by John F. Carr
Kalvan Kingmaker
( Kalvan - 3 )
John F. Carr
John F. Carr
Kalvan Kingmaker
PROLOGUE
Knight-Sergeant Sarmoth sighed with relief, when up ahead he saw the first Kythari watchtower. His oath brother, Longshanks, was walking behind his destrier, having rode his own pony into the ground. Steel Hooves was made of sterner horseflesh, but Sarmoth could hear his lungs laboring like a blacksmiths bellows.
"Who goes there?" asked a helmed figure from the top of the watchtower, cradling a crossbow.
Longshanks snorted, as if to say, 'Isn't it obvious we are Zarthani Knights?' After all, Kythar was a garrison town, the garrison to Tarr-Ceros, the biggest and most important of all the Orders castles and seat of the Grand Master of the Holy Order of Zarthani Knights.
"Knight-Sergeant Sarmoth of the Twelfth Lance, reporting. We need new mounts. It is urgent that we see Grand Master Soton at once!"
The guard raised the visor of his helm, revealing a youthful face just beginning to sprout a blonde fringe around the jaw. "Nomad trouble?"
Sarmoth nodded. He didn't intend to give a full report to every guard and under-officer he met.
"In that case, you can use my horse. Leave her at the Old Barley Stable on the first street north of the tannery-you can't miss the smell."
The watchguard's horse was a swaybacked old nag, which snorted and kicked at Steel Hooves approach. Sarmoth was pleased to see that his destrier took no notice of the other horse, except to nip her on the flanks. He tied a rope between the two horses and took off at a canter, with his oath brother riding behind.
Within two candles, after two more stops at a watchtower and a guard shack, they reached the outskirts of Kythar. Sarmoth was pleased to find the city so alert; other towns much closer to the nomad hordes he had passed had been lax about the threat of invasion. He knew that fools ruled their councils.
Kythar was a thriving city, bustling with commerce and industry; half a dozen war galleys were tied up at the docks and dozens of barges and riverboats swarmed the lesser wharves. Twice he saw points of Knights moving through the streets toward the towering castle, perched on a hillside, east of the city. The streets were far wider than those of Dorg, which he had visited with his father many years ago. Sarmoth suspected the broad avenues were to facilitate the movement of troops, since the city had grown up around Tarr-Ceros, not the other way around, as was usually the case.
It took six candles to reach the first barricade; twice he was questioned at the outer works, until he was provided with an escort. Sarmoth was guided across temporary wooden bridges that passed over deep trenches, and through three wooden palisades, the height of the outer walls of Tarr-Syklos! Then came the great stonewalls, eighteen to twenty rods thick, which ringed the foot of the great Tarr. These ring walls would break the heart of any nomad army, thought Sarmoth, as he was led through one gate after another.
He left his mount, escort and the watchman's nag with the Tarr sentry, with orders to have his mount taken to the castle stalls, and the guards returned to the Old Barley Stable.
Still nothing he had seen so far had prepared him for his first close-up view of Tarr-Ceros, a veritable stone mountain of a fortress, faced with white marble. A great central keep towered over the surrounding buildings like a sentry. The atmosphere was forbidding, as though the great fortress were already under siege. Knights, some fully armored, were coming and going in large numbers through the great portal. Maybe the Order was at siege, he thought, hadn't the Knights fought and lost many of their Lances in far-off Hostigos, where they defended Styphon House, against the heretical Easterners.
Sarmoth was led to a large antechamber with several long benches, holding four or five parties, including that of a yellow robed Archpriest, who was flanked by a bodyguard of Styphon's Own Guard, resplendent in their silver armor and blazing red capes. He suddenly felt shabby in his woolen pants and dusty jerkin, with only a short black tunic emblazoned with the white Holy Wheel to indicate he was one of the Brethren.
Sarmoth was given a scowl by the Archpriest, when a Knight Commander, in silvered armor every bit as shiny as the Temples guardsmen, approached and called him by name. He followed the Commander into the Great Hall, hung with banners and rich tapestries picturing the Orders great victories. Behind the Grand Master's seat was a magnificent window made of a dozen or more panes of glass, which displayed the Lydistros River and the bustling port. Sitting beneath the window, in a gilded chair that was more throne than seat, sat the Orders commander, Grand Master Soton.
Sarmoth was surprised, when the massive figure rose up from his seat to greet him, he wasn't much taller than he'd appeared seated. Grand Master Soton had a huge head and was clean-shaven but for a mustache. He was also surprised to see that Soton wore a simple tunic, from better cloth, but otherwise similar to the one he wore over his jerkin. The Grand Master's only badge of office was a massive silver chain with a gold representation of Styphons Holy Wheel the size of his fist. Sarmoth had expected raiment fit for a king; after all, the Knights protected lands larger by two than even the grandest of the Middle or Great Kingdoms.
The Grand Master indicated a chair in front of his desk, saying, "Have a seat. You've come a long ways, Sergeant Sarmoth."
Sarmoth nodded, his tongue suddenly in knots, and sat after the Grand Master.
"What news do you bring?"
The urgency behind his words broke through the temporary paralysis of Sarmoth's tongue and he began to speak. "The Mexicotal have driven the western nomads and Ruthani across the Sea of Grass to the very gates of Xiphlon. The great walled city has once again rebuffed their attempts at siege craft, and now the nomads are moving into the lower Sastragath. The Mexicotal have invested Xiphlon and the nomads have nowhere else to flee, but to the east and north. Many of the lower tribes are being pushed into our realms and the Knight Commander of Tarr-Syklos has sent me with this message, requesting additional troops."
Sarmoth removed a folded leather packet from inside his jerkin and gave it to the Grand Master. The Grand Master paused to read the document, his brows furrowing as he read. Halfway through, he rose to his feet and banged his fist on the table. "We will have to put an end to this invasion, or we will lose a century of progress!" Then he muttered some curses damning the Daemon Kalvan and the Inner Circle of Styphon's House for wasting so many of the Order's finest Knights. Sarmoth pretended he didn't hear the curses, since he was not offended: he was no lover of priests, be they for the so-called One God, Styphon, or any other god.
While the Grand Master was busy reading the message, Sarmoth studied the standards and flags hanging from the massive timbers bracing the stones walls. There were old banners, won at battles and wars, from the dawn of history. Many were now the stuff of legend. Wasn't that flag, with a cow skull on a black field, the personal banner of Erasthames The Great? Then he saw the tattered red banner, with the blue halberd-head of Hostigos. He looked in awe; this was the Daemon Kalvans banner!
"We took that from the Veterans of Hostigos at Tenabra." Soton said, as if reading his mind. Soton raised his head and looked Sarmoth in the eye. "No, it's not King Kalvans flag, but his father-in-law's, Prince Ptosphes of Hostigos. We had to cut off the banner-bearers arm to take this away!"
"The spoils of victory."
"Hard won, son. And only after, the traitor, Balthar changed sides in the middle of the battle-the old skinflint." Soton made as if to spit on the floor. Then he paused to load a corncob pipe and light it from a tinderbox. "Balthar found a fitting end at the edge of Kalvans blade, or so I hear. After Tenabra we chased Ptosphes all the way up the Syphistros Valley and into Beshta. It was a grand chase and we would have caugh
t him, too, if it hadn't been for all our allies straggling behind.
"The Hostigi breed good fighters; I'd be proud to fight by their side and include them in any host."
Sarmoth's eyes opened wide. "They're heretics!"
"Maybe. But before that they're soldiers, and damn good ones at that! We lost two Lances at Chothros Heights and another three at the Battle of Phyrax. And we could use every man jack of them against these nomads, curse and blast it!"
Soton blew out a cloud of tobacco smoke that momentarily obscured his head. "You look like a fighter not a messenger-am I right?"
"Yes, sir. Commander Sytomanes wanted someone fast and I've been called the best horseman in the Twelfth Lance."
Soton looked him over from crown to toe. "I believe you might be. Would you rather return to Tarr-Syklos, or kill some nomads?"
"Kill nomads, Sir!"
Soton gave a wide mouthed smile that showed off the yellowed-wedges of his tobacco stained teeth. "Then I'll see to it that you're transferred to the Fifteenth. You can fight by my side. I promise you more blood than you'll see in any slaughterhouse this side of Balph!"
FALL
ONE
I
Paratime Police Chief Verkan Vail watched while the trees and scrub brush of Fourth Level flickered through the wavering silver sheen of the Ghaldron-Hesthor transposition-field, as the transtemporal conveyer carried him toward Fourth Level Aryan-Transpacific, Kalvan Time-Line. The civilized Second and Third Levels were behind him now. Once in a while Verkan caught flickering glimpses of Fourth Level-buildings, airports, occasionally a raging battle. Fourth Level was the high-probability level of all the inhabited Paratime Levels. There the First Colony had come to complete disaster fifty thousand years ago, losing all knowledge of its origins. It was the most barbaric level, as well as the largest. Its cultures ranged from idol worshippers on Indo-Turanian to the nuclear priesthood on some time-lines in the Europo-American, Hispano-Columbian Subsector.
The conveyer was now entering the low-level probability Fifth Level, where nature not man was triumphant. The only humans were Service and Industrial Sectors proles and their First Level overseers who labored there to keep heavy and light industry off First Level, Home Time-Line. On Fifth Level only the mountains remained constant. Occasionally, a large beast could be made out, while several times large pools of water, appeared and disappeared. There was always a bit of variability between time-lines, sometimes nothing more than trees growing in different spots, other times bodies of water flowing in otherwhen deserts.
The Service Sector Proles were not indigenous to the Fifth Level, but were brought from time-lines of near savagery, which they voluntarily left for a better life. The Paratime Transpositional Code limited the colonization of Service Sector time-lines to natives below second-order barbarism. The Serv-Sec Proles were the ones who did most of the administrative and record keeping for Home Time-Line. The proles who were dumped in the Fifth Level, Industrial Sectors, where the machines and robots of First Level were manufactured, were at the bottom rung of the Service Sector. Here were the survivors of Paratime screw-ups, when policy or criminal mistakes had made it necessary to transplant entire tribes and sometimes nations to protect them from their hostile neighbors, or to protect the Paratime secret. No matter-it seemed-how diligently the undermanned and overworked Paratime Police worked, there were always new bodies to fill another industrial time-line on Fifth Level.
Few, on First Level, realized the majority of these uncountable timelines had never been visited by Home Timeliners, even after twelve thousand years of parasitism upon Second, Third, and Fourth level time-lines. First Level Para-topographers had described less than one tenth of one percent of all the 'known' time-lines. In actuality it was an impossible job and most current Paratime theorists did not believe they would ever completely map this near infinity of diverging time-lines.
In theory the transposition field was impenetrable; however when two craft going in the opposite direction interpenetrated, other objects and life forms could and did pass through. It was why unscheduled trips like Verkan's were limited to the highest echelon of the Paratime Police. It was also Paratime Policy to have a weapon drawn just in case the hitchhiker was dangerous, or a threat to the Paratime secret. Most human pickups were killed immediately and disposed of back at the conveyer head. Only a few escaped, and even fewer flourished in their new 'homes.'
His friend Kalvan, who ruled an unruly kingdom on Fourth Level Aryan Transpacific, was the exception. There, Great King Kalvan, formerly Corporal Calvin Morrison of the Pennsylvania State Police, had accidentally boarded a conveyer in Europo-American, Hispano-Columbian as a Paratemporal hitchhiker, and was bumped off on Aryan-Transpacific,
Styphon's House Subsector. This was an even ruder and deadlier culture than Pennsylvania, ruled by a mafia of priests who worshipped a god named Styphon. Styphon's theocracy only held their power because they held the secret of how to make "fireseed"-or gunpowder.
Kalvan not only survived, he had prospered. In less than a year, he'd married a princess, founded an empire, broken Styphon's House's monopoly of gunpowder and more than held his own against the worst that band of priestly tyrants could throw against him. Styphon's House had met him with the unholy Holy Host, the largest army ever assembled on that backward time-line, and he had destroyed it.
Kalvan's intervention into local politics had created a new time-line. In many ways Kalvan's Time-Line was unique. It was the first time in First Level history when Paratime observers had been present at the start of a new subsector, identified from the exact point of divarication. The Paratimers had been close before, the President John F. Kennedy assassination, only a few years earlier, had been the critical event in the formation of the Europo-American, Kennedy Subsector. The Kennedy assassination, while newsworthy, had not been considered a divarication event until months later. The Kalvan split had been discovered as it happened: Verkan Vail himself had been on-hand, when the very conveyer that former Pennsylvania State Trooper Calvin Morrison had stumbled onto and exited on Aryan Transpacific, had arrived at the Fifth Level conveyer-head rotunda.
Because of growing instability between the two competing nuclear-powered sovereignties, the Kennedy Subsector was far too dangerous to risk intensive study and monitoring. Kalvan's Time-Line, on the other hand, was technologically backward so there was little danger to outtimers. The Dhergabar University had sent out a Kalvan Study Team to survey Kalvan Prime, as they called it, and other teams to study as many of the nearby Styphon's House Subsector 'control' time-lines as possible.
True, there were some-mostly do-gooders and professors who'd never traveled outtime-who still believed it was Home Time-Line's duty to colonize these barren time-lines, even here on Fifth Level. Or worse, that it was their duty to spread the 'benefits' of First Level civilization and Psycho Hygiene. Worlds without number, thought Verkan, only a politician or do-gooder would think they could be tamed in even ten thousand lifetimes.
Finally the conveyer came to rest outside a white marble villa. Solid mesh appeared overhead, out of the iridescence, and Verkan holstered his sigma-ray needier. He opened the door and saw two lovely prole girls, draped in white togas, tending flowers in the garden. So much for ex-Chief Tortha Karf's solitude, he thought!
Verkan watched with amusement as a small brown, long-eared 'beast' scurried through the flowers, causing the girls to squeal in assumed outrage. It appeared that Tortha was losing in his attempt to rid his hideaway, known on Fourth Level, Europo-American as Sicily, of its indigenous rabbit population. He caught the girls' coy glances in his direction, and was glad his wife, Dalla, wasn't along. Jealousy, along with overwork, had brought an end to their first marriage and, while Dalla was less possessive these days, the sight of two half-naked serving girls ogling Verkan would not be taken lightly. A catfight would not be the proper introduction for the bad news he had to share with his former boss and the ex-Paratime Police Chief.
The commot
ion brought Tortha Karf to the doorway. "Verkan! From your message ball, I didn't expect you for several hours."
"We managed to home-in on the missing Paracop's beacon and were able to extricate him from the Fourth Level mess he'd fallen into. His mission was locating and then extracting French Impressionist paintings from a gautlatiers mansion on a particularly nasty Fourth Level, Europo-American time-line. Unfortunately, someone had already removed the paintings and he was picked up by the Gestapo, a rather brutal quasi-police force."
"Must have been in the Axis Subsector."
Verkan nodded.
"I remember that Subsector well," Tortha continued, "it's impact reverberated across the entire Fourth Level. Adolph Hitler's public works and culling of the regional populations on that subsector makes your Pennsylvania State Trooper's transtemporal interference look like a tempest in a teapot-to use a Europo-American Sector cliche! Remember when the Opposition Party claimed that Hitler was really a renegade Paratime Policeman?"
Verkan refused to be baited.
Tortha noticing his discomfort, added, "Come on in. I've been by myself too long. I've forgotten all my manners."
Verkan gave a pointed look at the girls who were watching them closely.
Tortha shrugged his shoulders in feigned ignorance and led Verkan through the foyer and into the main room, where the rich gold-veined white marble walls displayed Cretan murals. The floor was covered with Fourth Level, Etruscan-Zoroastrian rugs and contained several embroidered purple divans, decked with gold fringe, which appeared to be Alexandrian-Roman in origin.
"So this your 'little cottage?'" Verkan asked.
"Compared to Paratime Headquarters, this place is tiny. And much quieter. So what brings you to paradise?"
To Verkan his ex-Chief looked a little twitchy. Too much of a good thing? Maybe paradise was better dreamed about than lived. He was sure Kalvan, in the midst of a war with three great kingdoms, might very well agree. "The Wizard Traders have popped up again."