Kings of Morning Read Free

the shade of the awning, the people here barely glancing at his purple stripe. His young face creased with momentary sadness. Then he shook his head, and yawned, and carried on his way to the looming ziggurat of the King.
     
     
    T HE K ING'S S TEPS soared up, a stairway to the sky. They were for the high caste, civil servants, diplomats, men high in the King’s service. And they called for fit men, because there were three thousand steps, each wide as a ledge. The Great King rode his horse to the summit of the ziggurat, but for everyone else the climb had to be made on foot.
    At their base the Royal Honai stood, like golden statues resplendent in polished bronze, with silver pomegranates on the butts of their spears. There were ten thousand of these tall Kefren, the finest soldiers in the Empire, the bodyguard of the Lord himself. A great army had been sent west the winter before, but the Honai had stayed behind, and the King with them. Whatever war was flickering out at the borders of the Empire was not considered important enough to warrant his personal attention. And why should it? This was the world that all people knew, and had always known. There was not a generation living that had contemplated anything else.
    The Steps were not for the likes of Kurun. He padded quickly through the serried manifold maze of alleyways and mud-brick streets that congregated along the base of the High City like the breakers of a brilliantly coloured sea. In this babel of shouting, haggling, gesticulation and barter, the small merchants and traders of the city traditionally had their stalls, their carts, their shops and lean-tos. They sold small animals for sacrifice, sweet incense, flowers, bolts of cloth to be draped and cut upon the wearer in the street, sandals of plaited reeds, trinkets of every base metal and some precious ones, bright pebbles from the river polished to brilliance, and cuttings touted as sprigs from the gardens of the Great King himself.
    One man, Arozian the gardener, had a stall covered with miniature trees which he kept small through constant pruning. They always drew an open-mouthed crowd from the provinces, and his stall was well known as a honeypot for pickpockets. Kurun pressed his fist to the belly of his sash as he passed, flashing a wave to the blue-faced old Juthan. There were few of his race left in Asuria. Most Juthans, slaves and free, had left or run away over the years to join their kin in Jutha under the rebel king Proxanon. Those that were left had become something of a curiosity, and one that was viewed with a certain suspicion. But here in the Long Bazaar Arozian was a fixture, and he liked to boast that the High Priest himself had made purchase from him.
    A dark gateway loomed, many times Kurun’s height, wide enough for two wagons to enter abreast. It looked like a door to the underworld, and in many ways it was. This was the Slave Gate, one of the entrances to the dark intestines of the High City. The traffic passing in and out was watched over by more of the royal Honai, but these warriors were not the gleaming legendary figures who stood at the foot of the King’s Steps. They wore true battle-armour, and short stabbing spears with butts of iron which doubled as maces. Like their brothers, resplendent at the foot of the King’s Steps, they were incorruptible – unlike almost every other gate-guard in the city – and were as quick with a blow as a query. Kurun bowed his head as he shuffled past them, as did the rest of the crowd, and the hubbub of the street was dimmed, so that it seemed the Slave Gate was witness to pulsing trains of penitents intent on their sins and the dust on their sandals.
    The heat and light of the sun was blocked out, and at once the smell of the Slave-City engulfed Kurun. Thousands of bodies, sweating and ill-washed and packed together. Animal ordure, soot, woodsmoke, and here and there the half-sick fragrance of perfume on a slave-girl.
    Massive hanging lamps of