Inversions

"He determined to try and cheat death too-by building a monumental palace so great, so magnificent, so spell-bindingly sumptuous that Death itself — which was believed to come for those of royal birth in the shape of a great fiery bird visible only to the dying — would be tempted to stay in the great monument and dwell there and not return to the depths of the sky with the Emperor clutched in its talons of flame.

"Accordingly the Emperor caused a great monumental palace to be built on an island in the centre of a great circular lake on the edge of the plains and the ocean, some way from his capital city. The palace was fashioned in the shape of a mighty conical tower half a hundred storeys tall. It was filled with every imaginable luxury and treasure the empire and kingdoms could provide, all secured deep within the furthest reaches of the monument, where they would be hidden from the common thief yet visible to the fiery bird when it came for the Emperor.

"There too were placed magical statues of all the Emperor's favourites, wives and concubines, all guaranteed by his holiest holy men to come alive when the Emperor died and the great bird of fire came to take him.

"The chief architect of the palace was a man called Mu

"With this in mind, the Emperor waited until the great mausoleum was all but finished and then had Mu

"The Emperor had his courtiers tell Mu

"But the Emperor had misjudged the cu

"When he returned to his home his wife, who thought she was a widow, and his children, who thought they were without a father, at first thought he was a ghost, and shrank from him in fear. Eventually he persuaded them that he was alive, and that they should accompany him into exile, away from the Empire. The whole family made their escape to a distant Kingdom where the King had need of a great builder to oversee the construction of fortifications to keep out the savages of the wastelands, and where everybody either did not know who this great architect was, or pretended not to for the sake of the fortifications and the safety of the Kingdom.

"However, the Emperor heard that a great architect was at work in this distant Kingdom, and, through various rumours and reports, came to suspect that this master builder was indeed Mu

"The Emperor ordered the King to send his master builder to the Imperial capital. The King at first refused, asking for more time because the fortifications were not ready yet and the savages of the wasteland were proving more tenacious and better organised than had been anticipated, but the Emperor, still nearer to death now, insisted, and eventually the King gave in and with great reluctance sent the architect Mu

"The Emperor at this time was so close to dying that he spent almost all his time in the great death-defying palace Mu

"When the Emperor saw Mu

"'Because you had me walled up within it and left to die, my Emperor, Mu

"'It was done only to assure the safety of your Emperor and to preserve your own good name, the old tyrant told Mu

"When the Emperor said this, Mu

"At this Mu

"Instead Mu

"But the chief bodyguard was so full of shame that Mu

"The Emperor got his wish then, dying within the great palatial mausoleum he had built. Whether he succeeded in cheating death or not we ca

"What a sad tale! But what happened to the family of Mu

She remained a prized partner of the General's household and one whom he was still known to visit on occasion.

The bodyguard DeWar shrugged. "We don't know," he told her. "The Empire fell, the Kings fought amongst themselves, the barbarians invaded from all sides, fire fell from the sky and a dark age resulted that lasted many hundreds of years. Little historical detail survived the fall of the lesser kingdoms."