A Time of Ghosts

by Robert Holdstock

  Duprai beckoned Raven towards the oracle, and she moved out of the shadow of the pillar, stood staring across the floor at the dark crystal there. The Guardian said, “I know only the questions that are asked, not the answers that are given. There are some question which would destroy the oracle, and it is that which I guard. Once I leave the hall the questions you have asked will slip from my mind as quickly and as easily as dew drips from a leaf. You have nothing to fear from me.”

  Raven said, “It had not occurred to me that I might have.”

  She walked swiftly to the dark crystal and stared down into it for a moment. Her head spun, the blood surging in her body, and the sounds of her heart and breathing growing loud and echoing through the spaces in her skull and belly so that she felt herself shaking and booming with sound as her body was drawn towards the strange material.

  “Step upon it,” said Duprai, distantly; and Raven obeyed him.

  At once she was sucked into a pit, into a whirling pool of time and space. Her stomach churned for a brief moment and she felt her hair spread on some soft wind, flowing around her like a golden veil. Rock walls and strange landscapes whirled past her eyes; beasts and strange machines were glimpsed in frustrating snatches of vision before they were swallowed by distance and darkness. Her body thrilled to the sensation, as a wind rippling her skin, caressing her intimately with that permitted touch.

  She found herself descending into a dark chasm, along which a hollow wind blew, mournfully and sonorously. The walls were sheer, craggy, and in their deep recesses lurked creatures strange, and others that she recognised, and as she passed them so they peered down at her from the vanishing strip of light above her head.

  Deeper into the darkness she went, and the wind grew louder…it seemed to speak to her, familiar words, once heard in a place where the nether end of a falling star had danced in the air, held by no rope, nor force of mind…

  The world turns, Raven, though its spin may end at any point. A brake is required, a pivot point, a place, a being…

  Abeingbeingbeing…echoed the wind.

  A focus at which things rest in readiness to be shaped…

  Shapedapedaped…went the walls of the gorge, and she turned her head to left and right and the valley seemed to stretch forever.

  You, Raven, are the focus. You are the axis of the world. Upon you depends the world…

  “Upon I! Upon I!” cried Raven, remembering how scared she had been at Quell, how monstrous the concept that had wormed into her head. “What am I but a warrior?...what can I do?”

  Again the echoing memory of the voice at Quell: the words seemed to rebound from the walls of the chasm, emerging from the darkness below, rising above her as she heard them, into the blue daylight above.

  She descended faster, her stomach heaving, the walls rising before her eyes with terrifying velocity.

  And the memory: This is a young world…and like a growing child it flexes its muscles, striving to define its destiny…There are those who would shape it for their own ends, create an order that will bring them to dominance as they subjugate others to their will…But as metals are melted, blended to forge the finest steel, so must this world be shaped…Order for now is wrong…Order destroyed the Old World…There is a need for Chaos…for Chaos…for Chaos…You, Raven, are the Chaos bringer, you are the Swordmistress of Chaos, you are Raven, and you are the future of the world…

  Abruptly the rising chasm walls stopped, and Raven felt herself standing on solid ground, staring into a depthless space, as if she stood upon a precipice and stared out across the night. The wind was cool on her face, and distantly, in the darkness, lights moved in complex patterns.

  Something, some voice remaining after the remembered voice of Quell, said to her, “Ask what you have come to ask.”

  “Who am I?” cried Raven into the emptiness.

  At once a great shape loomed before her, dark, wide, with stray light showing the rounded spheres of monstrous eyes. She sensed sweet breath, and the extending of wings; she felt cool air blowing across her body, ruffling her hair and shift, and for a moment, just a moment, she thought…

  But then the shape was furled and indistinct, hovering in the blackness before her. “You are Raven,” came its voice, sensuous and deep, no voice that she knew, no voice that she felt she could ever know. “You are Raven, who was Su’aan, and who is Chaosbringer.”

  “Who do I seek?”

  The dark oracle laughed gently. “You seek Donwayne, the destroyer, the Weaponmaster, the abuser, the pawn of Sorcerer Belthis.”

  “Did I kill Donwayne?”

  “Aye, Raven. You killed Donwayne inasmuch as you believed you had killed him and thus he was dead in your heart and mind.”

  She felt momentarily too shocked to speak. Not dead? Donwayne! Not dead? But how could this been? Carefully, evenly, she said, “Then Donwayne is let alive, and walking freely.”

  “Free and not free,” said the oracle. “But alive, yes. And dangerous still.”

  “But I killed him!” screamed Raven, fury and despair overwhelming her. As she teetered on the edge of the precipice, so the darkness seemed to clear and she saw, as through a veil, the arena at Kahrsaam, and in the arena…her own body, moving slowly through the motions of a duel.

  There again, opposed to her, was the foul shape of Karl ir Donwayne parrying her blows, and striking hard at her.

  She watched, almost mesmerised, as the slow battle was replayed, and their dancing figures moved almost effortlessly about the dry arena, sand drifting up from their feet, and slowly settling, blood smeared and reddened.

  “See…now!” came the voice of the oracle, and as she watched so the figure of Donwayne seemed to split, and an image of him moved away from Raven, towards a part of the arena where a familiar green and black robed figure was half hidden.

  “Belthis,” murmured Raven, and as she watched so Sorcerer and ghost vanished into the darkness of the tunnel…

  While on the sand-strewn floor of the games pit, Raven struck down the spiritless flesh of a man who still lived, and was making fast his escape!

  The vision faded. Darkness flowed back across her eyes. “He lives, then. And I must hunt him again.”

  “He is a weapon, Raven, a weapon to be used against you. At all times you must guard against your higher emotion, for pursuit of Donwayne might mean a breach in the pattern of Chaos whilst your attention is directed elsewhere.”

  Raven said nothing, feeling the wind on her flesh cooling the angry heat the burned her. The oracle spoke again: “And yet, sometimes pursuit is correct, for it will lead you to the source of the breach. Be guided by the bird, Raven, be ever guided by the bird, and by the words of Spellbinder.”

  The dark shape began to drift away and Raven felt the tug of reality at her mind; but summoning all her strength she cried out, “Where is he now? Where do I find him?”

  And the voice answered her: “To the north, where your sword is needed now, where what seems to be is not, and where a Rainbow holds the key. Go, Raven, time waits on no man or woman, and time runs short.”

  Six

  “Sea and sky are neither friend nor enemy, but can harbour both.”

  The Books of Kharwhan

  Fair winds and a fortunate flow of the currents carried them north at speed. The ship cut a shallow draught, and its wide hull smacked the water as it rode the waves and sent great shudders through the vessel. The great double-sail cracked and billowed out above the prow so that at times it seemed the unusual vessel would topple keel-over-mast; but it rode steady and straight at the hands of the Zantarian Captain.

  Raven stood by the double-headed prow, following each gruesome gaze out across the green-shimmering ocean. The wide-eyed, grimacing figures were earthly manifests of two lesser-known Zantarian gods, and Raven felt glad to be of Ishkar, for she would not like to be bound to the mercy of such fiercesome creatures.

  Blue-cloaked against the cold winds, her golden hair streaming before her, R
aven let the power of wind and sea drain up and into her body. She knew the sailors watched her, those of Ghorm most of all for they worshipped yellow in that gold-hungry city. At a cry of “Dark Land!” she stared across the ovean to the west and saw the rising crags of some small and unknown island, and she thought of Gondar Lifebane, Master of Kragg, and felt an unaccustomed longing.

  A sea mist rapidly obscured the dark island, and the ship ploughed on, a few days only from its port in Ghorm, and no more than a few days from its destination south of Lym.

  The Captain called out to Raven, “It may not be safe to stand there m’lady.”

  Raven walked across the shifting deck, her cloak wrapped tightly about her, hiding her voluptuousness from the crew. Below the read-deck she stood and asked why.

  The Captain, a fat man called Jharnok, swathed around in red and yellow woolens, grinned and pointed back to the island. “Those islands only raise from the sea occasionally. It means there has been some disturbance, most likely towards Kharwhan.”

  “We are many kli from the Ghost Isle.”

  “Aye, lady, but the destructive effects of Kharwhan can reach around the span of the Ocean. If the submerged islands have been brought into day, who knows what else may have been dredged to the surface for a while. It would be as well to take care.” He turned from her and called to a swarthy, naked man to run to the aft of the vessel to keep watch. The man obeyed reluctantly. He looked long, hard and hungrily at Raven as he passed her.

  Raven went below decks, to the tiny, low-ceilinged cabin that she, Karmana and Moonshadow had been allocated. Karman was asleep, wrapped tight in thick blankets, her breathing heavy and labored. She, like Moonshadow, was the worse for their sea journey. Though the ship sailed fast, it did not sail smooth, and even Raven had found herself spending time at the starboard rail during the first two days of the crossing.

  She unbuckled her heavy cloak, smoothed the wrinkled from her tunic as Moonshadow, seated despondently across the heavy wooden table from her, watched her movements darkly.

  “I do not trust this crew,” said Raven. “They are greedy men, and I trust not greedy men: greed is insatiable. Some of them seem little better than animals.”

  Moonshadow contemplated his hands for a moment. “Not really what you would expect of a crew from a City State. More the crew of a marauder.”

  “We may have been duped, friend Moonshadow. So let us be on our guard, and stand ready to assault the ship.”

  “Three of us against twenty?” He considered this, then shrugged. “Reasonable odds.”

  Night came swiftly, and the strong winds kept the ship fleeing northwards. In turns they watched through the night, Raven sleeping fitfully and chill, and welcoming the closeness of Moonshadow’s body, for the man seemed aglow with heat. Only his eyes were gold, the iciest, greyest eyes that Raven had ever seen, and yet when they regarded her she could sense the humanness of the man, and something else, some agony, hidden deep beneath the pale-skinned features of the stranger.

  At dawn all three awoke and paced the deck, the brisk, spray-laden wind freshening them. They huddled at the prow, watching the heaving white-capped waves as they broke about them. A dense mist hugged the horizon, and dark clouds rolled across the sky above them, so they seemed to sail into the mouth of a storm, though no storm broke.

  The crew watched them. Dark-skinned men, mostly naked, they seemed unable to work when the two women were aboard. Raven sensed that many of the crew had been afloat for most of their lives, perhaps forbidden to touch the land. Such men, known as seabirds, were most likely slaves who had been given their release into a Captain’s service, but were promised only death should they attempt to come ashore again. It was freedom of a sort, for they worked as men among men, and not dog among dogs.

  But they were starved of the things that make men hungry, and Raven could see it in their eyes, in their nervously clenched fists.

  “By the Dark God, these men scare me,” said Karmana. She had wrapped her black cloak about her, tucking her hair out of sight to try and reduce the inviting aspect of her body. Moonshadow, lean and strong, stood with his legs braced apart and stared at the ocean ahead. His shorter cloak waved and flapped in the wind, and he seemed less concerned with survival than with his own thoughts.

  Raven said, “They are untrained fools. We could take them easily. Their only advantage is their sea-legs, opposed to our shaky land-legs.”

  There was a sound like steel sliding from leather, and Moonshadow turned to watch the golden-haired woman. She smiled narrowly and he realised she now carried her sword at the free, concealed beneath her cloak.

  The day brightened, the sun broke through and the waters around them seemed to burn with some hidden fire.

  Squatting on the deck Raven questioned Moonshadow about himself.

  “You puzzle me. But that you know, of course.”

  Moonshadow said nothing.

  Raven said, “When I came to the oracle you were already there. I would not have listened, but arriving suddenly I heard you ask the oracle of what use was I to you. Will you tell me what the answer was?”

  Reaching up, Moonshadow swept back his silvery hair, tucked it inside his collar so the wind would not blow it wild. How lean his face, how angular and jutting the bones of his skull, thought Raven. By no mean an unattractive warrior, she was ever startled by noticing how translucent and almost paper thin was the man’s white skin. Like his name, she thought; he is almost a moon’s shadow, a fragment of silver gossamer. And yet he is powerful, and confident.

  Moonshadow said, “The oracle advised me that you, in part, are my destiny. It told me to stay with you, and I would come face to face with the destiny I seek. Why else do you think I sail with you?”

  “The question had occurred to me. What is your quest?”

  The warrior reached into his belt and drew from it a magnificent, many-faceted green stone. He hunched round so that his body shielded the price from avaricious eyes. He might have noticed the man at the mast-head, but he did not.

  Raven reached for the emerald but Moonshadow’s hand closed upon it quickly. He looked at her almost angrily, then relaxed, opened his hand again and placed the stone on her palm. “Do not close your hand,” he said, “but merely look at it.”

  “It’s beautiful,” said Raven.

  “The most magnificent stone I’ve ever seen,” said Karmana. “It’s more splendid, even, than that in the pommel of your sword, Raven.”

  “True,” agreed the other girl wistfully, holding the emerald higher so the light glinted from it. She looked at Moonshadow. “But what has this to do with your quest?” She sought answers with more urgency than she wished to imply.

  “How many facets has the stone?”

  “Countless,” said Raven, staring at the green gem.

  “No less than the facets of evil in he whom I seek. Watch…”

  As Raven kept her hand extended, the gem resting lightly in its palm, so legs seemed to unfold from the glittering edges of the jewel, and a bulbous, round body rose on eight limbs, to stand there trembling, watching with bright, tiny eyes. A green spider, quite the most repulsive and horrid thing she had ever seen. At once she wanted to cast the creature away, but she remained paralysed while the animal crawled slowly towards her wrist, its legs moving slowly, almost mechanically, the tiny hairs on it irritating the sensitive skin of her palm.

  “That which I seek will evoke no less a horror in you than the spider. Beauty and repulsion are contained within the same object, and this is the way with the Crugoan; it can hide in many forms. My fear, Raven, was that it might have been hiding in you, but that fear is gone. I know the form the Crugoan has taken, and though it be not as ravishing as yourself, it is still far sweeter than the true features of the thing.

  “This little friend,” he reached out and let the spider crawl on to his hand; its legs folded up and it became again the bright surfaced jewel. “This is how I shall kill it, when I catch it. The spider i
s the deadliest imaginable; a single touch of its jaws leads to agonising death.”

  “Thank you for letting me hold it,” said Raven, wiping her hand hard against her thigh.

  Moonshadow smiled. “Feaer not. It has jaws and eyes only for the Crugoan.”

  “This Crugoan…you have sought it for long?”

  Moonshadow nodded slowly. His eyes were distant, his expression thoughtful and pained. “For all my life, it seems, I have quested to find the thing. No true human, the Crugoan, but a worker of magic nonetheless. And until I find it I am its prisoner…its helpless prisoner…” His eyes flickered upwards towards the cloud-covered skies.

  Raven shivered. She understood nothing, but sensed it would be wrong to press Moonshadow for further explanation.

  Then she noticed the fear in Karmana’s eyes. She was looking across the deck, towards the place where the crew gathered when their hands were not needed at the rigging or the oars.

  “We have trouble,” said the northern girl, and shaking back her salt-caked black hair she jumped to her feet.

  In a single motion Raven and Moonshadow too had risen, turned, and adopted defensive postures. Raven threw back her cloak, slipped her sword from its scabbard again and waved it menacingly across the planks.

  Captain Jharnok stood there, hands haughtily on hips, his dark-whiskered face broken by a wide, black-toothed smile that gave him the appearance of some evil, wrinkled shrew. The wind drove his loose cotton clothing against his body, and Raven could see the ridges of muscle standing out along his thighs. The man was tensed, poised ready for attack.

  “The green jewel,” he said. “I will have it, if you please. The cost of your voyage has just been increased by as much as it is worth.”

  A naked man tugged at Jharnok’s sleeve; he was muscular and scarred and clutched an enormous broad-bladed scythe-like weapon. “And the golden girl,” he said audibly, his Zantarian accept strong and thick. “We shall have her as you promised?”