Darkstone - An Evil Reborn (Book 4) (3 page)

He didn’t feel threatened by the old man, but by something else. The Cabal, the sorcerer called it. A cabal was a secret organization according to his studies. He’d have to ask Sulm. His tutor wouldn’t be fired, after all. He hoped he would never look on that red tower and not think of evil, smelly men.

After carefully peering around the corner looking for pursuers, Vish put his hand to his head to calm his mind. He took a few deep breaths and re-entered the street and quick-walked all the way home.

He spent the rest of the morning in his room. Vish, sitting at the head of his bed, started at a knock on his door, as he listlessly turned the pages of the book on the Warstones.

“May I come in?” his mother said as she went ahead and opened the door anyway. Vish didn’t mind. She did it all the time. He had no privacy, even though he wished he did. “I have received a copy of the message from the Sorcerer’s Tower that you are not ready to begin instruction. Did something go wrong?”

She sat at the foot of his bed. Vish pulled his feet in close and looked at his mother over his knees. He nodded, afraid to begin.

“You can tell me.” She smiled. Vish recognized that smile as one that he couldn’t resist.

“I saw through their deception and I told them that I didn’t like it. I held a ball that glowed with colors, so I must have some power. They wanted me to answer questions in a way that I didn’t want to, so I refused to let them proceed.”

“What kind of questions?”

Vish pursed his lips. “I can’t tell you.” He turned his head away, her gaze now made him uncomfortable. “They were about loyalty.”

“Loyalty, eh?” Vish now felt like he could chance a look. Her eyes had narrowed and her happy appearance had faded. She bit her lip as she thought. “About your father? Me? The sorcerers?”

Vish could only nod. “That’s all I’ll say. I ran away when I wouldn’t give them what they wanted.”

“What did they want, Vish?” she said, leaning forward, anticipating his answer. How could he resist his mother’s questions? He couldn’t.

“The sorcerers, they wanted me to pledge my loyalty to their cabal above all else or they wouldn’t teach me.” There! He said it. “I don’t want to be a sorcerer and fool people like they do. Nothing was real in the room they put me into. I don’t like them!” Vish had to breathe heavier to keep from bringing tears to his eyes, but they watered just the same.

Her mother slid up to his side and held Vish in her arms. “You don’t have to go back there. I think your tutor will be very happy with the outcome.” She put her hand through his hair and hugged him tighter.

Vish enjoyed the hug and the familiar smell of her perfume, but it did not remove the fear that still upset him.

~~~

Chapter Two

~

A
s a ten-year birthday present, Princess Yalla let Vish attend
a council meeting, escorted by Sulm. Vish had never been in the council chamber before.

“Your father has fifteen councilors, no more. A circular table, and the chairs that surround it, are the only pieces of furniture in the Imperial Council Chamber. There is flat part where the Emperor sits and an opening directly across, where people can address the council and your father. The councilors are arrayed around the rest of the circle. Above the chambers is a gallery that goes all the way around for waiting supplicants, nobles and those given specific permission by your father and his councilors to attend.”

“Have you been to a council meeting before?”

Sulm shook his head, but grinned. “I’ve been in the chamber when empty, but this is my first session, too. I’m probably more excited than you are.”

As Vish walked with Sulm up the steps and into the coolness of the Emperor’s Palace, he wanted to see his father more than anything else. It had been months since he had been as close to his father as he would be, looking down from the gallery. They were searched for weapons of any kind.

“I left my knife at home,” Sulm said. “They would confiscate it and I’d have to petition them to return it to me.” He shrugged. “It’s happened before. The Emperor allows no weapons in his presence. It’s a good rule.”

Vish saw a handcart that already contained various items that the guards would recognize as weapons as they left the searching area.

Sulm presented a card with an imperial seal to a guard who pointed down the hall to the gallery entrance. They trudged on stone steps up a narrow, chilly staircase lit by magical balls of cold fire and emerged into the bright light of the chamber. Vish looked up at the glass dome that covered the chamber. Bright white light came from above through a circle in the center and then colored glass formed pictures of soldiers and sorcerers in battle followed by farms, orchards, rivers, deserts, and cities until soldiers and sorcerers fought again in battle. The scenes astounded him.

“What does it all mean?” Vish said. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the dome.

“It means that the Council presides over all of Dakkor in times of peace and in times of war. At one time, Dakkor ruled all of Zarron, from Cuminee to the northern tip of Serytar. Some would like a return to those days. Your father, seemingly, does not. Another good thing.”

Vish tore his eyes from the dome and looked down at the council table. A large, empty chair made of gold stood at the head of the table. A few of the councilors sat shuffling through papers or stood talking to their helpers. Papers were being examined and exchanged.

More councilors arrived and took their places. Vish looked at the gallery filling up with all kinds of people, but most of them were well-dressed nobles.

“You have brothers in attendance today,” Sulm said.

“I can’t see any.”

His tutor laughed. “How many of your 26 brothers have you ever met?”

“My two full brothers. Neither is here since they are still with their nursemaids and two who are from houses close to ours.”

“I see one of them.” Sulm pointed across the gallery. “The one in blue and white.”

Vish noted a boy much older than he, maybe fifteen? Sixteen? He wore a loose silk tunic with white stripes and white pantaloons. Vish could see the flash of jewelry. He squinted and noticed the gold rings on his hands as he talked and laughed together with a girl about the same age.

“Is that a sister?” Vish asked.

Sulm laughed. “I doubt it. She is probably a concubine. The Emperor forbids his sons to wed until they are twenty.”

The thought of marrying a girl gave Vish shivers. But twenty seemed a long way off since he had only reached halfway there. “What’s a concubine?”

“A female companion. She is more than an acquaintance, but not a wife, definitely not a wife.”

Vish thought back on his readings. “A prostitute? A woman who sells her body?”

“Where did you learn that?” Sulm asked. He looked indignant.

It didn’t matter to Vish. “In one of the books in my room. It’s a story of a great warrior and his travels to Serytar looking for a chest of gems. He meets a prostitute along the way and uses her for information. I didn’t understand all of it, but she accompanied the men and made them laugh.”

“And that’s nothing that I taught you, remember that!” Sulm said. “But as to your question, not a prostitute, but something more honorable.”

Vish had lost interest in the conversation and looked down onto the council floor. Most of the councilors’ seats were occupied and their helpers began to leave. He saw them emerging onto the gallery and he noticed one group that sat together across from their master so they could look at each other.

“Do they signal each other?”

Sulm had been looking elsewhere and became distracted himself. “Who?”

“The councilor’s helpers. They are sitting so they can see each other.”

“I suppose they might. Why not?” Sulm shrugged. “They are called ‘aides’ and that is an excellent observation, young Prince. During the session, see if they do.”

People began to rise. Sulm pulled Vish to his feet.

A man walked into the center of the table and raised his hands. He wore a gold and white uniform. “All rise and all hail to Shalil, Emperor of Dakkor and Protector of Zarron!”

Vish heard everyone else say, “All hail to Shalil, Emperor of Dakkor and Protector of Zarron,” as his father walked slowly from a door that Vish didn’t notice set within the round wall below.

He looked a little older than Vish remembered, but that was his father. He dressed in gold and white silk robes and wore a turban with a gold band at the bottom and a spike of jewels that thrust from the top. He strutted to his golden chair and sat slowly down, adjusting his robes. A shaven-headed man followed him with a folding stool and a box.

“What is the box for?” he whispered to Sulm.

“The man writes down the proceedings. He is the only one permitted on the floor to write anything down. What he writes is the official record of the proceedings.”

Vish looked around at the aides on the balcony and saw them opening up similar boxes. He nodded his head. They would also write down what happened.

“Why do the other’s write their own accounts then?”

“Perspective. You answer me,” Sulm said. He folded his arms and crossed his ankles and leaned against the stone back to the bench.

“Oh.” Vish knew immediately what Sulm meant. “The man down on the floor will write what the Emperor wants and it might differ from what is actually said. All of these men will write down what they want. Maybe none of them will be the truth because they have their own perspective and that is often wrong or a lie.”

Sulm patted Vish on the head and then folded his arms again. “That’s all you need to learn today, excellent.” He smiled, with too much self-satisfaction for Vish and looked down at the first discussion. “Enjoy the rest of your experience.”

Before long, Vish’s eyes began to droop. He didn’t know most of what went on in the council chamber. Sulm shook his shoulder.

“We must stand again when your father leaves the room.”

Vish blinked his eyes and tried to will away the stupor of slumber and stood with the rest of those in the chamber. Still trying to gather his wits, he noticed the anticipation of the council’s end. His father left first, followed by the scribe struggling with the stool and table. Did that happen every council meeting? Poor scribe.

The chamber began to buzz with noise. Voices called from the chamber up to the gallery as councilor’s asked and answered questions that they didn’t mind hitting other ears. Vish remembered the collective tension build at the end of the council meeting and then as his father left, there was a release, like a wave hitting the shore with the hiss of foam and the promise of cool water creeping up one’s legs.

Sulm didn’t say a word as they clambered back down the awkward spiral stairs to the ground level of the chamber. They passed the ornate double doors, now open and filled with chatting men with a few women joining in just outside the doors. He led Vish to a less-traveled corridor. They moved past a few guards and then out into the sunlit Imperial gardens, the lush park that ran between all of the private outer buildings and the compound that housed the royal families.

Vish felt a bump and looked up at the prince that Sulm pointed out during the session. The young man sneered at Vish and pulled his concubine past him, breaking out into a run. Vish followed them with his eyes and unexpectedly felt a pang of jealousy clutch at him. He raised his eyes to Sulm. His tutor made a poor substitute for a person of his same age. Not one that could look at him with excitement in her eyes. A girl? The thought made his face scrunch up as if he bit into a lemon. Still, he continued to observe his half-brother and the girl until they ran up the steps of the third wife’s house. If only he could be so old.

“Do you want to be like him?”

Vish didn’t know, but his vague repulsion of the girl made him shake his head. “No, I don’t like girls.”

Sulm just laughed and began to talk about the history of the Council. Vish didn’t listen. He’d regret ignoring Sulm lecture, but he knew where he could read about the Council in his library.

“My father is too important,” Vish said, interrupting his tutor.

Sulm stopped and guided Vish to a stone bench shaded by an arbor of plum-colored bougainvillea. He peered at Vish the way that generally made Vish squirm, but the boy didn’t feel intimidated today. “He struts in and flaunts the rules of the chamber with his scribe and then struts out. Why can’t he behave like a regular man or even like one of the Councilors?”

Vish thought of perspective and how he didn’t like it. His father created a facade and spoke from behind one. What was the real man like? He found that perspective became an excuse for men to use for their own ends. His father used deception.

“He is the Emperor. It’s in his best interests to behave as a man apart,” Sulm said. Vish looked at him and didn’t think Sulm meant what he said.

“Is that what you really believe?” Vish asked, wondering how Sulm would answer.

The tutor shrugged. “Many men do what they want. The more power a man has, the more he can do what he wants,” Sulm looked at the roofs of the wives’ houses following a pair of birds engaged in a chase of some kind.

“I’d like to have the power to act any way I please,” Vish said.

That brought Sulm eyebrows halfway up his forehead. “You don’t think you do?”

“No, the sorcerers want me to pledge loyalty to them. Mother wants the same thing. Father does too. I am bound by my promises. Mother has taught me that and you have too, if you remember.”

Sulm leaned over, grinning, and put his palm to his forehead. “What have I created?”

“The gods created me. I am their creature, as are we all.”

That brought a laugh to his tutor. “As are we all. One second you spout sedition and the next you declare the most rote of religious statements. As are we all. In the end that’s all we are, just men. Let’s get you something sweet to eat in your kitchen.” Sulm smiled and laughed. “I’ll beat you to your house.” He walked quickly and Vish had to trot to keep up with him.

Perhaps Sulm was a friend after all.

~~~