The old man croaked, "Nothing."
"Is that all you have to say? Am I to trust you so readily?"
"I swear by my heart and all the gods, by the true name of The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken, that I had no part in your wife's murder."
Some portion of Garth's mind was aware that the old man was taking this seriously indeed, to make so long an answer so quickly, but his anger would not permit him to consider that. "And what good is your vow? How can it bind you? Death holds no terror for you, old man; you have little to lose in that regard. Nor have you shown any thought for your honor; what need have you of honor or trust, you who have incomprehensible power and no desire but death? You have abandoned the service of your god; can I know that his name still holds you?"
"You cannot be certain. Take my word or not, as you please." The old man's ghastly voice was as dead as ever.
Garth was by no means so calm; with a wordless bellow, he reached out and grabbed the King's throat in one huge hand. "Lying scum!" he cried. "Deathless monster! Do you dare to mock me at such a time?" In his rage, he cared little for accuracy or fairness and ignored the fact that, if any mockery had been spoken, it was he who had mocked the King and not the reverse. He squeezed.
His hand went limp and dead, falling with a heavy thud on the table.
"Your pardon, Garth. I lived for several years with a broken neck once, long ago, and I have no desire to repeat the experience."
Garth stared down at his hand. Sensation returned in a sudden rush of pain. He had bruised several knuckles on the oaken tabletop.
The discomfort quickly faded to insignificance, but served to distract him from his anger long enough for his rationality to reassert control. As the incident had demonstrated, the King had power. Garth could not harm him, but he might be able to use him. After a moment's hesitation, he moved around the table and sat down opposite the old man.
"It is I, rather, who should ask for pardon, O King," he said. "Forgive me; I let my grief get the better of me. I came here not to challenge you, but to ask a favor. I do not know the limits of your power, O King; perhaps what I ask cannot be done. Still, I must make the attempt. Can you restore Kyrith to life?"
The King paused before he moved his head once from side to side. "No, Garth. I am sorry."
"It is not possible?"
"I cannot do it."
"Why not? You are the high priest of Death; have you no power over him?"
"You ask me to undo the god's work. Could you create with the Sword of Bheleu, restore what you had destroyed?"
Garth had to acknowledge that he could not have done such a thing; the very essence of the sword's power was destruction. He was not willing to give up completely, however. "What of your own spells? You were a mighty wizard in your own right, were you not? Knew you no magic to restore the dead?"
"If ever I did, it is centuries forgotten."
"Is there no talisman that can serve? Bheleu has his sword, and the Death-God his book; has the god of life no totem?"
"The totems of the Lords of Eir lost their virtue at the center of time, in the Eighth Age, when the balance first shifted against them. They have no power now, if they still exist at all."
"Is there no way to shift this balance again?"
The old man shrugged almost imperceptibly. "There may be; if so, it would be in the Book of Silence. That is not the totem of The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken; but of Dagha, god of time, the creator of both Eir and Dыs." He stopped suddenly, as if he had meant to say more and then thought better of it.
Garth, listening intently, noticed the peculiarly abrupt stop, but could read no meaning into it. He ignored it and considered instead the words that had preceded it.
He had taken it for granted that the Book of Silence was the totem of The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken; after all, the Forgotten King had obviously expected, three years ago, that Garth would find it on the Final God's altar in Dыsarra, as he had found the Sword of Bheleu on Bheleu's altar, and the Stone of Tema on Tema's altar, and the Stone of Andhur Regvos on the altar of Andhur Regvos. Furthermore, the book was needed for the King's great final magic, and Garth was fairly sure that that somehow involved conjuring the Death God into the mortal world. That, too, seemed to imply a fink with the Final God. Garth knew relatively little of human theology, and most of what he did know he had learned on his trip to Dыsarra, but he had had the definite impression that Dagha had few dealings with mortals. He had never heard of any cult of Dagha, nor any temple dedicated to Dagha. Why, then, should so powerful a talisman be linked with this obscure deity?
It did not seem reasonable. He decided that the King was lying, hoping to trick Garth into keeping his oath and fetching the Book of Silence on the basis of a false hope that it might aid in the resurrection of his dead wife.
If he could expose this trickery, he might find himself in a better position from which to deal with the old man.
He reached this conclusion in barely three seconds; the pause in the conversation was scarcely noticeable before Garth said, "Indeed. Then what is the Death-God's totem? Surely you must have it, as his high priest and chosen vessel."
"I left it in Hastur, in my chapel." The King's voice was softer than usual, barely audible, a grinding, scratching whisper. He seemed not to be looking at Garth, though how Garth knew that, when the old man's eyes were as invisible as ever, he could not have said.
"Hastur?"
"Hastur, capital of Carcosa."
"Where was this place? Surely the chapel must be long gone; I have never heard of Hastur, and Carcosa has been forgotten for centuries by all save yourself."
"The barbarians took the city and it became Hastur-dar-Mallek, Hastur-of-the-Barbarians, but they could not have destroyed it, even had they tried. They buried it instead, Hastur below, Hastur-dar-Mallek above." There was a strange animation in the old man's tone.
"I have never heard of Hastur-dar-Mallek, O King."
"That was long ago, before overmen were first created; the name has been shortened to Ur-Dormulk."
"Ur-Dormulk? That was your capital?" Garth was astonished. He had heard the Forgotten King speak of his long-lost kingdom of Carcosa once or twice before, but he had not paid very much attention to the stories. He had never doubted that the old man had once been a true king, yet he had not seriously supposed that this vanished empire had had any connection at all with the world as it was in this, the Fourteenth Age.
Now, suddenly, he was told that Ur-Dormulk, the most ancient and independent of Eramma's cities and Skelleth's trading partner, which he had seen from afar on his trips to Dыsarra and Orgul, was once the King's capital. This revelation provided a new and more definite link between his own era and the old man's vague past. Somehow Garth had always thought of them as two separate worlds, unconnected save by certain magical objects and by the King himself; it required a major readjustment of those thoughts for him to realize that it was all one, divided only by time.
There were a few seconds of silence as the overman absorbed this news. Then he thrust it aside; it was not relevant.
"You have not said what it was that you left in your chapel."
"I left them both there, the Pallid Mask and the Book of Silence, and I sealed the chamber with the Yellow Sign. I knew that the invaders could not pass that, and that they could not use the book or the mask if they did, but I posted a guard as a matter of form. I was still concerned with form then, and with my reputation as a great wizard."