John Fultz - Seven Kings

Knowing this, she had still chosen to work the Great Spell. Not to do so would have left D’zan’s spirit trapped inside a decaying body. The act of sorcery saved him from becoming a monster, yet could not restore him to full manhood. She could never tell him this. For all other purposes, he was a man, with a man’s hungers, desires, and emotions. The man she loved above all others. He might become the greatest King that Yaskatha had ever known, if he chose to pursue the goal. He might bring a new age of prosperity and peace to his nation. But never would he be able to father a child. The body that could have done so was destroyed by the Usurper Elhathym.

“I am barren.” The lie fell from her lips, heavy as a stone wrenched from her gut. “I was afraid to tell you.” Her tears fell to stain the bedsheets.

D’zan sighed. He wrapped his arms about her. He said nothing, and his touch was tender. Yet she had confirmed his fear. Her lie had preserved his pride.

He said nothing more about it after that day. He still lay with her, still smothered her with his passion, though not as often. He claimed pressing royal duties. Often she did not see him for days at a time. Yet always he returned to ravish her in the darkness of their chamber, as if she were some secret love rather than his ordained Queen and wife.

She renewed her interest in the study of history, philosophy, and sorcery. She spent most of her days in the library, or on the stone benches of the palace gardens, a book nestled on her lap. She dined frequently with her mother and those ladies of noble personage whose presence she could tolerate. She preferred the company of books and scrolls. Twice Iardu visted her in the form of a great eagle. He spoke of strange spirits, forgotten spells, and distant worlds. Some impending doom seemed always to worry him, but he was evasive. Always he flew from her at dawn, back to his lonely island, she supposed. The ageless wizard said many things she did not understand, or would not understand until years later. She learned not to forget a word that he mumbled.

In the fourth year of the marriage, the first of many black rumors floated across the marshes like poison vapors. The lost Emperor of Khyrei had returned. Gammir the Bloody. Now they called him Gammir the Reborn. It was Vod, Sharadza’s own father, who had killed Gammir nearly four decades ago. Yet the word of his return brought nightmares. Yaskathan mariners, as well as merchants from the Jade Isles and Mumbazan traders, spoke once more of Khyrein piracy. The marauding of the black-and-crimson ships had ceased for years, but now they plied the waves again, preying on any vessels in their path.

D’zan sat in long meetings with his advisors. Many who shared his confidence urged him toward war on the returned Emperor of Khyrei, yet there were no facts to prove Gammir’s return. Sorcerers could defy death a thousand times, so it was quite possible. Yet it was just as likely that some new lord, hungry for greatness and power, had taken the name of the old Emperor and used it to secure the throne. D’zan asked her to join a council meeting, against the wishes of his advisors. They did not care for what she had to say, or for her pleas for caution and diplomacy. They wanted war. That day she realized that these were the same advisors who had turned D’zan away from her, whispering in his ear the necessity for an heir. They were the ones who had ruined her marriage.

She had worked her magic on a garden pool, looking across the world as if through a mirror. Although she could spy the frosty peaks of the northlands and the Giant forests of Uduria, even the dry streets of parched Uurz, she could not bring the capital of Khyrei into focus. There was indeed some great power there, something that blocked her magical vision. It could be that Gammir the Undying had actually returned. She called for Iardu on the night winds, but he did not come.

D’zan was unsurprised at the failure of her sorcery, as if her lack of childbearing had proved her ineffectiveness in all areas. Yet he did not chastise her when she stood powerless to confirm the Khyrein rumors. He only kissed her forehead and stalked off for another conference with his generals.

She heard them speak of an embassy to Mumbaza. They would draw the Boy-King to their war by exploiting his eagerness to prove himself a man. Undutu was about to claim the throne from his mother the Queen-Regent. The Son of the Feathered Serpent would be a Boy-King no more. Now he would be the King on the Cliffs, the Jeweled One, as his fathers were before him. She had little doubt that Undutu’s young ego could be stroked enough to end Mumbaza’s long peace. An ambassador from Uurz had already pledged King Tyro’s allegiance to Yaskatha, supporting whatever action they might take against the Khyrein pirates. For the second time in her young life, Sharadza sensed the reek of war rising on the air, the scent of warm blood flowing through street and gutter, dripping from the gnarled fingers of dead men.

So it went for months on end. Squabbling ambassadors and rumors of sea battles. It seemed Uurz could not commit itself to war after all, for the Twin Kings were in disagreement. Lyrilan the Scholar checked the martial ambitions of his brother Tyro the Sword. The King of Mumbaza was not as eager to prove his war prowess as expected. He was a thinker, this dark-skinned youth, raised by his Queen-Mother to be cautious, and counseled by Khama the Feathered Serpent to maintain the harmony of the Pearl Kingdom. Meanwhile the depradations of the Khyrein pirates continued, and ships were lost in every season. Perhaps it was these frustrations with political matters, added to his fears of remaining heirless, that drove D’zan into the arms of Lady Cymetha.

At first she was only a whiff of perfume, a sweet odor that lingered on D’zan’s skin when Sharadza came near him. The scent of another woman’s lust. The reek of betrayal. She followed him one night in the form of a black cat, gliding between the columns of the great hall and skirting the hems of tapestries. Earlier, he had claimed that a meeting with his advisors would keep him late into the night. He told her not to wait up for him. Several times now he had done this, slipping into the royal bed much later with that strange scent lingering on him.

She followed D’zan into the domain of the courtesans, directly to Cymetha’s chamber. She listened at the door with her feline ears pricked, and heard the sounds of their passion. It was the sound of what she had lost. Something precious gone forever. A sparkling diamond dropped into the ocean’s dark abyss.

She did not confront him the next day, or the next. Yet no longer did she let him touch her. He would never touch her again; not until he admitted what he had done. What he continued to do. So months passed in icy silence, as politics and infidelity claimed the King’s attentions, and the pages of ancient tomes wrapped a protective sheath about her heart. Everyone at the court knew of D’zan’s affair; yet he would not insult her by speaking of it directly. Likewise, she uttered not a word to spoil her mother’s happy existence among the courtly idylls of Yaskatha. Yet even Shaira must have wondered why her daughter would give her no grandchild to coddle. Sharadza evaded her mother’s deft questions on the matter.

Three months ago she saw Cymetha’s round belly for the first time. The pregnant courtesan was roaming the halls outside her newly appointed private suite in the company of seven serving maids. Cymetha’s status had improved greatly. And why not? She carried the King’s only heir inside her ambitious womb.

Sharadza confronted D’zan that night, marching openly into a meeting of his advisors. She brushed aside their blather of war and justice, sweeping them bodily from their chairs with a great wind. Sensing her anger, fearing her power, they fled the room. D’zan was outraged and fuming. He rose from the table, yellowed maps rustling in the air like mad Yaskathan pigeons.