Cobweb Empire (5 page)

Percy gratefully looked up in his faded
watery eyes, and saw a benevolent expression there. At the same
time, since the priest continued onward and down the street, the
neighbors started to disperse, seeing that nothing more was going
to come about.

“I think it is time we were on our way,”
said the black knight to Percy, without looking at her parents.

“Yes,” she said. “But first, I need a bite
to eat. . . .”

“You may come inside, daughter,” said Niobea
from the porch.

Percy looked up, meeting her mother’s eyes,
and saw a reluctant acceptance there. The priest had examined
things, and made his decision, and apparently it was no more than
Niobea could do.

“Thank you, Ma. But it’s all right, I will
eat in the yard.”

“You—” Niobea paused, gathering herself, it
seemed. “You do not have to go.”

Percy stood facing her mother. “Actually, I
do . . .” she replied softly. And then Percy turned
away, and followed the knight into their backyard.

Niobea could only watch in silence.

T
hey were back on
the road within the hour. Percy was done eating in a hurry,
stuffing her face with chunks of bread and cheese and tea, while
the soldiers were packing up and readying the horses. After another
tearful farewell from Jenna Doneil, hanging onto Percy’s neck, and
tight hugs from her sisters, Percy had Betsy once again hitched to
the cart, and all the girls back in their seats, next to the
Infanta and the marquis.

Betsy and the cart pulled out slowly from
the Ayren yard, wheels and hooves crunching on the fresh overnight
dusting of snow, flanked by Chidair soldiers, and the tall imposing
knight, fully armored, and seated on his great warhorse. They
turned onto the street, heading south, with Alann and Niobea and
Belle and Patty watching from the porch with grave faces, and the
rest of the neighbors not trying particularly hard not to
stare.

They look, and yet they do not even know
what it is they see
, thought Percy, glancing sometimes behind
her, and seeing the Infanta huddled in her poor cloak.

The familiar parts of Oarclaven were soon
behind them, as the rutted road wound outside the village, and was
soon framed by hedgerows on both sides, and beyond, snow-covered
fields. A dark speck of a bird or two circled the sky.

Overhead, the winter morning sun shone
brightly for once, and there was as yet no overcast.

The knight did not approach the cart, nor
did he look back at any of them for more than a brief glance, but
rode up ahead with Riquar and a few others. In general, there was
silence among the men-at-arms.

After about an hour of traveling, as they
were passing a few poor farm houses just off the road, Emilie
stirred in her blanket and told them she was home.

“There it is.” She pointed at a small
thatched-roof building among a couple of others, none of them
enough to comprise a settlement that was large enough to be called
a village, and all of them partially buried in snow, with only one
cleared path leading off the main thoroughfare.

Percy tightened Betsy’s reins, and the draft
horse came to a graceful stop, snorting loudly. The knight and his
soldiers slowed down also, watching casually as Emilie clambered
down from the cart, holding her small travel sack and blanket, and
then said her farewells to everyone.

“Get well, my friend Emilie Bordon, please!”
Marie spoke warmly, in her heavy accent, waving to her.

“Yeah, don’t wanna hear you dropped dead,
and then woke up again an undead scarecrow,” said Niosta,
chortling. Then, realizing what she was saying, she put her hand
around her mouth in some chagrin, and glanced in the Infanta’s
direction.

“Thank you for everything, Percy,” Emilie
concluded, wiping the side of her reddened nose. “Sorry I was sick
so much of the time . . . and no good to anyone.
Just a dumb bedwarmer.”

“Don’t be a ninny-fool,” said Percy. “Not
your fault you got sick. And you were more useful than you can
imagine, even as a bedwarmer! Can’t have too many warm bodies when
sleeping in the cold. Besides, you were there for all of us, the
best you could. And you got lucky too, not being a Cobweb
Bride.”

Emilie grinned, then immediately
sneezed.

“Eeow! Now, off to your own warm bed with
you and your snots!” Percy said gruffly. “Hurry! And I promise,
I’ll see you when I come around back this way.”

“You better!” Emilie smiled again, then
waved one more time, and started running slowly, as well as she
could, up the cleared path, nearly stumbling in the icy spots
underneath the snow. They watched for a few seconds, making sure
that she got inside safely, and the door of her home closed behind
her.

“At last,” said Lizabette, with a brief
ingratiating glance in the direction of the Infanta. “More room in
the cart for
our betters
, and of course now that poor
creature can get some proper help for that nasty sneezing illness,
in her own home.”

“Whoa, Betsy,” said Percy, taking up the
reins, and ignoring the comment. They were moving again.

After a few moments of silence, the Infanta,
Claere Liguon inhaled a deep breath of crisp air in her mechanical
doll lungs, and she spoke suddenly. “I have decided,” she said in a
soft voice, and at first to no one in particular.

Everyone in the cart turned to look at her.
And the black knight, riding a few paces ahead, gave away the fact
that he was apparently paying very close attention to everything
indeed, and heard every word, by turning around immediately to
look.

“What is it?” Vlau Fiomarre was staring
closely at her.

But Claere ignored him, and turned her head
directly to address the one driving the cart. “Percy Ayren,” she
said. “The next time we stop for a rest, I have one thing to ask of
you. I want you to grant me my final death.”

Chapter
3

T
he Kingdom of
Tanathe reposed in the southeast region of the Domain. Its western
side bordered with the Kingdom of Solemnis—which in turn connected
with distant Spain in the southwest—and on its northern side was
the Kingdom of Serenoa. To the east lay Italy, and directly south,
the balmy seawaters of the Mediterranean.

Tanathe was a verdant sun-filled land, with
orchards of succulent peaches and figs, olive trees in abundance,
and great dark grapes ripening on laden vines. There was never
winter here, no snow, only a brief season of crispness in the air,
and a deeper chill at night.

The small southern peninsula known as the
Tanathean Riviera was considered to be heaven on earth. In its
heart was the city of Riviereal—land-bound and yet built upon the
last outflow of the great river Eridanos as it ran all the way from
the distant northern Kingdom of Serenoa, cutting through Tanathe
and emptying within the peninsula—not into the great sea, but
somewhere on a southern plain, into the earth itself.

Eridanos never reached the sea. And yet,
legend said, it continued flowing beneath ground, through caverns
and deep crevices of the land that knew no sun, until it found the
Mediterranean.

Some said it continued to flow through the
underworld.

T
he Island of San
Quellenne was visible from the shore. In the cream and milk haze of
the balmy delicate overcast, it looked like a large floating slice
of white chocolate upon the silvery-mauve waters of the
Mediterranean.

The young boy stood on the sandy beach of
the Tanathean Riviera, watching the seagulls circle over the
island. He was skinny, no older than seven, and wore nothing but
baggy cotton pants that were rolled above his knees to keep the
surf away. His olive skin was tanned to a brazen glow, and his
unruly black hair curled in the breeze.

The boy blinked from the spray, and raised
his hand to shield his eyes from the general glare.

In that moment the sun came out, and the
haze fled. The seawaters were suddenly deep resonant blue, as
though the eye could focus at last and the world achieved proper
hue and contrast.

“Flavio!”

The boy did not turn at the sound of an
irate female voice.

“Flavio San Quellenne! What is wrong with
you? How many times must I go chasing you around the sand dunes?
Mother says to come home or be spanked!”

The boy turned around and then cheerfully
waved at his sister.

The girl calling his name was older, at
least eighteen, and a proper young woman. She wore a long simple
sleeveless dress of similar white cotton, and her hair and skin
were both a rich darkened bronze. The long hair was gathered in a
plait, which streamed like a dark plume of fire behind her, down
her back and to her waist. She had the airs of a nobly raised
maiden.

“Come! Come here, Jelavie!” he replied. “I
have something funny to show you!”

“What?” The girl waded through the sand, her
woven sandals sinking with each step, until she stood at the
child’s side on a more solid section of beach right at the water’s
edge, that darker stripe which had been moistened by the sea into
firm consistency.

A mere stride away from the tip of her
sandals, the foam rolled in.

The boy pointed to the island, its whiteness
blazing in the sun.

“Look! The mountain is gone!”

“What?” The girl shook her head in
frustration at her brother, but then glanced into the distance,
squinting against the sun.

And then drew in her
breath. . . .

“No,” she said, blinking. “It cannot be.
That is merely the haze, a mirage . . .”

“What’s a mirage?”

“Nothing, just an illusion from the heat in
the summer.”

“But it’s not that hot today.”

“It is hot enough. . . .”

The girl continued to stare and observed
only the flat whiteness of land where there would normally be a
small double-headed mountain with jagged pale cliffs on the right
side.

“Saga Mountain is gone!” repeated the
boy.

“Silence, Flavio!” The girl’s voice was
troubled now, but not in the usual way. “I tell you, it is but the
mist and the haze, nothing more. . . .”

“Then why can you see the sky there? Only
blue sky, Jelavie! And look, a bird!”

Jelavie stood looking, perfectly quiet,
forgetting to reply, as the wind whipped her plait of hair into a
metallic frenzy, and set loosened curling tendrils around her
temples.

“Saga Mountain! Saga Mountain is gone! It is
hiding!” the boy intoned, making it into a song, and then looked
away, seeming to forget, and ran to pick up a shell and some bits
of turquoise sea glass.

His sister continued to stand, frozen in
place, looking at the strange
changed
topography of the
island, refusing to believe her own vision. She blinked repeatedly,
rubbed her eyes. Long moments passed, and there was no longer any
remainder of haze or morning mist upon which to blame the
disappearance of something as impossible and large as a
mountain.

Eventually, as the boy continued to make
small happy chatter and collect treasure from the sea as it was
washed upon the shore, Jelavie turned away and strode after him,
throwing occasional wary, puzzled glances back at the island and
the new line of the horizon in place of the missing mountain.

“Enough, let’s go home, Flavio,” she said at
last, taking him by the hand which was clutching a greedy handful
of polished rocks and shells.

“No!” The boy began to frown and pull in her
grasp.

“Let’s
go!
” his sister said, raising
her voice to the commanding level of a high-born lady, namely the
Lady San Quellenne, their mother.

But as they struggled lightly in the
customary manner of siblings, and she managed at last to pull him
along, Jelavie threw one glance in the direction of the sea—just
one more time, as though to make sure. Just one more time. She had
purposefully occupied herself with normal concerns for the last few
moments, just so that she could allow herself this one secret
peek . . . in case the world itself needed that
time, a magical pause of sorts, long enough to conceal and reveal.
And then, just maybe, she hoped the world decided to cooperate and
“put things back” the way they always had been.

But it was not to be.

This time, as her gaze hungrily searched the
line of the horizon, there was still no mountain.

Furthermore, the entire Island of San
Quellenne was gone.

In its place there was only the sea.

M
any leagues
inland, at the very spot where the Kingdom of Tanathe ended,
precisely at its northwestern corner, lay the Supreme Seat of the
Domain, known as the Sapphire Court. Neither a true city nor an
isolated citadel, it incorporated elements of both. And in its
overall structure and purpose it mirrored its northern foreign
counterpart, the Silver Court of the Realm.

The Sapphire Court was a jewel of civilized
urban splendor, with a Palace of the Sun to rival the grandest
edifices in Europe. It was said that the King of France was
inspired by it to such a degree that he too became the Sun King and
commenced building architectural wonders. Meanwhile, Rome took one
look at the Catedral D’Oro y Mármol and was duly humbled upon
comparing it with Rome’s own lesser Basilica di San Pietro.

There were other wonders in the Sapphire
Court, structural miracles such as the Triple Aqueduct that
spiraled and ascended upon itself into a three-decked tower, which
then pressurized and fed all the fountains in the city and outlying
estates for miles around. The great Dome of the Stadio Soffio di
Dio, or the “Breath of God,” was made of polished flat pieces of
mirror glass, layered and assembled into infinite reflective
facets—in truth, a divine, breathtaking sight, as though a luminary
cousin of the sun descended to earth and perched upon a mortal
building. As a result, the entire Stadio shone so brightly in the
sunlight that it was impossible to look at it directly, except on
overcast days.