swamp portal with rifle in hand, who had faced down brigands and outlaws, fought off claim jumpers and raiders, and stood his ground against charging bison, Ricathian cape buffalo, and even an infuriated grizzly bear, decided that the only thing to do was run. He was a fleet-footed man. If he started now, he could be all the way back to the train station in no more than twenty or thirty minutes.
And from there-
The chamberlain's cleared throat interrupted the Voice's brief fantasy of escape. Kinlafia looked at him, and the chamberlain twitched his head at the open doorway. For an instant, Kinlafia actually considered backing away, but he discovered that he lacked sufficient nerve to chicken out at the last minute. And so, he nodded back to the chamberlain, and followed the palace staffer through the doorway with a surprisingly steady tread.
The room on the other side was on the small side-indeed it was positively tiny-by the scale of Calirath Palace, which meant it was no more than twenty-five or thirty feet on a side. It was furnished with surprisingly worn, overstuffed armchairs and a long, comfortable looking couch. A coffee-table which appeared to have been made from driftwood stood in front of the couch, and an old leather-topped desk sat before the wide bay window which looked out over the sun-soaked palace gardens.
Bookshelves lined the wall opposite the window, and the priceless artwork so much in evidence elsewhere in the palace had been replaced by what were very good but obviously amateur watercolors and oils of a land whose soft, misty greenery was far removed from the sunbaked heat of Tajvana.
All of that registered instantly, but almost peripherally. It couldn't have been any other way, when the man who'd been seated behind that desk stood and held out his right hand.
Kinlafia froze. No one had ever instructed him in formal court protocol and etiquette, but he had a shrewd notion that one didn't simply walk up to the Emperor of Ternathia, say 'How the hell are you?' and shake hands with him. On the other hand, he had an equally shrewd notion that one didn't refuse to shake hands with him, either.
'Voice Kinlafia.'
Zindel chan Calirath's voice was a shade deeper than his son's, but it sounded remarkably similar, and the physical resemblance between him and Janaki was positively uncanny. The crown prince stood eight inches over six feet, and he and his father were very much of a size. If anything, Zindel might have been a fraction of an inch the taller, and his shoulders were definitely broader. Aside from that and the strands of gray beginning to thread themselves through the dark, gold-shot hair of the Caliraths, the Emperor looked far more like Janaki's older brother than his father, the Voice thought. Then he gave himself a mental shake as he realized he was keeping the Emperor of Ternathia-no, the designated Emperor of Sharona-standing there with his hand held out.
'Your Majesty,' Kinlafia got out. It sounded a little strangled to his own ears, and he drew a deep breath, then reached out and gripped the hand of the most powerful man in Sharonian history.
Darcel Kinlafia had come into this room determined not to intrude upon the Emperor's privacy in any way, only to discover that the stress of the moment was too great for him to shut down his Talent completely. He was far too well trained, and too experienced, to let things get fully out of hand, of course. He didn't even come close to tapping into Zindel's thoughts, but the Emperor's emotions were something else, entirely. Kinlafia couldn't help sensing those, and he felt a moment of something very like panic as he realized that was the case.
Yet that flare of almost-panic was brief. It vanished in a moment, blown away on the genuine welcome flowing out of Zindel like some warm, comforting tide, and something else swept over him in its wake.
He remembered how Janaki's sheer presence had radiated that mysterious magnetism, that awareness that he was in the presence of the direct descendent of Erthain the Great. Yet whatever it was that Janaki had, it was far stronger, almost physically overpowering, as Kinlafia gripped Zindel's hand. It was like an electric charge, flowing through him, and he wondered if the Emperor was aware of it.
'My son has written me quite an epistle about you, Voice Kinlafia,' Zindel said. 'He appears to have been impressed by you.'
'Ah, Prince Janaki is too kind, Your Majesty,' Kinlafia got out.
'His mother will be glad to hear that.' The Emperor released the Voice's hand with a smile. 'I, on the other hand, know Janaki a bit better than that. He wouldn't have written me a letter like this one-' the Emperor gestured at the creased sheets of paper lying on his desk '-unless he truly felt it was justified.
And I suppose I should add, Voice Kinlafia, that I have a very lively respect for his judgment.'
'Your Majesty, I don't-'
Kinlafia broke off. The truth was, that he didn't have a clue what to say, and Zindel chuckled.
'I apologize, Voice Kinlafia. I'm sure this is all rather overwhelming after months out on the frontier.
Tajvana traffic all by itself is probably enough to leave you longing to run for cover. And as if that weren't enough, here you are, dragged into the Palace for a face-to-face interview with that bogeyman, the Emperor.'
There was so much genuine warmth and amusement in Zindel's expression that Kinlafia found himself chuckling as he nodded.
'I would never call you a bogeyman, Your Majesty,' he said ruefully. 'A little scary, now … that I might go for.'
'I don't suppose I can blame you for that. On the other hand, at the moment what I most am is a father who hasn't seen his son in months. And you, Voice Kinlafia, are the man he picked to send his letters home with. That would be enough to make you welcome without any other recommendation from him.
But you're also the Voice who relayed Voice Nargra-Kolmayr's last message to us, and from what Janaki's had to say in his letter about you, you're the sort of representative we're going to need in our new parliament, too. That's quite a combination of recommendations.'
'Your Majesty, that was Prince Janaki's idea. Running for Parliament, I mean. It hadn't even crossed my mind until he raised the possibility.'
'Which isn't a bad recommendation for office all by itself.' Zindel's smile turned far less humorous.
'Most people who start out wanting power for its own sake shouldn't be trusted with it in the first place.
Which, I suppose, must sound a bit strange-if not hypocritical-coming from someone in my position.'
Kinlafia made no response to that last statement, and the amusement returned to the Emperor's smile.
'I see Janaki was correct about your natural … diplomacy, Voice Kinlafia,' he observed. 'Don't worry.
I won't put your native tact to any more tests. For now, at least.'
Zindel chan Calirath watched the tanned, brown-haired Voice with careful attentiveness … and with more than just his eyes. He knew the fanciful rumors-legends, really-about the mysterious Talents which were somehow reserved as the exclusive property of the House of Calirath. Of course he did; everyone knew about those ridiculous tall tales. But what Zindel knew that most people didn't was that there was a solid core of truth behind them.
The Calirath bloodline extended far beyond the immediate imperial family. It could be no other way, after so many millennia, and the longstanding policy of the emperors of Ternathia to not simply permit but actively encourage periodic marriage outside the ranks of the aristocracy had only pushed that extension harder and farther. And yet there were the Talents which had been persistently associated with the imperial house for literally thousands of years but which scarcely ever manifested outside the immediate imperial family. And in addition to the Talents which everyone knew about, there were others, most of which were spoken of only in whispers, about which very few, indeed, knew a thing.
Zindel chan Calirath had always cherished his own doubts about the mythic, almost demigod stature of Erthain the Great as the sun source of all Talents. Yet he knew of no other explanation for the knowledge conserved within the Calirath archives. Ternathia had given the Talents to the entire human race … but the imperial dynasty had not shared all it knew. Only the Caliraths, their most trusted Healers, and the high priests of the Triad knew how to activate the potential to Glimpse the future, for example. And only the Caliraths and those same trusted Healers knew how to awaken the other Talents bound up with the Winged Crown.
There'd been times Zindel felt more than a little uncomfortable with the notion that such knowledge had been kept secret for so long. The fact that no one was ever informed of it without first voluntarily agreeing to have that information placed forever under seal by a Mind Healer had also bothered him upon occasion. Yet, in the end, he'd always come back to the inescapable fact that the knowledge which reserved those Talents as the Crown's monoploy constituted one of the Empire's most important state secrets-one which had literally saved the Empire on at least two occasions. That was the sort of advantage no ruler could justify casting away.
