by Adam Corby
Empty, the great square was scarcely more quiet than it had been full. Even the regents went at last, singly and wordlessly, to their hushed palatial abodes.
The rain came again, dampening robes of black linen. Now there remained only the holy virgins, the chara and the Queen. Soon dark God would rise from the distant bright horizon, and whisper His words into Goddess’s ear; and the last of the rites must be completed before then. The priestesses beckoned, and the chara touched the elbow of the Empress; but the grieving mother stared heedless at the barge of harsh stone and the rending sail above. The High Priestess approached, and took the Queen’s hand; and silently, as a mother leads her bemused, infirm child, she led her majesty to the waiting litter. Behind, with the movements of a doll, came the Chara of Corthio. The aged priestess put her majesty into the litter and signed to the bearers. They took up the two litters of ebony and black silk and bore them away. Only then, in the privacy of the rain, did the priestesses ascend again the stone steps, there to do what was needful.
* * *
The funeral procession continued in the city, but high in his chambers in the Imperial Palace, the Gerso sat alone.
His windows were covered with dark hangings, and the chambers were as dark as any chamber could be. One small oil lamp flickered on the floor, throwing a yellowish stain of light across the walls.
The Gerso sat naked before that lamp. His body was bathed in laurial oil, and strange markings rippled across his skin, a charactery tortured and bent, half drawing, half writing. His dark skin gleamed also with sweat and his muscles were hard knots, so that the veins and tendons stood out.
He sat utterly still, and strove and worked against himself.
A trickle of sweat formed among the black hairs of his chest, and licked its way down over the ridges of his lean belly, to the dark root of his sex.
His fingers twitched from his left knee and the dagger flipped onto the floor before him. Between the man’s knees and the oil lamp the dagger stuck in the floor, leaning at an angle.
The pommel of the handle ended in a green orb, which was carved so that it bore in its seven facets the image of the moon’s true aspect at that very hour, as the jade chariot of dark God passed from thin crescent at its rising over the bright horizon, to the full body disc when it sank below the dark horizon.
Thus the Gerso sat naked on the floor, and the lamplight passed through the green orb and threw a sickly strange light upon him. In the shadow that his body etched on the wall from this light, something stirred.
The shadow grew large. And it crawled across the wall, to face the man.
The Gerso opened his eyes, and looked upon the thing.
‘I want her,’ he said. ‘Fetch me the heart of the Queen.’
And the thing on the wall writhed and made answer, in the manner of tongueless, mouthless, voiceless things,
Her heart I cannot give you. Her loins I can make twitch and dance, and I can topple her over into lust for you. But such things as love lie beyond my reach.
‘I want her body, not her heart,’ the Gerso said. ‘Give me her loins and her heart will follow.’
And the thing upon the wall shook with silent laughter, and flitted up through the crack between the ceiling and the wall to do its master’s bidding.
* * *
Solemnly the bearers took the litters up the silent, empty streets. They met but a few people, who bowed in silence until the litters passed. Through the barren marketplace and over the high road bridging the coomb to the Citadel the bearers took their burdens, up unto a Citadel as the priestesses had borne theirs to a tomb. And very like a tomb was that Imperial house: every face of marble draped with black, and over every window and dark doorway the hangings. Every slave was swathed in mourning; and only one in ten of the hundreds of lamps in those twisting depths was lighted, and that with wick trimmed well back. Even the great golden Disk of Goddess was covered. It was such a place where dark God Himself might feel at home, and stop to take His pleasure for a few hours.
Into those somber depths the bearers bore their burdens, separating in the innermost courtyard. The royal litter went on to the central halls; that of the Chara Ilal went to the southernmost wing, where the chara kept her chambers. In the central entrance hall the slaves put down their litter, but the Empress did not emerge. They grew worried; and at last they bent and helped her majesty forth, which she permitted with the air of one who walks abroad still dreaming. Absently, she signed for them to go. But the slaves only stood watching her ascend the curving marble stairs, tears welling in their great dark eyes.
With steady trudging steps, she ascended the many stories of her palace. The soft pad of her naked feet upon the stone did not echo off the black-draped walls. Through the murk of long slanting passageways and up coiling flights of steps she walked, where she could see nothing about her.
But her feet carried her on, knowing well the path they trod. In the darkness slaves passed the Queen without seeing her; and even, once, bumped into her, to fall back abashed and abject. Yet the Queen took no notice.
In time, the great oaken doors of her chambers presented themselves, and opened before her. She passed within, silent as a specter come to haunt its onetime abode. The great doors swung shut behind her, closing with a mocking ring of gray iron. At the sound, the Queen’s shoulders began to fall and her posture slumped. Each step seemed slower and more burdensome than the one before. Then a hand gripped hers, and a strong arm went around the small of her back, and she looked blankly up into the face of Ennius Kandi.
* * *
In the darkness, Ampeánor’s body stirred, and he roused himself from the dream.
He felt the stiffness of his back and the soreness of his limbs. Images of the battle swam before his eyes: the unkempt barbarians, the terror of the Tezmonian guardsmen, the arrows filling the sky. It was said that Ara-Karn alone had given them the bow. But whence had he had it?
Heavy chains weighted his arms and legs. He lay upon cold, damp stones, and all about him there was hollow silence and darkness, complete and overmastering. He might have lain upon his bier in the chamber of the death-barge of the Torvalen, high atop the necropolis of Rukor.
Despair swept over him then, the way a freshening breeze will take the sail of a ship when she emerges from the shadows of the Isles, and takes again the deep; and he felt for the first time in his life, helpless. Ara-Karn had told his men to take him alive, and that could mean but one thing: they meant to torture him to death. It was the way with these savages. Else they might leave him here and forget him; and here he might lie and starve and rot while the years wheeled and the cities southward fell and were gutted.
Out of the pained confusion of his waking mind, Ampeánor was sure of but one thing: that the civilized lands must learn the secrets of this strange new weapon if they were to endure. Bows must be stolen or captured, and the master craftsmen of the Empire must learn to fashion them. And more: somehow the urgency of this knowledge must be borne to Tarendahardil, that Allissál might be warned and learn some way to guard herself. Yet what could he, the prisoner of Ara-Karn, do to aid her?
Allissál … into the darkness her beauty came and wounded him anew with longing. In all these years he had never touched her, save to kiss her hand or steady her: a few rare times he could not forget. No alliance had been possible between them, for he had not seen her before she came as a young maid into Tarendahardil to be consecrated as its Queen; and that same year, the year which had known Elnavis’s birth, she had been consecrated again, and ritually wed to dark God.
But once, a few years ago, they had chanced to be alone together on a hunt in the forests of Rukor, separated from the others of the party. Then, heated and dirtied, she had bathed in the mountain stream, and he had parted the reed stalks and gazed upon her nakedness. That had been a tempting that had tried his soul; yet he had prevailed, and returned dry-mouthed and shaking to his watch post. And now, chained in this underground cell, he saw again tha
t summer hunt: and he wished he had fallen to his desires no matter what the consequences, even if she had despised and hated him for it forever after. Then, at least, he might have faced his death without regret.
‘Allissál, O Allissál,’ he groaned aloud, ‘will I never see you again, to tell you of all my feelings?’
The thought mocked him and maddened him. He strove up against the heavy chains. Half to his feet he rose in a supreme effort, his veins bursting, the blood starting afresh from his many wounds. The ring of iron was like the tolling of a great bell in his skull; dizziness assailed him and he fell back gasping, blood streaming into his open mouth.
He lay a long while unconscious.
The beard upon his cheeks was bristling and itching when glaring torchlight reamed through the bars in the door of his cell. Rough cursing sounded from without; then the rasp of a key turning the lock. The cell filled with the glare; he shut his eyes tightly.
‘What do you want?’ he asked, knowing well why they had come.
A clay tankard of water and a rough wooden bowl containing a greasy hot mess were set in the straw beside him. A voice grunted in the barbarian tongue, ‘Eat.’
He was suddenly ravenous. He ate and drank as greedily as a farm slave. When he had done, they took back the bowl and tankard. They did not answer his questions. The torchlight fled the cell, the door slammed shut and the lock grated. He was alone.
He thought, They wish me healthy before they begin.
After that he was fed four more times at odd intervals. The routine never varied; they never spoke save to issue him rude commands. How much time passed was uncertain; that internal clock that he shared in common with all beasts and men was unreliable here in the darkness. Yet from the length of his beard he guessed it was weeks since the battle on the walls. The fifth time they came was shortly after the fourth; and this time they brought no food.
There were four of them. They laid strong hands on him; he heard a rasp sounding by his head on the wall. They lifted him up. The chains about his legs were gone, but the heavy manacles still weighted his hands.
‘Come,’ they said, shoving him forward.
‘Where are you taking me?’ he demanded.
One of them hawked and spat. ‘To see the King.’
They dragged him forth from the cell.
* * *
They took him along a low corridor sloping gradually upward. Ampeánor was weakened, starved and but half-healed: he could only walk unsteadily. The barbarians cursed him and shoved him along.
‘You filth,’ he swore at them in their own tongue. ‘If I live, I’ll see you on the point of my lance for this!’
They only laughed and shoved him more rudely. ‘Aye, if you live! But it will be the whim of our great King as to how long you’ll live, and who’ll have the pleasure of killing you!’ He added an obscene jest at Ampeánor’s expense, at which the others howled derisively.
They emerged from the tunnel into the light of Goddess, whereat Ampeánor shrank back. His captors laughed, and dragged him forth. Around the courtyard high walls gaped with breaches. Then he knew the place: those stones had gone at his command to repair the city’s outer walls, and this was the prison of Tezmon. A few more barbarians joined them as they passed through the gates. Ampeánor smiled. At least he commanded some respect among them.
They drove him stumbling up the winding streets. On all sides were visible the ghastly evidences of the rule of Ara-Karn. Corpses, not all of them entire, lay rotting and stinking in the strong sunlight. Rats tore openly at the graying flesh. Dogs, once the pampered pets of scented foreign courtesans, now slunk the streets half starving, gnawing human bones. Charred remnants stood where once proud buildings had towered. Other structures were even now aflame, with none bothering to extinguish them. From dark windows came shrill cries of tormented women and gruff, violent laughter.
The guards brought him to the mansion of the mayor, through the ornately carved inner doors, into the hall where once Armand had commanded his beloved Vapio dancing girls. About the walls the slave-maidens were positioned still; but now their hair was disheveled, and their paints blurred, and golden looping bonds their only dress.
Upon the dais in the ornate chair Ara-Karn sat now, the hard lines of his huge frame seeming too massive for the delicate woodwork. He did not so much sit there as sprawl, with one long leather-clad leg thrown over the arm. In one scarred fist he held a golden cup slopping wine over the blood-stained coat of mail; beside and behind him several other maidens attended him and eyed him fearfully. When they looked at Ampeánor, it was with pity and a desperate mute appeal.
The guards threw Ampeánor sprawling on the mosaic tiles. He heard their coarse laughter in his ears. He looked up, saw a tilted Ara-Karn regarding him expectantly. He set his teeth. Despite the heaviness of the chains and the weakness of his long-starved limbs, he rose staggeringly to his feet. He threw back his lank, heavy hair with a scornful toss of his head, planted his feet wide and, still gasping, stared down at the seated barbarian.
The giant rumbled an amused laugh at the sight. The laughter shook an ugly mass of livid scar tissue that ran down one side of his once-handsome face, where there had been hair and beard and the upper half of his ear. Someone had hurt him badly, once. May he strike again, Ampeánor prayed, and may I aid him to do so. He looked about the hall, trying to find the instruments of torture.
‘You fought well,’ Ara-Karn admitted equably, ‘for a civilized man. How would you like to fight for me from now on?’
He looked back, shook his head in silent contempt.
‘No? We have gold in plenty, man. Women, too, as many as you’d have the strength for.’
The sounds he had heard in the street returned to Ampeánor’s mind. He shook his head. ‘Torture and slay me now,’ he said wearily, carelessly. ‘But I shall never join you, Ara-Karn.’
‘Do not call me by that name!’ the giant roared. ‘I am not Ara-Karn, that thief, that trickster, that fleer, that barge-robber! I am Gen-Karn Great King, the chieftain of Orn!’ He had risen from the chair, his black eyes blazing like coals, his scarred fist knotted upon the hilt of his massive sword.
‘Hearken to me, Southron,’ he blazed, ‘that you may know me – it is I, Gen-Karn, who speak! When I was a youngster and had taken my first bandar pelt, then I slew a man, my father’s brother: for I had lain with a woman of his, and he was jealous and challenged me. But even then few could match my sword, and I slew him. But this angered the chief, a wheezing old fellow. And he had more to fear from me than the portent of my name alone. So they cast me out for seven winters’ time, knowing no other tribe would dare to shelter me. This was their hope, that I should die when the winter snows came, and the winds drive down from the white-toothed North. But I did not die. Instead, I came southward, and went among the mountains of the Spine. Over rivers of ice and between the wind-scoured rocky peaks above where not even birds dare go, I found a way: it was the burning of my anger and my youth that warmed me.
‘I came down from the mountains. I found the green fields of the civilized lands. And it was not yet even winter there! I shook the ice from my beard, and I vowed unto those mountains, that Orn should know my hand again. Seven winters I roamed the lands of the lower North and the South: even unto the great City I ventured. And what I saw made me laugh, and shake with desire.
‘What are these that you call men? No better than women! None from all the tribes had gone so far as I: not Bar-East himself, the old footshaker, has seen the City Over the World! And with all this knowledge driven like knife-blades into me, I went back to the far North, through Gerso where they knew me not, and so to Orn.
‘Then the old chief of our tribe was long dead, and my brother was chieftain of Orn. But I would not long bide that, but slew him that winter, and held the warriors to me with my tales of the wealth that would be ours when we fell like snow-winds on the blossomed South! And that next autumn, when the time was come for the Assembly of the Tribes,
I challenged the old Warlord Obil-Kalth and slew him before the Pyre.
‘And in truth, I was the greatest Warlord the tribes had known for as long as the lists are remembered. It was I who spread rumors among the tribes, of the riches of the South: it was I who made them lust for war! This was my plan, and it was of my devising: and we should have been heard within these halls ere this, had not Gundoen and some of the other chieftains opposed me out of their own little pride! Then the trickster, the barge-robber, came along: he robbed me of my rightful place, this Ara-Karn: by a foul trick and an unlawful challenge, or else he would have never bested me, and I should have hurled his corpse from off the lip of Urnostardil, and Gundoen’s besides!
‘Unlawful I call his challenge, and so it was: I remain the rightful Warlord; and now I only bide my time until the Assembly of the Tribes, which he dare not deny, when he shall know of me again! And if he dare not meet my challenge, then I declare him coward and slave, a man to be mocked or spit upon even by women!
‘Now know you, Southron, that I, Gen-Karn, have broken with the barge-robber Ara-Karn. These men are my men, not his; and they know no will but mine! This city is my city, not his; Gen-Karn is King in Tezmon! And if he doubt it, let him come and take it from me – and until then let him give over sending his beer-boy Gundoen, or his beer-boy Gundoen’s beer-boys, to beg me to return to his standard!’
So the giant raged in the ornate echoing hall, as much to himself and his own followers as to Ampeánor. The captive women cringed in terror before the fury of their drunken, demonic captor; even the callous, iron-clad warriors looked uneasy. Only Ampeánor stood undaunted, gazing upon the barbarian chieftain with scorn and disgust.
