Fire Sea

by Margaret Weis

  “I—I couldn't!” Alfred stammered, becoming more and more flustered as he sought to grope his way through the morass threatening to engulf him. “It was impulse. Act of the … the moment, you see. I looked up and … there was that sword c-coming down. The runes … just popped into my head … er … so to speak.”

  “And just popped back out again, eh?” The earl jabbed a sharp-boned finger into Alfred's ribs. Every part of the old man's body appeared to have been honed on a grindstone.

  “So to speak,” returned Alfred faintly.

  The earl chuckled and poked him again. Alfred could almost envision truth being sucked out of him like blood whenever that knifelike finger or those knifelike eyes touched him. But what was the truth? Did he truly not know what he'd done? Or was one part of him hiding it from the other, as he'd grown so adept at doing over these many years of being forced to conceal his true identity?

  Alfred passed a shaking hand through his thinning hair.

  “Father, leave him be.” Jera came to stand at Alfred's side, placed her hands on his shoulders. “More wine, Sir?”

  “No, thank you, Your Grace.” Alfred's glass stood untouched, untasted. “If you would excuse me, I'm very tired. I'd like to lay down …”

  “Of course, Sir,” said Jonathan. “We've been thoughtless, keeping you up well into the dynast's sleep time after what must have been a terrible cycle for you—”

  More than you know, Alfred said to himself sadly, with a shudder. Far more than you know! He rose unsteadily to his feet.

  “I'll show you to your room,” Jera offered.

  The faint sound of a bell chimed softly through the gas-lighted darkness. All four in the room hushed, three of them exchanged conscious glances.

  “That will be news from the palace,” said the earl, starting to rise on creaking limbs.

  “I'll go,” Jera said. “We daren't trust the dead.” She left them, disappearing into the shadows.

  “You'll want to hear this, I'm sure, Sir,” said the earl, black eyes glittering. He waved a hand, inviting—or ordering—Alfred to be seated.

  Alfred had no choice but to sink back down into the chair, although he was miserably conscious of the fact that he didn't want to hear whatever news came swiftly and secretly in what, for this world, were the waning hours of the cycle.

  The men waited in silence, Jonathan's face was pale and troubled, the old earl looked crafty and enthused. Alfred stared bleakly, hopelessly at a blank wall.

  The earl lived in Old Province, on what had once been a large and affluent estate. Ages ago, the land had been alive, worked by immense numbers of cadavers. The house had overlooked waving stands of kairn grass and tall, blue-flowered lanti trees. Now the house itself had become a cadaver. The lands round it were barren, lifeless seas of ash-mud created by the endless rain.

  The earl's dwelling was not a cavern-formed structure, as were many in Necropolis, but had been built of blocks of stone, reminding Alfred strongly of the castles the Sartan had created during the height of their power in the High Realms of Arianus.

  The castle was large, but most of the back rooms had been shut off and abandoned, their upkeep difficult to maintain because the only person who dwelt here was the earl and the cadavers of old servants. But the front part of the house was exceptionally well preserved, compared to other mournful and dilapidated dwellings they had passed during the carriage ride through the Old Provinces.

  “It's the ancient runes, you see,” the earl told Alfred, with a sharp glance. “Most people took them off. Couldn't read them and thought they made the place look old-fashioned. But I left them on, took care of them. And they've taken care of me. Kept my house standing when many another's sunk into dust.”

  Alfred could read the runes, could almost feel the strength of the magic upholding the walls over the centuries. But he said nothing, fearful of saying too much.

  The lived-in portion of the castle consisted of downstairs utility rooms: a kitchen, servants’ quarters, pantry, front and back entryways, and a laboratory where the earl conducted his experiments in attempting to bring life back to the soil of the Old Provinces. The two levels above were divided into comfortable family living quarters: bedchambers, guest rooms, drawing room, dining area.

  A dynast clock1 headed for its bedchamber, indicating the current time. Alfred thought longingly of bed, sleep, blessed oblivion, if only for a few hours before returning to this waking nightmare.

  He must have actually dozed off, because when a door opened, he experienced the unpleasant tingling sensation of being awakened from a nap he had never meant to take. Blinking, he focused bleary eyes on Jera and a man wrapped in a black cloak, emerging from a doorway at the far end of the room.

  “I thought you should hear this news from Tomas himself, in case you had any questions,” said Jera.

  Alfred knew, then, that the news was bad and he let his head sink into his hand. How much more could he take?

  “The prince and the stranger with the rune-covered skin are both dead,” said Tomas in a low voice. He stepped into the light, pulled the cowl from off his head. He was a young man, near Jonathan's age. His robes were dirty, fouled with mud as if he had ridden hard and fast. “The dynast executed both of them this very night in the palace gaming room.”

  “Were you present? Did you see it happen?” the earl demanded, sharp-hewn face jutting forward, seeming to slice the air in its eagerness.

  “No, but I talked to a dead guard whose duty it was to take the bodies to the catacombs. It told me that the preserver was being set to work to maintain both men.”

  “The dead told you!” The old man sneered. “You can't trust the dead.”

  “I am well aware of that, Milord. I pretended that I didn't know the dynast had canceled his rune-bone game and blundered into the gaming room. The cadavers were cleaning up a great pool of blood—fresh blood. A blood-covered spear, its tip notched, lay nearby. There can be little doubt. The men are dead.”

  Jera shook her head, sighed.“Poor prince. Poor young man, so handsome, honorable. But one's ill fortune can be another's good luck, as they say.”

  “Yes,” said the old man fiercely, eagerly. “Our luck!”

  “All we need do is rescue the cadavers. The prince and your friend's.” Jera turned briskly to Alfred. “It will be dangerous, of course, but—my dear sir,” she said in sudden consternation, “are you all right? Jonathan, bring him a glass of stalagma.”

  Alfred sat staring at her, unable to move, unable to think in any rational manner. Words burst forth from him. He rose, clumsy and stumbling, to his feet. “Haplo, the prince— dead. Murdered. My own people. Killing wantonly. And you—you callous … Treating death as if it were nothing more than a mild inconvenience, a nuisance, like a cold in the head!”

  “Here, drink this.” Jonathan held out a glass of a foul-smelling liquor. “You should have eaten more at dinner—”

  “Dinner!” Alfred cried hoarsely. He knocked the glass away, backed up until he bumped into a wall and could go no farther. “The lives of two people have been torn from them and you can talk only of eating more dinner! Of … of recovering their … their bodies!”

  “Sir, I assure you. The corpses will be well treated.” This from Tomas, the stranger. “I know the late-cycle preserver, personally. He is highly skilled in this art. You will note little change in your friend—”

  “Little change!” Alfred ran his trembling hand over his bald head. “It is death that gives life its meaning. Death, the great equalizer. Man, woman, peasant, king, rich, poor: all of us fellow travelers to our journey's end. Life is sacred, precious, a thing to value, to cherish, not to be taken lightly or wantonly. You have lost all respect for death and thereby all respect for life. Stealing a man's life is no more a crime to you than … than stealing his money!”

  “Crime!” countered Jera. “You talk of crime? You were the one who committed the crime! You destroyed the body, sent the phantasm into oblivion where it will c
hafe forever, bereft of any form or shape.”

  “It had form, it had shape!” Alfred cried. “You saw it! The man was finally free!” He paused, confounded by what he'd said.

  “Free?” Jera stared at him in bewilderment. “Free to do what? Free to go where?”

  Alfred flushed hotly, shivered with chills. The Sartan, demigods. Capable of forging worlds from one that was doomed. Capable of creation. But creation had been brought about by destruction. Our magic led the way to necromancy. This next step was inevitable. From controlling life, to controlling death.

  Yet why is that so terrible? Why does every fiber of my being revolt against this practice?

  He saw, once again, the mausoleum back on Arianus, the bodies of his friends lying in their tombs. He'd felt a sadness when he had visited them the last time before he'd left Arianus. His sorrow was not so much for them, he realized, as for himself. Left alone.

  He recalled, as well, the deaths of his parents in the Labyrinth….

  No, Alfred remembered confusedly. That had been Haplo's parents. But he'd felt the tearing grief, the raging anger, the terrible fear…. Again, for himself. For Haplo, that is. Left alone. The mangled bodies who had fought and struggled had found peace at last Death had taught Haplo to hate, hate the enemy who had locked his parents inside the prison that had killed them. But, although Haplo might not know it himself, death had taught him other lessons, as well.

  And now Haplo was dead. And I'd almost begun to think there was a chance that he …

  A whine broke in on Alfred's thoughts. The swipe of a tongue, cold and wet on his skin, made him jump.

  A black, nondescript dog gazed up at him worriedly, cocked its head to one side. It raised a paw, placed it on Alfred's knee. Liquid brown eyes offered consolation for trouble felt, if not understood.

  Alfred stared at the dog, then, recovering from his initial shock, he threw his arms around the animal's neck. He could almost have wept.

  The dog had been prepared to offer sympathy, but such rough familiarity was apparently not to be tolerated. It wriggled out of Alfred's grasp, regarded the man in puzzlement.

  Why all the fuss? it seemed to say. I'm only obeying orders.

  Watch him. Haplo's final command. “G-good boy,” Alfred said, reaching out gingerly to pat the furry black head.

  The dog submitted to the caress, indicating, with a dignified air, that head patting was acceptable and the relationship might advance to ear scratching, but a line had to be drawn somewhere and it hoped that Alfred understood.

  Alfred did understand.

  “Haplo's not dead! He's alive!” he cried.

  Looking around, he saw everyone in the room staring at him.

  “How did you do that?” Jera's face was livid, her lips white. “The beast's corpse was destroyed! We saw it!”

  “Tell me, Daughter! What are you talking about?” her father demanded irascibly.

  “That … that dog, Father! It was the one the guard threw into the mud pit!”

  “Are you sure? Maybe it resembles—”

  “Of course I'm sure, Father! Look at Alfred. He knows the dog! And the dog knows him!”

  “Another trick. How did you manage this one?” the earl asked. “What marvelous magic is this? If you can restore cadavers that have been destroyed—”

  “I told you, Father!” Jera gasped, hardly able to speak for awe. “The prophecy!”

  Silence. Jonathan gazed at Alfred with the undisguised and fascinated wonder of a child. The earl, his daughter, and the stranger regarded the Sartan with shrewd, thoughtful eyes, perhaps plotting how best they could make use of him.

  “No trick! Not me! I didn't do anything,” Alfred protested. “It wasn't my magic that brought the dog back. It's Haplo's—”

  “Your friend? But, I assure you, sir, he's dead,” said Jonathan, with a glance at his wife that said plainly, Poor man's gone mad.

  “No, no, he's not dead. Your friend, here, must be mistaken. You didn't actually see the body, did you?” Alfred asked.

  “I didn't. But the blood, the spear—”

  “I tell you,” Alfred insisted, “that the dog would not be here if Haplo were dead. I can't explain how I know, because I am not even certain my theory about the animal is the correct one. But I do know this. It would take more than a spear to kill my … er … friend. His magic is powerful, very powerful.”

  “Well, well. There's no use arguing over it. Either he's alive or he isn't. All the more reason for us to get him, or what's left of him, out of the dynast's clutches,” said the earl. He turned to Tomas. “And, now, sir, when will the resurrection on the prince be performed?”

  “Three cycles hence, according to my source, Milord.”

  “That gives us time,” Jera said, twining her fingers together, her expression thoughtful. “Time to plan. And time to get a message to his people. When Prince Edmund doesn't return, they will guess what has happened. They must be warned not to do anything until we're ready.”

  “Ready? Ready for what?” asked Alfred, perplexed.

  “War,” said Jera.

  War. Sartan righting Sartan. In all the centuries of Sartan history, there had never been such a tragedy. We sundered a world to save it from conquest by our enemy and we succeeded. We won a great victory.

  And lost.

  1 A diminutive clay model of the dynast himself set within its own miniature duplicate of the palace. As originally designed, the dynast doll was attuned magically to the dynast and portrayed the current time by its position within its play palace. Thus when the doll went to bed, the hour was the dynast's sleeping hour. When the doll sat down to dinner, it was the dynast's dining hour. When the magic on Abarrach grew weaker, the dolls began to keep less-than-perfect time.

  CHAPTER 26

  NECROPOLIS,

  ABARRACH

  ONE CYCLE FOLLOWING THE PRINCE'S DEATH, THE DYNAST canceled his audience hour, a thing he had never before been known to do. The Lord High Chancellor gave it out publicly that His Majesty was fatigued with pressures of state. Privately, Pons allowed it to be known to a privileged few, “in strictest confidence,” that His Majesty had received disturbing reports concerning an enemy army camped across the Fire Sea.

  As Kleitus had foreseen, the alarming news drizzled down among Necropolis's inhabitants like the incessant laze, creating an atmosphere of tension and panic quite conducive to his plans. He spent the cycle secreted in the palace library, quite alone, except for the dead who guarded him and they didn't matter anyway.

  Elihn, God in One, looked on Chaos with displeasure. He stretched forth his hand and this motion created the Wave Prime.1 Order was established, taking the form of a world blessed with intelligent life. Elihn was pleased with his creation and granted all good things needed to sustain life thereon. Once he set the Wave in motion, Elihn left the world, knowing that the Wave would maintain the world and a Caretaker was no longer necessary. The three races created by the Wave, elves, humans, and dwarves, lived in harmony.

  “Mensch,” Kleitus declared in disdain and scanned rapidly over the next few paragraphs of text, which dealt with the creation of the first races, now known as the lesser races. The particular item of information he sought wouldn't be found in this section, although he remembered it as being near the beginning of the dissertation. It had been a long time since he'd read this particular manuscript, and at that time he'd paid scant attention to it. He'd been searching for a way out of this world, not a history of another world long dead and gone.

  But, during the small hours of a sleepless sleep-half, a phrase had come to His Majesty's mind, a phrase he recalled reading from the pages of a text. The phrase brought him bolt upright in his bed. Its discovery was of such importance that it had prompted him to cancel the cyclical audience. A rummage through his memory brought the book to recollection. He had only to track it down and corner the words.

  In its effort to maintain balance and prevent degeneration back into Chaos, the Wave Prime co
nstantly corrects itself. Thus the Wave rises and thus it dips. Thus there is light and thus darkness. Thus good and thus evil. Thus peace, thus war.

  At the world's beginning, during what were known falsely as the Dark Ages, people believed in magical laws and in spiritual laws, balanced by physical laws. But as time passed, a new religion swept the land. It was known as “science.” Propagating physical laws, science ridiculed the spiritual and the magical laws, claiming that they were “illusions.”

  The human race, because of their short-lived span of time, became particularly enamored of this new religion, which held out the false promise of immortality. They referred to this period of time as the Renaissance. The elven race maintained their belief in magic and were now consequently persecuted and driven from the world. The dwarven race, quite skilled with things mechanical, offered to work with the humans. But the humans wanted slaves, not partners, and so the dwarves left the world on their own, taking refuge beneath the ground. Eventually, humans forgot these other races, ceased to believe in magic. The Wave lost its shape, became erratic, one end bulged with strength and power, the other end was flat and weak.

  But the Wave would ever correct itself and it did, at horrific cost. At the end of the twentieth century, the humans unleashed a terrible war upon themselves. Their weapons were marvels of scientific design and technology and brought death and destruction to untold millions. In that day, science destroyed itself.

  The dynast frowned in displeasure. Certain parts of this work appeared to him to be wild surmise and speculation. He had never known any mensch—all those in Kairn Necros had died before he'd been born—but he found it extremely difficult to believe that any race would bring deliberate destruction on itself.

  “I did find corroborating texts to back this up.” He often spoke aloud to himself when in the library, to relieve the incessant, nerve-racking silence. “But the writers came out of the same early period of our history and probably shared the same faulty information. Thus they all might be considered suspect. I shall keep that in mind.”