on the night that Paper Crown’s tower had burned and Kalan’s baby had fallen to its death.

“And why should we oblige you in this slight matter?” Shrike was saying with a smile.

Oh yes. There was also Graykin, who leaned on her all too heavily.

Behind the Randir, his ten-command stirred and chuckled.

“For the novelty of it, perhaps?” said Jame, stifling a flash of irritation. Why could one never deal freely with the Randir, except for Shade and Randiroc? “How often do you have the chance to grant a Knorth anything?”

“Say ‘please.’”

“I thought that was implied. Please.”

“Very well. Come along, you.”

Graykin shot her a glance, then turned away, straightening. He disappeared with the Randir, a shabby, oddly dignified figure, into the falling night.

And now, thought Jame, for Krothen.

II

IN BETTER DAYS, the Rose Tower was a hive of activity. Now it drowsed, its lower rooms untenanted.

It had also suffered damage without the god-king to maintain it. For one thing, that subtle twist in its construction seemed more pronounced so that Jame, walking up the spiral stair, felt as if she was about to pitch out over the balustrade into space. For another, the stone roses that rambled around the window frames and up the balusters crumbled at her touch. At the level of the absent clouds, they had worn away altogether, leaving pocked stone, and the marble steps were hollowed out with use.

Here was the level at which guards usually stood. Not now. Above, curtains as ragged as cobwebs fumbled at the windowsills of Krothen’s apartment. Inside, chaos.

However, Krothen still had servants, as Jame found when she climbed to the top.

“Welcome,” said a wheezing voice.

Labored breath seemed to fill the circular room, rasping and rattling within its stone shell. It was dim and hot inside, despite a cool evening breeze edging around the marble petals, and it stank.

As her eyes adjusted, Jame made out a great mass of flesh slumped on the dais. The Krothen of old had been obese beyond reason, but he had also seemed oddly buoyant, no doubt thanks to his god-given power. Now, deserted by it, his flesh dragged him down in heavy, sagging folds as if he were a sculpture of butter left out in the sun. Servants had removed a side panel of his white brocade robe. One was struggling to hold up a pallid slab of fat while another sponged the exposed crevasse with lavender water.

“Forgive me for not rising to greet you,” said the former king with a twisted smile that more closely resembled a grimace. “My skin tears if I move. Ah, mortality. It’s killing me, you know.”

What to say to that? Jame kept a respectful silence and waited.

“I miss my acrobats and clowns,” he said peevishly, pausing between sentences to gasp. “What, am I never to have any fun again? I even miss that stodgy prick, my high priest. He’s saying that I’ve lost the favor of the gods, you know. What gods? I was one. I will be again. That’s why these few servants have stayed. They still have faith in me. Do you?”

“I do,” said Jame, surprised to find that this was true. “At least as king.”

He wheezed a laugh. “I forgot. You Kencyr and your one true god, whom you hate. Do the Karnids love their precious prophet or only fear him? What about the Witch King of Nekrien? No matter. Their followers believe in them, and belief is power.”

That certainly was the case in Tai-tastigon, thought Jame, where gods died along with the last of their worshippers. For that matter, she suspected that even in his current state Krothen had more followers than the few in this room. After all, common folk spoke more often of his return to power than of his nephew and possible successor, Prince Ton.

“To make it worse,” he continued, “Gemma is bestirring itself. They’ve always envied our prosperity. Now that they see us weak, how long before they rise up to strike? Ah, their emissary was right: my arrogance may yet come back to haunt my people. Hanging their raiders certainly didn’t help, even if they did indirectly cause a seeker’s death. And I had to endure their bodies dangling in front of my windows.”

“What can I do for you, your majesty?”

“Just this: find that cursed temple of yours and start it up again.”

She should have guessed that Krothen, no fool, knew the ultimate source of his power.

“When it first failed, I went to look for it,” she said. “The tower built around it has collapsed. It must be buried in the ruins, perhaps shrunk too small to find.”

Krothen quivered. Jame wondered if he was going to be sick. No, the entire tower was shaking. A stone rose petal split with a sharp report, then another. Cracks etched the pale green chalcedony floor. The servant lost his grip on the slippery fold of flesh which he had been supporting and it closed over his companion’s hand with a smack. The trapped man stifled a cry of pain and tried to pull free, but couldn’t. Krothen’s eyes rolled up in his head until only the whites showed. His mouth gaped, wide, wider. Something pale emerged: fingers, prying the plump lips further open, cracking their corners. Inside, behind rows of teeth, a face appeared. Kroaky.

“I can’t get out,” he gasped. “I can’t get out. Help us!”

Krothen shuddered again. Sweat ran down his multiple chins as if over a waterfall and his face was a patchy greenish-white. He reached up and stuffed his younger self’s fingers and face back down his throat. Then, with a mighty gulp, he swallowed them.

The Rose Tower stopped swaying. The servant at last pulled free his hand and retreated, cradling broken fingers. Krothen gave a sickly smile.

“Look again,” he said. “Please.”

III

THE RICKETY STRUCTURE surrounding the Kencyr temple had collapsed more or less in place, filling the stump of its shell with a jumble of broken floorboards, rafters, and stones. The resulting pile was at least ninety feet across and three times Jame’s height. She regarded it dubiously from across the street, Jorin huddled close at her side. Nothing had changed since she had last been here, just after the winter solstice. Then as now, her sixth sense gave her not so much as a twinge, yet the dormant temple was presumably somewhere under that mass of wreckage, perhaps reaching nearly to its top, perhaps shrunken to the size of a grain of sand at its bottom. Nothing would prove which except shifting through the entire lot.

When she had first seen the scope of destruction, she had turned her back on it. The temple was the priests’ business. They had said so, emphatically. Therefore, let them deal with it. But half a season had passed since then, and they had done nothing.

Jame remembered the priests at Karkinaroth who, shut up in their temple, had died of hunger and thirst. Marc had tried to free them. Was she so much more callous than her old Kendar friend? If she hadn’t freed her cousin Kindrie from their god’s theocracy, he might have been in there. However reluctant she was to learn, experience was beginning to teach her that not all priests were alike.

Feet shuffled on the sandy road and Jorin growled. Jame turned quickly to confront a blond, tattered figure in the brown robe of an acolyte.

“You,” she said to Dorin, son of Denek, son of Dinnit Dun-eyed. “So you’re the guard they left outside the temple. Are the rest inside?”

“Yes.” He sounded dazed, as if he were having trouble bringing her into focus. Whom else had he seen over the past fifty-odd days of isolation, and what had that meant to someone accustomed to the hive mentality of the priesthood? “Grandfather, all the others, trapped . . .”

“Do they at least have provisions sealed in with them?”

He shook himself, coming to life a little and regaining a shade of his normal haughty nature. “D’you think we’re fools? The temple is unstable. This could have happened at any time, so of course they do. Some. But not enough to last all this time.” Again his manner and voice cracked. “We’ve got to get them out!”

They couldn’t help what they were, Jame thought, fashioned by a god who didn’t care.

She looked up at the frail sickle of a moon declining to the west overhead. “In this light, we might easily miss them, and there are only two of us. Tomorrow morning, early, I’ll bring my ten-command and heavy tackle.”

“No!”

He grabbed her arm. She could feel the nervous tremor of his flesh through her own. Instinct told her to shake him off, but she restrained herself.