“I understand,” said Mathew wearily, “you can do with me what you will—provided Astafas allows it—but I”—the young wizard drew a deep breath—”I insist that you let my friends go.”
Auda ibn Jad smiled—so might a snake smile. Reaching out with his slender hand, he took hold of a strand of Mathew’s wet red hair and drew it slowly and lingeringly through his fingers. The Black Paladin moved close to Mathew, his body touching that of the wizard’s, his face and eyes filling Mathew’s vision.
“I will let your friends go, Blossom,” ibn Jad said gently. “Tell me where. Shall I leave them on this ship? Shall I drop them in the Kurdin Sea? Or perhaps you would prefer that I wait and set them free on the island of Galos? The Guardians of our castle find their work tedious sometimes. They would enjoy a chance for a little sport. . .”
Ibn Jad wrapped the strand of hair tightly about his finger and pulled Mathew’s head so near his own that the wizard could feel the man’s breath upon his cheek. Involuntarily, Mathew closed his eyes. He felt suffocated, as if the Black Paladin were breathing in all the air and leaving Mathew stranded in a vacuum.
“I was preoccupied, absorbed in keeping the ghuls in thrall. You took me by surprise, Blossom. You caught me off guard. Few have ever done that, and therefore I rewarded you by allowing your Calif to live.” Ibn Jad gave a sharp tug on Mathew’s hair, bringing tears to the young man’s eyes and jerking his head nearer still. “But never again!” The Black Paladin breathed the words. “You are good, my dear, but young. . . very young.”
Giving Mathew’s hair a vicious yank, he sent the wizard sprawling face first on the deck. The wand flew from Mathew’s hand, and he watched in agony as it slid across the sandscrubbed wood. He made a desperate lunge for it, but a blackbooted foot stepped on it.
Crouched on his hands and knees, Mathew cowered in chagrin and shame. He could feel Auda ibn Jad’s smile shine upon him like the light of a cold, pale sun. And then he heard the boot scrape across the deck; the wand rolled toward Mathew and bumped against his hand.
“My regards to Astafas,” said the Black Paladin. “I welcome his servant to the Isle of Galos.”
Chapter 4
The Isle of Galos was the peak of a huge volcano whose smokerimmed, stormshrouded head reared up out of the murky waters of the Kurdin Sea. Like a fierce and ancient patriarch who sits motionless in his wheeled chair for days and at whom relatives glance fearfully and say, “Do you suppose he’s still alive?” the volcano had done nothing in years. But, like the old man, the volcano lived still and occasionally gave evidence of this by a slight tremor or a small belch of noxious fumes.
It was here that the few followers of the dead Zhakrin chose to make what might very well be their final stand against the world and the Heavens. When it was known—almost twenty years ago—that their God was growing weaker, word went forth from the Lord of the Black Paladins, and those last remaining survivors of various purges and jihads and persecutions made their way to this place that seemed the embodiment of the dark horrors of their religion.
Carried across the Kurdin Sea by their few remaining immortals, the Black Paladins were left alone on the Isle when those immortals vanished. The knights’ lives were harsh. Their God could no longer help them. They had nothing on which to live but faith and the code of their strict sect that bound them with undying loyalty to each other. Their single, unswerving goal was to bring about their God’s return.
None but the members of that strict Order could have survived the ordeal. Survive they did, however, and—not only that—they began to thrive and prosper, acquiring—by various means—new members for their Black Cause. The sorceresses of the Black Paladins were able to capture the ghuls and, by granting them human flesh in payment, they persuaded Sul’s creatures to work a sailing vessel between the Isle and the mainland. Contact with the world was reestablished, and once more the Black Paladins went forth—always in secret—to bring back what was needed.
The knights imported slave labor and began building Castle Zhakrin—a place of refuge where they could live and a temple for their God when he should return. Castle Zhakrin was constructed of shining black obsidian, granite, magic, blood, and bones. Numerous unfortunate slaves either fell to their deaths from the towering battlements, were crushed beneath huge blocks of stone, or sacrificed to Zhakrin. The Black Paladins sprinkled the blood of the victims over the building blocks; their bones were mixed with the mortar. When the Castle was completed, the remaining slaves were put to death and their skeletons added to the building’s decor. Human skulls grinned above doors, dismembered hands pointed the way down corridors, leg and foot bones were imbedded in the walls of winding staircases.
Riding in the stern of ibn Jad’s boat, Mathew gazed in awe at the Isle that he had been too preoccupied to notice from the ship. A barren, windswept, jagged cone of rock jutted from the water, soaring up to lose itself in the perpetual clouds that shrouded the mountain’s peak. Nothing grew on the rock’s dead, roughedged surface. The wind seemed the only living thing on the Isle, whistling through lips of twisted stone, howling bleakly when it found itself trapped in deep ravines, beating against blank canyon walls.
Castle Zhakrin stood against one side of the mountain, its sharp spires and gaptoothed battlements making it look like the mountain’s offspring, something the volcano spewed forth in fire and smoke and ash. A great signal fire burning from atop one of the towers added to the illusion, reddish orange light poured from the windows like molten lava streaming down upon the black sand beach below.
Gathered upon that beach were the Black Paladins. Fifty men of ages ranging from eighteen to seventy stood in a single straight line upon the sand. They were dressed in black metal armor that gleamed red in the rays of the setting sun. Draped over their shoulders were vestments of black cloth, each adorned over the left breast with the signet of the severed snake. The knights wore no helms, their faces—Mathew saw as the boat drew near—might have been carved from the stone of their mountain, so cold and immovable were they. Yet, when the boats were dragged ashore by the rowersyoung men of between fifteen and seventeen whom Mathew judged, from what he overhead, to be knightsintraining—he noticed that the faces of the Black Paladins underwent a swift and subtle change. Greeting one of their own, he saw true emotion light their eyes and soften their features. And he saw this—astonishingly—reflected in the usually impassive face of Auda ibn Jad.
Startled by the change in the man, Mathew watched in wonder as the usually cold and taciturn Black Paladin leapt from the boat into the water before the squires had a chance to haul the boats ashore. Wading through the crashing waves, Auda ran into the arms of an elderly man whose head was ringed round by a crown shaped in the semblance of two snakes, twined together, their heads joining at his forehead, their redjeweled eyes sparkling in the twilight.
“Ibn Jad! Zhakrin by thanked! You return to us safely,” cried the man.
“And successfully, Lord of Us All,” said Auda ibn Jad, falling to his knees and reverently kissing the old man’s hands.
“Zhakrin be praised!” cried the Lord, lifting his hands to the heavens. His words were echoed by the other knights in a litany that reverberated from the mountainside and faded away in the pounding of the surf.
Khardan cried out in pain, and Mathew’s attention was withdrawn from the Paladins. The Calif lay in the bottom of Mathew’s boat. He had lapsed into unconsciousness and twitched and tossed and moaned in some horrid, feverracked dream.
“The Black Sorceress will care for him. Do not worry, Blossom,” Auda had told him. “He will not die. Don’t be surprised, however, if he doesn’t thank you. You did him no service in saving his life.”
Mathew considered glumly that he had done none of them any service by his foolhardy act and had undoubtedly further compounded their troubles. Ibn Jad viewed him as a threat. Worse still, Zohra saw him as a hero. Despite the fact that they were in separate boats—Zohra having been put into the custody of Kiber,
who looked none too happy about the fact and watched her warily—Mathew could feel the woman’s eyes on him, looking at him with admiration. This newfound regard for him only served to increase Mathew’s unhappiness. She expected him to save them, now, and he knew it was impossible. Once again he found himself living a lie, trapped into pretending he was something he wasn’t, with death the penalty for the tiniest mistake.
Or perhaps death was the reward. Mathew didn’t know anymore. He’d lived with fear so long, lived with the twisting bowels and cold hands and chill sweat and thudding heart that he increasingly saw death as blissful rest. The irrational anger continued to bum inside him—anger at Khardan and Zohra for being dependent on him, for making him worry about them, for making him feel guilty over having plunged them into this danger.
The squires and goums carried Khardan to shore. Wading through the water beside him, Mathew looked down at the painracked body and tried to feel some pity, some compassion. But all was darkness inside him, darkness cold and empty. He watched them place Khardan upon a makeshift litter, watched them haul him slowly up stairs carved into the rock leading to the Castle, and felt nothing. Zohra floundered through the water, Kiber holding her arm. Raising her head, she gazed after her husband with lips that parted in concern. Fear and pity for him—not for herself—glimmered in her black eyes. Mathew saw then that Zohra’s hatred of Khardan masked some type of caring—perhaps not love, but at least a concern for him. And Mathew, who had loved Khardan longer than he cared to admit to himself, was too frightened to feel anything.
The emptiness only angered him further. He thought, somewhere, he could hear the imp laughing, and he looked away from Zohra’s smile of approval and expectation. Mathew was almost thankful when Auda ibn Jad beckoned peremptorily to the young wizard to attend him. Turning his back on Zohra—who was standing wet, haughty, and bedraggled in the black sand— Mathew walked over to where ibn Jad was exchanging warm greetings with his fellow knights.
“What dread brotherhood is this?” Mathew said to himself, glad to have something to which he could turn his thoughts. “This man sold humans into slavery with no more regard than if they had been goats. He murdered an innocent girl, driving a knife into her body with as little care as if she had been a doll. He cast men to ghuls and watched their terrible sufferings with equanimity. And I see nothing but the same cold, dispassionate cruelty in the faces of these men surrounding him! Yet tears shine in their eyes as they embrace!”
“But where is Catalus, my bonded brother?” Auda looked questioningly around the circle of knights surrounding him. “Why wasn’t he summoned to join us for this, our greatest hour?”
“He was summoned, Auda,” said the Lord in a gentle, sorrowful voice, “and it is sad news I must relate to you, my friend. Catalus was in the city of Meda, training priests in our new temple there when the city was attacked by troops of the Emperor of Tarakan. Cowards that they are, the Medans surrendered and— to a man—pledged their allegiance to Quar!”
“So the war in Bas has begun,” said ibn Jad, his brows drawing together, the cruel eyes darkening. “I heard rumors of it as I passed through the land. And Catalus?”
“Knowing the people would turn our followers over to the troops of the Amir, he commanded the priests to kill themselves before they could be offered up to Quar. When the troops came, they found the temple floor running with blood, Catalus standing in the middle, his sword red, having dispatched those who lingered overlong.
“The troops of the Amir laid hands upon him, calling him coward. He bore their taunts in silence, knowing that he would soon see them choke on their own poisoned words. They dragged him before the Amir and the Imam of Quar, who thought he now had possession of the soul of Catalus.”
Shuddering himself at the terrible tale, Mathew saw Auda ibn Jad’s face drain of its color. White to the lips, the Black Paladin asked softly, “And what did my bonded brother do?”
The Lord laid his hand upon Auda’s shoulder. All the knights had fallen silent, their faces stern and pale, their lips compressed. The only sound was the breaking of the waves upon the shore, the mournful wailing of the wind among the rocks, and the deep voice of the Lord of Black Paladins.
“Catalus watched the other prisoners slaughtered around him. When it came his turn, he drew from his robes a dagger he had concealed there and sliced open his belly. He crawled forward and, with his dying breath, grasped hold of the Imam’s robes with his crimsoned hands and called down Zhakrin’s Blood Curse upon Feisal, the Imam of Quar.”
Auda ibn Jad lowered his head. A sob tore through his body; he began to weep like a child. Several of the knights standing near rested their hands upon him in compassion, many of them unashamedly wiping their own eyes.
“Catalus died in the service of our God. His soul is with Zhakrin, and he will fight to help bring our God back to this world,” said the Lord. “We mourn him. We honor him. Next we avenge him.”
“Honor to Catalus! Praise to Zhakrin’“ cried ibn Jad fiercely, lifting his head, tears glistening on his cheeks.
“Honor to Catalus! Praise to Zhakrin!” shouted the knights, and as if their call had summoned the darkness, the sun vanished into the sea and only the red afterglow remained to light the land.
“And now, tell us the name of this woman with hair the color of flame who stands here with you,” said the Lord, his admiring gaze sweeping over Mathew. “Have you brought her for one of the Breeders, or has your heart been touched at last, Auda ibn Jad, and will you take her for wife?”
“Neither,” said ibn Jad, his lips twisting in a smile. “No woman, this one, but a man.” There was laughter at this, and several of the men flushed in embarrassment, their companions nudging them teasingly. “Do not be ashamed, my brothers, if you looked upon him with desire. His milk skin and green eyes and delicate features have deceived more than one, including myself. His story I will tell you in detail over our evening repast. For now, know that he is the Bearer and a sorcerer in the service of Astafas, our brother God.”
A subdued, respectful murmur rippled through the Black Paladins.
“A sorcerer!” The Lord looked at Mathew with interest. “I have heard of men who were skilled in the art of magic, but I have never before encountered one. Are you certain, ibn Jad? Have you proof?”
“I have proof,” said Auda with a touch of irony in his voice. “He summoned an imp of Sul and kept the ghuls from feasting upon that man whom you saw being carried into the Castle.”
“Truly a skilled magus! My wife will be pleased to meet you,” said the Lord to Mathew. “She is the Black Sorceress of our people, without whose magic we could not have survived.”
Ibn Jad’s eyes still glistened with tears shed over the death of a comrade, yet their threat slid through Mathew’s soul like sharp steel. The young wizard could not make a coherent response, his tongue seemed swollen, his throat parched and dry. Fortunately a bell began to toll from the Castle tower. The knights began to disperse, walking across the beach, their boots crunching in the sand. Several respectfully drew the attention of their Lord to themselves. Ibn Jad was carried off by friends demanding to hear the tales of his adventures. Mathew thought he was going to be left alone, forgotten on this dismal shore, when the Lord glanced around over his shoulder.
“Some of you squires”—he called to the young men unloading the ivory jars and other baggage from the boats—”take the sorcerer to the chambers of my wife. Bid her find him suitable clothing and prepare him for tonight’s ceremony.”
Two squires leaped to act on their Lord’s command, taking charge of Mathew. Without speaking a word to him or paying him attention beyond a cool, curious glance at his sodden woman’s clothes, they led him swiftly over the wet, packed sand to where Castle Zhakrin stood, its black shining surface tinged with the blood of the departed sun.
Chapter 5
Climbing the black stairs carved into the side of the mountain, Zohra continued to maintain her haughty dignity and composur
e. Pride was, after all, the only thing she had left. Led by Kiber, who kept glancing at her as though she were a ghul and might eat him at a bite, Zohra set her face into a rigid mask that effectively hid her fear and confusion. It wasn’t as difficult as might be expected. She seemed to have gone numb, as though she had been drinking gumiz or chewing the leaves of the plant that made city dwellers crazy.
She walked up the steep stairs without feeling the stone beneath her bare feet. At the top of the steps, a bridge known as the Dead March led the way across a deep ravine to the Castle. Made of wood and rope, the bridge swung between the sheer sides of the defile. Narrow, swaying dangerously whenever anyone stepped on it, the bridge could be crossed only by a few people at a time and was within easy arrow shot of the Castle’s battlements. A hostile army attempting to use it was doomed—easy targets for the Castle’s archers, who could also shoot flaming arrows that would set the ropes afire and send the entire structure plunging into the canyon below.
Human heads, mounted on poles, guarded the entrance to the Dead March. These were heads of prisoners, captured by the Black Paladins, and made to suffer the most dreadful tortures. By some arcane art, the flesh remained on the skulls and the agonized expressions on the dead faces served to warn all who looked on them what awaited an enemy of the Black Paladins in Castle Zhakrin.
Zohra glanced at the gruesome guardians with uncaring eyes. She navigated the perilously swinging bridge over the ravine with an appearance of calm that had Kiber shaking his head in admiration. Entering the gaping black archway of the Castle without faltering, she passed coolly beneath the redtipped iron spikes that could be sent crashing down from the ceiling, impaling those who stood beneath them. The skulls grinning at her from the granite walls, the bony hands that held the flaring torches, didn’t cause her cheeks to pale or her eyes to widen. Standing in the huge, torchlit hall, she watched the goums bear the litter on which Khardan shivered and moaned up a staircase. She had not spoken since they’d left the ship and asked only three questions upon entering the Castle.
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