Trinian

by Elizabeth Russell

  “My uncle, you see, is in power now. He has driven me from my people and led them astray. They know no better than to believe him about the lies he spreads.”

  Denin told his tale: he was the rightful heir after the death of his grandfather, but his uncle, Xedril, had taken advantage of his nephew’s youth to secure the position for himself. Denin, when he became aware of his uncle’s intentions, tried to protect himself from the coup, but it was too late. His uncle had successfully gained the allegiance of the most powerful lords, and Denin found support only from those who had no power to help him. The young prince was at first treated superficially as a respected member of the court, which pacified his few supporters, but inevitably, as the youth continually attempted to regain his proper place, his uncle circulated scandalous rumors about him, and those who did not believe them could not refute them. Finally, Xedril – with almost the full backing of the court – banished Denin from the country.

  “Yet you live here, just outside the borders,” said Trinian.

  “Of course I do. These are my people – my land. I do not abandon them at the first sign of danger.”

  “Of course not. Your men love you, that is plain. You are a brave leader; but leadership is more than courage. You must be able to retain that position in times of peace. Thus far you have proven yourself incapable of gaining or maintaining favor with the lords of your country.”

  Denin spoke quickly to vindicate himself. “That is true. But I was young and inexperienced. I was pitted against men with no morals, willing to stoop to any level. If faced with such a foe again, I would know what to expect, and could hold my own.”

  Trinian looked at the impassioned youth with keen, bright eyes, “You have impressed me, king of Kara.”

  Denin grinned. “Likewise, emperor of Minecerva.”

  “Do you expect me to overthrow your uncle and crown you king?”

  Denin flushed at the abrupt question. “And why else have you come here but to gain the allegiance of this kingdom? I assure you that my uncle will no more pay allegiance to you than he would surrender his power to a challenge; yet, if you were to re-establish the rightful heir to the governing seat, you would secure gratitude and allegiance from me, and from my people.”

  Trinian rose to his feet. Gorj and Krong still sat silent, pillars of support in the wilderness that stretched between the two monarchs. Across the empty lands that shut them away from their people, before the future that threatened to rip away their citizens forever, there was only wilderness. Two lonely, weighted men stood and looked at each other over a dim, lighted candle, which hardly pushed away the shadows crowding in the darkness.

  After a long moment, Trinian stepped over the candle and put his hand on Denin’s thin, sloping shoulder. “You are a man I want for me in my struggle against the gods.” He was silent a moment, considering. Then, finally, he nodded. “Very well,” he said at last. “I will reseat you as king of Kara.”

  Denin’s eyes shown bright. “Thank you, sire. You will not have cause to regret it.”

  Trinian nodded. “I know.” He stepped back to his place by the fire. “I have another mission to complete, however, and I can allow nothing to hinder it. I will leave Gorj and his retinue with you, and they will help you overthrow your uncle.” He glanced at Gorj, and the silent man nodded once. “I could give you no better help than that of his and his men.”

  “And yourself, sire?” asked Gorj.

  “I will meet you in Kara when my mission is complete. And when I return, we will officially seal the union between our two countries.”

  81

  In the House of Justice

  As the morning dawned the next day, Trinian left his retinue with Denin and, followed without question by faithful Kett, ascended to the tip of the blue mountains toward the home of Justice.

  Single-minded as were his steps, the sudden sight of the city caught him off guard, and he stopped still at a rise of the mountains and gasped at the splendor of it. Red-roofed buildings, yellow spires, and blue walls were all glistening like jewels; pedestrians were dressed in multi-colored costumes of diamond patterns; spices and fruits from the market filled the air with tangy sweetness; monkeys, doves, and cats clung to people’s shoulders and added to the general outcry of good-will, haggling, and jostling that filled the space. It may have had less people than Drian, but it was a world he could never have imagined, with more people crammed into one space than he would have thought possible. Kett, too, gaped and wondered. But after a long moment, Trinian shook his head and turned his mind once again to ascending the peak of Kara.

  The abode of Justice was a large manor, situated on a cliff above the city, with sprawling lawns, winding hedge mazes, and glorious fountains that glistened like diamonds in the light of the sun. A long, twisting path of red gravel led to her large blue front door, and she was in the herb garden next to the front stoop, wearing a glorious gown of pale pink gauze and a wide-brimmed straw hat with trailing pink ribbons. She spoke to them from where she stooped, weeding and planting busily, without one smudge even threatening to smear her gown.

  “Well, she said you’d be here, and I was expecting it, of course, though you certainly took your time about it. But I am glad you will help Denin – he’s a good boy, much better than his crazy uncle.

  “I couldn’t do anything about it, of course,” she continued as she stood up, the practical lines of her austere face belying the frivolity of her gown and ribbons. And yet, somehow, everything about her looked perfectly right. “My father is so very strict about freewill and all, and that sort of rubbed into my sister and I. We only help them when they ask, and even then, it’s just sort of graces; we don’t lead coups, or such like nonsense. A person is a person, regardless of who rules them, and they can choose to be good or evil as they like. I won’t interfere.”

  She stepped into the red gravel path with bare feet, and did not seem to notice the sharp stones she walked over. She gestured for them to follow her inside. “I suppose you want to know about the dangerous prophecy for the end of time? Well, yes, they always do, though it surprises me how few ask for knowledge of their own future. It’s usually only the desperate ones, you know, and they’re usually messing things up on their own, already. They don’t need my help or knowledge of the future to do that.

  “Course, that’s not you. Mostly, I’d say you’ve made all the right decisions so far, though mostly for the wrong reasons. Then again, I’m not all-knowing – not even my father is – so who am I to say? I can only tell you what I know, but you’re not going to like it.”

  She was leading them through the great hall of a foyer, past columns and well-lit sitting rooms and wide hallways, all the way to the back of the manor, where her kitchen was laid out in full glory.

  “I have another herb garden closer to the kitchen for easy access,” she explained as she laid the herbs, muddy roots and all, on the marble counter tops. “But I like to keep one on every side of the house. They smell so nice.

  “Well,” she sighed resignedly as she removed her hat, and as she turned to them, they blinked, because she had changed her entire gown by taking off her hat. Now she wore a green cotton dress that fell full to the floor, and nestled snuggly along her arms, and her black hair was piled in numerous braids atop her head. “I suppose it’s no use trying to talk you out of it – I’m sure my sister tried. And once they know half the truth, they have to know all of it. So ask your question, young king, and I’ll give you the answer I can.”

  Trinian spoke right away, as if her imperious command pulled it out of him. “Can I kill Power?”

  As in the house of Mercy, Kett fell to his knees, and Trinian stood his ground, as she, in a brilliance of divinity, answered him:

  “There’s only one to conquer him you fear,

  And only one to hold his might at bay.

  There’s only one to fall so he’ll be killed

  One you love, in land of cruel day.

  When one is thrice pie
rced of purest sight

  Such sacrifice will lead to your god-might.”

  She faded to a blue cotton dress, with her hair in twisting black tresses down her back, and a tangle of braids on top, and smiled good-naturedly. “I’ve some things for you to take back to Kara. I’ll lend you my wagon to bring them down. Don’t worry. They are for that lad Denin, and his uncle won’t get them. If you want my advice, go straight to the city and wait for your friends there.”

  Trinian and Kett departed without another word, each pulling one side of the food-laden wagon, and as he walked, Trinian convinced himself of the virtue of the message. That it meant, undoubtedly, that he could defeat Power. It seemed someone would die before he could kill Power, but he did not trouble himself with the question of who. It would have to be someone like Adlena – someone who could see with unique sight, but he did not consider that it might be her. She was fully mortal now, and no longer used her spirit nature, so the prophecy was about someone else. The important part was that he would and could kill Power, and he knew he had to travel to Karaka to do it: “in land of cruel day”. That could only be Karaka. As he wended his way to the city Kara, he was more light of heart than he had been in weeks.

  * * *

  Denin’s uncle was as unlike his city as rock is from a rainbow. The culture of the court was stiff, formal, and gray, as if the elite overcompensated for their power with boring precision and uplifted noses. They clearly wished to ostracize themselves from the common, boisterous crowd of the populace, with its colorful costumes and diamond-patterned outfits, by strutting about in gray silk and stiff corsets, which clashed horribly with the warm colors of the walls and paintings around them. King Xedril was a hard-faced, cold man, dressed in stiff black leather, so ramrod in his chair that if he moved, he looked like he might break in half.

  “To what do I owe this unlooked for pleasure from a man who carries a cart of vegetables into my city? My guards from the gate tell me you call yourself a king.” Xedril reached for a goblet of wine from one of his attendants while he spoke, looking Trinian’s physique up and down, but without making eye contact. “Drian does not have a king and never will.”

  “From what I hear,” said Trinian, “you are no born king yourself.”

  The man’s cold, shaved eyebrows stiffened, as if glued into non-expression, and for a brief moment, he met Trinian’s gaze. But then he glanced at the far, round window in the wall at the other end of the chamber, and kept his gaze there while he spoke. “It is not good practice to insult a king in whose territory you are visiting.”

  “Precisely. And it has come to my attention that not only have you insulted your overlord and Emperor, but you have dethroned his rightful representative in this country.”

  “How dare you? You dare to come here, from Justice knows what decrepit hamlet, to tell me how to run my world? I had every right to take over from a naïve child. I was born to this throne – if my brother had had no heir. I deserve it, and I care for it, and after five hundred years, I think we have a right to run affairs without consulting the monarch of Drian! Where were you when the plague of ’54 wiped out half our people? Where were you when Destruction wreaked his havoc and the mountain shook against the bones of our city? Not born yet, that’s where!”

  His fevered speech, begun in anger, had mounted in pitch with each sentence, and now he screamed at Trinian, his eyebrows still stiff and unmoving. “The son of a miner, no doubt, you are! Dredged from beneath the earth to pretend to be a king! Guards! Guards, throw these men back to the bowels from whence they came! Take them away!” He was still screaming as the guards escorted them from the throne room and threw them into the dungeons.

  82

  Trinian Accepts His Death

  The dungeons were cold and damp and made for an unpleasant sleeping experience. But sleep the two Drinians did, and Trinian’s dreams were more troublesome than the rats that pawed at his feet.

  First, he dreamt of a wide field, glowing yellow in the mid-day sun, splattered with blue wild flowers that peeked their heads up in the midst of a full wheat crop. His father stood beside him, delivering a lecture he used to give often about the importance of land, of family history, of inheritance. He had always tried to inseminate these thoughts into his eldest son – to arouse a desire in him to lead after he was gone.

  The landscape then melted away, and he found that, all along, they had been standing in a mine, digging coal and silver for the elite of Drian. They were servants to the crown – to the new king who had just arisen after five hundred years. Trinian was not a farmer, or a soldier, or a king – it had all been only a dream.

  “Who are you to rule a kingdom?” his father asked him. “Who are you to abandon your mother? Did you think you had won a victory by outliving me? That I would let you abandon your family? You left her alone – she died while you were on tour. You were never a soldier – you have always have been a miner.” He lifted a handful of dirt and shoved it in his son’s face. “This is what we are. It’s what we came from. And it’s what we will ever become!”

  Adlena approached Trinian in the mine, a halo of light around her – the misery of the tunnel standing apart from her as darkness recedes from a beam of sunshine. She came right up to him and he thought, “Now my father will know. Now he will see that I really am a king.” But when she lifted her finger, she pointed past him, to someone else in the darkness. Someone else was king, and she had chosen them to leave the cave.

  She turned away and the man she had pointed to started screaming, “She has purest sight! She has given me my birthright! She has purest sight!”

  “No!” screamed Trinian. “Not anymore! She doesn’t see me! I’m just a miner, and she does not love me!” She walked away and he wept as she left with the other man.

  He must remain, forever digging deeper into the earth. He looked at Nian, still holding the clump of dirt, and then his father evaporated into the air – he was dust. “It’s what we will ever become,” his voice floated back to his son.

  Then a third dream surfaced from his unconscious. Afraid to become dust he grabbed hold of the ground, and found himself on a hilltop, overlooking Drian. The red city beckoned to him. It was vulnerable, and he had left it alone. All at once, as he fell to his knees in shame, he wanted to return to the mine, to disappear into dust. Anything was better than this betrayal he had wrought on his people.

  Adlena was standing on one of the walls and he saw her pierced suddenly by an invisible assailant and fall off the edge, disappearing among the buildings below.

  Then, though the city was still Drian, it transformed. It was white, as if purified. A man stared at him from across the expanse, holding his gaze with an intensity that wounded him. It was not accusation. It was not fear. But Trinian felt accused, and he was afraid. The man’s skin was golden, so golden it blinded, and then it was red, but Trinian saw it was only on account of the blood that flowed generously from many wounds.

  His largest wound was a hole in his side, and from the hole poured blood, mixed with water, washing down upon Drian like a mighty hurricane wave. It was turning the city from red to white. The golden man bent down and lifted up Adlena and she walked into the wound in his side and vanished.

  The city did not need Trinian any longer. It had a new king, a greater one, and the son of Nian was so insignificant and so afraid that he longed to disappear. He had no right to dispute a claim over his beloved city, for the new king had bought it with his own blood.

  Then the sea of blood rose up in a mighty wave and hit Trinian so torrentially in the face that he awoke, gasping, drenched in his sweat.

  “Sire?” Kett was awake in an instant.

  “It’s nothing. Dreams.” The king gasped.

  “Of course, your majesty.”

  “Kett?”

  “Yes, sire?”

  “She said ‘she of purest sight.’ Who did she mean?”

  “I don’t know, sire. It sounds like a goddess to me.”

&nb
sp; “She said it was one I loved. Who did she mean?”

  Kett’s voice was thick with sadness. “I don’t know, sire.”

  “She said it required sacrifice. I can sacrifice. She must have been speaking of my death. It is my death that will wash Drian clean.”

  Kett was silent a long moment. “I hope not sire,” he asked at last.

  “No one will die, Kett. I will kill the god! I’ll kill him before he kills anyone else. I will sacrifice everything to kill Power.”

  “I know,” quivered Kett’s voice in the darkness, his heart full of aching sadness and fear for his beloved king.

  But all at once, Trinian had no fear when he thought of the final battle. If only he could get his hands around the god’s neck. If only he could squeeze the life from him – man to man, in the final confrontation – then he could save his people and bring peace to the world. Even this journey now was only a side-track in his ultimate, final calling. In that moment, he would triumph. He must. It was his destiny.

  It is hard to say what sort of king Trinian would have been had he been born to it. Would he have been content, like Astren, to allow other men to fight in his name, to send others to search out and build alliances with countries, to wait for the enemy to attack his kingdom? Would he have kept his family with him instead of sending them away for other kings to protect? Such questions are fruitless. Had he grown up a prince, he would have been a different man, and so a different king. Every choice of Trinian’s life had formed him into the man he was now: his upbringing in a tight-knit family with parents who fostered a belief in hard work and love; his time in the military, when he strove by every action to prove himself and advance in the ranks; and his firm faith in the fact that he was set apart from all others by a divine appointment. Had he been a mere king in another of a long line of kings perhaps this belief would not have been so firm. Or perhaps it would have been drilled into him as a title only, a figurehead, which was how Astren viewed his own position. For to Astren, it was not about his own individual actions but about his position: that above all, the old steward believed, was what gave the people hope. Yet Trinian did not see it so. For him, it was entirely about his personal calling. He was no figurehead. He was a person with a destiny.