The
day’s discussion wore on. The braziers were refuelled. They began to burn with a brighter and
brighter light as the evening lengthened into night. They began to take more breaks as time
passed. They discussed each other’s activities and occasionally, much to
Hardacre’s chagrin, the conversation turned briefly to gossip. Not that there
was much he could do – the council could discuss anything that it wanted and
agendas and time slots were anathema to at least half of the group. Discussion at length was the usual way.
However, this prolixity did sometimes lead to
some restlessness. They had had to sit through a long report transmitted by
Gwyneth concerning the activities of the CRS, which even she seemed to find a
little too detailed. She kept reminding them that she hadn’t actually written
the thing.
Eventually, after about twelve hours of the
initial session, the topic came back round to the overall strategic position.
‘It must be considered improved, surely?’
said Elizabeth, ‘after all that’s one major enemy down…’
Everyone murmured their agreement except for
George, who still hadn’t said anything at all. John wondered if he was somehow
sleeping with his eyes open, or possibly ill. He was really tempted to say
something to him, just to make sure that he was okay.
‘Yes’ said Gwyneth, ‘but we have no idea how
this all affects the power balance among the Cloaks. Will one of them take over
Whitecloak’s land? Will they seek revenge?’
‘We have no intelligence from there at all’
admitted Bronwyn, ‘and it’s not clear how we could arrange to get some’
‘What about the Emperor?’ continued Gwyneth,
‘we must have more idea of what he intends?’
John shook his head sadly. This was something
that had been a problem for some while.
‘Not really’ he said quietly, ‘Pallatian
plays his cards close to his chest – even more so now since he’s begun his
political restructuring. We, however, do
know is that he’d like to get Ortia back, if he can get through the Wall…’
‘We could help him with that’ said Angharad,
interrupting, ‘it’s just Dwarven Magic, after all’
Gwyneth shook her head and looked over to
Elizabeth.
‘I’m sure that wouldn’t go down too well in
Eth City’ she said
‘No it wouldn’t’ agreed Elizabeth, ‘I don’t
want rogue witches spoiling the good relations that I’ve built up with Lady
Anne’
‘It was just a suggestion’ explained
Angharad, ‘I’m not planning to go there now and offer my services…’
John interrupted this exchange immediately.
It was too late in the day for a clash of temperaments.
‘I think we’re agreed that we can’t act at
the moment, but it might well still be a possibility if things get very bad for
the Empire’
Elizabeth cocked her head and frowned.
‘We couldn’t do that without consulting our
allies’
Stephen, who had been asleep for a good
proportion of the evening’s discourse, stirred in his seat.
‘Surely the Visneorians are our allies too –
Coalition of the Civilised States, and all that...’
‘Our primary ally’ said Elizabeth, very
firmly, ‘is the Ethian government. We must never do anything to jeopardise
that!’
There was a lot of shaking of heads and the noise
of uncertainty. Stephen was about to speak again when Gwyneth cut him short
with a look.
‘Shall we move on? We have been over these
fairly subtle political points far too many times before. Let’s get back to the
evidence in front of us’
There was nodding round the table and some
surreptitious mumbling about ‘Eth City cosmopolitans’. Elizabeth pretended not
to notice.
‘So, tell us a bit more about what you found
out in Ortia, John’ asked Celia, her voice raised above the murmur of sound.
She stopped for a second, like a schoolteacher, waiting for the hubbub to die
down.
‘As I was trying to say’ she continued, ‘what
was going on in Ortia?’
John smiled at Celia, thankfully. He was very
grateful for her common sense – she always kept her head and took admirably
little interest in council politics.
‘The Proconsul received a letter from him,
delivered by one of the guards who accompanied Dr Fielding to the east. He said
that it was intention to send an expeditionary force to the East to reclaim the
cities and establish new Proconsuls’
‘Reclaim what cities?’ said Celia, ‘are there
any left other than Ortia?’
‘Not that are held by the Visneorians, no’
agreed John,’ Melloreis is permanently destroyed; Portalis, near the Wall, is
held by rebels; and Monurbis, which guards the pass between East Visneoria and
Tlaxaca, is in enemy hands’
‘Not that much to reclaim then’ said Celia
John shook his head, remembering the white
city in the wilderness, even though he had to imagine its true beauty when
whole, as when he had seen it had had lost almost all of its perimeter wall.
‘Ortia would be a prize for anyone’ he said,
‘and it’s reabsorption into the empire would open up a vast area of fertile
arable and pasture land. It would also form a perfect staging post for any
military push to retake Monurbis and therefore secure the old, plausibly
defensible, imperial borders’
Stephen stirred again, this time with his
face even more flushed than usual.
‘Then, as I said before, I cannot imagine how can we deny them any and all help that we
can give them’ he said, ‘Angharad should go straight away to fix that whole
Wall thing, before the Tlaxacans regroup’
John sighed, hoping that someone else would
answer this and stop the conversation going round and round in circles. Gwyneth
rapidly obliged. She stood up, always a sign that she was about to pronounce
definitively.
‘As we
have already said, we can’t do that. It would clearly be gross political
interference, which would only be justified if the empire were under direct
attack and we could sell it as a necessary act of self-defence. As it is, and
as has already been pointed out several times, Eth would never stand for it’
Chatter filled the meeting space again.
John stood up, touched Gwyneth on the
shoulder and persuaded her to sit down.
‘That’s enough’ he said, very loudly.
The chatter subsided
‘That’s all the politics that we can cope
with, I think, for the time being’ said John, firmly, ’let it be noted that we
could not agree on the actions that need to be taken with respect to the
empire, but that we remain committed to its continued well-being. Does anyone
object to that description of our discussion?’
No-one had the strength to resist their
leader; they all nodded the proposition through – after all it didn’t commit
anyone to anything. Almost everyone was happy to move on. Hardacre’s team
brought round the flagons of wine which indicated that the session was finally
drawing to a close. This was Penvaylen wine, grown on the slopes of that
eponymous southern mountain, and the traditional Hybitor drink, at least among
the wine snobs in the council. Most of the rest of them would choose Valley
Chard cider, which gave the drinker a much more bracing experience and was a
great deal cheaper. No one turned down
the wine though.
John stood, lifted his glass, and proposed
the toast.
‘To the thirteenth hour with thirteen guests!’
The entire council stood and drank.
‘Not guests but friends!’ they answered,
almost as one.
As usual, everyone responded to the toast
with appropriate gusto except Elizabeth and Gwyneth, who both frowned and shook
their heads slightly. John smiled inwardly, some people never changed and some
people, in fact the same people, had no idea how to loosen up.
Bronwyn drained her glass and, still
standing, looked across at George. She’d been worrying about him too.
‘Papa’ she said, ‘I can’t remember you saying
anything the whole day. Are you feeling well?’
He smiled at her and sat back down. He looked
round the room as the others resumed their seats and then finally spoke.
‘I’m so sorry if I’ve alarmed anyone, but, in
fact, I am quite fine’
He stopped for a second and sipped his wine.
‘I must admit that as I have got older I have
felt less and less of a need to contribute when I have nothing to say that has
not already been expressed by others. And all the topics have been covered well
and in more than adequate detail. But that is not why I have been so quiet, if
I’m being completely honest…’
Bronwyn looked even more worried, as if she
were concerned their venerated former leader was about to tell them all off.
She should have known better – George had only been known to lose his temper a
handful of times and each time it had been in the face of the enemy.
‘Why
then, Papa George?’ asked Bronwyn
‘Because, and forgive me for this, I have
spent the last ten hours or so trying to remember what that ancient stuffy elf,
Macrocephalos, taught me all those years ago’
The entire table went completely silent.
‘Stephen is right, it was all very technical
and boring and couched in the most abstract terms, but I think I remember some
small fragments of what he tried to teach us’
John gestured to Hardacre, who had just
happened to enter the room at this point with a new flagon of wine, to refill
George’s glass. This was an essentially redundant gesture, as the old witch’s
glass was almost as full as when it was originally poured.
‘He taught about a cosmology of three worlds,
all made of the same material, which was embedded in a matrix of another
material, from which the three worlds had been created. Two of the worlds were
connected through the first material, but the third world came later and was
somehow separate and could only be entered through the matrix material’
George sipped his wine very slowly.
‘What does that mean exactly, though?’ asked
Stephen, ‘that was all a bit of a mystery to me, even then’
‘I assume that means Helios and Nux were the first
two worlds and Skiophos is the third’ said John
‘And the Outer Void is the matrix?’ suggested
Owen, tentatively.
George nodded, coughed gently and then rubbed
his head. Everyone hoped that this would bring back a few more memories.
‘Anyway’ he said, ‘The old mage said that the
beings that inhabited the twin connected worlds, the worlds that came first,
were of two types, the ‘Pedobamoi’[that we call elves] and the ‘Eopotanoi’ or
‘Uchbenoi’ [that we might call gods, I suppose]’
‘Yes! That’s what the Basileus called the
gods – the Uchbenoi…’ exclaimed John
George looked at him with mild reproach.
‘Sorry, Father…. Do carry on’
‘Apparently the gods and elves lived in
concord. But they were separated in some way in both time and space so that
they did not normally interact with each other.
This circumstance was agreeable to both races, and endured for a long
time’
‘What about us?’ whispered Kathleen very
softly, forgetting that the acoustics of the hall made almost any sound
audible.
George looked across at her, but his
expression didn’t change. He carried on.
‘Then came the third world… this world…
Skiophos… through a process that Macrocephalos did not explain with any clarity. There, he said, an experiment was conducted;
the races were permitted to mingle freely, although the basic laws of the twin
worlds still applied. This was a wilder, less steady world, and few from the
twin worlds were granted access. There many unpredicted things happened beyond
the control, or indeed knowledge, of almost all the twin worlds’
‘You mean humans, do you?’ asked Kathleen a
little more boldly
‘I am not certain’ replied George, very
softly, ‘but possibly – quite possibly’
He sighed deeply, got up from the table and
walked to edge of the entwined trees that made up the chamber. He stared out
into the sky and then into the forest. It was a moonless night, and, beyond the
small pools of light, cast by the steady brazier flames, there was a deep
silent darkness.
The council shivered. They had all forgotten
how cold it could be this far north on the first morning of November.
George turned back to face the council. His
face was very hard to read.
‘And it seems clear to me’ he continued,
‘that the experiment is still running’
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