Age of War

Chapter 12

The guards led her through a maze of passages and open-air avenues. There seemed to be no delineation between indoors and outdoors within the Enclave, and they would head down a narrow corridor intermittently lit by wall sconces that would not have been out of place in the Keepers’ stable complex, only to turn a corner and find themselves in another fetching courtyard. There was a vague sense of different buildings with different uses. She knew, from pictures and descriptions, what some of the most famous looked like. As they crossed one open space, this time with several statues on high plinths scattered around, she caught sight of the imposing Chamber of Ministers, a squat behemoth of a building with a pointed roof and high towers on each of its front corners. They were topped with slender minarets, but torches were lit below them, reflecting from the bronze cladding so that they seemed to be lit by two mighty flames that pierced the gloomy night.

And now another arresting sight reared up. The Enclave was huge – so huge that it incorporated gardens, groves of trees, bubbling streams and even low hills. The palace itself, the residence of the Imperial family, was in the centre of the Enclave at the highest point, and all the buildings immediately adjacent were only a few storeys tall so as not to detract from its magnificence. Again, Jonis knew roughly what it looked like by simple cultural osmosis, but nothing prepared her for the sight of it. It was an enormous edifice, impossible to make sense of at a glance. At night, its shapes were particularly indistinct with towers, walls, roofs, slender bridges and covered walkways arranged seemingly at random. It wasn’t even truly one building, but rather a great warren of disparate constructions, linked haphazardly, following no conceivable order. They marched straight for it, down a straight paved roadway lined with tall evergreen trees. On either side were lawns, and more monuments were scattered here and there in dells and delicate pavilions. The gardens were cunningly terraced so they seemed to melt into the buildings that abutted them, and the whole scene gave Jonis a headache as she tried to take it in. She’d still seen no one else since they’d entered either. It was like a mausoleum.

The gates of the palace itself were magnificent. They stood open, each six times the height of a man or more, decorated with intricate carvings in silver, gold and electrum. She had no time to examine the scenes they depicted, and could only gaze around in wonder at the white marble walls in which no gap or seam was evident. The whole building seemed to be off one piece, as if cast in some monstrous mold the size of a mountain. The entrance hall was oval, and two intertwining staircases led up to a gallery that seemed to float in thin air. Branches wound their way around every column and through every balustrade, and in spring – if such a season was ever to come again – it must have been a truly magnificent sight. Instead, Jonis had to content herself with the cold austere beauty of this draughty, winter manse.

Her mind was thoroughly scrambled by the time she was led into the depths of the palace, at last truly inside as she understood it, and the guards gestured for her to pass through another set of carved double doors. Here the walls were not pale and airily becoming, but instead dark and brooding, their carved surfaces sharp and severe, and the air was gloomy and oppressive. She walked alone into a great vaulted chamber, with its ceiling lost in smoke from the torches that were set on titanic black marble columns all along the sides. There was a great aisle along the centre and, as she craned her neck upwards, she could discern the dim shapes of banners hanging in the rafters. So. She would be meeting the Empress formally. She’d hoped for something a little less one-sided. There was no one else in the room, not even guards. Of course she had no weapon with her, and even if she had, she’d have been made to relinquish it at the entrance to the Enclave. She checked herself – was she really thinking about hurting the Empress? Where had that thought come from? She didn’t even know the woman, except by reputation.

And what a reputation. For as long as Jonis had been alive, she’d just been Lady Vion, the Princess of Atlas, reputed to be the most beautiful woman in the world. Hard, cruel, befittingly imperious, a true daughter of Atlantis. But also, most pertinently to her, the lover of Rayke Albrihn. Like her. At least for a time anyway. And it dawned on her that perhaps the reason for her summons was more mundane. Maybe this was all about Rayke? But that seemed absurd. She hadn’t wronged the Empress. Albrihn was not hers: he’d made that quite clear. No, this must be something else. She feared it somehow related to the discoveries she’d just begun to make. Was there some conspiracy at the heart of Atlantian history, despite Calad finding the idea so risible?