The Book of Silence by Lawrence Watt-Evans

was scarcely noticeable before Garth said, “Indeed. Then what is the Death-God’s totem? Surely you must have it, as his high priest and chosen vessel.”
    â€œI left it in Hastur, in my chapel.” The King’s voice was softer than usual, barely audible, a grinding, scratching whisper. He seemed not to be looking at Garth, though how Garth knew that, when the old man’s eyes were as invisible as ever, he could not have said.
    â€œHastur?”
    â€œHastur, capital of Carcosa.”
    â€œWhere was this place? Surely the chapel must be long gone; I have never heard of Hastur, and Carcosa has been forgotten for centuries by all save yourself.”
    â€œThe barbarians took the city and it became Hastur-dar-Mallek, Hastur-of-the-Barbarians, but they could not have destroyed it, even had they tried. They buried it instead, Hastur below, Hastur-dar-Mallek above.” There was a strange animation in the old man’s tone.
    â€œI have never heard of Hastur-dar-Mallek, O King.”
    â€œThat was long ago, before overmen were first created; the name has been shortened to Ur-Dormulk.”
    â€œUr-Dormulk? That was your capital?” Garth was astonished. He had heard the Forgotten King speak of his long-lost kingdom of Carcosa once or twice before, but he had not paid very much attention to the stories. He had never doubted that the old man had once been a true king, yet he had not seriously supposed that this vanished empire had had any connection at all with the world as it was in this, the Fourteenth Age.
    Now, suddenly, he was told that Ur-Dormulk, the most ancient and independent of Eramma’s cities and Skelleth’s trading partner, which he had seen from afar on his trips to Dûsarra and Orgûl, was once the King’s capital. This revelation provided a new and more definite link between his own era and the old man’s vague past. Somehow Garth had always thought of them as two separate worlds, unconnected save by certain magical objects and by the King himself; it required a major readjustment of those thoughts for him to realize that it was all one, divided only by time.
    There were a few seconds of silence as the overman absorbed this news. Then he thrust it aside; it was not relevant.
    â€œYou have not said what it was that you left in your chapel.”
    â€œI left them both there, the Pallid Mask and the Book of Silence, and I sealed the chamber with the Yellow Sign. I knew that the invaders could not pass that, and that they could not use the book or the mask if they did, but I posted a guard as a matter of form. I was still concerned with form then, and with my reputation as a great wizard.”
    â€œYou remember, then? The Book of Silence is there? How very convenient that you should recall that just now!” Garth did not try to keep the scorn out of his voice; he was quite sure that it was no coincidence that the King’s memory had returned just as he had suggested how the Book of Silence might be of use to Garth.
    The old man seemed to be almost lost in reverie, quite oblivious of Garth’s tone; he made no answer.
    â€œDo you think, then, that I should fetch the book immediately, so that Kyrith might be revived?” Garth’s tone was still sarcastic, but there was a sincere thread of hope in it.
    The Forgotten King shifted suddenly, and the tattered edge of his hood flapped. “No,” he said.
    â€œNo?” Garth’s surprise was genuine.
    â€œYour wife is dead, Garth,” the King said, “and I know of no way she can be restored to you. Even were the cosmic balance shifted again, and the totem of the god of life found and used by its rightful master—for I promise you, we who are bound to destruction and death could not touch it—I doubt that it could turn the corpse into anything better than a half-rotted vegetable. Too much time has passed already.”
    â€œIs time, then, the crucial point? Could not