“Ikarno...”
Across the dale the mist parted to reveal the near slope of another hillock and a pale figure on horseback, one hand outstretched.
“...my love…”
He was not aware of having urged his horse forward until he felt a hand pulling at his arm and heard an urgent voice cutting through his dulled thoughts.
“Do you hear me, my lord?” Atroc was repeating. “It was only the enemy's trap, a net of imaginings sent to tangle up your mind, nothing more.”
Coming to his senses, Mazaret realised that he was halfway down the other side of the rise, and reined in his mount. As well as Atroc and the three knights, there were two newcomers, both Crown Rangers whose looks of concern were shared by all. He was about to assure Atroc that his mind was his own when the sound of hooves drew all eyes north to the bare top of a low hill wreathed in mist. A line of seven or eight horsemen came up out of the grey veil, over the hill and down the other side. The last rider, garbed in white, halted her skittish mount at the crest for a moment before following the others.
“You see, ser?” Mazaret said to Atroc. “No imaginings but a real enemy.” Before the seer could answer he turned to the rangers. “Good sers, what landmarks are those to the north and west of that bare hill?”
“Nearest is the scree slopes of the southern face of the Quern, my lord,” said one, a freckled, sandy-haired youth. “A perilous hill, that one, full of rock falls and loose ground. Further by half a mile is Greylok Hill and between them is Blueaxe Ridge.
Despite the chill that went through him, Mazaret looked at a grim-faced Atroc who shook his head. “Fate's black hand, my lord.”
“We are close,” Mazaret said, “and I would pursue them. I must confront this evil shade, Atroc. I must look it in the face and see it and know it for what it is. Perhaps then my soul would find a measure of peace.”
The seer's face was unforgiving. “Some faces are best left unseen. Listen to me, my lord – ”
Mazaret silenced him with a raised hand and a glare, then addressed the rangers. “Sers, ride to the woods east of here, gather together the rest of my knights and guide them to the foot of Blueaxe Ridge where I shall be.”
“By your command, my lord,” the rangers said and swiftly departed. Mazaret glanced at his three remaining knights, saw their sombre readiness then looked at Atroc.
“My course is set, seer,” he said. “You may accompany us if you wish.”
“I would rather you followed my counsel, my lord.”
“Mayhap your quick cunning will suffice.”
The elderly seer gave him a hooded look and chuckled softly. “Truly, you know how to lead men, my lord. But into folly?”
Mazaret was resolute. “Be sure to give Prince Yasgur a full account on your return.”
“I shall, my lord,” Atroc said. “After witnessing this skirmish in its entirety.”
Feeling curiously reassured, Mazaret replied with a sharp nod then tugged his horse's nose round to the north. A brief dig with the heels and he was off at the gallop with the others following.
As he rode he could smell the moist iciness of the slow-moving mist, but there was something else in the air, a faint odour like dry earth but dustier, sharper. When they came to the slope where the enemy had been a short while ago, he noticed that the snow lay only in a few diminishing patches and that light wisps of vapour were rising from the ground. At the crest of the hillock there was no snow at all and the winter-bleached clumps of grass were gleaming with dew.
Atroc dismounted and knelt to lay his hand on the earth. “Warm,” was all he would say as he climbed back into the saddle.
Mazaret urged his mount on down the other side of the hillock. To their left reared the stony promontory of the Quern with Blueaxe Ridge coming off its shoulder, a sheer dark wall that stretched for more than quarter of a mile before merging into the more rounded Greylok Hill. At the foot of the ridge was a wide, shallow bowl bounded by the flanks of the hills at either end. The ground looked marshy and Mazaret could see several meltwater rivulets running towards the centre while the steam coming off the ground made the mist heavy and damp.
As they entered the bowl at a slower canter, Mazaret could just see at the other side a solitary figure descending from a notch in the flank of Greylok Hill. A brief survey of their surroundings revealed no sign of enemies lying in wait but mist such as this could conceal a multitude of foes. The figure walked along the foot of the ridge towards the midpoint and stopped to watch the knights’ approach. Mazaret frowned and when they reached what he hazarded was the centre of the muddy depression he called a halt.
“Now sers, I want you to remain here while I ride over to discover what I can from the one who waits,” he said. “If I need your aid I will hold my sword aloft.”
“If you need our aid, my lord,” Atroc said drily, “most likely we'll be in need of it ourselves.”
“You shall be my eyes,” Mazaret went on. “If any enemy attackers appear, give a loud, repeated whistle.”
The seer's face was full of flinty-eyed disapproval but Mazaret ignored it and turned to ride on alone. He knew he could only do this on his own. By now he could see that the lone figure was wrapped in white robes and had a womanly appearance, but was it truly Suviel or some corrupt fragment of her spirit? If it were the latter, would he be able to bear such knowledge?
Then he remembered something she was fond of saying – “They cannot corrupt everything because they cannot reach everything.” The memorey warmed him until, a few moments later, the cold, luring voice from before slipped again into his thoughts.
“I knew you would come.”
Longing and fear shuddered through him but still he rode on.
“Soon you will be by my side, never to leave…”
He halted his horse some yards away, calmly dismounted and hung the reins on his saddle before facing the woman who in every detail resembled Suviel Hantika. Steeling himself, he walked up to her and stopped two paces from her, close enough for scrutiny, far enough away for safety.
“How is Gilly?” she said. “And Bardow – how does he cope with that old seer Yasgur keeps around?”
He studied the line of the nose and mouth, the movement of the lips, the shape of the ears, the form of cheekbone and chin, and found no fault, nothing out of place.
“And how is Tauric? The emperor's crown must be a great burden for such a young man. Does he speak of me?”
The hair was long and fine and utterly white, but it was the eyes that told all. Icy-grey they were, cruel, staring and soulless. He turned and moved towards his horse.
“Wait! Beloved, remember our last night together? It can be so again– ”
He came round angrily. “You are not her!” he said. “She would never deliver up her closest friends to our deadliest foes. There is nothing of her in you!” He could not keep the force of his loathing hidden and the rivenshade recoiled slightly. “I don't know what you are, something caught in a mirror perhaps, made to strut and mouth your masters' foulness. You are naught but a hollow – ”
The rivenshade snarled in hate. “I meant what I said about you never leaving!”
The damp grassy earth under his feet trembled. A black dread came over him and he turned to run but before he could reach his startled horse the ground juddered violently, making him stumble and fall. His horse panicked and leaped away at a mad gallop. As he tried to regain his feet he could see Atroc and the other knights struggling to control their mounts as they likewise tore away.
A rumbling, grinding sound came from the ground under Mazaret as the chill voice of the Suviel-rivenshade whispered on and on. Endearments and coaxings mingled senselessly with malefic curses while the bones of the hills gave forth a ghastly groaning fit to unbalance the mind.
“We have come with knives to cut away the old land and all of its useless past. The world will have a new face…”
Another giant spasm shook the ground and Mazaret turned to see the pal
e rivenshade floating no more than a foot in the air, facing the ridge with her sinuous hands outflung. His hate cut through his fear and he grasped the hilt of his sword, determined to cut her down. But before he could rise fully from his knees, sharp snapping sounds came from all around and in horror he saw large cracks spreading up and across the looming face of Blueaxe Ridge. He cried out as massive, moss-covered pieces of rocks tilted away and fell, turning over and over. Massive shards split off, wide sections slipped and shattered, and clouds of pulverised grit and dust poured down. The catastrophic cascade was happening along the entire length of the ridge, and even the hills at either end seemed to be breaking apart.
A huge spear of stone slammed into the ground only feet from Mazaret. He was about to try and scramble away on hands and knees when he saw an immense piece the size of a house tumbling through the air towards him. With the first words of a prayer to the Earthmother on his lips, he could only watch the hurtling approach of his inescapable doom….
And stare as the great fragment, whose every ragged, broken detail he could see, suddenly slewed aside and rushed past him to bound across the rubble-littered ground.
“No death for you, beloved,” came that voice. “No darkened depths, no flowing tribulations in the Earthmother's realm. A new dream awaits.”
She smiled down at him from where she hung in the air, arms lifted wide, the windings and folds of her pale robes floating gently on otherworldly zephyrs. Sprawled and half-sitting amid the roaring chaos, Mazaret saw a succession of jagged chunks of stone diverted away from himself and the Suviel-rivenshade, heart hammering in his chest at each one. Yet despite this precarious safety, he noticed that something was emerging from the ruptured face of Blueaxe Ridge, something sheer bearing vertical grooves and striations….
With a shock he realised that it was a wall surmounted by battlements whose tapered merlons curved outwards like claws. The dark barrier was becoming gradually visible all along the ridge and when Mazaret looked to the southern end he could see massive pieces of the Quern calving away as the unmistakeable shape of a fortified tower slowly thrust up from the hill's interior. To the north a second tower was turning Greylok Hill into rubble.
More fortifications were grinding their way up out of the ground, a wide curving wall punctuated by turrets and enclosing most of the shallow bowl. Beyond it to the east, a solitary rider watched from the crest of a hillock and some shred of intuition told Mazaret that it was Atroc, paying witness to this monstrous calamity.
The terrible, rasping roar took on a deep drone which began to climb in pitch and strength till Mazaret could feel his scalp itch and his teeth ache. A spidery crawling sensation attacked his skin and a needling irritation made his eyes water. The air in his lungs vibrated and in panic he clamped his hands over his ears and closed his eyes.
After long moments the droning suddenly faded away into a strange, reverberant silence. Breathing heavily Mazaret lowered his hands and opened his eyes to more surprise. The shattered remains of the ridge which had formed heaps below were gone, and the muddy, mossy ground had been stripped away to reveal a wide courtyard of interlocking flagstones enclosed by the curved battlements. But what dominated the transformed landscape was the vast structure which now reared up behind the wall before him. It resembled a drum keep but built on a prodigious scale from a pale, almost translucent green stone. An eldritch, pearly aura surrounded it, slightly blurring the details of the relief carvings which encircled it in great bands.
“Behold the glory of Gorla.”
The rivenshade's words were icy intrusions upon the utter quiet. She was now standing several yards away and directly in front of towering double doors which were slowly beginning to open. Each door must have been 30 feet wide and a hundred high, and hung on a spindle hinge that made a rolling iron sound as it swung outwards. Within was a canyon of shadow, a high-sided passage beyond which Mazaret could see the softly-radiant bottom levels of the keep called Gorla. And marching ranks of soldiers, chariots and cavalry.
Mazaret's own composure in the face of this naked might pleased him in a way. His fear seemed to have dissolved in the corrosive knowledge of his vulnerability and now all that he had left was to decide how to die. Then he saw a tall figure emerge from the shadows, a man in black-stained leather armour who walked with a certain swagger and carried a heavy broadsword at his hip. He had a full head of curly black hair and a trimmed beard, while his eyes brimmed with hate and a gleeful intensity. He halted beside the Suviel-rivenshade who put her arms about his neck and pulled him lower for a long, lascivious kiss. When he straightened there was blood on his lip.
“I always knew we'd meet again, my lord.”
The rich, expressive voice instantly struck a chord in Mazaret's memory and as recognition came to him, a cold voice spoke.
“Truly, he is the Deathless one.”
A pale figure in a fawn leather bodice and kirtle and bearing a spear, stepped from the blackness of the gate, and anger kindled in Mazaret's thoughts – it was a second Suviel-rivenshade. Then a third came out, garbed in chainmail and carrying over one shoulder a long-handled woodcutter axe.
“What joy it will be to fight at your side,” the one with the spear said.
“Never,” Mazaret said.
“Ah, but you shall be with us,” Azurech said with his new mouth. “I promise.”
“And I will make you break that oath,” Mazaret said, drawing his sword and charging.
Azurech brought out his own blade swiftly enough to parry Mazaret's incoming blow. Mazaret then ducked under the backswing and swept on past the warlord, running with sword raised towards his true target, the rivenshade with the spear. If he could slay just one, it would be a kind of vengeance.
As he beat aside her spear he cried out, “Suviel, forgive me!”
But the rivenshade shrieked with laughter and the shadows flowed out to engulf him.
* * *
From the hillock, Atroc had watched the breaking of the hills and the battlements which they birthed and the vast keep which rose up out of the earth. The titanic din was like the roaring of a thousand beasts heralding the sight of a legend made real.
Gorla. The oldest sagas of the Mogaun told of the Lord of Twilight's banishment by the Fathertree and the Earthmother after a great battle at the world's dawn. Of all his fierce bastions, only two of the lesser ones – Gorla and Keshada - did they allow him to shift into the Realm of Dusk.
And what a place for this ancient fortress to appear, on Besh-Darok's front doorstep!
With eaglesight, an old talent learned in his long-gone youth from a forest crone a continent away, Atroc was able to see all that transpired before the huge gaping doors. When the Shadowking Byrnak came striding out he uttered a black oath, then a moment later frowned. Despite the man's astonishing resemblance, he was tall and gaunt where Byrnak was shorter, broader and bearlike. And when Mazaret unsheathed his blade, Atroc felt a sense of bleak approval for the man's determination to die like a warrior.
Then he was startled to see the Fathertree knight swerve past his foe and rush at one of the rivenshades. For a moment it seemed he would overcome her until a mass of guards wielding clubs and nets swarmed out of the shadows and overpowered him by sheer force of numbers.
As they dragged the sad, bound form off into darkness, Atroc grimly tugged his horse round and dug in his heels, urging the animal into a gallop. He had to return to the city with all speed and find out if Gorla's sister citadel, Keshada, had also appeared. If it had, then Besh-Darok faced a tidal onslaught of violence and evil not seen in these lands since the world's dawn.
He lashed his mount faster through the misty trees, as if trying to outride what he still saw in his imagination, Gorla's huge courtyard athrong with hosts of men and horrors.
Part Two
Chapter Eight
Empty and hungering, Winter comes,
With white chimes and chains,
And a pale embrace for the unwary.
> —Jedhessa Gant, The Lords Desolate, Act 2, ii, 18.
Inside the swaying boxwagon, warmed by the bolted-down brazier, Gilly sat on a unsteady, padded stool while striving to restring the 8-string kulesti he had bought early that afternoon. The varnish was chipped and scored in many places and one of the ivory tuning pegs had been replaced with a wooden one, but he had noticed that the neck had a metal, perhaps bronze, chine, a clear indication of quality. Its former owner was a sorrowful mother of three clearly driven by hunger and desperation to sell the instrument. A twinge of pity had made him give her an extra half-regal on top of the asking price. Now, as he struggled to thread one of the tuning pegs with a catgut string while the wagon lurched along, he could feel his patience starting to fray.
“If you wait till we stop to make camp, you might find that less challenging.”
Gilly glanced over at the shell-like wicker chair in which Keren sat, legs drawn up as she lounged amid an abundance of garishly-coloured cushions. Various cutting remarks suggested themselves, but instead he put on a smile that was almost a leer.
“Ah, but I enjoy a challenge, dear lady.”
Keren regarded him coolly from within the wicker chair as it shifted and creaked on its four short legs. “That must be why you were sent with us.”
“Hmm, you really need more practice with the barbed insults, you know. That one barely made sense - ”
At this Medwin sat up in the boxbunk fixed to the front of the wagon's interior, a look of exasperation in his face. “I don't know which will drive me mad first - your bickering or this monstrous decoration!”
Gilly looked around him at the crimson-and-gold wall hangings, the curlicue-carved woodwork (painted bright blue), the array of torn and peeling paper masks pinned to one wall, the tinkling clusters of charms, the bronze openwork tallow lamp swinging from the roof, and the motheaten, heavy purple drapes that hung across the rear door. It was gloriously hideous.
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