Empire of the East (32 page)

Rolf sheathed his sword and turned and ran shouting to rally his crew to the balloons. At his direction men put down weapons, eased off armor, took up tools and ropes. The technology-djinn, still constrained by the spells that Gray had put upon it, obeyed Rolf's orders when he called them out.

When he could look up from his work again, Rolf saw that the Guard of Som had been reformed once more on the plain. The ranks of black were not greatly smaller than they had been at the start of the day's carnage; Guard replacements were trotting out from the citadel wearing torn and bloodstained garments in which they had already been slain once today. But the Guard had missed its chance to push the stubborn West from its small foothold on the height; the trickle of reinforcement up the pass had thickened steadily. Soon it would become a flow of hundreds and of thousands.

There were wizards of diverse but minor skills ascending with the army; each of these as he arrived was hurried to the side of Gray, who still was conscious, though standing only with the help of strong men on each side. But one by one these lesser magicians fell away, nearly as fast as they arrived and sought to relieve Gray of some part of the invisible power of Zapranoth. Some crumpled soundlessly. Some leaped and fell, groaning as if struck by arrows. One man tore with his nails at his flesh, screamed wildly, and before he could be stopped, leaped from the precipice.

Rolf took it all in with a glance. “We are ready!” he shouted to Thomas.

“Then fill your baskets with good men, and fly! We will be with you there.”

Most of the survivors of the original assault force, being the type of men they were, had already boarded for the next attack. The wind seemed right. But Zapranoth was coming, rushing now toward them like a toppling wall. Rolf, in the act of boarding his balloon, looked up and cried out at the sight. With the majesty and darkness of a thundercloud great Zapranoth now passed above them; it was as if the skirts of his robe spilled madness and dragged lightning. Two of the balloons burst thunderously, even as the djinn in its invisible cage became a blur of terror. Above the djinn there lowered a drifting fringe of cloud, that in the winking of an eye became a closing pair of massive jaws. With the devouring of the djinn, Gray cried out in despair and pain, and his head rolled loosely on his neck.

Men were running, falling, waving weapons in the air. In the confusion Rolf lost sight of Thomas, who had not yet given the last order to cast off. But there was no doubt what must be done; the balloons were ready, a little wind still held. Even without the djinn they could rise up and drop again upon the citadel.

“Cast off!” Rolf shouted left and right; ropes were let go, and his flotilla rose and flew. The demon that had just passed by now turned, but did not strike at the balloons; perhaps Gray was not yet wholly overcome. As the craft passed over the formation of the Guard, stones and arrows made a thick buzzing swarm around them. Shafts pierced every gasbag, though the padded baskets shielded the men inside. But their flight was not intended to be far.

Lowering again, they reached the citadel's low wall, and for the most part cleared it. Along the top of the wall, behind its parapet, one lean man in black came running toward the invaders as if to fight them all, while others ran away—by his behavior Rolf knew Som the Dead. But in another moment Som was left behind.

Inside the walls, the silent flyers skimmed above a different world, one that was still ordered, peaceful, pleasant to the eye. Trees, hedges, and the rooftops of low sprawling buildings skimmed the basket bottoms. There fled before them women in rich silks and furs, and a few servants in drab dress.

Only one person besides Som remained to watch them boldly. One young servant girl who had mounted a low roof gazed at the balloons, and past them at the battle. Rolf passed near enough to get a good look at her face.

It was his sister Lisa.

There was a steady swell of sound, a moaning endless tone so long prolonged in his strange loneliness that Chup could not imagine or remember when he had begun to hear it; and this odd swelling was a light as well, of which he could not remember his first sight, so bright he did not need his eyes to see it, but not too bright for eyes in spite of that.

And it was a touch, a pressure, of an intensity to make it unendurable if it had been felt in one place or even many, but it bore in all directions on every fiber, inward and outward, so all the infinity of opposing pressures balanced and there was no pain. Chup lived encompassed in this swelling thing like a fish within the sea, immersed and saturated and supported by inexhaustible sound, pressure, light, odor, taste, heat of fire and cold of ice, all balanced to a point of nothingness and adding up to everything.

So he lived, without remembering how he had come to be so living, remembering only the soft and singing promise of the sword. He did not waken, for he had not slept. Then: I am Chup, he thought. This is what the beheaded see.

What had jogged him into thinking was the feel of someone prosaically pulling on his hair. He did not open his eyes now, for they were already open. He could see light and soft pleasant colors, flowing downward. Up he rose, pulled by his hair, until he broke with a slow splash of glory back into the world of air, in which his senses once more functioned separately.

He was in a cave. He could not at once be certain of its size, but he thought it was enormous. The overhead curve of its roof was too smoothly rounded to be natural. The upper part of the cave was filled with light, though its rounded sides and top were dark; the lower part, up to what was perhaps the middle, was filled with the glowing fluid from which Chup had just been lifted, an enclosed lake of restless energy. Chup knew now that he had reached his goal, what he had heard the soldiers call the Lake of Life.

Like some gigantic bear reared on two legs, immersed to his middle in the lake, there stood the shaggy figure of a beast. His fur was radiant, of many colors or of none, as if of the same substance as the lake. Chup could not see the creature's face as yet, because he could not turn or lift his head. Chup's head swung like a pendulum, neckless and bodiless, from what must be this great beast's grip on his long hair.

He could, however, move his eyes. Where his body should have been below his chin there was nothing to be seen except receding strings of droplets, not gore, but drops of multicolored glory from the lake. Falling dripping from his neck stump, out of sight beneath his chin, the droplets splashed and merged into the glowing lake whence they had come. Chup understood now that he, his head, had been immersed and saturated in the lake, and that had been enough to restore life, with no least sense of shock or pain.

The grip upon his hair now turned his pendulum-head around, and now he saw the High Lord Draffut's face. It was a countenance of enormous ugliness and power, more beast than human certainly, but gentle in repose. And now Chup saw that in his other hand the Beast-Lord held like a doll the nude and headless body of a man. Like a child washing a doll he held the body down, continually dipping and washing it in the Lake of Life. With the splashing and the motion the brilliance of the liquid intensified into soft explosions of color, modulating in waves of light the steady gentle lumination of the air inside the cave.

And now, in his enormous shaggy hand, very like a human hand in shape but far more powerful and beautiful, the High Lord Draffut raised the headless thing and like a craftsman turned it for his own inspection. Like that of one newborn, or newly slain, the muscular body writhed and floundered uncontrolled. On its skin Chup could count his old scars, like a history of his life. He marked the jaggedness of the neck stump, where Charmian had hacked and sliced unskillfully. From its severed veins the elixir of the lake came pumping out like blood, and tinged with blood.

The hand that held Chup's head up by its hair now shifted its grip slightly. Turning his eyes down once again, he beheld his own headless, living body being brought up close beneath his head. Its hands grasped clumsily, like a baby's, at Draffut's fur when they could feel it. Closer the raw neck stump came, till Chup could hear the fountaining of its blood vessels. And closer yet, until there came a pressure underneath his chin—

His head had not been breathing, nor felt any need to breathe; now there came a choking feeling, but it entailed no pain. It ended as the first rush of lung-drawn air caught coldly in his mouth and throat. Then with a sharp tingle came the feelings of his body, awareness of his fingers clutched in fur, of his feet kicking in the air, of the gentle pressure of the great hand closed around his ribs.

That hand now bore him down, to immerse him completely in the lake once more. Once he was below the surface, his breathing stopped again, not by any choking or impediment but simply because it was not needed there. A man plunged into clearest, purest water would not call for a cup of muddy scum to drink; so it was that his lungs made no demand for air. Then in two hands Chup was lifted out, to be held high before an ugly, gentle face that watched him steadily.

“I came—” Chup began to speak with a shout, before he realized there was no need for loudness. The lake gave the impression of filling all the cave with waterfall-voices, as sweet as demons' noise was foul, but yet in fact a whisper might be heard.

“I came as quickly as I could, Lord Draffut,” he said more normally. “I thank you for my life.”

“You are welcome to what help I have to give. It is long since any thanked me for it.” The voice of Draffut, deep and deliberate, was fit for a giant. His hands turned Chup like a naked babe undergoing a midwife's last inspection. Then Draffut set him, still dripping with the lake, upon a ledge that—Chup now saw—ran all the way around the cavern. This ledge, and the huge cave's walls and curving roof, were of some substance dark and solid as the goblet in which the demon had brought him his healing draught long days ago. The ledge was at a level but little higher than the surface of the lake. Seeing at a distance was difficult in the cavern's glowing air, but at its farthest point from Chup the ledge seemed wider, like a beach, and there were other figures moving on it, perhaps of other beasts who tended other men.

The Beast-Lord said: “I cannot command the valkyries, or I would have sent them for you. If I could choose what men I help, I would help first those who fight against the demons.”

Chup opened his mouth to answer. But now that he was no longer bathed in the fluid of life, a great weakness came over him, and he could only lean back against the wall and feebly nod.

“Rest,” said Draffut. “You will grow stronger quickly, here. Then we will talk. I would give all men sanctuary, and heal them, but I cannot…I sent for you because you are the first man in the Black Mountains in many years who has cared for a fellow creature's suffering. A small beast brought me the news that you had saved it from a demon.”

For a moment Chup could not remember, but then it came to him: in the cavern of Som's treasure hoard. Still he was too feeble to do more than nod.

He tried again to study the figures moving in the cavern's farthest reaches, but could not see them clearly, so vibrant was the air with light and life. The ledge Chup rested on was of a dull and utter black, but covered tightly with a film as thin and bright as sunlight, a glowing, transparent skin formed of the fluid of the lake. The film was never still. At one spot there would begin a thickening in the film, a thickening that swelled and pulsed, rose up and broke away, becoming a living separation that went winging like a butterfly. And from some other place there would spring a similar fragment, perhaps bigger than the first, big enough to be a bird, flying up and sagging as its wings melted, but not dying or collapsing, only putting out new wings of some different and more complex shape and flying on to collide in the singing, luminous air with the butterfly, the two of them clinging together and trembling, seeming on the verge of growing into something still bigger and more wonderful; but then diving deliberately together and melting back into the gracefully swirling body of the lake, with their plunge splashing up droplets that fell again into the patterned film that glided shining and without ceasing over the black substance of the ledge.

Feeling some returning strength, Chup raised one hand to touch his neck. Running his fingers all the way around, he followed the scar, thin, jagged, and painless, of his death wound. Once more he tried to talk.

“Lord Draffut, is the battle over?”

Draffut turned his head toward the far end of the Lake. “My machines are still working without pause. The battle goes on. From what I have heard from beasts and men, the foul demon is likely to prevail, though if the issue were left to swords alone, the West would win.”

“Then there is little time for us to act.” Chup tried to rise, but felt no stronger than the splashing butterflies of light.

“Your healing is not finished. Wait, you soon will be strong enough to stand. What do you mean, we must act?”

“We must act against the one you call ‘foul demon'—if you are as much the demons' enemy as you claim, and I have heard.”

Draffut lifted his great forearms high, then let them down, like falling trees, with a huge splash. “Demons! They are the only living things that I would kill, if I could. They devour men's lives, and waste their bodies. For no need of their own, but out of sheer malignity, they steal the healing fluid from my lake, and taunt me when I rage and cannot come to grips with them.”

Chup was now able to sit straighter on the ledge, and his voice had grown stronger. “You would kill Zapranoth?”

“Him soonest of them all! Of all the demons that I know, he has done human beings the greatest harm.”

“I know where he has hidden his life.”

All was silent, except for the sweet seashell roaring of the lake. Draffut, standing absolutely still, looked down steadily at Chup for so long that Chup began to wonder if a trance had come upon him.

Then Draffut spoke at last. “Here in the citadel? Where we can reach it?”

“Here in the citadel he hid it, where he could keep his eye upon it every day. Where we can reach it if we are strong and fierce enough.”

The Beast-Lord's hands, knotted into barrel-sized fists, rose dripping from the lake. “Fierce? I can be fierce enough for anything, against obstacles that do not live, or against demons, or even against beasts if there is need. I cannot injure men. Not even—when it must be done.”

“I can, and will again.” With a great effort Chup rose up, swaying, to his feet. “Som and his demon-loving crew…as soon as I can hold a sword again. Lord Draffut, the human Lords of the East are more like demons than like men.” Lifting a weak arm, Chup pointed to the distant beachlike place, where people were being cared for by tall inhuman figures. “Who are are those?”

“Those? My machines. At least they were machines, when I was young. We all have changed since then, working in this cave, in constant contact with the Lake of Life. Now they are alive.”

Chup had no time for marveling at that. “I mean those being healed. If you would fight the demons, fight the men who help them. Turn against the East. Order your machines, beasts, whatever they are, to stop healing Som's troops now.”

At that, Lord Draffut's eyes blazed down upon him. “I have never seen Som, let alone acknowledged him as lord, and I care nothing for him. Men come and go around my lake, and use it. I remain. Long before there was an East or West, I lived. From the days of the Old World I have healed human wounds. Weapons were different then, but wounds were much the same, and men change not at all—though to me they then were gods.”

Were what? Chup wondered, fleetingly; he had not heard that word before.

Draffut spoke on, as if relieving himself of thoughts and words too long pent up. “I was not in the Old World as you see me now. Then I could not think. I was much smaller, and ran behind human beings on four legs. But I could love them, and I did, and I must love them still. Turn against the East, you say? I am no part of that abomination! I was here before Som came—long before—and I mean to be here when he has gone. I walked here when the healing lake was made, by men who thought their war would be the last. When they went mad and ran away, I was locked in, with the machines. I—grew. And when new tribes of humanity came, I was ready to lend them the collars, and the valkyries' help, that they might be healed when they fought. And—after them—came others—”

The High Lord Draffut slowed his angry speech. “Enough of that. Where is the life of Zapranoth?”

Chup told him, things that he had heard and seen, and how the pieces seemed to fall together. The telling was quickly finished, but Chup was standing straight before he'd finished; he felt his strength increasing by the moment. “The girl's name is the same, you see. Lisa. Though I would wager that her face and memory have been changed. And she has been here just half a year.”

Draffut pondered but a moment more. “Then come, Lord Chup, and I will give you arms. If there are men I cannot frighten from our path, then you will fight them. If what you say is true, no other obstacle can keep me from the life of Zapranoth. Come! Swim!” And Draffut turned and swam away, cleaving the lake with stretching overhand strokes. Chup dove in and followed, faster than he had ever splashed through water.