Volume III: The People and Their Faiths
Volume IV: The Lineages of the Great Kings and the Bloodlines of the Great Houses
Volume V: The Societies of the Pseudomen and the Cloud Kingdoms
“You see?” the queen said. “They are safe and whole. I have kept your faith.”
He nodded, aching to open the third volume and read. But first he had to know. “Thank you,” he said. “But how did you come to possess these texts?”
She looked at him quizzically, amused by the question. “You gave them to me when I was only a little girl. I always knew you would return for them, as you promised. I wish you’d have come while Father was still alive. He was very fond of you. We lost him four years ago.”
He recalled a broad-chested man with a thick green beard and a crown of golden shells. In his mind, the King of Tarros laughed, and a little girl sat on his knee.
King Celestior. My friend. She is his daughter, once my student, and now the Queen of Tarros. How many years has it been?
He kissed the queen’s cheek, and she left him to his books. Hours later, her servants brought him seafood stew, Aurealan wine in pearly cups, and a box of fresh candles. He read throughout the long night, while the warm salt air swept in from the sea, and the jade moon crept from window to window.
For days he sat in the chamber and read. Finally, they found him collapsed over the books, snoring, a white beard growing from his chin. They carried him to a proper bed, and he slept, dreaming of a distant world that was a lie, and yet also true in so many ways.
“You’re walking out on me?” she said, eyes brimming with tears.
“You walked out on me,” he told her.
She said nothing.
“Joanne… sweetheart… you know I’ll always love you. But this isn’t working. We… don’t belong together.”
“How can you be so sure?” she cried.
“Because if we did… you would have never climbed into bed with Alan.”
Her sadness turned to anger, as it often did. “I told you! I never meant for it to happen.”
“Yeah, you told me,” he said. “But you did it. You did it, right? Three times… that I know of.”
She grabbed him, wrapped her arms around his neck. Squeezed. “You can’t just leave me behind,” she said.
Now he was crying too. “I’m done with this,” he said.
“No,” she whimpered. “We can still fix it.”
“How?”
She stood back from him, brushing a dark strand of hair from her forehead. Her eyes were dark, too. Black pearls.
“We’ll get counseling,” she pleaded. “We’ll figure out what went wrong and we’ll make sure it never happens again.”
He turned away, lay his forehead against the mantle.
“You cheated too,” she said, almost a whisper.
After you did. He didn’t say it out loud. Maybe she was right. Maybe there still was hope.
He had never loved anyone but her.
Never.
They stood with their arms wrapped around each other for a little while.
“I’ll always love you,” he said. “No matter what happens.”
The people of Arthyria differ greatly in custom, dress, and culture, and wars are not unknown. Each kingdom has its share of inhuman denizens, humanoid races who live in proximity or complete integration with the human populace. These are the Pseudomen, and they have played a great role in many a war as mercenary troops adding to the ranks of whatever city-state they call home. There is generally little prejudice against the Pseudomen, although the Yellow Priests of Naravhen call them “impure” and have banned them from the Yellow Temples.
There are five Great Religions in practice across the triple continents of Arthyria, faiths that have survived the upheaval of ages and come down to us through the fractured corridors of time intact. The cults and sects of lesser deities are without number, but all of the Five Faiths worship some variation of the One Thousand Gods.
Some faiths, such as the Order of the Loyal Heart, are inclusive, claiming that all gods be revered. Others are singular belief systems, focused on only one god drawn from the ranks of the One Thousand. Through these commonalities of faith we see the development of the Tongue, a lingua franca that unites most of Arthyria with its thirty-seven dialects.
Here mention must be made of the Cloud Kingdoms, whose gods are unknown, whose language is incomprehensible to Arthyrians, and whose true nature and purpose has remained a mystery throughout the ages.
When he woke he was closer to being himself, and the people of Tarros were restored. He walked through the palace in search of Celestia, marveling at the beauty of those he had forgotten. Their glistening skins were shades of turquoise, their long fingers and toes webbed, tipped with mother-of-pearl talons. They wore very little clothing, only the same white loincloths he’d seen yesterday. Webbed, spiny crests ran up their backs, across the tops of narrow skulls, terminating on their tall foreheads. Their eyes were black orbs, their lips far thicker than any human’s, and only the females grew any hair: long emerald tresses woven with pearls and shells.
They were amphibious Pseudomen, a marine race that had evolved to live on land. The island kingdom was a small portion of their vast empire, most of which lay deep beneath the waves. Some claimed they ruled the entire ocean, but Jeremach knew better. There were other, less civilized societies below the sea.
Now that he had read three more volumes, Arthyria was one step closer to being whole. So was he. Vastly important things lay just on the edge of his awareness. He must know them… everything depended on it.
He found Celestia in her gardens, surrounded by a coterie of amphibious subjects. They lounged around a great pool of seawater fed by undersea caverns.
“Jeremach… you look more like yourself today,” said the queen, beckoning him with a webbed hand.
“I should say the same to you, Majesty,” he replied. He saw himself now in the surface of the pool. His garb had changed little, but he looked older. At least forty, he guessed, but his hair and thick beard were as white as a codger’s. How old am I really? he wondered. Will I continue aging as the world keeps reverting to its true state?
“I trust you found what you were looking for in those dreadful books?” she asked. She offered him a padded bench beside her own high seat. Tiny Tarrosian children splashed in the pool, playing subaquatic games and surfacing in bubbles of laughter.
“I did,” he said. “I found the truth. Or more of it, at least.”
“It is good to see you again, Old Tutor,” she said, smiling with her marine lips. Her eyes gleamed at him, onyx orbs brimming with affection.
“You were always my favorite pupil,” he told her honestly.
“How long will you stay with us?”
“Not long, I fear. I hear a call that cannot be denied. Tell me, did your father sign a treaty with the Kingdom of Aelda when you were still a child?”
“Yes… ” Celestia raised her twin orbs to the sky. “The Treaty of Sea and Sky, signed in 7412, Year of the Ray. It was you who taught me that date.”
“And your father received a gift from the Sovereign of Aelda… do you still have it?”
Clouds of jade cotton moved across the heavens. The next book called to him from somewhere high above the world.
She led him below the palace into a maze of caverns created by seawater in some elder age, and three guards accompanied them bearing torches. When they found the great door of obsidian that sealed the treasure vault, she opened it with a coral key. Inside lay a massive pile of gold and silver coins, centuries of tribute from the realms of Arthyria, fantastic suits of armor carved from coral and bone, spears and shields of gold and iron, jewels in all the colors of the prism, and objects of painful beauty to which he could not even put a name.