His hand went limp and dead, falling with a heavy thud on the table.
“Your pardon, Garth. I lived for several years with a broken neck once, long ago, and I have no desire to repeat the experience.”
Garth stared down at his hand. Sensation returned in a sudden rush of pain. He had bruised several knuckles on the oaken tabletop.
The discomfort quickly faded to insignificance, but served to distract him from his anger long enough for his rationality to reassert control. As the incident had demonstrated, the King had power. Garth could not harm him, but he might be able to use him. After a moment’s hesitation, he moved around the table and sat down opposite the old man.
“It is I, rather, who should ask for pardon, O King,” he said. “Forgive me; I let my grief get the better of me. I came here not to challenge you, but to ask a favor. I do not know the limits of your power, O King; perhaps what I ask cannot be done. Still, I must make the attempt. Can you restore Kyrith to life?”
The King paused before he moved his head once from side to side. “No, Garth. I am sorry.”
“It is not possible?”
“I cannot do it.”
“Why not? You are the high priest of Death; have you no power over him?”
“You ask me to undo the god’s work. Could you create with the Sword of Bheleu, restore what you had destroyed?”
Garth had to acknowledge that he could not have done such a thing; the very essence of the sword’s power was destruction. He was not willing to give up completely, however. “What of your own spells? You were a mighty wizard in your own right, were you not? Knew you no magic to restore the dead?”
“If ever I did, it is centuries forgotten.”
“Is there no talisman that can serve? Bheleu has his sword, and the Death-God his book; has the god of life no totem?”
“The totems of the Lords of Eir lost their virtue at the center of time, in the Eighth Age, when the balance first shifted against them. They have no power now, if they still exist at all.”
“Is there no way to shift this balance again?”
The old man shrugged almost imperceptibly. “There may be; if so, it would be in the Book of Silence. That is not the totem of The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken, but of Dagha, god of time, the creator of both Eir and Dûs.” He stopped suddenly, as if he had meant to say more and then thought better of it.
Garth, listening intently, noticed the peculiarly abrupt stop, but could read no meaning into it. He ignored it and considered instead the words that had preceded it.
He had taken it for granted that the Book of Silence was the totem of The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken; after all, the Forgotten King had obviously expected, three years ago, that Garth would find it on the Final God’s altar in Dûsarra, as he had found the Sword of Bheleu on Bheleu’s altar, and the Stone of Tema on Tema’s altar, and the Stone of Andhur Regvos on the altar of Andhur Regvos. Furthermore, the book was needed for the King’s great final magic, and Garth was fairly sure that that somehow involved conjuring the Death God into the mortal world. That, too, seemed to imply a link with the Final God. Garth knew relatively little of human theology, and most of what he did know he had learned on his trip to Dûsarra, but he had had the definite impression that Dagha had few dealings with mortals. He had never heard of any cult of Dagha, nor any temple dedicated to Dagha. Why, then, should so powerful a talisman be linked with this obscure deity?
It did not seem reasonable. He decided that the King was lying, hoping to trick Garth into keeping his oath and fetching the Book of Silence on the basis of a false hope that it might aid in the resurrection of his dead wife.
If he could expose this trickery, he might find himself in a better position from which to deal with the old man.
He reached this conclusion in barely three seconds; the pause in the conversation was scarcely noticeable before Garth said, “Indeed. Then what is the Death-God’s totem? Surely you must have it, as his high priest and chosen vessel.”
“I left it in Hastur, in my chapel.” The King’s voice was softer than usual, barely audible, a grinding, scratching whisper. He seemed not to be looking at Garth, though how Garth knew that, when the old man’s eyes were as invisible as ever, he could not have said.
“Hastur?”
“Hastur, capital of Carcosa.”
“Where was this place? Surely the chapel must be long gone; I have never heard of Hastur, and Carcosa has been forgotten for centuries by all save yourself.”
“The barbarians took the city and it became Hastur-dar-Mallek, Hastur-of-the-Barbarians, but they could not have destroyed it, even had they tried. They buried it instead, Hastur below, Hastur-dar-Mallek above.” There was a strange animation in the old man’s tone.
“I have never heard of Hastur-dar-Mallek, O King.”
“That was long ago, before overmen were first created; the name has been shortened to Ur-Dormulk.”
“Ur-Dormulk? That was your capital?” Garth was astonished. He had heard the Forgotten King speak of his long-lost kingdom of Carcosa once or twice before, but he had not paid very much attention to the stories. He had never doubted that the old man had once been a true king, yet he had not seriously supposed that this vanished empire had had any connection at all with the world as it was in this, the Fourteenth Age.
Now, suddenly, he was told that Ur-Dormulk, the most ancient and independent of Eramma’s cities and Skelleth’s trading partner, which he had seen from afar on his trips to Dûsarra and Orgûl, was once the King’s capital. This revelation provided a new and more definite link between his own era and the old man’s vague past. Somehow Garth had always thought of them as two separate worlds, unconnected save by certain magical objects and by the King himself; it required a major readjustment of those thoughts for him to realize that it was all one, divided only by time.
There were a few seconds of silence as the overman absorbed this news. Then he thrust it aside; it was not relevant.
“You have not said what it was that you left in your chapel.”
“I left them both there, the Pallid Mask and the Book of Silence, and I sealed the chamber with the Yellow Sign. I knew that the invaders could not pass that, and that they could not use the book or the mask if they did, but I posted a guard as a matter of form. I was still concerned with form then, and with my reputation as a great wizard.”
“You remember, then? The Book of Silence is there? How very convenient that you should recall that just now!” Garth did not try to keep the scorn out of his voice; he was quite sure that it was no coincidence that the King’s memory had returned just as he had suggested how the Book of Silence might be of use to Garth.
The old man seemed to be almost lost in reverie, quite oblivious of Garth’s tone; he made no answer.
“Do you think, then, that I should fetch the book immediately, so that Kyrith might be revived?” Garth’s tone was still sarcastic, but there was a sincere thread of hope in it.
The Forgotten King shifted suddenly, and the tattered edge of his hood flapped. “No,” he said.
“No?” Garth’s surprise was genuine.
“Your wife is dead, Garth,” the King said, “and I know of no way she can be restored to you. Even were the cosmic balance shifted again, and the totem of the god of life found and used by its rightful master—for I promise you, we who are bound to destruction and death could not touch it—I doubt that it could turn the corpse into anything better than a half-rotted vegetable. Too much time has passed already.”
“Is time, then, the crucial point? Could not the god of time be coerced, with the Book of Silence, into undoing what has happened?”
“No. I doubt that the book wastes space on anything so trivial.”
“The reversal of time, the resurrection of the dead, are trivial? Why, then, have you recalled where it lies? What good can it do me now?”
“There
was no deception in my sudden memory, Garth; your mention of the Death-God’s totem, the Pallid Mask, reminded me. I had brought the book from Dûsarra so that I might have both my great devices in a single safe place.”
“In three years, you did not recall so simple a fact?”
“In three centuries, three millennia, I did not. Perhaps I was not intended to; though I do not currently wield the mask directly, no greater power has freed me of my patron as I freed you of Bheleu. The Age of Death is not yet come, but Death holds sway in every era.”
This presented Garth with another new concept. It had never occurred to him that the Forgotten King might himself be the victim of the machinations of the gods beyond the fact of his immortality. Garth had assumed that the old man had had no contact with the gods since he left the service of The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken, that he dealt with no being more powerful than himself. The suggestion that his patron deity was still affecting him, perhaps involving him against his will in some divine scheme, was unsettling.
The entire conversation was becoming unsettling; it was getting out of hand, Garth decided. He had come with the intent of asking a few simple questions and receiving a few simple answers. He had wanted to know what part the King had played in Kyrith’s death and whether she might be brought back to life somehow. He had not wanted to listen to details of the King’s past, or to anything about the Book of Silence that might remind him of his own false oath. The King was being more loquacious than ever before in the three years Garth had known him, but everything he said related to his own concerns, rather than to Garth’s. In mixed anger and desperation, Garth declared, “I care nothing for that. Answer me my questions.”
The King said nothing.
“Is there any way known to you, no matter how fantastical or difficult, in which Kyrith might be restored to life?”
“No.” The old man chopped the single syllable off short, but it was unmistakable and definite.
“Have you any reason, however slight, to believe that there might be some way not known to you?” Garth was reluctant to give up until he had exhausted every possibility.
Again, the King said, “No.”
That seemed final; Garth could think of no other approach. The old man might be lying, but if he were, Garth had no way of coaxing the truth out of him.
“You had no part in her death?”
“No. I am no oathbreaker.”
The added phrase hurt, and Garth wondered whether the old man knew of his intended infidelity. It was only after a few seconds of silence that he realized that the King had had no need to mention his oath, for the King did not like to speak unnecessarily. Garth had no choice but to conclude that the King knew very well that the overman had sworn falsely when he agreed to fetch the Book of Silence and was reminding him of it as delicately as possible.
He was not at all sure why the old man should do so. Perhaps, Garth thought, the King meant to shame him into fulfilling his false oath. The overman leaned back, his chair creaking beneath his shifting weight, and thought in silence for a moment.
In Dûsarra, watching his scrying glass, Haggat decided that this was an ideal opportunity for his next planned event. He gestured to his waiting acolyte, who hurried off to tell a priest, especially trained for this coming performance, that it was time to begin.
A moment later, in the King’s Inn, something flickered at the edge of the overman’s vision. He whirled, startled, his hand already on the hilt of his dagger, since the table’s presence would have made it difficult for him to draw his sword.
The glinting had not been, as he had first thought, the gleam of firelight on metal. There was no one behind him. The flash of light had come from something he could not identify, a blurry redness hanging in mid-air and glowing faintly.
It hovered at the level of his eyes, perhaps a foot wide and a foot and a half in height, a blot of color against the dark background of the taproom.
This, obviously, was magic at work. He kept his hand on his dagger, though he knew ordinary weapons would probably be useless against whatever it was. Various possible origins for the thing passed through his mind. It might be a manifestation of Bheleu, come to reclaim him with or without the sword. It might be a sending of the council of wizards that had sought to destroy him, as a menace to the peace of Eramma, three years earlier. It could be something the Forgotten King had contrived, for reasons of his own, or it might have been sent by the cult of Aghad as part of its revenge upon him.
He had, he thought, made altogether too many enemies in his life, and too many of them possessed of supernatural power.
The blot was changing as he watched; it swirled and roiled about, not like smoke or even liquid, but as if it were made of flowing light. It grew, and shadows appeared within it.
Red was Bheleu’s preferred color, but that was the bright red of fire or fresh blood; this thing was of a duller, browner shade, like blood that had dried. The King was the King in Yellow, but could, of course, use any color he chose; the council wizards had employed a wide variety of spells. Still, Garth found that he associated the unhealthy hue of the thing with Aghad.
As he realized that, the thing suddenly resolved itself into an image. It was a face, a not-quite-human face, twisted and sneering, with curving fangs protruding from its upper lip. Garth stared; he knew he had seen it, or one like it, somewhere before.
He glanced around; the Forgotten King was paying no attention to this manifestation, nor to anything else for that matter, but the tavernkeeper was staring in horror. The other customers had departed.
Garth turned back; the apparition was still there, hanging motionless, as if waiting.
“What are you? Why are you here?” Garth demanded. “Speak, O vision, and explain yourself!”
The face grinned and replied, “Greetings, Garth. It is good to see you so untroubled that you can share a drink and pass the time with this doddering old fraud.” The voice was a low rumble, lower than any human voice and not easy to understand; it spoke with an accent unlike that of Skelleth, but one that Garth had heard before.
“Who are you?” Garth asked.
“Do you not recognize me? Have you never seen my likeness?”
“You are familiar, but I cannot place you.”
“Ah, so, feeble a memory, and in an overman! It is scarce three years since you invaded my home and destroyed my altar.”
“Aghad!” Garth remembered now where he had seen that face; it had appeared on the small, carved idols sold in the Dûsarran market. The accent, too, was Dûsarran.
“You do remember! I am flattered!”
“Filth!” Garth spat. He did not give any serious consideration to the possibility that this might be the god himself; he was quite sure that it was some sort of trickery contrived by the cultists. He shifted, so that the table would not impede him, drew his sword, and rose to his feet.
“I had feared that you would be displeased by my paltry attempt to return the favor you did me, but I suppose you must have tired of your bitch years ago. Perhaps you would like to thank me for freeing you of her?” The thing grinned again.
Garth’s sword came up and slashed through the image in a single smooth motion. It cut a narrow swath through the ethereal substance of the thing, but the speaker did not seem perturbed. In fact, it did not seem to notice his action at all. Garth had hoped for some sort of magical feedback.
“I notice that you haven’t troubled to bury her; were you planning to feed her to your warbeast? You need not fear for its health; we used no poison. Nothing that could harm a warbeast, at any rate; we did not want to hurry her death. She took quite a long time to die; we found it very enjoyable. Would you care to guess whom we plan to kill next?”
Garth growled low in his throat and slashed at the image again, striking vertically this time. The sword passed through without resistance, leaving the floating image divi
ded into quarters, but still unconcerned.
“You’re not guessing, overman,” the voice rumbled. “Will it be another of your wives? One of your children? Your cousins, or your uncle? Your friends on Ordunin’s City Council? Perhaps the next won’t be an overman at all; maybe we’ll kill one of your friends here in Skelleth. The old man might do for a start. Or perhaps we might take the best of both worlds and kill your traitorous comrade, Galt the swindler. Will you guess, overman? Will you guess, or will you just wait and see?”
Garth hacked at the thing again, splitting it further and leaving six fragments. The face was no longer clearly visible; the edges of each segment were blurred, and the whole image seemed to be distorted.
It grinned and vanished completely, with a sound of fading laughter.
Garth stared at the empty air, then looked about, seeing no sign of any further supernatural manifestation. The sword still in his hand, he announced, “Hear me, Aghadite scum! I have had my fill of you. You owe me a life for my wife’s death, and a hundred more for the manner of it. I swear that I will find you and destroy you, wherever you may hide. I will return to Dûsarra, smash your temple, and grind it into the dust. Your magic will not protect you; your god will not save you. I swear this, by everything I hold dear.”
There was no answer but the silence of the almost-empty tavern.
Chapter Seven
After a long, wary moment, Garth finally admitted to himself that he could do nothing more immediately. He sheathed his sword, flexed the bruised knuckles of his right hand, and sat down again.
The apparition’s words rankled, particularly the remarks about leaving Kyrith’s corpse untended. One didn’t bring a cadaver into a taproom, however, and he had hoped that the Forgotten King might resurrect her; that had seemed more important than providing the body with an appropriate rest.
He glanced at the Forgotten King. The old man wasn’t going anywhere; Garth could come back here later if he decided he had to speak with him further. Without any more conversation, he rose and marched out the door. The King said nothing and made no move to stop him.
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