Margaret Weis - Fire Sea

“I would have said it in the council, if I were certain of my facts. I prefer to leave it to the wisdom and discretion of His Majesty to bring up the matter if he thinks it proper that the people should know.”

He glares at me. “What is it, Baltazar? Another theory?”

“Yes, Sire. Another theory ... about the colossus. According to my studies, the magic in the colossus was intended by the ancients to be eternal. The magic in the colossus, Your Majesty, could not possibly fail.”

The king regards me in exasperation. “I don’t have time for games, Necromancer. You were the one who said the colossus were failing—”

“Yes, Your Majesty. I did. And I believe that they are. But perhaps I chose the wrong word to describe what is happening to our colossus. The word may not be failure, Sire, but destruction. Deliberate destruction.”

The king stares at me, then shakes his head. “Come, Edmund,” he says, motioning peremptorily to his son. “We will go see your mother.”

The young man runs to join his father. The two start to walk away.

“Sire,” I call out, the urgency in my voice bringing the king again to a halt. “I believe that somewhere, in realms that exist below Kairn Telest, someone wages a most insidious war on us. And they will defeat us utterly, unless we do something to stop them. Defeat us without so much as letting fly an arrow or tossing a spear. Someone, Sire, is stealing away the warmth and light that give us life!”

“For what purpose, Baltazar? What is the motive for this nefarious scheme?”

I ignore the king’s sarcasm. “To use it for themselves, Sire. I thought long and hard on this problem during my journey home to Kairn Telest. What if Abarrach itself is dying? What if the magma heart is shrinking? A kingdom might consider it necessary to steal from its neighbors to protect its own.”

“You’re mad, Baltazar,” says the king. He has his hand on his son’s thin shoulder, steering him away from me. But Edmund looks over his shoulder, his eyes large and frightened. I smile at him, reassuringly, and he seems relieved. My smile vanishes, the moment he can no longer see me.

“No, Sire, I am not mad,” I say to the shadows. “I wish I were. It would be easier.” I rub my eyes, which burn from lack of sleep. “It would be far easier. . . .”

Edmund appears alone, at the door to the library, where I sit recording in my journal the conversation that recently took place between father and son, as well as my memories of a time now long past. I lay down the pen and rise respectfully from my desk.

“Your Highness. Please, enter and welcome.”

“I’m not interrupting your work?” He stands fidgeting nervously in the doorway. He is unhappy and wants to talk, yet the basis for his unhappiness is his refusal to listen to what he knows I am going to say.

“I have just this moment concluded.”

“My father’s lying down,” Edmund says abruptly “I am afraid he’ll catch a chill, standing outdoors like that. I ordered his servant to prepare a hot posset.”

“And what has your father decided?” I ask.

Edmund’s troubled face glimmers ghostly in the light of a gas lamp that, for the moment, drives away the darkness of Kairn Telest.

“What can he decide?” he returns in bitter resignation. “There is no decision to be made. We will leave.”

We are in my world, in my library. The prince glances around, notes that the books have been given a loving good-bye. The older and more fragile volumes have been packed away in sturdy boxes of woven kairn grass. Other, newer texts, many penned by myself and my apprentices, are neatly labeled, stored away in the deep recesses of dry rock shelves.

Seeing Edmund’s glance and reading his thoughts, I smile shamefacedly “Foolish of me, isn’t it?” My hand caresses the leather-bound cover of the volume that rests before me. It is one of the few that I will take with me: my description of the last days of Kairn Telest. “But I could not bear to leave them in disorder.”

“It isn’t foolish. Who knows but that someday you will return?” Edmund tries to speak cheerfully. He has become accustomed to speaking cheerfully accustomed to doing what he can to lift the spirits of his people.

“Who knows? I know, My Prince.” I shake my head ruefully. “You forget to whom you talk. I am not one of the council members.”

“But there is a chance,” he persists.

It hurts me to shatter his dream. Yet—for the good of all of us—he must be made to face the truth.

“No, Your Highness, there is not a chance. The fate that I described to your father ten years earlier is upon us. All my calculations point to one conclusion: our world, Abarrach, is dying.”

“Then what is the use of going on?” Edmund demands impatiently. “Why not just stay here? Why endure the hardship and suffering of this trek into unknown regions if we go only to meet death at the end?”

“I do not counsel that you abandon hope and plunge into despair, Edmund. I suggest now, as I have done before, that you turn your hope in another direction.”

The prince’s face darkens, he is upset and moves slightly away from me. “My father has forbidden you to discuss that subject.”

“Your father is a man who lives in the past, not the present,” I say bluntly. “Forgive me, Your Highness, but it has always been my practice to speak the truth, no matter how unpleasant. When your mother died, something in your father died, too. He looks backward. It is up to you to look forward!”

“My father is still king,” Edmund says sternly.

“Yes,” I reply. And I cannot help feeling that this is a fact to be deeply regretted.

Edmund faces me, chin high. “And while he is king we will do as he and the council command. We will travel to the old realm of Kairn Necros, seek out our brethren there, and ask them for help. You were the one who proposed this undertaking, after all.”

“I proposed that we travel to Kairn Necros,” I correct him. “According to my studies, Kairn Necros is the one place left on this world where we might reasonably expect to find life. It is located on the Fire Sea, and, although the great magma ocean has undoubtedly shrunk, it must still be large enough to provide warmth and energy for the people of its realm. I did not counsel that we go to them as beggars!”

Edmund’s handsome face flushes, his eyes flash. He is young and proud.

I see the fire in him and do what I can to stoke it.

“Beggars to those who brought about our ruin!” I remind him.

“You don’t know that for certain—”

“Bah! All the evidence points one way—to Kairn Necros. Yes, I think we will find the people of that realm alive and well. Why? Because they have stolen our lives from us!”

“Then why did you suggest that we go to them?” Edmund is losing patience. “Do you want war? Is that it?”

“You know what I want, Edmund,” I say softly.

The prince sees, too late, that he’s been led down the forbidden path. “We leave after we have broken our sleep’s fasting,” he tells me coldly. “I have certain matters to which I must attend, as do you, Necromancer. Our dead must be prepared for the journey.”

He turns to leave. I reach out, catch hold of his fur-cloaked arm.

“Death’s Gate!” I tell him. “Think about it, My Prince. That is all I ask. Think about it!”

Disquieted, he pauses, although he does not turn around. I increase the pressure of my hand on the young man’s arm, squeezing through the layers of fur and cloth to feel the flesh and bone and muscle, hard and strong beneath. I feel him tremble.

“Remember the words of the prophecy. Death’s Gate is our hope, Edmund,” I say quietly. “Our only hope.”