Trinian

by Elizabeth Russell

  “Yet it came to an end on account of King Ronarge. Pleasure and peace, you see, make men weak and lead to indolence. Ronarge was a good man certainly, coming from a long line, almost five hundred years, of righteous men. But he had a flaw; and one flaw is enough to ruin a man. For Ronarge, the flaw was the love of luxury. He desired all that was the best in the kingdom: livestock, food, weavers, tapestries, minstrels, perfumes, furs, jewels: all that was soft, beautiful, and pleasurable, and it may not come as a surprise then, when I say that his wife was the most lovely in the land, for full golden hair and a rose-petal complexion made her the beloved blossom of the kingdom.

  “With all this luxury, the king cared little for maintaining Drian and so allowed it to fall into dreadful neglect. The army and the outer walls, no longer the pride of the city, fell into disrepair. The kingdom did not complain, for they were used to peace and reveled with the king, eating and drinking and giving and receiving in marriage, until the day the dragon arrived.

  “Yes, for there were dragons aplenty in that time, freely roaming over the world and living in fear of none. Many plundered and stole and carried off women. For what purpose these foul beasts wanted such fair creatures we cannot imagine; but want them they did and more than anything else.

  “There was a beast by the name of Lucer, and he was the worst of them. He heard tell of the king’s handsome wife and decided to have her for himself. Setting out to claim her, he flew over the land, and news soon reached the king of his approach. Filled with fear and panic, he ordered the army out to slay him. But the army was undisciplined, overcome with fear, and all too concerned for their own safety. Without a resourceful leader, the soldiers were led to their deaths and never returned to Drian.

  “Then the kingdom was thrown into turmoil. The king hid in his palace, the populace hid in their homes, and the dragon sped ever nearer. He flew to the palace where the king cowered with his wife, tore out the walls, and perched in the crumbled stone. The king’s sword lay on the ground as he shivered in fright.

  “Lucer gazed at him with scorn. ‘Take up your sword and fight me, you coward!’

  “But the king was still. The dragon turned toward the Queen, and rumbled, ‘Did they tell you I was hideous? Did you really think I was worth all this terror?’

  She approached him, as if drawn to him, and he pulled himself up with pride. ‘Well I am. Or rather, I am worth much more. Strip! And let me see you!’ And with that he looked at the king, daring him to reach for his weapon; for truly, the beast was spoiling for a fight.

  When Lucer looked back at the queen, he found she had done as he bid. He looked her up and down, but terror had ridden her of her beauty. ‘You are neither of you worth this trouble!’ he cried. ‘I am Lucer, the great beast, come to conquer your city and deprive you of your women. But when I arrive, you hand yourselves over freely. This was your great test! And you failed.’ He smiled. ‘I am glad of it. We are now in merry company together!’ And with this applauding cry, he flew away, far off over the mountains and into the sky. But behind him he had left behind his polluted breath, and all men now breathed it in.

  “Shivering in gasps the queen looked at her husband and was revolted when she saw the way he looked upon her nakedness. In trembling haste she pulled her clothes over her quivering body, shamed and weeping. That night she, and the child within her, died. King Ronarge lived many more years but passed childless; and there the line ended.

  “Thus the last King of Drian broke faith with his people and so the covenant was broken. And now the people of Drian have forgotten their heritage.”

  A long silence hung in the air when Gladier finished his tale.

  “But the king will return,” said Trinian after awhile, gazing intently at the wizard. “Will he not? Are not there prophecies about that?”

  Gladier looked at him. “Yes. In a time of great need and after much trial, the king will return.”

  “And what has this to do with the Healers?” asked Adrea.

  Gladier smiled. “Bless me, I had forgotten the point of my story. Yes, yes, the Healers. You see, the blessing was linked to the covenant. The Healers received their gift when King Adalam received his. They were all part of the same promise. When the covenant was broken, the blessings ended. Therefore, until the king returns, the Healers will be lost in legend.”

  “But if the covenant is renewed – if the king returns, then surely so shall the blessing? And then the Healers will return?” she asked.

  “But how will this help our people now?” demanded Trinian. “They are all dying and we are their hope. It seems that if we are to find a Healer, we must find a king. But the line is dead, and how could we ever find it again?”

  Instead of answering, Gladier rose and lifted up his arms. The lamps died in a rush of air and the old man stood gaunt and upright in the silvery light of the bay window. Then solemnly, in a deep voice, he recited: “From the deep ashes of time, after ages shrouded in mist, the sun will rise and bathe the world in his golden light. The king shall return. It shall be after great trial: a famine will sweep through the land, followed by death. In this way you shall know that the coming of the king is imminent: the King who restores the world. Then shall come the Golden Age, a time of wonder: the Dryad will awaken and lie down with the mortal; wild horse shall bear the maiden; tender infant end the war; poison shall save the world. Who can see these things and not wonder? Wonder and madness, death and joy walk hand in hand. Health, also, and all arts shall be renewed, for the Healers shall return. Oh! That that time may come swiftly, for then shall I regain peace, for then can I pass away, bestowing my lost and renewed blessing upon a new minister. All this shall come to pass for the reign of the Golden King.” Then Gladier let his arms fall to his sides, and he sank wearily into his chair.

  They gazed at him. In awe and amazement, with flushed cheeks and glowing eyes, they stared hard at this old, old man. Wondering, now, how old he truly was. They drew a breath of deep wonder, and then Adrea leapt from her chair, pointing an accusing finger at him.

  “It’s you! You are the Healer and prophet. It’s of you that my nurse spoke, when I was only a little child. Heavens above! You must be nigh on five hundred years old!”

  “How have you lived so long?” asked Trinian.

  “It is incredible! You cannot be mortal.”

  “I cannot be a great many things,” answered Gladier soberly, “but I am as mortal as both of you. Did you not listen to what I said? ‘Then shall I regain peace and then shall I pass away.’ My death is but staved off for an indefinite amount of time. Therefore calm yourself, Lady Adrea, for I am neither a deity, nor a king: only an old man in the wilderness who heralds his coming.”

  Then he heaved himself upright. “That’s enough conversation for one night. Your heads are full to bursting, and I think you should sleep on it. Good night, my children, and sleep well.”

  With practiced grace, he raised his hands in benediction.

  II

  POWER

  “I saw him coming, swift and savage, making

  for me, head high, with ravenous hunger raving

  So that for dread the very air seemed shaking.”

  - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

  5

  Power and Passion Collude

  After the meeting of the gods, at the beginning of the eleventh century, Power had disappeared into the depths of his corner in the far East of Minecerva, the land of Karaka. There he piled up layer upon layer of mud and muck to conceal a deep labyrinth of caverns dug below the surface. While he was wary of Rordan, he was far too determined to be deterred from his ultimate goal.

  He had driven out the natural gods who had once ruled the land, and decided to take on their shape. But it was like smooshing an apple into a banana peel, and the change did not suit him: his power and strength crackled out of the physical shell as if he would burst asunder, but he was perversely pleased with himself all the same, for no other god had ever attempted to take on
tactile shape or rule the physical realm. He was less than he had once been, but he thought of himself as more.

  In the eleventh hour and ninety-fourth minute, Passion came to visit him. She was tired of the wails of the dying in the rest of the world, so she came to amuse herself with her brother. Few individuals - mortal, natural god, or high god - could resist her charms, so after they had reveled in debaseness for a little while together, he sat up and offered her some wine. She pushed it away and filled his glass with her own stronger elixir to lower his defenses. She enjoyed secrets and knew he had many.

  After drinking himself into an open humor, he began to brag about the monsters and men at his command. “To rule is the greatest joy in life. The lower ones were created to obey us,” he gloated.

  “Mmm, and don’t they just?” She purred. “Just a little nudge here and there, and they are like putty in our hands.”

  “No, no!” He knelt up and held his glass aloft. “Command! Rule!” He roared, and though he was drunk, he was powerful. “They must know who you are. Know who commands them! Or it is no fun.”

  “Fun?” She giggled at him. “Since when did you care about fun?”

  “It has been long in coming,” he nodded and his eyes were fixed on some distant, invisible point, gleaming with eager lust, “but my era is about to begin.”

  “How do you figure that? The Golden King will come soon, when the clock strikes twelve, and then we will have to answer to him. You don’t have time to really rule.”

  Then he laughed long and loud and Passion, despite herself, shivered, for he was so handsome and black and dynamic in his mirth.

  “Yes, but you see, I have consulted the oracles.” He flopped down beside her on the soft, black bed to tell his secret, and she thrilled in anticipation to hear it.

  “At the very beginning,” he told her, “I flew over the world to practice my art, to implement it, to serve the Golden King and answer to him when he returned. But twelve hundred years is a long time to build something you cannot keep, and looking ahead, I saw myself losing everything. All I had worked so hard to build taken from me by one who abandoned us for so long. Can he justify himself, I wondered. Who was he to rule over what I molded? So, in the nine hundredth year –”

  “The eighth hour,” she corrected him, but he paid no heed and kept on with his story. When he taken control of Karaka as a physical being, Power had ceased to measure time in the same increments as the high gods.

  “In the nine hundredth year, I descended to Fate’s two daughters, Justice and Mercy, who rule in the mountains of Austro, to find out what they foresaw. Mercy told me what I did not expect:

  ‘Beware the rightful heir of Drian’s throne

  His coming brings the end you fear,

  Since rightful mortal heir is the inertia

  For reign of rightful King of Minecerva.’

  “She predicted that a king would return to rule Drian – after all these years, somehow, someone would find an heir to that weak and mortal throne! And his coming would mean that I would lose all, because it heralded the One who would take everything away from me - He would take it, claiming what is mine as His own. Mine!” He breathed heavily a moment, seeing only red in his anger, but he mastered himself, remembering what came next. “But Justice – she told me something I had barely allowed myself to hope for. She told me that just before he is to return, there is another possibility:

  ‘Only one to challenge your great might

  there’s only one to end your usurpation.

  To defeat him sustains your lasting nation

  To overthrow maintains your mortal station!”’

  Loudly, Power proclaimed the prophecy; loudly, he continued his explanation. “If I can step into the line of the lost monarchy of Drian, and claim rightful rule over Minecerva, then I do not have to hand it over to the Golden King. It will be mine, mine I tell you, and He can’t have it!” He broke again into wild, unchecked laughter, and Passion joined him, filled with the fun of the idea.

  “But how can you do it?”

  His eyes were bright, fiery orbs. “I have searched long and hard for the rightful ruler, and I do believe I have found him. Long ago, I traced his lineage and suspected him from a distance, but always he has lived in Drian, protected by Rordan, and I could not touch him. But my moment is now at hand, for tonight, for the first time in his life, he has left Drian, and Rordan cannot protect him.”

  6

  Hazy Confrontation

  Serene and knowledgeable, the shining moon of the heavens gazed down upon Gladier’s cottage, shedding her silver radiance in a sheet of sparkly light. She streamed through the great bay window where Trinian slept, casting her silver beams upon him, aware of the mark upon his brow, the birth-right of his destiny.

  She was silver, she was a lady, and joyfully, patiently, gently, she reflected the rays of the sun upon a confused world, and kept watch over the confused souls who lived below. She smiled now in the secret knowledge of what was about to come, and she smiled for Minecerva’s wondrous, painful, precarious fate that would envelop it for the next five years. She knew, as not even the high gods knew, the reasons for all the pain, loneliness, death, and despair that would descend upon Minecerva in this, the final hour, and she knew it was well worth it.

  Suddenly, the stillness was ruptured by a great crash and stamping of bristly feet in the forest glen, and the moon merely glowed the brighter and maintained her quiet, patient course in the heavens, allowing events to unfold according to their prescription.

  Ten hideous creatures, tall and terrifying, with bristly short hair, black hides, horns on their heads, and standing upright upon four legs, trampled through the clearing, making an unholy racket and knocking down tree and bush before them. With a heave of a massive shoulder, the greatest beast threw himself against the cottage door, crashing in the frame – that door which had never opened to any but friendly callers. Their noise was great, yet none of the sleepers awoke, for the mortals slept in a magicked slumber that hung darkly heavy about the house, and under such cover, the beasts seized the soldier who slept in the main room behind the bay window. With a leap and a howl, they sprang back into the woods with him, their prey, and all was silent once more.

  Darkness, night, and dank death clung to the air Trinian breathed when he opened his eyes from his deep sleep. Monstrous beings – vile, deformed, and terrible – bore him gagging for breath. Then, his vision clearing, he perceived in the dim light a fortress rising like a dank dream from miry ground. Vanishing and fading in and out of substance, the fortress stood as a darksome extension of the vast plain of mud.

  Great gates gaped to receive their band, and Trinian was overcome by the nauseous stench of the cavern, so that he nearly fell insensible again. Twisting, turning tunnels led ever deeper into the darkness so that he could make out nothing except imagined darker blotches where he thought he saw more of the beasts. Eventually, after an interminable period, the darkness grew less oppressive until he made out an actual light ahead.

  They emerged into a cavern too large to be lit completely by the various bonfires that burned throughout. There was a man sitting on a raised dais in the center, at a makeshift desk. If he could be called a man, for he was paler than the paper that surrounded him and his eyes were of the palest blue, so that he looked like a ghost. Indeed, in contrast to the black beasts and red light of the fires, it seemed to Trinian he was carved from pure ice. Though he had lost his humanity, still he had once been a mortal man who had become consumed with the sheer mightiness of Power’s divinity, and had willingly enslaved himself to the god, a mere sample of those mortals who are willing to relinquish their humanity, with full and clear knowledge of the weight of their actions, to utter depravity. Though few and far between, they do exist, and we do an injustice to our own fallen nature when we doubt it.

  But he had not lost every shred of humanity, for when he spoke, it was with even a human voice, though it was frigid and sharp.

&n
bsp; “Welcome. I see you are a splendid figure of a man, a warrior, I think. But that will not help you. We will bring you before your god and you will fall to your knees,” he spoke casually, sorting the papers on his desk as he did. “He will crush you to the floor with his eyes. No man cannot tremble. No man cannot sink in terror. You will serve him from this moment on, mindless and blind to all but his awesome power. You are signed in for your appointment. You can go.”

  Trinian, attempting to rein in his terror, paid no heed to the icy voice. Desperate, he tried to hold himself apart from the absolute wretchedness surrounding him; blindly, he struggled to regain his calm, soldierly attitude, with which he had once thought he could face anything with equanimity, but which was now failing him.

  The beasts, which Trinian knew from legend were called gorgans, opened bronze doors three stories high and shoved him through into the swallowing darkness. Though he could not see, he felt that the chamber was small and enclosed, and he struggled to breathe around stagnant pockets of air. His knees shook and he felt a great load on his heart dragging him to the earth but, stubbornly, he remained upright.

  A growing sound filled the chamber, glancing off the cold, muddy walls and reverberating against the bronze doors. It tore his heart in agony and it took him a moment to recognize it for what it was.

  Laughter.

  “Who are you?” he tried to challenge the laugh, but his voice was barely a quivering whisper.

  “Yes, how could I expect you to know that? You know not even who you are.” When he heard the dreadful, beautiful voice, Trinian knew it was a god, and once again, he strove not to fall to his knees.

  “You do not fall before me.”

  Trinian did not answer, consumed with repeating to himself, over and over, that he would not fall.