Prologue

PROLOGUE





“Have you found him?”

The man kneeling before the Crimson Throne quailed at the greeting. He had ridden hard the last few days, sleeping in the saddle when fatigue swept him away like the rapids in the southern bend of the Uk. Three horses had fallen beneath him, to lie broken in the muck of the road, and three new ones cajoled out of stubborn citizens of the realm. Meals had been sparse, water rare, and Theran had been given no time for rest or refreshment upon broaching the walls of the citadel. He was weary beyond all ken of strain, hungry, thirsty, and, to add burden to his ails, ineffective.

“No, My Lord. The Ukwald is dense and spans hundreds of miles—“

The sound of a fist splintering tabletop shattered Theran’s resolve, and he nearly toppled to the floor. He caught himself with a single mailed hand and managed to keep from disgracing himself further. He took a deep breath and raised his eyes to his liege.

The man seated at the table was a waif drowning in red satin, thin of limb and gaunt of face. His skin was a marbeled wonder of agelessness; it had the look of vellum crumpled in the grip of a giant’s fist then smoothed and revivified by a virgin’s touch. His face was a wonder of angles; a long, hawkish nose perched between high and protruding cheekbones which offset his vaguely triangular head, tapering from a broad, wrinkled brow to a delicate pointed chin. His mouth was small and livid under a dark mustache, and his eyes seemed to glare from beneath twin moss-obscured caverns. The silver plate atop the table was overturned, the matching wineglass pouring its musky contents onto a bearskin rug, but Theran’s attention was captured by the man’s fist, a seemingly weightless and slender collection of bones protruding from the voluminous sleeves of the royal garment that had somehow buried itself in the heartwood of an ancient oak. Theran swallowed audibly.

“Do not bandy words with me, Child. I shall have none of your excuses. What of the settlement at the heart of the wood, Ukanad? Did you find it?”

“Yes, My Lord. It was exactly as you described. We made camp outside its gates for thirteen days, as commanded, but none in the area had ever seen or heard of a boy fitting My Lord’s descriptions. We scoured the surrounding forest, and found nothing but wolves and hoards of Tiranki, which I came to understand are quite the nuisance to the local lord—“

“What care have I of the plagues which beset the smallest of my vassals? I care but for one thing; the capture and safe delivery of this boy. He has occupied my Dreamings for longer than I care to remember, and none of these dreams have been pleasant.” The Keeper of the Throne raised his left hand to the stubble on his cheeks, and only then seemed to notice his right hand buried in the wood of the table. He frowned, extracted his hand, and scanned the room. His retinue of guards stood immobile, unmoved. “Forgive me my outburst, Child. My dreams have been exceptionally trying of late, and I fear for the safety of the realm. You are weary from your travels. Rise, please, and retire for the night. We shall speak more of this matter on the morrow.”

Theran hauled himself to his feet, swaying with the effort. “My heartfelt thanks, My Lord. I will rise early, and eagerly await your summons.”

“Very well. Before you go, tell me—how goes the procurement of lumber from the Ukwald?”

“Well, sir. With the swollen number of loggers currently working, we shall soon have enough timber to build an armada that stretches the horizon.”

“Good, very good. Well done, Child. Now go, eat, bathe, and rest. I will call for you tomorrow after I have broken my fast.”

“As My Lord commands, so it shall be.” Theran spun on his heel and walked from the room, willing himself not to stagger. The massive doors creaked shut after him and he allowed himself to stumble.



Yuris Covenat, Keeper of the Ancient Throne of Nyburn, Protector of the Realm, Chancellor of Souls, and Dreamer of the People waved two impatient hands at unseen servants in the darkened wings of the hall and bade them remove his interrupted meal. He looked with distaste at the proof of his weakness of will: the jagged cavity in the otherwise serene surface of his dining table. He shook his head and turned his thoughts inward, breathing deep to quell the torrent of rage that roiled beneath the surface of his usually serene façade. The hall was filled with subservients who should not have seen his outburst; he had worked too hard and for too long to let one momentary slip ruin him.

He forced his tense muscles into submission and rose to his feet. “Send the Reader to my chambers,” he announced, “and have a carpenter repair the table.” He commanded without emotion or inflection, and floated from the room, his robes whispering against the tiled floor.

Cold penetrated his bones in the passageway, and not for the first time did he curse this foul excuse for a citadel. Shoddy planning and slapstick workmanship had created wind tunnels instead of hallways, ovens instead of rooms. Winters were unbearable, summers intolerable. The Kings of old had cared for nothing but appearances, and the keep reflected their arrogance.

Yuris moved aside a heavy woolen tapestry depicting the Battle of Polybardum, a minor victory of a long-forgotten king. Yuris kept it hanging because it helped insulate the walls of the keep, its artist was talented in the depiction of violence, and it was large enough to conceal a scarce-used door which led down into the bowels of the citadel. It was only one of thousands of such passageways, and Yuris prided himself in knowing them all. He was the Keeper of the Throne, after all, and how effective a Keeper could he be if the very building which housed the Seat held secrets from him?

The door itself revolved around a central steel post which yielded under his learned touch, and Yuris entered into the welcome bosom of total darkness. He door swiveled shut after him, the tapestry muffling any sounds of movement. The Keeper stood silent for a moment, basking in the heat that traveled up the corridor from the fires that warmed the bathwater for the denizens of his household, then muttered a few short words and held aloft an amorphous blob of colorless light. If the people of his regency knew that he lit his way with a Witchlight, he would be hanged within the hour, subject to the rules and fears he himself had instilled in the populace.

But the people didn’t know. They continued offering up their seers, their healers, their sages and their mages, condemning their ministrations as abomination. The dungeons below were filled with people of the Talent; hedge wizards and midwives, jugglers and apothecaries all waiting their trial before the throne. Yuris was a just Keeper; if the condemned showed no mark of the Talent, they were freed. If they could Forge and Wield, however, they were imprisoned, then tested, then freed as well, but not to walk the weary road home. Those with the Talent never walked again.

Yuris flowed down the stairway illuminated by his Witchlight, pressed a specific stone on an otherwise unremarkable wall, stepped on another stone in the floor, and shouldered past the reluctant, but now unlocked, hidden door. The portal snapped back into place and Yuris released the incantation for his light as his eyes adjusted to the gloom spread by several torches and a sizeable fire in the center of the room. A dark shape stood over a kettle perched precariously above the flames of the pyre, and let drop several items which plopped into the contents of the cauldron.

“He eludes us yet, does he not?” The voice was soft and tenuous, yet held a listener rapt as though tied by a hundred thousand tendrils of spiderweb.

“He does. Why ask a question to which you’ve already delved the answer?”

A chuckle. “I enjoy seeing the most powerful man alive admit defeat.”

“I am far from defeated, Wyrm. Merely delayed.”

“Delay is defeat. I can see the strain of delay in your bones, and I taste it in your blood. Your will cannot hold the hoard in thrall for eternity. Already you are beginning to break down.” Another pair of unseen objects plopped into the pot, which sighed as though receiving a lover’s caress.

“I have it in me to hold the mindless at bay for another century, if need be. They do not concern me.”

“Yet something does. Something is gnawing at the fringes of your being. Something other than the Dreams, though they are getting worse. Have you tired yet of Dreaming of yourself?”

“I did not come here to be heckled with idle prattle.”

“Of course not, you never do. Yet here we are, prattling idly.”

“The elixir, Wyrm.” Yuris extended a hand toward the form, keeping his cloak and arm far from the steam that spewed from the kettle

“So soon? Why, ‘twas just—“

“I have no need to be reminded by the likes of you. The elixir. Now.”

“Very well. I suppose, if you have no need of reminders, I need not tell you again of the grave peril you put yourself in? Immortality is not something that can be quaffed.”

“Must I hear this each time? Give me the elixir, or I shall give you to the dungeons.”

The figure spread his arms and in one body hand appeared a small ochre vial. “Here is your drug, Keeper.”

Yuris snatched the phial, held it up to one of the torches, and peered through its murky contents. “It is darker. And a larger dose.”

A sigh—the sound of a breeze scattering the dried leaves across a mausoleum floor. “Yes. It is.”

“Why?”

“Why ask a question to which you’ve already delved the answer?”

Yuris turned his head from his inspection and frowned at the form. He glared down his nose for a moment before popping the waxed cork from the bottle and drizzling its contents down his throat. He coughed once, and grunted. “Perhaps this will keep me from your wretched company for more than a pair of nights, crone.” He tossed the bottle at the bubbling cauldron.

A single withered hand snapped from the shadow and clenched the glass before it touched the brew. “All things are possible under the eyes of God.”

Yuris laughed. “There is no God. I chased him down with my dogs and had him slain.”

“So you pray in the depths of the night. You have had what you need of me, Keeper, now go. You have less need of me than I of you.” With that, the form turned its back on Yuris and bent once again over its concoction.

Yuris bit back the caustic remark that threatened to surge free of his mouth to remind the cleric of its place, and in its stead turned and strode from the apothecary. With a sure and strong hand he pushed aside the entrance to the room and entered again into the warmed staircase, followed it to its source, and blew past the tapestry. He emerged into the hallway behind a serving wench, who shrieked when she heard his footstep and dropped the tray of edibles she had been carting in the direction of the guard house.

“Oh! Forgive me, My Lord; I did not notice you there.” Her face flushed with embarrassment and she scrabbled to collect the fallen foodstuffs.

“Nay, my Child, forgive me. I am sure the guards will be twice as brusque with you when their dinners are doubly late. Pardon my startling you.” He bent to help her in her chore, relishing the musky scent of her sweat. He drank deep of the feminine vintage, and lifted her downcast face to meet his. Her eyes met his for only a heartbeat before blinking shut and fleeing to the shoulder of his mantle, but in that once glimpse he gleaned a lifetime of images. “A pretty girl, you are. Such clear eyes. And with child? Ah, the product of a happy father, I should think.”

The serving wench shuddered at the sound of his voice, stammered, and tears began to flow down her cheeks. “Aye, m’Lord. Thank you, m’Lord. Please, I-I-I must get the vittles to the guards. Please.” Her eyes met his again, for another instant.

“Of course, forgive me.” He released her face and stood over her as she scooped the tray from the floor. “Name the child Den and he will prosper; Henning and you will die before he; Polchik and he will die before you. Fare well, Child, and let not Fennik of the Guard know you carry more than his mead, for his pride will not allow him to sire a bastard.” The girl froze under his pronouncement, and Yuris smirked as he turned on his heel and stalked the hall to his bedchamber, the dosage of elixir adding a spring to his step and sent dream-visions cartwheeling through his head. He loved to Dream awake; it was so much more fulfilling than Dreaming asleep.

He entered the subdued opulence of his innermost sanctum silently and found the Reader awaiting him. The Reader was a hefty man, of prodigious girth, thick of limb and bereft of hair. He, as had all Readers before him, had been denied the pleasures and pains of true masculinity at an early age, and his status as Chief Eunuch of the Court showed in his easy mannerisms and agile and discerning mind. His had been a life of study and comfort, living among others such as he and rising to the apex of sagacity to be chosen as the one individual capable of guiding the Dreamer through is visions, recording them, and securing their contents from the curious eyes of a bloodthirsty populace. His skin was sallow, the color of votive candles, for he had not seen the sun in decades. Night was his only constant friend—night, and the Dreams.

“Good even, My Lord. I was concerned not to find you here, awaiting me. Are you quite well? My my, I should say you are. An uncommon light gleams in your eyes, a light I’ve not seen in many upon many a year. Perhaps the dreams will be fluid and concrete this night; clarity floods from you like ale from a newly formed bung.” The Reader’s voice was light, airy, like the song of a whipoorwill.

“Yes, Rees, I daresay I feel well this evening; despite the less-than-satisfactory news I received regarding the manhunt for the boy, I feel as though progress is within our grasp. Perhaps tonight’s Dreams will illuminate the path to salvation.” Yuris began the involved process of extracting himself from his garb, and Rees rose to assist him. The eunuch’s hands were deft, if corpulent, and learned in their tasks.

Before long, the voluminous drapery of a cloak was removed, leaving a thin, fragile skeleton of a man shivering beside an expansive bed. Rees peeled back the mountain of quilts and began chanting in a language Yuris had never bothered learning. The words and cadence of the serenade were as familiar to him as the darkness under his eyelids, and he succumbed to the Dreaming ritual willingly. Though the elixir had fueled his system with energy and vigor, he bent his conscious mind into submission, and welcomed the unconscious with a smile and a sigh. Such visions to be had!