Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 4 Darkbridge Read online

  Again she raised her arms, revealing like a glance from downcast eyes the slight tufts of red-gold hair in the musky hollows where the arch of the breasts joined the arms. The twin daubs of hair above echoed the single patch below, forming a triad whose harmonies fell and rose and shuddered with her breath like the light of Goddess on wheat-fields in the burning airs of summer. In a few gestures she did out the jeweled pins and clasps imprisoning her hair. It fell free with a shower of coils and gleaming ringlets: she tossed her head, and the mass of hair waved out like a nimbus about the oval of her face and the horizon of her shoulders, releasing a perfume unbearably sweet.

  The man, Ara-Karn, stood before this spectacle where he was, as if held helpless by a desire so wrenching and powerful it might have been a spear hurled through him.

  From the soft-lipped mound of linen the woman stepped toward him. She was as naked, as blazing and as chaste as the fiery orb of Goddess Herself. There was fire too within her eyes, a fire cold with silver-blue. She had lost none of her anger, but now it mingled with something else, something more sure and more dangerous. She breathed deeply, and the breath swelled her ribs and brought up her breasts. The breath caught in her throat, behind the pink dance of the tongue and the small sharp teeth.

  ‘I hate you,’ she said.

  ‘I hate you more than any man or thing I have ever despised in my life. Because of you there is no peace in me. There will never be, not so long as you live. Everything is changed, and there will be no going back. Because of you. I cannot lie down to sleep without thinking of you. If I were not unworthy of my race, you would now be no more than a corpse upon that carpet. But there are two men beyond that door, and if you touch me, I will summon them and order them to beat you to death before my eyes. This I swear before the Couple.’

  She reached forth with both hands. Upon the inner left wrist the Sign of the Couple was marked in black ink. She set her hands to the neck of his tunic, so that her knuckles brushed against the hollow of his throat and he could feel the ice cold hands. She tore down on his garment to the belted waist; the long opening bared the sunburnt flesh of his chest, and the torn linen hung down between his legs obscenely. Deliberately, never taking her eyes from his, she ran the nails of her hands over that denuded stretch, so that the skin blanched and bled.

  She laid her hands upon either side of his face, filling the hollows of her scented pains with the bristles of his beard below the high cheekbones. Naked, soft and gleaming in the darkness, she rose upon her sweet-turned toes and kissed him full upon the opened mouth. Then she stepped back and struck his face with all her strength.

  He all but fell over, but with an animal grace held his footing; impulsively he stepped forward until their bodies almost touched again. The green in the black depths of his eyes flashed, and his brows were as black as the lands beyond the Knife-Edged Border. But the fury in her gaze was the equal of his. Again she went up against him, the soft, curving expanse of her form yielding to the leather and iron of his garb. Again she kissed him, taking his mouth to hers with avid expertise – then broke free and struck him again with still greater force. All the left side of his face went pale, then blue beneath the hammer of that blow, and his hair whipped back like a banner.

  He looked at her with wild laughter in his eyes. She had stepped back again, shaken by the force of her own blow. There was a hint of doubt in her eyes now – confusion, almost fear. She glanced down at her own breasts gleaming with his blood. He stepped forward again; their bodies came together.

  She threw back her hair. ‘By Goddess’ cries, how I hate you.’ Again she kissed that mouth of his, needfully, holding his face down to hers. She kissed him longer this time, then broke it, throwing back his head – but this time he caught her wrist in the bond of his hand. The force of the blow swept back the length of her arm, twisting her upper body. She brought up her other arm, but again his hand was there to prison it.

  * * *

  She fought, but he held her wrists so strongly that she could see the veins and thews harden on his forearms. Soundlessly, except for slight grunts impossible to restrain, they struggled. She could feel the sweat break like an itch upon her back, in the flatness between her breasts, beneath her arms and between her legs. She struggled, but in vain. He held her wrists too tightly, and forced her body against his too closely for her to have done anything against him with her legs.

  Then he twisted her arms upward and behind her shoulders. She arched back beneath him, as if yielding. Her hips were driven helplessly against his; one of his knees filled the hollow between her legs. He leaned forward, and a lock of his hair fell against her own. Their eyes were very close. A drop of sweat gathered and fell from the tip of his nose upon the tip of hers; it ran into her mouth. She tasted his salt and his lust in that drop, and threw her head forward to bite and draw blood from that laughing face, only his mouth was there to meet hers and he crushed her head back, grinding lips against each other and sucking the breath out of her lungs so that she became weakened and dizzy and fell.

  She fell, and her long naked limbs writhed upon the heap of her own garments, and she could feel the iron brooch-pins underneath her shoulders, and the golden mask cold against her buttocks, and something else, hard and sharp beneath the linen, in the arch between her nether back and buttocks.

  He was lying over her, pinioning her legs with his knees and pressing one hip against her middle so that the clasp of his belt cut into the wet flesh about her sex. He looked into her eyes long enough for her to know the wildness and madness in him; to know too that she was his then and that he might well do anything he pleased with her – even kill her with those strong hands, if she dared cry for aid. He looked at her, and it was as if he had been on the point of speaking – but he remained silent, as if his body had become his tongue now. Then, slowly and with care not to lessen any of the force by which he held her helpless, he slid his body forward.

  The broad tunic rose above her face. He lowered himself upon her. The ragged leather hung open to swallow her face and blot the last of the light from her eyes. The sweating, bloody, naked chest pressed upon her mouth. Again he moved: her lips rolled beneath him and his blood and sweat smeared over her. She tasted its rankness and the stink of it was worse than the reek of any of the kills she had made hunting. She could not breathe or escape, and mewed weakly into his bones.

  He lifted himself and moved back down. He looked into her eyes. There might have been even tenderness in his eyes. She thought for a flashing moment that he would kiss her, but instead he took her left hand, the Sign dark and smeared by the strength of his fingers, and placed it between his legs. He made her undo the thongs and bare him, then he put her hand between her own legs. There he ran her hand up and down, slowly and surely. Against that invasion, that monstrous use of her and the vileness of the knowledge it implied, she strove and bucked. He laughed and rolled over, so that she lay squirming and wet atop him. Still smiling, he loosed her wrists and dropped his arms on the floor behind his head.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘all the masks are fallen. You are free now: do as pleases you. If you came to taunt and torment me, and prove your power over me, rise and go. It is done, and I lie beneath you even as Gundoen lay below the Vapionil.’

  She began to cry.

  She lay against him, her hair falling a mantle over her back and shoulders. She could feel the side of one of his knees with the pads of her toes.

  This was his cruelest gesture yet. She felt lost and confused as though she had been dropped a long way into an unknown land. She remembered when she had fallen from the roof of the stable to the ground when she had been young. She remembered the lonely darkness of the far side of the mountains. She saw nothing through the tears. Then at length, painfully, she raised her head.

  She saw with wonder that his body bore more scars and bruises from her now than it did from all the battles of the wars he had commanded. She had left marks there that would remain upon him for the rest of his yea
rs. As he had left such marks upon her wrists. These marks with their secret tale would serve as chains between them, like the marks the ancient lords of Tarendahardil had put upon the bodies of their slaves. She arched forward, and licked his bloody chest. Then she kissed it.

  ‘Are you a demon or the spawn of dark God indeed,’ she said, ‘that you have such mastery over me?’

  ‘I am what I told you,’ he said. ‘As are you.’

  ‘You are insane. There is no heart in you but hatred and a lust for death. And I am so degraded that I would beg you for it.’

  ‘Then come.’ He lifted her in the crook of his powerful arms. Gently with his nose he brushed the hair from her face. ‘Come,’ he murmured, ‘Alastaphele.’

  She nestled against him as he bore her to the bed. There he laid her down against the deep Tezmonian purple of his bed-coverings. And there she answered him, in the tones of a surrender, ‘Yes. Yes. Very well.’

  V

  The Summons

  IT WAS NOW that, in the depths of a dark tent, the great bulk of a man began to stir.

  A cloak was spread across the huge body, stained where it had stuck to drying blood. At one edge a few swollen bound knuckles emerged. The cloak was slowly dragged down below the face. It was a face of horror. Bleeding, bandaged, swollen, bluish. One eye closed forever beneath a mess of black and yellow scar. The other half-shut, lacking eyebrow and every other eyelash.

  Gundoen struggled up on the rude pallet. Painfully and without understanding, the half-shut eye looked out from beneath the cloak. All about him lay the bodies of dead guardsmen. It occurred to Gundoen suddenly and with great surprise that he still lived.

  He had survived the torments.

  He looked around with greater interest. Where was he? He did not know. But it was safe. Ara-Karn, his son, had brought him here. Gundoen had known Ara-Karn would come. He had known he would not fail him. There at least Hertha-Toll had been wrong. He had told her so.

  He placed the gross round paws of his bandaged hands on the ground. He tried to heave himself up. Pain like fire ran through him; he sat back with a grunt. He shook his head. He had no more strength than a child. Slowly he lowered his head and fell asleep. He dreamed of the crossing of the Taril and all the men he left there, unvoyaged at his command. He would join them now.

  * * *

  Avli-Oan rode out of the thunder of the encounter, past the ruins of the place and the ominous Brown Temple of Goddess. Fast as a river he rode. At the outskirts of the burned city he came upon a mass of men: in full war-gear, a thousand mercenaries reclined upon stones in the shade out of the sun. He was upon the men before he knew it. He reined in the braying war-horse, raising swirls of dust. The Eglandic war-horse pranced about, and Avli-Oan stared through the dust, the confusion of the battle still burning in his bright eyes.

  Towering above him, dominating the entire quarter, was a monumental arch of grayish-white stone. Thousands of sculpted figures adorned it, surmounted by deep-cut characters that read, though the young tracker could not read them,

  THE WAY OF KINGS OVER THE WORLD.

  Avli-Oan looked up in amazement. It was not the monument of his people’s ancient conqueror that caught his breath. That he had seen many times. But now the way through the arch was dark with an enormous, square-based, wooden tower. It blotted out the sky, as high and broad as the archway itself. Six solid wheels as tall as the height of three men supported it; the axles passing into the wheels had been fashioned from the boles of trees centuries old. Bronze and iron spikes as big as the forearms of women had been driven into the wooden walls to hold the interlocking beams together. High overhead, just beneath the curve of the arch, the parapet of the tower was covered over with cured bull’s-hides many layers deep. Eight hundred warriors might have their quarters in this movable stronghold. Halfway up its face had been painted a large black Darkbeast tooth, the device of Ara-Karn.

  Avli-Oan stepped off his horse among the mercenaries, but he did not look at them. His eyes rested raised upon the monstrous tower. Never had he dreamt of such a thing. But seeing it now, he knew straightway to what use it would be put.

  ‘Surely,’ the young warrior said within himself, ‘this is worthy of Ara-Karn himself.’

  Then still in wonder he passed among the throngs of men, and found the leader of the mercenaries sitting on the forward lip of the tower, amid the massive bronze rings used to draw it.

  ‘Erion Sedeg! Nam-Rog, chief of the Durbars and leader of the chieftains of all the armies of Ara-Karn, sends me to find you and ask of you: What has held you up so long? Is there some trouble, do you need aid, or are we now to count on your promises and big words no longer? The time has come to prove your loyalty to Ara-Karn. Spur on your men and bring up what you have fashioned with all haste.’

  The mercenary wore Desert-robes of black with a girdle of iron-studded leather. Beneath the head-robes he wore a bronze skullcap. Three knives were caught in the girdle, a strong-bow leaned beside him, and in his hands he held a small whip. The paint upon his face was white and red and black, the triple hues of death; the eyes were worse.

  ‘We wait,’ he said.

  He spat out picsle juice and swatted at a fly.

  ‘We were not sure, after all, that you in all your thousands would have need of us. But it does not go well?’

  ‘We have slain them by the hundreds and twice gained the second step of the battlements. But a giant Southron has defeated us. Champions and chieftains he has slain, scattering their bones to the birds, and driven us back down the ladders. Many hours have passed and yet there is no weariness in this man. He rages on the battlements, and the men only poke at him and flee. It shames me to say this. Not even the strongest bows are of any use. Death-birds turn aside from him. Now they have begun to call him Elna-Ana and say that the Gray Priestess has blessed him so that he shall be invulnerable and unkillable.’

  Erion Sedeg tossed aside the whip and gestured upward. ‘Go back now to your master, barbarian, and tell him all will be well. You have failed, but it is not yet the end. We will come now. As for this Southron—’ the mercenary smiled, baring his scarlet sharp teeth— ‘with this tower and the blessing of Ara-Karn, we will kill him.’

  With that the leader of the mercenaries turned and, agile as a monkey, climbed the tower. He climbed over the wall of bull’s-hides and stood before the arch. Leaning out over the bull’s-hides, he gestured.

  His men swarmed about the base of the tower. Avli-Oan was crowded back. He found his war-horse and calmed it, standing on the fringe of the throngs.

  The man upon the tower began to speak. His words echoed off the stone.

  ‘Soldiers, your time has come, and my prayers are answered.

  ‘You are the finest of all who have joined here. I have chosen you for this hour. He has chosen you. You have come from a score of cities, from mountains, wood and plain. You have come from the shores of the unmeasured Desert. You have come here for this deed. The King watches and knows what is done here in his name. Now his eyes shall turn upon you. You have bows, you have strength and courage – and you have the tower.

  ‘The barbarians have failed. A single man defeated them. The Black Citadel still stands – the false goddess Allissál still lives. This is as it had to be. Dark God smiles upon you and accepts your offerings. It rests with you now, to break apart the Iron Gate and hurl the woman from the cliff. Your master, your King, demands no less.’

  Around Avli-Oan the mercenaries and Southron traitors raised their voices in a chant. ‘Ara-Karn, Ara-Karn, Ara-Karn.’

  ‘I do not know what were the hopes and dreams of any of you before the war. I do not care. You came some as captives who had seen your cities broken and burned, others as hostages to the pacts your cities accepted when they sued the King for peace, others as thieves and outcasts seeking plunder and to be on the winning side. And some of you, perhaps, came as I came, to serve Him and give Him glory. We were noblemen and farmers, mine-diggers, swordsmen, slav
es. Now we are more. Now we are the soldiers of Ara-Karn! We have waited for this, you and I. Now it has come. It calls us on. Behind us lies the wreckage of the former age; before us if we fail wait homelessness and hunger. But if we win, then we shall live as princes over the cities of the new age, the age of Ara-Karn!’

  Loudly and hatefully the hundreds cheered the words of the Conqueror’s prophet. Driving together the trains of draught horses and oxen, the mercenaries took up the weighty cables and ropes, and began to pull against the tower.

  An immense groaning and creaking of wood and rope issued in the midst of the desolation. At first Avli-Oan did not see that they accomplished much. Then the tower shuddered and started – the dark walls of wood moved forth from the arch. Slowly the big wheels turned, and men and beasts drove their legs against the ropes, and the stone-clad earth began to roll beneath the black shadow of the tower.

  Avli-Oan shook himself. How many hours had gone by since he had come this way? He looked up. Dark God had risen again and stood already midway through the sky. The young tracker vaulted up on his horse and rode through the ruins ahead of the lurching tower, back to the Iron Gate.