So, Vuel was mustering an army, and he had chosen a most defensible spot to do so. On that floating settlement, Vuel could safely gather thousands of warriors before marching. The town was safe from invasion by any but aquatic creatures or armies with boats…or silver golems that did not breathe.
Emerging from a brake of cane, Karn waded down into the black water of the placid lake. Cool silt rose around him, caking his legs and grinding in ankles and knees, but still he continued. Soon, water poured into the deep silver collar around his neck, and lapped at his jaw. He sensed, too, the empty inner cavities of his torso filling, the spaces that were supposed to hold the items of Gerrard’s Legacy. Though cool liquid coursed into his innards and water closed over his head, Karn’s anger felt hotter than ever. The ropes of seaweed that dragged past him as he descended into the murk only stoked the flames of fury. Vuel would pay not only for the injustice of taking his stepbrother’s possessions and using them to buy an army, but also for the indignities suffered in recovering that Legacy.
The bed of the lake dropped away in lightless steppes to a bottom perhaps fifteen fathoms deep. The cold, muddy depths did not deter Karn. He could see past the blackness to the spot below where five gigantic anchors clutched the bottom. Tireless, Karn strode to the central one, grabbed hold of the massive chain that rose from it, and climbed.
Above, the festival lights in the center of the town made a gold and fervid glow in the water. Through the undulating surface, Karn caught glimpses of drumming hands and leering faces, lizard-skin vests and feather-festooned spears. There were cups of ale there, too, and roasting haunches of pork. It was quite a feast that Vuel threw for his men, the kind that precedes a great battle, and all of it bought by ransoming Gerrard’s future.
Hand over hand, Karn pulled himself up through the turgid flood. He reached the bright-shining surface and hauled his streaming metal frame onto the wooden superstructure above. He found himself in the slanted hold where the anchor was kept when it was raised, and from that concealment, he peered over the capstan to survey the center square of Albiuto.
After the cold, muffled murk of the lake bed, the center of town was loud, hot, crowded, and bright. The settlement was the center of many caravan routes and was rich in commodities brought from faroff parts of Jamuraa. Soldiers milled about in laughing, arrogant clusters, their cups of ale so full they foamed down upon the planks at their feet. Torchlight glimmered from their dark faces and the irridescent scales of their lizard-skin coats. Here and there, jesters cavorted, entertaining the crowd by juggling torches and knives, singing songs, and exchanging items from their own many pockets with those of others’. Long, low benches—fat logs split down the center and laid out upon the deck—held steaming platters of pork and grilled leeks. Wagons laden with raw haunches of boar and bags of onions stood here and there about the square.
At the far end of the open space, a more orderly group of warriors clustered around a broad table where a map lay spread. Above it stood a lean, young figure, bare to the waist, his powerful physique glistening like carved onyx in the torchlight. He was poised on an upturned barrel, a cane of bamboo in one hand, with which he gestured imperiously at the map.
Despite the distance between them, Karn immediately knew this to be Vuel, rebel son of Sidar Kondo, and knew the map to be a schematic of his father’s arboreal village. Karn tuned his ears to the exact timbre of Vuel’s voice and heard the plans of war.
“There will be three main bridges from the ground to the treetops. Once they are cut, the villagers will be trapped. Then we set fires here, here, and here. The largest will be beneath the warriors’ lodge. We’ll roast them in there like grub worms”—harsh laughter interrupted this comment—“but I also plan a particularly fiery end for Father, here. There will be plenty of plunder, of course. Larders and strong-boxes, jewels…and our famed women. Bamboo-dwellers have strong hands and long legs, you’ll find.” More laughter. “While the rest of you are finding sport elsewhere, I’ll be conducting a boar hunt of my own—chasing down a squealing little piglet that has the pretense of calling himself my brother. He’ll be stuck more than once before the hunt is done.”
Still streaming algid water and slimy muck, Karn rose from the anchor hold and strode wetly onto the deck, into the midst of the revelers. His mere presence ended the laughing and drinking. Warriors fell back, dropping cups of ale and lifting swords and spears. Karn pushed past them with no more interest or concern than he had shown in pushing past brakes of cane and bamboo. Those few with nerve enough to take a swing at the massive man of silver found their swords jangling in nerveless hands, their spear hafts crunched in the golem’s grip.
Ahead, Vuel stopped his battle planning and raised his eyes. A broad smile broke out upon his face, and he gestured widely with his arms. He shouted over the muttering soldiers, “Ah, if it’s not my stepbrother’s silver spoon, come to join in the fun. We could use a silver golem—if you’ll fight. So, you want to kill the bastard as much as I do, eh?”
Karn’s metallic face was incapable of scowling, but he suspected the fire in his belly shone bright in his eyes. “I am not here to join you. I am here to warn you. Anyone intent on harming Gerrard will have to deal with me, first.”
Catching the flippant spirit of their leader, the warriors around Vuel let out a moan of feigned dread.
Vuel jumped from the barrel head and, swaggering, approached the silver golem. “A terrible threat, indeed. These warriors have battled goblin armies and giant serpents, but an encounter with you? All that sermonizing and angst—every last fighter would be bored to death!” The hilarity that followed this comment was exaggerated, perhaps as much from fear as from derision.
But Karn could not discern such subtle differences, and his fury mounted. Gigantic hands moved with sudden, fierce speed. Karn grabbed Vuel by the torso and hoisted him into the air. The ring of soldiers around the two widened, and those in front lifted weapons high.
Vuel gasped, true dread blossoming in his eyes, and his face reddened with the pressure of blood filling it.
Karn hissed at him, “Your stepbrother is destined for greatness. He is the heir to the Legacy. He is the one child born to defend this world. He was forged of flesh as I was forged of silver, and each of us bear within the hope of generations.”
Mastering his terror, the young rebel spat on the silver golem’s face. “What good is my brother’s Legacy?” he cried. “Greatness cannot be handed to a man. He will denigrate and despise it. Nor can greatness be stolen from a man who truly possesses it. I am the one destined for greatness, not that little piglet. I have taken Gerrard’s precious Legacy, what was never truly his, and with it, I have raised this army. And now, I will take what belongs to my Father, and soon what belongs to all the world.”
Karn growled. “I have come to take back the Legacy.”
“No,” replied Vuel, his vicious smile returning, “you have come to fall into the trap I set for you. You have come because I wanted another piece of the Legacy—you.”
A wave of dread moved through Karn, but his hold on the rebel only grew stronger. “I will kill you if I must.”
Vuel shook his head, eyes creased in pain. “You wouldn’t kill the sidar’s son. You couldn’t bear to see the look in Kondo’s eyes.”
“I will kill you unless I get the Legacy.”
“I am not afraid of death.”
With slow deliberation, Karn squeezed his hands together. “So be it.”
Vuel let out a blast of breath, lungs emptied by the massive pressure. Karn curiously felt the man’s flesh slithering away beneath his touch. Humans were such fragile things, soft as soap bubbles. He gazed into the man’s bulging eyes. Vuel’s face clenched in a knot of pain, and his mouth opened to shriek, but there was no air to bear the sound. In the sudden silence came the ominous pop of ribs.
The warriors around rushed forward en mass, pummeling the sil
ver giant with swords, clubs, spears, whatever came to hand. Karn’s own frame rang with the assaults, mournful bell-tones from the empty chambers where the Legacy once resided. But none of the pummeling weapons left even the slightest scar on him.
“Tell me where the rest of the pieces are, or die,” Karn said, and he marveled at the cruel glee in his own voice.
Vuel resisted for one more moment before his hands waved frantically about him. Karn released the pressure, and the warriors fell back. Weak as a kitten, Vuel hung in the silver golem’s slackened grip. He panted brokenly, and his sides trembled in pain.
“Where are they?” Karn demanded.
Head drooping in surrender, Vuel gasped out, “Bring out…the man.”
The crowd of warriors parted, some moving purposefully toward a locked, bolted, and guarded doorway. The building was perhaps the most solid one in the town, constructed of vast timbers and reinforced with iron. A prison. As the guards worked at unlocking and opening the front double doors, a murmur of dissatisfaction and incredulity moved among the gathered warriors.
“You won’t be able to…to get them that easily, though,” rasped Vuel. “I hid them…well.”
A manacled man emerged from the prison, flanked by four guards. The man was huge, a head taller and twice as wide as the rest of the crowd. His figure was enormous and muscled, his eyes proud as he shuffled forward in rags and chains, steadying himself on the running board of a laden wagon.
“The Legacy is a valuable treasure….Not something to be left…lying about,” Vuel continued. “I was so impressed by your personal guardianship that…I came up with another guardian. I found…the biggest villager in Albiuto—turned out to be the blacksmith—and cut him open…stashed your treasures inside.”
Only then did Karn notice the long, crude vertical slice up the blacksmith’s distended belly. The skin had been stretched to accommodate the stolen pieces of the Legacy, and then thick leather thongs had laced the man’s muscles back together.
“I don’t know his real name,” Vuel continued. The smile had returned to his wicked features. “I’m not interested in such trifles. To me, he is simply Karn—my vessel for the Legacy. Of course, now that I have captured you, I don’t need him anymore. One Karn will have to die.”
Stunned, Karn dropped the grinning rebel to the planks and waded through the crowd toward the man with the butchered belly. Reaching the wagon beside which the blacksmith stood, Karn extended a silver hand and said in a voice choked with pity, “Come with me.”
Vuel staggered after. “Oh, he can’t come with you. To make room for all that stuff, we had to pull out his own innards. He is kept alive only by the workings of my archmage, to whom a number of the Legacy artifacts are promised when I am through with them. If you take my Karn away from me, he’ll die.”
Overcome, the silver golem dropped to his knees before the man, and gazed into his eyes. Unblinking, the blacksmith returned this look, courage and sorrow written across his tormented features.
“So, you see,” came the harping voice of Vuel, “the only way you and your precious Gerrard can have the Legacy back is if you kill this man to get it. And, if you wouldn’t kill me, the patricidal son of the sidar, how would you ever kill an innocent man?”
Shame, dread, and fury warred within Karn. He had been a fool. He had fallen into Vuel’s trap. His emotions had not been his own to command, but marionette strings pulled by Vuel. He was nothing more than a silver spoon, as Vuel had said, nothing but a pretty tool to be traded and used. Now, to all the other emotions Karn felt, there was also self-loathing, utter despair.
And Vuel was laughing. The rebel clutched his aching chest as he laughed, but he laughed all the same. The warriors around him added their guffaws, and merriment spread mockingly through the crowd. Soon, the whole square broke forth in peals of laughter, the whole square except the two figures at its center. Karn and his namesake regarded each other.
Holding his sewn-up belly, the blacksmith spoke, softly and evenly. “I am dead one way or another. I cannot blame you if you reach within me and draw forth what is yours. Vuel has killed me, not you.”
Over the roaring crowd, Vuel shouted, “Behold, the helpless guardian! Behold, the silver golem with a heart of glass and a gut of paper. Fear him. Tremble before him!”
The blacksmith was still speaking, “One way or another, you must act, Karn. Listen to your fear and flee, or listen to your fury and take what is yours. Return to Gerrard and guard him from Vuel, or strike me down and, with the treasures once again in your grasp, strike down Vuel once and for all.”
“—Creatures like this one, hulking powerful creatures that are too fearful of their own might to use it, are the creatures that will roll over before us and grant us the world—”
“You must act, Karn. You must act.”
Karn crumpled slightly forward. Vuel was right. He couldn’t kill this man. He couldn’t kill even these hyenas. In rage, Karn reared his head back, howled, and flung out a massive arm. His fist struck the food-laden wagon. It lurched up into the air. Raw haunches of pork tumbled up. Onions pelted down. Wheels turned in languid suspension above the ground. Soldiers scattered, and with a great crunching boom, the wagon smashed onto the quay. Its profound impact was followed by shocked silence from the warriors.
“Behold—” crowed Vuel viciously, “the guardian has slain someone at last!”
Karn looked. There, jutting from beneath the wagon’s ruined bulk, were the lifeless legs of a small village boy.
“Enough!” shrieked the blacksmith. He reached with manacled hands, dug fingers into his own flesh, and ripped wide the wound. “Here is your Legacy!” Out tumbled the glistening items.
Dumbfounded, Karn caught them one by one in his imploring hands. Even as the blacksmith crumpled, dead, beside him, Karn saw that he held not just the items of the Legacy, but also a great, wet gem. The Touchstone, one of the few magical devices with the power to shut him down. And this one worked on contact.
The rage was suddenly gone. Even the fear. Even the despair. Karn was shutting down. Desire was draining away. Sensation followed quickly after. Vuel’s mocking laughter dissolved into silence. Karn was defeated. He was deactivating.
In one final exertion of will, Karn clutched the grisly Touchstone tighter, irretrievable, within his silver grip. Warriors rushed him as they saw what he did, their hands clawing at his implacable fist, but they were too late. Already, he was as still and dead as stone.
The rest of that night—the rest of the next decade—he experienced in fleeting, fragmentary impressions. The world moves all too quickly when one is a statue.
Karn felt Vuel prying futilely at his hands of silver.
Karn saw warriors standing in dejection and defeat.
Karn glimpsed fires—torches—born by villagers, and oars and gaff hooks; shouts and splashing waters.
Vuel and his mercenaries were driven off the docks into the lake.
The slain figure of the blacksmith was born away.
Daylight came, and darkness after that, and daylight again.
The smith was brought back, this time within a great sepulcher, and a shrine was made in his honor at the foot of the silver golem statue. They were inseparable then, the metal Karn and the fleshly Karn, each in his time a bearer of the Legacy, each emptied now of what had once made him great. It was in gazing at that sarcophagus that Karn made his pacifistic vow, never again to fight or slay. Perhaps it was only the conviction of a moment, but as the sun circled above, the thought became cemented into an eternal vow.
And Karn stood. It was his final refuge.
At first, the townsfolk remembered him as the strange silver man who had come to rally the people of Albiuto and drive out the army of Vuel. Later, they remembered him to be a mere statue of that man. Last of all, he became only a public perch for cowbirds and swallows.
To be deactivated so long grieved Karn, of course. He agonized over the fate of Gerrard. Vuel’s attack on his father’s village must have been somewhat successful. Neither Gerrard nor Kondo nor any of their warriors had come seeking Karn. Perhaps they were all dead. But Vuel’s success could not have been complete, either, since he himself had never returned. All Karn was left with, then, was worry and days. It became the pattern for his life, a tempest of emotion wrapped in a cold, still shell.
At least, deactivated, he could not kill again.
Tarnish and bird droppings and various substances conveyed upon the questing fingers of children conspired to make Karn almost unrecognizable by the time he was at last discovered. Even then, it was not Gerrard, or Kondo, or even Vuel that strolled into the public square and, arms clasped, surveyed the immoble silver golem. It was Sisay, captain of Weatherlight, a ship that was one more piece of Gerrard’s lost Legacy.
She bought the shabby old statue and hauled it into the cargo hold. Still, she could not awaken the slumbering giant, who held the Touchstone in his grasp. So, Karn had been rescued from a sunlit public square only to stand, immobile, within a dark, wooden hold. There he remained, outwardly as still as a statue but inwardly ravaged by sorrow, guilt, anger, dread, and rage.
At long last into that storm of emotion came a new impulse—joy. It came at the touch of a crew member, a man in a white shirt, brown waistcoat, and black pants. The man had dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard. Something like mirth danced in his sharp eyes as he scrubbed the grime away from the golem.
Rath and Storm Page 18
