A Time of Ghosts

by Robert Holdstock

  The soldiers of the Altanate roared. Spellbinder shouted encouragements to Raven as she dodged the sound of a blow, and skipped back again, striking and missing and knowing that it was just a matter of moments before he broke through her concentration, which was her main defence.

  Then she noticed, in the dimness, that Silver was waving at her, and that his left hand was gleaming bright. She heard the sword of the Night Warrior strike at her, gauged the approach of it by the sound it made, and deflected the blow. She stepped back, and the Warrior came between her and Silver.

  As Silver’s hand waved so the ghostly outline of the man appeared, then vanished as he stepped aside.

  In that instant Raven had seen the giant warrior, his long hair, his ridged muscles, the thick armor around his hips and skill. He carried, she imaged, a sabre much like her own, and a small round shield, metal-rimmed, wood-faced.

  She struck to where the Night Warrior had moved and felt her blade knocked aside, to a cheer from the crew. A moment later, as she stepped back, she felt her arm cut and saw the thin line of red that the Warrior’s near miss had inflicted.

  She worked around him until again he stood between her and the bizarre northern tribesman. Silver, grinning broadly, extended both steel-shining hands about him, catching the attention of the men who guarded him. Raven saw the Night Warrior as a silvery outline, an insubstantial apparition, glittering and rippling as the fire reflected off Silver’s light-giving hands.

  Raven struck at him and noticed how lazy was the deflecting blow. She stepped back, and feinted, then went in under the man’s guard, hitting at the ghostly head with her wicker shield. The man grunted in surprise, and then screamed as Raven’s sword went into his belly; she fell back, dropped down, twisting the sword so that its point was angled upwards. She hesitated for just a moment as the Night Warrior froze, staring at her, aware of how close he was to death . Then she pushed with all her strength. The blade must have emerged from the man’s back, tatters of his heart upon it.

  The sword was wrenched from her hand as the Night Warrior stumbled, unseen, across the deck. Where he fell a great gush of blood slowly appeared, drenching the wooden planks.

  M’rystal rose in the silence and walked to the vanquished Warrior, kicked the thin air where he lay, then looked at Raven.

  He said nothing, walked past her to the lower decks. The crew and guards dispersed, and Silver and Moonshadow ran to Raven to congratulate her.

  “Well fought,” said Moonshadow, “what a warrior you truly are.”

  “With a little help from her friends,” said Silver quietly, and Raven reached out for his hands and grasped them warmly. The man said, “I recognised him as a bizarre mutation from the Ish river. I noticed during our wars with the Tribes of the Corgani that I could make their Mist Warriors, as they were called, visible with my own silver skin. Useful, no?”

  “Beautiful,” said Raven, her breath still ragged and hurting her lungs. “I feared for my life, I am not ashamed to admit it.”

  Spellbinder said, “You should not have. I was watching him at all times and was ready to strike him.”

  Raven shook her head in despair. “I nearly die and all you can say is that I had nothing to worry about! What sort of danger is that?”

  Spellbinder laughed. “Save danger for when I am not with you. But now, I think, we should rest. In the morning I imagine M’rystal will call for us again.

  Ten

  “Time, striving to reduce all things to their natural state, is the prime agent of Chaos. And yet nature is the highest form of Order. Magic draws upon this paradox.”

  The Books of Kharwhan

  Raven woke to two sensations: a man’s arms about her, his breathing heavy and deep upon her neck; and the rolling motion of the ship, as if it were being battered by high waves.

  She eased out of the arms and turned to see who had lain so close to her. Silver awoke and smiled up at her, before sighing with contentment and rolling over on to his back. “You may not remember it,” he said, his eyes closed, the smile still on his lips, “but we made love a thousand times last night. Each time…” he yawned, “was a thousand times better than the time before. My lips are sore with kissing you. My loins ache you have drained them so.” He sat up abruptly, looked around at the others who still slept, then back at Raven. “Once more,” he begged, “to prove it was no dream.”

  Raven laughed and pushed him down to the hard deck again. She winced as the cut on her arm stung for a second. “I’m exhausted,” she said. “A young girl such as I am is no match for your mighty northern customs.”

  “True,” said Silver. He reached for his sword belt, which M’rystal had returned the night before, and buckled it on. “Are we sailing?”

  They peered up at the sky, visible through the open hatch to the upper deck.

  Raven shrugged, then led the way up to the steps and out into the crisp and mist-laden dawn.

  They had set-to about a kli from the cliffs of Kragg, and the deep water and high breakers were tossing the anchored fleet like so many paper ships. The wolf boat was there, and Spellbinder was already aboard it, crouched on the deck and wrapped in his heavy black cloak. He saw Raven appear at the nearby railings and beckoned to her.

  M’rystal appeared from below decks on the Kragg ship and stared across the ocean at her. She ran to the grappling ropes and hauled on them, inching the wolf boat nearer until she could leap the intervening distance with ease. Silver fetched the others from their sleep and they all gathered about Spellbinder.

  “Is the siege of Kragg at an end, then?” asked Raven.

  M’rystal nodded and pointed to the high mast of his flagship. Raven shaded her eyes and saw impaled there the slackjawed head of Gorghai. The Altan said, “Had he known a little more of what he was doing he would have survived in his field longer.” He sighed. “There will be trouble on the sea because of this siege. I doubt Lifebane will show much mercy to any Altanate trader he runs to ground for the next few months.”

  “You have brought that upon yourself,” said Karmana, standing close by. “As for myself, I am amazed that you are so easily swayed.”

  The Altan turned to look at her, then glanced at Raven before shaking his head and watching the concentrating form of Spellbinder. “She understands not the way of honour,” he said, perhaps to no one, perhaps to Raven. Raven found herself regretting that mistrust had lain in her heart. For all his faults and multiple weaknesses, M’rystal, as his father before him, was a man of his word.

  “Silence,” said Spellbinder. He looked at Jirrem. “Take the ship further out into open water, away from the fleet.”

  M’rystal said, “I have twntey guards below decks. Try nothing sinister or you shall be a sea serpent’s supper.”

  “We’ve tried that already,” murmured Raven.

  The small vessel cut swiftly away from the wallowing fleet, and turned her nose away from the wind, rising and falling with gut-churning motion as the sea tried to overturn her. But Lifebane’s wolf boats were no shallow craft to be buffeted by anything but a giant storm; though the passage was uncomfortable, the ship rode the waters in masterful fashion.

  At last Spellbinder called for the sail to be furled and the sea anchor dropped. Kragg was a vague grey shape rising from the sea and shrouding mists. The bulk of the fleet was invisible, but two ships, crammed with soldiers, had sailed nearby and floated, starboard aspect, towards the wolf ship, their Captains watching intently.

  M’rystal sat down near the rear deck and shivered. Raven wanted to ask why he felt it necessary to so expose his delicacy to the elements, but she assumed that he had his reasons and kept quiet, adopting a similar seated position in the shelter of the sail-locker. In the middle of the deck Spellbinder had his eyes closed.

  After a while she heard him whisper her name. The air had grown bitterly cold, almost unnaturally so, and the warriors grouped around the bulwarks were huddled and frosty-breathed. M’rystal seemed desperately uncomfortable.
Raven could hear his teeth chattering.

  She watched Spellbinder’s lips as he spoke to her, hardly more than breathing but speaking audibly to her. “Fear not what will occur,” he was saying. “Remember what I told you of my spell-binding.”

  “I am not afraid,” said Raven quietly.

  “I reach beyond the wall of years,” said the Sorcerer. “Even now my mind travels the ages of future, searching among the gods and Sorcerers of time for the spell I require. Half of it I have, but the key words remain in the mind of a man not yet born, whose people have not yet come of age, whose world will spring from this one in a time when all of us, all our lands, will be fine dust.”

  The flow of almost silent words ceased. Throughout them Spellbinder had scarcely moved. Raven understood that he was gradually bringing her to full awareness of the strangeness of him, and of the strangeness of her role in this world. Pierce by piece the facts and information were given up to her. She was Raven, Chaosbringer, and she knew in her heart, if not for a fact, that her destiny was guided by the mysterious priests of Kharwhan, the Ghost Isle. Who or what those priests might have been Raven knew not; and yet this Spellbinder, this handsome warrior whose skills with the sword were no greater than his skills with magic, this outcast from his own land was almost certainly one of those hidden priests, a man…perhaps more than a man….who had emerged from behind the mist-shrouded cliffs of the forbidden land.

  And yet how could she be so certain? In fact, she could not be certain at all. Perhaps this was what he wanted her to think. Perhaps he was something very different to a Sorcerer priest from Kharwhan.

  He had told her that she, Su’aan, Raven, was the focus of things past and things future. He had told her that her coming had been often spoken of before her birth, that she was the moving moment where all the forces of destiny were drawn together. He had told her that she was the bringer of Chaos, and was thus the shaper of the world to come. He had told her that she was guarded by unseen hands, and by his own hands, and by the sword-sharp claws of the great bird that was so often near her.

  Doomed to suffer, doomed to conquer, knowing not the sacred tomes…

  The words of the litany came back to her, chilled her as their meaning twisted and turned in her head. How little the song had meant to her when first Spellbinder had softly sung it. The elegy of an ancient tribe, the last fading reflection of their religion, perhaps. She had heard a thousand such. A lullaby sung to wailing children, the words meaningless, the rhythm and melody all that was important, the message, the significance forgotten. And yet, this was no lullaby, no soft consoling ditty designed to make her mind sleep and cease asking questions. Each time she said it over to herself the words seemed to thunder, to echo through her skull, as if someone, or something, screamed at her to understand them, to become a part of them.

  Life and death, they both are hidden, in the chose infant frame,

  New world born, and old one dying, who to guess the godlike game?

  She was snapped from her brooding reminiscence by a gasp from someone on the deck of the wolf ship.

  Standing, she saw a sight that made her stomach churn, her skin crawl. Only Spellbinder, of the people on the deck, remained motionless, for this thing was his doing.

  The sea had fallen calm as a fishpond, its silvery surface bright as new forged steel, not a ripple nor a wave to break the smoothness of it. And around them the wall of mist was twisting and circling them, like an immense vortex, winding about them and up into the air, the walls, the spinning motion, growing faster, more dizzying to watch.

  A sound rose from the ghostly silence, then, a high-pitched sound, a keening sound, as wind whining through tall spires, or a distant scream disseminated by space and wind. The keening swelled in volume and became a frightening sound, a shriek piercing the spinning fog wall. When Raven glanced at Spellbinder she saw his lips parted, his teeth together, and wondered whether the sound came from him and was being sucked into the unreality beyond the becalmed wolf boat.

  The keening sound broke into a sequence of unrecognisable cries, words by the sound of them, but no words from anywhere around Worldheart. Each word was followed by a gasping sob, a cry of despair, or an uncontrollable breath sucked in shrilly to try and compensate for the enormous effort of some inhumanly difficult task.

  Sweat poured from Spellbinder’s face. Raven watched him, wondering whether to run to him and bathe his skin, but she remained, like the others, paralysed at her spot upon the planks, watching the whirling mists, wondering where in space and time they travelled. She looked up, and where the vortex of fog was open above their heads she could she flickering golden light, spinning blues and reds, and great tendrils of flame and colour that licked briefly and were gone.

  The most disturbing effect of all occurred then, for the sea buckled, as a thin metal shield that is struck by an axe; a great depression formed in it, with the wolf ship at the lower point of the den, so that the sea swirled above their heads on each side, seeming to run towards them and under them, though the small vessel did not shudder nor in any way respond to the surging currents. There were shapes in the water, huge shapes, and frightening images—dark skulls and gleaming helmets, twisting about and watching them. Robed figures waved wildly, horse-drawn chariots turned around and around, naked men holding them back while they brandished vast-bladed spears. Flame licked through all, curled around all the shapes beneath the silky water an consumed them.

  All of a sudden Spellbinder cried out, “I have it! I have it! At last!”

  At once the depression in the sea evened out, the ship rising with stomach-wrenching effect until it was once again level. The mist slowed and stopped, a dense circular wall around them, similar to those great storms that sometimes whirled across the Worldheart Ocean.

  Some degree of motion returned to the waves around them and the wolf ship bobbed comfortably.

  Spellbinder rose, his eyes dark, his whole body tense beneath the light leather clothing he wore today. He crossed to the ship’s side, leaned across the railings, and stared into the distance. Rave could hear him muttering words, incomprehensible words. With his left hand he made the most complex finger signals she had ever seen, wondering how he had learned such dexterity.

  Then, from the mist, the ship came.

  M’rystal rushed to the rail and leaned across it, his face aglow with confusion and excitement. Moonshadow ascended the lower rigging and the others crowded in various places to watch the new arrival.

  Ghostly, as Argor had been in the arena, the ship was one of Lifebane’s wolf ships, its sleek black hull riding low in the water, its fiercesome prow figure grinning and glaring at Raven’s ship as it came towards them. The huge sail was full blow and billowing, the red embroidered eye of the All Mother half closed as it guided the ship.

  The sea and the mist gleamed bright through the intangible structure of the vessel. A gull, circling the sea, settled to the strangely calm ocean surface and flew right through the ship!

  “What are we seeing?” asked Raven, in awe through she knew not why.

  “The ship that kidnapped Krya,” said Spellbinder, and M’rystal cried out in anger.

  “By the Skull! I am deceived! That is a wolf ship of that Kragg sea wretch or I am a Kahrsaamian peasant! What trickery do you offer me, Raven?”

  “Calm yourself,” said Spellbinder. “No one has denied that the ship was a wolf ship, nor that it seemed incontrovertibly to be manned by Lifebane’s reivers, and by Lifebane himself. But watch.”

  The ghost ship sailed past silently. On the deck, guarded by two of Lifebane’s men, was the frail form of Krya, her hair matted by sea salt, her face drawn and haggard, her whole bearing depressed and weakened. The men who manned the sails and the tiller were obviously sea wolves as the sea was green. Legs braced apart, eyes fixed on the distant walls of Kragg, was Lifebane himself, helmet, beard, axe and arrogant bearing all sure signs that they watched their old friend Gondar.

  Raven felt a chill
of fear and uncertainty, then caught her breath as the ship sailed close. “Can they see us?” she whispered a moment later.

  “No,” said Spellbinder, “they sail as they sailed many days ago. Time separates us still, only my spell has united our times for as long as I can keep the words of it running through my mind. For now it is easy, in hours it will become exhausting, in days I shall fail and the spell will be lost. But that should be time enough to watch what happens to this ship of wolves who are not wolves. See, is that Gondar?”

  Passing not a spear’s throw away, Raven could see that the bearded figure of the Captain was not their friend. The likeness was astonishing but this was a man dressed up to seem like Gondar. His face was thinner, and his arms had not the full ridged muscles and knots of veins that characterised the frightening physical strength of the Warlord of Kragg.

  “’Tis not Lifebane,” said Raven in agreement. “This is tricky.”

  M’rystal was calling Krya, as if his words might penetrate the barrier of time and turn her eyes towards him. She was sobbing, shaking her head and weeping loudly; yet no sound carried towards them. M’rystal cried too, drawing back from the rail and dropping his head.

  “She is beyond me,” he cried. “Is there no spell to bring her back in the flesh?”

  Spellbinder did not answer that question, but said, “You see her only as she was when brought to Kragg, days ago. Now she is elsewhere and by following this ship we will find just where she is hidden.”

  Moonshadow’s scream of anger startled everyone. Spellbinder turned to look at the man and saw him clinging, white-faced, white-knuckled, to the rigging. He was staring at the departing ghost ship, and when Raven looked to see what had caught his attention, so too did her heart stop and a scream of fury sprang to her lips.