I struggled to regain my breath, huffing and puffing.
“If…if you name a successor…now, Majesty,” I managed to hiss out between long-drawn inhalations. “The result will be a terrible—a civil—war, almost immediately. The center cannot hold under such circumstances. You would die, and the Kingdom disintegrate within a few years.”
“See, we told you!” the Queen bleated from the head of the table, pointing her finger at old Lord Gronos. “We told you this several times, we did, and you wouldn’t listen to us, neither. So there! So there!”
The Chancellor blanched, but still had the courage to press the issue further.
“Master Scanner,” he said, turning his shaggy sideburns towards me. “And what would the result be of doing nothing?”
I looked directly then at the Queen, because I dared not proceed without her official endorsement. She pouted for a moment, frowning at the man who’d had the audacity to challenge her judgment, but finally she nodded, ever so slightly, and I sighed. I didn’t really want to undertake this reading, but I had no choice in the matter, of course.
So once again I edged out from underneath the blanket of my natural protections, finely honed from many years of practice, and dared to essay the query a second time, but on this occasion hedged with the conditionalities of yea and nay. Even so, the result was almost the same, and I again was racked and almost ruined with the scenes of pillage and rapine that surged through my consciousness. I believe that I even passed beyond the void for a few seconds.
When I came to my senses, I again had their rapt attention.
I managed to choke out just two words, “The same,” before their heated reactions filled the room with vitriol, giving me a short respite in which to regain my composure.
“But,” I yelled out over the din, “For so long as her Majesty doth reign, peace shall prevail!”
At that the voices became silent, until one querulous soul, Metropolitan Polylogas, suddenly gasped out the obvious question, “And how long will that be?”—and then fell back in his chair, appalled when he realized what he’d said.
“Belay that!” the Queen shouted. “Thou shalt not respond, Master Morpheús, on the pain of death! And thou, foolish churchman”—she sent a pair of dagger-shaped glances down the row at the hapless prelate—“thou shalt leave us forthwith. Thou art dismissed from this Council permanently!”
“Yes, Majesty,” the little, bald-headed man choked out, before backing his way towards the door.
“Gentlemen,” she said, her face as stern and resolute as I’d ever seen it. “This matter shall remain closed, until we choose to bring it before this Council again. Is that well understood by all of you?”
When she’d received murmurs of acquiescence and nods of the head from around the table, she added: “This meeting is closed. You may all leave me—all save my Chancellor and my Scanner Prime. And you may not discuss what you heard outside of this room. Now go, all of you!”
And they all filed out, one by one, eyes rooted to the carpet.
“Come,” she ordered Lord Gronos and me, when the rest had left, pointing to the two chairs flanking her.
“Your vision was true?” she asked me.
“My probing was sound, Your Majesty,” I said, “and while I might be able to refine it further by adding various details, I do not believe the essentials will alter with any future reading. What will be, will be, just as I have said it.”
“So mote it be,” she intoned. “We believe you. What can we do to forestall the war that will come?”
“You cannot stop it from coming,” I said, “Unless….”
“Unless what? What is it that you’re not telling us, Morpheús?”
“If you had a true heir, Majesty, that might postpone the chaos for a time. But what I saw was a swirling of the æther so profound, so beyond my previous experience, that I do not believe it can be put off indefinitely. It was as if the cosmos itself had broken in twain, leaching chaos throughout this world. For I tell you true, my Queen, that if Kórynthia falls, so will the Empire; and if the Empire falls, well, none of us are safe.”
“As you know,” she said, looking almost thoughtful, “we are beyond the child-bearing years, and we have no other close relations yet living. What about…?” She turned to the head of her government. “Chancellor, could I legally adopt an heir-apparent?”
“Not without changing the law, Majesty,” Lord Gronos said. “And I do not think that would be possible, given the present circumstance. You can forbid people talking—but people will talk nonetheless, as you well know.”
“I should not have asked the question, should I, Grony?” She had retreated very nearly to girlhood again.
“In my opinion, no, Majesty,” the Chancellor said. He sighed, long and loud. “But what is done, is done. It cannot be taken back. And perhaps it too is part of the scheme of things. I also feel this rush—this mad route—towards chaos, and I cannot seem to stop it, no matter what I do. Mayhap a younger man….”
“You are the only one we can trust to this position,” she said, “precisely because you have no ambition beyond it. The rest….”
She saw the look on my face and laughed out loud. “This is beyond your usual experience with these things, isn’t it, Morphy? You poor innocent soul. You won’t be innocent much longer, I fear. Should I then ask the second question, my Scanner Prime?”
I dropped my head and examined the swirling pattern of tughras on the table, the intertwined emblems of the House of Tighris. I thought a very long time before responding, but no one prodded me for a quick retort, which I much appreciated.
“No, Majesty,” I finally said.
“Very well. This audience is ended. We thank you for your service, Scanner Prime. You may leave us,” Queen Evetéria said.
I glanced up just once before I headed for the door. The Queen had aged a decade or more in just an hour. Or so it seemed to me, the official High Hypatomancer for the Kingdom of Kórynthia and the Heir of Paltyrrha.
CHAPTER FOUR
“QUEEN L’S”
My meeting with the Council had left me shaken right down to my bones. Never in my memory had a vision so immediately and harshly impacted my psyche, so that I found myself questioning everything that I regarded as “normal.” For if what I’d seen was true—as I had to believe—my entire world was on the verge of disintegration, even destruction.
As a member of the Court, I couldn’t escape being drawn towards one faction or another, willy-nilly—and if I tried to hold myself somehow above the fray, so to speak, that wouldn’t protect me in the end. First I would be courted, and then, when I refused the overtures of one pretender over another, I would fall under immediate suspicion of collaboration with the “enemy,” whomever that might be.
No, there was no safe ground here that I could see anywhere, and the end would come as soon as the aging Queen lost her sensibilities or died, thereby destabilizing the fragile balance at the heart of Paltyrrha. Even I could not see precisely how much time was left to her, but it could not be much more than a decade. I had to find some way to extricate myself from this conundrum, and survive to fight another day.
I also needed the counsel of someone wiser than myself.
I dispatched a message requesting an audience with the Chancellor, not certain of how or even whether he would respond. We had never been close: my previous contacts with him had been limited to my few Council appearances, various receptions and public functions, and one consultation on a personal matter—the whereabouts of a grandson who’d gone missing years earlier. I was hoping that our short, shared experience during