Anackire

25

High on a golden stone in the furnace of noon, the woman sat looking across the river. Behind her the black walls of a ruin went up. The sun of the hot months had burned her nearly as black, all but the silver bracelet on her left wrist—which, drawing close, you saw was not a bracelet, but a ring of bright scales native to her flesh.

Yannul, having come out of the ancient city of the Zor, stood under the boulder. The farther shore was occupied, as usual, with its normal uneventful business. For almost a month it had been so. Since that night, that sunrise, of Power, when the world had seemed to chime like a bell. Easy with supernatural things, the villages across the river had soon put magic aside, a commonplace.

“Safca,” he said, after a while.

“Yes,” she said, “I know. You’re going home.”

“The villa-farm at Amlan,” he said. “Medaci thinks we should go back. She says our elder son will get there. We don’t know where he is. But—safe, she says.”

“Oh yes,” said Safca. “Yes, your son is safe and well.” Her voice was remote, and beautiful. He had never realized, in the beginning, she had a beautiful voice. Perhaps it was a legacy of royal blood. For she had that, too, did she not? “Yes,” she said again, “I have that, too.”

“I shall never,” he said, “get used to having my mind read.”

“I’m sorry. Your secret thoughts are secure enough. But some things burst out, barking like dogs. I still don’t know, Yannul, if it’s true.”

“That you’re Amrek’s daughter? You aren’t like him. But the mark on your wrist—”

“The curse of Anackire.”

Yannul said, “Maybe it wasn’t a curse. Only an emblem. It hasn’t harmed you. Could Amrek have misunderstood?”

She looked down at him. Her eyes were black Vis eyes—the Storm Lord Amrek’s eyes? She had altered a great deal. If she had the heritage of that line did not really matter anymore. She could reign here if she wanted. The Lans who had followed her would make her a queen, without being asked. But she was a priestess too, and possibly temporal rule meant nothing. Zastis fell late this year, and was almost due. The small camp in the ruined city was restive, eager, and you saw the same in the villages over the river. Even he, finding Medaci had not changed, returning from the inferno no winged avatar but a woman. . . . Silly as adolescent lovers, they had coupled in a wild orchard under the walls, and scolded each other after, grinning.

But Safca, walking with a dozen male eyes scorching on her, gave no indication. Up on her rock now like a lioness, she watched the sky or a man with equal complacence, and no haste at all.

And if she had caught that thought, she did not answer it.

“Will you stay here,” he said eventually, “the city?”

She said: “All places are one.” He perceived she reckoned this to be so. “But for others—the town we came by. Or Lan under the mountains. Since Lan is accessible again. The passes are open.”

“I know it.”

“But there were no messengers,” she said, her innocent eyes far away. “How could you know this?”

“Telepathy rubs off.”

Safca smiled. “I see your son,” she said, “Lur Raldnor, riding from the Lowlands. You must be proud of such a son.”

Something wrenched at Yannul. He said, “What else do you see?”

“Many things.”

She would not tell him. Only what it was his right to be told. That night, that morning, were distant as the stars, but he tried, if reluctantly, to conjure them.

“Do you,” he said, “frequently see Anackire?”

“We are all Anackire. Anackire is everything.”

“Then, no record. It was a dream—the war, the breaking of the sword.”

“In Elyr,” she said, “the towers are watching for a star.”

“They’ll see one, too.” He grinned again.

“No, not Zastis, Yannul. Not an evening star of desire. A morning star of peace.”

Yannul glanced over the river.

“I remember,” he said slowly, “Koramvis.”

But the woman on the rock said, “The past is the past.” And then he too saw, her mind focusing for his, Lur Raldnor riding under the sun. There was a second black ruin behind him, the length of the Plains and the little land of Elyr between, but Lur Raldnor was singing, some antique song Yannul half recalled, so he found he also began to form the words of it, noiselessly.

“Yes, father,” said Lur Raldnor. “I know you hear me.” He laughed at the sky. This was something he had yet to get used to. Having formed part of a mental colossus, he still had not mastered the everyday techniques of mind speech. It was like starting to make love and looking through the velvet surface to the skeleton.

One could fathom why the Sister Continent, growing mercantile, had begun to suppress its telepathy.

There were Sister Continent ships at Moiyah now, and over in Shansarian Alisaar. Some made on for Vardian Zakoris, for Dorthar and for Karmiss. It seemed they had held assembly down there in the south, and decided to reserve judgment on the war in Vis. So the old alliances stood after all. Now they ventured in as warlike friends, to an area less tumultuous than expected. Although in Karmiss, Shansar’s comradeship would be welcome enough. Istris had suffered. Word had it she was wrecked. The Warden had seized authority, of course. But Shansarian autocracy would be reestablished before the year turned, the Lily thoroughly eclipsed by the goddess with the tail of a fish. Ashyasmai would be Ashara, once more. As for the banner of the Salamander—it was burned, ironic fate for a fire-lizard. Kesarh’s ending was not so efficiently tabulated.

Which reminded one of Rarmon. But then again, one knew about Rarmon, too, what had chanced, and what was to come. Destiny, like the metaphorical girl’s flesh, translucent and to be looked through.

There had been no problem that way with the Xarabian girl, who was not naturally a telepath. She had wept when Lur Raldnor bade her farewell, and told him she would call her son by his name. But Lur Raldnor, though he had not disillusioned her, had foreseen she would not bear his son.

He went back to singing the song of the Lannic hills his father had taught him long ago. Magic had its place. There were other things. He knew he was young and the earth was beautiful. And that anyway he, and everything, lived forever. But he had known that since Medaci told him, when he was three years of age.

“And it’s farewell on Thaddra, now, is it? To me, who risked his fine skin under that damned tower,” said Tuab Ey in the wine-shop at Tumesh. “Dorthar. What can Dorthar offer you? Soft living and the King’s favor, and rich food and good liquor—what’s that to the healthy life you could lead with us, eating raw orynx in the jungle in the rain?”

“Come with me,” said Rarnammon. “You earned whatever I can get you.”

“Humble thanks. I’m a lord here. Among lords I’d be scum, and I know it.”

Tuab Ey stirred the stew with his dagger. “As for the tower. Some god passed over us. I heard his wings. Now I credit gods. But I lived through it. Galud says the tower raged as if it was alight.”

“Galud may be wise.”

“Then there were the lepers, apparently all cured. Even Jort verified that.”

“Jort may be—”

“Wise, too? Hmm. So you’re some god’s golem,” said Tuab Ey. “Priest-king. Hero. Come and be human with me.”

The man with the black hair and yellow Lowlander eyes looked at him, until Tuab Ey dropped his gaze, entertained to be bashful.

“Fare well and prosper in Thaddra,” said Rarnammon eventually.

“And you in Dorthar, you bastard of a king’s bastard.”

Outside the sun seared on an old marketplace. Slaves were being sold under an awning. For a moment Rarnammon, in the shadow of the shop door, saw a red-haired woman in with the lot. But Astaris’ hair had been dyed black, they said, when Bandar put her up for sale here.

Galud glared at him as he brought over the zeeba. Rarnammon rode away through the town and up into the foothills, his mind crowded by different things. Somewhere Yannul’s son was riding too, and somewhere that woman he had met in Olm sat on a rock. Safca, Amrek’s daughter—the revelatory visions had failed him there, or else been masked by some stronger will.

The city of Rarnammon dwindled behind Rarnammon son of Raldnor, a drumbeat fading over the miles.

The drumbeat of Dorthar lay ahead.

Sometimes, he wished he did not hear it. At others it alerted him. The time of the miracle had gone by; one could not remain at such a pitch. And had he not once brooded in Lan that there was nothing for him, that he was not enough in himself to ask anything of existence. The visions, which had revealed so many things, had left him oddly nearsighted in other ways. It was foolish now to balk or to step aside. There had always been witchcraft in Dorthar.

Raldnor had fled his own legend. But that was Raldnor.

The blueness of the mountains poured down and the forests curled away. There was no trace of Free Zakoris, only a broken machinery of siege abandoned on a slope.

They were raising a mighty stonework seven days along the Pass, to mark the visitation of the dragon the Dortharian soldiery had seen. The sculpture was homegrown, crudely if earnestly done. That might account for its curious shape. It was not like a dragon, more an enormous turtle, jaws and fins extruded from the discoid carapace.

He did not question the soldiers about it. They in turn did not recognize him—he did not allow them to. When he was gone, only then, rumor moved among them. But they pointed out to each other that the man they took him for in retrospect had betrayed Dorthar to the Leopard, and would not dare to be coming back.

Rarnammon was still on the Pass when Zastis began. The Star slunk up behind the moon, and dippered the mountains with its soft red flame. He was alone, and trying to sleep out the dreams that came, tinged like the mountains by the Star; he recalled a story that Zastis had been a palace the gods made for themselves in the clouds, a love-palace, which caught fire. Being a thing of the immortals, it burned on, unquenchable. And rising at certain seasons, inspired men, now, with lust.

The dreams themselves were uncharactered. Awake, he dredged up memories. But these also seemed to have no true relevance. He had been through a greater whirlpool now than pain or pleasure or sex.

The sentry posts on the Pass, as it cut into Dorthar, were Zastis-lax. The miracle had disorganized them, too. Some had grown authoritarian, or they had turned religious.

Finally, he came down from the mountains, through the huge boulders that had collapsed into fresh attitudes after the great earthquake, and settled there to seeming permanence.

He was on the path above that lake they called Ibron, no company, he thought, but the floating birds, when a glowing whiteness was suddenly against the curve of the hillside before him.

A man had fallen here, from a racing chariot, to the lake. Rarnammon beheld a spinning shape, and looked through it to the Amanackire who stood beyond.

There was an interim, then. They did not move or communicate. He did not try the mind speech with them, nor let them probe him, he was strong enough to prevent it now. Such things remained an intrusion to Rarnammon. At length he lost patience. He said aloud: “I’m not my father, as you understand. Tell me what you want, or get out of the way.”

He disliked them, so cold, so pale. Unearthly impure purity. Not Lowlanders anymore, but something novel and quite alien. The white eyes met his and were lowered unwillingly. They did not care for him, either, or that he, not they, had wedded the psychic storm. They jealously wanted to be gods, gods in the ancient manner: Men who were paranormally superior to, and held sway therefore over, other men.

“Son of Raldnor,” one of them said, “are you on the road to Anackyra?”

“Where else?” he said.

“Raldanash is ours,” they said, for all of them seemed to speak as one now, some mental overlay not to be avoided. “Raldanash we accepted, though his skin is the dark man’s skin.”

“This is a warning of some sort?”

“Yes,” they said.

“Explain it.”

“You are not ours. Nor will we be yours.”

“Then, I’ve heard you out. Where’s Ashni?”

“She went away over the hills. Some are with her.”

“But not you,” he said. “That must rankle.”

As he spurred the zeeba, they seemed to smoke into the flank of the hill. It might be a trick, but he did not think so. Maybe they had learned that art of projecting the image from elsewhere.

Riding on, he made sure no other recognized him en route to the city. He met no more Amanackire.

He used the random “Merchant’s Road” through the ruins to the river. Some thief was operating a ferry and poled him across.

When he got in at one of Anackyra’s white gateways, entering the heat and rush of the metropolis, it seemed as if a pane of clear glass enclosed him. It was not only the cloaking anonymity he kept about himself. He was removed.

The city, which had been reprieved from devastation, was everywhere discussing the wonders of gods and sorcery, and everywhere ignoring them. Trade and commerce flourished. Men argued and hassled in the dust. Two girls fought shrieking by a wine-shop. Incense and the rasp of gongs rose from the temples. Five of the sacred prostitutes, the Daughters of Anackire, crossed an avenue, guarded by temple soldiers. These women were bare-breasted, their nipples capped and rimmed by gilt, gold in the yellow veils of their skirts, their hair bleached, topaz in their ears and navels.

Rarnammon turned to look after them, dully amazed. Not only at the absurdity of the world.

Vencrek, Warden of Anackyra, said, “You’re here, as he mentioned you would be. Your disguise must have been a nice one to get you through the streets.”

“And Raldanash?” Rarnammon asked.

“He lies at Moiyah, with the fleet. There are Vathcrian ships there now, from the Homeland.”

The Storm Palace was cool, and perfumed with shrubs and trees and the unguents of costly women. The languid gestures of Zastis, the scents of Zastis, breathed about them, everywhere.

“The council will be convened in the hour, my lord,” said Vencrek. “You have that much time. The royal apartments were opened and made ready. As he ordered it.”

“What is the council to be told?” Rarnammon said.

“What the city’s to be told. That you were ordered to Zakoris-In-Thaddra on a secret mission, at the wish of the Storm Lord. That this mission was accomplished with honor, and should the war have proceeded to its logical ends, your valor would have placed you at Raldanash’s side, his chief commander.”

“Did you agree to this?”

“He’s written to me,” said Vencrek. “I have the letters and the proclamation here, the latter still under his unbroken seal. He reposes utter trust in you. I can’t do otherwise.”

“But you can,” said Rarnammon, “do precisely otherwise.”

“Yes, you would have got that from Kesarh, no doubt. Yl’s pirates fed the fish with him, I gather.”

Rarnammon did nothing, waited. After a time, Rarnammon said, “Do I assume Raldanash informed you of all his plan?”

“I take it he informed you, my lord.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Rarnammon shrugged, deliberately. He said. “I thought that in Vathcri mind speech between brothers was not unusual.”

Vencrek paled under his pale skin’s tan. One could not ascertain why; it could be from many reactions.

“Yes, then,” he said, “you and I both know that Raldanash means to give up the crown of Dorthar. Means to abdicate and wander the backhills of Vathcri instead, as some starveling priest.”

“If he can find solace that way,” said Rarnammon, “why not? He never wanted this.”

“While you, of course,” Vencrek said, “always wanted it.”

“Maybe. I won’t deny I may have done. I am, after all, Raldnor’s son. What was he? Priest and King. I’m the part of him that coveted glory in the gaze of men, perhaps. And Raldanash is the priest—meditation, and the hills of home. What do you want to do, Vencrek? Raldanash gives me his voice. If you can’t stomach it, you must go.”

“I’ll stomach it,” Vencrek said. “I don’t want the backhills any more than you do. You’ll see how well I’ll stomach it. I can earn your favor, my lord.” The blond head lifted, the Vathcrian smiled. “Let’s see, my lord, if you can earn mine.”

Later, when the council was done with, the shouting and dissension—had not Raldnor himself cast away this very kingship in the wake of victory?—the paid gossips were sent out to ply their trade through the city, just as in Istris all those short years ago. The people would be manipulated. The council would be manipulated. The customary bribes were negotiable here, as anywhere. Rarnammon who had been Rem knew the business, and dealt ably. He had besides Raldanash’s decree to back him.

One considered Raldanash, picked up almost dead on the deck of that ship, lying dreaming the Dream of the goddess in the Lowland port of Moiyah. And the vessels of Vathcri evolving on sunset water, like an omen.

And Rarnammon wanted Dorthar. Yes, it was sure.

When the correct amount of days and nights were judged past, he rode through the city in procession and a gem-encrusted chariot. Standing in the Imperial Square on a dais beneath the giant statue of his namesake, he addressed the crowds, employing every gambit Kesarh had ever shown him, and won them, and heard them roar for him, the huge cry going up like birds. Kingship was more than triumph, more than a shout. But the King’s blood that had come down to him, from Raldnor and Rehdon, remembered the sound a people make for their King, and welcomed it, as a right.

“The coronation’s for the last quarter of Zastis. You must wed all his wives,” said Vencrek. If there was a cutting edge in that, it was softly gloved. “Every king in Vis is obliged to send his representative or be present in person. Apparently, Yl himself will arrive. The kingdom of Zakoris-In-Thaddra is no longer building war-galleys. He’s promising to give you slaves and palutorvus tusks.”

“Is there any news of a man named Kathus, an Alisaarian?”

“Yl put his counselors to death on his return. He said they’d gone against the edict of the gods, advising him to unholy conflict. One man evaded the sentence. An Alisaarian.”

(So, he was landless again, Kathaos the Fox, running, and too tired to run, Kathus-Kathaos, who despised all religion and disbelieved all gods, saddled with a continent run amok with piety. Once he had ridden for the only break of light in the sky. But the light was an illusion. Or else illusion was a reality he had not bargained on.)

“And Kesarh Am Karmiss feeds the fish,” said Rarnammon quietly.

“Pirates,” said Vencrek. “They unswore allegiance to Yl when he capitulated, did for Kesarh, and now roam the sea in packs again. The oceans north and east may need some cleaning up before the snow. We note, even the miracle,” said Vencrek, “didn’t conclude every battle, my lord.”

There were no longer Amanackire about the court. They had gone away into the hills above Koramvis. Ashni was there, men said. But it did not seem to Rarnammon that she was. The glints of the psychic beacons had died down in his mind. He no longer kept unconscious track of Yannul’s son, or Amrek’s daughter in the Zor. Raldanash had retreated on an inner tide. Ashni, like some all-pervasive light, seemed to surround them, and yet was nowhere in particular.

“There was a priestess the Amanackire may have followed,” Vencrek said, shadowing Rarnammon’s thoughts in the endless way of telepaths. One grew accustomed to it. “There’s also a priestess on Ankabek again.”

“Yes,” Rarnammon said, not listening. Music rippled somewhere. The trees beside the colonnade were sinuous with Zastis, when sex invaded everything. And there had seemed to be no time. . . .

“Astaris, according to some.”

“Astaris no longer exists.”

“Do you recall the Xarabian princess, Xa’ath’s daughter?”

In Karmiss, it was the Festival of Masks. In the east, where Istris was rebuilding, lamps strung the scaffolding, and banners dripped from gutted houses. When Free Zakoris came, the volume of smoke had blown to smear Ioli, but there was only torch-smoke now. The beer and wine flowed as it had always done. And on this occasion of war, the wines had been spared. Next year would be a fine one for the vintage they called now Salamander. It seemed one wine merchant, at least, still loved him.

Karmiss had much to talk of, between the drinking and the kisses. The Warden had fled the island. There was a Shansarian regent from over-the-ocean. A King-Elect was found among the rubble of Suthamun’s house. Something clever was managed. The boy had been got on a Karmian woman and had coppery skin to set off his fairness. Nor was he a eunuch.

There was a Storm Lord elect in Dorthar. His mother was a Vis-Karmian. Istris toasted him on the bell-ringing carts and by the fire-scorched harbor, choosing to forget, even if they knew, he had been also Kesarh’s henchman. Gossip detailed a magnificent progress, by land and river, through Dorthar. Now the Dortharian ships lay off Tjis. The Shansarian regent had gone there and clasped hands with Rarnammon son of Raldnor. A pledge had been made to raise up Ankabek of the goddess, that the Leopard had destroyed.

That isle, they said, was held by specters. But there were specters at Istris and Ioli, too, for the festival—in fancy-dress and drunk.

The royal biremes rested a mile out from Ankabek. Their emblems were the goddess and the Dragon of Dorthar. As yet, the man who was to be Storm Lord, had not selected a personal device. From the landing of the island, they looked merely charming toys. Not that any came to see. Those who had chosen Ankabek as a refuge had long since received happier news and returned across the straits to mainland Karmiss. Only seabirds were left now. Wading in the ringed shallows, they took flight, when an oared boat ran out at them from the ocean.

Presently a pavilion went up on the beach of shale. A party of Vathcrians and Dortharians, laughing and sporting or theosophically serious, strode to investigate the twice-deserted village. One man climbed away from it. He passed into the fire-blackened groves above and was lost to sight.

They were not all finished, the trees of Ankabek. Here a twig, a branch, there a whole young sapling, was bladed with the ruby leaves of summer. And from some, the quick and the dead boughs, metal discs hung quivering and unsounding, smirched or bright, in the windless air.

The walk was of the same duration as it had always been. But coming out at the crown of the island, seeing the husk of the temple, memory itself pierced the side. Events had happened here. Now everything was gone, only the walls, the trees fighting back to bud and leaf, the scope of the sea and the sky beyond, indifferent and unassociable.

The Lowlanders burned their corpses for this very reason, to expunge each physical life, its worth already integrated by the soul, and only the soul persisting. It was hard on those who remained behind.

Rarnammon, he himself one that remained in the wake of death, saw between the phantom trees, another. He had not been assured he would discover her here. Raldanash’s mind had hinted something, of her presence, the rekindling of his flagging strength through Ankabek and through the ingenuous medium of this woman.

She was seated on the ground, clad in one of the temple robes, dusty black as the burned trees. The blood-red hair matched with the sprays of new leaves. A strange picture.

He went closer, moving silently, not wanting to alarm her. He had recognized the stance as that of meditation. At ten yards’ distance he paused. Her face was tilted slightly up into the sunlight, and her eyes were partly open. It was Ulis Anet, much as she had been. But then, too, it was Val Nardia. For a moment he missed the tore with the pearls Kesarh’s sister had always worn at court. Before his impressions sorted themselves.

Her eyes widened abruptly, and he knew she saw him. Although maybe where he stood, there were other persons, less corporeal.

“Ulis Anet Am Xarabiss,” he said carefully. “Do you remember me?”

“Rarnammon,” she said. Because she rendered him the full name as now it was, it was obvious her awareness had been heightened. Obvious, in other less decided ways. She stared at him for some time before she said, “I’m no priestess, my lord. My being here is an accident. You’ll find me rather odd. I’ve stayed alone some while. Atonement, self-examination. What do you want with me?”

“Perhaps nothing,” he said.

She came gracefully to her feet, and the light sifted through her hair, between her fingers when she spread her hands.

“When I first looked and saw you,” she said, “I saw Kesarh. The darkness—and then—Raldanash. Your eyes, do you understand? But you’re like him. Like them both.” She wept then, slowly and thoughtfully, as if without grief. He stood and watched her. In a space, she touched her palms to her cheeks and the tears and the weeping were gone. “Let me show you a marvel of the island,” she said. She moved away toward the headland, and he went after her. Her beauty, which he had never properly seen before, flowed from her like her shadow between the stems of the trees.

West of the temple, the burned groves gave way to burned oaks, and the sea spread under them, a long stretch down. Among the grasses stood a small stone Anackire, rough layman’s work. He wondered who had put it there.

Ulis Anet walked to the edge of the rock.

“It’s curious,” she said. “I never asked the spot and I might have been misled. But the sun’s westering. This is the hour when it occurs.”

“What is it?” he asked her gently. He did not think her without reason, but he was half afraid to go near her, that his arm or sleeve might brush against her, or his voice. As if she might disintegrate. Or as if some hurt would spring from proximity.

But, “There,” she said, and pointed to the deep water below.

And suddenly something dazzled, a spear of amber light starting up from the sea.

They looked at it, each of them transfixed. And then the dazzle flickered out.

“They flung the statue down from these rocks,” she said. “Anackire. Could it be some ornament. Her hair—or a jewel—”

“The Free Zakorians took Her eyes,” he said, “but one of the Leopard ships went down. The current, maybe, brought it back—”

They gazed at the water, disbelieving now that it had ever revealed anything.

After a while, he offered her the food and wine he had brought.

They sat by the oaks above the sea to share this picnic. He recollected, he thought, Kesarh and Val Nardia sitting here. There was a timelessness and a lack of urgency, but under all, the anomalous sense of change, nervous and unanswerable.

Once, a golden snake spilled through the grass. The serpents of the goddess had survived, and now the island was theirs.

The man and woman spoke, ordinarily, of extraordinary matters.

Shadows extended in bars across the ocean, on the rocks. The west flushed; the east flushed as if in reflection, anticipating the Star.

“You don’t mean to stay here,” he said. “You hadn’t made up your mind to be an acolyte or a hermitess?”

“I considered it. But you must advise me. You were one with the great web of Power. A god.”

“No,” he said.

“At least,” she said, “for a night and a day. The hem of that fire passed over the island. I’m a witness. You were a god. You tell me then, my lord, where I should direct my steps, how I should spend my life. You know he died because of me.”

“Kesarh died because of Kesarh.”

“I put my guilt and terror aside. Ankabek taught me to do that. But not how to live out the rest. Ankabek says only: Wait.”

“Come to Dorthar, then. She speaks more loudly and to greater purpose.”

“Never to me.”

The sun stepped upon the tide. The world swam in scarlet lights and shades. The Star crushed out a rose along the eastern horizon.

“Ulis,” he said, “this conversation about gods—if this were some brothel in Istris I’d cringe with shame. I’ve had what I wanted, and it was never a woman. And now this is a ruin and a rock with burned trees on it. A damnable couch. And I want you.”

Her face was wholly blank, and then the blankness dashed away in laughter.

“The Storm Lord apologizes to his handmaiden for an uncomfortable bed?”

“And for his lack of knowledge, which fails to team with his years.”

“Zastis,” she said. Her voice was very low. “It’s Zastis. And every moment of it I was alone here, until now.”

He found her mouth then, through the sinking of the sun. It was sweet and unknown country that the sunset made.

Somewhere in the hills above Koramvis, the Thaddrian watched the stars of dusk come out, and the Red Moon among them, and then the last Star of all, redder than the cookfire on the stones.

Zastis disturbed the Thaddrian, but he was used to it and to setting his body aside.

He had made the fire on the stones to add normalcy, but it did not. The lake was far off, the mountains loomed. This hilltop seemed bizarrely out of the world while being totally within the world. All around, the Amanackire, the tawny and the icy-pale, sat meditating, some through the formula of prayer.

The Thaddrian thought of the miracle they had wrought. Then stopped thinking of it. The mystery was over. He was homesick for his temple on the plain, the fat High Priest and his wine jars—and his surreptitious ladies, at this season. For the useful scrolls and cartographies, the rituals, so empty but so pretty. He was thirsty for mediocre things. He had forgotten, having grown irritable with it, his love for mankind.

“Soon,” she said.

He glanced up and saw Ashni standing across the fire.

Her smile was so lovely, so redolent of everything that did no harm yet was limitless—sky, stars, light.

“You’re going then, madam,” he said. It was rhetorical, requiring no reply, getting none.

Gradually all their eyes, even those weird pallid eyes, were coming to her.

She told them, succinctly, with no words, that now she would leave them.

None of her Lowlanders objected. They bore it, pridefully, the Chosen Race, the Children of the Gods. He felt the loneliness creep down like wolves from the mountains. Did no other feel the loneliness, too?

She’s only a girl, he thought stupidly. Fourteen, fifteen. Long, silken hair and lily skin. But her eyes found him again. She was not only a girl, at all. There had been that legend in Thaddra of a wolf child. Some mirror-image of prophecy. What could she be now?

But she was walking away, quite briskly, as she always walked—a swift and effortless glide, hair fluttering out like butterflies—something to be done. Up the hill. There was a rock there, about a hundred feet above. She went right the way to the rock, and climbed it in three steps. She seated herself on the rock, and he could see her there. They could all see her.

What would happen?

It was like a soft little rill, a child’s giggle, or a stream’s, in his brain. His personal creed had always denied that final metamorphosis. Raldnor and Astaris had ridden into the jungle on a wagon. Ashni, at some juncture of the night, would walk away among the hills, alone.

When he woke, near dawn, the rock on the hill was vacant, and the Thaddrian priest of the Dortharian Anackire comprehended that this was what she had done.

He was raking the ashes of the fire, looking for the sausage he had let be blackened there, when some strangeness made him lift his head again.

The sky was already expanding, a crystal smoked with gold in the east. Then a tiny silver sun with streaming hair was birthed out of the gold.

The Thaddrian jumped to his feet, clutching the cindery sausage in his hands, waving it at the Amanackire until they roused, some waking, some simply moving in, sleepless, across the hill.

There in the morning sky blazed the star.

In Elyr they would be whispering, murmuring in their solitary towers. They had foretold the star, the appearance, its passing away. For now, they would worship it, a sign of peace, the ray of hope.

In all Lan they would be seeing it, from their blue heights, from out of their close-wrapped valleys. The young man riding into Amlan with a ragged clatter, Yannul’s son, would look across the roofs and see it and swear, knowing others of his kindred saw it too. And Safca, in the eye of a dark tower of the Zor, like any Elyrian, would spy the star and hold out her hand, childishly to view it on her finger’s end. Raldanash, land-bereft on the sea that folded toward Vathcri, in the stern of a blue-sailed ship, would look, the outcry of the sailors lost on him. He would smile to see the star, so like a tear. All over Vis they saw it, woke and saw. On Ankabek, the man and woman, hero and heroine under the oak trees, beheld the star caught in the branches like one more disc of silver. Their bodies still locked, they turned back again to find light in each other.

The Thaddrian, having got up the hill, learned that the rock’s far side was a minor precipice from which no one could have descended save by means of wings. He loosed the sausage down it, like an offering. Ashni had stolen by all of them, then, even the sleepless Amanackire, as they snored. She was gone to be a peasant in Thaddra, or to run with wolves.

He grinned at the sky, crying with joy.

“And yet,” he said, “Ashni, you are also the Morning Star.”