Free To Green Angel Tower, Volume 1 by Tad Williams

seemed white as milk. Blue veins showed at his temples and along his wiry arms, bulging as though they might burst through the flesh.
    Pryrates opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. His sigh was that of an Aedonite martyr overwhelmed with the foolish wickedness of his persecutors.
    “Damn you, priest,” Elias snarled, “my mind is made up.”
    The king’s advisor said nothing, but only nodded; the torchlight made his hairless skull gleam like a wet stone. Despite the wind that fluttered the curtains, the room seemed full of a curious stillness.
    “Well?” The king’s green eyes were dangerously bright.
    The priest sighed again, more softly. His voice, when he spoke, was conciliatory. “I am your counselor, Elias. I only do what you would wish me to: that is, help you decide what is best.”
    “Then I think it best that Fengbald take soldiers and go east. I want Josua and his band of traitors driven out of their holes and crushed. I have delayed too long already with this business of Guthwulf and with Benigaris’ fumblings in Nabban. If Fengbald leaves now, he and his troops will reach my brother’s den in a month. You know what kind of winter it will be, alchemist—you of all people. If I wait any longer, the chance is lost.” The king pulled at his face irritably.
    “As to the weather, there is little doubt,” Pryrates said equably. “I can only once again question the need to pursue your brother. He is no threat. Even with an army of thousands, he could not stop us before your glorious, complete, and permanent victory is assured. There is only a little while longer to wait.”
    The wind changed direction, making the banners that hung from the ceiling ripple like pondwater. Elias snapped his fingers and Hengfisk scuttled forward with the king’s cup. Elias drank, coughed, then drank again until the goblet was empty. A bead of steaming black liquid clung to his chin.
    “That is simple for you to say,” the king snarled when he had finished swallowing. “Aedon’s Blood, you have said it often enough. But I have waited long already. I am cursedly tired of waiting.”
    “But it will be worth the wait, Majesty. You know that.”
    The king’s face grew momentarily pensive. “And my dreams have been getting more and more strange, Pryrates. More ... real.”
    “That is understandable.” Pryrates lifted his long fingers soothingly. “You bear a great burden—but all will soon be made right. You will author a reign of splendor unlike anything the world has seen, if you will only be patient. These matters have their own timing—like war, like love.”
    “Hah.” Elias belched sourly, his irritation returning. “Damned little you know of love, you eunuch bastard.” Pryrates flinched at this, and for a moment narrowed his coal-black eyes to slits, but the king was gazing down morosely at Sorrow and did not see. When he looked up again, the priest’s face was as blandly patient as before. “So what is your payment for all this, alchemist? That I’ve never understood.”
    “Besides the pleasure of serving you, Majesty?”. Elias’ laugh was sharp and short, like a dog’s bark. “Yes, besides that.”
    Pryrates stared at him appraisingly for a moment. An odd smile twisted his thin lips. “Power, of course. The power to do what I want to do ... need to do.”
    The king’s eyes had swung to the window. A raven had alighted on the sill and now stood preening its oily black feathers. “And what do you want to do, Pryrates?”
    “Learn.” For a moment the priest’s careful mask of statecraft seemed to slip; the face of a child showed through—a horrible, greedy child. “I want to know every thing. For that I need power, which is a sort of permission. There are secrets so dark, so deep, that the only way to discover them is to tear open the universe and root about in the very guts of Death and Unbeing.”
    Elias lifted his hand and waved for his cup once more. He continued to