Ships from the West

Eleven

Aurungzeb stirred lazily with a kiss of silk hissing about his hams. ‘I like that woman. I have always liked her. As direct as a man, but with a mind as subtle as an assassin's.'

He rolled over in the bed and the sturdy hardwood frame creaked under him. The white-limbed girl who shared it with him scurried nimbly out of the way as his vast bulk settled and he sighed comfortably.

Ancient Akran, the vizier, leant on a staff that had once been ceremonial but now was genuinely necessary. He stood on the other side of a curtain of gauzy silk which hung like fog around the Sultan's monumental four-poster.

'She is . . . remarkable, my Sultan, it must be said. Making arrangements for her husband's wedding while she, his wife, is yet living. That argues a formidable degree of will.'

'He will accept, of course. But I find myself worrying all the same. Perhaps we sent out the embassy too soon. I am not convinced that he will see past the unseemly haste of the thing. Corfe is as cold and murderous as a winter wolf, but there is a stiff propriety about him. These Ramusians – well, they are not Ramusian any longer, I suppose, but our brothers-in-faith after all – they see marriage in a different light to the rest of us. The Prophet, may God be good to him, never said that a man should have one spouse only, and for a monarch, well . . . How can a man maintain his dignity with just the one wife? How can he be wholly sure of a son to follow him? Torunna's Queen may be a marvellous woman in many respects, but that did not stop her womb from proving as barren as a salted field. Or near as damn it. One child in sixteen years, and a girl at that. And the bearing of it rendered her a virtual invalid by all accounts. If he has any red blood in his veins at all, Corfe ought to jump at this chance. A beautiful young woman to share his bed and bear him sons? And she is beautiful, Akran. As fair as her mother once was.

'No, unseemly haste or not, Torunna's Queen and myself are of the one mind on this matter. And the fruit of this new union will be my grandchild. Think of that, Akran! My grandson on the throne of Torunna!'

Akran bowed, straightening with the aid of his staff and stifling a groan. 'And what of this other union, sire? The Prince Nasir is impatient to know more of his intended bride.'

Aurungzeb's grin faded into the bristling darkness of his beard. He levered himself into a sitting position, helped by the nude girl beside him, and while she leant against his back to keep him upright, he stroked his bearded chin with one plump, hairy hand, the rings upon it sparkling like a brilliant, tiny constellation.

'Ah, yes. The girl. A good match, a balancing of the scales.' He lowered his voice and peered into the grey mist of the surrounding gauze. 'They say she is a witch, you know. Like her mother.'

'It may be court gossip sire, no more.'

'It matters not; that shall be Nasir's problem, not mine.' He boomed with sudden laughter, shaking the slim, straining shoulders of the girl who was supporting him.

"The Prince has expressed a wish to see this girl before he marries her. He is in fact relaying through me a request to go to Torunn to meet this Princess Mirren face to face.' Akran licked his thin lips nervously.

Aurungzeb frowned. 'He will hold his tongue and do as he is told. What does it matter to him how this girl looks? He will plough her furrow and plant in her a son, and then for recreation he shall have a garden of concubines. The young! They hatch such absurd ideas.'

'He also would like to visit Torunn in order to-'

'What? Spit it forth.'

'He wants to see something of his mother's homeland.' Aurungzeb's eyebrows shot up his face like two caterpillars on strings. 'Does something ail the boy?' Akran coughed delicately. 'I believe the Queen has been telling him stories about the history of her people. I beg your pardon, my Sultan. I mean the people she once belonged to.'

'I know what you mean,' Aurungzeb growled. 'And I was aware of it. She has been filling his head with tall tales of John Mogen and Kaile Ormann. She would do better to prate to him of Indun Meruk or Shahr Baraz.'

With a titanic heave, the Sultan hauled himself off the bed. He struggled through the flimsy veil that surrounded it, and sashed close his silk dressing gown. Barefoot, he padded over to a small gilt table that glittered in the light of the overhead lamps. His soles slapped loudly on the marble floor, for he was an immense man with a pendulous paunch. He gently lifted the brindled length of his beard out of the bosom of his robe and poured himself a goblet of sharp-smelling amber liquid from a silver jug.

He sipped at it, his face changing. There was no trace of joviality left in it now. His eyes were two black stones.

'What do we know of the current situation at Gaderion?' he snapped.

'There has been fighting in the open country between the two defensive lines, sire, and the Torunnans may have had the worst of it. In any case, our spies tell us that conscription has begun in earnest, and martial law declared.'

Aurungzeb grunted. 'He will be wanting troops, under the terms of the treaty. I suppose I shall have to give him some. We are allies, after all, and with these marriages . . .' He broke off, chin sunk in his chest.

'There are times, Akran, when I wonder if it is all but a dream. Everything that has happened since Armagedir. Here are we, two countries whose faith is the same in all but name, who are about to be joined by the closest of dynastic ties – so close that, if they take, then these two Royal lines will become virtually one. And yet twenty years ago we were each striving for the annihilation of the other in the most savage war that history has yet seen. Old habits have not died hard; they have withered away like morning mist as the sun climbs. I try to tell myself that all this is for the best, for all our peoples, but still something within me is astonished by it, and is still waiting for the war to begin again. And then this Second Empire, arising out of thin air and empty theology to dominate the world-' He shook his head like a baffled old bear. 'Strange times indeed.'

He mused some more.

‘I tell you what: Nasir shall indeed go to Torunn. He shall lead the contingent of reinforcements that the treaty obliges us to render, and he shall see the face of his bride-to-be. But he shall also make a first-hand report on the state of the Torunnan military, and the current situation up at the gap. His wide-eyed enthusiasm may well get farther than the shadowed creeping of our spies.'

'He is young, sire . . .'

'Bah, at his age I had already fought in half a dozen battles. The younger generation has no idea-' Here Aurungzeb halted, interrupted by the boom of the chamber doors as they were rolled back by a pair of bald-pated eunuchs.

Through the ornate doorway strode a tall woman in cobalt blue silk. A veil covered her face, but above it two grey eyes flashed from under stibium-darkened brows. Her sandal-clad feet clapped on the marble. Behind her a gaggle of veiled women huddled nervously, and dropped to their knees as the Sultan's baleful glare swept over them. In the four-poster, the slim girl pulled the sheets over her head.

'My Queen-' Aurungzeb began with a voice like thunder, but the woman cut him short.

'What is this I hear about a marriage between Aria and the Torunnan King? Is it true?'

The vizier backed away discreetly and signalled for the eunuchs to close the doors again. They did so, the sonorous boom passing unnoticed as Aurungzeb and his Queen stood glaring at one another.

'Your presence in the harem is both awkward and insult shy;ing,' Aurungzeb bellowed. 'A Merduk queen-'

'It is true?'

Something went out of Aurungzeb, some kind of self-righteous outrage. He turned away and studied his forgotten wine goblet as if reluctant to meet the fire of her eyes. 'Yes, it is true. There have been negotiations, and both parties are in favour of the match. I take it you have some objection.'

To his surprise she did not speak. He turned back to her enquiringly and found that she was standing rigid as wood, her hands clasped together, and the beautiful eyes alight above the veil with tears that would not fall.

'Ahara?' he asked, startled.

She lowered her head. 'Who thought up this match? The man's wife is not yet dead.'

'Actually it was she who suggested it, through our regular diplomatic couriers. She is dying, it seems, and wishes her husband's line to be secured. Torunna needs a male heir. And what better way to cement the bond between our two count shy;ries? Nasir shall marry Corfe's daughter at the same time. It will be quite touching I am sure.' Here Aurungzeb stopped. 'Ahara, what is wrong?'

The tears had slipped down inside the veil. 'Please do not do this. Do not make Aria do this thing.' Her voice was low and there was a throb in it.

'Why ever not?' Aurungzeb was a picture of exasperation and perplexity.

'She is . . . she is so young.'

Aurungzeb smiled indulgently and took Ahara in his arms. 'It is hard for a mother, I know. But these things are necessary in affairs of state. You will become used to the idea in time, as will she. This Corfe is not a bad fellow. A little austere, perhaps, but he will be good to her. He had better be; she is my daughter, after all. With this our two houses will be joined for all time. Our peoples will become even closer.' Aurungzeb tried to hug her more tightly. It was like embracing a pillar of stone. Over her shoulder, he nodded meaningfully at Akran. The vizier rapped on the chamber doors. 'The Queen is leaving. Make way.'

Aurungzeb released her. He tilted up her chin and kissed her though the veil. Her eyes were empty, expressionless, their tears dried.

'That is more like it. That is the bearing of a Merduk queen. Now I feel you may need a rest, my sweetness. Akran, see the Queen back to her apartments. And Akran, see that Serrim gives her something to calm her nerves.' Another meaningful look.

Ahara, or Heria as she had once been, left without another word. Aurungzeb stood with his hands on his broad hips, frowning. She was Nasir's mother, hence the dam of a future sultan. And he had made her his queen – almost seventeen years now she had been his wife. But there was some part of her she kept always hidden, even now. Women! So many times more difficult to deal with than men. He thought she confided in old Shahr Baraz, but that was all. And he – you would think he was her father the way he watched over her.

A purr from the bed. 'My Sultan? It grows cold here. I need to be warmed.'

He rubbed his chin. Since Nasir was going to get a look at his new wife, why not do Corfe the same courtesy? Yes, Aria would also go, with a suitable chaperone from the harem. Her beauty would melt that stiff-necked propriety of his, and he would see sense. Excellent. Now where might this glorious double wedding be held? Aurungabar for choice – Pir Sar would be such a magnificent setting. No, Corfe would insist on it being in Torunn. He was King of Torunna after all. But it must be soon. This war was erupting around their ears, and once it had blossomed into full flower Corfe would no doubt take the field, perhaps not to return to the capital for months. Yes, let it happen in Torunn, and straight away. In fact, let Aria take the road at once.

Then Aurungzeb remembered that Odelia had not yet breathed her last. He said a quick, furtive prayer of apology to the Prophet for being so presumptuous. He liked and re shy;spected Torunna's present Queen; their letter correspondence had been a stimulating challenge. But he needed her dead, soon.

The Queen of Ostrabar sat in her chambers like a porcelain vase set aside in a velvet-padded box. She sat straight-backed on a divan and stared through the fretwork of an ornately carved shutter at the teeming sprawl of the city below. This place had been her home throughout her life, though in different guises. Once it had been Aekir, and she had been Heria. Now it was Aurungabar, and she was Ahara. She was a queen, and the man who had been her husband was a king. But of different kingdoms.

When she thought about it like that she had to marvel at the joke fate had played upon Corfe and herself. It had been a long time. She was past youth now, sliding into middle age with grown-up children by a man for whom she felt nothing but distaste.

And her daughter was destined, it seemed, to marry the man who had once been her husband.

How could Corfe do this to her, or to himself? Had he changed that much? Perhaps the passing years had healed or hardened him. Perhaps he was entirely a king now, with a politician's pragmatism. A matter of state, was that it?

'You sent for me, Mother?' It was Aria by the door, in the Queen's Wing and thus unveiled, a willowy version of herself as a young woman. Perhaps that was it. The resemblance to the ghost of a woman he once had loved.

'Mother?'

'Come sit with me, Aria.'

The girl joined her. Heria smoothed back the raven hair from her cheek with a smile. There was a dreamy sense of unreality that fogged her mind, but it was not unpleasant. Serrim, the ageing eunuch, had a small chest full of every potion and herb and drug that the east produced, and he had made her eat a tiny cube of pure kobhang an hour before. He and that wizened crow Akran had watched her swallow it down with ill-concealed relief. It was not that they were afraid of her, but they were the butts of Aurungzeb's anger when she committed some transgression, such as walking unaccompan shy;ied in the market, or receiving a male visitor without a eunuch present. The rules seemed to have become more stifling over the years, partly because she was the mother of the Sultan's heir, and partly because as a noble matron she was supposed to set an example, to lead a veiled life of discretion and inoffensiveness. She was no longer even allowed to ride a horse, but must be borne in a palanquin like some kind of aged libertine.

'Have you heard the rumours too, Aria?'

'About my wedding? Yes, Mother.' The girl's eyes fell. 'I am to be married to the King of Torunna, and Nasir is to marry his daughter.'

'You know then. I am sorry. You should have heard it from me.'

'It's all right. I know what is expected of me. I suppose it will be quite soon now. In the kitchens they are talking about a caravan being prepared for Torunn, and Nasir is to lead an army to help King Corfe. Imagine Mother, Nasir leading an army!' She smiled. She was a quiet, grave girl, but the smile lit up her face.

Heria looked away. 'He will be fine, as will you.' 'Will you be coming with us?'

The question rocked her. 'I -1 don't know.' A maniac notion filled her head, a vision of herself at her daughter's wedding, flinging herself at the groom, begging him to remember her. She blinked her stinging eyes clear. 'Perhaps.'

Aria took her hand. 'What is he like, Mother? Is he very old?'

She cleared her throat. 'Corfe? He is – he is not so old.' 'Older than you?'

She gripped her daughter's fingers tightly. 'A little older. Some years older.'

Aria looked thoughtful. 'An old man. They say he is lame, and bad-tempered.'

'Who says?'

'Everyone. Mother, my hand . . .' Heria released it. 'Are you all right, Mother?'

'I'm fine, my dear. Tired. Ask the maids to bring in a blanket. I believe I may well lie here and doze a while.'

Aria did not move. 'They've been giving you more of their drugs, haven't they?'

'It calms me, Aria. Don't be worried.'

Don't be worried, she thought. You are to marry a good man. The best of men. She closed her eyes. Aria eased her back on to the divan and stroked her hair. 'It will be all right, Mother. You'll see,' she whispered, her lovely face grave again.

Heria slept, and from below her closed eyelids the tears trickled down soundlessly.

There was an hour before the dawn, in the black throat of the night, when even a city as large as Torunn slept. Corfe's horse picked its way through the streets unhindered and he rode it with the reins loose on its neck as though the tall gelding knew the way better than he. And perhaps it did, for the bay destrier brought Corfe unbidden to the North Gate, where he saluted the sleepy gate guards and they, grumbling and unaware of his identity, opened the tall postern for him to lead his mount through. Once beyond the city walls he let the gelding have its head, and it burst into a fast canter. The moon was riding high and gibbous in a star-brilliant sky, but it was just possible to make out the glimmerings of the dawn speed shy;ing its way up over the distant ramparts of the Jafrar in the east. Corfe left the pale ribbon of the Kingsway and headed north, his steed dipping and rising under him with the undulating ground. But he kept his knees clamped to the gelding's sides and a loose bite on the reins, and almost it seemed that he might be afloat in a grey moonlit sea upon some bobbing ship, save for the eager grunts of the horse and the creak of the saddle under him.

He reined in at last, and the steam of his mount's sweat rose around him, clean and acrid at the same time. Dismounting, he hobbled the gelding with the ease of long practice, and after he had slipped off bridle and saddle, he rubbed it down with a wisp of coarse upland grass. The gelding clumped away, happy to nose at the yellow grass and sniff for better fare. And Corfe sat on the swell of the hill, grey in the moonlight, and stared not east at the gathering dawn, but west to where the Cimbrics loomed up dark and forbidding in the dregs of the night.

Tribesmen's tales told of a hidden pass in those mountain fastnesses, a narrow way where determined men had once forged a passage of the terrible mountains. The journey was semi-legendary – the reputation of the Cimbrics as the harshest peaks in the world had been well-earned – but it had happened. And Corfe had a map of the route.

Almost four centuries before, when the Fimbrians had been lords of the world, they had sent out exploratory expeditions to all corners of the continent. One of those expeditions had had as its mission the discovery of a pass through the Cimbrics. They had succeeded, but the cost had been horrend shy;ous. Albrec, High Pontiff of Torunna and all the Macrobian Kingdoms, had discovered the text of the expedition's log in the Inceptine archives of Torunn cathedral. He seemed to consider the discovery of unique and ancient documents to be part of his calling. Or perhaps it was a hobby of his. Corfe smiled at the moonlit night. Even now that Albrec was a middle-aged man at the head of a large and influential organ shy;isation, there was something of the enthusiastic boy about him when it came to a dusty manuscript or mildewed grim-oire. This ancient record, an untidy bundle of dog-eared and mouldering papers, he had shown to Corfe on a whim, never guessing how important it might prove.

For Corfe intended to use the log to take an army across the Cimbrics and win the war at a stroke.

It was a huge gamble, of course; the log might be a fiction, or at the least hopelessly out of date. But the alternative to such a bold stroke would be either a full frontal assault on the Thurian Line, or a fall back to the purely defensive business of holding Gaderion and hoping for the best. To try and break through the Thurian Line would be foolhardy to the point of lunacy. It was too heavily fortified, and the defenders would outnumber the attackers many times over. As for the magni shy;ficent works at Gaderion, formidable though they were, Corfe placed little faith in the merits of a static defence, and had done since Aekir, all those years ago. He had seen supposedly impregnable cities and fortresses fall too often to be sanguine about the chances of containing the Himerians up at the gap.

There was snow still clinging to the flanks of the Cimbrics. It glowed in the bright moonlight, and the mountains seemed to be disembodied, luminous shapes that hung suspended over the shadowed expanse of the darkened land at their feet. Deep in the midst of the range, the snow remained inviolate all year round, and even among the lesser peaks the drifts would still be deep and cold. Spring took its time in the high places.

The Fimbrian expedition, three hundred strong, had started out in the Year of the Saint 117, with the melting of the first snows, and once they had fought their way into the centre of the range they had travelled along the backs of huge glaciers as though they were a network of roads amid the tall peaks which spawned them. Crevasses and avalanches had killed them by the score, but in the end they had won through thirty leagues of the most forbidding terrain in the world, and had come finally to the shores of the Sea of Tor, and the trading post of Fort Cariabon as it then was. Even with the renowned stamina and endurance of the Fimbrians, they had been two weeks on the mountainous section of the journey, and half of them had been left frozen corpses upon the flanks of those mountains.

Corfe had been mulling over the log for months, and had interviewed a succession of Cimbric tribesmen to test its veracity. Nothing they had told him about the region con shy;tradicted the account, and he was convinced that the route was still feasible, if difficult. He could see no other way of winning this war.

His horse, bored with the winter-dry grass, nosed his neck and its warm breath blew down his nape. He rubbed the velvet-soft nostrils absently, and turned his head to peer eastwards.

The rising sun had still to clear the Jafrar, but its promise was clear in the lightening sky. A skein of cloud had caught in the summits of the eastern mountains and looked as though it had been set afire from below. Behind it the sky was palest aquamarine, a pink glow riding up it moment by moment.

He turned his gaze north-east, to where the Thurians stood, the first flush of the dawn beginning to pale their eastern sides. The world he knew was defined by the brutal majesty of mountains. The Cimbrics, the Thurians, the Jafrar. They gave birth to the rivers which watered the world. The Ostian, the Searil, the Torrin. Somewhere out there in the low country leading down to the Kardian Sea there stood Aurungabar, capital of Ostrabar. He had been there as King and had seen the huge labour of rebuilding which the Merduks had under shy;taken. Myrnius Kuln's vast Square of Victories still remained, opening out from the foot of what had been the cathedral of Carcasson; but it was called Hor el Kadhar now, Glory of God. The old Pontifical Palace was now the pleasure garden of the Sultan wherein his harem had been installed. And somewhere among those buildings there slept right at this moment the woman who had been Corfe's wife.

Why he should find himself thinking about her at this moment he did not know, except that it was usually on waking and on going to sleep that he saw her most clearly. Those ill-defined periods of the day between darkness and light. Or perhaps she was lying awake herself in the pre-dawn murk, and thinking of him. The thought made his heart beat faster. But the woman he pictured in his mind was young, not much more than a girl. She would be almost out of her thirties now, a mature woman. And he, he was a greying martinet with a halt leg. They were strangers, complete and utter. And yet the pain remained.

Was she thinking of him at this moment? There was the oddest pain in his breast, a wrench as though something there had suddenly constricted. He pushed the balls of his palms into his eyes until the lights flared, and the pain faded. He was too old to be entertaining such fancies.

He knew he would marry this girl who was his wife's daughter. It was necessary for the good of the kingdom, and he had sacrificed so much to that end that he could not imagine doing otherwise.

But there was a deeper, darker reason for doing so that he would not even contemplate admitting to himself. In marry shy;ing Aria, he would possess something of Heria again, and perhaps that would help calm his snarling soul. Perhaps.