The Usurper Read online

  The Usurper

  Telnarian Histories

  Book Four

  John Norman

  Notes, in the Manner of a Preface

  “The sky was dark with the coming of ships.” The Annals.

  It is difficult in our enlightened era to understand the dark and troubled times. How terrible they were, how fearful to live then! How fortunate that they are past! And yet, then, one suspects, men, and women, were alive, as they are not now. Perhaps something was lost with their passing. But one should not speak such thoughts. Indeed, one should not even think them, lest they be inadvertently spoken. Have not many been sentenced, for words spoken in sleep, monitored by the electronic listeners?

  What is one to make of the thousand sciences, of the thousand worlds?

  The ant has his world, the vi-cat his, and we ours.

  Some believe that time is the creature of clocks; yet it seems there was a time before clocks; if clocks stopped, might they not have stopped for a coding or less; some believe that length is the child of marked sticks; yet it seems that a length lay in wait, so patiently, for the stick. It is fortunate we have discovered the end of space. We are informed, and wise. One wonders what lies beyond that end, and where our space might be. Some say the world had a beginning, but how could it begin? Would it just appear? Were things not lonely then, so empty, nothingness, without even space? A universe contained in a spoonful of energy? And whence that spoonful of energy? How wide and deep that spoon? Was it far from here? Perhaps there are tides in worlds, as universes breathe, expanding and contracting.

  We are fortunate to live in a quiet, stable, equable world. Science has sounded our world, and tamed it, made it fit for habitation, by such as we. We graze peacefully. How grateful we must be. Our science is one of the thousand sciences. How fortunate we are that it is the one truth, as we are told. What, I wonder, do the thousand false sciences tell their populations, or herds. Do they proclaim their falsity boldly? Perhaps not.

  Surely the world is a mysterious place, this world, and perhaps others. One puzzles on the dark selections of nature. Would it select equivalently on a heavy world, and a light world, on a hot world, and a cold world, on a dry, barren world and on an aqueous world? One supposes not. On one world a termite prospers, on another a wolf. In the dark and troubled times who would prosper? I think men and women were not then as they are now. In our world what place would there be for such men and women, or, in their world, what place would there be for such as we? Might not they turn their back on our world? Might we have survived in theirs? Perhaps, if we became as they, those who could. One wonders if one could become as they, impatient, alert, agile-sinewed, far-trekking, keen-sighted, enduring, wary, sustaining hunger, and heat and cold, hardy, ready to hunt, and be hunted, ready to kill or be killed. They were the dark and troubled times, times in which life was noticed, not overlooked, times of threat, difference, and risk, times in which life was simpler and more raw, times in which life was perilous, but lived.

  I am different from many others; I am much alone, with my studies, and my memories of lives I never lived, or do not think I lived. I frequent ruins, and old buildings. I am found in obscure libraries, I peruse crumbling manuscripts, not seen fit for preservation. I am one with chroniclers I have never known. I sift through their accounts, often so laconic. This manuscript, following, is based largely on the Valens manuscript, 122B, details concerning which I have supplied elsewhere. It is unusual amongst such manuscripts as it deals largely with individuals, and not institutions, federations, and states. I effect nothing critical on this score. Is it not one way to understand a time, seeing it as those saw it, whose time it was?

  As our story begins, the wings of the Telnarian empire spread over thousands of worlds. The empire was eternal, and, I fear, dying.

  I think there is a particular reason I have attended to these supposedly antique matters, and it has to do with the mysteries and intricacies of time, and the interlacings of dimensions. Sciences, here and there, doubtless the false sciences, as we are told, have supposed a multiplicity of worlds and dimensions, suggesting that reality is less prosaic and constricted than commonly supposed by small animals such as we, bred not to understand but, in the midst of dark sanctions, to survive. Are we, whom it took millennia to discover the stone club, the planted seed, and the bronze knife, ready to understand the possible births and divisions of worlds?

  I wondered, long ago, if Telnaria might not lie at our elbow. How is it, for example, that certain troves of manuscripts lay so long, not merely neglected, but, apparently, undiscovered? Is it possible that they were not there, until recently, in the historical past? But surely that is absurd. But one wonders. As I once mentioned, long ago, when I was very young, once, for the briefest instant, while wandering amongst ruins, my sleeve brushed a column, but it was not worn with age, weathered by centuries of wind and rain, sheeted with moss, blackened and scarred by lightning, but fresh and golden, lofty and deeply carved, and then it was gone. But I had glimpsed Telnaria.

  Our story continues, at the edge of a forest on the world of Tangara, at a small camp far from the provincial capital of Venitzia.

  It is the month of Igon, a month of bitter cold in the northern latitudes of Tangara.

  It is dusk.

  Chapter One

  “Prepare yourself, Cornhair!” snapped the brunette, who was first girl, and carried a switch.

  “‘Filene’!” said the blonde.

  “Why ‘Filene’?” said the brunette.

  “It is my name!” said the blonde.

  “Why is it your name?” laughed the brunette.

  The blonde was silent.

  “Speak,” said the brunette, “or my switch will play a merry melody on your silken hide, and, as you are, you will feel it, and keenly!”

  “Because it is the name Masters have given me!” said the blonde, tears in her eyes. Almost without thinking, she lifted her hand to her throat. She wore, as did the brunette, a Telnarian slave necklace, of the sort favored in some of the provinces. It was all she wore.

  “Kneel, Cornhair,” said the brunette.

  The blonde knelt. Instant obedience is expected in a slave, to any free person, and even to another slave, if possessed of authority over her.

  The blonde touched the light, small chain locked about her neck, with its pendant metal disk. The disk, in three languages, including a Herul pictograph, identified her as a property of the Telnarian empire, to be returned, if found, to the office of the provincial governor, in Venitzia. In her transportation to the camp, her naked body bundled in a thick fur sack and hood, the chain had been housed in a soft, leather sleeve, which is not uncommon in the cold, or in a situation where the slave might be exposed to cold. Indoors, or in warmer areas, sleeves are removed from such “necklaces.” The reason for this is simple. Men like to see the chain on a slave’s neck. Metal against female flesh is sexually stimulating. It is even more so when it is understood that the woman is a slave, and the device is, in effect, a slave collar, which she cannot remove. It does not take long for an enslaved woman to gather that she is now, is expected to be, and must be, a stimulating sexual object.

  “You look well on your knees, Cornhair,” said the brunette, “—as any slave.”

  The blonde and the brunette were in a rearward portion of a long tent, one of four at the camp, inside the defense perimeter. These four tents were designed for imperial occupants, even of rank; accordingly, they were floored, insulated, and heated. They were small oases of comfort in the wilderness outside Venitzia, even in the month of Igon, even at the edge of a forest, into which not even Heruls would penetrate, a forest rumored to be roamed by
Otungs.

  “For what am I to prepare myself?” asked the blonde.

  “The camp has a visitor,” said the brunette.

  “The sought barbarian, he has been found?” exclaimed the blonde. “He, Ottonius!”

  “The Master, Ottonius,” said the brunette.

  “Yes,” said the blonde, “the Master, Ottonius!”

  Slaves do not address free persons by their name. They address free men as “Master” and free women as “Mistress.”

  “It seems he recalls you from the Narcona,” said the brunette.

  The blonde felt giddy.

  “You served him on the ship,” said the brunette.

  “He did but interrogate me and use me for a servile task,” said the blonde.

  “What task?” inquired the brunette.

  “Polishing his boots,” said the blonde.

  “That is all?” said the brunette, skeptically.

  Putting the slave to a servile task, particularly if she has recently been free, before putting her to one’s pleasure, is often thought to be instructive. It helps them better understand what it is to be a slave. Interestingly, the performance of such small, homely tasks, caring for a Master’s quarters, cleaning his garments, preparing his food, expectantly awaiting his return, and the opportunity to welcome him, kneeling before him, and such, can be sexually stimulating to the slave. Many a free woman fails to understand the joys of submission, and the yielding totality and warmth of a woman’s bondage, for slavery, for the slave, is a wholeness, a mode of being, a way of life, a life of surrender, of serving, of love, and devotion. In helpless bondage, choiceless, mastered, and owned, she is contented, grateful, and fulfilled; she is as she would have herself.

  “Yes, Mistress,” said the blonde.

  As first girl, the brunette was as Mistress to the blonde.

  The blonde recalled how the barbarian had taped her mouth shut and bound her, kneeling, at the foot of his bed, and then slept. How her feelings had wavered, and disturbed her, how she had wanted to hate him, and had, at the same time, helpless at the foot of his bed, longed for his hands upon her body, holding and caressing her, with thoughtless, severe, possessive authority, as a slave may be held and caressed. How well the slave knows herself, nothing, and owned, and trembles with a responsiveness no free woman can understand, save in her dreams, thrashing in bonds, or grasped in the implacable might of her Master’s arms.

  “Why then would he wish you at the supper?” asked the brunette.

  “I do not know,” said the blonde.

  “Your lineaments are acceptable,” said the brunette. “That is probably enough.”

  “Four will serve,” said the brunette, “you amongst them. Perhaps, if you beg prettily enough, he may, after the men are done with their business, as the conclusion of an evening’s collation of wine and tarts, bed you for his pleasure.”

  “What is wrong?” asked the brunette.

  “Nothing, Mistress,” said the blonde.

  The heart and body of the blonde churned with tumult. It was with difficulty that she restrained herself from reaching to the floor, to steady herself. It would be unwise, of course, to break position before a superior.

  It was as though she suddenly found herself on a plank, unsteady, frightened, precariously located, a yawning abyss disappearing, leagues below.

  The time was at hand, for which she had waited, for so long, enduring such hardships, and humiliations, as though she might be naught but another meaningless slave.

  Surely no more than one or two in the camp, those who would supply the tool of assassination, whose identity or identities were unknown to her, knew her true identity, that she was not a slave, at all, but, rather, was a free woman, the Lady Publennia Calasalia, and a free woman not merely of the honestori, but of patrician stock, indeed, one once of the Larial Calasalii, before being disavowed, because of waywardness and debts, even to the obliteration of her name from the relevant rolls of lineage. Long ago, in a private audience, late at night, with sober, cunning Iaachus, the Arbiter of Protocol in the court of the Emperor Aesilesius, he aware of the miseries and nigh destitution of her lot, she had been recruited to perform a tiny task, in which no more than a single drop of blood need be shed, but a drop on which might ride, so delicately, breaking not even the surface, the fate of worlds, and the winds of power, reaching to the ten thousand sectors of an empire, for small things in a single palace, or court, or audience room, or hallway, an order given, a glance exchanged, a nod, might be eventually felt, borne on the wings of light, and piercing the charted thresholds and passes of space, to the farthest outposts of the limitanei, verging on the remote, threatened perimeters of the empire itself.

  “Perhaps he will find you of interest,” said the brunette.

  “‘Of interest’!” exclaimed the blonde, angrily.

  The brunette looked at her, puzzled. What an odd cry, she thought, from a slave. “You had best hope so,” she said, “lest you be whipped, discarded, sold, or slain.”

  “Of course, Mistress,” said the blonde, lowering her head, humbly.

  Soon, she told herself, this dreadful matter, with its humiliations and degradations, would be done. The chain then, with haste and abject apologies, might be removed from her neck.

  She could not remove it herself, of course. It was on her, as much as on the neck of any slave. How fearful it would be, she thought, to truly be a slave! How she might then pull at that chain, helplessly, wildly, fearfully, and know it truly on her, signifying to all who might look upon her what then she would be, a property, as much as a pig or dog!

  Happily it would soon be removed, when her task was done.

  Again she touched the necklace.

  How fearful to think of being truly a slave, a helpless, lovely, purchasable object, one no stranger to thongs and chains, to gags and blindfolds, to hoods and harnesses, to cells, kennels, and cages, a creature which must kneel, submit, obey, and strive to please, something to be ranked as loot, something to be listed as cargo, something which might be routinely vended from a thousand, indifferent platforms on a thousand, indifferent worlds.

  But she would soon be rich, and once more highly placed, with position, and power.

  How she would enjoy a hundred vengeances. How she might then buy the brunette, and others, who had slighted or abused her, and teach them then what it might be to be the slaves of a free woman!

  But who would supply the delicate knife, light and slender, needlelike, so finely ground, with its transparently coated blade?

  Might it be blond Corelius, so handsome, and ironically polite, who had so often treated her as though she might be free, perhaps knowing she was truly free? Or had he been merely mocking one he deemed a helpless slave? Might it be severe Ronisius, who treated her no differently than he did others, assumed slaves, or was this part of a subterfuge on his part, that little attention be brought to her? Or it might be a higher officer, say, Lysis, supply officer of the Narcona. The knife would not be entrusted to a lesser figure, surely. It must be he, then, a higher officer! Certainly it could not be short, ugly Qualius, with his shuffling gait, his porcine countenance and porcine manners, a tender of livestock on the Narcona, that being brought to Venitzia, who had occasionally brought her her gruel, and feasted his eyes upon her as she crouched hungry, wishing to be fed, in her cage. But Phidias, himself, the captain of the Narcona, was in the camp! How anomalous that was! Why should one such as he brave the long trek to the forest, a dangerous journey through frozen terrain, perhaps under the eyes of furtive, lurking Heruls? His post was surely on the ship.

  It must be he, then, she thought.

  How could wise, cunning Iaachus, Arbiter of Protocol, who, it was said, was depended upon by the empress mother herself, and was perhaps the mind and will behind the throne, have chosen a better agent to transport a small, black, flat leather case
between worlds, thence to bring it from a rude provincial capital to a mysterious rendezvous at the edge of a dark forest?

  It must be he, she thought.

  But perhaps not!

  He may know nothing of the knife.

  She did know matters of moment were afoot, as perhaps many in the camp did not, recruitments and alliances, matters supposedly of political and military consequence.

  Would not an agent less conspicuous be more judicious?

  “Clean and groom yourself, Cornhair,” said the brunette. “You are to sparkle.”

  “Yes, Mistress,” said the blonde.

  “Slave cosmetics, and slave perfume,” said the brunette.

  “Such?” inquired the blonde. They were, after all, in a wilderness camp, far even from the modest comforts and amenities of a provincial capital.

  “Surely,” said the brunette. “You are not a free woman.”

  Little did the brunette know, thought the blonde. How she would pale, and cringe, if she knew she were free.

  We would then see in whose hand the switch reposed!

  The blonde thought of the subtleties of the dressing table, before which she might kneel, and avail herself of the assorted pencils and brushes, disks and vials, on its surface, and in its tiny, shallow drawers. How different those articles and supplies were from those with which she had once been familiar, ordered at great expense from a dozen worlds, long ago, before she had fallen on straitened times. How little she had thought of such things then, the darins slipping through her small fingers like water, before the glistening, spinning wheels and the tiny plates on the marked tables had turned against her. She had fled creditors on more than one world, only on another to once more drain family resources and accounts.

  How she despised that miscellany, suitable for slaves, on the low table.

  Even the mirror was small, and cheap, mounted in its unpainted frame. How different it was from the large, broad, ornate, expensive mirrors she had had installed in her various boudoirs, particularly before falling upon her straitened times.