by Tad Williams
Eneas curled his big-boned hands into fists. He stood and began to pace. With his back to them, the sewing ladies could now gawk in earnest, and they did. "First of all, you will take all your meals from this moment from the king's table, Princess," he said. "That way you will receive the benefits of my father's own tasters. One of my own servants will bring your food to you when you do not join the others, to make sure that all remains safe." He paused for a moment, thinking. "Also, if it does not offend you, I will leave some men of mine to watch over your chambers. I must go away again and cannot properly look after your safety, but my guard captain will make certain you are safe both here and when you leave your chambers. Lastly, I will tell Erasmias Jino-a good man whom I trust-to keep an eye on your well-being at all times, and especially when I am absent from the court."
She wasn't sure she liked the sound of that (the sharp-eyed Lord Jino made her more than a little uneasy) but Briony knew better than to argue with this powerful, kind young man when he was trying to help her. She couldn't avoid a pang of sadness, though: the mention of a guard captain reminded her of Ferras Vansen-who, according to every source she had found, had disappeared with her brother Barrick after the disastrous battle at Kolkan's Field. In fact, she felt obscurely ashamed just now, as if she was letting this handsome prince make love to her instead of simply allowing him to help protect her-and as if she owed something to Vansen anyway, which she didn't. The very idea was foolish.
Still, the ache did not quickly leave her, and she fell silent for such a long while that Eneas began to look troubled.
Ivgenia, trying to rescue the moment, spoke up. "Where do you go this time, Prince Eneas, if I may ask? All the court misses you when you are away."
He grimaced, but Briony thought it was not directed at Ivgenia so much as the idea of people talking about him. "I must go south again. The Margrave of Akyon is besieged by Xixians in the south and I go with my Temple Dogs and the rest of the army we are sending to break the siege."
"And then will you relieve Hierosol itself, your Royal Highness?" Ivgenia asked.
He shook his head. "I fear Hierosol is lost, my lady. They say that only the innermost walls still stand-that even Ludis Drakava has fled."
"What?" Briony almost fell off her chair. "I had not heard this. Is there any news of my father, King Olin?"
"I am sorry, Princess, I have heard nothing. I cannot think that even a barbarian like the Xixian autarch will harm him, but I don't believe the Hierosol-folk would leave him to Sulepis anyway. Remember, they have not surrendered their city yet, and may hold out for a long time. Some nobleman will have taken Drakava's place, I think. Still, I wish I could give you better news."
Briony's eyes felt hot and full. Ordinarily she would have fought back the tears, but this was no ordinary time. "Oh, gods preserve my poor, dear father! I miss him so much!"
Feival leaned in with a kerchief. "You will run your powder like new paint in the rain, Highness," he told her.
Eneas looked uncomfortable. "I am sorry, Lady. Please, do not put too much stock in anything I say about your father or Hiersosol. The country is at war and little can be known for sure. It could be that Ludis, wanting a valuable bargaining piece like your father, has taken him with him in his escape."
Briony sniffed and let out a small, pained laugh. "I hardly think the idea of a desperate Ludis Drakava dragging my father across a battlefield is well made to cheer me up, Prince Eneas."
Now he looked even more discomforted. "Oh, by the gods' honor-truly, Briony, I mean Princess, I am sorry I even spoke…"
She didn't want to dangle him on the hook forever. "Please, Prince Eneas, don't worry yourself. You meant only kindness, and I have been deceived for so long by so many I thought friends that I can only thank you for telling me the truth. Now, please, do not let us keep you. I know you have much to do. Thank you for everything."
When a slightly confused Eneas had gone out, Briony daubed her eyes, waving away both Ivgenia's attempt to comfort her and Feival's attempts to repair her face. Pleading exhaustion and worry she sent them both away, though they were clearly dying to talk to her about Prince Eneas.
Briony was not suffering quite so much as she made it seem. She was miserable about her father, of course, and frightened, too, but that had been true for months-there was only so much terror she could feel, so much weakness and helplessness she could suffer. So she had made plans instead to do something about that helplessness, and now she had begun to put those plans into effect.
8
The Falcon and the Kite
"There are many reports of the fairies on the southern continent, or at least memories of them, from Xis all the way down to fabled Sirkot in the farthest stretch of the southern lands. It is also reported there are some forested islands in the Hesperian Ocean where the Qar still live, but this has not been proved."
-from "A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand"
Pinimmon Vash wiped the nib of his pen carefully on the blotting paper and then drew the looping letter bre. He wiped the pen again before starting the next letter. It was more important to be accurate than swift.
The paramount minister of Xand was writing out his calendar.
Some of the other young nobles, scions of families at least as old as the house of Vash, had mocked him for spending so much of his youth on his letters. What red-blooded, true child of the desert would choose to sit cross-legged for hours, first sharpening pens and mixing ink and preparing parchment, then scribbling words on a page? Even if the words had been about something manly, like battle, it was nothing like actually fighting in one, and in fact the writing exercises in which young Pinimmon had been engaged often consisted only of copying household accounts.
Not that Vash had been unable to ride or shoot a bow. He had always been just good enough to escape the worst bullying, never finishing among the leaders at the feast-day games, but never finishing last, never embarrassing himself. Thus it was that his peers had ended with middling commissions in the military or been condemned to idleness on their family's estates while Vash had risen up beneath first one autarch then another, as scribe and accountant and bureaucrat, until he had reached the exalted position he held today, the second most powerful man in the world's most powerful empire.
In practice, though, that only meant that he was the secretary to the world's most dangerous madman.
Vash finished writing out his page and sighed. It was true these long days on shipboard had given him time to complete unfinished work, putting various political and economic affairs in order and answering his neglected correspondence, but even catching up with these tasks depressed Vash a bit: it felt as though he was preparing to die, readying his estate and selecting his bequests. He had been increasingly uncomfortable with his monarch for months now, but things had grown worse since the escape of the little temple girl whom Sulepis had bizarrely selected to be his hundred and seventh bride. Increasingly, the autarch seemed to be living in some realm that others like his paramount minister could only guess at but never enter-talking in disconnected sentences about odd subjects, often religious, and pursuing courses of action like this sea voyage north that Sulepis had not bothered to explain to anyone, but which would doubtless not have made sense even if he had.
Still, what was to be done? Many of the previous autarchs of Xis had been slightly mad, at least compared to ordinary folk. The generations of close breeding began to tell, not to mention that even the strongest and most sensible of men sometimes found it hard to deal with absolute power. A survivor of the reign of Vaspis the Dark had famously referred to living in that autarch's presence being as unnerving as sleeping beside a hungry lion. But Sulepis seemed different even from the most savage of his predecessors. He gave every sign of some serious intent, but nothing could make sense of his actions.
Vash clapped his hands and stood, letting his morning robe slide from his frail old body. His youthful servants scuttled forward to dress him, their handsome li
ttle faces serious, as if they were taking care of precious artifacts. In a sense, they were, because the paramount minister's power over them included the right to have them killed if they injured or displeased him. Not that he had ever killed anyone for displeasing him. He was not that type. A decade or so back he had even gone out of his way to choose boys with spirit, servants who would tease him or even occasionally pretend to defy him-knowing, mischievous, seductive boys. But as he passed four-score years Vash's patience had dimmed. He no longer wanted the once enjoyable, but now only strenuous exercise of bringing such servants into line. Now, he gave any new recruit only two or three whippings to reform. Then if they showed no signs of learning the silent obedience he had come to prefer he merely passed them to someone like Panhyssir or the autarch's current regent in Xis, Muziren Chah, someone who enjoyed breaking rebellious spirits and had no compunction about pain.
I have seen too much pain, Vash realized. It has lost its power to amuse or even to shock me. Now it just seemed like something to be avoided.
Vash pretended to meet Panhyssir by accident on the deck outside the autarch's huge cabin. The heavyset priest and an acolyte had apparently just opened the Nushash shrine.
"Good morning, old friend," Vash said. "Have you seen the Golden One today? Is he well?"
Panhyssir nodded, a movement that consisted largely of flattening the front of his several chins. In the greater informality of shipboard life he had stopped wearing his tall hat except during actual services; his head and wide face, now covered only by a simple coif, seemed curiously and obscenely naked. Panhyssir was, however, wearing a very impressive black robe. Instead of the autarch's falcon or the golden wheel of Nushash, though, it was embroidered with a flaming golden eye.
"What is that?" Vash asked. "I have not seen that mark before."
"Nothing," said Panhyssir airily. "A fancy of the Golden One's. He is sleeping in today with the little queens." These were his hundred-eleventh and hundred-twelfth wives, two young noble sisters, nieces to the king of Mihan sent to Sulepis as tribute. His interest in them, as opposed to the escaped temple girl, seemed of the ordinary sort. Ordinary for the autarch, in any case: the music of their shrieks had kept the ship's passengers from sleeping well the last several nights.
"Ah, good," Vash said. "May the gods send him health and vigor."
"Yes, health and vigor," repeated Panhyssir. Ready to move on, he gave Vash another little squish of his chins.
"Oh, I had just one question more, good Panhyssir. Do you have a moment? Could we speak somewhere out of the wind? These old bones of mine take the chill so, and I am not yet used to these northern waters."
The chief priest gave him a blank look but turned it into a smile. "Of course, old friend. Come to my cabin. My slave will make you some good, hot tea."
The priest's cabin was bigger than his, but did not have a window. After decades of doing the crucial social computations of court, Vash could not help considering what that meant, and was pleased to decide that it meant his own status had not dropped precipitously despite all the time Panhyssir had been spending with the autarch in the last half a year.
The high priest's cabin did have a chimney, which was good, since it meant he could have a small stove. An acolyte began making tea while Vash lowered himself onto a bench, consciously avoiding the usual game of trying to make a social near-equal sit first. He wanted the priest of Nushash in a good mood, after all: Vash was hoping for honesty, or something close to it.
"Now," said Panhyssir when the bowls of tea were in their hands, "what can I do for you, my dear old friend Vash?"
Vash smiled back, thinking of all the times he had toyed with bringing one of his kinsmen in from the country to put a knife in Panhyssir's eye. Court life made for both unexpected friends and enemies. Just now, he found himself thinking about the priest almost fondly. Panhyssir might be a self-serving dog, but he was one of the old crowd, and there were few enough left, especially after the carnage of Sulepis' rise to power. "It is the Golden One, of course," he said. "I worry night and day about how best to serve him."
Panhyssir nodded sagely. "As do we all, may the Lord of Fire protect him always. But how may I help?"
"With your wisdom," said Vash, and took a sip, deliberately slowing himself down. "And your trust. Because I would not want you to think I seek to pry into that which is unquestionably yours and yours alone."
"Go on."
"I mean of course your relationship with Golden One, and your counseling him in the ways of the gods. I do not wish to interfere in such an important stewardship, and of course I cannot even understand all the ways of the living god on earth, let alone the immortal gods in heaven."
Panhyssir was half-amused. "Granted, granted. To what end may I lend you my… wisdom?"
"I will be honest, old friend. That is how I show you my trust and good faith. We both know that there are many in our court who would seek to exploit any sign of weakness or doubt on the part of another minister-denounce him, perhaps, or simply seek to blackmail him."
"Terrible, these young ministers," said Panhyssir gravely. "They know nothing of loyalty or service."
"Just so. But I trust you, with your years of wise service, to recognize the difference between questioning the autarch's wisdom and a mere-and completely sensible-concern for his well-being."
Panhyssir was enjoying this. "You interest me, Vash. But then, in your zeal to serve, your thought always reaches far ahead of the rest of us."
Vash waved his hand, anxious to avoid a flattery contest, which in the Xixian court could last for hours. "I seek only the well-being of Xis and to do the will of the gods, especially mighty Nushash, who is king of all the heavens as the autarch is master of all the earth. But here we come to my question." He stopped and took another sip of tea, and for the first time felt the seriousness of what he was doing-the risk he truly was taking. "Where are we going, good Panhyssir? What does the autarch plan? Why do we take such a small force of soldiers so far beyond the reach of our mighty army into a strange northern land?"
Now that his doubt was spoken and could not be taken back, he swirled the tea in the bowl and watched the leaves eddy, the patterns as complex and beautiful as a poem rendered in fine script. For a moment Vash had a vision of a completely different life, one in which he had turned his back on power and wealth and had spent his time instead marking out in ink the delineations between earth and eternity, transcribing the words of the great poets and thinkers with no other goal than to make them as beautiful and evocative and true as they could possibly be.
But that Vash, disowned by his parents, would have starved by now, he thought, so I would not be having this thought… He realized his mind had wandered, even at this crucial moment, and marveled. Truly, I am getting old.
"Ah, yes, our journey north." The high priest frowned, not in anger or indignation, but like someone considering an interesting challenge. "What has the Golden One told you?"
Vash almost said "Nothing," but checked himself. That had the sound of exclusion to it. "Only this and that. But I fear I cannot understand him sometimes, his speech is so exalted and my thought is so humble. I thought perhaps you could explain it more fully to me."
Panhyssir smiled and nodded. You self-satisfied toad, thought Vash. This is why you became a priest, isn't it? To be able to lord it over the rest of us, to say that you alone know the gods' wishes.
"First of all," the chief priest said, "you must understand that the Golden One is a scholar as well as a ruler. He has located and read books of old lore whose names few learned men even know. I can honestly say that he has gone farther in the study of the gods and their ways than even I, the chief priest of the greatest god, have done."
Vash did not doubt that was true: Panhyssir was by no means a stupid man, but his enjoyment of power far exceeded his love of scholarship. "And all this… study? Somehow it draws us north, to some freezing, rain-swept, savage land-but why?"
"Because the Gold
en One has conceived a plan so audacious, so breathtaking, that even I can scarcely understand it." The priest patted his broad middle. "And there is only one place in all of Xand or Eion that it can be implemented-a castle in the tiny nation called the March Kingdom. The pagan king Olin's own country."
"But what plan, Panhyssir? What plan?"
"The Master of the Great Tent, our blessed autarch, is going to wake the gods themselves from their long sleep." The priest drained his tea and held out the bowl until the slave could come and take it from him. "And all it will cost is the northern king's life. A trivial price to pay to bring heaven to our corrupted earth, dear Paramount Minister Vash, don't you agree…?"
Pinimmon Vash did not know what to think. As he slowly climbed the steps from the high priest's cabin to the upper deck, a wave of weariness rolled over him, heavy as the foaming sea itself. What could anyone do in the face of such folly, let alone one old man? Of course Panhyssir and his priests were perfectly satisfied with the autarch's madness-he jumped at their vaporous ideas like a cat chasing a piece of string. Was this the cause of the relentless expansion into Eion that had drained so many of Xis' assets and which left them with an army so large, hungry, and dangerous that it had to be kept constantly in the field to keep it from causing trouble at home? But if so, why then this sudden change of plan, first the costly attack on Hierosol and then this strange stab, like a conjuror's sleight-of-hand, into the far reaches of the northern continent?
Did the autarch and the priests truly believe the gods were waiting to be awakened at the northern king's castle? Or did they seek something less unlikely-some object of great power or great worth? But what could someone like Sulepis want that much? He was already the mightiest man in the world. Would he bankrupt Xis on such whims, throw every adult man into battle, perhaps destroy an entire generation, just to buy himself the imperial equivalent of a shinier sword or a grander house?