Chapter 13: What could have been
Plumes of incense smoke rose from the circle in the center
of the room, like columns of gray tainted by the deep amber of the blaze in the
middle.
The scent of it recalling distant forests in the northwest
from which the embers came, holy wood that carried the memory of that land
where the gods once walked, and whose faces in stone looked down about the
circle and the monks with fiery eyes.
The monks bowed, and chanted, then bowed again, towards the round
hearth and the plumes of smoke, then away from it, pausing to pray specific prayers
to each stone face.
The heat rose; sweating faces chanting harder, clinging to
something none could see but all believed stood before them, two dozen men in
brown robes and shaved heads, chanting in anticipation of arrival, or answer
from the faces of stone or even the fire.
A few stood back from the inner circle, young men, eyes
reflecting the fire and the ceremony, each with fingers clutched at their sides,
waiting, watching, chanting, almost invisible in the deeper darkness that filled
the extremes of the round room.
On the floor near the fire, near the kneeling monks, the
remains of once living creatures sat, rabbits, squirrels, a few rats, which
waited for some specific moment to get tossed into the flames. A new chant
uttered, this time, in one direction, towards the largest of the stone faces carved
into the northern wall.
Then, when the last of the animals vanished into the flames,
the chanting stopped.
One monk rose up from among the others, went to the large stone
face, carrying more incense which he placed on the ground before it.
Quiet came, except for the sputter of the burning bodies and
splinters of wood. Even the perpetual wind that howled through the rest of the
castle had become still, a deep breath taken, held, not released.
The monk’s fingers reached out to the stone face, touching
it, and then withdrew it again. Behind him, out of the circle of fire the flames
came alive, and the monk pushed his way to the edge of the circle, stared down
into it, at first aware of nothing, and then slowly shapes appeared, dark, furious
figures moving through an unfamiliar landscape that was not Amlor, or may not
even have been present day, figures with faces full of triumph and agony, caught
at some moment of near death, then vanishing again to some new scene, some
other place, long ago or perhaps not happened yet. And then, these vanished,
too, and the flames became flames again, and the monk’s head bowed, as if exhausted,
and the prayer he uttered sounded inhuman, more a wail than a chant, more of a
cry of anguish than anything that might be mistaken for hope. And then, silence
came again, and the monk knelt down among the others, the flames from the
hearth reflected in the stream of tears flowing down his face.
**********************
Almost from the beginning when Ely came of age to train, he
understood the great hope that the wizard had for him, part of some great cosmic
scheme that the boy needed to prepare for. The wizard warned him against unprovoked
emotion, urging him to remain cool in the face of all aversity, now betrayed by
the conflict waging inside him between his duty to Amlor and his love of the
queen.
Blyord seemed to believe as the king did that these forces
opposed each other. Ely saw them as connected, the love for each part of that
larger plan.
When young, Ely accepted the wizard’s lessons as truth, working
hard to learn all he could, hoping the lessons would lead to some enlightenment
later.
His father became frustrated with this, preferring Ely
follow his brother’s path, training as warrior, and he exceeded in that as
well. But the king perpetually seemed to favor Ajax, and spared no complement
for Ely’s accomplishments, even when these exceeded those of the younger prince.
“Father is glad to be rid of me,” Ely once complained when
the king chose him to serve as an ambassador, sending him off to represent the
kingdom in distant lands, while at home, the always visible Ajax won much renown
and love of the people. The tales never ceased about Ajax’s great victories at
Land Gate and how the prince and his troop of extremely loyal knights fended
off attacks from the always furious horse lords that occupied the Clyan side.
Warriors returning to the capital and the throne carried
back exaggerated tales of these deeds, making Ajax shine ever more brightly in
the aging king’s eyes.
His loyalty to the throne alone allowed Ely to continue the drudgery
of his duties, while he secretly wished he could change places with his brother
and win glory as well.
All this changed when he met Queen Laithia in Taffar, who
rather than casting a spell on him as his father seemed to believe, she opened his
eyes to a wider world, a world that was not gray, a world made of softer things
that steel and stone.
She made Ely dream other dreams than Blyord’s narrow vision
of his becoming the greatest warrior king in history. She taught him he could
live for today and not for some imagined future apocalypse.
The throne Ely was to inherit upon his father’s death seemed
to him like death itself, and he dreaded the idea that he might waste away
sitting on it the way his father and his father’s father’s fathers had.
He even ceased envying Ajax’s pursuit of glory.
The more in her presence, the more Ely dreaded his heritage,
hating the idea that he would eventually be forced home to live out his days as
king. He didn’t hate his people, who he knew too be a hardworking and honest
people, but he came to hate being trapped on a throne, isolated from reality,
contemplating past glories of past kings, or living in the hope that his son or
sons might accomplish something he could not.
Most of all, he hated the fact that he had been born to it,
and to lay it aside would be a complete betrayal of faith and could not see any
of the paths to greatness Blyord predicted, only one path, a gray path that
would eventually lead him to his grave.
“Had I understood sooner what all of this meant, I would have
relinquished the throne and the sword and gotten on with my life,” Ely told the
wizard when he returned. “Now, I can’t give it up, even if wanted to.”
“If you learned anything from all the lessons I’ve taught
you, it is that you cannot escape fate,” Blyord said.
“It not a lesson I wanted to learn,” Ely said, bitterly,
standing near the window and staring out at the world beyond, not towards his
beloved south, but to the dismal north and its snow-covered mountains.
“You were to young to realize what it all meant,” the wizard
said. “But it is a good thing. You need to accept your fate.”
“And what about the rest of me?”
Blyord’s gray brows folded down over his gray eyes.
“The rest of you?”
"The part of me that wants to be happy.”
“Duty and happiness are often at odds,” the wizard said. “But
I suspect your path is laid before your feet, and I doubt you can stray from it
now, whether you would want to or not.”
“And what path am I to take next?”
“Back to the king,” Blyord said. “He is going to want to
know if you have made up your mind.”
“I have,” Ely said. “But not in the way he wishes.”
“I do not expect he will receive that well,” the wizard
mumbled.
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