It had always been like this with his father. Not fear, just a kind of canny reluctance, rootless and long-winded.
Eventually he had to relent-that too was part of the game-so he made his way to his mother's private apartments. He could hear his older brother, Inrilatas, ranting about the Gods in his locked room. His brother had broken his voice bludgeoning the walls years ago, yet still he croaked, on and on and on, as though flooding his room in some lunatic search for leaks. He never stopped raving, which was why he was always kept locked in his room. Kelmomas had not seen him for more than three years.
His mother's apartments were located down the hallway. He padded across the rug-strewn floor as silently as he could, his ears keen to the sound of his parents' voices filtering through innumerable wheezing cracks and surfaces. He paused outside the iron door, his breath as thin as a cat's.
"I know it pains you," Father was saying, "but you must have Theliopa with you in all your dealings."
"You fear skin-spies?" his mother replied.
Their voices possessed the weary burnish of a long and impassioned conversation. But the roots of his father's exhaustion stopped short of the deeper intonations that warbled in and out of his discourse. A heart-easing hum, and a kind of ursine growl, far too low to be consciously heard by Mother. These spoke from something as unwinded as it was inscrutable, an occluded soul, entirely hidden from lesser ears.
He manages her, the voice said. He sees through her face the way you do, only with far more clarity, and he shapes his voice accordingly.
How do you know? Kelmomas asked angrily, stung by the thought that anyone, even Father, could see further than him. Further into her.
"The nearer the Great Ordeal comes," Father said, "the more desperate the Consult grows, the more likely they will unleash what agents remain. Keep Theliopa with you at all times. Aside from my brother, she's the only one who can reliably see their true faces."
Kelmomas smiled at the thought of the skin-spies. Agents of the Apocalypse. He loved hearing the stories about their wicked depredations during the First Holy War. And he had gurgled with delight watching the black one being flayed-carefully, so that Mother wouldn't see, of course. Somehow, he just knew he would be one of the few who could see past their faces, just as he could see past his father's voice. If he found one, he decided, he would keep it secret, he would simply watch it, spy on it-he so dearly loved spying. What a game it would make!
He wondered who was faster…
"You fear they'll attack the Andiamine Heights?" Real horror shivered through Mother's voice as she said this, the horror of events scarcely survived.
All the more reason to trap it like a bug, Kelmomas decided. He would say things, cryptic things, that would make it wonder. He needed something to tease now that Samarmas was gone.
"What better way to distract me than by striking at my hearth?"
"But nothing distracts you," Mother said, her tone so desolate that only silence could follow. Kelmomas found himself leaning toward the door, such was the ache that emanated from the quiet beyond. It seemed he could hear them breathing, each following their own tangled string of thoughts. It seemed he could smell the absence of contact between them. Tears welled in his eyes.
She knows, the voice said. Someone has told her the truth about Father.
"When must you leave?" Mother asked.
"Tonight."
Kelmomas made ready to push through the door… Mother was hurting! And it was Father-Father! How could he have missed this before?
He'll see you, the voice warned.
Father?
None know how much he sees…
This puzzled the young Prince-Imperial. He stood motionless before the cast door, his hand arrested mid-air…
But she needs me-Mommy! Think of the warm cuddling, the tickles, the kisses on the cheek!
He's the root, the voice replied, and you're but the branch. Remember, the Strength burns brightest in him.
For reasons Kelmomas was entirely unable to fathom, that dropped his hand like lead.
The Strength.
He turned, ran like a loping athlete one-two-three-leap! — down the halls past the bemused Pillarian Guards. As a Prince-Imperial, he had the run of the Andiamine Heights, though he was forbidden to leave its halls and gardens without the express permission of the Empress. So run he did, down the tapestried halls, through the slave barracks and into the kitchens. It was here that he palmed a silver skewer. A couple of the more matronly slaves stopped to ruffle his hair and pinch his cheeks. "Poor boy," they said. "You loved your brother dearly, didn't you?" He looked through their faces, made them blush with compliments. He worked his way to the Atrium, but the great doors to the Imperial Audience Hall had long been shut. No matter, the entrance to one of the second-floor galleries remained propped open. He decided to climb the twining stairs upside down, walking on his hands.
He flipped back to his feet when he reached the summit. All was shadows. He could only see the airy hollows of the Hall by looking through the slot between the pillars and the immense tapestries that hung between. For some reason, it seemed both more vast and smaller when seen from this vantage. When he reached the final pillar, it unnerved him to see that he could look down on the Mantle and his mother's seat. It dawned on him that no matter how great, no matter how pure and concentrated one's Strength, it was always possible that someone unseen looked down.
He secured his hands and hooked his feet along the edge of the immediate tapestry, slid like a bronze weight to the polished expanse of the floor. The grand pillars astonished him-or so he pretended in the name of his epic feat. Laughing, he climbed the steps to the Mantle, the great throne of ivory and gold from which his father passed dread judgment upon the Known World.
"Skuh-skuh-skin spies!" he whispered to himself. How long would it be before they showed themselves?
He couldn't wait!
He climbed onto the throne's hard seat, sat swinging his feet for several moments, hoping for the onset of absolute power, becoming bored when it failed to arrive. A sparrow caught in the netting above cried tweet-tweet-tweet in forlorn tedium. He craned his neck up and back to stare at its shadow. It periodically thrashed, a rustle like a dog's hind leg scratching. The stars beyond twinkled without sound.
He wished he had a stone, but all he had was the skewer.
The world he walked was far different from the world walked by others. He did not need the voice to tell him that. He could hear more, see more, know more-everything more than everybody save his father and maybe his uncle. His sense of smell, in particular…
He pressed himself from the throne, from the residual aura of his mother, and trotted down the steps to the Auditory floor. The smell of his uncle, the Shriah, he could recognize readily enough, but the smell of the other, the stranger, was pungent with unfamiliarity. He squatted, bent his face to the smear of evaporated urine-a fuzzy patch of grease in the moonlit gleam.
He breathed deep the Matriarch's rank odour. It transported him, enlightened him in the manner of petty things followed deep.
Then he stood and turned, leapt the stair to the dais in a single, effortless bound. He wandered onto the balcony behind the thrones, stared out across the moon-silvered distances of the Meneanor Sea.
There was something ominous about the Sea at night, the unseen heaving, the black curling beneath the booming surf, the sunless hissing. Only in the dark, it seemed, could the trackless extent of its menace be perceived. Vast. Impenetrable. All-embalming. Every struggle wrapped in a fizzing haze. Every death a dropping into the fathomless unseen…
Ever did Men drown in blackness, even in sun-spliced waters.