'Although he was once a king in fact, and a king whom emperors served, he gave up his throne to a successor who founded the ancient Imperial dynasty that the founders of the present Ur-Dormulk overthrew centuries later-yet it was said that in time the King would return and reclaim his rightful place, and when he did, the stars would fall and the earth shatter. He disdained all trappings of royalty and went about the world in scalloped tatters that were a strange shade of yellow-hence the name, the King in Yellow. His servants wore black. This is said to be why the lords of Ur-Dormulk wear black and the people of the city shun all shades of yellow.'
Silda paused and shook her head. Chalkara glanced down at her yellow dress, and Garth was uncomfortably aware of his custom of wearing black armor.
Silda continued. 'Such a bare recounting of the facts known to me does not convey the essence of what I have read and heard concerning him. Throughout all the city's recorded history, from times so ancient that we cannot interpret the dates and on until the chaos of the Twelfth Age, the shadow of the King hangs like smoke. In every account of tragedy he is mentioned, and in descriptions of more pleasant times there is always an air of foreboding associated with him. In the wars of the Age of Aghad, the city was sufficiently disrupted so that the continuity was lost and the myths forgotten among the public. But there can be no doubt that, before that age, the tales of the King had persisted, at least among the learned, for more than ten thousand years. This, despite the fact that no historian or storyteller ever dared set down anything but veiled hints as to his true nature. I had thought that no one now alive had ever heard of him, save myself; that only in the ancient books and scrolls was he mentioned-books and scrolls that no one but me has read in three centuries or more. To hear you three speak of him as if he were alive today, as if you had seen him...'
'I have seen him,' Shandiph said.
'He has been lost for more than a thousand years!'
'You said yourself that he could not die,' Chalkara pointed out.
Garth said nothing. He was mulling over what he had heard.
He had thought of the Forgotten King's life span in terms of centuries, not millennia. He could not conceive of anything existing for eleven thousand years. He could not truly conceive of living even one thousand years. That would be seven times his own lifetime, roughly; eleven thousand years would be his years seventy- sevenfold. His species itself had not existed for much over a millennium.
For the first time he honestly thought he understood why the King wanted to die. The weight of so many years was surely more than any mind could bear.
He had known that the King had a sinister reputation among any who knew of him at all; Garth had attributed this to his position as the high priest of death, but here there seemed to be something more. Why were the city's histories silent on the exact nature of the King's menace? Why was it said that the heavens would fall if he returned?
Would delivering the Book of Silence truly begin an Age of Death? If so, what would that mean?
That, at least, was a question he might ask. 'What would an Age of Death entail?' he inquired.
'Widespread death, obviously,' Shandiph replied. 'Just as the current age is one of war and chaos and destruction, and the last was a time of stagnation and decay.'
'And after it, what?'
Shandiph shrugged. 'Who knows? Perhaps nothing will survive the Age of Death, not even the earth or the gods themselves. Perhaps humanity will be destroyed but the rest of the world will go on, and your people will begin a new cycle of their own. Perhaps death will be limited, and many, even whole nations, will survive, and the lesser gods will have their turns as the rulers of the ages. I don't know. I do know that an Age of Death is not something I want to see.'
Garth considered these possibilities, particularly the first and most horrific.
What if nothing were to survive the Age of Death? The world itself vanished, and the gods dead; would not even time itself cease to be? The end of time would be an actual fact, not just a poetical turn of phrase.
He recalled, with a growing apprehension, that when he had bargained with the King for eternal fame, the King had sworn that Garth's name would be known 'as long as there is life upon this earth.' When the King had offered him immortality-or so he had understood the offer-the old man had said that Garth might live until 'the end of time' if he aided the King's magic. The King had said that his magic would cause many deaths, including those of the entire cult of Aghad. And perhaps most important of all, the priest of The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken in Dыsarra had told Garth that the Forgotten King was bound to live until the end of time. The King sought to perform a feat that would allow him to die.
It appeared very much as if the Forgotten King meant to bring about the end of time and the death of everything. He had meant to assure that Garth might live and be known until the end of time, not by extending the overman's life, but by destroying the world and time itself.
CHAPTER TEN
After a moment of silence in which Garth absorbed the basic concept that he might be aiding in the utter destruction of the world, he began to consider the possible ramifications and permutations of his situation.
One question came to mind immediately. It seemed reasonable to assume that the world could not end, and the King could not die, until the end of the Age of Death. Yet the old man had implied that his death would be immediately achieved by his conjuring. When Garth had believed that the method involved summoning The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken and renouncing his bargain, he had seen no contradiction there. He had thought that the King's offer of eternal life was based on substituting Garth for himself in the Death-God's power, but that no longer seemed reasonable. The offer had not been of eternal life at all.
'How long,' he asked, 'would the Age of Death last?'
Shandiph shrugged. 'I told you,' he said, 'I am no theurgist, nor am I an astrologer or a seer. I don't know. I have heard philosophers say that the length of an age is subjective and cannot always be predicted or measured. Perhaps it will last a million years, until the sun grows cold and the seas run dry, or perhaps it will be over in an instant, and the world will vanish in a puff of smoke.'
That was a very unsatisfactory answer, in Garth's opinion. 'Wizard,' he said, 'I was told by Bheleu, in a vision he sent while I held the sword and he sought to dominate me, that his reign would last thirty years. Now you speak as if it might be over in just three. How can that be? Could the god have been wrong? That was not part of my understanding of the nature of a god. Might my refusal to serve him have altered that, when the god himself had once said it? I had thought that the ages were fixed in the stars, and that only failures of interpretation caused the uncertainty and disagreement among astrologers.'
'I don't know,' Shandiph admitted. 'Perhaps the stars offer a choice; perhaps the god lied. My friend Miloshir told me that Bheleu's reign would last for either three years or thirty, but could not say which; it may be that his knowledge was lacking, or it may be that it had not yet been determined. Your refusal might in truth have been the crucial event; perhaps you ameliorated the Age of Destruction only to hasten the Age of Death.'
Garth remembered the smoking battlefields and charred wastelands he had seen in his journey south through Eramma. If these were the scenes of a mild Age of Destruction, what would it have been had he not refused his role? That was a depressing line of thought.
The possibility that by limiting the destruction he had brought the end of the world half a generation earlier-or a full generation for humans-was even more disheartening. It appeared that he had faced a situation in which he would cause disaster, whatever course he might choose.
'You say that my actions might bring the Age of Death; how could that be prevented, if that is to be the next age? Must there be an Age of Death? Need it be the Fifteenth Age, and not the Hundredth?'
'Again, Garth, I cannot say with any certainty. Miloshir spoke as if there were to be fifteen ages to complete the current cycle, the first seven dedicated to the Lords of Eir and the last to the Lords of Dыs, while the Eighth Age was an era when light and darkness were in balance. Whether this scheme of being is truly fixed and immutable I do not know. If it is unalterable, then there will be a Fifteenth Age, a final age, an Age of Death, and it will occur immediately after our current Age of Destruction.'
'It seems little to choose, between destruction and death.' Shandiph shrugged. Chalkara, who had been following the conversation closely, said, 'I would prefer to live, however terrible the times in which I live, than to
