This Forsaken Earth

by Paul Kearney

  Miriam spoke to Artimion as though they were alone in the room. “Whatever this thing is, we should not have it in the Ka. It is dangerous.”

  “The thing has ears, Miriam,” Rol said wearily. He felt like a bear in the ring, beset and bewildered.

  “There has been enough talk for one night,” Artimion said. “Cortishane, your friends will see you back to your chambers. Do me a courtesy and remain there until morning. Miriam, you will see Canker looked after. A room in one of the Towers, and two of your men at the door.” He smiled at the Thief-King. “Merely to see that you come to no harm.” Canker bowed.

  “Nothing that has been said or seen in this room is to go beyond it.”

  “Who’d believe it anyway?” Elias Creed asked wryly. He hoisted one of his captain’s arms over his shoulder, for Rol’s knees were buckling, and he and Gallico half carried, half dragged him from the room.

  It was not a darkness like that of sleep, but rather some womb of starless night, black as the end of the world. He fought through it like a man struggling through deep water, but without direction or sense of progress.

  A quicksilver light grew about him, and at last there was up and down, left and right. There was weight and air and all the things that made existence a rational thing. He stood with his feet planted firmly in black soil, and a wind was in his hair. There was water in the wind, a rushing moistness, a smell of rich, writhing, striving life so intense he felt it had entered his lungs and punched them wider in his chest, shocked the slow beat of his heart into something faster, stronger. He stood on a gray nightscape, drenched in starlight. A rolling plain dotted with drumlin-hills, rising up to vast mountains, and then the starfields blazing and wheeling above.

  A woman stood beside him, nude and pale with a magnificent mane of black hair which fell down over the lush curves of her breasts. She turned to him and smiled, and he saw that her eyeteeth were fangs of bright silver.

  “Fleam,” he said.

  “That is what you have called me.” And she linked one arm in his, her satin-soft skin producing a jolt of fierce pleasure as it met his own.

  “What is this place?”

  “Give it a name. Any one you like.”

  Rol looked at the walls of mountains about the horizon, the rolling grassland monochrome under the stars.

  “It looks like—like the Goliad.”

  “Then that is what it is.”

  His bare toes dug into the moist black earth beneath him. “This is no desert.”

  “This is the Old World, Orr-Diseyn. This is the shadow cast by the world men have made.”

  “The world men have made.” He smiled, but there was no mirth in it. “Do men make things like this, outside of dreams?”

  He began walking, mostly to feel the soft earth beneath his feet, the mud balling up between his toes. The woman he had called Fleam followed, her feet barely imprinting the ground. He felt heavy and leaden in comparison; but all the same, there was that exhilarating sense of well-being, of strength. It was as though something in the air and in the ground was nourishing him, making him grow like a light-starved plant brought into the sun. He marveled at it, and brought a hand up in front of his face to stare at his own palm as though he had never seen it before. It was his scarred palm, the mark set there by what might have been a god. More than ever, he felt that the wormed lines in its paleness were some form of ideograph, a message he must decipher; but that did not seem important now.

  “This is a dream,” he said. It made things more understandable to say it.

  “No, no, this is all real,” Fleam contradicted him. Her smile was both alluring and vicious. “It is time you stopped thinking like a mere man, a mortal thing, Orr-Diseyn.”

  “I am a man.”

  “You are nothing like. That carcass you haul around is a vessel, nothing more, as inessential as is a ship to its company.”

  “Men at sea are wont to drown without their ship.”

  “They do not feel pain when the ship’s hull is pierced. If it sinks, they will swim. They have a life beyond its wooden walls. Do you understand me? The body you inhabit will be cast off someday. You must prepare for that day.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  She stopped before him, caressed his face. “You will, in time.” She pressed herself against him, and he moaned as her mouth reached up for his. He could feel the fangs against his lips, felt her tongue come questing into his mouth. It was cold and dry, like that of a reptile, but the rest of her was a glory of soft flesh and smooth skin. He dug his fingers into her buttocks and pulled her closer.

  But then she wrenched herself out of his grasp as though she had been burned. She screamed, high and shrill.

  “That’s enough,” a quiet voice said. “Leave him.”

  And Fleam was gone. Rol fell to his knees, light-headed. Strong hands took his arms and lifted him to his feet again.

  When the dizziness had passed, he found himself looking down into the face of an old man, dark-eyed and bearded, with broad peasant shoulders.

  “You should be more careful of the company you keep,” the man said lightly.

  The mud was cold now under Rol’s feet, the air chill. He looked up and saw that clouds had come across the stars and were building steadily over the mountains. The old man touched him lightly on his shoulder. On his other side, a small hand slipped into his and gripped it tightly. It belonged to a boy, not ten years old. There were tears coursing down his face.

  “Why is he crying?” Rol asked the old man.

  “He knows what is coming.”

  Five

  A MATTER OF SHIPS

  THE SEA-BREEZE, THE RUSH OF THE PATIENT WAVES—THESE things calmed his spirit now as always. He stood on the lip of the sea-cliffs and watched the long swell of the waters roll in from the east, like the heralds of a different tomorrow. The sun rising fast behind them.

  “Quite a little show you put on last night.”

  Rol did not turn round. “I thought Miriam had her lads guarding you.”

  Canker joined him on the edge of the cliff. Two hundred feet below them the Inner Reach beat upon the stone in a long belt of foam. The climbing sun was bright, but there was a coolness in the air, borne off the white heights of the Myconians in the west.

  “I was not once a Thief-King for nothing.”

  They stood side by side and watched the sea, almost companionably. There were three fishing yawls out close to the horizon, performing the dual functions of gathering in their catch for the Ka and keeping a lookout for Bionari cruisers.

  “There may indeed be a freedom in the sea—for such as you, that is. On a morning like this I can almost fathom it.”

  “It’s clean,” Rol said. “It has no memory.”

  Canker seemed about to speak, then held his tongue. He smiled instead, the first genuine smile Rol had seen him make.

  “What does she want with me, Canker?”

  The smile left his companion’s face. “I can rely on your discretion?”

  “About as much as I can rely on yours.”

  “Rumor will out in the end, I suppose. We’re losing, Rol.”

  Cortishane stared at him. “The war?”

  “What else? Phidon had fallen to the loyalists before I left Myconn, and Myconn was on the point of falling back into their hands. We rebels are being driven back into the mountains.”

  “You’ve been on the road three months, you say. This is old news.”

  “Yes. Many things, both good and bad, may have happened since. Rowen was trying to regain diplomatic contact with Perilar and Oronthir—last summer they were on the point of granting her official recognition as Bionar’s Queen.”

  “And now?”

  “Now they hold their hand, waiting to see how the tide will turn. They may even invade on their own account, seeing opportunity in Bionar’s chaos.”

  “How did she do it, Canker? One woman alone—how did she start such a storm?”

 
“She is extraordinary, Rol. You of all people should know that.”

  Rol stepped back from the cliff-edge, glimpsing as he did an odd look in Canker’s black eyes. “So what is her plan, and why is she so keen for me to figure in it, after all this time?”

  They strolled away from the sea, to where Ganesh Ka’s ruins were strewn in cyclopean walls and arches about the feet of the soaring towers. On the forested slopes above them, work-parties were trudging uphill to the logging camps in the depths of the trees. Charcoal was created there in vast earthen kilns, to provide smokeless heat for the inhabitants of the city below. Faint over the wind, there came the hollow clanking of goat-bells, a dog barking.

  “Even before our recent reverses, she was thinking of you,” Canker said at last. “I have watched over her these last several years, and have seen the strain that bends her.”

  “Ambition will do that.”

  “Indeed. It does strange things to people. And hers is the highest ambition of all. She can afford to trust no one, and this has made her task almost insupportable. Phidon did not fall through battle and siege, but through treachery. Bar Asfal is suborning our generals with bribes and titles and amnesties.”

  “Artimion has always thought you will win, in the end.”

  “Artimion has a mind as sharp as a pine-needle, but he is not on the spot—he has not seen what I have. We are losing; and if we lose, Rowen’s life will be forfeit.”

  Rol smiled, but there was bitterness in his voice. “Queen or corpse, is that it?”

  “You know her, Rol. She could do nothing else.”

  “Oh, I knew her, Canker. Once. What is she to me now?”

  “Your sister. The woman you loved—the woman I see that you love still.”

  Rol’s breath sucked in sharply. When he exhaled again the words rushed out with it. “It was—it is—a thing of sickness, this love. I’d be better off without it. My soul would be that much the cleaner.”

  “We cannot choose who or what we care for. Your feelings for your sister do not rank that high in the list of this world’s perversions. Believe me, I know.”

  Rol collected himself. His voice hardened. “Those feelings were not enough for her eight years ago. She holds me cheap if she thinks she can play upon them now.”

  Canker laid a hand on Rol’s arm, halting him in his tracks. “She is tired, Rol, and she’s surrounded by traitors and fools and greedy men. I would not have her end her days on an impaler’s stake.”

  “So she has set her charms about you, too, eh, Canker?”

  The Thief-King frowned, and looked away.

  “If you want my help, you’ll have to be a damn sight more honest than this. Maybe I do still love her, but what of it? I am not some starstruck boy anymore, ready to uproot my life for the snap of her fingers.”

  “If I thought you were, I would not be here,” Canker said with some asperity. “Do you have no interest in the world beyond this half-baked little kingdom of yours? You have a ship, yes, but you could command whole fleets. What are you here but some floating brigand, living from one day’s plunder to the next? The blood that is in you deserves better.”

  “The blood that is in me. I wonder, Canker, has Rowen told you the whole story of our shared parentage? We came out of the same womb, that’s true; but Psellos told us before he died that we had different sires. Your mistress is indeed the Lost Heir of Bionar, but my father was not hers. He was someone else entirely. Did she tell you that?”

  Canker blinked, taken aback.

  “So don’t prate to me of blood. My mother was a witch out of the Goliad, my father someone known only to the gods. I have no stake in the future of Bionar, and no wish to marshal fleets and fight for the destiny of nations. All I have ever really wanted, I have.”

  “All except Rowen,” Canker said, collecting himself.

  “A man must learn to live with his disappointments, or else he is not much of a man.”

  “And what manner of man are you anyway, Cortishane? Did you see the looks on the faces of your friends last night, when the other thing came blazing out of your eyes? They wonder now what kind of creature they are sharing their precious little pirate camp with. Your welcome here is wearing thin, I fear.”

  “No thinner than yours.” But Canker’s gibe had hit home. “You were not surprised by it, were you? Not completely.”

  “They have a library in Myconn, the greatest in the world, it’s said. Rowen has had scholars working for us there, in the Turmian, ferreting out secrets and lore, anything that might aid our cause. They have dug up quite a few bones, my boy.”

  “Explain.”

  “No. Rowen will tell you herself.”

  Rol laughed. “Gods in heaven, is that the sweetest you can make your pill? Psellos did the same, as I recall, dangling knowledge before me like it was a carrot for an ass.”

  “Laugh if you will,” Canker said, smiling himself now. “But would you not like to know what is happening to you? These rages, the transformations, the visions of another world beyond our own…”

  Rol turned to seize him, but the Thief-King was out of his reach, darting away like a dragonfly. “Well, now, have I touched a nerve?”

  “I’ll kill you,” Rol choked.

  “Aha, the starstruck boy is back. Use your head, Cortishane. Do you think you can sit here forever and play at being a pirate, while the world burns down around you? People are looking for you; it just so happens I found you first. If you do not come with me by choice, sooner or later you will be forced to go somewhere against your will.”

  “Lies.”

  “No, simple truth. It is not just the Bionese who are looking for this Hidden City of yours—there are a hundred ships scouring the Reach alone. Stay here and you are doomed.”

  “And your old friend Artimion—have you told him this?”

  “No. I care not a damn for Artimion, or any of these other vagabonds. The truth is, I was sent here for you, pure and plain. Whatever you say about your father, or lack of one, I know that you and Rowen are connected, and together you will decide the fate of this continent. Now put aside your distrust, your anger. Come with me to the Imperial City. Face Rowen again. She needs you. She loves you yet, Cortishane, I know it. I swear it.”

  If Canker was not being honest now, then his dissembling had been raised to the level of art. Rol found that he had no other words to say. He walked past the Thief-King blindly, his feet picking their way between the stones, guided by the comforting rush of the sea.

  On first coming to Ganesh Ka, Rol had laid claim to a series of rooms high up in one of the city’s weird towers, close to the tunnel that led down to the docks. It was a stark eyrie, hewn out of solid rock, but he had softened its austere lines somewhat with the pickings of piracy, gathered over the course of a dozen cruises. When ashore, he was singularly indifferent to his surroundings, but when he had had occasion to bring a girl or two up here, they had one and all complained about the bare stone, the wind that hissed through the window-slits. So he had furnished the place, after a fashion. It had chairs and a table, hewn out of wood so fresh the resin still oozed out of them. There were bright rugs on the floor, woven in Aringia or Tukelar and brought out of the holds of captured merchantmen. An ancient, exquisite bronze lamp in the shape of a dancing girl with an enigmatic smile, and a rope-bottomed bed to support his mattress.

  Creed had lit the fire again. He lived next door, Gallico close by. The three of them ate together most evenings, much as they did at sea, and when they were gathered about the sticky table, the fire blazing and the girl of the lamp smiling her thousand-year-old smile, it seemed to Rol that he had found a home at last, and two men he would gladly have claimed as his brothers. For that reason alone, Ganesh Ka was worth fighting for.

  “There’s a nip in the air,” Elias Creed said, entering without ceremony and dumping an armful of wood on the floor.

  “You soak up heat like a lizard, Elias,” Rol told him. He was sat in an elbow chair, scanning a l
ist of provisions which the city quartermasters had grudgingly deigned to part with. Canker’s words were still running through his head, as insistent and annoying as a half-remembered song.

  “Aye, well, we’re not all cold-blooded as frogs. Gallico got himself a haunch of venison off one of the hillmen, and is roasting it down in the square. Will you eat there, or have it brought up?”

  Rol raised his head and looked round at the room, tawny with firelight. “I’m not hungry.”

  “I’ll have him bring it up, then. Some of the good wine too…How’s your face?”

  Rol touched his mouth. “Still bearing the mark of Gallico’s knuckles, I fear.”

  “You saw Canker this morning?”

  “Yes. He does love to talk.”

  Creed hesitated. He seemed about to comment, then shrugged. “Well, if you want to come down to the square tonight, there’s many would be glad to see your face, knuckle-marks or no.”

  “You think so, Elias?”

  “Aye. And most of them are prettier than me.”

  “I’ll bear it in mind.”

  It was in many ways the heart of the Ka, the square—or so they called it. It was a place to gather around the cooking fires and talk over the day’s labor with friends and acquaintances. It was never empty, often crowded, and the woodsmoke that hung under its cavernous roof was a permanent fixture. The smoke smarted the eyes and soaked into clothing, and everything they ate was tainted with it. Rol found a place at one of the fires, people making way for him, nodding, staring. The Revenant’s captain was seldom seen here, except when drunk and looking for some nocturnal companionship. But he was stone-sober now, and withdrawn, and was handed venison and a wooden mug of birch-beer without comment. He sat cross-legged on the stone floor to enjoy them.

  Easy to lose oneself here, in the close-packed crowds about the fires. The gabble of a hundred conversations and arguments, the leaping shadows, the jostling bodies; they were a fine curtain of anonymity to sit behind. Rol wiped grease from his lips, wincing at the scab there, and listened to the people milling around him as they talked through the minutiae of their lives. A more tattered, patched, and filthy crowd it would be hard to imagine, but under the grime there were people of all stations in life, from scholars to cutthroats, and they rubbed along surprisingly well with one another. There was a little recreational thievery, but no violence. In many ways, women, in particular, were safer here than walking the streets of Urbonetto, or Myconn itself. Another of the Ka’s peculiarities. Was it unique, or could it be duplicated elsewhere?