by Rypel, T. C.
Tralayn advanced gravely, “I must say that I’m inclined to believe it now. At least we must act as if it were true, because that’s what the Llorm are saying. Mord has manipulated well. Satan’s minions do not lack for cunning. To Klann, he has created the appearance of a city cold and cruel enough to mask regicide behind the sacrifice of their own children. And he’s made the populace fear him still more in thinking he has the power of life and death, that he alone raised Klann from the grave.”
“Mord murdered him?” Gonji asked, his face twisting.
“Of course—who else?”
“But why, Tralayn? How can that possibly serve his purpose of eliminating the city—”
The bushi stood by, whispering translations for those who needed them, murmuring in shock at these portentous concepts.
“—killing the supreme military leader?” Gonji shook his head in disbelief.
“Who knows the workings of the diabolical mind?”
“He can’t get away with it...can he?” Wilf offered hopefully at Gonji’s side.
“Perhaps not,” Tralayn agreed, considering. “Perhaps this time he’s taken on too much. But it matters nothing if you cannot get the city to oppose him. And now is the time, Gonji—now it must be done! The troops—even the Llorm—seem in disarray. The mercenaries grumble amongst themselves in fear of lost wages. The army’s morale is at low ebb. You must meet with the council. Plans must be made swiftly, the evacuation to the catacombs begun even as the battle rages. And Gonji—” she paused breathily “—you must confront the Deliverer of whom we’ve spoken. Tell him he must help us at all costs. Tell him it was my dying wish—”
“Forget your unwilling hero!” Gonji railed. “I am your Deliverer, neh? Who has sacrificed the most with the least to gain in this bloody venture?” Then he composed himself. “What do you mean your...‘dying wish’?”
“I shall not be with you again,” she said evenly. “The evil sorcerer will have his way with me. Just one more confrontation. Perhaps I can make Klann see the truth, if things be as Garth says. Mord will see this city destroyed. He bears it a grudge fortified by centuries of hatred. Scrolls found hidden in the chapel tell of great evil forces which twice before besieged Christian communities in Vedun. And the last time, centuries ago, a demonic sorcerer was disfigured by militant priests, branded so that men would recognize him wherever he roamed. But in their zeal they fought evil with evil and were ultimately destroyed by malevolent forces. They are gone, but the branded one lives on, wearing a mask to conceal his disfigurement. It is Mord, and he will not rest while stone lays upon stone in Vedun.”
“Jesu...,” someone breathed. The foul air was making their breaths come in gasps.
“Go now, and do what you must,” Tralayn said. “Be firm in faith and courage, and strong of arm.”
Anton moaned somewhere below.
“We can’t all go the long way around,” Gonji declared. “We’ve injured men who need attention.” He scratched his neck, nerves and anger erupting all over his body. “All-recht—two-thirds of you go back through the tunnels to the cavern and brief the baron. Tell him I’ll be back later to work with him on the plan, once I’ve spoken with the others. Spread the word that we’re on evacuation alert, but everyone must go to their jobs until they’ve heard official word of...anything else. If nothing’s happened, meet me back at the cavern tonight. The rest of you come with me—those who kept any weapons, come along this way. Bring Anton up.”
Enervating fear gripped them, and no one moved.
“Let’s go,” Roric commanded. “We haven’t time for weak spines now. You’re past all that.”
They were galvanized. Anton was passed up with some difficulty.
“I’ve told you, you can’t come through this way,” Tralayn admonished. “The house is being—”
“Then you’re going to have to leave,” Gonji said quietly. “So sorry, milady, but if you leave, they will follow. Then we may be able to sneak away singly or in pairs. You’ll be in violation of curfew....” His words trailed off.
She thought a moment, then bowed her head. When they were in her parlor—nine men, counting the injured knight—the fireplace was resealed. With a final farewell, Tralayn was gone into the night, headed for the chapel, where she knew Flavio would be.
They watched her furtively from the windows. Sure enough, a small mounted party followed her, keeping her just in sight down the lanes. One mercenary strolled over and began to mount the steps to the house. Gonji cautioned them to silence. The soldier stopped halfway up and sat, drew out a pipe and lit it.
Seconds later Gonji peered out from behind the rear corner of the house, glancing around the area circumspectly. He timed the pace of the Llorm crossbowmen on the ramparts, then went back inside.
“Let’s go,” he ordered. “Make it to the alleys and you’re safe for a space. Remember, it’s after curfew. If you’re stopped you’d either better have a damned good story or you’ll have to try to take them. Get Anton and Stefan to Verrico. Keep your ears open for word from the council. If you’ve heard none, then meet me at the cavern tonight.”
They slipped out the window, making Anton as comfortable as possible. A loose tile on the sill, dislodged by Foristek, shattered on the stone pavement. They froze, eyes prying at their sockets, heard the rasp of steel from the steps. If the guard cried out....
The mercenary reached the corner of the house, blade raised high overhead. “All right—” he growled low.
Then Gonji’s clamping hand clutched his throat, tearing a small keening whine of air from the vacuum of his gaping mouth. The guard flew over Gonji’s hip, landing hard with a clatter of armor and the bounding sound of the loosed sword. In seconds he was dead. Gonji dragged his body into the deep shadow of the house.
Two horses trotted up along the street from the direction of the granary that now billeted free companions. Gruff voices argued in the stillness.
“Go!” Gonji whispered. They all darted away into the darkness, two of them bearing the moaning Anton between them. But Wilf edged up behind Gonji.
They both readied for a spring, hands on sword hilts. The clacking hooves stamped by, sparking off the paving stones twenty feet from the concealed pair. A pistol-grip glinted in a broad belt. The mercenaries talked on, disputing hotly in a language Gonji didn’t know. Then they were gone toward the east.
Gonji tapped the smith, and they pulled the dead mercenary into the back lane, looking about frantically for a place to hide him. They abandoned the effort when the crossbow quarrel shattered against a hut, just above Wilf’s head. An eagle-eyed rampart sentry had spotted the dim figures far below and was now pointing them out to his partner.
“Dear God in heaven,” Wilf gurgled.
“Run!” Gonji spat.
And they were off in a low crouch, as if all the Seven Devils cackled behind.
* * * *
“Genya—Genya, I must speak with you.”
“Hush, now, Richard,” she replied, “something’s afoot.” All the servantry had been roused by the fearful tumult that swept the castle. Richard had come up behind Genya in the vaulted chamber in the central keep, now alive with a flurry of activity.
“Genya—Lottie’s gone,” the baker persisted, his voice pained.
“What? Gone...where?” She gave him her full attention now.
“I—I don’t know. She’s disappeared. I haven’t seen her in two days now. Early yesterday morning one of the scullions saw her in a corridor of the southeast drum tower and—”
“The one where the sorcerer stays?” Genya queried, grimacing.
“Da—and that’s the last anyone saw of her. Genya, you’ve got to help me look for her. I’m scared.”
“All right, all right, relax. We’ll search as we can.”
“I’ve already searched the larders and pantries and stables—the gardens she sometimes tends—and I’ve worked my way over to the armorer’s tower and the prison tower, but—I—I—”
/> “Why haven’t you tried Mord’s tower, where she was seen?” Genya asked in a strained voice.
“You know I haven’t any reason to be about there. I was hoping....”
“That I’d try there, is that it?”
“Da, ” he gasped, excited, “could you?”
She’d thought as much. Richard wasn’t noted for his valor. She clutched at the neck of her robe, pulling it close, recalling the foul magician’s hungry looks.
“Well, I...I suppose.”
“Oh, Genya, you’re marvelous!”
Da, thanks a heap, she thought as he leaned over to kiss her cheek. But then she stopped him with a hand on his chest. She moved forward a step, staring like the others at the strange figure that strode into the chamber, parting the milling servantry before him.
* * * *
The castellan, General Gorkin, roused his wife from sleep. “Stir yourself, good lady, and attend on us—hurry!”
She rubbed at her heavy-lidded eyes. “Are you out of your mind? What hour is this?”
“Never mind, just get up—there’s been a new Rising.” His words were weighted with near religious awe.
“Wha-a-a-t?” She was fully awake. “The king is dead?”
“Yes—poisoned in Vedun. We’ve a new monarch to...break in. Perhaps we can start on the good side of this one, eh?”
“I shall have no trouble there,” she declared haughtily. “You’re the buffoon who can never read his moods. Ah, I shall immediately prevail upon Thorvald to use her ‘charms’ to seduce him to let us stay in this place forever—that’s a laugh.”
“Mind your tongue,” Gorkin said, combing out his hair and beard in the mirror. “Have you no sensitivity? The scion of the Akryllonian throne has again given a life in the pursuit of his people’s home.”
“Oh, screw your Akryllon. Who can love a home they’ve never seen?”
“Have a care, lady,” he warned, “the servants are everywhere. I’ve got to go turn out the royal grooms.”
“Royal grooms,” she sneered. “Has anyone told Thorvald yet? Bel! She’ll have an orgasm just thinking about her new possibilities!”
“Hush! Get yourself ready.”
“Oh, shut up and do what you have to do, Sten. I’ll be along with all my courtly grace....”
* * * *
Klann stared into each mirror in turn in the counseling chamber, which his dead Brother had reappointed as a throne room. He touched every part of him that reflected back, gazing with the innocent bewilderment of the newly un-blinded. His hair was black as jet, here and there touched by strands of gray that he found not unappealing. It was long and wild and tangled, streaming down his back in a lifetime’s growth. His wavy beard similarly coursed down to his waist. His eyes were a deep, piercing brown, narrow and close-set. His face was sharply chiseled, with an aquiline nose and pointed chin. His body was taller, more slender than that of his predecessor, erect and dignified, his posture plank-like. The long, curled fingernails on both hands, by now half broken off in his passion to touch the stuff of physical life, lent him an eerie oriental bearing.
“All new,” he spoke, the dozens of people crowded into the throne room following his every movement, hanging on every utterance. “Everything new...all apprehended only...second-hand before. Ohhh...I’m going to like this life.”
To those who listened, the assertion sounded foreboding.
“You can’t know—none of you can know—what it’s like to feel your kin die, crying out in their anguish, seizing upon your life essence for—” But abruptly the spell was gone. Then: “Bring me food—I’m ravenous! A sampling of everything the kitchens can deliver on short notice. The king demands it!” Servants scrambled to do his bidding, running into each other in their haste. The new Klann laughed to see the result of his every spoken whim. The room was cleared of all but his advisers.
The grooms came forward then to attend on him. These personal servants of the king were Akryllonian nationals who had been schooled from birth in the ritual grooming of a newly risen King Klann. The generation before them had no opportunity to use the traditionally passed ritual. In times past, many generations had gone by without a Death and Rising of Klann. These grooms would long retell the proud tale of how they had trimmed the beard and hair of the newly risen king, how they had manicured him, bathed and dressed him in his finest raiment, setting, at last, the Diadem of the House of Bel upon his brow.
The food was served, and he wolfed it down with no care for table manners, so eager was he to experience as quickly as possible the fullness of life. The Chief Botiler brought him a variety of wines to sample, discreetly limiting his consumption so that he might not disgrace himself on this first intemperate night.
Advisers, astrologers, and military people arrived; the ladies of court put in their most attractive appearances, vying with one another for the grandest entrances so that they might curry the Newly-Risen’s favor. But no one caused more of a furor with her appearance than the seductively clad Lady Thorvald, who glided along the chamber wall to stand at one end of the table set before the dais, leaning against a marble column with heaving bosom and expectation in her heavily painted eyes. Her nightdress had been chosen well to reveal her ample charms and still potent allure.
When he had finished his repast, Klann pushed the table away from him—too hard. It tilted over and crashed to the floor, servants hurrying to clean the mess even before the yelps of shock had died out. The newly emerged personage of Klann the Invincible felt the muscles in his arms.
“Yes...I am the Strong One. The one you’ve all awaited these many long years and despairing generations. The one who will at last bring you to your home...to Akryllon. There will be changes, make no mistake. I’m not like my soft Brother who feared shadows in the halls and brooked the slaughter of his men by conquered peoples. They will know fear. They will know obedience. We—will—not—be—defied!”
Klann was seized by the trembling and glazey stare that his most intimate confidants recognized as the trancelike state in which the internal Brethren communicated their counsel. But he began to growl in a most unseemly way, for a monarch, causing the more timid among them to back away. This the aged scribes, the keepers of Akryllon’s history, identified as the primitive wrath of the Tainted One, less diluted now by the rational caution of the remaining Brethren. A female voice passed Klann’s lips once, saying something in the Kunan tongue that was too garbled to understand. The court whispered in rapt fascination. But soon the rigidity of the seizure relaxed, and Klann’s eyes returned to the throne room.
It was at that point that the golden-masked sorcerer knifed into the room, courtiers scurrying to clear him a path. He bowed to the newly risen Klann.
“I await your word, my liege. What punishment shall we visit upon the brazen city that has caused you such suffering?”
Klann eyed him suspiciously a moment, then his gaze softened. “For the nonce, a tightening of the fist will suffice, I think. Perhaps a change in local government....”
Mord’s fathomless eyes reflected a certain disappointment. “It was that devious sorceress who likely did this to you, and—”
“Yes,” Klann interrupted. “Have her arrested. I should like to hear these superstitions she spreads from her own lips before I seal them. And her defense of what you accuse.”
There was instant muttering at this bold command, experience reminding the more sage among them of the danger of such a radical measure.
“Sire,” one of the advisers spoke up, “isn’t that rather extreme before the facts be known—?”
“Extreme?” Klann exploded, charging at the man. “What is extreme? Did not your king die in their city? Have they not opposed our every wish? I have a plan for these militant people, and it begins—what is this? What have you brought me here?”
A Llorm corporal-of-guards came forward, knelt, and indicated the toothless old man he dragged along with him. “Milord, this old fool has, I think, intelligence of an u
rgent nature.”
The old man shambled forward and squinted at Klann, who made a face back at him that caused the court to chuckle. “Come-come-come, what is this all about?”
“Are you...Baron Rumka?” the doddering man inquired uncertainly, squeezing his cap between sere brown hands.
There was instant laughter, mixed with gasps at the senile faux pas, when the words were translated into Kunan. The Llorm guard cuffed the old man on the side of the head. “I’ve already told you whom you’re addressing, you idiot! Just tell the king what you told me.”
“This had best be worth our while,” Klann warned the soldier.
With the Llorm’s prompting the man related the tale of the ambush he’d seen, perpetrated by the militia. Klann’s ears reddened as he listened. The room buzzed with translations.
“Bandits!” he cried at last. “Bandits—do you hear that, you military experts? Why aren’t they working for us? Has the whole province gone mad? What kind of bandits, old fool? Turks?”
“Oh, no, sire,” the old codger whined, “just...bandits.” He grinned and cocked his head, a vapid cast to his ancient eyes.
“Where is that outpost?” Klann asked of his advisers.
“I think the leader was Mongol...da, that’s it,” the man babbled on, only now no one was listening as the king spoke with his military leaders. The corporal-of-guards began to push him back toward the archway and double door.
“It must be at the Borgo Pass, sire.”
“Yes, that’s it. Is it strategically useful to us—?”
“Da, a Mongol—” the old man continued as the Llorm strove to calm him.
“Quiet now, you silly old bastard, His Majesty’s speaking.”
Klann walked with hands behind his back. “You’d best fortify it again with better men. And check all the outposts in the marches. Raise the wage for outpost duty to attract better men. We can afford the additional numbers by now, surely—”
“A Mongol with—with—with his hair tied up on his head like a tulip bulb—” The Llorm had the old man’s arm twisted and was carrying him off.