by Adam Corby
Ennius Kandi emerged from the doorway of the southern lance-tower and calmly collected bundles of reddened arrows. He descended into the workshop of the armorer.
After a few moments he emerged, bearing a long bundle wrapped in dark cloth.
He passed though the inner gates and strode across the grounds of the Citadel. There as usual the refugees clustered about him, flinging questions at him about the assault and the words spoken between the guardsmen and the barbarians. But he did not stay among them long.
Instead, he entered the dim corridors of the Palace and mounted in swift, long strides the steps to the uppermost story. There, on the dark side of the Palace, the Gerso entered his own chambers, silent, somber, and empty. The Gerso’s only servant had been Kuln-Holn, but Kuln-Holn had long since left his service.
In the corridor without, the palace guard sat within his accustomed niche and quietly watched the Gerso’s door, as the Queen had commanded.
Ennius Kandi stepped out onto his balcony. There he opened the armorer’s bundle, revealing two long iron rods set with prongs resembling claws. Along with the rods in the bundle was a large wooden hammer of the sort shipbuilders use to drive home pegs in the bellies of ships.
On the balcony the air was clear and cold. Winds gusted from the roof above. Far below, the half-burnt lower quarters of the city spread in patterns of shadow and light.
Ennius Kandi lifted one of the rods.
With care he set the claws upon it and screwed them fast. He placed the instrument against the stones of the outer wall beside the balcony. With the hammer he drove the claws into the cracks between the stones. The claws did not penetrate the stone far, but when the Gerso pulled down on the rod, the claws but gripped the stone tightly.
He stood on the stone balustrade, and stepped out upon the fastened rod. Each claw passed through the rod and emerged upon the other side in a ring. The charan planted his foot in the lower ring and gripped the upper ring with his hand. He tied a rope around his chest and then to the upper ring, freeing his hand.
He stepped completely off the balustrade, swinging a little in the winds.
The claws of the rod gripped the stone more tightly.
Calmly, the Gerso adjusted the second rod. When it was fitted to his satisfaction, he pulled the hammer from his belt and drove the rod in, above that from which he hung.
The mountain winds buffeted him and made a rippling banner of his tunic. He had forsaken his cloak. Far below him the gerlins soared about the rugged cliffs. The Gerso now hung from the second rod. He used the hammer to release the grip of the first, and reset the distance between its claws. The sounds of the wooden hammer could not overcome the groan of the winds enough to call attention to any within the thick walls. The balconies were empty. It was the time of the long sleep.
It took him less than half an hour to reach the Palace roof.
The Gerso loosened his instruments and drew them up after him. The wide stone field of the rooftop, set with walkways and lookout points and statues, was empty. He stood alone as on a high tableland. About him were the taller peaks of the towers, below him the crowded grounds, the Iron Gate and the outbuildings. Beyond and below the Citadel spread the city; beyond and below the city stretched the world.
Ennius Kandi shouldered the rods and made his way across the rooftop.
Two doorways opened onto the rooftop, one from the White Tower and one from the Black. The Black Tower was shorter yet greater of girth than the White. It linked the central, older halls of the Palace and the smaller Southern Wing. Within the Southern Wing the last charai and charanti were housed and fed. There they drank the last of their wine, dallied and sported, and spoke no word regarding the barbarian. The Black Tower held the important Tarendahardilites, those with influence enough to escape the hardships of the camp below. Kiva dwelled there, along with merchants and ambassadors.
Ennius Kandi passed the Black Tower and approached the White. He kept to the darkward edge of the roof, lest any from the courtyards below might see him. Softly, he tried the green-worked brass doors. They were barred from within. Shrugging the rods free, he stepped to the edge of the roof. Once again he eyed the stones of the wall, set the claws of the devices, and swung his shipwright’s hammer. Again he looped and tied the rope through the upper ring of the first rod, swung out over the lip of the roof, and fell from sight.
Like a dark beetle on the face of a white sand dune, the Gerso worked his way around the tower. The white stone was rougher than the black of the Palace, bearing still the scars of chisels. It was softer as well, rendering the purchase of the iron claws less secure. The upper claw of one rod pulled free with a grating sound, and for a moment the Gerso swung out from the wall as the rod slowly twisted the lower claw out.
A hundred fathoms below, the Palace dump heaps beckoned.
He stretched his arm and twisted the rope through the lower ring of the second rod just as the lower claw of the first rod broke free. The rod fell a few feet, caught on the rope and rang against the stone.
The Gerso grasped the lower ring of the second rod and pulled himself up. Secure upon the second rod, he hauled up the first rod and studied its claws. They were still useful, having bent little. The soft stone had crumbled and broken instead.
Two fathoms to the Gerso’s right, somewhat above where he now hung, the first window of the tower’s darkward side broke the pale surface.
Ennius Kandi smiled, and touched his brow in ironic salute to the Palace dump-heaps.
When he reached the window, he peered inside. The window opened onto the tower stair. To one side doors connected the tower to the rooftop; below, the doors opened into the Palace. The stairwell was empty. Then voices sounded from above, and the Gerso dropped back upon the rings of his devices.
Two maidens descended the steps from above. For a moment their forms crossed the window. Both were beautiful, young and carefree. Ennius Kandi recognized them as the Queen’s personal slaves. The maidens reached the lower doors and left the tower.
The Gerso wormed his way back in. He left the rods fastened to the wall outside.
Some moments he spent smoothing his ruffled hair and restoring order to his garments. He concealed the rope about his chest behind a statue in a corner where the dust was not light. The stairwell was still. From somewhere above, women’s laughter sounded, delicate, musical, a sound of innocent yet knowing happiness. Ennius Kandi climbed the stair.
Upon a landing above, a set of broad, beautifully-carven wooden doors adorned the wall. It was from here the two maidens had come.
Silently, Ennius Kandi opened the doors and passed within.
It was a long low chamber draped in black. At the far wall a jeweled throne crowned a dais. The throne was empty, but before the dais lay a reed prayer-mat, upon which crouched a delicate figure. Nothing of the figure could be seen, for it was covered entirely in black linen. Only the hands could be seen, resting gently in the lap. They were the hands of a woman, and they were lovely.
Ennius Kandi drew the doors shut behind him. The figure on the prayer-mat raised her black-mantled head, revealing not a face but a mask of gold fashioned in the antique likeness of Goddess.
The Gerso charan bowed.
‘Greetings, your majesty,’ he said softly.
* * *
The deepest Palace went deep into the mountain, and the walls and ceilings were stained black from centuries of lamps and torches. Kuln-Holn passed the Palace kitchens, great drafty halls whose stone walls were always warm and fragrant. Beyond the kitchens the lower slaves had their dimchambers.
In a far corner of the smoky hall Kuln-Holn found a young woman weaving a piece of fabric on a hand-loom. She was plain, and marked with years of fret and toil. When she saw Kuln-Holn she rose to embrace him.
‘Come, come,’ she said, drawing Kuln-Holn to the couch. ‘Oh, it is good to see you again! I feared – but that’s best left unsaid. Tell me, have you seen her majesty? And did all go well with your secret
tasks?’
‘It went well, Salizh,’ Kuln-Holn said. ‘What are you weaving?’
She held the lamp over the loom. ‘A robe for the baby. Feel, put your hand here – he grows bold, doesn’t he? He shall be a boy – as you foretold.’
‘A boy strong and lusty, who will tower over you.’
‘Ah,’ she sighed. ‘Berrin would have been proud!’
Kuln-Holn looked away. ‘Yes. But do not weep. I could not bear to see your tears again.’
‘I only weep when the work makes me tired. We must work so much harder now in the kitchens, there are so many to feed! Poor wretched people, who must sleep under the sky – I pity them. They say the great ones grieve and the lowly work on, and that is just what I have been doing – working and working. I have years before me, and I will need a man beside me.’
From the pocket of her apron she drew out a scrip of parchment. Kuln-Holn had seen that parchment many times. He did not need to be able to read to know what was written there.
‘Beloved wife Salizh,’ she read aloud, ‘greetings and a hundred salutations. By the time you find this, I may already be a hero. Kuln-Holn is getting weapons from the armorer. I am sure he means to fight on the barricades. I want to go too. I may even win our freedom! Your own husband, Berrin. Oh yes, I’ve taken the leather sack so don’t go looking for it.’
Salizh kissed the parchment. Then she crushed it in a ball and stuffed it in the cushion of the couch. ‘Farewell, Berrin. I loved you, but you are gone, and now I must work without you.’
Kuln-Holn looked at the walls of the chamber, dingy from the soot yet warm from the cooking-hearths. Here beneath the rock, this slave’s chamber was not much smaller than the hut into which he had been born, far away on the shores of the Ocean of the Dead. A peace came over him, and a strange forgetfulness.
‘Salizh, will you marry me?’
He felt her hand press his. ‘I will marry you, Kuln-Holn.’
It was like some dream.
‘Of course,’ Salizh added, ‘I will need to gain permission first.’
Then the memories and the knowledge came back to Kuln-Holn, and he turned away.
‘What is it?’
‘How can you bear to be with me? I took your husband to the barricades. I saw him die. I could not save him – it was to save my life that he died.’
‘Will you weep now, when I have ceased?’ She leaned to him, but Kuln-Holn shied away. ‘Why won’t you let me kiss you? It isn’t right, that a husband should avoid his wife.’
‘Then did that really happen? I asked you, and you agreed?’
‘You asked me, and I agreed. I hoped you would ask me ever since you left and I did not see you for three passes.’
‘Still,’ he muttered, ‘we mustn’t kiss.’
‘Why?’
‘The war goes on, and who can say what the end will be? And Goddess hasn’t forgiven me. Salizh, I have not held a woman since the death of my wife, and that was many winters ago. And there are other matters – her majesty must give you her permission … and my master dwells among us…’
‘I thought you left his service.’
‘I did,’ he answered miserably. ‘But he has not yet let me leave.’
‘What do you mean? Even if you were still in his service, Kuln-Holn, would he prevent your marriage, if the Queen herself allowed it?’
‘It isn’t that. He wouldn’t try to forbid it. If I told him, he would only laugh.’
‘Kuln-Holn, I do not understand. Does he still stand on all the formalities, this master of yours, now, after so much has happened? What sort of man is he?’
Kuln-Holn gazed into the smoky murk above them.
‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I fear that he is not a man at all.’
* * *
‘No need for you to lower yourself,’ said the Empress Allissál.
The Charan Ennius Kandi straightened. He was kneeling on a carpet before the reed prayer-mat. It was silent in the dark chamber. On the carpet before his knees the Gerso placed a small bag of yellow leather bound by a green cord.
‘You go to great lengths to visit a lonely mother who lost her son,’ the Empress continued. ‘Tell me, sir, in your desire to pay your patroness your respects, how much did you bribe the guardsmen below?’
From his belt the Gerso drew forth his dagger. It was an evil instrument, its curiously wrought handle all of worked jade. He set the dagger before his knees, pointing the blade to his right.
‘I see,’ the Empress said.
‘Your pardon, Your August Majesty,’ he said, his smooth courtesy slightly more than what protocol required. ‘I had to see you, but you refused my messages, and so forced me to this path. I am the bearer of a gift and a letter for your majesty, which I was enjoined to deliver personally. They were entrusted to me during the last mission on which your majesty sent me.’
‘What mission was that, Charan?’
‘Your majesty sent me to the cities along the Knife-Edged Border, to present gifts to the lords and princes of those cities and invite them to your majesty’s marriage to the Charan Ampeánor. These were entrusted to me by the Lord Ankhan and the Lady Lisalya, when I visited Ul Raambar. Perhaps your majesty has forgotten, because at the time I left Tarendahardil your majesty was ill – your majesty was said to be ill – and so it was Ampeánor who gave me the task.’
‘Another messenger would have returned before the summer’s end. When we were gathering forces to defeat the savage, we sent messengers to Ul Raambar, but none of them returned. There were rumors of a uprising of the Madpriests. I feared you had become embroiled in the city’s defense.’
‘I have seen many cities fall since Gerso, but I did not see the end of Ul Raambar, your majesty. I left Ankhan and Lisalya in perfect happiness and health.’
‘So should you leave us all, Charan Kandi.’
‘That was just after the end of High Summer,’ he said. ‘When I had delivered all my invitations, I rode the Marches, and fell out of hearing of the world’s events. The Marches are a strange land, your majesty. I had never visited them before. For a time I roamed those pathless, vacant grasslands, consoled by the flat and empty desolation. There can be a certain beauty in solitude, your majesty: the very soul seems to be drawn up into the void of the sky, and do battle there with phantoms. I regained Fulmine only to find it fallen, her cities ruled by barbarian garrisons. Riding hard toward Tarendahardil, I reached the city to behold pillars of smoke mounting from High Town. I rode through streets of flame and smoke where even the barbarians dared not go, and won through. So I fulfilled my vow to your majesty.’
‘What vow, Charan?’
‘That if Tarendahardil fell I would not forsake you.’
‘Ah. I had been thinking of another vow of yours. And when you rode in such marvelous safety through fire and forty thousand enemies, and beheld the ruin of the City Over the World and the brutal slaughter of her citizens, what was it you felt, there in your secret heart?’
The smile on the lips of the Gerso had faded as he had spoken of the Marches. Now it was as if traps had been opened in the backs of his eyes, and perceptible there, through the green-flecked blackness, was the infinite.
‘I thought, your majesty, of how wonderful it is to be a man and learn the use of forces which unbidden, all of themselves, will work our tasks for us. Wonderful and terrible, for such engines are less easily halted than loosed. This fire the barbarians set, now. If what the guardsmen tell me is true, the barbarians only wanted to force the defenders away from the barricades along the slopes of High Town. And yet not even the rains could kill the conflagration that ensued. Thus most of the city was reduced. But perhaps it was none of Ara-Karn’s purpose that it should end so. Perhaps he would even have spared this city from the usage of his cruel men – if he could have done so. More forces, more burdens.
‘So has our kind won sovereignty over the world. But is it to the better? We have only fashioned man-made worlds that we call cities, which
mirror the flaws and vices of our makeup. Elna, who founded your majesty’s Empire, was only a man. Think then how intoxicating it would be to have the power of a god!’
There was a rustling at the narrow window. The Queen turned her golden mask and held out a gesturing hand. ‘Niad,’ she sang softly. ‘Niad, Niad!’
The great bird leapt into the chamber with a beat of its wings and alighted by her side. Its claws caught up the carpets and skins in radiating folds, like tiny mountains. The Queen stroked the dark head, and the bird gave forth a low, trilling sound.
‘And do you train and tame the wild things now?’ the Gerso asked.
‘You made mention of a gift. Do you have it still?’
He unbound the green cord and pushed the yellow bag onto the reed mat. The gerlin’s fierce eyes followed the Gerso’s every movement.
The Queen drew from the pouch a circlet of gold plates set with dark rubies cut in the likeness of hearts. Even in the gloom the piece sprinkled the black linen with gleams of fire and blood.
She held it in the pale ivory of her fingers. ‘Explain this, please.’
‘It was the gift of the Lady Lisalya,’ he said. ‘I have been told it is a Raamba wedding-band. Each Raamba lady wears one upon her right thigh when she lies upon her wedding-couch. They say the Raamba ladies never remove them afterward, and that should any man other than their husbands behold them, then the ladies must put that man to death or live ever after in shame. They are faithful women in Ul Raambar.’
‘And the men are loyal to their sovereign. Or rather we should say, so things were.’ She replaced the band in the bag and drew out a scroll of parchment. She examined the seal carefully before breaking it. ‘This is from Lisalya as well, I see.’
‘Yes, your majesty.’
She lighted the lamp. She read the writing of the letter. After a while she let the parchment curl upon itself.
‘Words from the currents of the dead,’ she said absently. ‘She wrote highly of you, Charan.’
