Roger Taylor: The fall of Fyorlund

That the pleasure he gained from this thought was simply the despised human trait of vanity, did not occur to Dan-Tor. It was an awe to which he was entitled. A faint, distant whisper asked ‘Is he a danger?’ but it could hardly be heard above the clamour of self-praise. No, no. Danger lies only in Hawklan and impatience. There’s no danger in this scurrying bladder. He’s just another human clutching gratefully at the knees of his execu-tioner, in mortal fear for his mayfly life.

And, in part, he was right. Dilrap was in fear of his life, and he did understand the Ffyrst’s machinations. But he neither envied nor worshipped. Just as the years of Dan-Tor’s influence and ‘improvement’ to the Fyordyn way of life had accumulated to lead them disastrously from their ancient roots and leave them bewildered and lost, so years of scorn and derision had accumulated and festered in Dilrap to make him a man very different from the plump youth who had trailed after his stern and haughty father, and subsequently gone on to be the butt of every Palace wag. His trem-bling nature was shored by two great props: his love of the Queen and his deep and growing hatred of Dan-Tor.

But in understanding Dan-Tor, so he knew his own vulnerability, and, like Dan-Tor, he too wondered why he was still privy to the Ffyrst’s musings. The uncer-tainty, and his sense of Dan-Tor’s own uncertainty, did little to calm him. His nights became fretful and nightmare-haunted, where once they had been a solace and a retreat from the torments of his waking hours.

‘Majesty, I’m afraid,’ he blurted out inadvertently to the Queen one day.

Sylvriss felt the weight of his burden added to her own; strangely heavier to bear since her confrontation with the Sirshiant. Having gained a deeper insight into the ancient ties between the Riddinvolk and their horses, part of her almost snarled, ‘We’re all afraid, Dilrap. Do what you have to do. Don’t come bleating to me’. But that same insight helped her set this savage shade aside and she laid her hand on his shoulder.

‘I understand, Dilrap,’ she said. ‘Has anything hap-pened to make you especially alarmed?’

Dilrap shook his head and then poured out his complex mixture of doubts and fears. Sylvriss let the words flow unhindered into the scented air of her chamber, until he fell silent. She stared at herself in a small mirror on her table, watching as a hand reached up and fingered a worried line etching itself perma-nently into her face.

‘I’ve no answers, Dilrap,’ she said eventually. ‘Who can say what motivates the man?’

Of late she had been trying to pursue Dan-Tor’s actions to their logical end, but had given up in despair. They seemed to lead to some form of Kingship. Not the cautious, thoughtful Kingship of Rgoric and his predecessors, but some appalling, unfettered authority over everyone and everything. But why?

Why should anyone want such authority? And it could only be over a cowed and damaged people, for damaged they would be. The people of Vakloss were already too afraid to speak publicly in opposition to Dan-Tor, and sooner or later he would have to face the Lords in battle. Lords who would probably fight to a bitter end. The man’s mind was beyond her.

She turned away from the mirror, with its wretched intimations of her own mortality. She too was afraid. The fear and mistrust that soaked the City had seeped into the Palace. Her many contacts were dwindling and she had no way of knowing whether this was through increased caution or whether they had been arrested and had revealed their secrets to their interrogators.

She clung to what she knew and what she could reasonably infer; conjecture was infinite. Certainly, none of the Lords still in the City could be safely trusted. Those with whom she had made discreet contact had quietly slipped away, and those who were left kept an uncertain neutrality or sided openly with Dan-Tor, for a variety of reasons.

It came to her gradually that whether or not Dan-Tor discovered her covert opposition to him was irrelevant. She was effectively imprisoned in the Palace, guarded as she was on the increasingly rare occasions she was allowed into the City. Her ability to influence affairs or even to know of them was diminishing rapidly. He doesn’t need to expose any of my deeds, she thought. Save one. His every action stifles opposition and isolates me.

But her one massive act of defiance was gathering a momentum of its own, and slipping beyond her control. It was a blessing turned fearful bane. As Dan-Tor had moved forwards more openly to greater power, his need for the King had declined, and consequently so had the attention lavished on him. However, as an iron ring of warriors had once guarded Ethriss, so Sylvriss had encompassed her husband with a silken ring of trusted attendants, herself its jewelled clasp, affecting the role of demure nursewife. Slowly she had continued weaning him from Dan-Tor’s potions and slowly, uncertainly, the King had gained strength and well-being.

She glanced at her face in the mirror again and smoothed out the offending line. Her eyes shone wet for a moment as she knew that the concerns impressed on her face had not been primarily for herself, but for the King, and the constant worry about what he could and could not safely be told of outside events, and how he could be restrained from interfering without too much lying.

It had always been difficult, but now he was improv-ing daily and all her decisions caused her torment. Was he or was he not strong enough to hear the full truth of what had happened? Would her very deceit destroy him and his love for her? Would he be pitched back into his black dependence on Dan-Tor? Or would he be prompted to some dire action against the man, here, with his own Palace infested with alien guards, and with his loyal Lords so far away?

Abruptly, she said, ‘We must escape.’

Dilrap looked up, eyes wide. ‘Escape, Majesty?’ he echoed.

‘Yes,’ she said slowly. The words had slipped out almost unnoticed while she was preoccupied, but hanging in the air they crystallized her thoughts. ‘Dan-Tor may tire of you soon, Dilrap. He may discover our schemes to hinder him. He’ll surely find out about the King’s health soon, and when that happens, where are we?’ She swept her arm around the room, soft and comforting, a haven amidst the turmoil. ‘We’re already imprisoned. Trussed like market chickens. Helpless and impotent.’

Dilrap fluttered. Sylvriss’s remarks had brutally summarized their predicament. He clutched at a straw. ‘If the King is stronger, Majesty, cannot he help us?’

Sylvriss shook her head, but offered no other com-ment.

Dilrap fell silent. This was a domain that he knew the Queen kept even from him, for his own sake. ‘But where could we go, Majesty?’ he said eventually. ‘And what of the King? And all the people who’ve helped us?’ There was a hint of reproach in his voice.

The Queen replied without hesitation. ‘We go to the Lords in the east,’ she said. ‘And the King goes with us. As for our helpers, we do them no great service in receiving their loyalty in this way. Not now. From now on they must watch and wait. Keep the old ways alive quietly, against the coming of happier times.’

Dilrap’s eye flickered restlessly around the room as he tried to free Sylvriss’s sudden determination from images of shining blades and hard, indifferent faces approaching him purposefully at the behest of some trivial signal from Dan-Tor. ‘But how, Majesty? And when?’ he asked plaintively.

‘The how should present no serious problem,’ Sylvriss replied. ‘You’re allowed to move freely in and out of the Palace and I’m still allowed to move freely inside. A rendezvous and a small cache of supplies can be arranged inconspicuously enough then it’ll just be a matter of surprise and speed when a suitable opportu-nity presents itself.’