When they left the vine-trimmers, the Emperor had traded places with Falco, and Zoë had jumped up beside him on the seat of the big wagon. Hosts of yellow daisies were growing along the roadside, and, as he walked next to Falco, Jon wondered what Lyla would have thought of them—blossoms so different from the autumnal rock flowers she loved, but different too from the luxuriant flowers of spring. Yellow daisies with a purple center, rising from clusters of finger-shaped leaves—Jon had never seen them before today and guessed they belonged to the drier climate of the North.
Engrossed in the flowers, his attention to the road lapsed—until Falco touched him lightly on the shoulder. Looking up, he saw a group of men on horseback watching them from the crest of the hill they were climbing. The afternoon sun was directly behind the riders, so it was impossible to distinguish their faces. But they were dressed in white, and their arms gleamed in the sunlight. From the stiffening of their bodies, Jon knew that Zoë and the Emperor recognized them, too.
Zoë whispered to the Emperor, then pulled out the red-and-white cloth Malayuka had given her in Great Barton. Making a point of shaking out her hair, she twisted the cloth and tied it around her head, trying to appear as if she were readjusting her appearance, not transforming it.
“Your sash,” she called down softly to Falco. “Give it to the Emperor, but don’t let the horsemen see you hand it up.” Falco did as she asked, moving close to the wagon to make the transfer, but when Zoë handed the strip of fabric to the Emperor he looked at her in confusion.
“Tie it around your waist—exactly the way Falco was wearing it,” Zoë whispered. “Be quick, but don’t call attention to what you’re doing.”
Meanwhile, the soldiers had descended in their direction. Drawing up, they halted in a line across the middle of the road.
“Friends,” Zoë said. “Why do you block our way to safety?”
The captain ignored her and looked hard at the Emperor, who moved in his seat to make sure the sash was visible.
“Where are you going?” the captain asked. “Don’t you know that we’ve won the war? There was no need to leave wherever you came from. Everything will be better now.”
The man spoke with the clipped Eastern accent Jon had first heard in Great Barton. That meant he’d be unlikely to recognize that none of them sounded like local farmers. But how would the Emperor respond to his questions?
“We flee the Emperor,” he told them, speaking slowly—not like a farmer from around Kar but at least not like a member of the ruling class.
“Haven’t you heard?” the captain asked. “The Emperor is dead. You have no reason to fear him.”
“Yes, we know that the old Emperor was killed. But he’s not the one we’re fleeing. We’re trying to stay clear of his son, the new Emperor. He’s sworn to avenge his father. You must have heard that. It was all the talk at home. They say many men have flocked to his banner; they’re seeking out true believers and putting them to the sword.”
“That can’t be true,” the captain said.
“It is true. These are my neighbors,” the Emperor replied, pointing to the men and women behind him. “We’ve all taken our families to find safety with our brethren further west.”
Except for Ellen, there were no children with them. Would the captain notice this? And wouldn’t he question the existence of brethren in the West? Fortunately, he was less interested in the man he was interrogating than in what he’d said about the Imperial family.
“Where did you say this Emperor’s son is?”
“In the hills northwest of the Imperial City—at a secret refuge his father fortified and stocked with provisions to last for years. The son has an army of horsemen and they sweep down to seize whatever they want from us. It’s said they lie in wait for the Chosen.”
“Have you seen these horsemen?” the captain asked.
“No, sir. But the word of them has spread, and we didn’t want to see them with our own eyes.”
He believes us, Jon realized to his relief. He doubts the truth of our story, but doesn’t doubt our honesty. He simply dismisses us as ignorant bumpkins.
“We must report what you’ve told us,” the captain said. “But I doubt it’s more than a few runaway soldiers you’re talking about and nothing like an army. Yet we should be able to make short work of them in either case. What do you have in these wagons?”
“Whatever came first to hand,” Zoë replied. “We were in a hurry.”
“I’d better take a look. You’re not hiding anyone, are you?”
Zoë laughed. “Why would we hide anyone?”
“What are those bottles?”
“Brandy,” the Emperor told him. “A few bottles made from our own grapes—just to remember the place in case we never got back. But from what you say we’ll be able to return soon, so we don’t really need them. Perhaps you’d take them as a gift—as a gift to the soldiers fighting for the faith.”
“Yes, we could take them,” the captain said. “Gordo,” he called to one of his soldiers, who’d dismounted in order to take a better look at the contents of the two carts. “Come and put these bottles of brandy in my saddlebags.”
“Just beyond the summit of this hill,” he said to the Emperor, “you’ll come upon a road to the South. We have a camp five miles down that road. Go that way and you’ll be safe. Like I said, I suspect your Emperor’s army will turn out to be nothing more than a few renegades—that’s all. But our troops will protect you. Just don’t say anything about the brandy—they may get the idea that you have more of it and ransack your wagons. We wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?”
“No sir.”
The captain signaled to his men to follow him, and they galloped east, passing on either side of the wagons.
“Hurry,” Zoë called out as soon as the soldiers were out of hearing. “We need to put a distance between ourselves and the road to their camp.”
But she stopped speaking when she saw that the Emperor was grinning at her.
“Your Highness?” she asked.
“We did it,” he said gleefully.
“Did what?”
“We tricked them! We actually tricked them! It was one thing to lie to those vine-cutters, but deceiving that officer was a real challenge. I’ve never done anything like that before in my life. You can’t believe what it means to me.”
“You played your part well.”
“Yes, that’s exactly it. I played my part well, like a good actor. Have you ever been to the theatre?”
She shook her head. She hadn’t a clue to what a theatre might be. Playing a part was just a phrase she’d heard someone use.
“No, I don’t suppose you have—but neither have I, for that matter. But I’ve seen actors—they sometimes performed in the palace. On special occasions, when Father was entertaining guests, he’d arrange for actors to perform the traditional plays of their region, and, when I was old enough, I was allowed to watch. It was always a treat, but it never occurred to me that I could do anything like what the actors were doing. Pretending to be someone I wasn’t, I mean. But that’s what I just did. I pretended to be a farmer and they actually believed me. It’s incredible.”
Zoë looked confused. This talk about playacting meant nothing to her. But Jon understood it. He, too, had never seen a play, but he remembered the day he’d deceived the women about John and the rush of power that had come from carrying off a successful lie. That was exactly what the Emperor was feeling at this moment, and it was the first time he’d ever experienced such a sensation. The Emperor was learning how to manipulate his subjects, but did that lesson mean that power is inevitably linked to deception?
“Do what Zoë orders,” the Emperor told the drivers. “We must manage to go faster—at least until we get well past the turnoff those soldiers told us about.”
And so they increased their pace—although with oxen it was still slow going.
Jon walked by himself for a time, then fell back to find Alf and K
lei, who were bringing up the rear of the procession. Marekko was carrying on a lively conversation with Klei, but Falco’s assistant grew silent when he saw Jon. Marekko clearly disliked him, although he’d never spoken more than two words to the man.
“How far are we going?” Alf asked.
“I don’t know. The Emperor described a place in the mountains; he said nothing about the distance.”
Reaching the summit of the hill, a jagged blue line in the West indicated the presence of mountains.
“There they are,” Klei said.
“But we still have a long way to go. You see the road branching south up ahead? I’m sure Zoë will want us to get well beyond if before we stop for the night.””
▲
The next morning, Falco was back, his red sash in place, driving the first wagon, and once again the Emperor walked beside him, along with Jon and Zoë.
“What is the place like where we’re going?” Jon asked, sure that the Emperor would provide him with more than enough information. “West House, you called it.”
“This road ends in a mountain valley, where there’s a small fortress and a village. I was there two years ago. At one time, a wall stretched from one side of the valley to the other, but much of it has fallen, and stones have been carried away by the villagers for building materials, so you have to use your imagination to reconstruct what it once looked like.
“West House stands at the south end of the wall. It’s still classified as an Imperial Fortress, which is why I visited it—Father sent me to review the garrison, which should give you an idea of how minor the place is. The garrison doesn’t live in the fortress anymore—they live with their families in the village. Of course, a few kept guard during the week of my visit, but that was a formality. Four days’ journey on horseback from Kar, they might as well be on the other side of the planet.”
“And this fortress,” Jon asked, “Is it the place where you plan to put the library?”
“No. It wouldn’t be safe there. The Chosen are bound to come there someday—although it can’t be a high priority.”
“Unless they suspect that you’ve fled in this direction.”
“And it won’t be difficult to discover the direction we took,” the Emperor said. “I’m certain we were seen leaving Kar by more people than that old woman at the gate.”
“But many others also fled the city,” Jon pointed out. “We were a day later than the great exodus, but that fact in itself wouldn’t identify you as the Emperor. Once the Chosen discover you’re not in the city, they’re likely to assume you left with everyone else, when it would have been easiest to escape unnoticed, and that means you could have gone in any direction you chose.”
The Emperor was pleased to hear what Jon was telling him. He hadn’t considered this possibility.
“But where will we put the library?” Jon asked.
“That’s the fascinating thing. The fortress has a warden—a man old enough to be Lawrence’s father—who showed me something he alone knew—a secret passed on from one warden to the next and revealed to no one but members of the Imperial Family. The fortress abuts a sheer cliff rising high above the valley floor, and its tower conceals an aperture into the mountainside—an aperture with a kind of door you can open and shut, only it doesn’t move on hinges and it has an irregular shape, so that it blends in with the rock. If Talis hadn’t told me about it, I’d never have guessed it was there, even though I examined the room carefully. Talis said I was the first person he’d revealed the secret to since my father visited the fortress as a young man, and you can imagine how long ago that was.”
“Where does the door lead?” Zoë asked.
“It leads to a staircase that spirals up a cylinder cut into the stone. Here and there, slits let in a bit of daylight, but they’re too small to be noticed from the valley floor. Whoever constructed it was an expert at concealment. The stairs end in a covered chamber at the top of the cliff, and from there a way goes further up the mountain.
“You wouldn’t guess it if you looked up from the village, but the top of the cliff is wide and flat—like a table, but a table with a shortened leg, since it slants to the Southeast. It’s a strange place—one of the strangest places I’ve ever seen, but you’ll see that for yourself. Not far from the entrance to the stairway, you come to a cluster of low buildings. I thought at first that they were a kind of upper fortress where the defenders could flee as a last resort; and the Emperor who built the tower may have had the same idea, for he constructed a few new buildings on the ruins he found there. They’re ruins themselves now, but their foundations have survived. It’s to those half-ruined buildings on the cliff that I plan to bring the library.”
“But not by wagon,” Jon observed.
“I’m afraid the library will have to be carried up book by book—and the distance will be considerably greater than the distance we carried it in the palace. But I could imagine no location in the Empire where the enemy would be less likely to seek the library. At least no location I knew myself at first hand.”
“And once the books are hidden, what will we do then?” Jon asked.
“That we’ll have to decide. The books will be in danger as long as we remain nearby, but where to go I’m not sure. I’ve brought maps and we’ll study them together. If my brother were alive, he’d have a plan. I always went to him when I had a thorny problem. But you and Zoë will be able to help me. Together, we’ll come up with something.”
▲
Once it crossed a north-south byway that skirted the feet of the mountains—more trail than road—the East Road climbed above the rapids of a stream. Seen from below, it appeared to lead to a wall of rock, but, as you ascended, the wall opened to reveal a mountain vale—a counterpart to the Valley of Women, Jon observed. There was even a rivulet meandering through the landscape. But the stream drained no lake, and, unlike the lush meadows of the South, this valley was brown with parched grass.
The Emperor had described the setting accurately. A walled cluster of buildings commanded the south rim of the valley. Rising from the far side of the largest structure, a watchtower scaled the lower cliff side, while a two-story arcade connected this tower with the gate of the complex, near where the wall of the fortress joined the ancient wall that spanned the valley.
“That’s the wall he told us about,” Alf said. “But why did they build it where the valley is widest? Fortifying the entrance to the valley would have made more sense. Remember the wall at the end of the Valley of Women?”
Jon had had the same question.
“Do you think it had something to do with the fortress?” he suggested.
“Perhaps,” Alf said. “If the fortress had to be built against the sheerest place in the cliff and the wall had to connect with the fortress, then what you’re suggesting makes sense.”
“It’s not much of a wall,” Klei observed. “A good runner could easily jump it.”
“It was higher once,” Jon told him. “You can see how much has fallen. And men may have been shorter then.”
“Shorter? Alf asked. “What a strange idea.”
It was a strange idea, Jon acknowledged. But he knew he was right. And it wasn’t the fallen stones alone that told him that the wall had been higher when it was first built. He could almost see it as it had once appeared, when the masonry was fresh. Another one of those visions that seemed like memory but must have been an hallucination. And yet it had the feel of solid reality.
“Just a guess,” he said.
“You must be thinking about what the Emperor said when he told us that the locals had used the wall for building materials,” Klei said.
“Yeah, that’s what I meant.”
But how they’d reused so much stone was not readily apparent. A few cottages huddled on a knoll next to the stream, but the fields near the wall were empty. If a garrison was stationed here, you wouldn’t guess it. Certainly no soldiers guarded the entrance to the valley. But why guard the entrance? In
recent centuries, the only wars had been fought on the eastern border, and here they were far to the West.
At one time, a gate had stood where the road penetrated the long wall, but all that remained were two columns, one fallen and broken into three fragments, the other standing at a precarious angle. From the look of them, you could tell they were the work of the wall builders, and not the Emperor who’d ordered the highways. But if the wall and its gate predated the West Road, then it stood to reason that the West Road had followed an earlier route into the valley.
Standing at the gateway, Alf turned and looked around.
“It’s the center,” he said. “You’d have to measure the place to be certain, but it sure looks like they located the gate at the very center of the valley.”
“So the wall divides it into two equal areas,” Jon noted.*
“To my eye, that’s the way it looks. Of course, it would be difficult to prove without calculating the precise area of the valley, and that would be a challenge.”
“But what’s the point of dividing the valley into halves?” Klei asked.
“Not just halves. From here a straight east-west line would divide it into perfect quarters. Whoever constructed these things must have had an appetite for geometry” Alf said. “But what they were after I can’t tell you.”
“So it wasn’t really a fortification,” Klei observed.
Jon thought of the symbol on his arrowhead—a circle with a line through the middle. Could that have anything to do with what they were seeing?
“Welcome to the end of the West Road,” the Emperor announced as he joined them at the gateway. “We turn off here.”
Following a track along the inside of the wall, they approached the fortress, the Emperor leading them on foot while the wheeled vehicles followed slowly, lurching as they climbed in and out of the ruts. Like the land around it, this structure, too, seemed deserted, but, as they drew near, a white-haired man appeared in the slit above the gate, disappeared, and then reappeared below, pushing the door open.
“It’s the Warden,” the Emperor said. “Talis—the old man I told you about, Jon.”
The Flight from Kar (The Emperor's Library Page 32
