by Kate Elliott
The audience kept a respectful silence, waiting for him to speak, but he could almost taste their wariness. They did not trust him. Neither did they hate him. They waited, reserving judgment.
He knelt without looking down at the void of stars beneath his feet and set the tower, his token from the emperor, on the smooth floor.
“The board,” he said. “Enlarged ten times normal size.”
At first he could not tell that the black field had manifested, since it blended with the heavens below, but then the grid of lines burned into view and the midnight black slab of stone that marked the emperor’s throne. One by one the pieces flickered into view and solidified. The horseman had moved farther yet away from the throne, shadowed by the teardrop. The other eight pieces lay scattered across the board, marking no pattern he could discern. A murmur ran through the crowd, quieting only when he rose.
“This is the game played by the emperor and the princess,” he said to his audience, which no doubt ran into the billions.
He turned slowly, a full circle, surveying the ranks upon ranks of his khaja subjects, like the ranks of an army. There, he thought he recognized the pale outline of Charles Soerensen, attending in nesh, but he couldn’t be sure. There was no one who looked in the least like Diana, although perhaps she truly was here, guising in a different form. Perhaps she still cared enough about him to watch over him, now and again. But he pushed these thoughts of her aside; they were too distracting. He could not afford to be distracted.
Instead, he walked through the game, avoiding the other princes, keeping to the lines as much as he could, and made his way to his own piece.
“This is where we stand.” He halted above the horseman, which half melded with him. “Where we go from here is up to us.”
Here he paused, to let his words sink in, here in this hall and in every hall, every chamber, every street or corner where any woman or man had stopped to hear him, to measure him, to pass judgment. For that was, perhaps, the most important lesson he had learned from Bakhtiian: Let the whole of your people be your army, all of the tribes, and let that army follow you not just willingly but passionately, with their hearts.
He looked up and nodded, satisfied. He had their complete attention.
2
The Shores of Heaven
VASSILY KIREYEVSKY SURVEYED THE battlefield from the hilltop. He turned to Yaroslav Sakhalin. The late summer sun shone down, bathing him in sweat under his armor.
“His banner has fallen. The Prince of Filis must be dead.”
“We will see,” said Yaroslav, never one to hasten to any conclusions.
But so it proved. Prince Basil’s body was dragged up the slope and displayed. A Filistian lord who had turned coat last winter, after Bakhtiian himself had ridden into Jeds and taken up the campaign personally, identified the body.
“What of the Mircassian boy?” Vasha asked, but no one knew, and when he rode down into the Filistian camp, he discovered that Basil’s half sister had murdered the child and killed herself rather than fall into the hands of the jaran. It saddened him, more for the child’s sake than hers.
He examined the corpse: The boy had black hair and the olive skin of southerners, and although Vasha had heard his age estimated at sixteen, the child looked younger. If he was truly an invalid, a simpleton, no sign of his infirmity showed in his corpse, except that he was small.
“What will you do now, Vassily?” Yaroslav Sakhalin asked when Vasha emerged from the tent.
“I will take the news to my father myself, before I return to Mircassia. King Barsauma is failing, but even if he dies while I’m gone, they don’t dare try to unseat me, not now that we have defeated Prince Basil.”
“What of your wife?”
Vasha had learned that when Yaroslav Sakhalin spoke, he usually sounded censorious, even if he did not mean to be. But the habit served him well, since it made it easy to distinguish between those of his men who doubted themselves and those who did not.
“Princess Rusudani and I have an understanding, Sakhalin. In any case, she is pregnant now—” He broke off and looked away, concealing a flush of pride. Rusudani was pregnant with his child.
The old general laughed softly. “All young men are full of themselves when their wives become pregnant for the first time. I am told I was insufferable.”
Vasha was paralyzed for a moment by the spectacle of Yaroslav Sakhalin joking with him. Then he collected himself.
“Surely it is no more than we deserve,” Vasha replied, watching Sakhalin carefully. When Sakhalin smiled, Vasha smiled in return, relieved that Sakhalin seemed amused by this weak sally. But it seemed safer to return to the matter at hand. “It is the council that concerns me. They are not content with either Princess Rusudani or myself, and in particular, with me. I have heard it said that I hold too great an influence over her, that there are too many barbarians at court. There is a young lord who was put forward as a prospective consort for the princess, but I have seen that he was posted to the war. Unfortunately, he didn’t manage to get himself killed.”
“I’ll be sending scouting parties south, to probe,” said Sakhalin. “I could use some auxiliaries.”
“Yes. That would do very well. I will attach his company to your army before I leave.”
So it was settled. Lord Intavio agreed to the posting because he had no choice, surrounded by the far greater jaran army in the hinterlands that straddled the border between Mircassia and Filis.
In the morning, leaving Sakhalin to mop up the remains of Prince Basil’s army, which had by now scattered into the hills, Vasha took a contingent of one thousand men, half jaran riders and half Mircassian cavalry, and rode southwest, toward Jeds. Toward his father.
They came after twenty-six days of hard riding to Jeds. Vasha left his guard in the camp that had sprung up to the east of the city and rode the rest of the way with a smaller escort of one hundred picked men and twenty archers. They circled the city and went directly to the palace.
Tess came herself to greet him, where he dismounted in the great courtyard that fronted the palace. She grinned and hugged him, there in front of everyone, and a moment later Natalia and Yuri ran shrieking from the eastern loggia and threw themselves on him, jumping on him and tugging at his armor and dancing around.
“Gods, you’ve grown. Stand back. Let me look at you.”
Natalia stuck her hands on her hips. “Papa gave me a horse,” she said. “It’s a very fine horse, too, I’ll have you know. And Lara didn’t get one because she took Kriye out bareback and got thrown, too.”
“Lara is here, too?”
“Yes, and Sofia. We all sailed south together, and none of us got sick, only Yuri did.”
Yuri had already strayed off to examine the strange khaja armor worn by the Mircassian soldiers, so he could not defend himself against this slur.
“How many of the children came south from Jeds?” Vasha asked Tess.
She only smiled. “Enough. They’re very loud.”
“Did Stefan bring them down?”
“No, Sonia did. Didn’t you hear? Stefan just got married.”
“So Jaelle did get pregnant!” Vasha laughed. “That’s the last I heard, that Stefan hoped it was true, but they weren’t sure yet. He’ll come to Mircassia then, when the child is safely born.”
“And you must come in and get that armor off. I’ll get you something to drink.”
“Where is…my father?”
She hesitated, then lifted a hand in the direction of the sea. “Out riding.”
“Perhaps I should go out directly.”
“If you wish. What news have you brought, Vasha? You look well.”
He gave a brief account of the battle and its outcome, the disposition of armies, the current mood of the Mircassian populace, which favored Rusudani and her consort, and the council, which remained suspicious.
He took in a deep breath. “Rusudani is pregnant.” Unable to help himself, he grinned.
Te
ss raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t wait long. She can’t have had the other child that long ago.”
“Aren’t you happy for me?” he demanded.
“Now, Vasha,” she said, maddeningly calm, “let’s wait until the child is born to celebrate. What happened to the other baby?”
“When it was eight weeks old, Rusudani sent it north to Lady Jadranka with a wet nurse and an honor guard. It was a little boy. I left before we heard whether the child arrived safely. It was a pretty child.” He said it wistfully. He had been sorry to part with the infant, but Rusudani had refused to have anything to do with it. As far as he knew, she had never come to see the baby after it had been born.
Tess put a hand on his hair, ruffling it as if he were a child, and smiled affectionately at him. “I’m glad you came, Vasha. Go see your father.”
Like a good son, he obeyed, stripping out of his armor and just wearing his padded surcoat over his clothes. One of the palace grooms brought him a fresh horse, and he rode out with two escorts.
Most of the palace fronted a cliff, but to the north the ridge dropped down and melded with the shoreline, forming a broad strand at the mouth of the River Edesse. Vladimir and a handful of guards sat, some on their horses, some dismounted, at the farthest limit of solid land, keeping watch, but Vasha could see a distant figure that must be his father much farther out on the beach.
Vasha handed his reins over to his guard and headed out onto the strand. Once out of the slight windbreak provided by the last low promontory, he had to duck his head repeatedly to keep the stinging sand from his eyes.
Here, on the shoreline, the wind blew continually, just as it did on the plains. The waves came in in layers, levels building one on top of the next, sliding in over the damp course of sand and soughing away again. The wind coursed over the water, changing its color, darkening it. The constant breaking of one wave atop the next layered an endless steady crashing noise over the world, that shrank into this one stretch of sand and the gray-blue sea, stretching out to the islands that dotted the horizon, pale grey with clouds.
Ilya turned, shading his face against the wind, and, recognizing him, nodded. Then he turned back to stare out to sea. He stood at the very limit of the land, at that point where land and sea blend and become one.
“What are you doing out here?” Vasha asked, having to pitch his voice loud to be heard above the wind.
“Where did you come from?” Ilya demanded.
Vasha launched into his description of the battle, the disposition of forces, the end of Filistian resistance.
Ilya heard him out in silence. “You are well?”
“Rusudani is pregnant,” said Vasha, but cautiously, not knowing what to expect.
For the first time, Ilya smiled. The wind tore through his hair, rippling his shirt sleeves all the way down his arms. “That’s my boy.”
Vasha could not help but laugh. “Why is it that women take the news one way and men another?”
“Women are more interested in the birthing of a child, men in the getting of it.”
Emboldened by this levity, Vasha repeated his initial question. “But what are you doing out here?”
“I’m just wondering,” said Ilya so softly that Vasha could barely hear him above the wind, “what lies beyond the sea.”
“What lies beyond the sea? Don’t you have enough to think about on the lands that lie between here and the plains? Half of the Yossian principalities could break away at any time, if they think we’ve weakened at all, and the Dushan king is still furious about losing the man who was the jaran governor there. Another of his sons is threatening open revolt against his father. And Mitya is still having trouble on his eastern border with Vidiya. Now that Filis is defeated, King Barsauma will begin negotiating over those two border provinces, and Yaroslav Sakhalin is sending scouts to the south. According to the reports we got from Kirill Zvertkov after he joined up with his army again, there has still been no recent word from the second expedition sent out along the Golden Road.
Ilya grunted. “I would take a ship to Erthe,” he said absently. “Katya went, and returned, and went north to Sarai.”
“When was this? Does she mean to stay? Perhaps she will come to Mircassia now.”
“No. She means to return to Erthe. She’ll sail from the north, she says. She may already be gone. I don’t know. We haven’t had word yet. That was months ago.”
Vasha struggled with his disappointment and finally got it under control in time to hear his father going on.
“There is something strange about Erthe, Vasha,” he said, describing his words with his hands. “I don’t think it’s a land like these lands. I think it is bounded on one side by the ocean and on the other by the heavens themselves, so that if a man stood on the shore he would look out into the vault of the sky, only it would lie at his feet instead of above his head.”
Vasha laughed. “How could that be?” Sobering, he saw that his father was serious. Ilya was not truly looking at the ocean or listening to the roar of the waves. He was oblivious to the bite of the wind and the fine blowing sand on his skin. He had gone on a Singer’s journey, traveling to lands that could only exist in his own mind or beyond human ken, in the worlds that belong to the gods.
“Father!” Exasperated, Vasha raised his voice. “Haven’t you spent enough time staring out at the water? There are lands to administer here, right here. I have a much more detailed report to give you, and three other messengers with me, who have reports to give as well. But you only care about what lies beyond, not what you have in your hands already.”
He turned, looking toward the guards who waited on the ridge. They stood there, small figures like statues unmoved in the wind. Another rider came, picking her way down the ridge. It was Tess. He recognized her at once, even at this distance.
Ilya did not reply. He did not appear to be listening. A wave ran in and crept up to his boots, then slid back, absorbed into the next wave.
Vasha shrugged finally. It was not his right to disturb the meditation of a Singer. He turned full around and began to walk back across the sand, to meet Tess. Out here the strand was flat and dry, untouched by water, and the wind hit with redoubled force, sculpting the sand into endless tiny ranges of irregular hills, running out along the strand until they were lost to distance.
“Does he come out here often?” he asked as Tess came up to him and they stopped together and looked toward the shoreline and the silhouette of Ilya.
“Yes. I’ve never quite figured out what he does, though, except just to look. Perhaps the constant wind out here reminds him of the plains.”
“He’s searching for the shores of heaven,” said Vasha flippantly, still irritated by his father’s infuriatingly pointless musing.
But Tess smiled sadly. “Has he found them yet?”
“Can anyone find them? I have work to do, reports to hear, Talia and Yuri to play with. I need to write a letter to my wife. I’m going in. Are you coming with me?”
She shook her head, and he threw up his hands in disgust and went back by himself. He stopped once, when he was almost at the ridge to look back.
The sun had come out from behind the clouds and it spilled its light along the waters, turning them to a rich gold. It was beautiful, in its way, rimming the edges of the clouds with white-gold where a patch of deep blue sky showed and reached until it flowed forward in the waves that spilled themselves into nothing at Ilya’s feet.
As if, thought Vasha, the shores of heaven had overflowed, lapping over into his world like a promise, sworn by the sun and the moon and the wind. If only Ilya would look at what lay right before him instead of always staring at the sky, he could see it for himself.
The wind picked up, blowing sand hard into Vasha’s face, and he shaded his eyes and watched as Tess reached Ilya at last and reached out to touch her husband’s arm. After a long pause, Ilya turned. Coming to himself, he said something to her and together they started back across the sands.
Vasha waited for them.
About the Author
Kate Elliott has been writing stories since she was nine years old, which has led her to believe that she is either a little crazy or that writing, like breathing, keeps her alive. Her most recent series is the Spiritwalker Trilogy (Cold Magic, Cold Fire, and Cold Steel), an Afro-Celtic post-Roman alternate-nineteenth-century Regency ice-punk mashup with airships, Phoenician spies, the intelligent descendants of troodons, and revolution. Her previous works include the Crossroads trilogy (starting with Spirit Gate), the Crown of Stars septology (starting with King’s Dragon), the Novels of the Jaran, the Highroad Trilogy, and the novel The Labyrinth Gate, originally published under the name Alis A. Rasmussen.
She likes to play sports more than she likes to watch them; right now, her sport of choice is outrigger canoe paddling. Her spouse has a much more interesting job than she does, with the added benefit that they had to move to Hawaii for his work; thus the outrigger canoes. They also have a schnauzer (a.k.a. the Schnazghul).
April Quintanilla
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1994 by Katrina Elliott
