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The old eyes peered at him, bright and hard as a raven’s. “Not if they had the sense they were born with.” Galen pulled up the sheepskins, punched the cushions, and made himself comfortable. “They’ll get no succor there, and no shelter save the dungeon.”
The Inner Capital, the very heart of the New Kingdom and the empire, lay over the dolphin-backed swell of the island. It was not so far away – a fast horse could run it in less than an hour – but Faunos has not seen the spires and towers of Vayal in years.
He remembered it well, but even when he had been much younger, going there was filled with danger. He was born with the look of the Zehefti witchboys, some strangeness about the eyes, a curve to the mouth, which would always betray him. By the time he was fourteen or fifteen summers old, it would have taken little to set tongues wagging, and send a witchfinder after him.
He was ten years old, the first time Galen took him into Vayal. The old teacher insisted that he must know the city just a little, or it would be the enemy that defeated him on the day when necessity took him there. Faunos could not imaging what catastrophe would ever take him to the city, but he bowed to Galen’s experience and was wide eyed as he saw the great gold spires streaming blue and scarlet pennants, the fountains and courtyards, canals and temples, the villas and palaces of the rich. No other land possessed anything like it. Vayal was magnificence as he could not have imagined it before.
That day he stood barefoot in the dust and strong white sunlight at the roadside, and watched the pomp and splendor as a parade went by. He counted almost a hundred chariots, each dressed in gold and scarlet to honor Helios and, in the same moment, to mark the blooding of the priest-king’s seventh son.
The tradition of the seventh son was purely ceremonial in Vayal – it rank hollowly, like an empty wine jar, since no magic was passed on, and only rank was inherited. Still, the parade astonished Faunos. He might have curled his lip, knowing no Power had been born in this male child of Azhtoc, there was no reason for him to be celebrated as a seventh son of a seventh son. But the gold was blinding in the sun, the blare of trumpets was overwhelming, and Soranchele Izamal-xiu Ulkan had killed his leopard.
The animal’s skin had been stretched and cured. It hung like a cloak about the boy’s shoulders, and he wore it proudly. He was fifteen, and already those shoulders were broad, the legs long and muscular, the arms round with youth, strength. Three of his brothers were officers, placed highly in the priest-king’s armies; three more were high priests who rarely stepped out of the shadowed recesses of the temple of Helios.
But this youth, whose raven hair shone blue-black in the sun, and whose blue eyes coolly surveyed the crowd that had gathered to catch a glimpse of him – this boy would one day wear the double crown. Faunos marked him well, for his rank, his stature, and his rare beauty. He caught one long glimpse of the young man's face, and never forgot it.
Beside the youth in the chariot, only a little taller, rode his father, a figure shrouded in gauze, silk, cloth of gold, that concealed his face and form from commoners. To look upon the face of the embodiment of Helios was death, for all but a handful of his kin and comrades. Mahanmec Azhtoc could only have been proud of the boy, Faunos thought, and more than likely the great king recalled the day of his own feasting.
The ritual was reserved for the seventh sons, whose courage was proved in the forest, in blood. With the skin of the leopard about his shoulders, the heir to Vayal was permitted to wear his swords in public. That day, Soran also carried a pair of hunting javelins, and a double-curved Incari bow for which the quiver lay against his back.
“See his face, know him, remember him well,” Galen had said in a voice betraying as much sadness as anger. “This beautiful youth, with the gold-painted eyes and the pearls roped into his hair, will be the sovereign of Vayal through all the long years of your survival, when I’m gone to dust. It’s not Azhtoc you must dread, it’s this one, who is not even a man yet. This one, this Soranchele Izamal-xiu Ulkan, will receive the honors that should have been your own, Faunos Phinneas Aeson. When his father lies on the funeral pyre, Helios will reach down and possess the blood and bones of this seventh son. All of Vayal will prostrate at his feet. All the Empire of the Atantan will seek his glory and cower in his shadow.”
The words haunted Faunos for years, yet the same day he and Galen returned to hiding and isolation. They were on a galley bound for Incaria before the sun set, deliberately keeping away from the people of Zeheft and Vayal alike, out of dread. So easily could the boy be recognized either as his father’s son, or as the witchboy he was. Either way, a glance of recognition would be his doom.
For fifteen years Galen had kept them on the move between the islands, always running, always hiding, from Ilios to Kush to Nefti and Incaria. They were running out of places to hide, Faunos thought bleakly. The outlands were fast vanishing, storm by storm, and with every tantrum of Volcos, who made the earth shake in his rage.
At last they had returned to Zeheft because nowhere else was safe. Ilios was rank with contagion. Incaria was bustling with Imperial warships. They could have shipped out with a trading galley headed east into the wild, dark lands of the Keltoi, who were Faunos’s mother’s people, but the tribes were savage, unknowable. Many eastbound galleys never returned. They might have headed west into the mystery of Jaymaca, but the same was true, and the ocean was violent there at this time of the year, when Hurucan was always furious.
Faunos stirred, restless, hungry, ill at ease. Wanting air, he returned to the door. From the corner of the cottage he could almost see the lights of the water gypsies’ camp, and he could hear their music in wafts, when the wind blew strongly.
Part of him feared the gypsies, for he had never spent long enough with people to know their ways and wiles; but the greater part of him longed to be with them. He glanced back at Galen, but the old eunuch was dozing again. His skin was cool, his cheeks pale. The water jug was full and the brazier burned brightly.
With a soft curse, Faunos settled on the doorstep, arms wrapped around his knees, and listened to the songs of sea and wind.
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