Hold Fast had been one of the first and largest investors in the short-lived, but highly profitable trade with the Sanang tribes on the edge of the forest. Metals for wood was the primary and original exchange, but the Holdings merchants had soon adapted, and before long sugar, coffee, chocolate, tobacco and dozens of other items were changing hands, and the money started to pour in.
The exorbitant price of a tiny, sugared chocolate bar in the Holdings capital had caused a scandal when they had first appeared one morning in the marketplace, but the entire stock had sold out in record time.
But now, her father told her, they were facing massive debts. He had borrowed heavily on this latest caravan, and unless they could recoup some of their losses, the family would be forced to sell much of their property.
Their evening out had been cancelled, and her father sat and glowered in silence by the fireplace, working his way through a bottle of fine white rum. He had still been sitting there when Daphne had gone to bed, though when she arose the next morning, he had gone.
When she saw him the following evening, his mood had improved considerably. The queen had listened to his arguments, and had been won over. A punitive expedition would be sent, to show the Sanang that acts of violence against Holding citizens would not be tolerated, and Hold Fast were going to be the main beneficiaries. Firstly, he had negotiated prime rates and percentages of all appropriated materials, and secondly, the army would require thousands of the estate’s horses to transport the vast army and its supplies all the way to the Sanang frontier, where the ancient wall would be re-occupied.
Now, as she lay on the mattress in her cell, she tried to balance what her father had told her, with what she had since learned. How had a single punitive expedition turned into a sustained campaign of systematic pillaging and looting? Her father’s greed seemed the inescapable answer.
No, Daphne. Not greed, power.
She started, and bolted upright. Not the same voice, she thought. Then who? It had almost sounded like…
Yes, Daphne, it is your father.
You’re in my head? This can’t be happening, this cannot be right, get out!
This may make it easier for you, the voice of her father said.
He appeared before her, and she nearly screamed.
‘I am not really here, Daffie,’ he said, raising his hand. ‘Calm yourself.’
‘Wha… what? How?’
‘I am using inner-vision to enter your mind via your sight,’ he explained. ‘Once in your mind, I can make your eyes see things that are not really there.’ He smiled. ‘Really, Daffie, I do hope that all the money I spent to keep you at university wasn’t completely wasted. You are familiar with the workings of inner-vision, are you not?’
‘Inner-vision?’ she cried.
‘Keep your voice down,’ he frowned.
‘I do remember, father,’ she said, trying to calm herself, ‘but hearing about it in a lecture is a little different from it actually happening inside your own damn head. Especially as you’ve never told me you possessed it.’
‘Apologies for that, my dear,’ he said. ‘I tend only to tell people if I absolutely must. The uses of inner-vision can be very subtle if no one is aware you can do it.’
‘So the church doesn’t know?’ she gasped. ‘But what about when you were tested?’
‘It hadn’t manifested itself at that age,’ he said. ‘Yet a further example, if one were needed, of the church’s short-sightedness and wilful stupidity. They have blinded themselves to everything except their scripture, and ignore the fact that some people don’t fully develop their powers until after they have conducted their tests.’
Daphne started coughing. Her heart was pounding, and she thought she might faint or vomit.
She took a drink of water, and controlled her breathing.
‘Is inner-vision taxing?’ she asked.
‘It varies by distance,’ he replied. ‘I could have used it to contact you before; I wanted to, but I was so far away that any conversation would have been over in a few seconds. And right now, for the first time, I happen to be quite close to you, geographically speaking.’
‘You’re in the palace?’
‘I am,’ he said. ‘I arrived back in the capital a few days ago, and after several days trying, have just had an audience with the queen. While she is sympathetic to you personally, she cannot interfere with the workings of the law. Not openly, at any rate.’
‘No one has spoken a word to me since I got here,’ she said. ‘What is the church saying about my case?’
‘Very little.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘They are using the excuse that an unplanned communion with the Creator may offend him, and have added your claim to the agenda of their next scheduled meeting of minds.’
‘You don’t believe them?’
‘Of course not!’ he shot back. ‘They’re just playing for time. There is no creator, Daffie. I know I have never openly said this to you before, but the Holdings religion is nothing but foolish nonsense, a collection of ridiculous dogma that a child could see through.’
Coming like that from her father, she felt certain he spoke the truth. But if that were the case, then why hadn’t the church just called her a liar, and sent her back to be hanged?
‘Father,’ she said. ‘I think the church set me up.’
‘Then you really didn’t get any orders?’
She lowered her eyebrows and glared at him.
He shrugged. ‘Apologies, Daffie. Please, carry on. Do you have evidence of your claim?’
‘None,’ she sighed, ‘but I know for a fact that I didn’t sign any damned receipt, therefore I have to believe that the priest Rijon is involved. And the way the image of the fort was put into the head of the Sanang who led the assault...’
‘Didn’t you deny that theory at your appeal?’
‘I did,’ Daphne said, ‘but what Weir said about the dream was true. That’s what the Sanang leader told us. It could have been done with inner-vision, couldn’t it?’
‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘It would have needed a mage of great power, as the distances involved would have been immense, so if there were a conspiracy, it went very high up indeed.’
He paused for a moment, pondering.
‘It if were them,’ he said, ‘then they achieved their aims most beautifully. Hold Fast has been shamed throughout the Realm, and I have been told to stay away from the council. I am in the city secretly, as you have probably deduced, and this is the first chance I’ve had to speak to the queen since news of the disaster arrived. Furthermore, the war has been thoroughly discredited in the eyes of the common folk. Before, we had great support from the masses. Now they are truculent, and riot at the first sign of a recruiting sergeant. Yes, the church has done very well indeed out of your misfortunes, my dearest Daffie, and the coincidence, if it were such, of the queen’s illness has tightened their grip on power.’
‘How is the queen?’
‘Poorly,’ he said, looking depressed. ‘She was always so strong, so full of energy, and this dreadful wasting sickness has her confined to her bed, where she dictates her commands to her advisors in the dark, as the light hurts her eyes. I doubt she will last much longer, and I fear that her brother will soon be king. When that happens, the church’s victory will be complete, and they will lead us back to the dark ages.’
‘Was it really that bad?’
‘Ahh Daffie,’ he said. ‘You’re too young to remember what it was like, how the priests would poke their noses into every part of your life, and tell you what you were allowed to wear, or say or do, and what would cause you to be punished. It was only twenty years ago that the right for the church to jail, torture and execute heretics and atheists was removed from them. I do not want to live like that again.
‘Plans are afoot, Daffie,’ he went on. ‘Today’s meeting with the queen went very well in that regard. Unfortunately, while you are being held here, I cannot get you out by force, but be assured, now that
I’m back in the city, I will move mountains to set you free.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, not knowing if she wanted his help.
‘I heard the rioting lasted five days,’ he went on, oblivious to her feelings, ‘after your execution was commuted. The city has calmed down now, though the people haven’t forgotten you. Most seem to trust the church to do the right thing. Fools. There may be some more unfortunate disruption in the streets, once the queen announces her news a few days hence.’
‘What news?’
‘That the Sanang campaign will continue for a final, fourth year,’ he said, smiling at her in triumph.
‘Is that wise?’
‘This year will be different,’ he said. ‘I have presented my proposal to the queen. It involves a more considered approach, advancing only to the Twinth, and then fortifying and holding that line. We went too far last summer, I realise that now. The queen has also assured me that she will consider my idea of continually occupying the region up to the river, and transforming it into a permanent province of the Realm. A final and fitting payment for the crimes of the Sanang, I think.’
She opened her mouth to warn him about Agang and his battalions, but hesitated. He wasn’t paying her any attention, appearing preoccupied with his plan.
‘What do you think the church will do?’ she asked instead.
‘What?’ he replied, snapped out of his reverie. ‘The church? What can they do? More fulminating from the pulpit, all useless froth and pompous verbosity.’
‘Father,’ she said. ‘How is mother?’
He looked down. ‘Not taking it well, I’m afraid. She blames me, of course.’
‘I saw Ariel at my appeal.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have spoken to her since. And your brothers. They are all prepared to help in any way they can.’
Daphne didn’t argue.
‘We’ll start looking into the priest Rijon first,’ he said. ‘I will spare no expense investigating your claims, Daffie. If there’s anything that implicates the church in any of this, we’ll find it. My reach is long.’
‘I need a favour, father.’
‘Name it, dear.’
‘In my haste at the frontier,’ she said, ‘I left a debt unpaid. A family helped me, at great cost to themselves.’
‘Show me everything you remember of them.’
She concentrated, thinking of their faces, and names, and where they said they had lived while staying in the wall forts over winter. She felt a strange pressure on her mind, a shadowy presence pushing at her thoughts.
‘I see them,’ he said, and she felt the pressure disappear. ‘I’ll have my agent send someone to find and reward them. You always were a thoughtful girl.’
‘Thank you, father.’
‘I must go now,’ he said. ‘I still have much to accomplish today.’ He came closer. ‘Stay strong Daffie, my dearest daughter of Hold Fast. Do not let them see you weaken. Hold to your story about hearing their god’s voice, it was very clever of you to think of it.’ He smiled, and disappeared.
All my love, the voice in her head said, then it vanished, and Daphne was alone again.
One dawn, several days after the vision of her father, she began to hear a roar of raised and angry voices drifting over the river from the Lower City, just as he had predicted.
The queen must have made her announcement, she thought, and the people of the capital were letting her know what they thought of her decision. There had always been a steady supply of willing recruits from the capital’s poorer quarters, and indeed from all over the River Holdings, but she wondered if the protests meant that a draft had been called.
Her breakfast didn’t arrive that morning. Instead, four armed wardens approached her cell. They stood before the barred doorway, and she rolled out of bed onto her feet to face them.
‘Daphne Holdfast,’ a warden called to her, from behind an iron helmet, ‘you are required to be in the holy prophet’s blessed presence.’
They opened the door, and entered her cell. The chains that had been removed upon her arrival were refastened to her ankles and wrists, and she let herself be shackled without resisting.
She was taken to the end of the long passageway, and up a spiral staircase that ascended all the way to the main levels of the citadel. While in her cell she had remembered her captivity in Beechwoods, and had exercised daily, and was barely out of breath by the time they emerged into a large hall. A couple of the wardens were out of shape, and were panting, and she smiled the tiny smile of a small victory.
The giant hall was empty. The walls were hung with massive tapestries and paintings, depicting scenes from the life of the first prophet, back at the founding of the Realm five centuries before. In each the prophet was centre-field, usually in the light of the sun’s rays, benevolent and mighty. There were no windows in the hall to give Daphne a clue to her whereabouts, and the wardens, once they had regained their composure, led her off again.
Her prison slippers glided over the polished marble floors, and they passed through lavishly decorated rooms and corridors, passing the occasional guard at their post, but no one else.
At last they came to a large gilt door, which was guarded by four armoured wardens. They swung it open for Daphne to enter, and she went into a dark chamber. Daphne could see little once the door was closed behind her, but gradually her eyes adjusted to the dim candlelight.
The room was small, with a black throne on a raised pedestal against the wall across from where Daphne stood. To either side ran long tables, and sitting behind were figures dressed in black, five on her left, and six on her right. Wardens lined the walls, and flanked the throne, their armour glinting in the flickering light. A spear nudged her forward until she was standing in the centre of the room.
To her surprise, she realised that someone was sitting on the high throne a few paces before her. She had thought it empty, but she saw that a thin, black robed figure was hunched over in the great chair.
The sound of gentle murmuring reached her ears from either side of the room, though it was so dark she could see none of the figures moving.
‘Daphne of Hold Fast,’ a man’s voice called out to her, though she couldn’t tell from which direction, ‘you have claimed a vision skill that was not apparent at your testing.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I possess battlefield and line, but none other.’
‘You claimed at your appeal to have the ability to commune with the Creator, did you not?’ the voice asked, a slight rise in temper showing.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘I said that I heard his voice, and that I spoke to him, once, but I could no sooner do so again than I could fly.’
‘Your claims are false, Holdfast,’ another voice said. ‘We have communed with the Creator, and humbly petitioned him about your boast. He does not recall you.’
Daphne had tried to think of all the things they might say to her, but it still shook her to be called a liar, by people she knew were themselves lying.
‘I believe I did hear him,’ she said, her voice faltering. ‘He told me that the war was wrong, and that we should unite the peoples.’
‘You could have learned that from any sermon,’ a third voice replied.
Daphne paused. ‘Do you intend to send me back to be hanged, then?’
‘Oh Daphne,’ the second voice said, ‘we are not the villains here. You said it yourself, the war is wrong. It is a disgusting, immoral, savage attack on a disorganised and poorly defended people, purely for greed and material gain.’
‘And it’s about to escalate into an outright occupation,’ the third voice said, ‘starting this coming spring. The queen has today announced the formation of the greatest invasion force yet seen, and drafting sergeants are scouring the townships as we speak. As is always the way, it is the poor who suffer in war, as the merchants grow wealthy on their sweat and blood. Can you, after all you have seen, deny a single word of this, Daphne?’
She said nothing. She knew they wer
e lying about the Creator not remembering her. She felt more certain than ever that the meeting had truly occurred, and that it hadn’t been an illusion caused by mental exhaustion. However, as much as she hated to admit it, they were right about the war. It was a shameful stain on the Holdings, and it looked like it was only going to get worse. She imagined Agang confronting the Holdings along the River Twinth. No matter who came out as winners, there would first be great carnage on both sides.
‘Do you want to live, Daphne?’ asked the second voice.
She shrugged, not caring if they could see her in the dim light.
‘It’s in our power,’ the first voice said, ‘to not only commute your sentence, but to quash it utterly, if you agree to repent and make things right.’
‘By doing what exactly?’ she asked.
‘You can end the war, Daphne,’ the first voice continued. ‘You. If you denounce your father as the influence behind your treachery, you will bring down the entire war-making apparatus with him. Once Holder Fast is prosecuted, the impetus behind the war will suffer such a blow, that there will be no campaign this spring. And, as the health of the queen deteriorates, that means there will be no more campaigns. The war will be over, and you will have helped end it.’
‘But, my family…’
‘A sacrifice, Daphne,’ the second voice said, with soothing compassion. ‘For you, a great sacrifice. We understand child, we sympathise, but there is no other way to end this war. Think of the thousands of lives you will save, the children who will keep their parents, the husbands and wives whose lives will not be ripped apart. Peace, Daphne. Imagine peace, and do the right thing.’
‘What will happen to the rest of my family, and to me?’ she asked, her thoughts paralysed.
‘No one but your father will pay the price,’ the first voice replied. ‘You will be pardoned, and they will be safe.’
The Magelands Origins Page 21