Into The Thinking Kingdoms

"Strange dreams, Peregriff. Indistinct oddities and peculiar perturbations."

"Perhaps a sleeping potion, Lord?"

Hymneth shook his head peevishily. "I've tried that. This particular dream is not amenable to the usual elixirs. Something convoluted is going on." Straightening, he took a deep breath and, as he exhaled, the air in the room shuddered. "I'm going out today. See to the preparations."

The soldier of soldiers nodded once. "Immediately, Lord." He turned to comply.

"Oh, and Peregriff?"

"Yes, Lord?"

"How do you sleep lately?"

The soldier considered carefully before replying. "Reasonably well, Lord."

"I prefer that you did not. My misery might benefit from company."

"Certainly, Lord. I will begin by not sleeping well tonight."

Behind the helmet, Hymneth smiled contentedly. "Good. I can always count on you to make me feel better, Peregriff."

"That is my service, Lord." The soldier departed to make ready his master's means for going out among his people.

Hymneth took pleasure in a leisurely descent from the heights of the fortress, using the stairs. Sometimes he would descend on a pillar of fire, or a chute of polished silver. It was good to keep in practice. But the body also needed exercise, he knew.

As he descended, he passed many hallways and side passages. Attendants and servants and guards stopped whatever they were doing to acknowledge his presence. Most smiled; a few did not. Serveral noted the presence of the noisome, coagulated black vapors that tagged along at their master's heels, and they trembled. Passing one particular portal that led to a separate tower, he paused to look upward. The woman was up there, secluded in the small paradise he had made for her. A word from her would have seen him on his way exalted. That was not to be, he knew. Not yet. But he had measureless reserves of confidence, and more patience than even those closest to him suspected. The words would come, and the smiles, and the embraces. All in good time, of which he had a fullness.

He could have forced her. A few words, a pinch of powders, a few drops of potion in her evening wine and her resistance would be forgotten, as frail and fractured as certain tortured tracts of land to the east. But that would be a subjugation, not a triumph. Having everything, he wanted more. Mere bodies equally magnificent he could acquire with gold or spell. A heart was a much more difficult thing to win. He sought a covenant, not a conquest.

With a last look of longing at the portal, he resumed his descent. Passing through the grand hall with its imposing pendent banners of purple and crimson, its mounted heads of sabertooths and dragons, arctic bears and tropical thylacines, he turned left just before the imposing entryway and made his way to the smaller door that was nearer the stables.

Outside, the sun was shining brightly, as it usually was in Ehl-Larimar. Several stable attendants were concluding their grooming of his chariot team: four matched red stallions with golden manes. The chariot itself was large enough to accommodate his cumbersome frame in addition to that of a charioteer. Peregriff was waiting on the platform, reins in hand. He had donned his gilded armor and looked quite splendid in his own right, though he was both overshone and overshadowed by the towering figure of the caped necromancer.

The scarlet stallions bucked restlessly in harness, eager for a run. Hymneth found that he was feeling better already. He climbed into the chariot alongside his master of house and horse.

"Let's go, Peregriff. We will do the population the honor of viewing my magnificence. I feel—I feel like bestowing a boon or two today. I may not even kill anyone."

"Your magnanimity is truly legendary, Lord." The old soldier chucked the reins."Gi'up!"

Snorting and whinnying, the team broke forward, speeding down the curved roadway that led up to and fronted the fortress. Through the massive portico in the outer wall they raced, sending dust and gravel flying from their hooves. These were inlaid with cut spessartine and pyrope. Catching the sunlight, the faceted insets gave the team the appearance of running on burning embers.

Down the mountainside they flew, Peregriff using the whip only to direct them, Hymneth the Possessed exhilarating in the wild ride. Down through the foothills, through groves of orange and olive and almond, past small country shops and farmhouses, and into the outskirts of the sprawling country metropolis of wondrous, unrivaled Ehl-Larimar.

Looking back, he found that he could see the fortress clearly. It dominated the crest of the highest moutain overlooking the fertile lands below. But the direction in which they were traveling prohibited him from seeing one part of the fortress complex, one particular tower. In that obscured spire languished the only unfulfilled part of himself, the single absent element of his perfection. It bothered him that he could not see it as the chariot raced onward.

Inability to sleep, inadequate angle of vision. Two bad things in one morning. Troubled but willing to be refreshed, he turned away from the receding view of his sanctuary and back toward the wild rush of flying manes and approaching streets.

Manipulating the team masterfully, Peregriff shouted to his liege. "Where would you like to go, Lord?"

"Toward the ocean, I think." The warlock brooded on the possibilities. "It always does me good to visit the shore. The ocean is the only thing in my kingdom that's almost as powerful as me."