Seven Kings: Books of the Shaper: Volume 2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

rift greater by cloistering himself in this lofty tower for the better part of a year to work on this book. Yet surely Tyro understood that this was Lyrilan’s tribute to the life of their father. Tyro had ordered a golden statue of Dairon erected in the palace courtyard, and another of bronze in the Great Marketplace. Yet Tyro did not create these works himself. Lyrilan’s ode to Dairon’s greatness was something he had created out of raw love, stubborn dedication, and blood-dark ink. Both of Tyro’s sculptures had been completed months before Lyrilan’s manuscript.
    “One does not need to stare at the sun to understand its brightness, Majesty,” said the sage, tugging at a single braid of his white beard. “Have I not read your previous tomes, and every line of your inconstant poetry? I have no reason to believe that this volume will not be a masterwork. Your father would be very proud of you.”
    Lyrilan shrugged his shoulders and poured wine into a crystal goblet for his guest. He refilled his own cup with more of the Uurzian vintage. Now that his head need no longer be clear, he could afford to get good and drunk. Then would come sleep, long and deep. After that, he would take his wife in the way he had so long denied himself.
    Ramiyah
, he prayed,
please be able to forgive my long absence. Now I will give you children, as many as you desire
. He knew there would come a day when another unwritten book would call out to him, possess his body and spirit, and demand that he write it into existence. Someday he would creep from his bed and find himself chained to the writing desk again, obsessed with some new work. Yet now he put the thought from his head. He must find a balance between this solitary work and his duties as husband, as King, and eventually as a father.
    “Stay here,” he told Volomses. “The chamber is yours. Read it. It needs your eyes. Only when I have gained your studied endorsement will I have it bound and passed to the scribes for duplication.” Lyrilan waved to his servant, who opened a wall closet and brought fine new robes for the King as he shed his sweat-stained tunic.
    Volomses gave a solemn half-bow. “I will not leave this chamber until I have done so,” he swore. Servants would bring the sage meals and wine, and even courtesans if he wished, while he inhabited the study and perused Lyrilan’s pages. This was a ritual Lyrilan had enacted with every book he had written for the past seven years. His first volume,
The Perilous Quest of Prince D’zan, Scion of Yaskatha
, was one of five such tomes to grace the shelves of the Royal Library of Uurz. Each of those volumes had benefited from the editorship of Volomses. This book of Dairon’s life would be the sixth. Lyrilan wondered if, someday when the old sage had passed away, he could ever write another book or have the courage to put it on public display. He put the thought from his mind.
    “Thank you,” he said, embracing the sage as an uncle or cousin. “They are never finished until you read them.”
    Volomses nodded. His gaze wandered to the manuscript as he drank from the goblet, then his head turned back to Lyrilan, who had donned a robe of green and gold, a cape of liquid-blue silk, and hose of black velvet. His wiry legs were far too thin for going bare, even in the long heat of the drought.
    “Your brother expects you at the feasting,” said the sage, as if he muttered a warning.
    Lyrilan nodded. “I will not disappoint him. In fact, I may drink more wine than he does this night.” The servant handed him a thin coronet of gold with a single emerald set at the center of the forehead. Lyrilan slipped it on to fit tightly about his brow and arranged the long, oiled curls of his black hair. “Tell my wife Iawait her in the Grand Hall,” he said. The page rushed off to summon his mistress.
    Volomses still had not looked away from his King. “You know there will be gladiators? Khyrein spies in a duel of death.”
    Lyrilan