Her thoughts of the Plateau and Deforya dropped away as she realized that there was another source of illumination in the chamber besides the dim glow of the ancient light-torches. From the Table itself oozed a faint purplish hue. Or did it?
Mykella blinked.
The massive stone block returned to the lifeless darkness she'd always seen before on the infrequent occasions when she had accompanied her father or her brother Jeraxylt to see the Table.
"Because it is part of our heritage," had invariably been what her father had said when she had asked the purpose of beholding a block of stone that had done nothing but squat in the dimness for generations.
Jeraxylt had been more forthright. "I'm going to be the one who masters the Table. That's what you have to do if you want to be a real Lord-Protector." Needless to say, Jeraxylt hadn't said those words anywhere near their father, not when no Lord-Protector in generations had been able to fathom the Table.
Mykella doubted that anyone had done so since the Cataclysm, even the great Mykel, but she wasn't about to say so. Before the Cataclysm, the Alectors and even the great Mykel had been reputed to be able to travel from Table to Table. Another folktale and fanciful fable, thought Mykella. Or wishful thinking. No one could travel instantly from one place to another.
Yet . . . once more, the Table glowed purple, and she stared at it. But when she did, the glow vanished. She looked away, and then back. There was no glow . . . or was there?
She studied the Table once again, but her eyes saw only dark stone. Yet she could feel or sense purple. Abruptly, she realized that the purplish light was strangely like the soarer's words, perceived inside her head in some fashion rather than through her eyes.
What did it mean? How could sensing a purple light that wasn't there save her land? How could that be a talent? If the soarer had not been a dream, if she had appeared, why had she appeared to Mykella and not to her father or to Jeraxylt?
Slowly, she walked around the Table, looking at it intently, yet also trying to feel or sense what might be there, all too conscious that she was in the lowest level of the palace in the middle of the night— and alone.
At the western end of the Table, she could feel something, but it was as though what she sensed lay within the stone of the Table. She stopped, turned, and extended her fingers, too short and stubby for a Lord-Protector's daughter, to touch the stone. Was it warmer? She walked to the wall and touched it, then nodded.
After a moment, she moved back to the Table, where she peered at the mirrorlike black surface, trying to feel or sense more of what might lie beneath. For a moment, all she saw in the dimness was her own image— black hair, broad forehead, green eyes, straight nose, shoulders too broad for a woman her size. At least, she had fair clear skin.
Even as she watched, her reflection faded, and the silvery black gave way to swirling silvery-white mists. Then, an image appeared in the center of the mists— that of a man, except no man she had ever seen. He had skin as white as the infrequent snows that fell on Tempre, eyes of brilliant and piercing violet, and short-cut jet-black hair.
He looked up from the Table at Mykella as though she were the lowest of the palace drudges. He spoke, if words in her mind could be called speech. She understood not a single word or phrase, yet she felt that she should, as though he were speaking words she knew in an unfamiliar cadence and with an accent she did not recognize. He paused, and a cruel smile crossed his narrow lips. She did understand the last words he uttered before the swirling mists replaced his image.
". . . useless except as cattle to build lifeforce."
Cattle? He was calling her a cow? Mykella seethed, and the Table mists swirled more violently.
The Table could allow people to talk across distances? Why had no one mentioned that? There was nothing of that in the archives. And where was he? Certainly not within the sunken ruins of Elcien. Could he be in far Alustre, so far to the east that even with the eternal ancient roads of Corus few traders made that journey, and fewer still returned?
Alustre? What was Alustre like?
The swirling mists subsided into a moving border around a circular image— that of a city of white buildings, viewed from a height. Mykella swallowed, and the scene vanished. After a moment, so did the mists.
The strange man— could he have been an Alector? Hadn't they all perished in the Cataclysm? Mykella didn't know what to think. Still . . . she had thought of Alustre and something had appeared. Could she view people?
She concentrated on her father. The mirror surface turned into a swirl of mists, revealing in the center Lord Feranyt lying on the wide bed of the Lord-Protector, looking upward, his eyes open. Beside him, asleep, lay Erayna, his mistress. After the death of Mykella's mother, her father had refused to marry again, claiming that to do so would merely cause more problems.
Mykella felt strange looking at her father, clearly visible in darkness, and she turned her thoughts to Jeraxylt. Her brother was not asleep, nor was he alone. Mykella quickly thought about their summerhouse in the hills to the northeast of Tempre. The mist swirled, and then an image of white columns appeared, barely visible in the dark.
She tried calling up images of places in Tempre, and those also appeared. So did an image when she thought of Dereka, and she viewed the city squares in Vyan and Krost, but even the mists vanished when she tried to see Soupat or Lyterna. Finally, she stepped back from the Table. It still glowed with the unworldly purple sheen, but she could now distinguish between what she saw with her eyes and what she sensed.
She shivered. Telling herself that it was merely the chill from the cold stone of the lower levels, she eased back out of the Table chamber, carefully closing the door behind her.
Once she had climbed the two flights of stairs and returned to her own simple room, Mykella sat on the edge of the bed. What had really happened?
II
Mykella hadn't thought she would sleep, not with all the questions running through her head, but she had. She even overslept and had to hurry in getting washed up on Duadi morning. Dressing wasn't a problem for her, not the way it was for her two younger sisters, particularly Salyna. Mykella just wore black nightsilk trousers and tunic over the full-shouldered black nightsilk camisole and the matching underdrawers, with polished black boots. Her father insisted on those undergarments whenever they were to leave the palace, and it was simpler to wear them all the time. It seemed almost a pity that few ever saw them, and most of those who did would not have recognized them for what they were, since they cost more than a season's earnings for a crafter. Soft and smooth as they were to the touch, they could stop any blade or even a bullet, although a bullet impact would leave a widely bruised area of flesh beneath.
More than a few had tried and failed to learn the herders' secrets, but now few tried, especially since the Iron Valleys were so cold and forbidding and their militiamen were vicious fighters. What was the point of fighting and losing golds and men when the only thing of value was nightsilk that was cheaper to buy than to fight battles over?
Mykella hurried down the corridor and tried to ease into the breakfast room of the family quarters through the service pantry.
Feranyt looked up from the head of the table, polished dark oak that had endured many Lords-Protector and their families. "Mykella . . . I had wondered when you would join us, especially when I heard you had gone prowling through the lower levels of the palace last night."
Mykella managed a rueful smile as she took her place on the left side of the table— the place that had once been her mother's. "I couldn't sleep. I knew I could walk around down there safely— and quietly." She looked directly across the table at Jeraxylt, seated to her father's right. "There were others who weren't exactly quiet or sleeping, either."
Jeraxylt smiled lazily, even white teeth standing out against his tanned face and the dark blue uniform of the Southern Guard, then shrugged. "I got a very good night's sleep."
Mykella lifted the mug of already-cooled tea
. Jeraxylt wasn't about to admit anything, and her father certainly wouldn't press his son, not when they'd both been engaged in a similar fashion. She took a slow sip of the cool tea and waited to be served.
"You look good in that uniform." Salyna smiled at her older brother. "The seltyrs' daughters and the High Factors' daughters think so, too."
"How would you know, little vixen?" Jeraxylt grinned at his youngest sister.
"I'm a girl, silly brother. I know."
Rachylana raised her left eyebrow. Lifting a single eyebrow was one of the skills Rachylana had pursued, as if such unusual talents were required of a middle daughter.
Jeraxylt ignored the gesture.
"What are you doing today?" Mykella asked. "Playing Cadmian again?"
"I'm not playing. I'm going through all the training a Southern Guard gets."
"Father won't let you serve, not in a combat position, anyway." Mykella eased her head sideways to let the serving girl —Muergya on that morning— set a platter with an omelet and ham strips, along with candied prickle, before her.
"Lord-Protectors don't serve. They command."
"Didn't Mykel the Great serve?" Mykella asked innocently.
"That was different. Besides, we don't know that. He probably just had the scriveners write the history that way," replied Jeraxylt.
"Be careful how you speak of history, Jeraxylt," cautioned the Lord-Protector. "You are the heir and will be Lord-Protector because of that history. Disparage it, and your disparage your own future."
"Lord-Protector . . ." Rachylana looked to her father. "Why don't you just call yourself Landarch or prince? That's what you are, Father, aren't you?"
Feranyt offered his middle daughter a patronizing smile. "Rachylana . . . names and titles carry meaning. The words 'Lord-Protector' tell our people that our duty is to protect them. A Landarch or a prince rules first and protects second, if at all."
Mykella caught the hint of a frown that crossed Jeraxylt's brow. The fleeting expression bothered her, as did a feeling, one that was not hers, yet that she had felt. That feeling had combined pride, arrogance, and a certain disdain.
After hurriedly eating the undercooked omelet and greasy ham, and gulping down the candied prickle because she knew she needed to, Mykella stayed at the breakfast table only until her father rose. Then she departed, washing up slightly before making her way to Finance chambers on the east end of the palace— still on the upper level.
Kiedryn was already at his table desk in the outer chamber, and the door to the smaller study that belonged to Joramyl, as Finance Minister, was closed, not that Mykella expected Joramyl to appear anytime soon.
Mykella glanced at the white-haired chief clerk. If anyone would know what the soarer had meant, Kiedryn might. He'd claimed to have read every page in the archives.
"Do you know if the Mykel the Great had a special talent?" she finally asked, standing beside the smaller table that was hers. "Do the archives say anything about that?"
"He had many," replied Kiedryn. "He could kill men without touching them. He could walk on water and even on the air itself. He could disappear from sight whenever he wished. He brought an army through the steam and heat when the River Vedra boiled out of its banks during the Great Cataclysm. He was called the Dagger of the Ancients because he cut anyone or anything that stood in his way. He married Rachyla because she was the only one who could stand up to him."
"Do you believe all that?"
"Mostly," replied the chief clerk. "No one with less ability could have created Lanachrona out of the chaos that followed the Cataclysm. The western lands are still mired in chaos, with all their little lordlets and the seltyrs of Southgate playing them off against one another, and the situation with the nomads to the southeast is even worse . . . and always has been."
"But you didn't say he had a talent, one talent."
Kiedryn laughed sardonically. "You didn't ask it that way. Talent— that's what they say that the nightsheep herders have up in the Iron Valleys. Maybe Mykel had it, and maybe he didn't. The archives don't say." He shook his head, almost mournfully. "You'd have to have something like that to handle those beasts."
Mykella bit back the reply she might have made. Why couldn't anyone just answer her questions? Rather than upset Kiedryn, and to no avail, she settled at the table and began to look over the latest entries in the master ledger. When she reached the end of the third page, she frowned.
Then she stood and walked to the rows of individual account ledgers set on the dark wooden shelves built into the inner wall, picking out one and taking it back to her table desk. After studying the second ledger for a time, she turned to the chief clerk.
"Kiedryn? The barge tariffs on shipments from the upper Vedra are down for the harvest season. They're even lower than those for the spring, and spring tariffs are always the lowest."
"Mistress Mykella," replied the chief finance clerk with a shrug, "I cannot say. We did send patrollers to visit all the factors and bargemasters."
"And?"
"They all claimed that they had paid their tariffs, and most of them more than last year. Almost all still had their sealed receipts."
Mykella stiffened. "What did Lord Joramyl say?"
"He claims that some of them must be lying, or that some of the tariff-collectors had pocketed the tariffs. He told your father this last week."
What Kiedryn was not saying was that no one except the Lord-Protector was likely to contradict Joramyl, since he was not only the Finance Minister of Lanachrona, but the only brother of the Lord-Protector as well.
But why had her father said nothing?
Mykella went to the cabinet at the end of those set beyond Kiedryn's table desk and opened it, leafing through the folders there until she found the list of factors. She carried the list back to her table and began to copy names.
III
By Quinti afternoon Mykella had studied the accounts enough to estimate that at least two thousand golds had been siphoned out of the Treasury over the past two seasons, just from the seasonal tariffs on the bargemasters and the seltyrs and High Factors . . . or rather that those golds had never been put into the Treasury after having been collected. But her calculations were only estimates based on past years' collections and various ratios between barge landings and other records— and she might be wrong. Nonetheless, she would have wagered almost anything that more than a few golds that should not have now rested in Joramyl's strongboxes in his westhill mansion, with its high walls and guarded gates. But there was not a shred of hard proof, and she'd been careful to be polite to Joramyl when he had come into the Finance chambers.
She'd been careful as well in not letting Kiedryn know what she had been doing, other than her normal supervision and questioning. The last thing she needed was for the clerk to mention anything to Joramyl.
How could she discover proof? Could the Table show her anything?
It was certainly worth a try.
Late that afternoon, just before the palace guards were relieved by those on evening duty, Mykella carried a stack of ledgers down from the Finance chambers to the door to the lower levels. She could feel the eyes of one of the patrolling guards on her from a good ten yards away. She maintained a resigned expression as she neared the door.
As she stopped short of the door, the guard looked at her directly, and she could sense a feeling of curiosity, a question why the Lord-Protector's daughter was lugging around ledgers by herself.
"These are the personal accounts of the Lord-Protector, but they're several years old. They aren't needed often, but they need to be kept in a safe place, and the older records are stored on the lower level," she explained. "I'll be there a bit because they have to be put in order." She tried to press the need for safety toward the guard.
Abruptly, the man nodded and stepped forward. "Do you need help, Mistress Mykella?"
"If you'd hold these while I unlock the door, I'd appreciate it. These records are only for the Lord-Protector
, the Finance Minister, and the head clerk. They'd prefer to keep it that way." She offered a pleasant smile.
She could sense his feelings as she closed and locked the door behind her— too handsome for a Lord-Protector's daughter.
Handsome? That was a word for men, not women. Yet Mykella knew she didn't possess the ravishing beauty of Salyna or the exotic looks of Rachylana. She was moderately good-looking, if less than imposing in stature, but she could think . . . and liked thinking— unlike all too many of the women in her family and in Tempre, where a woman's duty was always to her husband and her sons.
Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 2 Num 2 Page 14
