The Ardoon King Read online

  Chapter 18: The Evils of the Empyrean Glossa

  As Ben stared at Lilian, there was a polite tap at the door, and it opened. Fiela poked her head in. With a concerned expression she said, “Is everything okay? I thought I heard yelling.” She looked back and forth between the crying woman and the man standing above her. “You’re fighting again,” she said meekly.

  “Yeah,” said Ben quietly. “Come on in, Serretu. We’re finished.”

  Fiela walked gingerly inside, her eyes downcast, clearly not wanting to see the angry and flushed faces of the other two people in the room. Her hands behind her back, she said in a tiny voice, “I just talked to Diz. There is a Nisirtu noble on his way to Steepleguard.”

  “A noble?” asked Ben.

  “A major noble, I think. A gentleman.”

  Lilian grunted a laugh and covered her eyes. “Oh, joy,” she said sarcastically. “I was hoping for another noble to stir the pot.”

  Fiela looked at Lilian. “Shall I have him killed?”

  That was exactly what Lilian wanted. She glanced at Ben, took in a deep breath and managed a weak smile. “No, Fiela. I must allow him a chance to pledge loyalty to the Fifth Kingdom.” Dabbing at her eyes with a silk cloth, she said, “Get his name and give it to Persy. Have her consult the grand registry. I’d like to know who I am dealing with.”

  Fiela looked at Ben for confirmation but the man was brooding and gave no indication of having heard the exchange. “As you say, Sister.” She left the room quickly, anxious to escape the toxic atmosphere.

  When she had left, Ben said, “Rationing, Lilian. It has to start now.”

  Spinning a silver brush on her dresser with one finger, the woman slowly shook her head. Without looking up, she said, “I can’t support that, Ben. I won’t. The timing is not right. But I cannot contest your command. If you wish to act unilaterally, you may, of course.”

  “I thought we were in this together.”

  “I had thought so,” she said, still spinning the brush. “If you were more reasonable-”

  She heard the door slam shut.

  Ben retreated to his study, as he always did after a fight with Lilian. And as always, he spent his first few minutes alone scanning the raised lettering of the spines on his bookshelf. He wasn’t looking for any particular book. He simply found the presence of books calming. He loved their potentiality. The right book read at the right time by the right person could change the world.

  He ran his fingers along the leather spines and inhaled the musty scent of captured knowledge. It was intoxicating.

  Should I have used Empyrean tonight?

  He could have bypassed Lilian’s ego and brought her to her senses. He could have made her see the dire situation everyone at Steepleguard was facing if they didn’t start planning ahead. Hell, he didn’t need to convince her of anything. With the Empyrean he could have forced Lilian to believe him, and if he had, this very night the two of them would be taking steps that might preserve their tiny kingdom. Thoughts spoken in Empyrean were incontestable to anyone other than Ben and Ridley, his former mentor. Anyone who heard the words immediately believed everything they were told, no matter how ridiculous.

  Yet speaking Empyrean turned everyone around him into slaves. No one could disobey or even disbelieve him. In a sense, when he spoke Empyrean to get his way, he was replacing the listeners’ reality – their identity, even – with his own. Yes, he could end his constant bickering with Lilian by simply invoking Empyrean and compelling her to see things his way. But doing that would be killing a part of the woman – her belief system. Her personality. Her identity. Who she was.

  He wasn’t sure why he argued with his wife at all. Wasn’t arguing with her in any language essentially the same thing? Wasn’t he trying to compel her to think differently, to think like him, and in doing so wasn’t he still trying to kill off who she was, at her core?

  True, she was doing the same when she argued with him. Any person who argued with any other was, Ben now realized, trying to morph his or opponent into a clone of themselves; to remake others in his or her own image. Was arguing in English or Agati any less ethical than using the Empyrean? It seemed to him the only difference was the rate of success. With Empyrean, success was guaranteed. Arguing in other languages rarely resulted in success.

  Especially with Lilian.

  His eyes fell upon the spine of the odd family album that Ridley had left him. It had been months since the scribe had vamoosed, leaving the photo album behind as evidence of his secret, lifelong involvement in Ben’s life. Ben pulled it from the shelf, took it to his desk, and began thumbing through it.

  Ben had flipped through the album a hundred times before, yet he still found the photos eerie. Most included him, as a boy, and a smiling younger-but-still-ancient Ridley. Several also included either Ben’s mother or father, or both, staring forward with zombie-like expressions, their minds temporarily wiped by Ridley’s use of the Empyrean.

  The album had once contained a photo, taken at an amusement park, of a very young and very beautiful Lilian accepting a golden cup from a confused boy - Ben. The future king and queen were perhaps ten years of age at the time. Ridley hovered behind them like the demi-god he was. It was Ridley’s proof that both Lilian’s and Ben’s lives had been scripted. Ben could not be sure if he was still living in a script, and not knowing walked him toward a type of madness, which is why he’d burned the photograph. Lilian had never seen it and never would.

  Not all of the photos were weird or menacing, however. Ben’s favorite was portrait-sized photograph of his father. The man had been young when the now faded color photo was taken. Perhaps in his early twenties. Ben’s father had left the Army after a single uneventful tour during one of America’s rare periods of peace, undecorated but also unharmed by war. Ben, who had paid the price for his war decorations, thought that was a good thing. The eyes of the man in the photo were still full of life. The man was unhaunted.

  He was a good looking fella, too. His brown air was cut short. Army short, not Marine short. He could have easily passed as a civilian when out of uniform. Unlike Ben, who was square-jawed, the man in the photograph had an oval shaped head with a modest chin, high cheekbones, and a nose that was just shy of ‘prominent.’ His complexion was perfect and his eyes were bright blue. In another world the man might have been a male model.

  “You’d have kicked my ass if I’d said that to your face,” muttered Ben as he ran his fingers across the photograph. “You kicked it for far less.”

  He stilled his hand when he sensed something shift beneath the photograph. With a single finger he traced the outline of whatever it was and ascertained that it probably wasn’t another photo. The dimensions were wrong. The object was long but not very wide.

  Hmmm.

  After carefully lifting the protective plastic sheet from the top of the photograph, Ben reached beneath it, found the object in question, and slipped it out. It appeared to be an airline ticket, beige with purple stripes at top and bottom.

  Curious. Perhaps it was the ticket his father used when he left the Army and flew back home? A souvenir?

  Ben put on his reading glasses and studied the ticket. The logo at the top was that of an angry lamassu, the iconic protector of the Nisirtu.

  In cuneiform characters, the otherwise generic ticket read:

  Nisirtu Airlines – “This is how time flies! Shouldn’t you?”

  Name: Anax Sargon II

  Date/Time: Open

  From: TBD

  To: Denver, Colorado (Denver International Airport)

  Seat 1A (First Class)

  Tax/Fee/Charge: $4,800,000,000.00 (U.S.)

  Non-Refundable/Fully Transferable

  Advance check-in not required.

  Control Number: MRGO-ABAB-DWTBIMPANTEDxMLIAB-O-AIAQC

  Document Number: ITTMTSAMSTGAB-2027

  Ben sighed and looked toward the ceiling.

  What now, Ridley?

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