Prophecy: Child of Earth

35

Stephen Navarne nodded to the captain of his guard, then stepped out of the carriage. The coachman shut the door behind him, bowing deferentially to Philabet Griswold, the Blesser of Avonderre-Navarne, as he did. The benison’s face molded automatically into the beneficent smile he bestowed on the faithful, then withered back to the grim expression he had worn the moment before as the soldier turned away. The two leaders exchanged a glance, then made their way up the palace steps that led to Tristan Steward’s offices.

His cousin’s missive had been terse and direct, and Stephen reflected on the words as he climbed the stairs. The Nonaggression pact with the Bolg has been broached in a grievous violation resulting in the gruesome and totally unwarranted execution of three Bethanian subjects, two of them soldiers in the royal guard, it read, therefore declare the peace agreement to be void. Simple words that foretold the death of the continent.

When he reached the great elevated courtyard at the top of the stairs Stephen turned for a moment. From this vantage point, the tallest in Bethany except for the towers and balconies of the palace, he could see much of the city proper. Within the white stone rings of the great circular basilica of Fire next to the palace he could make out a number of clergymen, huddling together in apparent fear of the clamorous muster that was taking place within Bethany’s walls.

He had seen signs of it on his way in from Navarne with the benison, and had been greatly disturbed at Tristan’s ability to raise such a large army in such a short time. The air in the lower courtyard crackled with the electricity of conflict amid shouted orders and the clashing of the smithy’s anvils. Soldiers streamed through the streets. He could see no townspeople.

“Sweet All-God,” he murmured, watching the ferocity with which the Lord Roland was making ready for war.

“Rine mirtinex” intoned the benison in agreement, the holy response in Old Cymrian. “Let’s get in there before he’s half-way across the continent.”

“Tarry a moment, Your Grace,” Lord Stephen said, shielding his eyes from the morning sun. In the streets that bordered the Fire basilica a morass of soldiers was surrounding what appeared to be the coach of a high-ranking clergyman. The guards accompanying the carriage were taking exception to the scrutiny, and ugly sounds were beginning to make their way into the air.

The armor of the retinue accompanying the coach was not that of guards from any Orlandan province, but the scarlet and brown uniform of Sorboldian soldiers. The sun glinted off the many small hinged plates of their mail, woven in intricate meshwork to keep out the heat of their arid, mountainous home. The Sorbolds were used to a harsher clime, and a harsher mentality; they were grievously outnumbered in their dispute, whatever it was, and did not seem bothered by that fact at all.

“It must be Mousa,” said Griswold disdainfully. Nielash Mousa was the Blesser of Sorbold, and his chief rival. It had long been assumed that one of the two men would be the Creator’s choice to replace the Patriarch upon his demise. Stephen said nothing, but moved closer to the edge of the stairs. His own contingent of guards was logjammed in the crowded streets, near the brewing conflict.

His eyes moved quickly to the streets near the city gate where his coach had entered. Llauron and his contingent had been following them, and would be entangled in the imbroglio themselves in a moment. He felt his stomach twist into an even tighter knot than had been there since Tristan’s urgent summons had arrived.

As if reading his mind, the benison touched his arm. “The Invoker and his retinue were right behind us,” Griswold said. “There will be a far worse incident if some harm befalls them even before they reach Tristan’s hold. Between Mousa and Llauron, war is about to break out on every border Roland has.” Stephen nodded in dismay.

A flash of scarlet caught his eye, and Stephen looked down to the steps of the Fire basilica. Standing there on the tallest rise was a man in the gleaming red robes of the benisonship of Bethany, wearing a great horned helmet. The man stood silent, the amulet around his neck reflecting the sun which it had been designed to resemble. Ian Steward, the Blesser of the See of Canderre-Yarim, Tristan’s younger brother.

As Lord Stephen and Griswold watched, the youngest of the Patriarch’s benisons raised his hands to command the attention of the throng swirling below his feet, but the soldiers paid him no heed. In a abrupt violent scuffle the door of the Sorboldian carriage was torn open. The Sorbold guards began slashing with their weapons as the tide of Orlandan guards surged forward toward the carriage. Ian Steward’s shouts for calm were swallowed in the chaos that erupted.

Suddenly, with a infernal roar, the fire from the wellspring in the center of the basilica thundered out of its brazier, sending flames of pure heat and light soaring into the sky above the temple. Ablaze with the intense colors that burned in the inferno at the center of the Earth, from which the firewell sprang, the flames reached to the clouds above, showering the area around the basilica with ash.

The commotion screeched into silence. The soldiers in the streets, both Orlandan and Sorbold, froze where they stood, staring at the conflagration in the sky. The flames billowed over the clouds and then receded in a heartbeat, leaving nothing in their wake but silence.

Stephen was aware of the trembling of Griswold’s hand, still resting on his forearm. “Sweet Creator, what was that?” the benison asked in a shaking voice. “I had no idea Ian Steward could command the element of fire.” The symbol around his own neck, fashioned to evoke a drop of water, clinked against its chain.

Lord Stephen cast a glance at the benison on the temple steps below, who was standing as rigid as Griswold. For a moment he seemed as shocked by the sudden eruption as the soldiers had been. Then he gathered his robes and walked purposefully down the steps of the basilica into the sea of humanity.

The crowd parted immediately before him, forming a wide river in the human sea. The scarlet-robed cleric strode to the carriage in the center of the fray and gestured at a Sorbold soldier to open the door. The man leaned in at the window, then obeyed. The bension reached in and drew back, assisting another man clothed in clerical robes fashioned in rich shades of vermilion and green, brown and purple. Philabet Griswold’s face twisted into a scowl.

“Mousa. I knew it.”

“Tristan undoubtedly summoned him as well,” Stephen said, watching a second man alight from the carriage. From this distance it was impossible to recognize his face, but he could tell by his manner of dress that it was not the Prince of Sorbold himself; he had apparently sent an emissary. “I think it’s wise that Sorbold is represented in these discussions. Perhaps their presence will have a tempering effect on Tristan.”

Griswold nodded curtly, then turned and made his way across the courtyard to the heavily guarded doors leading to the Lord Roland’s offices. Stephen watched a moment longer to be certain the two Sorboldian dignitaries and Ian Steward made it safely to the lower courtyard, then turned and followed Griswold.

As soon as the palace gates closed behind the Blesser of Canderre-Yarim, the street erupted again into the frenetic preparations for war.

“Lords, Your Graces: His Grace, Llauron, the Invoker of the Filids, has arrived.”

The chamberlain stepped away from the door and bowed politely. Lord Stephen, standing at the sideboard by the window, looked up and smiled wanly at his old friend. Llauron stood in the entryway, attired in his simple gray robe cinched with a rope belt, his blue-gray eyes twinkling in an otherwise solemn face. Despite his modest vestments, in marked contrast to the rich robes of state worn by the benisons of the Patriarch, he cut a royal figure among all the nobility and high clergy clustered in the room around him.

For a moment the conversation in the room died away. Then Tristan gestured impatiently at the Invoker, waving him into the room. Llauron smiled and nodded to the chamberlain to close the door behind him.

Stephen refilled the brandy snifter he had drained the moment before and poured a second glass, then crossed the thickly carpeted room and handed the second snifter to Llauron.

“Well met, Your Grace,” he said.

“Thank you, my son,” Llauron answered, still smiling. He took the glass Stephen proffered, saluted the duke of Navarne, and took a sip. He chuckled and leaned closer to Stephen. “Canderian brandy. I see that Tristan does not limit himself to the fruits of his own province out of a selfless loyalty to his merchants and vintners. Bethany boasts its own credible brandy, though of course it cannot compete with that of Canderre.”

“Tristan has never done anything selfless in his life,” Stephen answered, casting a glance at the group of dukes and benisons engaged in heated discussion around the Regent. “And he is about to prove my words ringingly true yet again.”

Tristan’s hands were in the air, gesturing toward the immense table in the center of his library. “If you will all be seated, we can begin,” he said. His voice was thick and strained, matching the exhaustion on his face and the obvious pain in his eyes. Stephen had yet to make it to his side for a private word, but could see that Tristan was more than deeply troubled by whatever had transpired that now brought them together. It was not a good sign.

As the assembled nobility and clergy took seats around the table Tristan dismissed the servants, then signaled for silence.

“The time for tolerance is long past,” he intoned gravely. “As I believe each of you know from the missive I sent you, the Bolg have broken the peace accord and murdered three of my citizens, two of them soldiers. The pact is forfeit. It is time to end this insanity once and for all. The muster of my troops will be complete in three days’ time, at which point I will be calling for the marshaling of all of Roland’s forces. Our purpose today is to determine a time and meeting place for the assemblage of that joint army.”

The dukes and benisons immediately broke into a soft cacophony of mutterings and exclamations, but were brought to silence again by Tristan’s upraised hand.

“I have asked Anborn to serve as Lord Marshal for the Orlandan forces in this campaign,” he said. He turned to Llauron. “I hope this invitation to your brother is not displeasing to you, Your Grace.”

Llauron looked amused. “Whether it is or not, my son, it appears to have been displeasing to Anborn.”

Tristan and the others cast a glance about the table. Anborn was not there.

“Where is he?” Tristan demanded.

“With Anborn, who’s to say?” said Griswold. “Are you certain he planned to attend, my son?”

“I’m certain he received my missive. If he was unable to attend I expect he would have had the courtesy to reply thus.”

Llauron chuckled. “Actually, my son, not to reply was uncharacteristically courteous for Anborn. I shudder to think what he would have said if he had.”

“Probably something rudely similar to what I have to say,” said Quentin Baldassarre, the duke of Bethe Corbair. “Tristan, are you out of your mind? Go to war with the Bolg?”

A wave of agreement broke over the gathering, as voices were raised in simultaneous assent. Martin Ivenstrand, the duke of the coastal province of Avonderre, could be heard above the others, the fury in his tone apparent.

“My citizens have been dying in these unexplained border incursions for the last two decades,” he said angrily, “as have many innocent victims in the other provinces and Tyrian. We have heard nothing from you in all this time, even when you, yourself, Tristan, were suffering casualties. So why now do the deaths of three Bethanian citizens suddenly constitute a need for war?”

“I cannot believe you would even consider taking on the Bolg, especially over something like this,” agreed Ihrman Karsrick, the duke of Yarim. “If An-wyn could not defeat Gwylliam, in the land she ruled for three centuries, what in the name of the gods makes you think you could wrest the mountain from the Bolg? You’d be slaughtered in a heartbeat, just like your forces were during Spring Cleaning. And ours as well, if we were foolish enough to stand with you. Where is this madness coming from?”

The look of utter shock on the Lord Roland’s face caused the group to dissolve into silence. After a moment, Lanacan Orlando, the gentle Blesser of Bethe Corbair, cleared his throat nervously.

“My son, what makes you think the Bolg are responsible for your loss?”

“Indeed,” Baldassarre chimed in, “to my knowledge they have stayed within their own lands, within the mountains. We have not even seen them in Bethe Corbair, which borders Ylorc. How did they make it all the way to Bethany?”

Tristan slammed his fist down on the heavy table, causing the crystal goblets to shudder and clink threateningly. “The victims weren’t in Bethany,” he snarled. “They were within the borders of Ylorc. The third-week mail caravan found them, torn limb from limb and partially eaten, for gods’ sake, strewn across what used to be Gwylliam’s Great Moot.” His face went pale. Stephen Navarne began to rise, but Tristan glared at him and he sat back down.

“The Bolg attacked the mail caravan?” asked Cedric Canderre, the duke of the province that bore his family’s name, and Tristan’s future father-in-law. “I can’t imagine that. It was King Achmed’s suggestion to implement the weekly caravans in the first place.”

“I did not say that the Bolg attacked the caravan. They—the victims were not with the caravan.”

“Why were you citizens, your soldiers, in the Bolglands without the mail caravan?” asked Ivenstrand. “That seems foolhardy. It is difficult for me to work up tears at the loss of reckless idiots, Tristan. Whoever ordered them there should face military justice. Perhaps you should start by disciplining whichever of your commanders is responsible, and let the rest of us go home and tend to our own troubles.”

“Did any of you hear what I just said?” Tristan demanded, his voice raw and shaking. “Partially eaten. Tom to shreds. All but unrecognizable. Doesn’t the sheer savagery of this abomination merit better than this dismissive attitude?”

“I’m sorry to hear about it, certainly,” said Ivenstrand, “but it hardly compares to the children who were kidnapped from my province and Stephen’s, slaughtered like swine and drained of their blood, and in the House of Remembrance of all places, gods help us. There have been repulsive acts of violence throughout this land for quite some time, Tristan. As the central authority it has been your responsibility to determine the source of this violence, and thus far we have seen no solution to it, have been presented with no explanation for it. And now that it has touched you, for some reason, suddenly you expect us to commit our forces en masse to a suicide mission. It’s insane.”

The bells of the tower began to chime the noon hour, and the room became still. When the twelfth knell rang and died away, Nielash Mousa spoke.

“I have something to add,” he said in his soft, dry voice.

Tristan Steward broke his stare away from his fellow regents and fixed it onto the benison from the neighboring nation of Sorbold.

“Yes, Your Grace?”

The benison nodded at the emissary who had accompanied him to Roland. The man produced a folded piece of parchment and handed it to him. The benison opened the folds and read over the paper quickly, then looked up to the assemblage again.

“His Highness, the Crown Prince of Sorbold, has received word from King Achmed of Ylorc by way of avian messenger. The king denies any incursion or assault by the Bolg against any Orlandan citizen.” As the men began to murmur among themselves, Mousa produced another, smaller piece of parchment, sealed with the crest wax of Ylorc, then folded his hands, waiting for the silence he was granted a moment later. “In addition, the Prince asks that I deliver to you, Lord Regent, a message that was included in King Achmed’s missive and addressed to you.” Mousa extended his hand with the note.

Tristan Steward leapt to his feet and snatched the parchment, broke the seal, and scanned the message. The other regents and holy men watched as the blood drained from his face, and he sat slowly back down. He stared at the message for some time, wrapped in the silence afforded him by the other men. Finally he looked up once more.

“Will no one stand with me in this matter?” he asked, his voice cracking.

“Not I,” said Martin Ivenstrand firmly.

“Nor I,” added Cedric Canderre. “I’m sorry, Tristan.”

“Cowards,” Tristan sneered. “It is simple enough for you to stay out of it, isn’t it? Your lands are far from the Teeth, and your subjects need not fear the cannibals, at least not yet, anyway. But what say you, Quentin? Ihrman? Your provinces border Ylorc. Will you not fight to spare Bethe Corbair and Yarim?”

“Not for this,” said Quentin Baldassarre stiffly. “For all I know, your soldiers were attacked by wolves. You have given us no evidence to the contrary.”

“In my judgment, it would be a disaster that we would be bringing upon ourselves, especially in light of Achmed’s denial,” said Ihrman Karsrick. “If what the Firbolg king says is true, and you attack the mountain, you would be the aggressor who broke the accord. And then ten percent of Roland is forfeit, assuming the Bolg would even let you sue for peace again. I want nothing to do with this. It’s madness.”

Desperation and dark rage contorted the Lord Roland’s face, and he turned to his cousin, Stephen Navarne.

“Stephen, stand with me. Help me make them understand.”

Stephen sighed and looked away, catching the sympathetic eye of the Invoker. When he turned back to Tristan the expression in his green-blue eyes was direct.

“How can I make them understand when I can’t even comprehend your perspective myself? You have my loyalty and my life, Tristan, but not the lives of our innocent subjects. I cannot stand with you in this.”

A thick silence descended again. Slowly the Lord Regent rose from the table and walked brokenly to the tall library windows that looked out over his fair city. He leaned on the glass, lost in thought.

After a few moments, the dukes and benisons began to talk softly again among themselves. Philabet Griswold turned to Ian Steward.

“That was a very impressive display this morning, Your Grace. Would that I could command the sea as readily as you brought forth fire from the earth.” Ian Steward said nothing; he was watching his brother intently, a worried expression on his young face.

Stephen Navarne looked over at Llauron, whose face was impassive. Though the basilicas of the Patrician religion were dedicated to the five elements, in truth that lore was more or less lost in the faith as it was now practiced. Instead, the worship and manipulation of the lore of the elements was more akin to the practice of the Filids, who worshipped nature. It was his belief that the sudden roar of the fire was more likely the work of the Invoker than the Blesser of Canderre-Yarim, but Llauron betrayed no sign that he was even listening.

As the others dissolved into various discussions of different matters, Stephen rose and walked to the window where Tristan still stood, staring blankly over the city. He waited patiently for the Lord Roland to speak. Finally Tristan sighed.

“I wish I had been more available to you some years back, Stephen, when Lydia died,” he said. “I’m sorry.” His eyes remained locked on whatever old pathways of remembrance he was walking down.

“Who was it, Tristan? It wasn’t—it wasn’t Prudence, was it?” Tristan only nodded and left the room, his absence scarcely noted by the chattering holy men and the other regents.

Trying to absorb the shock of Tristan’s answer, Stephen’s eye caught the crumpled parchment note the Lord Roland had left behind when he departed from the library. Stephen picked it up slowly and read the few words written on it in a spidery script.

I thought you hud learned your lesson early. I see I was wrong. I told you the cost would be greater later on. And you paid the price both times for nothing—she still doesn’t know.

“I know your pain is very great, my son.”

Tristan looked up. He had not heard the door open. As he turned he caught a glimpse of his own face in the looking glass, a face that had never before borne the ravages of time quite so clearly. He was haggard, from the deepening lines around his mouth to the crevice that had been carved somehow into his forehead between his eyebrows. There was no hiding the redness in his eyes, born of grief and the lack of sleep that grief had caused.

The eyes that looked sympathetically into his own glimmered red for a moment as well, as if in empathy.

“Yes, Your Grace,” the Lord Roland murmured. A hand came to rest gently on his head.

“The others, they do not understand,” the sonorous voice intoned without a hint of condescension. “They only see what is immediately before them. It is very difficult to be the one who alone comprehends the severity of the situation to come, who sees the danger when it is still down the road yet. The eyes of a visionary weep often over time, it is said.” The hand moved to Tristan’s shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze.

The Lord Roland exhaled brokenly and lowered his head to his fists, clutched on the table before him. The hand on his shoulder passed over his back, and then was removed, disappearing within the sleeve of the robe above it.

“This land is divided against itself, my son. After the Great War, your Cymrian forebears chose to allow Roland to remain divided thus, under these disparate houses, because they feared the chaos and death that Anwyn and Gwylliam’s union had wrought in its undoing. It was folly to believe that it could remain this way without even greater chaos following. Look at me.”

The last words had a ring of irritation to them, an undertone of threat, and Tristan raised his head to see kindly blue eyes staring intently back at him. For a moment he thought perhaps there was something else within them, something dark, something red, but then the holy man smiled, and Tristan felt warmth course through him for the first time that day, a day which had begun with such promise and had ended in such a debacle. It was a feeling of acceptance, of approval; of respect.

“You are the eldest, Tristan, the heir apparent of the Cymrian line.” Tristan blinked painfully. “Your Grace—

“Hear me out, m’lord.” The holy man bowed slightly as he uttered the last word, and deep within his soul Tristan felt the sickening gnaw of the morning’s humiliation miraculously abate. Something in the tone of the word had reached into that hidden vault of royalty within him, a place long denied in the attempt to maintain a friendly consensus with his cousin and the other Orlandan heads of state. It was the first pleasant sensation he had felt since Prudence had left his arms and ridden away to her grisly death. Involuntarily he smiled slightly, and was smiled at warmly in return. Tristan nodded for him to continue.

“The lines of succession may seem unclear to to you, because no one in those days after the War was willing to assume the throne. Indeed, if they had tried, the non-Cymrian population would have unseated them anyway, such was the hatred for all the descendants of the Seren, not just the line of Gwylliam.

“As you can see, now that war looms again, this fragmented system has yielded no real leadership. An obvious act of aggression has taken place, but the others are unwilling to band together to support you, even the dukes of Beth Corbair and Yarim, whose own lands border the Firbolg realm.

“What will happen, then, when the violence escalates? When the Firbolg swarm down from the Teeth and begin swallowing the lands of Roland? Will you and your fellow regents just sit back and watch while your subjects are devoured, literally, by those subhuman monsters?”

“Of—of course not,” the Lord Roland stammered.

“Really?” The warm voice grew instantly icy. “How do you propose to prevent it? You couldn’t convince them to join together before the slaughter begins. Once the mayhem starts, how do you expect to field an army that will be able to fend off the wave of death that will come with those cannibalistic demons? By the time the Firbolg reach the boundaries of your central lands, Tristan, it will be far too late to stop them. They will possess all of Bethe Corbair and Yarim, Sorbold too, perhaps. They will eat you alive, or drive you into the sea.”

An inkwell and several bound books fell violently to the floor, swept off the table by the force of the Lord Roland’s reaction. “No.”

The warmth returned to the holy man’s eyes as black ink pooled like dark blood from the shards of the inkwell, staining the floor.

“Ah, a hint of viscera. You see, I was right. You may be the one after all.” Despite the warmth in the eyes locked on to his, and the heat lingering in the room from the angry dissension that had taken place there, Tristan felt suddenly cold.

“The one for what?”

The screech of the legs of the chair as it was pulled back ripped through Tristan’s ears as the man sat down across from him.

“The one to return peace and security to Roland. The one to have the courage to put an end to the chaos that is the royal structure of this land and assume the throne. If you had dominion over all of Roland, not just Bethany, you would control all of the armies you sought in vain to bring together today. Your fellows, the dukes, can say no to the Lord Regent. They could not refuse the king. Your lineage is as worthy as any of the others, Tristan, more so than most.”

“I am not the one in need of convincing, Your Grace,” said Tristan bitterly. “In case this morning’s fiasco didn’t prove it, let me assure you that my fellow regents do not see the clarity of the succession scenario that you do.”

The holy man smiled, then rose from the table slowly. “Leave that to me, m’lord,” he said, the words soft, their sound pleasant against Tristan’s ears. “Your time will come. Just be certain that you are ready when it does.” He walked slowly to the door and opened it, then looked back over his shoulder on last time. “And m’lord?”

“Yes?”

“You will think about what I said, hmmm?”

The Lord Roland had nodded agreement. True to his word, when the dukes and religious leaders had finally left Bethany, he pondered the suggestion, endlessly, in fact. He thought of little else with each waking breath, almost as if he had no other choice, turning the sage words over and over in his mind, like an insistent melody. All other thought, other reason, was drowned in the noise of it.

The suggestion had wound around his soul like a cinnebara vine, a ropelike plant he had once studied that made an excellent trap, hanging loose and harmless until the victim sought to pull away. Then it clung with a strangling insistence until the animal caught within it stopped struggling. The sensation of pondering the suggestion was eerily similar.

It was only at night that he found respite from the words, in an older, deeper obsession—his insatiable hunger for the woman he had sacrificed everything for, including the only love his life had ever known. Even now, after all that had happened, he still dreamt of Rhapsody.

In his sleep she called to him, wrapped in a fiery warmth. He dreamt of making love to her, fiercely, passionately, looking into her face as the thunder rolled up inside of him to see an older, more familiar face beneath his, lined with age, the golden tresses replaced by strawberry curls.

Curls matted with black blood.

From these dreams he would wake in a cold sweat, shaking violently, willing her to leave his thoughts, wishing he could somehow exorcise this beautiful demon who still haunted his dreams.

The Lord Roland did not know that his obsession with her, deep and intrinsic as it had become to his soul, was the one thing saving him from being given over completely to the command of another, much darker demon.