The sun never set upon the Throne is what they say. Looking upon it for the first time, I could easily believe it. Already the largest single building in existence, the palace was constructed of interlocking, cyclopean slabs of white marble, forming squared sections that resembled an upturned labyrinth when viewed from above. Rising from it for two hundred hand-spans were the sparkling domes and minarets made of polished quartzite and roofed with tiles of purple travertine. From a distance those slabs of white marble comprising the palace's walls appeared smooth, when actuality they were carved with images of the ancient kings, the ten thousand saints, the holiest of concubines, the chastisers of the false doctrines, and half a hundred martyrs from history. Its golden surfaces caught the sun's rays and seemed to be infused by them. The sun was a constant, never blocked out by the smog as would be the case in any other part of the kingdom.
Once the Duke conjectured that perhaps there were other types of worlds, ones that weren't flat or as malformed as ours. He had speculations of worlds that developed as rings and orbited their suns in circular or elliptical motions. He imagined worlds that were pyramids, and ones where they were spherical or cubed these too would also orbit their suns. He had such imagination. He had even come up with equations describing how the physics of those imaginary worlds would operate, how life would develop on those worlds, what the sky would like, and so many other things.
I dearly miss those discussions. I cannot express... No, I will continue. We have not much time.
Leaving the carriage I crossed a small courtyard lined with enough chrome to build a small industrial town. Upon making my first step, the courtyard became a blazing haze of white light - so great was its reflective surface in that constant sun. I remember covering my eyes at the sight of it, and having to be lead across by expert guardsmen.
I was led across the courtyard's length to the massive, main entrance - an onyx archway standing twenty feet high. Deeper within, set in depressions in the walls stood giant, twin statues of titans, their muscled bulk holding up the arch, while their feet crushed vaguely humaniod creatures with reptilian scales, flippered hands and porcine noses.
After my satchel was searched by a weary-looking doorman and returned to me, I was lead into the receiving hall. It was a brilliantly lit chamber of dazzling white tiles whose edges and corners glinted with polished bronze. The glossy white walls were hung with garlands of shining ribbons of the same white color. The first half of the chamber was a wide, shallow pool of clear water with a single staircase gently curving and spiraling upwards toward a shared ceiling upon which was set a huge sun-face of gold - a circular pattern resembling nothing more than a circle of serpentine sunrays framing a stylized representation of the sun, the face of the Creator whose face seemed to smile down upon visitor to the Palace like an old friend.
I stood in awe before I was led up that stairway down a hallway that could have accommodated a parading regiment of servants, vassals, and guardsmen. Even before the Princess came to power, the Palace was a monument to excess; crossing the border into garishness from the moment one entered the chamber. From then on, room after room of nauseating ostentation passed before me, until the hairs on the back of my head rose. There was enough wealth displayed in a single chamber that was easily equal to an entire year's profit of apples from my family's orchards.
Eventually, after having my senses bedazzled by the myriad surfaces of gold and porcelain, I was eventually led the royal trophy room where I was told to wait. In a room whose high ceiling rose to nearly sixty feet above the floor, there were displayed on oak-paneled the severed heads of a multitude of beasts, all of them perfectly proposed. During my lengthy wait I counted at least six hundred before giving up. Where there were not a head mounted, there was a tapestry - at least a hundred - each detailing the past exploits and heroics of the hunters of the royal family. It was a proud tradition of the monarchs to pursue the hunting of exotic beasts, and the current king was no exception. Several suits of well-polished armor leaned against the impressive architecture, some ornate and some functional, grasping magnificent weapons. The floor was littered with hundreds of fine hides, from the fur of s'karas and rackleshacks as would be found in the hunting lodge of any noble, to the scaled hide of crystal dragons to strange, shifting flesh, hiding the polished marble beneath. Even the ceiling was covered with a thousand tales, of the brave hunters of the royal family from times before times to the present day, with roughly a quarter still empty, waiting for the exploits of future hunters.
On the far wall was a monumental fireplace, with a colossal humanoid skull on the mantlepiece, covered in rotting arrows and corroding swords, with a single, magnificent spear of unmatched craftsmanship sunk deep into the forehead. It seemed less of a skull and more like some huge, inverted triangle instead, wide at the top, pointed at the bottom, and with odd winglike protuberances jutting out from its sides like two bulky wings. Its features were the essence of the demonic; two jutting fangs, eye sockets wide enough to swallow a fist. Exactly what the skull belonged was knowledge that had been lost over the ages and was subject of much speculation by the scholars of the palace.
Should you ever happen to visit the palace, you will not find that trophy room. It's gone now. I know, because I was the one that had be burden with the details of its dismantlement and the destruction of every trophy in that collection. That room, and its skulls, had always frightened the Princess ever since she was a little girl, and so upon her ascension to the throne, one of the first things she ordered was that the entire collection be converted into a second bathing chamber. The heads and tapestries were to be thrown out, despite my protests that many of them were from animals that were no longer found anywhere else in the known world. Where it was possible, the bones were to be rendered down to make soap for the bathing chamber or used as char to repaint some areas of the rooms. The rest were disposed of in the general garbage heap and were free to be taken by whatever opportunistic scavengers desired them.
After what I deemed to be two hours of waiting eagerly, one of the guards led me from the trophy room to a metal elevator, where I went up several levels before finally coming to a stout balcony that allowed a grand view of the yellowish banks of smog. At each corner of the railing stood a large stone pot, in which were planted decorative plants and flowers.
In the center of the balcony stood a stocky figure dressed in scarlet finery who was dictating to another man dressed in the official black and red uniform, badged with the sunburst of the kingdom. The guard walked up and whispered in the second man's ear. The man the king had been dictating to excused himself and walked up to me, and it was then that I made the acquaintance of the chancellor. It was also then that I realized that if he was the chancellor then the identity of the other man was obvious.
The King of Oriana.
His royal highness was a tall, stocky man, brown churls extending from the back of his head upon which lay a gleaming circlet of gold. I didn't see his face just then, his back was turned to me as he stared off into the distance. I imagine if he had turned around to face me, I would seen identified the cool fury of those glittering blue eyes that he possessed. Blue eyes like I sometimes imagined the Creator having; unblinking, unquestioning, staring forever and seeing all and understanding nothing. I would have seen in those eyes the fire of passion, the regal dignity characteristic to the proud legacy of Oriana's monarchs.
I would have also seen the madness.
Perhaps if the king had turned around I would have seen all those things in those eyes and left that accursed palace, never to return, and history would have played out differently. But speculation on the might-have-beens is for the young, not for the old like myself.
The chancellor was also a tall man; tall and rail-thin, with snapping eyes and a mouth that looked as if he had tasted something bad. On his narrow face a pair of clear reading glasses glinted golden under the light. His clothing was rumpled and his hair, thin and showing the scalp beneath, was in wild disarray.
Instantly I knew that this man was the chancellor, to whom I would be apprenticed to, and eventually replace.
"I expected someone that was taller," he joked, shaking my hand. His long, slim fingers were bare, except for a single golden signet ring embossed with the royal crest of the Crown of Oriana.
"Can hardly help that, sir." I replied, ignoring the quasi-insult.
He nodded. "I suppose that we must work with what we have. You'll at least get more use out of the roll ladders in the records room than I do. Now if you'll follow me, we can get this over with."
The hallway to his office had the feel of walk-through sculpture. Everything was perfectly placed. I recall that the wallpaper had a rippling pattern of umber in wide vertical stripes, a very pale red against a dark blue background.
He led me back to his office where the interview process began.
I know that the office well, for in time it would become mine when I became chancellor. It is filled with shelves of accounting books, and they are all old and browning. Some of the books are held together with string or bits of rubber so ancient they break when they are touched but do not fall away for they have over the decades melted onto the book covers. Papers are everywhere, bundled and banded and boxed. Some of the boxes were falling apart, spilling yellow flimsy sheets that might be centuries old onto the floor.
The records of the Kingdom of Oriana stand upon those shelves and they are rotting at their cores, falling away in flakes, inexorably oxidizing, as are all the books, in a process so pervasive that one can smell it, a haze that clung to the books like smoke from a distant fire.
To organize them and preserve them is beyond the task of any one man. To even attempt to find order in all of that seems insane. I know. I've tried for years, but the collection seems accursed, mocking any attempts to collate its contents. Once I attempted to suggest to the Princess that perhaps the books could be transcribed to new ones, but she instead told me to …
I am sorry. I digress once more. You must stop me next time...
Sitting across from the chancellor - in the much the same way that I stand from you now - at a desk buried beneath a mass of charts, graphs, computations bright with a dozen colors.
The first thing he did was casually dip a finger into a snuff box of red powder. He closed his eyes in slight relaxation as he inhaled the fumes given off by the strange grounded herb.
"Would you like some," he asked me. That was the first question in the interview, if I desired to inhale some unknown drug. To this I declined, and to which he replied "A weakness of mine. It sometimes helps me to concentrate, and with this position sometimes you need anything that you can get."
The second question that I was asked was: "You have the documents that you were told to bring?" He sniffed his nose to clear it and replaced the lid to the snuff box.
"I have," I said, and withdrew the yellowed parchment carefully from my satchel. The chancellor took them, and after a moment of studying them, commented "You've gone to all the right schools. You come from a healthy linage, with no contamination in the bloodlines that I can see."
"You know what is involved with this honored position?"
"I have some inkling," I replied. "And might I say, I am honored for it."
"You will be paid a salary of one hundred gold at the first of every month. Though you might be used to the barter system, we use actual gold here in the palace. All our taxes and most of the tribute is paid using it. You will receive your meals from the royal kitchens, and you will have your own quarters here at the palace. Your duties will largely consist of aiding me with the tables of taxes collected and the distribution of resources like grain shipments and the granting of parcels of land throughout the kingdom.
"But you have also been brought here for another purpose, one that was not stipulated in your letter of summons." The chancellor paused, and said firmly. "You are to be the tutor to a special member of the royal family."
I raised an eyebrow, "I was indeed a tutor to many students when I was enrolled at the university, and I have no objections to continuing in this regard. Indeed, I am honored. But I am curious as to whom as I will teaching to and what you would like me to teach? Does the king now have a child, or does his mistress have a younger sibling?"
"No," he said. "I am afraid not. You will be assigned to tutoring the king's younger brother."
"I wasn't aware that there was another prince. I admit that my knowledge of recent events is quite vague. Did the king recently adopt another? Forgive me..."
"No need," the chancellor said. "You'll find many thing surprising here, and the existence of His Majesty's brother is a fact that is only known by a few outside of the royal family. He is kept, shall we say, isolated due to a complication of his birth. He is not well physically and even less so mentally."
The chancellor gave an involuntary wince. "Now if you will just sign right here..." The chancellor proffered a document with the terms and conditions of my employment for me to sign, which I did.
"I should like to see him," I said as I finished writing my signature.
"I doubt that you would say that if you knew what he is like, but I admire your attempt to feign enthusiasm," the chancellor said. "Very well. Afterwards I will show you to the dining hall and your quarters, but now let us go see him."
He stood up, reaching into the front drawer of his desk to pull out a ring of keys. In the same motion, he leaned down to the floor to pick up a lantern which he then handed to me.
"Let us go visit the king's brother," the chancellor said. "Let us go see the 'Duke of Zill.' "