A single candle provided the only illumination in the windowless room. It cast a weak, wavering light on the Emperor’s face as he sat on the hard, stone surface of Agaw’s bench. The bench was much less comfortable than the Lion Throne. But comfort was the last consideration on Dardar Alemeyu’s mind.
The Emperor was not wearing his crown. Still, the black-and-gold chamma that swathed his body symbolized his rank, and his inescapable responsibility.
He had come to Agaw’s sanctum soon after a meeting with the Leba and his daughter in the Chamber of Audiences, with only his palace guards in attendance. As he sat with his hands clasped beneath his white beard, Alemeyu remembered what had been said after Gebrem and Tiyana had told him what had happened during their latest encounter with the Fidi sorcerer.
For a long time after the two had finished their tale, Alemeyu had looked at them without speaking. Then he asked a single question.
“Do you believe what this man has told you?”
“Yes,” Gebrem answered without hesitation.
Alemeyu turned his gaze to Tiyana.
“So do I,” she said.
“Why?” Alemeyu asked them both.
An uncomfortable span of silence followed the Emperor’s question, as though the Leba and his daughter were struggling with knowledge that was easier to understand than to articulate. Amply aware of the limited patience reflected in the Emperor’s hard-eyed gaze, Gebrem tried to formulate an answer that would enlighten, not irritate, the irascible monarch.
“We touched the Fidi at a level beneath what the eyes can see,” the Leba said. “And when mind touches mind, Emperor, there can be no deception.”
Tiyana nodded agreement.
“The Fidis’ ship nearly killed me, Mesfin,” she said. “That gives me more reason as anyone to be suspicious of them. But I saw the same honesty inside the sorcerer that my father did.”
“So you trust him, then?” the Emperor asked.
“I ... distrust him less.”
Alemeyu willed a smile from reaching from his lips. Despite the long-standing tension between him and Gebrem, he sometimes wished Tiyana were his daughter, not his cousin’s. This girl had the makings of an Empress ...
He pushed that thought aside and hardened his voice. But his thrust was directed more at Gebrem than Tiyana.
“But you have said this man has great ashuma power. How do you know he is not using that power to deceive you into accepting his tale?”
Gebrem and Tiyana looked at each other. There was only one honest answer they could provide, and Gebrem gave it.
“We do not know, Mesfin,” he said through tightly compressed lips.
“Just so,” Alemeyu said.
He waited a moment before continuing. It was a moment similar to many in the two men’s lives: yet another opportunity for Alemeyu to reassert his superiority over his younger cousin, the son of his father’s brother. He remembered that the relationship between his father and his uncle was not dissimilar to the one he now endured with Gebrem.
Perhaps it will always be so, between an Emperor and a Leba, he mused.
“I must think on this matter in solitude,” Alemeyu said. “Wait here.”
And with that, he left Tiyana and Gebrem in the Audience Chamber.
Before he had departed from the chamber, Alemeyu already knew what his decision would be. However, Gebrem needed to be reminded – yet again – that he was not the Emperor. The Leba’s leading role in the interlude with the Fidi might well have inflated his perception of his status. A long wait in the Audience Chamber would remind Gebrem of his true place, which was several levels below that of the occupant of the Lion Throne.
Now, Dardar Alemeyu looked at the candle burning in Agaw’s sanctum. The Emperor had used the time to think about many other matters, including whether or not it was time to put Issa aside and find another woman to give birth to the next Emperor or Empress. When the candle was finished, he would tell Gebrem and Tiyana what he had in mind for the Fidi.
2
In Kyroun’s cabin on the White Gull, a gathering of another kind was taking place. With the Seer was a group of other blue-clad Almovaads – Acolytes and Adepts. These were the Believers who had demonstrated an aptitude for sorcery. The others remained outside the cabin.
More than two dozen Almovaads were crowded into a space that could comfortably accommodate less than half that number. However, any discomfort they might have experienced meant nothing, because they were in Oneness, a mystic communion that encompassed much more than the In-Seeing Kyroun had shared with Gebrem and Tiyana.
There was no need for a contact of hands in Oneness. The Almovaads in the cabin had progressed far enough to work their sorcery independently. Yet they were not independent now. They were One with their Seer ... and One with Almovaar. Although their bodies were crammed together in a small space, Oneness set their minds free in a space that seemed limitless; an expanse of pale, blue light like an early-morning sky reflected in clear water. The Almovaads’ thoughts rippled across the surface of that space.
The Matile are determining our fate now, Kyroun told them. His thoughts, though voiceless, were as clear as the ice in the Northlands of Cym Dinath.
Their Emperor will make the decision.
Can you not look into the Emperor’s mind and be aware of what he will decide?
That thought came from Eimos, a young Acolyte who harbored ambitions of becoming an Adept. But he was impatient – too much so for Kyroun to allow him to advance to the practice of a higher level of sorcery before gaining sufficient control over his impulses.
I can, the Seer said. But I choose not to.
Why not? the Acolyte asked.
Kyroun did not reply. His silence was a test, an opportunity for Eimos and the others to learn a lesson.
But Eimos was not the one who broke the silence. It was Byallis, a young woman whose raw talent
