by Dave Morris
Caelestis screamed in pure fury. Had Fate itself decided to conspire against him? The dormitory had been unpleasant enough, but here he was in a darkened cell with the smell of stale urine in his nostrils and only a bed of greasy straw to lie on. High above, a narrow grating admitted a chink of moonlight.
He went to sit down, heard something rustling its way through the straw, and thought better of it. As he paced irritably up and down, tiny eyes watched him in the dim light.
‘Sharing a cell with rats...’ groaned Caelestis. ‘Why didn’t I just go with Altor to the monastery? Still, got to look on the bright side. At least now things can’t get any worse.’
The panel opened in the door. ‘The time of your execution has been confirmed as one hour after dawn,’ announced the hunchback.
Caelestis ran to the door. ‘I’m to be hanged? But I haven’t committed any crime!’
‘No, no, you’re not going to hang.’
Caelestis breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Thank God—‘
‘They’re going to chop your head off.’ The hunchback gave a peal of laughter.
Caelestis glared at him through the narrow panel. ‘If I’m to die, at least bring me a hearty meal. That’s traditional, isn’t it?’
‘Not in my jail it isn’t,’ chortled the hunchback.
Caelestis shook his head wistfully as if resigned to his fate. ‘All that hostility and resentment—but I understand. How you must have suffered in your life. Thrust into this world only half-formed, piteously ugly and twisted, in your youth you must have been the butt of many cruel jokes. Why, even now you are forced to live a life of menial drudgery despite your obvious intelligence. No doubt the bureaucrats in charge of the prison snicker at you behind your back, imagining themselves superior. What do that know about the secret misery in your poor tormented heart? The misery of a beautiful soul trapped in a hideous body. Misery that finds its only outlet when you vent your spite on such as me.’
Tears had begun welling up in the jailer’s eyes. ‘You understand! Everything you say is true, so true! But how can you, with your perfectly muscled body and fresh young features... how can you know what it is like for a poor hunchback like myself?’
‘I will tell you the truth,’ said Caelestis with deep sincerity. ‘Once I too was as bent and gnarled as you. Men spat on me in the street, children pelted me with rotten fruit, and dogs snapped at my heels. But I was lucky enough to fall in with a kindly old wizard from—er, well, from Khitai, actually, and he used his sorcery to transform me. No longer was I a miserable hunchback, but now the lithe and handsome youth you see before you.’
‘Where can I find him?’ The jailer clutched the grille. ‘Tell me, I beg you. If I can find him, perhaps he’ll agree to transform me as well.’
‘Well, he might. He’s a very good friend of mine, of course. Um, can you read?’
‘No.’ The jailer’s mouth drooped. ‘Does that matter?’
‘Not at all, but I just thought that perhaps I should write you a letter of introduction to take to the wizard. I’ll explain that you’re my very good friend. You are my good friend, aren’t you..?’
‘Of course.’ There was a rattling noise while the jailer hurried to unlock the door. As Caelestis emerged from the cell he was engulfed in a clumsy embrace. ‘How handsome I will be, thanks to you. It is a dream come true!’
‘Quite so,’ said Caelestis. ‘Now, if you can provide me with paper and a pen...’
The hunchbacked jailer led him to a little room where magistrates would sign warrants of execution. Caelestis sat at a desk and dipped his pen in the inkwell. ‘You must take this letter to the commandant of the Knights Capellar, at the Temple of the Roc,’ he said. ‘He is a friend of mine and will lead you to the wizard.’
As the jailer skipped around out of sheer joy, Caelestis wrote:
‘This hunchback is an evil heretic. He is writing me to force this on pain of torture. He thinks it is a letter of credit, but God has granted me the wisdom to outwit him.
Signed, Friar Caelestis of Cornumbria.’
Clutching the letter, the jailer escorted Caelestis to a postern gate of the prison and let him out into the street. ‘I shall go straight away to the Capellars,’ he said.
Caelestis smiled. ‘See that you do, my friend.’ As the jailer turned away and lurched off down the street, the smile hardened into a look of pitiless satisfaction.
Dawn was still an hour or two away, but the sky was visibly lightening. Caelestis’s smile faded altogether. He was hungry, penniless and worn out—and he still had not had any sleep that night.
‘Next time,’ he said sourly to himself, ‘I shall listen to Altor.’
Altor rose as the sun intruded slim golden rays between the carved window lattices. The pattern of sunlight on the marble floor was like interwoven leaves. Altor rose, dressed and sat a short while in prayer before going down for breakfast.
He was directed towards the refectory by a knight who was just going off guard duty. There he found Tobias with several of his officers, discussing their military plans over a frugal meal.
Tobias looked up without smiling. ‘I am pleased to see you refreshed by a good night’s sleep,’ he said curtly. ‘Be seated and break your fast with us. You will find this plain fare more fortifying than all the overripe fruits and oily meats of the Ta’ashim lands.’
Altor looked woefully at the bread and water on the table. Though he lacked Caelestis’s extravagant tastes, he had been looking forward to a rather more substantial breakfast. Nonetheless he thanked Tobias. ‘I am nourished by love of Our Lord.’
A scrawny hound was crouching under the table and looked up at Altor as he sat. Tobias ejected a gob of phlegm which struck it between the ears. It whimpered and slunk away.
‘Yon hound is like the Ta’ashim race,’ grunted Tobias with a sneer. ‘It will come to beg at your table, but it is always ready to bite if you do not have the strength to show you are the master.’
Altor tore himself a chunk of bread and said nothing, more than ever convinced of Tobias’ fanaticism.
Suddenly Tobias turned his ice-grey stare on him, and Altor could not help flinching despite his courage. It was like looking into the eyes of Hate. ‘Well?’ said Tobias flatly. ‘What is your business in Crescentium?’
Altor hesitated, then drew from his haversack the hilt and jewelled pommel. ‘These are fragments of the Sword of Life. The third and final part, the blade, may be somewhere in the Crusader territory or the neighbouring Ta’ashim lands—‘
Tobias snorted. ‘The Ta’ashim states border our own. In that sense they are neighbours, but in no other.’
‘Quite so.’ Altor went on: ‘The blade must be found and the sword restored, as it is the only weapon that can prevail against the Five. They are five wizards—the last of the True Magi—who fled the destruction of the city of Spyte to become comets. In that form they have heard the music of heaven and their powers have grown unchecked. If the Sword of Life is not made whole, the Five will return to claim this world as their own.’
Tobias rubbed his jaw. ‘God has sent you to me for guidance,’ he said. ‘For, now I think on it, I have heard some story of this Sword of Life, and in the legends I have heard it has its dark twin: the Sword of Death. Find the one and you will find the other, is my guess. To learn more you must seek out Ormrud, a physician of Quadrille. He is the most learned man in Outremer.’
‘Excellent. Where will I find him?’
‘Here in Crescentium. His house is beside a fountain of black marble at the eastern end of the street of tanners.’
After breakfast, Altor went out into the street to keep his rendezvous with Caelestis. There was no sign of him. Turning to a Capellar on sentry duty at the gate, Altor said, ‘I was supposed to meet my friend here. If he shows up, will you tell him I have gone to the house of the physician Ormrud?’
The knight’s face hardly changed under the stern prow of his helmet. ‘What does your friend look like?’
‘The man you are describing was arrested last night,’ said the Capellar. ‘By now he has been sent to meet his Maker.’
Four:
The Healer
Much to Caelestis’s disgust he had had no choice but to spend the night sleeping in one of the ramshackle slums along the side-streets leading to the bazaar, surrounded by lice ridden beggars and stray dogs.
Even fitful slumber fled with the first light of day. Caelestis lay there glumly, eyes still closed, as the sun poked intrusive beams in through the windows.
He listened to the sounds outside as the new day began: the street-traders’ shouts, the jangle of church bells and the caterwauling of Ta’ashim priests, the indignant braying of donkeys as they were driven to market. Every noise stabbed through Caelestis’s brain. He had a splitting headache and his eyes felt like hot grit.
Beside him, the first action of the beggars as they woke was to crawl out into the street and accost passers-by with pleas for food and money. ‘Give alms!’ Caelestis heard the cry from outside. ‘Give alms, or I am sure to starve before the dawning of a new day.’
‘Get out of the way, you son of a camel,’ replied a voice of fastidious disdain. ‘I must get my wares to market or I will lose my investment and become as vile a pauper as yourself.’
To this discouraging tirade, the beggar replied, ‘Give alms and increase your merit in the sight of God. Then you will prosper and grow rich.’
The patter did not strike Caelestis as all that convincing, but it obviously worked because he heard a grudging sigh and the clink of a copper coin landing in the beggar’s plate.
Caelestis realized that his clothes were crawling with fleas. Grimacing, he got up and lurched out into the street, where he was immediately sick into the gutter.
One of the beggars looked up in irritation. ‘Mongrel! Your vomit will drive away my clientele.’
Caelestis ignored him. Miserably wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he squinted through the hot sunshine to where a fountain stood at the end of the street. The cool clear water splashed invitingly across the black marble rim. Caelestis hurried across and dipped his head into the fountain, gasping at the sudden cold.
‘Get away from there, you,’ snapped a woman as she passed. ‘You’ll pollute the drinking water.’
Too dejected to think of a suitable insult, Caelestis merely hissed at her. If he had still had the ring he would have called out the Faltyn and promised it ten years of his life—whatever it asked for. Nothing could be worse than another instant in the slums of Crescentium.
Nearby stood a queue of lepers and cripples outside a narrow white-walled house. It looked very clean for a building right in the heart of the poor quarter. At first Caelestis refused to acknowledge anything that did not relate to his own misery, but at last curiosity got the better of him. Approaching a rug-seller on his way to market, he asked whose house it was.
‘Ormrud the healer,’ replied the rug-seller.
‘A healer? God be praised.’
The rug-seller took this as an invitation to commence a story. ‘He is said to be the wisest man in Outremer. But what is wisdom? I myself have seen—‘
Caelestis was in no mood to suffer another tortuous fable. Shoving the man aside, he set off across the street with renewed hope. Even at this early hour the rising heat and dust were becoming stifling, and he was grateful for the cool shade of the entrance hall.
A young Ta’ashim woman came running up as he entered and pointed to the queue of sick people. ‘These others were here before you,’ she protested.
Caelestis was about to pretend that he could not understand her accent when a thin sandy-haired man emerged from a curtained vestibule at the back of the hall. ‘That’s right,’ said the man. ‘Wealth and social rank buy no privileges here.’
‘Wealth?’ spluttered Caelestis. ‘Social rank? I tell you truly, I am the poorest wretch in all Crescentium and therefore I deserve—‘
A tall broad-shouldered figure emerged from the vestibule behind the physician. Still half dazzled by sleepiness and the bright sunshine outside, Caelestis blinked at him. ‘Altor..?’
‘Caelestis!’ cried Altor in delight. ‘I feared you were dead.’
Caelestis fingered his dirty tunic and winced. ‘Worse,’ he said. ‘I had to sleep rough.’
Altor roared with laughter. ‘That’s typical of Caelestis,’ he said to Ormrud. ‘Nothing upsets him as much as squalor.’
‘In that case please go with Dhali,’ said Ormrud, indicating the Ta’ashim girl. ‘A hot bath and a good breakfast will make a new man of you, my friend.’
As Caelestis allowed himself to be led away, Altor drew Ormrud to one side. ‘Before you return to your patients, there is something I must show you.’
He drew the sword hilt out of his haversack. In the shadowy hallway, the jewel-encrusted metal glittered like a handful of starlight.
‘The Sword of Life!’ gasped Ormrud. ‘I thought it had been destroyed long ago.’
Altor drew it further out of the sack, then hastily tucked it away as an inquisitive patient drew near. ‘The blade is still missing, as you see.’
Ormrud nodded. ‘Perhaps I can help.’ He ushered Altor back into the vestibule that served as his consulting room, drawing the curtain across behind them. ‘There are those who would like the blade to remain undiscovered.’
‘I know, but surely you don’t think anyone here..?’
Ormrud shrugged. ‘The precaution of talking in private might be unnecessary—but why take chances? Now, let me tell you what I know. In the very earliest days of the world, as you may have heard it told, there was no way for the living and the dead to tell one another apart. Between Life and Death there was not the absolute line that exists today, but only an inconstant blur. Eventually this became intolerable—a widow does not wish to meet her dead husband while out walking with her new love, nor could anyone say who should be head of each family. So the archangel Abdiel was sent down to earth and cut apart the place that was for the living from the place for the dead. He created two icons of this parting, two great swords of power. One of these, the Sword of Death, remained beneath the world until brought back from Hades by the paladin Ganelon—‘
‘And the other,’ said Altor, ‘was the Sword of Life.’
‘Quite so. It is said Ganelon hoped to use the Sword of Death against the very forces of the Devil, but was corrupted himself by the intensity of its baleful power. As to that I cannot say—I do not think that life and death are quite the same as good and evil. In any case, the Sword of Death was lost somewhere in the country that is now Marazid.’
Altor nodded impatiently. ‘Yes, but it is the Sword of Life that interests me.’
‘The fates of the two are inextricably linked. Yours, which contained within its blade the essence of life, was broken into three pieces by Yaunt the Seven-Eyed, a fiend from the frozen desert wastes of Krarth. I had believed even the fragments themselves were destroyed—or lost forever beneath the ruins of Spyte. It seems that is not the case.’
Altor frowned. ‘But I thought the Sword of Life was created to destroy the last of the True Magi. Wasn’t it?’
‘Well, not according to the version of the myth I’ve just told you. But remember that truth has more than one shape and speaks with more than one tongue.’
‘But can it destroy them?’
‘Of course,’ said Ormrud, nodding. ‘Blue Moon, Red Death and their ilk—they are of the undead. I mean this not in the trite sense of the term, as applied to clattering skeletons and zombies that shamble round lonely graveyards at night. Some great entities linger in this world without ever tasting death, you see. Their death is a kind of apotheosis—they become undead. The Five belong to this category, and the Sword of Life will sever their link with our reality and send them into the void.’
‘If we can find the blade,’ said Al
tor.
Some time later the three of them sat in Ormrud’s private chambers. Caelestis did indeed feel a lot better now that he had bathed and Dhali had washed and mended his clothes. A nap had cured his headache, and after a wholesome meal he was no longer convinced that he was dying of food poisoning. As he nibbled at a bunch of grapes, he listened to Altor explain everything Ormrud had told him.
‘So far so good,’ said Caelestis. ‘All we need to know now is: where exactly in Marazid is the blade located?’
‘Oraba’s prophecy mentioned a city beside a bay,’ said Altor. ‘Hakbad, perhaps?’
Caelestis spat out a pip. ‘Or Kiri Umoor, or Distan, or maybe half a dozen other places.’
‘Well, we have to start somewhere,’ snorted Altor.
Ormrud held up his hands. ‘My friends, I can only suggest that you go to see a man called Susurrien. He is an Opalarian prince, but is now exiled from the Ta’ashim lands—and with good reason; from what I hear he is as sinister as a snake. However, he is known to desire the Sword of Death for himself, and hence he may be able to give you some information about the Sword of Life.’
Caelestis jumped to his feet. Now that he was rested, he was impatient to be off. ‘And where can we find this Prince Susurrien?’
‘He lives here in Crescentium. But, my friends, be careful. There is a Ta’ashim proverb: Even the lion and the serpent will lie in ambush together when both are hungry for the flesh of the gazelle. If you two are lions, Sussurien is assuredly the most venomous of serpents. He may agree to assist you, but you must never trust him.’
After getting directions they thanked Ormrud and set out across the city, keeping to the side streets where there was less chance of running into a militia patrol.
‘Caelestis, I think you’re being unduly cautious,’ said Altor as his friend ducked out of sight inside a fruit-seller’s booth to avoid being seen by a magistrate lounging in a sedan chair.
‘Oh yes?’ Caelestis craned his neck around the awning of the booth to watch the sedan chair disappear along the street. ‘You weren’t the one who had to spend the night in jail. And for a crime I didn’t commit!’
