Kavin's World (23 page)

The horizon was a level line with no sign of mountains; it seemed that we had come to the driest part of this plain, and there was much of it ahead of us.

“Are you sure we are going in the right direction, Thuramon?” I asked.

“If there’s one thing I count on, it’s my skill with the stars,” he told me. “We are in the right path. But we’d best make haste. I have a feeling we may encounter some… guardian.”

I glanced around the gray wastes around us, and saw nothing but heat shimmering.

“Guardian?”

“I do not think the three have become aware of us yet,” he said. “But I am certain they have set out some means to make it difficult to come so near their land. I don’t know what we may encounter. But from here, I should be on guard.”

But we saw nothing, all that day. We rested, for only a few hours; and rode on while darkness still lay on the waste. And when the sun rose, there was a distant glitter on the far horizon: sunlight on snow, but still miles away.

Now we rode in an extended line, a man on
either side and
another well ahead, to widen our view of what might wait for us. The man on my right, a hundred paces off, was Orm, and Caltus was advance picket. It was Caltus who pulled up his horse first, and raised his hand to halt the group. But then, suddenly, Orm cried out a shout of warning, and we turned to look that way.

I could see nothing at all; yet Orm had dropped his lance level, and brought up his shield, ready to charge. He cried out again, his voice hollow in his visored helm.

And at that point, Caltus suddenly wheeled his horse around, and charged down upon us. He had no lance; he, like armsmen of his type, preferred the crossbow and the longsword. It may have been that which saved Orm’s life, for Caltus charged him from the side, and had he borne a lance, could have spitted him. As it was, Caltus’ horse struck that of Orm, while Caltus, with an unhuman howl, slashed wildly, his blade clanging against Orm’s helmet. Both horses went down in a tangle of hooves and whinnying.

Then, suddenly, the horse which bore the invisible Macha Emrinn sprang forward; the beast shouldered my stallion, thrusting between me and a second armsman, who had also drawn his blade. Thus, I was saved, for the moment. But the madness reached me, too; suddenly, I knew every man there was my enemy, had been plotting secretly against me, and must now be slain. Killing was good, something said within me. Aha, the sheer pleasure of feeling the blade slice through flesh, the good sharp smell of fresh blood… it would hurt them, when I killed them, and their pain would be a greater pleasure yet.

I dug my spurs into Gold, and he sprang ahead, while I swung my lance level with another man’s back.

But my luck was with me yet: Gold’s foot met a deep hole, and he stumbled. I was hurled forward and over his shoulder, knocking me breathless on the ground.

From my gasping bed on the ground, I saw Thuramon ride by, quite slowly, as though the general madness had not touched him at all, and after him, his stone-faced aide. Each carried a small sack, from which he dipped a handful of green powder, strewing it about like a farmer planting seed. I struggled to rise and kill the traitor dogs… and then a puff of the green dust caught me in the face.

I sat up, feeling my aching ribs. Near me, Caltus sat beside the sprawled body of Orm, weeping. Others were wandering around in a circle, like drunken men.

“In Tana’s name, what happened?” I managed to stand.

“In Tana’s name, indeed.”
Thuramon dropped his empty sack, and reached down to help me into Gold’s saddle again. “But wait a moment… we’ve lost no men yet, but we’re about to lose one.” He spurred forward, and leaned over to knock Caltus’s sword from his hand with a sweep of his staff. Pulling in his reins, Thuramon scowled down at the armsman.

“No need to slay yourself just yet, good Caltus. Orm has a sore head, but he lives. Look.”

“I have broken oath-service,” Caltus said, stone-faced. “I went mad. I must slay myself, while I still have honor.” He dropped to his knees, scrabbling about for his sword again.

“Thickhead!”
Thuramon roared angrily. “All of you went mad for a moment. But I was ready with the counterspell. Sheathe your sword, fool. You were trapped by a spell, laid here for just that purpose. There’s no dishonor in that.”

Caltus stared at him doubtfully, and then at the others. Finally, he grunted, and put his sword back in the scabbard. Orm sat up, groaning and demanding explanations.

“Mount and ride.” Thuramon snapped. “There may be other traps.”

In a moment, we were on our way again, all of us looking thirstily at those snow gleams so far away, and asking for more information on our moment of madness from Thuramon.

“Now, how would I know precisely how it’s done?” he grumbled.
“Enough that I’d a countering agent ready.
And that at least three of us were not affected. You’d best thank that invisible lady, prince Kavin.”

“But what could do that… thing?” I asked. “We seemed… possessed. I felt a kind of spirit.”

“So it might well have been,” Thuramon said. “A madman’s ghost, bound by spells to lie there, in wait; one who loved slaughter and death in his lifetime, and this may be his reward. I don’t know, nor would I wish to know. Magic of that sort is too black for me. I’m a simple honest wizard.”

And that was all we could get from him, though I suspected he knew more. For the rest of that day we rode, growing thirstier, our reddening eyes watching the wastes around us for new traps. The mountains drew nearer, and no more traps appeared. But at dusk we were still too far.

We rode on, in the darkness, until the larger moon rose; the light glimmered now on slopes that seemed much closer. But the light seemed changed, somehow. It was not the familiar moonglow we knew. Then we realized that there was another light on those peaks. Behind the peaks, a blue glow pulsed, an unearthly light the color of burning salt.

“There lies the valley of the three.” Thuramon
said,
his face grim. “Now pray to Tana, Prince, that they may not see us.”

And here, at the foot of the mountains, we found grazing at last, and a small stream. Our horses fed again, as the dawn rose; for ourselves, we still had dried meat from our earlier hunting, for we saw no game here.

The stream had cut a narrow channel which we followed up toward the distant peaks with growing difficulty. Again and again we had to turn, finding new ways when one path proved impossible. Toward the end of the first day, we lost a load horse, slipping and falling down a seemingly bottomless cliff. But we picked our way onward, till darkness came. By that time, we had reached an easier way, a rough ridge that rose upward as we went. Here we picketed the horses, to wait for moon-rise.

We sat, huddled in our cloaks, lighting no fire for lack of wood. It was growing most damnably cold, and a few flakes of snow drifted down as we sat. Ahead, the blue glow pulsed again, filling the horizon and outlining the jagged peaks ahead.

Then, below us, we saw orange light. We went forward a little, moving carefully for fear of falling, and found that the ridge on which we were hung over a deep valley. There, far below, we saw light, and movement.

The orange light came from chimneys, which flared steadily down there; and nearby, in the dimness, we saw figures, men moving to and fro. It was too far to hear any sound, but even where we were, the sulfurous smoke was sharp in our nostrils.

“They are slave gangs.” Semas, whose eyes were best of all of us, peered downward. “See how they move?”

“Chained together,” another man murmured.

“They work in metal, down there,” Thuramon said. “The power of the three is spread through these mountains. They may have slave-worked mines all about us. For their work to come, they’ll need much metal. Some for
weapons,
and some… for more chains.
A chain for every man who still lives, after they finish.”

“It seems over-ambitious,” someone said sardonically.

“Not for the three.” Thuramon stood up. “We must not stay here. One of them need only look up, to see us in the moonlight.”

Even more slowly, now, we went on.

The journey became an agony. The snow fell, steadily, hiding dangerous places; the way was as many paces up and down as it was forward, and every step on crumbling rock. We struggled on, through the night and into the dawn which was no true dawn, but only a lightening of the sky. Over us, dark drifts of mist were mingled with a growing smoke, and the sun was invisible.

Then we entered a narrow pass, and ended on a high shelf, where we sat and looked down into the valley of the three kings.

We were perched up there, for
all the
world like so many mice looking down into a kitchen. And, like mice, we could be struck down by the housewife’s broom at any moment.

But that valley was like no kitchen, except such a kitchen as a demon might own. It was all as it had been in the magical image, cast by Arastap; but grown even fouler since.

The great central building seemed to have grown larger than I remembered. The valley was criss-crossed with the metal strips now, and the smoke that belched from the chimneys was thick and yellow. And from here, we could see clusters of huts, and crowds of human figures, bestirring themselves through the whole valley.

But the blue glow still pulsed on, even in daylight, and the sight of it seemed to disturb Thuramon mightily. He stared toward the farther end of the valley, and murmured a word, in another language; but it sounded like a curse.

The valley’s other end was some miles distant, but the blue light seemed to come from there, where a strange looking structure stood. It might have been as tall as a ship’s mast or taller, and it seemed more like an unnecessarily complicated gallows. It was black, and skeletal, outlined against the pulses of light that seemed to come from behind it.

“The gate,” Thuramon said. He looked gray and very old. “We are too late.”

“Too late?”
I asked him, a little angrily.
“Too late to strike one blow, at least?
How, too late?”

“That gate opens a way to a hundred other worlds and more,” Thuramon said somberly. “A gate to pasts and futures… I had hoped that they could not build it so quickly. But it’s there, and working even now, as you
see
. They may call on powers you could not dream of to aid them; loose such horrors on this world as you cannot imagine.”

“Are we beaten before we lift a hand?” I asked him.

“It may be.” He resumed his study of the valley, and was silent for a long time. Then, at last, he shrugged. “Still… we may do all we can. As Gryvan’s men did, so long ago, in that other valley.”

Here, in this nook in the valley’s rim, we were safe from sight for the moment. We picketed the horses well back, and made further exploration around the outer edges of the ravine, where the rock wall opened on the valley.

There was a way down, but not one that any horse could take. A man might, if he had climbed a swaying mast at sea, as I had.
Or if he had a fly or a spider for an ancestor.
It was a mere scratch on the walls, a foot-wide ledge that seemed to lead downward.

“If we strike, hard enough and well enough, these three will work no more evil,” Thuramon said. “And because they are what they are, their power centers in themselves, in their own lives. If we slay one, a third of their power’s gone. If we slay all three, there will be an end to it.
But most of all, if we slay that dweller in darkness, the third king…
I have a tool for that one, though he who uses it will probably lose his own life as well.” He glanced up at the darkening sky.

“That path is twice as dangerous in the dark,” he said. “But in the light… those below are slaves, but some of them still have eyes.”

“In the dark, then.”
I said.
“Now… half to go, half to stay.
We must leave the horses; when we escape, we’ll need those beasts. Who’s to rear guard?”

The men looked at each other, and muttered. None would take that service willingly, it seemed.

“Well, then, I’ll make the choice,” I said.
“First, you armsmen.
None of you is skilled in climbing…”

Caltus stared at me, his face set like stone. “Lord Prince, I broke oath to you once…”

“We all went mad, driven by a demon,” I said, impatiently. “Will you never leave off about that?”

“My honor is stained,” he said. “I must go with you.”

I groaned.
“Honor!
Mine is as tattered as a beggar’s breeches. But, since you’ll doubtless never forgive me otherwise, come and die with us. But the other armsmen stay here. That, I insist on.”

Scowling, they agreed. I looked around. “You, Orm, are hurt from that fall. I saw how stiffly you ride. You could not crawl down.” He stared at me, as I spoke, and then turned away, toward the horses, where he stood leaning on his lance.

Finally, I turned toward the boy, Marag Mik. As I looked at him, his eyes went wide, and he cried out.

“No!” and he fell to his knees. “No, please! I will not stay! Lord, you’ll need me!”

“I need you living more than dead,” I said. “I do not think we will return. And for you, I have a special service, because you’re still very young… and because I think you have in you something very worthy. Caltus! Take witness to what I will now say. I make this squire, Marag Mik, heir to one third of those lands I hold in Koremon, and call him swordbearer and knight, by my right. And in return, I ask that he take oath to defend my sons and my queens, and the land and people of Koremon. I give him my name, and take his; under the eyes of Nine Gods, name him Champion of the House, and kinsman to Hostan.”

I finished the ancient formula by striking the boy lightly on the cheek; he rose trembling as he stared at me. I clapped his shoulder.

“Come, now. It’s not as great a title as you think. It’s a mere form; there are none left in my house who can take the rank of Champion, and you are of the right age. My sons will need a friend; they’re not two months old yet. And if ever a boy was worthy of knight service, you are.”