This story is a work of fiction. It contains references to violent behavior between adults, and expressions of physical affection between consenting adult males. If you find this type of story offensive, or if you are underage and it is illegal for you to read it, please exit now. All characters are fictional and in no way related to any persons living or deceased. Any such similarity is purely coincidental.
This work is copyrighted by the author and may not be reproduced in any form without the specific written consent of the author. It is assigned to the Nifty Archives under the provisions of their submission guidelines but it may not be copied or archived on any other site without the consent of the author.
I can be contacted at Bookwyrm6@yahoo.com
Copyright 2003 Kristopher R. Gibbons All rights reserved by the author.
2 The Trappings & The Suits
Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not "seems."
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play,
But I have that within which passes show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2, Line 76
An amused Aldul leaned against a tree, gazed out across the clearing to the city of Osedys. The sunlight glinted off the priest's silver crescent earring and highlighted scar ridges along his crossed arms. He gave the only comment he dared, sensing m'Alismogh's wordless ire.
"This reminds me of home."
A rough stone wall stretched as far as Aldul's eye could glean, and obscured any view of the city itself. Though taller than two body-lengths, the constructors noisily worked to raise this barrier still higher.
The noontide bell sounded from within the city as the two trekked across a field scored and furrowed by the exigencies of slab hauling. Little to no vegetation, grass or weed, met their feet, just hard-packed dirt etched with runnels and gouges. Awnings and booths, along both directions, ornamented the wall at regular intervals. The rising of the gray barrier before their faces lodged a dismal weight in m'Alismogh, a feeling of approaching something both mysterious and foul. Once at the arched entranceway a large, solid-looking man leapt out of a recess, halting their progress. A glitter of amulets and warding-tokens obscured the black and green of the man's Guard uniform.
"Declare yourselves."
"What is this?" m'Alismogh demanded, his head beginning to ache.
The lean-faced traveler scorned faking surprise at the gatekeeper's childish gesture. "Aldul of Kuo-eda. Arrived at the behest of the Temple Archate."
The gatekeeper paused, then turned to a tally board on which siglae had been notched. After two slow perusals, the Guard found what he sought. "Yes, the Temple petitioned for an Approval of Residency for you.... I can write you a Conditional Pass until you have been interviewed."
"Interviewed?" m'Alismogh queried.
"Yes, by an official from the Throne."
Aldul simply nodded, but m'Alismogh asked. "For what purpose?"
"We do not let all kinds into Osedys...." the Guard began.
"Just those who can pay?"
Both the Guard and Aldul frowned. "We glean a fee for the effort involved, of course."
"Why, when the visitant is clearly desired, and is not a merchant? Simply record name, age, place of origin, and be done with it! If such "officials" choose to labour at a convoluted ritual merely because of an expected visitor, that is their choice."
"Nonetheless...." the Guard's growled out. "This custom has been observed for years."
"Less than nine years!" the Songmaster shot back. "'Approval of Residency,' 'Conditional Pass.' This is ludicrous! Menam would have split the head of the first person to suggest such inanities! No. He would have made the fellow who thought of it solely responsible for every aspect, with no one to delegate to."
"Knew him personally, did you?" the Guard sniped. "Declare yourself!"
The gateman's voice, naturally boisterous, pounded on m'Alismogh's ears, pain lanced through his head at each syllable, and gave the challenge an exaggerated significance. Distracted, annoyed, and feeling like someone else directed his mouth, m'Alismogh answered. "Evendal, Evendal m'Alismogh Oseidhu."
Aldul lost his grimace, and nodded comprehension.
The moment of stillness Evendal m'Alismogh experienced stemmed purely from his own shock. No feeling of faintness, no overly loud echoing, no sudden lightning-flash of recollection whelmed or flooded his senses. He simply knew. He knew who he was. And he knew his feelings about it all would come later.
The gateman's eloquent face turned ruddy, stuck between laughter and fury. "What did you say?" Aldul almost smiled, well familiar with the feelings displayed.
As if to a simpleton, Evendal m'Alismogh, Evendal Songmaster, enunciated slowly. "Evendal. Evendal of Osedys." Even in his insolence, he evinced a thrilling; the words spoke themselves. The gateman scowled, then looked to Aldul, who maintained a wise silence.
Still ascowl, the gatekeeper turned back to m'Alismogh and growled. "That our Prince has been nine years dead does not give you privilege to bandy his name about."
Evendal stood stiff and clench-jawed as quicksilver anger swept through him. He glanced beyond the gateway to see his beloved city awaiting him: the very avenues of his dreams. Almost snarling, he gave voice to the pain in his head and the frustration bubbling in him.
"I object to you. I object to you poised at the eave like some viper in wait on the weary. No doubt, after telling you all our business except the day of our death, we would then need to pay a second absurd token for your time. For having a beast of burden. For simply breathing." It was not a question, yet the man nodded. "I find that anile. I object to the wall. If it were merely two feet high, it would still be loathsome. Are we preparing for a siege?"
"Twice now I have given you my use-name and my home. I care little whether you believe me, but I will not be so insulted as to answer a third time. No matter if I am whom I say, with no writ against me, there is no law or precedent for my detention. Stand aside."
Evendal m'Alismogh stepped under the granite arch. The watchman went for his sword, burnished bronze, and moved to assault the radical. m'Alismogh pushed aside his cape, pulled his steel, and stood ready. They paced, assessing height, grip, mass and tactic without a word.
"Master Gatekeeper," Aldul abjured. "I beg you. Take a look at your opponent's weapon, then ask clemency."
The Guard snorted and lifted his blade in salute. Evendal m'Alismogh began a like gesture, but halted in mid-turn when a linen-clad figure interceded, tugging his sword-arm down.
"Aldul!" m'Alismogh hissed, furious and fearful for his companion.
"Show him the pommel."
Red-faced, eyes locked on his companion's, Evendal m'Alismogh complied.
"How came you by this?" the gateman exclaimed, comically wide-eyed over the emblazoned hilt.
m'Alismogh tore his attention away from Aldul. "It is my own. A gift from my father."
The gatekeeper gazed up from the sword and caught the stare of its owner. His legs failed him, as did his bravura. "m'elumna ekha nis-ureg Evendalh(7)." he whispered the axiom, nine years unvoiced, identifying the Heir.
Evendal m'Alismogh, annoyed Prince of the Thronelands, spat.
The gatekeeper, Bruddbana, proved inordinately useful to the two wanderers. Evendal had received Bruddbana's promise of fealty and immediate assistance; along with the unnecessary advise that "quietly" was the best way to enter the palace. He guided them to the Archate, exchanged Aldul's beast for coin, and then guided them to a quiet tavern. Once comfortable, he related the principal events - with colourful embellishment - of Osedys' nine-year interregnum.
The aging King's Counselor, Polgern ald'Morruth, had been ruler pro tem when news of the Decimation reached the city. Early in the official period of mourning Polgern appointed an 'outstanding hero of the tragedy,' called Abduram agdh Lukaad, as Militia General. Later, in an unprecedented usurpation of authority, Abduram traded the title 'Militia General' for the grace of 'Co-ruler.'
Who was there to protest? Any man with a measure of courage and puissance had died at Mausna. Bruddbana and many of the Guard had been commanded to remain, but as subordinates pledged to the Health of the Kingdom. And who knew what that meant? Besides, the late Lord's infamous distrust of strong-minded courtiers had rendered the Court a hen-house, with Polgern and Abduram the only foxes.
Polgern had managed to make opposition seem ill prepared and petty. Quicker than thought the city wall began, ships received tariffs according to the size of their cargo-space, the Nikraan practise of indenture re-emerged, and the co-rulers announced severe and exotic punishments for people under criminal suspicion.
"Some of whom, their crime was being sister's son to some poor fool smuggling minnows."
The Dowager? She still appeared for a few Court fetes and occasions. One rumour had her deranged at her family's dissolution and living purely in her diseased mind. Another rumour had her in love with Polgern, or with Abduram.
Abduram? Nobody that Bruddbana approached had ever heard of him before Polgern raised him, not even those few survivors of Mausna. A cruel, darkly handsome dastard, by all accounts - and there were many. His father Lukaad, a swordsmith, had died at Mausna. Another son of Lukaad, younger, survived somewhere, which was as well.
The longer he talked, the bolder Bruddbana's words. Evendal pointed out how they had best not tarry, lest news that Bruddbana had deserted his post reach the palace before them. Aldul wryly offered to delay his return to Temple in favour of a guided tour of the royal residence. Through a frantic variety of gestures and expressions, Evendal tried to let his companion know that much his ignorance remained - his memory continued to play miser. Blind to his new lord's impairment, Bruddbana performed the as yet most invaluable function of showing the Lord Evendal where the palace stood.
When the trio came up the last street unto the royal enclosure, the first thing Evendal noted was another ten-foot granite wall. He stopped and almost choked on pain. "The hawthorn!" he cried.
"Long gone." Bruddbana commiserated. And Evendal realised, comfortlessly, that his memory was a living creature, and would speak or rest without fanfare or prodding.
As they entered the grounds, and passed the Guard standing patrol there, Aldul and the Alismogh played witness and offender. Once inside the cordon, they became guests, with Bruddbana as the appointed host.
They strode down a long white-sand path, guarded on both sides by statues of men portrayed in widely variant styles, standing proud and alert: The deceased rulers of the city and province. Near the end of this regal assemblage came a deliberate gap, an interruption in the regular distance between figures. Set in the white sand of the Causeway itself, isolated from the human icons it interrupted, crouched a bronze statue of a wolf gnawing on the carcass of a half-naked slave. Evendal needed no goading to know the icon represented the Nikraan Interregnum, the darkest time in his people's history, until Mausna. The human images resumed with Kahalam the Renewer, who restored justice and reapplied the laws of the land.
Evendal fought the urge to examine each figure, in the lingering hope of forcing memory. When he came to the last pedestal at his right, however, the heir of Osedys had to halt and stare, in a frisson of fear.
Carved out of gray rock, distinct from all its blue-toned predecessors, stood a form and face too familiar for calm. A tall, stocky replica of the last ruler, head bowed, gripped the shoulder of the shorter, head-bowed image of a man-child. The tableau held ambiguous nuances. The lowered heads; veiled grief? Or rage? That hand on the teenager's shoulder - possessive, restraining, violent, or empathetic? A small ivory rosette inlaid against the throats of father and son, and spice plants lay strewn atop the pedestal; startling markers of recent mourning.
Long Evendal m'Alismogh glared at the telltales blanketing the gray feet; sage, rosemary, apple-boughs and thyme. Though a statue of an autocratic patriarch, yet it spoke to him, called to him. This was Menam, his father nine years dead. A tension stiffened Evendal's neck and shoulders and began to throb even as it tightened his chest. Against this pressure, and the urge to flee, Evendal forced a deep, ragged breath and looked up into the visage of the king's icon. The face he had expected to see surprised him nonetheless. For a moment Evendal's mind imbued flesh-tone and living colours upon monochromatic rock. The only gray, now dwelling in eyes that sparkled with a virility and passion out of memory, out of Evendal's pain. Like a breaker of that ocean which his people loved and neighbored, a pulse and power arose within Evendal m'Alismogh's heart and stomach, flowed, and crested in his throat.
Safe back in a tavern with his englamoured peers, Bruddbana's confident dissembling tended to falter at this moment. He would take solace in quaffing a brew, and then resume his tale. Aldul spoke of it only once, in reporting his remarkable journey to his new Priestess. His gloss of "He cried out" only intrigued the notoriously curious woman, who insisted on elaboration. After a number of false beginnings, Aldul ironically resorted to the very bards he resented. Bruddbana spoke haltingly, much later and to his wife only, of what he remembered about Mausna lost. All the young, so eager and vital; legions of them in battle array. The flower of the province, their hope and crowning glory. Then so suddenly all of them gone, without a lament equal to their promise.
Aldul, perhaps closer to the spirit of the cry, scorned battle themes or grandeur to convey the despair, and the intense personal longing, in Lord Evendal m'Alismogh's keen:
Cruel Memory
Is that dear face now solely your's
which I had loved so dearly?
Then find no haven in my heart
all you bloody ghosts of Memory.
Will Sorrow drown earth's hidden homes,
the lands beyond the seas,
Roar throughout the Empyrean(8),
but return no hope to me?
It began low. A controlled bass intrusion, a moaning, breathy, but unwavering. A catch that might have been a sob propelled the cry into achingly high ranges and throat-cracking projection. Evendal wailed notes of unnatural timbre in his ecstasy, the force and vigour of repressed emotion finding its own channel. Bruddbana watched, silenced by the unexpectedly alien; such ostentation foreign to the Osedys he walked in his own mind. Aldul watched, wordless with remembrance.
m'Alismogh's cry slid from vibrato to tremulo, and Aldul moved from empathy to amazement as he distinguished a dissonance in the wail; two distinct tones sung simultaneously. The howl's passion evoked no images in either Aldul's or Bruddbana's eyes, only unbidden tears. The wail did not actually linger, but it swiftly and brutally grabbed the gut of those who heard it. It was a call, a despairing cry for water in an oases-less desert. It summoned all who admitted to an experience of loss. In hot-blooded deliberation, Evendal discarded the tremulo for a longer, throaty quavering, one to crack open the skies. Aggressive grief renamed Death and called it Chaos. The raucous, unmeasured undulations unburdened a living heart bereft of one bereft of life.
Abrupt and without resolution, the Prince stopped keening.
Evendal rested on the sand where he knelt, weeping and rocking, arms folded about his chest. No one about the palace dared to move for the length of several deep, shuddering breaths. Then, answering the call as they could, those folk in range left their labours and diversions and began to gather around the Guard, the Kwo-edan, and the weeping unknown. Aldul emerged from the dw^mer with a blink and a frown, and viewed the approaching throng with apprehension.
No words of challenge or anger were exchanged, only looks of puzzlement and sorrow. Even so, Aldul and Bruddbana, on opposite sides of Evendal, stayed as quiet and tense as watchcats. Whispered variants of "Who is he?" with the expected shrugs and denials, wafted at random from the mass. None dared to be direct with their curiosity.
From within the palace proper a lone and tardy figure trod the Royal Causeway toward the clustering. Obscured in a gray cloak and hood cut much like the Alismogh's, the tall form strode fluidly up to the crowd. The people quickly gave place to this solitary pedestrian until it stood before the Kwo-edan and the seemingly oblivious mourner. Within the cloak, Aldul faced a woman, big-boned but slim. Her oval face sported a straight nose, which ran long yet hardly protruded from the curve of the profile. To Aldul, the creases and shadow beneath her hood bespoke a haunted suffering. Amused surprise shone clear if brief on the woman's slablike face, dethroned by an unsettling pleasure and a ravenous smile.
She stepped forward. "Who are you, that you so honour the memory of this house?"
If m'Alismogh heard, he gave no sign.
"What do you seek in the dust, child?"
Evendal ceased to sway and pivoted about to glare at the woman, matching suffering for suffering. "You ask the riddle. You answer it." His words carried bite and strength, yet the wells of his eyes continued to flow.
Lady Onkira's hand swept to her forehead, shielding her brow, as her mouth opened to speak. The muscles of her throat strained and shifted, yet no sound escaped. Aldul felt reminded of one of his own skills: mummery. Finally, as Evendal simply stared at her, Onkira's hand dropped, and her shoulders sagged. "No!" she hissed. Ambiguous passion crafted her face.
The next gesture should be Evendal's, Aldul thought.
"Have I come home?"
Though a simple question, the tone of defeat drew Aldul's glance, to see the lady's discarded look of hunger flitter briefly on the Prince's face, and then disappear.
The Lady Onkira's eyes darted up from the pliant face of the questioner to the fixed countenance of the icon as she answered. "Yes." Though she lingered sweetly over the one word, Evendal's frozen silence afterward swallowed her drawl. No one moved. Gradually, reluctantly, Onkira lowered her misty-eyed gaze to the gawky intrusion playing in the dust. All those close enough noted her glare, so fierce that Aldul wondered if she were memorizing, or finding fault, with what she saw.
"No." Evendal corrected. "And you have not answered your own riddle: What do you seek in the dust, woman?" His voice broke again. "Or in the planes of a chunk of stone? Forgive me that I am not fourteen any longer. Had you come to believe that my skin had turned to this gray rock? Would you offer thyme to me if I stood still enough? By the Five Thunders!"
Tears came quick to blinded eyes. "You come to me, like one from the dead. My own precious child! And your first words of greeting are a taunt! You crack my heart!"
Evendal glanced beyond the cloak, and noted the woman's attire. "I come to you as one from the living, mother, and plan to stay that way. It is you who come as one from the dead. Why else wear the colour of crows, who love the dead as no human ought?"
When he received neither answer nor retort, the Lord Evendal stood. He kissed his immobile parent, the one of flesh. "When you saw who I was, your first words to me were a furious denial. Your second words were a lie." He spoke gently. "I shall live in the guest wards."
Onkira stiffened. "I have kept your rooms...."
"And so they are not meant for the living to dwell in." he observed grimly.
"I am done with public mourning." he declared, allowing a final glance over his father's effigy.
"You never loved him! Or me!"
Evendal stared, momentarily speechless from the accusation. "Perhaps." he acceded, softly, then promised. "You'll never know."
Onkira's gaze shifted to the ground before her son's chill countenance and Evendal, with a deferential nod to her, moved back up the Causeway. Some of the crowd followed as far as the first icon, but moved no further when Evendal and his companions showed no awareness of them. Those closest to the confrontation soon spread their tidings, using the phrase that had announced his birth: m'elumna ekha nis-ureg Evendalh. The sunrise, the near-king Evendal.
Prince Evendal was returned out of death and mystery.
Once past the wall, the trio went to where they had hidden the Prince's crate. Evendal leaned wearily against a hitching post and started shaking; his eyes ached and chyme threatened to rise. Fierce with himself, he forced three deep stabilizing breaths. Aldul stood a hand's-breadth away, his own eyes swimming. Bruddbana concentrated on the many doorways and windows along the street, restless and discomfited by such emotion in his lord.
"What? Am I unhinged?" m'Alismogh growled.
"No, lord." Aldul replied. "I saw."
"What? What did you see? How did it seem to you?"
The Kwo-edan answered promptly. "A woman livid with the dead. And living with the dead."
Bruddbana could take no more. "You speak of the Dowager!"
"At the request of your sovereign."
Evendal interceded. "This sovereign begs a truce." Without further comment the Heir hoisted his burden and suffered Bruddbana to precede him to the guest apartments. As they strode back down the Causeway, all three were relieved to see few stragglers, and to not see the Dowager. Evendal clenched his jaw when, past his memoriam, a token four-foot high granite wall interrupted his view of the courtyard circle and the greater part of the palace building beyond. "Someone's pleasure in Kul-stone is obsessive."
Bruddbana nodded and smiled; anger ornamented a Prince. "Polgern."
The truant Prince recalled the object only because of its absence, and stared in bewilderment at the focus of the Palace Courtyard. A natural spring had once anchored the circle, loosely enclosed by a single ring of half-buried stones. It had bubbled forth with the most delightful fresh water in the region. Now what looked like a brick-capped well commanded the circle, serving as a pedestal for yet another effort in icon-craft.
Two male figures flanked a white marble throne, obverse hands resting atop its back, faces forward in wooden smiles. One figure looked of average height, thin, in close-fitting vesture, clean-shaven with a symmetrical tonsure and benign, finely sculpted features. The figure's razor-thin nose and polished gray-crystal eyes declared him Polgern son of Morruth. Evendal noted the feminine form behind the two men and the throne; her eyes gazing forward at nothing as though blind, and posed in an attitude of indifferent benison. Enormous eagle-like wings stretched from her shoulders to over-shadow all, her hands likewise uplifted. In the hand rising behind Polgern's partner she held a sphere, made of blue-glazed ceramic. All the figures were adult, painted. But for the ball, Evendal would not have known the character represented. The canaille called her Ir the Praecentrix(9), the respectful used her title: Custode of Kelotta. The artist had fashioned his Ir with a humourless countenance, as well as one more physically matured than previous artisans. She resembled that Nikraan strumpet they had called 'Fortune' more than the Praecentrix of the land. Evendal barely resisted the urge to laugh, and wondered how much of this display of technique - the dull smiles, the sloppy, disinterested benediction, the distorting of conventional forms. How much of it was poor artistry and how much subtly honest judgment?
The Heir concentrated lastly on the image of the second claimant to power. His likeness tall, with broad shoulders and sturdy frame, that characteristic slender Hramal waist, and long powerfully accentuated legs clad in greaves - as one just returned from battle. A dark brown beard and moustache framed the sinewy face, with a hawk-like aquiline nose that somehow just failed to overwhelm the features, and painted dull brown or black eyes. Where Polgern's icon modeled sagacity, his counterpart exuded ruthless ferocity, ambition. The statue's singular, lively, smile could more easily be imagined with the model up to his greaves in unarmed enemies. The figure's left hand caressed the sword carved at his thigh.
Lord Evendal's face radiated unbidden heat, pinpoints of light stabbed and swarmed in his vision. A humming filled his ears and he fought for balance, even as he wrestled with heart-thudding rage.
"Enkengre!" he whispered, a hiss. "Traitor!" He knew suddenly, with delightful bloodlust, that this Abduram agdh Lukaad won all advancement through regicide and that he himself, as King's heir and King returned, came to avenge.
"Abduram." He finally spoke aloud. "This monument will be slag or shards before Our coronation. No one is to hold converse with Abduram agdh Lukaad, except to retrieve him to Our Presence for Justice. We claim his life for Our father's." Evendal spat on the offensive image as he strode past. He achieved the palace steps before Bruddbana or Aldul understood his words.
"Sire!"
"My lord!"
Neither could think beyond their own surprise, and Evendal's suddenly commanding mien.
The Heir looked on his companions from a distance greater than the few steps. He felt indeed separate, uncleanly amputated from others by this gravamen. It held him away, unprotected in its chill isolating wind, and he breathed deep of its paralysing air with a desperate fervour. The two allies stared up at their enraged friend, but only one thought the anger in him a hallowed rage, noble and undeniable.
"His life is mine!"
Aldul bowed his head at this ambiguous truth. Bruddbana nodded, fighting against a proud smile. Neither could know the gut-twisting reaction in Evendal m'Alismogh from their sealing gestures of deference. His face, an expressionless mask with bright beryl eyes, muted a raving chaos of dimly suspected self-violation. He wanted the scum dead! He knew a dishonesty in his conviction, yet it seemed inconsequential. The demands of his singular estate, and his providential knowledge of the kingdom-warping injustice, were unelidible.
But the painful hint of inner schism nagged.
Aldul received his excursion. Over a few centuries, the palace had evolved into a crab with claws, aligned along an east to west axis, with the main entrance facing the south. Court inflicted itself at the western end; guests nestled mostly along the eastern sides. Near as Evendal could fathom, little or nothing in the building layout had changed - a marvel, given Polgern's obsession with granite. When they came into the echoing dimness of the assembly hall, the royal throne, the center of the room's dais, held an offensive coating of dust. Strange, Evendal puzzled, considering the effort both Polgern and Abduram no doubt went through to have it. Where Evendal uncertainly recalled either eight or ten chairs flanking the Throne, he now noted only six, and one of those draped in funereal gray.
Word of his presence, with identifying detail, had moved preternaturally swift. At every corner he wandered, residents and fellow itinerants remained properly outside Prince Evendal's circle of Presence and made a variety of obeisances or courtesies to him. This privilege wrung Evendal's heart even as it mitigated his traveler's claustrophobia. Rooms full of wary faces and covert glances quickly numbed m'Alismogh's tired mind.
The tenth bell of day struck as Lord Evendal m'Alismogh bade a weary and timid well-faring to Aldul Kwo-edh. Bruddbana had fled early and eagerly to broadcast Abduram's new state to his fellows, and spread word of the Authority calling this turn of Fortune's Wheel. Exhausted and feeling bone-brittle, Evendal dropped onto a bed and strove to relax, intending a nap. The journey's end, the excitement, the succession of shocks and griefs, demanded rest even as they thwarted any chance for it.
His mind wandered back to his first sight of home; the proliferation of granite: Grainy gray walls of Kul-stone that threatened to seal him in, to wall him away from the clear blue of sky he had learned to treasure during his trek home. To wall him away in a sepulchre of night that his mother was making into the pedestal for his memoriam. In this tomb-dark, Lord Menam shared space with Evendal. The older king was yet dying, but alive enough to clutch his son about the waist, shake him and rasp. "I don't understand."
Terrified, Evendal jolted out of his doze. Though he lay wide-eyed, the image of his dying father lingered. Fancy too vivid supplied a fuller vision that granted wounds, blood, and the absence of a victim's weapon. Nine years old and three weeks fresh, the last vestiges of disbelief gave way to fury at the man whose life slowly ebbed before his mind's eye.
As he recognized the emotion cresting in him, Evendal wondered. Did I hate him so much? Then, words he knew he had shouted over the corpse pounded for escape from his head. 'Don't die, damn you. I love you. I need you, father! You can't die on me, now!'
Squinting against the pain of the memory erased the image. Two ragged breaths and he realised he was under scrutiny. On the periphery of his vision, he could make out a thin silhouette, motionless. Except for the likelihood of a curious gawker, Evendal knew two options to the voyeur's identity - Polgern or Onkira. Neither possibility inspired enthusiasm.
"I have enough shadows darkening my steps before, and following after my heels. One more is one too many. Grant me your name if you would warm my doorpost."
The silhouette stirred, and stepped in as it responded. "Lord Polgern I am called, Lord Protector of the Thronelands is the duty I entertain."
Enter Danger, neat.
"Yes, Master Polgern. To what do I owe the honour of this visit?"
"Lord Polgern." he corrected, softly. "I do not know who you are, but I am co-ruler these nine years. And rightly called Lord Protector, protecting this land from both the facile ambitious and the fools. Which one are you, and how are you called?"
"Nine years has gifted you with poor eyes or poor memory. I am addressed as Prince Evendal m'Alismogh ald'Menam a Onkira, Heir of Osedys and the Thronelands, Left Hand of the Unalterable, and Sword-Brother to the Sea."
"m'Alismogh? That is not one of the reverences."
Evendal tried to shrug lying down. "I have been wandering for nine years, mayhap I have earned one in that time."
Polgern snorted. "You are a young, spirit-driven fool. To try as sophomorically as you have, simply meandering in here from the nearest pig-farm. This jest of a coup only marks you for death. 'Dead' is a title I will add to you graces."
Polgern stood quite near, so Evendal shifted his head to gaze calmly up at an aged face, once respected, now creased and contorting with an effort at anger. m'Alismogh ignored the long-bladed dagger, too surprised at what he saw in Polgern's face to worry over a piece of metal. Fear sweated from the co-ruler; incongruous, inexplicable fear.
"So. You cannot be honest, even with this atypically personal attempt at assassination. You have to pretend you are executing a reactionary, Master Polgern? You cling to a flimsy ruse, when the truth beads on your brow and crinkles your eyes? Abduram tried to kill me, and failed. The Kul tried to kill me, and failed. Or perhaps one of them succeeded. You know what you are looking at. Or do you? Uncle Pomun?" A score of years ago he would crow "Pomun," Polgern's name mangled by a toddler who could not yet manage most consonants.
Polgern swallowed hard; Evendal did not dare.
"Did Abduram tell you about his attempt on me? He must have, else you would have waited for Mausna's destruction, and its death-count, to be confirmed before you took control. If I had gone in pursuit of him, but was still alive, your known actions would have marked you for execution. I had to be dead."
"Yes. You had to be dead. Abduram swore he saw you chase him and fall into a tremor-formed crevasse. He spoke, at length, of how he just barely survived the breaking-up of Mausna. And how you did not. Many things Abduram is... but he has never needed to lie. What are you?"
Evendal smiled, his eyes cold and glittering. He pivoted and sat up, then stood. Polgern, knife in hand, stepped back. "I am here. The Left Hand of the Unalterable. Did you never know what that title meant, Polgern the Wise, Menam's 'Most Sagacious Counselor'? It means something more than Justice, something other than a sometimes-inappropriate Clemency. The Left Hand of the Unalterable is what I am, Polgern. Whether I want the title or not, is moot. It is what I am, by the grace of the one you defamed out in the Courtyard. The mystery you call Ir." Evendal held out his hand, palm up.
Slowly, without display of emotion or reluctance, Polgern relinquished his blade. Once the dagger left his hand, he shook his head, as if befogged.
"Your life is mine, Polgern. I claim it according to the fealty and homage you violated."
A clattering out in the corridor resolved itself into Bruddbana with sword out and ready. He looked from Evendal to Polgern with surprise and embarrassment glowing on his face.
"Well met, good Bruddbana. Would you kindly escort Master Polgern to lodging he will find difficult to leave?" With undisguised relief, the Heir of Osedys leaned against his cot and let out a sigh.
"What is your judgment concerning myself, young lord?" Injured merit stiffened his manner, and scorn dripped from the honorific.
"I do not know, but whatever decision I arrive at, I know I will regret the waste." Evendal's voice came out thin-timbred, tired.
Polgern left with a facade of disgust.
(7) m'elumna ekha nis-ureg Evendalh - the sunrise (is) the near-king Evendal. (8) Empyrean - a bit of license, as the Hramal believe the skies to be glass, not fire. (9) Praecentrix - Teacher, tutor, mentor.