When he and Pen, freshly washed and turned out in clean clothes, presented themselves at the door of his parent’s suite, completely new worries elbowed their way into his mind.
“The Empress will see you now, Your Highness,” said one of the ladies in waiting, the daughter of a Silbari noble house who had come north to serve his mother for the customary year. “Baron Penghar, Magister Pyrull wants a word with you.”
Terrell thanked her and let her lead Pen aside while he moved alone through the warren of the Imperial Suite. He could hear Dona Seraphina’s voice raised somewhere ahead.
“—fool I am for sending a barely trained healer with you! I should have gone myself—”
“Stop it, Seraphina.” Those were his mother’s cool tones overriding the priestess. “I’d have made the same choice. You’d merely have argued longer than she did.”
The door opened, and he saw his mother sitting in a chair in front of the windows of the castle solar. The Two Suns shone through the many glass panes. Terrell had to squint to see details. She wore Silbar’s deceptively simple silver crown as she usually did. The thumb-sized amethyst in the front of it glittered.
He crossed the room in a few strides, knelt at his mother’s feet, kissed her extended hand. The skin was papery and shrunken on her fingers. He looked up into her face and gasped.
Though he knew she wasn’t yet forty years old, she looked fifty. Wrinkles creased her formerly smooth face.
“Mother! What happened to you?” Looking around with growing suspicion, he found that his sire wasn’t in the room. “Where’s Father?”
“Sit next to me, my dear son,” she told him, her voice still strong but now with a faint quaver. “There is something that I must tell you.”
* * *
“Father’s dying?” Terrell said incredulously a little while later. “How can that be? He’s always been so strong!”
“No longer,” Dona Seraphina interrupted, a sign of the depth of her upset. “There’s a cancer eating at him, and we—I!—can’t cure it. I thought that I and the rest of the healers had successfully beaten it back before the Fealty trip. I thought he’d have several years more, but I was wrong. It surged back and now it’s spread to his organs. He wouldn’t last another year, probably not even half a season, except that your mother—”
“I’ve made my decision,” she interrupted the priestess sharply. More quietly she said to Terrell, “You know that your father and I married to settle a war.”
He nodded numbly, taking refuge in recitation. “The Conquest, it’s called in Silbar. After my Gwythlo grandfather Hywel, the first Emperor, set out to conquer Silbar, your father and he killed each other in the Battle of Black Pass. The Empire and Silbar both lost their rulers in the same hour.”
His mother sniffed. “The bards exaggerate. Your grandfathers probably never got within a hundred yards of each other in that chaotic slaughter. The crucial part happened days later and hundreds of miles away.”
“I remember the tale, Mother. Father led the fleet that assaulted Aretzo, while you commanded the city’s defenses. Once word reached him that he’d become Emperor, he proposed marriage to you and ended the war.”
“It was much more complex than that,” his mother said wryly, “But that’s the most important part. He proposed to me, my romantic Gwythlo enemy, on bended knee in my own Palace. How could I refuse him? Never think, my son, that your father and I had a loveless marriage of state.”
Terrell gestured helplessly. “Well obviously not! Anyone who saw you two together could tell. I always knew. Osrick did too—oh.” Years of thoughtless observations fell into place. “That’s why he hates you.”
His mother nodded sadly at the expression on his face. “Yes. He has never forgiven me for winning his father’s love. Even at age fourteen, it made him madly jealous, I suppose because the first flush of his own manhood had come on him. It’s why he tried to kill you as a baby.”
“And did kill my twin brother.” Terrell knew again that old ache, the loss of someone he couldn’t even remember, now forever absent. I wasn’t meant to be alone. But that was unfair to Pen, who’d been raised with him like a real brother.
He glanced across the room at the small shrine in one corner where his mother kept a candle always burning. A tiny lock of fine black hair sealed in crystal dangled on a gold chain from the lacquered frame of the icon.
So little we have left of you, Ryghar; Terrell thought. A wisp of baby hair and Mother’s memories.
He found himself tugging gently at his own hair—pure yellow, the same as Osrick’s and Father’s, or rather the same as Father’s hair had been before it went gray. We were not identical, but we were twins. Damn the legends! I should have grown up with you too, Ryghar, you and me and Pen. Sometimes I dream of it—
With an effort he pushed that thought aside. He knew better than to confide those dreams to Dona Seraphina, or to anyone else, even Pen. Might-have-been dreams were a trap, the Writ warned of it in a dozen places. Everyone got only the life The One gave them. Wishing for anything else was a deceit of the Pale Seraphs, a trick of the Temptress.
Only the service I make of the life I’ve been given will matter when I set my soul in the Grey Judge’s scales. What I have lost and will yet lose on the way . . . must serve to make me stronger. There is no other path for a Prince of Silbar.
Seraphina had been pacing; now she stopped and faced his mother. “Is it love to kill yourself while your son still needs you?”
Terrell turned to his mother in shock. She smiled mirthlessly.
“I am not killing myself, Terrell. I have shared my lifeforce with your father, bound us together. I can buy him many more tendays of life this way, and thus buy time for you.”
“Me?” His voice cracked humiliatingly but he ignored it.
His mother’s eyes met his own and he saw there an intensity that she usually kept hidden.
“Seraphina tells me you want to go to Aretzo. Do so with my blessing. Years ago, your father decreed that Silbar would be yours to rule upon his death, yours and your line. He required Osrick to consent, and to bind himself to support you in exchange for only two duties; that you acknowledge your half brother as your Emperor, and you pay him tribute. It is part of Osrick’s oath as Crown Prince, and I used this fealty trip to remind every noble of what he has sworn to. They’ll all be watching him, judging him, for if he can’t keep an oath to his brother, how can they trust him to keep his oaths to them? He’s trapped, and he knows it.”
“And furious about it.” Terrell twisted his lips wryly. “He wanted to kill me after he got back. Now I understand why.” He must have realized Father is dying, too.
His mother tensed, and her gaze narrowed. “I sent Pyrull to protect you!”
“He did. Osrick was angry but he walked away.”
She relaxed. “Good. I thought he would. He is your father’s son. He’ll come to his senses eventually. Especially once that white cow of his stops popping out daughters and gives him a son or two to dote on. At least she’s fertile, Seraphs witness.”
His mother tossed her head and sniffed. Terrell almost smiled. There had long been no love lost between her and the Crown Princess. But sunlight caught the wrinkles spreading in her face and grief wrenched at him anew.
“Mother. If I go to Aretzo, will I ever see you and Father again?”
She became cold and remote, like a stone carving rather than someone he loved. He could see how much it cost her, and it almost broke his heart.
“No,” she said. “You won’t, and that’s as it must be. You are my only living child, Terrell, the last of the DuRillin-DiSilbar line. I count on you to refound that line, to restore Silbar to glory once more. You’ve had the best teachers and have still more of them waiting for you in Aretzo. The palace staff will serve you gladly, as will most of the aristocracy; your claim also legitimizes them. You’ll have to win over the mages and the merchants and the commons, and—” Her eyes darted to Seraphina and b
ack to him, “—the Temple Hierarchy, but you’ll start with the legitimacy of my dynasty. Use it to build your own, so that when my crown returns to the Stone Throne—” Her voice caught, and she stopped speaking.
When she died, he knew she meant. Silbar’s Crown would depart the body of a dead King or Queen and appear on the Stone Throne atop the Hill of Sight in Aretzo. Legends said it had done so a hundred and twenty-three times so far, ever since the first king made The Pact With God two millennia ago. Mother had made sure he knew the stories.
“I will have to stand for it as tradition demands, one of The Twenty Candidates,” he nodded.
“First among them!” his mother interrupted fiercely. “You are the most direct heir in the entire Royal House. You have precedence by birthright and none can doubt it. They must let you try first!”
“Have no fear of that,” Seraphina sniffed. “The tradition is firmly established, no one will question his right to be there. Not openly, at least.” She rolled her eyes, leaving unsaid the caveats of Silbar’s long grim history. Terrell knew that the makeup of the Twenty changed, sometimes often, as men fell aside due to age, illness, accident—or murder.
“I pray I am judged worthy,” he agreed, ignoring the rest. “But that means—I have to think about this. There’s so much! And to leave you and Father here—” His own voice faded as his thoughts faltered, not knowing what to do with the anticipation of grief.
“You must prepare,” his mother said firmly, while Seraphina jerked her chin in harsh agreement.
Terrell swallowed the rising lump in his throat, forced himself to set aside the pain. They weren’t going to die today, or for many tendays yet. He would be mad to grieve before the need arrived. “How long do I have?” he asked, knowing there were two questions in the words.
His mother chose to answer only the surface one. “You have three days before your father will send you off to Silbar with pomp and ceremony. Then four tendays to get there, and as much more as I can give you to establish yourself. You must be in unassailable control of Silbar when Osrick mounts the Imperial throne. You are my son. You can do this.”
“I can do this.” He nodded, excitement kindling in him. It would be the biggest challenge of his life, but he had been preparing for it for nearly eighteen years. “Mother, I need to see Father.”
* * *
Terrell’s sire lay napping lightly in the big bed that his parents had shared all the years of his life. Curtains across the room’s great window shadowed his face. A maid pulled them aside and Terrell beheld the craggy canyons grown in his father’s forehead. He looked shrunken, as though his skin no longer fit. The yellow of his hair had been fading for so long Terrell could scarcely remember when there hadn’t been some gray; now most of it had gone translucent white. Mother sat on the edge of the bed and clasped one of Father’s hands, wrinkled and spotted, and by that Terrell saw how much flesh had withered off the Emperor’s frame. The blue eyes opened, and the same lively intelligence looked at him again.
“I’m not dead yet, boy,” his father said gruffly. “So don’t look at me like that. Makes me want to swat your backside, and that’d be undignified for at least one of us.”
A smile bloomed on Terrell’s face, surprising him. “May it please my Father; I would not want to force him to be undignified—unless nobody else could see.”
The Emperor of twenty realms smiled back, pleased. “Let’s skip the flowery language; takes too much breath. I promised your mother you’d have Silbar. But Osrick will still need its money. Tell me, son; can Silbar’s treasury afford a tribute of a half-million pounds of silver annually?”
“That sum would be impossible to sustain,” Terrell answered thoughtfully. “The silver mines produce more than twice that, but most of it has to go to support mages and spells already propping up vital functions, like bridges and harbors and the fleet. Without them, both artifice and trade would suffer, and the realm would shrivel, until it couldn’t collect enough in tolls to provide any tribute at all. A healthy Silbar is necessary to support a healthy Empire, and the reverse is equally true.”
“Good. You listened when I talked. Very good.” The old man on the bed sighed. “Wish your brother had done as much. Maybe you can be smart enough for both of you.”
“Father, I—” Terrell said as the bedroom door opened and Osrick barged in, a pair of guards not-quite impeding him. A green-clad woman followed at his heels.
“Father!” Osrick bellowed. “I—!”
“Have the discipline of a drunken plowboy!” The Emperor cut him off savagely, sitting up in the bed. His wife tucked a pillow behind him and sat next to him, one hand resting lightly on his arm. “And half the wits, since your aunt goaded you into barging in like one! Did you take even a moment to wonder why the Chief Druid in our realm might want you to provoke my anger?”
Osrick stopped in confusion, glanced aside at his green-clad aunt. “I—no, Father. I didn’t think. Until now.”
“Better late than never,” the Emperor snorted. “You’ve been used, Imperial Crown Prince Osrick. Remember what it feels like.” His gaze shifted to the woman in green. “Klairveen, you may have grown slightly cleverer while I’ve been away. I give you permission to speak, and it had better be good.”
Klairveen, the Chief Druid of Gwythlo, gracefully bowed, using it to also shift a step away from Osrick and closer to the Emperor. “Your Imperial-Majesty-my-brother, please forgive my impetuous invasion of your quarters. I simply feared for your life.”
“Oh, very good Klair; play upon love and fear at the same time. Note well, my sons, the artistry with which your aunt laid that one on us. You’ll both find there are others better at it than she, and unfortunately, most of them will have even less true feeling behind the words, damn all their eyes. But drop the honorifics, sister, and talk plainly in front of your nephews.”
The mask of concern on Klair’s face slipped, settled into a chilly stare that flicked across Terrell’s mother and himself like a lash. The Chief Druid of Gwythlo wasn’t short on charisma when she wanted to use it, but she wasn’t wasting any on them. She said, “Very well, Brion; I heard you were dying. I’m not entirely bereft of filial tenderness, hard though you make it for me to show it. The rumors made you sound at death’s door. I worried that I’d not get the chance for one last try at your Edict—and a chance to say goodbye, you heartbreaking idiot.”
“Put in an honest order of priority.” Brion nodded. “You are learning. But my Edict stands. Followers of any faith from a kingdom within the Empire may worship in any other land of the Empire, no exceptions, no taxing or persecuting or massacring them. And you can drop the noise about last try; we both know you won’t give up that fight even when I’m burnt on my pyre. Osrick, that’ll be your problem then, but remember! She has a list, and once she’s got the top thing on it she’ll be every bit as relentless for the next, and then the next. You can’t shut her up by giving in to her, only by waiting for one of her Quarter rituals and enjoying the three precious days of quiet.”
“While I placate the land wights for your neglect,” Klair said bitterly. “Care you nothing for the gods of your people?”
“Which people, Klair? I rule twenty realms, nineteen of which believe I already favor Gwythlo in too many ways.”
“Your home,” she answered forcefully. “These valleys and hills and forests and rivers! This land that birthed you, nursed you, taught you, raised you high! If its people, your true people, don’t deserve some favor for that, then your heart is a stone.”
The Emperor’s stern face softened at those words. Terrell thought about riding in the cool forests, swimming in the slow rivers, and guessed dimly at the draw her appeal must offer to his father. And to Osrick, whose face looked more like Father’s in this moment than it ever had before.
“None of us are stone, Aunt Klair,” Terrell said into the silence. “I feel it too, the call of the North land that you’re trying to enlarge in the hearts of my father and brother.
It’ll always have a place in my heart too.”
“But not a dominant one,” Chief Druid Klairveen answered him coldly. “Your skin tells the truth. Silbar will always have a greater claim on you, Prince Terrell DuRillin.” After a pause she grudgingly added his third name, “DiGwythlo.”
“Yes,” he acknowledged. “And that’s why I must go there, become its ruler if the One God wills it so.” He shifted his attention to Osrick. “But the northern blood will still be there in my veins too, brother, you know that has to be so. It’s a tie on which you can rely. While I live I’ll always be part of the same truth that you belong to, even while I am part of my own. Let me be the bridge you need between them.”
Osrick stared at Terrell, suspicion warring with hope in his face. Their father shot a warning glare at his sister that silenced her next words a-borning, and glanced between his sons, expectant, waiting. At last the Crown Prince nodded.
“You’ll willingly acknowledge me Emperor? Pay me tribute?” he demanded.
“Two hundred thousand pounds of raw silver each year,” Terrell pledged. “That’s as much as Silbar can yield without damaging its ability to deliver the same the next year, and the next, into all the long years of the future. Accept a limited return now, Osrick, and it will still pay you when we’re both old and gray. Demand more, sooner, and Silbar collapses like a gutted cow, leaving only hide and bones. Bones that you’ll have to garrison, while they yield nothing and drain your other lands.”
Osrick’s face darkened. “Are you threatening me, little brother?”
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