Margaret Weis - Fire Sea

“Father, are you certain you’re up to this?” Edmund asks worriedly.

“Yes,” the old man snaps, although my guess is that he wouldn’t have gone if he’d been alone. “Don’t worry about me. If Baltazar has his way, we’ll all be out in this before long.”

Yes, he knows I’m near, knows I’m listening. He’s jealous of my influence over Edmund. All I can say is, Old man, you had your chance.

“Baltazar has found a route that takes us down through the tunnels, Father. I explained that to you before. The air will grow wanner, the deeper into the world we penetrate.”

“Found such a fool notion in a book, I suppose. No use lighting the damn thing,” the old king remarks, referring to the lamp. “Don’t waste your magic. I don’t need a light. Many and many are the times I’ve stood on this colonnade. I could walk it blindfolded.”

I can hear them moving through the darkness. I can almost see the king thrust aside Edmund’s proffered arm—the prince is dutiful and loving to a father who little deserves it—and stalk unhesitatingly through the doors. I stand in the hallway and try to ignore the cold biting at my face and hands, numbing my feet.

“I don’t hold with books,” the king remarks bitterly to his son, whose footfalls I can hear, walking at his side. “Baltazar spends far too much time among the books.”

Perhaps anger feels good inside the old man, warm and bright, like the fire of the lamp.

“It was the books told us that they were going to return to us and look what came of that! Books.” The old king snorts. “I don’t trust them—I don’t think we should trust them! Maybe they were accurate centuries ago, but the world’s changed since then. The routes that brought our ancestors to this realm are probably gone, destroyed.”

“Baltazar has explored the tunnels, as far as he dared go, and he found them safe, the maps accurate. Remember, Father, that the tunnels are protected by magic, by the powerful, ancient magic that built them, that built this world.”

“Ancient magic!” The old king’s anger comes fully to the surface, burns in his voice. “The ancient magic has failed. It was the failure of the ancient magic that brought us to this! Ruin where there was once prosperity. Desolation where there was once plenty. Ice where there was once water. Death where there was once life!”

He stands on the portico of the palace and looks before him. His physical eyes see the darkness that has closed over them, sees it broken only by tiny dots of light burning sporadically here and there about the city. Those dots of light represent his people and there are too few of them, far too few. The vast majority of the houses in the realm of Kairn Telest are dark and cold. Like the queen, those who now remain in the houses can do very well without light and warmth; it isn’t wasted on them.

His physical eyes see the darkness, just as his physical body feels the pain of the cold, and he rejects it. He looks at his city through the eyes of memory, a gift he tries to share with his son. Now that it is too late.

“In the ancient world, during the time before the Sundering, they say there was an orb of blazing fire they called a sun. I read this in a book,” the old king adds drily. “Baltazar isn’t the only one who can read. When the world was sundered into four parts, the sun’s fire was divided among the four new worlds. The fire was placed in the center of our world. That fire is Abarrach’s heart, and like the heart, it has tributaries that carry the life’s blood of warmth and energy to the body’s limbs.”

I hear a rustling sound, a head moving among many layers of clothing. I can imagine the king shifting his gaze from the dying city, huddled in darkness, to stare far beyond the city’s walls. He can see nothing, the darkness is complete. But, perhaps, in his mind’s eye, he sees a land of light and warmth, a land of green and growing things beneath a high cavern ceiling frescoed with glittering stalactites, a land where children played and laughed.

“Our sun was out there.” Another rustling. The old king lifts his hand, points into the eternal darkness.

“The colossus,” Edmund says softly.

He is patient with his father. There is much, so much to be done, and he stands with the old man and listens to his memories.

“Someday his son will do the same for him,” I whisper hopefully, but the shadow that lies over our future will not lift from my heart.

Foreboding? Premonition? I do not believe in such things, for they imply a higher power, an immortal hand and mind meddling in the affairs of men. But I know, as surely as I know that he will have to leave this land of his birth and his father’s birth and of the many fathers before him, that Edmund will be the last king of the Kairn Telest.

I am thankful, then, for the darkness. It hides my tears.

The king is silent, as well; our thoughts running along the same dark course. He knows. Perhaps he loves him now. Now that it is too late.

“I remember the colossus, Father,” says his son hastily, mistaking the old man’s silence for irritation. “I remember the day you and Baltazar first realized it was failing,” he adds, more somberly.

My tears have frozen on my cheeks, saving me the need to wipe them away. And now I, too, walk the paths of memory. I walk them in the light... the failing light.. . .

... The Council Chamber of the king of the realm of Kairn Telest is thronged with people. The king is meeting with the council, made up of prominent citizens whose heads of household served in this capacity when the people first came to Kairn Telest, centuries before. Although matters of an extremely serious nature are under discussion, the meeting is orderly and formal. Each member of the council listens to his fellow members with attention and respect. This includes His Majesty.

The king will issue no royal edicts, set forth no royal commands, make no royal proclamations. All matters are voted on by the council. The king acts as guide and counselor, gives his advice, casts the deciding vote only when the issue is equally divided.

Why have a ruler at all? The people of Kairn Telest have a distinct need for propriety and order. We determined, centuries before, that we needed some type of governmental structure. We considered Ourselves, our situation. We knew ourselves to be more a family than a community, and we decided that a monarchy, which provides a parent-figure, combined with a voting council would be the wisest, most appropriate form of government.

We have never had reason to regret the decision of our ancestors. The first queen chosen to rule produced a daughter capable of carrying on her mother’s work. That daughter produced a son, and thus has the reign of Kairn Telest been handed down through generation after generation. The people of Kairn Telest are well satisfied and content. In a world that seems to be constantly changing around us—change over which we apparently have no control—our monarchy is a strong and stable influence.

“And so the level of the river is no higher?” the king asks, his gaze going from one concerned face to another.

The council members sit around a central meeting table. The king’s chair stands at the head. His chair is more elaborate than the other chairs, but remains on a level equal with theirs.

“If anything, Your Majesty, the river has dropped farther. Or so it was yesterday, when I checked.” The head of the Fanner’s Guild speaks in frightened, gloom-laden tones. “I didn’t go by to see today, because I had to leave early to arrive at the palace on time. But I’ve little hope that it would have risen in the night.”

“And the crops?”