Soldier of the Mist

CHAPTER XXXIV-In the Regent's Tent

There was no one to meet me. "Wait here," said the young shieldman who had brought me. As he turned to leave he added, "Don't touch anything."

I do not believe I have ever been a thief; but for a thief it would have been tempting indeed. There were lamps of silver, gold, and crystal, and many soft carpets and cushions. A long knife in a green sheath with gold mountings hung from one of the tent poles, and an ivory griffin spread its wings upon a peak of ebony.

I was admiring this last when the regent entered, bringing with him a sly little Hellene with a beard. "This is the slave," the regent said, dropping to a cushion. "Latro-Tisamenus, my mantis."

I did not know the word, and my ignorance must have appeared on my face. Tisamenus murmured, "A mere consulter of the gods, sir, a humble reader of the omens of sacifice."

"Tisamenus advised me at Clay. Those who know the result know why I think highly of him."

"His Highness has told me of his dream. I wished to see the man. It sometimes amuses His Highness to accede to my little requests. Sir, Latro, I noticed you were admiring that statuette when we entered. Do you know of those monsters?"

"Do they actually exist? No, nothing."

The regent said, "I'm told they live in the country of those Sons of Scoloti who revolted against the royal branch of their people, and that they hoard gold."

I said, "Which can't be as precious as this carving, Highness."

Tisamenus murmured, "I'd understood they're found north and west of the Issedonians. It's said they put out one eye of any man they find trying to make off with their treasure; but if he's already one-eyed, they kill him. However, I think it likely my information is mistaken, Highness, and yours correct."

The regent laughed. "No, you've the right of it, I feel sure. The best intelligence of such things is always that which puts them farthest from us."

Tisamenus nodded and smiled. "I don't suppose you've seen the creatures, sir?"

I shrugged. "I've no way of knowing. From what I read in my book today, I was already with the regent when we were in Rope. If he's told you about me, he must have told you I don't remember."

"Yet you remembered the monster, sir. I saw that memory in your eyes."

I shook my head. "I don't recall what I learned of them, if I did. Or how I learned it, or where."

The regent chuckled. "Sit down, you two. I'm remiss in my duties as your host. Latro, Tisamenus-" He turned to the mantis. "Which do you prefer, Tisamenus of Elis, or Tisamenus of Rope?"

"As Your Highness chooses to honor his servant."

"Tisamenus of Elis, then. Latro, Tisamenus got my permission to visit his family after the battle. That was unfortunate, because he wasn't present to interpret my dream when I dreamed about you; but I've told him that dream now, and in general he seems to feel I've caught the meaning without him."

"To visit my sisters and their husbands, sir. I have not been favored in the matter of sons and daughters." The mantis sighed. "And the Inescapable One deprived me of my poor wife at the time of the last Games."

I cleared my throat. I did not think what I was about to say would lose me my head, but the possibility, however slight, lent a chill to my words. "With your leave, mantis. Why is it you call me 'sir' when the regent has called me a slave?"

The regent said brusquely, "That's just his way."

Almost too softly to be heard, Tisamenus murmured, "Courtesy is never wasted, sir. Particularly courtesy toward a slave. We slaves appreciate it." To me he added, "You will not be able to answer our questions, then. That's a terrible pity, but perhaps you won't object if we beg you to try."

"Fetch some wine," the regent told Tisamenus. "Want a cup, Latro?"

"I can answer that one," I said. "Yes. But Io can tell you more about me than I can tell you about myself."

"I questioned her some time ago," the regent said. "And I was able to pass to Tisamenus all I learned in a few words. She met you in Hill. You were badly wounded. You'd tried to embrace a statue of the River God, and they brought you to the oracle there. It gave her to you and assigned a citizen to guide you to Advent. All three of you were imprisoned in Tower Hill until you were freed by a captain from Thought. In Advent, the goddess came to you in a dream and promised to restore you to your friends. Then the lochagos I'd sent looking for you found you and brought you to me."

Tisamenus poured the wine, so old and good it perfumed even that perfumed air. "Thank you," I said, accepting the cup.

"You don't look pleased. What's the matter?"

"You told me a lot, Highness, but none of it was what I wanted to hear."

"Which is?"

"Who my friends are, where my home is, what happened to me, and how I can be cured."

"Your friends are here-two of them, at least. I'm your greatest friend, and anyone who stands with me will be your friend as well. Do you know of the promise made me in my dream?"

"Yes. We talked of it this afternoon in the gorge."

Tisamenus murmured, "Then perhaps you also know why it should be so. What makes you a talisman of victory?"

"I have no idea."

The regent said, "My first notion was that we'd been born at the same instant-it's well known such children are linked. Tisamenus?"

The mantis looked doubtful. "I'd guess he's the younger." To me he said, "I don't suppose, sir, that you know the day of your birth?"

I shook my head, and the regent shrugged. "So it might be true. I'm in my twenty-eighth year. Think that might be your age, Latro? Speak up. You won't be beaten."

"Twenty-eight sounds old to me, Highness. So I think I must be less."

Tisamenus had risen. "Shrewdly spoken, sir, and I agree. May I call your attention once more to this admirable carving? Can you perhaps inform me as to the name borne by these monsters?"

"They're the Clawed Ones," I said.

"So," Tisamenus whispered. "The god who took away your memory left you that. What man comprehends their ways?"

The regent drank. "A thousand times I've heard somebody say that: Who understands the ways of the gods? Everybody asks the question, nobody answers it. Now I'm a man and nearly a king-do you know many of our Rope Makers already call me King Pausanias, Tisamenus? So I'll try, Latro. You do."

As cautiously as I could, I said, "I'm not sure I follow you, Highness."

"I called you an idiot once. Since then, I've seen enough of you to know you're anything but."

"Yet there's an idiot here, Highness, if you believe I'm in the councils of the gods."

Tisamenus said, "You're treading on dangerous ground, sir."

"Because if you believe it, Highness, it must be true; and I would be an idiot not to tell you."

The regent gave Tisamenus his twisted smile. "You see what I mean? If this were the pentathlon, he'd win every event."

"Good," I said. "Because if we're linked, Highness, it might be that if I were beaten you'd be beaten too."

"And the chariot race. But Latro, my friend-and I'll call you my friend and not my slave-you know things you don't know you know. You didn't remember the name of the winged monsters until you were asked, did you?"

I shook my head.

Tisamenus murmured, "So it is, perhaps, with the councils of the gods. If we recall them to you, will you tell His Highness?"

I said, "If he wishes it, certainly. But though Io says I once swept floors for a woman in Thought, I don't believe I ever swept the hall of Olympus."

"Then we'll begin with speculations humbler still. You acknowledge that there are many gods?"

I sipped my wine. "All men do, I suppose."

"You once told His Highness, no doubt truly, that you were a soldier of the Great King."

"I feel I am."

"Then you must know something of the barbarians, sir. Indeed, you must have marched through Parsa, for the Great King's army did so on its way here. Are you aware that they hold there's only a single god, whom they call Ahuramazda?"

"I know nothing of them," I said. "At least, nothing I can remember."

"And yet they sacrifice to the sun, the moon, and the earth, and to fire and water. It is possible-I speak now as a sophist, sir-that there is but one god. It is possible also that there are many. But it is not possible that there are one and many. You disagree?"

I shrugged. "Sometimes a word is used for two things. When I loaded the regent's mule, I tied the load with rope."

Prince Pausanias chuckled. "Excellent! But now that you've bested poor Tisamenus, let me play Ahuramazda's advocate. I say that just as there's only one king at Persepolis, there can be only one god. Why should he tolerate more? He'll destroy them, then there'll be only one. Show me my error, Latro, if you can."

"Highness, if you were truly a magus-I mean a priest of this Ahuramazda-I don't think you'd speak like that. You'd say there can't be a single god, but that just as there are two kings in Rope, there must be two gods also."

The regent held out his cup, and Tisamenus poured him more wine. "Why do you say that, sir?"

"I don't say it, but I think the magi would. They would reason thus: There's good in the world, so there's a good god, a wise lord. But there's evil too, so there must be an evil lord as well. In fact, one posits the other. There can be no good without evil, no evil without good."

The regent remarked, "Here we know that good and evil come from the same gods, having observed that the same man is good one time and evil another."

"Highness, a magus would say, Then I will call the good Ahuramazda and the bad Angra Manyu, evil mind. And if the good is truly good, won't it put the lie from it?"

The regent nodded. "Yet what you say doesn't explain Orith-the other gods. What of earth, fire, wind, and so forth?"

Tisamenus nodded, leaning toward me to listen.

I said, "Now I can speak for myself as well as for the magi. It doesn't seem to me that there can't be good without evil or evil without good. For a blind man, isn't it always night? With no day? It seemed to me that if Ahuramazda-"

A shieldman of the bodyguard entered as I spoke; when I fell silent, he addressed the regent. "The captain has arrived, Highness."

"Then he must wait. Go on, Latro."

"If Ahuramazda exists, Highness, all things serve him. The oak is his; so is the mouse that gnaws its root. Without oaks there could be no mice, without mice no cats, and without cats no oaks. But shouldn't he have servants greater than oaks and men? Surely he must, because the gap between Ahuramazda and men and oaks is very wide, and we see that every king has some minister whose authority's only slightly less than his own, and that such men have ministers of their own, similarly empowered. Besides, the existence of the sun, the moon, the earth, and of fire and water are indisputable facts."

"But the existence of Ahuramazda is not an indisputable fact. Finish your wine."

I did so. "Highness, let us think of a great city like Susa. Within the city stands a palace as great again. A beggar boy squats outside the palace wall, and I'm that poor boy."

"Is Ahuramazda the king in that palace?"

I shook my head. "No, Highness. Not so far as I, Latro the beggar boy, have seen. The servants are the lords of the palace. Once a cook gave me meat, and a scullion, bread. I've even seen the steward, Highness, with my own eyes. The steward's a very great lord indeed, Highness."

The regent rose. Tisamenus stood at once, and so did I.

"So he is, to a beggar boy," the regent said, "though not to himself, perhaps. We'll speak of this again when you've returned from Sestos. Do you want to see your ship?"

I nodded. "Even if it's the one we came in, I'd like to see it, Highness. I've forgotten it, but Io says we came by ship."

"It's one of those that brought us here," he told me as we stepped from the scented air of the tent into night air that was sweeter still. "But not the one in which you and Io sailed with me. I'm taking that back to Olympia. One of the others is going to carry you and Pasicrates to Sestos."

The shieldman and another man were waiting outside. The regent said, "You're Captain Nepos?"

The captain stepped forward, bowing low. "The same." His hair gleamed like foam in the moonlight.

"You understand your commission and accept it?"

"I'm to carry a hundred Rope Makers and two hundred and seventy slaves to Sestos. And a woman, who must have a cabin to herself."

"And a slave girl," the regent told him. "With the slave you see before you."

"We can occupy the same cabin," I said. "Or we can sleep on deck, if there's no cabin for us."

The captain shook his head. "Just about everybody will have to sleep on deck, and it'll be crowded at that."

The regent asked, "But your ship will hold them all, with their rations?"

"Yes, Highness, only not in much comfort."

"They don't require comfort. You know you won't be able to make port at Sestos? It's under siege, and the other ports of the Chersonese are still the Great King's."

The captain nodded. "I'll land them on this side, from boats. That'll be the safest way."

"Good. Come with us, then. I've promised Latro the sight of your ship, and you'll have to point it out to him." The regent looked about for Tisamenus, but he was gone. The shieldman offered to search for him, but the regent shook his head. "You've got to allow these fellows some freedom, if you want to hang on to them." As we began our walk, he added to me, "He wanted to spare his legs, I suppose. We had to make him a citizen to get his help at Clay, but he's no Rope Maker, just the same."

Though the moon was low and as crooked as my sword, it was a clear night with many stars. We climbed a cliff above the town that gave us a fine view of the little harbor. "There's Nausicaa," her captain said proudly. "Nearest the mouth of the bay." His ship was only a darker shape upon the dark water; yet I wished I were on board already, for I feel there is nothing for me here.

The regent said, "You'll be anxious to get back, I imagine, Captain."

"Anxious to serve you, Highness, but-"

"Go." The regent waved a hand.

I thought we would return to the camp, but the regent remained where he was, and after a time I realized he was not looking at the ship, but at the sea, and at Sestos and the world beyond.

When he turned away at last, he said softly, "What if the beggar boy-Let's not call him Latro; his name is Pausanias. What if Pausanias the beggar boy could become known to the king? You must help me, and I'll help you. I'll give you your freedom and much more."

I said I did not think I could do anything, but I would be happy to do all I could.

"You can do a great deal, I think. You know the servants, Latro. Perhaps you can persuade them to allow me to enter the palace."

He turned to go. The shieldman, who had followed us when we climbed the steep path up the cliff, came after us as silently as ever.

While we returned to the camp, I thought about what the regent had said and all the things I have written here. And I despaired of promoting so great and terrible an enterprise, though I could not say so when I parted from the regent. How is a man, even a prince and a regent, to enter a palace no man has seen? To befriend a monarch whose ministers are gods?

There is one more thing to tell, though I hesitate to write of it. A moment ago, as I was about to enter this tent Io and I share with Drakaina and Pasicrates, I heard the strange, sly voice of Tisamenus at my ear: "Kill the man with the wooden foot!" When I looked around for him, there was no one in sight.

I have no notion what this may mean, or who the man with the wooden foot may be. Perhaps it was some trick of the wind. Perhaps I am to be mad as well as clouded of memory, and this voice was a phantom of that all-obscuring mist.