Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 3 The Iron Gate Read online

  ‘Is a man who disregards the command of his sovereign a man to be trusted?’

  ‘Trusted for what he is, for his nature – yes, your reverence, he is.’

  ‘Explain.’

  Berowne drank another mouthful.

  ‘I mean, your reverence, that every man is something tangible, no matter how much he may try to dissemble away that true nature he carries. In my dad’s pottery shop, the buyers would come and go, and some men’s word was good, and other men would always try to cheat, no matter if they could easily afford the price. It was their nature to scrape and connive, even as it was the nature of the others to pay without bargaining. Now, this Rukorian was a man something after the heart of the High Charan Ampeánor. It was not in his nature to stand by and save himself while others fought. So he went. He could be trusted to go, and not trusted to do any other thing. That was my meaning, your reverence.’

  She nodded, as if his words had borne weight. Well, he thought to himself, perhaps they had. One could never tell with Postio. He took another mouthful.

  ‘And you, Captain – what is your nature?’

  He glanced slyly to the maidens. ‘Oh, your reverence – shall I say plainly? I was born to love women. When I see them in their beauty, even though I know them to be utterly faithless, something in my belly sings, and I want to follow at their tails. So I became a soldier – it is the best profession for one such as I am. The hours are good, and the glint of armor has a certain appeal – and then, there is the danger. Never am I more ready to love than when I have freshly come from death and clamor and the stink of arms.’

  His voice sounded loud and boastful in the quiet chamber. Berowne looked down somewhat shamefully. Why had he asked for Postio? He cursed himself, but happily. Sadness was impossible when a man drank Postio.

  ‘Well, captain, if you have a mind for it, I can offer you the chance to be as eager for love as you have ever been in your life.’

  At her gesture, the maidens left the room. Berowne wiped the corner of his mouth. He tried to steady the rush in his brain. This was why she had sent for him. He must play the captain now.

  ‘Captain, I have a task for you to perform – for you or for one of your men. It should be a man of daring and cleverness, and he should know the City well. For that is where I mean to ask him to go.’

  ‘Your reverence, I was born and raised here. There is not a street or building I do not know.’

  ‘He should also know the tongue of the barbarians.’

  Berowne frowned. ‘Then I am not the man, your reverence. Nor is there one in my command who knows even so much as I – for I learned some words from two Gerso merchants who came hither some months ago. I know of only one man, your reverence: this Gerso of whom I spoke earlier. Ennius Kandi knows the barbarian tongue well enough to have been born to it.’

  ‘Yet I should prefer to choose some other, I think,’ the Empress answered. ‘All the more so if this man does such fine work here. In truth, I know him: he was once one of a group of men I sent abroad upon various errands. It would be unfair of me, I think, to ask him go out into such danger again. On the whole I think he has done his share for me. But I know another who might do.’

  She rose, and touched the wall behind the throne. One of the maidens entered and abased herself.

  ‘Bijjame,’ the Queen said, ‘bid Kuln-Holn attend us here.’ The lovely, white-wigged maiden gave her mistress a further obeisance and departed. The Empress resumed her place upon the prayer-mat.

  ‘Yet your reverence,’ Berowne said, ‘how is it possible that we might slip past the barbarians? There are always a score or more of them spying on the Iron Gate.’

  ‘There is a way. It is known to but two other living souls besides myself. It is an ancient secret of the Bordakasha, handed down from Emperor to Emperor. Elna’s engineers built it into the Citadel. Elna meant it to victualize the Citadel in case of siege. It is a sure way, yet not, perhaps, a way without peril.’

  ‘And what would your reverence have us do once we gain the city streets?’

  ‘You have done battle many times on the Iron Gate, captain. How many barbarians are there camped outside the city?’

  ‘In all?’ Berowne scratched his chin, considering. ‘I could not even guess. There are not above a thousand men in any one attack, but that is not a tenth of the numbers we know they had before Egland Downs.’

  ‘Even so. There is space for only so many men to assault the Iron Gate at any one time – for the rest, we cannot say. Perhaps they are in those tents in the field – perhaps they have long ago departed. Perhaps they wage war in Rukor or Belknule, or farther to the South, toward the dark horizon. Perhaps there are only some two or three thousands of them without the city here. If so, then there are things we might be doing. It little suits me, Captain, that having broken this long sleep, I do no more than endure assault upon assault, while our stores dwindle. Let us at least dream of counterstrokes.’

  He nodded.

  ‘So, Captain Berowne, I would ask you to go into the camp of Ara-Karn.’

  Berowne sat back upon his heels. The savagery of the barbarians was legendary. Still, he thought, Kiva would be especially solicitous of him before he went. And, if he could return, he would earn the highest praise of the Empress herself. He might even become her general, or even when all this was ended, be granted a charanship somewhere about the realm. Charan Berowne! It was not a thing to put aside. He gulped down the last of the wine, even to the bitter lees.

  With all the grace he could muster, he made the formal obeisance of acceptance.

  ‘It but remains to find you ears,’ she said as the door opened behind him. The slave led in a short, paunchy, gray-headed man. He looked like a peasant come from a half-tilled field.

  The short man made a clumsy abasement before the Queen. ‘How goes it, Kuln-Holn?’ she asked.

  ‘Well enough, your majesty,’ he said. His voice betrayed a thick northern accent.

  ‘Captain Berowne, I present to you Kuln-Holn, my beloved servant. Do not be deceived by his appearance: he is a most capable and deadly man. He was born in the North, and speaks the barbarians’ tongue as well as any tribesman.’

  ‘Indeed he does,’ Berowne agreed. ‘Your reverence, this man and I are old comrades. Often he shares the men’s watches. Forgive me that I did not think of him before. But the name you use is new to me. We call him simply Iocantris, “Little Doughty.” ’

  ‘It is well that you know his worth, captain. Kuln-Holn, sit and be at ease. I called you here to ask of you a great service. This Captain means to go into the enemy camp. It were better if he went with one who knows the tongue of the far North. Will you go with him?’

  There was doubt upon Iocantris’s forlorn face. At length he bowed his head. ‘All right,’ he said.

  The Queen spoke again, using the barbarian tongue. Little Doughty answered in like manner. Berowne caught only a word or two. The Empress seemed to be examining the man’s resolve, while Kuln-Holn was plainly in some pain of heart. At last he bowed again, and the Empress nodded.

  ‘All is agreed,’ she said. ‘Captain, I have impressed upon Kuln-Holn the need for secrecy. You are neither of you to speak a word of any of this, least of all of the secret way, to anyone. Not to your closest, most trustworthy friend – not even to your dearest love.’

  ‘Of course not, your reverence.’ Berowne wondered how he could tell Kiva enough to impress her without breaking this word to her majesty.

  ‘Now rest. I will see you freed from your watches, Captain. Haspeth will take your place. When you are refreshed, I will tell you what you need to know.’

  Descending once more the ornately-carven stairs, Berowne laughed, and clapped Iocantris on the shoulder. It had come to him suddenly, that when Kiva pouted and demanded of him why he came to her so late, he could astonish her. And the next time Ullerath came a-knocking at Kiva’s door, Berowne could order the Eglander away.

  * * *

  In the long l
ow, black-draped chamber, the Empress Allissál reached forth her hand and slew the flame of the golden lamp. She sat alone there now, in silence save for the low sussuration of winds that passed without.

  The maiden Bijjame entered and laid her ivory-draped body before her mistress.

  ‘Reverence, the Charan Ennius Kandi has come again. He asks to be allowed an audience.’

  ‘Let him depart as before.’ The slave-maiden rose. ‘Bijjame, before you leave, tell me: do the slaves still keep a watch upon all the movements of that man?’

  ‘Yes, your reverence. Two men watch him, dividing the hours so he is never out of their knowledge. But he has done nothing unusual.’

  ‘Have them continue the practice, please, and inform me when there is something out of the ordinary to report. For the common details of his existence here, I do not want to be told.’

  ‘Yes, reverence.’ The tall, lovely slave backed out of the chamber.

  The room fell darker for a moment. The rustling of feathers sounded at the window. The deadly gerlin had come back.

  ‘So, Niad, I have awakened at last,’ she said, without turning. ‘I wonder, to do what?’

  III

  The Sontil

  FAR FROM TARENDAHARDIL, brightward of the grassy steppe of the Eglands, a chain of mountains ran North to South. As hills and islands, the chain leapt up from Elna’s Sea; as it ran South it swept darkward, like the bent of a well-made shield. Brightward of the mountains were Goddess, the Desert, and the sunstruck cities of Postio, the Delbas, Ilkas, Bollakarvil. Darkward lay the fertile lands of the Empire. Between them stood the mountains, a waste of rock and cold. None dwelt there, not even wolves. Not even the terrible armies of Ara-Karn, that had crossed the burning wastes of the Taril itself, had dared mount those slopes, but had instead marched beneath them, invading the Empire by the Southern Way of Vapio.

  In the shadow of those mountains was a region even more shunned.

  It was a forest. Yet no mere notion of forest could encompass that ancient, brooding, sullen land. It was furtive, secretive, shameful, like some stagnant, unwholesome sea.

  Of the rains that fell upon the mountains, one part fell upon the sunward side, two upon the shadow. The sunward waters fed the Delba, the second-greatest river in the South. The waters of the shadowside drained into fens and brackish pools, whence no river survived.

  Runaway slaves from time to time escaped into that forest, to live like beasts away from the cruelty of their masters. Many entered, none returned. It was said that they shed their clothing and went on all fours, and they became strange and forlorn monsters, feared even by the beasts.

  Pharokul, seventeenth Emperor of Tarendahardil, commanded that a road be built through the southern fringes of the forest. Pharokul desired a road shorter than the Sea Way between Bollakarvil and Tarendahardil. Imperial engineers reported that the soil upon which the road would rest was firm, dry and level. Ten thousand laborers, under the command of the finest engineers, set forth to build the roadway.

  In less than a week, ten passes of dark God overhead, all messages from the camp ceased. Three passes later, when the first supply train reached the campsite, it found a scene of horror. The camp walls were broken and scattered like straw. Tools and scraps of clothing were strewn everywhere. The beaten earth was pungent with human blood and refuse. In seven passes’ search not one body, nor any part of one, was found.

  Ten thousand men had vanished.

  They had completed two fastces of the roadway, less than the distance a man could walk in an hour.

  This forest, ancient beyond even the legends of the high kings of Vapio, would not even own a name. Upon the Imperial maps it existed as a shapeless stain upon the parchment, marked simply Sontil, the Wood.

  Birds, it was said, rarely flew over the Sontil.

  Wood cut from the trees of the Sontil, when burned, released a smoke that was poisonous to all living things.

  Other things were also said of the Sontil, but they were less believable.

  Inozelstus of Anoth, the legendary traveler and philosopher, ventured beyond the knife-edged border and spent a season among the Madpriests, being every moment in danger of his life. But he never dared set foot within the Sontil.

  The trees of the Sontil rose and fell like tidal currents of some painted sea. Upon one hill-like swell of that fantastic growth, a orin tree rose above the others like a stone tower. Older than Elna was that tree, scarred by lightning and stormwind yet balefully defiant; its roots clutched the hill upon which it grew like a knotted fist.

  In the windwoven, uppermost branches of that monument of branch and leaf, a tiny figure clung. The winds parted the leaves and revealed the figure in greater detail.

  It was the figure of a man.

  Piebald in the shadows of the leaves, wrapping both arms about the branches, his mouth loose and open in the too-swift air, the lord Ampeánor, High Charan of Rukor and betrothed of the Empress Allissál, looked out on the Sontil.

  When the winds abated somewhat, he made his way back down the trunk.

  He wore a simple woolen tunic, shoes of soft leather, a belt, and a torn shoulder-mantle. A sword was tied to his back and a heavy war-knife caught in his belt. His legs and arms were brown, his hair long, his beard grown full.

  As he descended, he climbed down into darkness.

  The light of the upper branches gave way to shadow, the shadow of the middle branches gave way to gloom.

  In an hour, Ampeánor reached the lowest branches, dead now for centuries, brittle, leafless, and dry. He hung ten fathoms above the forest floor. It was so dark that he could only dimly make out the ground. Distant overhead danced a scattering of pallid points. That was all of Heaven that reached here.

  Ampeánor climbed down another six or seven fathoms. He reached the lowest branches. He hung for a moment by his arms, then let go. He landed in a thick growth of grayish moss that broke beneath him with the sound of a wet sponge. From the gash mounted a sickening exhalation.

  Tethered to the orin’s grotesquely-arching giant roots, a warhorse waited. Ampeánor offered the beast a bundle of leaves he had gathered at the summit. The horse nibbled it, then turned away. Ampeánor stroked the horse’s flank. He felt bones beneath the slack, dry skin. His heart went out to the warhorse. It had been a fine beast when he took it from the stables of his estate on the outskirts of Tarendahardil. It had been one of his best for strength and endurance.

  ‘Your horse is dying, Southron.’

  Some paces away, a half-naked figure was bound to the high arch of a root. His head was round like a ball and set directly into the great barreled chest. His arms were long and massive, the legs short and knotted as the root to which they were tied. If an ox had mated with a hardy woman, this man might have been their issue.

  Such was Gundoen, chieftain of the far North.

  Ampeánor untied him so that he was free of the root but his arms and knees were still fettered.

  He answered him in the barbarian tongue. ‘Do you want to eat?’

  Gundoen shrugged. Despite his bonds, it was a disdainful gesture. ‘Do you want to feed me?’

  * * *

  Ampeánor ate on the bank of a dark, oily stream at the foot of the hill. The barbarian lay a few paces away. Ampeánor had left a bit of meat and a wooden bowl filled with water by the barbarian’s head. The bonds never came off.

  It seemed to Ampeánor as though they had gone far enough to have reached the dark horizon by now. But even from the summit of the orin he had glimpsed no end to these woods.

  He groaned softly.

  What went on in the world outside? Was the League of Elna formed? How far had the barbarian armies marched? Had Allissál recovered? And what of the Gerso, Ennius Kandi? Ampeánor knew he was a traitor – perhaps the man had been found out by now?

  ‘Hey – Southron,’ the barbarian said. ‘What’s that around your neck?’

  Ampeánor saw that the tooth had slipped above his tunic during the
climb. Heavy, longer than a span, the tooth curved to a wicked yellow point.

  ‘A gift.’

  ‘That is a Darkbeast tooth,’ the barbarian said. ‘Only the bravest of our hunters have the right to wear one. Only those who have helped bring down a Darkbeast with their own spears. And Darkbeasts dwell only about the foothills of Urnostardil in the far North. They are huge as huts, with hides tough as armor. They can devour a pony in a single gulp. Not even I have hunted Darkbeast. How did a Southron come by a Darkbeast tooth?’

  Ampeánor did not mind the barbarian’s insults. The silence here needed words, even with such a one as this. ‘Gen-Karn, your former Warlord, presented it to me in Tezmon. He is our ally now, and works against your god-king.’

  ‘He is dead,’ Gundoen answered. ‘The hand of Ara-Karn reached out and snatched him from afar.’

  The hand of the Gerso rather, Ampeánor thought. He bound the barbarian to the root once more. Ampeánor’s ribs still ached from the time the barbarian had caught him unawares and knocked him sprawling.

  ‘Sleep well, barbarian. Next waking we go faster.’

  Ampeánor settled himself in the damp moss. Deep in those malignant woods, his dreams were never peaceful. After a time he opened his eyes.

  The barbarian slept soundly, but before Ampeánor stood another figure. It was the figure of a bent old woman wrapped in rotten folds of cloth festooned with curling leaves of strange colors.

  Ampeánor recognized her as Melkarth, the ancient seeress whose hut stood at the border between the mountains and the Sontil.

  She leaned on a carven staff and leered at him. ‘You were not right, my lord,’ she croaked, ‘to use my name in your lies. Do you not know that this man’s woman is a sister of mine? Now it will be the worse for you.’

  She turned into the gloom.

  Ampeánor called after her. ‘Wait! What can you tell me of the wars, and of Allissál?’ But she neither paused nor answered.

  He stood, minded to follow her, but in the movement started as if waking. He looked about. He could not tell if it had been truth or dream.