“Otar,” said Balin, and shook his head. “He was always daft. He used to make speeches in the market places, the wine shops, anywhere that people would listen to him, lying that Kushat was dying and it was time we took the power beyond the Gates and made ourselves great again. He became so troublesome that Rogain chained him up time or two, and after that be vanished.”
“He found someone to listen,” said Stark. “Is there more to the legend?”
“It is believed that the building of Kushat was part of the bargain that Ben Cruach made to get the—whatever it was he got….”
“Bargain? Bargain with whom?”
“Or with what. No one knows. It does not seem that anyone but Ban Cruach knew even then, though it is all so long ago that nothing is sure. Perhaps there never was a bargain. But this you can depend on. Regardless of what gods or devils may be waiting there, there is enough danger in the Gates of Death without them. Crevasses, ice and mist and grinding rockfalls, starvation and cold.”
“Well,” said Stark, “those things won’t stop the Lord Ciaran, so they can’t stop us. As for what else may or may not be there, I suppose we’ll find out when the time comes. Until then we may as well forget it.”
“At any rate,” said Balin, “we have the talisman. So if there is truth in the legend…. Stark?”
Silence.
Thanis said, “He’s asleep.”
Balin swore a long and involved Norland oath, and then smiled wryly. “I’m not at all sure it’s entirely human, but I’m glad to have it on my side, anyway.”
“Would you really have killed him?”
“Let’s put it this way. I’d have tried.” He measured the thickness of Stark’s shoulders and shook his head. “I’m extremely relieved that I didn’t have to.”
Thanis turned again to the talisman, not going close to it but standing with her hands clasped tightly behind her back and her head bent, her eyes somber and shadowed. Suddenly she said, “I’m afraid, Balin.”
He touched her shoulder gently. “So am I. But the thing has come home and the gods have put it into our hands, and we must do what we can.”
He took the crystal reverently in his fingers and returned it to the hollow boss, closing it carefully.
Thanis had not moved, except to let her hands drop to her sides. Now she lifted them and brushed the black heavy strands of hair from her forehead, and it was an old woman’s gesture, infinitely weary.
“It’s all to be broken, isn’t it?” she said.
The one small word encompassed everything, the city, the Quarter, the street, this building, this room, these few belongings, this way of life. Balin experienced something of Stark’s personal hatred at the Mehish bastard who would do this breaking, and he wanted very much to comfort Thanis, but it was no use lying and so he did not. He said, “For a time, I’m afraid. For a time, anyway.”
He hung the belt over the wall peg under Stark’s cloak, threw his own cloak around him and went out. The cold air struck him with the familiar winter smells of frost and smoke. The dark roofs glinted in the sunlight, lying against one another like the discarded counters of a game of hazard, and above him the great Wall rose as it had risen since his eyes first opened on the world, massive and comforting and secure. Balin went down the hollow steps, his hand touching the worn stone at his side. He moved slowly. He moved like a man with a knife in his heart.
VII
It was evening again when Start awoke and lay stretching, still sore in all his muscles and ravenously hungry, but feeling pretty much himself. He became aware of sounds that had not been there before, the pacing of men on the Wall above the house, the calling of the watch. Thanis heard him stir and came from where she had been standing at the doorway, looking out into the dusk.
“There is still no sign of attack,” she said.
“It will come.” Stark sat up. There was something different about the room. In a moment, he realized that all the small things were gone, the little useless things that made a room something more than merely a box in which to shelter like a captive animal. Presumably they had been hidden somewhere. The utilitarian things, clothing and such, were arranged in two small piles in a corner, where they might be quickly chosen from, and a supply of food was beside them, wrapped in a cloth. The room was already vacant. No one lived in it any more. People were only camping here, waiting to move on. He glanced up at Thanis. Her eyes hurt him, so big and full of unshed tears.
He said, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she answered with unexpected fierceness, and suddenly her eyes blazed. “Just tell me what I can do to fight.”
“You’ve made a good beginning.” He smiled at her, pleased. “Is there anything to eat without breaking into the iron rations?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve had a good day in the markets.” She brought him cold meat and bread and wine. She watched him eat for a minute or two and then began herself to eat, very hungrily. And again Stark smiled.
“I see the knot has come untied.”
She seemed surprised. “How did you guess?”
“I’ve known a time or two myself when the food choked me. Here, have some wine. It’s warming to the gut and cheering to the nerves.” He poured her cup full and she smiled and drank it, and they were companionable in that bereaved room, with the thick shadows sliding in to cover the empty places and a pleasant warmth from the brazier.
“Where is Balin?”
“Talking. Planning. He’ll be home soon.”
“I should thank you. Both of you, for taking me in, but especially you, for helping me there in the marketplace.”
She looked at him briefly, steadily, and smiled a little, and said, “Thank me if you will. There’ll be little enough of kindness soon.” She glanced away from him around the room, and outside on the Wall the boots rang on cold stone and the voices challenged harshly.
Stark reached over and pulled her to him and kissed her, feeling the warm sweet-smelling firmness of her body, feeling the immensely thrilling fact of life in her, beating in her throat under his fingers, stirring in the lift and fall at her breathing, her own individual and separate being. And she clung to him, almost desperately, and did not speak and all at once it was as though he held a child, small and frightened and seeking comfort.
Something in his manner must have changed, because she pushed away from him, laughing a little and shaking her head. “I need more wine, I think.” She lifted the cup and then paused, listening, and gave Stark an urchin’s grin.
“Anyway, here is my brother.”
Balin was in a taut, keyed-up mood. He sat down at first with them to eat, but then rose and moved restlessly about the room, his eyes too bright, his voice edged and brittle, talking about all he had been doing.
“I’ve had to be very careful, Stark. Only four other men know about the talisman, and them I trust as I do my own right hand. One word—just one word in the wrong ear, and the three of us here would never live to see what happens to Kushat.”
“You have a rallying place?”
“Yes. The Festival Stones. They lie outside the city…” He sat down beside Stark and dipped his finger in the wine, drawing with it a map on the table-top. “Here, to the northeast, some two miles. There is a ceremony there every year at the spring solstice, mostly for the children now, though in older times it was a more serious thing.”
Stark nodded. The sun rose and set for all the planets, and on each one of them the worship of the Shining God was old as the first men, as old as life.
“Everyone knows where it is,” Balin was saying, “and from there the way is clear to the pass. That is all arranged. Each man will find his own way out of the city. There are a hundred ways and every thief knows them. In its under-levels, Kushat is a honeycomb.”
Again Stark nodded. This was so with every Martian city he knew.
The challeng
e of the watch sounded on the Wall. Suddenly the room was stifling. “I would like to go out,” Stark said, and rose. “Is it possible?”
“Oh, yes. As long as we stay in the Quarter.” He jumped up, caught by a new idea and eager to go again. “We will go around and let the men see you, so they’ll know you when the time comes.”
“And,” said Stark mildly, putting on his cloak. “you might show me one or two of these ways out of the city that every thief knows. Just in case we become separated in the heat of battle….”
Balin said cheerfully. “I told you, I’m not a soldier. Come on.” He touched Thanis on the shoulder. “Try and get some sleep, little one. You’ll need it.”
She gave them an uncertain smile, and they left her and went out into the cold night. Both moons were up, painting the tumbled roofs of the city in a wild pattern of black and greenish silver, double-shadowed and constantly shifting. The towers of the King City rose up as though they would catch the nearer moon out of the sky, and it shone maliciously through them where their walls were broken away, revealing them for the sad ruins they were. Below in the streets there was mostly darkness, except for the watchfires in the squares, with here and there a torch lighting a tavern sign, or a dim gleam behind a shuttered window.
Stark noticed that Balin went ahead of him rapidly down the stairs and did not pause to look. He shook his head sympathetically and followed him. High above on the Wall the iron-shod boots tramped rhythmically.
“The city seems very quiet,” Stark said, walking beside Balin along the crooked street.
“They still do not quite believe,” said Balin. “Even here in the Quarter. No one has ever seen an attack, and no one has ever thought of such a thing in the winter. Winter is a safe time, when the tribesmen are too busy scratching a living to be bothered with making war. In the summer they try to plunder the caravans we send to trade with cities farther south, and they attack our hunting parties, but that is all. Most people in Kushat are of Thanis’ opinion, anyway—regardless of the talisman. The great Wall still protects us.” He looked up at it. “And when I see it, I cannot help but feel in my heart, no matter what my mind tells me, that the Wall is proof against any enemy.”
“Nevertheless,” said Stark. “show me these hidden ways.”
Balin showed him. There was a place in the Wall itself where a slab of stone swung open into a dark tunnel. There was another place where a paving block, hidden in a narrow mews, tilted open to show a rusted ladder of iron pegs going down into what Balin said was the system of ancient drains that carried the spring floods under Kushat.
“Very good,” said Stark. “But we may be driven back out of the Quarter. Supposing that I am running for my life somewhere between here and the King City. Where would I go?”
“In that case,” said Balin, “your best way would be by the Quarter of the Tomb-Robbers. That is only our name for it, of course—the artisans call it the Quarter of the Blessed. It is a burying ground.” He led Stark up onto a roof-top and pointed out the way as well as he could, and then described in detail how to find the entrance to the hidden rat-runs that pierced the many levels below the surface, through the layers of detritus built up over the centuries to the deep rock that underlay it all.
“Stay with the main tunnel. It will bring you out under the Wall and well away.” He paused and added, “It leads under the King City. That was the road that Camar took when he left Kushat. He might have come back that way unseen…. Of course the men who use these ways go chiefly to meet with outland traders and dispose of items that cannot well be sold in Kushat. Trade moves briskly in summer, at the time of the caravans.” Again he paused. “Poor Camar. The sin of pride. But perhaps after all he has done the city a great service.”
“We’ll know soon,” said Stark, feeling the weight of the belt around his waist. “Doubtless sooner than we wish.” And he stored all the information Balin had given him very carefully in his mind, knowing that by it he might live or die.
They went after that to a succession of poor tavern rooms, thick with smoke and the smell of people and old used leather garments. They sat for a little while in each one, drinking a cup of the sour wine that came by caravan from places with a kinder climate, and in each one, lean dark-faced men took note of Stark but did not speak. When they walked home the nearer moon was close upon the Wall and the black figures of the sentries moved hugely against it.
Thanis lay at one end of the bench bed, sleeping. They lay down quietly and did not disturb her.
The night wore on.
Very late, when the farther moon was sloping in the west, Thanis woke and knew that she was not going to sleep again. The room was very quiet except for the deep breathing of the men. The sentries on the Wall had ceased their pacing. Thanis lay in the dark quiet until she could not stand it any longer and then she rose and went to the window and opened the heavy curtains. Wind and moonlight swept together into the room. She stood with a fur robe wrapped around her, leaning on the sill and looking out at the slumbering city.
Stark stirred uneasily, turning one way and then another. His motions grew violent. Thanis turned, and then crossed the room and touched him.
Instantly he was awake.
“You were dreaming,” she said softly.
Stark shook his head. His eyes were still clouded, though not with sleep. “Blood,” he said, “heavy in the wind.”
Thanis whispered, “I smell nothing but the dawn.”
Stark got up. “Wake Balin. I’m going up on the Wall.”
He caught his cloak from the peg and flung open the door, standing on the narrow steps outside. The moonlight caught in his eyes, pale as frostfire. Thanis turned from him, suddenly trembling.
“Balin,” she said. “Balin…”
He was already awake. Together they followed Stark up the rough-cut stair that led to the top of the Wall.
Stark looked southward, where the plain ran down from the mountains and spread away below Kushat. Nothing moved out there. Nothing marred the empty whiteness.
Stark said, “They will attack at dawn.”
VIII
They waited.
Some distance away in either direction a guard was huddled down over a small brazier, each one making a sort of tent out of his cloak to hoard the heat. They glanced incuriously at the three civilians, apparently content merely to survive these last hours of the night, when a man’s will and courage ran out of him like water from a cracked vessel. The wind came whistling down through the Gates of Death, and below in the empty streets the watchfires shuddered and flared.
They waited, and still there was nothing.
Balin said at last, “How can you know they’re coming?”
Stark shivered, a shallow rippling of the flesh that had nothing to do with cold, and every muscle of his body came alive. The farther moon plunged downward. The moonlight dimmed and changed, and the plain was very empty, very still.
“They will wait for darkness,” Stark said. “They will have an hour or so, between moonset and the rising of the sun.”
He turned his head, drawn inevitably to look toward the cliffs above Kushat. Here, close under them, they seemed to tower outward in a curving mass, like the last wave of eternity rolling down, crested white with the ash of shattered worlds.
He looked into the black and narrow mouth of the Gates of Death, and the primitive ape-thing within him cringed and moaned, oppressed by a sense of fate. By this means and that he had been led across half a world to stand here with the talisman of a long-dead king in his hands. If things went as he supposed they would, he would soon be following the footsteps of that long-dead king into whatever strangeness might lie beyond that doorway—a strangeness, perhaps, that spoke with little spidery voices….
He shook with the memory of those voices and fought down a strong desire to take off the belt and drop it outside the Wall. He reminded him
self of how he had ridden toward Kushat, looking up at the pass and lusting after the power that he might find there, power to destroy Ciaran of Mekh, and he laughed, not with any very great humor, at his own inconsistency.
He said to Balin, “Camar told me that Ban Cruach was supposed to have gone back through the Gates of Death at the end. Is that true?”
Balin shrugged. “That is the legend. At least, he is not buried in Kushat.” It occurred to him to be surprised. “Why do you ask that?”
“I don’t know,” Stark said, and turned back to his contemplation of the plain. Deimos touched the horizon. A last gleam of reddish light tinged the snow and then was gone.
Thanis pressed closer to Balin for warmth, looking uneasily at Stark. There was a sort of timeless patience about him. Balin was aware of it, too, and envied him. He would have liked to go back down where there was warmth and comfort to help the waiting, but he was ashamed to. He was cold and doubtful, but he stayed.
Time passed, endless minutes of it. The sentries drowsed over their braziers. The plain was in utter darkness under the faint, far northern stars.
Stark said, “Can you hear them?”
“No.”
“They come.”
His hearing, far keener than Balin’s, picked up the little sounds, the vast inchoate rustling of an army on the move in stealth and darkness. Light-armed men, hunters, used to stalking wild beasts in the snow. They could move softly. But still they made a breathing and a stirring, a whispering that was not of the wind.
“I hear nothing,” Balin said. And Thanis shook her head, her face showing pale from the folds of Balin’s cloak.
Again they waited. The westering stars moved toward the horizon, and at length in the east a dim pallor crept across the sky. The plain was still shrouded in night, but now Stark could make out the high towers of the King City, ghostly and indistinct. And he wondered who would be king in Kushat by the time this unrisen sun had set.
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