Century of the Soldier: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume Two) (93 page)

"I would rather that his identity remained secret for now. He is an ambivalent sort, sire, a man unsure as to where his loyalties lie. They are sorry creatures, these fellows who cannot make up their minds what is black and what is white. Do you not think?" The mage's smile was disconcertingly shrewd.

"Indeed." There was a brief moment where their eyes locked, and something akin to a struggle of wills took place. Golophin dropped his gaze first. "Was there anything else, sire?"

"Yes, yes there was. I was wondering if - that is to say -" Now it was Corfe who looked down. Quietly, he said, "I thought you might call in on the Queen. She is very low, and the physicians can do nothing. Old age, they say, but I believe there is more to it than that, something to do with your... realm of expertise."

"I should be glad to, sire." And here the wizard's eyes met Corfe's unflinchingly. "I am flattered that you should trust me in such a grave matter." He bowed deeply. "I shall call on her at once, if that is convenient. Now, if you will excuse me sire, I have things to attend to."

"Your suite is adequate?"

"More than adequate, thank you, sire." The wizard bowed again, and left, his robes whispering about him.

The man had served kings faithfully and unstintingly for longer than Corfe's lifetime. Formio was merely being a cautious Fimbrian, that was all. The King of Torunna rubbed his temples wearily.
God, to get clear of the palace, the city, to get back on a horse and sleep under the stars for a while.
Sometimes he thought that there were so many things contained in his head that one day it would bulge and burst like an overripe melon. And yet when he was in the field it was as though his mind were as clear as the tip of an icicle.

I never should have been King
, he thought, as he had thought so often down the years.
But I am here now and there is no other.

He collected himself, strode across to the fire where Ensign Baraz stood stiff and forgotten.

"You've met the great Golophin, I see. What do you make of him?"

Baraz seemed startled by the question. "He asked me about my grandfather," he blurted out. "But there was not much I could tell him that is not in the history books. He wrote poetry."

"Golophin?"

"Shahr Ibim Baraz, sire.
The Terrible Old Man
he was called by his men."

"Yes. Sometimes we called him that too, and other things besides," Corfe said wryly. "Whatever happened to him?"

"No-one knows. He left camp and some say he set out for the steppes of his youth, at the very height of his victories."

"As well for Torunna he did. Baraz, Princess Mirren speaks very highly of you. She seems to think that you are a very gallant young officer and has asked that you accompany her on her daily rides from now on. What would you say to such a proposal?"

Baraz's face was a picture of pleasure and chagrin.

"I am honoured by the lady's confidence, sir, and I would esteem it a great privilege to be her morning escort."

"But."

"But I had hoped to be attached to the field army. I have not yet commanded anything more than a ceremonial guard, and I was hoping to be assigned to a tercio."

"You think that your time spent with the general staff is wasted then."

Baraz's dark face flushed darker. "Not at all, sir, but if an officer has never commanded men in the field, what kind of officer is he?"

Corfe nodded approvingly. "Quite right. I'll make a bargain with you, Baraz, one that you had best not give me cause to regret."

"Sir?"

"You will remain the Lady Mirren's escort for the time being, and will remain attached to the staff as interpreter. In fact I will have need of you in that capacity this very evening. But when the time comes I promise that you will have a combat command. Satisfied?"

Baraz smiled uncertainly. "I am at your command, of course, sir - I merely follow orders. But thank you, sir."

"Good. I will wish to see you in the audience wing of the palace at the sixth hour, in your best uniform. Dismissed."

Baraz saluted and left. There was a jauntiness to his stride that made Corfe pause. Before Aekir, there had been something of the young officer's eagerness in himself. That urge to make a name for himself, the desire to do the right thing. But in Aekir his soul had been re-tempered in a white-hot crucible, and had made of him someone else.

T
HE FACE WAS
like that of a bloodless doll, lost in the wasteland of blinding linen that surrounded it. So slight was the wizened form under the coverlet that it might not have been there at all, a mere trick of the lamplight perhaps, a shadow conjured up by the warm flames leaping in the hearth. But then the eyes opened, and life glistened out of them. Bloodshot with pain and exhaustion, they yet retained some of their old fire, and Golophin could well picture the beauty that had once filled the wasted face.

"You are the Hebrian mage, Golophin." The voice was slight but clear.

"Yes, lady."

"Karina, Prio, leave us." This to the two ladies-in-waiting who sat silent as mice in the shadows. They curtseyed, their skirts scraping on the stone floor, and snicked shut the door behind them.

"Come closer, Golophin. I have heard a lot about you."

The wizard approached the bed and, as the firelight fell on his ravaged face, the Queen's eyes widened slightly.

"Hebrion's fall left its mark on you, I see."

"It is a light enough burden, compared to some."

"My husband asked you to come here?"

"Yes, lady."

"That was thoughtful of him, but useless, as we both know. I would have sent for you in any case. There are so few folk of intelligence I can converse with these days. They all troop in here and look dutifully mournful - even Corfe - and I can get little sense out of them. I am near the end and that is that." She hesitated, and said in a more ragged tone, "My familiar is dead. He went before me. I had not imagined there could be such pain, such a loss."

"They are part of us," Golophin agreed, "and with their passing goes something of our own souls."

"You wizards, you can create them, I am told, whereas we Dweomer-poor witches must wait for another to come along. Myself, I shall have no need of another. But I do miss poor Arach." Then she seemed to collect herself. "Where are my manners? You may sit and have some wine, if you do not mind drinking from a glass a queen has used before you. I would call a maid, but then there would be an interminable fuss, and I grow impatient with advancing years."

"As do we all," Golophin smiled, filling the glass. "The old have less time to waste than the young."

She stared at him in silence for a minute and seemed to be testing words in her mouth. Her eyes were bright as fevered jewels.

"What of you now, Master Mage? Where do you call home?"

"I have none, lady. I am a vagabond."

"Will Hebrion see you again?"

"I hope so."

"You would be very welcome here as an advisor at court."

"A Hebrionese wizard? I think you may exaggerate."

"We have all manner of foreigners in Torunna these days. Formio is Fimbrian, Comillan a Felimbric tribesman, Admiral Berza a Gabrionese. Our Pontiff, Albrec, is an Almarkan. The flotsam and jetsam of the world end up in Torunna. You know why?"

"Tell me."

"The King. They are moths to his candle. Even those haughty Fimbrians come trickling over the mountains to join him, year by year. And in his heart he hates it. He would rather be the simple nobody he was before Aekir's fall. I have watched him these seventeen years and seen the joy leech out of him day by day. Only Mirren lifts his heart. Mirren, and the prospect of leading an army into battle."

Golophin stared at Odelia wonderingly. "Lady, your candour is disarming."

"Candour be damned. I will be dead within the week. I want you to do something for me."

"Anything."

"Stay here with him. Help him. When I go there will be only Formio left for him to confide in. You have spent your life in the service of Kings. End it in the service of this one. He is a soldier of genius, Golophin, but he needs someone to guide him through the silken quagmire that is the court. He, also, is less patient than he was, and will brook no opposition to what he sees as right. I would not have such a man end his days a tyrant, hated by all."

"Surely that is not possible."

"There is a black hole in his soul, and once he sets his mind to something he will shift earth and heaven to accomplish it, recking nothing of the consequences. In the years he has been King I have tried to make him see the value of compromise, but it is like trying to reason with a stone. He must have someone of experience in the darker wiles of the world beside him, to help him see that a sword is not the answer to everything."

"You flatter me, lady. But the confidence of a king is not an easily won thing."

"He admires competence and plain speaking. From what I have heard, you possess both. But there is another thing. When I am gone there will not be a single practitioner of the Dweomer at court, save only my daughter. She also needs guidance. There is a wellspring of power in her that quite eclipses anything in my experience. I would not have her explore the Dweomer alone." Odelia looked away. Her withered hands picked restlessly at the heavy weave of the coverlet. "I would she had been born without it. It would make her life easier.

"Your people and mine have chosen a different side in this war, Golophin. The wrong side. They had little choice in the matter, it is true, but they will suffer for it. They may even be destroyed by it."

Something astonishing dawned on Golophin.

"You are against this war."

Odelia managed a tight smile. "Not against it, but I have my doubts about fighting it to the bitter end. The Dweomer runs in my blood as it does in yours, and in my daughter's. I believe this Aruan to be evil, but many of the aims he espouses are not. We will not be fighting Merduks in the time to come, but fellow Ramusians - not that there is much to tell between us all now I suppose. And I do not want a pogrom of the Dweomer-folk to stain Corfe's victory, if he should gain one. There must come an end to this senseless persecution of those who practice magic."

Golophin felt a wave of relief. He was not a traitor, then. His doubts were not his alone. And Bardolin might not be the evil puppet he had feared, but a man trying to do the right thing in difficult circumstances. The thing he had so wanted to be true might well be so.

"Lady," he said, "you have my word that when the time comes I will be by your husband's side. If needs be I will make myself his conscience."

Odelia closed her eyes. "I ask no more. Thank you, Brother Mage. You have eased an old woman's mind."

Golophin bowed, and as he did he found himself thinking that here in Torunna he had found a king and queen who were somehow larger than the monarchs he had known hitherto. Abeleyn, who had become a good ruler before the end, even a great one, seemed now but a boy beside Corfe of Torunna, the Soldier-King. And this frail woman breathing her last before him; she was a worthy consort. There was a greatness here in this country that would remain the stuff of legend, no matter how many centuries passed it by.

He laid a hand on the Queen's forehead and her eyes fluttered open, the lashes feathering against his palm.

"Hush now."

The Dweomer in Odelia had sunk down to a smoking ember. It would never kindle into light again, but it was all that was keeping her alive. That, and this woman's indomitable will. She might have been a mage - the promise was there - but she had never undergone the training necessary to make her powers bloom. Anger stirred in Golophin. How many others, humble and great across this blinkered world, had wasted their gifts similarly? Bardolin was right. The world could have been different, could still be different. There might still be time.

He gave Odelia sleep, a heavy healing sleep, and with his own powers he stoked up that last ember glowing within her, coaxed it into a last flicker of life. Then he sat back, poured himself some more of the fragrant wine, and mused upon the crooked course of this darkening earth.

Eleven

A
URUNGZEB STIRRED LAZILY
with a kiss of silk hissing about his hams. "I like that woman. I have always liked her. As direct as a man, but with as mind as subtle as an assassin's."

He rolled over in the bed and the sturdy hardwood frame creaked under him. The white-limbed girl who shared it with him scurried nimbly out of the way as his vast bulk settled and he sighed comfortably.

Ancient Akran, the Vizier, leant on a staff that had once been ceremonial but now was genuinely necessary. He stood on the other side of a curtain of gauzy silk which hung like fog around the Sultan's monumental four-poster.

"She is... remarkable, my Sultan, it must be said. Making arrangements for her husband's wedding while she, his wife, is yet living. That argues a formidable degree of will."

"He will accept, of course. But I find myself worrying all the same. Perhaps we sent out the embassy too soon. I am not convinced that he will see past the unseemly haste of the thing. Corfe is as cold and murderous as a winter-wolf, but there is a stiff propriety about him. These Ramusians - well, they are not Ramusian any longer I suppose, but our brothers-in-faith after all - they see marriage in a different light to the rest of us. The Prophet, may God be good to him, never said that a man should have one spouse only, and for a monarch, well... How can a man maintain his dignity with just the one wife? How can he be wholly sure of a son to follow him? Torunna's Queen may be a marvellous woman in many respects, but that did not stop her womb from proving as barren as a salted field. Or near as damn it. One child in sixteen years, and a girl at that. And the bearing of it rendered her a virtual invalid by all accounts. If he has any red blood in his veins at all he ought to jump at this chance, Corfe. A beautiful young woman to share his bed and bear him sons? And she
is
beautiful, Akran. As fair as her mother once was.