Without a Heart "The eminent philosopher Phayallos also maintained that the fairy words meaning 'god' and 'goddess' were very close to their words for 'uncle' and 'aunt'…" -from "A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand" THE CHILD TOOK HER HAND and placed it against his narrow chest, a gesture Qinnitan knew meant, "I'm frightened." She pulled him closer, held him as the movement of the Xixian ship rocked them both. "Don't worry, Pigeon. He won't hurt you. He only brought you to make sure I don't dive over the side and try to swim back to Hierosol."
He gave her a reproachful look: it wasn't just for himself that he was frightened.
"Truly, we'll be well," she said, but they both knew she was lying. Qinnitan lowered her voice to a whisper. "You'll see-we'll find a chance to get away before we catch up with the autarch."
Their cabin door abruptly swung open. The man who had snatched them from the streets of Hierosol stared at them, his eyes and face devoid of expression, as if he were thinking of something else entirely. While disguised as an old woman he had mimed feelings quite convincingly, but now he had thrown that aside as if human nature were only a mask he had been wearing.
"What do you want?" she asked. "Are you afraid we're going to sneak out the locked door? Climb the mast and step off onto a cloud, perhaps?"
He ignored her as he walked past. He yanked hard at the bars on the window, testing them, then turned to survey the tiny cabin.
"What is your name?" Qinnitan demanded.
His lips twitched. "What does it matter?"
"We will be together on this ship until we reach the autarch and you can be paid your blood money. You certainly know my name, and much more-you must have spent weeks following me, watching everything I did. By the Sacred Hive, you even dressed up like an old woman so you could spy on me! The least you could do is tell me who you are."
He didn't respond, and his face remained as expressionless as a dead man's as he turned and left the cabin, every movement as precise and fluid as those of a temple dancer. She might have almost admired it, but she knew it would be like a mouse admiring the murderous grace of a cat.
She felt something damp on her arm. Pigeon was crying.
"Here, here," she said. "Shh, lamb. Don't be afraid. I'll tell you a story. Do you want to hear a story?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Have you heard the true story of Habbili the Crooked? I know you've heard of him-he was the son of the great god Nushash, but when his father was driven into exile, Habbili was treated very badly by Argal and the rest of the demon-gods. For a while it seemed there was no chance he would survive, but in the end he destroyed his enemies and saved his father and even Heaven itself. Do you want to hear about that?"
Pigeon was still sniffling, but she thought she felt him nod.
"Some of it is a little frightening so you have to be brave. Yes? Then I'll tell you." And she told him the tale just as her father had taught it to her.
Long, long ago, when horses could still fly and the great red desert of Xand was covered with grass and flowers and trees, the great god Nushash was riding and met Suya the Dawnflower. Her beauty stole his heart. He went to her father Argal the Thunderer, who was his half brother, and asked to marry her. Argal gave permission, but he had a cruel, dishonorable trick in mind, because he and his brothers were jealous of Nushash.
When Nushash had taken Suya away to meet his family, Argal called his brothers Xergal and Efiyal and told them Nushash had stolen his daughter. The brothers then assembled all their servants and warriors and rode to Moontusk, the house of Xosh, brother of Nushash and Lord of the Moon, where Nushash and his new bride were staying.
The war was long and terrible, and during the years it lasted a son was born to Nushash and Suya. His name was Habbili, and he was a brave, beautiful child, the treasure of his parents, wise and kind beyond his years.
Bright Nushash and his kin were defeated at last by the treachery of his half brothers. Suya Dawnflower escaped the destruction of Moontusk, but was lost in the wilderness for many years until Xergal the Lord of the Deep, Argal's brother, found her and made her his wife.
Xosh the Moonlord was killed in the fighting. Great Nushash was captured, but he was too powerful to destroy, so Argal and the others cut him into many pieces and scattered those pieces over all the lands. But young Habbili, son of Nushash, was tortured by Argal, his own grandfather, and all the rest of that demon clan. They tormented him and lamed him, then at last they cut out his heart and burned it on the fire and left him dead in the ruins of Moontusk.
But a mother serpent came into the ruins looking for a place to lay her egg, and so when she birthed it she hid it in the hole in Habbili's chest. With the poisoned egg in his chest he came to life once more, consumed with anger and vowing revenge.
"How can you do this to me?" the mother snake said. "I have brought you back to life, but my child is in your breast and cannot hatch. If you go away now to attack your enemies you will have returned evil for good."
Habbili thought about this and saw that what she said was true. "Very well," he said. "I will trust you, although my own family has betrayed me more times than I can count. Take back your egg, but go and draw a coal from the fires burning in the rubble and put that in my chest instead." And Habbili reached into his chest, pulled out the serpent's egg, and then fell down dead once more.
The mother snake was honorable. She could have left him then, but instead she went and drew a coal from the fire burning in the ruins of the tower and brought it back, although it burned her mouth badly, which is why ever since all snakes have hissed instead of spoken. She placed it in his chest and he came back to life. He thanked her and went on his way, limping so badly from his many injuries that the mortals who met him named him "Crooked."
For years he wandered and had many adventures and learned many things, but always he thought of the evil done to him by his grandfather and uncles. At last he felt he was ready to resume the sacred feud and to bring his father, Nushash, back to life. But his father's body had been cut in pieces and scattered up and down the lands of the north and the lands of the south so Habbili had to search long and hard to find them. At last he had recovered all but his father's head, which was kept in a crystal casket in the house of Xergal, the god of deep places and the dead, whom northerners call Kernios. Habbili went to Xergal's stronghold and, with the use of charms and spells he had learned, made his way past the guards and into the heart of the house. And as he stole through that dark place, the wife of Xergal came upon him. Crooked did not at first recognize her, but she recognized him-for she was, after all, his mother Suya Dawnflower, whom Xergal had captured and forced into marriage.
"You must run away, my son," she told him. "The Earthlord will be back soon, and when he returns he will be angry and destroy you."
"No," Habbili said. "I have come to steal my father's head, so that I can bring him back to life."
Suya was frightened, but she could not change his mind. "Dark Xergal keeps your father's head in the deepest cellar of his house," she said at last, "in a crystal casket that cannot be broken without the hammer of Argal the Thunderer, his brother. But you cannot steal the hammer without the net of Efiyal, Lord of the Waters, who is brother to both. All three brothers are together on a hunting trip and their treasures are unguarded, so you must go now to steal them, for soon they will return to their houses and then you will never succeed."
So Habbili the Crooked fled from Xergal's house and followed his mother's instructions, diving into the great river and swimming down into its depths to the house of Efiyal. There by his skill he overcame the crocodiles that guarded the river god's throne and stole the net. Next he climbed high to the top of Xandos, the great mountain, to Argal's house on its peak. He threw Efiyal's net over the one hundred deadly warriors there so that they slept at his command, then took the great hammer down from the place where it hung by the door. Then Habbili reclaimed the magic net and climbed down Mount Xandos. He went down into the ground, back to the house where Xergal his uncle, lord of the deep places, kept his throne and all his treasure.
"Please be careful, son," his mother Suya told him. "If Xergal finds you here he will destroy you. He is the god of the dead lands. He will drag you into the shadows and you will stay there forever." But Habbili went down the stairs into the deepest part of the Deathlord's castle and found his father's head in a box of gold and crystal, floating in a pool of quicksilver. When Habbili picked it up his father's eyes opened. But since he had eyes and a mouth but no heart, he did not recognize his own son, and so Nushash's head began to cry, "Help! Xergal, great lord! Someone is trying to steal me!"
At that moment Xergal was returning from his hunting trip. He heard the cry of Nushash's head and hurried down the tunnel toward the deep vault, his footsteps booming like thunder. Habbili was frightened despite the coal burning hot in his breast-he knew that with his crippled legs he could not outrun the Deathlord-so he set the head of his father down on the floor, took up the Hammer of Argal and the Net of Efiyal, and waited. When Xergal burst into the room, his beard and robes black as a starless, moonless night, his eyes flashing red like rubies, Habbili threw the net over him. For a moment Xergal was slowed by his own brother's sea magic and stopped, amazed. In that moment, Habbili threw the hammer at him and it knocked Xergal the Earthlord to the ground. Habbili picked up the hammer, took the head of his father in its crystal casket, and ran up the stairs with Xergal right behind him, getting closer all the time.
Suya, Habbili's mother, grabbed at the cloak of Xergal as he ran past. "Husband," she cried, "you must come and eat your supper before it is cold."
The Earthlord tried to pull away from her, but she held on. "Woman, let go of me. Someone has stolen what is mine."
Suya clung to him. "But I have turned back the bed. Come and lie with me before the bed is cold."
Still Xergal fought to get away. "Let go of me! Someone has stolen what is mine!"
Suya would not let go. "Come and stay with me. I feel ill, and soon I may die."
Xergal shouted, "You will die now!" and struck her down, but by that time Habbili the Crooked had escaped from of the underground palace and had fled south into the forests around Xandos. There he used the Hammer of Argal to free his father's head from the casket, and then all the pieces of Nushash Whitefire were joined and the Lord of the Sun was alive again.
"Father!" he said. "You live once more!"
"You are a good and faithful son," Nushash told him. "You have saved me. Where is your mother? I wish to see her."
When Habbili told him that Suya the Dawnflower had died so that they could escape from Xergal the Earthlord, great Nushash was full of grief. He went away then to his house in the highest heavens and resumed his old chore of driving the sun chariot across the sky each day. Habbili remained on the earth, where he taught the sons of men the truth about Argal the Thunderer and the rest of that traitorous clan of gods, revealing them all as the enemies of Nushash Whitefire. So the people drove out Argal's supporters and the lands all around Xandos ever after worshipped Nushash, the true king of the sky."
Pigeon squeezed her hand. She looked down and saw the question in his eyes. "Yes," she said, "that is the truth. That is why I told you the story. Habbili the Crooked was dead, with his heart cut out, and yet he returned to defeat his enemies-and they were gods and demons! Yes, he was frightened, but he did not surrender to fear. That is why things turned out right in the end."
Pigeon squeezed her hand.
"You're welcome. So do not fear, little one. We will find a way. The gods will help us. Heaven will preserve us."
She held him for a long time until she noticed that the sound of his breathing had changed. Pigeon had finally fallen asleep.
Against all odds, the crippled boy Habbili survived, she thought to herself. Against all odds. But to save him, his mother had to die.
"Are you a believer, King Olin?" The autarch's golden eyes seemed even brighter than usual.
"A believer?"
"Yes. Do you believe in heaven?"
"I believe in my gods."
"Ah. So you are not a believer-at least in the old sense."
"What does that mean, Xandian? I told you I believe in…"
"… 'In my gods,' is what you said. I heard." Sulepis turned up his long hands like the two sides of a scale. "Which means you acknowledge that other people have other beliefs… other gods. But those who truly believe in their own creed think that other gods cannot exist-that the beliefs of others are superstition or devil-worship." The autarch smiled. For a handsome man, he had a terrible, frightening smile; even after more than a year of serving him Pinimmon Vash had still not grown used to it. "I gather you are not that type."
Olin shrugged, but his words were careful. "I try to understand the world in which I live."
"Which is to say you find it hard to believe in anything so foolish as the idea that every word of the Book of the Trigon is the truth. Ah, no, do not grow angry, Olin! The same is easily said of my people's Revelations of Nushash. Fireside tales for children."
Even Vash, with all his years of practice, could not suppress a small grunt of astonishment. The autarch turned to him, grinning. "Have I offended you, Minister Vash?"
"N-No, Golden One. Nothing you do could ever offend me."
"Hmmm. That sounds like a challenge." Sulepis laughed, the high, careless mirth of a happy child. "But at the moment I am involved in a deep philosophical discussion with King Olin, so perhaps you would be more comfortable doing something else." His smile abruptly disappeared. "In other words-go, Vash."
Vash bowed and immediately backed out of the Golden One's presence. As he passed the Scotarch Prusus lolling in his chair, Vash thought he noticed something other than the usual fear and confusion in that rheumy eye. Had the cripple's interest been pricked by the autarch's careless blasphemy? Was the simpleminded creature actually offended? Vash was coldly amused. Perhaps Sulepis was sending away the wrong man.
Once he had gone into the main cabin, Vash climbed as quickly to the deck above as his old legs would allow, then circled around so that he could stay within earshot of the autarch's voice. One did not reach the paramount minister's exalted age by being ignorant of the substance of important conversations, but since he did not have his usual resources in place here on the royal ship he'd have to do the spying himself, degrading and dangerous as it might be.
Sulepis was still talking when Vash drew near enough to hear.
"… No, there is no need for coyness, King Olin," said the autarch. "Wise men know that the ancients spoke secrets in the great religious books that are too powerful for simple folk to hear. Knowledge of that sort is for the elite-for men such as you and I, who have studied the deep arts and know the truth behind the gaudy pageant of history."
Vash leaned forward a little until he could see the back of Olin's head where the northern king stood at the railing below him. The autarch was out of sight, although Vash could tell from Olin's tense stance that he must be near: how well the paramount minister knew the nerve-jumping fear that even an apparently friendly conversation with Sulepis brought.
"You mistake me…" Olin began, but the autarch only laughed.
"No, do not argue, my good fellow-a man who has so few breaths left to him in this world should not waste even one. I know much more about you than you do about me, Olin Eddon. I have watched you and your family, you see."
The northerner grew very still beside the rail. Were it not that the green, unsettled waters of the Osteian Sea continued to hump and thrash themselves into white froth beyond Olin's shoulder, Pinimmon Vash would have thought the entire world had suddenly paused like a skipped heartbeat. "You have watched us…?"
Sulepis went on as though the other monarch had not spoken. "I know that you, your royal physicians, and other philosophic explorers of your court have made a study of the old teachings, the lost arts… and of the days of the gods."
"I do not know what you mean," Olin said stiffly.
"It could be that you did so originally for your own reasons-to learn more of the mystery of your family's tainted blood-but in your years of study you cannot have failed to learn more about the way the world truly works than the simpletons who surround you, who call you the monarch anointed by the gods without truly knowing anything about the gods at all." For a moment Sulepis came into view and Vash shrank back, but the autarch only moved closer to Olin, his back turned to Vash's hiding spot. Vash couldn't see any of the guards but he knew they would not like the autarch being so close to the foreign prisoner.
It was a strangely ordinary scene, the two men leaning side-by-side against the rail: had it not been for the autarch's ceremonial costume-the high-peaked headgear known as the Henbane Crown because it resembled the poisonous seed of that plant, the huge golden amulet of the sun on his chest, and of course his golden finger-stalls-Sulepis might have been an ordinary Xandian priest discussing tithes and temple maintenance with some northern counterpart. But to face those golden eyes directly, Vash knew, was to feel quite differently about what sort of creature the autarch was.
The northern king seemed to be surprisingly brave: anyone else feeling the autarch's heat so close, the fever of the Golden One's thoughts, would have shrunk away. People in the Orchard Court whispered that standing near Sulepis was like standing in the unshielded desert sun, that if you stayed too long first your wits, then your very skin and bones would burn away.
Vash shuddered a little. Once he had called such talk nonsense. Now he felt he could believe almost anything about his master, this terrifying god-on-earth.
"Perhaps this is all a bit difficult to grasp." The autarch stretched his long fingers toward the western horizon as if he would pluck the sun setting there like a fig from a branch. "I have perhaps pondered more on these things than you have, Olin, but I know you can grasp them-that you can understand the truth. And when you do… well, perhaps then you will feel differently about me and what I plan."
"I doubt that."
The autarch made a comfortable, satisfied noise. "Do you know the story of Melarkh, the hero-king of ancient Jurr? I'm sure you have heard it. His wife was cursed by evil fates and so she could not give him a son. He saved a falcon from a great serpent, and in reward the falcon flew him up to heaven so that he could steal the Seed of Birth from the gods themselves."
Olin looked up, his expression so odd that Vash could not read it. "I have heard something like it told of the great hero Hiliometes."
"Ah, you illustrate my point. Now, most of those who hear that tale believe 'This is a true thing. This is what Melarkh-or Hiliometes, if that is how they hear the tale-this is what the great hero did.' " For a moment the god-king's hand rose again, finger-stalls glittering like fire in the sun's dying rays. "But those, of course, are the very simplest of the simple. Cleverer men-clerics and other wise men, leaders of the common folk, they will say, 'Of course Melarkh may not have flown up to heaven on a falcon or brought back the Seed of Birth, but the story speaks of how the secrets of the gods must be discovered by brave men, how mortals can change their fate.' And the wildest minds, the loneliest of philosophers living far from the disapproval of others, might even think, 'Since no falcon large enough to carry a grown man exists, perhaps the tale of Melarkh riding one to heaven is false. And if that tale is false, perhaps others are false too. And if the tales are false, perhaps all the stories they tell are lies. Perhaps the gods themselves do not exist!' And from such blasphemy even the wisest recoil, because they know that such thinking could uproot heaven itself and leave men alone in the void."
The autarch's tone changed now, growing softer and more intimate, so that Vash, cursing his old ears, had to lean down to the point where his back, already sore, began to ache in earnest. He was also terrified that the railing might creak under this greater weight, giving him away.
"But here is what I say to all of them, the stupid and the curious and the brave," the autarch continued, "they are all of them right! And they are all of them wrong as well. Only I understand the truth. Only I of all living things can bend the gods to my will."
Vash took a breath. This was a scope of madness even he had not seen before, and he had witnessed many of the autarch's strangest and most savage ideas.
"I do not… I do not understand you." Olin sounded weak and ill now.
"Oh, I think you do. Or at least you grasp the general drift of what I say-because you have thought such things yourself. Admit it, Olin, you are surprised to hear such ideas-ideas more exalted but otherwise not so different from your own-coming from one you think of as so different from yourself. Well, you are right-I am different. Because where you have learned these secrets and thought these thoughts in the depths of despair, trying to learn why you and your line are so cursed, I have stepped forward and said, 'These secrets are what I seek, but I will not be the anvil, I will be the hammer. It is I who will do the shaping.' " The autarch let out another gleeful laugh. "You see, I know what is beneath your castle, Olin of Southmarch. I know the curse that has bedeviled your family for generations, and I know what caused it. But unlike you, I will shape that power to my own will. Unlike you, I will not let heaven rule me with ancient tales and infantile warnings! The power of the gods will be mine-and then I will punish heaven itself for trying to deny me!"
After the autarch returned to his cabin, King Olin remained at the rail, staring silently at the water. Pinimmon Vash, whose knees were throbbing now too, dared not move yet for fear the northern king would notice him. At last, Olin turned and let his guards lead him back toward his small cabin. For a moment Vash could see the foreign king's face clearly, its skin so slack and its hue so ghastly pale that Olin might have already been dead. In fact, the foreigner looked as though he had seen not only his own death, but the end of everything he loved.
Pinimmon Vash, who had never wasted a drop of pity on others, thought of Olin's bloodless face and found himself hoping that the gods would show mercy on the northern king and let him die in his sleep that night.