CHAPTER TWO

A Winding Back

Morvina’s dead husband, Volkis, had been an ineffectual ruler; under him, the great nobles whose rebellion had put him on his brother's throne pursued their own interests without interference.
He had been quite content to live quietly in the shadow of Tayssad, his brother; neither he nor his wife, Yunnika the Beautiful, had desired anything more than to be left alone with each other on a comfortable estate, but Yunnika died within days of giving birth to a son and for his second wife he married the awesomely ambitious Lady Morvina. No beauty, for she was small and sharp-featured, her black hair bundled up on top of her head like some kind of whiskery growth, she planned and executed her conquest of Volkis with single-minded zeal, ruthlessly exploiting the influence and great wealth of her family.
Two years after her marriage she gave birth to Sigmar, born with a damaged hip and a weakened left leg.
No such handicaps inconvenienced his half-brother, Egmar.
When he was six and Egmar eight, Morvina played a central role in engineering the revolt, led by her brother Borden, which killed Tayssad and put her husband on the throne.
Egmar, now heir to a kingdom, soon learned how to exploit his status, spending his limited energy adding new dimensions to the pursuit of princely pleasures. Deliberately, perhaps, Sigmar lead a very different life, playing rough, dangerous games with adventurous, daring friends, their escapades constantly upsetting the sedate routine of the court. He was driven, it seemed, by the need to prove his strength, endurance and power to dominate others. He did not care whether people disliked him; only that he could control them.
To the outside world, the overthrow of King Tayssad and his replacement by Volkis was a marginal event, for although the Sairish crown had once belonged to mighty rulers, revolt and conquest had whittled their realm away, and what remained is relatively poor and militarily insignificant.
The triumphs of its founder, the legendary Bedekka, are still sung of by the travelling minstrels, and no one listened to their songs with more rapt attention than the young Prince Sigmar. He grew up to revere Sair's great warrior king, but if Bedekka's exploits thrilled him, a more immediate influence was exercised by his uncle Borden.
The regicide Borden was a powerful nobleman whose burgeoning ambitions were destined to be fulfilled at the expense of the once-mighty Sei Empire and its Laifyan territories.

* * * *

And so it is that Fate lays a meandering thread which lies across distance and time,
linking the Empire and the little kingdom of Sair Jisenner with its dysfunctional Royal Family.


In Felewith

The mid-winter festival came and went, and Shansi was still a virtual outcast at her husband's court. The despair of those first few weeks immediately following the news of her father's flight into exile was, however, beginning to weaken its grip. What made her situation less unbearable was the growing friendship between her and Reela, her chambermaid.
Reela had begun to confide in her and to pass on palace gossip as she dressed her hair and helped her into her formal court clothes. At first she had been sullen to the point of insolence, but it had mattered little to Shansi then because the court was full of people who wanted to be her friends. Then, when she found herself abandoned and despised, Reela had softened. By mid-summer her change in attitude was such that Shansi had no hesitation in telling her the strictly confidential news that she was pregnant. No one else knew.
Three days later Shansi had retired to her chambers for the night when Reela burst in. She was extremely agitated, and Shansi was unable to make out what she was trying to say, but it seemed that she thought her mistress to be in grave danger. Unwilling, or unable to elaborate, she hurried weeping from the room, leaving Shansi in a state of wild confusion.
She was never to see her servant again. The next day a complete stranger reported for duty; she said she was to replace Reela, who had been taken ill and was too poorly to leave her bed.
"Ill!" exclaimed Shansi. "That cannot be so. I spoke with her only last night and she was perfectly well then. If she had been sickening for something I can assure you I would have known."
The new girl looked at her unblinkingly. "She got ill-overnight," she said, "and I'm to take her place. That's all I know."
Shansi summoned Ghouzene, the Mistress of the Household. "What's this about my Reela being ill?" she demanded.
Ghouzene, a fat, middle-aged woman with heavy eyebrows and more of a beard than was seemly, informed her that Reela had been struck down by a fever; a fever that had already killed a number of people in the capital. It was thought she would not live long.
The next day Shansi was informed of her death, and she began to feel profoundly apprehensive, her fears focused upon Morvina, whose presence in the palace bore down upon her more oppressively than ever. She felt certain that Morvina had had something to do with fomenting the revolt in Kroya, and the same instinct told her that she had been involved, somehow, in the disappearance of Reela, Shansi's only friend. Anxiety began to rob her of sleep, and at last she spoke to Egmar about his step-mother; she said she could no longer stand her malevolence, and she implored him to find some pretext for making her leave Felewith.
Egmar listened impassively to what she had to say, and then informed her that it was all in her imagination. He knew for a fact that Morvina held him in the highest regard. His trusted counsellor the Lord Garapu, who had served his father with such distinction, had told him so. And if Morvina loved him, she must also love Shansi, his wife.
Shansi began to weep, overwhelmed by frustration; she pleaded in vain, and then she tried a different tack: "Whose appointment is Ghouzene?" she asked.
"Ghouzene?" Egmar appeared not to know who Ghouzene was.
"Yes. The Mistress of your Household."
"I appoint all the officers of the household," Egmar retorted stiffly. "You know that."
"Then please get rid of Ghouzene."
"What on earth for?"
Shansi looked down at her feet. What reason could she give? Egmar refused to believe anything she told him. "I don't want her in the palace," she said simply, her voice barely more than a whisper.
Egmar cupped his ear with his hand theatrically. "What was that?"
"I said," said Shansi, "I don't want her in the palace."
"And I suppose when I've got rid of her, because you don't want her in my household, you'll instruct me as to who I should appoint in her place?"
"I could probably find someone better than Ghouzene."
"Appointments in the king's household," said Egmar coldly, "are to be made by the king - the king alone. You know that as well as I do. What you are suggesting is against the law. I never want to hear you speak of it again. And you must stop this nonsense about Morvina. I command it!"
Taken aback by his vehemence, Shansi did her best to obey him, and yet within two weeks was compelled to ask him once again to rid the palace of Morvina.
She had found her new chambermaid, Reela's replacement, to be sly, insolent, unco-operative and entirely unsuitable. She was also incompetent, and she had complained about her in the strongest possible terms to Ghouzene. But nothing was done to replace the girl, and in exasperation Shansi had stormed off to confront the Mistress of the Household in her own quarters. It was an action without precedent; an outrageous contravention of palace etiquette, but Shansi was too upset and angry to care.
Ghouzene's startled servant told the queen upon her arrival that her mistress had been summoned to see Morvina, and Shansi immediately made her way to the quarters of the dowager queen. On her way, however, she began to have second thoughts about bursting in, and she paused by the heavy curtains drawn across the doorway. From the voices she could hear it was apparent that Morvina and Ghouzene were just the other side of it. Morvina was saying that Shansi's loyalty was questionable, to say the least, and that they (Morvina and Ghouzene) were obliged therefore to keep her under close surveillance. And for that reason it was essential that she should continue to be served by her present chambermaid, a girl who could be trusted to do as she was told and to report everything she saw and heard. Demands for her replacement had to be resisted, however strident they might become.
Shansi was appalled, and that evening she told Egmar what she had over-heard. He went pale with rage, and in the next moment had struck her a stinging blow across the face with the back of his hand, one of his rings cutting her cheek. She was either lying, he shouted, or admitting that she was an eavesdropper, and in either case she disgusted him.
Uncowed, although she could feel the warm blood running down the side of her face, Shansi implored him to get rid of Morvina for both their sakes, but he merely stared at her stonily, and stalked off.
It was after this disastrous interview that Shansi reached the conclusion that if Morvina could not be made to leave the palace then she must be rendered harmless by removing all those in the royal household whom she controlled. They must somehow be discredited; implicated, perhaps, in treachery or denounced as servants of the demon Galgaug. Once removed, Shansi would have them replaced by people she could trust.
It was a neat solution, but when she came to examine it she saw that it contained a crucial flaw: it required witnesses and testimony, which would entail the laying out of gold and the exertion of a powerful influence, and Shansi, although Queen, had little wealth, and less influence. She was not even provided with a personal allowance.
It was time, she decided, to tell Egmar about their baby, and risk the shame and ignominy if she were unlucky enough to lose it.
When he heard the news the king was more delighted than she could have hoped. He positively crowed with pride and pleasure. His attitude towards her altered so completely that she felt emboldened enough to suggest, albeit diffidently, that he might consider granting her a secluded country estate to which she could retire for her confinement.
Egmar smiled as understanding dawned: it was her condition that had made her behave so oddly of late! He noticed, with a pang of guilt, the livid mark on her cheek caused by his ring when he had hit her. It was a sound idea that she should get away from the pressures of the court; they were making her unbalanced. He made immediate arrangements for her to be given title to a lodge and its estates which he owned, but hardly ever visited, in a province some five days' walking distance to the south of Felewith, and to Shansi's great delight, not far from Kroya.
Before he could change his mind she sent into her father's former kingdom for friends whom she heard had survived Taigram's downfall. She requested them to go directly to her estate in Fromond, and she gave them letters to confirm their business and status. They were to prepare the lodge for her arrival and confinement. She then took enormous delight in informing her chambermaid that she would soon be leaving the royal compound and would have no more need of her services.
Ghouzene requested an audience as soon as this news got back to her. Shansi was courteous but firm: her household in Fromond, she said, was her own affair, and she would make her own appointments there.
The Mistress of the Household spluttered and protested, but Shansi insisted that as far as the royal lodge was concerned, the king himself had decreed that an exception be made of it, and she went on to hint that if Ghouzene could not provide her with a chambermaid to attend her at court who was more to her liking, she would get the king to appoint someone else as Mistress of the Household. Ghouzene was practically grovelling by the time the interview ended.
Following upon this interview, Shansi noted a remarkable change in Morvina's attitude towards her. The Dowager Queen actively sought her company; made pleasant conversation with her and began to show a motherly interest in her condition. Then Shansi was presented with no less than five girls from whom to select a chambermaid. She dismissed them all and sent for Ghouzene, She informed her that there was only one person whom she could trust to look after her properly in her delicate condition, and that was an old friend of hers who was even then preparing for her arrival at the lodge in Fromond. She referred to her childhood friend from Kroya, Lewvin, daughter of a high-ranking nobleman. She knew she was breaking the rules in making this request, but felt confident that she would get away with it. She did. Lewvin duly arrived at Felewith and reported for duty. Her first task, Shansi informed her, was to concentrate on learning the Sairish tongue. She herself would be her tutor, and after a faltering start, was soon delighted by her student’s progress.