Valour and Victory (43 page)

The words
appeared to whisper at him with the wind before they faded
away.

He wrapped his
arms round Grainne and watched as the peace delegation from the new
Largan wound its slow way up the hill towards Vada.

He would not
fail Chizu and the others. Together all the species on this
wonderful planet would work together to make it one to be proud of.
There were troubles ahead, of that he was in no doubt, but there
was a chance now, a chance for lasting peace.

“I will not
fail you,” he vowed.

Perhaps it was
fancy but he knew the spirits of Tala and Chizu understood. The
wind eddied round him and Grainne in benediction. Tala and Chizu
were still with them, not in any physical form but he was sure they
would continue to watch over them, now and forever.

* * * * *

Isobel

The remains of
those who died at the Cocteau manor were buried together on the
orders of Duchess Tamsin.

A few of the
deceased, those who could be identified as members of the ducal
family were buried separately, notably Duke Pierre whose partly
eaten body was interred in the mausoleum known as the ‘Duke’s
Vault’.

The tower where
Isobel and Katia had died was a pile of broken and fire darkened
stone. After much soul-searching Duchess Tamsin decided not to
disturb the ruin to look for the bodies underneath. Instead, she
ordered that the blast site be tidied up and a cairn erected over
the rubble. It was painted white, as a representation and
dedication to both the courage and innocence of those entombed
within.

Archbishop Tom
Brentwood presided over the Service of Remembrance.

King Elliot
also attended the service; it was only one of the many he went to
during that long year after the war. Every year after that he went
to the cairn to remember the girl who had once been his
betrothed.

Although Isobel
hadn’t lived to become Elliot’s Queen, she wasn’t forgotten, nor
was James. Elliot remembered the good times with James, when they
were children and during their last months together. He tried to
forget about his friend’s desertion.

Duchess Tamsin
governed the duchy for ten years until her son Charles came of age.
She retained her seat on Conclave for a further three.

Charles married
and he and his wife, a Baron’s daughter, had three children, thus
preserving the ducal bloodline. Tamsin’s daughter married Baron
Charles Karovitz, grandson of the General who had fought the Larg
in Brentwood during the war.

Tamsin’s
youngest, Estelle, born after her mother’s rescue from the cellar,
married Prince Pierre, the little boy, second cousin of Elliot, who
with his mother and baby brother had been imprisoned on the upper
rooms of the Old Citadel by Prince-Duke Xavier.

As for the
others who had known Isobel in life, most of them were dead but
Anne, the Kellessa who had been appointed as her senior
lady-in-waiting, who had prepared her for and accompanied her
during the service when Elliot and Isobel had made their sacred
vows, she held the same position in Queen Zilla’s household,
guiding the young northerner through the first months before
deciding that the secular world was no longer for her.

She joined the
Thibaltine Order in AL 610 and died within its walls nine years
later.

* * * * *

Hilla

The war
cemetery situated to the north of the ridge in the Duchy of
Duchesne is a sad, yet beautiful place, with ordered lines of stone
grave markers, each with the identity of the person lying below
chipped out in large letters.

It is a place
of peace, where the allst trees grow, swaying in the breeze. It is
covered in flowers, except on the paths. In the summertime the
heady scent of the dalina flowers fills the air.

Many people
visit the cemetery.

There is a
permanent staff of gardeners employed there, paid for by the Crown
with instructions to keep the acres in a pristine condition.

Wilf Taplin,
the Warrant Officer who commanded the Garda Officer Trainees at the
ridge and had watched so many of them die, spent the last years of
his life here in a small cottage. He was unable to put the trauma
of the day behind him. Not all the casualties of the war died on
the ridge, or in Brentwood, or at Fort. Wilf Taplin was not the
only one haunted by the memories and who gravitated back to the
area, unable to move on.

Hilla
Talansdochter’s grave is just one in a long line of Garda graves
situated in the western part of the cemetery, the only thing
differentiating it from the others being the profusion of flowers
growing around and over it, for this is the grave of the triplet
sister of the Queen and she plants a dalina seedling every time she
visits.

In the same row
lie Hilla’s friends, Dolvin Annson, Paul Farquer and Jen
Durand.

Queen Zilla’s
friend Maura is buried in the next row and her brother Zak is
buried in the corner of the cemetery dedicated to the Militia of
Dunetown.

The Queen
visits these two graves as well but it is the grave of her triplet
sister where she cries.

She talks to
Wilf Taplin when she visits and they comfort each other.

* * * * *

The deaths of
Zak, Hilla and Tala left their parents, Talan and Zanda with a
dilemma.

They returned
to Dunetown after Elliot and Zilla’s wedding. Although Elliot and
Zilla had invited them to make their home in Murdoch, they had
refused. Neither felt comfortable with all the pomp and
circumstance.

As the years
passed they began to wonder what would happen to the inn when they
became too old to manage it.

To leave it to
Zilla was out of the question and Rilla wasn’t interested. In the
end, they decided to bequeath it to their oldest daughter Zala and
her husband Matt. It was their eldest son Mathieu who travelled
south to Dunetown in the summer of AL 628 to take over. Mathieu had
proved to be not even a fifth of the merchant his father was and
was eager to put merchanting behind him. By then Talan was dead.
Zanda bowed to her youngest daughter’s entreaties and left for the
southern continent.

She spent her
last years in one of the dower apartments at the palace at Fort,
enjoying the company of her royal grandchildren. She died in AL
638, a very old lady, not long after the birth of her youngest
great-grand-daughter Princess Mary.

She was also a
frequent visitor to the graves of Hilla and Zak.

* * * * *

Tala

No one found a
single trace of the bodies of Tala and Chizu.

There is no
memorial marker where they died destroying the
Ammokko
.

There are many
memorials elsewhere, the biggest being at Settlement, beside the
one of Jim and Larya and above where the Battle of the Alliance was
fought in AL 2.

The one of Tala
and Chizu is every bit as big.

Both stand as
benevolent sentinels, looking over the Island Chain that was once
the route of the Larg when they attacked the northern
continent.

The
fortifications near Settlement are being dismantled and the route
to the southern continent is being opened up. Plans are being made
to build bridges to connect the islands. Some people have begun to
make their homes on the biggest. Inns are being built to cater for
the rapidly increasing trade and holiday traffic between the
northern and southern continents.

Foremost of
those campaigning for the development of the Island Chain is one
Horatio Anders, once head Councillor of Argyll and who was forced
to resign his office shortly after the war. The reason behind his
resignation is very hush-hush but everyone knows it is because he
refused to believe in the Lai and the Dglai and had actively tried
to stop Argyll getting involved in the war. He is still not the
most popular of people but he is getting things done so many are
beginning to forgive and forget.

Not so his son
Julean. He is ashamed of his father’s role and embarrassed about
staying behind at Stewarton in safety when his friends fought in
the war. Recent reports say that he has taken to drink and is often
to be found drunk as a lord in the cheapest taverns in the
city.

The other
memorials to Tala and Chizu are dotted around, in Stewarton, Port
Lutterell and elsewhere. There is a large one at Fort in the
Kingdom of Murdoch. There is a very beautiful one at Dunetown, her
birthplace.

There are, as
far as we are aware, no memorials on the other northern continent
where live the Lai. Like the Lind, they see no need for such
edifices and seem to find it strange that we do.

Tala became for
a time the most popular name in Argyll and many girl children
continue to be named after her.

* * * * *

The Lord
Marshall

Now that the
war was over and the desert safe to travel in, Baron Philip Ross,
the newly appointed Lord Marshall, led a troop from one of the
mounted regiments into it, following the path that he, Danal and
the others had taken on their quest to find the power-core.

Jilsei, who had
carried Philip into the desert, went with them.

Their task was
to find the bodies of Derek and Denei.

It was Jilsei
who located them using that uncanny knack of the Lind. They always
know exactly where they are.

The two of them
were lying where they had been left, under a thin layer of sand
that had blown over and gathered. The dead Larg lay to one
side.

Philip and his
men buried Derek and Denei together and the Larg in another
grave.

A cairn of soft
desert stone was piled over Derek and Denei and Philip cemented
into it a small bronze plaque that he had commissioned before they
set out.

There they lie
to this day.

Philip spent
the rest of his life in royal service, dying aged fifty-one in AL
622. His wife Anne and their four children survived him. It was his
daughter Anne who married Walter Merriman, Derek’s younger brother
whose identity Elliot had ‘borrowed’ during his sojourn in the
northern continent.

Derek would
have liked that - to know that his brother was married to the
daughter of the man he respected and admired.

* * * * *

Elliot and
Zilla

Elliot and
Zilla’s marriage was a long and happy one.

They had five
children, three boys and two girls.

Hilla was the
eldest and was born in AL 610. She married one Kellen James
Taviston, grandson of the Kellen Martin Taviston who had been Head
of Protocols at the palace during Elliot the Eleventh’s reign and
during the first nine years of Elliot the Twelfth’s. They had four
children, Hilla, James, Zala and Zak. It was not usual for a
Princess of the Blood to marry a mere Kellen but it was a love
match and Elliot overrode all objections with a firm but benevolent
hand.

Elliot and
Zilla’s second child, the Crown-Prince, they named Elliot. He was
born three years after Hilla. He also married a lady from a
non-ducal house, the eldest daughter of a Kellen, Thanessa Alison
Tanon. They had three children. Elliot succeeded his father as King
Elliot the Thirteenth in AL 647 when he died after a short
illness.

Paul was Elliot
and Zilla’s third child. He became a priest and had a long and
distinguished career within the Church.

Isobel, their
second daughter, born in AL 615, married the senior Earl of the
Island Confederation of Galland and was the longest lived of the
five children, dying in AL 699.

Ian, the
youngest, married Margravessa Catherine Duchesne, the granddaughter
of Count Peter Duchesne, the Lord Marshall who had lost his life in
Brentwood in AL 608 holding back the Larg.

Of Elliot’s
three sisters, the eldest, Princess Susan got her wish and married
Duke Robain Hallam in AL 611, aged eighteen. Princess Mary married
Duke Ernest van Buren in AL 614 and Princess Janet married Duke
Euan Kirkton of the Eastern Isles in AL 616.

The Dowager
Queen Mary, Elliot’s grandmother who had been so kind to Robain
during his first days at the palace died in AL 609. Elliot’s
mother, the Dowager Crown-Princess Susan lived until AL 635.

On the
political side, Elliot became known as Elliot the Twelfth, ‘The
Great Reformer’. During the thirty-nine years of his reign his
kingdom was transformed beyond all recognition. He forced though
many changes.

In AL 610 he
promulgated the decree, commonly known as ‘The Rights for Women’,
repealing every one of the old laws forbidding them to hold titles,
land and coin in their own right. Primogeniture remained as the
basis of inheritance, titles and land rights still passed to the
nearest male heir but provision had now to be made for any
unmarried daughters and sisters and also for the widow. Fathers and
brothers no longer had the right to force daughters and female
siblings into convents.

Lower down the
social scale, widows and daughters could inherit family businesses
and farms. They could also become fully-fledged members of Guilds
and of the farming co-operatives that began to spring up.

From AL 610 all
Dukes were encouraged to abolish slavery in their own demesnes. The
Northerly Dukes and Duchesses, those of Duchesne, Graham, Gardiner,
Brentwood and North Baker declared slave emancipation in AL 611.
South Baker followed in AL 613.

Hallam of
course, the new name for Sahara, had declared all slaves free the
month Robain became Duke.