The Book of Silence

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Garth watched for a long moment, unsure what to do. He knew that he did not want the King to complete his spell, but he did not know whether it would be safe to interrupt it.

  The chant ended abruptly with a high-pitched grating sound, and without hesitation or pause the King said, “Greetings, Garth.” He did not turn.

  “Greetings, O King.”

  There was a moment of growing silence as the last echoes rebounded, faded, and died.

  “What are you doing?” Garth asked at last.

  “I prepare the final magic,” the King replied.

  The overman stepped forward, circling wide to the left so that the old man would not be able to reach out and snatch the sword away from him. “How can you do that,” he asked, “without the Sword of Bheleu?”

  “The sword is required only in the final stage, at the end of the three days, a point that will arrive shortly. I can prepare the magic, but I cannot complete it without both the sword and your assistance.”

  This answer troubled Garth, not so much because of what was said as because it was given so freely and seemed so cooperative a response—totally out of character for the old man. Something about him had changed; Garth guessed that having begun his spell, after so long a wait, had affected him.

  The overman took another few steps and looked at the old man’s face.

  For a moment he did not realize what he was seeing, but only that something was wrong. The King’s face seemed to shimmer and alter as the overman watched, distorting itself, and after several seconds Garth realized that the old man was wearing the Pallid Mask. The mask had fitted itself to the contours of the King’s face, but remained smooth and pale and metallic, retaining its unsettling ability to shift its appearance inexplicably. The old man’s long wisp of beard was caught up inside the mask’s chin, out of sight, and the eye sockets were less sunken than his own—though his eyes remained invisible, hidden now, not by the shadows of his cowl, but by the mask.

  “You will not receive my aid.” Garth said. “It may be that you will somehow get the sword from me, but I swear I will never help you to destroy all the world just so that you may die.”

  “No, perhaps you will not—but might you not destroy all the world so that your enemies, the followers of Aghad, will perish with it?”

  “No.”

  “Do not speak so quickly, Garth. Think first. You seek to slay them all; you have sworn to destroy them. How else can you do this? With the Sword of Bheleu you can destroy the entire city of Dûsarra, it is true—but to do so will take time, and in that time many will be able to escape, to flee elsewhere. Some may already have done so. Will you hunt them down throughout the world, one by one? Do you expect to live forever, then? Are you ready to devote centuries to this pursuit? It will take centuries to find and kill them all, Garth. You cannot destroy each of them that way. Nor can you use the Sword of Bheleu to destroy every place that they might hide; the sword’s power is not great enough to destroy all the world. Together, though, we might send them all to their deaths with a single simple spell, this same spell that I have almost fully prepared.”

  “And in so doing, consign the rest of the world, as well, to destruction, myself along with it.”

  “Would that really be so unbearable? A moment, and it would all be over. Is your life so pleasant, then, that you must cling to it so tenaciously? Would it not be a comfort simply to let go, to let yourself fall into the nothingness of death? I have sought for that peace for long centuries now; can you find it so repulsive?”

  “My life is my own, old man, and none of your concern. I do not want to die, nor to be responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people.”

  “Innocent? Who, Garth, is innocent? The overmen of Ordunin, who exiled you for aiding them and refused even to consider your pardon? Your family, who refused to leave a frozen wasteland to join you? The Yprians, perhaps, who squabble among themselves and have invaded, without cause, the lands of their neighbors? The Erammans, who have turned the richest empire in this decadent world into a chaos of civil war, who drove your people into the wilderness to die? The Orûnians, who tried to take advantage of their neighbors’ internal strife? The people of Skelleth, who despise you even after three years, despite all you have done for them? The people of Ur-Dormulk, what few remain, who sent soldiers to kill you? Who among these is worthy of your consideration? Where are the people who deserve to live so much that you would give up your just vengeance and go on living a life that has become a burden to you, merely so that they might survive a few years longer amid war, plague, and famine?”

  “You distort the truth with your words, old man,” Garth said, resisting an urge to give in, to admit that the Forgotten King was right. He was uncertain whether this impulse came from himself or from Bheleu or from some magic wrought by the King, the book, or the mask. Whatever it was, it was powerful, almost hypnotic; his gaze was fixed on the Pallid Mask, white and gleaming, and he found it hard to think of resistance. “What of Frima?” he asked, grasping at the first memory he could dredge up. “She has done nothing to deserve death. Surely there are millions more like her.”

  The old man did not answer; instead, he leaned his head forward and began chanting again.

  Garth remembered suddenly why he had come to this place and demanded loudly, “Old man, are there any Aghadites here?” He doubted that there were. The Forgotten King would not care to be disturbed by their presence, and Garth knew that the King was capable of enforcing his whims.

  The chanting broke, and the King said, “We are alone here, Garth, alone with our gods.”

  The overman, refusing to trust the old man, tried to figure out some way in which this pronouncement could be interpreted that would allow for the presence of cultists. He could think of none; after a moment’s hesitation he nodded and turned to go.

  The King was chanting again, but his voice was suddenly drowned out by another sound, distorted by the echoes of the passageway and by the distance, but still, unmistakably, the roar of a warbeast.

  Startled, Garth froze, staring into the shadows of the entry passage; then, with the glowing sword held out before him, he broke into a run.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Blood spattered across his face as he emerged from the cave. Garth blinked and raised his free hand to shield his eyes. His ears were filled with human screaming and the roaring of the warbeast.

  His first impulse was to strike out with the Sword of Bheleu, blasting whatever stood before him, but he restrained himself. Koros and Frima were around somewhere, and he did not want to harm them. The sword’s power was not selective enough to leave them unscathed in a blind attack.

  After the first shower of blood across his face nothing more struck him, although Garth did not yet realize what had actually hit him. He lowered his hand and opened his eyes.

  Koros stood before him, fangs bared and dripping blood, several mangled corpses beneath its massive paws, others flung up against either side of the defile, weapons scattered on all sides. Its roar had died to a sullen growling.

  Garth wiped at the liquid on his face, looked at the residue on his hand, and then understood that blood had been flung upon him by the warbeast’s attack on the last of the Aghadites. It was, he was sure, human blood.

  The warbeast was not uninjured, however. Three crossbow quarrels protruded from one shoulder, and a fourth from one of its forepaws. Something had gashed it across the face, narrowly missing one of its great golden eyes.

  No further threat remained. There could be no doubt that every human in sight was dead.

  With that thought, Garth became aware that Frima was not there. He looked over the bloody bodies, but saw none that might have been his Dûsarran companion.

  The sound of screaming was still continuing, he noticed, coming from somewhere beyond the rocks to his right. Koros was looking in that direction, apparently tr
ying to locate the sound’s source. It was only then that Garth realized he was hearing, not the wordless yelling of dying men, but a human female calling, “Koros! Koros!”

  It was Frima’s voice, but no sooner had Garth recognized it than it fell silent.

  “Frima!” the overman bellowed.

  There was no answer; his cry echoed from the surrounding rock and was followed only by silence.

  “Frima!” Garth called again. Koros growled; there was no other response.

  It was obvious that the Aghadites had gotten her, separating her from the warbeast somehow, and then killing her. Garth felt his anger mount. He saw the glow of the sword deepen to red and brighten to a ferocious glare. The Aghadites would pay for this, he promised himself. They would all die, every one of them, no matter where they might hide. They had destroyed an innocent girl and they would regret it—if they lived long enough to know what happened.

  He remembered the Forgotten King’s words, and his own reply. Frima was gone now, and with her his concern for the world’s inhabitants. The world might be full of innocent victims, he told himself, but if he didn’t destroy them, someone else would.

  “I’a bheluye!” he cried. “Aghad, I will destroy you!” He turned and strode back into the temple of Death.

  Watching from their concealed vantage point at the mouth of a tunnel in the surrounding stone, the high priestess of Aghad and two of her companions saw the overman’s magic sword blaze up a baleful red, and heard him proclaim his anger.

  “I think,” the high priestess said, “that we should wait until he’s had some time to calm down. If we try to bargain with him now, he’s liable to fry us all before we can speak a dozen words; he’s too mad to worry about the girl. When he’s had more time to think, we should be able to make a deal.”

  Her companions made noises of agreement, peering warily out. Farther down the tunnel, a loud thump sounded, followed by muffled cursing.

  “Be careful with her!” the high priestess warned. “She may be the only thing that keeps us all alive!”

  “I beg your forgiveness, mistress,” someone answered. “But she fights like a mad creature. She chewed through the gag already, and we had to drop her to prepare another.”

  The priestess turned away from the tunnel opening and stared down at the struggling form of their captive, barely visible in the light of the single shuttered lantern allowed so near the entrance. “You can hurt her if you need to,” she said, “just as long as you don’t kill her or cripple her.”

  Frima thrashed harder and tried to scream; one of the Aghadites jammed another wadded cloth into her mouth, stifling the sound.

  Garth did not hear Frima’s struggles, and would not have paid enough attention to recognize them for what they were if he had. He was convinced that she was dead. Whenever someone else had fallen into the hands of the Aghadites, he or she had died. Kyrith had died and Saram had died; Garth saw no reason to think that Frima had fared any better. He expected to be confronted with her mutilated corpse when next he emerged from the temple of Death—if he ever did emerge.

  He strode down the passageway with the sword blazing before him, the glow feeding on his anger and stoking it as well. His rage, or the combination of his own despair and rage with the malign influence of Bheleu, had driven all conscious thought from his mind, save the necessity of destroying the cult of Aghad, regardless of the means or the cost. He stormed into the inner chamber of the temple just as the Forgotten King’s chanting paused.

  “What must I do, old man?” Garth demanded.

  “You will know when the time comes,” the Forgotten King replied. He began to chant again.

  Garth was in no mood to wait, but he forced himself to stand behind the King, awaiting the instructions he was sure would come. The old man would give him a sign, some way of knowing what was expected of him, and he would act; the spell would be completed, and the world would end.

  His enemies would be destroyed—the cult of Aghad would be wiped out to the last stinking, treacherous member. The city of Dûsarra, which had so blighted his life, would vanish. The gods themselves, the foul Aghad and Garth’s own unwanted master Bheleu among them, would die. The Forgotten King would perish, and his Unnamed God with him.

  Garth himself would die, but what of it? He had little enough left in the world. His people had scorned him, Kyrith and Saram and Frima had been murdered, and his world had sunk into an era of chaos and destruction.

  The old man would have his wish; his life, which had lasted so impossibly long, would be over.

  Everything would end.

  Everything.

  Koros would die—both the warbeast and the god it was named for. It was hard to imagine the animal dying. The sun would go out, or so he assumed; there would be nothing left for it to shine upon. The green fields of summer would never be again; sun above and earth below would both be gone. The farmers in the fields would be gone, human and overman alike.

  There would be an end to war and hatred and death, Garth told himself.

  Yes, and an end to love and life as well. The destruction would swallow up the good with the bad, and there would be no more world, no more time, no chance to make anything right. He would never again feel the wind in his face or the sun on his. back, not only because he would be dead and beyond all feeling, but because there would be no more wind, no more sun, ever again. Fish would no longer swim in the sea, for the sea would be no more, and birds would not fly. No new year would ever follow this one, no autumn would supplant this final summer—all because he, Garth of Ordunin, had defied the gods and lost. He had been defeated by Aghad, Bheleu, and Death; he had lost himself in the anger and despair that the dark gods sent. He was allowing the gods to manipulate him.

  This must not be.

  The Forgotten King’s harsh voice cut through to him, raised suddenly to a new pitch and volume, wrapped around the massed consonants of the chant, and Garth felt magical power seething around him.

  He wanted to stop, to retreat, to reverse his decision. He did not want the world to end, did not want to aid in its destruction, but he could not move. He felt a fierce compulsion to give in, to do what the old man wanted, to serve the gods who had shaped the world in this one final act, and he fought desperately against it.

  The chanting stopped, and the old man turned to face him, the mask gleaming dully in the red light of the sword, as if washed in blood.

  In desperation, struggling to destroy the compulsion that he felt overtaking him, Garth lashed out with the Sword of Bheleu, striking at the old man, hoping to disrupt the spell before his part in it was needed. He thrust the glowing blade against the King’s chest, expecting it to be turned aside and to receive a backlash of magical force, a resistance that would break the web of power that held him.

  The blade sank easily through the old man’s frail body with a sound like a soft sigh, emerging a foot or more from his back and scraping against the stone of the altar. Thick, dark blood oozed slowly forth onto the shining metal.

  The Forgotten King smiled, the Pallid Mask twisting to fit his face, and Garth realized, even before the first rumbling began, what his part in the final ritual had been. He had been destined, all along, to plunge the Sword of Bheleu into the heart of the King in Yellow.

  He stared in horror at the mask. Something was happening to the King; his blood was evaporating from the sword, and his body was fading, thinning away to nothing. The mask was melting into the flesh of his face, blending with it, reshaping itself; it sank back against the bone of the old man’s skull, pulling itself tight.

  The King’s yellow mantle fell open, and Garth tried to scream at the sight of what lay beneath, but something had happened to the flow of time; he was unable to move normally. An eternity wound itself past him and through him as his mouth came open.

  The King in Yellow turned insubstantial and seemed simultaneous
ly to grow and shrink, departing from Garth’s presence in some impossible direction. He was no longer more than a vague caricature of a human being. His head was a fleshless, grinning skull, the mask indissolubly joined; his fingers were gleaming bone, his whole being somehow smoky and indistinct.

  Then he was gone, and Garth remained frozen in an instant of distorted time, waiting for his own death.

  The Sword of Bheleu was still held out before him, impaling the space where the King had been; and now, as Garth watched, his mouth still opening in his need to scream, the blade puffed away in glittering, luminous powder, and the gem in the pommel burst into a shower of crystal, light, and blood. The grip crumbled away, and his hands were empty.

  He became aware of a deep rumbling all around him.

  He felt himself standing in the temple, suddenly conscious of every instant, of every action of his body. He felt his heart pumping blood, an age passing between each beat, felt his muscles contracting, and waited for it all to stop, waited to die.

  It did not stop. Time dragged on, horribly elongated. He felt eldritch energy whirling about him, filling the air.

  Then, abruptly, it was over—but he was not dead.

  He stood in the cave that had been the temple of Death, his mouth open as if to scream, but the need to cry out had passed. His mind was clear and calm. The air was still, and the forces that had filled it with tension were gone. The sword of the thing that had called itself the god of destruction was gone. The old man who had called himself the Forgotten King was gone. The strange pale mask was gone, and the old book on the altar as well. Nothing remained but a hollowed-out cave, its walls carved into ugly friezes. A dull rumbling still persisted.

  Behind him, a voice said, “So it’s finally over.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine