Children of the Dragon Read online

  8

  HE DID NOT know how many hours might have passed before the guards came again.

  Jehan had not slept. Squeezed inside the cagelike cell in blackness, Jehan Henghmani could see further than ever before. He had been reborn, just as a baby released from the womb is suddenly immersed in more new world than he’d ever dreamed could be. It was as though there’d been no life before at all: a butterfly forgetful of the caterpillar.

  It wasn’t the pain and hunger that had kept Jehan awake. He had slept through many storms before, but he couldn’t sleep when the storm was inside his own head. Besides, Jehan had slept aplenty before; he had only just awakened!

  The guards came again, and against his will, Jehan’s heart hammered and he felt the stinging frost of fright.

  In the intoxication of his metamorphosis, Jehan had forgotten his terror of the promised torture. But was the new Jehan immune to it? Would he not feel the pain? Or had he risen above pain as well as death?

  The sound of feet slopping through the muck stopped outside Jehan Henghmani’s cell. He heard the key grate in the rusty lock, the groan of the door pulled open; torchlight momentarily blinded him.

  Jehan squinted up at the guards; they seemed to tower swaggeringly. Their swords and truncheons were poised in their hands.

  While they unchained Jehan, he did not balk. Standing a cautious distance outside the cell was Nimajneb Grebzreh. “Well,” he said, “you know what comes now, you Urhemmedhin pig.” Then he turned to the guards and said, “Drag him. Drag him out like a pig.”

  This was a humiliating indignity, and Jehan seethed at his impotence. But he fought to hold his temper. He would not squander his newfound energy gnashing his teeth; instead, he would channel it into bearing everything with stoic nobility. He might not escape their torture, but he would blunt their satisfaction in it.

  Jehan had heard of holy men with such extraordinary self-control that they seemed oblivious to pain, and cheerfully thrust spikes through their palms and cheeks. This was what Jehan would work toward emulating.

  Dragged through the mud, he swore that regardless of the torture, he would not allow himself to scream. He might groan and grimace, but he would not give them the satisfaction of hearing him scream. Gradually he might learn to overcome even the grimaces. He would strive toward a serene smile even under their most hideous tortures: an absurd nirvana.

  This seemed an impossible goal. Yet only yesterday, it had seemed impossible that Jehan would be alive today. The possible is limited only by the imagination, nothing is impossible. It was not impossible that he could smile under torture. It was not impossible that he could become the Emperor of Bergharra.

  They dragged him through the muddy tunnel and then into a chamber with a cold stone floor. The light was harsh. Jehan looked at the terrible display of torture implements all about, diabolical devices, and the deep redbrown stains they had squeezed out of those who’d gone before. He looked up at the men who had brought him to this place. Their eyes were tremulous with loathing, fear, and lust to see him suffer agony.

  Chained tightly he was thrown on the floor, looking up at them, waiting, bracing himself. For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then something, something infinitely more than nothing.

  Back inside his cell, Jehan could not open his eyes.

  He was being chewed up in razor jaws.

  But through the fury of pain, he could remember what had happened. Despite all his resolve, he’d screamed. So quickly the jaws had snapped down upon him, with such ferocity, they wouldn’t let go. Jehan bellowed; the fangs had only torn deeper through him. It was a terrible agony to defy imagination, and the teeth of it ripped ever deeper, chewing flesh and soul to shreds. Jehan bellowed.

  And even while the horror ripped him to pieces, Jehan struggled to master himself. He was aware of the glee of Grebzreh and his cohorts, reveling in his screams, and he was as incensed at himself as at them.

  With fitful, titanic effort, he fought through the agony to grit his teeth, to will the severance of body from mind.

  Wrestling with the teeth that crushed him between steel jaws, Jehan gained a hold on himself. He knew that to stop his screams would only provoke worse tortures. But even stronger than the guards’ lust to hear him scream was his will to deny them.

  He clenched his teeth until they cracked, but he wouldn’t scream. Blood spurted from his nose and ears, but he wouldn’t scream.

  Ground to pulp between the rending jaws, Jehan could taste sweet triumph. He had won, he would never cry out again. Let them invent phenomenally excruciating tortures, they might as well be tickling him with feathers.

  Increase the torment they did. Jehan passed out—but he did not scream again.

  Jehan lay now back in his cell, palpitating with the agony of what they’d done to him. The jaws had not spit him out, they were still tearing at him. There would be no respite—ever.

  And yet, he knew that he had won, and they had lost.

  At length, he managed to open his eyes and gather his wits into a semblance of order. He tried to force his thoughts upon Jenefa and his daughters, instead of the jaws that would never release him. But his mind went black with pain, and he had to struggle again to hold in a scream. Choking on it, he collapsed back into stupor.

  A second time, he was restored to consciousness. The jaws had relaxed their grip, but not very much. He could at least, though, manage to think, and move.

  He noticed in the weak light that something had been shoved through the flap in his door. Groping it with his hand, he found a rude wooden platter, and on it was food—the food of the gods.

  Jehan’s warders were complying with the Emperor’s decree that he be fed human flesh.

  It was a severed hand and forearm. Jehan took it into his hands and stared at it in the dim light. It did not repel him; he had seen dismembered bodies before, not a few of which he had dismembered himself. Yet this thing had a strange impersonality to it. Jehan found it difficult to imagine the arm as part of a whole being.

  He held it in the light, manipulating its fingers and wondering about its former owner. The man’s age was difficult to guess. His skin was browned by the sun, the hand calloused, the fingernails cracked and black with dirt. The arm had been amputated neatly at the elbow. Yet it appeared to be a healthy limb, so presumably had been cut off a corpse. Had this fellow been executed, perhaps with the same ax Jehan had used to kill Zakhar Wasfour? He was obviously just a peasant. Possibly his crime was retusal to pay crop-rent, or maybe he had balked at a daughter being sold into concubinage. But then, only special criminals were brought here, to the dungeons of Ksiritsa. Maybe this man had been an Urhemmedhin zealot.

  Jehan’s warders were making no effort yet to force this food down his throat. Perhaps they thought him a monster who wouldn’t blanch at eating human flesh. But at any rate, this was meat, and all he’d get to eat. It would nourish him. He could even count himself lucky; other prisoners had their food rations embezzled by the guards.

  Jehan sniffed at the arm; it seemed fairly fresh. He wondered how it would taste. Some might even regard this a delicacy; there were land barons who enjoyed human milk squeezed from the breasts of sharecropper mothers whose babies were killed for that purpose.

  Experimentally, Jehan sank his teeth into the soft underside of the arm. The meat was tough and stringy, hard to pull off the bone. After his devastating ordeal, Jehan almost lacked the strength. When he did manage to gnaw loose a mouthful, the taste was flat.

  Nevertheless, the Man Eater of Taroloweh stripped the forearm clean down to the bone.

  The rest of that peasant man was fed to him piecemeal, and he ate everything—arms and legs, torso, lungs, heart, liver, intestines, stomach. He ate the bowels with feces still in them. He even ate the genitals.

  When, at the end of many weeks, he was given the head, he could at last see
the face of the man whose flesh had nourished him. Jehan had envisioned the courageous face of an Urhemmedhin martyr. But to his surprise, it turned out to be a Tnemghadi. With broad nose and drooping mouth, the converging eyebrows accentuated its moronic look.

  Jehan chewed the skull white, and then he cracked it open against the wall to get at the brains.

  And while the Emperor’s edict was carried out respecting Jehan’s diet, so too was the daily regimen of torture unstintingly inflicted. Jehan was the prisoner in the dungeon upon whom all attention was focused. The Warden Grebzreh took personal delight in setting the program and watching it implemented, continually inventing ingenious new torments for Jehan.

  They froze him and baked him until the blood oozed from his pores. They set scorpions upon him, cracked his bones with rack and chains, tormented him with thirst, they beat him blue with lead pipes, scalded, branded, and lacerated him, rasped off his skin with files, and they salted all his wounds. They stuck needles in his flesh and eyes, hot burning needles; they cut off his ears and nose, sliced slowly away, whittled down to stumps.

  Jehan had been an ugly man before, but now they truly made a hideous monster of him.

  Let them, Jehan said, in the end this monster will rise up to devour them.

  They burned him, cut him, beat him, slashed him, pulled out his fingernails and toenails, they peeled off his skin in sheets and hacked off his toes, one by one, bit by bit and smashed his fingers with hammers. But he fought against them, fought especially to save his fingers, balling his hands into tight fists they couldn’t open no matter how they beat him. And once they’d put out an eye with a red-hot poker, he wouldn’t let them take the other, wouldn’t let them make him blind. And he wouldn’t stand for being made a eunuch, either.

  They did abominable things to him, but when they tried to cripple him like that, he would fight back. Despite the unending ordeal, his power did not wane; he seemed to absorb the strength of the men whose flesh he ate. And he would dole out almost as many scars and mutilations as were visited upon him.

  He would throw the fire back at them; and they would scream as he would not.

  BERGHARRA—Tnemghadi Empire, silver pastari or five-tayel piece of Emperor Sarbat, Satanichadh Dynasty, middle period of reign, circa 1175. Obverse: facing portrait of Sarbat, Tnemghadi inscription in exergue. Reverse: facing portrait of a woman, thought to be one of the Emperor’s favorites, or possibly the Empress. Crown mintmark (Ksiritsa). A most unusual special issue, since almost all Tnemghadi coinage bears the imperial dragon on the reverse. Breitenbach 1356, 33 mm., struck slightly off center and with a small planchet crack at 7 o’clock, mentioned only for the sake of accuracy. Virtually uncirculated with deep bluish toning, undoubtedly the finest extant specimen of this great rarity. (Hauchschild Collection Catalog)

  9

  TNEM SARBAT SATANICHADH sat like the god he was upon the Tnemenghouri Throne beneath the rising sun engraved in fiery gold. From the scepter perch, the dragon Sexrexatra overlooked the throne room with his glittering ruby eyes.

  The vast chamber was filled, with every member of the Court in the spot assigned according to rank, to attend upon the ceremonies of state. The most eminent were close to the throne; the lesser creatures were relegated to the rear.

  Nearest of all to Sarbat was Yasiruwam Irajdhan. The venerable Grand Chamberlain was making the ritual presentation to Sarbat of the new envoy plenipotentiary from Valpassu, the jungle kingdom to the south. Irajdhan stood in dignified silence while the envoy and the Emperor exchanged pleasantries, formalistic and substanceless. The ambassador conveyed the salutations of the ruler of Valpassu, along with various gifts: carved ivory figurines, bejeweled candlesticks, and bolts of fine-weave colored silk. Sarbat in turn voiced gratitude and respect to the ruler of Valpassu.

  Then Irajdhan took the envoy by the arm and escorted him down the crimson carpet. Nothing was said; later, Irajdhan would ply him with wine and girls. Then the Grand Chamberlain would demand an increase in Valpassu’s tribute payment to Bergharra, soldiers from Valpassu for the Bergharran army, and the appointment of Tnemghadi officials to key posts at the Valpassu court. This would, once and for all, reduce the jungle kingdom to vassal status. Failing capitulation, Bergharra would invade Valpassu.

  The Chamberlain and the envoy exchanged ceremonial bows, and parted. A page boy took this opportune moment to hand Irajdhan a dainty little silver tray, carrying a leather pouch and a folded parchment, upon which was embossed the seal of the Imperial Mint of Ksiritsa.

  Irajdhan marched back across the chamber to the throne; all business was held in respectful abeyance until he got there. Then he handed the tray up to Sarbat. Nestling it in his lap, the Emperor broke the seal on the document and read it. He at once brightened with pleasure.

  “Aha,” he announced, “the Master Coiner sends us samples of the new pastari.”

  Sarbat opened the pouch with a flourish and up-ended it; a dozen shining silver coins clinked out onto the tray. Taking one of them, the Emperor studied it carefully on both sides, tilting it at various angles to catch the light. Then he displayed it to the Court between thumb and forefinger.

  “There it is: a magnificent coin, this new pastari piece, the finest artistry in the history of coinage anywhere. It shows the portrait of our dearest Lady Sirimava. Did ever a lovelier face adorn a coin?”

  “Why don’t you put my face on a coin?” asked Halaf the clown.

  “I would, were you as beautiful as Sirimava,” said the Emperor as he kissed the coin with smacking lips and a lewd grin. The courtiers all laughed amiably.

  “Well, Majesty,” said Halaf, “I can put my face on a coin anyway.” And the clown took a copper out of his pocket, held it flat in his palm, and slowly lowered his face onto it. This coaxed a mild titter from the assemblage.

  “Here, good Irajdhan,” Sarbat said, holding out the coin he’d kissed, “this one is for the beautiful lady herself.”

  The Chamberlain brought the piece to Sirimava, who was seated on a cushion nearby. She gazed at it with her head cocked prettily.

  Halaf had meanwhile scampered up the arm of the throne, and he patted the head of the dragon on the scepter. “Poor old Sexrexatra,” the clown lamented, “you’ve been replaced on the pastari by a better-looking dragon. Or, I should say, dragoness.”

  This time his joke brought gales of laughter. Even Sirimava laughed.

  Sarbat was fingering the remaining coins, and suddenly frowned. “Oh, look, here’s one that’s got a crack, and it’s not even properly centered. Those swine at the Mint! We can’t have the lovely face of Sirimava marred like that. How dare they give me such shoddy work? Friend Irajdhan, find the workman responsible; he must be punished.”

  “He will lose his hand, Your Majesty.”

  “No, not his hand,” objected Halaf the clown. “The culprit is obviously insensitive to womanly charms. Let the punishment fit the crime, then; it’s not his hand to be chopped off!”

  This once more scored with laughter.

  “My royal fool is right; he’d make a wise judge. We will carry out his sentence, good Irajdhan.”

  Irajdhan bowed deeply to hide his flushing, infuriated that his own counsel was superseded by the clown’s. “It will be done, Your Majesty.”

  “And here, let the members of our Court have a look at these coins. Distribute them.”

  “Give the cracked one to the Empress!” cried Halaf, and yet again there was a peal of general laughter.

  “Yes,” Sarbat agreed, “I don’t think the Empress appreciates the Lady Sirimava’s beauty either.” He handed the tray down to Irajdhan; his eyes, smiling wrily, were on the Empress Denoi Devodhrisha. And she was looking straight at him, her face betraying no clue of her thoughts.

  When Irajdhan handed her the coin, she didn’t give it a glance. She reached inside her robe and withdrew a folded square of parchment. Wit
h her gaze still fixed upon the Emperor, she motioned to a page, who took the note and, resting it upon a silver tray, waited until Irajdhan finished distributing the coins. Then the boy handed him the tray.

  Irajdhan looked at it gravely. This was a message from the Empress to Sarbat.

  When it was handed to the Emperor, she still had her eyes coldly locked on him. He tore the message open; a silver coin tumbled into his lap. It was the cracked Sirimava coin, returned to him.

  The written note was brief; Sarbat took its contents at a glance. “Her Majesty, the serene and honored Empress Denoi Devodhrisha,” he announced in solemn tones, “informs us that she wishes a private audience with the Emperor.”

  He paused; they stared at each other. Everyone held his breath.

  “The Empress’ request shall, of course, be granted with pleasure. We will be delighted to receive the Empress in our private chambers this evening, directly after dinner.”

  The Empress, leaving her maidservants outside, entered her husband’s chamber unattended.

  She had not set foot in his private rooms in fifteen years. In fifteen years, they hadn’t been alone together; never before had she requested a private audience.

  Sarbat was in readiness for it, as he would prepare for a state conference. She found him sitting in his high greatchair, a reduced version of the Tnemenghouri Throne, and he was dressed in full regalia, postured ceremoniously.

  Striking a pose too was Sirimava. She lay stretched out on a divan, naked but for jewels, facing Sarbat. Her head, enswathed in its remarkable yellow hair, rested on one elbow; her other hand caressed her own rump. Her nipples were pierced with delicate gold hangings, like earrings. Sirimava was a very tall and more than very handsome woman. Not only was her hair an exotic contrast to the dark tresses so common to Bergharra, but her skin was fairer too, a milky pink. Her name meant “fair woman” in the language of Kuloun, whose king had given her to Sarbat as a gift, having acquired her from a land even further west.