His thoughts were spiralling. When he withdrew from them he found that Devrin and Walter had moved off, as the prince showed the scruffy scribe around the library, pointing out this book and that. “Ah, here’s one of interest to you,” Devrin was saying. He pulled out a dusty leather tome, the surface cracked and frayed, and laid it on a table with a thud. “Oddities and Anomalies,” he said. “Unique Powers from Across the World. I daresay you would fit in here yourself, Walter, with this luck of yours.”
Selleck gave a chuckle. “It’ll make fine night-time reading, good prince. Might I pick a few books out, to take to my bedchamber?”
“By all means. There is one on Vandar’s Tomb somewhere, I think, listing all the official and successful journeys there. You could be in that one too.” Devrin smiled and returned to Elyon. “Well, shall I show you the rotunda? It’s just up the stairs.”
They left Walter to pick through the library; the man would have ample time to explore every nook and cranny of the tower in the coming days, and the rotunda in particular would become like a second home to him. For now it was only the two princes who wound about the spiral stair, moving up the worn stone steps, smoothed by time, level by level as the tower narrowed and thinned toward the top. Devrin carried a flaming torch before him to show the way, stopping to light the candles sitting in small niches along the outer wall. When they reached the top of the stair it straightened out, leading right up into the domed rotunda at the tower’s summit, a large half-orb empty of all furnishings but for the plinth set at its hearth, a stone pillar tessellated in squares of gold and blue. The walls were thick stone, painted in veins of gold, windowless but for the great glass aperture that looked straight out over the endless sea. On the floor was a wondrously detailed mosaic depicting the day Rasalan rose from the frothing ocean to gift his sight to Thala. The tower did not exist then, so the demigoddess stood only on the clifftop, looking over the raging waters as the ocean god came up from his halls.
“Beautiful, isn’t it,” Devrin said. “I’ve always wanted to see it.”
Elyon frowned. “You’ve never been here?”
“Up here? No. This is the preserve of kings and queens. I have come to the tower before, long ago, but was only permitted into the guest quarters.” He looked about the walls; there were more candles in niches, and a few torches in sconces too. “Let’s see how it looks when given more light.” The prince moved about the circumference, firing the torches and the candles, filling the dome with warmth and radiance. “Ah…the detail. I could stand here all day admiring it.”
Elyon had rarely seen such a fine work of art. It felt almost wrong to be walking on it, but he supposed so few people ever came up here that the mosaic would not be unduly damaged by their footfall. All the same, he went about more carefully than he normally would, worried the weight of his plate might crack or tarnish a tile. After a full slow circuit, he found his way to the window that gazed out over the frozen sea. It was broadly oval in shape, somewhat like a pupil. “It’s like a giant eye,” Elyon said.
“That was the intention,” Devrin agreed. “When the Eye of Rasalan is placed on the plinth, its power is amplified, it is said. The weaker monarchs would only glimpse through the pupil here, in the tower. There is one rather similar to it, back in Thalan. The Tower of the Eye it is called.”
Where Hadrin was taken, Elyon thought. Amilia had pointed it out when they first flew to Thalan.
“Typically the Eye would be kept there while a monarch was in Thalan. But here they would see more clearly.” Devrin smiled and filled his lungs, terribly excited. “Well, perhaps you can place the Eye down now, Elyon? I am my father’s son. Now he will curse me for a monster forevermore for this, but maybe I’ll have a little gander first, see if I might glimpse something for you?”
For us, Elyon thought to correct him. This was about everyone, not just him. But he only took the orb from the bag on his back and set it on the plinth. A smile graced his bearded lips as he placed it there. It sat snugly in the depression, a perfect fit. It felt good - right - to bring it back to its proper place, and to finally complete his quest.
Devrin looked at the Eye like it was an old friend of his, though more likely he’d glimpsed it only a handful of times in his life, if that. He moved about it in a slow walk, admiring it from all angles, smiling and turning his head here and there. “I suppose my auntie Cristin asked to have a look as well, did she?” He glanced over, seeing the answer in Elyon’s eyes. “Did she have any luck?”
“None. She said it was broken. That the pupil was shut for good.”
Devrin smiled. “Perhaps she’s right. I daresay we will find out in due course. Though…” He continued to circle it, like a very friendly bird of prey. “I can feel a certain power coming off of it. A throbbing essence, if you will, spreading from its core. Do you feel it as well?”
“Not like you do.”
“No. It is steel that calls to you, not the timeless motion of the sea.” He took another slow step, another.
Elyon watched him, as the prince moseyed along on a second circuit. He seemed to be biding his time, embracing the essence of the orb, letting its aura enrobe him, fill him. Not like Cristin. She tried too hard and gave up too easily. Devrin did not seem that sort and his father, too, would be greatly more patient. “Your auntie said something interesting about your father,” Elyon said, as the prince walked.
Devrin kept his eyes on the orb. Another step. Another. “Oh? And what was that?”
“She spoke of a rumour regarding his sire.”
“Ah, that. A well-worn thing among the members of my family. There is no proof of it either way, though some like to point at my grandfather’s general sense of discourtesy toward his king brother as reason to believe it. Not many take it seriously, though. Why do you mention it?”
“Because of that.” Elyon pointed at the orb. “If your father is Godrin’s son, not Tayrin’s, his sight will likely be stronger.” He was not the eldest son, no, not the firstborn and thus not direct in the line of Thala by primogeniture, so in that sense it probably didn’t matter, but all the same, Elyon had been intrigued by it. Simply being born of Godrin’s loins, brilliant as he was, might have fostered Sevrin with more power, and Devrin too by extension.
Might this have even been foreseen? By Godrin or even his father King Astan before him? Elyon didn’t much want to take that thought to completion, ugly as the implications were. A father, guiding his eldest son to sire a child by the wife of his brother. There was much about all this that could be perverse, even if it was necessary. Like tricking a poor girl into thinking a handsome prince was coming for her, he thought. Gods, that poor woman. No wonder she’s turned so crazed.
Devrin had stopped before the Eye, his hand to his chin, rubbing. “Well…here goes, then,” he said. “Let’s see if Great Rasalan’s got anything to show me.” He stepped toward the glowing orb, put his hands to the stone plinth to either side, locked eyes with the pupil and leaned in. A second later he leaned back. “My father is here,” he said.
Elyon frowned. “Great Rasalan showed you that? That isn’t so exciting, Devrin.”
“No, I mean…I heard them outside. A horse whicker. It must be them arriving.”
Elyon had heard nothing. He reached to grip the handle of his dagger, enhancing his hearing, and true enough there was the sound of horses and men below, and the howling wind blowing in through the open doors. “You’re right. Good ear, Devrin.”
“We Seaborn have decent senses, you know. Helps us under the water.” He smiled and then looked at the Eye once more and the smile slipped from his lips. “Well, my chance is gone. Knowing my father he will command me to stand down. Etiquette must be followed, Elyon. Gods forbid I might have better sight than him.” There was the smallest hint of rancour in his tone, hidden amidst the jest. “Well, let’s leave it here. Come, I’ll announce you.”
They sped together down the spiral stair. Walter was waiting where it passed the library and joined them as they descended, a stack of books clutched in arm. He took a short moment to deposit them into his room, then they continued back down into the entrance hall with the stables and the wood and the weapons. Men were dismounting and unpacking their saddle bags, bustling about, stabling the horses.
Devrin saw his father among all that and moved forward at once. “Father, you made it. I have prepared the tower for your arrival. The fires are roaring and Hemmet is preparing the food. Oh, and Elyon is here with his friend Walter Selleck.”
King Sevrin’s face looked like it was carved from a block of ice, white-blue and frosted over as it was. The rest of him was fur speckled in hoarfrost. “Prince Elyon. You didn’t have to await my son too long, I hope?”
“No, my lord. He awaited us, in truth.”
“Oh?”
“They arrived only fifteen minutes after I did, Father. No more than an hour ago.”
Sevrin cocked a brow. “Intriguing. And you must be Walter Selleck.”
“Last I checked.” Walter gave that functional bow. “A pleasure, Your Majesty.”
“Majesty. I don’t feel so majestic right now. Your Frozenness would suit me better, yet I thank you for the courtesy, Walter. But that’ll serve on the titles. We’ll dispense with them here in the tower. My lord will do, or Sevrin when we’re alone. And we’ll be alone plenty enough, I would think.”
It was hoped that Walter’s luck might help Sevrin to open the Eye. It would be an extremely dull charge, Elyon knew, standing by for hours on end while the king peered endlessly into that orb. He would be tasked with writing down anything he heard as well. As Elyon understood it, Sevrin might mutter something without remembering, and someone must be on hand to record it.
“I have shown our guests around, Father,” Devrin put in. “And I brought Elyon to the rotunda. We left the Eye up there.”
Sevrin looked at his son. “I asked you to wait for me, Devrin. Before visiting the top of the tower.”
