The Empty Kingdom

THERE WAS NO LIGHT burning in the room. The najashi sat awake in a pool of moonlight, a cup of wine at his hand. Telemakos stood in the doorway.

“Young scorpion,” Abreha said coldly. “What more is there to be said between us?”

“I want to buy Athena’s passage back to Aksum.”

Abreha looked down at his hands. He twisted his signet ring from his finger.

“And what can you possibly offer me in payment?”

Telemakos stepped lightly and swiftly across the room. His footfalls made no sound. He knelt before the najashi and pressed his forehead against the floor. The chimes at his elbow were silent. He moved with the sure stealth of a leopard stalking its prey.

“My service,” Telemakos whispered. “I offer you my service.”

There was a faint click as Abreha dropped his ring against the marquetry of his writing table. Telemakos waited.

Abreha picked up a taper and reached over with it to flick through the bells of Telemakos’s bracelet. They rang and rattled.

“How do you do it? How do you move so silently?”

“I don’t know. I am a good tracker. I have always been quiet.”

Abreha lit the taper.

“As it happens,” he said slowly, “I have need of your service, and you may not guess how it gladdens me that you offer it freely.”

There was a small burner on the floor beside him. Abreha set about lighting it, and blew out the taper.

“All right, Morningstar. Get off your face. Come to your knees and listen to my proposal.”

Telemakos rose, obediently, and sat back on his heels with his head bowed. The charms glittered, winking gold as the light caught them, but they made no sound.

“I want you to map the Hanish Islands for me.”

Abreha placed a warming pan for mixing ink above the lighted burner.

“The skirmish in Adulis has not affected the negotiation over al-Kabir,” Abreha said. “I am to meet with a representative of my cousin’s there, to complete our transaction. I will travel in the flagship of my armada, as I did during Aksum’s plague quarantine, with an escort of small warships to ensure my own safety in Aksum’s waters.

“I’ll put you aboard one of the warships, and you and they will leave the rest and navigate the archipelago in secret. I want you to sail the waters and walk the perimeter of the islands yourself, out of sight of the exiles and without the knowledge of my cousin’s ships and servants, and draw me a true map of Gebre Meskal’s prison fortress and its attendant islets. I want you to list any cove where a boat may find harbor, small or large, and any cave or inlet where an ambush may be placed on the island itself.”

He paused. Telemakos was silent, thinking, I could do it. He knows what I did in Afar, now, and he knows I could do this, too. How long would it take—a month, two months? The najashi could kill me tomorrow, if I refuse.

“Is it true that Gebre Meskal means to forgive you for ignoring his quarantine?” Telemakos asked.

“I am building a church in his father’s name, in thanksgiving that he has done so.”

Gebre Meskal has got ships coming and going from Hanish, Telemakos thought, guarding the prison and negotiating with Abreha. Aksumite ships, bound for Aksum. Maybe when I have finished the mapping …

“I’ll do it,” Telemakos said. “If you swear by your dead children that you will send Athena home to our parents.”

Abreha picked up his ring and dropped it in the warming pan. “By God, you young fox, I don’t know where your loyalty lies, but you do not disappoint me.”

“I can’t decide which is the greater tyrant, you or Gebre Meskal,” Telemakos said. “In truth, aren’t you and your cousin cut from the same cloth? He condemned an entire city to death in the name of his nation’s good, and you spurned his sacrifice in the name of your own! My loyalty lies with Athena. I will not sacrifice my sister in my emperor’s defense.” He raised his head and added bitterly, “Nor any child.”

Abreha rebuked him in quiet: “You are no longer a child, Lij Bitwoded Telemakos Eosphorus.”

Now the najashi picked up a short penknife. He leaned forward and worked the blade’s edge firmly beneath Telemakos’s bracelet, and sawed through the thin silver strip. The chimes shook frantically for a moment, then the band fell away. Telemakos glanced down at the bracelet and spat on it. “Prove to me you’ll keep your word and send my sister home. Swear by your dead children.”

Abreha laid the knife down on his desk. He said gently, “Morningstar, I will not profane the souls of my dead children. But I’ll give you surer proof than my word alone. I’ll entrust you with my kingdom, if you dare to accept it.”

In contemptuous disbelief, dumbfounded beyond fear, Telemakos raised his eyes to meet Abreha’s, as one warrior might accept another’s challenge. The najashi held his gaze.

“How are you going to do that?” Telemakos inquired as politely as he could, given that he was staring boldly into the najashi’s face.

“By this seal.” Abreha gestured to the signet ring that lay in the warming pan.

Telemakos began to guess at the najashi’s intent. They were still eye to eye. He murmured, “Why doesn’t it melt?”

“It is nickel, not precious metal. That little flame is not hot enough to melt it. It can be used as a brand, as well as a seal.”

Then Telemakos lost all strength to speak. His question came out as no more than whisper, but still he stared brazenly into the najashi’s face. “Do you brand all your servants?”

Abreha answered with quiet patience: “It is not the mark of a servant.”

Telemakos remembered the touch of the smooth metal, after Abreha had sealed Telemakos’s unsent letters with it, warm against the base of his skull.

“This seal on you will afford you protection within the bounds of my kingdom, and my own authority if you choose to wield it,” Abreha explained. The najashi spoke seriously. He was not threatening; he was offering terms. “Accept the seal, and you accept the responsibility of carrying that authority as long as you remain alive, unless you tear it from your skin first. Misuse it, and you risk your sister’s life. Or refuse it, with no honor lost, and trust me on my word alone.”

Telemakos gazed into the najashi’s sad black eyes beneath the heavy brow, and moved his lips to say, I will accept. But no sound came out. He licked his dry lips and managed to croak, less formally but with no less determination, “All right.”

The najashi turned away first, graciously.

“Wait by the window, with your head on the sill. The mark goes on the back of your neck, where it may be hidden by your hair. It is not meant to be disfiguring.”

Telemakos moved to the window, thinking, I have spent a great deal of the past two years on my knees before Abreha.

He rested his cheek against the sill, feeling as if he were preparing himself to have his head struck off.

“You are fearless,” said the najashi warmly.

“I’m afraid of dreams,” Telemakos croaked.

“Yet you aren’t afraid of pain, which is real, while the dreams are not.”

Telemakos gave a hiss of sudden frustration, and found his voice again. “Must we discuss this like a pair of scholars? Do it!”

“The seal isn’t ready,” Abreha said quietly. “I can wait in silence, if you wish.”

So they waited in silence, Telemakos with his head bent over the wide windowsill, watching the jeweled lights of the city above and below.

Abreha’s narrow fingers smoothed back the hair at the base of Telemakos’s skull.

“I doubt you’ll ever thank me for this,” Abreha said. “But perhaps you will forgive me.”

Very gently, he kissed the back of Telemakos’s neck to seal their contract, then pressed the mark of Solomon into his skin.

For one second the world was made of sparkling white light and blinding heat; then it was black. When he knew himself again, Telemakos was slouched against the wall below the window, sobbing childishly. The limewashed plaster beneath his cheek was damp with tears. He clenched his teeth and bit back the next sob.

He saw, rather than felt, that his hair was suddenly aflame. Abreha instantly beat it out with a damp cloth.

He expected this, Telemakos thought. He expected me to come to him. He expected he would be setting me this task, and sealing it like this. He had everything in place.

The najashi left Telemakos sitting by the window. He laid his ring in a dish to cool, and put away the tongs he had used to hold the heated metal. Then he slid his hand beneath the lip of his writing desk and sprang the hidden panel. He took a curl of palm tape out, closed the lid, and rolled the writing open on the marquetry.

“Your aunt has sent you a letter,” Abreha said, “thanking you for the lion skin you sent her, and I see no reason you may not read it.”

He expected me here, Telemakos thought again. He has saved this for last, to distract me, to court my favor, to reward my compliance …

But it worked. Telemakos crept to Abreha’s side. The najashi held up the light in the burner so Telemakos might read.

Goewin’s love and elation seemed to shout at him from the scratches on the narrow frond. Telemakos had the strangest sensation, shaping each word silently with his lips as he read, that he knew exactly how each sentence should end, as though he had read it all at least a dozen times before.

Telemakos my dear,

This gift, this prize

delights me! Never you the coward or

the fool, not with your father’s strength and wit

and cunning bred in you to such degree.

A child no more, you’ve grown to manhood now.

Heed me, Telemakos.

He prowled among

the lions; he became a young lion,

and he learned to catch prey.

Few sons achieve

their father’s stature. Most do not, and few

outstrip them. You, my soldier, you won’t fail,

my bold hero. Beloved friend, you are

so well grown now, so wise, the flower of

the rising generation, and your deeds

will be their song.

Telemakos, heed me.

Your loving aunt, as ever, G.

The letter was in Ethiopic, but the inset quotation midway through it was in Latin. This meant that the word lion was in Latin, too; it would have been anbessa, Abreha’s second name, in Ethiopic. So Goewin avoided making any connection between Telemakos’s gift to her and the najashi’s part in it. How I love her, Telemakos thought.

“May I read it again before you put it away?”

“Of course.”

A child no more, you’ve grown to manhood now. Heed me, Telemakos …

He suddenly recognized the familiar rhythms of Homer’s Odyssey. He reached out to touch the palm leaf, as if physical contact with Goewin’s written words would bring him closer to his aunt, and at the second his fingertips brushed the inscription, he realized that the entire letter was composed of the goddess Athena’s inspiring words to the prince Telemakos. The thrill of discovery and mystery that went through him felt as though it really did come straight through the scratched marks.

The phrases were out of context and out of order, but they were all direct quotations from his father’s own Ethiopic translation of the first four books of the Odyssey.