The Empress of Dreams by Tanith Lee

Author:Tanith Lee [Lee, Tanith]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: DMR Books
Published: 2021-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

The Pain of Glass

A Story of the Flat Earth

1. The Third Fragment

That very afternoon a caravan had entered the city. It had journeyed from the Great Purple Sea, which lay far to the west and was so named for the preponderance of purplish weed that massed its waters, and at certain seasons dyed them. After the coast, the caravan negotiated many lands. It had crossed serpentine rivers, dagger-like mountains, and finally the Vast Harsh Desert, renowned for waterless and unobliging terrain. Small wonder then that the caravan might be supposed to bring with it much valuable stuff, not to mention travellers’ tales, whose vividity was matched only by their tallness.

Prince Razved stood on a balcony of his palace, staring out over high walls and lengthening shadows, to the marketplace.

“Oh, to be merely a merchant,” sighed the Prince. “Oh, to have no destiny but the discovery of new things, adventure and commerce.”

He did not mean this. What he actually meant, and partly he knew it, was that he yearned to be freed from the direly irksome situation into which Lord Fate had thrust him. For though he ruled the city, he might enjoy neither it nor his full power in it. A single awful obstacle kept him always from his rights.

Just then a voice arose at his back. It was wild, quavering, and disrespectful.

“Are they here? Are they near?”

The Prince clenched his jaw and his fists. He paled white as fresh ivory. Young though he was, the weight of extra decades slumped upon his shoulders.

There in the chamber behind the balcony stood a filthy and dishevelled old man. Two hundred years of age he looked, and the colourless thin wires of his hair rained round his face, which was like that of a demented hawk. He was mad as the word, and none could help him. Now too he began to weep and scream. Razved locked his fists together behind his back and bellowed for assistance.

It came instantly in the person of three men, frenzied with dismay, who rushed into the room, where they flung themselves on their faces before the Prince.

But Razved only said to them, in tones of steel, “He has got out again. How has he done this? Are you not meant to care for and contain him?”

“Mighty Master—only a moment was the door undone…”

“Only ever is it undone for a moment,” replied Razved, his tone now composed of stifled rage and black despair. “Or it is the window-lattice. Or some other pretext. Take him away. Hide him from me. If you transgress again, you will meet the doom those of his last retinue suffered.”

Whispering shrieks of terror, the jailor-retinue leapt to their feet and gathered in the mad old man, bearing him instantly off, crying and calling, along the corridor to renewed detention.

But Razved could not rid himself of the memory of the encounter, which had been so often repeated through countless years. He strode to another chamber. There he donned a disguise he sometimes employed when wandering about the city.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.