‘Don’t you dare turn and look, Gully. Don’t . . .’
Treacherous Ground
Alan stood erect, with his feet spread and his arms loose by his sides so the aides could fit the harness they had created for him during the night.
‘Hey, these are onkkh reins,’ he muttered to the aides, who were working as a team to fit the harness to him.
‘Sire, we chose them for the strength of leather.’
‘I’m sure you did.’
The aides were small on the whole, vastly smaller than the Shee. But they were also strong-minded to the point of stubbornness. The most argumentative of the three couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, but she made up for it in physical presence. She had arms and legs a weightlifter would have envied, and her tugs and squeezes brooked no resistance any more than they took notice of his grumbles of discomfort.
‘Who are you?’
‘Aides do not volunteer names.’
‘You know that with this,’ he pointed with his thumb to the ruby red triangle in the centre of his brow, ‘I could pick your name right out of your head?’
‘As you know, Sire,’ the ‘sire’ was spoken in a manner that pulverised any notion of respect the word was intended to convey, ‘I could pluck that gaudy jewel out of your brow in a blink of the eye with this.’ She lifted a viciously curved steel needle up under his nose.
Alan laughed, waving off the admonitions of the Kyra, who had witnessed the insolence.
‘So,’ he bent down to within inches of her face, ‘to what grievance do I owe this huffing and puffing?’
‘Well, begging your pardon, Sire,’ she intoned, ‘we aides have sacrificed yet another night of sleep to your whim of taking a peep at the world down out of the sky.’
Qwenqwo, who was also watching the confrontation, shifted on his feet, but again Alan placated him with a wave of his hand.
‘While the restraints are not yet tight, can I invite you and your two companions to shift your focus from stitching holes in leather to the landscape.’ He took several steps, made awkward by his harness, to lead the three aides to the edge of the knoll on which they stood. ‘Take a good look around you.’
The aides, with a weather eye on the remorseless stare of the Kyra, muttered: ‘Mage Lord – if I have offended you—’
‘Please, bear with me and take a close look at this landscape. But do so knowing that we are but a few days march from the walls of Ghork Mega.’
Livid colours proliferated throughout the cracked and fissured ground, flowing through the rock in striking patterns of crimson, lime green and sulphurous yellow. The surface was churned up, as if it were a delta cut by myriad streams – except this landscape had not been formed by a great river, but by something more akin to a searing biting acid that ate up the natural rock and dirt and spewed back the vileness before them. In their few strides over the knoll, blood red hardpan cracked under their feet to reveal still more tormented ground.
She said: ‘I will admit that it is intimidating.’
‘Please, take a close look at what is poking out of the ground immediately to the north of my right foot.’
The aides, now red in the face at the unwanted attention, knelt down to peer at the ground.
‘Mayhap it’s bone.’
‘What kind of bone?’
She rooted in the hard-baked crust using her powerful curved steel needle, to discover an eye socket. ‘A skull.’
‘And immediately adjacent to the skull, there is something shining, is there not?’
She poked again. ‘Could be a battle helmet.’
‘So, we are confronted by an intimidating landscape in which we discover a skull bearing a battle helmet. What might that suggest to you?’
‘This ground might have been the site of fighting, likely long ago.’
‘I agree. Now, assuming that the disturbing patterns and appearances in the landscape might have something to do with that skirmish, long ago, what other conclusion might we draw?’
The aides climbed back onto her feet, rubbing the dirt from her hands and knees, then wiped the needle clean on her coarse green skirt before carrying out a long and careful perusal of the landscape. Many eyes were now upon her, and upon her confrontation with the Mage Lord.
‘Mayhap it’s an ancient battlefield, Mage Lord.’
‘Now, do you understand why I need to inspect it from on high?’
‘I am sorry for doubting your judgement. I can now see why the ground from the air might interest you with its violent history. Yet even so, is not such a history predictable this close to the Tyrant’s lair?’
‘With the help of the Gargs, I have been taking a careful note of distance. We are now about three quarters of the way between the fortress we destroyed – which we believed to be the first of three fosses guarding Ghork Mega – and the city itself. If we regard the third fosse as the walls of the city, then you would expect to find a second fosse somewhere between the two. Is my thinking making sense to you?’
‘It is not. No doubt you will enlighten me.’
Alan laughed: this aide was as stubborn as Qwenqwo. ‘Right! Let us accept the advice of the Garg Prince, who, with his fellow scouts, tells us that the walls of Ghork Mega are visible from high in the air. They have seen no sign of a defensive wall or fortification between where we are and the city walls. Now is that something to trouble your logic?’
‘Mage Lord, I am a seamstress and leather expert. I am no strategist.’
‘We are standing at a point between this position and the city where a second defensive fosse should confront us. But instead, we find what you quite rightly describe as an intimidating landscape.’
The redoubtable face creased with the effort of concentration, but still the eyes did not widen with enlightenment. ‘I can see why you might be confused upon discovering that the second fosse is missing, but I don’t see what you would hope to discover when lifted aloft that you could not readily come across through walking over the ground.’
‘I fear a trap.’
‘A trap?’
‘We know that our enemy is exceedingly cunning. I worry that we have not found the second fosse. The obstacles he placed in front of us have often taken us by surprise. This close to his capital city we need to be cautious. I need to take a good hard look at this intimidating landscape with this third eye – the oraculum you see in my brow – before I would risk a single Shee. Do you understand now why I must be taken aloft?’
At last he saw understanding begin to dawn in her eyes. ‘Mage Lord, I begin to see – and what I now see frightens me.’
‘I’m beginning to frighten myself through talking about it. Perhaps it is not a bad thing to experience fear. But first you need to complete my harness – I need to examine the land ahead from on high above our present position. I must scrutinise every league from here to the gates of Ghork Mega.’
As they threaded the straps under his crotch, then fastened them to the harness that went around his waist, and to the further supports that went under his armpits, he stared ahead to where a variety of sand devils raised clouds of dust amid the dunes and scrub that stretched ahead for mile after mile.
‘You sure you want to do this?’ Qwenqwo’s brow was creased by concern.
‘I have no other option.’
*
Alan dangled from his harness high in the cool air, made to feel slightly dizzy as the hovering team of Gargs holding him up were caught in the changeable and blustery breezes. Iyezzz had formed a protective vee north of him, the prince, as always, taking the most dangerous position at the apex of the vee. From this height, the individual Shee and even the onkkh spread over several square miles of parched ground below were reduced to the size of ants. Alan followed the direction of the vee and saw the walls for the first time. There, hazy in the pallid blue distance, was the
ir target: Ghork Mega. Even from this distance Alan could make out the broad outlines of the city, which occupied an entire hill overlooking what was probably a gigantic harbour. He shivered in grudging acknowledgement, not only of the menacing size of it, but also of the ethereal beauty of its silhouette with its hundreds of towers and minarets. The distance, according to Iyezzz, was no more than forty miles – thirteen leagues or so as the Gargs calculated it – to its enormous southern gate, set into walls said to be two hundred feet high. Iyezzz was right – just three days’ march . . .
We should not tarry . . .
He sensed Iyezzz’s impatience to complete this survey. Who knew what the Tyrant might launch against them? He also sensed Kate’s anxiety down there amongst the ants.
There were elements of the landscape that gave Alan the heebie jeebies; shapes poking through the tough sprouting grass and desert scrub that suggested . . . threat, unknown menace? The land certainly bore the scars of what might have been previous battles. He switched to the vantage of the ruby oraculum in his brow. What he saw puzzled him. The landscape was pretty much the same, but the air over it looked different. The hackles on his neck rose. He opened his eyes to reappraise it anew.
There was something important going on, but he couldn’t quite make out what it was.
He thought of Kate. He signalled her mind-to-mind:
Kate appraised it with him. She said:
The blood red cloud had a wispy tentacle reaching from it into the sky, and if you followed it, the blood red glare filled the entire sky. Even as they looked in a mixture of bewilderment and fear, a tentacle of the cloud began to waver in Alan’s direction.
Alan sent his thoughts mind-to-mind to Iyezzz.
*
Heading back to solid ground, Alan closed his eyes to try to clear his mind, but the blood red horror penetrated his mind through the oraculum. He counted the moments as his Garg helpers swooped down to dump him, knees buckling at the sudden shock, before a startled Qwenqwo, Kyra, Kate and Bétaald.
He accepted the Spear of Lug from Qwenqwo. ‘I reckon we may be heading into great danger.’ He turned to the puzzled Kyra and Bétaald. ‘Please trust me. Have the army retreat for several miles.’
The Kyra was sceptical. ‘Retreat?’
‘Yes – and immediately, Ainé. But, if you wouldn’t mind, I want you and Bétaald to remain. We’ll need a hundred or so aides with shovels, or whatever they need to dig the stony ground. I also want Qwenqwo, Kate, Magtokk and Mo to stay.’
The Kyra said: ‘You want the aides to dig?’
‘The arid landscape is an illusion. This entire hinterland between here and the city is a graveyard. That much I have already figured. We need to know who, or what, are buried here.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘I believe we are looking at the second fosse.’
The Kyra stared at him, eyes unblinking.
Bétaald placed a cautioning hand on her shoulder. Then she confronted Alan. ‘What do you suspect, Mage Lord?’
Alan stared for a second into the amber eyes of a panther. ‘I sense a malignant entity out there, an entity that inhabits the entire landscape between here and the city. It permeates everything, from the ground to the sky. I sensed it, and so did Kate. Our combined instincts tell us that it is exceedingly dangerous – some kind of guardian.’
‘A guardian?’
‘A formless enemy, with no more substance than a mist or a vapour.’
Bétaald nodded to the Kyra. ‘We shall instruct the aides to dig.’
Even as the Shee shepherded the army backwards, Alan was marking out a broad target area, perhaps a hundred feet square. He instructed the aides to remove the dirt and surface rock to see what lay beneath.
They all watched, nervously, as the aides got to work. It took the remainder of the day for the surface layers to be cleared from the square. As the sun approached the western horizon the observers were increasingly shocked into silence. They were gazing on the timeworn bones of warriors, who lay as they had fallen, in jumbled disarray. The varied armour and weapons suggested many different armies had come here at different times over the aeons. The ground was so dense with their bones that their accumulation made up the bedrock.
Ainé was the first to speak. ‘So many!’
‘Yeah,’ Alan nodded. ‘Every army that ever marched against the Tyrant and made it this close to his city.’
Bétaald said: ‘The graveyard must run to the very gates.’
The Kyra spoke bluntly: ‘Had we marched on, this close to our destination, our bones would have joined the others.’
Alan felt Kate’s hand close on his. He said: ‘Is there nothing known about this terrible place, no word from history?’
‘There are tales,’ Bétaald spoke. ‘Many, now that I reflect on it, that tell of wars and annihilations here in the Wastelands. But we just accepted that there would have been wars aplenty as the Tyrant gained supremacy.’
Darkness fell and they retired to join the main army. Alan joined the others in sitting cross-legged on the sandy ground and welcomed the advice of his many friends. ‘I don’t know what we face, but I could see no other defences between here and the city walls. The Tyrant is far too clever to allow an army to just walk up to the walls of Ghork Mega. We all anticipated a second fosse. I’m certain now that this is the fosse, even though it is not a barrier of walls and fortifications.’
The Kyra, who was sitting opposite Alan said: ‘Important as this observation is, we cannot tarry in our attempt to counter the danger; the attack upon the city from the sea is imminent. We must support this with a simultaneous attack from the land.’
Bétaald asked Alan: ‘What did you mean when you called this the second fosse? What is it you really sensed out there, Mage Lord?’
‘Great malice, something very similar to what I recall from the Battle of Ossierel.’
‘A Legun incarnate?’
‘It was the feeling I had when we faced that monster, but this doesn’t really look the same as what we saw at Ossierel; that Legun had a skull-like face and had a human shape, even if it was gigantic.’
Ainé growled a tiger’s growl. She spoke in the soft purring voice the Kyra employed when seriously threatened. ‘A Septemvile.’
Alan hesitated. The term was familiar but he had no real understanding of what it meant. ‘Your mother-sister talked of this with me just before the Battle of Ossierel.’
‘My mother-sister spoke to you of the Tyrant’s inner circle?’
He had to stop and think before he answered her. ‘Yes, she did.’
‘Seven Leguns.’
He struggled to remember circumstances that had been similarly stressful. ‘Yes, she tried to explain the Leguns to me, but I didn’t altogether understand. Can you explain them further?’
‘You have already encountered their leader?’
Alan hesitated a second time. He recalled a monstrous creature called the Captain, which had all but exterminated them at Ossierel.
‘Are you saying what I saw here in the ground between us and the city, and what I sensed in the air, was a Legun?’
‘Legend has it that there are seven Leguns known as the Septemviles, which guard the Tyrant and his dominions. The Captain was f
amiliar to my mother-sister and her mother-sister in turn – my grandmother-sister. He destroyed my grandmother-sister before my mother-sister’s eyes in the great arena at Ghork Mega. Legend suggests that there are six others named for the malice they bear. But it may be relevant to our situation that one is said to be formless, or to take the shape of a mist, or shadow, capable of mimicking a natural feature in a landscape, including defensive walls. It kills through suffocation or through poisoning. It is known as Earthbane.’
Alan felt decidedly out of his comfort zone. He stared at the Kyra, then he turned to Kate, who was nodding. She said: ‘Should we expect to encounter more of them in our attack upon Ghork Mega?’
The Kyra looked at Bétaald, who nodded.
Alan muttered, ‘A Legun known as Earthbane. That’s what we are facing?’
‘It would make sense. This Septemvile might well assume the form of the second fosse of the Tyrant’s capital.’
He said: ‘What else do you know about this Earthbane?’
‘It is said to bide its time, becoming one with the landscape in which it hides. It is formless, much as you described. It is capable of waiting for centuries, even millennia, existing as an invisible cloud. Yet, when it manifests it can destroy an entire army. It kills by poison. It is said to be impossible to rescue a victim once he or she is caught in its embrace. Contact with it is likely to spread the poison until all are destroyed.’
Alan looked through his oraculum at the treacherous quagmire ahead, now fading into the dark of night. There was a potent malice in the poisoned ground and in the shifting mists. ‘Do the legends tell us how we can defeat it?’
‘In legend it has never been defeated.’
A Foundling
The Return of the Arinn Page 13