Chapter XI: Not Your Place

When legends die, the dreams end; there is no more greatness.'

Tecumseh

She had never known such pain as the pain of waiting. All her life she had plunged into the thick of the battle, and now she stood on the fringes while her son took her place. She was helpless, paralyzed by the crown.

Some demon seemed to have cast its wing over her land, and anger reigned supreme. Petty grudges had become hatreds in the blink of an eye. The air was noxious with crimes of passion. For the first time since the reign of Yesün, the dungeons were filled.

And Khutulun wept.

The day dawned with slaughterous splendor, as she stood on her balcony, hands gripping the balustrades so tightly the stone was imprinted on her palms.

Please, she begged breathlessly, praying to the Dragon, the Gyfalcon, the Lion, the Fox. Please. Please.

There was a cry from somewhere below her chambers, then the furious voices of two women. She put aside her despair and fear and went out, descending the stairs.

A serving-woman sat on the floor of the seventh terrace, clutching her ankle, crying angrily at the other woman. Her voice was shrill with pain and flavored with the accents of the East. Khutulun recognized her as the Rhûnic widow of a lord killed in the uprising, a woman named Jiao. The other was younger, a whisker away from being a girl, standing on the landing as if she pushed Jiao.

"Enough!" Khutulun's voice rose above the clamor, high and hard. They paused and looked at her, their eyes filled with resentment. "What is this?" she demanded. She took Chimeg by the arm as she came down, dragging the girl to where Jiao sat.

Chimeg was sobbing, her eyes red and swollen, her voice so thickened with tears Khutulun could not understand her, and she did not have the patience to coax the answer out of the girl. She turned to Jiao, who sat nursing her ankle.

"What is this?" she repeated.

Jiao tried to rise, but her ankle gave way beneath her. Khutulun caught her quickly, arms still strong from farmwork, and lowered her back to the ground. "You do not need to walk. Only talk."

Jiao's lip curled, an expression of spite and scorn Khutulun had never thought to see on a face so gentle. "She thinks I made her swain fall in love with me. As if any man courting Chimeg would need much temptation!"

"Hold your peace," Khutulun said coldly. "Chimeg, go about your duties. I will deal with you later. And wash your face, or else you will be mistaken-" She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, clipping off the words with brutal neatness. "Chimeg, go. Jiao, put your arm about my shoulder. Is your ankle broken or only twisted?"

"Twisted, I think, Khatun. But I cannot go about my duties now, and you let Chimeg go with only a word?!"

"Hold your peace," Khutulun repeated harshly. "It is for me to deal with Chimeg, not you." The two women stood; Jiao leaning heavily on her Queen. Below them, a woman wept and a man shouted oaths. The place was rank with rage; it hung over Nispet, coating it like the membrane of some dark egg, and she could taste it on her tongue, bitter and arid like ashes and blood. And when the egg hatches, what then? she thought hollowly. The chick will be nothing pleasant.

She could feel the anger growing in her, her fabricated patience wearing thin and threadbare. Had she sacrificed so many years, so many lives, so many tears and heartbreaks for this wretched place? If she could, she would hand it back to the Tyrant King without blinking, and let the people wade through the blood and fall under the lash, as they had before she come. Then there would be heads on pikes at every corner of the pyramid, and crows would flock around them like courtiers around a king.

She handed Jiao away to the healer, a small woman, wizened with desert sun and harsh living, and left. Red rage pulsed at her temples and Claim dangled sweetly along the length of her leg, clothed in supple leather. But not for long.

The thought came unbidden, and Khutulun pushed it away with all her strength. Men and women, guards and servants and courtiers, ceased their squabbles as she passed, and looked after her, their eyes cold and flat and black. A shiver crawled down her spine.

Broodlings of darkness, she thought. Broodlings of dragons.

Tears bit at the backs of her eyes, stinging like nettles, and how deeply she wished for Gansuk to kiss them away before they could fall. But Gansuk was dead, buried in a watery grave, with sand for his coffin and only the fish to mourn him.

She came to the first terrace and stood stricken, staring at the sky. It was a field of flame, a billow and a spew of fire, and the sun rose with a terror and splendor, an exultation of blood. Cold misery filled her stomach, the misery a mother feels when she lives to see the raven gloat over her only child, knowing she can be of no help.

The world-tree is been cast down, she thought. The hopelessness, the helplessness in her, crystallized into dull acquiescence as she studied the horizon. There was a quenchless fire in the sky and a deathless wyrm upon the earth. All would fall, and she mourned under morning for the desolation of her land.

And then there was a change.

At first, she did not rightly know what it was. A breeze blew about her, lifting her black hair, and joy was in her veins, rising like sap in the springtime, strong and fierce and unstoppable. She stood at the foot of the pyramid, and raised her arms, and laughed, and why, she did not yet know. Yet she did. Deep in her heart, with a mother's sense, with a mother's love, with a mother's exultation, she knew.

She knew Gansuk could return to her, and Atkiray yet lived, and Harad could heal. She knew she could carry on with the crown on her head and the country on her back, so her son could bear the bell and Harad come into her own.

A dark form billowed into the sky, like woodsmoke rising from a funeral fire. It looming above her, a hooded figure, hands outstretched, grasping yet impotent, its power finally denied. There was a sadness and a corrupted majesty in its gesture, but Khutulun did not pity it.

"Go hence," she said. "Go hence. There is no place for you here."

The shape swirled above her, and then sunlight broke through the shadow-hide like golden daggers. The light rested on Khutulun's upturned face, and the darkness fell away as the true Dragon took its rightful place in the sky.

~.~_~.~

The Tower of Ecthelion seemed to pierce the feverish belly of the sky, and a wash of blood rolled down its pearly sides. Lothíriel studied it for a minute, her slender brows colliding, and then turned to the red horizon, which danced with crimson embers and rose-glows. Minas Tirith yet slept and she had the city and the sky to herself.

She had never seen such a sky before. It was a raging red, a color that filled her with a lingering disquiet, but also a strange pleasure. It was wild and unfamiliar, a chance happening that would be gone in an hour. Its transience gave her a pang, but she recognized that ephemerality was the wellspring of beauty.

She bit back a sigh, for she was sad and scarcely knew why. Then she went down a winding stairway that was still and cool, smelling of night-shadows and dew on stone. From there, she came onto a wide alley, whose walls were lined with hatches. She knocked thrice on one of these, and called in a light, teasing tone, "Master Targon! My belt is tight!"

"And a fine morning to you as well," grumbled a voice. An old man peered out through the hatch, eyeing her lacy finery with faint distaste. He had a close-cropped beard and eyes that were keen and bright, although his hair was as white as hoarfrost. His was a stern face, but there were wrinkles around his eyes that spoke of smiles.

"A fine morning to you," Lothíriel said brightly. "Have you seen the sky?"

Targon nodded slowly. "Crimson as a cherry," he admitted. "Red sky in the morning, shepherds take warning." He swung a door open and stepped out in the paved alley, looking up.

"Sailors as well," Lothíriel added. The strange magic of the morning was dispelled by Targon's gruff presence, and she was a little glad of it.

"I suppose so." He cast her an appraising glance. "Hungry for breakfast or companionship, girl?"

"For both," she admitted. "And the air will be fine on the walls." She arched an inviting eyebrow.

Targon grunted and ducked into the buttery, returning with a small wicker basket. Long stairs led them to an embrasure cradled in the out-thrust battlement, where a stone seat had been carved. They sat there, as was their wont, and ate looking out over the lands. There was bread and butter, cheese and apples, and Targon had a flagon of ale, although he would not allow Lothíriel to drink it. "Our good Queen seems as fond as ale as she is of Westman's weed," was the only answer he would give when Lothíriel protested.

They often broke their fast in silence, but that day, under the eye of the blazing sky, such a thing did not seem right to Lothíriel.

"They say strange things happen when the day dawns red," she said softly, toying with her piece of bread.

"Who does?" Targon demanded. He devoured his apple in large bites, eating the core and spitting the seeds out over the sill.

"Old wives, I suppose."

"And so?"

Lothíriel looked at him with a kind of vexed fondness. "Sail away in a sieve, Master Targon," she said. "You know very well what I mean."

"Such dainty words from the daughter of dukes," he said. "I see why your father sent you away."

Her glare was a sheet of frost, but Targon, well-wintered, minded it not. He smiled at her instead. "Never mind what I say, girl. I am a rough old man. See!" He rose suddenly, pointing out over the sill. Lothíriel bolted to her feet, her eyes growing wide. She leaned out dangerously far over the sill, only dimly aware of Targon's hand on the collar of her dress, trying to pull her back.

The sun was rising red, and all the lands below her lay shrouded in the fiery glow. The white walls of Minas Tirith shimmered as if with blood. And into that beautiful, terrible sky a cloud seemed to loom. It made the shape of a shrouded figure, as grey as ashes against the field of fire. And yet a faint thought flashed across Lothíriel's mind, and it was that the figure was hotter than the sun, that it rose in dawn-scorching splendor. But even as she watched, it seemed to weaken, waver like a man who has lost his way. It turned to North, and then South, and then East, and finally it turned West. Beneath a cloud-cowl, it seemed golden eyes pleaded with her.

"No," she whispered. "No." A wind flurried past her, and it seemed chill and somehow fraught with power. It filled her lungs with air, and she said with the breath it gave her, "It is not your time. It is not your place."

Then the moment was gone. She realized that what she had thought to be golden eyes were only sunbeams breaking through the clouds, and she let Targon pull her back. The cloud was gone, the sun rising fast, like a bird taking flight. It soared above the red bank of clouds, and Minas Tirith shone white in the morning, and the Pelennor Fields stretched in an emerald veld, save the place where the beast was burned. There it was always black.

She turned back to Targon and offered him a weak half-smile. "It is shaping up to be a fine morning, Master Targon," she said.

Below her the city stirred, eager to be about its business, the small matters that compose the life of men.