Responsibility of the Crown

by G Scott Huggins

  Avnai nodded. “As you command, kyriarch. Shall I tell her?”

  “No,” said the Crown. “She deserves to hear it from me.”

  * * *

  An hour later, Azriyqam stood before her father, half-terrified he would know she’d been eavesdropping.

  “Royalty is a bit like the Endless Ocean.” The Crown removed the diadem from his head and placed it on the desk. “It’s never really under your control, you can get lost in it, and you can get so used to it that stepping outside of it disorients you, takes your feet out from under you. Much like you experienced your first day, when you fell into my arms.”

  “I’d never walked on land before, sir.”

  He nodded. “And I’ve never had a child who hasn’t grown up knowing she was a daughter of the Crown. I’ve wanted you back for so long, imagined so much about you, that I haven’t really thought about how strange this all is to you.” His gesture took in the Kreyntorm and Stormness itself. “I’m sorry. Sorry I expected you to take up duties I never even recognized as duties anymore. However, they are real duties. You are about to be granted more privilege than you ever imagined, and you will need to know how to use it. Tell me, did they not educate you at all on board that Century Ship?”

  “I can read and write. Some,” answered Azriyqam. “And do some ciphers. I can sew, very badly. They wouldn’t let me do anything else. They didn’t want to endanger me and have to explain my death if my mother should ever return.”

  “They should be worrying about your father now.” The Crown saw her face and deliberately softened his voice. “But no matter. Despite your unreadiness for it, there are some things you must learn right away, some duties you must assume. Fortunately, I am at least able to provide excellent teachers. The first duty you must assume is your Union with the Theurge.”

  “What is that?”

  “Avnai called it sorcery. What it truly is I should prefer to leave to your mentor.”

  Azriyqam inhaled. “Isn’t it dangerous? Sir?”

  The Crown’s face seemed to soften and firm at the same time. “Yes, it is. Normally, children start learning about the Theurge when they’re Erzsi’s age, but they aren’t permitted Union with it until about fifteen years.” He looked her in the eyes. “Azriyqam, you have never had any power until now and so it was proper for you to be afraid and to show fear. But now you’re a member of a royal house. Now, you have power, so while you will still feel fear, it will no longer be right for you to show it, still less to be ruled by it. Instead, you must learn how to master it. A slave shows fear because it would be dangerous and foolish for him to do otherwise, but for a free woman—and even more for a ruler—allowing fear to rule her can quickly cost her her freedom, and soon afterward, her life. This is a hard lesson to learn, but I would be doing you no kindness to pretend it can be made easier by delaying it. I do this because I love you. I know you can’t really feel the truth of that now, and dead gods know there’s no particular reason you should love me. But I loved you that morning when your mother sailed away with you in her arms. Just to the other side of the bay, so we both thought.” Tears sparkled in his eyes at the memory. “I hope someday you’ll see I still do love you, my first and eldest daughter.”

  Azriyqam felt her own eyes filling. “You’re going to let me do something…teach me something…that matters? Is it important?”

  “It may be profoundly important. That will be for you to decide.”

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice quavering. “Father.”

  * * *

  The next morning, she was summoned to High Lady Senaatha’s study in the tower of the College of Sorcery. The summons had arrived at breakfast, and the Crown had ordered a carriage to take her. The college itself was no castle like the Kreyntorm. The twisting, wandering architecture bespoke construction built in obedience to necessities other than defense. Why, for example, did a series of walls with breaks in them large enough for a dragon to waltz through surround the college? The walls were often topped in bronze or iron, but not in regular rows of spikes. The strange figures almost looked like writing.

  The towers within were widely spaced, and no two were of the same shape. Azriyqam saw an inverted cone that looked as though it should topple over. Another building was almost spherical, except for the base, which abruptly widened into a hexagonal wall.

  A servant bowed deeply to her before conducting Azriyqam to the study. To her surprise, it was not in a tower, but in a glass-fronted room on the edge of a low, round building. High Lady Senaatha was a silver-blue dragon in human form. She bore more than a passing relationship to Consort Khiirya and the crown of her head was also set with seven small horns.

  But that was not what drew Azriyqam’s attention. Sitting in a chair before the Lady Senaatha’s desk was Merav.

  “What is she doing here?” snapped Merav.

  “Coming to learn sorcery,” said Senaatha, “and behaving with rather more decorum than you. Welcome, Princess. Please sit.”

  “Thank you. Kyria.” Studying Senaatha’s face, Azriyqam decided to risk a question. “Are you by chance related to the Consort Khiirya?”

  “Not by chance,” replied Senaatha, her voice flat. “I am reliably informed that it was on purpose.”

  Azriyqam felt her heart sink. “Then Merav is your daughter?”

  Merav snorted, but Senaatha shook her head. “No. Merav is our brother’s daughter. I am her aunt, and by extension, something of an aunt to you, as well. I am pleased to have the chance to meet you. Shaaliym’s Foresight concerning you was one I was not certain I would live to see.”

  Azriyqam blinked. “Are you ill, kyria?”

  “Not at all. But your mother’s Foresight did not come with a date attached. They rarely do. It would have been fulfilled as fully if your brother had found you when you were both in your sixties, and I am engaged in a dangerous profession.”

  “Sorcery is dangerous, then?”

  Merav rolled her eyes. Senaatha said, “The Theurge is always dangerous. Much of what you will learn from me involves keeping you aware of the dangers it poses. In short, keeping you alive. I will invest you in it, and you will be my apprentices in its ways.”

  With a sidelong glance at Azriyqam, Merav said, “Isn’t it even more dangerous to invest someone in the Theurge without teaching her anything about it first, kyria? She knows nothing about what it is.”

  Senaatha arched an eye ridge. “There are many humans who have studied the way dragons and halfdragons fly. They know much about flight, and yet they know nothing of how to fly. Both of you are here to learn to Command the Theurge, not to theorize about it. What Azriyqam needs to know of theory can be taught quite quickly, and it will do you no harm to listen to it again.”

  Turning to Azriyqam, she said, “Your brother tells me you know of sorcery and that you’ve seen winddrivers in action.”

  “Yes, kyria.”

  “The Theurge is what allows sorcery to work. It is in everything you see, do, and breathe. It is in you. You are unaware of it because you are not in Union with it. And this is why, when you asked the statues of the Kreyntorm for directions, they didn’t obey you. They sensed you were not in Union with the Theurge, as any adult member of the royal family should be. The Theurge that animated them therefore recognized you as an impostor.”

  “That’s what Avnai said.”

  “Indeed. The Theurge can only be Commanded by those who are in Union with it. Today, you will be invested in that Union. Then your real training will begin. You will learn the language that allows you to Command the Theurge, and within that learning lie the lesser and greater dangers of the Theurge.”

  Senaatha looked each of them in the eyes in turn. “The lesser danger of the Theurge is this: it does what you Command. It does only what you Command. What you say, if you say it correctly, it will do. If you Command it to fetch you a book, it will do that. If you Command it to fetch you a knife, it will do that, as well. The Theurge will not greatly care whether the
knife arrives point-first. If you carelessly Command it to light you a fire, the Theurge may ignite the nearest object that can burn. Even if it is your own hair or another’s clothing. The Theurge neither knows nor cares whether your Command is safe. That is the lesser danger.” She walked to the door. “Now you will see the greater danger.”

  They rose and followed Senaatha deeper into the low building, across a great round room of stone with a complex sigil of some dark glass inlaid in the floor. It was surrounded by a series of long stone pews. Senaatha led them to a narrow door of black, lacquered wood behind a fluted stone column they might have missed if she hadn’t led them there. She unlocked it with a silver key. A softly glowing lamp at the top of the narrow, long room brightened at a muttered word from the dragon.

  Nine waist-high stone slabs stood along the walls of the room, four to a side and one at the back. They were all vacant except a single slab at the rear. Upon it lay a body. Azriyqam stifled a scream. Even Merav looked uneasy.

  The body was pale and spectrally thin. It was a halfdragon, but so emaciated that it was impossible to tell whether it was male or female. A loincloth covered it, and its hair had fallen out. It was a starved corpse.

  Then, impossibly, it breathed. A slow, shallow breath. Azriyqam could not help herself, she jumped and bit back a shriek.

  “The Commands we know are safe have been learned at a great price,” said Senaatha, “and are passed down by rote and ritual. But for those who would Command the Theurge carelessly, or reach for more power than is wise, the Void awaits to take their minds. They are left as you see, without thought and without sense while their body slowly fails.”

  “What did he do?” whispered Merav.

  “We don’t know. That is the difficulty with the Void. This was Dayan Gamal, a great sorcerer of your grandfather’s time. We have preserved his body as a lesson to you, young initiates, but what he was trying to do when the Void took his mind, we cannot know. No one returns from the Void. All we know of it is that it waits to take those who inquire too deeply of the mysteries of the Theurge. This is why, while you are my students, you will never speak a Command I have not approved. This is why we do not invest children in Union with the Theurge. I do not intend for your body to exhale its final breath on one of these slabs, emptied of mind and soul. Never forget this.”

  Both of them nodded and were relieved when they followed Senaatha from the room.

  Senaatha led them back into the wide theater-in-the-round. Placing them at two points of the sigil, she said, “It’s time.”

  “Time for what, kyria?” asked Azriyqam.

  “Your investiture in the Union.” At Azriyqam’s stare, she said, “I can teach you little else without your own participation.”

  But, already? She suppressed a shudder. Senaatha continued. “I will invoke Union. When I place my hand on your head, speak your name.”

  “My name?” Azriyqam looked up.

  “The Theurge must know you and hear you in order to obey you.” Azriyqam’s breath quickened. This thing would know her name? She barely knew it herself, but Senaatha was already chanting, almost a song. Over Senaatha’s head, the air thickened, coming alive with silver and gold motes. A narrow column of them, streaming from the floor at her feet up toward the ceiling of the room. The dragon’s eyes snapped open and she chanted a phrase in liquid, incomprehensible syllables then reached out for Merav’s forehead. When Merav spoke her name, the column of motes danced around Senaatha’s arm and surrounded Merav. The younger halfdragon gasped and relaxed, shuddering.

  Senaatha repeated her chant and was looking at Azriyqam. “Thystur klishain da rynein serulai…Azriyqam v’Moshaiu-kheri.”

  When Azriyqam spoke her own name, the motes coalesced around her. It was as though water had flowed through her, alive with cool fire, and she trembled with its passage.

  Then it was gone.

  “You are Initiates in the Union of the Theurge,” said Lady Senaatha. “Wield your power well, that you may do good and not harm to others and yourselves.”

  Azriyqam felt no different. Should she? Merav was practically bouncing on her toes, but Senaatha spoke calmly, as if nothing had happened. “Commands to the Theurge may be either written or spoken. The sigil in which we now stand is a series of such written commands. Look down.”

  Azriyqam obeyed. She stood in the center of a three-armed spiral with hooks running off the arms.

  “The point at which you stand Commands the Theurge to attend you more carefully,” continued Senaatha. “Effectively, it will make your Commands more powerful, but it will also limit the Commands you may give. The greater sigil that surrounds us restricts the scope of your Commands to the space within it. It will also cut off the Theurge from us entirely, for a time, should I give the Countermand. Rest assured I shall do so if I feel the need. Now. What is the first rule you must remember while you are my students?”

  Azriyqam didn’t realize they had anything to remember, but Merav said, “We are never to speak a Command without your permission. Kyria.”

  “Yes, and the second rule is like it. If I tell you to give a Command, you will do so without hesitation. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, kyria,” they said.

  “Today we will learn the First Command: The Invocation of Union.”

  “But I thought we were just invested in Union,” said Azriyqam.

  “Investment is not the same as invocation. To give Commands to the Theurge, you must have its attention. Investment makes it possible for the Theurge to attend you, but it will not actually do so until you have invoked it. Like so.”

  Senaatha stood back and said, clearly, “Thystur klishain mnoyu.”

  Nothing appeared to happen, but when she opened her eyes, it seemed to Azriyqam there was a subtle light in them that had not been there before.

  “I spoke in the language of the Theurge, telling the Theurge to attend me. It will attend me until I turn my attention away from it. While it does, I can speak or do anything else I wish, and, so long as my attention is on it, the Theurge is mine to Command. If I speak in the language of the Command, the Theurge will do my bidding.” She withdrew a slender metal rod with a sliver of wood set in it. “Calidain derev.”

  The sliver of wood burst into flames.

  The fire consumed it within moments, leaving only a wisp of smoke. Azriyqam felt her eyes widen.

  Merav looked bored, and Senaatha turned to her. “Invoke your Union.”

  The girl took a breath and repeated the syllables of the First Command. Then she inhaled sharply. “I can feel it,” she whispered. She wasn’t bored now. She drew breath as if to speak and met Senaatha’s stern gaze.

  “Release the Theurge,” said Senaatha. Merav lowered her eyes. The tension left her. “You will have your entire life to Command the Theurge. You will proceed slowly.”

  Merav bowed from the neck.

  “Azriyqam.” Senaatha gazed at her. “Invoke your Union.”

  In a small voice, Azriyqam said, “I cannot remember the words.”

  Merav sighed, but Senaatha said patiently, “Thystur. Klishain. Mnoyu.”

  Azriyqam repeated, “Thystur klishain mnoyu.”

  Nothing happened.

  She looked uncertainly to Senaatha. “Am I in Union?”

  Merav snorted.

  “No, child,” said Lady Senaatha. “You didn’t pronounce the words exactly right. The Theurge cannot be almost invoked. It must be invoked precisely, or not at all. Try again.”

  Azriyqam tried again, but nothing happened. Her gut knotted. What if the Theurge itself had rejected her?

  “You’re not pronouncing it right,” said Merav, impatiently. “There’s no vowel between the m and the n. It’s ‘mnoyu,’ not ‘manoyu.’ And there’s a glide in ‘thystur.’ It’s not ‘thister,’ like pronouncing ‘sister’ with a lisp.”

  Senaatha nodded. “Our speech sounds strange to you, does it not?”

  Azriyqam hesitated. “Yes.”

 
“Describe how we sound to you.”

  “It sounds rather as if you bite off each word and spit it out.”

  “That’s better than slurring everything together like a peasant,” Merav said with a sniff.

  Senaatha gave her a sharp look. “People tend to speak the way they’ve learned from others, Merav. Had you grown up on a Century Ship, you’d sound the same. But the language of Command has its own sounds. It doesn’t sound like either of our dialects. Try to concentrate on the words as we say them. Merav, you invoke first. Then I will do so. Azriyqam, you last.

  “Thystur klishain mnoyu,” said Merav. Then Senaatha repeated the phrase. Concentrating hard, Azriyqam tried, but the words choked her.

  “You cannot say it, ‘thister klishayn manoyu,’ and expect results,” said Merav.

  Azriyqam glared at her semi-cousin.

  Senaatha gave her a bland smile. “She mocks you. Well then, mock her back. Mock the way she invokes the Theurge.”

  Azriyqam just stared at the Lady Senaatha, but then did as she was told: “Thystur klishain mnoyu,” she aped.

  Salt water swallowed Azriyqam. She hung in the burning cold, feeling the attention of an enormous Presence focused upon her. She saw bubbles rising in the dark green waters. She forced open her eyes and still saw the dark waters about her, but then she saw Senaatha and Merav staring at her as well. She opened her mouth to speak, and water rushed down her throat.

  The Theurge’s presence vanished.

  “Well, that was reasonably better,” said the Lady Senaatha. “Well done.”

  “Does—does it always feel like that?” Azriyqam breathed.

  “Like what?” asked Senaatha.

  “Like drowning in the Ocean.”

  Senaatha’s brows drew down.