The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [10]
The Lord of Glarond nodded, saying nothing, and the wizard continued, "The fire enchantment is as you say; so far as I know, save for illusions specifically crafted to ape its hues, it is the only magic that makes flames so vivid, green and blue."
He stepped idly forward, rubbing his hands together as if lost in thought. If he noticed a cat stirring just a little under a chair, he gave no sign of doing so.
"Rather than dying and falling to ash, men burned in it become what I call 'the Melted.' Their flesh melts on their bones, running and sagging to grotesquerie, their bones become rubbery and very strong-and they fall under my will."
"When you sleep, do they roam free?"
"No," the wizard answered flatly, and instead of elaborating, he added, "At any time I desire, I can 'burn' one of my Melted from afar. It blazes up like a torch as I send a spell to it. The magic passes into the Melted, and is emitted from its fingertips when it touches the right someone. Then it collapses into ashes and dust, and the full fury of my magic is visited on the being it touched… such as the king, or one of his precious Band of Four."
"Or a treacherous baron, perhaps?" Audeman Glarond murmured mildly, examining his fingernails. "Warning duly noted, most subtle of wizards."
Oh, most subtle. Lying tongues, and traitors, and the craven.
The Risen King of Aglirta smiled grimly as courtier after splendidly garbed courtier slipped in through the arched and gilded doors, to join the swelling throng already milling along the walls of the throne room. None of them approached the River Throne itself; he sat alone amid a goodly stretch of bare tiles, his only companions the young pages sitting, hidden from him, against the carved, kneeling stone knights that flanked the throne itself.
King Kelgrael Snowsar flexed his arms and quelled an urge to shift sideways in his throne and throw his feet up over one of its massive carved marble arms, a pose he remembered as far more comfortable than sitting upright and staring down from his height upon the assembled people. It was even harder to quench the urge to yawn.
He should be excited-angry, or more amused, or eager for what was to come. Instead, the King of Aglirta felt a little weariness, a tinge of sickness at what he knew was to come, and a great, gloomy emptiness. His grip on the scepter across his knees had already melted away to become a row of lightly resting fingertips on the old, smooth metal; firmly he halted the beginnings of rhythmic tappings on the scepter, and gripped it tightly again.
Some of the watching eyes, of course, would see that grasping as something born of fear. A sign of weakness-nay, another sign of weakness.
After so many years asleep, perhaps he was getting too old for this. Kelgrael smiled a little at that, and touched the hilt of the sword at his side, quelling the urge to draw it forth and check its readiness (which he'd already done, earlier and in private; doing so again now would send all sorts of forewarnings and messages he didn't want to share with the growing, excitedly murmuring throng), and watched more and more strutting merchant lords and self-styled "lords of the court" arrive, glancing swiftly at him and then away as they slipped into the room without approaching the River Throne where one man sat all alone. As usual, the only person staring up at his king with anything that resembled admiration was that young lad with the staring black eyes-the son of the dead bard Helgrym Castlecloaks. There he was now… Raulin, that was his name… giving Kelgrael a tentative smile. The Risen King smiled back, warmly, and the young lad almost darted to his usual place against the wall, seemingly embarrassed.
Gods, but Flowfoam Isle could be a crowded yet lonely place. It had not always been so, but Aglirta had been shattered while he slept, the proud rich land he remembered swept away into legend, leaving behind too many fearful folk cowering under too many fierce