Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 2 The Divine Queen

by Adam Corby

  He remembered the sleepless sleep in Tezmon, and the antechamber filled with sleeping lancemen; and he saw again the map of the North, on which the Gerso had inscribed the information Gen-Karn had given them. He pulled the map from the brazier, trying to stifle the flames. But it was too late. The last scraps of parchment crumbled in his burnt fingers.

  And it struck him now, that it had been no storm that had wrecked the merchantman, nor rocks that had shattered those many bows, nor slain Elpharaka, Ferrakador or his men.

  A sound in the chambers beyond startled him. Quickly, he snuffed the lamp and fell behind a chest in the audience chamber.

  Faintly from without he could hear words exchanged. A clank of iron followed, and a sudden unbearable light glaring in from the antechamber. The flaps fell to again, plunging the tent into gloom; and a lone, dark figure entered the chamber.

  He did not dare raise his head at first. He heard the man’s footsteps. They were heavy and slow, those of a man saddened or wearied from a long journey. The man stood still for a space, and sighed. He had lighted as yet no lamp, apparently being familiar enough with these chambers to need none. The steps began again, nearing; they sounded hollowly on the raised wooden dais, and stopped. The great carven throne creaked, as a heavy body settled in it.

  Ampeánor cursed under his breath. Was Goddess so kind as to send him his enemy so nicely, then, and was he to greet the opportunity weaponless? All his weapons he had left behind where he had entered, to ensure the utmost silence. Now he had only his hands. Carefully he unlaced the front of his leather tunic, withdrawing the long cord lacing. He wrapped it tight about both fists. The public executioners of Rukor sometimes strangled the condemned; and as their High Charan, he had seen their work many times. It would be a fitting death for this one now.

  Cautiously he wormed his way forward. The man, if he were Ara-Karn, God-King and Damned, would be wearied from his ride. His movements would be slow. But perhaps he would not sleep just yet; perhaps he had already summoned guards or men to attend him. It was a chance not to be missed. It was a Rukorian proverb never to cast a shadow on the gifts of Goddess. He inched himself forward. As he did so, the Darkbeast-tooth within his opened tunic dragged across the edge of the dais, raising a soft, scraping sound.

  ‘Who is there?’ cried the man on the throne.

  XVI

  The Hall of Justice Again

  SLOWLY AND RELUCTANTLY, Allissál returned to health. It had been the second real illness of her life, and in a way she was sorry now to see it end. Life in the gloomy chamber, attended by her maidens, sheltered from all worldly concerns, had come to seem an altered and superior existence. It was calm and quiet there, and she could hear the recited legends of the past whenever she wished. Whenever she slept, it was as if she went away to some distant and unheralded bourne; yet when she woke she could recall none of the happy times she had spent there.

  She woke at length, and knew that she must resume the burdens of her life. Yet at the first her waking was so unfamiliar it might itself have been a dream. Beside her head, half tangled in the strands of her hair, she found a ribboned parchment sealed with Ampeánor’s personal device. Taking it up she read it, and so learned what he had been driven to.

  So he had gone away to danger once again, and this the most perilous of his travels. How very unfair and selfish of him, she thought; then knew her shame and was sorry. There was, after all, no use in being annoyed. Some vast, pervasive, malignant fate seemed to oversee and undo all that they attempted – had she been superstitious, she might have been tempted to give credence to the fantastical rumors of Ara-Karn.

  She had chosen as she knew she must: there was no other path for her. She could not work with Dornan Ural. The barbarian drew ever closer. The Empire needed a ruler with real power. She could not have wed Ennius – he was a foreigner, and had no base of power among either the highborn or the officials. Moreover, the foreign courts, which knew him not, would not have trusted in his leadership – she herself knew nothing of his ability to general armies in the field. And, finally, to have chosen him would have wounded and alienated Ampeánor. No, Ampeánor had been her only choice; nor could she have wed him with Ennius’s child pushing out her belly.

  She felt upon the verge of tears. She had given in to her passions only twice in her life, while Ilal and the other charai of her court danced with lovers by the score. Yet both her small affairs had brought her nothing but misery. It was all so unfair. She should have truly run away when she was a girl, and never returned. Even couch-slaves must lead better lives than hers.

  There was also, it seemed, a note from Ennius. It was brief, and perhaps no harsher than she deserved. ‘Always I knew we were alike,’ he ended, ‘but never so alike.’

  Its formality and its utter refusal to show even the least bit of warmth hurt her deeply. Had she not vowed a sacred oath to him, and did he not realize how much that had cost her? She was relieved Ampeánor had sent him abroad to Ul Raambar before he had left. It would be long ere Ennius would return. Perhaps by then she might be better able to face him. Even so, she could not help feeling that it was very likely she had now lost both of them. Still weak from the poison and feeling very childlike in the gloom, she gave way to her tears, and drenched the pillows of her bed.

  * * *

  High Summer burned to an end, and Tarendahardil emerged sluggishly from her labored rest. The winds turned back a little, cool with the sea, cool with the darkness beyond. It was quiet in the city, even in the Thieves’ Quarter – grim, it might even have been said.

  A minor festival was declared to celebrate the Divine Queen’s return to health. She presided over a session at the Circus, looking very thin and pale, and yet somehow – or so those courtiers nearest her box claimed – for all that, she was more lovely and more desirable than ever. It put one in mind of the poetess who had died for her passion, and called love bittersweet. There was something deep within the Queen’s countenance inviting at once danger, intrigue, and desire. She moved listlessly, and smiled but politely at the merriments of Arstomenes, but in her shoulders, and the way she moved her legs, there seemed a waiting fierceness none had before noted in her. The court poets worked upon their homages to this new evidence of her beauty, helpless to turn their minds from it, though they greatly doubted how their words might be received. Of course, no conversation might end without some speculation concerning the whereabouts of the High Charan of Rukor, who should have sat beside her and held her hand when the crystals were strewn; but the answer, known to but her majesty, remained unspoken.

  It was a few passes after the closing of the festival that she first essayed to resume her duties. Minor petitions and addresses, which required her presence under law, had mounted grievously in the durance of her illness. Long had Dornan Ural sent messages requesting that she suffer to hear some of these petitions, but the very length of the lists he had sent in had daunted her – or rather, stiffened her stubborn wish to defy him even now. At last, however, she consented.

  Ironically, it was this that finally brought about her consent: Bistro of Eliorite had quit her service. ‘We are accomplishing nothing here,’ he had complained to her. ‘While in the meantime the barbarian draws even ever nearer! I cannot stand it any longer, your majesty – I must go and kill me some of them!’ She had not attempted to dissuade him, but had loaded him with gifts and seen him off with honor, knowing she bade farewell to a dead man. Well, but she thought bitterly, were they not all of them here dead to a man? Only Ara-Karn was alive in the world, in the eyes of the gods.

  Because the petitioners were so numerous, it was the opinion of Dornan Ural that the audience was best held in the old Hall of Justice, where they might all come at once. The Empress sat in a high antique throne of gold and rubies in the King’s Light, and the highborn clustered with their retinues in the upper galleries. All the courtiers and the petitioners were outfitted in their grandest, most handsome styles to catch the Queen’s eye and favor. D
espite the orders of the High Regent and the inclination of the Queen, the affair had become a grand one, reminiscent of the time of the old Emperor, Allissál’s father. Nothing that occurred or was granted in this session seemed likely to be forgotten.

  Yet, even so, things went unwell from the very start. Never had Dornan Ural seemed so pompous, so insistent upon all formalities and points of law. As for her majesty, she seemed to be not in the best of spirits, and interposed interruptions and delays of her own, to the growing exasperation of the High Regent. Like cat and dog they were, that cannot meet for quarreling. The repeated urgings and outraged coughs of the High Regent only served to prick the malice of the Queen the more. The petitioners, seeing this, chose between them, appealing to the one the decision of the other. Few things were accomplished; the session dragged on and on, even to beyond the third meal.

  The truth was, that immediately she had been seated by her maidens in the old throne, so full of the presence of her ancestors, Allissál had been struck by the realization that hers was, after all, a paper empire; as fat old Dornan Ural, bustling in with his carrying-racks of parchments, made more clear. The one love of her life she had broken and betrayed – the life growing within her she had poisoned – herself she had condemned to a marriage of state with a man she once had loved, and now despised – and had all of it been for this? This was naught, and less than naught. She looked out through narrowed lids upon the throngs vying for her attention and favor; and she cursed them in the sight of Her. She had seen her duty, and in great pain fulfilled it; and by that had freed herself. Had Ennius entered that hall then, as he had so long ago, when she had first set eyes upon him and been outraged by his impudent looks, she would have gone away with him and left them all to their separate dooms. Bored and disgusted, she protracted the session only to make them all share in her misery. Would they force her to undergo this farce? Very well – but she had her own ways and manners of compliance.

  It made for a break of relief when the slave announced the appearance of two refugees with word of Ara-Karn. ‘Ara-Karn?’

  ‘Yes, Divine One. They claim not to be merely the bearers of some new rumor, but actually to have known and spoken with the barbarian.’ He pointed them out among the crowds: men in tunics and trappings of the merchant class, in the fashion of the northern cities.

  Dornan Ural groaned aloud, beside himself despite decorum. ‘Can this not wait? Does not every exile tell a like tale? Paranin, did they speak truthfully?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said softly, ‘we would prefer to examine the veracity of these men ourselves, High Regent.’ They were speaking almost privately now, and the crowds, intent upon catching what it was they spoke of, were hushed and attentive.

  ‘Your majesty,’ Dornan Ural said impatiently, ‘I was but attempting – it is well known your majesty sees anyone claiming knowledge of Ara-Karn; and it has opened the door to many who only hope to gain some silver for their lies. Yet we have six-and-thirty items remaining on the schedule even after all this time!’

  ‘All hail his August Majesty, Dornan Ural nal Servant’s-Chambers,’ she said aloud. ‘Or should it rather be Dornan the Mage, who knows these fellows to be liars without ever having heard them? But it were better for your vaunted glory, my lord, if you saw more to these important details of rule yourself, instead of pestering us with them and fobbing them off upon your overburdened subordinates.’

  Dornan Ural’s face went bone-pale, then darkened to the color of a deep flowering bruise. In the quiet, her words had reached or were passed along to the farthest corners of the hall. All eyes were now upon him. He opened his mouth, but all that emerged was a little, stammered, high-pitched squeak.

  It was an unfortunate sound. The slave-maidens had all they could do to restrain their smiles. From above came the open laughter of Arstomenes and Ilal and the ladies they had to join their frolic: a drunken, mocking laughter.

  Dornan Ural closed his mouth. He nodded very slowly to her majesty. Still was his face dark as Postio wine, or the face of a seducer in Rukor strangled on the steps of the judges’ hall. In a whisper, he asked, ‘And does your Divine Majesty permit, that this lowly one be granted leave to depart the Presence?’ He used such a construction as the lowest of slaves might.

  ‘We may Goddess thank, that your regency is soon to be ended,’ she replied coldly. ‘Yes, you may depart now until that time when we call upon you to submit the articles of your office to our lord, your new Emperor. And after that, we hope to see you when you have learned somewhat of grace and wit – in short, never.’

  Dornan Ural bowed low and abased himself almost, yet not quite, as a slave would. As he rose he kept his eyes fixed upon her majesty. In an utter stillness, the High Regent of Tarendahardil backed out of the chamber. The crowds parted to let him pass. Through the high uncovered opening the light of Goddess beamed in, a fall of quiet and kindness upon the figure of the Queen. She rose and left the hall; behind her was a growing turmoil. The slaves, displaying greater presence of mind than the courtiers there, made the announcement that the audience was at an end.

  In the upper galleries, highborn lords and ladies arched their painted bewigged heads together, exchanging many an artful glance and clever remark. Such stuff as this more than compensated them for having to endure the hot, dull weeks of her majesty’s illness, during which all public shows and entertainments had been suspended. While the audiences had been going on, there had even been some wagers exchanged, as to who should prevail, her majesty or the High Regent. Now it was agreed that the portly High Regent had never been more entertaining; though there were regrets expressed that he had proved of such poor stamina, and had ended the show so abruptly. Somewhat more of detail might have gone into the climax. These and other comments were abated when Arstomenes invited them all to join him at his palatial estates in Vapio, for a garden party that, though it could not equal in dignity the notable one her majesty had arranged the previous year, would more than supply the lack with merriments of a more varied cuisine. Lightly and graciously applauding the suggestion, the charai and their male attendants led the way out of the galleries into the light of Goddess, where they formed a procession, colorful and splendid. Again the conversation reverted to the High Regent; and some of the younger nobles proposed an expedition, to beard him in his den and offer him their condolences upon the remarkable ill-temper of the Queen, to see how he might take it.

  * * *

  Allissál had repaired to the shadowed walkways of the lower gardens, and there would have ridden off her anger on Kis Halá, save that Emsha protested such strenuous activity should come too soon upon her recovery; to which Allissál in the end had to agree. It was then close on the time of the shortsleep; still she had no will to rest. As for the High Regent, while she would have admitted that her words had been ill-chosen and indecorous, she was not sorry that she had said them. So much for him: she thought no more on the matter. More to relieve her boredom with some little amusement than anything else, she sent for the two talebearers whose appearance had been the cause of so much unpleasantness and merriment.

  With tolerable form the two men prostrated themselves before the Queen, adding to their thanks to her for seeing them the prayer that their tale might provide her with some slight value in the coming war. The one was tall, of late middle age, with a dark beard and a sourly humorous turn of lip; the other was younger, clean shaven, and more refined. From their features and voices she knew them for merchants from ruined Gerso. They confirmed her in this, adding that until recently they had abided in the trading-cities of the lower Delba, going from thence to Bollakarvil to view the shrines there. When Bollakarvil was besieged they had journeyed to Tarendahardil.

  ‘And the barbarian, gentlemen,’ she reminded them. ‘Have you truly spoken with him?’

  ‘Your majesty, not only have we spoken with him: we were present at that ruinous Pass when first he made appearance in the far North, rising ragged and wild from his own death-barge, out o
f the frenzied seas of the Ocean of the Dead. All his early history among the barbarians is known to us; before that, no living man has knowledge. For know that I who speak am Zelatar Bonvis, called, though it is an overstatement, the prince of merchants of our city that was; and this is Mergo Donato, my apprentice. We were first of all civilized men to hear the name of Ara-Karn, first to behold his face, and first to view his first bloody acts of madness.’

  At least these men were up to a performance worthy of her generosity. Rather amused, and much relaxed, she signed him to continue.

  ‘That springtime before Gerso fell, we chanced to be among a tribe of the barbarians. This tribe dwelt farthest from our city, being situated in a far corner of the far North, upon a bay of the Ocean of the Dead. Thither had we gone to negotiate for whatever bandar pelts the tribe should gain in the coming Hunt: for they were among the most skillful and bravest of hunters in the far North. A man named Gundoen was their chief: a strong ruler and a proud, who unfortunately allowed his wrath and prejudices to sway him overmuch. Yet perhaps now he is a grown man, being the general of all the armies of the tribes.’

  ‘And is not this Ara-Karn their general?’ she interposed.

  ‘Your majesty, pardon: Ara-Karn is their king, or Warlord, as they would style him – but Gundoen leads the warriors. This we have learned in our long travels since our homes were burned and all our fellows slaughtered. Often since then, we have escaped a city mere hours before it fell; and every time the leader of the barbarians outside the walls was Gundoen.

  ‘While we were but newly arrived at Gundoen’s village there came into the chief’s hall a tribesman whom they had named “the Pious One,” because of his fanatical religious beliefs – rather a cracked-pate, but useful to them because he fashioned the barges for their dead and saw to certain of the rites. He had come to the chief’s hall to summon Gundoen, for as chief of the tribe it was Gundoen’s duty to see off all corpses in their barges. Yet reminded of his forgetfulness before all his proud warriors, Gundoen grew angry, and refused to see the man off.’