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.
The Spirits of the Past
‘EVEN I,’ he said, ‘can grow impatient.’
He sat cross-legged before her, bronze against the silver-gold tent. It was the first hour of the longsleep, but Allissál felt no wish for rest.
Their ease and pleasure had gone: they were enemies again.
‘Where then to begin?’ he mused. ‘Shall I speak of our true first meeting, the one you do not now recall? Or go back yet farther, to the ages before I first came into the world? No: I will begin with a voyage.’
He pointed through the opening of the tent. ‘Tell me, Gold, what one finds at the bright horizon.’
‘The end of the lands of men, and the start of the sands of the great Desert.’
‘Go there,’ he said.
‘Beyond those shores of sand,’ he said, ‘extends a world of rock, sand, and glaring heat. And in the very heart of that vast, burning world, there lies a spot where Goddess hangs high overhead, a giant, blazing orb unbearable to behold. On every side the tormented sands are torn by swirling winds – the breath is full of dust that slices into the lungs like a razor – the very stones of the earth are blackened by ages of Her nearness. You stand at the center of a world beyond this world, a place beyond even the imaginings of the prophets.’
‘I see it,’ she said softly.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘go beyond.
‘The glare, the heat, the towers of sand and dust, abate somewhat. Sparse scrubs of sere grass break the weariness of the land. Clouds cross the skies, and there is even a little rain. In the sand and clay run dry riverbeds. And farther still, the sands reach their end, and there is greenness, softness, streams of dark water, plants, beasts, oceans and men. But the beasts here are not the beasts of the world you know, and the men here are not the men of the world you know.’
‘But where are we?’ she asked, troubled by the sights that ran before her eyes. ‘What is this place?’
‘My world.’
She opened her eyes.
From a serving-platter he caught up a round ripe fournal fruit. With the knife on the platter he scored a line about the fournal, from stem to dimple and back to stem. He placed the fruit on the carpet by the opening, so that the circle he had cut ran with the commencement of the shadow.
‘Consider again the world,’ he said. ‘All men know it is an orb from the way Goddess falls to greet the earth as a man journeys toward the dark horizon. Here, where it is closest to the Sun, is the world of Goddess and the Desert – there upon the shadowside the black seas from which rises God’s jade tower. Only here, along this twilight line, may life endure. Here at the stem is the land beyond the far North, where there are only mountains of ice; here by the dimple swells the Southern Ocean; and in between lie all the lands you know. And yet, as you can see, this forms but one half of the circle I have cut. Here upon the other side of the fruit is another half.’
‘Of course,’ she answered. ‘Those are the lands of the dead.’
‘There, where I am from, it is your world that is called the lands of the dead.
‘It is curious, is it not,’ he added, ‘that in both our worlds men should have the same superstition, and lay out their dead in barges? Even the shape of the barges is the same. Perhaps there is truth in the ancient sayings of both our kinds, that the barge came from Goddess in the age before the lands were sundered.’
‘You came to the far North in such a barge,’ she said.
‘Even so. And there are other likenesses, for we too had our Elna, who united all the lands beneath his banner. And so wise was he, and so stable and prosperous his kingdom, which though it stretched from the ice to the warm seas and none lived outside it, it continued under a single dynasty for more than a hundred generations of men. One hundred generations of High Kings, all of the same house – peace for a thousand years – can you imagine the wealth and weakness they amassed?
‘I can. I was the last of them.
‘The child that I was in that faroff life was flattered, pampered, cozened, given his choice of a thousand amusements each pass. Ten thousand courtiers of either sex attended his pleasures. Two thousand slaves saw to his desires. He owned twelve palaces, four thousand of the finest horses, five hundred ships of trade and three hundred of war – for wars arose now and again, to put down rebellions and to suppress pirates and slaves. In all the thousand temples of the world, when the priestesses took up their chants, it was for him they sang. And when he put aside the silver robes of childhood and drew on the golden ones of youth, there were one hundred and twenty-nine ladies of the most accomplished art and beauty to wait upon his pleasure. His look and bearing were different from my own – not even the laughter would you know. Here you see shadow, but the boy-king was light.
‘And he was happy, for though not ignorant he was naïve. The ignorant do not know there is such a thing as evil in the world – the naïve know that evil lives in the world, but they do not believe it. And because both his sacred parents died when he was a babe, a High Regent was appointed to oversee the world for him. This was a kindly old man much attached to the prince, and since the boy-king was the last descendant of his house, he took his Regent almost for a father. The boy-king called him old Kar Belthus and left him to rule the world while the boy-king, careless and unafraid, swam in the streams of its myriad pleasures. Even after he was crowned and anointed High King, he left the duties to old Kar Belthus.
‘He was, I grant you, somewhat spoiled. But what is excess, but too much of pleasure? And to the young not even everything is enough. Once he had brought down with his bow some beast, or known the wonders of some mountain or some palace, it was intolerable to him that he should be forced to do the like again, above all since there were so many other beasts and palaces unglimpsed. And it was the same with women…’
His voice softened and failed. He seemed lost in his reveries. Then his eyes stabbed hers, and he smiled an evil, wicked smile. ‘Until on the festival of Narioolis over the lake of Her Mirror, the boy-king danced with a lady newly come to court, and took her to his bed.
‘Alastaphele she was called, and her hair was rich and delicate as gold seen through a sea-pool, and her eyes ranged from the gray of winter clouds to the blue of a mountain lake. Others were lovelier or more clever, and she was artless in some ways, being yet a virgin when they met. But when the boy-king awoke he found that she had left him alone in his bed – and she was the first ever to do that.
‘At this his estimation of her grew. Rare among the ladies of the court were those with the delicacy to understand that once was enough for him, and so spare him the bother of farewells. He was weary of tears and threats of leaping off high rocks if he did not show mercy. And yet she had not stayed long enough for him to give her the present usually granted those whom he had favored. And it struck him that perhaps she had not departed solely out of consideration. Perhaps for her too, once had been enough. Perhaps he might not have been allowed to couch with her again!
‘Then it seemed to him that perhaps she had not been so artless, and he began to wonder if he had explored fully the delights she might have offered. Yes, he knew these games, but his regard for her grew when he saw that she could play them – and knowing this could not heal his injured pride. She had become at a stroke the one thing in all the world he might not have again: he determined to alter that, and win from her the solace of those very tears and threats of leaping off high rocks she had denied him.
‘He learned she was a younger daughter of Epharinaigue, whose kingdom lay beyond the mountains of Keldaroon near the bright horizon. He had never visited Keldaroon, whose rock-climbers were the most famous in the world. So for some weeks he made camp there, enjoying their feats and demonstrations, and planning in secret his own assault upon Alastaphele.
‘Gaining the palace of Epharinaigue, he camped in that prince’s forests and, sending gifts and pleasantries, commanded that Alastaphele come to him. In less than an hour Epharinaigue and all his family waited upon the boy-king in his tents – all but Alastaphele. He feigned anger and gravely threatened Epharinaigue. He could see the other ladies of the court secretly applauded this rude girl, and was now determined to take her discourteously and leave her with nothing, and so make of her a lesson for the others. Never had he been so appreciative of all his kingly rights and powers.
‘Yet not even making Epharinaigue his go-between sufficed: the girl denied her own father’s commands, and locked herself in the maidens’ garden of the palace with her women, threatening not to emerge until either the king had left or she herself lay dead. Then he saw that he had behaved badly, for if the girl did die he should be thought of harshly, and if she forced him to depart he would be shamed before the world, and not have the enjoyment of her anyway. This desire now burned in him. No other woman might please him, and his every dream ran like a whirlpool round the memory of this girl. She left him no other choice but to turn the threat of his anger against her father. If Alastaphele did not yield with a willing grace, the boy-king decreed, all Epharinaigue’s lands and powers would be forfeit, and Epharinaigue and all his kin sent into the Desert – the formal declaration of death reserved for traitors. The scribes of old Kar Belthus were outraged by this decree, but what could they do? He was still High King.
‘That pass, during the longsleep, Alastaphele came to him. How she gained entrance I do not know, unless it were with the aid of the ladies of the court. The King had gone alone to his couch, and slept fitfully, when she entered his dimplace. She knelt beside his couch. In her hand she held a sacrificial dagger of the festival of Narioolis – that same dagger, in fact, which is in your possession. It is ancient beyond your telling, and has certain qualities … I wonder if even Alastaphele knew what manner of thing she took as her instrument that sleep?
‘Holding the dagger to his throat she said, “This surely would be just to slay you, though it be blasphemy and treason. For you have shown yourself to be a tyrant and unworthy of the name of your ancestor. Did he do then as you do now, and use his powers to dishonor women and turn noble men to vile deeds? O King, I had heard of you that you were beautiful, noble and of great talents, for all that you wasted these gifts of Goddess on vain pursuits, and were not King at all save in name and blood. This was a thing I could not understand, and determined to learn the truth of you – which I did. You, who might be the greatest father to us all since the Great Ancestor himself, choose instead to be the vainest fool in a hundred lifetimes of men. You will win here nothing but scorn and ridicule, for now I go to a place of hiding where you will never find me. As for my father and family, if you choose to execute your hateful decree, you will find in their corpses only the seedbed of a vengeance and terror such as you might not now even dream. And be assured, O High King, that did I not love you with all my body for the man you might have been, it would be your holy blood and not these bonds that I should leave upon this couch.”
‘So she bound him and made him eat of the sleep-herb anxorlai, and departed as secretly as she had come. And the King did not protest or cry out, for it delighted him to have inspired so great a hatred in her breast. And then the truth of her words was known to him, and he burned for shame. And when he awoke, he undid her simple bonds and commanded his horse, for he would go riding alone in those woods. But he turned past the castle of Epharinaigue, and, taking Epharinaigue’s punishment for his own, rode into the Desert. For was it not true, that the King himself had been guilty of the greatest treason?
‘He was never one for moderation – as giddily as he once delighted himself, now he scorned and detested the man he had become. Sand and pain alone could comfort him. The dust swallowed him and slew his horse so that he must go afoot, haggard, blinded and starving, wandering at hazard beneath the brightward peaks of Keldaroon. And there in the end, in dark strange caverns, he fell in with curious painted men.
‘They took him in and cared for him all ignorant of who he was, for they were the priests of Temaal. And the King hid from them his name, family and titles, and was initiated into their hidden rites. And so a year passed.
‘When the King returned to the world that had been his, he found the court in disarray. They had deemed him dead and, as he was the last of his house, there was confusion as to who should undertake the rule. Old Kar Belthus had all that he could do to keep order. There was even talk of dividing the world under the separate underkings. When they were assured he was indeed the King, they would have ordered celebrations such as had not been known for three hundred years. That he forbade: he was not returned merely to play again the fool that Alastaphele had named him.
‘He summoned old Kar Belthus; he took up all the powers of the King. All that Kar Belthus had set in motion, the King overthrew – what sort of King is it but a weakling who does nothing but assent? Old Kar Belthus protested, but the King stripped him of his mantle of jade and gold. A coolness grew between them, and they were no longer the loving almost-kin they had been.
‘Then the greatest joy of the King’s return reached him, for Alastaphele made appearance in his court, chastened, grieving and only half-believing he had returned from a death to which she believed herself to have condemned him. In high ceremony they were joined, for from the hour he had heard her bitter truths, he had known he could have no other woman, and no more fitting Queen. They were bound before the priestesses with the sacred cords, and for a pleasantry they held that same jade dagger between their joined hands.
‘A year they had, of the greatest work and happiness. And the highest joy they shared was that pass when they learned she was to have a child, his heir. An heir! A child. A son. His son – my son – Alastaphele’s own son!’
For a long time he was silent. She waited, caught up in the tale’s spell, and fearing what grim turn it would take.
‘Two weeks later,’ he said at length, ‘he stood haggard on the roof of the highest tower of his principal palace. Before his feet, Alastaphele lay dead.
‘His grief was unspeakable, a thing beyond all reason, almost a malady in itself. He saw off the death-barge of his beloved Alastaphele from a fogbound port in the gray North. Weeks passed and the courtiers grumbled, but still the King had not will or strength to depart that port. Only old Kar Belthus might comfort him – in truth during those last weeks of his sojourn in that world, the two came close to remaking all the lost affections they once had shared.
‘Kar Belthus told the King of an old legend of the port, that those who sailed deep upon the currents of the dead might sometimes hear whispered words of the voyaged ones, echoing across the lapping waves. The King commanded a fleet of three ships, including his royal ship. They set out across the fearful expanses of the Northern Sea, toward the bright horizon.
‘Far they went, farther than any others had ever gone living. Strange untoward islands they passed, and made camp upon for a brief time. They were places bitter and chill, and their waters unwholesome. Goddess loomed high overhead, and the currents of the dead ran sickly beneath the keel, and great grew the fear of the sailors. But the King, ever hanging over the forward rail, listening in vain to the waters’ voices, would not heed the voices of men. There were strange fishes in those silvery waters, and the birds of the air were unknown, and he thought at any moment he might overtake the barge of his beloved Alastaphele. Only old Kar Belthus, whispering words among the seamen, kept the peace there – or so the King believed.
‘And then one pass he woke from a drugged sleep to find that the other ships had turned back and were vanished already beyond the dark horizon: and on the deck before him stood no courtiers nor old Kar Belthus but only a knot of seamen, driven half mad by fear. And he knew they meant to murder him.
‘The King never knew such eloquence as he did that hour, when he won from them his life. Still, they would not take him back to the world – they had done treason and their lives were forfeit, unless there were no longer a High King. It was only by invoking the very fear of the Couple that he kept their blades from his heart. They put him over the side into his own death-barge, which he had had made at the same time as Alastaphele’s, that even in death they might proceed in like vessels. The seamen gave him a makeshift mast and a few vessels of food. And so in dread and haste they consigned him to the care of Goddess, and fled away with a following wind.
‘He watched the masts of that ship sink below the dark horizon. The hundred-and-first of the Great Ancestor’s line stood in the little, rocking barge, the only upright thing in all the world. Then he sat down in his own death-barge and wept, for he was naïve no longer…
‘Behold him now some weeks later, still upon the bowl of that same accursed sea. The last of the food was gone – the water as well. The sail was rent and worthless. The King lay in a stupor, filthy, wretched, not far from death. Wreckage passed by on silver waves. The voices of those waves rose in choral songs, bell-like, impossible and strange, things of unbearable beauty and horror. Monstrous things sundered the deep, rising like islands only to sink again half-seen. He lay there, the only living witness to a world which before him only gods and the dead had known. At length he slept, perhaps never to wake again.
‘Then he dreamt clouds darkened the sky. Winds roused themselves like wild dogs, and it grew deadly cold. A terrible storm broke over the barge. Rain fell – not rain: that is too mild a word. A sea suspended in the heavens drained down upon the nether waters of the earth.
‘And that tiny, feeble figure in a tiny, forlorn barge, woke to find his dream was true. He fought his way to his feet and gloried in that fury. He drank the waters of the storm and had much to keep the barge afloat, and still – he gloried in it all.
‘The storm passed on, and with it the last of the King’s strength. He slumped to the bottom of the barge and lay moveless, while tide and current brought his death-barge into the green embrace of a deep-water bay. There on a storm-lashed shore he found some hundreds of rude-clad men and women kneeling to Goddess as She was violated…’
§
ARA-KARN had risen again to step outside and refill the long troughs. He returned with a pensive look about his eyes, as though he had sent his gaze to pierce vast distances. Now his eyes turned again on her.
‘Continue,’ she said, to break the stillness.
‘But surely, all is open to you now. As I sat weeping among the relics of my short and wasted life, and as the masts of my ship vanished beneath the dark horizon, a transformation was worked within my soul. Into my mind, unbidden, came the sayings of the priests of Temaal. A strange spirit seemed to step into my soul – in truth it was myself. When they see their shadows, some men are undone, and some are made. When I stepped into that barge, it was with every intention of sailing against those sweeping currents in a hopeless attempt to regain the world. Then I beheld in them a fate, a flow of strength not to be denied. I might contest this fate and be destroyed, or ride the wave and try to guide its course. I chose to ride it. So was it revealed to me in a moment, that no man has mastery of that which he loves. Only by being indifferent to my life might I have command of it.
‘I came to know the swells which drove my barge so well, it seemed almost as if I might summon them at will. And when the rains came at last to wet my cracked lips I laughed, and knew I rode the wave still. Had Goddess Herself descended to offer me the treasures of Her golden body, I would not have been surprised. What did it matter that it would take the favor of the gods to see my little barge through that storm: Whatever it needed, even so should it be granted.
‘So, when I stepped upon the shore of the far North, there where none of my race had ever set foot before, I knew at once what land I had reached. There before me was a brutal people who might kill without tears for lust or need. They were all I could have wished. I rode the wave still.
‘I threw the gilded relics of my former life in dedication to the waves. I knew then how it must be. I had divined much within the little barge. Old Kar Belthus, whom I had trusted and even loved, had set in motion plots against me. Alastaphele, my Queen, must have suspected him. So old Kar Belthus had her poisoned, slowly, so that even she believed it a sort of sickness. It was old Kar Belthus who chose her physicians and priest-healers. To depose me, though an act of blasphemy and treason – that, perhaps, I could forgive. But to murder Alastaphele heavy with the life growing within her – for that, there could be only vengeance.
‘So I knew the purpose to which my second life must be devoted. I would gather forces. I would build a fleet. I would return to the lands of my birth. I would wreak blood upon those lands and pay back old Kar Belthus a hundredfold for the lives of Alastaphele and our child.
‘Already among these barbarians there had been rumors of the coming of one with power. Little Kuln-Holn had fostered most of them: I used his happy prophecies. None of the peoples of your world had ever learned the making of the bow: I made them aplenty, and by them made Gundoen’s tribe feared. Gen-Karn had fired the tribes with the dream of conquering the lands South of the Spine: I took power from Gen-Karn with bloody hands and bent his dreams to my will. Each step I took increased the gain to me. It scarcely mattered what I did: the power of the wave roiled round me like a maelstrom. They even named me one with a dark God; forgive me, but after a time it became a title I found difficult to contest.
‘I fashioned the myth of Ara-Karn. I made the warriors fear me, rough wild men even as they are. I made them worship me. I fed them with promises of vengeance for the defeat Elna had given them centuries before. I never meant to keep those promises. My goal was Arpane on the Sea, the only port-city on the Ocean of the Dead. There I would order the building of my fleet; thence I would lead my warriors across the cold and silver seas.
‘And then word reached me that the Empire meant to enter the war, and aid the cities of the North.
‘This irritated me. The building of the fleet would take a year, and in that time my warriors would find their passions cooled. Such an army feeds but on attack and victory. To be set upon at the rear by your armies would have damaged the myth of Ara-Karn. And my warriors would not have sailed with me, if it meant leaving their wives and children at your mercies. Dornan Ural was right, you see: we would not have crossed the Taril. It was you who altered that – you with your dreams of restoring your fading Empire. You drew us here. You! And you did so because you knew, deep within your secret heart, who I was, and who you are.
‘You called me: I came.
‘Already, in Ancha, Eliorite and Carftain, I had used the guise of the Gerso. I determined to use it again. I journeyed South, taking only my little prophet Kuln-Holn at my side, in case I should need a messenger to send to Gundoen. I would spy out this Empire and her talk of grand alliances. I would delay the formation of the league until my fleet was built – then Ara-Karn would reappear in the midst of his worshiping warriors, and lead them over the Ocean of the Dead.’
§
‘BUT THEN why do you stay?’ she asked. ‘You won all you wanted when High Town fell. You might have built your fleet and sailed away by now. Why have you remained?’
‘For you,’ he said.
‘I knew you again the first moment I beheld you. Even as Ara-Karn was that young High King on the far shores of the world beyond, even so were you his Queen.
‘You are Alastaphele reborn. Her spirit lives and sleeps within you just as surely as the spirit of that young King lives and sleeps in me.
‘You were my consort, my Queen, and my heart’s desire. And so I dared defy the wave, to take you home again.’
She was silent for a long beat of time. She felt the tent-wall close behind her. She remembered the ill dream she once had had, and it was as if she wished nothing but to flee and escape this thing forever.
In his black eyes she found no trace of the man she thought she knew. It was as if a stranger knelt before her. He had let fall his semblance of reason as if it had been a soiled cloak, and was revealed now scarcely a man at all, but some thing of power, lacking all restraints. She had loved him, then hated him: now she began to fear him.
‘But you are mad,’ she said.
