Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 4 Darkbridge

by Adam Corby

  Open-mouthed, the other chiefs regarded him long enough for a heart to beat a score of times. They could not believe it had been Marn-Klarten who had spoken these words. Not even Roguil Arn could believe it.

  Then Farn-Jar-Gur took a mouthful of wine and swallowed noisily. ‘Ah, what is it we speak of?’ he asked. ‘The Warlord will not refuse us. It is these Vapionil.’ He hated them all the more for being in their power.

  ‘Yes, these slaves – these Southrons,’ said Roguil Arn. He set his big fist on the handle of the axe. Then Tarx Taskas did likewise with his weapon, and Erin-Gar-Birn and Ven-Vin Van, until soon all their hands were upon their weapons save for Pelk-Noem’s and Nam-Rog’s. The chieftains glanced about the circle. Great emotions passed over their countenances, and their strong fingers writhed upon metal, wood and bone. Then all at once they surged to their feet and drew their weapons so the bright metal tongues clashed against one another; and Tarx Taskas cried out, ‘Death to Southrons! Home!’ – and the others echoed him.

  Kiva, pale-faced, looked on them with fear. They were like the wild beasts that had been penned beneath the Circus in Tarendahardil awaiting the next festival, the veterans who had grown accustomed to the savor of human blood. Rage and violence flashed from their eyes. These were not the same men she had met in this camp a year before, when she waited with the other prisoners for the decision of Ara-Karn. Then they had been silent and proud; now they despised themselves. No crime was beyond such men.

  The chieftains’ blazing eyes fixed themselves on Pelk-Noem and Nam-Rog. ‘And you,’ they said: ‘will you now join us or oppose us?’

  Pelk-Noem swallowed, and stood uncertainly. But gloomily from beneath his thick eyebrows the chieftain of the Durbars looked up at his fellows. For the greater part of his life he had seen these men every year at the Assembly of the Tribes; for years he had lived with them on the unending road of war. He had seen many of them grow to manhood, and had spoken of their progress with other men his age. His life had been saved by some there; others he had saved. Now he saw drunkenness, fear and hatred contort their faces.

  He glanced at the red-haired Southron woman, and he felt ashamed. All at once he knew what the Southrons felt when they uttered the word, ‘barbarian.’ But then he thought of the bones of Gundoen, of Hertha-Toll alone and of his own sons, the last of whom fell in the last attack on the Citadel. And he thought of the man in the tower who had brought it all to pass – the man who was Gundoen’s adopted son.

  He stood, and the others gave back a little before him. He ungirt his sword-belt, drew the sword and threw the belt behind him. He held the sword aloft with the point hanging down.

  ‘He has summoned us, hasn’t he?’ he said. ‘So let us see what he wants.’

  Grimly pleased, the others nodded, and put back their weapons – all but Nam-Rog. Kiva followed them uncertainly and at a distance. She had that look about her of a child who has been thrown in among other children, older and bad: he dares not comment or protest, and fears what he is about to do, but fears even more to leave.

  In a band of four score they rode up those streets they knew too well. But when they came upon the square and saw before them the high black wall of stone and the open gateway, then they drew rein. They seemed unwilling to go on. Through the gaping opening could be seen the dim, ugly grounds where three thousand corpses had lain, the victims of an unclean death. Ghosts hung about the place, and even the most drunken chieftains knew unease.

  They rode into the fastness slowly, unspeaking, casting their eyes about them and making the Sign of Goddess. The mercenaries of Erion Sedeg gave way before them. The winds were cold here, and in the sky above the dismal Palace three gerlins wheeled, those hateful birds that had feasted for a year at the foot of the Iron Gate. The chieftains’ horses halted before the high buildings. The chieftains did not dismount. Their eyes passed over the windows and balconies walled up like gouged-out eyes. Some of them shivered. They looked to Nam-Rog to lead. But he would not.

  Just before them, broad stone steps led up to a colonnade in the Palace like a cave into a cliff. Between the two central pillars a high-seat of kings had been upraised: next to the high-seat was a table littered with papers and a low footstool. The high-seat was empty, but Erion Sedeg sat on the footstool. He stood before the chiefs.

  ‘The Dark One, Ara-Karn the King of Kings, is displeased,’ said Erion Sedeg. ‘So he has summoned you. Behold now a full year gone by since he left you with a command – a simple thing, or so one would have thought. A woman was to be found, the last of the dynasty of the former age. She was to be found and brought before the King, so that he might forever put an end to those times. Well, where is this woman? Your men have brought us nothing but rumors and wild stories. Now your King, the Returned One, the Conqueror, gives you this final word. Bring to him this woman by the Pass of Goddess next summer, or be known as traitors and pay the penalty.’

  Roguil Arn smiled, and began to unbind the peace-strings of his axe. But Nam-Rog raised his arm. He scorned even to speak to the painted Southron, but urged his horse on alongside the Palace, until he came to stand below the White Tower. The other chieftains likewise cast up their eyes to the peak of the Tower and its single brightward window boarded over. Nam-Rog lifted his naked blade.

  ‘Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn!’

  His shout was echoed by the others until the noise of it shook loose the terror from the place.

  ‘Ara-Karn!’ the Durbar shouted once more. ‘Now five years have gone since you came among us, an outcast from your own kind and a suppliant. And four years have now gone by since we accepted you as a tribesman and our Warlord. We let you lead us, and put half a hundred cities beneath your rule. We crossed the Taril and left our bones to litter that desert. For a year we went in battle under the Iron Gate of this stronghold, for a year we gathered tribute and saw to the rule of these lands. And the nearer seemed our victory, the farther away was our homecoming. We sojourned in strange lands and ate the bitter flesh of beasts we did not hunt; we lay awake in terrible heat and learned the speaking of alien tongues.

  ‘Once we were hunters and proud, and we killed only for need or pleasure. We roamed the forests and drank of cold streams, and we raised our sons to carry on our tribes. Now we have killed for gold and for the good of others. We have learned lies and treachery. We have seen our sons and fathers and brothers go down in death far from their home villages. We have seen our fellows become drunkards and don the robes of Southrons. Enough!

  ‘We will go back to our home woods and our old ways. You have no more need of us. We have no more need of a Warlord. We will return to what we were.’

  Silence grew in the fastness as the echoes of Nam-Rog’s words died. The haunting of the place seemed stronger than before. These spirits would never be appeased. The barbarians looked about them, grasping the handles of their weapons. They glanced at Erion Sedeg, daring him to order his men against them. But the face of the Southron was unreadable beneath its paint. He raised a hand and pointed.

  ‘Go,’ he said.

  ‘Take your spoils and go back behind the Spine. The King will allow this – if you will choose out thirteen of your number, chiefs or the kin of chiefs, to stay behind as hostages.’

  ‘Will he deal with us as he dealt with Southrons?’ Roguil Arn grumbled.

  But Nam-Rog said to Erion Sedeg, ‘That is well. We will give you our oaths upon it. I myself will be one of the hostages, if that be his will.’

  Dismally they left the Citadel. But when they were again riding in the streets of the city, then the chiefs raised their voices against the Durbar, complaining of the vow.

  ‘I gave a word,’ Nam-Rog answered, ‘A word once spoken is a free bird: it will fly where it pleases. I am going back with all my tribesmen, and let Ara-Karn be damned and die here alone among Southrons if he wants, but he will hold no kin of mine.’

  The others grumbled their accord. ‘Aye, let him sit and rot,’ one said.

 
Kiva rode far behind the other chiefs, attended by ten men she had won to her cause in Tezmon that she had this waking lost. The warriors Ara-Karn had given her would cleave to their own tribes, and Tezmon would soon after fall prey to the armies of thieves roaming the North. But Kiva still had these men, and two coffers of treasure, and her beauty and her wit. From time to time she thought of the Divine Queen and of what might have befallen her. The thought saddened her.

  And sad too was the look on Kul-Dro’s face. ‘He was so proud and strong and sure of himself,’ Kul-Dro muttered, ‘and we followed him as we would a god. Now it has come to this. Doom sits next to him, waiting; and yet he does nothing!’

  So the chiefs went away brightward to the port-city at the mouth of the Delba, and from there summoned their men. They loaded ships with the heavy spoils of war. Erion Sedeg did not oppose them. On a waking late in autumn when the winds did not drive against them, the warriors of the tribes of the far North sailed across the Sea of Elna and left the South, Tarendahardil, and Ara-Karn behind.

  The next waking the Riders of the King returned once more to the City Over the World, haggard, feverish, and weary unto death. They rested in the Black Citadel two passes. Then they rode brightward after the armies and their chiefs.

  A week later the Vapionil came down from the Citadel and set their chariots upon the Southern Way. After them the last of the ambassadors departed for their cities.

  Then even Erion Sedeg and his soldiers left the Black Citadel. They took the hostage children and went darkward, long lines of horsed and armored men beneath black and yellow banners.

  At that, even the Tarendahardilites gave up and departed, scattering to the winds, leaving the city to the ghosts of its slain. For a full week afterward the now-empty Citadel sat as ever on the mountain, sending aloft its wind-curled plume of gray smoke.

  Then the smoke stopped.

  XVII

  Whispers

  SOME WEEKS PASSED.

  The few barbarians that remained South of Elna’s Sea were either sunk in pleasured Vapio or ruled their cities as independent fiefs, vainly dreaming of dynastic rule. From his strongholds in Fulmine and Belknule, Erion Sedeg sent armies to gather tribute in the name of the King, but these armies were little better than bands of thieves. They took the best houses wherever they went, and ate the food and used the women without repayment.

  In name, almost all the lands and cities were loyal to the King; in truth, all was chaos. There was not industry or trade. The cities crawled with desperate poor. The rule of princes had become the exercise of axemen. Bands of robbers swarmed the South. Men looked back now on the rule of the Bordakasha as a golden age, forever lost.

  Only Rukor was not yet in ruins, for Rukor had never been subdued. Even Erion Sedeg had overlooked Rukor, for she feigned docility, and Ara-Karn – perhaps he had forgotten Rukor too. But there Haspeth, Captain-General to the Divine Queen, High Charan of Rukor, Fulmine, the Eglands and Vapio, completed the mustering of his army of vengeance, and led them secretly aboard a fleet of ships.

  From the Isles the dark fleet sailed along the coast past deserted headlands, toward the unwalled ruins and the undefended man. Something else went before it, from city to city in South and North alike, so that not even Erion Sedeg with all his men and arms could quench it. A single, dire rumor that ran like a bright evil upon men’s tongues, sometimes in malice, sometimes in pleasure, sometimes in dread:

  ‘Ara-Karn is mad.’

  XVIII

  In Darkness

  AMONG THE RUINS of Tarendahardil all rested shrouded and still. Weeds stood between the stones in the streets, silently bending in the wind. Gerlins, starving for prey, soared around the high-piled stones of the Imperial Palace, whose every opening was blocked up with stone or wood, as if they hungered for the blood they sensed within.

  In the darkness of those forsaken halls walked the King of All the World.

  Alone he trod the chambers of the Black Tower and through the fragrant rubbish left in the elegant rooms of the Southern Wing. With hands caught behind his back, he walked amidst the shades of the thousands who perished by his treachery. His thoughts were his own. Did he seek penance there? He was his own penance. Here, in the shadow of these halls, he had become a nameless man. For two years now it had been Erion Sedeg who had spoken in the name of Ara-Karn.

  * * *

  Long ago it seemed now, many years, since he sat in the throne in the black tent with the Song of Elna still upon his knee, and fell asleep to the thin bright screams of Dornan Ural…

  In that hour he had dreamed of his former life, and fanned the flames of his ancient hatred and yearning for revenge. He saw a youth, a maiden, and a palace of red stone. Then a shadow fell across the dream, of the interloper, the enemy, the stranger: death and ruin, a pregnant woman’s anguish, blood dripping from a smoking sword… The inveterate hatred convulsed his limbs as he sat dreaming, until the dreams turned and twisted, and the maiden lay in the dim place atop the White Tower, and the youth was a weeping, frightened boy in the ruins of Gerso, and the interloper – it was himself, Ara-Karn, who cast that malformed shadow and held the smoking blade; and the hatred ran from him like water and he woke.

  He stumbled out of the black tents. There were some clouds but otherwise it was fair and bright. He walked through the camp slowly, followed by his guards. He felt the eyes of all men on him. His presence called them forth. At a distance he saw the top of the tent of the chief of the Durbars. Remembering Gundoen, he had the brief desire to speak with Nam-Rog, but he did not. He was Ara-Karn.

  In the penalty-square he beheld the last remnants of him who had once been called the most powerful man in the South. Now the most powerful man in the South was Ara-Karn. Still gazing at the scraps was a woman, the camp-follower who had won the contest. She looked up at his approach. She neither abased herself nor departed. It was as if they had been equals.

  She wore a lora the colors of rust and blue and a black shoulder-mantle adorned with beads of glass. Here she was known as Elrialgis. Her hair was long, thick, and black. She was beautiful, but even more cruel. In the depths of her black flashing eyes she carried the scars of all that she had done since these wars had overturned her life.

  She had been born in Postio, the tribesmen had told him. There she had been the prettiest and best-loved daughter of a wealthy shipping merchant until, in the midst of her wedding-ceremony to the young man she adored, the barbarians of Ara-Karn at last succeeded in breaking down the walls of that city. Elrialgis saw her bridegroom slaughtered on the altar before her, and she, the bride, was passed from man to man on the dirt before the heat of the burning city. She was added to the spoils of a Durbar warrior, a man high in Nam-Rog’s council; but during the long wait below Bollakarvil he had bad luck gaming, and Elrialgis passed to a warrior of the Archeros, a clever man. She was hardened by then, and the Archero had come to fear her: after the surrender of Ilkas he traded her to a Raznami for a Raamba sword.

  After Vapio, many new women entered the camp, more artful and complaisant, and Elrialgis fell among the crowd of unclaimed women, those who must please all comers to survive. Then she learned well the lie, but even as she lay with those bored and sullen strangers, it was not their embraces but visions of their anguished deaths below the Iron Gate that gave her pleasure. She ran her delicate fingers along their scarce-healed scars and took her pleasure in questioning them on their fear and suffering in battle.

  Now he, Ara-Karn, had dropped Dornan Ural like a ripe plum into her hands. How she had unleashed all the pent-up cruelty, hatred and pain of these years, and plied well her imagination in giving this old man she had never known to torments.

  Ara-Karn looked at her silently. He saw the blood still fresh beneath her nails. She was bleak and vengeful and vicious, this girl still young in years but holding all the bitterness of great age. Never again would she know love or warmth or compassion. So had these wars, which he had loosed, made her. She was his daughter. She was h
is great handiwork.

  For a moment he felt himself stirred by her dangerousness. Then he said to her, ‘The prize is yours. You have done well what I commanded. Now go, and never come near me again.’

  She smiled, accepting the pectoral from him, and gave him a courtesy prettily as an innocent maid, and the foulness of her doing that reminded him of himself. ‘Your majesty, Great King, in one breath you have fulfilled both my dreams.’

  He left the penalty-square and climbed alone into the Black Citadel. The mercenaries were still at work there, contesting with the gerlins over the stinking bodies of the slain. He entered the White Tower, and the dimplace at its summit where, so long a time before, he had seduced the Empress to the ringing of her own son’s mourning-rites. The place was empty except for the great bed. The maidens were in the hands of the Vapionil, and all the other belongings had been taken by the mercenaries. Even so the place smelled strongly of her presence.

  He stepped about the room softly, lest he disturb their memories. He opened the saffron bed-curtains, holding them apart with arms extended. ‘Alastaphele,’ he murmured. The sound of it was as hard and hollow as that of a broken pin dropped down a dried-up well.

  He never left the Palace thereafter.

  * * *

  He continued to let Erion Sedeg speak for him. Why not? By now that man knew him better than he did himself. The matters of the consolidation of his rule did not concern him. Only one thing concerned him.

  Great Kaan, that woman was last seen traveling darkward. We have spoken with the peasants of the Marches. She passed in haste, paying for food with coins and jewels. She was alone, Divine One.