Authors: John Dahlgren
Sagaria (73 page)
“The legends,” said Memo primly from Samzing’s shoulder, “talk of a final abyss.”
Sir Tombin spun toward him, almost losing his balance on the ledge.
“What final abyss? What legends?”
“The legends of how the Rainbow Crystal will save, or perhaps not save, the three worlds from doom, of course,” replied Memo waspishly.
“You could have told us something about this before,” Perima pointed out.
“Doesn’t everyone know the legends?” queried Memo to the company in general.
“No!” they all cried, except Cheireanna, who was standing right at the very edge of the vertiginous drop, staring downward. It made Sagandran feel ill just looking at her, so he didn’t.
“Well, I’m sor-
ree
,” said Memo in a tone that said, “dimwits.” “The legends are in all the books, there for anybody to see.”
Sagandran’s fists were clenched so tightly he wondered if his fingernails were drawing blood from his palms.
“Okay,” he said. “Forget all that, Memo. Just tell us what the legends say. What happens to the people who come with the Rainbow Crystal to confront the Shadow Master? Is there anything that might help us?”
“Oh, all right,” muttered the memorizer. “If that’s the way you want it.”
“We most emphatically do,” Sir Tombin assured him.
“Indeed,” added Samzing firmly, “if you do not tell us the entirety of these legends of yours forthwith, Memo, I shall take the greatest of pleasure in dropping you off the edge of this cliff.”
“You wouldn’t do that!” cried Memo, aghast, realizing he was sitting on the shoulder of a potential assassin and had no obvious way of getting off it.
“Wouldn’t I just?” murmured the wizard.
“Oh, well, if you’re sure you don’t already—”
Perima’s voice was acid. “Could we take turns tossing him off the cliff, Samzing?”
“Be like that!” snapped Memo. “Now, let me just get my thoughts in order. Aha. Yes. Tum-de-tum-de-tum. The Boy Whose Time Has Come arrives in Sagaria from a world that is beyond the boundaries of reality. You know that bit already. He comes into possession of the Rainbow Crystal by accident, or maybe as a gift from some sage a lot wiser than he is. Yes, we’ve done all this. He meets a rat, a brat and a frog, according to one of the racier versions. Well, I think we know who the rat and the frog are.” He gazed around him with a breezy smile that rapidly faded. “Ahem, it doesn’t take three guesses to work out the identity of the brat. I wonder,” he added hastily, “if the word brat is merely an error of transcription, and what the scribe really meant to write was the old runic character meaning ‘gorgeously lovely young female of regal bearing’? The two runes are very much alike, you know, terribly easy to confuse, and—”
“Get on with it,” said Sagandran through gritted teeth.
“Thanks to the intervention of—um, the runes for ‘wizard’ and ‘bumbling old goat’ are very similar as well. Anyhow, they eventually get to Qarnapheeran, where they meet up with a character who’s largely unregarded in most versions of the legend but whom the finest modern revisionist textual critics say could well be the most signif—”
“It’s a long drop, Memo,” Samzing reminded him.
“Ah, yes, well, we can leave the semantic analysis until later, I agree,” said Memo, nodding vehemently. What made his nodding look so absurd, reflected Sagandran, was that the oversized spectacles stayed in the same place throughout the procedure, while Memo’s head bobbed up and down behind them. “Now, where was I? Have I said that before? Somehow this motley bunch of ragamuffins – I’m only repeating what it says in the books, I assure you! – gains access to a portal that’ll take them to the Shadow World. There—”
Flip erupted. “We know all this! It’s what’s going to happen next that’s important, you dunderhead.”
“I’m getting to that bit. Don’t hurry me or I’ll forget something I shouldn’t. The Boy Whose Time Has Come – that must be you, Sagandran – and the brat – er, the princess brat – they’re seized by a bad, bad, bad, bad wizard, who, with the benefit of hindsight, I think we can confidently identify as my ex-master, Deicher. Oh, he was bad, all right. I’m surprised, thinking about it, that I was able to put up with him all those y—”
Sir Tombin drew Xaraxeer from its sheath and started idly examining its golden blade for sharpness.
“Yes, well, the frog and the bumbling old goa—wizard and the horse and the gallant, undervalued memorizer go after them. Did I mention the horse? I should have. Anyway, the horse … lost my track here. Oh, yes, the rest of the bunch pursue them, and on the way they pick up a peasant girl. Even so …”
Cheireanna turned from regarding the ravine to give Memo a long,
icicle-cold
look.
I wonder if she understands more of what we’re saying than we think?
mused Sagandran.
“… they find the boy and the bra—princess. Soon after, they meet King Brygantra in the Mausoleum of the Grand Ancients – that’s what that place was called, you see – and King Brygantra tells them how to get to the Palace of Shadows, which is where their arch-enemy, the Master of All Darkness, hangs out. So, they have a confrontation with him.”
Memo fell silent.
“Yes?” prompted Sagandran, after the silence threatened to become permanent.
“Well,” said the memorizer, “that’s where things become really interesting, you see. From the point of view of textual analysis, that is.”
There was another silence, broken only by the crackling of Samzing’s knuckles as he clenched and unclenched his fists.
“From that point onward in the story,” Memo added, “there are two quite distinct courses of events, diametrically opposed to each other. It depends on which of these two quite dissimilar variants of the legend you choose to regard as the genuine one. It’s well known that one or the other of the two variants is a falsification, created by some partisan scribe or other with the intent to deceive, but since nothing’s known about him or her, it’s impossible to guess the true account. Scholars have concluded that both must be given equal weight, equal credibility, until history proves the matter one way or the other. So, which do you want first – the good news or the bad?”
“Both,” said Flip forcefully. He rubbed his forepaws together with a level of potential violence that startled Sagandran. “Or, by the bladder of the arch-foe Arkanamon himself, I’ll—”
Wisely, Memo started speaking again before Flip could outline what exactly he would do. “According to manuscripts derived from what we scholars call the first strand, or Strand A, the companions reach the Palace of Shadows, confront the Shadow Master and, surprisingly soon thereafter, end their days in the slave mines. Those of them, that is, who haven’t been beaten into shapeless pulp during their, ahem, contretemps with the Master of Darkness.”
“I could have stayed at home with Golma,” Samzing mused. “Such an excellent cook, she is.”
“But wait!” cried Memo. “The versions derived from the other strand, that’s Strand B, to be precise, tell of a quite different conclusion.”
“Speak quickly, little one,” hissed Perima. “Your life may depend upon it.”
“In the Strand B versions, the companions reach the Palace of Shadows, just like in the Strand A variants, and they have a confrontation with the Master of Darkness – no change there, either – but instead of being defeated by him, they emerge triumphant, and their glorious deeds are celebrated throughout the rest of time by the grateful populations of the three worlds!”
“Indeed?” said Sagandran dubiously. “The Earthworld as well?” Somehow, he thought it unlikely. Unless things had changed considerably since he’d left home, the folk of the Earthworld hadn’t the slightest conception that a titanic battle between Good and Evil was underway, upon whose outcome their fate
depended.
“Don’t doubt me,” said the memorizer earnestly. “For all you know, Sagandran, someone in the Earthworld could write a book on the whole of the adventure, and everyone there would know of the legend, and of the valorous part you played in it.”
Oh yeah
, thought Sagandran,
and pigs might fly
.
Sir Tombin had other concerns in mind. “Do the two versions of the legend give any clue at all, Memo, even the tiniest hint, about what we might do to encourage the possibilities of one of these results over the other?”
“Hm, not really.” The memorizer unnecessarily adjusted his spectacles. “Oh, according to the variant in which we’re victorious, we get to the Palace of Shadows by going through the slave mines. According to the other version we build a pair of great wings out of light, supple withies and glide there on the hot zephyrs rising up from the gorge.”
“Can anyone see any withies?” said Sir Tombin.
The ledge was barely large enough to hold themselves, let alone anything else, but everybody dutifully looked around them before confirming solemnly that, no, there were no withies available.
“Then we go through the slave mines,” Sir Tombin concluded. “I would suggest this as the wiser course anyway, whatever the … ah … withies situation. If we follow the events recounted in the more optimistic of the two variants as far as is possible, perhaps we can increase the chance of it turning out to be the true version. Does everyone agree with my reasoning?”
Everyone nodded.
“What are withies, anyway?” Perima whispered to Sagandran.
“Tell you later,” he replied, trying to project a reassuring sense of omniscience.
Her eyes narrowed. “As I thought. You don’t know either.”
“Which means there’s only one question left facing us,” Sir Tombin was saying, “and it is this: Where in the world might be these slave mines?”
Cheireanna, who’d again been gazing down between her toes into the plunging ravine, looked back over her shoulder at the Frogly Knight, a small smile lighting up her mud-smeared face. She coughed to attract his attention.
She
is
learning to understand us
, Sagandran thought.
The smile persisting, Cheireanna slowly and deliberately pointed downward.
“Oh,” said Sir Tombin.
teps had been cut into the sheer face of the cliff. Whoever the trailblazers might have been, they possessed a courage Sagandran was sure he didn’t. Perima and Sir Tombin had both taken pains to stress repeatedly to him that whatever he did, he shouldn’t look down, which was rather like telling someone to on no account think of a gooseberry or poke at a sore tooth. However, not giving in to the temptation to look downward proved a lot easier than he’d anticipated. He’d tried once with a quick experimental glance, and thereafter had felt no temptation whatsoever to try again.
Samzing had been dragooned by Sir Tombin into leading the way and from somewhere beneath, Sagandran could hear the wizard’s strained breathing and occasional profanities. The targets of the curses appeared to be Flip and Memo, who were once more stowed away in Samzing’s pockets. After Samzing went Cheireanna, who seemed to regard the ladder as the biggest and best children’s climbing frame she’d ever come across. She would probably have tried doing backflips and other stunts during the descent had Sir Tombin not made it clear to her, via Memo, that any tomfoolery could jeopardize their entire venture and thereby doom her world to an eternity under the iron heel of Arkanamon. Nevertheless, Sagandran suspected Sir Tombin had been so eager to put Samzing in the lead as a way of slowing Cheireanna down. Next came Sagandran, followed by Perima – another strong inducement to turn his gaze upward rather than downward, he thought guiltily.
Finally, there was Sir Tombin. Sagandran worried about this, but tried to keep his concerns at bay by thinking of other things. Not only was the Frogly Knight carrying the saddle bag with their provisions over his shoulder and an unwieldy scabbard at his waist, but he was also clad in heavy Shadow Knight armor. What if Sir Tombin should fall? Well, his plummeting body would undoubtedly sweep the rest of them off the cliff like ninepins.
After a while, it wasn’t just Samzing’s cursing that Sagandran could hear
from below. At first faint and in the distance, then progressively louder, there were the cracks of whips, shouted orders, the straining and crashing of primitive heavy machinery, screams of agony – all the noises his imagination might have associated with a slave mine, but which he’d never expected to hear in real life.
At last, he risked a second look downward and saw that, unlike before, the ground was actually visible, not lost beneath a blanket of cloud. This time the distance was merely dizzying. Some way back from the cliff, and looking bizarrely angled because of the skewed direction from which he looked at it, there stood a stout stone wall. So far as he could see, there were no guard posts on top of the wall – which was a good thing because the companions would be as obvious as flies on a window to anyone who looked in their direction. As it was, they just had to trust to luck that no one within the walled compound would glance at the cliff face.
Inside the wall, in startling contrast to the gloom of the Shadow World, he could see the flare of roaring red flames.
Now that their goal was finally in sight, their descent seemed to slow to an agonizing crawl. For most of the downward climb, fear and excitement had been sending enough adrenaline through Sagandran’s veins that he’d barely noticed the exertions of the muscles in his legs, arms and hands. Now exhaustion was leadening them, and he wondered how much longer he could hold on. It would be idiotic if he made it all the way down to within a mere fifty feet of the ground and then fell off. A mere fifty feet? Such a fall could kill him as surely as if he’d just jumped off the ledge and been done with it.
The only thing that kept him going was that both Cheireanna and Perima seemed not only to be far from exhausted, but appeared to be enjoying themselves. Looking at Perima’s rear end, he could see her legs moving with brisk ease, as if this were merely a pleasant stroll. He thanked his lucky stars that the giddying height hadn’t brought on another attack of the nausea she’d suffered when they’d been transported into the marble passageway.
As the companions moved lower and lower, Sagandran kept expecting to hear a shout of challenge from somewhere behind him – a guard raising the alarm, perhaps even one of the slaves alerting those around. But no such shout came. All he heard were the noises of torment and industry growing louder and louder until, finally, they were muffled as the wall came between them and his ears.
At last his feet touched the ground. Sagandran’s legs had turned to jello and he thought they were going to give out beneath him as, for the first time in hours, he stood on solid ground. Even so, he summoned the determination from
somewhere to stay upright long enough to reach out a (completely unnecessary) hand to assist Perima down.
Samzing had already flopped. The wizard lay spread-eagled on his back and was staring up at the smoke-filled sky mumbling drivel, a snail track of drool trickling from the corner of his mouth. Behind the gray beard, his face looked dangerously pale. Cheireanna was chuckling about something. Sagandran hadn’t a clue what might have amused her, unless it was the complete depletion of the wizard.
A crash drew his attention back to the base of the long ladder of steps. Sir Tombin had arrived. The Frogly Knight staggered and his face was drawn with fatigue, but he managed a brave smile.
“I’d not like to have to turn and go straight back up that ladder again,” he said ruefully, staring up at the cliff face. From here, the chain of steps seemed to rise like a thread that reached all the way to the sky.
“Are you all right, Sir Tombin?” asked Perima anxiously.
“I’ll be fine, sweet girl,” said the Frogly Knight, “in just a few moments. It’ll take me a little while to catch my breath, that’s all. You might see how my dear old friend is though.”
Perima glanced across at the sprawled Samzing and her eyebrows rose in two expressive arches. “Give me the saddle bag. He looks as if he needs water desperately.”
“This prison compound must have a gate somewhere,” said Sir Tombin thoughtfully after the wizard was back on his feet.
Perima was skeptical. “I can’t see one. Looks like a blank wall to me.”
Sagandran followed her gaze. The high stone wall was perhaps three or four hundred yards long and seemed entirely featureless. On the other hand …
“They must get the slaves in and out somehow,” he said.
“I suspect the focus is more on getting them in.” Sir Tombin’s tones were wistful. “I don’t imagine there’s many of the poor blighters who come back out again, unless it’s feet first.” He shook his helmeted head, dismissing his own moroseness. “Whatever, we can’t just stand here. Sooner or later, someone’s bound to spot us and get suspicious.”
“What do you suggest then?” said Perima. “I think Memo’s damned legend has led us to a dead end.”
“The prophecy,” contributed the memorizer, “says we go through the slave mines.”
“Does it say whether we’re alive or dead when we get to the other side?”
“Alive,” Memo retorted promptly, before realizing Perima was being sarcastic. He glared at her, but continued nevertheless. “In the version of the legend that
says we’re victorious, we get to the Palace of Shadows by going through the slave mines. We could hardly be victorious if we were all dead, could we?”
But we could be victorious if some of us were dead,
thought Sagandran sourly. He decided not to voice the thought. There was enough of a cloud of depression hanging around the companions already as they stared at the forbidding wall, without adding further discouragement.
Samzing had been ostentatiously not joining in with the debate. Breathing deeply in an attempt to bring the strength back to his limbs, he had been surveying the barren landscape around the mines, whistling softly between his teeth, searching for any optimistic sign.
“Look,” he said, pointing. “A track.”
Squinting, Sagandran could see a dark line crossing the terrain in the direction of the slave mines. If the wizard hadn’t pointed it out, Sagandran would never have noticed it or, if he had, he would have assumed it was just a natural feature of some kind. But Samzing was right; it was a roadway, and roadways led to places. The only place around here the track could lead to looked to be the entrance to the mines, which must be further around the perimeter.
Sir Tombin picked up the saddle bag. “Right we are then.”
“I don’t think we should go straight there,” said Flip in a small voice.
Perima spoke sharply. “Why not?”
“Because then it would be obvious where we came from. I think we should go across country until we hit the track, somewhere out of sight of the mines’ main gate, and then go to the mines that way.”
“Why? It’d only take us longer.”
“Because, Perima,” said Sir Tombin patiently, “Flip’s worked out my plan for getting us through the slave mines or, at least, into them, and you haven’t.”
Perima’s body tensed as she recognized the reproof. “Which is?”
“That, once again,” Sir Tombin tapped the side of his helmet with a glove and the metal clanged, “I’m a Shadow Knight escorting a consignment of prisoners. A wizard, two girls and a boy. I think it would be judicious if our, ah, smaller friends concealed themselves within Samzing’s robes once more. I don’t believe Shadow Knights have much interest in tiny slaves.”
“Why not?” Flip looked belligerent. “Just because we’re physically smaller doesn’t mean—”
“Yes it does,” interrupted Samzing, turning toward them from his continued surveillance of the landscape. “You have great strength of heart and soul, young Flip – yes, you as well, Memo – but what is needed in slaves is strength of limb. That worries me a little, Quackie. Sagandran looks tough enough, but myself and the two girls …”
He stopped talking when he saw the freezing fury in Perima’s eyes. Cheireanna’s stare was likewise frigid.
“Ahem,” said Sir Tombin mildly. “I’m afraid my dear old fellow trooper, Samzo, is right, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. Now, let’s be on our way.”
Samzo?
thought Sagandran gleefully. Pays him back for all those “Quackies,” I guess. Better even than “Fishface!” Oh, boy. Later …
As they took a diagonal course across the blighted countryside to join the distant track, Sir Tombin and Samzing, the two longstanding friends, led the way. Sagandran, following with Perima and Cheireanna, could hear snatches of their conversation drifting back.
“I think it’s cross you mean, dear old sponge, not burn.”
“Eh? What the blue blazes are you talking about, old chump?”
“You said we’d burn the bridge when we came to it. What you meant was that we’d cross it. Oh, and by the way, Tombo old bean, don’t call me ‘Samzo’ again, all right?”
Sir Tombin chuckled. “If we find a bridge, dear boy, you may do whatever you wish with it.”
From behind, Sagandran couldn’t tell whether this mollified the wizard, but the two walked onward amicably enough.
That’s what their friendship’s all about,
he reflected.
Arguing like crazy and loving each other all the more for it.
He turned and grinned at Perima. I guess I know what that’s all about.
