Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 4 Darkbridge

by Adam Corby

  ‘I see in him now the end of the path I might have chosen, the path you may choose now. Once indeed I swore to let nothing sway me from the darkness of my heart’s desire. And I led another down that way. He was a Rukorian captain in my service here, and is the general of the army camped now on the plain. You would call him a soldier in Her cause, but I have seen and spoken with him, and to me he seems a greater monster than this man ever was. He is implacable and terrible without relief, and if he stood where you stand now, he would not waver.

  ‘The same fate befell another man, one whom I once believed I loved. Even in my son I saw it, when he returned all bent from his former beauty, living only for death and cruelty. But now to me it seems a better thing to perish as a victim than to end in power as these men have.’

  Alsa stood gestured with the stone blade, as if to dismiss the words. ‘And will you let this man escape unpunished, after all he has done?’

  ‘Can you look at him and think of this place that he has made his home, and still call him unpunished?’

  Alsa looked down on the ashen body, bloody, lifeless, ready for a death-barge. She shook her head, and against her own belief heard her lips utter the word, ‘No.’

  ‘His full punishment, if he can endure it, would be in living on afterward. For if he chooses that, then he will face no small atonement.

  ‘Listen to me, child. Once I believed that we should be whole as the world is whole, both of darkness and of light, complete unto ourselves. But it is a lonely pleasure to be complete. Who will hear your voice, but you? Who will speak in answer, but you? What does a circle meet but itself? There is only one wholeness for me, and that is the wholeness between this man and me. When I saw him again, my body seemed to leap in anguish for all he has suffered and must suffer still. And that is more than you or I could have endured. There is a word – I will not say it here fully. What is love? I do not know, but it has mastered me.’

  Alsa lowered the knife. But her fingers would not let it go.

  ‘And yet,’ she asked, ‘what would become of me? How could I return to the Temple or face the sisters?’

  ‘That life is not for you. You lack the simple faith of the old High Priestess. It was put upon you, even as being Queen was put upon me. I never knew its meaning or gave myself to it until the year that ends this pass. Then, seated at the knees of a rude woman and seeing how she ruled a little village, I chose to become again a queen.’

  ‘But what you speak of is forbidden.’

  ‘This is the Pass of God, and Goddess turns Her back. Nothing is forbidden on this pass. You yourself have said it.’

  Once again Alsa took a step back. ‘I hear you,’ she said at last. ‘And I want to trust in this vision you offer me. But I do not see it. I cannot perform the ritual! But it is the only way I know! And I am afraid of what I will become if I perform it.’

  ‘You must choose from your heart. This will be no ritual, you are no priestess here, but only a young and nameless woman, come to murder her enemy. And if you choose murder, then you must kill me first before him, and swear that you will speak the rites for both of us together. That is my one demand.’

  Alsa stood over the outstretched body. Slowly she sank to her knees beside it and laid one long, pale hand along the stiff, bloody neck.

  ‘Choose,’ said the Queen.

  ‘Do you call this mercy?’ she demanded.

  ‘Choose.’

  Alsa flung the knife away. The stone blade broke against the wall. She stood to her feet and faced the older woman. ‘Small choice,’ she said hotly, ‘for I think he is already slain.’

  Grave gladness kindled in the Queen’s eyes. She knelt beside her on the far side of the body.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, so softly Alsa could scarcely hear it. ‘I know it is far from easy, above all to take the first step. Let me take it for you then.’

  The hands lifted off the golden mask. Alsa tossed her head, stared around the room, touched her cheeks wet and chill with tears.

  ‘You are lovely, Alsa,’ said the Queen. ‘Put off these robes, say your last prayers at the altar and go into the world. Go to Hertha-Toll in the far North; ask the women there what it is like to be with a man, and without one. Rejoice in your youth and the desire you fire in men. Perhaps you will find some stirring within yourself also.’

  She embraced the younger woman and kissed her on her brow.

  Alsa bent her head. A great heaviness seemed to lift from her shoulders, and her body quivered the way a young colt will in the breezes of its first summer.

  ‘I had lost my faith,’ she said. ‘I had lost my faith, but now I believe I have seen Goddess in the flesh and heard Her words. Wherever I go I will say to all that here is a Queen worthy of worship.’

  ‘We will meet again before you go.’

  The sounds of the priestess’ footsteps faded down the dark stairwell.

  * * *

  Allissál turned back to the man beside the bed. But all her efforts to restore him were in vain. She had told Alsa that he still lived, but in truth she was not sure. There was so little life in him.

  She drew his head upon her lap and rocked him in her arms.

  ‘Jade, Jade, wake up, and live.’

  There was no answer in the heavy body, not even a flickering of the fine black eyelashes. Her hair brushed across the anguished face. She was weeping. The cold of him seemed to pierce her like a weapon of despair.

  ‘Jade, Jade, wake up, and live.’

  She bent lower over him. Her tears fell upon the brow and nose and bearded cheeks. She kissed the cold gray lips fiercely, as if the very desperation in her might somehow stir him. But the lips did not move.

  Had she come too late? She stared at the lines about his eyes, the deep furrows on the brow, the cheeks sunken like caves under the sharp bones. The trail of his blood led across the floor from the dais to the black mouth of the doorway. No doubt the stairs were also painted with it. She had heard the tales they told in the South, of how the King was mad and the anger of the gods fell on him at last. She had taken the rumors for messages he sent to her, to ask her for her pardon. She had never guessed at this.

  ‘Jade, Jade, I beg of you, wake up and live, or I will surely die with you.’

  Was it only in her hope? – there was a faint stirring of the eyes – and did not the lips move slightly?

  She dragged the body on the bed, wrapped in the cloak. She roamed the chamber to find something for him. He needed food and drink. In her maidens’ old quarters she found a stoppered ewer half-full of water. Eagerly she climbed back up the narrow stairs. She found him as she had left him, no better and but no worse. She tilted the ewer against his lips; the water spilled over the bed-linens, but it seemed as though his lips did move, and drink, a little.

  Then all at once in horror she remembered.

  She cast the ewer down and recoiled from the body. She stared in terror at the ewer. Had it been left untouched because of that? She smelled of the water: it was faintly sweet, as though crushed dried blossoms had been sprinkled and dissolved in it. But her maidens had often left such water in basins beside their couches to perfume the air while they slept or lay in love.

  Once more she looked at the body, cold and gray as winter’s light. Then she swept the ewer up to her lips and drank deeply. It was sweet and deadly cold, that water. She felt it spill like ice down the open front of her tunic. She sat beside him by the bed and drew the sheets over both of them. She held him in her arms and kissed the cold, cold cheek.

  ‘We follow the same path now,’ she murmured in his ear.

  She lay down on the bed and curled against the cold, still form.

  * * *

  Some time passed. Then distantly she heard a faint, shuffling sound. It was issuing from deep below the Palace. From level to level the shuffling ascended, until it filled all the stories of the Palace – until it spilled up the tower steps and came from the very threshold of the room. An angry murmuring echoed the shuf
fling sound, like the buzz of swarming bees – but the doorway was still empty.

  Fear took her. The hairs of her nape were upstanding. She was trembling.

  The ghosts and spirits he had fetched from their unquiet, earthbound ends had been set free when his Dark Man had burned and failed. But still they filled the halls and pits of the Palace. Still they sought him out atop the White Tower. And she too was the object of their vengeance. The slain of Urnostardil, the murdered slaves who had built the citadel, had much to seek from the last daughter of Elna’s house.

  ‘Begone,’ she cried aloud. ‘You will not have him!’

  She clasped the cold shrouded body fiercely. But the horrid sounds from beyond the door did not cease, nor did the hungry spirits of the dead give back. She knew who they were, but felt no shame to defy them.

  ‘Go back, and I promise you goodly offerings. The songs of Farewell will be sung at every crossroads of the city, and a hundred times more in the yard between the gates.’

  But the angry murmurings only grew more dreadful in her ears.

  ‘Go back,’ she said, ‘and we will found a yearly festival in your memory. Each year for one week’s time men will think of you and bid you good fortune in the world beyond.’

  But the anger beyond the door increased still more – and did she make out, faint like candle-cast shadows, vague hands grasping at the stones about the door?

  ‘Go back,’ she pleaded. ‘What do you want of me? Will your pain be less if ours is added to it? I will give over and consecrate this Citadel of my ancestors to you. Even this, the pride of Elna and Ilazrius, and the last remnant of my heritage, I will give you if you spare him. It will stand here over the sea throughout the centuries, the largest and finest barge in the world, and there will be thirteen shrines consecrated within it for prayers and offerings to be given you. Only, I beg of you, let him live.’

  At that, at last, there was a lessening in the angry sounds. One by one, the sightless shades turned and sank down the many levels into the earth that was their prison.

  Allissál, sobbing, leaned against the body beside her. Still he had not stirred, and she felt a sickness in her belly. What had she done? They were both dead, and she had sworn away her heritage. Elna himself had slept and died here in this room centuries before, ancient and revered in his great carven bed, surrounded by his many women, sons and grandsons.

  She felt very tired. There was not even strength left for tears. But also she felt peace. At last she felt she knew the heart of her greatest ancestor, the barbarian, the lover, and the King.

  So, prepared at last, she turned to have her final look at him, and found his eyes open upon her.

  ‘Good-waking, Jade,’ she said.

  He smiled. It was a strange sight, that smile. Weakly he raised his hand and wiped at the traces of her tears. But he said nothing. His eyes were open with an empty wonder. They were the eyes of a newborn child, which showed only innocence. No memories darkened them. The blackness in the pupils had shrunk, leaving only the green, bright as a bandar-skin.

  ‘How do you feel?’ she asked him. But he only looked at her.

  Slowly she drew down the hunting-cloak. His naked chest seemed wan and gray. But the wound over his heart had closed; the dark blood no longer oozed out. Even the scar seemed old and fading. She marveled at him, and wondered if he really was a man, or what his followers had claimed.

  ‘You need light and air,’ she told him, and helped him to his feet. She covered his nakedness in the cloak, and refastened the brooch-pin by his throat. In this and in the rest he let her do as she would; he offered no more objections or help than a toddling child would have done. He leaned upon her trustingly. His movements lacked that grace and sinuous strength they once had.

  Slowly she helped him down the stairs and out upon the wide roof of the Palace in the gusting winds.

  ‘It is raining,’ she said. She drew the hood over his head, but he pushed it back and let the rain stream down his face.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is right to feel this rain. It is a good rain.’

  He eyes looked far out beyond the roof-rim over the ruins of the city he had destroyed. The mists had risen, but in the murk of the rain little beyond the ruins could be seen. It was as if the world began and ended with what had been left here, lifeless and grim.

  His lips moved, and his throat worked, but no sounds came out.

  ‘Ah, my poor love,’ she murmured, and kissed him. She kissed his mouth and his throat.

  It was as if her kiss brought back the gift of speech to him. ‘Allissál,’ he said. She had never heard her name spoken in that way. It was as though he had placed in that one word all clouds and seas, lakes, mountains, cities, children, and every Queen that ever was.

  His eyes mirrored the misty sky in peace. But then a shadow darkened the eyes, and the black swallowed much of the jade therein. A respite of calm followed, and then another bout of painful thoughts and memories. She watched all this as she might have looked on thunderclouds in the sky that come nearer and then are blown back, then threaten a deluge once more.

  At last the balance of black and green in his eyes settled. Still it altered, somewhat, but slow and slight the changes that still took place. And she knew that he had faced what he had done, faced it as though it had been the deeds of another man; then acknowledged that the man who had done all that was himself after all. The worst, she knew, was past.

  ‘Good-waking, Jade,’ she said.

  He looked at her. He drank in the sight of her. She felt a little dizzy to be looked on with such fierce delight and joy. ‘I want to call you Gold,’ he said, ‘but that was another.’

  ‘Call me what you will. I will even play her, if it pleases you.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘She is gone now. And it would not be right.’ He sighed. ‘And do you forgive me?’

  She rose to her feet before him. ‘Behold.’

  She lifted the hem of her tunic. High up the pale right thigh, the Raamba marriage-band gleamed in the mist like fire and sunlight. ‘Since you last saw this, it has not left my body. Even in the Ocean of the Dead I wore it.’

  He nodded. Some small part of grace, of nobility and even of innocence, seemed to return to that blighted, blasted, darkened visage whose owner had set the world aflame.

  ‘Jade, there is an army below, in the field where your men camped. Now your men have deserted you, but at a word from me these will follow you and do your bidding.’

  He was still caught in the contemplation of the ruins. ‘Tell them to go home.’

  ‘I meant no mockery. The army is there. They are Rukorians, and Haspeth leads them.’

  ‘Tell him to go home, then. I will wage no more wars.’

  She rested her head upon his shoulder. ‘Then we must go away, as soon as you are able,’ she murmured. ‘For if they find us here and learn that you are Ara-Karn, then they will kill us both, and Haspeth will strike the first blow. I set them on their course and loosed them, but I cannot rule them now in this.’

  ‘The world is as wounded as I am,’ he said. ‘This was my doing. Now,’ he said, ‘I must heal it.’

  Their faces were so close that the rain that dripped from their chins fell upon each other’s breast.

  ‘I will help you,’ she said. ‘I will not leave your side again.’

  He leaned down and kissed her.

  Epilogue

  WHEN THE SOLDIERS found the Citadel empty, most of them returned to Rukor and put away their swords. But part of the army remained; Haspeth led them darkward and waged war upon Erion Sedeg in Fulmine. After some months’ campaigning the two armies joined on a muddy field in Belknule in the battle known thereafter as the Wolf’s-Feast. There fell Haspeth and all his followers, even to Haspeth’s son. Erion Sedeg lived, though wounded and weak. With him survived fewer than fifty of his mercenaries.

  Upon his return to the horse-court of his fastness in Fulmine, the man who was called the King’s Tongue was murdered by the h
ostage children. For a prank they sketched these characters in his blood on the stones beside the corpse:

  DA ELGA KAAN

  The children scattered laughing to their home-born cities, where they were received with welcomes as heartfelt as they were brief.

  But when the cities heard rumor of the return of the Divine Queen and that she had joined herself in marriage to the King in the old Imperial City, they sent legates to see if it were true. Bands of people flocked there as well, so that the ruins came alive again. Guided by the last priestess of the Brown Temple, they passed fire over the black mountain-top and cleansed the earth with seawater, and so purified the place of evil and consecrated it as a barge-tomb for the poisoned ones.

  Alsa found that she could not leave behind her virgin’s robes so quickly, for there was much to be done that year, and she alone knew the rites which would ease the people’s minds. Messengers were sent to the other priestesses in the caves of the Desert, but they did not return.

  At opposite ends over the welcoming gateway of the barge two statues were raised, of red stone, one at the north lance-tower and the other at the south. So different they had been in their hearts and all their ways, yet fate entangled their lives to end them. Now like sentinels the carven likenesses of Gundoen and Ampeánor stood atop the battlements of the barge and looked out over the reborn city, brightward and to the sea; and the gentle light of Goddess, loving and forgiving, fell upon them both in equal measure.

  * * *

  That spring Kiva returned to Tarendahardil. She and her followers stayed in the Hall of Kings and there did worship to the royal couple.

  One sleep the King came to see Kiva alone. He showed her two ornate, gilded coffers. ‘I kept these for you,’ he told her, ‘but it was not until now I could bring myself to let you have them. It was not always irony. I knew them too.’

  Kiva took the coffers out of the city brightward to the hill beside the sea. There, in the two beautiful barge-tombs she had had built a year earlier, she put the coffers along with clay vessels of food and Postio wine. Then in the strong ruddy light of Goddess she did off her robes and lay in the dirt between the tombs with the men who had accompanied her.