by Martin Ash
I shook my head, so certain now as the axe was held above me, posed to descend and sunder me from this world. ‘There is nothing I can do. She will never come to you, nor will you ever find her. She has gone.’
There were tears in Feikermun’s eyes - I think he knew that what I said was true. But he could not or would not accept it. The tendons of his neck stood out like cords and his features contorted with rage. ‘Then you will die!’
There was nothing I could do to save myself - nowhere I could run, crowded by enemies, Feikermun’s beasts and Wirm’s men, and nothing I could summon that would change anything. Yet I felt no fear, and simply waited for what must come next.
Dhaout’s night was split by an earshattering roar which drowned out even Feikermun’s agony. His beasts turned as one and he too spun around, arresting the fall of his blade, deflecting it from me. The beasts cried out, yelling in terror and alarm and drew their weapons to confront the monstrous Scrin that had materialized just yards away. They were unsure; the creature eyed them for a moment, swiping and slashing at the air ravenous with fury.
‘No! Back!’ bellowed Feikermun, thrusting himself towards the thing. ‘Feikermun commands! Your master commands!’
And I remember thinking: My master? Scrin know no master.
Then the creature hurled itself at Feikermun’s men and I took the moment to duck away, slipped into a crack between nearby buildings and ran quickly, in near-darkness, veering into alleys, around corners, putting distance between myself and the shrieks howls and roars behind. And all the time thinking: I have been here before!
When the sounds had died away behind me I paused to regain my breath, leaning against a wall. Looking back and upwards I could see again the glows of the fires in the night sky and the tall, opaque columns of billowing smoke. My skin burned, the rainspots welcome on my cheeks. I thought about the Scrin: They are however we perceive them, in whatever form our consciousness can accept. Had each of us, then perceived the same monster in our midst, or did we see individual, differing interpretations of whatever it was that had broken through?
Something disturbed me deeply about that encounter, something I could not quite identify. I pushed myself away from the wall, thinking: I have taken the amber. The Avari are free. Yet the dream, the nightmare, continues.
Feikermun would be looking for me now, I was certain of that. I did not know how I was so sure, yet I had in my mind a vision of winged people appearing in the Dhaout street and driving back the Scrin that tore into Feikermun’s beasts. And an image of Feikermun, confused, raging at the Avari, who likewise vanished in the wake of the monster. And when he turned and found me gone, he roared his vengeance into the night.
I stumbled on in the dark, wondering where I might go next. The gidsha dream. I was possessed by a strange conviction that I knew what was about to happen. I thought, Somewhere close by soldiers wait to intercept me. I am being taken to meet the Golden Lamb.
I was right.
I was also wrong.
A short way further on I was hit suddenly by a stench that made my stomach roll and my skin crawl. In almost the same moment something slammed into me hard. As I slipped in the mud my fingers closed on hair and cold skin, something slightly and horribly giving. There was a loud, angry humming noise. My senses reeled, rebelling against the stink, and I fell to the floor; the thing on top of me.
I rolled, half-crazed with panic, believing I was about to be torn apart. In the darkness everything was abruptly still, bar the pattering rain. I waited, hardly breathing, thinking the thing was still close, searching me out. My heart hammered against my ribcage. But nothing happened, and presently I found the courage to stand and edge forward, my eyes better adjusted to the dark now.
I saw the thing a little way in front of me, a dense blot in the wet mud, its gut-churning reek still living on me. It did not move. I thought I knew what it was now. With one foot I stretched forward and prodded. It gave slightly with my pressure but showed no volition of its own. I pushed again, harder, and at last allowed myself to relax.
A carcass. One of Feikermun’s hung dogs, half-rotten, fly-infested and crawling with maggots. I had collided with it and pulled it from its makeshift gallows when I fell. I moved away, half-consciously wiping at my clothes and skin as if that would remove the stench. And just ahead, somewhere - this way, that way - the Golden Lamb’s men waited.
Or was it different now? I no longer carried the amber. I had been here before but it was not the same. And what if I should take another path? Deliberately or by chance, what then? Would it change things? Was the pattern already cast? How would I ever know?
Did I really have that choice?
I became aware suddenly that there were figures moving past me in the darkness. Creeping stealthily by, several of them, their feet squelching in the mud and the light creak and jangle of leather and metal. Before I had time to conceal myself and take stock I was grabbed by rough hands. A hand was clapped over my mouth. A figure loomed beside me, pressed a blade to my throat.
‘Do not move! Do not cry out!’ My sword was taken away and I was dragged back into the lee of a building. ‘Keep your magics to yourself or you will die!’
A helmeted face was close to mine, a pale blotch enlivened by the dark gash of a mouth and two hollows for eyes. The pressure of the hand upon my mouth eased a little. ‘Make no sound.’
The hand slid away, though the blade remained at my throat. ‘You will come with us.’
I had been here before, but it was all different this time. I risked a hoarse question. ‘Who are you? Where are you taking me?’
‘You will know soon enough. Now be silent!’
They marched me away - not far. There were squads of soldiers moving cautiously in the opposite direction, and others assembled in the backstreets. We arrived at a tall villa with a familiar fortified door. We entered, passed through the cellars and came eventually to the hall where I had been, or thought I had been, not long earlier. The Golden Lamb occupied his seat upon the dais. He was garbed virtually as before, and his guards were alert around him.
‘You are Linias Cormer of Chol?’ he asked sternly from behind his metal helm.
I felt a chill run down my spine. This was all so familiar.
‘I am,’ I replied.
The golden head turned slowly from side to side. ‘I would dispute that.’
‘I assure you, sir—’
‘Then you are not Ronbas Dinbig, the merchant, secret representative of Khimmur and man of numerous and sometimes dubious talents?’
My gut turned hollow. He seemed to know, or suspect, so much. What trap was this? My mind sped this way and that. I tried to force myself to calm. ‘I am not. As you yourself know, for your own men brought me here from Riverway in Kutc’p.’
The Golden Lamb surveyed me silently and nodded thoughtfully to himself. ‘We shall see.’ He clicked a finger. ‘Bring the other!’
A guard strode to a portal in one wall beside the dais and pulled it open. There was a brief movement from within and then a man was brought into the hall, flanked like myself by two guards. Perhaps I had experienced too much in too short a space of time, for when I saw him I felt hardly a thing. Not shock, not surprise. It was as though I were incapable of feeling anything more. I simply saw him and recognized that it was he, that it was I. He was my double.
He was brought forward to stand before the dais, somewhat obliquely to me. I eyed him; he eyed me. Now the uncanniness of the situation began to strike me again. I felt that my nerves were stretched to their rawest, furthest limit, that the world spun slowly and soundlessly around me. The blood roared sickeningly in my ears.
The Golden Lamb stood and came to the fore of the dais to address the newcomer. ‘You are Ronbas Dinbig of Khimmur?’
‘I am.’
And now I felt truly, truly threatened. I had denied myself; he did not. This was my greatest fear. If I were found guilty of fraud and he were declared to be me, then he might leave here
, as me, and return to Khimmur. What would become of me?
Should I confess? But it might all be a trick, an elaborate ploy designed to force admission from me. And what then? I would be forced to confess my mission, the secret plans of the Hierarchy and everything else.
Who was the Golden Lamb? Could he be in league with Feikermun? No, it seemed impossible. But why such an interest in me and my role? Who was he?
I drew a deep, shuddering breath, and said, ‘It is not true. I am Ronbas Dinbig.’
‘No! He lies!’ My double made to step forward but was restrained by his guards. ‘He is not Dinbig! You can see! Look at him! He is a fraud, an impostor!’
The Golden Lamb stood with his hands on his hips, feet firmly planted. ‘This is most interesting. Cormer, or Dinbig, or whoever you are, why do you suddenly change your tune? A moment ago you were vehement and convincing in your denial.’
‘Sir, I did not know what you planned. I came here in secret, partly to discover the identity of this... person who I had learned was impersonating me.’
‘But as you yourself have just admitted, you were escorted here by my own men. They know you as Master Cormer, hailing from Chol.’
‘But that is not, truly, who I am.’
‘He lies!’ sneered my double. ‘Have him prove it.’
‘Can you do so?’ enquired the Golden Lamb.
‘Not here. Not now,’ I said, my fear mounting again. ‘I wear a disguise, but it is not one I can remove, nor you. Experts in Khimmur must do it.’
‘Pah! Blatant poppycock!’ spat my double. ‘I am Dinbig! See, look at me! Ask me anything! Then you will know!’
A rage began to grow within me, coupled with a sense of total helplessness. What a path I had followed; what a deadly, vicious trap I had allowed myself to walk into. For he spoke the truth. He was me. Like the amber that had held the Avari, he had been spewed forth out of Feikermun’s madness. He was Feikermun’s conception of me, drawn from a more or less chance encounter some years ago. He was ‘I’ following a path I might have chosen in other circumstances, given other motivations, other impulses. He came from Feikermun, and I shuddered to think of the damage he might do.
I said, hardly convincingly, ‘Likewise, you may ask any question of me. If you know anything of my life and background you will know that I am speaking the truth.’
But my double also spoke the truth, I realized. Almost certainly he had been spawned with ‘my’ memory intact.
‘Is it possible,’ mused the Golden Lamb, ‘that you would both answer correctly any questions I might ask you? Ah, well, it does not really matter, for there is a simple test I can conduct which will prove beyond any shadow of a doubt which one of you is lying and which is telling the truth. The matter will be done, then, to everyone’s satisfaction. Are you both willing to participate in this little exercise?’
‘Do we have a choice?’ I asked.
The Golden Lamb turned his head to me, and I sensed that behind the mask he smiled. ‘To be perfectly honest, no.’
I shrugged. ‘Then I agree.’
‘Excellent. And you, sir?’
My double remained mute and tense, but gave a single brief nod.
‘There is one last thing,’ added the Golden Lamb. ‘When the test is complete only one of you, the one who reveals himself to be telling the truth, can be permitted to live. The impostor I shall execute on the spot. But it is probably hardly worth my mentioning this. The test must be conducted and, as I have said you have no choice but to participate. Let us proceed without further delay.’
Twenty
The golden lamb seated himself on the edge of the dais, his legs hanging loosely over the front, hands resting upon the lip. He appeared casual, but I noted his men shifted their stances almost imperceptibly, the better to intercede should either of us think to take a lunge in his direction.
‘Now, is this not intriguing?’ he began. ‘Here are we, uncertain of one another, seeking one another out. You wonder who I am; I wonder who you are. Perhaps you each wonder as to the true identity of the other. We are each, for reasons perhaps even we are not entirely sure of, disguised. We each wear a mask of differing type, but the effect is essentially the same in each instance. I find myself pondering this with a kind of almost gleeful fascination.’
He allowed a moment to pass; neither I nor my double spoke. The Golden Lamb said, ‘Ah, well, as I said, it is time for the test. It is very simple, ludicrously so, and will cause you no pain, though I repeat that whoever fails must necessarily perish. And should you both fail - not impossible, given the queer nature of what is happening here in Dhaout - then you will both die, under summary law, exposed as frauds, liars and who knows what else. Do you wish to say anything?’
I hesitated a moment, then spoke edgily. ‘I am suspicious. You claim infallibility for this test you intend to conduct, but I do not know you and I can conceive of no test or exercise that could guarantee the result you seek.’
‘Of course you can’t. Your ability to do so would render the test null and void. As for knowing me, the test, by its nature, might be illuminating for he who survives it.’
‘What is my significance in this?’ I demanded with sudden indignation. ‘I am not of Anxau, have little more than casual interest in its affairs. Of what importance can I possibly be to you, unless...’
‘Unless?’
‘Unless you work somehow with or for Feikermun of Selph.’
The Golden Lamb uttered a short bark of laughter. ‘I do not, I assure you. But, I say again, the test will prove illuminating to the victor, if there is one. Now, we are wasting time and there is much to do. After all, fortune is in the air, so I hear.’
He sat motionless, silent. I could not see his eyes within the golden helm, but I sensed that they shifted from one to the other of us. His attitude was expectant, I thought, but could not fathom why. I looked to my double, whose face remained as blank as mine must have been.
‘Well?’ said the Golden Lamb.
I was baffled.
‘I am waiting,’ he said.
‘For what? I do not understand.’
‘Have you nothing to say?’ His voice was loud, if muffled, and there was a tautness in his posture now.
My double spoke. ‘What... what are you asking of us?’
‘An answer!’ declared the Golden Lamb. He jumped down from the dais and stood before us, hands upon his hips. Then he turned and began to pace back and forth. His helm was tipped slightly back; he seemed lost in thought. He stopped pacing some distance across the floor, and spun around to face us. ‘Nothing? Are you sure?’
It was surely a strange and cruel game. I was dumb; my double also. The Golden Lamb said, ‘You have both failed. With regret, then, I sentence the two of you to death.’
‘Failed what?’ queried my double. ‘This is madness. Do you play with us? What have we failed? Where is the test?’
‘I say once more, fortune is in the air, so I hear.’ The Golden Lamb advanced upon us, then halted. I sensed that he scrutinized us both minutely, and he must have seen something in my expression, for he leaned towards me. ‘Yes, Cormer, or Dinbig, or whoever you think you are? Yes? Have you something to say?’
I was groping, suddenly, desperately seeking, striving to dredge something - I did not know what - from my memory. What was happening here? I could not work it out - and yet.
I stared at him. He stared back. ‘Yes?’
Could this be true? I tried to pierce through the golden helm, into those unknown eyes within. It was coming to me. It was coming to me.
And then…
I had it! And he saw that I had it. By Great Moban’s Ear, I almost
laughed out loud. I was disbelieving, stunned, could hardly fathom it, understood the truth of it, and doubted even as I did.
‘Do not impart it in the hearing of the other!’ commanded the Golden Lamb. He strode away, his back to us. ‘Speak into my lieutenant’s ear, and he will convey your words to me.’
>
My guards pulled me back. I glimpsed fear on the face of my double. The Golden Lamb’s lieutenant moved up close to me, and now I found myself floundering. For I could not remember the response. I was so shocked, so overwhelmed, flooded first with incredulity, then relief, then, again, fear - for I was about to fail. Fortune is in the air, so I hear. I could not remember the response!
The lieutenant’s heavy-lidded eyes narrowed, his face hard. I struggled with my memory, urging it to come, damning myself. But I was empty. ‘I cannot remember,’ I cried out at last, ‘but I know now who you are behind that mask!’
The Golden Lamb turned, observing us, then said slowly and levelly, ‘That is not enough.’ He turned to my double. ‘What say you?’
The other Ronbas Dinbig looked at me, green eyes flashing. ‘He is an impostor who seeks to trick you. He knows nothing.’