The Empty Kingdom

by Elizabeth E. Wein

  For one second the world was made of sparkling white light and blinding heat; then it was black. When he knew himself again, Telemakos was slouched against the wall below the window, sobbing childishly. The limewashed plaster beneath his cheek was damp with tears. He clenched his teeth and bit back the next sob.

  He saw, rather than felt, that his hair was suddenly aflame. Abreha instantly beat it out with a damp cloth.

  He expected this, Telemakos thought. He expected me to come to him. He expected he would be setting me this task, and sealing it like this. He had everything in place.

  The najashi left Telemakos sitting by the window. He laid his ring in a dish to cool, and put away the tongs he had used to hold the heated metal. Then he slid his hand beneath the lip of his writing desk and sprang the hidden panel. He took a curl of palm tape out, closed the lid, and rolled the writing open on the marquetry.

  “Your aunt has sent you a letter,” Abreha said, “thanking you for the lion skin you sent her, and I see no reason you may not read it.”

  He expected me here, Telemakos thought again. He has saved this for last, to distract me, to court my favor, to reward my compliance …

  But it worked. Telemakos crept to Abreha’s side. The najashi held up the light in the burner so Telemakos might read.

  Goewin’s love and elation seemed to shout at him from the scratches on the narrow frond. Telemakos had the strangest sensation, shaping each word silently with his lips as he read, that he knew exactly how each sentence should end, as though he had read it all at least a dozen times before.

  Telemakos my dear,

  This gift, this prize

  delights me! Never you the coward or

  the fool, not with your father’s strength and wit

  and cunning bred in you to such degree.

  A child no more, you’ve grown to manhood now.

  Heed me, Telemakos.

  He prowled among

  the lions; he became a young lion,

  and he learned to catch prey.

  Few sons achieve

  their father’s stature. Most do not, and few

  outstrip them. You, my soldier, you won’t fail,

  my bold hero. Beloved friend, you are

  so well grown now, so wise, the flower of

  the rising generation, and your deeds

  will be their song.

  Telemakos, heed me.

  Your loving aunt, as ever, G.

  The letter was in Ethiopic, but the inset quotation midway through it was in Latin. This meant that the word lion was in Latin, too; it would have been anbessa, Abreha’s second name, in Ethiopic. So Goewin avoided making any connection between Telemakos’s gift to her and the najashi’s part in it. How I love her, Telemakos thought.

  “May I read it again before you put it away?”

  “Of course.”

  A child no more, you’ve grown to manhood now. Heed me, Telemakos …

  He suddenly recognized the familiar rhythms of Homer’s Odyssey. He reached out to touch the palm leaf, as if physical contact with Goewin’s written words would bring him closer to his aunt, and at the second his fingertips brushed the inscription, he realized that the entire letter was composed of the goddess Athena’s inspiring words to the prince Telemakos. The thrill of discovery and mystery that went through him felt as though it really did come straight through the scratched marks.

  The phrases were out of context and out of order, but they were all direct quotations from his father’s own Ethiopic translation of the first four books of the Odyssey.

  Sphinxlike, Goewin had sent him a riddle.

  Telemakos read it again. Only the lines in Latin were unfamiliar; they sounded biblical. Why had she used Latin? She could have written the whole thing in Ethiopic, or even in Greek. If it was from the Bible and the Odyssey, it was all originally Greek anyway. So why this verse in Latin? Why any of it?

  He became a young lion.

  Leo. Goewin had taught Telemakos the Latin word for lion on the day they met, nine years ago, when Telemakos had been no more than six years old. It was one of his earliest memories, how he and Goewin and Priamos, Gebre Meskal’s ambassador to Britain, had exchanged names for his wooden Noah’s Flood animals in three languages. Goewin had told him the British word for lion, also, llew. Her father used to call her twin brother, Lleu, the young lion. The Roman legate at Abreha’s Great Assembly feast had called him that as well.

  Leo. Llew. Lleu, who had once been prince of Britain, Goewin’s twin brother. Medraut had also used the word leo, in the brief time he and Telemakos had been together earlier that year: Spiderwebs joined together can catch a lion.

  Telemakos, heed me.

  Telemakos’s eyes were beginning to burn again. He could not unravel it. He had not enough time. It was not fair.

  “Have you finished?” Abreha’s even voice cut through his concentration.

  “I’ve finished,” Telemakos whispered. He watched the najashi’s narrow, dark hands roll the palm strip shut.

  “Muna, are you there?” the najashi called. The queen came in without answering aloud; only her clothes rustled and tinkled, as though, like a ghost, she had to make her presence known through the objects around her.

  “Make a bed for the Morningstar in the sitting room,” Abreha said. “Let him stay here tonight. You may want to anoint the burn.”

  Telemakos shivered. He reached up toward the blazing mark at the back of his neck, but thought better of it. Muna helped him to his feet, holding her resolute silence. Her touch on his bare skin was gentle and thrilling. Telemakos turned his flaming face away from her, ashamed of his tears and the turmoil in his stomach.

  “Do you want an opiate?” Abreha asked him.

  Telemakos bit back the bitter sarcasm that sprang to his lips: Why didn’t you think of that before you set my hair on fire? He remembered his father, cold and courteous, held captive in chains that threatened to choke him.

  “I’m all right,” he said stiffly. He shrugged off Muna’s simmering hands. “I told Athena she could have my dogs. She has promised to behave herself for you if she gets them. I left her sleeping in the Great Globe Room, and it would be a good thing if they were there for her when she wakes.”

  Muna beckoned him, one hand down, her fingers opening and closing by her side. Telemakos followed her out of the najashi’s study and into the receiving room. She communicated without speaking, exactly as Medraut used to do, pressing Telemakos’s shoulder to make him kneel and patting the shining ebony tabletop to make him lay his head down on it. She was sympathetic, but not shocked by the najashi’s treatment of him; her manner was so firm and straightforward that he realized she must know more of Telemakos’s misdeeds than he had thought. She was somehow Abreha’s conspirator.

  Her touch as she smeared aloe over the back of Telemakos’s neck was so delicate that he almost thought he was imagining it. But the brand itself felt like a small circle of flame at the base of his skull.

  “Let me plait your hair,” Muna said. “It will keep it off this wound, and you will look respectable for your interview tomorrow.”

  My interview? he thought, and suppressed a shudder, but the bells were gone and made no sound.

  Abreha came through and stood watching as Muna began to comb Telemakos’s hair. She scolded her husband sharply. “You might have waited to mark him until after your Federation lords interrogate him. Perhaps they’ll find fault in him that you don’t see.”

  “I know the worst already,” Abreha answered. “He will withstand their questioning.”

  Telemakos dreamed he was in Afar, but the dream was unfamiliar. He lay on his stomach by a stagnant pool in a riverbed that was otherwise parched to dust. Above him, on the bank of the dry river, with the desert at his back, Goewin’s slain twin brother, Lleu the Bright One, the young lion, the prince of Britain, whom Telemakos had never known in life, sat cross-legged. Lleu had Goewin’s dark eyes and white skin, but in the dream he was the same age as T
elemakos.

  Telemakos lay with his left arm plunged to the shoulder in the still, green water, trying to tickle trout. But the pool was empty and the water was icy cold, and his arm had grown so numb Telemakos could not feel his fingers anymore.

  He looked up at his uncle and said, “I can’t do this. It will destroy me. It’s not worth it.”

  “You must,” Lleu answered. “You must show me how.”

  “There’s nothing here,” Telemakos said, and pulled his arm out of the water. But when he willed his black, frozen fingers to open, there on the palm of his dead hand lay Abreha’s signet ring.

  “That is the mark of Solomon,” Lleu said. “You can keep it.”

  XII

  A GUARD OF HONOR

  THARAN WAS WITH TELEMAKOS when he woke, pouring coffee spiced with ginger that Muna had left for them.

  “The najashi has departed San’a. He is taking your sister to Aksum,” the vizier told him. “Do not protest; we thought it best to spare you both a violent parting. When you’ve broken your fast, you may come with me to a gathering of the Federation so they may question you.”

  Telemakos could neither eat nor drink. Tharan sat patiently with him for a few minutes, then twisted the ends of his mustache and stood up.

  “Let’s go, then, boy. They will be waiting.”

  Tharan escorted him alone; no guard went with them. The stairways seemed eerily silent without the companion clash of tinsel at Telemakos’s elbow. He thought again of Medraut and tried to carry himself with his father’s fearless dignity.

  “Lower your head,” Tharan told him suddenly. “You must not enter the Chamber of Solomon looking as though you have blood right to it. Your chances of withstanding this trial will be far greater if you do not seem prideful.” He stopped, right there in the hall, and tipped Telemakos’s head forward with a light touch. Telemakos stood still, seething, and fixed his gaze on his feet.

  “Not so much,” Tharan directed. “Show them humility, not shame. Are you ashamed of yourself?”

  Telemakos did not think Tharan expected an answer to this, but he raised his chin, keeping his eyes cast down.

  “Princely,” Tharan said. “Perfect. Hold that. Can you?”

  “Sir.”

  “I shall cough, to remind you, if I see you falter.”

  “I don’t understand,” Telemakos said quietly. “Why does it matter how I—”

  He stood suddenly overwhelmed by his own perfidy, frozen, unable to step forward into this bleak, brief future he had created for himself, facing a lifetime’s worth of fear and torment packed into a few weeks.

  Tharan gripped him by the shoulders, as a soldier would his comrade before battle.

  “Morningstar,” he said, “do not be afraid.”

  Telemakos managed to swallow, and held his chin raised and his eyes lowered. He felt sure he must seem as demure as Muna as he walked into the assembly room where King Solomon was said to have held his councils.

  Telemakos had no idea what to expect of this ordeal, but his first shocked thought as he entered the arena was that he knew every one of his judges by name. There were sheiks he had met on his first day in Himyar, at the Governor’s palace in al-Muza; others he had been introduced to and spoken with at the last Great Assembly of the Federation; Shadi and Jibril and Haytham of the Scions; and Malika’s uncle Alim, who had traveled with them from Marib. Dawit Alta’ir the Star Master was there, representing his home island kingdom of Socotra.

  And why isn’t the najashi here himself? Telemakos wondered bitterly—but of course, the najashi was taking Athena to Aksum.

  Telemakos stepped into the center of the room to meet the contempt of the gathered tribal lords. It had taken less courage to face down a pair of fighting lions.

  His first interview lasted all that day. But it did not have the feel of the criminal trial Telemakos had expected. From the start it seemed far more like a scholar’s examination than an inquisition. Dawit spent an hour quizzing Telemakos on his knowledge of Himyar’s water: which provinces each wadi valley irrigated, how to harvest flood waters, the working of the wells beneath San’a, the depth behind the dams. It seemed unjust to Telemakos that he might be accused of treachery for possessing knowledge that his Himyarite masters had pounded into his head without his ever asking for it in the first place, but it also seemed pointless to pretend he did not know these things. So long as his questioners were focused on their own kingdom they did not touch on Aksum, and that was a relief.

  The three Scions were given their fair turn to speak among the others. They sat together in a tense, conspiratorial knot. They avoided looking at Telemakos, but they were scribbling furiously back and forth among themselves on wax blocks the whole time, and Telemakos guessed they were probably more focused on him than anyone else there. They elected quiet Shadi as their spokesman. Shadi looked at him directly when he spoke, as a king to a supplicant. Telemakos kept his eyes lowered.

  “Your loyalty is in doubt,” Shadi said, a thing no one else had directly mentioned.

  “My lord,” Telemakos acknowledged.

  “Jibril and I have good reason to uphold you, but Haytham wants you to account for your interest in Awsan.”

  “I have none,” said Telemakos. “I’ve never set foot in Awsan.”

  Shadi directed his reply to the assembly as much as to Telemakos. He ducked his head and murmured in his half-embarrassed way, “Haytham observes, by your answers to the Star Master, that you’re more intimate with Awsan’s fruits and fields than he is.”

  “Anyone can memorize names and figures,” Dawit snapped, “and it is a pity Haytham of Awsan has not applied himself better to the geography of his own kingdom. The Morningstar has never been to Britain, either, but he has got the measure of it in his head. Tell this assembly of Britain’s principal rivers and where they flow, Morningstar, just as you have done for Himyar.”

  Half in disbelief, because it was so irrelevant, Telemakos spoke hesitantly. “Tamesis, in the southlands, flowing east; Sabrina in the west; and Tava in Caledonia, north of the Roman wall. These are the largest …”

  Tharan coughed. Telemakos had raised his eyes, without thinking, to see if anyone was actually interested. He looked down quickly.

  “Did you ever think to hear such a thing?” Dawit Alta’ir demanded of no one in particular, sitting back and picking leaves from his beard. “A young Aksumite speaking the names Tamesis, Sabrina, and Tava in Ghumdan’s alabaster halls? He knows what he knows. Question him further if you are dissatisfied with him, my princes and my servants. Question him yourselves; I will not.”

  The interrogation lasted three days, not always under the same people. For its duration Telemakos was housed with the palace guard in their barracks. No one seemed specifically assigned to watch over him, but he was expected to adhere to the warriors’ routine and standards and was never left alone. Each night before Telemakos slept, Tharan stopped by to bid him good night and to drip clean water over the burn at the back of his neck.

  When the Federation assembly had finished with him, Telemakos started on the journey to al-Muza and the Hanish Islands to fulfill his pledge to the najashi. He traveled as one of a detail of young Himyarite soldiers. None of them towered over him as the cadets had done two years ago, though he was more slightly built than they; dressed like them for desert travel, and with his hair plaited tight against his skull, Telemakos looked like one of their number. Only he carried no weapon.

  In the evenings, as they roasted partridge over a sage-scented cooking fire, the soldiers talked neutrally about hunting and the day’s journey. Telemakos studied his companions’ faces from beneath his lashes and wondered why these particular men had been chosen as his guard. Some of them were not very much older than he. He was curious about them but did not want to risk being cut cold by his only companions when they might be under orders not to speak to him casually. No one had said anything, in the middle of the first night out from San’a, when Telemakos had suddenly sat u
p sobbing aloud and calling for Kidane—Save me, save me, Grandfather! He would have been deeply embarrassed if anyone had said anything, so maybe they were just being polite. He did not want to have to explain the wound on his neck, either, and only rinsed it briefly when no one was looking.

  He wondered how far ahead of him Abreha was, and if the najashi really did mean to take Athena all the way to Aksum himself. She is safe, isn’t she? Telemakos fretted. I wouldn’t finish the najashi’s filthy maps for him if I didn’t believe he would keep his promise to take her home. Is she safe? Why, oh why, would I ever trust her to him?

  The burning sore at the back of his neck was all he had for surety. Each morning Telemakos woke with the feel of dried tears on his face. Half the time he could not remember what he had been dreaming of to make him cry. He wondered what his guards must think of him.

  On the third evening of the journey, Telemakos tempted them to speak to him. He spread his complex instruments for measuring distance on a square of cloth beside the fire. It was like opening a box of magician’s tricks: they had never seen a drafting compass or an astrolabe.

  “How does that work? Is it a secret?”

  “It’s just a skill. Someone has to show you how the first time, and then you have to practice, just the way you learn to throw a spear. Pick it up and look, it’s not magic.”

  “What do you use the wand for, if not magic?” One of them pointed hesitantly toward a straight-edge ruler.

  Telemakos laughed. “That’s for drawing lines! Are all soldiers so superstitious? Look, I’ll show you …”

  He showed them how to use the compass, too, and let the six of them each try it in turn, drawing circles in the bare ground where they had pulled up the grass around the cooking fire.

  “With the star measurers you can reckon where you are, and how far you’ve still to go. I can figure the distance from here to al-Muza.”

  He could not do the calculations in his head but scratched figures with a finger in the dirt. His audience was so impressed by these occult tracements that Telemakos thought it would have disappointed them if he had announced a number directly without any show of conjuring it.