Seven Kings

18

The libraries of Yaskatha were sumptuous and extensive, yet Lyrilan spent none of his time exploring them. Instead he stayed cloistered in his borrowed palace chamber with its terrace overlooking the Cryptic Sea. D’zan had set sail nine days ago, his golden galleons joining with the white swanships of Mumbaza.

Lyrilan took little food or wine, despite the protests of Volomses, who left his studies in the halls of parchment and scroll twice a day to visit. The old sage seemed to enjoy his new life in the southern capital; as a scholar of the north he commanded a certain respect in Yaskatha, and the women of the court found him endearing. Undroth, too, seemed less the eternal general and more like a retired lord. He spent most his time with discreet courtesans or exploring the royal vineyards. At times he drank with the veterans of the palace guard, reliving old glories.

Lyrilan took no woman to his bed and spared no time to get acquainted with his new neighbors. Word about the palace, relayed to him by Volomses, was that grief had made him a recluse. He did not care what the powdered and pampered folk of D’zan’s realm believed.

Last night, by the soft light of thirteen candles, he had finished The Third Book of Imvek. The secrets unfolding in his brain had followed him into a restless sleep. He dreamed the abstractions, the metaphysical propositions, the songs in ancient tongues. He walked the winding streets of empires long forgotten, dead cities scattered across the world like patches of moss obscured by smothering wilderness. He spoke with the savants of races who carved mountains into colossal cities long before mankind was a dream in the eye of its mysterious creators. He saw the Gods themselves in his dreams, lurking like shadows about the fires of primeval humanity. The worst of his nightmares brought him face to face with the deepest truths of Imvek’s discoveries.

All these years Lyrilan had thought he understood the world and its history. What was any world but a complex collection of historical ages? Even as a boy he knew all the Ages of Man, from the Time of Serpents to the Sundering of Tribes, to the Founding of the Realms, to the Age of Heroes, the Plague Age and the Age of Discovery. A succession of wars and catastrophes and legends that comprised the whole of antiquity.

Yet it was all but the slightest glimpse of a world ancient beyond belief, where civilizations rose and fell and rose again; an endless cycle of rebirth, ruination, and reinvention. How many lost races had walked the surface of the earth and molded it to fit their needs? He could never know. Yet now he knew the names of at least a few.

Imvek’s odyssey into the Southern Isles had brought him to the Lost Cities of K’Timba, whose mighty stones lay scattered across the islands beneath millennia of jungle growth. There he had discovered the bones of a capital that must have rivaled great Uurz in its day. The remains of mummies and the mosaics of ancient tomb walls spoke of a society where prehuman beings gathered to ponder obscure philosophies of space, time, and existence.

Imvek had learned the lost language of the Yl’ktri, whose words were primal glyphs of power. Using those very words he had called up the ghosts of the creatures who inscribed them on tablets of antediluvian stone. From such phantoms he learned the subtle cadences of the Yl’ktri speech. Theirs was a language that manipulated the elements as a man’s hammer hewed stone or wood. This was well before the wayward Prince gave up his tongue to carry his stolen knowledge home to Uurz.

Imvek’s account also told of how he summoned a spirit whose race once roamed the starfields, spreading conscious thought like seeds across the universe. He learned the true shape of the living worlds, and the shapes earth held before Man existed. From the ancestors of the finny Sea Folk he learned the mysteries of the ocean depths. In visions he toured the palace of a winged people who dwelled among the clouds when earth’s land masses were not yet formed. His research penetrated all the way to the earliest instance of life itself, when the secrets he learned became too great. He refused to set any more of his primordial visions on parchment.

Still, he had learned enough to fill six volumes with prehistoric wisdom. These books, one by one, pulled back the curtain of modern supremacy to reveal the wonders of bygone epochs. Throughout the untold eons lurked the presence of colossal beings who were not Gods, for they were greater and far deadlier than any God could be.

Imvek posited that these Walkers from Beyond were the original architects of earthly life, though he found no proof of this blasphemous claim. If the Gods had created Man, as their priests claimed, then why have the Celestials forgotten and ignored their creations for so long? Lyrilan found Imvek’s unanswerable question to be the strongest proof of his theory.

Chief among the third book’s revelations were the existence not only of the Yl’ktri language, but of an entire set of tongues that served as the basis for all spoken communication. These the author dubbed the Vital Tongues. The power of these languages was the power of sorcery. Yet their true authority lay not in the vocalization, the sounds made by lip, tongue, and tooth. The entities who invented these languages possessed very different physical forms to humans. To speak the Vital Tongues aloud as they had been in the earth’s early ages was impossible for a human. No, the true power of these primal languages was the conscious meaning and intent behind the words, whether they were written or spoken.

As the greatness of a man lies in his heart, not in the might of his limbs, so did command of the Vital Tongues lie within the mind that conceived and expressed their meaning. The vigor of these languages was triggered by the power of living blood, the liquid foundation of all life.

Knowing all these things, Imvek no longer needed a human voice to command the languages of power. Therefore, he sacrificed his tongue willingly to an ignorant barbarian King in order to escape with the untold treasure of his discoveries. By losing one simple tongue, he gained several that were far more potent.

Sitting among the silken hangings and sculpted stone of D’zan’s house, Lyrilan felt the great weight of the past lying upon the world like an unseen burden. It lay upon him, upon his traitorous brother, and all Kings and Queens and warriors and maidens; on all the children of the earth. He realized after reading that third volume his own insignificance in the face of the vast cosmos and its infinite wonders.

Then it came to him that the Vital Tongues, the prehuman songs of power, were his key to lifting that weight and remolding the world to suit his needs.

He had learned the power of living blood to invoke the influence of the Vital Tongues. Phrases and formulae lay scrawled across the volume’s latter pages. Secrets torn from empires fallen to dust. How much more of the forgotten languages might he learn in the fourth, fifth, and sixth books? Yet before he continued his journey through the realm of Imvek’s sorcerous knowledge, he longed to try another incantation, to feel the syllables of a Vital Tongue spilling from his own lips, miracles sprouting from the forest of his willpower. Like Imvek, he need not speak the Tongues aloud, but the act of speech provided a focus for him, like a schoolboy reciting ciphers.

While the shroud of night lay deep and still about the palace, he assembled certain ingredients: a stone bowl, a dagger, the petals of a night-blooming flower, a bit of ground bone from the pork shank he failed to eat for dinner, and wine of an ancient vintage. This took some doing, but he bribed the custodian of the wine cellars with a splendid tourmaline from his coffer of Uurzian jewels. He combined these ingredients in the wide bowl, which he carried to the terrace. Midnight breezes played with the strands of his long hair. The Cryptic Sea glittered in the moonlight as if littered with floating diamonds. He breathed deep of the salty air.

He held the dagger’s blade over a burning brazier until it glowed a bright crimson, then slid it across his palm. The shallow cut he had inflicted upon himself during the sea voyage had already healed. He sliced a parallel groove alongside it, and squeezed his fist over the copper bowl until twenty-one red drops joined the contents there. Then, holding his bloody hand toward the sky, he began the song he had chosen from Imvek’s third volume.

A vision of Ramiyah lay in his mind, conjured only by his imagination. This was soul magic, the calling of a spirit from the Realm of the Dead. Imvek had learned much of his greater magic in this way, prying secrets from the specters of antiquity. Yet it was not esoteric knowledge Lyrilan sought this night.

The wind picked up and great waves slammed against the shore below the palace. The ships and boats anchored in the harbor bobbed and shifted with the uncommon turbulence of the bay waters. A great wind moaned through the orchards, and lightning turned the black sky to cobalt blue over the distant face of the sea. The candles in his room went out at once, followed by the hanging braziers. Lyrilan stood with darkness at his back and moonlight on his face, speaking sounds from beyond time and space.

“Ramiyah…”

He mixed her name into the incantation. Behind his closed eyes she smiled and danced and lay with him in a heated embrace. The sweet smell of her skin, peaches and rosemary, filled his nostrils. Or it could be that he imagined them. Perhaps it did not matter which was true.

A fog rolled up from the sea to hide the vineyards along the hillside. White vapors crept toward the palace as Lyrilan continued the ancient song. His heart beat faster, and he wanted to cry out, to laugh or weep, or hurl himself from the terrace onto the marble walks of the courtyard. A wisp of vapor coiled about the railing of the terrace and then curled about his legs.

He kept his eyes firmly shut while the clammy vapor caressed his face, shedding coolness and damp sea air.

“Ramiyah…” He called her name again.

How long he stood chanting over the bowl he could not guess.

Now his eyes opened and she stood before him in a gown of wispy vapors. Her golden hair shined to rival the moonglow, and her soft blue eyes regarded him with an infinite sadness. He gasped and his bloody fingers trembled. The spell had worked.

Lyrilan, she breathed and he fell to his knees.

“O, sweet Wife,” he said, tears flowing freely now. They crossed his lips hot and salty. “Our love cannot be hindered by the shackles of Life and Death. To see you again… to hear your voice… it brings me such pleasure.”

Ramiyah’s ghost shivered about the edges, and she shook her blonde head.

There was no smile on her lovely face. Her gaze was as blank as a marble effigy.

Why have you done this?

Lyrilan blinked and reached out to her. His dripping hand passed through her body. She was insubstantial like the sea fog, perhaps made of it.

“Because I love you… I miss you…” he said. “I wanted to tell you… I’m so sorry…”

I am dead, Lyrilan. What can your sorrow mean to me?

Lyrilan sighed. “I will make them pay for taking you from me. You and our son. This I swear to you.”

Our son was never born, said the wraith.

“An even greater crime to avenge. Come wrap your arms about me,” he begged. “Pretend just for a little while… that we both still live and love.”

Once more the apparition shook her misty head.

You still live. The Dead cannot love the Living. It is not permitted.

“Permitted? By whom? Who denies what I ask this night? I have sung the language of the Yl’ktri, a Vital Tongue. Come and embrace me!”

No, said the ghost. She turned away from him, facing instead the dark truth of the sea. Leave me be, Lyrilan. Let me rest. You should not have done this thing.

“I don’t understand,” he cried. “Why not?”

Because it is wrong. In your living heart you already know this.

“I do not care!” he said. “We were robbed, everything taken from us. This small token of sorcery brings us together again, even if only for one more night of bliss. Love me, Wife, as you did before.”

Before I died? No. It is not permitted.

“I will decide what is permitted,” said Lyrilan. “If you ever loved me, girl, turn and face me now.”

She turned, her yellow locks tossed in a sudden updraft. Her face was a mask of white bone, staring at him with sockets stark and empty. She wore the naked grin common to all skulls.

Lyrilan fell back and howled at the phantom. The ghost raised its hands toward him as the golden hair fell from its nude skull. It floated closer to him, as if it would indeed take him in its vaporous arms. He writhed back across the carpeted terrace, pressed his back against the cold wall, and covered his face with his arms. His sliced palm was still bleeding. It dripped across his shuddering face.

The Dead cannot love the Living, whispered the skull. Send me back to my rest.

“Go!” Lyrilan shouted, waving his bloody hand in the face of the corpse. Yet it was already gone.

He lay weeping like a lost child on the terrace when Volomses found him. The sage helped Lyrilan to his feet and walked him to the cool comfort of his bed. He shut the burgundy curtains of the terrace.

Dawn was on its way, bringing the inevitability of a mortal existence to light once more. Lyrilan did not want it. Life was a worthless thing without love. And if love did not exist beyond the walls of Death, how much power could it truly possess? He pulled at his sweaty locks of hair and kicked the sheets from his bed. Volomses sat near the bed and soothed him with the patient tones of a worried grandfather.

After a while Lyrilan lay calm in the quietude of despair. The soul-deep wound given him by Tyro had been reopened. Was that unkind specter truly the spirit of Ramiyah, or only a figment of his tortured imagination? Impossible to say.

Volomses gave him mulled wine. He drank it sitting up in the bed, knees drawn up to his chest. The sage went to the terrace, took the stone bowl and poured its contents into the lower gardens. With soap and water he wiped the terrace free of blood and all other signs of conjury. Finally, he wiped the blood from Lyrilan’s face, arms, and hand, stitching up the deep cut and wrapping it with a white bandage.

“Majesty,” said the sage, “you really must avoid cutting yourself in such a way. Nothing good can come of it.”

Lyrilan almost told the sage what he had learned from Imvek’s books. The most powerful blood used in the working of sorcery was always that of the sorcerer himself. Besides, spilling the blood of others held no appeal for him. Only the blood of those touched with greatness would outshine that of a sorcerer. That would be a blood worth harvesting. Until he found such blood he must rely on the red potency of his own veins. He said nothing of this to Volomses.

Instead he called for the curtains to be lifted so the sunrays could find their way into his chamber. Volomses saw this as a good sign. He smiled and left the chamber on an errand to secure breakfast for the both of them. Lyrilan bolted the door behind the sage.

From the second of his traveling chests he lifted The Fourth Book of Imvek the Silent.

When Volomses returned with a platter of fruits and cheeses, Lyrilan denied him entry.

“Go away,” he ordered through the door.

The wound beneath his bandaged palm throbbed. It mirrored the constant pain in his heart. He had grown used to it, and no longer paid it any mind.

He sat in the center of the ruffled bed with the book propped on his folded legs.

He opened the first of its musty pages and began to read.

Ramiyah’s fleshless face lingered in his memory like an unheeded warning.