The Earth Goddess

by Richard Herley

  9

  Today, two months and more after Yseld’s funeral, Paoul felt able at last to visit her grave alone. This morning Hothen had been removed, pronounced unfit and sent to the mainland with his mother: his place would be taken by one of Lord Heite’s nephews. By the autumn there would be a new Flint Lord at Valdoe.

  Paoul had lost all interest in his claim. Without Yseld, it could serve no purpose. And, although he had not yet summoned the courage to admit it, he had a bigger aim in view.

  The temple and its precincts were deserted when he arrived. The sky had cleared after an early evening squall; the rain had softened the turf and wetted the grass on the tumulus. She was buried at the western end. No fragment of her wreaths remained. Only a small stone marker, bearing the single beautiful character of her name, distinguished her grave from the vacant soil.

  Standing here, Paoul realized that his craving for death, for peace, had changed. It had become secondary but intrinsic to that chilling design which he was yet afraid to contemplate. At first, in his guilt and despair, he had wanted to join her. He had wanted to complete the pact at which she had hinted in their final moments together. He had wanted to kill himself by killing Hothen.

  He had almost done it. He had almost rushed upstairs. Without Rian, he would have been unable to contain the first access of his rage, but she, the slave, had been wiser than a priest. In the crucial instant she had checked him and given him back his self control. He would never lose it again: her words had revealed to him the course of his future purpose, if only he were strong enough to take it.

  “He’s not worth killing,” she had said, and she was right. Hothen, his half brother, was not the cause of Yseld’s death. Nor even was Ika, nor the negligent Teshe. The cause was not even here in Brennis. It was at Hohe, at the centre of the Gehans’ circle, the same circle that had made Rian a slave, Rian and all the others, the same that had made a slave of Paoul.

  The empire’s goddess, Gauhm, had killed his Yseld. The true Earth Goddess had been murdered by the false. But Yseld had been much more to him than that: it was to her gentle spirit that he should build her monument. He would have to remain alive, submerged in all he loathed. He would have to remain alone, completely alone, until, working from the centre, he had done so much damage that the Gehans’ empire could not survive.

  Death would be easier. Death needed no resolve.

  They had fitted him perfectly for his task. They had taken an innocent child and made him into a future Prime.

  Facing across the tumulus, towards the sea, Paoul turned his eyes south-eastwards, towards the citadel, and knew he had no choice.

  Thirty-eight years later, almost to the day, Forzan Paoul, former Principal of the Temple School, Surveyor of the Vanseries, Honour Companion to the Gehan of the Gehans, and now Moderator of the Supreme Board of the High Council, was unanimously declared successor to the ailing Prime.

  His accession took place in the winter. In the spring it was noticed, first by the lakeman, and then with increasing alarm by the men in the temple and in the barracks, that fewer pairs of herons had returned to breed. The heronry, for over three centuries the symbol of the continuance and prosperity of the Gehan empire, had in large part been unaccountably abandoned.

  The following spring, no pairs at all were seen to build. The islands were deserted: the birds had gone elsewhere.