King Yvorian’s Wager

Darrell Schweitzer

For the last in this vein of “Dunsanian” fantasies I have selected a story by Darrell Schweitzer (b. 1952). Schweitzer’s work covers the whole range of fantasy but he is perhaps best known for his exotic, far-future fantasies set in his own version of the Dying Earth, as depicted in The Shattered Goddess (1982), and his stories of the youth of the world when the gods are awakening and still deal with humans, as explored in The Mask of the Sorcerer (1995). Schweitzer is also a scholar of the fantasy field having edited a number of reference works. In homage to Dunsany he wrote a study of the author’s work, Pathways to Elfland (1989) and compiled a volume of his previously uncollected stories, The Ghosts of the Heaviside Layer (1980). Schweitzer is also the editor of the current incarnation of Weird Tales, where the following story first appeared.

ON THE MORNING OF HIS FATHER’S FUNERAL AND his own accession, King Yvorian had a vision. It came to him as he rode in solemn state on the golden throne of the Eagle Kings, borne aloft at the head of a procession of priests and courtiers by the former king’s most trusted bearers. He sat stiffly in his metal-feathered robes, in his helmet that gleamed golden and silver like a second sunrise.

All around him the heralds chanted the dirge of the dead monarch, and soldiers marched grimly, clad in black armour, with black banners draped from their spears. The common folk leaned out of windows and gathered on rooftops and walls, waving palm fronds and making their own lamentations. Each strove to outdo his neighbour, to tear his hair more painfully, to shred his garments more wretchedly, to show his face more streaked with tears, for the old king had been a tyrant, and they feared him even when he was dead.

Then, suddenly, the young King Yvorian stood up. His bearers struggled desperately to keep the throne level as the weight shifted, and the people gasped, and the chanters ceased their chanting.

The king spread his arms, and for an instant his robes were like burning wings in the bright morning light.

Someone shouted, “The king is going to fly!” and the whole multitude dropped to its knees, for they knew that the first king of the Eagle Dynasty had flown long ago, soaring into the sun to return with a fiery crown on his head, bestowed by the gods. Surely, if Yvorian too were about to fly, it was, at the very least, a miracle.

But the king merely stood swaying on the footrest at the throne’s front. The beak-shaped visor of his helmet fell down over his face, and for an instant he did indeed look like a divine eagle sent by the gods to rule all the lands of the Crescent Sea. Then he fell. His knees buckled, his head bowed, and he tumbled forward into the dusty street. His helmet rolled beneath the feet of the stumbling bearers.

The commoners cried out and began to flee in wild confusion. The bearers set the throne down and knelt, covering their faces with their hands. The courtiers and priests milled about, uncertain. Only the soldiers stood, stolidly, guarding their king who shouted words no one could make out and writhed like some drunkard or madman, tearing, hurling his metal-feathered robe aside, clawing at the dirt.

Overhead, shutters slammed closed.

Still the bearers knelt, calmly, knowing they had failed in their duty, while the prefect of the guards struck off their heads one by one. The youngest bearer wept, but he did not try to run away.

A soothsayer pushed his way through the soldiers and also knelt, trying to read the future in the spreading blood, but the prefect struck his head off too, lest he succeed.

Then the priests gathered around the boy-king in their black robes and black, beak-visored helmets, resembling nothing more than vultures gathered for the feast.

A more prudent soothsayer, watching from a balcony, remarked on this.

The priests dared not lay hands on the king, for they knew that he was touched by the gods, and when the gods touch a ruler so explicitly on the first day of his reign, it is an awesome portent. At such times, the whole history of the nation might be written anew.

And it was a holy thing. They let the vision run its course and waited patiently for more than an hour until the king sat up, dazed, and held out his hands to be helped to his feet. In silence the priests brushed him off as best they could and led him back to his throne. His helmet had been lost somewhere in the confusion. He sat with the wind blowing through his yellow hair. There was dirt down one side of his face.

The priests raised the throne up on their own shoulders.

It was only much later, after King Yvorian’s father had been properly laid to rest in the necropolis of the Eagle Kings by the shore of the Crescent Sea, that Kaniphar, the chief priest, took the boy aside and asked him, “Mighty One, what did you see?”

“I saw the gods,” said the young king. “I saw them as the poets describe them, huge and insubstantial as clouds, reclining on their couches as they moved men and armies across the face of the world, like pieces on a game board. All the while they were laughing. Then, as they turned and saw that I was among them, a god who had the face of a dog leaned down to me and said, ‘Behold, thou shalt wager with Rada Vatu.’”

“Many are the forms and aspects of the gods,” said the priest. “It could have been any one of them that spoke to you.”

“It does not matter,” said the king. “Tell me of Rada Vatu.”

The priest grew pale. “Majesty, I am afraid.”

Then the king spoke in a low, grim voice, and for an instant it seemed that the dread former monarch had returned in the person of his fifteen-year-old son.

“The foremost of my priests must never be afraid to serve me.”

Kaniphar fell to his knees and the king touched him lightly on the head, as if to bless him, but said nothing more, and the high priest was truly frightened.

“Very well then,” he said. “You shall learn of Rada Vatu.”

So, all night beneath the uncertain light of hanging lamps, the priest and the king pored over ancient books and unlocked many secrets, and spoke of Rada Vatu.

“This one is older and mightier than all the gods,” said the priest, “and it is ill luck even to speak his name. For he is the lord of death and time and fate, and those are three of his other names. Sometimes, when the gods are at their games, a playing piece suddenly vanishes from the board. That is because Rada Vatu has taken it. Then the gods are silent and thoughtful, for they know that one day Rada Vatu will sweep them all away with a wave of his hand. In the end the gods are as men, and Rada Vatu erases them like old figures traced in the sand.”

“But Rada Vatu shall wager with me!” said the king, leaning towards the priest, whispering in a low voice like a hiss.

“Yes, he does that. He is a trickster, and fond of games.”

“I shall beat him,” said the king. He jumped up, knocking his chair over backwards. He paced back and forth in his excitement, striking his fist into his palm. “Surely this means I shall be the greatest of the Eagle Kings!”

“Perhaps so, Majesty.”

“No! It means more! It means I’ll be greater even than the gods, and Rada Vatu will treat me as an equal. He won’t snatch any playing pieces away from me!”

Now Kaniphar the priest was beside himself with terror and he shook his folded hands and wept, and his voice broke as he begged the king to put aside such thoughts.

“Majesty, know that Rada Vatu is death and that he comes to each of us at the ending of our days, but not before.”

King Yvorian turned to him fiercely. Another vision had come to him, not from the gods, but out of his own mind.

“No, in my case it will be different. Rada Vatu shall come to me on my own terms, like an envoy I have deigned to receive.”

Just then the gods looked down from their game and paused. One or two started to laugh, but were swiftly hushed into silence.

The next day King Yvorian (who had appointed a new chief priest that morning) gave the first of a seemingly endless stream of orders. The kingdom was transformed. Royal heralds shouted in every square in every town. Before the palace, trumpeters blew blasts, then the gates swung wide, and the armies of the Eagle King strode forth, to subdue and extract tribute from all the lands bordering the Crescent Sea, from all the islands, from all the cities on the banks of the rivers of the hinterlands.

The wars went on for years. Meanwhile, the people groaned under the exactions of King Yvorian, who taxed away the wealth of the rich and conscripted the poor for their labour.

The king began to build. A palace like none the earth had ever known rose in the capital of the Eagle Kings. Some said it was the king’s very vision, a madman’s dream made solid out of stone and wood and glass. Fantastic towers rose, and onion-domed minarets, and among them sat the colossal image of King Yvorian himself on a carven throne, as high as a mountain, carefully placed so that on the first day of the year the sun rose directly behind the king’s crown, radiating his glory to all the world.

Inside, winding staircases turned so subtly that the eye could not follow them, until they ended up nowhere at all. There were rooms of gold and of silver, and chambers filled with clouds from which strange voices issued, and corridors suffused with red light, with green, and orange and blue. In one vast hall was only darkness, an enclosed abyss, infinite, bottomless. In these endless rooms amid the twisting corridors a whole other kingdom awaited the king’s desire, a glittering court populated by bird-headed men and impossible beasts, by beautiful, nearly divine youths and maidens, all constructed of humming metal and a kind of marble that was somehow soft and warm and seemingly alive. There was, too, a library, with floor, ceiling, and walls, and even the shelves mirrored. The mirrors angled through time. The reflections multiplied the books until the library contained all that ever had been written, or ever would be, to an infinite number.

But nowhere in all the huge palace, which was greater than a city, would the king permit any clock or hourglass or other means to telling time. Nor would he allow anyone who entered there to speak of persons who had died - the new chief priest acted as if he had never had a predecessor - for the palace, he said, was a labyrinth designed to confuse Rada Vatu, and time and death were banished from it.

When he was twenty-five and had fathered a score of sons by his many wives, King Yvorian retired to his labyrinth. He entered alone, without any priests or ministers, for they were not like him, he said, but ordinary men who would inevitably age and be swept away by Rada Vatu. But he, in the prime of his manhood, was to remain ageless for ever, so that Rada Vatu would come and wager with him.

For a while, the king spoke to his ministers through a pool in the silver chamber, in which he could see their faces, from which their speech drifted up like something shouted in the depths of a cave. But the greyness of their beards and the weariness of their faces distressed him, until he could bear to look on them no more.

He devoted many years to pleasure in the company of his deathless, lifeless youths and maidens, in rooms filled with strange scents, with vapours and waters that brought impossible ecstasies.

Then he turned to his books, and a faceless automaton read to him the exquisite poetry of the ancients, and the sere, harsh words that are to come in the world’s last age, when the sun is already dead and the remnants of mankind retreat into metal pyramids miles high to escape the darkness and the monsters that have inherited the earth.

And his thoughts were troubled, and he sent the automaton away, then read by himself for a while before withdrawing into the black room, the walled abyss. There he floated, his mind detached from his senses, and he pondered many things. He knew pain then, and shame, and he repented his follies, his excesses, his thousand petty cruelties.

He began to dream, there in the darkness, and his spirit drifted, and it seemed he looked down on the turning earth for century after century, as the history of mankind slowly passed.

Then he was walking, naked and cold, among the tombs of the gods. He looked down once, and realized that the dust stirring around his feet was not dust at all, but suns, countless billions to be kicked aside with each step.

The tombs rose on either side of him as if to line an endless avenue, black, vaster than worlds, silhouetted against faint stars and glowing nebulae, each of them carven to show some aspect of the god therein: an upraised hand, a bull’s head, a cross, a salmon leaping.

Still King Yvorian journeyed along the avenue, among the dust of stars, until the tombs on either side of him were featureless and empty, their doors left open. At last there were no more of them, and he came to those grey, infinite plains which have never known the tread even of Rada Vatu.

His mind emptied, all thoughts, all knowledge, all pride pouring out like water on to the hungry sand - but a single spark remained like a final star in the endless night, the realization, the voice within him: Yes, I am the greatest of all. I am worthy to treat with Rada Vatu.

That was enough. It brought him back. He swam up, out of the darkness, out of the dream, out of the black chamber.

He stood in the silver room, by the pool, staring down into the motionless water. He wore only a plain white robe and was barefoot, for he knew that Rada Vatu was never impressed with finery. His own reflection showed himself unkempt but unaged, his yellow hair and beard wild, but his face as unwrinkled as it had been on the day he first entered the labyrinth.

“Surely I am ready,” he said aloud. “Surely Rada Vatu will come to me now.”

“I have been with you all along,” said a voice.

The king whirled around, searching for the one who spoke. But he was alone in the chamber. Carvings of men and beasts stared down at him from the walls, but he knew them incapable of speech. He walked towards a far corner of the room, away from the pool.

“Liar!” he shouted. “I have not allowed you to enter my house until now. I have shut you out.”

“No, I have merely spared you.”

“Show yourself!”

Dust and plaster sprinkled from the ceiling, rattling on the marble floor. Then a draught billowed behind a tapestry. A hanging trembled like shaken bones. Darkness and dust whirled together and rose like a miniature whirlwind, then formed the likeness of a man clad in a black robe and barefoot. The face was that of Kaniphar, the chief priest Yvorian had slain on a morning long before.

“You!” He retreated back towards the centre of the room.

“It is I.” The voice was a cold whisper, like the wind between the tombs of the gods.

Then Rada Vatu tore away his Kaniphar face like a mask and revealed the glaring visage of the former tyrant, Yvorian’s father. And the king retreated further, until he stood against the edge of the pool.

Rada Vatu removed his father face. Now his head was hollow like a hood, filled with pale blue fire. Two brilliant eyes floated there, like tiny stars.

“Why… why have you come?” said King Yvorian.

Rada Vatu strode to the edge of the pool, leaned down, and touched the water with his hand. The clear pool became blood-dark.

The king scurried away from the pool, across the room. Rada Vatu stood there, gazing into the water, his back to Yvorian.

“Do you not know? I have come to wager with you.”

The king regained some of his composure. “Yes. Of course. I knew that.”

“And I know all that you do,” said Rada Vatu, “for I can peer into your mind even as I peer into this pool.”

“Yes. A wager.”

“Even so. I desire sport on occasion.”

“A wager.”

Rada Vatu turned around, and the fire of his face was blinding white, and his robes were white too, resplendent as the sunrise. Only his eyes were dark, huge, like shafts into an abyss.

” This is my wager, King Yvorian of the Eagle Land: that you shall cast aside your glories of your own will, that you shall no longer even call yourself a king, that in the end you shall know yourself to be as other men. Until that time, I shall not touch you with death.”

“Then I am truly immortal,” said King Yvorian. He laughed loud and long. “It is an absurd wager. I accept!”

The king rubbed his dazzled eyes, looked again, and saw that Rada Vatu was gone. But the pool was still the colour of blood.

Because he no longer feared death or time or the touch of Rada Vatu, King Yvorian emerged from his labyrinth. It was a long journey to the gate. He walked for many days, still clad in his plain robe, barefoot, his hair wild, but wearing the beaked crown of the Eagle Kings. At last he came to a corridor he barely remembered, then into a darkened, pillared hall filled with debris. Rusted chains dangled where lanterns had once hung. Dust and leaves covered a tarnished throne. Some of the great roof beams had fallen, and even a few of the pillars. He climbed, then wriggled his way towards the outer door. Mice scattered before him, rustling under the leaves.

The door was gone, the doorway itself misshapen, like the mouth of a cave.

King Yvorian stepped outside, into the warm sunlight, on to soft grass. To see living grass again and a blue sky and trees rising around him seemed, for the moment, to be more a marvel than all the blackness of the outer spaces, all the infinite suns, all the tombs of the gods.

He walked a little ways, then turned to look back. He saw no palace, no colossal image of himself, no capital city, nor even the doorway from which he had emerged, but only a grassy hillside. Before him, a plain stretched all the way to a line of mountains which rose like an island glimpsed across the sea, a blue smear on the horizon that might be land, or perhaps a cloud. He found a path and followed it. The sun and wind on his face, the warmth of the earth beneath his feet were all startling, wonderful.

The path turned sharply around the hill. Suddenly a dog blocked his way, barking. King Yvorian jumped back, startled. He had nearly forgotten what such a creature was. He reached to touch it. The dog snapped at his hand, but then retreated, whining, puzzled.

The dog ran to a boy of about eight years and hid behind the child’s legs. The boy wore a patchwork of wool and leather. He carried a staff.

“Who are you?” The boy’s speech was strangely accented.

King Yvorian stood up straight and said sternly, “Do you not know? I am Yvorian the mighty! I am the king of legends! I rule all these lands!”

“You talk funny,” said the boy. He turned and ran down the path, the dog running after him.

Yvorian continued on for several hours, until the sun began to set behind the blue mountains and the air grew cold. At last he sat down, exhausted, marvelling at the motion of the sun and the darkening sky. He slept by the side of the road on a pile of leaves and grass. When he awoke at dawn, he was stiff and sore, and weak with hunger. All these things were stranger to him than any of his dreams or visions within the labyrinth.

That morning he passed through a forest of scrubby trees and reached a village. Huts of stone and wood lined a single street. He walked among them, turning to either side, recalling the tombs of the gods.

Slowly the villagers emerged to stare at him, clad as the boy had been in leather and wool. They gathered before him, filling the street.

“Bow down before me,” said Yvorian. “I am your king, returned to you at last.”

At first the villagers just gaped. Some shook their heads. There was a low murmur of whispered questions.

“Behold! I am Yvorian of the Eagles! I am the greatest king of all! I command you!”

Then the child from the day before pushed through the crowd, tugged on the sleeve of a village elder, pointed at Yvorian and said, “That’s him!”

Some of the villagers began to laugh. Others turned away, embarrassed or afraid. “A madman! A madman!” someone shouted.

The king raged at them. He shrieked for them to be still. He grabbed a man, then another, shoving them to their knees. But each merely leaped up again, laughing and shouting.

Yvorian struck about with his fists, truly like a madman in his fury. The villagers caught hold of him and beat him with clubs, tearing his robe, snatching the crown from his head. He fell to the ground, blind from the blood streaming over his face. Still the villagers kicked him and prodded him with their clubs.

Before he lost consciousness, he heard a woman say, “I wonder who he is, really.”

A man said, “Where did he steal that crown?”

King Yvorian wandered for many days, ragged, covered with dirt and blood. He came to other towns, but no one would recognize him as king. Always, people laughed at him, or turned away sadly, or made signs to ward off evil. Sometimes their speech was strange, and he could not understand what they were saying at all.

So the king begged for bread and scraps. Occasionally he got some. More often, he stole. Oftener still, he went hungry.

Then soldiers seized him. This was the final outrage.

“Take your wretched hands off me! I am the king. I command all soldiers. I’ll have your heads, all of you!”

The soldiers said nothing. Their captain barked a command, and all of them marched off, dragging King Yvorian. They did not wear the uniform of the Eagle Legions, Yvorian noticed. Their armour was not of scales shaped like feathers, but strangely supple plate like nothing he had ever seen before.

They brought him to a wooden lodge inside a stockade, where five judges sat in a semicircle around a table. The first judge wore a white robe, the second pale blue, the third green, the fourth orange - it seemed to Yvorian that the motif represented the seasons - but the fifth was clad in black and hid his face behind a silver mask fashioned like a skull.

The soldiers cast Yvorian roughly to his knees before the judges. A soldier flipped over an hourglass and the trial began.

“Who are you?” the first judge demanded, leaning forward in his carven chair.

Yvorian staggered to his feet. “I am the king, you fool. I am the mighty and eternal Yvorian, ruler of all the lands of the Crescent Sea, and all the islands.”

The judges sat back, pondering.

“What you claim cannot be,” said the second after a while. “There is no king here, nor has there been in the memory of any living man. We, the Five, rule the lands. As for the Crescent Sea, it is not known to us.”

The third judge laughed. “Perhaps it has dried up.”

“Silence!” Yvorian shouted. “You are all ignorant men. Surely you have heard the mighty story—”

The third judge laughed again. “I know many stories, and I’ve heard more, but never one about you.”

“I alone of all men have been found worthy to treat with Rada Vatu—”

The four judges drew back with a simultaneous gasp. Then the fifth stirred, the black-clad one, his silver skull of a mask regarding Yvorian.

“That name we do know, but it is never spoken. Your own name is strange to us—”

The king stood still and said calmly, “But it is my name, and I am who I claim to be.”

The masked judge banged his hand on the tabletop. The hourglass tumbled to the floor.

“We shall find that out, and much else besides.”

The judge waved his hand, and Yvorian was seized by torturers, who tied him to a post and beat him till blood streamed over his back and thighs. They broke his legs with hammers, then turned him on a wheel over a fire. All the while he screamed and gasped, “I am King Yvorian. I am Yvorian, the greatest of all. I built the palace of the Eagles. I conquered all the lands. I am the mighty king. I am Yvorian.”

But in the end, after many days, it seemed to him that perhaps he had only heard that name in a story somewhere.

The torturers nailed him to a tree and left him to die. Weeks passed, and he suffered beneath the hot sun and the cold of the night.

Crows rested on his shoulders. But Rada Vatu would not touch him, and he could not die. His broken bones mended. His wounds began to heal.

People gathered to marvel, to touch him, to bear away some of his hair or a cloth soaked in his blood, that they might be healed.

At last, a fearful torturer came in the night with a ladder and a pair of pinchers.

He drew out the nails, and Yvorian fled naked into the darkness.

King Yvorian thought back to the long years within the labyrinth, to the pleasures of his retreat, to the mysteries he had pondered, to his visions within the black room. More than once he tried to convince himself that this was yet another of those visions, more terrifying and painful than most, but a thing that would end.

Yet each morning he woke by the side of a road, or in a field or loft or cave, and he saw his sun-blackened body and his many scars, and he knew otherwise. Even his hands and feet were still marked where the nails had been.

So he retraced his path, avoiding the villages and towns, until he came again to the hillside from which he had emerged. He resolved to go inside once more, dress in his finest robes, and come forth, crown on his head, sceptre in his hand and sword at his side, with an army of automatons at his back. He would conquer the lands once again and put the unbelievers to death. Then he would command that his palace be unearthed, that it might stand more resplendent than ever before the eyes of men.

But he could not find the cave mouth. He wandered over the hill for weeks. He could not find it.

Finally, he knelt down and wept. He pounded the earth with his fists.

And a stranger stood before him. He looked up. The newcomer had the shape of a barefoot man in a black robe, but without any face or head. Only fire filled the robe’s hood.

“Who are you?” said the stranger.

“I am King Yvorian, if I am anyone at all.”

“Who are you?”

More firmly, the king replied, “I am Yvorian, lord of all the lands.”

“Ah,” said the other, and departed.

Clad in a kilt and shirt of woven grass, King Yvorian came down from the hills, into the broad valley where the Crescent Sea had once been in ages past. He followed a yellow-silted stream until he reached a river, and clear water.

Still he was king in his own mind, and each night he dreamed of his palace, and of his old ministers - he could still recall their names, every one, and their voices, and their individual manners, arrogant or servile or cold and expressionless. He remembered building the labyrinth. It seemed that still he heard the noise of hammers. It seemed that just a day or two before he himself had broken the ground with a spade and poured blood on the cornerstone.

And in his dreams his terrible father visited him many times, pacing back and forth, raging, proclaiming that a king is a king until he dies or abdicates, and to abdicate is to die.

“I have not abdicated,” said Yvorian, in his dream.

Kaniphar, the chief priest he had killed, stood before him mournfully and said only, “A king lacking a kingdom is no king at all.”

“I am still Yvorian,” was his only reply. When he awoke from that dream, he was troubled.

Once more he declared his kingship openly in villages and towns along the river. Often he was laughed at or driven away with stones, but in other places men listened silently as he told the tale of his entire life, of his wager with Rada Vatu. This was a tale without an end.

Crowds gathered to hear him. Someone gave him fine clothing, and he threw away his grass kilt and shirt. Still the tale continued. Scribes came to write it down. Then heralds arrived for him, and bore him in a chair across many lands, until he came to a great city of black stone, which stood on a hill overlooking the river where it emptied into the grey, white-capped sea.

He was placed on a dais in the forum of the city. All around him pillars rose like trees in a forest, bearing up statues of gods and of kings. People swarmed out of black marble houses, out of wooden tenements, out of hovels; rich and poor alike, great lords in their canopied litters, beggars shoving against the levelled spears of the soldiers who held them back.

And Yvorian told his tale, and the people listened, and when Yvorian paused he could hear the wind blowing among the rooftops. And when he was done, the old and sick came to him, filing up to where he sat so they might be touched by his healing hands.

This went on for hours. It was nearly dawn when the place was empty but for a single youth, who stood before the dais. The boy was about fifteen, fair-haired, and richly clad. Rings gleamed on his fingers.

Yvorian regarded him.

“It feels so good to be a king once more.”

“You are not a king,” said the boy. “You are a madman. The mad are touched by the gods, even as kings are, and sometimes their hands can heal, even as those of a king can. Both are holy. But I am prince of this city. When my father dies, I shall be king. You, holy madman, shall remain what you are.”

The prince left him, walking swiftly across the square.

Stunned, trembling, Yvorian rose from his seat and descended the dais. He saw another standing before him in the darkness among the pillars, a barefoot old man in a black robe, whose face rippled when he spoke like a thin, paper mask. His eyes were mere holes filled with fire.

“Are you King Yvorian the mighty?” the stranger asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you certain?”

The madman cast off his fine robes and fled from the city, naked. He howled among the hills and in the depths of the forests. He crawled on all fours among the beasts of the fields, grazing. And he wept, and tore his hair, and dug in the earth with bloodied hands, searching for his kingdom.

But still he knew who he was, and when people came upon him he would rise and stand before them in great dignity, and try to tell them the story of King Yvorian. Often he was answered with laughter and stones, but sometimes with reverence. He touched many, and healed them.

At last when he lay shivering in the winter rain, feverish but unable to die, an anchorite found him and carried him to his hut high among the mountains. The holy man clothed him and gave him warm broth, and he told his story once again.

“It is a fine story,” said the anchorite.

“It is true.”

“Does that really matter? The pattern is interesting. It contains a moral.”

Yvorian sat still for a while, warming his hands with the cup of broth. “I am not sure any more. My mind is filled with so many things, as if I have lived 10,000 years. I think all those things are true. But some of them must be only dreams. How can I tell?”

“Truth may be found both in waking things, and in dreams. So, again, does it really matter?”

“But I have no crown,” said Yvorian. “Where is my palace? Where is my kingdom?”

Now it was the anchorite who paused. He sat still for a long time, gazing into the fire pit. Smoke rose gently up through the roof. Yvorian looked up at the smoke and the few stars he could see through the hole in the roof.

He waited patiently.

“I know where your kingdom is,” the other said at last. “If that is what you desire, go to a certain town, as I shall direct you, and obey the first person you meet, whatever you are asked to do. Then you shall find your true kingdom.”

And the king wept once more, for the very first time in his life out of gratitude.

The town the hermit named for him was far away. He walked throughout the winter and spring. By summer he had reached the edge of a vast desert. His fur clothing was too hot for him and he discarded it, once more weaving garments out of grass.

Slowly, painfully he crossed the wasteland, his grass clothing burned away by the sun, his bare skin darkened like old wood, his hair and beard streaming behind him in the wind like clouds crossing the face of the moon.

He reached his destination in the evening, as the last herdsmen drove their flocks into the town, as little bells rang to call the workmen home from their labours and the priests to their prayers.

A woman was drawing water from a well. She was neither young nor old, and three children clung to her brightly patterned skirt.

When he saw her, the wanderer did not proclaim himself king. He did not command her to bow down. He only said that he was very thirsty.

The woman looked up, startled. “If you’ll carry this bucket for me,” she said, “you may have some.”

He nodded eagerly. She gave him the bucket and he stared into it. In the failing light he could still make out his own reflection, and he saw a man with a weathered face, whose hair and beard were purest white. He drank.

“And if you will work for me,” the woman said, “I’ll give you food and clothing. My husband has died, and I need all the help I can get.”

Again he nodded, and followed her back to her house.

“You must tell me your name,” she said.

“I am… Yvorian.”

“I’ve heard that name before. In a story, I think.”

“Yes, I know the story. I’ll tell it to you some time.”

The children stared at him, wide-eyed.

For Yvorian, every aspect of life in the town by the desert’s edge was new to him, a marvel. He was no longer a naked wanderer, but wore comfortable, plain clothes, and ate regularly. That was a forgotten condition he was only beginning to recall. He performed many labours for the widow, whose name was Evadina. He tended her flocks. He cleaned her stable. He drew water from the well many, many times. Never before had he served another. It strengthened him.

After seven years, he married her. This, too, was utterly novel, for he had never loved anyone before in all his long life, or been loved, or even expected to be. It was like an opening of the eyes, an awakening for the first time.

Although he was taken to be a man of at least fifty, he fathered three sons by Evadina. As they grew, he told them, and his stepchildren too, the story of King Yvorian who dwelled beneath a magic mountain far to the west. Sometimes the story concentrated on the king’s pride, or his cruelty, or his loneliness; sometimes it was merely a tale of marvels. At the town festivals, he told the story to all who would listen, and people applauded and left coins in his hat.

He tried to write the story down at the request of the priests, who wanted a copy to keep in their temple, but the only script he knew was an archaic one no one could read. Nevertheless, the priests admired his brush work and sometimes commissioned him to restore the icons of the gods, which hung in roadside shrines and faded from the sun and the weather.

On the night before the youngest of his sons was to go away and live elsewhere with his bride, Yvorian told the story of the king for the last time, extending it further than ever before, telling how the king emerged from his mountain and wandered through many lands, shedding his robes and his sceptre and his crown, until he found himself better off without them, relieved of their burden, and found a life no king could ever know.

“Father,” said the young man. “I have loved that story since I was a child, and now you have made it such a beautiful thing that I think I have only now heard it for the first time. I shall remember you by it always.”

The young man turned to go, then paused.

“What is it, son?”

“Still I do not understand. The story, it has no ending.”

“Yes, it does. Come here.” Yvorian rose, and led his son into the bedroom. His son followed, carrying a candle. The old man lay down beside Evadina, the boy’s mother, who was already sleeping.

“Father?”

Yvorian put his finger to his lips. “Quiet. Don’t wake her.” Then he whispered, “This is the end of the story, that the teller came to recognize the end, and he knew that it didn’t matter, for shortly before the end he had gained a great treasure, which was merely a life lived well, and not even Rada Vatu could take that away from him. Slowly, then, Rada Vatu began to touch him, and he started to age, as all men do, but it did not matter.”

Then the young man saw that his father was tired and went away. He left the candle burning by the bedside. Yvorian lay still, gazing into the darkness, listening to his wife’s breathing as she slept beside him.

After a time, he was aware of another person in the room. A stranger stood by the bed, clad in a black robe. His eyes glowed, like fireflies. He held a gleaming axe in his hand.

“Are you not the famous and mighty King Yvorian?”

“No. That is another Yvorian, a character in a story. I tell of him often.”

“Ah.” The stranger’s face shrivelled inward, consumed in fire. The axe rose. “I win the wager,” said Rada Vatu.

“Are you certain?”

The axe fell.

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