Chapter 002| The King's Tongue

There were only two whale-oil lamps in the Tomb Undervault.

Ion sat under the second lamp, turning the coronation rites of the 102nd king to the sixth page. Since the old king passed in the afternoon, he had not left the Royal Tomb. The Church neither barred him nor kept him. He himself would not go. When any reigning king passes, the rule of the Tomb Undervault is to look up the coronation rites of his great-grandfather. That is the way of it. The 102nd king was the great-grandfather of the present old king, crowned in Year 318 of the Royal Era, reigned twenty-seven years, died in his sleep. No one could find the cause of his death——what the Tomb Hierophant wrote that year was "the mandate of heaven was spent," and in all twenty-seven years no other coroner's record was left behind.

Ion did not believe the four words "the mandate of heaven was spent."

He took up the greypen——the goose-quill from which the house took its surname, the one whose writing on skin would not fade——and wrote a line in the margin of the sixth page of the rites:

102nd died in sleep = no autopsy = record without basis

When he had written it he set the pen back by the inkstone.

The Undervault was 12 meters deep, 4 meters wide, the whole west wall given to archives, ranged back from the 87th king, one cabinet to each king. The archives before the 87th were in the Main Vault, which was not the coroner's to keep. The smell of the whale-oil lamps overpowered the mildew of the parchment scrolls, but it could not overpower the damp of the Undervault——the Royal Tomb lay 30 meters underground, four walls of stone, never dry the year round.

Ion was thirty-eight, the Throne Coroner, in his seventeenth year holding the seal. The coroner before him had only sat to his eleventh year——Ion was the second in all history to sit to a seventeenth. Who the first was, Ion had never found in any record——there was only half a page of ruined text in the Undervault, and on that half page the surname had been blotted over with ink, blotted twice, to make sure it could never be read again.

Ion had searched seventeen years and not found it. He knew that searching another seventeen would not find it either.

But every year he searched once.

The door opened.

No knock first. The door axle gave half a creak, and the man was inside.

The door of the Undervault must be knocked three times before entering, with name and rank announced. In seventeen years only two kinds of men had skipped that rule——the Church's courier, the Throne's summons.

Ion did not look up.

"My lord Greypen." The courier was a tomb-keeping servant, sixteen or seventeen, his voice not yet fully broken, breathless from running. "The Throne Hall. At once. Do not change your clothes."

Ion put the greypen into the first layer of his tool bag.

"Who?" he asked.

"The Holy Father, the Captain of the Guard, the Seventh Princess. All in their places."

"The old king's body?"

"On the altar. The lid is already off."

Ion closed the coronation rites of the 102nd king and rose. His left hand held the tool bag, his right took no lamp——the way from the Undervault to the Throne Hall he had walked at least eight hundred times in seventeen years. He needed no lamp.

Before he went out of the Undervault he turned and looked once at that half page of ruined text.

The ruined text was still there.

---

The Throne Hall stood directly above the Royal Tomb, 60 meters above the surface, the deepest of all the halls of the Iron Palace.

Ion went up, past two rows of holy knights, through the inner court, past the Holy Father's vesting room, around the third turn, and pushed open the last bronze door. Both sides of the bronze door were carved with the iron deer and the halo, carved for 412 years.

The hall was black.

Eighty-seven lamps hung from the vault, every whale-oil in them fresh, every flame lit. The light struck upward and nothing came back. The dome was held up by 87 basalt pillars, each pillar 18 meters from floor to vault, the surface smooth, as if drinking the light into itself. The brighter the lamps, the thicker the black at the foot of the pillars. The first time Ion came into this hall he had counted the pillars, and given up halfway——the black pressed on the numbers and would not let a man hold where he had reached.

The Throne was at the far end of the hall.

Ion did not look at the Throne. He came in and did not look at the Throne——this had been his habit for seventeen years. Do not look, do not think of it, do not approach it of his own will. The coronation instruments of past ages heaped beside the Throne he had seen, all of them; the Throne itself he had never looked at close. In seventeen years he had needed to come within three meters of the Throne only twice——once at the old king's coronation (twenty-four years ago, when Ion was still an apprentice, come in behind the previous coroner), and once six years ago at the coronation of a certain lord-king (who was no king, only a nominal successor, later deposed).

The Throne gave off a very faint silver light. The light did not travel outward; the black around it drew toward it instead, like water seeping into a gap. The back of the chair had no solid board to it; it was woven up of very fine lines, one by one, and those lines rose and fell slowly, like a cloth laid over something that was breathing.

As Ion came into the hall, the lines of the chair's back leaned a little toward him.

——No. Not leaned. It shivered once, then drew back.

Ion went on.

The altar was in the middle stretch of the hall, 9 meters from the Throne, 11 meters from the bronze door. A white cloth was laid over the altar, and under the white cloth was the body. Three around the body.

The Holy Father, Aurus——the white robe of the White Tower Church, the collar embroidered with the silver halo, his hair nearly all white, his eyes clear, past sixty.

The Captain of the Guard, Marcus——iron armor, his cloak the guard's true red, his left hand on the sword's hilt, his right not, past fifty, a short beard over his whole face.

The Seventh Princess, Selene——a silver cloak, a single braid, the end of the braid bound with a length of gray thread. The gray thread was of the Mute March, not the rule of the Ironhold court. She was twenty-two or -three, long-browed, not like her father, like the third-generation queen, dead these thirty years.

"My lord Greypen," the Holy Father said.

Ion bowed, not deep, the angle of seventeen years, just answering to the rite of "the Throne Coroner to the Church." He straightened, to the Captain of the Guard: "Captain." To Selene: "Highness."

Selene did not return the bow. She only looked at him, looked for a second.

"Please begin," the Holy Father said.

Ion set the tool bag at the right of the altar, opened it, laid things out in order: the coroner's knife, nine silver probes, three bone saws (blunt tooth, fine tooth, bone saw), a bronze mirror, the greypen, the key to the Tomb Undervault——this one not used, set at the far right by custom.

He washed his hands——there was a silver basin by the altar, with spirits added. When he had washed, he drew on gloves of camel hide.

"Lift it," he said.

Two hierophants came and lifted the white cloth.

The old king. The 105th. Passed in the afternoon of the 23rd of the Cold Moon, Year 412 of the Royal Era; it was now early evening. The body was still fresh, the skin going blue, a very faint thread of blood at the corner of the mouth, the eyes closed, the pupils before the closing of the eyes——no. He would have to examine to know.

Ion lifted the eyelid with a silver probe. The pupils were even, not dilated, not contracted, no fright at the closing of the eyes. First record: no fright before death.

He parted the lips and looked at the teeth. The row complete, the third lower right molar repaired a year ago, the work done by the Royal Tomb's physician. No bite on the tongue, no bite on the lip. Second record: no convulsion before death.

He looked at the neck arteries. No rope mark, no choke mark, no fingerprint. Third record: not strangled before death.

He smelled the nostrils. No spirits, no poison herb, no opium. Fourth: no poison taken by mouth or skin.

He raised the left hand and looked at the nails. The nails clean, no scratch mark, no mark of struggle. Fifth: did not struggle.

He looked at the right hand. The same.

"Outwardly: a state of health, no external wound, no typical sign of poisoning," Ion said to the Captain of the Guard.

The Captain's hand did not ease from the sword's hilt. "Inside."

Ion took the coroner's knife. "Highness, Holy Father, turn aside."

The Holy Father turned aside. Selene did not move, went on watching.

Ion cut down from the throat, one stroke straight down, to the lower belly. The knife was very steady. Seventeen years. The eight hundred and forty-sixth time. He did not look up to read another's face.

The belly opened, he looked the organs over once. The stomach held only gruel, no poison, no solid residue. The liver normal, not swollen. The spleen normal. The kidneys normal. The pericardium normal, no fluid pooled.

"No anomaly in the belly," he said.

"The breastbone," the Captain said.

Ion took the bone saw, the fine-tooth one. The breastbone takes 8 minutes to saw, and Ion had never sawed more than 10. Today he sawed 11.

Halfway through he found the breastbone's hardness was wrong.

The fine teeth of the saw bit in, and the feel that came back was too solid. The breastbone should be hollow; the saw passing through should give a stretch of slack. This one did not. There was something pressed up under the teeth.

He set down the bone saw, took a silver probe, ran it round the inside of the breastbone——not cutting into the chest, only along the surface——and scraped, once.

The silver probe touched a point.

"Captain, back three steps," Ion said.

The Captain stepped back three.

Ion pried slowly with the silver probe. Before the probe had even brought its weight to bear, the breastbone split open from the inside——the thing within pushed its own way out and shoved his hand back half an inch.

A length of black, hard matter bored up from inside the breastbone.

Ion tapped it with the probe. The ring of it was metal, clear, cold. He scraped off a little of the surface, and under it showed a substance black and gleaming, giving off a very faint silver light——the same light as the back of the Throne's chair just now.

A length of the Crown's tooth. Pushing outward from inside the breastbone, pushed out a small half-length.

Ion ran the probe round its root. Between the tooth and the breastbone there was no seam, no rivet, no weld——it came out of the bone itself, bone and metal grown into one. The flesh and blood around the breastbone was not wounded, no pus, no inflammation. The bone had been forced open from the inside, like a child cutting teeth, the tooth breaking the gum, the gum-flesh giving way of itself.

Ion did not speak.

The Holy Father did not look. The Holy Father's face was turned the other way. He did not gasp——Ion marked this——he did not gasp. The Holy Father knew this thing.

The Captain's hand pressed back to the sword's hilt, tighter.

Selene came a step nearer. She looked at that length of black tooth for about 5 seconds.

"My lord Greypen," she said. Her voice very low. "Please go on examining."

Ion went on examining.

He opened the chest——the heart normal, not enlarged, not shrunk, no separation, no puncture. The lungs normal. A little mucus in the windpipe, a normal response of death.

"No external wound in the chest," he said.

"Except that length?" The Captain pointed once at the black tooth inside the breastbone.

"That length grew out of the bone," Ion said. "No wound, no mark of anything set in. It was in his bone to begin with."

The Captain was silent.

Ion turned to the head. Shaved the hair, cut the back of the skull——the brain tissue normal, no hemorrhage, no mass.

One place left.

Ion walked back to the head of the body.

"Lift the tongue," he said to the hierophants.

The hierophants dared not move.

Ion lifted it himself.

With a silver probe he picked the root of the tongue from the gap in the teeth and turned the tongue over.

The face of the tongue up, Ion used the bronze mirror to throw the lamplight onto it.

There was a word on the tongue.

One word. Ion bent close and touched the cut of it with the probe. Painted ink would lift a layer; a knife-cut would turn out a lip of flesh——this cut had neither. The strokes lay sunk into the flesh of the tongue, the edges worn smooth, grown into one with the flesh around them, as if the tongue had come up bearing it from the first.

An ancient glyph, four strokes, a structure Ion had never seen in modern Ironhold script.

But Ion had seen this word.

The third volume of the Tomb Rites, the 47th page, in the entry for the last years of the Era of the Gods, had named it once. For three hundred years no one had opened that book. Ion had found it eleven years ago in an archive box deep in the Undervault——no label on the box, only that book inside, the cover worn, the page edges dusted. Eleven years ago he had read that book through once, and committed the word on the 47th page to memory.

Every year he opened that book once. Every year the word on the 47th page was there.

Now the word was on the old king's tongue.

"My lord Greypen," Selene said.

Ion did not answer at once. He bent his head and looked at the word again. He scraped lightly along the edge of the word with the silver probe——scraped off some black flakes, like charcoal, not the color of flesh.

What the word was called, what it meant, Ion could not say. He knew only one thing——it had a name, and that name he remembered.

The third volume of the Tomb Rites, the 47th page, that entry read:

In the last years of the Era of the Gods, the first word appears on the tongue of a man.

The first word.

Ion straightened and put the silver probe back into the third layer of the tool bag.

"Holy Father," he said.

The Holy Father did not turn back.

"Holy Father," he said again. "I need you to confirm this word."

The Holy Father, slowly, turned back.

The Holy Father looked at the word, looked for about three seconds.

"I do not know it," he said.

Ion did not answer.

That the Holy Father did not gasp——Ion went on keeping it in mind.

"My lord Greypen," the Captain said. "Your finding."

Ion closed the old king's tongue. He drew the white cloth back over the head. He took off the gloves and threw them into the refuse basin at the altar's edge.

"He did not die of poison," he said.

"Then?" the Captain asked.

Ion now——at last——raised his head, to the Captain of the Guard.

"He died of having a true name spoken over him," he said.

For a second the Captain did not react. Then his hand, slowly, eased from the sword's hilt.

The Holy Father did not turn back.

Selene said, softly, "My lord Greypen, your next words will either lose you your office or cost you your head. I would have you decide first which one you want."

Ion did not look at Selene.

"Highness," he said, still looking at the Captain, "the last man to sit in this seat was stripped of it by the Throne's own hand."

A pause of a second.

"I am not much afraid of losing this seat."

Selene did not answer.

The Holy Father did not turn back.

The Captain's hand eased, fell, did not rest on the sword.

The hall went quiet. No one spoke. The lamps still burned, wind came through the seams of the vault, the back of the Throne's chair held to that very faint rise and fall. Four living men, one corpse, and not one of them opened his mouth.

How long the quiet held, no one could say——

——there was someone running outside the hall.

The footsteps came from the west, running hard, the boots striking the stone stair step by step, without regard for ceremony. The holy knights' shouts to halt came from far off, drowned under the footsteps.

The bronze door was pushed open.

A foot soldier of the guard, his whole head sweating, his cloak askew on one side, came in, looked once at the altar, and at once knelt, his head bowed to the ground.

"Report——"

"Speak," the Captain said.

"The Mute Wall beacon, relayed by Watchtower No. 1: the hounds are massing in force. The alert is raised to the highest level."

The Captain did not react at once.

The Holy Father did not turn back.

Selene——now Selene at last raised her eyes to Ion once.

Ion did not look at her.

From the hidden compartment of his tool bag——under the sheath of the coroner's knife, that layer——he took out a sheet of silver paper. The length of black crown-tooth he had pried from inside the breastbone with the silver probe just now——half a length, about half a knuckle long——he picked up, wrapped in the silver paper, and put into the hidden compartment.

He closed the compartment.

Then he closed the tool bag.

"Captain, Holy Father, Highness," he said. "I will return to the Undervault and complete tonight's record. I will send the finding to the Guard's command before dawn tomorrow."

The Holy Father did not turn back.

The Captain: "Granted."

Selene: "My lord Greypen."

Ion looked at her now.

"The Undervault. Early evening. I will come," she said. "Have two copies ready, please."

Ion nodded, bowed——the bow he had just given the princess, for the first time in seventeen years lowered by a degree——took up the tool bag, and walked out of the bronze door.

As the bronze door closed, the Throne's chair-back shivered again.

Ion did not turn back.

【Ch. 002 End · The Throne Hall】