Authors: L. E. Modesitt Jr.
As Lorn stands in the foyer outside the bedchamber, half pondering what he has so belatedly recognized, Sypcal steps up and hands Lorn the Brystan blade. “I trust you will not need this, but you might wish to keep it. I would that you not leave the Palace to inform your consort until your lancers can escort you.”
“I will wait,” Lorn says.
“You will find you will wait more than you ever wished, Your Mightiness,” Sypcal says, as they leave the foyer outside the bedchamber of the dying Empress.
Lorn suspects Sypcal’s words are all too true.
CLXIV
Lorn shakes his head as he reins up outside his dwelling, followed by Palace Guards, and a company of Mirror Lancers commanded by Cheryk. At Sypcal’s insistence, Lorn has earlier sent a messenger to Ryalor House requesting Ryalth meet him at their dwelling. He glances at the clear green-blue sky, a winter day’s sky somehow… austere. Or perhaps that is the way he feels.
“Your Mightiness… while it is an imposing dwelling, I do not think you will see much of it,” suggests Cheryk as Lorn dismounts.
The title sounds strange to Lorn, but he offers a smile to the captain. “There’s likely much I will not see as I did.” He turns and unlocks the iron gate. He is barely inside the walls, followed by two of the Palace Guards in the green-and-silver, when Ryalth comes running from the veranda.
She slows a good dozen paces short of Lorn, and her eyes go from Lorn to the guards, then back to him. “What’s the matter? Are you in trouble?”
“I think,” he begins with a smile, “we are both in trouble.” After a slight pause, he adds, “I have the stone… or it has me. Toziel named me his heir. That makes you Empress-Consort.”
Her eyes widen. For a moment they both stand in the chill and sunny day, beside a fountain that does not flow.
“Truly?” the redhead murmurs.
“Truly.”
Another silence falls between them.
“What of the Magi’i?” she finally asks. “Most would oppose you.”
“Kharl… he tried to kill me when the advisors were read the declaration. I was fortunate enough to prevail.”
“There is no one else left, then?”
“Liataphi will be First Magus. Rustyl was the magus who died with Chyenfel. Sypcal will be Majer-Commander. Vyanat declares he is pleased, that in these days the merchanters are most gratified that you are Empress-Consort, for they will have a voice.” Lorn grins. “And that they will have a voice is certain.”
Abruptly, Ryalth shivers. “It’s cold out here.”
Lorn takes her arm, and the two turn toward the veranda. One of the Palace Guards slips ahead of them and into the house. The other holds the door.
Lorn and Ryalth descend the steps and cross the foyer into the sitting room. Lorn looks at Ryalth. “Where’s Kerial?”
“Kysia’s feeding him in the kitchen.”
“Good. I just worry.” Lorn nods.
“What are you holding?” she asks.
He lifts the silver-covered volume. “Something of great interest.” He extends the book to her. “The Empress gave it to me. It was the Emperor’s. There’s a note. Go ahead… read it.”
Lorn looks over her shoulder, seeing the words again, as Ryalth reads the angular and shaky script of the note.
To the Emperor-to-come:
These are the words of His Mightiness Kiedral’elth’alt’mer, the Second Emperor of Light, as he wrote them. So far as is known, this is the only remaining copy.
He has much to say. Read them all, if you dare, before you sit in the Malachite Throne.
There is a verse marked…for the Emperor Toziel…
At the bottom is a single, spiraled initial R. “Have you opened it?” Ryalth asks.
Rather than answer, the man who is not sure he is either Mirror Lancer majer or Emperor opens the silver cover, holding it open to the first page, a page with but a title in large letters: Meditations Upon the Land of Light. When he is certain Ryalth has read it, he turns to the second page, and a dedication: To those of the Towers, to those of the Land, and to those who endured. Below the dedication is a name, and a title Lorn has never seen nor heard before: Kiedral Daloren, Vice Marshal, Anglorian Unity.
Then he turns to the page with the green leather marker, and reads the lines there slowly, aloud.
I would be remembered in the morning breeze,
in a single daffodil above late snow,
in slanting sun through trees,
and distant hills where cold winds blow.
Do not wear mourning green; you have seen what I have seen.
Is that the way Toziel would like to be remembered-or as the father figure that the Emperor always must be?
Ryalth’s eyes are bright, and her blue eyes meet Lorn’s. “I wonder.”
He closes the book, then takes the note from her hand and slips it inside the front cover, before he hands her the book. “We each have a copy.” He smiles. “Since you have entrusted yours to me these long years, I will entrust mine to you.”
CLXV
Jerial steps into the green-walled salon of the Empress. Her eyes circle the room, then come to rest on the man in the silver-trimmed green tunic and trousers who stands from where he has been sitting on the white divan, beside a red-haired woman in formal blue tunic, trimmed in both green and silver.
A small boy in green trousers and tunic turns. “Jehwhal!” His legs pump, carrying him toward the healer in green.
Jerial bends and scoops him up, hugging him.
Lorn and Ryalth follow their son.
“This is all… hard to believe,” Jerial says, shifting Kerial to her left shoulder.
“It’s hard to believe you won’t be staying in Cyad,” Ryalth says. “I worry about Kerial… with you gone.”
“You and Aleyar can do all that I could.” Jerial turns to her younger brother. “You know it’s better this way. All I’ve ever really wanted was to be free and to help you as I could, and with you on the Malachite Throne…”
“I know,” Lorn says heavily. “We still worry.”
“I’ll be fine. Ryalth has arranged a villa for me in Lydiar… and a position as the healer for Ryalor House there.”
“Eileyt will ensure that we know if you need anything,” Ryalth confirms.
“It was good you gave him Ryalor House.”
“Besides Lorn, he worked the hardest to build it. But he didn’t get everything,” Ryalth says. “You’re getting the two thousand golds, and we did keep a little, in an account with the Trader’s Exchange. It has to be mine. Lorn cannot own anything.” She smiles. “If anyone had thought about a lady trader as Empress-Consort… they would have forbidden that, too, and someone will probably make sure it does not happen again.” She laughs gently.
“I wish you could be here for the ceremony,” Lorn says.
“The longer I stay, the harder it will be to leave, and if I try to be free here, I’ll always be looking over my shoulder. And you will worry about me, and then I will be caged by your concerns.” Jerial eases Kerial back to Ryalth.
The healer and the heir embrace, and then Ryalth and Jerial embrace.
After a time, Jerial looks back once, at the door, before she steps from the salon.
CLXVI
Do times make the man? Or does the man make the times?
His Mightiness, Lorn’elth’alt’mer, looks at the malachite-and-silver throne, then at the Empress-Consort who follows him, their son in her arms, as he walks slowly from the doors of the Great Audience Chamber toward the Malachite Throne.
On the immediate left side of the Great Hall are the Magi’i of Cyador, and their families. In the group of Magi’i stands Tyrsal, who will be the Hand of the Emperor, and knows it not, and Aleyar, who doubtless does. Beside Tyrsal stands Vernt, who believes he is there solely because he is Lorn’s brother. The First Magus, the sad-faced Liataphi, stands to the left at the base of the dais.
Also to the left is the newly-promoted Majer-Commander Sypcal, who will never fully recover from his poisoning, and who is slowly dying and knows it, and behind him, Captain-Commander Brevyl, who yet protests his triple promotion and who still does not care personally for Lorn, but for whom honesty and duty remain more important than personal tastes. Behind them are the remaining senior commanders, and the newly-promoted overcaptain Cheryk.
On the right side of the hall are the heads of the merchanter houses, and those who head the trading firms too small to be houses.
Lorn steps toward the Malachite Throne, each step measured.
Do times make the man? Or man the times?
Does it matter? Except to acknowledge that, either way, the costs are high?
Lorn bows his head as he approaches the Malachite Throne, not in respect for the throne, but in homage to all those who have paid those costs, one way or another, from the innocent grower’s daughter who still at times haunts his dreams, to Myryan, and to Tyrsal, who will pay more than he knows for Ciesrt’s death. He bows, too, in respect for all those who have paid whom he does not know and may never know.
…and in respect to the ancient Emperor whose words helped in ways the writer could never have imagined.
…and the new becomes the old, with the way the story’s told… So shine forth both in sun and into night bright city of prosperity and light.
L. E. Modesitt, Jr., lives in Cedar City,
Utah
.
THE SAGA OF RECLUCE
1 The Magic of Recluce
2 The Towers of the Sunset
3 The Magic Engineer
4 The Order War
5 The Death of Chaos
6 Fall of Angels
7 The Chaos Balance
8 The White Order
9 Colors of Chaos
10 Magi’i of Cyandor
11 Scion of Cyandor
THE SPELLSONG CYCLE
The Soprano Sorceress
The Spellsong War
Darksong Rising
THE ECOLITAN MATTER
The Ecologic Envoy
The Ecolitan Operation
The Ecologic Secession
The Ecolitan Enigma
THE FOREVER HERO
Dawn for a Distant Earth
The Silent Warrior
In Endless Twilight
Of Tangible Ghosts
The Ghost of the Revelator
The Timegod
Timediver’s Dawn
The Hammer of Darkness
The Parafaith War
Adiamante
The Green Progression (with Bruce Scott Levinson)