The Testimony of the Right Honorable Erich of Frostbane, Ta’al of Volparnu and Grand Vizier of the Skarsian Matriarchy
The warden led me into the visiting room. “She can’t do anything harmful, like a deep scan, without physical contact,” he said. “She can still probably read your mind, though. It’s best to wear this.” He handed me a metallic skullcap.
It’s hardly the most fashionable attire I’ve ever worn. Feeling a bit ridiculous, I followed the warden. “We’ve got her constantly monitored,” he assured me. “I’m telling you, nothing out of the ordinary is happening.”
And if it were, would I know? I’d never met the woman, and even if I had, she’d been locked away for years. Surely, an experience like that wears upon the personality.
I sit across from her, behind a force-screen. “Hello, Molly,” I said.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked.
“That’s a hostile way to treat your first visitor in five years.”
“You’re here to interrogate me. That’s the only reason anyone comes here. That, and the one biographer about a decade ago, who wanted to know about my experiences with the Archon. I told him the truth. I told him that the Archon is an unimaginable horror, and that its desire is to obliterate the human race.”
“I’m sure that the prosperous immortals of this system might see that a tad differently,” I murmured. For my part, I had nothing against the Archon. My brother, of course, loathed him. That was to be expected. It was also amazingly foolish, but then again, my brother is an amazingly foolish man. If I were the Archon, I would have had Merkht put to death slowly and painfully, to avenge my wife’s honor. Instead, he’s allowed to retain his title and honors – albeit more-or-less on paper – and granted the privilege of immortality.
I know exactly what the Archon is thinking because I’m thinking it too. Hunting accident. Someday that fool will be eaten by a frostbeast, and then my son will become Tenzain of Volparnu in his stead.
The only possible grudge I could have was at one point, I nurtured a vague desire for Tara, the then Tenzina. That faded the minute she divorced my brother. The desire was really a desire to one-up him. Ah, sibling rivalry. The Matriarch is an attractive woman, but not as beautiful as my wife, who is unfortunately having an affair with my brother, who remains childless despite his remarriage to an absolutely worthless woman. Such is life.
Molly, on the other hand, is a scarecrow. If she’d ever had any beauty, she’d lost it in the rigors of prison life. Such a woman would not be given the time of day on Volparnu. The Matriarch is correct: Volparnian men are, in large part, idiots.
The conversation with her went nowhere – not that I expected it to. She seemed sullen, and my instincts told me that she was hiding something. But as the warden said, there was nothing suspicious that could be pinpointed.
I was about ready to leave when the door behind Molly opened. Another prisoner was being brought to receive a visitor. She seemed familiar, and after a second I recognized her – Christolea. She had not lost her beauty although her thick mane of pale blonde hair had turned to wires of white, and her age showed in the skin of her hands and neck. She recognized me as well, and glared at me with the bitterest hatred. For a moment, I thought she was recalling how Clive Rivers and I had turned on her during her attempt at a coup so many years ago – turned on her because she proved to be incompetent, and the Grand Vizier, Bok Denevi, power hungry. Then I wondered if it was because I was ten years older than she, but appeared to be thirty years younger.
And I was Grand Vizier, too. How amusingly ironic.
Christolea’s visitor was an elderly man. Really, it wasn’t surprising that she had visitors – she came from an old family of a good name, a once-powerful family under the 5th Matriarch. She was, apparently, a distant relative of the current Matriarch through an illegitimate liaison. Most importantly, she was the only other person alive who contained the proper genetic marker to wield the Staff of the Matriarch, the alien implement which allowed the Matriarch to control the power and defense grids.
In short, she was a rival, and it was a wonder that Her Eminence hadn’t had her executed for her treason. If I were the Matriarch, I would’ve killed both these witches. But Tara is soft.
That isn’t quite an accurate assessment. In battle, she has the heart of a hero. She can kill, well enough, in heat, the heat of battle, the heat of anger. But she has no stomach for killing in cold blood, and so her enemies languish in their bitterness.
It occurred to me that the current regime has a number of enemies, and their time is running out. But Christolea could do nothing without an Archon, and the time when an alternative Archon could be considered was long gone. The needs of the Domha’vei had grown, and Ashtara had grown to suit them. There is no other nau’gsh, Cu’enashti or Arya, large enough to serve as a conduit for that amount of power. In order to assemble an Arya grove, we’d need at least several dozen trees to match Ashtara’s six, and it was impossible to get five of them to work together.
But why would anyone want to? Really, considering that Archon and Matriarch are, in theory, absolute dictators, it could be so much worse. We are ruled by a god who is only interested in pleasing his woman, and a woman who treats ruling an interstellar empire as if it were a tiresome salaried job which she has to perform competently enough to justify her cocktail parties and beach holidays.
Anyone who wanted to supplant them was out to ruin the Domha’vei, not rule it, which placed me solidly in their corner.
As I left, I asked the warden, “Who is that man who was visiting Christolea?”
“Oh him? That’s old Payter Almiss. He comes here a few times a month. I think he knows her family.”
One does not survive the shark pool of Volparnian politics by having bad instincts. I contacted Danak. “I think we have a problem.”