City Under the Sand

III The High Consorts’ Council

As befitted his name, the Shadow King kept to the shadows, even when making a public appearance. To give him his due, Kadya decided, this appearance was only somewhat public, and the idea that Nibenay, king of the city-state that bore his name, would deign to make public appearances at all was a new one. For a thousand years, or so people said, he had stayed out of sight of his subjects, hidden away in the Naggaramakam, the Forbidden Dominion within Nibenay, where only the king’s family, his templar wives, and their slaves were admitted. No free person had ever entered the Naggaramakam—none, at least, who had ever then left it again. And Nibenay had rarely ventured forth.

But Athas was changing, faster than Nibenay found comfortable. Events in Tyr, including the death of that city’s sorcerer-king—at the hands of mortals, no less—had made those changes disturbingly apparent to all. Nibenay had realized he had to make changes of his own, in order to ensure that his own subjects didn’t decide he needed to be assassinated as well.

His plan was to remake his image into someone who was accessible, attentive to the needs and concerns of the populace. At the same time, he meant to build up Nibenay’s already powerful military to the point that anyone considering an attack from without would decide the effort was bound to be suicidal. He was, to be blunt, trying to put a more positive face on his rule … without, in fact, showing his face much at all, while pretending to show it far more than he had in the past.

And the truth was, Kadya thought—although thinking this way frightened her, since it would be no large matter for Nibenay to dip into her mind and see it—he was not the most handsome creature ever to walk Athasian soil. He was striking, in his way. And power had a kind of aphrodisiac effect on many people, making them willing to overlook his physical defects. She included herself in that category. Kadya’s parents had decided, shortly after her birth, that her life would be dedicated to the priesthood. At seven she was enrolled in a state school, run by templars, and by fourteen she was initiated into the priesthood. Shortly after her sixteenth birthday she was married to Nibenay. All of his other templars were also his wives.

Fortunately, since as time passed she found him less and less appealing, he did not summon her to the marriage chamber more than once or twice a year. She was allowed to have slave concubines of her own, to meet her needs, as his needs were met by his vast harem of templar wives.

But Kadya was a woman of ambition, and smarter than her parents had expected, or they’d have kept her back and given one of their other daughters to the cause. So she kept her thoughts to herself, gave herself to him willingly when she was so called, and in the best tradition of Nibenay’s templars, schemed to improve her standing in the hierarchy. That scheming had brought her to this place, the High Consorts’ Council, where those templars who had responsibility for the administrative temples of the government came together to hear pleas from the city’s residents and to pass judgment on issues as needed.

Today, as he did a few times during any given month, Nibenay himself attended the council. The council chamber was a long rectangular room inside the Temple of the King’s Law, with an arched roof, the low points of which seemed to droop to the floor as a series of columns. Torches flickered on each of the columns, but there was a corner, near the back of the room, where those torches had been extinguished. That’s where her king stayed, letting the darkness conceal himself. The golden crown atop his head caught the light from more distant torches and refracted it into the shadowed corner.

The high consorts, the five templars representing the five governing temples, sat in chairs of equal size, arrayed in a half-circle facing the long end of the room. The beseechers sat or knelt on a floor of cool tiles before them, and most knew better than to address the Shadow King directly. The audience, made up of lesser templars like Kadya, sat on the floor around the room’s walls or against its many columns.

“Can I be expected to run my business if his thuggish friends keep running drunkenly down the lane and knocking down my stall every night?” a merchant was complaining. Kadya realized her mind had drifted. One petty dispute after another wore on her. “There are nights I think it’s a contest—see how many minutes after Rahede gets his stall set up one of them can slam into the posts and guylines and bring it all down again!”

“Your stall is in the Western District, yes?” High Consort Kahalya asked. The matter was no real concern of hers, as she was the templar overseeing the Temple of the House—unless she was looking for a way to increase this poor merchant’s taxes, which was always a possibility.

“Yes, on the Lane of Seven Beggars,” the merchant said. He had a plump face, a round belly, and sweat streamed from beneath the checked krama wrapped about his head.

High Consort Rejan spoke up. This problem really fell under her bailiwick, the Temple of Trade. Like the other high consorts, she was entirely naked. “Then you can hardly expect not to encounter a … shall we say, a rugged element, can you?”

“I’m prepared for rugged, High Consort,” Rahede said. “It’s deliberately destructive I have a problem with. Short of killing my neighbor, I see no other way out of this. And if I killed him, I would miss the breads and rolls his bakery provides.”

“You could move,” Kahalya suggested. “Perhaps space could be found for your stall in the Palm Marketplace. Of course, a tax would have to be levied accordingly.”

“Isn’t there some way he can be reasoned with? Or threatened?” Rahede pleaded. “Or just told to keep his thug friends from visiting when they’re drunk?”

Nibenay cleared his throat, back in his gloomy corner. “Merchant, it seems to me you have two choices available to you. No, three. One, you kill the baker. Perhaps we don’t remember you threatening to do so in our very presence, and perhaps the Temple of the King’s Law doesn’t choose to pursue justice for the dead.”

High Consort Djena’s chuckle was a singularly unpleasant sound. She was their host for this forum, as the templar in charge of the Temple of the King’s Law, hers was position second only to the Shadow King himself. The temple controlled crime, punishment, the enforcement of laws, and all the dungeons and slave pits with which those who broke the laws might find themselves intimately familiar. But Nibenay had undercut his own system by installing a fierce young protégé, the fifteen year old psionic prodigy Siemhouk, as high consort over the Temple of Thought, and Siemhouk answered to none but the Shadow King.

“Yes,” Djena said after her chuckle had sent a shiver running through the poor, fat merchant. “Perhaps I would forget those things. If you’d care to find out how sievelike my memory is …”

“Choice two,” Nibenay picked up again. His voice gurgled like water trickling though pebbles. “You could move your stall elsewhere. Cliff side might be a better fit for you than the Western District. Palm Court, even, if you could afford to lease a space in either place. As Kahalya points out, the taxes would be higher than where you are now, but with a corresponding improvement in security as well.”

“Yes,” Rahede said, forgetting the rule about addressing Nibenay directly. “Perhaps …”

“Or choice three,” the Shadow King interrupted, a sharper edge to his voice than before. “You could pack your—what is it, ceramic bowls, cups and jugs and get out of my city before the sun rises again. I’m certain there are others who deal in similar objects, so that none of my fair subjects would go wanting for a new bowl or mug.”

“Make your decision,” Djena suggested. “Make it now.”

Rahede looked at the naked women before him, sitting straight in their high-backed chairs while he crouched uncomfortably on the floor. From Siemhouk, barely fifteen, to Djena of a certain age, they showed a variety of body types and facial expressions. None, Kadya noted, looked particularly sympathetic, but if he were to throw himself on the mercy of one she thought it would be the mul Bamandji, High Consort of War, who was so unconcerned with these sorts of squabbles that she hadn’t said anything for the last hour. Kadya wasn’t certain she was still awake, although her eyes were open and the beginnings of a smile played about her lips.

Siemhouk hadn’t spoken, either, but the look on her face could not, under any circumstances, be confused for a sympathetic one. She looked like she might order the merchant put to death for boring her.

It had happened before.

“I … perhaps I’ll just talk to the baker again,” Rahede said. “Try to work things out. And if we can’t, then … then I’ll move. Someplace.”

“That would be best,” Rejan said. “I know that baker. If a worthy sacrifice were to be made at the Temple of Trade, I might even find time to have a word with him myself.”

“That would … I will make sure such a sacrifice is offered,” Rahede said. He backed out of the room on hands and knees, thanking the high consorts profusely as he went. That was not only unnecessary, but a more confident approach probably would have better served his case. He couldn’t know that, though. Kadya guessed he would either make a spectacular offering at the Temple of Trade, or morning would find him dead or enslaved.

“Will there be any more appeals today?” Djena asked. Hers was the position Kadya wanted. She had been placing herself before Nibenay more and more, allowing him to see that she was intelligent and capable. Her current position was under Siemhouk, helping to organize the city-state’s schools and the special training for templars and other agents of the king.

“No more for today,” Saulindas said. She was a young templar, muscular and high-breasted, wearing a bright blue sarong and leather sandals. She started to close the door to the Council chamber, but then stopped with a gasp.

“One more,” a gravelly voice from outside declared. “The Shadow King will see me.”

Every eye in the room was fixed on the doorway when he came through. He was covered in sand and dust and filth, as if he had just rolled to Nibenay all the way from Urik. His head flopped around his right shoulder as he limped into the chamber. Something had chewed on his legs during whatever journey he had made; bone showed through the holes there as well as the gap where his neck should have been. He had the look of a soldier about him, with a hard, worn muscularity, his limbs and torso crisscrossed with scars old and new—but he was obviously undead, and just as obviously had been so for some time.

“And who might you be?” Nibenay demanded.

“My name is Shen’ti,” the dead man said. “Not that it matters. I was, of late, a mercenary in the employ of House Faylon. It was in this service that I made the discovery I’ve come all this way to reveal to you now.”

“What discovery is that?” the Shadow King asked.

“A city, buried under the desert sand for years beyond measure. This city is called Akrankhot.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Rejan uttered. Then, at a sharp glance from both Nibenay and Siemhouk, she covered her mouth with her fist and looked at the floor.

“This city,” the mercenary repeated, “is called Akrankhot. It was, I believe, a place of considerable importance during Athas’s past. It was uncovered by a violent storm, and my companions and I, separated by that storm from our caravan, happened upon it.”

“And why do you think this would be of interest to me?” Nibenay wanted to know.

“Because beneath Akrankhot, your eminence, is a trove of metals that I believe to be greater than all the metals currently known to exist on all of Athas.”

“You know this because?”

“I saw it.”

“I mean, how much metal is known to exist on Athas.”

If a dead man with his head mostly detached could be said to look sheepish, this one did. Kadya noted that Siemhouk was sitting forward in her chair, her eyes narrowed, hands gripping her dimpled kneecaps. Kadya recognized the look—the young princess was the Way to psionically probe the dead man’s mind.

“Speculation, my lord, that’s all.”

“It’s a big city, this Akrankhot?”

“Huge. Not the equal of Nibenay, of course, in beauty. But expansive.”

Siemhouk leaned forward a little more. She was a beautiful girl with bright, alert blue eyes, straight and lush black hair, and a complexion much darker than most Nibenese. Her slim figure was just beginning to blossom with the curves of the woman she would become.

Whatever she was seeing in the mercenary, it fascinated her. Kadya would have to try to find out more, later on.

“The point is, you’re saying, there’s a lot of metal in this city.”

“More than I could have dreamed,” the mercenary said. “This is why I had to come, to tell you of our discovery, no matter the cost.”

“It appears,” Nibenay said with a grim, throaty chuckle, “that the cost was great indeed.”

The dead man took a scroll from his belt. “I brought a map,” he said.

Siemhouk jerked back in her chair as if she’d been slapped. Her eyes were wide, her full lips parted, and she was breathing heavily. “I’ll take it,” she said. She rose from the chair, Kadya believed to disguise her reaction to whatever she had found in the dead man’s mind. Ordinarily Siemhouk would have made a visitor walk to her to place something in her hand, or directed one of her retinue—Kadya, perhaps—to fetch it for her. The fact that she went to the mercenary was almost as curious as her startled reaction had been.

When she had the scroll clutched in her hand, Siemhouk turned away from Shen’ti. He made a rasping noise, took a half step after her, and then collapsed onto the tiles. Siemhouk whirled around, then jumped away from his grasping, clawing hands. The mercenary rattled and kicked and seemed to shrink, and then Kadya realized he was shrinking, literally, his flesh tightening on his bones, drying out, decomposing right there before them. White showed through skin that turned to flakes, then powder, with a crinkling noise. A stink filled the chamber, reminding Kadya of the time she had gone into a small house in the Hill district where seven people had been murdered, their bodies undisturbed for most of a month.

Whatever magic had been keeping the man upright and mobile during the time since he had left Akrankhot on this mission had fled him when he delivered the map to Siemhouk. That time—weeks, perhaps—had caught up to him.

Templars were crying out, one or two weeping openly, and others laughing at the spectacle. Siemhouk turned her back on the dead man, carried the scroll to Nibenay and put it in his pudgy, thick-fingered hand. Then she sat down again, as if waiting for some other supplicant to come before the high consorts, while Shen’ti’s body finished its rapid deterioration not five paces away.

What, Kadya wondered, did she see in his head? And what was it that made her pull out so abruptly?

Trying to pry loose information Siemhouk didn’t want to share could be a difficult and dangerous task. But Kadya was afraid curiosity itself would kill her if she didn’t at least make an attempt.

“If what our friend Shen’ti said is true—” Nibenay began.

Siemhouk cut him off. “It’s true.”

“—then it’s imperative that we launch an expedition to this place, Akrankhot, immediately. We need to find that trove before anyone else does. That much metal could be employed in the construction of weaponry and armor that would make our already formidable army into the strongest our world has ever known. We would be unbeatable.”

“I agree, Father,” Siemhouk said. She rarely called him that—only when she’s after something, Kadya thought. What is it this time?

Nibenay ignored his daughter. “And if he’s right about the city’s size, then whatever he saw might have only been a small part of what is really there.”

“But how do we ascertain that, my liege?” Kahalya asked. “Tear up every building in the ruin? Dig up the very earth beneath them? It could take years to find it all.”

“It could,” Nibenay admitted. He considered the problem for several minutes, during which nobody spoke. “But if we could send someone on this expedition who could dowse the location of the metal, much like a water witch would find a well, then that person might be able to easily locate what it would take an army years to unearth.”

“Do we know someone like that?”

“I know of someone,” the Shadow King said. His yellow eyes had taken on a peculiar orange cast. “I do indeed …”

After the Council session ended, Kadya accompanied Siemhouk and her sister templars back to the Temple of Thought. Crowds parted for them on the street, most looking away from the nude girl and the nearly naked women accompanying her, all of them recognizing the Shadow King’s templar wives.

At the temple, Siemhouk didn’t dismiss them, but instead took them into a private chamber where she performed the business of state. The floor was covered with silken pillows, some piled up in corners. The walls were draped with silks in bright colors, interlaced with golden threads. Candles in hanging, windowed holders were kept lit, imparting the room with soft light and the smell of burning spices.

Siemhouk flopped down on her usual mound of pillows. For just an instant, she looked like the young girl she was rather than the jaded, experienced woman she presented herself as. That impression was fleeting, though, and in a moment her youthful face was overtaken by a bored expression. She appeared older, but less alive.

“We need to take advantage of this,” Siemhouk began.

Kadya had been thinking the same thing. Not for Siemhouk’s sake, though, but for her own.

“Why?” The questioner was the young templar named Saulindas, barely three years older than Siemhouk. Kadya’s responsibilities included overseeing the facilities of the various state schools, making sure the buildings were properly equipped, cleaned, and staffed. Saulindas reported to her, and so far the only thing Kadya had entrusted her with was managing the slaves who swept floors and dusted for cobwebs.

“Because that much metal, as my father said, could make a huge difference in our defenses,” Siemhouk explained. “Such an expedition will be a complex undertaking, requiring careful planning and organization. Whoever is put in charge of this expedition—and brings back the metal—will have a say in how it’s used. The wealth and power that metal represents will play to the advantage of that person.”

“I see,” Saulindas said, in a way that made clear that she didn’t.

“And I intend to be that person,” Siemhouk added.

“As you should be, High Consort,” Kadya said. The Naggaramakam, and the city’s various temples, were a continuous hotbed of intrigue, every seasoned templar vying for advantage over the others. The one Kadya had her eye on was Djena. Siemhouk didn’t have to answer to the High Consort of the King’s Law, but everyone else did. And Siemhouk had almost unlimited power because she had her father’s ear, and his trust. But if Siemhouk and one of her chief allies controlled the Temples of the King’s Law and of Thought, then Siemhouk’s sway over Nibenese events would be almost total.

And Kadya, of course, would no longer live in Siemhouk’s shadow. She would have all the power and authority of a high consort—the templar who, according to Nibenay’s plan, was meant to be the ultimate authority, and would be again if anything ever happened to Siemhouk.

Not that Kadya wanted to see that happen, of course.

But Siemhouk was right. This discovery, if it was as the dead man had described, could change the course of history.

Whoever controlled the metal, and brought it to Nibenay, would be a most important individual in the coming days and years and centuries of the Shadow King’s rule.

Siemhouk graced Kadya with an entirely inauthentic smile. Kadya returned the empty gesture. Kadya was skilled at defending her own mind, and she would know if Siemhouk tried to get inside her. She would have time to blank it out, to think about her genuine love for her young sister-wife.

Until that happened, she intended to keep scheming.