Samples from books that we have published under the Eartherean Press imprint.
This is another in a series from the second book in the 4-book series The Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn: The Divine Queen.
© 1982 by A. Adam Corby
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
‘Throned Eternity in Icy Halls’
WHEN WINTER CAME to Tarendahardil it brought the rains, like chill lances driven on the stormhorses of the north and dark horizons. The storms swept across Elna’s Sea, transforming the lesser roads into rivers of mud. Water ran in torrents through the empty streets of Tarendahardil; not a rooftop but echoed with the beating, driving, ceaseless, wretched rain. The Circus was closed, the marketplaces nearly empty. Most of the nobles had gone south, to Vapio where the rains never fell. The old, grizzled Guardsman shook the water from his whiskers and cloak like a great faithful dog, eyed the towers of the Palace above him with apprehension, and entered.
‘…Murdered, you say?’
He nodded stiffly. ‘They found the body in a gutter in the Thieves’ Quarter, your majesty. He was recognized by one of the guards, who had known him, and wept at the sight.’
‘Who could have done such a thing?’
He shrugged. ‘It was done in the Thieves’ Quarter. It must have been for gain.’
The Queen leaned back in the shadow of the high sweeping throne, wrapping herself the tighter in a cream-colored cloak. ‘Many were the times we warned him about venturing thither; but his was a soul reckless in its glory. Tell us how it was done.’
‘Your majesty … it was not very pretty…’
‘Your news alone is bad enough: do not censor it. Speak.’
‘His throat was cut. Also there were two deep gashes in his belly, made by a long knife or dagger. The murderer must have crept up behind him in the shadows and ripped him open before he was aware of it. First he cut open the belly – it had bled badly – then the throat, probably to silence the cries of the dying man. Few wounds are more painful than belly-wounds, your majesty.’
‘Yes, that will be enough, thank you. We shall want a full investigation of this, captain: let the Thieves’ Quarter feel our wrath. Give the body to the embalmers. Tell them to spare no art to make it appear presentable. Also send a slave to the Charan Ennius Kandi to request his presence.’
‘Yes, majesty.’
The dank chamber fell silent again, save for the never-ending sound of the rains falling without. Allissál drew the cloak closer about her, her feet drawn up under its hem, huddling. A tear started from her eye, and began to trace a wandering path down her cheek. Without, the sky was a shifting palette of gray and dingy green. The winds drew violent veils of mists and rain-flaws forming and rending around and through the perching Citadel. ‘Did you want me?’ said a low voice in her ear. She turned her head and found his mouth upon hers, hungry and forceful.
Gently she disengaged the embrace, not liking the wild lights in his eyes. ‘Now is no time for frivolities, Ennius. Qhelvin of Sorne has been murdered.’
‘How is that?’ he asked calmly, stepping over to stand at the opening, looking out into the maw of cloud. She began to tell him, her voice as controlled as she could manage.
‘This is ill luck,’ he said over his shoulder.
‘Worse than you think. Qhelvin was to ride to Belknule for a secret meeting with the rebels. It is too late to cancel the meeting now, and to send no one would be disastrous. The fear of Yorkjax has made these nobles superstitious as barbarians. You must go in his place, Jade.’
The Gerso shook his head. ‘No, not I. Can you not send the Charan of Rukor?’
‘Ampeánor must return to Rukor until the spring. He has many duties there he has been neglecting. And to send so prominent a man would set Yorkjax’s hackles high; any seen in his company would be suspect. Of the other agents, those not presently engaged are not trustworthy enough. We doubt not their loyalties, just their abilities. Qhelvin always spoke of you as above the others: now all his offices must fall to you. There is only you, Jade. Why did you not wish to go?’
‘I would not wish to miss Qhelvin’s funeral.’
‘We know what close friends you were. Yet there is no help for it.’
‘I repeat, I will not go – unless,’ he added, turning, ‘your majesty has sufficient to pay me for it.’
‘All our gold must go to buy the renegade barbarian.’ She smiled. ‘Yet we still have jewels.’
‘This is the only jewel I have a taste for.’
‘Well, taste it then… What is this on your belt, sir, a spot of blood? Whatever have you been doing?’
‘Deflowering a virgin – what else?’ he said lightly.
She laughed. ‘Was it very pretty?’
‘I enjoyed myself,’ he murmured, bending over her.
§
THE GUARDSMEN brought Qhelvin’s body up to the Citadel shortly after the Gerso had left. They bore it in state, silently, as if he had been one of their own. They had felt themselves his friends, even those who had hardly known him: such had been the charm of the man. They laid it upon a slab in the hall of the embalmers, a dusty, ill-smelling abode buried deep beneath the level of the stone, ill-lighted by a few foul lamps. The shadowed walls about were lined with compartments filled with stoppered vials and webs and rusting instruments. The Queen followed them, attended by four of her maidens, their pale robes shining against the patchwork walls of green and gray and purpled rust.
She stood limned in the dark archway. Beside her an old man stood in grief: Qhelvin’s man, who had taught Qhelvin in Sorne when Qhelvin had been a boy. Now he offered her a small golden locket. Within it was a tiny painting of a few confident brushstrokes, obviously done out of memory. Yet even so the likeness of Ennius was skillfully wrought. ‘Had he finished this, he would have offered it to your majesty himself,’ the old man said in a cracked voice. Allissál nodded, and took it from his hands.
Below them the sad-eyed Guardsmen set the body out. The embalmers, wizened slaves in leather tunics whose faces were muffled against the effects of the chemicals of their trade, gathered about the body.
‘Stay,’ murmured the Queen. They bowed in silence, and receded into the lightless corners. She stepped forward, down the two steps, her little satin slippers darkened by the dampness of the subterranean floor. Hesitantly, she reached forth and with her pale beautiful hand laid aside the bloodied rags. The mutilated body was all but naked; only the ripped bloody shirt was left – all the rest had been stripped antlike by the thieves of the Quarter. She looked silently upon the pallid graying flesh, lips contorted in agony, silently beseeching eyes, and eloquent horrors of gutted throat and belly.
‘Dear friend,’ she whispered, in tones so low not even her maidens might hear, ‘did we not warn thee, that thy wanderings there could end in tragedy? Yet still thou couldst not stay away. What was it thou sought there, we wonder? Well, and hadst thou been anything other than what thou wert thou wouldst never have come to offer us thy services and do so much on our behalf. Peistros of Sorne drove thee hither, and all on account of that single love-intrigue – and was any woman’s pleasure worth so much, Qhelvin? Ah, we know that answer now. Sleep now, and forget her and us. Perhaps she will await thee there, beyond those hills her own sad folly drove her to. Well, and Elnavis is dead, and Qhelvin also. Yet before thou fliest, this I will swear to thee, upon the spirits of all my ancestors, upon the very altar of Goddess and this Citadel: that if I live I will see this act avenged.’
Then she leaned forward and tenderly kissed those cold contorted lips, careless that by doing so she bloodied all the bosom of her gown. She issued her instructions to the wordless embalmers, signed to her maidens, and followed the grizzled captain up out of the dampness below, to the greater dampness above.
§
THE RAINS fell droning on the rooftops and towers of the Citadel, running down the slick stone sides, and forming arching white sprays below, where the drains from the cisterns’ overflow projected out of the cliffside. Down the spray fell in mists far below concealing the palace dump-heaps. Trade, travel and war were at a standstill. Entertainment was hard to come by, and unsatisfying even then. The nobles all were gone, to their estates or Vapio in the deeper South. Thither Ilal had gone, more the wanton than ever since Elnavis’s death. Only Allissál was confined to lifeless Tarendahardil, sitting miserable in the cold marble halls, with nothing in her ears but the melancholy echoes of water dripping from the vaulted ceilings and the endless droning voice of Dornan Ural.
He had expressed concern when he had first seen her expression. ‘I would be much improved with more freedom,’ she answered flatly.
‘Ah, little steps must go before leaps, your majesty,’ he uttered in banal cheerfulness, drawing yet another armful of scrolls from the bags his clerks bore and spreading them on the table before her. ‘Worry not – Tarendahardil is secure. Your majesty will see that I am right. Ara-Karn will never cross the Taril.’
She affixed the new Imperial Seal upon yet another document and thrust it aside. She did not bother to mock him now. Akrion and Orovil had fallen swiftly, along with the lesser cities; now the entire North was in the hand of Ara-Karn. During the winter he would secure the hinterlands, scouring the wild hills and wastelands to destroy the last ragged bands of resistors; then half the round world would be his.
Dornan Ural continued, as the documents came and went. The repairs to the sewers, the trials of the officials, the mood of the populace – which was only half so irritable as her own. She sat listening, hearing none of it, a sour look on her face. Dornan Ural signed to the clerk, who poured out another pouchful of scrolls.
The stores of grain were running below their accustomed levels due to the numbers of fugitives from the North, Dornan Ural said; and the Prophetess had predicted a long and severe winter. Fighting was reported in the Thieves’ Quarter, and several deaths, Dornan Ural reported: would it not be wiser to call off this fruitless quest for the Sorean’s assassin? There had been another sacrifice at the Brown Temple, Dornan Ural confided; the responses had not, however, been auspicious. An embassy from Pelthar awaited without, Dornan Ural revealed, returning the gifts sent to Orolo; had not he, Dornan Ural, said it was too great an extravagance? Now, the income from harbor-duties, due to the cessation of trade with the North—
‘Oh, to the Darklands with it all!’ she swore, sweeping the scrolls to the floor. She rose, throwing the mantle from her brow and shaking loose her hair. Trampling the parchment with her heels, she flung herself from the hall. Behind her an embarrassed, startled Dornan Ural looked after her, then knelt and began carefully to gather the torn and dirty scrolls into his bosom.
She strode through the empty corridors of the huge Palace like a prisoned wild beast. Qhelvin’s funeral had been a miserable, sodden affair, making her all too aware of her lack of real achievements up to now. The League was unformed and all hung in suspension, moveless and immovable – was she to be undone by nothing greater than a foul spate of weather? When the slave came timidly to announce the return of the Gerso Charan she did not even answer, but went straight to his chambers in the upper levels.
She found him wearied and mudspattered, but she did not allow him so much as a word. ‘None of your mission, the weather or politics,’ she warned him. ‘It clings to us like a dirtied cloak. Enough of this ceaseless rain! Let bring your gear below as it is: we travel hence. I will be free of it!’
That very waking they departed, journeying the Way of Fulmine toward the dark horizon. Allissál led them, urging on her fierce mare Kis Halá, setting a pace the attendants found difficult to maintain. They turned off the Imperial highway, going northward into the mountains that marched the Empire’s darkward borders, between northern Fulmine and southern Rukor. So in a few more passes of reckless riding she brought them into view of the palace of her childhood. Rising from the knees of ancient snowbound giants the towers of the palace seemed pink fingers against the silvery rocky walls, shining in splendor, eclipsed by neither rain nor cloud.
Allissál spurred on Kis Halá up past the sleepy little village and into the palace courtyard, snow bursting like clouds beneath her mare’s hooves. She came round in a sweeping turn, and the high walls and towers spun before her, and she laughed in little steamy clouds. Gone was her listlessness, gone her melancholy – gone, her pent-up rage.
She cast her eyes lovingly over the old courtyard as the others came clattering in behind her. ‘This was home to me once, Jade,’ she said, gesturing about her at the icy marble and charsonton. ‘Then I hated it and schemed only to escape. Now it is joyous to return; most especially now, in the deep of winter.’
Faintly he smiled. ‘It is your youth I see from your eyes,’ he said, as the servants went in to rouse the caretakers. ‘It is a thing given to few indeed, to return to youthful haunts and be a child again. It must be a wonderful feeling.’ The smile vanished from his lips, and a gloom fell over his lightless eyes.
But she laughed, and would not let him think of ruined Gerso. ‘No such moody musings hereabouts, my Charan,’ she chided. ‘By decree we forbid them – even though Dornan Ural has all the official parchments. Mark you the mountains above us. It was the fondest dream of my girlhood to scale their icy paths. Since then, though I have gone among them several times in the heat of summer, I have never ventured upon them in winter, when they are most majestic and dangerous. We shall go among them a-hunting, Jade, if you’ve a mind to.’
Thereat he raised his dark enigmatic face, and his eyes were sparkling. ‘And do you hunt, too? My Chara, if that be true, then I have found here all a man might wish for, in the deep of his hidden heart.’
The emerging caretakers greeted her with astonishment. Eagerly they helped her dismount and see to Kis Halá, Glory’s Lamp, a horse the color of an oil-flame. They entered musty halls to open shutters, sweep clean the webs, and set the kitchen fires roaring.
Alone in the great banquet hall the two of them ate and drank their fill, the Empress and her courtier, avid after long riding in the mountains’ airs. When the time of the shortsleep was upon them the dimchambers were not yet warmed: so, like old foot-troopers after forced stages, they lay together on bandarskins before the huge hearth carved of figures full of mythological import.
Within a pass, all preparations were complete, and men summoned from the village were assembling in the courtyard. Tall strong men they were, crafty in hunt or wood, and leading strong sly dogs on leathern leashes. Allissál emerged before them clad in hunting tunic of soft leather and fur warm against the frosty air. It had been the gift of her dear friend Lisalya, the Lady of Ul Raambar. Overhead, wintry clouds the color of dull venom-green slate were gathering; but Allissál only shook loose her foaming hair from the fur hood and laughed.
The huntsmen raised a cheer to see her standing there so brave and beautiful, and their dogs took up the cry barking, so that the din echoed from the walls of marble and charsanton. It was none of it like the somnolently buzzing summers she remembered. Then behind her Ennius appeared, to lift her lightly into her carmine and silver saddle. He swung up on his own mount, and presented her with the gilded horn of the hunt.
Kis Halá moved eagerly beneath her, as if sensing what was to come. She took up the horn in gloved hands slowly to her lips, relishing this moment. Cold against her warm soft mouth was the metal; and it tickled, so that she could not blow at first. Then of a sudden she gave three short blasts. The huntsmen roared, the dogs brayed, and the horses thundered out of the courtyard. The ice-clad stony paths clattered with the hooves as they rode up, upon the knees of mountainous giants.
§
TWELVE PASSES they spent there, pursuing spoor of eklas and cornering mountain thorsas in their winter lairs. Their hoofbeats echoed off the steeps like the footsteps of titans, and their laughter was like brazen bells. For meals they ate the flesh of their kills, superbly cooked and seasoned by the skilled mountain men. When they tired they had simple tents set up on the ice by metal pegs driven into cracks in the stone.
Once they outdistanced the others and found themselves separated from them by the shadow-edge of one of the mountains. There they lost the spoor of the ekla, but found other game beneath the twisted pines, their bodies dark against the flaring, dying corona of Goddess on the far side and the ice melting and steaming underneath them. About them, the steeps of an icy desolation and the incessant winds; and no other life except for the pair of them – and one startled snow-thirsla that scampered at their sounds, its pink rump flashing. At this she laughed impudently at him, her eyes glinting in the shadow of her hair; and he chafed her.
In all, their party took five eklas and three monstrous mountain thorsas. Two of the thorsas Ennius dispatched, but the third, the largest and most fierce, she claimed for her own. Rushing in, her boots half-slipping on the snow-flecked ice, she thrust her silvered lance at the beast’s bowels, feeling the haft wrenched from her grasp. The thorsa bellow deafened her, she felt its fetid breath wash over her and the huge black curling claws raked her thigh, sprinkling blood on the snow. Fear surged in her, but she forced it back. She swept out her light hunting sword, fell, saw nothing but a rush of fur and animal sinew; rose and struck.
The thorsa screamed like a doomed and dying god, a cry echoed a hundredfold off the surrounding cliffs. Then sluggishly it fell on the lip of the precipice, its black, steaming blood spilling like heated wine upon the stained and melting purity of the snow.
The hounds drew round, maddened by the scent of the blood, but the whippers-in drove them back. She stood quivering in the darkly stained snow, bloodied sword still smoking in her gloved hand. Her mantle had been torn back and her hair fell disheveled over her brow and down her back. The golden hair caught up the light of the sun and threw it back shivering, almost too bright to bear. Her eyes were a frosty silver, color of the mountain ramparts about; her cheeks were the color of the maiden’s stain upon the marriage sheets; her breath emerged in little clouds of ice-flecked steam, quickly gathered by the winds. Standing so upon the edge of the infinite, the distant heroic mountains her backdrop, she seemed the very image of the primeval Huntress, Dhalki, consumed in ageless splendor.
The image was of but a moment; for then she stooped and with her own hand, and the sharp blue Raamba blade, severed the great head from the carcass. The attendants held it aloft dripping, all shaggy and black, its eyes and lips still frozen in the savage despair of its dying scream. They praised it as the finest they’d ever seen, not with the glib assurances of professional courtiers but with the rough familiarity of true comrades. She saw the face of Ennius smiling approvingly above the others, and every thought of Empire was driven from her mind. Gladly at that moment would she have forsaken all her power and ambition to remain thus, not wealthy or great, but the simple ruler of a small domain, so that she only had another with whom to share it.
Then a sudden consuming wave of weariness shook her and she fell, and had to be borne back to camp upon a litter of woven lances. Even so she did not pass from consciousness, but saw the cliffs wheeling about her, and heard the distant voices of the hunters speaking of her in tones of worship. Her mind still woke: it was but her body slept. Floating on that bier of lances she did not care. She felt only the fullness of her own happiness, and a childlike wonder.
Naked beneath a pile of thorsa- and bandar-skins in the soft brown gloom of her tent, she listened dreamily to the sounds of the men moving about outside in the camp. In the corners of her mind she was aware of exhaustion lurking like a shadow to carry her off; but she held it apart by force of will, waiting until he should come.
The flaps were suddenly sundered and silvery light illuminated the interior, blinding her. Then the darkness was renewed, and she felt his hand lightly stroking her brow. In her nostrils crept the aroma of something steaming and sweet. She opened her eyes.
His smile was gentle in the darkness. ‘Awake still? You’ve more of iron in you than many of the men I’ve hunted with. But there is no purpose in it now: drink this and sleep.’
She parted her lips slightly and accepted the hot spiced wine he had lifted to her mouth. ‘So the slaves would serve me when I was little and ill with fever.’ She sighed. ‘Only then I disliked it and, when they were gone, would pour it down a crack in the floor of my room by the wall. Emsha was furious when she found out. And are you reduced to the duties of a servant now, Jade?’
‘If you can become a child again, I can be a servant. Yours, anyway.’
‘That was only once I was really ill. I had the chills from the mountain air, because I had slipped away against their orders. But usually I was too protected. I was not suffered to be ill; it was not permitted me, like so many other things. They were the slaves, and I the Bordakasha – still, the slaves gave the orders, and the Divine One had to obey. I disobeyed them whenever I dared,’ she murmured, finding his mouth with her wine-warmed lips. ‘It seemed my only real pleasure, though I was often in the wrong and did very foolish things just for the joy of confounding them. Even to Emsha I was merciless at times.’
‘Often,’ he said, ‘men will sigh that they were not born to a throne. But they little know the loneliness of royal children, who can have no close kin, no friends, no playmates of their own station.’
‘Even so – but how do you, who were not so born, know it? Yet listen, and I shall tell you how I got the fever when I was young.’
‘Later.’
‘No, now. I am Princess and you only my servant, remember. So they all addressed me: it was “Princess” from this one, “Divine One” from that. They were only slaves about me, and the children of slaves. The gulf was too great for friendship. Only Emsha would I confide in, and even she was not told all.
‘In that castle below us I was held captive, while my parents and the court abided in Tarendahardil and progressed about the Empire. I had lessons in rhetoric at this hour, courtly etiquette the next; languages before eating and history afterward. History was the only subject I enjoyed: it brought me closer to Elna. Even then I dreamed of restoring my Empire to its former glory. Philosophy was that which I most loathed: the tutor was a dry old fool, not unlike Dornan Ural. I played such tricks upon him I am sure he despaired of my ever becoming civilized.
‘And when spring came I spent the hours gazing through the windows at these mountains, still in winter’s sway. I, of divine ancestry, the child of the mightiest house in the round world, was held captive, while the children of my servants roamed free and ragged in the woods, climbing the cliffs for gerlins’ nests and bathing naked in mountain pools. When the blossoms were open in the lowlands upon the spring of my fourteenth year, I resolved to go.
‘I planned it thoroughly, with all the excitement of forbidden schemes. I hid dried meats, figs and nuts about my chambers; with considerable ingenuity, I secured and hid a stout rope beneath my couch. And then, upon the outbreak of a fine warm spell of weather, I slipped down out of my dimchamber window to the roof of the stables far below. I can show you the very spot; the drop does not look much to me now, but then it drove my heart upon my very tongue.
‘Upon that roof I felt as free as I have ever felt in my life. Even now I believe that had things gone as I’d dreamed, I would have cast my kingdom aside for a handful of figs and led an adventurer’s life. The air was sultry with heat. Below me I could hear the horses moving in their stalls as Eno, the stablemaster’s son, went among them with the feed. Behind me, through the wall, I could hear some of the slave-women gossiping as they went about their duties. The castle continued as ever, but now I was beyond its reach, an airy spirit with strange powers at my command, and no ties with those toiling mortals bound with the stone.
‘I went to the end of the stables as stealthily as I could and gazed down. Another drop presented itself to me, yet now I had no rope: it was tied securely to an iron rod in the wall of my dimchamber. The distance to the ground seemed much farther than I had thought, and I all but turned back. But my spirit returned and I tossed my sack of provisions to the ground. Resolutely I hung suspended from the lip of the roof, my fingers slowly slipping as the sweat broke from my palms. I could not see the ground or let go the roof; nor had I the strength to pull myself back up. Then my grasp slipped and I fell. I hit the ground hard upon my heels and rolled in the dirt, the breath stricken from my lungs.
‘It occurred to me then what would have happened if anyone had heard the noise. “What is this, young Mistress?” they would ask, their foolish faces shocked. That was a humiliation I could not have borne. But none came except Eno. He poked his head out of the stable door and looked at me slowly rising to my feet, my rags in disarray and face smudged with dirt. He would never have known me had it not been for this hair of mine. He looked me in the eye a moment, smiled, and returned to the stables. I gathered up my sack and ran loping through the gardens to the low part of the walls before he could give the word. And then I had climbed the walls and come to the woods above the castle, deep and dark and wonderful.
‘Soon the ancient trees shut out every view of the castle and I danced through slanting shafts of sunlight, laughing and shouting as if my tutor’s fears for me had been correct after all. I was making for the high passes of the mountains, to reach their other side. I had never seen the shadowside of a mountain before – such a thing seemed utterly mysterious to me. There giants and mountain spirits dwelt, or so they used to tell me; and I had gotten the notion that the spirits of our voyaged ancestors somehow congregated on the dark sides of mountains when the year was young. There I would find the souls of heroes and maybe even of great Elna, though they might outwardly be no more than ragged thieves. Three passes I spent there, sleeping on beds of moss by mountain streams and climbing ever higher.’
She fell silent then, so that it was as if the lurking weariness had finally come and taken her away. But then ‘It ended miserably,’ she murmured. ‘The warm weather did not last, and a storm came out of the Darklands, the last of winter in the mountains; and I was green with death. Finally I crossed over the high passes, shivering already with fever, to find – nothing. In that gloom the air was colder and fogbound as I searched about. There were only a few stunted pines growing from shattered, rocky walls, and ice bound in frozen waterfalls. In the shadow and the silence, I was utterly alone. They needn’t have scolded me when they found me, not really; nor looked so concerned when they saw me shivering. What was the sickness of my body, when all their costly physicians could do nothing to heal the wound within my heart?’
She looked at him, but his face was a shadow: not even the flecks within his eyes were visible now. ‘Do you know what first attracted me to you?’ she asked. ‘I think it was when I first asked you whence you came, and you said, “From beyond the mountains.” From the far side of the mountains, just as in my girlhood dreams… Why do you look at me that way?’
His whispered reply was lost in the sudden keening of the wind without the tent, a wind so sharp and dank it pierced even that pile of furs. It was the beginning of winter snows so heavy that they soon drove the hunters back out of the mountains and into the shelter of the castle below.
§
SO TIME PASSED in the snowbound Summer Palace. Occasionally they would have their horses saddled and go riding over the white landscape and there she would always surpass him, for Kis Halá could go like a bird. Other times they met in the armory, where around a large firepit he would instruct her in the art of swordplay. Already she knew something of these arts, having been privately tutored by Ampeánor. Yet, though the Gerso was not the master Ampeánor was, he still had much to teach her. One thing she disliked about Ennius’s methods was that he always mastered her – Ampeánor had had the grace to allow her to win a point or two, to encourage her; not so Ennius. It made her redouble all her efforts with a fury, aiming for his heart; yet he never let her touch him there.
Once, returned from riding, they found a visitor awaiting Ennius. The short, coarsely featured man had just beaten the snows that had forced them in, and was warming himself before the huge fire in the banquet hall.
‘Your servant!’ she exclaimed. ‘I wondered why you had not brought him. Such a clumsy-looking fellow, how can he serve you?’
‘His life is mine,’ he answered. ‘I will hear what he has to say and rejoin you later – if you so allow, Princess.’
‘As you wish.’ She smiled. ‘I will be ready for you when you come to me, Jade.’ She left the hall, attended by two servants, with an eager grace.
§
WHEN SHE had gone the smile on the face of the Gerso remained, making him seem even young. He turned to his servant shivering before the high hearth.
‘And are you cold, Kuln-Holn?’ he asked jestingly. ‘Surely it is not so cold here as it gets in the far North.’
‘But it is high here, and far from the Ocean,’ answered the Pious One. ‘And we are close to the dark horizon.’
The Gerso barked a short laugh. ‘Well, but Kuln-Holn, I think it is rather you who have changed. Half I had forgotten you, here so far away from it all. What tidings from the North?’
Kuln-Holn shivered and drew closer to the leaping flames. Behind him the master stood before a large, unshuttered window through which draughts of wintry air entered unimpeded. ‘Lord, I entered their camp unknown, and went among them closely. When they do not quarrel over spoils they swill wine and carouse with the camp followers. And when they eat, they stuff their bellies two-handed. Between spilling blood and dining, they will not cleanse their hands, except to wipe them on the backs of the dogs. And the stink of the camp is a cloud that will not pass.’
‘What,’ asked the master sardonically: ‘and are they so changed as all that?’
‘I suppose they are as they ever were, lord. But they ought to be finer, now that they are kings in the North; and they seem only fouler.’
‘Rather conquerors than kings, Kuln-Holn.’ He had been looking through the window to the mountains above, their crowns concealed beneath the raging stormclouds. There had been a soft smile resting on his lips. Now he sighed, and turned his back to the window. ‘And Gen-Karn?’ he asked at length.
‘Lord, this much I learned. Soon after Carftain fell, Gen-Karn gathered his Orns and fled the camps, taking the road to Tezmon. With him he took the Buzrahs, whose feud with the Karghils had broken out anew; the Raznami, and the Jalijh clan of the Pes-Thos. With them also went scattered warriors of various tribes, who were discontented because of the ban upon open looting.
‘From Tezmon Gen-Karn has sent spies into the camp to demand the autumnal Assembly of the Tribes. These spies spread rumors against the name of Ara-Karn, saying that the Assembly has not been held only because Ara-Karn fears the challenge of Gen-Karn. So Gen-Karn’s support among the tribes is growing. The tribes grow restless and discontent; nor can all the chiefs silence them. Many grow homesick and weary of all the killing, which they say has not the joy now that they kill with bows instead of swords and spears. Gen-Karn is big upon their tongues; and yet it is said, that if Ara-Karn wars upon Tezmon, then the lesser chiefs will fear for their own liberty and will rebel.’
The master had come to the hearth, and squatted before the flames. With a gloved hand he reached forth and rearranged the burning logs, so that the blaze crackled and leapt up with such hot fury that Kuln-Holn was forced to give back several paces. But the master remained still, his flesh glowing orange with the heat. And Kuln-Holn was minded of what was said of vengeful God, that He loved all manner of destruction, and especially delighted in burning.
‘And what do they say there,’ the master asked, ‘concerning the Divine Queen?’
Kuln-Holn flushed dark, and averted his face. ‘Lord, you would not like how they speak of her there,’ he muttered.
The master smiled. But that smile the servant could not see for the darkness of his master’s face against the glare. ‘I shall not ask you, how things go with Ara-Karn. But what could you learn of how Gundoen fares?’
‘Lord, Gundoen was not in the camp when I was there. When the first rains of winter reached the North, then Gundoen sent messengers to the far North, to his wife Hertha-Toll, that she should come to him and share in all the wealth, and also prophesy to him of his future. Perhaps he wearied of the concubines he had taken – but some said he was greatly troubled in his dreams. When the messengers returned, it was with these words of Hertha-Toll the Wise: that it was there in that village she had been born, and there she would die, no matter how many wonders there were to be seen in the lands south of the Spine. At this word Gundoen grew angry, so that he swore he would wench as he pleased and leave Hertha-Toll to her old-woman’s foolishness. Yet later he thought better of it, and went north himself, with but a handful of men. Garin went with him: so I saw neither of them.’
‘Well. And what shall be your counsel now, Kuln-Holn? Shall we forsake the will-o’-the-wind we pursue here, and go back into the North where the fighting is and where, perhaps, we are more needed? Or shall we stay and sop up our pleasure and say, So much of a rest at least we have earned?’
‘Lord, I do not see what we do here, or what good comes of it. There in the North men fight and sweat and find harsh death; and here we live in great comfort. Are we forgetful, or spell-wrought? Or is this a thing commanded?’ The short, middle-aged man paused, and glanced furtively toward the portal through which the Queen had departed. ‘But still, to go back … I think I prefer the city, and peace, even if it is wrong.’
The black head before the fire nodded. ‘Ah, Kuln-Holn, you have changed indeed.’
‘Perhaps so, lord. Yet I am your man still.’
‘Remain so, Kuln-Holn, if you will die in peace. Well – then we will stay. Return to this Holy City of yours, and glean what pleasures and what peace you may. You too have earned them; and I think they will not last long. I am half-sure you have a secret lover there, the way you are always disappearing.’
‘Perhaps so, lord. Then I may leave?’
‘Go, and rest. Depart when you will.’
Still, the servant hesitated. The gleams of the firelight upon his features showed well his barbarian ancestry, so that in his rounded, gentle face, lines of hardship and cruelty were revealed, for a moment: then they were gone, and only the simple face of Kuln-Holn the Pious One remained. ‘Lord,’ he said, haltingly, as if daring a heavy risk, ‘you will not forget, in all that you have found and won here – you will not forget your mission?’
The Gerso lifted up a great blazing timber and let it fall back upon the pile, so that the sparks scattered and danced upon the charred stone floor. His face was averted, and his voice harsh, as ‘Kuln-Holn,’ he answered, ‘and have you not learned even now, that I will go my own way in this? Do not fear, but all our debts shall in the end be fully paid.’
Uncertainly the servant nodded, and left the hall. The master straightened, and walked again to the window. There light flakes of snow were floating in: they fell upon his flushed burning face and melted instantly, streaming from his black eyebrows. He looked, but could not see the mountains now, for the storms had descended to the lower passes. Then the face of him bore the stern look of a wooden idol. Abruptly he turned, shaking the snowflakes from his hair, and went in pursuit of the Empress of Tarendahardil.
§
SHE HAD FULFILLED her promise, and let a small canopy be set up on the flat roof of the tower. There they lay together briefly as the snow fell deep upon all sides. She wrapped her nakedness in a heavy bandarskin and pointed out to him the way she had escaped as a girl, to seek the giants over the mountains. He, already dressed, leaned over the narrow icy parapet and looked at the stone courtyard far below. Yet it seemed to Allissál that he listened with but a part of himself, and that the rest was far away where she might never reach it; and she remonstrated him, and asked if he might be more attentive if she spoke of Ara-Karn.
But he asked in return, ‘Why have you so deep a curiosity about the barbarian? Whenever some new exiles come to Tarendahardil claiming to have seen the man, you are ever quick to give them audience.’
‘His destiny is part of Tarendahardil’s,’ she replied. ‘The barbarians must rise, to be put down again. So it is written. Yet for all these tales I hear, I learn no more of him. Each belies the others; and I can little trust men whose bread depends on how I take their tales. Tell me truly what you think of him, Jade – you have seen him often. Is he truly choked with hate? He cannot be a man, not to be sickened even yet with all the death and ruin he has caused. Rather, he must be some wild beast, a savage no better than a Madpriest.’
‘A wild beast,’ he repeated. ‘A savage no better than a Madpriest. No,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I know him no more than you.’ He stepped upon the parapet, idly pacing above her.
‘Be careful, Jade,’ she said. ‘It is a far drop to the courtyard or to the stable roof.’
He laughed scornfully, and leaped up in a sudden flip in the air, turning his body about over the rooftop fourteen fathoms below. Her heart leapt up her throat: he landed, his boots but half clinging to the icy ledge. She shouted, but he laughed again, and bowed low upon one leg, the other stretched out behind him over the void, with all the grace of a performer reared in Vapio.
Then she grew angry, but he only shrugged carelessly, and did not leave the edge. ‘I knew I would not fall,’ he said. ‘Some of us are cursed by misfortune, and others by luck: but we are all of us cursed. Thereby each of us shall know his fate. If he is to die later, a man cannot die now. My doom is yet to be – therefore, until I reach it, I am an immortal. Even if I jumped I would survive it.’
‘Oh?’ she asked, thinking him to be acting a madcap for her entertainment. ‘And where does your doom lie, may I ask?’
‘Well, for that,’ he said with a smile, ‘I haven’t decided yet.’
‘Ah – and are you God now as well?’ He looked at her, and there was no humor in him.
‘When was I not?’
‘You speak madness,’ she said, angry and alarmed. ‘What is human will then, if all is predestined?’
‘Will is that which creates our destinies in the first instance.’
‘What then of Gerso?’ she asked sharply; and rued it instantly.
Now his face was cold and sharp as the ice along the gutters as he answered, ‘Gerso he destroyed.’
She threw off the bandarskin and stooped to enter the canopy, as flakes of snow left small chill bites upon her skin. There she donned her robes, sorry for how she had hurt him and eager to remedy it. When she came forth again he stood still on the edge of the parapet with his back to her and his gaze directed down that dizzying drop. His hands hung casually at his sides, one hooked in his belt, the other toying with his jade dagger. It was as if he, the monarch, had dismissed her. Angrily she left the rooftop in silence.
Yet later, in the middle of the longsleep, he came to her bed, speaking tales of lands and peoples she had never heard of; and he took her violently, so that she could scarcely breathe for pleasure.
§
BEFORE THE TIME of that sleep was ended, a soft knocking sounded at the doors to her chamber, and the voice of one of the servants informed her there was a messenger just ridden in from the great City, with an urgent message to be delivered only into her hands. She rose gently, careful not to wake Ennius, swiftly robed herself, and went to receive the messenger.
He wore the trappings of a Rukorian lancer, and he was wet and white with snow. He saluted her in the military fashion, and kissed her hand.
‘Surely we know you,’ she said. ‘Are you not that man who came to us with the High Charan of Rukor’s message, before he was to leave for Tezmon?’
‘Your majesty, I am that one. And the message I bear your majesty now is also from my lord.’
She took the brass cylinder and unfurled the scroll. Her face altered instantly. ‘This is well,’ she said. ‘Will you tell the caretakers, please, to ready our departure? We will return with you to the capital.’ He nodded and saluted her again: backed to the door, and left.
Slowly she walked before the hearth, where the ember-bed still cast up waves of warmth and light. She leaned against the warm stones of the wall, watching with half-closed eyes the way the rising airs waved the unfurled scroll to and fro. Images flickered up before her in the glow: of Tarendahardil as she had first seen it when the lords and soldiers had brought her, scarcely out of girlhood, down from this very castle Goddess-ward, to be a Queen in the City Over the World. Then her reverie burst, and she started up as if unable to be still any longer. She read the message again on her way back to her chambers:
To her Imperial Majesty Allissál, Divine Queen in Tarendahardil, from her man Ampeánor nal Torvalen, High Charan of Rukor, greetings and obeisances.
My Queen, you must return to Tarendahardil as quickly as you can. The foreign ambassadors have returned, begging to meet with you and resume in the formation of the League of Elna. Even Dornan Ural is frightened at the news, and has promised us a free hand.
Ara-Karn has crossed the Taril. Even now Postio, the first of the cities of the South, is under attack.
