“Is this young duke of Rift Ridge dangerous, Pons? Or is the man merely stupid?”
The Lord High Chancellor paused to consider the question. “I don’t consider him dangerous, Your Majesty. Nor is he stupid. He is young, idealistic, ingenuous. A touch naive as concerns politics. He is, after all, the younger son and was not raised to have the responsibilities of the dukedom thrust on him so suddenly. Words come from the heart, not his head. I am certain he has no idea what he is saying.”
“His wife, though, is another matter.”
The Lord High Chancellor appeared grave. “I am afraid so, Your Majesty. Duchess Jera is extremely intelligent.”
“And her father, deuce take him, continues to be a confounded nuisance.”
“But that is all he is these cycles, Sire. Banishing him to the Old Provinces was a stroke of genius. The earl must do everything in his power merely to survive. He is too weak to cause trouble.”
“A stroke of genius for which we have you to thank, Pons. Oh, yes, we remember. You needn’t keep reminding us of it. And that old man may be struggling to survive but he has enough breath left in him to continue to speak out against us.”
“But who is listening? Your subjects are loyal. They love Your Majesty...”
“Stop it, Pons. We get enough of that muck shoveled over our feet from everyone else around here. We expect some sense from you.”
The Lord High Chancellor bowed, grateful for the dynast’s good opinion; knowing, however, that the flower of royalty would cease to grow unless it was nurtured by the aforementioned muck.
The dynast had withdrawn his attention from his minister. Rising from the throne made of gold and diamonds and the other precious minerals that were so abundant in this world, His Majesty took a turn or two around the large gold—and-silver-inlaid dais. Pacing was a habit of the dynast’s; he claimed that movement aided his thought processes. Often the dynast completely discomfited those presenting suits to him by leaping up from the throne and circling it several times before returning to it to pronounce judgment.
At least it kept the courtiers on their toes, Pons reflected with some amusement. Whenever His Majesty rose to his feet, everyone in the court was expected to cease conversation and perform the ritual, reverent obeisance. Courtiers were forever called on to cease their conversation, fold their hands in their sleeves, and bow with heads practically to the floor whenever His Majesty took it into his head to walk out a problem.
Pacing was just one of the dynast’s many little eccentricities, the most notable of these being a love of tournament combat and an addiction to the game of rune-bone. Any of the new dead who had been at all proficient in either game during their lives were brought to the palace, where they performed no other service except to offer His Majesty sparring partners during the waking half of the cycle or play at rune-bone with His Majesty far into the sleeping half. Such peculiarities led many to misjudge the dynast, considering him nothing but a shallow-minded gamester. Pons, having seen those many fall, was not among them. His respect for and his fear of His Dynastic Majesty were both deep and well founded.
Pons waited, therefore, in respectful silence for His Majesty to deign to notice him. The matter was obviously serious. The dynast devoted five complete revolutions around the dais to it, his head bowed, hands clasped behind his back.
In his mid-fifties, Kleitus XIV was a well-formed, muscular man of striking appearance whose beauty, when young, had been highly praised in poetry and song. He had aged well and would, as the saying went, make a handsome corpse. A powerful necromancer himself, he had many long years left to stave off that fate.
At last His Majesty ceased his heavy tread. His black fur robes, treated with purple dye to imbue them with the royal hue, rustled softly as he once again settled himself into his throne.
“Death’s Gate,” he muttered, tapping a ring on the arm of the throne. Gold against gold, it gave out a musical, metallic note.
“That’s the reason.”
“Perhaps Your Majesty worries needlessly. As the duke writes, they could have come here by chance—”
“Chance! Next you will be talking of ‘luck’ Pons. You sound like an inept rune-bone player. Strategy, tactics—that’s what wins the game. No, you mark our words. They have come here in search of Death’s Gate, like so many others before them.”
“Let them go, then, Majesty. We have dealt with such madmen before. Good riddance to bad rubbish—”
Kleitus frowned, shook his head. “Not this time. Not these people. We dare not.”
The Lord High Chancellor hesitated to ask the next question, not truly certain he wanted to know the answer. But he knew what was expected of him, the echo chamber for his ruler’s thoughts. “Why not, Sire?”
“Because these people are not insane. Because . . . Death’s Gate has opened, Pons. It has opened and we have seen beyond!”
The Lord High Chancellor had never heard his dynast speak like this, had never heard that crisp and confident voice lowered, awed, even . . . fearful. Pons shivered, as if he felt the first flush of a virulent fever.
Kleitus was staring far off, staring through the thick granite walls of the palace, gazing at a place the Lord High Chancellor could neither see nor even imagine.
“It happened early in the waking hour, Pons. You know that we are a light sleeper. We woke suddenly, startled by a sound that, when we were truly awake, we couldn’t place. It was like a door opening... or shutting. We sat up and drew aside the bed curtains, thinking there might be some emergency. But we were alone. No one had entered the room.
“The impression that we had heard a door was so powerful, that we lighted the lamp beside the bed and started to call for the guard. We remember. We had one hand on the bed curtain and we were just drawing the other back from lighting the lamp when everything around us ... rippled.”
“Rippled, Your Majesty?” Pons frowned.
“We know, we know. It sounds incredible.” Kleitus glanced at his chancellor, smiled ruefully. “We know of no other way to describe it. Everything around us lost shape and substance, dimension. It was as if ourselves and the bed and the curtains and the lamp and the table were suddenly nothing but oil spread over still water. The ripple bent us, bent the floor, the bed, the table. And in an instant, it was gone.”
“A dream, Your Majesty. You were not yet awake . . .”
“So we might have supposed. But in that instant, Pons, this is what we saw.”
The dynast was a powerful wizard among the Sartan. When he spoke, his words brought sudden images to the mind of his minister. The images flashed past so swiftly that Pons was confused, dazzled. He saw none clearly, but had a dizzying impression of objects whirling about him, similar to an experience in childhood when his mother had been wont to take him by the hands and twirl him around and around in a playful dance.
Pons saw a gigantic machine, whose metal parts were fashioned after the parts of a human body and which was working with frantic intensity at nothing. He saw a human woman with black skin and an elven prince waging war against the prince’s own kind. He saw a race of dwarves, led by one in spectacles, rising up against tyranny. He saw a sun-drenched green world and a beautiful shining city, empty, devoid of life. He saw huge creatures, horrible, eyeless, rampaging through a countryside, murdering all who came in their path and he heard them cry, “Where are the citadels?” He saw a race of people, grim, frightening in their hatred and anger, a race with runes traced on their skin. He saw dragons . . .
“There, Pons. You understand?” Kleitus sighed again, half in awe, half in frustration.
“No, Your Majesty!” the chancellor gasped, stammered. “I do not understand! What—where—how long—”