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.
Judgment
ONE SLEEP, late in winter, a heavy mist came off the sea to cloak the ruins of Tarendahardil. Slowly the mist rose off the lower quarters, until only the plateau and the mountain remained in its embrace. And there was revealed in the harbor a fleet of ships of war, their masts vanishing into the wet gray ceiling of the cloud.
The black decks of the ships were empty, and the steering-oars pushed back and forth to the wash of the harbor currents. But on the marshaling-field brightward of the ruins a new encampment stood outside the crumbling wooden outworks of the barbarian camp. Over the encampment were raised the standards of Rukor, Vapio, the Eglands, Fulmine and the house of the Bordakasha. But the army made no move toward the mountain stronghold hidden beyond the mist. It was as if even Charan Haspeth feared as yet to walk the desert ways of the city of Ara-Karn.
§
O GODDESS, O Dear One, O Lady Unequaled, hear me, hear my words. The Man has come and defiled your temples and ravished those made holy in your service. He has struck down your altars and reft you of offerings. Strike him, and reave him of life in return.
Let the one he loves most strike the blow. O Goddess, hear my words!
There was only one person still left alive in the city. In the Brown Temple Alsa, last of the priestesses, still tended the sacred fire. At the end of every sleep she rose and ate a small cup of millet mixed with water. Then she fed the fire and reconsecrated the black blade before the idol. This she did in the black robes and golden mask of the high ceremonies; all the other rites she performed unmasked in the gray robes.
She went about her labors silently, used to the unmanned stones outside. She only spoke for prayers. But long since had Alsa lost her faith in that vanished burning orb to which she prayed. In the quiet confinement of her little world, she continued her observances only out of habit and the hopelessness of change. Hatred born of silence and long brooding had replaced the faith in her. She had seventeen summers now, and had become a beautiful woman beneath the virginal robes, but her eyes were like hard stones.
Now, kneeling in black before the burning altar with the knife balanced on her outstretched fingers, she heard a footfall on the steps without.
Hastily she completed the formulae of consecration and rose to find concealment, too late. A woman stood in the doorway. Tall and handsome, she was dressed in Rukorian hunting garb: a dark green hooded hunting-cloak from Gerso, fastened with a blood-red opal brooch-pin cut in the likeness of a serpent’s egg; beneath this a white sleeveless linen tunic with a blue-patterned hem above the knee, a leather wristband, sandals laced up the calves, and a zone of leather and brass. At her side hung a pouch of arrows and a bow of the invaders. Water streamed from her hair and cloak.
‘Who are you?’ Alsa demanded.
The woman drew back the hood. ‘Do you not know?’
The priestess gaped.
‘You are the Body of Goddess.’
The woman nodded. ‘So they called me.’
‘It is true, then?’ Alsa could scarcely believe it. ‘You are the Empress, the Divine Queen? You have returned?’
‘And who are you, your reverence, that alone you keep the sacred fire?’
‘I am known to your majesty. I an Alsa; once I brought a message from the High Priestess to your majesty.’ She scarcely knew what to say. ‘Did your majesty come with the army? – But of course. Where are the others? All the cities speak your name. We have lacked only your voice to lead us in holy rebellion against the Cursed One.’
‘So I saw in my journey. But I traveled here alone, and told no man my name. I have only come to see him.’
‘Your majesty knows what pass we enter on, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘It is the Pass of God,’ Alsa said. ‘It is the Pass of Freedom. Goddess turns Her back this pass. She sees nothing of what we do. It does not come to pass, and no crime requires purification. Nothing is forbidden to us this pass. Nothing.’
‘My nurse brought me your message,’ the woman said. ‘So I stopped here on my way. They say he is alone. Will you come with me?’
‘With all my heart, your majesty.’
§
ON THE WAY OF KINGS the fog closed about the women with an awful, secret silence. The cold rains passed in veils across the broken stones, fallen walls, and charred remains. There was no more dismal place in the world. Its face belonged to Ara-Karn. Its very soul was his.
In the square below the mountain they walked among the bones of Elna’s Pillar of Victory. The stone disks were defaced with the tribal marks of the barbarians. A wooden causeway bridged the coomb. In spite of all the rain, the stones below still bore the stains of the lives they had taken. The Iron Gate had been torn from their sockets in fury by the barbarians, dragged across the mountain-top and hurled down the cliff. The wall of black stone gaped like a malformed mouth, beyond which mists closed, removing all sight.
Into that mouth the women walked in silence.
At the Palace door the priestess stopped. She peered into the doorway. A breath of stagnant, musty air issued from within, as from some mountain-thorsa’s lair that has been broken into after being sealed for many years and, littered with bones and rotten bedding, gives pause to even the bravest hunters. So this black doorway gave pause to the priestess.
‘I am troubled,’ she moaned.
The Queen took her by the hand. ‘Come. There is no danger here for us.’
They went in, and the Queen shut the door behind. They stood in one of the servants’ entrances. The halls were narrow and the ceilings low. They waited while their eyes grew to drink the gloom. Then the Queen took the priestess by the hand and led her through the lightless labyrinth of the Palace of Ara-Karn.
Alsa, as she walked in the darkness, could not help but see again all the sights of violence she had witnessed these past years.
The broken, bloody body of the old High Priestess stretched naked on the altar; the burnt bodies in the streets and back ways of High Town; the wounded people who came to her in the Temple. She saw again the body of the young Emperor, the son of this woman who now, unknowing, led her in this labyrinth. Alsa herself had plunged the black stone blade into Elnavis’ heart – the same blade she held now. She had done that in a fit of religious frenzy, and even now remembered only the haze and smell of it, as a long debauch. Now she felt neither frenzy nor fear, only a cool, growing anger. This man alone had caused these things.
‘Where is he?’ she whispered.
‘He will be above,’ the Queen said, ‘in the White Tower. There stands the door. Are you still afraid?’
‘No. I am glad.’
Softly the Queen opened the door. The well of stairs was lighted by a dim gray light falling from above. The two women ascended the steps quietly. Despite herself, Alsa felt her belly tremble. She gripped the knife fiercely in her hand.
Upon the second landing they found that the source of the light was a doorway opening into a long, low chamber. The walls and ceiling of the room were covered with black linen; a narrow window, partly covered with a broken bit of board, let enter the misty winter light. There was a throne, black and gray feathers strewn about the floor, and a smell of blood in the air. Otherwise, the room was empty.
They went on. The light faded and failed about them as they ascended. At the summit of the steps the Queen stopped. She guided Alsa through a wide doorway. There was very little light there: Alsa could discern a large, pale shape, but could not make it out. From the echoes of their footsteps, she guessed it was a large room, almost as large as the chamber of the Goddess.
‘Where are we?’
‘My dimplace.’
‘Is he here?’
The Queen’s hand pointed Alsa’s in a certain direction. ‘There, cut into the wall, you will find steps leading to the window. Take down the boards that cover it.’
Hastily the young priestess obeyed. Feeling her way up the cold steps, she reached the window. She found a metal latch or catch at one side: releasing it, she let the boards fall on the ledge. The sound and sudden inpouring of light were startling. It took her some moments to regain her sight. Blinking, she looked down into the room.
It was a round, hive-like chamber barren of hangings, chairs, lamps or vessels. Only a large bed surrounded with pale bed-curtains remained: it was that which Alsa had seen vaguely in the darkness. The Divine Queen stood silent at the foot of the bed, looking down at the floor on the far side. Her face was hidden by the golden hair, and Alsa could not see her majesty’s expression.
Warily the young priestess descended and came round to the side of the Queen. She saw it then.
One wall was smeared with dark stuff that was like fungus, or lichen, or coal dust. It caked on the floor, where lay fragments of dark wood, three bright arrows, and a slag of metal like iron.
On the dais supporting the bed lay the body of a man.
He had been dressed in a simple tunic. His legs were bent and his feet bare. His arms were out-flung on the stones. His torso was twisted half round, and his face lay against the stone. His arms and back were bloody with long, raking wounds, as if torn by knives. The flesh was gray and blue with cold.
Blood lay about it in a wide ring, dark aromatic blood, as thick as jelly.
The body did not stir. It did not look as if it would ever stir again.
‘Are we too late, then?’ Alsa asked. ‘Is he dead?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’
The young woman stooped and laid him out in the position of the dead. She took care to let the weird blood leave no stain upon her. She made the signs of Goddess, of God, and of the Couple. She repeated breathlessly, mindless of the words in her rising excitement, the words of the ritual. Her breasts rose and fell and she felt the fabric of her robes brushing across the pointed peaks. Her thighs trembled softly.
She held the knife aloft in both hands. She looked to the Queen, for a final blessing.
‘Wait.’
The Queen had watched these gestures with thoughtful eyes. Now she undid the hooded cloak and draped it mercifully over the naked form. Upon the dark green fabric that covered the man’s heart she placed the blood-red opal cut in the shape of a serpent’s egg.
Then she tore free the cords of her tunic, baring her breast, and stepped between the priestess and her victim.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘you may strike.’
‘Your majesty, I do not understand! Will you spare this man?’
‘I offer myself in his place.’
‘But he is a monster!’
‘He is a part of me.’
‘Are you the Body of Goddess or some emissary of the Dark One come to ensnare me?’
‘Neither. I am a woman.’
‘No, I will not hear these words of yours!’
‘Strike then, and condemn yourself. So you will die untouched and hopeless.’
‘You speak of hope and defend this man, the enemy of all hope?’
‘I only speak as the words are torn from me.’
‘You were yourself his greatest enemy!’
‘I fought against myself. I was a stranger to myself.’
‘You brought me here, you asked me—’
‘—To come to know what lurks within your heart.’
‘Righteous anger, or the requirement of my order.’
‘There are but two paths for you. Your choice will prove you.’
‘I will not go near this crossing—’
‘Too late: you are upon it even now.’
‘And before me—’
‘—His way or Hers. It is for you to choose which is which.’
‘Divine one, Divine one!’
Alsa fell back. One arm was flung over the masked face, the other held out the black stone blade as if it were a charm. Sadly, the other woman shook her head.
‘Girl,’ she said, so softly that only they two might have heard the word, ‘listen to what I say. I call you girl because of your youth, but in truth you are not a girl but an unnatural thing, part maiden, part crone – even as I was once. Now it is time for you to put aside both of these. When I have spoken, then it will be for you to speak. Whatever the choice you make, I will obey it. Our fate will be for you to choose.
‘Once I thought of this man as you think now, and prayed for his death. And because I proved unworthy, I sought even the path of death. But this was not granted. An old woman, whom I had wronged terribly, brought me back to life and health. So, naked and cleansed in the Ocean of Death, I emerged and faced this same choice. And I knew I could never be free of this man until I had faced him one last time. The old woman warned me I must arrive no later than this very pass. But I could not make my choice until just now, when you broke the boards of the window and the gray light bared his body under me.
‘I see in him now the end of the path I might have chosen, the path you may choose now. Once indeed I swore to let nothing sway me from the darkness of my heart’s desire. And I led another down that way. He was a Rukorian captain in my service here, and is the general of the army camped now on the plain. You would call him a soldier in Her cause, but I have seen and spoken with him, and to me he seems a greater monster than this man ever was. He is implacable and terrible without relief, and if he stood where you stand now, he would not waver.
‘The same fate befell another man, one whom I once believed I loved. Even in my son I saw it, when he returned all bent from his former beauty, living only for death and cruelty. But now to me it seems a better thing to perish as a victim than to end in power as these men have.’
Alsa stood gestured with the stone blade, as if to dismiss the words. ‘And will you let this man escape unpunished, after all he has done?’
‘Can you look at him and think of this place that he has made his home, and still call him unpunished?’
Alsa looked down on the ashen body, bloody, lifeless, ready for a death-barge. She shook her head, and against her own belief heard her lips utter the word, ‘No.’
‘His full punishment, if he can endure it, would be in living on afterward. For if he chooses that, then he will face no small atonement.
‘Listen to me, child. Once I believed that we should be whole as the world is whole, both of darkness and of light, complete unto ourselves. But it is a lonely pleasure to be complete. Who will hear your voice, but you? Who will speak in answer, but you? What does a circle meet but itself? There is only one wholeness for me, and that is the wholeness between this man and me. When I saw him again, my body seemed to leap in anguish for all he has suffered and must suffer still. And that is more than you or I could have endured. There is a word – I will not say it here fully. What is love? I do not know, but it has mastered me.’
Alsa lowered the knife. But her fingers would not let it go.
‘And yet,’ she asked, ‘what would become of me? How could I return to the Temple or face the sisters?’
‘That life is not for you. You lack the simple faith of the old High Priestess. It was put upon you, even as being Queen was put upon me. I never knew its meaning or gave myself to it until the year that ends this pass. Then, seated at the knees of a rude woman and seeing how she ruled a little village, I chose to become again a queen.’
‘But what you speak of is forbidden.’
‘This is the Pass of God, and Goddess turns Her back. Nothing is forbidden on this pass. You yourself have said it.’
Once again Alsa took a step back. ‘I hear you,’ she said at last. ‘And I want to trust in this vision you offer me. But I do not see it. I cannot perform the ritual! But it is the only way I know! And I am afraid of what I will become if I perform it.’
‘You must choose from your heart. This will be no ritual, you are no priestess here, but only a young and nameless woman, come to murder her enemy. And if you choose murder, then you must kill me first before him, and swear that you will speak the rites for both of us together. That is my one demand.’
Alsa stood over the outstretched body. Slowly she sank to her knees beside it and laid one long, pale hand along the stiff, bloody neck.
‘Choose,’ said the Queen.
‘Do you call this mercy?’ she demanded.
‘Choose.’
Alsa flung the knife away. The stone blade broke against the wall. She stood to her feet and faced the older woman. ‘Small choice,’ she said hotly, ‘for I think he is already slain.’
Grave gladness kindled in the Queen’s eyes. She knelt beside her on the far side of the body.
‘Thank you,’ she said, so softly Alsa could scarcely hear it. ‘I know it is far from easy, above all to take the first step. Let me take it for you then.’
The hands lifted off the golden mask. Alsa tossed her head, stared around the room, touched her cheeks wet and chill with tears.
‘You are lovely, Alsa,’ said the Queen. ‘Put off these robes, say your last prayers at the altar and go into the world. Go to Hertha-Toll in the far North; ask the women there what it is like to be with a man, and without one. Rejoice in your youth and the desire you fire in men. Perhaps you will find some stirring within yourself also.’
She embraced the younger woman and kissed her on her brow.
Alsa bent her head. A great heaviness seemed to lift from her shoulders, and her body quivered the way a young colt will in the breezes of its first summer.
‘I had lost my faith,’ she said. ‘I had lost my faith, but now I believe I have seen Goddess in the flesh and heard Her words. Wherever I go I will say to all that here is a Queen worthy of worship.’
‘We will meet again before you go.’
The sounds of the priestess’ footsteps faded down the dark stairwell.
§
ALLISSÁL turned back to the man beside the bed. But all her efforts to restore him were in vain. She had told Alsa that he still lived, but in truth she was not sure. There was so little life in him.
She drew his head upon her lap and rocked him in her arms.
‘Jade, Jade, wake up, and live.’
There was no answer in the heavy body, not even a flickering of the fine black eyelashes. Her hair brushed across the anguished face. She was weeping. The cold of him seemed to pierce her like a weapon of despair.
‘Jade, Jade, wake up, and live.’
She bent lower over him. Her tears fell upon the brow and nose and bearded cheeks. She kissed the cold gray lips fiercely, as if the very desperation in her might somehow stir him. But the lips did not move.
Had she come too late? She stared at the lines about his eyes, the deep furrows on the brow, the cheeks sunken like caves under the sharp bones. The trail of his blood led across the floor from the dais to the black mouth of the doorway. No doubt the stairs were also painted with it. She had heard the tales they told in the South, of how the King was mad and the anger of the gods fell on him at last. She had taken the rumors for messages he sent to her, to ask her for her pardon. She had never guessed at this.
‘Jade, Jade, I beg of you, wake up and live, or I will surely die with you.’
Was it only in her hope? – there was a faint stirring of the eyes – and did not the lips move slightly?
She dragged the body on the bed, wrapped in the cloak. She roamed the chamber to find something for him. He needed food and drink. In her maidens’ old quarters she found a stoppered ewer half-full of water. Eagerly she climbed back up the narrow stairs. She found him as she had left him, no better and but no worse. She tilted the ewer against his lips; the water spilled over the bed-linens, but it seemed as though his lips did move, and drink, a little.
Then all at once in horror she remembered.
She cast the ewer down and recoiled from the body. She stared in terror at the ewer. Had it been left untouched because of that? She smelled of the water: it was faintly sweet, as though crushed dried blossoms had been sprinkled and dissolved in it. But her maidens had often left such water in basins beside their couches to perfume the air while they slept or lay in love.
Once more she looked at the body, cold and gray as winter’s light. Then she swept the ewer up to her lips and drank deeply. It was sweet and deadly cold, that water. She felt it spill like ice down the open front of her tunic. She sat beside him by the bed and drew the sheets over both of them. She held him in her arms and kissed the cold, cold cheek.
‘We follow the same path now,’ she murmured in his ear.
She lay down on the bed and curled against the cold, still form.
§
SOME TIME PASSED. Then distantly she heard a faint, shuffling sound. It was issuing from deep below the Palace. From level to level the shuffling ascended, until it filled all the stories of the Palace – until it spilled up the tower steps and came from the very threshold of the room. An angry murmuring echoed the shuffling sound, like the buzz of swarming bees – but the doorway was still empty.
Fear took her. The hairs of her nape were upstanding. She was trembling.
The ghosts and spirits he had fetched from their unquiet, earthbound ends had been set free when his Dark Man had burned and failed. But still they filled the halls and pits of the Palace. Still they sought him out atop the White Tower. And she too was the object of their vengeance. The slain of Urnostardil, the murdered slaves who had built the citadel, had much to seek from the last daughter of Elna’s house.
‘Begone,’ she cried aloud. ‘You will not have him!’
She clasped the cold shrouded body fiercely. But the horrid sounds from beyond the door did not cease, nor did the hungry spirits of the dead give back. She knew who they were, but felt no shame to defy them.
‘Go back, and I promise you goodly offerings. The songs of Farewell will be sung at every crossroads of the city, and a hundred times more in the yard between the gates.’
But the angry murmurings only grew more dreadful in her ears.
‘Go back,’ she said, ‘and we will found a yearly festival in your memory. Each year for one week’s time men will think of you and bid you good fortune in the world beyond.’
But the anger beyond the door increased still more – and did she make out, faint like candle-cast shadows, vague hands grasping at the stones about the door?
‘Go back,’ she pleaded. ‘What do you want of me? Will your pain be less if ours is added to it? I will give over and consecrate this Citadel of my ancestors to you. Even this, the pride of Elna and Ilazrius, and the last remnant of my heritage, I will give you if you spare him. It will stand here over the sea throughout the centuries, the largest and finest barge in the world, and there will be thirteen shrines consecrated within it for prayers and offerings to be given you. Only, I beg of you, let him live.’
At that, at last, there was a lessening in the angry sounds. One by one, the sightless shades turned and sank down the many levels into the earth that was their prison.
Allissál, sobbing, leaned against the body beside her. Still he had not stirred, and she felt a sickness in her belly. What had she done? They were both dead, and she had sworn away her heritage. Elna himself had slept and died here in this room centuries before, ancient and revered in his great carven bed, surrounded by his many women, sons and grandsons.
She felt very tired. There was not even strength left for tears. But also she felt peace. At last she felt she knew the heart of her greatest ancestor, the barbarian, the lover, and the King.
So, prepared at last, she turned to have her final look at him, and found his eyes open upon her.
‘Good-waking, Jade,’ she said.
He smiled. It was a strange sight, that smile. Weakly he raised his hand and wiped at the traces of her tears. But he said nothing. His eyes were open with an empty wonder. They were the eyes of a newborn child, which showed only innocence. No memories darkened them. The blackness in the pupils had shrunk, leaving only the green, bright as a bandar-skin.
‘How do you feel?’ she asked him. But he only looked at her.
Slowly she drew down the hunting-cloak. His naked chest seemed wan and gray. But the wound over his heart had closed; the dark blood no longer oozed out. Even the scar seemed old and fading. She marveled at him, and wondered if he really was a man, or what his followers had claimed.
‘You need light and air,’ she told him, and helped him to his feet. She covered his nakedness in the cloak, and refastened the brooch-pin by his throat. In this and in the rest he let her do as she would; he offered no more objections or help than a toddling child would have done. He leaned upon her trustingly. His movements lacked that grace and sinuous strength they once had.
Slowly she helped him down the stairs and out upon the wide roof of the Palace in the gusting winds.
‘It is raining,’ she said. She drew the hood over his head, but he pushed it back and let the rain stream down his face.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is right to feel this rain. It is a good rain.’
He eyes looked far out beyond the roof-rim over the ruins of the city he had destroyed. The mists had risen, but in the murk of the rain little beyond the ruins could be seen. It was as if the world began and ended with what had been left here, lifeless and grim.
His lips moved, and his throat worked, but no sounds came out.
‘Ah, my poor love,’ she murmured, and kissed him. She kissed his mouth and his throat.
It was as if her kiss brought back the gift of speech to him. ‘Allissál,’ he said. She had never heard her name spoken in that way. It was as though he had placed in that one word all clouds and seas, lakes, mountains, cities, children, and every Queen that ever was.
His eyes mirrored the misty sky in peace. But then a shadow darkened the eyes, and the black swallowed much of the jade therein. A respite of calm followed, and then another bout of painful thoughts and memories. She watched all this as she might have looked on thunderclouds in the sky that come nearer and then are blown back, then threaten a deluge once more.
At last the balance of black and green in his eyes settled. Still it altered, somewhat, but slow and slight the changes that still took place. And she knew that he had faced what he had done, faced it as though it had been the deeds of another man; then acknowledged that the man who had done all that was himself after all. The worst, she knew, was past.
‘Good-waking, Jade,’ she said.
He looked at her. He drank in the sight of her. She felt a little dizzy to be looked on with such fierce delight and joy. ‘I want to call you Gold,’ he said, ‘but that was another.’
‘Call me what you will. I will even play her, if it pleases you.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘She is gone now. And it would not be right.’ He sighed. ‘And do you forgive me?’
She rose to her feet before him. ‘Behold.’
She lifted the hem of her tunic. High up the pale right thigh, the Raamba marriage-band gleamed in the mist like fire and sunlight. ‘Since you last saw this, it has not left my body. Even in the Ocean of the Dead I wore it.’
He nodded. Some small part of grace, of nobility and even of innocence, seemed to return to that blighted, blasted, darkened visage whose owner had set the world aflame.
‘Jade, there is an army below, in the field where your men camped. Now your men have deserted you, but at a word from me these will follow you and do your bidding.’
He was still caught in the contemplation of the ruins. ‘Tell them to go home.’
‘I meant no mockery. The army is there. They are Rukorians, and Haspeth leads them.’
‘Tell him to go home, then. I will wage no more wars.’
She rested her head upon his shoulder. ‘Then we must go away, as soon as you are able,’ she murmured. ‘For if they find us here and learn that you are Ara-Karn, then they will kill us both, and Haspeth will strike the first blow. I set them on their course and loosed them, but I cannot rule them now in this.’
‘The world is as wounded as I am,’ he said. ‘This was my doing. Now,’ he said, ‘I must heal it.’
Their faces were so close that the rain that dripped from their chins fell upon each other’s breast.
‘I will help you,’ she said. ‘I will not leave your side again.’
He leaned down and kissed her.
