Triumph of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [112]
He could have moved into the Crystal Palace. Glancing up above him, through the leaves of a myrtle tree, Joram could see the Palace hanging over him like a dark star. Its lights extinguished, it was barely visible, shining in the pale light of a new moon.
Shaking his head, Joram looked hastily away. He would never go back there. The Palace held too many bitter memories. There he had first seen his dead mother. There he had heard the story of the death of Anja’s child. There he had believed himself nameless, abandoned, unwanted.
Nameless….
“I wish to the Almin that fate had been mine!” Pausing beneath the snow-laden boughs of a drooping lilac bush, Joram leaned against it for support, ignoring the chill water that dripped from the leaves, soaking his white robes. “Better to be nameless than to have one name too many!”
Gamaliel. Reward of God. The name haunted him. The memory of his father haunted him. He could still see the old man’s eyes…. Realizing, he was shivering violently, Joram began to walk the dark paths again, trying to warm himself.
At least the rain had stopped. Several Sif-Hanar, arriving through the Corridors this evening from other city-states, brought an end to the deluge. A few of the nobility demanded that the magi change the weather to spring again immediately, but Prince Garald refused. The Sif-Hanar would be needed for the upcoming battle. They could end the rain and keep the temperature moderate in Merilon this night, but that was all. The nobles grumbled, but Joram—their new Emperor—agreed with Garald, and there was nothing the nobles could do.
But Joram supposed he could look forward to future arguments like that. He stumbled as he walked. He was tired almost to the point of exhaustion, having slept fitfully last night after the battle, troubled by dreams of two worlds, neither of which wanted him—the real him.
Nor do I want either of them, he realized wearily. Both have betrayed me. Both hold nothing for me but lies, deceit, treachery.
“I won’t be Emperor,” he said to himself in sudden resolve. “When this is ended, I’ll turn Merilon over to Prince Garald to rule. He is a good man; he will help change it to a better place.”
But would he? Could he? Good and honorable and noble as he was, the Prince was Albanara, those born with the magical gifts needed to rule. He was accustomed to diplomacy and compromise; he reveled in the intrigues of court. Change, if it came at all, might be long in the coming.
“I don’t care,” Joram said tiredly. “I’ll leave I’ll take Gwendolyn and Father Saryon and we’ll live quietly by ourselves someplace where it won’t matter to anyone what my name is.”
Moodily pacing the garden, hoping to wear himself out so that sleep—deep and dreamless—would claim him at last, Joram found himself walking near the house. Hearing voices, he glanced up at a window.
He stood outside a downstairs room that had been made into a bedchamber for Gwendolyn. Clad in a rose-colored nightgown with long, flowing sleeves, his wife sat in a chair at her dressing table, allowing Marie to brush out her lovely, golden hair. All the while, she talked animatedly to the dead Count and a few other deceased who had apparently joined the party.
Lord Samuels and Lady Rosamund were in their daughter’s room as well. It was the sound of their voices that had attracted Joram’s attention. They stood close to the window, talking to a person Joram recognized as the Theldara who had treated Father Saryon during his illness in the Samuels’s house.
Taking care that he didn’t allow any of the light shining from inside the house to fall upon him, Joram crept softly through the wet foliage and, hidden by the shadows of the dark garden, drew near the window to hear their conversation.
“There is nothing, then, you can do for her?” Lady Rosamund asked in pleading tones.
“I’m afraid not, milady,” the Tbeldara said bluntly. “I’ve seen madness in many forms in my life, but nothing to equal this. If it is madness, about which I have my doubts.”