A Solitary Journey (4 page)

She approached the hive, registering carefully how the bees reacted to her presence as she got closer. The hive was nestled in a natural crack in the gum trunk and honeycomb jutted from it. The bees swirled around her, some alighting on her arms and face and shoulders, but she relaxed, ignoring them, and reached the tree. Slowly, she reached for a chunk of white honeycomb protruding from the main mass and casually brushed away the black-and-yellow bees clinging to it without making a fuss. Then she broke off the portion of
honeycomb and walked calmly back towards the river, feeling the raw golden honey oozing along her hand and her arm, and ignoring the crawling, buzzing insects clinging to her as they retrieved what they could of her plunder.

She sat on the yellow grass bank and gently brushed aside the persistent bees to suck on the sweet honeycomb. She knew that the bees would only sting her if she acted rashly—if she tried to hurt them or agitated them.
Who taught me this?
she wondered.
How do I know these things
? She savoured the refreshing sweetness after her constant diet of yams, berries and leaves, and when she put the honeycomb on the grass the remaining bees swarmed over it in a desperate salvage operation.

Dark moving patches on the river caught her eye and made her wary. She crept into the bushes to observe four water vessels—two rafts, a rowing boat and a boat with a rudimentary single grey patched sail—packed with people paddling upstream against the steady current. As they drew closer, she saw that the people were mainly women and children, with a scattered handful of men. The pelicans swam away from the craft, while children yelled and pointed at the elegant waterbirds. The people were strangers and her instinct warned her to remain in hiding, but she was also compelled to call to them, her loneliness crying out. She emerged from the green-and-gold-leafed bushes onto the river bank as the first vessel, the boat with the sail, drew alongside, less than thirty paces across the river. A young girl pointed at her until others looked in her direction, and a woman gesticulated and waved, calling, but her words were lost and the sailboat kept going, as did the first raft, its passengers staring like the girl on the sailboat. The second raft followed the first, several people waving as they poled past, but the last
boat turned and as it came towards the bank she was filled with trepidation. She didn’t know these people. From where had they come and to where were they going? What if they intended to harm her?

An older woman balancing at the prow of the boat called, ‘Do you want to come with us?’

She had to make a decision. What were her choices?
I can go on my own,
she considered,
but where? I don’t know where I’m going.

The boat crunched against the muddy bank and the woman, her greying dark hair tied in a ponytail, said, ‘You’re welcome to come with us. It’s a tight squeeze, but it’s better than walking.’ She offered a hand, while two men steadied the boat with their oars. ‘Well?’ the woman asked.

She hesitated, looking at the dirty, saddened faces and staring eyes of the women and children huddled in the boat. ‘I’ll come,’ she said, and took the woman’s hand. Squeezing into the space between two women, a boy curled at her feet, she smiled with embarrassment at the strangers who smiled in return. The men heaved on the oars and the boat drifted away from the bank until the river current turned the prow. She glanced at the receding bank and drew a deep breath. Squatted on its haunches beneath a leafy bush at the water’s edge, a black rat stared at her and she felt a strange longing for the creature.

‘
T
he fact of the matter is, as Your Majesty has always known, we cannot be held responsible for the political foolishness of our brethren. We stay here, in the Holy Jarudhan temple, because we have no wish to be embroiled in the political machinations of secular people.’

The Queen stared impassively at the old man, and when she did not respond to Seer Diamond’s speech another of the white-haired men in light blue robes cleared his throat politely to say, ‘Your Majesty, Seer Diamond speaks for us all.’

‘As always,’ Queen Sunset muttered, knuckles whitening as she clenched her hand on the arm of the chair. ‘Thank you, Onyx, for your explanation of what I just heard,’ she added, sending Seer Onyx a withering glare to convey her disgust. ‘So, gentlemen, you will not obey the direct order of your sovereign queen. Is this what you are saying?’ She looked directly at Diamond as she asked her pointed question.

Diamond glanced at his four colleagues, all seated at the long table in the temple meeting room, before he replied, ‘We are servants of Jarudha, Your Majesty. It is not—’

‘Answer the question!’ Sunset snapped.

Diamond raised an eyebrow. ‘We will not forsake Jarudha for politics. We have no choice in this matter.’

Sunset’s anger erupted as she stood and glared at the Seers. ‘Neither do I!’ she declared. ‘Gather what few possessions you have. As of this afternoon, you are all under arrest.’

Diamond’s anger flared in his eyes. ‘On what charge?’

‘Treason.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ Onyx said.

‘Failure to obey the queen’s direct instructions is treasonous,’ Sunset countered.

‘You can’t just accuse us without evidence and a lawful trial,’ Diamond protested.

‘Your refusal is all the evidence I need, and since you’ve forgotten this small detail I remind you that I
am
the law,’ she replied. ‘Gather your things, gentlemen. Goodman will be here shortly with my Elite Guards to accompany you to the Royal Gaol.’

‘The Bogpit?’ Seer Vale gasped.

‘This is outrageous!’ Diamond protested. ‘You can’t do this!’

‘I
am
doing it, old man! You are not the authority here.
I
am.
I
am your queen and
you
will obey me or live the rest of your life in
my
gaol.’

‘You will regret this sacrilegious lunacy!’ Onyx scowled.

‘Not before you regret your disobedience,’ Sunset retorted. ‘Goodman will be here before sunset—unless you decide to change your attitude and your decision. I have spoken.’

She left the chamber, followed by her bodyguard, and passed along the curved corridor of the temple, ignoring the bowing Jarudhan acolytes in their yellow
robes with their shaved heads as she strode into the garden, heading for the palace. Torches lit the white gravel path. At the gateway separating the temple enclosure from the palace grounds, she halted and gazed up at the night sky. The moon hung in its third quarter, casting a pale glow over the stone palace buildings.
To be queen,
she told herself silently,
I have to be decisive. To stay queen, I have to take risks.
The thought wasn’t hers. It was the advice of her uncle, Kingly Royal, when she succeeded to the throne after her father’s untimely death.

‘You can’t be anything but ruthless to rule this kingdom,’ he had said, the morning before her coronation. ‘Others will see a girl and they will think you are weak. Some will see a young princess, untried in politics, and think you weak. You can’t be weak. Neither a king nor a queen has time for weakness. Remember this, Sunset Royal, and you will not fail your father.’

She’d wondered when she was crowned why her uncle hadn’t been made the king. The law ensured that succession went first to the oldest surviving child before other blood relatives could be considered, but he was a man, the closest blood to her father, and a strong man. If having a girl succeed was so controversial, why didn’t the members of the Royal family simply bypass her? Once she grew into the role of queen her opinion changed.
Why shouldn’t a woman rule a kingdom
? she argued.
What made a woman any less able than a man
?

Her uncle Kingly died unexpectedly of a heart malady when she was in her early twenties, although suspicion was rife that he died from a poisoning meant for her. Now entering her fifties, with thirty-seven years of reigning supreme behind her, she gave no quarter on any issue to men. Her strength was not
physical, but of heart and mind. The Seers would obey her or perish. For a long time she had wrestled with them over their status and rights, power that they justified in the name of their deity. She asked them to intercede on her part, as the Seers had for her father and grandfather in wars, but they refused. She begged them, she cajoled them, she ordered them and they refused, even when members of their ranks turned against her to support her son, Future Royal. The games were finished. She would show them, after all this time of patience and frustration, that she was the law.

‘We aren’t seriously going to allow this
woman
to dictate to us?’ Onyx protested. ‘How dare she threaten to imprison us!’

‘I don’t think she is threatening,’ Vale quietly said.

Diamond was rubbing his beard thoughtfully. ‘Well?’ Onyx asked. ‘She can’t be serious about putting us in the Bogpit, can she? I mean, she’s made that threat before and nothing happened.’

‘Many times,’ Diamond agreed. He stood by his chair. ‘Only this time I think our brother Vale is right. This time she isn’t bluffing.’ The assembled Seers waited for Diamond to continue, but he moved around the table towards the door.

‘Then what will we do if she’s having us arrested?’ Seer Gold asked.

‘I, for one, won’t be spending time in the Bogpit!’ Onyx roundly declared.

Diamond turned to his colleagues. ‘No. None of us will be spending any time in the Bogpit.’ He drew a breath. ‘But we will send to our brothers and inform them of the Queen’s latest outburst, and we will do what we can to hasten their arrival with the Prince.’

‘How will we keep out of the Bogpit?’ Vale asked.

Diamond smiled. ‘We will tell the Queen that we have been mistaken and that we will help her to defend the kingdom.’

‘Against our brothers?’ Onyx asked.

‘Defending the kingdom takes many forms, Onyx,’ Diamond said. ‘I never said from whom we were defending it, or in whose name we were defending it. Only that we will defend it.’

‘She’ll send us to the battle lines,’ said Gold. ‘Then what?’

‘Magic is such an unpredictable skill. Our Blessings are from Jarudha and if He does not bless us on the battlefield we can hardly expect our magic to work, can we?’

‘It’s still a battlefield,’ argued Onyx. ‘We can be killed.’

Diamond shook his head. ‘The Bogpit? Or possibly a battlefield?’ He spread his arms in a questioning gesture. ‘I know which is safer for me,’ he declared, ‘and we will already be standing among our friends. Our foes are our liberators.’

The Seers looked at each other as they assessed Diamond’s wisdom and nodded approval. ‘There is a reason you are our leader,’ said Onyx.

‘I will tell the Queen personally that we are contrite and committed to defending the kingdom. Then we must consider quickly advancing two or three disciples to Seer status so that they can be the first to go out to battle. While I’m gone, you four can make the choices. Jarudha bless our work.’ In unison, the Seers echoed Diamond’s prayer for blessing.

Sailors scurried up the mast, adjusting the sheets to catch more wind. The ship heeled to port in a sharp gust and Prince Future stumbled, grabbing the railing.
On the slippery deck, thundermakers slid and fell as the ship rolled, and all throughout the Kerwyn shipmaster bellowed orders. A grappling hook thudded into the woodwork, and another, and sailors frantically scrambled to cut the ropes as the Shessian ship pulled closer. Seeing the Shessian soldiers preparing to board, Future unclasped his hilt strap and drew his sabre. ‘Get below, Your Highness!’ Sharpaxe yelled, but Future ignored the warning. It had been too long since he’d last felt the thrill of hand-to-hand combat. Too many people were mollycoddling him because he was the prince and heir to the throne.

Three more grappling hooks thumped on the deck and jagged against the railing. The black canvas of the Shessian ship towered overhead and the shouts and cries of men eager to fight mingled with the scraping of wood as the two ships crashed together. Kerwyn soldiers and sailors pressed around the Prince as the Shessian soldiers leapt aboard and thundermakers boomed.

Future stepped back and waited for his foe to break through the cordon. Swords and knives and pikes bristled in the struggling pack of men. A Kerwyn sailor slid backwards to lie at Future’s feet, his stomach torn open, blood squirting across Future’s dark grey trousers, and a Shessian soldier pushed through the battling crowd, long knife in hand. He crouched, facing the Prince, and Future smiled when he saw that the man recognised him. The hesitation gave Future first blood as he punctured the soldier’s left arm with his sabre. Prompted to fight, the soldier retaliated, his knife sweeping a finger-span past Future’s face, but then he was knocked aside by a Kerwyn sailor swinging a cudgel who leapt on him and beat him to death. Future stepped around the bloody struggle and headed for
another Shessian soldier pressing a wounded sailor against the railing. He stabbed the soldier in the back, wrenched out his sabre and turned to hunt another victim. The noise of battle, the cries and screams, excited him. He slashed at a soldier and ducked a sweeping pike before he retreated to safety.

The Kerwyn sailors were winning. An explosion rocked the Shessian vessel and a ball of flame curled through its sails. Shessian soldiers close to the Prince threw down their weapons to surrender and the Kerwyn sailors cheered. ‘No prisoners!’ Leader Sharpaxe yelled. The shipmaster repeated the order in his Kerwyn language and his sailors attacked the unarmed Shessian soldiers, cutting them down or driving them back into the water separating the two ships. The thundermakers loosed a volley at those aboard the burning Shessian ship who were frantically fighting the spreading flames while their stricken ship drifted aimlessly.

Prince Future sheathed his sabre and studied the wider scene. The Shessian fleet was in ruins. Caught downwind in the open ocean by the Kerwyn fleet that came like ghosts out of the heavy morning fog, the Shessian ships, though greater in number, couldn’t match the Kerwyn vessels with their thundermaker and thunderclap magic. One by one, the Kerwyn rallied and ran down the Shessian vessels throughout the day, until only a handful of the demoralised Shessian ships were able to turn and run with the wind for shelter in the Port of Joy bay. In every direction ships were burning, yellow flames flickering along the wide ocean, white and black smoke filling the sky. Dots with waving arms bobbed among the flotsam from the sinking vessels.

‘It is a pleasing sight, Your Highness.’

Future turned to the speaker, a blue-robed Seer with sparkling green eyes. ‘Jarudha’s will is very powerful, Weaver,’ he acknowledged.

Weaver smiled. ‘Jarudha has tolerated abominations in the kingdom for too long, Your Highness. He guides us to cleanse our people and make the foundations for His new order. This small victory is His word to us that He is our Lord and Master.’

‘I am blessed that He has chosen me to lead this change.’

‘We are all blessed by Him, Your Highness. I am pleased that you can see with your own eyes what Jarudha will do for you if you let His work be done.’

‘I’m surprised to see you here,’ Seer Diamond whispered to his unexpected guest whose face was hidden in the shadows of his blue cowl. ‘I thought you’d come when Future was in the city.’

The guest smiled and bowed his head in deference to his superior Seer. ‘The Prince will be here within a handful of days, old master.’ He threw back his hood, exposing his long auburn hair. ‘I’ve just heard that the Queen’s fleet is burning.’

‘How?’ Diamond asked, studying the lined face of the man he’d trained as a disciple.

The younger Seer fumbled in the folds of his robe to extract a fragment of beige parchment. ‘Weaver sent this message with a seagull.’ He handed the parchment to Diamond who opened it and read.

‘So the Prince will be here within five days,’ Diamond confirmed.

The younger Seer nodded. ‘It is time to make the preparations.’

‘You’ve done well, Vision. Your father would be proud of you.’

Vision’s brown eyes sparkled. ‘My father planned for this time. Had he not died at the hands of the Abomination, he would be delivering this message.’

‘Jarudha’s justice is wise, but He unfolds it in His own time, not ours. Truth knew this. So do you.’

Vision bowed his head. ‘Thank you, Your Eminence.’ He lifted his head and said, ‘I will see to the preparations. The Prince must not be weighed down with unnecessary complications.’ Then he withdrew from the chamber.

Diamond watched the young Seer depart with mixed feelings. His father, Seer Truth, had been a ruthless man, impetuous and ambitious, determined to see the coming of the new Jarudhan Age, but he had lacked the patience of someone who would ultimately triumph. That he had died fighting the Abomination, the term the Jarudhan Seers used for the young woman who’d brought and destroyed the Conduit a decade ago, was inevitable in Diamond’s view. Jarudha’s sense of justice was always ironic. So Diamond had taken Truth’s son, the acolyte Vision, under his personal tutelage as a disciple for the five years following Truth’s death to ensure that the young man had more patience and more craft to his character than his father, and when Vision was promoted into the Seers’ ranks he was sent north to serve Prince Future. The past five years of political manoeuvring and war had matured the young Seer into a calculating, calm servant of Jarudha—exactly the kind of man Diamond hoped he would become. But—and he had no evidence to support it—he retained a cautious doubt that Vision could remain patient if he rose to higher power. Only Jarudha knew the full answer. The preparations in Vision’s charge would be the catalyst.