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many days' travel in all directions. I would annihilate his army before he got
near enough to do any damage."
"Now that he has seen how invincible you are on land, I doubt that he would
try," said the seaman. "I only mentioned it as a possibility. No, what is most
likely is that he will try a blockade. To do this, he will station a strong
fleet off the harbor mouth. Nothing can go out or come in. Any supply or troop
transports he will sink or capture. Using cargo vessels to keep
the warships supplied, he can keep up a blockade for months."
"What is the speed of these warships like?" the king asked unexpectedly.
"Well, sir, it is difficult to describe. Under oars, in calm waters, they move
with terrible speed in short spurts. Under sail, they are slow."
"I need to have a better idea." The king thought for a while, then: "I have
another task for you, seaman. I want this ship repaired, fitted out, armed and
floating out there in the harbor within a week. I give you full authority to
draft all the men and supplies you need. Find oarsmen among the sailors who
lie idle here in the port. Can you do that?"
"Why, yes, my lord. But I must warn you ..."
"Warn me of what?"
"Well this one ship, and a small, old one at that, will not constitute much of
a navy."
Gasam laughed, a sound with a menacing edge although he slapped the man's
shoulder in comradely fashion. "Have no fear. I do not intend to take on the
whole Nevan navy with this little ship. Just get it sailing in the harbor, and
I shall give you further orders. And find out about those harbor defenses."
"As my king commands!" said the seaman, saluting.
Later, in the palace, Gasam described his ideas to Larissa. The queen lounged
on a couch, her women hovering about her. The house had been fully restored
and the sounds of new construction drifted in from outside. A tame bird
paraded through the room, pausing once to spread it spectacular cape of neck
feathers,
scarlet and emerald. It fluted a high, trilling cry and refolded the cape,
then stalked away with brainless dignity. The queen smiled after it.
"The houses here are full of these tame animals: birds and beasts and tiny
man-of-the trees. The people here keep them for their beauty or their amusing
antics."
He stroked her back. "They are rich and decadent. Such people are drawn to
trivial amusements." Once, to him, great herds of kagga and other livestock
had seemed the epitome of wealth and power. Now he knew that ownership of
humans was even more important.
"I think you are right about the ships," she said. "We will know in a few
days. And I believe your mariner spoke truthfully. My spies tell me that there
has been lively coming and going between Pashir's palace and the Chiwan
embassy and that messengers are passing back and forth between the two
capitals at an unusual rate." The queen reveled in her new role as spymas-ter.
For the first time she was able to take an active part in her husband's
conquests.
"And with the other kingdom, Omia?" Gasam asked.
"No more than the usual. It is believed that relations are strained between
the two kings. King Oland of Omia would like to snatch some Nevan territory
for himself. He can always claim that Pashir is a usurper and Omia's treaties
with the old king are abrogated."
Gasam tried to visualize how these kingdoms lay. "Do any but Chiwa and Omia
share borders with Neva?" Maps were still new to him and he had difficulty in
committing their subtleties to memory.
The queen looked at her diminutive serving woman. "Dunyaz?"
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As always when the king was present, Dunyaz knelt with her hands atop her
thighs, her eyes downcast. A band of riveted copper encircled her neck. Such
bands now identified all slaves.
"Omia lies to the northeast," she said, "and Chiwa to the south and southeast.
Between those nations lies an ill-defined area called the Zone. No nation
truly claims this land. The people are strange and live in isolated villages.
There is a place called the Canyon where the people are said to be great
sorcerers. The land is barren desert for the most part, although there is one
large river, the Kol."
"Sorcerers," the king muttered. "This might bear looking into. And to the
north along this coast?"
"North of Floria ... excuse me, my lord, north of the City of Victory" for
thus had Gasam renamed the city "the settlements become fewer and there is no
clear boundary where Nevan power ends. The people of the north are primitive
hunters and herders and have never been a threat, so there is not even a
border fort in that direction. I could show you maps...." It was a delicate
and awkward thing, reminding the king that he could not read nor understand
maps.
"I do not trust pictures drawn on skin or paper," he snapped. "Those can be
made to mean anything. Land I know."
"Tell us about this desert," Larissa said, turning aside the king's annoyance.
"I have never seen it, just heard of it," the slave said. "It is a dry
country, where there is
little rainfall. People live along the river, or at oases where springs come
to the surface. The people are hostile and resent intruders. There is a man
there who some say is a king, but others say he is a sort of wizard. Nobody
knows whether he is part of a dynasty, or whether it is the same man, reigning
for centuries. Whichever, it is a poor land he rules, a place of sand and
rock. It is a brutal place full of dangerous animals, things that live nowhere
else. In the king's menagerie at Kasin there was a desert snake twenty paces
long and as big around as a man. It was a torpid thing, and once a month the
keepers fed it a whole kagga which it swallowed live."
"An uninviting place," said the king. "But I shall be lord of it as well, once
I have conquered the more desirable places. This talk of magic, though ..." He
brooded for a while. "I would hear more of it. My queen, have your spies bring
me word of that land, and its ruler, and of this magic, if it truly exists."
"I shall do so without fail," she promised. "Do you detect some sort of threat
from this?"
He shrugged. "Threat or promise, I wish to know about it. Even if it does not
exist, it can be useful. Before I crushed them, the spirit-speakers of our
islands had the people cowed, thinking that those mumbling chanters had
magical powers."
"And yet," the queen said, "we know that real magic exists."
The king nodded. "Yes, but small magics. The hunters of the hills had the
magic of the wild animals, and they had good fire magic. I never
saw any that could give one people power over another, though."
"Do you believe such magic exists?" she asked.
Gasam smiled. "I will believe in anything that will increase my power."
Gasam watched admiringly as the warship went through its maneuvers in the
little harbor of the City of Victory. With his queen beside him, he sat on a
folding stool at the end of one of the long piers. In their honor, the pier
had been draped with precious cloths and strewn with flowers from the
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