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—”
“We know nothing more about these visions than you do. They came to us too fast and when we tried to lay hold of one, it slipped away, like the laze through our fingers. But what we are seeing, Pons, are other worlds! Worlds beyond Death’s Gate, as the ancient texts write. We are certain of it! The people must not come to know this, Pons. Not until we are ready.”
“No, of course not, Sire.”
The dynast’s face was grave, his expression hard, resolute. This realm is dying. We have leeched off other realms to maintain it—”
We have decimated other realms to maintain it, Pons corrected, but only in his own thoughts.
“We’ve kept the truth from the people for their own good, of course. Otherwise there would be panic, chaos, anarchy. And now comes this prince and his people—”