Empire of the East

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Empire is surely Saberhagen’s best work yet…his storytelling abilities shine.”

  —Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review

  “A fast-moving tale that’s thoroughly enjoyable.”

  —Birmingham Post

  “A fine mix of fantasy and science fiction and speculation.”

  —Roger Zelazny

  “Buy it; beg it; borrow it; but read it.”

  —The Jersey Journal

  “I think Empire of the East is better than The Lord of the Rings, though I admit it’s a matter of taste.”

  —Larry Niven

  “Empire of the East is a book the reviewer is hesitant to say too much about because of the continual surprises the author springs on the reader…. One of Mr. Saberhagen’s great talents is a sense of rhythm…the most seamless splicing of SF and fantasy I’ve found since Bradley’s Darkover came into being.”

  —Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine

  “There are few writers who can do justice to a really rich set of characters and backgrounds and Saberhagen has proven to be the best.”

  —Lester del Rey

  “Hear me, Ekuman!”

  “Hear me, for I am Ardneh! Ardneh, who rides the Elephant, who wields the lightning, who rends fortifications as the rushing passage of time consumes cheap cloth. You slay me in this avatar, but I live on in other human beings. I am Ardneh, and in the end I will slay thee, and thou wilt not live on.

  “Hear me, Ekuman. Neither by day nor by night will I slay thee. Neither with the blade nor with the bow. Neither with the edge of the hand…nor with the fist. Neither with the wet…nor with the dry…”

  Ekuman strained to hear more, but the old lips had ceased to move. Now only the flicker of torchlight gave the illusion of life to the victim’s face, as it did to the face of the dead torturer at his feet.

  Contents

  Prologue by Roger Zelazny

  1. THE BROKEN LANDS

  I: Hear Me, Ekuman

  II: Rolf

  III: The Free Folk

  IV: The Cave

  V: Desert Storm

  VI: Technology

  VII: The Two Stones

  VIII: Chup

  IX: Messages

  X: Fight for the Oasis

  XI: I Am Ardneh

  XII: To Ride the Elephant

  XIII: The Morning Twilight

  2. THE BLACK MOUNTAINS

  I: Tall Broken Man

  II: Duel

  III: Valkyrie

  IV: Djinn of Technology

  V: Som's Hoard

  VI: Be As I Am

  VII: We Are Facing Zapranoth

  VIII: Chup's Pledging

  IX: Before the Citadel

  X: Lake of Life

  XI: Knife of Fire

  3. ARDNEH’S WORLD

  I: Ominor

  II: Summonings

  III: Banditry

  IV: Distance

  V: Little Moment of Revenge

  VI: Ardneh

  VII: Orcus

  VIII: They Open Doors, They Take Down Bars

  IX: Ardneh's Life

  X: Beast-War

  XI: World Without Ardneh

  Prologue

  by Roger Zelazny

  Fred Saberhagen does not look like the father of the berserkers, Count Dracula’s amanuensis, or an authority on Inca tortures. These items do occasionally come to mind when his name is mentioned, however, because they are the sorts of things which fix themselves readily in memory. So, I wish to counter any image of a latter-day H. P. Lovecraft by remarking, for openers, that Fred is a genial, witty, well-informed individual, with a wonderful wife named Joan, who is a mathematician, and the three best-behaved children I’ve ever met: Jill, Eric, and Tom. He likes good food and drink and conversation. His working habits seem superior to my own, and his facility with scholarly matters may even pre-date his one-time employment as a writer for the Encyclopæadia Britannica.

  I liked Fred’s writing before I ever met him, and now that we are almost neighbors, I am pleased to know him. I am just returned from a trip, and I finished reading his novel The Mask of the Sun on the airplane. It made me feel that he could do no wrong. It has one of the most suspenseful openings I have encountered in a long while, leading steadily and carefully into a truly exotic setting and story-situation. His management of the paradoxes it involves is an exercise in precision and symmetry. (I might as well add “colorful imagery and characterization,” and for that matter “scholarship which does not impede but enhances.”) And having recently read his The Holmes-Dracula File, I was still fresh on it for purposes of contrast and comparison. There, I was impressed by the apparent ease with which the chapters (alternately narrated by the count himself and by John Watson, M.D.) were recorded in appropriately individual styles, by the authentic feeling of his Victorian London and by the sinuosities of the plot. It was very different from The Mask of the Sun, but was written with equivalent skill, care and attention to detail.

  All of which, upon reflection, is a way of saying that he is a versatile writer. But there is more to Fred’s stuff than mere technique. Sit down and read ten pages of anything he has written, and you begin to see that he has given it a lot of thought. It hangs together. (I’m tired of the word “organic” in reference to literature. It makes me think of a book with fungus growing on it. Fred’s books lack fungus but are of a whole piece—press one anywhere, and the entire story fabric responds uniformly to the tension, seamlessly—because he has passed that way many times and knows exactly why he situated every house, tree, black hole, berserker, and idea just where he did.) To see, to feel, to know the world you are assembling in such a consistent and fully extended fashion has always seemed to me the mark of a superior writer. It lies beyond any surface trickery—hooks, gimmicks, stylistic pyrotechnics—and is one of the things that makes the difference between a memorable book and one that provides a few hours’ entertainment and is soon forgotten.

  I could simply end on that note and be telling nothing less than the truth—after announcing that here is another one, to enjoy, to remember—and then get out of your way and let you read it. But life is short, good writers are a minority group and opportunities to talk about them are few, unless you are a critic or a reviewer, neither of which hats fit me. And there is another thing about writing and Fred which seems worth saying here.

  Raymond Chandler once observed that there are plot writers, such as, say, Agatha Christie, who work everything out in advance, and then there are others, such as himself, who do not know everything that is going to occur in a story beforehand, who enjoy leaving leeway for improvisation and discovery as they go along. I’ve written things both ways myself, but I prefer Chandler’s route because there is a certain joy in encountering the unexpected as you work. I’ve compared notes on this with Fred, and he is also of the Chandler school. If this tells you nothing else in terms of the psychology behind some people’s creations, it at least lets you know which writers are probably having the most fun. And this is important. There are days when such a writer curses the free-form muse but the reconciliations are wonderful, and the work seldom seems a mere chore. It is good to know that beyond the place of Fred’s versatility—and even beyond that special metaphysical locale where occurs the careful tightening of all story-strands into total self-consistency—there, in the secret place where he puts things together for the first time, all alone and wondering and working hard, he has this special on-the-spot joy in associating the stuff of life and ideas. For some of this, I believe, does come through to the reader in all good writing that happens in this fashion. I feel it in all of Fred’s stories.

  If further confirmation of the versatility of Fred Saberhagen were needed, here
is Empire of the East. In this unusual collaboration with his earlier self, he has produced a fine mix of fantasy and science fiction, action and speculation.

  Book One

  The Broken Lands

  I

  Hear Me, Ekuman

  The Satrap Ekuman’s difficulties with his aged prisoner had only begun when he got the fellow down into the dungeon under the Castle and tried to begin a serious interrogation. The problem was not, as you might have thought from a first look at the old man, that the prisoner was too fragile and feeble, liable to die at the first good twinge of pain. Not at all. It was almost incredible, but actually the exact opposite was true. The old man was actually too tough, his powers still protected him. All through the long night he not only defended himself, but kept trying to hit back.

  Ekuman’s two wizards, Elslood and Zarf, were adepts as able as any that the Satrap had ever encountered west of the Black Mountains, far too strong for any lone prisoner to overcome, especially here on their own ground. Yet the old man fought—in pride and stubbornness, perhaps, and doubtless with the realization that his fighting could cause powers so enormous to be arrayed against him, could create a tension so great, that his inevitable collapse would bring him sudden and relatively painless death.

  The intensity of the silent struggle mounted all through the darkest morning hours, when human powers are known to wane, and others may reach their peak. Ekuman and his wizards could not identify the particular forces of the West that the old man called upon, but certainly they were not trivial. Long before the end, the air within the buried dungeon seemed to Ekuman to be ringing audibly with powers, and his human eyesight misinformed him that the ancient vaults of the stone ceiling had elongated and receded into some mysterious distance. Zarf’s toad-familiar, wont to jump with glee during the interrogation of stubborn prisoners, had taken refuge in a puddle of torchlight near the foot of the ascending stair, for once wanting nothing to do with the dark corners of the chamber. It crouched there solemnly, goggle eyes following its master as he moved about.

  Elslood and Zarf took turns standing on the rim of the pit, three meters deep, at whose bottom the old man had been chained. They had with them talismans of their choice, and had drawn signs on floor and wall. They of course could gesture freely—though on the level of physical action the struggle was very quiet, as was to be expected when it involved wizards of this rank.

  While one of Ekuman’s magicians took his turn at maintaining the pressure, the other stood back before the Satrap’s elevated chair, conferring with him. They were all sure that the old man was a leader, perhaps the very chief, of those who called themselves the Free Folk. These were bands of the native populace, reinforced by some stiff-necked refugees from other lands, who hid themselves in hills and coastal swamps and carried on an unremitting guerrilla warfare against Ekuman.

  It was only through a stroke of fortune that a routine search operation in the swamps had netted the old man. Zarf and a troop of forty soldiers had come upon him sleeping in a hut. Ekuman was beginning to believe that if the old man had chanced to be awake, they might not have taken him at all. Even with the prisoner at his present disadvantage, Elslood and Zarf together had not even managed to learn his name.

  Down in the pit the guttering torchlight flashed with unusual brightness from chains that were of no ordinary metal. Blood puddled darkly at the old man’s feet, but not a drop of it was his. Lifeless before him one of Ekuman’s dungeon-wardens lay. This man had approached the chained wizard incautiously, to be surprised when his own torture-knife whipped itself out of its sheath to fly up and bury its dull blade to the hilt in its owner’s throat. After that, Ekuman had ordered all his human servitors save the two wizards from the chamber.

  Later, when the prisoner had begun to display small but unmistakeable signs of weakening, Ekuman considered having the wardens in again, to try what little knives and flames might do. But the wizards advised against it, pleading that the best chance for a cruel prolongation of agony, for extracting useful information from the victim, lay in finishing by the powers of magic alone the process they had begun. Their pride was stung.

  The Satrap thought about it, and let his wizards have their way, while he sat attentively through the long hours of the test. He had a high wall of a forehead, and a full, darkish beard. He wore a simple robe of black and bronze; his black boots shifted now and then upon the stone floor.

  Only when the night outside was drawing to its end—though day and night in here were all the same—did the old man break silence at last. He spoke to Ekuman, and the words evidently formed no spell, for they came clearly enough through the guarded air above the torture-pit. When toward the end of the speech the victim’s breath began to fail, Ekuman stood up from his chair and leaned forward to hear better. On the Satrap’s face at that moment was a look of politeness, as of one simply showing courtesy to an elder.

  “Hear me, Ekuman!”

  The toad-familiar crouched lower, becoming utterly motionless, at the sound of those first words.

  “Hear me, for I am Ardneh! Ardneh, who rides the Elephant, who wields the lightning, who rends fortifications as the rushing passage of time consumes cheap cloth. You slay me in this avatar, but I live on in other human beings. I am Ardneh, and in the end I will slay thee, and thou wilt not live on.”

  Given the circumstances, Ekuman knew no alarm at being threatened. The word “Elephant,” though, caught his attention sharply. He glanced quickly at his wizards when it was uttered. Zarf’s and Elslood’s eyes fell before his, and he returned his full attention to the prisoner.

  Pain showed now in the prisoner’s face, and sounded in his voice. Defenses crumbling, powers failing, he was quickly becoming no more than an old man, no more than another victim about to die. He labored on, with croaking speech.

  “Hear me, Ekuman. Neither by day nor by night will I slay thee. Neither with the blade nor with the bow. Neither with the edge of the hand…nor with the fist. Neither with the wet…nor with the dry…”

  Ekuman strained to hear more, but the old lips had ceased to move. Now only the flicker of torchlight gave the illusion of life to the victim’s face, as it did to the face of the dead torturer at his feet.

  The ringing pressure of invisible forces faded quickly from the dank air. As Ekuman straightened, sighing, and turned from the pit, he could not resist a quick glance upward to make sure that the vaulting had settled back where it belonged.

  Zarf, slightly the junior of the two wizards, had gone to open a door and call the wardens in to see to the disposal of the corpses. As the magician turned back from this errand, Ekuman demanded: “You will examine the old one’s body, with special care?”

  “Yes, Lord.” Zarf did not sound optimistic about the results to be expected from such an autopsy. His toad-familiar, however, was now grown lively again, and ready to begin the job. It burbled shrilly as it hopped into the pit and began its usual routine of pranks with the two bodies.

  Ekuman stretched, wearily, and began to ascend the worn stone stair. Something had been accomplished, one of the rebel chieftains killed. But that was not enough. The information Ekuman required had not been gained.

  Halfway up the first curved flight of stairs he stopped, turned back his head, and asked: “What make you of that speech the ancient blessed me with?”

  Elslood, three steps behind, nodded his fine gray head, knit his well-creased brow, and pursed his dry lips thoughtfully; but at the moment Elslood could find nothing to say.

  Shrugging, the Satrap went on up. It needed a hundred and more stone steps to raise him from the dungeon to gray morning air in a closed courtyard, from courtyard to keep, and from keep to the tower where his own quarters were. At several points Ekuman acknowledged, without pausing, the salutes of bronze-helmed soldiers standing guard.

  Once above ground, the stairs curved through the Castle’s massive, newly strengthened walls. The bulky keep was three tall stories high, and the tower rose two level
s more above its roof. Most of the tower’s lower level was taken up by a single large room, the Presence Chamber, wherein Ekuman generally conducted his affairs of state. At one side of this large round chamber space had been given to the wizards, covered alcoves in which they might keep their implements, benches and tables where they might do their work under their Lord’s most watchful eye.

  It was straight to this side of the Presence Chamber that Elslood went as soon as he and Ekuman had ascended to the tower. Around him here he had all the sorcerer’s impedimenta: masks, and talismans, and charms not easily nameable, all most curiously wrought, piled on stands and tables and depending from the wall. On a stand a single thick brown candle burned, pale of flame now in the cool morning light that filtered through the high narrow windows.

  Pausing first to mutter a secret precautionary word, Elslood put out a hand to set aside the arras which concealed an alcove. Within this space the Satrap allowed him to keep to himself certain private volumes and devices. The drapery pulled back revealed an enormous black guardian-spider, temporarily immobilized by the secret word, crouched on a high shelf. The tall wizard reached his long arm past the spider to withdraw a dusty volume.

  When it was brought into the light Ekuman saw that it was an Old World book, of marvelous paper and binding that had already outlasted more than one generation of parchment copies. Technology, thought the Satrap, and despite himself he shivered slightly, inwardly, watching the fair white pages turned so familiarly by Elslood’s searching fingers. It was not easy for one belonging to a world that thought itself sane and modern and stable to accept the reality of such things. Not even for Ekuman, who had seen and handled the evidences of technology more frequently than most. This book was not the only Old World remnant preserved within his Castle’s walls.