“Had I not bowed to democracy, Lomboan and his cronies could not have worn the clothes and the words of the court. Had I not been bowed by their words and the plots they concealed, I should not have given them tracts in the city to govern in my name. Had they not learned new words in secret with which to bind their tracts, their supporters could never have outnumbered those still loyal to me. But my body has aged before my mind, and the army that I might command could not sustain me. It appears that my time is past, but nonetheless my thoughts are formed with grace, using words of power, as befits a king.”
Now he was in sight of the gate. It was open, in accordance with the promise that he had exacted, and beyond the stout walls waves rippled and faded in the white grass. Against the planed road to the mountains stood a swordsman holding the king’s steed. Topops strode forward and thrust his foot into the stirrup, acknowledging the swordsman neither by word nor glance.
Topops was stroking the fur of his steed and whispering words of praise into its great veined ear when he heard the slither of discovered metal. The swordsman had swept his blade free of its green-woven sheath and was poised to cut at the legs of Topops’s steed. The leaves which protected the man’s skull and body were well-nigh impenetrable—but Topops’s foot had already lashed out, crushing the man’s windpipe, and in the same movement he half-swung from the saddle and caught the flung sword by its hilt. His lungs heaving, he rode his steed over the choking man in sorrowful fury, for years ago they had ridden together, leaved for battle.
Then from beyond both halves of the gate came the snorting and spittle of restrained steeds, and Topops knew that the swordsman had been sacrificed to weaken him. He shouted: “Fall, droppings of the world! Conceal yourselves, lest you be shovelled into the pit and thus subjected!” and casting his sword in an arc that almost splintered the edges of the gate, rode forth.
Two of Lomboan’s men edged from ambush and flinched back from the whooping blade. One tried to arrest its flight with his own sword, but screamed as it sprang from his hands to slash through the grass and stand quivering. “No power!” the other, a squat man with a dull pulped face, shouted in encouragement. “Empty words, empty head, empty crown! We ghostise him!” and by his speech Topops knew him for a mercenary from one of the decadent lands. He brought his sword down like a whip on the mercenary’s skull, not cleaving the leaf but stunning him, and heeled his steed towards the mountains.
Miles onward he halted, brushing sweat from his face and clutching at his breath. He opened the baskets which hung beside his heels and smiled bitterly to find provisions; they would have formed part of the mercenary’s payment, and the man would have feasted at once, using Topops’s body as table. He gazed back to the city of Topome, which shone now like green buds growing from the rippling tinted plain. Far down the road two insects scuttled in the dust. Topops stroked his steed, which was the swiftest in the land and which would carry him to Yemene, three days’ ride away on the coast, and to a ship.
At dusk he reached the mountains. Avoiding the route used by traders from Yemene, he rode until he reached a second and untravelled pass. Its mouth was little wider than an alley between hives, and Topops knew enough of the superstitions of mercenaries to suspect that his pursuers might baulk at its entrance. “Nevertheless,” he thought, “most forms of life may be subdued by the words of a king.” And he rode between the towering dim walls.
Hours later he heard a dry tinkling far back down the pass, like the sound of the settling of ash, and knew that his pursuers had not been deterred. He rode on, often holding back cold rough darkness with both hands. Eventually he slept, laying himself along the back of his steed so that the brushing of his chin might sustain the coaxing of his hands.
When he awoke, in darkness close as the lid of a coffin, the sounds of his pursuers had ceased. He allowed his steed to continue until the darkness parted jaggedly high above him and displayed a sprinkling of stars. His eyes, alert now to any light, made out a cave ahead. It was dry, and Topops led his steed within, and both slept. But near dawn they were thrust forth by something soft which emerged from deep within the cave, filling the bore entirely and carrying before it a clattering debris of loose rock. Dazed, dismayed and uncertain of his words’ power against its bulk, Topops mounted his steed. He gazed back, but was unable to determine whether what protruded from the cave was a limb or a worm.
By full daylight he had almost reached the far side of the mountains. The grey chiselled walls loomed above him, and on the ledges lay great balls of bone through which the wind moaned softly. Behind him came distant rustles of pursuit. He urged on his steed, out of the mountains. As he emerged slow waves of wind and cloud-shadow passed across the forest which stretched beneath him to the horizon.
He rode obliquely into the forest, which was almost a day’s width. The heads of the trees shook violently above him, buffeted by the wind, but already green heat was settling between the trunks like a still warm sea. Soon he encountered the cleared route of the traders. Ashes of old fires stirred among the green gripping roots. He quickened the pace of his steed, plunging between the tremendous unshaken trunks in flight from the stifling heat of noon.
Long before dusk he was forced to halt, for his steed’s fur was lank with sweat and his own head pumped like a heart. He led the beast into a glade and, as it had not been provided for, shared his food and water with it. Then he lay back in the soft green hollow of a trunk. The branches glittered and chattered with birds. One, grasping a horizontal branch with long translucent legs as pink as its plumage, fluttered its wings and spun wildly head over heels. Topops rested, heavy with thought, for beneath the agony of the swordsman he had trampled his memory revealed sorrow and acceptance. “Let Lomboan know that his words cannot cast out humility and courage,” he thought.
At last he rose. The hissing and creaking of the forest concealed any sounds of pursuit. He coaxed speed from his mount, thinking to reach the plain beyond the forest before dusk. The baskets drummed against his heels, his steed’s muscles flowed between his thighs, wind swept back the branches of his hair. Then his steed fell, netted by the long twining grasses.
Topops struggled to his feet. The beast was kicking weakly, its round black eyes rolling. He slashed the vines, but the beast lay snorting, and blood and foam began to pulse from his mouth. Then Topops knew that the food they last shared had been poisoned. He had eaten little, disliking the taste. Cursing, he stroked the beast’s head and, closing its eyes with one hand, plunged the sword deep.
He cut the straps between the baskets and, emptying one, tied it about his shoulders. He collected fruit and filled his flasks with water from a nearby stream. Then he strode down the path between dimming trees, until exhaustion dragged relentlessly at him and he sheltered in a glade.
When he awoke it was daylight. The bright coiled and thrusting green of the glade pained him like the plucking of torture. He staggered to his feet, embracing a trunk, and the forest sprang closer to oppress his eyes. His limbs were numb and felt immense. He tied the basket to him with battling fingers and began to trudge towards the edge of the forest, his mind floating dully outside him.
When he reached the white plain, on which the sand shifted whispering like an echo of the sea on the horizon, he saw that he had emerged a mile west of the road to Yemene. The poison burdened his mind, but he realised that his pursuers might have gained, and that he must not keep to the edge of the forest. Instead, he staggered forward obliquely onto the plain.
The green sun throbbed in his eyes like a silent gong; it glittered on grains of sand, stabbing with points of light. The sand slid beneath him; it threw him face downwards into hollows, it crawled beneath his nails as he tried to rise, it rustled in his ears like insects. As he groped to his feet in the midst of the plain, he glimpsed a building ahead, sinking with the rest of the landscape as his mind slipped down again.
He shuffled forward, grasping the straps of his basket. Remembering his pursuers, he turned, and th
e plain whirled with him. Against the green of the forest he saw a clump of pale pulpy blossoms. Then, as he chafed his fingers with the straps to gain a hold on his mind, he made out that the blossoms were the faces of his pursuers, idly awaiting his death.
He began to run, supporting himself with his sheathed blade, plunging his feet into sand. The building ahead was clearer now: a low round hut, white as the plain, like a globe half-buried in the sand. Topops knew that it was a shrine, abandoned before the building of Yemene and for that reason shunned by the people of the coast. He could run no more; his chest was wheezing like a bellows clogged with sand, and the horizon swayed as if storm-wracked. “It is fitting that a king should defend a shrine,” he thought, gathering his mind. “Let the mercenary defy the superstitions of his fathers and find death.”
He groped his way around the shrine and found the door, which was framed like a blank canvas in a crust of sand. He thrust at the door. The sand scraped and sifted down, but the door refused to move. Around the curve of the shrine he saw the mercenary, a blur of dull green and flesh, preparing to mount his steed. Topops plunged his sword into the plain and, thrusting against it, ground his shoulders into the door. With a thud of released sand, it swung inwards.
Topops unsheathed his sword and entered, steadying himself with one hand. The interior of the shrine was gibbous: against the flattened side of the half-globe stood a throne of white rock. Otherwise, apart from a scattering of sand, the shrine was empty.
Topops glanced about, choosing the area he might best defend. “An ousted king should fight before a throne,” he thought, and gripped the arms of the throne, closing his eyes and preparing his mind for combat. When he opened them he noticed a carving on the wall to his left. It was crude but powerful, and he fastened his mind upon it for strength.
It depicted a child gazing up at a man, who was in turn gazing up at a form whose outlines were vague. The child’s face turned to the man, and the man’s to the form, bore identical expressions of awe. Topops found that the sketched but unclear lines of the form affected him somehow with the same emotion. Seeking power, and moved by the passion which had gouged the figures from the stone, he stepped forward and traced the lines of the carving with his fingers. As he completed the strokes a shiver of inexpressible recognition passed through him; and the carving retreated from his hand as a door slid open in the wall.
The space which the gibbous wall had concealed was cramped; it contained only a stone bench draped with hide cracked by age. Nevertheless Topops entered. One part of his mind recognised that the mercenary would be outlined against the light, while he would be less visible in the dim space but would have little room to manoeuvre. Another deeper part of him was furiously impatient, and insisted that he feel a presence latent somewhere in the shrine. And so he did: a dormant light about to blaze forth. A peace which was also weakness descended on him, and he sank on the bench, his sword ready by his side. Now the shrine seemed thin as a shell, about to shatter and reveal its contents, as did the landscape outside and the approach of the mercenary. It stretched; it attenuated; it quivered, and a vision rushed forth.
A plain of grey sand. Dry waves of dust fly up hissing and scatter. Layers of black cloud are piled on the horizon like sediment, seeping into the plain so that sky and earth are indistinguishable. Dust and shadows drift across the plain. Sometimes the crust cracks like an egg, and from the sliding mound malformed vegetable limbs edge forth. In one place an eye the colour of decaying trees stares up from the sand, sprinkled and bordered by dry tears of dust. A plain of grey sand. Wooden figures climb forth from the sand, crippled and tottering, and bludgeon one another clumsily. Where a limb is splintered or one of the blind green eyes is gouged, white rot flows.
Beyond the sand, a beach of purple mud, almost black. A grey sea laps at it, and where the waves collide the mud trembles and sucks like gelatine. Conical cores of rock emerge from the sea, glinting dully, and the tips of others are sucked by the mud. From the beach arise flopping pillars of mud and tottering insect-like constructions of shells. When they clash, the pillars spatter and are cloven like worms; the white skeletal insects are smashed into fragments, and each recombines. A beach of purple mud, almost black.
Deep in Topops’s mind the dormant light was forming. A point of pitiless radiance began to grow, sweeping shadows back into the landscape, spreading through his mind. “No,” he thought, “not a plain of grey sand, not a beach of purple mud, but a green kingdom!” His mind was stretched above the landscape, cupped like the shrine, its edge drawn keen. He clamped it down like a crown thrust deeply into sand and mud. Then, as his mind made a globe and tightened upon its contents, he began to command the landscape.
“Sea, scoop the mud! Unblemished sea, pour on the beach! Laden sea, sink to rest deep in the ocean! Winds, cast the grey dust upon the mountains! White suffocated sand, rush to meet the sea! Soil and rocks, rise now from the plain! Flying sand, sunder the wooden cripples! Growing wood, become trees and come forth! Spring up, grasses! Rocks, do not conceal the cripples in your hollows! Rocks, close and crush them!”
Then the cup about him became the shrine, and in the doorway behind the throne stood the mercenary. Topops gazed at him calmly and rose; his mind still seemed cupped about him. He saw that the man had come alone to take his sword and garments, as knowledge comes instantly in a dream. The mercenary fell back into the throne-room, raising his sword. Without thought of his own blade—indeed, without thought—Topops caught up all the sand from the floor of the shrine and flung it in the man’s eyes, searing through them. The man fell twitching, already dead.
Topops gazed down at the corpse. The shrine had given him the power to inhabit his own vision. Behind him he heard the door slide into place and, turning, saw that the third form in the carving had become clear. It was a man surrounded by light, gazing up in awe at a sketched form. Topops stretched his hand towards it. Then he heard the beat of hooves on the sand.
He strode to the door of the shrine. Outside, the third of Lomboan’s men was dismounting. “Go back to Topome,” said Topops, emerging from the shrine. “I have killed the mercenary but have no wish to show other than forgiveness to my subjects. Return to Lomboan and tell him that you speak the king’s words. Tell him that I have the power to make Topome the greatest city on Tond, and that he and his like must flee.”
The man unsheathed his sword, casting the sheath into the sand. Topops urged the sand to throw the man to the ground, so that he could subdue him, but his mind had shrunk. The man flew at him, sword moaning. “Do not tempt your king!” shouted Topops. “I will kill no more slaves to Lomboan’s words! A king does not punish slavery!” But as he retreated into the shrine, his adversary sheathed his sword in the sand and poised a knife to throw. He refused Topops even the honour of a sword; instead, a knife, as one impaled a criminal. Topops clamped his mind about the shrine and the doorway contracted, cleaving the man’s hands and arms as he sought to hold back the walls. Then Topops, out of pity, brought the walls together.
The shrine cast out the corpse of the mercenary. Topops closed the door, sweeping the remains of the third man onto the plain, and gave himself up to sorrow. As he grieved he glimpsed the landscape beneath the layers of black cloud. Wooden figures were scrambling forth from the rocks, and beneath the white sand on the beach pillars of mud were struggling up, coated with crumbling sand.
He thought: “A king’s mind should be worthy of him. My mind has allowed evil to lie its way into Topome, and has been guilty of the deaths of two subjects whose only crime was slavery. Nor does it have faith outside this shrine. Therefore I shall do battle with it, and shall subdue the evil which threatens my vision, for then my mind shall have full use of its power and may use it to benefit Topome and indeed Tond itself. My mind shall be purified and whole, as befits a king.”
Then Topops found his way through the darkness to the throne and began to cup his mind.
All this happened centuries ago, or so say the
legends of Yemene. The city of Topome was rent by riots and looting long since. The shrine now stands between a rocky plain and a beach patched with mud. Travellers who skirt the land of the shrine say the trees fight there, levering themselves from caves which sometimes close in on them, splintering. Sailors say that skeletal figures and dark worms battle at twilight on the beach. When the people of Yemene shelter from the tides that storm upon the beach, this is the tale they tell. None goes near the shrine.
The Barrow Troll
DAVID DRAKE
Playfully, Ulf Womanslayer twitched the cord bound to his saddlehorn. “Awake, priest? Soon you can get to work.”
“My work is saving souls, not being dragged into the wilderness by madmen,” Johann muttered under his breath. The other end of the cord was around his neck, not that of his horse. A trickle of blood oozed into his cassock from the reopened scab, but he was afraid to loosen the knot. Ulf might look back. Johann had already seen his captor go into a berserk rage. Over the Northerner’s right shoulder rode his axe, a heavy hooked blade on a four-foot shaft. Ulf had swung it like a willow-wand when three Christian traders in Schleswig had seen the priest and tried to free him. The memory of the last man in three pieces as head and sword arm sprang from his spouting torso was still enough to roil Johann’s stomach.
“We’ll have a clear night with a moon, priest; a good night for our business.” Ulf stretched and laughed aloud, setting a raven on a fir knot to squawking back at him. The berserker was following a ridge line that divided wooded slopes with a spine too thin-soiled to bear trees. The flanking forests still loomed above the riders. In three days, now, Johann had seen no man but his captor, nor even a tendril of smoke from a lone cabin. Even the route they were taking to Parmavale was no mantrack but an accident of nature.
The Sword & Sorcery Anthology Page 25
