Death and the Emperor

Book 2 Chapter XVIII: The Key to the Mystery

At night, she should have been a skeleton, with dart and hour-glass, rather than a woman, this attendant; for her touch was as the touch of Death. -- Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

By the time Death left to return to her duties, she and Kilan had discussed every possible reason for Varan's choice, and a few impossible ones. When she was gone Kilan was left to puzzle over the situation on his own. Why did Varan want to be a Reaper? What was she thinking?

He thought and thought about it until he fell asleep. He thought and thought about it when he woke up. But for all his thinking he still couldn't understand it.

And I never will understand it until I speak to Varan, he thought. Why does she want to spend eternity gathering souls? I can't think of a more depressing job!

The news about Varan had driven all ideas of visiting Qihadal out of his head. He might as well have completely forgotten about his wife's existence, for all the thought he spared her. It was only several hours later, when he first saw the day's paper, that he remembered his intention to visit her.

Somehow the papers had learnt that the baby would be born soon.

"EMPRESS CONSORT'S ORDEAL WILL SOON BE OVER," the headlines read.

This was a title calculated to attract curiosity and raise questions. It certainly raised questions for Kilan. Until he read this headline he hadn't had a clue that his wife was going through any ordeal. It was only as he began to read the article that he realised the author was referring to her pregnancy. Well, that was an ordeal, he supposed, but being a man he had placed that in a box labelled "Things I Can Never Understand", and never thought of it again until something reminded him of it.

The rest of the article was simply about the birth being expected sometime next week, and how everyone expected the baby to be immediately shipped off to be adopted into some distant branch of the family, where it would grow up in obscurity and never be heard of again. And then, the journalist was sure, everyone could forget the tragedy that the Iqui had allowed to befall his daughter, and it need never be mentioned again.

Kilan knew very little about what Qihadal must be thinking and feeling, but he suspected it would take her a long, long time to get over what had happened to her. Certainly she could never forget it.

He folded up the newspaper and went in search of Qihadal.

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Qihadal spent almost all her time nowadays in her garden. She could no longer work in it, but she sat there and read. Sometimes she simply sat and thought. She thought about many things -- her past, her present, her possible future. On occasion she dreamt up futures for her child -- futures which always involved it killing her half-brothers and taking the throne of Malish. Other times she was sure it would be sent away somewhere and she could forget its existence. Still other times she thought it might be born dead. That would be the happiest outcome, she was sure.

Sometimes when she was alone and feeling particularly depressed, she wondered if it would kill her. Her thoughts ran along the same lines as Nimetath's. Would Death turn the dangers of childbirth into a way to rid herself of a rival?

Today she was studying a history of Carann, trying to make sense of the convoluted family trees. Either the book's author had made a fine mess of the genealogies, or Tinuviel's ancestors had married only their close relatives. She was muddling her way through an account of the events leading up to the Battle of Ningyi Plain, and so far she'd learnt of five marriages between brothers and sisters, twenty-one marriages between cousins -- at least some of whom, if she understood the book correctly, were the result of brother-sister marriages -- and even an aunt-nephew marriage.