The Return of Fitzroy Angursell by Victoria Goddard

Author:Victoria Goddard [Goddard, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Underhill Books

Astandalas had been called the Golden. It had been made largely of a yellow sandstone, and exuberantly planted with yellow roses. In the right season and the right light it had shone luminous as a candle-lantern. I had seen it so on our infrequent visits as the Red Company, and once only as Emperor, on a late-afternoon progress to perform one of the hundred-year rituals of binding.

But even in its heyday, in its height of glory, on an early-summer day when one was dazzled by sunlight and rose-perfume and magic and all the pomp and circumstance of an ancient Empire, Astandalas had had its hidden rival here.

And now Astandalas was gone, and white Solaara had taken its place: a city far more beautiful in all its parts than that ancient and frankly dirty capital had ever been. And yet Mae Irión, unknown to us all, had persisted, still clad in gold and its citizens with it.

There was another set of falls below our vantage-point. The Qavaliun spread out between fingers of rock, paler jade water between the same dark stone as the Place of Perspective, and crashed down perhaps a hundred or two hundred feet into a wide lake before continuing off down a folded valley that already lay hidden in mist.

On the very edge of the cataract a mound rose up, the work of hands and magic (for only magic could counter the degree of erosion the river brought; I did read the reports brought to me). A single road spiralled up from a bridge at the bank to an observatory at the peak. It was lined with houses and other buildings, all built nestling against each other with even their windows lining up agreeably, and every roof and door and window-frame was gilded.

“I wonder who does the polishing?” Masseo muttered.

I reached out my magic cautiously, aware of the influence of the river. There was much magic here, that was the honest truth, different from any I’d ever encountered before. I felt my heart begin to speed up with excitement, and made certain my face and bearing were as serene as for any court appearance.

The knowledge they might have! Four thousand years of discovery and learning, held secret in their hidden jungles behind their high walls—oh, they would not hold it out with open hands, surely, even to me. Perhaps especially not to me. For here I was not and could not be Fitzroy Angursell of the Red Company.

There was a strange heaviness to the air, a net draped across the land with its anchor somewhere in the central tower of the city. It tasted of secrecy and concealment and some lingering unwholesomeness, and I did not like it at all.

I straightened my back and let my magic unfurl just a little more. Ezan shivered and looked around, as if at a breeze passing, but one of his fellows looked on me with wide, astonished eyes. I smiled at him regally and put my thoughts firmly into place as Artorin Damara, Lord of Zunidh and Last Emperor of Astandalas.

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