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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks his long-suffering and patient wife, who is the muse of all his ideas, as well as many kind readers who offered advice. I would like particularly to thank Sean McNulty, Latin scholar, and Tom Simon, pundit, for their assistance in difficult linguistic and historical matters.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Acknowledgments

Epigraph

Part Two: A World of Fire

One: Theft of Fire

Two: The Sea of Cunning

Part Three: A World of Ice

Interlude: A Cold Silence

Part Four: The Long Wait

One: The Tomb-Robbers

Two: The Pit of Revenants

Three: The Warrior-Aristocrats

Four: The Warlock of Williamsburg

Five: The Blue Men

Six: The Testament of Soorm the Hormagaunt

Seven: The Old Man of Albion

Eight: The Testament of Oenoe the Nymph

Nine: The Dying Place

Ten: The Testament of Kine Larz of Gutter

Eleven: The Coming of the Witches

Twelve: The Testament of Ctesibius the Savant

Thirteen: The Testament of Rada Lwa the Scholar

Fourteen: Rumpelstiltskin and the Widow

Fifteen: The Calculus of Fate

Persons of the Drama

Races of the Drama

Tor Books by John C. Wright

About the Author

Copyright

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;

Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.—

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew

From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue …

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

PART TWO

A World of Fire

1

Theft of Fire

A.D. 2535

1. Sir Guy

All he wanted to do was stay dead.

Menelaus Montrose woke up while his body was still frozen solid. The bioimplants the battle surgeons of the Knights Hospitalier had woven into his brain stem were working well enough for him to send a signal to the surface of the coffin, activate the pinpoint camera cells dotting its outer armor, and see who was trying to wake him up.

The light in the crypt was dim. The walls were irregular brick, and in places were cemented with bones and skulls. Niches held both coffins for the dead and cryonic suspension coffins for the slumbering.

There was a figure like a metal ape near the vault door, which had moved on vast pistons and stood open. The light spilled in from here. Only things near the door were clear.

To one side of the larger metal statue was a marble sculpture of Saint Barbara, the patron of grave-diggers, holding a cup and a palm leaf in her stiff, stone hands; to the other was Saint Ubaldo, carrying a crosier, whose office was to ward off neural disorders and obsessions. Above the vault door was a relief showing the martyrdom of Saint Renatus Goupil under the tomahawks of Iroquois. He was the patron saint of anesthesiologists and cryonicists. Above all this, in an arch, were written the words TUITIO FIDEI ET OBSEQUIUM PAUPERUM.

From this, Menelaus knew he had been moved, at least once, from his previous interment site beneath Tiber Island in the Fatebenefratelli Hospital vault. That had been little over a quarter century ago: the calculations of Cliomancy did not predict any historical crisis sufficient to require him to be relocated in so short a space as thirty years. That meant Blackie was interfering with the progression of history again.

The larger metal statue moved, ducking its head and stepping farther into the vault. Menelaus could see the Maltese cross enameled in white on the red breastplate. There were four antennae and microwave horns on his back, folded down. The scabbard for his (ceremonial) broadsword was empty, and so was the holster for his (equally ceremonial) chemical-energy pistol. Between helmet and goggles and breather mask, the figure looked like a nightmarish bug.

Montrose turned on the microphones on the outside of the coffin, and special cells in his brain stem sent signals to receivers dotting the inner coffin lid, and also to implants lining his auditory nerve. It sounded like a strange, flat, echoless noise, not like something that actually came through his ear, but he could make it out.

Menelaus turned on the speaker vox. “Why do you disturb my slumber, Sir Knight?”

He heard the ticking hum of motors and actuators coming from the armored figure. Like a mountain sinking into the sea, the big armored figure knelt. Menelaus realized this was strength-amplification armor. He tried to work out the Cliometric constellation of a set of military circumstances where this type of gear would serve any purpose that a sniper with a powerful set of winged remotes could not serve better, and his imagination failed. Unless the man was wrestling giants, or facing enemies who could walk up to arm’s length and tear the flesh from his bones, he did not see the purpose.

“My apologies, sleeper. Ah. Our records are somewhat dark. Are you Menelaus Montrose? You don’t sound like him.”

“Why the poxy hell do you disturb my poxy slumber, Sir goddam Knight?”

“Ah! Montrose! Good to hear you again, Liege.”

“Guy? Sir Guy, is that you?”

“Pellucid thawed me out two days ago. As we agreed, I have a veto over anyone trying to disturb you, even your pet machine. And it is His Excellency Grandmaster Guiden von Hompesch zu Bolheim now. They promoted me when I slept.”

“Yeah, they do poxified pox like that to you when you ain’t up and about to fend it off.”

Another implanted circuit in his brain stem made contact with a library cloth stored in an airtight capsule inside the coffin armor. The self-diagnostic showed much more deterioration than he would have expected. Half the circuits were dead, and file after file was corrupt. But he brought up the calendar, and a fiber fed the pixy image directly into the same neural circuits he was using to peer through the cameras.

“Pox! Thirty-five years. Rania’s not back yet? Any signals?”

“I have not heard, Liege. There is something that may be a signal. I would have prevented them from thawing you, if it were not significant.”

“So tell me.”

“An astronomer has detected massive energy discharges erupting from the Diamond Star. So it looks like your Princess arrived there years ago, and we are seeing now the result of some sort of macro-scale engineering. The data are ambiguous, and the Order thought you would want, with your own eyes, to look the data over and draw your own conclusion. Was I right to wake you?”

“Damn right, and thank you for asking. Have the astronomer send his data into the coffin. I can tell you the input-output registers.”