Swans Over the Moon Page 5

  The lawyers nodded and smiled like a trio of easily-entertained monkeys. Dexter rolled his eyes at their stupidity. Were it not for tradition, he knew, these men would have been involuntarily retired years ago for their senility.

  “M'lord,” he began to speak, but the Judicar held up a firm hand to silence his counselor.

  “Let it be so. It is now decreed. Heterodymus, send thirty of my best men, along with their retinue, to secure the trade route. This should be sufficient.”

  “But M'lord . . .”

  Again the upheld hand signified an order of silence.

  The orders were fulfilled. Silence was maintained.

  Chapter 8

  For weeks, silence reigned over the palatial halls. It crept like a skittering wave of venomous black spiders into every crevice, the woolen weight of it only ruffled by the Judicar's sighs. Even the pygmy servants slowed their labors as they absorbed the growing malaise of their liege. The susurration of his murmurings made the air thick with brooding thoughts and malcontent. Such an air of darkness had not over-shadowed the throne room since the days of his wife's death. Disorder seemed to be percolating beneath the surface of it all, waiting for its chance to burst forth through the despairing veil.

  Through this uneasy silence came the sharp-tapping footsteps of Heterodymus marching into the throne room. Selene stood behind her father, who was slouching on his throne, a half-empty chalice of wine spilling from his hand. Sinistrum and Dexter stood silent before the Judicar, hands clasped behind their back. The Judicar had motioned for silence, and silence would not be broken by any but he who had decreed it. After an uncomfortably long time, too long even for patient Selene, who fidgeted with anticipation, he spoke.

  “What news, Heterodymus?”

  “None but ill,” Sinistrum groaned.

  “But it will please M'lord,” Dexter sweetly intervened.

  “Speak to me of Euler. The taxes, are they working?”

  “All too well,” Dexter said in a voice tainted with disappointment.

  “You will be pleased to hear,” Sinistrum's elocution was exquisite, words enunciated perfectly, but with a hint of being forced into formality, “that Euler has paid her debt for the disservice that she has rendered. What might displease you is the disservice that has been rendered to Euler. She has been forced to beg for food from her neighbors and has sold her crown for rags with which to cover her shame. She has wandered under frosting night and the withering sun of day. When her means were gone, she sold herself, her body and virtue, for mere morsels. Euler is a shell of her former self, but your oath remains intact. Law is still maintained between the two of you.”

  The Judicar smiled out of the corner of his mouth, as if he thought a joke was hidden in Heterodymus' comments.

  “My dear Heterodymus, I have never know you to be so poetic. Your gift of allegory is remarkable.”

  “Allegory?” Dexter looked confused.

  “Yes, your allegory about Euler and her sufferings. It is a beautiful, if a bit melancholy, metaphor.”

  “M'lord,” Sinistrum began.

  Dexter finished the thought. “Sinistrum's words, M'lord, were not metaphorical. We speak, quite literally, of the Lady Euler, your daughter.”

  Selene slowly walked out of the room, her Tarans flitting behind her in the wake of the wind caused by her departure. The Judicar's face slackened at her departure and he croaked out a few unintelligible syllables in an effort to speak.

  “Lady Euler?” he managed to ask.

  “Yes, M'lord.”

  “But how do you know this?” The question came out haltingly, but with a hint of denial in its tone.

  The reply was as smooth as Dexter's young skin: “She told us herself.”

  At this Heterodymus clapped his hands and a quartet of servants brought a stretcher through the pillars of the throne room. Two Procellarian knights chaperoned the injured occupant. She looked up, half-delirious, her blonde hair shining in the feeble light of the throne room, which had become darkened in more than spirit. Her robes had been torn to tatters and her bronze skin was peppered with black bruises and red scratches across her neck and arms. Teeth marks showed on her neck.

  “Basia? You should not have come here.” Stern-ness and compassion, even fatherly love, co-mingled in his voice. “You have condemned yourself by coming here.”

  She whispered feebly. “I know that, father,” a tear carved down her dusty face. “But my death is inevitable. My people have rejected me and debased my body. I could not maintain order as they wanted or needed.”

  “Order? There is only chaos in Euler,” he said angrily.

  “Order on the trade routes. I could not maintain it. But this is of no consequence.”

  “The consequence of coming here under decree of banishment is death. I cannot stay the law,” the last phrase carried strong tones of helplessness.

  “It does not matter. I came here to die. But only after I saw you one last time.”

  The guards motioned to the servants that they should pick up the stretcher and follow them.

  Heterodymus, both Dexter and Sinistrum, looked at the Judicar with pleading expressions.

  The Judicar looked at his chalice. “I cannot stay the law,” he moaned. Then, after drinking its sweet contents, he let the metal vessel clatter to the floor, dented, scuffed, his tears spilling from its mouth onto the throne room floor.

  Chapter 9

  The Judicar sat on his throne brooding in near darkness. He had not eaten for days. Only the draughts that Selene brought to him from time to time sustained him, quenching his thirst and giving moisture to his filthy skin. The only movements he made were the laborious trips to the cistern and to bed, to relieve himself and catch a few hours of troubled, unsatisfying sleep. Selene helped him, as he was sometimes so weak that he was unable to hold himself upright. In those moments, he thought of her as an angel, her white hair shining through his dolor.

  She stood behind his throne as Heterodymus entered the room only long enough to make a short, almost mechanical announcement before wheeling about and leaving. “It is done.” The Judicar, even in his weakened state, could see that his servant was merely following procedure in the most perfunctory manner possible. He raised his hand to the twin's receding back, trying to hail him, but Selene gently pushed the hand back down to the arm of the throne while giving the retreating counselor an icy stare.

  “Father, you should not worry so about Heterodymus.”

  “But he is my friend and my counselor.”

  “No, father. He is merely a servant.” The Tarans were sleeping in the air above her, cradled in hammocks of silk scarves.

  The Judicar's voice filled with sadness. “He is disappointed in me.”

  “He does not understand your accomplishments, father.”

  “Accomplishments?” he said in surprise. “Accomplishments.” He chuckled, then coughed. “Tell me of these accomplishments, Selene.” His voice was a touch slow, his words slurred from lack of sleep. He looked ten years older than when he had first gone out to battle against Cimbri and the Scaramouche.

  “Your charge against the Scaramouche was most brave,” she said cheerfully.

  “Brave?”

  “Yes, you rode gallantly into the enemy, though severely outnumbered. And all the courtiers and their daughters commented at length on how handsome you look in your armor.” She smile and winked at him.

  “Bah! True men of war do not care for fashion in battle. What do women know of such things?”

  “Not nearly enough, I suppose. But beyond fashion, you charged headlong into the midst of an opposing force . . .”

  “I became lost,” he laughed in self-deprecation.

  “. . . and bested their leader in one-on-one combat.”

  The Judicar abruptly stopped laughing. His face sagged under the weight of emotion.

  “And now, father, you have defeated another enemy, snatching victory from ignominy without even the use of arms.” She poun
ded her fist into her hand with each of the last six words for emphasis.

  She knelt next to his throne, looking up at his downcast face from the arm of the throne. His blue eyes were empty of light, reflecting pools of heartache.

  “And you did this without breaking your oaths. You have unflinchingly kept your side of every covenant you have entered. Is not this a thing of great merit? Lesser men would have buckled under the pressures you have endured.”

  She stood up before him, holding his hand in hers. He looked up at her softly-glowing whiteness. “And, most importantly, you have restored order to Procellarium and righted the wrongs of entropy. For this you shall be hailed for generations to come as the last Judicar worthy of his title.”

  He looked down at his lap again, then up at Selene. He stood suddenly, decisively, startling the napping Tarans awake. They rubbed their eyes with tiny fists, then looked at him with disdain through half-open lids.

  “You are right, my dear. I have fulfilled my imperative and must continue to do so. My spirits have flagged as of late, but I see now that I have discharged my duty as well as can be expected.” He slowly bent his back, then sagged back down into his throne.

  “But still?” Selene questioned, sensing that he had something more to say.

  “But still . . . I am saddened.”

  “I think, my dear father, that you suffer from being locked away in your chambers for so long. You have forgotten about the common people to whom you have dedicated your time and efforts. By all means, you should be joyful in their presence, father. You are allowed discretion, in certain matters of ceremony, to do just that. Some pomp might do you good. A parade, perhaps?” She smiled.

  An odd thing, thought the Judicar, that he had never, ever noticed her smiling before this conversation. Not in all his or her years.

  A grin expanded across his face. “Yes. Yes, I deserve, my people deserve a bit of celebration!”

  He snapped his fingers, bringing several waist-high pygmy servants scampering in to fulfill his orders.

  “This will be a celebration to remember!” Selene exclaimed. The Judicar was invigorated. A new energy permeated the palace. Light had returned.

  Chapter 10

  The Judicar welcomed the publicity of the parades. Events of state were the one time the Judicar did not feel quarantined from the rest of common society. Most of the year was spent insulated from the majority of the population by his knights, his counselor, and, possibly, lawyers, his servants, and his family. Even during times when affairs were going well, being before the public was like fresh air, a patch of green grass in the lunar desert. Today, for the first time in a long time, he would feel alive again.

  They stood on a broad balcony – the Judicar, Heterodymus, Selene, and a group of a dozen bodyguards and servants – a hundred feet above the street. The balustrade was richly cut with ivory geese, necks and wings intertwining in an architectural ballet along the railing's edges. The archway behind them was crested with a pair of geese, their wings extended to hold up the keystone, a delicately carved white marble frieze of the blue planet above. Buildings across the promenade blocked the harsh light of the setting sun, allowing the company reprieve in their immense rectangular shadows. Above them the main palatial tower thrust into the sky, stabbing its minaret a thousand feet or more into the evening light. If one looked too long at the borders of the buildings across from them, one would see their rectangular shapes burned onto their vision for some time to follow.

  On the street below the Knights of Procellarium marched at the head of a long parade. Few knights could be spared due to the security issues to the north, but those in attendance were resplendent in silver armor, holding long poles. On the top of each pole was attached a shimmering orb that cast a soft phosphorescent white glow over the streets and walls, a lesser light to rule the night. Behind them marched the less-heavily armored, but no less beautifully-attired militia. Since these men were only to be called upon in times of great need, their dress was more ceremonial than functional, as the laws and covenants of Procellarium were created to discourage incidents that might require a full-fledged army to resolve them. Their helms were, in keeping with the décor of the kingdom, surmounted with geese whose wings covered the wearer's face, save where splayed feathers allowed eyeholes. The crest was the goose's own neck and head, thrusting up and forward from the back of the helmet in a threatening, open-billed pose. Each man wore a white tunic with a small black cravat at the neck, white cape, gloves, and boots, the last two items flared dramatically at mid-arm and calf.

  The militia was several thousand strong and looked like a river of undulating milk, above which bobbed their spears and standards. The people on the sidewalks and alleys below scrambled to see the spectacle while the sounds of a band of drums, trumpets, and bagpipes grew stronger behind the militia.

  The people. The Judicar had all but forgotten the magnitude of his responsibility, how many thousands relied on him to keep order. His knights, the largest group with which he would, indeed could, surround himself for any length of time, was a speck in the ocean when compared to the throng that was his nation. He was weighed down with the thought of caring for so many people, the power of rulership drowned out by the charge of leadership. He felt small and alone, the magnificent shouts of the crowd silenced by the roar of responsibility in his head.

  He waved perfunctorily. Selene smiled and waved to the crowd, beaming from their attention, feeding on it. The Judicar looked at her and was glad for her happiness, hoping only that she might find more and more of it. He had no other daughters left to bless.

  But Selene's smile abruptly ceased, and the shouts of the crowd came back to the Judicar, only this time in a roar, the chanted lauding of Procellarium's leader and laws turned to screams and random shouts of anger and fear. He looked down to see a small group of citizens fighting with the militia, as if a stone had rolled off the bank and into the river of milk. Several knights wedged their way through the crowd to the source of the disturbance, sending a wave through the throng.

  Most of the malefactors were contained by the combined efforts of the knights, militia, and a majority of the crowd. But a few individuals and small groups slipped through the morass of bodies and made their way through the dark and empty streets of the city beyond the parade route. A group of militia detached from the main ranks to take the prisoners to a nearby square where they would surely suffer summary execution for crimes of disorder, as the laws dictated. Some of the crowd followed, drawn on by morbid curiosity, but most of the people stayed to watch the parade resume some semblance of normalcy.

  As the last of the crowds dispersed into the streets, the Judicar walked through the archway and through a series of winding hallways to the throne room. Selene took her leave and the royal bodyguards took their posts at the doorway as the Judicar sat down on his throne. Heterodymus stood silent before the throne for an uncomfortably long time, watching the Judicar. But his lord only sat, thinking. He started several times, as if to speak, but each opening word was caught in the net of a conflicting thought before it could be fully released from his mouth. Heterodymus continued to stare at him, waiting patiently.

  “What disturbs you, Heterodymus?” he finally asked. “You may speak freely.”

  The voices, both Dexter's and Sinistrum's, came so quickly that the Judicar had difficulty determining which was which. At times one would begin a sentence, while the other would end it. He had never heard this cross-pollination of sentences before and was nearly hypnotized by the effect.

  “You saw the crowd,”

  “The disturbance . . .”

  “Rebellion is being fomented.”

  “It is being allowed from within.”

  The Judicar sat upright. “Are you accusing . . .”

  “You?”

  “No, but our laws prevent such a thing from happening.”

  “Unless . . .”

  “Unless the laws are not being enforced.”

  T
he Judicar shook his head, dizzy and confused.

  “Then who?”

  Dexter and Sinistrum looked hesitant, as if wanting to avoid the very subject that they had brought up.

  “It is difficult to bring such accusations before you.”

  “Such accusations carry consequences, whether they are proven true or false, M'lord.”

  The Judicar stood and screamed in frustration, fists coming down on both thighs in a rage. “Speak, damn you! If you know something, then out with it, now!”

  The twins looked at each other, neither wanting to be the one to break the news to him.

  The Judicar regained his composure, sitting back down on his throne with a sigh. “Heterodymus, speak. You are my counselor, and what you say here need not go further.”

  They looked at each other, Sinistrum and Dexter, and nodded to each other as if to assuage their mutual fears and assure their support for one another, brothers to the end.

  “You have heard the crowd, M'lord.”

  “How they chanted.”

  The Judicar chuckled. “But they always chant at such occasions. 'Hail to the Judicar, may our nation never fail,' and 'To order, to order, we ardor for order,' blah, blah, blah. It is all pre-programmed, just as the traditions require.”

  “Sir, did you hear their exact words today?”

  “It's all a murmur from the balcony, Heterodymus, and with the cloud that has hung over me, my senses are dulled.” He put his hands up to his head, massaging his temples.

  “M'lord, after chanting momentarily to your long health . . .”

  “They began a new chant.”

  “A new chant?” The Judicar rose from his throne and walked to a window across the chamber, his steps slowing as the twins stated in eerie unison:

  “Queen Selene, Queen Selene, Queen Selene.”

  The Judicar stood at the window, peeking out into the night. He wondered for a moment how many had been put to death at the gallows since the disturbances began, then looked up at the stars that peppered the night with their astral flares. After a moment, he turned to his counselor.