Sovereign

CHAPTER 20

In the throne room of Areava Rosetheme, surrounded by the pomp of the court and the most powerful and influential of Kendran citizenry dressed in all their finery, Orkid Gravespear found himself dwelling on his poor dead nephew.

Orkid felt guilty he was not able to grieve for him the way he wanted to. Sendarus had been in so many ways the son he had desired, and had been the linchpin in his brother's plan to raise Aman from vassal state to equal partner with Kendra in the Kingdom of Grenda Lear. And yet instead of grieving he was wondering who could count all the possibilities in one life?

He watched Areava sitting on her throne, the chancellor in him admiring the manner in which she carried out her official duties, the bearing she maintained, her aloofness and majesty, and at the same time the man in him beholding the woman he knew he loved beyond almost all else.

Almost all else, he told himself, knowing that his work for Aman had been the reason behind everything he had done in his adult life.

Perhaps until now, he added, recognising that the death of Sendarus had released the full strength of his feelings for Areava, feelings he had suspected for many years but always held at bay.

Well, ask no more, old friend. Now I can love in the name of duty.

'If Amemun were here now, he would turn to him and ask him about the possibilities contained in one life, and he could almost hear the man's voice in his ear saying, 'Many possibilities, but always one choice.'

He thought he felt his friend's presence then, and he half turned to check over his shoulder. A member of the Twenty Houses stood there, ignoring him, her attention fully on the queen. His eyes settled again on Areava, seeing beauty and strength and honour in her features, in her voice, in her actions. These days, even when she was nowhere near him he found his thoughts settling on her, disturbing his peace and concentration. He recognised what he felt was passion, and smiled ruefully to think that Amemun would admire the elegance of duty and passion combining while still being confused by the latter; Amemun had never had any time for passion.

Orkid now made excuses to be with Areava. When once he would blithely take care of every little detail in his duty as chancellor, he would now store them up as items for discussion in his private meetings with the queen. When she held something, he imagined it was his hand; when she lightly touched something, he imagined it was his cheek; when she spoke, he imagined her words were just for him.

He was a child again, he knew. In so many ways helpless and exposed to feelings < against which he no longer had the defence of duty. He found himself obsessed by all the possibilities now contained in his life and the knowledge that they were all meaningless without Areava herself making the single choice he so desperately wanted her to make: to love him in return.

Dejanus did not dare be at the funeral pyre himself; it had taken too many gold pieces to get the innkeeper of the Lost Sailor Tavern to keep quiet the fact he had been with Ikanus the night she had died. Or that her body had been covered in terrible bruises and her left cheekbone fractured. Still, when he found out from one of the tavern's waiters—and another of his informants—that Ikanus's ashes had been thrown over the sea near the harbour so that some of them might be blown by the wind or carried by the currents to her home province of Lurisia, he made sure he visited the spot and threw a last gold coin into the water to help her on her way. It soothed his conscience, and even helped him raise a tear.

But, he sighed to himself as he turned away from the sea and headed back to the palace, it had been her fault.

He was elemental, he thought. Wild and pure, his feelings as original as life itself, not bound by social constraints or self-deception or strange customs. He would pass through this world untainted, letting be when let be, but reacting without regret like a terrible storm to any threat.

In the warm autumn heat, with the city strong and proud around him, with the palace of Kendra rising over the world, he was afraid of nothing. He liked the day much more than the night; by day everything was plainly visible, deception could be exposed, he could stride through the streets so sure and confident of his own power and his willingness to use it. On a day like this he could even confront Orkid.

Except on this day there was no need. He was commander of the Great Army. He would be famous throughout the world. Dejanus the Conqueror. Even the name of the vaunted General Elynd Chisal would fade in comparison; it was ironic that this would happen at the expense of the General's own son. Who was also the son of that hag Usharna, he reminded himself, the great antislaver, the great antimercenary.

'The Great Bitch,' he smirked to himself.

He raised his eyes to the palace where the new bitch lived, Usharna's whelp. When he had finished with Lynan and his rabble of Chett nomads she could not but help look to him for her security. He would be the most powerful man in the Kingdom. Even Orkid Gravespear, chancellor, Amanite, enemy, would shrink in the shadow Dejanus would cast over the Kingdom.

On that day, on that glorious day, he would never be frightened of anything ever again.

For the first time in his life Olio felt responsible for himself. It was a strange, partly unwelcome feeling. He had tasted responsibility before, towards his sister especially, and later towards all the sick and dying he believed he could heal, but he saw now it had been a hollow thing because he had not understood the need to take charge of his own fate, that entry into true adulthood that comes with a clear understanding of your own mortality and vulnerability to external events.

The moment of realisation had struck him that morning when he was dressing. He had finished putting on his clothes and was replacing the Key of the Heart around his neck. He saw it reflected in the dress mirror and it caught his attention. Such a simple, beautiful amulet. It had stolen his mind and only reluctantly surrendered it back to him. It had been his fault. He had been a child playing with a thing of power, and had escaped by the thinnest of threads.

His eyes moved up from the amulet to meet his own gaze, and for an instant he did not recognise the man standing before him. It was that surprise of meeting his own self, older, wiser and wounded, that made him realise that no one except he could be responsible for his own life. That as a prince of the realm—as Areava's brother, more to the point—his life would be spent in service to the Kingdom, but the part that belonged to him and him alone he could now share or keep apart as he saw fit.

He went to his desk and sorted through the papers there. They were minutes from the council, left for him by Harnan Beresard. He had a lot to catch up with. He glanced outside. The sun was shining, the air was warm. He would rather go down to the harbour and stare at the sea, watch the ships leave with filled sails, listen to the seagulls and kestrels calling overhead.

No. Later perhaps, after the day's council meeting, and he could not faithfully attend that until he had read up on the meeting he had missed. Still, that did not mean he could not enjoy the sun. He picked up the papers and left his chambers, heading for the courtyard in the church's wing of the palace. When he got there he saw two novices in one corner speaking softly to one another, and a priest sitting under a tree, praying softly. Olio sat on a stone bench without shade across it and started reading. A short while later he stopped. While a part of his mind had been dealing with the dry recordings of the secretary, teasing out the most important details and subconsciously arranging them into some kind of overall picture, another part was preoccupied with a question he had been asking himself ever since he had recovered, but which in light of his decision to accept all his responsibilities now took on greater urgency. What was he to do with the Key of the Heart?

Powl studied the sheet in front of him. On it he had carefully inscribed all the letters he had deciphered from the embossed spines of the volumes in Colanus's tower. It had taken many days of careful and secretive work, using the lightest paper he could find placed over each spine and gently rubbed with charcoal. He had checked inside the volumes themselves to make sure each symbol he copied actually existed somewhere in clear text, then arranged each group in rows according to their volume's place in the tower shelf. One hundred and twenty groups in all.

There were forty different symbols, seventeen of which he recognised from the common Theare alphabet. In thirty-one of the groups these symbols appeared together without any of the unrecognisable ones. At first the discovery had excited him, but almost instantly he realised the groups still made no sense to him. What did KELORA mean, for example, or KADRIAL? These were not words he knew, and there was no one in his experience with more knowledge of the world and everything in it.

He understood in an abstract way that he was giving himself this problem to solve because the most important problem in his life—discovering the name of God—was proving so elusive. He still held on to the faint possibility that these volumes with their secret and arcane knowledge might provide him with that name, but at the same time knew deep in his heart that the profane, no matter how extraordinary, would never reveal the sacred.

Nevertheless there was a great mystery here, one never solved by all the prelates, magikers and primates that had come before him. To be the first since Colanus himself to read the volumes, or even a portion of a single page, would be exhilarating.

Placing a hand on the one volume he had brought from the tower to his own room, he returned his attention to the sheet, his eye tracing each symbol and then scanning down each column of groups, looking for any clue that might open a window—just a crack—into this ancient language.

There was a knock on his door. He quickly folded the sheet and tucked it into the volume from the tower, then hid the volume itself under a stack of heavy books from the church library.

'Yes?'

Father Rown entered. 'Here are Haman's minutes to the last council meeting and the agenda for the meeting at noon. I've gone over them as you requested, and made some notations in the column for your attention.'

Powl took the papers. 'Thank you.'

Rown nodded and started closing the door.

'Father?' Rown popped his head back into the room. 'I am very grateful for your diligence and patience on my behalf.'

'Thank you, your Grace,' Rown said, smiling in surprise, and left.

Powl looked at the minutes, checked the notations made by Rown, glanced at the agenda. Nothing unexpected. He scanned the pages quickly to make sure he had not missed anything. That's when he saw it. He stopped, looked up to clear his vision, and looked down again. It was still there. A pattern. In fact, two patterns. The first was Harnan's habit of adding a mark, which in and of itself had no meaning, to denote the start of each main point in the minutes. The second was the use of another mark, also without any meaning in and of itself, to separate items in the new agenda. Not all symbols represented letters, and perhaps not all groups of letters represented words. With sudden excitement he put the papers aside and dug out the sheet from the Colanus volume. What if it were the same here? What if, for example, two of the groups he could transcribe did not represent KELORA and KADRIEL but ELORA and ADRIEL, and the K symbol was nothing more than extra emphasis or even some kind of stylistic decoration? What if the K symbol represented an entire idea or thought and not a single sound?

God help me! He slumped back in his chair, his excitement evaporating as quickly as it had come. How could he possibly explore all the variants? He would need a dozen lifetimes. What had he been thinking?

He cursed himself. The problem was he had not been thinking. He had been avoiding those issues he most needed to confront because of his guilt at the way he had gained the primacy. With his own hands, the hands with which he wrote sermons and meaningless entries for the Book of Days, he had suffocated his predecessor. He had committed a murder in the name of God but for his own sake. His mind was occupying itself in inconsequential detail while his soul was lost altogether.

He picked up the sheet, ready to tear it in two, but stopped himself. He could not let this go. Profane or not, irrelevant or not, it was a mystery, and if he could not solve the mystery of God's name then at least he could try and solve another. And it would not be just for himself. He was a priest and a learned man, the two occupations so closely related they were almost the same thing in his mind, so using his learning to increase knowledge for knowledge's sake was not simply a profane act but touched on something indefinably yet tangibly sacred.

The sun was slanting almost directly through his window. It was nearly noon. He hid the sheet again, covered the ancient volume. He would come back to it later. He would find the window to this great secret and open it, and who knew what he might learn?

Matters were almost under control again.

Areava sat at the head of the council table, aware her Kingdom had been damaged but was still largely intact. She and the state had received terrible blows and survived. She had loyal councillors before her, drawn from the best her royal city had to offer. She had her trusted chancellor to her right, the selfless Orkid Gravespear. She had her mighty constable sitting opposite her, suitably chastised but eager to prove himself anew, she was sure. Most importantly, by her left side once again, her brother Olio. She placed her left hand over his right; he curled his fingers around hers.

'This meeting of my executive council is now in session. You will see on your agenda that the first item for discussion is the creation and organisation of the Great Army, and attached to the agenda is a schedule for recruitment and supply put together by the Great Army Committee for our consideration.'

The councillors quickly scanned the document. Since the schedule had been hurriedly produced after Dejanus's dismissal from the committee, Areava closely watched his reaction for any sign of anger or rebuke, but she could not read his expression and he remained silent. Among the others there were muttered comments about the cost and some sharp intakes of breath at the scale of the operation, but no one fell off their seat or immediately raised any objections.

'I have communicated to King Tomar our intention to raise the Great Army's standard in southern Chandra.'

'Has he replied?' Marshal Triam Lief asked.

'Not yet, but the message was sent only recently.'

'He will not object, surely?' Mayor Shant Tenor piped up.

'We are asking a great deal of him,' the marshal said.

'I do not expect any objection from his Majesty,' Areava said firmly.

'Perhaps another letter stressing the urgency of the situation is in order?' the mayor suggested.

Areava opened her mouth to say she did not think that would be necessary, but before she could, Orkid said he would draft a letter for the queen's signature if that was the council's advice. Irritated by the compromise when in her view no compromise was necessary, she agreed in order to stop anyone thinking she and Orkid were dissenting.

'Are there any questions regarding the schedule?'

'How are we to meet the requirements for all this food?' asked Xella Povis, the head of the merchants' collective. 'Can the Kingdom's farmers produce enough, and if they can, how do we get it all to southern Chandra?'

'Getting it there will be no problem if we use the navy,' Fleet Admiral Setchmar said quickly.

'We may be able to use merchant traders for the transport of most of the supplies,' Orkid pointed out, saying what Xella Povis wanted to hear. 'That would leave the navy free for other duties.'

Areava let the conversation go and carefully observed her councillors at work. Most of them took their cue from self-interest, but she had expected that. Cleverly, the Great Army Committee had created a schedule that would pour at least some of the crown's money into the hands of every commercial interest, and distribute at least some of the political gain from the formation of the army to the constable, the marshal and the fleet admiral, The result was that to some extent everyone in the Kingdom would feel that not only had they made a contribution to the defence of the realm but that they would also gain some benefit from it apart from defeating the outlaw Prince Lynan and his band of marauding Chetts. She wondered, almost wistfully, if any of them were capable of working for the Kingdom's benefit without any expectation of reward. At that point Olio removed his hand from hers to organise the papers in front of him. She glanced across and saw that he had actually written comments on his copy of the minutes. Surprised, she looked up at him, but he was concentrating on what was being discussed and did not notice.

Yes, she thought, at least one here is capable of that, and her heart filled with pride.