Darkling Fields of Arvon

by James G Anderson

  "For I Hordanu am . . . I Hordanu am . . . Hordanu am . . ."

  Kal felt the cool weight of the Talamadh in his hands and the familiar chill that ran up his spine at the otherworldliness that emanated from the object. Its presence seemed to stave off and repel the seductive lure of Ferabek's voice.

  Without taking his eyes from the harp, Kal stepped to the ornate seat and turned toward the crowded square. Slowly he lifted the harp, his gaze following it, until he held it high over his head.

  "For I Hordanu am . . . I Hordanu am . . . Hordanu am . . ."

  "Yes, yes, sit! Play for us!" Ferabek's thick lips quivered in a sneer. "Play!" he barked, "Play!"

  "I give thee thanks, O Wuldor," Kal whispered, still looking at the raised harp, its frame flashing with blinding auric light reflected from the sun. Ferabek continued to speak, malice and contempt seeping from his words. From the corner of his eye, Kal saw Cromus ape his master's scorn as he lifted his head and gazed down his long nose, disdain pulling at the corners of his mouth. A breeze rose. The unfastened flaps of the magician's black leather cap lifted and fell, making it look as though a large raven had come to perch on the Thrygian's head. The banners above Kal snapped in the stiffening breeze.

  "Yes, yes! Play! Sing!" the Boar cried. "Sing to Wuldor, who was and who is no more! Sing, yes, sing!" Ferabek's laughter rose maniacal, feral, resounding from the dais like the howl of a beast. "Enbarr!" he called, looking into the portico for his proconsul. "Enbarr! This is your countryman! This is your doing! Come and witness his end!"

  "Thou, Wuldor, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of Ahn Norvys unto all its furthest marks," Kal intoned, his voice rising with the wind. "All within the compass of the rising and setting of the sun thou hast laid and even beyond these boundaries all is of thy founding might. When the sum of the ages shall be filled—"

  "Hail, king of yesterday!" Ferabek howled. "Sing of that which is no more—"

  "—and century upon century shall lie in the procession of the years, these mighty works of thine shall march darkling into night, but thou shalt endure." Kal's voice grew steadily stronger, even as the rising wind buffeted him and made the crimson cloak press to his side and tug, flapping, from his neck. "All these shall wax old like a garment, and as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall unto harmony be restored for the span of a Great Year, until chaos doth rise afresh from gloom-darkened fields—"

  Ferabek threw back his head in laughter. "A new day dawns!" he shouted "Yes! Yes! A new day dawns!" The Boar continued to laugh, and Kal saw Cromus slip a long dagger from the sleeve of his robe. The Thrygian's eyes narrowed, and he took a half-step towards Kal.

  "Though these works of thine wax old," Kal continued, closing his eyes and lifting his face to the raised harp. "Thou art ever the same, and thy years shall not fail, from generation unto generation, though they be as countless as the leaves of spring."

  Even as the last syllable was spoken by Kal, the wind blew still harder.

  "Yes! A new day! A new age!" Ferabek said. "Cromus, do not even the elements attest to it? Yes! Yes!"

  In that moment, there rose from the Talamadh a whisper of a sound. It grew steadily stronger, louder, a resonance encompassing all tones at once, from the deepest earthborn boom to the thinnest trill of birdsong, rising, growing, deepening. Kal felt the Talamadh vibrating in his hands. In the harp's song he could hear lines of melody, dozens of them intertwined, woven together without any dissonance. He heard phrases of tunes he knew. One would rise above the others, then fall back into the harmonic tapestry of the whole, even as two others swirled up above the rest like swallows in chase of one another.

  Kal opened his eyes slowly. The sun blazed in the deep azure field of the sky. As he lowered his gaze, Kal was startled to find that the sea of faces in the square, the soldiers closest to hand, even Enbarr, Cromus, and Ferabek, had all disappeared. No longer did Kal stand on the raised dais at the foot of the Silver Palace. He stood at a seashore, its vast, gently undulating surface stretching out uninterrupted to the far horizon, a barely discernible line where blue ocean met blue sky. Then a rank of mountains rose up out of the sea, obliterating the horizon and encircling a portion of the water with their stony fastness. Footing the mountains was an expanse of deep green forest, broken here and there by cleared fields and pastureland that swept down to the water's edge. Steadings dotted the open land, and, far to his left, Kal could see the clustered buildings of a large settlement like a dark grey smudge on the shore. To his right, on the opposite end of the small sea, an island sat in the mouth of a bay. A castle stood on the island, and behind the island, small in the distance, Kal saw the tall domed form of the Great Glence.

  The Stoneholding lay spread out before him, pristine in its wild beauty, ringed around by the snow-capped peaks of the Radolans, Deepmere sparkling beneath a cloudless sky. From the surface of the lake, a great flock of white geese lifted in a cloud of flashing wings. They banked away, steadily climbing, then wheeled around, until they were flying directly toward the Great Glence.

  Kal looked again toward Wuldor's Howe, protected by the island. Before Kal's eyes, the form of the Great Glence began to shift, as if somehow being wrested from the ground on which it sat. It grew larger, slowly at first, the granite dome swelling, until it seemed that the distance between him and the structure was rapidly closing. Kal felt a sensation of weightlessness and was unsure if the building was flying towards him or he towards the building. The stonework of the Glence had lost all appearance of solidity as it stretched, filling Kal's entire field of vision. The massive dome loomed over him, and its great oaken doors flew open, revealing nothing but shadow-cast blackness. The opening grew wider, like the maw of a ravening beast, and Kal was devoured by the edifice to the sound of a howling wind. The doors slammed shut behind him. There was silence and utter darkness.

  Kal felt the raw surge of fear consume him. His heartbeat throbbed in his ears, and he heard his fitful, sucking breath catch in his throat. His fear enveloped him and coalesced, covering him like another skin that painfully peeled away from him and slipped, a formless vapour, into the darkness. Fear was replaced by doubt, which crept over him, heavy and clinging, until it, too, was rent from his frame and flew off unseen. He would have cried out from the agony that wracked his being, had he the breath to do it.

  Now anger filled his veins and seeped out his pores, condensing on his body like a heavy sweat that trickled and ran cold from his brow, his chest, his limbs. His strength ebbed with it as it pooled at his feet and purled away into the blackness.

  Pride swelled in his chest, expanding his lungs until he thought his distended torso would tear apart, rib from rib. His head jerked back, and his mouth gaped open. In a silent scream, a torrent of black smoke spewed from his throat and swirled up into the void above him.

  Wave after wave, his viciousness manifested itself in violent, wrenching forms—resentment, a leaden weight that bowed him over nearly to the ground; envy, an icy chill in his marrow; disdain, contempt, and scorn contorted his features and made his eyes burn like metal orbs in the belly of a forgeman's fire, until he would have torn them out himself. Avarice, malice, ill-will, and meanness, every trace of corruption or aberration of his character appeared to him like another self and tore at his very being, leaving him weak and empty, like a vessel drained, a shell, thin and brittle.

  Kal had fallen to his knees, leaning on the knuckles of one hand, gripping his stomach with the other. Around him he could see all his maleficence, every flaw of his character, depicted by the vague shadow forms of his intemperate nature, as on an invisible stage, black on black, with himself at the centre. These same amorphous, miasmal shapes that swirled around and surrounded him now mocked him, condemned him in voices from his past—his own voice and his own past. Kal buried his head in his hands, sobbing noiselessly, too feeble and frightened even to lift his eyes.

  He gradually became conscious of a faint light in the abyss of darkness that
enshrouded him, but, peering between his fingers, he saw only blackness and shadow. Still, Kal sensed the light growing stronger, and a calmness overcame him, a calmness that blossomed into a deep peace. Kal lowered his hands from his face and looked with shocked bemusement at his fingers and his palms. They glowed dimly, as if he held light cupped in his hands. The gleam grew steadily brighter. The brilliance, it occurred to Kal, came not from his hands at all, but was reflected by them. He moved his hands away from his face, and they dimmed. Drawing them closer to his face, they became brilliant again. Around him, the shadows gave way to the mysterious candescence, and he rose to his feet. Courage possessed him, and he laughed aloud. He stood in the centre of an ever-widening sphere of light, around the vague margins of which shrieked and thrashed the shadow-shapes of his faults. These retreated from him, shrank back into the failing shade of darkness, until the grey stone walls of the Great Glence appeared, and the shadows were no more.

  Like a wave erupting from the surface of a still pool into which a stone is thrown, an intensity of brilliant light burst from Kal, and he could see nothing but whiteness. From the depth of brilliance, the faint form of an immense block of stone resolved, upon which stood the Talamadh—luminous, marvellous, glorious! Kal's eyes were fixed on it, and it alone. The Talamadh consumed his entire attention.

  Staring at the harp, Kal became slowly conscious of a single line of melody carried by a single human voice singing in a language foreign to his ear, woven into the now gentle sonority of the harp. The Talamadh glinted in the sunlight, its golden form framed once more by the blue Arvonian sky. Kal lowered himself, still singing, to the throne in front of which he had been standing, and, as he drew the harp to himself, the wind music faded and was replaced by the fanned thrum of rising and falling arpeggios as his fingers moved over the strings.

  The wind had subsided to little more than the waft of a warm summer's breeze. The breeze carried a clamour of fear, panic, grief, and sorrow mixed with laughter and cries of elation to his ear. It dawned on Kal that there were people nearby. It struck him as bizarre, this eclectic jumble of expressed emotion. Close at hand, someone screamed, "No! No! Stop! Take it from him! Take it! Take it! Take it!"

  The melody was complete, and Kal let his palms rest on the strings he had been plucking. He raised his eyes from the harp and looked to the square below. The expanse of cobblestone was in a state of near-complete chaos. A press of people fled from the square up every avenue and alley that led away from the Palace. Others stood fixed in place, scattered across the square, staring up, enraptured, at Kal holding the sacred harp. Some stood staring with blank, expressionless faces; some seemed caught up in what appeared to Kal like uncontrolled giddiness. All around them, banners and pieces of clothing lay strewn over the cobbles.

  And there were bodies. Some writhed in convulsive anguish. Others lay motionless. Whether these were dead or alive, Kal could not be sure. Many of them were Black Scorpion Dragoons or Gawmage's dog's-head troops. In a far corner of the square, a lone soldier tried to restore some order and rally the few of his compatriots who were still standing.

  "Cromus! Take it from him! Stop him! Cromus!"

  Kal looked to his left, where Ferabek was on all fours, his back arched, snarling over his shoulder at his Thrygian magician. Slaver and vomit stained the Boar's contorted face and pooled on the flagstone and over his fingers and hands.

  "Cromus, you wretch, do something!"

  There was the sharp clatter of metal on stone. Kal looked at his feet, and there lay a bloodied dagger, the one the Thrygian had drawn from his robes. Kal lifted his gaze to where Cromus stood motionless, little more than an arm's length away, his expression wooden and inscrutable.

  "Cromus! Cromus!" Ferabek cried.

  The Thrygian blinked once, heavily, and opened his mouth as if to speak, but no sound came out. He lowered his eyes to where his hands pressed against his lower abdomen. A red stain crept from behind his hands, drawn, as by a wick, by the white fabric of his robes. As Cromus lowered his hands, a mess of mottled pink viscera slipped from a long tear in the cloth at his belly, spilling into his hands, overfilling them and falling to the ground. The faintest hint of a smile teased the Thrygian's face, and he sank to his knees and closed his eyes.

  "Cromus! Crom—Proconsul!" Ferabek screamed, clawing at the soiled flags with his nails. "Stop this from happening! Proconsul! Enbarr! Enbarr! Enbarr! Enbarr!"

  Kal glanced into the wings of the portico. There were no soldiers or guardsmen to be seen. The headsman had fled, leaving Rhodangalas lying on the ground where it had fallen from his hand. Only the unmistakable figure of Enbarr remained, aloof and cringing, clinging to the shadows of the portico. He clutched his robes about him, and a look of strained confusion etched his dimly lit features as he looked at his liege lord groveling on the dais atop the Great Square. Enbarr shot a long glance at Kal, his expression unchanged, then turned and fled into the Palace.

  The Boar raved, shaking his head from side to side, then began to pound it on the wet flagstones. A spurt of blood flew from his scalp, and just when it seemed that he would split his skull open, Ferabek slumped to the ground. His limbs twitched, and then he fell still.

  "Kal!"

  Gwyn came bounding up the steps two at a time towards him.

  "Kal!"

  Galli and Devved were running up behind Gwyn. Both were shouting as they ran. As Gwyn approached the top of the stairs, a soldier appeared from the palace and ran to Ferabek. Kneeling beside his master, the soldier glanced up at Gwyn but offered him no challenge as he ran past. Another soldier appeared but ignored the Holdsmen altogether, coming to the assistance of his comrade and his lord.

  Kal looked up at Gwyn from where he sat. The young Holdsman's face was placid, but his eyes betrayed an insistence and an urgency of purpose. Galli and Devved now flanked Gwyn.

  "Kal, are you all right?" Devved said. "Get up. We must go."

  Kal remained seated, motionless. Gwyn reached forward and gently shook Kal's shoulder and nodded to his friend.

  "Uferian and his men have left for the ships," Galli said. "I sent them ahead while we came to get you. Everything's in confusion. What happened, Kal? Did you see it? I'm standing there watching the Boar and his Thrygian pushing you around, and all of a sudden—"

  "Galli, leave off," Devved said. "We have to go, Kal."

  "All of a sudden, I'm in my beeyard," Galli continued, "at the Burrows, nice and peaceful, until the bees all start to attack me. But it's not the bees attacking me, it's me attacking me! It was the strangest—"

  "And I was afire in my own forge, and we'll talk about it later, so stop nattering, Galli," the blacksmith said. "Now we must run. While we have a chance."

  Kal smiled. "It's all right, friends," he said and stood up. "All is well. Come, let us leave as Devved bids us." Kal walked past the soldiers still crouching over Ferabek's inert body without looking at them. "Galli, my sword, get it for me, please. And the scabbard . . ." Kal cast a glance to one side and the other, until he saw Rhodangalas's sheath and the sword belt lying on a table within the portico. "There." He pointed.

  Led by Kal, the group turned and descended the stairs to the square. A knot of soldiers on the far side of the square had seen them and raised the alarm. "To arms! To arms!" The cry echoed off the surrounding buildings as the small cohort began to run across the cobbles toward the stairs, swords drawn.

  An alley branched off the square skirting the foundation of the Silver Palace. Kal glanced at his companions. "To the moorage. To the ships," he said. "Now we run, friends! Now we run!"

  Devved balked, hesitated and looked at Kal, then stooped to the prone figure of a fallen soldier, his mastiff's-head tunic crumpled over him, and drew the man's sword. "I stay here," he said. "You all go."

  Kal placed a hand on the blacksmith's chest. "Hold them off as long as you can," he said. "We'll wait for you as long as we can. Briacoil, Devved. May Wuldor hold you in his eye."

  "Go, Kal
. Go now. Briacoil."

  As Kal skip-stepped backwards away from Devved down the alley, the blacksmith turned to face the square. Kal spun around and ran after the two other Holdsmen, clutching the Talamadh to his breast. In but a moment, Kal could hear behind him the grunted exertion of Devved swinging the sword and the ringing clash of metal on metal. As their way cut to the right around a corner away from the Palace walls, Kal glanced back up the alley. Devved fought three soldiers. Two more stood ready behind them, and still two others lay on the cobbles nearby.

  "May Wuldor hold you ever in his eye, Devved . . . . Friend," Kal whispered, then turned the corner, and Devved was lost to his sight.

  The three Holdsmen ran through the grounds of the Silver Palace, heading for the quay down alleys and bypaths that were all but deserted. Those few people whom they did chance to encounter either ignored their passage or looked at them with the blank stare of utter confusion. Through it all, Kal tried to push the thought of Devved from his mind. He had sacrificed himself for the sake of his friends.

  Once, as the Holdsmen slowed their pace to get their bearings, a man appeared from an adjoining alley and pulled up short at the sight of Kal, blocking the way. Dressed in common garb, coarse and well-patched, the man clearly belonged to the outer streets of the city. The stranger's eyes settled on the Talamadh, then searched Kal's face. A look of dawning comprehension quickly passed over the man's face, replaced almost at once by a queer admixture of pain, intercession, and a profound joy. Kal pulled the velvet robe over the Talamadh, concealing it from view. The stranger fell to his knees and grabbed Kal's hand and pressed it to his brow. The man muttered something that Kal could not make out. Then, lifting his face to look at Kal, he said, "Thank you, my lord, thank you. I am one of . . . There are others, many others. Ardiel's breath still fills the breast of many in Arvon, even here in Dinas Antrum. I-I could not see you . . ." The stranger's voice caught in his throat. He coughed, then continued, "B-but I heard you. I was beckoned . . . drawn, somehow . . . I can't explain, but I came days ago to wait at the Palace gates. Then I heard your voice. And the music!" The man threw his head back, still clinging to Kal's hand, and laughed. Kal glanced at his companions. Gwyn nodded and smiled, looking at the kneeling man.