A man coming upon Torunn for the first time—especially from the north—might see in it uncanny similarities to the layout and construction of Fimbir. The old city walls had long ago been enlarged and changed so that they bristled with ravelins, bastions, crownworks and hornworks designed for a later age of warfare, when gunpowder counted for more than sword blades; but there was a certain brutal massiveness about the place which was wholly Fimbrian.
It brought back memories for Corfe as his troop of horsemen and their trundling charge came over the final slopes before the city. A tangled riot of later building meant that Torunn was surrounded by unwalled suburbs beyond which the grey stone of the walls could be seen lying like the flanks of a great snake amid the roofs and towers of the Outer City. This was the place where he had joined the tercios, where he had been trained, where his adolescence had been roughly hewn into manhood. He was a native of Staed, one of the southern coastal cities of the kingdom. To him, Torunn had seemed like a miracle when first he had seen it. But he had seen Aekir since, and knew what a truly huge city looked like. Torunn housed some fifth of a million people, and that same number were now on the roads leading towards it, seeking sanctuary. The enormity of the problem defeated his imagination.
In the suburbs the press of people was worse. There were Torunnan cavalry there, struggling to keep order, and open-air kitchens had been set up in all the market places. The noise and the stink were incredible. Torunn had the aspect of one of those apocalyptic religious paintings which depicted the last days of the world. Though Aekir at its fall, Corfe thought bitterly, had been even closer.
Before the new, low-built city gates a tercio of pikemen had been drawn up in ranks and a pair of demiculverins flanked them. Slow-match burned in lazy blue streamers. Corfe was not sure if the show of force was to receive the High Pontiff or to keep the teeming refugees out of the Inner City, but as the carriage was spotted the culverins went off in salute, blank charges roaring out in clouds of smoke and spitting flame. From the towers above, other guns began to fire until the walls seemed to ripple with smoke and the thunderous sound recalled for Corfe the Merduk bombardment at Ormann Dyke.
The Torunnans presented arms, an officer flourished his sabre, and the High Pontiff was welcomed through the gates of Torunn.
K ING Lofantyr heard the salute echoing across the city, and paused in his pacing to look out of the tower windows. He pushed aside the iron grilles and stepped out on to the broad balcony. The city was a serried sea of roofs reaching out to the north, but he could glimpse the puffing smoke clouds from the casemates on the walls.
“Here at last,” he said. The relief in his voice was a palpable thing.
“Perhaps now you will sit a while,” a woman’s voice said.
“Sit! How can I sit? How will I ever take my ease again, mother? I should never have listened to Abeleyn; his tongue is too renowned for its persuasiveness. The kingdom is on the brink of ruin, and I brought it there.”
“Pah! You have your father’s gift for drama, Lofantyr. Was it you who brought the Merduks to the gates of Aekir?” the woman retorted sharply behind him. “The kingdom won a great battle of late and is holding the line of the east. You are Torunnan, and a king. It is not seemly to voice the doubts of your heart so.”
Lofantyr turned with a twisted smile. “If I cannot voice them to you, then where shall I utter them?”
The woman was seated at the far end of the tall tower chamber in a cloud of lace and brocade. An embroidery board was perched on a stand before her, and her nimble hands worked upon it without pause, the needle flashing busily. Her eyes flicked up at her son the King and down to her work, up and down. Her fingers never hesitated.
Her face was surrounded by a deviously worked halo of hair that was stabbed through with pearl-headed pins and hung with jewels. Golden hair, shot through with silver. Earrings of the brightest lapis lazuli. Her face was fine-boned, but somehow drawn; it was possible to see that she had been a beautiful woman in her youth, and even now her charms were not to be lightly dismissed, but there was a fragility to the flesh which clothed those beautiful bones, a system of tiny lines which proclaimed her age despite the stunning green magnificence of her eyes.
“You have won the battle, my lord King—the fight against time. Now you have a Pontiff to parade before the council and quell these murmurings of heresy.” She caught her tongue between her teeth for a second as the needle bored in a particularly fine stitch. “Unlike the other kings, you can show your people that Macrobius truly lives. That, and the storm which approaches from the east, should suffice to unite most of them under you.”
She set aside her needle at last. “Enough for today. I am tired.”
She stared keenly at Lofantyr. “You look tired also, son. The journey from Vol Ephrir was a hard one.”
Lofantyr shrugged. “Snow and bandit tribesmen—the usual irritants. There is more to my tiredness than the aftermath of a journey, mother. Macrobius is here, yes; but beyond the city walls thousands upon thousands of Aekirians and northern Torunnans are screaming for succour, and I cannot give it to them. Martellus wants the city garrisons moved to the dyke, and the Knights Militant promised to me will now never arrive. I need every man I can spare across the country to hold down the nobles. They are straining at the leash despite the fact that I promised them the true Pontiff. Already there are reports of minor rebellions in Rone and Gebrar. I need trusted commanders who do not see opportunity in the monarch’s difficulties.”
“Loyalty and ambition: those two irreconcilable qualities without which a man is nothing. It is a rare individual who can balance both of them in his breast,” the woman said.
“John Mogen could.”
“John Mogen is dead, may God keep him. You need another war leader, Lofantyr, someone who can lead men like Mogen did. Martellus may be a good general, but he does not inspire his men in the right way.”
“And neither do I,” Lofantyr added with bitter humour.
“No, you do not. You will never be a general, my son; but then you do not have to be. Being King is trial enough.”
Lofantyr nodded, still with a sour smile upon his face. He was a young man like his fellow heretics, Abeleyn of Hebrion and Mark of Astarac. His wife, a Perigrainian princess and niece of King Cadamost, had already left for Vol Ephrir, vowing never to lie with a heretic. But then she was only thirteen years old. There were no children, and a severed dynastic tie meant little at the moment with the west struck asunder by religious schism.
His mother, the Queen Dowager Odelia, pushed aside her embroidery board and rose to her feet, ignoring her son’s hurriedly proffered arm.
“The day I cannot rise from a chair unaided you can bury me in it,” she snapped, and then: “Arach!”
Lofantyr flinched as a black spider dropped from the rafters on a shining thread and landed on his mother’s shoulder. It was thickly furred, and bigger than his hand. Its ruby eyes glistened. Odelia petted it for a moment and it uttered a sound like a cat’s purr.
“Be discreet, Arach. We go to meet a Pontiff,” the woman said.
At once, the spider disappeared into the mass of lace that rose up at the back of Odelia’s neck. It could barely be glimpsed there, a dark hump nestled in the fabric which transformed her upright carriage into something of a stoop. The purring settled into a barely audible hum.
“He is getting old,” the Queen Dowager said, smiling. “He likes the warmth.” She took her son’s arm now, and they proceeded to the doors in the rear of the chamber.
“As well I became a heretic,” Lofantyr said.
“Why is that, son?”
“Because otherwise I’d have to burn my own mother as a witch.”
T HE audience chambers were filling rapidly. In his eagerness to show the living Macrobius to the world, Lofantyr had allowed His Holiness only a few hours to recover from his journey before requesting humbly that he bestow his blessing upon a gathering of the foremost nobles of the kingdom. There were hundreds of people congregating in the palace, all clad in the brightest finery they possessed. The ladies of the court had emulated Perigrainian fashions with the King’s marriage to the young Balsia of Vol Ephrir, and they looked like a cloud of marvellous butterflies with wings of stiff lace and shimmering jewels, their faces painted and their fans fluttering—for the audience chambers were hot with the press of people and the huge logs blazing merrily in the fireplaces. It was a far cry from the austere days of Lofantyr’s father, Vanatyr, when the nobles wore only the black and scarlet of the military and the ladies simple, form-fitting gowns without headdresses.
Corfe and his troop had quartered their mounts in the palace stables and tried to spruce themselves up as best they could, but they were muddy and worn from the travelling and many of them wore the armour they had spent weeks fighting in during the battles at the dyke. His men made a dismal showing, Corfe admitted to himself, but every one of them was a veteran, a survivor. That made a difference.
The court chamberlain had hurriedly procured a set of purple robes for Macrobius, but the old man had refused them. He had also refused to be carried into the audience chamber in a sedan-chair, and to let anyone but Corfe take his arm and guide him up the long length of the crowded hall.
“You have guided me on a harder road than this,” he said as they waited in an antechamber for the trumpet blasts that would announce their entry. “I would ask you one last time to be my eyes for me, Corfe.”
The doors were swung open by liveried attendants, and the vast, gleaming length of marble that was the floor of the audience chamber shone before them, whilst on either side hundreds of people—nobles, retainers, courtiers, hangers-on—craned their necks to see the Pontiff they had thought dead. At the end of the hall, hundreds of yards away it seemed to Corfe, the thrones of Torunna glittered with silver and gilt. Lofantyr the King and his mother the Queen Dowager sat there. A third throne, that of the young Queen, was empty.
The trumpet notes died away. Macrobius smiled. “Come, Corfe. Our audience awaits.”
The tramp of his military boots and the slap of Macrobius’ sandals were the only sound. Perhaps there was a faint murmuring as the crowd took in the soldier in the battered armour and the hideously mutilated old man. Out of the corner of his eye, Corfe glimpsed some of the spectators looking hopefully back at the end of the hall, as if they expected the real Pontiff and his guide to come issuing out of the end doors in a sweep of state and ceremony.
They walked on. Corfe was sweating. He took in the immense height of the building, the arched roof with its buttresses of stone and rafters of black cedar, the huge hanging lamps . . . then he saw the galleries there, packed with watching faces, brilliant with liveries of every rainbow hue. He cursed to himself. This was not his province, this august ceremonial, this painted game of politics and etiquette.
Macrobius squeezed his arm. The old man seemed amused by something, which unsettled Corfe even more. His hand slithered round the hilt of his sabre, the one he had taken off a dead Torunnan trooper on the Western Road.
And he remembered. He remembered the inferno of Aekir, a roaring chaos like the very end of the world. He remembered the long, vicious nights in the retreat west. He remembered the battles at Ormann Dyke, the desperate fury of the Merduk assaults, the ear-numbing roar of the enemy guns. He remembered the endless killing, the thousands of corpses which had clogged the Searil river.
He remembered his wife’s face as she left him for the last time.
They had reached the end of the hall. On the dais before them the King of Torunna regarded them with mild astonishment. His mother’s gaze was a calculating green appraisal. Corfe saluted them. Macrobius stood silent.
There was a cough somewhere, and then the chamberlain banged his staff on the floor three times and called out in a practised, ringing voice which filled the entire hall.
“His Holiness the High Pontiff of the Western Kingdoms and Prelate of Aekir, the head of the holy Church, Macrobius the Third . . .” The chamberlain looked at Corfe then with incipient panic. Obviously he had no idea who the Pontiff’s battered companion might be.
“Corfe Cear-Inaf, colonel in the garrison at Ormann Dyke, formerly under the command of John Mogen at Aekir.” It was Macrobius, in a voice clearer and stronger than Corfe had ever heard him use before, even when he had preached at the dyke.
“Greetings, my son.” This was to Lofantyr.
The Torunnan King hesitated a moment, and then descended from the dais in a sweep of scarlet and sable, his circlet catching the light of the overhead lamps. He knelt before Macrobius, and kissed the old man’s ring—another gift from Martellus; the Pontifical ring had been lost long before.
“You are welcome to Torunna, Holiness,” he said, a little stiffly, Corfe thought. Then he recalled his own manners, and as Lofantyr straightened he bowed. “Your majesty.”
Lofantyr nodded briefly to him and then took Macrobius’ arm. He led the blind old man up to the dais and placed him on the vacant Queen’s throne. Corfe stood alone and uncertain until he caught the eye of the chamberlain, who was beckoning discreetly to him. He marched over into the whispering press of people who were gathered on either side of the dais.
“Stay out of the way,” the chamberlain hissed into his ear, and he banged his staff on the floor again.
Lofantyr had risen from his throne to speak. A hush fell on the hall once more. The King’s voice was less impressive than his chamberlain’s but it carried well enough.
“We welcome here at our court today the living embodiment of the faith that sustains us all. The rightful High Pontiff of the world has been delivered by a miracle out of the cauldron of war in the east. Macrobius the Third lives and is well in Torunn, and with his presence here this city of ours has become the buckler of the Church—the true Church. With the Holy Father’s prayers to sustain us, and the knowledge that right is on our side and God watches over our ranks, we are sure that the armies of Torunna, greatest and most disciplined in the world, will continue the work begun in the past few weeks at Ormann Dyke. Other victories will be stitched upon the battle flags of our tercios, and it will not be long ere our standard is reared up once again on the battlements of Aekir and the heathen foe is flung back across the Ostian river into the wilderness of unbelief and savagery from whence he came . . .”
There was more of this. It passed over Corfe’s head unheeded. He was tired, and the rush of adrenalin which had carried him up the hall had washed out of him, leaving him as drained as a flaccid wineskin. Why had Martellus insisted he come here?
“So I say to the usurper in Charibon,” Lofantyr went on, “there is no heresy in recognizing the true spiritual head of the Church, in fighting to hold the eastern frontier safe for the kingdoms behind us. Torunna and Hebrion and Astarac represent the kingdoms of the True Faith, not the diocese of an imposter who must in his turn be branded heretic.”
The speech ended at last, and the hall boiled with talk. The people within began to spread out across the bare central space in knots of conversation, whilst from side doors up and down the chamber attendants came bearing silver salvers upon which decanters of wine and spirits gleamed. The King poured for Macrobius, and the hall hushed again as the Pontiff stood up with the wineglass blood-full in his hand.
“I am blind.”