The Orb And The Spectre (Book 2)

by Martin Ash

"He should have sent his soldiers!" said another man, and turned to Shenwolf. "Where were you? Why did you not come to save us?"

  Now Issul realized that the comments had been chiefly aimed at goading Shenwolf, who still wore his blue tabard bearing the royal coat of arms.

  Others echoed the man's words. "Where were you? Where was the King? Why were we sacrificed?"

  Shenwolf looked thoughtfully from one to the other. "You weren’t sacrificed. For my part, I have been fighting the Karai elsewhere. My companions also. Many of us who rode out have not returned, nor will they ever. We can’t be everywhere, and my friend Jace is right, it would be unwise for King Leth to attempt to meet the Karai in open battle. They are strong and have powerful allies. We must bide our time."

  "Bide our time!" spat one man. "That’s the action of a weak and indecisive leader." He rose angrily to his feet and stabbed a finger at Shenwolf. "Why are you here, then? Why are you not now fighting the Karai? Are you afraid? Do you call yourself a soldier when you do not even dare to fight?"

  Shenwolf gazed steadily into his eye but took the taunt in silence. Issul began to speak but the man butted in, grabbing a staff and thrusting its end towards Shenwolf. "Is that the truth, soldier? Are you afraid? Are all the king's men afraid?"

  "Losses are inevitable against an enemy as powerful as the Karai," said Issul angrily. "Wizened Lea was not sacrificed, but we knew it could not be defended. We sent warning and the promise of shelter weeks ago, to you and to the nearby villages."

  "We?" said the woman. "We? Who are 'we'?"

  "The King," said Issul quickly. "Envoys were sent out. It was well broadcast within the city-castle."

  They did not want to hear. The man with the staff was shaking with emotion. "Cowards! Skulking behind walls!"

  He thrust his staff at Shenwolf. It would have struck the young soldier upon the breastbone with some force, but he fended it with his hand.

  "Fight me!" snarled the man. "Fight me! Or are you afraid of me, too!"

  Issul glanced around at the other travellers. They were mainly elderly, or women and children, but their mood was becoming ugly and there were enough of them to constitute a mob. She stood, as did Shenwolf and the other two.

  "Plainly you do not wish us here. We will leave."

  The man with the staff swung at Shenwolf, who stepped lithely to the side. The blow went wild. He grasped the staff, twisted quickly and pulled it from the man's grasp, then cast it to the ground.

  Issul motioned him away. She backed off, Kol and Phisusandra beside her. They mounted their horses, watched by the group who had now fallen into a sullen silence and seemed a little uncertain of itself.

  "You people," Issul called. "You will be made welcome at Enchantment's Reach. Every one of you. The King will turn no one away, not even those who deserve only his disfavour. But come peacefully. Troublemakers will be arrested and dealt with harshly."

  She put heels to flanks and rode back onto the way, watched by puzzled, haggard faces.

  Midway through the afternoon the cloud broke up, and at last, rounding a bend, Issul saw in the distance before her the vast towering scarp. She brought her horse to a halt, her heart pounding as she peered into the far, high distance and, yes! there at the crest, the high walls and the towers behind them, shimmering in the sunlight. She turned to Shenwolf, smiling with tears in her eyes. "I am home!"

  He returned the smile. "It’s a good feeling, is it not?"

  As they passed on none of them took notice of a bent figure at the wayside. It was one among several, poorly garbed, nondescript. A woman, advanced in years, heavily built and leaning upon a staff. She wore a long dress of dark fust and a worn and faded green shawl pulled up over her grey hair. Scored upon the flesh of her left cheek were the marks of deep fingernail scratches where she had once, not long ago, struggled with a child in the woods, and lost him.

  Arene watched the Queen as she rode away. She recognized her as the young beauty who had pursued the Vileborn in the forest and had been knocked down and carried away by the Karai. The subsequent influx of soldiers, frantically searching the region, making enquiries everywhere, had quickly told her that the woman must have been of major importance. Through listening, observing and questioning she had learned that it was the Queen of Enchantment's Reach herself who had fallen victim to the Karai. The soldiers did not know her fate, and Arene had not elected to inform them.

  But what did the Queen of Enchantment's Reach know of the Vileborn?

  Arene nodded to herself as she watched Issul ride away down the forest road. The Queen was alive and had returned. She would hunt the Vileborn again, as her destiny predicted. It all could have prevented so easily, there beside the pond, had not the impudent young stranger intervened. But his intervention, also, was surely destiny, that part which affected her own, to which she was necessarily blind. Such is the way of things. So many possible paths; she could never have been open to them all.

  Arene had not seen the face of the young soldier at Issul's side as they paused upon the way, for his back had been to her. Had she seen him she might well have wondered.

  She observed thoughtfully until the little party had passed out of sight around a bend. Then she leaned upon her staff once more and hobbled on, bound like all the others upon the road for the great city-castle that was now not so very far away.

  II

  The Karai prince Anzejarl cantered up the grassy slope on his black stallion, the beautiful Olmana at his side on a chestnut gelding, her long burnished-red hair blowing in the breeze. They came to a halt upon the crest and gazed down the long shallow valley where the bulk of the Karai army was encamped. Rows of blue and white tents stretched into the distance, a strong wooden palisade enclosing them. Anzejarl rested his hands upon the pommel of his saddle. He looked towards a nearby lake-side. Tall, lumbering, grey-skinned trolls were gathered there, more than one hundred in number. They squatted by the waterside, lazed beneath the trees, rolled upon the dusty earth. Here and there a squabble broke out between two or more of the creatures. Brief flurries ensued, then broke up, the creatures parting with snarls, beating their chests and making threatening gestures. Anzejarl spurred his mount and rode down to put himself among them.

  As he and Olmana approached the trolls looked up, one then another, then more. Gibbers passed between them and they became subdued. Their ugly faces watched the pair, blinking stupidly. Some licked their chops or scratched at parasites on their thick skins, but none moved towards the two who, with their horses, would ordinarily have been seen simply as fresh meat.

  Anzejarl's nose wrinkled in disgust at the pungent reek that came from the trolls. He passed among them uneasily, stroking and patting the neck of his nervous horse. He was still not fully-accustomed to the fact that he commanded these bestial things, that they were cowed and submissive in his presence. In fact there was much that he had not yet grown accustomed to, and he wondered if he ever would.

  The trolls stood eight or nine feet tall, were ropily muscled, hard-skinned with a sparse covering of short, coarse hair, long of limb and immensely strong. They were rare creatures, typically holding to small family groups, half-a-dozen strong at the most. But they had come out of Enchantment in a horde, obedient to Anzejarl's call.

  How did he summon them? He knew only what Olmana had told him. She had given him a gift, so she described it, soon after she had come to him in the Karai capital, Zhang, and seduced him. First she had given him the gift she called Awakening: she had awoken him to emotion, human feelings, something quite alien to the Karai. She had placed rapture upon him, given him new vision, made him experience joy, wonder, sometimes sadness or anger, even fear. She had opened his eyes to many things, and when he had seen she had made him want.

  And most of all he had wanted her.

  When her seduction of him was complete and she had turned him upon his own family, she had offered more. The means to summon and command trolls and slooths - with a hint that other things might follow.
But the means by which she had accomplished this was a mystery. She told him she had to put something inside him, that it was done while he slept. By this time Anzejarl was wholly in her thrall, and more, had come to trust her unquestioningly and, just as importantly, to need her. So he awoke one morning and knew the harsh guttural tongue of trolls and the piping calls of slooths, though at that time he had never laid eyes on either. And he did not know how he knew it.

  Olmana took him to a bare mountain peak on the edge of Enchantment and revealed to him the words to call into the wind. Days later the creatures of Enchantment were gathered before him outside the walls of Zhang.

  A huge, almost white and hairless troll loped forward and placed itself before Anzejarl as he brought his horse to a halt. "Do you bring us news of man-flesh, Prince of the Karai? Does warm blood and fat gore await us?"

  Anzejarl nodded sombrely. "Very soon, Gulb. Very soon."

  "We hunger for the battle."

  "As do I," Anzejarl lied, for he had tired of war. Even victory brought him little joy now. It had become. . . almost routine, and Anzejarl had begun to crave new and indefinable excitements. He nodded ruefully to himself. These thoughts, these emotions. . . before Olmana he would not have known them. All had been duty, all necessity and nothing more. But now, at her behest, he ravaged nations in search of a child he knew nothing of.

  Two days earlier Olmana had become excited. "I sense him! He is free!" she had exclaimed. "Anzejarl we must move swiftly now!"

  Anzejarl dug into the pouch at his waist and brought forth a wad of green ghinz leaves. He stuffed them into his mouth and chewed, closing his jewel-eyes for a moment to savour the rich narcotic as it chased his over-sensitized nerves. He looked down at the squatting troll. "Be patient, Gulb. You’ll taste human flesh again very soon."

  He turned his horse away and walked it from the monstrous horde, Olmana following.

  "What are your plans, oh Prince?" she asked, her green eyes twinkling as they passed beneath the trees.

  In his mind Anzejarl shrugged. "Duke Hugo is an impatient man, unlike his cousin the king. I think he does not like to be cooped up in the castle of Giswel. I think the sight of my army camped before him is too much for him to bear."

  She smiled to herself, but she was restless, he knew that. Olmana was a woman given to temperament, and in recent days he had seen changes in her. She was impatient and demanding, more so than before. It was the Child, her goal. For whatever reason, the Child was of absolute importance to her, and she seemed convinced that she was now virtually within grasping distance of it. But yet she feared something. Did someone else seek the Child? Was she in danger of losing it? It was beyond Anzejarl's capacity to say, for Olmana confided nothing more than her obsession, her unswerving need to locate the mysterious Child.

  Anzejarl watched her aside as they rode. She was beautiful. Far too beautiful. His eyes travelled from her shining bronze-red hair, over her slim arms, her full breasts swaying beneath the loose velvet blouson she wore, her slender thighs spread across her horse's flanks. Anzejarl felt his blood surge and knew that he loved her insanely, that she could never love him in the same way, that she controlled him, had him totally under her spell, and he resented her.

  Such a rush of emotions. It all but rocked him from his saddle. He spat free the ghinz and reached for more.

  What are you, woman?

  She was no ordinary female, he was certain of that. Olmana was of Enchantment. In his blind lust and love for her, he also, sometimes, feared her. In his dreams he had seen her change her form, become something quite monstrous and repulsive. In his dreams, when Olmana did whatever it was she did to allow him to command her creatures. . . . And then he awoke and she was beside him, usually naked, and he reached for her, aroused by her in a way no Karai woman had ever aroused him, spending himself in pleasures unlike the formal couplings he had known in his past.

  She was his goddess. The way she played with his body. . . . The way she played with his mind. . . .

  Anzejarl turned away, unable to bear the intensity. Desire. . . love. . . resentment. . . terror. . . wonder. . . . And this was but a fraction of the whole. Was this really what she had done? Awoken him to a realization of humanity? Was this all of it? The part of him that remained wholly Karai stepped back for a moment and observed curiously, detached and remote. How did humans live with such turmoil within them? The conflicts of desires and uncertainties, for all that they gave, were an agony.

  Olmana's eyes were fixed upon the hillside ahead. A slight frown had clouded her pale brow. She might have been wholly unaware of Anzejarl's presence, and he wondered what she was thinking.

  Two days earlier several slooth's had flown back from the secret forward camp that Anzejarl had established deep in the forest. Some of them bore injuries; some had been burned. There was no way of knowing exactly what had happened there, for slooths were dim beasts who communicated only in terms of their immediate sensations, without a developed language. But it was plain that all had not gone to plan at the camp.

  The news had thrown Olmana into a paroxysm of rage. She screamed at Anzejarl to despatch a strong force to investigate and secure the camp. There was something there that she was fearful of losing, something magical that she had had constructed underground. Anzejarl did not know what. At her behest his warriors had taken prisoners from surrounding villages to construct the camp and the magic chamber. But whatever was happening within that chamber had been kept secret from him.

  Even before the slooths' return Anzejarl had had inklings that not everything was well with Olmana. She had seemed pleased with the progress of the camp itself but something else preyed on her mind and irked her intensely. He had watched her pacing up and down, muttering to herself, cursing. He had heard names fly from her tongue: Bartacanes, the Orb, the Triune. None made any sense to him, and he could not question her.

  Olmana turned to him now with blazing eyes. "We must move swiftly, Prince of the Karai."

  Anzejarl nodded and spurred his horse up the slope.

  III

  Leth seethed. He could barely take in what had happened. His mind rebelled against it, refusing to believe whilst knowing that it must. It seemed the most monstrous dream in which he struggled impotently, his greatest fears becoming real, his life taken from him as he watched, unable to move or respond. His whole body ached and burned with the knowledge of what had been done to him. He felt that he was going mad.

  Why had he not foreseen this? How he railed at himself now. His errors were laid glaringly before him. He had been blind. He had not heeded the opinions of his counsellors. And never had he given thought to the possible, unthinkable consequences of that.

  To declare him insane and unfit to rule! What outrage!

  And he was snared and could do nothing.

  It was a perfect coup, executed after careful and deliberate planning by Fectur. How long must he have been working towards this moment? How delicately must he have trodden? To what extent had he manipulated events?

  All along Leth had been conscious of Fectur's disingenuousness, had wondered at his warnings, his heartfelt concern. Yet with guile and craft Fectur had actually been egging him on. Putting himself beyond blame, Fectur had helped him make his own way down the path to his destruction. Leth had suspected something, but not this. Never this.

  He was held in his apartments, guards stationed at the entrances. Fectur's men. Leth's household and professional staff had been removed and replaced: again by Fectur's men. Leth could communicate with no one who might give him aid.

  He has declared me a danger to the state, sick and unsound of mind, my judgement impaired, unfit to rule!

  Nothing else could ever have worked. But this way - the cunning! - to cast doubt upon the sovereign's sanity, to provide 'evidence' to support the charge while professing to act solely out of love and concern for both monarch and realm. . . . All would know the real reason behind Fectur's action, but too many supported him, and what he had acc
omplished was, in essence, legal. It was a coup, full and absolute. Fectur had appropriated total power for himself.

  Doctor Melropius had come to Leth minutes after he had been escorted from the Hall of Wise Counsel. He entered sheepishly, twitching with embarrassment, his forehead agleam with sweat, ears glowing scarlet.

  Leth swung on him. "Melropius, you must do something! This is insupportable!"

  "Oh Sire, if I had only known! Believe me, I had no idea. When Lord Fectur expressed his concern for you and asked my advice--"

  "Yes, yes. I understand that. I hold nothing against you personally. But what can be done? I have to get out of here!"

  Melropius stood stiff and shamefaced. "Lord Fectur has ordered me to bring you whatever medicines I deem necessary, Sire. I have herbal potions to help you sleep and to calm your nerves; stimulants to help your appetite--"

  "Calm my nerves!" Leth exploded. "Don't be a fool, man! Do you understand what you are saying? I have been overthrown! This is the most vile treachery, and you talk of calming my nerves!"

  "Sire, I regret this, believe me." Melropius shifted from foot to foot and was close to tears. "I will do all I can to help you. But these are Lord Fectur's instructions."

  "Do you believe me insane, Melropius?"

  "No, Sire. Of course not. But you are under a great deal of strain--"

  "Damned right I am! But can you not see, Melropius, that I will never be allowed to return. Fectur has no interest in passing power back to me. Why would he?"

  Melropius stood open mouthed in shock. "S-Sire. . . . It-it-it is only a m-matter of time. A few days. A w-week or two, perhaps."

  Leth turned away. "You have not seen, have you, Melropius?"

  The door opened silently and Fectur entered. "If you have given King Leth his medications, Doctor, you may leave."

  Melropius hurriedly departed, his bald head bowed. Leth glowered at Fectur, barely able to control himself. He was bigger, stronger than Fectur, and Fectur had entered without guards to protect him. Nor did he carry a visible weapon.