by Victor Poole
"You promise?" Ajalia asked. Leed sighed again, and nodded.
"He is too big for me, and he is not worth my time," Leed said.
"Good boy," Ajalia said. "Put your hand here," she said. She took Leed's hand, and placed it against her elbow.
"What is that going to do?" Leed asked critically, looking at her arm.
"Tell me what direction I am going to step," Ajalia told the boy, and Leed looked down at her feet. "No," she said, "look at my whole body, and tell me where I am thinking of going."
Leed lifted his chin, and glared hard at Ajalia.
"Left," he said finally. Ajalia stepped left.
"Did you feel how my energy moved?" Ajalia asked. She took Leed's hand away from her elbow, and stepped back from him. "Now watch me again, and tell me which arm I am going to raise."
"Right" Leed said at once.
"Good boy," Ajalia said. "Now go back to Philas, and watch for the assassins in the crowd. Philas will weed them out before the procession starts on the bridge. You will know by the way Philas twitches his lips. He cannot help it. He thinks men who kill for pay are absurd. After the coronation ceremony, come and find me, and tell me how many assassins Philas kept away."
"His lips will twitch?" Leed asked skeptically.
"Yes," Ajalia said. "Supporters of the old king, Silas, will have paid several aristocrats and their servants to slip a knife into Philas. Philas will think this is very funny. Watch my face."
Ajalia pretended to be Philas. Leed laughed as soon as she changed her expression; she did Philas very well, and always had done. He had a particularly grouchy slump in his shoulders, and a clench in his jaw, that made his physicality distinctive. When Ajalia was sure that Leed was staring at her, she pressed the ends of her lips outwards in the shadow of a smile.
"I saw that," Leed told her. "You look like Philas. How are you doing that?"
"I am face-bearing slave," Ajalia told him, "or I was. I imitate my master, when he does not want to travel places, which is always. Did you see the smile?"
Leed nodded.
"I haven't ever seen Philas smile like that, though," Leed told her.
"That's because you haven't seen Philas around an assassin. He thinks they're ridiculous."
"But how do you know there will be anyone who wants to kill Philas?" Leed asked her.
"Because he will be king by tonight," Ajalia said.
"So?" Leed asked. Ajalia laughed, and Leed glowered at her. "It isn't nice to laugh at me," he told her with dignity.
"Why did Delmar need to kill his father?" Ajalia asked Leed. She saw Leed keep himself from rolling his eyes.
"Because Simon was the worst Thief Lord ever," Leed said.
"But was Simon a Thief Lord?" Ajalia asked.
"Of course he was," Leed said, "and I'm late."
"Yes, and this morning you told me that you have outgrown me, and you do not believe yet that anyone has the motivation to kill a king." Ajalia looked at Leed, and twitched her eyebrows, and Leed smiled in spite of himself.
"Fine," Leed said. "You win this time. But after this, I won't make any more mistakes."
"Come and tell me after," Ajalia reminded him.
"Yes, I will come," Leed told her. His green wings beat down powerfully through the air, and he shot up in the sky. "I will tell you how many assassins make Philas pull at the mouth," Leed shouted down at her, and then the child flew away like a shot. Ajalia watched him go, and then she sat down on the magical platform to wait.
The sun had just begun to tip over the edge of the horizon when the crowds of people from Talbos and Slavithe began to assemble on the beach, and along the tall hills that formed one of the harbor walls in Talbos. Ajalia could see the dark shapes their bodies made; she could just distinguish the Slavithe people from the Talbos citizens, because of the plain brown clothes that the Slavithe wore. Ajalia had asked Delmar if he was going to transplant any people from Slavithe to Talbos, and he said that he was not sure.
"I didn't spend much time looking around underneath Slavithe," he had told her, when she had asked about this. "I think we're going to have to take out the anchors, and lift up all of Slavithe before I'll be able to see what the land is actually like."
Ajalia had pointed out that lifting up the city into the air would likely necessitate some manner of evacuation, and Delmar had laughed.
"I'd have to rebuild most of Talbos, if I wanted to do that," he told her. She had then asked him if he meant to rebuild Talbos, and his eyes had turned sober. "I don't know," he said. He had thought about this for some time, and then repeated that he did not know.
As Ajalia watched the city turn out onto the beach, she thought about her master, and the journey that Delmar had proposed into the East. She imagined her master coming into the land of Talbos, and the picture she made in her mind was jarring. She could see her master living quite easily in Slavithe, and reforming the markets there with great vigor and enjoyment, but she could not see the same thing happening in Talbos. Talbos, from the little she had seen of the city itself, seemed somewhat sour. The citizens of the place had angrier eyes, and they seemed more beaten down and distrustful than their counterparts in Slavithe. Ajalia had tried to imagine that this sour character had originated from the bad king Fernos, but when she looked at the old Thief Lord Tree, and at Delmar's father Simon, she could not explain away all of the bitterness she saw in Talbos by attributing it to poor leadership.
There was a withdrawn and internalized anger in Talbos that Ajalia had not found anywhere in Slavithe. She wondered what had driven some slaves to stay in Slavithe, and some to go to Talbos, when the division had first grown up between the founding brothers, Jerome and Bakroth.
Ajalia had asked Delmar again if Bakroth had been the first falcon, the legendary man who had traveled up to the sky kingdom, and brought back the falcon's dagger, and built up the land of Slavithe, and Delmar had told her that he did not know.
"Bakroth built Slavithe, without question," Delmar told her. "There is much evidence, in the records I have seen. But nowhere is he called the falcon. His wife was a woman of deep magical knowledge, but I do not think that Bakroth's wife was the sky angel. I think that the sky angel came after Bakroth."
"But if Bakroth built Slavithe, doesn't he have to be the first falcon?" Ajalia asked. "How could he get the dagger, and draw the piece of land down from the sky kingdom, if he was not the falcon?"
"I don't know," Delmar told her. "I don't know. There were other men who learned magic, and who built many of the walls. I can see how they did some of it, now that I have built a little myself."
"I thought you had not looked much at Slavithe yet," Ajalia said.
"I have not looked beneath the ground," Delmar explained. "I had to look at the buildings, in order to lift the dragon temple up as I did. The energies are different. I can see four, maybe five different kinds of building in the white city when I am above it. The energy has a different feel in different places. I know there were more men wielding magic than Bakroth, and I know that Backroth began to settle Talbos. It says so," Delmar told her, "in the records that I have."
"One of my boys said that you were related to Bakroth," Ajalia said suddenly. She tried to remember if this had been Leed. "Are you a descendent of Bakroth?" she had asked then.
Ajalia saw, through the brimming morning light, Delmar approaching the beach. Delmar was followed behind by several leading citizens of Talbos. Savage was with him, and Ajalia knew that Elan had gotten permission to attend the ceremony. She watched the distant party walk down in a line to the black stone bridge, and enter it in single file.
"I suppose I could be descended from Bakroth," Delmar had told her. "I don't see how it matters, though. Our ancestors were slaves from everywhere. I could be descended from anyone."
"It strengthens your claim in both Slavithe and Talbos," Ajalia said, "if you are from Bakroth."
"People here would not agree with you," Delmar told her. "They would be pretty happ
y if I was a child of Jerome. The things I have told you are not generally known. Bakroth has been built up into a terrible monster, in the stories here."
"Why don't you make these records open to the people?" Ajalia asked. Delmar's face had drawn together.
"I never thought of doing that," he admitted. "But now that magic will be more generally known, it would be wise."
Ajalia stood on the magical platform, which had been constructed with a series of steps leading from the land bridge to its clear square, and she watched Delmar come near. Rosk was just behind Delmar, a crown of glittering metal in his hands.
Delmar climbed the steps of ocean water, and joined Ajalia on the large platform. Delmar grinned at Ajalia, and she smiled back at him.
Rosk climbed the steps to the magical stage, and went to stand at the farthest edge. The wild priest from the mountains nodded solemnly to Ajalia, and she bent her head towards him. The citizens of Slavithe, with Savage and Elan behind them, climbed up the steps, and arranged themselves behind Ajalia and Delmar. The mood was tense, and the people on the distant beach stood like statues in the stiff morning breeze, waiting.
At long last, a rich trumpet sounded behind the platform, and the assembled members of the coronation party turned, to watch the approach of Philas and his Saroyan followers across the narrow black bridge. Leed was flying above Philas, and Ajalia could just see, in the new light of the sun, a gleaming crown of white light shining on Philas's head. Ajalia smiled, and turned to look at Delmar. He met her eyes, and a smiled crept along his own mouth.
This, Ajalia told herself solemnly, was going to be fun.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Victor Poole has a little gray cat and a penchant for sketching. You can read more about him and get updates about more of his books at www.victorpoole.wordpress.com.
Table of Contents
The Road to Talbos
Delmar's Reluctance
An Amicable Trade
Ajalia Warns Fashel
Trouble with the Guard
Elan and Thorn
Fallor's Affliction
King Fernos
The False King
The Shadows Beneath the Mountain
The Bound Priests
Savage and Coren
Ajalia Collects a New Boy
The Soul of the Sky God
The Lost Ones
The Men Discuss Philas
Delmar Vows to Change
The King's Second Family
The Transformation of Talbos
The Gray Dragon Palace
The Land Bridge
The Coronation