Ships from the West

shadow, and knocked on the door of the cathedral sacristy. A hollow voice said 'Enter', and Corfe pushed the massive ironbound portal open. The Pontiff Albrec stood within flanked by a pair of Inceptines who were in the process of disrobing him. Behind him gleamed a gallery of chalices and reliquaries and a long rail hung with the rich ceremonial garments a Pontiff must needs don at times like this.

'Leave us, Brothers,' Albrec said crisply, and the two Inceptines bowed low to King and Pontiff, and departed through a small side door.

'Corfe - will you give me a hand?' Albrec asked, tugging at his richly embroidered chasuble.

'Felorin,' the King said. 'Wait outside and see no one enters.'

The tattooed soldier nodded wordlessly and heaved shut the great sacristy door behind him with a dull boom.

Corfe helped Albrec out of his ceremonial apparel and hung it up on the rail behind, whilst the little cleric pulled a plain black Inceptine habit over his head and, puffing slightly, kissed his Saint's symbol and settled it about his neck. The air wheezed in and out of the twin holes where his nose had been.

There was a fire burning in a small stone hearth which had been ingeniously hewn out of a single block of Cimbric basalt. They stood before it warming their hands, like two men who have been labouring together out in the cold. It was Albrec who broke the silence.

'Are you still set on this thing?'

'I am. She would have wished it. It was her last wish, in fact.

And she was right. The kingdom needs it. The girl is already on the road.'

'The kingdom needs it,' Albrec repeated. 'And what of you, Corfe?'

'What of me? Kings have duties as well as prerogatives. It must be done, and done soon, ere I leave on campaign.'

'What of Heria? Is there any word on how she is taking all this?'

Corfe flinched as though he had been struck. 'No word,' he said. He stood rubbing one hand over the other before the flames as though he were washing them. 'It has been eighteen years since last I saw her face, Albrec. The joy we shared so long ago is like a dream now.' Something thickened in Corfe's voice and his face grew hard and set as the basalt of the burning hearth before him. 'One cannot live by memory, least of all when one is a king.'

'There are other women in the world, other alliances which could be sought out,' Albrec said gently.

'No. This is the one the country needs. One day, Albrec, I foresee that Torunna and Ostrabar will be one and the same, a united kingdom wherein the war we fought will be but a memory, and this part of the world will know true peace at last. Anything, any sacrifice, any pain, is worth the chance of that happening.'

Albrec bowed his head, his eyes fixed on Corfe's tortured face. And you my friend, he thought, what of you?

'Golophin has been transporting messages swiftly as a hawk's flight. Aurungzeb knows of Odelia's death, and we have both agreed on a small, a - a subdued ceremony, as soon as the girl arrives. There will be no public holiday or grand spectacle, not so soon after . . . after today. The people will be told in time, and I will be able to leave for the war without any more delay. I want you to conduct the ceremony, Albrec.' Corfe waved an arm. 'In here, away from the gawpers.'

'In the sacristy?'

'It's as good a place as any other.'

Albrec sighed and rubbed at the stumps where long ago frost had robbed him of his fingers. 'Very well. But Corfe, I say this to you. Stop punishing yourself for what fate has visited upon you. It is not your fault, nor is it anything to feel ashamed over. What's done is done.' He reached up and set a hand on Corfe's shoulder. The Torunnan King smiled.

'Yes, of course. You sound like Odelia.' A strangled attempt at a laugh. 'God's blood, Albrec, but I miss her. She was one of the great friends of my life, along with Andruw, and Formio, and others long dead. She was another right hand. Had she been a man, she would have made a fine king.' He pushed the palm of his hand into the hollow of one eye. 'Perhaps I should have told her. She might not have been so insistent on this thing.'

'Odelia? No, she would still have wanted it, though it would have tortured her much as it is tormenting you. It is as well she never knew who Ostrabar's Queen is.'

'Ostrabar's Queen ... I wonder sometimes - even now I wonder - about how it was for her, what nightmares she must have suffered as I fled Aekir with my tail between my legs.'

'That's enough,' Albrec said sternly. 'What's done is done. You cannot change the past, you can only hope to make the future a better place.'

Corfe looked at the little cleric, and in his bloodshot fire-glazed eyes Albrec saw something which shook him to the core. Then the King smiled again.

'You are right, of course.' He tried to make his voice light. 'Do you realise that Mirren will have a step-mother younger than she is? They will be friends, I hope.' The word hope sounded strange coming out of his mouth. He embraced the disfigured little monk as though they were brothers, and then knelt and kissed the Pontifical ring. ‘I must away, Holiness. A king's time is not his own. Thank you for yours.' Then he spun on his heel and thumped the sacristy door. Felorin opened it for him, and they left together, the King and his shadow. Albrec stared unseeing into the depths of the bright fire before him, not hearing his Inceptine helpers re- enter the room and stand reverently behind him. He was still shaken by the light he had seen in Corfe's eye. The look of a man who cannot find peace in life, and who means to seek it in death.

In the midst of the crowded activity that currently thronged Torunn, few remarked upon the entry into the city of a Merduk caravan several days later. It was some thirty wagons strong, and halfway down their column a curtained palanquin bobbed, borne on the shoulders of eight brawny slaves. They had been given an escort of forty Cathedraller cavalry, and entered the city via the North Gate, where the guards had been told to expect them. Merduk ambassadors and their en­tourages were a common sight in Torunn these days, and no one remarked as the caravan made its stately way to the hill overlooking the Torrin Estuary on which loomed the granite splendour of the palace, its windows all draped black in mourning for Torunna's dead Queen.

Ensign Baraz was within the palace courtyard as the heavily laden covered wagons rattled through the gates, drawn by camels whose heads bobbed with black and white ostrich feathers. He drew up the ceremonial guard, and at his crisp command they flashed out their sabres in salute. The palan­quin came to a halt upon the shoulders of the sweating slaves, and a bevy of silk-veiled Merduk maids lifted back the cur­tains to reveal a barely discernible form within. This shape was helped out with the aid of a trio of footstools and the ministrations of the maids and stood, slim, and somewhat uncertain, with the cold spring wind tugging at her veil. Baraz stepped forward and bowed. 'Lady,' he said in Merduk, 'you are very welcome in the city of Torunn and kingdom of Torunna.'

He got no farther through the flowery speech of welcome which he had devised the night before after the King had peremptorily informed him of his mission. A stout Merduk matron with black eyes flashing above her veil waddled forward and demanded to know who he was and why the King was not here to greet his bride-to-be in person.

'He has been unavoidably detained,' Baraz said smoothly. 'Preparations for the war—'

'Sibir Baraz! I know you! I served in your uncle's household ere he was transferred to the palace. My brave boy, how you've grown!' The Merduk matron enfolded Baraz in her huge arms and tugged his head down to rest in her heaving, heavily scented cleavage. 'Do you not know Haratta, who wiped your nose when you could barely say your name?'

With difficulty Baraz extricated himself from her soft clutch. Behind him, a fit of coughing had spread throughout the men of the honour guard and the eyes of the slim girl who had been in the palanquin were dancing.

'Of course I remember you. Now lady' - this to the girl - 'I have been instructed to guide you and your attendants to your quarters in the palace and make sure that all is as you wish there.'

Haratta turned and clapped her hands. In an entirely differ­ent tone, a harsh bark, she began to issue orders to the hovering maids, the slaves, the wagoneers. Then she turned back to Baraz, having produced a chaotic turmoil of activity out of what had been stately stillness a moment before, and pinched his burning cheek. 'Such a handsome young man, and high in the favour of King Corfe, no doubt. Lead on, master Baraz! The lady Aria and I would follow you any­where, I'm sure.' She winked with a kind of jovial lechery, and when he hesitated shooed