Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 2 The Divine Queen

by Adam Corby

  ‘From Tezmon Gen-Karn has sent spies into the camp to demand the autumnal Assembly of the Tribes. These spies spread rumors against the name of Ara-Karn, saying that the Assembly has not been held only because Ara-Karn fears the challenge of Gen-Karn. So Gen-Karn’s support among the tribes is growing. The tribes grow restless and discontent; nor can all the chiefs silence them. Many grow homesick and weary of all the killing, which they say has not the joy now that they kill with bows instead of swords and spears. Gen-Karn is big upon their tongues; and yet it is said, that if Ara-Karn wars upon Tezmon, then the lesser chiefs will fear for their own liberty and will rebel.’

  The master had come to the hearth, and squatted before the flames. With a gloved hand he reached forth and rearranged the burning logs, so that the blaze crackled and leapt up with such hot fury that Kuln-Holn was forced to give back several paces. But the master remained still, his flesh glowing orange with the heat. And Kuln-Holn was minded of what was said of vengeful God, that He loved all manner of destruction, and especially delighted in burning.

  ‘And what do they say there,’ the master asked, ‘concerning the Divine Queen?’

  Kuln-Holn flushed dark, and averted his face. ‘Lord, you would not like how they speak of her there,’ he muttered.

  The master smiled. But that smile the servant could not see for the darkness of his master’s face against the glare. ‘I shall not ask you, how things go with Ara-Karn. But what could you learn of how Gundoen fares?’

  ‘Lord, Gundoen was not in the camp when I was there. When the first rains of winter reached the North, then Gundoen sent messengers to the far North, to his wife Hertha-Toll, that she should come to him and share in all the wealth, and also prophesy to him of his future. Perhaps he wearied of the concubines he had taken – but some said he was greatly troubled in his dreams. When the messengers returned, it was with these words of Hertha-Toll the Wise: that it was there in that village she had been born, and there she would die, no matter how many wonders there were to be seen in the lands south of the Spine. At this word Gundoen grew angry, so that he swore he would wench as he pleased and leave Hertha-Toll to her old-woman’s foolishness. Yet later he thought better of it, and went north himself, with but a handful of men. Garin went with him: so I saw neither of them.’

  ‘Well. And what shall be your counsel now, Kuln-Holn? Shall we forsake the will-o’-the-wind we pursue here, and go back into the North where the fighting is and where, perhaps, we are more needed? Or shall we stay and sop up our pleasure and say, So much of a rest at least we have earned?’

  ‘Lord, I do not see what we do here, or what good comes of it. There in the North men fight and sweat and find harsh death; and here we live in great comfort. Are we forgetful, or spell-wrought? Or is this a thing commanded?’ The short, middle-aged man paused, and glanced furtively toward the portal through which the Queen had departed. ‘But still, to go back … I think I prefer the city, and peace, even if it is wrong.’

  The black head before the fire nodded. ‘Ah, Kuln-Holn, you have changed indeed.’

  ‘Perhaps so, lord. Yet I am your man still.’

  ‘Remain so, Kuln-Holn, if you will die in peace. Well – then we will stay. Return to this Holy City of yours, and glean what pleasures and what peace you may. You too have earned them; and I think they will not last long. I am half-sure you have a secret lover there, the way you are always disappearing.’

  ‘Perhaps so, lord. Then I may leave?’

  ‘Go, and rest. Depart when you will.’

  Still, the servant hesitated. The gleams of the firelight upon his features showed well his barbarian ancestry, so that in his rounded, gentle face, lines of hardship and cruelty were revealed, for a moment: then they were gone, and only the simple face of Kuln-Holn the Pious One remained. ‘Lord,’ he said, haltingly, as if daring a heavy risk, ‘you will not forget, in all that you have found and won here – you will not forget your mission?’

  The Gerso lifted up a great blazing timber and let it fall back upon the pile, so that the sparks scattered and danced upon the charred stone floor. His face was averted, and his voice harsh, as ‘Kuln-Holn,’ he answered, ‘and have you not learned even now, that I will go my own way in this? Do not fear, but all our debts shall in the end be fully paid.’

  Uncertainly the servant nodded, and left the hall. The master straightened, and walked again to the window. There light flakes of snow were floating in: they fell upon his flushed burning face and melted instantly, streaming from his black eyebrows. He looked, but could not see the mountains now, for the storms had descended to the lower passes. Then the face of him bore the stern look of a wooden idol. Abruptly he turned, shaking the snowflakes from his hair, and went in pursuit of the Empress of Tarendahardil.

  * * *

  She had fulfilled her promise, and let a small canopy be set up on the flat roof of the tower. There they lay together briefly as the snow fell deep upon all sides. She wrapped her nakedness in a heavy bandarskin and pointed out to him the way she had escaped as a girl, to seek the giants over the mountains. He, already dressed, leaned over the narrow icy parapet and looked at the stone courtyard far below. Yet it seemed to Allissál that he listened with but a part of himself, and that the rest was far away where she might never reach it; and she remonstrated him, and asked if he might be more attentive if she spoke of Ara-Karn.

  But he asked in return, ‘Why have you so deep a curiosity about the barbarian? Whenever some new exiles come to Tarendahardil claiming to have seen the man, you are ever quick to give them audience.’

  ‘His destiny is part of Tarendahardil’s,’ she replied. ‘The barbarians must rise, to be put down again. So it is written. Yet for all these tales I hear, I learn no more of him. Each belies the others; and I can little trust men whose bread depends on how I take their tales. Tell me truly what you think of him, Jade – you have seen him often. Is he truly choked with hate? He cannot be a man, not to be sickened even yet with all the death and ruin he has caused. Rather, he must be some wild beast, a savage no better than a Madpriest.’

  ‘A wild beast,’ he repeated. ‘A savage no better than a Madpriest. No,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I know him no more than you.’ He stepped upon the parapet, idly pacing above her.

  ‘Be careful, Jade,’ she said. ‘It is a far drop to the courtyard or to the stable roof.’

  He laughed scornfully, and leaped up in a sudden flip in the air, turning his body about over the rooftop fourteen fathoms below. Her heart leapt up her throat: he landed, his boots but half clinging to the icy ledge. She shouted, but he laughed again, and bowed low upon one leg, the other stretched out behind him over the void, with all the grace of a performer reared in Vapio.

  Then she grew angry, but he only shrugged carelessly, and did not leave the edge. ‘I knew I would not fall,’ he said. ‘Some of us are cursed by misfortune, and others by luck: but we are all of us cursed. Thereby each of us shall know his fate. If he is to die later, a man cannot die now. My doom is yet to be – therefore, until I reach it, I am an immortal. Even if I jumped I would survive it.’

  ‘Oh?’ she asked, thinking him to be acting a madcap for her entertainment. ‘And where does your doom lie, may I ask?’

  ‘Well, for that,’ he said with a smile, ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

  ‘Ah – and are you God now as well?’ He looked at her, and there was no humor in him.

  ‘When was I not?’

  ‘You speak madness,’ she said, angry and alarmed. ‘What is human will then, if all is predestined?’

  ‘Will is that which creates our destinies in the first instance.’

  ‘What then of Gerso?’ she asked sharply; and rued it instantly.

  Now his face was cold and sharp as the ice along the gutters as he answered, ‘Gerso he destroyed.’

  She threw off the bandarskin and stooped to enter the canopy, as flakes of snow left small chill bites upon her skin. There she donned her robes, sorry for how she h
ad hurt him and eager to remedy it. When she came forth again he stood still on the edge of the parapet with his back to her and his gaze directed down that dizzying drop. His hands hung casually at his sides, one hooked in his belt, the other toying with his jade dagger. It was as if he, the monarch, had dismissed her. Angrily she left the rooftop in silence.

  Yet later, in the middle of the longsleep, he came to her bed, speaking tales of lands and peoples she had never heard of; and he took her violently, so that she could scarcely breathe for pleasure.

  * * *

  Before the time of that sleep was ended, a soft knocking sounded at the doors to her chamber, and the voice of one of the servants informed her there was a messenger just ridden in from the great City, with an urgent message to be delivered only into her hands. She rose gently, careful not to wake Ennius, swiftly robed herself, and went to receive the messenger.

  He wore the trappings of a Rukorian lancer, and he was wet and white with snow. He saluted her in the military fashion, and kissed her hand.

  ‘Surely we know you,’ she said. ‘Are you not that man who came to us with the High Charan of Rukor’s message, before he was to leave for Tezmon?’

  ‘Your majesty, I am that one. And the message I bear your majesty now is also from my lord.’

  She took the brass cylinder and unfurled the scroll. Her face altered instantly. ‘This is well,’ she said. ‘Will you tell the caretakers, please, to ready our departure? We will return with you to the capital.’ He nodded and saluted her again: backed to the door, and left.

  Slowly she walked before the hearth, where the ember-bed still cast up waves of warmth and light. She leaned against the warm stones of the wall, watching with half-closed eyes the way the rising airs waved the unfurled scroll to and fro. Images flickered up before her in the glow: of Tarendahardil as she had first seen it when the lords and soldiers had brought her, scarcely out of girlhood, down from this very castle Goddess-ward, to be a Queen in the City Over the World. Then her reverie burst, and she started up as if unable to be still any longer. She read the message again on her way back to her chambers:

  To her Imperial Majesty Allissál, Divine Queen in Tarendahardil, from her man Ampeánor nal Torvalen, High Charan of Rukor, greetings and obeisances.

  My Queen, you must return to Tarendahardil as quickly as you can. The foreign ambassadors have returned, begging to meet with you and resume in the formation of the League of Elna. Even Dornan Ural is frightened at the news, and has promised us a free hand.

  Ara-Karn has crossed the Taril. Even now Postio, the first of the cities of the South, is under attack.

  XI

  Of Comedy and Kings

  THE TWIN BLADES FLASHED brilliantly in the light of Goddess, kissing each other and dancing away under expert mastery. For a moment, the only sounds in the great hall were the rasp of blades and the whisper of sandals on the stone floor. Then with a flourish the Rukorian sword-dancer ended his exercise, to the appreciative applause of the guests.

  ‘Truly a beautiful performance.’ Arstomenes of Vapio sighed, returning his winecup to the serving table that the servants might bear it away. ‘Was it of your devising, my lord?’

  ‘The sword-dance is an ancient custom of Rukor,’ Ampeánor answered. ‘It is intended to better breathing and coordination and allow a man to sense his weapons as if they were mere appendages of his limbs. Thus he may know even in darkness just where the blades end.’

  ‘In the time of my father, every noble was taught the sword-dance,’ grumbled Farnese, High Charan of the Eglands. ‘It gave them discipline. Now I daresay Ampeánor is the only member of his generation to know the art.’

  ‘I know not of discipline,’ lazed Arstomenes, glancing over the weapons arrayed about the walls above their heads. ‘I was considering how alluring a lady would be engaged in such routines.’

  ‘Indeed, my lord, her majesty knows the swords,’ offered the Chara Ilal.

  Arstomenes held her look; then insolently turned his eyes to the Queen. ‘Indeed, your majesty? Is what her ladyship says true?’

  ‘Only in part,’ the Queen answered shortly. ‘We do not know the dance.’

  ‘Oh, your majesty is too modest,’ dismissed the Charan of Vapio. ‘My lady Ilal, it seems you must serve in her majesty’s stead. Do you think you could learn the dance?’

  ‘I am certain I could, my lord. Yet one thing doubts me: you would not have me dressed so scantily?’ The Rukorian had worn only a length of linen wrapped about his loins to give his limbs the greatest freedom.

  ‘Oh, far more so.’ Arstomenes smiled. ‘Such loveliness as yours, Chara, belongs to all men.’

  ‘I think the Charan of Rukor would prefer her majesty in such a role,’ offered the Gerso Charan. Ampeánor, who had been regarding the Queen in secret, looked at him sharply, coloring.

  ‘I am sure we all would that’ – laughed Arstomenes – ‘meaning no slight upon your sweet charms, Chara. Chara Fillaloial, what would the ladies of your time have said to such a proposition?’

  ‘It would have depended on whether it were a public or a private one, my lord,’ replied that lady graciously, yet not without a flash of warning in her eyes.

  ‘Well, my lord? Which would you have proposed?’

  Farnese regarded him as a gerlin would a serpent’s skin. ‘We did not make idle jests of our loves then, as the present generation sees fit to do.’ Stiffly he rose, with a cough raked up from his chest. ‘Ampeánor, your majesty, if you will forgive me, I should leave now.’

  ‘Of course.’ Ampeánor nodded, rising. ‘You need not have stayed even so long, my lord.’

  ‘I fear I too must depart,’ said Arstomenes, arising gracefully from his couch. ‘I have an appointment with the daughters of the Chara Fillaloial. It seems they owe me some gaming-debts.’ He flashed his gaze to the Chara Ilal, then lightly away.

  ‘You have our leave,’ said the Queen.

  ‘They were poor fools to fall in debt to you, my lord,’ said Ilal sweetly. ‘Be sure I would never make such an error.’

  ‘I much fear that if ever I set my dice against yours, Chara, it would be I who would end in debt.’

  Ilal smiled, and rose as if to leave with him.

  ‘I must be going,’ Dornan Ural broke in awkwardly. ‘I must examine the tax-receipts before the sleep. Then upon the waking I must see the petitioners, and—’

  ‘If you would stay to give us the list of all your duties, High Regent, I fear none of us would ever depart.’ Arstomenes laughed. Theatrically he kissed the Queen’s hand. Several of the others likewise presented themselves, after which Ampeánor saw them to the door. There they exited into the gardened courtyard, where their litters awaited. The last to depart was Dornan Ural, following the overly grateful Lornof of Fulmine. The High Regent begged that Ampeánor would soon confer with him upon the taxes. ‘Things will shortly be in a sorry state. So far, I have been able to leave the reserves in the Citadel intact, yet that grows ever more difficult. And of all the other regents only you, my lord, seem to appreciate all I do, and are willing to share the labors.’

  ‘Certainly,’ Ampeánor agreed. ‘But I would rather speak of the wars. You promised us a free hand.’

  ‘And it shall be yours, my lord, within the limits of our present difficulties. I was glad to hear the case is hardly so desperate as at first glance it appeared. Postio has now beaten the barbarian back into the desert; I have heard the defeat was all but complete. So long as Rukorian warships control the Sea of Elna, Ara-Karn has no lines to his bases in the North. It should not be so difficult a matter to hold him in the wastes of the Taril, and there let him bake away. Ara-Karn will never reach so far as Tarendahardil.’

  ‘Not if we prevent it,’ Ampeánor replied. ‘The reports I have had from Postio were not so hopeful as the ones you seem to have received.’ The High Regent nodded absently, glancing out into the courtyard, and took his leave.

  Ampeánor watched the last of his departing guests clam
bering into their sheltered litters in silence. What vain idle fools they were! He wondered that Farnese could bear them. He wondered that he himself could have suffered them through an entire meal. Gossip, love-intrigues, and scandal were all they cared for. The barbarians seemed so superior to them. Their vices at least were honest ones, and did not comprise the whole of their lives; nor did they seek to refine lechery and drunkenness into forms of art.

  He turned away, holding the risen fury tight within himself. Instructing the servants that he and his remaining guests were not to be disturbed, he returned to the dining hall attended by a pair of trusted Rukorian lancers.

  * * *

  Through the bronze outer doors of the courtyard of the Hall of Rukor, the litters departed one by one. Dornan Ural, stepping down into the warm sunlit courtyard, hesitantly approached the Chara Ilal before she had stepped into her litter.

  ‘My lady,’ he said abruptly, ‘you enjoyed the feast?’

  She looked at him piercingly, her long dark-lashed eyes sparkling with the slow fire of fine wine. ‘Wonderfully,’ she answered. ‘We had no such entertainment in provincial Vapio. After all, a sweating soldier doing his training exercises is not for the aesthetically indiscriminate.’

  ‘My lady, I wish you had not spoken so freely to the Charan of Vapio. It might damage your reputation.’

  ‘Oh?’ She laughed, her soft, painted breasts moving excitingly beneath the transparent gauze of her upper gown. ‘And what is my reputation to you, sir?’

  ‘It is just – just,’ he stammered, blushing; then stopped. ‘Would you – would you mind if I walked beside your litter?’

  ‘Why not? The streets are free enough, so long as you do not intend to join me within. I do not think my men could bear both our weights.’

  ‘Your pardon, my lady, but that is not just what I meant,’ he muttered, looking at the courtstones beneath her sandaled, jeweled toes. ‘It is just, that I thought – rather, I had hoped – that is, in the Gardens, once, you – and I—’