The Plains of Kallanash

by Pauline M. Ross

  Seeing his hesitation, the man lowered his arms and said, “Your archer there will have no trouble putting an arrow in any of us from where he stands, if we should make the slightest move against you. Will you not sit and talk to us? It has been so long since we saw anyone from outside. And Skirmishers and barbarians together… There is a tale to be told, I believe.”

  “And a sword-maiden, too,” said one of the women, smiling at Mia. “That is a tale I should like to hear.”

  Again Hurst was irresolute, but Mia suddenly set off across the room. “Crenjifor!” she murmured. “And denniyar! Of all things! And you have golden wine – this is dark enough to have come from Herramin.”

  “Near enough,” one of the women said, rising, and moving gracefully across the room to the side table where Mia stood with a glass decanter in one hand and a prickly fruit in the other. “This is from Northern Trellia, the very best quality. Here, let me pour you a glass. Anyone else?”

  “We’re not here for a party!” Hurst said in exasperation, feeling the situation beginning to drift away from him.

  “We should very much like to hear what you are here for,” one of the men said. They had a curious rolling accent, that reminded him strongly of Dondro. Yet they were not like the Servants to look at, not in the least. Nor were they quite like Karningers. They had high foreheads and rounder faces, with narrow lips and noses.

  “Who are you people?” he burst out.

  “Oh, come on,” Mia said. “Surely you can work it out? You should be able to count, at least.”

  Hurst counted. “Nine,” he croaked. “You’re the Nine.”

  “Didn’t you notice the symbols they each wear?” Mia went on. “This is Sylinor… Pashinor… Gullinor… Gaminor…” She walked round the table, wineglass in one hand and fruit in the other, pointing out the delicate embroidery on each breast, listing the names of the Nine.

  “But you’re not Gods.” That was Gantor.

  “No, no, we’re perfectly human, but…” He stopped and frowned. Sylinor, Hurst worked out. “There is more to it. Would you like to hear our tale?”

  Hurst hesitated again.

  “I should like to hear it,” Gantor said firmly.

  In the end, Hurst, Gantor and Dethin unstrapped their swords and sat side by side, opposite the Nine, while Mia roamed about the room, eating and drinking and gazing out of the windows. The other four stood around the walls, swords still drawn, Trimon with an arrow nocked, just in case. One of the women – Gaminor, Hurst guessed – set wine on the table in front of each of them, which Gantor and the Nine sipped appreciatively. Dethin and Hurst left theirs untouched.

  “I must start, I suppose, with the Tre’annatha,” Sylinor said.

  “Trannatta,” Gaminor said to him with a smile.

  “Oh – yes. It’s a corruption of the name, of course. They call themselves Tre’annatha. Tell me, what do you know of them?”

  “They are from the northern coast,” Gantor said flatly.

  “True. They first came here – oh, almost a thousand years ago, it must be. They opened up the northern trade route, and brought in spices and silks and vines and oils and all these exotic fruits your sword-maiden is enjoying so much. And the Petty Kings were so grateful they fought for the right to control the supply, and the Tre’annatha went home again in disgust. Or so it is said. Would it surprise you to learn that in fact they stayed on?”

  “We have seen them,” Dethin said quietly. “They call themselves Those who Serve the Gods now.”

  “Ah! So you know something, then. They stayed, and hid themselves away underground. For they had no interest in spices. What they were looking for was magic.”

  He paused and looked round at them, perhaps expecting some reaction, but they said nothing. They had seen enough strangeness in the last few days to suppress even Gantor’s scepticism.

  “The Tre’annatha have a long history, and they retained many written records, even from before the Catastrophe, or shortly after. They brought their own languages and writing system to the Petty Kings…”

  “Kannick Old Script!” Mia said, from her post by the window.

  “It is very like that, yes. They introduced that style of writing here, and it only died out recently – a couple of hundred years ago or so.”

  “You have a novel concept of recently,” Dethin said.

  “All things are relative,” Sylinor said, beaming benevolently at him, and some of the others laughed. They were so relaxed, Hurst thought sourly.

  “So they had stories, legends, perhaps, about magic,” Sylinor went on. “They had one legend about an island a long way from any other land, and in the middle of this island was a circle of mountains and in the middle of that a beautiful golden tower, from which all the magic in the world emanated. There were great mages there, so the tale went, who learned how to combine their magic to become even more powerful. But they were arrogant, and began to believe they were gods, and brought down the Catastrophe that changed the world. Naturally, the Tre’annatha assumed that the island and everything on it had been swept away, but they thought there might be traces left of the original magic. Reservoirs, perhaps, where it still survived and could be caught and harnessed. Imagine how excited they were, when they first came to the plains, to hear about Kashinor – its ring of mountains, and the golden tower at its centre, still called the Tower of Mages.

  “It wasn’t difficult to get into Kashinor, it was open to anyone in those days. But the tower – that was more difficult. The scholars had control of it then. Only the finest scholars could enter the Tower of Mages, so it took them a while to achieve their objective. But eventually, one of them rose to the highest rank possible amongst the scholars, and so found herself here, in this room. It looked much as it does now, or so we have been told. This table was here, with all its strange writing, and more on the walls, just as you see it now. You cannot read it, but they could – the Tre’annatha. Or at least, they had learned men who were able to decipher it, in time. Can you guess what it told them?”

  “Of course we can’t,” Hurst said crossly. They were so wordy, these people! He was primed for action, and it pained him to sit listening politely to this long rambling history, feigning interest. “Can we get to the point?”

  Dethin threw him an amused glance. “You will forgive us a degree of impatience, Lord Sylinor. We’ve had a difficult few days, and it’s made us a little tense. Please continue.”

  “Try the wine, Hurst,” Mia said from somewhere behind him. “It’s excellent, and it will help you calm down.”

  “I will, if you will stop prowling round like a leopard, and come and sit down.”

  Dethin jumped up and ushered Mia into the vacated seat next to Hurst, reseating himself in the next chair along. He always liked to have Mia between the two of them, Hurst realised. Was that just courtesy to Mia? Was he making a pointed contrast with Hurst’s incivility? Or was he punctiliously sharing her evenly between them?

  He had been debating with himself for days whether it was better to have her with him, under his eye, even when that put her at some risk, or to leave her behind and worry about her even more. Better to have her there, he decided, calm and not at all unnerved by these people, these not-Gods. He sipped his wine, which was indeed good, and smiled at her, feeling the tension drop away a little.

  Sylinor watched them compose themselves, his lips showing just a hint of amusement. “I apologise – Commander, is it not? The story is long, but I am getting to the point at last. The writing was set down just before the Catastrophe. Sadly, it says nothing of the events which led to that point, only that, in case all other efforts to avert disaster failed, nine mages had been laid under a lasting enchantment and hidden under the mountains, to be revived later to aid in rebuilding.”

  “You? So you’re mages?” Hurst said, astonished. “Did you make this tower, then? It is magic, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed it is,” Sylinor said, reaching for his wine. “As to who made it�
�� that is lost in the clouds of time. The Tre’annatha could read the directions for finding the resting place of the mages – us, that is – but they could not fully understand them. The meanings of the measurements used and the directions were unlike anything they had met with previously. It took them a long time to find us in the dragons’ caverns, and more time to bring us here, for we had been turned to solid stone. But the tower healed us. You are aware, I take it, that the tower has healing properties?”

  There was a silence in the room. Hurst supposed he ought to feel something, but his sense of wonder was blunted. Healing properties? He shifted his bad leg, and wished sourly that the tower would heal that. He’d forgotten to take his pain-reducing lozenges that morning, and although the ramp had been easy enough to walk up, he could feel the beginnings of a dull ache now that he was sitting down.

  No one spoke. Sylinor sighed, and continued. “So – we were restored to life and health, but there was a tiny problem. We remembered nothing at all, not even our names. Our minds were empty.”

  Gantor barked with laughter. “That must have pleased your rescuers!”

  There was a ripple of laughter around the table. “Indeed so. They wanted to bring us back to life to harness our magic and make themselves powerful. We were a sad disappointment to them, I fear.”

  “You speak the language well enough,” Dethin said. His voice was soft, but his eyes had narrowed.

  “That is a good point,” Gaminor said. And it was a good point. How come they could talk so well? How did they know so much, with empty minds?

  “They taught us,” one of the other men said. “They gave us names, they taught us to speak again, they taught us to read, and then they brought us books, that we might teach ourselves what we could.”

  “They hoped we would remember,” said the woman. “But that never happened. All we now know, we learned from books.” There was sadness in her voice.

  “So – no magic, then?” Gantor said.

  Again, amusement eddied around the table. “No magic,” the woman said. “No spells, no power, no abilities as far as we can tell. And no memories of home, of childhood, of family, of happier times. This tower is all we know.”

  “You never leave it?” That was Mia.

  “Never. Even if they would allow it, we cannot say what would happen to us outside the protective environment of the tower. We are thousands of years old. We might simply crumble to dust and blow away, who knows?”

  “Some of us would like to try, though,” said Pashinor. “We are tired, my friends, tired of this peculiar life that is no life. We have sat up here in our eyrie watching Kashinor change and grow for over four hundred years now and…”

  “Four hundred years!” Hurst said, his eyes wide. He could hardly imagine such confinement. “Four centuries, in this one room?”

  “There are sleeping rooms on the floor below,” Gaminor said. “Bathing rooms, eating rooms, entire rooms filled with clothes…”

  “And books,” one of them said, and they all laughed.

  “Books have been our solace,” Sylinor said. “We read voraciously, everything they brought us, hoping to recover our lost magic but there was nothing. Whatever magic created all this, the means was lost in time. Eventually, the Tre’annatha despaired of finding the secret that way, but they set us another project. They had taken control of this tower by themselves, but beyond that – Kashinor, or the Kingdoms beyond the Ring – they could not control those, not without armies, I suppose. But the wars between the Petty Kingdoms – that caused instability. They would gain a foothold in power somewhere, and someone would invade and it would all be lost.”

  “But why did they need power?” Gantor asked. “If they came here to find magic and failed, why stay?”

  “Oh, there is magic here. It is suppressed, perhaps, kept in check, but it is still everywhere, for those who know what to look for. The ability to harness magical power is in all of us, it is just a matter of unlocking the secret, and the Tre’annatha are very good with locks.” Another ripple of laughter. “They are ingenious builders – mechanical things, you know.”

  “We know,” Gantor said grimly. “We have encountered some of them.”

  “Ah! Interesting. Well, the Tre’annatha are a very patient people. They were prepared to wait as long as necessary. They had already waited almost six hundred years to find and release us, they were in no rush. Kashinor is the epicentre of magic on the plains – perhaps in the whole world, who knows, but to uncover the secret of it, they needed to control the population and they needed stability. They set us the task of finding a way. They are not warriors, so it was no use building an army. We realised that all the Petty Kingdoms had a religion of some sort – all different, of course. Some had one god, and some had many. Some worshipped in temples and some in the fields. Some made offerings and some prayed and some flayed and purged themselves… It occurred to us that the way to manage the trick was to introduce a new religion, and spread it over the whole of the plains.”

  “The Word of the Gods,” Mia said, standing abruptly. “It was you! You created the whole thing! Pah!” She walked off to the windows again, and stood, back turned, looking out.

  “We did,” said Sylinor, looking rather smug. “It was not easy. It took us a long time to get it right – the incantations, the design of the temples, the hierarchy, all those details. Then the Tre’annatha seemingly brought the Word from the northern coast and assiduously spread it everywhere. And it worked! In time, all the Petty Kingdoms fell to the Word of the Gods and the Tre’annatha were able to take control.”

  “There is no magic in what is being done now,” Gantor said sharply, and he too rose to his feet. “The way the Karningplain is ruled – that is down to rigid laws and a people cowed into subservience and harshly punished for the least transgression.” He stomped across the room to the wine decanter, boots thumping, and refilled his glass.

  “Oh, yes,” Sylinor said. “It has all gone too far, we know this. The original purpose has not quite been forgotten, perhaps, but buried under layers of organisation. They are severe masters, the Tre’annatha. We helped with some of that, too – creating some of the more sensible rules, moderating their odd ideas, trying to create balance. It was not easy. They were not always willing to listen to us. But now you are here, with your swords and bows, to sweep them away. That is your purpose, I suppose? Have you cleared them all out of the tower? And will you set us free?”

  “We should very much like to be free,” Gaminor said softly.

  “Yes,” said Hurst. His voice sounded unnaturally loud in his ears, and as he stood up his armoured leather creaked like a tree in a storm. “Yes, we’ll set you free. There will be no more prisoners. Would you like to come down to the lower levels, and meet the leader of our little expedition? And if you want to leave the tower, we’ll show you a safe way out.”

  There was a bustle of movement, a buzzing of excited voices as they all rose and shook out their draped gowns and prepared to leave their home. Or was it a prison? Hurst was wrapped in morose thoughts when Dethin tapped his arm.

  “The signal, remember? The red sheet.”

  The sheet had to be placed where the scholars, primed by messages sent through Hilligor, would see it and know that the tower was taken. They would put the word out that an assembly would be held in three days’ time at the scholars’ hall. It seemed a simple enough task, but the smooth stone walls and the glass-paned windows gave no place to hang the sheet.

  “We need something to fix it in place,” Hurst muttered. “Nails or something of the sort.”

  “Or magic,” grinned Walst.

  “Anyone? No? There’s never a mage about when you need one,” said Gantor cheerfully. “Let’s rig up some furniture to tie it to.”

  At last it was done. It felt rather final to Hurst, the first visible sign to the world that something was happening. There was no turning back now. He had never been prone to introspection, but he was beginning to appreciate
the enormity of what they were doing. He caught sight of Mia then, stuffing fruit into the space in Walst’s pack left by the removal of the sheet, and smiled.

  “There’s plenty of fruit in the kitchens down below,” he murmured into her ear.

  “Oh yes, but no denniyar. So sweet, as if they were straight off the bush.”

  “And they have been there for months,” Gaminor said, laughing. “Nothing rots here, and we get tired of them after a while. Come, sword-maiden, let us leave this place.”

  The Nine set off down the ramp in an excited gaggle, but Gantor tugged on Hurst’s arm to hold him back.

  “Do you trust these people?” Gantor said bluntly. “They spin a good tale, I’ll grant you that, but – why are they locked up here, with the Silent Guard to keep them in? We know nothing about them, and we have only their word that they have no magic.”

  “You think they’re dangerous?”

  “I have no idea, and neither do you.”

  Hurst pressed his palms to his temple. He wished once again that Tanist was there to take charge, to make the decisions. Battles were so much easier.

  At the top of the ramp, the others waited for him. He turned to Mia. “What do you think? Are they dangerous?”

  She shook her head. “All I got from them was friendliness and sincerity. And pleasure – they were very happy to see us.”

  “And if they had any magic, wouldn’t they have escaped long ago?” Dethin said. “They’re only kept here by a simple lock, and a handful of men.”

  “Good point,” Hurst said. “That’s settled, then. Let’s catch up with them before they wander off.”

  On the lower level, the Nine were milling about in twos and threes examining everything, and peering over the parapet at the long drop to the ground floor. Hurst reminded himself that they had never seen the rest of the tower before, so some excitement was natural, but he rather wished they were more docile. It took some time to collect them all together, and even longer to quieten them down.