The Sovereign Road

by Aaron Calhoun

  “It is the first winds of the Judgment Storm,” said the Mariner, as if in answer to Garin’s unspoken question. “Soon it will be upon us. We must be off.”

  As they reached the upper deck, the storm’s full fury broke upon the ship. The once-peaceful skies were now filled filled with billowing dark clouds illuminated by a near-continuous volley of lightning bolts, and an icy rain lashed the boards of the deck. Across the horizon, great waterspouts launched skyward from the ocean into the tempest. There was no land to be seen, only the boiling watery wasteland of the Mare Primum.

  “I must go to my family now,” the Mariner stated flatly. “The price of your passage along the meridian is your service as lookout. Do you agree to this cost?”

  Garin quickly nodded yes, and the Mariner left with a grunt, leaving Garin to his work.

  He watched for what seemed like weeks, holding fast to his post amidst the driving rain, but the sun never rose and the storm never lifted. Then, a row of looming shadows appeared on the horizon. Garin waited a few moments before descending to report.

  “Good,” the Mariner grunted. “We have reached the Mounts of Nomos, the place where the Laws of the Earth are writ upon the bones of the world. The Judgment Storm is a thing of Chaos and should abate beyond them. You have done well, now return to your post.”

  Garin climbed the stairs to the deck and was greeted by an uncanny sight. To the port and starboard sides of the ship loomed great masses of rock: sheer vertical columns, slick with rain, which rose from the swirling ocean currents like the watchtowers of a submerged citadel. Atop each stood a stone pillar inscribed with words that burned with strange fire. As the ship passed between them it was as if some invisible thresholf had been crossed. Then the churning of the sea ceased and the clouds overhead swiftly dissolved, leaving behind the pure brilliance of a night sky strewn with billions of stars. Garin’s eyes widened at the sight of them and for a moment he forgot his quest, captivated by a beauty beyond anything he could ever have imagined as for the first time he understood how much light had been lost to the entropy clouds.

  Garin passed what seemed like aeons that way, his gaze fixed on the glittering canvas above him. Then the sky lightened, and soon the morning sun rose in a rush of gold and ruby effulgence, revealing a low, dark coastline to the west. Fulfilling his duty, Garin ran downstairs to report what he had seen, and soon the Mariner and his family were rushing about the craft making preparation for landfall. The great ark finally ran aground on a rocky beach covered with slime and seawrack. After the gangplank had been lowered and all the penned animals had disembarked, the Mariner turned to Garin and asked where he was traveling. He frowned when he heard the name of Hyrosol Eld.

  “The place you seek was once grand and glorious,” said the Mariner, “and the gleam of its towers were the pride of Mythos. Yet it has fallen into corruption, the bleak enslavement of the Once-Men. I dare not guess whether the one you call Kyr will be there when you arrive, but if he is you will likely find him in the Shattered Temple, once called the Temple of the Beloved, that lies near the city’s heart.”

  Then the Mariner gave him a leather sack filled with gleaming white shells that sparkled in the sun like gemstones. “These are quite common along the shores of Mare Primum, but for some reason the Once-Men find them valuable. This should be enough to quell any questions regarding your presence there and provide for your entrance. Now, farewell, and I pray that you find the one you seek.”

  After thanking the Mariner Garin had continued onward from the shoreline. The rocks of the coast soon gave way to grassy hills and the hills gave way in turn to the bleak desert in which he now wandered. As the endless miles had slid by, Garin had pondered the words the mariner had spoken with little insight to illumine their meaning.

  Once-Men? Shattered Temple?

  The phrases seemed strange and forbidding, imbued with meanings that Garin could only guess at.

  ***

  A low rumble sounded in the distance, and Garin awoke from his reverie to see that the dark line had resolved into a vast wall of battlements built of cracked black stone. Behind the wall, jagged towers in varying states of disrepair pointed at the sky like broken fingernails. Above the city a massive thunderhead churned, a vortex of tense black cloud that threatened to break open at any minute.

  He had arrived.

  The great gate of the city, framed by two gray towers of crumbling stone, stood open less than thirty paces away. Guarding the gate was a squadron of soldiers that broke formation as Garin approached the gate, blocking his path.

  “State your business, traveler.”

  The words sounded peculiarly hollow, as if they had somehow been emptied of life and vitality, and a strange wave of fear coursed through Garin. Though he did not wish to draw undue attention to himself, he risked a glance at the guard who had spoken.

  The soldier was clad in armor of black iron, unadorned save for an emblem upon the breastplace in the shape of a fist closing around an open eye. In his hands he held a halberd that seemed little more than a jagged fragment of metal affixed to a long shaft of grey wood. The visor of his helm was open, revealing a face as pale as marble, but otherwise human in appearance. Then Garin gasped as he saw the guard’s eyes. There was neither sclera nor iris, only twin holes that seemed to drop forever into an impossible void. Suddenly Garin knew what a once-man was.

  “I repeat, state your business! Why have you come to Hyrosol Eld?”

  In response Garin held out the bag of shells and opened it just enough to give a glimpse of its contents. Though his eyes were unreadable, the guard grinned wth avarice.

  “I come from Mare Primum to trade in the Great Market,” said Garin.

  “Indeed,” replied the guard with a humorless laugh. “There is much that you could purchase for what you hold. Yet what value is it if you do not reach the market?”

  Deliberately, slowly, Garin let his shoulders slump forward. He had expected this, and in truth did not care how much of a bribe was required. Above all, though, he knew that he must appear genuine.

  “What is it you would require to ensure safe passage,” said Garin carefully.

  “Normally two shells would suffice,” said the guard with a smirk. “Each,” called out another, followed by nods from the rest of the squadron.

  “Yes, each,” he continued. “But today we have orders to turn away all merchants in preparation for the coming of Lord Daath.”

  At the mention of Daath, Garin’s heart quailed.

  Am I too late?

  Still, there was nothing to be done about it. He had to press on. Gathering his courage, Garin continued the negotiation, hoping he had successfully kept his fear from showing.

  “Lord Daath,” he said, “This is indeed a glad day. I would greatly enjoy being present for his arrival.”

  “As would most,” said the guard, nodding his approval at the response. “But you, of course, can now see the position in which this places us.”

  “Perhaps additional shells could relieve that difficulty?” suggested Garin, his heart pounding.

  “Perhaps they could,” said the guard with feigned thoughtfulness. “Ten each should be adequate.”

  The other guards nodded in response.

  “If the initial price was two,” said Garin, “would not five be a more reasonable sum?”

  At this the guard frowned, and Garin felt a lump forming in his throat. Had he pushed him too far?

  “More reasonable, but not what we require,” said the guard sternly, all trace of humor now gone. “Still, we would be willing to accept seven, but no less.”

  The tone in the guard’s voice told Garin that further haggling would not be tolerated, and he wordlessly opened the sack, giving each their required bribe. After it was done, the guard grunted and moved to the side.

  “Safe trading to you,” he said, a sarcastic edge to his voice. Garin nodded and proceeded through the gate.

  At once the stench of the city hit him like
a wall, a smell of mold and decay like that of a mausoleum. He stood on a broad avenue paved with cracked flagstone stained almost black by ages of soot and grime. On either side of him towered great crumbling edifices of masonry and rotting wood that blocked the light of the afternoon sun and cast the streets into thick shadow. And all around him surged the crowds of the Once-men. Though they conversed and traded as if nothing were amiss, to Garin they looked like animated corpses, undead revenants merely going through the motions of bodily life. He could almost feel the combined weight of their blank gazes, like a hundred thousand gates into the outer darkness.

  He proceeded as swiftly as he dared, taking time on occasion to trade a few shells from his bag for the trinkets sold in the stalls that lined the street. As the shells traded hands he could see furtive glimmers of light flash in the black eyes of the merchants, and with sudden insight he saw that the shells’ purity, their almost gemlike brightness, was the only fragment of beauty within this city of living death.

  The road sloped upward as Garin moved further into the city: at first gently, but then with increasing steepness. Ahead he could see the sprawling mound that Hyperion had called the Mount of Sacrifice, its summit circled by towering walls of red granite, its slopes deep in shadow. As the road began to ascend the lowest reaches of the mount it abruptly curved to the left, coiling around it like a serpent. Here the buildings were better kept, a seemingly endless array of decadent palaces and citadels peopled by Once-men clad in ermine robes and jeweled finery. Yet as Garin stared into the absence that was their eyes, he realized that the deadness and corruption ran even deeper here than in the more visibly decayed regions he had just passed through. He walked for what seemed like an eternity, treading an endless spiral up the side of the mount, until at last the road ended in a vast plaza filled with a crowd of Once-men.

  Built upon a terrace that stretched outward from the wall surrounding the mountain’s peak, a pavement of black marble ran to a sheer drop that loomed over the city below like a cliff face. From that edge, two great staircases supported on buttresses of black iron coursed downward to Hyrosol Eld’s northern gate. At the back of the plaza, built into the red granite surface of the wall, stood a tumbledown edifice of stained rock and obsidian pillars capped by a metallic dome. The surface of the dome was dark with dirt and tarnish, but in places its original luster still gleamed amidst the filth. The center of the dome was marred by a great gash. Almost instinctively, Garin knew that this was the Shattered Temple.

  “He comes!”

  The cry rose from a bearded seneschal who stood in the center of the plaza; his arm was outstretched and his fingers pointed to the north. Gripped by sudden fear, Garin turned and saw a dark mass of boiling vapor shreiking toward the city. He did not have much time. Quickly he skirted the crowd, angling toward the dark entrance of the Shattered Temple. As he reached the door, he risked a glance backward and saw the shadowy mass as it winged over the city wall like a vulture and began its decent toward the plaza. There was a deafening crash as the sky was rent by a searing bolt of lightning. A black rain began to fall, and a loud shout rose from the crowd as the Once-men proclaimed the arrival of Lord Daath. Without hesitation, Garin turned and ran through the entrance.

  The inside of the temple was a shadowy vault filled with curving rows of marble pillars lit by the furtive gleam of countless torches. In the smoke-filled darkness of the temple’s heart, robed figures bowed and danced in a strange ritual around a dim sacrificial flame. Beyond the fire, Garin could just make out a towering bronze door set into the back wall, its surface gleaming dully in the half-light. Though unmarked, he felt sure that the door led to the Mount of Sacrifice’s summit. The door was shut tight, sealed with a bar of iron.

  Garin shifted sideways into the shadow of a pillar, his eyes scanning the dark alcoves and colonnades. There was no sight of Kyr, and at once Garin was struck by the impossibility of a man such as him ever finding comfort in such a vile place.

  “They used to call this the Temple of the Beloved?” he whispered to himself, as if saying it would somehow render it more believable.

  Then a shout from the center of the temple drew his attention. The priests, finished with their strange leaping dance, were now filing down the nave of the temple in a double procession, crying out in unison.

  “He comes! He comes! Let Lord Daath find the priests of his temple faithful.”

  Garin’s heart withered in his chest, and a sickening numbness took hold of his limbs as he realized why Daath had chosen to make his arrival here. Of course he would come to the temple. Trying to hold his fear in check, Garin slowly slid behind the nearest pillar, his eyes always watching the priests. Seeing their attention was elsewhere he backed away from the entrance, crouching behind nearby pillars whenever it seemed they might turn his way, seeking to lose himelf in the gloom. All at once he was met by a hard, cold surface of granite. He had reached the inner wall. There was nowhere else to go.

  A great cry began to rise outside the temple, and Garin could hear the footsteps of a multitude approaching. Suddenly a great weakness descended on him, and he slumped over in exhaustion. He was trapped, and there was little he could do about it. Then a curious image upon the tiled floor caught his eye. In the dim torchlight it was difficult to see clearly, but Garin could just make out the outline of a woman. To the side of the image, a strange mosaic of white tiles set in what once must have been a deep blue background was visible through the soot and grime. His eyes widened as he realized that it was an image of the Sovereign Road.

  The image gave him hope, though he could not explain why, and it did not seem right to leave it in this state. Garin began to brush away the dirt and soot, and as he did so more of the mosaic came into view. The woman was depicted wearing a golden robe with a stylized sun emblazoned across the breast. Her eyes were blue, and a smile was on her lips. The road began at her bare feet and swept about her body in a great spiral before at last ending in a circle of stars that hovered over her head like a coronet. As Garin examined it more closely he noticed an irregularity: a single red tile in the portion of the road near the top of the woman’s head. Puzzled, Garin touched the tile and felt it move. Suddenly he heard a soft click and looked up to see a low section of the nearby wall swing open. Garin stared for a moment in disbelief, then quickly scrambled through the opening, pulling the door shut tightly behind him.

  He found himself on a broad landing overlooking a deep chasm lit by a soft azure light that welled up from the depths. From the edge of the platform a series of stairs descended into the cool abyss, and Garin, having nowhere else to go, began the descent. Four flights below, the stairs ended at a golden door inset into the sheer rock face of the chasm wall. The surface of the door was elaborately worked with the image of a woman crowned with stars, a mirror of the one that lay above. Garin placed his hand upon the door and it swung open easily.

  Beyond was a spacious chamber that gleamed with gold and silver. The chamber’s alabaster walls were covered in bas-relief carvings depicting scenes from an ancient garden. In them and man and woman walked amidst trees and flowers, followed by a leaping cascade of birds, deer, lizards, and all other kinds of animal. Between them stood a strange figure the likes of which Garin had never seen before: his body covered in robes, his head replaced by a starburst. It reminded him somewhat of Hyperion, though it was clear that the image was not meant to depict him specifically. Midway between the walls and the chamber’s center stood a ring of broad pillars that supported the high vault of the ceiling. Each was covered images of vines, fruiting plants and trees. Worked in pure silver, these images seemed almost to pulse with life, as if they not been carved so much as transmuted directly from living plants by some subtle form of alchemy. In the heart of the chamber, shining with a holy radiance, lay a sarcophagus of pale sapphire. With halting steps Garin approached the sarcophagus, then stopped and gazed in awe as he saw what rested within.

  The sarcophagus was occupied by a woman of su
rpassing beauty clothed in robes of purest white. The robes were fastened about her neck with a clasp of bright gold bearing the image of a lamb. Encircing her hair was a coronet of lapis lazuli, inlaid with hundreds of silver stars. Her eyes were closed, though in sleep or death Garin did not know. In only one place was the perfection of her figure marred: in the center of her chest, a deep red bloodstain bloomed upon her robe like a crimson flower.

  Garin sank to his knees in wonder and sadness at the sight: wonder that such beauty could exist, sadness that it had been broken. For long moments he wept, unsure of why he did so, but simultaneously knowing that it was the only right response. Rising back to his feet, Garin noticed something that he had not before: a square of parchment sitting atop the sarcophagus. With trembling hands, he picked it up and began to read.

  Garin, by now I have passed beyond the circles of Mythos to the worlds above, where I trust you will soon join me. Understand that I waited as long as I could for you here at the tomb of my Beloved. Long I gazed at her beauty: she who once was the crowning joy of the worlds, now a victim of the shadow. How I yearn to free her, to raise her again to life, but that time is not yet here.

  Know, my child, that the Shadow is soon to arrive on this world. It is for that reason that I must leave. I do not fear him, but my continued presence here would certainly draw him to the path you must travel, placing you in danger. Know that as long as you stay within this chamber he cannot find you. Oh, he yearns to know where the body of my Beloved lies, but he cannot, must know, be allowed to enter, for if she dies the final death all hope dies with her. You are safe here, but you must not tarry.

  The road between worlds touches Mythos at the pinnacle of the Mount of Sacrifice. In this world the pathway only opens to those who give of themselves freely. Remember, you have not yet resisted to the point of blooshed. Fear not! We will soon meet again.