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He was Soranchele Izamal-xiu Ulkan, the seventh son of the priest-king Uxmal Mahanmec Azhtoc, and he strode through the outer galleries of his father's palace on the night of his coming of age.
The last scarlet and purple tones of sunset brooded over the western ocean, but the storm had passed on. Its tail still lashed, but its fury was almost spent. Vayal had battened down, and as Soran walked up from the quay where the Incari had tied up, he watched the boards and ropes that had safeguarded roofing and walls being taken down. Hammers beat a tattoo across the city, and in the morning the work gangs would come in to demolish the few buildings that had been damaged beyond repair.
Like a great golden spire, the temple of Helios had withstood the onslaught of wind and ocean. The quays of Vayal were safe, and high above the city, where the view of the harbor was without compare, the palace itself smelt of sea and joss, ocean and spice. Lamps fluttered in the evening wind as Soran made his way in from the white marble courtyards. The coolness prickled his skin, reminding him for a moment of the gale into which he had stared from the bow of the galley. Death had never seemed so close as the minutes when the Incari ran the gauntlet of the Myrmidae, yet Soran had rarely felt so alive.
And then, as the galley turned toward Vayal, he saw a line of sails on the horizon. The Zehefti were fleeing, and no one would blame them. The only question in Soran's mind was, where were they fleeing to? With Kush and Nefti already lost to the sea, and Ilios rank with contagion, they should have come to Vayal.
But the people of Zeheft had never been welcome in this city, and even now, when they faced the extinction of their kind, Vayal would grant them little succor. All Soran's life, this had been the way, and if a voice were raised in protest it would soon be answered with wrath. Wisely, the men of Vayal remained silent, but the dread they would never utter was written in their faces.
The outer lands had been gone for years, and not all the prayers of all the priests in Vayal had kept the earth and sky at peace. If Zeheft were destroyed, how long would it be before Hurucan and Peseden come for Vayal?
The question itself was treason, and no one was about to speak it aloud, but it simmered in the mind of everyone in the city tonight. Soran saw it in the dark eyes of Azhtoc's people, in the instant before they prostrated before the priest-king's tall seventh son, upon whose dark head the double crown of the Old and New Kingdoms would one day rest.
If the kingdoms existed when the time came, Soran though sourly. Uxman Mahanmec Azhtoc was far from elderly. Many years of rule stretched on before him, before Soran could expect to stand beside of the funeral pyre, speak the grand words and light the taper that sent his father's soul to join their ancestors.
Long before Azhtoc expired, the empire would be gone, and every man in Vayal knew it -- save possibly Mahanmec Azhtoc himself. He was blinded by the glorious radiance of Helios, Soran was sure. Prophecies made timeworn by the ages spoke clearly to him, while the pleas of his people, even his own sons, were easy to ignore.
Two score priests of Helios knelt as they saw Soran approaching. The more lowly priests and acolytes prostrated, and two temple lay brothers doing penance for some fancied sin went down in his path, so he would tread on their raw, flogged backs, and bestow the blessing that could only be gleaned from royal touch. Soran had no idea what the brothers had done, and he walked over them with an expression of disdain. Their faith was less simple that witless, and in the sight of Azhtoc they were as worthless as the captives who labored in chains in the palace gardens.
Shadows wreathed him as he left the priests behind. The green eyes of leashed jaguars and leopards blinked sleepily at him. A pall of joss smoke shifted on the heavy air, and his pupils widened as he stepped into a realm of fat gold candles and slender eunuchs, billowing gauze and doe-eyed courtesans who ambushed him with smiles and obeisance.
The night of his coming of age was reason for all of Vayal to celebrate, and the palace was dressed in scarlet and blue. A pair of macaws shrieked from their perches in the audience chamber, where slaves from Nefti and Kush were sluicing the green marble floors with rosewater. Soran glanced at them and passed on into the private chambers.
The light there was gold, the air heavy with the scents of seduction. Houris lounged in the inner courtyards, waiting to serve the royal household and the temple, and several seemed to be watching for his return. One was more beautiful than the other, and he knew them all. They were from Ilios and Incaria, Aegyptos and Kriti, Keltoi in the east and Jaymaca in the west; and a few were from the distant lands where the Jaguar Kings claimed descent from darker gods than any who had ever held dominion over Vayal or Zeheft.
The women were sumptuous, the boys ripe and luscious, the eunuchs tall, slender and gorgeous. Soran graced them with a smile -- they were waiting to see which one he would choose for the night of his coming of age, but he passed on once more. Every houri in the palace was his father's hireling. Each was carefully selected -- this one for the lean perfection of his muscles, that one for the great roundness of her breasts, the next for the length of his legs, or the ripe pout of her mouth, or the lustrous cape of his hair. Not one among them was less than perfect in his own her own way, and tonight Soran wanted none of them.
Tonight, he would choose. He was of age, and he had the right. He would have passed by them all, continued to his own chambers, but a voice called him back. A thin, brittle voice which sought to ingratiate and only aggravated him.
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