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.
Freedom
BUT ALLISSáL HAD GONE down to a land not even the cunning of the Vapionil could discover.
Even as the tribes were bidding the final farewell to their dead, she emerged into the light outside the Citadel. Concealed in a voluminous hooded traveling-cloak, the former Empress of half the world stood in the shelter of a broken pillar on the steps of the Hall of Kings.
For the first time she saw the ruin of her city close at hand: and she, no less than Dornan Ural, felt the emptiness of the loss. A few dark clouds rolled across the milky greenish sky, and beneath them gerlins wheeled. She remembered when she had first come to this place, and the crowds had cheered her in the rituals. She had been a girl then, and this city had been her Paradise.
She leaned against the broken pillar. An ungainly cart went by in the square, pulled by broken beasts guided by dirty men in rags. The cart left a stench in its wake: it was full of corpses. For three weeks this had been going on, and was yet undone. One cart more; a few bodies more.
When she had awakened from her bad dream, Allissál called her maidens to her side. She kept them in silence, forbidding them food and drink. Two she sent down to discover what was happening, but they found the doors of the White Tower barred and sealed. By then it was too late, and the ghastly feast had reached its end. The maidens cried in fear and misery; Allissál, looking down from her dimchamber window upon the corpse-strewn earth, only trembled.
What he had done, not even the worst barbarian would have done. He was, then, capable of any act, no matter how vile, no matter how brutal, no matter who fell victim to it – and she had answered him when he had called her by a dead woman’s name, and she had tasted joy in his body. She looked beyond the corpses of those who had worshiped him and called him father, to the dark grove. But already the many barbarians were riding into the grounds. She and her maidens were trapped there, the prisoners of a madman.
From that waking, her only thought had been of thwarting him. She waited and planned, and her women learned much from the Vapionil and mercenaries set to watch them.
Now in the shelter of the broken pillar she looked away brightward and saw the long voyaging procession of tribes returning to the camp. It was the first hour of the longsleep, and she felt tired. She wondered if he could sleep, after all he had done. Then she heard a nervous whinny and recognized the call of Kis Halá. Silent as the shadow of God, she passed below, to the alleyway between The Hall of Kings and the tombs of her ancestors in great stone barges.
Emsha was attempting to soothe the frightened animal. Allissál quieted the mare with a caress.
‘Oh – majesty!’ Emsha said. ‘You startled me, I did not know what … but what is this? Do you wear his garb now?’
Allissál was wearing a dark green hooded hunting-cloak from Gerso, fastened with a blood-red opal brooch-pin cut in the likeness of a serpent’s egg. She had found it where he had left it, in the dirt beside the stone blood-basin over the pit that was the mouth of the secret way.
‘It is a goodly cloak,’ she murmured, kissing the mare’s broad warm muzzle, delighting in the eager affection of the great animal. ‘Was there any difficulty in passing the Gates?’
‘No, majesty. I did even as you said, and told the guards I brought the horse to him. They did not question me after I had mentioned that name.’
‘Have you brought the basket with the food?’
‘Yes, there upon the saddle. Majesty, what—’
‘Emsha, call me “majesty” no more. The Divine Queen is gone.’ She climbed into the saddle. She felt Kis Halá moving beneath her, a movement like that of a deep sea swell, that knows no laws or limits.
‘I am going now, Emsha,’ she said, arranging her skirts. ‘As my final act here, I release you from servitude. Here in this pouch are my most valuable jewels: pick two of the finest, and settle in some quiet place far from these tragedies.’
A pained look entered the nurse’s broad wrinkled face. She pushed back the proffered bag. ‘Majesty, what are you saying? What should I do without you? Where would I go? I do not need these. I will go with you.’
Sadly Allissál reached out to touch the cheek of the only real mother she had known. ‘Do you think it will hurt me any less, dear one? But no, Emsha. Where I go now, you could never follow.’
Then she brought the great gleaming mare about, clapped her heels to the sleek golden flank, and rode out into the square. Down the slope of the plateau she rode and vanished among the ruins of the blackened lower city.
Behind her the old, weary woman stumbled out into the square. Through the curtain of her tears Emsha could see another cart pass by. Beyond, dark and squat against the gray-green sky, loomed the Brown Temple. Miserably Emsha crossed the square, and mounted the many steps in the hope of solace and guidance from the Merciful Lady.
§
SWIFTLY ALLISSÁL left the city behind. Only once did she run across some of his warriors: they were driving cattle up the Southern Way to feed the army’s maw. ‘Go quick, my darling,’ she muttered to the mare, digging in her heels.
But the barbarians did not give chase. They stood stupidly and stared and pointed. Vaguely from afar their cries reached her, carried on the wind: The Hooded Man! The Deathless One! She laughed; it pleased her that they took her for himself. She knew then that she was safe, shielded by the myth he had woven about his mask.
By little-traveled ways she sought the dark horizon. She skirted major roads and trade-routes, and rode many miles outside the cities in her path. Even so her progress was good. So, by wood and hill and devious stream, she came into the range of mountains that once had marked the marches of her Empire.
A pass or two she stayed to rest in the abandoned tower of Ghezbal Daan; there she bought cheese and meat and bread of the herders watering their flocks. Restless, she could not abide there long, even if Kis Halá needed rest. She rode down the steep slopes, and entered upon the Marches.
Straight before her she found her road, a wide dead swath of earth that was not marked upon any of her maps. There upon those empty plains she felt her heart expand, to fill and join with desolation. It was a sadness so immense and vague, that it seemed to blend with an unknown pleasure within her. And she thought to herself, that she would have liked to live out the rest of her years here, where she might never again have to hear another person’s voice. But even this small pleasure was denied her, for he would find her here. There was nowhere in this world where she might hide.
She urged the mare on. Before her Yron Ghadil rose and widened its embrace.
She rode on, eating in the saddle. Goddess did not stop Her light, she thought: why then should Her earthly body need to stop? But from time to time she did stop to rest Kis Halá. The long, hurried journey was wearing down the mare. ‘But soon enough,’ Allissál murmured, giving the mare stalks of verdure, ‘soon enough you may rest. On Darkbridge you will rest.’ So the weeks sped with none to count them.
At length, upon a stony hill, she granted her mare a good rest. For three passes Allissál lay upon the hard ground with her traveling-cloak for her blanket and mattress both. She scarcely felt her thighs or buttocks after that riding. She ate of brown bread and dried meat she had traded with the lonely plainsmen; she drank of the frosty waters of the Kabdary’s source; she slept with neither sense nor dream.
Upon the third pass she was awakened by Kis Halá’s warm tongue licking her face. shoved the long head out of her face; but Kis Halá looked back at her with bright, amused eyes.
‘Are you ready, then?’ Allissál asked. ‘Very well. But you need not bear my weight for this part of our road.’
She looked skyward. The mountains rose like a castle wall, and about them carrion birds wheeled. Even as Allissál watched, the jade chariot of God touched the peaks and passed beyond the lands where men dwell. Far away, at the opposite end of heaven, Goddess sat just above the bright horizon, fat and shining like a gorged blood-beetle.
The mountains of Yron Ghadil stretched to either side, in ramparts of crimson, violet and silver. Here so high and far away from Goddess the air was chill, and Allissál felt watched by angry eyes. Shuddering, she gave Kis Halá the last bit of sugar she had saved. She left the girths of the saddle loose, took the leads in hand, and began on foot to ascend the narrow path which led to Ul Raambar.
After a pass she gained the narrow stony field before the city where she had once been welcomed with great honor by the Charan Ankhan and Chara Lisalya. The high stone walls had arched here before her, to form the famous Iron Gates, those gates fashioned in likeness to the Gate of Elna’s fastness. The Raamba gates had been high things of iron and bronze with a frieze of poured warriors, and in blue steel characters worked with fire-opals, the name of the city. Now the walls were rubble, and the gates but scattered fragments bidding entrance to the leavings of the Madpriests, heaps of trash and clean-picked bones.
At her feet Allissál perceived a part of the gates’ device, robbed of fire-opals and broken on both sides so that only ‘AAM’ remained, like a voiceless moan testifying to the fate of the city and its people.
She turned away. The stones fell down to the Marches. And Goddess-sun shone on, as serene now as when Allissál stood here in the arms of Ankhan and Lisalya.
‘O Sun,’ she muttered, ‘be not such a whore, at least avert your face.’
Wearily, Allissál entered the wasteland.
She had loved Tarendahardil better than any city of the earth, but her heart had held a special place for Ul Raambar. Ever she had been forced to see the squalor and corruption of the City Over the World; Ul Raambar had had none. Tarendahardil had sprawled – Ul Raambar had perched on the rocks nice as a gerlin’s nest. Tarendahardil had been fat – Ul Raambar lean; Tarendahardil wealthy – Ul Raambar noble; Tarendahardil softened in her age – Ul Raambar hardened in hers. Tarendahardil had been the seat of the Bordakasha, the World-Rulers who gambled all on power and glory, and knew the risks they took; Ul Raambar had been innocent of guile. She had only sought to guard the lands of men from the Madpriests; now, for another’s whim or cruelty, she was waste.
Allissál saw broken arrows among the bones of the fallen. It had been upon her cause that Ara-Karn came here, to make friends with Ankhan and Lisalya even as he planned their death.
She walked on, leaving Kis Halá behind.
In the city center lay a flat field of stone. Once the palace of Ankhan had towered here. Allissál walked on, but the dirt clung to her feet, as if imploring remembrance of what once had been. Like a ghost wandering the grave-heaps of those too poor to build barges, Allissál passed on.
The ground sloped down beyond where the palace had stood, where trash-heaps were obscured in rising shadows. At the far end of the city the walls of the mountains loomed on either side. The streets ran together to one thoroughfare, like a river to the choke-point of the Pass, where the walls had been thickest, and Raamba soldiery had defied the red-eyed Madpriests.
The mountaintops gleamed bloody overhead, but their bottoms drowned in shadow. A wolf bayed somewhere from the darkside. Even the air seemed tainted by the darkness beyond.
It was the end of life, the edge of the world.
Once again Allissál had the feeling of being watched. She stopped. The wind pouring up from the Pass beyond caught her full in the face, tearing back her hood, scattering her hair, invading her mouth. She caught an odor unlike any she had ever known. An odor of foulness and sickness and cold and death and hatred. A nameless dread surged within her. She knew she could go no farther. She ran back up onto the field of the city, to find and embrace Kis Halá, the only other living thing.
§
SHE ATE and slept and rested. So the passes fled, and Allissál huddled in the shelter of some stones, and dared go no farther.
Something held her there – therefore she waited. From time to time she wondered what he did, and how he had received the news of her flight. She stood outside the shattered Iron Gates and looked back on the world. What went on there, she wondered. It was a curiosity simple and without regret: an innocent wonder in a faraway land that she would never enter. She walked back to her shelter and lay down again in sleep. Now it seemed to her she slept more than she waked.
She woke from a dream she could not remember, and looked into the sky beyond the bloody peaks. God hung there, larger than ever, smiling-bright. He sank away, and was no more.
She stood. Her body seemed light as frost. She heard Kis Halá’s laughing whinny. Something stirred in her, a thing she had considered dead, lost to her forever.
She cast off the heavy cloak and began to move. A song played in her mind, a peasant song she had loved when she was a girl in the mountains. Her feet moved faster. She took up the steps of the dance she had learned with the song. She danced and let go of all thought, she danced and entered wholly into her body as it moved. She did not know what had come over her, except perhaps that she endured so much misery and unhappiness that now she could stomach no more: she became happy instead. Faster and faster she spun until she fell, laughing without breath or mirth.
She caught Kis Halá, pulled tight the girths and vaulted into the saddle. She drew the cloak about her shoulders and urged Kis Halá forward. Uneasily the mare obeyed.
She rode down the Pass. The shadows swallowed her; she took up and lighted a pine torch. It flared in the wind. She urged Kis Halá up and over the thick high walls, where the Madpriests had left their ramps. The mountain-stone rose smooth and soft beyond. Lifting the Torch in one hand, she read what had been graven there:
UL RAAMBAR HAS FALLEN,
ITS LORD AND LADY SLAIN.
WE GO TO SEEK MADPRIESTS
TO MAKE THEM PAY.
—Wrought in the four hundred and thirty-second year of the jewel city by Ghezbal Daan, last captain of Ul Raambar, and these others:
Below it in the soft stone were carven, chipped and scratched two hundred names, marks and devices: some of lords highly-titled, others of rude peasants unable to do more than chip out some design in place of a name. Riding closer, she reached out with the jade dagger and scratched:
Allissál
once Empress
once of the Bordakasha.
Loving the enemy, she fought him,
Despising him, surrendered;
Defeated by him, she conquered.
She leaned back in the saddle, surveying her work. Then she spat into the teeth of the wind, pricked her mare in the rump, and rode down into darkness.
But of a sudden she drew rein. She heard a human voice, faint against the winds from the waste above. She held the torch farther from her ears.
Again she heard it, faint and weak and prayerful, thrown into the Pass.
The voice was calling her by name.
