Well, ask no more, old friend. Now I can love in the name of duty.
'If Amemun were here now, he would turn to him and ask him about the possibilities contained in one life, and he could almost hear the man's voice in his ear saying, 'Many possibilities, but always one choice.'
He thought he felt his friend's presence then, and he half turned to check over his shoulder. A member of the Twenty Houses stood there, ignoring him, her attention fully on the queen. His eyes settled again on Areava, seeing beauty and strength and honour in her features, in her voice, in her actions. These days, even when she was nowhere near him he found his thoughts settling on her, disturbing his peace and concentration. He recognised what he felt was passion, and smiled ruefully to think that Amemun would admire the elegance of duty and passion combining while still being confused by the latter; Amemun had never had any time for passion.
Orkid now made excuses to be with Areava. When once he would blithely take care of every little detail in his duty as chancellor, he would now store them up as items for discussion in his private meetings with the queen. When she held something, he imagined it was his hand; when she lightly touched something, he imagined it was his cheek; when she spoke, he imagined her words were just for him.
He was a child again, he knew. In so many ways helpless and exposed to feelings < against which he no longer had the defence of duty. He found himself obsessed by all the possibilities now contained in his life and the knowledge that they were all meaningless without Areava herself making the single choice he so desperately wanted her to make: to love him in return.
Dejanus did not dare be at the funeral pyre himself; it had taken too many gold pieces to get the innkeeper of the Lost Sailor Tavern to keep quiet the fact he had been with Ikanus the night she had died. Or that her body had been covered in terrible bruises and her left cheekbone fractured. Still, when he found out from one of the tavern's waiters—and another of his informants—that Ikanus's ashes had been thrown over the sea near the harbour so that some of them might be blown by the wind or carried by the currents to her home province of Lurisia, he made sure he visited the spot and threw a last gold coin into the water to help her on her way. It soothed his conscience, and even helped him raise a tear.
But, he sighed to himself as he turned away from the sea and headed back to the palace, it had been her fault.
He was elemental, he thought. Wild and pure, his feelings as original as life itself, not bound by social constraints or self-deception or strange customs. He would pass through this world untainted, letting be when let be, but reacting without regret like a terrible storm to any threat.
In the warm autumn heat, with the city strong and proud around him, with the palace of Kendra rising over the world, he was afraid of nothing. He liked the day much more than the night; by day everything was plainly visible, deception could be exposed, he could stride through the streets so sure and confident of his own power and his willingness to use it. On a day like this he could even confront Orkid.
Except on this day there was no need. He was commander of the Great Army. He would be famous throughout the world. Dejanus the Conqueror. Even the name of the vaunted General Elynd Chisal would fade in comparison; it was ironic that this would happen at the expense of the General's own son. Who was also the son of that hag Usharna, he reminded himself, the great antislaver, the great antimercenary.
'The Great Bitch,' he smirked to himself.
He raised his eyes to the palace where the new bitch lived, Usharna's whelp. When he had finished with Lynan and his rabble of Chett nomads she could not but help look to him for her security. He would be the most powerful man in the Kingdom. Even Orkid Gravespear, chancellor, Amanite, enemy, would shrink in the shadow Dejanus would cast over the Kingdom.
On that day, on that glorious day, he would never be frightened of anything ever again.
For the first time in his life Olio felt responsible for himself. It was a strange, partly unwelcome feeling. He had tasted responsibility before, towards his sister especially, and later towards all the sick and dying he believed he could heal, but he saw now it had been a hollow thing because he had not understood the need to take charge of his own fate, that entry into true adulthood that comes with a clear understanding of your own mortality and vulnerability to external events.
The moment of realisation had struck him that morning when he was dressing. He had finished putting on his clothes and was replacing the Key of the Heart around his neck. He saw it reflected in the dress mirror and it caught his attention. Such a simple, beautiful amulet. It had stolen his mind and only reluctantly surrendered it back to him. It had been his fault. He had been a child playing with a thing of power, and had escaped by the thinnest of threads.
His eyes moved up from the amulet to meet his own gaze, and for an instant he did not recognise the man standing before him. It was that surprise of meeting his own self, older, wiser and wounded, that made him realise that no one except he could be responsible for his own life. That as a prince of the realm—as Areava's brother, more to the point—his life would be spent in service to the Kingdom, but the part that belonged to him and him alone he could now share or keep apart as he saw fit.
He went to his desk and sorted through the papers there. They were minutes from the council, left for him by Harnan Beresard. He had a lot to catch up with. He glanced outside. The sun was shining, the air was warm. He would rather go down to the harbour and stare at the sea, watch the ships leave with filled sails, listen to the seagulls and kestrels calling overhead.
No. Later perhaps, after the day's council meeting, and he could not faithfully attend that until he had read up on the meeting he had missed. Still, that did not mean he could not enjoy the sun. He picked up the papers and left his chambers, heading for the courtyard in the church's wing of the palace. When he got there he saw two novices in one corner speaking softly to one another, and a priest sitting under a tree, praying softly. Olio sat on a stone bench without shade across it and started reading. A short while later he stopped. While a part of his mind had been dealing with the dry recordings of the secretary, teasing out the most important details and subconsciously arranging them into some kind of overall picture, another part was preoccupied with a question he had been asking himself ever since he had recovered, but which in light of his decision to accept all his responsibilities now took on greater urgency. What was he to do with the Key of the Heart?
Powl studied the sheet in front of him. On it he had carefully inscribed all the letters he had deciphered from the embossed spines of the volumes in Colanus's tower. It had taken many days of careful and secretive work, using the lightest paper he could find placed over each spine and gently rubbed with charcoal. He had checked inside the volumes themselves to make sure each symbol he copied actually existed somewhere in clear text, then arranged each group in rows according to their volume's place in the tower shelf. One hundred and twenty groups in all.
There were forty different symbols, seventeen of which he recognised from the common Theare alphabet. In thirty-one of the groups these symbols appeared together without any of the unrecognisable ones. At first the discovery had excited him, but almost instantly he realised the groups still made no sense to him. What did KELORA mean, for example, or KADRIAL? These were not words he knew, and there was no one in his experience with more knowledge of the world and everything in it.
He understood in an abstract way that he was giving himself this problem to solve because the most important problem in his life—discovering the name of God—was proving so elusive. He still held on to the faint possibility that these volumes with their secret and arcane knowledge might provide him with that name, but at the same time knew deep in his heart that the profane, no matter how extraordinary, would never reveal the sacred.