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.
Epilogue
WHEN THE SOLDIERS found the Citadel empty, most of them returned to Rukor and put away their swords. But part of the army remained; Haspeth led them darkward and waged war upon Erion Sedeg in Fulmine. After some months’ campaigning the two armies joined on a muddy field in Belknule in the battle known thereafter as the Wolf’s-Feast. There fell Haspeth and all his followers, even to Haspeth’s son. Erion Sedeg lived, though wounded and weak. With him survived fewer than fifty of his mercenaries.
Upon his return to the horse-court of his fastness in Fulmine, the man who was called the King’s Tongue was murdered by the hostage children. For a prank they sketched these characters in his blood on the stones beside the corpse:
DA ELGA KAAN
The children scattered laughing to their home-born cities, where they were received with welcomes as heartfelt as they were brief.
But when the cities heard rumor of the return of the Divine Queen and that she had joined herself in marriage to the King in the old Imperial City, they sent legates to see if it were true. Bands of people flocked there as well, so that the ruins came alive again. Guided by the last priestess of the Brown Temple, they passed fire over the black mountain-top and cleansed the earth with seawater, and so purified the place of evil and consecrated it as a barge-tomb for the poisoned ones.
Alsa found that she could not leave behind her virgin’s robes so quickly, for there was much to be done that year, and she alone knew the rites which would ease the people’s minds. Messengers were sent to the other priestesses in the caves of the Desert, but they did not return.
At opposite ends over the welcoming gateway of the barge two statues were raised, of red stone, one at the north lance-tower and the other at the south. So different they had been in their hearts and all their ways, yet fate entangled their lives to end them. Now like sentinels the carven likenesses of Gundoen and Ampeánor stood atop the battlements of the barge and looked out over the reborn city, brightward and to the sea; and the gentle light of Goddess, loving and forgiving, fell upon them both in equal measure.
§
THAT SPRING Kiva returned to Tarendahardil. She and her followers stayed in the Hall of Kings and there did worship to the royal couple.
One sleep the King came to see Kiva alone. He showed her two ornate, gilded coffers. ‘I kept these for you,’ he told her, ‘but it was not until now I could bring myself to let you have them. It was not always irony. I knew them too.’
Kiva took the coffers out of the city brightward to the hill beside the sea. There, in the two beautiful barge-tombs she had had built a year earlier, she put the coffers along with clay vessels of food and Postio wine. Then in the strong ruddy light of Goddess she did off her robes and lay in the dirt between the tombs with the men who had accompanied her.
The two men returned to the city, but Kiva did not clothe herself. Naked in the dirt she abased herself and, lifting her face brightward prayed, ‘O Lady, you who are never far off when a woman knows joy or suffering, grant now that these two men, whom I loved beyond all the others I knew, be given free passage across the seas to the world beyond. Here I have honored them as best I could. Now give them strong and beautiful bodies there, laughter, riches, and peace, and the company of women no less lovely, no less skilled, and no less drunk in love with them, than I.’
A full waking and longsleep Kiva rested with only a cloak of black linen and a necklet of chorjai blossoms to conceal her nakedness. There she ate of the finest food and drank dark Postio unmixed, and wept and laughed and remembered, and so gave ease to the spirits of Ullerath and Berowne.
§
THE REBEL TRIBES did not reach home swiftly, for they were a large company burdened with many goods and followers, and the roads of the North were unsafe. More battles lay in store for them, but at length, in the fullness of summer of that year, they won their way to the Pass of Gerso and the ash-field of the city where they had begun.
Through the Pass at last they beheld again the woodlands and wild fields of the cold far North so dear to their savage hearts. Some went down on their knees and kissed the dirt of their native land. There had been little wine on the journey, and the going had been hard along those muddy, snow-flecked, outlaw roads. The tribesmen were lean again and hard, and their cold eyes glittered young once more.
They followed the paths and sought their own villages, Vorisal and Kamskal and Morbynar, Chalpion, Roighal, Karghil, River’s-Bend, Forun, Buzrah and Undain.
Last of all to reach home were Kul-Dro and the men of the tribe of Tont Ornoth, whose village lay farthest from the Pass. One week they had passed in Durbar, and now Nam-Rog came on with them, bearing still the jeweled coffer.
Hertha-Toll greeted the chieftain of the Durbars gravely amidst the wild cries and laughter of the warriors and their wives. Together they went down to the bay and placed the coffer in the barge the old woman had readied.
They went out in a fishing boat upon the Ocean of Death. Nam-Rog pulled the oars and Hertha-Toll held the line. They found the Current of the Dead and let the barge drift. And Hertha-Toll said the words, and so they bade their last farewell to him whose life had bound theirs, the bravest man, the ablest warrior, and the mightiest hunter of all the tribes of the far North.
§
HALF A YEAR passed, and spring wheeled round again to the far North. Then a ship came into the bay below Gundoen’s village. It was a ship from Arpane on the Sea, the only city on the Ocean of Death.
The ship drove its keel up aground, and men came ashore laden with trunks of riches and bales of silks and linens. And there stepped ashore a young woman, almost a girl, beautiful, of black eyes and lustrous dark hair.
‘I am called Alsa,’ she said.
In her arms she cradled an infant some months old, strong with bright jade eyes and golden hair.
The young woman presented the child to Hertha-Toll on the beach. ‘I bring him to you from the King and Queen in Tarendahardil,’ she told her through the interpreters. ‘He is their firstborn. It was their wish that you guide and raise him, if this pleases you. He has of course many names, but the one we all call him, is “Gundoen-Ana.” ’
The old woman took young Gundoen-Ana into her arms. He was sheltered from the cold in the folds of a dark green hooded hunting-cloak from Gerso, bound with a blood-red opal brooch-pin cut in the likeness of a spider.
Hertha-Toll held him up into the bright, bright sky.
‘So,’ she said to Nam-Rog at her side, ‘a child has come out of this after all.’
The Tale Behind the Tale
The Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn I composed when quite young, and sold to the TimeScape imprint of Pocket Books. But since it was a long book, my editor, David Hartwell, asked that it be divided into three volumes. At the time I considered this to be a mistake: personally I love and prefer long tales, if they be good ones, and enjoy the prospect of a good long read when I heft a thick tome in my hand. But I agreed to David’s condition of publication because he knew his business, and I also saw opportunities for improving the tale by restructuring some chapters in the course of helping each volume to stand better on its own.
It took me a long time to recast the second volume, and years to rework the third. The book was long overdue; what’s more, the first two volumes had not sold well, and David Hartwell had left Pocket Books. The new editorial staff looked over my reworked third volume (now almost as long as the entire tale had been when it was deemed too long to publish in one volume), and declared it was unpublishable. They were right: the thing had run away from me.
And so no one but my friends has ever read the full story, or learned the final fate of Ara-Karn.
Now some thirty years after the book was first accepted for publication (and with asotir’s assistance), I can offer a revised and expanded 30th anniversary edition.
The first two volumes – The Former King and The Divine Queen – I reproduce much as they were first published, correcting only some typos and grammatical errors that slipped past me. The unhappy third volume I have shortened somewhat, and reworked it into two parts, now titled The Iron Gate and Darkbridge.
To those who read the first volumes long ago, and have wondered in the years since, ‘What happened, and how did it all end up?’ I offer my apologies. Now at last, if you have found this, you can find out.
— Adam Corby
Spring 2009
