Northlight

by Wheeler, Deborah

  The girl didn’t seem to take offense. She grinned at him, and he noticed for the first time that her spectacular hairstyle was a wig. The grin told him he probably had seen her at the University.

  “We don’t have that much to do yet — meetings, you know, and getting our uniforms made up, a few special errands like this, and of course signing people up. Nothing compared to what we will be doing once General Montborne is Guardian. Then he’ll really — ”

  Terricel blinked. Montborne, Guardian?

  He shouldn’t be surprised — the general was an obvious choice if you totally disregarded the problem of bypassing the traditional balances and the concentration of so much power in one person — but he recoiled from the girl’s glassy-eyed fervor. Yet if he protested that there were other worthy candidates, that the whole process deserved careful consideration and not jumping with the first likely prospect, she’d likely tell him he was too old and too stodgy to know what was really going on. Just as he dismissed Markus, the gaea-priest on the Inner Council, and many of the older Senators.

  o0o

  The Brigade girl led him north, along streets lined with budding cerise trees. The family-owned residences here enclosed courtyards with landscaped gardens, fountains and hedges of false jasmine and lace-from-heaven. Montborne’s building was in traditional Laurean style, an elongated “U” with a courtyard in the center. A pair of visibly armed soldiers stood at the gated entrance. Security precautions made sense for Montborne, but Terricel wondered how the neighbors liked having to walk by the guards every time they went in or out. In these last few days, they probably welcomed them.

  The girl spoke to one of the guards and they were allowed to pass. They stopped at the door at the far end, the short leg of the “U”. Here the girl turned Terricel over to a fresh-faced aide, who ushered him past a formal entry area, down a short corridor reeking of floor wax, and into a narrow, window-lined room.

  The walls were unadorned except for a single pennon, so faded that its original color was difficult to determine. Montborne’s senior officer stood as usual inside the door. Montborne himself sat in one of the comfortable-looking armchairs drawn up around a small table at the near end. Hobart, the Senate presidio, occupied another, smoking an antique pipe. A nose-tickling odor emanated from it, possibly hothouse tobacco. Terricel couldn’t be sure, as the only thing he or his friends had tried smoking was ghostweed.

  “It’s good to see you again, lad, very good. I appreciate your coming so promptly.” Montborne got up and shook Terricel’s hand, covering it with both of his. They sat down just as the aide came back with a tray of mugs, a steaming carafe, and a pot of rose-honey.

  Terricel sniffed his drink cautiously. The caramel-colored liquid gave off a sharp, tangy aroma. He blew across the steaming surface, took a sip, and found it pleasantly astringent.

  “It’s boramy, from the northern islands of Archipelago,” said Montborne. “A mild stimulant. The islanders claim it sharpens the thought processes. When I was a junior officer, I served along the western border states — they weren’t annexed then, that would be ancient history to you young people. Anyway, I developed a taste for the stuff. Here it costs almost as much as surgical steel, so I save it for my special guests.”

  Terricel flushed. To give himself something to do, he took another swallow of the boramy tisane. His headache faded.

  “Have you ever been to Archipelago?” Montborne asked.

  “No, but I’d like to. Someday.”

  “The University, while justly deserving of our reverence, is only a microcosm.” Montborne gestured expansively with his empty hand. “While you’re struggling through it, it seems like the whole world, but in reality it’s only a tiny particle. Out there,” he indicated the southern-facing windows, “there is the real Laurea, and it’s bigger that you can possibly imagine. Full of riches and adventure, fascinating places, beautiful women. Not all of them,” with a confidential wink, “fellow students. There are thousands of people who never earn the right to call themselves ‘sen.’ It’s time for you to start thinking beyond the walls of your University.”

  What is this, a recruiting speech for your Pateros Brigade? “I’m a senior student,” he said, a little stiffly. “I can’t go trotting over half of Laurea, not until I’ve completed my studies.”

  “Listen to me, Terricel,” said Hobart. Until now, he’d been sitting back, listening to the conversation and chewing meditatively on his pipe stem. “General Montborne didn’t ask you here to make polite conversation about your academic career.” He pointed one elegantly manicured finger northward. “The world out there is filled with real dangers. We’re on the brink of war, you know that, a war in which too many boys like you will never come home. A war that could see the University razed to the ground and its libraries used for kindling. What good will your master’s degree be to you then?”

  Terricel’s immediate response was the traditional platitude that without the University to preserve and foster learning, they’d be little better than the northers anyway. He stifled the words, for he sensed undercurrents to this conversation whose meaning he couldn’t guess.

  “This is no Solstice romp we’re talking about.” Hobart apparently took Terricel’s silence for disagreement. “What faces us now is total annihilation at the hands of the norther savages. They have already struck at the very heart of our nation. They won’t stop until we’re ashes beneath their feet.”

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows upon his knees. “Terricel, you’re a bright and perceptive young man, well trained in statesmanship by your mother. In your heart, you know what’s at stake.”

  What is he getting at? “I know this isn’t a game.”

  “I have dedicated my life to Laurea’s defense,” Montborne said. “In some other time, some peaceful time, I would be content with patrolling the borders and an occasional parade drill on holidays. I’d gladly leave the running of the country to those trained for the job. But we both know the Senate has drifted along from one generation to the next until it can act in an emergency exactly as well as a headless barnfowl can.”

  Still unsure as to the direction of the conversation, Terricel tried a probe. “Perhaps what’s behind Laurea’s troubles is the lack of a single central ruler. There are some who say you should be Guardian.”

  “Me, pro tem? What good would that do? The position’s time-limited.” Montborne had apparently misinterpreted the question. “We’d be asking for catastrophe if, at some crucial point, I had to turn over command to some civilian who knows nothing about national defense. It could cost us the war.”

  “War is inevitable, then?”

  “The only question is on whose timing it will be, ours or theirs,” Montborne said. “I prefer not to stake the future of my country upon the whims of savages.”

  Terricel ran one hand through his hair, his thoughts racing. The confusion he allowed to show on his face was genuine. “Why are you telling me all this? Shouldn’t you be talking to my mother instead?”

  “You are the wave of the future, lad, you and others like you.” Montborne smiled, a flash of brilliance across his chiseled features. “It’s time we stopped looking to the past to safeguard our land. Don’t misunderstand me, I have nothing but the highest respect for your mother. She’s served Laurea long and well. But let’s face it, she’s an old woman. Her stamina’s not what it used to be. Even her ideas are worn out. Good enough, perhaps, for drifting along in peacetime, but now...”

  Terricel stared at him, imagining what Esmelda would say to that.

  “She’s not stupid, your mother — she knows she can’t go on forever. So she’s been grooming you as her successor, taking you to all the Senate meetings, all the private conferences. Surely this can’t come as a surprise to you.”

  “Yes, my mother has trained me as her adjutant. But I believe the University should be free to choose its own representative when it comes time to — for her to retire.”

  “Our boyhood plans
change when we become men,” said Montborne gently. “Laurea — not the University — needs you now.”

  As Terricel made an ungraceful exit, he realized that Montborne fully intended him to tell Esmelda what had happened.

  Chapter 8

  The next morning, the day of Terricel’s thesis proposal, he breakfasted with Esmelda in the solarium. The glass-topped table was piled with papers and reports, mugs of stimulant tisane, and dishes of fruit and cold smoked fish. One of the opal-eyed house snakes was silently slithering between the potted palms.

  Brow furrowed, Esmelda studied Terricel’s transcription of the coded logs. “I’ve seen something like this before, but I can’t read it. You’re right about the insignia being the same. The ring is very old. It came to me from my mother and to her from her father. Among other things, she told me it was a copy of an even older design.”

  “What does it mean?”

  Esmelda’s face, which had softened minutely along with her voice, snapped closed. She shoved aside the page of transcribed code and picked up the next notebook.

  The ring might have something to do with the old Guardians and this Gate or Gatekeeper, whatever it was. “‘Among other things’? What else did your mother tell you?” Terricel persisted.

  “It’s a family heirloom, nothing more!” Her voice resonated with warning and her eyes sparked black fire.

  An heirloom that should have gone to Avi, you mean. He wouldn’t give up. “Then why does it have the same symbol as in the logs? Why won’t you tell me what it means? What’s really going on here?”

  “I don’t know!” For the first time, Esmelda sounded more frustrated than adamant. The next instant, her voice was back under tight control. “I don’t know why the dotted circles appear both on my ring and in those ancient documents. That knowledge was lost generations ago. We may never find out. Our priority now is to the living, to the orderly succession of Laurea, not some detail of ancient history.”

  Terricel blinked, half in astonishment. Esmelda had hidden many things from him over the years, but he did not think she was hiding anything now. She truly didn’t know, and that ignorance clearly rankled her.

  He watched her face as she bent over the notebook, her lips slightly pursed as she read along. Was the link as trivial as she pretended, a tidbit only? Or was it a vital clue now lost, forever beyond her reach? Did her anger cover a deeper, human fallibility?

  “Something else happened yesterday,” Terricel said, drawing himself back to the present. “Montborne called me in for a private chat.” He went on to describe the interview with the general.

  “Of course Montborne’s maneuvering behind the scenes,” she said, making check marks across Terricel’s notes on the Jeravian succession. “He hasn’t gotten where he is by waiting for an engraved invitation. He’s a man who takes full advantage of what circumstances he’s given, for which we all were grateful at Brassaford. You’re surprised he approached you?” She took a mouthful of plum compote and swallowed it without chewing. “I’m not. He wants to know if you, as my adjutant and heir, are susceptible to his influence, like that girl in his — what was it, Pateros Brigade?”

  My adjutant, she said, and heir.

  But only, he thought tightly, because Avi was long gone. Avi again. Why should he be thinking so much of her now?

  Terricel noticed the time on the wall clock and pushed his chair away. “I’ve got to get going.”

  “Whatever it is, it can wait.” Esmelda picked up the pad with his notes on legal challenges during the dynastic transfer to Worrell II. “We’ve got several days’ worth of work to go through and I have a meeting in an hour.”

  “My thesis presentation starts in an hour. I want to go over my written summary once more to make sure all the details are tight.”

  She looked up. “I thought you cancelled that.”

  “No, just the tutoring sessions.” He didn’t like the mild tone of her voice. His shoulders rose slightly, the muscles along his neck tensing. His words came out more belligerent than he intended. “I’ve done everything you asked. It’s not so much to take this one morning for my own work, is it?”

  “This,” she jabbed the nearest stack of papers with one blunt finger, “this is your work. There is nothing — not even a finished thesis and certainly not an unapproved proposal — that could possibly be important enough to interrupt it.”

  “Corrode the work, then!”

  “Don’t you use language like that with me, young man!”

  Terricel had half-risen from his chair. At her words, he sat back down, as if he’d been cut behind the knees. He curled his hands into fists and as quickly released them.

  He remembered Aviyya screaming, “I’m not you! I’ve got to have my own life!”

  “Don’t turn this into a confrontation,” he said, his jaw muscles suddenly so tight he chopped off each word. “I’m not saying I don’t care what happens to Laurea. I’m not saying I’m going to quit. I just want the chance to follow through with my own work. Why else did you encourage me to continue my studies?”

  “Yes, your University training is valuable!” Esmelda shot back without missing a beat. “But what do you think it’s for? Churning out one irrelevant monograph after another? Do you think that’s what I would prepare any child of mine to do?”

  “The way you prepared me?” he flared. His stomach clenched around a knot of fire. Words rushed unchecked from his mouth. “Or the way you prepared Avi?”

  The next moment, Esmelda was on her feet, eyes blazing. “That’s utterly unforgivable! Your sister knew what was at stake — ”

  “And was that why she left? Was it?” It was a cruel thing to say, and the next instant he wished he could call back his words.

  For a fractional moment, Esmelda’s face froze into an unrecognizable mask. Then she said, in that almost inhumanly calm voice of hers, “I think enough time and energy have been expended on this subject. We have too much work to do to waste any more on pointless squabbling.” With regal dignity, she lowered herself to her chair. “We will pretend this conversation never happened.”

  Terricel’s heart pounded, his muscles wound so tight he felt the smallest touch would make him burst open. He pushed himself to his feet, the chair legs scraping on the tile floor. He moved away from the table, brushing against a delicate potted fern. It took all his control not to strike out at it.

  The house snake had completely disappeared, waiting for the humans to leave and its natural prey to emerge. There was no sign of its mate.

  Not trusting himself to speak, Terricel turned and left the room.

  o0o

  All the way to the University, Terricel struggled with his roiling emotions. By the time he arrived, he was able to talk in a normal tone of voice, although his hands still had a distressing tendency to shake. He told himself that once he got started, he’d calm down and concentrate.

  To make matters worse, his presentation had been scheduled for a second-floor seminar room that he particularly disliked. It was too white and too big, too reminiscent of his mother’s house. He supposed Wittnower had requested it to make him feel at home. But at home he didn’t have to pass by the rows of formal portraits of University Deans and Senators, past and present, that lined the walls of the main building, larger than life in their gilded frames.

  Esmelda hated her portrait, although Terricel was never sure if that was from personal modesty or good taste. It depicted her with one hand clutching a weighty tome and the other pointing to the horizon, where the city she had saved still burned.

  Terricel once asked her how she lived with the constant reminder of what Laurea owed her. She’d shrugged and said, “By understanding it means nothing.”

  Normally he passed the portrait without any particular notice, but this morning the painted eyes seemed to follow him, measure him. He paused in the middle of the corridor and glared up at it.

  “This is mine,” he muttered under his breath. “Mine. And you can’t stop me.”


  The committee was assembled and waiting for him, even the old Sociology master who was notoriously ten minutes late to everything. As he took his place at the head of the conference table, Terricel decided this was a good sign, although his stomach churned uneasily. He was glad he hadn’t eaten much breakfast.

  He glanced around the room, seeing only the politely blank faces, each invisibly stamped with the authority of a different field within the School of Humanities — three Histories, one Philosophy/Sociology, one Art, fortunately from Written rather than Visual or Music, and, of course, Wittnower, who was History but who, as his mentor, couldn’t vote. Because his field wasn’t in Natural or Applied Science, he didn’t need a gaea-priest present to sanction the proceedings.

  The Department page brought in a tray with mint tisanes and scones for everyone, and the committee members munched and sipped. Terricel cleared his throat, tried to look poised, and opened with a discussion of the importance of Humanities, specifically History. He implied that no educated Laurean could be ignorant of his past, that a thorough understanding of what had gone before was necessary not just for a scholarly life but for a good life.

  He thought he was doing well. The faces remained blank, but the eyes softened and from time to time he caught a faint, almost drowsy nodding. Perhaps the committee found solace in the timeless academic ritual, a reassurance that even in these days of uncertainty, the pillars of the University — students, masters, examinations, theses — still held firm.

  Gathering confidence from his early success, Terricel raised his voice. “Laurea is Harth’s oldest settlement, yet there’s no concrete evidence we evolved here — for that matter, why do we have the concept of evolution?”

  Well, perhaps that was a bit much. Sociology and Written Art coughed and shifted in their chairs. It was only a small departure from the orthodox, not a fatal misstep.

  Before he could say anything more, Ancient History, who had appeared half-asleep, sat bolt upright and demanded his references for an exogenous origin of humankind on the cultures of Harth. Terricel pulled out his prepared list of fourteen published papers.