Seven Princes

32

The streets of Yaskatha boomed with song and cheer. Months of misery and fear were replaced by a flood of goodwill and wild celebrations. D’zan’s name rang through the avenues, plazas, and orchards. Well-wishers and skeptics flocked into the city from outlying farms and villages. Wine and ale flowed in rivers, men carried girls on their shoulders, and children stuffed themselves with the sweetmeats of vendors made generous by joy. D’zan had not yet emerged to walk among his people, and tales of his battle wound explained his immediate privacy. The Yaskathans wrote verse about him and sang his praises. The legend of his vanquishing Elhathym grew wilder with each telling.

In the midst of this jubilation, Sharadza sat with Iardu in a grove of the palace gardens and wept. She gazed into a pool below a sculpted fountain. Atop the water gleamed a vision of Vireon and Alua kneeling before the throne of dead Andoses. Iardu put his arm about her shoulders. She had learned the spell of scrying from him, though she already regretted looking toward Shar Dni. So much death… An entire city, more or less, murdered in a single night.

Poor Andoses. He looked so pitiful slumped in his father’s throne, a pile of broken bones and punctured flesh. The headless corpse of Fangodrel lay nearby, blackened and shriveled. Sharadza had watched it all, helpless to give Vireon aid. Unlike the Glass of Eternity, the enchanted water could not be used as a gateway, only a window. She could look across the world, view any scene she wished, yet was powerless to affect it from so far away. She felt useless.

All the suffering and devastation of the Sharrians… It was the very thing she had tried to prevent. War and death had come despite her intervention. Iardu had been right all along. War is a tide that flows where and when it will. A storm of tragedy too great and powerful for any man or woman to control. The Khyreins had struck first and decimated the Sharrians; Elhathym had struck first and annihilated Zaashari. Perhaps if she had not rushed off to save the world, the attacks would have been postponed. Perhaps Shar Dni might still exist today. Andoses might still be alive… and the people of Zaashari… and D’zan. What a piteous thing this handsome Prince had become. Dead, yet undying, what future could he have among the living?

What difference have I made at all?

What if I had done nothing?

“Dry your tears,” said Iardu, patting her shoulder. “It’s not as bad as all that.”

She glared at him. His eyes gleamed in their myriad colors. The blue flame guttered low on his chest. His robes had been restored, but the dark bruises on his skin remained.

“My cousins are all dead,” she reminded him. “My aunts, uncles… an entire city!”

“No,” he said. “Thousands of women and children survive. See them milling in the courtyard there. Vireon is their hero, their savior. Alua is their new Goddess.”

Sharadza watched them in the ensorcelled water. Grimy faces bright with tears stared upon Vireon and Alua, raw hope glimmering in their eyes. Among the smoking ruins of an empire, those people refused to give up. Surely Vireon would take them to Udurum. And there he would be King. What of Shar Dni? Perhaps, over time, it might be rebuilt as Udurum once was. Yet there were no Giants to rear its new walls and raise its towers. No, it would remain a haunted ruin.

Iardu waved his hand and the watery view shifted to the open sea. The black ships of Khyrei sailed southward. What must those captains and soldiers feel in their hearts now that their wicked Empress was gone? Which one of them would rise to replace her, and bring more war in some distant year?

“Their fleet is leaderless and vulnerable,” said Iardu. “If you wish, I might summon a hurricane and drown them all.”

“No!” She shook her head, a mass of black curls twirling. “There has been enough death. Leave them be.”

“As you wish,” he said. “Perhaps they will choose a more peaceful way of life without Ianthe the Claw driving them to conquest.”

She heard the doubt in his words. He did not believe them himself.

“What about D’zan?” she said. “What has happened to him?”

Iardu dispelled the image with a dip of his finger into the pool. The vision turned to ordinary ripples. Songbirds trilled in the cypress branches, and the smell of citrus hung heavily about the garden. Somewhere inside the palace walls D’zan sat or wandered wordless and grim, a prisoner of his own dead flesh.

“Elhathym killed him,” said Iardu. “Yet his spirit refused to abandon his body. By embracing death instead of running from it, he defeated his enemy.”

“How could he do this?” she asked.

Iardu shrugged. “You saw the gleaming sign on his forehead, the mark of the Sun God. His belief in this power made it real. This is the sorcery that all men are capable of working… the magic of Faith. They give credit to the Gods for their own works. Try to tell them this, however, and they call you Heretic.” He smiled.

“What will become of him?”

“His physical shell will continue to rot and decay with his spirit trapped inside. Eventually, he will be a dried, animate skeleton. The people will fear him and call him worse than Elhathym. Unless…”

“Unless what?” she asked. “What can we do?”

Iardu stared into the green leaves dappled with sunlight. The Flame of Intellect blazed on his breast. “Did you know that the hair and fingernails of corpses continue to grow even in the grave?”

They left the gardens and entered the palace. Servants and soldiers were busy removing all trace of Elhathym’s brief reign, cleaning for the coming feasts and the official coronation of the young King. Sharadza and Iardu found D’zan sitting still upon his throne, from which he barely moved at all. In the last few hours the throne room had regained much of its grandeur. Fresh tapestries of Yaskathan ancestry lined the walls. Dust and blood and bones had been scoured away, and the Vizier’s podium was restored to its rightful place. The throne that Iardu had conjured from marble had been set with a fresh coterie of jewels. Beams of sunlight showered through the vertical casements.

D’zan wore a silver breastplate engraved with the sword and tree, a crimson cloak, and leggings of white silk tucked into tall black boots. On his sallow face sat a slim crown of gold studded with six emeralds and a single brilliant red opal. His eyes sat like heavy stones in the center of black sockets, and the flesh grew tight about his skull. The hole in his chest was completely covered by the corselet, and gloves of dark leather hid the pallid skin of his hands. As before, the greatsword lay across his knees, oiled and gleaming bright as his crown.

Iardu climbed the dais and spoke to him in whispers. At length D’zan sighed and nodded. He arose and followed them into the garden. There he gave an order, in a voice like sand on stone, that his two guests and he not be disturbed.

The Shaper found a secluded glade rimmed by blossoming pomegranate trees. Here D’zan lay down upon the grass, the sword on his chest pointing toward his feet. His gloved hands wrapped about the hilt like a slain hero fit for burial, which in many ways he was.

Sharadza let Iardu lead the spell. She played the role of student and protegee.

He plucked a single strand of D’zan’s brown-blonde hair from his head and breathed upon it; he gathered naked sunlight in his right hand and invested it into the strand. Then he offered it to Sharadza, who poured her own breath upon it and pricked her finger with a pin so that a single drop of her blood fell upon the hair.

Iardu let go of the strand and it floated down to the green sward next to D’zan. Now Iardu sang over the strand in the grass, and Sharadza watched in awe. The hair grew into a rope, then wound upon itself to create an oval. Drops of white fire fell from Iardu’s hand upon the oval and it melted into a shape like that of a newborn baby.

As Iardu sang, he made the sign Sharadza had been waiting for. She poured a ewer of fresh water and another of seawater over the infant sculpture. The substance of hair became flesh, and it grew longer and more solid. Iardu dropped a shard of white bone upon its belly, and the flesh rippled, taking the bone into itself. Now the shape lyinge shape near D’zan was that of a young boy, the hardness of bones filling its limbs. Soon the young boy was a young man, a twin to D’zan before his death. Its eyes were closed as if in sleep.

Sharadza took D’zan’s sword from his cold hands and wrapped the new body’s warm fingers about its hilt. Then she took the crown from the rotting head and placed it on the fresh one. Now Iardu bent over the rotting corpse and pulled something miraculous from its mouth – a glowing orb large as an orange and blazing brightly even in the sunlight. He held it out to Sharadza. She took it in her hands gingerly, as if it were a delicate crystal. It hummed, warm and beautiful in her cupped palms. She knelt and dropped it into the open mouth of D’zan’s new body.

His new eyes opened. They were sparkling, and as green as her own.

He sat up, inhaling air with freshly molded lungs. She glanced at the corpse and saw that it was now truly lifeless… only a husk of dissolving skin and muscle. These two were twins – one living, one dead. She put her arms around the new D’zan. He could not speak or see yet – while Iardu stripped armor and clothing from the empty corpse. She helped D’zan then to stand in his new body, and he blinked at her, voiceless. His eyes gleamed at her. They had been dark before, but now they were bright as emeralds.

They helped him to dress in tunic, corselet, cloak, leggings, and boots. By that time he had regained his voice. He spoke his first words to Sharadza, an intimate whisper.

“You are beautiful,” he said. “I wanted to tell you this since I first saw you.”

She smiled at him and could do little else. He stood on his own now, a proud young King restored to health and vigor.

“Thank you, Shaper” he said, taking Iardu’s hand. “Now that I live again, my kingdom will live. I will never forget what you have done this day.”

Iardu’s shoulders sagged a bit, but he seemed chipper. “Thank me later with some of your fine Yaskathan wine. Now you must bury this corpse to complete the spell.”

He produced a silver shovel for D’zan, who proceeded to dig a grave between the pomegranate trees. Sharadza and Iardu kept an eye out for passers-by. It would not do to have anyone witness the burial of their new King. Even if it was the new King himself that dug the hole.

D’zan rolled his former body into the hole and covered it with dirt. Iardu waved a hand and thick grass grew across the mound. Sharadza tossed a few flower petals on the unmarked grave, and a patch of golden magnolias sprouted there.

Every grave must have some marker.

She embraced D’zan, then Iardu. She wiped at her eyes. “Life from death… This miracle soothes my heart.” Something in D’zan’s eyes made her want to linger near to him. Perhaps it was because her own blood had played a small role in his rebirth. Or it could be the verdant green of his eyes? Suddenly the urge to kiss his warm pink lips overwhelmed her. She turned away and faced Iardu instead.

“I supposed we must carry the grim news of Khama’s death to’s dea his family.”

Iardu smiled. “There was no time to explain before now… but Khama is not dead.”

Her mouth fell open. She turned to stare at handsome D’zan again. He grinned, his white teeth shining.

“Elhathym merely caught the Feathered Serpent in a prison of earth,” Iardu said. “What better way to capture a Creature of the Air? Khama is of the Old Breed. We do not die so easily.”

Sharadza beamed. “Then let us go to Zaashari and free him.”

Iardu glanced at D’zan then back at her. “No… no, you stay here for a while, Princess. I will go alone to free Khama. Then I’ll return to my island.”

“Why?” asked Sharadza.

“There is a certain stone there that I’ve kept too long… a splendid pearl that belongs to someone else. I think it is time I returned it.”

Sharadza hugged the Shaper, squeezed him in the way she used to squeeze her father’s neck. She kissed his cheek. “You should visit her,” she said. “Don’t just drop it in the sea.”

Iardu smiled. His eyes glimmered. He turned to D’zan and motioned to the hidden grave. “If these bones are ever found, you must declare them a fallen soldier whom you loved well. No one must know what Elhathym did to you. Or what I have done to reverse it.”

D’zan embraced him as well. “All the riches of my kingdom are yours for the asking. What would you have from me?”

Iardu rubbed his beard, cocked his head. “A bottle of wine would suit me best.”

D’zan called for a servant and Iardu had his wish. He kissed Sharadza’s forehead, then soared into the sky as a red eagle. They watched him ascend until he was only a speck in the blue vault. Then he disappeared behind a pearly cloud.

Sharadza turned her gaze earthward again and found D’zan kneeling on the grass before her. In his open palm lay a ring of white gold set with three fiery stones.

“Sharadza, Princess of Udurum,” he said, gazing into her eyes. “Every kingdom needs a King… and every King needs a Queen. You held my soul in your hands even before I died and was reborn. Will you be my Queen?”

She stared not at the golden bauble, but into his eyes of glittering green.

Lyrilan walked into the Royal Library of Uurz and felt himself at home. The journey from Yaskatha to Murala had taken nearly a month, with frequent stops along the coast to avoid winter storms. In those tiny villages and desolate stretches of coast, he had found a peace that was wholly unlike the peace of Uurz, or any of the cities he had visited. The simple fisher-folk of the coasts were unconcerned with wars, sorcerers, or the many evils abroad in the world. He wondered what secret they knew that allowed them to enjoy a day-to-day existence without the benefits of city culture, the written word, or the thoughts of history’s great men. They told folk tales around warm hearth-fiarm hearres and showed him scattered ruins where the heroes of old fought monsters. Half their tales were lies or distortions of actual history, but that made them no less compelling. Some of them he would write down one day.

First he must write the story of D’zan as he had long intended. Upon the rolling sea for weeks, he often stared at the dark waters, thinking of his lost and incomplete manuscript rotting away on some sandy sea bed. It was better this way. How could he be objective and consider the whole story while he was stuck in the middle of it? Trying to write the chronicle of King D’zan’s rise to power was impossible while he shared that adventure himself. Only now, with months and a thousand leagues between him and those wearisome days, could he see it all clearly enough to set it down in ink.

It was a tale of Princes, Kings, Sorcerers, a Princess and an Empress, a Boy-King and a Giant-King. The death of Shar Dni wove tragedy into the narrative, not to mention the betrayal and seduction of Fangodrel the Bastard. The rising legend of Vireon the Slayer began inside D’zan’s tale. Tales often grew from other tales – like buds from the branches of trees. Tyro played a starring role, though not as great a one as he had imagined.

Tyro had expected a war of years, and the Battle of Yaskatha had not sated his lust for glory. He had tried to convince D’zan to march upon Khyrei, but the King of Yaskatha had other, sweeter endeavors in mind. So Tyro returned to Uurz with his battle fever still burning… No tragic fate had befallen him, only a minor wound quickly healed. He would continue to look for war where he could find it. Someday, sooner than Lyrilan or Tyro would like, their father would pass away and they would rule as Twin Kings. Lyrilan would have to balance his brother’s lust for war as the voice of peace. He did not look forward to those days.

Dairon had greeted his sons with pomp and splendor when they returned, and his joy was even greater when he learned there was no longer a need for his legions to march south. He mourned the death of Shar Dni, but he rejoiced at the death of the Khyrein Beast-Queen. “Let them rot in their filthy jungle,” Dairon said. “We’ll not spill our blood unless they forget their place again.” Naturally, Tyro felt otherwise. Father declared it was time for Tyro to marry. A good woman would cool his warrior passion. Lyrilan was not so sure.

The wedding of D’zan and Sharadza was a spectacular affair. Lyrilan would save its description for the closing scene of his book. It would make a fine and uplifting coda to a tale of death and grim sorcery. The rain of flowers from the golden heights, the silver parade of soldiers trailing crimson, the black horses thick with hanging jewels, the opulence of the bride’s gown and her crown of jewels… All these details lingered vivid in his mind. Now, however, he must cast his mind back to the day he met D’zan, a frightened, nervous lad who smelled of horseflesh and ate like a starved orphan. Or perhaps he would reach farther back and begin with the Prince’s early years… the tales of his father’s conquests. Whichever he chose, the tale would really begin when the dark stranger came to Yaskatha.

Outside the librarium’s high windows, raindrops glistened in the sunlight and a rainbow glimmered above the Palace of Sacred Waters. Somewhere in the city bards sang of ancient lovers, and storytellers spun sagas of war and doom. Wine poured and flowers bloomed. Plowmen planted the fields beneath the rushing clouds of spring. Uurzians lived, loved, died, hoped, died, d, dreamed, wept, and laughed. A thousand thousand stories unfolded like the petals of numberless flowers, composing a pattern whose complexity was too great for a single mind.

The only way to make sense of nature’s grand design was to isolate the threads, follow the individual strands in the weave of the world. To capture the essence of life itself on parchment with a spell of ebon ink. One tale at a time.

He picked up his quill and dipped it into the flask of dark fluid.

He thought of his friend who had lived, died, triumphed, and lived again, and he pictured the King and Queen of Yaskatha lying in some shady bower. They would have many heirs to read this story.

In the brazen haze of daylight, he touched quill to page and began his spell.

The broad streets of Udurum were full again. Not with bustling and rowdy Giants, but Sharrian refugees eager for homes and work. They carried bags of gold and precious jewels from the treasury of their dead city, placed into their hands by Vireon the Slayer. Spring warmed the black walls of the city, and the Sharrians walked humbly through lanes built by Giant hands. They spread their wealth gradually among the folk of Udurum and forged lives for themselves the way Giants used to forge steel here.

Vireon looked across his city from a balcony on the high tower of Vod’s palace. His mother had gone south to visit her daughter and new son-in-law in Yaskatha. She had given him the crown before she left, and Udurum applauded her choice. Even the fiercely proud Uduri knew the city would be stronger with Vireon as its King. The Giants who went north might even return when they heard the tale of King Vireon whispered about their cold fires.

Shaira lingered long enough to bless his marriage to Alua. Shar Dni’s fall and the murders of her entire extended family, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces… it had all been too much for her. The lines of worry marred her face, and the burden of Queenship must come off her shoulders. So Vireon took the weight of the crown, made Alua his Queen, and now his mother would know at least a little happiness. She would have many grandchildren. He expected she would live out the remainder of her life in warm, sunny Yaskatha. It reminded her of Shar Dni as she had known it in her youth. He would visit her when duty allowed it.

Now Udurum had both King and Queen again. Alua turned her natural wisdom to the fields and orchards. The blooms of spring had never come so thick and vibrant. Vireon watched the dancers of the spring festival in the streets below, and the lilting music filled his ears.

She came from the tower to join him on the terrace, wrapping her cool arms about his chest from behind.

“Shall we go down and join them?”

“It is expected,” he said.

“What troubles you? This should be a time of joy. The frost fades and the earth sends forth its bounty. Speak to me.”

He breathed deep of the sweet northern air. Along the southern horizon, the Grim Mountains looked tiny and insubstantial, black fangs crowned by white mists.

“At times… I still think of Tadarus,” he told her. “And the other one.”

She knew of whom he spoke, as she knew he could never again say the name.

She kissed his mouth softly. “The past is set in stone… the future is a mystery… but the now is what you wish it to be. Your memories honor Tadarus. Let that honor give you joy.”

He held her in his arms while warm winds danced about the tower.

He said nothing of Fangodrel’s last words, the hatred he spat as his scorched head flew from his shoulders.

My blade interrupted that curse… stole it from his lips.

I reject his curse.

It is only the reminder of a sad revenge.

The only true curse is that of memory.

Alua was right. He must forget the one and honor the other.

I reject his curse.

They entered the tower and lay together, the melodies of the festival wafting in through the windows. Later they went down into the streets and sampled the delights of spring.

He still did not understand Love.

Or Sorcery.

But this simple joy in a world filled with sorrow…

Perhaps this was the beginning of Wisdom.