“Further,” he added, staring coldly across the table at the primate, “we hereby withdraw our recognition from Timotheos Patriarch of Paltyrrha and All Kórynthia, and declare him deposed from that office, effective immediately.”
“What?” came the reaction from around the room, for Timotheos had been a popular choice, both among the clergy and the councilmen.
“Father?” said Prince Arkády, but the king continued without interruption.
“...The Bishop Varlaám Njégosh, Secretary of the Holy Synod,” the king stated, “is nominated Locum Tenens. We would also not be at all displeased were he elected patriarch. Record this,” he sputtered, waving at Gorázd, who continued writing as fast as he could go.
“The Patriarch Timotheos having been dethroned, he is ordered to depart this council forthwith,” Kipriyán declared, glaring across at Timotheos.
“Guards, escort him from the room!” he yelled.
“I will leave on my own two feet, thank you,” Timotheos said, standing up. “Sire, although I respect your office, you may not interfere with mine, which came to me from God Himself. Until such time as I am restored to office, I declare you excommunicated, and I order the Holy Synod to proclaim my decree, publish it throughout Kórynthia, and enforce it to the letter. You shall not take the sacraments or attend mass in this kingdom until you relent. You are condemned to everlasting Hell until you seek repentance. No man, not even the king, is above God.”
King Kipriyán sputtered and jumped to his feet, almost pulling his sword. He stopped himself with his weapon halfway out of its scabbard. Then he pointed at the patriarch.
“Arrest that man,” he ordered the guards, “and throw him in the ‘Hole.’ He will be bound over for trial one week hence.”
When they hesitated, he screamed, “Do it!”
Before the soldiers could grab him, Patriarch Timotheos smiled serenely and said: “He who touches me is excommunicated. I place the Kingdom of Kórynthia under interdict. No masses shall be said, no sacraments given, no weddings held, no dead buried, until I am released, and until the king humbles himself before God. I forbid any of the clergy to continue in your service. He who raises his hand against the patriarch, raises it against the Church; he who raises it against the Church, raises it also against God.”
Then he turned to the two guards, and said: “I forgive you, my sons. Lead me to my prison cell, and I will gladly follow.”
His dignity intact, he meekly left the room, and was dutifully trailed by both the Archpriest Athanasios and the Bishop Varlaám.
“Stop them!” ordered the king, but no one moved to obey.
He looked wildly around the room.
“What is the matter with all of you!” Kipriyán raved. “Are you all possessed by the Dark-Haired Man?”
“Sire,” said Prince Arkády, “there is no Dark-Haired Man.”
“Oh, I see,” the king sneered, “now that you’ve tasted some of my power, you want it all. Well, my boy, we’ll see about that.”
He turned to the grand vizier.
“I order Prince Arkády and his children removed from the register of succession,” he stated, very calm now. “List them all, one by one. I hereby declare my second son, Prince Nikolaí, the new Hereditary Prince of Kórynthia.”
Lord Gorázd looked very strangely at his king.
“But, sire,” he said, “Prince Nikolaí is dead. He perished at Killingford.”
“Killingford?” Kipriyán responded, “I forbid the use of that name. It bespeaks an attitude of defeatism. The proper name is the Schilling-Ford, and it was a great victory for Kórynthia. Have I not said so? Kipriyán the Conqueror does not lose battles, and he does not lie. Ever. Record it!” he yelled at Gorázd, pounding the table.
“Record it or be damned,” he added in a softer, even more sinister voice.
“It is so recorded, majesty,” Gorázd emphasized.
“Very well. Nikolaí, what is our military status?” he inquired.
“Uh, Prince Nikolaí is regretably absent, sire,” Lord Gorázd noted.
“Then, uh, Kiríll, tell me what I need to know!” the king blurted out.
“Yes, sire,” Prince Kiríll said carefully, rising from his seat, and glancing at his older brothers.
Arkády inclined his head ever so slightly.
“As you’ve heard,” Kiríll continued, “Prince Walther has apparently become King of Pommerelia under somewhat mysterious circumstances. There are so many different rumors being circulated in Balíxira about the passing of old King Barnim that they are impossible to fathom.
“Secondly, we have evacuated all of our armies from Pommerelia except for the forces occupying the three fortresses of Lockenlöd, Karkára, and Borgösha....”
“What! On whose orders?” the king interrupted.
“Prince Arkády’s, sire,” his son replied. “You were, uh, somewhat incapacitated after the great battle....”
“I was not!” he shouted. “I was just fine. But you refused to listen to me. Sit down!” he added.
“Zakháry,” he continued, “what is our battle readiness?”
“Sire, the army has mostly gone home,” Prince Zakháry reported. “We still have a few thousand men in the citadels, as already reported, but the rest are....”
“Traitors! You’re all traitors and whiners,” the king said. “I can’t trust any of you anymore.”
Kipriyán turned to the army commander, who was present at this meeting both as a courtesy and also to provide additional information on matters military.
“General Lord Rónai,” Kipriyán ordered, “I want you to hold those castles at all costs.”
“Yes, sire,” the officer replied, saluting crisply.
“How soon can we call up the reserves?” Kipriyán inquired.
“Well, highness, I don’t know,” Rónai stated. “Perhaps a month or six weeks.”
“Order it done,” the king commanded. “I want to mount a second expedition as soon as possible. And get those damned Arrhénis back. We wouldn’t have had these problems in the first place if Sándor had been doing his job. In the meantime, I want to reoccupy the Valley of the Spargö as a staging area. Can you do that with the men we have available there?”
“Possibly,” the general responded. “Just barely. But we’d be subject to constant attacks by the irregulars.”
“Then kill them. Burn them out. For every attack on our troops, execute a hundred farmers. Are there any questions?” the king asked, glaring around at his councilors, who sat in absolute silence.
“We’ll reassemble here in a few days,” he added. “And then I want some answers from all of you.
“Finally,” Kipriyán noted, “I see that we’re short several councilors. Therefore, I do appoint General Lord Rónai, General Lord Reményi, and Doctor Melanthrix to the Royal Council, effective with our next session. This meeting is adjourned.”
The king stomped out of the room, clearly displeased with the entire proceeding.
Arkády remained in his chair, covering his face with his hands.
“Lord God,” he said to no one in particular, “what have we ever done to deserve this?”
The other councilors were equally stunned. They murmured back and forth to each other in barely audible tones as they slowly exited the room.
“Madness,” Arkády heard from several quarters. “He’s gone mad.”
The prince could only agree.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“WE’VE HAD ENOUGH KILLING FOR ONE YEAR”
An hour later Prince Arkády met secretly with his sister, Princess Arrhiána, in Kórynthály. Each of them had transited there separately, and then walked slowly to the back of the tomb of King Makáry, their grandsire, checking carefully to make certain that no one had followed them.
“I can’t believe what I just heard,” Arrhiána said. “I don’t understand what Papá is doing, or why.”
“Nor can I, sister,” Arkády
replied. “But he did it nonetheless, and I’m very worried about his frame of mind. Where do we go from here? I don’t think the country can survive a second war this year. We lost so many soldiers in Pommerelia that we don’t have enough men even to bring in the crops.
“I don’t think father understands the level of unrest out there. Either that, or he just doesn’t care. I don’t know which is worse. But I can’t sit idly by while we rush headlong into another conflict. I do hope you’ll attend the next council meeting on Saturday, sister.”
“Oh, I’ll be there, Kásha,” she indicated. “We’ve had enough killing for one year. I’m already tired of celebrating memorial masses for the people I love.”
“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” the prince said. “We can’t continue in this direction for very long: we’ll have insurrection in the streets, possibly even civil war. What’s happened to the strong, fair, gracious leader we once knew? Father seems to have lost all of the finer virtues. All he has left now is his naked authority.”
Arkády glanced up at the massive structure of the tomb of their grandsire looming over them.
“Do you remember, sister, when we found Papá wandering here last March?” the prince asked.
“How could I forget,” Arrhiána responded. “All that nonsense about the Dark-Haired Man.”
“I’m more interested,” he continued, “in what father was saying about the two regents, Dowager Princess Zubayda and Prince-Bishop Víktor, and about King Makáry. Something untoward obviously happened during the Great War, something out of the ordinary, something that was later hidden away.”
Princess Arrhiána clasped her hands together for a moment, and then looked down at the interlocking fingers, one laid over another.
“According to Brisquayne,” she said, “Mösza may have been involved in a scandal at court during the year 1164, an incident so abhorrent to the regents that they packed her off somewhere out of the country, never allowing her to return. Papá might have known about it in general, without being aware of any of the particulars.”
“What kind of scandal?” her brother inquired.
“An affaire d’amour, perhaps,” the princess replied, “or maybe something more. Brisquayne overheard a conversation during that period that would indicate the possibility of Mösza having borne a natural child. But Brisquayne also said that Mösza was essentially an innocent, even at the ripe age of twenty-four, and that she couldn’t have instigated such a liaison.”
“But what difference would it have made?” Arkády mused. “There have been plenty of illegitimate members of our family sired over the years, and nobody has ever paid much attention to any of them.”
“Well, Víktor was a churchman and Zubayda originally derived from Tôrtous,” Arrhiána noted. “Perhaps the idea of a supposedly virginal princess bearing a child out of wedlock was anathema to them.”
“I still think there has to be more to it than that,” Arkády speculated. “I sense that we’re missing something vital here. I repeat my earlier question: however scandalous the situation might have seemed to the old regents, what difference would the child have made to any of them? Why not just pack the infant off to the local monastery, and marry the girl to some foreign monarch? Why would Kipriyán have been told by his guardians to be so very careful about this particular situation?”
“Hmmm,” the princess pondered. “If we look at the history of the time, at the end of 1164 Papá was the last surviving male descendant of King Makáry. Had he died before producing an heir to the throne, his uncle, Patriarch Markos, Makáry’s next youngest brother, would have succeeded, except that as a high-ranking churchman, he might have ruled himself ineligible.
“Grandpapá had no other surviving brothers at the time of his death, and they themselves had all died young without producing male issue. However, several elderly great-uncles, the Princes Ysídor, Siegfried, and Víktor, were still living then. Two of them had sired both children and grandchildren by that time, but the law of succession allows the throne to pass through female lines when more than two generations have intervened. Thus, a strong claim to the crown might have been made under such circumstances for the sons of Papá’s eldest surviving sister.”
“The Forellës!” Arkády exclaimed.
“Yes,” his sister agreed, “Teréza’s future children were potentially the next heirs to the throne, followed by the Arrhéni offspring of Princess Genthia, unless another, relatively unfettered, senior male heir could have been produced, from offstage, so to speak.”
“Mösza’s child,” the prince stated.
“Possibly,” she affirmed. “Of course, this is all speculation, but the child, if he were a boy, would have had an equal right under law to the throne after the deaths without children of Kipriyán and Patriarch Markos, and a better right by age and seniority to any sons of Teréza and Genthia, who weren’t born in any case until somewhat later. Or so I believe.
“I think that they prudently arranged to have the child sequestered away somewhere, under very tight control, just in case they eventually needed him. Then, when Kipriyán began producing heirs of his own, they quietly disposed of the lad.”
“That would explain some of it,” her brother acknowledged, “but I still think there’s something missing from our little drama.”
She cocked her head, and smiled her sly, slanting smile.
“Have you never considered, brother, that maybe they just didn’t get along very well?”
He grimaced, and gave her a mock blow across the back of her head.
“Just like you and I, huh?” Arkády intimated.
“I knew you’d understand,” she laughed in return.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“I NEED TO MAKE A FEW THINGS DEAD”
At the same time, Prince Kiríll was meeting with his elder brother, Prince Zakháry, at their hunting lodge in the Börzsö Forest.
“We have to do something, Kir,” Zakháry was insisting. “Now that he’s appointed that quack to the council, God knows what else he’ll do before he’s done. I’m absolutely convinced Melanthrix is behind all of this. If we get rid of him, we cure father, it’s as simple as that. How does he expect us to fight another war without men and supplies?”
“I don’t know, brother,” Kiríll responded, “but again I have to urge caution. You saw what father was like today. It wouldn’t take much to push him over the edge, and then any of us could quickly become expendable. Extra royal princes are always somewhat of a nuisance anyway. Whatever we decide to do, we mustn’t give anything away. You especially. Learn to bow and simper with the best of them. I know it’s not in your nature, Zack, but better that than seeing you brought to the block. This is a very dangerous time for all of us. Be careful.”
“‘Careful’ is my hallmark,” Zakháry snorted. “Now, I need to work some of this aggression out of my system. Let’s grab some bows and see what game we can scare up out of the brush. I need to make a few things dead.”
“I’m for that,” his brother concurred, eager to be killing in the fields. “Come along,” he said, hurrying out the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“MOST BUFONIOUSLY WARTY”
In her home in the Jabal Khaibár, the Countess Mösza was wondering at the prolonged absence of her little friend, the ifrit, and the equal omission of any recent obituaries from Kórynthály. She suspected a fly floating in the broth, and so she was taking steps to discover just what had happened to her unwilling helpmate.
She had in her possession an old blanket woven from the fur of a very special cat, one capable of housing an entity such as herself. This shroud had belonged to one of the ancient mages, perhaps Rÿah or Tsrükh or MassáttLlán. She wasn’t really sure. The artifact was very rare, very potent when used in the proper fashion, carrying within it the fragmentary essences of makers and makings unusual and undivine.
Mösza activated her psaiaura, which were built into
the very structure of her house, and laid the cloth flat on a worktable, fastening it with pins already set in place for that purpose. She sprinkled holy water over the blanket, mixed with the blood from an unbaptized babe, and spoke a few words in the old tongue.
Then she raised up her hands and twisted the æther with her two wills, and called up the dæmon Vörshchkelidôg.
A faint image of a miniature gargoyle formed over the cloth.
“Who disturbs the sphygmos?” a rough voice issued from the mouth of the grotesque being.
“I have an ifrit gone missing,” Mösza complained. “I sent Bezarduardakus on an errand, and he never returned. I want an accounting.”
“This entity will check,” replied the warty one, and his entire body vanished and reappeared in just an instant.
“Ifrit claimed unlawful compulsion,” the dæmon continued. “Petition made to king of ifrits, who upheld its appeal, voided the indenture, and enslaved said entity for ten thousand years.”
“I claim recompense,” she noted, “under the law of unfair employment of magical assistance.”
“Granted,” it said. “What is thy wish?”
“The death of a human,” she demanded.
“Inappropriate use of an ifrit,” the dæmon noted.
“Then use another, damn you!” Mösza cried.
“This entity is already damned, by definition, and cannot be redamned,” it responded.
It paused for a moment, lost in thought.
“Cost is 6.66 souls,” it added.
“Oh, very well,” she agreed.
“One attempt only will be made,” the dæmon indicated. “No further assistance shall be provided thereafter.”
“Just get it done!” she ordered, and closed down the æthernet.
From the corner of the room Sadyris had watched the entire drama out from one half-lidded eye, while pretending to be asleep, and now she took herself to her little box, where she stretched her tail into a rigid line and thereby touched another.
'Ware the Dark-Haired Man Page 8
