The Bard of Sorcery

by Gerard Houarner

  A moon was rising on the uneven horizon behind him. For the first time, Tralane understood the terror Agathom must have felt at the falling of his world's moons. A body was heaving itself into sight before Tralane's shocked eyes, glowing as if subterranean fires were raging beneath a translucent surface, and its widening semicircle was already larger than both Star Speaker and Wanderer together. The sky's face would be nearly obliterated by the fully risen moon. Its mountains and craters were clearly defined, marking out in curious runes the annihilation of a world.

  Tralane considered using the Eye to escape the baleful scrutiny and doom of the moon that seemed to be falling, even as it rose. He cursed his every past wish for a lucky glimpse of Star Speaker or Wanderer. Then reason took command, and he waited as the satellite freed itself of encumbrances and hovered overhead.

  There were no tremblings in the earth, no rifts or explosions, nor any great onrush of wind. The air thickened and warmed with fog which flowed up along the mountainside, racing past Tralane. The rest of the world remained as it was. Nature's laws were not being set aside by wrathful gods; the moon was not falling. Reassured, though still nervous over the proximity of his onetime sign of fortune, Tralane resumed his climb.

  The moon was full, but the fog dampened the sharpness of light until a universal, hazy whiteness surrounded Tralane. A pale maw that was the moon above him was the extent of the physical environment defined in the fog. The slope yet to be climbed had disappeared, this time not into darkness but into scattered light. Swirling tails of mist trailed after his hands and feet as he moved, and clouds of moisture exploded from his mouth and nostrils as his breath became increasingly labored. By the time he had reached the wall of crystals that was the body of Wyden stretched out on the earth, he was almost overcome with weariness. The rapid embracement of the moon by the cloying, damp cloudiness was draining the vitality from him, just as it was diffusing the light. Again he cursed, and this time the object of his anger was the amulet. He had been allowed to enter the world of the emperor, but his route had been deflected so as to weaken him for the final confrontation. He did not have to wonder who had caused the diversion.

  Tralane brushed his hand cautiously across Wyden's impenetrable hide and studied the now milky jewels which composed the skin. He revised his initial assessment of impenetrability, since the Jade Warrior, at one time, had also seemed impervious. But the vulnerability of the living wall did not for the moment interest him. He had to climb over the protruding mass, yet the few handholds the crystal-incrusted surface offered would tear his flesh, and bleed more strength from him. He thought of climbing down, using the Eye to back away into another world and try a new approach into the city itself. But the mind sharing the Eye with him would not allow him any such easy convenience and might lead him into an even more dangerous approach.

  He crept sideways underneath the overhang of god-hood, sometimes approaching and at other times retreating from the wall, depending on the location of the holds he could find. His purpose was to avoid beating himself fruitlessly against the barrier. He sought, rather, something inexplicable, and he would follow the serpent's windings around the mountain until he reached the city's wall, to find the core of his mystery. His progress was slow, until the fog momentarily parted around a dark crevice partially hidden by Wyden's body. He made his way towards the crack and squeezed through the opening, until he was inside the mountain. He rested awhile, trying uselessly to catch his breath and not dwell on the task ahead. Then, before doubt could unseat his courage, he crawled up into the crack, Wyden's body at his back and the mountain in his face and on his sides.

  There was the smell of dank, uncirculated air, like that of the deepest dungeon of a fortress. He had been in enough of such places to know the aroma and dislike the association. The fog refused to climb in after him, as if Wyden were holding off all natural elements. He had difficulty pushing through the tunnel as his layers of clothing caught on the rock and his two swords wedged themselves into the mountain. He tugged and pulled, working up a sweat that irritated him all the more because the heat of his exertions was sealed next to his skin by his greatcoat. His patience began to evaporate; after a while he wanted only to breathe, to shed the confining armor he had gathered around himself and feel once again the cool breeze run across his chest. Instead his hand, searching for a hold, fell into emptiness. He discovered a gate.

  The entrance was narrow, and would have been hidden by shadows in the crevice even had Wyden not deigned to mask its location further. It was a secret egress for the fortress city's inhabitants. Tralane had used a few such conveniences during some of his earlier escapades. They could be easily defended or closed, if discovered during times of war, but were an invaluable aid to the intrigues at court. They usually served rulers, since it was rulers who had structures built or torn down and burrowings filled in or reopened. If customs on this world ran a course similar to the ones on his homeworld, and he saw no reason for them not to since they both flowed from the same human source, the passage that opened up behind the gate would lead eventually to the complex of throne room and royal quarters. There, he was certain, he would find the Emperor of Many Faces and the answers he so desperately desired.

  He shed his coat and some of the layers of clothing he had hastily donned in the Wilderness Flower. He bundled them together, wrapped his coat around them, and tied the whole affair into a pack which he slung over his shoulder; the two sleeves of his coat tied together served as a strap. He tightened the sword belts around his waist and, somewhat relieved, advanced into the pitch-black passageway.

  He crept along a wall, an outstretched hand keeping him in contact with the smooth, cool mountain rock. He was impressed by the power that had eaten its way through stone like a worm through soft soil to make the tunnel and wondered whether some sorcerer king from the city above him or the Emperor himself had been responsible for its construction. He drew one of his swords with his free hand and kept the blade across his stomach and chest, suddenly anxious of being caught off guard by such might. He pulled his hand away from the wall, letting his fingers barely graze the surface, afraid of what might snatch at him from the darkness if he passed too close. Dread settled into his heart as he lost count of the steps he had taken into the mountain. Time stretched itself on a rack of fear. At any moment he expected a door to burst open, flooding light and shadow into the passage, illuminating an inconsistent reality in which ambiguous shapes, growing and shrinking with every flicker, converged on him with grim and silent intent.

  But if there were any doors, they remained shut. The silence was as thick as the smell of chill, stale air, and the quiet shuddered only a little when his foot struck stone and he fell forward with a sharp cry. He landed on stairs. He rose and began the long, tortuous climb to the city above.

  He rested several times on his journey, muttering to himself for not having brought food and water. He especially regretted the water. He should have returned to the Wilderness Flower after slaying the Beast and taken some provisions, or at least snared some game before so hastily departing the last living world he had seen. He thought of the city's inhabitants and of the delicacies and staples they surely kept in storerooms he might stumble across. Yet the land around the mountain seemed bleak, and he had not seen a town or river in the valleys below to war-rant the building of a fortress city on the heights. In the brief glimpse of terrain Tralane had received by moonlight, there was nothing to indicate that this world had any delicacies or staples to offer, or even simple vegetation and water. But then, what sustained the Emperor's court and army? Where were the roads? Where was the evidence of an empire, which the title Emperor implied? Even in Tralane's preoccupied stay on the mountain slope, he should have seen or heard some hint of the vassals at the Emperor's command—a cluster of lights from an out-post on the slopes, the dim sounds of revelry before the fog closed in. It did not make sense that there should be an Emperor and no subjects. Tralane began to wish for the discrete guard so
metimes found in such passages, for at least then he would have proof of some kind of life.

  After his third rest, with his mouth parched and his back frozen by the creeping cold of the steps, Tralane bumped against a barrier. His hand swept across the impediment for several moments before he realized it was a door. He pushed with his hand with no result, then shoved with his shoulder and heard the creaking of hinges. The door gave way, and Tralane found himself in a large, circular room, barely distinguishable in the dim glow from a stairwell at the opposite end of the room. A series of doors lined the walls to either side, and at the center of the room a stone pedestal stood raised to waist height. Something lay flat across its top.

  Tralane crossed the distance between the pedestal and the doorway, wary of any dozing guards hidden in shadowy corners. The purpose of the place came to him—it was a dungeon, perhaps a private one for the exclusive pleasure of the city's rulers. With a secret entrance and exit, enemies could be spirited in and endangered friends allowed to escape, all under the guise of a mysterious death. Tralane knew the system well, having seen it first hand at the more civilized courts of his homeworld.

  The victim, human in shape but no longer in appearance, who lay spread-eagled on the pedestal, with coagulated blood pooled beneath him, had all the markings of the most civilized mutilation Tralane's old masters might have practiced. Under the bard's palm, the chest was still, and the ears were deaf to his urgent whispers. The hands and feet were free of bindings, as if the will to move them had long since drained out of the body along with the blood. If the victim was not dead, he might as well have been.

  Tralane turned away to examine the doors and found they were cast from the same heavy, black metal as the door separating the dungeon from the passage through the mountain. Each had a small hatch near the bottom through which food could be thrust. He opened them one by one and peered into the dark recesses of each cell. He had gone nearly halfway around the room when he found one inhabited. A body, stinking and unkempt, lay on the floor near the hatch. Tralane released the latch and opened the door, pulled out the body. To his surprise, he found a woman in his arms.

  She shivered, opened her eyes slightly, and struggled weakly against him. Her mouth opened and closed around soundless, inarticulate words. Her chest heaved with unnatural strength as a shriek of terror struggled to be set free. Tralane held on to the woman firmly, caressing her filthy, matted hair. Her skin was cold, though she had stopped shivering after his initial embrace. Her eyes opened wide, showing the invulnerability of her fear. She refused to be comforted by his efforts to soothe her.

  "Who are you?" Tralane asked in a whisper, still waiting for the cry of alarm from a hidden warden. "Why are you being held here?"

  The woman's persistent silence led him to believe that they did not share a common language. Then he caught a glimpse of her tongue and felt her throat; he saw that language was not the only barrier. He frowned at the cruelty of her mutilation. Careful surgery, the rudiments of which he had learned as a boy in Mathi's tower, had turned her into a mute. The words of any language could not cross her lips, and her loudest cry would amount to nothing more than a hoarse, choked whimper. Her suffering made him forget his own physical discomforts.

  Tralane inspected her clothing for some symbol of her identity—a jewel, bracelet, an embroidered sign, or the patterns of her dress and its material. But he could not detect the markings of either nobility or servitude which, he had assumed, would be common in an emperor's fortress, where rank should descend in proper order from the royalty of the head to the baseness of the feet.

  She wore a simple frock that had once been a dark blue or gray but was now black with grime. It could have been a princess's casual gown as easily as a maid's dress.

  Not knowing when a guard might pass by, Tralane glanced anxiously back at the stairwell leading up into the fortress city, then slowly helped the woman get up. When they were both standing, she recoiled from physically touching him and staggered to a wall. He motioned towards the door, but her face twisted into a mask of disgust at the escape he offered her. He casually noted that when her face settled back into its natural contours, there was a chance that her high cheeks and dark eyes might make her a beautiful woman. But there was too much darkness and filth between them for Tralane to be certain, and other matters demanded his attention. After she refused his offer of clothing from his pack, he left her to do as she wished. If he survived what was to come, he would return and force her to safety.

  He started toward the stairwell, stopped before he reached the first step, and listened to the barely audible sounds coming from behind him. Then a pounding sound echoed in the dungeon, as if something soft and desperate were trying to beat down a hard and implacable barrier. With a backward glance over his shoulder, Tralane saw the woman hunched over the spread-eagled man on the pedestal. Her face was hidden against the stones, and she heaved as if she were weeping. Yet when she rose, even in the bad light he could see that her eyes and cheeks were dry. He went back to the pedestal and listened for the man's heart beat, checked for a pulse, and put his ear to the other's nose and mouth to try to catch the sound of breathing. There were still no signs of life, despite the fact that the corpse was not yet decomposing. He appeared to be on the verge of death, frozen in that waiting moment when life was still calling to a soul with every heart beat while death hovered in plain view, hands outstretched.

  The woman collapsed to her knees, and Tralane knelt beside her, holding out his hands helplessly. She stared at them blankly, with only the recognition of the death of someone she had loved lighting her eyes. He waited a while, searching for a way to comfort her, to communicate a sharing of grief. He started to rearrange the position of the body, so that it would at least appear to rest easier, but the woman started to her feet and dragged him away from the pedestal. Finally, with a disconsolate shrug of his shoulders, he set out again towards the stairs.

  To his surprise, after he had climbed a few steps, he heard her following him. He proceeded cautiously, seeming to take for granted that she should follow him, but listening carefully to her movements. He was afraid she might take him for an agent of the man's murderer and revenge herself on him. However, they progressed steadily up the stairs without incident, and soon his suspicions were assuaged.

  They rested several times on their way, the stairwell being longer and steeper than the tunnel Tralane had already passed through. This time, however, some light was provided by patches of phosphorescent moss set at regular intervals on the walls. By this glow, he saw that she kept to a constant distance of twelve steps from him. When they rested and he saw her sitting forlornly in the gloom, her eyes twin vortexes of darkness glistening with restrained tears, he could not fight back the urge to try to comfort her. The rebuffs he received first angered him, then filled him with sorrow for having been irritated by her grief and the suffering of her imprisonment. He wanted to take her to her kinsmen, where she might feel free to relieve herself of her pent-up emotions, but his ignorance of the world they were in prevented him from granting even this small favor. Perhaps when they reached the more frequented halls of the city, she would see herself to safety. Tralane did not wish to entangle her in the dangers of his own life and hoped she would conveniently disappear before his inevitable confrontation with the Emperor.

  They climbed for what seemed in that timeless place an infinite age. At last, they found the stair's end. Tralane held up his hand to the woman, then crept ahead. The door blocking their path was like the previous portals he had encountered, and he tested its firmness with a few shoves. The door gave way, and he pushed until there was enough space for him to squeeze through.

  He came out at the end of another tunnel, but in this passage the walls had been constructed from blocks of stone, not carved through the mountain. At the other end of the passage stood an ornate door, larger than any so far encountered and made from wood. The moss light revealed its gilt and circular, cosmographic carvings of st
ars and strange creatures. It was an imperial symbol, for on each corner of the door a crown and scepter stood out in bas relief. The secret entrance and dungeons did indeed lead to the royal quarters.

  He reached this latest door and put his ear against the crack of space at the lintel. He heard nothing except for a faint whistling as air pushed through from the other side. With a tug at the handle he found at the center of the door, Tralane opened the way into the fortress city.

  He found himself looking out across a darkened ballroom, through a frame of tattered curtains drawn to conceal the doorway. Stepping through the door, he found it had been camouflaged to look like a continuation of the ballroom's walls. Cautiously, he drew aside the curtains and studied the corners, balconies, canopied stages and high-arched exits for signs of the guards he expected to find. The ballroom floor, a spiral pattern of white and black chips of polished stone, was covered with an undisturbed coat of dust. Awnings, tapestries depicting battle scenes, and pieces of furniture were all in dilapidated condition. The ceiling, a dome of frescoed deities caught in the act of exercising their particular powers, was punctured at several points. Moonbeams stabbed through the breaches to land in spots on the floor. Again, there was an absence of guards.

  Tralane was puzzled by the silence, and the abandonment of such regal confines to the exigencies of disuse. The fallen grandeur of the room was contradicted by its size and decoration; if indeed the Emperor made the fortress city his sanctuary, such a hall would be an appropriate throne room or gathering place for the court. The spiraling path betokened a ritual procession, even a dance, if the kingdom and its people had retained enough of their spiritual gaiety, though a glance at the grim-visaged, impossibly endowed heroes and gods depicted throughout the room showed the marked inclination towards self-aggrandizement of its makers. The people the Emperor had come to rule were solemn and serious, burdened, like the woman he had released from the dungeons, with emotions that were expressed in settings of grand formality rather than wild intimacy. Yet, if this were so, what had happened to the city's inhabitants to make them neglect their own dwelling place?