A Time of Ghosts

by Robert Holdstock

  Raven

  A Time of Ghosts

  Richard Kirk

  For Jim Fitzpatrick and Alan Stivell in memory of a time when a steel blade meant more than just a close shave.

  Prologue

  They brought him to a place of tents, a skin and bone town half buried by wind and sand. The dwellings clung to the shifting sands as if they feared that the slightest breeze, swirling across the sun-baked grains, would wrench them from their tenuous hold upon the land. Rough hides, stretched over frameworks of bone and wood that had been gleaned from the fertile lands at the edge of the desert, the homes and meeting places of the nomads offered scant promise of comfort to the old man who rode with them.

  Skeletally thin dogs ran around the horses as the warriors came, tired and wet, from the desert trail; women, dressed in featureless black robes, looked up from the stone quern, and crudely fashioned looms. A child, naked and bronzed by sun and wind, stared at the stranger who sat, slumped forward, in the saddle of a warrior’s horse.

  He was taken to a wide, low roofed dwelling, and beneath the flapping canvas, pleased to be in a cold place at last, the stranger smiled for the first time since he had been picked up by this nomadic tribe. He was narrow of eye, and old, and his white hair, thick and strong like a young man’s hair, tumbled to his shoulders. His body was frail, his tattered linen robes, and short, fur jacket, unable to hide his thinness from the scrutinising gaze of the warriors of the desert. He seemed pleased by the coolness, but had not seemed unduly bothered by the heat, despite his winter clothing.

  Across his lap he placed the sword he carried, hiding its finer features from view by discreetly folding his robe across it. He had clung to the sword with all the fervour of a man clinging to life. None there had been who once thought, or would have dared, to try and take it away from him.

  A man in chieftain’s robes entered the cool tent, squatted down among the others, facing the stranger. He dipped his fingers into the bowl of crystal clear water that rested between guest and hosts, then passed the bowl to the old man. The stranger clasped the cup gratefully, sipped on it and smiled.

  The Warlord said, “Are you the one we have heard of? The one who rode with Raven?”

  The old man placed the bowl carefully before him, anxious not to spill any of the water that was left. He smiled at some inner secret, and his fingers shook as he touched his lips, drying them. His left hand was bandaged.

  “Have you food?” he said.

  He was brought food, small chunks of crisped meat, dry, green fruits, small nuts that crumbled to dust when they were bitten. He ate hungrily, not pausing until there was nothing left to eat. His fingers touched the clay platters as if disappointed, but he asked for no more.

  Once of the white robed warriors, a younger man, leaned forward with a fire of interest blazing in his dark eyes. “Raven. Tell us of Raven.”

  Again the old man smiled. He turned his age-yellowed eyes to stare at the man who had spoken. “Something to warm my heart, some liquid fire that will take the pain away.”

  He was passed a stone flagon that he unstoppered clumsily, and tilted to his lips. He choked on the drink, spilled it down his chin, but smacked his lips appreciatively after the smallest sip.

  Then he reached down to the cool sand on which they sat, traced the shape of an eye and passed a crudely drawn sword through that symbol.

  He looked up sharply. The desert wind had blown into the tent, sending a swirl of sand and hot air. Someone reached to close the flap. Outside a dog howled in misery, and two children laughed; too young to know pain, and thirst, and the eternal, all-consuming desert that threatened them.

  At length the old man spoke. “How can I tell you of a legend?” he said softly. “How can I tell you of a legend without diminishing that legend in your minds?” He turned to look at the young man nearest to him, then back at the chieftain, who frowned beneath the stranger’s gaze. “Aye, I rode with Raven. I rode with her from that bitter day when first she threw off the shackles of a slave, until…until that last day, the day of the final battle.” He held up his bandaged limb, pulled the filthy rags like a gauntlet to show his hand, hewn through in mid palm. “A sea wolf struck me, a man with whom I had shared a hundred battles. In those final days even friendship gave way to the onsurge of Chaos.”

  He fell silent, listening to the howling wind, the noisy billowing of the tents. The young warrior shuffled uneasily in that silence, and finally broke it.

  “That sword you carry…was it her sword?”

  The old man uncovered the weapon that straddled his legs. He ran his good fingers down the carved sheath, and then up to the gold-trimmed hilt. He touched, for a moment, the massive green jewel that was set so squarely in the pommel.

  “Aye. She carried this for many years. Many are the lives that returned to the wind, liberated by this razor’s edge.” He stopped speaking, but this time only briefly. “A thousand tales I could tell you of Raven, of those who rode with her, and of those who died for her, men and women from every nation and every tribe there was. But how can I make you know Raven herself? How can I describe a dream? Chaos fashioned her, the world knew her, and now Chaos has claimed her. She sleeps somewhere, perhaps in the high mountains of the north, perhaps beneath the very desert sands that shift around us as we sit here, idle. Perhaps she sleeps on the wind. I know not. It was all…it was all too long ago.” He was silent, introspective for a moment, and those who watched him felt the wave of sadness that flooded through their guest. Then the white head lifted, the intense eyes stared, the mouth parted in a smile, a smile of triumph, a smile of remembered pleasure…

  “But for a while, for a heartbeat, perhaps two, her hair flashed brighter than sun on an iron blade, and her sword struck more cold than the ice wastes could ever strike.

  “She was called Chaos-bringer, and she was brought to life to do the work of those who hid behind a veil of mist, the shadows of men who inhabited the shadows of the world. But she was a woman, and a warrior, and she was proud. By the sands, she was proud! She came to accept that strange forces had fashioned her, and that she was more important to the world than any primal element within it. But first and foremost she was a warrior, and a woman, and she could never forget those things that warriors and women love…

  “Listen. I shall tell you a tale of Raven’s first days, and of how a shadow of the Moon joined her band.”

  One

  “Training a man to fight with a sword is to produce a soldier, one of thousands. Training a man to fight with what her prefers is to produce a specialist.”

  The Books of Kharwhan

  The man in the arena died.

  He turned, then, and ran across the yellow sand, but not before a second blow had struck him through the neck to the accompaniment of laughter from his armoured opponent.

  “Two strikes! Here is the third!”

  Steel clashed on steel, ringing loud in the deserted place. Dark carrion birds swirled into the baking air, crying raucously, loudly, as their sleep was disturbed yet again by the grating sound of blade striking blade.

  A third time the smaller man died, but this time, as he turned to run from his powerful opponent, he ducked and jumped; the long, straight-bladed sword swished below him and he struck in return, bringing his weapon hard against the big man’s shoulder, cutting into neck and throat, and through almost to the other side before the illusion broke.

  “A strike to me!” cried the thrice-slain warrior.

  His opponent backed away and smiled. He was a tall man, broad and heavy with muscle that strained beneath the dark-metal links of his armour. His breastplate was burnished steel, hammered and honed as smooth as ice, before it had been engraved with t
he protective runes of some ancient language. His legs, thick as the trunks of knotted saplings, were naked but for strips of softened Yr leather that bound him above the knees. His green eyes sparkled with pleasure as he flung back his head and laughed, then turned to face the crumbling stone tiers that encircled them. His bright yellow hair hung down his back, damp with sweat and heavy with dust. “There is a fine fighting spirit in this one,” he called, and the words seemed to linger in the hot air, echoing between cracked stone seat and dark-mawed tunnel, and upwards from the sand arena to the deep blue sky.

  “There is no shame in running,” said the smaller man, breathing heavily and relieved to have scored a strike at last, “no shame when it means the fight can continue on equal footing.”

  The blond warrior let his broad sword point to the ground, as he turned narrowed eyes upon his opponent, staring at him thoughtfully for a moment. Then again he smiled and addressed himself to the ruins that surrounded them. “This one speaks as I, Argor, would speak. His words make as much sense. Does he need training?”

  A woman’s voice answered him from the shadowy walls of the place. “Aye, Argor, all men need training. No man would have lived until his third decade unless he had learned how and when to run. But there is much more to learn than that.”

  Argor shook his head, growling. “Stop telling me the things that I remember telling you, Raven.” He turned back to the smaller man and squared up to him again. “How are you know, my friend?”

  “I am called Silver.”

  Argor was surprised. “A good name for a swordsman.” He scrutinised Silver closely: a stocky, tough-looking man, lean of face, with lank hair, black as jet, and cut to rest about his shoulders. He wore a band of green cloth around his skill, keeping the sweat from his eyes and binding back his hair. His armour, which left bare his arms, was of some dark stained leather, not Yr or Xand, not tough nor weak, but pliable, and creased where it moulded tightly to the warrior’s body. He wore a short black kirtle of some soft fabric, and knee high boots that were turned down to show their dank fur lining. By all the signs Silver was marked as a man from the north western lands, a kingdom of squabbling bands and perpetually warring tribes. His sword, short and broad, with a black-wood hilt and bronze trimmings, had served him well enough in this first training bout, and Argor did not scorn it.

  He said, instead, “Well Silver, let’s go to it again with the sword. In time you shall learn to use a hundred weapons you have never even seen. Axes and javelins, Xand bolas, throwing stars such as Raven uses with more skill than even I. There are a hundred variety of blades with which you must become familiar, scimitars from Xandrone which sing like the wind as they take heads, sabres from Kahrsaam and Tirwand, and from Quwhon, whose black steel cannot be seen against shadow and which you must know to recognise by its sound. But for the moment, to celebrate the end of your brief slavery, we shall scrap with swords!”

  Silver, his face tanned and etched by wind and sun, grinned and waved his sword menacingly. But a strange expression passed across his features and he straightened from his attaching crouch, placed a hand across his leather cuirass to signify pause.

  He stared at Argor, at the man’s broad shoulders and stocky legs, at the gleaming metal armour that encased his chest and belly, at the rich jewels that studded his word-girdle, and the scabbard that hung from it.

  Through Argor’s body the ruined arena shimmered and gleamed like some nightmare vision. Each feature of the crumbling structure was visible, ghostlike, dreamlike, through the translucent features of the warrior mercenary whose body lay quiet in the northern city of Kahrsaam, where he currently leased his sword. A ghost of a man in the ghost of a city. Silver glanced around at the immense decay of a once mighty people, long since lost beneath the shifting sands to the sound of Vartha’an. He could imagine the crowds that had cheered from the cold stone seats, tier upon tier of them, rising up into the blue; he could imagine the helmeted guards standing about the high ramparts, and guarding the dark tunnels that led from pits in the belly of the desert, where the slaves and animals had been chained, ready for their release into brief life and agonising death.

  Scattered about the floor of the arena were the decaying statues of the gods these people had worshipped. Carved in red marble, streaked through with green, translucent crystal, some of the statues had fallen and lay half buried in the sand, but most still stood proud, watching the walls of the square arena, hands extended to the tiers of watchers above them. It was as if in their eternal deafness they chose to ignore the fingers that had scrabbled at their lower limbs as blood had drained into the sand at their feet and men and women had died, screaming, through the long hot days of the games season.

  Silver stared at these statues through the shimmering wraith that was Argor, and his discomfiture overwhelmed him.

  “Raven!” he called, angry.

  “What now?” came the woman’s voice. “What now, Silver? Can you not train in silence?”

  “Aye,” cried Silver, staring at the spectral warrior before him. “I can train in silence. I could train in silence if a hundred Yr circus warriors threatened me. I could train in silence if it were my own brother, or sister, or mother that wielded sword against me. But by the Skulls of Thach, Raven, I cannot concentrate when my opponent is a ghost.”

  There was laughter. It seemed to come from all around the arena, a woman’s laughter, and the deeper laughter of a man. Silver lifted his eyes to scan the crumbling brickwork of the dead place. He thought he saw movement in a dark and cool overhang.

  “If you cannot fight a ghost,” came Raven’s voice, “then who can you fight?”

  “Indeed!” cried ghostly Argor, and Silver saw that man’s sword sung high and brought down towards him with ferocious intent.

  He parried the blow, and where the two blades met, blue sparks flew and there came a sound like metal ground on blunt flint.

  “Well parried tribesman. Well met!”

  Silver straightened up and smiled. The next moment he realised Argor’s blade was embedded in his belly, and the spectral warrior was grinning broadly. “Flattery is a deadly weapon.”

  Silver looked down as Argor withdrew the ghostly sword. He watched the hand through the steel, the grip of Argor’s fingers through the gold-trimmed hilt.

  “A mere flesh wound,” said the tribesman, and struck at the mercenary.

  Blue fire crackled where steel and magic clashed.

  Silver drew back and wiped perspiration from his face. High above him, where once a king or an emperor had sat to watch the death games, he saw a hint of golden hair, the imprecise outline of a woman as she watched her new recruit put through the paces. Beside her stood a dark figure, cowled and shadowy.

  He shivered to think of the frightening power that man possessed.

  The spectre of Argor was unbothered by the heat. Wher he law, in the far distant Kahrsaam, it was not hot, and his spirit, drawn across the vast distance between the two countries, was glad of this exercise.

  Argor called out, “The heat is wilting our friend.”

  Raven, her voice coming from all directions, laughed and said, “I think not.”

  When Argor looked back he realised that Silver had struck him through the chest and was grinning broadly.

  “By the Horns of Xin, that was tricky!”

  “How find you Silver as a swordsman?” asked Raven, and Argor winked hugely at the tribesman and called:

  “No finer warrior have I been asked to test. He will fight well for you, Raven.”

  “His swordplay is naïve and you know it, Argor. But he will certainly fight well for me. Better than you think. Silver, show this Xandronian cow-hugger your strange trick.”

  “A trick, eh?” said Argor with interest, ignoring Raven’s friendly allusion to his childhood practices. He squared up to Silver and the two men positioned themselves to fight.

  Argor’s spectral blade flashed up and Silver stepped back, waving his right arm as he did so, and
striking at Argor with the sword in his left.

  Argor was dumbfounded; Silver’s blade had passed cleanly through him, and not because of the unaccustomed left-handedness of the blow. He stood there, staring at the grinning northerner and at Silver’s right hand which blazed bright, every bit as silver as his name, as the steel weapon he carried.

  Before Argor’s widening eyes the tribesman raised both hands and demonstrated them changing colour to a high metallic sheen that reflected light into Argor’s eyes so that he blinked and squinted; even Silver’s face, below his greasy black hair, changed to the bright, reflecting steel-colour so that he seemed to radiate fire and brilliance from every visible part of him.

  “By the All Mother!” cried Argor. “What manner of magic is this?”

  “No magic,” said Silver.

  “Then how?”

  The silver sheen vanished from the warrior’s face. He stared up at Raven’s half concealed shape. “Do I tell him?”

  “Indeed,” said the woman. “He is a trustworthy associate, even if he does spurn the opportunity to ride with me.”

  “I was born within four kli of the Obsidian Tower,” he explained, then, to a fascinated Argor. “The Tower marks an ancient ford across the river Ish. It is aid that all who are born within ten kli distance of the Tower will develop strange abilities, or be changed in bizarre ways. Most children so born die very quickly, but I…I found my mutation to be advantageous, for it is only in evidence when I wish it to be.”

  Argor thought hard for a moment, then slapped Silver on the shoulder, or would have if there had been some substance to him. “I always tell my recruits that the hand is the most powerful and the most indispensable weapon they have. In your case, Silver, it is all the weapon you need!” Raising his voice he called, “By the paps of the Black Queen, Raven, a few more like this fine fellow and we’ll rule the lands around Worldheart together!”