OrbSoul (Book 6)

by Martin Ash

  There were those among his advisors who held that the word of a Karai conqueror, no matter his lineage, was of no consequence. The Karai, as a matter of course, held scant regard for those they deemed inferior. In the opinion of these advisors, the best the occupants of Enchantment's Reach could hope for was enslavement and the harshest labour. Any who could perform no useful function to their potential overmasters could expect to die. The issue was exacerbated by Prince Anzejarl's manifest link with the True Sept. It was no secret that to the Sept, unbelievers had, by the very fact of their non-conviction, relinquished their right to existence.

  These advisors believed Pader had just granted Prince Anzejarl and the True Sept licence to commit vengeance at their leisure.

  Pader, still reeling from not only the shock of the suddenness and devastating effectiveness of the assault, but also Mawnie's murder and the disappearance of her infant daughter, Lir, and subsequently, Lord Fectur, had found himself wavering. Others of his advisors, however, were in accord with his opinion that surrender had now become the only viable option. The Royal Palace might hold on against the assault for - conceivably, and at most - another day or two, but the consequences for the thousands of people in the occupied city-castle were too terrible to contemplate. No one doubted that in order to break the spirit of the Palace defenders, Anzejarl would put innocent citizens to torture and torment in full view of Orbia's walls. In their scores, if not hundreds or even thousands. And reprisals when the Palace did eventually fall would be all the more terrible. As war-trolls and shock-troops were already battling inside Orbia's walls, even though the Palace gate still held, it could truly only be a matter of time.

  Even so Pader had agonized for more than an hour before taking the decision to order a surrender. To throw themselves upon the mercy of the Karai? It seemed an absurd notion. But with the city gate and barbican down there was no way now to stem the Karai influx. If they could save as many lives as possible today, was there yet a hope that Leth and/or Issul might return, bringing with them the supernatural help that would liberate their cherished kingdom again?

  As a last ditch measure several units of special forces were ordered under cover, ready to rise and strike against the invader as and when the opportunity might present itself. Then an emissary was sent out, bearing word of Pader's conditional agreement to surrender.

  Pader was perched upon the edge of his chair on the Royal Dais. Alongside him the Seat of the Sovereign remained empty in honour of the absent monarch. Around the Hall soldiers were in attendance. Karai soldiers, about fifty in all, silent, impassive, watchful.

  Karai soldiers guarding the Hall of Wise Counsel!

  Pader experienced a welter of emotion, an enormous welling rising from the pit of his gut, threatening to burst him apart from within. Silence hung upon the Hall like a granite weight. He sat motionless, his throat constricted, his eyes upon the floor. His conqueror obliged him to wait.

  The minutes slid by, and at last he heard the sound of purposeful footsteps approaching from beyond the double doors at the rear of the Hall. His heart kicked. The doors swung open. Ten Karai heralds entered carrying slender brass horns from which banners bearing Karai colours were suspended. They stood five to each side of the doorway, raised their instruments and blew a shrill fanfare. A twelve-strong guard of honour marched in and proceeded down the length of the central aisle to take up positions before the dais. Moments later Prince Anzejarl swept through the doors, accompanied by a trio of battle-scarred, seamed-faced generals. Anzejarl marched directly to the dais, his searing gem eyes sweeping and appraising the Hall as he went. He took in the empty throne. His eyes flashed at Pader.

  'Where is Leth?'

  Without pausing he mounted the dais and lowered himself with full confidence into the Seat of the Sovereign - a gesture which caused Pader Luminis to quiver with helpless outrage.

  'I said, where is Leth?'

  'The King is absent,' Pader replied.

  'What? He has fled in the face of his foe? What kind of monarch is this?'

  Pader shook his head. 'King Leth was elsewhere when you cast your ring of steel around Enchantment's Reach. I am sorry to disappoint you.'

  Anzejarl frowned. 'And his Queen?'

  'The same.'

  'Then I am expected to deal with an underling?'

  'I am afraid that is correct.'

  Pader studied his enemy's face, comparing it to what remained of the memory of the youthful visage he had seen all those years ago in the Karai capital, Zhang. The brooding air remained, the fierce intelligence was still apparent, but the face . . . Yes, it was older, of course, but there was something else in the harsh, pale features that commanded Pader's attention. Something at first indefinable. Pader barely recollected the details of the face he had seen of the boy Anzejarl, but he knew that, as with all Karai, what he had looked upon had been a mask. Still and virtually expressionless, revealing no emotion and little, if anything, of the character within. Yet the face of the man-Karai he looked upon now was anything but emotionless.

  Pader was fascinated. His subject was extraordinary, contradictory and thoroughly atypical. A harsh, forbidding countenance, but full of expression; savage, non-human, yet fevered, animated, intense, and riven with . . . angst. It was the last thing Pader had expected. Anzejarl looked in every aspect like a man - a Karai - caught in a bitter and prolonged conflict, but what his features stated was that the conflict was more than anything with himself. Pader could barely take his eyes away.

  Prince Anzejarl gestured peremptorily with a finger. 'You may step down. You and your clique of advisors. Put yourselves in the common seating.'

  Pader's cheeks burned but he could do little but comply. He rose stiffly and walked from the dais. At the head of the steps he halted, his attention drawn to another person who now entered the Hall and strode confidently to the dais. A woman, young and startlingly beautiful, her hair long and lustrous bronzen-red. She was clad in light chain armour, baggy green padded troos, calf-boots and a long, flowing rust-toned cape. There was an unworldly cast to her, and a hard, cruel set to her mouth. Pader eyed her intently.

  So, at last, you are here. The cause of so much of this. You who have roused the Karai and brought such destruction upon the world. You are . . . what? And why? Why have you really come? Do you truly see with the eyes of a god? Are you projected here in flesh and mind by one of the Highest Ones? Purely to oversee our destruction?

  Pader recalled discussing this 'woman' with Orbelon. He, like Leth before him, had declared that, now they were aware of her, their primary effort should be directed almost exclusively against her. Orbelon's response had been discouraging: You cannot destroy her. As far as you are concerned she is indestructible.

  But Orbelon had added something that had hooked Pader's consciousness. In order for this woman to remain here in the formed world without suffering enfeeblement she must carry a magical artefact of some kind on or close to her person. With this she would renew her essence and her power. Furthermore, she would require an artefact - perhaps the same one, perhaps something different - to maintain her hold over Anzejarl and to allow him to continue to command the terrible allies he had brought from Enchantment.

  As Olmana approached Pader took note of the leather pouch that she wore at her belt.

  Olmana gave him no more than a cursory glance. She mounted the steps to confer with Anzejarl. As she passed Pader he felt her aura. She radiated a psychic chill like nothing he had experienced. He recoiled inwardly, on pure reflex, and stared after her in some shock. Recovering, he continued down the steps and took a seat. Olmana was bent, speaking into Anzejarl's ear. Pader could not hear what passed between them. He waited quietly, still shaken by the character and power of the force she emanated.

  Then she turned around, and looked down scathingly at Pader and his advisors. 'Your king and queen are absent? Where are they?'

  'Far from here. As I have explained to Prince Anzejarl, we are uninformed as to their exact
location. You will not find them unless they choose to be found.'

  Olmana stood rigid for a moment, glaring at him, then said with disdain, 'It is nothing to us.'

  She raised her beautiful head suddenly and gazed with strange passion off into a far distance. Her expression became quizzical; she was poised, as though harkening to a voice no one else heard. Pader noted the tension in her body; she was quivering. Then she frowned, gave a flick of the head, and turned back to Prince Anzejarl, who was also watching her closely. Pader could not read the look on his face. Olmana seemed irritated and distracted. She spoke in quick undertones to the Karai prince.

  Anzejarl began to rise from the throne. Olmana stepped away and stared briefly down at Pader and the others again. Then she spoke in sharp tones to one of Anzejarl's generals. 'Take these wretches away and lock them up.'

  v

  Night enfolded Enchantment's Reach. A weird calm descended. Some fires still smouldered in shells of ruined buildings, most had now been doused. Fighting had ceased, except for a few isolated spots where word of the surrender had not got through - or if it had it had been disregarded. The streets were quiet and eerily deserted but for Karai sentries and patrols. A strict curfew had been imposed. Not even the taverns and hostelries showed lights, for the conquering Karai, in their discipline and implacability, took no time for revelry. The great snow-covered city-castle was silent and still, though of course it did not sleep.

  In the bedchamber of the royal apartments of the First Tower of Dawn Prince Anzejarl lay spreadeagled upon his back on Leth's and Issul's marital bed. A huge log fire blazed in the hearth, radiating a determined heat to ease the chill of the room, and numerous candles warded off the dark and filled the chamber with lightly shifting shadows. Anzejarl was naked. Through his head ran a hundred thoughts.

  The day had gone so well, and yet he was deeply troubled. No matter the scale of his victory, satisfaction and gratification eluded him. It was as though the Greatest Prize, now that it was in his hands, could not match up to the anticipation that had borne him to it. Something was lacking. With the short, brutal years of campaign and conquest, victory after victory, the focus and single-minded purpose. . . to finally arrive here, at his goal, and find. . . what? That it was not what he wanted? Or that demons still raged within him?

  Or was it that he feared what might come next?

  Or a combination of all these things, and more?

  Earlier in the evening he had been with Olmana. She had shown an unexpected measure of openness that had been absent for many days. Indeed, Anzejarl had perceived moments, just briefly, when it seemed she was on the verge of a confidence. She appeared almost to want his reassurance and encouragement. He sensed the need to tread carefully still, but had not shied from quizzing her.

  'Something is happening here,' she had snapped when she first entered the room, striding back and forth in agitation and gnawing at the knuckle of her thumb.

  'Something?'

  'In this place. Something. I do not understand. I do not understand.'

  'To what do you refer?'

  Olmana had gone to the window. Grasping the mouldings on either side she stood tensely, looking out across the wide evening distance to where the weirdlights of Enchantment hovered far away, in all their eerie, glowing beauty.

  From where he sat upon the bed Anzejarl had seen that she mouthed inaudible words. He was aroused, wanting her, but he knew that her temper was high. He determined to enquire into the source of her discontentment.

  'Olmana, is it the Child? Is the Child not here, as you had expected?'

  He braced himself, expecting her to wheel upon him in fury. But she remained where she was and lowered her head, shaking it from side to side. 'Here . . . elsewhere . . . I no longer know. I no longer know!' She thrust herself back from the window. 'Orbelon, what have you done?'

  'You have mentioned Orbelon many times,' Anzejarl said, after a pause. 'Will you explain to me who Orbelon is?'

  'I have told you before, he is my enemy, who I believed could never trouble me again. You need know no more. But . . .' She pressed fingers and thumb to her furrowed brow. 'Orbelon, what is happening here? What have you done? How?' She glanced up, her mouth stretched wide. 'The Child may yet be here, or in another location. I am no longer able to tell, for they place mists around me.'

  'They?'

  'Orbelon has returned, out of his non-being. And he has somehow gained the assistance--' she paused. 'Yes, the assistance of at least one other, for I cannot believe they act entirely independently. Orbelon is somehow free and has united with Triune. I sensed it before; now I cannot doubt it. Gah!' She tensed and clawed savagely at the air. 'Are you empowered? Can you be? How? How? And Urch! Do I truly sense you also? And the Child . . . I cannot see!'

  Watching her Anzejarl had had the impression, by no means for the first time, that Olmana spoke with another's voice, that she saw and knew things that were seen and known by another - in fact, that her very thoughts were the thoughts of something unseen, unknown. It unsettled him, making him feel ever further removed from her. He questioned even more the nature of this woman who he had come to love, fear and be enslaved by, and who he lusted for now.

  For long moments Olmana had seemed entranced. She stared into space, unmoving. Then she had turned to fix him with a wild glare, and her voice was a near shriek. 'We have little time, Anzejarl!'

  'What is it you want?'

  'Tomorrow we go underground.'

  'Beneath the city?'

  'Or into the bowels of the Palace itself. There is something there. I am certain of it!'

  'We can go now, if you wish.'

  She had shaken her head emphatically. 'Now I must meditate, draw strength, and plan.'

  She took several rapid steps across the chamber, halted and cocked her head with an ireful expression, her lips twitching in agitation. 'Triune, you cannot foil me! Your Soul is mine still!'

  Anzejarl had watched her, seen the torrent of emotions that coursed across her face.

  What is it that she so fears? he wondered.

  *

  For an hour Anzejarl had drawn some mild degree of satisfaction from inspecting the private apartments of King Leth and Queen Issul. He gave close examination to their clothing and fineries, opened drawers and cupboards to take intimate stock of their most personal effects. He went to Leth's study, pored for a while over books, ledgers and private papers; elsewhere he became fascinated by Issul's possessions, her ornaments, perfumes, jewellery, soaps, make-up, powders, creams. He went to her office, looked through her official letters and papers, found them less rewarding to his inquiring mind, and returned via the children’s room to the private apartments and the master bedchamber. By such means Anzejarl felt himself assuming a kind of relationship with the absent King and Queen, gaining, as he believed, more than vestiges of an appreciation of their individual characters, and an insight and understanding of their daily lives. For him, for that rarest of beings, an enquiring, self-interrogating Karai, it was a fascinating, valuable and perhaps even vital study.

  Everywhere he perceived evidence of their closeness. Issul had written numerous intimate notes to her husband; some were in a bundle bound with a blue silk ribbon beneath Leth's pillow, as was a gold locket containing a lock of Issul's hair. There was a magnificent informal painting upon one wall, depicting the two of them, their faces radiant with joy. Issul stood slightly behind Leth, her arms draped around his shoulders and her cheek pressed to his. Elsewhere were portraits of their two children, Prince Galry and Princess Jace.

  Anzejarl could almost hear Issul's and Leth's voices here, in this most intimate of settings. Their ghosts were everywhere. He smelt the two of them upon the bedsheets and pillows. Their odours of scent and perspiration were distinct and individual on either side of the bed, but mingling each into the others closer to its centre. He found a stick of lip-rouge upon Issul's dresser, and touched it to his own lips, sniffed and licked it, hoping to gain something of
a knowledge and taste of her. He gazed into her vanity-mirror and imagined her sitting before it, applying her make-up. He took up her hairbrush and smelt it, pulled free several long fair hairs, then dragged the brush through his own unruly locks. A feeling, haunting and remote, had begun to bloom within him. Yet again, it was a feeling he could not define, an uneasy longing, something previously unknown to him.

  Troubled in his heart, and in a kind of reverie, Anzejarl had returned to the bed, where he removed his clothes. Naked, he lay down upon the soft covers, his gaze taking in the shadows that crawled upon the ceiling.

  Leth's absence left him somewhat deflated. It was unexpected. Where might he be? Assembling some mighty force somewhere, preparing to strike back in the hope of re-taking his kingdom? To Anzejarl's mind it was not probable. His spies informed him that the kingdoms of the Northern Modane had responded negatively to Leth's appeals for aid, and he knew of no other such force. And with the city-castle and Orbia now securely in his hands, he could imagine no force capable of taking it back. Unless . . . might Leth himself, or his Queen, be seeking aid from within Enchantment?

  Again, it seemed most unlikely. The Highest Ones had no interest in anything but their own affairs. Olmana, whatever her true origins, was hardly an exception, for she had come here solely in pursuit of her own particular ends. She had used Anzejarl and his Karai army purely as tools to achieve these. Anzejarl could not imagine the Highest Ones paying heed to a kinglet like Leth.

  Further questioning of the Lord Protector, Pader Luminis, had revealed little more. Anzejarl was inclined to believe him when he declared his ignorance of Leth's and Issul's whereabouts. Pader openly stated that they both intended to return and vanquish the Karai invaders, but Anzejarl perceived his words as little more than bombast and bluff, to be expected in a broken man. Torture might elicit more. Anzejarl considered its application on the morrow; tonight he had grown weary of violence and force, and had more pressing matters on his mind. He had instructed the Lord Protector as to the modes of conduct he expected in the aftermath of the battle, and made it plain that any form of resistance or uprising would invoke the severest reprisals. Then he had left him to stew in his cell.