Kay, Guy Gavriel - Sarantine 2 - Lord of Emperors

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One of the world's foremost masters of fantasy, Guy Gavriel Kay has

thrilled readers around the globe with his talent for skillfully

interweaving history and Myth, colorful characterization, and a rich

sense of time and place. Now, in Lord of Emperors, the inter-

nationally acclaimed author of The Lions of Al-Rassan continues his

most powerful work.

In Sailing to Sarantium, the first volume in the Sarantine Mosaic,

renowned mosaicist Crispin - beckoned by an imperial summons of the

Emperor Valerius - made his way to the fabled city of Sarantium. A

man who lives only for his craft, who cares little for ambition, less

for money, and nothing for intrigue, Crispin now wants only to

confront the challenges of his art high upon a dome that will become

the emperor's magnificent sanctuary and legacy.

But Crispin's desire for solitude will not be fulfilled. Beneath him

the city swirls with rumors of war and conspiracy, while otherworldly

fires mysteriously flicker and disappear in the streets at night.

Valerius is looking west to Crispin's homeland of Varena to assert

his power - a plan that may have dire consequences for the family and

friends Crispin left behind. But loyalty to his homeland comes at a

high price, for Crispin's fate has become entwined with that of

Valerius and his empress, as well as the youthful Queen Gisel, his

own monarch who is an exile in Sarantium herself. And now another

voyager arrives in Sarantium, a physician determined to earn his

fortune amid the shifting currents of loyalty, intrigue, and

violence.

Drawing from the twin springs of history and legend, Lord of Emperors

is also a deeply moving exploration of art, power, and the ways in

which people from all walks of life seek to leave an impression that

endures long after they are gone. It confirms Kay's place as one of

the world's most esteemed masters of fantasy.

Guy Gavriel Kay's distinguished literary career began when he helped

complete Tolkien's posthumous masterpiece, The Silmarillion. The

author of Tigana, A Song for Arbonne, and The Lions of Al-Rassan, he

has been both an Aurora Award winner and a World Fantasy Award

nominee. An international bestselling author, his works have been

translated into fifteen languages. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Jacket illustration \a169 1998 Keith Birdsong

Author photograph \a169 1998 Beth Gwinn

Jacket design by Carl D. Galian

HarperPrism

A Division of HarperCollimsPublishers

www.harpercollins.com

LORD OF EMPERORS

BO 0 K II OF THE

SARANTINE MOSAIC

GUY

GAVRIEL

K A Y

HarperPrism

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

Publisher's note:This book is a work of fiction. All names,

characters, places and incidents

either are the product of the author's imagination or are used

fictitiously, and any resemblance

to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely

coincidental.

For Sam and Matthew, 'the sinking-masters of my soul.'

This belongs to them, beginning and end.

LORD OF EMPERORS. Copyright \a169 2000 by Guy Gavnel Kay. All rights

reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this

book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without

written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in

critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins

Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or

sales promotional use. For further information please write: Special

Markets Department, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd

Street, New York, NY 10022.

FIRST U.S. EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied

for. ISBN 0-06-105121-7

00 01 02 03 047 RRD 10 9876543

ACKNOWLEDCEMENTS

The Sarantine Mosaic is animated by and in part built around a

tension in the late classical world between walls and wilderness. For

my own introduction to this dialectic (and how it shifts), I am

indebted to Simon Schama's magisterial Landscape and Memory. This is

also the work that introduced me to the Lithuanian bison and the

symbolism surrounding it, giving rise to my own zubir.

The general and particular works cited in Sailing to Sarantium have

anchored this second volume as well, and Yeats remains a presiding

spirit, in the epigraph and elsewhere.

I should now add Guido Majno's quite wonderful The Helping Hand: Man

and Wound in the Ancient World. On Persia and its culture, books by

Richard N. Frye and Prudence Oliver Harper were immensely useful. For

table matters and manners I was aided by the Wilkins and Hill text

and commentary on Archistratus, along with works by Andrew Dalby and

Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat. Attitudes to the supernatural are

explored in books by Gager, Kieckhefer, and Flint, and in a

collection of essays edited by Henry Maguire for the Dumbarton Oaks

research facility in Washington, D.C. Dumbarton Oaks also provided

translations

of Byzantine military treatises, papers presented at various

symposia, and some evocative artifacts in their permanent collection.

On a more personal level, I have been greatly the beneficiary of the

skills, friendship, and commitment of John Jarrold, John Douglas, and

Scott Sellers, and I am indebted to the careful and sympathetic eye

of my copy editor for both volumes of this work, Catherine

Marjoribanks. Jennifer Barclay at Westwood Creative Artists has

brought intelligence and a necessary sense of irony to increasingly

complex foreign language negotiations. Rex Kay, as always, offered

early and lucid commentary, especially (but not only) on medical

issues.

I also want to record here my appreciation for the encouragement and

sustained interest offered by Leonard and Alice Cohen for fifteen

years now. Andy Patton has been a source of ideas and support for

even longer, and in this case I am particularly indebted to him for

discussions about Ravenna and light, and the various doorways (and

traps) that must be negotiated when a novelist deals with the visual

arts.

There are two others who continue to be at the centre of my world,

and so of my work. The usual suspects, one might say, but that

flippancy would mask the depth of what I hope to convey. Accordingly,

I'll simply conclude here by naming Sybil and Laura, my mother and my

wife.

Turning and turning in a widening gyre...

PART I

KINGDOMS OF LIGHT AND DARK

CHAPTER I

Amid the first hard winds of winter, the King of Kings of Bassania,

Shirvan the Great, Brother to the Sun and Moons, Sword of Perun,

Scourge of Black Azal, left his walled city of Kabadh and journeyed

south and west with much of his court to examine the state of his

fortifications in that part of the lands he ruled, to sacrifice at

the ancient Holy Fire of the priestly caste, and to hunt lions in the

desert. On the first morning of the first hunt he was shot just below

the collarbone.

The arrow lodged deep and no man there among the sands dared try to

pull it out. The King of Kings was taken by litter to the nearby

fortress of Kerakek. It was feared that he would die.

Hunting accidents were common. The Bassanid court had its share of

those enthusiastic and erratic with their bows. This truth made the

possibility of undetected assassination high. Shirvan would not be

the first king to have been murdered in the tumult of a royal hunt.

As a precaution, Mazendar, who was vizier to Shirvan, ordered the

king's three eldest sons, who had journeyed south with him, to be

placed under observation. A useful phrase masking the truth: they

were detained under guard in Kerakek. At the same time the vizier

sent riders back to Kabadh to order the similar detention of their

mothers in the palace. Great Shirvan had ruled Bassania for twenty-

seven years that winter. His eagle's gaze was clear, his plaited

beard still black, no hint of grey age descending upon him.

Impatience among grown sons was to be expected, as were lethal

intrigues among the royal wives.

Ordinary men might look to find joy among their children, sustenance

and comfort in their households. The existence of the King of Kings

was not as that of other mortals. His were the burdens of godhood and

lordship-and Azal the Enemy was never far away and always at work. In

Kerakek, the three royal physicians who had made the journey south

with the court were summoned to the room where men had laid the Great

King down upon his bed. One by one each of them examined the wound

and the arrow. They touched the skin around the wound, tried to

wiggle the embedded shaft. They paled at what they found. The arrows

used to hunt lions were the heaviest known. If the feathers were now

to be broken off and the shaft pushed down through the chest and out,

the internal damage would be prodigious, deadly. And the arrow could

not be pulled back, so deeply had it penetrated, so broad was the

iron flange of the arrowhead. Whoever tried to pull it would rip

through the king's flesh, tearing the mortal life from him with his

blood.

Had any other patient been shown to them in this state, the

physicians would all have spoken the words of formal withdrawal: With

this affliction I will not contend. No blame for ensuing death could

attach to them when they did so.

It was not, of course, permitted to say this when the afflicted

person was the king.

With the Brother to the Sun and Moons the physicians were compelled

to accept the duty of treatment, to do battle with whatever they

found and set about healing the injury or illness. If an accepted

patient died, blame fell to the doctor's name, as was proper. In the

case of an ordinary man or woman, fines were administered as

compensation to the family.

Burning of the physicians alive on the Great King's funeral pyre

could be anticipated in this case.

Those who were offered a medical position at the court, with the

wealth and renown that came with it, knew this very well. Had the

king died in the desert, his physicians-the three in this room and

those who had remained in Kabadh-would have been numbered among the

honoured mourners of the priestly caste at his rites before the Holy

Fire. Now it was otherwise.

There ensued a whispered colloquy among the doctors by the window.

They had all been taught by their own masters-long ago, in each case-

the importance of an unruffled mien in the presence of the patient.

This calm demeanour was, in the current circumstances, imperfectly

observed. When one's own life lies embedded-like a bloodied arrow

shaft-in the flux of the moment, gravity and poise become difficult

to attain.

One by one, in order of seniority, the three of them approached the

man on the bed a second time. One by one they abased themselves,

rose, touched the black arrow again, the king's wrist, his forehead,

looked into his eyes, which were open and enraged. One by one,

tremulously, they said, as they had to say, 'With this affliction I

will contend.'

When the third physician had spoken these words, and then stepped

back, uncertainly, there was a silence in the room, though ten men

were gathered amid the lamps and the guttering flame of the fire.

Outside, the wind had begun to blow.

In that stillness the deep voice of Shirvan himself was heard, low

but distinct, godlike. The King of Kings said, 'They can do nothing.

It is in their faces. Their mouths are dry as sand with fear, their

thoughts are as blown sand. They have no idea what to do. Take the

three of them away from us and kill them. They are unworthy. Do this.

Find our son Damnazes and have him staked out in the desert to be

devoured by beasts. His mother is to be given to the palace slaves in

Kabadh for their pleasure. Do this. Then go to our son Murash and

have him brought here to us.' Shirvan paused to draw breath, to push

away the humiliating weakness of pain. 'Bring also to us a priest

with an ember of the Holy Flame. It seems we are to die in Kerakek.

All that happens is by the divine will of Perun. Anahita waits for

all of us. It has been written and it is being written. Do these

things, Mazendar.'

'No physician at all, my great lord?' said the small, plump vizier,

dry-voiced, dry-eyed.

'In Kerakek?' said the King of Kings, his voice bitter, enraged. 'In

this desert? Think where we are.' There was blood welling as he

spoke, from where the arrow lay in him, the shaft smeared black,

fletched with black feathers. The king's beard was stained with his

own dark blood.

The vizier bowed his head. Men moved to usher the three condemned

physicians from the room. They offered no protest, no resistance. The

sun was past its highest point by then, beginning to set, on a

winter's day in Bassania in a remote fortress near the sands. Time

was moving; what was to be had long ago been written.

Men find courage sometimes, unexpectedly, surprising themselves,

changing the course of their own lives and times. The man who sank to

his knees by the bed, pressing his head to the carpeted floor, was

the military commander of the fortress of Kerakek. Wisdom,

discretion, self-preservation all demanded he keep silent among the

sleek, dangerous men of the court that day. Afterwards he could not

have said why he did speak. He would tremble as with a fever,

remembering, and drink an excess of wine, even on a day of

abstinence.

'My king,' he said in the firelit chamber, 'we have a much-travelled

physician here, in the village below the fortress. We might summon

him?'

The Great King's gaze seemed already to be in another place, with

Perun and the Lady, beyond the confines and small concerns of mortal

life. He said, 'Why kill another man?'

It was told of Shirvan, written on parchment and engraved on tablets

of stone, that no man more merciful and compassionate, more imbued

with the spirit of the goddess Anahita, had ever sat the throne in

Kabadh holding the sceptre and the flower. But Anahita the Lady was

also called the Gatherer, who summoned men to their ending.

Softly, the vizier murmured, 'Why not do so? How can it matter, lord?

May I send?'

The King of Kings lay still another moment, then he motioned assent,

the gesture brief, indifferent. His rage seemed spent. His gaze,

heavy-lidded, went to the fire and lingered there. Someone went out,

at a sign from the vizier.

Time passed. In the desert beyond the fortress and the village below

it a north wind rose. It swept across the sands, blowing and shifting

them, erasing dunes, shaping others, and the lions, unhunted, took

refuge in their caves among the rocks, waiting for night.

The blue moon, Anahita's, rose in the late afternoon, balancing the

low sun. Within the fortress of Kerakek, men went forth into that dry

wind to kill three physicians, to kill a son of the king, to summon a

son of the king, to bear messages to Kabadh, to summon a priest with

Holy Fire to the King of Kings in his room.

And to find and bring one other man.

Rustem of Kerakek, son of Zorah, sat cross-legged on the woven

Ispahani mat he used for teaching. He was reading, occasionally

glancing up to observe his four students as they carefully copied

from one of his precious texts. Merovius on cataracts was the current

matter; each student had a different page to transcribe. They would

exchange them day by day until all of them had a copy of the

treatise. Rustem was of the view that the ancient Trakesian's western

approach was to be preferred in treatment of most-though not all-

issues relating to the eye.

Through the window that overlooked the dusty roadway a breeze entered

the room. It was mild as yet, not unpleasant, but Rustem could feel a

storm in it. The sands would be blowing. In the village of Kerakek,

below the fortress, the sand got into everything when the wind came

from the desert. They were used to it, the taste in their food, the

gritty feel in their clothing and bed sheets, in their own intimate

places.

From behind the students, in the arched interior doorway that led to

the family quarters, Rustem heard a slight rustling sound; he

glimpsed a shadow on the floor. Shaski had arrived at his usual post

beyond the beaded curtain, and would be waiting for the more

interesting part of the afternoon lessons to begin. His son, at seven

years of age, showed both patience and a fierce determination. A

little less than a year ago he'd begun dragging a small mat of his

own from his bedroom to a position just outside the teaching room. He

would sit cross-legged upon it, spending as much of the afternoon as

he was allowed listening through the curtain as his father gave

instruction. If taken away by his mothers or the household servants

he would find his way back to the corridor as soon as he could

escape.

Rustem's two wives were both of the view that it was inappropriate

for a small child to listen to explicit details of bloody wounds and

bodily fluxes, but the physician found the boy's interest amusing and

had negotiated with his wives to allow Shaski to linger outside the

door if his own lessons and duties had been fulfilled. The students

seemed to enjoy the boy's unseen presence in the hallway as well, and

once or twice they'd invited him to voice an answer to his father's

questions.

There was something endearing, even to a careful, reserved man, in a

seven-year-old proclaiming, as was required, 'With this affliction I

will contend,' and then detailing his proposed treatment of an

inflamed, painful toe or a cough with blood and loose matter in it.

The interesting thing, Rustem thought, idly stroking his neat,

pointed beard, was that Shaski's answers were very often to the

point. He'd even had the boy answer a question once to embarrass a

student caught unprepared after a night's drinking, though later that

evening he'd regretted doing so. Young men were entitled to visit

taverns now and again. It taught them about the lives and pleasures

of common men, kept them from aging too soon. A physician needed to

be aware of the nature of people and their weaknesses and not be

harsh in his judgement of ordinary folly. Judgement was for Perun and

Anahita.

The feel of his own beard reminded him of a thought he'd had the

night before: it was time to dye it again. He wondered if it was

still necessary to be streaking the light brown with grey. When he'd

returned from ispahani and the Ajbar Islands four years ago, settling

in his home town and opening a physician's practice and a school,

he'd considered it prudent to gain a measure of credibility by making

himself look older. In the east, the Ispahani physician-priests would

lean on walking sticks they

didn't need, gain weight deliberately, dole out words in measured

cadences or with eyes focused on inward visions, all to present the

desired image of dignity and success.

There had been some real presumption in a man of twenty-seven putting

himself forward as a teacher of medicine at an age when many were

just beginning their studies. Indeed, two of his pupils that first

year had been older than he was. He wondered if they'd known it.

After a certain point, though, didn't your practice and your teaching

speak for themselves? In Kerakek, here on the edge of the southern

deserts, Rustem was respected and even revered by the villagers, and

he had been summoned often to the fortress to deal with injuries and

ailments among the soldiers, to the anger and chagrin of a succession

of military doctors. Students who wrote to him and then came this far

for his teaching-some of them even Sarantine Jad-worshippers,

crossing the border from Amoria-were unlikely to turn around and go

away when they discovered that Rustem of Kerakek was no ancient sage

but a young husband and father who happened to have a gift for

medicine and to have read and travelled more widely than most.

Perhaps. Students, or potential students, could be unpredictable in

various ways, and the income Rustem made from teaching was necessary

for a man with two wives now and two children-especially with both

women wanting another baby in the crowded house. Few of the villagers

of Kerakek were able to pay proper physician's fees, and there was

another practitioner-for whom Rustem had an only marginally disguised

contempt-in the town to divide what meagre income was to be gleaned

here. On the whole, it might be best not to disturb what seemed to be

succeeding. If streaks of grey in his beard reassured even one or two

possible pupils or military officials up in the castle (where they

did tend to pay), then using the dye was worth it, he supposed.

Rustem looked out the window again. The sky was darker now beyond his

small herb garden. If a real storm came, the distraction and loss of

light would undermine his lessons and make afternoon surgery

difficult. He cleared his throat. The four students, used to the

routine, put down their writing implements and looked up. Rustem

nodded and the one nearest the outer door crossed to open it and

admit the first patient from the covered portico where they had been

waiting.

He tended to treat patients in the morning and teach after the midday

rest, but those villagers least able to pay would often consent to be

seen by Rustem and his students together in the afternoons as part of

the teaching process. Many were flattered by the attention, some made

uncomfortable, but it was known in Kerakek that this was a way of

gaining access to the young physician who had studied in the mystical

east and returned with secrets of the hidden world.

The woman who entered now, standing hesitantly by the wall where

Rustem hung his herbs and shelved the small pots and linen bags of

medicines, had a cataract growth in her right eye. Rustem knew it; he

had seen her before and made the assessment. He prepared in advance,

and whenever the ailments of the villagers allowed, offered his

students practical experience and observations to go with the

treatises they memorized and copied. It was of little use, he was

fond of saying, to learn what al-Hizari said about amputation if you

didn't know how to use a saw.

He himself had spent six weeks with his eastern teacher on a failed

Ispahani campaign against the insurgents on their north-eastern

reaches. He had learned how to use a saw.

He had also seen enough of violent death and desperate, squalid pain

that summer to decide to return home to his wife and the small child

he had scarcely seen before leaving for the east. This house and

garden at the edge of the village, and then another wife and a girl-

child, had followed upon his return. The small boy he'd left behind

was now seven years old and sitting on a mat outside the door of the

medical chambers, listening to his father's lectures.

And Rustem the physician still dreamt in the blackness of some nights

of a battlefield in the east, remembering himself cutting through the

limbs of screaming men beneath the smoky, uncertain light of torches

in wind as the sun went down on a massacre. He remembered black

fountains of blood, being drenched, saturated in the hot gout and

spray of it, clothing, face, hair, arms, chest . . . becoming a

creature of dripping horror himself, hands so slippery he could

scarcely grip his implements to saw and cut and cauterize, the

wounded coming and coming to them endlessly, without surcease, even

when night fell.

There were worse things than a village practice in Bassania, he had

decided the next morning, and he had not wavered since, though

ambition would sometimes rise up within him and speak otherwise,

seductive and dangerous as a Kabadh courtesan. Rustem had spent much

of his adult life trying to appear older than he was. He wasn't old,

though. Not yet. Had wondered, more than once, in the twilight hours

when such thoughts tended to arrive, what he would do if opportunity

and risk came knocking.

Looking back, afterwards, he couldn't remember if there was a knock

that day. The whirlwind speed of what ensued had been very great, and

he might have missed it. It seemed to him, however, that the outside

door had simply banged open, without warning, nearly striking the

patient waiting by the wall, as booted soldiers came striding in,

filling the quiet room to bursting with the chaos of the world.

Rustem knew one of them, the leader: he had been stationed in Kerakek

a long time. The man's face was distorted now, eyes dilated, fevered-

looking. His voice, when he spoke, rasped like a woodcutter's saw. He

said, 'You are to come! Immediately! To the fortress!'

'There has been an accident?' Rustem asked from his mat, keeping his

own voice modulated, ignoring the peremptory tone of the man, trying

to reestablish calm with his own tranquillity. This was part of a

physician's training, and he wanted his students to see him doing it.

Those coming to them were often agitated; a doctor could not be. He

took note that the soldier had been facing east when he spoke his

first words. A neutral omen. The man was of the warrior caste, of

course, which would be either good or bad, depending on the caste of

the afflicted person. The wind was north: not good, but no birds

could be seen or heard through the window, which counterbalanced

that, somewhat.

'An accident! Yes!' cried the soldier, no calm in him at all. 'Come!

It is the King of Kings! An arrow!'

Poise deserted Rustem like conscripted soldiers facing Sarantine

cavalry. One of his students gasped in shock. The woman with the

afflicted eye collapsed to the floor in an untidy, wailing heap.

Rustem stood up quickly, trying to order his racing thoughts. Four

men had entered. An unlucky number. The woman made five. Could she be

counted, to adjust the omens?

Even as he swiftly calculated auspices, he strode to the large table

by the door and snatched his small linen bag. He hurriedly placed

several of his herbs and pots inside and took his leather case of

surgical implements. Normally he would have sent a student or a

servant ahead with the bag, to reassure those in the fortress and to

avoid being seen rushing out-of-doors himself, but this was not a

circumstance that allowed for ordinary conduct. It is the King of

Kings!

Rustem became aware that his heart was pounding. He struggled to

control his breathing. He felt giddy, light-headed. Afraid, in fact.

For many reasons. It was important not to show this. Claiming his

walking stick, he slowed deliberately and put a hat on his head. He

turned to the soldier. Carefully facing north, he said, 'I am ready.

We can go.'

The four soldiers rushed through the doorway ahead of him. Pausing,

Rustem made an effort to preserve some order in the room he was

leaving. Bharai, his best student, was looking at him.

'You may practice with the surgical tools on vegetables, and then on

pieces of wood, using the probes,' Rustem said. 'Take turns

evaluating each other. Send the patients home. Close the shutters if

the wind rises. You have permission to build up the fire and use oil

for sufficient light.'

'Master,' said Bharai, bowing.

Rustem followed the soldiers out the door.

He paused in the garden and, facing north again, feet together, he

plucked three shoots of bamboo. He might need them for probes. The

soldiers were waiting impatiently in the roadway, agitated and

terrified. The air pulsed with anxiety. Rustem straightened, murmured

his prayer to Perun and the Lady and turned to follow them. As he

did, he observed Katyun and Jarita at the front door of the house.

There was fear in their eyes: Jarita's were enormous, even seen at a

distance. She stared at him silently, leaning against Katyun for

support, holding the baby. One of the soldiers must have told the

women what was happening.

He gave them both a reassuring nod and saw Katyun nod calmly back as

she put her arm around Jarita's shoulders. They would be all right.

If he came back.

He went through the small gate into the road, taking his first step

with his right foot, glancing up for any signs among the birds. None

to be seen: they had all taken shelter from the rising wind. No omens

there. He wished there hadn't been four soldiers sent. Someone ought

to have known better. Little to be done about that now, however. He

would burn incense at the fortress, in propitiation. Rustem gripped

his stick and struggled to present an appearance of equanimity. He

didn't think he was succeeding. The King of Kings. An arrow.

He stopped abruptly in the dusty road.

And in the moment he did so, cursing himself for a fool, preparing to

go back to the treatment rooms, knowing how very bad an omen that

would be, he heard someone speak from behind him.

'Papa,' said a small voice.

Rustem turned, and saw what his son was holding in both hands. His

heart stopped for a moment then, or it felt as though it did. He

swallowed, with sudden difficulty. Forced himself to take another

deep breath, standing very still now just outside the gate.

'Yes, Shaski,' he said quietly. He looked at the small boy in the

garden and a strange calm descended upon him. His students and the

patients watched in a knotted cluster from the portico, the soldiers

from the roadway, the women from the other doorway. The wind blew.

'The man said ... he said an arrow, Papa.'

And Shaski extended his two small hands, offering his father the

implement he'd carried out into the yard.

'He did say that, didn't he?' said Rustem, gravely. 'I should take

that with me then, shouldn't I?'

Shaski nodded his head. His small form straight, dark brown eyes

serious as a priest's with an offering. He is seven years old, Rustem

thought. Anahita guard him.

He went back through the wooden gate, and he bent and took the

slender instrument in its leather sheath from the boy. He had brought

it back from Ispahani, a parting gift from his teacher there.

The soldier had indeed said there was an arrow. Rustem felt a sudden,

quite unexpected desire to lay a hand upon the head of his son, on

the dark brown, curling hair, to feel the warmth, and the smallness.

It had to do, of course, with the fact that he might not come back

from the fortress. This might be a farewell. One could not decline to

treat the King of Kings, and depending on where the arrow had lodged

. . .

Shaski's expression was so intense, it was as if he actually had some

preternatural apprehension of this. He couldn't, of course, but the

boy had just saved him from the terrible auspice of having to re-

enter the treatment room after walking out and taking his bamboo

reeds, or sending someone back in for him.

Rustem found that he was unable to speak. He looked down at Shaski

for another moment, then glanced over at his wives. There was no time

to say anything to them, either. The world had entered through his

doorway, after all. What was to be had long ago been written.

Rustem turned and went quickly back out through the gate and then

with the soldiers up the steep road in the north wind that was

blowing. He didn't look back, knowing the omen attached to that, but

he was certain that Shaski was still standing there and watching him,

alone in the garden now, straight as a spear, small as a reed by a

riverbank.

Vinaszh, son of Vinaszh, the military commander of the southern

fortress of Kerakek, had been born even farther to the south, in a

tiny oasis of palms east of Qandir, a sparse, spring-fed island of

greenery with desert all around. It was a market village, of course.

Goods and services exchanged with the dark, grim peoples of the sands

as they came riding in on their camels and went back out again,

receding and then disappearing on the shimmering horizon.

Growing up as a merchant's son, Vinaszh came to know the nomadic

tribes quite well, both in times of trade and peace and during those

seasons when the Great King sent armies south in yet another

fruitless attempt to force access to the western sea beyond the

sands. The desert, at least as much as the wild tribesmen who shifted

across its face, had made this impossible, again and again. Neither

the sands nor those who dwelled there were inclined to be subdued.

But his childhood in the south had made Vinaszh-who had chosen the

army over a merchant's life-an excellent, obvious choice to take

control of one of the desert fortresses. It represented a rare

measure of clear thinking on the part of officials in Kabadh that he

was, in fact, appointed to govern Kerakek when he attained sufficient

rank, rather than being given command of, say, soldiers guarding a

fishing port in the north, dealing with fur-clad traders and raiders

from Moskav. Sometimes the military succeeded in doing things

properly, almost in spite of itself. Vinaszh knew the desert, was

properly respectful of it and those who dwelled there. He could

manage some of the dialects of the nomads, spoke a little of the

Kindath tongue, and was unruffled by sand in his bed or clothing or

folds of skin.

Still, there was nothing at all in the background of the man to

suggest that the soldier son of Vinaszh the trader might have had the

rashness to speak up among the mightiest figures of Bassania and

offer the uninvited suggestion that a small-town physician-one not

even of the priestly caste-be summoned to the King of Kings where he

was dying.

Among other things, the words put the commander's own life at risk.

He was a dead man if someone afterwards were to decide that the

country doctor's treatment had hastened or caused the death of the

king-even though Great Shirvan had already turned his face to the

fire as if looking in the flames for Perun of the Thunder, or the

dark figure of the Lady.

The arrow was in him, very deep. Blood continued to seep slowly from

it, darkening the sheets of the bed and the linens that had been

bunched around the wound. It seemed a wonder, in fact, that the king

still breathed, still remained among them, fixedly watching the dance

of the flames while a wind from the desert rose outside. The sky had

darkened. Shirvan seemed disinclined to offer his courtiers any last

words of guidance or to formally name an heir, though he'd made a

gesture that implied his choice. Kneeling beside the bed, the king's

third son, Murash, who had covered his own head and shoulders with

hot ashes from the hearth, was rocking back and forth, praying. None

of the other royal sons was present. Murash's voice, rising and

falling in rapid incantation, was the only human sound in the room

other than the laboured rhythm of the Great King's breathing.

In that stillness, and even with the keening of the wind, the sound

of booted feet was clearly heard when it finally came from the

corridor. Vinaszh drew a breath and briefly closed his eyes, invoking

Perun, ritually cursing Azal the Eternal Enemy. Then he turned and

saw the door open to admit the physician who had cured him of an

embarrassing rash he'd contracted during an autumn reconnaissance

towards the Sarantine border towns and forts.

The doctor, trailed by Vinaszh's obviously terrified captain of the

guard, entered a few steps and then paused, leaning on his staff,

surveying the room, before looking over at the figure on the bed. He

had no servant with him-he would have left in great haste, the

captain's instructions from Vinaszh had been unambiguous-and so

carried his own bag. Without looking back, he extended the linen bag

and his walking stick and some sheathed implement, and Vinaszh's

captain moved with alacrity to take them. The doctor-his name was

Rustem-had a reserved, humourless manner that Vinaszh didn't really

like, but the man had studied in Ispahani and he didn't seem to kill

people and he had cured the rash.

The physician smoothed his greying beard with one hand and then knelt

and abased himself, showing unexpectedly adroit manners. At a word

from the vizier he rose. The king hadn't turned his gaze from the

fire; the young prince had not ceased his praying. The doctor bowed

to the vizier, then turned carefully-facing due west, Vinaszh noted-

and said briskly, 'With this affliction I will contend.'

He hadn't even approached-let alone examined-the patient, but he had

no real choice here. He had to do what he could. Why kill another

man? the king had asked. Vinaszh had almost certainly done just that

by suggesting the physician be brought here.

The doctor turned to look at Vinaszh. 'If the commander of the

garrison will remain to assist me I would be grateful. I might have

need of a soldier's experience. It is necessary for all the rest of

you, my revered and gracious lords, to leave the room now, please.'

Without rising from his knees, the prince said fiercely,'I will not

leave my father's side.'

This man was almost certainly about to become the King of Kings, the

Sword of Perun, when the breathing of the man on the bed stopped.

'An understandable desire, my lord prince, 'said the doctor calmly.

'But if you care for your beloved father, as I can see you do, and

wish to aid him now, you will honour me by waiting outside. Surgical

treatment cannot take place in a crowd of men.'

'There will be no ... crowd,' said the vizier. Mazendar's lip curled

at the word. 'Prince Murash will remain, and I myself. You are not of

the priestly caste, of course, and neither is the commander. We must

stay here, accordingly. All others will depart, as requested.'

The physician simply shook his head. 'No, my lord. Kill me now, if

you wish. But I was taught, and believe, that members of the family

and dear friends must not be present when a doctor treats an

afflicted man. One must be of the priestly caste to be a royal

physician, I know. But I have no such position ... I am merely

attending upon the Great King, at request. If I am to contend with

this affliction, I must do so in the manner of my training. Otherwise

I can avail the King of Kings not at all, and my own life becomes a

burden to me if that is so.'

The fellow was a stuffy prig, greying before his time, Vinaszh

thought, but he had courage. He saw Prince Murash look up, black eyes

blazing. Before the prince could speak, however, a faint, cold voice

from the bed murmured, 'You heard the physician. He is brought here

for his skills. Why is there wrangling in my presence? Get out. All

of you.'

There was silence.

'Of course, my gracious lord,' said Mazendar the vizier, as the

prince, mouth opening and closing, stood up uncertainly. The king had

still not taken his eyes from the flames. His voice sounded to

Vinaszh as if it already came from somewhere beyond the realms of

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Oneoftheworld'sforemostmastersoffantasy,GuyGavrielKayhasthrilledreadersaroundtheglobewithhistalentforskillfullyinterweavinghistoryandMyth,colorfulcharacterization,andarichsenseoftimeandplace.Now,inLordofEmperors,theinter-nationallyacclaimedauthorofTheLionsofAl-Rassancontinueshismostpowerfulwork.InSa...

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