He laid a hand on the Queen's forehead and her eyes fluttered open, the lashes feathering against his palm.
'Hush now.'
The Dweomer in Odelia had sunk down to a smoking ember. It would never kindle into light again, but it was all that was keeping her alive. That, and this woman's indomit shy;able will. She might have been a mage – the promise was there – but she had never undergone the training necessary to make her powers bloom. Anger stirred in Golophin. How many others, humble and great across this blinkered world, had wasted their gifts similarly? Bardolin was right. The world could have been different, could still be different. There might still be time.
He gave Odelia sleep, a heavy healing sleep, and with his own powers he stoked up that last ember glowing within her, coaxed it into a last flicker of life. Then he sat back, poured himself some more of the fragrant wine, and mused upon the crooked course of this darkening earth.
Eleven
Aurungzeb stirred lazily with a kiss of silk hissing about his hams. ‘I like that woman. I have always liked her. As direct as a man, but with a mind as subtle as an assassin's.'
He rolled over in the bed and the sturdy hardwood frame creaked under him. The white-limbed girl who shared it with him scurried nimbly out of the way as his vast bulk settled and he sighed comfortably.
Ancient Akran, the vizier, leant on a staff that had once been ceremonial but now was genuinely necessary. He stood on the other side of a curtain of gauzy silk which hung like fog around the Sultan's monumental four-poster.
'She is . . . remarkable, my Sultan, it must be said. Making arrangements for her husband's wedding while she, his wife, is yet living. That argues a formidable degree of will.'
'He will accept, of course. But I find myself worrying all the same. Perhaps we sent out the embassy too soon. I am not convinced that he will see past the unseemly haste of the thing. Corfe is as cold and murderous as a winter wolf, but there is a stiff propriety about him. These Ramusians – well, they are not Ramusian any longer, I suppose, but our brothers-in-faith after all – they see marriage in a different light to the rest of us. The Prophet, may God be good to him, never said that a man should have one spouse only, and for a monarch, well . . . How can a man maintain his dignity with just the one wife? How can he be wholly sure of a son to follow him? Torunna's Queen may be a marvellous woman in many respects, but that did not stop her womb from proving as barren as a salted field. Or near as damn it. One child in sixteen years, and a girl at that. And the bearing of it rendered her a virtual invalid by all accounts. If he has any red blood in his veins at all, Corfe ought to jump at this chance. A beautiful young woman to share his bed and bear him sons? And she is beautiful, Akran. As fair as her mother once was.
'No, unseemly haste or not, Torunna's Queen and myself are of the one mind on this matter. And the fruit of this new union will be my grandchild. Think of that, Akran! My grandson on the throne of Torunna!'
Akran bowed, straightening with the aid of his staff and stifling a groan. 'And what of this other union, sire? The Prince Nasir is impatient to know more of his intended bride.'
Aurungzeb's grin faded into the bristling darkness of his beard. He levered himself into a sitting position, helped by the nude girl beside him, and while she leant against his back to keep him upright, he stroked his bearded chin with one plump, hairy hand, the rings upon it sparkling like a brilliant, tiny constellation.
'Ah, yes. The girl. A good match, a balancing of the scales.' He lowered his voice and peered into the grey mist of the surrounding gauze. 'They say she is a witch, you know. Like her mother.'
'It may be court gossip sire, no more.'
'It matters not; that shall be Nasir's problem, not mine.' He boomed with sudden laughter, shaking the slim, straining shoulders of the girl who was supporting him.
"The Prince has expressed a wish to see this girl before he marries her. He is in fact relaying through me a request to go to Torunn to meet this Princess Mirren face to face.' Akran licked his thin lips nervously.
Aurungzeb frowned. 'He will hold his tongue and do as he is told. What does it matter to him how this girl looks? He will plough her furrow and plant in her a son, and then for recreation he shall have a garden of concubines. The young! They hatch such absurd ideas.'
'He also would like to visit Torunn in order to-'
'What? Spit it forth.'
'He wants to see something of his mother's homeland.' Aurungzeb's eyebrows shot up his face like two caterpillars on strings. 'Does something ail the boy?' Akran coughed delicately. 'I believe the Queen has been telling him stories about the history of her people. I beg your pardon, my Sultan. I mean the people she once belonged to.'
'I know what you mean,' Aurungzeb growled. 'And I was aware of it. She has been filling his head with tall tales of John Mogen and Kaile Ormann. She would do better to prate to him of Indun Meruk or Shahr Baraz.'
With a titanic heave, the Sultan hauled himself off the bed. He struggled through the flimsy veil that surrounded it, and sashed close his silk dressing gown. Barefoot, he padded over to a small gilt table that glittered in the light of the overhead lamps. His soles slapped loudly on the marble floor, for he was an immense man with a pendulous paunch. He gently lifted the brindled length of his beard out of the bosom of his robe and poured himself a goblet of sharp-smelling amber liquid from a silver jug.
He sipped at it, his face changing. There was no trace of joviality left in it now. His eyes were two black stones.
'What do we know of the current situation at Gaderion?' he snapped.
'There has been fighting in the open country between the two defensive lines, sire, and the Torunnans may have had the worst of it. In any case, our spies tell us that conscription has begun in earnest, and martial law declared.'
Aurungzeb grunted. 'He will be wanting troops, under the terms of the treaty. I suppose I shall have to give him some. We are allies, after all, and with these marriages . . .' He broke off, chin sunk in his chest.
'There are times, Akran, when I wonder if it is all but a dream. Everything that has happened since Armagedir. Here are we, two countries whose faith is the same in all but name, who are about to be joined by the closest of dynastic ties – so close that, if they take, then these two Royal lines will become virtually one. And yet twenty years ago we were each striving for the annihilation of the other in the most savage war that history has yet seen. Old habits have not died hard; they have withered away like morning mist as the sun climbs. I try to tell myself that all this is for the best, for all our peoples, but still something within me is astonished by it, and is still waiting for the war to begin again. And then this Second Empire, arising out of thin air and empty theology to dominate the world-' He shook his head like a baffled old bear. 'Strange times indeed.'
He mused some more.
‘I tell you what: Nasir shall indeed go to Torunn. He shall lead the contingent of reinforcements that the treaty obliges us to render, and he shall see the face of his bride-to-be. But he shall also make a first-hand report on the state of the Torunnan military, and the current situation up at the gap. His wide-eyed enthusiasm may well get farther than the shadowed creeping of our spies.'
'He is young, sire . . .'
'Bah, at his age I had already fought in half a dozen battles. The younger generation has no idea-' Here Aurungzeb halted, interrupted by the boom of the chamber doors as they were rolled back by a pair of bald-pated eunuchs.