by Adam Corby
Even now doubtless the buds broke like sores from the branches in the South, and the flowers opened like bright wounds, and the birds built black nests and sang the bloody praises of their land’s new master. All the world was one now, lying beneath him as sated as a well-paid whore. All but a small stone hive somewhere in the Desert, where a handful of crazed women sang their songs of fury and of hate.
Allissál ran her fingers through her ragged short hair. She felt dirty and ugly. She thought of him – of the stories Kiva had told her. He was alone now, in the dimness of his usurped Palace, sending men in search of her. She knew he was dying there, choking on his madness.
She looked into the storm. Its wind threw dust into her eyes, teasing out unfelt tears. She had escaped the armies of the Conqueror and evaded all his spies, but she had not crossed alone the back ways of the North. The spirits of the dead, of all those poisoned in the Citadel, still pursued her. They gathered over her even now, lashing up the storm. She felt their presence and their rage. They had been denied the world beyond, and there was no way she could appease them. They had been her people, their lives had rested in her care. She alone had known the danger, but she had done nothing to imprison him. Now their deaths weighed upon her. They could not cross the Ocean of Death without a guide.
She heard their whispers in the winds. The voices filled her with a weary weakness beyond all her power to shake. She did not hate him, did not love him, did not need him, did not fear him. All that had vanished with the snows. But this was his world now. What then was left for her?
Quietly she stepped down the wooden steps to the clearing. On the rail behind her she left a bag holding all the gold and riches that that red-haired couch-lady had given her in Tezmon. Hertha-Toll, the widow of the man Allissál’s orders had condemned, could leave them in her next basket-offering if she wished.
She walked through the village, touching the sand with her toes first at each step, soft as a maid gone to see her first lover. She liked the small rude huts, but did not look at the stone walls of his new buildings rising like vague threats.
The upturned fishing boats were weathering the winds well. The storm had not yet broken over the beach, but the distant lightning now had found its tongue. Allissál stood on the stony beach beneath the shrine, alone.
The Couple were vanished from the sky. Only the voices of the dead filled her ears, roaring in the wind and waves. The air pressed the rags against her body and stole the breath from her mouth. She felt a sudden weakness stab her, from the bent of her ribs through her belly and along her legs to the back of her knees. That was fear. For a moment she turned her face away. Then she turned back.
Her eyes were narrow against the winds as she drew the dagger.
The wind moaned in the roof tiles. Calmly and sternly she took the dagger and cut through the silk ropes that held the death-barge in place.
It was almost beyond her to drag it down the rocks. But when she reached the lapping mouths of water it was easy.
She turned back then to face the land, her feet cold in the turquoise water. The sense of fate was strong in her, and all her fear was gone. This was all the working out of destiny in a play whose author was centuries dead but whose words remained untouched. He had voyaged out of the ruins of his world, to make a ruin of hers. Now she would follow the same path, in the same barge. It was as it had to be.
‘Once you were everything to me,’ she murmured. The wind took her words and flung them across the hills. ‘But I will not live on as your slave or your prize, nor yet the actress in the play of your madness.’
So saying, the former queen put the barge out into the waves, toward the distant Goddess who awaited her behind the onrushing storm over the Ocean of the Dead.
* * *
For a full pass the storm lashed the coast with rain and wind, fierce, pitiless; then scornfully it passed over the little huddled village, and with it went the last of winter in the far North. Goddess emerged again, and the women of the tribe looked warily out of doors, even as they had done after that other storm years before – the storm that brought him.
At the beach they beheld with wonder the rifled shrine and its silk lines cleanly cut. But Hertha-Toll stood in the grass above the beach, and nodded. She showed no wonder that the stranger had left behind the dark green hooded hunting-cloak and its blood-red opal brooch-pin cut in the likeness of a serpent’s egg. She only marveled when they found buried beneath the driftage and sand blown across the shrine, a great bright sword, with the hilt they all knew, which had been Tont-Ornoth’s, now brought back to them by some working even Hertha-Toll might not imagine.
Two thousands up the coast from the bay, the slaves found the wave-washed nude body of the blonde woman lying on the rocks, bleeding and still, with a few birds perched indifferently about it.
In a cart they bore it to the chief’s hall, before the chief’s wife. Hertha-Toll looked upon the body strangely. This she had not foreseen.
In her mind she saw Gundoen again as he had been in his youth, recalled how he had wooed her with flowers and the bodies of animals he had brought down in hunt. When he died, were there any healers about him? But for the others’ sake she felt the wounded torso and opened one salt-encrusted eye.
She went a few steps from the cart and stood a doubtfully. ‘Well,’ she muttered at length, ‘I will do what I know. But this one has passed beyond the shores of life already, and by her own choice. It will take a greater voice than mine to call her back.’
Curtly she bade them bear the cold, pallid body into the hut. She asked about the dagger, but it was not to be found.
‘One thing further,’ she said, bitterness like salt entering the sound of her voice. ‘Let none of you tell the King’s men of this. He has no right to hear of it, even if by some chance or grace she does return to life.’
XVI
The Last Assembly
WINTER ROLLED over Tarendahardil and the ambassadors came and went, the wheels of their tribute-wagons heavy with cold mud. No buildings had been restored in the old Imperial city, but life of a sort returned to her. The last surviving Tarendahardilites still dwelt there, unwilling or unable to surrender their city.
Others came as well, the fortune-seekers of change, desirous of wealth and power from the dominion of the barbarian. They swarmed in rude tents pitched against burned palaces, penning goats and pigs where charanti, philosophers and artists once had congregated. From time to time the streets came alive to the clatter of the Riders of the King, barbarians astride the strongest Eglandic stallions and bearing the black banners set with a yellow Darkbeast-tooth. The Riders never stayed long but shortly emerged pale-faced from the Citadel to set forth yet again, lashing to bloody froth the flanks of their steeds.
And the ambassadors came and went, bringing trains of tribute and hostage children up the old Way of Kings to enter the bleak, black stronghold on the mountaintop. They were ushered in by sly Vapionil slaves and the soldiers of Erion Sedeg, and after them went herds of cattle and sheep and baskets of grain, salt and sugar. And with a gray evil the cook-smoke went up from the black Palace into the rain and low clouds of the dull jade sky.
And so another Pass of God went by.
At the end of winter riots broke out in the poorer cities and bands of thieves roamed the hills and countryside, mostly in the North where the conquest had been longest and most harshly felt, but also along the Delba. Erion Sedeg set out with his armies, a mix of lesser barbarians and his own forces, and he crushed all resistance in the cities, killing the half-clothed rioters by the hundreds. But when Erion Sedeg moved on, the bands of thieves waxed into armies, and trade in the North ceased. Only Tezmon in the North was at peace.
In Fulmine meanwhile Erion Sedeg established himself in the fortress built by Lornof’s father, where he spent the spring increasing his power, ever-jealous of the worship of his high dark master, whose name he continued to exalt.
The greater barbarians gathered in Vapio, which ha
d sprung up yet again like some fleshy ruby flower seductive and unkillable. There the warriors drank and ate and smoked and gamed in luxury, aided by their willing slaves, until their wits dulled and their arms softened. Feuds broke out anew among the tribes, there was some fighting but as yet little killing. Several Buzrahs were found dead in their couches: it was said they had eaten too heavily of the purple dream-herb, but a little afterward several Karghils were missing and never after seen.
A new feud began, one with the promise of even greater danger. The chiefs of the fourth and fifth armies refused to pay Roguil Arn the spoil they had promised, saying that since he had not slain Elna-Ana he did not deserve it. Roguil Arn descended on Vapio with fourscore men and murdered the chieftains of the Gerinthars, the Necistrols, the Goat-Tribe and the Gise-Nathos with seven-score of their followers. They caught them naked or in the robes of women, and butchered them to the delighted drunken screams of the Vapionil whores who serviced them. After this, the agreed-upon amounts were given over to the bloody-armed young champion, and pacts of peace were sworn. But sly whispers in the shadows of the purple towers in Vapio spoke of poisonings, and Roguil Arn, hunting and fishing along the mountains brightward, heard nothing of this. Other feuds also began over artful women or gaming-debts. Ill feelings grew stronger, but the warriors as yet dissembled it.
That winter Bar-East died. The old wanderer had been following the line of the shore toward Zaproll on the Sea, the last corner of the lighted lands he had yet to visit. The warriors mourned his passing and slew horses and slaves to the gods for Bar-East’s spirit, and the chieftains ordered a tower of stone built to mark the place where he had died. In Vapio there was some talk of destroying Zaproll on the Sea to make good the boast that Bar-East had gone everywhere, but that was mostly drunken talk and nothing was done as yet.
When spring did reach Tarendahardil, it did so grudgingly and late. It grew quieter there now, for the greater number of favor-seekers had gone away to Fulmine. The field brightward of the ruins was almost deserted: by the especial command of the King, only Nam-Rog and his Durbars were condemned to remain in the camp. They might have taken quarters in the Citadel, save that Nam-Rog quarreled with Erion Sedeg, and his warriors refused to dwell in that place. So they went back to the muddy camp where they had lived a year and a half. A week afterward half the warriors, led by Avli-Oan, defied Nam-Rog’s commands and pleas and left for Vapio. Those who stayed spoke of summoning their wives and children from the far North when spring cleared the roads; but when spring did come the robber armies roamed the North, and the warriors dared not send their bidding. They grumbled, and passed the summer sweating in the swelter of their tents in that accursed land.
Late in the summer, at the fall of autumn in the far North, the chieftains returned to Tarendahardil. Ara-Karn summoned them. But first they met in the Assembly.
They gathered in the broad dead field before the remnants of the piled camp-wall. Only the chiefs and high men of the tribes came, those who had been the leading hunters in the far North. Eleven chiefs scorned to attend. No Buzrahs or Karghils came. One who did come, oddly, was the red-haired Southron woman Ara-Karn had put over the Orns to insult and outrage the other chieftains.
They elected Kin-Sur, a Borso, to be the new Speaker of the Law. Kin-Sur dutifully recited the old laws of the Assembly before the small gathering. The chieftains drank and tossed bone-dice while he did this. Few heeded his words.
Nam-Rog, seated beside the Warlord’s empty place, shook his head. ‘Soon the very tribes will no longer exist,’ he muttered. ‘He might save us, if he would – but who can speak reason in the darkness of that foul tower?’
‘What are these words of yours, Nam-Rog?’ asked Pelk-Noem who was now chief over the River’s-Bend tribe. ‘Don’t you know that to speak words against the King is treason?’
‘That is a word of these Southrons, not of the tribes,’ growled old Gan-Birn of the Jalijhas, with a glance at the red-haired woman. ‘We have no king over us.’
‘Go and tattle on me to Erion Sedeg if you will,’ Nam-Rog said gloomily. ‘You were ever a Southron in your ways, Pelk-Noem, and stayed in your tents when we men went under the Iron Gate.’
‘Old man, you make me want to tell him,’ Pelk-Noem said, his face a mottled crimson.
‘Enough, enough,’ pleaded Welo-Pharb of the Undains. ‘Can we not meet together without bitter words, after all we have seen and done together? Nam-Rog, you have been here near the Warlord these months. Why has he summoned us now? What passes in the dark ways of his mind? Has it to do with the great fleet of ships that now cover the beaches at Arpane on the Sea? Over a year of toil, begun as soon as we took that city; now, as I hear it, abandoned since last winter. Will he settle now the feuds, or let us at last journey homeward again?’
Grimly the chief of the Durbars shook his head. ‘No. Not that.’
Shadows fell across the scarred and bearded visages, and the great strong hands reached for bowls of beer and wine.
‘By God’s jade balls,’ swore one, ‘will this never end?’
‘Nam-Rog, is there no speaking to him?’ asked Kul-Dro. ‘Outside of Gundoen and Kuln-Holn, you knew the Warlord best. Can you not persuade him?’
The old Durbar looked at the fortress on the mountain and its plume of gray smoke. In his tent he still kept the great brass-worked coffer in which were sealed the bones of Gundoen. All these months he had been holding it, haunted during his sleeps by the ghost, just to gain leave long enough to take it up to Hertha-Toll. He sighed and drank more beer. It was dark and bitter stuff. It was the way he preferred it now.
‘This is the way of him,’ he said at length. ‘He lives like a spirit of these Southrons, trapped after his death in a lightless stone hollow beneath the ground. All the window-holes of the Palace he has had covered over with stones and planks. No torches or lamps are allowed, and it is darker there than at the foot of Urnostardil. Only the cook-fires still burn, in kitchens underground. He is surrounded by the soldiers of Erion Sedeg, the children of the Southron princes, and slaves. You know the slaves – they are these Vapionil dogs.’
A groan of hatred and disgust went round the circle.
‘None of us has seen the Warlord since last winter, on the Pass of God. Even then he spent his wakings and sleeps in the tall tower, and no one brought food or drink to him. All his orders come through the mouths of Erion Sedeg and the Vapionil, nor is there any way of knowing which of the words are his and which their own. Even when we did reach him, he would hear no words on the rebellions, the feuds, or the cities. All he ever heard were the rumors about the former Empress, the last of Elna’s kin.’
‘But why should he be so eager to gain vengeance on her?’ asked Erin-Gan-Birn of the Roighalnis. ‘He is not of the tribes.’
‘She bewitched him,’ said Pelk-Noem, making a sign with his shadow-hand.
‘Who speaks treason now, Pelk-Noem?’ asked Farn-Jar-Gur of the Eldars. He had forsaken his duties in the South when Erion Sedeg had gone there. Instead he had gone to Vapio, and his eyes were heavy-lidded and bloody, and his words came out slurred like rain.
‘You never speak any, all men know,’ Pelk-Noem answered. ‘You will speak even less after I cut out your tongue.’
‘Be silent, you two, will you not?’ protested Ven-Vin Van of the Borsos, who sat with his head half wrapped in a cloak, miserable from dream-herb.
Ah Gundoen, thought Nam-Rog, you were right to die when you did, in the height of battle when our victory was full. You spared yourself these sights. I wish I had gone down at your side.
‘And what news is there of the far North, and home?’ Erin-Gar-Brin asked this: his city was Zaproll on the Sea, farthest from the news. At his words several faces brightened, and the talk ran over the tales that had reached them from the home villages. At length Roguil Arn lifted himself to his feet, cast down his bowl and proclaimed,
‘By Goddess, I care not what befalls, I will take my men home!’
&nb
sp; The others looked on him for a moment – some with a hint of fear in their eyes, as though they looked for fire to come out of the sky and strike him dead. Then Tarx Taskas who represented the Fire-Walkers, rose and said quite calmly, ‘I will join you.’ Another followed him and another, until they had all sworn the same oath, all but three: Nam-Rog, Pelk-Noem, and Welo-Pharb. The Southron woman did not count, of course.
‘And Erion Sedeg?’ Nam-Rog asked.
Silence fell on his words. One by one the chieftains took their seats again. Then only Roguil Arn was left standing. ‘I care not,’ he said, ‘what is Erion Sedeg to me? He is a Southron. If the Warlord grants that I may go, what can that Southron do to oppose it? Would he dare go against my axe? Then let him, and by the count of three he will trouble me no longer.’
‘Much of his strength is still in the North,’ Nam-Rog said. ‘They are near the Pass of Gerso, they are many, and they have the bow. It is said Erion Sedeg has joined cause secretly with the Vapionil. It would be an easy matter for him to send word to his men to cross into the far North where are our wives, our children, our homes. And here too he is strong, in his high fortress. Will you have the stomach for another siege, Roguil Arn, when our men are scattered and half of them will do out of fear what the Warlord says, no matter what we tell them?’
‘I will not go against the wishes of the Warlord,’ Pelk-Noem said, looking at the ground. ‘I remember Gen-Karn’s fate. I was there when we went into the Citadel. A full year he suffered to abide among them, awaiting Gundoen’s return; then he moved his hand, and all fell dead…’
‘I tell you, I will go!’ insisted Roguil Arn.
‘Then you go alone,’ said Kan-Brin of the Pes-Thos, who blushed as he spoke.
‘There is still a way,’ said Marn-Klarten of the Undains. ‘In truth, how do we know that it has been the Warlord’s mind that we stay, and not merely what the Vapionil and Erion Sedeg have said that he says? What then if we saw him alone now, where there are none of these slaves? We could win him over, surely. He has Erion Sedeg: why should he need us? Surely he will let us free. We are free men, are we not? Are we not of the tribes of the far North? And if he does not…’ Marn-Klarten smiled wolfishly, and let his hand drop to his sword-belt.
