The Stone's Assent
The Street of Silk was still beautiful, despite everything. The diaphanous veils that marked the entrance to the buildings seemed to shimmer with the smoke-tinged light of sunset. Here a pale green not seen in nature, or lilac, or robin’s egg blue. He knew some, but not all, of the pleasures contained within. Blue veils were for elegant kalis parlors, yellow for games of chance, and red veils were for sex. He had indulged, of course, but only with the detached interest of the scholar.
The streets were not simply packed; they were riotous. A crowd of men in masks edged with silver and red, the local equivalents of sub-tarkans or vatakasai by their dress, spilled into the street, laughing and shouting. One last debauch before the storm. But it wasn’t just the soldiers: The singing, drinking, and gambling that normally stayed behind the gauzy walls had completely overflown into open sight. Social barriers had broken down, and slaves were cavorting with freedmen. Such are the wages of chaos.
Further along the road he heard prayers, and saw men in the robes of the Patriarch’s servants leading impromptu processions to sanctify the circuit of the walls. “Bless our Prince Among Princes, Avatar of Opporia…Bless the Star of Light, may it pierce the servants of Istria…Bless his tarkanai, may their swords cut off their treacherous ears…Bless…” He smiled wryly. So they preferred Prince Among Princes to High Prince these days. The Star’s power was clearly on the wane, then. The procession was composed of high-ranking slaves, functionaries and craftspeople that belonged to noble and princely houses. They were the ones with genuine faith, not the crypto-Ardavani sympathies of the nobles. And faith in the system as well, Axilias knew. They stood to lose more than anyone else if Hiuttu fell. To the upper echelon of slaves, freedom would be loss of patronage and livelihood, destitution and ruin.
He had seen scenes like these before in Sacossa, just before it fell to the Western Redeemer. Panic in all its flavors. But order here had not yet fully collapsed; the local leadership was competent, even if the Redeemer was not. He would take the measure of this new Prince and all his trappings. And, if he got what he wanted…
The burning had begun hours before. It was the dockside quarter, where the local elites with ties to the rebels had lived. Redeemer Kartis, or the consortium of princes that had now taken control of the war away from him, had begun the purge. Wealthy but low-blooded freedmen, or those tainted by association. He could not imagine what was transpiring further down the Valley, only that there it would be far worse.
He halted before one edifice, wreathed in swirls of brilliant white silk. The portal here was guarded, by two men with ornamentally curved spears that would nonetheless disembowel him quite effectively.
“Confessor, your presence is awaited,” said the one on the right.
“I am glad my message arrived safely with your master,” said Axilias-ta-Alma.
“Yes,” he replied simply enough to be insolent, and the soldiers uncrossed their spears and opened the door.
Axilias only had the opportunity to hesitate and narrow his eyes before the blindfold went over them.
He was forced to his knees, and disoriented. “Now we shall see how sweetly the trained northern bird can sing,” said his newfound captor’s voice, in Hu’uti.
“At least my cage is not on fire,” he replied, and was clubbed on the head for his pains. He considered this a prudent time to sleep, or perhaps that was the blow…
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When they removed the blindfold, he was in a small, shallow-keeled boat. Night had come. The smoking warren of Hiuttu was behind them, as their craft glided smoothly towards the south bank of the Had. There in the distance sprawled the palace of the Prince of Stone, built in the Kothari style. Something of the terraces missed its mountainous home, Axilias thought, but he admired how they had dug a canal from the river into the palace itself, so that they disembarked from the boat in a shining, tiled hall. Lest the feet of a Prince of the Kothari ever be soiled by the dirt, he observed. Society was more clearly regimented here, the culture more developed – he had even seen the tragic lay Nekelia acted out on a public stage.
But in their wealth and their decadence, this Exatai had grown weak, especially the princes. Iralliam had clearly diminished the martial culture, he suspected. There were lessons to be found here…but of course, that was why he was here. To find them. He noticed that they had been proceeding through a series of open air water-courtyards; the old Satar emphasis on water had been massively amplified due to the arid surroundings, but he noticed stranger things that could only be found in the greatest of the Nuccia and in the Sephashim itself – devices. He saw water wheels and complicated fountains. This Prince of Stone was exactly what he had hoped to find.
He had the body of a young man, but the voice that came from the mask was old. He was laid out on a divan, facing the cool darkness of the river, as two functionaries with fans blew smoky incense over an exposed leg wound, softly chanting prayers as they did. They were surrounded by the soft lapping of the Had, and the occasional hunting cry of the black heron. There was no moon. “You are considered great among the Accans, are you not?” came the voice. He spoke an extremely old and refined form of Satar that Axilias had almost never heard in Atracta. Weariness was the first note, but there were hints of curiosity as well, and less arrogance than he expected.
“I trot small pastures, Prince Veshkalon, while you canter great fields.” The old-style Satar had been a test, to see if he was the true Axilias-ta-Alma. He responded with the ancient Atractid saying to prove that he understood the test and was capable of passing it.
Veshkalon tilted his head slowly to the left, something that tended to denote pleased acceptance in mask culture, the angle indicating no undertones of deference or command.
“I wish that the times would have permitted you a more fitting welcome, Confessor of the Sephashim.”
“Perhaps, though strange times might make strange allies.”
Veshkalon laughed a harsh and cynical laugh. “How close lay the deepest bonds of affection to the coils of enmity! They are as two rivers from the same spring.”
“Talan the Elder. Well spoken.”
“I take it you speak for this Tephras?”
“Just as you are Redeemer Kartis’ trusted interlocutor.”
A pregnant silence, and then they both started to chuckle heartily.
“Tell me what Redemptrix Zelarri wants, then,” he said, still laughing.
“I was impressed,” digressed Axilias, “when your men did not take from me what I had carried here. Surely they searched me and saw it. It was that to which she told me to attend before making her offer: The honesty and efficacy of your men.”
Vashkelon lowered his head in pride. He was silent for some time.
“I was content to serve and honor.”
“But no longer.”
“No.”
Axilias-ta-Alma removed from his robe the bag of amethysts, the finest take from a whole year’s production of the Rahevat mines. The jewels within chinked softly as he placed it next to the Prince of Stone. “The Redeemer of the North grants his blessings to this effort by the new Redeemer of the South. May his challenge show his exatas, and turn the fortunes of this war.”
“I think she overreaches, your Redemptrix. But her reach shall not exceed my grasp.” He stood, blood from his leg wound flowing downwards. “But why you, Confessor? A tarkan would have sufficed to carry this bribe.”
Axilias smiled. “This was at my request, in fact. The completed Lays of Atraxes have been lost in the south, have they not? I believe you are wont to recover them…descended as you are, matrilineally, from his line.”
Veshkelon strode forward until their masks almost touched. “Yes,” he said coldly.
“I have memorized them in their entirety. And I will transcribe them for you, in return for the works of Ictevis on hydraulic motion, and the newer astronomical codices from Athas.”
He grunted assent. “Do you know what they say in the Had about an Accan bargain?”
Axilias chuckled, stroking his beard. “Count your children.”
