The Immortal Throne (2016)

by Stella Gemmell

  ‘Soldier?’ Thekla was looking at her.

  ‘Yes, lady?’

  ‘What is your name? You are always here.’

  ‘Valla, lady.’

  ‘Valla, do not speak of anything you see or hear.’

  ‘No, lady. But …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘May I get this veil for her? I will, if it is within my power.’

  ‘No, it is lost.’

  ‘Then can another be made?’

  Thekla shook her dark curls. ‘It is not a simple thing. The Gulon Veil is an ancient artefact of great power used down the centuries to heal and to preserve. It cannot be remade or replaced, like this broken cup.’ She watched the old woman. ‘Without it the empress can heal but it takes a toll on her. You would not understand.’

  Annoyed at the slight, Valla bit her tongue then said respectfully, ‘I know of the Immortal’s power, lady. She healed me of a grievous injury. I owe her my strength and my life. I would help her if I could.’

  Thekla turned to her, her grey eyes piercing. ‘She healed you?’

  ‘Yes, lady. And the gulon.’ She flushed. The woman would think her a fool. But Thekla just nodded.

  ‘Yes, she told me about it. I thought she was wrong to save the creature at the expense of her own strength. But Archange can be … sentimental. The gulon is an ancient beast.’

  Valla thought Archange as sentimental as a stone wolf, but she asked, ‘You know the creature?’

  ‘I know of it. I believe it is the gulon which once pursued my cousin Saroyan, to her great annoyance.’ She smiled slightly.

  Valla asked, ‘Why did it follow her?’

  Thekla shrugged. ‘Who knows what is in such a beast’s mind? But the empress was fond of Saroyan and perhaps she healed it for that reason. Or,’ she added, ‘perhaps because it is the only thing in the palace as old as she.’

  Valla looked at the empress, who now slept quietly.

  ‘Will she die?’ she asked softly.

  Thekla looked up at her. ‘That is a question many people would like the answer to.’

  Giulia Rae Khan had not died. Much as she had wished it. After the heart seizure sparked by her brother’s death she had lain close to death herself for days but eventually her scarred heart had assumed its proper rhythm, her rich Serafim blood flowed more powerfully through her veins, and she accepted that she must live a while longer.

  As she lay propped up in her bed watching the road to the north, she had hoped there had been some fearful mistake, or mischief by the enemy, and that one day Marcus would come riding back. She had been parted from him often enough before, during her short, bitter marriage to Marcellus and Marcus’ own wretched liaisons, and while he was away fighting and during her year-long voyage. But they had always been together in their hearts, and they always knew they would be reunited because each of them was more precious to the other than any short-lived spasm of the heart or loins.

  Now she had admitted she must go on living, Giulia decided she would act the part, so one bright morning she ordered a hearty breakfast and turned her face to the world again.

  When told Fiorentina had been abducted her first reaction had been ‘good riddance’. But she quickly resumed her normal way of approaching life and decided this offence against her could not stand. She demanded to see Jona Lee Gaeta but was informed he was in attendance on the empress. Giulia had told no one else of the girl’s pregnancy, and Jona would have no advantage in kidnapping her himself, so her eye turned, as ever, to Archange as the mover behind this outrage.

  She told her servants she was leaving the palace and ordered her favourite horse saddled. This provoked an outbreak of anxiety among her old retainers, but eventually she was dressed in warm riding clothes and mounted on her favourite gelding.

  She looked around with interest as the horse clopped up the Shell Path trailed by her guard of six. Labourers hard at work mending storm damage pulled off their caps and bowed their heads as she rode past. Old men most of them, they knew her and treated her with the respect she was due. She gazed out over the City as the gelding climbed higher and, for the first time since Marcus’ death, she smiled. She had been told of the vast army at the northern gates but this did not trouble her. She did not fear death. Perhaps these foreign invaders, whoever they were, would bring Archange to account for her crimes. An emperor’s murder, much as Giulia had disliked Araeon, should not go unpunished.

  When the Serafia came into sight she halted, a variety of emotions churning through her heart. It was beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful creation of them all. It seemed to float on its mountaintop, its multitude of white spires narrowing to needle-points which appeared to pierce the dome of the sky. Some towers were connected to the rest of the palace by fragile, fairy bridges which seemed to fly across under some mysterious power of their own. A pair of eagles soared among the towers, their wings tipping to catch the thermals.

  When Giulia rode up the gates were closed, all was quiet. She could see no one on the walls. The only movement was the eagles high above. She gestured to Amylas, the leader of her guard, and he dismounted and pounded on the gates with his mailed fist. In response there was only silence. Irritably she nodded to the soldier and he hammered again, long and hard. They waited.

  Finally the silence was broken by the sound of shifting timbers and the gates shivered. A crack appeared in the centre and one gate opened enough for a man to sidle through. It was a common soldier, who regarded them silently.

  ‘I am the lady Giulia Rae Khan,’ she told him, thinking him a rough oaf who would not recognize her. ‘I wish to see the empress.’

  ‘The empress is seeing no one,’ he replied.

  He began to retreat and she rapped out, ‘The empress will speak to me, soldier. Tell her I’m here.’

  The soldier ducked back behind the gate, which closed. They waited in silence, Giulia fuming. Then at last the gate opened again. This soldier was tall and fair and was a commander of the Thousand, Giulia noted with approval.

  ‘My regrets, lady Giulia, but the empress is seeing no one.’

  ‘Where is the child!’ she burst out, containing her anger no longer. ‘Tell Archange I know she has stolen the baby.’

  He frowned. ‘There is no baby in the White Palace,’ he told her, a picture of calm indifference. ‘I can vouch for that. Would you like me to deliver a message to the Immortal?’

  The use of this title infuriated Giulia.

  ‘The Immortal!’ she spat, losing her temper entirely. ‘I knew Archange when she was nobody, a slut who’d spread her legs for any man to further her ambition. She’s a malevolent, scheming bitch. Always has been. That’s the message you can deliver to her, soldier!’

  Then she threw her head back. ‘Where’s the baby, Archange?’ she yelled as loud as her old lungs could manage. ‘Where’s the whore’s sister? Have you killed them both already?’ Her screams bounced off the walls and echoed round the towers and came back to them like the cries of distant gulls.

  The soldier retreated and the white gates closed again and all was silent.

  Giulia clutched her hammering heart. ‘Bitch,’ she spat, turning the horse’s head for home.

  Even Fiorentina did not know where she was. Unconscious, she had been brought to this prison room and left. She and Alafair had been there for many days, with no explanation and no visitors apart from the silent thug of a guard who brought their food. It was decent food, but she found it hard to eat. She had long since lost any appetite for putting food into her already crowded body. Fiorentina had demanded the guard bring her his superior, but he had ignored her and she wondered if he could even speak. She had once been told, perhaps by Rafe, that the guards in the dungeons of Gath had their tongues ripped out to stop them conspiring with prisoners. Her thoughts dwelled constantly on such atrocities.

  Fiorentina assumed she had been kidnapped and was being kept alive for the baby she carried – she could see no other reason. Thus she would remain unharmed
until the birth. After all, if her captors had wanted the child dead they could have killed them both at the Khans’ palace. But once the boy was born, would they need her? The thought of death did not worry her – her days were a lifeless void without her husband and anyone could bring up the baby. But she wanted at least to see the boy born, to look into his small face, to see her lord made flesh again. Then she would die content.

  In her mind she constantly counted and recounted the days since the child’s conception. She knew she was long overdue. Alafair guessed it too; Fiorentina saw the fear in the girl’s eyes when she contemplated her distended belly. Alafair was worried about helping the baby into the world, for it was something she had never done before, and she had confided her anxiety to her mistress. But there was something more. As the pregnancy stretched on and on, unnaturally, a disquiet grew between them that they never discussed.

  One night she awoke, her heart racing in her breast.

  Moonlight flooded the room and in its silvery path, at the end of her bed, stood a small, wizened woman with wild white hair. She was tiny but her eyes were huge in her lined face and they spoke of an indomitable will. She grinned toothily and scuttled to the side of the bed. She reached out long, curved nails like knives and touched Fiorentina’s belly. Fiorentina, bloated and helpless in her final days of pregnancy, could only cry out feebly but Alafair, curled up on the couch, slept on.

  The old crone whispered, ‘Is he like his father? Is he dead in there, girl?’ Fiorentina cringed away from the sharp talons.

  Then the woman was gone, and only the bright moonlight marching through the casement was left to disturb her.

  But as she turned over awkwardly before drifting off again, Fiorentina saw a man’s face looking at her through the bars in the door. Believing she was still dreaming, she slept. But when she awoke the next morning Fiorentina was convinced the watcher had been Marcellus.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  THE END OF summer came quickly and when it arrived there was barely time for autumn. The long hot days had seemed endless, but when they stopped and the cold and rain swept in, well, that soon seemed endless too.

  The invading armies, camped outside two of the Great Gates, celebrated the rain, for their leaders had found it difficult to keep eighty thousand men watered on their long journey south. The lands they came from were cold as charity and the winds that howled across the steppes were seen as a manifestation of their warriors’ strength and relentless endurance.

  The City troops defending the Great North Gate were sheltered from the worst of the storms and the biting cold made little difference to their days, which were spent manning the battlements, dodging enemy arrows as they dislodged the invaders’ flimsy ladders, and building up defensive walls behind the gate should the enemy break through. They had been warned of the threat of cannon, though the common soldier was inclined to disbelieve a threat he had never seen and could not imagine; he thought the towering gate, built of reinforced timbers as thick as a man’s thigh, was impregnable.

  The forces defending the Paradise Gate, facing east, were less fortunate. The wind and rain from the north whipped through them by day, as they worked tirelessly to move giant blocks of stone, dismantling buildings, reinforcing the gate and creating a killing field behind it, and at night as they tried vainly to sleep, hunkered down behind any shelter they could find.

  In the far south of the City, at the ruined Adamantine Wall, work went on feverishly long into the night regardless of weather. Rebuilding was impossible to achieve quickly. A long stretch of the wall from the Raven Tower to beyond the Isingen Tower had been demolished by the unleashing of the reservoirs and would take years to reconstruct. So a decision had been made to excavate a defensive ditch in front of the ruins. This work moved quickly but the ditch kept filling with water, for the land was lowlying, and engineers were brought in from the suspended work on the site of the Red Palace to design drainage pipes and canals to the nearby river.

  Trees were still in full leaf when rain-heavy winds started battering in from the west, and the last trees in the City which had not already been chopped up for firewood or building succumbed to the gales and were brought south for the vital work on the defences.

  Rubin learned all this as he languished in his prison cell in the White Palace, high above the City. He spent his time staring out of the small window at the relentless rain and the grey sky. His food was brought by an old soldier, a stout man, one-eyed and garrulous, who enjoyed nothing more than relaying the rumours he had heard of the invading army’s moves and the plans of the defenders. Rubin listened to everything he was told and tried to sort out fact from gossip. The guard, whose name was Gallan, claimed thousands of people were leaving the City – those who were able – and heading west across the sea. The rich, he said scornfully, were the first to go, then mothers and children of the merchant class, sent abroad in numbers never seen throughout the long war.

  Rubin still hoped the invading army was Marcellus’ work and he daydreamed that one day his cell door would fly open and his lord would be standing there, chiding Rubin for falling foul of Archange despite his best advice. Rubin’s faith that Marcellus lived was strong but the best part of a year had passed now since his lord had departed the City and Rubin wondered if he still planned to return and, if so, what he was waiting for. And in his secret heart he doubted that even Marcellus could have raised such an army in that time.

  What bothered him above all was why Marcellus, or any invader come to that, would not march directly south and enter the City by the Adamantine Breach? Why hammer on the front and side doors when the back door is lying open?

  He had been in the cell for ten days and was fast asleep when the door opened and Rubin bolted awake, heart pounding. Was this to be a covert, midnight execution? Had the empress changed her mind? He scrambled up, looking around in the gloom for something to defend himself with, but there was nothing.

  ‘Rubin?’ a voice asked. A tall thin man stood in the doorway, face lit vividly by the lantern he held up. Rubin, squinting, was sure he knew him, but he couldn’t remember from where. He sounded hesitant, unthreatening, and Rubin’s heartbeat slowed a tad.

  ‘It’s me … Elija,’ said the visitor, stepping one pace into the cell.

  Rubin peered at him, scarcely able to believe it was his friend from so long ago in the Halls. Then he grinned in relief and recognition and Elija smiled back. He was carrying a pile of books under one arm and he looked around then dumped them on the floor.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Rubin asked, clapping his old friend on the shoulder. It seemed a miracle. He had never expected to see Elija or his sister again. In truth, he’d thought them long dead. Neither seemed to possess the strength or resilience to survive long in the Halls. Yet the boy was just as he remembered him, still watchful and anxious, though taller and better fed.

  Elija lowered his eyes, looking sheepish. ‘I live here now. With Emly.’

  This was so unexpected that Rubin was startled into silence for a moment. Then, ‘You live here in the White Palace?’ he repeated, amazed. ‘Are you servants?’

  Elija laughed, and Rubin could see the character the years had drawn on his face.

  ‘No. We are … I don’t know what we are,’ Elija confessed, shaking his head. ‘We were adopted by Archange, I suppose.’

  Rubin could only stare. ‘Why?’ What strange turn of fate could have brought the pair from the very depths of the City to its dizzy heights?

  Elija grinned, perhaps sharing his friend’s puzzlement. Then he told Rubin of their life, his and Emly’s, after they left the Halls, and how Em’s fortunes had become enmeshed with those of the empress. ‘But Archange cares little for me,’ he said.

  Rubin listened, first with fascination then mounting impatience. ‘Can you tell me,’ he interrupted, ‘about Indaro? They say she killed the emperor.’

  Elija told him about the events of the Day of Summoning. ‘I did not see her do it – I was not ther
e – but I know many who did. It is true, Rubin, but—’

  Rubin sank down on the bed, his mind in uproar. ‘I thought,’ he said bleakly, ‘my sister fought for the City.’

  ‘She did,’ Elija said earnestly. ‘She saved the City.’

  Rubin snorted. ‘Does it look saved to you? Do you ever go down there?’

  Elija argued stoutly, ‘But the war ended because of them, Indaro and Fell and their friends. The Blues have all marched away. Indaro was a hero. You should be proud of her.’

  ‘She murdered the emperor yet you call her a hero,’ Rubin said scornfully. Elija did not argue but he turned away as if about to leave.

  Rubin did not want to fall out with his old friend. He asked, ‘How did you know I was here?’

  Elija slid his back down the wall and sat on the floor. ‘No one tells me anything, but eventually I get to hear most of the gossip. I heard soldiers talking, then I spoke to Gallan, your guard. It was Gallan who let me in here. I told him we were old friends. He’s a good man.’

  Then he asked, ‘What were you doing, sneaking around the palace?’

  Rubin told Elija his own story. ‘I came here to find my father,’ he finished. ‘And here I am, under sentence of death.’ The retelling of the tale had made him miserable. Why had he come here? If he hadn’t, he would never have heard of Indaro’s treachery. And he would not be about to die.

  ‘I will ask the empress to reprieve you,’ Elija said, but the words sounded tentative and Rubin was sceptical. ‘You say she cares little for you,’ he retorted. ‘Why would she pay any attention?’

  Elija face fell. ‘I can try,’ he said. He looked up at the window. ‘It’s nearly morning. I must go. I don’t want to get Gallan into trouble. I will come back if I can.’

  After he had left Rubin stared glumly at the pile of books. He didn’t have the heart to pick them up. The news about Indaro had crushed him. He had clung to the hope that he had been lied to, but there was no reason for Elija to lie and Rubin was forced to accept it was the truth. As the day of his death loomed, he tried to contemplate it with acceptance, hoping only that it would happen quickly.