The Book of Silence

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  He hoped that the implication that Frima had been exiled by a rival faction would be accepted. If the situation on the Coast had in fact been as the Yprian had described it, such things would probably have been common and familiar.

  “Ah,” the Yprian said. “A pity, if true.”

  “It is true.” Garth spoke as if offended, his voice flat. As it happened, most of what he said was indeed accurate. It was the way it was said that gave a wrong impression, by implying that the enemies who had murdered Saram had been usurpers in Skelleth, rather than outside foes.

  “A shame; she would have been such a good hostage in dealing with the Chuleras.”

  Garth shrugged. “I am sorry she is of no value to you. She has some worth for me; I am to be paid by her family upon her safe delivery to Dûsarra”

  “That seems very odd, you know. Dûsarra is largely deserted now. And how did a Dûsarran ever come to be married to the Baron of Skelleth?”

  “I do not know the details; she turned up in Skelleth almost three years ago. The dead Baron was something of an adventurer, you know; he took the title for himself, rather than inheriting it. His predecessor was murdered, as well.”

  “You still haven’t told me your name.”

  “Thord,” Garth said. “Thord of Ordunin, son of Dold and Sherid.”

  “I am Chorn of the Khofros.”

  “What do you plan to do with me?”

  “I have not decided.”

  “I would like to point out that I will put up serious resistance if you do not release me very soon. Besides myself, the warbeast is a formidable threat. I do not think it worth your while to keep me here or to kill me. Far better to let me go in peace.”

  “You have a good point there. I will keep it in mind while I discuss this with our elders.” The Yprian rose and signaled with one hand.

  Three guards, all overmen, stepped forward and kept Garth under close watch while Chorn strode off and vanished into a large tent. They made no attempt to disarm Garth; he guessed that they judged the great two-handed broadsword too awkward a weapon to be much of a threat in such a situation. Were he to reach for it, he could be killed long before he could get it free of its scabbard—or at any rate, he could have been killed if it were an ordinary weapon, rather than the Sword of Bheleu.

  Garth was pleased that no one touched the sword; he was unsure how it might react, even when its power was damped by the Forgotten King. He sat waiting patiently for several minutes.

  When Chorn finally emerged again he was smiling. Garth did not know how to interpret that until he saw the Yprian gesture for the guards to depart.

  They obeyed, vanishing into the darkness beyond the fire’s light.

  Garth rose as Chorn dismissed the watch on Frima and Koros.

  “Our apologies, Thord, for detaining you,” he said. “You understand our situation, I’m sure.”

  Garth nodded.

  “You are free to go, and we hope that you will speak well of the Khofros in the future. We bear no malice toward any people in Eramma or the Northern Waste, nor even in Dûsarra, and would welcome peaceful contacts with them. I am sorry that we were not more hospitable, but in war the amenities are neglected.”

  “Thank you,” Garth said, still slightly suspicious.

  No one interfered as he mounted the warbeast and helped Frima up behind him; no one attempted to stop them as they rode on westward through the camp and out the far side, past the sentries.

  The stay among the Yprians had delayed them for something over an hour, but Garth was not excessively annoyed. He knew that it could have been much worse. He was relieved that the Khofros had apparently decided that they did not need anymore enemies.

  He was not sure, however, whether he was pleased or dismayed at the Forgotten King’s disappearance; he was still debating the point as he rode out past the final sentry, whereupon it became moot. The old man was walking alongside again as soon as they were out of sight in the darkness, as if he had been there all along—and Garth was not entirely sure he had not been. Invisibility could well be one of his wizardly talents. The overman decided not to mention it, and the old man did not volunteer any information.

  Frima, however, was not so reticent. When she noticed the King’s reappearance, she demanded, “Where were you?”

  The Forgotten King did not reply.

  After she had repeated the question three times, each louder than the last, and had finally been hushed by Garth, while the King remained obdurately silent, she gave up. Instead, she asked Garth, “Why didn’t they kill us?”

  “Why should they?”

  “We might have been spies.”

  “We weren’t.”

  “But we might have been.”

  Garth shrugged.

  “I think they should have killed us.”

  “You would prefer to be dead?” Garth inquired politely.

  “I didn’t mean it that way—though I don’t know, really. Maybe when I die I’ll see Saram again.”

  Garth did not like the trend of that thought. “They did not kill us because it was not worth their trouble. Koros and I would have put up a good fight, and they would have lost several warriors before they could kill us—if they could kill Koros at all,” he said, hoping to direct Frima away from thoughts of an afterlife. Even though he had come to believe in the existence of gods, or at any rate of supernatural powers, he had not accepted the human superstition of life after death. He did not want to risk saying anything that might tempt Frima to commit suicide, or to permit herself to be killed at what might be an inopportune moment.

  “I suppose that’s true,” Frima agreed. There was a brief silence before she asked, “Who were those people?”

  “Yprians,” Garth replied.

  “What were they doing there?”

  Garth explained the situation, repeating points every so often, clarifying what Frima did not immediately comprehend, and admitting ignorance when she asked questions he could not answer.

  When at last she was satisfied with his explanation and convinced that the whole camp had not been put there by the cult of Aghad, she fell silent.

  Garth glanced back and noticed that the sky was beginning to lighten in the east. They would be resting soon.

  That, he was sure, would do them all good.

  He had been thinking over recent events while answering Frima’s questions; one subject was Frima herself. She was talking again, as much as she ever had. Garth took that as a sign that she was getting over the shock of Saram’s death and wondered whether she still grieved.

  She was certainly more entertaining, if sometimes exasperating, as her normal talkative self than she had been during her long spell of silence. Traveling by night could be boring, with the scenery obscured by darkness, if one’s companions refused to speak.

  He began looking for somewhere they could take shelter for the day. It would not do to be caught unawares by another party of Khofros, or by any other Yprian tribe.

  They found an abandoned, partially burned farmhouse shortly after sunrise, its former owner’s skull on a stake by the door. A message was scratched on the wall with charcoal: “This is the fate of our enemies. This land belongs to the Khofros.”

  Frima was reluctant to enter the ruin, but Garth was insistent, despite the ash and odor. It was shelter, burned or not.

  They spent the day sleeping peacefully; no one found them. Garth awoke in midafternoon and found the King sitting, fully awake, on the one intact chair at the unscathed kitchen table. The overman smiled at the familiar pose in the incongruous setting. He said nothing, but roused Frima, and the party set out anew.

  Having learned from their first encounter, Garth carefully avoided all contact with humans or overmen thereafter, circling wide around the camps and outposts they encountered, sleeping in ruins, caves, or other places of concealmen
t, and stealing supplies rather than buying them. They passed several Yprian encampments of varying sizes, and Garth tried to distinguish the various tribes by the differences in their armor and accouterments; he was fairly certain of some identifications, less confident of others. Since they were avoiding contact, they never learned the names of the five tribes between the Khofros and the Dyn-Hugris, but Garth was reasonably sure he saw representatives of at least three of them.

  The sword’s gem remained black throughout, to Garth’s relief. He had no desire to defend Nekutta by destroying the invaders; after all, many of the Yprians were his own species, which the Nekuttans were not.

  As well as the invading armies, they came across camps of ragged humans, mostly unarmed, whom Garth guessed to be refugees. Many of the inhabitants of these camps wore the traditional hooded robes of Dûsarra; others wore the homespun tunics of farmers.

  Checkpoints had been set up at several places along the road; circling around them became enough of a nuisance that Garth gave serious consideration to Frima’s suggestion of abandoning the road altogether, before finally rejecting it. He had traveled this route once before, but he was by no means sure that he would be able to find Dûsarra if he left the highway.

  They were, by Garth’s estimate, about a day’s travel—or rather, a night’s—from Dûsarra, with the mountains visible on the western horizon, when their rest was interrupted early one afternoon.

  They had taken shelter in an orchard, hidden from view by the thick foliage of the apple trees. Garth did not expect anyone to trouble them unless the owner of the grove should turn up, and a farmer or two was a threat the overman knew he could handle easily.

  It was not a farmer, however, who coughed politely to awaken him. He rolled over, reaching automatically for the Sword of Bheleu, and found himself looking up at a man of indeterminate age, muscular in build, and clad in a gray robe and hood.

  There was something familiar about him, Garth realized as his hand closed on the hilt of the sword.

  “Greetings, Garth of Ordunin,” the man said. “I come in peace; you will not need the sword.”

  The fact that the man recognized him somehow did not surprise Garth; he was certain that they had met before, though he could not recall when or where.

  “Greetings, man,” he said.

  “You don’t recognize me?”

  “No.”

  “I am the Seer of Weideth; we met three years ago, on two occasions.”

  “I recall only one,” Garth replied. He had run afoul of illusions sent by the Seer and the village elders of Weideth when first he traveled to Dûsarra. He remembered the incident well and saw that this man was indeed the one who had called himself Seer on that occasion. On the way back to Skelleth he had passed through Weideth without incident, and without meeting the Seer again.

  “I was one of the Council that fought you in the hills north of Skelleth,” the gray-robed man explained.

  “Oh, yes.” Garth had not realized that the Seer had been included in that group, along with Shandiph, Chalkara, and a score or so of others whose names he did not know. There had been so many in robes, the traditional garb for a wizard, that he had not noticed the Seer among them. “Why are you here?”

  “I have not come to interfere; it’s far too late for that. You need not worry. I just wanted to see you and look at the sword that has caused so much destruction and meet the King in Yellow while we both still live.”

  There was a sadness in the Seer’s tone, and something else Garth did not recognize; overmen were not prone to wistfulness, so Garth was not familiar with it. He saw no harm in the man.

  “Here I am,” he said, “and here is the sword. The King is the old man in rags over there.”

  “I know.” The Seer looked down at the sword Garth held and remarked, “It’s hard to believe that that thing can hold so much power.”

  The overman shrugged.

  “And you have the book and the mask, as well. Do you know how long the spell will take?”

  “I know nothing about it,” Garth replied.

  “O King, do you know?”

  The old man had been sitting quietly, ignoring their visitor, but he answered, “Three days.”

  “And you have a day’s travel remaining—four days in all. Why, then, can I not foresee my death? Is my gift that weak?”

  The Forgotten King said nothing.

  “You seem certain that the old man will be allowed to work his magic,” Garth said, irked. “I am not so eager to see him succeed.”

  The Seer looked sideways at him. “What can you do?”

  “I hold the Sword of Bheleu—and I intend to continue to hold it.”

  The King stirred, and the gem in the sword’s pommel suddenly flared up, vividly red. A wave of unreasoning fury swept over the overman; he propelled himself to his feet, the sword ready, its blade glowing white.

  Then the glow died, the stone blackened, and the King muttered, “Do you, Garth?”

  “If it is the only way to prevent you from bringing on the Age of Death, yes, no matter what it may cost me.” The rage had vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving his head feeling light; his right hand was warm, almost hot, where the sword’s grip pressed against it.

  “You swore to aid me in my magic.”

  Garth did not know how to reply to that at first, but finally said, “I did not know then what was involved.”

  “Do you now?” the Seer asked, openly curious.

  “Do you?” Garth countered.

  “In part. I have spent much time in study since last we met, learning more of what was to come. My own gift of prophecy is feeble, but it was sufficient to make clear the writings of others.”

  “Then tell me, Seer, what I am involved in. What is this magic the King pursues? What will it do? What is the Fifteenth Age to be?”

  “The Fifteenth Age is the Age of Death; it will last no more than three hours—perhaps less—bringing time to an end. The gods themselves will die, and the Forgotten King with them. It will be brought about when a ritual from the Book of Silence is performed in the place of Death, a ritual requiring the totems of death and destruction as well as the book itself.”

  “And the world will be destroyed as a result?”

  “I would think so,” the Seer replied. “How can anything exist when the gods are dead and time has ended?”

  “The spell requires the Sword of Bheleu?”

  “Yes.”

  Garth turned to the Forgotten King and smiled. “I think that I may stave it off for some time yet,” he said. “Can even the King in Yellow, high priest of Death, take the sword from its chosen bearer against his will?”

  “You have seen, Garth, how easily I restrain its power,” the old man said.

  “True, O King, but you have not restrained me. I am still an overman, while you are only human.”

  “Do you think my powers so strained by confining Bheleu that I cannot use them upon you?”

  “If that were not the case, O King, then why have you relied upon more mundane methods of bending me to your will these past three years? Why did you not simply compel me to do what you wished me to do? Why did you allow me to return to Ordunin after slaying the basilisk? Why did you not send me directly to Dûsarra? I think that, mighty as you are, you cannot directly force me to act against my own judgment. I don’t know why this should be so, but I believe it is. If I am wrong, then I have lost, and the world is doomed, and you have but to command me to give you the sword to prove it.”

  The King did not answer immediately. At last, he shrugged slightly and said, “I have waited for seven ages; I can endure further.”

  Elated by what he took as an admission of defeat, Garth grinned. He was still trapped between Bheleu and the King, but he saw now that his position was, perhaps, not absolutely hopeless. He might find some solutio
n if he could hold the King off long enough and remain sufficiently free of Bheleu’s influence to think rationally about it.

  It did not occur to him to wonder why the King should continue to suppress the god of destruction when Garth had openly announced his intention not to cooperate.

  The overman turned back to the Seer and said, “There, you see? Your doom has been delayed.”

  The Seer nodded, but asked, “For how long?”

  Annoyed at this ingratitude, Garth replied, “For as long as I can prevent it.”

  “And how long will that be? Will you live forever? I cannot foresee your death, any more than I can my own, but my power of foresight is weak, particularly when far from home.”

  “I expect to live for many years yet, human, and perhaps in that time I will find some other way of forestalling the end.”

  “I can only wish you well, overman.”

  Somewhat mollified, Garth relaxed slightly. He stood silently for a moment as the Seer gazed dolefully at him, then at the sword he still held.

  Feeling that the silence was becoming uncomfortable, Garth asked, “How is it that you are here, rather than in Weideth? If you came to see us, would you not have done just as well to wait at home? Our route passes through your village.”

  “Weideth is gone,” the Seer replied. “It was taken by a Dûsarran army over a year ago and destroyed a month later by advancing Yprians. Many of us fled, in small groups. I am the only survivor of my company and I have lost contact with the other parties. I’ve been living alone, a few leagues south of here.”

  Reminded anew of the chaotic conditions in Nekutta, Garth was uneasy. “I am sorry to hear it,” he said.

  The Seer said nothing.

  “If you wish to join us, you would be safer than while traveling alone.”

  “Thank you, but no. I couldn’t stand it. Sooner or later I would take up the sword, or look at the mask, or touch the book, and I would die, even before the world ends. I prefer to live out whatever time remains to me without facing such dangers.”