Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 4 Darkbridge

by Adam Corby

  ‘What weakness is this?’ he asked.

  The thing that had been his strength had left him, and behind it had left only a husk or shell.

  How long had it been since he had eaten? Too long to feel hunger’s pangs.

  From the dimplace above, a weary, gray-washed light seeped like tears through the cracks about the boards that had been set over the lone window. The light fell past him, touching with indistinctness the stairs. The stairs coiled down into a fist-sized hole of blackness, like the tale of centuries, like the flight of winds that had begun their journey at the back of the dark half of the world, like the hours between a poor child’s meals. Time did not matter any longer. An instant or this year without her, it was all the same. He knew now he would not see her again. He had lost her. He had brought about her death through ignorance that first time, but now he had done so through what? Pride, or overlonging. It no longer mattered.

  ALASTAPHELE!

  The scream rang off the many steps like the dying cry of some wolf in the cold, which is sick from licking the blood of its own wounds and, in rage and sorrow, howls out one last mating-howl before darkness comes to close its weakened eyes. The echo that returned to assail his ears seemed the cry of a stranger.

  He heard another sound from below as well.

  Slowly he stumbled down the steps, surrendering his body to the eager beckoning of the depths of the earth. The darkness thickened about him almost tangibly, so that it was as if he walked down the deepening, ever-colder levels of the sea. He felt himself drawn down by the need of the spirits of all those he had murdered here. He remembered what he had asked Kuln-Holn about the gods. He remembered what the priests of Temaal had told him about the fate of the dead. Alastaphele, did she walk once more below the hills of Keldaroon?

  He stopped before the open doors of the audience chamber. The long, low room was flooded with gray light. The boards that had been nailed over the narrow window were in pieces on the floor. Standing on them were a half dozen large gerlins. Perched on the arm of the throne, regarding him with an evil look, was Niad.

  * * *

  The man stepped into the room. The floor was bare stone, but the walls and ceiling still hung with heavy black linen. The birds eyed him watchfully. He felt their hunger as if it were his own. There was no sound there but the dripping of the rain that licked the stones outside.

  ‘Are you to be my judges, then?’ His voice sounded hoarsely in his ears.

  Niad ceased preening and raised his great, wicked head.

  Without warning he spread his wings and launched himself.

  The black-winged shape filled the man’s vision. Unthinkingly he raised his arm in a protective gesture. The great beak jabbed his shoulder and the cruel talons raked his forearm. He felt the pain as liquid fire as he fell to the floor. The air boiled around him, beat up by the merciless strokes of wings. The room filled with raucous, avid cries. Dimly he saw the other gerlins start up into the air, their talons and wings contesting for the little space.

  Again Niad struck, tearing open the man’s broad back. The reek of blood suffused the room, beat about by the rushing wings. The gerlins had starved in the cold season; many died. These, the strongest, were left. Led by Niad, they had at last succeeded in breaking into the Palace, but had not dared venture into the blackness beyond this room.

  Now, maddened by the reek of blood, they flew about furiously and fought over their prey. The man covered his face and eyes with his arms and struggled to rise to his feet. They beat him back; he fell into a corner of the room. There the space was so narrow only one of them could come at him.

  It was Niad who won the right. The monstrous bird swept in, struck, and wheeled back again. The man dragged himself up with a bloody hand clutching at the linen. He pulled at it between the bird’s attacks. The linen came loose from the wall, but along the floor and ceiling it was fastened more securely.

  Again the huge bird swept in. The heavy talons caught linen and flesh and shredded both. Standing half-folded in the linen, the man saw the bird’s sharp turn. He saw the onrush of feathers, beak and talons. Then he fell, and held the linen open in his hands. Screeching, helpless now to turn, the bird flew into the hangings that the man twisted around it. The cries filled the room – different cries now, cries of helpless rage and fear muffled by the hangings. The black linen swelled and fell at the desperate thrashing. There was a heavy, hard sound. Then the roar of feathers was stilled, and the rippling hangings hung down grotesquely, bearing the broken body against the wall.

  In fear the other gerlins alighted at the far corners of the room. One by one, doubtfully, they departed through the narrow window, and on the outer ledge spread their wings and pushed into the largeness of the rainy sky.

  In the recesses of the room, the man leaned into the embrace of the stone and slowly sank onto the floor. Like some rich young chara’s doll, which she has discarded in the sudden blooming of her womanhood and left to lie in some out of the way corner of her wardrobe, so the High King lay unmoving in that corner in the tower of the abandoned Palace.

  In time even the rain fell silent; but shortly afterward another deep-bellied cloud came to loose its veils over the mountain-top.

  * * *

  He came back to his senses. Weakness, loss of blood, pain, hunger and thirst made this difficult. He looked around the audience chamber, and remembered that time when he had first seen it shrouded so, two years and more before.

  He lay resting, gathering his strength. He wanted to see her dimplace again before he died.

  Later he stood, and walked unsurely to the door. He could see nothing at first in the well beyond, but he could clamber up the cold stone steps by feel. Slowly he crawled round the circles of the stairs. In truth he did not have the strength for it, not in his torn body. There was a time during which he thought he would not manage it, and would leave his corpse there upon the steps. But that would have been meaningless. If she lived, he wanted her to know he had died in her chamber, by her bed. He wanted her to know he had not forgotten. One last show-piece; and let her live with that.

  He lost sight of the place for a while.

  He was breathing heavily. He looked about.

  Before him the doors were open into her dimplace. By the slivers of light through the cracks in the window he could see the faint, pale outlines of her bed. He took hold of the carved stone railing, and pulled himself to his feet. More he would not crawl.

  He went in. He smelled the remnants of her presence. He remembered her troubled sleep that he had seen when he had come here like a thief to discard the water-ewer and guard her life – the last time he ever saw her. He was glad that she was gone. He was glad she had at least been spared this. He did not want to think of her as in any way his handiwork.

  Weakly he knelt, then sat at the side of the bed. He rested his cheek against the saffron bed curtains. Breathing in the scent of peaceful flowers by a quiet riverbank, he let his eyes close.

  And in death he dreamed.

  XIX

  The Final Flight

  HE DREAMED he saw a forest’s edge, and from it a lonely rider broke and entered on the fringes of a vast and withered range. And in the dream he was himself the rider.

  He rode a horse that once had been a noble beast, yet now its eyes were glazed and its coat befouled, and it bore him with a rolling, stuporous gait. And his own looks, beneath the tangle of his ragged hair and dirty garments, were those of one gently born – gently born, but fallen now from grace. His eyes were hollows, his mouth a whip-welt, his hands gripped the reins too tightly.

  He looked not behind him, nor too far before. Alone upon that stark expanse, he rode as if all the hordes of bloodletting God rode at his tail, pursuing him or following his lead. Off to the right the blazing Goddess-sun sat like a fattened blood-beetle, half a fist above the horizon. Somewhat above Her the faint green God-moon was rising.

  Sometime later he raised his head and looked about. The range spread to al
l sides, stopped only by sky. His horse’s gait was not so measured now. He drew back on the reins; and gratefully the horse slowed to a walk. Between his legs the stiff-ribbed barrel chest heaved and strove. With an effort he let fall the reins, and the horse stopped and swayed as if it might fall. He clambered to the ground, pulling after him his bags of food and drink.

  He made an end to a brief meal and lay back on the harsh cushion of the grass.

  He watched himself there. He had in the dream the look of a young man, but the lines of his face bore too many accounts unpaid-for.

  Of a sudden he sat up and cried aloud a word. Convulsively his hands sought the sword that hung still beside the saddle. The range grew away from him, infinite and void. Dark against the moveless sun, the horse looked mournfully into his eyes.

  He plucked stick-burrs from his cloak and urged the horse onwards. He held Goddess-sun firmly to his right hand side. Impassive and still She sat, far away, unmoved by the travails of tiny men.

  Slowly he wended his way down the range. The verdure grew rarer; the air drier, choked with pungent dust. He found the track of an extinct river and followed it, deeper into the desert.

  When his horse died he gathered the wood the river had left and cooked one of the haunches. The meat was acrid and left him thirstier. He tied the bags to his back and wandered on. Perched atop the bags, his heavy, bloody shortsword swung and gleamed. Behind him the desert carrion gathered, and nicely cleaned the bones.

  A river fell out of the mountains far ahead, cold and bitter with the ceaseless darkness beyond; and at a bend in the river a small city rose. He stumbled down into the city, into air that was sweet with water.

  He found an inn, and drank and ate. Then at last he seemed to slough off the last vestments of the desert, and looked about him at the others there, as if he were a man among men. In a voice unused to speaking, he asked if any of them knew the way to the city of Zaproll on the Sea.

  ‘That is no hard task,’ answered the innkeeper. ‘This river Somois is your road. Follow it to where it meets the sea and you will find what you seek.’

  He strewed some coins across the table, took his bags and left. The men looked after him.

  ‘A queer sort,’ remarked the man at table. ‘But then, did you not say he came out of the desert?’

  ‘I marked me well his trappings,’ said the innkeeper. ‘Even so foul I knew them for the mark of the charanti of Gerso.’

  ‘Gerso,’ murmured the innkeeper’s winegirl, compassion on her pretty brown face. ‘That is a world away, on the border of the cold wilderness where they say Elna caged the barbarians. How has he come so far?’

  ‘How has Ara-Karn?’ answered her master.

  * * *

  South the Somois ran, down along the mountains, away from the moveless Sun. It broadened at its delta where, soft as columns of smoke against the dark-bright water beyond, rose the towers of the city of Zaproll on the Sea.

  Shyly the Gerso entered the city, asking the way of those he passed. So at length he came to a great house by the vineyards and knocked upon its door. A slave admitted him. Then was it just past the time of the fifth meal, and the wealthy master and his family reclined on couches on the stoa, taking herb and enjoying the fine weather. Wordless he stood before them, then he cast down his bags and sank on his knees. Great tears welled from his eyes and fell upon the stone walk, dark as ink.

  Three times he essayed to speak to them, but each time his voice choked in his throat.

  ‘O sir,’ he managed to say at last, ‘you will not know me now, but we are of a family, and once you loved my father. And once, when I was very young, my father sent me here to take a winter. And I slept in a chamber the color of pink sea-coral and played with your daughter, whom you called Asta.’

  Thereat the master’s wife arose and exclaimed, ‘Look, my husband: it is none other than your kinsman’s only son from Gerso in the North.’

  And the master nodded, and raised the youth to his feet. ‘Even had you stood in the crowds of Tarendahardil should I have known you,’ he said.

  They bade him lie on a couch in the cool of the stoa, and they spoke of old family matters, tales of folk he had not seen in years. And the faces of his family grew dim before his eyes, and he ceased to move or smile.

  Through the garden a young woman came, lovely in her grace. ‘They are bringing in the catch,’ she began; then beheld him on the couch. ‘But what man is this?’

  ‘Hush, Asta,’ said her mother. ‘This is one you should know well. Yet for now let him rest.’

  So the slaves laid the Gerso to rest in the dimchamber for guests, whose walls were the color of pink sea-coral.

  * * *

  The long stone quays of the city of Zaproll on the Sea smelled of salt and fish-heads beneath the clustering birds. On the hillsides above the city the work of the wine went on, and the laborers bent over the grain, mowing with sickles and scythes the year’s second harvest. Below the city the many boats entered the harbor laden with shining fish. Asta walked with him along the stone ways above the boats.

  She asked him with a pretty pouting, ‘Why do you draw away from me?’

  He answered, ‘You would hate me, if you knew all I have done.’

  ‘What then?’ she teased.

  He looked at her with a desolate humor, worse than pain, showing on his countenance. ‘Oh, I am not the same one you knew when we were both young, Asta. Then I was a little boy, but now I am a man and have had the best of tutors, and learned my lessons well. In Gerso he tutored me, among the burning ruins, on the art of hate and sorrow. Now I am a traitor to my kind, and the blood of thousands stains my hands.’ Seeing her look he laughed a laugh that ended too suddenly. He stood over her, and something terrible and fierce blazed out of his eyes, so that unthinkingly she turned away.

  ‘No,’ he said harshly, ‘there is no forgetfulness for me, not even here – of all places, not here! None of it might have been at but a single word from me. One word! And well I know the speaking of that word now. Tell me what you have heard of the fastness of Ul Raambar. Tell me, pretty Asta, have you not heard fair words of Ul Raambar? – Yet perhaps not the final word. Why did I not speak out, there or in Tarendahardil, in the garden of the Empress? What demon was it that seized my tongue in fear? Was it him? And yet I hate as much as he said I would – even more. All, all that he said was true!’

  ‘Who is this you speak of?’

  ‘Who? Who?’ he shouted. He flung wide his arms, sweeping them over sky and earth and sea. ‘Him! Him!’

  Silently they returned to the great house. All the fury drained from him. The master and his wife, seeing his resignation, thought him almost well.

  Before the fourth meal of the following pass he went down to the quays again. He walked the stone moles, and watched the ships pass in and out of harbor. Swirling in the sky above, the many sea-birds culled and cawed. The great, warm Southern Ocean glittered in the light of moveless Goddess, taunting him within its glitter. I am the end, it seemed to murmur. There shall be no flight beyond me, but one.

  Against a shed leaned a low-slung boat, agleam with black and yellow paint. He looked upon it. That was a death-barge, which bears men’s corpses over the bright waves Goddess-ward where, upon the blessed shores of the far side of the world, poor men rise again as princes, and every drab is beauteous.

  He looked to sea again where the currents ran, where the sky was a curtain of darkness. He closed his eyes. Then he took oars into the death-barge and laid it in the water. The shipwright, who had paused in his labors to drink a cup and let the paint dry, emerged and called for the thief to stop; but the Gerso heard him not.

  * * *

  Only the eye-gulls kept him company, wheeling in the pallid sky. Beneath the little barge the warm currents drew him on, deeper toward the darkness. Already Goddess sat half-quenched in the distant sea. And in Her light the clouds above were coppery, and his chest blood-red.

  All at once She was no more, and hi
s heart quailed, to be beneath a desolate darkling sky. He threw back the oars, lay in the bottom of the barge and slept. And still the currents drew him on.

  He slept not long in the gloom. His head turned, his chest strove, the sweat stood on his brows and cheeks; and then his eyes were open. He heard the water beyond the sides of the barge, but saw only the sky. A deep violet green it was, smudged here and there with other colors, singular, miraculous, unworldly colors. He had never seen their like before. He lay enraptured by the sight. Throned high in splendor, changeful God passed mocking by, leading him on.

  He opened his mouth. In his heart he felt such painful wonder, it was as if he lived now and had known only death or drugged dreams before. Darker grew the sky, darker. And out of it appeared between the clouds innumerable flecks of fire, monstrous and strange.

  Then in the wonder of his heart an enormous knowledge burgeoned. He strove to raise himself, but there was no more strength within his limbs. His lips began to move, as if he would give voice to that boundless knowledge. But his lips said only a word, the word he had uttered in the burning wastelands, the word which broke his every sleep, the word as he had heard it from the lips of others, in curses, in horror, in despair and worshipful exaltation – the word – the name.

  The pitiful sounds were one with the slapping of the waves. The darkness was complete. The death-barge was no more, and he himself was no more. But at times, such was the trick of the waves that they seemed to echo the hoarsely whispered words that were all that remained of him. It was as if thousands dimly chanted them:

  ‘Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn!’

  * * *

  He was himself once more in the dream. The currents bore him on toward the bottom of the world, the center of the Dark Seas opposite to Goddess. From there the light of Her rose faintly all along the ring-like rim of the sea like a corona of fire.