kingdom will be secure, however.’ He went to his throne, reached
up, and took his huge sword down from the wall. As it always did
when he took it in his hand, the sword burst into blue fire, but it
appeared that even the Orb grieved for my sister because the fire
seemed to me to be a bit subdued. The grieving king turned to face
the assemblage, holding the flaming symbol of his authority aloft.
There was an absolute, almost fearful silence among the mourners.
‘My son, Prince Daran, will stand in my stead,’ Riva declared in
tones that clearly brooked no opposition. ‘You will obey him even
as you would obey me.’ Then he switched the sword around in
those huge hands, taking it by its fiery blade and extending the hilt
to Daran. ‘Thus I transfer all power to my son!’ he boomed.
Somewhere a bell started to ring, a deep-toned sound that seemed
to shake the very stones around us. I knew with absolute certainty
that no bell on the Isle was large enough to make that sound. Daran
reverently took the sword from his father and raised it above his
head. The fire of the Orb burst forth, running up that massive blade
and enveloping the young prince in a sort of nimbus of blue light.
‘All hail Daran!’ Kamion commanded in a great voice, ‘Regent of
the Isle of the Winds!’
‘Hail Daran!’ the crowd echoed.
Elthek’s face was pale with fury and his hands were trembling.
He obviously hadn’t even considered the possibility of a regency,
and certainly not a regency so supernaturally accepted. Clearly,
he’d assumed that the grief-stricken Riva would try to continue to
perform the duties of the throne, and a situation like that would
have been almost made to order for the Rivan Deacon’s gradual
usurpation of power. Kamion would have been shunted off to one
side, and Elthek, speaking for the distraught Riva, would have
insinuated himself into a position of unassailable authority. The
blazing sword of the Rivan King in the hands of Daran effectively
cut off Elthek’s path to power, and the Deacon was clearly unhappy
about it. I managed to catch his eye, and just to rub it in a bit, I
returned his smirk.
Riva, as he’d announced, went into seclusion, and Daran, Kamion
and I took over the reins of govermnent. Daran flatly – and wisely,
I think – refused to sit on his father’s throne, but presided instead
from a plain chair placed behind a common table piled high with
the documents which are the curse of every ruler in the world.
I discovered that winter and early spring just how tedious affairs
of state can really be, and I marveled at the hunger some men have
for a throne – any throne. Alorns are basically an informal people,
and an alorn king is usually nothing more than a glorified clan-chief
who’s readily accessible to any of his subjects. -That’s fine outside
in the open, I suppose, but once the business of running a kingdom
moves indoors, problems start to crop up. The formal setting of a
throne room calls for formal speeches, and this unfortunately brings
out the worst in some people. Oratory, however grand, is really
nothing more than a way for a pompous man to stand up and in
effect say, ‘Look at me,’ and most of the ‘petitions to the throne’
Daran was forced to endure were pure nonsense.
‘Must they go on and on like that?’ Daran complained one rainy
evening after we’d closed up shop for the day.
‘It’s just a way of showing off, your Highness,’ Kamion explained.
‘I can see them, Kamion,’ Daran said. ‘They don’t have to wave
their arms and make speeches. Can’t we do something to cut all this
nonsense short?’
‘You could shorten your work-day, dear,’ I suggested.
‘What?’
‘You could hold court for an hour every morning and then pack
up and go back to your office. The fact that others are waiting in
line and time is limited might encourage those orators to get to the
point.’ Then another idea came to me. ‘Or, you could require each
speaker to hold an iron rod in his hand while he’s talking.’
‘What good would that do?’
I smiled. ‘I’ll just gradually heat the rod until it’s white-hot, Daran.
I think the speaker might hurry right along once his hand starts to
smoke.’
‘I like that one,’ Daran said.
‘Unfortunately, it smacks of witchcraft,’ Kamion observed, ‘and
elthek might want to make an issue of it. I think we can come up
with something else.’
What Kamion devised positively reeked of genius. The next
morning a portly baron was reading aloud – badly – from a prepared
text presenting all sorts of reasons why he should be exempt from
certain provisions of the tax-code.
‘I think I’ve come up with the answer to our problem,’ Kamion
murmured to Daran and me. He strolled to the edge of the dais,
stepped down and casually approached the speaker. ‘May I see that,
old boy?’ he asked politely, holding his hand out for the sheaf of
paper in the baron’s hand. Then he firmly took the document from
the startled noble and glanced at it. ‘Very interesting,’ he said. ‘His
Highness will consider it and let you know what his decision is in
a month or so.’
‘But -‘ the baron began to protest.
‘The matter will receive the Prince Regent’s full attention, old boy.
Was there anything else?’
The baron began to splutter.
Kamion looked around. ‘Ah, corporal of the guard,’ he said to
one of the soldiers at the door.
‘Yes, my Lord Brand?’
‘Could you find me a bushel basket somewhere?’
‘I think so, my Lord.’
‘Do be a good fellow and see what you can turn up.’
‘Of course.’
Kamion returned to the dais and then faced the assemblage. ‘One
of the problems his Highness has been encountering lies in the fact
that the finer points of many of your petitions are glossed over when
you present them to the throne aloud, gentlemen, and what you
have to say deserves better than that. As soon as the good corporal
returns with that basket, he’ll pass among you and you can deposit
your petitions in the basket. That way, you’ll all be able to go about
your business without wasting time waiting for your turn to speak.
Think of all the hours you’ll save that way, and all the important
things you’ll be able to accomplish.’
They gaped at him. I knew for a fact that most of these nobles
didn’t have anything better to do. The hours spent in the throne
room were their only reason for existence.
Then the corporal returned with the basket and, at Kamion’s
instruction, passed among the throng to receive all the laboriously
prepared petitions, which were reluctantly surrendered.
‘Excellent, gentlemen!’ Kamion said. ‘Capital! Now, why don’t
we all go back to work?’He glanced at the window.’Pity it’s raining,,
he noted. ‘If it weren’t, we could all go fishing. Shall we
adjourn?’
Daran rose from his chair, and Kamion and I followed him from
the hall.
‘You haven’t really done me any favors, Kamion,’ Daran
complained when we reached our impromptu office. ‘Now I have to
read all that idiocy.’
‘It won’t take very long, your Highness,’ Kamion assured him.
He went to the fireplace and dumped the contents of the basket into
the flames. ‘oops,’ he said. ‘How clumsy of me.’
Daran and I collapsed in helpless laughter.
In many respects, I think it was Kamion’s urbane and civilized
manner that helped me through the difficult time after Beldaran’s
death. He was very wise, absolutely loyal, and he had a charm about
him that made everything he touched go smoothly. I knew his wife
quite well – well enough to know that although she wasn’t happy
about the way his duties kept him away from her, she understood
that his position required him to spend long hours with Daran
and me. There was never anything improper about the relationship
between Kamion and me, but had our situation been different
Well, there’s no need to go into that, is there?
It was early in the summer of the year 2038 that something came
up that was far more serious than long-winded petitions to the
throne sententiously delivered. Although the coastline of the Isle
of the Winds looks barren and hostile, the interior valleys are often
lush and fertile – particularly in the southern part of the island.
Rank among the alorns was – still is, probably – based on the
ownership of land suitable for agriculture, and those southern
valleys are highly coveted. There was a Baron Carhein, a typical Alorn
bully, who lived down there, and he had a son, Karak, who, as it
turned out, was a drunken brute. Their neighbor, Baron Altor, had
a daughter, Cellan, who was a beautiful, gentle, and cultured girl.