Samples from books that we have published at Eartherean Books.
This is another in a series from the third book in the 4-book series The Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn: The Iron Gate.
© 2009 by A. Adam Corby
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
The Pass of God
THE RAINS POURED DOWN upon Tarendahardil.
There had never been such a season in the memory of men. The rains made a muddy sink of the field of the barbarians’ camp and filled the cisterns of the Citadel until they overflowed. Goddess was not seen for weeks, and then but briefly, with a wan, unfriendly light.
The assaults upon the Iron Gate grew less frequent and more indifferent. The guardsmen, walking in the rain and forever re-oiling the blades of their weapons, did not enjoy the respite. It was the Tarendahardilites, however, who were the most afflicted. The rains made the grounds of the Citadel into a thick, abominable soup. There, hour upon hour, the miserable survivors of the City Over the World ate and slept and wallowed. Their odor and filth had long since grown dreadful, and the people sullen and brutish.
§
UPON THE PALACE ROOF a crescent of gaily-colored tents had been arranged. They were green and gold, the colors of the spring, and the half-circle opened to the bright horizon. At the brightward end of the roof in a tent set apart from the others, a procession of musicians, actors, reciters, tale-tellers, poets, singers, dancers and mimes performed with the ruins of their City for a backdrop. In the tents of the half-circle the last highborn survivors of the Empire reclined upon couches of seltiswood, accepted the offerings brought by the servants, and enjoyed these entertainments commanded for their pleasure by their Empress to mark the festival of the Pass of God.
The golden fiery disk of Goddess-sun never wavered in its height above the bright horizon. Only as a man traveled toward or away from the bright horizon would he see the Sun rise or sink. But She did turn, in the course of each year, from South to North and back again. She rode high into the North for High Summer, when Her heat was strongest, and she passed back far down to the South in winter, when Her heat and light were at their weakest point. And although the court astronomers rested confident in their calculations and formulae, the people as a rule grew most restive and nervous as they saw Goddess drift farther away into the deep South. And even the most educated of men wondered in their bosoms, whether She would return this year.
And when She lay at her weakest and farthest away, then the passes came when the jade Moon of dark God rode brightest and most arrogantly through Heaven. Then came the time for cut-throats and rapers and reavers of all kind; men showed their worst faces, tempers ran short, crime of all manner doubled, rebellions and revolutions were born, and murder ran rampant and foul.
In the midst of these dark passes, the foulest of the year, was celebrated from time beyond reckoning, the Pass of God.
Its origins lay beyond the ken of the most learned historians. But its trappings and ceremonies were practiced the same from the halls of Vapio to the huts of the far North.
Upon the Pass of God all temples and shrines of Goddess were forsaken and draped in dark cloth. And mummeries were practiced, rude as well as refined: and their subject all the same, violence and death. But a stylized violence, and a death treated most comically.
Thus men looked to smile their way past their fears, and even in propitiating the Dark One, to wink and smile and look with a hopeful eye toward the golden, fiery orb far south of them.
From the depths of the Imperial tent in the hollow center of the crescent, through the eyelets of the mask of heavy gold, the Divine Queen regarded her audience. The courtiers, charai and charanti had broken out their most opulent salvaged treasures in appreciation for this brief respite to the boredom of their captivity; yet little they knew how absurd their costumes appeared in gray rain against the ashen city, nor how empty and false their elegant gestures seemed above the walls of a capital which had become its own necropolis.
Allissál saw and approved them all. It had been her desire that this gathering should be a mockery, as befitted the Pass of God. From time to time she noted disappointment at the quality of the performances, since the finest artists had perished in flames in the pleasure-gardens of the High Charan Arstomenes.
‘Yet stay,’ she whispered within the mask, ‘for I have in mind for an ending an entertainment which will bring even you gracious lords and ladies standing.’
She sat upon a low footstool at the back of the tent, her naked legs crossed beneath her robes. Over the ceremonial robes she wore the gray cloak of a priestess in retirement. She held her hands in her sleeves and accepted none of the cheese or sweetmeats. But before her she had let stand a great gleaming silver-wine-cup dark to the brim with Postio, foaming sweet as blood.
On the couches to her sides sat Captain Berowne and the Rukorian Captain Haspeth. Four Rukorians and four of the Citadel Guard, in full armor and arms, flanked the tent. Upon an elaborate perch Niad devoured big, bloody gobbets of lamb’s meat staining a milk-white bowl.
Apart from the others, near the front of the tent, the presumed Gerso bestrode a stool as he would a horse. He wore a dark green hunting tunic with an empty knife-sheath and a wide cloak slung from his shoulders by a chain of curiously bound iron. His beard was narrow and gleaming, and his long dark hair streamed water upon his chest and cloak. It was he the Empress sent out following each performance to bear gifts to the entertainers. That was a mark of the highest honor, as Haspeth remarked: for any slave might have performed the task with equal courtesy.
The Charan smiled slightly at this, and inclined his head. For his part too, he had refused all meat and wine. ‘It would not be fitting,’ he said once. He did not explain.
The published list of performances was but two-thirds accomplished when a troupe of mimes appeared to perform the Irony of Coliarin. It was an old tale, of Coliarin, the wastrel second son of a High Charan, who spent the last years of his life forlornly seeking his squandered Fortune. Fortune was played by a beautiful woman in a cloak of cloth of gold, masked, tall, who mimicked each of Coliarin’s gestures behind his back. Coliarin wandered from city to city, encountering people of all levels of the world, asking the way to his Fortune that went at his heels like a shadow. In the end Coliarin met a turtle, who told him to look to his back. Coliarin turned to behold his Fortune being seduced by another man. Coliarin, reaching for her most pathetically, expired in comic fashion.
For once the performance was well received, for the mimes were excellent, and their observations of the world both wicked and wise. They were Vapionil, and the parts of Coliarin, Fortune, and Death had been so skillfully drawn that they would have won leaves in the Vapio Festival itself. They pranced, fell, tumbled and grimaced so that the laughter from the tents of the spectators overcame for a moment even the laughter of the rain.
Berowne’s great chest and hard broad belly shook beneath his armor. ‘And to think the poor man went so far and labored so hard, when all he had to do was glance over his shoulder!’
‘It is as true for many,’ the Charan remarked, ‘that they go forward when what they most desire lies in their past.’
‘Friend Ennius, do not act sad,’ Berowne said. ‘Did you not see how he fell, there at the end? Never have I seen such a fall, not even among the street-tumblers of the Thieves’ Quarter.’
‘And what of the woman, echoing even his slightest gestures like the friend in a glass?’ asked Haspeth. ‘It was a thing to tear the delight from even the most downcast of men.’
‘Some men discover the true worth of what they have only after they have lost it forever,’ the Empress said.
‘Do you think he lost his Fortune, your majesty?’ Ennius Kandi asked. ‘Can any man ever lose that which is his?’
‘Why then, my lord, how do you account for the ending?’ asked Haspeth.
‘He did not lose her. He discarded her. All his life he sought a dream, and as long as he did so he sustained the dream within himself. It was only when he beheld her true nature that he was doomed. Then Death itself was to be preferred to surviving the loss of his ideal.’
‘In brief, he was a fool,’ she said.
‘True, such delusions may not long be held by those of us in this world,’ the man in green said gravely. ‘Yet in the other world, perhaps…’
‘What world?’ asked Berowne. ‘The land beyond the Blessed Shores?
‘Perhaps. Perhaps that one beyond Yron Ghadil. Yet as for this other word of your majesty’s, this “forever,” I find it oddly out of place. There is no such thing as forever. Not so long as there is will or desire.’
‘But he died!’ Haspeth said.
‘There is that which outlives death. Desires and souls of sufficient strength. And gods.’
‘Yet when the object of desire is beyond one’s reach?’ the Queen asked, reaching back to caress Niad.
‘Then it becomes necessary to reach farther.’
‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘desire ends before life.’
‘Sometimes. And sometimes, your majesty, desire follows one like Coliarin’s Fortune, plain as Goddess to all others’ eyes.’
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that we have kept the mimes waiting over-long. Captain Berowne, will you pass to Charan Kandi that silver wand? And, Charan Kandi, be sure to express to the man who played Coliarin all our appreciation. There could have been no more suitable presentation this Pass than this tale of an over-grasping man finding at last his deserved end.’
‘Certainly, your majesty.’ He took the wand and stepped into the rain.
Berowne glanced to the tent in which Kiva reclined, beset with blandishments from wealthy merchant and nobleman alike. For a moment he felt resentful that her majesty had insisted he attend her here, and denied him even the solace of a few strong bouts of Postio. He and Haspeth might not even rest in comfort like the others, but must wear full armor and arms.
The Empress was watching the Gerso crossing the rain to the performers’ tent.
‘My captains,’ she said, ‘I have not yet told you how grateful I am for all your efforts on my behalf. When word reached us of Egland Downs, then I thought our own downfall was near. But you have proven yourselves warriors after the style of the early ages of Tarendahardil to withstand so long the barbarians. Truly I had not thought I should live to see this year arrive.’
‘It is your own courage, your reverence, that inspires us to perform beyond ourselves.’
‘I thank you for that, Captain Haspeth. Up to now, however, I have been scarcely more than a shadow to you. It is time I set about playing my part. In the next passes I should like to inspect the cisterns and granaries with you. It would also be well to begin to train the Tarendahardilites with whatever weapons can be found for them.’
‘Rely on Ennius for that, your reverence,’ Berowne said. ‘Those people worship him like a god.’
She said no word to that.
‘Your reverence may expect our fullest readiness and loyalty,’ Haspeth said.
‘There may be even more required of you than that, Captain.’
‘Whatever your reverence requires, it is yours,’ Berowne said.
‘Thank you, Captain Berowne. Yet I may ask of you something which will sorely try even your great faith.’
‘Put me to this test, your majesty,’ Haspeth said, as with a jump of the blood. ‘I wait but for the chance to prove myself worthy again, to expunge the stain upon my honor. The greatest torments I will face, I will not flinch, not even if your majesty ordered me to cut the life from my only brother’s corpse.’
‘I may ask you to go even beyond that, Captain. I may ask you to do what seems to you monstrous and against all reason and knowing – and to do it simply because I ask it.’
‘Your reverence,’ Berowne said, ‘I am here, and hold my office, only because of you. Because of you and your house, this City that I love came into being and stood first among the cities of the world. Command me, and I will act first and consider later. Yet even so, the soldier performs best who has some foreknowledge of what is to be expected of him.’
She took up the silver winecup. She drank deeply, for the first time. Then she put back the cup, letting the two soldiers see that her nails were stained blood red, and that the inside of her left wrist was now dyed with the Sign of the Couple.
‘A traitor dwells among us,’ she told them. ‘He has killed before and will kill again. When these performances have reached their end, I will ask you to place him under arrest and put him to death.’
§
A GUARD appeared before the tent. He was young, and there was fear in his eyes.
‘Yes, Riad, what is there?’ asked Berowne, rising to his feet. He still seemed shaken by what he had just heard. ‘Do they attack again?’
‘No, sir.’ The man opened his mouth, stopped, then rushed on with a flood of words. ‘It’s the people, sir – the Tarendahardilites. They stormed the Hall of Justice. Ullerath called out the men, but even they weren’t enough, and now there are but a handful left to watch the Iron Gate; even so we can scarcely hold them.
‘They have stones and sticks, and cry for food and shelter. How can we raise arms against them? The men linked shields at the doors, but they might be turned even as I speak – there is no knowing how many have been killed already, and Ullerath fears murder if they break into the Palace.’
Haspeth swore. Berowne stood open-mouthed. Servants ran from tent to tent. Indignant cries sounded from the elegant recliners in the other tents.
Niad took wing and swept out of the tent. The gerlin soared over the roof, then dropped like a pitched stone beyond the rim.
From both sides the highborn streamed toward the edge of the roof.
Berowne swung round and went to one knee before the Queen, his eyes a plea for orders.
She herself rose slowly to her feet. She uttered no words, but looked out of the eyelets to where Ennius Kandi congratulated the mimes.
§
AT THE ROOF’S EDGE they made way for her. She heard their comments absently: some highborn lords and ladies made jests and remarks as if the scene below them were but another performance, but others chattered fearfully. Below their feet, the courtyards milled with thousands of Tarendahardilites.
‘By Goddess’ grace,’ Haspeth swore, ‘what madness has taken them?’
‘The madness of cold and hungry misery,’ Berowne said.
‘Well, if the barbarians choose this moment to attack, it will be a pretty turn.’
‘Would it have been possible, think you,’ the Queen asked, leaning over the parapet, ‘for anyone to have sent messages to them, to goad them to this frenzy?’
‘Does your reverence mean the traitor?’ Berowne asked.
‘Your majesty, speak his name now. We will end this stain on our honor before we deal with the rabble below.’ Haspeth’s voice was hot and eager for death.
Far below, the color of the mob altered, as heads turned skyward into the rain. They saw the spectators lining the roof’s edge; from their thousand throats a sullen roar struck off the walls.
‘We will go below,’ Allissál commanded. ‘This should never have been. Captain, are you sure of your men?’
‘As sure as I am of my own heart.’
‘We will see. Come.’
§
HOW IT HAD BEGUN, no man might have said. There had been the usual hunger, the usual misery, the usual grumbling on the grounds, but not to excess. Only their quality seemed strained this pass. Perhaps it was the thought of the entertainments given on the rooftop for the delectation of the high ones, perhaps it was the influence of Him in whose honor this pass was named. But all at once a woman whose child had perished of the fever two weeks earlier rose and cried in a fearsome wail, ‘Is it a feast-pass, and is there to be no more food for us?’
And from all quarters a hundred arose and began striding toward the Palace, perhaps with no other intention than of begging for more bread. But five hundred more rose on their heels, and then the whole encampment was afoot. And they went not humbly, but with a growing rage. For were they not the last survivors of the City Over the World, so how was it they must suffer and perish in filth worse than any barbarian’s?
They swarmed past the gateways and filled the inner courtyards. They lifted their faces against the rain, to the balconies and windows behind which the rich and noble dwelt in comfort. And then they came upon the broad stone steps leading to the ancient colonnade and the doorless entrance to the Imperial Hall of Justice.
The foremost halted.
Then they surged forward again.
The steps vanished beneath them. The low roof of the colonnade echoed to their passing. Thousands of them filled the hollow of the gloomy, ancient Hall; thousands more milled and thronged without.
But the guardsmen had not stood idle. They saw the movement of the Tarendahardilites and told Ullerath. The Eglandic lieutenant called the men off duty and marched them to meet the mob. Seeing them by the Hall of Justice, Ullerath guessed their goal, though not their purpose, and at double step led his men through another gateway and down the corridors in time to take a stand at the doors to the lower Hall before the mob broke into the Palace itself.
The Tarendahardilites, unsure in their own hearts just what they wanted, halted before the King’s Light where, throughout the centuries, Emperors had given justice to their people. Something of awe entered the inflamed hearts of the foremost of the Tarendahardilites, so that their voices stilled. Their eyes ran round the walls, set with busts of all the Emperors to Elna.
It was then that Ullerath, having dispatched one man to summon more men from the Gates and Riad to the roof for the guidance of the captains and the Queen, made a mis-step. He ordered the inner doors opened and told his men to lower their lances to cow the mob.
There were six entrances into the Hall: one through the colonnade, two portals that broke the long wall in thirds on the level of the stone-worked floor, and two other portals above, leading from the upper level of the Palace to the galleries, where of old the noblest houses had set their names and devices in brass upon the backs of long benches. There was also a small, little-known way, which led to a low, close chamber hidden behind the dais. The guardsmen stood at the ground portals; above, all was as yet obscure.
So, when of a sudden the only two doorways to be seen were opened to reveal the guards in full armor, lances ready, the Tarendahardilites felt caught in a trap. Fear rose in them, and indignation. Were those lances now trained upon them, as if they were no better than barbarians? Were they to be slaughtered for some bread?
Ullerath stood forward. The Eglander was tall and lean. His eyes cut deep beneath his upswept brow, and his pupils seemed fashioned for looking out across the immense spaces of the plains of his home. He held his lance aloft and demanded of the filthy, rain-sodden mob,
‘Why you have broken like robbers into the house of our Queen? You have come where you do not belong. Return where you belong, or I shall see that you regret it!’
He spoke harshly, for Ullerath feared for the safety of Kiva, the lady he loved in rivalry with Berowne. So he spoke without thought, and said more than he wished.
The outcome was immediate and unfortunate. The Tarendahardilites were prisoners within the Citadel. Wretchedly as unwanted hounds or stepchildren had they been treated before, when they had come as suppliants to the refuge of their sovereign; now, having offended, what lot could they hope to be accorded?
From the depths of the crowd a voice shouted, ‘Bread! Give us bread!’
They began to move forward.
Another cried, ‘Shelter for our children!’
‘Soup for our bellies!’
‘Fresh clothes for our backs!’
‘Cups that are clean!’
‘And wine!’
‘And cloaks!’
‘And winter loras!’
‘And tent-cloths to put over us!’
‘And wood to burn!’
‘Death or hard knocks is all that you’ll get if you do not give way now!’ Ullerath bellowed. He knew than he had mistaken; he saw it in the eyes of his own men.
The crowd surged forward. The foremost crowded the portals. The guardsmen gave back half a step. Their eyes went to Ullerath for some way not to kill, but Ullerath was new-come from the plains, and had never commanded men against city rioters. It was long years since the granaries had last run empty and riots broke out of the Thieves’ Quarter – not since two years before Dornan Ural had been named High Regent.
The crowd sensed the indecision of the guardsmen, and shoved forward once more.
Now they were at the very threshold of the portals, and stained with their dark grasping hands the delicate friezes round the door frames.
The guardsmen gave back again, a full step. The lances wavered and clattered against one another. Another step and the portals would be cleared.
Then suddenly the mob receded back into the Hall. They pushed back against the far wall, leaving space before the guardsmen. The mob raised their heads toward the upper reaches of the Hall.
There Allissál stood with the remnants of her court.
To her right was Berowne, to her left Haspeth. Some servants held lamps, and the oil-fed flames cast lurid crowns behind the black cowl, and gleamed like lightning off the golden mask.
Seeing the Divine One so near, the mob hushed. She waited until the moment it must break, then spoke and said,
‘So, my people, you have sought me here into the Hall of Justice, as is your right. What then do you require of me, a woman who has lost her son, her land, and her city?’
There were murmurs but no answer to her words. The refugees within the Hall seemed shamed and sullen, though the thousands out in the yard still grumbled.
Then a woman cried out from the back of the Hall.
‘Give us shelter!’
Allissál turned to Berowne and said softly, ‘Captain, go below and take counsel with your lieutenant and see how the men fare.’
‘Ay, your reverence,’ he said, giving her the military salute. The nobles in their fineries stepped forward to take his place: four stood where he had been, three charanti and one young chara whose eyes glowed darkly in the lamplight. There were dried flowers in her loosened hair and her lora was rumpled about the skirts.
The masses saw the drunken highborn, and their fury and despair awoke again. And the woman’s voice rose up, a howl as from some beast-bitch that has lost her brood to a hunter’s wiles: ‘Give us shelter!’
And a man shouted, ‘Give us food!’
And at that the cries went up from all sides of the crowd: not the cries of suppliants but of men who demand that which has long been promised them:
‘Give us wood to burn!’ – ‘Give us lamps to light our hearts!’ – ‘Give us tent-cloth!’ – ‘Give us bread without worms!’ – ‘Give us herbs to cure our children!’
The cries went on, growing in ferocity. Even the sacred person of the Queen but served further to inflame them. She had failed them. They had starved and perished while she reclined in opulence and commanded players to amuse her. In their suffering they had called upon her – she had done nothing.
The crowd surged forward. Even the Vapionil nobles paled. And still the cries went on.
‘Give us water to wash our clothing!’ – ‘Give us peace from the barbarians!’ – ‘Give us beds, linens, roofs for our children!’ – ‘Give us respite from this winter that destroys us slowly, one by one!’
‘No!’
The cry was sudden, unlooked-for: the voice thunderous and stern as dark God’s own. In its wake the mob was struck silent and fearful. They turned to seek out the source of the voice. It had come not from above but from the empty stone dais – from the King’s Light where the high throne of Elna stood massive and immovable.
A single man stood there.
He was tall, lean, garbed in a green hunting tunic and cloak. He bore no weapons, and his hair and garb were fully as rain-sodden as the rags of the Tarendahardilites.
He stood in the center of the King’s Light. The sky had lightened, and Goddess shone upon the dais, and upon the face of the Charan Ennius Kandi, as if he had been cut out of stone, one with the busts along the walls.
He pointed down at the Tarendahardilites, accusingly. The crowd fell back some paces, more fearful of that stabbing finger than they had been of the guardsmen’s lances.
‘What do you here, what do you seek?’ His voice seemed to take on the harshness and solidity of the age-old stones themselves. ‘Do you come to draw our defenders from the walls, and make it easier for the enemy to kill us all? Will you eat up what grain we have, empty the cisterns of their abundance? Have you now no greater foresight than children? “Give, give, give!” you cry – but what will you give, what have you ever given? You receive the bounty of these walls, of the lives of loyal guardsmen, of grain and water: what have any of you ever done to repay these priceless gifts?
‘By dark God, were I your ruler, I would give you all you ask and curse you to the Knife-Edged Border, and then open the Iron Gate and see how much better you enjoy slavery to the barbarians to the sanctuary of the Bordakasha! Is it for you that I go upon the lance-tower at the risk of my life? Is it for you that I have seen the black battlements run with the blood of loyal guardsmen? Is it for this I have gone among you and seen to your children, and sought out lost relatives on the far side of the camp, and seen to the peace of the quarrels that break out among you as often as squabbles between spoiled children? Is this how I receive my payment for all my pains?’
The mob bowed their heads. But he went on, relentless.
‘Well, you may have your wishes, all of them – I grant you all! Guardsmen, Captains, lay your lances on the floor. As for me, I carry no weapon. Come kill me first, and let Him for whom this pass is sacred curse and harry you to the last of your wretched lives!’
They stood amazed and fearful at his rage even more than his words. Never had they seen him thus: before them he had ever appeared kindly, humble, even loving. They had never known such strength in him. They had come to worship him as their only bulwark against the hordes of Ara-Karn. Bereft of him they should have been harmless as babes against those ravening thousands. Their hearts quailed; and as if commanded by some greater, unseen power, they went down on their knees before him, regardless that such an act was blasphemy in the presence of the Empress.
‘Well?’ he cried, more wrathful than before. ‘What play-acting is this? Come on!’
‘We cannot!’ came a woeful voice.
‘You must!’ he stormed. ‘There is no going back for you now. What a man begins this pass, he must end – is that not the saying of the Pass of God? Do you think that I would go upon the battlements to defend you, after this? How could I be sure that you would not fall back on these tricks, storming the Palace and putting to death innocent slaves and helpless nobles for a few loaves of moldy bread?’
‘We will give you oaths, we will swear it before the Couple!’ they cried.
‘What good are the vows of children? No, it must be better than that.’
An awkward silence fell athwart the Hall. Beyond the lower portals the guardsmen stood unarmed above their weapons, awed at the sight of this one man’s fury cowing the desperation of thousands. Even the drunken nobles stood rapt by the performance.
The silence grew. The Tarendahardilites glanced back out toward the grounds, but crowded thus on their knees there was no easy way they might depart. Then, reedy and thin, an old man’s voice sounded from someplace in the thick of the mass amongst the roof-pillars.
‘I will gladly be called a child, if you will be my father,’ he said humbly.
The Charan Ennius Kandi lowered his arm. He seemed to consider for several dreadful moments. Then he said, ‘If I am to be called father, then I will look for naught but blind obedience from you, no matter what I demand.’
‘You will have it!’ cried a woman.
‘I will have no grumblings, no more games like this.’
‘No, no!’
‘You will call me Father, and be obedient in all things. And in turn I will see to your needs in the way of any father for the children of his body. But hold it fast in your minds always, that this thing must be bound as by blood between us on this very pass. And God Himself shall hold this relation sacred, and woe betide any who trespass it!’
‘So be it!’ they cried, with one voice. ‘We swear it, by the Dark One!’
‘And so I swear likewise.’ His voice was more human now. Something of the greatness of his presence seemed lost, as if it had taken all his strength to cast down the will of those thousands and make of it a thing to leap and dance to his.
‘And now, Father Ennius?’ they cried out. ‘What will be our lot now? What may we hope for?’
‘You may expect a punishment for having dirtied this Hall and put the life of her majesty in danger,’ he said. ‘Return to whence you came, and sit through the fifth meal without a drop of water or a crumb of bread. This is my decision.’
Sullen silence answered him. Some hundreds of them rose up angrily and dismayed.
‘Well?’ He had turned as if to vanish again as mysteriously as he had appeared; now he turned back. ‘Why do you wait? Do you want my permission to beg forgiveness from her majesty, whose house you so rudely broke into? Very well, then: you have it.’
His voice was like a rod of bronze. Penitently then, on their knees again, the Tarendahardilites begged pardon from the woman in black above them. Silently she inclined the gold mask and blessed them with the Sign of Goddess.
‘And now,’ the man on the dais said, ‘my children, you have my leave to go.’
They pushed back out of the hall. They had accepted his punishment. There would be no further trouble this pass.
Berowne breathed a great sigh of thanksgiving. The guardsmen gathered up their arms and saluted the man who had once again proved their salvation.
Above, the many nobles also departed. Soon only the slaves, Haspeth, and the Empress remained before the benches.
‘Your majesty,’ the Rukorian said, ‘now that this matter is ended, thanks to the Charan, what of the traitor?’
‘There is no traitor, captain,’ she said. She still gazed down at the King’s Light, though the man who had stood in it had gone. ‘I only wished to test your loyalty. Now I see no sovereign could find finer men to serve her.’
‘Your majesty, we did little. It is the Charan who holds the debt of all our thanks.’
‘Captain, need I teach you yet again, how to address me?’
He bowed his head. ‘Yes, your reverence.’
She turned to go. And she thought to herself, bleakly as a condemned prisoner whom the world has made its puppet, It is too late. I waited too long. I dare not unmask him now.
§
THE RAIN fell again on the stone field of the Palace roof. The streams ran culverts to drains down which they fell to the black caverns beneath the Palace, where brick-lined cisterns had been constructed centuries before.
Alongside one culvert a solitary figure crossed the roof-field toward the Imperial tent, the last left facing the performers’ tent. The man halted before the tent, rainwater streaming from his wrists and cloak.
The Empress Allissál raised her head silently. Before her the gilded wine cup lay upon its side. An empty amphora stood beyond.
‘You have something to say to me, I think,’ he said.
The mask remained as unreadable as the metal from which it had been forged.
‘Not yet?’ he asked. ‘When your maidens so readily allowed me to enter your presence, it raised my hopes.’
He straddled the stool. He looked at her in such a way that she knew that, despite her robes, she sat nude before him. She saw drops of rainwater glistening in his beard, and remembered once how, after they had sported together in her bath, she had seen fragile droplets caught in the hairs about his sex, so that they gleamed like diamonds.
‘I liked you better clean-shaven,’ she said.
‘I liked you better in the role of Dhalki,’ he remarked. ‘Do you remember? That winter when we hunted game in the snowy mountains above the castle of your childhood, and you took a thorsa by yourself.’
‘I remember.’
‘It was in remembrance of that sojourn that I wore this garb this pass. The entertainments you offered were quite enjoyable while they lasted.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It was on the Pass of God,’ he said, ‘that you brought down your thorsa and told me of your childhood. And yet that time seems so far away, farther even than the Pass of God I was offered a barbarian maiden who shared your likeness – all but the eyes – or the Pass of God when we slept together on the edge of the Desert and swam beneath Goddess in a lake blue-white with salt. And yet none of those times is as far away from us as now.’
‘I never swam in a lake at the edge of the Desert.’
‘Allissál did not, perhaps. But Gold did.’
‘Will you bait me forever, or will you speak of it?’
He smiled. ‘Very well. You meant to have me put to death this pass.’
‘It was decided and arranged.’
‘You meant to give your people a great entertainment upon this Pass of God: the death of Ara-Karn. You would have hung my body on the Iron Gate and let the word run from city to city that the dreaded Enemy was no more. So you hoped my warriors would lose heart and decamp; so the Southrons would take hope and cast out the invaders.’
‘And do you know what stopped me?’ she asked. Her voice was bitter as the gall of a sacrificial bird.
‘I do. Do you?’
‘You have won, you have conquered, all are yours,’ she said. ‘I surrender. Let there be an end. The Empress nal Bordakasha who sought your downfall is no more. The spectators have sought their dimchambers, but I let the performers’ tent stand for your final act. Reveal yourself then and tell me what you want.’
‘But how can I remove my mask when you still wear yours?’ he said softly. He stepped forward and reached for her mask.
And she felt again that feeling that had seized her when, in thick of those on the upper galleries, she beheld him stand alone against the mob: a feeling of overbearing desire for him, who she knew now was the only man she could ever have, and the only man who could have her. Against that feeling she struggled desperately, her arms tense within the sleeves, her hand tight upon the jade handle of the dagger.
‘Ah, no,’ he whispered. ‘That is for you alone to remove.’
He caught her up in his arms. Taken unawares by the gesture, she pulled her arms free and caught his neck. He bore her out into the rain. Her gray cloak swept against his long legs as he walked. The rain streamed from his beard onto her breast. She felt the long hard lines of his veins beneath her palms, and knew he felt her nakedness through the wet linen.
He bore her into her tent. His boots kicked aside the empty wine-cups. Crossing to the raised dais, he gently seated her in the jeweled throne, the throne she had commanded brought up from the audience chamber. Then he stepped back and surveyed her.
‘I return you all titles, lands, cities, powers and peoples as hitherto,’ he stated. ‘From the mountains of Belknule to those of Bollakarvil and beyond, from the entrance of the Southern Way into Vapio to the broken walls of Postio, all men shall know your strength and call you Empress again. All your former realms and all the others that my tribesmen conquered in the South shall be yours to set your heel upon as prettily and as easily as you might set it on this prayer mat. So you will rule the greatest realm of any member of your line for the past six generations.’
She stiffened in the throne as if she had just been given the gravest insult. ‘And for all this that you grant me,’ she asked, ‘what am I to give?’
‘Yourself.’
She laughed, a harsh bitter laugh, angry and contemptuous. ‘And do you think now you can purchase me?’
‘Do it, Gold,’ he said, and for a moment she thought she heard almost despair in his voice. ‘Do it, or you will behold dreadful consequences of the deeds of this pass.’
‘Never. I will cast myself from the Palace roof first. Do you think I would ever consent to play your concubine for all the world to see?’
‘I did not ask as Ara-Karn,’ he said sadly. ‘So you see: all is not yet mine, and the Empress lives still. The war will go on, then.’
She threw herself forward on all fours, her body beneath the wet linen quivering. ‘You monster!’ she cried, as if her words might wound. ‘You are no man, but a devil sent here to torment me!’
He paced the tent restlessly. It was as though he had not heard. Caught against the brightness of the outer clouds, he was but a dark outline. She could scarcely make him out. His voice issued out of the outline.
‘Once, such words from your lips would have wounded me worse than lance-thrusts. Now … now they are wasted on a dead man.’
Something caught her eye then: it was his shadow. It moved strangely out of harmony with his own steps, as though it were the shadow of another man who walked beside him.
She leaned back, satisfied that her words had hit the mark, and smiled … what had taken place?
She had blinked, but it felt as though she had slept. It was as though an hour had slipped by. He no longer stood in the opening of the tent. The rains were pouring down across the roof and he was there leaning over her and she felt his hands upon her, roaming. And for one moment or two it felt to her as though she were still dreaming, and she wanted it like she wanted him in all the other shameful dreams she had had.
But though he stood still she glimpsed out of the corner of her eye that his shadow moved. It touched her own and crawled on top of it. Then she felt a thrill run down her spine to leave a sweet ache in the headwater of her sex. Fire flushed down her face and upper arms and breasts, and her mouth ran dry.
She should have protested. She should have stopped him but instead she stopped herself from stopping him. Let him go on, a voice welled up from deep within her, there is no one to see, no one will know what you do here … you are safe with him, you need not command but only obey, ease into his power and let him do what he does so well, as he did on the pass of Elnavis’ voyaging when you were so alone, as lonely as you are now … only he came to you then, as he comes to you now … as he will always come to you…
And something yielded within her. She let go, and let him go on.
His hands slipped between her breasts. He reached through her sleeve into the robes and drew out her arm. Her fist was a white knot clenched about the jade handle of his dagger. Why so angry, little one? she asked her fist. You make no sense.
He smiled the mocking maddening smile. He drew her hand down so that the knife-blade slipped beneath the linen sash that held her robes in place about her waist. Pulling her hand down in his, he made her cut through the sash.
Its two ends fell asunder.
She twisted but his fingers wrapped about her wrist and knuckles and he pulled her hand to his own waist. The knife-blade found the leather belt in his tunic and sliced through. It passed lower.
‘Oh yes,’ he murmured, and held her hand more firmly.
The needle-sharp point cut the lacing of his breeches, one turn at a time. His sex burst forth but she looked away from it. His eyes caught her gaze and she could not look away from those eyes.
‘And now the rest.’
She felt his hand push her fist and dagger towards her, between her legs. She would not look there – she would not. But she heard the whisper the black fabric made when the knife slashed through it, and she felt the coolness of the airs as they swept between her bared thighs.
‘Stop – stop it,’ she heard her voice say, half muffled through her teeth and the mask. But why do you say that, little voice? You tell only lies.
And he would not stop. Slowly he bore back upon her hand until her arm bent behind her and her wrist felt it would shatter – then all at once her fingers convulsed and opened and the dagger clattered on the roof-stones.
She shuddered, but he pressed down upon her with the length of his body. She felt his hands upon her knees pass up her thighs. She felt his hands upon her belly and her breasts and throat. She felt his hand slip into the very hollow between her thighs and linger there, and to her shame she knew he felt the dampness of her traitorous flesh.
He held her gaze and touched his fingers to his tongue. It was as if his eyes spoke to her and said, This taste I know. This taste I own. I can make you taste this way, whenever I desire.
His face bent down to within a finger’s breadth of the mask. His eyes filled the field of her sight.
‘Whenever I desire,’ he said, and entered her.
He raped her then, with long, slow, knowing strokes. He slid inside her to the root, then slid out all the way, then entered her again. She felt full, then empty; empty, then full. He knew every trick to make her body twitch and gasp. He played her body like a master aliset-player, and her body made for him the music she had longed for and feared and hated most of all because it came from him. When she cried out, he did not stop, but went on, altering his rhythm and speed, turning her back and forth, here and there where he wanted. She struggled no longer. She was his and knew it. She felt his seed loosed like a melting, and she bit into his shoulder to stifle a second outcry.
Only then did he let her go. He stood over her. The rain drew tears from his eyes, from the black depths where green flecks fired. He pulled the cloak around him, touched his brow to her, and left.
His boots scraped on the roof-stones. The door to the White Tower opened and shut.
She looked past the tent roof to the clouds and rain. She lay still upon the platform. She felt her breath shudder as it passed through her open mouth and filled her lungs. She lay back, her legs open to Heaven, and let the rains lave her there with cool small hands.
Something of herself, of her own will and heart, came back to her then. It felt as though a darkness had been lifted from her eyes and she could see again. But what she saw filled her with revulsion.
I am a whore, she thought. I am called a Queen and wear the robes of a priestess, but my body is a slut from the streets in the Thieves’ Quarter.
She felt tears in her eyes and the sky blurred. And then all she felt was the hope to hear the door open again, and his boots upon the roof stones coming back to her.
