She looked up as the door opened and a young slave curtsied to her.
“Lord Forollkin is returned, my Lady.”
“Then bid him come in,” said Follea calmly.
She had heard the trumpets sounding for Prince Kerish-lo-Taan and knew that where he was her son would be also.
Forollkin strode into the small, cluttered room and kissed his mother on the forehead. With a sharp cry she thrust him back.
“Zeldin's Mercy! What have you done to your cheek?”
“Just an accident, mother,” said Forollkin, unthinkingly masking the wound with his hand.
Follea turned to her slave. “Fetch us some food and the white wine of Indiss.”
“Your words are my actions,” answered the girl and left them alone together.
“And now, Forollkin, what manner of accident?”
Her son slung down his travelling cloak and perched on an ebony stool to pull off his boots.
“Lord Yxin was at the temple, playing bloody games with a hide whip.”
“He struck you?”
Leaning over his boots Forollkin muttered, “No, not him.”
Follea heard. “I knew it. Proud Prince Kerish, the vicious...”
“Mother, his temper slipped its leash, that's all. He was sorely provoked by Yxin and he gave me his apologies very humbly.”
Follea laughed harshly.
“The seas will quench the stars before the Godborn are humble and Kerish-lo-Taan is the worst of them all, slave-girl's son though he is.”
A slave girl who supplanted you in the Emperor's affections, thought Forollkin. He knew well enough why his mother hated Kerish-lo-Taan, but he valued his peace too much to argue against it.
“There is no malice in the Prince,” he said mildly.
“I think otherwise,” snapped Follea, “but come, what other news do you have?”
“I spoke with Lord Jerenac,” answered Forollkin cautiously.
Follea looked at him sharply. “He thinks well of you, as I have heard.”
“Mother, he wishes me to return with him to Jenoza,” said Forollkin abruptly. “He hinted that I would succeed him as Lord Commander.”
“Oh, my son!” Follea embraced him hungrily. “That is the best news you could have brought me. Lord Commander of Galkis, it sounds well. I do not doubt that your sword will carve out glory for you and for your mother!”
“Mother,” Forollkin held her away from him, “I haven't given Lord Jerenac my answer yet. I am not sure...”
“Not sure, when fortune stares you in the face! Are you mad?”
“Mother, there is Kerish. Jenoza is a long way from the Palace and such a parting would hurt him deeply. He is young and alone and he still needs my help.”
“He may need you,” retorted Follea, “but what has he done to deserve you? He uses you and when he can no longer use you he will toss you aside like a withered fruit whose juices he has sucked dry. His father, all the Godborn, are the same. You must think of your own life, and if not of yours, then of mine.”
Forollkin knew what she would say next.
“I am your mother who carried you in her body, but you never think of me. You refuse an offer that would give me honour. You cling to your precious Prince, while I must serve a foreign Queen. You will care nothing if I die destitute among strangers.”
Forollkin glanced at the tapestries, the elegant furniture, the silken robe she was embroidering for herself.
“Mother I have not yet chosen. I must have silence to make my decision.”
“But how can I trust you to know what is best?' cried Follea. “You do not have the cunning of the Godborn, because the Emperor denied you the powers he gave to a slave-girl's son.”
The door opened and two slaves entered carrying a flagon of wine, a steaming dish of spiced meat and a bowl of fruit. They set them down on a table, bowed and withdrew. Forollkin suddenly realised how hungry he was.
Follea, her face calm again, picked up her embroidery.
“When you have eaten,” she said, “you must tell me your other news. Did the ceremony go well?”
* * *
Kerish-lo-Taan was met in his apartments by four of the ever-changing servants who waited on him. He stood passively while they stripped off his travelling clothes and then washed in the scented water they brought him and put on a loose silk robe and jewelled sandals.
On a square table, a splendid supper had been laid out on bowls and platters of delicate gold. Kerish, who hated being watched as he ate, sat down in an uncomfortable ivory chair and picked at his meal, impaling slivers of meat on a silver fork. His servants stood silently at the four corners of the table. Not for the first time he found himself almost afraid of them. He had no idea how to break into their world and make them see him as a person instead of a daily task.
He glanced round the familiar apartments; at the tall windows opening on to the garden, the hanging lamps of translucent alabaster, the marble floor inlaid with golden stars and spread with soft black furs. The events of the temple seemed very remote.
The lonely evening stretched before him, like so many others. A Prince of the Godborn was too exalted to have friends. Kerish took refuge in beautiful things, the precious objects that made the room exclusively his own. There was the vase of gold-veined lapis that held the Emperor's weekly gift of a rare orchid; the casket of creamy ivory, decorated with zelokas strutting among starflowers, that housed his copy of the Book of the Emperors; his zel set; and most of all, his zildar, a delicately carved seven-stringed instrument, painted in purple and gold.
When supper was cleared away, he practised the zildar for a while but his tired fingers stumbled on the strings. His servants were soon hovering to help him to bed. Once again Kerish let himself be undressed and rubbed with Dirian sponges soaked in perfumed oils. Then, at last, he was lying in his own bed, curled up beneath the coverlet, staring at the tapestry he had loved since childhood. It showed the Gentle God hand in hand with his beloved Imarko. The servants fastened the shutters, doused the lamps and withdrew to the outer rooms.
There was no peace in the Prince's dreams. He found himself back in the great hall of the temple. It was night. The place was filled with menacing shadows and he could find no way out. Then the wooden zeloka unfolded its gold and purple wings and flew at him. Kerish dodged the sharp claws of the Bird of Truth and ran. There was no escape. The alabaster walls were smooth and relentless and the voice of Ka-Metranee echoed round the hall, `A curse on Golden Galkis!'
Chapter 6
The Book of the Emperors: Love
“And I say to you, beware, for those we love best we cannot know. Love clouds our sight and you, my brother, I cannot save.” With these words he departed and they did not meet again.
As soon as the Prince woke and dressed, the routine which had dominated his life for the past nine years began again. His day was divided among the tutors who instructed him in poetry and calligraphy, High Galkian and Zindaric, music and mathematics. Most important of all were the priests, whom Kerish visited to learn and recite from the Book of the Emperors and to be taught the history of Galkis and the holy laws of Zeldin.
It was while he sat with them at noon, discussing the meditations of the Silent Emperor, that Kerish heard the trumpets for the entry into Galkis of the High Priest and Prince Im-lo-Torim.
Three hours later, the Imperial Summons came. Kerish was sitting cross-legged strumming at his zildar and trying to compose a tune for a poem written by the Crown Prince's primary wife, Kelinda of Seld.
"My soul is a white bird
Blown by the east wind
From my heart's home,
Seld, the green and golden
Fair land that I look on
Only in dreams,
And wake, weeping..."
Resplendent in a purple fleece and carrying a rod of cirge, an Imperial herald strode into the room. He bowed to Kerish and touched him with the shining rod. “His Divine Majesty, the Emperor Ka-Li
traan, summons thee, Prince Kerish-lo-Taan, to attend his royal presence.”
Kerish rose to his feet.
“Where must I go?”
“To the Hidden Pavilion,” answered the herald. “I will escort your Highness to the gate of the Emperor's gardens.”
As Kerish-lo-Taan walked behind the herald through the winding passages of the Inner Palace, he tried to remember when he had last spoken to his father. He had seen the Emperor less than a month ago when he had presided over the ceremony to welcome spring, but that had been a purely formal occasion and they had not talked. It would have been nearly a year ago, Kerish decided. He had been walking deep in the gardens and had met his father by chance. Even then the Emperor had done no more than murmur that he was growing to be more like his mother.
The herald stopped before a high wall of glassy green brick that curled away to right and left and was pierced by a single gate.
“I will leave your Highness here, for I have a second royal command to execute.”
He bowed deeply and strode away. The gate swung open at a touch and Kerish entered the Emperor's garden.
Only once, just before his ninth birthday, had he been to the Hidden Pavilion but his memory of the way had never faded. The Prince followed narrow paths that constantly twisted and forked, crossed slender bridges over deep pools or gushing streams, and passed under archways embraced by clinging blossoms. As he went deeper in, he could not resist stopping occasionally to look or touch, for the gardens of Galkis were justly famed as one of the wonders of Zindar.
If the Golden City was decaying and the Empire threatened, the gardens were more glorious than ever. The Emperor Ka-Litraan had emptied his treasury to buy red rock-inliss from Gannoth, spice trees from distant Kolgor, and speckled flowers from the pleasure gardens of Losh. From the land of Four Rivers had come sultry marsh lilies; from Erandachu the windflowers that carpeted the land every spring; from Gilaz spike palms, cruel and sharp to the unwary hand; from Oraz the snake plant whose stems writhed like serpents and whose flowers dripped poison; and from Seld the Crown trees whose yellow blossoms were strewn before queens.
Huge tengis birds, bright feathered and long tailed, strutted on the grass. Jewel-like vilic birds, the length of Kerish's little finger, sucked nectar from clumps of azure heaven-flowers. Flights of gaudy butterflies shimmered in the afternoon heat and in dim, green pools swam gold-scaled sun fish from Jenoza and sharp-toothed kirgass from Mintaz.
Kerish wandered through a silvery grove that showered him with white blossoms. He passed by a black pool blotched with red lilies and overhung by the delicate trees that weep for the Poet Emperor and his love. He crossed a slender, high-arched bridge that led to an avenue of dark and ancient illuga. Beyond lay a lawn dotted with tiny gold buds that opened only at sunset and a wall of fire-trees whose scarlet blossoms raged at the wind.
Kerish walked between two trees, taking great care that the flowers on the lowest branches did not touch and burn him. Even he had to stoop slightly to enter the silver door that confronted him. The Hidden Pavilion was carved from translucent crystal and men said it was the work of Zeldin himself. Inside the pavilion the Emperor Ka-Litraan spent all the hours he could spare and many that he could not.
It was here that his rare and cherished orchids were kept and it was stiflingly hot. Between dense banks of brilliant flowers sat the High Priest, who smiled encouragingly at Kerish but did not speak. In the centre of the crystal pavilion grew a glossy-leaved plant, taller than a man. Kerish knew it for the Lord of Flowers, the Emperor orchid, whose huge purple blooms appeared only once in the lifetime of the Godborn.
Beside the orchid, his hands resting on one delicate leaf, stood the Emperor Ka-Litraan. Kerish knelt and then lay face downwards, waiting for royal permission to rise and look at the Emperor's face. Instead, his father leaned down and raised Kerish up with his own hands. For a moment they looked at each other.
The Emperor's age would have been difficult to guess. His long raven hair was threaded with white and the veins stood out, blue and hard, on his thin hands, yet his coldly beautiful face was serene, unmarred by the scars of age. Kerish's own face was an almost exact copy and their eyes might have been carved out of one piece of amethyst and inlaid with gold and ebony by the same craftsman. The High Priest watched them, knowing that it was not himself that the Emperor saw mirrored there but a girl who had died sixteen years before.
* * *
The Emperor and the High Priest had discussed many things in their brief time together. Izeldon had described the events of the ceremony of Presentation. The Emperor had laughed, a bitter sound, without warmth.
“So Zyrindella has defied our gentle Zeldin once too often. I thought she would.”
“You knew?”
“Of her deceit, her ambition, her cruelty? Oh, I have watched her closely. I could name every one of her lovers, even the father of her child. I will uphold your sentence of banishment and even give the Governorship of Morolk into other hands but when I am dead, dear uncle, she will find a means to take revenge. She may make that son of hers Emperor yet.”
“You are smiling!”
“I smile because the Godborn are not worthy of tears. Don't look at me so, Izeldon. I know that I am the least worthy of all. I will smile at darkness, because we deserve our doom.'
“And Kerish? Does he deserve it too?”
“You are going to ask me again to send him away?”
“Yes,” the High Priest had answered steadily.
This time the Emperor had listened.
* * *
“Look, child,” said the Emperor Ka-Litraan, “the Emperor orchid is in bud. It will flower within six or seven days.”
Kerish stared hard at the plant, his face totally lacking expression.
“Your son dislikes being called a child,” said Izeldon.
The Emperor took Kerish's face between his hands and studied him again.
“How old are you now?”
“Eighteen, your Majesty, almost.”
“So, Kerish-lo-Taan,' the Emperor released him, “you are almost of age and today we must decide your future. But first, pour us some nectar.”
Looking around, Kerish saw a crystal flagon of pale liquid and three goblets standing on a small table. He filled two goblets and knelt to offer them to the Emperor and the High Priest.
“Pour a third for yourself,” said Ka-Litraan, “for I think your temper needs a little sweetening.”
Kerish smiled ruefully.
“Good,” murmured the Emperor. “It pleases me to see you smile. There is time enough for your face to harden into a true mask.”
The Emperor, a crystal goblet in his hands, wandered among his orchids. The flowers seemed to lean towards him as he passed.
“You may sit, Kerish. You are pale. You look as if you fled some terror down the hours of darkness:”
“I dreamed that the Bird of Truth flew at me, your Majesty, and I could not escape.”
Ka-Litraan shuddered. “You will never escape that dream until you face truth as I have done.” The Emperor stopped to touch an orchid the colour of blood spattered on sand. “Then perhaps you will learn to admire only plants and beasts, who do not love or lie and kill in innocence.”
“Truth may be as beautiful as it is terrible,” said the High Priest quietly.
The Emperor laughed. “What, uncle, can nothing bring you to final despair?”
“No,” answered Izeldon. “Majesty, remember why we three are together.”
The Emperor nodded. “Prince of the Godborn, you will soon be of age. I shall draw one pattern of your future life and the High Priest another. You must choose.”
The sun blazed down through the crystal roof. Beads of perspiration glittered on Kerish's face and his silk tunic clung damply to his body.
“It is the custom,” continued the Emperor, “for the Princes and Lords of the Godborn to be given a city or province to govern. The Crown Prince has dominion over Galkis its
elf. Ka-Metranee and Im-lo-Torim rule in Holy Hildimarn and Jerenac governs Jenoza. In Morolk my poor nephew and his wife will still rule in name but Zyrindella will be confined to her palace. A worthy regent shall govern in her place. You approve, uncle?”
“I approve, though I fear that you see further than I do.”
“It is the Emperor's privilege,” said Ka-Litraan bitterly, “and I know my dear children only too well. So we come to Tryfania and Zyrindella's stepfather. He hates me with good cause, but he thinks I will repay my guilt by letting one of his sons be Governor after him. He is wrong. I intend Tryfania for you, Kerish-lo-Taan, but not just yet. You need more experience. The Governor of Ephaan is an old man with one young daughter.
Prince of the Godborn (Seven Citadels) Page 8