Empire of the East (18 page)

After enjoying a meal from what had been meant as Ekuman's festive table, Rolf mounted to the Castle's battlements to take a turn as lookout. The high roofs and walls had been cleaned of the last reptile's corpse, and the last bleaching bones of the reptiles' victims had been removed for burial. Now on all the roosts were birds, beginning to stir with the sunset; Rolf could pick out Strijeef, stretching his bandaged wing.

Rolf turned in all directions, looking out over the battlements. It seemed to him odd that the new air of freedom should be invisible over distant swamps and farms, villages and roads, the pass, the desert, the Oasis of the Two Stones.

The Thunderstone was safe, though the Prisoner's Stone had not yet been found. Nor had Charmian.

Looking from the roof-terrace into what had been the Presence Chamber, Rolf could see that Sarah was still there. There were many wounded now for her and the other women to tend; but still she spent as much time as she could beside one pallet. Nils still lived. And Mewick still lived, and even walked a bit, though he bore five or six wounds and had been drenched in his own blood.

And Chup survived—or half of him, at least. He lay on one of the pallets that had been set in rows in the Presence Chamber. Most of the time he kept his arms raised to cover his face. His legs and all below his waist were dead, unmovable, since Mewick's hatchet had at last come looping around his guard and bitten at his spine.

Sarah's eyes would not meet Rolf's. He turned away and looked down into the courtyards. Thomas, his broad shouldered figure tirelessly erect, was down there directing the building of a temporary barrier across the breach that Elephant had made in the outer Castle wall. If some surviving band of the enemy should think to take surprise revenge, they would not take the leader of the Free Folk unaware.

Though Thomas was ceaselessly giving orders, still he did not hesitate to stoop and lift a timber himself. A girl Rolf did not know, wearing a wide Oasis farmer's hat, was staying close to Thomas's side. And there was yellow-haired Manka, stewing food in a huge caldron—and there stood Loford, displaying a bright bandage around the upper girth of his right arm.

Rolf had a bandage too, over the wound on his back. A dozen smaller hurts all throbbed and nagged. But these discomforts were no burden now; other things, more lasting, had happened to him.

He still had no clue to what had happened to his sister Lisa; he no longer had a real hope that he would ever learn her fate.

His fingers kept straying to the inner pocket of his shirt, to touch the knot of golden hair concealed there. He would speak of the charm to Loford—yes, when he had a chance.

Alone on the battlements Rolf stood the day's last lookout, gazing levelly across the desert. The mountains of the East were black even now, with the rays of the setting sun thrown full upon them.

The great demon came to Chup in the middle of an autumn night of howling wind. It came in the midst of a torrent of air, whose vortices rose seemingly within a single gasp or howl of attaining life; it came with a blast that shook Chup's hovel of a shelter, pitched against the inside of the Castle wall. Lying sleepless with the nagging of his ever-painful wound, for many nights, Chup had heard time and again the screaming passage of things that from their sound were on the verge of becoming elementals of the air. So it was that he paid little heed to the demon's first shaking of his lean-to.

But soon the shaking grew more violent. A prolonged pounding against one end of his little shelter bounced its crooked boards against the wall of enormous stones. Raising his upper body on his elbows, Chup looked down the length of his paralyzed legs in the direction of the sound. And he saw, like smoke flowing through the crevices of his patchwork dwelling, the demon coming in.

Involuntarily he stiffened. The thing from the East would have been his ally, in his days of power; what business it might have with him now he did not know. And even a strong man, thinking demons were his allies—even such a man, when a demon came to him at midnight, and at hardly more than arm's length distance, might know himself strong indeed if he resisted the urge to run, or to cover his eyes and flatten himself on the ground.

As for being able to run, Mewick's battle-hatchet had seen to that. And as for covering his eyes—well, he was still Chup. Raised on his elbows, he kept his gaze fixed steadily upon the smoky image coalescing in the close space before him. Outside the wind moaned softly, relieved of bearing that which had come in to Chup. Rain began to spatter on the lean-to.

Inside the hovel, space changed and distance grew as the face of the demon began to take its shape. Chup could scarcely make out on it anything like a human feature, and yet he knew it was a face. As it became a little more distinct there grew in Chup the fear that he might understand what he was looking at, that at last he might perceive the features rightly and that when he did they would be too horrible to see.

Nothing but demons could shake him like this. Now his eyes demanded, if not closing, at least to be allowed to slide out of focus. With a sigh he at last let them do so.

Only then, as if it had waited for that token yielding, did the demon speak. Its voice was a skeletal hand, searching furtively through dead leaves: “Lord Chup.”

The power tapped by this pronouncing of his name made its image plainer in his sight. With a shudder he gave up trying to face down the thing, and let himself sprawl back on his rude bed, a forearm flung over his eyes. “I am Chup. But Lord no longer.”

“But Lord again, mayhap.” The dry leaves rustled, stirred by finger-bones. “Your unclaimed bride, the Lady Charmian, does send you greeting now through me.”

“A greeting—from where?”

“From her place of power and safety in the Black Mountains.”

Of course, the demon could be lying. It could have come merely to torment a cripple, like some nasty child on a romp; sometimes no meanness was too small for them to bother with. But no, on second thought. It would not have come so lightly to this castle now, filled as the place was with an army of wizards and warriors of the West; even demons had to heed some dangers. It was here, then, on important business.

Without lifting his arm from his eyes, Chup asked: “What does my Lady want of me now?”

The image of the demon's face began to form inexorably inside Chup's eyelids, under his forearm that could not keep it out. Moving what did not seem to be a mouth, it said: “She wishes to share with you, as with one worthy of her, her present power and glory and delight.”

Now whether he opened his eyes or shut them, the demon's face, like some hideous afterimage, remained the same. “Power?” Suddenly shaking-angry, Chup raised his head and glared. “Power is mine, you say?” His enemies had not heard a groan or a complaint from him in half a year, but now the fullness of his bitterness burst out. “Then show me that I have just the power to move my legs—can you do that?”

Below the monstrous face the darkness worked. There appeared a pair of hands, roughly manlike but deformed and huge. They were visible in the light that sprang out when a cover was removed from an object held in one of them. It was a large, thick goblet or bowl, dark itself but holding a bursting warmth of multicolored light. That glow ate away the darkness, and seemed to half-obliterate the demon's image, and yet it did not dazzle when Chup looked directly at it.

The demon's free hand reached for Chup. He uttered an involuntary grunt, but did not feel the repulsive contact he expected. There was only an impersonal force that spun his body halfway round. Now he lay face down, with his dead feet still pointed at the demon. On his back, right in the old unhealthy wound where Mewick's hatchet had bitten at his spine, Chup now felt a cold touch as of icy water. A moment later there followed something, some kind of shock, that might have been pain of terrible intensity but was ended so quickly that even the timidest man could scarcely have cried out.

When that clean shock had passed, Chup realized that it had burned away the nagging gnawing that had lived in the wound almost since it was made. Before he could think beyond that point, the next change came, a dazzling tingling down the great nerves of both thighs. Automatically he tried to move his legs. Still they would not stir; it was long months since those wasted, shrunken muscles had contracted, save for painful and uncontrollable twitchings. But even now he felt those muscles try.

With his arms he turned himself again upon his back. The demon, withdrawn slightly, was recapping the vessel from which it seemed to have poured his healing. Warmth and light vanished. Chup again faced only a distorted presence, dim in darkness. The only sounds in the hovel were those of rain and autumn wind, and Chup's lonely, ragged breathing that now gradually grew steadier.

“Is this a true healing?” he asked at length. And then: “Why have you done it?”

“A true healing, sent to you by your bride, that you may come to her.”

“Oh? Why, then, she is very gracious.” Chup could feel the coursing life down to his toes; he tried them, but they were still too stiff to move. He did not dare accept this miracle as true; not yet. “She is full of unexpected kindness. Come, messenger, I am no child. This is some prank. Or—what does she need me for?”

With the speed of a blow, the demon-face came looming over him. He was Chup—but he was no more than human. He could not, with all his will, keep from turning his head away and lifting up an arm as if to ward a blow. His stomach, that had never troubled him before a fight, now knotted in spasm. His eyes clenched uselessly upon the demon-image looking through their lids.

Unhurriedly, the voice of dry leaves scraped at him. “I am not to be mocked, lord though you were, and lord you are to be. Not to be called ‘messenger' in insolence. Much less shall you scorn those who sent me here.”

Those? Of course, Charmian herself was no magician, to have the ordering of demons. She would again have charmed a wizard or two into helping her, with whatever scheme she played at…The demon would not let him think. He was to be punished for his disrespect. He had the sensation that the demon was starting to peel away the outer layers of his mind, with no more effort or concern than a man toying with an insect. They could change men. If it kept on it would turn him into something far less than a cripple. Unless they really needed him—he cried out. He could not think. He was Chup, but he could not stand against an avalanche.

“You are not to be mocked,” he whispered, through clenched teeth. “Nor are your masters to be scorned.”

The effortless onslaught faded. When he was master of his eyes again, there was nothing to be seen but the bearable dim face.

The demon then began impersonally to tell him why he was needed. “Among the forces of the West now gathering in this castle, there is a peasant youth named Rolf, born here in the Broken Lands.”

There could have been more than one fitting that description, but Chup had no doubt who was meant. “I know him. Short and dark. Tough and wiry.”

“That is his appearance. With him he now carries, always and everywhere, a thing that must be taken from him. It must be brought to the Lady Charmian—and to no one else—in the Black Mountains, and soon. When the youth goes into battle, what we seek may be destroyed or lost. Here the power of the West is too strong for me or any other to take the thing by force; stealth must be used.”

“What is it?”

“A small thing in size. A knot woven from a woman's yellow hair. A charm of the kind that men and women use when they seek from one another what some of them call love.”

Yellow hair. Charmian's own? He waited for the demon to go on.

It rasped: “Tomorrow your legs will bear your weight, and soon they will be strong enough for battle. You are required to get this charm before the Western army marches—”

“They may move any day!”

“—and bring it to your Lady. Men in her service will be patrolling in the desert, a few kilometers to the east, watching for you. Beyond that you must expect no further help.” The hugeness of the demon's face was growing less; Chup saw how far the space beneath his slanting roof had stretched, now it was coming back.

The dry voice too was fading. “I will not come to you here again. Except to punish you for failure.” And then the face and voice were gone, the hovel it had occupied was ordinary. The wind outside went howling loud again. Chup lay without moving until it had become an ordinary sound, burdened with no more than the rain.

 

The rain and clouds delayed first entry of the morning's light into the long and crowded barrack-room. When Rolf woke all was still in darkness, round him the familiar jumble of packs, equipment, weapons, and bunks and hammocks with their load of snoring bodies.

He who had roused him, without touch or word, stood at the foot of Rolf's bunk, a tall and bulky figure in the gloom.

“Loford? What—” And then Rolf guessed what had brought the wizard to him. “My sister? Is there something?”

“There may be. Come.” Loford turned away. Rolf was into his clothes and had caught him up before Loford reached the door.

The wizard turned to a stair, and as they climbed the rising turns of stone toward the Castle roof, he explained in a low voice: “My brother has arrived. He is speaking much of technology and how we may be able to use it. Of course I mentioned your experience, and your handiness along that line, and he was interested. I told him also how I have tried with my poor spells to learn what happened to your sister. Beside my brother I am a backwoods dabbler. Certain powers that I never could have commanded, he has called up and set to work. Understand, the answer we get may be incomplete, or…”

“Or may not be one I want to hear.” They were starting up the last steep stair, leading to the battlemented roof of what had been Ekuman's private tower. “Still I thank you. It will not be your fault if the news is bad.”

Emerging on the roof, Rolf pulled his jacket tighter against the dying drift of rain, and through habit, without thinking, made sure that something in an inner pocket was safe. Mist hung like wet garments round the tower, and no sentry had been posted here in this hour before the dawn. Near one battlement a tripod supported a brazier in which glowed a green, unearthly-looking fire. Besides the fire a motionless figure in wizard's robes stood looking out away from the Castle, into the rainy night.

Loford raised one finger to his lips, gave Rolf a warning glance, then led him forward. The green fire flared up once, the waiting figure turned, tall and spare. Hood and shadow concealed the face of Loford's brother. His fingers moved as if he tested some invisible quality of the air. Arrayed on the paved roof around him, Rolf now saw, were some of the things that good magicians used: the fruits and flowers of autumn, what looked like water and milk in little jars, small heaps of earth and sand, plain wooden twigs, some bent, some straight. The green unsteady light had changed them all, but they looked innocent and simple still.

The hooded figure beckoned, with a turning of its head, and Rolf went to stand beside it, still keeping silence as he had been signed to do. Now, looking out across the battlement into the east wind and its drifting rain, he saw the clouds and tendrils of lethargic mist speed faster past him. In a moment it seemed to Rolf that he stood on the prow of a racing ship of stone, driving into a gale. A vase holding flowers was blown in from the parapet, to land at Rolf's feet with a tiny smash.

Rolf put out his hands to grip the stone before him. The man beside him raised a long arm, pointing nearly dead ahead. Just at that point the driving mist flew faster still, became a gray smooth blur that was not mist, and then tore soundlessly from top to bottom. Rolf peered into the opening, leaned into it, and then for him the wind and rain were gone. A vision engulfed him while it seemed that he hung bodiless in space.

A forest clearing, that he had never thought to see again. A house of thatch and poles, simple and small, the garden, the familiar path, fowl in a pen beside the house. The vision was utterly silent, but it held life and movement, sun and shadow shifting with a breeze. Then in the shaded doorway a dim figure moved, one hand with a gesture that Rolf had seen ten thousand times wiping itself on his mother's familiar ragged apron.

Rolf cried out then, as in a nightmare, knowing and enduring the worst before it happened. And someone, disembodied too or at least invisible, was gripping his arms, speaking with Loford's kind whisper in his ear: “It is all written! All unchangeable! They cannot see or hear you. You can only watch, and learn.”

His mother had shaded her eyes, looking out; then she stiffened with alarm, hurried inside, and shut the useless door. Rolf did not know how he could keep watching. But he had no choice. He must learn Lisa's fate. And he must learn who
they
were, the ones who came. Soldiers of the East, of course. But Rolf wanted their faces and their names.