Death Gate Cycle 3 - Fire Sea

by Margaret Weis

  Impulsively, Edmund pulled off his fur gloves, reached out his hand to touch the rock, to run his fingers along the sigla-inscribed stone. He paused, however, suddenly fearful of the magic, afraid of being burned or shocked. He looked questioningly at me.

  “It won’t hurt you,” I said, with a shrug. “It lost, long ago, the power to hurt.”

  “Just as it lost the power to help,” Edmund added, but he said the words to himself.

  Gingerly, he ran his fingertips over the chill stone. Hesitantly, almost reverently, he traced the pattern of the runes whose meaning and magic are now long forgotten. He lifted his head, looked up and up as far as the torchlight shone on the glistening rock. The sigla extend upward into the darkness and beyond.

  “The column rises to the ceiling of the cavern,” I commented, thinking it best to speak in the crisp, concise voice of the teacher, as I used to speak to him in the happy days when we were together in the classroom. “Presumably, it extends up through the ceiling to the region of the Celestial Sea. And every bit of it is covered in these runes, that you see here.

  “It is frustrating”—I could not help frowning—“but most of these sigla, individually, I know, I understand. The rune’s power lies not in the individual sigil, however, but in the combination of sigla. It is that combination that is beyond my ability to comprehend. I copied down the patterns, took them back with me to the library, and spent many hours studying them with the help of the ancient texts.

  “But,” I continued, speaking so softly that only Edmund could hear my words, “it was like trying to unravel a huge ball made up of myriad tiny threads. A single thread ran smoothly through my fingers. I followed it and it led me to a knot. Patiently I worked, separating one thread from another and then another and then another until my mind ached from the strain. I untangled one knot, only to find, beneath it, another. And by the time I unraveled that one, I had lost hold of the first single thread. And there are millions of knots,” I said, looking upward, sighing, “Millions.” The king turned away from the pillar abruptly, his face drawn arid darkly lined in the torchlight. He had not spoken a word during the time we’d stood beneath the colossus. It occurred to me, then, that he had not spoken since we left the city gates. He walked off, back to the path. The people lifted their children to their shoulders and started on their way. Most of the soldiers followed after the people, taking the light with them. One only remained near myself the prince.

  Edmund stood before the pillar, pulling on his gloves. I waited for him, sensing that he wanted to talk to me in private.

  “These same runes, or others like them, must guard Death’s Gate,” he said in a low voice, when he was certain no one could overhear. The soldier had backed off, out of courtesy. “Even if we did find it, we could not hope to enter.”

  My heart beat faster. At last, he was beginning to accept the idea!

  “Recall the prophecy, Edmund,” was all I said.

  I didn’t want to appear too eager or press the issue too closely. It is best, with Edmund, to let him turn matters over in his mind, make his own decisions. I learned that when he was a boy in school. Suggest, introduce, recommend. Never insist, never force him. Try to do so, and he becomes hard and cold as this cavern wall that is now, as I write, poking me painfully in the back.

  “Prophecy!” he repeated irritably. “Words spoken centuries ago! If they ever do come true, which I must admit I doubt, why should they come to fulfillment in our lifetime?”

  “Because, My Prince,” I told him, “I do not think that, after our lifetime, there will be any others.”

  The answer shocked him, as I intended. He stared at me, appalled, said nothing more. Glancing a last time at the colossus, he turned away and hastened to catch up with his father. I knew my words troubled him. I saw his expression, brooding and thoughtful, his shoulders bent.

  Edmund, Edmund! How I love you and how it breaks my heart to thrust this terrible burden on you. I look up from my work and watch you walking among the people, making certain they are as comfortable as they can possibly be. I know that you are exhausted, but you will not lie down to sleep until every one of your people is sleeping.

  You have not eaten all cycle. I saw you give your ration of food to the old woman who nursed you when you were a babe. You tried to keep the deed hidden, secret. But I saw. I know. And your people are beginning to know, as well, Edmund. By the end of this journey, they will come to understand and appreciate a true king.

  But, I digress. I must conclude this quickly. My fingers are cramped with the cold and, despite my best efforts, a thin layer of ice is starting to form across the top of the ink jar.

  That colossus of which I wrote marks the border of Kairn Telest. We continued traveling until cycle’s end, when we finally arrived at our destination. I searched for and found the entrance to the tunnel that was marked on one of the ancient maps, a tunnel that bores through the kairn wall. I knew it was the right tunnel, because, on entering it, I discovered that its floor sloped gently downward.

  “This tunnel,” I announced, pointing to the deep darkness inside, “will lead us to regions far below our own kairn. It will lead us deeper into the heart of Abarrach, lead us down to the lands below, to the realm that is lettered on the map as Kairn Necros, to the city of Necropolis.”

  The people stood in silence, not even the babies cried. We all knew, when we entered that tunnel, that we would leave our homeland behind us.

  The king, saying nothing, walked forward and into the tunnel—the first. Edmund and I came behind him; the prince was forced to stoop to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling. Once the king had made his symbolic gesture, I took the lead, for I am now the guide.

  The people began to follow after us. I saw many pause at the entrance to look back, to say farewell, to catch a final glimpse of their homeland. I must admit that I, too, could not refrain from taking a last look. But all we could see was darkness. What light remains, we are taking with us.

  We entered the tunnel. The flickering light of the torches reflected off the shining obsidian walls, the shadows of the people slid along the floors. We moved on, delving deeper, spiraling downward.

  Behind us, darkness closed over Kairn Telest forever.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE TUNNELS OF HOPE, ABARRACH

  WHOEVER READS this account (if any one of us is left alive to read it, which I am greatly beginning to doubt), he will note a gap in the time period. When I last put down my pen, we had just entered the first of what the map calls the Tunnels of Hope. You will see that I have scratched out that name and written in another.

  The Tunnels of Death.

  We have spent twenty cycles in these tunnels, far longer than I had anticipated. The map has proved inaccurate, not so far, I must admit, as to the route, which is essentially the same one that our ancestors traveled to reach Kairn Telest.

  Then the tunnels were newly formed, with smooth walls, strong ceilings, level floors. I knew that much would have changed during the past centuries; Abarrach is subject to seismic disturbances that send tremors through the ground, but they do little more than rattle the dishes in the cupboards and set the chandeliers in the palace swaying.

  I had assumed that our ancestors would have fortified these tunnels with their magic, as they did our palaces, our city walls, our shops, and our houses. If they did so, the runes have either failed or they need to be reforged, reinstated ... re-runed, for lack of a better term. Or perhaps the ancients did not bother to protect the tunnels, assuming that what destruction took place could be easily cleared by those possessing the knowledge of the sigla.

  Of all the possible disasters those early ancestors of ours feared for us, they obviously didn’t foresee the worst of all. They never imagined that we would lose the magic.

  Time and again we have been forced to make costly delays. We found the tunnel ceiling collapsed in many places, our way blocked by immense boulders that took us several cycles to move. Huge cracks gape in the
floor, cracks that only the bravest dared jump, [cracks] that had to be bridged before the people could cross. And we are not out of the tunnels yet. Nor, does it seem, that we are near the end. I cannot judge our location precisely. Several major landmarks are gone, carried away by rock slides, or else have altered so over the years that it is impossible to recognize them. I am not even certain, anymore, that we are following the correct route. I have no way of knowing. According to the map, the ancients inscribed runes on the walls that could guide travelers, but—if so—their magic is now beyond our comprehension and use.

  We are in desperate straits. Food rations have been cut in half. The flesh has melted from our bones. Children no longer cry from weariness; they cry from hunger. The carts have fallen by the wayside. Beloved possessions became burdens to arms grown weak from starvation and exhaustion. Only the carts needed to bear the elderly and the infirm remain in use and these carts, too, tragically, are beginning to litter the tunnels. The weak among us are starting to die now. My fellow necromancers have taken up their grim tasks.

  The burden of the people’s suffering has fallen, as I knew it would, on the shoulders of their prince. Edmund watches his father fail before his eyes.

  The king was, admittedly, an old man, by the standards of our people. His son was born to him late in life. But, when we left the palace, he was hale, hearty, strong as men half his age. I had a dream in which I saw the king’s life as a thread tied back to the golden throne that now stands in the cold darkness of Kairn Telest. As he walked away from the throne, the thread remained tied to it. Slowly, cycle by cycle, the thread is coming unraveled, stretching thinner and thinner the farther he moves from his homeland, until now I fear a harsh or clumsy touch will cause it to snap.

  The king takes no interest in anything anymore: what we do, we say, where we are going. Most of the time, I wonder if he even notices the ground beneath his feet. Edmund walks constantly by his father’s side, guiding him like one who has lost the power of sight. No, that is not quite a correct description. The king acts more like a man walking backward, who does not see what lies ahead, only what he is leaving behind.

  On the occasions when the prince is called away by his numberless responsibilities, and he must leave his father, Edmund makes certain that two soldiers are on hand to take over his task. The king is tractable, he goes where he is led without question. He moves when he is told to move, he stops when he is told to stop. He eats whatever is put into his hand, never seeming to taste it. I think he would eat a rock, if it were given to him. I also think he would stop eating altogether, if no one brought him food.

  For long cycles, at the journey’s start, the king said nothing to anyone, not even to his son. Now, he talks almost constantly, but only to himself, never to anyone around him. Anyone that can be counted, that is. He spends a great deal of time talking to his wife—not as she is, among the dead, but as she was, when she was among the living. Our king has forsaken the present, returned to the past.

  Matters grew so bad that the council begged the prince to declare himself king. Edmund rebuffed them, in one of the few times I have ever seen him lose his temper. The council members slunk away before his wrath like whipped children. Edmund is right. According to our law, the king is king until his death. But, then, the law never considered the possibility that a king might go insane. Such a thing doesn’t happen among our people.

  The council members were actually reduced to coming to me (I must say that I relished the moment) and begging me to intervene with Edmund on behalf of the people. I promised to do what I could.

  “Edmund, we must talk,” I said to him during one of our enforced stops, waiting while the soldiers cleared away a huge mound of rubble that blocked the path.

  His face darkened, turned rebellious. I had often seen such a look when he was a youth and I had forced upon him the study of mathematics, a subject to which he never took. The look he cast me brought back such fond memories that I had to pause and recover myself before I could continue.

  “Edmund,” I said, deliberately keeping my tone practical, brisk, making this a matter of common sense, “your father is ill. You must take over the leadership of the people—if only for the time being,” I said, raising my hand, forestalling his angry refusal, “until His Majesty is once more able to resume his duties.”

  “You have a responsibility to the people, My Prince,” I added. “Never in the history of Kairn Telest have we been in greater danger than we are now. Will you abandon them, out of a false sense of duty and filiality? Would your father want you to abandon them?”

  I did not mention, of course, that it was his father who had, himself, abandoned the people. Edmund understood my implication, however. If I had spoken such words aloud, he would angrily deny them. But when they were spoken to him by his own conscience ...

  I saw him glance at his father, who was sitting on a rock, chatting with his past. I saw the trouble and distress on Edmund’s face, saw the guilt I knew then, that my weapon had struck home. Reluctantly, I left him alone, to let the wound rankle.

  Why is it always I, who love him, who must repeatedly cause him pain? I wondered sadly, as I walked away.

  At the end of that cycle, Edmund called a meeting of the people and informed them that he would be their leader, if they wanted him, but only for the time being. He would retain the title of prince. His father was still king and Edmund confidently expected his father to resume his duties as king when he was well.

  The people responded to their prince with enthusiasm, their obvious love and loyalty touched him deeply. Edmund’s speech did not ease the people’s hunger, but it lifted their hearts and made the hunger easier to bear. I watched him with pride and a newfound hope in my own heart.

  They will follow him anywhere, I thought, even through Death’s Gate.

  But it seems likely that we will find death before we will find Death’s Gate. The only positive factor we have encountered on our Journey thus far is that the temperature has, at least, moderated; growing somewhat warmer. I begin to think that we have been following the correct route, that we are drawing nearer to our destination—Abarrach’s fiery heart.

  “It is a hopeful sign,” I said to Edmund, at the end of another bleak and cheerless cycle, traversing the tunnels. “A hopeful sign,” I repeated confidently.

  What fears and misgivings I have, I am keeping to myself. It is needless to pile more burdens on those young shoulders, strong though they may be.

  “Look,” I continued, pointing at the map, “you will note that when we come to the end of the tunnels, they open up on a great pool of magma, that lies outside. The Lake of Burning Rock, it is named—the first major landmark we would see on entering the Kairn Necros. I cannot be certain, but I believe it is the heat from this lake, seeping up through the tunnel, that we are feeling.”

  “Which means that we are near the end of our journey,” Edmund said, his face—that has grown much too thin—lighting with hope.

  “You must eat more, My Prince,” I said to him gently. “Eat at least your share. You will not help the people if you fall sick or grow too weak to go on.”

  He shook his head; I knew he would. But I knew, as well, that he would consider my advice seriously. That sleep-half, I saw him consume what small amount of food was handed to him.

  “Yes,” I continued, returning to the map, “I believe that we are near the end. I think, in fact, we must be about here,” I placed a finger on the parchment. “Two cycles more and we reach the lake, provided that we don’t run into any further obstacles.”

  “And then we are in Kairn Necros. And surely there we will find a realm of plenty. Surely we will find food and water. Look at this huge ocean that they call the Fire Sea.” He indicated a large body of magma. “It must bring light and warmth to all this vast region of land. And these cities and towns. Look at this one, Baltazar. Safe Harbor. What a wonderful name. I take that as a hopeful sign. Safe Harbor, where at last our people can find peace and h
appiness.”

  He spent a long time, studying the map, imagining aloud what this place or that must look like, how the people would talk, how surprised they will be to see us.

  I sat back against the cavern wall and let him talk. It gave me pleasure, to see him hopeful and happy once more. Almost, it made me forget the terrible pangs of hunger gnawing at my vitals, the more terrible fears that gnaw at my waking hours.

  Why should I burst his pretty bubble? Why prick it with reality’s sharp-edged sword? After all, I know nothing for certain. “Theories,” his father, the king, would have termed them in scorn. All I have are theories.

  Supposition: The Fire Sea is shrinking. It can no longer provide the vast regions of land around it with warmth and light.

  Theory: We will not find realms of plenty. We will find realms as barren, desolate, and deserted as that which we left behind. That is why the people of Kairn Necros stole light and warmth from us.

  “They’ll be surprised to see us,” Edmund says, smiling to himself at the thought.

  “Yes,” I say to myself. Very surprised. Very surprised indeed.

  Kairn Necros. Named thus by the ancients who first came to this world, named to honor those who had lost their lives in the Sundering of the old world, named to indicate the end of one life and the beginning—the bright beginning, it was then—of another.

  Oh, Edmund, My Prince, My Son. Take that name for your sign. Not Safe Harbor. Safe Harbor is a lie.

  Kairn Necros. The Cavern of Death.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE LAKE OF BURNING ROCK, ABARRACH

  HOW CAN I write an account of this terrible tragedy? How can I make sense of it, record it in some coherent manner? And yet I must. I promised Edmund his father’s heroism would be set down for all to remember. Yet my hand shakes so that I can barely hold the pen. Not with cold. The tunnel is warm, now. And to think we welcomed the warmth! My trembling is a reaction to my recent experiences. I must concentrate.