Samples from books that we have published at Eartherean Books.
This is another in a series from the fourth book in the 4-book series The Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn: Darkbridge.
© 2009 by A. Adam Corby
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
The Black Tent
BY THE SEA’S BRIGHT EDGE a hundred huge, rough-hewn men stood along the stone line of an ancient road. Goddess gleamed off their burnished armor of bronze, silver and gold, and deepened their scarred limbs to purple. Behind them, on slopes leading up to the end of a sere, trampled plain, were gathered other men, older, bearing graver wounds; younger ones stood below, among the rocks in the warm waters. There were no women there. In silence the thousands stared into the sea, that surged and splashed against the rocks, never silent, never still.
Upon the waters a thousand little vessels danced, drawn by currents out to sea. The vessels were black with gold upon their prows, and every one unmanned. For cargo the barges bore clay and bronze bowls and pitchers, broken swords, reddened axes, bound sheafs of human hair, rings, cloaks and a long bag of tough sailcloth stitched tight and sealed with wax against the spray and air.
One vessel was manned: in it a mighty-armed champion rowed with the current, towing behind him the largest, most ornate barge. Alone of all the living the young warrior rowed before the armada of the slain, ensuring with the sweep of his strong-driven oars that the corpse bound in the bag in that barge went first.
Alongside the bag lay pieces of bronze armor, once beautiful, now stained and battered, and a gleaming blue longsword studded with gemstones and inlaid with gold and silver, a weapon worth a kingdom.
From the distant shore a faint keening was borne to the rower above the creak of his oars. The old blind warriors on the plain made their chant, bidding the last farewell to the voyaged ones. Hearing it, the warrior cut the tow-line and put his boat back for land. The thousands of death-barges, driven on by the current, surrounded him for a hundred fathoms on every side. A chill ran up his spine, and he rowed hard to be free of the voices rising from the dead around him.
§
NAM-ROG and his two score had passed through the Iron Gate at last. But they found little to delight them. Mutely they stared upon the scene of the last feast of the Tarendahardilites. It was a sight that stirred horror in them: like their horses, tossing their manes and stamping their hooves, the tribesmen longed to be free of that place. To die in battle or hunt was honorable, to die of sickness familiar, to die of hunger unavoidable. But poison smelled of sorcery, of vile charms and muttered curses against which no swords or strength availed.
Ara-Karn, their Warlord, their King, their divinity, had poisoned the wells and cisterns of the citadel.
The warriors covered their mouths and nostrils with linens, and would take no drink of water or wine that they found in that place.
Warily the warriors gathered what riches they could find while Nam-Rog arranged for the corpse of Gundoen to be borne down to the camp. The Empress and her women they left shut up in the White Tower. In half a waking the warriors left that unclean place they had battled so long to win, nor would they ever again willingly set foot within it.
Ara-Karn ordered a public mourning of thirty passes for Gundoen, a thing unheard-of among the tribes. But in truth they all had such rites to occupy them. Many and great were the warriors who had fallen in that battle. So for three weeks the fields echoed with hammer, chisel and saw, as the fleet of death-barges was constructed. The Blind Ones were much sought after. Each new chieftain and champion vied to do his foregoer the greater honor.
Many warriors went up into the stronghold to see it, nor would they re-sheathe their swords until they had beheld with their own eyes the body of the man who alone had turned back all their armies. They went below the earth, into the near-black room of the jailers behind the bronze door. There they gazed upon him in awe, even as the companions of Nam-Rog had discovered him. Elna-Ana, whom the Southrons called Ampeánor of Rukor, lay upon his side against the wall in a corner of the room. His ghastly face seemed to stare each newcomer in the eyes. The famous sword, held in both fists, was thrust entirely through the body.
The Warlord encouraged these visits and ordered, when the tribesmen and slaves should have had their fill of seeing it, that the corpse be hewn into pieces and scattered in ditches for the birds and worms. Such was their dread now of Ara-Karn, that no tribesman dared to disobey. Only Roguil Arn spoke out against it, calling it the deed of a weakling to treat so grand an enemy so shamefully. He stole the body and built a magnificent death-barge by himself, lest any other be blamed with him. With his own hands the greatest fighter of the far North hewed planks and carved that barge and painted its prow with gold. The jeweled blue sword he left beside the corpse-bag. None would take that sword now, not even for payment: it had slain its master and was luckless and untrustworthy.
The young chief of the Vorisals did not face the Warlord’s wrath for his disobedience. Ara-Karn did not attend the voyaging; he hardly stepped outside his tent. Only once did he address his followers after his return: a bitter speech few understood.
He had learned that one of the Imperial embalmers had survived the poisoning, and had him see to the body of Gundoen. Now, filled with herbs and surrounded by fragrant spices, the corpse reposed within a sealed jeweled coffer near the Warlord’s tent. It was decreed that the remains of Gundoen would voyage forth on no waters but those of the Ocean of Death, from the bay of his home village. And in this Nam-Rog agreed, though it flew in the face of all custom to keep a corpse so long.
In that mass voyaging it seemed as though an entire generation went out on the waters at once. And the young warriors on the rocks looked up past the chiefs and champions to the Blind Ones singing to the Sun. The young men felt as if they had spent their lives passing from one foreign city to the next. They wondered what it would be like to be home again. As children they had gone to war, as men they had known only these Southron lands.
When the last barge sank below the dark line of the sea, the barbarians returned to the camp upon the plain. They went back brooding. Three weeks, thirty passes of dark God overhead, had fled since the taking of the Citadel. It was now well into autumn, and the Darkland winds were chill. At last their vengeance was complete, and the Golden Woman of the South, last daughter of Elna, was in their hands.
Gloom and foul dreams descended upon the camp that longsleep. The barges had been seen off, but the spirits of the dead seemed to linger. So many in these wars had died badly. Hundreds had been left on the parched stones of the Taril. Hundreds more lay in the Palace dump-heaps. Thousands of tribesmen had died in the dim past during the building of that Citadel – and then there were the Southrons and their unclean, luckless deaths. They would not willingly leave this place. How could such spirits ever be appeased?
§
AFTER LONG HOURS, the jade orb of God rose above the Sea of Elna. The strained, fretful silence ended in the camp. From all quarters the warriors converged about the central clearing. Soberly they gathered, with a sadness strange for victors.
Before them a large, elaborate tent rose above the camp at the summit of a low hill of earth shaped like the barge-mound of some old Southron King. Poles of ivory and seltiswood supported the black folds of silk and dyed bandar-skins drooping to kiss the dead earth. Above the tent a black banner hung unmoving on a pole, marked with a yellow Darkbeast-tooth.
To one side the golden coffer of Gundoen rested on ivory legs, sheltered from the light by a linen canopy like a shrine. To the other side a heap containing all the objects of value found within the Citadel lay open to the sky, awaiting division. Between them two empty high-seats of equal size and beauty had been raised.
All the byways of the camp bore the many marks of that year’s encampment. No tracks marred the awful virginity of the hard-packed earth of that mound. Such was the home of their Warlord-King, the Conqueror, the Returned One, Ara-Karn.
§
INSIDE THE TENT, the man wet his hard brown arms in a gleaming silver ewer of lustral water and let his attendants dry and array him. This he did naturally, as if long used to it. The walls of the tent surrounded like a treasure-vault the array of spoils, of carpets, statuary and weapons. The place suited the man, but there was something about the man that did not suit himself. Some traces of cheerfulness, of an almost hopeful anticipation. The attendants, noting this change in their master, were almost emboldened to speak and make jests; of course they did not. They were in the presence of Ara-Karn.
In the midst of these preparations three men were conducted into the presence.
His glance took them in. The cleansing and ritual purification of the citadel had been left to the slaves, for no barbarian would enter that place twice. These three newcomers were dark and wiry and appareled with elegance. Their faces were burned with the telltale marks of subtlety, fear and cruelty. In a word, they were Vapionil, and knew well the art and science of their slavery.
A number of Vapionil had survived the poisoning; the mercenaries of Erion Sedeg guarded the Citadel, but it was to the Vapionil that Ara-Karn gave the keeping of the Queen, trusting in their cowardice and venality. Not even the highest lieutenants of Erion Sedeg were allowed entrance to the White Tower.
Now great dread was apparent in their cunning faces, and they prostrated themselves before him with agitation.
‘Spare us, Great Kaan!’ they cried him from the ground. ‘Forgive us, for we are but helpless mortals who have done our best!’
‘What is it?’ he asked coldly. ‘Why have you not brought her as I commanded?’
‘That woman, O King of Kings, who some say is descended from Goddess, has fled!’
There was nothing of cheerfulness about him now. ‘And Erion Sedeg?’ he asked.
Erion Sedeg had survived the burning of the Tower, and was now a man whose power rivaled even Nam-Rog’s. When men spoke of the Warlord, it was now no longer in the terms which Kuln-Holn had taught them, but in those of Erion Sedeg. His flesh was blackened and hideously scarred, but the iron strength and evil will remained. As soon as he heard that Ara-Karn had returned, he ordered himself taken before the King.
Lying on the litter, Erion Sedeg gripped the Warlord’s arm and stared into the cold, impassive face with its hard, black-green eyes. Then he relaxed his grip. Already the rumors of the horror found within the stronghold were circulating about the camp. ‘Yes, you are the one,’ he said, shrinking back to sleep. ‘You are my Master, of whom I have spoken.’ The King of Kings did not respond.
‘Every chamber of the Citadel has been twice-searched, Great Conqueror! Her slaves are being questioned most expertly. The mercenaries of Erion Sedeg swear she did not pass through them – what else are we to think but that she took flight indeed, unless she had jewels hidden away, and the mercenaries do not speak the truth. Or again, some whisper she cast herself from the palace walls; but her women do not weep for nothing, so this seems unlikely.’
They babbled on swiftly in Bordo. A civilized lord, such as they were accustomed to, would have been amused by their extravagant protestations. A barbarian, such as this one was said to be, would have been flattered by their exaltations, or filled with such contempt that he scorned to punish them. But this one only looked at them, and in the bent of his lips might be read either amusement or scorn, and irony or despair in the greenish gleaming of his black eyes. At length, under that moveless gaze, the words of the Vapionil failed, as a brook will falter in the Desert when it sinks into the baking sands and is no more. Even so, the Warlord of the far North knew that the tale was not yet fully told.
‘What else?’ he asked in a calm voice.
They hesitated. ‘O Magnificence of the World, a word she left on parchment, addressed to your August Majesty. Yet it was our doubt whether you would wish to acknowledge it.’
Silently he extended a sinewy hand, its sparse black hairs curling from the intersections of its many lines, its flesh brown from sun and wind, and moveless as a monument’s.
With some agitation, the foremost slave bowed his head, lifted up the scroll, and felt it taken from his hands.
§
AMONG THE BARBARIANS below the mound were forty or fifty civilized men. They were dressed plainly, in undistinguished traveling-garb and the harness of many cities. They were Peshtrians, Pelthari, Belknuleans, Zaprolis, and men from all the lesser principalities and cities of the deeper South. They stood meekly and uncertainly among the piles of bales and chests and trunks brought as tribute for the Conqueror.
From time to time the legates cast nervous glances at the barbarians crowding in around them. Foremost were the proud chieftains and champions, light-haired, light-eyed giants bristling with weapons, bedecked with silver, gold and gaudy gems. Among them passed their beautiful women, herb-eyed, slow-moving, as though their every step or shudder produced in them an exquisite ache about the limbs. They were robed in loras of the finest silk, and their thin brown arms were weighted with bands of gold, ivory, silver, copper and electrum. Here was a ruby cut in the design of fallen Mersaline, there an emerald ringed with gold after the fashion of Postio. Evidence of the many conquests was everywhere, not least in the terrible scars of the barbarians, the gashes and mutilations they wore with more disdainful pride even than their jewels.
Without warning the tent-flaps sundered and a solitary man stepped out.
The chieftains straightened and held aloft their spears, swords, axes and bows, acclaiming him. The civilized men, their mouths dry of a sudden, fell to their knees in abasement.
‘Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn!’
The man gazed at the high-seats, then stepped forward. Silently he abode over the masses of men as the clamor of the warriors swelled into a roar.
‘Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn!’
At length the civilized men made bold to glance up from their abasements. It was not the proper form, but their curiosity had the better of them. So many were the tales they had heard of this man, that had he been larger than a war-horse and fashioned out of brass and flame, they would not have been surprised.
Yet here was a man not much above the middle height, with a short dark beard and hair of middle length. Over his torso he wore a black tunic cut after the fashion of no known city. He wore soft leather leggings after the manner of the far North, and on his shoulders a short mantle of brilliant green bandarskin. The black tunic rose into a cowl folded behind his head, in the way of the nomads of the Desert beyond the ruins of Postio. He wore no jewels, gold or silver. Yet upon his chest was spread a massive pectoral, all of great teeth curving and cruelly-pointed – the enormous teeth of the mythical Darkbeast.
The Conqueror of the World looked down upon those Southrons as if he knew their thoughts, and his mouth altered its bent somewhat. A dismal, unshrinking cold seemed to radiate from the dark figure, as though this were a thing belonging to no lands beneath Her broad face. At that moment the civilized men could well believe the whispered rumors that named Ara-Karn a Madpriest, one exiled from the Darklands for such deeds as revolted even those tormented souls.
When the acclaim subsided, he lifted his hand to the civilized men and spoke a few words. The legates eyed one another furtively; yet none of them knew the language of their conquerors.
One of the chieftains answered the Warlord, gesturing likewise toward the Southrons. He was an older man with streaks of gray in the ash-blond of his long hair and beard. Yet he stood up strong as a man half his age.
The Conqueror nodded curtly, and signed to the civilized men.
Uncertainly they rose, the knees of each man aching. They made their way up the tumulus and halted. Thirty steps away seemed close enough to this man. The men conferred among themselves. Helplessly they looked to the chieftains and their herb-eyed ladies.
‘Does no man of you speak the language of the South? How else may we give your great King our messages?’
The women looked upon them blankly. The old chieftain shook his head. In a Bordo savoring thickly of the tongue of the far North he told them, ‘No man speak for him now. Speak him. He speak.’
Doubtfully, the legates looked again to the brooding figure. He had not moved or given any sign of understanding. There was a monstrous intensity about his brows, as though he were capable of doing murder at any instant; yet his every action bespoke an all but inhuman patience. Again the legates consulted; at length one stood forth.
‘O Great King,’ he said slowly and loudly, ‘from several cities and nations have we come to pay you homage. We here are representative of all those lands not yet under your domain. I am called Engkor, of the house of Gonyaga of Zaproll on the Sea. Many gifts have we brought you to hail your majesty’s great triumphs.’
He gestured at the chests and bales. The Conqueror held his calm and terrible gaze upon the Zaproli.
‘Your majesty,’ Engkor said, ‘we have come to submit to your majesty the overlordships of all our lands, and to proclaim you the first Emperor of South and North, supreme King of all the lands where men dwell. In your presence we abase ourselves.’ So saying Engkor fell to his knees and leaned forward on his hands. The other legates followed his example, so that in short order each man held his face close to the earth and saw only the dirt. It was better than enduring those eyes.
Ara-Karn addressed the chieftains in the tongue of the far North, ignoring the legates.
‘All that is yours,’ he said, indicating the heaped gifts. ‘Take it as you please.’
But the chieftains did not move. The Warlord let a ripple of displeasure darken his brow. ‘Well? Why do you stop? Jump, jump: it is all yours.’
Gloomily the old chieftain replied, ‘Lord, we will not fall to this as dogs to corpses in the field, nor will we act like savages before these Southrons, bur rather follow your own example. Many such trifles have we already. Let the slaves apportion these to our tents later.’
‘What are you, that you would act as I?’ shot back the King. ‘If you will not accept my gifts when I offer them, perhaps they will be gone when you return. Yet Nam-Rog, I can recall the time when you would not have called such treasures trifles.’
‘Many times has God ridden past our Lady since then,’ the old warrior responded. ‘Few things on earth are the same now as they were then.’
The Warlord nodded. ‘You remind me of more than you know, old man.’ Abruptly speaking in Bordo for the first time he addressed the legates: ‘You have said all the unconquered cities are present here. What then of Ul Raambar?’
The Zaproli looked up, stung by the swift words so clearly spoken.
‘There is no Ul Raambar,’ he groaned.
A trace of pleasure – it might have been pain – crossed the dark face. ‘Ah, yes. I had forgotten. What then of Belknule? Is Yorkjax represented here?’
‘Lord, Great One, I am a Belknulean,’ said one. ‘Yorkjax is gone. Hearing of your majesty’s victory over this the ancient city of your enemies, the tyrant gathered his followers and sought to flee. Then at last the nobles and people would suffer no more, but fell upon Yorkjax and his men and put them to death, even to the last woman and child of theirs. Belknule is at last free: free to offer herself humbly at the feet of your most feared majesty.’
‘With such suppliants I will fear no lack,’ the Conqueror said. ‘As to your gifts, I will take them. Yet gifts are not sufficient. What is given bespeaks equality and independence. Therefore each of you will accompany one of my captains to your homeland and surrender all forms and fashions of power into his hands. In addition will I levy this tribute of you all: three golden Elnics for every man now in my armies. All your soldiers will give their weapons to my men, who are to be treated by you with all the honor I trust you would do me. More: those of you who have skilled shipwrights will send them North. Let them gather at Arpane on the Sea, and there await my orders.
‘Yet, that you may not consider your new master too harsh, this honor will I perform unto you. I will accept of you twenty children from each land or city. Let them be of your noblest and most wealthy houses, for they shall stay with me as my attendants. Let none of them be more than twelve summers in age, and let there be as many sons as daughters: for no doubt my future Queen will wish to partake equally of this pleasure.’ This last phrase was spoken with such strange intensity, the legates were at a loss to know quite what to make of it.
Silently and miserably they nodded acquiescence to his terms. Such subtle severity they had not expected of a rude general of red-handed barbarians. But well they knew their helplessness.
‘It is enough,’ said Ara-Karn, dismissing them. He turned to the chieftains. ‘Nam-Rog, you understood?’
Grimly the chieftain of the Durbars nodded. ‘Lord, it was our mind to return to the far North after this city fell. We have not seen our homes or wives since before we broke the Spine.’
‘When I have mine again, then perhaps I will allow you yours,’ the Warlord said. ‘Until then do as I command.’ He made a move as if he would go – then stopped. ‘Yet what is this?’ he mused.
The civilized men and their servants had risen and receded into the throngs. One however still knelt upon the earth, his aged head held close over the ground.
‘Lord, this was not one of these,’ Nam-Rog said. ‘Him we found in the Palace of the Citadel, on a high-seat in the great, empty hall. Dead men lay about him, but when he saw us he welcomed us. It was he who told us where to find the corpse of Elna-Ana. He called himself your ally, and carried on so that we thought him wrong-headed. We put him among these other Southrons rather than the captives. It seemed the best place for him.’
The Conqueror of the World gazed down upon the kneeling man. He sat in one of the high-seats.
‘Dornan Ural,’ he called softly. ‘Dornan Ural, did you seek me?’
The old man looked up. The former Regent was all but unrecognizable now. His hands were the color of dead earth. Strands of greasy hair fell about his face and ears. The unshaven bloated face was streaked with mud and tears, the eyes bleary, huge and hollowed. Yet, though his torn tunic was unspeakably filthy and vile, upon it hung a thing worth more than all the gifts of the legates: the pectoral of the High Regent of Tarendahardil.
What he had done, and what thoughts had passed through his skull since he had locked Ampeánor in the cell beneath the Palace, not even Dornan Ural himself might have said. Doubtless he did not remember welcoming the barbarians. But he could not forget his passage through the city’s ruins. Foremost in the long lines of captives, Dornan Ural felt his eyes grow ever larger as he beheld the dreadful wastes for the first time.
They had passed the burned, broken stones of Dornan Ural’s own hall on the edge of High Town; they passed marketplaces, theaters, and the offices of his officials. In the lower city where the poorer classes and merchants had lived and worked, the destruction had been complete. The buildings had been close-set and of wood, and the fire had raged among them without mercy. Only then did the knowledge take full hold in him. She was no more, and there was no other place quite like her. In years to come, no men would know her beauty or her splendors. Tarendahardil, his city, was dead.
‘Dornan Ural,’ reproved Ara-Karn gently and terribly, ‘what posture and condition is this for the High Regent of Tarendahardil, the Chief Administrator of all the Seven Ranks of the officials?’
The frog’s-eyes blinked. ‘Lord, majesty – you know me?’
‘Certainly I know you, my old fool. Do you not know me?’
‘You are the Conqueror, the King, the Returned One, his august majesty Ara-Karn, the Fist of God, the—’
‘Enough. And no more? You do not remember me?’
‘Great Majesty, never before in my life have I beheld you.’
‘Then why have you been so bold, Dornan Ural, as to venture your life here among these brigands and robbers who are your enemies?’
‘Great One, it was not enemies I came to find but rather friends, and a man more than man, to whom I hoped to render some small service.’
‘You flatter as well as ever. Your wits, it seems, have not yet completely failed. What service could you offer me?’
Dornan Ural tried to think. What had it been that had made him welcome the barbarians?
‘Divine One,’ he said slowly, choosing his words with care, ‘mighty are your armies, and many your conquests. But to conquer and to rule, these are different matters. I have gained many skills in almost a score of years of overseeing the Empire nal Bordakasha. Divine One, I would ask no more than the honor of serving you.’
‘Even as you served your former mistress?’
‘Even so, Divine One. In minor tasks I could relieve your majesty of much toil, and perhaps offer some instruction.’
‘How to ensure the loyalty of my servants, perhaps.’
‘That and many other matters, O King of South and North. For example, there exists a hidden passageway into and out of the Citadel. Its secret is known to me.’
The dark face of the King was expressionless. ‘So she did not throw herself from the walls. Dornan Ural, your former mistress still lives. Were you aware of it?’
Confusion crossed the ugly face. ‘Lord, if you say it is so, then I acknowledge it.’
‘Dornan Ural, her fate rests in my hands. Her golden body is in my grasp. Do you know what I will do to her? Imagine if you can. I am considering your offer, Dornan Ural. My answer depends on what you now say. You were her servant and her tutor, Dornan Ural. Was she a good monarch? Praise her if you can, and I will spare and honor her; otherwise— Well? Have you nothing to say?’
‘Great King, what can I say? She was your enemy. Her followers are still numerous. I would be a poor counselor indeed, if I advised your majesty to give power to one who would later use it against you.’
The King rose and signed for two of the lesser warriors to approach, ‘Your words are wise, Dornan Ural. I will be bound by them. Now follow me. There is something I would show you.’
The old man stood awkwardly. The four men walked round the dark tent to the brightward side. There the King halted. He indicated a side tent out of which the light of a hundred lamps seemed to stream.
‘Go you there and behold,’ said Ara-Karn to Dornan Ural.
Wonderingly the old man approached the tent. The flood of light caught hold of his dirtied leggings up to his trunk, transmuting his stocky legs into things of speckled gold. Dornan Ural stood dumbfounded. His legs wavered and he sank suddenly upon his knees, and the tide of light engulfed him, making him blink and weep. So perhaps old Kar Belthus would seem, confronted with his old charge horribly returned from his long voyagings.
The walls and floor of the little tent were covered with dark-dyed velvet, blue and green and black. Set upon spear-shafts near the back wall was a thing taller than a man, circular in shape, ornately carved and cast. A hundred spikes radiated outwards from its beaten rim, each set with a cluster of diamonds as large as a woman’s knuckle. The shield-like circle of it was of the finest electrum, gold and silver intermingled so that each should exalt the other’s glory. It caught the light of Goddess and hurled it back three-fold, so that before its glare Dornan Ural had to put his hands over his eyes.
Over and behind him the Warlord stood, implacable.
‘But, but—’ Dornan Ural stammered, ‘what is this?’
‘It is the Disk of Goddess,’ answered Ara-Karn.
Dornan Ural looked uncomprehendingly into the face of the barbarians’ king through a veil of sparks and orange blossoms.
‘Do you not understand even now, old fool?’ Ara-Karn said pitilessly, ‘This is the Disk of Goddess, symbol as well of your former mistress. Can you outshine it, Dornan Ural? Should I then keep you and destroy this? You betray your true worth with ever word and gesture. You have nothing to offer me save one thing – and that thing I will take indeed, though I think it will rather pain you to give it up.’
He spoke a word to the warriors. Grimly they nodded and neared the kneeling Dornan Ural, drawing their swords.
‘Please, please,’ the old man moaned, crawling to catch the King’s knees. ‘I have already done your majesty a service! It was no one else but I who captured the Charan of Rukor, who for years ordered the defense of the Citadel!’
‘You took him from my vengeance,’ Ara-Karn said, stepping to evade him. ‘You robbed me of him, and left only yourself in his place.’
‘Mercy, mercy, I beg of you—’
‘You beg?’ There was no passion in the voice of Ara-Karn, only a cold irony. ‘And what of her? What of those times she begged you, as far as her own proud nature would allow her to implore anyone? She trusted you, Dornan Ural – you betrayed her. Did you not once take oath to serve her? She was your mistress. You should have been her ally, her helpmeet, her man. And what did you ever do but disobey her wishes, subvert her every plan and hope, and in the end betray her?’ The voice went on, inhumanly cold, desperately calm. ‘You were willing even to sell her to these savage hordes. And would you have let her suffer that for only some gold and your own worthless life? By the gods who do not exist, you sicken me. But you shall sicken me no longer.’
He turned and began to walk back through the tent. The warriors reached for Dornan Ural. But terror made him quick – slipping between their arms, he crawled after Ara-Karn. The few steps around the tent seemed farther than between Zaproll and Arpane; ever behind him he heard the footfall of his executioners. The last corner fell back: he beheld bobbing before him the slope of dead earth, the twin thrones, clustered chieftains, and the thousand tents of the barbarians.
The legs of the King were before Dornan Ural. He gripped them fiercely, sobbing, ‘Mercy, mercy, I implore you! Show you are as great as men call you, by sparing me. If I displease you, I will go away to some island – only grant me life! Else how may you yourself ask mercy some pass from the gods above? Show kindness, and it will be shown to you! Please, please, your majesty…’
The two warriors stood behind the writhing man. Their faces were heavy with disgust. This was clearly not a task they relished; yet it might also be said that a thing so wretched as this before them were better slain. And, too, they were warriors of the far North, and knew not pity. Unwaveringly they looked into their Warlord’s eyes.
He nodded. ‘It will not grieve me overmuch if this garb is soiled.’ The words could scarcely be heard above the wailing of the old man.
Expertly they brought their swords into position. They must aim carefully, to avoid their Warlord’s legs.
Beyond, the herb-eyed ladies looked on blankly, perhaps with even a faint sparkle of cruel pleasure. But there was revulsion and anger in the eyes of the chieftains. So many times had they killed men in passion and battle, they could not have numbered them all. But they had never killed like this.
The warriors were on the down-stroke when Ara-Karn said suddenly, ‘Stay!’
Inexperienced men would have been helpless to obey him, but these were veterans of the wars for two score cities. The heavy blades flashed past the neck and shoulders of the prostrate man, slicing through the folds of his robes before they bit ringing into the stony earth.
Even as the blades whistled by the ears of Dornan Ural he, sure the very moment of his death had come, loosed a brittle squeal, so loud and piercing it seemed to hang over the outspread tents long after the two warriors had cleaned and sheathed their swords.
There was a quiet upon the scene as that shriek ceded to the low groan of the wind in the tents.
The chieftains looked with outrage upon the pile of soiled linen and flesh that once had ruled half the Southlands in the name of the Empress and her son. The two warriors seemed relieved that they had not befouled their blades upon such a man and such a death. Of them all, only Ara-Karn remained unmoved. With a gentle turn of his knees he freed his legs front the shaking arms.
‘Gather the warriors in the penalty-square,’ he said calmly, ‘and let them form the Tunnel of Spears. Drive this man through it. It is my will he have some life left to him when he emerges from the Tunnel. Then cut his body in pieces and scatter them over the fields, even as these Southrons would have done to Gundoen had they had the chance. Well? Why will you stop and look at me so?’
‘Lord,’ Nam-Rog said, ‘that this man was your enemy and has done you harm, I would not deny. Yet what else can you do to him? There is nothing left. How many times will you make as if to kill him? It was in my mind to call that a good act of yours, that you spared him now. Yet if you saved his life only to give him this crueler fate, then I know not what to say, except that I will have no hand in it.’
‘Did you not see Gundoen’s body?’
‘I will not equal these men’s vileness, whatever this one may have done against us.’
Ara-Karn frowned. ‘And do you think I make a trial of you now? – or is it rather you who would test my resolve? You grow dangerous, Nam-Rog. And you others, whose side will you take in this, his or mine?’
None dared speak, but their reply was evident in their eyes.
‘Well, I shall force you to do nothing distasteful, now that I have made you greater than kings and given you riches beyond your former imaginings. It strikes me that there are others in the camp who will perform this more as I would wish. Give him to the poorest harlots among the camp-followers, then. They shall work upon him as they please and as their cleverness bids, and be crueler by far than any of the warriors, one of whose spears might slip early and end the entertainment. Let the women know that she whose work is judged most novel in the way I would have it, shall be given his golden pectoral as her reward.’
‘And will you, lord, be the judge of this?’
For a moment the two men’s eyes held each other; but in the end it was Nam-Rog who let fall his gaze.
‘No, not I,’ Ara-Karn said calmly. ‘Choose out ten slaves from among my Vapionil and let them judge. Dress them in garb fit for princes, and put upon each man’s head a band of gold set with jade, and in his hand an ivory rule. You shall see I am no mean play-giver.’ As there was no word for ‘play’ in the tongue of the tribes, he used a Bordo term, but his words were understood.
Nam-Rog nodded. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘in this as in all other things, your will shall be law.’
The King heard the lie, and a gleam as of humor passed through his eyes; yet it was gone too swiftly to be surely known. ‘Nam-Rog of the Durbars, you will find a place in my court yet. When this spectacle is done, you chieftains shall ready yourselves to be guided by the ambassadors to their several cities. Take what men you like, and choose who shall have which city. One half of this tribute you may keep or distribute as you please; the other send North with the shipwrights to Arpane on the Sea. Now, what business is left?’
Nam-Rog was silent, but a lesser chief said, ‘Lord, we have gathered the servants and folk we found still living in the Citadel. What is your will for them?’
‘Let them be brought.’
The two warriors lifted the still-twitching Dornan Ural and carried him down among the tents. It was doubtful whether he knew even then what lay in hand for him, any more than a child will who plays beside a serpent. Soon other warriors appeared, driving before them the captives from the Citadel. Most were people of the City who had taken refuge in the Citadel when Tarendahardil fell, but some were of the Palace.
The Conqueror walked before them where they knelt, the last of his children. None knew him. This was not Father Ennius but the barbarian, Ara-Karn.
At length he drew to a halt.
Before him knelt a tall woman whose hair was a brilliant mixture of gold and vermilion. She was the loveliest there, more beautiful even than the companions of the chieftains: a chara of hetairai. It seemed a miracle that she should have emerged unscathed and unclaimed from the taking of the Citadel.
She bent her shoulders forward somewhat now, and glanced up to the Warlord briefly from beneath her dark lashes. Thereafter she held her gaze on the ground between his feet.
‘Bid the others depart, give them freedom,’ Ara-Karn said. The warriors gestured with their spears, and the hundreds of men and women rose and left. The Warlord, ignoring them, held his gaze upon the woman. At length, he bade her speak her name.
In a voice low and musical she responded, ‘O Great One, I am called Kiva.’
‘I asked you not what you were called,’ he rejoined coldly, ‘but rather what your name is.’
‘Mirso Lengan, O King.’
‘Yes. I know you. Are you not the woman kept by Berowne and others of the guardsmen?’
‘Indeed lord, I was that one,’ she answered sadly.
‘Your hair alone would set you apart from a thousand, Mirso Lengan. I have never beheld its like. Tell me, is it all of that same hue?’
‘No, your majesty. I have it dyed. The dyes of the Vapionil do not treat all hairs equally.’
‘False even in this. All the same, a pretty wench. Will you serve me in my chamber?’
‘Your majesty, to be the companion of one so high was an honor beyond even the most extravagant dreams of my girlhood. Yet surely your majesty has many women more lovely and pleasing than I.’
‘Woman, who said that you should be my companion? I only asked if you would serve.’
‘It was ever taught me, your majesty, that great men must bear burdens so heavy that their servants should only cheer them. I greatly fear I should fail in this, and be of little use to you.’
‘Do you grieve the deaths of men who paid you? Or do you merely sorrow at the loss of your former state, and say these things in the spirit of good bargaining?’
A ripple passed over Kiva’s slender shoulders, like a flaw upon a still lake. No other sign of her feeling was apparent, yet when she spoke, then bitterness and pain broke through her tones, a thing not even such an artist of herself could mask.
‘Great King, Merciful King,’ she said, ‘it may please your humor, now that all the lands where men dwell are subject to you and the fate of the races hangs from your lips, to have sport with the fallen and mock their losses. More than once did I plead with Captain Berowne and his lieutenant Ullerath, the only survivors among my men after Egland Downs, to take their possessions as I would take mine, and flee away with me to some island in the Southern Ocean where we would have peace together. But they remained here out of duty and obedience to their sovereign, she who is now your prisoner. So I too have fallen into the hands of your men, and you may call me whore and jest with me, and no man still living will call you wrong. But I, a poor bereaved woman who have known no other art or calling than the pleasing and happiness of men I found I liked – I say this ill becomes your majesty or the claims of greatness they make of you.’
Ara-Karn looked upon the kneeling woman. She knelt very still, so that not even her bosom moved. At last he spoke.
‘Perhaps you will find this jest more amusing,’ he said. ‘How would you like it if I made you chieftainess of Orn?’
She gazed up at him wonderingly.
He explained: ‘No Orn warriors survive. They are but women and children now, in Orn in the far North. You, as their leader, would receive the Orn’s share of tribute from the two piles, as well as what remains in the tents of Gorn-Tal, the last chief of that tribe. The other chieftains will lend you warriors. In addition, it pleases me to give you the rule of Tezmon, since Gen-Karn and his Orns conquered that city for me. Well? What have you to say to that?’
She did not alter her expression in the slightest. ‘Very well, your majesty. This is a great honor your majesty does me.’ There was no gratitude in her tone.
‘Now you may join your fellow chiefs in the circle,’ he said, smiling coldly. With his hand he helped her rise. In curt words he explained what he had done to the chieftains. They took his decision silently, without objecting that he had taken on himself what remained the right of the Orn tribesfolk.
‘There is one further matter, a small thing,’ the Warlord announced. ‘Doubtless there has been some talk in the camp concerning my plans for the former Empress, Allissál of the Bordakasha.’
‘A good deal of it,’ the Durbar chief replied. ‘It was rumored that you intended to offer the last of Elna’s kin in sacrifice to dark God as soon as the mourning was complete. But others claim that was not the way of Ara-Karn, and that you intend rather to give her to that man who won most honor during the siege of the stronghold. This pleased the followers of Roguil Arn.
‘But Erion Sedeg, who may know best the heart of Ara-Karn, says that as the full measure of your contempt for your fallen enemy, you will offer her to all the men in the camp who wish to have her, from chieftain to warrior to mercenary, even to the slaves, one man after another for so long as she might live. Though none have seen her, all dwell upon the legends of her beauty and burn to see her bared before us. The men did not like the first rumor much, and liked the last one best of all.’
‘I had sent for her,’ the King of Kings acknowledged. ‘I would have displayed her to you this waking. She has escaped and fled, however. Every chieftain will therefore send me the finest trackers of his tribes, and they will go in search of this woman through all the cities of the world. They will convey her to me – unharmed, and with all honor. When she is returned to me, then I will wed her before the Couple and make her my Queen over you all.’
He dismissed them then, mindless of their gaping mouths, and returned alone into the black tent.
§
THERE THE CHILL of autumn winds did not reach, nor Her light nor Her heat. There no lamps or candles burned. Folds of darkness seemed to compress the heavy air. The chambers of the tent crowded with couches of silk and skin, chests of treasure, tables, rugs and pelts and cushions, ceremonial tripods, and an ornate heavy throne from one of the conquered cities of the South. All these, upon a train of ponies and ox-carts thirty riders long, the warriors of Ara-Karn had brought with them through the many lands of their long war-faring, dutifully erecting it first of all whenever a camp was made, though none would occupy it. Now, at long last, its owner had returned. But it had been a year and a half since he had played at being Ara-Karn.
From one tripod the solitary man drew an ember with a pair of tongs, and lighted a lamp. From a rack he pulled a scroll and spread it on the table before him. He began to read the lists he had ordered prepared, of the materials needed to build ships and carry an army of men a long ways overseas. Over the storm-wrought seas of the Ocean of Death, across to the far band of dusk on the other side of the world, where only, as all men knew, ghosts and evil demons dwelled.
He was half way down the third list when he paused. Though the walls of silk and linen and bandarskins were an effective barrier against the common murmur of the camp, overhead gaps had been cut in the tent roof, so cleverly designed that they allowed no light in – only letting out the smoky, scented inner air. Through them now entered a series of distant, wailing shrieks. They seemed not sounds but narrow wounds torn in the flesh of air.
The punishment of the traitor had begun. He had rendered her his final service.
‘And I wonder,’ he murmured, ‘whether your precious secret might have led me to her? Perhaps. But then you see my poor old fool, I would have been forced to spare your life after all. The honor of my men would have demanded it – and I cannot outrage them fully. I still have need of them.’
He cast his eyes down again, and saw that other scroll, the one his Vapionil had brought to him. It was the first scroll of the ancient Epic of the Bordakasha, which recounted the feats and lives of the first five Emperors of the South. In the space beside the title were written, in that lovely, familiar script, her final words to him:
You may keep your vengeance and your destiny. But leave me mine.
He had not seen her since he had beheld her naked in her bed in her dimchamber. But someone must have informed her that he meant to send for her this waking. She had planned well.
Ara-Karn nodded. The thin shrieks scarred the air.
They were a little comfort.
From behind him there arose a soft furtive sound. He turned, and beheld the foremost of his Vapionil slaves, a man with the slyly smiling face of a professional assassin. For a moment the two men regarded each other, as the distant cries of dying Dornan Ural pierced the tent. Then the King of half the world pointed to the scroll and said two words:
‘Find her.’
