Riddle of the Seven Realms

by Lyndon Hardy

  He was a cataloguer and yet… He flexed his arms trying to imagine for perhaps the millionth time the sensation of darting between the uppermost spires of his prince’s towers, of swooping down into the dark abysses, or even of visiting distant lairs without the assistance of a djinn dangling him from great talons and protecting him from danger.

  Astron closed his eyes, wiggling his fingers in exaggerated slowness, straining for the feel of the matter about him, trying to caress its form and texture, molding it into the shapes that he commanded, and transforming even its innermost structure and bonding so that it became as he desired.

  But as always, the feelings did not come. His weight pressed all too firmly on the soles of his feet. His palms and the tips of his fingers felt no more than the tenuousness of air. He was only Astron, the one who walked. Besides, there was no time for such reverie, he decided angrily. He must report to the prince.

  Quickly Astron navigated through the maze of peripheral domes to the main rotunda. The slight give of the thinly stretched web of matter to each stride reminded him of the firmness of Palodad’s crude steps of true stone. The outer passageways were empty; the flitter of imps and bustle of messenger devils had stopped. When he burst into the central rotunda, Astron found that every demon in the domain had gathered. In concentric circles, they hovered and squatted; all eyes were focused on the hub in which were conversing no less than two princes of the realm.

  Astron felt his limbs stiffen. He might already be too late. Gaspar and his minions had arrived. Astron saw Elezar sitting on the same pillow of silk and down. Ignoring the other cushions, Gaspar stood with arms folded across his chest, his massive torso rippling with muscle that seemed just barely under control. Deep-set and cruel eyes brooded under an overhanging brow, shadowing a face that never smiled. With a wave of irritation, he brushed aside the mites that swarmed about his chin. Small bursts of unwoven energy crackled from his fingertips, arching spontaneously from joint to joint. In the dreams of men, it was demons such as Gaspar that they feared the most.

  Astron hesitated. One part of his mind willed his legs forward to tell the prince what little he had learned. Another bade him to remain still; it would not be prudent for Gaspar to hear the extent of Elezar’s ignorance. In nervous anticipation, Astron waited for some indication of what he should do.

  “I have come to settle our wager,” the lightning djinn’s voice rumbled throughout the dome. “Either you know the answer to my riddle or you do not. There is nothing to be determined by delay. Submit to your doom as you have agreed.”

  The guard of colossal djinns behind Elezar, six in all and each identical to the tiniest scale to his brethren, tensed and bared their fangs, but the prince motioned them to remain calm.

  “Your haste hints of weakness,” Elezar replied. “How bored has your following become?”

  “There is no trace of the great monotony in a single one.” Gaspar waved at the brace of lieutenants he had brought with him, now standing off to the side. He glanced about the dome and eyed the web of vaults and spars that held the expanse of the great roof aloft. “Every one of them looks forward with anticipation to when they can reduce all of this to base iron.”

  “And even if your challenge should prevail,” Elezar said, “after the few brief moments of destructive fury, what then? What new amusements will you promise? How can you hope to keep alive their will and allegiance for even an epoch more? In the end, you will lose, Gaspar. The eons and eras stretch before you farther than you dare imagine.”

  Elezar paused and lowered his voice to a whisper, although all present could still hear. “Are you not already weary, Gaspar? Does not the futility of it all begin to gnaw? Will one more orgy of destruction be that much different from the last? Submit, submit to me, and at least the ending will be amusing for all.”

  “No,” Gaspar thundered. He unfurled his wings and rose a span above the floor cushions. The air around his shoulders began to crackle and hiss. Sparkles of color pulsed into existence above his head.

  The guard djinns quickly interposed themselves between Elezar and the other prince. Gaspar’s lieutenants vaulted over the smaller demons between and formed a rank alongside their leader, their synchronized wing strokes creating a wind that whistled through the rotunda archways.

  “Are these the actions of a prince secure in his command?” Elezar continued his questioning as the djinns maneuvered. “Why do the images I propose prick at your stembrain so?”

  “I will have your existence to do with what I will,” Gaspar roared back. “It has been promised. Agree to the conditions of the challenge and surrender. If you do not, it will not only be the lightning djinns that you must face. All of daemon will aid my just cause.”

  “And if you hurl one bolt at what is mine before that surrender is made, what then of the agreement?” Elezar said. “If a single atom of my domain is disturbed before I accede you the right, on whose side will the realm render succor and aid?”

  Pops of thunder exploded from Gaspar’s hands. For a moment, the intensity of the arching between his fingers increased. Then the demon curled one hand into a fist and smashed it into the other, smothering the pulsating energy. He roared an incoherent bellow of frustration and waved his lieutenants back to their positions. Sullenly he drifted to the rotunda floor, again folding his arms across his chest.

  Elezar’s guard djinns resumed their positions behind the prince. For a long moment there was silence throughout the vast dome.

  “I will illustrate my point in a less destabilizing manner,” Elezar said at last. He motioned to an archway and four devils responded by carrying in a sculpture on a stand of marble.

  Astron saw that it was molded in heavy bronze, a cluster of bubbles popping from a viscous broth, a copy of an artform prevalent in the realm of the fey. As the devils positioned it between Elezar and Gaspar, six more demons waddled forward, each one squat and broad, with eyes that squinted from between deep folds of flesh. They positioned themselves directly behind Elezar and gazed at the sculpture from expressionless faces.

  “Now pick one of your lieutenants,” Elezar said. “I give him leave. He may do with this matter as he wishes.”

  Almost in unison, Gaspar’s djinns expanded their chests. Crackles of energy began to dance from their fingertips and eyes. Their alertness for possible battle moments before was a mere shadow of the excitement that gripped them now. Gaspar grunted irritably and motioned one near the middle forward. The selected lieutenant quickly arched across the intervening distance and landed with a heavy thud near the sculpture. His eyes widened. He wiggled his fingers, letting short arcs of piercing blue jump from one hand to the other.

  “Wait a moment until the shield demons are ready and then you may begin,” Elezar said. “I wish to minimize the effect of your craft upon the dome and the others who watch.”

  Gaspar’s lieutenants nodded. Astron heard the shield demons begin to hum in a six-voice harmony. Simultaneously he saw the lightning djinn start to fade. On the top, bottom, and each side of the demon, a plane of haziness began to form, six sheets of growing opaqueness that intersected and confined him and the adjacent sculpture into a box.

  As if they were filling with fog, the surfaces grew less and less transparent, finally hiding the djinn totally from view. The glow of imp light around the rotunda walls reflected diffusely from what looked like a solid cube. The shield demons had constructed a confining barrier, Astron knew. Little energy could penetrate it from either side.

  But then the interior of the cube pulsed with light. In a heart beat, Astron saw a searing bolt of yellow rip from the djinn’s hand and strike the sculpture with a devastating force. The power released was so immense that even the small fraction that trickled through the barrier was sufficient for all to see what was happening.

  The sculpture ripped asunder where the bolt struck it at mid-height. Globules of molten metal sputtered from the point of contact. Two jagged halves ricocheted from the walls of the confi
ning box. Before the image faded, the djinn struck a second time with two quick bolts that hit each of the tumbling pieces. Again the metal shrieked and tore; four fragments bounced about the cube.

  With increasing rapidity the djinn aimed strike after strike at the fragments, ripping them into finer shards and filling the confining volume with light. Astron flicked his membranes over his eyes. The outwelling residue of the destruction was too painful to watch directly, even with the shield demons’ barrier in place. Between spread fingers, he watched the djinn begin to froth and gesticulate wildly, barely in control of himself as he sought to rip the cloud of scrap into even smaller rubble.

  The onslaught continued unabated until only a hazy dust filled the cube. No recognizable part of the original sculpture remained intact or any of the metal of which it was composed. Only motes of transmuted matter bathed in the glow of the careening light.

  With no more targets on which to focus his power, the djinn finally stopped, slumping exhausted in one corner of the box. Elezar motioned to the shield demons. The side of the confinement nearest to Astron dissolved away as quickly as it had formed. Amidst pulses of escaping light and heat, the djinn tumbled out to lie at Gaspar’s feet, limbs scattered haphazardly and with a smile on his face beneath glazed eyes.

  “Such is the amusement that you offer to those who would follow you,” Elezar said, “and to any who has not tasted the pleasure of total destruction, the allure might be strong indeed.”

  The prince looked down at the djinn slowly regaining his composure. “But I wonder, Gaspar, now that the experience has been savored, what more can you promise that will not be repetition of the same. And after the second, the dozenth, perhaps the hundredth time, what then will be your hold over this mighty djinn?”

  “You speak of events that are in epochs yet to run,” Gaspar said. “None of my lieutenants, nor any of the legions that they command, have tastes so jaded that they do not look forward to repeat for all your lair the small sample we have witnessed here.”

  “My point is not yet complete.” Elezar raised one robed arm to cut off the other prince. “Let us see first the principle upon which the allegiance to my domain is founded.”

  As Elezar finished, a small devil came forward, barely larger than Astron himself. He entered the box from the open side and immediately sank into a deep contemplation of the still swirling dust. For a long moment nothing happened. Then a tiny spark of light blinked into existence before the devil’s eyes and, following that in rapid succession, a series of others.

  Gaspar rumbled with impatience but Elezar and the concentrating devil paid him no heed. For a long while more, there was no visible change in the haze, but then Astron saw a sparkling precipitate begin to fall to the bottom of the box.

  “A significant fraction of the matter has been lost to light and other rays,” Elezar said. “But it is of no concern. The weaver will work with what is at hand. He will first reassemble the basic particular components back into copper and tin, reversing the transmutations of your lieutenant. Then he will reconstitute the sculpture, coalescing the particles together one by one, if need be.”

  The prince paused and looked at Gaspar. “It took this one an era to make the first sculpture, staring from a hoard of bronze another of my minions had obtained from the realm of the skyskirr. It will take him eras more to reconstitute it and restore what he had before or perhaps craft something of greater beauty still. Eras, Gaspar, eras, not mere heart beats, and then it is done. He will be constructing, weaving, paying attention to painstaking detail to ensure that each little mote is in its proper place. It is a matter of rational control of the stembrain, not surrender to its lust.

  “Eras and not heart beats, Gaspar—that is why princes such as I will endure long after djinns of lightning have long since surrendered to the great monotony.”

  “The stronger shall endure the longer,” Gaspar said. He motioned his lieutenant to resume his position in line. “And there is little doubt between the two of us as to which it will be.”

  Gaspar unfolded his arms and stuck a bulbous thumb toward his chest. “My will has forever been my own,” he said, “but in cold reality, Elezar, you can make no such claim.” The djinn paused and looked around the assembled demons in the rotunda. “It is no less than another riddle. How can any here choose to ally themselves with one who has been enslaved by a mortal?”

  “It was no common man,” Elezar shot back. “No less than the archimage did I contest in wills. And I am not ashamed of the result. No prince of the realm would have fared any better than I. Certainly not a coarse djinn who has not even dared to answer a single call when it has come through the flame.”

  “So you assert,” Gaspar said. “Such is your interpretation of the events. But if this mortal is so great that even princes bend to his will, why are there no others who also call him master somewhere in the realm?”

  “I have spoken with accuracy,” Elezar said. “The archmage knows quite well the folly of too much interaction with our domains. It is a mark of confidence in his power that he has no compulsion to exercise it wastefully.”

  “Spoken like a true slave of a dominating master.” Gaspar laughed. “A lowly imp could not have put it better. Come, Elezar, Prince Elezar, submit to me now before my followers discover that the victory does not represent that great an accomplishment.”

  “I will not be distracted by your words.” Elezar beat his right arm against his chest. Astron saw the agitation billow in his prince’s face. He stirred uncomfortably. Against Gaspar, Elezar’s strength lay in his wits, not the plasma that glowed about his fingertips.

  “If dominance by a man is of such little consequence,” Gaspar continued, “then why does it upset you so much that I discuss it openly in front of those who blindly follow? Perhaps there is more to the story that you have not told.”

  “Begone!” Elezar stood and shouted. “Flutter back to your rough stone lairs and await the answer to your riddle. I will reveal it to you when the time is proper.”

  “I have come for it now,” Gaspar growled, unfurling his wings.

  “I said begone.” Elezar clapped his hands together. The air above his head hissed. Traces of blue sparked about his ears.

  Gaspar flexed his fingers, letting small tendrils of light race up from the webbing near the palms to the fingertips. “You warned of the consequences that would accrue from the rest of the realm if I struck outside the bounds of our agreement,” he said. “Do you not think that the other domains would judge with equal disfavor one who professes to know what in fact he does not? Admit the truth, Elezar. You might once have been a prince, but now you are nothing more than the dim-witted doll of a man.”

  Elezar snarled, baring fangs that he seldom showed to others. With a flick of his wrist, a bolt of ionizing blue arced between the two princes, striking Gaspar on the shoulder and spinning the djinn to the ground. Gaspar swooped into the air, a small rivulet of smoke wisping from where he had been touched. A glaze of pain clouded his eyes. Sparks showered off his knees and elbows into the air.

  “The prince of lightning djinns does not submit to such insult,” he yelled. “If you are so foolish as to test the strength of me and my lieutenants, then so shall you meet your doom.”

  With an ear-shattering roar, the djinn unleashed a huge bolt in Elezar’s direction that slammed past the weaving devil and into the midst of the shield demons. One was hit directly in the chest and exploded in a spray of bone, sinew, and gore. Those on either side were hurled from their feet, colliding with Elezar’s guards, who scrambled airborne to get out of the way.

  Astron saw Gaspar’s lieutenant rise in reply; then almost instantly the upper expanses of the rotunda filled with brilliant bursts of light painful to see. All of Elezar’s followers who had surrounded the hub arose in a mass confusion, some scrambling for exit tunnels and others surging forward to aid their prince.

  For a moment, Astron hesitated, shouldering aside the imps and sprites lesser
than he who raced past. His stembrain said to run but he knew that his duty was to help Elezar as best he could. He heard the air implode in a great clap of thunder and then the crash of falling matter from somewhere across the rotunda. Shrieks of pain blended with the crackle of ionization; one of Elezar’s guards plummeted to the floor a wingspan away, the odor of charred flesh bubbling from a smoking hole in his side.

  Near the apex of the dome, two more djinns converged on one of Elezar’s lesser devils who had soared forward into the fray. One methodically countered strokes of crimson with larger bolts of his own, meeting the thrusts of energy head-on and dissipating them harmlessly into the air. The other unleashed his power unimpeded, each stroke blasting asunder a limb or wing.

  The prince must withdraw, Astron decided. Elezar’s guard demons were too few. Despite their battle lust, they would not prevail against massed lightning djinns in the confines of the rotunda. The prince must retreat to a position where he could direct all the demons at his command—draw Gaspar’s minions into separate battles where superior numbers could harry each one singly.

  But how to withdraw safely? Astron’s thoughts raced. Even though his membranes were down, he had to squint his eyes against the fierce glare as he looked in the direction of the hub. He saw the arcs of energy, his prince, the master weaver, the scattered shield demons, and Elezar’s guards trying to form into some sort of protective array.

  Then, with a sudden flash, Astron realized what must be done. He whirled about, looking for a devil to carry a message to the prince but saw only chaos. There was no one to listen. He squeezed shut his eyes for an instant, picturing the smooth walls of his den in which he stored his artifacts and the comfort of leafing through his books and deciphering their meanings.

  “Duty,” he muttered at last. “Without duty there is no purpose—only surrender to the impulse of the stembrain and the great monotony.”

  Wondering if he would ever see his treasures again, he waved aside a cloud of imps winging past and headed for the hub. A blob of plasma from a fallen djinn roared by his left, hitting a small devil in the back as he ran, incinerating the tiny wings and burning its way through to the chest.