The King's Might: A Legend of Averdan

Part Six, Chapter One

Author's Note--

Some big shit happens in this chapter. Yeah, like. Really big. So you should read it and stuff.

I'll bake you cookies, my virtual readers. Or, well, I'll bake myself cookies, and tell you about them. Golly, but the Internets are hard. Maybe a picture?

Ta,

EFR

SIX

SIXDOVES

*****

One

In Which There is A Much Belated Test of Naming

The magician treated him kindly, or at least with little unkindness.

Jalith was mostly left to himself, for which he was just as grateful. The peace of the place, the endless white halls and the endless white snow outside, was lulling. He found himself drifting, as if in a dream, from one corridor to the next, from one sparsely furnished chamber to another. Days passed. Jalith, studying the fine and crystalline layers of ice that made the halls of Sixdoves up, barely noticed them.

He had been led first to the bathing chambers underneath the palace, where the ice was eroded somewhat by steam from the hot springs there. An unsmiling attendant had toweled, soaped, and toweled him again, until his hair glistened like silk and his skin like polished stone. He had been given a tunic of solid white, furred and unadorned. The comb, which had never been taken from him, had been cleaned and polished, and placed in his hair.

"I thought you wanted that," Jalith said to the magician.

"It has performed the task it was meant for in bringing you to me. You may keep it, if you so choose. " The magician's eyes glittered. "Do you like it here?"

"Yes," Jalith said. His heart felt made of ice, so peacefully and heavily did it lie in his chest. Behind them a man played on a harp, slow glacial notes that melted into the walls as though they had never been. They were eating, or Jalith supposed they were eating. He did not really notice the food.

"As well you should. It is in your blood." The magician smiled his slow cold smile. "And my kingdom? Do you like it as well?"

Jalith had wandered outside, finding none to stop him. There had been nothing but white, endless and cool, for miles around. "It's...peaceful."

"Yes. Yes, it is." The magician leaned forward. "You see, I too desire peace. This peace, the white peace. The peace of a million million years. Peace unto the world's ending."

For a moment, something like disagreement rose in Jalith's heart. The notes of the harp droned onward, onward, onward. The moment ended.

"Yes," Jalith agreed. "Peace unto the end of the world."

He walked sometimes with the magician, sometimes without him. The man rarely spoke. Sometimes he put a cool white hand to Jalith's cheek, almost affectionately.

"You are mine now, Southern prince," he would murmur. "Mine, mine, mine."

At these times something would well up in Jalith, something almost like love.

Jalith's bed was large and soft, laid with many white blankets. His pillows were soft and cool. Though no fire burned in his rooms, he was never cold--the coolness of the place lay soft and gentle on his skin, agreeable in all respects.

He had come here for some reason. But why had he come?

For the first time in his life, his heart was full of unchanging peace. His scarred body, reflected in the bathing pools, no longer seemed ugly or out of place. He remembered his life distantly and fondly, as a child recalls a broken toy. He admired the silver whorls and ragged scars on his hands equally, admired the beauty of their discord.