Ashes at the Feast
They looked upon him as one looks up at a god, their eyes brimming with awe.
The king thrust out his left hand, red to the wrist. Blood had pooled deep in the broad palm and ran between his fingers. A drop fell like rain, struck a prisoner's body, and burst.
A terrible scream split the banquet hall.
"Gh—aaagh! Don't come!"
The prisoner thrashed so wildly that the cart chained to him lurched and rocked. He was not glaring at the king. He stared into empty air and screamed through his agony.
"No—don't come any closer! Don't eat me! I don't want it... I said I don't...!"
Fear stretched his eyes as wide as a man under torture. His hands fought something no one else could see, the frantic motions of a madman, and before that unreal frenzy a strange dread closed over Elona. Why has he suddenly become like that? He looks like a man fallen into hell...
Then the prisoner, writhing in pain, went utterly still. Only a few seconds later did Elona understand that the stillness was forever. She stood far off, and still it was plain even to her: the man was dead.
Death had shown its shape.
"Vanish."
At the Sindar King's single word the corpse slumped—like a clay doll drying until it crumbled, like a crude sandcastle weathered by a thin wind. The dead man's body blackened into ash and seemed about to collapse, and then, before anyone knew it, it had scattered to nothing.
It was gone from the world.
Elona stared blankly at the space that had returned to nothing, then slowly turned her eyes to Kazan. He passed the same sentence on the prisoners who remained. Whenever a drop of his blood, welling as if from an endless spring, touched the living, the torment of purgatory wrapped them, and death and annihilation followed.
The god of wind and death.
Elona had just turned that name over in her mind when Kazan looked back at her. His gaze, steady enough to pierce, swept across her reaction. The moment he realized her eyes still lingered where the prisoners had been, his expression hardened.
"Let the banquet continue."
At his command the hall sank back into noisy clamor. Servants wiped away what remained of the condemned and carried food in. While Elona, her face drawn and thin, stared only at the floor, dishes began to arrive at the king's table as well.
Meat barely seared, still weeping blood, turned her stomach. Worse, Kazan was coming back to her, stanching the wound in his palm. Pale, she looked at his hand.
"Do you always execute them this way?"
"I almost never do it with my own hands."
"What power is in your blood, that people disappear without a trace...?"
"Sindar's power."
Kazan unwound the cloth he had been using to stop the bleeding. The palm he had cut deep with a knife was clean, healed without a mark. Elona drew a startled breath, but his face did not change. It's like magic. Is Kazan already used to it? Since when has his body been like this? When he lived in Parsion, he was no different from anyone else... Had the change come when he became king of Ashatra—when he received Sindar's name? The question was still forming when voices rose in front of him.
"Your Majesty, you've returned at last!"
"We have been waiting!"
Once the banquet truly began, people lined up before the king. Men and women in splendid dress bowed to him in turn and offered their praise.
"To widen the realm before a year of your reign is out—the streets are full of voices extolling Your Majesty's achievement!"
"Thanks to you, the trade routes lie open without obstruction, Your Majesty. In about three months, Bahalen's trading post will be in our hands as well."
"Please accept this, Your Majesty. A raw opal mined in the south! The size is so rare I wished above all to present it to you."
Nobles, great merchants, and the magnates of every region flattered him without restraint and laid their tribute down. Drink had flushed their faces, and their voices rang high with excitement. Kazan answered them only with a calm, even manner. People marveled that he possessed a king's dignity and charisma, but Elona thought otherwise. Kazan seems to be in a bad mood.
She glanced at the fingers tapping his empty cup. It was an old habit of his. When something grated on him, or when he was displeased, his fingers twitched without his noticing. Smile or blank face, the hand always gave him away. Why has his mood soured? Because I compared him to my brother? Because I paid attention only to the prisoners? Whichever it was, he seemed angry with her. If he drank heavily on top of that, he might turn rough tonight. Her face was paling when a burly man, midway through speaking with Kazan, swung the talk toward her.
"Ah, then is this woman the one? The princess of fallen Parsion!"
Elona stiffened and looked up, and the man snickered.
"Who could have imagined it? Those Parsion bastards who exploited our people so thoroughly have received heaven's punishment at last! I hear Your Majesty butchered their king and offered him up to the god Sindar. When do we get to see this wench's blood?"
He patted the dagger at his waist and grinned with malicious delight. At a loss, Elona turned her eyes away, and Kazan answered.
"I've seen enough blood to be sick of it. I'd rather there were more wine."
He held the empty cup out to her as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Remembering too late the duty she had been given, she hurried to lift the bottle. It was the first time in her life she had waited on anyone, and her hands were stiff as she poured. Seeing them tremble around the heavy bottle, the man burst out laughing.
"Royalty, of a sort—and clumsy beyond belief!"
When he jeered in that comic tone, the nobles around them laughed with him. Shame kept Elona from answering. Kazan drank in silence and let them say whatever they pleased about her. She had eaten nothing since afternoon, and after so much abuse she felt queasy, as if the words had lodged in her chest.
It was a long while later that Kazan called an end to the feast.
"That will do for today."
While drunken nobles went out leaning on their attendants, he quietly charged her.
"Go back to the palace. Don't sleep. Stay awake."
The voice that closed the words was strangely cold. So what I said really did put him in a bad mood. Even so, Elona had no intention of taking it back. To her eyes he truly was cruel. To anyone else, perhaps not—but to her, he was no different from a tyrant. Where has the Kazan I knew gone? Feeling a distance too vast to cross, she rose. Out in the desert, night had fallen, and a cold wind was blowing.
From far off, the clamor of the city streets carried deep into the royal palace.
It was late, after the banquet had been dismissed. Feeling the air grown cool, Kazan stepped out onto a balcony of the Main Palace. Night lay over the desert city of Perma, yet festival light still brightened every quarter. For the week of the victory celebrations, the royal capital would go on blazing through the dark.
The whole people rejoiced at Parsion's fall.
Kazan turned that fact over as he looked down on the vast city. All of it had been wrought by his own hand: this city, worn thin by civil war, restored to peace and prosperity, and the Parsion that had exploited his homeland brought down in a single day. Every history of Ashatra would bear his name, and his descendants would carry the dynasty on. Seventh son of the Kalima King. The great Sindar Kazan Mileshatra.
Meaningless things. With a bored gaze he turned away. The long audience, and then the celebration after it, had taken far too much time. He wanted the cumbersome ceremonial robes off and something fit for bed in their place. Once he had cast aside every pretense, he meant to go to Mano Palace. Since arriving in the royal capital, that was the only thing he had wanted.
To have Elona.
The more I hold her, the more she seems to break. That, too, was what he wanted. He had thought it from the first time they met: she was like a discarded wax doll, precarious and easy to ruin. And so he had wanted to keep her whole, to treasure her—until she drove a hidden blade into his sincerity. This is only the beginning.
He had just stood before the mirror to change when a knock sounded at the door. Loosening his belt, Kazan answered.
"Who is it."
"It is Irid, Lord Sindar."
At the soft voice he made no reply. A few suitable words on his way out, once he had changed, would be enough.
But Irid had the nerve to open the door and come into his room. It was an insolence he had seen often enough. He kept his attention on shedding his clothes, and he rebuked her.