The Flight from Kar (The Emperor's Library

by Frederick Kirchhoff

  Filling the great shallow bowl below them, the Imperial City spread out like a map. Descending in a straight line, a row of plane trees on either side, the road first passed through a band of cultivated land and then entered the city walls through an elaborate arch. To their left, the river curved toward the road, bent north, then flowed into Kar between two towers, each supporting half of a barrier gate like the wing of a giant insect. Inside the walls a jumble of tile roofs, orange, yellow, red and green, stretched into the distance, divided by the line of the river, itself crossed by a series of bridges; and on its west bank, deep within the city, a mammoth edifice rose over its surroundings—creamy yellow walls, some blossoming into towers and all topped with intricate, many-leveled roofs of azure tile. It could only have been the Imperial Palace—a building larger than a small city. And, beyond the palace, Kar continued northward—too vast to seem real.

  “You see those blue roofs? That’s where we have to go,” Jon announced, pointing to the palace.

  “It’s very big,” Alice said.

  “Yes, it’s very big,” David agreed. “Grandfather’s told me about it many times, but I’d never pictured it like this. I always thought he was exaggerating, but I was wrong. His words didn’t give justice to the place.”

  “The palace or the city?” Jon asked.

  “Both. But it’s the city that’s the greater surprise. Can you imagine how many people it must hold? Thousands upon thousands.”

  “Do you think as many as a million?” Alf asked.

  “At the very least. Two or three million,” Jon suggested.

  “Five million in its heyday, John once told me,” Zoë said.

  “I get lost just looking at it,” Klei said.

  “But it’s like a forest, isn’t it? A forest of houses,” Jon pointed out. “And that should make it easy.”

  “Easy?” Alice asked.

  “I know what Jon means,” Alf said. “He’s saying that, despite its size, there’s a logic to the city that allows you to find your way through it. The river cuts the city into halves, and bridges cross the river at regular intervals. That gives you a way of breaking the halves into sections. Kar is enormous, but it’s not as confusing as Great Barton, because it has a clear pattern.”

  “Yes, it does have a pattern,” Zoë agreed. “But our task is to find the Emperor. Exploring the city—if we ever have time for that—will have to come later.”

  And with those words, she led them down the long descent to the South Gate.

  In the last hours the road had been empty. Now no guards manned the gate, and the portal itself was open. Was Kar utterly deserted? Still, they saw no banners of the Chosen.

  Nevertheless, they paused before entering the city. None of them had ever seen architecture on the scale of the South Gate. But what struck Jon was not the magnitude but the artistry of its design. The huge arch represented two wheat sheaves curving to the keystone, which took the form of an open book. Apertures suggested that the arch was hollow, with stations for observers—or defenders. Its lower edges were chipped, and the upper stonework was worn by wind and rain; even so, the gate appeared built to last forever. Jon decided that it embodied both power and imagination. The power came as no surprise, but the imagination was unexpected, and it raised his spirits.

  “What does the design mean?” Alf asked.

  “We saw grain fields yesterday,” David said. “This is probably the gate they use to bring grain to the city.”

  “But what about the book?”

  “Food and knowledge,” Jon answered. “The staples of life.”

  “And the grain supports the book, doesn’t it? Or at least the book is at the top.”

  All of the company recognized this moment as a decisive event. For as long as any of them could remember, as far as Kar had been a catchphrase for extraordinary distances, although to Southlanders the Imperial City had always been more imaginary than factual. Yet now Kar stood open before them, no longer myth, but, as David had said, “the real thing.” And its gate was wide enough to admit a dozen men riding abreast. For the first time since they’d set out, they shared an unspoken sense of their own insignificance.

  “We’d better be on our way,” Jon said, almost in a whisper.

  “Yes,” Zoë replied. “And now it’s your turn to lead.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because coming here was your idea. You’re the one who said he’d speak to the Emperor. None of us said we’d do that. We made the trip to keep you company, but now it’s up to you to find him and present your message.”

  Jon couldn’t argue with her reasoning, yet, as they entered the city, his mind was not on the Emperor. He was still thinking about his and John’s plan to visit Kar. This was to have been their journey, and sharing the experience with anyone else felt like a betrayal. The gate had been colossal, but wouldn’t it be better if the city itself fell short of his expectations?

  And that was exactly what Jon discovered. Once inside the walls, they crossed a plaza and found themselves on a broad avenue lined with three and four-story buildings. But instead of supporting the hive of activity he’d anticipated, the avenue was empty, as were the windows and doors that looked out on it. Kar had turned out to be a gigantic necropolis.

  “Where is everybody?” Alf asked

  “On our way here, we passed hundreds of people fleeing the city, and many more used the road last night,” Klei reminded him. “Moreover, the River Road isn’t the only highway from Kar. When we looked down at the city, we saw many gates, with roads heading in different directions. And I bet there’s a North Gate that matches the South One, for the River Road goes all the way to Tarnak. Isn’t that right, Jon?”

  “That’s right. And there’s probably an East and a West Gate, as well.”

  “But it’s still hard to imagine a city like this completely deserted,” Alf said. “I thought there’d be a few people left.”

  “Who says it’s completely deserted?” Klei asked. “Seeing no one doesn’t mean no one’s left in the city; and, under the circumstances, you’d hardly expect them to be going about their ordinary business. What are the alternatives when your town is about to be taken by an enemy? Unless you’re a soldier, you either flee or you hide. We passed the ones who fled; the rest are hiding.”

  “Make’s sense,” Alf replied. “Still, it’s spooky. So many buildings and not a soul to be seen—not even a dog or a cat.”

  Jon, too, found it spooky; and the strangeness of the city was enhanced by an architecture that echoed that of the South Gate. Walking along the avenue, they found themselves between two rows of buildings that assumed proportions beyond the ordinary—and shapes unlike anything they’d seen elsewhere—sweeping curves and daring protuberances of stone, all carved into natural forms—flowers and birds and fish and trees—with glazed brick facings that composed whole walls of fantastic relief. On the more imposing structures, this ornamentation was gilded and set with colored glass and semi-precious stones. It reminded Jon of the workmanship on Lyla’s knife, only on a grander scale. Her gift must have come from Kar itself.

  Yet, elegant as these buildings were, the gilding was worn and many ornaments had fallen or been pried from their settings. More serious, cornices had cracked and fallen, shutters and casements hung askew from bent hinges, and broken windows had been filled with rough-cut boards or even rags. The city had been laid out on a monumental scale, with fountains and garden squares at each major intersection, but the fountains were dry and the gardens held only weeds and leafless trees. Kar was magnificent, but it turned out to be a magnificent ruin; and the city must have been in decline long before the Emperor’s army set out to engage the Chosen.

  Jon felt a profound sense of loss. He was too late, if not for the Emperor, then for whatever Kar had once been. Surely the city Peter had visited half a century ago had been different. But Kar wasn’t completely empty. Penetrating further, they saw shadowy faces peering from windows and now and th
en a distant figure scurrying from one refuge to another. But no one approached or offered any sign of greeting. Those who fled had been fearful, but those who stayed behind were stricken with terror.

  But they had no time to worry about these matters. The Chosen had not yet entered Kar, and so it was still possible to reach the Emperor (if, of course, he had remained in his palace), although in another hour it might be too late. And, in one sense, it was already too late—for what good could now come of bringing the Emperor word of the Foresters? Both Emperor and Foresters were defeated. Yet, if it was possible to find the Emperor, Jon was determined to do it, not because of his promise to the Foresters but because of his promise to himself.

  Jon quickened his pace, but stopped when he saw a boy in a doorway, staring up at him with a pale, blank face. The boy wore nothing but a shirt, and it was torn in several places—he might as well have been naked. Was this what the city did to a child?

  “Where is everybody?” Jon asked him.

  The boy shook his head. But was it yes or no? You could tell nothing from his eyes, which had the look of a long-caged animal.

  Hearing Jon’s voice, the others approached the child.

  “What is the way to the Emperor’s palace?” Zoë asked him.

  He pointed in the direction they were headed, then slipped back into the darkness.

  A few minutes further, they entered a plaza fronting a four-storied building built with the yellow stone and blue roof-tiles of the Emperor’s palace. It must have once been an Imperial structure of some sort, but its doors and windows were boarded, and weeds grew in their crevices.

  And then they began to see the cats. In every direction they looked, cats prowled the pavement—orange cats, black cats, cats with stripes, cats mottled with all imaginable feline colors. The only thing they had in common was their emaciation—and the mixture of wariness and hunger in their eyes.

  “Here are the cats you were asking about,” Jon told Alf. “Are there enough of them for you?”

  “More than enough—but they prefer Klei to the rest of us.”

  Indeed, two of the cats had approached Klei, one meowing plaintively and the other rubbing its back against his ankles.

  “They do seem to like you, Klei,” David observed.

  Didn’t they notice that most of the cats appeared more concerned with Jon than with Klei? They kept at a distance, but their eyes were on him, and they followed him, moving when Jon moved, stopping when Jon stopped, but never coming too close, as if acknowledging an invisible boundary.

  Klei reached down to pet the cat that was meowing, but it snarled and darted away. Still, when he resumed walking, the animal returned and followed him, keeping close to his heels.

  “You have a friend,” Alf told him.

  “It’s hard to tell. What kind of friend threatens to bite your hand?”

  Klei looked back again, but the cat was gone. And, when the avenue bent to the left, the other cats disappeared as well. Perhaps their territory ended at the river, for the companions had reached one of the bridges they’d seen from the ridge.

  Jon glanced at the water as he crossed. It looked different from upstream—not so much muddy as thick, and so opaque you couldn’t guess its depth. He found it hard to believe this was the same river that began in the Valley of Women.

  “Wow!” Alf exclaimed, catching full sight of the square that opened before them on the other side of the bridge. “You could put a whole town in there with room left over.”

  “This must have been where Grandfather saw the Emperor,” Zoë said.

  But the square itself was dwarfed by the palace, which extended northward along the west bank of the river, one grandiose wing after another, roof above roof, tower upon tower, in a confusion of forms and purposes. Surely this edifice was the embodiment of Imperial might—and Imperial history as well. Yet, instead of being ornamented like other buildings in the city, its walls were absolutely plain. Only their dimensions suggested a special significance.

  A wide, shallow stair led from the square to a massive door in the center of the palace facade, and above this entrance a balcony extended outward on cantilevered supports. But the three doors to the balcony were closed, as was the larger door below them, and the square was empty, save for a flock of doves that wheeled into the air as they approached, only to land a hundred feet away and return to their search for food among the paving stones.

  Crossing the square, they reached the foot of the stairs, and there, of one accord, they stopped. Jon felt their eyes on him. Zoë had led them to Kar; now it was Jon’s duty to lead them to the Emperor. But what to do next was far from obvious. Jon had assumed there’d be guards at the door and that he’d be able to persuade them to take a message to the Emperor. But, while this appeared to be the main entrance to the palace, no guards were in sight. He mounted the stairs, followed first by Klei and then by the others. Surely one didn’t simply knock on this huge bronze door and ask if the Emperor was at home. Yet what else could he do? So here they were, after weeks of travel, coming to pay a call on the ruler of a deserted city—a man who, if he was in fact here, was likely hiding in this pile of stone like a cornered animal. And this was the being they’d walked months through the sweltering heat to find! Jon suddenly found that thought unimaginably absurd—so absurd he laughed out loud. It was the first time he’d laughed without restraint since John’s death, but that fact served only to make the situation more ridiculous. It was absurd, wasn’t it? Completely absurd.

  “What are you laughing at?” Alf asked.

  “Just something that came into my head. Nothing important.”

  And that response made Klei laugh, followed by Zoë. The others looked at them in confusion.

  “There should be guards here,” David said. “Guards to present ourselves to. There were always guards with the Prefect.”

  “Yes, I can testify to that,” Alice added in support.

  “Ah, the famous Prefect,” Jon said, laughing even harder—so hard he had to lean against the door to support himself.

  And then, to everyone’s surprise, it swung inward almost without a sound.

  Alf ran up the steps and put his hand on the edge of the door, moving it back and forth.

  “It’s perfectly balanced,” he said. “So heavy it would take a dozens of men to lift it, yet a child could open it with one hand. I wonder how they managed that. It would be great to talk to the architect who designed this door or the men who constructed it.”

  “All of them are long dead,” Jon reminded him. “This building has been here for centuries. See how the steps are worn away.”

  Alf turned and looked down.

  “They must have used the wrong kind of stone.”

  “I suspect the stone was the best they could find. What you see is the effect of time.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  Inside, stairs rose to the right and to the left, while straight ahead a passageway led through the darkness to a sunlit interior courtyard. Crossing this courtyard, they came to yet another door, smaller than the first, but similar in design. This door, however, was ajar, and someone was standing in the shadows behind it.

  “Who goes there?” came a high, faltering voice.

  A figure stepped forward into the light. It was a girl. She couldn’t have been more than twelve, but she held a long pike and lowered it against them, struggling to keep the weapon balanced.

  “Who goes there?” she asked again, this time with more confidence.

  Jon stepped forward a few paces and made a deep bow. The others stood in their places, but, seeing Jon’s gesture, they bowed as well.

  “We represent the Emperor’s Foresters. We come from the Southland to bring him news of the far reaches of his realm.”

  The girl rested the point of her pike on the pavement and called out to someone behind her. “Grandfather, Grandfather, the Foresters are here. Foresters from the South with something to tell the Emperor.”

  It wa
s stranger than Jon could have dreamed.

  An old man, completely bald, but for a fringe of white hair around the back of his scalp, with bushy white eyebrows and a carefully trimmed white beard, emerged slowly from the shadows behind the girl. He was wearing a brown velvet robe, and around his neck hung a gold chain.

  “Foresters? You call yourselves the Emperor’s Foresters? What makes you think anyone in his right mind would believe such an outlandish claim?”

  “You appear to have heard of the Foresters. Perhaps you know something about their customary dress. If you do, you’ll see that all but one of us is wearing it,” Jon pointed out. “And she is our friend—and the Emperor’s friend as well. Her father and her two brothers fight in his army.”

  “You’re wearing green cloth—I can see that. But I met some Foresters once, and I don’t recall their being at all like you.”

  “Here’s my knife,” David said, approaching the old man.

  The old man took a backward step, but when he saw that David was holding the handle in his direction, he reached out and took it from him.

  “Yes, I recognize the Emperor’s sign, but that doesn’t prove you’re a Forester. It only proves you have a Forester’s dagger, and there are many ways you could have gotten your hands on one—just as there are many ways you could have found a bolt of green wool.”

  “Grandfather,” the girl asked, “why don’t you trust these people? They look honest to me.”

  He turned and gazed at her affectionately.

  “Do they, Sweetheart? I guess you’re right. Besides, I can’t imagine why anyone would pretend to be a Forester. It would be like pretending to be a gremlin. But, still, does that mean they have the right to an audience with the Emperor?”

  He asked the question in a way that suggested he was ready to comply with her judgment.

  “I think he’d like to see them,” the girl replied. “He’s very lonely.”