Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 3 The Iron Gate

by Adam Corby

When the time of the fifth meal drew near, Hertha-Toll dressed again. ‘I cannot let you leave hungry.’

  ‘Ah, I’ve eaten too much of Southron dishes.’

  So Hertha-Toll stood at the fire-pit and made food that they shared silently. Both knew that somewhere beyond the thick dark walls, beyond the snow and the white trees and the shining hills, God fell to the dark horizon.

  ‘There is only one thing I would ask of you, wife.’

  ‘Ask, my chieftain.’

  ‘There is a man who lies sick and dying in a cave in the South. He and I slew a Darkbeast together. Tell me how to heal his wounds.’

  Hertha-Toll gazed into his eyes, and Gundoen saw the wisdom and the sorrow of the old woman he had wived. ‘And do you wish him saved?’

  ‘He is a brave man, a good hunter and fighter. He is an enemy, but an honorable man.’

  ‘It could be better for him as well as for you if he died now as he is, an honorable man.’

  ‘Wife, when is death ever better than life? Whatever may come to him, let this much at least be said of him: that, one of two men, he fought the greatest Darkbeast and lived to tell it.’

  ‘Very well. Your friend will live. But I need tell you no secrets. Melkarth knows well how to save him.’

  He frowned. ‘Then why has she not done it?’

  ‘There is only one thing that will dry the venom of the Darkbeast, a mushroom that must be ground fresh-picked: and that mushroom only grows in the weeks of high Summer. Now no more words, Gundoen. Dark God is falling, and this pass is ending – can you not feel it?’

  He took his wife in his arms, and held her so tightly it was a wonder she could breathe. He buried his head in the soft hollow between her breasts, and he grieved to think of all that he had lost when he had lost his youth. And when he woke, he found himself in the cave again, alone.

  Gundoen rose and shook himself. He looked at his arms and knew again the many scars of his life.

  He thought to himself, ‘These are not things to grieve but boast of. Each scar is a prize no other man has won, and no other man can rob me of. I am a chieftain now and general, and a boy no more.’

  He took up the bowl and went into the rain. In Melkarth’s cave he stood over the fire and the old seeress mixed her potions. ‘Was it real?’ he asked.

  She stopped. ‘Would it be worse for you if it were not?’

  ‘No. But why didn’t you tell me you could heal the Southron only in high Summer?’

  She shrugged, and went back to her mixing. ‘I hoped you would lose patience and go back to your own life.’

  ‘Would you have saved him then?’

  ‘Who can say?’

  Gundoen frowned, shaking his head. ‘Never in my life will I understand the ways of women,’ he growled. ‘Give me warriors and swords. Iron knows no guile.’

  He stood at the cave-mouth. In the gloomy Sontil the dismal rain still fell. The sight filled Gundoen with disgust. Rain was wrong for winter’s cloak. Winter was an old man with a cold white grin.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this has been no common pass. And I wonder how it went for Ara-Karn?’

  XII

  The Pass of God

  THE RAINS POURED DOWN upon Tarendahardil.

  There had never been such a season in the memory of men. The rains made a muddy sink of the field of the barbarians’ camp and filled the cisterns of the Citadel until they overflowed. Goddess was not seen for weeks, and then but briefly, with a wan, unfriendly light.

  The assaults upon the Iron Gate grew less frequent and more indifferent. The guardsmen, walking in the rain and forever re-oiling the blades of their weapons, did not enjoy the respite. It was the Tarendahardilites, however, who were the most afflicted. The rains made the grounds of the Citadel into a thick, abominable soup. There, hour upon hour, the miserable survivors of the City Over the World ate and slept and wallowed. Their odor and filth had long since grown dreadful, and the people sullen and brutish.

  * * *

  Upon the Palace roof a crescent of gaily-colored tents had been arranged. They were green and gold, the colors of the spring, and the half-circle opened to the bright horizon. At the brightward end of the roof in a tent set apart from the others, a procession of musicians, actors, reciters, tale-tellers, poets, singers, dancers and mimes performed with the ruins of their City for a backdrop. In the tents of the half-circle the last highborn survivors of the Empire reclined upon couches of seltiswood, accepted the offerings brought by the servants, and enjoyed these entertainments commanded for their pleasure by their Empress to mark the festival of the Pass of God.

  The golden fiery disk of Goddess-sun never wavered in its height above the bright horizon. Only as a man traveled toward or away from the bright horizon would he see the Sun rise or sink. But She did turn, in the course of each year, from South to North and back again. She rode high into the North for High Summer, when Her heat was strongest, and she passed back far down to the South in winter, when Her heat and light were at their weakest point. And although the court astronomers rested confident in their calculations and formulae, the people as a rule grew most restive and nervous as they saw Goddess drift farther away into the deep South. And even the most educated of men wondered in their bosoms, whether She would return this year.

  And when She lay at her weakest and farthest away, then the passes came when the jade Moon of dark God rode brightest and most arrogantly through Heaven. Then came the time for cut-throats and rapers and reavers of all kind; men showed their worst faces, tempers ran short, crime of all manner doubled, rebellions and revolutions were born, and murder ran rampant and foul.

  In the midst of these dark passes, the foulest of the year, was celebrated from time beyond reckoning, the Pass of God.

  Its origins lay beyond the ken of the most learned historians. But its trappings and ceremonies were practiced the same from the halls of Vapio to the huts of the far North.

  Upon the Pass of God all temples and shrines of Goddess were forsaken and draped in dark cloth. And mummeries were practiced, rude as well as refined: and their subject all the same, violence and death. But a stylized violence, and a death treated most comically.

  Thus men looked to smile their way past their fears, and even in propitiating the Dark One, to wink and smile and look with a hopeful eye toward the golden, fiery orb far south of them.

  From the depths of the Imperial tent in the hollow center of the crescent, through the eyelets of the mask of heavy gold, the Divine Queen regarded her audience. The courtiers, charai and charanti had broken out their most opulent salvaged treasures in appreciation for this brief respite to the boredom of their captivity; yet little they knew how absurd their costumes appeared in gray rain against the ashen city, nor how empty and false their elegant gestures seemed above the walls of a capital which had become its own necropolis.

  Allissál saw and approved them all. It had been her desire that this gathering should be a mockery, as befitted the Pass of God. From time to time she noted disappointment at the quality of the performances, since the finest artists had perished in flames in the pleasure-gardens of the High Charan Arstomenes.

  ‘Yet stay,’ she whispered within the mask, ‘for I have in mind for an ending an entertainment which will bring even you gracious lords and ladies standing.’

  She sat upon a low footstool at the back of the tent, her naked legs crossed beneath her robes. Over the ceremonial robes she wore the gray cloak of a priestess in retirement. She held her hands in her sleeves and accepted none of the cheese or sweetmeats. But before her she had let stand a great gleaming silver-wine-cup dark to the brim with Postio, foaming sweet as blood.

  On the couches to her sides sat Captain Berowne and the Rukorian Captain Haspeth. Four Rukorians and four of the Citadel Guard, in full armor and arms, flanked the tent. Upon an elaborate perch Niad devoured big, bloody gobbets of lamb’s meat staining a milk-white bowl.

  Apart from the others, near the front of the tent, the presumed Gerso
bestrode a stool as he would a horse. He wore a dark green hunting tunic with an empty knife-sheath and a wide cloak slung from his shoulders by a chain of curiously bound iron. His beard was narrow and gleaming, and his long dark hair streamed water upon his chest and cloak. It was he the Empress sent out following each performance to bear gifts to the entertainers. That was a mark of the highest honor, as Haspeth remarked: for any slave might have performed the task with equal courtesy.

  The Charan smiled slightly at this, and inclined his head. For his part too, he had refused all meat and wine. ‘It would not be fitting,’ he said once. He did not explain.

  The published list of performances was but two-thirds accomplished when a troupe of mimes appeared to perform the Irony of Coliarin. It was an old tale, of Coliarin, the wastrel second son of a High Charan, who spent the last years of his life forlornly seeking his squandered Fortune. Fortune was played by a beautiful woman in a cloak of cloth of gold, masked, tall, who mimicked each of Coliarin’s gestures behind his back. Coliarin wandered from city to city, encountering people of all levels of the world, asking the way to his Fortune that went at his heels like a shadow. In the end Coliarin met a turtle, who told him to look to his back. Coliarin turned to behold his Fortune being seduced by another man. Coliarin, reaching for her most pathetically, expired in comic fashion.

  For once the performance was well received, for the mimes were excellent, and their observations of the world both wicked and wise. They were Vapionil, and the parts of Coliarin, Fortune, and Death had been so skillfully drawn that they would have won leaves in the Vapio Festival itself. They pranced, fell, tumbled and grimaced so that the laughter from the tents of the spectators overcame for a moment even the laughter of the rain.

  Berowne’s great chest and hard broad belly shook beneath his armor. ‘And to think the poor man went so far and labored so hard, when all he had to do was glance over his shoulder!’

  ‘It is as true for many,’ the Charan remarked, ‘that they go forward when what they most desire lies in their past.’

  ‘Friend Ennius, do not act sad,’ Berowne said. ‘Did you not see how he fell, there at the end? Never have I seen such a fall, not even among the street-tumblers of the Thieves’ Quarter.’

  ‘And what of the woman, echoing even his slightest gestures like the friend in a glass?’ asked Haspeth. ‘It was a thing to tear the delight from even the most downcast of men.’

  ‘Some men discover the true worth of what they have only after they have lost it forever,’ the Empress said.

  ‘Do you think he lost his Fortune, your majesty?’ Ennius Kandi asked. ‘Can any man ever lose that which is his?’

  ‘Why then, my lord, how do you account for the ending?’ asked Haspeth.

  ‘He did not lose her. He discarded her. All his life he sought a dream, and as long as he did so he sustained the dream within himself. It was only when he beheld her true nature that he was doomed. Then Death itself was to be preferred to surviving the loss of his ideal.’

  ‘In brief, he was a fool,’ she said.

  ‘True, such delusions may not long be held by those of us in this world,’ the man in green said gravely. ‘Yet in the other world, perhaps…’

  ‘What world?’ asked Berowne. ‘The land beyond the Blessed Shores?

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps that one beyond Yron Ghadil. Yet as for this other word of your majesty’s, this “forever,” I find it oddly out of place. There is no such thing as forever. Not so long as there is will or desire.’

  ‘But he died!’ Haspeth said.

  ‘There is that which outlives death. Desires and souls of sufficient strength. And gods.’

  ‘Yet when the object of desire is beyond one’s reach?’ the Queen asked, reaching back to caress Niad.

  ‘Then it becomes necessary to reach farther.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘desire ends before life.’

  ‘Sometimes. And sometimes, your majesty, desire follows one like Coliarin’s Fortune, plain as Goddess to all others’ eyes.’

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that we have kept the mimes waiting over-long. Captain Berowne, will you pass to Charan Kandi that silver wand? And, Charan Kandi, be sure to express to the man who played Coliarin all our appreciation. There could have been no more suitable presentation this Pass than this tale of an over-grasping man finding at last his deserved end.’

  ‘Certainly, your majesty.’ He took the wand and stepped into the rain.

  Berowne glanced to the tent in which Kiva reclined, beset with blandishments from wealthy merchant and nobleman alike. For a moment he felt resentful that her majesty had insisted he attend her here, and denied him even the solace of a few strong bouts of Postio. He and Haspeth might not even rest in comfort like the others, but must wear full armor and arms.

  The Empress was watching the Gerso crossing the rain to the performers’ tent.

  ‘My captains,’ she said, ‘I have not yet told you how grateful I am for all your efforts on my behalf. When word reached us of Egland Downs, then I thought our own downfall was near. But you have proven yourselves warriors after the style of the early ages of Tarendahardil to withstand so long the barbarians. Truly I had not thought I should live to see this year arrive.’

  ‘It is your own courage, your reverence, that inspires us to perform beyond ourselves.’

  ‘I thank you for that, Captain Haspeth. Up to now, however, I have been scarcely more than a shadow to you. It is time I set about playing my part. In the next passes I should like to inspect the cisterns and granaries with you. It would also be well to begin to train the Tarendahardilites with whatever weapons can be found for them.’

  ‘Rely on Ennius for that, your reverence,’ Berowne said. ‘Those people worship him like a god.’

  She said no word to that.

  ‘Your reverence may expect our fullest readiness and loyalty,’ Haspeth said.

  ‘There may be even more required of you than that, Captain.’

  ‘Whatever your reverence requires, it is yours,’ Berowne said.

  ‘Thank you, Captain Berowne. Yet I may ask of you something which will sorely try even your great faith.’

  ‘Put me to this test, your majesty,’ Haspeth said, as with a jump of the blood. ‘I wait but for the chance to prove myself worthy again, to expunge the stain upon my honor. The greatest torments I will face, I will not flinch, not even if your majesty ordered me to cut the life from my only brother’s corpse.’

  ‘I may ask you to go even beyond that, Captain. I may ask you to do what seems to you monstrous and against all reason and knowing – and to do it simply because I ask it.’

  ‘Your reverence,’ Berowne said, ‘I am here, and hold my office, only because of you. Because of you and your house, this City that I love came into being and stood first among the cities of the world. Command me, and I will act first and consider later. Yet even so, the soldier performs best who has some foreknowledge of what is to be expected of him.’

  She took up the silver winecup. She drank deeply, for the first time. Then she put back the cup, letting the two soldiers see that her nails were stained blood red, and that the inside of her left wrist was now dyed with the Sign of the Couple.

  ‘A traitor dwells among us,’ she told them. ‘He has killed before and will kill again. When these performances have reached their end, I will ask you to place him under arrest and put him to death.’

  * * *

  A guard appeared before the tent. He was young, and there was fear in his eyes.

  ‘Yes, Riad, what is there?’ asked Berowne, rising to his feet. He still seemed shaken by what he had just heard. ‘Do they attack again?’

  ‘No, sir.’ The man opened his mouth, stopped, then rushed on with a flood of words. ‘It’s the people, sir – the Tarendahardilites. They stormed the Hall of Justice. Ullerath called out the men, but even they weren’t enough, and now there are but a handful left to watch the Iron Gate; even so we can scarcely hold them.

>   ‘They have stones and sticks, and cry for food and shelter. How can we raise arms against them? The men linked shields at the doors, but they might be turned even as I speak – there is no knowing how many have been killed already, and Ullerath fears murder if they break into the Palace.’

  Haspeth swore. Berowne stood open-mouthed. Servants ran from tent to tent. Indignant cries sounded from the elegant recliners in the other tents.

  Niad took wing and swept out of the tent. The gerlin soared over the roof, then dropped like a pitched stone beyond the rim.

  From both sides the highborn streamed toward the edge of the roof.

  Berowne swung round and went to one knee before the Queen, his eyes a plea for orders.

  She herself rose slowly to her feet. She uttered no words, but looked out of the eyelets to where Ennius Kandi congratulated the mimes.

  * * *

  At the roof’s edge they made way for her. She heard their comments absently: some highborn lords and ladies made jests and remarks as if the scene below them were but another performance, but others chattered fearfully. Below their feet, the courtyards milled with thousands of Tarendahardilites.

  ‘By Goddess’ grace,’ Haspeth swore, ‘what madness has taken them?’

  ‘The madness of cold and hungry misery,’ Berowne said.

  ‘Well, if the barbarians choose this moment to attack, it will be a pretty turn.’

  ‘Would it have been possible, think you,’ the Queen asked, leaning over the parapet, ‘for anyone to have sent messages to them, to goad them to this frenzy?’

  ‘Does your reverence mean the traitor?’ Berowne asked.

  ‘Your majesty, speak his name now. We will end this stain on our honor before we deal with the rabble below.’ Haspeth’s voice was hot and eager for death.

  Far below, the color of the mob altered, as heads turned skyward into the rain. They saw the spectators lining the roof’s edge; from their thousand throats a sullen roar struck off the walls.

  ‘We will go below,’ Allissál commanded. ‘This should never have been. Captain, are you sure of your men?’