Charles A. Gramlich SHADOW DREAM The wind came up out of the west, silver with a rain that misted softly across a land of dark fantasy. There were ravens in that land who watched the rain with the eyes of old men, and trees whose crystal leaves chimed as if tears stroked them. The rain fell into rivers that ran in shadows down to the Frozen Sea, and on highways paved with the dust of ancient skulls. The rain fell, too, on battlements where warriors armored in argent strode, and on towers from whose spires a thousand flags whipped in a thousand colors. It fell on temples raised to dreaming gods and palaces where dragon kings sat brooding, on ruins haunted by the scent of faded wars and on mountains whose eroded faces were those of demons. The rain fell on all corners of the land that was called Kesh-Kare-Ill, which, perhaps, does not exist except as reflections exist. Jeweled cities stood with their faces to that mist, their streets thronged with people who ignored the drizzle that fell often from the gray skies of Kesh-Kare-Ill. Occasionally, I saw strangers in the crowd. These were mostly wanderers or traders who had crossed the Frozen Sea, or those who had lost their way. In the marketplaces--beneath blue, and gold, and purple striped awnings that broke the rain--they haggled over the palest of opals and selected pearls without a flaw. They listened in wonder as tiny metal birds chirped stories in their ears, and they tossed stone coins to the blind minstrels who plucked out whispering melodies for them on harps strung with children's tears. I heard one of the strangers say that he could not stay long, that he must return to the outside world and show men there the treasures of Kesh-Kare-Ill, and I laughed. None have ever been known to leave here. They drink amethyst wines from the vineyards of Phralis or eat the delicate ivory blooms of the tseatha plant, and they lose their days in cups full of dream and longings for things they cannot name. I should know, for I came as one such wanderer many years ago and have remained. Forever it seems. There was once a prophet who claimed that only the dead find their way to Kesh-Kare-Ill. But there were many who disputed him. "It is not odd," they said, "that the people are all so very pale here. For the sun is strangely dark and it seems always to be turning late evening. It is not odd that there are no cemeteries here, for many races cremate their dead." But then, I always wondered why all the songs sung in Kesh-Kare-Ill were songs of lament and dirges to lost souls? * * * Abruptly, I set aside the singing scroll, which has awakened the past for me. The tinkling of its voice chimes on for a moment and then is gone, as the past is gone. I rise and walk across my room to gaze into a mirror at what I have become; my skin is the white of fresh bone and my eyes lie deep beneath their brows. I see that my hair and beard have grown long and are as silver as the rain that falls outside my window, and I do not need the scrolls to help me remember. In some year whose name is forgotten, a man came to Kesh-Kare-Ill--a lion man, a golden man, a man whose hair flamed like the sun and whose eyes were as deep blue as the mountain lakes of Lockinar, which lies far beyond the Frozen Sea. He crossed that sea alone, on a ship with grey sails that slid on diamond runners over the dark ice, and reached a quiet harbor to the north of the land. Mountains stood blocking his way, but they did not stop him. His first assault carried him up to their needle spires, and his second brought him down the far slopes amid the rumbling echoes of his passage. No one remembered when those peaks had last been scaled. The man traveled on foot until he reached the lower hills, and there, in a silent amphitheater of stone, he trapped an emerald stallion with fanged eyes and broke him to his will. There was blood on this man and heat lightning in his swift movements, and blood too was on the broadsword that hung over his shoulder. That blade had been recently cleaned and sharpened--as if from a battle-- but when one looked with the eyes of the past the stains were still there. He rode from that place on his stallion's flying hooves, and like a dagger he drove into the heart of Kesh-Kare-Ill. The hoofbeats rang behind him and shattered the silence. Where he entered the land it was not far to Timorii the Jaded, Timorii the City of Solitude, which lies along the Road of Sighs just past the dolmens dedicated to the melancholy god Sephraell. With an iron dirk he carved his name on one of those standing stones. It is still there for I have recently seen it--Chalice Tenethosse, Chalice Goldenhorn. Chalice came to Timorii in the cyan evening with a storm as his mantle. Massive clouds boiled and heaved, vomiting darkness and savage lightning that ran purple to the ground. And on that day it rained as it had never rained in Kesh-Kare-Ill--in rivers, and seas, and oceans that shattered the crystal forests into myriad fragments and washed like a tide over the walls of all the cities in the land. The people of Timorii, accustomed only to mists, fled inside their black domes, and everywhere the echoes came of slamming doors and shuttering windows. Even warriors shivered in their armor, and drew their weapons closer, and caressed their steel. Chalice sat his horse outside the open gate of the city and smiled as the rain plastered his red-blond hair to his skull and water sluiced in a torrent from his harsh features. He stood in his stirrups and shook a fist at the storm and laughed in booming notes to rival the thunder. I remember that when he came through the gates and entered the city, the streets were lorn, wet, and drifting with shadows flung down like gauntlets by the hurtling storm. Chalice moved along those broad avenues like a predator, a single warrior, rippling scarlet. Straight on he rode, toward the palace of the Chalk King, and guards moved with swords and bronze bucklers and would have barred his path. Blades rasped from jeweled scabbards and flashed violent--and violet with lightning--but Chalice did not stop. He drove his jade stallion forward and rode them down, rode them all down in a cold dream of steel that left sobbing screams dying behind him in the dusk. So the barbarian came to Timorii, hot with passion, driven by lusts, and later that night, as the storm worshipped the earth, Chalice stood on the highest tower of the Palace of Raptors, shouting his name at the city and demanding allegiance. At his feet lay the dead and broken body of the Chalk King, and the chained loveliness of the queen who would live now as his slave. There had never been such a man in Kesh-Kare-Ill, a man of demon strengths and ripping eyes, and the melancholy warriors flocked to his banner. Armies rose overnight to make war in his name, and they carried the torch of conquest to the Frozen Sea, and the Hollow Lands, and even unto the gates of fabled Tolembarach at the edge of the Plain of Sorrows. Always those armies rode beneath the banner of the golden horn on the scarlet field, and always they won: at Djinn Valley and at Thorn Ridge, and at half a hundred other battlefields without names. In an instant it seemed, Chalice's will charged the blood and passions of a hundred thousand men, and in that one short moment Kesh- Kare-Ill fell and the soul of Chalice Goldenhorn was nearly lost. Only at Tolembarach was he defied, and he raged there and swore to tear the city stone from stone and give it to the sea. But he did not. On a twilight evening, while the siege fires played like fire elementals across the Plain of Sorrows, the young queen of Tolembarach came to the walls and gave strength to her people. Chalice Goldenhorn saw her there, with her pale skin, and her dark hair strung with pearls, and a gossamer gown that floated like a rapture around her slim form. He saw her and loved her then. And forever. For her he spared the city that had defied him. For her he turned away from his anger and from the conquest that had given him an empire. His armies melted away; his banner fell and was buried in dust. Swords rusted in their sheaths and shields lay broken and forgotten on ancient fields of battle. The warhorses died and the ruins of empire sang lost songs of past glories whenever the wind blew through them. And he loved her then, and forever. For a thousand years they reigned in Tolembarach-- golden king and pale queen--and it seemed for a time as if summer had come to the autumn land. One could stand on the walls of the city and look down on fields of grain ripening perpetually amid dusky yellow sunshine. In the evening, warm zephyrs beat back the mistral winds of the mountains, and hoarfrost no longer formed on the streets during the blackness of night. For the first time in Kesh-Kare-Ill's history, children sang songs that were not full of weeping. But time does not stop, and even a thousand years seem ephemeral when they are over. Perhaps it was the coming of a storm like that which had harbinged his arrival at Timorii that shattered the spell, or perhaps it was the sound of the too lonely wind that blows always in the empty towers of Tolembarach that at last broke the shadow dream. Chalice awoke one day with his love beside him and found the castle paved with dust, the precious tapestries dimmed and torn. The winged spiders had come and spun their webs so thick in the room where he lay with his queen that they hung like cerements from the marble ceiling. In horror, Chalice gazed upon the dead and blackened flower petals that lay scattered across the tiled floor. Only last night they had been freshly gathered and strewn to make a carpet for the feet of his lover. He turned to her then and touched her shoulder beneath the rotted purple silk that had once draped their bed. She was only an empty corpse's shell, and her mummified flesh crumbled to powder beneath his hand. He stood, crying out, her beauty running like dust through his grasping fingers, and for the first time he looked down on himself naked and saw the great savage wound in his chest that had taken his life so many centuries ago. And he knew. Only the dead find their way to Kesh-Kare-Ill. * * * Long years have passed since that day and Kesh-Kare- Ill lies empty. Its dead are no longer remembered in the outer world and even shades have no existence without memories. I remain--alone--and I do not even know why. My hair is the color of frost now and my skin has the texture of faded parchment. In the mirror, I can barely see my pale blue eyes lying deep within their sockets. I am the emperor Chalice Goldenhorn and am king over nothing. Yet, I remember a woman who once I knew, and I loved her then, and will love her forever: Chimera. Chimera.