The Eyes of a King

by Catherine Banner

  Talitha was secretly working for the rebel group that was planning to take over the country. But as head of the secret service, she was responsible for the hunting of the rebel leaders. Without Aldebaran it was easy to cut down the country from the middle of the ranks. Many of the powerful royalists working in the secret service died in dangerous operations and suspicious circumstances during the following years. Many wasted time looking the wrong way, sent far away on pointless missions. An atmosphere of fear rose over the country. Meanwhile, Marcus Kalitz was developing an army and a dictator—his son, Lucien.

  Now, Anneline, Marcus Kalitz’s daughter, did not know of the plans of her family. She met the young king at a ball and they fell in love. They were engaged when she was fourteen. Lucien hated his sister from that day onward.

  Anneline suspected her family of plotting something, though she did not know what. She found the silver eagle, an ancient and powerful charm, in her father’s possession. She gave it to the lord Aldebaran. Anneline knew that Aldebaran was in danger from her family, and she advised him to flee. He gave to her a prophecy that had come to him as a vision.

  Just before Anneline’s wedding, the great Aldebaran escaped the Kalitz mansion and the bonds of magic that Talitha had placed upon it. Aldebaran’s power did not match that of Talitha, although he surpassed her in wisdom. Talitha caught him, and she and others exiled him from the country.

  The king married Anneline Kalitz, who was beautiful and good. A baby was born to the king and the queen, and he was named Cassius also. He would have become King Cassius III. From the first, the boy had the eyes of a king, and he was loved by the people. And when Queen Anneline saw this, she began to suspect that Aldebaran’s prophecy had meaning, and so it was made into a book, as were all the prophecies of old.

  The silver eagle contained great power—the power of freedom. And Aldebaran knew that it must be protected by any means. It was part of his prophecy, and if Lucien found it, he would destroy it. So Aldebaran hid the talisman where no one could find it.

  After his father’s death, Lucien Kalitz grew even more fiercely determined to take over the country. There were many whose allegiance he could buy. He set up factories to mass-produce foreign firearms—weapons that had not been seen in this world before. He had imported them from somewhere far away and employed some of the country’s cleverest scientists to discover how they worked.

  One night Lucien Kalitz’s army stormed the castle. There was no one who could withstand the foreign guns. At Lucien’s orders, his soldiers murdered the king and the queen, who was Lucien’s own sister. But when they came to the prince, they were afraid, because of the prophecy. So they took him to Lucien. Lucien commanded Talitha to exile the boy. It would have been unwise to kill an innocent child who was so loved by the people. So the prince was exiled to England, where Aldebaran also was. And the lord Aldebaran took the boy into his care and sought to bring him up as one fit to rule Malonia.

  Lucien’s army took control of Malonia, and he named himself Commander of the Realm. Less than a year later, his government were calling him King Lucien instead. And he turned away from the prophecy, cast it aside as if it was a joke, and pretended he was invincible. But perhaps he remembered it sometimes, because others believed it was true. There was a chance. He knew that something must be done to prevent its fulfilment, so that the people would look away from dreams, back to reality.

  Lucien knew of the powerful charm that Aldebaran possessed, and he sent his soldiers to England, to seize it. But they could not find it, and torture had no power over Aldebaran. Talitha was needed for the war that Lucien now waged on Alcyria, and she could not afford to be weakened by searching in vain for the silver eagle.

  Then a rumor began: the prince had never been exiled; he had been shot with his parents on the night that Lucien took over the country. People had seen it happen. A child’s body was found, and it could have been the boy’s. The rumor spread like a germ through the country. The prophecy was forgotten. The people accepted Lucien as king. They stopped waiting for the boy’s return. They were a broken nation. They had no guns, no money, and no power. And they had no hope either. And we ask who started that rumor.

  I tell this story as I see it, because this is what I believe about our country. This is what I have seen. To write these words is my God-given right, and I will not be silenced by fear. I will give everything I have, and I will give my life, if it is my own destiny to lose it for this cause. The prince is not dead. He will return. We should not give up hope because the Golden Reign is ended. The earth circles constantly from day to night, and back again to day, and when we are in night, we have the day to look forward to, but in the day we have only the night. And I tell you truly that the Iron Reign is begun.

  Perhaps it was fortunate that I could tell that story by heart, because tears had been blinding me for a long while now. I breathed in silently and blinked them out of my eyes. Stirling’s face was distant, and he did not seem to have noticed. “I have lost the page,” I said, bending over the book and leafing through it. “Wait a minute.”

  I went on reading hastily.

  Aldebaran closed the book. “Do you understand that story?”

  The boy nodded. “This is the story of my family.” He got up and went to Aldebaran’s side. “Who wrote this?”

  “My nephew, Harold North. I have been copying it down chapter by chapter using my willpower. You know that I can see what he writes.”

  “He wrote it like a legend,” said the boy. “Like one of the old stories you used to tell me, about good and evil.”

  “He told it like that because he wanted to make people listen,” said Aldebaran. “He will suffer for this book, but he wrote it anyway. You know that this story is real. You have seen Lucien and his military commanders and the great Talitha. You have seen the marks of torture on my arms and legs.” The boy nodded. “Here in England, they used to believe that the king was appointed by God,” Aldebaran continued. “That is not true. It is chance that you were born the son of the king of Malonia. But there are people in your country who would die to see you take the throne again, because of the prophecies surrounding you, because your father and grandfather ruled the country well, and because they are already dissatisfied with Lucien. People like Harold North. People are prepared to die for you, and you in return will give your life to them.”

  “That is why I have to remember about Malonia,” said the boy.

  “Tomorrow I will begin to teach you,” said the man. “So that you do not forget.”

  The last light lay, glittering, on Stirling’s hair. He did not seem to notice that I had stopped reading. I wiped my face on my sleeve. I was almost glad that he seemed barely to register what was going on around him while I was crying like that over some story about my father’s book.

  It was true that he had suffered for it. That chapter had been one step too far for the great Harold North. They put a price on his head and banned every royalist book in the country. And now here we were, his two sons, who he would not have recognized, sitting here reading his declaration of freedom. Those were the last words he wrote before he left us for good.

  “I think you were right,” I said, wiping my face and trying to keep the tears out of my voice. “Aldebaran did not die, or the prince. If this story is true, they went on living in England.”

  Stirling had shut his eyes, and I did not know if he heard me, or if he was sleeping. I put away the book, then took his hand and sat beside him in silence until Grandmother returned.

  “I heard you talking,” Grandmother said when she came in with a bowl of soup for Stirling. “Were you telling a story, Leo?”

  I shook my head and let go of his hand, standing up. Stirling turned to her weakly as she sat down where I had been, on the side of his bed.

  She tried to spoon soup into his mouth, but he vomited it straight back up. We went through this process about three times every day, because he had to keep his strength up. He had to, otherwise h
e would not survive the final stage of the illness, which was unconsciousness. The next stage.

  When I trailed back upstairs with the washed-out bucket, Grandmother asked me, “Leo, will you go to church?”

  “What?” I said, trying to get my brain to work.

  “Will you go to church?” she repeated. “ To pray for Stirling.”

  “You can go,” I said. “I will stay with him.”

  “No—I’ll not leave him.”

  “Father Dunstan prays for Stirling at every service,” I said.

  “I know, but … please, Leo … please go …” She took my arm.

  “Every service,” I said. “Morning and evening.”

  “I want one of us to be there.”

  I was too tired to go, but I was too tired to argue. So I went.

  I did not hear a word of the service. It seemed as if there was a wall of glass round about me that filtered every normal sensation and made it strange and distant and dreamlike. After the service had finished, I remained where I sat. Gradually, everyone else left.

  “Ah, Leonard,” said Father Dunstan when he emerged from the vestry. “I was meaning to come and see how Stirling is getting on. Shall I see you back at your house?” I nodded without focusing my eyes on him, and it was five minutes after he’d gone before I realized what he had said.

  I walked to the back of the church slowly and stood looking at the rack of candles burning there. Through my tired, watering eyes, the lights made diagonal crosses, which stretched in the breeze from the open door. A storm was blowing up outside. The wind was snarling in the narrow streets and snapping newspapers against the empty fountain in the square. The door rattled open and shut again, banging against the frame.

  The wind lulled for a moment. I took a candle, lit it, and put it in the rack, for Stirling, apart from the rest so that I could tell which one it was. I knelt down beside the candles, judged the distance wrong and crashed my knee against the floor, and had to bite back a curse. I bowed my head in guilt.

  “Please, God, please let Stirling live,” I whispered, so quietly that I could not tell whether I had really whispered it or just thought it. “Please. I know that I am evil, but should he be punished for it? I promise that if you let him live, I will never swear again. I will come to church every day. I will read the Bible morning and night. I will give anything. I would have my arms and legs cut off, if that was the only way Stirling could live.” For a moment I was uneasy, as if this bargain was final and it might actually happen. And then, kneeling there, I was paralyzed with guilt that I valued my arms and legs over my own brother.

  “Please—I will do anything,” I went on whispering. “Let me catch silent fever and die if someone must, only spare him. He is the good one. He is too good to die—do you not see?” I was speaking out loud now: “Do you not see?” But there was silence. God was too far away to hear. “Only do not let him die to punish me.”

  The door swung and crashed against the wall in a sudden gust of wind. The candle flames bowed low and rose again in unison. Except for one. Stirling’s candle, the youngest and the tallest, separate from the others and closest to the door, went out. A narrow thread of smoke coiled upward, and then the wind snatched it away. I stared at the space where the flame should have been, then stood up and ran out the door. I believed in bad omens. Truly, I did, and there was no point in pretending not to.

  Hitting my elbow on the front door frame in my haste, I slammed the door shut and clattered into the bedroom. Grandmother and Father Dunstan turned to look at me. Stirling lay still.

  “He is unconscious,” said Grandmother.

  I stood there and looked at him, panting and clutching absently at my numb elbow. “Come and sit down, Leonard,” said Father Dunstan. “Do not be alarmed. This is a normal stage of the illness.”

  I had thought that Stirling was dead, just for a second. But I knelt beside the bed, put my hand in front of his mouth, and felt the breath there. “How long?” I said.

  “This will probably not be over quickly,” said Father Dunstan. “All we can do is wait.”

  We sat there in silence, watching Stirling. Stirling’s body, that is—for wherever his spirit was, it was not there. There was a strange calm about him that made me think that he was dreaming. Whenever he moved the slightest amount, Grandmother would leap up with a cry, only to sit down again when he fell back into stillness.

  For some reason I was not worried. The calm of Stirling’s breathing made my breathing slow also, and I could hear Father Dunstan’s watch ticking and my own heart beating, but nothing else. My mind wandered to other things. I began to wish Maria was here. But she had brought some shopping earlier; she would not call round again that day. She would not want to see me, anyway. Why had I said that to her? Why? How could I have said that? I screwed up my eyes and pressed my fists into them at the thought of it. How could I have said that?

  When I opened my eyes, I saw that Father Dunstan was looking at me. I stopped grimacing. He smiled kindly. “All right, Leonard.”

  I felt so guilty then that I made myself imagine that Stirling was dead. Gone forever. I would walk to school on my own. Grandmother and I would go to church on our own. If someone asked me if I had a brother, I would have to say no. His bed would be empty, and his place at the table, and his desk at school taken by someone else.

  I imagined myself looking out the classroom window one day, seeing Second Year Platoon A training in the yard. I would see that one whose front teeth had been missing for a year, and the colonel’s nephew with the orange freckles, and the one who was smaller than the rest and always started fights—as usual, I would see them all—but I would not see Stirling, no matter how long I looked, because Stirling would not be there. Stirling would never be there; he would not even exist, except as a memory.

  My heart was rattling against my ribs. I looked quickly to see that he was still breathing. Slowly but regularly, he was. I pressed my hand to my heart, and after that I did not take my eyes off him.

  Father Dunstan stood up to take Stirling’s pulse at midnight. We were sitting in the dark, and it had been dark for two hours, but it was only then that I noticed. No one made a move to light a lamp. “How is he?” asked Grandmother.

  “It is hard to tell,” said Father Dunstan. “It is very hard to tell.” And he sat down again, and we went on staring silently at Stirling.

  After about half an hour, my eyes grew heavy. It hurt to keep them open. I pushed fiercely against the heavy blinks. Could I not even stay awake one night for the sake of my own brother? What if he died while I slept?

  But it was no good. I was falling asleep, and no one made a sound to stop me; the stillness in the room was lulling me into sleep, and Stirling’s slow breathing, and the darkness, and I just could not keep my eyes open.

  I woke up and saw Stirling lying there, and started to my feet. “Grandmother, why didn’t you wake me?” I demanded. “How is Stirling? Worse?”

  “The same,” she said. He was lying still, just as he had been before. Her chair was drawn up close to his bedside, and she was pressing a cold cloth to his forehead.

  While I had been asleep, I had forgotten that Stirling was ill, and my heart was beating fast again now. “Where is Father Dunstan?” I asked.

  “He went to take the eight o’clock Mass,” said Grandmother. “He thinks that Stirling may lie like this for a couple more days without changing.”

  “And then what?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “For now, we have to be patient. Sit quietly, Leo.”

  But I couldn’t sit quietly. I had gone to sleep resigned to waiting and watching in silence. I had woken up and could not wait anymore. Overnight I had lost whatever calm I’d had. I began pacing about the room. I tripped over my boots on the floor, and Stirling’s forehead furrowed for a second. “Leo, why don’t you go to school?” said Grandmother.

  “School? How can I go to school?”

  “I think it would be good for
you. Or else go down the road and buy some bread; we are out of food, and neither of us have eaten since yesterday lunchtime.”

  “What if Stirling gets worse while I am gone?”

  “I will send Maria to fetch you. She will do that; she has said she will. Why don’t you get ready to leave at least, then you can decide?”

  I was already in my uniform; I had fallen asleep in it the night before. I splashed some water on my face and hurried back into the bedroom. “Maybe he is worse,” I said, looking at Stirling. His face was flushed with fever, but then, it had been like that before. “Father Dunstan is coming after the service,” said Grandmother. “He will be able to judge whether Stirling is worse or not.”

  “Grandmother, I don’t know why, only I’m worried. You know I have powers. If I am worried, there may be a reason.”

  “But Father Dunstan said—”

  “Does Father Dunstan have powers?” I demanded.

  “Leo, what use are your magical powers to Stirling? What use is anything that you can do? What can you possibly do to make Stirling well? He may lie like this for days before he wakes up, and all we can do is wait. Sit down or go out for a while, but will you please try to be calm and sensible?”

  It made me suddenly almost cry with anger that she could be so unreasonable. “Grandmother, why are you trying to pretend everything is normal?” I began. “Do you seriously think—”

  “There’s nothing you can do, Leo,” she repeated.

  But there was. There was something I could do. I could not sit here waiting, but I could do something. So I left.

  I ran. That was all I did, just ran—out of the city and through the graveyard. There were no soldiers at the gate to stop me. I went on. Something was driving me out into the hills to search for the Bloodflower again. If you have powers, you cannot ignore them.