Soldier of the mist

The regent said, "My first notion was that we'd been born at the same instant-it's well known such children are linked. Tisamenus?"

The mantis looked doubtful. "I'd guess he's the younger." To me he said, "I don't suppose, sir, that you know the day of your birth?"

I shook my head, and the regent shrugged. "So it might be true. I'm in my twenty-eighth year. Think that might be your age, Latro? Speak up. You won't be beaten."

"Twenty-eight sounds old to me, Highness. So I think I must be less."

Tisamenus had risen. "Shrewdly spoken, sir, and I agree. May I call your attention once more to this admirable carving? Can you perhaps inform me as to the name borne by these monsters?"

"They're the Clawed Ones," I said.

"So," Tisamenus whispered. "The god who took away your memory left you that. What man comprehends their ways?"

The regent drank. "A thousand times I've heard somebody say that: Who understands the ways of the gods? Everybody asks the question, nobody answers it. Now I'm a man and nearly a king-do you know many of our Rope Makers already call me King Pausanias, Tisamenus? So I'll try, Latro. You do."

As cautiously as I could, I said, "I'm not sure I follow you, Highness."

"I called you an idiot once. Since then, I've seen enough of you to know you're anything but."

"Yet there's an idiot here, Highness, if you believe I'm in the councils of the gods."

Tisamenus said, "You're treading on dangerous ground, sir."

"Because if you believe it, Highness, it must be true; and I would be an idiot not to tell you."

The regent gave Tisamenus his twisted smile. "You see what I mean? If this were the pentathlon, he'd win every event."

"Good," I said. "Because if we're linked, Highness, it might be that if I were beaten you'd be beaten too."

"And the chariot race. But Latro, my friend-and I'll call you my friend and not my slave-you know things you don't know you know. You didn't remember the name of the winged monsters until you were asked, did you?"

I shook my head.

Tisamenus murmured, "So it is, perhaps, with the councils of the gods. If we recall them to you, will you tell His Highness?"

I said, "If he wishes it, certainly. But though Io says I once swept floors for a woman in Thought, I don't believe I ever swept the hall of Olympus."

"Then we'll begin with speculations humbler still. You acknowledge that there are many gods?"

I sipped my wine. "All men do, I suppose."

"You once told His Highness, no doubt truly, that you were a soldier of the Great King."

"I feel I am."

"Then you must know something of the barbarians, sir. Indeed, you must have marched through Parsa, for the Great King's army did so on its way here. Are you aware that they hold there's only a single god, whom they call Ahuramazda?"

"I know nothing of them," I said. "At least, nothing I can remember."

"And yet they sacrifice to the sun, the moon, and the earth, and to fire and water. It is possible-I speak now as a sophist, sir-that there is but one god. It is possible also that there are many. But it is not possible that there are one and many. You disagree?"

I shrugged. "Sometimes a word is used for two things. When I loaded the regent's mule, I tied the load with rope."

Prince Pausanias chuckled. "Excellent! But now that you've bested poor Tisamenus, let me play Ahuramazda's advocate. I say that just as there's only one king at Persepolis, there can be only one god. Why should he tolerate more? He'll destroy them, then there'll be only one. Show me my error, Latro, if you can."

"Highness, if you were truly a magus-I mean a priest of this Ahuramazda-I don't think you'd speak like that. You'd say there can't be a single god, but that just as there are two kings in Rope, there must be two gods also."

The regent held out his cup, and Tisamenus poured him more wine. "Why do you say that, sir?"

"I don't say it, but I think the magi would. They would reason thus: There's good in the world, so there's a good god, a wise lord. But there's evil too, so there must be an evil lord as well. In fact, one posits the other. There can be no good without evil, no evil without good."

The regent remarked, "Here we know that good and evil come from the same gods, having observed that the same man is good one time and evil another."

"Highness, a magus would say, Then I will call the good Ahuramazda and the bad Angra Manyu, evil mind. And if the good is truly good, won't it put the lie from it?"

The regent nodded. "Yet what you say doesn't explain Orith-the other gods. What of earth, fire, wind, and so forth?"

Tisamenus nodded, leaning toward me to listen.

I said, "Now I can speak for myself as well as for the magi. It doesn't seem to me that there can't be good without evil or evil without good. For a blind man, isn't it always night? With no day? It seemed to me that if Ahuramazda-"

A shieldman of the bodyguard entered as I spoke; when I fell silent, he addressed the regent. "The captain has arrived, Highness."

"Then he must wait. Go on, Latro."

"If Ahuramazda exists, Highness, all things serve him. The oak is his; so is the mouse that gnaws its root. Without oaks there could be no mice, without mice no cats, and without cats no oaks. But shouldn't he have servants greater than oaks and men? Surely he must, because the gap between Ahuramazda and men and oaks is very wide, and we see that every king has some minister whose authority's only slightly less than his own, and that such men have ministers of their own, similarly empowered. Besides, the existence of the sun, the moon, the earth, and of fire and water are indisputable facts."

"But the existence of Ahuramazda is not an indisputable fact. Finish your wine."

I did so. "Highness, let us think of a great city like Susa. Within the city stands a palace as great again. A beggar boy squats outside the palace wall, and I'm that poor boy."

"Is Ahuramazda the king in that palace?"

I shook my head. "No, Highness. Not so far as I, Latro the beggar boy, have seen. The servants are the lords of the palace. Once a cook gave me meat, and a scullion, bread. I've even seen the steward, Highness, with my own eyes. The steward's a very great lord indeed, Highness."

The regent rose. Tisamenus stood at once, and so did I.

"So he is, to a beggar boy," the regent said, "though not to himself, perhaps. We'll speak of this again when you've returned from Sestos. Do you want to see your ship?"

I nodded. "Even if it's the one we came in, I'd like to see it, Highness. I've forgotten it, but Io says we came by ship."

"It's one of those that brought us here," he told me as we stepped from the scented air of the tent into night air that was sweeter still. "But not the one in which you and Io sailed with me. I'm taking that back to Olympia. One of the others is going to carry you and Pasicrates to Sestos."

The shieldman and another man were waiting outside. The regent said, "You're Captain Nepos?"

The captain stepped forward, bowing low. "The same." His hair gleamed like foam in the moonlight.

"You understand your commission and accept it?"

"I'm to carry a hundred Rope Makers and two hundred and seventy slaves to Sestos. And a woman, who must have a cabin to herself."

"And a slave girl," the regent told him. "With the slave you see before you."

"We can occupy the same cabin," I said. "Or we can sleep on deck, if there's no cabin for us."

The captain shook his head. "Just about everybody will have to sleep on deck, and it'll be crowded at that."

The regent asked, "But your ship will hold them all, with their rations?"

"Yes, Highness, only not in much comfort."

"They don't require comfort. You know you won't be able to make port at Sestos? It's under siege, and the other ports of the Chersonese are still the Great King's."