Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 2 The Divine Queen

by Adam Corby

  It was not long before the Captain of the Guards was announced and let enter. A tall, young man with curling chestnut hair and long mustaches, he was strong and handsome in his dusty armor. His was a tracker’s build, so that Kuln-Holn was put in mind of his daughter’s fine husband, Garin. But the murmured comments of the maidens compared him with the Lord of Rukor.

  The Queen asked him his news. ‘Your majesty,’ he answered, with some confusion in his manner, ‘the barbarians were led by a man who claimed to be your majesty’s ally. Though a battle was all but joined, he beat back his ragged men and, turning to me, demanded to be conducted into the presence.’

  The Queen leaned forward in her high throne, her brows pensive. ‘Did you recognize him, Captain?’

  ‘He spoke to me very familiarly, your majesty. He called me by vile names, so that at first I denied him; but in the end, I reconsidered. He looked at me strangely, with a haunted look – and yet at the same time he seemed amused by it all, as if death held no terror for him. Yet I know few even about here. I was summoned from Rukor by Haspeth – he who now holds all Rukor. He who held this post before me did not return from Egland Downs, and so I took command.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we remember now.’ She gave her goblet to one of the maidens and summoned the fruit. The maiden took a little silver knife and cut a slice of barsilia, profferring it to her majesty on a cloth of silk. She took it up thoughtfully in her slender, pale fingers, and placed it between her lips.

  ‘Do not admit him, majesty,’ Kuln-Holn pleaded softly in the tongue of his tribe, so that none other would understand. ‘Send him away.’

  She smiled into his eyes, as if she knew well what he feared. ‘And have you forgotten your oaths already, Kuln-Holn? But we are curious.’ In Bordo, she said, ‘Captain, bid them let him enter.’

  The captain saluted, and went to fetch the stranger. From beyond the doors came the sound of orders briskly given, and the doors opened again.

  The man at the doorway between the guardsmen was dressed in a dark military tunic stained from travel, and black leather armor strengthened here and there by chipped, rusting iron plates. A short, torn, filthy traveling-cloak hung from his shoulders. His arms, naked and scarred above the heavy black iron wristbands, were bronze from wind and Goddess. One hand played idly about the empty scabbard, as if missing that sword the guardsmen had taken. He regarded them all in a single sweeping glance. His eyes were bright and hard, and his lips smiling and disdainful.

  ‘But this is not Ara-Karn!’ Kuln-Holn could not help muttering.

  None had heard him but the Queen. ‘No,’ she said, in a voice so low it seemed a mere murmur of horror. ‘It is Elnavis. My son has come back from the dead.’

  An awed murmur, irresistible even upon tongues as well-trained as theirs, flitted about the circle of maidens and then fell to silence.

  The man at the doorway stepped into the chamber with the unconscious swagger of a warrior who has boasted many killings; yet it could not hide from Kuln-Holn’s eyes the slight limp, nor that one leg was twisted below the knee. The man picked up a fruit. As if from habit he wiped the barsilia on the back of his begrimed arm. He bit into it noisily. The juice trickled over his beard, and with the back of his hand he wiped it up.

  ‘Greetings, Mother,’ he said through the fruit in his mouth.

  He smiled strangely at the expressions of those about him, even as Kuln-Holn had seen Ara-Karn smile upon the fiery ruins of fallen Gerso. ‘So. Did you have the goodness to attend to my barge? So thoughtful; I wish I might have been there to see. And now none of you knew me. Do you know me now? Who rules here? Where is the old fool Dornan Ural? Where is Ampeánor of Rukor, and why has he ordered the lower quarters abandoned?’

  The young captain lowered himself awkwardly, ‘My apologies, your highness. May it please your highness, I am now Captain of the Guard. The High Charan is gone,’ he added, glancing uncertainly toward the Queen. ‘He has disappeared, and is thought dead. Just as you should be!’

  The prince laughed scornfully. ‘Does this look like I’m dead, you idiot?’

  Kuln-Holn had seen the prince only once before; yet even so, merely from the expressions on the faces of the guards and slaves here, he could tell how much that boy had changed in becoming this man.

  ‘Your highness, I must humbly beg—’ the captain began.

  ‘Oh, enough! Get back to your post, if post you have – and take your hounds off my men! Where is the famous hospitality? By the breasts of Goddess, we’ll feast before we sleep! Where is Ilal, by the way – well, another will do as well. I’ll be here if you need me, but give us a rest first! Killing those dogs out yonder is tiring work. Especially if you’ve been at it as long as we have.’

  The Rukorian saluted rigidly and backed from the chamber, preceded by his men. The Queen said, in a voice distant and hard, ‘That was a good man you but now made your enemy, my son. That was not the way of a wise ruler.’

  ‘Oh, Mother, as I said to that fool: enough! I’m old enough now to be crowned Emperor, if I’ve a mind to proceed with such a farce. It was the occasion to which we both looked with such fondness, was it not? – when I should take the Ivory Scepter? Only, Mother, when it came, who was to be Emperor, I – or you?’

  She looked at him as if it were the first time she saw him. ‘You have changed in this year. Where have you been?’

  ‘Why, I was fighting the barbarians. That was your plan, was it not? Well, Mother, I return to inform you that it has succeeded better even than you wished! Oh, I have gained experience, such as you could not imagine. Shall I tell you what it is, to awaken buried beneath a dead horse and a heap of corpses, and be uncovered by a greedy monster of a man, only because he wants to loot your dead body?’

  ‘Tell us, then.’ In her voice, for an instant, Kuln-Holn thought he had heard a tremor of deep emotions. ‘Why did you not return long ago? They told us you were dead.’

  ‘For all they knew, I was. It was Warcloud that was struck, not I. The corpses piled up over me, and the thunder of the attack was like a sea in my ears, and then there was nothing. I was not crushed, only because Warcloud’s body lay over me and shielded me. Yet when I woke, Mersaline was long fallen.

  ‘At first, looking over that blackened field, I knew not what to do. A wild fancy took me for a moment, to enter the city and kill as many barbarians as I could until I was no more; but my leg had been twisted in the fall, and I knew, weakened as I was, I should prove little menace.

  ‘So I went into the brown hills above the city, and there found others, men of the Companions, Mersalinals, and others. They flocked to me, and I agreed to lead them. Upon my sword I made them give oaths terrible as Elna’s, to follow me always and never cease warring upon the barbarians.

  ‘Winter came over us, harsh and frozen there; but we left it behind us when we followed the barbarians’ trail-marks into the dusty Taril. We came on the ones they had left behind to die; we took their gear and finished the work. We had grown, then: for every fallen city was a breeding ground for our cause.

  ‘Whenever I judged we might harry the barbarians, slay and steal and be away before they might strike back, I let them feel our hate. We stole bows and arrows from their baggage trains, and learned the use of them. Should I have returned a failed, broken boy with a limp, to shame you and all your proud ancestors with my lowly defeat? Nay: but now I have returned as you see me. I knew the barbarians would reach Tarendahardil in the end. Not even the armies of your beloved League could have stopped them, and I knew it.

  ‘So, here we are! My men and I are feared now even by the barbarians. They did not dare oppose us when we broke through their lines here. Just gave back crying, “The demons! The demons!” We did not need to seek cover after all. And now, Mother,’ he concluded, ‘I will show you my command. They are down in the old Hall of Justice. We should do it now: they’re brave lads, all of them, but once they get drink in their bellies they are no better than randy hounds sniffing
bitches’ tails!’ He offered her his arm formally. ‘Come now, your majesty.’

  The Queen rose, signing the maidens away. She took the proffered arm in silence, and like a ghost walked with her son out of the chamber. Kuln-Holn followed after. He did not trust this foul-mouthed man, royal blood or no.

  The prince led his mother upon the dais into the King’s Light. Himself he fell into the throne, leaving her standing impassively and alone before the crowds of ragged, dirty, coarse-mannered men. The air was pungent with the odor of their bodies. They raised a loud, rude cheer at the sight of her, the Divine Queen of Tarendahardil; whereat Kuln-Holn blushed furiously. Never had he, a barbarian born, seen a fouler, more villainous-looking band of men.

  ‘Now,’ said the prince, ‘Mother, that first one is called Gabrak the Gutslitter. He’s seen more intestines than a professional embalmer! Go on, Gabrak, shyness in you? Kiss her hand, you dog!’

  And when those hundreds of murderous men had all, to the last and lowest of them, stepped before her, and grinned impudently at her, and left a bit of their own grime upon her hand and her arm and her skirts (for some of them must feel of this fabric, of a finer weave than they had ever laid their hands on before), then the Empress turned back to her son where he slouched in the King’s Light. Her shoulders quivered slightly, and her breasts rose and fell hurriedly, and in the depths of her eyes was a reflection as of the terror of a shy, wild beast beset by fire. But elsewise her control was perfect.

  ‘And will you accept the crown of your forebears?’ she asked him.

  He grinned at her even as his men had, and scratched his beard. ‘It is mine by right, is it not? Is it not the Crown of Elna?’

  She nodded, and left the Hall. Behind her as she left the men muttered crude comments and appreciative oaths, and his highness laughed.

  Kuln-Holn fled the hall.

  At first he could not find her; but after asking many of the slaves he found her at the dark side of the Palace, standing in an open balcony that was set out from the outer wall. The mountain winds ruffled her soiled lora, and shook into disorder her golden hair. Against the brilliance of the city spread far below, she seemed a shadow, unreadable and yet pitiable. Kuln-Holn stood in the corridor, and knew not what he might say or do.

  After a while, a burly slave approached and abased himself before her majesty. In his arms he held a large, flat object covered by moldy velvet. The Queen nodded, and took it from him. She raised it on high, over her head, a dark rectangle against the bright sky. For a moment the winds opened the velvet, and Kuln-Holn saw that it was a tablet of stone, covered with dense inscrutable characters. Then she opened her hands and it was gone.

  It plummeted down the sea of air, to reach in a little while and be shattered on the Palace dumpheaps, over a hundred fathoms below.

  * * *

  In the banquet-hall of the Palace, the prince’s band held carouse, eagerly and laughingly disdaining all proprieties. Elnavis presided over them, by his presence prohibiting any possible protest the outraged slaves might make. The dirty men fell upon the exquisite couches, slopped wine upon their brazen thighs, and put their arms up the soft white skirts of the pretty serving-maidens.

  Into the midst of the bruit the Chara Fillaloial appeared. Despite her years, the chara was a lovely, graceful woman. She wore the robes of mourning, and about her throat a pendant that the Charan Farnese had presented her more than two-score years earlier. Warily, but with great dignity, she led her attendants round the outskirts of the hall to the dais on which the royal couch was raised. There she lowered herself before the prince, murmuring in a hoarse voice scarcely audible against the roars, her gratitude to Goddess that She had spared the prince through so many perils.

  But when she upraised her head, the aged chara revealed eyes reddened, darkened and enlarged from unstinted weeping. ‘Please, Elnavis, my dear child,’ she prayed, ‘can you tell me anything of my daughters? They went to Vapio, to Arstomenes’s festival, and now I do not even know – Elnavis, you are the last of us to have passed that way – have you any news of them you might relate to me? Even the sureness that they are dead would be preferable to me; then at least I might order ceremonies for their spirits in the Temple, and so send them finally to peace…’

  ‘What should I know of those sluts you spawned?’ Elnavis asked irritably. ‘You should know their shameless hearts better than anyone else – no doubt now they are the treasured couch-mates of some score or more of the damned barbarians, and are satisfied at last. Now be off with you – has no one here any better to do than plague me with all these piddling trifles?’

  The Chara Fillaloial bent forward her head, stood, and returned to the door of the hall. There by a ceiling-post she swayed a little on her legs and might have fallen, save that her attendants caught her up and helped her away.

  That next waking Elnavis let himself be crowned as the last Emperor in Tarendahardil. He went first to the Hall of Kings, where he knelt before the shrine of Elna while his chosen attendants received the Ivory Scepter.

  Therewith they went across the square to the Brown Temple. There the attendants lay the ancient relic upon the stone bench before the carven image of Goddess. Elnavis knelt before the fire as the priestesses ranged round him, clad in the dark robes and golden masks of the higher rites. That was the moment when the High Priestess should have sent aloft the welcoming-chant, and presented him with the Ivory Scepter. But the moments passed, and she was silent and still.

  ‘Well, old woman, what is it?’ Elnavis growled. ‘Have you forgotten the words, or what?’

  Her eyes behind the mask disturbed him, he knew not why. ‘This is a thing that should not be,’ she uttered in a reedy, frail voice. ‘The rites have been enacted for you. Already Goddess has accepted you into Her bosom. How have you dared return? Yet, if you truly wish to help your kingdom, there is another way, an older way, a way requiring courage and great dedication. Yet, truly, it is your only pathway now.’

  ‘Old hag, I have had trouble enough with this folly already. Don’t you know we may be attacked at any hour? There are matters I must attend to. Cease babbling, wipe the drool from your chin and begin the chant. This is not a posture I prefer.’

  But still she shook her head – whereat with an angry oath he leaped to his feet, grabbed the Scepter, and flung himself from the hall. There the rumor of his unheralded return had brought the crowds thick in the great square.

  Bathed and arrayed in ceremonial robes, Elnavis was known to them at once; and the sight of them cooled somewhat his burning anger. When he leaped upon the broad back of his dark stallion, it seemed to them, his adoring, disbelieving people, like some ancient fable from the earliest age of the city. Their accolades rose into the sky so that, for a moment, all sorrow was forgotten, and none asked why it was that the Divine Queen was nowhere to be seen. They remembered only this, that this was Tarendahardil, the City Over the World. Victory would not be denied.

  Vainly buoyed by the cheers and the hands reaching for his touch, the blessing touch of one who had surmounted even death, the young Emperor smiled, and waved aloft the Ivory Scepter.

  It was during the following celebrations that the barbarians attacked.

  XXII

  The Battle of the Lower Quarters

  ‘BUT I DO NOT WISH to go there,’ Kuln-Holn complained.

  Berrin laughed at his friend’s reluctance and dragged him on. ‘Do you still fear to encounter your master, in the midst of all this?’ he asked. ‘Be assured, however much you may have erred, he will have larger things on his mind than giving you a beating.’ So Kuln-Holn went with the other slaves to the Palace rooftops, there to behold the hordes of Ara-Karn as they issued from their camp.

  Thick and swarming like iron and bronze beetles upon warm sand, they entered the city by the Archways of Vapio and the Eglands. Thousands and thousands of them there were, barbarians, mercenaries, renegades, troops ordered from the conquered cities. They were, perhaps, less than half the
numbers of the great armies of the League of Elna; yet even so, it had not been Fronaril of Peshtria that had returned from England Downs. Like a tidal surge they rode the empty, narrow streets of the forsaken lower quarters.

  Down to meet them went the defenders, bands of picked men. The Captain of the Guard led a company of guardsmen; Elnavis led his followers; groups of professional robbers and killers from the Thieves’ Quarter flitted shadow-like among the open, dark doorways. Most went riding, but some were on foot, garbed in light robes and tunics for speed.

  The leaders of the defenders cut among the approaching barbarians, cutting their horses from between their knees – then turned swiftly back among the twisting alleyways, out of sight of the bows. Some of the Emperor’s men were posted on rooftops along the major ways, and rained down arrows on the barbarians from above – little they liked this taste of death they had so often doled out themselves. The men of the Thieves’ Quarter darted out from doorways and behind statues, to duck and rip gaping wounds in the bellies of the barbarians’ horses before slipping back out of sight. The ways quickly became choked with the carcasses, so that the barbarians in their impatience spread out in ever-lessening companies, seeking to reach High Town now by all the devious, twisty ways of the side streets. Women from the Thieves’ Quarter emerged from doorways there to greet them, in seductive poses and casting saucy glances at the barbarians. They would cry, ‘Spare me, and I will serve you well!’ When an incautious barbarian would seek to hoist one to his side for a kiss, he would find that her hand held steel eager to caress his throat. Then she would laugh mockingly and be gone. Others of them cast bundles of nettles on the horses’ rumps, so that they kicked and bucked and cast their riders clattering to the ground. The many engagements spread like a rising wave in the labyrinth of the lower city.