Excerpt: SOON TO BE TITLED

The great hall was lined with the portraits of forgotten men. Across one wall were the faces of pagan kings – eleven in number – painted wildly in reds and ochres: the colors of tumult. There were men high on proud horses; men surrounded by tropical birds; men in towns that no longer had names, buried beneath the desert sand. At the end of the wall, aligned neatly with the corner, the eleventh portrait was of a man with deep solemn eyes. Rodim had ignored this portrait before. In the war, it had been moved through the cellars of the palace. Its frame had been broken, the brightness of the object that he held had been reduced to gray, and Rodim was certain that the luster of his eyes was no longer there. On the streets, copies of it of varying size, quality, and accuracy were sold to thousands of patrons before they were apprehended and destroyed by a bonfire that made the city smell of ash and pitch for days. The original painting was found in the wine cellar, torn at the edges by rats and warped by the moisture and cool of the room. His artisans had restored it to its present condition, the colors slightly faded, but the flowers in his hand as bright as the day the painting had first been made. Red and ochre. The old king's eyes were unbearably sad. The words below the painting, carved into the ancient frame, said merely: Taram Anduvan, emperor.
His father's portrait hung in the center of the room. His eyes were fierce and the wind blew his dark hair across his face. The artist had painted him on the prow of a ship in the midst of a storm. Waves crashed against the sides of the ship and Rodim's clothes were soaked, even in the relative innocence of the artist's imagination. He took ill that night, his son remembered. Every time he looked at the picture, he thought that he saw his face among the men in the background, wrapped in some sailor's cloak, pushed further and further below deck as the storm grew stronger. He would have preferred to wait out the storm with his father, but Rodim I would have none of it. He waited alone throughout the night, fascinated by the waves, the dark sky, the untamed ocean. When dawn broke, he went to wake his son, his hair consumed by the smell of salt. Rodim II had fallen asleep only an hour before, and his arms were wrapped around the rough wool blanket that had been slung across the bunk. The emperor smiled at his son, a boy of seventeen, and fell asleep, exhausted by his battle with the ocean. He died within days. Still, the picture captured something of him that Rodim had not remembered in life. Romance, adventure, or perhaps caution. The fear that some day his son would have to brave this same war, this same ocean.
Some later king would look upon his father's portrait and see the son lost in the darkness of the painting. That was his fondest hope.