Most of my original vassals had also died by the time that the century wound down toward the year 2400, and their successors had somehow learned better manners. The threat of what was wryly called ‘Nerasin’s complaint’ in most of Arendia hovered over their heads, and even though they might disagree with some of my social innovations, they were prudent enough to keep their objections to themselves. The fact that their former serfs were no longer bound to the land in de facto slavery encouraged them to be polite to their workers as well – particularly after a fair number of cruel, arrogant landholders discovered that they had no workers when harvest time rolled around and they were obliged to stand helplessly watching while their crops rotted in the fields. I like to think that I might have played some small part in establishing that polite civility which is so characteristic of the archetypal Sendar. Experimenting with societies is a very engrossing pastime, wouldn’t you say?
What I did in my duchy was quite deliberate, but what happened in Vo Wacune was almost an accident. I spent a great deal of my time there at the palace, since my position almost demanded that I immerse myself in politics. Politics, however, is a male preoccupation, and there were days when I wanted to be with women. Occasionally, I’d invite certain selected young ladies to my town house so that we could discuss matters that men simply wouldn’t understand. As I’d observed earlier, Arendish ladies were – on the surface at least – a giddy, seemingly brainless group, interested only in fashions, gossip, and snagging suitable husbands. There were, however, Arendish ladies who had something between their ears besides fluff. Asrana had been a perfect example of that peculiarity. I winnowed my way through the court of the Duke of Wacune and skimmed off the best and brightest young ladies and, by carefully manipulating the seemingly random conversations in my library or my rose garden, I began to educate them. It’s always a delight to watch the awakening of a mind, and after a while the random discussions at my house turned away from current fashions and empty gossip to more serious matters. My informal ‘ladies academy’ produced quite a few women who had a significant impact on Wacite political and social life. Women instinctively know how to gently guide and direct their husbands, and my little school subtly modified some things I heartily disapproved of.
We’d gather in my rose garden or on the terrace in the evenings as the stars came out. We’d eat chilled fruit my kitchen boy brought us, and we’d listen as the nightingales sang as if their hearts were breaking. And, since I’d gathered most of the more beautiful and interesting young women at court, the young men would come to the street outside my house and serenade us from just beyond the walls in clear tenor voices that dripped with longing. There are worse ways to spend an evening.
The twenty-fifth century was a time of relative peace in Arendia. There were occasional little brush-fires, of course, usually involving long-standing feuds between neighboring barons, but the Arendish dukes, applying sweet reason and the threat of overwhelming force, were able to smother the flames with only minimal help from me. I did make one suggestion, though, that seemed to be very effective. A vassal is obliged to provide his lord with warriors whenever the lord calls for them. The dukes found that peace would break out almost immediately when feuding barons were neatly stripped of all able-bodied men by the calling in of that obligation.
The world was moving on beyond the borders of Arendia. The raids along the Tolnedran coast by Cherek pirates continued through the twenty-fifth century, long after the reason behind them had been forgotten. No one even remembered Maragor, but the Chereks, those most elemental Alorns, continued to sack and burn Tolnedran coastal cities while piously explaining their barbarism by saying that they were simply following Belar’s orders. All that ended rather abruptly with the ascension of the first Borune dynasty to the imperial throne in Tol Honeth in the year 2537. Ran Borune I was far more competent than had been his predecessors of the second Vorduvian dynasty. He rousted his slothful legions out of their comfortable garrison in Tol Honeth and put them to work building the highway that runs from the mouth of the Nedrane River north to Tol Vordue. The construction put legion encampments all along the coast within easy reach of the traditional Cherek targets, and the Cherek freebooters began to encounter much stiffer resistance when they came ashore. It was about that point that the Chereks decided that they’d fulfilled their religious obligations and that it was time to go find someplace else to play.
Since Ran Borune was the first of his family to occupy the imperial throne, his palace still crawled with left-over Vorduvians whose characters covered the spectrum from the near side of rascalism to the far boundaries of outright criminality. The Vorduvians had been much impressed with Ctuchik’s elaborate scheme early in the twenty-fourth century. The ongoing Arendish civil wars had given the Vorduvians all sorts of opportunities to make obscene profits – largely in the arms trade. What was known in Arendia as ‘Polgara’s Peace’ dried up their markets, and my name was routinely cursed from Tol Vordue to Tol Horb and Tol Honeth. The Borunes were a southern family, so they were not in a geographical position to be much involved in the arms trade in Arendia, so Ran Borune saw no real reason to fall in with some of the more exotic solutions to the problem suggested by the Vorduvians, the Horbites, and the Honethites.
It must have been in about 2560, after the Chereks had decided that raiding the Tolnedran coast wasn’t fun anymore, that a cabal of those three families decided to stir things up in Arendia. They approached the then current duke of Mimbre, a young fellow named Salereon, and opened that box which I’d assumed had been permanently nailed shut. They began by addressing Salereon as ‘your Majesty’ and explained that by saying that since Mimbre was the largest of the four duchies, the Duke of Mimbre was in reality the king of all Arendia – just as soon as he got around to annexing the rest of us. Fortunately, my careful training of the Arendish dukes took over at that point. Salereon, accompanied by only a few retainers, rode north and arrived at my manor house in the late spring to discuss the business.
‘Methought I should consult with thee ere I embarked upon this venture, your Grace,’ he said earnestly when the two of us were alone in my library. Salereon was a nice boy, but fearfully dense. In a way, he was actually asking my permission to declare war on me. I wasn’t sure whether to explode in rage or to laugh in his face. Instead, I carefully – and slowly – explained what his Tolnedran ‘friends’ were trying to accomplish.