by Adam Corby
‘It is a lie,’ the stranger said. He advanced the length of the table. ‘You only say it to torment me! Who put you up to this, slave? Was it him? Did Melkarth teach him to fill you with these monstrous slanders?’
‘Lord, what is it that so angers you? Indeed my lord, if you know her majesty I can prove my words to you. For while I was with her I saw a certain mark she had, which she’d gotten at birth. It lies upon her right thigh, close inside her hip – red as a barsilia fruit, the size of a woman’s toe-nail, shaped like a three-pointed crown.’
‘It is a lie! Confess it to Goddess!’ The Rukorian leapt on the rancher. He took Eno’s throat between his hands and shook him so that his head banged against the back of his chair. ‘Confess, slave, and tell me who put these words in your slobbering mouth, or it will be your death!’
Arnam shouted for Torval to release his father. Galn took down an old lance and rushed at him. But when the stranger felt the lance-head, he hurled Eno against the wall, snatched the lance and beat the young man about the head with the haft. Arnam saw the blood about his brother’s head and took another lance, yelling for help.
The Rukorian spun the lance about and with skill learned of old cast the lance so the head went through Arnam’s body and struck with a clatter off the lime-washed wall.
‘Murder!’ Galn cried.
The Rukorian pulled down another lance and the old sword. Eno’s sons circled him. One he gutted with the lance and slew, then kicked the bench into the other’s knees, and slashed the sword-blade against his neck so that the head was hewn from the trunk and the blade snapped in two. Berlan ran for the inner door, and the stranger bounded after him.
The door wrenched open, and Eno’s wife Rilltor peered in. Behind her were Elprin and one or two other women. Berlan screamed and slid through the doorway; the Rukorian’s sweeping sword-blow fell short, and the half-blade stuck in the door-jamb.
Pale and ghastly the women’s faces stared into the eyes of their stranger-guest, and past him to the bodies of their menfolk where they lay strewn about the hall, bleeding, dead or dying. Then in terror Rilltor slammed the door, and the women fled in fear of their lives.
Ampeánor leaned against the door. He looked behind him, and he saw what the women had seen. His arm trembled, and the lance fell from his fingers.
At the far end of the hall the barbarian stood up. Goddesslight shone on the Darkbeast teeth on his chest. He stepped to the table. He took a platter and heaped meat on it. He picked up Arnam’s bowl still full of the fermented mare’s-milk, sniffed it, then slurped it down.
There was no other sound save for one of the dying boys moaning and twitching against some dishes.
‘I did not mean it,’ Ampeánor said in the tongue of the far North. ‘Some madness overtook me.’
Gundoen sank his teeth into the meat. ‘I have seen the like befall warriors of my tribe. They know nothing but blood and will murder even their own wives and little ones.’ He drank more milk.
‘Let us get horses and leave this place,’ Ampeánor sad. ‘Why do you eat now, when you would not touch what they offered before?’
Gundoen shrugged. ‘Before, they were my enemies, and I will take no courtesy of a foe. But these men are now the enemies of no man but you, Southron.’
* * *
They left the ranch and rode North. Avoiding all roads and men, they reached in a pass or two the blue river Eaffash, and Egland Downs.
They made camp in the midst of that venomous green field thick with bones and rust and ghosts. It was raining, and the clay wet and steaming. Gundoen kicked aside some bones, mumbled a charm, and lay down between horsehair cloaks to sleep.
Ampeánor sat on his heels, feeling the autumnal rains trickle down his neck. He had wandered the length of these fields, and seen his own image in a calm water of the Eaffash. Now he leaned on the broken sword, weary, so weary, and looked at the sleeping barbarian. Ever since he had gone with the barbarians to Ilkas, Ampeánor had held this plan, though in sleep he had shuddered, and wondered if he could carry it to its end. Only in the rains of this field did he know that he would go through with it. And the man before him went to it like an ox to the dark altar.
As far as the eye could see, the bones of the finest fightingmen of the South littered the field. Eighty thousand had fallen here, and the muted echoes of their cries rose through the mud to assail the ears of the High Charan of Rukor.
A shudder took his body, of horror, perhaps, or fear.
For one summer, years before, he had gone hunting with the Queen in the mountains above Torvalinal. And they had lost their party, and Allissál had bathed in a cool mountain stream. And Ampeánor had parted the tall reeds and gazed upon her in her nakedness, a vision he might never thereafter forget. And he had seen a mark on the curve of her thigh, red as a barsilia fruit, the size of a lady’s toenail, shaped like a three-pointed crown – even as Eno, whom Ampeánor had strangled to death with his own hands, had avowed.
And now it seemed to Ampeánor that he could hear the hideous voices of the dead of Egland Downs groaning and whispering. And it seemed to him that what they told, over and over again, was his very name.
‘…Ampeánor … Ampeánor … Ampeánor…’
XVIII
Ampeánor’s Homecoming
‘…AMPEÁNOR … AMPEÁNOR … AMPEÁNOR…’
The guardsmen about the battlements hailed the dark thin figure atop the battlement steps.
It seemed to them a thing too marvelous to believe.
The cold winds had begun again to blow from the dark, and the earth to sicken and die, and with it the guardsmen’s hopes. It had begun to seem to them, as they faced a second winter here, that their labor would be futile. The secret of Haspeth’s going had not stayed secret long, yet it was months since he had gone, and none now scanned the line of the sea for ships bearing down from Rukor.
And now without warning the last great noble of the realm appeared among them, with the barbarians’ general his captive!
He raised his arms and stilled the chant. Slowly he did off his ragged Eglandish garb, flinging it behind him. Naked, the High Charan girt himself in the tunic and armor of a common guardsman.
They knew him. He was one of them. He was the best of them.
Captain Berowne bore up a great wine cup all of silver and filled with foaming dark Postio. The charan held it high to Goddess and then God, and drank that wine until he let it fall empty and clattering on the stones of the yard below.
‘And so,’ he said, terribly, ‘will we all drink the blood of our enemies before Goddess takes again Her Summer Throne. This I vow, or else let dark God cast me from this peak.’
At that oath all the guardsmen let the Renda know their voices. The cheers resounded over the Iron Gate, so that the barbarian watchers, troubled at heart, sent down to the camp to summon the chiefs and champions of the tribes, that they might themselves learn of this strange turn of mood behind the black walls.
One by one the lord of Rukor had the guardsmen brought before him, and met with them in full view of the city below. From Captain Berowne he learned the men’s names and hearts.
Then a hush fell in the yard below. Ampeánor went once more upon the steps and looked down on a procession of maidens in white loras, led by a man and woman walking side by side. The man wore a hooded hunting-cloak, the woman a gold mask and black linen robes under a gray cloak.
Then Ampeánor asked wonderingly, ‘Who is that priestess, that the men salute her?’
Berowne answered, ‘It is her majesty the Empress.’
Gracefully the woman ascended the steps. Then in the press of guardsmen she saw the lord of Rukor, and halted. And he, seeing her movements and height, and the maidens behind her, knew the captain’s words were true.
The color surged and ebbed from Ampeánor’s face, like the wash and turn of unseen waves upon a desolate shore. Berowne and the guardsmen offered the queen the military salute, but Ampeánor might not move his limb
s. His eyes probed her as though his gaze had been a lance. And she in turn stayed moveless, her features concealed behind the mask of Goddess.
For some moments no words passed between them. Then Ampeánor started, as if cast up from a dream. He reached out as though to take her in his arms.
At that moment a gerlin flew between him and the sun, screeching. It circled him three times, flew over the yard, and vanished beyond the inner gates. At this the guardsmen stepped back and made the sign of Goddess.
Ampeánor in those moments had recognized the man beside the queen. ‘So it is you, Charan Kandi. And who gave you the freedom of this place?’
‘My lord,’ the Gerso said, ‘no one in this place is free.’
At this the queen stepped forward and went apart with her betrothed. There they spoke privately, so that none might overhear. Their gestures were formal, and they did not embrace.
Meanwhile the square about Elna’s fallen pillar filled with the barbarian chieftains.
They beheld the man resplendent in armor and beside him the priestess in her gray cloak. Fear spread across the upturned faces, and they murmured, ‘The Gray Priestess … Gray Priestess…’
Meanwhile, forgotten by the others, the barbarian captive looked at the Gerso charan through the press of men. The love in Gundoen’s eyes for his adopted son was such that any man would have known it.
A look of warning crossed the visage of Ara-Karn. He crossed to the Beak, the engine he had devised to catch up stones and loose them on the barbarians.
Ara-Karn laid his hand on the mast of the Beak. He looked down at the long ropes dangling free, at the well-greased turning mechanism. If he had the will, a single man might wield it. He looked across at Gundoen where he stood forgotten by the guardsmen. Gundoen took a step closer to the Beak.
The work of a moment: Gundoen to leap into the Beak’s ropes, Ara-Karn to turn it out over the tribesmen and lower Gundoen down to them.
Then Ara-Karn looked at the couple by the parapet.
He took his hand from the Beak.
Gundoen looked a questioning look, but the look of the Warlord answered him no. So Gundoen nodded, and stepped to the parapet atop the Iron Gate.
He looked down on the warriors. Gundoen saw Nam-Rog and Kul-Dro, and Bur-Knap of the River’s-Bend tribe, and Ven-Vin-Van of the Borsos, and Ren-Tionan of the Foruns. Yet they, gazing at the woman in gray, did not yet know Gundoen. He looked at the Southron lord, and smiled the smile he gave when his tracker led a bandar into the bite of his spears.
He leaned over the parapet and lifted his voice, happily: for though all ran as Hertha-Toll had foretold and he knew his doom was upon him, to face pain such as no other man had ever known, Gundoen knew also that the fame his death would bring would outlast that of Tont-Ornoth himself. And because he stood again in the presence of his son, his Warlord, and his warriors, and because he felt his own strength in the light of Goddess, Gundoen rejoiced, and called down upon the tribesmen to stir them to the battle lust of old:
‘Warriors! I am Gundoen Strong-In-Girth, and I hunted alone with one other man, the king of all Darkbeasts, and wear his teeth upon my chest! That is what I did this year! What deeds do you boast? Will a hundred weakling Southrons defy you forever? Or will you give their blood to dark God? By now you might have reduced this very mountain to a plain, had you the heart for it! Has Goddess made women of you all? Come feed these Southrons to your dogs!’
The warriors were startled to see him, for they had deemed him dead. Now they felt the hot doom in his words, and the fierce wildness of his heart kept so long from battle. He alone remembered what it was to be a warrior of that land of cold plains, cold woods and cold rivers, where Urnostardil crowned the Darklands. Now, hearing him, they too remembered, and lost their fear of the Gray Priestess. As great as Ampeánor’s appearance wrought on his men, Gundoen’s wrought twice that upon his. They raised spears and shields and cried to him in tribute so that the Iron Gate itself rang with it.
At that Ampeánor cried out angrily to the guardsmen to take the barbarian into the yard.
But Gundoen laughed, and catching the arms of the two nearest guardsmen, flung them out over the parapet to their deaths in the coomb below.
Other guardsmen lunged at Gundoen with lowered spear-points. He tore the lances from them, and caught the largest of them. Him Gundoen held lightly over his head, and threw into the rush of the others, knocking four men back over the battlements to fall to the stones of the yard. Again the warriors raised their cry, and Gundoen’s own tribe began the war-chant of Tont-Ornoth.
‘Do not kill him,’ Ampeánor cried; ‘we need him still alive.’
The guardsmen crowded close about the chieftain, and two dozen lance-points marked his flesh with streams of blood. But at that shout of the man he most despised, Gundoen put his arms behind his chest, as much as to say, I have had my sport, now do as you will. The guardsmen bundled him down into the yard between the gates.
Still the barbarians below the Iron Gate roared like wolves that run starving along the Knife-Edged Border, surrounding the lonely cabins of woodsmen and tearing with their strong jaws at the roof-thatch.
Ampeánor snatched a lance from a guardsman. ‘Enough of this,’ he cried, and cast down the lance.
It shot true from his strong arm, and broke the armor-plates, and buried itself in the guts of Haln-Gaw. Haln-Gaw had pushed his way to the forefront of the chieftains, for he could not speak, the way the Hooded Man’s death-bird had broken his jaw. All Haln-Gaw might do was howl, and he sought the forefront so that his howls should put greater fear into the Southrons. So he had done since his maiming; but on this pass it was his undoing. The lance-head burst through the armor at his back, and Haln-Gaw writhed on the paving stones, his nails scraping the lance-haft, until the spirit left him.
At that death, the chieftains lost their voices, and the guardsmen cheered. Ampeánor escorted the queen off the battlements.
Before that pair, the great inner gates were opened for the first time since the siege of Tarendahardil had begun. The Tarendahardilites crowded beyond, brought by the rumor of the return of Rukor. Now they saw him in full war-gear at the side of their empress, and their mouths opened to sound a cheer. But the cheer died in their throats as they let the procession pass. They had seen his face. And they remembered Elnavis when he returned.
But when they beheld again the Charan Ennius Kandi walking behind the Imperial couple, then the people cheered. He nodded and gave them words of hope. At that the lord of Rukor looked back over his shoulder and his frown deepened.
They came beneath the high walls of the Palace. All at once Ampeánor felt the great weariness take him that he had withstood for so many passes. He had not slept since he had left that ranch in the Eglands. Briefly he ordered Berowne to convey the captive beneath the Palace.
‘You may rely upon it, my lord,’ the captain answered. ‘I will find a hole in which to shut him up as secure as an amphora of red Postio.’
In the inner court Ampeánor stumbled. Even walking became difficult. All knowledge of what passed about him grew vague, and all he saw was that he had reached his old chambers in the Palace. And there before him was Pharnor Bittan, his graying master of the hunt, taking the armor from his limbs.
And there on the wall was the painting done by Qhelvin of Sorne, a painting of a woman of golden, glorious hair, her beauty bright and pure. A great emotion took his heart, and his eyes burned without tears. And he thought, weakly and to no purpose, Surely, this woman must be pure?
Then he fell, and dark sleep at last took him.
And he dreamed a grand procession wended its way up to the Imperial Hall of Justice, where priestesses and dignitaries made ready to welcome and wed the Divine Queen and her chosen one, and all the people cheered as the couple came into the King’s Light. But the chief dignitary bore the face of Eno, the former slave; and the man who took Allissál in his arms and crushed her lips beneath his was not the lord of Rukor bu
t the traitorous spy Ennius Kandi.
* * *
Happily the people within the stronghold took their shortsleep. They slept with greater ease than they had known since the summer of the year before, when the field below the city filled not with barbarians but eighty thousand of the finest fightingmen of the South, on their way to Egland Downs.
But there were those who did not sleep. Upon the roof of the southern lance-tower, the Hooded Man stood looking up at the Palace. And upon the roof of the Palace the dark figure of the Divine Queen walked alone with the restless, unmeasured tread of a woman too aware of her body.
One of her maidens abased herself and offered her majesty a scroll of parchment. She read upon the parchment a single line, unsigned:
Alastaphele, forget not.
She looked to where he stood over the Iron Gate, and crushed the parchment in her hand.
Ara-Karn
confronts his bitterest enemy in
Canto Four:
DARKBRIDGE
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.
