Seven Princes by John R. Fultz Page A

beasts hung between the towering bookshelves, and the fanged skull of a great Serpent lay on a central pedestal beneath a dome of transparent quartz. A dozen torches flickered in sconces like the yawning mouths of gargoyles. The room was spacious enough for a Giant to comfortably peruse the shelves, but Giants did not read. Only their shamans knew the magic of capturing ideas into runes, and all their shamans were dead for two decades now. Sharadza sat in her father’s reading chair and pored over tome after tome, finding only frustration in the musty pages.
    She sighed as she closed the most recent volume, re-clasping its lock of bronze and staring at its embossed cover. If
The Codex of Ancient Knowledge
did not contain the secrets for which she searched, what hope did she have of finding it anywhere else? She had read at least a hundred such works in the month since her father went marching westward to give himself to the Sea Queen. Her mother made daily offerings to the Four Gods, Earth, Sky, Sea, and Sun, but Sharadza held little faith in her mother’sreligion. Queen Shaira had learned her faith during a childhood in distant Shar Dni. Sharadza could never admit it to her mother, but she did not believe at all in those faceless Gods.
    Unseen powers of earth and air would not help her father, any more than his army of men and giants could. This was a matter of deepest sorcery, a curse that haunted Vod from before the birth of his children. The only way to fight it was through sorcery. In all the tales she’d ever read in the history texts, in all the legends told her by Fellow, even in the tales of traveling singers who visited Udurum, there was never any story of a sorcerer defeated by anything less than a more powerful sorcery. Her father was a sorcerer of legendary reputation – he rebuilt the crumbled city, slew the Lord of Serpents, and brought green life to the Old Desert – but he had given himself over to this curse and would not fight it. He was a man of honor, and that she understood. But
she
was not bound by the curse. If she could only learn sorcery, she might aid him in his time of need. She might defy the vengeance of the Sea Queen.
    Had Vod reached the ocean shore yet? She checked the date on a nearby calendar. Any day now Vod’s chariot would come upon the Cryptic Sea, and he would cast himself into the lightless depths. Time was running out. Unless… unless his magic prevented him from drowning. Would he walk the sea bottom for leagues until he reached the Sea Queen’s aqueous palace? If the sea itself did not rob his life instantly, there might still be time for her to learn. Time to call up some dark power and send it to redeem her father.
    She lowered her head to the dusty cover of the book, and tears welled in her eyes. She was tired of weeping; she felt dried up inside. But there was nothing in this damnable library to tell her, nothing that opened her mind to the secrets of sorcery. Why did her father keep all these books if they had nothing to do with hissorcery? Her grief turned suddenly to anger. She tossed the heavy book to the floor and kicked over her chair as she stood and wiped at her cheeks. This place was useless. Her brothers might accept that their father was doomed, but she would never believe it.
    Damn them for being so chained to his will! Their sense of honor prevents them from defying him, even to save his life
…
    She called for a servant to darken the library, gathered up her cloak of purple wool, and stalked into the hallway. Tadarus and her mother were in the council chambers meeting with members of the giant and human populations, discussing taxes, tariffs, and other meaningless minutiae. Let them waste their time with such trivial notions; she would not sit and pretend that her father was not approaching death at this very moment. Signaling her personal escort, two soldiers by the names of Dorus and Mitri, she exited the palace through the lesser gate. The two men