L. Modesitt - Heritage of Cyador

Once the undercaptain is out of sight, Lerial asks, “Do you know who in the duke’s family is likely to be here? I can’t imagine Haesychya will be.”

“I haven’t talked to him since we left his study yesterday.”

“You haven’t?”

“Propriety and concern, dear nephew.”

“You mean that you’re concerned about his propriety?” banters Lerial. His voice is low. “Or … I’m sorry.”

“I think you understand.” Emerya’s voice is cool.

Lerial does. Emerya has made the first and dramatic move in coming to Swartheld. Now … the question is whether Rhamuel will reciprocate. Lerial knows Rhamuel wants to, but rulers do not and often feel they cannot do what they personally wish. Lerial also doesn’t know, not for certain, how strong an influence Sammyl will be. “I hope he has the sense to do what is right for both of you.”

“He will do what he thinks is right.”

Lerial understands what she means by that as well.

Before long, Lerial sees four figures in dress uniforms approaching: Sammyl, Ascaar, Dhresyl, and Norstaan-the three senior commanders of the Afritan Guard and the duke’s personal aide.

Norstaan hurries ahead to meet Lerial and Emerya. “If you two would follow the commanders out, and take your places … The duke and his family are on their way.”

“We can do that.”

After exchanging brief pleasantries with the commanders, Lerial and Emerya follow them along the corridor and out through a doorway on the east side of the palace, taking a position on the north side of the stone platform, with the timber framework holding Mykel’s coffin, under which is a mixture of fatwood and huge long-burning hardwood logs. They stand some four yards back and about three yards to the left of where the duke and his family will be, directly in front of the four Mirror Lancers who had taken positions earlier, with Emerya the one closer to the duke’s position, an arrangement, Norstaan has declared, that reflects Rhamuel’s wishes. An equal distance to the right from where the duke will be are Sammyl, Ascaar, and Dhresyl, representing the Afritan Guard, with four Afritan Guard rankers behind them. On the west side of the stone platform stand the palace retainers. Lerial understands that, for a more public memorial, prominent merchants and others would stand on the east side.

Then they wait … and wait … for more than a third of a glass before the door from the palace opens once again. Norstaan walks beside Rhamuel, who wears the crimson Afritan Guard dress uniform, although one trouser leg has been slit from thigh to cuff to allow for the cast on his leg, as two palace guards guide the wheeled chair to a point just short of the middle of the north side of the stone platform Immediately behind the duke walk Kyedra and Aenslem, the only other family members present, both attired in black and white.

Lerial manages not to look at Kyedra, although he does use his order-senses to confirm it is indeed Kyedra.

“You’re lingering with that order-sensing,” murmurs Emerya. “That’s a bit too familiar, even if she can’t sense it.”

Lerial flushes. It’s been so long since he has been around other Magi’i that it has slipped his mind that his aunt can certainly sense what he does, at least when they are relatively close.

After several moments of silence, the two palace guards ease Rhamuel’s chair forward a yard or so, and he begins to speak.

“We are here to memorialize the life of my brother Mykel and to mourn his death. He was a good man, and he was taken from us far too soon by the greed for golds and the forces of chaos that serve that greed. Those who took him have paid. That is as it should be, but there will be no great revenge against those houses. Mykel would not have wished it, for what he desired most was harmony and prosperity for everyone in Afrit…”

Rhamuel does not speak all that long. When he finishes the memorial itself, the palace guards wheel him to the base of the pyre, and Norstaan steps forward with a flaming torch, one that Lerial suspects is significantly longer than that usually employed. He hands the torch to Rhamuel.

“With this torch, the symbol of chaos controlled by order, we return the mortal remains of Lord Mykel to the forces from which he was born that he may live in them and they in him.” After the last words, Rhamuel thrusts the long torch into the pyre, and the guards ease him and his chair back from the rapidly growing flames.

Once the pyre is a roaring inferno, the duke passes a few words to the others, and the guards turn his chair and escort him back into the palace with his family. Lerial and Emerya are next, followed by the Mirror Lancers, and then by the commanders. After the mourners leave the courtyard, Lerial knows, they will be replaced by shifts of Afritan Guards until nothing is left on the stone platform but ashes.

Once Lerial and Emerya are inside the palace, she says quietly, “We have some considerable time before the dinner this evening. I would appreciate learning from you the details of what has happened here in Afrit, and just what you have done that your father does not know. I’d also appreciate your letting me know what you do not wish him to learn. Knowing you, those are usually the details you tend to forget to mention.”

“I still might forget some of those,” replies Lerial, half-humorously.

“Forgetting a few ‘inconvenient’ facts is fine, if they aren’t ones that will cause me trouble if I don’t know them.”

“I won’t skip over that kind.” Mostly, anyway.

They make their way to Emerya’s quarters, on the second level of the west wing of the palace, but on the northwest corner, as far as possible from the duke’s sleeping quarters while still remaining on the same floor.

“Definitely the appearance of propriety,” Lerial observes as he steps into the sitting room, furnished as a lady’s study.

Emerya does not immediately reply, but walks to the window and opens it full wide, standing before it and looking to the north for a long time. Finally, she turns and takes one of the armchairs, more delicate than those in Rhamuel’s sitting room and upholstered in a muted dark blue velvet.

Lerial takes the other chair. “Where do you want me to start?”

“I won’t say ‘at the beginning.’ I would like to know how you accomplished so much destruction when you can’t draw much natural chaos from anything.”

“I seem to have two talents. One is that, while I cannot draw much chaos or create it out of myself, I have become fairly adept at redirecting the chaos others muster, and the larger the amount, the more I can concentrate it into a focused force. That was mostly what I did at Luba. Duke Khesyn sent three or four chaos-wizards. He really didn’t intend to land there, I think. He just wanted to kill as many Afritan Guards as he could. Khesyn probably hoped that attack would force Rhamuel to retain forces there, while the Heldyan armsmen went downriver to swell the invasion force he was building at Estheld…” Lerial offers a brief summary of the battles around Luba and then the ride to Swartheld, including the dinner at Shaelt and the assassination of Valatyr. “That was the first indication I had that there was something fundamentally wrong in Afrit.”

“The first indication … after all your patrols?” Emerya’s question is probingly ironic.

“I mean, within the very structure of Afrit. I began to listen more carefully and ask a few questions. It didn’t take long to discover that there were no mages or wizards available in any fashion to the Afritan Guard. That bothered me a lot, and then that became a real problem when the Heldyans invaded and parts of the Harbor Post and the palace exploded and several commanders died in strange ways…” Lerial runs through all the events, including Aenslem’s poisoning and Maesoryk’s likely connection through the cammabark, and the expedition to Estheld … and the results.