The Book of the Blessed

The Kingsboro

“Cousin!” Anson barked, stabbing him in the back with a finger the way few men would dare, “Wake from your sleeping, wizard.”

Ash, a broad shouldered, caramel colored man, wrapped in his red mantle, blinked, taken aback, but when he turned around he was not surprised to see Anson.

“Cousin,” he purred.

“Cousin,” Anson bowed low. He smiled as he embraced Ash who rose from his perch in the window seat overlooking High Bailey.

“I have been up a long while, actually,” Ash said. “I arrived early to see your father. But where were you?”

“With an old friend.”

Ash smiled.

“Pol,” Ash said, knowingly.

Anson blinked.

“I feel like we’ve already been introduced,” Ash said. “You have spoken of him before.”

Anson’s grey blue eyes were slits, as if he had forgotten this and was trying to remember. He shook his head and said: “Well, then let me reintroduce you.”

“I will be glad of that. When?”

“Tonight, most likely.”

“I will send word to him, and bring him to my chambers,” Ash decided.

Now it was Anson who blinked, but he did not say no, because there was no dissuading Ash. How could there be?

“You are looking even fairer than when last I saw you,” Ash said, observing the bronze haired soldier with his foxy smile and leather trousers.

“Do you ever cease from games?” Anson murmured.

“Never,” Ash shook his head, rising as they walked across the nearly empty room. “But I do not jest in that, cousin.”

Anson found himself blushing, and tried not to look like a fool in the presence of the magician.

“I have to serve the King’s pleasure,” Anson said. “Could you come with me and then we be free?”

“I need food in me first.”

“You are rising late,” Anson noted as Ash moved across the large sunlit room, putting southcakes on the table, and then putting the orange juice and butter there as well.

“I’m not rising,’ Ash told him. “I’m eating.”

He lifted the glass of orange juice to his lips. “And drinking.”

“Breakfast? At noon?”

“How long have you known me?” the mage asked him.

“And I can’t believe you came to my chambers to comment on m eating habits. Have a southcake by the way.”

“No, no,” Anson waved this off. “I’m not hungry. I can scarcely eat.”

There was no need to say “Because of the King?”There was no need, either, for Ash to pretend that he was so distressed he himself could not eat. Such distress was impractical. He dusted off one very large southcake, and Anson said, “I am always surprised at how you put food away.”

“Well, I’m glad to impress.”

“And there is that whole matter of being the King’s first Council,” Anson added.

“I am this King’s First Council,” Ash said. Then he added, “I know as much as you may love the King, it is not only his leaving this world, but who ascends to the Lower Throne after him that matters.”

“It will not be me, even if I am his son.” Anson said.

“No,” Ash agreed without mercy. “It will not.

“Years ago, when my mother sent your mother and I from the Rootless Isle to save the Old Queen’s life, it seemed, when King Anthal came to love your mother and made her Queen, that you might come to power. It would have been in the King’s right. But there was really no reason he should pass you over for your older brother.”

Anson opened his mouth and Ash said, “The fact that Cedd is disagreeable is not sufficient reason to take a throne from him. A King does not have to be agreeable.”

“But he will never forgive me for the fact that people thought I should succeed him.”

“No,” Ash agreed again, “and I will be summarily dismissed the day Cedd sits on the Low Throne.”

“But,” Anson looked hopeful, “you have a plan?”

Ash straightened his mantle and smoothed his shaven head even as he ate, preparing to head out the door to the royal chambers.

Ash’s eyes popped, and he slapped his chest, dramatically, the flakes of a southcake falling from his lips.

“Why do you think I’d have a plan? Why should the King serve the Rootless Isle or the Hidden Tower anymore than he should the bishops? Why should we not all fade away and let a new power council the King?”

“You have a plan,” Anson insisted.

“Brother,” Ash put the last bit of cake in his mouth. “would you be so kind as to bring me my seal… as long as I have it? And parchment and ink.”

Anson nodded. As he walked away, Ash said, “Numbwits, I always have a plan.”

Bright afternoon sunlight came through King Anthal’s chambers even when curtains were drawn over some of the great windows. A vaulted ceiling easily two storeys in height stretched over them, and as the mage, a surprisingly youngish man, hooded in deep red, entered with his great staff, crossing the floor, the King, white beard to his chest, sat up, eyes wide.

“Akkrebeth,” he spoke, “I had not expected to see you.”

Ash lowered his hood, and his staff made solid noises as it stomped the flagstone floor, muffled only a little as it went over the carpet.

“I have come,” he said, “from the Towers to oversee your comfort. Also, I confess, to bid you remember your promise.”

Ash was a handsome, not overly tall, broad shouldered man, the brown color of the western Royan. He looked on the murals about the wall which told the history of Ankar, the land which had become Westrial, Inglad and Essail. There, on the walls, were the ancient Fisher Kings, the lords who had raised the land up from its watery depths, and on the shores of the wide River Westyl was the great city of Ondres, Overlooking the river from its stony height and ringed about by baileys and long walls, high roved, was the mint and leaf colored castle now called Greenboro, where of old the ancient kings had reigned. Over the bed stretched great Vendigeid, the Giant King who had led the Royan, the people of Ankar and Chyr and Rheged, against their enemy across the sea, and here was the last of the Ankaran kings to be a free ruling lord, Caralandos, who had become a client king to the Sincercian Empire which had ruled over the southern lands four hundred years.

But, near the king’s bed was the coming of the The Ayl. They had swept out of the north through the weakened lands of the Empire and settled in the wild desert country of Ververland before, on ships, sailing into Ossar. Deeply tanned, the fair folk had become, their hair bleached, and though they had taken the homeland of Ankar, they were never able to absorb it old people, the Royan. Here was the mural of King Eoga of the West Ayl taking to wife the dark Princess Syarr Rhohedrina. In her time Locrys was weak and had been for centuries, nothing more than one of the ancient lands made province of a fallen empire. Under Eoga and Syarr a mighty new kingdom was established that some still called New Locrys. but most now called Westrial. Both identities this land held, and both came together in the great palace which had become, in time, the great city Kingsboro.

“Remember your promise,” Ash said, simply, “you did not promise that Essily’s son would be king, but your promised to protect all of your people. King, do not leave your land defenseless, the old ones defenseless against those who practice the new religions, and all of your land, defenseless against those who practice magic in the dark, such as the Priests of Phineas and the Black Hands to the South. Remember your promise.”

“And I have, Akkrebeth,” the old king’s voice was a rasp, and then it was interrupted by a watery cough which continued until Ash, called Akkrebeth, came behind him to lift King Anthal higher on his pillow.

When the fit of coughing ended, Ash said, “But what does it matter if you leave them to the wolves upon your death? Who, right now, oversees the court in your name?”

“Anson.”

“And not Cedd, Because you know he has neither the wisdom nor the temperament for it, and yet you would make him king.”

“I would need,” Anthal cleared his throat of phlegm, “a very good reason to overturn the succession, Cousin. I believe that in the end Anson will help Cedd, will be a good partner to him.”

“Do you really?” Ash said.

“Ash,” the King reprimanded him.

Ash nodded. The King was old. The King was dying. He had been good and kept his promises, but it was because the King was old and dying that Ash had to continue.

“Cedd will be King. That is so, but while you live you have the authority to shape the succession if not to change it.”

“That is impossible, Ash,” the King’s voice was a whisper, “The Council of Barons ruled long ago that a new king could not be bound by the conditions of an old king.”

“True,” Ash said, “and the law of the land, written in ancient times when it was only called Ankar, and ratified again in the last centuries, is that even a King cannot overturn a law without the support of half of Parliament and the Bound Laws may never be overturned without the support of over nine tenths of the Royan Parliament. It should have been made Bound Law that no practitioner of magic could be harmed in this land for the sake of his craft, but it never was made so, and so when Cedd comes to the Throne, he may resume the persecutions.”

“He would never do that,” Anthal insisted, but Ash said, “Cousin, you do not know your son.

“It is too late to summon a council to create a Bound Law. But you can ensure that Cedd rules according to your conditions.”

Anthal blinked, understanding, but let the mage continue.

“Have him crowned while you still live. A King crowned during your reign is Bound to operate under the conditions you place upon him.”

“That has not been done in over two hundred fifty years,” Anthal said. “It was done in the days when successions were insecure, when kings went off to war leaving young sons behind them.”

“And can still be done,” Ash said.

“But surely Cedd will wish to overturn those conditions,” Anthal thought. “Any king would.”

“Your Grace,” Ash said, “if you had forgotten about this old law, then surely Cedd has never known it. If you simply put the conditions of the coronation in the coronation vow when it is spoken at the ceremony in the Cathedral, then Cedd will not be able to reject it. He may, perhaps, not even hear it. But the people will, and the brehons always overlook the royal contract after the coronation, and then at the first Parliament call the King in to remind him of his powers.”

Anthal nodded.

“Well, then,” he said, looking up at Ash, “If it pleases you…”

“It does.”

The King said, “Then let us summon a brehon, and by night’s end all shall be put in order.”