Empire against the expansionism of the southern Yilthid and their Groull slaves.
The vast prismatic panes of Jorgill Deep now reflect the sunlight in proud white-gleaming sheets, glaring out from the nullifidian bulk and heavy tracery of the walls. Arrian feels coddled behind them, safe inside a structure that has scoffed for millennia at every kind of storm. She gazes at the splendid ship in the harbor and walks gracefully out through black arcades atop the battlements. Flowering vines grow here and frame the sky with perfumed boughs drooping with white petals.
“What if it’s an Ublisi come to visit your father?” Corwin says quietly. “Would you be frightened?”
Arrian is surprised that his thoughts have been identical to hers. She is peering curiously toward the harbor. “I don’t know,” she says slowly. “I’ve never seen one before.”
“I hear they have no blood. That’s queer to think of. They can’t die. Ever.”
“Oh, Cor! It’s probably just an ally. A household from the south. They say southern ships are grand to look at.”
“I want to get off this island!” Corwin suddenly spouts. “I want to see the mainland. Go places. Do something important.”
“Father says it’s safer here on the isles.”
“Your father doesn’t know everything!”
Arrian stops and turns with a look of shock on her small dark lips. It has never occurred to her that anyone might have ideas that oppose those of her father and the sudden realization forces her to stop completely in order to digest. “By the Eyes, Corwin, why are you so upset?”
Corwin looks down at the box of colors in his hands. The sunlight on the wood shines gold and turns his fingers copper. He bites his lip while color flushes his ears and cheeks. Only when Arrian begins walking again does he venture to respond. “I’m just tired of being here and never seeing the world.”
“What does that have to do with my father?”
“Nothing.”
He wants to say that he is upset with himself. I know he is angry for not having been braver, brasher. He should have killed the centipede. He should not have gotten her colors. He should have kissed her, brushed his hand across her waist and then …
There are noises coming from the harbor, excited shouts and the roll of drums. Corwin and Arrian take a tertiary staircase down to a small balcony the guards seldom use. It looks out from a tiny room that punches clean through the fortress wall and grants a good view of both the docks outside and the courtyard within. From here, they can see Arrian’s father standing with a body of men in robes, personal advisors who whisper in each other’s ears. It is strange that I know what they are whispering. The drums are also those of her father’s men: sea turtle skin stretched over hoops beaten with soft leather mallets.
But Arrian is staring at the ship. The prow, covered with beaten copper and silver studs, seems to burn its reflection into the dock waters. At the center of one of the sail’s moons, a silver eye is painted. Arrian can see a dark-skinned woman in white silk stepping gracefully near the landing while bare-chested albinos flex their muscles to get the moorings tight. Their shoulders are red from the sun.
It is a delicious scene.
The woman wears a copper carcanet with red jewels, anklets and bracelets that explode in the sunlight. Part of her face is lined with a curious black design—even darker than her skin—which seems to hold her eye like a diamond in a claw.
The drums fade and Cendrion harps fill the air with soft music. Arrian notices green and blue veils hanging in the gate. They bloom fatly in the wind while the woman and her servants seem to float toward her father.
Caliph checked the time with bleary eyes. The soothing aroma pouring from the lanthorn was a natural stimulant but he closed the book across his stomach. His head ached. He didn’t understand why Sena must have been reading this particular account, for long hours, locked away in this freezing chamber just before she left.
He turned his thoughts toward her return. The possibility of sex and quiet conversation made him long for her. Fire and wine would warm the moment of her arrival. He had already informed the staff of their duties, he had orchestrated everything.
She would tell him all about her trip, what she had done, where she had been. He in turn would tell her about the problem with the Pandragonians. They would sit close together, feet touching.
As the High King, he was forced to keep certain secrets. Maybe that was why he didn’t begrudge her a handful of locked doors; or judge her based on the books she read. In fact, her secrets were part of the allure, part of her intractable luster. The unfathomable still looked out at him from behind her mirror-like eyes.
Caliph felt his lids droop despite the lanthorn’s light. He turned into the bow of the chair and barely heard the journal clatter to the floor.
4O.S.: A stringed instrument with a woodwind built into the neck. It is held vertically in front of the body and played by blowing and plucking at the same time.
5A possible transliteration of Jingsade (or Gringling script) into Mallic (or the language of the Lua’groc) and a word whose meaning is generally described in Trade as “deliverer/rescuer” but contextually
6O.S.: A Gringling princess.
CHAPTER
4
In Octul Box, the infamous witch’s skin up-welled with a fantasy of jewels that beaded from her very pores. Dark and dazzling, both the expression on her face and the diamonds, like droplets of night sweat, seemed products of wild ecstasy. Taelin could see flexuous clones of precise lamplight in each gem, positioned by the jewelers who had engrailed her body, snapped lithos and presumably left her with the treasures.
The posters were everywhere: INDULGE YOURSELF. GET TICKY!
She passed Jesuexe Furrier where Sena’s pavonine eyes stared back at her.
Taelin shivered.
A letter had come from her father by bird that asked her to do things she didn’t want to do—that she had no intention of doing. She wandered the streets to clear her head.
The morning had remained dismal. Clouds grazed single-story structures, astonishingly low.
While she browsed the upscale streets where ice had been salted away, people passed her with ostentatiously manicured creatures on glittering leashes. In shape, the small faceless monsters resembled furred maggots with bizarre haircuts. Stubby legs propelled them around while drool flowed from gaping holes at the front of their bodies.
Taelin sat down under one of the smooth patinated bronze dragons whose sinuous body made a shape like lightning over Octul Box’s fountained mall. Lily white spatters had put the sculpture in a sour mood. Its eyes indicated it wanted to tear something apart. Taelin could relate.
She had tried to console herself with a bottle of Pandragonian perfume. Sena’s return had been delayed by weather and no new audiences were being granted. Nevertheless, Taelin put her name down for an appointment at the earliest convenience and left a cruestone.
She glanced toward Isca Castle. Even from Octul Box, the blue-black carrion birds played an evil game: leading her gaze repetitiously toward cages made hazy by two hundred yards of intervening mist.
Assuming the Iscan staff (or Sena) granted her an audience she couldn’t help morbidly envisioning herself suspended there, left to rot, while the castle’s mythic spindles marked her grave. Would even her father be able to save her if she wound up on the witch’s bad side?
Pandragor had not executed anyone in over two hundred years. Not that Pandragor was perfect, Taelin mused, but if some of its values rubbed off on these northern backwater rogue nations of the world … well, maybe things would improve. It was simplistic and imperialist and she knew it. But Pandragor was the freest country north or south of the Tebesh Plateau. She believed in it. She trusted it.
She opened her box and took out the pearlescent bottle, fingering the snowy braided cord and ball: its every detail spoke to her of home. It was indulgent but she couldn’t help herself. She pumped the atomizer once and the
