Edmund’s handsome face flushes, his eyes flash. He is young and proud.
I see the fire in him and do what I can to stoke it.
“Beggars to those who brought about our ruin!” I remind him.
“You don’t know that for certain—”
“Bah! All the evidence points one way—to Kairn Necros. Yes, I think we will find the people of that realm alive and well. Why? Because they have stolen our lives from us!”
“Then why did you suggest that we go to them?” Edmund is losing patience. “Do you want war? Is that it?”
“You know what I want, Edmund,” I say softly.
The prince sees, too late, that he’s been led down the forbidden path. “We leave after we have broken our sleep’s fasting,” he tells me coldly. “I have certain matters to which I must attend, as do you, Necromancer. Our dead must be prepared for the journey.”
He turns to leave. I reach out, catch hold of his fur-cloaked arm.
“Death’s Gate!” I tell him. “Think about it, My Prince. That is all I ask. Think about it!”
Disquieted, he pauses, although he does not turn around. I increase the pressure of my hand on the young man’s arm, squeezing through the layers of fur and cloth to feel the flesh and bone and muscle, hard and strong beneath. I feel him tremble.
“Remember the words of the prophecy. Death’s Gate is our hope, Edmund,” I say quietly. “Our only hope.”
The prince shakes his head, shakes off my hand, and leaves the library to its flickering flame, its entombed books.
I return to my writing.
+
The people of Kairn Telest gather in the darkness near the gate of their city wall. The gate has stood open for as long as anyone can remember, for as long as records have been kept, which is from the time of the city’s founding. The walls were erected to protect the people from rampaging, predatory animals. These walls were never intended to protect people from one another. Such a concept is unthinkable to us. Travelers, strangers, are always welcome, and so the gates stand open.
But then came the day when it occurred to the people of Kairn Telest that there had been no travelers for a long, long while. It occurred to us that there would be no travelers. There hadn’t even been any animals. And so the gates remain open, because to shut them would be a waste of time and a bother. And now the people stand before the open gates, themselves travelers, and wait in silence for their journey to commence.
Their king and prince arrive, accompanied by the army, the soldiers bearing kairn grass torches. Myself—necromancer to the long—and my fellow necromancers and apprentices walk behind. After us trail the palace servants bearing heavy bundles containing clothes and food. One, shambling close behind me, carries a box filled with books.
The king comes to a halt near the open gates. Taking one of the torches from a soldier, His Majesty holds it high. Its light illuminates a small portion of the dark city. He looks out across it. The people turn and look out across it. I turn.
We see wide streets winding among buildings created out of the stone of Abarrach. The gleaming white marble exteriors, decorated with runes whose meanings no one now remembers, reflect back to us the light of our torches. We look upward, to a rise in the cavern floor, to the palace. We can’t see it now. It is shrouded in darkness. But we can see a light, a tiny light, burning in one of the windows.
“I left the lamp,” the king announces, his voice loud and unusually strong, “to light the way for our return.”
The people cheer, because they know he wants them to cheer. But the cheers die away soon, too soon; more than a few cut off by tears.
The gas fueling that lamp will last about thirty cycles,” I remark in a low voice, coming to take my place at the prince’s side.
“Be silent!” Edmund rebukes me. “It made my father happy.”
“You cannot silence the truth, Your Highness. You can’t silence reality,” I remind him. He does not reply.