CHAPTER EIGHT

The Delios made port at Athad that afternoon, tying up at the northern docks. Adred disembarked and entered the capital, with its endless tall towers and walls, huge fountains, escarpments of temples and public and government administration buildings, its wide boulevards and squares and gardens filled with everyone. He had been away for more than four months, hoping in his absence to live down the two disappointments that had seen him leave: his father’s death early in the year and a silly-serious love affair with a nobleman’s daughter.

It was raining. Despite that, Adred found his spirits rising, anticipating seeing Dursoris and Orain and the mothering Queen Yta. He stopped at a public bathhouse (as he had promised himself he would), and then took rooms in the Indura, which provided lodgings a few blocks from the palace. He visited his banking house and was greeted there by old friends of his father’s; while withdrawing forty in long gold, Adred told them how things were with Count Mantho in the uplands. (Old-timers still referred to Kendia as the uplands, although the state and its immediate surroundings had ceased to be foreign long ago, and business with the traders there had been done on good terms since the second year of Evarris’s reign.)

The rain was a downpour by the time Adred reached the palace. He waited for a moment beneath the propylon set before the east wall’s pedestrian gate, then dashed on through and across the brick patio to the small inner courtyard. Roofed walkways edged the gardens there, and Adred followed one, sidestepping puddles the best he could. As he jogged up the steps to the wide front portico, thunder boomed from high beyond the Bithitu Temple, and Adred glanced back, expecting to see lightning. Under the portico roof, he shook the rain from his hair, then took the last few steps to the entrance doors; at the top, he paused to scrape the mud from the bottom of his boots, adding wedges of drying muck alongside those of others who had entered this morning.

A servant in the reception area greeted Count Adred and requested that he wait for a moment while Princess Orain was informed of his arrival. The palace seemed uncommonly quiet—there were still many in mourning, no doubt—and Adred noticed the long rows of black cloth that still hung against the stone walls of high-ceilinged entrances and hallways. When the servant returned to conduct Adred upstairs, the count in­quired about Evarris’s funeral and learned what he had already surmised, that he had arrived too late.

Directed, on the third floor, toward Orain’s apartment, Adred moved down the corridor, reaching inside his shoulder cape to take out a package he had brought for young Galvus. A gift from Kendia: a book of the humanistic philosophy of Radulis. He had no doubts what Prince Cyrodian would do with such “anti-militarist, anti-expansionist, humanitarian trash” should he find his son reading it.

Orain was standing in the center of her receiving chamber, waiting nervously, as Adred walked in. He closed the door behind him, undid his cape and dropped it onto a chair, then merely stood there, feeling awkward in the gray room and looking with puzzlement at Cyrodian’s wife.

“Orain?”

She ran to him abruptly, her naked feet slapping on the stone. Adred, surprised, held out his arms, and Orain hurried into them and embraced him strongly.

“Thank the gods you’re here!”

“Orain, what—”

She began to sob. Adred held her close for a moment, self-consciously dropping the Radulis on the chair beside his cape. He took Orain’s shoulders in his hands and gently pushed her away. Looking her in the eyes: “What’s happened? Orain, what’s wrong?”

“All I’ve been doing is crying and crying,” she confessed. “Adred, they’re going to cause a civil war!”

“Who? Who is?”

“The princes! Elad and Cyrodian—Dursoris! They’re going to be at each other’s throats!”

“Tell me what’s happened. Where are they now?”

“They’ve ridden off to the Oracle at Teplis. Yta’s gone there, too. She left this morning; they followed. Oh, Adred! They all want the throne; they were just waiting for Evarris to die!”

“Come here. Orain, come here. Sit down. Have some wine.”

“I can’t drink any wine.”

“Did you have any breakfast? Lunch?”

“I can’t eat.”

“Here. Sit. Now, drink some wine. Go on. It’ll calm you.”

As she did so, he rang a bell on one of the tables to alert a servant and told that one to have Orain’s plate brought in. He watched her carefully until the servant returned, then made Orain eat some lunch, and he insisted on her drinking a full goblet of wine. As she ate, she told him, clearly and succinctly, all that had happened within the past few days.

Adred was surprised. What had he returned to?

“Mother!”

Galvus knocked on the outer door, then came in and said a bold hello to his Uncle Adred. Bold, because now he was the man of the palace, for a day or two, and had some very real knowledge of what was occurring.

Adred gave him the Radulis, and Galvus was ecstatic.

“But keep it to yourself,” Adred warned him. “If anyone around here finds you with it, they’ll probably have my head.”

“Do you know how long I’ve wanted a copy of this?” Galvus asked. “Did you find it in Kendia?”

Adred nodded. “Just read it with patience, Galvus. The world won’t change overnight. Radulis gets carried away with himself sometimes, but neither the prophet nor the gods are going to come down and start a new world.”

Orain spoke. “Galvus, would you leave us now, please?”

“Yes, Mother.” He told Adred, “She still wants to protect me from everything.”

“Of course she does,” Adred smiled. “Don’t blame her.”

“Oh, I don’t. Thank you for the book. Thank you very much.”

“You’re more than welcome. We’ll talk later.”

When he had gone, Orain asked, “What do you think of all this, Adred?”

He stared into her face for a long time. He listened to the rain. He thought then of the Dursoris he had known, the princes he had known, the Yta he had known. He was drinking wine, Orain’s wine, on an empty stomach, and he was becoming light-headed.

“What, Adred?”

Her face, as gray as the rain-dampened shadows, but as warm and close and tearful as memories that are good memories.

Perhaps because of the wine, perhaps because Orain was close and near, perhaps because Galvus was the only man of blood in the palace, Adred remembered himself and the robed scholar on the Delios, that morning when the birds had wheeled in the sky, arced down, dipped into the sea, and died.

“Surely this is a bad omen.…”

“Adred?”

“A bad omen, isn’t it, Orain?” he said. “What else can the oracle say? It’s surely a bad omen.”

Athad, the capital, which had seemed to him large and colorful and full of every sort of vitality, every memory, able to manifest everything to him, had shrunk to the gray sound of rain within the closeness of Orain’s chamber.