Kingdoms of the Night (The Far Kingdoms)

by Allan Cole, Chris Bunch

  “Then people in other lands started thinking that we were the fabled folk and to suit our own purposes we encouraged those new myths. It made potential enemies fear us, allowed our rulers to seal us off from evil influences and — to be frank — it gave us a sense of vaulted superiority over others.”

  I knew that trait. One of the first things I’d noticed about Irayas was the people had little interest in the doings of others and thought there was nothing we barbarians could do they couldn’t better. One of my fellow voyagers — Sergeant Maen, I believe — said the people of Irayas walked around with their noses tilted so high that they were in danger of drowning whenever it rained.

  “The first difference I noted,” Janela said, “was in the old tales — before our coming — the fabled lands were said to lie on the other side of the eastern seas. And in those stories they were called ‘The Kingdoms Of the Night.’ As soon as I realized that, I searched for all legends that made reference to such a place. Everywhere I traveled I sought those myths. In dusty tomes, wizards’ vaults and even in the camps of nomads where stories have been handed down intact over scores of generations.

  Those myths all agree the Old Ones fought a mighty war against an unimaginably powerful and evil enemy. The survivors retreated across the eastern seas where they now wait for an eventual return.”

  She patted her purse. “It was in one of those camps that I found the dancing girl,” she said. “According to the witch I bought it from it came into her people’s possession long ago when they raided the last caravan that traded with the people of the Kingdoms Of The Night.”

  “It must have been long ago,” I said. “There’s little I don’t know of trading tales and I’ve never heard of anyone who has ventured those waters.”

  “I tried once,” Janela said. “But I was turned back by our coast watchers. If it weren’t for my family connections they would have summarily tried and executed me when they boarded my ship.”

  I was most impressed — not just because of her courage and initiative but because among her people such a voyage to the east is forbidden. Although Vacaan is named after the supreme god of the Old Ones, Janela’s people become quite disturbed when the ancients are mentioned. Fear was part of the reason. But I think it’s more because the Vacaanese can’t bear the comparison to such mighty people.

  Still, they honor the Old Ones in many ways. There is a mountain peak behind the city of Irayas, for example, where the east wind always blows that the ancients held holy, a mountain whose plateau holds haunted ruins of those Old Ones. When a great Vacaanese wizard dies his body is turned to ashes on a funeral pyre so the winds can carry his smoke — his essence — across the eastern seas where the gods are said to dwell. That was where I’d performed such a ceremony for Janos.

  “Did you know,” I murmured, “Janos thought light itself had physical properties? That it actually bent when it followed the curve of the horizon?”

  On the surface, my question had nothing to do with our discussion. But Janela immediately took my reference.

  “Yes,” she said. “And it was that which captured my imagination when I read the last lines of your book. And you described the vision you saw of the Fist Of The Gods. That was no vision. A trick of light — bending light — revealed those mountains to you.”

  Barely containing her excitement she whipped up her voluminous purse. From it she took a much battered chart and unrolled it between us. I leaned to look and saw the coast of Vacaan and spreading out from there the eastern seas. Beyond those seas was a coastline, and many marks showing mountains, rivers and deserts. Far inland — farther than most would be comfortable imagining — I saw a rough sketch of a fistlike range. It was labeled “Antero’s vision.”

  “I began this chart,” Janela said, “when I first began my studies. On it I transferred every clue I found in the myths of the Kingdoms Of The Night.” She grinned, rueful. “As you can see from the mess I made, many of those clues turned out to be false starts.”

  I laughed with her. The chart’s surface was marred in many places where she had rubbed out her mistakes.

  Then I said, “Where do we begin?”

  I heard Janela’s sharp intake of breath.

  “You’ve decided!” she crowed.

  “Yes,” I said, flat — disguising my own excitement. “I’m going with you.”

  Janela’s eyes glowed with victory. But following my lead she forced calm. A slender finger stabbed at the map.

  “There,” she said. “The jumping-off point is Irayas itself!”

  I sent for strong spirits to seal our bargain.

  As the servant poured she said, “I have to ask, even though I fear it may weaken your new resolve — pray tell me, my Lord, what particular bit of evidence made you decide in my favor?”

  And I answered: “Oh, why don’t we just lay it at the feet of the persuasive powers you inherited from your great grandfather?”

  “I’ll accept that, my Lord,” she said. “Even if your answer has more honey than substance to it.”

  She was quite correct. My decision had been built on the ruins of my son. I had failed with Cligus. Just as I still believed I’d failed with Janos.

  But I swore I wouldn’t make the same mistakes with this Greycloak.

  I owed Janos that.

  I raised my goblet in a toast. “This time,” I said, “we’ll get it right.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE WOLF IN THE PALACE

  A few days after my decision a strange sense of uneasiness began to plague me. I was sleeping restlessly, although I’d never really been able to sleep well since Omerye had died. But now I would wake near dawn with a sense of dread. It was if I were a boy again awaiting punishment for a piece of mischief.

  At first I thought it was base worry, since I still hadn’t announced my plans to the family. Then I thought perhaps I’d become like too many old men I knew, letting my body sit idle and boil up strange juices that flowed like oil of wormwood through my mind, fertilizing dark thoughts.

  I began exercising not only to clear my mind but also because I certainly couldn’t traipse out into the wilderness as the doddering old wreck I was. I remembered the soldierly setting-up exercises Janos Greycloak had favored and began doing them morning and night. After the midday meal I swam for an hour in the garden pool. I hired a dueling master and spent several hours a week stumbling around the mat with him.

  But these were light tasks compared to the most onerous of all. Every morning before dawn rain or sun, I stripped, save for a tie about my loins and ran with Quatervals as my companion. He’d been running, heat of summer, storms of winter, every day since he joined my household and was forever going on about how much fresher it made him feel. I maintained all his straining accomplished was making him familiar with the inevitable aches and agonies of old age when he was still comparatively young. To be truthful, I was Quatervals’ companion and that for only a moment, since I faded rather quickly while he went on to Mount Aephens and back — running the full three leagues to the mountain, then up and down its league-high crags.

  At first I wasn’t even out of sight of the villa before I sank to my knees, wheezing like a greedy harbor seal with a fish blocking its gullet, but each day I managed a little more. It was a real victory the day I went far enough to see Mount Aephens rise out of the dawn mists.

  My diet that had never been a problem, since I never was one to put on weight and after Omerye’s death the pleasures of the table vanished for me.

  What my household thought of all this I didn’t know, but made the mistake of asking Quatervals.

  “Why, they think you’re trying to make yourself strong enough to give the wench a tumble she might remember longer than a moment or two.”

  I hadn’t told anyone who Janela really was nor our intent — other than Quatervals and one or two others — but I’d forgotten people make up their own stories when there’s an absence of fact and the most lascivious is generally the best-believe
d and the quickest to spread.

  “Thank you, my friend,” I snarled. “Now I understand why you come from such a very small tribe.”

  Quatervals snickered but took no injury. It was remarkable that unlike most people who pride themselves on the truth he was decidedly thick skinned.

  Hesitantly I told Janela about the problem, fearing damage to her reputation. I was hoping she might produce an explanation for her presence that involved an area somewhere above the genitals.

  She just laughed. “What do you think people said any time I put myself under the tutelage of a man?” She heard the echo of her words and laughed once more. “Yes, sometimes I did just that but it was at my desire, not my mentors’.”

  I said I was amazed she’d found so many sensible and understanding people to study and live with. I knew too many masters who thought their power over their servants included the bedroom as a matter of course.

  “It wasn’t they were understanding,” she said. “But words, sometimes magical, sometimes not, can change a man’s mind, if indeed he’s thinking at a time like that. It always surprised me how quickly a jest can turn a stiff tool into a limp cloth.”

  I told her she needn’t go in search of the Kingdoms to gain riches — I could name a dozen households in Orissa where the maids would cheerfully pay a week’s wages to learn those jests.

  She smiled and said in the current matter what people said didn’t bother her so we could let the problem lie as far as she was concerned. “If you say nay, you’ll be the first man I’ve ever met with gray in his beard who does object to people saying a young woman thinks he has something under his tunic she finds worth while.”

  That ended that and I retired, a bit amazed I could still blush. Janela’s somewhat bawdy honesty would have made Janos proud.

  None of this changed the sense of dread that haunted me. I even wondered if my mind might be weakening and soon I’d be one of those old loons who sit in parks, nodding in the sun and trying to remember the path back to where bread drenched in milk awaits their toothless pleasure.

  Then I remembered. I’d had this feeling before. But the knowledge brought me scant comfort because I also remembered when and where. It was when Janos Greycloak and I sought the Far Kingdoms. There’d been wizards searching for us, trying to find and destroy us from several directions. First there’d been the Archons of Lycanth and I recoiled reflexively at their memory, hoping their dead souls were even now screaming in some demons’ embraces. Far worse was the watching by the one who controlled the two Archons, Prince Raveline, the sorcerer who’d seduced and then helped Janos destroy himself and whom I’d slain with the help of my brother’s ghost in that haunted city above Irayas.

  Once again I felt I was being watched, or more correctly looked for, like a hunter scans a thicket for the stag he’s certain is hidden within. By whom I had no idea. So I tried not to think of him, for so I thought this entity, although it might as well have been her or it, which was foolish, much like telling an honest man you’ll fill his cloak pockets with gold if he can not think of a blue pig for the passage of a glass.

  Fortunately there were other things to take care of, the most important being the finishing of the Ibis. I also sent word by fast courier boat for two of the vessels I kept ported in Redond across the Narrow Seas, to refit according to my instructions for an inshore trading expedition in an area where great storms could be expected. This way their captains would have no clue as to my intent yet would be ready for a deep water crossing and whatever lay at the voyage’s end.

  Once the ships were ready I ordered them to anchor just off Orissa’s river mouth to await further orders. I would rather have had three ships identical to the Ibis but we hardly had the time. These two, sister ships named Firefly and Glowworm, were single-deck hoys, smaller than Ibis, less handy and luxurious but as close as I could come to ships that might meet any problem I could imagine.

  All this was important but in the course of all these details of ships being here and there, Amalric’s gut shrinking from here to here, his ability to trot from there to there... something was ignored.

  I discovered what it was one night not long after dusk. There’d been a chill wind blowing, a reminder of winter’s storms with brief spatters of rain, a night that made a man grateful when he saw his home loom up out of the blackness, its windows alight from a fire someone has thoughtfully laid for him and his mind turns toward a warm brandy and spiced roast fowl and perhaps a blanket across his knees. Such were my thoughts as I huddled in my cloak as Quatervals turned our carriage out of Orissa’s heart, where I’d spent an exhaustive afternoon at one of my banking houses making sure they understood our new currency exchange policies.

  I felt something touch my spine. Not fear, not dread but... a warning, perhaps. It wasn’t of danger, but more like what a man feels when he’s ridden out and can’t remember whether he left his door unbarred and so turns back.

  “Quatervals,” I said. “To the yards. I wish to see the Ibis.”

  I was not telling him exactly what I did feel, since nine times of ten the man comes back to his house and finds to his embarrassment not only is the door securely barred, but bolts are slid and the latchstring pulled inside.

  Janela should still be at the ship, since two days earlier I’d told her which cabin would be hers and against her not-very-sincere objections told her she could decorate as she pleased since she’d be spending long hours in it during our journey. Further, she should keep in mind she might well be entertaining important visitors there. Those guidelines had produced a flurry of yardage merchants, painters and chandlers, as well as a quickly-suppressed moan on my part as I realized what most of Orissa and not just my household must now be thinking about goatish old Amalric Antero, his trading ship being turned into a floating bedroom and his new-found obsession with the woman of short-bobbed dark hair and soul-staring eyes.

  But I’m afraid I let my concern show as I asked him to put the horses to a trot. Quatervals looked at me sharply, tapped the reins on the horses’ backs and adjusted his sword belt so his blade was handy. I thought of telling him it wasn’t that bad, I was just being a cantankerous old man. The yard workers were gone and the docks deserted when we pulled up.

  I muttered, seeing that the yard lamplighter was amiss in his duties and hadn’t bothered to fire the torches that sat on posts along the wharf the Isis lay at. But there were two lanterns burning at the ship’s gangway and I could see another light flaring from the windows of Janela’s cabin. All was very peaceful. Feeling even more a fool I got out of the carriage and started toward the ship. Quatervals gave me a skeptical glance but followed.

  We’d just gone through the gates when I heard a shout from the Ibis, a woman’s shout of anger and surprise.

  “Janela!” I said, but Quatervals was already running, his blade whipping out of its sheath as he went. I went after him as fast as I could, cursing myself for being a fat comfortable fool.

  Quatervals ran down the slight incline toward the finger-wharf and two men sprang out at him from behind some bales of cargo. I saw steel flash as Quatervals lunged at one and he screamed agony, but the second smashed at him with a club and sent my guard spinning off the quay into the water.

  The man came at me, club high as I panted toward him. At one time when I’d been a bravo, I would’ve lugged out and spitted him like a cockerel as he charged. But not now, not carrying all these years. All I had time for was to slip out of my cloak and swirl it out like a bait net, waist high. Gods be blessed the wool was heavy and wet, with enough weight to send him stumbling to the side, clawing for his balance, then going to one knee.

  Before he could recover I saw a long pole, a tool of some sort, and seized it. It had a heavy ball at its end, and I swung as hard as I could. The weight struck my attacker in the head and dropped him. He lay motionless but I had to be sure and stamped hard on his throat.

  I could feel my heart thudding against my chest, trying to burst free. A few feet
away lay the sprawled body of a man, the lamplighter, struck down before he could accomplish his task so the villains would have benefit of the dark. I held the pole he used to light the dock lanterns, a long stick with a heavy ball of tarred twine at the end.

  On the deck of the Ibis I saw figures and again heard Janela shout with rage. I ran, staggering actually, down the dock, a buffoon armed with a match. As I went past, I saw Quatervals reach a piling and laboriously begin pulling himself out of the water.

  The Ibis was beside me, her deck and bulwarks not much higher than the dock. On the ship were four struggling figures. One of them was Janela and I saw the glitter of her dagger as she cut at an attacker. The other three carried swords and wore dark clothes. I stood helpless, trying to determine what I could do. Then amazement hit as I watched Janela defend herself.

  I had never... have never... seen anyone fight in such a manner and I’ve witnessed, in demonstration or for blood, a thousand ways of war. It’s possibly easiest to understand if I describe what I saw rather than try to explain: One man lunged at Janela, but even as his wrist straightened for the thrust she’d slipped inside his guard and slashed and I heard a shriek.

  A second man was bringing his sword — a great two-handed blade up over his head but as he did she shifted sideways and the blade smashed into the wooden deck, bedding itself.

  Before he could yank free, she drove the dagger into his chest.

  The third man struck at her back but again she was not there for the blow to land. But she’d had to move in such a hurry her weapon was still bedded in the second man’s chest as he tumbled backward.

  Now Janela was unarmed and the first man struck. His attack cut nothing but air.

  It was if she could anticipate what her attackers were going to do and move accordingly. But no matter this strange skill, now she was doomed, facing two armed men empty-handed.