Page 52 of A Crown of Lies

He nodded. “Then I shall pray for the same today as I have these last nine months.”

The priest nodded. “Let us hope the Mother has heard your pleas.” They started walking again. “The good news is that the king’s condition is deteriorating rather rapidly. He is unlikely to manage siring another child.”

“Thank the Divine. I’m certain the queen was just as relieved to hear it.”

“She would be more relieved if you would speak to her,” the priest counseled.

Michal shook his head. “Queen Olga has no love for me.”

Indeed, they detested one another. He was a living, breathing and very visible reminder of her husband’s infidelity, and a public shame for her, since she had failed to give him an heir. The prince hated her because of her constant scheming to supplant him as his father’s heir and take the throne for herself. When Haarima-jaan and Eris ascended, it opened the pathway for other women to rule in the Free Cities. Michal was not opposed to it in principle, but he was his father’s heir, not Olga. The throne was his by right, and by the will of the Divine, he would fight to claim it.

They exited the castle, passing through the courtyard full of dead leaves and dry grass, making for the entrance to the cathedral on the other side. Rain poured from the sky, gathering in muddy puddles around the disused courtyard. Few made the journey from the palace to the cathedral anymore, especially by this path.

“She does love her child, my prince, as any mother would. All she asks is for you to declare your intent. If the child is born male—”

“Any true born child—male or female—is a threat to my rule,” Michal said firmly. “I have declared my intent to marry the child off to some foreign lord or princeling as soon as it is of age if she is willing to renounce the claim of her children to the throne and formally recognize me as my father’s heir. Which she has thus far refused to do.”

“A mother’s love can soften the heart. She will come around and realize it is better to have a living child and no claim than a dead heir for a son.”

Michal nodded. “I shall pray you are right, priest.”

The prince pushed open the door to the cathedral and entered alone. Dark stone walls rose on either side. In the recesses to the right, ancient stained-glass windows depicted the saints in their trials. Prince Michal’s footsteps echoed loudly in the narrow hallway, mixing with the distant chant being sung. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, and the monks of the divine were saying their morning prayers. They sang their songs in low, melodic chants, the sound haunting.

When he was a boy, Michal found everything about the cathedral unsettling. It was here they had laid his mother to rest in her stone coffin, as was the Savarran custom. The people of the Free Cities burned their dead except in Greymark, where they interred them in stone cairns. But in Savarra, those of noble birth had their insides removed and stored in clay jars. Their bodies were wrapped in scented cloths and placed inside intricately carved sarcophaguses, which were put proudly on display in grand temples.

His mother had no such temple built as a memorial to her great battle with the Reaper. Instead, they had tucked her sarcophagus into the dark depths of the cathedral.

Michal paused at the top of the stairs, peering down into the inky shadows, the chant and distant sound of rain against stone filling his ears. If his mother had lived, his father might have divorced Olga and married her instead, and this whole ordeal never would have happened. Instead, she had died, and he had been excised two weeks too early from her cold corpse.

Morosi, they called him. Death omen. A living child born from a dead womb. For so long, he had resisted being the monster they believed he was, but those days were drawing to a close. The prince was tired. So very tired.

And so, he removed the torch from the wall and descended into the bowels of the cathedral to seek the counsel of the dead.

The stairs descended, wide and deep, the sound becoming more of an echo the further he went. When at last he stepped into the lower chambers, it sent a small plume of dust up into the air. Michal walked to the left, clinging to the wall to find his way. It was so dark down there, the chamber so wide and large, even the torchlight could not illuminate it all.

He found his mother’s chamber a short distance down and entered it, placing the torch in the iron holder on the wall. The chamber was small, no larger than a prison cell, and crowded. Clay jars coated in glittering golden spiderwebs lined the walls. In the center, resting eternally on a lifted marble platform, was his mother’s sarcophagus.

Michal ran his fingers over the smooth stone features of her face and touched his own, finding a match. The paint had faded over the years, but he knew they had the same chestnut eyes, the same raven black hair. She’d been a great beauty in life, and he was thankful to have inherited some of that, even if his father’s features had made his eyes too wide and his nose all wrong. The curse of his father’s feeble blood went deeper than his face, however, for the prince had an affliction of the blood that often left him weak and dizzy, sometimes so much that he could not rise for days at a time. Strange rashes would mar his cheeks and neck, and he would be so tormented by aches and pains that no medicine could treat. His joints swelled and his bones broke easily.

The healers could find no cause and no cure. It was, by all accounts, a curse of the gods visited upon him for being born a bastard.

The prince gripped the lid of the sarcophagus and pushed with all his might. It slid aside, easier now than all the times before, and he peered down at his mother’s wrapped and shriveled corpse. Her arms had been brought tight against her chest. Some of the wrappings had come loose around her face, and more spiders had gotten in. Malnatherons. Nasty creatures. His great grandfather had bought some as pets from Trinta and they’d all escaped, coming down into the depths to breed. They wove golden webs, which were amusing, but their bites were nearly always fatal.

He extended his hand and lowered it into the sarcophagus, letting the little golden spider crawl into his palm. “Come onto my throne, said the spider to the fly,” he recited. “’Tis the prettiest throne that you ever did spy. The way up to it is a wide white stair, and I have such sights to show you there.’”

Michal closed his fist quickly, crushing the spider before it could bite his palm. Then he shook the corpse from his hand and retrieved the burial wrap from the little chest at the end of the sarcophagus. The prince hummed to himself as he lovingly rewrapped his mother’s corpse. Once all the wrappings were back in place, he shook some sweet perfume onto his palms and began rubbing her down. Her body had long ago lost the stink of death, but the perfume would keep the beetles and spiders out until it wore off again. Besides, he liked the smell of it.

He’d stolen the first draught of perfume from his father’s mementos of his mother when he was five. When he’d emptied the first vial, he’d been so distraught at the thought of never smelling his dead mother again that he wept all night. Eventually, he found a way to get more from Savarra, no easy task for a lad of five.

Once she was seen to, he carefully lifted himself over the edge of the sarcophagus and climbed into it with her, curling up next to her with his head resting on her mummified chest. For a long while, he just lay there, stroking her wrappings, trying to imagine how she had been in life.

“I had that dream again, mother,” he whispered, his voice raspy against the stone. “The storm in the east that devours the west. I thought it had finally come to pass when they laid siege to Brucia, but I was mistaken. The storm brews slowly. It is deception. Lies. And the Brucian queen cannot see how she sells our way of life away. Now they say she has struck a bargain with D’thallanar, and another elf whispers rebellion into the ear of the king in Greymark. And here, the snake of a queen my father married plots to murder me before I can strike at her child. She wishes to rob me of my throne, and the others are willingly giving theirs away to the elves. We are surrounded by pretenders wearing crowns of lies. What’s to be done, mother?” He stroked his fingers down the wrapping over her jaw, waiting for his answer.

“The Trintan queen is weak. I know I could have her if I wished it and put all this to bed, but…” He closed his eyes and let his forehead rest against her jaw. “I detest the idea of sleeping next to anyone but you. No one could ever love me as you do.” He kissed her mouth gently through the wrappings.

After a long moment, he sat up and frowned down at her. “But if she’s gone, who…” He sighed and turned away. “What right have I? I can barely hold Ostovan’s throne.”

He stared at the side of the sarcophagus in silence.

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