So much he saw along one stair, from one gate; but in that side of the wall alone there were a dozen such gates, and as many stairs, and around many of those the buildings clustered more thickly. Elof could not take in a half of what he saw there; time was not given him. He jumped at the crash of the gangway upon the quay, and the roar of the sergeant's voice, mustering the guard.
The soldiers came clattering along to form up on the deck, and suddenly, after two weeks of lazy informality, they had the look of guards once again. The sergeant clumped up the gangplank to exchange words with the sentries on the quay. Elof, without turning, spoke to Trygkar. "Shipmaster?"
"Aye, Mastersmith?"
"You're of northern stock, and the seas are the northerner's birthright. Are you happy, sailing all your life upon river and channel?"
"Happy enough, lad," said Trygkar guardedly. "We never reckoned much on the sea, not knowing who or what lay beyond it. Anyhow, birthright or no, the maneaters stand in the way of it now, as of so much else. And not only them."
The sentries, looking agitated, were summoning somebody from the building at the rear. Elof bit his lip; over the last few days they had told the old shipman much of their voyages, and he had seemed enthralled and envious. But there had never till now been a free moment when they might safely sound him out; and there was little time for persuasions. "Search your heart, shipmaster. Is there not, deep down, the least longing to make one great voyage, unbarred by bank or boundary, to sail like the sky-wanderers, free upon the winds of the world? To find a fair land and a free kindred, and help against our common foe?"
"Not in this here cog, master…" Trygkar grinned as he might at an over-enthusiastic boy, but Elof had seen his light green eyes shift suddenly, seem to gaze at a far grey horizon.
"And if I found you a fit craft?" hissed Elof.
"A seaworthy craft? Couldn't get one past the Gate, and there's no seacoast free to build on; Where'd you ever get such a craft?"
"From the Ekwesh, of course!" said Elof impatiently. "If you could find a crew?"
"From the…" repeated Trygkar, and began to laugh, softly. "By Saithana's belly!" He shook his head in happy disbelief.
"Then you'll come?"
The sergeant was saluting two plump men who came striding up from the rear, evidently officials of some kind; they were quizzing him rapidly, and darting surprised glances at the travellers.
Trygkar fell silent suddenly, pressing his lips till his small moustaches bristled. "By the Horns of the Bull, with such lads as you twain I just might! There'd be no problem about a crew, not among us old northerners! I might! But when?"
"Who can tell? so much depends on what we may do here… upon your lord's word, among other things. A day, a year…"
"So that it take not ten years… Past that I might be too old. Get you word to me when you know - whatever my lord may say! Then we'll see!" There was sudden fire in his soft tones. "Lads, if it's at all possible I'm your man! Daft I may be, but I'd not miss this last endeavour if I did have to wait ten years!"
"Maybe it will not take so long," said Elof quietly. "But however long, I shall still call upon you, shipmaster!"
"Do you so) Fare you well - Mastersmith! And my thanks!" The officials were nodding vigorously now, and abruptly one turned on his heel and stalked away; the sergeant turned back down the gangway as swiftly, and tossed Elof and Roc a crisp salute that was as good as a command.
"By your leave, gentles…"
One of the sailors sought to take up the bag that was all their gear, but Elof forestalled him, graciously enough, and let the sergeant usher them over the gangway, with the escort clumping behind. He heard a sharp intake of breath from Roc as he set foot upon the deep-worn stone of the wharf; at long last his feet rested upon his ancestral land.
But they were not to remain there long. The sergeant led them towards a great gibbet crane at the rear of the wharf, and ushered them up short steps onto the dais beneath, a broad square of stone wail supporting a raised floor of wood with a low railing around it. It looked so like a hanging gibbet that Elof found himself uneasily scanning the boards for signs of a trap; he told himself angrily that he was growing foolish, and turned to the doors at the back. Then he recoiled in alarm, suspecting he knew not what snare, as he felt something snap taut underfoot, and the dais judder. "Do yer take hold, sirs!" warned the sergeant, himself seizing one of the rails. Roc swore in horror as with an alarming squeal the whole contraption, themselves, their escort and all, was plucked bodily from the ground.
The doors swung open before it, and Roc swore again. A long ramp of smooth stone stretched out before them, rising straight and high among the buildings above, and running the length of it two deep parallel slots. Through them ran two heavy cables, singing with tension; looking back, he saw the same two running down into the empty space beneath the dais and into a mass of pulleys and wheels. They were standing upon some kind of winched platform, set on an angled carriage to keep it level as it was hauled up the ramp; he peered over the edge to see the small iron wheels running in the slots, and was all but tipped over the side by a sudden jerk. "Have a care, sirs!" the sergeant warned. "Faster and easier than the thousand stairs, is this, but no smooth ride. Stretchin' in the cable, they always say - though like as not it's their own idle hands shirkin' the task!"
"Hands? You mean it's men hauling this weight up?"
"By a capstan, to be sure," shrugged the sergeant. "Expensive by paid labour, but there's never a shortage of sturdy rogues from the jails, even if they need their backs tickled now and again!" Elof hoped he had not noticed Roc's tactless grimace; evidently they were thinking the same thing. Water power would manage the job better and cheaper, even if the cost of building was higher; either Kerys had lost its once, famed skills in that art, or it no longer cared. He did not like to think which. At any rate they had not learned the art of drawing and plaiting wires of steel into strong - and unstretching - cables, that was clear. They were rising high now, cresting the rooftops; the platform was catching the breeze and beginning to sway. After the first shock Elof and Roc, not long from the mastheads, hardly minded the sensation, but the soldiers clung grimly to the stanchions, and even the sergeant was a shade paler beneath his bricky colour.
Already they were over the outer walls of the Strength, and passing among its host of roofs. It startled Elof to see so great a mass of stone reaching such a height; it seemed to war with all he knew of the mason's art, this tower thrust at the heavens. But as they passed the terrace and gallery, square and street shelved out from the slopes, he began to appreciate the vast skill of its shaping. Grand and imposing as was the Strength from a distance, at closer sight it seemed far less substantial, a thing of lightness and air and outlines rather than of bulk, of arches that soared like an arrow's flight made stone, heavy buttresses that surged like carven waves, lighter flying buttresses that fountained up in sprays or rose in fluttering excitement like a flock of birds startled from a cornfield. They tapered into a surprising thinness, those buttresses, both for lightness and exaggerated perspective, till with the carven foliage that adorned them they stood out against the sky like bent saplings. Roofs of vast height were narrowed, built in against the slope on their hidden side; many of the spires and towers that seemed so solid proved to be chiefly openworks of pillars and carving, intricate and delicate.
But as the platform neared the top of its run and he came among the buildings, he saw that all this too was a work of skill, and not just a vainglorious facade. Had the Strength actually been as it was made to seem from afar, it would have been ugly and intolerable close to; the streets through which their escort hurried them would have been overshadowed valleys, deep and dank, the noble arches and doorways around dark cavern-mouths - a gloom-ridden place, horribly airless and oppressive. Instead their impressions were of brightness and space captured within the lightest possible cage of stone. Enormous windows in walls reduced their weight, and left pillars within to uphold the
roof; but fair works of coloured glass filled them, and the rays of the sinking sun shining through them and playing over street and wall turned the Strength into a shimmering hoard of jewels. From any reasonable angle or distance the whole vast edifice had been contrived to seem fair and consistent in itself, both its several buildings and the greater whole they made up. Some strength, perhaps, had been sacrificed; it might not have with-stood the rigours of endless northern winters, so much closer to the winds and the snows off the Ice. But then it was built for the south; and it was yet a place that great armies would break against, and lesser ones flee at the very sight of, and nonetheless a dwelling fit for all the arts of peace.
Winding their way along the walls they came at last to yet another such platform and ramp. As it lifted under them Roc shaded his eyes against the dust glare, and, looking out over the hazy magnificence of the view, he sighed in deep content. "Well, whatever else there may be, this is all the legends tell of this realm, and more. Can't you see here all the roots of Kerbryhaine, of Morvan and Morvanhal that now is, aye, even of your own little towns in Nordeney with their painted slats -see, in yonder patterned window, the same style? It's well named; the strength of our folk it is, sure enough."
Elof nodded slowly. "It is; for it embodies so much wisdom and skill and sheer cunning of mind and hand. This must have been a fair size of hill once, but what can you see of that? Nothing. As if they'd melted it down and moulded it anew from the hot blood of the earth. But there is something strange about some of these buildings - sergeant!"
"By yer leave, gentles?"
"Those buildings down below there - yes, that one… and that. Look down through those huge windows and what d' you see? Exactly. Nothing. They're spic-and-span, they've some of them painted walls or hangings, but scarce a stick of furnishing in them all."
"Small wonder there, sir; them as dwells there are well content with little. They're tombs, those are."
" What? Every one?"
"More'n a few, sir, aye. For in what better hallow should the kings who built the Strength wish to lie, in halls befitting their glory and power? All their lives they'd be working on them, as splendid as they could make'em. 'Twas always intended thus, as I've heard, sirs, hallow and palace and place of strength together, a living show of their power. As the old saying goes, The Strength of Kerys is its mighty tombs."
"So long as it lies not buried with them!" said Roc quietly, as the sergeant turned away once more. "What a pile of wealth to heap upon your own dry bones?"
Elof nodded. "What needs the greatest of men more than two strides of ground, if only he leaves a worthy name? And all the show in the world cannot enhance that. Remember Dorghael Arhlannen, how simple it was, and yet the feeling there?"
"Aye, that I do! These gilded boneyards fare ill by comparison - whup, here's the end of our ride!"
There came more streets, more looming buildings, and another ramp; this one was shorter, and ended before tall gates in an encircling wall; upon their dark wood the image of the bull's head with gilt sun between its horns stood out in weathered relief. The platform creaked and juddered to a halt, and Elof thought he heard, echoing up from the slots below the winding gear, the distant groans and gasps of exhausted men. Then the sergeant bellowed at his shaken men, and they formed up around Elof and Roc more closely than before. As the gates ground open the travellers saw they had at last reached the brow of that carven hill, for against the sky of evening, taller even than Elof had guessed, arose its mighty crown, the Horns of the Bull that held the sun.
Cobbles rang beneath their feet as they were marched briskly off the platform and across a wide square. Elof slipped and stumbled, for he was gazing at the towers. They looked subtly newer than the others at their feet, and their resemblance to horns was no accident; their outermost faces were flat and hard-edged, but the inner faces were shaped carefully into a graceful continuous curve, as across the brows of a gigantic bull. Below them, at the level where eyes would be, stood two round drum turrets, many stories high and faced with graceful colonnades that flanked the front wall of a palace, a greater than any on the hill below, and a fairer. Midway in that wall a tall arched doorway opened, and above it a wide balcony whose canopy was in the form of a high helm crowned with a circlet The helm shone silver, the circlet with the lustre of fine gold and the sunlit fire of encrusted gems. To Elof that crown, like the overwhelming towers, seemed more vulgar than splendid; it hardly seemed to belong against the calm strength of the palace, almost as if it had been added later - recently, even. Then he frowned with sudden understanding. That balcony fell midway between the towers. When they captured the sun, it must seem to stand above that balcony, that helm like a crest; and how would a man seem who chose to appear beneath it then?
There were sentries waiting within that arch; a great many sentries, their mail brightly gilded, the shafts of their long spears a gaudy scarlet, as were the bobbing horsetail crests on their helms. One among them bore a surcoat of black worked with the crest of the sun between horns in heavy gold thread. He stepped forward unhurriedly, without surprise, a slender man with greying blond hair, and the sergeant saluted with great deference. Somehow, swift as the ascent had been, some message had passed more swiftly, and they were awaited. The man in the surcoat inclined his head politely to Elof. "I am Irouac, officer of the King. He will hear you at once, gentle sir, if you will come this way; but your sword, I fear… Not in his presence; no-one may, save his guard alone. I myself will bear it beside you; and I must search your burden also."
Elof s teeth clenched and his fist closed unbidden on Gorthawer's silvered hilt, but he knew he would achieve nothing by resisting; with the best grace he could summon, he unslung the bag from his shoulder and passed it to Irouac, then slowly drew the sword from his belt. The officer's eyes widened as he touched its edge, and he held it gingerly by its quillions. "A noble weapon, this! I understand you are a smith; of your own forging?"
"Of my re-forging. It was forged in the deeps of time, by a hand unknown to me. It came to me… as an inheritance."
"A rich one, then! It is fit to be a legendary blade of old, such as Belan that was Glaiscav's, or Talathar; that would fit its colour."
Elof smiled; his lore was being gently tested. "It would indeed, talath being a word in the Old Northern for the Dark; the Coming Dark. But whose blade might that have been?"
Irouac waved them in before him; the red-crested sentries closed in behind him, leaving their escort unceremoniously out on the steps. "This way, good sirs! The king will receive you in the main hall, only within these doors ahead - Open, there! Whose sword, sir? Why, I hoped rather that you might know that, for the last that is told of that hero was of his setting out oversea to seek the land you come from; Talathar was lord Vayde's sword, Vayde the Great. Was he simply lost at sea, then? Did he never come among you, and find the hero's death foredoomed to him, after all? Well, well. And has this blade a name?"
Elof swallowed in a dry throat; he was aware of Roc beside him, staring, speechless. "Vayde did come among us, sir," he answered with an effort. "I am thought by many, though by what ways I know not, to be distantly of his kind. And the blade has a name, sir, of my bestowing; it is Gorthawer. Know you what that means?"
"Why yes," said Irouac. "It means…" Then he hesitated, licked his lips, almost let fall the blade he held. "It means Nightfall."
The officer hurried on. Elof followed after him, but he hardly noticed the tall arches of the outer hallway, windowless and gloomy, nor its rich murals, dimmed now in shadow save where the declining sun shone down through the windows of the gallery above and shed a splash of sudden colour on the walls. He was elsewhere, wandering lonely over infinite grey marshes. Under cool heavy skies, with the smell of salt in his nostrils and the sharp black rushes rattling like an enemy's spears, the grass-flowers sprinkled like a spray of fresh blood; he was seeing the mass of bodies the bog had brought up in the spring thaw, cloven corpses from a thousand years past, some th
irty or more, and one huge frame whole, still grasping a black-bladed sword. A sudden pang, and he was back at Morvannec as it then was, on that terrible, glorious night when a free people had bought their freedom anew in blood, when the light had first shone on that great statue of the Watcher, and shown him a face so like and so unlike his own. Vayde's face, Vayde's blade - and Korentyn who had known Vayde had seemed to recognise his very voice… Yet he was not Vayde; whatever twists and turns the River had taken, whatever the unknown parentage he cared for so little, he had never been more sure of that. Vayde was reputed a giant in stature, and so the Watcher's image showed him, Vayde, by such chronicles as Elof had bothered to consult, was a warlord, a schemer, a man of unpredictable and frightening temperament as his wrath-stamped countenance suggested, wielder of a cold and deadly justice; worse, he was certainly a necromancer who trafficked with strange forces in his strange tower, who had prolonged his life to twice that of ordinary men, and only incidentally a skilled smith. He had served good kings and good causes with ruthless loyalty, and sometimes by fell deeds they would never have countenanced themselves. What could Elof find of himself in all that? Little or nothing. If he was honest with himself, a certain ruthlessness; but not half so much. No word of love, and what had driven Elof most of his life save the quest for love? If Vayde had ever loved, no chronicler had thought to mention it. Uncertain tales were told of his eventual end, but all agreed it had come about in the turmoil when Kerbryhaine drove out the refugees from Morvan, whom he favoured. It could well have been in the Marshlands, then…
He came back to himself with a start. Roc had jogged his elbow. Glancing quickly around, he saw that they stood now on the threshold of a long hall, stone-flagged and shadowy, save for a window at the far end, through which the sky of evening showed ruddy and fierce. The buzz of voices hung heavy on the darkening air. Torches and lanterns were being lit along the walls, and by their flicker they revealed a considerable company there, seated around long tables, strolling about or simply lounging, kicking their heels against the rush matting that covered most of the flags. "Not here yet!" breathed Irouac thankfully. "Come along! Come! Not to be kept waiting!" He led them swiftly down the middle of the hall, where lines of pillars marked out a central aisle, lit very brightly by lamps before curved mirrors of metal cunningly worked into the pillars; they revealed the flagstones worn almost into grooves beneath the mats. Irouac halted them some twenty paces from a wide dais of white, not very high but surmounted with an immense carven chair of oak and some kind of yellowed ivory, clearly ancient work. Its back reached twice the height of a man, with a heavy canopy of ivory above it shaped to seem like cloth blowing in a wind, cloth intricately inlaid with gold, and each arm was a small table of ivory, their carven edges worn almost smooth by the rubbing of robed sleeves. There were images in the carvings that looked like scenes from a tale, and he was just striving to make them out, when the crowds at the side rustled into sudden life, there was a single clear note upon a trumpet, and a voice called out "Clear the way! Stand aside, all men! He comes, the Lord Nithaid of the Lonuen and of the Ysmerien comes, High King of the Land of Kerys and all its folk! The King comes]"
The Hammer of the Sun Page 23
