Raven and Silver separated, and they came, thus, to the darkness of the mountain and the winding stairs, carved from the bedrock, that would take them to the mountain’s summit.
Sixteen
“Order and disorder build upon each other. A tool, used to create either, must be prepared to draw upon both.”
The Books of Kharwhan
The woman cried, quietly, almost inaudibly. In her corner, tied and uncomfortable on the hard stone floor, she tried to move her body to relive the pain…terrible pain…her whole body racked with pain, and for this woman, pain was something she had never known, save for the transient pain of womanhood, and the murmuring pains of her body as it grew and shaped to become the way it was. But this pain filler her, consumed her, spread from her womb to her throat, and down all her limbs; her mind had been rent as badly as her sex, and the pain washed through her, wave after wave of it. And she cried.
The Dark Man prowled, restless, mindless. The stench that accompanied him was overwhelming, the stink of excrement and blood, and of sex, that awful acrid odour of a man’s sex, used and unwashed, rising, as sap in a stripling tree, oozing from his pores, a foul odour of animal lust. His dark armour was dulled, his lank hair gleaming with grease. He stooped over the woman, breathed on her and froze her with his fetid aroma. He laughed, but the laugh was hollow, unhuman. His eyes, narrowed, were dull, dead. The ugly swelling of his groin was contained, now, at rest, satiated. It would soon rear, black and thick, and the pain would come to the woman again, and she whimpered as she thought of that violence, stretching her.
The small man sat, staring immobile at the entrance from the mountain stairs. Behind him, behind his stone chair, the snows and bitter winds of another land swirled and raged across the cliff top, not daring to burst into this cavern. His eyes were dark, his face drawn, skull-like. Dark robes kept him warm, but his hands trembled as he watched the darkness, and listed to the growing sounds of someone climbing the stairs. “They come,” he whispered, “they come…she comes…Raven…she shall know soon enough the folly of this venture…and Spellbinder too…he comes there…oh Spellbinder, you never did have the sense to know a trap…I shall destroy you soon…and Raven too...I shall kill every one of you…”
And a second voice spoke in the stillness, an alien voice, the voice of neither the Dark Man nor the small man, nor the whimpering girl: He comes, he comes…he has followed me…but he will not recognise me, he must not recognise me…can it be that he has found me already? No…no…such is not possible…he will not know me…he will not know me through this earthly host…he will not sense me…
And in the whispering stillness, the woman cried, sensing that she would soon be free of bonds and pain and possession.
The climb had been interminable, but as she eased her pain-racked body up the last great turn of the spiral staircase, hanging on to the stone wall with all her strength, she felt a blast of cool air, and the heavy animal smell of an unwashed man. She knew, then, that her trial of strength and determination was almost over.
So for the moment Raven sat on the icy stone beneath her, drew her sword and tried to suck strength from its gilt-edged handle; a faint light from above highlighted the polished blade, and she stroked the metal for a second, listening to the rising sound of the others.
She had forged ahead of them, and they wound their way upwards still many turns of the spiral stairway below. One, she knew not who, had followed close behind her until dropping back, but she could hear the sound of his advance. She sensed it was one of the men, and suspected it was Spellbinder. He would arrive next, and sometime after him the rest of the band would stagger to the top.
Raven knew that there would have to be time to rest, and that such an indulgence might well be denied them.
When she was fully recovered, in strength and wind, Raven climbed to her feet, pushed the deadly point of her sleeve-shield forward as she clenched her left fish, and with her sword balanced carefully in her right hand she ascended the last few steps of the mountain stairs.
She walked cautiously along the short, narrow tunnel that led, in darkness, to the cave beyond.
She stepped quickly into the chamber and crouched, like some wild beast, ready to spring. In an instant she had observed her surroundings: The cave was wide, low-roofed, and open to the elements. In front of her the cloudy skies and misty, frozen peaks of mountains were visible through the great mouth of the cave; snow and wind swirled past that entrance, but their chill and their noise did not enter he chamber, which was warm to Raven’s skin; the elements were held at bay as if by magic.
A woman cried softly and Raven scanned the darkness of the cave for a sign of her. She walked towards the open ledge, and turned.
A hand pushed her and she stumbled, swinging round and bringing up her sword in time to block a ferocious blow from a man she recognised all too well.
His laughter insulted her. His smell appalled her.
Donwayne the Weaponmaster stood there, and as he laughted he again tried to kill her.
Raven struck back at him, crying out, “This time I shall finish you completely! No more tricks, Donwayne, no more help from your warlock friend!”
A thought nagged her. Where was Belthis?
Blood flew from Donwayne’s face where Raven’s sword cut deeply into his cheek before he stopped the passage of the blade. His roar was that of an animal. Raven felt instinctively uneasy, backed away even as she struck and parried, her ears ringing to the noise of the metal blades smashing off each other.
She recognised why she was so uncomfortable. There was a deadness in Donwayne’s eyes, a terrible, empty gaze, the gaze of a corpse. He stared at her and his face creased and bled as he laughed, his foul breath washing across the woman. But his eyes were without the light of blood, the lust for death—they were dead eyes, and it unnerved Raven. It was like fighting no living thing, a spectre, a shadow…she sympathised, too late, with Silver who had found it so hard to fight the ghost of Argor. Warriors were trained to react to every animal glance and expression of their opponent’s face. To fight a man wearing a death mask was one of the hardest feats imaginable.
A moment later her blade was struck from her grasp and skittered across the cave floor, back towards the stairs.
Donwayne yelled triumphantly and dealt a cruel and final blow to Raven’s head, intending to split her skull down to the neck.
She blocked the blow with her sleeve shield, pushed and slashed with its point at Donwayne and ripped across his chin and his armoured chest before he again brought his blade round to deal her a killing blow.
She kewn, now, that it was just a matter of moments before her tiny shield yielded before the Tirwand steel of Donwayne’s blade. Slowly she backed away from him, walking to the precipice that dropped away just outside the cave. She saw, in a moment when she could glance behind her, a treacherous line of steps carved into the rock and winding down the cliff. But the drop was immense, and the ground below jagged with stone and ice.
Suddenly, icy wind caught her hair and her clothes, whipped around her, sucking her backwards. The barrier to the elements was gone and the swirling snow-wind outside reached into the cave and tried to grasp her and suck her outwards and down.
Donwayne drove at her relentlessly, and she stabbed and shielded until her arm ached, and she longed for a moment’s respite. Her golden hair got into her eyes, covered her face, and was hacked and cut into drifting, spinning locks by each stroke of Donwayne’s blade.
In the corner of the cave Raven could see a dark shape standing, watching her. The eyes glowed, the teeth showed where the man was grinning. It was difficult to tell but she sensed instinctively that she watched Belthis.
She knew, then, that she was lost, for with one swift and easy spell he could knock her out over the sheer cliff, to tumble and smash on the ground a kli or so below.
Then the warrior that had followed her so closely up the stairs burst into the cave, reached down for Raven’s sword a
nd flung it to her. Raven caught it deftly, as Argor had trained her, and she struck quickly and cuttingly at Donwayne, splitting open his scalp below the rim of his helmet. Donwayne merely grinned.
The other warrior ran forward and engaged the big man.
Raven was taken by surprise as she saw Karmana’s lithe, dark-haired frame pass in front of her, blocking the Weaponmaster’s strike.
“Leave him to me!” cried Raven angrily.
“Back away, Raven. He is mine, now, mine for what he did to me!”
Karmana’s sword found flesh and Donwayne grunted with pain. His own sword slashed down at the northern girl and blood flew from her forehead where the edge grazed her. She swept her sword across Donwayne’s belly and the armour parted exposing a thin red line across his flesh.
He laughed at that.
Recovered from her earlier efforts Raven moved in to strike.
Donwayne parried a vicious blow from Karmana, and as his neck was exposed so Raven struck at it, her blade flashing down, the edge sure to find its mark against his vulnerable flesh. She cried for joy as she saw the moment of victory at hand, Donwayne’s neck hewn through in an instant…
But Karmana’s blade blocked the blow, and again the northern girl screamed, “He is mine! He is mine!”
And the next thing that Raven knew she was being struck by the flat of Donwayne’s blade and was tumbling backwards over the precipice!
As she stumbled she felt her feet lose their grip and her body begin to fall over the edge, she reached out and clutched desperately at Donwayne’s hair. In the instant that Raven fell, so Donwayne staggered to the edge of the precipice and tumbled over, his fingers grasping and scrabbling at the rock, unable to find a grip.
The wind caught his body and blew him to the left, and as he launched into space so he found himself hitting the shallow steps that led down the immense cliff. He cried, and laughed, and turned triumphant eyes upwards, to let Karmana see that he was not lost, but hanging there, and working himself round to get a firm grip on the stairway.
Raven, dangling above him and holding on to the icy, slick rock with just her fingers, was quite helpless. There was no Silver below her to save her when she fell this time, and she knew it was a matter of seconds only before her strength went, and her fingers gave out.
Karl ir Donwayne began to climb down the steps into the valley below, and Karmana cried out with anger as she saw her prey escaping.
But the dark-haired girl was torn, now. Raven, as she gasped for help, saw Karmana go through a terrible confusion of emotion, her eyes going first to Donwayne, then to Raven, back and forth as if the wind blew her feelings from one to the other of them.
She could easily have caught Donwayne and finished him as he made his escape. But she chose instead to reach down and help Raven, dragging the woman over the precipice and into the safety of the cave.
Karmana crouched by Raven, wiping the sweat and snow from Raven’s face and smiling reassuringly. A moment later there was a sound like a face being slapped. Karmana screamed shrilly, threw out her arms before her as if to find her balance, but could find nothing to hold herself against as some unseen hand pushed her over the cliff. Raven was shocked into silence as she twisted round and watched Karmana’s body vanish into the ice wastes below, a dark shape that was finally lost to vision until a brief flare of red told of her instant death, on the rocks.
Almost too dazed and confused to think, Raven staggered to her feet, touching gingerly a split in her skin above her left eye. Blood had congealed and frozen, but the flesh and bone was sore to the touch.
As she stood so she could hear the sound of someone running up the last few steps. But approaching her, smiling, was someone more immediate, and more immediately threatening.
Robed in dark red, with gold and silver bands around his arms and a rune-engraved amulet slung about his neck, his white hair swept back from his high domed forehead and his narrow eyes and dry lips not belying the cunning and coldness of the man—it was unmistakably Belthis!
Before Raven could even move, some invisible hand, the same that had pushed poor Karmana to her death, gripped her. She flexed and twisted against the unseen chains, but her body was held immobile. She felt herself carried back to the precipice, felt the icy winds blowing through her clothes and hair, knew that unless it was Spellbinder coming up those stairs she was finished.
Belthis stood before her, his eyes alive with anger and hate. “It would have been magnificent,” he said. “I would have controlled a quarter of the world, and with the armies at my disposal I could have swept south as far as Xandrone and there would have been none could have stopped me.”
“I would have stopped you,” said Raven bitterly. “But then, I already have.”
“With help from Spellbinder,” said Belthis quietly. His voice was like a snake’s hiss, his gaze like a snake’s hypnotic, destructive gaze. “But I cannot deny that you are too troublesome for your own good, and have managed to destroy a great dream. For this you will die. For this I have waited for you, knowing you would follow me, knowing that the old man at the mouth of the Ice River would direct you to me. But what can you do? I have you in a spell against which you are helpless. This is always the way. When the man with a sword meets the man with magic, the man with the sword will be dead, as a southern warlock once said. When Spellbinder comes through that passage I shall throw you out across the chasm; because he loves you, he will instinctively reach out his mind to save you, and in that moment I shall destroy him completely and utterly. It will be so simple, but then, simplicity is always best.” He walked toward Raven, then reached out and slapped her viciously across each cheek, grinning. “I shall try again. Rest assured, Raven, I shall try again, and shall succeed. I shall own half the world, and then all of it. But how much do I need when my goal is Kharwhan itself? As far as Ishkar shall be mine, and then Kharwhan will be surrounded. I need not the Island fortress of Kragg, but Lifebane, who has fought Kharwhan for so long, he will join me. We shall subdue the Ghost Isle as a great army. And I shall control that which I seek to control, that which lies upon the Ghost Isle itself. I shall leave the lands to those imbecile war-lords who desire it. They can fight among themselves. I shall be where I want to be. I shall have what I desire…Kharwhan, and its great secret. I shall be Master of more than your primitive, tiny mind has ever imagined.”
He backed away, sensing the close approach of Spellbinder, and vanished into the shadows, near to where the slumped and sobbing shape of a woman lay.
Spellbinder came through the passage, saw Raven and looked at her, urgency silencing him, uncertainty making him dart to the side of the cave.
Raven felt herself thrown out across the cliff. In the same motion she saw Spellbinder run towards her, throw up his hands and cry some word. She was caught in mid-air, above the perilous drop and shattered remains of the girl from the Seven Tribes of the Dubthag. The wind whipped about her, her hair streamed about her face. Arms tugged her down, arms kept her upright, two spells fighting in a brief moment to control the flimsy body of the woman.
And Raven saw Belthis emerge from the shadows, triumphant, his spell well practiced and occupying only a fragment of his mind, while Spellbinder, desperate to save Raven, was using all his mind, all his awareness to stop her falling as she hovered out above the void.
“Release me!” screamed Raven. “Let me die! He tricks you!”
Belthis had raised a great sword and was about to strike Spellbinder down.
But something stopped the wizard, and he turned, his face melting into a mask of fear, of horror.
Raven felt herself drawn slowly back into the cave, felt her feet touch the rough edge of the cliff and find a grip. Spellbinder ran to her, clutched her to him. They moved away from danger, into the cover of the sloping wall of the cave.
Belthis was screaming horribly.
When Raven looked to see what had so frightened the evil Sorcerer she saw Moonshadow standing at the exit from the tu
nnel, a tall, thin shape, his face pale and narrow, his eyes no more than slits as he stared at the wizened form of the warlock. His hands rested easily by his sides, no weapon in evidence, no tensions; and yet he held something, some green thing, clutched in the fingers of his left hand.
“The jewel,” said Spellbinder.
“The spider,” said Raven, and a chill fled through her body.
Belthis screamed, “It is not possible that you have found me so quickly!”
But the voice was not that of the warlock, it was a high pitched voice, filled with loathing and contempt, the voice of something a thousand times more evil, more foul even than the outcast Sorcerer himself. It spoke through Belthis’s mouth, from within Belthis’s mind, but it was not Spellbinder’s arch enemy, it was something more potent, more frightening, and even Spellbinder was frightened and did not intervene.
Moonshadow did not respond to the creature that was Belthis, merely grinned. As Belthis lifted his arm and shot a brilliant streamer of blue fire at the strange warrior, so Moonshadow reached up and grasped the fire as it played about him. The magic flame dripped and melted in his grasp and faded away. Moonshadow laughed, then sneered, then flicked his wrist toward Belthis.
The green spider, unfurled and vicious, clung to Belthis’s robes and began to crawl towards his throat.
Belthis again screamed, beat at the spider, threw spells and curses at it, but to no avail. The horrible creature climbed inexorably towards Belthis’s exposed flesh, and Raven remembered the glistening fangs of the beast, the horrible jaws of the spider that could kill a man instantly just by touching him with the venom of its teeth.
Then something very strange occurred, something that frightened Moonshadow almost as much as it frightened and astonished Raven.
The Crugoan began to cast off the body of Belthis!
As a man might wriggle out of a tight fitting robe, the Crugoan wriggled out of the flesh and bone prison that was the Sorcerer. Gnarled, clawed fingers probed from Belthis’s skull, found a grip and heaved the upper part of the Crugoan’s body from the crushed and wrinkling host that was squashed and squeezed below it like some piece of rag.
A Time of Ghosts Page 21