Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 4 Darkbridge

by Adam Corby

  While the refugees were thus occupied, a man appeared in the brass doorway, unnoticed and alone. He wore the padded linen tunic some guardsmen wore underneath their armor, but he was himself unarmed. He was breathing heavily, sweat streaming down his broad face, traces of bloodstains upon his legs. He looked at the Tarendahardilites with a tormented look, seeming not to understand their murmuring. Quietly Kuln-Holn made his way through the crowd.

  He stopped in front of the tent of the wounded.

  There two men lay side by side. They were both dead now, but in their lives had burst with life. They were so great of girth that the weary corpse-bearers had not the strength to shoulder their bodies across the mountain. Or perhaps it was that Berowne had been so loved by all that they dared not drop him into the muck; while the body and features of Gundoen were a horror even corpse-bearers feared touch.

  Kuln-Holn stood over the two corpses. He looked first upon Berowne, who had treated him with humor and honor, and with whom he had gone under the earth to spy upon the tribesmen. Then he looked on Gundoen. Gundoen had always mocked Kuln-Holn, calling him ‘Little Prophet’ and worse names. Once Gundoen had almost killed Kuln-Holn. But he had been his chief.

  Kuln-Holn descended to the slaves’ quarters. She was waiting for him there, sitting beside the bed, her head buried in her hands.

  ‘Salizh, I am back,’ Kuln-Holn said.

  The young woman looked up. She gazed with wonder at the form of her husband, then put her arms about him and wept.

  ‘I believed I would never see you again.’ Hungrily she clasped his legs and pressed her cheek against the stained end of the tunic. On the bed beside her, little Bornin cooed.

  Kuln-Holn looked about the cavernous hall. All his dreams of belonging here, of family and friends, had fled like hearth-smoke. In the end, it was not enough that he was accepted here, that he wore the armor of a guardsman, that he had taken a wife who had borne a child and was now burdened with another. Kuln-Holn was a tribesman of the far North. He was of Gundoen’s tribe.

  First in his pride Kuln-Holn had brought about the deaths of his first wife and newborn son; then in his piety he had almost made an outcast of his daughter; then in his fury he had slain his daughter’s husband on the steps of the Brown Temple when High Town had fallen. Now he had killed his chief.

  Was it merciful Goddess, he wondered, or cruel God, who had driven him to this?

  A commotion rose at the far end of the hall.

  ‘But it is true, I tell you! And now they say we should open all the storing-halls and prepare a great feast of thanksgiving. Cakes and sweet-pies are to be baked for all, and all the holy offerings for Goddess are to be made!’

  Salizh looked at Kuln-Holn through her tears. ‘Oh, husband – can it be true?’

  When the rumors of Gundoen’s torture reached him, Kuln-Holn had hidden here and clung to little Bornin; but when that scream entered even these halls, Kuln-Holn had been impelled to go up look through the kitchen doors into the little yard. He had been in time to see the guardsmen bear down a huge thing covered by a darkly stained cloak. Kuln-Holn had seen the Empress departing the scene. She had commanded the thing. All the slaves said so.

  Kuln-Holn stroked Salizh’s hair. The women of his tribe did not have such fine hair. She was a stranger to him, this woman. What did she know but this Palace where she had been born, the latest in a long line of Southron slaves?

  ‘Salizh,’ he said. ‘Salizh, I am going.’

  Her face grew pale. ‘Is the battle not over?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘That is over.’

  ‘Then that is well, Kuln-Holn. Now I can let you go freely, for I will be sure to see you again. I will save you things from the feast, and a place to sit beside me. Who do you go to see? Is it her majesty again?’

  ‘No,’ he said, pulling away from her, tearing apart the embrace. ‘It is my master.’

  * * *

  Two burly slaves stood before the doors to the chambers of Ara-Karn. ‘We were commanded to keep watch here by the Empress herself,’ they said. ‘We were to see that Father Ennius does not leave. But why her majesty ordered it, that we do not know.’

  ‘Did she say that he was to have no guests?’ Kuln-Holn asked. ‘You know me. I come from the fighting on the Iron Gate; I have no weapons or strength. I was his servant once. We share the same fate. Let me in.’

  The men looked each other in the eye. ‘And what word of the battle, Iocantris?’ asked one. They had not heard.

  Kuln-Holn passed within. ‘Bad,’ he answered, and shut the door behind him.

  The hangings were drawn across the windows. No lamps burned to dispel the gloom. Kuln-Holn could make nothing out. ‘Lord,’ he called out, in his own tongue, ‘It’s me.’

  He heard the sound of hangings pulled to one side, or perhaps it was a chuckle. ‘Enter then and be welcome, Kuln-Holn.’

  ‘Lord,’ said Kuln-Holn, not moving, ‘Gundoen is dead.’

  There was a gentleness unheard-of in the master’s voice as he answered, ‘I know.’

  ‘Lord, it was I who killed him.’

  The broad hangings of the balcony pulled apart, so that a bright serpentine line blazed into the chambers. Ara-Karn stepped through that line. He was dressed in a dark green hunting tunic of the style of the civilized folk of the North.

  Kuln-Holn beheld once more, like a bad dream he could not shake, the death-barge in the waters of the Ocean of the Dead, the wrestling bodies in the sandy clearing in the midst of his village, the Darkbeast falling to the earth. He saw the burning waste they made of Gerso, he saw the falls of Ancha and Eliorite and Carftain. He saw his master’s face, orange against a heap of flaming logs; he saw Berrin’s corpse bent in a ball at his feet; he saw the Empress Allissál, the most beautiful, tearing petals from a dead blossom; he saw the desecrated corpse of Gundoen.

  ‘Lord,’ he said, unable to hold out anguish from his voice, ‘Why?’

  The dark visage of Ara-Karn nodded. ‘You wish for release, Kuln-Holn, and relief from your pain. I cannot give you those with words.’

  A shaking had taken hold of Kuln-Holn’s body. ‘Was it,’ he whispered, ‘was it the gods’ intentions?’

  ‘There are no gods, Kuln-Holn. Only hateful little mortals of no worth whatsoever, fleeing their own shadows. Had there been gods – had there been such a thing as divine retribution – then surely I should have encountered it by now. Instead, what do you see? I am a monster, and I rule the lands you know. What god would allow that, Kuln-Holn?’

  ‘But you are a god!’ cried Kuln-Holn.

  ‘No, Kuln-Holn, I am no god. I am only a wretched barge-robber. That was what Gundoen called me. He did not know that it was from my own barge that I robbed. And if those people on the grounds below discover who I truly am, do you not imagine their suffering and confusion would be even worse than your own? – But I say too much.’

  Quietly he passed to a table, and poured from a ewer some liquid into a little silver cup. He offered the cup to Kuln-Holn.

  ‘Drink, Kuln-Holn,’ he said. His voice was gentler than any Kuln-Holn had ever known. ‘Drink of those waters wherefrom you rescued me. It is this you came to find.’

  Kuln-Holn took the cup into his hand. There was water in the cup, sweet-smelling as though sprinkled with crushed blossoms. Kuln-Holn looked up into the eyes of Ara-Karn, the Fist of God, the Messenger of Goddess. And he was comforted. What he saw within those black, green, glittering stones surely went beyond the mortal.

  Kuln-Holn brought the cup to his lips and drank. He had not known how great a thirst he had until that moment. Again he found the eyes of his master; then all about him darkened and he seemed to step back into a time twenty years past.

  He heard the wash of his boat in the water, and smelled the brine all about him. Never had he known so marvelous a catch. A strong swell rocked the little boat in the wind, and Kuln-Holn was fearful that the storm they had spoken of would break and drown him. He slipped on some of the f
ish and fell on them as on a bed. Then he looked above him and laughed.

  The storm-clouds were breaking. There would be no storm. This great catch would make Kuln-Holn rich, and his luck would make him respected in the counsels of the tribe. He might even have some say as to who should be the next chief, whether the young hunter Gundoen or some other. He felt a strange peace descend upon him. ‘I give you thanks,’ he prayed to Her.

  Slowly his eyes closed. A wave of warmth broke over him. He thought of all the troubles of his life, and they were no more than fevered dreams.

  ‘And still,’ he heard himself ask, ‘what else could I have done?’ and an answer came in deep tones, of a voice familiar but never heard before, not in that side of the world.

  ‘Nothing else,’ the voice said.

  So at last the heart of Kuln-Holn knew contentment, and he let the life pass from his body and flit across the swells toward the beckoning bright horizon, and the blessed World Beyond.

  ‘Not for nothing are they named alzhaale.’

  Above the body stood the master, dark against the hangings. He stooped and unbent Kuln-Holn’s fingers from his shoes. As if by afterthought he rearranged the limbs of the body into the proper order, after the custom of the far North.

  ‘Sail well, Little Doughty,’ whispered Ara-Karn. ‘I told you once I had no pity, but now I have found some to spare you. But your father should have taught you, that though blown leaves may be portents, they are not the ones who summon and rule the storms of winter.’

  He stepped out on the balcony and took up again his clamps. Once more he set them to bite and hold the cracks between the stones. Crab-wise he climbed across the face of the Palace, with only the winds for his companions – even the gerlins were all feasting on the bodies at the foot of the Iron Gate.

  Ara-Karn ascended the base of the White Tower, a small figure mounting up the sky. He passed the windows of the lower levels and came round to the brightward curve and the topmost level. From that vantage-point all the Citadel could be seen as if from overhead, from the inner courtyards to the black cowl and the encampment, where rose the laughter of rejoicing. Above him the golden Disk of Goddess burned in the fine autumnal sky.

  Ara-Karn put his hands to either side of the narrow opening over his head and pulled himself up and in.

  Beyond the wall, the window opened into a large, gloomy, hive-like chamber. The window broke the wall just below the painted, domed ceiling; from there a series of steep stone steps ran into a well of shadow. Ara-Karn sat for a moment on the topmost step, smoothing his hair and beard. Then he stepped down into the room.

  A great canopied bed was upraised in the room. Beyond it the room opened on a small raised chamber. In this chamber were two couches, a serving-stand, and a series of niches. In one niche was a ewer of drinking water, refilled at the beginning of every sleep.

  On his way out, the dark figure of the intruder paused at the foot of the great bed. Beyond the saffron canopy, her nakedness only half-concealed by the silken bedclothes, lay the Empress Allissál. Lying there, her brow slightly troubled as if by dreams, she was surely lovelier by far than Qhelvin of Sorne had ever imagined.

  ‘Sleep on, sleep well,’ the intruder murmured. ‘I am sorry to have used you so, but my destiny commands that I sit once more in the throne of my ancestors; and only my vengeance, like blood, bread and breath, has sustained me. When you wake all will be done, you will remember and be mine again. Our destinies will be one. Until then I kiss you, Alastaphele.’

  When he passed through the narrow deep window again, he poured the water into the thirsty winds, and threw the ewer after it.

  * * *

  In the hive-like dimplace the Empress Allissál slept on. But before the foot of the bed stood the barbarian Gundoen, naked, bloody, his body blackened with mutilations. He gestured at her and roared, ‘Here she is! Here!’

  Then Allissál looked down into the Palace and saw, rising through all the many stories, spilling from chamber to chamber, a wash of thick black water engulfing all it touched. Story by story the black tide rose, until it oozed into the White Tower and swirled around the stairs, faster as it rose, until it spilled against the outer doors of her dimplace – and she woke in terror.

  * * *

  Now, perhaps an hour after that dream had stained the couch of the Divine Queen of Tarendahardil, the lord of Rukor made his way through the fields of bodies. Above him loomed the dark walls of the Palace. He entered by way of the colonnade leading into the Imperial Hall of Justice. The high ceiling was lost in the gloom overhead; thick silence had settled like dust upon the bottom of that hall, as upon the murky bottom of the sea. Ampeánor leaned against one of the seven roof-pillars, whose base was as broad as a house.

  Before him on the inlaid floor lay some sixty corpses. The bodies lay in ordered, circular rows, the feet pointed at the dais and the heads, all of whose eyes were open, propped up on stones or on clay bowls. The light of Goddess fell mistily through the smoke outside, upon the ancient throne on the dais. The throne was carved from a single block of wood inlaid with dusky gold and shadowy silver and set with jewels of great price.

  A man sat upon that throne, a shabby old man with a gold disk on his chest. Twined round the bald, bulbous head was a crown of green and purple leaves of the sort the people awarded their favorites at festive times.

  Slowly the man raised his head off his chest and looked down on the lord of Rukor.

  ‘Dornan Ural,’ Ampeánor called across the hall, ‘do you know what has befallen us? Why are all the refugees dead? Was it some sudden pestilence, or a worse thing?’

  ‘I know,’ the old man said slowly, ‘that you have come. As I foretold. Why did you betray our city?’ The voice was cold as it rang off the stone walls. Ampeánor saw that the busts of the Emperors in the niches around the hall had been disfigured.

  ‘You went away, and our armies fell at Egland Downs. Now you return, and behold what occurs.’

  ‘Dornan Ural, what goes on here?’

  The old man cast his eyes about the hall, lovingly over his people. Gently he answered, ‘It is a trial, my lord.’

  ‘You old fool, do you not understand what this means? Our defenses have vanished. At any hour the barbarians might learn of it. Have you forgotten the secret way? It was to you that the old Emperor entrusted the secret: you told it to her majesty, who related it to me. Go about the halls, gather those who yet live, and await me by the pine-grove. I will go to the White Tower and see to the safety of the Empress.’

  Ampeánor left the hall and plunged into the dark byways of the Palace. His lonely steps rang off lightless stone walls. It was as gloomy as the Sontil. Now and again dark shapes crossed the sunlit ends of the passageways – shapes of other survivors, those who, like him, had divined in time the source of the danger. They fled from Ampeánor’s approach as if he were the enemy. Now and again he saw them. More often he stumbled over bodies stretched upon the floor.

  In the uppermost story of the Palace, the stench of corruption and disease had already begun to congregate. At the end of the long black corridor, the entrance-way to the White Tower was brightened by the light of Goddess. The doors to the Tower were shut fast, and a tall dark man stood before them. For one fleeting, maddening moment, the light fell across that man’s face.

  It was the Gerso.

  Then all at once Ampeánor grasped what it seemed to him now he had known in his heart ever since he awoke in the cave in the hill in the Sontil: that thing he had learned in those very dreams which ever since had been his torment.

  Ennius Kandi was Ara-Karn.

  ‘Traitor!’

  He drew the Raamba sword. His cry rolled down the hallway, hollow and hard as a hound’s. The man, Ara-Karn or not, Gerso or not, was gone now; Ampeánor set out after him. At the entranceway he paused, gasping and listening above the roaring of his heart. He tried the doors to the tower, but they were sealed. The sound of footsteps reached him from the stairs below. He plu
nged down after them.

  He did not see the man, but was led on by the footsteps and his own hatred, a thing so strong it must have been a gift of God. He crossed the Palace and the Black Tower into the Southern Wing. He was led to the floor of the Vapionil; he beheld his twin half-brothers where they had died amidst the others, choking amidst their final pleasure-fête. Some there might even still live. As he went through them, Ampeánor staggered. The bodies on the floor, nude, with drugged smiles still cut upon the stiffness of their dead faces, caught at his ankles and felled him.

  But the Gerso’s footsteps called.

  Ampeánor went after them, back into the Palace. Down he went into a low hall where a thousand support-pillars grew from floor to ceiling like insanely ordered trunks of a forest of stone.

  At last he found himself in the blackness of the slaves’ quarters, where he felt ahead of him with chance thrusts of the sword. In the rank, fetid odor of the dead, Ampeánor stopped long enough to lift his head and howl,

  ‘Ara-Karn, stand and face me!’

  —And it seemed to him that a voice issued from the darkness near at hand, a mocking, scornful voice he knew as well as that of his beloved; and it said to him, ‘Not yet, my lord: no, not yet!’

  Ampeánor stumbled into the kitchens. There were no sounds about him now. His enemy had gone. Blindly he felt along the walls and drew down a long, heavy torch sticky with pitch, of the sort they used to rekindle hearth-fires.

  He strode to the hearths, where he could just discern the white mounds of packed ash. He dug them open, baring dull embers to the air. The embers brightened; Ampeánor thrust the torch into their midst, twirling it until it blazed in the draught.

  He had fashioned fire in the sightless belly of the mountain. The gleams shone luridly off the long walls thick with bronze and wooden implements, showing corpses on the floor. Ampeánor raised the torch on high and traversed the passageway that led into the rock beneath the slaves’ quarters. He knew how to draw his enemy.

  The heavy door fell back clanging from his hand. Beyond it the rooms of the jailers were empty. From the hook on the wall he took down the heavy bunch of keys. He went down the passage hewn out of the stone of the mountain, down to the cell in which Berowne had told him he had left the barbarian. Loudly Ampeánor unlocked the door. He thrust in his torch.