Outside it was barely dawn, but that didn’t matter – more wine than water was going around the room, servants slipping in and out with practised efficiency. Conversation flowed like the grape from the bottle, and there was even a little tense laughter erupting here and there in the corners. When the silver bells rang they all set down their goblets, ceasing their chatter. Twivona stood from the gold-gilt couch, and found Gathel with her eyes. She controlled the trembling of her fingers, folding her hands together demurely and setting the pace. Her Shadow, Justice and Malice fell into place behind her, and she stepped into the narrow corridor of black, reflective stone. In small groups the High Lords and Ladies of the Realm got to their feet, following her as she led them from their antechamber of silk and excess, stepping as briskly as her shoes would permit along the passageway, heading towards the strangest of spaces.
They had no newcomers this morning – everyone knew what to expect. There would be no gasps of awe from a young (or old) replacement as the Arreax door fell open. But she still felt it in her mind as she thought about the shadowed hall, even after taking her place in her ancient seat dozens of times.
Where in many places the Founders and their heirs had opted for grandeur and mood over practicality, here in the Chamber of the Arrealbord they had indulged those instincts for opulence and mystique. Hearths mantled in precious metals and stones blazed forth a vital orange light. From a single piece of milk-white marble a great spiral table had been shaped, yet it was unlike the blemishless Noxway; its honey-gold swirls caught the firelight, ripples in the surface glowing like burning veins. The chamber was drenched in spells that remained poorly-understood and oft-conjectured since the dawn of the age; it smelt of magic; when seated there, one breathed it in, bathed in it.
The hallowed hall had but two entrances: the great door of defence which was never opened, by the decree of Arreath Ril himself; and the small door at the rear wall of the chamber. It was this door which swung open in advance of her as she travelled the last stretch of the escape tunnels, entering the Arreax, the Chamber of the Realm’s Council.
The Arreax was as old as the Realm, and it embodied the Realm – Mund’s Seat at its heart, with Amrana and Ouldern nestled close-by, all the way down to Hezreni and Chakobar and Myri at the tail. They entered in single file out of necessity, and she kept the pace at the front, now passing the great chairs of those three lesser provinces. Practicality dictated the procession – the four representatives of the First Seat, then the four representatives of the Second, and so on. It wouldn’t do for High Lords and Ladies to be shoving past those already seated, oh no. It was tradition, though, which held her to take the long route, traipsing about the outer edge of the spiral – instead of simply cutting around the tail and approaching her lofty chair by a route that wouldn’t even take a quarter of the time. Poor old Wenlyworth two steps behind her was equipped with a flotation device under his clothes, and she suspected he wasn’t the only one. No one revealed the exact nature of their fittings, obviously, but she knew those worn by men differed little from women’s brassieres – which could also be similarly ensorcelled, her research had uncovered. But most eschewed such contrivances, seeking to stride under their own power even into their dotage. There were many legal means by which one might preserve one’s physical potency – for a price. Unlike one’s youth and beauty, much to her dismay.
She understood herself as a creature of charm. Enye’s blessings had come upon her when she reached full bloom, and she still remembered what it was to be an uninteresting waif with bad hair, pale and buck-toothed at the back of every gathering, gaze downturned. Now, despite being older, she couldn’t imagine ageing – not really – and she was introspective enough, honest enough, to understand her vanity. She didn’t want to go back. She didn’t want to lose what she’d gained.
Death changed everything. She’d loved her sister, but she couldn’t deny that the loss of her sibling had been the trigger for the change in her. It was almost as though she became her. Suddenly Litini’s attendants became Twivona’s own; her lips and cheeks were painted to give the appearance of health; her wild hair was tamed. Soon Litini’s suitors were her own, too.
Everybody loved her now – all but one.
Her decision to remain unattainable had been enough to drive men to duel over her, and she’d relished every incantation, every gesture. As that aura crystallised into aloofness, she aged into her confidence, reaching an apex where she was both maiden and mother, desirable and maternal. Yet she was never a mother, never realised the potential of the maiden. She lost herself in her self-image, and she knew it.
She mounted her chair, if chair it could be called, and turned her gaze about the room. Each of the thirty-three great seats were really four chairs rolled into one, and each was a unique edifice, a true work of art shaped from a single piece of near-transparent crystal. Two shallow steps up from the circular platform admitted her Lord Justice into his place on her right hand, and her Lady Malice on her left. Four steps there were for her old Lord Shadow to climb, where he would perch just below and behind her. Five steps for her, from which height the marvellous table, useless-enough as it already was, descended into a glorified footstool. The surface, when touched in the proper way, its ensorcellments called upon, could repeat back the voices of their forebears, making their long-dead decisions and judgements into a living sound. A feature rarely utilised, in these latter days, and even then only by the lords’ underlings. She had no idea how to lift those ancient voices from the ancient material, and she very much doubted any of her peers did either. She’d seen it done once by a team of transcribers after a council session, and it’d seemed involved indeed.
No. The table, with its fantastical spiral shape, was there primarily to reinforce the proper order. Her at its head, at the heart of the room. Everyone else, after her. Beneath her. She was the voice of the Realm, the lips of the world. The others – they were various stops along its digestive tract.
This was what Father taught her. And as she’d aged into her position, she’d felt the truth of his teachings more and more each year that passed. The wilfulness she’d been possessed by, before her sister’s death, before her ascent to the Heir of House Sentelemeth, faded into a shadow of its former self. Her studies in the history of the Realm finally crystallised and she came to understand the value of tradition, institution. It was always the place of youth, to seek to tear down structures. It was the place of experience, the benefit of wisdom, to take those attacks and incorporate them into the whole, seamlessly expand the structure, adapt the practises, reinterpret the tradition. It was what she was best at. It was what gave her the strength to rule, to be heard by all and listened to, even in such a chamber as this. The Peacekeeper Initiative, the foreign policy decision that saw three territories fall back under Mundic control in just twelve years, was all hers – with a little help from her Justice, Malice and Shadow, of course. The notion of moving the armies to an aggressive footing had kept the conservatives happy, despite the pacifist means they employed in their new style of warfare – thanks in large part to innovations in non-lethal weaponry. The diplomatic gains had been massive. The economic gains, massive. And her skills didn’t just lie with outland affairs, wrangling with uncouth negotiators – she’d managed domestic situations with the same aplomb. Satiating the various religious groups, each of whom had a different agenda, a different set of likes and dislikes – blind hatred of sorcery being the most-common gripe, of course – was itself like casting a complex spell. The ability to balance upon the political tightrope… this was what Twivona saw as her greatest asset.
Fast in her high throne of ancient crystal, looking out across the magic-soaked chamber and seeing her near-rivals all about her, the First Lady of Mund couldn’t control her hands any longer. She had them clasped together in her lap but it was no use – they spasmed and she gripped the delicately-shaped arms of her chair, shifting her weight as though the motion were deliberate.
She couldn’t balance. Not when there was no ground upon which to stand. The firmament beneath her had been shaken, and she shook in turn. Her fragile tightrope had thinned to a razor’s edge; she would topple one way or the other, and bleed, bit by bit, until she decided how best to defenestrate herself.
She swallowed, and prayed to Yune that the loudness of it echoed only inside her own head. It sounded like a tree splitting in half. The silence in here was physically painful.
And it was to her to break it.
Nineteen members were missing, exactly as she’d been notified by Gathel two hours in advance of their arrival. One hundred and thirteen pairs of eyes reflecting the fiery glare.
“In Kultemeren’s name,” the words came out passably between numb lips, “I accede we are all in attendance.” She saw them leaning forwards; even those with bored expressions were staring at her, and she fought to raise her voice without it trembling. “The High Council of Chraunost, of the year Nine-Hundred and Ninety-Nine, is henceforth brought to bear upon the world’s ills. Let them be solved before we separate.”
The phrases of age-old tradition spent, she fell back thankfully into silence.
It did not last long enough to become oppressive. Argument erupted, and the crystal thrones worked their magic, permitting each speaker only so long at their turn before their volume was diminished, their shouts reduced in seeming to mere whispers.
“You must recognise my right to speak!” the High Lord of Chakobar cried instantly from the tail of the table, and he seemed to garner the most attention. Everyone knew the pale, anxious young scion of House Daevon would have something to say. “I hereby call upon you to vote! The Magisterium can no longer handle my country’s ills, and they’ll become the world’s in short order!”
Chakobar’s beautiful, brown-skinned Lady Malice placed her hand upon her Lord’s armrest, and he broke off, glancing at her.
The Chakobese Malice spoke, her voice hard. “The Tirremine Incident cannot go unexplored, and our people may no longer even live –”
“Your people!” shrilled Lady Alaphar of Karamar, her fierceness belying her age and wizened frame. “We do not know what has happened to them. Even now the Magisterium’s scouts move on your coasts –”
“Scouts – what songs will their precious birds sing them from the shadowland? Everything that nears my home is slaughtered –”
“We do – not – know that to be the case!” Twivona was close enough to see the spittle flying from Alaphar’s thin lips. “Your people, your home indeed! You have not set foot in Chakobar since last summer, and then it was only for the tan! Were you born there, Zalista? Did you sup the mother’s milk o’ the land?”
“That is irrelevant! You say it yourself – that we do not know is ample, more than ample cause for the utmost concern! Do you not recall what was said of the dragons…”
Twivona glanced between the two exchanging barbs. Most of the people in here would comprehend the nuances of their opposition, and those who didn’t were beneath such subtleties even were they to be explained slowly. The identity of young Lyferin Othelroe had been revealed upon his death, the former champion Redgate, slain on outland sands by Phanar of N’Lem and his cohort. Former champion, as the testimony of the adventurers held him to have been a murderer, a callous and evil man in the extreme. Testimony given under spell and oath, testimony corroborated by arch-diviner…
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By Timesnatcher… But could he be trusted, in the end? His predecessor was now leader of the heretics, and, going off his recent behaviour – assuming reports were accurate…
She couldn’t doubt, not now. She had to focus.
Lady Alaphar was the Lady Malice to the Second Seat. Ostensibly she’d been the Council-member closest to Redgate, the young Lord Shadow, throughout his career, given the advanced senescence of the Second Lord and his Lord Justice. She was slavish in her defence of Lyferin, as if his guilt entailed some besmirchment of her honour. An obvious undercurrent of thought was that this whole fiasco had started with the Lord Shadow’s quest to slay Ord Ylon. Lyferin went to Chakobar and died, and, thus far, it seemed, everything else there had followed him into the grave. Not a word from across the ocean in months.
Lyferin’s meek replacement, some obscure cousin sloped forth from the Ilswent domains, kept to his well-practised silence, allowing Alaphar to do all the work.
“… almost two thousand shipments – did they arrive? They certainly did not return!”
“What a great loss to the Realm. Spices and drugs. However shall we feed ourselves?”
“That, my Lady, is beneath you. These are human lives!”
“What would you have us do, that’s not been done already!”
“Mobilise the army! The Hawks of Myri are on campaign in Aber-Lan –”
“So you would spend the lives of Myric sons and daughters, spill out their precious blood upon your barbaric, infertile soil, all for what?”
“We won’t stand for that!” growled Lord Justice Vernays.
“When I speak of Chakobese lives, you sneer,” Lady Zalista Udur countered smoothly, ignoring Vernays, still staring unblinkingly at Lady Alaphar. “When I speak of action, you speak of Myric lives. Shall I now sneer?”
“Sneer if you will – you are not the expert in such matters. Or would you have us now believe you to be a military genius in disguise?”
“I would have you believe I would prefer us to do something, rather than nothing.”
“It is to the Magisterium to design our policy; our trust in their expertise –”
“Too long have we trod the same paths, back and forth in argument, you and I.” Zalista’s voice quaked now, not in fear but frustration, even anger. “You are no different – you will not change – even here in the face of all your equals. It is not strength you demonstrate – only that you remain frightened, so childish as to put your trust in –”
“– you, who think you know so much, could be so blind. Do you not see so many empty seats as I? As you yourself state, there remains the matter of the dragons, beyond our scope, and you are no seer, no part in the project…”
As their vehemence grew, their volume diminished, and the Lord from Myri started voicing his concerns more loudly. A vote as to whether his province’s forces might be sent trotting over to Chakobar was definitely not on his agenda.
“We are skirting the true issue! The latest missives scarcely mention any success in corroborating the claims of Vardae Rolaine, or in catching the damn fiend. Until this matter’s settled, there will be no peace, only unrest!”
That was Lord Tenthur, Wenlyworth’s arch-rival.
Indeed, Twivona’s old Lord Shadow immediately responded:
“If you read the missives carefully you will, my Lord, already be aware of the reason such topics receive scarcely a mention – you do us no good, only ill, to feed this aura of fear which has fallen upon the city. There have been in the course of Mund’s recorded history some ninety-three such prophets of doom; it is hardly an exclusive club into which Hierarch Twenty-Five now unwittingly inserts herself. We defied fate before, and –”
“She’s going to kill us all!” someone croaked.
“Come Highsummer, I’m gone,” someone else vowed.
This is why we fail, Twivona thought, closing her eyes as all descended into anarchy. She had no special power to bring them to order, no authority beyond that which she had already displayed. The chairs tried to perform their duties, quietening some, providing a voice to others, letting those who needed to be heard break through the hubbub.
It wasn’t enough. Never again would be it be enough, not since Yearsend.
“And there are so few champions remaining!” came a shocked voice from the Twenty-Somethingth Seat. She fancied it to be Lord Melton, but she wasn’t going to bother opening her eyes to check. “Might we not vote to increase their remuneration rates, that more might see their way to such a career?”
“It’s not a career, it’s a calling,” her Lord Haid replied loudly, repeating the trite phrase.
At least he sounded like he believed it now. Gathel’s own appreciation of the city’s defenders had been much improved, deepened, by his timeless spell in Etherium, pursued by the dragon’s agents.
“I am given to believe,” came the low, haughty purr of Cay-Lehan Osordei, “that nigh-all the champions turned heretic that night, when Madame Rolaine spoke to us.”
“I have received assurances,” Twivona replied, “from the Heads of Recruitment and Logistics that the Magisterium will provide the required forces. Over a thousand new magisters have been deployed in the city in the last week, and two thousand more will –”
“In the place of archmages, champions, you will set untested boys and girls –”
She hadn’t meant to become drawn into an argument, yet now she was faced with opposition she felt a coldness come over her.
“The thousand includes three archmages, each of them tried in the field!” she found herself retorting, and she almost bit her lip at that needless, bald lie – one of the three archmages was a former toy-maker, tried in the fields of miniature design and marketing… “The majority of the magisters are being brought in from Disholt and Ferund; a contingent of your own experts are sailing in from Amrana even as we sit here, sparring idly.”
“Is that what you think this is?” Lady Osordei eyed her dangerously, and Twivona realised too late that her comment had been sloppy – she couldn’t afford to give any ground to her rival. The Third Lady had always despised her; she’d been her sister’s oldest friend. She was the one person in the world to have displayed animosity regarding her replacement act. Her sister’s oldest friend, who’d once dressed Twivona in daisy-chains and played hide and find in the palace gardens with her. Cay-Lehan hated her because she wasn’t Litini – a grudge Twivona could never put to rest, or even come to acknowledge as valid.
Memories that had faded to grey pages.
Valid or no, Cay-Lehan’s spite hurt sometimes. The spine of the book ached as it bent open, the recollections of youth accessed against her will, events still burning there in smoking ink upon the creased material of Twivona’s mind.
“You think of this as some game? That our words are as the rocks thrown by children, rather than the bricks laid carefully one by one? Fie, Twivona, and for shame! I –”
“Desist,” Twivona said quietly, yet the chair enhanced her voice, as Cay-Lehan’s shrank away. “Perhaps I sparred too idly; your latest rock has struck me a terrible gash.”
Some laughter rippled at that, and the tension in the room was lessened. The left side of Cay-Lehan’s face bunched up in a scowl, an expression the First Lady was all too familiar with.
Twivona smiled at her rival, and the magical silence of the Arreax stretched between them. Off to the side, Zalista Udur of Chakobar was still duelling her own rivals, and, in the quiet surrounding the First and Second Seats, Lady Udur’s voice grew in strength:
“The Magisterium’s report has been derived from divination, and all they will tell us is that there was a deviation in Tirremuir. A deviation! As though this would be enough to satisfy any of you that your countrymen were safe, that your homes and wealth were protected! No. We cannot sit by and watch our world crumble. Our ancestors demand immediate action! The gods demand it!”
And yet, hours later and thanks in large part to Twivona, they’d done nothing about anything.
The High Council session ended, and, last as she’d been first, Lady Sentelemeth exited the chamber with her Justice and Malice huddled close at her sides in the narrow space, her Shadow floating along behind.
She let a reasonable distance develop in front of her. The black glass of the narrow corridor reflected them like they were ghosts when she glanced from side to side, their mirror images swathed in shadow, outlines broken, details distorted.
“How do you think it went?” Twivona asked.
Wenlyworth chuckled; Haid made something of a gargling sound.
Her Malice, Lady Gwena Rhaegel, alone spoke plainly, her deep, dull voice belying the intelligence working the tongue. “We knew how it would go.”
“But I don’t like it.” Twivona almost felt as though she were on the verge of bursting into tears and she struggled to keep a lid on her emotion, managing to hiss rather than wail: “I say: I don’t like it! These measures… why does everything I do and say have to be pacification? Why can’t we do something –”
“You sound like her,” Lady Rhaegel interrupted; Twivona instantly knew to whom she alluded, and fell silent.
“You sound like her, and you know the answers to your own questions. I gave you the figures myself. The Magisterium is doing what it does best, and if –”
“No, Gwena!” Twivona stopped, turned. “I understand what they’re doing, but what about us? Why can’t we do something? We’re supposed to be the leaders – what’s our rule worth, if we’re worthless?”
“I think my Lady might have missed her daily dose,” Wenlyworth commented dryly, referring to the prohibitively-expensive elixir consumed by all Arrealbord members with breakfast each day. It contained a number of different substances, designed in concert to protect the imbiber from a variety of perils: poisons; enchantments; changes of shape and state… And, as the rumour went, despair.
“I most certainly did not miss my dose, and I will not be pacified. I should’ve permitted Zalista’s request; we could’ve had a force inside Chakobar within the week –”
“The military committee would’ve hated it, as we’ve already discussed,” Gwena said in a light but chiding tone.
“I’m in no mood for your jests, Lady Rhaegel! Ismethyl’s blade! Does it matter what they’d have thought of it? It’s their job to do as they’re told.”
She started walking again, resuming her former pace and, leaving her a bit more room this time, her colleagues fell in behind her.
She’d not gone five steps before she was stopped in her tracks.
A trio of masked individuals in front of her. The one at the front in black could’ve been mistaken for a boy were it not for the form-fitting quality of her clothing. The one at the back, clad in a robe of purest white, gave off a brooding aura. And in between, far taller than his companions, a man whose darkness was punctured by a hundred radiant hourglasses, each displaying just a few grains of sand remaining, already falling through the valves.
The aura emanating from the two at the front was anything but brooding. There was a sense of excitement on the air. Exuberance.
Twivona knew who they were; everyone knew who they were, and she’d met the two gentlemen before. The girl’s identity she could infer from the bow she wore.
She’s finally going public.
Twivona drew in a breath, and that was all she managed.
“First Lady!” The young woman’s voice was strong, confident. “It’s been too long, and I’m afraid it may not be a happy birthday if we spend too long on pleasantries. We estimate six demonic infestations are underway currently, and by the time we’ve dealt with one, another five will have appeared. I’m afraid this is it. The Incursion you always feared. Ulu Kalar has won.”
The Incursion… But there hasn’t been one in…
Some part of her had hoped that they’d stopped altogether, as a few of the rumours reported to her in whispers by her Shadow had suggested. That Vardae Rolaine was wrong in more ways than one.
“I…”
She glanced aside, to check her friends’ reactions, and found herself distracted from her own protests, her words dying in a strangled sound. It wasn’t just the motionlessness of her fellow nobles, cluing her in on the fact she alone had been taken inside a chronomantic construct.
No – it was the walls. For the first time, the blackness reflected. She could’ve been in here a thousand times, and never once had she seen her shadow-eyes staring back at her from the void’s infinite mirrored recesses.
How…?
“Two-point-two seconds,” Starsight said, in a voice that would’ve been melodic had it not been so strained.
“You remember your protocols, First Lady?”
Twivona dragged her gaze back to Nightfell.
“Pr… protocols…”
Her mind swam in the memories, and she closed her eyes. It’d been five years or more since the Palace Guard had last gone over the system with her.
In event of… impending disaster… we…
Oh. Oh gods. The rhyme.
“She remembers. She’ll do it. Come on.”
She felt a slight tug on her clothing – she opened her eyes again and the trio of powerful diviners were gone.
Wenlyworth almost bumped into her as her companions came to a halt about her, glancing at her curiously.
“The bunker,” she breathed. “It will open?”
Gong! Gong! Gong!
The Mourning Bells were pealing out, and even here, inside the buried fastness of the Arrealbord Palace, the sound was cacophony.
Every muscle in her shook all at once, tremors flooding her, and when she glanced again into the depths of the black-glass walls Twivona saw that her reflection was more broken than ever.
“Come on,” she said, folding her arms across her chest and hurrying her steps.
“My Lady!” Haid exclaimed, clutching at his robe and stumbling to keep up. “An Infernal Incursion!”
“Damn! What’s this about a bunker, Twivona?” Lady Rhaegel asked.
“We’ve got to get the others. All of them.” Her trembling subsided, and Twivona focussed on her duty. “We’ve got to get them to the Blackway, as quickly as we can… The very survival of the Mundic Realm may depend on it.”