The Iron Gate: Chapter 17

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.

Egland Downs

WHEN THE BARBARIANS FELL upon Vapio in the dusty heat, they swept aside the womanish charioteers and put to the sack the towered city of the age-old High Kings. The notorious pleasure-gardens they found already burning: for the High Charan Arstomenes, apprised of the enemy’s approach, had resumed the custom of his ancestors and in the midst of his last debauch adorned his death with the lives of his votaries, the graceful, besotted nobility of the Empire.

But when they gained the Eglands, the barbarians found before them not cities rising high behind stone walls, but thousands of scattered ranches and horse-herds splendid as the winds. An army greeted them as well, the greatest army ever seen by man: the army of the League of Elna pitched on the flank of the river Eaffash on the wide flat plain of Egland Downs.

The barbarians passed on, avid for Tarendahardil. They left behind them stark death where the army of the League had been, but they left the ranchers in peace.

The folk of those ranches lived on as they had before.

Of the Eglanders there were two classes. The elite riders of the High Charanti of the House of Esothan fell at Egland Downs; the ranchers, earth-colored, humble men with no thought beyond their herds, survived. And now those horsemen rode the rolling plains as they had for centuries.

In a broad bowl of land set between three softly falling slopes of the plain, a man named Eno had his ranch. Here he had come as a young man with his father, freed and made rich by their service to the Imperial House. Now as a stout man of middle age he had a good, coin-keeping wife, six strong sons, several daughters, and a herd of two hundred of the finest stock, swift, long-legged beauties with the scent of God in their nostrils.

One pass late in the second autumn after Egland Downs it fell out that Galn, Eno’s third son, entered the hall where the household was at table for the third meal. They had been noisy before, but at Galn’s appearance fell silent.

Eno put his fat thumb in his belt and greeted his son. ‘Come eat with us if you have hunger. Is it already time for Arnam to ride on the ridges and watch for the enemy?’

Galn stepped deeper into the hall and drew off the wide-brimmed hat of the horsemen. ‘Father, I was riding as you bade me, when I saw two strangers on the plain.’

‘Were they armed?’ asked Arnam.

‘No, they are not with the barbarians,’ Galn answered. ‘The one was doubtful of looks, but the other was tall, of lordly features and bearing, and spoke in the language of the court. When we approached them, they would not speak of their business nor of where they went, but only bade me guide them some place where they might eat and rest. They wear ragged garments, their hair and beards are wild, and their wind-burnt cheeks hollow. They were never slaves, nor ranchers, nor field-workers, nor merchants, nor craftsmen of the cities. They were fighting-men once, but now they cross beneath Goddess with little meat and water – not even a single horse. So, seeing their unhappy state and thinking that here were two men who had lost all at the hands of the Cursed One, I brought them here. Even now they wait without the hall to see if you will grant them courtesy, father.’

‘Then bring them here before us, my son,’ said Eno. ‘For no doubt you have reason, and these two men deserve our shelter. But when you have led them in, Galn, go out again with your men and ride the circuit lest this prove a trick.’

Galn nodded and went. Meanwhile the hall fell noisy with wondering who the strangers might be, and what good fortune their visit should bring.

When the men appeared in the hall, the talk fell off. Galn had been right about these two. Their arms were too hard, their bearing too proud, their eyes too bold. The tall one perhaps was well enough, but his fellow, as broad as he was tall, made the householders uneasy. Over his chest he wore a string of huge, evil teeth, the like of which none had seen before. His features too were strange, and his looks were scornful. His body was mottled with scars of sword-wounds, knife-marks, burn-welts and lance-wounds. Even Eno was struck at the sight of him.

At length however, gathering his courage, Eno stood so that the Goddesslight falling through the windows threw his shadow across the old horse-lances and sword set for decoration on the wall.

‘Greetings, friends,’ he said. ‘Brothers I should say, for we are all joined against the common foe. I am Eno, and this is my house. Here find welcome, and any help or comfort we can offer you.’

Briefly the tall one inclined his head. ‘I thank you and accept your hospitality,’ he said in the ritual phrase of the guest. ‘May Goddess shine on you, and may God, who is ever a wanderer, see your kindness this pass.’

Eno bowed and made greetings on behalf of each member of his family. The tall one said, ‘I am Torval, and this man you may call Brinbal, the Strong One. I am a Rukorian who fought beneath the walls of Bollakarvil when she fell last year. Since then I have been sick, and this man tended me. We crossed the Sontil, and escaped that place but a week or so ago. Since then we have wandered here hungry, sore and weary, yet most of all anxious for news. We have heard nothing of the happenings of the world for more than a year.’

At this they greatly wondered around the table, for they had never heard of anyone who had traversed the Sontil and emerged from it still living. But Eno, who had learned the ways of the highborn during his service for the nal Bordakasha, made space at the table and placed before the guests meat and cheese and fermented mare’s milk. ‘And if there is anything else you wish, sir,’ he added, ‘only tell us, and there will be legs to run and fetch it.’

‘Let the food be first,’ Torval said. ‘Later I will say what else I will require. But while we eat, tell me the events of the world. What news is there of your lord, the Charan Farnese – and of Tarendahardil and her Divine Majesty the Empress?’

‘Alas, sir,’ said Eno, lowering his face, ‘there I have but one sad tale after another to rob you of your hunger. But will your companion not eat with us?’ The massive stranger had not taken his place at the table, but instead sat on a round stone stool against the far wall, and shook his head at every offer of food or drink the house-women made.

The Rukorian shrugged. ‘He will do as he likes. He is a barbarian, and my captive.’

There was silence. Eno cleared his throat and asked rather nervously, ‘Then, sir, should not some care be taken? We have no place to hold men. Perhaps the cave below, where we store our milks and meats?’

Torval barked a bitter laugh. ‘Let him be. He has sworn me and his word is good.’

‘If that is so, sir, then indeed marvels attend you with every appearance of dark God,’ Eno said, glancing at the huge-muscled barbarian. But later when the general noise had uprisen anew, he leaned across the corner of the table to Kamalan his second son and said, ‘See you keep careful watch over the barbarian – be always between him and those old lances on the wall.’

Throughout the meal the householders cast fearful glances at the huge-bodied man. There were times in the course of the recounting of the year’s events, when some of them would curse the barbarians or their leader. Then an awkward silence would fall over them, all but the Rukorian, who went on eating as before; and none dared look at the barbarian.

But that one sat steadfast on the stone, eating nothing, drinking nothing, seeing nothing, seeing all.

The Rukorian put many questions to Eno about the fall of Tarendahardil and the siege of Renda the Black Citadel, but he seemed moved only when he learned of the death of the Charan Farnese.

‘Yes, sir, it struck us all,’ Eno said. ‘He was a great lord, a noble lord, and of a long ago time as it seems to me now. We won’t see his like again! Not that I knew him, or that he was ever even kind with me, or relented on his privileges the breadth of a stalk of hay – but he was of the old sort, and there was a way about him that you couldn’t help but admire.’

‘He was sick a long while,’ the Rukorian said.

‘Ah, but still, he had lived so long, it was a blow when it came. There’s no one in the plains who can remember a time when we weren’t ruled by the Charan. He left behind no heir, you know. He was the last of the Esothan, and left his horses and halls to the Charan Ampeánor of Rukor – your own lord, sir – him that had been all but a son to him. At least, that was the way I always heard of it, and I was in the service of her majesty the Empress some years back, when she was a girl. Would you hear of his last weeks, sir?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well then, that was in early summer, wasn’t it, Rilltor? Yes, that’s it: the foals were new upon the fields at the time, and the Charan held one in his arms and kissed its ears in blessing.

‘From ranch to ranch the Charan went, with a few friends, old men almost as well born as himself, the last of the Empire. They bore him on a litter between horses when his strength was too light to have command of the saddle. And they pitched the red tent upon a ridge, and he sat in a chair in the shadow and saw us ranchers as we came to him. Of disputes, quarrels, and the like he refused to hear a word: all he cared about was the horses. No one was allowed to speak a word about the court or the wars. It was piteous to see him, sir, weak and gasping as he was. All the flesh had gone from his face, there was only bone and veins, blue and purplish, and the big scornful eyes and harsh wet mouth. Words came to him slowly, and everyone knew the end was near. He seemed not sorry, but glad of it, in my own mind.’

Eno sighed and drank more of the mare’s milk.

‘It was at the end of the shortsleep after we saw him that he was found, sir. The old men borrowed spades and went up on the ridge and dug a pit, and cast in the stiff thin body, all stripped naked and raw. Then they threw the dark dirt on top of him and made a mound, over which they drove horses until it was flat again.

‘It seemed horrible to me. They spoke none of the rites, nor even set down stones in the outline of a barge to face Goddess and voyage his ka to the Blessed Shores. But so he had commanded it, they said. The old ones struck the red tent and set free the horses that had borne his litter, and then they rode off as the winds go. What became of them, or of the Charan’s servants, no man knows. But this is sure, none of them held a lance at Egland Downs. Out there’s where they left him, sir, upon that ridge through the window. The spot is green now, but my son Arnam left a stone to mark it. They say he wanted his body to go back to the dirt out of which Goddess had fashioned it, to feed the grasses that feed the horses. For he had lost all hope and joy in the works and world of men. The virtuous men, he said, had all departed from the world, and now all that survive them are beasts, madmen and the gods of pain.’

§

LATER THAT PASS the Rukorian knelt on the grass beside the stone, and looked upon the ground that held the rotten remnants of the High Charan Farnese, once the greatest general of his age, preeminent noble of the Court of the Bordakasha, Regent for an Empress and a Prince. And he, who had loved that bitter, proud old man better than any other, wept without shame, and dug his fingers in the worm-ridden dirt.

Long hours he stayed there, lost in the melancholy winds of his thoughts. Weary, weary, but his mind ran drunken on, and he could know no peace. So many had fallen in a year! Was Farnese truly gone, and in such a hateful manner? Ampeánor had had no legitimate brothers, no sisters at all; he had detested his father and loathed his mother. This one old man had been all the kin he had had, and all the love he had owned he had shared between Farnese and Allissál.

The sky was clouded, yet here and there breaks let fall mournful showers of the wheat-colored light of Goddess in Her Autumn House. The light swept slowly across the Eglands, which now appeared for the first time to Ampeánor’s eyes to be empty.

He felt the hours that had passed. It was late, past time for the fifth meal. He staggered up and made his way back to the ranch.

§

THE MASTER and his sons still sat to table drinking the fermented mare’s milk. Galn had joined them, for it was Keasner’s time to keep the ridges.

When they woke from the shortsleep, they found the barbarian as they had left him, sitting on the stone stool in the hall. The men went to their labor, and the women swept the hall nervously, going wide from the stone stool. In time the hour came for the fourth meal, and the household gathered anew.

Eno sent his sixth son Berlan to remind the Rukorian of the hour, but the boy, who had only nine summers, returned shyly to whisper in his father’s great ear that the stranger knelt still on the death-place of the High Charan, and had not moved at Berlan’s calls.

Eno shook his head sadly, and refilled his bowl. ‘Surely he is no mere lancer, that one. He reminds me of the High Charan. Could Farnese have had a son after all?’

The barbarian sat as ever, Goddess gleaming off his burnished skin. The shadow behind him seemed darker and more solid than the wall on which it was cast, and the light seemed evil when it glinted off the teeth that overspread his chest.

After some moments, Arnam set down the liquor-pot loudly, and his wife Elprin asked, ‘Why does he sit like that, and why don’t he eat? Can’t he go elsewhere?’

‘Hush, wife,’ said Arnam.

‘Hey, barbarian,’ called out Galn, who had drunk more of the mare’s milk than his custom. ‘Don’t you even want some of this?’ He hoisted the liquor-pot.

‘Do not tempt him, son,’ Eno said. ‘He is still a savage.’

‘I’m not afraid,’ Galn said.

‘I remember Egland Downs too, brother,’ said Arnam, looking at their father.

‘Can’t he even shut those eyes of his?’ Elprin said.

‘Do not speak of him,’ Eno’s wife said. ‘The lord said he is safe. Let him be.’

‘And when did a dirt-wallowing barbarian ever hold his word?’ asked Arnam.

Elprin giggled. Eno refilled his bowl.

‘Hush,’ said Rilltor. ‘He might hear you.’

‘He can’t understand us any better than a dog,’ Arnam said. ‘He only speaks his own foul tongue.’

‘Time for us to leave them to it,’ Rilltor told the other women. The men sat about the table drinking. But Gundoen sat steadfast on the stone, eating nothing, drinking nothing, seeing nothing, seeing all.

It was some time later when the door opened and Ampeánor stepped again into the hall. He drew off the riding-cloak and began to eat.

Eno set down his bowl and said, ‘The women are readying a dimchamber for you, lord. You are welcome to anything that is ours for as long as you please to stay.’

‘We go after the first meal. I would see Tarendahardil again as soon as I can.’

‘Lord, it is not my part to question you. But is it wise to venture so near that city? The barbarians must still be there. There are safer roads to Rukor.’

‘I go not to Rukor, but to Tarendahardil.’

‘Take me with you,’ Arnam said. ‘I want to fight the barbarians. I’m not afraid!’

‘Take me, too!’ Galn said.

The man they knew as Torval looked them over: bent-legged, raw-boned ranch-boys, their faces burnt by the wind. He shook his head. ‘I must go alone if I am to remain unseen.’

Eno sighed. ‘Listen to the lord, boys, and be wise. You are young, and have your lives ahead of you.’

Arnam and Galn looked each other in the eye. Galn said, ‘What road is safest to the City?’

‘Better avoid the Imperial roads,’ Arnam said. ‘Grellantor saw hired men of the Cursed One riding in bands on the Southern Way, a week or less ago.’

‘They’re all over,’ Kamalan said. ‘There’s only one place they won’t go.’

‘Yes, because no man will go that way for fear of his very soul,’ Eno said. ‘Even the barbarians shun the haunted fields of Egland Downs.’

‘Yes, tell us about it, father,’ Arnam said. ‘You know so much about it, don’t you?’

The master of the house set down his bowl. ‘Ah, lads, don’t blame me if I chose the safer path and wouldn’t let you die. Two or three untrained youths would have added nothing to the League. And then how great a loss to me, if one of you had fallen? Was I not proved wise in the end?’

But the young men only frowned.

‘Still,’ Eno said. ‘It hurt me to give no aid to her majesty. I should not be saying this, I suppose, but I dare say there is not another man in all the ranches with so much reason to defend her. I was a servant of hers, when she was but a child and my father was stable-master of the castle where they raised her. Why, I even saw her in her nakedness and had the pleasure of her, which is more than many a high lord can claim.’

The Rukorian cast his gaze up and down the length of the Eglander’s fat body. ‘What did you say?’ he asked.

‘Yes, it is true before Goddess, I lay in love with the Empress Allissál herself,’ Eno said. ‘And, sir, I was the first to have that pleasure, for it was I that pierced her maiden’s veil.’

‘Ah, father,’ said Kamalan with a sly distrusting smile, ‘you never told us this tale before.’

‘No, nor you nor any other, not even Rilltor. For I am a man of honor. And why it is I speak it now I cannot say, save to lay it on the knees of Goddess who has filled this drink with such strength. It was the season before the old Emperor died, that her highness the Princess came to me in the stables, and drew me down and put her hands about me, for I was a well-favored youth, and she was hot to learn the ways of love. Later, after she became Empress, she granted my father and me our freedom, and give us gold with which to buy this ranch. And so all you boys were born free, for Rilltor and I wed after I was a free man, as you know well.’

‘Do you mean it is true?’ asked Galn. ‘The Empress knows you?’

‘Yes, son, as she knows few others.’

‘Then you could have sent us to her majesty with words of introduction? And we would have been presented at the court?’ Arnam asked.

‘Why, I suppose that is not too far from true,’ Eno said, reaching for the liquor-pot.

‘But this a foul-mouthed lie you tell,’ the Rukorian said. He rose to his feet and leaned his fists on the table. Then Eno bethought himself, and let go the pot.

‘Indeed, my lord, it is not. I speak no slander of her majesty, whom the Couple look after and protect from lies. I would gladly take back my words, seeing how they have wrought in you, lord, but I cannot swallow back simple truth. I did indeed lie with the young Princess in the hay of the stables, near the horses in the cool shadow. At first I was unwilling, as a loyal servant of my lord. It was she who fell all hot with longing for me, and putting her hands beneath my tunic made me promise to teach her the ways of Goddess. And such was her beauty that I did as I wished with her, many times. And for that she gave me many gifts.’

‘It is a lie,’ the stranger said. He advanced the length of the table. ‘You only say it to torment me! Who put you up to this, slave? Was it him? Did Melkarth teach him to fill you with these monstrous slanders?’

‘Lord, what is it that so angers you? Indeed my lord, if you know her majesty I can prove my words to you. For while I was with her I saw a certain mark she had, which she’d gotten at birth. It lies upon her right thigh, close inside her hip – red as a barsilia fruit, the size of a woman’s toe-nail, shaped like a three-pointed crown.’

‘It is a lie! Confess it to Goddess!’ The Rukorian leapt on the rancher. He took Eno’s throat between his hands and shook him so that his head banged against the back of his chair. ‘Confess, slave, and tell me who put these words in your slobbering mouth, or it will be your death!’

Arnam shouted for Torval to release his father. Galn took down an old lance and rushed at him. But when the stranger felt the lance-head, he hurled Eno against the wall, snatched the lance and beat the young man about the head with the haft. Arnam saw the blood about his brother’s head and took another lance, yelling for help.

The Rukorian spun the lance about and with skill learned of old cast the lance so the head went through Arnam’s body and struck with a clatter off the lime-washed wall.

‘Murder!’ Galn cried.

The Rukorian pulled down another lance and the old sword. Eno’s sons circled him. One he gutted with the lance and slew, then kicked the bench into the other’s knees, and slashed the sword-blade against his neck so that the head was hewn from the trunk and the blade snapped in two. Berlan ran for the inner door, and the stranger bounded after him.

The door wrenched open, and Eno’s wife Rilltor peered in. Behind her were Elprin and one or two other women. Berlan screamed and slid through the doorway; the Rukorian’s sweeping sword-blow fell short, and the half-blade stuck in the door-jamb.

Pale and ghastly the women’s faces stared into the eyes of their stranger-guest, and past him to the bodies of their menfolk where they lay strewn about the hall, bleeding, dead or dying. Then in terror Rilltor slammed the door, and the women fled in fear of their lives.

Ampeánor leaned against the door. He looked behind him, and he saw what the women had seen. His arm trembled, and the lance fell from his fingers.

At the far end of the hall the barbarian stood up. Goddesslight shone on the Darkbeast teeth on his chest. He stepped to the table. He took a platter and heaped meat on it. He picked up Arnam’s bowl still full of the fermented mare’s-milk, sniffed it, then slurped it down.

There was no other sound save for one of the dying boys moaning and twitching against some dishes.

‘I did not mean it,’ Ampeánor said in the tongue of the far North. ‘Some madness overtook me.’

Gundoen sank his teeth into the meat. ‘I have seen the like befall warriors of my tribe. They know nothing but blood and will murder even their own wives and little ones.’ He drank more milk.

‘Let us get horses and leave this place,’ Ampeánor sad. ‘Why do you eat now, when you would not touch what they offered before?’

Gundoen shrugged. ‘Before, they were my enemies, and I will take no courtesy of a foe. But these men are now the enemies of no man but you, Southron.’

§

THEY LEFT THE RANCH and rode North. Avoiding all roads and men, they reached in a pass or two the blue river Eaffash, and Egland Downs.

They made camp in the midst of that venomous green field thick with bones and rust and ghosts. It was raining, and the clay wet and steaming. Gundoen kicked aside some bones, mumbled a charm, and lay down between horsehair cloaks to sleep.

Ampeánor sat on his heels, feeling the autumnal rains trickle down his neck. He had wandered the length of these fields, and seen his own image in a calm water of the Eaffash. Now he leaned on the broken sword, weary, so weary, and looked at the sleeping barbarian. Ever since he had gone with the barbarians to Ilkas, Ampeánor had held this plan, though in sleep he had shuddered, and wondered if he could carry it to its end. Only in the rains of this field did he know that he would go through with it. And the man before him went to it like an ox to the dark altar.

As far as the eye could see, the bones of the finest fightingmen of the South littered the field. Eighty thousand had fallen here, and the muted echoes of their cries rose through the mud to assail the ears of the High Charan of Rukor.

A shudder took his body, of horror, perhaps, or fear.

For one summer, years before, he had gone hunting with the Queen in the mountains above Torvalinal. And they had lost their party, and Allissál had bathed in a cool mountain stream. And Ampeánor had parted the tall reeds and gazed upon her in her nakedness, a vision he might never thereafter forget. And he had seen a mark on the curve of her thigh, red as a barsilia fruit, the size of a lady’s toenail, shaped like a three-pointed crown – even as Eno, whom Ampeánor had strangled to death with his own hands, had avowed.

And now it seemed to Ampeánor that he could hear the hideous voices of the dead of Egland Downs groaning and whispering. And it seemed to him that what they told, over and over again, was his very name.

‘…Ampeánor … Ampeánor … Ampeánor…’

The Iron Gate: Chapter 16

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 Way of Fame

‘WELL?’ GUNDOEN GROWLED. ‘Have you cured him?’

‘Hush: hush, chieftain.’ Melkarth stepped away from the pallet. ‘I have done for his body all that one can do. For the rest…’ She shrugged.

The man upon the pallet lay still, as he had done since autumn of the year before. The gashes on his chest had faded to pale scars, and his chest now rose and fell in even breaths. Melkarth stepped forward again. In her crooked hand she held a wooden stirring-spoon filled with some of the broth still bubbling over the hearth. Gently she offered it to the man on the pallet. His lips caught at the spoon and supped. Melkarth nodded.

Slowly, the man’s eyelids opened.

His gaze wandered about him without understanding. His hand slid across his brow and face. He looked at the two above him: at ancient Melkarth, at massive Gundoen. He sat up. The effort of even so small a feat was apparent. His yellowish skin darkened and paled, and sweat appeared upon his brow.

‘Not so quickly, my lord,’ Melkarth said. ‘It is long indeed since you walked abroad, and it will need time ere you regain your strength.’

The man looked at her as though she had spoken in a strange tongue. His beard and hair streamed over his shoulders and naked chest. He put his long-nailed hands to the edge of the pallet and set himself on his feet. With faltering steps he went to the mouth of the cave. He stood in the open air at the Sontil floor.

‘What is he about?’ Gundoen asked, ‘why doesn’t he speak?’

‘Follow and watch what he does,’ Melkarth said. ‘When the moment is right, bring him back.’

The barbarian muttered something and left the cave.

Outside, the air was warm with the heavy breath of High Summer, but there was coolness still in the gloom beneath the leaf-roof. Gundoen found the Southron at the foot of the hill. There the stream running down the hillside collected in a pond between the roots of a huge tree. The lord of Rukor crouched in an angle of a root, staring down into the dark mirror of the pond, into his own reflected face.

At the sound of Gundoen’s approach, he turned. He looked the barbarian in the face, and his mouth opened as though to speak. Then it closed again, and he turned back to his image.

‘Enough,’ Gundoen growled. He picked up the Southron in his arms, and bore him back to the cave. ‘You are lighter now at least,’ he muttered. By the time Gundoen had brought him again into the cave, the General Extraordinary of Tarendahardil was asleep.

§

THAT NEXT WEEK Gundoen hunted game, and Melkarth simmered herbal broths to feed to the lord of Rukor. Ampeánor won back his strength. By the second week he could climb half the height of one of the trees of the wood; at the end of the third week he climbed to the top and gazed into the brightness of the world beyond. He returned darkened with the effort, thoughtful and silent.

That pass Gundoen and the old woman ate the fifth meal in silence. The lord of Rukor, exhausted by his efforts, slept in the pallet. Outside it was raining, and the raindrops dripped heavily from the leaf-roof far above.

When the meal was done, Melkarth sat weaving by the hearth. She wove cloths of strange designs on a small double-loom. Gundoen watched her, enchanted by the movements of the old woman’s cunning fingers.

‘He does well, our sleeper,’ she said. ‘Did he tell you what he did this pass?’

Gundoen nodded. ‘He recovers faster than I looked for. It is the doing of your potions.’

‘Perhaps. His heart longs to see what they do in the world beyond. In two or three weeks he will leave.’ She glanced over at the pallet. ‘You should go now, Gundoen.’

‘I have thought on it. Maybe I am only a hunter after all, and not a warrior.’

‘So you will stay?’ she remarked after a space.

‘No.’ He stood, and stretched his war-scarred arms until the sound of the joints cracking echoed in the cave. ‘Ara-Karn is my son, and the men of my tribe are in battle. I will leave at the end of the longsleep, and seek out the armies.’

‘You will not.’

The hoarse voice sounded from behind them. By the pallet stood the lord of Rukor. He had cut back his hair and shaved his beard with the war-knife, so he resembled more his former state. But there remained a thing about his eyes and the corners of his mouth, a remnant of the horror of the Darkbeast.

‘You will not go,’ he said. ‘You will remain and await me.’

‘And who are you, Southron, to order my coming and going?’

‘I am the holder of your oath, barbarian,’ Ampeánor answered. ‘You swore to me on your people, the wisdom of your wife, and the first chieftain of your tribe, that you would remain by me and work me no ill as long as we were in this cursed place.’

Gundoen shrugged. ‘Why should I keep that oath? I am only a barbarian, after all.’

‘You are Gundoen.’

The chieftain cast down his head and was silent. But Melkarth said lowly, ‘This is wrong of you, my lord. This man saved your life.’

‘My life would not have been so endangered had he been honest with me and told me we were a walking in a Darkbeast’s trail.’

‘And so you owe him nothing?’

‘I owe him my thanks, and that he has. But he remains a barbarian, as he himself has he said, and my captive.’ He spoke in Bordo, but Melkarth answered him in the tongue of the far North.

‘This you will regret,’ she said.

‘I will do it all the same. And you, Gundoen,’ he said in the language of the tribes, ‘put from your mind all thoughts of leaving, until I am ready. Goddess willing, that will not be long.’

Gundoen spat into the embers and went to the mouth of the cave. His great shoulders cast a shadow across half the cave, and then he was gone. Ampeánor took the barbarian’s place at the hearth, and stared into the flames.

‘Let him go, my lord,’ Melkarth said. ‘Release him from his oath.’

‘No.’

‘Would you be bound to a barbarian’s fate?’

He looked at her angrily. ‘Old woman, what do I know of what has gone on beyond these trees? What cities have fallen, and what is the state of things in Tarendahardil? There is a woman there whom I love more than wealth or life or honor. Do you know what has become of her? Perhaps you do, but you will not tell me. That man is my only winning for a year’s labor. His life is of value to the barbarians, and he holds the secret of the whereabouts of Ara-Karn. I will not let him go.’

‘Yet perhaps he also has a woman he loves, and who loves him.’

‘How dare you compare his love to mine? He is a filthy, ale-swilling barbarian, born where they know nothing of honor or custom.’

‘Ah yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘I had forgotten. No, my lord, there is no comparing you two.’

‘Do you mock me? Listen to me then, and hear the sort of love of which I am capable.

‘When I was a youth, the Rukorian court was among the most licentious in all the Empire, second only to Vapio. My father was a sour, retiring man who all his life had been backward with women, until he fell into the snares my mother laid for him. She was a Vapionil, the third daughter of a lesser noble of small estates. But she possessed a perilous beauty that made her the master of any man. She seduced my father, easily; he could scarce believe his good fortune until he discovered just how good that fortune was. Some at my father’s court remarked that my mother would have made a great hetaira; many said she already was one, in all but name.

‘I grew up in that vileness, but I saw the vileness about me and despised those who took part in it. I saw my mother surrendering herself to innumerable lovers, and my father – if indeed he was my father – grow ancient before his time, a dotard nursing a bottomless wine-jug.

‘The painted women threw themselves about me, but I repulsed them. I roamed the hills about Torvalinal; I locked myself in the tower to pore over treatises by the masters of hunt and war. When my time came, I took the Pilgrimage of Elna; when I returned I put myself to the training of my lancemen, whom I made into the finest in the South. Thus I remained chaste, until my seventeenth year.

‘That year saw my first command. The pirates of the Isles had become a grave danger during my father’s years. Those monies that should have maintained the fleet had gone instead to feed my mother’s lust. The pirates had become a nation unto themselves, building city-strongholds in full view of the coast. Not a merchantman on Elna’s Sea but risked attack; and they were led by a captain famous for his battle-skills and cruelty. Twice the Emperor had sent Imperial navies against him; the pirate mocked us, and returned the generals’ heads on silver basins.

‘It was against this madman I set forth.

‘The excuse of it was a woman. A daughter of one of the Rukorian houses had been taken for ransom. More gold was demanded than we could pay; if it were not paid, the pirate threatened to sell the maiden to the Madpriests.

‘We set out, thirty-five ships and five thousand lancemen strong. For half a year we struggled, this demon of a pirate and I. The length and breadth of Elna’s Sea we battled, in coastal creek, on the hills of nameless isles, even at the edges of the Dark Sea itself. The pirate chained the maiden to the foremast whenever we engaged, to taunt me. I saw her imploring our aid, and felt compassion for her. No lances were ever cast at that ship, for fear lest she be harmed.

‘It was on the brink of the Dark Sea I forced him to a last encounter. He had been retreating for some weeks, and made efforts to slip into the darkness where we could not track him. Goddess was choked with blood on the crests of the swells; the shadows we cast fell like weird giants over the waters. The ships swung about, engaged; the men did battle and broke off, and the ships swung to again. The rowers broke their backs with the effort; the seas were littered with bits of oars, lance-hafts, and corpses. So three weeks passed, he ever striving to turn into the darkness and I to come between him and the dusky border.

‘But I had trained my men well, and we fought for honor, while the pirates only fought for gold; so we triumphed, and I cut the life from the body of the pirate. And the maiden I had saved I cut down from the mast myself, with the blood still hot upon my hands. She was the loveliest girl I had ever seen. Drunk on her beauty and driven out of myself in my triumph, I took her in my arms and drank out of her mouth, and in his very bed, I took her like a madman.

‘She was the first woman I ever knew, but I was not her first man. Oh, far from it! When we were above again, she wept over the corpse of that infamous pirate, and upbraided me for having saved her!

‘It was then I learned the heart of woman. When my father died I cast out the corrupt courtiers, and pulled down the infamous palace my mother had built. Her I banished from Rukor entirely, though I let her keep the rents of certain estates so that she should not go in rags. I saw to my men. And that was enough for me, until I beheld Allissál.

‘After years passed, I knew fully the greatness of her soul, and I knew the fullness of my love. She is pure beyond you other women, so that I pause even to call her by the same name as the rest of you. It is for her sake that I have done all I have done.’

Melkarth bent over her loom. ‘No man can despise women without offending Goddess,’ she said. ‘Have you forgotten all I foretold you when you visited me those years ago, in your Pilgrimage? How you dreamed of the fame and glory of battle, and of being the equal of your ancestors! Alas, it was your downfall. Now you think yourself better than the other nobles of your generation, those who fell with Arstomenes in his pleasure-gardens. Yet I say, O man of a lost age, that it would have been better for you had you given in to the desires of the women of your father’s court, than to go the way you have.’

He stood over her in the firelight. Rage burst from his brow, his fists were knotted at his sides, and he might have struck her. But Melkarth laughed, and struck at his legs with her staff and felled him.

‘Fight against beasts and men first, my lord,’ she advised him gently: ‘but do not make trial of a woman’s strength.’ With that she folded her mantle over her head and left the cave.

The rain had lessened to a sprinkle. All the green stalks of grass in the clearing at the foot of the hill nodded beneath the drops. The smell of wet moss was pungent in the air. Gundoen sat in a stone seat on the hillside. The water beaded and rolled over his great round head, streaming from scar to scar. He seemed like the abandoned idol of an ancient cult. The old woman settled in the seat beside him. Gundoen made no move to acknowledge her.

At length she murmured, ‘Of old habit, I prefer to be alone with my visions, my potions, and the creatures of the wood. But I will miss you when you go, Gundoen.’

‘This is a new song for you to sing.’

‘No,’ she answered. ‘I only wished you go for your own good, and for Hertha-Toll’s.’

‘You never told me how it is you know our tongue.’

‘Oh,’ she said, smiling and showing one or two teeth, ‘yours is a tongue written on the bark of tree-trunks and carved on pebbles in fast-rushing streams. The stone-folk of the mountains speak a tongue very like it.’

‘We were here before,’ he said simply and proudly. ‘Before Elna, even.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did I bother to save him?’

Melkarth shook her head. ‘You did as you must. I would have spared you, but it was ordained by Her.’

He nodded. ‘Then there is no escape?’

‘None, chieftain.’

‘My wife’s visions will all come true?’

‘All, chieftain.’

‘Will I see again my son, Ara-Karn?’

‘It will be he who decides your fate.’

Again he nodded. He stood, and looked into the forest. ‘Good. It is good for a man to know his end. Let it come! I will spit in its eye when it does.’

The old, old woman bent so that her face was hidden. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is the way of fame.’

He glanced back at her and frowned. ‘Do not weep, old woman. It makes me uneasy.’

§

AT THE END of the third week following his climbing of the great tree, Ampeánor was strong enough to journey. He fashioned himself a rude lance out of a branch with a jagged stone in its end for a point. With it he brought down game for the journey. Melkarth taught him the trails to leave the Sontil by the shortest path.

For parting-gifts the old seeress gave the lord of Rukor a woven shoulder-mantle, and to Gundoen a necklace she had fashioned out of the teeth of the Darkbeast. ‘I had forgotten it,’ Gundoen said when he slung it over his head. ‘It is good. It is the way I would choose to go.’ He bent and kissed her on the mouth.

The old seeress, standing on the crest of the hill, watched the two men descend the yonder side. When they vanished, Melkarth looked up to the light of Goddess dancing in the leaf-roof far above. Perhaps she prayed: it was a good place for it. After a space she went back to finish her weaving and depart for another of her many abodes. This one had served its end.

§

AT THE SONTIL’S EDGE Ampeánor and Gundoen emerged upon an open, empty land. Ampeánor stripped Gundoen of his weapons and bound his arms with grass rope. The barbarian watched the charan’s actions, a scornful smile on his lips. ‘There is no need for this, Southron,’ he said. ‘I will flee from no man, least of all from you.’

‘I take no chances,’ Ampeánor muttered, drawing the knots tighter.

They ventured upon the grasslands beyond.

Vistas of rolling plains extended around them, conquering at length the high dark wall of the Sontil behind them. The winds blew from a vast distance, huge towers of clouds built themselves into cities in the sky, and Goddess shone over all with a blazing light. From the grasses underfoot the bitter odor of wormroot touched their nostrils.

Ampeánor breathed in that odor. ‘Yes, I know this place. It is the domain of the Charan Farnese, home to the finest horse-tamers in the world. It is the Eglands.’

For seven passes they crossed the plains, journeying North and darkward. They ate the meats Ampeánor had prepared, and drank of streams they chanced across. The flatness of the land spread to all sides: there were only the faintly rolling contours of the land and the great arching vault of sky.

When they camped for the fifth meal on the eighth pass, Ampeánor offered Gundoen his portion of the dried meat. The barbarian shook his head.

‘I do not want that. Give me something else.’

‘What, then?’

‘Cut me loose.’

Ampeánor shook his head.

‘Southron, this is no way for a man to go. It is the way of slaves.’

‘If I loosed you, I could not hold you.’

Gundoen fixed the lord of Rukor’s eye. ‘And if I truly wanted to stop you from bringing me to your stronghold, do you think these cords could stop me?’

Ampeánor considered. In the end, what means did he have to force the barbarian to accompany him besides the threat of death? And death was nothing this man feared. The thought made him see the barbarian in a new light. He had changed, this unlettered savage, since Ampeánor captured him.

‘Do you mean,’ he asked slowly, ‘that if I cut your bonds, you would go with me freely?’

‘Yes.’

‘You would work me no harm? You would go even into the Citadel of Elna, and your death?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

The barbarian shook his head. ‘It’s enough for you to know it’s so.’

Ampeánor shook his head. ‘And the thing that surprises me most,’ he murmured, ‘is that I believe you.’

The barbarian rolled on one side, offering his back and the strong ropes cutting into his massive arms. Only half believing what he did, the High Charan of Rukor drew the war-knife and cut the ropes.

The Iron Gate: Chapter 15

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.

The Iron Gate: Chapter 14

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.

The Iron Gate: Chapter 13

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.

Blossoms

EMSHA WAS GLAD for the return of spring. She went out of the gloomy halls of the Palace, and the songs of the women working in the camps and the warmth of Goddess’ light made the old nurse happy in her heart. There were no more rebellions: they were at peace now in those hundreds of gaily-colored tents beneath the young sky. It had all been the Gerso’s doing – even Emsha had to admit it. He had overseen the allotment of the tents of the highborn among those Tarendahardilites who were most needy. He had delved the dusty storerooms to find what was needed to give shelter to all. While the last tents had been in the making, he had found shelter in the Hall of Justice. Now the people had emerged to drink in the blessings of the Lady, and that Hall, properly scrubbed, had been left vacant and silent once again.

Sections of the grounds had been dug and sown with the season’s first crops. Tasks had been meted out among those best able to fulfill them – to work in the fields, to see to the tents, to tend to the ill, and to go down with torches and long staves into the granaries to rid them of rats. Disputes were settled by the Gerso, who seemed to know every man and child of the encampment by name, province, and history. So by his grace routine had fallen on the Citadel of Elna and, save for the occasional rattle that reached them from the battlements, the last subjects of the Empire might scarcely have known they were yet besieged and at war.

Emsha smiled to hear the women’s songs. She too felt like singing, for her Allissál had emerged at last from the shadow. She ate better now, and no longer sat brooding in the chambers of the White Tower, but would venture forth to oversee the works and even sat beside the Gerso when he settled the disputes of the Tarendahardilites.

At the edge of the dark pines, that last remnant of the groves of the Imperial Gardens, Emsha found some wildflowers. The blossoms were yellow with black centers, the leaves marked with purple and covered on the underside with some sticky substance. Strangely, Emsha, who had known all the myriad flowers of the Imperial Gardens, did not know these. Doubtless they had been sown by some birds of passage. Still, they were pretty enough. Her tongue moved softly to an old nurse-song she knew, as she bent and picked some of the flowers for her mistress. She returned to the Palace to find a man sitting on the floor before the doors of the White Tower. It was Kuln-Holn.

‘Please, nurse,’ he said humbly, ‘will you come with me? There is a woman of the slaves about to give birth.’

‘That is a thing to happen any week,’ Emsha answered. ‘There are women of their own rank to see to them. Why then ask this of me? What is this woman?’

‘My wife.’

Emsha nodded. ‘Very well,’ she said.

They went below, into the cavernous smoky halls below the earth, where the lower slaves had their couches. There for several hours, out of Goddess and in dampness that did her bones little good, Emsha aided the birth. It was a birth hard enough, but no worse than many she had seen. The woman was young and rather fair, and held Kuln-Holn’s hands and showed courage, and at the end was delivered of a good-sized boy.

Tenderly Emsha tended to the babe and held it against her boson. She felt for it the deep-surging love she felt for all such. Then she held it for the mother to take.

‘No,’ Salizh whispered. She was pale and damp with sweat, but there was a light of triumph in her eyes. ‘Give him first to my husband.’

Kuln-Holn took the bundle hesitantly. There was awe in his face. He held up the tiny, delicate, mewling creature in his thick, coarse hands, and gazed into the half-closed eyes.

‘Name him, Kuln-Holn.’ Salizh sighed. ‘He is your son.’

‘But it’s Berrin’s child,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘You are my husband. He is our son.’

Kuln-Holn set the little burden upon his wife’s breast. Of a sudden his heart had grown too large for the ribs that girdled it. He wondered how many winters it had been, since his own wife had borne him a son and both had died? Ever since then, Kuln-Holn had been alone. His gaze wandered over the faces of the slaves gathered about them. He saw their happiness, and knew that it was for him. Through the person of his wife, Kuln-Holn was now one of them.

His eyes caught the gleam of metal in the storage-niche: it came from the guardsman’s armor that he had worn when he had wandered back from the burning city into the shelter of this Citadel. He had not dared do battle since: now he knew he could fight again, even against the warriors of his own tribe. His eyes returned to the little thing huddled on Salizh’s naked breast. A son—!

‘Well then,’ he said at last, ‘I will name him Bornin. It means “Flower” in my tongue.’

‘That was well-named,’ Emsha murmured. Again she took up the babe and looked to the mother. Then she rose and left them.

Emsha took another path to the upper stories. She had drawn her mantle over her head, and the many slaves gave way respectfully before the linens of the upper stories.

‘Woman! What is it you do here?’

Emsha stopped. The words had been uttered lowly and with menace. Half concealed by one of the pillars was the half-shaped form of some man.

‘It’s I who should be asking that,’ she answered sharply. ‘If you are here thieving, I will get the guards to give you a good beating.’

‘Be silent, old fool.’

The man stepped forth with a broken gait. Even in that gloom, the shabbiness and dirtiness of his robes was apparent. Something gleamed golden on his chest. Emsha knew him only by that pectoral as Dornan Ural, at one time the High Regent and the most powerful man in the world.

‘My lord, forgive me,’ she said. ‘I knew not who you were.’

‘Tell me than old woman, do you go above? In this light I cannot make you out – my eyes are bad – but your voice is known to me. What season of the year is it now? Is it summer yet?’

‘No, my lord. It is but spring.’

‘And aren’t the tax-rolls ready yet? – But no, they could not be: I haven’t seen them yet. Little is done but I must put my hand to it. – And how is it out there, eh?’

‘Well enough, my lord. They grow grain on the grounds, and the barbar—’

‘Be still! Not a word!’ The round, pale gray skull twisted away, then back. The dingy form of the once-High Regent drew itself up in the gloom. ‘I do not often go above,’ he said after a moment, in the formal tongue of court. ‘This place has all to serve my needs. Still, on occasion I have ascended to the Hall of Justice. I am all that remains of the Council now, you know. But the last time I went, I found the hall filled with folk from the lower quarters! It was a sleep, and they lay about there below the dais like the fallen dead! Fear of plagues took me, and I returned here, where it is safe, and easy to avoid the voices.’

He leaned against the pillar, and drew a hand across his face.

‘My lord,’ Emsha said, ‘the air and gloom of this place breed strange moods and sicknesses. Come up with me. The light of Goddess will do you good, I know, it was the same with majesty.’

He repulsed her with a suddenness that surprised her. ‘I know you now,’ he said, ‘you’re one of them. Did she send you here? – Or has Ampeánor come back, to offer me his noble regrets that he let my city fall?’

‘Come, my lord. I will see you safely to the tents of the wounded. The physicians will tend to you, and see that you are—’

‘—Betrayed again? – or merely laughed at, like some clown? Do the men on the Iron Gate need more amusements? They thought I did not know they mocked me, but I saw through them! Do even slaves now think it safe to taunt me? Begone and bear this saying to your dear majesty, if you dare: that there is one here who waits, who has forgotten no word or deed!’

‘I grieve for you, my lord.’ Emsha sought the upper levels and the light.

The old man watched her go.

Then he turned back to the gloom.

Dornan Ural wandered among the support-pillars of the main halls. He walked with his hands clasped behind his back and his head hunched low, grumbling to the shadows.

He had not expected to be honored while he was in office – had not expected the indolent, drunken, highborn to appreciate his efforts on their behalf. But he had hoped to be granted some small measure of respect after his retirement. Surely some little honor was due to him now. But no, not a word of thanks or praise did he receive, but only scornful jests. He had more in common with the barbarians than these noble charai and charanti. Should he then have looked for the Empress to offer him anything but hate and mockery? They had been enemies for centuries, her kind and his.

‘But I am proud,’ the old man whispered to the support-pillars, ‘proud to have been born of the race of slaves! Good, honest folk who worked hard for all they won. And yet, O Dornan Ural, was your father granted his freedom only so that his son should become a slave?’

The nobles deserved all they had suffered at the barbarian’s hands. But it was not right that Tarendahardil should have suffered for their sins. For that the blame must lie with the Empress and her beloved, Ampeánor of Rukor. He had forsaken them and brought on the destruction of the city. Many times Dornan Ural had foretold it: Ampeánor would return to this place, and face the penalty for his desertion.

Now a sudden keen longing took Dornan Ural as he passed nearby a narrow familiar stair. Dornan Ural ascended to the Hall of Justice.

The huge hall was empty now. Slowly the old man crossed the floor inlaid with tiles depicting the mountain of the Citadel rising above his city. As he did so he felt the sightless eyes of the painted busts of the Emperors of Tarendahardil where they lined the niches.

Dornan Ural stepped upon the empty dais. Before him fell the warm shower of Goddess they called the King’s Light. Weakly Dornan Ural knelt, then sat in the glittering pool, bathing in its warmth.

He gazed down the deep hall. He was reminded of the many meetings of the Council of Regents he had summoned here. From this spot they had decided the fate of the South for almost twenty years. He had been Chief of the High Council, High Regent of Tarendahardil. Ambassadors and princes had offered gifts to win his favor in his official hall, where he had been able to look out upon the beauty of Tarendahardil, that city he had loved…

Dornan Ural held out his hands before him and gazed upon them. He saw himself even as that old nurse must have seen him – a deformed, ugly, coarse, stammering, filthy, twitching parody of a man. Slowly he covered his face from the light. What had become of him? How would he end? Groaning, the old man cast himself down miserably, and wept on the warm stone.

§

AS SPRING WORE into summer, the crops grew green, and the dark aspect of the Citadel was softened and made almost serene. Months had passed since High Town had fallen and the Citadel was besieged; now it seemed the Iron Gate might withstand forever the blows of the barbarians. There were many women who went about the grounds, their bellies full and swollen; the young men of the Tarendahardilites practiced with their new-fashioned weapons under the stern eye of the Charan Ennius Kandi, whom many now had taken to calling Father. The guardsmen did their rounds, and in their off-watches visited the women in the Palace who granted them the honor of their couches; even the nobles seemed not so sullen or bored as theretofore. So for that while at least the people in the fastness were as happy and contented as their state would allow, and had even gone so far as to pass round jests at the expense of the barbarians and Ara-Karn.

But there was one at least who was far from content.

Captain Haspeth’s brows fell darkly across his eyes, which now and again shot fiery glances over the ruins below, as if hoping to descry the next approach of the enemy. He had no watches, the Rukorian: but at all hours he stalked the ways of the battlements, lance on shoulder, helm on head, his great shield like an anchor-stone upon his arm.

Sometimes he scorned even to descend to eat. He passed the other guardsmen with neither word nor gesture to acknowledge their salutes: was as if he knew nothing beyond his own dark thoughts and the city streets leading up to the Iron Gate.

It was Haspeth who was ever at the hardest point of battle during the assaults, fighting desperately, careless of wounds and equaling the fury of even the most fearsome of barbarians.

The others came to shun him at meals and sleeps, and pass him in silence on the battlements. Sometimes the men gaming in the yard between the gates would glance at the sky, and their laughter would die in their throats at the sight of that gloom-ridden sentinel wearing down the black volcanic stones.

‘I tell you sir, I like it little,’ Narrano Delcarn said at last to Berowne. ‘He was ever stern, but of late has grown to brooding. He will not smile nor speak any word to me except of battle. I have heard him laugh but once these four months, and then it was when he tore barehanded the guts of some barbarian through a hole in the poor man’s armor. Only Charan Kandi can speak to him for any length of time, but what they speak of I dare not say. My captain grows blood-darkened, sir. I fear for his health.’

‘And has he no woman to warm him with her thighs?’ Berowne asked.

‘None, sir.’

Berowne shook his head. ‘When a man frowns in springtime, it is life he frowns upon,’ he said. ‘But then, what can one hope for? He is a Rukorian, I after all.’

‘Not all Rukorians are alike, Captain,’ Narrano responded. ‘My captain comes from the mountains near Torvalinal, the seat of my lord Ampeánor’s charanship. That is near to the shore, and not sixty fastces come between the city and the Isles; yet it might as well be six hundred for all that our kinds are alike.’

‘And how is this?’

‘The men of those hills are darker, with deeper eyes. They are the older race, and trace their ancestry to the years when the barbarians ravaged the lands before Elna’s coming, when they say men were ruled by priestess-mothers. They are folk of mountains, and have dealt ever with iron and bronze that are sharp and hard for death. But we men of the Isles came from the seas in the years after Elna, and have mixed with all the peoples of the coasts; we deal with the winds and waves, which sing and laugh to Goddess, and give way each to the other.’

Berowne smiled. ‘So, and now you fear for your captain’s virtue?’

‘Sir, I do not think that it is fitting to joke about such things. I would have asked this of Father Kandi, save that he is not of the guard.’

‘He would not have refused you.’

The Rukorian looked away. ‘I know. But we are already too greatly indebted to him.’

Berowne clapped his great ham of a hand on the curve of the young man’s armor, above the shoulder. ‘Well then, if you ask it, my friend, I will speak with your captain. And perhaps I will have something to say that might cheer even him.’

So Berowne mounted the steps to the battlements, and found his quarry passing beneath the southern lance-tower. Side by side the two marched for a space, the great-bodied Tarendahardilite making his fellow-captain look like some boy in play-armor.

‘And how goes it with you, friend captain?’ Berowne asked after some moments.

‘Eight passes now,’ Haspeth muttered, ‘Not long now, perhaps, before they come at us again.’

‘It goes well with me also,’ Berowne said. ‘Kiva is always fresh this season, with all the sweetness of hill-flowers dancing in the breeze of Goddess’ breath.’

‘We kill them now,’ Haspeth said, ‘three-fourths score to every one of us we lose. It is not good enough, Captain. There are too many of them.’

Berowne sighed. ‘Yet at least, Captain, we may perhaps discourage them?’

‘That idea of Ennius’, to pour down on them the harsh poisons and potions of the Imperial embalmers, was the thought of genius,’ Haspeth said. ‘The barbarians had to drive the mercenaries against the walls, and then the balance was almost two score to one. But the vats ran dry and the barbarians returned. We must plan anew. Even now, if you notice, our supply of stones grows short: and those that we have dropped now are mounding even over the feet of the Iron Gate.’

‘Perhaps if we rained the Palace slops on them?’ Berowne asked mildly.

‘None of your jokes, Berowne. I’ve no mind for them.’

They went on in silence a space. Suddenly Haspeth halted and seized the Tarendahardilite’s broad shoulder. ‘Captain Berowne, what do you think of her majesty’s words of a traitor among us?’

‘Why, what would you have me think? Her majesty told us it had been meant as a test; for the rest, I have never seen sign of any traitor.’

The Rukorian resumed his step, as if he could bear to abide in one spot for no more than a few short moments.

‘I wish there had been a traitor,’ he said shortly. ‘It was my chance to redeem myself. Captain, we fight a doomed battle, wasting our arms against an enemy numberless as the winter rains. Any soldier, any slave, might do as much – yet we are called captains.’ He brought up the huge shield and swept it over the fields of ruins. ‘So it is said, that the great Ghezbal Daan, may Goddess curse him now for a traitor and coward, was once caught in his tower and surrounded by two thousand of Yorkjax’s best warriors. In less than three months, fifteen hundred of the Belknuleans were slain, and the remaining five hundred had joined the service of Ghezbal Daan.’

‘The Raamba was a great captain in his time, there is none who will deny it. But what are we to do?’

The Rukorian struck the stones with the haft of his lance. ‘More.’

‘Then perhaps this will cheer your spirits, Captain,’ Berowne said, coming to a halt. ‘I come now from speaking with her majesty. She wishes to see us both in the White Tower after the third meal.’

‘But why did you not say this straightway? It is two months now since she has so summoned me, though she has seen you often enough. What is her purpose?’

‘I don’t know. But she asked me a great many questions about you, and spoke of great plans.’

Haspeth opened his arms like some huge, metal-winged bird of prey. ‘At last!’ he breathed. ‘O barbarians, mind my words, and do not attack again until I have returned!’

§

IN THE AUDIENCE-CHAMBER all was even as it had been half a year before, when Berowne had first been guided there by the maiden of bewitching eyes and scent. Her majesty sat cross-legged on the reed prayer-mat before the two captains, who knelt on the thick and costly rugs. Once again the great black and yellow gerlin perched upon the jeweled throne.

They were alone.

With all due courtesy the Queen inquired after Haspeth’s health, of the state of the defenses, and of the men’s outlooks on the war. She heard them in silence, with deference and politeness. Then when they had done, she fell into a deep meditation.

The silence gathered weight within the low chamber, broken by nothing but the soft outward whisper of the winds across the window-face, and by Niad as he preened. The two captains sat waiting; Haspeth with his eyes politely cast upon the floor before him, Berowne with the heavy pads that were his hands set like steaks on his knees, regarding her majesty with wonder and curiosity. Then he cast aside his gaze, coloring somewhat: for he’d caught himself wondering most intently what she truly looked like, the naked beauty underneath the robes and mask.

The Queen bestirred herself. She lifted her mask slightly. Then all at once she rose, beautifully, like some cloud lifted by the airs in a narrow defile; and the black robes swept down from her form in long sinuous lines, so that for that one instant Berowne knew he would never forget, she stood above them looking down, more compelling than the finest statue of Goddess that had ever graced that City famed for the beauty of its statuary.

‘Stay, rest as you are,’ she said. She stepped back, and then with a simple grace that took Berowne’s breath, seated herself in the jeweled throne. Absently, with one slender naked hand, she caressed the gerlin.

‘Now, sir captains, to the matter at hand.’ She spoke with the sureness of one long used to the order of men. ‘Captain Haspeth, it will perhaps surprise you, after our long confinement here, to learn that we might have left this place upon any pass we wished.’

Captain Haspeth was surprised, as the look upon his face bore witness.

‘That we have not done so, has been a matter more of policy than the ease with which it might have been done. This was the seat of our House. It was here great Elna chose for the archstone of his strength. The Citadel is all that remains to us of Tarendahardil: and Tarendahardil was the sign and symbol of civilization. Had we fled in ignominy, there surely would have been no man of the unfallen cities who might defend us: no, but all would have sent legates to the enemy to sue for peace and grant him what he will. Thus it was our duty to remain.

‘Now regard, six months and more have passed, and the Iron Gate remains unforced. We have withstood all Ara-Karn might do, and dwell here secure. We have water, we have meat and grains and crops: in brief, all that we need to remain so for some years. This all the world has seen. Doubtless the other cities of the South marvel at what we have done, and have gained hope for themselves. Elna laid siege to Urnostardil for no longer a term, and we have seen how well the barbarians, rude and unlettered, survived that. What they did, so may we do and surpass.

‘So I have wondered, what move were best to employ next. The barbarians are weary of war, and long for their own lands again. Almost are they on the very edge of rebellion against their deadly, damned lord. If then we were to leave, suddenly and of no choice but our own, and the barbarians were faced with a hollow hull, might they not indeed turn back to their own cities? And even if they did not, do but think of how this mocking of them will appear to the unfallen cities. We stayed here and defied the foe to do his uttermost; when weary of the game we left, as easily as the free winds of passage.’

Berowne sat bemused by the scheme. Haspeth too was caught up out of his darkness for a moment by it.

‘Yes,’ the Rukorian breathed, ‘your majesty, whet a general you would have made! Is this to be done, then? Shall we set things in movement for it?’

‘Not yet, my hasty soldier,’ she said gently. ‘It is not so simply done: how might we leave here in our thousands and not draw the notice of the enemy? The secret way is narrow, as Captain Berowne, who has used it, may tell you. Its outlet is in High Town itself, upon the Way of Kings. And then, what if we win away? The barbarians will overrun an emptied Citadel and, in sudden anger at the trick, may be after us as swiftly as their horses can bear them. On the open road we should fall to their swords and axes like summer wheat.

‘Something must be done to cast their minds to some other quarter and engage them for enough time to let us scatter in the winds. And it is there, Captain Haspeth, that I would use you: if you have the strength, the genius, and the courage to bear such harsh usage.’

Haspeth did not answer her. He only drew off the heavy war-glove from his right hand, pulled out the massive long war-knife from his belt and laid it, pointing back at him, on the floor at her feet.

Gravely, the Empress nodded. ‘Yet before I accept what you have offered, Captain, I must warn you of the dangers. For I sit not before you as Goddess, who has but to speak and expect that it be done. I am only a woman with perhaps little understanding of these things – you yourself thought me as much once.’

‘It is cruel of you, your majesty, to speak of that.’

‘Very well,’ she assented. ‘It is agreed, that shall be forgotten. You have redeemed yourself with your months of faithful service here. You need not accept this new danger to gain my pardon: you have it freely already.’

He nodded.

‘Yet if you do choose to accept this task, I will expect of you such works as perhaps not a handful of men in all the world might have the daring, the cunning, the strength or the wisdom to achieve.’

‘I accept it,’ he said.

‘You will die in doing it,’ she said.

‘I accept it.’

‘You must wear rags and lie in mud; you must deal with men you despise, and laugh with them at their vile jests. You must do many things repellent to your own honor. And you will condemn yourself again and again, though in outward seeming you do but relish all you do.’

‘I accept it.’

‘You must become a thing more – or less – than mortal: you must make of yourself a rod of bronze, sleepless, tireless, ever vigilant. There will not be an hour of peace for you, for a pass, for a week of passes, for months. You will always be moving, ordering, overseeing the greatest and most trivial works alike. You will need to hold in your head great lists of men and numbers, and commit none of it to parchment. You will need greater cunning than I have ever seen in any man but one.

‘And then, at the end of all this labor such as would break almost any man, you must be prepared to see it fail – but you must not let it fail: for it will be you, and only you, who will see that it succeeds. You will need to compel it to succeed.

‘And at the end you will win no triumph, no glory, no cheers, no honors for your reward. Not even the thankful word of a sovereign will you have. For you will be dead, Captain: and you will die with the blood and souls of thousands of your own innocent countrymen as your burden. And when you die, you will not even know whether you will have succeeded or failed.’

The Rukorian shuddered visibly at her words. Berowne marveled, both at what her majesty said, and at the play of his fellow-captain’s features. Even more did Berowne marvel when he heard Haspeth’s voice calmly answer yet again and for the fourth time,

‘I accept it.’

The Queen arose and took up the war-knife on her lap. ‘Then this shall I guard among my most treasured jewels,’ she said softly. ‘Captain Berowne, you may leave us now. When the hour is ripe for Captain Haspeth’s departure, you will take him to that place you know of, and see him safely upon the streets of High Town. There you will counsel him on what way you think best for him to pass unnoticed out of the ruins. I would be as sure in my heart as I may, that he has won free from the barbarians. Then you will return to take up your former duties. You will thereafter speak no word of this to any man, any child, or any woman – not even to your own beloved Kiva – not even to me, unless I first speak of it and order you to do likewise. Do you understand?’

‘I do, your majesty,’ Berowne said solemnly. ‘And may I say, your majesty, that even your great ancestor would have praised you in this.’

She inclined her head as Berowne stood heavily to his feet and saluted her. Then he departed.

In the outer hall he bowed gallantly to the saucy-eyed, white-wigged maiden, who abased herself to him prettily. Berowne laughed; by now, he and Bijjame understood each other’s games so well! She laughed with him, and ushered him below.

§

IN THE AUDIENCE CHAMBER behind the still, closed doors, Haspeth remained kneeling upon the rug. His face was calm now, settled. A sort of peace had claimed him. It was the sort of peace the court embalmers fashion upon death-masks.

The Queen leaned back in the throne. The gray-blue eyes were lost in the shadow of the golden mask. ‘You also, my lord,’ she said gently, stroking the great bird’s head. ‘This is a matter for no ears but this man’s and mine. Go, and keep clawed watch upon the windy walls without.’

The gerlin eyed her, then ducked its head as if in understanding. The feathers formed a black arch over the jewels in the throne. Then it straightened, flung wide its wings to bestir the air of the chamber, and swept out the narrow window.

‘Now, Captain Haspeth, it shall be one of the most difficult tasks of your mission that you will need to perform first. When next the barbarians attack the Iron Gate, in the thick of battle when no man thinks but for his own safety, you will make as if your enemy stabs you through. You will fall and lie with the dead so that all, the enemy and your own men alike, believe you slain. Berowne, and only Berowne, will be party to the secret. He will see that you are borne away in such a way that none will know anything but that your corpse has been cast down over the cliff-side with the others. These may seem needless cares, but please believe me, they are of the first importance. If but a single soul within this fastness but Captain Berowne and I know you still live, then is all your mission undone and a failure.

‘For men, you may take two – but they are not to be privy to the secret until you are all out of the city. See that they are hidden away during this battle and led by Berowne directly to the way without knowledge of where they go; afterward Berowne will see that they are counted among the slain. I will speak to him later to explain all of this.

‘Your goal is to be Rukor. There you will visit every folk-gathering, every town, every farm if need be. You will gather all the men you can find who can fight and serve your purposes. You will feed them on false hopes of victory; glory, and wealth; but in your heart you will know you are condemning them to their deaths. Spare no man on this account! The enemy has conquered up to now, because he has the soul of the Darklands of God. All is shadow in him, and this he uses for his greatest strength. We must do likewise, and find the shadow within ourselves.

‘I have observed you, Captain: you alone I find have already embraced the shadowside of your heart. I am at the start of learning mine. Rejoice in it, for dark and deadly deeds are needful if we are to bring about another age of peace and light. Discard then all notions of honor, using them only as they may further your mission. It is this mission that has now become like the Couple Themselves to you. You will kneel and pray at its shrine at every meal, for the length of every sleep. This world itself is half shadow, Captain: so are we mortals made as in its image: become the world, half no longer but whole, light as well as darkness. Nor shrink not from what you find there, for if you hesitate also, all will be undone and thousands will die for nothing.

‘After you rouse the folk-gatherings, you will go even into the islands – even among the pirates you will go. There you will name yourself renegade and mercenary, a drunkard, a thief, a swaggerer, a liar and a whore-monger – whatever is the worst in men, you will adopt as your mask. You will tell all the men of the islands that you have been sent by me, your Queen, but in your heart you mean to betray me. You hatch another scheme in your heart, to ride to my rescue, only to rob me of all the gold and jewels stored here in the citadel. Tell the pirates that with your own eyes you have seen the treasure, and pile it as high as you can!’

‘But your majesty,’ Haspeth said, ‘I understood there was no more gold here?’

‘There is not. We are poor as field-workers now. But the barbarians seem still to believe in the old fables of the treasure-hoards of the Bordakasha, and so it seems likely that the pirates will believe as well. Their own greed will convince them.’

‘The pirates,’ Haspeth said, ‘are a lawless band of murderers.’

‘Indeed, that is their greatest asset to us in our plan. Think you, for centuries these pirates have defied the Emperors and the charanti of Rukor themselves, who have served as the most valiant of our noblemen. Will these same pirates then buckle the knee to barbarians? No, but they will only make a pretense at it when needful, even as they pretended to be our loyal subjects whenever Bordakasha warships ringed their isles.

‘When you have your men, return. Do not disturb yourself as to the passing of time: this is a thing that may take you fully a year to accomplish. We will remain here as before. When you are ready to return wait yet longer, until some time about the middle of autumn. Thus when we depart, there will be but a few weeks suited to travel remaining to the year – so I hope we nay be scattered and have found refuge, while the barbarians will be hindered by the rains and mud.

‘Send me no warning when you return. I wish to hear nothing of you until Berowne spies the barbarians rushing to meet you on the field of battle. That shall be the only message I require or desire. Fall upon them as suddenly as you may, or else they shall make short work of you – forget not Egland Downs! But let the pirates risk their necks more than the good folk of Rukor, for the fewer pirates we must deal with, if this plan succeeds, the better for what comes after.’

He nodded. As the Empress had spoken, Haspeth’s face had resumed its former grimness. Narrano Delcarn had spoken rightly of the character of the men of Torvalinal. They might be anything but mixture. Degrees were beyond their capacities. Haspeth had been a man of the most scrupulous honor; now at a blow he had been unleashed as a soul the equal of a Madpriest’s. And through it all it was the lust for fame and glory that remained. His sovereign had asked this of him: he needed no other warrant. He would dissemble, lie, steal, slay or beg to achieve this that she asked of him. It came upon him in a moment, what he had so long sought unknowingly and blindly, as holy revelation will come to a priestess in the Desert, her mouth blackened by salt and thirst. He had attained a dreadful, fearsome serenity.

Allissál, regarding his features intently, was satisfied that she had chosen well – albeit the final result frightened even her who had brought it to pass. Was this what it was like, then – was that the point she herself would reach in the end?

‘Your majesty,’ Haspeth breathed, and even his voice was now changed, ‘I have been a soldier in an age of peace. I have dreamed of war and fame and glory, and seen poets lauded, fat merchants enriched, and nobles laugh like women. Now a war has come, the great War – and I missed it. I was camped by Bollakarvil when she fell; I did nothing. I watched the armies of the League of Elna spill down like a flood to meet the foe: I remained behind. And now your majesty, I confess that this has become even more than a thing of fame to me. I have looked over the parapets and seen the barbarians with such hate that now I long for nothing more than to defeat them all, crush them and stamp them underfoot to stain the land for a hundred years. I know what your majesty requires. It shall be done. I shall see it done. Upon all my hope of the Blessed Shores, I, a dead man, swear it to you. Haspeth has become but a sword held in your majesty’s hands. So let it be.’

‘That was spoken after my own heart.’ She arose from the throne and held out to him a small jeweled casket. ‘Herein you will find jewels and my ring. The jewels will purchase whatever you may need, and mayhap give the better credence to your lies about our treasury. The ring will show you are my legate. Also there are two scrolls here, written and signed by my own hand. You are no longer a mere captain of the guard. Now you are Captain to the Queen, a man whose word shall be obeyed as if it issued from my own lips. Also I have made of you Charan of Vapio, Charan of the Eglands, Charan of Fulmine, and Under-Charan of Rukor. So all the vanished Empire is one within your person, and so may men flock to you as to some being of the skies. You know your own people better than I – you know what these powers grant you. Use them well – by which I mean, use them with criminal ruthlessness.’

‘Your majesty, that I will.’ He took the casket.

‘Captain, my High Lord, it may be that the barbarians will attack again on the next pass. Then I will never again see you. This may be as our final meeting. What I have asked of you is more than I have asked of any other man. I tremble even to think of it. And yet we are strangers, for I feel as though I know even Berowne better than I know you. That should not be so, but it is. If you accomplish what I have asked of you, then will I see that your name shall be sung for a thousand generations. But is there anything else you might wish of me? I will grant you anything. My powers are small for now, yet Goddess willing, and by your aid, I may yet return to some preeminence among men. Is there anyone dear to your heart, perhaps, you would wish exalted? Do you have kin you wish to carry on some of the powers I have granted you now?’

‘I have only a son in Torvalinal, your majesty. He is now twelve summers old.’

‘I will ennoble him.’

‘No, your majesty. My son will not survive me. He will be my first recruit, and he will die by my side.’

‘You frighten me, my lord. It shall be as you wish – yet there is one gift I will give you unasked, for it is in my heart to grant it you, and in my mind that it may be helpful to you in all the trials you must face hereafter.’

And so saying, the Empress of Tarendahardil did off the golden mask, and at the sight of her face the Rukorian paled and gasped. Then taking his head between her hands, she kissed him full on the mouth, deeply, in the way of a woman who sees her lover off to death.