by Adam Corby
‘Borun-Kane called down the Jade Eye from heaven, but even its magic was to no avail. So with their powers Borun-Kane and Enpsit Ennahael made the Darkness flower, and delivered us from the clutches of the women’s-cult, all thanks be given to the Two! But Al-Nah lost the battle in his heart, and grew weak. He came to depend upon the women’s-cult in all things; and when he woke from his sleep, he found that the Whore-Priestess was no longer beautiful but old and wrinkled and toothless, and serpents oozed out of her belly. Then in fear Al-Nah would have repented, and went to the mountains crying to Borun-Kane to admit him into the Darkness. But Borun-Kane his brother only laughed, and told him, “With women have you cast your lot, and betrayed your brothers – therefore with women you may stay, and watch them betray you in the arms of others.” So you are answered, O woman with a shadow. Now tell us truly of Ara-Karn. Has he indeed risen from the shores of the dead?’
‘So he says,’ she answered at last.
‘What it must be like to meet the Son of Kaan! Have you ever seen him? Is he truly without shadow even in those blinding lands? And does his touch bring death?’
‘He is a man like any other man,’ she said. Her tone admitted no further conversation – moreover they did not believe her.
They journeyed on over the ships rocking and groaning against one another, the sound of the waters in their ears.
A light snow began to fall, so that the moon above, starved to the thinness of a nail, gave but a faint glow in the darkness. A great wave swelled beneath them, sweeping by, swinging the planking back and forth, stretching without parting. Kis Halá became alarmed, and swung her head violently, shaking loose the muffler. She grew stiff with terror at the sight of the waves below: neighed, stumbled.
Another wave swung past; Allissál took Kis Halá’s head firmly in hand, trying to put back the wrappings, but it was too late. The mare’s left foreleg plunged over the edge of the planks, the ships rocked as a new wave passed. Kis Halá neighed with terror, Allissál screamed and there was a loud splash.
Again she screamed, her fingers bleeding from cuts the reins had left. There was a mad plashing from the ice below; a choked whinny. Then a loud thump sounded, as of a body knocking against the side of the ship.
And silence.
She was gone, now. Kis Halá was dead.
Gently, fearfully, a hand plucked at her robes. ‘Haste, haste,’ they murmured. ‘Did we not say that there would be danger? Perhaps the fee was not enough. Anyway now Darkbridge has your horse: you cannot have it back. The tide falls quickly. We go.’
‘Yes,’ she said. She did not move. The tears were falling blindly from her eyes, but otherwise she was strangely calm. What had she ever done, she wondered, to warrant such punishments? But she knew, she knew, and was transformed in suffering. And then it seemed all right. It was as if she had always known it must happen so.
She straightened, pushing back the hood from her head. The little flakes of snow bit the back of her neck. She looked up into the falling snow. Another wave rocked the ship. What was it he had said about swells of destiny? She took a step, feeling his dagger chafe her thigh. Once she had been a queen with handmaids at her call, once she had been the rider of a great horse. Now she was only a wretched woman standing in the cold.
She looked back to the ships stretching behind her, back to the world she had known, back where swift black currents carried Kis Halá’s corpse to the mouths of the great reptilian fishes of the Dark Seas.
The light snow fell like a wet mist upon her lips. The line of ships stretched before and behind, vanishing behind the veil of snow. The land was gone as utterly as the Sun. Only ships and waves existed. She stood there, her short hair wet with melting snow; unbound, without place or home or hearth, past or future or name or face in that onetime world, as she trod upon hollow planks at the side of dark unknown creatures going whither she knew not. A great, abiding emptiness filled her.
‘It is enough,’ the little ones were saying. ‘The tides are down and it is the last pass of God. It is the pass of the ritual! Go below and rest, but give over this weeping, O woman with a shadow! Do not act as though Darkbridge has offended you! Below, below!’
Passive and uncomprehending, she let them usher her below deck. The ancient hold was covered over to keep it dry from the storms. Yet it was visible to her eyes now. They had divided it into a rude hall, with sleeping-berths open to both sides. At the far end an open space was strewn with bundles of rope, used in repairing the cable.
Weary now beyond measure, Allissál sat upon the edge of one of the berths.
The melting ice slid from her hair to her shoulders and naked neck like cold, close kisses. She noticed she was weeping. Putting off the cloak, she curled up on the berth and slept.
And for the first time since she left Goddess, she dreamed.
* * *
She stood in the White Tower, hearing again the tread of the barbarian guards beyond the doors. Once again she gave Emsha instructions and had herself arrayed in a lora belonging to one of her maidens. Once again she went below, beneath the guardians’ watchful eyes, and once again she found the secret hollow and went beneath the earth.
She followed the caves and reached at length a vast hall arched over beneath the streets of High Town, near to the end of the road. Upon either side of that hall a row of ornately-carven stone benches stretched. And sitting hugely on the benches, all her ancestors, the Emperors and Queens nal Bordakasha, turned their heads and regarded her. There were Ilazrius and Phorantilar and Velarion and Merriskil and Jarilharijen and the others. And at their head Elna himself bestrode a great gold throne.
In deathly stillness they regarded her as she passed down among them. When she reached the throne she stopped. Elna looked into her eyes, put his huge hand over her head, and said in a great, booming, melancholy voice,
‘O Daughter, and will you let us all now die?’
‘But Father,’ she answered, ‘And was it all a lie?’
He bent his huge head and let close his broad moon’s-eyes; and she knew that the tales of the Madpriests were true. So she lowered herself before him and passed through the door in the wall between his legs, and awoke miserable and bereaved.
* * *
The sound of the rituals of the little folk rang in her ears. Silently she gathered her cloak and went up on deck.
They sat in a circle in the main deck. Muffled in green robes, they wore about their waists a green-dyed rope that tied them in a circle, so that, from above, they would have appeared as the outline of the jade Orb itself. The snow was still falling, making of the masts and riggings and coils of ropes and the railings spectral lines glowing in the darkness of Earth’s eternal shadow. Already the snow had coated the concealing cloaks of the small men and women, yet strangely, in the very center of their ring the snow melted and dried as soon as it fell. It seemed to Allissál as though that central dark circle was slowly, inexorably growing.
She sat behind them, unnoticed. In the snow she crossed her legs tight and close to her hips, so that she rested her forearms upon her knees and sat quite straight. She felt neither sadness nor dread, nor loneliness, nor joy, but she felt the alien beauty of the scene and was bound by it. She knew she would never behold its like again. There upon the snowy deck of a ship tied to a thousand others all rocking on the belly of the deep black sea, the Madpriests of Darkbridge chanted their old, old song:
O God, do not give off Wandering.
O God, do not leave us so.
Return once more
Renewed and strong,
To axe in twain the sky
And rain its blood your bounty in our mouths.
O God, do not weaken in desire.
O God, do not leave us so.
Renounce those suits,
Grow strong in lust,
And take from her your right.
So let her cries be music for our ears.
O God, do not grant them peace.
O God, do not l
eave us so.
Loose all the hates
And sicken them
With envy and your rage
Make them cut and make them howl,
Their war and death shall clothe and prosper us.
O God, O God, our only God:
We follow you and offer you
Blood and fire and largess of the slain,
Corpses high and deep.
O God, O God, our only God:
Lacking you we have lost all,
Our mind, our heart, our very flesh:
There is naught but you.
Rise up anew,
Be freed of death,
Hide not but hoe
And leave those weeds in slaughter.
O God, do not give off Wandering.
O God, do not leave us so
Return once more
Renewed and strong.
To axe in twain the sky
And rain its life our bounty on our heads!
Again the little folk sang their verses. She heard the same song echoed and re-echoed by all the circles on all the other ships; and the chant of them went aloft against the muffling silent snow, forlorn as the call of a maimed gerlin to its lost mate.
And Allissál thought of him.
XII
The World Beyond
SHE STRODE along the silver, snow-clad strand. The sound of the waves upon the ice and gleaming rocks was fragile and lovely as the tortured voices of flawed crystal bells. The salt mists ate into the stepped faces of ice above, and the delicate twisting ribbons of meltwater slid across the hard sands to be swallowed by the sea.
The little people had left her when she gained this other shore.
‘Have we not provided you with food, the best of our kitchens and catches?’ they asked. ‘You will find your road, never fear, tall one. Pray to God, He has traveled all the paths before us!’ So they bowed their little bodies and bade her farewell, uttering many a long and curious salutation, and went back on the bridge of ships.
After some hours she encountered what seemed like a road cut through the snow, and she followed it up a great cliff of black and violet stone whose facets were sharp as sword-points. Changeful God gleamed greenly off His sea below. She followed her shadow where it danced across the rock, beckoning her on.
For some passes she followed this path, taking back a sense of land that did not move to greet or flee her feet.
On that dark path she met nor men nor beasts. These lands were yet more barren than those where Estar Kane ruled. Snow fell in heavy drifts and the footing was cruel. Once she fell and the deep, hungry whiteness almost swallowed her. But beckoning her on always was the purple glow at the black sky’s edge, a dim and distant witness to the bright horizon.
Brighter and wider the jagged skyline grew before her, until she reached a hilltop and stepped once more into light. Far, far away through stark woods upon a distant hill, the halo of the Sun shone against the clouds.
Allissál sat in the snow, covering her eyes with the Madpriest’s robes. When she had blinked away the last of the pain and tears, then she turned back like a little girl, and laughed and cried at once.
* * *
The first city that emerged from the horizon stood out bravely above the sea. It struck her as beautiful and strange in the distance. A curious, quiet excitement stole over her. What sort of people would she meet in this new world? Would they have heard anything of her world? Others had gone this way before her, yet perhaps they, like her, had wished only to let their past sicken and die behind them. Here were new lands, new lives. For the first time she knew the full meaning of the myths of the Blessed Shores.
But when she was nearer, she saw that the towers of the city were gutted and the great buildings fallen in ruins. Once a huge white mole had run the length and breadth of the harbor: now only its pieces emerged from the waves, like teeth, and the sea washed freely past the gaunt shipless masts that stood in drunken postures like long-dead trees. Something about the scene struck her as vaguely, dreadfully familiar.
Within the city walls everything was still. The broken streets were void. The city had been taken and ravaged recently, and more than once.
A shadow crossed a side-street to her right. She shouted and made after it. It was a man short and ragged, dreadfully thin. She overtook him in a field of burnt stones that once had been an inn or a merchant’s house. The man fell against a stone and Allissál stood over him, the sword bright in her grasp.
‘Pray, pray, do not harm me, my lady! I have nothing, I swear it to heaven!’
She put up the sword. ‘I mean you no evil, man. I would but ask you some questions.’
‘But I don’t know anything!’
‘You know the name of this city. Or were you dropped out of the sky?’
A confused, or perhaps it was cunning look crossed the man’s features. ‘The name? Which name, my lady? Once we were called – but that is forbidden now by our masters. Are you not one of them? By God, I am loyal to the King! But listen, if you are not one of them – can you not hear them? His warriors ride nearby!’
‘Whose warriors?’
The man’s black eyes widened like chorjai flowers. He flung his arms so that they took in sea and sky and earth. ‘His – his – Ara-Karn’s!’
She let fall the sword beside her. The man saw his chance and slipped behind a blackened wall. Allissál scarcely noticed.
It had not even struck her that this man of another world should speak Bordo. Now the knowledge of it began to grow big in her like a tree, the leaves and branches blackening the bright sky. Now she knew what city this must be: knew it from wall-paintings in Tarendahardil of the varied fastnesses of Elna. In all the world, only Tezmon of the purple-weavers had boasted that great white mole. She looked with new eyes at the town where Ampeánor had twice gone and been twice disgraced. How like fate’s cruel humor, she thought, to bring her to this doomed place!
She heard hoofbeats nearing and mindful of the gaunt man’s words, vanished in the shadows of the ruins.
It had been all of it a lie. Darkbridge did not lead into another world, but back again into the same one. Elna’s Sea must narrow after it left the lands of men. Where the bridge of ships stretched from shore to shore, the sea must come to a narrow neck before widening again into the vast sunless sea. Estar Kane took her jewels knowing full well that what she sought was no more than smoke; doubtless he bade the little ones to carry on his jest.
Her first thought, as she flitted like a shade among the broken walls, was to flee the city straightway. But hunger assailed her. She put her back to the fallen craft-halls and followed the slopes to the high hill overlooking the harbor, where the merchants’ palaces had stood. She went carefully, hiding from the riders. They were more frequent where she went.
In the high old core of the city, the barbarians directed the last Tezmonians in labor to clear streets and rebuild palaces. The bruit of the labor held no voices raised in song or cheer. The dust rose in great dun balls, masking the Sun, raining dirt on the dark backs of the slaves.
Allissál watched them from the window of an empty tower. She turned over in her mind how to go on. In the Darklands she could have stolen bread and meat under the cloak of darkness, yet here the light went on forever. It would be needful to wait for the next sleep. She heard sounds in the corridor behind her, and hid in a cluttered corner.
Three barbarians, two men and a woman, entered and stood at the window where Allissál had been. The men had long hard arms much-scarred; the woman was red-haired and wore many jewels and little else. They spoke guttural, halting tones; the men pointing out the work to the woman in a way that indicated she was no common concubine. The woman nodded and said something in reply, at which the men left the chamber. Their heavy footsteps rose hollowly from the steps below. The woman stood quietly at the window looking out at the many men toiling.
Allissál crept up on her, dagger in hand. She gripped the woman’s shoulder. ‘Stay and do not
cry out, or I’ll cut you,’ she said in the tongue of the far North.
The barbarian turned and regarded her with widening eyes. Then with grace she abased herself and exclaimed in courtly Bordo, ‘Your majesty!’
Allissál staggered back.
‘Your majesty will not recall this one, surely,’ the woman went on; ‘I was called Kiva, and was a woman of the High Town. Your majesty granted me shelter in the Citadel for the year of the siege. I was never presented at court, yet even so, so many times have I beheld your majesty in procession in the City, that I would know her even in rags.’
‘And are you the couch-slave of those barbarian lords now?’
‘Oh no, your majesty. Those men are mine. I am the chieftainess of Orn now, and my tribe rules this region, with Tezmon for our chief city.’
‘And whose plan was this?’
‘Ara-Karn’s, your majesty.’
Allissál put back the dagger. It was not what she would have expected of him, but now that she heard of it she was not surprised. There was no denying the woman’s prettiness. The hair was dyed, of course.
‘Your majesty, I know not how you have appeared here, or how many of your followers have accompanied you; yet howsoever many they may be, your majesty will not be safe here. I may call these men mine, but in truth they come from different tribes, and are jealous of one another. I do not rule here: only the fear of Ara-Karn quells them. Even so they compete for honors and boastfulness at all hours.
‘Your majesty has become a great prize in the world. The Riders of the King travel all roads South and North in search of you. Who finds your majesty and delivers you safely to the Black Citadel is promised the greatest treasures and power above all others. If there were but a whisper of your majesty’s presence here, these men would lay the city waste a third time in their efforts to bring you to the King. You must go, and do not, I pray you, tell me where you are bound; yet if there is aught else you would require of me, speak and it shall be yours.’
Allissál looked out across the rooftops of the blighted city.
‘Bring me then what I should need to travel a long way alone. I have nothing now but what you see. I should like a bow also.’
