Islands of the Inner Sea

by L J Chappell

  They didn’t talk much after that.

  Pireon wondered if his relationship with Father Ykerios was strong enough that he could ask what high matters of state had been discussed with the Crown Prince. He eventually decided not to, recalling the rebuke he received when questioning Father Ennerikos’ experience.

  ‘Did you invite the Crown Prince back?’ he asked instead. ‘To the Temple?’

  ‘Yes,’ the Hierarch said. ‘That will be tomorrow in the afternoon, so we will leave Emindur the day after that.’

  The next day, Crown Prince Silvendor and a small party of family members and high officials arrived at the Embassy-Temple amid considerable pomp and splendour. The Crown Prince was dressed ceremonially in a striking military uniform and, in contrast with the Hierarch’s journey to the Azure Palace the day before, their visit had presumably been announced publicly. Crowds lined the streets, rows deep, and cheered the carriages and the Heralds and the shining Honour Guard as they passed.

  The inside of the Temple had been decked out in the best silks, and all the skylights in the Dome and the upper walls were propped open to illuminate the murals and icons to their best effect. Normally there was no seating in the Temple itself but on this occasion two simple chairs had been set out, for the Hierarch and the Crown Prince.

  Early in the morning, Ykerios had addressed the delegation and the resident Priests: their goal today was not to overwhelm Silvendor’s party with the splendour, tradition or sanctity of the Mother Temple but to impress them with the familiarity, stability and continuity of Corvak. The Crown Prince and his party were coming not as worshippers but as old friends: they should leave reassured that Corvak was still the friend they already knew.

  ‘But that’s not to say that we don’t have to make a special effort,’ he added, looking around their faces with a twinkle in his eye. ‘If ever there was a day to do things perfectly, then this is that day.’

  To have such a public visit by the Emperor or the Crown Prince would be good for the Temple itself. It would remind the population of Emindur that the Temple existed, and of the unique history, friendship and culture that Corvak and the Empire shared.

  The Crown Prince arrived an hour after noon: most of his party came by carriage, but Silvendor himself had preferred to ride horseback at the head of the short procession. On entering the Temple, and presumably according to custom, he made a sacrifice at the central altar – the altar to the Dead God. An attendant stood just behind him, holding a silver platter, as he carefully laid out its contents: cut strips of some animal, presumably rare or expensive, that Pireon did not recognise.

  Traditionally, one of the priests would have handled a food offering, but the Prince arranged the pieces appropriately, poured on the oil and lit it himself. He stood in front of the altar for a minute as the sacrifice burned, head bowed as if in prayer. Then he walked over and sat in one of the two chairs. His uniformed attendants and family members took up stations behind him, alongside several of the Senior Priests.

  Ykerios performed the Sacrament of Welcome, before taking his place beside Silvendor while Demnadias led a series of Prayers and readings from scripture. Watching from one of the concealed vantage points that were traditional in Corvak Temples, Pireon saw his brother among the Neophyte Priests at the back: today, they were performing the duties that the Initiates normally would.

  The two parties exchanged gifts – Ykerios presented Silvendor with a jewel-encrusted icon, leaning over and offering an explanation of some of its features. The Crown Prince, in return, presented the Hierarch with a rolled silken tapestry that told the story of the brothers Haroven and Piroven, who figured in the ancient legends of both Corvak and Pevensal. Ykerios made a point of inspecting some of the detail and being appropriately impressed.

  Both gifts were then taken away by attendants, waiting and presumably primed for that particular duty.

  After that, a number of the most valuable icons and relics of the Temple were brought out and paraded as appropriate passages from Scripture were intoned and Blessings given. Senior Priests purified the Temple and its occupants with incense and oils and then the small party of Dancers that were part of the delegation performed the Dance of Ja’Orr, the Healer of Bodies. A musical group from the Embassy-Temple provided a simple accompaniment. Entranced as always, Pireon watched Ajiila with soft eyes as she traced out the traditional patterns with her hands and fingers and feet, in the air and on the Temple floor. As always, every muscle was the perfect expression of poise and balance, of precision.

  When the Dancers left, making way for the Speakers of the Oracle, Pireon went after them. Ajiila and the others stood as a group outside, in their performance silks, laughing and talking quickly, relieved that everything had gone well. Pireon had hoped to find a moment to talk to Ajiila, but it would not have been appropriate to interrupt their shared triumph now. In contrast, the Temple musicians who had accompanied them inside joined them a couple of minutes later and they formed a single group.

  Pireon was still watching from the far side of the courtyard when the Crown Prince and his party departed fifteen minutes later, and the Neophyte Priests retired from the Temple. He saw Dach wave and greet Ajiila, and then walk over and effortlessly insert himself into the group of Dancers and musicians. Now matter how much attention he paid, Pireon had no idea how his brother was able to do that – to somehow became an integral part of any group, no matter how exclusive it otherwise seemed.

  He watched Ajiila for a few minutes longer as she stood beside his brother, laughing and happy.

  It won’t last, he reassured himself. Dach was so wrong for her.

  The Crown Prince and the Imperial delegation had stayed for over two hours. Now the Neophytes gradually returned the Temple to its normal state, packing away the silks and the icons and the relics that they had brought with them, and preparing everything to be loaded back onto the wagons.

  The delegation left the Embassy-Temple early the next day, beginning the next stage of their journey back to Elagion. Father Ykerios rode at the front of the lead wagon: he chose Father Mykenoi and Pireon to sit with him.

  An hour after setting out, they reached Emindur’s Mountain Gate and an officer met them there, introducing himself with a curt nod: ‘Captain Bisetter.’ They would be accompanied by an escort as they travelled east through the Empire, he explained. One hundred mounted soldiers.

  ‘This force seems rather large for an escort,’ Father Mykenoi said: ‘Are all these soldiers to protect us in Ruthin?’

  ‘We are an escort for ceremonial purposes only,’ Captain Bisetter assured them. ‘An honour guard. The road through Ruthin is perfectly safe.’ He smiled, and sped up to take a position at the very front of their procession.

  ‘Well, it seems the situation in Ruthin is worsening rather than improving,’ Ykerios commented wryly, once the officer was out of earshot.

  ‘Why do you think that, Father?’

  ‘Three years ago, our “honour guard” was only forty mounted soldiers.’

  2

  As the wagons followed the slow road south-east towards the White Mountains, they were watched from a suite of basement rooms in an annexe to the Azure Palace. A figure hunched over a round table, muttering: from time to time his head twitched awkwardly. In his right hand he held a staff. An image of the caravan hovered in the air in front of him: he flicked his finger, left and right, and the view rolled forwards and backwards so that he could briefly study each of the wagons and the honour guard that flanked them.

  ‘They are leaving now, the tricky priests from accursed Corvak,’ he said to himself. ‘And they didn’t notice anything.’

  Twice, and they hadn’t noticed anything. He had been nervous, thought that all those priests being so close was a risk. He had heard the tales, and who knew what powers they really had, but he hadn’t needed to worry at all. They hadn’t suspected anything. Instead, everything had gone the way they had planned.

  And they had been so tra
nsparent, so childish: pandering to the Crown Prince, treating him like he’s oh, so special. But that’s only because they don’t know. That’s only because they think they can use him in the future. They want him to love them. But they don’t know, do they?

  If they knew, they wouldn’t have treated him so nicely, wouldn’t have flattered him, wouldn’t have given him those things and plotted with him.

  ‘But it won’t do them any good, will it, Mouse?’ he said aloud, gleefully. ‘It won’t do them any good at all. Hateful priests.’

  The stupid, hateful, greedy priests hadn’t suspected at all.

  I was too good for them. I’m too good for everyone. And nobody knows. I come out of my dungeon and I do as I am bid, and then I slink back to my little cell, despised and all alone.

  ‘All alone? Well, not completely alone, eh Mouse?’ He banged on the floor with the end of his staff, as if expecting to provoke some reaction. There was no sound and no answer. He looked over his left and right shoulders as if afraid someone might be behind him, might be listening to him.

  ‘We’ve made him do things and say things, and then we’ve made him forget. And he doesn’t know. And we’ll make him do more things, because we’re not finished yet. And he won’t remember. Oh no, he won’t remember. He never remembers, does he.’

  I hear you ask: “Are we sure he’s forgotten? Are we sure he’s forgotten everything?”

  Well, of course he’s forgotten, Little Mouse, otherwise he’d tell somebody and they’d send people to stop me …

  And what about the stupid old man, running away – running away to Arafel, lovely warm Arafel?

  He won’t find his brother there. No, no. His brother’s running as well, but not to Arafel. He found out, found out. He was cleverer than we thought, cleverer than the black lord thought, and now he’s running to tell the others, but he should hide instead.

  ‘The black lord won’t let him get far, will he? The black lord won’t let him tell the others. How far do you think he’ll get, Mouse? How far?’

  He left a brief pause, and then seemed to answer his own question: ‘No, I don’t think he’ll get very far either …’

  3

  Surprisingly, the day after leaving Sherron, the ferry to Marsalea pulled into port and began to take on supplies, passengers and more cargo. Some of the Company’s fellow passengers had clearly been aware of this particular halt in advance, as they had gathered their things together and were on deck, ready to leave the boat when it docked.

  ‘You advertised this service as having no stops,’ Vorrigan complained to the crew, trying at the very least to get a portion of their money back.

  ‘Do you want to get off here?’ was all they said in return.

  As they didn’t want to get off, they didn’t have any real leverage regarding the financial situation.

  There was a second stop the following morning and a third, on the larger island of Comarenza, the day after that. Their merchant friend in the Isthmus, Anslak, had introduced himself as being from Comarenza – Lanvik wondered if he had caught an earlier boat, or whether he ever came back here. It would surely have been expensive to repeatedly ship three wagons and the draught animals back and fore, so perhaps his business was based in Sherron.

  As soon as it had become obvious that the ferry might be spending time in port, Kiergard Slorn warned the others to watch Vander more closely. ‘If he wants to give us the slip, he will feel more confident in this part of the world. For all we know, he could have friends or family or contacts in any of these ports, and if he vanishes into these islands then we’ll never find him.’

  In accordance with these instructions, Vander was carefully watched whenever they were in port: at all times, at least two of the others were with him. If he noticed, which Lanvik assumed he must have done, then he didn’t say anything: didn’t object.

  At least these frequent stops allowed the Company to stock up on their supplies of food and drink; there was food available on board but it was poor quality, usually stale, sometimes mouldy and always over-priced.

  From the deck of the ferry, Lanvik watched two groups of Light Elves huddled together on the quay in Comarenza, simply sitting or lying together around a pile of bags. Some of them asked passing strangers for food, others simply sat sullen, quiet and tired. He had noticed similar groups at their previous stop and at first assumed that they might be on a pilgrimage, but they had an air of listless dejection that he hadn’t seen among the thousands of pilgrims in Darkfall.

  That evening, Lanvik found himself playing a game of cards with Vander, in one of the Company’s two cabins. He considered asking about the groups of Terevarna that he had seen, but it was the young Elf who spoke first: ‘What do you think of the others?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The Company: Kiergard Slorn’s Company. You haven’t known them much longer than I have,’ he explained. ‘So what do you think?’

  Surprised, Lanvik thought for a moment before replying, ‘I like them. All of them, probably.’

  ‘Yes,’ Vander nodded, ‘I thought you did. I can tell. I like them as well – I think they’re good people, if there is such a thing as good people.’

  ‘I don’t know if they’re good people,’ Lanvik cautioned. ‘They do a lot of killing, and stealing.’

  ‘They don’t trust me,’ Vander told him. ‘They watch me – at least two of them, every time we dock. They’re just making sure I don’t jump ship and disappear, I suppose, in case they lose whatever payment they’ve been promised. But they needn’t worry: whatever harm might be done by rescuing me cannot be stopped any more. All I want now is see Aruel again and, as far as I know, you’re taking me straight to her.’

  ‘Someone you know?’ Lanvik prompted.

  ‘The ring that you showed me belongs to someone close to my heart.’

  ‘So who is she, then?’

  ‘Aruel is a member of the Fassiori of Arrento. The Fassiori are the ruling family.’

  ‘She’s a princess?’

  ‘Only a lady,’ Vander corrected. He smiled to himself at some memory. ‘The Fassiori are selfish and arrogant – they keep a distance between themselves and other people, even the rest of the aristocracy, and that arrangement generally suits everyone. But Aruel is different from the rest of her family. She is witty and clever, and she has a great sense of adventure and sometimes she says such beautiful, poetic things that can take your breath away.’

  Vander had been a little reluctant to talk at first, a little guarded, but now that he had mentioned Aruel, it seemed that he needed to elaborate on the subject. Even so, when he talked, he had the air of someone sharing a confidence: information that he was not expecting Lanvik to pass on.

  Lanvik listened as he listed simple superlatives about the girl, how beautiful she was and how much smarter and funnier she was than everyone else around her.

  And then Vander talked about their secret, hidden love and about how perfect a match they were for each other.

  He told stories of things that she had done or that they had done together. How he had sneaked into her room while she was ill to bring her fruit and how she had insisted that he stay all night and read her children’s stories from a book under the bed. How they had once set an ambush for her least favourite uncle: tripping him up, tying a bag around his head and throwing him off a bridge into a lake, before running away laughing. How they once found an injured baby bird – she had insisted that he take it home and nurse it back to health, and she had visited every day: when the poor thing died, they buried it and held a little mock-religious service.

  Lanvik assumed that these tales were intended to show Aruel’s superior and endearing qualities: certainly Vander’s face lit up as he related them – they were the stuff of his memories. Frankly though, if these were her best moments then the girl sounded vain, self-obsessed and petty; and the things they had done together seemed flat and uninspired, or else irresponsible and cruel.

  Still, Vander and Aruel
were both still young: perhaps that was how everyone that age sounded and behaved, and Lanvik was simply growing old and sceptical. But there was very little else to do onboard the ferry, so he listened as Vander tried to both relate and relive his secret three-year romance.

  ‘But if you were so close to her and she’s part of the ruling family, then why were you selected to be sacrificed?’ he asked.

  ‘Aruel is of the age and rank that is most useful in matters of negotiation and good relations between the islands. Given her value as an instrument of diplomacy, I am sure important voices would have been extremely unhappy at our liaison.’

  ‘You mean you were picked because of your relationship with Aruel?’

  ‘I think perhaps yes, I was. The selection is supposed to be by public lottery – names are chosen at random in every town and village on Arrento, one for each ten thousand souls. These unfortunate candidates then progress to a second draw, made by the Duke himself. But I’m sure such things can be manipulated, and supposedly chance events might be more intentional than they appear.’

  ‘You were going to be sacrificed …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘… but you still weren’t sure you wanted to come with us?’

  ‘No,’ Vander agreed. ‘I should not have gone with you. I know that now, but I was confused in Darkfall. I am part of the Tribute and that was my time and place to die. I’ve known that since my name was selected last year, so I’ve had a long time to become reconciled to the idea. And now, now that I did not die in Darkfall, there may be very unpleasant consequences – consequences for Arrento and perhaps more widely across the Inner Sea. Aruel may have employed you to rescue me and bring me home: a single person acting on her own, rather than on behalf of the government of Arrento. But the Empire might not look at it that way: they might choose not to appreciate or recognise the difference, but insist that the whole island is responsible for the actions of its people. And I don’t know what they might do if they believe that we’ve broken the terms of the treaty.’