Keeping close in the wake of Isar’s captors, he passed the guards unseen while they were still joking and shouting friendly insults at each other. He was so close to the bird of danger that he could hear its heart beat.
Pausing at the lip of the ridge overlooking the plain to the west, Gya could scarcely refrain from gasping.
Night was close to falling and its dark stain was already over the land below, although the ridge was still in light.
As far as he could see the natural green of the earth had been destroyed. Ragged black tents and shabby wooden shacks were sprawling everywhere, cooking fires were so numerous it almost seemed that the whole plain was smouldering, and a suffocating lid of smoke hovered over the place cutting off fresh light and air from the inhabitants.
Gya wondered if they ever saw the sky and marvelled at the stars.
Hastily he ducked behind some hawthorn bushes as the guards and Isar’s captors finished their fraternizing.
Gya wondered what Isar was thinking as he lifted his head to look at the scene below.
He must have been in despair.
Na-Groth’s people outnumbered the people of the villages many times, and nothing held them back from cruelty and killing. Their leader preached it. Their god demanded it. It was difficult to keep in mind that they were also human, and so subject to natural laws of change.
Gya knew that he could not afford to lose sight of Isar now. Amongst those innumerable hovels it would be impossible to find him.
He kept close, silent as a wild cat stalking its prey, glad of the falling dark.
Isar’s captors lit torches and their acrid smell and guttering flames led Gya on. It was completely dark by the time they reached their destination.
Drawn back in the shadows, Gya stared aghast at the vast palace of Na-Groth, its wooden columns hung with skulls, flickering white in the light of the fires that burned on the open ground before it.
In the centre of this open space stood a giant figure.
The hateful Groth himself.
Gya shuddered and drew back.
* * * *
Isar was dragged before the palace of Na-Groth and pushed down upon his knees.
The leader of his captors shouted and struck his spear loudly upon the ground.
From the dark chasm of the entrance a man appeared, robed in red, the colour of death.
Isar could see his eyes glittering in the flame light and his cheeks shadowed and hollowed like a skull’s.
He carried a tall staff and thumped it on the earth imperiously.
Dust rose.
He spoke words Isar did not understand, and was answered in the same language.
Isar was hauled up and pushed forward, so that he fell on his knees in front of the man.
His mind told him to rise, his pride as a free being cried out against the indignity of kneeling to this creature, but his body was weak from the rigours of the day and it would not obey his command.
The man, noting the struggle in the boy’s face, smiled, and the smile was the most chilling thing Isar had ever seen.
‘Come!’ he said suddenly in Isar’s language, but with a stranger’s intonation.
The soldiers pulled Isar to his feet and pushed him to follow the robed figure. In the darkness of the monstrous building he struggled to think of ways of escape, but his weariness robbed him of all his initiative.
The passage, dimly lit by an occasional sputtering torch, gave way at last to a huge chamber where impotent and lifeless trees formed the columns that held the roof of wood and hides high above them.
All the wood in the building had been charred and polished in some way so that it had a dull, dark gleam.
Fires in small stone enclosures were burning at intervals around the hall, and torches were leaning from the columns above the height of a man’s head. The atmosphere was hot and thick with a sickly sweet smell. Near the roof, the smoke gathered and hung oppressively.
At the end of the chamber and focussed in most of the light, Na-Groth and his Queen sat on high thrones of the same dark polished timber.
Isar was led before them and, again, given a push from behind that precipitated him on his knees before his enemy.
The man who had brought him spoke long and eloquently. Although Isar could not understand the words, he caught the boasting drift of it. It seemed that he had been specially sought and that his capture was regarded as a great achievement.
Fleetingly he wondered why this was so, but had no time to think the question through.
All his effort was concentrated on bringing himself to his feet.
He was bound and his body weary to desperation, but he was determined not to kneel to Na-Groth.
Around him the court of Na-Groth was gathered, warriors and guards, old men in long robes like the one who had greeted him at the entrance, women in garments the like of which he had never seen and, behind the Queen, two lines of young girls, her personal attendants.
The Queen was magnificent in form, her hair sloe black but her skin pale. Her eyes were like black diamonds and it was she who commanded his first attention. It was the curl of her lip that goaded his flagging strength to one last effort.
Clumsily he staggered to his feet.
‘Kneel before the great Na-Groth and his Queen!’ commanded the skull faced man, pointing his staff at him, his eyes blazing.
But Isar stood precariously on his feet, lifting his chin and daring to look directly into the eyes of the deadly Queen, and then into those of Na-Groth. There he met such a look of crazed greed that he almost reeled back. The man was either drugged or mad. His eyes were blurred and bloodshot, but the muscular hand that gripped the side of his throne was endowed with almost superhuman strength.
Isar had the feeling in those few crowded moments that Na-Groth was not in charge of himself.
Someone, or something, else ruled his dark soul.
Isar looked back to the Queen.
Was it she?
But he did not think so.
Both of them were looking out from the dark holes of their eyes, using the splendour of their surroundings to hide their own inadequacy.
Kyra could command respect and speak with authority, standing barefoot in a field, with nothing more than a peasant’s loose woollen shift about her.
But these people had to use tricks to give them stature.
The skulls, the fires, the dark wood, the towering columns, even the use of giant shadows in the spaces between the columns, were all part of the illusion.
The warriors’ swords and spears, however, were real, and he had felt the harshness of their knuckles.
He thought back to the Temple of the Sun and asked for strength to outface his enemies.
Behind the Queen’s throne he noticed a slight movement and turned his eyes towards it.
His heart leapt.
Lark was there, her deep, expressive eyes willing him to silence.
Joy at seeing her was extinguished instantly in anxiety for her safety as well as for his own. He knew without any doubt that she was there because she was forced to be there. Most of the other attendants looked as though they had come to accept the advantages of their situation, but Lark’s eyes had not changed since he had seen her last, and he knew she was still loyal to the old ways and the overthrow of Na-Groth’s power.
He looked away from her, knowing that he must give no sign that he recognized her, or she too would be lost.
‘Kneel!’ the command was given again, harshly.
He stood his ground.
A guard whipped him until he at last fell down.
‘I see...’ he managed to bring out from his bleeding mouth, ‘Na-Groth does not want the respect of free men, only the fear of slaves!’
This time the whipping he received made him lose consciousness.
7
The Invisible Enemy
Karne was hoping to keep his small army well hidden from Na-Groth. Surprise was his greatest strength, for the men he had
with him were greatly outnumbered and most of them unused to conflict.
But Na-Groth was no fool.
Even as Isar lay bound and bleeding on the floor of one of the dark chambers of the palace, and Karne was surveying his men and speaking to them of surprise, one of Na-Groth’s spies was kneeling before the two thrones and speaking of the puny force the Temple had managed to muster.
Na-Groth laughed hugely at the description.
‘So be it!’ he roared, still laughing. ‘If they want to die as heroes, let them die as heroes! We will not disappoint them.’
The place was filled with the noise of people stamping their feet in approval and Na-Groth’s humourless and rasping laughter.
It was the Queen who raised her hand at last for silence, and on the instant, everyone froze as though a sudden chill wind had swept over them.
She glared at everyone in front of the thrones, her venomous eyes subduing them, compelling them to their knees.
When the whole vast hall was full of silent, kneeling figures, she rose to her feet, drawing her lord with her.
The two stood on their dark platform, high above their subjects.
Na-Groth was not laughing now and his face was gathering darkness like the sky before a storm.
He waited long enough for the silence to become intolerable and then he raised his fist above his head and brought it down like an axe, his voice spitting out the words:
‘Crush them like flies!’
‘Like flies!’ screamed his minions at his feet.
‘Like flies,’ said his Queen with satisfaction in her cold and deadly voice.
‘Let the beacon fires be lit and the warriors be sent!’ roared Na-Groth.
It was as though a dark wind swirled through the hall and gathered all the people up like winter leaves.
No one but Na-Groth and his lady Maeged remained.
* * * *
Khu-ren and Kyra were very near to despair.
For all their skill they could not reach Isar.
The black malevolence of Na-Groth’s rule produced powerful vibrations, stronger as they centred on the persons of Na-Groth and Maeged.
Their palace was impregnable to the priests of Light.
Khu-ren, in spirit-travel, could visit the ridge that overlooked the encampment and could see quite clearly the distant dark palace, but, when he tried to move towards it, the air broke up around him in swirling currents, and he had to use all his psychic strength not to be sucked down into the vortex of Na-Groth’s destructive will.
‘We need someone inside the palace to reach out to us,’ he explained to Kyra.
‘If only Isar were strong enough!’ she said sadly.
Khu-ren looked at her closely and his voice took on the tenderness of warning.
‘You must prepare yourself my love,’ he said gently.
‘For what?’
She looked at him with frightened eyes, for she knew the answer.
‘Isar may be dead.’
‘No!’ she cried.
‘It would be surprising if he were not. We have lost contact with him completely, which means either he is dead already, or he is well within the range of Na-Groth’s power. We could not expect that Na-Groth would not have killed him as soon as he found him.’
Kyra was silent, her shoulders bent and her face desolate.
Khu-ren put his arm around her and they sat together, deep in thought. Gradually Kyra began to straighten up and pull away from her husband. She had that look upon her face that she had when she was listening for something ordinary ears could not catch.
He drew back at once and waited beside her, hardly daring to move in case he disturbed her concentration.
Slowly... slowly she turned to her husband.
‘What is it?’ he whispered.
‘It is Maal,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘I am sure it is Maal!’
He kissed her and held her tight.
‘Where is he?’
‘I do not know ... the impression was very faint and strange. There was a girl and he was a shadow behind the girl ... and his voice came from the mouth of the girl ... and yet ... and yet I did not get the impression they were the same person...’
Kyra strained to recapture the experience, but it was gone.
‘What did he say?’
‘Karne ... is ... in danger. His position is known to Na-Groth. There was something about flies ... but I did not understand that.’
‘Never mind what you did not understand. We have enough to know that Karne is in danger, and him, at least, we can reach.
‘Come.’
He took her hand and they prepared again for the adventure of spirit-travel.
* * * *
Karne posted the watches for the night and took one of the positions himself.
He was restless and knew that he would not be able to sleep though his body was weary from the effort of the day. At times he felt it was only the strength of his own will that sustained this crowd of men and drove them away from their families and into danger.
It was not an easy burden to bear.
Up to now his determination to gather an army and move it to Klad had kept him going.
But now they were in position as near to Na-Groth as they dared to be, he was not sure what to do next. He did not want to fight if it could be avoided.
On their way he had made constant inquiry of villagers about the passage of a tall, red haired youth, and was convinced from what he had heard that Isar was too far ahead of them for their paths to cross.
He sat in the darkness, watching over his men, and thinking anxiously about Isar.
He looked up into the clear sky above him, and it was as though a sudden reversal of his normal thinking occurred.
From being Karne, master of his own actions, leader of men, proud Spear-lord on whose shoulders rested the cares of his people, he had become a minute point in an immensity of Nothing.
Confidence in himself, his people, his god, trickled away. He felt as though a suffocating black cord had settled round his chest and was somehow drawing tighter and tighter.
At first he abandoned himself to the desperation of the experience, and then his old habits of thinking and believing began to return.
He broke from the clutches of despair and shook his head fiercely to clear it of its dark thoughts.
He thought of his sister, younger than himself, but often wiser.
‘Help me,’ he cried deeply in himself. ‘I cannot see the way!’
Was it possible there was no way?
‘Karne!’
He heard his name called and turned his head.
Kyra was standing before him, faintly luminous in the darkness.
He sprang up and made to move towards her.
‘No!’ she said sharply, holding up her slender white hand.
For a moment she seemed to disappear and Karne felt a choking lump rising in his throat.
‘Fool!’ he cursed himself.
But she returned, and this time he remained as motionless as the still night air.
‘Listen to me ... there is no time ... Na-Groth knows you are here ... Try to...’
But before she could complete the sentence the noisy approach of one of the men complaining that he had watched long enough and was ready to sleep, broke the tenuous thread of the vision.
Kyra was gone.
Karne rounded angrily on the man.
‘No one will sleep tonight,’ he roared. ‘Wake everybody up!’
‘What?’ gasped the fellow, staring stupidly.
‘You heard me! Wake everybody up and tell them to report to me at once.’
As the oaf still stared and gaped, Karne punched him in the chest.
‘Move!’ he shouted. ‘We are about to be attacked!’
This made the man move.
While the men, confused and grumbling, were gathering around him, Karne was planning.
All doubts of purpose and meaning were gone.
He enj
oyed action, and action they were about to have.
* * * *
Meanwhile Gya, who was hiding among the hovels of Na-Groth’s encampment, was needing all his cunning to stay alive, and had not yet found a way to reach his friend in the Palace or retrieve his bow.
He had managed to steal some food and was sitting in the dark shadow of an untidy pile of wood, when he had the sensation that he was being watched. His hands went automatically to his weapons before he remembered that he no longer had them.
He stayed tensely still and looked carefully around him.
At first he saw no one and then there was a slight movement to the left.
Turning his head swiftly he looked into the watching shadow of a small girl. She seemed no more than seven or eight summers old and so thin and sickly it was not likely that she would see the ninth.
He crept towards her holding out what was left of the meat he had stolen earlier from an unguarded spit.
She did not move back in fear as he half expected her to do, but continued, unmoving, to stare at him.
Her scrutiny began to make him feel uneasy.
He was shocked to see her face and limbs were marked with festering sores.
For the first time Gya felt great pity for these people, particularly for the children, who were caught in a trap as surely as were his own people.
There was no malevolence in the eyes of the child as she stared at him, only curiosity.
‘Here,’ he said softly. ‘Take this. Eat.’
He imitated the motions of putting the meat to his mouth and eating, and then he held it out to her.
Briefly her eyes left his and moved to the meat, and then back again to his.
‘It is yours. Eat,’ he whispered.
Whether she would have taken it or not he would never know, because a woman’s voice called out ‘Berka!’ and instantly she turned and ran.
Gya was in a quandary.
He was not sure if the child would give him away or not, but he could not risk it.
He must move.
He stuffed the last of the food hungrily into his mouth and looked around for somewhere new to hide.
It was late and most of the fires had died down.
Shadow on the Stones Page 8
