John Fultz: Seven Kings

In the sky great galleons hovered like floating mountains, sails spreading from the sides of each hull as well as the mainmasts. They moved in constantly shifting patterns, gliding in unison from north of the city wall, coming in low to skirt the summits of spires and temples. From these ships launched winged lizards bearing human riders; they jousted with wooden poles between the summits of towers. These flying reptiles found perches on the tops of high turrets. Air galleons docked between those pinnacles as well, sending men up and down their hanging rope ladders.

The greatest of all the city’s wonders stood near its center. Grander than any palace or temple alone, it served the purpose of both. A massive eminence of pearly stone, nearly as white as the distant desert, rose from a labyrinth of cloistered gardens and orchards. Its walls slanted inward, yet instead of a pyramid’s point or a series of terraced gardens, the structure culminated in a massive face of pale stone, square-jawed and with stylized flames about the eyes.

Here was the carven face of Zyung, whose name was also the name of the city and the empire that stretched across an entire continent. The temple-palace’s lower regions were a mass of bridged towers and rosy domes. Phalanx after phalanx of warriors marched about its sheltered grounds. Here was the home of the God-King, standing tall and majestic as an ice-crowned mountain. Yet no mountain ever bore a visage like that of Zyung, whose great stony eyes overlooked hundreds of tributary kingdoms.

Zyung, whose high house was the center of the world.

Along the winding courtyard roads of the palace rolled the bone carriage, the dead steeds slowing their pace at last. Servants and soldiers wandering those gardens heard the beating of hooves where no horse or other mount was visible. Yet those who peered from the upper windows of the citadel, priests and sages and sorcerers, saw the rattling bones for what they truly were. Soon their warnings spread to the very heart of the temple-palace.

The carriage drew up before a gate of jeweled iron fronting the structure’s grand entrance. The ceaselessly beating hooves finally came to rest on the polished pavement, and the pale carriage rattled to silence. From the shelter of flowering trees and sculpted hedges, slaves, laborers, and strolling courtesans peered now at the strange conveyance.

Its single door of melded bones opened without a sound. From the shadows of its dark interior came a white panther tall as a war horse. It stalked patiently in a ring about the carriage, purring low and deep. Next, a black wolf exited the carriage and followed at the heels of the panther, sniffing the air for stray wisdom.

When the panther ceased its prowling about the carriage, the conveyance crumbled at once into a clattering pile of bones. The four dead horses reared their heads one last time and fell into dust. Soon there was only a pile of white sand lying before the open gate of the temple-palace. The wind picked up and began to blow the sand away. Before the sun passed beyond the city’s imposing wall, there would be no more trace of the pale carriage or the bone steeds.

Warriors marched forth from the gate, spears and shields at the ready, but they did not confront or hinder the white panther or the black wolf. The troops only stood facing one another in double row, and the two beasts walked beneath a row of crossed spears into the vaulted hallway.

Panther and wolf peered about the columned recesses and ivory galleries, the first with eyes like black diamonds, the second with eyes of liquid ruby. Palace servants hid behind corners or ducked into niches to avoid those hungry glares.

Eventually the pair of beasts came into a throne room vast as a hollowed hill. Jewels sparkled like constellations on the walls and ceiling; a forest of pillars stood carved from agate, emerald, and onyx. Panther and wolf followed a long carpet of intricate design toward a dais of nineteen steps at the hall’s far end. There sat a grim Giant with a face to match the greater face atop the temple-palace. Warriors and advisors stood like tiny gamepieces in orderly rows about his massive throne, a chair carved with unmatched skill from a single colossal diamond.

The face of Zyung expressed an abiding calm to rival that of his stone effigy. The fires of his eyes simmered low now, but the heat of them fell across the two beasts as they came to lick at his black boots. One of his hands, each large enough to cradle or crush a living man, lowered to stroke the glossy pelt of the panther, then the rough fur of the wolf.

Panther and wolf licked his tree-thick fingers. When the God-King drew back his hand, the beasts paced about his throne and settled into place like complacent hounds. The white panther lay to the right of the diamond throne, the black wolf to the left. Red tongues lolled between their fangs. Their devious eyes remained open, darting about the spangled hall, searching for easy prey.

Zyung raised his other hand now, and a great horn blew somewhere in the hall.

A second horn took up the golden note and passed it to another, and another, until a thousand such horns echoed about the ramparts of the temple-palace.

The God-King spoke three words that rang like thunder across his realm.

His eyes blazed, twin suns that would scorch the world clean.

Let it begin.