Chapter Nine
12 Jennitar, just after lunch
Off to the Castaviran city of Pfulerre. We originally planned to go further south, to Lirilla, which is a major Balaenic port city, but after our reception in Barrekel, Cederic judged it better not to risk being turned away again. We were resupplied somewhat in Teliarne, but they don’t have a lot to spare because of supporting the Helvirite Army, so supplies aren’t as plentiful as we’d like. We’ll be pushing things to get to Pfulerre without running out of food—the journey will take most of two weeks.
It’s only been a few hours (I’m writing this in the wagon) but I’m glad I have a project to occupy myself during those two weeks, because the country we’re traveling through is mostly forest. That’s not true, it used to be mostly forest, but the area around Teliarne is grassy plains and big plantations. My travels through the new combined landscape tell me that at some point we’ll run into that forest, but I have no idea when that will be. So it’s boring plains, and then boring forest, and then we come to the coastal region, which is beautiful even at this time of year. Or was beautiful. Who knows what it looks like now? According to the map, Pfulerre is no more than twenty miles from Lethess, which is a popular place for wealthy people to go to enjoy the warm salt breezes and bathe in the ocean. It would be a real shame if that disappeared. Not that I’m wealthy—I mean, I wasn’t wealthy before, but I stayed there for about a month, recovering from a broken arm, and there’s still plenty to do if you don’t have money (or, like me, have money but are saving it for books).
Unfortunately, this project isn’t going to require much of my time for a while, because there’s only so much kathana practice you can stand in one day, so I’m looking for other things I can do to keep from going out of my mind with boredom:
1. Teach Mattiak and the other Balaenics Castaviran.
2. Practice pouvrin.
3. Ride with the other mages and bitch about how bored we all are.
4. Practice riding Acorn, or whatever the hell the horse’s name is. She hasn’t tried anything yet, but I think she’s just waiting for me to let down my guard. My teachers insist she’s a very well-behaved mare, but every one of them rides a great foaming beast with mad eyes that’s about two feet taller than I am, so I think their judgments are compromised.
5. Ride with Cederic. (This is hopelessly self-indulgent. He doesn’t need me clinging to him all day long.)
Back to practicing the kathana. I hope we can do it soon.
15 Jennitar
Nothing to report for the last three days. We’ve gotten to a point where we can’t practice until we stop for the night, because the motion of the wagon is throwing us off. A few more days and we should have it.
18 Jennitar
I’m so tired, and discouraged, and the only reason I’m writing this down is that I don’t want to forget any of that tired and discouraged feeling. Which sounds ridiculous, because who would want to remember such negative emotions? But it’s important to me that I remember everything, not just the wonderful things but the sad and heartbreaking ones as well. Though this wasn’t heartbreaking. It was just a huge setback.
It’s not a very difficult or complex kathana, not like the convergence kathana, so it didn’t take long for us to understand our parts and practice synchronizing them. I asked Cederic if we could camp early tonight, to give us more light to work by—we still ended up needing lanterns fueled by th’an, but the last of the daylight gave our assistants enough that they cleared a flat space of earth for us before sunset. It hasn’t snowed for a while, just rained, and the ground here is clay rather than soft earth, which is perfect for a kathana circle, and after our assistants finished pulling up the sod with their trenching tools, we smoothed it down flat and marked out a double circle about two feet in diameter. Cederic, who’d asked to be present, stood nearby, watching, and I don’t think I’d realized until then how much he misses doing magic. He doesn’t have time, because as good as he is, there are so many other things only the Emperor can do. I wonder if I should invite him to join us occasionally. He might be busy, but he’s not that busy. I hope.
Then Audryn, with the help of Terrael referring to a list, began marking out inert th’an in the space between the circles while the rest of us worked out the cardinal and ordinal directions and marked those off too. (You still have to be a mage to scribe even inert th’an, which infuriates me on Terrael’s behalf. I’m afraid to ask him if he minds, in case I’d be rubbing salt into the wound.) Jerussa, Tobiak, and Relania moved to stand at the east, south, and west points respectively. Jeddan stood at the southeast, and I stood at the southwest, because our mind-moving pouvrin are so much weaker than the others. Jaemis went to the north and knelt in the clay with a sharpened stick in his hand. “Are you ready?” he said.
“Almost,” Audryn said. In a few more seconds she stepped out of the circle and she and Terrael went to where a tambourine and a skinny piece of metal attached to a string waited. Audryn picked up the tambourine, Terrael took the metal and a steel rod about the size of his middle finger, and the two of them messed with the instruments, trying to find the best sound.
Then everything was quiet. We were far enough from the camp that the noise of so many people sounded more like waves on the beach, or that sound you get when you put a shell to your ear that’s supposed to sound like waves on a beach but really only sounds like the blood rushing through your ears. I imagined I could feel Cederic’s eyes on me—he was standing behind me and to the left—but all I really felt was cold. And nervousness.
Audryn struck the tambourine, lightly, then harder, then back and forth until she found a sound she liked. She gave three quick taps, then fell into a slow beat, tap tap tap with long pauses between the taps. After she’d done this a few times, Terrael joined in, making his chime ring out between taps and then three times after the third one: tap ting tap ting tap ting ting ting.
I let my breathing fall into harmony with the beat and counted. As the fifth round began, I started to work the mind-moving pouvra, slowly, letting the shape fill me as I bent my will to meet it. I couldn’t tell what anyone but Jaemis was doing, but I knew I’d begun at the right time because he began scribing th’an to fill the gap at the northern point. The beat accelerated, and I embraced the pouvra and let it work more quickly, directing it at the th’an scribed in the circle rather than at the world. Any minute now, and we’d know if we were right.
On the seventh round, the ground in the center of the circle began to tremble, and I had to clench my fists to stay focused. Then, between the seventh and eighth rounds, the ground simply hunched itself and rose into a hillock about five feet tall, constrained by the kathana circle. I let the mind-moving pouvra go and sank down to sit next to the hillock. What a colossal failure.
“So they are interchangeable,” Jeddan said.
“Looks like,” Jaemis said.
“It could be a mistake,” said Relania. “I know I was having trouble directing the magic into the kathana. We might have moved the earth with the pouvra instead.”
“It’s no mistake,” I said. “Whatever condition isn’t being met, it’s not that pouvrin and th’an are different. It would have solved half our problem if they weren’t interchangeable. Now we have to start over.”
“It is unfortunate that we need to bring the magics together,” Cederic said, “because this is a remarkable discovery. We now know we can teach each other our different magics.”
“Maybe we should do that anyway, Sai Aleynten,” Terrael said.
“I am happy to advise, but it is not I to whom you should look for that answer,” Cederic said. He offered me his hand, and I let him pull me up.
I brushed the seat of my trousers, which were clammy, and said, “I think we shouldn’t let ourselves be distracted. That was exhausting. Imagine if we tried to do both—teach each other magic and try to bring them together, I mean.”
“It shouldn’t have been this tiring,” Jaemis said. “I think working together—putting th’an and pouvrin into a kathana, I mean—might be more of a burden than I anticipated. We should allow for that next time, Terrael.”
“Well, at least we proved something,” Jerussa said, then yawned. “You’re right, I feel exhausted. I’m not going to think about this again until morning.”
We scrubbed out the kathana circle (I don’t know why, it’s not as if anyone’s going to care out here, and it’s not as if we didn’t alter the landscape, but it’s part of the tradition) and went back for a late dinner and then bed. Well, it will be bed for me as soon as I finish this. I’m trying to let Jerussa’s optimism carry me along and not be dragged down by my natural pessimism. We did prove something, even if it wasn’t the something we had in mind. Tomorrow we’ll look at this anew, and I’m going to keep reminding myself we’re one step closer to learning the truth.
19 Jennitar
We all felt more optimistic after a good night’s rest, and were able to look at our failure logically this morning. Really, we should be optimistic, because we’re working our way down the list of conditions. Inborn ability, identical magics, the right concentration of magic—all restored. That leaves us with the problem of how will is applied to work magic, which is definitely different between Castaviran and Balaenic magic, and we’re all going to think about that separately and discuss tomorrow.
We should be in Pfulerre on 21 Jennitar. We’re still traveling through the forest, but the trees have gone from deciduous to evergreen, which has to be a Castaviran feature because not only was this part of Balaen not forested, there aren’t (weren’t?) evergreen forests until you get much further north, near Thalessa. I wonder what Thalessa looks like now. It’s so bleak in the winter, and cold, with icy rain that coats the roads and makes the cobbles dangerous to walk on. I’m just as happy we’re not going that far north.
I wonder if Mam’s still alive. It bothers me that I don’t give a damn either way. I wonder where Roda ended up. I wonder if anyone in Thalessa even remembers me.
I don’t know why I’m suddenly maudlin. I’m going to think about magic now. I left my past behind a long time ago and I don’t need it troubling me now.
20 Jennitar
Much discussion, much playing around with th’an and pouvrin, ultimately fruitless. This is such a big, nebulous topic—the application of will, I mean—we can’t even agree on where to start discussing it. I told everyone to take a rest day, and we scattered to ride with friends in other wagons, and my wagon ended up singing Castaviran folk songs that made me laugh. I had no idea Castavirans were so dirty-minded.
21 Jennitar, afternoon
I was surprised at how relieved I felt to see the coastal landscape unchanged. I guess I think of my time in Lethess fondly. I had an excuse in my injury not to pursue my quest so doggedly as I had for the three years previous, and there’s something about the coast that relaxes you. Relaxes everyone around you, too, and people are so friendly. Even the crime rate is lower in Lethess. I don’t know if it’s the same for Pfulerre, and I have no idea if the climate in Castavir was as lovely as it is in Balaen, but if not, the Pfulerrian citizens have to be praising their God for their good luck. The slushy snow turned into rain a few days ago, then into warm rain, and by the time we reached Pfulerre, late this afternoon, most of the clouds we’ve been traveling under were gone and the sun was shining—weak and watery sunshine, but by comparison to what it was like in Barrekel, very welcome. Still cold, but I’m not going to complain.
We’re waiting for the envoy to return from seeing the consul of Pfulerre, Daenen Radryntor. No one in our party knows her very well, but Cederic says her relationship with the God-Empress was never very warm—never anything she could be challenged on, but she never went out of her way to court her favor. That was smart of her, because we saw, horribly, what happened to Vorantor when he tried to impress the God-Empress. So we’re feeling confident she will respond favorably. (Confident but not certain, of course.)
We tried swapping will-invoking methods this morning—doing pouvrin by exerting our will on them, scribing th’an without a strong purpose in mind—and succeeded only in giving ourselves headaches. We already know if you try to force a pouvra into being, it slips away, but I was hoping we might be able to perceive why that happens, or see the effect. No luck.
The Castavirans were even worse off than we were, because they go through such rigorous training to learn to scribe th’an properly that trying to do it incorrectly was like trying to teach a fish to breathe air. So it didn’t work. I’m marking it as one step closer to finding the truth, because I’m trying to be optimistic.
And speaking of optimism, it sounds as if Terrael’s envoy is back.
21 Jennitar, evening
We’ve been given what I assume is the nicest room in the consul’s palace. It overlooks the ocean and has actual glass windows so you can watch the waves, and the ships coming in and out of the harbor, without having to endure the salt wind that comes off the ocean constantly. It might be too warm in the summer, but right now it’s very pleasant, even if the evening overcast I remember from my time here is drifting in. When the sun finally sets, it will be nearly impossible to see where the water ends and the sky begins. It’s disconcerting, but in a pleasantly eerie way.
I suppose I’m in a good mood because for the first time since we began this journey, our processional came into a city and the crowds lining the road cheered us. Even Pansy, or whatever the hell the horse’s name is, seemed less inclined to throw me off. Possibly she thought the cheering was for her. I was able to wave and smile at everyone, and managed not to feel awkward or nervous at all the attention focused on me. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get used to being watched all the time, but if I can bluff my way into Holaen Manor, I can pretend not to feel as if I’m about to be arrested.
The consul’s palace has the same southern architecture as Teliarne, except instead of big open windows, everything here has shutters or glass to protect against the spray and sand that gets blown everywhere during a storm. I wonder what it sounds like to hear the wind beating against the windows. It’s too bad we can’t settle here instead of Colosse. Maybe we can have a summer home here.
True God help me, I can’t believe I just thought that. I have got to stop taking my new affluence for granted like that. I can’t be so careless about my new position. We owe a lot to the citizens of this country, and I don’t want to turn into someone like Brisson Rialen, thinking only of his personal comforts, or true God forbid someone like the God-Empress, seeing everyone around her as playthings. Not that the last would ever happen; I’m not insane. But I’ve been poor and struggling for so long, it’s like a miracle that I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to find my next meal, or where I’m going to sleep—this room is so beautiful I can hardly believe it’s ours.
I’m feeling tired, so I’ll write about Daenen Radryntor and everything tomorrow. Cederic is still meeting with her, and I was going to join him for the discussion, but he told me I looked exhausted and I should go to bed. I don’t feel exhausted, but I am tired enough I didn’t argue with him.
That bed looks so soft. It makes me sleepier just looking at it.
22 Jennitar, early
This is why I shouldn’t go to bed early no matter how sleepy I am; I always wake up before dawn and can’t fall back asleep. On the other hand, I really was tired because Cederic didn’t wake me when he came to bed, and he must have been tired because I didn’t wake him when I got out of bed just now. I’m wearing this quilted satin robe I found hanging in the little room outside the kiorka. I hope this is what it was intended for, because it’s very comfortable.
So, yesterday we came into the city to much acclaim and rode all the way to the palace, where Daenen Radryntor was waiting to greet us. She’s red-headed, which told me she had at least one Endellaviran ancestor, and taller than average, and fat in a way that makes her look bold and commanding. If I were anyone else I would have found her intimidating.
She stood at the foot of the steps so she wasn’t looking down on us, and waited for Cederic and me to dismount before coming forward and making the Imperial salute. “Pfulerre welcomes you, your Majesty,” she said in her deep, commanding voice, and Cederic inclined his head and said, “The Empress-Consort and I are gratified by your welcome.” So I hurriedly inclined my head too.
“We have prepared a reception for you, your Majesty, if you will accompany me,” Radryntor said, gesturing at the door, so we went up the wide steps and through a pillared portico into the palace. It has the same mosaic walls as the palace at Colosse, though with different images, mostly of the ocean and ocean animals and ships. The wide hall had archways opening off it, curtained by blue and green gauze that made it feel even more as if we were underwater, but in a good way.
Radryntor led our group (Cederic and me, Lerongis and his wife, Mattiak and the generals, Terrael, and three Sais) through one of these arches into a vast reception hall full of well-dressed people standing around and talking quietly. They immediately turned their attention on us, and every one of them made the Imperial salute. I resisted the urge to scratch where the Torque of Rule rubbed my collarbone or fidget in some other un-Imperial way.
“Thank you for your welcome,” Cederic said. “We feel honored by your presence. Pfulerre’s loyalty to the Empire is well known, and we are glad to see it confirmed today.”
“Allow me to make introductions,” Radryntor said. I was swept along in Cederic’s wake to meet a lot of people, many of whose names I don’t now remember. I think they were local nobles from the surrounding area, and government officials, but I still don’t know much about Castaviran government, so that didn’t make a huge impression on me. I realize that’s a serious failing in the Empress-Consort, but I haven’t exactly had time. I’ll do it once this is all over.
(I realized as I wrote that I might subconsciously be thinking “if we fail, I won’t need to learn,” but I don’t think even I am that pessimistic.)
A lot of them were very flattering, commenting on my beauty, which made me want to laugh, because I know I’m not that beautiful, but it also made me nervous. It’s a well-known fact that the higher you rank, the prettier you are, so it might just have been that, but now I know I have power in my own right, I’m afraid people are going to try to get me to use it in their favor. That’s not going to happen—I’m too suspicious of people’s motives to be easily swayed—but I dislike the idea of having to be so on my guard all the time. I’ll have to talk to Cederic about this later. If we’re going to spend the winter in Pfulerre, we’ll have to be on show all the time, and it’s time I learned what that meant.
But it was a nice reception, all things considered, and the Pfulerrians were nice to the Balaenics in our party, and didn’t say anything offensive about me being Balaenic, and then the reception turned into a dinner, which was also nice even if, as I’ve mentioned, half the food Castavirans serve is strange to me. In this case, it was seafood prepared in unusual ways, and I was glad because I grew up eating almost nothing but fish and kelp, and I’m usually put off by any kind of seafood. But this was all very good.
Then Cederic went to his meeting, and sent me to bed, and I was grateful for that. It’s almost dawn now, and he’ll be waking soon and I’ll have him tell me what he learned. I’m worried that my Empress-Consort duties are going to interfere with my responsibilities to the mages, but I’ll do my best to keep them balanced.
I’m hungry now. I hope it’s not fish for breakfast.