said coldly, ‘A man such as Ansel Pikan is not a hired hand nor a common doctor to be ordered about like a servant. In my country he’s reckoned a mystical healer of the highest degree, more revered than your Abbas of Zeth. He came to Cala because I besought him from the bottom of my heart — not because of any promised stipend. Yes, I intend to reward him well! But I will do it from my own treasure. Is that quite clear? And if Ansel chooses to use his healing powers on a mere sick child in the meantime, that’s his business and none of the Crown’s.’
‘Hmph!’ said the queen, unmollified.
The women were not friends, as happens often enough with wife and husband’s mother, but thus far on the long journey they had contrived to keep peace between themselves for the sake of the dying man whom both of them loved. Cataldise Blackhorse was of ancient Cathran stock, a small person, deceptively mild in demeanor, rosy-cheeked and stout but with iron-colored eyes and a will to match. She was the one who had begged Olmigon to appoint her brother Vra-Kilian to the post of Royal Alchymist. The king had been unable to resist her plea, to his lasting regret. Until Conrig came of age and became Lord Constable, Kilian had dominated the Privy Council through sheer force of personality. The prince and the wizard had been at loggerheads ever since, with Olmigon frequently caught in the middle.
Princess Maudrayne Northkeep was the favorite niece of Sernin Donorvale, the dauntless First Sealord of Tarn. Tall as a man, with high breasts, curling auburn tresses, and piercing blue eyes, she was so lovely that Conrig would choose none other from among the eligible Tarnian maidens — in spite of her reputation as a short-tempered hellcat with a tongue like a rapier. Their mating had been a clash of titans, wildly ecstatic at first, then tempestuous as the Prince Heritor became obsessed with achieving the Sovereignty of Blenholme and spent less and less time with his demanding wife. Of late, their relations had been not so much stormy as detached and ominously formal. And Maudrayne knew why.
Her apparent inability to conceive a child had frightened and infuriated the princess. Her temper soured and her desperation grew as Conrig’s ardor cooled. He still treated her with respect, but they bedded joylessly now, only in hopes of engendering an heir to the throne. Oddly, as the princess became estranged from her ambitious husband, she drew closer to the morose and suffering king — two tormented souls who had begun to fear that they had failed in their duty through fault of their own.
Maudrayne now carefully uncovered Olmigon’s abdomen and examined the stout truss contrived by the Tarnian healer that now confined the ruptured bowel to its natural place. Then she restored the king’s garments and the covering. ‘All is in order with the binding. His Grace seems much improved the last few days, no doubt buoyed up by anticipation.’
Queen Cataldise gave the younger woman a hard glance. ‘And what will happen when his hopes are dashed? My husband would have been content to remain safely in Cala if your uncouth witch-doctor had kept a tactful tongue in his head.’
‘Ansel only spoke the truth,’ Maudrayne retorted, ‘as must all of his kind. The King’s Grace asked plainly how many days were left to him. In my homeland, the dying have a right to know this, so that they may put their affairs in order. It’s a stupid Cathran custom that healers should lie to the patient about impending death, out of misplaced kindness.’
‘So you say, madam! And I say your custom is cruel to deny all hope of remission or recovery. Is your precious Ansel a seer as well as a physician, to state positively that my royal husband will surely die within two moons — making him determined to undertake this vain journey that can only hasten his demise and perhaps disrupt the peace of the realm?’
‘Red Ansel is indeed a seer,’ Maudrayne shot back. ‘A mighty practitioner of both natural and supernatural science. He did the king good service, and only an ingrate would speak ill of it. As to the pilgrimage, if it comforts Olmigon’s uneasy heart, how can it be vain? I thought you approved.’
‘Approve? Bah! Any educated person knows that the Promise of Bazekoy is only an ancient superstition. No Cathran monarch for the past three hundred years has given the oracle credence — only my poor simple-hearted darling. Yet I could not distress him by telling him so.’
‘The king has a right to ask his Question. So said Abbas Noachil himself, when windspoken by the Royal Alchymist. Call it superstition if you dare, madam. I say this pilgrimage will give the king consolation in his final days.’
‘And shorten his life!’
‘He knew the price and accepted it. So must you. If his Question receives a clear and felicitous answer, it may bring solace to the Cathran people as well as to His Grace.’
‘If we only knew what he intends to ask!’ the queen fumed. ‘But he won’t say. What if the oracle stands mute? Worse, what if it’s only some ancient charade once countenanced by the Brothers of Zeth, but now, in this more enlightened age, become mercifully obsolete?’
‘The king will ask his Question,’ Maudrayne repeated. ‘Abbas Noachill conceded him that right, but he did not say whether there would be an answer. Thus it is with all prayers. And yet we continue to storm heaven, madam — you and I as well as the king.’
She fixed her mother-in-law with a challenging stare, and Cataldise had the grace to look away, abashed.
‘I never counseled my son to put you aside for barrenness,’ the queen said in a low voice. ‘Nor did the king. Both you and Conrig are young. There is time for you to have children.’
‘That’s true. Remind your son of it! Ah, God — if only I could put my own Question to Bazekoy! I know what I would ask. But the emperor’s oracle only speaks to a dying ruler of Cathra. The rest of us can only petition the unseen, silent God and try not to despair.’
The cavalcade arrived at the gate of Zeth Abbey at the end of a dreary, overcast afternoon. The animals and most of the travelers were bone-tired and covered with grey dust, the latter a legacy of the Wolf’s Breath. The periodic bouts of falling ash had afflicted this region of the kingdom more than the parts further south, strewing the ground with pale patches like thin frost, even after summer thunderstorms and the soft rains of autumn had washed much of it away. In a fine paradox, the ash greatly enriched the soil; but only when the Wolf’s Breath ceased to dim the sun would folk reap its benefits.
King Olmigon had roused as the coach covered the final league of the journey, taking both water and nourishment and declaring that his pain was much diminished. When they rolled into the abbey his mind was clear and his spirits high. Abbas Noachil, a stooped ancient with shrewd, bird-like eyes, stood in the forecourt with all of the resident Brethren to welcome the royal party.
Supported by the two lords-in-waiting, Olmigon alighted from the carriage, then settled into an open chair-litter that would be borne by four of the red-cowled Brothers. The queen and princess flanked him and the Royal Alchymist hovered behind. Olmigon was dressed in a loose gown of white velvet, having a hood edged with blue fox fur. As befitted a pilgrim, he wore no crown and no ornament. A wooden disk with the gammadion’s voided cross burnt into it hung from his neck by a leather thong. His hair and beard were a dingy yellowish color and sadly sparse, and weight-loss occasioned by the rigors of the trip had left his face seamed and wrinkled as a withered apple. His eyes were opaque hazel pebbles sunk in rheumy pits.
‘God’s peace and the blessing of Saint Zeth be upon you,’ Abbas Noachil said. ‘Who are you, and why have you come to this holy place?’ The question was a formality, because the Royal Alchymist had windspoken the progress of the procession to Noachil every day it was en route. But it was necessary that the king make his unusual request with his own lips.
‘I am Olmigon Wincantor, High King of Blencathra.’ His voice was little more than a whisper, but without tremor or hesitation. ‘I have come here, where Bazekoy the Great, Emperor of the World, breathed his last, in order to ask my one Question and receive a true answer, as is my right. Know that my own body is failing, and I am prepared