Princess Tatro was calling, pointing to servants she recognized wending their way up the hill to the palace.
Less than twenty years earlier, a covered way had been built up the hillside to the walls. Under its protection, an army had advanced on the besieged fortress. Using gunpowder charges, it blew an entrance into the palace grounds. A bloody battle was fought.
The inhabitants were defeated. All were put to the sword, men and women, phagors and peasants. All except the baron who had held the palace.
The baron disguised himself and—binding his wife, children and immediate servants—led them to safety through the breached wall. Bellowing to the enemy to get out of his way, he had successfully bluffed a path to freedom with his mock prisoners. Thus his daughter escaped death.
This Baron RantanOboral was the queen’s father. His deed became renowned. But the fact was that he could never regain his former power.
The man who won the fortress—which was described, like all fortresses before they fall, as impregnable—was the warlike grandfather of JandolAnganol. This redoubtable old warrior was then busy unifying eastern Borlien, and making its frontiers safe. RantanOboral was the last warlord of the area to fall to his armies.
Those armies were largely a thing of the past, and MyrdemInggala, by marrying JandolAnganol and securing some future for her family, had come to live in her father’s old citadel.
Parts of it were still ruinous. Some sections had been rebuilt in JandolAnganol’s father’s reign. Other grand rebuilding schemes, hastily started, slowly crumbled in the heat. Piles of stone formed a prominent part of the fortress landscape. MyrdemInggala loved this extravagant semi-ruin, but the past hung heavy over its battlements.
She made her way, clutching Tatro’s hand, to a rear building with a small colonnade. These were her quarters. A featureless red sandstone wall was surmounted by whimsical pavilions built in white marble. Behind the wall were her gardens and a private reservoir, where she liked to swim. In the middle of the reservoir was an artificial islet, on which stood a slender temple dedicated to Akhanaba. There the king and queen had often made love in the early days of their marriage.
After saying good-bye to her brother, the queen walked up her stairs and along a passage. This passage, open to the breeze, overlooked the garden where JandolAnganol’s father, VarpalAnganol, had once raced dogs and flown multi-coloured birds. Some of the birds remained in their cotes—Roba had fed them every morning before he ran away. Now Mai TolramKetinet fed them.
MyrdemInggala was conscious of an oppressive fear. The sight of the birds merely vexed her. She left a maid to play with Tatro in the passage, and went to a door at the far end which she unlocked with a key hidden among the folds of her skirt. A guard saluted her as she passed through. Her footsteps, light as they were, rang on the tiled floor. She came to an alcove by a window, across which drapes had been drawn, and seated herself on a divan. Before her was an ornate trellis. Through this she could watch without being observed from the other side.
From this vantage point, she could see over a large council chamber. Sun streamed in through latticed windows. None of the dignitaries had yet arrived. Only the king was there, with his phagor runt, the runt that had been a constant companion ever since the Battle of the Cosgatt.
Yuli stood no higher than the king’s chest. Its coat was white and still tipped with the red tassels of its early years. It skipped and pirouetted and opened its ugly mouth as the king held out a hand for it. The king was laughing and snapping his fingers.
“Good boy, good boy,” he said.
“Yezz, I good boy,” said Yuli.
Laughing, the king embraced it, lifting it off the ground.
The queen shrank back. Fear seized her. As she lay back, the wicker chair beneath her creaked. She hid her eyes. If he knew she was there, he made no attempt to call.
My wild boar, my dear wild boar, she called silently. What has become of you? Her mother had been gifted with strange powers: the queen thought, Something awful is going to overwhelm this court and our lives…
When she dared look again, the visiting dignitaries were entering, chatting among themselves and making themselves comfortable. Cushions and rugs were scattered everywhere. Slaves, females and scantily clad, were busily providing coloured drinks.
JandolAnganol walked among them in his princely way and then flung himself down on a canopied divan. SartoriIrvrash entered, nodding sober greetings, and stationed himself behind the king’s divan, lighting a veronikane as he did so. The runt Yuli settled on a cushion, panting and yawning.
“You are strangers in our court,” said the queen aloud, peeping through her trellis. “You are strangers in our lives.”
Near JandolAnganol sat a group of local dignitaries, including the mayor of Matrassyl, who was also head of the scritina, JandolAnganol’s vicar, his Royal Armourer, and one or two army men. One of the military was, by his insignia, a captain of phagors but, out of deference to the visitors, no phagor was present, except for the king’s pet.
Among the foreign group, most conspicuous were the Sibornalese. The ambassador to Borlien, Io Pasharatid, was from Uskut. He and his wife sat tall and grey and distant from each other. Some said that they had quarrelled, some that Sibornalese were simply like that. The fact remained that the two, who had lived at the court for more than nine tenners—they were due to complete their first year in another three weeks—rarely smiled or exchanged a glance.
“You I fear, Pasharatid, you ghost,” said the queen.
Pannoval had sent a prince. The choice had been carefully made. Pannoval was the most powerful nation among the seventeen countries of Campannlat, its ambitions restrained only by the war it had constantly to wage against Sibornal on its northern front. Its religion dominated the continent. At present, Pannoval courted Borlien, which already paid levies in grain and church taxes; but the courtship was that between an elderly dowager and an upstart lad, and what the lad was sent was a minor prince.
Minor he might be, but Prince Taynth Indredd was a portly personage, making up in bulk what he lacked in significance. He was distantly related to the Oldorandan royal family. Nobody greatly liked Taynth Indredd, but a diplomat in Pannoval had sent him as chief advisor an ageing priest, Guaddl Ulbobeg, known to be a friend of JandolAnganol since the days when the king had served his priestly term in the monasteries of Pannoval.
“You men with clever tongues,” sighed the queen, anxious behind her lattice.
JandolAnganol was speaking now in a modest tone. He remained seated. His voice ran fast, like his gaze. He was in effect giving a report on the state of his kingdom to his visitors.
“All of Borlien is now peaceful within its borders. There are some brigands, but they are not important. Our armies are committed in the Western Wars. They drain our lifeblood. On our eastern borders, too, we are threatened by dangerous invaders, Unndreid the Hammer and the cruel Darvlish the Skull.”
He looked about him challengingly. It was his shame that he had received a wound from such an unimportant adversary as Darvlish.
“As Freyr draws nearer, we suffer from drought. Famine is everywhere. You must not expect Borlien to fight elsewhere. We are a country large in extent, poor in produce.”
“Come, cousin, you are too modest,” said Taynth Indredd. “Everyone knows from childhood that your southern loess plain forms the richest land on the continent.”
“Richness lies not in land but in land properly farmed,” replied JandolAnganol. “Such is the pressure on our borders that we must press peasants into the armies, and let women and children work the farms.”
“Then you certainly need our help, cousin,” said Taynth Indredd, looking about for the applause he felt his point merited.