Empires

The three empresses met in a field high in the mountains. Each was accompanied by a single handmaiden who bore a covered basket and stared intently at the ground. The Empress of Flowers was the first to move forward, because she had always been the most impulsive. She climbed the three half-height steps into the gazebo and washed her hands in the basin that waited at its centre. The Empress of Oceans came next, limping a little as she stepped up, and washed her hands also. The Empress of Stones moved last and slowest, and when her hands were cleansed they hung at her side and dripped onto the floor. For a long time the three regarded each other from behind their veils, then each reached up and removed it.

The handmaidens knew better than to peek, but if there had been an observer at this moment he would have been astonished to see that the faces of the three women were more than a little similar. The same pale grey eyes lay below the same thick lashes over flushed cheeks with the lightest spray of freckles. The same half-smile curled lips that were all but mirrors each of the other. There were differences, of course - the Empress of Oceans' skin was ruddy and wind-bitten, her hair sea-bleached and tied in an intricate knot on her head. The Empress of Flowers' hair was long and sun-polished and hung in gentle curls, but there were traces of dirt beneath her fingernails. The Empress of Stones' hands were cracked and calloused with labour and there were dark circles beneath her eyes.

The sisters grasped hands, heads bowed, silent. There would be time to discuss the state of the Empires soon enough, and time to share the treats that each had brought, and time to be regaled by the singing and music and dancing of the handmaidens. For now it was enough to be together, for a moment, after so long. They dared not meet more than once in ten years, and though the years were far kinder to them than to most, still the weight of time was heavy upon them.
The Empress of Stones broke the circle first, gathering her skirts and sitting on one of the three benches.

"There will be war," she announced. There was no clue in her tone as to how she felt about this, and for that moment her sisters wondered how much had changed in the past decade. "It cannot be helped. Men are ever thirsty for blood and cannot be sated until it is shed."
"I feared it would be so," agreed the Empress of Oceans. She too sat, and after a while the third sister joined them.
"There is always a way to avoid it," she said.
But of course there was no way.

The Empire of the seas, where great city-ships rode the waters as a scent rides the wind and salt encrusted mountainous sails, had felt the change of the tides. Afraid and angered they were already assembling their strength, calling the city-ships to the Navel, the mountain-island that was the only land they ever set foot upon. They believed that the unrest in the waters was caused by some sorcery from the other Empires - they knew the sins of the landbound and would not be persuaded otherwise.

The Empire of the mountains and caverns had felt the tremors in the earth and seen ancient cairns topple into the great canyon. They had come, on foot and on horseback, in wagon and litter, to the Deephall to petition their Empress. As the earth trembled around them they cried out in rage, and nothing could dissuade them from their belief of the conspiracy between the sea- and plains-dwellers.

In the Empire of the plains, fields and plateaus and gentle hills and valleys writhed. Lush grasses yellowed and ancient trees toppled. In anguish they flocked to the Tree and beneath its time-wrinkled boughs they petitioned for an end to the treachery of their neighbours. Reports from all provinces agreed - sea- and stone-spies had poisoned their lands.

"So war it must be," the Empress of Stones repeated when each had relayed the situation in her lands. "Our beloved peoples cannot see beyond their fear of the neighbours they do not know. And so they will kill each other, or die trying."
The Empress of Flowers wept quietly. She knew well the dying of each thing in its season, and the cycle of new life nourished by each death. There was no beauty in war, though, and in her mind she saw the plains-grasses stained red with the blood of her people.
"But what is the true cause?" the Empress of Oceans asked. Her voice was as soft as the tide, and as moving. Her sister's tears dried at once and the Empress of Stones' frown deepened. "The changing tides, the quaking earth, the dying fields... I suspect a great darkness, sisters, that has gone unnoticed within one of our own borders."