The Dead Kingdom (Seven Citadels)

by Geraldine Harris

  Back at their lodgings, the travellers had little appetite for the meal they were served. Kerish pushed aside a plate of pickled fish and crossed to one of the thin windows that let so little light into the gloomy dining chamber. With his back to the others, Kerish told them about his oracle. None of them could make much sense of it. They were still arguing about what blue against black might mean when the Prince of Gannoth walked into the room. The shadows of pain and exhaustion still disfigured his face but he smiled serenely at his startled guests.

  "Truly, I am quite recovered. I have forgotten this morning; the only blessing that the burden of the oracle brings, but I have not forgotten my promise to show you the Cave of Pictures. It's an hour's walk from here. I hope it won't be too tiring for you, Princess."

  "Tiring?" Gwerath was incredulous but a nudge from Kerish made her say, "No, I'm sure not."

  "Good. Lord Forollkin and Master Gidjabolgo, I hope you will come too."

  The Prince sent for warm cloaks and they took the quickest path out of the city and along the cliff tops. It appeared to be Hemcoth's custom to wander about his small realm without ceremony and he stopped to speak to every Gannothan they met.

  "I have left my sister being polite to our other guests," confessed the Prince. "She's far better at it than I am. I never know what to say to those scowlers from Chiraz, let alone the Envoy of Losh."

  He led the travellers along a lower path than they had taken that morning and greatly amused the Galkians by trying to help Gwerath over the slightest obstacle and continuously asking if she needed to rest. Occasionally Gwerath agreed, but only for the sake of the frail Prince.

  As they rounded the headland, wind and sea made conversation more difficult. They walked in silence, preoccupied with holding on to their cloaks. Kerish looked up once, the wind stinging tears from his eyes, and saw the white tombs high above them. Hemcoth took a path that led sharply down to the grey shore beneath the cliff of tombs. The tide was out, leaving the pebbled beach fully exposed. They walked across broken shells, slippery rocks and dank patches of clinging seaweed.

  Suddenly, Hemcoth stooped with an excited cry. "Look!" He picked up a smooth piece of wood, as blue as the royal staff. "Have you ever seen such a colour? It's like no wood that grows in Zindar. It drifts here from across the Great Ocean, from an unknown land."

  Kerish stared at it fixedly, suddenly understanding part of the oracle, but Forollkin was saying, "Do you think your people came from this unknown land?"

  "I think all the races of Zindar did, " answered Hemcoth, "I long with all my heart to fit out a great fleet and sail across the Great Ocean to find that land, but I cannot leave Gannoth."

  “Surely if you want it so much, it must be right!" exclaimed Gwerath.

  Hemcoth tucked the blue wood into his belt and shook his pale head. "Whenever I run to meet my desire I stumble over my duty. I cannot leave my people and my heritage."

  He turned towards the cliffs and led the travellers through a low entrance into a cave.

  At first the floor was covered with rock pools and they had to pick their way carefully among jagged stones and slippery, evil-smelling seaweed. At the foot of a pebbled slope, Hemcoth reached the limit of the light from the entrance. He clapped his hands and they waited, shivering in the dank cold of the cave.

  After a minute they heard a rattle of pebbles and smelled smoke. An old man, as pale as if he had never seen light, and clothed in matted furs, hobbled towards them, carrying two torches.

  "This is Bekon, the Guardian of the Cave."

  The old man gave his Prince a toothless smile but he would not speak. When he had handed over the torches he scuttled away like a sea-creature retreating into its shell.

  Hemcoth led them up the slope into a second and much larger cave. Water dripped from its green roof but the walls were covered with carvings in low relief. They had once been painted, but only a few flakes of colour still clung to the stone. The carved scenes were crowded together and arranged in no obvious sequence but Hemcoth led the travellers straight to the furthest wall.

  "This is a great battle, but not fought in Zindar."

  He held his torch high so that the others could see the mass of figures fighting with axes and two-edged blades.

  "Can you see the settlement burning?" He pointed to the blurred outline of a fortress that seemed to be built from the trunks of huge trees. "Now look at this figure. He seems to be a chieftain and his head-dress is very like our crystal crown. There are several scenes missing on this wall, but then he appears again, with other chieftains."

  Forollkin had the other torch. He held it close to the wall but the rock was so blotched with damp he could only see the outline of the crown, a hand clasping a rod, and the profile of a woman.

  "Here he is a third time," said Hemcoth, "watching a ship being built. It looks like the ocean-going vessels of the traders of Further Eran, and here are more ships."

  The torches lit Hemcoth's eager face and a group of ships so clearly carved that even the devices on their sails were visible.

  "That one could almost be the Winged Circle of Galkis," murmured Kerish, tracing the symbol with his fingertips.

  Hemcoth had already darted to the next wall. "Here are the ships sailing."

  "Why, there are hundreds of them."

  "Yes, Princess, a great fleet, filled with men, women, children and even animals."

  "Oh yes," Forollkin waved away the smoke from his torch and leaned forward. "That must be a cat, there by the stern post, Kerish."

  “It looks just like...”

  Kerish bowed his head and didn't finish the sentence.

  "The walls are too damaged here to see much," Hemcoth was saying, "but I think this was a storm scene. That forked line could be lightning." He knelt among the damp pebbles. "Down here there are drowned bodies, floating on the waves."

  The flickering torchlight picked out a woman's hair tangled with seaweed and one forlorn hand clutching at a broken mast.

  Hemcoth got up and crossed to another wall and the others followed him. "This is the fleet again, close to the land. I have studied all the maps I can find and I believe this is the south-west coast of Seld, where there are no safe harbours."

  "Oh, how horrible," murmured Gwerath. Forollkin's torch had lit up a carving of an emaciated woman and a dead child.

  "I fear there must have been famine among the ships," said Hemcoth, "before they reached the end of their long voyage."

  Kerish had moved on to the next scene. "Isn't this Gannoth?"

  "Yes. There is the bay of Gultim and they are hauling stones up the hillside to build the palace of the first King. This last wall," sighed Hemcoth, "is the hardest to understand. I think a quarrel is shown here. Can you see the crowned figure striking another man? I believe that many ships sailed away from Gannoth, north to Seld and south to Losh and Proy, and so men spread eastwards."

  "Across the empty lands," murmured Forollkin.

  "Empty? No, " said Hemcoth. "I don't think so. High on this wall is the best of all the carvings. Hold up your torch Forollkin. Can you see a river coiling round? That is the Rellendon and those, I am told, are . . . "

  "Watch-trees," finished Kerish. "They're building a city among them, aren't they?"

  For the first time Gidjabolgo broke his silence. "What are those figures?"

  "Ah, that is the great riddle," answered Hemcoth.

  "They have wings as well as arms!" exclaimed Forollkin.

  "And three eyes," whispered Kerish.

  "Yet they are beautiful," said Hemcoth, "and better carved than all the rest. Look, one of the creatures is trailing a broken wing. This is the last scene of all. Can you make out two creatures on either side of a tunnel of trees. One is spreading its wings and raising its hands, as if it was forbidding anyone to enter."

  "While the other beckons," said Kerish.

  "Summoning the chosen through the golden archway," whispered Gidjabolgo.

  They stared at each o
ther.

  "Perhaps. I don't know," said Hemcoth.

  The old guardian hobbled out of a crack in one of the walls and tugged at his Prince's sleeve.

  "Ah, of course, the tide must be coming in."

  As Hemcoth spoke, the others noticed that the muffled roar of the sea sounded closer.

  "The lower cave floods. We will leave by the stair."

  They followed the old man through the crack and up a stair hewn in the rock. After a hundred steps they came to the small, dark chamber where the guardian lived but he followed them up the rest of the stairway. Hemcoth thanked the old man as they emerged through a low archway onto a path on the other side of the bay. Blinking in the evening sunlight, the guardian took the torches and went back into the darkness.

  "He was a Captain in the Gannothan fleet," said Hemcoth, "long before I was born. One night he misjudged his distance from the rocks that lie beyond these cliffs. His vessel foundered and only he was washed ashore. He has never left the cave since then."

  *****

  They walked back to Gultim by a different route, passing through a village where women sat in front of their stone huts, weaving the fine hair of the hardy cazmor into cloaks for the wealthy of Seld and Losh. A herdsman with his flock of bleating cazmor stopped to speak to his Prince about the price of winter fodder. Children, with caps full of eggs gathered from the dangerous cliffs, clustered round the strangers.

  "No doubt you find our lack of ceremony strange, after Galkis," said Hemcoth, "but we are a small country and poor. Nevertheless, I have some things in my library that might interest your Highness . . ."

  "I should be very glad to see your library," answered Kerish warmly, "and I hope you may be able to solve a riddle for us."

  "A riddle?" Hemcoth's face brightened. "I will certainly try."

  Kerish and his companions sat impatiently through the feast for the departing envoys and ambassadors. As soon as it was over, they were taken to Prince Hemcoth's library in the highest tower of the palace. The wind howled round the massive walls. Mekotta, shivering in her thin royal robes had just sat down beside the driftwood fire. Hemcoth was leaning over the central table, perilously close to a candle, trying to impose some order on a pile of books and scrolls. The room lacked the shabby grandeur of the rest of the palace and was as plain as any scholar's study.

  Mekotta invited Gwerath to sit beside her. In spite of some misgivings about a Princess who travelled with no female attendants, she was determined to be kind. So Gwerath was forced to talk about Erandachi clothes and her impressions of the court of Seld while trying to listen to what the others were saying.

  Hemcoth began by showing them drawings he had made over the years of the carvings in the Cave of Pictures. Then he got out a map of the Dirian Sea and the adjoining coastlands to trace a possible route for the first ships. Kerish's finger flew to a small, thin island off the mountainous coast of Chiraz.

  "Can you read the inscriptions?" asked Hemcoth. "That's Silnarnin."

  "We aim to visit Silnarnin and the Citadel of Tir-Melidon."

  "I have never heard that Silnarnin was inhabited. In fact," continued Hemcoth, "I believe the cliffs make it impossible to land there. Look, there is no harbour marked on the map."

  "We must try," murmured Kerish.

  He was already looking at another part of the map, where Roac was marked in black. "Hemcoth, what are the Dead Waters?"

  Mekotta faltered in the middle of a sentence and Hemcoth looked grim.

  "The stuff of my nightmares," he answered. "Roac is a closed kingdom. Long ago a king of Roac became a great sorcerer. He risked some forbidden danger that killed all his people, killed the land itself and the very sea that laps against Roac. Only he was left. Some think he still survives, trapped in his own darkness." Hemcoth moved his pale head as if he were trying to shake out a memory. "Perhaps there is nothing but bones and dust in Roac but the seas around the Dead Kingdom are black and no ships enter them. Yet there are stories . . ."

  "The Ships of the Dead are phantoms, to frighten children," said Mekotta firmly.

  "They frighten me still," answered Hemcoth, with a half smile. "Why do you ask about the Dead Waters?"

  "Because we must sail them to reach Tir-Roac."

  "No!" It was Mekotta who gasped with horror. "Prince, no. Roac is cursed. No-one can enter it."

  "Lady, we were sent to Gannoth to find the way into Roac," said Kerish and he repeated the words of the oracle.

  Hemcoth listened, white-faced. "I don't remember. I don't even know if my words are true."

  "But you can guess their meaning . . ."

  "Blue against black," the Prince nodded reluctantly. "The blue driftwood is not rooted in Zindar."

  "And could your shipwrights make us a craft of such timber?" asked Kerish. "Is there enough?"

  "Yes. But I beg you to change your mind. Princess, surely you can persuade them?"

  "I shall be going too," said Gwerath calmly.

  "Koandor," pursued Forollkin. "Do you understand that too?"

  "I think that I have seen the name but I must find a much older map."

  As Hemcoth searched through a chest of scrolls and Mekotta began to plead with Gwerath and Gidjabolgo, Forollkin stared down at the table. He noticed a gold framed miniature, half hidden beneath a pile of maps, and pulled it out. It showed a child with pale copper hair and brilliant green eyes.

  "Who is she?"

  Hemcoth returned to the table, carrying a map in a leather case. "Princess Shameera, the younger daughter of the Queen of Seld. My betrothed."

  "Betrothed? But she's too young."

  "She is seven, and we will be married when she is twelve. It is the Queen's desire to marry her younger daughter to an insignificant Prince, so that she will never trouble the elder."

  "And why do you agree to such a marriage?" demanded Forollkin.

  "Her dowry will be very rich," answered Hemcoth bitterly. "How can a poor Prince of Gannoth refuse?."

  "If Shameera is like her aunt, she will make a learned and gentle Princess for Gannoth," said Kerish.

  "And if she's like her mother?"

  No-one answered Gidjabolgo's question.

  Hemcoth slid a yellow map out of its leather case and unrolled it carefully. "This was made before Roac fell."

  The kingdom of Shubeyash was drawn in bright colours with a green and golden crown marking Tir-Roac. The citadel stood beside a small river that joined the Dirian Sea in the Bay of Koandor. Kerish frowned at the crabbed hand and then read the name aloud. "Koandor. We must find this bay and sail up the river to Tir-Roac. Hemcoth, will you have the boat made for us, please? I cannot promise that we will be safe in Roac but we must go there for a cause we hope to be good."

  "All of you?” asked Hemcoth. “Do all of you say the same?"

  "All of us, even the Forgite," answered Gidjabolgo dryly.

  "Then I must help you," said the Prince of Gannoth, over his sister's continued protests, "but I cannot ask any subject of mine to enter the Dead Waters. Who will sail your boat?"

  "I will," answered Gidjabolgo unexpectedly. "My father was a shipwright and I have often sailed small craft in the waters off Forgin."

  "Elmandis be thanked," said Forollkin, "though I never thought I'd say it. You can teach me some sea-craft then."

  Hemcoth searched their faces for signs of fear or regret and found only anticipation.

  "I had hoped your visit would be a long one," he said plaintively, "but I will order the shipwrights to begin tomorrow."

  *****

  It took three weeks to fit together a boat from small pieces of blue driftwood in the skilful Gannothan fashion. For the travellers it was a pleasant time and passed all too quickly. Gidjabolgo and Forollkin went out each day in a small fishing craft and the young Galkian learned to sail after spectacular displays of temper on both sides. Sometimes Kerish and Gwerath left their lessons to come with them. They all joined in torch-lit hunts, when Hemcoth took his guests out on to
the bay to watch his hunting gethon fly from his wrist to spear fish on its beak. Other evenings were spent in Hemcoth's library, with the travellers telling stories of distant lands for the Prince of Gannoth to write down in his book.

  At the end of the first week, the Zeloka set sail for its long journey back to Galkis. Engis was unhappy at leaving them again, but Kerish watched the Zeloka sail with curiously little pain. He had sent formal messages to the new Emperor and written to Kelinda. Forollkin did not reply to his mother's letter.

  As soon as the small blue-hulled craft was ready, she was loaded with provisions and the best maps that Hemcoth could find. The white wings of a gethon were painted on her bows but Kerish named her Starflower. On the morning they sailed for Roac, Hemcoth and his sister came down to the quay to say goodbye.

  "If we accomplish our task in Roac, we'll put in at Losh-Sinar and send you word," promised Kerish. "From there we'll be sailing to Silnarnin."

  Gidjabolgo untied the Starflower and bellowed orders at Forollkin.

  "I wish I was coming with you," shouted Hemcoth, as they drew away from the quay, "even to the Dead Kingdom."

  For a long while Kerish and Gwerath hung over the rail watching the receding island and the tiny figures of Hemcoth and Mekotta, still waving on the quay.

  "I wish we were sailing across the Ocean to look for that other land," said Gwerath. "I want a journey that will never end."

  From their white thrones high on the cliffs, the Kings of Gannoth looked out across the Great Ocean, forever waiting for a new beginning.

  Chapter 7

  The Book of the Emperors: Promises

  A traveller may enter no stranger realm than the mind of another man, yet even there the star of Zeldin is constant and shall be your guide.

  In the morning sun the hull of the Starflower was a vivid blue against the clear turquoise of the Dirian Sea. The wind was in the West, singing its fierce cold song with the desolate cries of the sea birds as chorus, and causing the man hunched over the tiller to curse steadily. Nevertheless, there was a kind of peace in Gidjabolgo's face as he steered the boat towards Roac.