Chapter 7

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“Headaches?” Ambrose read from the comboard Roth Perquin handed him and the First Minister nodded grimly. “That son of a bitch!”

Alurn watched the King rant against the High Bishop for a moment, wondering when a good time to intercede would present itself. He didn’t want to do so with anyone else in the room, but some things about being the King of Cobalt hadn’t changed in a thousand years. Ambrose was almost never left alone.

“Maralt is there at the mansion,” Roth was saying between the tirades, telling Alurn that the First Minister knew more than was good for him. Alurn didn’t think the comment was useful either, only fueling the King’s rage. “He’s with Kamien.”

Ambrose’s voice cut off in stunned silence. He’d read the Book, so he knew. Alurn thought the next thing coming was an execution order. He entered the King’s mind so Ambrose would see him. The old man wouldn’t approve, but there wasn’t much choice.

“They’re all right. All of them.”

Ambrose jerked at the intrusion, his eyes snapping to where Alurn stood by the fire. The First Minister turned to look too, but saw nothing. By the time Roth turned back, Ambrose had his expression carefully masked.

“What is it?”

“I need a minute.” The King looked across the room at Alurn again, but only for a second this time. “I’ll contact the boys, Geneal, Carryn, whoever I need to, and find out what this is about.”

“Geneal says they’re all right, or will be once they wake up from the drug she gave them. It was the only way to control the pain they were in.”

“I’ll talk to her. Thank you. Tell Brendin I’ll let him know when I’m ready for Lord Meits.”

Roth nodded to that. With one last look over his shoulder, and still seeing nothing, left the King alone.

“I’m sorry.” Alurn spoke quickly aware of the limits of time. “Don’t blame Maralt, or Carryn. It couldn’t be helped. Your boys are all right, Your Majesty.”

“I want you to stay away from them.” Ambrose came around the desk at him. Alurn might have been intimidated, except for having been King before, for longer too, and this was like talking to one of his children. It was clear Ambrose didn’t see it that way.

“I stay away until their lives depend on my being there.”

Ambrose paused at that. There was a level of distrust from him that was unfortunate at a time when cooperation between the Palace and the temple was of vital importance. That couldn’t be helped either and for all Alurn knew, was part of things yet to be. He knew more about the future than most, more than the High Bishop, but still, there were possibilities that remained hidden. There were only certain issues he knew he could change. Making Ambrose trust Gradyn Vall was not one of them.

Alurn wanted to attempt to repair the damage where he could, and where it was most important. “Carryn wasn’t lying to you when she said she didn’t know where Maralt was. You blame him when you shouldn’t.”

“I blame you. This is your mess.”

“Yes, it is.” Alurn accepted the blame without rancor despite the accusatory tone. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been dead a while. I was the same age as your sons, Ambrose, when all this started for me. I didn’t ask for it. I hope they have more time to grow up than I was given. I’ve employed all the means I know to make that a reality for them. You’re welcome.”

The eyes of the King narrowed. “What do you want?”

“Your assurance – that you’ll leave Carryn to teach your sons what must be taught. Their lives depend on it.”

“And Maralt?” Ambrose clearly didn’t want Maralt around. That couldn’t be helped either.

“Their lives will depend on him too.” It was the truth, in a way. Alurn turned to the fire, watching the flames encircle a glowing coal, dancing hypnotically across the red and black surface.

Ambrose didn’t believe it. “You expect me to let him stay and be involved with them?”

“Yes.”

“That isn’t going to happen,” Ambrose started to turn from him.

“It is.” Alurn concentrated just enough. “It has to happen. Maralt has to be here. He will be involved with all your children.”

Ambrose fought the suggestion to the point of pain, but Alurn planted it in his mind deeply and firmly enough that the King soon lacked the ability to resist. He knew on the same innermost level what was happening, but as shock and anger, coupled with surprise and even fear entered his eyes, Alurn took that knowledge from him. At the same time, he vanished from the King’s thoughts, leaving him unaware that there ever had been a conversation. Touching just the fringes of his mind, Alurn watched Ambrose look around the office in confusion for a time. The King went to his desk to check his schedule, wondering why his next appointment wasn’t already there.

“Brendin, send in Lord Meits.”

Roth came in instead ahead of Meits, wondering what decision Ambrose made. “What about Maralt?” When Ambrose didn’t look up from the comboard, Roth’s eyebrows rose.

“He has to be there.” Ambrose winced as he spoke.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing. I have a headache.”

Roth gaped at him, but Ambrose cut him off. “It’s nothing to be concerned about,” he said at the same time Alurn said the same thing.

The First Minister blinked and rubbed his temple. “All right. Do you want me to call Eldelar?”

“I’ve got something here in the desk. Send in Meits.” Ambrose nodded to the door. “I want to get this over with.”

“What about the boys, Ambrose?”

The comboard clattered on the desk when the King tossed it down. “Geneal is there with them. I’m sure they’ll be fine. It’s a relapse or some side effect from this training they’re getting. Now, let’s get on with this.”

Alurn waited a moment longer to make sure Roth did just that and followed him from the office, sensing his confusion at Ambrose’s behavior. Alurn didn’t want him to report his misgivings to anyone else. The more people to control, the greater chance of failure at containment and so, Alurn didn’t let him express his doubts when Roth found Melgan Lon, guiding him word for word instead.

“He thinks it might be a side effect of the training Carryn is giving them. He’s not worried.”

“And Maralt?” There was a fair amount of suspicion toward Maralt, but Melgan didn’t know about the level of involvement last year or what Maralt had done to Dynan. Alurn checked, riffling through memories. Roth didn’t know that much either, less than feared.

“Kamien has known him for some time now. Trusts him. Ambrose says he has to be there too. He’s one of them, so, maybe he’s helping.”

Melgan looked around to make sure no one was close enough to hear. “Doesn’t it strike you as a little unusual that Ambrose should change his mind without so much as a word about it to us?”

Roth shrugged on cue. “Maybe. I’m not sure what the difference is between Maralt and his sister, why one was welcome and not the other. He never explained that to begin with, so obviously, there’s more to all this than he’s willing to go into. These next several months are going to be hard on him. They’re graduating. They’ll be here for another couple of months after that and then there’s conscription. Maybe that has something to do with it and how odd he’s been lately. I’m not so worried about Dynan and Dain as I am about their father.”

Melgan grunted at that. “I’ll watch him. See if I can find out what’s gotten to him. You watch them – Carryn and her brother. Especially the brother.”

Alurn thought to do something to change their views about Maralt, but didn’t know what and then knew it would only cause more difficulty. He was already across a moral line he didn’t like to approach, much less obliterate the way he had. Not that he felt anything when he forced someone to behave as he needed. Alurn remembered how Adiem reacted well enough, but never encountered the same desires. It was wrong though, regardless of what it felt like, pushing others to act or not act. As King he used the art of simple persuasion, rather than force.

Now he had to go back to Gradyn and explain it all, a thing Alurn didn’t look forward to, and then he had to go to Maralt. The tasks ahead might be the ones, the final affront to send Maralt from the light. He was fairly close to it already.

Gradyn Vall was asleep in his room on the rickety cot he called a bed. Alurn hesitated at making his presence more thoroughly known. The old man – he looked dead when he slept, he was so old – was dreaming of his youth, a thing he rarely managed or could even remember most days. He was well past a hundred. Alurn didn’t want to take him from the fair visions. Gradyn needed the rest too, having not gotten much of it in recent days from worry and orchestrating a rescue.

Alurn left him to sleep, going instead to the task he was less concerned about. Maybe it would be easier to tell the old man after the fact, when it was too late to be persuaded to a different course of action. Not that Alurn could be persuaded, but Gradyn would likely try. Maralt was like his son, as close to a son as a man married to the temple could ever have. Carryn was like his daughter, and now, they were both distant from him, removed from his daily influence. It was difficult for him, letting them go out into the wide world, where other untold dangers might find them.

No, Alurn corrected, the danger would find them. No doubt about it.

The old man had reason to be afraid. The demons were real, after all.

Alurn sent himself back across the gulf of distance between Rianamar and Beren, the wave of thought he rode arcing up into the outer atmosphere of the planet so that he stood above the world looking down. It wasn’t a route he usually preferred, finding the vacuum of space a little too close to non-existence, but every once in a while, he ended up here. Maybe it was some buried subconscious need to be reminded about the scope of things, or it was a higher power making the point. The whole of Cobalt rolled by beneath him, tufts of clouds dotting the Wythe Sea. The browns and greens of the land caressed the deepest blue. The white-capped mountains rose, hardly distinguishable from the clouds. From Arel to Altair to Cobalt, the lives at risk numbered into the billions.

Point taken.

“All right,” he muttered.

“Don’t fail of your purpose,” space intoned.

“Trying not to.” Alurn watched the ground and wished he were on it.

“You stand upon a precipice...”

“No kidding.”

“... unto which you can either fall or overcome.”

“Honestly, you haven’t changed – at all – in a thousand years. Not even a little.”

“Try harder,” he was told and then the ground rose at him. They were not gentle, these Beings he’d named Gods since there wasn’t another term that fit the power they wielded. They didn’t have much of a sense of humor either. Alurn closed his eyes.

The only advantage to already being dead was he wouldn’t end up splattered on some walkway or road when he hit the planet. It still wouldn’t feel good, though the advantage to being dead meant the pain wouldn’t last. Feeling anything came from some residual memory of once having a physical body. He was jerked to an abrupt halt though and then set down.

The guesthouse on the Beren Mansion grounds rose around him. Alurn remembered Beren as a place of peace, due largely from the location of a Temple of Faith, near, if not on the mansion grounds. There was likely nothing left of it but a few stones. Still, there were no coincidences as to why his family had settled here too.

Alurn moved to the large window looking out over the front lawn, his gaze drawn to the far left of the main house and beyond the barn where a glade of trees stood. These were larger than the ones that lined the drive, the largest on the property. There was a graveyard there for the monks, mounds only now, without even a headstone. Alurn saw someone moving amongst the trees, shrouded in the mists that covered the grounds.

She was shrouded herself, covered almost completely by a trailing white cloak, worn to better blend in with the fog. That didn’t keep Alurn from knowing her. He watched as Liselle Tremault searched the ground near one of the mounds and then by a tree, making her furtive way closer and closer to the edge of the property near the road. She drew back a moment at the foot of another grave, glancing purposely over her shoulder and all around. Her lips were drawn tight, her mind full of fear. She bent at the waist, reaching down to pick up a small satchel drawn closed by a string of ribbon. Even as she looked around herself again, she drew out her comboard and read.

“The first substance in the vial with the blue cap, will make the user unable to resist your advances. Be careful with the dosage. Too much and you’ll be attending a funeral. The other, just a drop, will produce a stupor of several hours. For the night, two will be enough. Have a lovely time, dear. I want to hear all about it.”

Liselle did something then that wasn’t normal. She deleted the message, applying a kind of code that would hide the fact it had ever been sent. Alurn wanted to find out what she was doing, sensing it was nothing good, but the sound of someone descending the stairs behind him drew him back to the guesthouse and cut him off from her. He recognized an area he wasn’t meant to interfere in, grumbling that he would rather not know in the first place if he wasn’t supposed to do anything about it.

An answer to the string of blasphemous thoughts aimed on high wasn’t forthcoming.

Kamien read from a comboard as he descended the stairs, pulling on his uniform coat as he did. Maralt was with him. Both turned to glance out the front windows to note the weather. Alurn waved his fingers, getting Maralt’s attention.

Maralt did an admirable job of not showing his complete annoyance in front of Kamien, who like Roth Perquin, saw nothing. “I think I should stay here.”

“Why? My father says here your appointment as my advisor is approved.” That statement was followed by a quizzical frown and a wince. So Maralt had found his own way to stay close at hand, yet distant enough to go mostly unnoticed.

“I’d like to tell my sister in private, if you don’t mind.”

“Why should she care?” Kamien shook his head and held up a hand. “No matter. I have to check on the little darlings and find out why they’ve woken in excruciating pain yet again. There’s not a day that goes by that there’s not something wrong with them. Once you’ve talked to Carryn, join me and I’ll introduce you to them.”

“I will.” Maralt nodded his head instead of a more formal deference to His Highness. Kamien didn’t care and didn’t notice. He walked out the main door, reading and shaking his head.

“The introduction won’t go well.” Alurn had already seen it. “So be prepared. Dain, you know. It’s subconscious, permanent, and you can’t change his reaction. You can only contain your own. If you don’t, he’ll spend a lot of his energy trying to get rid of you, have you banned from the Palace. So keep your distance. We can’t afford for you to be exiled.”

Maralt glanced at him, sensing something perhaps, of what wasn’t said. “Yet. You were going to say, not yet.”

Alurn nodded, guessing now was as good a time as any to explain, so he did, expecting the state of denial, the refusal, the disbelief that this act could possibly be the right thing to do and that he wouldn’t. He would not. Maralt listened, at least at first, but his mind closed soon thereafter.

“You’re saying the High Bishop knows this?” Maralt stared at him, shaking his head. “And he condones it? I can’t believe it.”

“You’ll have time to confirm it with him.” Alurn didn’t want to be around for that conversation, knowing how horribly difficult it would be for Gradyn to appear in any way to approve of this. He would do it even if he didn’t agree, knowing the consequences that doubt would breed.

“This is insane. It isn’t a good enough reason. There isn’t a good enough reason.”

“Saving Dynan and Dain is the ultimate reason, Maralt.” Alurn meant that as an assurance but it came out more an accusation. “You’ve sworn to do so and now I’m telling you how.”

“I’m not going to do this. If this is what it means, if this is the only way, as you say it is, then it isn’t for me. I’m not going to do it.”

He turned and walked out of the house.

Alurn watched after him and then glanced toward the ceiling, waiting for some pontification or at the least, derision, to find him through the ether. There was nothing. No indication that he’d failed. Nothing to say he’d succeeded either. There was just the ceiling.

“That went well,” he said to it and decided it was time to go home.