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.
War
ABOUT THIS TIME, the Charan Ennius Kandi was seen walking alone through the corridors of the darkward side of the Palace. His form passed before the windows and the balconies opening from the corridors above the cliffs. Rumor flew ahead of him; everyone in the Palace had heard Gundoen’s scream and learned its cause.
As ever, on the orders of the Queen since High Town had fallen, a single male slave followed quietly a hundred paces behind the Gerso.
At length the charan entered upon a long passageway that stretched empty before him. He followed its length for a while, then stopped and turned back suddenly, in the way of a man who has just remembered something he has forgotten. There were no open doorways there, so that the slave who had been following stood still, and bowed as the charan passed him.
The Gerso struck the slave in the head. The blow threw the man back, his head struck the wall, and he fell senseless to the floor.
Ennius Kandi dragged the body to an open balcony admitting Goddesslight and cool, sweet air. The Gerso lifted the body over the parapet.
In the winds the falling body turned over and over. The limbs flailed and twitched. Then it struck an outcropping of rock and was flung outwards, tumbling faster. At last it vanished in the Palace dump-heaps, smoky and blue in the distance.
‘Now dog my steps,’ said the Gerso, ‘if you can.’
He passed below. On the level of the kitchens and the slaves’ quarters, he followed a long dark passage hewn out of the mountain. At the end two of the Imperial household guards stood before an ancient door. The torchlight gleamed off their armor.
‘I am come at the Empress’ request, to look to the prisoner,’ said Ennius Kandi.
‘Certainly, Father Ennius,’ they said.
They entered the crypt and met the jailer, a guardsman recovering from a wound in his shoulder. He took torch and keys and led them down the passageway. The men passed low, round doors on their left. The musky, intimate smell of the mountain closed around them. The doors had no openings, only heavy, oiled bars and rings of bronze, and numbers burned into the wood. The four men reached the end of the first passage and were led back and down again. At the turning-back of this second passage the jailer stopped. He consulted the list upon the leather band on his wrist.
‘Here is the door,’ he said.
He undid the bar and, warily, kicked the door inward. The four men stooped below the low opening. The jailer thrust in the torch: the yellow flames cast their gleams off the crudely hewn little room beyond, and the unmoving bulk upon the floor.
‘Sweet Goddess!’ swore the jailer.
The Gerso crawled down into the cell. He drew up the cloak to cover the huge body, then looked back over his shoulder.
In the torchlight his face was awful to behold.
‘Help me bear him out.’ The voice equaled the face.
The guardsmen had tears in their eyes. ‘Not in all this year have I seen the like,’ said one. ‘Is it as bad as it seems, my lord?’
‘No,’ answered Ara-Karn. ‘He feels nothing. He is dead.’
§
THEY BROUGHT HIM, at Father Ennius’ guidance, to the tents below the Iron Gate where the dead and dying lay. The jailers laid the great body down on a cot at the rear of a tent and hastened back to their post.
Ara-Karn stood for some time, gazing down on the ruin that had been a chieftain of the far North.
It was some time later when he emerged. He slipped out through the corner where the canvas sides overlapped.
From the high black cowl of stone behind him the sounds of battle rang. Iron struck iron and screams and shouts of hatred bled into the air.
Those sounds found their match upon the face of the man with black-green eyes.
His skin, always darkened from sun and wind and the heat of his inner fires, had turned the black-blue of a thunderhead. Such a fury blazed in the dark eyes that perhaps no man had ever beheld in him, who ever held himself so well in hand when others lost their heads. His hands, long and sinewy, so fine and yet so powerful, worked, gripped, unclenched.
He walked apart from the gates.
Some of the Tarendahardilites saw him, and rushed to him, eager for some hopeful word of the defense. But when they beheld the aspect of his strides and face they fell back away from him, abashed and dismayed.
Himself he strode through them like a raging god, oblivious to them. He saw them no more than the insects crushed beneath his boots.
So he came to the dark grove, the last and most ancient stand of the Imperial gardens. He shoved through the thick pines and evergreens into the darkness, moving it seemed at hazard, unless it were his one aim to get himself apart from all manner of things human.
He burst out into the small clearing, where a stone basin stood above the pit. The sight of it brought him up short.
He stared at the crudely hewn stone. He knew its purpose: such things were scattered in dark places in all the lands where men dwell. He had himself partaken of the gruesome rituals such bowls were made for, when he and Gundoen had shared blood mixed with beer, and sworn undying fellowship and the common cause of vengeance.
Ara-Karn approached the stone basin. Just beyond it sank the pit where, of old, the beasts would have been sacrificed. Deep in that pit, though he did not know it, delved the steps Berowne and Kuln-Holn had descended, to find the secret way out of the citadel into the city below.
He had eyes only for the stone. It was centuries old. No doubt it had been chipped out long before Elna had first taken life. The blood of a thousand sacrifices had stained it so deeply, not any number of rains could ever hope to cleanse it.
He had no beast with him to make a sacrifice.
His sacrifice, maybe, he had left on the cot in the tent of the dying.
He plucked free the blood-red opal brooch-pin cut in the likeness of a serpent’s egg, which held his cloak about his shoulders. The dark green hooded hunting-cloak fell unnoticed to the ground. He held out his arm over the bowl and clenched and let go his fist several times, until the veins stood out and the tendons were rigid leading into the wrist. His forearm gleamed with sweat like oil; strange markings mottled the skin, half drawing, half charactery; the markings seemed to match the eroded markings along the side of the stone basin.
He dug the point of the pin into his arm and let the blood flow freely. His blood was not bright red like the blood of common men. It was dark, almost black, and thick as syrup, with a pungent odor that filled the clearing in the ancient grove.
Then he stooped. He did not lift the bowl to Heaven on high, as was commonly done. But like an animal he lowered himself down to it, and lapped up his own blood like the beasts at fetid pools after the rains soak the earth.
His hands gripped the sides of the basin with such fury that it seemed the stone might crack beneath them.
He lifted up his head. His face dripped his own blood and his lips were black with the syrup he had drunk. And his eyes—!
He began to mutter words in a tongue so old, the stone of the basin might still have been forming deep in the bowels of the earth when they were first heard. Rage and madness shone from his face like the clouds above the bright horizon that reflect the light from the Blessed Shores.
His shadow at his feet darkened and grew. It crept up behind him, and reached high above him in the air. Then it bent and arched over, and reached its huge arms deep underground.
‘You who died here and were buried unvoyaged,’ he breathed, ‘O you slaves and conquered ones! Now is the hour of your vengeance! You knew him – knew his firstborn father, the one you called Tont-Ornoth. You were his kinsmen. Rise up, I command you, seek the light, stretch hands and arms out of the ground. Seek out those who did this to him, and let them feel your wrath!’
§
IN THE ABSENCE of their leaders the exhausted guardsmen wavered and gave back. Beneath the southern lance-tower there was no rest or comfort.
The three Pes-Thos brothers were fighting with a ferocity the guardsmen had never known. As one man, monstrous, three-headed and six-limbed, the chieftains fought. Kan-Brin used a double-barbed lance, Estar-Brin a sword as long as he was tall, and Aln-Brin-Daln, the most murderous, laid waste about him with a long stave, the end of which was iron-shod and forged to a studded iron ball. One brother struck home his blow while the second drew his weapon back and the third raised his on high. The shield-wall shrank from that terrible onslaught; the three brothers laughed in their black beards. There was no question of countering those blows – it was all the guardsmen could do to save their lives.
At the center of the lines Poran-Dilg beat back the men who faced him, strewing the stone with broken shields and broken men. All the ground that Roguil Arn had won, Poran-Dilg had now regained, and more. Through the press of men and metal the Eldar could see the inner gates. The guardsmen gave way, missing the supporting strength of their officers. But Berowne and his lieutenant lay strengthless atop the steps from the yard, stanching the blood of their wounds. Dearly had Ullerath’s recklessness cost the defenders.
So Poran-Dilg advanced onto the second step of the battlement.
Soon after him came the three brothers.
And then all at once that half of the barbarian line swept onto the second step, crowding the defenders back. Men fresh to battle swarmed over the black parapet: Kerrin-Kalk with his Harvols, Grent-Hol with his Kamskals, Vurnar and some Vinkars. The Karghils’ chieftain Oro-Kang was there, hot for battle. Welo-Pharb and five of his Undains stood on the parapet and bent back bows to shoot over the heads of their allies on the lines. Ring-Sol urged on his Archeros. Estar Aln strove to prove his Korlas loyal warriors of Ara-Karn.
And the men of Gundoen’s tribe were there as well, the tribe of Tont-Ornoth: big-shouldered Kul-Dro led them. As he drove home his blows the old spear-man sang out the war-chant of his tribe, loudly, in the hope that somehow in the stones of this dark place, Gundoen might hear them and take heart.
Before this onslaught, terrible and bloody, the guardsmen stumbled and collapsed.
The manfall among them was worse than their small numbers might bear. The wounded were borne to a tent pitched in the shadow of the cowl of rock. There the guardsmen lay on rags and straw, crawling with flies, in row upon long row. The dying men lay groaning with hideous dreams of ceaseless war and suffering.
Nor did their comrades on the battlements fare better. The front line still stood on the second step, but the other two were on the third. Groans and curses echoed among the metal-clad men; there was no longer room behind the men of the third line, they stood with their legs pressed against the rearward parapet. They were shaken most of all at the center beneath the blows of the monstrous axe of Poran-Dilg. The men there would have fled had there been the space for it. Only the close-shoving press pinned them there, like men chained to their doom.
They knew they would be driven backward over the rear parapet. Then the barbarians would break open the Iron Gate and overrun the Citadel. There would be no escape, no future battles, no life. It was the end. So, slaughtered ignominiously, their bodies would serve the glory of the new conqueror and his savage men.
‘We must fall back!’ Ullerath shouted to Berowne. ‘The men cannot hold here. Let us take our places on the summit of the inner gates! For what other reason was this fastness built with twin sets of gates? So we may trap the barbarians in the yard between the gates and batter them with stones and lances!’
The two men stood on the top steps by the southern lance-tower, close against the wall. Berowne looked back to the Palace and the squat Black Tower. ‘Truly, why do I fight here?’ he asked his heart. ‘My place is not here, I am no great captain in time of war; even Haspeth would outshine me here. I belong at Kiva’s side. That is how it were best for me to die, not here in a heap of men, but there at the door of her chambers, in her defense. Then at least I might hear her voice and drink in her scent as I died. Kiva, Kiva!’
So the captain thought to himself, ignoring the pleas of his lieutenant, while all along the battlements the guardsmen slipped and fell to their knees in the blood and muck, and groaned, and wept, and cried out to Goddess as they fought – to Goddess, who heeded them not. And then they cursed Her, and Elna and the barbarians and the Empress and Ara-Karn all alike, for bringing them to such a miserable end.
§
ALL THIS Ampeánor saw as he stood quietly in the little doorway beside the inner gates. He regarded the lines of men fighting, their weapons raised like black pen-marks upon the clouds’ pale parchment. At either side rose the lance-towers; above them a half-score gerlins circled and swooped.
A slight thrill of pleasure raced up the back of the lord of Rukor. The torments and anguish of his long wandering were forgotten. The Gerso and Allissál were forgotten. Battle waited on him, glorious battle of the sort he had dreamed of as a child, when he had shunned his father’s palace and his mother’s pleasure-fêtes. It was as if he had stepped from the cells of a madhouse into the open light of the world beyond.
With swift hungry strides he crossed the yard. The light of Goddess gleamed off the great shield he held as easily as if it had been of linen. He ran up the steps below the southern lance-tower, lightly, like a youth in search of his beloved, and plunged into the sweating, bleeding, swearing mass of men.
So the High Charan of Rukor entered the battle.
There was no order there, no one voice to be heard above the din. No man knew him. Ampeánor was driven against the wall of the lance-tower. Then he put his hands to the carvings and climbed up somewhat above the level of men. His eyes scanned the lines of the enemy. He drew back the long lance. His eyes found a man. The lance shot forward, driven by all the strength in the charan’s arm and torso.
Phal-Galn of Gundoen’s tribe, a broad-shouldered, unbearded youth fighting with abandon at the side of the three chieftains of Pes-Thos, used a square shield of polished wood and bull’s-hide: this he preferred to the metal shields because it was lighter to wield and because it was the sort his fathers had used. But the shield betrayed Phal-Galn, for the Rukorian lance flew through the nine folds of leather and bit into the spear-man’s chest. Phal-Galn was thrown backward onto the stones as though smitten by a thunderbolt, and death like sleep shut fast his eyes. He had no death-words, but his spirit broke from the corpse instantly.
The guardsmen nearby turned open-mouthed to behold the killer. Before the others could name him, Ampeánor jumped down, passed through the ranks and stood forth alone against the barbarians. One hand held the treasured shield, the other drew the long sword. Beautiful it was and blue, the perfection of the centuries of effort by the armorers of Ul Raambar. It sang as it sprang from its scabbard, and Goddess broke from it with a thousand-colored smile.
The uproar waned below the southern lance-tower.
The guardsmen drew in the air whole lungfuls at a time. The sweat from their brows and chins dripped upon the darker dew staining the black stone.
The barbarians wavered before this new foe. Perhaps they recognized him as that shining unknown warrior, the image of Elna, who had received the blessing of the Gray Priestess. A moment it lasted. Then they came at him.
First were the chieftains of Pes-Thos, brothers, not one by one but three at once. With lance and sword and stave they buried Ampeánor in blows; but the shield held true. The lord of Rukor struck back, and the bright blade drank the blood of Estar-Brin, who howled with rage. Again Ampeánor struck between the brothers’ blows, and the Raamba steel rang off the long lance of Kan-Brin. The sword shattered the flame-hardened wood, and Kan-Brin was cast back from battle. Aln-Brin-Daln swept back his manslaughtering stave, and he drove it against the Southron lord with all the power in his arms. It was a blow like none other the chieftain had in all his life sent forth; doubtless even those stones, ancient as they were, never witnessed its like. Against that blow the great shield was useless, but Ampeánor skipped back, and the stave swung short and shot like a hammer against the stone of the step, shattering it.
On the step was a loose stone, dropped from the Beak as it swung overhead: Ampeánor stooped over that stone. It was no paltry thing: two strong men, maybe, might have lifted it. Ampeánor gathered it in his arms and swung it up over his head. Then he cast it.
The stone smashed the body of the Pes-Thos. Aln-Brin-Daln flew back three paces. There he lay, the stone atop him. He groaned, and wildly tossed his head, but strangely, made no move to remove to the stone. Kan-Brin and Estar-Brin ran to his side. They lifted the stone from off the body of their brother. Then it could be seen, what damage the blow had done. The ribs were all bent in along that side, and half the flesh was torn away from the big shoulder, and the neck was bent strangely from the shoulders.
‘Brothers, aid me,’ groaned the great chieftain, piteously: ‘the sky flashes dark before my eyes, and I have no feeling in my limbs.’
The black-haired men bore up their brother and carried him to the rope ladders. His great form, bloody and gleaming, made a bridge between two ladders. He had killed his first man when he had had but eight winters, and his count before he came below the Iron Gate of Elna’s Citadel had been eight score and seventeen. He had been famous as one of the greatest of warriors and hunters, a man to leap a river in a bound in springtime; but beneath the terrible strength of Ampeánor of Rukor, Aln-Brin-Daln had found his doom, and he would do no fighting that pass.
Aln-Brin-Daln and Phal-Galn were not alone that waking. Many tribesmen fell beneath the Rukorian’s strokes. On the walls of Tezmon his allies had fled from around him, and he had fought hopelessly and alone, backed against the pillar of some unknown merchant’s palace. Below the walls of Bollakarvil he had fought shamefully, on the side of the enemy. Here, at the last stand of the Bordakasha Empire, atop this mountain in the sea-winds with lonely desolation stretching to all sides, Ampeánor, High Charan of Rukor and pledged Consort to the last Empress, had found the fulfillment and full flowering of the grand dreams of his youth. Tireless he was and terrible, and the barbarians fell below his bloody strokes. All the champions and chieftains of the second army who still remained upon the battlements went against him, and fell; the others, lesser men with fear dashing their hopes, fled from him.
Kerrin-Kalk of the Harvols and Grent-Hol of the Kamskals he killed; Oro-Kang of the Karghils fled from him, bloody, and had to be helped down the ladders. Estar-Aln of the Korlas was pushed before him, but ran without striking a blow. A warrior of the Undains, Jahln-Deg, stood upon his toes and aimed his bow at the Rukorian: the death-bird danced off the glorious armor and fell harmless to the stone, to be trampled underfoot in the surges of the battle. Ruas-Sthel, a spearman of Gundoen’s tribe, was unstrung by him and felt the Raamba sword sheathed in his vitals. Kuld-Fit-Valn of the Archeros, his mother’s sister’s son Lanh-Drom, Lang-Garn of the Kamskals, Ghol-Sli of the Jalijh, Woon-Bir-Karn of the Vinkars, Loit-Sert of the Pes-Thos – all fell before the Rukorian lord and were made ready for the barges of their tribes.
Poran-Dilg roused himself now. The warriors beside him had turned to confront this new threat from behind them – turned and died. Now Poran-Dilg slowly bent his head and shook his heavy, bloody axe. He drew it out of the crushed shield of a guardsman and, so close to the rear parapet, turned about.
The champion of the Eldars stood face to face with Ampeánor.
Both men were tall, but the Eldar was taller of the two, and by far the broader. His brawny arms might have served the Rukorian for legs. Both men were covered in the blood of their foes and as yet unwounded. They stood with weapons poised in the thick pungent air, and the roar of battle fell to stillness as all eyes went to them, the two greatest on the battlements.
Poran-Dilg raised his axe. ‘You have made me turn aside,’ he said. ‘Your skull I shall keep.’
The Eldar stepped forward, driving the huge axe in a mighty blow. The Rukorian stooped behind the wall of his shield. The axe smashed the metal, gouging out chunks of gold and bronze, but the iron held and the lord was unharmed. Now he stood, and struck a blow; Poran-Dilg parried it with the butt of the axe.
So they traded strokes, each man striving to pierce the defenses of his foe. The men around them counted the strokes. It seemed beyond belief that two mortals could sustain their strength so long, giving and getting such blows.
Then the Raamba blade of Ampeánor fell from the parry of Poran-Dilg and cut into the flesh of the leg of the Eldar just above the knee. It was not a grave wound, but blood sprang from it, and this drew a cheer from the guardsmen. Poran-Dilg feinted, and drove a blow above the rim of the bright shield. At the last instant Ampeánor saw it, the huge brutal axe bearing down, and he bent. The axe-blade smashed against the strengthening ridge atop the Rukorian helmet and tore the thing from Ampeánor’s head. Blood started from the lord of Rukor’s ears. He staggered back, and there was no understanding in his eyes or strength in his mouth; and the barbarians cheered hoarsely.
Ampeánor stumbled – his feet caught at a corpse – he fell.
Poran-Dilg jumped forward. Then Ullerath hurled a lance, and the heavy lance-head struck one of the Eldar’s ankles, smashing the bone. Poran-Dilg staggered, but held his footing. Ampeánor swung the brilliant blade two-handed. The sword cut in an arc that nothing might withstand. Like a black rainbow the blade flashed through the arm of Poran-Dilg, shearing off the huge hand wielding the axe. Axe and hand fell heavily on the stone; Poran-Dilg howled and fell to one knee.
Over him stood the lord of Rukor, bloody blade outstretched. The point of it ran under the Eldar’s chin through the thick beard, and touched the naked, corded throat.
‘So,’ gasped Poran-Dilg, ‘you scented, weakling Southron, you have killed me. Go on, finish what God alone has granted you: I have no life without that hand and my axe. Dark God gave them to me, and I repaid Him well with blood and slaughter; now, as is His right, He takes them back, and me with them. I go to Him gladly, for Poran-Dilg, best man of Eldar and strongest warrior in all the armies of Ara-Karn, will never be content to take pity from others or be less than the strongest. Death holds no terror for me: but by my blood upon these stones I curse this place and all who live here, and most of all you.’
Ampeánor brought the sword down upon the barbarian’s neck. Poran-Dilg did not even twitch beneath that blow, but stayed as he was and even brought up his neck to meet the blade.
And it is said that, when the body fell back in a tumble on the second step of the battlements, the eyes were still open, and the brows twisted in a glare of hateful triumph.
§
WITH THE DEATH of Poran-Dilg the sweet taste turned bitter in the mouths of the barbarians. They looked from the body on the stone to the Southron standing over it, bare-headed, furious.
It had been foretold long ago that if the barbarians should ever rise, then Elna would return. Elna, the unconquerable; Elna, the god.
Behind him the lines of guardsmen surged forward. They drove their wall of lance-points into the barbarians. Once more the clatter and clash of arms mounted from the peak. But now it was the barbarians who gave way, the guardsmen who drove forward. The barbarians were driven and penned in close together, so they no longer had space to wield their weapons. Man fell against man amidst murderous cursing. Those who fell beneath the press were trampled by their fellows. Back over the parapet – a few managed to catch at the ladders, but the rest leaped to their deaths on the stones below. Hundreds died in that butchering, and their groans rose ghastly against the Iron Gate.
The warriors in the square feared to touch the luckless ones whom dark God spurned.
So after so many hours of ceaseless fighting, the guardsmen regained the parapet.
§
IN THE SQUARE among the milling thousands, Gorn-Tal accosted Yan-Oro, chief of the Yurlings.
‘O Chief,’ said Gorn-Tal, ‘let me join your tribe, that I may fight alongside the Yurlings in the fifth army.’
Yan-Oro looked up at the Orn, who towered over the portly Yurling by a head and a half. ‘But how will you fight so, with your shield-arm torn and bandaged?’
The Orn grinned. ‘The fifth army will not do battle for a while. Maybe by then this will be healed.’
Yan-Oro’s eyes grew big at this, and swiftly enough he gave his assent, and let his kinsman Dairn-Yil sponsor the Orn. He revealed to Gorn-Tal the hidden word of the Yurlings, and mixed their blood together, and so Gorn-Tal of Orn entered the Yurling tribe.
Gorn-Tal went to Erin-Gar-Birn of the Roighalnis, and Gorn-Tal said ‘O chief, let me join your tribe, that I may fight at the side of the Roighalnis in the fourth army.’
Erin-Gar-Birn was a lean man, hard and shrewd. ‘But how will you fight, Orn, with your shield-arm torn and bandaged?’
‘The fourth army will not do battle for a while. Maybe by then this will be healed.’
Erin-Gar-Birn nodded. ‘I will let my uncle’s son sponsor you into our tribe,’ he said; and so it was done. Gorn-Tal learned the hidden word of Roighalni and mixed his blood with that of Erin-Gar-Birn’s uncle’s son.
Gorn-Tal went to Kurn-Vorna Aln, chief over the Fulsars, and Gorn-Tal said ‘O Chief, let me join your tribe, that I may fight at the side of the Fulsars in the third army.’
Kurn-Vorna Aln was even then binding on the last of his armor in the cool shade of his shelter. He was a small man, hairy, cunning, and suspicious, even as the little beast from whom his tribe had gained their name.
‘You have gone up the ladders already,’ he said. ‘You have done your part and more. Why would you wish to go again?’
Gorn-Tal answered simply, ‘I have had dreams and seen the Gray Priestess. This battle will be my last. So I would gain what glory I can and kill as many of our enemies as I can, so that their spirits will serve as my slaves in the lands beyond. Even so was I brothered to Born-Oro-Tirb and became a Jalijha to fight alongside their champion and bring glory to Gan-Birn and his son.’
‘Little luck you brought to either,’ Kurn-Vorna Aln said sourly. ‘Born-Oro-Tirb is slain, and Gan-Birn weeps like a woman in his tents. And how many of the Southrons will you kill so, with your shield-arm torn and bandaged? You will not even be able to climb the ladders, for we go even now into battle, and you are far from healed.’
Gorn-Tal signaled his slaves. With cords and linen they bound the wounded arm to the body of the chieftain, around the chest and from the neck; then they bound on the shield so that it could not fall or be struck off.
Kurn-Vorna Aln laughed. ‘Surely,’ he said, ‘no man who seeks death so eagerly as you do, Orn, should be hindered. I myself will sponsor you, and be proud that such a man would wish to call himself a Fulsar.’ So it was done, and the tall grim spear-man became a member of his fifth tribe, and went up the ladders alongside Kurn-Vorna Aln.
§
NOW ORDER was restored upon the gate. Ampeánor sent messengers to go among the camp of the refugees and find there all the men the Gerso had trained. These men were sitting in a mass before the tents, waiting. They wore leathern armor and held staves and scythes and hammers and knives of all sorts. They had known by the noise that they would be summoned to this battle. There was no despair nor eagerness upon their faces. The memories of the battles on the barricades in High Town were still fresh in their minds, though Goddess Sun had danced to North and South for a whole year.
The trained men stood. They said nothing, but looked up to the black cowl with faces unfathomable.
The messengers went on into the Palace. There they spread through all the stories and chambers of the huge buildings to summon all men to the Iron Gate. To slave, merchant and highborn alike the guardsmen gave the summons, and were rewarded with men of good will but lacking weapons or skill. And with the consent of her majesty the Empress, passed down by the high maidens of the White Tower, all the guards of the Imperial Household and the slaves were freed of their duties to go to save the Citadel.
One last summons remained undelivered, and the last guardsman went to give it. But when he knocked upon the door to the chambers of Ennius Kandi, the guardsman got no answer.
Emboldened, he opened the door and entered, but the chambers were empty. Nor could any man tell him where the charan had gone. He was not in the Southern Wing, in the levels underground, among the refugees or in the tent of the wounded. It seemed the man had vanished from the Citadel.
The guardsman went to the doors of the White Tower, and sent up word asking if the Charan Father Ennius were in council with the Queen. The maidens returned to take from him his last hope. Bewildered, he climbed down to the meeting-place of his fellows. They said that doubtless Father Ennius even then showered his shafts of death on the barbarians from the southern lance-tower. So the guardsmen led the hundreds they had reaped back to the battlements. But not even there would they find Ara-Karn.
§
NOW THE TIDE of battle had utterly turned. The lord of Rukor rested from his first great outpouring of strength; he sat on the rear parapet and drank water greedily. By him, an armorer hammered the brilliant helm back into shape. Other men of the reserves gathered earth to scatter over the steps, so the blood should be absorbed and the footing bettered.
The third army of the barbarians were now climbing the ladders – warriors of lesser tribes, and half the mercenaries from the cities of the South. They went up the ladders, but even in the absence of Ampeánor the barbarians were struck dead by the score. The air below the Iron Gate was thick as in a slaughterhouse, despite all the mercenaries and slaves could do to cart away the corpses. The guardsmen and Tarendahardilites drove their lances pitilessly, happy for the groans and screams they were begetting. Not a single man of the barbarians could win again to the bloody parapet.
Forgotten now are those guardsmen and refugees, save for Berowne and Ullerath. Only some names are remembered: there was a Coriolarthil of Rukor, and a Shilvas of Vapio, and Egdar Borniltharn of the Eglands. There were two men named Ghirlando, Black Ghirlando and Bone Ghirlando. Their names alone survive, carved on the stone walls of the yard between the gates. The men themselves are gone. They did not fight as the barbarians, each man striving to do better than his comrades and gain a greater share of plunder. They fought together in the triple line under their leaders and their lord. Each man’s shield guarded his neighbor as well as himself, they thrust their lances in harmony and sang with one voice. So it is said that the barbarians fought only a single man upon the Iron Gate, a man of six hundred arms and heads, and but a single will.
Below them, the kinsmen of Ampeánor’s second victim were laying down their brother before the feet of Nam-Rog of the Durbars.
‘Nam-Rog, you know us,’ said Kan-Birn. ‘Always have we sided with you in the councils. Now our brother here has been wounded by the great Southron Elna-Ana, and though we have closed his wounds and wrapped cloths about his ribs, he lies in pain and cannot move. His breathing is clear, and he speaks and sees, but will not eat or move. It is said that you have skills of healing, and that you hold the herbs of Gundoen, which Hertha-Toll prepared for him before we crossed the Taril. Heal our brother, and be sure that henceforth the tribes of Durbars and Pes-Thos will be as one.’
The aged chief bent low, and passed his hands over the great sprawling body of Aln-Brin-Daln, he who once had been feared in all the huts of the far North.
‘Yes, I will heal him,’ he said, and drew his war-knife and cut the throat of the Pes-Thos. The black blood ran in great gouts out of the gaping flesh onto the stones.
Kan-Birn drew his own knife and would have fallen screaming on the Durbar chief had not a score of Durbar spearmen defended their chief.
Old Nam-Rog calmly wiped and sheathed his knife. ‘Rest easy, Kan-Brin, and you also, Estar-Brin. Did you not see that he was dying? Would you have enjoyed the hours of his pain? Or else he had somehow lived – then do you not see it must be only as a cripple, a man of no strength or mastery over his limbs or bowels? Men who live even a year so, will carry their deformities with them into the world beyond. Now he shall be reborn whole-bodied and clean, and be thankful for it.’
‘O Great Chieftain, and was this the best you could do for him, to complete the Southron’s work?’ cried Kan-Brin.
But Estar-Brin stood coldly by, his hands playing upon the long handle of his sword. ‘And have we not a hundred slaves who might have tended to him?’ he mused. ‘Had we not won three chests full of treasure, rightful payment for our deeds? O Chief, I do not blame you for your view. Maybe it is true. But the right to give the death-blow belonged to no one but Kan-Brin and me, and for that I blame you wholly. I go now to kill the Southron and avenge my brother. After that we shall put into a barge the body of our brother. And then I shall kill you.’
So the two brothers gave the corpse into the arms of some of their followers and went up the ladders in search of Ampeánor.
But Nam-Rog leaned against one of the stone disks of the fallen Pillar of Victory. He looked up to the men high on the narrow ladders, fighting and dying beneath the lance-thrusts of the Southrons. ‘May their wish be granted, and may they kill him soon,’ Nam-Rog murmured. ‘I do not like this Southron, the tales of him begin to trouble me.’
In long lines the slaves bore from the rocks the bodies of the slain. Nam-Rog and the chieftains had said that the order of the armies had been chosen by lot; in truth they had secretly ordered all the strongest tribes in the first two armies in the hope that they, in the first rush of battle, should conquer. Now of the last three armies there were few great champions, and the mercenaries, without Erion Sedeg, fought indifferently. The manfall was terrible, the gains scant, the hours over-long. The waiting warriors grew dispirited. The chiefs met in council, but did little more than count the men missing from the circle, men mowed down by the murderous strength of the Southron champion, him whom they could not cease from calling Elna-Ana, the Return of Elna.
Suddenly the battle on the Iron Gate waxed furious again. At one end of the wall Kurn-Vorna Aln and Gorn-Tal fought to gain the parapet; at the other Kan-Brin and Estar-Brin strove to reach Ampeánor. In great, battering strokes Estar-Brin swung his huge sword; even so, he could not pierce the shield wall. The others atop the ladders saw him, however, and fire kindled in their hearts.
The din mounted to the clouds, and the guardsmen began, very slightly, to waver.
Kurn-Vorna Aln saw it. He shouted into the ear of Gorn-Tal under cover of his shield; then the Fulsar stepped back down a rung. Gorn-Tal was fighting now with another of his weapons, a battle-axe one-bladed and backed with an iron spike. The Orn strove upward, battering and shattering the shields. A gap showed in the shield-wall. A groan of fear sounded from the lungs of the guardsmen there. They recognized this barbarian and were desperate to halt his onslaught. Four or five leaned out far over the parapet, driving their long lances at the twisting great body of the Orn. Then it was that Kurn-Vorna Aln shot up at the guardsmen with his short strong bow.
Those iron-beaked arrows at such short distance were not to be stopped by bronze, leather or bone.
They drove deep into the defenders’ bodies, to the feathers. The guardsmen cried out and died. They fell forward over the parapet. A break opened in the shield-wall. Gorn-Tal jumped up, shearing off lance-heads and shattering shields before him. Two fell beneath the blows, three more were wounded; the rest drew back.
Gorn-Tal stepped boldly on the parapet.
From the square below, the dark form of the Orn-Jalijha-Yurling-Roighalni-Fulsar seemed to burn in the sky like a beacon. All the warriors knew him. Lifting their weapons they screamed his praises into the stricken air. The uproar staggered the guardsmen.
It also brought Ampeánor back into the battle.
He saw the wild man on the parapet and the space around him. Quickly the lord of Rukor caught up his helmet and a lance and leapt forward.
Another barbarian was even then clambering onto the narrow parapet – Kurn-Vorna Aln of the Fulsars. Proudly he stood at the side of the Orn-Fulsar, his brother. Even then Ampeánor loosed his cast.
The lance flew true. The Fulsar brought up his small shield at an angle before his face, so the lance did not break through the layers of leather and studded wood, but skipped off and flew harmless into the deep empty air. Kurn-Vorna Aln, however, staggered back under the force of the blow.
The Fulsar chief stood at Gorn-Tal’s left. Had the Orn not been wounded in his shield-arm, maybe he could have reached out a steadying hand. But that arm was bound fast: and Kurn-Vorna Aln fell. Unwounded he toppled from the parapet, and his curses echoed off the iron as he fell. The men high on the ladders reached to catch him in vain. On the jagged bed of rocks the life broke from the Fulsar’s body. So his spirit rose to join those others hovering over the scene of the battle, in the hundreds, like two clouds, urging on with voiceless cries the deeds of their companions.
On the battlements the lord of Rukor moved to do battle with the chief of Orn. Gorn-Tal without a word aimed a ferocious blow. The axe smashed against the shield. Ampeánor kept his footing, leaned forward and swung the blue blade at the legs of his enemy, at the knees where the vital strings are bared. Gorn-Tal leapt back; unheard-of, such agility in a one-armed man. So, dancing and dodging on the slick lip of the parapet with empty death on one side, the two warriors did battle. Furiously they exchanged blows to the cheers of the opposing sides.
Madly and in vain did the two brothers Kan-Brin and Estar-Brin shout at the Orn to cease. Then, desperately, they strove to gain the battlements. It was as if they would have fought through half the length of the shield-wall to reach the High Charan. But Berowne hurled an enormous stone into Estar-Brin’s face; the Pes-Thos was too swift, and the stone rolled down half the length of the ladder behind him, crushing men as it rolled. It was a marvel the ladder did not snap beneath the weight. The Pes-Thos rose again, and opened five wounds on the body of his enemy with the greatsword, jabbing it like a lance, so that the guardsmen called on the captain to give back; but Berowne would not. Ullerath fought his way to the side of his rival, and together they beat back the barbarian. Bloodied in a score of places, the Pes-Thos chieftain had to relent. Weary and dazed, the battle-fury beaten out of him like fire out of iron beneath the blows of a smith’s hammer, Estar-Brin swung down the rope to the bloody stones below, where Kan-Brin awaited him.
‘Glad enough of the sight of you was I this time,’ Berowne breathed, leaning on the Eglander’s shoulder. ‘But why save me, when you know I will take Kiva away from you?’
Ullerath laughed. ‘Against your living presence my campaign has nothing to fear,’ he said, ‘but I will not contend with memories.’
Even then a tremendous cry went up from the throats of the guardsmen. Ampeánor had struck the last Orn warrior below the helmet, where the neck joins the skull. Now the bone was crushed, brains showed with blood, and the corpse of Gorn-Tal dropped like a stone to smash against the greedy rocks below.
At that sight the voices in the square were stilled; but the cheers of the guardsmen lifted high and joyous.
Wordlessly Kan-Brin and Estar-Brin gathered the broken body and bore it away. They laid it in the center of the circle of chieftains. Mutely they regarded it, twisted, bloody, grotesque. Then the slaves laid the corpse out formally on a bed of straw in a cart, and conveyed it to the camp.
There, far from the clatter of swords, what once had been Gorn-Tal, last living Orn, was taken by the nine, his beautiful bed-slaves. More by far he might have claimed from the conquered cities of the Southlands. But he had ever been a grim and lonely man, and the chatter of many voices about him had been to him a thing unbearable. So these nine had been all he took. Now with tears in their lovely eyes they washed the body of the blood and filth of battle. About his head they bound colored linens in the shape of the twisted headbands of sailors. Up and down his long limbs they ran soft sponges from the Southern Ocean, and over the flesh they sprinkled with their slim, long-fingered hands fragrant spices and crushed herbs blended in water and oils, to take from the corpse the hateful stench of wasteful death.
Thereafter the beautiful women arrayed the body of their conqueror in golden armor. And upon the death-bed beside him they laid his treasured weapons, axes and bows and curious lances and swords and knives. With these they strewed gemstones and bundles of flowers tied with stalks of rare herbs. And gently and lovingly with fragrant oil the maidens caressed the face of the great Orn, taking from his features all hatred and doom and suffering, leaving only peace. They brushed back his hair, making its long curls glossy. So it was said that never in his life had Gorn-Tal looked so beautiful as he did in death.
With that the slaves let fall the sides of the large tent and revealed their lord in death. Around the bed they set the coffers, open to reveal the wealth the Orn had won in battle. Gold and silver and fine silks were there aplenty, along with cups and drinking-bowls inlaid with gold, all of the finest craftwork.
And there came the Blind Ones, those warriors who had been first to go up the ladders in the season when the guardsmen had poured down on them the vicious potions of the Imperial Embalmers. Now scarred about their faces, their eyes burned out and ghastly, they tented together, attended by slaves. Some warriors had held it shameful to let them live, for in the far North any man who could not hunt or fish was sent into the wilderness to die. But others would not have it that the Southrons should claim as victims men they had not rightly slain; and besides, these were different times and the tribes were poor no longer. So the Blind Ones grew famous as tale-tellers and singers, and often made so great entertainments during the long misery of summer that some credited them alone with saving all the encampment from going mad and falling on one another.
Now these settled on all sides of the open tent of Gorn-Tal. They mourned the fallen one, and recited at length his deeds. More than the death of a man, this seemed to them the passing of a whole tribe, one of the mightiest in its time. And this man was the only Orn to defy Gen-Karn and live. And they told of his recent deeds, of how he had gone up the ladders again and again and had become a man of five tribes, a thing unheard of. Around the Blind Ones the halt and gravely wounded sat in silence and gave tears to the black earth in mourning for this man whom once none gave shelter. That had been in the winters of Gen-Karn’s strength, when all feared him and praised him as the greatest Warlord the tribes had ever known. But in Tezmon he had lost his life in a ghastly way spoken of only in whispers.
And later, when the lovely slaves took away the body and placed it in a barge in the sea, the warriors left the tent standing, a symbol of Orn in the camp. So they followed the customary death-rites for a chieftain, even though there were no other Orns there to succeed Gorn-Tal.
And long after the hour of the longsleep came the Blind Ones, the wounded, and the nine lovely bed-slaves remained about the body; and the music of their mourning went up sweetly into the warm, bright air of the southern fall.
§
IN THE SQUARE below the Iron Gate all was tumult and confusion. The last ranks of the third array were mounting the ladders, but over the Iron Gate Ampeánor of Rukor stalked the parapet, going between the shield-wall and the attackers from one end to the other, tall against the sky. Like a thorsa he roamed, ferocious, bloodthirsty; no man might stand against him. Goddess blazed off his armor and the great shield; red blood dripped from the iron leaf of the lance-head, and his eyes were twin terrible stones in the shadow of the helm. The barbarians struck token blows at him and leaped back onto the rope ladders. The mercenaries scarcely offered him even a blow. The name of Elna-Ana passed from mouth to mouth like the bitter, unfelt kiss of whores. Never had the tribesmen known such fear of an enemy: they masked it with anger, but defeat was in their hearts. Born-Oro-Tirb was dead, and Aln-Brin-Daln, and Poran-Dilg and now Gorn-Tal, he who had twice won the parapet. Who yet lived who could defeat this man?
Now a delegation went to the shelters of the Vorisals. Among them were the chiefs and counselors of all the tribes of the fourth and fifth armies. Yan-Oro, the chief of the Yurlings, spoke for them.
‘O Roguil Arn,’ the Yurling called into the shelter, ‘Chief of the Vorisals, now Gorn-Tal and Poran-Dilg lie dead, and there is not a single man of all the tribes who would deny that you are our greatest champion. I myself was always of this mind. It was you who won our greatest victory in this battle, and since you left the fighting things have gone against us. And now there seems no hope of victory so long as Elna-Ara stalks the battlements. This we will offer you, chieftain, if you will return to battle: one half of all the treasure we personally have been allotted from the campaigns of the South, and three parts out of every five which are granted our tribes when the fastness falls. All this we pledge to you, if only you will go up the ladders and kill this Southron.’
The Vorisal broke from the tent and stood tall over them, a strong young man broad-shouldered and pale-eyed. ‘Do you think my axe is for sale?’ he roared. ‘Do you take me for a Gerso merchant?’
At this they took pains to allay his anger, but with a sweep of his hand Roguil Arn silenced their babbling. ‘As for this Southron,’ he said, ‘I do not fear him. Not for all your gold would I do this thing; I will accept both deed and gold, however, as my proper due. But I do not go to battle without my tribesmen, and they are wounded and weary. What will you offer them?’
‘This,’ replied Yan-Oro boldly: ‘all the hunting and wood-felling rights of the Silver Forest, up to the banks of the Black River, will the Ekilehs and the Kagions yield to your tribe.’ The men of those tribes gaped to hear this, but assented.
‘That is well,’ Roguil Arn said, and dismissed them. The chiefs and counselors went away, for the most part well-content; but when they were gone, then the scowl broke from the Vorisal's face and he laughed. ‘Ah,’ he sighed, ‘I would have given them gold for the pleasure of fighting this Southron. Now I will prove to all men I was Poran-Dilg’s better. Wait for me, Elna-Ana: Roguil Arn claims you!’
And the young chief threw back his head and flung wide his arms to the setting Jade moon and laughed like the barking of a wild dog.
Nam-Rog was then pacing before his shelter. Anger and worry rode upon his features, and deep in thought he chewed his beard. Then at once he called to his side Avli-Oan, a tracker of the Durbars.
‘Avli-Oan, you are the swiftest man in our tribe on either foot or pony. Take horse now and ride down past the ruins of this place. Find Erion Sedeg, the leader of the mercenaries, and say to him these words from me: What has held him up so long? Are we to count on his big words no longer? His time has come to prove his loyalty to Ara-Karn. Bid him spur on his men and bring up with all haste what he has fashioned. Go now, or else this one Southron will prove the salvation of the last of Elna’s kin!’
§
IN THE SHADOW of the age-old stones of the Palace, a curious quiet reigned. Slaves and highborn alike remained shut in their chambers, and spoke only in undertones. A superstitious fear had taken hold of them, that what they did might have an ill effect upon the battle. It had begun among the slaves, who believed that it had been the dying scream of Ampeánor’s prisoner that had conjured up the assault. Quickly the fear had spread, reaching even to the story of the Vapionil in the Southern Wing. Even they, herb-quietened or wine-wrought, moved with an exaggerated delicateness. It was as if noise or cry might shatter the shell-like fragility of their yearlong shelter here.
So it was that when the Queen emerged from the White Tower into the long passageways of the upper levels of the Palace, she entered into silence as into a tunnel under the earth, and met no one before her. Behind her went two servants in the tunics of the middle stories, big men bearing the heavy wooden staves used to punish rebellious slaves. At length the Queen reached the recessed door of the Gerso Charan Ennius Kandi.
Softly she spoke to the two men. Their lamps shone strangely off the portions of her mask not shrouded by the black cowl.
‘And your fellow?’ she asked.
The men looked at each other. ‘Pardon, your reverence,’ stammered one, ‘but he is missing. Maybe he went to join the defense of the gates?’
She left the men at the entrance, and entered the chambers alone.
Heavy hangings covered all windows and the entrance to the balcony. The dark, almost unseeable figure of the black-clad woman stood a few paces from the closed door, at the end of the anteroom. What thoughts or memories may have passed beneath the smooth surface of the golden mask, no man might have said.
The figure started suddenly. There had been a noise from beyond the hangings to the balcony. A man appeared there; in the sudden flood of Goddesslight the woman was revealed before him. The man stopped short, seeing her; she, like a thirsla come upon the lair of a mountain-thorsa, was moveless.
Ara-Karn stepped into the room and closed the hangings behind him. His hair was in disarray from the wind, his arms half bare; he wore a hunting-tunic and the harness of Gerso; at his belt was a knife-sheath, which was empty. His soft leather shoes were wet.
The darkness filled the room like the warmth of a good fire. There is a certain safety in darkness, whatever its attendant fear – also freedom. Many are the words that may be spoken aloud in darkness that would die short of a whisper in the light of Goddess.
The Queen tossed back her head beneath the black cowl, like some fine-spirited blood horse. ‘I had not expected to find you here, my lord.’
He bowed courteously, extending his arms in the ritual gesture of hospitality. When he rose, his features were composed again. But had she been privileged to behold those features an hour before, in the gloom of the grove where the stone basin stood, she would not have been able to believe they were the features of the same man.
‘Tell me, why is it that the Savior of Tarendahardil is not on the battlements?’
‘I was waiting for you,’ he said gravely, ‘Alastaphele.’
As always at the mention of that name, Allissál felt a chill upon her breast. Reaching into the depths of her sleeve, she felt the jade handle of the dagger and was comforted. ‘It is over, this game of yours. The masks are fallen at last. When this attack ends and Ampeánor returns, there will be no more hiding for you.’
‘There is still one mask left to fall.’
‘Do you expect that I should save you?’
‘No.’
In truth, she had hoped to find him here. She had readied herself for him most assiduously. But first there was something she must know.
‘It appears you have murdered one of the servants I set to watch you. Also you have freed Ampeánor’s prisoner. Where did you take him? Is he here?’
‘He is dead.’
‘I see.’ There was the weight of iron in her tone. ‘Did you know that I would leave the choice up to you?’
‘That choice was always up to me.’ He took a slight step forward and to his right; she did likewise, to maintain the distance between them.
‘Did you hope that I would save him?’
‘I knew that you would not.’
‘And that – that thing they did to him: did you foresee that as well?’ Fear and anger welled within her. She disliked being alone with him. She no longer knew what to expect. They were speaking softly and quite calmly in the dim, enshrouded room; she longed for the shriek of light.
‘It was for that very thing that I returned to this Citadel a year ago.’
‘So,’ she said. ‘And it came to pass. Did it please you to behold your friend cut as not even a Madpriest should be? Did it gratify you that he did not betray you even then?’
‘Oh, yes.’
She saw his eyes, taunting and wild in the darkness. Greenish flecks sparked in their depths like laughter or murder. She noticed that beneath her robes she was shaking. She could scarcely control her voice. Her right hand gripped the dagger handle so tightly the bones ached.
‘That will be his fame,’ he said. His self-mastery was wonderful to behold: only his eyes and the twist of his lips betrayed him. ‘Had he stayed what he was, a hunter and chieftain childless and beer-loving, then he would soon have passed from the memory of his tribe. Gen-Karn would have finished him. I gave him generalship of the armies, and I gave him this. It was this trial which made him great. Now he will live in all the lands for as long as Elna did: the chieftain, the general, the warrior not even the Vapionil might break.’
‘Will you take the glory for that, too?’ The time had come. She would never fathom the depths of his heart. He knew what she wanted and denied her of it mockingly. The time had come. She knew it.
By now they had exchanged places: it was he who stood before the anteroom, she who had her back to the hangings of the balcony. Now she stopped. He did too.
Because Ampeánor must not learn the deeper secrets of this man – must not have the satisfaction either of killing him or of the farce of a public trial. Because this man was her enemy. Because it was her city he had laid waste, and herself he had betrayed and used. And because only she was Bordakasha
‘It was a test,’ she groaned. ‘It was meant only as a trial. I wished to see how far you would allow it to go on – how far he would order it to go on. But you were both too proud, too mad, and it went on. You failed the test, you both failed – and because you failed, I failed as well.’
‘Yes. Only Gundoen triumphed.’
Because he had murdered Qhelvin of Sorne. Because he had betrayed Ankhan and Lisalya and their city Ul Raambar. Because of Elnavis’ degradation. Because of Tarendahardil. Because of all his crimes. Because Elna would demand no less.
‘You might have slain Ampeánor on the beach in Rukor, and all this would have been avoided. Why didn’t you?’
‘In order that all this might come to pass.’
‘Why? Did that man mean nothing to you? Did his love for you mean nothing? Have you nothing in that heart of yours but a mad brooding for revenge? How could you endure it, to sit so calmly and watch him treated so?’
‘Because I knew you would then end up as you are: alone with me here.’
Because he remained a danger to all men and cities, and now more so than ever, since his mask threatened to fall. And because she feared him and the madness that rode him. And in the end, because she had to regain peace, peace within her soul as well as in her body. It had to be. It had to be.
‘May Goddess damn you,’ she moaned, half a cry. ‘May you be cursed and tormented for a thousand years for this, Ara-Karn.’
Never had she felt such anger in all her life. She was seizing and releasing the dagger; she could feel its sharpness chafing the skin of her arm. Again she tried to drive herself to do it, in a mindless fury if in no other way. She knew then something of the madness Ampeánor must have felt in the bath-chamber. She swept her hand out of the sleeve.
§
HE SAW the empty hand dart out of the sleeve, vague and pale in the dimness, and rise to the shoulder of the black robes. There was an iron brooch there, embellished with black cundan stones cut in the likeness of a chorjai blossom, the flower of death and mourning. The hand pulled the brooch free and let it fall to the floor. The thick, heavy folds of black linen fell apart, like the opening of a bud in springtime, to bare one high, red-tipped breast.
A shudder of suppressed passion took the body of the Queen.
The faint light seeping into the room from the balcony beyond the hangings outlined the dark-robed form as both hands drew back the heavy cowl and pulled free the mask of gold. The yellow gold, dulled in the dimness, revealed a finer radiance behind it, of silver-blue eyes, a high glowing brow, cheeks like flowers kissed by Goddess near the dark horizon, and wide, perfectly-shaped lips deep red with paint, all framed by golden, foaming hair bound up in luxuriant tight masses and snaky coils. The folds of the cowl had fallen open to display by contrast the long, sinuous curve of the neck responding to the quickening beat of a single vein.
In all their fierce love-bouts through the Spring and Summer, not once had she removed the mask. She had opened to him all the rest of her naked body, but not once had she let him behold her face.
The sounds of the battle seemed dulled and diminished in the close, dark room, even as time seemed to slow and grow heavy in its pace. The Queen reached with long, elegant fingers whose nails were stained a red darker than that upon her lips, to the second iron brooch. The single garment of the robe slid open and apart. For a moment the fabric caught on the angle of the shoulder, so that her form seemed halved, all dark folds of linen below an expanse of smooth flesh, flower-scented in the secret flat hollow between the twin high breasts, descending to the swell of the hip. Her skin was the hue of new-fallen snow in the mountains of the Spine at the Dusky Border, a soft chill pallor blushed with the rays of distant Goddess. Then she shrugged, or perhaps it was no more than another shudder – the linen slid from the shoulder. The long, flattened sweep of the beautiful legs spiraled naked from the mound of linen. The golden fur of her sex had been trimmed, shaped and scented, an ornament like a jewel to perfect and surmount the curves of the lower belly and the softness of the inner thighs. Below those delicately curling tufts, clasping like a lock the right upper thigh, was a band of gold adorned with blood-red rubies cut in the semblance of human hearts.
Again she raised her arms, revealing like a glance from downcast eyes the slight tufts of red-gold hair in the musky hollows where the arch of the breasts joined the arms. The twin daubs of hair above echoed the single patch below, forming a triad whose harmonies fell and rose and shuddered with her breath like the light of Goddess on wheat-fields in the burning airs of summer. In a few gestures she did out the jeweled pins and clasps imprisoning her hair. It fell free with a shower of coils and gleaming ringlets: she tossed her head, and the mass of hair waved out like a nimbus about the oval of her face and the horizon of her shoulders, releasing a perfume unbearably sweet.
The man, Ara-Karn, stood before this spectacle where he was, as if held helpless by a desire so wrenching and powerful it might have been a spear hurled through him.
From the soft-lipped mound of linen the woman stepped toward him. She was as naked, as blazing and as chaste as the fiery orb of Goddess Herself. There was fire too within her eyes, a fire cold with silver-blue. She had lost none of her anger, but now it mingled with something else, something more sure and more dangerous. She breathed deeply, and the breath swelled her ribs and brought up her breasts. The breath caught in her throat, behind the pink dance of the tongue and the small sharp teeth.
‘I hate you,’ she said.
‘I hate you more than any man or thing I have ever despised in my life. Because of you there is no peace in me. There will never be, not so long as you live. Everything is changed, and there will be no going back. Because of you. I cannot lie down to sleep without thinking of you. If I were not unworthy of my race, you would now be no more than a corpse upon that carpet. But there are two men beyond that door, and if you touch me, I will summon them and order them to beat you to death before my eyes. This I swear before the Couple.’
She reached forth with both hands. Upon the inner left wrist the Sign of the Couple was marked in black ink. She set her hands to the neck of his tunic, so that her knuckles brushed against the hollow of his throat and he could feel the ice cold hands. She tore down on his garment to the belted waist; the long opening bared the sunburnt flesh of his chest, and the torn linen hung down between his legs obscenely. Deliberately, never taking her eyes from his, she ran the nails of her hands over that denuded stretch, so that the skin blanched and bled.
She laid her hands upon either side of his face, filling the hollows of her scented pains with the bristles of his beard below the high cheekbones. Naked, soft and gleaming in the darkness, she rose upon her sweet-turned toes and kissed him full upon the opened mouth. Then she stepped back and struck his face with all her strength.
He all but fell over, but with an animal grace held his footing; impulsively he stepped forward until their bodies almost touched again. The green in the black depths of his eyes flashed, and his brows were as black as the lands beyond the Knife-Edged Border. But the fury in her gaze was the equal of his. Again she went up against him, the soft, curving expanse of her form yielding to the leather and iron of his garb. Again she kissed him, taking his mouth to hers with avid expertise – then broke free and struck him again with still greater force. All the left side of his face went pale, then blue beneath the hammer of that blow, and his hair whipped back like a banner.
He looked at her with wild laughter in his eyes. She had stepped back again, shaken by the force of her own blow. There was a hint of doubt in her eyes now – confusion, almost fear. She glanced down at her own breasts gleaming with his blood. He stepped forward again; their bodies came together.
She threw back her hair. ‘By Goddess’ cries, how I hate you.’ Again she kissed that mouth of his, needfully, holding his face down to hers. She kissed him longer this time, then broke it, throwing back his head – but this time he caught her wrist in the bond of his hand. The force of the blow swept back the length of her arm, twisting her upper body. She brought up her other arm, but again his hand was there to prison it.
§
SHE FOUGHT, but he held her wrists so strongly that she could see the veins and thews harden on his forearms. Soundlessly, except for slight grunts impossible to restrain, they struggled. She could feel the sweat break like an itch upon her back, in the flatness between her breasts, beneath her arms and between her legs. She struggled, but in vain. He held her wrists too tightly, and forced her body against his too closely for her to have done anything against him with her legs.
Then he twisted her arms upward and behind her shoulders. She arched back beneath him, as if yielding. Her hips were driven helplessly against his; one of his knees filled the hollow between her legs. He leaned forward, and a lock of his hair fell against her own. Their eyes were very close. A drop of sweat gathered and fell from the tip of his nose upon the tip of hers; it ran into her mouth. She tasted his salt and his lust in that drop, and threw her head forward to bite and draw blood from that laughing face, only his mouth was there to meet hers and he crushed her head back, grinding lips against each other and sucking the breath out of her lungs so that she became weakened and dizzy and fell.
She fell, and her long naked limbs writhed upon the heap of her own garments, and she could feel the iron brooch-pins underneath her shoulders, and the golden mask cold against her buttocks, and something else, hard and sharp beneath the linen, in the arch between her nether back and buttocks.
He was lying over her, pinioning her legs with his knees and pressing one hip against her middle so that the clasp of his belt cut into the wet flesh about her sex. He looked into her eyes long enough for her to know the wildness and madness in him; to know too that she was his then and that he might well do anything he pleased with her – even kill her with those strong hands, if she dared cry for aid. He looked at her, and it was as if he had been on the point of speaking – but he remained silent, as if his body had become his tongue now. Then, slowly and with care not to lessen any of the force by which he held her helpless, he slid his body forward.
The broad tunic rose above her face. He lowered himself upon her. The ragged leather hung open to swallow her face and blot the last of the light from her eyes. The sweating, bloody, naked chest pressed upon her mouth. Again he moved: her lips rolled beneath him and his blood and sweat smeared over her. She tasted its rankness and the stink of it was worse than the reek of any of the kills she had made hunting. She could not breathe or escape, and mewed weakly into his bones.
He lifted himself and moved back down. He looked into her eyes. There might have been even tenderness in his eyes. She thought for a flashing moment that he would kiss her, but instead he took her left hand, the Sign dark and smeared by the strength of his fingers, and placed it between his legs. He made her undo the thongs and bare him, then he put her hand between her own legs. There he ran her hand up and down, slowly and surely. Against that invasion, that monstrous use of her and the vileness of the knowledge it implied, she strove and bucked. He laughed and rolled over, so that she lay squirming and wet atop him. Still smiling, he loosed her wrists and dropped his arms on the floor behind his head.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘all the masks are fallen. You are free now: do as pleases you. If you came to taunt and torment me, and prove your power over me, rise and go. It is done, and I lie beneath you even as Gundoen lay below the Vapionil.’
She began to cry.
She lay against him, her hair falling a mantle over her back and shoulders. She could feel the side of one of his knees with the pads of her toes.
This was his cruelest gesture yet. She felt lost and confused as though she had been dropped a long way into an unknown land. She remembered when she had fallen from the roof of the stable to the ground when she had been young. She remembered the lonely darkness of the far side of the mountains. She saw nothing through the tears. Then at length, painfully, she raised her head.
She saw with wonder that his body bore more scars and bruises from her now than it did from all the battles of the wars he had commanded. She had left marks there that would remain upon him for the rest of his years. As he had left such marks upon her wrists. These marks with their secret tale would serve as chains between them, like the marks the ancient lords of Tarendahardil had put upon the bodies of their slaves. She arched forward, and licked his bloody chest. Then she kissed it.
‘Are you a demon or the spawn of dark God indeed,’ she said, ‘that you have such mastery over me?’
‘I am what I told you,’ he said. ‘As are you.’
‘You are insane. There is no heart in you but hatred and a lust for death. And I am so degraded that I would beg you for it.’
‘Then come.’ He lifted her in the crook of his powerful arms. Gently with his nose he brushed the hair from her face. ‘Come,’ he murmured, ‘Alastaphele.’
She nestled against him as he bore her to the bed. There he laid her down against the deep Tezmonian purple of his bed-coverings. And there she answered him, in the tones of a surrender, ‘Yes. Yes. Very well.’
