Eric Brown - The Kings of Eternity

The Kings of Eternity

Eric Brown

First published 2011 by Solaris, an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

www.solarisbooks.com

ISBN(.epub): 978-1-84997-252-9

ISBN(.mobi): 978-1-84997-251-2

Copyright Eric Brown 2011

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Designed & typeset by Rebellion Publishing

PART ONE

Summer in Kallitha

Chapter One

Kallitha, July, 1999

That night, Daniel Langham dreamed. He had a nightmare about an alien being that came to Earth through an oval of brilliant blue light to assassinate him and his friends. The beast was reptilian and stood upright on two legs, fast and darting and vicious. It carried a rifle that spat liquid fire and annihilated its victims in seconds. In the nightmare, Langham was running, and getting nowhere, and the alien was bearing down on him.

He came awake in the early hours and sat upright, crying out loud in panic. He was sweating, his heart pounding. He calmed himself and stared around at his familiar bedroom.

He wondered if the dream was a warning for him to be even more vigilant. He climbed quickly from bed and dressed. From beneath his pillow he took the oval, amber mereth and slipped it into the pocket of his trousers, which he had done habitually for the past twenty-five years.

Then he left his villa and hurried along the path through the pine trees.

The moon was out, silvering his way, and the night was absolutely silent. Through the trees he could see the sea, twinkling.

He strode out over the uneven ground until he came to the shape of the villa on the hillside to his left. It was beautiful stone-built building constructed on two levels, with a spectacular view over the sea.

Yesterday, according to Georgiou at the taverna, an English woman had moved into the villa. Langham wondered if it was this that had provoked the nightmare.

He walked up the sloping drive and around to the rear of the building. He came to where he knew the bedroom to be. Eight years ago, when old Helmut had moved into the property, Langham had performed the very same... vetting operation, he had called it then.

Now he paused outside the open bedroom window and slipped the mereth from his pocket. He held it out towards the window, his breathing uneven, ragged, lest the mereth tingle painfully on his palm.

It did not tingle: it thrummed healthily, as if a tiny engine were embedded within its polished amber shape.

The English woman was, then, what she claimed to be.

Feeling light-headed with relief, Langham hurried from the villa and retraced his footsteps home.

For the rest of the night, he slept well.

The following morning, in common with every other morning for the past ten years, Langham sat in the shade of the vine-covered patio and wrote his customary four pages.

It usually took him three hours to complete his quota, from nine until twelve, but today he finished an hour ahead of schedule. The characters had taken over and chatted amongst themselves for the entire scene. All Langham had had to do was listen and take down what they said.

Over the years his writing routine had made him a creature of habit. He would no sooner dream of taking a morning off than he would of jumping into the sea from the rocky headland outside his villa. It helped, of course, that he was a recluse, and never left the island.

The trouble with being a respected writer, and trying to keep a low profile, was that his insistence on shunning the limelight itself became an issue of intense debate in the middle-brow press and the review sections of the Sunday papers. The more privacy he wanted, the less he got.

Perhaps, he mused as he slipped his manuscript book and pen into the drawer of his rickety writing table, it was time to move on again.

He took his sun hat from the hook on the whitewashed wall of his villa and stepped from the patio. Last year his editor, on one of his rare visits, had expressed shock and concern with Langhams habit of leaving his novel in progress in the drawer of the table, where any Tom, Dick or Harry - or even, Langham had corrected him playfully, Spiros, Kostas or Yannis - could get their thieving hands on it. Langham said that hed left his manuscript books in the same place for ten years, and they had never come to any harm.

But what would you do if some light-fingered Kostas did run off with a work in progress?

Hed thought about that for a while, and then replied, Start again, I suppose. After all, I have plenty of time.

He left the villa and walked up the track that climbed the ridge of the headland and led, a mile further on, to the village of Sarakina. Cicadas strummed their incessant, two note thrum, sounding more like some faulty electric appliance than insects. They fell silent as he passed, only to start up again in his wake; like this, he felt himself to be walking in a globe of temporarily reduced sound. It reminded him of the few times hed ventured into the islands capital, Xanthos; he felt sure that islanders and tourists alike were commenting on his passing among them: Look, thats the hermit novelist, Daniel Langham. Shh, here he comes! How paranoid, he thought!

The Ionian sea must be, he thought for perhaps the thousandth time, the most beautiful sight in the world. It was something to do with its unruffled cerulean calm, its dignity in agreeing to make hardly the slightest wave as it came ashore. Its grace was always enhanced by the presence of a boat upon its surface. A fishing boat, drawing a feathered wake, puttered from the harbour far below and headed for the fishing grounds on a lazy curve, and the sight of the vessel riding upon its back gave the sea a sudden dimension of vastness.

He continued walking, passing through pines fragrant with resin, and occasional fig trees, which had dropped their fruit like sticky bombs all along the track.

Ahead was the villa that belonged to the English woman, and outside it, seated upon a wooden packing case outside the gate to the villa, was the woman herself.

He slipped his hand into his trouser pocket and caressed the mereth, as if last nights test had been a dream... The device thrummed, reassuring him.

The woman stood and waved when she saw him. She was perhaps thirty-five, small and broad-hipped, with bobbed black hair and pale face. When he came closer, he saw that her hair was flecked with grey, and that crows feet wrinkles at the corners of her eyes made her appear older than his first estimation. But she had an attractive face, especially when she smiled.

Dont tell me, he said, gesturing at the case, Christos and that useless mule of his dropped it there and you need to get it inside?

You obviously know him well, she laughed. When I came out this morning, here it was. He didnt even tell me.

Hes not being rude. Thats how things work on the island. No-one would run away with it.

She gave it a kick with a plimsolled foot. They wouldnt be able to pick it up!

Perhaps between us...?

Would you mind? That would be lovely.

It was more awkward than heavy, and one person would have struggled with it. Between them they managed to manoeuvre it through the gate and into a stone building next to the villa. Just here. Thats fantastic.

He straightened up and looked around. A studio. You paint?