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 White Tower
THE PALACE OF ELNA was like a city unto itself. Story upon story rose to the sky, its wings and chambers connected in labyrinths. The long corridors bridging those wings were wholly interior, without a single window to admit the light of Goddess. Instead, the gloom was dispelled at frequent intervals by lamps of brass, gold and electrum.
Berowne followed a half step behind his escort. They climbed the upper stories, several floors above the level on which Kiva slept. It was quiet here, and there were few about. The walls were covered with costly tapestries between antique statues. Berowne had never before been admitted to these levels, and felt sadly out of place. Though he had managed to sponge the blood and grime from his limbs, he felt shamed before even the slaves, beauteous and courteous, who passed him here.
At length they reached a circular chamber set with pillars of porphyry. The guard escorting the captain was greeted by his fellows at the doors. Berowne felt a certain diffidence before them. Only those of noble blood were allowed to stand guard before the Imperial chambers.
The men at the door struck the butt of their lances upon the panels of the door, which rang out like musical gongs. The ornately-carven door whispered open from within, and a maiden issued forth.
She was young, and carried herself with artful loveliness. Her russet wig was of the Eglandic style, and her eyes were deep green, painted bewitchingly. Her lora was the hue of antique ivory, and on her arms and about her soft throat were clasped golden bands set with rubies.
Abasing herself with a startling grace before the captain, she beckoned him through the open door. Bewitched, he followed her. The doors shut softly behind them.
He stood within the White Tower.
They crossed another circular chamber, whose walls were adorned with painted porcelain, and whose floor mosaic depicted the Throne of Goddess where She sat in fiery splendor, attended by Her maidens, the Fifty of fabled beauty. A marble stair ascended through an opening in the painted ceiling. Berowne followed the maiden in silence up the steps. He took note of everything he saw: Kiva would be eager to learn about the Queen’s intimate chambers.
They climbed three landings, encountering no one. The musky, exotic scent of the slave was beguiling. Berowne was struck by the perfection of the maiden’s movements, which rivaled even Kiva’s.
And this was but one of her majesty’s slaves!
Upon the fourth landing the maiden halted before a pair of antique doors of darkly oiled wood. Gesturing the captain to wait, the maiden slipped through the doors. Berowne stood, his thick arms clasped behind his back. Alternately he gripped and loosed his wrist. Over his head the stairs spiraled upward, to reach at their peak those doors few indeed had ever seen: those opening upon the intimate dimplace of the Queen.
The maiden reappeared. Her voice was such as to send a thrill up the backbone of any man. ‘O Captain, my mistress bids you enter and attend.’
Berowne nodded. ‘Yet before I enter, sweet one, will you not tell me what will be required of me? Why has her majesty chosen this time to break her long silence? And why has she called upon me first of all?’
The maiden smiled, a secret, maddening thing. ‘Ah, as for that, my brave Captain, it is only for the Divine One to speak.’
At a murmured word from the slave’s scarlet lips the doors fell open again. For a moment Berowne felt a nervousness such as he never knew when a thousand barbarians swarmed the Iron Gate. He lurched forward. He heard the soft whispering of the maiden’s lora as she closed the doors behind him.
§
IT WAS DARK as a dimplace there.
The long, low chamber was swathed in hangings of black linen. The floor was buried beneath patternless blue-black carpets. At the far end the curving outer wall of the chamber was broken in a single, narrow window. The hangings were affixed long wreaths of dried chorjai blossoms, the poisonous blossoms of dark God used in funerary rites. The warmth and gloom of the chamber caressed Berowne like velvet hands.
Upon a dais near the outer wall an antique throne gleamed with gold and jewels. Around the throne were grouped half a dozen maidens in loras like that of Berowne’s green-eyed conductress. Each of these maidens was of a different sort of beauty, each lovelier than the rest. The scene reminded Berowne of the mosaic below; yet the throne itself was vacant.
Before the dais, on a small reed prayer mat overlying the carpets, knelt a priestess. She was garbed all in black linen. Nothing of her figure or her head could be seen as she knelt over a golden lamp adorned with pearls. Other than the window, this was the only source of light within the room.
As the captain slowly approached, the priestess lifted her head, and in the shadow of the wide black cowl Berowne beheld her face. It was not a human face. It was gold, cast and polished in the ancient manner, like the oldest statues on the grounds of the Citadel. The lamplight glinted off the gold oddly. He stopped, blinking. For once in his life, he was speechless.
Perhaps a dozen moments passed.
Berowne felt the eyes of the slave-girls upon him. They were watching him with mischief in their painted eyes. Still there was no sign of the Empress. At his feet the priestess gestured. She said, in a voice made metal and mute by the prison of her mask, ‘Please, Captain, to be seated.’
There were no couches, seating-cushions, or chairs other than the throne itself. Berowne squatted down upon his boot-heels. He caught the odor of his body, and felt like some wild ox dragged up out of the mire and set on display before the most elegant charai and their servants. The thought almost made him smile. His nervousness departed.
‘And are you truly Captain of the Guard, sir?’ the priestess asked. ‘I had expected another. What has become of the young Rukorian, he who held the post before the city fell?’
‘Your pardon, reverence,’ Berowne answered, ‘but my foregoer went into the city, to do battle on the barricades. He never returned. In his absence, I took command. I was his lieutenant. I am Berowne, a born Tarendahardilite.’
‘I see.’
The priestess was silent for a moment. Then, ‘I had not foreseen this,’ she said softly. ‘I gave the Rukorian the strictest orders, that nor he nor any of his men were to join that battle, but were to remain here and oversee our preparations. Did he not convey my wishes to you? What caused him, too, to disobey me?’
Now Berowne knew the one to whom he had been speaking so casually. He jerked his upper body forward and put his forehead on the carpet.
‘Your majesty, I did not know you – forgive me—’
The golden mask showed no emotions. ‘I pray you, do not apologize, Captain. Nor offer me those tokens of honor a former custom demanded. I am Divine Queen of Tarendahardil, the Empress nal Bordakasha of the South, no more. What lands or peoples remain, which still would bow to me? I am only what you see before you, a solitary woman humbled by her faults. Only the strength of your arms preserves me. Speak then as you please. Or, if you will give me any honor, address me as you have done, as though I were but one of the virgin priestesses of Goddess.’
Berowne nodded, taking careful note of the faces of the slaves. ‘Yes, your reverence.’
‘Tell me then, Captain Berowne, how goes the defense?’
Berowne told her of the assaults the barbarians had made in the past weeks. ‘Yet the Iron Gate is scarcely scratched, your reverence. Elna’s engineers were geniuses, who designed such fortifications.
‘As for the rest,’ he went on, ‘we have ample stock of grain and cattle to last us two good years. The cisterns are half full, and the slaves tell us that the winter rains will easily fill them. The folk from the city are encamped on the grounds, and seem content enough. If we have but the will, we may withstand a siege here for some years, perhaps even without end.’
‘Ah,’ the Queen said. Berowne did not know what to make of that.
‘Captain, you have done me an honor to give up precious rest to visit me here. I am grateful to you for it. It has reached me that another attack was mounted during your watch. My maidens saw it from the rooftop. All went well, I hope?’
‘Exceedingly well, your reverence. Haspeth joined me, and there was much excellent killing.’
‘Haspeth, the Rukorian captain? What does he here?’
Berowne could not restrain his smile. All of Haspeth’s waiting and wailing without those doors below, and not even word of his presence had reached her majesty’s ears.
‘Your reverence, he told me of the orders you gave him, before Egland Downs. He is deeply grieved to have gone against your wishes, and would suffer any punishment to make amends.’
‘Punishment? Who am I to punish anyone – anyone but one? No, let this be Haspeth’s punishment, that he might have been my General and done the barbarians great harm, but now can only wait and watch with the rest of us. Who else among your men distinguished himself?’
‘All the men fought bravely, your reverence. But one man I ought to mention, because though not of my command, he has inflicted more harm to the barbarians than any other three. This is a refugee from the southern lands, your reverence, a Gerso by his birth, and a nobleman – the Charan Ennius Kandi.’
The Queen passed her long, lovely fingers across the edge of the prayer-mat. ‘Ah.’
‘Yes, your reverence. Your reverence perhaps will recall how among the Emperor’s men there were several who had stolen bows from the barbarians, and knew their use. Regrettably, when High Town fell and the City burned, not one of those men survived. We did, however, by the most unforeseen of circumstances, manage to retrieve the bow of one of them, and his arrow-sack. Our Gerso, learning of this, told us he had seen the strange weapon used so often, that he thought he might learn its use. Now I would wager that he is a better shot than the barbarians, if your reverence will allow it.’
‘I will allow it. And he aids you?’
‘In this and other ways, though that alone would have marked him. It was he who designed the cranes and slings we use to drop stones upon the barbarians below the Iron Gate. He showed me how many men should stand on the battlements, and what space should lie between them. He also conferred with the armorers and gave them the designs for the new shields we bear, which are the greatest defense against the arrows, and yet leave a man’s lance-arm free. When all is done, your reverence, no man is so responsible for the good state we now find ourselves in, and I would ask your reverence to keep his name in mind, when the time comes for honors and rewards.’
‘Such a virtuous man, surely no worthy monarch could overlook,’ she said.
Just then a sound came from the narrow window. A great bird filled it, its talons digging into the mortar between the stones. Gleaming black were its feathers, with a saffron ruff above its breast. It was an enormous gerlin.
The maidens showed their fear and drew back behind the throne. But the Queen rose and made her way toward the window, holding a short stick before her.
Berowne stood to his feet. ‘Reverence, stay apart from such a creature. A gerlin that size will respect neither sticks nor swords. I have seen them rip apart the barbarian corpses below the Iron Gate. Let me fetch a lance and I will chase it out.’
The Queen ignored him. She stopped one step from the window. The gerlin glared at her with suspicious eyes. It pecked at the stick. Once again she proffered the stick. ‘Come, my lord,’ she said. ‘You taught me my place: now take yours.’
The great bird stepped upon the stick. A soft note of triumph sounded in the Empress’ throat. She turned, holding the bird perched before her.
A woman all in black, her face obscured by the antique likeness of Goddess, holding before her breasts a savage bird of prey beside a vacant jeweled throne round which seven of the most slave-girls in the South clustered in awe, pleasure and admiration – Berowne had never beheld a scene to equal it. He shook his head.
‘You are startled, captain,’ the Empress said, stroking the gerlin’s head. ‘Forgive the deception, but I was in no danger. For if you behold me at all now, it is due to none other than this bird before you. It was on a longsleep, and I lay in my dimchamber at the height of this tower, wakeful yet wearied, surfeited with dreams, wary of life, so sick at heart that I had all but lost hope. Then a noise alerted me.
‘This very bird had entered my chamber, and was wheeling frantically about beneath the ceiling, searching a way out again. He was half-starved, I think. I gave him water and named him Niad, which means in the old tongue of the South, “A Beginning.” Only then did I give thought to the siege, and what was best for us to do.’
‘That is a marvel,’ Berowne said. ‘I think none but one of the gods’ children could bring such a thing to hand. Yet if your reverence will pardon me, as gentle as this bird might seem now, he remains a wild thing, and might turn at any moment. I have seen gerlins not half this one’s size rip a barbarian to death, despite all his fellows could do to forbid it.’
‘Yet Niad’s greatest grandfather knew ours, I think. And I would follow in the footsteps of my ancestors.’
The green-eyed maiden approached her mistress bearing a silver vessel, in which were several bloody scraps of meat. The Empress fed the gerlin, which swallowed the gobbets as avidly as if it tore them from a fresh corpse. Then the Empress walked back to the window and released the gerlin.
‘Will you scratch?’ she murmured, in the tones Berowne had heard hetairai use with pets. ‘Go then, and claw the eyes of our enemies.’ The bird uttered a high, piercing cry, and scampered out the window.
The Queen resumed her place upon the prayer-mat. ‘And now we shall come to why I sent for you, Captain. Will you take wine while we speak?’
‘Thanks to your reverence. Would it be overmuch to request some bit of Postio?’
‘You will have all you desire.’
‘Your reverence, I hope I do not have all I desire. Or else you will need to summon some to carry me hence bodily. Postio is a favorite of mine – some would say a weakness.’
The green-eyed maiden set before Berowne a low table with a broad wine cup. From a porcelain ewer she poured the cup full of the dark, foaming wine.
Berowne took up the wine cup, feeling the metal warming in the cradle of his calloused flesh. ‘Will your reverence take nothing?’
‘The dead do not drink. But go you on.’
He held the liquid in the hollow of his mouth for a heartbeat before allowing it to drain with the slow torture of honey down his throat. He felt the wine work its way into his upper stomach. By the thighs of Goddess, but that was good! Already he could feel its fire dance about his veins. It lacked but the lips of Kiva to have borne him beyond the bright horizon. After a moment he opened his eyes.
‘Captain Berowne, you were, I think, aware of our orders that none of you of the Citadel Guard were to go down to the barricades before the final battle. Yet your predecessor went openly. Why did you not try to stop him or report his disloyalty?’
‘If it please your reverence, what else was I to do? Should I slay him, and deprive the barbarians of an able enemy? No – but I gave him a jug of Postio to fire his strength there. When a man has the need on him to do a thing, let it be to gain gold, fight a war or possess a woman, then there is nothing left for his friends but help him seek his fate. A man who could swallow back such passions is not a man at all, but a thing without fire, cold and cunning, not to be trusted.’
‘Is a man who disregards the command of his sovereign a man to be trusted?’
‘Trusted for what he is, for his nature – yes, your reverence, he is.’
‘Explain.’
Berowne drank another mouthful.
‘I mean, your reverence, that every man is something tangible, no matter how much he may try to dissemble away that true nature he carries. In my dad’s pottery shop, the buyers would come and go, and some men’s word was good, and other men would always try to cheat, no matter if they could easily afford the price. It was their nature to scrape and connive, even as it was the nature of the others to pay without bargaining. Now, this Rukorian was a man something after the heart of the High Charan Ampeánor. It was not in his nature to stand by and save himself while others fought. So he went. He could be trusted to go, and not trusted to do any other thing. That was my meaning, your reverence.’
She nodded, as if his words had borne weight. Well, he thought to himself, perhaps they had. One could never tell with Postio. He took another mouthful.
‘And you, Captain – what is your nature?’
He glanced slyly to the maidens. ‘Oh, your reverence – shall I say plainly? I was born to love women. When I see them in their beauty, even though I know them to be utterly faithless, something in my belly sings, and I want to follow at their tails. So I became a soldier – it is the best profession for one such as I am. The hours are good, and the glint of armor has a certain appeal – and then, there is the danger. Never am I more ready to love than when I have freshly come from death and clamor and the stink of arms.’
His voice sounded loud and boastful in the quiet chamber. Berowne looked down somewhat shamefully. Why had he asked for Postio? He cursed himself, but happily. Sadness was impossible when a man drank Postio.
‘Well, captain, if you have a mind for it, I can offer you the chance to be as eager for love as you have ever been in your life.’
At her gesture, the maidens left the room. Berowne wiped the corner of his mouth. He tried to steady the rush in his brain. This was why she had sent for him. He must play the captain now.
‘Captain, I have a task for you to perform – for you or for one of your men. It should be a man of daring and cleverness, and he should know the City well. For that is where I mean to ask him to go.’
‘Your reverence, I was born and raised here. There is not a street or building I do not know.’
‘He should also know the tongue of the barbarians.’
Berowne frowned. ‘Then I am not the man, your reverence. Nor is there one in my command who knows even so much as I – for I learned some words from two Gerso merchants who came hither some months ago. I know of only one man, your reverence: this Gerso of whom I spoke earlier. Ennius Kandi knows the barbarian tongue well enough to have been born to it.’
‘Yet I should prefer to choose some other, I think,’ the Empress answered. ‘All the more so if this man does such fine work here. In truth, I know him: he was once one of a group of men I sent abroad upon various errands. It would be unfair of me, I think, to ask him go out into such danger again. On the whole I think he has done his share for me. But I know another who might do.’
She rose, and touched the wall behind the throne. One of the maidens entered and abased herself.
‘Bijjame,’ the Queen said, ‘bid Kuln-Holn attend us here.’ The lovely, white-wigged maiden gave her mistress a further obeisance and departed. The Empress resumed her place upon the prayer-mat.
‘Yet your reverence,’ Berowne said, ‘how is it possible that we might slip past the barbarians? There are always a score or more of them spying on the Iron Gate.’
‘There is a way. It is known to but two other living souls besides myself. It is an ancient secret of the Bordakasha, handed down from Emperor to Emperor. Elna’s engineers built it into the Citadel. Elna meant it to victualize the Citadel in case of siege. It is a sure way, yet not, perhaps, a way without peril.’
‘And what would your reverence have us do once we gain the city streets?’
‘You have done battle many times on the Iron Gate, captain. How many barbarians are there camped outside the city?’
‘In all?’ Berowne scratched his chin, considering. ‘I could not even guess. There are not above a thousand men in any one attack, but that is not a tenth of the numbers we know they had before Egland Downs.’
‘Even so. There is space for only so many men to assault the Iron Gate at any one time – for the rest, we cannot say. Perhaps they are in those tents in the field – perhaps they have long ago departed. Perhaps they wage war in Rukor or Belknule, or farther to the South, toward the dark horizon. Perhaps there are only some two or three thousands of them without the city here. If so, then there are things we might be doing. It little suits me, Captain, that having broken this long sleep, I do no more than endure assault upon assault, while our stores dwindle. Let us at least dream of counterstrokes.’
He nodded.
‘So, Captain Berowne, I would ask you to go into the camp of Ara-Karn.’
Berowne sat back upon his heels. The savagery of the barbarians was legendary. Still, he thought, Kiva would be especially solicitous of him before he went. And, if he could return, he would earn the highest praise of the Empress herself. He might even become her general, or even when all this was ended, be granted a charanship somewhere about the realm. Charan Berowne! It was not a thing to put aside. He gulped down the last of the wine, even to the bitter lees.
With all the grace he could muster, he made the formal obeisance of acceptance.
‘It but remains to find you ears,’ she said as the door opened behind him. The slave led in a short, paunchy, gray-headed man. He looked like a peasant come from a half-tilled field.
The short man made a clumsy abasement before the Queen. ‘How goes it, Kuln-Holn?’ she asked.
‘Well enough, your majesty,’ he said. His voice betrayed a thick northern accent.
‘Captain Berowne, I present to you Kuln-Holn, my beloved servant. Do not be deceived by his appearance: he is a most capable and deadly man. He was born in the North, and speaks the barbarians’ tongue as well as any tribesman.’
‘Indeed he does,’ Berowne agreed. ‘Your reverence, this man and I are old comrades. Often he shares the men’s watches. Forgive me that I did not think of him before. But the name you use is new to me. We call him simply Iocantris, “Little Doughty.” ’
‘It is well that you know his worth, captain. Kuln-Holn, sit and be at ease. I called you here to ask of you a great service. This Captain means to go into the enemy camp. It were better if he went with one who knows the tongue of the far North. Will you go with him?’
There was doubt upon Iocantris’s forlorn face. At length he bowed his head. ‘All right,’ he said.
The Queen spoke again, using the barbarian tongue. Little Doughty answered in like manner. Berowne caught only a word or two. The Empress seemed to be examining the man’s resolve, while Kuln-Holn was plainly in some pain of heart. At last he bowed again, and the Empress nodded.
‘All is agreed,’ she said. ‘Captain, I have impressed upon Kuln-Holn the need for secrecy. You are neither of you to speak a word of any of this, least of all of the secret way, to anyone. Not to your closest, most trustworthy friend – not even to your dearest love.’
‘Of course not, your reverence.’ Berowne wondered how he could tell Kiva enough to impress her without breaking this word to her majesty.
‘Now rest. I will see you freed from your watches, Captain. Haspeth will take your place. When you are refreshed, I will tell you what you need to know.’
Descending once more the ornately-carven stairs, Berowne laughed, and clapped Iocantris on the shoulder. It had come to him suddenly, that when Kiva pouted and demanded of him why he came to her so late, he could astonish her. And the next time Ullerath came a-knocking at Kiva’s door, Berowne could order the Eglander away.
§
IN THE LONG low, black-draped chamber, the Empress Allissál reached forth her hand and slew the flame of the golden lamp. She sat alone there now, in silence save for the low sussuration of winds that passed without.
The maiden Bijjame entered and laid her ivory-draped body before her mistress.
‘Reverence, the Charan Ennius Kandi has come again. He asks to be allowed an audience.’
‘Let him depart as before.’ The slave-maiden rose. ‘Bijjame, before you leave, tell me: do the slaves still keep a watch upon all the movements of that man?’
‘Yes, your reverence. Two men watch him, dividing the hours so he is never out of their knowledge. But he has done nothing unusual.’
‘Have them continue the practice, please, and inform me when there is something out of the ordinary to report. For the common details of his existence here, I do not want to be told.’
‘Yes, reverence.’ The tall, lovely slave backed out of the chamber.
The room fell darker for a moment. The rustling of feathers sounded at the window. The deadly gerlin had come back.
‘So, Niad, I have awakened at last,’ she said, without turning. ‘I wonder, to do what?’
