Sadly such precautions were necessary. There had been three attempts on the Duke's life in the last two years. Such was the Angostin way. A man held power only as long as his strength and his guile held out. And his luck, thought Elphons. The four major Houses of Kydor were involved in an uneasy truce, but disputes broke out often, and battles were fought. Only last year Lord Panagyn of House Rishell had waged a short and bloody war against Lord Ruall of House Loras, and Lord Aric of House Kilraith. There were three battles, all indecisive, but Panagyn had lost an eye in the third, while RualPs two brothers were both killed in the second. Lord Shastar, of the smaller House Bakard, had now broken his treaty with Panagyn and allied himself with Aric and Ruall, which suggested a new war was looming. This was why, Elphons believed, Panagyn had sent assassins against him. Angostin law stated that the Duke's forces could not be used in disputes between Houses. However, if the Duke was dead, his three thousand soldiers would likely join Panagyn. The man, though a brute, was a fighting soldier, and highly regarded by the troops. With them he could win a civil war and make himself Duke.
Sooner or later I will have to kill Panagyn, he thought, for if he ever slays me he will see my son murdered on the same day. Elphons found the fear of such an outcome weighed heavily upon him. Niallad was not ready to rule. Perhaps he never would be. The thought made him shiver.
He looked up at the sky. 'Just give me five more years,' he prayed to the Source. In that time Niallad might change.
The Duke drew rein as his cavalrymen fanned out and entered the wood. Within moments they were galloping their mounts away from the trees and back to the convoy. The captain, a young man named Korsa, dragged his mount to a halt before him. There has been a massacre, my lord,' he said, forgetting to salute.
Elphons stared hard into the young man's ashen face. 'Massacre? What are you talking about?'
'They are all dead, sire. Butchered!'
Elphons heeled the charger into a run, his forty lancers swinging their mounts and following him.
The wagons were all drawn up within the trees some fifty feet from the water's edge, but there were no horses. Blood was everywhere, splashed against tree-trunks, pooling on the earth. Elphons drew his longsword and gazed around the scene. Lares and Korsa dismounted, while the other cavalrymen, weapons in their hands, sat nervously awaiting a command.
A cold winter wind blew across the lake. Elphons shivered. Then he climbed down from his mount and walked to the water's edge. Amazingly there was ice upon the water. It was melting fast. He scooped some into his hand. The mud beneath his feet crunched as he moved. Sheathing his sword he walked back to where Lares and Korsa were examining the traces of an overturned wagon. Blood was smeared upon the smashed wood, and a blood trail, like the crimson slime of a giant worm, could be seen leading away from the wagons and deeper into the trees. Several bushes had been uprooted.
Elphons turned to one of the soldiers. 'Ride out and keep the wagons back from here,' he said. Gratefully the man swung his horse and rode away.
Melting ice was everywhere. The Duke scanned the ground. It was badly churned, but he found a clear imprint just beyond the wagon. It was like the mark of a bear, only longer and thinner: four-toed and taloned.
In the space of a few moments something had descended upon forty wagoners and their families, killed them and their horses and dragged them away into the woods. It couldn't have happened without a sound. There must have been screams of terror and pain. Yet, only a few hundred yards away, Elphons had heard nothing. And how could ice form in this cloying heat?
Elphons followed the blood trails for a little way. Dead birds littered the ground, frost upon their feathers.
Lares crossed the blood-covered ground. The young man was trembling. 'What are your orders, sire?'
'If we skirt the lake to the north how long till we reach Carlis?'
'By dusk, sire.'
'Then that is what we shall do.'
'I cannot understand how we heard nothing. We had the woods in sight all the time.'
'Sorcery was used here,' said the Duke, making the Sign of the Protective Horn. 'Once my family is safe in Carlis I'll return with Aric's forces and a Source priest. Whatever evil is here will be destroyed. I swear it.'
It was still early when Waylander strolled into the North Tower library, climbing the cast-iron spiral staircase to the Antiquities section on the third floor. The three acolytes of the priestess Ustarte were sitting at the central table, examining tomes and parchment scrolls. They did not look up as he entered.
Strange men, he thought. Despite the thick stone of the tower the heat was already rising within the chamber, and yet they were garbed in heavy grey-hooded robes, silk scarves around their necks, and each wore thin grey gloves. Waylander did not acknowledge them as he moved past, but he felt their eyes upon his back. He allowed himself a wry smile. He had never been loved by priests.
Waylander paused and scanned the shelves. More than three thousand documents were stored here, ancient skin-bound volumes, fading parchments, even tablets of clay and stone. Some were beyond deciphering, but still drew scholars from as far afield as Ventria and the distant Angostin homeland.
His search would have been so much easier had the old librarian, Cashpir, not succumbed to a fever and taken to his bed. His knowledge of the library was phenomenal, and it was through him that Waylander had gathered so many of the precious tomes. He tried to recall the day he had read of the shining swords. There had been a storm raging, the sky black and heavy. He had sat where the priests were now, reading under lantern-light. For three days he had been racking his mind for any bright shard of memory.
He glanced towards the open window, and the new wooden shutters. Then it came to him.
The old shutters had been leaking, and water had splashed to the shelves close by, damaging the documents stored there. Waylander and Cashpir had moved some of the scrolls to the table. It was one of these he had been idly scanning. The area of the shelf closest to the window was still empty. Waylander walked across the chamber to the small office used by Cashpir. The place was a mess, scrolls scattered everywhere, and he could hardly see the leather-topped desk beneath the mass of books and parchment. Cashpir had an amazing mind, but no talent whatsoever for organization.
Waylander walked round the desk and sat down, picking through the parchments that lay there, recalling what had pricked his original interest on the day of the storm. One of the scrolls had told of giant creatures, melded from men and beasts. Waylander himself had been hunted by just such creatures twenty years before - sent to kill him by a Nadir shaman.
He studied the scrolls, examining each one before laying it on the floor at his feet. Finally he lifted a yellowing parchment and recognized it immediately. The ink had faded badly in places and one section of the parchment had been stained by fungus. Cashpir had treated the rest with a preservative solution of his own design. Waylander took the scroll back into the main library and walked to the window. In the sunlight he read the opening lines.
Of the glory that was Kuan-Hador there are only ruins now, stark and jagged, testimony to the fruitless arrogance of man. There are no signs of the God-Kings, no shadows of the Mist Warriors cast by the harsh sunlight. The history of the city is gone from the world, as indeed are the stories of its heroes and villains. All that remains are a few contradictory oral legends, garbled tales of creatures of fire and ice, and warriors with swords of shining light who stood against demons shaped from both men and beasts. Having visited the ruins one can understand the birth of such legends. There are fallen statues that appear to have the heads of wolves and the bodies of men. There are the remains of great arches, built, as far as one can ascertain, for no purpose. One arch, named by the Historian Ventaculus as the Hador Folly, is carved from a sheer cliff of granite. It is the most curious piece, for when one examines it one finds that the pictographic carvings upon the inner arch pillars vanish into the rock, almost as if the cliff had grown over it like moss.
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I have copied separately many of the pictographs, and several of my colleagues have spent decades trying to decipher the complex language contained in them. So far complete success has eluded us. What is apparent is that Kuan-Hador was unique in the ancient world. Its methods of architecture, the skill of its artisans, are apparent nowhere else. Many of the stones still standing are blackened by fire, and it is likely that the city was destroyed in a great conflagration, perhaps as the result of a war with neighbouring civilizations. Few artefacts have been recovered from Kuan-Hador, though the King ofSymilia has in his possession a mirror of silver that never tarnishes. This, he claims, was recovered from the site.
Waylander paused in his reading. There followed a series of descriptions of site examinations and a suggested layout of the city. Bored by the scholarly writing Way-lander skimmed through the text until he came to the concluding paragraphs.
As is ever the case when a civilization falls, tales abound that it was evil. Nomads who inhabit the areas that once were the realm of Kuan-Hador talk of human sacrifice and the summoning of demons. There is no doubt that the city boasted great magickers. I suspect, from the statues and those pictographs we have been partly able to decipher, that the rulers of Kuan-Hador did indeed have some understanding of the vile art of meld-magic. It is entirely probable that more recent examples of this abhorrent practice - among the Nadir and other barbaric peoples - are legacies of Kuan-Hador.
I have listed separately some of the oral legends pertaining to the fall of Kuan-Hador. The one most told concerns the return of the shining swords. Among the nomads of the Varnii - distant relatives of the Chiatze - the shamen speak a succession of doggerel verses at season feasts. The first and last verse read:
But seek ye not the Men of Clay,
Who buried lie in crafted night,
Their shining swords are put away,
Their eyes are closed against the light.
Death must await these Men of Clay,
Who stand in rows of ghostly white,
And will until that dreadful day,
When they awake to one last fight.
A more complete translation can be found in Appendix 5. The Historian Ventaculus produced an appealing essay on the song, claiming it to be a metaphor for the death and resurrection of those of heroic virtue, a faith system not unusual among warrior peoples.
Waylander put the scroll back in its rightful place on the shelf and strolled from the library. Minutes later he emerged on to the central terrace outside the Banquet Hall. Kysumu was waiting there, standing by the balustrade and staring out over the bay and the sea beyond. As Waylander approached the little swordsman turned. He bowed deeply. Waylander returned the compliment.
'I have found little,' he told the Rajnee. There are stories of an ancient city that once ruled this land. Apparently it was destroyed by warriors with shining swords.'
'A city of demons,' said Kysumu.
'So it is said.'
'They are returning.'
'That is quite a leap of imagination,' said Waylander. 'The city fell around three thousand years ago. The scroll I examined was written a thousand years ago. One attack on a merchant and his bodyguards is too little to convince me.'
'I also discovered a scroll,' said Kysumu. 'It talked of nomads avoiding the ruins because their legends say the demons were not all slain, but had escaped through a gateway to another world, one day to return.'
'Even so, the evidence is small.'
'Perhaps,' said Kysumu. 'But when I see birds flying south I know winter is coming. They do not need to be large birds, Grey Man.'
Waylander smiled. 'Let us say you are correct, and the demons of Kuan-Hador are returning. What is your plan?'
'I have no plan. I will fight them. I am Rajnee.'
'Matze Chai tells me you believe your sword brought you here.'
'It is not a belief, Grey Man, it is a fact. And now that I am here I know it is right. How far are the ruins from the palace?'
'Less than a day's ride.'
'Will you loan me a horse?'
'I'll do better than that,' said Waylander. 'I'll take you myself.'
If one fact of life was incontrovertible for Yu Yu Liang it was that one golden ounce of good luck was invariably followed by several pounds of bad. Usually, in his experience, falling upon him from a great height. Or, as his mother would say, 'When the emperor's parade passes by, the horse-turd collectors are not far behind.'
The blonde-haired Norda had left his bed only moments before, and Yu Yu was happier than he had been in months. This was despite the initial criticism offered by the woman. 'You are not in a race,' she had whispered to him, as he clung to her.
He had paused, his heart pounding wildly. 'A race?' he managed to say, between great gulps of air.
'Be slow. We have plenty of time.'
If Nashda, the crippled god of all labourers, had appeared in his room offering him immortality at that moment it could not have been sweeter. First, there was this beautiful woman lying beneath him, her golden legs around his hips. Second, there was not a queue of impatient ditch-diggers outside the door shouting for him to hurry. Third, as far as he knew, this glorious creature desired no money from him. Which was fortuitous since he had no money. And now to be told he had plenty of time . . . Could Heaven be any sweeter?
He took her advice. There were many new joys to discover, and some obstacles to overcome. Kissing a woman who still had all her teeth was surprisingly pleasant. Almost as pleasant as the fact that there was no sandglass on the table beside the bed, swiftly trickling his time away.
If life could get better than this, Yu Yu Liang did not know how.
The first indications that there was a price to be paid for such pleasure came just after she left, when he pulled on his harsh, woollen shirt. His upper back tingled with pain from the scratches to his skin. She had also bitten his ear, which had been most pleasurable at the time, but now throbbed a little.
Even so Yu Yu was whistling a merry tune as he stepped from the room - to find himself facing three of the Grey Man's guards.
The first, a stocky man with tightly curled golden hair, was staring at him malevolently. 'You have made a bad mistake, you slant-eyed pig,' he said. 'You think you can come here and force yourself on our women?'
In Yu Yu's village there had been a Source temple, and many of the children had attended school there. They had no wish to learn the tongue of the round-eye, but the priests had supplied two meals a day, and for this it was worth putting in a little study. Yu Yu had been a quick learner, but lack of practice since then meant he needed a little time to translate complicated sentences. Apparently he had committed some kind of error and was being accused of stealing a woman's one-eyed pig. He looked into the man's face and saw the hatred there, then flicked his gaze to the man on either side. Both were staring at him through narrowed eyes. 'Well, now you are going to learn a little lesson,' continued the first man. 'We're going to teach you to stick with your own kind. Understand, yellow man?'
Despite having no knowledge of the pig theft, Yu Yu understood only too well the lesson they were about to deliver.
'I said, do you understand?'
The man's hatred turned briefly to shock, and then to blank emptiness as Yu Yu's left fist cannoned into his nose. He was already unconscious as the right cross followed. The guard hit the floor, blood seeping from his nostrils. A second guard lunged forward. Yu Yu butted him full in the face then brought his knee up into the man's groin.
The guard gave a strangled cry of pain and sagged against the Chiatze. Yu Yu pushed him away and downed him with a left hook to the jaw.
'You give lessons too?' Yu Yu asked the last guard.
The man shook his head vehemently. 'I didn't want to be here,' he said. 'It wasn't my idea.'
'I don't steal pigs,' said Yu Yu, then stalked away down the corridor, his good mood evaporating. There were scores of guards in the Grey Man's palace and when next they came it woul
d be in greater numbers. This meant, at best, a bad beating.
Yu Yu had suffered such beatings before, blows and kicks raining in on him. The last such attack, just over a year ago, had almost killed him. His left arm had been broken in three places. Several ribs had been snapped, one of which had pierced his lung. It took months to recover, months of hardship and hunger. Unable to work he had been reduced, at first, to begging for rice at the poorhouse. Finally he had journeyed back to the Source temple. Some of the priests still remembered him, and he had been welcomed warmly. They tended his broken bones, and fed him. When his strength returned he journeyed back to the site of his beating and sought out singly each of the eight men involved in the attack. And he thrashed them. The last had been the most difficult. Shi Da was six and a half feet tall, heavily muscled and supremely tough. It had been his kicks that had snapped Yu Yu's ribs. Yu Yu had given a lot of thought to challenging Shi Da. It was a matter of honour that a challenge should be made, but the timing had to be exactly right.
So Yu Yu had walked up behind him in the Chong tavern and thwacked a heavy iron bar across the back of the man's head. As he slumped forward Yu Yu struck him twice more. Shi Da had fallen to his knees, barely conscious. 'I challenge you to man-to-man combat,' said Yu Yu, in the time-honoured fashion. 'Do you accept?'
A low garbled grunt of incomprehension came from the giant.
'I shall take that as a yes,' said Yu Yu. Then he kicked Shi Da in the jaw. Shi Da had hit the floor hard, then slowly rolled to his knees. Amazingly the big man climbed to his feet. Panicked, Yu Yu had dropped the iron bar and rushed in smashing blows left and right into Shi Da's face. Shi Da landed one clumsy punch before pitching sideways to the floor.
In his relief Yu Yu felt magnanimous and only kicked the unconscious man a few times. It was a mistake. He should have knelt by him and beaten him to death. When Shi Da recovered he put out the word that he would cut Yu Yu Liang's heart from his body and feed it to his dogs.