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 Sending
WHEN WORD of the Empress’ refusal was conveyed to Ennius Kandi, he went down from the Palace halls into the open air of the courtyards.
All about him stretched grounds which once had been lovely with the statues and walkways of the Imperial Gardens. Now refugees huddled upon the small heaps of their belongings, awaiting the next sleep or meal.
Some slept in makeshift tents, others beneath cloaks lain over their faces, others in the shadow of the cowl of rock. They slept fitfully, turning and moaning. Through the veil of sleep, groans of anguish and hatred reached from the depths of the hard dark soil into their dreams, as from the long-buried bones of Elna’s barbarian slaves, promising vengeance to the last Tarendahardilites.
Ennius Kandi smiled and walked on by. In his fingers he toyed with the death-bird that he never shot but kept always with him, even apart from the Iron Gate.
The exotic flowers, bushes, spice-plants and shade trees of the Imperial Gardens, so carefully tended for generations, were no more. A small corner of the groves had been spared, it was said at the special instance of the Empress herself. The rest had been butchered to make room for horses, cattle, pigs, chicken, dogs, and men.
‘Charan Ennius! Charan Ennius!’
Some ragged people crowded around the Gerso, tugging at his cloak, their faces pleading. Some held babies out for him to bless. Others touched his shoulders for luck.
‘The battle, Charan Ennius! How did it go?’
The Gerso halted. ‘Well, they came to us,’ he answered. ‘They wanted death. We gave them some.’
An old man laughed and clapped his hands.
‘Like as two brothers,’ he told the man beside him.
‘Like as two fellows!’ the other replied.
In their gloom, the people clung to but one hope. It was to see the Iron Gate open again, so that they might venture once more among the streets of their city. That hope, however, required faith, and faith required a figurehead. The barbarians had Ara-Karn. Against that one, shadowy and terrible, whom might the refugees hope to pit? The captains and charanti of the South were gone. Ghezbal Daan failed them before Egland Downs. The High Charan Farnese, already ancient, had fallen prey to a wasting sickness. The High Charan Ampeánor had vanished in midsummer. Prince Elnavis was a corpse somewhere amidst the ashes of High Town.
There remained only Ennius Kandi.
The beginning of his fame had come when he gained the shelter of the Citadel, the last man to do so. Riding out of the flames and smoke of High Town, with a great leap he had gained the narrow outcropping of stone at the foot of the Iron Gate. There, at the risk of his own life, he helped a half-score – some said a half-hundred – refugees mount to the battlements above the closed, towering gate. Only when the last of them reached safety did he think of himself. By then fifty barbarians were raining arrows upon him.
Once in the Citadel, the Gerso Charan organized the defenses and oversaw the distributions of food. He had a kind word for everyone save those taken with fear: with those he was stern and terrible. He seemed the only man on the mountain who had neither doubt nor fear of the outcome of the siege. Whenever anyone spoke of the strength of the barbarians in battle, Ennius Kandi smiled. It was not a smile of despair or of fear.
He was a member of the nobility of two cities, Gerso and Ul Raambar. Among the people, those were two names of power.
Gerso had been the first city to fall to the barbarians; Ul Raambar held Yron Ghadil against the Madpriests for centuries. In the person of one man were thus represented vengeance and might.
It was said that Ennius Kandi had seen Gerso fall, and Ancha, and Eliorite, and Carftain, and the city-states of the Delba. The rumors of his prowess had grown huge among the Tarendahardilites. It was said he had fought Ara-Karn three times, with each combat fiercer than the last. It was said that Ara-Karn offered fifty thousand golden Elnics for the Gerso’s head, and feared him more than any other living man.
There was this as well: of all the defenders, Ennius Kandi alone was visible to the people when the barbarians assaulted the Iron Gate.
The high inner gates and the cowl of rock hid the central battlements from the view of those within the grounds. Only the twin lance-towers could be seen. The deeds of the guardsmen were hidden, but all men saw the Gerso charan and his bow atop the southern lance-tower.
He had thus become, by his deeds, his history, his race and his position, a living symbol of defiance against the barbarians.
Once during an assault the jade eye of God had risen above the inner gates beside the southern lance-tower. For a space the watchers below stood enthralled as they saw the hooded man wield his bow against the dark pallor of God. It was seen how, as the bow was drawn back, its outline mirrored all the changes the face of God made in a single pass: a sliver when nearest Goddess Sun, a wedge overhead, and all but a globe gleaming atop the dark horizon. And one old man said, There stand two brothers.
The phrase was caught up and repeated until it became a catchphrase among them. From time to time, in the midst of squalor and the moans of hungry children in the middle of a sleep, the phrase ‘like as two brothers’ could be heard repeated over and over, like a prayer to Goddess.
Whenever Ennius Kandi walked among them, the Tarendahardilites clustered around him. He smiled on them and answered their questions gently, like some father greeting his children clutching at his legs. He knew each man by name; knew the gossip of the camps and what the Palace cooks prepared for the next meal. He told them how comically the fearsome savages had died. He saw to the children, the sick, and the aged.
Upon this occasion, however, he remained among them for only a brief time. His manner seemed distracted. Soon he passed into the courtyard of the guardsmen between the inner and outer gates.
The off-watch guardsmen sat in the sunlight seeing to their blades or casting dice bones. Cheerfully they hailed the Gerso charan and bade him join their game. He promised them another time to try to regain their losses, and passed on. He entered the south barracks, cut deep out of the cowl of rock. There the burly master armorer had his workshop piled with broken armor, swords and lances awaiting work, and bins filled with char-wood and coal. The forges roared, and smoke mounted through holes cut in the rock.
The armorer greeted the northern lord with a broad grin. ‘And have the cranes you bade me fashion worked to your satisfaction, Charan Ennius? Ah, but those were cunning designs of yours!’
‘They worked well,’ the Gerso answered him, ‘which is a tribute to your craftsmanship as much as to my design. I have a notion for another instrument, rather smaller, which I think you will find even more clever.’
§
UPON THE FOLLOWING PASS, two men met outside the Hall of Justice. They wore ragged, filthy tunics, and their dirty faces were unshaven. The one was short and of late middle age, the other huge, all muscle and hard bulk. The huge man smiled and gave out a rueful laugh.
‘Take it not unkindly, friend,’ he said, ‘but a more villainous or greasy pair I never saw in the Thieves’ Quarter. Well, and it is wise, I suppose – though Kiva vowed she’d not so much as let me enter her chambers before I’ve shaved twice and bathed three times. She would not even grant me a farewell kiss.’
‘Should we not go?’ the short man said.
‘Now you will not take fright, will you Little Doughty? Speak out now, if it is so, I’ll do without you rather than be betrayed by your fear. And yet they speak brave tales of your fighting on the barricades.’
‘I will be well enough,’ the other answered mournfully. ‘The Queen asked me, and I told her I would.’
‘That is the saying of a man. Come then, and before you feel the danger we’ll be on our way back.’
They descended among the throngs of refugees. On the fourth lower terrace of what had been the Imperial Gardens, they walked below the black cliff of the cowl of rock. There they came upon a dark grove of trees, the last unscathed, and most ancient part of the famous Gardens. In silence the two men plunged into it.
Among the trees it was dusky, almost black. The stink of the pines and herbal trees and roots was thick about them. There had been a light rain during the third meal, and wet leaves and needles drenched the ragged tunics of the captain and Kuln-Holn. At the grove’s end, beneath the rocky wall, the two men stopped.
Before them the trees shrank from a small dead circle of ground. In its center stood a squat, rough-hewn stone.
The stone was crusted over with ancient stains. Berowne spat over his shoulder and made the Sign of Goddess.
‘In truth,’ he said, ‘this is such a thing that might well arouse the neck-hairs of any who saw it, even if he were ignorant of the purpose it once served.’ Warily he touched the dank stone. ‘This is old, very old,’ he breathed. ‘Older, I think, than the city herself. Do you know what it is, Iocantris?’
‘I know,’ Kuln-Holn said miserably.
‘And it is said that in those times, it was not a loathsome thing, but even Elna and his captains made sacrifice to dark God, and drank the filled bowls until what they had drunk writhed and jumped in their bellies, and made them mad to shed what they had just consumed. Perhaps they enacted the rites even here upon this very stone. It sickens me even to look upon it. And yet here before us is the doorway of our passage.’
He uncovered his lamp and peered over the side of the stone into the depths of the blood-pit beyond. ‘I would rather face the most terrible warriors of Ara-Karn than climb into this foul hole. There is a prickling about my back like fear of the dark, fear of the snake, fear of … ghosts, say you? Still, I must admit it is an excellent concealment of the opening of our way.’
The stones of the pit were staggered like a narrow stair. Clambering over the altar, the captain gingerly dangled his legs into the pit. He picked up his lamp, descended, and was gone.
Kuln-Holn looked about him nervously in the darkness of the grove. High above, between the dark treetops and the rising black rock, a little patch of sky could dimly be seen. ‘Goddess, and dear Queen,’ Kuln-Holn muttered desperately, ‘protect me, please.’ Then he crawled down the stones, which were as slimy as though Elna had slain victims and drunk their blood only an hour before.
§
DEEPER DOWN, the hole stank of the earth. The two men groped their way. Stones and crumbling bricks lined the walls of the passage, barely holding back the press of the earth.
Fine roots dangled through cracks between the stones, tickling their necks and ears. The steps descended steeply at first. Then the way entered upon what seemed to be a natural cavern in the rock of the mountain like the belly of some monstrous fish. The slope there fell more gently, though still it led them down, back and forth and down some more.
For brief stretches the age-old vent was high enough to allow the captain to walk upright. Beyond the ring of light from Berowne’s lamp little eyes glared at the two intruders, blinked and were gone. The stale air was thick with the dust of ancient droppings. It seemed as though no man had trod this path for centuries.
The natural vent narrowed to an end. Before them a stone archway opened onto a manmade passage. The walls beyond still bore the scores of masons’ chisels. The way ran straight onwards and only slightly downward.
‘Why have you stopped?’ Kuln-Holn asked in a hoarse whisper.
‘There is something here beside the doorway. A bit of parchment, caught up here out of the wet. Here, take the lamp, and I will see—’ Berowne worried the parchment free and held it between his fingertips. ‘Hold the lamp closer, and I’ll try to read it… Forget not my – Nay, it’s no more than couch-stuffing now.’ He strewed the fragments on the stone and wiped his fingers on his thigh. ‘Strange. It was a woman’s hand.’
Berowne took back the lamp, and they entered the tunnel.
Forgotten objects from the Imperial past lay about their feet: bits of leather and pottery, broken knives, a rusted length of iron chain. Some discolored, half-rotted silk hung from a hook on the wall. There was a helmet and a broken table.
The tunnel broadened, so that at its widest point half a dozen men might have walked abreast. Overhead, above the strong archway of closely fitted stones, might have risen the palaces and temples of High Town. Soon they could feel the floor slowly rising again.
‘Now keep your tongue a prisoner of your teeth,’ Berowne said. ‘For what the barbarians may be doing on the other side of the doorway, not even the Empress could tell me. Like as not these new neighbors of ours have had their entertainments in the hall where our way emerges.’
The tunnel came to an end in a little chamber of brick shaped like a beehive. Narrow stone steps led round the walls up to the chamber’s peak.
‘I will go first,’ Berowne said softly.
At the top of the steps, a round door was set in the wall. Berowne set down the lamp and did out its flame. The darkness which followed was absolute, the lightlessnesss of the lands beyond the knife-edged border.
A slit of a panel was set into the door. Feeling about, Berowne found its knob and wrenched the panel aside. Beyond, the darkness was not so complete. He discerned a gloomy little room whose walls were covered with shelves and stored goods. There was no sign of life.
The captain set his hands to the bars of the door. Corroded from long disuse, the brass screamed against its hinges. Berowne set the mass of his body to the floor-rings. Raining dirt upon the captain’s head, the ancient door slowly gave way. Berowne squeezed through the door. He crawled over the pile of stuff set against the wall, of which the door on this side had seemed an integral part. He ventured beyond the storage chamber into the dusky corridor beyond.
In a short while he returned, and called down to Kuln-Holn.
‘Good Iocantris, come up. Tarendahardil and the tents of Ara-Karn await us.’
