CHAPTER FOUR
“I cannot allow Elad to have the throne.”
Abgarthis turned. She had not moved, and she had spoken so softly that for a moment, he thought to ask her to repeat what she had said. He approached her. “My queen?”
“How can I?” Still Yta did not move; her hands were folded in a religious posture, a habit she had brought with her to the throne twenty-eight years earlier: the fingers locked together, the hands resting upon her belly—the joining of two equal halves, the right female and the left male, over the womb. Her eyes studied some far shadow of the room. “He will rip Athadia apart with his ambitions. He and Cyrodian—”
Her words rested there. Abgarthis marveled at the strength of her.
“I cannot decide,” Yta whispered. “I cannot decide, O adviser.”
Abgarthis sighed. He set down his cup. “Shall I call in astrologers?” he suggested. “Seers? Wine readers?”
“I am trapped upon the rock, between the serpent and the sword, Abgarthis.”
“I do not understand.”
“When I left the Holy Order of Hea, in my young womanhood, to marry that dead king, that was my counsel: ‘Upon the death of this man you will find yourself trapped on a rock between a serpent and a sword.’ Those are my sons, Abgarthis.”
Abgarthis studied his queen, noticed her paleness, and sensed, now, the frailty her strength sought to defend. He moved to light an oil lamp.
“No light, please, Abgarthis.”
“But night comes.”
“Let it come. Please.…”
He moved away, feeling the closeness of shadows.
“I carry a curse, Abgarthis. Do you know how deep my love was for the king? You understand, although you never took a wife. Do you know how I trembled with joy when I left Hea Isle to come to the continent? How I trembled with joy to become wife and queen to the young king?”
Abgarthis did not speak.
“When I heard from my mother’s sister at court that Evarris had loved me since boyhood and had suffered when I left for the Order—do you know how I thrilled at the idea of renouncing my vows? I was so young, and fiercely independent. Hea has cursed me for that one wild, happy moment.”
“I know that you loved Evarris.”
“I always wanted him to die first, adviser. I never wanted him to suffer this grief over my passing. But with our first child, and a second, then the third.… How,” she asked, “can a woman give birth to living sons, raise them and guide them, instill her love and patience and hopes in them, and see them become men who have nothing to do with what she saw in them as boys?”
Abgarthis felt compelled to speak. “Men are not boys, Queen Yta. They forget their boyhoods. Boyhood is the molting skin they leave behind.”
Yta drew in a slow breath. “A serpent, and a sword, and a rock,” she said. “I must go to the oracle, Abgarthis.”
“Queen Yta—”
“Council can delay itself for a day or two. I must speak with the Oracle at Teplis. I must go to her. And I will follow her words. Whatever they may be, I want—”
Abgarthis listened carefully.
“—I want to return to the goddess, Abgarthis. With all my strength, I do. I want to return to Hea Isle to die. But I want to remain queen, as well. I have never been a good queen. I was a good wife, a fair mother, but a poor queen. Now I want to be a good queen, yet I want to die and be with the Mother. I want to achieve and I want to begone, in the same moment. What could come of that? What does that mean?”
“That you are human. A woman. On the funeral day of your husband.”
“The world looks at me— I can feel their eyes now. I want to hide from their eyes.”
“Perhaps you should rest,” Abgarthis suggested, abandoning the hope that Yta might come to a decision tonight. And he rankled inside—rankled that he, an official, should have to put such pressure on her in her hour of grief, that it was necessary.
He softly crossed the room, thinking it best to leave; as he put his thin hand to the door latch, he looked back.
“Good night, my queen.”
Yta moved. Turned her head to regard him. Her features, white clay, seemed to betray surprise at the sight of him, as though she had just noticed his presence. And Abgarthis was distressed and astounded to see in Yta’s eyes an emotion he had never before known her to exhibit.
Carefully she turned her face away. “Yes, yes—good night.”
Fear.