The Emperor's Elefant

Prologue

AACHEN, AD 793

They think it is a fragment from a shattered human skull. Bone white, it has the same dished shape, and is thin enough to be from a dead child. The clerks in the royal chancery glance at it with distaste as they pass my desk, giving me a wide berth. Possibly they imagine it is a gruesome memento from King Carolus’s disastrous campaign against the Saracens in Hispania fifteen years ago. They know that I took part in that failed invasion and that, though wounded, I survived the bloody ambush of his army’s rearguard during the retreat through the mountains. If the clerks presume that my swordsmanship saved me, they are wrong. The real reason was my friendship with the Saracens after I had lived among them and gained their trust, even though I was a spy.

Doubtless they also puzzle why the king himself still consults me from time to time, bypassing the royal council. They would be surprised to know that their most Christian and devout lord, Carolus, believes that dreams are a guide to the future. He asks my advice because I am someone who has been known to interpret the meaning of dreams and is himself a dreamer. Yet I am increasingly reluctant to provide the king with clear answers. Experience has taught me that dreams are rarely false but they often mislead. When their truth is finally revealed, the shock is all the greater. In the year before the Hispania campaign I dreamed of a giant Carolus on his warhorse and he was crying tears of blood. I had no idea then that it signified he would lose a third of his army and his favourite nephew and my patron, Count Hroudland, in that wretched ambush. And even if I had foreseen what was to happen, I could not have changed the outcome.

So when a dream provides me with a glimpse of the future, the prudent course is to hold my tongue.

Recalling the past requires similar caution. The story I will set down touches on a royal secret being kept from Carolus, here in Aachen. Should he learn what I am concealing from him, I would be disgraced. So I intend the tale as a purely private record of a journey to distant, little-known lands. That is why I have placed the little bone-white chip with its ragged edges in plain view on my desk. People steer clear of bits of skulls – though that is not what it is – and this will keep my written pages from prying eyes.