Sorealle

By Rigel Ailur

Maximillian of Sorealle: King Regnant despite the best efforts of some of his queendom's most powerful noblewomen to persuade—or coerce—him to marry. A neighboring queen begins massing an army, and his own people grow more and more anxious. One breaks ranks and launches a preemptive attack. Now Maximillian must hold the queendom together and fend off challengers from outside of and within his own realm.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bluetrix Books
• Release date: Jul 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463630273

Book preview

Mimion: a wilderness planet.

Four spectacularly different races share it, including fur-covered, arctic-dwelling hominids; gargantuan whale-like fish; sentient birds with twelve-foot wingspans; and humans.

Humans with seven senses instead of five, whose queendoms’ governments rely on those with the strongest telepathic and psychokinetic abilities. Political (and sometimes military) turmoil runs amok as monarchs constantly scheme and maneuver to consolidate their power and influence.

From the world’s stone age to space age and beyond, the stories span history and recount the lives of the most powerful Empress down to the most menial serf, from scientists to swordswomen to scholars.

Spellbinding and spectacular stories abound. Enjoy all the drama and romance, action and adventure, mystery and intrigue in all the

Tales of Mimion

SOREALLE

Rigel Ailur

Bluetrix Books

Sorealle

Rigel Ailur

Published by Bluetrix Books

© 2018 by Rigel Ailur

© 2018 cover design by Rigel Ailur

ISBN-13: 978-1721192977

ISBN-10: 1721192972

Copyrighted material. All rights reserved. Please do not reproduce in part or in whole without the express prior written consent of the author.

All characters and events in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

SOREALLE

Chapter 1

As King Maximillian of Sorealle reclined on his garden couch, he thought that no person had ever looked less ready for battle than he did at that moment. Good, he congratulated himself, absently stroking his full white beard. It would put Viridian, Grand Duchess of Meer, more at ease if she felt heartily welcomed. He shifted his considerable bulk on the velvet lounge and leaned forward so one of his gentlemen-in-waiting could adjust the pillows behind him. Of course the king could have done it himself telekinetically, but why waste his energy when someone else was there for that purpose?

If only he felt as confident as he looked. If only it were as easy to decide what to do, how best to fight his battle to keep the queendom.

Sitting more upright, Maximillian could better watch what was going on in the courtyard around him. He loved picnics, even when it meant his entire court moved outside with him. Maximillian didn’t care. He enjoyed company and loved observing the activity swirling around him.

Still, the bright sunshine and jovial activity could not keep his mind off the matter at hand. He hated juggling the cajolery, and politics, and diplomacy. No, not juggling, he amended, tightrope-walking. A queen wouldn’t have half his problems, he thought with uncharacteristic bitterness. Few dared challenge a reigning queen’s right to her realm. It simply wasn’t done. Well, not often, anyway, he amended.

Although the telepathic and telekinetic ability of some women was their true claim to power, those mental abilities ran in families. Once a queendom was established, only an extremely powerful telepath would dare challenge the monarch. If the queen refused the challenge, the upstart either tried to flee the queen’s wrath, or needed enough wealth or influence of her own to ward it off.

To his eternal frustration, Maximillian acknowledged that he faced additional challenges. A man’s social status was based on that of his female relatives. Normally, men had no telepathic ability whatsoever. Of course, high-born men could psychically ’hear’’ strongly telepathic women. But even commoners—who had no telepathic ability at all, hence their classification as lowly commoners— could do that if the telepath broadcasting was strong enough.

Maximillian, however, had a choice to make. A rarity on two counts: first, he was one of the few men on the entire planet Mimion with strong enough psychic skills to make him not just an aristocrat, but royalty, the higher of the two noble classes. Second, he had refused to marry and thereby turn his queendom over to a queen.

So did he want to continue to refuse to marry? Thereby continuing to annoy all his most powerful subjects?

Or did he want to withdraw from the battle entirely and finally take a wife? The ire that would create wouldn’t last long if he chose an influential-enough woman.

Or, did he want to make the battle even more difficult by announcing his beloved would be his wife? He honestly wasn’t sure how long the bad reaction to that would last.

The older he got, the less appealing any of the battles seemed to grow.

Most of the time, superficial though it remained, he thoroughly enjoyed the attention that came with his unique situation. The constant stream of marriage proposals counted as the best type of attention imaginable—as long as he could continue to say no without making enemies. The only male ruler on all of Mimion at the moment, he got very frustrated at not being able to run his queendom without so many people second-guessing him. Many aristocrats in Sorealle, despite supposedly being his subjects, felt they could run the queendom better than he could. Although the open criticism came and went in cycles, his courtiers’ lack of faith in him had remained constant over the seventy years since he had inherited Sorealle from his mother. He didn’t need to read minds to know that.

Most of the nobles meant well, but it was the few who didn’t whom he had to guard against. If only he could simply demand their loyalty like any other monarch—like any queen could. He had to be more circumspect, however. It was hard to act like a sovereign and at the same time defend his right to be one. A few noblewomen coveted the throne for themselves, but he usually managed to play them off against each other fairly deftly. Luckily, of all the nobles in Sorealle, he was the only royal. All the other nobles were aristocrats, vastly powerful in their own right but with their psychic abilities slightly below those of royalty. His royal standing, combined with the fact that his family had ruled Sorealle for generations and was exceedingly wealthy, allowed him to keep his grasp on the throne.

Over the past few months, though, Grand Duchess Viridian had grown increasingly insistent that he accept her marriage proposal.

If he lost the duchess’s support, he could find other nobles revoking theirs as well. Then the people already mocking a reigning king would see the consequences when chaos really did reign. Maximillian had absolutely no desire to be king in name only. If he wanted that, all he had to do was agree to be someone’s bridegroom. He would retain his title, but lose all authority to the woman who married him. No, Maximillian had no desire to sacrifice his personal liberty or control of Sorealle for the sake of avoiding a challenge. Plus, if he chose someone who couldn’t keep his vassals’ support, Sorealle would go to pieces anyway.

His servants had moved tables, stools and couches outside early that morning; the kitchen staff had been even busier than usual preparing the feast. The result was well worth their efforts. The grassy meadow just outside his castle’s walls had been turned into an open-air banquet hall. That fit Maximillian’s idea of a picnic. He had no desire to sit on the ground and eat out of a basket.

The number of servants outside nearly matched the number of nobles on the manicured, verdant lawn. There was no danger of confusing the social classes. The nobles all wore bright colors, as permitted by their rank. Some preferred more casual slacks and tunics, whereas others wore elaborate robes. Almost all of them, whether standing in groups or seated on the furniture, were laughing and holding drinks. None needed jackets or cloaks on the bright summer day, although a few wore them anyway. The hottest summer days reached only 20C, so no one would be uncomfortably hot even with the extra layers of clothing.

Servants, their own tunics and trousers very dark, darted among the nobility and refilled glasses. Others kept the tables laden with food. Maximillian did not believe in running out of anything, as his ample girth attested. He took another chunk of cheese from the table in front of him and smiled at all the merriment. All the bustle around him looked like a kaleidoscope of people. The dark neutral shades worn by the commoners make the rainbow hues worn by the upper class look that much brighter.

Maximillian tried not to make too obvious how closely he watched what was going on. He learned a great deal by taking note of who spoke with whom and for how long. The king’s highly developed mental skills allowed him to monitor the flow of emotions of the people conversing. He stopped just short of eavesdropping on what they said (skilled telepaths could sense eavesdroppers anyway), but considered soaking up the emotional ambiance around him merely another method of being aware of his surroundings. He prided himself on noticing everything that went on around him. In his position, it proved invaluable to know what alliances were being made, possibly behind his back.

His telepathic sixth sense told him the duchess and her retinue were less than a mile away. He could ’hear’’ the telepathic duchess ’speaking’’ loudly to someone who evidently had little sensitivity of her— or his— own. At least she never tried to surprise him with her visits. Maximillian gave the noblewoman credit for always being forthright with him. She somehow managed to play the political game while still being completely open about her objectives. Simply put, Grand Duchess Viridian intended to be Queen of Sorealle, and she rarely failed to achieve her goals.

In truth, she would not have been a bad match, Maximillian reflected, and he had kept close track of her since her youth. He saw Grand Duchess Viridian as an escape route if the other nobles turned on him. The woman had an impressive power base of her own. Her wealth, although considerable, was not what it could have been had she hoarded gold and kept all her land. Instead, she preferred being generous and having her influence grow rather than her fortune. She was one of the few who could probably keep the Queendom in one piece.

The woman was not only smart, but quick-witted as well, and worldly. Her Grand Tour had included not only the two continents in the western hemisphere, but also the one in the eastern hemisphere. She had been away from home for years and had come back much wiser about various peoples of the world. Maximillian kept the thought far back in his mind that he could do far worse than to entrust himself and his queendom to her. He would never admit to the duchess how highly he regarded her, but of course she had some idea since she was almost as sensitive a telepath as he.

However, high as his esteem was for Grand Duchess Viridian, Maximillian intended to marry Shyann and no one else. All he had to do was figure out how to do that without his queendom crashing down around his ears.

A rider from the duchess’s envoy emerged from the woods to announce the party’s imminent arrival. Any place else in the queendom, Maximillian would have been able to watch them approach from hundreds of miles away. The gently rolling plains of Sorealle meant the horizon was far in the distance. The king disliked the monotony of the landscape, however, and spent most of his time at his favorite castle in the sparsely forested northernmost reaches of his dominion. Besides, he felt far safer closer to the peaceful queendom to his north. The queendoms on his other borders were not nearly so peaceful.

The rest of the party emerged from the trees minutes later. An honor guard of ten knights escorted the grand duchess, who also traveled with a dozen attendants, ranging from one lady-in-waiting to a valet and a chamber boy. The duchess disliked flamboyance, so she kept her retinue small, unlike some nobles who refused to travel with less than a hundred knights and servants.

Knights were one of the few groups of peasants allowed to wear colors other than earth tones. The only other exceptions were the healers, who always wore light green, and the teng (priests) who wore their orders’ colors. The duchess’s knights’ lavender uniforms showed they were subjects of Sorealle, and the duchess’s coat of arms indicated they served under her. The women wore two swords apiece. They had split into two groups, five in the lead carrying lances and the other five bringing up the rear and carrying crossbows.

Most of the group was on horseback. At the center of the procession, four brown horses pulled an ornate coach, the doors on either side emblazoned with the duchess’s coat of arms. Grand Duchess Viridian rode alongside the coach. She urged her horse to a canter as soon as she caught sight of the king. Startled, people cleared a path for her as she wove her chocolate brown steed between tables and rode right up to the sovereign.

She slid gracefully off of her horse and made a low bow from the waist. Your Servant, Majesty.

He waited just a moment, making fleeting eye contact with a couple of nobles sending the most vituperative glares at the duchess. The aristocrats quickly resumed their own conversations.

Duchess, a pleasure to see you, King Maximillian held out his hand and smiled warmly in spite of himself. He had difficulty maintaining decorum around the duchess. He had to admit it: he enjoyed her company. She always had a mischievous glint in her turquoise eyes and a devilish smile on her lips, just as she did now.

Her turquoise cape swirled around her compact body as the duchess flung it back as she stood. She stepped forward and took the king’s hand in her own much smaller one. Rather than kissing his ring as protocol dictated, she turned his hand and kissed the palm.

Maximillian arched an eyebrow at the intimate gesture but made no comment. Although giving the duchess another welcoming smile, he kept a curious eye on the coach behind her. He recognized the man being helped down as the duchess’s father, Cian. A girl about ten followed, ignoring the offered help and jumping to the ground instead.

Her cape swirling again, Grand Duchess Viridian turned quickly and stepped aside to give the king a better view. Her flowing garment matched the color of her tailored slacks and blousey tunic. Maximillian had never seen her wear any other color except as an accent, or sometimes white to break up the solid turquoise. Even her knee-high riding boots were turquoise. Of course, turquoise matched her eyes beautifully, so perhaps she had no interest in other colors.

With your permission, Sir, you remember my father.

The king nodded, so she went and offered her arm, which the Duke gladly accepted. He leaned heavily on the cane held in his other hand. The girl, finely attired in short rose robes, followed a few steps behind.

Stroking his beard, a mass of white curls flowing down his chest, King Maximillian waited patiently for the Duke to approach. Maximillian had known the last duchess well and had mourned her passing. Not only had she been a very gracious lady, she was unflaggingly loyal as well. The king had been sorry to hear the duke had been widowed, but had felt relief that at least he had his daughters to look after him. Plus, he retained the title of Grand Duke of Meer until Viridian married, something not likely to happen in the near future, if at all.

The duke bowed as low as his rickety body allowed and greeted the king politely. They exchanged a few pleasantries before the duke, always eager to be away from the center of attention, took his leave of the monarch. Assisted by one of the servants, the duke shuffled off to find a quiet seat. Tall but gaunt, the duke looked much older than his hundred sixty-some years. Of the same age, King Maximillian looked younger than his years in spite of being rotund and having snow-white tresses.

Grand Duchess Viridian put an arm around the girl’s shoulders and drew her forward. Your Majesty, may I present my daughter?

So this was the next Grand Duchess of Meer. Ponderously, Maximillian swung his feet to the ground and sat the rest of the way up. He had known that Grand Duchess Viridian had returned from her Grand Tour with a daughter but had never met the child. Willowy and already almost as tall as her mother, the girl had her grandfather’s body type rather than her mother’s short, curvy build. Like some noblewomen, Viridian had never publicly acknowledged the father. Yes, yes! Please do, Maximillian replied merrily, suddenly back in good spirits. The king loved children.

Viridian beamed with pride. Thank you, Sir. This is Serise.

The girl, very poised, stepped forward and dropped to one knee. It’s an honor to meet you, your Majesty. The words sounded sincere but well-rehearsed, as if she’d been practicing for finally being presented in court.

Maximillian held out his hand for her to rise, and the girl stood and kissed the back of it. The king smiled and patted the girl on the shoulder. Are you hungry, young lady? he asked in a conspiratorial tone, as if they were not surrounded by a throng of people. I’m sure you can find something good from all these tables. That one over there is where all the sweets are. He pointed in the right direction, and got a huge grin of thanks from the child.

Remembering her manners, Serise thanked him and bowed again before dashing off to take his suggestion. Grand Duchess Viridian took a seat vacated by one of the lesser nobles. At an invisible telepathic signal from the duchess, her retinue disbanded. They all knew where to find quarters according to their station in life. One of her stable hands came and got the duchess’s horse so he could be tended to with all the others.

"You chose a fine day to be