Samples from books that we have published under the Eartherean Press imprint.
This is another in a series from the first book in the 4-book series The Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn: The Former King.
© 1981 by A. Adam Corby
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. The license is included as an appendix to this work.
Gray Priestess
WITHIN THE GATES Gundoen shouted his triumph over the bodies of the slain guardsmen, shaking his reddened blade; but Ara-Karn was calm.
‘The mechanism,’ he said.
They found it in the next room in the stone walls, seeming vast and monstrous in the dimness. Great wooden gears, metal plates and rods, and cables of great rope thicker than a woman’s hips were everywhere. Ara-Karn lifted a flaring lamp, studying the forms carefully.
Gundoen looked upon it too, but it was only a shadow to him. He took down lamps from the walls and put them this way and that, but still could make nothing of it.
‘We can lead them through the brass doors,’ he shrugged. ‘It will take longer but is there a hurry?’
‘We do not know what forces they can bring to bear upon us here,’ muttered Ara-Karn. ‘Nor is there time to open the Gates properly.’ He pointed at a huge cable, the thickest and strongest of all. ‘There. Cut that.’
The warriors who had entered with them sheathed their swords and took out their war-axes. And they began hacking at the cable, which was thick beyond the imagining of any who had not seen it with his own eyes or felt it with his own hands.
Cutting it took as much sweat as there had been blood spilt and more time. Beyond the walls they could hear the desperate shouts of the guards who had escaped. Finally there was only as much cable left as a strong man’s forearm. Gundoen swept the others aside. He drew his own heavy sword and, with a half-score desperate strokes, severed the tremendous cable.
With a thud it fell to the floor. There was no other movement. The gears did not turn, the ropes did not pull. The Gates without remained shut fast.
‘It needs oiling,’ said Ara-Karn. He pointed. ‘There and there.’
So the men took cups and brass tankards from the barracks room walls and scooped up hot blood from the pools about the guardsmen’s dead bodies, and splashed it red upon the cable where Ara-Karn had pointed.
For a few moments nothing occurred. From without the shouts grew louder, more insistent. Then there was a sudden loud creak, and the cable began to move. Slowly it was drawn back into the mechanism, pulled as if with irresistible force.
And with that, the force that had held the Gates shut fast departed.
A tiny crack appeared in those gigantic gates of stone.
At first there seemed to be no sign of any movement, but then the dark line cracked down the middle of those huge stone blocks. Slowly, a finger’s-breadth at a time, the crack widened, and the Gates parted. Then, in the depths of that dark crack, another crack appeared – this one of light. And beyond that bright crack could be faintly seen shining domes and palaces of red stone.
Now the Gates fell open not a finger’s-breadth at a time, but as fast as a man might walk – and even faster than that. It was as if the very mountains were rising, falling, moving back before the warriors of Ara-Karn. The pull of the earth dragged those mountainous Gates soundlessly on the invisible hinges built into the walls of stone by the master builders of Elna in centuries past. The warriors were silenced by the sight: the Gates swinging, the naked fairness of the city beyond.
Wide, wide the Gates swung, fast as a pony might canter. They swung back against the ancient stone stoppers, built like buttresses against the walls of the Pass. The Gates smashed into the stoppers with a sound of thunder and of solid stone shattering. The tremendous clap reverberated wrathfully from the stone cliffs.
Even outside the Pass they heard it. The war-ponies bucked for the madness of their sudden fear, but strong thighs and fists steadied them. The whole mass of men milled about, stunned and doubtful at the fearsomeness of that sound. Tales were risen in their minds – tales of great Elna, whom the Southrons called a god. Was it not prophesied that one pass he would return? Gerso lay before them like the bride upon the marriage-bed, yet they held back and looked at one another and muttered.
Then one of them, Garin of Gundoen’s tribe, rode his pony up to the crest of the ridge. His brown cloak waved out behind him and vanished behind the ridge. A few others went after; still more followed them. The ponies tossed their shaggy heads; swords clanked against thighs; lances raked the skies. The movement restored them; the growing fairness of red-roofed Gerso restored their avarice and their hate. The great, antlike mass surged forward, down into the perpetual shadow of the cliffs. All the valley floor filled with them, from the shattered Gates to the ridge beyond the mountains – and still men waited their turn outside the Pass.
Then Ara-Karn emerged from the small brass doors, and at the sight of him the horde stopped and recoiled, like a great wave running back. And they saw him and were struck dumb, and knew again their vengeance.
And he rode quietly before them, from one side of the Gates to the other. And behind him were Gundoen and the others, bearing aloft reddened bits of soft and pretty bronze armor. But the hands of Ara-Karn were as clean as when he had entered, for he had done no killing yet. He reached the far side of the Gates and rode back, sternly surveying the sea of leather and steed and sword before him. He reached the very threshold of the Gates, where the curving grooves, cut deeply into the sand, began. He brought his pony to a halt.
He raised his sword, which was cold and sharp.
‘Remember your oaths!’ he called, and his hundred voices were audible to all, like the voices of the dead of Urnostardil that cried aloud for vengeance. ‘Death to all Southrons!’
He wheeled and plunged ahead. Down beyond the Gates he came again into the light of Goddess, and all his armor and his sword gleamed fiercely, as if it were ablaze.
And the warriors behind him, awed by the sight, rumbled in their throats, ‘Death! Death! Death!’ A thousand voices raised that cry of all the warriors of all the tribes of all the far North.
Through the vast open Gates they poured, like the springtime flood that will not be denied and that washes away all that stands before it.
Down those broad streets they poured, yelling the fierce ululations of their tribes. The sound of their ponies’ hooves was like a rocky avalanche. The soldiers of the watch, responding to the incoherent prayers of the fugitive guards, had formed in a body in the opened cobble-stoned avenue just below the Gates. The warriors of the tribes saw them and laughed horribly. They raised swords, axes, lances, and bows. And they passed over the mangled remnants of the soldiery of Gerso with hardly a break in their stride.
Before them reared the many-storied palace of the Governor-General of Gerso. The Porekan’s palace quartered a full complement of his personal guards: these now issued forth from the gate, bewildered at what had happened. They saw before them a thousand demons on horseback bearing down on them. That was enough; the soldiers turned and ran screaming back into the courtyard. Five hundred barbarians rode after them, up the steps, burst asunder the palace doors, and rode laughing down the corridors within. In moments the palace was a bedlam. Servants, slaves, and houseguests ran back and forth and into one another in their efforts to escape the invaders – leaped from windows and cowered under beds. The warriors rode on, enjoying well their sport, taking whom they would, killing, maiming whom they would, letting free whom they would. Life and death and fate were theirs alone, sweeter far than the smoothest beer.
Up the stairs they rode: found, at length, the pillared terrace overlooking the city. They found the Governor-General and his guests. They found the merchant princes, who had profited from the bandar pelts. The warriors pulled up their ponies, not knowing what to do. With so much store of riches before them, what should be done first?
‘Now mark me, you rabble,’ proclaimed Porekan Delbar, stepping forward. ‘Know you not who I am?’
The warriors laughed suddenly, and surged forward. Was it not obvious beyond telling what should be done first?
Some moments later, the stairs resounded again to the hideous odors of burning flesh and hair, sweat from blackened armpits, and blood. Everywhere there was blood.
§
AND THROUGH IT ALL rode Ara-Karn with Gundoen beside him and, somewhat behind, Kuln-Holn and the bodyguard. Ara-Karn looked about him at the spectacle of the destruction of the works of centuries. His face was stained in sweat, bathed in lambent firelight.
That aristocratic face was raised slightly. The lips were parted, the dark beard glossy; the eyes sparkled with the strange jade fire. His nostrils flared pleasurably in the stench; his elbows swung somewhat by his sides to a certain rhythm. He held his pony in fierce check almost unconsciously, with a mind only for the tumultuous carnage surrounding him. And his cheeks puffed and fell now and then, as if he held a light merry tune upon his tongue.
Kuln-Holn could now behold him only with a shudder.
The former fisherman took no delight in those scenes of pillage. His was a peaceful spirit, and his dreams partook of that spirit. He had dreamed of glory and prosperity, but never of how to get them. In his dreams the rosy times somehow just magically came to pass. Yet was he certain that this was not the only road to them. Surely She would have no need to gain respect through blood and terror, as if She were no better than a petty chief whose people detested him. But then he thought, Perhaps these people have been wicked, and this is how She punishes them. Perhaps Ara-Karn has been sent here as Her scourge. That thought heartened him somewhat, though he did not fully believe it.
They rode past a temple of brown stone, whence issued screams of agony and death. Ara-Karn bent over to Gundoen and murmured something, chuckling softly at his own words. Gundoen frowned and looked down at the stones of the street, saying nothing. Kuln-Holn thought, Even the great hunter is disgusted at these scenes. What sort of man can it be who takes delight in them?
They rode down the firelit street. Kuln-Holn shut his ears to the inhuman screams of the brutalized priestesses of Goddess. All he could think was that they must have been wicked indeed to merit such awful punishment as this. And he repeated this thought to himself thrice over, until the screams of the priestesses were lost in the roar of the burning buildings.
Riders crossed their path: Gen-Karn and a handful of Orn warriors. Kuln-Holn saw Gundoen’s hand tighten on the hilt of his sword, as if the chief expected some trouble. But Gen-Karn did not heed. He rode swaying on the back of his large pony, a bottle of wine in one hand, the other pinioning the hands of a naked wench lying belly-down on the back of his pony, her long golden hair concealing her features.
‘Ho, Ara-Karn!’ roared the chief of the Orns. ‘Hail to the Warlord of the North!’
Ara-Karn, to Kuln-Holn’s surprise, smiled as good-humoredly as if to the companion of his heart. ‘Hail to the chief of Orn,’ he said, touching his brow with two fingers in salute.
Gen-Karn swilled at the bottle, smacked the woman’s round rump, and roared his approval. ‘Here’s a fine feast for my eyes! Lead us so, Ara-Karn, and I’ll be your man for life!’ He waved the arm with the wine bottle at the crumbling ruins, the bodies choking the streets, the burning portals. He drank in the fulfillment of his long-awaited vengeance as eagerly as he had swilled the fine wine.
‘Enjoy the sight to its fullest, Gen-Karn,’ the Warlord said calmly. ‘This will be the last city we take thus.’ He seemed gray and drained of a sudden.
Gen-Karn frowned his confusion. Then he laughed roaring and pinched the poor girl’s buttocks until she cried out. ‘Hail, Ara-Karn!’ he shouted.
‘May Ara-Karn be damned!’ cried a terrible voice. ‘May his loins wither like dried grapes! May his hair fall with his teeth to the ground. May She curse him and his name forever more!’
From the blackened ruins of a building came a haggard figure. Her hair was gray, loose but clotted with dried blood. Her robes were torn and darkened with filth, exposing pale bent legs. She stepped from the smoking shadows, and her eyes blazed with reflected flames.
‘Curse you, Ara-Karn,’ she cried huskily. ‘Goddess, hear my prayer! Bring down such shadowed doom upon this man’s head that he shall be an example for all the ages yet to come!’
Kuln-Holn shuddered at these terrible curses. For even through the blood and filth he could see that her robes were those of a Priestess of the Goddess, those who dedicated their maidenheads to Her. She had been virgin and inviolate – until now, when black-hated barbarians had stormed the city, sparing not even the temples. And her gray eyes gleamed with a holy flame.
Ara-Karn looked down upon the helpless, abject, pious figure; and it seemed to Kuln-Holn that the enjoyment had returned to his features. ‘Take her,’ he said.
Gundoen stared at his Warlord. ‘Do you not see what she is?’ he muttered.
‘Take her,’ shouted Ara-Karn.
The guards bound the shrieking creature’s arms to twin pillars. But of a sudden, they stood not in charred ruins, but in a small green field, and the pillars had turned into the branches of a great oak tree.
The other warriors looked about. They found themselves outside the city, in the vale below the broken gate.
The great oak tree jutted against the sky, black against the burning city, like an inhuman idol.
The priestess swung on the cords binding her fleshless bony wrists. Her arms were stretched apart, and when the fire-winds breathed out of the devastation, the branches waved and rose. The priestess thus hung in the air, and kicked and spat at them while she damned forever the name of Ara-Karn.
‘The only way to hang a wench,’ Gen-Karn approved drunkenly. Only he seemed to laugh at what struck superstitious awe into the hearts of the others.
Ara-Karn ignored him. He was as calm and as stiff as ice. To the guards he directed, ‘Kill her.’
But at this the guards hung back. They looked at each other, then dropped their gazes. ‘She is a priestess,’ one muttered, still ashen at her curses.
‘And I a god,’ replied Ara-Karn. ‘Now will you obey me?’
They steeled themselves, and once more approached the priestess where she hung in the weird oak tree. But even then, through the clouds, the smoke, and the gloom of the mountain pass, a shaft of Goddess-light struck the priestess and the oak. The light grew bright there, almost too bright to look upon; and it glowed and spread, and pushed the warriors back. They struggled against it, but in the end gave over.
‘Obey me,’ said the Warlord.
But they answered, ‘Lord, we cannot.’
‘Gen-Karn, will you do this thing?’
Gen-Karn considered for a moment. He shook his head. ‘She’s your wench,’ he said drunkenly. But now even the chief of Orn seemed shaken, and afraid.
‘Lord,’ pleaded Kuln-Holn, taking some hope, ‘can this be a part of your mission? Surely she cannot have sinned so—’
But Ara-Karn was not listening to the words of his prophet. He was looking at the swaying holy woman, his face growing hard. He looked round, and for one terrifying moment his gaze rested upon Kuln-Holn. But then the eyes passed on by and sought out Gundoen. ‘And you, my father,’ he said harshly. ‘Can you do it?’
Gundoen looked upon the shrieking woman. ‘Why?’ he grumbled.
‘Because it pleases me. Will you do it?’
He turned away. ‘Not I.’
‘Well then.’ He swung from the saddle-blanket and drew his long bright sword. Until then the Warlord had done no fighting; the beautiful blade and the hilt of Tont-Ornoth were still bright and clean. He approached the holy woman at such an angle that she could not spit at him or kick him with her blackened feet.
But the light of Goddess seemed to withstand even him. He pushed and strove, and managed to reach half a pace within the golden bright circle. But there he stayed, struggling, unable as it seemed to go farther.
‘May your own God damn you in darkness, Ara-Karn!’ she screamed. ‘May you never know contentment! May you be gorged on the blood you spill! May you fall at the very summit of your conquests!’
He drew back the long bright blade.
‘May you be your own enemy! May your own woman be your death!’
Ara-Karn swung the blade. And he uttered a word – or a syllable – ever after through the last passes of his life, Kuln-Holn would recall the sound, which seemed to crack even the bones of the mountainsides about them.
The words of the gray priestess ceased. They became choked, then turned to howls of mortal pain. The bright blade bit into her torso.
Ara-Karn stood before her, his feet planted wide in a woodsman’s stance. He drove the sword through the brightness, through the filthy gray robes, through flesh and bone and on into the harder flesh of the oak.
The light of Goddess died.
And the greensward inside that circle withered and browned. The leaves upon the old oak shriveled and crisped and fell like dead souls to the ground. The bark and bole of the tree contracted, seized up, and seemed to swallow in half the form of the gray priestess.
She hung there, impaled on the sword of Tont-Ornoth, still struggling. But her curses had ceased, and only a bright thin trickle of spittle and blood oozed from her lips.
Ara-Karn stepped back, looked up to heaven, and sighed. Kuln-Holn, Gundoen, Gen-Karn, and the guards looked on with blank, astounded faces.
Ara-Karn turned back. He seemed suddenly old and very weary. He mounted his pony once more. The front of his chest, his legs, face, and beard were bespattered with blood. He did not bother to wipe it off.
‘By the jade sword of God!’ swore Gundoen, agape.
Kuln-Holn could not look. He felt dizzy in the saddle, as if about to retch.
Even the hardened Gen-Karn was moved. Without a word he dropped the wine bottle and flung the golden-haired wench to the ground. She whimpered, looking about her fearfully, then fled into the shadows. Gen-Karn did not heed. He turned his pony and rode off toward the city. His warriors followed him, looking back in horror on the ghastly scene.
Ara-Karn put his heels to his pony and rode into the city he had pulled down. The others, staring back with horror, did not start after him at once. Then they came somewhat to themselves again and followed him in silence. When Kuln-Holn could again summon the courage to look at his master, he saw the darkened outline moving slowly against the red flames. But now the head was no longer lifted, and the elbows did not swing rhythmically, and the cheeks no longer puffed and fell with the merry tune.
Not even Gundoen seemed to wish to come up abreast of the Warlord now; they all rode some two-score paces behind him, still in utter silence.
At last Gundoen muttered, ‘She was the Guardian of the Pass.’ He shook his head. ‘Hertha-Toll spoke of her. While the Gray Priestess lived, Gerso could never fall.’ He looked at his Warlord, his adopted son, as though even he had come to trust in Kuln-Holn’s belief that this man must be a god.
A desperate cry sounded from ahead.
Kuln-Holn looked up. He saw a black shape leaping from a darkened alleyway, longsword in hand. It leaped upon the other black shape of Ara-Karn, knocking it from horseback. The two shapes rolled and struggled in the broken, bloodstained streets, becoming one in darkness, no longer distinguishable from where Kuln-Holn, Gundoen, and the guards were.
Gundoen spurred his pony forward. He shot to where, ahead, one of the figures was rising above the other slowly, longsword lifted on high. The chief drove his pony crashing against the man, knocking him a dozen paces to the ground. The guards came up and pinioned the attacker viciously. When Kuln-Holn reined up, he saw that the man was young and handsome. His chin was smoothly shaven, and the rags upon his naked limbs had once been fineries. He might have been a prince of this land before Ara-Karn had come.
‘I am well,’ said the Warlord to their eager questions, rising to his feet. ‘But what have we here?’ Kuln-Holn was shocked to hear what seemed like humor in his master’s voice.
‘A young Gerso nobleman, for the look of him,’ Gundoen muttered savagely. ‘We should not have ridden so far behind you, lord. Forgive me. It shall not occur again.’ He looked at the youth with fury in his light eyes. ‘Shall we kill him?’
‘Let me speak with him first.’ Of them all, only Ara-Karn seemed calm – as if he had not been the one just attacked in the very shadow of death. He approached the boy, who was still struggling, fiercely but futilely, against the arms of his captors. The hardness upon the Warlord’s face melted away as he gazed upon the stranger. He smiled.
‘You are rather young to play an assassin’s role, are you not? How many winters have you, boy?’
The boy snarled savagely, his eyes slits of hatred.
‘From your rags, you appear well born. Was your family wealthy?’
The boy kicked against the guards, but they held him firmly.
‘Yes, no doubt wealthy. Titled also,’ calmly resumed Ara-Karn. ‘Tell me, were you happy? … Still you will not speak? Well, deeds are the finest language. Your home is here in the city? Well, of that place that holds so many happy memories there remains only so much ash and blackened stone. You can never go there again. But if you could – would you ever be happy there again, do you think?’
The boy only grunted in his struggles to be free.
Ara-Karn smiled kindly, sadly. ‘I will answer for you. You could not. There is no going back to what you were before. So you hate me, boy?’
Still there was no answer. But now a savage gleam of hard humor lighted the slits of his eyes.
‘Yes, I see. So you can understand this tongue after all. Will you join me, then, and be my lieutenant?’
‘Lord!’ protested Gundoen; but the Warlord silenced him with an impatient wave of his hand.
The boy spat at Ara-Karn. The white spittle mixed with the priestess’ blood on the glossy dark beard.
Ara-Karn smiled more broadly. ‘So. And your mother, boy,’ he said suddenly. ‘Where is she?’
Then it broke from the exhausted youth – a cry of despair and anguish – ‘Dead!’
‘And your father?’
‘Dead!’
‘Brothers?’
A sigh. ‘Dead too.’
‘Any sisters?’
Anger flared again. ‘Dead, damn you, or—’
‘—Or being raped by my soldiers. She must have been pretty, then. Or perhaps not. My men were never too very particular.’
The boy screamed his anguish and tried to bite the arms that held him. ‘Damn you!’ he cried. ‘Damn you! Damn you!’
‘Lord,’ Kuln-Holn asked, swallowing with difficulty, ‘is all of this necessary?’
‘Yes,’ broke in Gundoen with heat. ‘Hasn’t the lad suffered enough? Kill him cleanly and have done.’
‘Kill him?’ queried the Warlord, his voice rising. ‘Be sure I’ll not be so kind. What is kindness to me? And when have I ever cried, “Enough”? Why, I intend to let him go free.’
‘Free!’ cried Kuln-Holn.
‘As free as he may ever be now,’ said Ara-Karn.
‘This is madness,’ groaned Gundoen. ‘Can you not see the look in his eyes? His hatred for you is greater than any feeling he has had before in his life. It must be greater even than that of his first love affair – that is, if one so young has had a love affair yet. If you free him, he will be your unremitting enemy as long as he lives.’
The Warlord of the far North looked his general calmly in the eye and said softly, ‘Yes?’ And such was the look in those dark eyes that the chief was forced to look away, a deep disgust growing in his simple heart.
‘Set him on a horse,’ commanded Ara-Karn in that soft, calm tone that admitted no disobedience. Swiftly it was done. The stupefied youth ceased all his struggling when he found himself astride one of the guard’s ponies.
‘See that he has weapons,’ added the Warlord.
‘Weapons!’ swore Gundoen to the smoky skies.
‘And enough provisions to last several passes’ ride,’ Ara-Karn continued, as if Gundoen had not spoken. ‘Go on – no need to worry about the young lord. He will not attempt another foolhardy attack. He is growing up now. He knows that vengeance tastes best when cold.’
The Warlord mounted his own pony. He brought it next to the boy’s, head to tail, so that the two men both sat abreast and faced in opposite directions. They were so close that their knees brushed against each other. In one swift thrust, executed so skillfully that none of the guards could have stopped it, the young Gerso could have whipped out his dagger and stabbed Ara-Karn in the chest, thereby exchanging lives. Or he might have brought up the leather reins in his hands and strangled the older man. But the boy, seemingly bemused by all that was happening, seemed not to think of either of these things.
Ara-Karn leaned back, regarding the boy. His posture was relaxed and insolent, as if he only sat before a mirroring pool and not some deadly enemy.
‘Boy,’ whispered Ara-Karn so softly that only the two of them and Kuln-Holn, who had ridden closer in order to protect his master, could hear it. ‘Boy – until this pass that is all you have been – a young and foolish boy, who has done nothing but play in the sunlight. Now, however, you are a man, for you have a purpose – something only a few ever attain. Most men live and die frivolously, never knowing the darkness of being a god, of seeing a goal that justifies their lives, which makes their existence real. Only a few know that shadowed joy, and of those few only the rarest handful ever attain the heart’s dark desire.
‘Now you have such a goal, and I wish you luck sincerely. Feel all of that hatred inside you, savor its acrid sweetness – and then you will know what it is to be fully alive. There will be sleeps when you cannot rest for the hatred of me – when your dreams will be full of the sight of your father dying, of the sound of your sister being raped. Listen to those screams, boy. Perhaps, even now, your sister cries out. When my men – and I have many, many men – have finished with her, if she retains any of her prettiness, she may live as one of their concubines. Then they will cast bones to see which one will claim her. If she is no longer pretty – and few are very pretty after such an ordeal as that – they may keep her as a cook-slave. Or perhaps they will have pity upon her and only cut her throat. Perhaps she is already dead, one more blackened corpse among so many corpses, with dark bloody bruises staining her once-soft thighs.’
The boy moaned, shutting his eyes fast, but Ara-Karn gripped his arm with fingers of iron, so that he must open his eyes. And he gazed into those eyes with that gaze so like a Madpriest’s that the boy’s outcry was stifled for very fear.
‘Now you begin to feel it,’ breathed the Warlord, releasing his grip. ‘Good! Savor the hatred and the fear, boy. Court them elegantly as some nobly born whore, and take them for your own. Live for them, breathe through them, dine with one, sleep upon the other. Let them be the shadow of your companion, and aways follow whither they may lead. Do you hear, boy? – always. Now go. We shall meet again.’
The boy, as if in a dream, lifted the reins. Then he hesitated. His eyes ringed his foes questioningly.
‘Go on,’ growled Ara-Karn irritably. ‘Do you think that if I’d meant to kill you I’d have wasted so many words? Be off with you!’ He swatted the flank of the boy’s horse with his jade dagger, hard, and the pony started off.
One more glance back the boy gave them, a glance of terror and despair. Then he set his heels to the pony, urging it to a furious gallop. Soon his figure was lost in the smoke and the glare of the fires. Shortly thereafter even the ring of his hooves on the broken stone streets was gone.
‘Lord, I can have two riders after him in a word, both excellent bowmen,’ Gundoen said. ‘They can be ordered to slay him before he reaches the outskirts of the city.’
‘No,’ replied the Warlord in a voice grown suddenly very old and very tired. ‘No. He shall have free passage from the lands of his enemies this first time. It is the only thing any of us may hope for. Afterward, if you ever see him again, I give you leave to kill him at your leisure.’
§
THE BOY rode as fast as he could urge the steed onward. They flew so fast that the walls of smoke billowing around them seemed like only storm clouds driven by the winter winds. Shortly he passed beyond the shattered city walls and descended into the broad green plains south of the city. In the fields he could see the dark masses of the barbarians heaping great mounds of loot from the burning city, savage victory-chants rumbling from their throats.
The boy rode past them, his eyes half closed. He rode up the road to the rolling hills beyond. Everywhere he looked, he saw the streams of refugees, fleeing in terror to the South. He shuddered to see them: to him it now became real that there was no longer any city called Gerso.
He paused on the crest of the hill opposite to the rift in the mountain where the ruins of the city were nestled, and panted, exhausted for the ordeal he had passed through. He wiped at the sweat upon his brow. Streaks of grime smeared on the back of his hand. He gazed back upon the city of his childhood for a long time.
By now almost all the city was in flames. Great billows of black smoke rose between the mountain peaks that had once watched great Elna build the city. The smoke rose in a curling column drifting slowly to the South, a shadow as of a tremendous army below it. Through the pillar of smoke Goddess could be seen faintly lambent, as if fitfully asleep and dreaming a nightmare of destruction and personal torment.
The boy wept.
A voice brought him out of his revery. ‘It is not a pretty sight, is it? And I fear that there will be other such sights before too long.’
Two men on horseback were behind him. They led several other men and pack-ponies burdened with supplies and goods. The boy recognized the bearded one as the famous merchant, Zelatar Bonvis. The other was the merchant’s apprentice, Mergo Donato.
‘We were still preparing our train of goods to trade with the barbarians,’ said Zelatar, his lips evincing a sour humor. ‘Now it seems that the barbarians have come to us.’ He too looked sadly on the ruined city.
‘What was it you said, Zelatar?’ asked the apprentice hurtfully. ‘Did you not say that when we came back this spring not even the name of that man would be remembered?’
‘So I did,’ sighed the bearded merchant. ‘Now instead of dying, as he ought, he seems to have infected the entire North with his madness. Well, did I not also say beware if the tribes should mass?’ He turned his gaze upon the youth. ‘Young man, you seem to have been of a good house. I seem to recognize you from somewhere. You are one of the few we have seen who had the foresight and levelheadedness to prepare his bags before he flew. We are headed South. I know many houses where my father traded there. Perhaps we will even go eventually to Tarendahardil, the seat of the great Empire. Not even the barbarians will follow us so far. Will you travel with us, at least part of the way?’
Dumbly, the young man nodded.
The merchant brought his horse about. ‘Forget about that city of Gerso,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘It may once have been home, but it is no longer. There are many cities scattered about the round world, my boy.’
Slowly they wended their way down the far side of the green hill to find the road again. They saw the ruins rise and fall back forever behind the hill; only the smoke remained. They traveled Southward, underneath the shadow of that pillar of black smoke, which still obscured the dreaming Goddess.
