A Time of Ghosts

by Robert Holdstock

  Here Spellbinder had pitched the tents of the band, and here too Raven was reunited with Silver and the others, some ten slave-warriors who now rode free, but with sword in hand and war in their hearts.

  Refreshed, washed, and dressed in clean, tight-fitting clothes, Raven sat by Moonshadow’s prone form. He lay still, almost unbreathing. He had been placed in a small tent with part of the roof open to the sky; bright stars shone through the window, and were reflected in the wide, bright orbs of Moonshadow’s eyes. His lips were thin and pale, and when Raven brushed them with her own she noticed that they were cold, cold as death.

  He reacted to the kiss and smiled, turned his eyes from the night heavens to Raven’s golden-haired features as they leaned close to him.

  “Worry not, my lady.”

  “But I do worry, Moonshadow. Your sickness seems absolute and there are none among us who recognise it, or can cure it. I should hate to lose you.”

  Moonshadow reached out a shaking hand and his grip on her wrist was weak and reminiscent of the touch of an old man. “I am not dying, Raven. This ailment is a regular visitation upon me.” The grip failed and he fell back against the furs, gasping for breath. Beneath his skin Raven could see the blood moving through the thin tubes that carried it about his body. He seemed to be fading from her eyes.

  “You are no man of this world,” she said softly, searchingly. She watched the smile that touched Moonshadow’s lips.

  “But I am, Raven, I am. Although for the moment I am a man of two worlds.” He lifted his right arm, pointing to the stars. “What see you yonder, Raven?”

  “Stars,” said the girl.

  “What else?”

  “Nought, for the present. The moon is new, hidden from our eyes. It hangs low on the horizon.”

  “I am the Moon’s shadow, Raven.”

  Raven searched his eyes, curiously, then shook her head, not understanding him. The man said, “When the moon is full, when its silvery strength is greatest, so am I also powerful, strong, practically invincible. But as the moon wanes, so I also wane. It makes little practical difference until the moon is almost gone, then my strength drains from me as water runs through cupped hands. For a few days I am helpless as a babe in arms. But for a few days only. Worry not, Raven. If I do not overburden you for a while, I shall soon wield as powerful a sword as any in your find band of mercenaries!”

  “This pleases me,” said Raven, and stroking back the man’s white hair, she leaned down to kiss his nose and forehead, still unable to repress a shiver she felt when her lips touched his ice-cold skin.

  She left him sleeping and went out into the night, glanced at the silver edge that showed beyond the dark face of the moon, then up at the fine, dense field of the stars. Torches burned low about the camp, unobtrusive light in the semi-desert darkness.

  Then light spilled across her and she lowered her gaze to the finest of the tents around, that which she shared with Spellbinder.

  Clad in black leather cuirass and leggings, with his wide-bladed sword hanging from the jeweled belt, Spellbinder stood there, watching her. He waved her to him and she went willingly.

  “How is our friend?” asked the warlock, as they stood together in the tent flap and stared at the night.

  “He will recover.”

  “And how is Raven?” Spellbinder turned her by her shoulders and faced her square. “I confess I have been hungry for you these last few days.”

  She reached up to cup his face in her hands, and drew his lips on to hers. They kissed gently, for a while, and then—arms around each other—went into the tent.

  Raven lay down upon the green quilt that covered their pallet, and Spellbinder sat beside her, stroking her legs and breasts gently, sensuously. After a while he slipped open the bow knows down the side of her short tunic and moved the material from her body so that she lay naked beneath his hands. Her eyes closed as he softly caressed her.

  “I envy other men’s touches upon you.”

  Raven smiled, reached down to hold his hand with hers, and moved it so his palm cupped her hard tipped breast.

  “Few touches are there that are as understanding and moving as yours.” She opened her eyes and gazed at him. “But I belong to no man, or woman, and that is how I would wish it.”

  “And how face has decreed it. Aye, Raven, ’tis nought but the envy of the feeble part of my manhood that speaks thus. Were it not for our closeness I should not confess this weakness at all.”

  Raven sat up, propped on an elbow. “Lay with me, Spellbinder. Your touch has aroused me and I shall not waste a drop of passion. I sense that passion will be hard won during the next few weeks.”

  Stripping his closed from his tanned body, Spellbinder stood above the woman as she caressed him and fully aroused him.

  Strangely, when they lay side by side, and indulged in a lengthy and unbroken kiss, they made no move to consummate the passion they felt. There was as much achievement of love in the closeness of their bodies and minds as in the sweating games that led to orgasm.

  They loved for a while, then slept for a while, and woke together in the very darkest hour that preceded the first rays of the dawn sun.

  Spellbinder, glad to be up and about before the others, ran to the canvas sacks that contained the band’s food and secured breakfast in the form of cold joints of some small animal, that was tasty enough when eaten with large swallows of Saran wine, also purloined from the meagre supplies that Raven’s troop carried with them.

  With furs from the bed wrapped around their shoulders they ate, and sipped from battered silver goblets, and talked about what had happened in the Altanate.

  “By now,” said Spellbinder, throwing a small bone over his shoulder, “Quez M’rystal has finished his preparations for war and will be starting his voyage to besiege Kragg. We can probably watch his fleet sailing out into the ocean today. I play, by the way, that we should follow him. What say you, my leader?” He grinned.

  Raven shrugged. “I certainly yearn to see Lifebane and understand why he has done this strange thing. Is M’rystal confident that it was the Sea Wolf who kidnapped his sister?”

  Spellbinder nodded thoughtfully. “As far as I have found out—in Kahrsaam I have to hide my face—a Kragg ship sailed up the river Lym as far as Balim. The Sea Wolves then stole horses and rode hard for Kyal, where Krya was pending a few days—and nights—in the temple of the All Motehr, a religious centre for all the eastern lands, and a notorious brothel. They say she was plucked from the shafts of three men when the Sea Wolves took her. The men confessed to it, and three heads now stand atop the gate at Kharsaam, each with its privates wedged between the jaws.

  “They should have kept their mouth shut,” said Raven with a wry smile. Spellbinder chuckled.

  “As I was saying. She was taken by men who, to all appearances, were Gondar Lifebane’s men, and they carried her back to Balim, and sailed away into the sunset. M’rystal killed every man in the temple, slaughtered as many people of Kragg living under his protection as he could, threw several different varieties of fit, and then ordered the entire country to war, to arms, and to the fleets. Most of his fleet was scattered, but he is now ready to go and rescue his sister-wife from his old enemy. He really means bad business.”

  “Has Gondar yet demanded ransom?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Strange,” said Raven, “since he could have left the demand at Balim.”

  Spellbinder agreed whole-heartedly. “Raven, this is in no way Lifebane’s handiwork. It makes no kind of sense. Lifebane has the intelligence to plan a vast conquest, but not the inclination. And he cannot stand the appearance of Krya. He called her a weasel, once, so lust cannot be the answer. I can think only that M’rystal has something that Lifebane desperately wants, or believes belongs to him. Either that, or this is no doing of Lifebane’s at all.”

  “For my part,” said Raven, “I opt for the latter. But we must be sure. If it is true then, hurtful though it is,
Lifebane has become a threat, and we must act accordingly.”

  Spellbinder patted her on the knee, a wry smile touching his lips. “You might sound a little more enthusiastic, but nonetheless—a commendable attitude.” He sobered, shook his head. “And yes, I agree….a hurtful decision to have to make.”

  “We must find Lifebane and confront him. I think he will be honest with me, if not with you.”

  “Aye,” said Spellbinder thoughtfully. “But there is no way we can get to him before M’rystal, and besides, by now Lifebane knows which way the wind is blowing and the sea gate into Kragg is well blockaded, you can be sure.”

  “So it goes,” said Raven softly, and Spellbinder smiled.

  “Aye, so it goes.”

  Raven said, brightly, “Magic will get us there ahead of time, and of M’rystal.”

  Surprisingly Spellbinder shook his head. “It would seem to be a simple spell, of course, but it is no spell that I possess. It would take time and energy to discover it, and besides…I must of necessity save my strength. Once we have proved that Lifebane is innocent of the charge, I have an idea to discover what really happened.”

  “Using magic?”

  “Partially. A very difficult spell, and one that will weary me greatly. I shall use the peacefulness of Kragg to conclude the bringing of it to this time, so I may bind it; then we shall see what really lies behind this kidnapping.”

  “Why not use it now? Why not prove Lifebane innocent without even going to Kragg?”

  Spellbinder raised a finger to his lips. “As I said, Raven, the spell is not ready. You know the way I work. I reach for spells, to bind them to my own mind…but to do that takes energy and emotion…” he gave her a strange look. “I am not yet ready, and that is all there is to it.”

  Raven finished eating and drained her mug of wine, but found the taste of it so refreshing and sweet after the salt cakes she had swallowed the days previous that she refilled her goblet. She turned to Spellbinder. “What know you of Uthaan, of an oracle there?”

  Spellbinder smiled narrowly, searched her eyes. “I know of it,” he said. “Why? Have you been there?”

  Angrily Raven said, “You know I have! Don’t play games with me, Spellbinder. I do not appreciate it.”

  Spellbinder sat back and help up his hands for peace. His pale blue eyes twinkled with humour. “Silver told me of your intention. But how was I to know if you got there?”

  “Was it not you put the idea into my head through the voice of Nivik, the old magician I met near Lyand?”

  Spellbinder cocked his head to one side, watching the suddenly irrational angry young woman. “It was convenient to me that Nivik was there, and could respond to my instruction. Why should that annoy you?”

  “Because it makes me feel chained!” cried Raven darkly. “It makes me feel watched! As if nothing I do is of my own doing. Is a sense of independence so unimportant an quality to you that you care nothing for stifling it in your ‘tool’ of Chaos? Well I care! I am Su’aan, a woman and a warrior, and I want that to be as important as the fact that I am Raven, Chaosbringer. I am no puppet! Deny that, deny my right to independence, and you will destroy me!”

  The sudden emotion passed. Spellbinder reached out and took Raven’s hand, and the woman lifted dark eyes, and drawn face, to stare at him. “Am I wrong to want that right?”

  Spellbinder shook his head. “No. The right to independence is inalienable. But Raven, just because I was able to influence you to go to Uthaan does not mean that I am influencing you. You have guardians, and there are places about the world where those who seek to maintain Chaos can speak to you, can guide you. But for the most part you are alone, you are independent. Raven…there may be those few who guide you…but you guide the world! It may seem hard to accept, hard to believe, to understand, but you must accept it: even those who guide you are now dependent upon you, and will become more so as time passes. Raven, these are early days. We merely toy with Chaos, play with it, learn to manipulate it and use it to our own ends: as Argor trained you with weapons, so those who speak to you, so I, Spellbinder, train you with more subtle forces, forces that before too long you will have to wield like an iron bladed sword, or fall beneath your attackers! Enjoy being watched while you may. Soon you will wish for those eyes with every stammered breath of your body!”

  Raven said nothing. Slowly she reached for Spellbinder’s other hand and squeezed him affectionately. She kissed his fingers, apologizing in silence…and yet there was a terrible look about her, a haunted look. Spellbinder suspected that it was not Chaos that confused and embittered her, now, but something else.

  He said, “Tell me, Raven. Tell me what Uthaan told you.”

  “Donwayne lives,” she said quietly, and Spellbinder could sense the control she exercised to keep her voice calm. “Donwayne still lives, still walks, still breathes! I killed him and yet he lives! By the Sword, Spellbinder, what must I do to ride my mind of this man? What must I do to avenge what he did to me? I kill a man and he survives because of a trick! What hope do I have for peace when destiny treats me with such contempt?” Her voice rose, angry again. Tears filled her eyes. “I shall have to seek him again, to kill him. I shall have to.”

  The silence that followed was cool and uneasy. Raven knew what Spellbinder was thinking, what he wished to tell her, but perhaps he thought it unnecessary, or inappropriate, to lecture her at the moment on the need to assign her desire for revenge to a low priority. Raven was glad he said nothing, for she was bitterly aware that she might make a disastrous mistake if she pursued Donwayne to kill him, rather than attending to the task that the nameless priests of the Ghost Isle seemed to know so much about, so much more than she.

  How easily she accepted her role as Chaosbringer, even so soon after her brief doubt!

  She remembered the words of the oracle at Uthaan, and in them there was a hope to which she clung as an autumn leaf clings to the branch, remaining there until a sudden wind tears it loose. Donwayne was to be found to the north, where her sword was needed now! Perhaps, just this one more time, Donwayne lay along the axis of her destiny; perhaps she would have one last chance to slay him without deviating from the path that destiny was marking out for her.

  The tents were rolled and stowed across the broad backs of Raven’s three pack horses, beasts from the northern plains of Xandrone that were built for speed and yet could carry great loads.

  Silver, clean and shaven for the first time since Raven had known him, greeted her with a great cheer as she mounted her horse, and turned to regard her small band of followers.

  Fine warriors all, seven of them male, five of them female, Raven being included in this number. Twelve in all, and magnificent in their armour or metal and Yr leather, mail and bone-plates, each warrior wearing the body armour of his nation, and each distinctive and proud because of it.

  Karmana had, at last, realised who and what Silver was, and the old tribal hostility between them was almost tangible; they fought hard, the two of them, to keep that hostility unvoiced. Black-haired, and angry of bearing, the northerners were a contrast to the rest of the band since they wore their hair short. The rest wore their hair long, in a variety of styles from plaits to pigtails. Mostly fair, they represented the cultures of north and south, east and west.

  Only one other Ishkarian besides Raven rode with them—a quiet man called Gillen, who carried two short swords, strapped cross-wise on his chest. He drew upwards, and it looked almost cumbersome, but he was adept and skilled, and fast.

  Two there were from the Altanate, and two outcasts from the City States. A red-haired Xandronian warrior called Brede entertained the others for hours with his tales of nights on the open plains of his country, and the great Xand drives from the breeding grounds near the Worlds End Mountains and up to the towns scattered along the Horn river.

  A woman from Kragg, called Arreena, managed to seem always as if she fought on the storm-whipped waters of the great ocean; her hair constantly strea
med and waved about her face, great curls tumbling past her breasts which heaved naked and full, as if she faced the salt spray of a wild sea, standing at the prow of her wolf ship.

  Rave was proud of them all, and they in turn were proud to ride with Raven.

  Silver came forward, turned his horse so that he stood beside her. “Our swords are ready, Raven. Lead and we follow! Point and we kill! Cry and we ride like the wind to help! Demand and we—”

  Raven silenced him with a laugh. “You have convinced me, Silver! Your enthusiasm is most welcome.”

  The tribesman grinned, his brown eyes sparkling. “Where do we fight? On whose behalf do we wield our swords?”

  “Aye,” cried Gillen. “My bones are weary of this semi-arid place. Supplies grow scarce. It is time we found gainful employ. Where, Raven?”

  Raven exchanged glanced with Spellbinder, who donned his bright helmet and stood in his stirrups. “In a few days,” he said, “the Altan, Quez M’rystal, will come on his knees to us and pay more than you ever dreamed for our swords and service.”

  This brought a delighted cheer from the warriors. “Action at last!” cried Karmana, and with the unstoppable enthusiasm of her race, she unsheathed her sword and waved it angrily at the skies. “By the Seven Tribes of the Dubthag, my blade can already taste blood. See, it even seeks to strike at the sun.”

  “By the Five Valleys of the Ogonors,” cried Silver, “we shall cut a swathe twenty men wide through any army that opposes us!”

  “A slack-jawed curse on the five valleys!” shouted Karmana, furious that Silver’s tribal oath should be matched so closely to hers.

  “The Dark Hags death rattle to the Seven Tribes!”

  Karmana screamed in fury and swung at Silver who parried her blow and laughed.

  Raven knocked both blades aside with her own and rode her horse between the opposed pair.

  “No one rides with me who does not ride as the friend of all slaves! Take your choice. Unite the Five Valleys and the Seven Tribes here, now, before us all, or scatter to the three winds.” She looked angrily between them.