“You are here because you have the potential to one day be of use to our kingdom. You would not be here otherwise. The road ahead of you will be hard. Very hard. But there is nothing easy about public service. Many of your predecessors have left the school before their graduation. Be in no doubt that these people are failures. If you feel that the learning is too hard, or that the prejudices of others are too upsetting, then I ask you to consider only one thing – the alternative. For the majority of you, that alternative is a lifetime of drudgery. If you take but one thing from today then let it be this – that school is not there so that you can be happy, it is there so that you can be ready.”
It is doubtful that any of us actually believed the seemingly hostile words of this most severe, most unusual woman. I, personally, had felt that she was simply trying to intimidate us, to make us uncomfortable. It took me several years to understand that everything she had said was actually true. It was, nevertheless, only in the awe-shocked aftermath of that speech that the room felt anything like as empty and cavernous as it does today.
The white walls, made from the distinctive white stone of Tallakarn, only add to this impression of size and emptiness. Dark, iron weapons hang on the walls to the back and sides of me. They appear tiny and pointless against the vastness of the room. In fact, there are only a few items that are large enough not to seem out of place here: the plush red rug on which I stand, the long table in front of me, and the king’s coat of arms on the wall behind him – a golden pair of imbalanced scales on a turquoise background.
This time the atmosphere in the room is not quite so jovial. My headmaster, gnarled and gaunt, sits near the door looking somewhat broken. His unkempt hair and general lanky inelegance seem magnified in this context. Here, despite his black cap and gown, he’s no one’s master. In fact, he cuts rather a pathetic figure, a sorrowful sergeant hauled in to explain the behaviour of his soldier. The fleeting moment of eye contact I receive from him contains more pity than anger.
The king oozes on a throne behind the long table directly ahead of me. He is so fat and shapeless that one could be excused for thinking he was in the process of melting. The royal attire is an ill-fitting, ill-conceived concoction of purple and silver that would have been a little too tight ten years ago and certainly is now. For this reason alone, I will endeavour to keep my eyes averted. There is something about him, perhaps his hairlessness, perhaps his piggy little eyes, that makes me think of him as an overgrown baby. An exceptionally ugly one. He wears an expression that would be called a smile were it genuine.
To his right sits his advisor, orator of that most memorable speech, Vesta. Vesta is a slender, neatly presented woman of indeterminate age dressed in slender, neatly presented clothes of negligible value. She is so still and expressionless that she could be made of stone. Where the king stinks of excess, this woman looks like she has never known, or sought, pleasure.
“Well, well! Here he is! The man himself! The boy who beat the prince!” The king’s voice booms off the walls in a manner that would be expected for a man of his frame. I remain silent.
“You are quite the athlete, boy.” He inflects his statement as though it is a question.
“It’s what a life on hillsides teaches you, Your Majesty,” I mumble, avoiding his eyes in the way that the youth of the kingdom are taught to do.
“Ah yes, you’re a sheep boy, aren’t you?”
“Goats, Your Majesty. My father is a goatherd.”
“I always used to want to be a sheep when I was younger. I used to crawl around with my father’s woollen carpet upon my back! I used to eat grass! Would you believe it?”
His laugh is unnaturally loud and enthusiastic. His belly, vibrating with good humour, threatens to erupt from his shirt. Curiously, neither the headmaster nor Vesta join the laughter. I just about force a smile but it no doubt looks awkward. He continues laughing.
“Oh, it’s a sign of the times when a prince gets beaten by a sheep boy, isn’t it, Vesta?!”
“Your Majesty.” Vesta’s clipped reply is scarcely an acknowledgement.
“I’d have never been beaten by a sheep boy. You know, Gruff… It is Gruff, isn’t it? If I had my way, then we’d never have had sheep boys in the class with real boys at all, you know.”
Silence.
“No, no, not at all. It wouldn’t be right, I said. Fish people are there to fish, farm people are there to farm, sheep people are there to…”
“Tend goats,” intercepts Vesta helpfully.
“But this woman,” – he gestures to Vesta – “told me different. ‘Give the people a chance,’ she said. ‘You’ll find remarkable people in all walks of life,’ she said. And do you know what?”
Silence.
“I said, do you know what?” he prompts.
“What, Your Majesty?”
“She was right. She’s always farking right, this girl. She’s so right about things that I think there’s something wrong with her. I’ve given up thinking or having opinions. Don’t need them any more. Useless.”
The king ruffles Vesta’s short grey hair rather aggressively. Vesta’s pale face remains inscrutable.
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” she replies, showing only a formal interest in the king’s compliment.
“Did you ever hear how she got the job as my advisor?”
“No, Your Majesty.”
“She kidnapped my son when he was a baby. You remember my son, don’t you? That fat useless bastard that you just beat to the trophy.”
“Yes, I know your son, Your Majesty.”
“Well, this bloody virgin kidnapped him when he was a baby!”
The king rolls out another one of his deep belly laughs. I don’t know how to respond. Despite his obvious amusement, I am reluctant to laugh at child abduction.
“Should have held on to the useless bastard, I say. Swapped him for a sheep boy or something! Ha ha ha!” Once more, no one laughs or responds.
“So, aren’t you going to ask?”
“Ask what, Your Majesty?” I attempt to remain as indifferent as possible. I find his tone to be excessively jovial, almost as though he is toying with me.
“What?! They told me you were sharp, boy. How she got the job as my advisor, of course, instead of getting hung at dawn! I just told you she kidnapped my son when he was a baby!”
He produces an expression that is somewhere between a smile and a threat. My upbringing has been very much one of not questioning one’s elders and, despite my natural curiosity, silence lingers. I refuse to play the game.
“If you wish to tell it me, Your Majesty.”
“He’s not very talkative, this sheep boy, is he, Vesta?” For the first time in the conversation, the king appears angry. He smacks a cup of beer to his face and knocks it back in great thirst.
“No, Your Majesty.”
“I’d hoped for more from you, Gruff. I heard you were a tyrant. I heard you’d crippled a boy!” As he says this, he begins laughing again, deriving humour from a vicious attack in the way that only a powerful man could. My eyes move uneasily to his stomach, parts of which are beginning to surface from beneath his outfit.
“I didn’t intend to cripple him,” I snap, looking the king in the eye. It’s true and it is important to me that people know it. Importantly though, I omit the apology. It is true that Tomos has paid perhaps too high a price for his meddling on the misty hillside that day but, nevertheless, I shan’t be apologising for it.
“He was the son of my treasurer, that boy you crippled. What’s my treasurer’s name, Vesta?”
“Rhys Ap-Rhys, Your Majesty.”
“Yes. The son of my treasurer, Rhys Ap-Rhys, that boy you crippled. They want you hanged!” Another laugh rumbles out across the room. I don’t answer.
“But that won’t happen. Not least because the man’s a gwnt. The prince informs me that his son’s a gwnt too. Maybe losing a leg will help him know his place a little better.”
Although I have troubl
e imagining the ever-diplomatic Prince Libran describing Tomos to the king in quite that way, I am nonetheless thankful.
“Thank you, your Majesty. That’s very just.”
“Just what?!” He growls.
“He means ‘just’. As in you have been fair, Your Majesty,” Vesta explains. She seems very attuned to the king’s various failings.
“I am not here to be fair, boy. Look at my sign. Does that look fair?” I glance upward at the large turquoise flag behind him. Upon it are the golden, imbalanced scales of his line.
“They represent your family’s bloodline, Your Majesty. They are there to show that your family were traders. So, no, they do not represent fairness. They represent profit and industry.” The words roll off my tongue as though they have been learnt by rote. This is, of course, because they have.
“Bloody right. I’m here to do what’s right. Not what’s fair.” He pauses for effect, giving my knowledge no praise. “And what is right, boy?”
“Whatever you say is right, Your Majesty.”
“My, my. Maybe he is sharp after all. They told me you were sharp, boy.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Although my confidence is growing, I still try to keep my eyes down in the way that I’ve been taught.
“That’s why we’ve got a quest for you,” he adds. His eyes harden. Finally he’s got to the point of the matter. He means to punish me in some more cunning way than pain.
“It’s a dangerous quest, boy. But I’m sure someone of your calibre can handle it.” Delivered by someone who was less of a buffoon, this may have sounded disingenuous. The headmaster, who I had almost forgotten was in the room, squirms uncomfortably in his small chair near the door. Vesta sits impassive beside the throne.
“Anyway, the crown has many crucial matters to attend to so I must insist you all leave. You,” gesturing to the headmaster, “I shall talk with you again tomorrow. Meanwhile, Vesta, if you would be so good as to continue the briefing in your own chambers. You know how I have no ear for detail.”
I cast one last unrequited glance to the headmaster as he scurries out of the door. Vesta rises from her seat like a puff of steam.
“Your Majesty.” She bows her acquiescence as she speaks but the gesture is so perfunctory as to be almost damning. She beckons me to a large door across the room to my right, opposite the smaller door through which the headmaster has left. I reach it first but step aside in order to allow her to open it. She returns the favour by allowing me to walk through before her.
My mind immediately moves to Vesta and her intent. She could have been tasked to kill me. She certainly has the cold eyes for it. And the distant manner. If that were the case, I imagine I’d have little chance to escape.
But there is more to Vesta than the simple scent of a killer. Something that I cannot put my finger on. It is a certain arrogance, almost bordering on contempt. Even in that large room, with the weight of royal favour upon her, sitting alongside the king, I did not sense that she was with him. She was almost indifferent to him.
Seven
I follow Vesta through the white stone labyrinth. The corridors are so bare and minimal that they are disorientating and it is not difficult to imagine becoming completely lost. The lack of decadence and ornament helps me to deduce that we must be in the servant’s quarters.
The walk, meanwhile, is accompanied by a strangely comfortable silence. I sense that neither of us places too much value upon conversation. This, in addition to the repetitiveness of the scenery, seems to only add to the distance we cover.
Indeed, I feel as though we have walked twice the circumference of the palace before we arrive at her chambers. She steps inside and opens the door, holding it so that I can follow through. The austere whiteness is the first thing to strike me, and instinct temporarily stops me from going further. I sense some sort of trap. It could be a gaol cell, albeit without a bed, hidden away in the belly of the palace.
It is at once immaculate and severe. The white walls, made of the same Tallakarn stone, seem cleaner here than anywhere else in the palace. Meanwhile, there is not an awful lot else to take in. There is a dark oak desk in the middle of the floor with two very basic matching chairs on either side. That is all. I doubt that there is even a speck of dust. The only man in the kingdom that would consider this room to be decadent would be my father. “Four walls? Only a sheep needs a pen.”
“Take a seat,” she commands. Vesta’s tone is no friendlier outside of the king’s presence. As is custom, I select the chair facing away from the door. It screeches over the white stone as I pull it away from the table. It is desperately uncomfortable; a chair designed to look like a chair rather than to serve as one. Vesta glides past and into her own seat. There is an efficient grace to her movement. Her eyes meet mine, possibly for the first time since our introduction. It is only now that I notice an almost androgynous quality to her face.
“Welcome to my chambers. This is my reception room. I have been told it is somewhat barren, but for this I do not apologise.” The tone of her voice, flat and emotionless, makes this lack of apology quite clear.
I shrug. I cannot say that my or my father’s room would be much different were we to inhabit a palace and, even if it would, it is not my place to judge. I am simply relieved that it is not a gaol cell. To my further relief, she skips any further conversational courtesies.
“Have you ever heard of Brightstone?” she asks. Her voice is unusually precise, possessing no trace of any local accent. Meanwhile, the question itself concerns me deeply.
“Yes,” I reply.
“What do you know of it?” she asks. There is not a hint of curiosity in her voice.
If a person is going to be sent to a place, the bare minimum that they might hope for is that it actually exists. Unfortunately, this is not the case for Brightstone. It is somewhere beyond the snow, the stuff of folklore, the kind of place that one might hear about from the friend of an uncle whose wife’s grandfather’s cousin had been there and survived. It is somewhere that people merely hope might exist, some other vestige of humanity clinging on to this otherwise dead, frozen mass.
“I know nothing of it. Only what I have heard.”
“And what have you heard?”
“Well… To begin with, most people say that it doesn’t exist.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think that you probably know one way or another.”
“Very good. What if I were to tell you that it does exist?”
“I’d probably be more likely to believe you than anyone else I know.” It is only as I say these words that I realise they are true. Even though I have only just met her, I realise that this grey, slender woman with all the charisma of cold stone has made quite an impression on me. She is clearly a superior being.
“Then you are a good judge of character. It does indeed exist.”
“How do you know?”
“I have been there. Some time ago.”
“I see.” A boy given to enthusiasm would have perhaps reacted differently.
“It is the only other civilisation on The Mother Island. That is not to say we share much in common. Brightstone is more advanced; they have technologies and wealth beyond what people here can imagine. It is also much older – perhaps a thousand years old. As it is more northerly and less exposed to the Eastern Sea, it is also possesses a more pleasant climate.”
“It sounds like you should have stayed there,” I reply.
“Things are not always so simple, Gruffydd.” She takes a map from a drawer in the table and lays it out before me.
Although I have seen maps less brown and faded, I have never seen one so accurate before. The only accurate maps that I have ever seen depict the known world. This map, meanwhile, makes the world appear much bigger than I had previously understood. Maps of the Mother Island simply don’t exist any more and, although I was aware of its existence, I had never had an inkling of its shape, size or extent. There was probably one t
ime when a drawing of an old man’s faint memory of how the Mother Island used to look would not have been too far from reality. But when the drawing of that faint memory has been copied and copied for hundreds of years without verification, it becomes useless. So useless in fact that the practice of copying them has long since ceased.
She points to me our position in relation to Brightstone. For a brief moment, I feel that rarest of emotions: excitement. For an even briefer moment, this excitement even surpasses that nagging doubt that I am only being provided with this knowledge for one terrible reason.
“As the crow flies, it is four hundred and thirty seven kilometres away from here on a north-westerly bearing. You should also note that it is not provided with the same natural barriers as our royal kingdom of Tallakarn. This makes it exposed to the snow savages in a way that we are not. The consequences of this are that the people of Brightstone have not been able to colonise any of the mainland in the way that we have and that, out of necessity, they are much, much greater fighters,” she says. She talks with such focus and precision that I cannot help but be impressed.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.
“You’re a sharp boy. Why don’t you tell me?” Vesta smiles the first smile that I have seen from her. It is a thin one, not altogether friendly.
“You want me to go there.”
“Prince Libran told us that you were sharp. Sharp and prickly, he said. Like a gorse bush.” Her eye contact, beginning from nothing, has become disconcertingly constant.
“People may think of me as they like. Why do you want me to go there? Is there not a less imaginative way that you could have me killed?”
“Why would we want to have you killed?” she questions flatly. Even this emotive comment doesn’t bring so much as a flush of blood to her pale face.
Tales of the Zodiac - The Goat's Tale Page 4
