Long Interlude: 775-781
Seven years passed: and little had been accomplished.
The Countess Vivian still lived at Nikolad, and still ruled what she had when her second child Anne was nursing. There were a few lines in her face and a bit of grey in her dark hair; her daughters were halfway through childhood; some of her long associates had died and many more children had been born. But to Vivian, as she studied the map of the Empire, time had worked none of its famous healing magic. Her unexplainable optimism after the Battle of Vodaru had aged into complacency and then a sad resignation. The years between that cataclysmic day, 24 July 774, and Lady Anne's eighth birthday, 2 June 781, were filled with events that shrank after seeming large. Now all of it was to her a vacillation and a delay and a niggling debate over details. Then, after all those swift empty years, something happened to renew the Countess's heart for the fight.
In the year 775, the Emperor, still weak after the bloodbath of Vodaru, began the task of subduing the rebellious Duchies. He invaded Orzali and soon took its capital, Ord, from the late Duke's heir Alando. The full conquest of the Empire's largest Duchy was not accomplished at once, however; the young Duke Alando fled to the south and continued the fight from Vendrezu, and there for a year held off an imperial army while the Emperor himself struggled to control the populous Orzalian north. Other rebellions cropped up; a renegade band of Avars feuded with Temkuz Khan, the Emperor's close ally; the Duke of Samarra and his clients in Kel and Panthalla continued to rule the sea. The small fleet belonging to the Grand Duke of Avigon was lost in an uneven battle, a foolish and premature attack on Samarra's navy, and from then on the Emperor had to do whatever he did without a fleet on the Gulf of Almery.
It was 776 before the Emperor conquered the Orzalian remnant in the county of Vendrezu, and the next year came and went and still the tiny mountain county of Tithean, under Alando and the veteran Titheanese Count Teodas, resisted. Another prince of the Orzalian ducal family escaped to Samarra, and the Emperor had to build an entire new fleet before he could do anything about that. Meanwhile, Duke Leontius of Rahavon was preparing for the inevitable.
In 777, the Emperor invaded Rahavon, to the southwest of Amari, and over the course of several battles gained the upper hand. Yet despite the spilling of an ocean of Rahavonian blood, and the extermination by various means of that whole ducal family, the struggle went on and on. Rebels in the western mountains never accepted the Emperor, fled at his approach, and re-emerged on his departure to bedevil the imperial garrisons. In neighboring Amari, to which a subservient Duke had been appointed, a new rebellion broke out on the Rahavonian model.
Countess Vivian watched with some satisfaction, and yet she saw her enemy slowly accomplishing his goal. She watched him, with increased caution, and wandered the Other Side, but always nervously. Simulacra of the Emperor there wandered the great avenue and browsed the bazaar in the strange nighted city. So Vivian, with great care, practiced her own arts. She grew in strength and knowledge, she taught her daughters, she still prepared to defend her life at any moment, and yet she believed that, even on her own turf, in an all-out fight she would be doomed. Susan grew stronger, astonishingly so to Vivian, and Anne also grew stronger, but Vivian guessed that all of them together could never take on the Emperor on his ground. He grew stronger as well, and more stable, and learned better to wield the weapons he held when seated on the ancient throne in the domed hall of the Imperial Palace. And was he not right, that Clane too was his ground? To prove otherwise, she would have to defeat him again and again, or once for all.
In Clane, summers chased winters as usual. The winter of 775-776 was brutally cold; the summer after was too dry; the winter after that saw five snowfalls of more than a foot in Tarnhold (and, at Nikolad, much more than that); then the summer of 777 was very wet. But it was not such strange weather as to be blamed on the Empire, just the usual extremes. Still the people worked the land, still there was enough to eat, still the beer was excellent, and still the grey cat couchant flew alone and free above Nikolad. And still the imperial pennant and the blue horse of Farlain flapped in the breeze over Vonnis and Angren and Intror.
On the eleventh day of January of 775, Angeline gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. The girl was named Elaine. The boy, the first one born, was sickly, and died four days later. There were many births at Nikolad in those years: each Spring, for instance, the exiled Duchess Zinyda produced a new child, a girl in 775, a boy in 776, and a girl in 777, but of the three only the first, Nerona, survived.
In May 775, word came to Nikolad of the death of Thane Burley of Skavin. He had been sick all winter and lay in his deathbed well into the spring. His son succeeded him, Thane Pecham, but Skavin, on its own since before the fall of Vonnis, no longer recognized any power beyond its hundred or so square miles.
Skirmishes with those who occupied Clane went on all through the intervening years, and there was one major military endeavor. In 776, Duke Salvar led a force of eight thousand that sacked Dubkarin, but was forced to withdraw with losses after Sir Francis Weaver and his thousand cataphracts cut his supply line, and the infantry of the Rukh repeatedly humiliated the Farlain knights. Imperial raids and patrols out of Angren likewise proved too costly for the occupiers, and by and by the two sides settled into an uneasy toleration. Before this could occur, however, Captain Edwy Sallier, leading a raid out of the hills into Intror, was hit by an arrow and killed. Lady Mirabel, whose second daughter had just died at the age of two weeks, was inconsolable, at least by any means known at the time to the Countess, who wondered if it would be any different if, or when, the same befell her.
Still Vivian continued to allow Willd to dare peril on scouting missions, along with Ellean Rain and Martin of Auzel, and among them they collected a dozen wounds and a similar number of arrows stuck in hats and packs and cloaks. Sir Rogier's daughter Annie and Sigrith's daughter Siglind joined the next generation of errand-riders. Lady Valerie de Nikolad, six feet tall and well-muscled, proved herself as a horse archer, and rose to become Sir Francis's trusted captain, the first woman in the Cataphracts; in a few years there were several dozen, mostly Rukh. Sir Rogier and family resumed residence at Clatu in the spring of 777, which coincided with the marriage of his elder daughter Elizabeth to Anair, son of the murdered Armand of Angren.
The fall of 777 was as gorgeous as any Vivian had seen even in Vonnis, and the winter was mild, and the spring was heartbreakingly beautiful. It was on 11 April 778, a fine day, that the Countess was walking with Jen in the orchards of Nikolad, on the lower slope of the mountain, when Martin of Auzel rode up from the town. He dismounted a little way from them and approached on foot, his hat off and his head bent.
"What is it?" asked Vivian.
"My lady," said Martin, "Thane Horst is dead."
Horst de Fugad was sixty-eight, although it was hard to remember that he was aging at all. That New Year's had been his forty-first as Thane of Westdubbik, and he had actually danced Vivian around his banquet hall--she had decided, for once, to take him up on his invitation to the Dubkarin feast. She had last seen him in late March at Nikolad; they had walked several rounds of the walls, discussing the changeless military situation. He had gone back to Dubkarin with no greater ambition than to see the fields readied for planting once more. No one ever doubted the strength of his heart, but, stepping outside for a breath of air on the ninth of April, he grabbed his chest and collapsed. He never revived.
By the time Martin had finished muttering the details of the Thane's death, the two women were no longer listening, but sitting on the ground sobbing together, Jen holding Vivian like a mother comforting a child.
The funeral was at Dubkarin. The entire Council and Thanes Sigrith, Rodrik and Hugo were there, but all the great lords and ladies held back as the body of the Thane was wept over and embraced and kissed and pleaded to by peasant women and middle-aged soldier farmers and the burgesses and tradesfolk of the town. Then his ashes were buried in the town cemetery at sunset of another fine spring day, and while Sir Rogier wiped a tear from his eye and the Rain sisters wept and the old women of Dubkarin wrung out their hankies, Countess Vivian just stared at the sod, thinking of her father's funeral ten years before, on a bone-freezing day in January. She wondered again what to think of it all. What was the point? What was she to get out of this? Horst de Fugad had been, and now, suddenly, he was not, and here she still was. Then of a sudden she remembered him at New Year's, spinning little her about the floor and laughing, and she bent double in tears.
His daughter Agnes became Thane of Westdubbik. Everyone agreed that Sigrith was the only possible choice for Lord Consul--it was Egon's suggestion originally. She was capable and experienced and popular, of course, and she soon exhibited a similarity of personality to the departed Thane that few had suspected.
Later in the summer word came to Clane of the death of Duke George of Samarra, the last of the rebel dukes--but not so. He had fallen victim to a minor pestilence, but his sons took up his father's cause, backed up still by Kel and Panthalla. Rumor had it that the Emperor had a way of spreading plague among the rebel states, but if it was so, it was not a terribly virulent pest. If the purpose had been to wipe out Samarra's leadership, it had failed even that lesser goal.
Perhaps such a power, or perhaps nature, explained the influenza that passed through Clane in December 778 and January 779. The toll again was not terrible--perhaps a dozen died in Nikolad, half of them children--but one of the adult victims was the treasurer of Clane, the quiet, rotund and efficient Maura d'Acali. One day she had a terrible cough; the next, a fever; and two days after that, on the last day of January, she died in her sleep, not quite sixty years of age. She had no family that Vivian knew of until her death--but here came her mother, over eighty, and a widowed sister who had just in the past year moved back to Acali. They cried all over Vivian, who cried along with them. Later that night, she was still crying, halfway through her third pint of ale.
"I never told her how good she was," Vivian sobbed.
"Oh, yes, you did," said Angeline, who was pregnant again. Ellean, Miranda, Mirabel and Jen all nodded. "So you can't feel bad about that."
"Yes," said Ellean. "You'll have to find something else."
"All my ministers are dying," said Vivian.
"That's very sad," agreed Ellean. "Who's going to be your new treasurer?"
"How about Ellean?" suggested Angeline.
"Thanks," said Vivian, "I needed to hear something funny." She started to whimper again.
"Well," said Jen, "how about Lady Mirabel?"
They all looked at Jen as though someone else had slipped in and taken her place. She shrugged, gripped her glass with both hands and stared at its contents. Then the women all looked at Lady Mirabel. "Oh, I couldn't," said Mirabel.
"Why not?" asked Vivian. "You keep good accounts for Nikolad. You're honest, trustworthy, let's see, honest--"
"You said that," Ellean pointed out.
"Well, it's important. Maura was honest, Neil wasn't. Loved her, hated him."
"He's alive, she isn't," said Ellean.
Vivian looked her in the eye. "Give me time, girl, give me time." She turned her attention to Lady Mirabel. "I propose a toast--to our new Treasurer."
"I really couldn't," said Mirabel.
"Did I ask you?" replied the Countess. "Drink."
And so they drank, and then again to the memory of the faithful Maura, but it was not the last of the Council's losses. Fergus Clark, climbing the stairs of the keep that March, suddenly became dizzy and fell back down. His son caught him before he did much damage to himself, but he slid into unconsciousness, and only the medicines of Miranda and the steady care of his family--and perhaps, the attention of the Countess, who sat beside him for an hour each night for a week--saved his life. He had suffered a stroke, and although he lived, his hands and feet no longer entirely heeded his instructions. This was a calamity of the first order. His handwriting was his trade, and now it was all he could do to produce a few legible words at a sitting. For a few months his mood was black, and it seemed he waited only for the return swing of the scythe.
Yet as the summer broadened, Lady Mirabel put him to work in the square. There was a statue put up in June of Thane Horst de Fugad, and Fergus Clark was informed that a bed of flowers around it would be nice. He threw himself into the task, and chased away all who came near, children to step in the plot, adults to offer advice. "At least," said Vivian, after being herself chased away by the old man, "he's no longer grumbling about his health." His hands were stopped from writing, but were still sufficiently agile to plant and water and prune and weed. Fergus took up talking more than he had for many years, and gradually he accepted a new position in the Countess's regime: gardener, story-teller and know-it-all.
Vivian's inclination was to restore Edgar to the position of Scribe, but to her surprise he declined. "My lady," he said, "do you not like the work I've been doing on the Annals of Clane?"
"I do, I do. It's ten times better written than the Annals of the Empire. And if it reflects any bias, it's a Clanish bias, and I'm all for that. I just thought you'd want your old job back."
"I thought I would too, my lady, but--well, what about Anne Atgate?"
"What? Anne Atgate? I thought you didn't like her. Oh, no, now I remember. You were in love with her handwriting."
He blushed, but did not deny it. And with Thane Sigrith's consent, Anne Atgate was appointed Scribe to the Countess. After the eager Edgar and the family man Fergus, the diffident and efficient Anne took some getting used to. The Countess could not have invented a better scribe. It was more than just her handwriting, although that was indeed as beautiful as the woman herself was plain. She said nothing but always managed to be at Vivian's elbow when needed. "You'll get used to it," Sigrith told the Countess. "I did, though it took a while."
The Clark clan's next generation began to take up the family trade: Fergus's son Andreas became the scribe of Mirabel de Nikolad, and daughter Mariane went to Hvanar to work for Thane Sigrith. Meanwhile the new Council members found their footing. Mirabel turned out to be a natural treasurer, even if she lacked her predecessor's legendary ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide in her head; Sigrith had even less trouble than Vivian had expected gaining the trust of the captains; the scribe soon threatened to organize Vivian's business completely. Sir Rogier, the only remaining council member from the time of Count Edmund, seemed not to age except in a barely discernable mellowing. The new Council met at Nikolad on the ninth day of July of 779, and in order of tenure they were: Sir Rogier de Clatu, Minister of State; Countess Vivian; Purcell Colmack, Minister of the Interior; Sir Francis Weaver, Horse Marshal; High Priestess Enjele Ennis; Thane Sigrith of Siret, Lord Consul; Lady Mirabel de Nikolad, Treasurer; and Anne Atgate, Scribe. All four loyal Thanes were present: old Hugo of Tarnhold, Sigrith of Siret, young Rodrik of Selac and Agnes of Westdubbik. There was not much business to do, although they looked out on an increasingly unfamiliar world beyond their frontiers.
"Tithean still resists, under Count Teodas and Alando of Orzali," Sir Rogier told them. "So do the rebels in Rahavon and Amari, and the Duke of Samarra with his island allies. There has been some sort of attempt to reconstruct the County of Shadewind, with the Avar Khan dressed up in the robes of Count, but the Avars do not like settled towns, so I suppose Old Marchwind must be a camp of tents these days. Salvar is still Duke of Farlain, and our own Thane Karlan is now his favorite underling. I hope Karlan appreciates the Empire: it gives him an excuse for switching his allegiance."
"I wonder if he knew," mused Vivian. "I wonder how many of them knew. How's our old friend Neil these days?"
"We don't hear his name much, but he still seems to be a sort of military governor of Vonnis and the Domain. He and Karlan both still await your orders of execution, my lady."
"Give me time. Oh, Neil must have known: the Big Guy was hiding in his basement for years before claiming the throne. Well, go on; I suppose the rest of the Empire must have its own Neils and Karlans."
"Oh, indeed," said Sir Rogier. "The Grand Duchy of Avigon, for instance, has passed from father to son with no detectable increase in backbone, and of course Amari and Allor and Orzali and Rahavon have been given new lackey Dukes. Umoro has come to accept the new order, and seems happily ignored as usual, an enviable state. The Emperor has been building a fleet in the Lavan between Dukesfal and Avigon, so no doubt he means to have another go at the islands soon. Still, since Salvar's raid on Dubkarin, there's been no hint of intention to subdue poor little Clane. I know of no reason for this, but I am happy enough with it not to complain."
"I don't trust it at all," said Vivian.
"My lady, it's just the weave of History."
"I really don't trust History," said Vivian. "Ask me why."
Meanwhile, as Mirabel de Nikolad attested, the Thanes paid their tenths to the Countess, and all paid their tenths to the Empire--in the person of the Countess. What was to be done with the Imperial Tenths was unargued: Vivian would keep them and spend them on military security, as she always had. What legality this now fell under was debatable: did they renounce the Empire and call the extra taxes the Countess's Tenth, or did they keep them as before, more or less as a memorial to the old way, or did they hold out hope for a Better Emperor, or perhaps an imperial government by committee of the Lords Sovereign? It was an abstract debate. The Emperor had always had one purpose, from the point of view of the merchant, the farmer and the artisan, and that was the security of his citizens. The money that would have gone to him was still spent on security. Viewed in this light, nothing had changed.
There was almost no trade between Clane and the rest of the Empire, which made little difference to what currently constituted Clane: the parts that had done trade south were all in the hands of Farlain now anyway, and none the better for it. Now the county began to exchange some goods with the Rukh that lived over the mountains. This started with Egon's commerce in cheese exchanged for amber. By 780 a small trade route had sprung up from Heldvarn and Simkin up through "Rocky Notch", the high valley where gathered the streams that formed the Rocky River, and thence over a low part of the mountains to the wild pine forest where the old chieftain and former invader Faulk was counted a representative of civilization.
Still Vivian watched the Emperor, and still she felt the Emperor watching her. He was holding back, as one avoiding a wasps' nest, who remembered being stung--but she sensed also a fear that mirrored her own bone-deep fear of him. And somehow she came, as if through long association, to see into this most mysterious figure: and she knew that he did not fear her (as well he should have, she thought) so much as something that might come from her.
Still summers followed winters, crops were planted and reaped, and children went on being born and growing up. Susan and Anne and Robin and Jack and Prince Othos and Mirabel's Patricia and Elaine and Nerona and the other children of Nikolad filled the square and the gorge and the mountainside and the orchards with noise. Jack was the eldest of this knot of kids, Suzy was the ringleader, Othos the daredevil, Annie the sweet one, Patricia the brain, Elaine and Nerona the tag-along younger ones and Robin the icky one, always with his hands muddy, always with a frog or a mouse peering out of a pocket.
Duchess Zinyda continued to bear children to Prince Frenerac each spring: in 778 a son named Maragon, in 779 another son who did not survive, and in 780 a daughter named Helizu. She was the last child they would have: the beautiful Duchess sacrificed her health in bearing Helizu, and died the next December of a fever. Frenerac's sorrow bordered on the self-destructive, but his resulting recklessness in Clanish raids did not earn him a glorious death, nor a place at his wife's side in the halls of the ancestors: only a reputation as a daring and courageous horseman, and among the enemy as a madman deadly to meet in battle. It also earned him a succession of new horses.
Angeline had her third surviving son, Henry, on 25 July 779, and then in August of 780 had a second daughter, Marrai. The girl was beautiful, as even Sir Rogier admitted, and her parents were terribly in love with her. Ellean continued to prize her freedom. She certainly did have lovers--Martin of Auzel was a main squeeze--but she swore she would never have a child. Her roommate, Jen, took no such oath--and in the summer of 780 became ever more clearly pregnant. Of course she'd never broach the subject herself. Vivian finally asked, as they were sitting down for a pint with Mirabel in early September.
"And the father is...?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Jen, as if she had no idea what Vivian meant.
"Oh, don't be coy. You must know."
"But he doesn't want me," said Jen, bursting into tears. "I was so foolish. We only, I, well, I mean, only twice, I never thought--but I should've known. Now it's mine to worry about."
"Oh, Jen. I'll be father to your child. Don't worry."
But Jen worried, and so did Vivian, about various things, especially when another round of influenza passed through Clane that October. It put poor Zinyda on her deathbed, and killed many children of the county. Both Susan and Anne were very sick--but young Marrai died. Angeline, unable to cope with further heartbreak, swore off having kids. For her part Vivian, listening to both her daughters coughing in the night, began to think once more of the tenuous thread on which hung the survival of her house. She was thirty-four, strong and healthy, and she stopped using her herbal powder two weeks after Marrai's death.
At first nothing seemed to happen, but she was paying too close attention. In December, just when she had given up on having a third child, she began to have dreams. In them she saw herself standing in a half-lit room, with an unseen barrier separating her from a handsome and earnest young man. He smiled at her, and tried to speak, or to reach her, but they could not touch. Later, in her dreams, she was walking with her daughters, and they saw, far off in the blowing grasses, the young man grappling with the shadow figure. Vivian and Susan and Anne ran across the fields toward them, but they could not help the young man: the struggle was his alone. On trips to the Other Side, he was there in the garden, but always a little way off. Vivian worried of the danger, for the Other Side was a different place now, with simulacra of the Emperor patrolling the gardens, and sinister crowds packing the City. The Lady of the Fountain was also more than usually anxious.
The winter was quite cold, and on its coldest night, as the wind sculpted the fine snow in the fields and orchards around Nikolad and howled between the stone buildings, Jen went into labor. Attended by Miranda as well as the Countess herself, the maid gave birth near dawn on 11 January, with much pain and many tears but little complaint, to a healthy daughter. The girl was named Violet, and this fatherless child of a servant was raised by all the great ladies of Nikolad.
By Susan's tenth birthday, in March 781, Vivian was showing even through a winter coat. She was confident enough to tell her intimate council that she expected a son, in July perhaps. But the dreams gave her increasing discomfort. Even in her trances she sensed the Imperial Eye turned upon Clane as it had not been in seven years.
By full spring Vivian was listless and distracted. She often seemed to grasp at something below her neck, as though touching a gem upon her breast. The full sun of May and the smell of mud and the flowers everywhere and the songs of birds and the universal music of rills and streamlets falling toward the Glass River: these had no effect on Vivian, who walked in her own cold world.
In that world were only six people: Vivian, her tutor and her two daughters, and the Emperor, and the son to come. The son was pursued by the imperial shadow, which avoided Vivian but hated and feared her male progeny. Susan and Anne shared in many of the dreams, especially when they shared their parents' bed, which was often; but they did not understand. As often with children, their lack of understanding helped Vivian understand. He fears my son, she thought. He should fear my daughters. He should fear me.
On the night of 28 May 781 Vivian lay beside her Willd, with Susan curled up next to her and Anne between them. Perhaps the girls thought that they could protect their mother from whatever threatened, but she had a dream that surpassed all the previous dreams. Through a grey-green haze she was pursued. The Lady of the Fountain was there, floating as it were at the edge of the vision, twisting her long hair in anxious hands. With her, of all people, Willd seemed to stand. Vivian and her children--all three of them--were running through an empty landscape, pursued by the Emperor and a half-seen beast of the air. Ever they ran, and ever the pursuers closed in on them. At last Vivian, fearing for her children, turned to fight. The Emperor struggled with her, but Vivian, the teardrop gem shining at her neck, held him back. Then the bird-thing dropped upon her and she threw her hands up to ward it off. The Emperor knocked her down--and went on, leaving her lying on the ground. In a moment Susan and Anne were helping her up. She was exhausted and frightened and bruised, but she was ready to fight again.
But it was too late. The Emperor had closed in on the young man, and already each held the other by the neck. They fought, but it was not even: an old and monstrously powerful man against a boy not even born yet. Before Vivian and her daughters could do more than shout, the son that would have been was strangled. The Lady cried out in dismay: No! Not this time! Yet there lay the handsome young man, a dead thing in the strange grassland. The Emperor gave the Countess a last look. But there was no gloating now, only apprehension. She and her girls were screaming at him in their rage: You are a dead man! You will die at our hands! Your doom is sealed! You are ours! Anne and Susan continued to wail curses at him as he stood over his victim, while Vivian turned and found the Lady beside her. She buried her face in her tutor's black raiment.
A rending pain pulled Vivian into a hazy waking. Miranda mac Conahay was trying to do something, Vivian couldn't see what. The pain returned, so intense that she heard her own voice fill the world with a long scream. Then she fell back into senselessness, a land of no dream. A tiny thought flitted through her head: that even in sleep he was there, so only in death would she escape from him completely.
Then she was rising through the haze of pain. He was watching, somewhere far off. She cursed him every way she could think of--and then she opened her eyes.
She was in her own bed. Susan and Anne stood beside her. Behind them, sleeping in chairs, were Willd, Ellean and Miranda. It was day. It turned out, later, that it was Anne's birthday, three days after the stillbirth of Vivian's only son.
Vivian looked straight into Susan's fathomless blue eyes. "Suzy," she managed to say in a wheezing gasp.
"Don't worry," said Suzy, brushing her mother's hair with her hand. She had a look full of knowledge, of wisdom shocking to see in a ten-year-old's eyes. "Don't worry. We'll take him. He'll die for what he's done." Annie smiled and gripped Vivian's hand.
"He has no idea," said Vivian, reaching out to brush Suzy's sandy hair. "He has no idea what a mistake he's made."