Harry Turtledove - Time of Troubles 1 - The Stolen Throne

The Stolen Throne

The Time of Troubles, Vol. 1

DEDICATION:

To the Redlines, father and son.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

The events chronicled in the books of The Time of Troubles begin about 150

years before those described in The Tale of Krispos and thus about 650 years

before those of The Videssos Cycle.

From the battlements of the stronghold, Abivard looked north across the broad

sweep of land his father, Godarz, held in the name of the King of Kings. Out

beyond the village that surrounded the stronghold, most of what he saw was

sere and brown from high summer; only near the Vek Rud River, and in the

gardens nourished by the underground channels called qanats, did green defy

the blazing sun.

Off to the east, the Videssians, Makuran's longtime foes, gave reverence to

the sun as a symbol of their god. To Abivard, the sun was too unreliable for

worship, roasting the highland plateau of Makuran in summertime and then all

but disappearing during the short, cold days of winter.

He raised his left hand in a gesture of benediction familiar to his folk. In

any case, the Videssian god was false. He was as certain of that as of his own

name. The God had spoken to the Makuraners through the Prophets Four: Narseh,

Gimillu, the lady Shivini, and Fraortish, eldest of all.

"Whom are you blessing there, son?" a gruff, raspy voice asked from behind

him.

Abivard whirled. "I greet you, Father. I'm sorry; I didn't hear you come up."

"No harm, no harm." Godarz let loose a few syllables of laughter, as if he

held only so much and didn't want to use it all up at once. Abivard sometimes

thought his father was a mold into which he himself had been pressed not quite

hard enough. They had the same long, rectangular faces; the same proud noses;

the same dark, hooded eyes under thick brows; the same swarthy skin and black

hair; even, these past five years or so, the same full beards.

But Abivard's face still lacked the lines of character the years had etched

across Godarz's features. The creases in his cheeks told of laughter and

sorrow, the furrows in his forehead of thought. By comparison, Abivard seemed

to himself a house not yet lived in to the fullest.

There was one furrow the years had not put in Godarz's face: the scar that

seamed his left cheek came from the shamshir of a Khamorth raider. That mark

vanished under his beard but, like a qanat traced by the greenery above it, a

line of white hair showed its track. Abivard envied him that mark, too.

"Whom were you blessing?" Godarz asked again.

"No one in particular, Father," Abivard said. "I thought of the Four, so of

course I made their sign."

"Good lad, good lad." Godarz was in the habit of repeating himself. Abivard's

mother, Burzoe, and the dihqan's other wives teased him about it all the time.

He always took it good-naturedly; once he had cracked, "The lot of you would

be less happy if I hadn't cared to repeat my vows."

Abivard said, "If I asked the Four to ask the God to bless any part of this

domain in particular, I suppose I should ask his favor for the flocks."

"You couldn't do better." Godarz thumped Abivard fondly on the shoulder. "We'd

be poor—thieving nomads take poor, son; we'd be dead—without 'em."

"I know." Away from the river, away from the qanats, the land was too dry to

support crops most years. That was true of most of the highland plateau. After

the spring rains, though, grass and low shrubs carpeted the hills and valleys.

Enough of the hardy plants lived on through the rest of the year to give

fodder for sheep and cattle, horses, and camels. From those the dihqans—the

lesser nobility—and all who depended on them made their livelihoods.

Godarz scratched at the puckered scar; though it was years old, it still

sometimes itched. He said, "While you're about your prayers, you might do as

I've done and beg the Four to give us another year of peace along the northern

frontier. Maybe they'll harken to the two of us together; maybe they will."

His expression grew harsh. "Or maybe they won't."

Abivard clicked his tongue between his teeth. "It's as bad as that?"

"Aye, it is," Godarz said. "I was out riding this morning, giving the new

gelding some work, and I met a rider homeward bound toward Mashiz from the

Degird River. The Khamorth are stirring again, he says."

"A messenger from the King of Kings?" Abivard said. "Why didn't you invite him

to refresh himself at the stronghold?" Then I'd have had a chance to talk with

him, too, instead of getting my news secondhand, he thought.

"I did, son, I did, but he said me nay," Godarz answered. "Said he grudged the

time; he'd stop to rest only at night. The news for Peroz King of Kings was

that urgent, he said, and when he gave it me, I could but bob my head up and

down and wish him the God's protection on his road."

"Well?" Abivard practically hopped with impatience and excitement. Concern

rode his voice, as well; not too many farsangs east of Godarz's domain, the

little Vek Rud bent north and flowed into the Degird. The frontier and the

steppe nomads who dwelt beyond it were close, close.

"He learned why the tribes are stirring," Godarz said portentously. After

another pause that almost drove Abivard mad, the dihqan went on, "The tribes

are stirring because, by the Four, Videssos is stirring them."

"Here?" Abivard exclaimed. "How could that be?"

Godarz's face went harsh; his scar, normally darker than the rest of his skin,

turned pale: rage. But he held his voice under tight control. "The Pardrayan

plain runs east almost forever. Videssos could send an embassy across it—not

quickly, but it could. And, by all the signs, it has. The God, for reasons

best known to Himself, has made Videssos rich in gold."

Abivard nodded. His father's treasure horde had more than a few fine Videssian

goldpieces in it. Every nation in the world took those goldpieces and was glad

to have them. The corruption and deviousness of the Empire of Videssos were

bywords in Makuran, but the imperials kept their coinage honest. No matter

which Avtokrator's face graced a coin's obverse, it would be pure gold, minted

at seventy-two to the pound.

Makuran coined mostly in silver. Its arkets were good money, but money

changers always took a premium above their face value when exchanging them for

Videssian gold.

"I see I've no need to draw you a picture in the sand, no need at all," Godarz

went on. "The cowardly men of the east, not having the kidneys to fight us as

warriors against warriors, bribe the nomads to do their work for them."

"They are no fit warriors, then—they're no better than assassins," Abivard

said hotly. "Surely the God will open a pit beneath their feet and drop them

into the Void, to be nothing forevermore."

"May it be so." Godarz's left hand twisted in a gesture different from the one

Abivard had used: one that condemned the wicked. The dihqan added, "Vicious

dogs that they are, they know no caste."

Abivard copied the sign his father had used. To his way of thinking, Godarz

could have pronounced no curse more deadly. Life in Makuran pivoted on its

five castes: the King of Kings and the royal household; the priests and the

Seven Clans of the high nobility; the lesser nobles like Godarz—Makuran's

backbone, they called themselves; the merchants; and the peasants and herders

who made up the bulk of the populace.

The Seven Clans and the dihqans fought for the King of Kings, sometimes under

his own banner, sometimes under one of the high nobles. Abivard could no more

imagine paying someone so he could evade that duty than he could think of

taking a knife and cutting off his manhood. He would lose it no more one way

than the other.

Well, if the Videssians were hucksters even at war, the nobles of the plateau

would surely teach the nomads they had bought where true honor lay. Abivard

said as much, loudly.

That brought back his father's smile. Godarz thumped him on the back and said,

"When the red banner of war returns from Mashiz, blood of my blood, I think it

likely you will ride with me against those who would despoil us."

"Yes," Abivard said, and then again, in a great shout: "Yes!" He had trained

for war since he was a boy who barely reached Godarz's chest. He had learned

to ride, to thrust with the lance, to bear the weight of armor, to wield a

scimitar, to wield the bow.

But Makuran had been unwontedly peaceful of late. His lessons remained lessons

only. Now at last he would have the chance to apply them against a real foe,

and one who needed beating. If the nomads swarmed south over the Degird, as

they had a way of doing every generation or two, they would kill, they would

steal, and worst of all they would wreck qanats so people would go hungry

until the underground channels were laboriously repaired.

Godarz's laugh was the small, happy one of a man well pleased with his son. "I

can see you want to get into your mail shirt and clap on your helmet this very

moment. It's a long way to Mashiz and back—we shan't be riding out tomorrow,

or next week, either. Even after the red banner warns of war, it will be a

while yet before the army reaches us and we join its ranks."

Abivard shifted restively from foot to foot. "Why doesn't the King of Kings

have his palace in Makuran proper, not on the far side of the Dilbat Mountains

overlooking the Thousand Cities?"

"Three reasons," Godarz said, sounding like a pedagogue though Abivard had

only been venting spleen. "First, we of Makuran are most likely to be loyal to

our lord, being of his blood, and hence require less oversight. Second, the

land between the Tutub and the Tib, above which Mashiz sits, is full of

riches: not just the famous Thousand Cities but also farmlands more fertile

than any the plateau boasts. And third, Mashiz is a hundred farsangs closer to

Videssos than the plateau, and Videssos is more important to us most times

than our northwestern frontier."

"Most times, aye, but not today," Abivard said.

"No, today the Khamorth tribes are stirring, or so it's said," Godarz agreed.

"But who set them in motion? Not their own chieftains."

"Videssos," Abivard said.

"Aye, Videssos. We are her great rival, as she is ours. One day, I think, only

one of us will be left standing," Godarz said.

"And that one will rule the world," Abivard said. In his mind's eye, he saw

the King of Kings' lion banner floating above the Videssian Avtokrator's

palace in Videssos the city, saw priests of the Prophets Four praising the God

in the High Temple to false Phos.

The setting for the capital of Videssos remained blurry to him, though. He

knew the sea surrounded it on three sides, and he had never seen a sea, not

even the inland Mylasa Sea into which the Degird River flowed. He pictured a

sea as something like one of the salt lakes that dotted the Makuraner plateau,

but bigger. Still, his imagination could not quite grasp a body of water too

vast to see across.

Godarz smiled. "You're thinking we shall be the one, aren't you? As do I, son,

as do I. The God grant it be so."

"Yes," Abivard said. "I was also thinking—if we conquer, Father, I'll see the

sea. The sea around Videssos the city, I mean."

"I understood you," Godarz said. "That would be a sight, wouldn't it? I've not

seen it, either, you know. But don't expect the day to come in your time,

though. Their border has marched with ours for eight hundred years now, since

the Tharpiya hill-men ruled Makuran. They've not smashed us yet, nor we them.

One day, though—"

The dihqan nodded, as if very sure that day would come. Then, with a last grin

at his son, he went on down the walkway, his striped caftan flapping around

his ankles, every so often bending down to make sure a piece of golden

sandstone was securely in place.

Abivard stayed up on the walk a few minutes more, then went down the stairs

that led to the stronghold's inner courtyard. The stairs were only a couple of

paces wide and had no railing; had a brick shifted under his feet, he could

have dashed out his brains on the rock-hard dirt below. The bricks did not

shift. Godarz was as careful and thoroughgoing in inspecting as he was with

everything else.

Down in the courtyard, the sun beat at Abivard with redoubled force, for it

reflected from the walls as well as descending directly. His sandals scuffed

up dust as he hurried toward the shaded living quarters.

The stronghold was a rough triangle, taking advantage of the shape of the

rocky knob on which it sat. The short wall on the eastern side ran north and

south; the other two, which ran toward each other from its bottom and top,

were longer and went northwest and southwest, respectively. The living

quarters were tucked into the corner of the eastern wall and the one that went

northwest. That gave them more shadow than they would have had anywhere else.

Abivard took a long, happy breath as he passed through the iron-faced wooden

door—the living quarters, of course, doubled as citadel. The thick stone walls

made the quarters much cooler than the blazing oven of the courtyard. They

were also much gloomier: the windows, being designed for defense as well

as—and ahead of—vision, were mere slits, with heavy shutters that could be

slammed together at a moment's notice. Abivard needed a small stretch of time

for his eyes to adjust to dimness.

He stepped carefully until they did. The living quarters were a busy place.

Along with servants of the stronghold bustling back and forth, he had to be

alert for merchants and peasants who, failing to find his father, would press

their troubles on him. Hearing those troubles was one of his duties, but not

one he felt like facing right now.

He also had to keep an eye out for children on the floor. His two full

brothers, Varaz and Frada, were men grown, and his sister Denak had long since

retreated to the women's chambers. But his half brothers ranged in age from

Jahiz, who was older than Frada, down to a couple of brats who still sucked at

their wet nurses' breasts. Half brothers—and half sisters under the age of

twelve—brawled through the place, together with servants' children, shepherd

boys, and whomever else they could drag into their games.

When they weren't in hot pursuit of dragons or evil enchanters or Khamorth

bandits, they played Makuraners and Videssians. If Videssos had fallen as

easily in reality as in their games, the domains of the King of Kings would

have stretched east to the legendary Northern Sea centuries ago.

One of his half brothers, an eight-year-old named Parsuash, dodged around

Abivard, thwarting another lad who pursued him. "Can't catch me, can't catch

me!" Parsuash jeered. "See, I'm in my fortress and you can't catch me."

"Your fortress is going to the kitchens," Abivard said, and walked off. That

gave Rodak, his other half brother, the chance to swoop down for the kill.

Parsuash screeched in dismay.

In the kitchens, some flatbread just out of the oven lay cooling on its baking

pan. Abivard tore off a chunk of it, then stuck slightly scorched fingers into

his mouth. He walked over to a bubbling pot, used the piece of flatbread to

scoop out some of the contents, and popped it into his mouth.

"Ground lamb balls and pomegranate seeds," he said happily after he swallowed.

"I thought that was what I smelled. Father will be pleased—it's one of his

favorites."

"And what would you have done had it been something else, son of the dihqan?"

one of the cooks asked.

"Eaten it anyhow, I expect," Abivard answered. The cook laughed. Abivard went

on, "Since it is what it is, though—" He tore off another piece of flatbread,

then raided the pot again. The cook laughed louder.

Still chewing, Abivard left the kitchens and went down the hall that led to

his own room. Since he was eldest son of Godarz's principal wife, he had

finally got one to himself, which led to envious sighs from his brothers and

half brothers. To him, privacy seemed a mixed blessing. He enjoyed having a

small place to himself, but had been so long without one that sometimes he

felt achingly alone and longed for the warm, squabbling companionship he had

known before.

Halfway down the hall, his left sandal started flapping against his foot. He

peered down and discovered he had lost the bronze buckle that held a strap

around his ankle. He looked around and even got down on his hands and knees,

but didn't find it.

"It probably fell into the Void," he muttered under his breath. Moving with an

awkward half-skating motion, he made it to his doorway, went into his room,

and put on a new pair of sandals.

Then he went out again, damaged sandal in hand. One of Godarz's rules—which,

to his credit, he scrupulously followed himself—was that anything that broke

had to be set right at once. "Let one thing slide and soon two'll be gone, two

lead to four, and four—well, there had better not be four, there had better

not," he would say.

Had just a bit of leather fallen off the sandal, Abivard could have gotten

some from the stables and made his own rough repair. But to replace a buckle,

he had to visit the cobbler in the village that surrounded the stronghold.

Out into the heat again, then. The sun smote him like a club. Sweat sprang out

on his face, rolled down his back under his baggy garment. He wished he'd had

farther to go; he wouldn't have felt foolish about getting on his horse. But

if his father had seen him, he would have made sarcastic noises about

Abivard's riding in a sedan chair next time, as if he were a high noble, not

just a dihqan's son. Abivard walked.

The gate guards pounded the butts of their spears against the hard ground as

he went by. He dipped his head to return the salute. Then he left the

stronghold and went into the village, an altogether different world.

Homes and shops straggled down to the base of the hill the stronghold topped

and even for a little distance out onto the flat land below. Some were of

stone, some of mud brick with widely overhanging thatched roofs to protect the

walls from winter storms. Set beside the stronghold, they all seemed like

toys.

The hill was steep, the streets winding and full of stones; if you tumbled,

you were liable to end up at the bottom with a broken leg. Abivard had been

navigating through town since he learned to toddle; he was as sure-footed as a

mountain sheep.

Merchants cried their wares in the market square: chickpeas, dates, mutton

buzzing with flies, utterances of the Prophets Four on parchment amulets—said

to be sovereign against disease, both as prevention and cure; Abivard, whose

education had included letters but not logic, failed to wonder why the second

would be necessary if the first was efficacious. The calls rose from all

around: knives, copper pots and clay ones, jewelry of glass beads and copper

wire—those with finer stuff came to sell at the stronghold—and a hundred other

things besides. The smells were as loud as the shouts.

A fellow was keeping a pot of baked quinces hot over a dung fire. Abivard

haggled him down from five coppers to three; Godarz was not a man who let his

sons grow up improvident. The quince was hot. Abivard quickly found a stick on

the ground, poked it through the spicy fruit, and ate happily on his way down

to the cobbler's shop.

The cobbler bowed low when Abivard came in; he was not near enough in rank to

the dihqan's son to present his cheek for a ceremonial kiss, as a couple of

the richer merchants might have done. Abivard returned a precise nod and

explained what he required.

"Yes, yes," the cobbler said. "Let me see the good sandal, pray, that I may

match the buckle as close as may be."

"I'm afraid I didn't bring it." Abivard felt foolish and annoyed with himself.

Though Godarz was back in the stronghold, he felt his father's eye on him.

"I'll have to go back and get it."

"Oh, never mind that, your Excellency. Just come here and pick out the one

that nearest suits it. They're no two of 'em just alike, anyhow." The cobbler

showed him a bowl half full of brass buckles. They jingled as Abivard sorted

through them till he found the one he wanted.

The cobbler's fingers deftly fixed it to the sandal. Deft as they were,

though, they bore the scars of awl and knife and needle and nail. "No trade is

simple," Godarz would say, "though some seem so to simple men." Abivard

wondered how much pain the cobbler had gone through to learn his business.

He didn't dicker so hard with the cobbler as he had with the fruit seller. The

man's family had been in the village for generations, serving villagers and

dihqans alike. He deserved his superiors' support.

Sandal repaired, Abivard could have gone straight back to the stronghold to

escape the worst of the heat in the living quarters. Instead, he returned to

the bazaar in the marketplace and bought himself another quince. He stood

there taking little bites of it and doing his best to seem as if he were

thinking about the goods offered for sale. What he was really doing was

watching the young women who went from this stall to that dealer in search of

what they needed.

Women of the merchant and peasant castes lived under fewer restrictions than

those of the nobility. Oh, a few wealthy merchants locked their wives and

daughters away in emulation of their betters, but most lower-caste women had

to go out and about in the world to help feed their families.

Abivard was betrothed to Roshnani, a daughter of Papak, the dihqan whose

stronghold lay a few farsangs south and west of Godarz's. Their parents having

judged the match advantageous, they were bound to each other before either of

them reached puberty. Abivard had never seen his fiancée. He wouldn't, not

till the day they were wed.

When he got the chance, then, he watched girls—the serving women in the

stronghold, the girls in the village square here. When one caught his eye, he

imagined Roshnani looked like her. When he spotted one he did not find fair,

he hoped his betrothed did not resemble her.

He finished nibbling the quince and licked his fingers. He thought about

buying yet another one; that would give him an excuse to hang around in the

square awhile longer. But he was sensitive to his own dignity and, whenever he

forgot to be, Godarz made sure his memory didn't slip for long.

All the same, he still didn't feel like going back to the stronghold. He

snapped his slightly sticky fingers in inspiration. Godarz had given him all

kinds of interesting news. Why not find out what old Tanshar the

fortune-teller made of his future?

An additional inducement to this course was that Tanshar's house lay alongside

the market square. Abivard could see that the old man's shutters were thrown

wide open. He could go in, have his fortune read, and keep right on eying the

women hereabouts, all without doing anything in the least undignified.

The door to Tanshar's house was on the side opposite the square. Like the

shutters, it gaped wide, both to show the fortune-teller was open for business

and to give him the benefit of whatever breeze the God chose to send.

One thing Tanshar certainly had not done: he had not used the prophetic gift

to get rich. His home was astringently neat and clean, but furnished only with

a much-battered low table and a couple of wickerwork chairs. Abivard had the

idea that he wouldn't have bothered with those had he not needed to keep his

clients comfortable.

Only scattered hairs in Tanshar's beard were still black, giving it the look

of snow lightly streaked with soot. A cataract clouded the fortune-teller's

left eye. The right one, though, still saw clearly. Tanshar bowed low. "Your

presence honors my house, son of the dihqan." He waved Abivard to the less

disreputable chair, pressed upon him a cup of wine and date cakes sweet with

honey and topped by pistachios. Not until Abivard had eaten and drunk did

Tanshar ask, "How may I serve you?"

Abivard explained what he had heard from Godarz, then asked, "How shall this

news affect my life?"

"Here; let us learn if the God will vouchsafe an answer." Tanshar pulled his

own chair close to Abivard's. He pulled up the left sleeve of his caftan, drew

off a silver armlet probably worth as much as his house and everything in it

put together. He held it out to Abivard. "Take hold of one side whilst I keep

a grasp on the other. We shall see whether the Prophets Four grant me a

momentary portion of their power."

Busts of the Four Prophets adorned the armlet: young Narseh, his beard barely

sprouted; Gimillu the warrior, a strong face seamed with scars; Shivini, who

looked like everyone's mother; and Fraortish, eldest of all, his eyes inset

with gleaming jet. Though the silver band had just come from Tanshar's arm, it

was cool, almost cold, to the touch.

The fortune-teller looked up at the thatched roof of his little cottage.

Abivard's gaze followed Tanshar's. All he saw was straw, but he got the odd

impression that Tanshar peered straight through the roof and up to the God's

home on the far side of the sky.

"Let me see," Tanshar murmured. "May it please you, let me see." His eyes went

wide and staring, his body stiffened. Abivard's left hand, the one that held

the armlet, tingled as if it had suddenly fallen asleep. He looked down. A

little golden light jumped back and forth from one Prophet's image to the

next. At last it settled on Fraortish, eldest of all, making his unblinking

jet eyes seem for an instant alive as they stared back at Abivard.

In a rich, powerful voice nothing like his own, Tanshar said, "Son of the

dihqan, I see a broad field that is not a field, a tower on a hill where honor

shall be won and lost, and a silver shield shining across a narrow sea."

The light in the silver Fraortish's eyes faded. Tanshar slumped as he seemed

to come back to himself. When Abivard judged the fortune-teller had fully

returned to the world of rickety wicker chairs and the astounding range of

smells from the bazaar, he asked, "What did that mean, what you just told me?"

Maybe Tanshar wasn't all the way back to the real world: his good eye looked

as blank as the one that cataract clouded. "I have delivered the prophecy?" he

asked, his voice small and uncertain.

"Yes, yes," Abivard said impatiently, repeating himself like his father. He

gave Tanshar back the words he had uttered, doing his best to say them just as

he had heard them.

The fortune-teller started to lean back in his chair, then thought better as

it creaked and rustled under his weight. He took the armlet from Abivard and

put it back on his parchment-skinned arm. That seemed to give him strength.

Slowly he said, "Son of the dihqan, I remember nothing of this, nor did I

speak to you. Someone—something—used me as an instrument." Despite the

bake-oven heat, he shivered. "You will see I am no youth. In all my years of

telling what might lay ahead, this has befallen me but twice before."

The little hairs prickled up on Abivard's arms and at the back of his neck. He

felt caught up in something vastly bigger than he was. Cautiously he asked,

"What happened those two times?"

"One was a skinny caravaneer, back around the time you were born," Tanshar

said. "He was skinny because he was hungry. He told me I foresaw for him piles

of silver and gems, and today he is rich in Mashiz."

"And the other?" Abivard asked.

For a moment, he didn't think Tanshar would answer. The fortune-teller's

expression was directed inward, and he looked old, old. Then he said, "Once I

was a lad myself, you know, a lad with a bride about to bear him his

firstborn. She, too, asked me to look ahead."

So far as Abivard knew, Tanshar had always lived alone. "What did you see?" he

asked, almost whispering.

"Nothing," Tanshar said. "I saw nothing." Again Abivard wondered if he would

go on. At last he did: "She died in childbed four days later."

"The God give her peace." The words tasted empty in Abivard's mouth. He set a

hand on Tanshar's bony knee. "Once for great good, once for great ill. And now

me. What does your foretelling mean?"

"Son of the dihqan, I do not know," Tanshar answered. "I can say only that

these things lie across your future. When and where and to what effect, I

cannot guess and shall not lie to claim I can. You will discover them, or they

you, as the God chooses to unwind the substance of the world."

Abivard took out three silver arkets and pressed them into the

fortune-teller's hand. Tanshar rang them against one another, then shook his

head and gave them back. "Offer these to the God, if that please you, but not

to me. I did not speak these words, whether they came through me or not. I

cannot accept your coin for them."

"Keep them, please," Abivard said, looking around the clean but barren little

house. "To my mind, you stand more in need of them than the God."

But Tanshar again shook his head and refused to take the money. "They are not

for me, I tell you. Had I read your future in the ordinary way, gauging what

was to come by the motions of the Prophets' armlet between your hand and mine,

I should be glad of the fee, for then I had earned it. For this—no."

One of the things Godarz had taught Abivard was to recognize a man's

stubbornness and to know when to yield to it. "Let it be as you say, then."

Abivard flung the arkets out the window. "Where they go now, and with whom, is

in the God's hands."

Tanshar nodded. "That was well done. May the foretelling you heard through me

mean only good for you."

"May it be so," Abivard said. When he rose from the chair, he bowed low to

Tanshar, as he might have to one of the upper nobility. That seemed to

distress the fortune-teller even more than the prophecy that had escaped its

usual bounds. "Accept the salute, at least, for the God," Abivard told him,

and, reluctantly, he did.

Abivard left the fortune-teller's house. He had thought to linger in the

bazaar awhile longer, buying more small things he didn't really need so he

could look at, maybe even talk with, the young women there. Not now, though.

He peered out over the sun-scorched land that ran out toward the Vek Rud

River. Nothing much grew on it now, not at this season. Did that make it a

broad field that was not a field? Prophecy had one problem: how to interpret

it.

He turned and looked up the slope of the hill on which the stronghold perched.

Was it the tower where honor would be won and lost? It didn't look like a

tower to him, but who could judge how the God perceived things?

And what of the sea? Did Tanshar's words mean he would see it one day, as he

hoped? Which sea had the fortune-teller meant? Who would shine a silver shield

across it?

All questions—no answers. He wondered if he would have been happier with an

ordinary foretelling. No, he decided. If nothing else, this surely meant he

would be bound up in great events. "I don't want to watch my life slide by

while I do nothing but count the days," he said aloud.

For all his father's teaching, he was still young.

* * *

In the days and weeks that followed, Abivard took to looking south and west

from the walls. He knew what he was waiting to see. So did Godarz, who teased

him about it every so often. But the dihqan spent a good deal of time at the

corner where the eastern and the south-facing walls met, too.

Abivard felt justified in haunting that corner when he spied the rider

approaching the stronghold. The horseman carried something out of the ordinary

in his right hand. At first, Abivard saw only the wriggling motion. Then he

recognized that a banner was making it. And then he saw the banner was red.

He let out a whoop that made heads turn his way all around the stronghold.

"The war banner!" he cried. "The war banner comes forth from Mashiz!"

He didn't know where Godarz had been, but his father stood on the wall beside

him in less than a minute. The dihqan also peered south. "Aye, that is the war

banner, and no mistake," he said. "Let's go down and greet the messenger,

shall we? Let's go."

The horseman who carried the token of war was worn and dusty. Godarz greeted

him with all the proper courtesies, pressing wine and honey cakes on him

before inquiring of his business. That question, though, was but a formality.

The crimson banner, limp now that the messenger no longer rode at a fast trot,

spoke for itself.

Harry Turtledove - Time of Troubles 1 - The Stolen Throne

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