1
The Crown and the Emerald
Elenai pressed her forehead to the window frame. Her fingers absently probed the sore spot on her neck where the stiff collar of her khalat had protected her from a mortal blow. With the city healers laboring long over the gravely wounded, none of their spell energy could be spared for minor injuries, much less bruises.
From her squire’s quarters, she studied the jagged hole in the tiles of the stable roof as dusk claimed the sky. She deliberately avoided consideration of the crumbling height of the inner city wall beyond, and the long rows of Naor tents outlined by the fading light. Those who dwelt in the latter had destroyed the former, yet now occupied Darassan land as allies, having sworn their allegiance to her only hours before. Even having been party to the events, she had trouble believing the result wasn’t a fever dream. She hadn’t the mental energy to contemplate the enormity of changes to her life, and to Darassus, and so she lost herself in consideration of the dark breach. Soon the damage vanished in the deepening gray of the surrounding tiles.
She risked a look elsewhere, where the dim building edges stood out against the lighter atmosphere. A few short hours before, the dead had littered the palace grounds and draped the shattered battlements. The bodies had been carted off; twilight grayed the blood that stained the stones and obscured the trampled gardens.
Vanished, too, were the crowds who had gathered to chant her name, the councilors who hastened to grant her a seat among them, and the angry city representatives who’d cried a council seat was too paltry for the woman who had saved Darassus. The old queen, pledged to guard them, had fled. Elenai had stayed and slain the Naor leader. Who else but she, they had said, should sit the throne?
Elenai protested that she was an alten, not a ruler, an answer that satisfied none of her listeners. They continued to bicker without including her. She’d craved guidance from N’lahr or Kyrkenall, but they’d vanished after the commander had held a sobering post-battle meeting. Rylin had summarized his own terrible ordeals, then disappeared himself, leaving no one to advise her but her close friend Elik. She had finally agreed to think over the crowd’s proposal, then Elik hatched their escape by pointing out Elenai needed rest.
That had been true enough. She wished dearly to lie down on her familiar bed, but neither it nor the narrow room around it belonged to her anymore. The squires had insisted her old quarters were beneath her dignity and promised to prepare a new suite. They’d carried away both her dresser drawers and the chest at the foot of the bed that had stored her possessions. She’d lost track of how long the near giddy squires had been absent since they’d begged her to stay “a few moments” in the now barren space, but she felt increasingly foolish for letting them have their way. Kyrkenall would hardly have held off sleep because he didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. She stared at the simple, yet oh-so-tempting bed a mere arm’s length away and pictured what the squires might say if they found her sprawled across it.
She shook her head at herself. She was barely managing to make the most simple of decisions as an alten. How could anyone possibly think she could rule as a queen?
The rap at the door startled her and she spun, hand dropping to where her sword hilt should have been. It wasn’t. What little remained of her sword had been carried off by squires.
“Elenai? Are you awake?” There was no mistaking her friend Elik’s gentle baritone.
“Yes.” She understood by his question he wouldn’t have been insulted if she’d been sleeping. “Come in.”
There was just enough space for the door to miss the footboard as it swung open. Elik halted at the threshold. He’d combed back his short, dark curling hair, and cleaned up the blood and dust and dirt. A dark abrasion stood out near the cleft of his chin. A bandage was visible beneath his right sleeve. He’d donned an older uniform coat because his new one had been cut to shreds in battle. It still bore the stitched linkage of three silver rings arranged in a chevron over two others. She realized that, as an alten, she had the authority, as well as the responsibility, to suggest him for promotion to sixth rank or higher. He’d certainly earned it.
“Your room’s ready,” he said with a smile. “You’re going to love it. Three rooms, complete with a balcony. And it looks on an inner courtyard, so…” He waved at the window, indicating the battle-scarred vista. “… you don’t have to look at that. It’s Temahr’s old suite,” he added.
The dead alten’s chambers had remained empty since the last war. Her new rooms would be in close proximity to those of N’lahr and Kyrkenall.
“You’ve earned this, Elenai,” Elik declared with quiet conviction, as if guessing her hesitancy. His earnest declaration bore no hint of jealously. Elenai and Elik had advanced in lockstep until circumstances swept her into a promotion from fifth rank to Altenerai, an accomplishment achieved only by Alten Enada in the last fifty years.
The drum of galloping hoofbeats interrupted the twilit still, drawing their eyes to the window.
Lamplight from the sconces affixed to either side of the steps below bronzed Kyrkenall’s black hair as he savagely reined in before the entrance to the Altenerai wing of the palace. It was strange to see him on a brown mare rather than his ever-faithful Lyria; the unflaggable dun had been left behind in Cerai’s little realm in the shifts. Was that just earlier this afternoon?
The archer snatched his black bow from its holster, then flung himself from the wheezing mount and sprinted up the stairs.
Elenai couldn’t guess which of a host of calamities would set the archer moving at such speed, but was already tense with alarm. “I think we’re about to have another problem,” she said.
She and Elik hurried to the main stair and started down the black granite steps. Below, Kyrkenall shouted for Thelar.
As she reached the central floor, a weary-looking third ranker stood up from the duty desk. Elenai sent him to look after Kyrkenall’s horse, then followed the archer as he advanced into the central hall, still shouting for the exalt.
“Kyrkenall!” she called. “What’s happened?”
The archer spun to face her and stilled, as if he needed a moment to register her or change his line of thought. Then his pupil-less black eyes fixed her with savage intensity. “I need Thelar,” he said. “He may have Kalandra’s gem.”
Her fatigue-fogged thoughts revolved in a slow circle before she understood. Rialla had told her they might find the alten’s long-lost love associated with a stone. “How do you know?” she asked.
“Rylin found her ring next to a gem on a shelf,” he answered impatiently. “Do you know where Thelar is?”
Elik, at her shoulder, answered. “Exalt Thelar’s in the queen’s office.”
Kyrkenall rushed off. Though her stride was longer than his, Elenai was hard-pressed to catch him. Elik practically ran to keep at her side. He asked softly, “What’s this about?”
She couldn’t answer immediately. How to explain that Kyrkenall had been absent from Darassus for seven years because he’d been obsessively searching for the missing alten Kalandra? And that they’d been told Kalandra was “in the stone on the shelf” through confusing visions from the long-dead alten Rialla? “He thinks he’s found something about Alten Kalandra,” she said finally. “And we know that memories can be stored in special gemstones, because we’ve talked with some of them.”
Elik looked puzzled but held off from more detailed questions as they trailed Kyrkenall.
Copyright © 2021 by Howard Andrew Jones
