KAIRN TELEST, ABARRACH

EDMUND APPEARS ALONE, at the door to the library, where I sit recording in my journal the conversation that recently took place between father and son, as well as my memories of a time now long past. I lay down the pen and rise respectfully from my desk.

“Your Highness. Please, enter and welcome.”

“I’m not interrupting your work?” He stands fidgeting nervously in the doorway. He is unhappy and wants to talk, yet the basis for his unhappiness is his refusal to listen to what he knows I am going to say.

“I have just this moment concluded.”

“My father’s lying down,” Edmund says abruptly. “I am afraid he’ll catch a chill, standing outdoors like that. I ordered his servant to prepare a hot posset.”

“And what has your father decided?” I ask.

Edmund’s troubled face glimmers ghostly in the light of a gas lamp that, for the moment, drives away the darkness of Kairn Telest.

“What can he decide?” he returns in bitter resignation. “There is no decision to be made. We will leave.”

We are in my world, in my library. The prince glances around, notes that the books have been given a loving good-bye. The older and more fragile volumes have been packed away in sturdy boxes of woven kairn grass. Other, newer texts, many penned by myself and my apprentices, are neatly labeled, stored away in the deep recesses of dry rock shelves.

Seeing Edmund’s glance and reading his thoughts, I smile shamefacedly. “Foolish of me, isn’t it?” My hand caresses the leather-bound cover of the volume that rests before me. It is one of the few that I will take with me: my description of the last days of Kairn Telest. “But I could not bear to leave them in disorder.”

“It isn’t foolish. Who knows but that someday you will return?” Edmund tries to speak cheerfully. He has become accustomed to speaking cheerfully, accustomed to doing what he can to lift the spirits of his people.

“Who knows? I know, My Prince.” I shake my head ruefully. “You forget to whom you talk. I am not one of the council members.”

“But there is a chance,” he persists.

It hurts me to shatter his dream. Yet—for the good of all of us—he must be made to face the truth.

“No, Your Highness, there is not a chance. The fate that I described to your father ten years earlier is upon us. All my calculations point to one conclusion: our world, Abarrach, is dying.”

“Then what is the use of going on?” Edmund demands impatiently. “Why not just stay here? Why endure the hardship and suffering of this trek into unknown regions if we go only to meet death at the end?”

“I do not counsel that you abandon hope and plunge into despair, Edmund. I suggest now, as I have done before, that you turn your hope in another direction.”

The prince’s face darkens, he is upset and moves slightly away from me. “My father has forbidden you to discuss that subject.”

“Your father is a man who lives in the past, not the present,” I say bluntly. “Forgive me, Your Highness, but it has always been my practice to speak the truth, no matter how unpleasant. When your mother died, something in your father died, too. He looks backward. It is up to you to look forward!”

“My father is still king,” Edmund says sternly.

“Yes,” I reply. And I cannot help feeling that this is a fact to be deeply regretted.

Edmund faces me, chin high. “And while he is king we will do as he and the council command. We will travel to the old realm of Kairn Necros, seek out our brethren there, and ask them for help. You were the one who proposed this undertaking, after all.”

“I proposed that we travel to Kairn Necros,” I correct him. “According to my studies, Kairn Necros is the one place left on this world where we might reasonably expect to find life. It is located on the Fire Sea, and, although the great magma ocean has undoubtedly shrunk, it must still be large enough to provide warmth and energy for the people of its realm. I did not counsel that we go to them as beggars!”

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 [king]—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.

“We leave Kairn Telest now,” the king was continuing, holding the torch high above his head, “but we will be back with newfound wealth. And we will make our realm more glorious and more beautiful than ever.”

No one cheers. No one has the heart.

The people of Kairn Telest begin to file out of their city. They travel mostly on foot, carrying their clothes and food wrapped in bundles, though some pull crude carts bearing possessions and those who cannot walk: the infirm, the elderly, small children. Beasts of burden, once used to draw the carts, have long since died off; their flesh consumed for food, their fur used to protect the people from the bitter cold.

Our king is the last to leave. He walks out of the gates without a backward glance, his eyes facing forward confidently to the future, to a new life. His stride is firm, his stance upright. The people, looking at him, grow hopeful. They form an aisle along the road and now there are cheers and now the cheers are heartfelt. The king walks among them, his face alight with dignity.

“Come, Edmund,” he commands. The prince leaves me, takes his place at his father’s side.

He and his father walk among the people to the head of the line. Holding his torch aloft, the king of Kairn Telest leads his people forth.

A detail of soldiers remains after the others have gone. I wait with them, curious to know their final orders.

It takes them some time and a considerable amount of effort, but at last they succeed in pulling shut the gates, gates marked with runes that no one remembers and that, now, as they march off with the torches, no one can see in the darkness.