by Robert Ryan
Aranloth was there too. The lòhren never seemed to rest. He had a kind word here for a wounded soldier, a helping hand there to those in need, and he remained ever a source of courage and humor when these things were required.
He was a better strategist than Gilhain was himself, but he never put himself forward, always offering humble advice, and allowing Gilhain to lead. For this much was true: Cardoroth had trust in their king. Even now, after so long a siege, they seemed little worried. They waited for some grand stroke of his that would break the enemy. Only he did not have one. What hope they had he had already placed in Brand.
He thought about the lòhren. He gave no commands, yet his influence was everywhere. Aurellin was here because she wanted to be, yet that was Aranloth’s idea first. It was true that she did not wish to be parted from him. It was true that she also gave heart to the men, for she was much loved and respected. But Gilhain knew that Aranloth had encouraged her presence to help put his mind at rest. If his wife was away in the palace, he would always worry of some sorcerous attack that might be made against her. That would break him, but here at least, with Aranloth constantly by both their sides, he did not fear that, and he was free to think only of the daily attacks against the wall.
And though no further attacks had been made directly at him, still the sorcerous chanting during the night continued. But it was directed at the whole city. It was like a soul-sapping dirge: depressing, bleak and used with the elug chant to lower the morale of the defenders.
So things had been for a seemingly endless series of days, though in truth it was not that long. Yet today was different. They all sensed it, most especially Aranloth who had been uneasy since yesterday afternoon, and that tenseness grew over the long night.
Other lòhrens moved along the walls. Their white robes gleamed, and they shifted their staffs from hand to hand. It was a rare sign of nerves.
“What is it?” Gilhain asked, turning to his old friend.
Aranloth slowly shook his head as though coming back from somewhere far away.
“I don’t know. Something. Something that the enemy hasn’t tried before. This much I can say – there’s a change in the air. I feel it. The other lòhrens feel it. Even some of the men sense it. But what it is … I don’t know.”
Gilhain knew what he meant. There was a brooding menace to the air like a storm in the distance: building, growing, massing – but not yet ready to break. But when it did break, and that felt inevitable, it would not be with wind and rain and hail.
He studied the dark host below. He cast his gaze around its perimeter. He considered its center, scrutinizing elugs, men and Lethrin with his experienced gaze. But he learned nothing.
For whatever reason, the enemy had also ceased the chanting. Normally that would be welcome, but just now he was not so sure. Nothing made sense today, and that worried him more than anything.
What was he missing? Was there something that he could do, or was the attack now moving beyond strength of arms and the courage of brave hearts to something that only lòhrens could defy?
The morning ran its course. As usual, the attacks began, but he knew they were half-hearted. The elugs were driven forward by their masters, climbing the walls in a dull stupor, knowing that they ran and climbed to their deaths. It was clear to both sides that those who sent them did not send enough, nor did they support them with archers or the beat of war drums.
The attacks were easily beaten off by the soldiers on the wall. Men laughed and joked. They leaned on their spears or the stonework, talking freely and enjoying this turn of events. It was better than the desperate fighting for life against a maddened enemy imbued by rage to kill. But that only fuelled Gilhain’s unease all the more.
At noon, the enemy host grew quiet. No further sallies were made. Through its dark ranks paced a wedge of elùgroths. As a wave they came forward, the host parting for them, either in awe or fear for their lives.
Aranloth strained to look. And whether his sight was better than a normal man’s, or he used some art of lòhrengai, he saw what Gilhain did not.
“Khamdar is not there.”
They both guessed what that meant. “If he is not there,” Gilhain said, “with his host at a time when they’re obviously preparing for some great attack, then he has gone after Brand.”
That scared him. If Brand was not dead, then soon he must face an enemy beyond his strength, for no man and few even among lòhrens could face an elùgroth, least of all one such as Khamdar.
“There’s still hope,” he said after a pause. “If Khamdar had caught and killed Brand, he would have returned to his host. His absence is, in a way, promising.”
“Maybe,” Aranloth said uncertainly. “But he might still be returning.”
“That is so,” Gilhain replied. “And yet if Brand still lives he must now be approaching the Angle and the last part of the quest. The staff is within his reach.”
They said no more. The elùgroth wedge had stopped between the host and the wall. They sat, still dark statues as they seemed, their wych-wood staffs pointed at the Cardurleth.
The war drums began to beat again. The elug chant rose also, becoming one with them and they one with the words:
Ashrak ghùl skar! Skee ghùl ashrak!
Skee ghùl ashrak! Ashrak ghùl skar!
And then the elùgroths began to chant themselves. What words they uttered, Gilhain did not know. Yet their force reached out into the very air, stretched to the wall, sunk deep into the earth and soared into the heavens. The sun seemed darker. The air more chill. Elugs, drums, chanting and sorcery all worked to one dark purpose. That much he knew, but what it was he could not guess.
The air tingled. The sun dimmed further as though clouds veiled it, yet the sky was empty. A gusty wind came up from the south, tugging at banners, blowing dust in little whirlwinds and scattering dead leaves as though thrown by the hands of the enemy themselves, for there was spite in it, even if it did no damage.
Gilhain squinted against a slap of dust-filled air.
“What is it?” he asked again, hoping that this time Aranloth had an answer.
The lòhren did not reply at once. He stood straight and tall. If the wind and dust and driving leaves annoyed him, he showed no sign of it. His gaze remained fixed on the enemy as though nothing else in the world mattered. At that moment, it did not.
At length, Aranloth glanced back at him. It was strange to see him without diadem or staff, but one thing was unchanged. His eyes were those of a man who had seen tragedies unfold: the death of loved ones, the massacre of innocents and the fall of nations. Pain was in them, both remembered and expected.
“I do not know,” he said hoarsely. “But it is something wicked beyond the reach of our thought.”
20. Bright were our Swords
Brand and Kareste had long since turned eastward. They had reached, and now followed, the Carist Nien river. Somewhere ahead was the land that Aranloth called the Angle.
There was no sign of any pursuit, and he thought that strange. He glanced at Kareste, quiet as usual where she rode on his left.
“Do you think we’ve lost them?”
“Maybe. But there’s another way to look at it. They may know where we go, and where Shurilgar’s staff is secured. There’s great power in it, and they will not allow it to be destroyed – if they can help it. Even better if they can obtain it for their own use. And no doubt it has many uses that neither Aranloth nor the elùgroths have considered…”
Brand did not like that new line of thought. “I don’t see how they could know where we’re going. And though elùgroths might set a trap, I don’t think the hounds, intelligent as they are, would run ahead rather than pursue.”
“That might be true, but don’t forget the elùgroths created the hounds. They obey their commands, and no matter how keen the chase, if one of the masters was with them they would be held under their control.”
That was likely enough, and the thought of the enemy bei
ng ahead of them was not a pleasant one. So it was that for the next several days they moved warily along the grassy trail they followed.
And trail it was, for even here in the wilds of Alithoras men had come and dwelt here, though there was no sign of them now. Yet their long-ago presence marked the land. The faint path they followed was only one such sign. Another was the presence of fruit trees. These had grown wild, the descendants of trees once cultivated but long since gone to seed. How long ago, Brand could not guess…
He took out and looked over the map that Aranloth had given him. It had seemed detailed in Cardoroth, but now it was scant of information.
It showed several entrances and exits to the tombs in case of need, but a particular path was marked in heavier outline: the one the lòhren had preferred. It was the shortest, and Brand had no desire to prolong his time underground.
The closer he got to the tombs the more real Aranloth’s warnings became. There were things there that he had no wish to see and meet, yet if wishes were truths he would not be here, would never have come to Cardoroth and the chieftainship of his people would be his. Nor would his parents have been killed by an usurper.
Yet wishes were not truths, and as much as he wished that he could change things, doing so would now mean a loss to him. He would be a poorer person for never having met Aranloth or Gilhain, for dwelling in the great city of Cardoroth, nor, and the thought surprised him, would he have met Kareste.
The river to their right grew as the days passed. A mighty thing it was, yet still not so great as the Careth Nien, the great river of Alithoras. Yet this one was still too broad to cross, a massive sweep of water that drove all before it. And it gathered pace and hurried along its course now, for the land began to slope downward at a steeper angle.
One night came when the roar of the river was loud as they slept, and the next day they saw rocks in the water and furious white-foamed rapids.
“We are come close to the Angle now,” Kareste said. And she had to talk loud to be heard over the toss and thrash of the waters.
The path was plainer here. In fact, he saw several paths, but they followed only one. This led down steeply now, but before it did Brand took one last look at the river. It surged ahead, spilling and floundering over a mighty waterfall in the distance. Waves crashed and foamed. Spray cascaded into the air, and through it all the sun shot rainbow rays that came and went, leaped and fell as swift as the water-mist of the river rose and swirled above the land.
Suddenly, Brand had a sense of how vast Alithoras was, how many treasures it contained. He had seen but a fraction of it, and a hunger woke in him to see more; to tread paths that no man before him had trod, to explore the valleys, to find his way through the green-lit forests, and most of all to climb the northern mountains, whatever their dangers and look down on the land that the Halathrin had named Alithoras – the silver land, the land that even the immortals thought fair.
With slow steps he followed Kareste down the rocky path. Cliffs formed to his right, blocking out his view of the river. A great gorge opened up on the left, steep and shear, a drop so deep that it made him dizzy, and on the other side were more cliffs.
On the rock faces he saw at last the mark of the people who had once dwelt in these lands. No wild fruit trees grew here. This was mightier. This had endured through the ages intact, not seeding and growing and seeding again through the long ages, but enduring wind and rain and sun and cold, enduring time itself. And if time had marred what once was there, time also had draped over it a sense of awe. For what he saw was carved by men, by men that had once lived and breathed as he did now, but who had died, according to Aranloth, some ten thousand years before. Yet still what they made spoke to him now with the freshness of a spell cast just at this moment. He looked. He saw, and the power of the magic, the power of time itself, smote him.
They both stopped together. Side by side they looked across the gorge and at the great figures in the rock on the other side.
A series of giant carvings were there, hundreds of feet high. The elements had blunted and cracked the images, but from this distance that was nearly invisible. There were bands of laborers working in unison to harvest wheat with sickle-shaped blades before they threshed the chaff from the grain. Nearby stood massive stone querns, turned by oxen to make flour. Hunters with keen spears, stealthy and silent, left a village with their heads lowered, searching for the spoor of game animals. There were miners, long-handled picks and shovels in the meaty hands, smiths and masons, dancers and storytellers. And there were warriors also. These were hard looking men in leather armor with round shields and short swords. And then Brand’s eye was drawn to the largest carving of them all. He saw at the end of the long procession what must have been a king and queen. They were stern and fearful to look upon, and there was an edge of cruelty in their stony glance. They wore no crowns; instead, great diadems encircled their brows, such as the one he wore upon his own head.
Brand had never seen anything like it before, and the age of it, the greatness of it, took his breath away. All that work must have taken decades, even hundreds of years, to carve into hard rock.
Neither he nor Kareste spoke. At length, with a simple glance, she led him on once more. They went down the rough path that looked out over sharp-rocked death below and timeless beauty beyond.
The path was steep, and as they descended the roar of the waterfall lessened greatly. After a while, they came to a kind of recess where the ledge widened. That was as far as they could go because a rock fall blocked the way.
Brand studied it. It was not recent, but it did not seem old either. Nor was it natural. Some battle had been fought here, for the cliff above the rock was blackened by fire. Not the fire of burning timber, for there was none on this rocky slope, but of lòhrengai or elùgai. His battles were not the only ones in Alithoras.
But the rock fall was not the major point of interest. To the right of the recess was a kind of statue, and beyond that a cave. It was his first sight of the entrance to the tombs, and his heart sank. Even he, unskilled and void of magic, could sense the powers that dwelt within. There was malice there, a hunger for life and a will to bring death and destruction. Whatever waited inside was not his friend, nor the friend of any living thing.
Kareste looked at the statue, and he went over. At once he saw that it was a monument of some kind, rather than a statue.
“It’s quiet here,” he said. “I don’t like it.”
“It is ever thus,” she answered. “This is a dead land. But even so, I know what you mean. It seems even stiller than normal.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Once. Long ago, it seems now.”
“Have you been inside?”
She laughed at that, but it was a grim laugh. “No. None go in there. It is death.”
“Then why do you think of doing so now? You don’t have to, you know. In fact, I would prefer it if you didn’t. This is my quest, and my responsibility. You’ve helped me greatly, and whatever debt you owe to Aranloth is paid.”
She ran a hand through her long hair. “No, it is not paid. It can never be paid.”
“Why not? You’ve save my life, even as Aranloth saved yours.”
“Because of many things…” Her voice trailed away.
It was no answer. But he knew he would get nothing more.
He looked around him, thinking. The recess they stood on was a large half-moon shape, perhaps forty feet long and just as deep at its furthest point. In the center sat a squat and ugly stone, the thing he had taken for a statue. It was as tall as he, but somewhat wider. Each of its four faces was carved with unusual writing.
He peered at it closely. The marks were a series of slashes, dots, and half circles, evidently some kind of writing, but it differed greatly from anything he had seen before.
“What does it say?” he asked.
Kareste rested her hand against the stone. “As you guess, it’s the writing of the Letharn. It’s an
ancient thing. But as for what it says, it’s better that you don’t know.”
“Words can’t hurt me,’ he said. “Tell me what they say.”
Kareste shrugged. “So you say, but do you know all the secrets of the world, all the powers that battle to and fro, of which men hear only distant rumor? No, you don’t. And it’s better that way. But see the cave, there is writing there if you would have me translate it, though that too is a dangerous thing.”
21. I am Death
Brand looked into the shadows around the mouth of the cave. It was buttressed by slabs of stone, and the high lintel was inlaid with the same curious writing. He looked back at her, and though he did not ask it, she read his will.
“Very well,” Kareste said. She walked close. He followed, and when they stood near the entrance she spoke again. Her words were slow and halting, for he saw that she must translate the ancient script with care. But her voice, unhurried as it was, seemed more like a chant than anything else:
Attend! … We who mastered the world … are become dust. We possessed the wealth of nations. Gold adorned our hands; priceless jewels our brows; bright were our swords. The world shuddered … when we marched! Now, our glory lies unheeded in the dark of the tomb. Servants … mutter secret words as they walk the hidden ways … Death and despair take all others!
She fell silent. A long time Brand considered the words. It was a warning, but warning or no he must go inside. He looked around. There was no sign of the hunt, which was just as well, for they could not take the horses in.