Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 4 Darkbridge Read online

  ‘Ha!’ barked Ampeánor, twisting about the roof. ‘At last, this reaches an end!’

  Allissál did not stir. She gazed at the Gerso, her robes rippling against her body.

  ‘I warned you once, your majesty,’ Ennius Kandi said, almost gently, ‘of what might come out of the doings of the Pass of God.’

  * * *

  Ampeánor walked through corridors giving onto the chambers of the last of Tarendahardil’s nobles.

  Each province held its own story suitably ornamented and maintained. Ampeánor walked not on the level of Rukor, but that of Vapio. The doors open on both sides revealed chambers bright with riches, lamp-flames, and the aromatic smoke of the seven dream-herbs. Men and women of many cities gathered here; one would not have known it was a scene within a stronghold under siege for more than a year.

  At the end of the corridor a group clustered about a small door half-concealed by hangings in purple and gold. There was an ineffable languor about those people. They melted to either side at Ampeánor’s approach. He opened the door and passed within. The low burst of a woman’s laughter from the corridor crimsoned his ears as he closed the door.

  It was a small chamber without windows, lighted by three small candles in a welter of tallow at one corner. The candle-flames turned the hangings, couches, and lounging-pillows red. Even the air, swirling and pungent with smoke, was red.

  On the couches two men were garbed and painted so alike they could have been taken for twins. They greeted the lord of Rukor fulsomely, offering him the empty couch, but Ampeánor stood with his fist squirming on the hilt of his war-knife. He had come directly from the roof of the White Tower, and still wore his armor.

  ‘There is a man who holds a secret I want to know,’ he said. ‘He has no fear of death. I have been told to see you two.’

  The men upon the couches smiled. ‘This is your prisoner, my lord?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A barbarian?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me then: is he so very strong?’

  ‘He threw a tall man from the battlements.’

  The two nodded. ‘And you desire that we … persuade him to tell you what he knows?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You will let us do as we please?’

  ‘I must know his secret.’

  Again the two nodded, well pleased. ‘Then you may leave matters in our hands, my lord. We shall be ready after the shortsleep.’

  ‘How much?’ he asked.

  A pained expression touched the twin faces. ‘My lord, we would not dream of demanding payment for this. We will do it,’ they added, lingering over the words, ‘for the sake of our nation, and the honor of the Queen.’

  ‘There is another thing.’

  ‘What is that, my lord?’

  ‘I do not want him to die before he has told all I want to learn. There are more secrets than one.’

  Again their pain was made apparent. ‘My lord, do you consider us barbarians? We will not so much as cripple him, though the results may not be pleasant to behold. In pleasure, after all, it is the lightest touch which most stimulates; it is the same in pain.’

  Ampeánor turned to the door.

  ‘But my lord, why are you in such haste? Do you not wish to know how our beloved mother fares?’

  ‘I have no mother,’ Ampeánor said.

  ‘Oh! dear brother, what a way to talk!’ laughed one.

  Ampeánor pushed the door shut. ‘You will never call me that again.’

  * * *

  In an angle between the Palace and the Black Tower, enclosed on either side and above by stone, was a small, curious yard. High walls ran between it and the courtyards before the Palace and the southern wing, forming a narrow cobbled lane that emerged in front of the stables. Above this yard the massive, arch-supported stones joined the Palace with the Black Tower: the great, rudely-hewn stones arching over it made the court seem more like a cave. The winds tore down that way always, raising a low moan.

  In shape, the yard was a square. It was paved with large stones that ran deep into the earth. In between the stones deep channels had been fashioned and lined with tiles: the channels ran the length of the passage to end as bright holes in the bulwark upon the edge of the cliff. No windows or balconies gave onto this court. No doors led into the Black Tower from it. There were only two broad, low doors, at the bottom of a series of steps, giving entrance into the underground level of the Palace, by the kitchens. In the square was set a platform of big, rude blocks set fast and close to one another in the shape of a diamond. There were channels carved in these stones also, leading into the yard. The channels and the stones were stained dark brown.

  Such was the butcher-stone of the Black Citadel, and the slaughtering-yard for great beasts – pigs, cattle, horses, sheep.

  Now Gundoen was bound upon those stones.

  Around the stone, sheltered from the wind, were several couches. Upon the couches, not reclining, sat Captain Berowne, Ennius Kandi, the High Charan of Rukor, and the Empress with some of her maidens. At the end of the lane a crowd of Tarendahardilites gazed with awe at the naked body of the captive barbarian. Below, the two doors to the kitchens had been opened: a group of slaves stood there.

  The twin Vapionil were dressed in saffron robes which left their long, lovely arms bare. They both had supple wrists and long, tapering fingers, like those of aliset players. Their eyes were kohl-streaked and herb-glazed.

  ‘If you will pardon us, my lords and majesty,’ said one, ‘we do not know this man’s tongue. So, if one of you would be gracious enough to ask the questions, we will, after a suitable time, ensure the answers.’

  ‘All three of us know the barbarian’s tongue,’ said Ampeánor, ‘but you, Gerso, are most at home in it. You will conduct the interview.’

  Ennius Kandi looked at the Charan of Rukor. His eyes were like green fire in that light. Within their glints there might be read a secret, unshakable promise. ‘Certainly, my lord. What is it you wish to learn?’

  ‘Begin by asking him where Ara-Karn is now, and whether he is alive or dead. You might also ask him whether the barbarians have ever sent any spies into Tarendahardil.’

  The supposed Gerso glanced at the Queen. Flanked by her maidens, she sat stiff and wide-eyed like some fine mare standing in the pen while her slaughter is awaiting her. She did not look at him.

  My Lady, she prayed in her heart, Let him forbid this thing even now. It is not too late for it. Let him speak – let him reveal himself as Ara-Karn – let him not condemn this man, so full of life, to be tormented and blooded like a pig.

  Why does he not speak? Why does he not open his mouth and shout it to the Couple, ‘I am Ara-Karn!’

  ‘Very well, my lord,’ said Ennius Kandi, who was Ara-Karn.

  She shuddered, so that her maidens caressed her to ease her evident pain. Why did he not speak the truth? Why didn’t she?

  The secret is his, she thought. Goddess, do not blame me, for I cannot tell it. But she knew in her heart that it was a lie, and she would bear the blame in full measure.

  The twin Vapionil waited, with slight, shining instruments poised in their hands above the body of the barbarian. Gundoen could not see the spectators on the couches. His gaze went only upward like an arrow to the sky.

  ‘Gundoen,’ called the Gerso, Ara-Karn.

  ‘Gundoen, can you hear? You are to be tortured, Gundoen. There is no escape for you, you will be mutilated unto death. This will be no glorious end. Be wise then, answer truthfully, spare yourself. What do you owe Ara-Karn? What gift has he ever brought to you save for war and unrest? Do you think he led you to help the tribesmen? Do you think that, were he in your place now, he would hesitate to sacrifice you?

  ‘You think you serve him by keeping silence; how can you be sure? Perhaps he would urge you to speak instead.’

  Now, helplessly, Allissál turned her gaze upon Ara-Karn. It was his voice that drew her, a voice perfectly calm and steady. She looke
d at his face and saw equal control there. How can he sit there so unconcerned? How can he go on speaking as though he tells an old friend what he had done that waking?

  ‘Gundoen, there are goals not worth the wining. And if luck will put the wining of such goals in our grasp, should we call it our fortune or our curse? Do you think any man enjoys his madness in the end? Does Ara-Karn?

  ‘You would never betray him, even were he himself to ask it, even if he wished it. Now you are free of that. To speak now is no betrayal. None would blame your words. Free yourself, free your master of the prison of dark dreams.

  ‘I give you the sacred word of the Empress of Tarendahardil, for whom I may now speak: if you answer now, your life will be spared and your freedom assured.

  ‘Speak, and live to sire real sons, sons worthy of your name. Where is Ara-Karn?’

  There was silence in the windy way. The maidens stirred; the Vapionil smiled to each other. Then the barbarian, Gundoen, opened his mouth.

  ‘This will get you more glory, O thief from Rukor, than what you did in the Eglands.’

  Ampeánor jerked his hand; the Vapionil set to work. They employed instruments that seemed to have been made for such work as this. Over the barbarian’s body they set a silver mirror on a stand, very highly polished, so that the barbarian might behold what they did to his body in close detail. Gundoen did not look to the mirror, but to the sky. He held his silence, though all there could see the agony in his slitted eyes.

  The silence ran on with God, broken only by the terrible clicking of the strange implements.

  Perhaps an hour passed.

  Allissál could not watch it. Though she forced herself at moments to behold what went on, ever her eyes of their own need fled from the man upon the stone and wandered up across the towers of her ancestor’s Palace, to the clouds shining in the happy light of Goddess.

  But once she looked askance at her formal husband. Ampeánor leered, snarled, and twisted in his seat as if he watched some wrestling-bout at the arena. Somehow the sight of him was worse than that of the flayed laid-open body. But Ara-Karn sat calm and still. One hand lay in his lap, the other on the armrest of his couch. Neither moved, each lay seemingly relaxed and easy. But in the face of the stranger, Allissál could see now his control begin to crack. The subtlest signs, which no one who knew him only casually would ever find or read, betrayed him. She knew him so well, she had seen him in bed, naked, spent, sweetly relaxed, his face open and young. And she could see in the slightest flaring of his nostril, the smallest pinch of the folds about his eyes, that he was in agony, suffering more than Gundoen seemed to be.

  I know him as well, she considered, as he knows me.

  As if sensing her gaze, Ara-Karn looked back at her. For one endless, frightening moment, she held his gaze and could not look away any more than he could. It was as if they two were alone in her dimchamber, naked before each other, fresh from love’s abandon. But into the silence of their eyes intruded the sounds of the Vapionils’ instruments, their horrible steel scissors, clamps and probes, and those sounds seemed to taint her every taking of delight from the arms, mouth, and hands of this man.

  ‘Majesty,’ whispered the maiden beside her, ‘are you well?’

  But Allissál could not answer. Ara-Karn’s eyes held her, and she sat naked before him, the barbarian’s blood running like a stream between them, staining their feet, staining their legs … Goddess dimmed in heaven, Allissál felt her eyelids fluttering, she leaned back blinded. Within her ribs she felt her heart knocking and galloping.

  The sound of the instruments returned. She took herself in hand, clenched the couch armrest, straightened her spine, and made herself watch once more.

  The Vapionil worked with growing agitation. Disbelief was in their eyes, and they proceeded somewhat farther than they would have liked, and much farther than they had intended.

  Gundoen, their victim, proved stronger than their methods. He had prepared himself for it. He had known he would face this before Ampeánor ever laid eyes upon him. Hertha-Toll foretold it; and Gundoen, in spite of his scornful words, had always believed his wife. He had accepted it and gone unto it willingly. So now he bore the pain not as a victim but proudly, as if he conquered. He made of his torment a blood-offering, as victim and sacrificer both.

  Distantly the cries of hunting gerlins soaring on the airs beyond the Palace could be heard, and the bell-toll to signal the changing of the guard.

  All at once Gundoen grinned, and he began to laugh as if he could not help it, as if it tickled him; only the laugh ended as a scream.

  It did not cease. He screamed, he screamed, he screamed.

  The full power of those ox-like lungs was unleashed in that scream. The very stones of the buildings echoed with it; the onlookers hid their ears in their hands. The echo of that cry filled the Citadel and made the men on the Iron Gate doubt what they did there; then ran beyond the Iron Gate to reach the tribesmen in the square below and chill their blood to jelly.

  At last the scream wore out his voice. He croaked, coughed blood and slime, and lay silent. The mouth still gaped and the open, bleeding belly bulged – but now no further sounds came forth. Then the last movements ceased. Gundoen lay still.

  The Vapionil paused, uncertain.

  Ampeánor said, ‘Go on. Go on. Make him tell us what he knows!’

  ‘No.’

  Allissál stood before her couch, straight as a statue. Did I rise? When did I rise?

  Fearfully one of her maidens tugged at her sleeve and muttered something; Allissál looked upon her, saw the fear welling in the girl’s young uncomprehending eyes. She inclined her head, and in a group those women of incomparable beauty rose and fled, their loras rustling against the wind.

  Allissál raised one black-swathed arm. ‘This—’ She could say no more. Then a deep shudder ran up and down her body. ‘Captain Berowne,’ she said, ‘return this man to his cell, please.’

  ‘Yes, your reverence.’

  ‘Here,’ Ennius Kandi said quietly. ‘Cover him with my cloak.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ampeánor sat on the edge of the couch. His eyes never strayed from the huge body laid open on the slaughtering-stone.

  The guardsmen cut the bonds and brought the limbs together. Berowne shrouded the body with the cloak. They wove their lances underneath to make a litter.

  ‘When we led him here,’ said one, ‘he came proudly, like a soldier summoned up for honors.’

  It took all of them to bear the weight of the body. They carried it away through the doors below. Before them the horrified slaves melted back, shunning the evil.

  Ampeánor started, as if he had been released. He stepped up onto the raised stones about the slaughtering-stone. He pressed his hand upon the wet, stinking stone. He looked on his bloodied palm. His eyes shot toward the crowd at the end of the lane.

  His face was the color of ash. He turned and opened his mouth as if to speak. But the Empress and the Gerso were gone, leaving him there alone with the wind and the stone and the two Vapionil, his brothers.

  II

  Of the Tribes at Tarendahardil

  BUT IN THAT TIME the barbarians were not idle.

  They met on the dusty, windy field brightward of the city, without the piled walls of the great camp. They met with their strongest armor, their sharpest swords, their heaviest axes, their stoutest spears, their deadliest bows.

  They sat in a huge fat wheel and heeded the harangues of Nam-Rog and the Circle of Chieftains. Nam-Rog spoke, and Gorn-Tal the Orn, and Kul-Dro who led the men of Gundoen’s tribe; and the greatest chiefs and champions spoke as well. Skillfully by their words they turned the last of the warriors’ weariness into hatred and the dark, bitter, need for the madness of battle. So many months they had fought there now, most of them had all but forgotten why it was they had come and what it was that kept them. Now they remembered. Gundoen had compelled them to remember.

  One last thing strengthened their hearts.
It was decided that this was to be their final battle here. Conquer or give back, when this was over they would turn their faces Northward and seek their homes again.

  Nam-Rog stood against this, but the other chieftains demanded it, mindless of the oaths they had sworn a year earlier. So Nam-Rog at length relented, at the end of the long counsels; yet he imposed this condition, that it be an assault like none before. The army was broken into five parts: each part would do battle in its turn. There would be no respite for the Southrons on the Iron Gate. Meals would be taken and sleeps passed, and warriors would battle on. When one part of the army wearied, the next would take its place. In this way Nam-Rog assured himself that this assault could be the last, because it would surely be enough.

  The warriors cast out lots for the order of battle and arrayed themselves into great, iron-bristling bodies dark upon the trampled earth.

  Nam-Rog met with Erion Sedeg, he of the painted face and reddened teeth, he who had once been a seaman, but was now leader of the mercenaries, and the most zealous follower of the cult of Ara-Karn. And Nam-Rog looked over the fields of men grown out of the ground, and nodded, worry and eagerness commingled in his lined blue-eyed face; and he said, not looking at Erion Sedeg,

  ‘That thing we spoke about in summer, is it done?’

  ‘Two weeks now it has been done,’ answered Erion Sedeg. ‘Now it stands on the Sea Way where a rise of the land conceals it from the eyes of our enemies. All the roads between are cleared. I have seen to it.’

  Nam-Rog nodded. ‘The warriors’ hearts now run fierce as mountain streams. Get your men and all the oxen and rope you need. When the battle is strongest and the Southrons cannot see beyond the curtains of our arrows, bring the thing and prove your worth.’

  ‘I will,’ the man in the robes of the tent-dwellers said darkly. ‘And then the defenders of this false and fallen Goddess will die to the last, and we will pitch on the rooftop of the Palace the black tents of our lord God.’