Empire of the East

by Fred Saberhagen

  He bore this silent, disturbing scrutiny only briefly before issuing curt orders for them to get to work. The shortest, Lisa, turned away at once and started in; he had to bark commands, and kick a couple of the others, to get them moving properly. Then he walked out into the garden, turning ideas over in his mind.

  On the next day Som’s chamberlain came to Chup, and led him down into the mountain. Through devious and guarded tunnels they passed, until the tunnel they were in broke out into the side of a huge and roughly vertical shaft. This chimney had the look of a natural formation; it was about ten meters wide here, at a level well below the citadel. It seemed to widen gradually as it curved upward through the rock. Sunlight came reflecting down through it, from what must be an opening at the unseen top, beyond a curve. A precarious ledge winding round the inside of the shaft, made a narrow pathway going up and down. At the level where Chup and the chamberlain now stood, this ledge widened, and from it several cells had been dug back into the rock, and fitted with heavy doors.

  Only one of these doors was now closed. Gesturing at it, the chamberlain, as if imparting necessary information, said: “In there lies she who was the Lady Charmian.”

  When Chup had nodded his understanding of this fact, if not of its importance, the chamberlain said quite solemnly: “Come.” And started down the rough helix of a path that wound both up and down the chimney.

  Chup followed. The two of them were quite alone on all the path, as far as Chup could see, peering down a long drop. From below, round a lower curve in the gradually narrowing chimney, in regions where the daylight scarcely reached, there came up a roseate glow. “Where are we going?” Chup asked the silent figure ahead of him.

  The chamberlain glanced back, with evident surprise. “Below us dwells the High Lord Zapranoth, master of all demons in the domain of Som the Dead!”

  Chup’s feet, that had been slowing down, now stopped completely. “What business have we visiting the Demon-Lord?”

  “Why, I thought you understood, good Chup. It is the business of pledging. Today I will explain how your initiation is to be accomplished. I must take you nearly to the bottom, to make sure you are familiar with the ground.”

  Chup drew a deep breath. He might have known they’d put demons into this, the one peril that could make him sweat from only thinking of it. “Tell me now, what is the test to be?”

  He listened, frowning, while the chamberlain told him. On the surface of it, it sounded easier than Chup had expected. He’d have to face Zapranoth, but not for long and not in any kind of contest.

  But there was something—wrong—about it.

  Still scowling, Chup asked: “Is there not some mistake in this? I am to serve Som as a fighting man.”

  “I assure you there is no mistake. You will not suffer at the hands of the High Lord Zapranoth if you do properly what you are sent to do.”

  “I don’t mean that.”

  The chamberlain looked at him blankly. “What, then?”

  Chup struggled to find words. But he could not make it clear in his own mind what was bothering him. “The whole business is not to my liking. I think there must be some mistake.”

  “Indeed? Not to your liking?” The chamberlain’s haughty glare could have withered many a man.

  “No, it is not. Indeed. Something is wrong with this scheme. Why am I to do this?”

  “Because it is required of you, if you wish to participate fully in the powers of the East.”

  “If you cannot give me any more definite reason, let us go back to Som, and I will question him.”

  It cost Chup some further argument, and the nearly incredulous displeasure of the chamberlain, but at last he was led upward again, and admitted to see Som once more.

  This time he found the viceroy apparently quite alone, in a small chamber below the audience hall. In spite of half a dozen torches on the walls, the place seemed dim and cold. It was a clammy room, nearly empty of furniture except for the plain chair Som was sitting in, and the small plain table before him. On that table there stood upright mirrors, and at the focus of the mirrors a candle guttered, topped with a wavering tongue of darkness instead of flame, casting all around it an aura of night instead of luminance. Som’s face turned toward the candle was all but invisible, and what little Chup could see of it looked less human than before.

  In answer to the silent interrogation of that face turned toward him, Chup came to attention. In a clear voice he said: “High Lord Som, I have taken and given orders enough to understand that orders must be followed. But when I think an order is mistaken, then it is my duty to question it, if there is time. I question the usefulness of this initiation, in the form I am told it is to follow.”

  Som the Dead was silent for a little time, as if such an objection were outside his experience, and he had no idea how to deal with it. But when he answered, his dry voice was hard to read. “What is it you dislike about the pledging?”

  “Excuse me, High Lord Som. That I dislike it is beside the point. I can carry out orders that I find unpleasant. But this…I see no benefit in this, for you, for me, for anyone.” That sounded weak. “Excuse me if I speak clumsily, I am no courtier…That’s just it, High Lord. I am a fighter. What can a thing like this prove of my ability?”

  Som’s voice did not change; his face remained unreadable. “Exactly what did my chamberlain tell you was required of you?”

  “I am to take the woman Charmian from her cell. Tell her that I’m helping her escape. Then I am to lead her down into the pit, where dwells our High Lord Zapranoth. There I am to give her to the demon, to be devoured—possessed—whatever Zapranoth may do with human folk.”

  The answer was quick and cold. “The chamberlain spoke our will correctly, then. That is what we require of you, Lord Chup.”

  A good soldier, if he had ever got himself in this deep, would know that this was the moment to salute, turn and leave. Chup knew it; yet he lingered. The hollows of darkness that were Som’s eyes remained aimed at him steadily. Then Som said: “The strong magic of a love-charm once bound you to that woman, but my magicians tell me you are free of that. What are your feelings for her now?”

  In a flash of relief Chup understood, or thought he did. “Demons! I’m sorry, lord. Do you mean, have I affection for her? Hah! That’s what you’re testing.” He almost laughed. “If you want me to feed her to the demons, well and good. I’ll drag her to the pit and toss her in, and sing about my work!”

  “In that case, what is your objection?” Som’s voice was still cold and hard, but reasonable.

  “I…High Lord, what good will it do to test my skill in lying and intrigue? To see if she believes me when I promise to help her? You’ll have other men in your service far more cunning in such matters than I am. But you’ll have few or none who’ll fight like me.”

  “The test seems useless to you, then.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Does a good soldier argue all orders that seem to him useless? Or, as you said before, only those that seem mistaken?”

  Silence stretched out following the question. Chup’s stubborn dissatisfaction remained, but his will was wavering. The more he tried to pin down what was bothering him and put it into words, the more foolish his objections seemed. What harm could he suffer, in obediently carrying out this test, that could compare with all he stood to gain from it? Yet, encouraged by Som’s seeming patience, he made an effort and tried once more to speak his inner feelings.

  “This thing that you would have me do is small, and mean…” Then try as he might he could not form his shapeless revulsion any further. He made a weak and futile gesture and fell silent. Despite the clamminess of the chamber, sweat was trickling down his ribs. Now his coming here to argue seemed a hideous blunder. It wasn’t that he cared what happened to her…the face of Som was growing hard to look at. And there were no perfumes here…but Chup was long used to the air of battlefields.

  The viceroy shifted in his seat, and lo, was very m
anlike once again. The dark flame had burned down to only a spark of night. “My loyal Chup. As you say, your talents are not those of a courtier; but they are considerable. Therefore will I not punish you for this insolent questioning; therefore will I condescend this once to explanation.

  “The test you do not like is given you because you do not like it, because you have shown reluctance to do things that you think of as ‘small and mean.’ To pledge yourself formally to the East is no meaningless ritual. In your case it will mean changing yourself, importantly, and I realize full well it can be very difficult. It is to do violence to your old self, in the name of that which you are going to become.”

  Time was stretching on in the odd little room. Like a man dreaming or entranced, Chup asked: “What am I going to become?”

  “A great lord with the full powers of the East to call upon. The master of all that you have ever craved.”

  “But. How shall I change myself? To what?”

  “To become as I am. No, no, not dead and leathery; I was playing with the woman when I told her she would be so. That is given only to me, here in the Black Mountains. I mean you shall become as I am in your mind and inward self. Now will you take the test?”

  “My lord, I will.”

  “You are obedient.” Som leaned closer, looking intently from his sunken eyes. “But in your case I wish for more than that. Loyal Chup, if you still had some affection for the woman, then merely to throw her to the demons might well suffice for your initiation. But as things are, it is not the woman, it is something else, within yourself, you must destroy ere you are ours completely.”

  Som rose from his chair. He was not tall, but he seemed to tower above Chup as he leaned yet closer, with his smell of old death. “You must be for once not brave, but cowardly. Small and mean, as you describe it. It will be difficult only once. You must learn to cause pain, for the sake of nothing but causing pain. Only thus will you be bound to us entirely. Only thus will there be opened for you the inner secrets of power and the inner doors of wealth. And how can I give command of my Guard to one who is not bound to me and to the East?”

  “The Guard…”

  “Yes. The present Guard commander’s aged and scarred well past his peak of usefulness. And you know Thomas of the Broken Lands, who is planning to assail us here, you know him and how he thinks and fights.”

  Not only an officer, but once again the commander of an army in the field…“My High Lord, I will do it! I hesitate no more!”

  When Chup had gone, the viceroy returned to brooding on his other problems. What power was it, almost equal to his own, that dwelt in the circlet of gold hair and almost awoke in him the old desires of life?

  His wizards would find out, in time.

  In all their divinations lately, a threatening sign, the name of Ardneh, loomed up from the West. A name, with nothing real as yet attached to it. But it was in that sign, they said, that the Broken Lands and other satrapies along the seacoast had been lost…

  VII

  We Are Facing Zapranoth

  Thomas had been right about the reptiles, Rolf was thinking now, as he trudged up a small hillock to where his commander stood looking upward at the black, night-shrouded cliffs. Rolf’s breath steamed in the air before his face. The onset of winter’s chill, more noticeable at this altitude than it had been near the seashore, had kept the reptiles close to their roosts, had prevented their scouting out the army of the West during the days as it lay hiding in a hundred fragments. Night by night they had crept closer to Som’s citadel.

  Rolf reached the spot where Thomas stood, alone for once, his head tipped back. There seemed little to be seen, gazing upward, except the stars above the cliffs, whose tops seemed but little below the twinkling sparks.

  “I think it’s going to work,” Rolf reported. He had recently been given his first command, a work party to set in order and inspect the balloon-craft that the djinn produced. All through this night the technology-djinn had labored at Gray’s direction, making airships. Loford and the other wizards had concentrated on preventing the army’s discovery by demon or diviner dwelling on the cliffs above.

  Gray had now learned to manage the djinn successfully, Rolf reported. At the foot of the cliffs were twenty balloons tugging gently at their mooring ropes, each of the twenty capable of carrying five armed humans. The balloons were to ascend connected in pairs by stout lines, and longer cords would fasten each pair to the ones behind it and ahead, so the hundred riders would find themselves together at the top.

  “Once we begin it, it had better work,” said Thomas, nodding, when Rolf had finished detailing his report. Thomas himself was one of the hundred ascending by balloon to seize a foothold on the cliffs. Rolf was going up, to order the maneuvering and landing of balloons, and Gray, as wizard and technologist both. The other ninety-seven had been hand-picked from the fiercest warriors. At first Thomas had contemplated lifting his whole army in an aerial assault. But testing and maneuvering, by night and day, on various smaller cliffs between here and the Broken Lands, had dissuaded him. The number of things that could go wrong had proven almost limitless, and the time available for practicing was not. In maneuvers, the stunt had been worked successfully with as many as fifteen balloons. He had decided to risk twenty to seize the upper ending of the pass.

  Thomas now had nothing more to say. Rolf, who had known him from his earliest days of leadership—not so long ago—wanted to offer more encouragement, but hesitated to interrupt what might be a necessary pause for thought. The pause was not long before Thomas turned suddenly and strode off down the hill. Rolf hurried after.

  Most of Thomas’s other officers were waiting for him, in a body, and he strode in among them briskly. “All here who are supposed to be? Once more: our flares will burn with a green fire, to signal you to start to climb the pass. We’ll sound horns at the same time, as we’ve rehearsed. Once you get the word, by sound or light or both, that we’ve seized the top of the pass, come up as if a hundred demons were behind you.”

  “Instead of waiting for us at the top, aye!” There were sounds of nervous laughter.

  Gray’s tall figure loomed up. In one hand he raised what appeared to be an ordinary satchel. “The demons at Som’s command number far fewer than a hundred. And I have the lives of two of the strongest of them in here.”

  “Zapranoth? Zapranoth’s life?” The murmured question came from several at once.

  Gray, perhaps irritated, raised his voice slightly. “These are the lives of Yiggul, and of Kion. I have had them in my possession for some time, though for the sake of secrecy I have said nothing about them until now. And I have let them live, so I can destroy them when Som has called them up, thrown them into battle, and is depending on them. I am sure many of you know their names: they are both formidable powers.”

  There was silence.

  Gray lowered his satchel. “You will see me blow them away like clouds of mist, before they have had time to do us the least harm.”

  “Not Zapranoth’s life,” one low-voiced listener said.

  “No!” Gray snapped. “His life eludes us still. But these two are the strongest of the other demons. With these two gone, my brother and I can beat off the smaller fry like insects. We will not need the lesser demons’ lives to drive them off.”

  There was no comment.

  Gray went on, a little louder still: “Then, with all the others gone, we will be free to deal with him. Myself, Loford, the other stout wizards here. Zapranoth is mighty, well, so are we. We will hold off him or any other power, until your swords have won the day.”

  “And that we will do,” Thomas put in with great firmness. “Any questions? Remember what you’ve been told about the valkyries. Let’s move, the light is coming.” He gripped hands all round with his officers, and led the way toward the moored balloons.

  Rolf trotted to take his place in the basket of the leading balloon. He felt weak in the knees, as usual before a fight, but he knew that it wou
ld pass. It crossed his mind as he and Gray were boarding their separate balloons that he had never seen the wizard sleep. If Gray felt any fatigue from his night-long supervision of the djinn, he did not show it. Gray was compelling the djinn to accompany his balloon, and had even forced it somehow to dim the intensity of its fiery image; Rolf could see it like a floating patch of campfire embers in the shadow of the great hulking gasbag of Gray’s balloon, some thirty meters distant. Tests had shown that the lifting gas provided by the djinn would not burn, but the problem of arrow-proofing the bags had not been entirely solved. They were protected to some extent by draped sheets of chain-mail whose rings were lighter than metal, made, as were the bags themselves, of something that the djinn called plastic.

  Rolf had argued at some length for using to the full the tremendous powers of the djinn, delaying the campaign as long as necessary to exercise its abilities and try out the results; it seemed to him that in a few months enough Old World arms, armor, and techniques might be acquired and understood to give the army an overwhelming advantage against the East.

  But Gray had vetoed such a plan. “For two reasons. First, not all Old World devices will work now as neatly and reliably as they did in the Old World. This is true in particular of certain advanced weapons. I do not fully understand why this should be; but I have my means of knowledge, and it is so.”

  “We could experiment—”

  “With devices far more perilous than balloons? No, I do not think that we are ready. The second reason, and perhaps the stronger”—here Gray paused for a moment, looking round as if to make sure that he was not overheard—“is the chance that our djinn will perish in this battle. We are facing Zapranoth, and such a blow is far from impossible. It would leave us without help in operating and maintaining our Old World weapons. No. Better that we fight with means we understand, depending on no one but ourselves.”

  Waiting now in the basket for the signal to ascend, Rolf grinned nervously at the impassive Mewick at his side. “Mewick, will you one day teach me to use weapons?” he asked in a low voice. It was something of an old joke between them, for Rolf at least. Mewick shook his head at Rolf in faint reproach and let his expression deepen into gloom.