Chapter Five - The Deplorable Word

The children were facing one another across the pillar where the bell hung, still trembling, though it no longer gave out any note. Suddenly they heard a soft noise from the end of the room which was still undamaged. They turned quick as lightning to see what it was. One of the robed figures, the furthest-off one of all, the man whom Digma thought so beautiful, was rising from its chair. When he stood up they realized that he was even taller than they had thought. And you could see at once, not only from his crown and robes, but from the flash of his eyes and the curve of his lips, that he was a great king. He looked round the room and saw the damage and saw the children, but you could not guess from his face what he thought of either or whether he was surprised. He came forward with long, swift strides.

"Who has awaked me? Who has broken the spell?" he asked.

"I think it must have been me," said Digma.

"You!" said the king, laying his hand on her shoulder - a white, beautiful hand, but Digma could feel that it was strong as steel pincers. "You? But you are only a child, a common child. Anyone can see at a glance that you have no drop of royal or noble blood in your veins. How did such as you dare to enter this house?"

"We've come from another world; by magic," Paul said, who thought it was high time the king took some notice of him as well as of Digma.

"Is this true?" said the king, still looking at Digma and not giving Paul even a glance.

"Yes, it is," said she.

The king put his other hand under her chin and forced it up so that he could see her face better. Digma tried to stare back but she soon had to let her eyes drop. There was something about his that overpowered her.

After he had studied her for well over a minute, he let go of her chin and said, "You are no sorceress. The mark of it is not on you. You must be only the servant of a sorceress. It is on another's magic that you have travelled here."

"It was my Aunt Andrea," said Digma.

At the moment, not in the room itself but from somewhere very close, there came, first a rumbling, then a creaking, and then a roar of falling masonry, and the floor shook.

"There is great peril here," said the king. "The whole palace is breaking up. If we are not out of it in a few minutes we shall be buried under the ruin." He spoke as calmly as if she had been merely mentioning the time of day. "Come," he added, and held out a hand to each of the children.

Paul, who was disliking the king and feeling rather sulky, would not have let his hand be taken if he could have helped it. But though the king spoke so calmly, his movements were as quick as thought. Before Paul knew what was happening, his left hand had been caught in a hand so much larger and stronger than his own that he could do nothing about it.

"This is an awful man," Paul thought. "He's strong enough to break my arm with one twist. And now that he's got my left hand I can't get at my yellow ring. If I tried to stretch across and get my right hand into my left pocket I mightn't be able to reach it, before he asked me what I was doing. Whatever happens we mustn't let him know about the rings. I do hope Digma has the sense to keep her mouth shut. I wish I could get a word with her alone."

The king led them out of the Hall of Images into a long corridor and then through a whole maze of halls and stairs and courtyards. Again and again they heard parts of the great palace collapsing, sometimes quite close to them. Once a huge arch came thundering down only a moment after they had passed through it. The king was walking quickly - the children had to trot to keep up with him but he showed no sign of fear.

Digma thought, "He's wonderfully brave. And strong. He's what I call a king! I do hope he's going to tell us the story of this place."

He did tell them certain things as they went along:

"That is the door to the dungeons," he said, or "That passage leads to the principal torture chambers," or "This was the old banqueting hall where my great grandmother bade seven hundred nobles to a feast and killed them all before they had drunk their fill. They had had rebellious thoughts."

They came at last into a hall larger and loftier than any they had yet seen. From its size and from the great doors at the far end, Digma thought that now at last they must be coming to the main entrance. In this she was quite right. The doors were dead black, either ebony or some black metal which is not found in our world. They were fastened with great bars, most of them too high to reach and all too heavy to lift. She wondered how they would get out.

The king let go of his hand and raised his arm. He drew himself up to his full height and stood rigid. Then he said something which they couldn't understand (but it sounded horrid) and made an action as if he were throwing something towards the doors. And those tall and heavy doors trembled for a second as if they were made of silk and then crumbled away till there was nothing left of them but a heap of dust on the threshold.

"Whew!" whistled Digma.

"Has your mistress sorceress, your aunt, power like mine?" asked the king, firmly seizing Digma's hand again. "But I shall know later. In the meantime, remember what you have seen. This is what happens to things, and to people, who stand in my way."

Much more light than they had yet seen in that country was pouring in through the now empty doorway, and when the king led them out through it they were not surprised to find themselves in the open air. The wind that blew in their faces was cold, yet somehow stale. They were looking from a high terrace and there was a great landscape out below them.

Low down and near the horizon hung a great, red sun, far bigger than our sun. Digma felt at once that it was also older than ours: a sun near the end of its life, weary of looking down upon that world. To the left of the sun, and higher up, there was a single star, big and bright. Those were the only two things to be seen in the dark sky; they made a dismal group. And on the earth, in every direction, as far as the eye could reach, there spread a vast city in which there was no living thing to be seen. All the temples, towers, palaces, pagodas, pyramids, and bridges cast long, black, disastrous-looking shadows in the light of that withered sun. Once a great river had flowed through the city, but the water had long since vanished, and it was now only a wide ditch of grey dust.

"Look well on that which no eyes will ever see again," said the king. "Such was Sharn, that great city, the city of the Queen of Queens, the wonder of the world, perhaps of all the worlds. Does your aunt rule any city as great as this, girl?"

"No," said Digma. She was going to explain that Aunt Andrea didn't rule any cities, but the king went on, ""It is silent now. But I have stood here when the whole air was full of the noises of Sharn; the tramping of feet, the creaking of wheels, the cracking of the whips and the groaning of slaves, the thunder of chariots, and the sacrificial drums beating in the temples. I have stood here (but that was near the end) when the roar of battle went up from every street and the river Tekribis ran red with blood." He paused and added, "And in one moment one man blotted it out for ever."

"Who?" asked Digma in a faint voice; but she had already guessed the answer.

"I," said the King. "I, Jador the last king, but the King of the World."

The two children stood silent, shivering in the cold wind.

"It was my brother's fault," said the king. "He drove me to it. May the Curse of all the Powers rest upon him forever! At any moment I was ready to make peace - yes and to spare his life too, if only he would yield me the throne. But he would not. His pride has destroyed the whole world.

Even after the war had begun, there was a solemn promise that neither side would use magic. But when he broke his promise, what could I do? Fool! As if he did not know that I had more magic than he! He even knew that I had the secret of the Deplorable Word. Did he think - he was always a weakling - that I would not use it?"

"What was it?" asked Digma.

"That was the secret of secrets," said King Jador. "It had long been known to the great queens of my race that there was a word which, if spoken with the proper ceremonies, would destroy all living things except the one who spoke it. But the ancient queens were weak and softhearted and bound themselves and all who should come after them with great oaths never even to seek after the knowledge of that word. But I learned it in a secret place and paid a terrible price to learn it."

Digma and Paul both wondered what the price had been but were certainly not going to ask him.

"I did not use it until he forced me to it. I fought to overcome him by every other means. I poured out the blood of my armies like water—"

"Beast!" Paul muttered.

"The last great battle," said the king, "raged for three days here in Sharn itself. For four days I looked down upon it from this very spot. I did not use my power till the last of my soldiers had fallen to their swords and spears and magicians, and the accursed man, my brother, at the head of his rebels was up those great stairs that lead up from the city to the terrace. I waited till we were so close that we could see one another's faces. He flashed his abominable, wicked eyes upon me, smiled, and said, "Victory."

"Yes," said I, "Victory, but not yours." Then I spoke the Deplorable Word. A moment later I was the only living thing beneath the sun.",

"But the people?" gasped Digma.

"What people, girl?" asked the king.

"All the ordinary people," said Paul, "who'd never done you any harm. And the men, and the children, and the animals."

"Don't you understand?" said the king (still speaking to Digma). "I was the king. They were all my people. What else were they there for but to do my will?"

"It was rather hard luck on them, all the same," said she.

"I had forgotten that you are only a common girl. How should you understand reasons of state? You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of the common people is not wrong for a great king such as I. The weight of the world is on our shoulders. We must be freed from all rules. Ours is a high and lonely destiny."

Digma suddenly remembered that Aunt Andrea had used exactly the same words. But they sounded much more impressive when King Jador said them; perhaps because Aunt Andrea was not seven feet tall and dazzlingly beautiful.

"And what did you do then?" Paul asked.

"I had already cast potent spells on the hall where the images of my ancestors sit. And those spells meant that I should sit on a throne and sleep among them, like an image myself, and need neither food nor water, though it were a thousand years, till one came and struck the bell and awoke me."

One idiot, Paul thought, looking at Digma.

"Was it the Dire Word that made the sun like that?" asked Digma.

"Like what?" asked Jador, looking puzzled.

"So big, so red, and so cold."

"It has always been so," said Jador. "At least, for thousands of years. Have you a different sort of sun in your world?"

"Yes, it's smaller and yellower. And it gives a good deal more heat."

The king gave a long drawn "A-a-ah!" And Digma saw on his face that same hungry and greedy look which she had lately seen on Aunt Andrea's. "So," he said, "yours is a younger world."

He paused for a moment to look once more at the deserted city - and if he was sorry for all the evil he had done there, he certainly didn't show it - and then said: "Now, let us be going. It is cold here at the end of all at the ages."

"Going where?" asked both the children.

"Where?" repeated Jador in surprise. "To your world, of course."

Paul and Digma looked at each other, aghast. Paul had disliked the king from the first; and even Digma, now that he had heard the story, felt that she had seen quite as much of him as she wanted. Certainly, he was not at all the sort of person they liked to take home. And if they did like, they didn't know how they could. What they wanted was to get away themselves: but Paul couldn't get at his ring and of course Digma couldn't go without him.

Digma got very red in the face and stammered, "Oh - oh - our world. I d-didn't know you wanted to go there."

"What else were you sent here for if not to fetch me?" asked Jador.

"I'm sure you wouldn't like our world at all," Digma said. "It's not his sort of place, is it Paul? It's very dull; not worth seeing, really."

"It will soon be worth seeing when I rule it," answered the king.

"Oh, but you can't," said Digma. "It's not like that. They wouldn't let you; you know."

The king gave a contemptuous smile. "Many great queens," he said, "thought they could stand against the House of Azkabon. But they all fell, and their very names are forgotten. Foolish girl! Do you think that I, with my beauty and my magic, will not have your whole world at my feet before a year has passed? Prepare your incantations and take me there at once."

"This is perfectly frightful," whispered Digma to Paul.

"Perhaps you fear for this aunt of yours," said Jador. "But if she honours me duly, she shall keep her life and her throne. I am not coming to fight against her. She must be a very great sorceress, if she has found how to send you here. Is she queen of your whole world or only of part?"

"She isn't queen of anywhere," said Digma.

"You are lying," said the king. "Does not magic always go with the blood royal? Who ever heard of commoners being sorceresses? I can see the truth whether you speak it or not. Your aunt is a great queen and the great enchantress of your world. And by her art she has seen the shadow of my face, in some magic mirror or some enchanted pool; and for the love of my beauty she has made a potent spell which shook your world to its foundations and sent you across the vast gulf between worlds to ask my favour and to bring me to her. Answer me: is that not how it was?"

"Well, not exactly," said Digma.

"Not exactly," shouted Paul. "Why, it's absolute twaddle from beginning to end."

"Varlets!" cried the king, turning in rage upon Paul and seizing his hair, at the very top of his head where it hurts most. But in so doing he let go of both the children's hands.

"Now," shouted Digma; and "Quick! Paul yelled. They plunged their left hands into their pockets. They did not even need to put the rings on. The moment they touched them; the whole of that worn, weary world vanished from their eyes. They were rushing upward and a warm green light was growing nearer overhead.