Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 4 Darkbridge

by Adam Corby

  ‘And will you, lord, be the judge of this?’

  For a moment the two men’s eyes held each other; but in the end it was Nam-Rog who let fall his gaze.

  ‘No, not I,’ Ara-Karn said calmly. ‘Choose out ten slaves from among my Vapionil and let them judge. Dress them in garb fit for princes, and put upon each man’s head a band of gold set with jade, and in his hand an ivory rule. You shall see I am no mean play-giver.’ As there was no word for ‘play’ in the tongue of the tribes, he used a Bordo term, but his words were understood.

  Nam-Rog nodded. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘in this as in all other things, your will shall be law.’

  The King heard the lie, and a gleam as of humor passed through his eyes; yet it was gone too swiftly to be surely known. ‘Nam-Rog of the Durbars, you will find a place in my court yet. When this spectacle is done, you chieftains shall ready yourselves to be guided by the ambassadors to their several cities. Take what men you like, and choose who shall have which city. One half of this tribute you may keep or distribute as you please; the other send North with the shipwrights to Arpane on the Sea. Now, what business is left?’

  Nam-Rog was silent, but a lesser chief said, ‘Lord, we have gathered the servants and folk we found still living in the Citadel. What is your will for them?’

  ‘Let them be brought.’

  The two warriors lifted the still-twitching Dornan Ural and carried him down among the tents. It was doubtful whether he knew even then what lay in hand for him, any more than a child will who plays beside a serpent. Soon other warriors appeared, driving before them the captives from the Citadel. Most were people of the City who had taken refuge in the Citadel when Tarendahardil fell, but some were of the Palace.

  The Conqueror walked before them where they knelt, the last of his children. None knew him. This was not Father Ennius but the barbarian, Ara-Karn.

  At length he drew to a halt.

  Before him knelt a tall woman whose hair was a brilliant mixture of gold and vermilion. She was the loveliest there, more beautiful even than the companions of the chieftains: a chara of hetairai. It seemed a miracle that she should have emerged unscathed and unclaimed from the taking of the Citadel.

  She bent her shoulders forward somewhat now, and glanced up to the Warlord briefly from beneath her dark lashes. Thereafter she held her gaze on the ground between his feet.

  ‘Bid the others depart, give them freedom,’ Ara-Karn said. The warriors gestured with their spears, and the hundreds of men and women rose and left. The Warlord, ignoring them, held his gaze upon the woman. At length, he bade her speak her name.

  In a voice low and musical she responded, ‘O Great One, I am called Kiva.’

  ‘I asked you not what you were called,’ he rejoined coldly, ‘but rather what your name is.’

  ‘Mirso Lengan, O King.’

  ‘Yes. I know you. Are you not the woman kept by Berowne and others of the guardsmen?’

  ‘Indeed lord, I was that one,’ she answered sadly.

  ‘Your hair alone would set you apart from a thousand, Mirso Lengan. I have never beheld its like. Tell me, is it all of that same hue?’

  ‘No, your majesty. I have it dyed. The dyes of the Vapionil do not treat all hairs equally.’

  ‘False even in this. All the same, a pretty wench. Will you serve me in my chamber?’

  ‘Your majesty, to be the companion of one so high was an honor beyond even the most extravagant dreams of my girlhood. Yet surely your majesty has many women more lovely and pleasing than I.’

  ‘Woman, who said that you should be my companion? I only asked if you would serve.’

  ‘It was ever taught me, your majesty, that great men must bear burdens so heavy that their servants should only cheer them. I greatly fear I should fail in this, and be of little use to you.’

  ‘Do you grieve the deaths of men who paid you? Or do you merely sorrow at the loss of your former state, and say these things in the spirit of good bargaining?’

  A ripple passed over Kiva’s slender shoulders, like a flaw upon a still lake. No other sign of her feeling was apparent, yet when she spoke, then bitterness and pain broke through her tones, a thing not even such an artist of herself could mask.

  ‘Great King, Merciful King,’ she said, ‘it may please your humor, now that all the lands where men dwell are subject to you and the fate of the races hangs from your lips, to have sport with the fallen and mock their losses. More than once did I plead with Captain Berowne and his lieutenant Ullerath, the only survivors among my men after Egland Downs, to take their possessions as I would take mine, and flee away with me to some island in the Southern Ocean where we would have peace together. But they remained here out of duty and obedience to their sovereign, she who is now your prisoner. So I too have fallen into the hands of your men, and you may call me whore and jest with me, and no man still living will call you wrong. But I, a poor bereaved woman who have known no other art or calling than the pleasing and happiness of men I found I liked – I say this ill becomes your majesty or the claims of greatness they make of you.’

  Ara-Karn looked upon the kneeling woman. She knelt very still, so that not even her bosom moved. At last he spoke.

  ‘Perhaps you will find this jest more amusing,’ he said. ‘How would you like it if I made you chieftainess of Orn?’

  She gazed up at him wonderingly.

  He explained: ‘No Orn warriors survive. They are but women and children now, in Orn in the far North. You, as their leader, would receive the Orn’s share of tribute from the two piles, as well as what remains in the tents of Gorn-Tal, the last chief of that tribe. The other chieftains will lend you warriors. In addition, it pleases me to give you the rule of Tezmon, since Gen-Karn and his Orns conquered that city for me. Well? What have you to say to that?’

  She did not alter her expression in the slightest. ‘Very well, your majesty. This is a great honor your majesty does me.’ There was no gratitude in her tone.

  ‘Now you may join your fellow chiefs in the circle,’ he said, smiling coldly. With his hand he helped her rise. In curt words he explained what he had done to the chieftains. They took his decision silently, without objecting that he had taken on himself what remained the right of the Orn tribesfolk.

  ‘There is one further matter, a small thing,’ the Warlord announced. ‘Doubtless there has been some talk in the camp concerning my plans for the former Empress, Allissál of the Bordakasha.’

  ‘A good deal of it,’ the Durbar chief replied. ‘It was rumored that you intended to offer the last of Elna’s kin in sacrifice to dark God as soon as the mourning was complete. But others claim that was not the way of Ara-Karn, and that you intend rather to give her to that man who won most honor during the siege of the stronghold. This pleased the followers of Roguil Arn.

  ‘But Erion Sedeg, who may know best the heart of Ara-Karn, says that as the full measure of your contempt for your fallen enemy, you will offer her to all the men in the camp who wish to have her, from chieftain to warrior to mercenary, even to the slaves, one man after another for so long as she might live. Though none have seen her, all dwell upon the legends of her beauty and burn to see her bared before us. The men did not like the first rumor much, and liked the last one best of all.’

  ‘I had sent for her,’ the King of Kings acknowledged. ‘I would have displayed her to you this waking. She has escaped and fled, however. Every chieftain will therefore send me the finest trackers of his tribes, and they will go in search of this woman through all the cities of the world. They will convey her to me – unharmed, and with all honor. When she is returned to me, then I will wed her before the Couple and make her my Queen over you all.’

  He dismissed them then, mindless of their gaping mouths, and returned alone into the black tent.

  * * *

  There the chill of autumn winds did not reach, nor Her light nor Her heat. There no lamps or candles burned. Folds of darkness seemed to compress the heavy air. The chambers
of the tent crowded with couches of silk and skin, chests of treasure, tables, rugs and pelts and cushions, ceremonial tripods, and an ornate heavy throne from one of the conquered cities of the South. All these, upon a train of ponies and ox-carts thirty riders long, the warriors of Ara-Karn had brought with them through the many lands of their long war-faring, dutifully erecting it first of all whenever a camp was made, though none would occupy it. Now, at long last, its owner had returned. But it had been a year and a half since he had played at being Ara-Karn.

  From one tripod the solitary man drew an ember with a pair of tongs, and lighted a lamp. From a rack he pulled a scroll and spread it on the table before him. He began to read the lists he had ordered prepared, of the materials needed to build ships and carry an army of men a long ways overseas. Over the storm-wrought seas of the Ocean of Death, across to the far band of dusk on the other side of the world, where only, as all men knew, ghosts and evil demons dwelled.

  He was half way down the third list when he paused. Though the walls of silk and linen and bandarskins were an effective barrier against the common murmur of the camp, overhead gaps had been cut in the tent roof, so cleverly designed that they allowed no light in – only letting out the smoky, scented inner air. Through them now entered a series of distant, wailing shrieks. They seemed not sounds but narrow wounds torn in the flesh of air.

  The punishment of the traitor had begun. He had rendered her his final service.

  ‘And I wonder,’ he murmured, ‘whether your precious secret might have led me to her? Perhaps. But then you see my poor old fool, I would have been forced to spare your life after all. The honor of my men would have demanded it – and I cannot outrage them fully. I still have need of them.’

  He cast his eyes down again, and saw that other scroll, the one his Vapionil had brought to him. It was the first scroll of the ancient Epic of the Bordakasha, which recounted the feats and lives of the first five Emperors of the South. In the space beside the title were written, in that lovely, familiar script, her final words to him:

  You may keep your vengeance and your destiny. But leave me mine.

  He had not seen her since he had beheld her naked in her bed in her dimchamber. But someone must have informed her that he meant to send for her this waking. She had planned well.

  Ara-Karn nodded. The thin shrieks scarred the air.

  They were a little comfort.

  From behind him there arose a soft furtive sound. He turned, and beheld the foremost of his Vapionil slaves, a man with the slyly smiling face of a professional assassin. For a moment the two men regarded each other, as the distant cries of dying Dornan Ural pierced the tent. Then the King of half the world pointed to the scroll and said two words:

  ‘Find her.’

  IX

  Freedom

  BUT ALLISSáL HAD GONE down to a land not even the cunning of the Vapionil could discover.

  Even as the tribes were bidding the final farewell to their dead, she emerged into the light outside the Citadel. Concealed in a voluminous hooded traveling-cloak, the former Empress of half the world stood in the shelter of a broken pillar on the steps of the Hall of Kings.

  For the first time she saw the ruin of her city close at hand: and she, no less than Dornan Ural, felt the emptiness of the loss. A few dark clouds rolled across the milky greenish sky, and beneath them gerlins wheeled. She remembered when she had first come to this place, and the crowds had cheered her in the rituals. She had been a girl then, and this city had been her Paradise.

  She leaned against the broken pillar. An ungainly cart went by in the square, pulled by broken beasts guided by dirty men in rags. The cart left a stench in its wake: it was full of corpses. For three weeks this had been going on, and was yet undone. One cart more; a few bodies more.

  When she had awakened from her bad dream, Allissál called her maidens to her side. She kept them in silence, forbidding them food and drink. Two she sent down to discover what was happening, but they found the doors of the White Tower barred and sealed. By then it was too late, and the ghastly feast had reached its end. The maidens cried in fear and misery; Allissál, looking down from her dimchamber window upon the corpse-strewn earth, only trembled.

  What he had done, not even the worst barbarian would have done. He was, then, capable of any act, no matter how vile, no matter how brutal, no matter who fell victim to it – and she had answered him when he had called her by a dead woman’s name, and she had tasted joy in his body. She looked beyond the corpses of those who had worshiped him and called him father, to the dark grove. But already the many barbarians were riding into the grounds. She and her maidens were trapped there, the prisoners of a madman.

  From that waking, her only thought had been of thwarting him. She waited and planned, and her women learned much from the Vapionil and mercenaries set to watch them.

  Now in the shelter of the broken pillar she looked away brightward and saw the long voyaging procession of tribes returning to the camp. It was the first hour of the longsleep, and she felt tired. She wondered if he could sleep, after all he had done. Then she heard a nervous whinny and recognized the call of Kis Halá. Silent as the shadow of God, she passed below, to the alleyway between The Hall of Kings and the tombs of her ancestors in great stone barges.

  Emsha was attempting to soothe the frightened animal. Allissál quieted the mare with a caress.

  ‘Oh – majesty!’ Emsha said. ‘You startled me, I did not know what … but what is this? Do you wear his garb now?’

  Allissál was wearing a dark green hooded hunting-cloak from Gerso, fastened with a blood-red opal brooch-pin cut in the likeness of a serpent’s egg. She had found it where he had left it, in the dirt beside the stone blood-basin over the pit that was the mouth of the secret way.

  ‘It is a goodly cloak,’ she murmured, kissing the mare’s broad warm muzzle, delighting in the eager affection of the great animal. ‘Was there any difficulty in passing the Gates?’

  ‘No, majesty. I did even as you said, and told the guards I brought the horse to him. They did not question me after I had mentioned that name.’

  ‘Have you brought the basket with the food?’

  ‘Yes, there upon the saddle. Majesty, what—’

  ‘Emsha, call me “majesty” no more. The Divine Queen is gone.’ She climbed into the saddle. She felt Kis Halá moving beneath her, a movement like that of a deep sea swell, that knows no laws or limits.

  ‘I am going now, Emsha,’ she said, arranging her skirts. ‘As my final act here, I release you from servitude. Here in this pouch are my most valuable jewels: pick two of the finest, and settle in some quiet place far from these tragedies.’

  A pained look entered the nurse’s broad wrinkled face. She pushed back the proffered bag. ‘Majesty, what are you saying? What should I do without you? Where would I go? I do not need these. I will go with you.’

  Sadly Allissál reached out to touch the cheek of the only real mother she had known. ‘Do you think it will hurt me any less, dear one? But no, Emsha. Where I go now, you could never follow.’

  Then she brought the great gleaming mare about, clapped her heels to the sleek golden flank, and rode out into the square. Down the slope of the plateau she rode and vanished among the ruins of the blackened lower city.

  Behind her the old, weary woman stumbled out into the square. Through the curtain of her tears Emsha could see another cart pass by. Beyond, dark and squat against the gray-green sky, loomed the Brown Temple. Miserably Emsha crossed the square, and mounted the many steps in the hope of solace and guidance from the Merciful Lady.

  * * *

  Swiftly Allissál left the city behind. Only once did she run across some of his warriors: they were driving cattle up the Southern Way to feed the army’s maw. ‘Go quick, my darling,’ she muttered to the mare, digging in her heels.

  But the barbarians did not give chase. They stood stupidly and stared and pointed. Vaguely from afar their cries reached her, carried on t
he wind: The Hooded Man! The Deathless One! She laughed; it pleased her that they took her for himself. She knew then that she was safe, shielded by the myth he had woven about his mask.

  By little-traveled ways she sought the dark horizon. She skirted major roads and trade-routes, and rode many miles outside the cities in her path. Even so her progress was good. So, by wood and hill and devious stream, she came into the range of mountains that once had marked the marches of her Empire.

  A pass or two she stayed to rest in the abandoned tower of Ghezbal Daan; there she bought cheese and meat and bread of the herders watering their flocks. Restless, she could not abide there long, even if Kis Halá needed rest. She rode down the steep slopes, and entered upon the Marches.

  Straight before her she found her road, a wide dead swath of earth that was not marked upon any of her maps. There upon those empty plains she felt her heart expand, to fill and join with desolation. It was a sadness so immense and vague, that it seemed to blend with an unknown pleasure within her. And she thought to herself, that she would have liked to live out the rest of her years here, where she might never again have to hear another person’s voice. But even this small pleasure was denied her, for he would find her here. There was nowhere in this world where she might hide.

  She urged the mare on. Before her Yron Ghadil rose and widened its embrace.

  She rode on, eating in the saddle. Goddess did not stop Her light, she thought: why then should Her earthly body need to stop? But from time to time she did stop to rest Kis Halá. The long, hurried journey was wearing down the mare. ‘But soon enough,’ Allissál murmured, giving the mare stalks of verdure, ‘soon enough you may rest. On Darkbridge you will rest.’ So the weeks sped with none to count them.

  At length, upon a stony hill, she granted her mare a good rest. For three passes Allissál lay upon the hard ground with her traveling-cloak for her blanket and mattress both. She scarcely felt her thighs or buttocks after that riding. She ate of brown bread and dried meat she had traded with the lonely plainsmen; she drank of the frosty waters of the Kabdary’s source; she slept with neither sense nor dream.