Samples from books that we have published at Eartherean Books.
This is another in a series from the fourth book in the 4-book series The Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn: Darkbridge.
© 2009 by A. Adam Corby
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
The Last Assembly
WINTER ROLLED over Tarendahardil and the ambassadors came and went, the wheels of their tribute-wagons heavy with cold mud. No buildings had been restored in the old Imperial city, but life of a sort returned to her. The last surviving Tarendahardilites still dwelt there, unwilling or unable to surrender their city.
Others came as well, the fortune-seekers of change, desirous of wealth and power from the dominion of the barbarian. They swarmed in rude tents pitched against burned palaces, penning goats and pigs where charanti, philosophers and artists once had congregated. From time to time the streets came alive to the clatter of the Riders of the King, barbarians astride the strongest Eglandic stallions and bearing the black banners set with a yellow Darkbeast-tooth. The Riders never stayed long but shortly emerged pale-faced from the Citadel to set forth yet again, lashing to bloody froth the flanks of their steeds.
And the ambassadors came and went, bringing trains of tribute and hostage children up the old Way of Kings to enter the bleak, black stronghold on the mountaintop. They were ushered in by sly Vapionil slaves and the soldiers of Erion Sedeg, and after them went herds of cattle and sheep and baskets of grain, salt and sugar. And with a gray evil the cook-smoke went up from the black Palace into the rain and low clouds of the dull jade sky.
And so another Pass of God went by.
At the end of winter riots broke out in the poorer cities and bands of thieves roamed the hills and countryside, mostly in the North where the conquest had been longest and most harshly felt, but also along the Delba. Erion Sedeg set out with his armies, a mix of lesser barbarians and his own forces, and he crushed all resistance in the cities, killing the half-clothed rioters by the hundreds. But when Erion Sedeg moved on, the bands of thieves waxed into armies, and trade in the North ceased. Only Tezmon in the North was at peace.
In Fulmine meanwhile Erion Sedeg established himself in the fortress built by Lornof’s father, where he spent the spring increasing his power, ever-jealous of the worship of his high dark master, whose name he continued to exalt.
The greater barbarians gathered in Vapio, which had sprung up yet again like some fleshy ruby flower seductive and unkillable. There the warriors drank and ate and smoked and gamed in luxury, aided by their willing slaves, until their wits dulled and their arms softened. Feuds broke out anew among the tribes, there was some fighting but as yet little killing. Several Buzrahs were found dead in their couches: it was said they had eaten too heavily of the purple dream-herb, but a little afterward several Karghils were missing and never after seen.
A new feud began, one with the promise of even greater danger. The chiefs of the fourth and fifth armies refused to pay Roguil Arn the spoil they had promised, saying that since he had not slain Elna-Ana he did not deserve it. Roguil Arn descended on Vapio with fourscore men and murdered the chieftains of the Gerinthars, the Necistrols, the Goat-Tribe and the Gise-Nathos with seven-score of their followers. They caught them naked or in the robes of women, and butchered them to the delighted drunken screams of the Vapionil whores who serviced them. After this, the agreed-upon amounts were given over to the bloody-armed young champion, and pacts of peace were sworn. But sly whispers in the shadows of the purple towers in Vapio spoke of poisonings, and Roguil Arn, hunting and fishing along the mountains brightward, heard nothing of this. Other feuds also began over artful women or gaming-debts. Ill feelings grew stronger, but the warriors as yet dissembled it.
That winter Bar-East died. The old wanderer had been following the line of the shore toward Zaproll on the Sea, the last corner of the lighted lands he had yet to visit. The warriors mourned his passing and slew horses and slaves to the gods for Bar-East’s spirit, and the chieftains ordered a tower of stone built to mark the place where he had died. In Vapio there was some talk of destroying Zaproll on the Sea to make good the boast that Bar-East had gone everywhere, but that was mostly drunken talk and nothing was done as yet.
When spring did reach Tarendahardil, it did so grudgingly and late. It grew quieter there now, for the greater number of favor-seekers had gone away to Fulmine. The field brightward of the ruins was almost deserted: by the especial command of the King, only Nam-Rog and his Durbars were condemned to remain in the camp. They might have taken quarters in the Citadel, save that Nam-Rog quarreled with Erion Sedeg, and his warriors refused to dwell in that place. So they went back to the muddy camp where they had lived a year and a half. A week afterward half the warriors, led by Avli-Oan, defied Nam-Rog’s commands and pleas and left for Vapio. Those who stayed spoke of summoning their wives and children from the far North when spring cleared the roads; but when spring did come the robber armies roamed the North, and the warriors dared not send their bidding. They grumbled, and passed the summer sweating in the swelter of their tents in that accursed land.
Late in the summer, at the fall of autumn in the far North, the chieftains returned to Tarendahardil. Ara-Karn summoned them. But first they met in the Assembly.
They gathered in the broad dead field before the remnants of the piled camp-wall. Only the chiefs and high men of the tribes came, those who had been the leading hunters in the far North. Eleven chiefs scorned to attend. No Buzrahs or Karghils came. One who did come, oddly, was the red-haired Southron woman Ara-Karn had put over the Orns to insult and outrage the other chieftains.
They elected Kin-Sur, a Borso, to be the new Speaker of the Law. Kin-Sur dutifully recited the old laws of the Assembly before the small gathering. The chieftains drank and tossed bone-dice while he did this. Few heeded his words.
Nam-Rog, seated beside the Warlord’s empty place, shook his head. ‘Soon the very tribes will no longer exist,’ he muttered. ‘He might save us, if he would – but who can speak reason in the darkness of that foul tower?’
‘What are these words of yours, Nam-Rog?’ asked Pelk-Noem who was now chief over the River’s-Bend tribe. ‘Don’t you know that to speak words against the King is treason?’
‘That is a word of these Southrons, not of the tribes,’ growled old Gan-Birn of the Jalijhas, with a glance at the red-haired woman. ‘We have no king over us.’
‘Go and tattle on me to Erion Sedeg if you will,’ Nam-Rog said gloomily. ‘You were ever a Southron in your ways, Pelk-Noem, and stayed in your tents when we men went under the Iron Gate.’
‘Old man, you make me want to tell him,’ Pelk-Noem said, his face a mottled crimson.
‘Enough, enough,’ pleaded Welo-Pharb of the Undains. ‘Can we not meet together without bitter words, after all we have seen and done together? Nam-Rog, you have been here near the Warlord these months. Why has he summoned us now? What passes in the dark ways of his mind? Has it to do with the great fleet of ships that now cover the beaches at Arpane on the Sea? Over a year of toil, begun as soon as we took that city; now, as I hear it, abandoned since last winter. Will he settle now the feuds, or let us at last journey homeward again?’
Grimly the chief of the Durbars shook his head. ‘No. Not that.’
Shadows fell across the scarred and bearded visages, and the great strong hands reached for bowls of beer and wine.
‘By God’s jade balls,’ swore one, ‘will this never end?’
‘Nam-Rog, is there no speaking to him?’ asked Kul-Dro. ‘Outside of Gundoen and Kuln-Holn, you knew the Warlord best. Can you not persuade him?’
The old Durbar looked at the fortress on the mountain and its plume of gray smoke. In his tent he still kept the great brass-worked coffer in which were sealed the bones of Gundoen. All these months he had been holding it, haunted during his sleeps by the ghost, just to gain leave long enough to take it up to Hertha-Toll. He sighed and drank more beer. It was dark and bitter stuff. It was the way he preferred it now.
‘This is the way of him,’ he said at length. ‘He lives like a spirit of these Southrons, trapped after his death in a lightless stone hollow beneath the ground. All the window-holes of the Palace he has had covered over with stones and planks. No torches or lamps are allowed, and it is darker there than at the foot of Urnostardil. Only the cook-fires still burn, in kitchens underground. He is surrounded by the soldiers of Erion Sedeg, the children of the Southron princes, and slaves. You know the slaves – they are these Vapionil dogs.’
A groan of hatred and disgust went round the circle.
‘None of us has seen the Warlord since last winter, on the Pass of God. Even then he spent his wakings and sleeps in the tall tower, and no one brought food or drink to him. All his orders come through the mouths of Erion Sedeg and the Vapionil, nor is there any way of knowing which of the words are his and which their own. Even when we did reach him, he would hear no words on the rebellions, the feuds, or the cities. All he ever heard were the rumors about the former Empress, the last of Elna’s kin.’
‘But why should he be so eager to gain vengeance on her?’ asked Erin-Gan-Birn of the Roighalnis. ‘He is not of the tribes.’
‘She bewitched him,’ said Pelk-Noem, making a sign with his shadow-hand.
‘Who speaks treason now, Pelk-Noem?’ asked Farn-Jar-Gur of the Eldars. He had forsaken his duties in the South when Erion Sedeg had gone there. Instead he had gone to Vapio, and his eyes were heavy-lidded and bloody, and his words came out slurred like rain.
‘You never speak any, all men know,’ Pelk-Noem answered. ‘You will speak even less after I cut out your tongue.’
‘Be silent, you two, will you not?’ protested Ven-Vin Van of the Borsos, who sat with his head half wrapped in a cloak, miserable from dream-herb.
Ah Gundoen, thought Nam-Rog, you were right to die when you did, in the height of battle when our victory was full. You spared yourself these sights. I wish I had gone down at your side.
‘And what news is there of the far North, and home?’ Erin-Gar-Brin asked this: his city was Zaproll on the Sea, farthest from the news. At his words several faces brightened, and the talk ran over the tales that had reached them from the home villages. At length Roguil Arn lifted himself to his feet, cast down his bowl and proclaimed,
‘By Goddess, I care not what befalls, I will take my men home!’
The others looked on him for a moment – some with a hint of fear in their eyes, as though they looked for fire to come out of the sky and strike him dead. Then Tarx Taskas who represented the Fire-Walkers, rose and said quite calmly, ‘I will join you.’ Another followed him and another, until they had all sworn the same oath, all but three: Nam-Rog, Pelk-Noem, and Welo-Pharb. The Southron woman did not count, of course.
‘And Erion Sedeg?’ Nam-Rog asked.
Silence fell on his words. One by one the chieftains took their seats again. Then only Roguil Arn was left standing. ‘I care not,’ he said, ‘what is Erion Sedeg to me? He is a Southron. If the Warlord grants that I may go, what can that Southron do to oppose it? Would he dare go against my axe? Then let him, and by the count of three he will trouble me no longer.’
‘Much of his strength is still in the North,’ Nam-Rog said. ‘They are near the Pass of Gerso, they are many, and they have the bow. It is said Erion Sedeg has joined cause secretly with the Vapionil. It would be an easy matter for him to send word to his men to cross into the far North where are our wives, our children, our homes. And here too he is strong, in his high fortress. Will you have the stomach for another siege, Roguil Arn, when our men are scattered and half of them will do out of fear what the Warlord says, no matter what we tell them?’
‘I will not go against the wishes of the Warlord,’ Pelk-Noem said, looking at the ground. ‘I remember Gen-Karn’s fate. I was there when we went into the Citadel. A full year he suffered to abide among them, awaiting Gundoen’s return; then he moved his hand, and all fell dead…’
‘I tell you, I will go!’ insisted Roguil Arn.
‘Then you go alone,’ said Kan-Brin of the Pes-Thos, who blushed as he spoke.
‘There is still a way,’ said Marn-Klarten of the Undains. ‘In truth, how do we know that it has been the Warlord’s mind that we stay, and not merely what the Vapionil and Erion Sedeg have said that he says? What then if we saw him alone now, where there are none of these slaves? We could win him over, surely. He has Erion Sedeg: why should he need us? Surely he will let us free. We are free men, are we not? Are we not of the tribes of the far North? And if he does not…’ Marn-Klarten smiled wolfishly, and let his hand drop to his sword-belt.
Open-mouthed, the other chiefs regarded him long enough for a heart to beat a score of times. They could not believe it had been Marn-Klarten who had spoken these words. Not even Roguil Arn could believe it.
Then Farn-Jar-Gur took a mouthful of wine and swallowed noisily. ‘Ah, what is it we speak of?’ he asked. ‘The Warlord will not refuse us. It is these Vapionil.’ He hated them all the more for being in their power.
‘Yes, these slaves – these Southrons,’ said Roguil Arn. He set his big fist on the handle of the axe. Then Tarx Taskas did likewise with his weapon, and Erin-Gar-Birn and Ven-Vin Van, until soon all their hands were upon their weapons save for Pelk-Noem’s and Nam-Rog’s. The chieftains glanced about the circle. Great emotions passed over their countenances, and their strong fingers writhed upon metal, wood and bone. Then all at once they surged to their feet and drew their weapons so the bright metal tongues clashed against one another; and Tarx Taskas cried out, ‘Death to Southrons! Home!’ – and the others echoed him.
Kiva, pale-faced, looked on them with fear. They were like the wild beasts that had been penned beneath the Circus in Tarendahardil awaiting the next festival, the veterans who had grown accustomed to the savor of human blood. Rage and violence flashed from their eyes. These were not the same men she had met in this camp a year before, when she waited with the other prisoners for the decision of Ara-Karn. Then they had been silent and proud; now they despised themselves. No crime was beyond such men.
The chieftains’ blazing eyes fixed themselves on Pelk-Noem and Nam-Rog. ‘And you,’ they said: ‘will you now join us or oppose us?’
Pelk-Noem swallowed, and stood uncertainly. But gloomily from beneath his thick eyebrows the chieftain of the Durbars looked up at his fellows. For the greater part of his life he had seen these men every year at the Assembly of the Tribes; for years he had lived with them on the unending road of war. He had seen many of them grow to manhood, and had spoken of their progress with other men his age. His life had been saved by some there; others he had saved. Now he saw drunkenness, fear and hatred contort their faces.
He glanced at the red-haired Southron woman, and he felt ashamed. All at once he knew what the Southrons felt when they uttered the word, ‘barbarian.’ But then he thought of the bones of Gundoen, of Hertha-Toll alone and of his own sons, the last of whom fell in the last attack on the Citadel. And he thought of the man in the tower who had brought it all to pass – the man who was Gundoen’s adopted son.
He stood, and the others gave back a little before him. He ungirt his sword-belt, drew the sword and threw the belt behind him. He held the sword aloft with the point hanging down.
‘He has summoned us, hasn’t he?’ he said. ‘So let us see what he wants.’
Grimly pleased, the others nodded, and put back their weapons – all but Nam-Rog. Kiva followed them uncertainly and at a distance. She had that look about her of a child who has been thrown in among other children, older and bad: he dares not comment or protest, and fears what he is about to do, but fears even more to leave.
In a band of four score they rode up those streets they knew too well. But when they came upon the square and saw before them the high black wall of stone and the open gateway, then they drew rein. They seemed unwilling to go on. Through the gaping opening could be seen the dim, ugly grounds where three thousand corpses had lain, the victims of an unclean death. Ghosts hung about the place, and even the most drunken chieftains knew unease.
They rode into the fastness slowly, unspeaking, casting their eyes about them and making the Sign of Goddess. The mercenaries of Erion Sedeg gave way before them. The winds were cold here, and in the sky above the dismal Palace three gerlins wheeled, those hateful birds that had feasted for a year at the foot of the Iron Gate. The chieftains’ horses halted before the high buildings. The chieftains did not dismount. Their eyes passed over the windows and balconies walled up like gouged-out eyes. Some of them shivered. They looked to Nam-Rog to lead. But he would not.
Just before them, broad stone steps led up to a colonnade in the Palace like a cave into a cliff. Between the two central pillars a high-seat of kings had been upraised: next to the high-seat was a table littered with papers and a low footstool. The high-seat was empty, but Erion Sedeg sat on the footstool. He stood before the chiefs.
‘The Dark One, Ara-Karn the King of Kings, is displeased,’ said Erion Sedeg. ‘So he has summoned you. Behold now a full year gone by since he left you with a command – a simple thing, or so one would have thought. A woman was to be found, the last of the dynasty of the former age. She was to be found and brought before the King, so that he might forever put an end to those times. Well, where is this woman? Your men have brought us nothing but rumors and wild stories. Now your King, the Returned One, the Conqueror, gives you this final word. Bring to him this woman by the Pass of Goddess next summer, or be known as traitors and pay the penalty.’
Roguil Arn smiled, and began to unbind the peace-strings of his axe. But Nam-Rog raised his arm. He scorned even to speak to the painted Southron, but urged his horse on alongside the Palace, until he came to stand below the White Tower. The other chieftains likewise cast up their eyes to the peak of the Tower and its single brightward window boarded over. Nam-Rog lifted his naked blade.
‘Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn!’
His shout was echoed by the others until the noise of it shook loose the terror from the place.
‘Ara-Karn!’ the Durbar shouted once more. ‘Now five years have gone since you came among us, an outcast from your own kind and a suppliant. And four years have now gone by since we accepted you as a tribesman and our Warlord. We let you lead us, and put half a hundred cities beneath your rule. We crossed the Taril and left our bones to litter that desert. For a year we went in battle under the Iron Gate of this stronghold, for a year we gathered tribute and saw to the rule of these lands. And the nearer seemed our victory, the farther away was our homecoming. We sojourned in strange lands and ate the bitter flesh of beasts we did not hunt; we lay awake in terrible heat and learned the speaking of alien tongues.
‘Once we were hunters and proud, and we killed only for need or pleasure. We roamed the forests and drank of cold streams, and we raised our sons to carry on our tribes. Now we have killed for gold and for the good of others. We have learned lies and treachery. We have seen our sons and fathers and brothers go down in death far from their home villages. We have seen our fellows become drunkards and don the robes of Southrons. Enough!
‘We will go back to our home woods and our old ways. You have no more need of us. We have no more need of a Warlord. We will return to what we were.’
Silence grew in the fastness as the echoes of Nam-Rog’s words died. The haunting of the place seemed stronger than before. These spirits would never be appeased. The barbarians looked about them, grasping the handles of their weapons. They glanced at Erion Sedeg, daring him to order his men against them. But the face of the Southron was unreadable beneath its paint. He raised a hand and pointed.
‘Go,’ he said.
‘Take your spoils and go back behind the Spine. The King will allow this – if you will choose out thirteen of your number, chiefs or the kin of chiefs, to stay behind as hostages.’
‘Will he deal with us as he dealt with Southrons?’ Roguil Arn grumbled.
But Nam-Rog said to Erion Sedeg, ‘That is well. We will give you our oaths upon it. I myself will be one of the hostages, if that be his will.’
Dismally they left the Citadel. But when they were again riding in the streets of the city, then the chiefs raised their voices against the Durbar, complaining of the vow.
‘I gave a word,’ Nam-Rog answered, ‘A word once spoken is a free bird: it will fly where it pleases. I am going back with all my tribesmen, and let Ara-Karn be damned and die here alone among Southrons if he wants, but he will hold no kin of mine.’
The others grumbled their accord. ‘Aye, let him sit and rot,’ one said.
Kiva rode far behind the other chiefs, attended by ten men she had won to her cause in Tezmon that she had this waking lost. The warriors Ara-Karn had given her would cleave to their own tribes, and Tezmon would soon after fall prey to the armies of thieves roaming the North. But Kiva still had these men, and two coffers of treasure, and her beauty and her wit. From time to time she thought of the Divine Queen and of what might have befallen her. The thought saddened her.
And sad too was the look on Kul-Dro’s face. ‘He was so proud and strong and sure of himself,’ Kul-Dro muttered, ‘and we followed him as we would a god. Now it has come to this. Doom sits next to him, waiting; and yet he does nothing!’
So the chiefs went away brightward to the port-city at the mouth of the Delba, and from there summoned their men. They loaded ships with the heavy spoils of war. Erion Sedeg did not oppose them. On a waking late in autumn when the winds did not drive against them, the warriors of the tribes of the far North sailed across the Sea of Elna and left the South, Tarendahardil, and Ara-Karn behind.
The next waking the Riders of the King returned once more to the City Over the World, haggard, feverish, and weary unto death. They rested in the Black Citadel two passes. Then they rode brightward after the armies and their chiefs.
A week later the Vapionil came down from the Citadel and set their chariots upon the Southern Way. After them the last of the ambassadors departed for their cities.
Then even Erion Sedeg and his soldiers left the Black Citadel. They took the hostage children and went darkward, long lines of horsed and armored men beneath black and yellow banners.
At that, even the Tarendahardilites gave up and departed, scattering to the winds, leaving the city to the ghosts of its slain. For a full week afterward the now-empty Citadel sat as ever on the mountain, sending aloft its wind-curled plume of gray smoke.
Then the smoke stopped.
