Fire Sea (3 page)

“Found such a fool notion in a book, I suppose. No use lighting the damn thing,” the old king remarks, referring to the lamp. “Don't waste your magic. I don't need a light. Many and many are the times I've stood on this colonnade. I could walk it blindfolded.”

I can hear them moving through the darkness. I can almost see the king thrust aside Edmund's proffered arm— the prince is dutiful and loving to a father who little deserves it—and stalk unhesitatingly through the doors. I stand in the hallway and try to ignore the cold biting at my face and hands, numbing my feet.

“I don't hold with books,” the king remarks bitterly to his son, whose footfalls I can hear, walking at his side. “Baltazar spends far too much time among the books.”

Perhaps anger feels good inside the old man, warm and bright, like the fire of the lamp.

“It was the books told us that
they
were going to return to us and look what came of that! Books.” The old king snorts. “I don't trust them. I don't think
we
should trust them! Maybe they were accurate centuries ago, but the world's changed since then. The routes that brought our ancestors to this realm are probably gone, destroyed.”

“Baltazar has explored the tunnels, as far as he dared go, and he found them safe, the maps accurate. Remember, Father, that the tunnels are protected by magic, by the powerful, ancient magic that built them, that built this world.”

“Ancient magic!” The old king's anger comes fully to the surface, burns in his voice. “The ancient magic has failed. It was the failure of the ancient magic that brought us to this! Ruin where there was once prosperity. Desolation where there was once plenty. Ice where there was once water. Death where there was once life!”

He stands on the portico of the palace and looks before him. His physical eyes see the darkness that has closed over them, sees it broken only by tiny dots of light burning sporadically here and there about the city. Those dots of light represent his people and there are too few of them, far too few. The vast majority of the houses in the realm of Kairn Telest are dark and cold. Like the queen, those who now remain in the houses can do very well without light and warmth; it isn't wasted on them.

His physical eyes see the darkness, just as his physical body feels the pain of the cold, and he rejects it. He looks at his city through the eyes of memory, a gift he tries to share with his son. Now that it is too late.

“In the ancient world, during the time before the Sundering, they say there was an orb of blazing fire they called a sun. I read this in a book,” the old king adds drily. “Baltazar isn't the only one who can read. When the world was sundered into four parts, the sun's fire was divided among the four new worlds. The fire was placed in the center of our world. That fire is Abarrach's heart, and like the heart, it has tributaries that carry the life's blood of warmth and energy to the body's limbs.”

I hear a rustling sound, a head moving among many layers of clothing. I can imagine the king shifting his gaze from the dying city, huddled in darkness, to stare far beyond the city's walls. He can see nothing, the darkness is complete. But, perhaps, in his mind's eye, he sees a land of light and warmth, a land of green and growing things beneath a high cavern ceiling frescoed with glittering stalactites, a land where children played and laughed.

“Our sun was out there.” Another rustling. The old king lifts his hand, points into the eternal darkness.

“The colossus,” Edmund says softly.

He is patient with his father. There is much, so much to be done, and he stands with the old man and listens to his memories.

“Someday his son will do the same for him,” I whisper hopefully, but the shadow that lies over our future will not lift from my heart.

Foreboding? Premonition? I do not believe in such things, for they imply a higher power, an immortal hand and mind meddling in the affairs of men. But I know, as surely as I know that he will have to leave this land of his birth and his father's birth and of the many fathers before him, that Edmund will be the last king of the Kairn Telest.

I am thankful, then, for the darkness. It hides my tears.

The king is silent, as well; our thoughts running along the same dark course. He knows. Perhaps he loves him now. Now that it is too late.

“I remember the colossus, Father,” says his son hastily, mistaking the old man's silence for irritation. “I remember the day you and Baltazar first realized it was failing,” he adds, more somberly.

My tears have frozen on my cheeks, saving me the need to wipe them away. And now I, too, walk the paths of memory. I walk them in the light… the failing light….

CHAPTER
2
KAIRN TELEST,
ABARRACH

… T
HE COUNCIL CHAMBER OF THE KING OF THE REALM OF
Kairn Telest is thronged with people. The king is meeting with the council, made up of prominent citizens whose heads of household served in this capacity when the people first came to Kairn Telest, centuries before. Although matters of an extremely serious nature are under discussion, the meeting is orderly and formal. Each member of the council listens to his fellow members with attention and respect. This includes His Majesty.

The king will issue no royal edicts, set forth no royal commands, make no royal proclamations. All matters are voted on by the council. The king acts as guide and counselor, gives his advice, casts the deciding vote only when the issue is equally divided.

Why have a ruler at all? The people of Kairn Telest have a distinct need for propriety and order. We determined, centuries before, that we needed some type of governmental structure. We considered ourselves, our situation. We knew ourselves to be more a family than a community, and we decided that a monarchy, which provides a parent-figure, combined with a voting council would be the wisest, most appropriate form of government.

We have never had reason to regret the decision of our ancestors. The first queen chosen to rule produced a daughter capable of carrying on her mother's work. That daughter
produced a son, and thus has the reign of Kairn Telest been handed down through generation after generation. The people of Kairn Telest are well satisfied and content. In a world that seems to be constantly changing around us—change over which we apparently have no control—our monarchy is a strong and stable influence.

“And so the level of the river is no higher?” the king asks, his gaze going from one concerned face to another.

The council members sit around a central meeting table. The king's chair stands at the head. His chair is more elaborate than the other chairs, but remains on a level equal with theirs.

“If anything, Your Majesty, the river has dropped farther. Or so it was yesterday, when I checked.” The head of the Farmer's Guild speaks in frightened, gloom-laden tones. “I didn't go by to see today, because I had to leave early to arrive at the palace on time. But I’ve little hope that it would have risen in the night.”

“And the crops?”

“Unless we get water to the fields in the next five cycles’ time, we've lost the bread-grain, for certain. Fortunately, the kairn grass is doing well—it seems to be able to thrive under almost impossible conditions. As for the vegetables, we've set the field hands to hauling water to the gardens, but that's not working. Hauling water is a new task for them. They don't understand it, and you know how difficult they can be when they're given something new.”

Heads nod around the table. The king frowns, scratches his bearded chin. The farmer continues, seeming to feel the need to explain, perhaps to offer a defense.

“The hands keep forgetting what they're supposed to be doing and wander off. We find them, back at work on their old jobs, water buckets left to lie on the ground. By my calculations, we've wasted more water this way than we've used on the vegetables.”

“And your recommendation?”

“My recommendation.” The farmer glances around the table, seeking support. He sighs. “I recommend that we harvest
what
we can,
while
we can. It will be better to save
the little we have than to let it all shrivel up and die in the fields. I brought this parfruit to show you. As you see, it's undersize, not yet ripe. It shouldn't be picked for another sixteen cycles, at least. But if we don't gather it now, it'll wither and die on the vine. After the harvest, we can do another planting and perhaps, by that time, the river will have returned to its normal—”

“No,” calls a voice, a voice new to the room and to the meeting. I have been kept waiting in the antechamber long enough. It is obvious that the king isn't going to send for me. I must take matters into my own hands. “The river will not return, at least not anytime soon, and then only if some drastic change occurs that I do not foresee. The Hemo is reduced to a muddy trickle and, unless we are indeed fortunate, Your Majesty, I believe it may dry up altogether.”

The king turns, scowls in irritation as I enter. He knows that I am far more intelligent than he is and, therefore, he doesn't trust me. But he has come to rely on me. He's been forced to. Those few times he did not, when he went his own way, he came to regret it. That is why I am now necromancer to the king.

“I was planning to send for you when the time was right, Baltazar. But,” the king adds, his frown growing deeper, “it seems you can't wait to impart bad news. Please be seated and give the council your report.” From the tone of his voice, he would like to blame the bad news on me personally.

I sit down at a chair at the far end of the rectangular meeting table, a table carved of stone. The eyes of those gathered around the table turn slowly, reluctant to look directly at me. I am, I must admit, an unusual sight.

Those who live inside the gigantic caverns of the stone world of Abarrach are naturally pale complected. But my skin is a dead white, a white so pallid it appears to be almost translucent and has a faint bluish cast given by the blood veins that lay close beneath the skin's thin surface.

The unnatural pallor comes from the fact that I spend long hours shut up in the library, reading ancient texts. My jet black hair—extremely rare among my people, whose hair is almost always white, dark brown at the tips—and the black
robes of my calling make my complexion appear to be even whiter by contrast.

Few see me on a daily basis, for I keep to the palace, near my beloved library, rarely venturing into town or into the royal court. My appearance at a council meeting is an alarming event. I am a presence to be feared. My coming casts a pall over the hearts of those in attendance, much as if I'd spread my black robes over them.

I begin by standing up. Extending my hands flat on the table, I lean on them slightly so that I seem to loom over those staring back at me in rapt fascination.

“I suggested to His Majesty that I undertake to explore the Hemo, track it back to its source, and see if I could discover what was causing the water to drop so severely. His Majesty agreed that this suggestion was a good one, and I set out.”

I notice several council members exchange glances with each other, their brows darkening. This exploration had not been discussed or sanctioned by the council, which means that they are, of course, immediately against it.

The king sees their concern, stirs in his chair, seems about to come to his own defense. I slide into the breach before he can say a word.

“His Majesty proposed that we inform the council and receive their approbation, but I opposed such a move. Not out of any lack of respect for the members of the council,” I hasten to assure them, “but out of the need to maintain calm among the populace. His Majesty and I were then of the opinion that the drop in the river level was a freak of nature. Perhaps a seismic disturbance had caused a section of the cavern to collapse and block the river's flow. Perhaps a colony of animals had dammed it up. Why needlessly upset people? Alas”—I am unable to prevent a sigh—“such is not the case.”