Shadow of the Warmaster

IX

1. 8 months std. after Adelaar aici Arash hired Swardheld Quale and his crew. Aslan as fugitive, living at the Mines.

The flarescreen spread across the wall inside the old smelter. Most of the smelter’s machinery had been salvaged for scrap when the mine shut down; the building itself was in fair shape, its brick walls were massive, its tiled concrete roof cracked but otherwise intact. A year ago, when Parnalee’s Spectacles had first appeared and were beginning to attract a considerable audience, some of the middlers among the Hordar exiles had plastered the walls and ceiling inside and pasted yosstarp over the plaster to make the huge room lightproof, others had picked up a comset in the course of a raid on a Raz strongroom and installed it here with a sunlight pickup and storage cells as its power source. The floor was littered with cushions and mats left here permanently because the Smelter had become one of the favored meeting places for the younger exiles, a combination Tavern and Dance Floor and ShowCenter; the greater part of the rebels and the outcasts were late middlers and young adults, fourteen through thirty-five, Hordar at their most energetic and prideful, male and female in nearly equal numbers; they came from every part of settled Tairanna, from the Duzzulkas, from the Sea Farms, from the east coast, west coast, south coast Littorals, even some up from Guneywhiyk the South Continent; desperate enough to chase a whisper; life on Guneywhiyk was even more constricted than it was here in the North.

Three days after Elmas Ofka took her isyas to raid the Palace, Aslan strolled into the Smelter and settled on a cushion in one of the corners, apart from the others. Like most of the escaped slaves she lived in amiable contiguity with the rebel Hordar, but this tolerance was a policy based on the needs of the rebels, not real acceptance; she had to be careful to avoid triggering the xenophobe that lay not so far beneath every Hordar skin. It was dark out, supper was over and the cleanup finished; this was the hour when Hordar in the cities went to the Dance Floors or into the Taverns, when parties began and lovers jumped the walls to meet in delicious secrecy. It was the eve of Gun Peygam, the Day of the Prophet, the one day in seven the Kuzeywhiyker Pradites set aside for rest and meditation. The eve of Gun Peygam was the day Parnalee chose for his weekly broadcasts.

Aslan twisted open the flask of tea she’d brought, filled the lidcup and sat with her back against the wall, sipping tea and watching the screen as the warning eye appeared, then dissolved into a play of color. The rebels were drifting in, exchanging scrip for drinks and food from the bar at one side, wandering about until they found a group they felt like joining or an empty mat where they could make their own group. Because they came from different places there were frictions, lots of frictions, clawfights and fist fights, hurt feelings and hurt bodies, but their joint hatred of the Huvved helped smooth down the worst lumps and gradually these Hordar from everywhere were beginning to think of themselves as Tairannin rather than Incers or Brindarin or whatever. At the request of the Council that was attempting to govern this patchwork settlement, Aslan had devised several strategies for diffusing hostility; these seemed to be working well enough to keep the ever-increasing population at the Mines from flying into fragments.

The color flow took on shape and definition, changing into a swirl of male and female dancers filling the screen with explosive movement timed to a music more guessed at than heard. Parnalee was using her data here as he would later on, as he did in every show, ignoring the distortions she’d tried to introduce, perhaps they were canceled out by what Churri brought him, it didn’t matter, it’d taken her less than a month to recognize the futility of her attempts to buy moral absolution without giving up her comfortable life, without facing and accepting the danger implicit in challenging the dominance of the Huvved; having recognized that weaselthink, she went missing from gul Inci when Tra Yarta sent her spying there. Her data, yes. It told him that Tairannin never settled immediately to anything other than work, they circled, approached and shied away, as if they were sniffing at each other and the air around them, as if they had to get the feel of place and people before they could settle to enjoying themselves; he was programming spectacular dance sequences at the beginning of each show so he could snag the eye and draw in the peripatetic viewer before the serious business of drama began.

Churri showed up at the Mines about six months after she went down the slide. One day in early spring when rain was turning the world to mud and the honeycomb inside the mountain was sweating and dank, he came strolling into the stubby shaft where she and Xalloor were living, grinned at her and went out again. He usually joined them at the Smelter when Parnalee’s Spectacles were on, watching the shows with a contagious glee as he ran a whispered commentary on the strings the Proggerdi was pulling. He wasn’t here now, he and Xalloor and her group were having a prolonged argument over their latest script, that’s what the note said that Xalloor sent round to her before dinner. If they managed to work things out before the Spectacle was over, they’d join her. She wasn’t expecting them. Conflict was foreplay for the Bard her father, probably that was what attracted him to her mother, Adelaar’s fierce and instant attack on anything that tried to control her. He’d quickly lost interest in Aslan; his daughter wasn’t the kind of woman he admired and there were no shared memories of her childhood to reinforce the bio-tie; the accidental fact of their relationship went back to being a thing of no importance to either. At least, that was the face she put on for him. She was too experienced an observer to place any pressure on the fragile bond that still existed between them, but his indifference hurt her badly. There were times she woke before dawn and lay on the crude pallet unable to sleep, caught in what she called the deadash grays, asking why she kept on living and finding no answer.

The dancers melted again to streamers of light that wove a garland about a small dark man holding a stringed instrument like a cross between a lute and a lyre. The rebels greeted his appearance with whistles and thumbsnapping, his name went skittering about the Smelter like the game ball at an ogatarka match, Murrebai, Murrebai, Murrebai, then the room stilled to a silence so intense it seemed nobody breathed as he began to play a simple plaintive^, tune; he finished the tune and began repeating it but somewhere in the middle his agile fingers and his agile brain took hold of it and twisted it up down around… and brought it back to a simplicity no longer naive, having passed through complexity as through fire and come out stripped clean and immensely strong. He allowed them no time to recover but began a cheerful old child song. The rebels sang with him, holding on to each other, many of them crying silently as they sang.

Parnalee, ah, Parnalee… What a job he’d done for Tra Yarta. When he got here, there was no such thing as an entertainment network; on the coast the Hordar thought in terms of family and city, up in the Duzzulkas family and estate; they didn’t care what happened outside the communal walls. The Huvveds arrived with other ideas, but in the three centuries they’d been here, a lot of Hordar concepts had crept into their worldview; most of them had Hordar mothers though Huvved boys were removed from female influence as soon as they could walk. Merchants talked to each other and the Seches kept in touch, but no one thought of using the universal comweb to deliver entertainment into the homes, not before Parnalee arrived.

Murrebai bowed and strolled offstage. As if he pulled it after him on invisible strings, a title scrolled across the screen in carefully brushed calligraphy: The Calling of the Prophet.

There was a murmur of approbation from the rebels, then they settled back in pleasurable anticipation.

The sonorous voice of an unseen speaker rose above solemn, portentous music, naming the actors, setting the time and place of the events to be portrayed.

Aslan hid her smile behind the lidcup, missing Churri and his pungent commentary; she doubted whether anyone else in that room understood how much Parnalee was dumping on them, mocking their sacred cows. There seemed to be few skeptics on Tairanna when it came to the life and teachings of their Prophet; the Eftakites from Guneywhiyk believed with equal fervor in Pradix, they simply had a later gloss on his teachings from their Prophet, Eftakes. She had a fair idea of what would happen to their comfortable, comforting certainties when the Universe outside began crowding in on them; she found it rather sad.

There was a concerted gasp from the audience, wordless cries of outrage. What’s he done now? she thought and frowned at the screen. As soon as she realized what she was seeing, she felt like gasping too. The actor playing the Young Pradix in his Violent Revolutionary phase was a Huvved. Or so it seemed. My god, she thought, he’s gone too far this time.

In a minute though, when she saw several of the Councilors pushing through the disturbance, she knew he’d judged these people to a hair; he knew what he was doing, that twisted crazy monster. He knew.

Councilor Belirmen Indiz slapped hands against hips and roared down the mutters and shouts, “Use your head, not your gut. You make me ashamed to call myself a rebel. You heard that cast list. Any Huvved patronymics on it? Eh? Any? That boy up there, sure he looks Huvved, but no Huvved has given him a name. Eh? He’s got no name but one he makes for himself. You, know how he got that face. Some Fehdaz got him on a servant girl and booted them both out when her time was on her. You think her family did better for him? Eh? What about when he was old enough to show his father’s face? Think about that. I see Huvved hair out there, light eyes, Huvved ears and noses. What was your life like, you with those marks on you? Eh? Think about it. You’re here, where would you be if your soul’s stains laid his load on you? Honor that middler up there for his pride and his skill, and curse the father, not the son.” He stalked back to his seat, folded his arms across his chest and sat massively upright, daring anyone to answer his argument.

Parnalee, ah, Parnalee. I wonder how many Houses are listening to a speech like that? You don’t need me or Churri either, you despise the men you manipulate but you understand them in some deep sadistic way better than I ever will, however much I probe and study. I think I am a little jealous of you. I know I am afraid of you…

When he came out of his room after the beating, he came like a storm. He raged through the house, tearing up whatever he could get his terrible hands around, he kicked holes in the walls, trampled computers into twisted wrecks. He was crazier than a tantserbok driven mad by must; wholly out of control. With his strength and mass and his rage he’d just about frightened the stiffening from her bones. Then, abruptly, standing in the center of the shattered common room he went still, quiet; between one breath and the next he stopped his rampage, turned and walked back into his room. Quietly, with terrible control, he shut the door. A day passed.

The second time he emerged, the beast had vanished though Aslan thought she saw it looking at her now and then; she saw it surface and sink again when, hesitating and afraid, she told him of the Warmaster and what it meant to them.

The Smelter was quiet again. Looking around her, Aslan could see eyes flicking from side to side. Looking for those Huvved marks, she thought, hoping no one would see Huvved blood in them. On the screen a battle was over, the two commanders were standing face to face, meeting each other as equals, warrior to warrior. Parnalee had dug up more Huvved bastards to play the empire soldiers and there was a tense silence in the room as the two men confronted each other; the Empire’s Captain accepted his death at Pradix’s hands, taking the sword thrust with a stiff nobility that made Aslan hide another smile behind her hand.

Parnalee was playing all the themes that Tra Yarta had asked from him, but he was putting a spin on them that undercut the Huvved; he was playing to species memory and the depths of Hordar pride, deflecting their present angers only to intensity them, laying a clutch of bombs for the future. Future? As close as tomorrow, maybe. Despite Aslan’s training, Churri was aware of what the Proggerdi was doing before she was; she was too tangled in guilt to use her brain, but once he pointed out what was happening it was obvious to her. Parnalee was seeding in the general population the same change that was taking place in the rebels, teaching the Hordar indirectly but effectively that they belonged to Tairanna and had a common enemy no matter where they lived; he was making possible the final overthrow of the Huvved once the rebels solved the problem of the Warmaster, but that wasn’t what he wanted, oh no, what he wanted was Huvved dead and he didn’t care what it took. He teased at the Hordar by slyly putting down the Huvved, so slyly he couldn’t be pinned on it, but every Hordar who saw the Spectacles knew what he was getting at and felt the pride and saw the possibility. Aslan watched and was afraid; she thought of warning the Council, but doubted they’d believe her or understand what she was saying. The best there is, he told Xalloor once, and perhaps he was, but he was also crazy and men were going to die of that insanity. And she saw no way of stopping it.

On the screen Pradix was driving himself and his men into building a funeral pyre for the enemy; one by one his men began slipping away from him, showing by their glances and their gestures that they thought he had cracked his head on something and let his wits run out. Before long he was alone, sweating and struggling with the trees his men felled and left laying. Parnalee cut repeatedly from the madman working on that crazy magnificent pyre to shots of Empire soldiers flying toward the bloody ground, bent on avenging the death of their brothers.

Xalloor slipped in and crept as quietly as she could to join Aslan. She dropped on the floor beside the cushion, wrapped her arms about her legs and watched the play unfold with a curious double vision. One part of her saw it critically, judged the skill or lack of it in every aspect, recognized the tricks and the cynical manipulations, the lapses in taste and logic; the other part was entranced by what was there, that part plunged into the play until she was drowning in it, surrendering like a child to sensation and emotion. How those two parts could exist in Xalloor simultaneously and separately without destroying each other was something Aslan had never been able to understand in all the time they’d been together, something Xalloor had tried more than once to explain and failed each time.

As Pradix lit the pyre and flames leaped upward, the needlenosed fliers of the avenging soldiers were visible on the horizon, black specks growing larger by the moment. Suddenly the sky darkened, turned an eerie ominous greenish purple as clouds swept in from every side. A funnel formed behind the fliers, caught up with them, beat them from the air like a maidservant killing gnats and raced on toward Pradix and the pyre. Closer and closer it came until its blackened vortex filled most of the screen with Pradix a tiny figure kneeling on the torn and trampled glass. Then it was gone; the broken world it left behind was quiet except for the vigorous crackling of the funeral fire. The small figure of the kneeling man was there still, untouched, shining in the dimness of the coming storm as if lit by another fire, one that burned inside him. A bird sang. The sweetness of its song was almost unbearable.

There was an explosive sigh as if every lung in the Smelter empties itself at the same moment. Otherwise the silence was unbroken.

Parnalee, you’ve the Luck of the crazy cradling you, Aslan thought, I can’t believe Tra Yarta passed this one. Was he suckered by the casting of that boy with his Huvved face and form? She rubbed at her nose, gulped down the tea left in the cup; it was cold, but the small bitterness was a satisfying counter to the fantasy on the screen. A headache began at the back of her skull; she rubbed at her nape, closed her eyes. How long does this go on? she thought. Where’s Churri? She slitted an eye and sneaked a look at Xalloor. Have you two decided to split? The dancer looked placid as a sleeping lizard, but that didn’t mean much, she was sunk in the Spectacle and nothing else mattered.

Somehow Pradix had changed from a fighter to a poet, she’d missed the transition while she was fussing, but wasn’t much bothered by that. He wasn’t the Prophet yet, but he was getting close. He’d acquired three men with assorted instruments and a rough cart with straw sticking out all over, pulled along by a team of yunks painted battleship gray with vertical black stripes. Since Parnalee had thrown in tarmac highways kept in top condition and a swarm of small black vehicles rushing along them at near supersonic speeds, not to mention the vast assortment of fliers that passed by overhead, the reason for that cart with its two-yunk propulsion system escaped her. She poured some more tea; she needed a touch of reality or she’d start giggling and get herself lynched from the looks on the faces around her.

He was going from village to village, mixing sedition with preaching, poetry with politics, escaping again and again just before soldiers landed on the town, building toward a finale that got the rebels on their feet, shouting out the words to the poem he was chanting in the ancient worker’s vag that was the basis for the Hordar they all spoke today; apparently it was a poem everyone here knew, probably one of those she’d sent Churri hunting way back in that other life, the kind no Huvved ever heard. Reluctantly she got to her feet with the rest, but she refused to chant with them.

Pradix the poet stood on the cart’s bed, straw about his feet, music on three sides, Yesil Uranyi perched on the front, drums going tam tam tummm toom, Saadi Klemm on his left, twee twee tootle too ooh, wandering flute, and on his right, scree ooh wee, singee singee, the fiddling man Nanno Inallet. Pradix the not yet Prophet stood in the cart and chanted his vagger song.

year ya year ya year ya ya

fear ya hear ya fear

shake ya shiver

terror fever

same old song, same old

sad song

same old sad

song

some men get old

some women cold

old ya cold ya