The Usurper's Crown

by Sarah Zettel

  Medeoan’s was the first hand in four generations to hold it.

  “Why are we born so?” she’d once asked Avanasy.

  “None knows,” he’d answered, shaking his head. “Perhaps because we are needed.”

  Medeoan shut her mind against memories of Avanasy. Avanasy was a traitor. He was banished. He was nothing. If no other sorcerer could help, he could not have done anything had he been here. It was foolish to long after him. This was her work. She was the one who was needed.

  Medeoan waved her hand. Prathad and Vladka stepped back. Medeoan stooped until the knife’s tip was a bare finger’s width above the ground. Schooling her mind, as Avanasy had taught her (no, no, don’t think of him now), she reached down inside herself and reached outside to the world around. She touched the magic, pulling it in, drawing it out, and she walked in a circle around the bowl. The air grew heavy and hot around her. The weaving had begun. She continued the tracery around the candle, the bowl and the cloth, linking them all together with her pattern.

  Medeoan knelt before the bowl, the cloth and the candle, holding palm and knife over them. “I have gone into the deep country. I have stood beside the mossy pool. I have drawn the clean water. I have claimed the consecration cloth, the consecration candle and the consecration bowl. I have claimed the blood of my beloved parents and the blood of my own self.” She pressed the knife blade against her palm. “I have drawn the transparent line, and in the open country I make a great cry. Over cloth, over water, over candle, over blood, I charm my beloved parents.” Hot. Hot. The air was on fire. Sweat beaded on her brow and trickled down her spine. So hot, hot with fever, burning, as her parents burned in their bed. Good. Good. Let me summon the fever. Bring it to me.

  “I banish from you the fearful devil. I drive away the stormy whirlwind. I take you away from the one-eyed wood-goblin, from the alien house-goblin, from the evil water-sprite, from the outlaw witch and her sister, from twitchy-eyed mermaids, from the thrice-cursed Baba Yaga, from the dragon, the Vixen, and all their works. I wave away Yvanka’s children and the screeching raven. I protect you from the flood, the fire, the frost, the quaking ground, from the twelve fevers that clutch and burn, from the black magician, from the warlock, from the savage shaman, from the blind cunning-man.”

  Pain now, running through her sinews. Her hands trembled, and the knife shook. She clamped her hand tighter and clenched her teeth.

  Do not cry out. Do not break the weaving of words. This is their pain, you can hold it, they cannot.

  Weak with pain and nearly blind with heat and effort, Medeoan took the knife in both hands and drove it straight into the ground.

  “As the earth surrounds the blade of the knife, so shall my protection surround Edemsko and Kseniia.” She panted against the heat and groped for the bowl. Her hands grasped the edges and she struggled to lift it. “As the pool swallows up the water,” she tipped the bowl over the pool’s edge, her hands quivering to hold onto it. “So will Edemsko and Kseniia’s illness be swallowed.” Her fingers slid apart and the bowl thudded to the ground. “As … as … as …”

  Hold, hold. You can compass countries if you let yourself. Feel the words as you feel the threads on the loom, and the flames of the fire. The pain is nothing. It will be gone in a moment.

  Avanasy’s voice filled her. Avanasy exiled, traitor, and yet it was his words that rung around her head, that guided her groping hand to the candle, that allowed her to spit on her fingers, and pinch out the flame.

  “As the flame is extinguished by my hand and spittle, so is Edemsko and Kseniia’s illness extinguished.”

  Medeoan forced herself to her feet. Her ears sang with the effort it took to raise her arms. “This is my word, blessed by Vyshko and Vyshemir, this is my wish, and this is my seal upon it. Be done! Be done! Be DONE!” She screamed the last word with all the force her heart held, and with that scream, the heat, the pain and all the summoned magic rushed through her body from her heart to the soles of her feet, and was gone.

  Medeoan collapsed onto the ground. She heard Vladka gasp and start forward, then stop. Perhaps Prathad held her back. She was too numb to look up, too numb to do anything except lie on the cold ground and breathe.

  Done, done, done, her last word echoed in her mind. I am done, they are done, it is done, all done.

  But done, Granddaughter, too late.

  Medeoan jerked her head up. There, across the pool stood a figure in black robes, its face indistinct, as if shrouded by shadow. It reached one fine, unmarked hand into the pool, and impossibly drew forth a wave of water.

  “No,” gasped Medeoan, pushing herself to her knees. “No, Grandfather, I beg you, it cannot be so.”

  Grandfather Death stowed the wave in his deep sleeve and turned away.

  “No!” Medeoan lunged after him, breaking her own, useless circle, running into the pool without even noticing.

  “Highness!” shrieked Prathad. Hands grabbed her, hauling her backward out of the water.

  The knife lay on the ground, and the candle burned beside it. Nothing. All for nothing.

  “What is it, Highness? What has happened?”

  “Ah!” cried Medeoan. “Ah, they are dying. I failed. I failed and they are dying!” She buried her head in her hands. She felt Prathad hold her close, weeping her own hot tears. Distantly, she heard the murmuring of the guards who surrounded her working. Gone. The emperor, the empress, were dying. The high princess had failed.

  “Highness,” said Vladka in a tremulous voice. “Highness, if it is as you say, you must return home, and quickly. You have …”

  “I have nothing!” Medeoan snapped. She clenched her fists. “What do I have?”

  “A husband who waits to hear from you,” said Prathad. “Let us take you to him.”

  Kacha. She knotted her fingers in her hair, as if seeking to pull it out by the roots. How could she have forgotten even for a moment? She ached to feel his arms around her. Too late. Too late. But it could not be too late. Everything had worked, she had felt it. One or the other of them must still live. They were not both gone. She had not completely failed.

  “Quickly.” She pulled away from her ladies.

  They all but threw on her skirt, her sleeves, her bodice, knotting each lace as swiftly as possible, and tossing over all her outer coat, her veil and coronet. Prathad called out for little, pale Anka the page girl, who ran for the guard to form up the escort. Medeoan did not wait for the canopy to be raised over her. She strode down toward the river’s edge where her barge waited. The guard followed in haste, reforming around her with the girl pages who all seemed as white as their kaftans. Let her ladies follow as they could. The captain would have left men behind to escort them. She had to get back to Vyshtavos. She had to know who lived and who died. She had to find Kacha. She had to know how she had failed.

  But Vyshtavos and its parklands lay beyond the city of Makashev, and although the captain sent the small barge ahead with a man to cry that the high princess (just princess still, she had not completely failed) was on her way, it did little good. Barges and coracles and rowing boats made a stew of the watercourse. The drawbridges were clogged with carts, and carriages, and old people on foot, and horses, donkeys, mules, dogs, all in the way, all streaming out of the streets between the wooden buildings with their peaked roofs and gilded spires and fat onion domes so that they could watch her pass. The river’s breeze brought down the smell of the summer city, all mud and garbage, smoke and cooking food, and Medeoan felt that with every passing moment her heart must burst for beating so hard as she clutched the rail of her bench and willed the oarsmen to pull faster, and faster yet.

  The lock to the imperial canal was at least open, and the keepers reverenced as her men pulled them past The buildings cramming themselves up to the shore gave way to willows, pines, and sloping, groomed banks planted with lilies and bluebells, rare orange poppies and bleeding hearts. The air was fresh again, filled with the scents of the green and the growing.
Birdsong replaced the endless gabble of people.

  Which meant they were close, but not close enough.

  Then the barge rounded the canal’s great bend, and the trees parted to show the red-and-white granite of Vyshtavos, the palace built by her grandmother to show that Isavalta was a united and peaceful land, and that its rulers had no need to hide themselves behind castle walls. The imperial dock was imported teak wood inlaid with ivory. More uniformed bargemen waited there to receive the ropes the oarsmen tossed them.

  But Medeoan saw them only for an instant. Her gaze skimmed past them to the broad, white granite steps, where the Council of Lords stood, with Kacha before them.

  Her mind went numb. She could not feel her body anymore. It was a paralysis even more profound than that which had taken hold after her failed spell. Her utterly failed spell. Prathad and Vladka had to grasp her arms and propel her forward before her feet would move. They had to walk along the dock and climb the steps, carrying her between them.

  Kacha was the first to kneel. He would be. It was so very like him. The first to bow his head and murmur, “Imperial Majesty.”

  The first to catch her as she tumbled to the ground in a faint.

  The next hours passed in a blur of moving color and the rustle of cloth. Crowds of people whose faces she could not make herself see kept on marching solemnly up to her to kneel and bow their heads and call her by her mother’s title.

  At last, her ladies took her back to her private rooms. She stood as still as a wooden doll while they removed her daytime finery and dressed her in her nightclothes. They laid her in her bed and covered her over with velvet and eiderdown, and she still did not move. She lay staring up at the canopy, trying not to think of what had happened.

  Mother and Father had to tried so hard to prepare her for this time. She, in her turn, had tried so hard to hide from it. Her efforts were of no use, however. The moment had found her, and all her evasions had accomplished were to make sure that it had found her stubbornly unready.

  “My heart?”

  For once, Medeoan found herself with no answer for Kacha. She heard his soft step as he passed the screens. She felt the feather beds sink as he sat beside her. She rolled over, huddling like an infant before him. His warm and welcome hand laid itself on her head and stroked her hair.

  “I thought there would be more time,” she whispered.

  “I know,” he said simply. “I believe everyone does.”

  “I don’t know what to do. They spent years teaching me, testing me, lecturing me, and now I don’t know what to do.”

  “That will come. What is important right now is that you realize you are not alone.” He grasped her shoulders and raised her up until she knelt on the bed before him. “I am here with you. Together we will be the autocrat for Isavalta. You will be the flesh and blood, and the oh-so-passionate heart. I will be the bone on the inside, supporting and binding.”

  “Yes.” In the darkness, her mouth sought his to kiss him hard and desperately. The press of his body against her held all the promise of life and the future. Together, as they were, they would know what to do. Together, hand to hand, skin to skin, and she would never be alone or confused again.

  Some time later, Medeoan woke again to darkness. She lay for a time, listening to Kacha’s breathing and feeling the warmth where his hand almost touched her shoulder. Beyond the curtains and screens that isolated them, she heard the soft rustles and sighs of her ladies asleep in their truckle beds. It was deep into the night, she felt that in her bones, and knew it by the sounds of sleeping around her.

  Gently, Medeoan drew back the covers and slipped from the bed. Her black-and-gold mourning robe stood on its form waiting for her in the faint light of the brazier smoldering at the bedside. Before she could reach it, one of her ladies, in the dim light she was not sure which one, was there holding it out for her. She slipped into its warmth and let herself be buttoned in. Wrapping her sleeve around her hand, she gestured for a brazier’s dish, which the anonymous lady brought so that she might have some light to see by. By its muted flames she could see it was Vladka who stood before her, ready to accompany her wherever she needed to go, and it was Vladka who she waved back to her post as she made her way between her sleeping ladies to the chamber door. The soldiers of the house guard and the young pages stationed there snapped to instant attention as she padded down the broad hall with its inlaid wood, its murals and mosaics.

  The god house lay down the south stairs and at the end of the Gilded Corridor. Tonight, its wide doors stood open, releasing a flood of incense and candlelight. The double-wicked, braided candles that she had last seen at her wedding would be burning all night tonight. Those were the candles of Vyshko and Vyshemir, and their light called the gods to watch over the dead as well as the living. The court sorcerers and the keeper and his assistants moved about the room, shadows in all that gold and light, going through the forms of the ritual, keeping the vigils that were necessary to ensure that no ghost or goblin took advantage of the presence of death to make mischief.

  Medeoan handed the brazier dish to one of the page girls and with a sharp gesture ordered her escort to stay outside.

  The god house shined like a cave of jewels and fairy gold in a midwife’s tale. The gods stood on their pedestal dressed in mourning black, and Medeoan imagined she could see tears shimmering in their glassy eyes. She looked up at them because she had no wish to look down to see the biers that flanked the gods’ pedestal, piled high with flowers and green branches. Translucent white shrouds had been draped over her parents, so she could not see the yellow tint to their skin anymore. Those shrouds had been woven with care by the court sorcerers and contained spells as well as flaxen thread. Spells of peace, spells of protection, spells to keep the spirit from attempting to return to the flesh it had abandoned so that all things would remain in their proper orbits.

  They would have fresh graves. The graves that had been dug in case of imperial deaths in winter were filled in when spring came. Medeoan had, more than once, walked through the cemetery with its stone monuments to see the gaping hole laid open for her, just in case she died while the ground was frozen hard. Every year it got a little bigger. There was a shroud for her too, somewhere.

  So much laborious preparation for this ending. So much of life spent getting ready for death. This was what she had fought against since she had been old enough to fight, that her whole life was to lead up to this moment, to this end.

  Well, now the end had passed, and here she still stood.

  “Majesty.” Iakush Vtoroisyn Gabravin, Lord Sorcerer to her father and Lord Sorcerer to Isavalta until she said otherwise, stepped softly up beside her. “It is not time for you to be here yet.”

  Until she said otherwise. “I have decided to be here,” she answered him. “Therefore it is time.”

  “You wish to speak to them,” said Lord Iakush with a sigh. “You have something you want to say, or something you want to hear.”

  Medeoan bit her lip, unable to answer. She had not thought her plan so evident.

  “I stood beside my father’s bier, just as you do, Majesty,” Lord Iakush said. “I still remember the feel of his shroud under my fingertips. But my teacher was there with me.”

  Medeoan swallowed. “My teacher is a traitor.”

  Iakush paused only a moment at that. “Then I must ask you to hear me. It is a dangerous thing to call upon the newly dead. They remember too well the touch of this world, and if called back to this place they have loved, they may not wish to leave.”

  “But the living are always stronger than the dead.” The words sounded hollow in her ears. She did not feel strong. She felt weak as water.

  “Stronger, but sometimes not so desperate, nor so frightened, nor, at the worst, so angry,” Iakush told her gently. “Your parents did not die easily. To call them back from the Land of Death and Spirit so soon will be to call them back to their hearts’ best loves and worst fears. They may not be able to let g
o again.”

  “If I bring them back, I can send them away again.” Medeoan did not look at the lord sorcerer. Her gaze remained fastened on the white-shrouded figures that were all that remained of her parents in the living world.

  “It will be a struggle, Imperial Majesty. Would you wish on them more struggle now that they have gone to rest?”

  “It is Vyshko and Vyshemir who are your living parents now.” Keeper Bakhar rounded the pedestal of the gods, coming to stand at her other side. “They protect you, and expect your duty in return.”

  Medeoan turned her gaze up to the gods in their black gowns, especially to Vyshemir with her cup and her dagger, the tools she had used to save Isavalta when Isavalta was only one city and Vyshemir was only a mortal woman. It was Vyshemir’s sacrifice of her life that saved Isavalta from invasion from the barbarians of Tuukos, and blessed it so that it could grow into the empire that had been placed into Medeoan’s hands.

  Not so long ago she would have cried, “But I do not want this duty!” She had, so many times, thrown herself prostrate at the foot of this pedestal, begging the gods for some way out. She was too small, she was too scared, she did not know enough, she did not want this duty. They had not listened. Instead, they had taken her parents and left her here.

  “I know what you feel,” said the keeper gently. “But if the gods trust you to rule their house, in their name, how can you fail to trust yourself?”

  You are the heir of Vyshemir, her mother had told her long ago. This is not a gift that can be returned. In the end you are the one who will decide how to make use of it.

  She had scorned those words then, and if she had not stormed out of the room on that occasion, she had on many others.

  “I just wanted to tell them that I understand now,” she said, wondering at her own words, but knowing the truth of them.

  “When death comes so close, we find we understand many things,” said Keeper Bakhar. “Come, Imperial Majesty, let us not trouble your parents, but pray for their rest and comfort.”