Margaret Weis - Fire Sea

“Unless we get water to the fields in the next five cycles’ time, we’ve lost the bread-grain, for certain. Fortunately, the kairn grass is doing well—it seems to be able to thrive under almost impossible conditions. As for the vegetables, we’ve set the field hands to hauling water to the gardens, but that’s not working. Hauling water is a new task for them. They don’t understand it, and you know how difficult they can be when they’re given something new.”

Heads nod around the table. The king frowns, scratches his bearded chin. The farmer continues, seeming to feel the need to explain, perhaps to offer a defense.

“The hands keep forgetting what they’re supposed to be doing and wander off. We find them, back at work on their old jobs, water buckets left to lie on the ground. By my calculations, we’ve wasted more water this way than we’ve used on the vegetables.”

“And your recommendation?”

“My recommendation.” The farmer glances around the table, seeking support. He sighs. “I recommend that we harvest what we can, while we can. It will be better to save the little we have than to let it all shrivel up and die in the fields. I brought this parfruit to show you. As you see, it’s undersize, not yet ripe. It shouldn’t be picked for another sixteen cycles, at least. But if we don’t gather it now, it’ll wither and die on the vine. After the harvest, we can do another planting and perhaps, by that time, the river will have returned to its normal—”

“No,” calls a voice, a voice new to the room and to the meeting. I have been kept waiting in the antechamber long enough. It is obvious that the king isn’t going to send for me. I must take matters into my own hands. “The river will not return, at least not anytime goon, and then only if some drastic change occurs that I do not foresee. The Hemo is reduced to a muddy trickle and, unless we are indeed fortunate, Your Majesty, I believe it may dry up altogether.” The king turns, scowls in irritation as I enter. He knows that I am for more intelligent than he is and, therefore, he doesn’t trust me. But he has come to rely on me. He’s been forced to. Those few times he did not, when he went his own way, he came to regret it. That is why I am now necromancer to the king.

“I was planning to send for you when the time was right, Baltazar. But,” the king adds, his frown growing deeper, “it seems you can’t wait to impart bad news. Please be seated and give the council your report.” From the tone of his voice, he would like to blame the bad news on me personally.

I sit down at a chair at the far end of the rectangular meeting table, a table carved of stone. The eyes of those gathered around the table turn slowly, reluctant to look directly at me. I am, I must admit, an unusual sight.

Those who live inside the gigantic caverns of the stone world of Abarrach are naturally pale complected. But my skin is a dead white, a white so pallid it appears to be almost translucent and has a faint bluish cast given by the blood veins that lay close beneath the skin’s thin surface.

The unnatural pallor comes from the fact that I spend long hours shut up in the library, reading ancient texts. My jet black hair—extremely rare among my people, whose hair is almost always white, dark brown at the tips—and the black robes of my calling make my complexion appear to be even whiter by contrast.

Few see me on a daily basis, for I keep to the palace, near my beloved library, rarely venturing into town or into the royal court. My appearance at a council meeting is an alarming event. I am a presence to be feared. My coming casts a pall over the hearts of those in attendance, much as if I’d spread my black robes over them.

I begin by standing up. Extending my hands flat on the table, I lean on them slightly so that I seem to loom over those staring back at me in rapt fascination.

“I suggested to His Majesty that I undertake to explore the Hemo, track it back to its source, and see if I could discover what was causing the water to drop so severely. His Majesty agreed that this suggestion was a good one, and I set out.”

I notice several council members exchange glances with each other, their brows darkening. This exploration had not been discussed or sanctioned by the council, which means that they are, of course, immediately against it.

The king sees their concern, stirs in his chair, seems about to come to his own defense. I slide into the breach before he can say a word.

“His Majesty proposed that we inform the council and receive their approbation, but I opposed such a move. Not out of any lack of respect for the members of the council,” I hasten to assure them, “but out of the need to maintain calm among the populace. His Majesty and I were then of the opinion that the drop in the river level was a freak of nature. Perhaps a seismic disturbance had caused a section of the cavern to collapse and block the river’s flow. Perhaps a colony of animals had dammed it up. Why needlessly upset people? Alas”—I am unable to prevent a sigh—“such is not the case.”

The council members regard me with growing concern. They have become accustomed to the strangeness of my appearance, and now they begin to discern changes in me. I am aware that I do not look good, even worse than usual. My black eyes are sunken, ringed by purple shadows. The eyelids are heavy and red rimmed. The journey was long and fatiguing. I have not slept in many cycles. My shoulders slump with exhaustion.

The council members forget their irritation at the king acting on his own, without consulting them. They wait, grim faced and unhappy, to hear my report.

“I traveled up the Hemo, following the river’s banks. I journeyed beyond civilized lands, through the forests of laze trees that stand on our borders, and came to the end of the wall that forms our kairn. But I did not find the river’s source there. A tunnel cuts through the cavern wall and, according to the ancient maps, the Hemo flows into this tunnel. The maps, I discovered, proved accurate. The Hemo has either cut its own path through the cavern wall or the river runs along a path formed for it by those who made our world in the beginning. Or perhaps a combination of both.”

The king shakes his head at me, disliking my learned digressions. I see his expression of annoyance and, slightly inclining my head to acknowledge it, return to the subject at hand.

“I followed the tunnel a great distance and discovered a small lake set in a box canyon, at the bottom of what once must have been a magnificent waterfall. There, the Hemo plunges over a sheer rock cliff, falling hundreds of footspans, from a height equal to the height of cavern ceiling above our heads.”

The citizens of Kairn Telest appear impressed. I shake my head, warning them not to get their hopes up.

“I could tell, from the vast dimensions of the smooth plane of the wall’s rock surface and from the depth of the lake bed below, that the river’s flow had once been strong and powerful. Once, I judge, a man standing beneath it might have been crushed by the sheer force of the water falling on him. Now, a child could bathe safely in the trickle that flows down the cliff’s side.”

My tone is bitter. The king and council members watch me warily, uneasily.

“I traveled on, still seeking the river’s source. I climbed up the sides of the canyon wall. And I noticed a strange phenomenon: the higher I climbed, the cooler grew the temperature of the air around me. When I arrived at the top of the falls, near the ceiling of the cavern, I discovered the reason why. I was no longer surrounded by the rock walls of the cavern.” My voice grows tense, dark, ominous.

“I found myself surrounded by walls of solid ice.”

The council members appear startled, they feel the awe and fear I mean to convey. But I can tell from their confused expressions that they do not yet comprehend the danger.