Mind of Cold Shadow
I sat astride my horse and looked toward the east, waiting for the messengers who were coming to pronounce my doom.
My name is King Rosteval of the Ponteppatra, Rosteval the son of Bosvadal. And on that day I waited, along with my wife and my army, all of us staring east across the grasslands.
The messengers would come, and they would pronounce my doom. It was as certain as Father Sun rising in the sky.
But I could still face it like a king—face it, and possibly give them pause.
We had to look strong, of course, and so I had drawn us all up in ranks before our city, Tekoro-Athu, a city of mud-brick houses and walls crowned with great domed palaces and temples of stone.
Looking to our right, I could see the glimmering waters of Lake Tekoro, a great expanse of water girded about by extensive reed-beds and palm groves. It was a verdant land, a lush land, a land I had won by right of conquest.
A land I now stand to lose to my grandfather, I thought. It was a wry thought, the idea of a grandson needing to fight his own grandfather to keep what he had won.
My grandfather had forged the greatest empire in the known world. He was no stranger to the right of conquest.
“How much longer is he going to make us wait?” said my cousin, the Lord Daryubal. I could hear the tension in his voice, like a bowstring drawn taut.
Daryubal shared my yellow-gold eyes, a common trait among the tribe of our birth, the Barduvatra, not to mention many of the other peoples who had come out of the Roof of the World. He was a broad-shouldered, strong-jawed fellow, dependable in combat.
I made a wry face. “I am sure Hamarvan has given Shalparyon, or whichever of his generals is leading this expedition, orders to keep us waiting for a time. We have humbled Hamarvan’s armies three times; no doubt he will want to keep us waiting and then present an imposing spectacle.”
I had crossed a desert to get away from my grandfather, King Hamarvan of the Ketaryatra. He had not taken it well.
My beautiful wife, Queen Ghaitta, gave a dignified smile. “At least we are all well-dressed, as befits our station.”
“I have you to thank you for that, my darling,” I said. “I was prepared to wear my armor and weapons.”
She laughed, and her lovely dark eyes sparkled. “Yes, husband, but you are a king now.”
Ghaitta and I had been married for two years now, but we had been together since I had acquired her as a slave-girl from my now-deceased friend and mentor, Cat-Eye Pon, about three years before.
My blood still pulsed with fire when I thought of that enchanted night we had first met near the foothills of the Masvalpa, a wild land far to the north, across the great desert. Cat-Eye Pon had offered her to me, a beautiful slave-girl wearing only a brief kilt, and I had been captivated by her face, by the fall of her long, dark hair, her eyes twin dark pools of delight—and by the rest of her, of course.
Today, however, both Ghaitta and I wore our royal raiment, the clothing we had worn on the day I had had myself declared king of the Ponteppatra and her my queen.
My own robes were cloth-of-gold, verged with purple hems, and black and white embroidering at the very edges. Over my breast was the design of a white gyre-form, limned in silver and borne between two black falcons. The design was based on our royal banner.
Ghaitta wore a green mantle, verged with purple, that ran over one shoulder and was bound around her waist. Her sleeveless cloth-of-gold blouse was ornamented with gems and cut in a popular Veyadian style, with an elegant, plunging neckline. It ended about halfway down her midriff. Her flowing white skirt was adorned with elaborate silver patterns and carmine red flowers.
Looking toward the south, I saw a dark cloud approaching. That was odd: it was still early in the Bulaiya-land dry season, but I had spent enough time in these lands to know that the dry season tended to arrive swiftly, without a lot of lingering rain.
But as the storm front approached, I glimpsed faceless spectral figures atop whirling spiral-forms, in colors of blue and silver. There was a rhythmic whirring sound, as if a great flock of large birds was ascending on furiously flapping wings.
“Rishva-storm!” someone shouted, and numerous other voices took up the cry.
“Another one of these things?” Daryubal said, glowering at the great mass of spiraling Rishva-forms as it advanced across the lake.
“They have been unusually common of late,” I said, frowning at the approaching Rishva-storm. It was crossing the lake now, and I saw any number of birds flying before it: crows, gulls, waterfowl, and so on.
The Rishva-storm was a great host of Rishva-pairs, spectral shades atop their whirling spiral-forms. The shades were about the size of men, and the spiral-forms they rode on were about half again as tall.
As they advanced, I could see that some were silver, some blue, others green, amber, rust-red, and still others black.
In fact, there seemed to be an unusually large number of black Rishva-pairs.
“My Lord Kurjayak,” I said, turning to the man to the right of my Ghaitta and raising my voice to be heard as the great Rishva-storm began to sweep down on our position. “Did you see many Rishva-storms farther west?”
“Yes, my king,” he shouted, golden-brown eyes keen as he looked at it. “They were many in number, far more so than usual.” His face was a deep bronze hue, and a part of his dark beard was colored with blood-red pigment.
Kurjayak was of the Isarpaday Tamnoolra, a race of proud horsemen and herders who raided their neighbors for slaves. Today he wore a sleeveless green serape, in the style of his people, over a fine white tunic edged with cloth-of-gold, and he put his hand to the purple brimless cap on his head to keep it from blowing away as the Rishva-storm came barreling down on us.
The winds lashed at us, tugging at our clothing in a rough manner. Two of my slave-girls, standing between the horses, tried to raise an umbrella over Ghaitta’s head, but the wind grabbed it and drew it into the storm.
The Rishva-pairs soared through the skies overhead, some of them dipping down to the ground before us and plunging into our ranks.
I had always been strongly attuned to Rishva-storms, and indeed to other, similar phenomena. Indeed, as I reached out with my Rishva-sense, I heard it: a great throbbing hum that seemed to call to me from within the very heart of the Rishva-storm.
It was the signature, I knew, of the white Rishva-pair that animated every Rishva-storm on this side of the gateway altars. Only the white Rishva could bring a storm through, and sure enough, I saw a great and mighty column of a Rishva-form appeared, massive as a great cedar tree—
Surprise knifed through me. I had expected the mighty spiraling column to glow white, and to have shadows moving within it and clinging to its edges.
This one, however, was perfectly black, a deep midnight black, glossy and liquid.
All around me, the others were shouting and exclaiming their amazement.
“Black Rishva—a mighty one!” someone shouted.
I looked to Ghaitta, and our eyes met.
“What do you think?” she said to me, not with words but with the mental speech we had, a consequence of our bond. Her former master, Cat-Eye Pon, had prepared her to be my sahaudas, my emanation-rebirthing-womb.
“I know not what to think,” I said in return, reaching out with my Rishva-sense and probing up, toward the Rishva-shade that surely waited atop the vast spiraling column. I could not see the shade itself, so dense were the Rishva-pairs thronging about it, but I had a certain facility for these things.
There was a sense of mental contact, like fingertips brushing the hand of another.
Cold fury hit me.
Never had I felt such cold and terrible anger, such a palpable sense of having been thwarted and yearning for retribution. The sheer force of it was astounding.
One winter when I had been growing up on the plains of Orestamar, I had been caught in a terrible hailstorm. The cold wind had cut at me, and sleet and hail had raked across my face.
That had been nothing compared with this.
“My Ghaitta, there is a cold and furious mind in there,” I said in the mental speech, and shared with her a mental impression of what I had sensed.
“We need to share this with Cat-Eye Touhai,” she said.
Mentally, I reached out to the woman who sat a horse a few places to my left. She had a high, slender face, and she wore an eye-patch over her left eye, though I knew that was to hide the Cat-Eye she had gained from her own former master. Her robes were cloth-of-gold, adorned with black falcons and white gyre-patterns limned with silver.
“Already I am beholding it, yes,” said Cat-Eye Touhai. “Here: see if this, it makes any sense to you.”
The mental impression she gave us was of the merest suggestion of a figure cloaked in great streaming plumes of shadow.
“Doesn’t your Cat-Eye allow you to see through this?” Ghaitta said.
“This is with the Cat-Eye, just so,” Cat-Eye Touhai said. “But I think, yes, I have seen something like this before.”
Cat-Eye Touhai had gained the gyre-patterned Cat-Eye from my friend and mentor, Cat-Eye Pon, who had enslaved her and prepared her for this role.
He had taken her captive after a successful dawn raid that the two of us had led against the Fargand Southern Army: back then they had been my enemies because I had not yet defected from Hamarvan’s banner.
Cat-Eye Pon had taken a special interest in the young woman, whom he had renamed Touhai, meaning She Who is Favored. The name turned out to be prophetic, for reasons I had not understood until the day he returned her to her people—and she promptly stabbed him to death with a sword he had originally taken from her.
In a manner of speaking, Touhai the slave-girl had died that day with her master. She had gained his Cat-Eye and his sacred emanation plume, and been reborn as Cat-Eye Touhai—just as Cat-Eye Pon had planned.
“What? Where have you seen something like this?” Ghaitta asked, concern clouding her beautiful dark eyes.
“After Cat-Eye Pon our lord ascended, yes,” Cat-Eye Touhai said, “and we defeated Aurvedan and Soltapyral, just so. You recall, yes, that we gained the armor of the Barrier Sentinel?”
“How could I ever forget?” I said, remembering that epic battle in which Cat-Eye Pon’s spirit had finally ascended to the status of a Rishva-god and we had defeated Soltapyral and the Barrier Sentinel he had gained control of.
Cat-Eye Touhai’s own gyre-eye had originally been taken from that Sentinel, and when she had touched the armored mask, the remaining eye had flashed and sent a beam of light at her. She had seen a vision that had unnerved her.
“I saw beings like this, yes, moving in the Rishva, rising from it to make war on the Sentinels.”
All around me the men were shouting to be heard, some of them cursing as they tried to keep their horses in place. Rishva-storms were seldom more than a minor annoyance, but this one was driving powerful winds into our ranks, and I felt the sting of dirt in my eyes.
My Rishva-sense was feeding me a frantic buzzing sound, like a swarm of bees. Turning my attention toward the shadowed thing atop the black Rishva, I felt again that sense of cold fury—and I realized that it was hovering more or less in place, as if it had drawn itself up against us.
Even as my mind wove this thought together, the shadowed thing turned about and began bearing north with a speed that put me in mind of a swift horse.
The Rishva-storm receded, like a great and swift river flood. The whirring sound of the Rishva-forms faded even as the horizon began to swallow it up.
“Be of GOOD CHEER, men!” I shouted, first in Old Hurranian, then in Tamnool. “What is a RISHVA-STORM, to HEROES such as ourselves?”
“A mere TRIFLE!” Kurjayak shouted in Tamnool.
There were cheers, laughs, and whoops, but I could see uneasy looks on the men’s faces, could hear them talking about the great black Rishva.
“The black Rishva, it is a SIGN!” Cat-Eye Touhai said, and I looked over in time to see her raise the eye-patch over her left eye.
The eye had no white: it blazed with a fiery orange glow, and there was a white gyre-form in place of a pupil and iris.
“A sign, yes, of BATTLE,” Cat-Eye Touhai said, “and GREAT DEEDS! Do not forget, Cat-Eye Pon our lord, he overcame Soltapyral, the false Rishva-lord!”
I heard a murmur of voices as the men passed her words down the ranks. We had only recently defeated Soltapyral, the ancient immortal who had become a god and led the Ketaryat army against us.
And then Cat-Eye Touhai spoke in the mental speech to Ghaitta and to me: “I know not what that thing is, but we must seek answers.”
“Yes,” I said. “It was angry, and I think it was angry with us. We will figure out what it is.”
Ghaitta shuddered, and her eyes were wide and fearful. “This is what I have been dreading ever since we defeated Soltapyral.”
“How do you mean, my dear one?” I asked.
She shrugged. “If Soltapyral could do everything he did, could help Aurvedan draw the Great Knot out of the Rishva… well, I thought perhaps some other being would make trouble for us. Besides, Telupari said as much when she took back the Serpent.”
“She did encourage us to seek answers,” I said. “And so we will—after we have dealt with these emissaries.”
After that, less than an hour passed before the advance scouts I had sent out came back to report the approach of enemy forces.
And indeed, as I looked toward the horizon, I beheld distant shining figures moving in the skies: the Bright Zayastura, the living gods and goddesses of these lands south of the Sebaiya.
As I watched them approach, I thought back on how Ghaitta and Cat-Eye Touhai and I had shared their path for a time.
“Do you think our Bright Zayastura will be among them?” Ghaitta said to me in the mental speech.
Turning toward her, I saw her looking to me. Her mouth was a wry line.
“I wouldn’t put it past them,” I said. “We did not part on the most cordial of terms, after all.”
Looking back toward the horizon, I saw that the moving figures of men on horseback were visible now, small and ant-like but numerous, a great host. They approached, the sun glinting off their iron helmets and iron-scaled cuirasses.
At last they came close enough for me to see their tawny Ketaryat faces, all proud lines and strong, well-formed noses. Their eyes were yellow-gold like mine, or gray, or dark, but they were all the eyes of wolves: they flashed and danced, the eyes of men who thrill at the chase and at the prospect of battle.
The Bright Zayastura flying overhead wore bronze cuirasses and helmets, and they were equipped with sandals that had terrible downward-facing blades. Their faces were painted: white on their cheeks, black lines accentuating their features, and red diamond-shapes on their foreheads.
These Bright Zayastura had fought us on behalf of Soltapyral, and had been perfectly willing to side with Hamarvan’s son, Prince Aurvedan.
Looking farther back, I thought I saw four familiar faces, but they were hovering high enough and far enough back that it was difficult to be sure.
“Ghaitta, Cat-Eye Touhai,” I said in the mental speech, “I think those four are known to us.”
“That is disappointing,” Ghaitta said, “but I cannot say I am surprised.”
“The Daivomandians, they must have made common cause with Hamarvan and Haldua,” Cat-Eye Touhai said. She sounded intrigued more than anything else.
Mentally, I reached out to see if I could detect the humming noise of the conversations the Bright Zayastura had among themselves. The humming came to me, but it seemed off, somehow higher in pitch.
A handful of the riders approached, one of them holding aloft a wooden pole crowned with sprigs of acacia—a traditional gesture requesting parley, though in the northern lands other trees were often used.
I winded a horn, and drums began to beat. “CAT-EYE PON!” I shouted. “CAT-EYE PON THE FURY!”
We had been born to different tribes: the Barduvatra, the Jala-Luwahra, and others from Hamarvan’s kingdom; the Pellakeshra of the Sebaiya desert; the Isarpaday Tamnoolra of the Bulaiya grasslands; the Fargandra from the west of Hamarvan’s kingdom, and still others besides.
But we had all become united by something greater than ourselves: we were all Ponteppatra, the people of our god Cat-Eye Pon.
And so I shouted the name of the remarkable man who had delighted in killing his enemies as much as he delighted in the bare-breasted slave-girls he sold, the man who had trained Ghaitta and prepared her for me, the man who had enslaved Touhai and prepared her to be his heir, the man I had laughed with and supped with and fought beside, the man who, in the all-too-brief time I had known him, had somehow become the father I had never had.
All together we shouted the sacred mantras:
“CAT-EYE PON, HIS NAME IS FURY!
“CAT-EYE PON, THE FRENZIED ONE!
“CAT-EYE PON, HIS EYE SEES FAR!”
I raised my right hand in a fist.
“CAT-EYE PON!” I shouted. “CAT-EYE PON!”
Thousands of throats gave voice to the same cry:
“CAT-EYE PON! CAT-EYE PON! CAT-EYE PON!”
We had shouted in exactly this manner before battle, but now it served as a show of strength—and a fitting introduction to the power of our god.
A moment’s concentration and an effort of will was all it took. The warm breath of my emanation filled my lungs, and I exhaled a plume of luminous emanation-mist.
Dozens, scores of wriggling emanation plumes rose up from our army, snaking into the sky. They coalesced into the figure of Cat-Eye Pon, a warrior on horseback with a Rishva-form, a great spiral, trailing out behind him. Warrior, mount, and Rishva-form were all white, but limned with shadow, and the Rishva-form had shadow bound within its coils.
The angle made it difficult for me to see, since he was hovering over us, but I could still recognize Cat-Eye Pon’s familiar, craggy face, the warm, easy grin, the gyre-form in his left eye, the glint in his right eye… my memory filled in the blanks.
Ahead of us, the Ketaryatra stopped in their tracks at our display.
I was already at the van of my army, but now I held up my hand and blew one short note on my horn. And then I rode forward, and Ghaitta, Kurjayak, Daryubal, Cat-Eye Touhai, and several others came with me.
Kurjayak was accompanied by his Fargand wife, the Lady Lupraxa. She was a proud woman with a noble face, and she wore a helmet adorned with a pair of stylized golden wings.
“I must say, my lord husband,” she said to Kurjayak in the Tamnool language, “Cat-Eye Pon our lord makes a fine spectacle with which to confront the Ketaryat dogs.”
I gave a wry chuckle. “My Lady Lupraxa, I will assume you are not including those of us who are of the Barduvatra.”
Her laugh was merry. “My king, we are all Ponteppatra. It is a far better thing to be than a Fargand, whatever that meddlesome prince may think.”
“Yes, I’ll want to discuss those matters with both of you later,” I said. The two of them had only arrived back from the west yesterday, and we had not yet had time to discuss the arrival of another Fargand army.
The head of the Ketaryat delegation was a man with iron gray eyes and a proud nose and face. It was the face of a man shaped to fight battles and lead armies into them.
I had met this man only once before, very briefly.
“My Lord Shalparyon,” I said in Old Hurranian, lending a hint of iron to my voice.
“Shalparyon the Younger,” he said, his voice deep and a bit gravelly. “Son of Shalparyon the Elder, of the line of Duvandal of the Axalvotra.”
One of my royal heralds formally introduced me, and then Ghaitta. I looked through the Ketaryat party, and noted the absence of Aurvedan.
I stared full into Shalparyon’s face. “For what purpose do you enter our domains, Lord Shalparyon?”
He stared back for a moment.
I stared harder, my eyes twin lances of iron.
Shalparyon averted his eyes. “King Hamarvan of the Ketaryatra has sent me as messenger, as an instrument of his will.”
“Speak,” I said.
He raised his right hand, and his eyes hardened. “These are the words of King Hamarvan, king of the Ketaryatra and all the peoples of Hurranar and Orestamar:
“‘Despite your many acts of rebellion and wickedness against my servants, I offer you this one chance to save yourself: return with my messenger Shalparyon, and submit yourself to me.
“’Do this, and you and all your household, all your allies and those you have beguiled, will be spared. You will live in great comfort in my court, and I will regard you as a grandfather regards his grandson.
“’Persist in your rebellion and wickedness, and I will destroy you. These are the words of Hamarvan.’”
Anger flared within me, but I kept it contained. A king must bridle his anger so that he can ride it like a horse.
My anger duly reined in, I smiled. “You have come a long way, Shalparyon. You and your men must camp here, outside the walls of Tekoro-Athu. When I am ready, I will give my reply to King Hamarvan.”
He bowed his head and turned his horse.
Turning my Rishva-sense upward, I probed the area around the enemy Bright Zayastura, and then around the four Bright Zayastura I had known and been allied with: Apshendarin, Maralitu, Shentora, and Kanavitar.
The enemy Bright Zayastura seemed to be silent, but the air around the four familiar Bright Zayastura fairly hummed with conversation. I pressed my Rishva-sense, trying to break through.
And then it came to me, a burst of mental chatter:
“—threat-is-spreading,” Maralitu said. I knew her as a lovely woman with gray-green eyes.
“I-trust-that-it-will-be-countered,” Apshendarin said, his tone forceful, and more hurried than usual. “Still, it-is-strange-to-see-so-many—”
“We-must-trust-they-know-what-they-are-doing!” Shentora said. “Darkness-cannot-overcome-light!”
Could they be talking about the thing in the shadows? It seemed a reasonable guess.
Returning my attention to the matter at hand, I wheeled my horse about and gestured for my party to withdraw back to our lines.
“Your Majesty King Rosteval!” said a woman’s voice from the Ketaryat lines.
I turned, even as I heard the sudden thunder of hoof-beats.
“Bardalos’ cock!” Daryubal cursed behind me.
What I saw was two riders, a man and a woman, bolting from the Ketaryat lines. She wore a blue-gray dress, white trousers, and a red-purple shawl about her shoulders, but carried no weapons. The man had a bow and quiver of arrows and a sword at his side, but had not drawn any of them.
“My Lady Parsetya!” Shalparyon said, and the wide-eyed look on his face told me he had no foreknowledge of this.
The two angled straight for me, but Kurjayak and Daryubal got to them first: Kurjayak intercepted the woman, Daryubal the man.
What were the two of them doing? Were they trying to defect? I was curious more than anything else.
“Hold, you!” Daryubal said to the man, who promptly held up his hands and bowed his head, a gesture of surrender.
Kurjayak reined in, blocking the woman.
“Let me see my NEPHEW, I would see my NEPHEW!” the woman said, with rising emotion, and it was only then that I realized she was speaking the Orestamarian language.
“My Lady Parsetya,” Shalparyon said, and he angled his horse toward the woman. “Cease this disgrace!”
“Your Majesty,” Kurjayak said, looking toward me for a moment, “I cannot understand the words of this woman who is shrieking at me.”
The woman’s eyes darted to Kurjayak, and then she urged her horse forward and around his mount. Her speed was astonishing.
Kurjayak cursed and sawed at his reins, but the woman had gotten the drop on him.
She reined in before me, and fixed me with a radiant smile. She had a slender, graceful face, and hypnotic eyes of light amber verged with green. The dark fall of her hair caressed her shoulders and back.
“Your Majesty King Rosteval, how my heart joys in your presence.”
Shalparyon was trying to approach, his men with him, but I motioned to my men to keep them at bay.
“Your Majesty, I implore you to return the Lady Parsetya,” Shalparyon said, tension in his voice.
I looked toward him, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the woman lunge.
Reaching for my sword was pure reflex—but I stopped as I realized she was vaulting off the horse. Approaching on foot, she grasped at the hem of my robe and bowed her head.
“Your Majesty King Rosteval,” she said, voice thick with emotion, “I beg and implore you to grant me sanctuary, me and my companion, that I may see the face of my nephew and be glad.” She looked up, and I could see tears forming in her eyes.
“Husband,” Ghaitta said to me in Tamnool. “What is she saying?”
“She asks for sanctuary for her and her companion,” I said. “She wants to see her nephew.”
“Your Majesty,” Shalparyon said, tension rising in his voice, “kindly return them to me.”
I looked at Shalparyon and glared. “You come to my kingdom bearing threats. I will hear out this woman.” I looked to Daryubal. “Bring her companion to me.”
He had a handsome face, but it was the rolling, wary blue-gray eyes that drew me in. He had a cagey look, like a jackal in the presence of lions. This, I knew at once, was a man who had seen much… and been touched in the mind by it.
“Rosteval, Ghaitta,” Cat-Eye Touhai said, using our mental speech. “Look to his aura, yes, the tattoos on his arms—with the Third-Eye sense, just so.”
His forearms, I saw, were tattooed in a night-black ink with elaborate spiraling designs—like the Rishva, I thought, but the cord-like spirals bore a series of knots and tangles that seemed to grow more intricate the longer I stared at them. They were also interspersed with thorns, making me think of some kind of thistle or thorny vine. The tattoos covered his hands and extended most of the way up his forearms.
It took only a thought to open my Third-Eye sense.
The outlines of the tattoos glowed with pale, shifting blue-and-green light. The light seemed to come from below the ink and around it, so that the inky black of the tattoos was superimposed atop the light, effectively back-lit by it.
“These tattoos, they make me think of the Serpent of Telupari,” Ghaitta said, and I heard fascination mixed with concern in her mental voice.
“What is the meaning of this?” I said to Cat-Eye Touhai, as I finished sizing up the man. He had a strong jaw, and his beard was short and seemed to have been recently cut.
“It means that he will bear watching, just so,” Cat-Eye Touhai said.
This man was a warrior who had seen battle, of that I had no doubt—but I knew, somehow, that there was more to it than that.
Men respond to battle in different ways. Put another way, battle marks the soul of a man in a way that corresponds to who or what that man was to begin with.
For example, my friend and mentor Cat-Eye Pon delighted in battle. He was all fury in the fray, and when we rode into battle together, I had seen a different side of him come to life, a side that only seemed to exist in those moments.
He had truly exulted in battle, and it had worked a kind of transformation on him: the jovial slave-trader who so delighted in bare-breasted slave-girls had somehow become a god of war, an embodiment of death-dealing in physical form.
To be sure, this is true of a great many men to some degree: I have known many warriors who came alive in battle, bringing to life a side of themselves that lay dormant much of the time.
And then there are men who simply face battle and get through it as best they can. These men are capable of great courage and heroism, but they seldom or never seem to be possessed by the spirit of a god of war.
Still other men play the jackal’s role: they are ready enough to fight if they believe they will gain spoils. I thought of Suti the Red, a Jala-Luwahi mercenary I had encountered in the course of a campaign I had led into the Eastern Lohiman Kingdom and up into Orestamar: a man with little courage and no honor, he had been killed by my men for trying to run during our battle with the Ketaryat army and Soltapyral outside the walls of Tekoro-Athu.
But the eyes that stared at me told me that here was a man who something different yet again.
This man had seen war, and he was haunted by it. The shadow of it was still within his eyes.
Turning from the man, I focused on the woman. Something about her looked almost familiar. One thing was clear: she was a Ketaryat noblewoman with Orestamarian roots.
“Fair lady,” I said in Orestamarian, addressing her as a lord formally addresses a lady who is not known to him, “by your speech, your manner, and your bearing I mark you for a noble lady of the Ketaryatra.
“However, it would seem that you have me at a disadvantage, for I do not know your name, parentage, and tribe, nor those of your companion.” I gestured toward the man, then back to her. “By what name are you called, and who is this nephew of whom you speak?”
She kissed the hem of my robe, a gesture of gratitude—but a familiar gesture.
“Your Majesty King Rosteval,” she said, and now her eyes shone with hope, “my nephew is as noble as I have heard tell, a man of true lordly bearing, a warrior without peer.”
“I do not take your meaning,” I said, but then the truth descended on me with the swiftness of a diving falcon.
Her smile grew wide. “Your Majesty, my name is Parsetya, daughter of King Hamarvan of the Ketaryatra, born to him by Asabraita, a slave-woman of the Jala-Luwahi who was sent as a gift by your father, Bosvadal the son of Verestam, of the line of Bardamal the Elder, after he crushed Dantebor Oak-Staff.
“Thus I speak truth when I say that I behold my nephew before me, and he is as noble and proud and beautiful as I have heard, and so much more.”
Could this woman be who she said she was? Perhaps. Hamarvan had fathered children not only with his several wives, but also with untold numbers of his slave-women. And she had named Dantebor Oak-Staff… my man Sabtemor, fallen in battle, had been the son of that Jala-Luwahi chieftain.
Could it all be an elaborate ruse? Perhaps. If I took in this woman and her companion, they would bear careful watching.
“Your Majesty,” Parsetya said, and I saw the desperation in those pleading eyes. “We have much to offer you, Javairyu and I.”
Somehow, I believed her. There was too much desperation in those eyes for me to think it was all a trick.
“Your Majesty!” Shalparyon said. “The Lady Parsetya was only supposed to observe this mission—”
“Return to your men!” I snapped, glaring at Shalparyon. “You will not dictate to me in my kingdom!”
I dismounted and stood before her. She looked at me, and suddenly I saw it: she had a slight resemblance to Hamarvan, but she also bore a resemblance to my mother, another daughter of Hamarvan by a Jala-Luwahi mother.
I removed my cloak and bundled it over my left arm, then drew my sword and raised it high.
“My Lady Parsetya,” I said, “I, King Rosteval of the Ponteppatra, the son of Bosvadal, of the line of Verestam, extend to you, and by proxy to your companion, my offer of protection.”
Her eyes shone as she stepped closer to me, a look of wonder and excitement on her face.
“HEAR ME!” I shouted. “The man who raises a hand against Parsetya of the Ashvasadra, that man will answer to me for satisfaction of honor.”
And as I had done two years before with Lupraxa, I sheathed my sword and put my cloak around her shoulders as a symbol of my protection.
Well, I thought, the irony hardly lost on me, now I have my very own daughter of Hamarvan.
