She clapped her hands. “I succeed him! Then we’ll have a whole country each.”
Despite his tension, his premonition that further ills were about to befall him, he burst into laughter, seized her, and pressed her delicate body against him.
The earth shook again.
“Can we sleep here, together?” she whispered.
“No, it would be wrong. In the morning, we go to see my friend Esomberr.”
“I thought he wasn’t your friend.”
“I can make him my friend. He’s vain, but not a villain.”
The earth tremors died. The night died. Freyr rose in strength, again hidden from sight by the yellow haze, and the temperature climbed.
That day, few persons of importance were seen about the palace. King Sayren Stund announced that he would hold no audiences; those who had lost a home or a child in the tremors wailed in vain in the stagnant anterooms, or were turned away. Nor was King JandolAnganol to be seen. Or the young princess.
On the following day, a body of Oldorandan guards, eight strong, arrested JandolAnganol.
They caught him as he descended the staircase leading from his room. He fought, but they lifted him off his feet and carried him to a place of imprisonment. He was kicked down a spiralling stone stair and thrown into a dungeon.
He lay for many minutes panting on the floor, beside himself with anger.
“Yuli, Yuli,” he said, over and over. “I was so sick at what they did to you that I never could think through to see what danger I was in… I never could think…”
After some minutes of silence, he said aloud, “I was overconfident. That’s always been my fault. I trusted too much that I could ride with the circumstances…”
A long while later, he picked himself off the floor and looked helplessly about. A shelf against one wall served as bed and bench. Light filtered in from a high window. In one corner was a trough for sanitary purposes. He sank down on the bench, and thought of his father’s long imprisonment.
When his spirits had sunk still lower, he thought of Milua Tal.
“Sayren Stund, if you harm one lash of her eyes, you slanje…”
He sat rigid. Eventually, he forced himself to relax and leaned with his back against the moist wall of the cell. With a roar, he jumped up and began to pace about, up and down, between wall and door.
He ceased only when he heard the scrape of boots coming down the stair. Keys rattled at the lock, and a black-clad member of the local clerisy entered between two armed guards. As he gave a scanty bow, JandolAnganol recognized him as Sayren Stund’s axe-faced advisor, by name Crispan Mornu.
“Under what devious law am I, a visiting prince of a friendly country, imprisoned?”
“I am come to inform you that you are charged with murder, and will be tried for that crime tomorrow at Batalix-break, before a royal ecclesiastical court.” The sepulchral voice paused, then added, “Prepare yourself.”
JandolAnganol advanced in a fury. “Murder? Murder, you pack of criminals? What new scoundrelism is this? Whose murder is laid at my door?”
Crossed spears halted his advance.
The priest said, “You are charged with the murder of Princess Simoda Tal, elder daughter of King Sayren Stund of Oldorando.”
He bowed again and withdrew.
The king remained where he was, staring at the door.
His eagle eyes fixed upon its boards, never blinking, as if he had vowed they should never blink again until he was free.
He stayed almost motionless throughout the night. The intense active principle within him, being confined, stayed coiled within him like a spring. He maintained a defiant alertness throughout the hours of dark, waiting to leap to attack anyone who ventured to enter the dungeon.
Nobody came. No food was brought, no water. During the night there was a remote tremor—so remote it might have been in an artery rather than the earth—and a powder shower of mortar floated down to the stones. Nothing else. Not so much as a rat visited JandolAnganol.
When light seeped in to the place of confinement, he went over to the stone trough. By climbing onto it and hooking his finger into a hollow between two stones, carved by previous prisoners, he could look out of the unglazed window. A precious breath of fresh air expired upon his cheek.
His dungeon was at the front of the palace, near to the corner by the Dom, or so he estimated. He could look across Loylbryden Square. His viewpoint was too low to see anything beyond it except the tops of trees in the park.
The square was deserted. He thought that if he waited long enough he would possibly see Milua Tal—unless she was also captive of her father.
His view was towards the west. The tiny patch of sky he could see was free of haze. Batalix cast long shadows across the cobbles. Those shadows paled and then divided into two as Freyr also rose. Then they died as the haze returned and the temperature started to mount.
Workmen came. They brought platforms and poles with them. Their manner was the resigned one of workmen everywhere: they were prepared to do the job, but not prepared to hurry over it. After a while, they set up a scaffold.
JandolAnganol went and sat down on the bench, clutching his temples between his nails.
Guards came for him. He fought them, uselessly. They put him in chains. He snarled at them. They pushed him up the stone stairs indifferently.
Everything had fallen out as King Sayren Stund might have wished it. In the incessant enantiodromia which afflicts all things, turning them into their opposites, he could now crow over the man who had so recently crowed over him. He bounded up and down with glee, he uttered cries of joy, he embraced Bathkaarnet-she, he threw merrily evil glances at his dejected daughter.
“You see, child, this villain you threw your arms about is to be branded a murderer before everyone.” He advanced upon her with ogreish glee. “We’ll give you his corpse to embrace in a day’s time. Yes, just another twenty-five hours and your virginity will be safe forever from JandolAnganol.”
“Why not hang me too, Father, and rid yourself of all your daughters to worry about?”
A special chamber in the palace had been set aside to serve as the courtroom. The Church sanctified it for judiciary purposes. Sprigs of veronika, scantiom, and pellamountain—all regarded as cooling herbs—were hung to lower the stifling temperature and shed their balm into the room. Many luminaries of court and city were gathered to watch the proceedings, not all of them by any means as in accord with their ruler as he supposed.
The three main actors in the drama were the king, his saturnine advisor, Crispan Mornu, and a judge by name Kimon Euras, whose station in the Church was minister of the rolls.
Kimon Euras was so thin that he stooped as if the tautness of his skin had bent the backbone it contained; he was bald or, to be precise, without visible vestige of hair, and the skin of his face displayed a greyish pallor reminiscent of the vellums over which he had parsimonious custody. His spiderish air, as he ascended to his bench, clad in a black keedrant hanging to his spatulate feet, seemed to guarantee that he would handle mercy with a similar parsimony.
When these impressive dignitaries were settled in their places, a gong was struck, and two guards chosen for strength dragged King JandolAnganol into the chamber. He was made to stand in the middle of the room for all to see.
The division between prisoner and free is sharp in any court. Here it was more marked than usual. The king’s short imprisonment had been enough to make filthy his tunic and his person. Yet he stood with his head high, darting his eagle gaze about the court, more like a bird of prey hunting weaknesses than a man looking for mercy. The clarity which attended his movements and contours remained part of him.
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