Samples from books that we have published at Eartherean Books.
This is another in a series from the third book in the 4-book series The Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn: The Iron Gate.
© 2009 by A. Adam Corby
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
Erion Sedeg
IN THE CAMP beyond the city there was no contentment. The winds had turned, and drove up dusty from the South, from off the desert wastes beyond dead Vapio, burning the mouths of the warriors of the cool far North. With every rising of God, companies of mercenaries rode forth out of the camp gates to gather herds of cattle, goats and yarglin to feed the many thousands of hungry bellies there. Goddess beat down like a brazen hammer, so the armor of the warriors burned even calloused fingers, and the city stretching into the distance wavered before their eyes as if it had been sunk beneath the waves of the Ocean of the Dead. Quarrels and fights broke out within the walls, over food, over armor, over women. The stink of the ordure of the camp drew flies and pestilence; every third word had become a curse. For such was High Summer in Tarendahardil, and even the sea itself had thickened like a noisome, brackish pond.
Still the men there put on their burning armor from time to time and ventured forth to mount the streets between the broken stones like an army of the damned, and hurl their sweating, stinking bodies once more against the broiling Iron Gate of Elna.
‘When will this end?’ they whispered, and grumbled, and groaned and swore. ‘In our village in the far North, our women are planting the grains.’ ‘In our home village the maidens draw out the wool of the sheep now, and wade barelegged in the river for fish.’ They had all but lost the memory of Elna, of Urnostardil, and of their long-vowed vengeance. They remembered home.
Even among the chieftains and champions there were harsh words. The old feuds ran strong again, and there were thefts of slaves and of treasured weapons. Nam-Rog strove to keep peace, but even he was wearied by the hateful heat, and lay many passes in the gloom of his own tents, fanned by his slave-women. And from time to time, so sickened was he with it all, that there whispered to him in the gloom a voice, and it said to him, Surely, surely by this time Gundoen has perished, there is nothing to hold you here longer. But he would groan, and grip his hunting-spear, and swear aloud by dark God’s strength, that he would not leave that land until he was sure.
So time wore sullenly about the camp, and only the mercenaries might have been said to be content.
Erion Sedeg had been a sailor in his early years, plying trade on the great river Delba; then after he had found his city conquered and his family destroyed, he had taken up the worship of dark God, and gone into the Desert. There among the tent-dwellers he felt secure, and scorned the lands where men dwell. He sat on rocks in the shadow of towering cliffs, and played with scorpions and death-beetles, and let his soul run dark as his burnt flesh. And then all the clans of the tent-dwellers had stirred with the story of the coming of a man, and they had gathered in those canyons only they knew of. The man was Ara-Karn, and the rite the clans put to him would have been death for anyone not charmed or an immortal. He lived: so he won them to his cause. It was then that Erion Sedeg found his god and took up sword and bow: he saw the slaughter of cities, learned the tongue of the barbarians, and worshiped at the memory of that man he had seen only once, and never spoken to.
The warriors distrusted him, though they gave him command over the mercenaries; his own men feared the madness in his eyes. But Erion Sedeg despised them all, even to the highest of his barbarian overlords. They did not know, but he knew. He felt a kinship only with that dark being whose specter hung still about the ominous black tents pitched on a mound in the center of the camp. And he knew that when the time was ripe, his master would return, and all the world would lie like a rotten fruit in his hand, to crush or keep or swallow at a bite. And then it would only be the faithful, those of a heart with Erion Sedeg and the King, who would inherit the world with all its powers and its dark delight.
He had therefore no concern of the passing weeks, for his faith was absolute. It was with no surprise that, in the deadly heat of High Summer, Erion Sedeg learned that Nam-Rog, chieftain of the Durbar tribe, would speak to him.
‘I would know,’ Nam-Rog said in the deep gloom of his tent, ‘how it is you measure the hearts of the men beneath you, Southron. Do many grumble, or leave foraging never to return?’
The lean, brown-skinned man did not at first reply. He was dressed in his manner after the fashion of the desert-dwellers, with chalky paint marking his features in a mask of scorn and war. Now he looked at the broad, ruddy face of the barbarian, drooling sweat. Erion Sedeg knew this was not the reason he had been summoned. His thoughts leaped to the black tent at the center of the camp, and for a moment he knew impatience.
‘My men do not forsake the cause of the King,’ he said. ‘But if you know of any such, give then over to me. I will kill them.’
Nam-Rog drank out of his bowl a treasured prize, real beer from the far North, brought over the seas and cooled in pits filled with snows from the mountains over Fulmine. He too, looked intently at his companion. The war-paint made a devil’s mask out of the dark lean features. The mask was a braggart’s device, a thing to frighten children, not men; but the eyes behind the paint were truly terrible. They were like to eyes Nam-Rog had beheld before – the eyes of Ara-Karn. This man lacked the force of will and the all-ruling self-command of the Warlord, but the severity and singleness of aim were the same. Either man could have killed like cowards and exulted in the blood. These civilized men, he thought to himself; no tribesman could have been so bent. Not even Gen-Karn, for all that his spirit had been lamed, had been the equal of these two.
‘And you, Southron,’ he said at length: ‘are you content?’
Erion Sedeg took from his belt a picsle leaf and chewed it. Already his teeth were stained purple-red from this habit. Picsle was not a dream-herb, but only tasted of its spice: Erion Sedeg chewed them for the sake of the dye, which made his smile ghastly.
He smiled now. ‘I am content when the King is content,’ he said.
Nam-Rog laid the empty bowl aside. He disliked this man. ‘Then I will say why I have called you and you may go,’ he said. ‘In the late months of the last year, you spoke some words to me about a – a thing, a device of some sort, which would help to overcome the fastness.’
‘Yes.’ Erion Sedeg put his dark hand lovingly about the knotted leather handle of his whip. His heart leaped: he knew now what would follow. ‘I learned the secrets of these things from craftsmen on the Delba: they had fashioned them for Ghezbal Daan, for Yorkjax of Belknule, and for other princes who had rebel lords they wished to put down. With this, and the bows we have, we will tear down the Black Citadel in a pass.’
Nam-Rog gestured at a coffer by the Southron’s feet. ‘There are riches enough: the men you have. How swiftly can the thing be done?’
‘It is not a matter of riches or of men, but of timbers,’ Erion Sedeg said. ‘They must be great, straight, and of the hardest woods. There are no forests near here: even those of Fulmine will not serve. Nothing could goad my men to take wood from the Sontil. Such wood lies only on the far side of the mountains. This will take two months or more.’
Nam-Rog nodded. ‘It would be of no avail to have it done soon anyway. There can be no great assaults in this heat. Gather the men you need, and come back to me when they are gone.’
‘I will go with them myself,’ Erion Sedeg answered. ‘Ara-Karn would accept no less.’
Erion Sedeg rose and wrapped his cloak about him. He left without further word or sign, and set in motion the needed preparations. He did this hastily, lest the barbarian should call him back with a changed heart; then retired to the inner chambers of his austere tent.
There Erion Sedeg made prayer before the small shrine he had had wrought, the shrine to the awful spirit of Ara-Karn. He murmured his words lowly, and there was none about – yet even so he hoped, in the dark, burning hollow of his heart, that the Master, that mysterious and supreme being who had issued out of darkness and fire and blood, might have knowledge of his wishes, and that the potent blessing of Ara-Karn might arrive upon his schemes.
So he gained fresh hope for the fulfillment of the dream he had cherished ever since the tent-dwellers had been roused to war, and Erion Sedeg had gone with them, his brain still troubled by the image of the dark man on the cliff-side – the dream to be placed in honor by Ara-Karn above all, even these barbarians, and sit and rule and give out death at the sword-hand of the King.
§
ABOVE THE PLAIN, on the mountain-top where the cooling breezes never failed, the Tarendahardilites gathered in the first harvest of the year, and rejoiced. Father Ennius had declared a three-pass festival, and the Empress herself was to preside. All the cooks made cakes and dressed their breads with special care, cups of wine were passed around, there was music, singing, and dance. There were even performed, before the shrine of Goddess by the Iron Gate, marriages, and naming of infants born that year.
The Empress sat upon a raised seat and looked over the crowds milling where the Gardens once had been: they were dressed in their finest, slave, cityfolk, and noble alike. They crowned the Gerso with the green and purple leaves of the Festive King. They even made him drink of the wine and dance with the Festive Queen, a four-toothed mother of sixty. He smiled courteously, bowed before his partner, and danced a dance with her no one had ever seen before, and which she could hardly match. At the close of the dance he took his partner in his arms and kissed her, to the delight and cheers of all the people there. Even the Empress herself, regarding them with an odd stillness of body, applauded.
Later they walked alone on the Palace roof, the Divine Queen and the savior of Tarendahardil. She walked along the shadow-edge, on the very parapet itself, with nothing below for two hundred fathoms, where the dark shadow of the mountain stretched like a finger pointing to the dark horizon. She sang softly as she walked; it was strange to hear those girlish notes issuing from behind the mask.
‘I often come here,’ she said, ‘to be free of the heat and gloom of the walls below. I have not been a prisoner of any one place for so long since I was a child. Sometimes my legs itch to feel the body of Kis Halá between them. I visit her weekly, but the sight of her longing to be free is sad. We make each other downcast. I often rode her across the fields outside the city in summer.’
He was watching her now with that same stillness with which she had watched him dance. ‘Do you remember,’ he asked quietly, ‘that time two winters gone, in the castle in the mountains near the Marches, how I stood upon an ice-painted parapet, and you feared for my life?’
She looked down beside her. ‘This is many times as high.’ She stopped and turned to face him. The winds rippled the wide black robes like a sail, pressing them against the half-glimpsed contours of her body.
He stood, his body half-turned away but his face regarding her fully. The green and purple leaves made an oddly hued tangle in his black hair: already they had begun to crisp and die. He gestured behind him, where the Imperial tent still stood in the center of the roof. ‘I have a present for your reverence, in honor of the festival.’
‘Yes?’ She stepped off the parapet. The gaiety had vanished from her voice. She crossed the stone field toward the brightward edge.
She stopped before a calendar-stone at the brightward parapet. Lines deeply-chiseled radiated from the stone’s base, to mark the seasons of the year. There was also a newer, fainter mark making a cross out of one of the deep grooves. She herself had scratched that mark, on the pass of the arrival of the barbarians to the marshaling-field below the city. Soon afterward, the barricades had been overturned, and the Citadel had been snowed with black ash. Nor would it be long now, she thought, counting the weeks, before the shadow of the stone would touch that mark again.
‘How much longer then, will you continue this game?’ she asked him. ‘Will it be another month, or year?’
‘As long as is needed.’
‘But then there will be an end?’
‘Yes.’
‘And when your men have overwhelmed us here, and put the last of us to death, or dragged the last of us away into slavery, will they use this Citadel, or forsake it?’
‘It has no use for them.’
‘And then the other cities will fall?’
‘If they challenge me.’
‘That pleases me,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘It will be a fitting way to mark the end of the Bordakasha. No other race will ever have such a monument as this to mark its passing.’ But he was silent, and did not answer.
She stepped upon the parapet and leaned against the obelisk.
Far below, the people danced the festival-dance: some casting their glances skyward saw her, a figure blacker even the than the stones of the building. Behind the figure great yellowish clouds arched and passed like the tale of centuries. A thrill of pleasure danced up and down the backs of the Tarendahardilites, and they cheered faintly.
‘Once,’ she said, still looking down, ‘only fishermen and farmers dwelt here, and some herders on the plateau: but none at all on this black mountain that they called Renda, the Black Fist. It is said those simple folk lived hard lives untouched by war and kings. From generation to generation, perhaps, rumors would reach their ears: of great Kings come to fabled Vapio, of vast armies on the march, of the nomad horsemen that ravaged the lands. Then new tales came one summer, of a league formed by the cities against the nomads and led by a single unknown man, Elna: and there were wild battles spoken of.
‘And then it is said a fleet grew out of the sea, and Elna and all his battle-stiffened warriors walked aland. They ate fish and mutton and got forage for their steeds, and then they went their way.
‘Elna returned to Renda nine summers later, at the word of the Prophetess. In a trance she bade him climb to Renda’s peak, and there behold his future. So Elna made camp with a few of his captains on the grass of the plateau, among the sheep-herds: and it is said he beheld Goddess bathing in a spring – there where now the Brown Temple is all that rises above the waste.
‘Then Elna went upon Renda by a perilous climb. Alone upon the lip of the stony cowl he beheld a desolate deep black cup of stone, cut by a ravine that seemed to plunge into the dead depths of the mountain. Some pits filled with greenish rainwater, some weeds grew in the crevices. And Elna chose that here should he build the head of his domains. Ten thousand slaves, captives of the wars, were set to the task; less than fifty survived the building of the Palace, the carving of the twin gates, and the filling of the grounds with earth. A city sprang up around its flanks; and Elna renamed the place Tarendahardil, the resting-place of my fist. So it is said in the Song of the Bordakasha.’
Faintly on the winds the sounds of laughter and music were borne up to them. In the distance, a speck high above the sunlit lower quarters of the city, a gerlin glided, searching for its prey.
She turned. The brazen light of Goddess had darkened his features almost red; his eyes were narrowed, his lips parted, showing the strong sharp teeth. He was looking at her. She felt that look as the touch of a hand upon her breast. She stepped down from the parapet.
‘Show me then this present,’ she said, passing close by him.
He bent his head and led her to the tent quietly fluttering. Upon is its far side a curious framework had been raised, upholding two rows of ten ship’s-amphorae slightly tilted. Below the amphorae were two wooden troughs extended over the outward-sloping wall of the tent; above them was a length of sail-canvas, gleaming against Goddess.
‘And what, pray, is the object of this?’ she asked.
‘Your reverence is no doubt uncomfortably hot, dressed so upon these dark stones,’ he said. ‘Behold.’
He raised his hand to the structure and drew part of it forward. The twin rows of amphorae tilted farther forward; water spouted from them, filling the two troughs. Ara-Karn let the amphorae back to their former posture as the water, through small holes in the bottom of the troughs, began to weep pliantly in the wind, darkening and bewetting the golden skirts of the tent.
He bent forward in formal invitation. ‘Enter, your majesty, and be cool again.’
They entered the tent. The cool breath of the water flowed with the breeze across the amber chamber. It was as though they had stepped across space to some forest glade beside a rushing stream.
‘But this is delightful,’ she exclaimed, seating herself upon her stool and drawing up the skirts of her robes above her sandaled feet.
He had seen briefly those feet and the pale, slender stems arising from them to vanish in warm secrecy underneath the folds of black linen. He brought up his gaze to meet hers, hidden in the shadow of the golden eyelets. After a moment he knelt on the rugs thrown over the hot stones of the roof.
He noticed she was twirling a flower between her fingers. The flower was yellow with a black center, and its leaves were marked with purple.
‘Where did you find that?’ he asked.
‘Emsha brings them to me. She finds them in the grove of trees beneath the cowl. They are the last remnant of the Imperial Gardens, I suppose; but I do not remember them, and not even Emsha knows how to call them,’
‘Where I come from,’ he said, ‘they are called “alzhaale.” ’
‘What a lovely name!’
‘Yes, the word is sweet. It means, “the evil.” ’
‘A strange name for so beautiful a plant.’
‘Among my people,’ he remarked lightly, ‘these flowers have a bad repute.’
They remained thus in silence for a time, each enjoying the calm. About the tent floor fragrant stalks of the harvest had been strewn, and upon the walls bunches of sweet, musky darylinthin herb were hung to dry: these now in the cool dampness seemed to revive, and the different scents intermingled wonderfully.
Allissál was aware then of a new thing in her, a thing she had not known in a year’s time, not since she had ridden on Kis Halá to the groves of the necropolis, when Ampeánor had been last at Tezmon. It was the pure, childish, sensual feeling of happiness.
And it made her bitterly ashamed.
In the weeks since she had met with Captain Haspeth, she had come to enjoy more and more these meetings with her enemy – when they sat together giving justice to the Tarendahardilites, when they conferred with Berowne about the defense of the Iron Gate, and above all when they were together alone for no other purpose than to escape all the others, as they were together now. It was a calm enjoyment and appreciation of his presence as a man. And even as an enemy, she no longer thought of him with bitterness. Haspeth was safely raising forces in Rukor; the attacks of the barbarians grew ever weaker. At first, seeing the possibility of victory at last, she had found it difficult to conceal a fierce anticipation beneath the guise of melancholic resignation. Now she felt an easy friendliness between them, which they had never before known. She knew he felt it too. They might be together now in comfort and not even feel the need to speak.
Gently she lowered herself from the stool and lay back upon the piled-up carpets, breathing in the perfume of the air, aware that he did likewise. She saw in her mind his long body lounging within arm’s reach of her, and she remembered the last time she had seen him naked, lying across her bed in the calm unconcern of sleep that only men and animals knew.
‘And now it strikes me,’ she said, and the words slid slowly and languidly from her tongue, ‘how strange it is that we never went together to gather flowers, nor to the theater to laugh at the latest comedy, nor yet lay together beneath the sky on a bed of ferns and grasses. Whenever we were together it was always fire and harshness, a toil of wills and bodies. Even that winter at the castle in the mountains, what did we do? In riding, sword-play and love alike, it was ever contention between us.’
‘It was our way,’ she heard him answer simply. ‘Let common folk pursue their common pleasures, and let cows content themselves on grass and hay. There is no greatness without bitterness, some gall in the mouth to spit out. It is only in saying no that the soul may prove its strength – above all in saying no to that which should come most easily and pleasantly. It was only that battle and victory we each sought, Gold, after our own notions of those things.’
‘And yet, to what end? Why should we have been so made, when none other is?’
‘Oh,’ he said lightly, ‘there are some who will fight forever until that which they seek to kill is slain at last.’
‘And what could be so terrible and of so great a menace to us that, unknowing, we would go on fighting it and know no rest while it still lived?’
‘Why, Dornan Ural, of course,’ he said.
They both laughed at that, a friendly laughter not to be withheld. She turned and raised herself, so that she was resting upon one elbow and looking down on him. ‘And now,’ she said, her voice still rich with the laugh, ‘will you not at last tell me who you are, and why it is you have come here?’
He bent his head to regard her, and slowly pulled off the leafy crown.
‘Very well,’ he said.
