The Dictator of Ortia bowed low and
waited. Aquilegia stepped forward to embrace him. Then they separated and stood
a few feet apart. As they stood there, awkward and uncertain, Aurelian wondered
why the Lady had chosen this grave, very young, elf as High Priestess. There
was nothing that obviously recommended her above all the other one hundred and
thirty eight priestesses in the temple.
‘How can I help you,
Lord Dictator?’ she asked.
He swallowed hard –
he was about to ask for a big favour. He thought it best just to blurt it out.
‘I’ve helped you, and
now I need you to help me, if you can’
Aquilegia frowned.
She stood very straight but looked very frail.
‘What sort of help?’
‘I want to you to
assist Baron Von Eisen’
The High Priestess
took a step backwards.
‘Do you mean the former
Grandmaster of the order of the Knights of the Crimson Flame?’
He nodded.
‘I went to see him
yesterday. His jailor insisted that I now have authority over him’
‘He’s in custody
isn’t he? How can we be of any help?’
‘I’ve been to see him
several times over the last few days.
He’s ill’
Aquilegia looked
puzzled.
‘We have no greater
healing powers than your healers, Dictator’
‘It is not an ailment
of the body, High Priestess, but of the mind. He has gone insane’
‘What form does this
insanity take?’
Sweat pricked on
Aurelian’s brow. He had found his visits to von Eisen harrowing and rather hard
to make sense of. He made the best stab he could at explaining.
‘He sees visions, he
spouts nonsense, he seems to be living in an unhappy fantasy world where he is
wracked by guilt… or maybe he is in there trying to avoid the guilt – I’m not
entirely sure’
She leant across to take
his hands in hers. He felt as if his
feelings were being drawn out of him so that they could be analysed. One side
effect, fortunately, was that briefly he felt less concerned.
‘You are disturbed by
this, I can tell, but why should this trouble the Lady? He is a traitor who
threatened the stability of the Empire’
He felt a strong
desire to pull his hands out from under hers but he forced himself to stay
completely still.
‘Because you have
skills with broken minds that we cannot hope to match’
‘What are you
proposing?’
‘I want you to give
him sanctuary – at least until he is made well’
Aquilegia grasped on
to his hands ever more tightly. She had the fingers of a slender priestess but
they were powered by a god. Her voice was suddenly almost harsh.
‘Sanctuary? On what
grounds?’
‘He is a broken soul
and he lives in a dreadful state. He has been thrown into a dungeon and left to
rot. No-one deserves such treatment and I cannot allow it’
‘What will you do
with him if we refuse to look after him?’
He finally tried to
drop his hands. She let go immediately. The spiritual bit was over- now it was
time for politics.
‘I will send him back
to his lands in Formor, broken yes, but nonetheless still potentially dangerous’
‘Why would you do
that?’
‘Because I will not
hold him indefinitely without trial, and he is not fit to stand trial as he is.
If you will not take him then I will not take further responsibility for his
continuing decline. He would be better among his own kind. I will, of course, when
I send him to Formor write to the King with full details of his actions.
Perhaps he will see fit to punish him’
She scowled; her face
temporarily aging by decades. She proclaimed her partial judgment.
‘His actions led to
an attack on the City and the death of my predecessor. It is not fitting that
he should just leave imperial jurisdiction. He must pay for his actions or
atone for them’
The Dictator folded
his arms. On this point he was resolute.
‘He’s lost his mind,
High Priestess. He cannot pay for
anything…’
Aquilegia stood still
and quiet for a second and then a decision was reached. Aurelian had no idea
whether this was an individual or a collective judgement and he really didn’t
care.
‘Have him brought to
me and I will see what can be done’
***
He returned to his headquarters, had
lunch with Lieutenant Gaius and then dealt with his correspondence. He had had a flurry of letters from all
corners of the Empire. A messenger had
hurried one to him from the Emperor but it hadn’t said a great deal beyond
accepting his temporary appointment as dictator and telling him to wait for
more orders. Most usefully, though, it
did warn him that an imperial force would be coming soon to restore Antonius to
his position. He wondered what good this would do – he assumed that if she
wanted to the Lady could just ping the foolish elf back to Visnea again. And so
on.
Bellis, Proconsul of
Monurbis, who he had invited to take counsel with him, had written apologising
that he was unable to come for the time being. He was still dealing with the
rebuilding and decontamination of Monurbis and the route to Ortia was not yet
entirely safe, particularly for an elf of advancing years. He offered to send troops
with his general, Otto, if they were needed, but Aurelian got the strong
impression that the wily old proconsul was simply being prudent. To come now
might suggest an alliance of the isolated and the odd – not the sort of thing
that a city full of barbarian knights and reformed kinaam ought to be doing if
they sought acceptance by their compatriots.
He had written several
letters to Viola in Gorodnikov, in the hope of getting some advice, or if not
that, just some moral support. However, he had had no reply and that was
worrying him. He was tempted to use one of the precious mail papers that
Marthian had given him to check how she was. It was only now that Viola was
gone that he realised what a good friend and ally she had been. She understood
Marthian so very well.
He had had a series
of letters from Marthian, of course. She had told him about the message from
the Lady and she had assured him that she had no intention of returning before
she had a direct order from Pallatian. Aurelian’s brain agreed with this
wholeheartedly, but his heart was willing her home. He struggled not to write
it down in his regular letters – come
home, I really miss you, or, I really
don’t know what I’m doing. She was his love and his liege lady and he had
no idea what to do without her. He had
set the city to hibernate, delegated what he could, and was now just waiting.
***
Two days later von Eisen was removed to
the Temple and Aquilegia took him inside to attempt to heal him. Aurelian only
heard about it second hand, but he was pleased and relieved to see the old
dungeon emptied. After that he ordered a team of builders to go down and seal
up the area permanently. He wasn’t entirely sure why. He told them that he
considered the accommodation unsuitable for a civilised city, but it wasn’t
only that. The few times that he had been down there, listening to the Baron’s
ranting he had felt something he had never felt before – a presence of evil,
something that lurked around the poor benighted traitor and was devouring him.
He had no idea what it was and he knew rationally that it was inside von Eisen
and would move with him. But a visceral part of himself felt that the dark
place far underground was now cursed and it felt wisest to abandon it.
Even beyond any of
these justifications, he was unable to face the most profound reason for his
actions. When he had been down in the cells, just he and the Baron, while the
madman had chattered away to his invisible companion, he had heard something.
He could have sworn that he had sensed, for a long, terrifying, moment, the
other voice in the room.
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