The Reavers of Skaith-Volume III of The Book of Skaith

by Leigh Brackett

  Stark spoke abruptly, and his words were like daggers. "I will not serve Sanghalain."

  "There is no need to. When that has happened which will happen, make alliance with the Kings of the White Islands. They will be your spearhead. You shall lead them."

  "Why?"

  She recognized the twofold nature of his question.

  "Because you are the Dark Man of the prophecy, fated whether you will or no, and the threads of your fate are knotted together in one place—Ged Darod, where you will fight your last battle with Ferdias and the Wandsmen. A battle you must win." She held up her hand to stop him speaking. "You care nothing for the prophecy, I know. You came here for one purpose, to rescue Simon Ashton. The ship you called for will come, but the Lords Protector now have the power to interfere with it. The off-world thing that Pedrallon left behind is in their hands."

  "The transceiver," Pedrallon said.

  Gerrith nodded. "You must make haste with your army, Stark. If you do not, the Lords Protector will send the ship away, or destroy it, and there will be no escape for you, forever."

  "We also have transceivers," Ashton reminded her.

  She shook her head. "I see you marching mute to Ged Darod, with nothing of the off-worlds in your hands."

  "Not even the automatics?"

  "Not even those."

  Ashton glanced at Stark, but his eyes were on Gerrith, seeing nothing else.

  "Will the Kings of the White Islands fight?" asked Halk. "Why should they help us?"

  "Because they wish to regain their ancient lands."

  "And where are these lands?"

  "Where Ged Darod now stands."

  A long silence followed. Gerrith continued to look into the clear water. Then she sighed and leaned back.

  "I see no more." She looked at them, smiling gravely. "You have been good comrades. We have fought well together. You will see to the end of that fighting. Go now, and remember that the respite will be a short one. The Goddess has set her hand on Iubar."

  They bent their heads, all but Alderyk, who gave her a king's salute. They left, and Simon Ashton went with them.

  Stark remained.

  He went no closer to Gerrith, as though he did not trust himself. "Will nothing turn you aside from this obscenity?" he said, and his voice was a cry of pain.

  Gerrith looked at him with love, with tenderness.

  She looked at him from far away, from some place he did not know and could not enter, but which he hated with every fiber of his being.

  "This is my destiny," she said gently. "My duty, my high honor. This was the thing I had yet to do, so that I could not go with the others on the starship. This was why my path led me southward into the white mist, though I could see nothing there but blood. My blood, I know now."

  "And Sanghalain will hold the knife?"

  "That is her task. Through the sacrifice of my body to Old Sun, many lives will be saved, and my world set free. Do not betray me, Stark. Do not let what I do be wasted because of your anger. Lead, as you were fated to lead, for my sake."

  Little flames hissed among the coals. Sleet tapped against the windowpanes. Stark could bear her gaze no longer. He bent his head and Gerrith smiled with a remote tenderness.

  "Remember all the long way we had together and be glad for it, as I am."

  Stark's heart was frozen in him and he could not speak. He turned and left her, walking softly, as one leaves a house of death.

  In the drafty hall Sanghalain waited, with her veiled women robed all in brown, and her honor guard, and Morn. The Lady of Iubar wore the same brown habit. Her body was full and gracious, a very woman's body, small in the waist, rounded of breast and hip. Her hair was black, one shining loop of it showing above her forehead where her veil was thrown back. She wore no jewels—all those were now in Penkawr-Che's coffers—and her face showed the pinched lines of care. Her eyes were like the winter sea where the sun strikes it, gray with depths and darknesses and sudden tides of light. Eyes in which, Stark had felt, a man might lose himself and drown. Once he had thought her beautiful. Now, as he moved closer to her, Morn set his hand upon his knife.

  Sanghalain met Stark's gaze calmly and without concern. "This is our world," she said. "You have no part in it, nor in its customs."

  "That is true," said Stark. "Nevertheless, do not let me look upon you again."

  He went away, along the cold corridor.

  Sanghalain and her brown-veiled women entered Gerrith's room.

  "It is time," said Sanghalain.

  And Gerrith answered, "I am ready."

  She walked with the Lady of Iubar and her women through the echoing ways of the tower. Morn and the honor guard followed with torches. A winding stair led upward to the tower top. They mounted it and came out upon the wide, flat, icy stones that stretched away to the sheer edges and the drop beyond. In the center of the round space a kind of bier had been erected and draped with rich fabrics to hide the faggots of wood piled beneath. It was still dark. The dead-white mist of the Goddess enfolded the tower, so that the torches burned only feebly.

  Gerrith stood silent, facing the east.

  At length, in the dark and the frost-fog, low on the horizon there crept a faint smudge of coppery light.

  Sanghalain held out her hand to Morn. "The knife."

  He gave it to her, across his two hands, bowing low. The women began to chant, very softly. Sanghalain veiled her face.

  Gerrith walked to the bier, a sacrifice going proudly, consenting.

  She lay down, and saw the knife blade shining above her in the white air, striking swiftly downward.

  When Old Sun rose, a dull ghost behind the shrouding mist, the folk of the White Islands saw a great blaze of flame on the tower top, and wondered.

  Eric John Stark went alone with his grief and anger into the barren hills, and no one—not even Simon Ashton—tried to find him. But the Northhounds howled without ceasing for three days, a terrible requiem for the wise woman of Irnan.

  21

  The hellish part of the ritual was that it worked.

  After that burst of flame on the tower top, the mist began almost imperceptibly to thin. At noon, the face of Old Sun was clearly seen for the first time in un-remembered months, and folk ran out to stand in the snow and feel his touch upon them. Then a wind blew warm from the north. By that afternoon the thaw had begun.

  It continued. As torrents rushed down the slopes and the ice began to go from the harbor, the people of Iubar, reborn, revitalized, flung themselves into the task of clearing and refitting their ships.

  The people of the White Islands, with their floes beginning to rot away beneath them, attacked Iubar in successive waves of desperation. But the boom had closed the harbor mouth to boats, and the land walls held.

  On the fourth day, Stark came back from his wandering, gaunt and strange-eyed. He would not enter the tower. He went directly to the boat and sent a messenger to bring his people.

  They came, and no one ventured to speak to him except Halk, who faced him squarely and said, "She had a better death than Breca."

  Stark inclined his head and turned away to speak to Ashton.

  "Have you heard anything on the radio?"

  "Nothing yet."

  Stark nodded. "You'd better wait here, Simon. I'm going to parley with the Kings, and they may not give us a chance to talk."

  Simon shrugged and sat down in his accustomed place, taking charge of the two automatics.

  Stark ordered the oars out. But at the last minute, Morn came padding down the quay. I will go with you, Dark Man.

  Stark looked at him with utter hatred. "Why?"

  Because you do not know the Kings, you do not even know their names. You know nothing of their customs or their history. You will never arrange a parley without me.

  Stark hesitated, then nodded curtly. Morn stepped aboard. The Northhounds growled, and Stark bade them be quiet. The rowers dipped their blades in the water and the boat moved out toward the harbo
r mouth, where the boom was swung aside enough to let them through.

  While they rowed across the open water, Morn talked. And because Simon Ashton had taught him well, Stark listened.

  When the first of the skin boats came out to challenge them, Stark shouted, "We claim the Peace of Gengan and the Holy Isle of Kings! Who denies us this is cursed."

  Reluctantly the people in the skin boats put their weapons aside and formed into a sort of ragged escort, while four of the boats darted off among the rotting, jostling floes.

  Stark could see that numbers of the White Islanders had been forced to move their skin tents onto the shore, wherever they could find high ground. The people in the boats had stripped their outer furs in the glow of the ginger star, which had been bought at such price, and their heads were bare. They seemed to run to every shade of color in their hair, which was clubbed, warrior-fashion, to give no grip to a foe. Their faces were uniformly windburned, a paler streak rimming each face where the tight fur hoods normally covered them. Their faces were also uniformly savage, with powerful jaws and cheek ridges, and deep-sunk eyes that carried an expression of single-minded ferocity. Stark wondered if these people would ever be found relaxed and smiling.

  One of the skin boats took the lead, and Stark steered after it until they reached a solid line of ice so old and thick that it had barely begun to wear away in the sunlight.

  The rest of the journey must be done on foot, said Morn. See there.

  Stark saw the crest of a giant berg glittering in the sun.

  That is the Holy Isle. Leave your hounds and your weapons. You will have no need of them. Bring an escort, but no more than four besides ourselves.

  Ashton came, and Alderyk, and Halk, and Pedrallon. Sabak was left in charge of the boat, Tuchvar of the hounds. He had difficulty controlling them. The smell of violence and the red thought of killing were all around.

  The Islanders hauled their skin boats onto the ice and followed. Afoot, they moved with a kind of controlled ferocity, setting their feet as a hunting animal does before the spring. But their weapons remained untouched.

  They are fighters, Morn said, catching Stark's thought. Killing machines. They are bred to nothing else. Any child that shows fear or weakness is thrown to the hunting packs.

  Some of the leopard-spotted beasts had come onto the ice, moving agilely enough on their short powerful legs, with broad paws that could disembowel a man in one swift stroke. The Islanders kept an eye on them, and from time to time beat back those which became too much interested in the foreign-smelling flesh.

  The shining peak of the berg came closer. Stark could see its foot, broad and massive, a veritable island of ice. The clear slopes rose above, and they were marked with curious dark blots, set in regular ranks one above the other. Morn said, That is where they bury their kings.

  Four men stood before a standard set on a high pole of sea-ivory cunningly joined and bound. The standard flashed in the sun with the untarnished brilliance that only gold can show. Its top was in the shape of a man's head, somewhat larger than life, and the expression of the face was one of gentle and sorrowful dignity.

  Beneath it the four Kings of the White Islands regarded the foreigners with the eyes of wolverines.

  Delbane and Darik, Astrane and Aud, the Sons of Gengan.

  Four separate small knots of people stood near the Kings, presumably their honor guards. And all up and down and across the slopes of the berg, the dead kings watched, upright in their burial niches, sealed in the ice and preserved without change by the perpetual cold. Stark could not count them, and presumably the ranks extended around the berg where he could not see.

  Trickles of water were beginning to run down those cliffs, and Stark wondered what would happen to the Holy Isle as the tribes moved northward.

  They will leave it here, said Morn, under the care of the Goddess. They will take with them only the Head of Gengan.

  A herald came forward. He was dressed no differently from the other Islanders, but he carried a staff of sea-ivory topped with a small copy of the Head, which was also wrought in gold.

  "Who are you, who would speak with the Four Kings? This one we know, his people are our old enemies." He gestured with his staff at Morn. "But you are strangers. You came from the north, with his help, and killed many of our people with unknown weapons. Why should the Four Kings grant you audience?"

  "Because," said Stark, "they wish to regain the lands from which their forefathers were driven. We can help them."

  The herald returned to the standard. He spoke with the Kings. Then he marched back.

  "Come," he said. And when they had advanced, he said, "Stand here."

  The four killer faces fronted them, under circlets of ivory set with great pearls brought out of the sea. The glance of their small, bright eyes was a stabbing rather than a seeing. Like their people, they had had all the softer places of the soul cut ruthlessly away, leaving nothing of love or laughter or mercy or kindness. The hairs rose at the back of Stark's neck, and N'Chaka repressed a challenging snarl.

  The four pairs of eyes roved over Ashton; over Alderyk, pausing curiously; over Pedrallon, hunched in his furs; over Halk's tall bulk. They settled at last on Stark, and stayed there. Something in his dark face and cold, light eyes spoke to them.

  "We march northward to the sun," said Delbane, the oldest of the Kings, and Stark recognized something in the man that he had seen before in the High North: the madness of a too-long prisoning in cold and darkness. "We have waited for generations, preparing ourselves. Now the Goddess has told us it is time. We are fated. How can such as you give us help?"

  "You have lost the ships of Iubar," Stark said, and the warmth of Old Sun on his face was like the warmth of shed blood. "Your people must do their marching on land, at least for the time being, since your skin boats won't live in the open sea. You know nothing of the world, and the north is full of hostile people. If you march alone, you will never see those lands you covet."

  Aud, the youngest of the Kings, leaped forward as though to sink his powerful teeth in Stark's throat. Instead, he began to orate, stamping his feet and flinging his arms wide.

  "For generations! You heard him say it, my brother-enemy. Countless years of waiting, until we were ready. You see there, the golden head? That is the head of Gengan, who was our lord and king at the time of the Wandering. He was a philosopher, a peaceable man. We were a peaceable people, we bore no arms, we kept no army, we were proud of our pious and lofty peacefulness.

  "But when the strong hands of well-armed countries, under which we had sheltered, let go, and the wolves they had held in check were loosed upon us with their weapons, we could do nothing but run.

  "We ran, all down the curve of Mother Skaith. And at last, the remnant of us were driven far into the White South, into a place so cruel and barren that no one else wanted it; and there we halted, and survived.

  "We taught ourselves new skills. The four grandsons of Gengan became each one a king over a fourth of our people, and each fourth has been at perpetual war with the other three. Only the fierce and the able live, and if they live too long they are sent to the Goddess. Now we are ready. Now we go to take back what was ours, to live again under the sun."

  Aud ceased his orating and looked contemptuously at the strangers. "If a child cries in the cold we slay it, so that weak seed will not be passed on. How can soft creatures like you be of use to us?"

  "These soft creatures managed to kill quite a number of your people," said Stark, showing the edges of his teeth.

  A dull flush came across Aud's cheekbones and his eyes burned. Stark stepped past him and spoke to the elder Kings.

  "Do you know where to find your lost lands?"

  Each King drew from among his furs a golden plaque, pierced at the top to hang about the neck on a leather cord. Each plaque showed an identical map, deeply incised; and though the scale was all wrong, Stark was able to recognize the general contours of sea and land, the place where Sk
eg now stood, and the plain of Ged Darod to the northeast.

  He placed a finger on Delbane's plaque. "Here," he said, and they were astonished, catching their breath sharply.

  "How can you know?" demanded Aud. "You, a stranger?"

  "Strangers often possess some scraps of knowledge. For instance, I can tell you that a great and powerful city stands there, the city of the Wandsmen, which you will be forced to take before you can occupy your land again."

  He turned and swept his hand in a wide gesture across the floes. "You are fighters and know no fear. But you could not break the walls of Iubar. Ged Darod is a hundred times stronger. How can you, with your bone-barbed spears, hope to batter down its defenses?"

  The Kings glared at him with their little stabbing eyes, sunk behind slabs of hard fat against eternities of wind.

  Dank said, "How do we know this city exists?"

  "Morn has been there. Let him show you."

  Now they glared at Morn. But Astrane said, "Show us."

  Morn nodded, summoning up the memories. Presently Stark could see again, in his own mind, the temples of Ged Darod with their shining roofs, the masses of people crowding the streets, the high bastion of the Upper City, which was the seat of the Wandsmen's power.

  The Kings made grunting sounds and shook their heads. They would not show dismay.

  "We are strong," they said. "We are fighters."

  "You are savages," said Stark. "You have not seen the world for centuries. You could not fight it with nothing more than your courage, even if your numbers were great—and they are small. How many have you lost here, gaining nothing?"

  He looked again at the wretched encampments of skin tents. And the Four Kings glared and said nothing, until Delbane spoke.