by David Mason
“Well done, Caltus, well indeed.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “Tana’s luck on the day I brought you to my service.”
“Now, then,” he said, in a businesslike voice. “All we need do is put this den to the torch and slay the rest. Shall I begin, lord?”
I glanced at Thuramon. “Slaying of prisoners, now…” I began. But he shook his head.
“These are… as you’ve seen,” he said. “Let one live, and it begins again.”
“We could serve you well,” came a croaking voice, behind me, and I swung around.
There, where the beast had lain, the Abbot now stood, holding himself erect with a hand on the altar. His face was very white, and his eyes still burned; but blood dripped steadily from his wound.
Still, I felt no pity. I remembered what he had planned, and my thought must have been in my face. The Abbot turned, still gripping the altar, and faced it, his back to me. He cried out in a long, rhythmic call, harsh words in an unknown tongue.
I raised my sword, then lowered it.
“I won’t slay a man at his prayers, damn it,” I said aloud.
“He prays to his demon,” Thuramon said, seizing my arm. “Kill him!”
But the Abbot had flung up his arms, and croaked a final echoing syllable; and now he turned again to face us, his arms still raised high. His eyes flamed with a demon’s look, and he grinned hideously.
“Heathen filth, you cannot slay the Servant of the Highest One! You are His, and he comes, to save me and to take you to Himself! A thousand years I have served…”
And behind him, a dark presence began to form, a Shadow, at first seeming to be his own shadow cast back behind him on the wall… and growing, denser, and greater. It loomed now, as high as the high roof of the hall; and a glow lit it, as though eyes stared out of it down at us. And the Abbot capered, shrieking with joy.
“Now this,” Thuramon said, quite calmly… although he seemed very pale… “This is my work. Fortunately I seem to recall a barrier…”
And he bent, scrawling hastily on the floor with a bit of chalk. His swift fingers drew a line of twisting characters between that Shadow and his servant, and ourselves.
The Shadow moved forward, and the figure of the Abbot seemed to dim, as it passed over him. Then, it met the chalked line, and stopped. For a long moment, it seemed to press against that wall, and the glow brightened. And then, very swiftly, it seemed to diminish, and was gone.
The Abbot stared at us, his mouth open, but wordless at last. After a long time, he spoke, in a hoarse whisper.
“A thousand years. I forsook the other for him. I served…” And then he shrieked, in hideous agony.
He was… crumbling. Even as we watched, his unnatural span of life left him, and he seemed to fall away in brownish flakes, moldering… and for a few more moments, still horribly alive. His hands, now bone in truth, scrabbled feebly in a strange gesture, back and forth and up and down over his chest… and his crumbling mouth emitted one last cry in a strange language.
“Basiloi… ahh… hagia sophi…”
The black robes lay in a flattened heap, out of which a few brown bones protruded.
“An evil end,” Thuramon said. He rubbed away the chalk marks with his foot, murmuring a phrase under his breath. “It doesn’t pay to serve a master who… requires too much.” He stared down at the dust that had been the Abbot. “He tried to change gods, too. But very late.”
In the open land, outside the monastery, men from our ships still came along the ancient road, while others leaned on their bloodied weapons; and among them were growing numbers of the small brown people, bringing gifts of food and ale. The place was beginning to resemble a fair. As we came out into the sunlight, we were greeted by a long roar, and shouts of the old victory cries of Dorada. I was very weary, but the sound gave me new strength; I went down among them to where Caltus waited.
“Thuramon,” I said, “tell these other folk, in their language, that we are their friends. Give them our pledges of fair dealing. We will not use one handspan of this land of theirs without their free gift of it; make that clear. But if they will share this fair land of Koremon with our people, we will repay with our arms and our tools, and whatever else they ask.”
Thuramon repeated what I said, in slow words of the native tongue, and a silence fell over his bearers. Then some of them began to mutter together, and finally, an old man stepped forward, and delivered a long speech.
“He says that we are the old ones come back, whatever that means,” Thuramon said. “I imagine there were other tall folk here once. He says many things, praises, I think. Then he says that they wish you to be their king, and to wear the Copper Crown, whatever that is, and all shall live here as it was in the ancient time.” He grinned. “I would highly recommend the idea, Prince. I am heartily sick of water in any form, and these folk make fine ale.”
I stood silently, thinking for a moment, and looking toward Isa. This land could be a fairer Dorada, a great and fair land; and here, my sons and my sons’ sons would reign… Isa’s sons, too. Not merely princes under a priestesshood’s whim, either, but true of kings. But then, I had seen a few kings in the west. Even good blood might thin, after a few generations; possibly our old Doradan way had its points, too.
Now what, in Tana’s name, was a Copper Crown, and what did it entail?
“Thuramon,” I said slowly. “Tell them we will gladly stay here, with them, as brothers in this land. Or perhaps another word… brother may not be best, considering. But on this matter of kinging it over them: say we have a vow, that I may not call myself a king. Not for a while yet, at any rate, not till we finish that other fight to come. It may be that to be their king has obligations. I’d wait a while.”
“You learn wisdom, boy,” Thuramon said, and turned to the peasant who had spoken.
More lengthy debate followed, and weariness crept on me again, till I leaned on my sword like an old man on a staff. Isa moved closer to me, and grasped my arm, smiling.
Thuramon finished his longwinded chaffering at last, and turned to me again.
“These are most interesting matters, Lord Prince,” he said. “But I’ll save all but the meat of it for another time. Briefly, then: they accept, and we do. Their Copper Crown they believe is sacred, a relic hidden from the old times when others ruled here. It will wait your pleasure, but they obey you in any case. They say there are few of them, and more land than all of us can fill, and they give us welcome.”
I raised my voice, speaking to all of our own folk.
“These brown people are our friends and brothers,” I said. “This land of Koremon belongs now to all of us, together, and we shall build our houses here, and live. Dorada is dead. I am not Prince of Dorada, but of Koremon, and you are all the men of Koremon from this day forth. And as for the rest, we shall land all from the ships, and hold feast time in this place.”
The cheering rolled like a sea wave at that, but Caltus, at my elbow, pointed to the monastery. There, against the wall, a handful of the black-robes cowered under the spears of guards and the axes of scowling brown men.
“Burn them all under their own foul rooftree,” Caltus said.
I shook my head. “We may tear down that hall of evil,” I said. “But I think Thuramon may wish to poke about in it first, looking for what crumbs of wisdom he can gather. Am I right, fat wizard?”
He nodded, grinning. “They’d have books, Lord Prince, and evil or not, I’d not burn books. And maybe other things.”
I studied the huddled group in the distance.
“It might be wisdom to kill them all,” I said slowly. “But… no, not thus, prisoners. A bad way to bring a new land to birth. Thuramon, do you think these can change skins as the rest did? If they can, they’ll be a great danger to let free.”
“It’s a plant, eaten with certain spells,” he said. “Once taken, they can change when they wish. It may be that these we took are all lesser ones, who had never been given the gift, since
they surrendered without trying that way. But there’s a way to keep them in their present skins, even so. Lock them away for now, and tomorrow I’ll work such tricks on them that they’ll seem as meek as mice from now on.”
Caltus scowled. “I’d finish them now,” he said. “Or at least, let them run free. There are two dragons flying up there, singing for such meat.” He thrust his sword point toward the sky, where specks wheeled high in the blue.
During the months that followed, I remember chiefly a burden of labor that would make no man envy a ruler’s rank. There were days when I managed to gain four hours sleep all together, but not many of them; and there seemed always to be new tasks waiting as the first were done.
In the first days, we sent a ship back along the coast, to call at those ports in the west where our folk had been sent. I gave them instructions to gather any who wished to come, Doradans or others; but to seek particularly for those who knew useful crafts, smiths, builders, and workmen. I sent letters, also, with the ship, addressed to such rulers as might soon be menaced by the same sorrows that had ruined Dorada. The letters spoke of a danger, and of the need to raise men to move against a distant evil; but I dared not be too specific. Those three might have their eyes and ears open in the west, and too loud a noise might attract them before I was ready.
It was the gifts I sent, rather than the vague words, that I hoped might move those rulers. There were vaults under that monastery, and in them an age’s worth of plunder. It was difficult to believe such hoards could be gained and hidden, nor could I understand where the jewels and gold had come from. But I used that hoard; here in Koremon we did not need the stuff yet, but in the west gold was a great mover of men’s minds.
There were other wonders under Koremon. The peasant folk knew a great deal they had never told their evil masters, and it became clear that this had once been a mighty kingdom.
Under the cover of grass, long roads of dressed stones ran from the sea to the distant hills, and under mounds, deeply buried, lay mighty ruins. Sometimes our folk would clear trees, and find a giant statue, worn nearly faceless by time; and others, plowing, would turn up bones and armor, and more.
In hidden places, the brown folk had kept certain things from that old time, which they brought out now. The Copper Crown itself, I saw one day; a heavy, plain band of thick metal, engraved in a language even Thuramon could not read. That we hid again, but other things we kept.
Among those things were tools, broken or age-rotted, but useful as models for our workmen. As we learned their uses, we grew awed at the skills of that vanished people. There were moldering books, too, over which Thuramon nearly burnt out his eyes. And best of all, a lamp… many such, in fact. These were bronze globes, the size of a man’s fist, having short legs on which to stand; and on each one, a rod of crystal emerging. They were green with age, but most of them still worked; merely touching one caused the crystal to light with a brilliant cold light, bright as sunlight.
Thuramon took one of the lamps to his new workshops, where he kept a dozen men busy; there, he cut it apart, trying to learn its secret. The first such lamp nearly killed him, its explosion taking the roof of his workroom into the air. But a singed wizard is a wiser wizard; he employed an apprentice to disassemble the second one, who was fortunate. However, the means of its working still escaped him.
Then, one after another, ships began to come to our shore, some with returned Doradans and others, and a trader or two seeking profit. A harbor began to take form, and the elements of a port.
The people of the Dragon island remained aloof. Twice, I visited there, and had conversation, laying certain plans; but it was early made clear that visits from others were unwelcome.
Meanwhile, I worked to build both a realm and a strong force to defend it. I had little doubt that the three would whiff our presence, and possibly suspect our ends in time. And in the end, only our arms could finish that evil, I was sure.
It took too long, I felt, as I drove myself and others daily. Month after month… and metal gathered, a foundry set going, guns casting. We built a new kind of gun, riding on cartwheels, easier to fire and faster to charge; and by painful experiment, we learned to cast them as we wished. We found a source of sulfur in a hill valley, and willow for charcoal.
The saltpeter was hardest to gather, at first, but then we found a mighty trove of the stuff. On a sea rock, eastward of the dragon’s island itself, some of our folk who had been fishing saw the crusts of white, drifted like snow. It was a favorite roost for dragons, who fished from that perch, and their dung yielded a saltpeter of a mighty power. Gunpowder made from it was of ten times the strength of that which we’d used before.
But chief of the treasures of our new land of Koremon were those horses, the tall, wide-shouldered ones we had first seen drawing the peasant carts. Our own horse copers soon had a few of them broken to saddle, and we found there were more of them run wild in the near hills. Most were of the same giant stock; the largest were nearly twice the size of an ordinary warhorse. Our armorers now had a liberty with weight of metal such as they had never known, both for the rider and the beast itself. Our smiths made a new kind of metalwork, and weapons.
We now had a growing troop of cavalrymen, using high saddles, bearing longer shields, and with lances like boat masts, and each man was shelled in metal like a lobster. But those mighty horses, with such a weight, and carrying padded shields themselves, could still thunder forward at an earthshaking gallop.
I found a horse I liked particularly, a beast of middle size, a golden brown in color with a lighter mane, and a bright eye. He was a stallion, and had some tendency at first to rear and wheel, but I worked with him until he rode better than any horse I’d seen before. I called him Gold, for his color, and rode him, whenever the work permitted a free hour or two… not very often.
As months went by, Isa’s time came nearer. The three of us, she, and I, and Samala, were often together; Samala gained from me permission to erect a small temple and hospice for the Goddess. I let it be done, though I cared nothing about that matter; but I had a second temple of equal size built for Tana alone.
And sometimes, when my two queens were off together, exchanging certain occult wisdom concerning babies and their secrets, I now found time to walk awhile alone, in the forested places near the new house of the Prince.
In that forest, I discovered one day that I was not alone.
A hand touched my face, and a laugh came from the empty air: the invisible Macha Emmrin was there.
She was a most difficult woman to make friends with in any ordinary way. She could speak, I knew; but she seemed to prefer silence generally. But it became quite certain that Thuramon was right, and that I possessed some charm for women, a charm which I could not myself see. Young, I still was, but I bore a good many scars now, and my hair was gray; also, my face did not seem to have the open friendly look it once possessed, to see it in a mirror.
Well, it must have been that luck of mine again; Tana’s luck, that seemed to be the one certain thing in an uncertain world. With such luck, one ought to take what it gives, and make no questions. The luck gave me a most unusual gift, this time, for, as I made quite certain, Macha Emmrin was certainly a woman, in spite of two most unfemale traits… invisibility, and silence of tongue.
Well it was that none ever followed me into the oak forest, to see me walking beside a little lake I had found, conversing wisely with empty air. Or with my arm around a vacant space, or an even more disturbing sight; the abrupt vanishment, which the Macha Emmrin could give by her touch.
Her greatest gift was not only her silence, but an occult ability to make me speak with little hope of any answer. Oh, sometimes a laugh; or a whispered word or two. But generally, I seemed to feel her answers, with no need of any sound from her lips; yet, it seemed to be necessary for me to use the older, more established way of speech, aloud.
“Koremon is a fair land,” I said, thoughtfully, as I lay on my back on a grass b
ank, staring up into the trees. “Fairer than… Dorada that was.” I knew she listened.
“Was your own land as fair?” I asked. “Or was it all as we saw it, a plain of grass, empty?”
Closing my eyes, I seemed to see dim towers, rainbow-colored, floating in a glowing sea, and phantoms who walked among them. I had seen this vision before; it was all she would let me know about her birthplace. A picture… and of a place that was in no way like that sea of grass where we had found her.
“And did your people have kings, and princes?” I wondered aloud. “And did those rulers find themselves with as little freedom to live as they wished as I have? Did they make oaths, to bind them to leave their rainbow towers, and seek quarrels with strangers? I’ll need to go out of this fair land, soon, Macha, and maybe never return. I must go on with this struggle, till it’s done. Else, my sons will have no land of their own, and this fair land will burn as Dorada did.”
The thought came from her. I would go, but she would go also, and I would return.
“Prophecies,” I said. “Some of them come about. If you help them, with the sword’s edge… Macha, I am no great prince, not even that… and no king at all. I find I do not love the sight of blood. I think I’ve slain too many already, and I’ve enough years left ahead to slay twice that number. And, as Thuramon might say, the gods seem to take an interest in me. Such an interest that I am offered a copper crown, and from what I’ve seen of kings, that means more labor, and more manslaying, to the end of my days. Kings and priests, and lords… is there no other way to set men’s lives in order? Could we have a land with no king at all, here in Koremon?”
Her laugh came softly, not mocking, but as if she knew a secret that would answer my questions… but could not tell. I felt a light touch on my face, and turned my head. She wished me to look to the north.
Low over the distant treetops, a dragon soared, its wide wings glowing iridescent in the sun. The sound of its call hummed through the forest, a deep music. It was not hunting; there were no beasts to its taste here. It was soaring for its own pleasure, as they sometimes did.