"Keep up, keep up," said the captain of the Izvandians. "If you fall, we can't help you."
They passed beneath the arch of the great gate. Stark saw that the stone was stained and weathered, the carvings grown dim with time. A winged creature with a sword in its claws crouched on the capstone, fierce jaws open to bite the world. The valves of the gate were very strong, sheathed in cured hides almost as hard as metal. There was a passage through the thickness of the wall, a sort of dark tunnel where every sound was caught and compressed and the din of voices was stunning. Then they were in the square beyond and forcing their way between market stalls, toward a central platform built stoutly of wood and higher than the jostling heads of the mob. Some of the mercenaries stood guard while others dismounted and hurried the captives up a flight of steps. Stark guessed that the square was the only open space of any size within the walls and that the platform was used for all public occasions such as executions and other edifying entertainments.
There were standing posts, permanently placed and black with use. Within moments Stark and Yarrod and the others were bound to them. The mercenaries took up stations at the edges of the platform, facing outward. The two Wandsmen in green went away; apparently Mordach had sent them on some errand. Mordach himself addressed the crowd. Much of what he said was drowned in an animal howling, but there was little doubt about the burden of his speech. Irnan had sinned, and those who were guilty were about to pay.
Stark flexed himself against the hide ropes. They cut his flesh but did not give. The post was firm as a tree. He leaned back against it, easing himself as much as possible, and looked at this place where presumably he was about to die.
"What do you think now, Dark Man?" asked Halk. He was bound to the post on Stark's left, Yarrod on his right.
"I think," said Stark, "that we'll soon know whether Gerrith had the true sight."
And once more he cursed the name of Gerrith, but this time he kept it to himself.
The crowd was still growing. People came until it seemed that the space could not hold any more, and still they came. Around the inner sides of the square there were buildings of stone, narrow and high, shouldering together, slate roofs peaked and shining in the sun. The upper windows were filled with people looking down. After a while folk were straddling the rooftrees and perching on the gutters, and the tops of the outer walls were packed.
Two distinct elements were in the crowd, and they seemed not to mingle. Foremost round the platform, doing all the screaming, were the Farers and the other flotsam. Beyond them, and quite quiet, were the people of Irnan.
"Any hope from them?" asked Stark.
Yarrod tried to shrug. "Not all of them are with us. Our people have lived in this place a long time, and the roots go deep. And Skaith, with all its faults, is the only world we know. Some folk find the idea of leaving it frightening to the point of blasphemy, and they won't lift a hand to help us. About the others, I'm not making any bets."
Mordach was urging the mob to be patient; more things were to come. Still they pushed and clamored for blood. A band of women forced their way to the steps and began to climb. They wore black bags over their heads, covering their faces. Otherwise they were naked and their skin was like tree-bark from long exposure.
"Give us the Dark Man, Mordach!" they cried. "Let us take him to the mountain top and feed his strength to Old Sun!"
Mordach held up his staff to halt them. He spoke to them gently, and Stark asked, "What are they?"
"They live wild in the mountains. Once in a while, when they get hungry, they come in. They worship the sun, and any man they can manage to capture they sacrifice. They believe that they alone keep Old Sun alive." Halk laughed. "Look at the greedy beasts! They'd like to have all of us."
Arms like gnarled branches reached and clawed.
"They will die, little sisters," said Mordach. "They will all feed Old Sun, and you shall watch and sing the Hymn of Life."
Gently he urged them back, and reluctantly they returned to the crowd. All at once Stark heard a shouting and a turmoil about the doors of one of the buildings overlooking the square, and a procession moved out from it with the green Wandsmen leading and a fringe of Farers flapping at the sides and rear. At the center, Stark made out a dozen or so men and women in sober gowns, with chains of office round their necks. They walked in an odd manner, and as they came closer he could see that they were bound in such a way as forced them to bend forward and shuffle like penitents.
A low deep groan came from the people of Irnan, and Yarrod said between his teeth, "Our chiefs and elders."
Stark thought he saw the beginning of movement among the Irnanese, and he hoped they would rush the crowd and rescue their leaders by force, starting a general revolt. The movement rippled and died. The procession came to the steps and climbed haltingly while the mob jeered. The elders were herded onto the platform and made to stand, and Mordach pointed his staff at them in a gesture of wrath and accusation.
"You have done wickedness," he cried, in a voice that rang across the square. "Now you shall do penance!"
The crowd screamed. They threw things. The citizens of Irnan stirred uneasily. They muttered, but still they did not move.
"They're afraid," Yarrod said. "The Wandsmen have packed the town with Farers, as you see. One word, and they'll start tearing Irnan apart stone by stone."
"Still, the Irnanese outnumber them."
"Our party does not. And the Wandsmen have hostages." He nodded his red head at the men and women standing bent in the sun.
There was a smell in the air now. The hot, close, frightening smell of mob; mob excited, hungry, dreaming blood and death. The primitive in Stark knew that sweaty acridity all too well. The ropes cut him; the post was hard against his back. The ginger star burned him with brassy light and his own sweat ran down.
Someone shouted, "Where is the wise woman?"
Other voices took up the cry, howled it back and forth between the gray walls.
"Where is the wise woman? Where is Gerrith?"
Mordach calmed them. "She has been sent for. She will be with us soon."
Yarrod cursed Mordach. "Do you plan to murder her as you did her mother?"
Mordach only smiled and said, "Wait."
They waited. The crowd became increasingly restless. Roving bands began looting the market stalls, scattering food and produce, smashing the stalls themselves to make clubs. Wine and drugs passed freely. Stark wondered how much longer Mordach could hold them.
Then the cry went up from the gate. "The wise woman! Gerrith is coming!"
An expectant quiet settled over the square. The hundreds of heads turned, and it seemed as though the Irnanese all drew one deep breath and held it.
Men-at-arms appeared, clearing a way through the press. Behind them came a cart, a farm cart soiled and reeking with the work of the fields, and after that more men-at-arms bringing up the rear.
Inside the cart were two Wandsmen, each one clinging with one hand to the jolting stakes and holding with the other the tall figure of a woman who stood between them.
8
She was dressed all in black, in a great veil that enveloped her from head to heels, a single shroud-like garment that concealed her face and all else beside her height. Set upon her head and circling the veil was a diadem the color of old ivory.
"The Robe and Crown of Fate," said Yarrod, and the folk of Irnan let out that held breath in a savage wail of protest.
The mob drowned it in their own blood-cry.
Men-at-arms and farm cart crossed the square, halted at the platform steps. The woman was made to leave the cart and climb. The diadem appeared first above the level of the floor. It looked very frail and old, and its ornament was a circle of little grinning skulls. Then there was the sway of dark draperies, and Gerrith, the wise woman of Irnan, stood before Mordach with the Wandsmen on either side.
Because of the veil Stark could not be sure, but he thought that Gerrith was looking past Mor
dach, straight at him.
Yet she spoke to Mordach, and her voice was clear and sweet and ringing, without a hint of fear.
"This was not well done, Mordach."
"No?" he said. "Let us see." He turned from her, speaking over the heads of his Farers to the people of Irnan. His voice carried to the walls. "You of Irnan! Watch now, and learn!"
He turned again to Gerrith and pointed his wand at Stark. "What do you see there, daughter of Gerrith?"
"I see the Dark Man."
"The Dark Man of your mother's prophecy?"
"Yes."
Well, thought Stark, and what else could she say?
"The Dark Man, bound and helpless, waiting for death." Mordach laughed. He laughed often, as though he found these human lapses from reason genuinely amusing. "He will destroy nothing. Do you recant, woman? Do you admit the lie?"
"No."
"Then you are no wiser than your mother, and your sight is no more true. Do you hear out there, you of Irnan?" Again his words carried far, and where they did not reach other tongues took them up and passed them on, whispering like surf against the walls, up to the windows and the rooftops. "Your prophecy is false, your wise woman a liar, your Dark Man a sham!"
In one swift motion he ripped crown and veil from Gerrith.
Astonishment, surprise, shock, outrage! Stark could hear the sounds beyond the delighted screaming of the mob. Halk, Yarrod, and the other Irnanese on the platform made instinctive, futile movements toward the killing of Mordach.
Only Gerrith stood tall and calm, as though she had expected this. As indeed she must have done, thought Stark, unless the wise women of Irnan habitually went naked beneath the ceremonial veil. And naked she was, all warm bronze with the sunlight on her and a thick braid of bronzy hair hanging down her back. Her body was strong and straight and proud, not flinching before the lewdness of the crowd. Nudity was commonplace on Skaith and hardly to be noticed, but this was different. This act was a stripping of more than the mere body. Mordach was attempting to strip her soul.
He tossed the black veil out to the mob and let them tear it. The diadem he smashed beneath his feet and kicked the old yellowed fragments contemptuously away.
"There are your robe and crown," he said. "We will have no more wise women at Irnan."
This, too, she had expected. But her eyes held a cold and terrible light.
"And you will have no more Irnan to rob, Mordach." She spoke with the tongue of prophecy, and it made Stark shiver with its finality. "The Crown has come with us from the old Irnan, all through the Great Wandering and the centuries of rebuilding. Now you have destroyed it, and the history of Irnan is finished."
Mordach shrugged and said, "Bind her."
But before the men-at-arms could reach her she turned and raised her arms and cried out in that wonderful ringing voice.
"Irnan is finished. You must go and build a new city, on a new world."
Then she submitted herself to the binding, and Mordach said, "Do not go at once, people of Irnan! Stay a while and watch the Dark Man die."
A roar of laughter swept the crowd. "Yes, stay!" they jeered. "Don't leave us now. At least wait for the ships to come."
Yarrod, bound to his post, threw back his head and screamed a harsh wild scream.
"Rise up, you dogs! Rise up and tear them! Where are your guts, your pride, your manhood—"
The madness was on him, the madness that makes dead men and heroes. Mordach lifted his hand. One of the Izvandians stepped up and quite impersonally thrust his short spear into Yarrod's breast. A clean and merciful stroke, Stark noticed, though he was sure Mordach would have preferred something more lingering. Yarrod fell silent and sagged against the post.
"Cut him down," said Mordach. "Throw his body to the crowd."
The tree-bark women commenced a shrill chanting, raising their arms to the sun.
Yarrod's red head, comet like, marked his passage. Stark preferred not to watch what happened after that, though he could not shut out the sounds. He lifted his gaze to the walls of Irnan, the windows and the rooftops, peripherally aware that Gerrith was brought and bound to the post that Yarrod had just quitted.
Amazingly, at his other side, Halk had begun to weep.
Mordach and the other Wandsmen stood benignly watching their flock, talking among themselves, planning the next act, the dramatic climax of their lecture on the folly of rebellion. In the background, many of the Irnanese were going. They had their cloaks pulled over their heads, as though they could not bear any more. They melted away into the narrow streets around the square.
Gerrith was speaking. "So they leave us," she said. Stark turned his attention to her. She was looking at him. Her eyes were a warm gold-bronze in color—very honest eyes, sorrowful but calm.
"It seems that Mordach is right, that Gerrith's prophecy was born of her own desires and not the true sight. So you will die for nothing and that is a great pity." She shook her head. The bronze braid had fallen forward over her shoulder and the shining end of it moved between her breasts. "A great pity." She studied him, his size and strength, the structure of his facial bones, the shape of his mouth, the expression of his eyes. She seemed full of regret and compassion. "I'm sorry. Why did you come here?"
"Looking for Ashton."
She seemed astounded. "But—"
"But that's what Gerrith said, isn't it? So perhaps, after all—"
She would have spoken again but he cautioned her to silence. The wandsmen were still talking. The men-at-arms had returned to their positions, looking disdainfully at the mob that growled and howled and bestially tore. Stark glanced again at the windows.
Perhaps he was imagining—
The windows were no longer crowded with watchers. They were empty, and shutters were being pulled to but not closed, as though to hide what went on in the rooms behind them and yet leave a view of the square. There were still people on the roofs but not so many, and there seemed to be movement of a furtive sort behind turrets and chimney-stacks. Stark took a deep breath and allowed himself a very small bit of hope.
The thing was to be ready if it happened.
Mordach came and stood before him. "Well," he said, "and how shall the Dark Man die? Shall I give him to the Little Sisters of the Sun? Shall I let my Farers play with him? Or shall I have him flayed?" The tip of his wand traced lines on Stark's skin. "Slowly, of course. A strip at a time. Yes. And whom shall we call to flay our Dark Man? The Izvandians? No, this is not their affair." He looked at the Irnanese elders standing bowed in their shackles. "It is their affair. They planned to desert us, to deny their duty to their fellow men. They fell into the error of selfishness and greed. The Dark Man is their symbol. They shall flay him!"
The crowd was overjoyed.
Mordach took a dagger from his belt and thrust it into the hand of a graybeard, who stared back at him with loathing and dropped it.
Mordach smiled. "I haven't given the alternative, old man. The choice is simple. A strip of his skin, or your life."
"Then," said the graybeard, "I must die."
"As you wish," said Mordach. He turned toward the nearest man-at-arms, one hand uplifted, his mouth open to speak.
Stark heard the ripping thud of the arrow into flesh, saw the feathered butt rise out of Mordach's breast as though it had suddenly blossomed there. Mordach drew in one shocked breath, a kind of inverted scream. He looked up and saw all the shuttered windows opening and the men with bows standing in them, and the shafts beginning to pour down like hissing rain, and then he went to his knees and watched his Izvandians and his green Wandsmen drop; and he turned his face to Stark and the wise woman with the beginning of a horrible doubt. Stark was glad that Mordach had that to take with him into the dark.
The graybeard had been a warrior in his time. He touched Mordach's body with his foot and said fiercely, "Perhaps there's hope for us after all."
More archers appeared, on the walls, on the roofs. They were shooting into the mob now.
There was a great squalling and shrieking, a surge of panic this way and that as the entertainment ceased to be fun.
Stark saw a body of mercenaries come in from the gate. At the same time, from the side streets, the citizens of Irnan began to stream into the square, armed with anything they could get their hands on. Among them was one group, well armed and keeping close order. These men cut their way through the pack with ruthless efficiency, heading for the platform. They gained it. A few of them stayed to hold the steps. The others hustled the elders down and cut the captives loose. Stark and the survivors of Yarrod's band caught up weapons from the dead Izvandians. They went down the steps and closed ranks around Gerrith and the elders. They started to fight their way back into the streets.
Some of the Farers, crazy with drugs and fanatic hatred, rushed the group, careless of the swords. The Irnanese cried, "Yarrod! Yarrod!" They killed their way across the square to the rhythm of their savage, bitter chant.
They passed into a narrow street between buildings of gray stone that had grown up during the centuries and then grown together overhead, so that in some places the street was more like a tunnel. It was quiet here. They hurried on, as rapidly as the elders could move, and presently entered a doorway. Beyond it was a hall of some size, hung with banners and furnished with one great table and a row of massive chairs. Some people were gathered there. Immediately they took the elders and helped them to the chairs, and one man shouted, "Armorer! Come here and get these shackles off!" Someone had brought a cloak to Gerrith and covered her. She was standing beside Stark. She turned to him with a fey look and said, "Now, indeed, I believe."
9
Halk spoke. His eyes were red with rage and weeping but his mouth smiled, all teeth and vengefulness.
"They don't need us here, Dark Man. Are you coming?"
Gerrith nodded. "Go if you will, Stark. Your bane is not in Irnan."
The Ginger Star-Volume I of The Book of Skaith Page 5