Cobweb Empire (14 page)

T
he farthest
eastern borders of the Kingdom of Balmue jutted up against the
Kingdom of Serenoa in a dry-land “archipelago” which was an eternal
fertile summerland known as Elysium. Meanwhile, just miles to the
north began the Aepienne Mountains, a grand white-capped range that
meandered true north, its sharp peaks scraping heaven. The
Aepiennes held back snow and winter, which was safely contained
beyond the foreign border of the Domain, so that all the icy cold
and whiteness was forever on the Realm side.

Here, in Elysium, it was always summer. The
region consisted of verdant grassland and farming country, and was
renowned for its rolling fields of exquisite flowers of every
hue.

Succulent poppies and lilies-of-the-valley
sprinkled the verdigris grasses, swaying in the gentle breeze. And
among them, caressed by the loving sun, arose stalks of fragrant
honey-clover, periwinkle, lavender, cornflowers, primroses,
forget-me-nots, pansies, violets, sweet alyssum, and infinite
varieties of daisies, dandelion, heather, and baby’s breath.
Occasional clumps of feathered rich carnations topped rises, and
hedges of honeysuckle strove to the sky.

It was a pleasure-dream to walk the fields.
The local children came to play here, running and rolling among the
pointillist riot of multi-colored blossoms, while young lovers came
falling down together to lie in the heady cloud of fragrance
permeating the rainbow land around them, and to daydream while
gazing at the heavens.

The nobility from all of the Domain and the
aristocrats from the Sapphire Court, made frequent pleasure
excursions to the Elysian Fields, where they held picnics and
played games of chase among the flowers, and picked enough blossoms
to return to Court with elaborate flower garlands in their hair.
The flowers here were so abundant that special harvesters were sent
to provide the local towns and the Court itself, with flowers for
all occasions. Even the Sovereign herself was known to visit, and
her servants were regularly dispatched from Court to pluck bouquets
of her favorite flower, the narcissus, together with the rare pale
asphodel and delicate orchid, which was all bound in strings of
gold, beribboned, and delivered to her Palace chambers.

Today had been exceedingly hot. The heavy
perfumed air rippled over the fields, honeybees wallowed in sweet
nectar and butterflies floated like airborne flowers, while a haze
stood up all the way to the horizon on all sides, blurring the
edges between land and sky. The golden sun was sinking, painting
the western dome of sky with a deep orange glow and lower edges of
the horizon with an echo-corona of plum violet. Not much longer
than a few minutes remained before sunset.

Three young men dressed in noble finery and
four similarly attired young ladies frolicked in the tall flowers.
The ladies were just past their childhood years and entering the
first blush of womanhood. Each was dressed in pale white or pastel
dresses of satin sheaths with over-layers of gauze and delicate
crepe, holding up their skirts immodestly above silk
stocking-covered ankles as they ran and squealed in delight.

“Sidonie! You must stop immediately, my
sweet Lady Sidonie! Or your punishment will be severe, I promise!”
The blond young man in silk trousers and billowing shirt, laughed
and cried out, running just behind the small quick girl who was out
far in front of them all.

“Catch me if you can!” she replied,
continuing to race forward, the creamy tops of her breasts bouncing
in the revealing décolletage, and her once-carefully arranged hair
spilling behind her in a riot of auburn waves and crushed
flowers.

“If Valentio cannot catch you, then surely I
will!” exclaimed another young man, with darker hair and a larger
built, running very fast and gaining on them both from the
back.

“Will my punishment be a mere kiss?” cried
Sidonie into the wind, without looking back at any of them.
“Because I have tasted Valentio’s kiss before, and his lips require
a soothing balm, for they are chapped and dry like fish
scales!”

“You have not had my kiss, Sidonie!” cried
the dark haired young man again, passing Valentio. “I promise you
sweetness like this entire field!”

The three girls running in the back laughed,
and then one of them shrieked in breathless wildness while the
third young man took a detour and grabbed her around the waist.

A sudden gust of warm wind blew in Sidonie’s
face and it sent a fluttering shimmer through the grass and
blossoms, a wave sweeping like a comb upon the surface.

The disk of the sun was now a sliver at the
horizon. At the same time an invigorating roar of air moving
powerfully against the land flooded and overwhelmed the
silence.

When it receded, all things were quiet
again; even the laughter of the ladies and the young men seemed to
have faded away.

So quiet it was that Sidonie, panting hard
and running at a breakneck pace, could not help glancing behind her
at the unusual lack of voices of her friends.

She glanced, and immediately her pace broke,
and she stopped with an off-balanced stagger, panting wildly,
holding on to her abdomen and forgetting the bursting ache in her
lungs.

Behind her, there was no sign of any of the
young men or the ladies. Indeed, as her unbelieving eyes took in
the sight, the
field
itself—that had only moments ago
stretched for miles to the horizon—was suddenly only about fifty
feet behind her, ending sharply, and behind it a clearing began,
nothing but dull packed earth and a rocky incline, and then, a
sharp rising hillside.

Sidonie made a sound of terrified disbelief,
because she was now looking up at the foothills of the Aepienne
Mountains.

T
he Sovereign was
alone in the Hall of the Sun. After she had ended her Audience and
dismissed her personal guards, the Chamberlains, and even her
advisor Ebrai Fiomarre, the gilded doors shut behind them all.

She remained seated on the Sapphire Throne,
motionless and engrossed in thoughtful silence. The crystal garland
chandeliers with their infinity of candlelight bathed the hall in a
soft warm radiance. The Sovereign herself resembled a perfect
alabaster statue of a goddess, reclining somewhat to one side
against the wind-colored precious stone seat, with crimson folds of
fabric cascading from her courtly dress to drape the polished jewel
facets of the throne.

For the duration of that solitary
contemplative state, her eyes had been closed.

And then, Rumanar Avalais straightened in
her seat and opened her eyes.

In that first moment of revelation, they
appeared to be dark twilight shadow-places . . . and
then, with a blink they were pure sky-blue.

Briefly caressing the sapphire armrests with
her fingertips, the Sovereign stood up. She stepped to the right of
the throne, stilling before the pedestal and its small golden
effigy. She observed the old goddess, seated in her partial lotus
position. And then she reached out and placed her hand upon the top
of the crown headdress. For several long seconds she stood, holding
the gold, feeling it warm up from the contact with her fingers,
until the metal was the same temperature as her flesh. Then, with a
small twist, she pushed down.

As the goddess figurine rotated ninety
degrees in her fingers, there came a brief grinding noise from
somewhere in the back of the throne.

Rumanar Avalais released the statuette and
silently stepped down the dais and stood behind the throne, looking
down at the precious inlaid floor, its mosaic having swung apart in
clever interlocking geometric jigsaws. In its place was revealed a
gaping square opening of darkness and a flight of stairs leading
down. . . .

Having no need for illumination, the
Sovereign placed her gold-slippered delicate foot upon the first
stair, and then the next, and descended into the darkness.

As she sank in the passage, a soft grey glow
started to seep upward from the innards below, until the stairs and
floor were sufficiently illuminated to reveal a room-sized stone
chamber, and beyond it, an open corridor from which came more of
the same even illumination, silvery lavender in hue and coming from
niches in the corridor walls.

Rumanar Avalais stepped from the last stair
unto the sterile stone floor, into that chamber of nothing but
monochrome grey. She walked, gliding like a swan upon the waters of
a slate stone ocean, and entered the corridor.

She passed the arching wall niches with
their matte glass lamp sconces obscuring hidden torches—it was the
nature of the frosted glass that created the strange, homogenous
silvery light permeating the place—and then the hallway curved
slightly and she emerged into a large chamber, that seemed to
billow with a cloud of the same anemic light.

The walls of the room were all pallor,
nearly white, and here the sconce lamps were more frequent,
circling the perimeter to cast cool lunar radiance upon an
impossible sight. . . .

The room was filled with motionless human
figures, all covered in fine, white gossamer cobwebs.

At first they seemed to be statues, shaped
in different positions, most seated on chairs, a few upright, and
in the very center of the chamber, upon a flat long slab of carved
marble, one figure lying in repose.

They were all women. The cobwebs covered
them with such a fine layer of whiteness that they appeared
ageless, smooth-featured, like beautiful life-sized dolls. Every
inch of their skin, the folds of their clothing, their hair and
lashes and lips, everything was effaced into gossamer whiteness.
And then the cobwebs stretched beyond the surfaces into empty space
all around them, creating infinite garlands of translucent netting
that filled the chamber, and traveled in infinite threads to bind
them together into one marvelous sepulchral artwork of hell.

The women had been stilled in a variety of
poses and the strangest detail was the condition of their eyes.

In every instance they were open. The eyes,
liquid and
alive
, had no cobwebs to dull them on the
surface. It was as if the diligent spider that had spun this
infinite web somehow made a detour around each eyelid and lash and
left the eyes themselves free of silken bonds.

The women, frozen eternally, continued to
gaze at the cobweb empire around them. And although their eyes did
not move, nor did they blink, they had in them a certain living
flicker of awareness, a pooling well of intensity that spoke
eloquently on their behalf.

Or maybe it was only a trick of the
light. . . .

The Sovereign, Rumanar Avalais, paused only
for a moment at the entrance. There was no expression on her
perfect face, and she approached the first female figure, seated in
a chair. This one was obviously young, and the cobwebs had not yet
grown sufficiently thick upon her to obscure the rosy colors of her
skin, gathered chestnut hair, and chartreuse brocade court dress,
and thus make her into the same homogeneous doll of matte porcelain
that had been the fate of the others.

“And how are you today, my sweet Lady
Leonora? Ah, but you grow pale . . .” the Sovereign
said in a voice of warm honey. As she spoke, her face took on a
delightful glow and a loving motherly expression never displayed in
public. She reached out with her fingertips to caress the chestnut
curls of the girl with their beginning nimbus of white silk, that
bare dusting of cobwebs, then stroked the maiden’s delicately
matted cheek.

At the Sovereign’s approach, the eyes of
Leonora seemed to widen just an infinitesimal degree, and her lips
too appeared to almost move, poised on the living brink. Possibly,
in her fixed silence, she strove to speak. . . . And
all around her the other cobweb statues also seemed to strive,
imbued with a wind of living
presence
, an intangible aura
that almost made the cobwebs flutter as each microscopic thread
grew taut with intensity and
sang
into the void of the
chamber.

And yet, it was all an illusion. Every one
of them remained still and frozen and lifeless, except for their
liquid staring eyes.

“It is so nice to see you, my Leonora,”
continued the Sovereign, and then, drawing closer to the girl’s
ear, proceeded to whisper, in the same loving tone. She imparted
news of the girl’s parents and chastised her for her missed duties
at Court that apparently she had been shirking. “Your mother, the
Countess D’Arvu was just telling me now how much she worries for
you, and how she had not heard a word from you for the entire
month. How could you be so thoughtless, Leonora? What a careless,
thoughtless daughter! How could you not write to your poor dear
mother? Really now, I expect more of my
Ladies-in-Attendance. . . .”

With another finger-stroke of the maiden’s
cheek, Rumanar Avalais placed a delicate kiss on top of her hair,
and then left the Lady Leonora behind, and entered deeper into the
cobweb morass, while motionless eyes followed her in a trick of
perspective from all directions.

She visited with every one of the female
statues, touching a cheek here, a forehead there, raining dewdrop
kisses upon the fingers of one childlike delicate girl
half-reclining on a settee and completely encased in a cocoon of
whiteness. She lowered herself in a mass of crimson crinoline
skirts before another maiden, seated primly on the floor itself.
Kneeling, the Sovereign put her arms around her, embracing the
sorrowful thing in the center of the cobwebs, so that her own dress
was now covered with a dusting of sticky threads, and her sleeves
edged with black lace and her alabaster neck were stained with
white gossamer silk.

“Now, now, I am here, my Marie-Louise,” she
crooned. She then arose and spoke to a Lily here and a Beatrice
there, naming them each with such heartfelt delight. As she moved
among them, the Sovereign spread out her arms, stroking the cobwebs
themselves, entering deeper into the center of their grouping.