by Adam Vine
The Lich shrugged. “Those are her ashes before you. She was one of the wights you slaughtered on your way in.”
“What?”
“She begged me to give her the Hymn of Death Undying. In the end, she won. As I said, I am in the end a selfish creature.”
“Then why not let me give you your mercy? Is that not want your heart truly wants?” I said.
I couldn’t tell if the flutter of his eyelid was some unholy spasm, or if he was actually winking at me. “Let me tell you something about this treasure you have come to claim. The Crown of Whispers is an instrument of tremendous power. You know the legend of how it washed ashore after a great orgy between the Gods of Sun and Moon, and Ithas, the patriarch of our land, found it and put it on. Whether all that’s true or not, it is above all things a weapon… the most powerful in existence. But here’s the secret, little man. I can’t control it. Nor can you. All we can do is listen to the things it whispers in our ear.”
“Is that what you tell yourself to justify the murder of an innocent girl?” I said.
The Lich saw red. Figuratively, of course; but in that instant, I felt his grip on me slide. The invisible pressure on my skin relented, my muscles freed from whatever intangible force had rendered them immobile.
The arrow left my string before he even knew it was drawn. I rolled out of the way as fireball burst where I’d been standing, a final desperate reflex to take me with him as my silver-headed arrow impaled the withered heart under his tattered purple robes. With an uncoiling hiss, the Lich released his last grip on this world.
***
Word of my deeds traveled faster than I did. You’d think, brave warrior, that anyone I met on the road would simply kill me and take the Crown of Whispers for themselves, but it was not so. As soon as anyone I met learned of what I’d done, they fell at my feet and groveled. A dozen battle-hardened warriors knelt to kiss my boots before I had left the first village. By the time I departed the mountains, my army was two thousand strong.
They called me the Coffin King. They told stories around their fires about me, the coffin maker’s son who’d outsmarted and slain the Lich. Men are quick to follow strength, but they are even quicker to follow stories.
***
Here I must pause, my noble, and oh-so-gallant warrior, to make a few observations about you.
One, your dress and posture show you come from humble origins, as I did. Not a coffin maker’s son; no, the strength of your upper back tells me you were a farmer’s boy.
Two, you fight for love, hoping your deeds will win her back. What was her name? Ah, Lina. Such a pretty name.
Three, you wonder how you’re going to get this crown off my head after you finish me off, if you will have cut the places where the flesh has grown over and entwined with the spires, if you will even have the strength left to carry it.
I assure you all your questions will be answered in time. Now, please. I must insist that you come closer. Just a few more steps. My voice fails me.
***
I arrived at the gates of our Empire’s capital with ten thousand warriors at my back. But the people greeted us as heroes, and a grander parade was thrown in my honor than the city had seen in the last hundred years combined. Thousands of people lined the streets under the shade of the old arches and columns, the stones all washed and freshly painted for my arrival. Confetti snowed on our heads and our ears were filled with the cries of ecstasy and the ringing of a thousand golden bells.
The city’s wells were already filling with fresh, clear water. Late summer blossoms bloomed on branches that had been bare weeks earlier. Grain was sprouting in the fields and fruit from the old vines. The true death of the Lich had given new life to the Empire.
***
I did not put on the Crown of Whispers until my coronation, fourteen days after I re-entered the capital. My coronation was hailed as the greatest party the Empire had ever seen. I swore an oath on the steps of the Great Library before Father Sun, Mother Moon, and all the people of our great city. I appointed my friend San, the locust merchant, as my High Wizard, my most important political advisor. I appointed Pia’s father, the brutish metalsmith Gahri as my Master-at-Arms. I appointed a dozen other members of my court whose names and qualifications came at the highest recommendation from the incumbents.
A grand feast was held for the commoners on Library Plaza, and a more private affair for the members of my court in the tea gardens within the palace walls. It was there that San, the former locust merchant, approached me and said, “The crown suits you. But I think it’s a bit of a farce for anyone to call me a High Wizard. I don’t know the first thing about magic.”
“We’ll study together. I’ve already ordered every book and scroll belonging to the former High Wizard to be delivered to my chambers,” I told him.
“I suppose you would, having killed the most powerful sorcerer in the Empire,” the Merchant San said. He took a long survey of the feast-goers sauntering about the flower ponds and moss-speckled bridges of the garden. The topic clearly made him uncomfortable. “You know they will expect you to take a wife before the harvest. Now that the Crown has been recovered, the Empire is even less secure than before it was lost. The Old Families consider you a threat, and won’t think twice about cutting your throat so one of their own can take your place. You need a powerful alliance made through marriage. Even then, I would not trust anyone who didn’t know you before, back when you had nothing but the patches in your pants.”
“So you, Gahri, and Pia, then?” I said.
San gave me a silver-capped grin and offered me a locust. “Try one yet? They’re dipped in chocolate. My favorite.”
***
I saw her dancing under the starlight during the band’s second-to-last waltz of the evening. She was Justina come again. She had the same crow-colored hair and burnished jade eyes, the same elegant spill of good hips and spider-slim legs. She was taller than Justina, older, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the woman dancing in front of me was the very shade of my first true love.
The music died and the dance floor cleared. We looked at each other and she started laughing. I was shy, but a healthy swig of wine helped embolden me.
“Your highness did not ask me to dance,” the woman who was not Justina said.
I took her hand and kissed it. “An emperor doesn’t need to ask.”
She placed that same white-gloved hand on my arm and we began to walk. “But he needs wine to speak to his subjects?”
I stopped her. “What is your name?”
The woman who was not Justina smirked. “I’ll tell you, but only if you dance with me.”
“I could throw you in the dungeon for that.”
“Maybe I want you to.”
Reluctantly, I took her hands and led her to the dance floor. I was always a horrible dancer – girls in my village would laugh in my face when I asked them to dance at the Juvenalia - but the woman who was not Justina did not punish me for my missteps. She only smiled and introduced herself. “I am the Lady Ita, of the Water Lily House. I see you have taken a pine tree as your sigil. Does that mean you are sturdy and strong? Or only that you are prickly, and have a strong scent?”
“Neither. It means I came from the earth and will soon return to it. All that matters is what I leave behind.”
“Not many kings are also great poets,” the Lady Ita said.
I leaned in close. “I learned to speak this way when I was a child, so that I could fit in more easily around people like you.”
The Lady Ita chuckled.
“So, where is your lord husband, Lady Ita? Forgive me. I was only a coffin maker’s son before. I don’t know much about politics.”
The Lady Ita frowned. “Don’t worry. He’s three years dead and gone. Pox in his lungs, a terrible thing. But if I may be so bold, you don’t strike me as a coffin maker’s son.”
“And if I may be so bold, you don’t strike me as a lady in mourning.”
�
��Maybe my mourning is finished.”
A month later, we were wed.
***
The Empire entered a period of extended peace.
I left most of the actual ruling to my councilors, preferring to spend my time studying magic. I locked myself in my chambers through all hours of the day and night, breaking only to sign royal edicts, eat, sleep, and make love to my new queen. I consumed every book, scroll, and scribbled scrap that I could.
San’s advice that day in the garden was never far from my mind. I immediately saw plots developing among the Old Families. The cook was an agent of the Redwood House; the girl who changed my linens, a spy for the Roses; my Queen’s favorite handmaid, a skilled assassin of the Orchids in disguise.
Now that I had my Crown, I was determined to keep it.
One of the Crown’s attributes was that it could read aloud what I saw written on the page, so although I couldn’t read, much less make sense of ancient grimoires on the subject of magic, with the Crown I was able to decipher literal piles of manuscripts; which, for a boy who grew up making coffins, felt just as magical as shooting balls of lightning from my fists.
I learned that magic is often nothing more than a finely-crafted illusion. The ziggurats that had scorched me when I entered the Castle-Under-The-Mountain, for example, were nothing more than arrows tipped with high-combustion fuel rigged to fire when someone stepped on a carefully-hidden pressure plate. So, too, did the Crown teach me to use illusion to my advantage.
After two years, I had learned everything the old High Wizard had known and more. The Lich’s spells, which had so dazzled and terrified me when I first invaded his dank fortress, seemed nothing more to me now than the cheap tricks of a parlor flop.
The Crown of Whispers was true power.
***
Three years into my rule, an alliance of bandit tribes in the Iga Mountains declared independence from the Empire. My advisors had predicted as much, since that region had never truly accepted imperial rule.
They butchered my emissaries and sent their heads back on silver-tipped arrows.
You must make an example of them, or others will follow, the Crown whispered in my ear.
I led a raiding party to the Izo Pass, where we slaughtered the bandits in their camp while they slept. I put three silver-tipped arrows through their leader’s heart, then cast a flurry of flame and ice down upon their heads so cruel they threw down their weapons and surrendered at my feet.
But the Crown was not appeased. They defied you, it told me. Rebellion is in their blood. You must wipe it from the earth, every man, woman, and child.
I gave the order. We left none alive.
***
My cruelty to the Mountain People did not go unnoticed back home in the capital. A series of anonymous pamphlets began circulating bearing the words KILLER OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN! And NO HEIR!
I consulted my councilors, who agreed the Old Families had put out the libelous filth. San, my High Wizard, assured me: “People are quick to trash talk their leaders, and even quicker to believe the slander they hear. This is just politics as usual.”
My Master-At-Arms, Gahri was less optimistic. “Soon they will rise against you. They saw you as a hero for saving them from the Lich, but stories die. It’s unfortunate your legend faded so quickly, but that’s the way of it. There’s talk in the streets the queen cannot conceive. You need to give the people someone new to put their hope in. You must give them an heir.”
Yet try as we did, the queen’s belly would not grow.
***
By my fifth year, the Empire was the most prosperous it had ever been.
To bolster my public image I threw wild, lavish festivals, bacchanalias complete with dancers, fire conjurers, elephant riders, and gladiatorial games that lasted weeks at a time. I built monuments to myself on every city square, replacing statues of the gods with ones of myself slaying the Lich. I ordered a fleet of one thousand ships built, promising pioneering families free passage to the New Provinces. I sought to spread my dominion beyond the setting sun.
Yet I spent my nights cold and alone, getting drunk on the best wines ever fermented and enjoying the most beautiful whores the world had ever seen. They did nothing to sate the growing emptiness inside me.
And then there were the campaigns. I suppressed more bandit rebellions in the Iga Mountains; rebellions I fomented, of course, by staging false flag ambushes on my own troops. Thousands died. The army began its push to expand the imperial borders to the north and south, on the pretense of protecting the settlers there from the bloodthirsty natives. The body count climbed to the tens, then to the hundreds of thousands.
And now I know something else about you, my brave warrior. You cringe at the thought of actual violence. Trust me, that reflex will vanish in time. Now please, come a little closer.
***
I fell in love with my own story anew each morning when I rose, the day already late and the gulls weeping on my balcony. The Crown whispered its affirmations to me in the mirror. You are a good king, it told me. You have saved the Empire. You are a good king, but not a great one. Your queen is holding you back.
I had the queen’s quarters moved to the farthest tower of the palace, sending the message by courier. I never spoke to the Lady Ita again.
***
In the tenth year of my reign, I divorced the Lady Ita and banished her to the Sisterhood of the Moon Singers to marry Pia, my young former assistant. Gahri showed up at one of my garden parties with a stunningly pretty young woman on his arm who I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t until my Master-At-Arms grew visibly nervous that I realized the girl was Pia. Nearly a decade had passed since I’d last seen her.
Pia had grown into a woman of breathtaking beauty. She was slender and almond-eyed, with a radiant smile and hair so blonde it gleamed like silver in the sunlight. Sweating profusely, Gahri informed me she had gone away to study alchemy at the New University in the Southern Province. He introduced her as “The Lady Pia.” I thought the old goat would drown in his own shirt.
I tried to take her hand and kiss it, but Pia only swatted it away and gave me that same confident, goofy grin she’d always had. “I hope you still love books, your highness. I brought you a whole cartful. My favorites. Almost all of them are about magic. I heard you’re something of an aficionado.”
***
We wed in the Great Library at sunset on the Feast of the Sacred Crown, standing where we’d first met a decade earlier among the stacks beneath a dozen shades of sanguine light falling through stained-glass like a story fractured in the retelling. I promised Pia I would be hers forever, and she promised she would be mine.
And the Crown whispered: But we’ve heard that before, haven’t we?
***
Our happiness faded as quickly as it came.
The Empire entered a rapid decline. A decade of war and rampant expansionism had not only drained the gold from the vaults faster than the royal accountants could measure, but had sent many of the Empire’s best minds abroad, where they wouldn’t be persecuted.
I, in my infinite wisdom, had begun executing any academics or members of the Old Families who spoke out against me, burning them alive on the steps of the Great Library as traitors.
My councilors, too, grew distant. The tenuous friendships I’d formed with San and Gahri withered. I stopping heeding their counsel, and eventually they stopped giving it, choosing to spend our meetings staring blankly into their wine instead.
Vicious rumors surfaced that despite still not having a legitimate heir, I’d sired hundreds of deformed bastards upon countless whores across various regions of the Empire. The former, at least, was true. Pia and I tried to produce a child, but like the queen before her, Pia’s belly never grew.
Whatever sliver of control I’d had over my temper with the Lady Ita vanished completely when Pia and I quarreled. A disagreeing word would send me spiraling into a foul rage. I drank the palace dry. And Pia, for all her innocent
patience, grew ever more hurt by my pitiless anger. She would lock herself in our bedchamber for hours, crying and begging me to be myself again.
But that was the problem. I was myself. I was a liar, and a whoremonger, and a loner, and a fraud. The only real power I ever had, had come from the Crown.
I can hear its whispers even now: We are as they made us, are we not?
Nothing I did could change my and Pia’s fate. The affection she had so selflessly showered upon me in the beginning evaporated with each successive tear. I emptied the royal coffers to take her on exotic trips to the farthest outskirts of the Empire. We spent our nights crying uncontrollably in each other’s arms on the sea of satin pillows that adorned the interior of our wheelhouse, until finally, she would place a tender hand on my cheek, and say, “I have loved you since I was a girl, and you were a pauper in rags. Nothing in the world could ever change that
To which the Crown would whisper in my ear: And you’re a fool if you believe her.
There was no spell or magic aid that could save us. Magic is mostly an illusion, and love is real. Pia’s love, which was as close to unconditional as the human heart is capable, could have saved me, if I had only let it; if I had not been enslaved to the Crown.
***
I started losing my mind. I began to suspect the Crown was evil, not a jewel-encrusted diadem at all, but an intelligent parasite that was manipulating all of us: me, Pia, our court, and through us, the Empire.
The Crown told me I was wrong. But I started having vivid, waking dreams. I ceased being able to tell what was real and what was an illusion.
