by Angus Wells
The ancient standing before the entrance spoke to Yssym and the halfling said, “Elders take you now … You obey them.”
He bowed and turned away. The foremost elder raised his staff, indicating the black opening of the door. Calandryll glanced at Bracht, at Katya; took one deep breath and stepped into the rotunda.
HE was blind, lost in the darkness permeated with the pungency of incense, panic rising, with it the instinctive desire for the sword left in their sleeping quarters. He fought that trepidation, standing still as he heard the others enter, the rustle of the elders’ long robes. A flint scraped and flame took hold on wick, the smell of incense growing stronger as pale gold light fluttered before him. It was a small flame, not strong enough to illumine the walls, barely sufficient to reveal the face that studied him across its feeble glow. He glanced sidelong, to left and right, finding Katya and Bracht, their features shadowed, elongated and planed flat, the woman’s hair a glowing halo about her head. More substantial shadows moved along the walls and he saw the fifth elder joined by his companions, their staffs held out, horizontal across their chests. They formed a circle, shuffling softly closer until the silver tips of the staffs touched, surrounding the trio.
Calandryll smelled the fresh-washed scent of Katya’s hair; heard Bracht’s nervous breath; wondered if they could hear the pounding of his heart. He felt a staff against his back and stepped forward as the elder facing him retreated and he was herded across the floor of the rotunda. The elders halted; lowered their staffs. They made a soft, musical clatter on the flagstones. One gestured and Calandryll saw an opening at his feet, smooth steps winding down into ultimate darkness. The elder gestured again and he swallowed, commencing the descent.
The flame faded behind. His hand touched cool stone, slick, curving. His eyes saw nothing: he felt Katya’s hand on his shoulder; heard Bracht’s muffled curse. Warily, he eased a foot forward, finding the step’s edge, the next, the one after that, the wall smooth beneath his nervous palm, his heartbeat a thunder against his ribs. The smell of incense receded, replaced with a musty odor. The stairway wound down, turning around an axis of stone, the walls crowding closer. He looked back and saw only blackness: he continued into the ancient bowels of the keep.
Flat stone was a shock that jarred his spine, Katya gasping as she fetched up hard against him. He heard Bracht say, “Ahrd, where are we?” and moved forward, allowing the Kern room.
Then pale light glowed silvery, a will-o’-the-wisp suspended in the darkness at first, but growing, spreading until he saw that they stood in a chamber of solid rock, circular, walls and floor and roof merged. All around were niches cut into the stone, and in them bones, dull-gleaming in the light. More littered the floor, these ill-ordered and of more recent vintage, some still cased in tattered remnants of long-rotted clothing. At the center, the light brightest above it, was a bier, a square slab of stone on which lay a body. It had belonged to a man, he saw, but one possessed of more years than any human man might claim. Hair yellowed by age spread over the shoulders and the nails of the hands crossed on the chest were long, curved like some bird’s probing beak. The body wore a simple robe of rough blue cloth, belted with a cord of white. The feet were bare, those nails, too, grown long. He stared at the face, seeing a proud nose thinned by age, cheeks sunken by the years, the mouth thin-lipped above a beard that stretched to the belt.
He cried out as the eyes opened.
Katya made a sound half shout, half shriek; Bracht grunted a soft curse.
The body seemed to creak as it rose, as if the joints protested such movement, locked stiff by time. The hair rustled, like shifting spiders’ webs; dust fell soundlessly from the robe. Calandryll found himself transfixed by the eyes. Once, he thought, they had been blue: now they were white, the milky stare of blindness, save that he knew, somehow, they focused; saw him. He held his breath.
The body—the Old One, he guessed—sighed: a whisper, dry as dust. Painfully he—it—eased from the bier, swaying slightly, as if their breath alone threatened his fragile stability, rising to face them with the husks of long-dead insects dropping from robe and hair. The bloodless lips parted.
“I have awaited your coming.” The voice was a rattle, like shaken bones. “How long? Does Gess-ytha stand still?”
Numbly, Calandryll realized the words came in the Old Tongue. He cleared his throat and said, “Men name it Gessyth now,” in the same language. “And it is swamp. The domain of the Syfalheen.”
“Ah,” sighed the Old One, “so they dwell here still. That is good. And you—why come you here to disturb my rest?”
“We seek the Arcanum,” Calandryll said. “In Tezin-dar.”
Laughter like things crawling among the relics of the dead echoed softly.
“The Arcanum, eh? Why?”
“That it might be destroyed. We come to bring it out from Tezin-dar to Vanu, that the holy men there may destroy it.”
“The Arcanum is a thing of power—power corrupt. With the Arcanum the Mad God may be raised. Do you seek that end?”
“No!” Urgently. “But one does—a mage named Rhythamun, though he goes by Varent now, and inhabits another’s body—and he would return the Mad God to life.”
“Insanity!”
“Aye—insanity. And yet he would attempt it. He seeks the book to that end and we three would deny him. He sought to deceive us. To seduce me, Bracht,” he gestured instinctively at the Kern, “to his purpose. Katya was sent from Vanu by the holy men of her folk, and warned us of his design. We stand together now.”
“Or fall if you lie. Name yourself and your companions.”
“I am Calandryll den Karynth, once of Secca in Lysse. With me stand Bracht of the clan Asyth, of Cuan na’For, and Katya of Vanu.”
“So—it has come to pass, just as we scried.” The milky orbs surveyed them each in turn. “The three have come. Now come you to me, that I may judge you. But first be warned—are you false, you shall not leave this place! You shall rest here with those other deceivers who thought themselves the equal of our knowledge. That we guard jealously—as they learned.”
A withered hand indicated the confines of the chamber. Calandryll stared at the bones there; and knew other judgments had been passed.
“Judge us,” he said. “You shall find us true.”
“Do you turn back now, you go with your lives. Do you submit to this and I find you false, your fate lies here—your bones shall join these others.”
“We are not false,” he said. “Judge us.”
“So be it.”
A longtaloned hand beckoned him forward. He approached the ancient. The hands rose, cupped his face, the dead eyes peering deep into his: into his very soul, it seemed. No breath came from the parted lips, not even when the bone-white head ducked and the lips moved.
“I judge you true, Calandryll den Karynth. Let your companions approach.”
He motioned them forward, aware that they neither understood what had been said, watching as the Old One stared into Katya’s eyes, into Bracht’s, each in turn, and pronounced his formula of acceptance.
“So, it is done. You grant me rest at last, and I thank you for that solace. Go to the Syfalheen and they will bring you to Tezin-dar. The Arcanum rests there and the Guardians will know you. Take that cursed book and destroy it, with the blessing of Yl and Kyta.”
He waved them away. The silvery light began to fade. Bracht urged Katya to the stairs. Calandryll looked back as he reached the well, and gasped as he saw the ancient face fall in, the white robe collapsing, all become dust that swirled briefly in the dying light, drifting on the still air.
Then there was only darkness through which they climbed, back to the dim light of the rotunda and the waiting elders.
WELCOME daylight illumined the entrance of the rotunda as they emerged from the crypt. The elders stood waiting, greeting them now in the sibilant language of the Syfalheen, touching them each upon the right shoulder as if in blessing, their yellow eyes n
o longer impassive but glowing with approbation, leading them triumphantly out to the courtyard. All the village stood there, a shout rising as they appeared, Yssym and the anxious Vanu folk crowding forward, plying them with questions. Calandryll reported the Old One’s words to his comrades and left Katya to pass that knowledge on to her people, himself intent on questioning Yssym.
“We are not the first,” he said as he was brought across the yard, a mug of chrysse pressed into his hand.
Yssym’s head turned solemnly. “You not first … Others come, false ones who not come out … Old Ones judge and false ones stay with Old Ones.” He barked laughter. “But you not false and Yssym have honor now … Watcher who bring True Ones.”
Calandryll nodded, wondering what manner of death befell such false questors. He asked, “Have you seen the crypt? The Old One?”
“Only elders see Old One,” Yssym replied. “Guard his resting place … Seal it now.”
“He said you—the Syfalheen—would bring us to Tezin-dar. That the Guardians will bring us to the Arcanum.”
“We show you way,” Yssym confirmed. “Syfalheen not enter Tezin-dar, but you go there.”
“And these Guardians?” Bracht settled beside them. “Are they Old Ones, or something else?”
“Yssym not know,” said the halfling. “Elders not know. Syfalheen not go to Tezin-dar … Forbidden.”
“They must be Old Ones,” Calandryll murmured. “But, Dera! How old?”
“How shall you bring us to the city if you are forbidden there?” asked Bracht, pragmatic as ever.
“Show you road,” Yssym promised. “Safe way … You go, no harm come … Road safe for you.”
“When?” Bracht demanded.
“Dawn,” said Yssym, “This day we feast … You True Ones … Syfalheen wait long time for you.”
They were allowed no other choice: preparations for the promised feast were already under way. The fires that had cooked their breakfast—and that likely their last meal had the Old One judged them false—were banked and meat set to turning on the spits. Loaves were baked, and their mugs filled and refilled with chrysse until, laughing, they protested they should be too drunk to travel farther than their beds did the Syfalheen not moderate their hospitality. Small harps and flutes of bone were produced and the villagers began to sing, strange melodies and likely, Calandryll thought, not heard by human ears in long ages.
“I had not thought to be preceded,” he remarked as the feast progressed.
“The bones?” Bracht shrugged, wiping grease from his chin. “So powerful a thing as the Arcanum is likely known to others than Varent-Rhythamun.”
“They were old,” Katya offered. Then frowned: “Though so is he, and he has long sought it.”
“He made no mention of other questers,” Calandryll said. “Though he spoke of guardians.”
“Perhaps he forbore to warn us,” suggested Bracht. “From the start he was a deceiver.”
“Likely,” Calandryll agreed after a moment’s thought, “and likely that is why he did not come here himself—he knew he must fail the Old One’s judgment.”
“Aye—and knowing he must fail, he sought dupes.” Bracht chuckled cynical laughter. “Innocents who might pass the test and bring the book from Tezin-dar into his waiting hands. Well, that shall not be!”
“But,” Calandryll frowned, “the Old One spoke of three—three seen in their scrying—yet Varent sent but we two. He could not know that Katya should join us.”
“Perhaps he did not know of that augury,” Bracht said, smiling his thanks as a halfling woman piled more meat on his plate. “He is not infallible.”
‘The gods work in mysterious ways,” Katya murmured, “and it seems to me there is a pattern, a balancing. The Old Ones foresaw that there should come a time when the Arcanum must be destroyed and set these obstacles in the way of such as Rhythamun—likely they would not make such knowledge public, lest such as he find a way to the book.”
Bracht nodded and said, “Certainly their plan was set long ages past—and more skillfully, it seems, than his.”
“Aye,” Calandryll allowed, “but even so we’ve yet to bring the book to Vanu.”
“We shall,” said Bracht, supping chrysse. “We have safe passage now—we bring the book out of Tezin-dar, Yssym guides us back and Tekkan brings us to Vanu. We cannot fail.”
“We must not fail,” Katya said.
“No,” Calandryll smiled, although a doubt still lingered in the hindermost recesses of his mind.
He pushed it back, listening to the strange Syfalheen song, the voices rising birdlike, in unison, then individual singers taking a verse, sometimes the whole village joining in.
“They sing of you,” Yssym informed him. “The song is very old … Not sung until now because True Ones not come until now … Syfalheen happy now … Listen, they sing of Watcher now … of me.”
Had his piscine features been capable of human expression, Calandryll felt sure he beamed proudly. He set a hand to the halfling’s shoulder, smiling, and said, “You have our thanks, Yssym.”
Yssym ducked his head, setting his own webbed hand on Calandryll’s. “You True Ones,” he said. “Syfalheen promise Old Ones we bring you to Tezin-dar when you come … This good day.”
“And a better when we’ve the book,” said Calandryll.
“Tomorrow,” Yssym promised. “Tomorrow you take road … Tezin-dar at end … Old Ones await you there.”
The festivities continued throughout the day, more than one of the Vanu folk succumbing to the deceptive smoothness of the chrysse, though the three who were to go on limited themselves, unwilling to face the road to Tezin-dar sore-headed. Torches were lit as darkness fell and it seemed the Syfalheen were bent on celebrating through the night, for their music could still be heard as Calandryll, with Bracht and Katya, returned to their quarters. They found their own clothes set out there, beside their weapons, and as the rising sun shone through the interlaced vines of the roof, they dressed, buckling on their swords.
Outside, they found the village reassembled, Yssym waiting with the elders by the rotunda. They broke their fast, though after the excesses of the previous night few had much appetite, and they were soon ready to depart.
Katya bade farewell to her people, and each of them came to Calandryll and Bracht, clasping their hands and speaking in the Vanu tongue. “They wish you well,” Katya translated, “and say they will await us here.”
Yssym handed them each a pack containing food, and a canteen of fresh water. “I not go farther,” he said. “Elders take you to road … You follow … Not go off road! … Road safe.”
They took his hand and turned to follow the elders, the village forming two lines between which they walked, the Syfalheen calling their own farewells, those fading slowly behind them as they passed out of the confines of the yard into the gardenlike fields beyond, the elders marching in their customary silence.
Their way went due north, the sun still low on their right, shining out of a sky empty of all cloud and bright as polished steel. For all their venerability, the syfaba maintained a steady pace, the silver tips of their staffs clicking busily on the ancient stone of the roadway so that it was little time before they came to the tumbled walls defining the perimeter of the village. They passed beneath another arch, this standing still, a great curve of weathered blocks hanging black against the sky, deep holes on the inward faces showing where hinges had torn loose. A cistern was dug nearby and Calandryll saw that the ancient gates formed its roof, two huge metal slabs, each thick as a man’s waist, unmarked by time. He wondered what force had thrust them in, and thought that someday he should return to this strange haven of tranquility and write down the history of Yssym’s people.
Someday—on this more pressing urgencies called him on.
Past the arch were orchards and fields, more of the strange beasts, that watched placidly as the travelers strode purposefully by, the road arrow straight. Had Orwen come this way, he w
ondered, taking the chart from his satchel as he walked. The map showed only swamp here, and he wondered if the Syfalheen had guided the chartist around their village, or whether he had come to Tezin-dar by a different route. He realized that an elder had slowed, matching pace and staring at the map.
“Ah-when,” said the halfling, and barked brier laughter, gesturing for Calandryll to refold the chart, then pointing ahead, saying, “Tezin-dar … Tezin-dar.”
“The map amuses them,” murmured Bracht as the elder rejoined his fellows, speaking low, his words met with further laughter.
“They know Orwen’s name,” Calandryll said. “But why did they laugh?”
No answer was forthcoming and they continued after the syfaba, who showed no sign of halting, even when the sun stood overhead, as though, the ones they had so long awaited arrived, they sought now to dispense their promise as swiftly they might.
Indeed, they did not slow their brisk pace until late in the afternoon, when the ridge of the dike surrounding the Syfalheen’s haven bulked from the land ahead. The road ended there, spanned by the mound of earth, the ancient flagstones disappearing beneath the more recent structure, the smell of the swamp wafting on the breeze. The elders gathered up the skirts of their robes and proceeded to climb the dike wall, beckoning Calandryll and his companions after.
They reached the summit and halted. Before them lay a wide expanse of reeds, brackish water visible among the thick stands, and no sign of a path; beyond the reeds, hazed by distance, stood a grey line of mangroves. Calandryll frowned, confused. Bracht said, “Ahrd! Yssym promised us a road to Tezin-dar.”
“Tezin-dar!” The elder who had spoken before touched Calandryll’s sleeve, nodding enthusiastically. “Tezin-dar!”
He pointed with his staff to the outer foot of the dike, shadowed now by the lowering sun. Calandryll stared, searching the reed beds for sign of the road; finding none.
