“Don’t try to shame me, Ogodis. Don’t threaten me!”
“Threaten you?” He laughed harshly. “By all the gods, King Elad, it appears to me that you, above all men, cannot be threatened, or shamed, or cajoled, or forced, or even inspired into doing anything! Where is your—” He caught himself as he saw a dark light enter Elad’s eyes and quickly amended his words. “Damn you…,” Ogodis said quietly. “Where is your…strong arm, Elad?”
“I used my strong arm once,” was the chilly reply. “It brought me only pain.”
Ogodis did not understand; he growled an obscenity, marched to the door, and slammed it as he left.
As he went down the hall, talking to himself in his hot anger, the imbur did not see Thytagoras standing in a marbled door well and did not hear him until, passing by, he heard a loud, “Imbur!”
Ogodis turned, threw his arms behind his back, and narrowed his eyes. “Yes?”
Thytagoras motioned him forward.
Ogodis, suspicious, approached. “Well? I am extremely busy, and I—”
“I think, Imbur, that you and I, right now, ought to open a bottle of wine and sit in the fresh air and discuss some things.”
Ogodis watched him with a hawk’s intensity. “Such as?”
“Such as…the city of Erusabad. Its defenses are minimal to anyone familiar with it. A few armed galleys could do a great deal of damage. And a fleet of warships— Who can say?”
Ogodis stared at him for a long heartbeat; then: “Get your wine, Thytagoras.”
* * * *
The quiet. The solitude. The ache.…
Smashed candles.…
“Burn one every night, and let that flame stand for the love we share.”
When Abgarthis came to Elad’s bedchamber, he entered without announcement, noticing that lamps still were lit, to find the young king sitting before an open window staring at the cool night. Here, too, were remnants of torn tapestries and thrown goblets. Abgarthis ignored those.
“Elad.”
The king sighed, rubbed a hand through his hair, but did not turn in his seat. “Do you realize, Abgarthis,” he asked, “that once something happens, it is never again the same as it was? I mean—” he spoke very quietly; clearly he had been drinking “—a thing occurs, or you make a decision, and you think then that you understand it and have put it in perspective. But…you haven’t. Time passes…and as more time passes, Abgarthis, the thing that happened, the decision you made…it changes. The perspective you had of it…it, too, changes. It never stays the same. Every year that passes, you have a new perspective on that thing, and then a new perspective on all of the…perspectives. It never ends. It’s like some wheel that keeps gathering more things to it but never stops.” Elad looked at his adviser then, showing Abgarthis his awfully pained, exhausted face.
Abgarthis told him gently, “I came to tell you that Council has been summoned. Your lords and ministers await.”
Elad seemed not to hear him. “We live in a cemetery, Abgarthis. Look around. You think you see colors and life, beauty…life?” He shook his head. “It’s all dead. We’re trapped by it. It’s all dying. Look carefully. You can see the death inside us. Everything is built on the death of everything else. People…animals…cities…everything is dead. Death is natural; life is unnatural. Impermanent. A lie. Life is a lie.”
Abgarthis was made enormously uncomfortable by this line of thought. What was Elad doing to himself?
“I look out at that city, adviser, and what is there? It is dirty. Worn. Used up. My empire is—used up.”
“Please, King Elad,” Abgarthis reminded him carefully. “Council awaits.”
He nodded. He pushed himself up from his chair, straightened his shirt and trousers, and looked his adviser in the eyes. “I apologize,” he said. “Something very frightening has just happened to me, Abgarthis. I must tell it to you. I— Abgarthis…I am no longer afraid of the oracle’s words.”
Now Abgarthis was concerned. “Truly…are you not?”
“Let come what will come,” Elad said. “What am I to that? Hardly a king. Only a man. Another dying man.”
He lifted his head and walked to the door, not looking at Abgarthis as he passed.
* * * *
O mankind, born in a storm and wandering in a storm—these things that come, they come with cause.…
The special session of the two congresses of the High Council came to order that night, just as the midnight gong sounded throughout the city. The ornate chandeliers that hung suspended from the tall ceiling cast their oily glow upon the assembled tables far below. Servants, roused from their quarters, stood by yawning, filling goblets and lighting table lamps when they went low. Of the forty-two ranking nobles and aristocrats of both Pritons, all save one were present: Count Vendasian had fallen ill and was abed in his estate outside the city, and so he had sent his eldest son, Vensador, in his stead.
Elad ordered ten scribes to commence the recording of the session, and after stating the reason for this specially arranged, hurried assembly (a cause known already to every face in the chamber), he asked Lord Thomo to take the floor and explain the issues as thoroughly as he could.
Thomo presented the facts. Emotion crept through, inevitably, and his own opinion; and very often, when something pertinent caused the councilors to break into abrupt, heated voices, his honor paused, cleared his throat, and requested silence to rephrase what he had just said.
When he had finished, Thomo hurried to a table near the throne dais and quickly swallowed a cup of cold water.
King Elad opened the floor for general discussion.
Every hand in the room lifted immediately; every man in the hall wished to have his say instantly. Elad depended upon protocol and recognized members of the Priton Nobility first, in the sequence of their years of service in the hall.
As the lords of the empire took their turns, some expressed outrage, and many were of the opinion that Queen Salia must certainly have been taken prisoner (contrary to Lord Thomo’s explicit testimony) and swore that this act by the Salukadian Empire must be regarded as the final arrogance hurled defiantly at the throne. Lords Rhin, Falen, and Bumathis made high-sounding appeals for armed justice in the name of the empire.
Almost unanimously, every aristocrat there accepted the queen’s defection—her “entrapment” in the conquered city of Erusabad—as an open invitation to confrontation.
“Shall we offer them our king next?” was the thrust of these opinions. “Shall we offer them everything we have, piece by piece, and still declare that we can live as neighbors with such a people as this?”
And, in a startling reversal of attitude expressed only a few months earlier, one of the aristocrats spoke for all of those present:
“I believe we must agree that King Elad so far has acted with the patience of a god in dealing with these savages. In the face of all that the Salukadians have done, our lord had sought to remain as responsible as anyone possibly could. I myself—and others in this chamber—have argued with him over these matters; yet, I can understand why King Elad would hope for temperance over belligerence. I believe his heart has been right—but the circumstances have been wrong!—for this generous mentality. Gentlemen…my friends…how long can we afford to treat the Salukadians as though they are our equals? We have been tolerant to excess. We have been as responsible and accommodating as we could possibly be. And still they defy us! Have we finally been sufficiently humiliated? We are a strong empire and a good people! Is it not time we showed these easterners that we have been tolerant this long only because we are the most powerful nation on the earth? Hasn’t the time come for even the most patient of us to run out of all patience?”
When Elad turned the floor over to members of the Priton Public Administration, their voices, though more concerned with the domestic effects of the situation, tended to echo the sentiments of the aristocracy.
Just as Elad was about to call for Lord Thomo to make a final statemen
t, Khamars interrupted the proceedings to escort the Imbur Ogodis into the hall. All rose to their feet; Elad called for the Imbur to come forward, and spontaneous cheers lifted. Ogodis bowed before the throne and begged permission to speak to the assembly; more cheers and table poundings met this request, and Elad allowed it.
Ogodis spoke quickly and forcefully. He made an appeal to sentiment because the queen held prisoner by the debased and animal-worshipping Salukadians was his own daughter. He made it known that he intended to sail in the morning for his own palace in Sugat, there to hurriedly arrange for his navy to embark for Erusabad—an armed navy prepared to make war, if war became necessary. Ogodis then declared that Thytagoras, lately commander of the Tenth Legion East in Athadian Erusabad, who had left the imperial service because of his uncertain feelings regarding King Elad’s patient policies (as was well known), had agreed to join the Gaegoshan forces in their sailing to Erusabad.
This announcement created pandemonium in the High Council chamber.
Elad and Abgarthis cried out for order several times as the councilors rose to their feet and yelled, hurrahed, and called for their king to reinstate Thytagoras and commit the Athadian fleet to just such an expedition.
Ogodis waved his hands wildly, crying out that he had absolutely no intention of shaming or denigrating the Athadian court, but that he had finally come to the limit of his own patience and was doing what he felt had been necessary to do all along.
When at last some semblance of order was restored, an irritated Elad thanked the imbur and asked him to be seated with the Nobility. The king then proffered a proposal to his collected council so that he might have as clear an understanding as possible (and have it recorded) as to how the assembly felt regarding this breach of international trust and guardianship.
“My proposal is this,” he announced. “that, in alliance with the armed forces of the throne of Gaegosh, the empire of Athadia will arm a flotilla of vessels and call upon her active legions not otherwise engaged to sail immediately to the city of Erusabad within the empire of Salukadia, confront the ghen of the Salukads, and make it known to him that unless the queen of this empire is returned to her people instantly, Athadia will regard this refusal as a declaration of war. If that be the ghen’s response, we will then commence the use of military force against the empire of Salukadia and against the Holy City of Erusabad. Your response?”
Arms shot into the air, councilors rose to their feet, and a general confused babble, strident and emotional, again filled the hall.
* * * *
Early the next morning. Orain awoke to the sounds of voices in the hallway just outside her apartment. When she heard Adred calling her name, she moved out of bed and pulled on a dressing robe.
She was lacing the front of it when Adred came into the outer chamber carrying a small silver tray of warm bread, fruit slices, jam, and tea.
“Well?” she asked him, as he set the tray on a table.
“Well,” he sighed. He moved to a window, pushed the sash open the whole way, and opened the shutters fully. New daylight struck him; Orain saw that Adred looked quite pale and very tired.
She remained standing where she was. “You’ve been up all night.”
“Yes.” He nodded stiffly and wiped his face. “Galvus has just gone to bed. I think young Omos cried himself to sleep.”
“Oh, gods,” Orain whispered. “Adred…they debated all night?”
“No. It wasn’t a debate. And it certainly didn’t take them all night. Come. Have some breakfast.”
“Adred.…”
He looked at her.
“Tell me, please— Oh, Hea.”
He walked to her, held her, and looked her in the eyes. “Oh, yes, Orain…oh, yes. And we can’t really say that we’re very surprised, can we?”
She was trembling. “No. No, we can’t.”
War.
Came to him then those lines of verse that Abgarthis had shared with him, on the night before Cyrodian’s execution:
The prisoning heart that suffocates love—
The sorrowing vengeance that love cannot placate.
Wars of anger, swords of hate:
We have the knowledge, but refuse to learn.
These things that come, they come with cause.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David C. Smith was born on August 10, 1952, in Youngstown, Ohio. In addition to many essays and short stories, he is the author of twenty-one published novels, primarily in the sword-and-sorcery, horror, and suspense genres. These include a series featuring the character Oron set on the prehistoric island-continent of Attluma; the fantasy trilogy The Fall of the First World; two occult suspense novels featuring the character David Trevisan; a literary coming-of-age novel, Seasons of the Moon, set in the rural matriarchal village of Weyburn, Ohio; and the occult thriller Call of Shadows. Smith has also written or coauthored eight pastiches based on Robert E. Howard characters, including the series of six fantasy novels featuring Red Sonja, coauthored with Richard L. Tierney.
Smith is coauthor with Keith Huff (author of the Jeff Award-winning play A Steady Rain) of the play Coven House, and is coauthor with Joe Bonadonna (author of Mad Shadows) of the screenplay Magicians and the novel Waters of Darkness. Smith is also author of the postsecondary English grammar textbook Understanding English: How Sentences Work.
Aside from writing fiction, Smith has worked as an advertising copyeditor and English teacher and for more than twenty years as a scholarly medical editor. He has served on the staff of Neurology, was the editorial production manager of the American Journal of Ophthalmology, and for more than ten years has been the managing editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
Smith, his wife, Janine, and their daughter, Lily, live in Palatine, Illinois, outside Chicago.
Further information about David C. Smith and his writing is available on his website (http://blog.davidcsmith.net/) and in his entry on Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_C._Smith_(author)].
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