Anna von Wessen (17 page)

The sons of Eiros were long, lanky fellows, with pointed faces and slitted eyes. Their attire was ancient-looking, and had been torn long ago by the claws of battle, never again to be mended and made new. Even at Night House, their swords were fast at their hips, and glinted in the torchlight beneath the table. Eirich’s accompaniment consisted of his unkempt and rough-looking mate, and his eldest son. Devin’s was made up two sons, and naught else.

Beside the brothers, Ursula sat silent, with her own pale head nearly on a level with theirs. She was clad in dark raiment, and her fair hair showed like snow against it, very long and straight. In addition to her height, she was very thick and sculpted about the limbs, so that she was rather Amazonian in appearance. Her clear eyes swept repeatedly over the hall; and though she was not armed like the brothers, it seemed that still she would have proved the less savoury opponent. Of the three, she made her expression coldest for Vaya; although the gesture so much resembled the state of her countenance before the effort, that it rather failed in producing the effect for which she was apparently aiming. No family member or friend sat at her side.

Absent from the assembly were Ria of Spain, and Abrast of France; and as Ephram took his seat, Koro gestured to the former three, and said: “You see that we are not all present; so I think we shall simply sit and talk a while, until we are complete. Yes?”

“Of course,” Ephram rejoined graciously.

Anna and Vaya stepped up to the table;
and, shying from Josev, Vaya took the chair beside her father. Anna took the next chair.

It was not long before the two remaining parties arrived. Fortunately for Koro, they came together; and so he was only subjected to the inconvenience of leaving his chair once more. Anna examined them, as they followed Koro across the hall: Abrast, very large and fierce, but dressed impeccably; and Ria, very small and dark, and attired something in the fashion of a sixteenth-century noblewoman. The pair of them produced a sight rather of the highest quality, which was representative of the combination of male and female beauty; and it seemed their intention to have it inferred, that the combination was deeper than outward appearance. They arrived as one; they moved as one; and they were desirous of having it understood, that they did in fact move as such.
They came to the table with stately airs, and looked as disdainfully at Vaya as quite everyone else had done. When they had finished with that, they glanced curiously at Anna; and she offered them a polite nod. Abrast had with him the commander of his army, who was also his nephew; and Ria had with her two half-grown daughters, who appeared as nothing more than miniatures of herself.

While Anna sat, listening to the faint hum of chatter, and awaiting the start of the feast, she looked to the wall behind the King’s table. There, worked into the thick stone, was a massive carving of an obsidian raven. This was not the Lumarian crest, wherein the black bird was heavily (and almost foolishly) bedecked with robe and crown; but was rather a naked raven, with its wings spread at their full span, and its eyes fixed upon the occupants of the hall. These eyes were menacing, and the sharp beak stood partway open, as the bird hovered in an eternal, bellicose leer.

Finally Vaya noted Anna’s wandering gaze; and she turned to her, and asked, “What are you looking at?”

Anna pointed to the raven.

“Ah,” said Vaya. She turned to the bird, almost in a sort of challenge; but then laughed quietly. “I never liked that raven, either.”

~

At length (very great length, it seemed to Anna), the meal was concluded, and the large party broke up for the night. The members of the house went off to their beds, or to their usual evening activities; while Ephram and the other Council members were asked very cordially by Koro to a drink in his library, and Anna and Vaya were sent to the chambers which had been made up for them. Both of them would have learnt, if they had conferred about it in the morning, that the other slept hardly at all. Anna, for herself, lay in the vast strange bed all night, observing the shadows on the ceiling and thinking of perhaps just as many grave and serious matters as Koro himself was doing in those black hours. Vaya, however, found that she could not keep to her bed; for the act tested very strongly the limits of her sanity. Rather, she left the silent, darkened chamber, and proceeded on her way to the roof of Night House, where she lay in the mild night air till the first rays of the sun appeared.

She was perhaps the only Lumarian, in all those long centuries that the house had stood in the same sad and solitary spot, who ever was bold enough (or mad enough) to shift within its walls. Granted, the purpose of the edict was not entirely understood by most, least of all by Vaya herself. The closest any could come to its true cause was the excessive hubris of Kryo, and his especial love for issuing orders which others were obliged to follow. But still, it would have been deemed a mark of the utmost disrespect to ignore what had become Night House’s foremost law. Yet Vaya seemed not much to care.

Early in the morning, there was a private meeting held between Koro and Ephram. The other Council members did not attend. The heads of house were not invited. The latter were especially affronted by this event; and here perhaps would be the proper place to explain, a little more about them. These heads of house, as you would probably guess, were nothing at all like those of the house of Balkyr. Their authority, if you will, was a specious item, designed to appear very noble and formidable; but really it was hardly any more than privileged opinion, and excessive grants of luxury. Possessors of these opinions and luxuries – the former of which were considerably insignificant, but the latter of which were nothing at all to scoff at – were twelve under Koro, the principal shareholder of said extravagance. Yet it can be said of the King Sybarite, at least, that his surplus of necessities and lack of wants was accompanied by a supreme power that many would verily die for. Fortunate for him, then, that his chances of perishing were far slimmer, and his own might much greater, than any mortal in his own position could boast of.

On the morning in question, he met alone with Ephram; and probably it is obvious to you, that they were discussing the fate of Vaya Eleria. The Lumaria were not much for trials, or for juries; but they favoured only judges. Really the defendant was not even required; and so, at this meeting, Vaya was not invited to speak. Present were only the King of England, and the King of the Lumaria; and the latter acted as the aforementioned judge. The results of their conference shall be described later.

The Night Council assembled as a whole, at sunset in Horn Hall. This time, though, the chamber was arranged in a very different way, with the King’s table remaining in its accustomed spot, but a number of small round tables being scattered on the floor below it, each of them meant to accommodate the representative of a single visiting country. Eirich sat with his mate and son at the first of them; was followed by Devin and his sons; the solitary Ursula; Abrast and his nephew; then Ria and her daughters. Ireland, Scotland, France, Poland and Spain: the last five nations, with England, who belonged still to the Council. One might say, then, that Koro’s title as “chief of the world’s organised Lumaria” was presently much less lofty than it had used to be.

At the head table sat Koro, Ephram, and Josev of Wisthane, with the twelve heads of house ranged on either side of them. Markedly separate from these fourteen, for the purpose of differentiating them from the legislators – but still seated at the head table, on account of their relation to Ephram – were Anna and Vaya. Between them and the last head of house was a space of four chairs. They sat on the far side of the action, looking rather like witnesses in a judge’s box.

Each table was covered with papers. For a number of minutes before the meeting commenced, there was a great noisy shuffling of these papers, accompanied by a goodly amount of whispering, as the Council members studied the lists of their own concerns in the firelight of the low chandeliers. But finally each Lumarian sat back in his seat, pushed his papers away from him, and turned to give ear to Koro. Anna was considerably amused, by the expressions upon the faces of Ria’s small daughters, which indeed were no less serious than any of the others. Neither of them could have been more than twelve years old; but still they appeared very eager for the conference to begin.

“Welcome, all of you,” said the grey-haired King, in his usual dry and indiscernible tones. “I thank you for your presence here today. As you all know, we hold this year’s conference in England, on account of King Ephram’s return. After many, many years, finally he has come home again.”

There was a short round of quiet applause.

“Really,” continued Koro, “he could not have chosen a more appropriate time. It was only a decade ago, after all, that our brothers and sisters in Romania fell away from us. And it was only in 1982, that we parted ties forever with our Russian brethren – most certainly our greatest loss in the past two centuries. If ever there was a time to attempt to unite ourselves, and in so doing to make an effort to recall our brothers and sisters in neighbouring countries, that time is now. I believe that Ephram can assist us greatly in that task.”

Abrast cleared his throat, and spoke out: “Is it your intention, Ephram, to apply this day for reinstatement to the throne of Drelho?”

“Yes,” answered Ephram.

Anna could perceive, in this moment, that Vaya smiled thinly.

“Shall we begin with that?” suggested Abrast.

“My thoughts precisely,” said Koro.

The latter began immediately to look through his own sheaf of papers, and came up quickly with a lengthy, closely-worded document. “I have here Ephram’s petition to regain the throne,” he said, “which he and I drew up only this morning. Each of your signatures will be required – ” (here he pursed his lips together, and shook his head, his face writ with an expression of mild contempt) “– save, of course, for Byron Evigan’s.

He has demonstrated some amount of hostility in this matter, and cannot be made to consent voluntarily.”

“Will you keep him on at Drelho?” asked Abrast.

“I believe that is up to Ephram,” replied Koro.

“Will you, Ephram?”

“I suppose we shall have to see how the matter pans out,” Ephram answered dryly.

“Anyway,” said Koro, “I will send the petition round now, and you may all sign it. That is – unless anyone wishes to contest the motion?”

Silence in the hall.

“Good!” said Koro. “Here, now –” (he handed the document to a page who stood by his chair, and shooed him away down to the floor) “– go and bring this to the tables.”

Soon the petition had attained all necessary signatures, and was stamped by Koro as approved. “Very good!” he said. “In all official terms, Ephram is once again King of Drelho – and King of England. The issue of steward Byron Evigan lies in his own hands to decide upon.”

Another round of applause. Josev, of course, clapped along with the rest of them; but the faint expression of displeasure which clung to his face could not be mistaken. His power, all in an instant, had been wrested from him. But he was wiser than Byron Evigan; and he knew far better than to conduct himself in the manner which that unlucky fellow had done.

Presently Koro sat forward in his seat, and folded his hands before him on the table. His expression grew, if it was possible, even graver than before. “The next issue at hand,” he said, “is the recent meeting with the Endai in London. Ephram travelled there some weeks ago, and met with Balkyr himself.”

A deep hush fell over the room at this statement.

“I am sorry to say,” Koro continued, “that the Endai do not wholly agree with our own views concerning the Narken. Certainly you would think, after the damage that the Voranu have done to their own people – after the gruesome tortures which they underwent at their hands! – that they would be somewhat more receptive to the idea of war. But the Endai, I’m afraid, are a race which I shall never fully understand.”

The faces in the hall became painted with wry grins.

“All the same,” said Koro, “the truth of the matter is that there must in the near future be some sort of climax to the violence. The warfare between the Lumaria and the Narken has till now been silent warfare, existing and exploding just under the radar of the humans – lest that race should for a moment suspect that it is not the strongest and greatest in the world.”

Even wryer were these succeeding grins.

“Still,” said Koro, “weak as the humans are – the Endai are neither few nor weak, and they are the wholehearted protectors of the humans. Therefore we must, at least for the foreseeable future, go on as we always have; and
therein
, my brothers and sisters, lies the problem. With the Narken always at our throats, how do we keep ourselves hidden? How do we keep the humans from perceiving our war? Someday there must come a final battle; and not till then can we live in peace. Presently it is both the Narken
and
the Endai who stand in the way of that peace. But perhaps, after a while, the lot of them will have disappeared; and then we shall keep all living humans as they themselves keep the cattle which they eat.”

Soft chuckles swept through the chamber.

“Today, however,” said Koro, “is not the day to draw up battle plans. Only know, each and every one of you – that the time is near. This morning I had a long discussion with Ephram, concerning a good friend of his left behind in the States. This is Adrian Ilo. Perhaps some of you have heard of him?”