by Simon Hawke
“Well, you have had your first,” said Sorak. “How does it feel?”
Korahna did not reply at once. When she finally spoke, it was in a soft, contemplative tone. “It was, of course, nothing like what I had dreamt of when I was younger. I had dreamt of adventure without the harsh realities. I had imagined traveling across the desert, but I had not added the sweltering heat to my imaginings, nor the horrible feeling of thirst, nor the aching muscles from hours upon hours of unaccustomed riding. I had no way of knowing what it would be like to fear being attacked by predators… either animal or human. And I could never have imagined that I could be treated as Torian had treated me.”
Neither Sorak nor Ryana spoke, waiting for her to continue.
“He had reduced me to something less than human,” she said after a moment. “I was merely a means to an end, a thing for him to possess and use to accomplish his aims. And when he called me his property… I think that it was only then that I realized just what I was to him, and all my outrage came bursting forth.” She looked at Ryana. “I was such a fool. I do not know what came over me.”
Ryana nodded. “Sometimes it happens that way, when a person is pushed far enough.”
Korahna looked away, out over the barrens once again. “When he plunged his sword into himself… I actually enjoyed it. It felt good. It made me feel so vindicated, so alive…” Her voice trailed off. She took a deep breath and expelled it heavily and shook her head. “What sort of person that does that make me?”
“A normal person,” Sorak said, but Ryana realized it wasn’t Sorak. The voice still sounded the same, but she knew him well enough to recognize the Guardian in the subtle changes only she could notice. And then, suddenly, she realized that Korahna would notice them as well because of their shared commonality of experience induced by Kether.
“Guardian?” Korahna said, proving what Ryana had suspected.
“Yes.”
“We have never met, have we?”
“I have known you, through Sorak,” said the Guardian. “But you have not known me.”
“Why, wise Guardian?” Korahna asked. “Why?
How can it be normal to feel such passion for someone’s death?”
“Because to a normal person, killing is an act of passion,” the Guardian replied. “Either that, or an act of desperation, of self-defense. Torian had denied you that which you, like all people, hold most dear and central to the very essence of your being—your own identity. Your needs and your desires. He denied you your free will. And you also knew that he would have killed us, if he could.”
“But he could not,” Korahna said. “When he realized that, he knew he could not win.”
“He made his choice,” the Guardian replied. “He could take a life, even his own, and not feel anything. And that is why you, Korahna, are a normal person and Torian was not. What you are feeling now, these are all things a normal person feels. If you did not feel any of these things, then you would be right to be concerned about what sort of person you had become. Except that, if you were such a person, such thoughts would not occur to you, for you would no longer have a conscience.”
Korahna looked down at the ground. When she Joked back up, there were tears in her eyes. “Thank you, Guardian,” she said, softly. “Thank you for helping me understand.”
That night, they made camp in the mountains and It a fire and slept. As Ryana felt weariness overcome her, she saw Sorak duck under and the Ranger came to the fore. He stood and walked off into the darkness without a word, moving as silently as a mountain cat. With a sigh of resignation, Ryana sat up and took her sword, holding it across her lap while she waited for the Ranger to complete his hunt and return. She gazed at Korahna as she slept, quietly and soundly.
“Rest well, sister,” she murmured, under her breath. “Rest well. The healing has begun.”
Chapter Nine
The Barrier Mountains were a crescent-shaped range, bowed out to the northwest, with the tips of the crescent pointing east and south. At the southernmost end of the mountain range, near the lower tip of the crescent, stood the city of Gulg. At the opposite end of the crescent, separated from Gulg by the wide and verdant valley sheltered between the opposite ends of the range, was the city of Nibenay. From where Sorak stood, on the crest near the upper end of the range, he could see the city down below. The city of Gulg was barely visible in the distance, shrouded in the early morning mist at the far end of the valley.
The two cities were located in one of the few areas of Athas that were still green. The region was sustained by runoff from the mountains and by underground springs that bubbled to the surface, most located near Nibenay. According to The Wanderer’s Journal, which Sorak had studied while they camped in the mountains, Gulg was not so much a city as a large settlement of hunter-gatherers who depended on the forests of the barrier Mountains for their sustenance.
The ruler, or oba, of Gulg was the sorcerer-queen, Lalali-Puy, whose name meant “forest goddess” in the language of her people. She enjoyed the full support of her rather primitive subjects, who worshipped her as if she were a deity. The oba resided in what was perhaps the most unusual palace on Athas, one that was constructed high up in the limbs of an ancient and gigantic agafari tree. Her templars lived in huts constructed in the lower limbs of that same tree.
The palace, wrote the Wanderer, was small, but magnificent—simple, and yet beautiful, reflecting the strong bond the residents of Gulg felt with the trees of the forest. Though she was a defiler, the oba was the closest of all Athasian rulers to the life path of a druid. However, it was a path she had perverted through her pursuit of power in the defiler arts.
Most of the residents of Gulg lived in small, circular thatched huts around the gigantic agafari tree where their queen made her home. Their simple dwellings were protected by a defensive “wall” that was, in reality, a huge hedge of thorny trees planted so close together that not even a halfling could squeeze through without being cut to ribbons. For the most part, the people of Gulg were savage, tribal peasants who hunted in the forests of the mountains and turned over all their game to the oba, who then distributed the food to her simple people through her templars.
The traders of the merchant guilds had to deal with the templars rather than directly with the people, and for this reason: Torian’s father, one of the queen’s templars, had forged a powerful alliance with the House of Ankhor. He had also raised a son in the warrior tradition of the judaga, the warrior headhunters of Gulg, fierce fighters and deadly archers whose poisoned darts could kill by the slightest scratch. Small wonder, Sorak thought, that Torian had felt so little compassion or regard for human life.
Nibenay, on the other hand, was a more conventional city, at least in the sense that it had buildings made of wood and stone. The architecture of Nibenay, however, was anything but conventional. Sorak had been fascinated by the Wanderer’s description of the stone carvings that covered almost every inch of every building in Nibenay. The people of the city were artisans and stonemasons, and justifiably proud of their skills, which they used to embellish buildings with intricate designs and scenes. Some depicted the buildings’ owners or the ancestors of the owners, others showed ritual dances, still more displayed carvings of beasts and monsters executed in painstaking detail, as if to placate such creatures and their voracious appetites.
The people of Nibenay had a much more diverse economy than the people of Gulg, who depended on trade with the merchant houses for all their goods. Aside from the small statues, idols, busts, and building decorations carved by the city’s stonemasons, for which there was much demand, the city had an agricultural economy, chiefly centered around rice fields irrigated by springs under the nobility’s control. But most of all, Nibenay was known for its production of weapons, particularly those fashioned from dense agafari wood, which was almost as hard and durable as bronze.
Agafari trees were slow growing and drought resistant, but when irrigated or when planted in the mountain
s, where there was a greater supply of water, they grew thicker and faster. War clubs made from agafari wood were capable of bursting almost any type of armor, and agafari spears and fighting staves were incredibly strong, despite their slenderness. They would resist blows from obsidian swords and even the extremely rare iron weapons could do little more than nick them. Agafari wood simply did not break.
As a result, it was difficult to work, and it took skilled craftsmen to make weapons from the wood. Entire teams of foresters sometimes took days to fell a single tree, working with stone spades and axes and controlled burning of the root system. Crafting weapons from agafari wood required special tools and a forge for carefully controlled tempering. A longbow made from agafari wood was not only difficult to draw, but if an archer possessed the necessary strength, it was capable of launching arrows with such force that armor would be penetrated at a distance of fifty yards. The craftsmen of Nibenay were justifiably famous for their agafari weapons, and the demand for them among the merchant guilds was high. There lay the crux of the rivalry between Gulg and Nibenay.
The weapons makers of Nibenay harvested the agafari trees growing in the Crescent Forest, but the hunter-gatherers of Gulg depended on them for their livelihood. The agafari forests sheltered game that fed the city of Gulg, and beneath the spreading canopies of the agafari trees grew kola bushes and peppet shrubs and other vegetation that not only helped feed the citizens of Gulg, but provided them a spice and herb trade. For more years than anyone could count, bitter rivalry had existed between the two cities, one that had frequently escalated into war over the available natural resources.
“Why do not the people of Nibenay simply plant new agafari trees from seedlings for the ones that they cut down?” Sorak had asked Korahna.
“They do,” the princess replied, “but they plant them in groves surrounding the city, where they can easily be irrigated by the springs. They do not bother to replant what they cut down in the Crescent Forest because irrigating those trees would not be practical, and it would require more time and effort to keep bringing the wood down from the slopes of the foothills. Then, too, the templars, who direct these operations, believe that depriving Gulg of its resources over time will weaken the city and make it more vulnerable to attack, or else render it completely dependent on Nibenay, which would require their capitulation.”
“And in the meantime, the Crescent Forest is destroyed,” Ryana said, “and along with it, the life cycle of the plants and animals supported by the forest.”
“True.” Korahna nodded. “As a girl, I had never even thought of such things, and I did not even begin to understand them until I started to study the preserver writings in secret and contacted the Veiled Alliance. The people of Nibenay fail to understand that it is not only the people of Gulg who will be hurt by this cruel practice, but themselves, as well. And the templars, if they know, do not seem to care. It is one of the; things I hope, somehow, to change one day.”
“That will mean aligning yourself against your father,” said Ryana.
“I have already done that,” said Korahna. “Once I had taken the preserver vow, I turned my back on him forever.”
“And incurred his enmity,” said Sorak. “If he even knows,” Korahna said. “Nibenay cares less and less for the affairs of his family, much less his kingdom. Do you know that I have never even seen him?”
“Never?” said Ryana with amazement. “Your own father?”
“Not even once,” Korahna said. “If he ever gazed at me or held me when I was an infant, I have no memory of it. His subjects never see him, either. For all my life, he has remained cloistered within the central portion of the palace, where no one save the senior templars ever sets foot. As long as I have lived, few of his many wives have ever even laid eyes on him.”
“How many wives does he have?” Ryana asked. “All the templars are his wives,” Korahna said. “Or else they are his daughters. The templars of Nibenay are all female, and the senior templars are the oldest of his wives. It is considered a great honor to be made a senior templar. One must first serve within the sacred ranks for a minimum of twenty-five years, then be elected to the office based on merit, which is determined by the other senior templars. Vacancies occur only upon death, and the oath is said to be most arduous. Some have even died in the administering of it.”
“Do you know why it is that you have never seen your father?” Sorak asked.
Korahna shook her head. “I have often wondered, but the few times I have asked, I have been told that it was not for me to question such things.”
“You have never seen him for the same reason his subjects never see him,” Sorak said, “because the Shadow King is no longer a man. It would repel the eye to look upon him now.”
“What do you mean?” Korahna asked.
“He has embarked upon the path of dragon metamorphosis,” said Sorak.
“My father?” said Korahna.
“All of the remaining sorcerer-kings are already at some stage of the dragon metamorphosis,” said Sorak. “Each of them fears the others will complete the transformation first, so they are expending all their efforts on the long and arduous spells involved.”
“I never knew,” Korahna said, a stricken expression on her face. “Not even my friends in the Veiled Alliance told me.”
“They probably sought to spare your feelings,” said Ryana.
“My own father,” said Korahna in a hollow voice. “It was bad enough when I realized what it meant to be a defiler, but to think that he is in the process of becoming a creature that is the foulest and most evil thing to ever walk this blighted world…” She shook her head. “I curse the day that I was born into such a pestilential kinship.”
“Now, perhaps, you can understand why the Sage takes such pains to conceal his whereabouts,” Ryana “There is only one creature that can stand up to a dragon, and that is an avangion. Each of the remaining sorcerer-kings would give almost anything to learn the Sage’s hiding place, for he represents the greatest threat to their power.”
“And if they can succeed in eliminating him,” said Sorak, “then there will be nothing to stop them. They will complete their transformations, and then they will turn on one another.”
“Then they will all destroy each other,” said Korahna.
“Perhaps,” said Sorak. “But in the end, it is likely that one shall triumph. However, by that time, Athas will be reduced to a blasted, lifeless piece of rock.”
“They must be stopped,” said Korahna.
“The Sage is the only one who can stand a chance to do that,” said Ryana, “unless, somehow, the dragons can be killed before they are able to complete their transformations.”
“I will do everything I can to help,” Korahna said.
“You shall soon have that chance,” said Sorak, looking down toward Nibenay.
* * *
They entered the city by its main gate, two giant, stone columns set into the walls, carved in deep relief with the intertwining figures of serpents and fire drakes. The bored-looking half-giant guards passed them through without comment and without bothering to search them. There was a steady stream of people passing in and out, and in Nibenay, as in most cities of Athas, everyone went armed. The sight of a sword and a knife or two excited no comment. Had they known that the three bedraggled-looking pilgrims carried metal swords, the guards might have been much more interested, but the day was hot and they could not be bothered to examine everybody passing through the gates. Troublemakers soon found more than they had bargained for within the city walls. The templars did not tolerate violations of the city’s laws, and the half-giants who composed the city’s guard and army were usually more than enough to deal with any criminal.
The first thing they did was make their way to the city’s central marketplace, where they sold their kanks. Korahna would remain in Nibenay, and Sorak and Ryana had no idea how long they would be staying. When it came time to leave, they could either purchase kanks or book p
assage with a caravan, or even go on foot, as they had done before. There was little point in expending their limited resources by stabling the kanks. Sorak’s practiced negotiation, aided by the Guardian’s psionic powers, enabled them to get a good price for the kanks, and the first of the proceeds bought them a good meal in one of the city’s taverns.
Korahna did not draw any curious glances. Since she had spent most of her life within the walls of the palace compound, none of the citizens of Nibenay could have known her by sight, save for those she had met in the Alliance, and they never would have recognized her. She looked nothing like a princess now.
Attired in the too-large clothing taken from the mercenaries and dusty from their journey, she looked more like a desert herder than a scion of the royal house of Nibenay. Her long blond hair hung lank and loose and tangled, her face was begrimed, her hands were dirty and now callused, her once-long fingernails bitten short, and she had lost weight on the journey. She now looked lean and hard, and there was something in her face that had not been there before—a look of experience.
What curious looks they received were due less to her appearance than to that of Sorak and Ryana. Unlike most villichi, Ryana’s hair was silvery white rather than red, and though she lacked the unnatural elongation of the limbs that characterized villichi, she was unusually tall for a woman. Her height and coloring, together with her lean muscularity, made her an imposing figure.
Sorak was even more uncommon looking. The people of Nibenay had never seen an elfling before. At first glance, Sorak looked human, but still different, somehow. Many of those they passed on the streets turned to stare at him without quite knowing why. Those who were more observant might have noticed his pointed ears when the breeze blew his hair back, or else they might have marked the unusual, elven angularity of his features, or the lustrous thickness of his hair, like a halfling’s mane. They might have noted that he, too, was tall, though perhaps not unusually so for a human. But even the least observant of them, if they looked into his face, could not have failed to note his eyes, deeply sunken, and with a gaze so direct and penetrating that most people were forced to look away.