Now the city of Aelda came into view: a sparkling crystal metropolis perched upon an island of white cloud. The spiral towers and needle-like pinnacles were like nothing in the world below. But a sense of vague familiarity flavored Jeremach’s awe.
The rest of the books are here, he remembered.
All but one.
The Winged Folk had no voices, and their bodies were translucent. They moved with all the grace of swans, gliding through the sky on feathery appendages grown from their lean backs. Their beauty was incredible, so much that none could be classified as singly male or female. Their bodies were the sexless perfection of inhumanity. The highest order of all the Pseudomen, the people of the Cloud Kingdoms were also the most mysterious.
A flock of them glided by as the sky galleon docked alongside a crystal tower. They stared at the visitor with eyes of liquid gold. They neither waved nor questioned his presence. He had sounded the horn. Otherwise, he would not be here.
The galleon’s crew of marble men followed him into a corridor of diamond and took their places in carved niches along the walls. Now they were only statues again. Someday, someone in Arthyria would blow another horn of brass, gold, and jet; and the statues would live again to man the golden ship. Jeremach left the stone men to their silent niches.
The scent of the Cloud Realms made his head swim as he walked toward the books. Up here lingered the aromas of unborn rain, naked sunlight, and the fragrance of unsoiled clouds. The diamond walls rang with musical tones, sweet enough to mesmerize the untutored into immobility. But Jeremach heard only the call of his books.
He found them right where he had left them so long ago, in a domed chamber supported by seven pillars of glassy quartz. The tomes lay upon a round table of crystalline substance, and they looked as incongruous here as the tall philosopher’s chair he had placed before the table.
He sat in the chair, sighed, and ran his fingers over the faces of the seven books.
Volume VI: The Knights of Arthyria and the Secret Orders of Starlight
Volume VII: Wizards of the First Age
Volume VIII: Wizards of the Second Age and The Forces Unleashed
Volume IX: Wizards of the Third and Fourth Ages, and the Death of Othaa
Volume X: The Doom of the Forty-Two Gods
Volume XI: The Great Beasts of Arthyria and the Things From Beyond
Volume XII: The Fifth Cataclysm and the Preservation of Ancient Knowledge
Don’t think about Joanne, he told himself.
But her words haunted him.
You’re throwing it all away.
How do you know this is the True World?
He opened the sixth volume, breathing in the smell of ancient papyrus and ink.
It’s my choice.
I choose Arthyria.
He read.
In the year 7478, the Wizard Jeremach returned to the Shunned City.
Legions of the living dead rose from its ruined halls to assail him, but he dismissed them with a wave of his hand, turning them all to pale dust. He walked among the crumbled stones of the First Empire, frigid winds tearing at his long white beard.
As he neared the palace of the Dead King, a horde of black-winged devils descended screeching from the broken towers. These he smote with a flashing silver blade bearing the sign of Tarros. As the last of the fiends died at his feet, the wizard sheathed his weapon. He walked on, toward the Shattered Palace.
Before the Dead King’s gates a band of ghosts questioned Jeremach, but he gave them riddles that would haunt them well into the afterworld. He spoke a single word, and the gates of blackened iron collapsed inward. He entered the utter darkness of the castle and walked until he found the Dead King sitting on a pile of gilded skulls, the heads of all those he had conquered in battle over the course of seven thousand years.
A red flame glowed in a pit before the Dead King’s mailed feet, and he looked upon Jeremach. Similar flames glowed in the hollow pits of his eyes. His flesh had rotted away millennia ago, but his bones refused to die, or to give up his hard-won empire. In the last five thousand years, none but Jeremach had entered these gates and lived to speak of it.
The Dead King took up his great black sword, but Jeremach laughed at him.
"You know that I’ve not come to battle you,” said the wizard.
The Dead King sighed, grave dust spilling from between his teeth. With fleshless fingers he lifted an ancient book from the floor of his hall. He offered it to Jeremach.
The wizard wiped away a coating of dust and saw the book’s title.
The One True World
Volume XIII: The Curse of the Dead King and the Undying Empire
Jeremach did not need to read it, for he knew its contents with a touch.
The Dead King spoke in a voice of grinding bones. “You have won,” he said.
“Yes,” said Jeremach. “Though you cheated, sending an assassin after me. How desperate.”
“I might claim you cheated with these books of yours,” said the skull-king, “But in war all sins are forgiven.”
“Still, I did win,” said the wizard. “I proved that Truth will always overcome Illusion. That a False reality — no matter how tempting — cannot stand against that which is Real. I escaped your trap.”
The Dead King nodded, and a crown of rusted iron tumbled from his skull. “For the first time in history, I have been defeated,” he growled.
Was that relief in his ancient voice?
“Now… will you keep your promise, Stubborn King?” asked Jeremach. “Will you quit the world of the living and let this long curse come to an end? Will you let men reclaim these lands that you have held for millennia?”
The Dead King nodded again, and now his skull tumbled from his shoulders. His bones fell to dust, and a cold wind blew his remains across the hall. The moaning of a million ghosts filled the sky. In the distant cities of Oorg, Aurealis, Vandrylla, and Zorung, the living woke from nightmares and covered their ears.
Jeremach left the ruins of the Shunned City as they crumbled behind him. He carried the black book under his arm. As he walked, the moldering slabs of the city turned to dust, following their king into oblivion, and the frozen earth of that realm began to thaw in the sunlight. After long ages, Spring had finally come.
By the time Jeremach crossed the horizon, there was no trace of the haunted kingdom left anywhere beneath the emerald sky.
Marion Zimmer Bradley was the author of the best-selling classic Arthurian novel The Mists of Avalon, the long-running Darkover series, and many other novels. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Amazing Stories, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fantastic, If, and in numerous anthologies. She was also editor of the acclaimed and influential Sword and Sorceress anthology series and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine. She was a winner of the Locus Award and the recipient of the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. She died in 1999.