Dark is the Moon

by Ian Irvine

  A few days later, well out of sight of land, they were struck by a furious storm, one that drove them far to the north. They almost foundered on the treacherous reefs surrounding the isle of Banthey, coming so close that they could see the wreckers and scavengers cavorting like lunatics on the shore. Once again Pender’s miraculous seamanship and Rustible’s consummate handling of the sails brought them off the lee shore unscathed.

  Rustible was a lugubrious-looking man. With his leathery face and bald brown head, clumps of frizzy yellow hair sticking out at the sides, a bulky round-bottomed body with skinny legs and incredibly long, thin feet, he looked the epitome of a sad clown. He acted one too, always expecting the worst, though he was a wonderful first mate, and faster than anyone up the mast to the lookout.

  They spent the next five days beating their way back into the wind, down between the inner and outer reefs surrounding a large mountainous island called Fankster, with Rustible constantly predicting their doom. After that it was plain sailing for the best part of another week until they came at last in sight of Taranta, though not even Pender was confident of navigating their way into port on this rocky and deeply indented coastline. They stopped at a pilot station outside Taranta Bay and hired a pilot to take them in and out again.

  “Two silver tars a day!” Pender exclaimed as he dropped back on board. “That’s the most expensive pilot I’ve ever heard of.”

  The pilot turned out to be a grizzled old woman of about eighty, with milky eyes and only four teeth, which were clamped over the stem of a battered pipe for the whole trip. She nipped nimbly between the sailors, took the wheel and began shouting orders in a cracked accent.

  Pender mooched about the deck, looking lost. “Silly old cow, she looks as blind as a cabbage.”

  “Shush!” said Mendark. “You’ll offend her.”

  “Mmph!” said Pender.

  “I’m serious! That’s old Hetla, and she is blind.”

  “What!” cried Pender, running to the rail to peer at the rocks, which were only a span or two away and shaped like chacalot teeth.

  “Blind from birth, but she’s still the best pilot in Taranta. Rain or storm, she hasn’t lost a ship in sixty years.”

  Pender pounded to the other side, not at all reassured.

  “She’s a sensitive, you prat!” said Tallia, putting her large feet up on the rail.

  They found Spear of Midnight laid up in dock in Taranta, but it turned out to be a fat little carrier almost falling to pieces with woodworm, nothing like the sleek, dangerous craft Lilis had described. Tallia wrote to Lilis and Nadiril, a long letter with news of their doings in the past half year and the failure of their search so far.

  They continued east to Huccadory, and thence to Gariott, where Pender was to unload his cargo and, with Mendark’s grudging approval, load spices and cinnabar for the run back south along the coast of Crandor. Tallia had recognized Gariott at once, for they had come in to shore between a pair of smoking volcanoes. The large one was a famous landmark; the other just a dwarf. Each peak made a roughly circular bulge out from the north-east-curving coast of Crandor, the space between forming a deep bay almost ten leagues across.

  “Look!” Tallia cried, leaning out over the rail like an excited child. “There’s Bel Torance.”

  Mendark and Osseion came out to admire the view, and Pender too. Bel Torance was a giant, rearing up in a perfect cone so high that even in these low latitudes it had a dusting of snow on its top. Tallia felt the urge to instruct them about her native land.

  “Bel BaalBaan over there used to be Torance’s twin but, two hundred years ago, it blew its top right off. A wave as tall as a tower washed the old city into the mud, and ash buried everything that was left. Mud rained from the skies for weeks. The dead would have made a cube fifty bodies high and wide and deep. When it was over Bel BaalBaan was gone, save for a ring of islands. See them there! One of them began to smoke anew, and made what we call Bel SusBaal—daughter of BaalBaan.” She pointed to the lopsided double peak that fumed further across the bay. “Ah, Crandor! My country has everything!”

  “Including volcanoes, tidal waves, earth tremblers, typhoons, floods and mountain slides,” said Mendark sourly. “Not to mention the nastiest insects on Santhenar.”

  “But it’s rich!” said Osseion. “Look at the size of those trees.”

  Tallia could scarcely believe the emotions that swept over her as they drew up to the familiar shore. Before she set foot on the chocolate soil of Crandor she could have told that she was home, for the breeze carried to her that rich sweet moist odor of the tropics, of forest and people; heat and humidity and things rotting quickly. As they drifted along the shore where the children played naked and the water ran dark and rank in the gutters, and the houses were just shelters on stilts, with slatted floors and open window frames, merely affairs to keep out the hot sun and the warm rain, she breathed a sigh of deep contentment. Home! Back where she belonged. And as deep a sigh that she was not back here for good.

  “What now?” she asked as they tied up to a wharf faced with cemented pumice-rock.

  “Tar Gaarn,” said Mendark, “and then Havissard.”

  “How far is that?” Pender wondered idly. He wasn’t interested in any place that you could not get to by boat.

  “Quite a way from here,” Tallia replied. “We head south down the coast of Crandor for another hundred leagues or so, to Strinklet. From there we take the Great North Road, south and west, then a western path through the mountains to Tar Gaarn.” Thinking about what was to come, a headlong flight across her native land, and then back to Thurkad in an equal rush, Tallia felt quite sad. She knew her duty and would do it, but she could not conceal her misery at the prospect of coming so close and passing all by.

  In the morning they set off for Strinklet, arriving without incident in another four days. Mendark knew how Tallia felt. He had spent weeks thinking about Tar Gaarn and Havissard. He sensed very strongly that what was needed to remake the flute would be found there. He would share it with no one, not even Tallia. What she did not know she could not be made to tell. And lately she had been acting a little too independently.

  They were to sleep on board The Waif that night, for there was a festival in the town and all the inns were full. But they could not bear to be cooped up any longer and, while Pender and the crew organized repairs and had the cargo unloaded, they went into town. Over dinner that night Mendark dropped his bombshell.

  “Tomorrow I’m going to Tar Gaarn. Alone! So do what you want in Crandor, then meet me back here in fifty days.”

  “Alone!” said Tallia and Osseion together. She was shocked. Though Mendark was often close-mouthed, she had expected to accompany him to Tar Gaam, a place she’d not been to but had often wondered about. What was he up to?

  “Completely alone!”

  “But who will protect you?” said Osseion. “What will I do?” Having guarded Mendark for so long, he could not imagine him even finding his way around by himself, much less protecting himself in this dangerous and foreign place.

  “What do I care? I was looking after myself when you were still on the tit,” Mendark said crudely. “Have a holiday.”

  “I don’t want a holiday,” Osseion muttered.

  A part of Tallia rejoiced at the weeks this would give her in Crandor, yet she knew Mendark was going by himself so that no one would know what he did there, or what he found. Perhaps if he did find what he was looking for, he meant to keep it for himself. Tallia was hurt at the lack of trust.

  When they rose with the sun next morning, Mendark was gone.

  It was a hundred leagues from Strinklet to the abandoned city of Tar Gaarn, the way the road wound through the mountains. Fifteen days by horse, allowing for rests and unforeseen accidents, bad weather, broken bridges and poor roads.

  Mendark hired two horses and, riding one and then the other, reached his destination without incident ahead of time, though the time passed very slowly. What if it
’s not there? he thought. What if I can’t find it? And even if I get it back to Thurkad, how am I going to keep it out of Yggur’s hands? His resources were meager now, while Yggur had armies at his disposal and the wealth of an empire.

  Still, Yggur is unstable. Adversity weakens him but it strengthens me. He lacks cunning. That reminded him of an enemy who had none of those faults. Rulke! Mendark was terrified of the construct and the potential it represented. It was advanced beyond any device that they could conceive, and Rulke could be building it already!

  No question that he, Mendark, was not Rulke’s match. But he would never give up. Rulke might fail. His construct might have a flaw. The game’s not over till it’s done! All the more urgent, his quest.

  From the top of the hill he looked down on the magnificent ruins with despair, that something so great, harmonious and subtle had been taken so easily, the very heart of the Aachim cut out. Tar Gaarn—the greatest city that they had ever built, the fount of their culture.

  And how changed the land was from what it had once been. When the Aachim first conceived the idea of Tar Gaarn the Sea of Perion was still a jewel. It had scarcely begun its long drying, and all the lands around were populated. Now all was empty desert and Tar Gaarn lay desolate.

  Though Rulke had taken the city and broken its defenses, not even he had been able to bring himself to destroy it. In this arid land its towers had been living fountains clad with water. Its crystalline domes and soaring arcs of stone were so attenuated and so delicate that they might have been made of spider thread. As with Katazza, it remained much as when the Aachim had abandoned it, more than a thousand years ago. Its most glorious works of art had been taken, those that could be carried, but the rest remained, statuary, carvings, mosaics. Many of the roofs were still intact.

  But the greatest work of all was the city itself, and that would endure while the last brick lay on brick and the last stone on stone. Even under its coating of dust and sand, beneath the litter of stone and tiles and time-mottled glass, the magnificence of Tar Gaarn struck him dumb. It was worth the journey just to see it for the last time. Just to see it once again, he corrected himself, though he knew that this was the last. After this business was over he would travel no more. His body was giving out and he knew he could not renew it again. Great mancer as Mendark was, even he had reached his limit.

  Mendark headed down the swooping, winding road to Tar Gaarn, where the soil was rich and red as Aachan gold, and the boulders scattered by the side of the road were black. He walked among the stones and broken columns, allowing the city to soak into his bones.

  It was built on a radial pattern, curving streets and radiating boulevards arising from the city circle and five satellite centers. The circle was a vast open space roofed with a series of concentric glass shells. Once the glass had been mirrored on the upper side, cooling the space underneath, but the mirror coating had failed long ago and many of the glass tiles lay shattered on the ground. It was sweltering inside.

  The building opposite, a tower with aerial walkways spinning out of it in five directions, was a broken ruin.

  Mendark heaved a heavy sigh. Scarcely had it been completed, the most beautiful city in all Santhenar, than it was destroyed. Tales of Tar Gaam, and of the tragic fool Pitlis who had designed it, swam in his mind.

  Nine days Mendark spent searching the ruins, but before he had been there an hour he knew that it was a folly. There was nothing to shed light on the Mirror or the quest; no information, no books nor, least of all, any Aachan gold. Searching further was hopeless; what he sought was gone, if it had ever been here at all. But he could not drag himself away. To him Tar Gaarn had been the greatest achievement of humankind on this world. It had just been completed when Mendark first saw it. A thousand years after it was abandoned, it was just as beautiful.

  And then again, perhaps the Aachan gold had never been here. Had it gone to Stassor, to the great library there? Then it might as well be destroyed, for he knew that the Aachim, despite his bond with them over the years, would never admit him to the secrets they kept there. Where else could it be, save Shazmak, now occupied by the Ghâshâd? Could the book Llian had seen there, Tales of the Aachim, hold the secret?

  While thinking thus, Mendark had wandered out of the city along the northern road. Walking helped him to think. Continuing up the hill, he eventually reached the crest of the ridge separating Tar Gaarn from the valleys to the north. The wind was hot from the west, but there was a twist-trunked fig tree near the crest that formed a traveler’s rest. Mendark sat down on a boulder in the shade, staring down at Tar Gaarn. But now its beauty was overshadowed; a pall was cast over it, and the shadow grew behind him until he could no longer restrain himself from turning that way. For the past week and more he had been avoiding it, hiding from himself all that he knew about it so as not to spoil Tar Gaarn.

  He turned to look the other way. Rising to his feet in spite of himself, Mendark found himself looking higher than he needed to. His eyes were tugged to the triple towers, drawn out to needles of metal in their arrogance, their disdain for all natural forces: their tier upon tier, balcony upon balcony, so delicate that it seemed they might scarcely withstand the wind, making no concessions to the practicalities of defense; shining in the sun as if they were made of glass. Havissard! The citadel of Yalkara. Defenseless! Undefendable! Unbreachable! Unbreached! How long was it since she’d fled? Three hundred years and more. No—Yalkara would never flee! She had done what she came to do, thwarted Faelamor, found a way home to Aachan and took it. Why had she come to Santhenar in the first place? None ever knew.

  Yalkara! Yalkara the enigmatic. Mistress of Deceits. The Demon Queen. Why did she come so long after the other Charon? Certainly not to aid them; at least, there was never any sign of it. Rather the reverse. To watch over them, spy on them? Perhaps. To be a foil to Faelamor? That hardly seemed needful, yet they were rivals from the first. To carry out some other, long-lasting and secret purpose of the Charon—some purpose which might yet be shaping the course of all their destinies?

  She had taken no home, no land, no servant or soldier or guide all the while that the Aachim grew in strength, nor opposed them either. But in the instant of their fall she was there and even before Rulke entered the city in strength she disappeared, and the Mirror too. Then she was opposed, and Rulke turned away from the sacking of Tar Gaarn (perhaps that was how it had survived) to pursue her across the length and breadth of Lauralin. That would have been the greatest chase and the greatest tale of all, had it been told.

  It seemed that the fugitive drama of Shuthdar was to be played out in another key, then Yalkara vanished and could not be found. Rulke immersed himself in another project, the building of his great city, Alcifer, that the hapless Pitlis had designed for him, though not long after it was complete Rulke himself was cast into the Nightland.

  Around that time Yalkara had mastered the Mirror, returned to the very doors of Tar Gaam and on top of the ancient silver mines of Havissard she constructed her citadel and gave it the same name. Why there? Most people said that she desired wealth beyond all things. And indeed, after reopening the mines and following the lode deep into the hot earth, she did become wealthy beyond any dreams. But Mendark had always thought that she built Havissard there to mock and humiliate the Aachim and to ensure that Tar Gaarn was never rebuilt.

  Her citadel was made with vast labor and unparalleled magnificence, sumptuous beyond any description—though, strangely, it was said that her own quarters and workrooms were austere in the extreme. Contradictions abounded at Havissard.

  Mendark was drawn to the place too; had always been, and each time he visited Tar Gaarn he had also sat here looking at the enigma of Havissard. He had never been able to get inside—no one could. Havissard was protected and resisted all attempts. But this time it would be different.

  At the Great Library in Zile, last spring, he had sought out and copied ancient plans of the silver mines. That was what he had been doing
all those weeks when Tallia thought he was sunken in despair. The maps were from before Yalkara’s time and did not show the newer workings, but they were the best he could find. If Yalkara had made her own maps there was no record of them.

  Well, better get on with it. Mendark headed on down the ridge, past Havissard without a backward glance and over another hill to the pockmarked valleys, the mullock heaps and slag piles, the shafts and adits out of which lifeless acid water ran. The streams were so stained with iron that every rock was the color of blood.

  The mines of Havissard—as ugly as Tar Gaarn itself was beautiful. He consulted his maps again, identified an adit further up the hill, checked his water bottle and one of the light-glasses purloined from Katazza, and splashed in.

  The adit led to a labyrinth, as was the way of old mines. Mendark had to check his way constantly, though he soon found that his maps were inaccurate. Doubtless new drives and shafts had been made after Yalkara reopened the mines, while old ones had collapsed or been filled with waste rock.

  He kept going, traveling on a hunch about the direction and the level, knowing that he wanted to end up under Havissard. But how was he to enter? Havissard was protected by a mighty spell, as strong now as it had ever been. Normally such things would fail when the mind that made them died, or in Yalkara’s case left the world. But to endure so long, this spell must be powered by something inside Havissard, retaining its strength whilever that object still maintained its power until, like a light-glass kept out of the sun, eventually it was drained dry.

  Yet Mendark had a plan, which was why he had come alone. He wanted no one to see what he was doing here, what powers he could draw upon and, most of all, what he hoped to find inside.

  Past broken ladders he made his way, beside shafts that offered only shattered bones and a lingering death. Up through wooden water ladders three times his height, among snail screws and rag pumps and other devices that had once been used to drain the mines, some broken and rotting on the floor, others seemingly as good as the day they were built. The mine was a museum of every kind of pump ever devised, but here they lay in rotten futility while the water found its level. Nothing could defeat it.