Gates of Stone

by Angus Macallan

  Farhan wasted no more time. He turned his back on the huge, stricken ship and began to run. He stopped after a dozen yards to help a dazed and bloody Artilleryman to his feet, urged another dust-covered man to follow, and the three of them, Farhan and his companion locked together, arm and shoulder, and reeling madly, staggered away into the jungle.

  * * *

  • • •

  It had taken no more than a quarter of an hour for everything to go from calm competence to utter bloody disaster. Katerina could scarcely believe it. One moment she had three beautiful ships swimming in the Straits in perfect order, the next one ship was half-sunk, its decks awash two hundred yards from the Manchatka shore, and another, her flagship, by all the Gods, was stuck uselessly on a rock and listing badly a bowshot away from its sister vessel.

  The Egil—thank all the Gods—was undamaged. It was now standing off the entrance to the Grand Harbor and bombarding the palace, as she had been ordered to do, her cannon ringing out regularly and the balls smashing against the ancient stones of the keep.

  She turned her telescope on the Green Fort—now even more of a smoking, shattered ruin, with barely one stone standing on another. To her left a cannon fired; the Ostrakan gunners had finally been roused to their duty and they were now thumping shot after shot into the fort across the Strait with great enthusiasm. Not that it was needed now. The men in the Green Fort were either all dead or had sensibly fled once again, and she could see no serviceable cannon among the piles of steaming rubble. There had been no movement there for a while now. No sign of life at all.

  She moved her spyglass to the Yotun, which was dropping a boat; a well-armed party of sailors was planning to occupy what was left of the Green Fort. If only she had thought of that earlier. A stupid mistake and one that she had paid, indeed would continue to pay for. There were seamen dangling from ropes over the side by the smashed hull where the ship had struck ground but she could tell just by the drunken angle of the deck that it would be no easy task to haul the ship off the rock and get her back into action. It would take time—and time was something she did not have.

  “Tell the Ostrakans to cease firing,” she called to a Legion officer who was hovering behind her. “Can’t they see that Yotun is sending in a party of our men?”

  She looked again at Egil, her last remaining ship, and felt a flicker of hope. Even under the battering from just one warship, the walls of the palace were taking serious punishment. Visible cracks were appearing in the ancient stonework and every ball that struck chipped another big chunk of masonry away. One of the arrow slits, she saw, had been knocked into a hole the size of a marak barrel. Even as she watched, a shot smashed into the top of the wall and punched out a gap the size of a small house.

  Maybe it could still be done. Maybe.

  She looked over at Ari, who seemed perfectly unperturbed by this disastrous turn of events. “I’m going down into the city to see Colonel Wang,” she told him. “Fetch the rest of the Niho. I believe I shall require all my knights with me today.”

  CHAPTER 43

  Guided by Ratna Setiawan, with a long dark cloak over his white robes, Jun, Ketut, Tenga and Semar made their way down a filthy, stinking back street in the heart of Singarasam and stopped at a tall, wide door made of some heavy wood—the tradesman’s entrance of the First House. They were well armed: Jun with his bow and a quiver full of arrows; Tenga with her vicious boarding ax; Ketut had a knife at her waist and the two old men each carried their heavy staffs. Jun hoped that they could be in and out without violence. But if he had to fight for the Khodam, he knew he would do whatever was necessary . . .

  However, Jun reckoned that it should be a simple and peaceable enough operation. If Xi Gung had played his part as promised, and both Semar and the Patriarch were convinced that he had, the First House should be almost entirely empty at this hour: Ongkara and the sorcerer Mangku, along with a substantial force of Jath guards, should be on the far side of Singarasam rallying the pirate captains to resist the fleet of the Celestial Republic. The rest of the guards and the household ladies were being lavishly entertained elsewhere.

  Certainly the First House looked to be entirely deserted. As Ratna knocked softly on the big door with his staff, Jun looked up at the gray walls of the imposing building, with its many balconies and small, square, barred windows, and he could not see a single light showing. The door opened and a figure poked his head out, a small, clearly nervous man, holding a candle that illuminated the extraordinary quantity of gold bullion sewn into his knee-length coat. Ratna spoke a few quiet words to him, passed over a chinking purse and the servant, after a quick glance up and down the street to check they were unobserved, held the door wide to allow them to enter.

  As he filed quietly in with the others, Jun thought: This golden fellow is taking a bigger risk than we are, for it will surely come out that we were freely given admittance, and if Ongkara discovers this fellow’s treachery, then . . . But that was not his concern: the servant had been well paid; he could look to his own affairs.

  They were now inside the First House—Jun felt a quickening of his pulse and a heat in his chest. Was this just normal excitement at this stealthy action or was his Wukarta blood responding in some magical way to the presence of the Kris? The golden servant silently led the way with his candle, taking them down long, dark, empty corridors and up a flight of wide, marble stairs. Jun strained his ears but he could hear nothing but his own quiet footsteps and those of his companions. It seemed the First House truly was deserted.

  They followed the servant down another passageway, across a carpeted hall with chairs set out by the walls for waiting, and stopped in front of a huge set of double doors.

  “This is the Audience Hall,” whispered the servant. “Tell Xi Gung that I have done my part. Whatever happens next, I consider my debt to him paid in full.”

  And he threw open the doors, turned his back on the five intruders and walked away into the gloom with his candle.

  Jun looked inside and was immediately filled with a deep sense of awe. This is how a palace should be, he thought. This is truly regal. The room was empty but brilliantly lit and decorated in the most glorious, extravagant Han fashion. As they all walked into the vast space, Jun saw a double line of red pillars, each pillar circled by bearded dragons of gold with purple spine crests and huge green feet, which made a kind of tunnel through the center of the Audience Hall. There were more golden dragons, silver eagles, jade fish and blue-lacquer bulls on the ceiling. The floor was speckled gray marble, highly polished with purple and green lotus-flower mosaics. It was magnificent—Jun’s eye leaped from one treasure to the next, stunned by the sheer drama of the decor. It made the palaces of his father seem like drab hovels. Then his eye fell on an object at the far end of the Hall.

  It was a shapeless, roundish, white object, as wide as a mattress and three times as high, with a vast gilded throne placed in the sagging middle—it was the Obat Bale. The legendary seat of the Lords of the Islands. But Jun had eyes only for the rickety contraption of sticks and struts set at the right-hand side of the throne, with a thin and very familiar object standing upright inside.

  There it was: the Khodam. The Kris of Wukarta Khodam. The blade of his ancestors. The purpose of this long and painful quest. It looked so ordinary, an old sword with a brown wooden handle in a plain wooden sheath, sitting up on the pale bulk of the Obat Bale, dwarfed by the gaudy throne. But he remembered it so well. He remembered his father sitting in state with his gnarled hand resting on the wooden hilt, pronouncing judgment on a matter of Tamani law or granting a boon to a kneeling supplicant. His poor dead father.

  He walked toward the Obat Bale, eyes fixed on the Khodam. Finally, finally he would be able to hold it in his own hand, to take it home to Taman in triumph. Arjun Pahlawan!

  The sound of a gong beating three times, the booming filling the huge room, jerked him out of his happy da
ze. He whirled around, his blood suddenly fizzing with shock, and saw that hidden doors in the walls on both sides of the Audience Hall were sliding back. The walls were opening and people were pouring into the Hall, dark shapes in black turbans with broad, gleaming scimitars. Dozens of men, scores even. All swarming into the huge room.

  Jath guards—who somehow were not on the other side of Singarasam. Nor wallowing in pleasure houses surrounded by whores. They were here, now, pouring into the Hall.

  Jun had the bow off his shoulder, an arrow nocked on the string in less than a heartbeat, and he was aware of Tenga beside him, moving lithely forward in front of Ketut’s little form, and hefting her big, shiny boarding ax.

  He did not hesitate—he shot the nearest man, a huge, bearded lout who was coming straight for him with his gleaming scimitar raised. His shaft sank into the fellow’s broad chest, the arrow punching in right up to the fletchings. He had another shaft on the string before the man had fallen. He shot a second Jath in the eye, knocking the man back, his scimitar wheeling away and clanging to the marble floor. He was half-aware of Tenga, swinging her bright ax; the meaty thud as it bit into a huge, black-clad stomach.

  He shot again, the slender arrow deflected by a swinging blade but sinking through another man’s thigh; and loosed again, his hands moving as fast as thought, the hours and hours of practice repaying his efforts once again. He dropped man after man, whirling, selecting targets, his left hand seizing an arrow from the quiver, nocking, drawing back the cord and loosing all in the space of a moment, but there were simply too many of them.

  There were Jath behind him now. Boiling into the Audience Hall from hidden doors on both sides. He saw Tenga spear a man through the belly with her ax-head, pull out and chop through another’s reaching arm. Hook the curved blade into another man’s eye.

  Jun turned and shot a man one pace behind him, who was about to strike, hurling him off his feet. He heard someone yelling, “Take them alive! I command you to take them alive.” In all the violent confusion of battle, to Jun, it sounded oddly like Semar’s voice.

  He was surrounded by a crush of men in black robes now, angry faces under black turbans, shining steel, grasping hands. His arms were pinned against his body. One man had a forearm round his neck, crushing his throat. He saw that Semar had been enveloped by two burly Jath, and one fellow had Ketut by the shoulders and was shaking her whole body; yet the Patriarch was standing alone, untouched, unmolested, his black cloak swept back to reveal his distinctive shining white robes, a dozen yards away by the far wall, ignored by the scrum of black-clad soldiery, and holding one hand in front of his mouth in horror.

  Tenga was still fighting, shouting her war cries and carving the ax through the air in great bloody swings, hacking at black bodies, laying open flesh, the blood spraying red. There was a circle of destruction around her. And any man who came within reach of her ax died screaming. He struggled in the grip of his foes, trying to bite at the arm round his neck. But a blow to the side of his head, like a bolt of lightning, dropped him to his knees.

  As his senses reeled and his vision blurred, he knew one thing for sure: they had walked into a trap. A trap set by their kindly host, Ratna Setiawan, Patriarch of Singarasam.

  * * *

  • • •

  They were cuffed and kicked and beaten with scimitar pommels and the flats of the blades until they were all on their knees in a line: all four of them. The Patriarch had not moved from his spot by the wall. He looked exhausted and very sad but was ignored by the Jath. The four captives’ wrists were tied with rawhide strings behind their backs. One great black-clad oaf, shaking with rage, snapped Jun’s bow in front of his eyes and cracked each of his few remaining arrows, too, for good measure. Then he spat into Jun’s face and the Wukarta prince felt the slow slide of his hot phlegm on his cheek.

  “That will do,” said a voice. “Leave them be for now.” And Jun watched a short, ugly little man with yellowish, almost light green skin, and long, spindly limbs swagger through the carnage of the Audience Hall—the floor was now thick with bodies, greasy with fresh blood and stinking like an abattoir—and clamber up onto the Obat Bale, where he arranged himself comfortably on the huge, gilded throne and grinned broadly at his four prisoners.

  Ongkara placed his right hand on the hilt of the Kris of Wukarta Khodam, and said, “So . . . you actually thought you could creep in here and make off with my new prize from right under my nose, did you? You really thought I would allow that?”

  None of the prisoners said a word. From his position on the end, nearest to the Obat Bale, Jun looked down the line of his friends. Tenga, next to him, had a fresh crop of cuts and slashes and a good deal of glistening blood all over her dark body, not all of it hers, he assumed, but her chin was up, her mouth a grim line and her eyes red-veined and burning like live coals. Ketut, next to her friend, was sunk in misery. Her eyes were closed; her bruised head drooped over her skinny chest. She seemed nearly unconscious.

  Semar, last in the line, seemed to be paying absolutely no attention at all to the Lord of the Islands. He was staring with mournful eyes at Ratna, who was still by the far wall, his white robes still shining, but now twisting his hands together as if he were washing them.

  Semar said quietly, “You show your true colors at last, Ratna Setiawan. That must be a blessed relief to you. But while you may have declared for a side—it is the wrong side.”

  “What do you know, Semar? You know absolutely nothing of these matters,” the Patriarch replied. “You have never understood anything important at all.”

  “Silence!” roared Ongkara.

  Semar ignored the King of Singarasam. “You seek to bring back the old magic, Ratna. I understand that. But you must know it would be cataclysmic. There is a reason blood magic has been forbidden for so long. You do not fully understand what you will bring into the world. The dark plague, when it comes, will extinguish the light of Vharkash. You will be destroyed, along with thousands of others. You follow Mangku in the belief that . . .”

  “You think you know what moves me to action, Your Holiness?” There was a sneer in Ratna’s final two words. “I told you: you understand nothing. I do not follow Mangku—I am his Master. I have been so ever since he first came to me all those decades ago at the Mother Temple and begged me to help him learn the ancient blood magic of the world . . .”

  “I said, ‘Silence!’” Ongkara was sitting up straight in his throne now.

  “Oh, Ratna, what have you done? Have you forgotten our most sacred teachings? The use of this ancient sorcery will lead to the unmaking of the world and everyone in it . . .”

  “Not everyone—as you admitted yourself. I am Dewa. I . . . am . . . Ebu!” Ratna shouted the last word.

  Semar just frowned at him.

  “My parents were slaves to the Mother Temple—Dewa filth, they called us, doomed to labor forever for our betters. My father was but thirty-one years old when he died. And he died an old man—worn-out by labor and cruelty, exhausted by life. But he was proud, so very proud that his little Dewa boy should have been selected for the honor of becoming a novice at the Mother Temple, so proud that his son should be allowed to serve the very religion that had enslaved him and my mother and killed them both so young. I have risen, yes. I am the Patriarch now. I have come into my own. But I am Dewa and I am Ebu. And I always will be, and when we have remade the world, Hiero Mangku and I, when we have achieved our glorious aim, my kind will live and prosper and rule here when your foul race has been wiped from the face of the Earth.”

  “Enough! Both of you will be quiet,” Ongkara bawled. “Or I will have you all boiled alive. This is my time to speak.”

  “I am sorry that your parents lived sad lives. But I never once took even the slightest notice of your birth,” said Semar, oblivious to the ranting of the Lord of the Islands. “I saw you only as a man. A good and holy man. That is why I made
you one of my deputies.”

  The Patriarch just glared at him

  Semar said, “You have made a terrible mistake, Ratna, but it is not too late to change course. You only have two of the seven Keys of Power, the Khodam and the Eye . . .”

  “We have three, you fool. We have the Key of Air, too, the golden crest of the Garuda Queen. Soon we shall have them all. Then we shall destroy you and your kind forever.”

  “Am I going mad? I will not be ignored.” Ongkara was fully screaming now.

  “Be quiet, you,” said Semar, looking hard at the Lord of the Islands for the very first time. Jun saw that the old man’s eyes had turned into solid black orbs. “No more noise, now; it is distracting to us. And you will order your Jath to cut our bonds. Do it right now.”

  Ongkara’s mouth flapped silently for a while. Then he meekly gestured to the nearest Jath guard an order to cut the rawhide thongs that secured the four prisoners. Jun could hardly believe his eyes—but then Semar . . . well, he had long been capable of delivering a surprise. It was clear that his strange gift for controlling the minds of men was not limited to stirring up a riot in Sukatan, or persuading a Han doctor to give up his home and position, or getting a pair of Manchus to collude in an escape from the Konda Pali mines. When he exerted himself, even the Lord of the Islands, it seemed, was not immune to Semar’s grip.