The Empty Kingdom

by Elizabeth E. Wein

Priamos laughed. His delight broke up the angry look of his heavy brow, just as it did Abreha’s. “Ah, heroic!” He was still laughing as he looked Telemakos over in the moonlight. “Never in my life have I had the upper hand over my brother! You’re not hurt, are you?”

  “Just wet. The prison warden gave me his shamma, but my kilt is soaking through it.”

  “Have mine. Take off your kilt so it can dry out. You’ll have to do without shoes till we reach Adulis, I fear.” He took Telemakos by the wrist to help him unwrap his shamma; the heavy nickel ring blinked silver against Telemakos’s dark knuckles.

  Priamos stared in stunned silence. At last he breathed a long, shaking sigh. When he brought himself to speak, it was in a whisper. “That is my father’s crest. That ring belonged to my father, Ras Anbessa, the Lion of Wedem.”

  “So it did,” Telemakos answered in a low voice. He had not thought of that, when he took it.

  “I last saw it on the hand of my elder brother, Hector, before he went to battle against Abreha in the past conflict with Himyar,” Priamos said quietly. “A dozen years ago now. Abreha’s men must have delivered it to him when Hector was killed. How have you come by it?”

  “I took it from the najashi, just now, as he slept. I took it because—I don’t know why I took it. Petty vengeance, I suppose. He had—he used it to brand me. He burned the mark into the skin at the back of my neck.”

  Priamos reached out a hand to tilt Telemakos’s head aside, moving so suddenly that Telemakos nearly lost the ring.

  “Shine a lantern here, someone!”

  Telemakos bent his head beneath the light while Priamos pushed back the wild hair.

  “Mother of God. I did not believe him—Not you, boy, I did not believe Abreha. He says he does not want to release you because he has made you his heir. How should any of us believe such a fantastic tale, when all we know is that he has held you imprisoned and helpless in a tower of Solomon’s palace for two years?”

  Telemakos shook his head, understanding none of this.

  “Telemakos Meder, if Abreha has put this mark on you, it means he counts you as his own son.”

  Telemakos jerked his head from Priamos’s grip and said sharply, “Do not mock me!”

  “I don’t. Look.”

  Priamos bent his own head to the light.

  “Look well,” he said, and pulled his shirt away from his neck. His hair was cropped close to his skull, and the lines of the scar shone clean against his dark skin, the familiar lion’s head within the five-rayed star.

  “But—” Still it meant nothing to Telemakos. “But you aren’t Abreha’s son!”

  “I am Priamos Anbessa,” Priamos said quietly. “I am called lion, Anbessa, after my father, as is Abreha Anbessa. I am marked with the lion seal of Solomon as are all Ras Anbessa’s sons. The man who branded you bears the mark himself.”

  “So he does.” Telemakos blinked, then nodded, falling back into Aksumite ways. “I know. But I thought…” He felt suddenly idiotic that he had not realized his full worth to Abreha. “The najashi isn’t allowed to appoint an heir without his council’s approval, and they have not tested me … Oh, but they have! That was my interrogation … And he led me to believe I was on trial for treachery!”

  Telemakos stared out over the dark harbor, sending winged thoughts toward Abreha’s ship.

  I did not need such proving, my najashi. I might have been more faithful if you had been kinder.

  He was suddenly overcome with exhaustion.

  “Can I sleep here?” he asked.

  Priamos and his companions unearthed a grass mattress and an elegant, light blanket that felt like a weave of silk and wool; they left Telemakos alone with a jug of water and a jug of wine, and cold fried bread and dried dates folded in a square of linen.

  He was not hungry, and once he was dry he did not need the blanket. But Telemakos could not go to sleep. He lay staring up at the sky’s familiar map of stars passing slowly and inevitably along their appointed paths. His cool, perceptive tracker’s mind began to make sense of all that Abreha had done over the last two years, and as with Anako, the overwhelming emotion that took hold of him now was not anger, or hatred, but pity.

  I betrayed him before he marked me as his son. He knew, and marked me anyway.

  That means he has already forgiven me.

  Telemakos opened his eyes to fast-moving clouds scudding high overhead in a blue sky. He sat up.

  “Ah, you have outdone your grandmother the queen of the Orcades this time, scheming young witch’s spawn,” Goewin said merrily, flying to his embrace. “I doubt if even Morgause ever knocked flat twenty-eight men with one blow. Half of them are still asleep, including our najashi, so he has not yet learned of your perfidious nature—well, perhaps he already knows.”

  Goewin held Telemakos off, so she could look at him. “Heavens, don’t weep, boy.”

  “I’m not. It’s the light.” Telemakos swiped at his eyes, and asked hopefully, “Is my father here, too?”

  “This is not his negotiation.” Goewin was cool. “He has no business representing Britain here; that is my role in the Red Sea. Medraut is … he has no match as warrior and hunter, but he is too headstrong for true diplomacy. I have made him wait for you in Adulis, with your mother and your sister.”

  “Ah, Goewin, truly? Athena, safe, with my mother and father?” Telemakos could not help himself. He burst into tears.

  Goewin waited. Then she smiled at Telemakos, doing small motherly things like tucking his hair back from his face and pulling his borrowed shamma straight. She wiped his eyes with the shamma’s edge. “Shame on Ras Priamos,” she said, “taking all the credit for your deliverance last night, and not telling either one of us the other was aboard! He didn’t want to wake me—”

  Telemakos saw that his aunt’s smooth, white face had become faintly lined, like his father’s but not so deeply, and that her eyes were red rimmed and blue ringed, as though she had not passed a full night’s sleep for weeks and weeks.

  “—I negotiated like this with your father, over Lleu’s life, years ago,” she said. “It was a simpler battle then, good and evil clear to me, Medraut wrong and contrite, no ransom paid. God grant this is the last time I have to win freedom for the prince of Britain! If it happens again, you’re on your own, boy.”

  “What’s my ransom?” Telemakos asked.

  “These damned islands, of course.”

  Telemakos was speechless. He gazed upward toward the black volcanic heights; the noise of the quarry was loud and busy now, and a patrol of pelicans skimmed the horizon between sea and sky.

  “Are they worth so much?” he asked finally, rather awed. Goewin burst into laughter.

  “Are you worth so much, you mean. Pestilent son of a demon, Gebre Meskal has entailed these lumps of rock to you to buy your freedom with.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Goewin held up a small linen bag, richly embroidered. She untied the silken cord that shut it.

  “This,” she said, “is your symbolic right to the land here. Hold forth your hand.”

  She poured into his open palm a handful of obsidian chips and slivers of polished tortoiseshell, coral beads, and pearls.

  “This is yours, just now: the Hanish Islands and the wealth they offer. In truth, the islands are a gift to you. Gebre Meskal has long owed you a debt of gratitude for your service in Afar, and the warning that you sent him through your father has made him eager to repay you. The archipelago is yours by the emperor’s decree, and became yours in deed when you set foot on Hanish al-Kabir—Why, what is so gaspingly funny about it?”

  Telemakos was choking with laughter. “I knew it!” he spluttered, coral and obsidian falling over his knees as the beads slipped between his fingers. “I knew it—I stood on the shore and in my heart I owned it! I stood kicking up seawater on the reef north of the prison and imagined myself king of the starfish! I knew—”

  He gasped and swallowed. He had not eaten for nearly a
day, and he was intoxicated with the audacity of his escape. “Anyone might do the same,” he said, more soberly but still breathless. “Anyone could stand there and feel that way. It is so beautiful. If I give it away this afternoon I will still feel like I own it. It means nothing who owns it in deed.”

  Goewin gathered the spilled tokens of Hanish’s wealth into a pile. She laughed as well. “It means a little, Telemakos. It means you may buy your own freedom. It is only a formality, of course, but I thought you would like to take hold of your fate yourself when the contract with Abreha is finally sealed.

  “Or,” she added slyly, “you could keep the islands, seeing as you have jumped ahead of your najashi’s plans and struck out for freedom on your own.”

  “You can see Hanish from al-Muza,” Telemakos said. He held forth the rest of the handful of jewels for her to put back in the bag. “You can see the peaks. It only takes a day to reach the islands, if you sail from Himyar. Of course they should belong to the najashi. What should I gain by keeping them—a new war between Aksum and Himyar, on my account this time? God forbid me!”

  “You have grown, Telemakos,” Goewin said softly. She tied shut the little bag that contained his freedom, and sat back on her heels to gaze at him. “Mercy on us, I think you must be as tall as I am. Stand up and let me see.”

  They climbed to their feet together. He was the taller by a fraction. Impulsively, she gave the back of his single hand a quick, reverent kiss. “‘Beloved friend, you are so well grown now, so wise—’” She quoted the goddess Athena briefly, and laughed again, her faintly lined face made young and bright with joy. “Dear one, you cannot know what a weight has lifted from my heart this morning.”

  It was late in the day before a party came paddling over to them from Abreha’s ship. The najashi’s hawri pulled alongside them and Abreha rose up on his knees, brandishing a scroll of parchment. Goewin, with Priamos firm and frowning by her side, leaned over the rail to shout at him. Her high spirits had not waned all through the hours of waiting for this moment.

  “Well met again, Abreha Anbessa, Lion King of Himyar!”

  Goewin beckoned Telemakos forward and gripped him by the shoulders, so that she and Priamos flanked him protectively, like the emperor’s spearbearers. But when Telemakos leaned over the rail, Abreha did not speak. He gazed up at Telemakos in silence.

  Telemakos did not look away. Long seconds passed, and after a time the sounds of wind and sea and the noise of work in the prison quarry seemed to become oppressively loud.

  “My najashi!” Telemakos called down. “Please don’t punish Iskinder.”

  Abreha only glared up at him accusatorily, until Telemakos felt almost desperate that the najashi speak to him.

  “I’m sorry I poisoned your crew,” Telemakos offered. He was in truth rather appalled at the number of men he had laid low in making his escape. He was not sorry for any of the rest of it.

  Abreha stated coolly, “You swore to me once that you are not a thief.”

  “I am not a thief,” Telemakos retorted. “I am about to pay off all my debt to you. And anyway, you swore to me that you would forgive me anything but knowledge.”

  “I did what?”

  “On the night you sealed our covenant. Our first covenant, when you told me you had written out my death warrant. You held the mark of Solomon before me on your open hand, and said, ‘There is no tangible thing you could take from me that I would not forgive you.’”

  The najashi knelt upright in the bobbing hawri, frowning thoughtfully. Then light seemed to break across his face, and he was smiling his joyful, child’s smile. “I remember. And you, silver-tongued sycophant, compared me to Solomon in my wisdom and forgiveness.”

  Abreha threw back his head and laughed.

  “I suppose I must forgive you, then, if I already gave my oath that I would.”

  “My najashi,” Telemakos called, and managed to keep his voice from cracking. “Mukarrib, Federator of Himyar! I would like to link the Hanish Archipelago with your Federation!”

  “So be it!” Abreha cried. “So be it. By heaven, you shall seal this contract yourself. You may keep my ring, on condition that you wear it, King of the Pearl Fishers! You may keep it, on condition that you bring it back to Himyar on your one fine hand, as my son should have done, if it is required of you! I will forgive the mark you took from me, if you forgive the one I made on you!”

  Telemakos lightly touched the seal at the back of his neck, and thought about the pact he was about to enter into. The threat of death was gone, but it had never been real. The danger of death was real, and would be there always. All the old bonds were still in place and more: his service to the najashi, and the emperor, and the high king.

  “You should have been plain with me,” Telemakos said. “You should have told me what it meant.”

  “I did you wrong. I meant well. I am sorry.”

  “If I did you wrong, I am not sorry!”

  “But you are sorry for Iskinder.” The najashi laughed again. “Well, if I can bring myself to send you away with my pardon, it is a small thing to overlook Iskinder’s negligence into the bargain. When are you coming back to Himyar?”

  “After your death! And not if I’m needed elsewhere first!”

  “Good,” said Abreha. “That’s all I ask of you.”

  Telemakos blessed him. “God grant you a great long life of prosperity, and also many healthy children of your own, my najashi.”

  He meant it.

  The Aksumite fleet was dismissed from al-Kabir. There was a change of guard at the prison, which Telemakos did not witness, because Priamos’s ship was long departed before the military formalities were finished. The monsoon had not yet begun and the wind was still in their favor; they sped smoothly back to Adulis, running before the wind.

  Telemakos slept contentedly through the dark, gentle nights of the sea voyage. His dreams were quiet and unmemorable, save one.

  He knelt alone at a well in the Salt Desert, dipping up water in a small wooden cup. The cup was perfectly round, like a globe; it fit smoothly into the palm of Telemakos’s single hand. When he looked inside it, the water was so clear he could see each grain of wood magnified, and the pattern made by these lines formed a miniature map of the world. Reflected light glinted here and there within the little hollow as though the map etched there was lit with tiny gold stars. When Telemakos lifted the cup to his lips he was astonished to find that the water of this barren place was sweet, and pure and cold as al-Surat mountain rain.

  When Telemakos woke, he imagined the taste of this water lingered in his mouth.

  “Peace to you, Lij Telemakos,” said the familiar gatekeeper of the archon’s mansion in the Aksumite port of Adulis. He bowed. “You’ve been lost. You have grown into a young warrior since you were here four years past!”

  Turunesh was spinning flax in the basalt forecourt, expecting him. Telemakos knocked the bobbins flying across the glittering black pavement as he threw himself into her arms. Pandemonium broke loose as the white salukis joined him, competing wildly for his attention. Over his mother’s shoulder, camouflaged among the black columns and tossing green fronds of the ornamental date palms, he could see a small figure following the salukis.

  “Athena!” Telemakos cried out, reaching to her. “My Athena!”

  She came tearing across the courtyard. “Telemakos, Telemakos!” She did not walk. She ran.

  Glossary

  (G=GE’EZ, OR ANCIENT Ethiopic; A=Amharic, or modern Ethiopian; SA=Sabaean, or ancient South Arabian; MA=modern Arabian)

  Amole (A): Block of cut salt used as currency.

  Anbessa (G, A): Lion.

  Bitwoded (A): Literally, “Beloved”; a bestowed, and unusual, noble title.

  Emebet (A): Title for a young princess.

  Hawri (MA): A narrow, open fishing boat, like a canoe.

  Injera (A): Flat bread made from tef, Ethiopian grain.

  Kat (MA): A mild stimulant in use throughout the Ho
rn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. It grows as a small bush and the leaves are chewed fresh.

  Kolo (A): Fried barley (eaten as a snack).

  Lij (A): Title for a young prince (similar to European “childe”).

  Meskal (G, A): Feast of the Cross (literally “cross”), religious holiday taking place at the end of September.

  Mukarrib (SA): Federator.

  Najashi (SA): King.

  Nebir (A): Leopard.

  Ras (A): Title for a duke or prince.

  Shamma (A): Cotton shawl worn over clothes by men and women.

  Suq (MA): Market.

  Tef (A): Ethiopian grain.

  Wadi (MA): A valley, carved by rainwater runoff, that remains dry except in the rainy season.

  Woyzaro (A): Title for a lady or princess.

  FAMILY TREE (Abreha)

  FAMILY TREE (Telemakos)

  A Biography of Elizabeth Wien

  Elizabeth Wein was born in New York City in 1964. She moved to England at the age of three, when her father, Norman Wein, who worked for the New York City Board of Education for most of his life, was sent to England to do teacher training and help organize a Headstart program at what is now Manchester Metropolitan University.

  When Elizabeth was six, Norman was sent to the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, to do three years of similar teacher training. In Christmas of 1970, while Elizabeth was living in Jamaica, her maternal grandmother, Betty Flocken, gave her a self-styled book-of-the-month subscription. Over the following three years, her grandmother sent her one book every month—some of them new, some of them having belonged to Elizabeth’s mother or grandmother when they were young. Elizabeth was introduced to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, and The Lost Prince; all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books including The First Four Years and On the Way Home; Beverly Cleary’s Henry Huggins and Ellen Tebbits; Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain series; and an obscure but adored favorite, The Horse Without a Head by Paul Berna (translated from the French). The anticipation of the arrival of these books, and the newly acquired satisfaction in being able to read them on her own, made Elizabeth decide at the early age of seven that she wanted to write books, too.