“It is too much,” he whispered.
It is too much…
32
The streets of Yaskatha boomed with song and cheer. Months of misery and fear were replaced by a flood of goodwill and wild celebrations. D’zan’s name rang through the avenues, plazas, and orchards. Well-wishers and skeptics flocked into the city from outlying farms and villages. Wine and ale flowed in rivers, men carried girls on their shoulders, and children stuffed themselves with the sweetmeats of vendors made generous by joy. D’zan had not yet emerged to walk among his people, and tales of his battle wound explained his immediate privacy. The Yaskathans wrote verse about him and sang his praises. The legend of his vanquishing Elhathym grew wilder with each telling.
In the midst of this jubilation, Sharadza sat with Iardu in a grove of the palace gardens and wept. She gazed into a pool below a sculpted fountain. Atop the water gleamed a vision of Vireon and Alua kneeling before the throne of dead Andoses. Iardu put his arm about her shoulders. She had learned the spell of scrying from him, though she already regretted looking toward Shar Dni. So much death… An entire city, more or less, murdered in a single night.
Poor Andoses. He looked so pitiful slumped in his father’s throne, a pile of broken bones and punctured flesh. The headless corpse of Fangodrel lay nearby, blackened and shriveled. Sharadza had watched it all, helpless to give Vireon aid. Unlike the Glass of Eternity, the enchanted water could not be used as a gateway, only a window. She could look across the world, view any scene she wished, yet was powerless to affect it from so far away. She felt useless.
All the suffering and devastation of the Sharrians… It was the very thing she had tried to prevent. War and death had come despite her intervention. Iardu had been right all along. War is a tide that flows where and when it will. A storm of tragedy too great and powerful for any man or woman to control. The Khyreins had struck first and decimated the Sharrians; Elhathym had struck first and annihilated Zaashari. Perhaps if she had not rushed off to save the world, the attacks would have been postponed. Perhaps Shar Dni might still exist today. Andoses might still be alive… and the people of Zaashari… and D’zan. What a piteous thing this handsome Prince had become. Dead, yet undying, what future could he have among the living?
What difference have I made at all?
What if I had done nothing?
“Dry your tears,” said Iardu, patting her shoulder. “It’s not as bad as all that.”
She glared at him. His eyes gleamed in their myriad colors. The blue flame guttered low on his chest. His robes had been restored, but the dark bruises on his skin remained.
“My cousins are all dead,” she reminded him. “My aunts, uncles… an entire city!”
“No,” he said. “Thousands of women and children survive. See them milling in the courtyard there. Vireon is their hero, their savior. Alua is their new Goddess.”
Sharadza watched them in the ensorcelled water. Grimy faces bright with tears stared upon Vireon and Alua, raw hope glimmering in their eyes. Among the smoking ruins of an empire, those people refused to give up. Surely Vireon would take them to Udurum. And there he would be King. What of Shar Dni? Perhaps, over time, it might be rebuilt as Udurum once was. Yet there were no Giants to rear its new walls and raise its towers. No, it would remain a haunted ruin.
Iardu waved his hand and the watery view shifted to the open sea. The black ships of Khyrei sailed southward. What must those captains and soldiers feel in their hearts now that their wicked Empress was gone? Which one of them would rise to replace her, and bring more war in some distant year?
“Their fleet is leaderless and vulnerable,” said Iardu. “If you wish, I might summon a hurricane and drown them all.”
“No!” She shook her head, a mass of black curls twirling. “There has been enough death. Leave them be.”
“As you wish,” he said. “Perhaps they will choose a more peaceful way of life without Ianthe the Claw driving them to conquest.”
She heard the doubt in his words. He did not believe them himself.
“What about D’zan?” she said. “What has happened to him?”
Iardu dispelled the image with a dip of his finger into the pool. The vision turned to ordinary ripples. Songbirds trilled in the cypress branches, and the smell of citrus hung heavily about the garden. Somewhere inside the palace walls D’zan sat or wandered wordless and grim, a prisoner of his own dead flesh.
“Elhathym killed him,” said Iardu. “Yet his spirit refused to abandon his body. By embracing death instead of running from it, he defeated his enemy.”
“How could he do this?” she asked.
Iardu shrugged. “You saw the gleaming sign on his forehead, the mark of the Sun God. His belief in this power made it real. This is the sorcery that all men are capable of working… the magic of Faith. They give credit to the Gods for their own works. Try to tell them this, however, and they call you Heretic.” He smiled.
“What will become of him?”
“His physical shell will continue to rot and decay with his spirit trapped inside. Eventually, he will be a dried, animate skeleton. The people will fear him and call him worse than Elhathym. Unless…”
“Unless what?” she asked. “What can we do?”
Iardu stared into the green leaves dappled with sunlight. The Flame of Intellect blazed on his breast. “Did you know that the hair and fingernails of corpses continue to grow even in the grave?”
They left the gardens and entered the palace. Servants and soldiers were busy removing all trace of Elhathym’s brief reign, cleaning for the coming feasts and the official coronation of the young King. Sharadza and Iardu found D’zan sitting still upon his throne, from which he barely moved at all. In the last few hours the throne room had regained much of its grandeur. Fresh tapestries of Yaskathan ancestry lined the walls. Dust and blood and bones had been scoured away, and the Vizier’s podium was restored to its rightful place. The throne that Iardu had conjured from marble had been set with a fresh coterie of jewels. Beams of sunlight showered through the vertical casements.
D’zan wore a silver breastplate engraved with the sword and tree, a crimson cloak, and leggings of white silk tucked into tall black boots. On his sallow face sat a slim crown of gold studded with six emeralds and a single brilliant red opal. His eyes sat like heavy stones in the center of black sockets, and the flesh grew tight about his skull. The hole in his chest was completely covered by the corselet, and gloves of dark leather hid the pallid skin of his hands. As before, the greatsword lay across his knees, oiled and gleaming bright as his crown.
Iardu climbed the dais and spoke to him in whispers. At length D’zan sighed and nodded. He arose and followed them into the garden. There he gave an order, in a voice like sand on stone, that his two guests and he not be disturbed.
The Shaper found a secluded glade rimmed by blossoming pomegranate trees. Here D’zan lay down upon the grass, the sword on his chest pointing toward his feet. His gloved hands wrapped about the hilt like a slain hero fit for burial, which in many ways he was.
Sharadza let Iardu lead the spell. She played the role of student and protegee.
He plucked a single strand of D’zan’s brown-blonde hair from his head and breathed upon it; he gathered naked sunlight in his right hand and invested it into the strand. Then he offered it to Sharadza, who poured her own breath upon it and pricked her finger with a pin so that a single drop of her blood fell upon the hair.
Iardu let go of the strand and it floated down to the green sward next to D’zan. Now Iardu sang over the strand in the grass, and Sharadza watched in awe. The hair grew into a rope, then wound upon itself to create an oval. Drops of white fire fell from Iardu’s hand upon the oval and it melted into a shape like that of a newborn baby.
As Iardu sang, he made the sign Sharadza had been waiting for. She poured a ewer of fresh water and
