CHAPTER TWENTY
Late in the evening, with the smoke of the funeral still in the air, untouched cups of wine before them, and with the silence as heavy as clouds, Adred and Galvus sat in Adred’s chambers.
“Why?” Galvus wanted to know. “Why?”
Adred shook his head.
“I feel as though I’ve turned into someone else, like I’m rock or steel. It’s not real. My body doesn’t feel like I’m real.”
Adred understood. “Cry, if you want to. Let go, Galvus.”
“Do you think I’m still a boy?”
“Men cry.”
“I don’t feel like crying. There are knives and poisons in me. Everything’s a lie. Everything is a lie.”
“Galvus, you have to face up to something. Look at me. If anything happens to Elad now, you inherit the throne.”
“I don’t want the throne.”
“Listen, now. We’re in a dangerous situation. This isn’t over yet. Elad could be assassinated—anything. Everyone’s afraid. You’re next in line for the throne unless he hurries up and has a son. And soon.”
Galvus wanted no part of it. “Let the throne fall, then. He dies, and we let the throne die. Let jackals fight over it; let the people rule themselves. Listen to me: I want no court life! I don’t want men like my father around me, or men like Elad! Is that why we’re here?”
Adred admired this young man: everything a good king should be, he was. “The throne’s as good as whoever’s sitting on it. It’s a horse you control; you don’t let it get away from you. I don’t have to tell you that.”
“All right. But suppose all of this is planned by the gods. Suppose grandfather wasn’t the great king we think he was—I mean, from the perspective of the gods, how they see us. Suppose he was actually a poor king. Suppose all of this is necessary for Elad to become a great king.”
Adred smiled strangely. “I appreciate a hypothetical argument as well as anyone, Galvus, but be careful. You’ve been reading Radulis, but you’ve been misreading parts of him, too.”
“But suppose—”
“Let’s not suppose.”
“Then I don’t want it,” Galvus said firmly.
“Suppose you have no choice,” Adred told him. “You’re the blood.”
“Then we find another way to argue about it. I’ll abdicate, and you can have the throne.”
“I don’t want to be a king!”
Galvus shook his head. “There’s a limit to what humanity can endure. There’s a limit to things like this.”
“You’d think there must be,” Adred agreed.
“I was raised by a good mother in a great land. Can that end overnight? Can the world end overnight? Are the gods dying, and they’re taking everything with them, and now we’re all dead, too? That’s what it is. It’s the fable.”
Adred looked away; this came too close to feelings of his own. Hollow, he watched the dance of a candle flame and thought of religious parables.
Small comfort, now.
“I don’t think the world will die, Galvus.”
“Then it should!” the young man said.
Soon, in the dimness beside him, Adred heard Galvus—a man—beginning to cry.…
* * * *
“Is it my fault?” Orain murmured, wondering aloud.
Quiet, in white robes, Yta, haggard and undone, sat with her.
“I caused this when I left Cyrodian, when I turned to Dursoris.”
“Hush,” Yta solaced her. “Shhh.… It’s not your fault. Yours is not the blame.”
Orain began to weep. “Oh, Mother.…”
“Orain, I leave tomorrow to do my penance, but you must keep your heart in trust to strong things. Orain, believe me.…”
Orain with a child’s face, child’s eyes, child’s heart in a woman’s body, woman of guilt and wants, lady of long, sad shadows, stared at her in surprise.
“Remember this always, though it may be small comfort. If the pain continues, if the tempest increases, if our world should end— Daughter, this is all the truth that remains: the gods are not in the temples, and they are not with the priests. I have worshiped Hea all my years, although I have not been to her temple. But Hea is not in her temple only, Orain; she is everywhere. Hea, the gods—the one god—they are within us. Remember this: the gods are within us. We are the gods; we are our crimes, we are our sins, we are our destiny, and the cause and end of all our dreams and ambitions.”
Orain sobbed, strengthless, not wanting to listen. Too tired.…
“I love you, daughter not born of my flesh. You have done no crimes; the crimes have been done to you. Orain, how can I face the Goddess when to face her is to look into my mirror? These pains have come, so awesome, because we have refused our deep secret, and we cannot share or understand what we refuse.
“Orain, live with this—I go with this—the gods are within us. We are the gods. We are their masters, and we are very poor masters, indeed, of our gods and ourselves.…”
Orain sobbed. Yta watched the candle flame and saw a funeral pyre, saw the fire grow, grow—grow to devour the world.…