Prince of the Godborn (Seven Citadels)

by Geraldine Harris

  “Do you think he will give me his key?” asked Kerish.

  “I do not know. He might destroy you merely for asking or he might trade his greatest treasure for a pretty pebble.” Elmandis frowned. “His moods change as quickly as water in the wind.”

  “Could you not tame him, Lord Elmandis?” demanded Forollkin.

  “No. By the Law of the Seven, no sorcerer may set foot in another's territory without their permission. It is a wise law framed to preserve Zindar from our quarrels. I will not break it,” declared the King, “and Ellandellore will never invite me to Cheransee. You and I, Forollkin, must wait for Kerish in Rindiss Bay.”

  Two crewmen arrived with the food and wine. Forollkin gratefully shovelled down the steaming kardiss as Kerish sat shivering.

  “Come on, eat,” said his brother cheerfully, “you can't face a sorcerer on an empty stomach.”

  Kerish picked up his bowl.

  “And you're trembling like grass in the wind. Here, take my cloak.” He wrapped it round the Prince's shoulders. “Fasten it then!”

  “Forollkin, please leave me alone!”

  Kerish slammed down the bowl and stalked to the rail, his back to the world.

  As Forollkin scooped up the discarded cloak, Elmandis lightly touched his shoulder.

  “There is nothing you can do to help him.”

  “But he is so afraid, so helpless.”

  “No Forollkin, he is not. He has great strengths, if he can find the wisdom to use them. Don't underrate his powers or he may turn them on you,” warned Elmandis.

  “I promised the High Priest that I would keep Kerish safe,” said Forollkin doggedly.

  “There are things in this world that those we love cannot be protected against. I failed to learn that lesson in time, but it is not too late for you.”

  * * *

  The pale sun of early morning glinted on the purple sails. The mists were clearing. Behind the Zeloka, the sea was calm. To starboard stretched the gentle coast of Ellerinonn but ahead, there was the angry sound of waves shattering on rocks and the sight of the great wall of fog that always hid the Isle of Cheransee.

  The barren coast of Mintaz and fair Ellerinonn were separated by a channel some ten miles wide: Between the two countries lay the sorcerer's island. The straits were filled with a maze of rock, hidden just below the surface. There was only a narrow passage on either side of Cheransee through which ships could pass.

  As the Zeloka sailed abreast of the island, Kerish joined Engis at the tiller.

  “If any ship tries to pass these straits without paying tribute to the sorcerer,” said the captain, “he sends down storms or mists. There's many a vessel been torn apart on these rocks and all her men drowned through the Lord of Tir-Racneth's anger.”

  A winding trail of smooth purple sea marked the safe water. On either side of it the waves frothed as they struck the unseen rocks. The Zeloka moved cautiously forward and the captain was soon too intent on steering to talk to Kerish. The Prince crossed to where Forollkin and Elmandis stood at the rail looking at the remains of a proud ship of Gilaz impaled on the inner rocks.

  “Not all those who die here are the victims of Ellandellore,” said the King softly. “Many ships are lost by careless captains before they come to the Place of Tribute.”

  “Could he not save them?” asked Forollkin.

  “Perhaps. He is not cruel by nature. He sees a ship in the distance and thinks of it as a toy. He watches it sink, judges it a pretty game and then cries because his toy cannot be mended to sail and sink again.”

  “But to use people as toys...” began Forollkin.

  “Blame those who taught him,” said Elmandis harshly, “not the child.”

  The sun rose in the sky but Cheransee was still shrouded in mist. For three hours, the Zeloka was borne swiftly forward by a strong current. Then the current slackened. The strip of safe water vanished and ahead loomed a barrier of rocks, showing black above the spray. The anchor was lowered to keep the Zeloka from drifting against the rocks and Engis left the tiller. “This is the Place of Tribute, your Highness. We must wait here.”

  It was not long before a dim black shape emerged from the mist. Kerish's keen eyes soon saw that it was a boat without sail or mast, its prow carved like a sea monster. The boat was quite empty, yet it moved swiftly towards the Zeloka. Engis attached a rope to a chest of coins and trinkets and lowered it down into the black boat as soon as it came alongside. When the rope came up again, Elmandis told Kerish to tie it around his own waist.

  Engis began to protest but the King continued calmly, “Prince, you must let this boat carry you to the shores of Cheransee. The sorcerer will sense your presence. It will not be difficult to find him. If you persuade him to give you his key, you must leave the island at once. To make the boat obey you, put your mouth to the figurehead and speak these words.” He stooped to whisper them in Kerish's ear. “Do you understand?”

  The Prince nodded but Forollkin said, “Kerish, I am coming with you. Lord Elmandis, this is a Galkian ship and you may not command me here. Kerish!”

  The Prince had already knotted the rope around his waist and was swinging himself up on to the ship's rail. Forollkin took two steps towards him but Elmandis' hands clamped down on his shoulders. Coldness crippled Forollkin. His limbs froze and refused to obey his frantic thoughts.

  Kerish smiled faintly at his brother and ordered Engis to lower him down into the black boat. The captain hesitated and was caught in Elmandis' green gaze. Trembling suddenly, he summoned his men and Kerish disappeared over the side of the ship.

  The black boat rocked as Kerish was lowered into it. He knelt, gripping the sides for balance and then undid the rope at his waist with shaking fingers. He watched it spiral upwards as the crew drew it back. Beneath him, the black boat shuddered into movement.

  Elmandis released Forollkin. He slumped to the deck. Engis rushed forward and rubbed warmth back into his limbs. Leaning against the captain, Forollkin made his way to the rail. He saw the black boat vanishing into the mist with Kerish sitting at the prow, his face towards Cheransee.

  “Captain, the way ahead is clear now,” said Elmandis, “Sail on.”

  Engis glanced at Forollkin, who nodded helplessly. The anchor was drawn up.

  Forollkin fumbled among his thoughts to shape a prayer to Zeldin. Elmandis understood.

  “Yes, pray. Pray for them both.”

  “Both?”

  “For Kerish, because he alone can preserve Ellerinonn,” said the King, “and for Ellandellore because he is my brother.”

  * * *

  Kerish looked ahead to the mountain of mist that was Cheransee. Beneath him the black boat throbbed like a live thing. He hated having to touch it but he was grateful for the speed and skill with which the boat skimmed the waves, heedless of the rocks beneath. One scrape against those jagged rocks, one tear in the hull and he would drown. The black boat made no mistake and sped on towards the sorcerer's island.

  Kerish felt for the key at his waist and fingered it, still only half believing that Elmandis had given away the source of his power. But suppose he had not? Suppose Elmandis was in league with the sorcerer of Tir-Racneth and had sent him here to die? Kerish tried to stifle the thought by telling himself how glad he was to be free of Forollkin's scolding and interference. It rang hollow. Kerish glanced back at the Zeloka. She was sailing serenely westwards under a sunlit sky.

  Suddenly the black boat plunged into the wall of mist. It rapidly became very cold and Kerish was glad that he had put on his warmest Galkian clothes. He could only see a few feet ahead but he guessed from the sound of the waves breaking that he was near the shore. Ahead, an archway of naked rock towered above a cauldron of white water. The boat was dragged swiftly towards it. Kerish shrank down, praying his craft would not smash against the rock. For a moment, there was darkness and then sickly light again.

  The boat was swept straight through the archway and crunched against the shore, se
nding the Prince sprawling onto the boards. When the black timbers had ceased to quiver, Kerish sat up and looked around him. There was still no trace of the bright sun that had lit the Zeloka. Above Cheransee, the sky was colourless. Dreary mist floated in straggling patches or crawled along the ground. All Kerish could see was a mile or more of flat grey sand and beyond that something dark and tall.

  Shivering, Kerish climbed out of the boat and sank up to his ankles in wet sand. The craft he had disliked so much now seemed a lone friend in this desolate place. Reluctantly, he let go of the smooth timber and began to walk towards the distant darkness.

  The crossing of the beach seemed interminable. In the grey sand that stuck to Kerish's clothes and sucked at his heels, there was no driftwood, no seaweed, no shells, no sign at all of sea life. Sometimes thick drifts of mist enveloped the Prince and he had to grope his way forward, careful always to keep the sound of the sea behind him.

  As the crashing of the waves grew fainter, he began to hear new sounds. They were still far in the distance but they left Kerish standing trembling for minutes at a time before he could nerve himself to go on. There were cries, shrieks and tainted laughter coming from the darkness ahead. A shroud of mist clung to him and he could see nothing.

  Kerish-lo-Taan opened the front of his tunic and drew out the jewel of Zeldin. Holding it in his right hand he edged forward. The High Priest's gift did nothing to dispel the thickening mist but it gave Kerish the courage he needed to keep moving.

  Robbed of sight, his other senses seemed heightened. He felt the texture of the sand squelching beneath his boots as if he were barefoot. He heard the sound of his own breath and heartbeat and, from close by, a wailing scream. Kerish stumbled forward and his hands touched something dank and cold. The scream sounded again. Kerish dropped to his knees and hid his face in his hands like a child afraid of the dark.

  After a long spell of utter silence, the Prince forced himself to stand up and open his eyes. The mists were clearing. He stood beneath a huge rock twisted into the shape of a winged beast. Kerish stepped back a few paces. In either direction stretched a line of towering rocks, grotesquely shaped like giants and monsters. All were hideous, as if in the morning of the world some cruel creator had moulded them in the patterns of his diseased fancy. Yet they were only rocks, streaked with slime and crumbling with age.

  “Rocks cannot hurt me. They can't move. They can't speak. If they seem to, it will be nothing but an illusion.” He found that he was whispering, as if he were afraid the rocks would overhear and prove him wrong. “Illusion!” he repeated more firmly.

  Kerish ducked under a lifeless claw to enter a maze of stone in which he was no bigger than an ant in a cornfield. Hundreds of terrible shapes blocked out the light. He wandered in a dim underworld of black rock and floating mists. Kerish soon stopped trying to make out the towering shapes. The snarl on one vast face, the half-open beak and coiled tongue of a second, and the clawed hands of a third shape affected him too badly. He began to feel that the moment he turned his back on them the rocks would move, darkness would tower above him and then descend to crush the life of one of the hated children of the gods who arrogantly called the earth their own.

  To distract himself, Kerish began to sing, randomly wandering from war chants to hymns, from ballads of love to children's rhymes. It gave him courage but he soon wished he had never opened his lips. His voice seemed to stir the brooding horror of the place. From shapes mercifully shrouded in mist, came distant shrieks of torment, sobbing screams of despair and shattered laughter. If the rocks could speak... How often had Kerish heard that phrase? Here they could and they spoke of ancient agonies and hate.

  The Prince stared wildly round but in the darkness and mist nothing seemed to move, no giant mouths gaped in the rock. Kerish pressed his hands over his ears but he could not stop the cries echoing in his head. Abruptly, Kerish's endurance snapped. He had to escape from the noise and stupidly he began to run. The white mist swooped down to blind him. He groped his way, catching at sharp and slippery rocks. Over and over again he whispered, “It's not real. It's not real!”

  Suddenly there was silence and Kerish's hands touched something different. A smooth, flat surface, dry and cold. A gust of wind, the first he had felt on Cheransee, tore the mists away. In the dim light, Kerish stood facing a young man dressed in purple and gold. The shock of seeing a human again made Kerish step back and cry out, “Who are you?”

  There was no answer. He stared at the young man's face. A haunting face with foam-white skin stretched tightly over delicate bones. A face framed by dark hair, streaked with silver. But the eyes! Huge, inhuman. Purple and gold and black. The eyes of the Godborn.

  Kerish looked down at the rest of the figure. The young man's slim form was dressed in Galkian clothes. Around his neck hung a brilliant purple gem on a cirge chain. Only then did Kerish realize that for the first time in his life he was looking at his own reflection.

  “No!” Kerish recoiled in shock. “No! That isn't me.”

  Kerish suddenly struggled to be free of his body, like a bird beating against the bars of its cage. The Prince of the Godborn knew that he was within a fraction of remembering a history that stretched back to the darkness before creation. Why did people call him Kerish? That was meaningless. This weak body that he now saw from the outside restricted his power, his freedom...

  In answer to some frantic mental warning, Kerish had just enough strength to stop gazing into his own eyes. He spun round and found his hands up against a second cold wall of glass. He was trapped. To every side and above and below him there were mirrors. From every angle his reflection leaped out at him and on his own face was a cruel mocking smile.

  Kerish shouted, “No, let me go!”

  He threw himself at the wall of mirrors. The glass shattered. For a moment he thought his soul had escaped and he was flying up out of the blackness. Then the world seemed to tilt and for a few seconds he lost consciousness. He woke bewildered. Grieving about something he could not remember.

  He was lying on something much softer than rock. Grass? Kerish opened his eyes. High above him the sky was clear and blue. Kerish sat up and found himself on the slope of a hill overlooking a pleasant grey-green island, walled with mist.

  At the summit of the hill was a tall, slender tower. It was built in pale blue stone and curved and twisted impossibly as it rose. Brilliantly-coloured banners and flags streamed in the breeze from its battlements or hung from star and moon-shaped windows lit from within and sending shafts of silvery light to challenge the sun. Kerish stared at it dizzily until a voice behind him said, “Welcome, Prince, to Tir-Racneth.”

  Kerish swivelled round. Beside him on the grass sat a young boy who looked about seven or eight years old. Like Elmandis, he had copper skin and hair so fair it was almost white. His eyes were green and wild. The boy was dressed in trailing lengths of splendid but tattered cloth, some sewn with jewels, some stained with salt water. He had a crown but it was too big and kept slipping down over his forehead.

  “Ellandellore?”

  The sorcerer of Tir-Racneth giggled. “No, I am the Emperor of the Screaming Rocks. Can't you see my crown?”

  Kerish got up and bowed. “Pardon me, Your Majesty. The sunlight dazzled me and I was blind.”

  Ellandellore smiled. “I know who you are because of your eyes. You're the Prince of Galkis. There's something I ought to remember about you but I don't know what. I saw your ship from my tower. I thought I might wreck her, but I didn't because she was pretty. You didn't like my subjects, the Screaming Rocks, did you? To tell you the truth,” said Ellandellore in a confidential whisper, “I don't like them either, but I dream them every night and they won't go away. You didn't like the mirrors. The Godborn are afraid of mirrors. Elmandis told me.”

  “Elmandis did?”

  “Yes, my brother. He's older than me and very wise. He used to tell me his secrets but then he got angry and said I mustn't play the games I like, so I
don't let him come here any more.”

  Kerish sat down again, trying not to appear as startled as he felt.

  “Aren't you lonely here?”

  “Oh yes, sometimes, but now I have you to play with.”

  “For a while,” said Kerish cautiously.

  The sorcerer of Tir-Racneth lay back on the grass, staring at the bright blue sky.

  “Sometimes when the ships sink I send the Black Boat to fetch people, but humans aren't good at my games. They get frightened but of course you know. You're half human.”

  He twisted his head to stare at the Prince.