Arms-Commander

C

Saryn stood at the window of the third-level sitting room, looking down at the long shadows cast across the front courtyard by a white sun tinged with the faint orange that came just before sunset. She was Overlord of Lornth…or tyrant…or what ever. Had that been her fate from the beginning? She had the sense that Ryba had certainly seen that…and believed it.

Had she had any choices? She shook her head. That’s a meaningless question. Each choice followed from the previous choice. In a sense, the day that she had defeated two squads of Henstrenn’s armsmen outside of Duevek had led to all that followed.

The same had been true for the other angels-those who survived.

Were the “right” choices merely the ones that allowed one to survive and prosper? What of those for whom any choice was wrong-like poor doomed Lord Sillek? Once his father attacked Westwind, Sillek had been left with no good choices. Was that what everyone called fate?

Ryba had dealt with her fate in one way, and she had created and would rule Westwind alone and pass that heritage to her daughter, Dyliess. Nylan and Ayrlyn had left Westwind and Lornth to build what ever they would in what had once been the Accursed Forest of Cyador. And Saryn…she had built nothing. Not yet. She had presided over the destruction of a tottering land, using the only means at her disposal, means that she would once have claimed that she never would have employed, only to find herself faced with rebuilding a land that shared few of the values in which she believed…and she had agreed, for the sake of all that, to have and bear children, and with a man she would have ignored totally years before.

Can you change Lornth enough that you will make a difference? Not changing Lornth would doom the entire land and possibly Westwind. Would she be successful, or would she find herself in the same position as Sillek?

She smiled faintly. That was what she would find out.

Thrap.

The gentle knock was Zeldyan’s. That Saryn could sense. “Come in, Zeldyan.”

The former regent and current lady-holder of The Groves slipped into the sitting room that had once been hers, gently closing the door behind her. “You have been here, alone, since all the others left.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

Zeldyan offered a sympathetic smile. “You are worried?”

“More like reflective, not that there’s not some worry there. I’m trying to do something…well, I have the feeling that your lord Sillek was trying to change things, too.”

“He tried, but he could not.”

“I don’t know that I would be here without what he did.”

“You are kind.”

Saryn shook her head. “I haven’t been kind. I’ve done what I thought had to be done. I think what I did was right. But it wasn’t kind. I couldn’t even afford to be kind to Chaspal. Any kindness would have been seen as weakness, as an opening for others to test me, and that would have forced me into greater use of force later.”

Zeldyan did not speak for a time, standing beside Saryn as they looked down into the courtyard and watched the shadows fade and the twilight slowly fall across the palace.

“I envied you, you know,” Zeldyan finally said. “You are always so confident, and so strong.”

You don’t have to think much when you have few choices, and, so long as you act quickly, that gives the appearance of confidence. “I only did what I had to, in hopes of restoring Lornth and stopping the endless feuding.”

“Lornth will be strong again. I know that. But it will not be the Lornth I have known.”

“That Lornth could not have lasted,” Saryn replied, “even without Westwind. Cyador was fading, and once it faded, so would have Lornth.”

“I would not have lived to see my Lornth fade.”

“No. It would have taken longer,” Saryn admitted, “but we do not choose the times in which we live. We only choose how we live in those times.”

“I will be leaving in the morning. I had hoped we could have dinner together again.”

Saryn smiled. “I would like that. Very much.”