by Anne Perry
Her hairless eyebrows shot up. “Asmodeus!” Then she started to laugh, this time wild and hysterical, soaring upward out of control, ricocheting from the narrow walls of the cleft. It was a maniacal sound, and yet unmistakably human in this lifeless landscape.
Then abruptly she stopped. “Asmodeus isn’t here, you fool! Erebus is his place—not this!” She jabbed a long, crooked finger at the dust around her. Then she started to laugh again, but there was only malicious pleasure in it, quiet, back in her control. Her eyes never left his face.
He knew she spoke the truth and his whole wild plan crumbled. The key to hell had gained him nothing!
What could he salvage? What was there left to do? He stared at the fearful woman in front of him. Surely there was evil enough in her to lead the forces of destruction, and then Asmodeus would have to follow? He could hardly allow her either victory, or defeat!
“I’m sure you’ll do as well,” he lied. He looked beyond her to the throng of people still waiting for her to return. “Keep your promise to them. What is Queen of Hell worth, compared with leader of an army on earth? And how long will you keep them, with nothing to offer? Have they loyalty?” Now he was jeering and he saw the flare of anger in Tiyo-Mah as she recognised it.
“You serve Tathea,” she said softly now, her shoulders hunched, her head forward like an animal’s preparing to leap. “Why would you want me to enter the world?”
He knew she would ask. He must offer her something she could not resist, bait to catch an angel of the Pit. “If Asmodeus will not come while she is alive, then you must,” he replied. His heart shivered with fear. “Offer him Tathea, broken, defeated in her strength, and all her warriors with her! He will make you his consort in eternity. You will have won the right.”
“Liar!” she said between her clenched teeth, but her eyes shone. “You will die, but she never will! Do you think I don’t know that? She is as old as I am, all but a few years.” She held up one rope-veined arm, the flesh hanging loose, jerking fingers to display her contempt for the moments of time the difference represented.
Now he taunted her back, blue eyes wide. “A few years? Her face is smooth, her hair thick and black. She walks upright, dances, rides, wields a sword as well as any man. She has laughter and life and friends she loves. And when she does leave the earth, it will not be for this!” He too flicked his hand to indicate the arid waste around them.
Tiyo-Mah’s face suffused with dark blood and her body began to tremble with a rage and hunger that devoured her like a fever. The sweat glistened on the bald dome of her forehead and through the thin strands of hair over her skull.
“You think you can beat me?” she screamed. “Fool! Imbecile! You know nothing. I’ll destroy everyone she loves, one by one, and she’ll watch, and her soul will bleed.”
Sadokhar knew he had succeeded, and he was washed over with fear. She was more terrible than anything Tathea had told him of, more than the imagination of nightmare could have created, because she was real. The remnants of humanity were unmistakable in her, calling out like the most hideous, and totally familiar in himself. Had he been less sickened he might have backed away; as it was he stood motionless, not in courage or defiance, but paralysis.
Then Tiyo-Mah turned and stalked back to the rock outcrop on which he had first seen her. The crowd broke into another crescendo of applause, and she raised her arms to them, letting the noise thunder around her until it finally subsided and the crowd stood waiting, faces uplifted.
“The time is come!” she cried out. “We are ready and the portal to the world is open. Asmodeus is not yet come, so I will lead you against the world and we shall win, and then present him with the prize!”
They began to cheer again, this time a rhythmic chanting of her name, mounting into a climax of sound that was almost unbearable.
As Tiyo-Mah lowered her arms the ground on which the people stood began to shift and heave as five craters appeared, hollowed out beneath their feet and they slithered and fell, howling, into the depths.
As they struggled they began to twine around one another, fighting helplessly, first arms and then legs, writhing together, contorting, backs arched, mouths gaping in silent screaming as if they were compelled against their will. In hideous battle like a pit of snakes, they melted into one another.
A stench arose of open sores, of rotting, pustulant flesh. Intestines belched forth, slimed over with black blood.
Sadokhar gagged and sank to his knees, overcome with nausea, but he could not drag his eyes from the sight in case one of the monstrosities should come towards him.
Eventually no more than five huge men stood on the sand, their muscles still swelling and shrinking as the separate entities fought for freedom from the imprisoning flesh, and were trapped. The agony was unimaginable.
Tiyo-Mah stared at them with a slow smile spreading across her face, then she lifted her head back and uttered a long, thin wail which filled the arena and rose to the flat sky above. It seemed to hang in the air long after it had ceased as if the enclosing silence remembered it.
Then at each of the entrances to the arena four figures appeared, all mounted on beasts, one at each gateway. They were the Lords of Sin. Even Tiyo-Mah shivered at the sight of them, but she did not retreat.
“The portal to the world is open,” she said, not loudly, but her voice seemed cradled and magnified by the rock. “We can go through into the days and nights, into the colour, into the sounds and visions of the flesh.”
There seemed an endless wait. Then one of the four figures came forward leading a white mule dressed in colourless trappings, and stopped in front of Tiyo-Mah. He was tall and slender, dressed as a legionary of the old Camassian Empire, and his face was serene, perfect featured, his skin smooth as sunrise. Only his eyes were brilliant with desire. His name was Ulciber.
“Give me a body,” he said softly. “Let me taste the wine and the peaches, let me feel the ground under my feet or the wind on my face.”
Tiyo-Mah hesitated.
He turned away as if to go.
“Possess mine,” she said hoarsely. “For a day!”
He stopped. “A day?” he said, still with his back to her.
“A day each year!” she amended, holding out her hand.
He touched it incredulously. “For ever?” he breathed.
“We shall win!” she said with scalding conviction, snatching her hand back. “Then we shall have all worlds!”
His shoulders relaxed and he turned back to her smiling, and offered her the mule. She mounted it, hauling herself unaided into the saddle and turning the creature’s head so she led the procession away from Sadokhar, towards the portal.
He slithered in sudden haste as he moved from his place in the rock cleft, back over the jagged stones and ran through the dust the way he had come, breathless, the sweat streaming on his skin.
The horsemen seemed oblivious of him. He half crouched behind a pile of broken boulders. Not one of the riders glanced to right or left, but followed Tiyo-Mah on to the smooth surface like ancient paving before the arch of the portal. Never once did he see her turn to ascertain their obedience. Her face was lit with a terrible appetite as if her heart already tasted the vengeance she had waited for for half a millennium.
The second one in the outlandish procession was a dwarf, squat and broad, dressed in a glittering coat of diamond-shaped panes, yellow as gold, shimmering even in this heatless light. His eyes were agate-coloured, with pupils like a goat’s, and he seemed to be so immensely heavy that the sway-backed creature that carried him staggered, its feet sinking deep into the dust and leaving three-clawed footprints behind.
After him came the man who had struck the bargain with Tiyo-Mah. He rode a blue-roan horse, almost iridescent, like the sheen on rotted flesh, bruised dark. Watching motionlessly, Sadokhar felt as if at a touch it might fall away, corrupted to the core. The breath strangled in his lungs. There was not enough air to fill them.
The fou
rth was a huge man with mighty shoulders, bold eyes and thick lips. His hair curled richly from his brow. He wore chain armour and carried a long sword, unsheathed and stained with blood. The horse he rode was red as fire and vivid as destruction. Its hoofs left charred imprints even in the sterile dust.
Sadokhar knew them all from Tathea’s words in his youth. The golden dwarf was Azrub, Lord of Delusion; the ageless soldier, Ulciber, the Corrupter of Souls; terror was the realm of Cassiodorus, his rage recalled from the journey of the spirit. Tathea had not seen him in life, but his parting words of hate had never left her.
Then came the five creatures from the vast throng which had filled the amphitheatre, their faces indistinguishable as they still melted into one another, forming and reforming in a legion of tangled spirits. One turned for an instant, and Sadokhar saw with skin-crawling horror the eyes, terrible with the warring of souls and the knowledge that they were locked for eternity in an embrace of destruction.
They were those who had lived with cruelty, filth and lies, unrepentant after death. Even in the presence of light and the gift of redemption, they had chosen their darkness. They pressed forward now through the gateway into the world again, to become Lords of the Undead.
Last of all came a rider on a black horse. He was clothed in black, a ragged cloak hanging like torn wings from his shoulders, his hair a night shadow over his head. His face was broad-nosed and thin-lipped, and the end of all hope was in his eyes. He left no trace on the arid landscape, as if it were his own and it held him so familiar it did not feel his passing.
This was he whom Tathea had faced and beaten off on the battlefield of the Western Shore, but now he was renewed, the last and strongest of all the Lords of Sin, Yaltabaoth, who held the power of despair.
One by one they passed under the archway and disappeared until only Yaltabaoth was left.
Sadokhar felt the black key in his pocket and his hand closed over it. He must wait until they were all through.
Yaltabaoth hesitated and turned. He looked directly at Sadokhar and his thin lips parted in a smile. He lifted his hand and in it was a key. He held it up.
Sadokhar tightened his own hand—it was empty.
Yaltabaoth tossed his key into the air and it vanished, then he swivelled in the saddle and rode through the archway and was gone, leaving Sadokhar alone in the rubble.
Chapter III
TATHEA WAITED IN THE ruins of Sylum till the sun rose with a glory of light, splashing warm radiance over the stones and picking out the vines in clarity, leaf by leaf. She stood sheltered behind a vine-coloured pillar, watching where Sadokhar had gone.
Then the stillness was broken by the emergence of an extraordinary figure from the archway. In spite of the centuries, Tathea knew her immediately. It was Tiyo-Mah, riding a white mule, its trappings scarlet and gold, and behind her came the Lords of Delusion, Corruption, Terror and Despair. After them, on foot, shambled four creatures unlike any she had seen before, muscles bulging beneath purple-black skin scarred and pitted, as if from innumerable pustules burst and healed over years. One was bull-necked, another lantern-jawed, a third rodent-like, thin, sharp-nosed. They trooped behind as Tiyo-Mah turned south towards the sea.
Alone, and cold in spite of the sun, Tathea crept down to the archway and under its shadow. She searched its crumbling stones, and those of the next arch, and the next, but there was no door, nothing but more rubble and broken columns, shattered pillars and mosaics of long ago.
At last, as the sun was high and bright, she mounted her horse and rode fast back to Tyrn Vawr, to tell Sardriel and Ardesir that Armageddon had begun.
She reached the courtyard of the castle and slid from her horse. Knowing what she did, she felt as if now it should all have been hideously different, a darkness in the very air. And yet the flowers still bloomed in the sun and two guards stopped mid-laughter as they saw her and snapped to attention.
“Find Ardesir and Lord Sardriel!” she shouted, gasping for breath. She turned to her horse, looking for a groom to care for it. It stood head down, foam-flanked. “Where is everyone?”
A page appeared and she gave him orders to take the animal, and before he was gone Sardriel came down the steps from the main door, a quill still in his hand, his face pale.
“He went to Sylum.” Tathea cut the silence. “He found the doorway to hell.”
Ardesir came from the other door and stood at her elbow.
She clenched her hands and stood motionless, forcing herself to breathe deeply, to keep her voice steady. “He went through, and I waited. It was nearly an hour, then Tiyo-Mah came out.” She described the procession she had seen, and what she knew of them.
“And Sadokhar?” Sardriel whispered.
She shook her head minutely. “No. I ... I looked in the arch. There was no doorway left. I don’t know how to find it.”
Ardesir opened his mouth to speak but he could find no words adequate. She could see behind his eyes his imagination racing. He knew all the subtle, ancient legends of darkness. The possibilities of evil were boundless. He was struggling to understand how she could have allowed it to happen.
Tathea looked away from him to Sardriel, and saw in his dark eyes pity, and a flash of grief which caught at her heart. Then it was concealed as if it had never been, and he nodded very slightly.
“It was a terrible price to pay,” he said quietly. “And I don’t know how we shall win the battle without him.”
How could he be so certain, and so resigned? The unblemished light of his mind was a sublime asset to their forces, but still she longed for some human vulnerability like her own, an instant’s crying against the loss. Was the pain in him only an illusion, imagined from her own wound? She looked back at him, knowing her anger was in her face and wanting him to see it.
“We must get him back!” Ardesir protested. “There must be a way!” He turned to Tathea, his eyes brilliant with pleading.
“I don’t know what it is. We can only pray,” she answered. “Search and pray.”
Sardriel reached out his hand as if he would touch her, then let it fall.
Tathea turned again to Ardesir. “Tiyo-Mah went towards the sea. She will take a ship for Shinabar. That is the seat of her ancient power, and the country she will find easiest to corrupt. You must follow her and learn what she means to do. Watch her, listen and send word back.”
He nodded. He required no further explanation, and if he was afraid he masked it in his steady gaze.
Sardriel was waiting.
“The barbarians have already taken at least half of Irria-Kand. When they reach the forest, if not before, they will turn south into Camassia.” She reminded them of what Eudoxius had told them. “Knowingly or not, they are allies of the last darkness. Take from the Treasury and sail to Caeva. Find their mercenary armies, and those from the Sea Isles, and buy them to fight in Irria-Kand. If we can hold the barbarians there, perhaps make some kind of truce, even temporary, it may be enough to shore up the borders of Camassia. Perhaps fear of war will cleanse them as peace could not.” She knew what she was asking of him. It was two thousand miles away across the far edge of the known world, vast plains swept by storms, tinder-dry in summer, snow-bound in winter. But the eastern flanks of Camassia were the vulnerable rim of civilisation. They could not choose their theatre of war.
“How much of the Treasury?” was all Sardriel asked, but his face was pale and stiff, and she understood the ache that was within him.
“You will need all we can spare,” she replied. “Take two-thirds of it. We will manage with what is left. We have wheat and timber, and there will still be trade for a while.” She saw the question in his eyes. “There are two of us yet to find,” she said softly. “I will send for Kor-Assh and Ulfin. And if they cannot read the staff, I will look further. Whoever they are, the last two will come.”
“Of course,” Ardesir agreed quickly, holding out his hand.
She clasped it for a moment, warm and strong, and then le
t go.
“I shall take a dozen men, to safeguard the money,” Sardriel said. “We shall leave at dawn tomorrow. I will send word as I can, but if you hear nothing, keep faith that I am fighting and shall not surrender. It may be that no one will pass from Irria-Kand westwards to carry news.” He held out his hand and she took it also, just for a moment. Farewells were understood. There was no time for lingering.
Tathea wept long and deep that night, and sleep came only with exhaustion. She rose knowing that Ardesir and Sardriel had left and she alone still waited in Tyrn Vawr. That day, and the next, and the next, she busied herself with the tasks of government that Sadokhar would have done were he here, consulting with Ythiel and the other ten Knights of the Western Shore, especially about the defence of the Island, when the time came. But each time she heard a footstep on the stair that sounded even faintly like his, she started with a wild hope that somehow he could have returned, only for it to fade, and leave her crushed.
Looking out of the windows she saw a figure in the distance who walked with the same ease he had, or bent his head in such a way, and the wound of Sadokhar’s loss was raw. The loneliness without him was a void which threatened to swallow everything, and she had no belief that time would heal it.
Then word arrived that Kor-Assh of the River was coming, and Tathea prepared to meet him as if Sadokhar were still with them, and might return any day. Rooms were made ready for him and the court dined in the Great Hall as always. But there were fewer visitors from other regions than usual, as if the whole city held its breath, waiting for something to happen which would explain everything, and make it right. They had lived so long in peace that fear was a small thing, not truly believed. A hundred people still sat at the tables and laughed and ate, passed the meat and the wine and told tall stories to each other.
Tathea did not take Sadokhar’s seat. It remained empty, but she sat alone a little distance from any others, even Ythiel and the Knights of the Western Shore.
They were halfway through the meal when there was a sudden ceasing of conversation at the far end of the hall as the doors opened and a man came in, followed by six others, but he alone came forward to the head table. He was dressed in a travelling cloak, dusty from the road, and he walked with grace, even though he must have come far and been tired. He was of more than average height, slender and strong. His hair and eyes were dark, the balance of his features spoke of both passion and strength so intense they had burned away the lesser quirks of character. It was difficult to tell his age, but he was not young. There was experience in the lines around his mouth, and time had left its imprint on him.