by William King
“It’s a lot of work,” said Rhiana, “in this heat, and no doubt the locals find them useful.”
Anders poked his head out beside Rhiana’s. “The locals believe they’ll be cursed if they disturb the pillars. You hear stories about people who have done such things. They always die curious deaths soon after, and someone always raises the pillars back into their usual place.”
He mopped his brow with his sleeve and stared at Kormak, waiting to hear what he had to say.
“Stranger things have happened,” Kormak said. He leaned forward and felt his tunic come unstuck from the backboard of the seat.
“You just said there was no magic in the pillars,” said Zamara.
“Nothing active,” said Kormak. “Who knows what might happen if you disturbed them?”
The Admiral said, “It is not a pleasant thought, a network of magic channelling runestones laid out across this land.”
Zamara sounded uneasy. Perhaps because like many Sidereans he liked to pretend that all of the Old Ones were aligned with the Shadow. It was little over a century ago that his nation had been ruled by the eldrim and freed only by great sacrifice. In Siderea, until recently, it was the Sun worshippers who had once been the serfs and the Lunars the overlords.
“Damned if I like the look of those jungles either,” Zamara said, pointing at the green mass covering the distant hills. “They could hide anything. And anything could creep up to the edge of the road without being spotted.”
Kormak said, “Balthazar’s papers claim there are tribes in there that still worship the Old Ones and worse.”
“That’s hardly news, Guardian,” Zamara said. “Every Siderean hears that from birth. We tore this land out of the hands of the moondogs and their Shadow-loving kin. We conquered the coastal tribes, but a remnant fled into the jungle and remains there still waiting for the bad old days to return.”
“You’ve been reading Balthazar’s papers?” Anders said. “Why?”
“According to Governor Aurin, our friend Balthazar used to visit the jungles a lot. He wanted to study the tribes, win their confidence, before leading them back to the Sun. At least, that’s what he told the priests.”
Zamara nodded his agreement. “A copper piece will get you a gold solar that he had other things on his mind during his little missionary expeditions.”
“That’s not a bet I’d take,” said Kormak.
“Damn. I was hoping for some easy money. You're not very cooperative with my financial plans, Sir Kormak.”
“I don’t have the prospects of a Captain General to look forward to.”
“I am sure the King-Emperor will reward you greatly on the success of this mission.”
“If the mission is a success,” Kormak said. He kept his voice quiet so that he could not be overheard by the marching soldiers.
Zamara shot him a sidelong look. “That’s not the sort of spirit you usually show. I detect a distinct lack of enthusiasm for our quest in your voice, Guardian. Why would that be?”
“Would you count the mission a success if we found more like Vorkhul? He nearly killed us all back in Trefal, and we had the King-Emperor and his armies close at hand. What if we find more and set them loose? Anders seems to think it a possibility.”
“It’s not a very reassuring thought.”
“You can understand then why it makes me uneasy.”
“Now you’re frightening me, Guardian. I tend to think that anything that makes you uneasy should leave me terrified.”
“What makes you think I am not?”
Zamara laughed. “At least you have not lost your sense of humour.”
“What do you think our chances are?” Kormak asked Anders. The mercenary had climbed forward on the wagon and leaned against the back of the seat.
“Of what?”
“Getting through to the lost city of Xanadar.”
Kormak felt Rhiana tense beside him. She was listening even if she appeared to be reading. The driver kept his eyes fixed too firmly on the road ahead. He too wanted to know. No doubt he would be gossiping about it around the fire tonight.
“Let’s get there first,” Anders said. “Before we worry about that, we’ve got to get through the jungle and then up through the mountains and then we need to cross the wastelands. All of them are dangerous if you’re not prepared.”
“In what way?”
“I told you before. The tribes don’t like us. They think we’ve taken their land. You can’t exactly blame them for it. We have. And I’m sure our friend Balthazar will find allies when he tells them that they need to come and kill us.”
“I heard they were primitives,” Rhiana said. “Will they really be any threat to a large party of well-armed and armoured warriors?”
“I’ve known plenty of people who died thinking that,” Anders said.
“That sounds ominous,” Rihanna replied. She closed the book with a snap and gave her full attention to the conversation.
“They use poison darts and poison spears,” Anders said. “They attack from ambush, and they attack by night. They won’t meet you in a fair fight unless they have overwhelming numbers. And they have other things as well, among them sorcery.”
“You’ve seen this?” Kormak asked. He surveyed the road as they rolled along. A stream cascaded down the hillside and passed through the channels under the road. He could hear it churning away below them, a faint sound that competed with the rumble of the wagon wheels on stone.
“I’ve seen any number of things that could not have been anything else. I’ve seen huge animals attack parties of men they would normally have avoided.”
“That sometimes happens when an animal is diseased or hungry,” Kormak said. Professional interest rose in him. It was not that he disbelieved Anders, he was simply trying to provoke him into saying more.
“Not like these,” Anders said. “They circled and attacked when people least expected. They picked off sentries and left the way clear for other attacks. They avoided traps that should have fallen into.”
Kormak considered this. Sometimes such things happened almost by accident. But Anders sounded as if he was certain it was something more.
“And I’m leaving the best till last. They would attack in the company of the tribesman. It wasn’t like they were trained attack dogs either. It was more like they were intelligent partners.”
Rhiana nodded. “I know how that works.”
At sea, she partnered with a dolphin with whom she was in constant mental contact. It was possible that the tribal shamans could do something similar.
“There were other strange things,” Anders said. “Shapeshifters.”
“Are you sure?” Kormak had encountered shapeshifters before. They were most often the creation of sorcery used either by the Old Ones or by powerful wizards. It took considerable skill in sorcery to create such things. Was it likely that primitive magicians such as the tribesman could do it?
“I’ve seen them,” Anders said. “I once saw a man wearing a jaguar headdress transform himself into a creature that was half man, half big cat.”
“It might have been an illusion,” Kormak said. Illusions were the easiest form of magic to work on the unprotected. They need only affect the minds of their victim, not change the basic nature of the world.
“It might have. It might have been something I ate. But there was nothing illusory about the claw marks it left in my comrade’s body.”
“It sounds like you’ve led an exciting life out here,” Rhiana said.
“Too exciting,” Anders said. “The company only did one tour against the tribes. They couldn’t pay us enough to go back into the jungle after that. We protected mansions and guarded forts but we never did any more sweeps. The tribesmen count on that. I think they count on the fact that in the jungle they are much more dangerous than we are.”
“We won’t be in the jungle,” Kormak said. “We’ll be on the road.”
“The road goes through the jungle,” Anders said.
“But I take your point.”
“Is there anything you think we could do to make ourselves safer?” Rhiana asked.
“Don’t go in,” Anders said. He said it with a smile, but there was an underlying seriousness to his tone that told Kormak he meant it.
They pushed on. All around them sharp-edged hills, steep and covered in trees, loomed.
“This must remind you of home,” Anders said.
“Not really,” Kormak said. “What makes you think so?”
“Well, it’s hilly, and it looks threatening.”
“Have you ever been to Aquilea?” Kormak asked.
“I’ve not had that pleasure,” Anders said. He made it sound as if he considered the idea anything but a pleasure. Kormak could not blame him for that. Any Sunlander entering the Aquilean Highlands was likely to get a taste of steel in his gut.
“Well the hills are a lot barer than this, and the sky is a lot greyer, and it’s a lot colder and a lot wetter.”
“You’ve obviously not been here in the rainy season,” Anders said. “It rains for days and not little showers either. The sky opens. Thunder bellows. Lightning flashes. Floods can wash away entire villages.”
“And yet there is plenty of vegetation,” Kormak said.
“It grows fast here,” Anders explained. “And what doesn’t get washed away develops very strong roots.”
“There is a lesson for life there,” Kormak said.
“That’s a lot more philosophical than I would have expected of you,” Anders said.
“He is full of surprises,” Rhiana said. “To look at him, you would think he never thinks it all.”
“Thanks,” Kormak said.
“I’ve been doing some thinking of my own,” Anders said. “I’ve been thinking about Count Balthazar.”
Kormak heard the nervous note in the mercenary’s voice. “It sounds like you’ve thought of something else to worry about.”
“No. I’m still worrying about the same things. What was that thing that he conjured up on the last night of the Masque of Death?”
“He called it a Servant,” Kormak said. “That’s what its name meant in the language of the eldrim.”
“I am none the wiser,” Anders said.
“It was a creature summoned from the Outer Dark,” Kormak said. “A spirit of some sort. That’s perhaps the best way of thinking about it.”
“Not sure I want to think about it at all,” Anders said. “You mean it was something like a ghost.”
“It was a creature of magical energy, from the Planes of Shadow, or so some philosophers would have you believe. They call them Umbrals. It took possession of the dead bodies and it changed them into something it could use in our world. If we had not closed the portal, more like it would have come through. They would have taken over our dead bodies, and they would have killed more people. And those bodies, in turn, would have been possessed.”
“You mean an army of dead would be wandering through the streets of Maial right now.”
“More or less.”
“Why would somebody do that?”
“You know the answer, Anders. Balthazar meant to kill us and then to overthrow the King’s government.”
“But would he not simply end up being enslaved by those creatures or whatever it was they served? The things he summoned were only servants after all.”
“Possibly,” Kormak said. “But often cultists do things like that. They worship the creatures who dwell in the Outer Dark. They serve the Shadow because it provides them with power. I doubt those monsters would have lasted long after the Holy Sun rose. Unless they could find a place away from His light.”
“There is a labyrinth of tunnels under the capital,” Anders said. “You saw part of it when you followed the changeling. I saw more of it than I ever want to see again.”
“Possibly those tunnels were originally built to shelter the Old Ones who dwelled in the city and beings summoned from beyond.”
“That makes a sinister sort of sense,” Rhiana said. “The possessed corpses could withdraw from the light and emerge when it was dark once more.”
“They could,” Kormak said. “Perhaps it was what was intended that way, that they would provide muscle to back Balthazar’s rule, although I doubt it.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“It takes a considerable amount of power to keep a portal functioning. It takes power to maintain binding spells. I think those things that were summoned were intended to be the shock troops of an invasion. Once they had done their work and established a climate of terror, the cultists would have taken over. They could always threaten to summon more. They could always demonstrate the power by making more sacrifices. It’s been done before in scores of places in scores of times.”
“The Shadow Kingdoms of the Southern Continent,” Anders said. “We used to hear about it all the time when we were in the Graveyard of Angels.”
“That’s one of the places,” Kormak agreed. “There have been others.”
“You’re saying that we very narrowly missed a complete catastrophe,” Anders said. “If Balthazar’s summoning had gone right, we would all be dead, and the Shadow would rule this land.”
“I don’t think that is overstating the case.”
“Then it’s lucky you were here,” Anders said.
“Perhaps the Holy Sun meant for me to be,” Kormak said. He said it more because he thought the others expected than he believed it. He had noticed in the past that such words often reassured people.
“And he’s still out there,” Anders said. “Count Balthazar, I mean. And he’s probably planning to do it again.”
“Most likely. Once they start down this path, most sorcerers follow it to the bitter end. Such magic is as addictive as any drug. They find reasons for working it.”
“Balthazar’s a very dangerous man,” Anders said.
“You’ve had as much experience of that as anybody,” Kormak said. “Orson is dead. The changeling is dead. He escaped.”
“And that galls you, doesn’t it, Sir Kormak?”
“I don’t like to see such men get away with their evil deeds.”
“In this case, I can only agree with you,” Anders said. “I would kill him myself if I got the chance.”
“I hope one of us does,” Kormak said. He stared off into the distance. It looked like there were some small clouds in the sky. He wondered if they would bring rain that might cool them down. He doubted it. That would be too fortunate.
Chapter Three
Anders watched as Kormak, Zamara and Rhiana vanished into Westerby to look for the inn. The village sat on a high hill overlooking the start of the jungle. A palisade of sharpened logs surrounded it. A ditch encircled the wall, and the ground had been cleared for at least a hundred paces on all sides. There were watchmen in towers at each corner. The single gate faced the road. Fortified blockhouses dotted the hillside. As the sun lowered the serfs returned to them, watched by their overseers.
Their camp lay in the shadow of the walls. The villagers were not going to let so large a force of armed men inside. Anders slouched over to the fire at which a group of old soldiers sat surrounding Sergeant Terves. He produced a flask from within his tunic and said, “Mind if I join you.”
The sergeant took the proffered flask. “Not at all,” he said. He took a mouthful of the brandy, glugged it down and passed it to the soldier on his right. He indicated part of a chicken that was baking in the ashes of the fire. “Help yourself to some bread and some meat.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” said Anders. There was silence. The soldiers who had been talking so companionably moments before were quiet. He knew they were waiting for him to speak. He helped himself to some meat and some bread. The meat was well cooked. The bread still quite fresh. He ate in silence then took out his pipe, filled it and offered the tobacco around. It was accepted but still the looks were expectant.
“What’s your story, mate?” Terves asked eventually.
“You have the look of an old soldier to you, but I don’t see any badges or a tabard.”
Anders shrugged. “I was with the Third Company of Trefal crossbowmen. Shipped out of the capital maybe twenty-five years ago when I was little more than a lad. Marched around the Graveyard of Angels for a while before we were posted here. Spent the rest of my days out here in Terra Nova.”
“Mercenary?” Terves asked. There was no animosity in his voice. Nothing to suggest he was impressed either.
“The company did ten years’ bonded service to the Governor and then hired out on our own. Fought for nobles clearing their lands of moondog tribes. Fought on different sides in the aristos’ private squabbles. Guarded caravans, did some pirate hunting in the Bounty Islands. You name it, I probably tried it.”
“Where’s your company now?”
“In the ground. Or their bones are decorating the streets of Xanadar.”
“That’s the place we’re headed,” Terves said. Anders saw the other soldiers round the fire were paying a lot more attention all of a sudden. There was a warning in the glance Terves shot him. The sergeant wanted nothing said that would undermine morale.
“Yep,” Anders said. “That’s the place we’re headed.”
“You’ve been there then,” said one of the soldiers. He had a corporal’s feather on his cap.
“I’ve been there,” Anders said.
“Nice place so I’ve heard,” said the corporal. The others laughed.
“No. Not nice at all. Full of monsters and ancient magic.”
An uneasy silence filled the air. Anders wondered what he was doing there. He had wanted company. He should have known this would have come up and that things would go this way.
Terves said, “We’ve been in places with both before. Seen some nasty things in our time. We’re still here.” He was reminding the others of this as much as informing Anders.
“You’ve been with the Admiral a long time.”
“I’ve been with him since he was a lad,” said Terves. “The rest of these chancers not so much.”
“And the Guardian?”
“He’s been with us a season or so.”