Adelmar ground his teeth. That sounded like his wife. Despite being married to him for twenty years, Lady Ellara had yet to adopt her husband’s austere tastes. Where he shunned what he thought of as ornamentation and frippery, Ellara sought it out like a magpie. In his opinion the clothes she wore were a little too fine, she laughed and drank a little too freely and loved life a little too much.
He adored her with every fibre of his being.
“State your business, and leave, Jarrod. I care not which order you choose. Or did you come here merely to show me my brother is a prancing jackanapes? If so then you wasted your time, for that I knew already.”
Jarrod pursed his lips. “Well, well, hark at you, big brother. Your verbal jousting has come on leaps and bounds living among those bluff northerners. You’re almost starting to sound as though you belong at court.” He laughed and clapped his hands. “Why, we’ll have you snorting Tenebrian moonspice from a fat dowager’s bosom in no time.”
Adelmar shuddered at the thought. “When that happens, you have my permission to throw me from the top of that damn fool tower the Order is building. Now, tell me what you’re doing here or leave. Either suits me.”
His brother sighed and flopped into a chair. “I’ve told you already, dear Addled. You were missed at church today. Not by me,” he said, raising a hand before Adelmar could protest. “By father. By the court, everyone. Father is in a rage about it. He saved you a seat by his side, and had to sit red-faced next to an empty chair for the entire ceremony. I merely came to warn you.”
“What does anyone care about where I choose to pray?” Adelmar slammed a clenched fist onto the tabletop. “What business is it of theirs?”
“Poor, naive Addled,” Jarrod said, reclining in his seat with one leg swung carelessly over the chair arm. The sight of it further irritated Adelmar. His brother was able to make even the everyday act of sitting appear louche. “In case it has escaped that blinkered mind of yours, you are father’s heir. What message does it send if you do not ascribe to the official faith of the Empire? People look to us for moral guidance, after all.” He grinned wolfishly.
Adelmar frowned. “It has been made official? I... had hoped the emperor would come around.”
“Shocking, isn’t it?” Jarrod smiled and stroked the thin, wax-tipped moustache he was currently affecting, which was seemingly now the fashion for the young noblemen of the capital. “He’s quite devout, you know. When he first took to the Brotherhood’s teachings and let that Archon fellow attend his councils, I thought it was a political gambit of some kind. We all did. But you should see him during the service! The old buzzard actually has tears rolling down his face.”
Adelmar’s face darkened. “It is unwise to mock any man in his own house, even more so when he is emperor.”
“Father?” Jarrod blinked in surprise. “Oh, I don’t think I have much to worry about there, brother.”
But Adelmar did not relent. “It isn’t the first time you’ve disrespected our father in my presence. I do not want to hear any more such insults fall from your lips.”
“Are you talking about what I said during snowfall?” Jarrod laughed. “I wondered why you looked as if you’d just sucked on a lemon. All I did was correct an inaccuracy.”
“Which was?”
Jarrod grinned. “I just pointed out that far from whatever nonsense father claimed dear grandpapa’s last words were, they were far more likely to have been “get that damned pillow off my face”. Though admittedly his voice would have been so muffled it would have been difficult to make out.” He chuckled, and reached inside his doublet. “Here, I brought you something.”
Adelmar reached for the object being proffered. It was a gold chain and pendant, affixed to which was a green crystal the size of a pigeon’s egg. “Do you really expect me to wear this?” he demanded.
“Easy, Addled,” Jarrod replied soothingly. “It’s just for appearances. It’s the same as mine.” He raised the pendant around his own neck, and tapped upon it with a ring. “Glass. I had one made up for you as well.”
Adelmar turned the stone over in his hands, examining it more closely. If it was a facsimile, it was well done. “It looks genuine,” he said. As he spoke, he found that his eyes were reluctant to leave the glittering surface of the gemstone.
“Of course it does,” said Jarrod, as though he were speaking to a child. “What do you think father would do if he found out?” He looked up at Adelmar and winked. “It will be our little secret.”
The older prince grunted noncommittally. With a sudden effort of will, he pulled his gaze away from the stone and tossed the pendant onto his desk. It landed untidily amongst his papers. “I will think about it,” he said, in a tone that implied he would do nothing of the kind.
Jarrod threw up his hands and stood. “Well, I tried,” he said, walking to the chamber door. “I’m sure that you know best. Incidentally, you’re expected at court. If I were you, I’d actually turn up this time. Father’s headsman is so woefully underemployed these days, I daresay he’d jump at the chance to make the Bloody Prince’s name a reality.”
He slipped through the door, lithe as an eel, before Adelmar could respond. He always had to have the last word, that one. Still, he had told it true: it was time to present himself to the emperor. After arriving in the city a few days earlier, he had stood beside him briefly for the snowfall. But since then he had busied himself at the barracks where the company of soldiers he had travelled south with were housed. He had told himself he wasn’t been avoiding presenting himself at court, that the needs of his men came before official pleasantries. But the truth was that he had allowed himself to be distracted from such duties rather too easily. He sighed.
Adelmar’s mood was little improved when, a short time later, he marched through the Hall of Light, the majestic throne room of Ehrenburg’s imperial palace. Nowhere else in the capital city could match its scale or grandeur. A score of fifty-foot tall marble columns lined the hall from the great oak and steel doors to the dais at the far end. His footsteps echoed loudly as he came on, his plate-metal greaves clattering. He had rejected the flashy court clothes – silk hose, padded silk breeches, stylishly slashed doublet and the most ridiculously pointed shoes he had ever clapped eyes upon – rather hopefully laid out for him by Ellara. Instead, he had donned the crimson platemail he was most comfortable in. Let everyone see him for what he was, a soldier.
From each giant column fluttered a veritable forest of standards and pennants, each one belonging to a noble house that lived under the imperial aegis. As he marched, Adelmar recognised the plated warrior and claymore of the Maccallams of Strathearn, the ruined fort of the Hylands of Caer Lys, the bow and arrow of Hunter’s Watch and half a dozen fish of various types and hues for the numerous Fisher Houses of Westcove. There were many more, some not even he recognised. Many of them belonged to houses and cities he had personally subjugated, bringing them to heel by force if they refused to willingly become part of the Empire... and pay the taxes and tithes that entailed.
It was surprising how many refused.
Above each one fluttered the imperial standard; a great red bull’s head on a field of white, its expression stern... or, as Jarrod was wont to proclaim, constipated. Scores of bulls’ heads thus gazed down from the walls of the throne room upon the standards of the other houses, the lords and ladies of the court and commoners and supplicants alike. The message was unsubtle, but no less effective for that: you belong to us.
Eyes turned to follow him as he made his way through the assortment of people that had gathered in the Hall that day. People who, it seemed to him, existed solely to loiter purposelessly in such places, making idle chatter and gossiping about the dozens of others doing the same. Adelmar ignored them. Ellara would no doubt have stopped to make small talk with those she recognised, and been mortified had she been the subject of their half-covered sneers and titters, but to Adelmar they were beneath contempt. Parasites, the lot of them.
>
At the far end of far end of the hall, atop the dais, stood the Golden Throne. Such was the distance from the great double doors that it was barely visible as you entered. You could see where it was, however. The day had dawned bright and clear, and all upon the dais was bathed in light so bright it hurt to gaze upon it for too long. The curved wall behind the throne and the roof above it were entirely glazed. The fittings that held the panes in place were intricately ornate, and beyond them was naught but the open sky and the blue rolling waves of Tranquil Bay.
Like the standards, the Hall of Light was unsubtle in the message it sent. Its architects had clearly laboured long and hard to build a place to make even the grandest of men feel small and cowed; all but the one who sat on the throne.
That was now, as it had been for the last twenty-seven years, Emperor Maximilien, fifth of his name and the first to earn the additional appellation ‘The Great’. His right to rule was beyond question; his line could be traced directly back through centuries of imperial rule. His ancestor it was who helped lay the first foundations of the coastal village that would become Ehrenburg, and who first assumed the duties of leading that fledgling settlement.
As the centuries passed, Ehrenburg had grown and prospered, aided by bountiful seas, a temperate climate and a location that provided a convenient stopping off point for the trading vessels of the east, bringing their exotic wares on long voyages south to sultry and mysterious Tenebrian ports. In the north, Whitecliff had also grown wealthy, but it nevertheless remained a pale imitation of its southern cousin. A thousand miles south, the fish of Tranquil Bay were more plentiful, the winters and storms far less severe and its port better-situated to attract passing traders.
As Ehrenburg grew, so its influence spread. The Legion was born from a need to protect itself from envious neighbours; initially a town militia but over time becoming a permanent fighting force of professional soldiers. Soon, neighbouring cities began to clamour for the protection of the Legion, in return for a portion of their own wealth and produce, boosting Ehrenburg’s coffers even further. The city’s port boomed like never before, with seafaring traders falling over themselves to purchase fine wines, spirits, furs, linens and other goods from across southern Callador. From such humble beginnings, the Empire was born.
In its history, the imperial city had experienced both booms and lean times, often dictated by the capabilities of the reigning monarch... and the level of resentment that festered in the far-flung corners of the Empire. Rebellions took place from time to time, and the Crown was not always victorious. But any defeat was short-lived, as any part of its dominion that had been lost was never far from its thoughts.
The northern uprising was one such. Emperor Frederik, Adelmar’s grandfather, known affectionately by his subjects as Fat Fredi, had shown little interest in holding on to his possessions. Preferring, in fact, merely to enjoy the trappings of power themselves and partaking of the various hedonistic pursuits available to one of his position, with an enthusiasm exceeded in size only by his legendary girth. Sensing weakness and already chafing against the disinterested imperial yoke, the north had rebelled. United under a Lowlands nobleman, Caderyn of House Carlyle, Lord of Creag an Tuirc, the northerners cast the Legion from their lands.
Adelmar had been but a boy at the time, barely six. Yet he remembered clearly his father’s seething resentment of his own father’s martial inadequacies. The nights he would spend raging at the loss of nearly a third of the Empire. Almost a decade passed, and if the northerners thought themselves safe after the passage of so much time, they were sorely mistaken. No sooner had Fat Fredi’s enormous coffin been lowered into the ground than the newly crowned Emperor Maximilien was mobilising the Legion for war. The once-proud fighting force had grown fat and complacent, a sad reflection of their recently deceased master. But soon, under the boy-prince Adelmar’s command, they were ready to reclaim what had once been theirs.
Adelmar himself, not yet fifteen and desperate to make a name for himself, had led the campaign against the north, winning easy victories against the Lowlands before they had run before him like cattle, firing their own crops in a desperate bid to outrun the merciless might of his Legionnaires. But it was in the final battle of the war where Adelmar finally found the fame he craved. His forces crushed the northern rabble at the gates of the Granite Pass, Adelmar himself defeating the upstart Caderyn in single combat after fighting through the general’s back lines with his vanguard. Seeing that the battle was lost, the beaten general had thrown down his sword at the young prince’s feet. He’d pleaded for his life and for the lives of his family and his soldiers.
Adelmar had listened impassively. Then he told the northern lord that his family would be spared, to live out the rest of their lives within the walls of Ehrenburg. But forbidden to leave or to marry, they would be the last of his line. Meanwhile, whatever remained of his army would be spared, if they agreed to lay down their arms, with two-thirds their number to take the Legion’s oath. “But you, my lord, are a traitor,” he had said. “Let your fate be a warning to all others who would betray the Crown.”
Caderyn had been kept prisoner for over a year, while the great fortress of War’s End was built above the Pass, in the midst of what came to be known as The Scorch, to stand vigilant over the north for all time. When the last brick was laid, Adelmar himself had nailed Caderyn to its walls, alive and shrieking. This act, and the war that had preceded it, earned him the nickname the Bloody Prince. He had heard it many times in the years since, though few dared to use it to his face. However, he in truth gave it little thought; if the name struck an ounce of fear into his enemies, then as far as he was concerned it had served its purpose.
These thoughts went through his mind as he marched the length of the throne room towards his father. The emperor sat straight-backed in the seat he had graced for a half-century. The Golden Throne of Ehrenburg towered above its occupant, seeming to glow in the sunlight. To look upon it was to gaze upon the power and wealth of the Empire. At least, that was the idea. Some years earlier, when they were children together, Jarrod had persuaded him into the throne room at night, when it was deserted. With a knife, he peeled back a layer of gold, revealing the plain wood beneath. Gold leaf, nothing more. Perhaps the throne had, in the past, been solid gold. It was possible it had been sold off to fund the vices of one of Fat Fredi’s decadent forebears. Or perhaps it had always been a lie. Adelmar knew not.
When he arrived at the foot of the dais, the emperor was engaged in his legal duties. In Ehrenburg, justice was most often dispensed by appointed magistrates, though of late the draughty, cramped court building was unusually quiet. Elsewhere, ruling families were free to enforce the laws of their lands, as well as imperial law, however they saw fit. But by long-standing tradition, highborn nobles from anywhere within the Empire could petition the imperial court to have the emperor himself sit in judgement of their cases. The emperor’s will, however, being harder to predict than that of the various magistrates or shire reeves, meant that such hearings did not take place often.
Two people stood before him now. One was a strutting peacock of a man in his middle years. He wore a dark mulberry doublet stitched with gold, with the fashionable high neck and lace collar. Over one shoulder he wore a short gold cape, fastened around his neck with a clasp in the shape of a many-branched yew tree, the sigil of Woodhaven. His greying hair was carefully styled, every strand in its place, likewise a thin, waxed moustache and trimmed, pointed beard. Prominently displayed on his chest was a green crystal pendant, hung from his neck by a thick gold chain. Adelmar wondered idly whether, like Jarrod’s, the stone was fake.
The man standing beside the elegant nobleman, cowering beneath the weight of the emperor’s severe gaze, could not have been more different in appearance. He was young, less than twenty Adelmar judged, and dressed in plain brown woollen garments. They seemed to have been well looked after, but were faded and noticeably thin in places. He bore no crest or emb
lem of any house that Adelmar could see. This wretched figure clutched a small silver-framed harp protectively to his chest, as if to ward off the eye of judgement. Unlike his clothes, the instrument he held appeared to be of very fine quality.
Adelmar listened as a clerk read out the facts of the case, which served to make the young man appear even more miserable. The dispute centred on the eldest daughter of Sir Edmond Hargrove, the nobleman, who the younger, a wandering troubadour, had gotten with child.
“Where is the girl now?” The emperor’s expression was as stern as that of the bulls’ heads that fluttered above.
“At home currently, Excellency, but not for much longer,” replied the Lord of Woodhaven, with a deep bow towards the dais. “I intend to disinherit the slattern, after which she will be free to go where she pleases, as long as it is not within my family’s lands.”
The emperor grunted. “And what of this specimen?” he asked, sweeping a hand towards the trembling singer. “I assume you wish him punished for the adultery?”
“If it please Your Excellency,” Sir Edmond simpered. “But I have other reasons for bringing this matter to your attention.”
“Such as?”
The noble’s lips parted in an oily grin. “Compensation, Excellency. We have had several offers of betrothal for the girl, but nobody will want her now. I seek to recoup the amount we would have received in dowry. I also seek an imperial decree that the whelp shall never be able to lay a claim against our house or family possessions.”
Dawn of the Dreamsmith (The Raven's Tale Book 1) Page 32
