The Last Page

ll.

—Sena

There was a key, their key, tucked inside a wrecked attempt at a map. To his surprise, the key affected him profoundly like a talisman. He thought of throwing it in the pond.

At noon he met the rest of the Naked Eight at Grume’s for a drink. Since Roric’s expulsion, Caliph had become their genearch; the one they toasted while skirting the humiliating topic that had forged their fraternity.

With graduation bearing down, they promised to stay in touch, look each other up; look Caliph up in particular since he would be king. They joked about taking advantage of his featherbeds and the fictitious chambermaids that gave sponge baths.

Caliph forced a laugh but he had to wonder whether it might be true that they clung to him primarily because of the power he would soon command. He wanted to believe that regardless of his distinction, there was some invisible unbreakable bond between them. They were the Naked Eight. Unfortunately it sounded cheap and mawkish, sincerity that with time would turn into the oldest kind of lie.

Caliph left Grume’s feeling depressed.

By Day of Dusk, his isolation was complete.

He went to the chapel where a heavy brocade of dove-colored stone seemed to shout. Choking-sweet clouds of incense smudged the tierceron vault under which twenty-nine graduates milled as though eight years of school had left them confused.

Caliph walked in, spotted with jewel-colored light and found Belman Gorn’s eyes watching him.

“Here for a gown?”

Caliph felt sheepish. “I opted out of that pomp. I’m staying one more semester. There’s a class on lethargy crucibles: slow power. I couldn’t pass it up.”

“Engineering?”

“No. It’s an overview of how they run, but mostly economics. Impact, cost, infrastructure . . . that kind of thing.”

Belman chuckled. “Let no one say Caliph Howl doesn’t love school. You probably won’t miss much at commencement tonight.”

Caliph smiled but knew Belman was wrong. Suddenly he understood that this should have been his night. Belman wasn’t giving him advice. Belman wasn’t talking to him like a student anymore. Some miraculous transformation had almost taken place. Caliph imagined all the doors and windows in Desdae being suddenly flung open, releasing him—every part of him—like a startled flock of birds.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, he watched his friends accept their degrees on the lawn. It was different than Sena’s graduation, an evening ceremony with an audience that included no one he knew and the occasional lacewing that fluttered like white fire through the last rays of evening translucence.

Caliph met the chancellor in the Administration Building on the eleventh. Enthroned behind his desk in a riveted oxblood chair, Darsey looked up from his work through a set of thick, half-moon spectacles to see the clurichaun standing on his desk. He stared at it for several moments; then his eyes flicked to Caliph. He wore a sad expression that Caliph didn’t want defined. “A deal is a deal, is that it?” the chancellor asked.

He pushed himself back, turned precisely ninety degrees in his chair and drew a roll of vellum from the great brooding bookshelf behind him.

Caliph didn’t answer. The chancellor opened the document, examined it briefly, re-rolled it and held it out. “I think you’ll find everything in order . . . your majesty.”

The words struck Caliph in the chest, solidly. He looked at Darsey for a moment, then reached out and took his diploma. “Be careful, Mr. Howl. I doubt the Duchy of Stonehold will be as quiet as the library.”

Caliph nodded faintly and left the room without a word. After that, he knew he was dead. He could feel it when he went to class. The hollowness. The emptiness of the campus. He had done spring and summer semester every year, but this year was different. This year he had fallen like too-ripe fruit.

Tarsh to Mam to Myhr to Psh. It was really only two and a half months. The class on lethargy crucibles made three hours of every day tolerable. The rest of the time he found himself coping with ghosts. Everywhere he turned he saw places where someone he used to know had done or said something. Usually that someone was Sena. He carried the key in his pocket like a weight.

On the fourth of Psh Caliph sat up in bed.

The cracked sink grimaced at him like a chrome-eyed creature backed against the wall. The place where the plaster had given out; the small pencil marks near his bed where he had written Sena’s name seemed sullen at being left behind.

A pillar of antiseptic sunlight fell through the window, whitewashing his sheets.

This morning, the Council was coming.

Outside, silken banners curled softly in the early summer air, barely moving in a shady breeze from the west.

Caliph had no energy. The final class had sucked him dry. His husk fell back into bed. Rather than face another day, another hour, he chose the oblivion of sleep.

Twighlight arrived. Still no Council. Word came by pigeon that there had been a storm, heavy snow and wind that prevented any navigation of the narrow crack through the Healean Range.

Caliph couldn’t breathe. He paced, watched the sun choke on sky as thick and bright as peach jelly. He walked to Karthl Hall and found Nihc Pag smoking in the shadows of the pitted front steps.

Nihc was a Pandragon but had lost most of his accent during eight years of school. He had gone through graduation and stayed for spring. Unlike Caliph, he had good reason. A two-focus degree in bioscience and exotic ecologies demanded additional time in the labs of the Woodmarsh Building. Soon, he too would vanish.

“Hey, Caph.”

Caliph sat down. Nihc stubbed his smoke against the wall and joined him. The sun was totally gone. Naobi had crawled out of the glutinous shadows like a white beetle that had been feeding on the day. She was in her waning half-phase: slender, livid and cadaverous. From the steps they could see the lake. Blue fireflies flickered sporadically, casting double images in the water, occasionally vanishing forever in the mouth of a leaping fish.

They said nothing for a long time. The splishing fish and the leaves that pitched and moaned around Desdae’s blackened gables were enough to keep the silence comfortable.

Finally Nihc made the first real effort at conversation. “Thought you were leaving today.”

Caliph envisioned the Council, the uniforms, the offices waiting for him in Stonehold. “Yeah. I am.”

Nihc plucked a killimore weed from beside the step and chewed it. “Not much of today left.”

“There’s enough. What about you?”

Nihc spat. “Headed out next week. Down south. Something lined up for me in the Empire, Pandragonian, of course. I wouldn’t serve Iycestoke if it killed me.”

“Really? What’ll you be doing?”

“There’s hunters in Pandragor that go out and trap all kinds of things so they can entertain the Emperor—or so they’ve got something to feed criminals to.”

Caliph mused sardonically, “Must cut long-term prison costs.”

Nihc shrugged. “I’m not a politician. I’m just going to advise the hunters on care and feeding. Think of it! Catch me a hlohtian ground sloth or a sintrosa—one of them ax-beaks, you know? Or—biggest damn thing to walk on four legs—a norkocis!”

“Sounds dangerous.”

Caliph glanced beyond the library at the dark shadows of the north woods. “I got a letter from Sena back in Tarsh. I think I’m going to see her.”

Nihc stood up, indicating that good-byes would soon be in order. “Must be excited. Over half the campus was in love with her.”

Caliph yawned and rubbed his eyes.