The tray that held the decanter still stood on the table. Vond smoothed his robe, but did not seem overly disturbed.
Sterren knew, as he stared at the corpse, that he would not be warning Vond of anything.
CHAPTER 36
Little was accomplished in the remainder of the meeting. The presence of Ildirin’s body cast a pall over the conversation, and Vond seemed to have spent his anger. In the end, he agreed to let the Imperial Council continue as it had been, with the understanding that it existed entirely by his sufferance, and that he had the right to dismiss any member at any time and to overrule any decision.
None of this had ever been in any question, as far as Sterren and the councillors were concerned, but nobody was foolish enough to point this out.
Afterward, Sterren took a long walk.
It was obvious that Vond was losing control. The magnificent buildings, the prosperous empire, the thriving crops had all served to hide this; Ildirin’s gruesome death had dragged it out into plain sight. Not only was any thought of a warning gone, Sterren was now convinced that he had to do all he could to destroy Vond quickly.
That night Vond ate dinner in the Great Hall, with Sterren at his right hand. As often as not he ate in his private apartments, if he bothered to eat meals at all, but on this particular occasion he held a formal dinner, with himself, Sterren, and the Imperial Council at the high table and the rest of the imperial household arrayed along three lower tables.
“You know, your Majesty,” Sterren remarked as he chewed a bite of apple, “you haven’t done any real spectacular magic lately.”
Vond looked at him. “Oh?”
“I mean, early on, you conjured up that storm to rout the armies of Ophkar and Ksinallion, and you quarried and assembled the stone for this palace in a few days, and so forth; but lately you haven’t done anything much more impressive than laying pavement stones. Oh, that’s certainly useful, and so is regulating the weather, and all the rest, but you haven’t done anything really showy in months.”
“You don’t consider lighting the night sky showy?”
Sterren pretended to consider that. “Well, I suppose,” he admitted. “But it’s not new. Everybody’s used to it now.”
“And why should I want to be showy?” Vond asked.
“To impress people, to remind everybody what their emperor is capable of. If you got the awe you’re due, you wouldn’t need to worry about disloyalty, and we could avoid unpleasantness like that meeting this morning.”
Vond nodded.
“Besides,” Sterren added, “I thought you liked using your magic as much as you could.”
“I do,” he said. “In fact, I’ve been getting irritable lately, and nervous. I wonder if it might be because I haven’t been doing enough. The power’s there to be used, after all. It’s always there in the back of my head, and I feel it so very clearly now...” His voice trailed off. Sterren nodded encouragingly.
“What would you suggest?” Vond asked.
“Oh, I don’t know, move a mountain, maybe?”
Vond snorted. “I’d need to build one, first; there are no mountains in the empire. Besides, where would I put it?”
Sterren waved that away. “Not a mountain, then. Well, the edge of the World lies a few leagues to the south of here; could you do something with that?”
“Like what?”
“Oh, peel it back and see what’s underneath, maybe. I’ve heard theorists argue about what holds the World up and keeps it from falling into the Nethervoid. Or maybe just go see what lies beyond the edge and bring back a piece.”
“There isn’t anything beyond the edge, is there?” Vond asked.
Sterren shrugged. “Nobody knows,” he said.
Vond considered that, clearly intrigued.
Nothing more came of it that night, but the following morning, the tenth of Harvest, Sterren awoke not in his own bed, but hanging in mid-air, just outside the open window of his room.
“Good morning!” Vond called from above him. “I thought you’d like to come along to the edge of the World and see what it’s like!”
Sterren looked up nervously. This was not really what he’d had in mind. “Good morning!” he called in reply. “I hope you slept well!”
Vond frowned.
“Actually,” he said, “I didn’t. I dreamt... well, I don’t know exactly what I dreamt, but it wasn’t pleasant, whatever it was.” The frown faded. “Never mind that, though,” he said. “We’re off to the edge!”
Sterren concealed his lack of enthusiasm for the venture, and rolled over in midair so that he could see where he was flying.
They sailed quickly past Semma Castle and across the few leagues of farmland beyond, into the empty southern desert.
Sterren would have watched the scenery, but there wasn’t any below; and to either side he could see nothing but mile after mile of sand spattered with tough, patchy grass.
Behind him he could see the towers of Semma Castle and the Imperial Palace gradually shrinking.
And ahead he could see nothing. The edge of the World was wrapped in yellow haze.
Sterren had seen that haze from the tower, but had assumed it was just windblown sand, or glare from sunlight reflecting off the edge itself. To his surprise, he could now see that it was neither, but a sort of very thin golden mist. It would have been almost invisible in any imaginable confined area, but here it seemed to go on forever. He could look through the golden mist, but all he saw beyond it was more golden mist, and still more golden mist, until eventually it added up to opacity. If there were anything beyond the mist, he could not see it.
And of course, nobody had ever suggested that anything existed beyond the edge of the World, except perhaps Heaven, where the gods lived, and that was more usually thought to lie somewhere above the sky.
He had nothing to provide him with any scale, but Sterren thought he must be seeing literally hundreds of miles of nothing but that yellow haze.
Vond called down to him, “What is that stuff?”
“How should I know?” Sterren called back. “Do you think we can get above it?”
“I have no idea!”
“I’m going to try.” With that, Vond began to rise, pulling Sterren up with him.
They ascended for what seemed like hours, and eventually the golden mist thinned still further, but so did the air about them. The blue sky above turned darker and darker, and grew steadily colder, until Sterren was shivering so badly that he could scarcely shout his protests to the warlock.
They did, indeed, come to the top of the yellow fog, but they were unable to see over it or through it; all they saw was a seemingly infinite expanse of golden haze, stretching on before them forever, while behind them all the Small Kingdoms were laid out, the central mountain chain curving down between the rich-green coastal plain and the paler, drier eastern lands. The ocean appeared on the western horizon, the burning sands of the great deserts on the eastern, and still they saw nothing to the south but golden haze.
When they could see the haze on the eastern horizon, beyond the desert, wrapping around the southeastern corner of the World, even Vond gave up.
Sterren had been ready to give up long before; unlike Vond, he had no supernatural power source to warm him or gather in air. Frost had formed on his face and hands, and he was having serious trouble breathing by the time Vond finally began descending.
