Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 2 The Divine Queen

by Adam Corby

  Rather annoyed at the bantering tones of his voice, she turned to study him. She saw him now in light and near to her for the first time. His figure was fine and graceful, leaner and hardened beyond the strength of most nobles. His features were ascetically fine, yet the lips were sensual and rather cruel – lips that had tasted things, many of them bitter, which few of sense or timidity would have dared essay. Yet it was his eyes marked him most. At first, at their meeting in the Council Hall, Allissál had thought his eyes were dark and calm, rather like Ampeánor’s; now she saw they were different. Strange hints of fire dwelt within those eyes, the color of lamplight shining on polished jade, and burning with strange power. Those eyes roamed the length of her body now and she could see he was studying her, even as she examined him. She turned again to the railing, trying to keep Qhelvin’s words in mind. ‘This is your first visit to our city, is it not, Charan Kandi?’

  ‘Yes, your majesty. She is truly wonderful. I had expected beauty, but the loveliness I find before me is greater even than I had dreamed.’

  She returned to the low-backed chair, determined not to let his ill breeding annoy her. After all, it was said that those of Gerso were little better than their barbarian neighbors. ‘We know something of the characteristics of the Gerso people, sir; and yet you are unlike them to our eyes. Would you like wine?’

  ‘Thank you. Your majesty is most observant. I am from the mountains beyond Gerso, as I have said. Only the snowbound peaks separate us from the barbarians, and like them we are born harder and raised more vigorously than the men of the lower passes with whom your majesty is undoubtedly more familiar. Also,’ he added dryly, ‘I have been told I am something of a throwback, resembling the dead spirits of our ancestors.’

  So men said of Ampeánor, she thought. Yet surely no two men so alike in one way could be so more unlike in all others. ‘Why have you come here?’

  ‘To find you.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘I saw Gerso fall,’ he said simply. ‘Also Ancha and Eliorite; and with each conquest seeming easier than the one before, I moved on to the next city, each time more dispirited. When Carftain fell I cast my eye about. It was then I thought of you – and Tarendahardil. They say this is a city that will never fall until the end of our very civilization is nigh. I was growing weary of flight.’

  ‘You would rather have fought?’

  He shrugged. ‘I am but one man. How could I, a man alone, oppose a great horde?’

  ‘You seem to know much of these barbarians; often you have seen them fight. Tell us and speak truly: have we a chance to defeat them?’

  ‘From what I have heard and seen, your majesty, you have every chance in the world, if you are not betrayed.’

  ‘Well, there is no danger of that: we are surrounded only by loyalty. Yet what of you, Charan? Have you lost all to this barbarian?’

  ‘I own the clothes you see, some armor, a sword, a horse, a mule, a servant, and this dagger. Nothing else.’

  ‘Have you no relatives who might succor you?’

  ‘All my kin are dead. The woman I loved – well, I think she is dead.’

  ‘We grieve for your loss, Charan Kandi.’ She asked him for no further details. In truth, she had expected no less. It was said that the barbarians had ravished Gerso utterly, putting every man and boy to death and enslaving every woman worth preserving; and that of all the thousands of Gersos, less than one in twenty had escaped alive. It was a rarity even to see a refugee from that city. ‘Do you not hate the barbarians?’

  ‘As much as any other man with so much cause.’

  She leaned forward. ‘What would you give to see them and their leader Ara-Karn destroyed, as they were in times past?’

  ‘My life?’

  She sat back, pondering him. ‘Why do you say that as if you had doubts?’

  ‘It would take my life. I have nothing else of value, if indeed that has any. Yet what purpose could it serve? After all, what am I compared with Ara-Karn?’

  ‘In compact with others you might do much. If we could show you such a way, what then? Would you be willing to give your life?’

  ‘What way, your majesty?’

  ‘Accept service with us here, under the standard of our son.’

  He smiled; not a happy smile. ‘I have seen the prince,’ he said slowly. ‘He impressed me as being very like – another I once knew, who was very close to me.’

  She looked at him, curious about this enigmatic man, who was so different from the others she had used. ‘And where is your friend now?’

  ‘Dead,’ he said flatly. ‘Long dead.’

  ‘We grieve for you.’

  He shook his head. ‘No matter. In a way, he deserved his death. He had done nothing useful in his life, and died, as he had lived, a fool.’

  ‘We hope you do not mean to imply—’

  ‘Certainly not; how could it be so? Yet in the name of my departed friend, I would offer your majesty a word of warning, if you would he so gracious to accept it.’

  ‘We will accept it. What is the warning?’

  ‘This: beware all regents.’

  She frowned. ‘Have you anything specific to say to us?’

  He shook his head. ‘But well I know the character of those who hold power in another’s name.’

  She leaned back, sipping her wine elegantly, studying him. He smiled courteously and went to regard the tapestries at the far wall. A dim voice spoke in warning from deep within her. Certainly he had looked at her as no servant ought.

  And what, she mused softly, would Ampeánor think of you? Accept you or speed you on your way? You are hiding something, that is clear – yet you are surely no spy of Dornan Ural’s. It would not be his way. And we need more agents, especially in Ampeánor’s absence. But even so, I wonder whether it would not be better to banish you from the court. So she turned the matter over in her mind, doubting and wanting at once, and in the end it was impatience that decided her. Was she only the woman Dornan Ural thought her after all, unable to decide alone?

  ‘Have you ever heard of the League of Elna?’ she said aloud.

  Against the far wall he nodded, rather too casually. ‘In Carftain they spoke of it; before that I heard a word from the governor of Eliorite. But since my arrival here I have seen no evidence of it.’

  ‘It is not intended to be seen. It is not the policy of the High Council; it is solely of our own devising, based upon the ancient, ante-imperial League formed by Elna. In the spring of next year, our son, the Prince Elnavis, will be crowned Emperor in the Hall of Kings and anointed in the Brown Temple. We have been awaiting that event for years; yet if the barbarians lay waste the North and then cross the Taril, as we fear they will, there will be little left for our son to rule. So we make our preparations. Many are the suppliants who have come here to the court, able men of noble birth who, like you, have been stripped of all rank, wealth and hope by the barbarians. We have made them welcome here; in return they offer us service. They have become the agents of our son’s cause, embarking from the quarters we give them here in the Palace and the City upon ambassadorial missions. For tokens, they bear our rings but no written words; for this must remain for now a secret thing.

  ‘We are bargaining with other nations of the South to put aside petty jealousies to fight the common foe, Ara-Karn. Pacts and treaties are presently being negotiated. None bear force of law now, of course, since the High Council is the official governing body of Tarendahardil. But the moment Elnavis takes up the Ivory Scepter those treaties will be in force. Then there will come into being a mighty army culled from all the nations of the League; and our son will command it.

  ‘By that time it is hoped the barbarian will have come not much farther than the Taril, that great sunward desert barrier between North and South. Ara-Karn will not cross that desert unless it be his intention to try to subjugate the South; if he does cross, we will be ready. Our son, at the head of forces twelvefold as great as those of the barbarians, will ham
mer them back into the desert. Then he will give chase: push them back beyond Gerso: and, Goddess willing, do what even Elna could not – destroy their breed, utterly and for all time. As one of our agents, your task will be to ensure that such an army awaits our son’s coronation.’

  He nodded, his eyes dark against the outer sky. The man was so difficult to read!

  ‘We have now eight agents. You will be the ninth. Regrettably, we cannot say that you will find any of your compatriots from Gerso among us. We have interviewed one or two, but deemed them too timid or mercantile or otherwise unsuited; yet you seem a different sort from them. You will be the Gerso among us. We have revealed to you here secrets known to not a dozen others; you now hold our hopes, our dreams, our very life in your hands. If the High Regent were to learn of all we do, there would be an end to us, and we would be watched and guarded like a child. Will you now serve us in the name of Elnavis, the future Emperor of the South?’

  He was standing by the balcony, watching the clouds drawing their shadows across the fair city below. He regarded his winecup for a moment, toying with it; then emptied it in a draught. ‘If it is so short a time before his highness assumes the throne, why do you let him risk his life upon this expedition? Surely any experience he gains in the field will not be worth this risk?’

  She sighed. ‘Because our son is of a hasty temperament; and once fired to a task, is impossible to restrain. Too, the other generals and captains of the South will be reluctant to trust their men’s lives to his leadership unless he proves his abilities. Also – well, if it is true that Elnavis has played overmuch here amid the decadence of the court, he has done so only out of boredom and the lack of duties. The promise of greatness is there. He needs but a task or some harshness to temper him. Let him now only do this Ara-Karn battle before the walls of Mersaline, and his true nature will shine forth.’

  ‘Your majesty places a heavy burden on the prince’s shoulders: few spirits indeed could bear up under it. Why do you think he will be able to do so?’

  ‘Because he is Bordakasha,’ she answered. ‘You seem to think little enough of our son’s abilities, for one who has shown so little valor on your own part. Yet there is something we can show you, to resolve your doubts.’

  * * *

  Attended by one of her maidens, she led him down the passageways of the Palace and up the broad spiraling stairs of the White Tower. She walked briskly and ahead of him and (rather to her disappointment) he was content to know his place, so that they exchanged no words. At the uppermost landing of the tower, the two guardsmen opened the heavy oaken doors of her chambers before them, and she entered with the Gerso into her hollow, rounded dimchamber.

  There a shrinelike niche was cut into one of the curving stone walls opposite her bed. The niche was covered over with an orange hanging. This Allissál struck aside, and lifting the lamp the maiden had lighted for her, displayed the contents of the niche.

  ‘This,’ she said, ‘is the most precious object in all the Empire.’

  Within the niche stood a long, thin tablet of stone, chipped about its edges, discolored with the lamp-smoke of many years. Across the face of it many lines of dense, inscrutable charactery were carved.

  ‘This,’ she said softly, with a nod of her head dismissing the maiden, ‘was cut by the courtly clerks in the earliest passes of this Empire under the direction of Elna himself, when he had just returned from his conquests over the barbarians, and when this very Citadel was not even begun. We discovered it years ago in the old archives, buried in caverns deep beneath the cellars of the Palace, within the depths of this very mountain. Can you read it, Charan?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘These words were spoken by the Prophetess of Goddess. No doubt even you of Gerso have heard of her; she was a great figure in those times, whose words would sway kings. She it was who forecast the League to Elna, when the barbarians still ravaged all the lands of the South. It was said she was ancient beyond time and had never known the love of a man. Now, of course, we are wiser than the peoples of those rude times, and much advanced: our Prophetess is only an old woman elected from among the Priestesses, a mere puppet of their caste; and the tablets of the true Prophetess’s sayings lie forgotten in those unvisited crypts. Yet I have visited there, and much that she spoke of has indeed come to pass. This prophecy regarded the final age of the Empire, what she called the Age of Jade and Iron. Beyond this, even her vision did not stretch: legend has it she died in agony mere hours after uttering these verses in drug-induced frenzy.’

  She paused, gazing at the tablet; then began whisperingly to read. Her voice swelled as she read; the Gerso watched her sea-gray eyes, full lips, and the burnished shimmer of her hair, as if these were the key to a greater riddle than was writ upon the tablet.

  When that which Elna forged of iron,

  grows soft with golden age,

  A storm will grow in Northern lands,

  and the Riders again will rage.

  The man will come, descent of God,

  and Death shall be his child.

  Against him naught avails or stands,

  not beast nor man nor stonework piled.

  The hero, the monster, the slayer of women,

  his yellow fires will burn —

  And all nations serve him, and call him King:

  and Elna will return!

  The voice of the Queen faded, but the words still hung about her dimchamber, shuddering with the flame-dispelled gloom. The Queen remained staring down upon the tablet, her eyes strange, as if ensorcelled: as if cast back upon the shores of some former life, and only now awakening to a time and term unfamiliar. Then, gradually, the dying whispers of antiquity faded, and the spell ebbed away.

  ‘Powerful words,’ she whispered at last, shattering the stillness. ‘Never, even in so many times, have they failed to move me deeply. Still do I remember when I first saw them, during my first month here, when my son was forming in my belly unknown to me. Even then, I thought these were the times of which she spoke. When my son was born, I took it for an omen and named him Elnavis, both in tribute to my great ancestor and that he might be the one mentioned in the verse. And when this past spring, the word came that Gerso was fallen and the barbarians newly risen, my hope was certainty, and I began to lay my plans. These are the times of the prophecy. And the barbarians will not be stopped until my son, the second Elna, rides against them!

  ‘Regard the words again. Is not my son descent of gods indeed? Our line came of Elna’s mating with Goddess; Elna himself claimed dark God for his father; and am I not called the incarnation of Goddess upon the earth? – and do they not further say it was dark God took me to beget Elnavis? Is not my son’s hair golden; and what else could the “golden fires” mentioned here mean? My son must be the one she foresaw. The nations of the South will follow him to victory. The destiny of the Empire is to be reborn. A new season of glory lies open before us!

  ‘Only a handful know of these words now; yet at my son’s coronation they will be broadcast throughout the South. And you may have a share in this. Now, you have nothing but the rags upon your back and a detestation for those who wronged you. You seek vengeance: I can see it in your eyes. Join us, and gain that vengeance – and the return of your lands in Gerso and high rank in my son’s court as well. Will you not join us, Charan Kandi?’

  There was sadness in his dead eyes, and the unforsaken regret of one long exiled from his home. Yet at the same time she saw there a hunger unlike any she had ever known before. ‘Nothing in this world can dissuade you of this, I see,’ he said. ‘I will join you.’

  ‘Then bend your knee and take our hand.’ The great rings of state and seal glittered in the lamplight. He bent, and took the hand before his lips. ‘Do you swear to be a true servant to our son?’

  ‘By all that men hold holy, by all that I desire,’ he said, looking up at her, ‘I swear.’

  There was neither regret nor sadness in his eyes now.

 
VI

  The Spoil of the Barbarian King

  AMPEÁNOR LEANED upon the low parapet and shaded his eyes with the flat of his gloved hand. He had been awakened from a doze by the stirrings of the Carftainians. Now he saw what had stirred them. At the end of the road, a small dark speck was crawling. It stretched and grew, and behind it rose pale, earthborn clouds.

  The Tezmonian guards muttered among themselves.

  ‘Courage,’ said the High Charan of Rukor.

  Soon the line was manifestly a mass of horsemen. Too distant to be heard, their numbers emerged slowly from the depths of dun-colored clouds, a mute inhuman horde. Ampeánor guessed at their numbers – five thousand, perhaps. Yet he had more men than that just guarding the city walls.

  The riders came on. Now their long, unkempt hair could be seen, streaming out beneath the ends of their battered, bloodstained helmets. Their armor glinted in the sunlight, and the swords they held on high were notched and dirtied with the life’s-blood of the thousands they had butchered in their rampaging on the hither side of Gerso. The wind rose slightly, carrying the dust and a faint odor as of a myriad sweating, unbathed bodies, to the walls. With the stench came a distant moaning in the air: the dull thunder of the horses’ approach, and above it the rising howls of savage bloodlust. They came on, growing; and the sounds grew with them. They came on, motley in their looted bits of armor and plundered weaponry. They came on, and in their fists they waved strange instruments of curved wood.

  ‘Bows,’ growled one of the Carftainians.

  Ampeánor looked again. The barbarians were so close now that he could see the things quite clearly. ‘They do not look so fearsome,’ he commented.

  ‘Wait and watch,’ spat the Carftainian.

  Almost as soon as the words were spoken, the barbarians wheeled and rode in long lines parallel to the walls. With undisciplined movements, they came gradually to form close ranks; then began to ride slowly forward once again. They raised the long bows in their mailed fists. From pouches slung at the sides of their saddles they drew the slender shafts: death-birds, as the barbarians had named them. They drew back the bows, taking careful aim. Along the wall the defenders stood still, fascinated by the spectacle of it. It seemed unreal; not a man of them spoke or lifted weapon, not even the Rukorian. The tension and the fear filled the air like a damp mist off the sea, slowly bedewing a traveler’s cloak.