John Fultz - Seven Princes

“I’ve dreamed of my mother before,” D’zan told his cousin. “But never of the place where she lies.”

“There is nothing to fear,” said Lysinda, taking one of his hands in her own. “Dreams are only passing fancies. They cannot hurt us.”

“Do you truly believe that?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said.

“But… this dream seemed so real. It was… a warning of some kind. I know it.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Lysinda, ruffling his hair. “Look about you: the sun is shining, the sea is laughing, the blooms of the garden rejoice. The stranger is dead and forgotten.”

“I’m afraid,” he whispered. She cradled his head in her lap awhile. She did not have to tell him that Princes of the royal house were not supposed to speak of fear or weakness. He knew that well enough.

D’zan forsook his studies for the day, and the two cousins went riding along the pounding surf. They rode twin mares the color of honeyed milk, and Olthacus the Stone rode some distance behind on his black charger, a single shadow for them both.

When sunset fell on Yaskatha once again, the King sat on his throne listening to reports of trading galleons from Mumbaza, Murala, Shar Dni, and the kingdoms of distant continents. D’zan reclined nearby on a lesser throne; his father was grooming him in the ways of statecraft. Behind D’zan stood the vigilant Stone, his eyes hidden beneath the hood of a heavy cloak. Olthacus scanned the throne room for potential threats among the comings and goings of the court.

Despite his keen sense for danger, not even the Stone saw the stranger’s second arrival. As before, the dark-robed Elhathym simply appeared before the King’s throne without any warning. His hoarse voice interrupted and overpowered the voice of the King’s viceroy, who read a cargo list from an unfurled scroll.

“Trimesqua,” interrupted the sorcerer, his sallow face looking even more skull-like than yesterday. “You have spurned my offer of mercy. As you can see, my death is beyond your power to grant. I give you one more chance to abdicate your throne. Since you refused my first offer, now it falls upon your people to suffer if you refuse a second time. Everyone inside this palace will die if you deny me again. Blood will flow through your streets and orchards. The shadows of your own past will tear you from your throne. What say you?”

Olthacus the Stone drew forth his great two-handed blade, and D’zan rose from his own chair to unsheathe his ceremonial scimitar. He felt again the terror of his dream… For a moment he was lost in the lightless crypts. Then he was staring at the broad back of the Stone, and guards rushed forward to encircle Elhathym in a thicket of bronze spear points and shining blades.

King Trimesqua did not rise from his throne this time, but his wrath was great.

“Charlatan! Chicanery will gain you nothing! Your fatal mistake was in returning to the scene of your previous treason. Now your death will be slow and agonizing. You will scream and beg forgiveness on the rack! Take him!” Spittle flew from the King’s lips to fleck his dark beard.

The palace guards swept over the sorcerer, a vast wave of silver and gold drowning a single black pebble. Olthacus the Stone did not move, but kept his place shielding D’zan in case the sorcerer unleashed some dreadful magic in his direction. But Elhathym did nothing as soldiers loaded his limbs with heavy chains and dragged him from the throne room. He did not even scream as they dragged him down below the living levels of the palace and into toce and the sulfurous glow of the torture chamber. Here, among the half-dead relics of political prisoners, murderers, rapists, and traitors, he endured the worst of torments the torturers could envision. For hours the hooded ones plied their trade, but not once did Elhathym scream. Instead, he laughed. As if all the processes of his own bodily pain and dismemberment offered some private delight.

In the throne room far above, the condemned man’s laughter drifted like a fetid smoke. D’zan, sitting at the arm of his father, shivered in his cushioned chair. He recognized that hollow sound from his dream of the tombs, and a nameless terror swelled in his heart. He could not speak to his father of his true feelings. He must be as brave and valiant as his sire, as grim and unfazed as the Stone. So he hid his quietly growing horror, and stuffed his ears with pieces of silk to drown out the faint laughter of the tortured man.

That night D’zan dreamed himself into the tombs again. He wandered, naked and alone as before, looking for the sarcophagus of his mother. In the living world he had visited her grave a thousand times, and such a familiar landmark might give him some hope of egress from the nightmare maze. But he could not find his dead mother, only legions of those who had died before his birth, a necropolis of winding corridors leading nowhere. At last, he saw a pale light and ran toward it. It seemed to draw away from him in the ever-lengthening distance that only occurs in the midst of dreams. Finally, he came close enough to realize the glow came from a single face, gleaming in worm-pale moonlight. It was the face of the sorcerer Elhathym, and it smiled at him in the darkness, floating wraith-like before him, bodiless. The face laughed, and the flesh sloughed away like that of a leper, leaving only a cackling skull that hovered in the endless dark.

D’zan woke screaming, and seconds later the Stone came into his bedchamber.

“It’s all right, Olthacus… I’m fine.” D’zan waved his guardian away, but the big man would not leave the room. He stood in the corner while servants dressed D’zan. The Prince called for a cup of morning wine, but could eat no breakfast. He spent the day in the library, poring over ancient texts from Khyrei detailing legends of sorcerers and necromancers who had haunted the Old World. In one of these tomes, after hours of meandering through moldy pages, he discovered mention of a wizard bearing the same name as the one who’d come to plague his nightmares. “The Tyrant Elhathym,” said the Book of Disgraced Savants , “ruled a southern kingdom before the Age of Serpents.” Nothing more than that brief passage.

Such texts were widely discredited by Yaskathan sages, because there were no civilizations that existed before Giants out of the northlands drove the race of fire-breathing reptiles from the earth. According to D’zan’s history tutors, the Giants then claimed the north for themselves, forcing the Four Tribes of humans to flee southward to ultimately form the five kingdoms: Yaskatha, Khyrei, Uurz, Mumbaza, and Shar Dni. How could there be a southern empire before any of this happened? Unless history was wrong… a lie invented to cover up horrible truths. And why would this present-day sorcerer take the name of a tyrant from an age of mystery?

It did not matter, he told himself. The sorcerer was finally dead now, tortured to death last night by order of King Trimesqua.

Or was he? efo0em"›

As the sun slipped once more into the sea, D’zan closed the musty volume and walked with urgency into the lowest level of the palace proper. Behind him, a second shadow, came the imposing figure of the Stone. The Prince hated the reek of the torture chamber, a blend of feces, sweat, blood, and fear. Even more he despised the terrible sounds that resounded among the boiling furnaces and intricate devices of torment. He usually avoided this part of the palace. But the sorcerer’s laughing had finally stopped, and he had to be sure that Elhathym was dead.

The smells of scorched flesh and decay drowned all others as D’zan entered the chamber. There was no sign of the sorcerer. Only the bodies of the three hooded torturers lying across the floor, blood pooling about their split bodies, their limbs askew in impossible angles. All the racks, cages, and shackles were empty, even those that had encased rotting corpses to terrify victims.