The Starfollowers of Coramonde

by Brian Daley

  But when they’d been in the badlands for four days, disheartening word came from the rearguard. Southwastelanders had pursued them down through the fertile regions, closing much of the lead the northerners had gotten at Condor’s Roost. The desert hordes were less than a day behind, outnumbering them badly. Springbuck’s allies were split into two schools of thought. One espoused by the Snow Leopardess, urged that a portion of the Crescent Landers stop and hold back the southerners while the remainder went on to Salamá. The other faction, led by the deCourteneys, said every man and woman might be needed in the Necropolis; splitting up their force would invite ruin. The Ku-Mor-Mai held this the wiser course, to push on and strike with full strength at the Five. Reacher concurred, and Hightower and Swan. Katya accepted it, though she’d meant to command the delaying action herself.

  They picked up their pace, hoping the enormous corps behind them would be slower. Rearguard scouts reported that the gap was closing, though; the Southwastelanders had stripped themselves of all their slower elements. Within another day their vast dust cloud was visible.

  At the end of the arid stretches, the northerners came to a plain that extended as far as they could see, like the bottom of a dry, dead sea carpeted with gray ash, hot and still. Banners hung limply, and the moisture on their skin and in their mouths was cooked away as soon as it formed. Looking up to estimate the time, Springbuck saw the sun was gone. The sky was light, but as monochrome as a bowl of lead.

  Gabrielle said, “We are come to the precincts of Shardishku-Salamá.” Andre’s hand felt of the scabbard of Blazetongue.

  The northerners rode out onto the plain, but as soon as the last of them had come, they all heard a sustained skeletal rattling, as if uncounted bones were clacking together. Not even the deCourteneys could guess what it meant. The Crescent Landers went on, but they’d passed beyond day and night. Here, it never became dark, although no special spot of light in the gray canopy indicated the sun.

  In their wake, many hours later, came the hordes of the Southwastelands. The desert men drew up before the desolate plain, spent from their chase. They looked among themselves, arrogant Occhlon, aristocratic Baidii and wily Odezat, having followed as far as they dared. This place was under the direct scrutiny of the Masters, prohibited to all. The rulers of the Necropolis would exact punishment now, and doubtless show displeasure to their lapsed guardsmen, the Southwastelanders, as well. It would take much penance and sacrifice to appease them.

  The desert men reined around and went back the way they’d come. There was nothing else to do; in their minds, the intruders were already dead. No one could survive or escape from the lifeless plain where lay Salamá. The southerners passed back up into the arid regions at a lesser pace, sparing their beloved horses, but anxious to be gone. When they’d left, and their dust had settled, a single man led his weary mount out of concealment. He’d come south behind them, unable to pass them and their patrols to join the northerners.

  He climbed tiredly into the saddle, his horse bravely summoning what reserves she had. Ferrian, once Champion-at-arms over the High Ranges, patted her dirt-encrusted neck. He’d had to steal her, last of the many horses he’d ridden since he’d come, late, to the Southwastelands. She’d carried him courageously, but he wasn’t sure she had the stamina to overtake the other Crescent Landers. He had long since stopped regretting that Wavewatcher and Skewerskean hadn’t overtaken the Mariner fleet before its troops had disembarked. He couldn’t think of setbacks now, though; the final remnant of the Lifetree had gone in beneath the umbra of Shardishku-Salamá.

  In the rose garden of the Library at Ladentree, Silverquill looked up. His mouth fell open. The Birds of Accord gathered in a great flock, circling the Library.

  As he watched, they turned south, called by their ties with the Lifetree. The Sage shaded his eyes, watching the Birds vanish to mere specks, and whispered the most earnest prayers he knew.

  The plain was dead, antiseptically so, without so much as an insect to be seen. The northerners came to feel they’d left the world of the living altogether. With no way to take bearings, Springbuck was given directions by the deCourteneys, who appeared to sense where they were going. He lost count of the rests the army had taken, and had no way to measure progress accurately. Water supplies dwindled steadily, and everyone began to show signs of exhaustion except Reacher, Gabrielle and Andre.

  A crunch under his hoof made Fireheel flinch. The Ku-Mor-Mai flicked at the ash with the tip of his sword. A length of brittle bone, a human femur, was there, broken by the gray’s step. Springbuck stared at it for a moment, then stirred up the soot around it. The rest of the skeleton, unguessably old, lay among scraps of harness and bits of metal trapping. Hightower had come up and his horse, too, snapped bones beneath its tread.

  They’d wandered into the last resting place of a slaughtered army. Probing the soot with lances and swords, they exposed rotted shields and corroded armor. One skull was still circled by a gleaming fillet, holding a big black pearl to its white brow.

  No one was inclined to scavenge. Springbuck got them moving again; for more than a mile they wended their way among remains, hearing the fragile cracking of an army they took to be a kind of predecessor. Once beyond the relics, the Ku-Mor-Mai took his followers a long way beyond the bonefields before he let them stop again.

  Andre was first to notice it, an indistinct irregularity on the horizon. As time went on, it became a serration-line of silhouettes, eerie designs difficult to discern. The still air made distances deceptive, and their approach toward that outline seemed to take days.

  Then they had their first sight of Shardishku-Salamá, the city taking on definition of a perplexing, somehow distorted sort. Some of the structures there were lit with wavering flame.

  A dark line had appeared, extending across their route, between them and the city. Some began to say it was a treeline, end of the desolation. Springbuck couldn’t make it out, but Hightower could, saying he thought it no treeline. In time, they realized it was another army, nearly spanning the horizon, coming closer.

  They gaped in disbelief at the sea of foemen. Numbly, they groped for shields and donned armor once more.

  A half-mile separated them when the opposing force halted. They flew no banners, and there was no sound of horns or challenges. Springbuck could see little, except that his force was outnumbered overwhelmingly. He called for Hightower and a standard-bearer, and rode up. Reacher fell in beside him, and the Ku-Mor-Mai was glad for his company. He felt a chill despite the hot, stagnant air.

  No parleying group came from the other side, so Springbuck rode on. He heard a sharp inhalation from the herald, and his own caught in his windpipe. His nerves, trapped between the primal need to run and a firm decision to go on, threatened to fail him. Drawn up before him in their terrible ranks were those who could only be the Host of the Grave.

  They stretched away to either side, as far as he could see, eyes glowing in black sockets. They waited in perfect silence with nothing to say, nothing to fear, desire or question. Severed forever from happiness or grief or thought, they waited, ideal household troops of Shardishku-Salamá, like so many statues of slate.

  Springbuck summoned up saliva, licked his lips. “Do you contest our passage?”

  One figure broke formation and advanced. He was wearing panoply that had once been rich and burnished, beautiful to see. Now it was green, crumbling with age. He sat a cadaver-horse, whose eyes were lit like its rider’s. A reek of charnel decay wafted from them both.

  Springbuck’s skin crawled as if it were too tight on his bones. Fireheel snorted and dug at the sooty ground. The corpse was implacable and unhurried. Springbuck’s horror fought hard to take control of him. The face he saw was rotting, areas of bleached skull showing through. The voice, when it came, was toneless, a whispering rattle from a throat-box long unused.

  It said, “Where your horses’ hooves stand, that is as far as you ever go toward Shardishku-Salamá.”

&
nbsp; With defiance he didn’t feel, the Ku-Mor-Mai answered, “That has been said before. We have come for our just returns.”

  The whisper-rattle came so mutedly that they had to bend forward to hear. “We tend the affairs of the ages here. Die.”

  There was the metallic complaint of its sword, grating out of its sheath.

  “Back to ranks!” shouted the Ku-Mor-Mai. All four of them yanked their reins, and rushed madly back in a shower of soot. Hysteria went at their backs. What good would lancers, swordsmen, war-drays and warrior-sisters do, when their opponents were already slain? Springbuck cast one look backward, and shrank from what he saw. The corpse-army was coming on, not slowly and not quickly, but irresistibly.

  When Springbuck and the others reached their own lines, their enemies had covered half the distance in pursuit. The Ku-Mor-Mai snapped orders to arrange his formation. He’d thought for a moment of withdrawing, but to what avail? The dead would never tire or pause; they’d simply roll across the plain until they eventually engulfed their exhausted enemies.

  He explained quickly what they faced. “Gabrielle, can you do anything?”

  She balanced the Crook in her hand and traded glances with Andre. “I do not know,” she confessed, “how can one affect shadows and carrion-meat?”

  Springbuck racked his brain for a way to stave off that attack or escape it. Then, on his own, Fireheel caracoled, and again, turning and rearing at the onrushing Host, whistling his fierce invitation. He didn’t care who was coming; the gray only wanted the chance to fight.

  Springbuck whipped Bar, the Obstructor, from its scabbard; the sword left a white swath of light in the gray air. Hightower bellowed invective of his own, sweeping free his two-handed greatsword. Red Pilgrim came up, and Blazetongue and the myriad weapons of the Crescent Lands. Some found comfort in a gesture, crouching behind lances or dropping visors. Others just eyed the Host, seeing that the die was cast, and accepted it in their hearts.

  The Host of the Grave made little sound, riding as if from nightmare. The living dreaded their touch more than the bite of their swords, but spurred their horses on.

  That singular onset began, men and women in death-lock combat with corpses. Beyond the desolation, in timeless Shardishku-Salamá, the Five, assured and imperturbable, awaited the battle’s inevitable outcome.

  PART V

  Symmetries of the Firmament

  Chapter Thirty

  Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate

  And the Warder is Despair

  Oscar Wilde

  “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”

  GIL MacDonald passed some intangible landmark that told him he was leaving behind something too sinister to be called unconsciousness. He felt excruciating pain in his eyes.

  He tried to move, but couldn’t, and so tried some more. In the end he did, but his fumbling hands were slapped away brutally. The pain returned. He tugged, tossing his head, fighting blindly. There were immovably strong hands clamping his head steady, thumbs pressing in at his eyeballs. He thrashed, moaned, and the hands retreated at last. Much of the pain remained. He rubbed his tortured eyes, and finally blinked them open.

  Light blinded him. Peering through the narrowest slits he could manage, he saw a room in darkness, but he lay in a cone of light. Beneath him, he felt rough stone. He heard a raspy voice he didn’t like at all. “You see, my Lord? Enough pressure on the eyes would awaken a man even from the Dreamdrowse.”

  A second voice spoke. “Adequate, Flaycraft.” The tone was placid, fear-provoking, as the cold malice of a snake. Shapes wobbled into definition. The first person Gil saw was the closest. He shook his head, disbelieving. This one was of the tribe of man, maybe, but a simian extreme. Squat, with long, shaggy brown hair that was almost a pelt, he slouched, bandy-legged. He was heavy with muscle, beady-eyed beneath ridges of thick bone. His fingers were long, hirsute and black-nailed. From him came the odors of instinct, of life at animal level. It came as no surprise than he was unclothed.

  Gil tracked his gaze to the other, making himself confront him. Yardiff Bey was calm, secure in his own environment. The cold ocular shone in the dark room; Bey’s face held an icy pleasure.

  Gil’s stomach contorted in fear, and his bowels threatened rebellion. He doubled over for a moment, but the spasm passed. He couldn’t imagine how long he’d been out. He sat up and swung his legs around. He was sitting on a stone slab that managed to combine the clinical with the sacrificial. His head spun, and he could see nothing outside the cone of light.

  Yardiff Bey watched the play of the outlander’s thoughts, each predicted, in sequence. The last of them, renewed fear, pleased the sorcerer. The creature, whom Gil took to be Flaycraft, was toying with something on his chest, a necklace. Gil saw it was the Ace of Swords, on its chain. Flaycraft grinned, displaying long yellow canines.

  Gil lurched, grabbing for his tarot. “Okay, ape-guts; give it here.” Weak, he lost balance. Flaycraft, shorter than the American but broader, eluded him easily and kicked him as he went down. He curled up and groaned. The beast-man seized him by his hair, yanked him to his feet, flung him back on the slab. Gil filed the information that Flaycraft was one strong animal.

  “So, that is your tarot now?” Bey asked. “The Ace of Swords? Reversed, I should think.”

  Gil rubbed his aching head. “Where’s Dunstan?” he managed.

  “Near.” Something like a smile crossed Bey’s face. At his side hung Dirge, recovered, apparently, from the wounded Acre-Fin. Those events all came back in a jumble.

  The sorcerer purred. “You do Dunstan and yourself ill service by being difficult. The regimen here is strictest compliance; punishment is Flaycraft’s trade. You erred in going against me and the convections of destiny. Your friend’s well-being as much as your own rests in your submission.”

  The dark-robed Hand of Shardishku-Salamá glided away, silent and stately as a manta-ray in deep water. Gil wanted to answer, but was preoccupied with the twin assertions that his friend was alive and that he, Gil, must behave. It begged the question, why was he still alive? The sorcerer would only tolerate him for some well-defined purpose, and was obviously using the Horseblooded for leverage. Goddam Bey, always knows just which button to push!

  Flaycraft watched him now, a cat with a new mouse. Got a crazy one here, Gil reminded himself. The beast-man caught his arm in an excruciating grip, shaking him like a doll. “Disobey once, I entreat you. Then, I can school you in lessons of torment. Already, I have taught your friend Dunstan!”

  He let go. Gil’s arm throbbed from that one brief squeeze. Flaycraft went off behind his patron. Gil wobbled after them a few steps, stopping at the edge of light. He saw Bey framed in orange radiance at the end of a passageway. Flaycraft went to stand by his side. Yardiff Bey waved a hand, and the passageway walls rumbled inward. In seconds, the corridor had contracted shut with a vibration that traveled through the floor.

  Gil took a few steps, groping at the blank wall. All he could feel was solid rock, nicked and chipped by ancient tooling. He blinked up owlishly at the light, but it was far overhead; he couldn’t make out just what it was or how it worked.

  Then he realized he wasn’t alone. In the silence left by the closure of the passageway, he heard breathing. He edged back to the slab. His pulse pounded behind his ears and beat at his temples.

  “There isn’t cause for alarm, Gil MacDonald. This is a sad thing, seeing you here.”

  Gil strained to see. The voice had been quiet, familiar. “Dunstan? Hey, Dunstan?”

  “Yes, I, my friend.” Gil stumbled into the dark again, tracing the words. “Just ahead of you. Pause a moment, sit, accustom your eyes to the dark.”

  Gil felt his way to the wall. A low shelf, like a bench cut from stone, ran along it. He sat. Gradually, he made out his friend’s outline. Dunstan was seated with his back to the wall, vague in the dim wash of the beam focused on the slab. Finding Dunstan lifted some of his anguish and fright, but robbed him of words. He blurte
d, “Oh man, man, I’m sorry. I was going to spring you, but I screwed it up good.”

  He couldn’t see the Horseblooded’s wan smile, but heard it in his tone. “Berating yourself is unfair. Few men ever came alive to Shardishku-Salamá; none ever imposed his will here.”

  “Salamá? This is it? Lay it out for me a bit at a time, okay?”

  “You broach two long and separate stories.”

  “Oh. Look, let’s go back into the light, huh? I’m not much for the dark, personally.” He labored to his feet, but Dunstan stayed seated. “What’s wrong?”

  The other was long in answering. “I have been confined here far longer than you, Gil. Bey proved his genius, restraining and punishing me with a single spell.”

  Gil groped for him. “What are you, tied or something? Maybe I can—” He snatched his hands away. “Oh, sweet Jesus Christ!” He’d felt down the Horseblooded’s arms for shackles or bonds, but where the wrists should have been, he’d felt only columns of stone. He touched again, gingerly. “Dunstan, your arms; what’s wrong with your—”

  “Not arms alone. It’s as I said. Yardiff Bey fettered me by his arts, as only he would think to do.”

  It was true. The flesh of Dunstan’s arms gave way to cold stone, and his legs were the same. The sorcerer had joined him to the perpetual custody of naked rock. Gil backed away and sat, head hung in defeat. “How long have you been like this?”

  “I do not know, and do not wish to. My foremost aspiration has been to forget time. I think I was close to success, but perhaps I was only on the rim of madness. I am in no pain, and hunger and thirst do not come to me, nor any agony of the body. But the unknown progress of time, that was a terrible affliction.”

  Gil began to tremble. “Does that mean I’m gonna be… will he do that to me?” He was ashamed, but it was his overriding thought and stark terror.