Yta turned to the Khamars, who stood awaiting her in the skiff, and lifted a hand to them. The guard in command pulled free his sword, pushed it into the air, and called out. Yta turned her back on her loyal hearts, turned away from her city, her empire, even her home, and stepped down the quay with regal majesty and feminine surety. The Khamars helped her settle herself in the skiff as the rowers pulled the boat from the dock.
It was morning. The mists had lifted from the sea; the sun was bright, and the sea shining brilliantly.
They stood, the three of them, in the company of councilors and court elders, surrounded by palace guards, and watched silently, heavy emotions binding them, as the skiff reached the ship. With distant, tiny flutters of movement was Queen Yta brought aboard, and the skiff lifted to the gunwales by lead lines. Small voices cried out, sails were loosed, gulls flapped free of the masts. Blowing winds swelled the gold and scarlet and blue sails into huge bellies, and the bireme was steered out, oars lifting and splashing, beginning its way toward the islands south of Athadia, beyond the horizon.
Its journey to Hea Isle.
It struck Adred that, with every wind and every wave, Yta was taking a journey into the past. Perhaps it was best for her that way. To him then came the memory of certain lines by the poet Leakhim, verse written to honor the Oracle in the pack of cards fortune-tellers used:
Behold the pentacle, dark diviner;
To you the opulence of love and life,
Or discord and the potent seeds of strife,
Sable succubus or bright entwiner.
Upon your tawny neck your head inclines;
You see within the golden pentacle
All opposites unite, prophetical;
To you alone are known the gods’ designs.
* * * *
Elad was not entirely drunk, but already this evening he had finished a bottle of dark Samesian wine, and Abgarthis recognized the effect of it. When that elder entered his king’s apartment, he found the young man staring out upon the capital from cushions on a wide balcony and throwing bits of food to birds that gathered on the stone wall there, feeding them, and emptying the last of his most recent cup.
Elad turned to regard the old adviser, who merely stood in the outer receiving room, waiting like some personified memory, an undying fossil from the days even before Evarris was crowned.
“If only,” Elad said, “I could cajole and command the members of my government as easily as I do these hungry birds.”
“The members of your government are hungry, too, prince. I mean…your crown.”
Elad stood and moved, somewhat unsteadily, to a couch and dropped into it. He lifted his right leg, crossed it over his left knee, and scratched where he itched. “I am alone, Abgarthis. No king ever was so alone, and no king ever should be alone.”
“Agreed.”
“I am not regarded by council as a worthy king, am I?”
“No, you are not.”
Elad nodded. “I know myself that I intended to rely upon my brothers, especially Dursoris. He would have made an excellent king. Now there is no Dursoris.”
“What do you wish of me, King Elad?”
The young man looked up at him. “Be for me what you were for my father. I’ll increase your lands, Abgarthis. Purse you however much you like. Ask. But be there for me even if you anger me. Especially when you anger me. Will you do that?”
Abgarthis stood silent for a moment before replying. “I have enough land and money. I don’t measure the good in life by land and money.”
“By what, then?”
“By the rising of the sun and the setting of the moon. These suffice.”
Elad smiled. “Stay here. I have called my first meeting of council tomorrow, and your presence in that room will steady them far more than mine will. They are a flock of birds that will scatter immediately unless I tempt them.”
“No. Don’t tempt them, your crown. You want to scatter them. But you want to send them in directions of your choosing.”
“How?”
The old man crossed to a table and pulled to it a chair that was nearby. He opened an ink gourd, took up a pen, and set before him a square of paper from a stack that rested by some goblets and a decanter.
“Sit,” he told Elad. “Your education begins.”
Elad rose. “Then let it begin.”
* * * *
The storm of events that had swept over the capital had affected the members of the High Council in a predictable manner. That, within a period of days, the death of the king should lead to fratricide and the abdication of the only stable voice remaining was looked upon with foreboding by many of those who sat high. For others, however, events now presented unique opportunities. Half of the councilors were elderly and had begun their service in the palace during the first years of Evarris’s rule. Most of the others were middle-aged. None was a woman. All of those on the Priton Nobility were well born and from the oldest families; most of those at the Common Administration table, although not of the gentry, nevertheless were among the moneyed class, the consequence of social maneuvering, business acumen, or simple financial corruption.
Elad, thrust so suddenly upon the scarlet and gold, was regarded by them as clay to be shaped, a prop to be used. They had seen him grow from boy to man and judged him to be far from prepared to deal adequately with the genial deceptions and tricks of protocol that figured importantly in the council chamber. The Athadian High Council, while not ruling the empire with anything approaching direct control, nonetheless exercised a profound influence upon affairs of national scope. To a degree, these men were shadow kings, and their prejudices, their favors, and their webs of influence made their collective motives at times merely self-aggrandizing but otherwise secretive and sinister. Power corrupts the way pleasant poisons linger: with a sweet aftertaste. Therefore, these forty-two men in fine robes and coats intended to break this mock king as they would an animal and lead him as they wished. They would use means far less transparent and potentially much more volatile than the heart attack or the knife wounds that had brought the empire to its current awkward state.
Elad, however, they saw this morning, mounted his throne dais and took his chair not at all nervously or self-consciously. And old Abgarthis, who could spin webs as delicately as a spider and move within the palace halls as noiselessly as a breeze, followed immediately behind the young crown and stood at his right side, nearly as imperial in his bearing as the first-born himself.
Abgarthis opened the session and, following preliminaries, addressed his fellow councilors with words both bold and sincere. All eyes were on this old robe. Elad, too, watched the white hair carefully.
“I ask,” Abgarthis said, “for a truce between those warring grievances that, I know, many of us contend with. We are men of law. We are men of duty. We have served, many of us for long years, in this chamber, assured that, whatever else may make of life what it is, here we make our own lives, and here we fashion the life of the empire for the furtherance of that throne and for the guidance of that throne.” Here he pointed to the seated Elad. “It is that throne—it is Athadia—that I urge you to keep in your hearts now and to pledge your wills to. And I think, at this moment, that every one of us ought to take to our feet, face the throne, and make due obeisance to our king.”
It was the charge entrusted to him by Yta, and it was a challenge flung in the face of every immoral man in the room.
Abgarthis faced Elad and led the proclamation. “We grant you the justice of the gods and devoutly swear our love and allegiance to the King of Athadia, and to none other. May the gods guide and protect you.”
Some mumbled it underbreath. Some coughed or scratched an itch or looked away as they said the words, but say them they did, and their words were copied down by scribes to remain forever.
“You drive for the center—hard, fast—and demoralize, immobilize. You cut off the poisonous part of the snake first; the rest you chop up at your leisure.”<
br />
Elad leaned forward, confronting the forty-two, and settled his attention on a skeletally thin man close to him on the right.
“Lord Bumathis,” he said. “I understand that you are concerned about my brother.”
There was a moment of silence; it was as though Elad had issued a dare. Lord Bumathis carefully stood. “Your crown?”
“My brother,” Elad repeated. “Cyrodian.”
There was a murmur of voices in the chamber, the sound of surf tide, and many glanced at Abgarthis, knowing the secrets that the old one held, knowing that few thoughts could be kept from him. The adviser had ears everywhere, from servant to sage—spies.
Lord Bumathis told Elad, “The dowager queen—Lady Yta—your mother, your highness, set down one condition for your ascension to the throne—that being the execution of Prince Cyrodian. I ask you, do you intend to follow through with that edict?”
Without hesitation: “I do.”
The skeleton remained standing.
“Is there more,” Elad queried, “to be said upon the matter?”
The skeletal Lord Bumathis coughed and answered, “Council believes the matter ought to be debated.”
“Does Council? Why?”
“My lord, it would cause repercussions.”
“Without doubt it would cause repercussions.”
“Grave repercussions, my lord.”
“Is that a threat, Lord Bumathis?”
“Under all the gods, no, lord king.”
“Lord Bumathis—” Elad leaned forward and fixed the man with a stare. “—of all the men in this empire, above all, we in this chamber should be the most knowledgeable and resourceful when dealing with…repercussions, don’t you think?”
Lord Bumathis remained silent.
Elad looked upon others there for reactions.
A councilor two seats down pounded on the table, wishing his chance to speak. Lord Bumathis, watching his king carefully, made no sign that he wished to continue this dialogue, and so he reluctantly dropped into his seat.
Lord Umothet rose. “Your crown, the arrest of Prince Cyrodian, in spite of the heinous charge leveled against him, has incensed the army.”
“I’m not surprised at that. I intend to speak to the crown’s shields this afternoon. Are you concerned about repercussions from our royal swords, Lord Umothet?”
“I think we can expect,” Umothet replied slowly, “that the worst we can anticipate, sire, has a better chance of occurring than does the best.”
“That, Lord Umothet, is a constant in this life. I believe you are right. Let me pose a question to my collected Council: Do you men of rank think it better for a king to anticipate matters and move on them before he is certain of them? Or do you think that king causes those matters actually to occur when he moves in anticipation?”
None there answered him. All remained silent. They had not expected this from the mock-king.
“Well, perhaps,” Elad allowed, “it’s a little of both. Let me present this to you in another way. Should a king act, or should a king react? How does one wear a crown? Tilted forward, or perhaps slanting off to the side? Or proudly atop his head?”
All stared at him.
Elad faced Lord Umothet. “How would you wear the crown, Lord Umothet?”
“Sire, the crown is not mine to wear.”
“Well said,” Elad replied. “Well said.” And to the room, as Umothet sat again: “As king, I intend to wear my crown forward and to act, not react. Depend upon it. My brother is my brother, and I shall discuss with my lords of rank this afternoon how to deal with him. Meanwhile, I have decided one thing more: I am going to purge this government of all of the waste that has collected during my father’s rule.”
Further murmurings in the room. What game was this? What usto move was this?
Bumathis rapped the table and stood. “Your crown, how? This is unprecedented.”
“I will make myself clear in the days to come. Each of you will be given orders from me. I expect those orders to be followed immediately. And that is all I have to say for the moment.”
The room was silent.
“Lord Councilor Abgarthis,” Elad continued, “wished our talk today to concern only those matters deemed most pertinent at the present moment. We are proceeding on that path. My brother has been assigned to be executed. Our economy is in a dire situation. And I must plan to keep beside me only those loyal first to me, second to themselves. Therefore…here is how I wear my crown.” Elad moved it slightly forward on his head. “You men each have many interests at heart; this I understand,” he continued. “But I have one interest, and it is my crown. I am your king.”
Elad watched them from his throne, fully aware of what he had done, of what he was doing, of what he had commenced: usto with the cards hidden, a game of bluff, a game of intimidation as well as chance.
Elad knew that he was not yet a king. But he could act the king and become king, yes. He turned to regard Abgarthis.
Old man, still with the shadow of Yta and Evarris on him, the smell of them on him.
Abgarthis nodded to him, just the slightest tilt of his white head.
And Elad thought, then, of the Oracle of Teplis, of that woman’s words, words that sat beside him on his throne as closely as did his scepter.
“You will take the throne, and none other after you, and you will rule to see everything precious destroyed, every hope ruined, every man and woman crying out in torment. You will rule Athadia, and the world will die in anguish.”
Elad did not believe those words, not literally, but he did not know how to interpret them.
Doubtless they portended some game, some secret pattern, serious, and with patterns of movement revealed slowly. Like an usto game.
Revealed slowly, even to a king.
A king yet to become king.
* * * *
The cells for those guilty of crimes against the empire were situated deep underground, accessible only by a corridor that led from beneath the palace proper to the subterranean prison under the Khamar barracks and guardhouse. Visitors to these cells were few.
But with the arrest of Prince Cyrodian, the lone guard seated at the entrance to the cell hall was kept busier than he had been for many years. Officials, councilors, and army personnel came and went with increasing regularity. And now, inevitably, the wife and son. The guard nodded solemnly but said nothing to Orain and Galvus, simply opened the door for them and stood at attention as they passed through and walked down the corridor to the prince’s cell.
Cyrodian was well accommodated in his bondage. His corridor held six cells, all vacant save for his. And his cell was far from barren; the stinking, rotted straw had been cleared out and the cold stone bench replaced with an army cot. There were numerous candles and oil lamps, tables, writing instruments, scrolls of law, ample plates of fruit and jugs of wine—all that he might desire, were he in his own chamber high upstairs, save the freedom to leave of his own volition and access to his weapons.
Orain recognized him, when she saw him in his cell, as though remembering some stranger lost to her for years. This was her husband, yes, caged like some rare, well-protected beast. Her hands worked nervously before her as she faced him through the bars of his cell, afraid of him, afraid of the emotions that filled her—afraid of the decision she had come to.
Galvus stood beside her, tall, proud, not in the least intimidated by his caged beast of a father.
Cyrodian watched Orain coldly. “I don’t want you here. Why did you come?”
“You’re my husband. It is a wife’s privilege to—to die with her husband, if he so wills it.”
Cyrodian’s expression was one of disbelief.
“I will die with you, husband, if you order it.”
Galvus was stunned. “Mother, you can’t—”
But he was cut short by Cyrodian’s brutal guffaw. “Die with me!” he shouted, wholly insensitive to what burned inside her. “No, no, my wife. You don’t
need to die with me!”
“But I will,” Orain told him, “I will, if you—”
“Why?” he grunted. “Because Dursoris is dead? That’s the only reason you want—”
Orain let out a deep, aching sound, brought her hands to her face, and in that moment twisted to one side and nearly fell to the floor.
Galvus moved to hold her and gave his father a look of scorn. “Why don’t you kill yourself?” he yelled at him. “Isn’t that what soldiers are supposed to do?”
“True, son of my lust. But I think I’ll forgo giving you that pleasure. I believe the empire needs me. One fool is dead already—but another sits on the throne. I’m needed more than ever.”
“Dog!” Galvus spat.
Orain sobbed afresh.
“Whose son are you?” Cyrodian asked him angrily. “You can’t be mine. Have you lifted a sword yet? Or are you getting humpbacked from carrying books?”
“Books are more powerful than any sword, Father. I like seeing you in prison! You can’t slap me around now, can you? You can’t beat me now, can you? You can’t beat your wife. All you can do is—”
“Son of a whore, shut your mouth, shut up!”
Anguished, Orain released sobs and reached to touch Galvus, to restrain him.
“Witch!” Cyrodian grunted to her. “Is this what you gave birth to? A weakling? A boy without—”
“Silence, silence!” Orain groaned.
Quiet settled for a moment. Galvus and Cyrodian, both breathing hard, stared at one another.
Then Galvus said, in a calmer voice, “The world is changing, Father. Your kind will perish.” He was thinking of Radulis, of philosophy, of dreams he held for a new empire, days of glory without bloodshed and violence.
“I should have struck you harder,” Cyrodian told him. “I should have strangled you in your crib.”
“Strangle a hundred of me,” was the young man’s answer. “I am a man of ideas, and men of ideas will always—”
“Ideas!” Cyrodian roared, as furious as if Galvus had touched him with hot metal. “There are too many ideas! Ideas have killed this country! Now another man with ideas sits on the throne! He will idea this empire to death! Become like steel, boy! Cowards always hide behind ideas. Learn to be a man!”
The West Is Dying Page 12