The Hammer of the Sun (30 page)

"And from the commons," growled Roc. "That's what it really means, I guess; wall out even the sight of the poor, that you can wallow in your wealth in peace. Look at the way the woodland screens off the whole fine quarter!"

"It may not be wholly their fault," said Elof. "Under some kings, even quite good kings, it might be bad for your purse or your standing to appear too openly rich…"

"And under the not so good, for your health also? Well, maybe," grunted Roc, unconvinced. "But hear this. I asked Kermorvan about the fashion once, seeing it wasn't the way in Morvannec, with all our palaces clear and open; rich or poor, folk have always trusted each other there. He told me it dated only from the declining years of Morvan, taken thence like much else rotten by the rebels who became the first syndics; that it was never the way in Morvannec -
nor in Kerys!
And you'll allow my lord Kermorvan's a bright lad; when he says the lore is so-and-so, thus it is."

"Then it must have come about at some time since the lands were sundered. Powers, there's been time enough!"

"Aye… but in both countries? Following the same path, the same ill path?
Again
?"

Elof frowned. "Well, they spring from the same root; they might well grow the same way - but no, you're right; I cannot believe it either, not when Nordeney and Morvannec have managed to be so different. It is more as if… as if the others display the symptoms of the same disease."

"Ahh," breathed Roc. "Like it might be a cold, you mean?"

Elof smiled grimly. "Caught in a chill wind off the Ice - yes, it might well be. Its hand can be subtle at times, and no less cruel; and it has many generations to study the flows and currents within the hearts of a people, and seek to channel them. Remember that as well as yours and Kermorvan's, this is also the ancestral homeland of Bryhon Bryheren."

Roc shuddered. "But if even Kerys is infected, what's the chances for the rest of us?"

"Every chance! Remember Tapiau, who despised men too much to be able to understand us. The Ice is ten times worse off, Roc; it hates us, it makes the worst assumptions about us. If we do not live up to them, we stand a better chance of escaping its snares!"

"Ah!" said Roc moodily, eyeing those walls, whose forbidding drabness seemed almost a reversed mould of the richness within. "But what's the likelihood of that here, d'you think? Eh? After all we've seen?"

"Still a good chance," Elof answered him calmly, "so long as the infection has not yet reached the heart. And that, I guess, we are about to find out."

The cog was gliding out from between the tall and insular houses of nobility and between another belt of woodland, growing against and over the most ancient walls they had yet seen, long since abandoned to the ravages of weather and wood. The channel lost its straightness and began to wind mazily about the buildings ahead; clearly it had once been a river here, before stone built up its banks and its channel was dredged. The buildings themselves took on a less even and upright look. There was no prevailing shape or size or fashion as in the outer quarters, save that they were all many stories high and built against one another, with few wide ways between; but here and there archways opened onto stairs and alleys that ran through the buildings themselves like worm-holes, as if space had been too precious to leave them open to the sky. Some buildings seemed more ancient even than the walls, others were brash and brightly new; some - and not always the old ones - gaped empty like skulls, while their neighbours stood in fine repair. And in many of their windows lights shone, although it was still only the middle of the afternoon. For in the shadow of the citadel they huddled, and behind its towers; for them, the sun had already set.

Some half-hour later, around a shallow bend in the river, appeared a row of wharves, with tall buildings behind them; walkways and galleries ran across their faces, overhanging the river, and between them many a complex hoist and crane for unloading. Elof and Roc stood beside Trygkar at the helm as with a heady blend of cursing and great dexterity he swung the cog alongside the furthest of the wharves, a vast grim affair of tapered stone blocks. Under the eyes of two bored-looking sentries men in dark liveries ran to take up the lines thrown ashore, hauled in the cog bow and stern till the long fenders of straw-stuffed canvas grated and squeaked against the stone, and made it fast. The crewmen were already beginning to strike the sail, and as it slid rustling and flapping from the mast it unveiled, like a curtain before a picture, the most startling prospect Elof had ever seen.

"The Strength of Kerys, masters," said Trygkar. "Within the Old Town, by the Royal Wharves. Great artery of the city, Heart of the Heart's Heart, the pivot about which the wide world spins. And for your worthy selves, voyage's end. May it be a fair omen to you. Pray don't forget the poor skipper!" But he chuckled quietly as he spoke, as if he knew he would get no answer; evidently he was well aware of how this sight struck a newcomer. As a distant hill or a bulk looming like a low cloudmass behind rooftops it had been an easier thing to accept, or if need be to ignore. But it could not be ignored here, for they stood at its very foot, and behind it the sky was fading to layers of blue-gray cloud interleaved with hues of peach and gold, a royal mantle draped about a crown.

Like a crown indeed rose the Strength of Kerys, a crown of many tiers and ornaments, and faced about with jewels and these jewels were edifices tall and fair in their own right. Of every kind and form they were, low and long and robust, square and strong, squat and fortified, tall and graceful and spire-crowned; palace and castle, hall and hallow, all were here, set high about those slopes like fruit in a tree, with a hundred smaller shapes scattered in their shadow. Seeing them from afar, Elof had not guessed how great they were in their own right, nor how fair in their several ways; not one but would have graced the heart of any city among men. The High Gate might be greater than any of them, but it was far less fair. His eyes followed a long stair, picked out in the long sunlight like the many-branched limb of a vast tree, from one of the tall, tapering gatehouses set in the walls encircling the slope's foot up to the level of a bulwarked fortification, out-thrust in the arc of a halfmoon to dominate the slope with dignity and strength. Around this and above the staircase wound, between smaller halls and up to a great frontage, bearing two sweeping spires that echoed the towers above. The stairway parted before it, swept up around and behind its steep-pitched rooftree to the two ends of a wide terrace. Upon this stood a palace built like embracing arms, a wide-windowed residence with nothing of the fortress about it. Up the slope it rose in curving steps, the stairways weaving about it, till it ended in a single high conical turret. From there, over a bridge that curved like the rainbow, the stair crossed to the first of a stepped pyramid of terraces; from the highest of these the towers arose.

So much he saw along one stair, from one gate; but in that side of the wall alone there were a dozen such gates, and as many stairs, and around many of those the buildings clustered more thickly. Elof could not take in a half of what he saw there; time was not given him. He jumped at the crash of the gangway upon the quay, and the roar of the sergeant's voice, mustering the guard.

The soldiers came clattering along to form up on the deck, and suddenly, after two weeks of lazy informality, they had the look of guards once again. The sergeant clumped up the gangplank to exchange words with the sentries on the quay. Elof, without turning, spoke
to
Trygkar. "Shipmaster?"

"Aye, Mastersmith?"

"You're of northern stock, and the seas are the northerner's birthright. Are you happy, sailing all your life upon river and channel?"

"Happy enough, lad," said Trygkar guardedly. "We never reckoned much on the sea, not knowing who or what lay beyond it. Anyhow, birthright or no, the maneaters stand in the way of it now, as of so much else. And not only them."

The sentries, looking agitated, were summoning somebody from the building at the rear. Elof bit his lip; over the last few days they had told the old shipman much of their voyages, and he had seemed enthralled and envious. But there had never till now been a free moment when they might safely sound him out; and there was little time for persuasions. "Search your heart, shipmaster. Is there not, deep down, the least longing to make one great voyage, unbarred by bank or boundary, to sail like the sky-wanderers, free upon the winds of the world? To find a fair land and a free kindred, and help against our common foe?"

"Not in this here cog, master…" Trygkar grinned as he might at an over-enthusiastic boy, but Elof had seen his light green eyes shift suddenly, seem to gaze at a far grey horizon.

"And if I found you a fit craft?" hissed Elof.

"A seaworthy craft? Couldn't get one past the Gate, and there's no seacoast free to build on; Where'd you ever get such a craft?"

"From the Ekwesh, of course!" said Elof impatiently. "If you could find a crew?"

"From the…" repeated Trygkar, and began to laugh, softly. "By Saithana's belly!" He shook his head in happy disbelief.

"Then you'll come?"

The sergeant was saluting two plump men who came striding up from the rear, evidently officials of some kind; they were quizzing him rapidly, and darting surprised glances at the travellers.

Trygkar fell silent suddenly, pressing his lips till his small moustaches bristled. "By the Horns of the Bull, with such lads as you twain I just might! There'd be no problem about a crew, not among us old northerners! I might! But when?"

"Who can tell? so much depends on what we may do here… upon your lord's word, among other things. A day, a year…"

"So that it take not ten years… Past that I might be too old. Get you word to me when you know - whatever my lord may say! Then we'll see!" There was sudden fire in his soft tones. "Lads, if it's at all possible I'm your man! Daft I may be, but I'd not miss this last endeavour if I did have to wait ten years!"

"Maybe it will not take so long," said Elof quietly. "But however long, I shall still call upon you, shipmaster!"

"Do you
so) Fare you well
- Mastersmith! And
my
thanks!" The officials were nodding vigorously now, and abruptly one turned on his heel and stalked away; the sergeant turned back down the gangway as swiftly, and tossed Elof and Roc a crisp salute that was as good as a command.

"By your leave, gentles…"

One of the sailors sought to take up the bag that was all their gear, but Elof forestalled him, graciously enough, and let the sergeant usher them over the gangway, with the escort clumping behind. He heard a sharp intake of breath from Roc as he set foot upon the deep-worn stone of the wharf; at long last his feet rested upon his ancestral land.

But they were not to remain there long. The sergeant led them towards a great gibbet crane at the rear of the wharf, and ushered them up short steps onto the dais beneath, a broad square of stone wail supporting a raised floor of wood with a low railing around it. It looked so like a hanging gibbet that Elof found himself uneasily scanning the boards for signs of a trap; he told himself angrily that he was growing foolish, and turned to the doors at the back. Then he recoiled in alarm, suspecting he knew not what snare, as he felt something snap taut underfoot, and the dais judder. "Do yer take hold, sirs!" warned the sergeant, himself seizing one of the rails. Roc swore in horror as with an alarming squeal the whole contraption, themselves, their escort and all, was plucked bodily from the ground.

The doors swung open before it, and Roc swore again. A long ramp of smooth stone stretched out before them, rising straight and high among the buildings above, and running the length of it two deep parallel slots. Through them ran two heavy cables, singing with tension; looking back, he saw the same two running down into the empty space beneath the dais and into a mass of pulleys and wheels. They were standing upon some kind of winched platform, set on an angled carriage to keep it level as it was hauled up the ramp; he peered over the edge to see the small iron wheels running in the slots, and was all but tipped over the side by a sudden jerk. "Have a care, sirs!" the sergeant warned. "Faster and easier than the thousand stairs, is this, but no smooth ride. Stretchin' in the cable, they always say - though like as not it's their own idle hands shirkin' the task!"

"Hands? You mean it's men hauling this weight up?"

"By a capstan, to be sure," shrugged the sergeant. "Expensive by paid labour, but there's never a shortage of sturdy rogues from the jails, even if they need their backs tickled now and again!" Elof hoped he had not noticed Roc's tactless grimace; evidently they were thinking the same thing. Water power would manage the job better and cheaper, even if the cost of building was higher; either Kerys had lost its once, famed skills in that art, or it no longer cared. He did not like to think which. At any rate they had not learned the art of drawing and plaiting wires of steel into strong - and unstretching - cables, that was clear. They were rising high now, cresting the rooftops; the platform was catching the breeze and beginning to sway. After the first shock Elof and Roc, not long from the mastheads, hardly minded the sensation, but the soldiers clung grimly to the stanchions, and even the sergeant was a shade paler beneath his bricky colour.

Already they were over the outer walls of the Strength, and passing among its host of roofs. It startled Elof to see so great a mass of stone reaching such a height; it seemed to war with all he knew of the mason's art, this tower thrust at the heavens. But as they passed the terrace and gallery, square and street shelved out from the slopes, he began to appreciate the vast skill of its shaping. Grand and imposing as was the Strength from a distance, at closer sight it seemed far less substantial, a thing of lightness and air and outlines rather than of bulk, of arches that soared like an arrow's flight made stone, heavy buttresses that surged like carven waves, lighter flying buttresses that fountained up in sprays or rose in fluttering excitement like a flock of birds startled from a cornfield. They tapered into a surprising thinness, those buttresses, both for lightness and exaggerated perspective,
till with
the
carven
foliage that adorned them they stood out against the sky like bent saplings. Roofs of vast height were narrowed, built in against the slope on their hidden side; many of the spires and towers that seemed so solid proved to be chiefly openworks of pillars and carving, intricate and delicate.