Voices of Blaze Page 9

  “Me?”

  Morghiad nodded, and looked back to the contents of his cup. The insect was now floating lifelessly on the surface. He drank the wine greedily.

  “But I haven’t been in Calidell in years, and even then it was only for Tal’s funeral. And before that… it’s been decades! I don’t even know-”

  “You will do this well. You’re good at talking, and that’s the most important thing. Med has provided you with some reading material to make sure you know what she needs. I am to remain impartial, but of course, if there’s anything else you require, I will help you.”

  Kalad set his mug down and spat, “I never asked for this. I never asked to be a bloody son of royalty! It’s not my responsibility.”

  “The people of Calidell paid their taxes, and those taxes are what put the clothes on your back. They paid for your education. You owe it to them. You can save them from years – centuries of bloodshed.”

  “I never asked for it.”

  “I never asked to be king, but that is what I got.” That was a small lie, Morghiad pondered as soon as he had uttered the words, but it did not matter now. Who could have performed the role better than he had at that particular time? “There were far worse situations I could have been born into. Well, I was born into a worse situation – try having a mad oracle for a father who shuts you in a box every night when you fail to beat him at sword fighting, and has no qualms about cutting off your limbs.” Acher had never done that to him, for all of his faults and cruelties.

  “The Daisain… locked you in a box?”

  Morghiad nodded. He could still remember the stink of it, and the feel of the old, rotting arms or legs that had been locked in with him.

  “Why didn’t you run away?”

  “I was a child. I knew nothing else. I thought it was normal, or that I deserved it. And he would tell me it was part of completing my mission; he told me every one of the lies I needed to hear.”

  Kalad was silent for a moment, and his eyes were focussed only on the table surface before him. Eventually he said, “It still doesn’t excuse what you did. You left us. You left mother-”

  “My actions were dictated twice by a madman. I cannot excuse them – I regret them deeply, but I cannot undo them either.” He paused. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I don’t know what else I can say to put this right, or do for that matter.”

  Still without eye contact, Kalad said, “Show me these documents.”

  Well, that had to be a start at least. Morghiad dug the scrolls out of their bags and handed the first of them to his son. While Kalad read, he went to gaze out of one of the windows, and Danner came to join him. Strangely, the wolf seemed quite keen for affection from him, and Morghiad obliged by stroking his large, grey-furred head.

  “This is all coded,” Kalad said.

  “Can’t have sensitive information falling into the wrong hands.”

  “Yes, but I haven’t used any of these codes in years. I don’t even remember half of the letters.”

  Morghiad kept his sigh quiet. He was not really supposed to know their content, but ignorance would harm Calidell more than inappropriate knowledge. It was not as if everyone else in Astalon would trust him to be innocent of Calidell’s secrets, anyway. “Tell me what you have translated, and perhaps my hints will help you with the rest.” He went to look over Kalad’s shoulder.

  “Pudding adventure over the southern land…” Kalad began, running his finger along the line.

  “No, it’s deserts advancing over the southern lands. What? Let me see that!”

  Kalad handed the parchment to Morghiad without argument, and he read through it rapidly. By the end of it, he felt as if his heart had hardened to ice. Calidell’s green fields and forest were turning to dust, and none of Medea’s efforts at making rain appeared to be enough to prevent the march of the sands. Why had she not mentioned this to him? Was this happening to all countries?

  He placed the scroll back into his son’s hands and returned to his staring place at the window pane. Sokiri, at least, was still very green. Though now that he thought about it, it had not rained in the days he had been here. It was always supposed to rain in Sokiri. “How has the weather been since you came here?”

  Kalad grunted into his cup. “Oh, they’re always going on about it – probably one reason why the wives don’t get as much attention as they should. The husbands are too busy fussing over the lack of rain. Makes the spirewoods shrink or something – well, they say it’s the spirewoods...”

  Morghiad looked to the point where the walls of the room met the bark of the tree it was tied to. Someone had recently stuffed the gaps with fresh-sawn timber, glue and nails. “It looks like this peace is going to be more important than I had initially thought.”

  Chapter 5

  Her eyes had peculiar lines about them, now that she examined them more closely in the mirror. When had those appeared? Was it the effect of sitting on that damned hard throne all day? No, she thought, pulling away from the mirror. It was because she was not getting enough fresh air in her lungs. She could not remember the last time she had held a sword, or had ridden out on her horse to visit the panthers in the forest. There were so few of them there now, mostly scared away by the number of people who rambled through the woods or had cut the trees back for farmland.

  A reserve, she thought. That had been on her list of projects to complete for some time now, but other problems continued to take precedence. She looked across to the table in the middle of her chambers – many hundreds of years old, but a recent goodwill gift from Forda. It was made of heavy winter oak, carved to resemble a panther’s head and painted in the blue and gold of the old Gialdin flag – just as it had been when a previous Jade’an had gifted it to the Fordans.

  Medea reached to the pile of objects at the centre of it, and picked one of them up. It was freezing cold against her skin, and clear and hard like ice, but it would only melt under certain conditions. She had managed to make ten of the things over two days by skimping on sleep and using every last dreg of energy and wit she had. While they lay upon the wooden table, they looked innocent enough, like shards of glass from a broken window, but when they were brought near the white walls of Gialdin, they could prove to be an altogether more serious set of implements.

  She had already carved up several sections of what little remained of Mirel’s prison cage, but it had only revealed to her how dangerous her latest creation was. If these cutters were to fall into the wrong hands, it could spell disaster for Gialdin City’s residents, for its defences and its palace. And so she had built in some protection. Just like ice, these knives would melt away to nothing as they were used. She sincerely hoped that her solution had not come too late.

  Medea rode to the site of the blight amidst her ever-growing entourage of soldiers, but kept her new blades in an unremarkable bag at the front of her saddle. The Watchers were still holding their vigil when she arrived, but their hopes and prayers had done nothing to hinder the advance of the rot. It had grown significantly overnight.

  “Nine of your most dedicated - to me,” she said aloud when she had dismounted.

  The Watchers all looked between one another for a moment, but after some shuffling and murmuring, nine men and women stepped forward.

  “You have proven your loyalty to this city, and to this nation with your devotion,” Medea began, “I hold here a solution to the disease that has set itself deep into our fine walls, and I will trust no one else but you to use it. It is not a cure to the disease, and it will not rebuild what has already been lost. We must think of the blighted walls as limbs poisoned with pinh. They must be cut away where the flesh is still good. Each of you must cut through the walls where they are still strong. Take one of these knives each…” She handed them out as she spoke, and nodded to her soldiers to see that each Watcher was properly guarded. “Save as much as you can, but do not leave any trace of rot behind, lest it take root a second time. I shall take the tenth kni
fe, and cut with you.”

  Medea approached the nearest section of afflicted wall – a piece that had once been the side of a shop, hitched up her skirts and clambered onto a box that lay at the side of it. Then, she jammed the blade into the crystalline surface, and sawed down through it like it was a piece of bread. Softer than cheese, she remarked to herself. The knife turned to water beneath its cutting surface, but enough of it was left to slice through another ten yards of structure at least. The diseased part soon fell away, and when she turned around, there was a rapturous cry of joy from the people who watched. Applause rang out against the walls that had survived, and for the first time in her rule, Medea was glad to be queen.

  The sea was a calm mirror of turquoise for once, with barely a ripple moving through it. Though the sailors all thought it a terrible thing when there was no wind or disturbance to move them along, Morghiad thought it a blessed relief to be free of the rolling waves. Besides, the breeze would be ruffling everyone’s shirts and filling the sails again before this time tomorrow. He could feel its south-western whispers teasing a corner of his mind.

  Morghiad glanced across the deck to his son, and observed him taking a seat at a foldaway table to deal a set of gaming cards for himself. Kalad made no invitation for his father to play. It was strange, Morghiad thought, to see his youngest son with a beard that covered most of his face. It made him appear aged, wizened – as if he had walked the earth for thousands of years rather than a few tens. How odd to see this grown, weary man before him when the Kalad he had known the best had been just a baby.

  Then again, Morghiad had been a father at this boy’s age. All of that did seem like a very, very long time ago.

  Morghiad went to join him, and found a convenient quarterdeck pillar to lean against while he struck up conversation. “You ever thought about having children, Kal?”

  “Is this about my-” He changed the tone of his voice as if to impersonate someone else’s. “-overriding duty to my family – the next in line?”

  “Ah, no, actually – it wasn’t about that.” Morghiad tried to shake the image of having stepped into a great, steaming mound of cow manure. “I was trying to ask about what you wanted.”

  Kalad sighed. “It seems an unfair thing to do whenever I think about it. I never chose to be born. You just… brought me into this world and expected me to deal with it. ‘Here,’ you said, ‘I think I’m giving you a good start in life, but really, your job will be to sort out all the problems I’ve left behind.’ That is the real purpose of children, but tell me what you think. Tell me why - why did you have children? Selfishness? Because you just… wanted them to add something to your life? Perhaps your marriage had become boring by that point.”

  Not for the first time, Morghiad was glad there were few other passengers on this ship. A single crewman stalked past them some yards away, his feet thumping rhythmically upon the boards of the ship. Made from Sokirin hardwood, Morghiad noted. It had to be just about the finest timber in the world. “There are better ways of posing your questions to me, Kal, as you well know.” His son had clearly decided to prod at his boundaries like a teenager. Perhaps that was to be expected, since they had never enjoyed the opportunity of that particular interaction. “My marriage with your mother has never been boring. We did not need children to make it better – for a long time we thought it wouldn’t even be possible, and we were content to accept it. I never felt with her that anything was missing.”

  “So why did you have us at all?”

  “I knew, or at least, I thought that I would not live forever. I worried what would happen to her after I was gone. I wanted to leave her with an army of children to watch over her – something of me that would not die. It was not so much about heirs for Calidell or any of that – we could have nominated someone to be next in line if we had needed to. And we wanted you because we thought we would all be content and that you would have a good life. And the reality of family is just that – there is much happiness to be gained from it, but it does not come easily, or without a price. I’ve learned that much. Perhaps you’re right - perhaps that part of it is selfish. We wanted children because it would make us happy, and we protected you because your safety put us at ease. Love is a selfish thing, I think.”

  “You are happy to admit that, and you still continue to be with my mother?”

  Morghiad unfolded his arms and inhaled a deep breath of the hot, humid air that hung about them. It was very nearly warm enough to thaw his bones. “I don’t have a choice. It takes over everything. The Daisain told your mother that she was selfish for marrying me, and that the family we’d created interfered with her duties. He believed she was born for higher things than pleasing herself. But he did not see everything. She has proved she can do both.”

  “Has she?”

  “Of course.” Artemi would not be in The Crux forever. She would return, and he would be there to help her fix the problems of the world when she did.

  Kalad did not look convinced, which was really very unfair of him. “To answer your question: no children for me. It would be selfish of me to give them life, and then expect them to cope with all the horrors they would inherit from me.”

  A memory came to Morghiad then, of Kalad’s birth and the fearful time it had been for everyone. Artemi had been barely conscious at the moment she had delivered him, which was probably a good thing. It had been no easy task for Morghiad to snap the collarbone of his own son just to free the child’s shoulders. Not easy at all, and not something he would ever mention to anyone, ever. “You could take in an orphan. Your mother and I considered that-”

  “Not for me.” Kalad forced a thin smile.

  “I understand.”

  His son looked at him as if he was not convinced that Morghiad understood, but he did. There were many more ways to find joy in life than children. Morghiad hoped that his son would find at least one of those ways before it was too late.

  After his somewhat clumsy attempt to converse with his son, Morghiad challenged him to a game, and they played for an hour or two. Of course, Morghiad proved himself to be just as blundering at cards, and lost each round spectacularly. He never had liked gambling.

  When he returned to his bunk in the evening, his thoughts rapidly focussed on the empty bed before him and the woman whose naked body should have filled it. He still could not detect any sign of her stream amidst the many thousands, and that concerned him deeply. She had been gone for three months now. During their marriage in this life, they had only been separated for a matter of days at a time, and in the life before, it had been a fortnight. In Morghiad’s first life, they had parted during the Kemeni Rebellion, and that had been three protracted weeks of painful longing for them both. But three months… three months was an eternity.

  The monsters stirred in the darkest reaches of his mind, kicking and stretching just as Tallyn had when he had been inside his mother. Morghiad had managed to control them for the most part, though he feared just how much longer he would be able to do that for. If he was tested as the Sokirin man had tested him…

  Seek the light.

  The light is cruel. It burns us just as it will burn everything.

  Morghiad shifted his thoughts to those of happier days, and drifted off with an image of his wife in his mind, her face smiling and her hair burning brightly in the Sunidaran sun.

  The next morning, he ventured to the hold to feed Tyshar and provide the horse with some company. Kalad was already there, having tended to his own animal, and was giving Tyshar a good nose rub.

  “How old is this thing, anyway?” he asked.

  “Shouldn’t speak of him like that. He gets rather sensitive,” Morghiad replied.

  Tyshar swept his great head away from Kalad’s touch and whickered as if to prove the point.

  “Well, he’ll be getting on for one hundred and twenty, I should think.” Morghiad opened Tyshar’s box and led the horse out so that he could begin clearing the old wood shavings. Given the calm
oceans, Tyshar had been permitted to wander more than usual in the confined space, and had left more than his fair share of mess. “Still as strong as he was when I was just a boy – the first time around. He’ll be riding to war for centuries to come. You know, I have been thinking about what you said last night – about love and selfishness… and why you’re here. Kal, you were born from two parents who loved each other, and we treasured you - surely that is better than being conceived for politics?” He paused in his stable-cleaning activities to measure his son’s reaction.

  “Politics might have meant my parents were less selfish.” Kalad grinned then, and began chuckling softly to himself.

  Morghiad’s return smile was weak.

  “Ah, I don’t know. Perhaps it was hard for me – the way it was, mother never stopped talking of you when I was little. I sometimes thought she would have given me up to have you back.”

  “She would never have done that.”

  “No? Hmm.” Kalad’s eyes dropped to the floor, but instead of saying more, he fetched a second fork to help Morghiad with the mucking out.

  “It was difficult for her,” Morghiad said. “She is practiced at fighting, yes, and managing countries. But raising a boy without his father there and ruling at the same time – well, no one would find that easy, or even get it all right. Not even Artemi Fireblade.”

  “When you have heroes for parents, everyone tells you how perfect they are all of the time.”

  “-and it’s not the reality,” Morghiad finished with a small smile. “Well, next time I see her, I shall reprimand your mother for speaking so well of me. How is that?”

  Kalad grinned back, and soon they were walking Tyshar about the small deck in order to give him some semblance of exercise.