“My point’s been made,” said Ragnarson to a runner. “The Itaskians look good. Tell Blackfang to withdraw.” As the messenger departed, a dust-covered rider approached from the direction of the Porthune. He was a tall, lean man, weathered, grim, who rode spear-straight. A soldier, Ragnarson thought. A man too proud to show weariness.
“Colonel Ragnarson?” the rider asked as he came up.
“Right.”
“Eanred Tarlson, Colonel, commanding the Queen’s Own Guard, Kavelin. I have a letter from Haroun bin Yousif.”
Ragnarson took the letter, sent a runner to prepare quarters. “Queen’s Own?”
“The King was dying when I left Vorgreberg.”
Ragnarson finished Haroun’s brief missive, which urged that he waste no time moving south. “You came alone? With trouble brewing?”
“No. I had a squadron when I left.”
“Uhm,” Ragnarson grunted. “Well, you’re here. Relax. Rest.”
“How soon can you move?” Tarlson demanded. “You’re desperately needed. The Queen had little but my regiment, and that likely to disappear if someone spreads the rumor that I’m dead.”
“The problem of succession, eh? The changeling and the foreign queen.”
Tarlson gave him an odd look. “Yes. How soon?”
“Not today. Tomorrow if it’s desperate. If I had my druthers, not for weeks. The men are green, not used to working together.”
“Tomorrow, then,” said Tarlson, as if yielding a major point.
Ragnarson recognized a strong-willed man who might cause problems unless things were made clear immediately. “Colonel, I’m my own man. These men march to my drum. I take orders only from my paymaster. Or mistress. I appreciate the need for haste. You wouldn’t have come otherwise. But I won’t be pushed.”
Tarlson flashed a brief, weary smile. “Understood. I’ve been there. I’d rather you took the extra days and arrived able to fight, anyway.” He glanced at the Trolledyngjan encampment. “You’re bringing families?”
“No. They’re staying. Shouldn’t you get some rest? We’ll start early.”
“Yes, I suppose.”
Ragnarson turned to greet Kildragon and Blackfang, who were arguing as they rode up, Haaken claiming Reskird had cheated. “Looked good. They might do if we can get them an easy first fight. Any injuries?”
Headshakes. “Just bruises, mostly egos,” said Blackfang.
“Good. We move out tomorrow. Haroun says the arrow’s in the air.”
Both men claimed they needed more time.
“You can have all the time you want. On the march. Haaken, get the families settled in the stockade.”
The leading elements moved out at first light. By noon the rearguard was over the Porthune.
An officer from Kendel’s army, as if by magic, appeared to lead them through back country, by obscure ways, out of the sight of most eyes, to the Ruderin border, where they were passed on to a Ruderiner for the march down the Anstokin border to the River Scarlotti, over which they would ferry to Altea.
Days went by. Miles and clouds of dust passed. Ragnarson did not push the pace, but kept moving from dawn till dusk, with only brief pauses to eat and rest the animals, for whom the march was punishing. Cavalry mounts were expensive. He had as yet received no advance from Kavelin’s Queen.
Ten days into the march, in Ruderin, near the northernmost finger of Anstokin, he decided it was time for a rest.
Tarlson protested. “We’ve got to keep moving! Every minute wasted …” Each day he grew more pessimistic, more dour. Ragnarson had tried to get to know him, but the man’s anxieties got in the way. He grew ever more worried as no news came north to meet them.
Ragnarson, while his troops were involved in maintenance and training, asked Tarlson if he would care to go boar hunting. Their guide said a small but vicious wild pig inhabited the region. Tarlson accepted, apparently more to keep occupied than because he was interested. Mocker tagged along, for once deigning to mount a beast other than his donkey.
They had no luck, but Ragnarson was glad just to escape the cares of command. He had always loved the solitude of forests. These, so much like those around his grant, infected him with homesickness. For the most part they rode quietly, though Mocker couldn’t stifle himself completely. He mentioned homesickness, too.
Toward midafternoon Tarlson loosened up. In the course of conversation, Ragnarson found the opportunity to ask a question that intrigued him.
“Suppose we find the Queen deposed?”
“We restore her.”
“Even if the usurper is supported by the Thing?”
Tarlson took a long time answering, as if he hadn’t considered the possibility. “My loyalty is to the Throne, not to man or woman. But no one could manage a majority.”
“Uhm.” Ragnarson remained thoughtful. He hoped Haroun’s scheme wouldn’t put them on opposite sides. Tarlson was the only Kaveliner with any military reputation, and he clearly had the will to manage armies.
Ragnarson wrestled serious self-doubts. He had never commanded such a large force, nor one so green and ethnically mixed. He feared that, in the crunch, control would slip away.
It was nearly dark before they abandoned the hunt, never having heard a grunt.
On the way back they struck the remnants of a road.
“Probably an Imperial highway,” Tarlson mused. “The legions were active here in the last years.”
iv) A castle in the darkness
Darkness had fallen. There was a quarter-moon, points up, that reminded Ragnarson of artists’ renderings of Trolledyngjan warships. “What warriors,” he mused aloud, “go reeving in yonder nightship?”
“The souls of the damned,” Tarlson replied. “They pursue the rich lands eternally, their captain’s eyes fiery with greed, but the shores of the earth retreat as fast as they approach, no matter how hard they row, or how much sail they put on.”
Ragnarson started. This was another side of Eanred. He had begun to fear the man was a small-minded, undereducated boor.
“Varvares Codice,” said Mocker, “same being attributed to Shurnas Brankel, legend collector of pre-Imperial Ilkazar. Hai! They send fire arrows.”
A half-dozen meteors streaked down the night.
“Ho! What’s this?” asked Ragnarson. They had topped a rise. Something huge and dark lay in the vale below.
“Castle,” said Mocker.
“Odd,” said Tarlson. “The guide didn’t mention any strongholds around here.”
“Maybe ruin left over from Imperial times,” Mocker suggested. There was hardly a place in the west not within a few hours’ ride of some Imperial remnant.
They drew close enough to make out generalities. “I don’t think so,” said Ragnarson. “The Empire built low, blockish walls with regularly spaced square towers for enfilading fire. This’s got high walls with rounded towers. And the crenellated battlement didn’t become common till the last century.”
Tarlson reacted much as Ragnarson had minutes before. Mocker laughed.
The road ran right into the fortress, which made no sense. There were no lights, no watchfires, no sounds or smells of life.
“Must be a ruin,” Ragnarson opined.
Curiosity had always been a weakness of Mocker’s. “We see what’s what, eh? Hai! Maybe find chest of jewels forgotten by fleeing tenants. Pot of gold buried during siege, waiting to jump into hands of portly investigator. Secret passage with skeletons of discarded paramours of castle lord, rings still on finger bones. Maybe dungeon mausoleum full of ancestors buried with riches ripe for plucking by intrepid grave robbers…”
“Ghoul!” Tarlson snapped.
“Pay him no mind,” said Ragnarson. “Weird sense of humor. Just wants to poke around.”
“We should get back.”
He was right, but Ragnarson, too, was intrigued. “Like the old days, eh, Lard Bottom?”
Mocker exploded gleefully, “Hai! Truth told. Getting old, we. Calcifi
cation of brainpan setting in. We go, pretending twentieth birthday coming still, and no sense, not care if dawn comes. Immortals, we. Nothing can harm.”
That was the way they had been, Ragnarson reflected.
“We explore, hey, Hulk?” Mocker stopped his mount beneath the teeth of a rusty portcullis.
“Go ahead,” said Tarlson. “I’m going to get some sleep.”
“Right. See you in the morning, then.” Ragnarson followed Mocker into a small courtyard.
He got the feeling he had made a mistake. There was something wrong with the place. It seemed to be
waiting…
And a little surreal, as if he could turn suddenly and find nothing behind him.
Overactive imagination, he told himself. Came of remembering what they had gotten into in the old days.
Mocker dismounted and entered a door. Ragnarson hurried to catch him.
It was dark as a crypt inside. He pursued Mocker’s shuffling footsteps, cursing himself for not having brought a light. He bumped into something large and yielding. Mocker squawked like a kicked hen.
“Do something,” Bragi growled, “but don’t block the road.”
“Self, am listening. And trying not to be trampled by lead-footed stumbler about without sense to bring light. Am wondering about sound heard over stampede rumble of feet of same.”
“Let’s go back, then. We can come by tomorrow.”
Logic had no weight with Mocker. He moved ahead.
So gradually that they did not immediately realize it, light entered their ken. Before they had advanced a hundred feet, they could see dimly, as through heavy fog at false dawn.
“Something’s wrong here,” said Ragnarson. “I smell sorcery. We’d better get out before we stir something up.”
“Pusillanimous dullard,” Mocker retorted. “In old days friend Hulk would have led charge.”
“In the old days I didn’t have any sense. Thought you’d grown up some, too.”
Mocker shrugged. He no longer was anxious to go on. “Just to end of passage,” he said. “Then we follow example of Tarlson.”
The corridor ended in a blank wall. What was the sense of a passage that went nowhere, that had no doors opening off it?
“We’d better go,” said Ragnarson. The sourceless light was bright now. He turned. “Huh?” His sword jumped into his hand.
Blocking their withdrawal was a curtain of darkness, as if someone had taken a pane of starless night and stretched it from wall to wall.
Mocker slid round him and probed the darkness with his blade. A deep thrust got results. Laughter like the cackling of a mad god.
“Woe!” Mocker cried. “Such petty end for great mind of age, caught like stupidest mouse in trap…” He charged the darkness, sword preceding him.
“You idiot!” Ragnarson bellowed. He muttered, “What the hell?” when his companion seemed to slide out of existence as he hit the blackness.
“Might as well.” He hit the darkness seconds behind the fat man.
He felt like he was tumbling down the entire well of eternity, rolling aimlessly through a storm of color and sound underlain by the whispering of wicked things. It went on and on and on and… Without breaking stride he entered a vast, poorly lighted chamber.
That room, or hall, was an assault on rationality. The air was overpoweringly foul. From all-surrounding, shadowed mists came rustlings, and for a moment he thought he saw a manlike, winged thing with the head of a dog, then a small, apelike dwarf with prodigious fangs. Everything seemed unstable, shifting, except the floor, which was of jet, and a huge black throne carved with exceptionally hideous designs. They reminded him of reliefs he had seen in the temples of Arundeputh and Merthregul at Gundgatchcatil. Yet these were worse, as if carved by hands washed more deeply in evil.
Mocker, sword in hand, prowled round that throne. “What is it?” Ragnarson asked, seldom having seen the fat man so upset.
“Shinsan.”
They were trapped fools indeed.
The mists stirred. An old man stepped forth. “Good evening,” he said. “I trust you speak Necremnen? Good.”
The old man turned to the throne, knelt, touched forehead to floor, muttered something Ragnarson couldn’t understand. For an instant new mists gathered there. An incredibly beautiful woman wavered in their depths. She nodded and disappeared. The old man rose and turned.
“My Lady honors me. But to business. You’re going where My Lady wishes you wouldn’t. Kavelin is already too complex. Go home.”
Ragnarson retorted, “Simple as that, eh? Might interfere with your plans, so we should turn back?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t do that.” His fingers, in deaf-mute signs, flashed a message to Mocker. “I’ve given my word.”
“I’ve tried to be reasonable. My Lady won’t tolerate disobedience.”
“Terrible. Hate to disappoint her.”
Mocker suddenly lunged, sword reaching.
A silvery filament lightninged from the old man’s hand, brushed Mocker’s cheek. The fat man collapsed. By then Ragnarson was moving in. The thread darted out again. Bragi tangled it on his blade, ripped it from the old man’s grasp, continued to bore in.
The sorcerer sprang straight up and disappeared in the mists overhead. Bragi, mystified, tried a few desultory sword swipes that got no result, then knelt to check Mocker’s pulse.
A shimmering, sparkling dust drifted down upon him. When the first scintillating flakelet touched his skin, he tumbled across his friend.
S
EVEN:
Y
EAR 1002 AFE
I
NTO
K
AVELIN
i) High sorcery
Ragnarson woke with a headache like that memorializing a week-long drunk. The demoniac whispering of his dream-haunts resolved themselves into the mutterings of Mocker.
Their cell was a classic, even to slimy stone walls. Beyond the rusty-barred door stood the winged thing, dog-teeth bared, a glowing dagger in hand. Other creatures stirred behind it, squat things heavily clothed, with faces like owls. The winged man opened the door.
Six owl-faces pounced on Mocker, bound him before Bragi reacted. Bellowing like a thwarted bull in rut, ignoring the agony in his head, he grabbed two, smashed them together, then used his fists on their faces. A neck went
snap!
He lifted the second overhead, hurled it skull-first against the floor.
A tide of weird creatures washed in. He went down. In moments he was trussed and being carried away. He tried counting turns and steps, but it was hopeless. Not only did his head hurt too much, his captors kept jabbing him in retribution for his attack.
They reached a vast room. It might have been the one where he and Mocker had been received, with the mists removed. It was huge. Every fixture was black. The monsters dumped him onto a stone table. He heard voices. Forcing his head around, he saw the old man arguing with the woman in the mists. The old man suddenly slumped in defeat.
The mist-woman faded. The man turned, selected a bronze dagger from a collection on a table, faced Ragnarson, raised his arms, began to chant.
Ragnarson noticed a pentagram chalked on the floor. A conjuration! He and Mocker were to be delivered to some Thing from Outside. He struggled against his bonds. The porters ignored him, nervously concentrated on their master.
A darkness animate became pregnant and gave birth to itself in the pentagram. The sorcerer stopped singing. Sighs escaped the creatures around Ragnarson.
Bragi shouted, hoping to disturb the wizard. It did no good. Furious with frustration, because his bonds would not yield, he performed the only act of defiance left him. He spit in the eye of one of the owl-faces.
It jumped as if hornet-stung, staggered, flailed its arms.
One crossed the barrier of the pentagram.
It withered swiftly, blackened. The creature screamed in soul-deep terror. The sorcerer tried to pull it out, then to c
hant the demon down. Too late. The owl-face was lost. The darkness in the pentagram gradually sucked it in.
The remainder of the old man’s servants fled, shrieking. Their rush washed against and overturned the table where Bragi lay. He hit the floor hard, groaned, found one hand had been wrenched free. And not five feet away lay the sorcerer’s dagger, that he had dropped when he had tried to save his servant. Bragi slithered to the blade, cut his bonds, then did likewise for a Mocker whose eyes were wide with terror.
A finger of blackness began to leak from the pentagram where the owl-face had broken its barrier.
The old man had disappeared again.
Staggering weak, Bragi and Mocker prepared to pursue his example. Mocker’s gaze fell on a table where their weapons lay. He moved to get them. His fat man’s run would have been amusing in other circumstances. He passed perilously near the pentagram, but the darkness within remained preoccupied with its victim.
It finished with the owl-face as Bragi and Mocker considered how best to escape, began slithering from the pentagram, writhing like a cat getting through a small hole.
“Self,” said Mocker, “am of opinion any place elsewhere is better than here.”
“Where’s here?” Ragnarson asked. “Maybe I could figure where I’m going if I knew where I’m starting.”
“Friend Bear doesn’t want to know,” Mocker replied.
“Bullfeathers. If you know, tell me.”
Mocker shrugged. “Are in small quill of Shinsan poked through cloth of universe into Ruderin. Are in two places at same time, Ruderin valley and small frontier castle in Pillars of Ivory on Shinsan border with Sendelin Steppe. Could be long walk home if luck turns bad.”
“Turns bad?” Ragnarson snorted. “Can’t be worse than it is.” The darkness still confined had grown visibly smaller. “I vote we walk while we talk.”
The darkness chose that moment to strike. They managed to evade it and flee.
The flight was an eon of fear, of oxygen-starved lungs and already punished muscles refusing to be tortured more but going on all the same. Always close behind was a snakelike black tendril.
Something came hurtling at them. Ragnarson grabbed it, Mocker stabbed it, and together they sacrificed it to the tendril. Only after the darkness began surrounding it did they see that it was another of the old sorcerer’s servants.