In the Earth Abides the Flame (66 page)

In the dusk of the Brownlands, the Maghdi Dasht watched in wonderment as their leader stiffened, then let out a great cry. 'My enemy! My enemy!' he cried in the ancient tongue.

Recovering himself, he spoke into the flame: 'Keep her for me. The enemy has set something within her, and I must find out what it is. She is keeping secrets from me, and no one can keep secrets from the sacred flame.'

'Secrets, my lord?' Deorc replied bemusedly. 'She has no secrets from me. The Wordweave makes that impossible.'

'Nevertheless!' The fearsome voice boomed out of the blue flame, the tendril broke contact with Stella, and she withdrew. Tanghin drew his hands slowly together over the bowl, and the flame disappeared.

'Well, Stella,' he said. 'It appears that you are claimed by one even greater than I. Great is the honour you are done!' There was malice in that voice, and something else: the merest edge of bitterness.

All she could say was: 'Wh-who?'

'You naive fool. Don't you yet realise who you have become involved with? I am Deorc, Keeper of Andratan, head of the Council of Faltha and new Lord of Instruere. Tanghin was simply a figment of my imagination. And yours, girl; and yours. You wanted him to be real.

Do you like this reality?'

Dumbly, Stella shook her head.

'And my master?' Deorc continued mercilessly. 'My master is the Destroyer himself. It is he who wants you for his own. Think on that as you wait in chains for his arrival!'

LATE ON THE THIRD DAY north of Kantara and the Joram, Kurr saw the pursuit. They had taken it easy thus far, their progress along the maze of steep-sided valleys, across cold mountain streams and through deep forests more like a wake than a journey. Nothing much was said. The Arkhimm had failed. They had lost one of their members, found but lost forever the Jugom Ark, and with it perhaps their last chance to influence the outcome of the great war that must soon explode across Faltha, if it had not already begun. Disconsolate, distressed and drained of all purpose, their thoughts dwelt on grief, failure and humiliation. As they withdrew into themselves like a pack of hibernating animals, their pace slackened, their wills faltered.

The Arkhimm felt lost from the outset of their journey home. Fear and futility forced them from the basin, scene of their failure, and took them many leagues before they stopped to take counsel among themselves and taste together the bitterness of their defeat. As far as anyone could tell they took a generally eastward path, steering away from the setting sun. But they were not certain. Even Te Tuahangata and Prince Wiusago could not be precise in such an immense landscape. None of them knew what lay to the east of the Almucantaran Mountains.

The desert, perhaps, or Tabul. Should they get through the mountains.

Two days' forced marching brought them to the end of the mountains and of their strength.

Bella wept openly and often at the loss of her father, and did little more than totter along at the tail of the group. In particular, the members of the original Company that had left Loulea so long ago - Kurr, the Haufuth, Hal - had, with no purpose to drive them on, reached their extremity. When his mind cleared enough to think, Kurr wondered at the crippled Hal's taciturn visage, his silence where once he would have asserted continued faith in the Most High and their mission. From this, above even the evidence of his own senses, the old farmer judged their mission finally over. The Arrow was lost. Instruere, then all of Faltha, would fall to the brown hordes. They would sooner or later all face a bleak and hopeless death. They did not even have their instinct for self-preservation to keep them alive.

The third day came as an extension of the first two. The morning sun saw the Arkhimm straggling across a plateau between the mountains and the bright blue distance. They were much lower now than when in the Almucantaran Mountains, and the temperature grew warmer with every eastward step. By noon it had become uncomfortably hot; by late afternoon the temperature still rose, reminding Kurr of the Valley of a Thousand Fires. He turned and gazed back at the mountains, now receding as though Kantara, the Joram and the wrath of the Sentinels were only a bad memory, his mind reverberating with longing for the coolness and the rain.

So it was that he saw four figures outlined against the setting sun. The second figure was unmistakably obese, and walked with that particular shuffling gait...

'We're being followed!' he cried. 'The Arkhos of Nemohaim pursues us!'

At the same moment Prince Wiusago, leading the Company, uttered a cry of his own.

'Beware! Step back!'

They had come to the edge of a cliff, a great escarpment stretching left and right further than the eye could see. Below them two thousand feet of warm, hazy air obscured the semi-arid lands rolling away into the gathering eastern gloom. One more step and Wiusago would have fallen.

'Did you hear me?' Kurr insisted from the rear of the group. 'The Arkhos is behind us!'

The great gulf in front of them held the Arkhimm for a few moments longer, then the warning the old farmer had spoken registered in their weary minds.

'Behind us!' Kurr repeated, pointing.

Phemanderac groaned. 'We need rest. Won't he ever give up?'

'He probably thinks we have the Jugom Ark.'

'Perhaps he has it?' Belladonna suggested.

'I've seen enough of this man not to want to wait around and ask him,' the philosopher said grimly. 'We must keep moving.'

'With this cliff beside us? With a new moon above? It doesn't bear thinking about,' moaned the Haufuth.

'We have no choice,' Phemanderac said. 'The quest may be over, but that is no reason to sit here and await death.'

For one or two of the Arkhimm death seemed almost preferable to the pointless future, but they said nothing. With the little energy left to them they stumbled across the plateau, always taking care to keep some distance between themselves and the edge of the escarpment to their right.

In the cool dark of night Kurr called a halt. 'Phemanderac, we cannot continue,' he said emphatically. 'We're asleep on our feet. We must rest.'

The philosopher grunted a reluctant agreement.

'We should move away from the cliff,' offered Wiusago. 'That way, if the Arkhos and his men still continue their pursuit, they may pass by without discovering us.'

'It's a faint hope,' Kurr said, 'but we can go no further.'

The first brush of dawn woke them from fretful slumber, from dreams of falling, dreams of loss. Kurr cast a nervous eye over the plateau to the north and to the south, but could see no sign of their pursuers. After sharing a cold breakfast from their negligible remnant of supplies, the Arkhimm shuffled northwards along the escarpment ridge like the condemned making their last walk to the place of execution. Throughout that day and the next they saw no sign of the Arkhos and his men, but suffered terribly from the heat and lack of water: few streams and no shelter interrupted the unrelieved flatness of the tableland. At times they barely moved forwards.

Of all the Arkhimm, Te Tuahangata seemed the most troubled. While physically he, Belladonna and Prince Wiusago were the least affected of the group - excepting Achtal, of course - the warrior of the Mist struggled within himself. 'This reminds me ... there's something I should remember.'

'What is it?' Wiusago asked him.

Te Tuahangata turned on his old adversary and frowned, his hollow eyes shadowed from the afternoon sun.

'I can't remember,' he said.

Wiusago looked beyond him, to the south, straining his vision to penetrate the heathaze.

'Perhaps we could ask the Arkhos of Nemohaim,' he said quietly.

Eight heads jerked southwards, eight pairs of eyes searched and saw. Perhaps half a mile behind them lay their pursuit.

'Why do we run?' Achtal asked. Phemanderac started. These were the first words heard from the Bhrudwan since they had left the desecrated basin. 'There are only four.'

'I don't know,' said Hal slowly. 'Why do we flee this man?'

'They have weapons,' said the Haufuth.

'But so do we,' Te Tuahangata reminded them. 'I have my mere, Wiusago here has his sword, and the Bhrudwan is a warrior with or without steel.'

'So why are we running?' Belladonna asked.

'I - I can't say,' said Phemanderac in wonder, as though he was awakening from a dream. 'We have nothing to fear from them.'

'What spell have we been under?' Kurr asked.

'Look!' Hal cried. 'Here, to the right!' He pointed to a deep notch in the plateau, snaking down towards the cliff. 'A path. Perhaps it will take us to the bottom of the escarpment.'

'Why don't we stand and fight?' Te Tuahangata insisted. 'I've never run from an enemy before.' The others heard the shame in his voice; the question continued to echo in their minds.

Why did we run? Undoubtedly the shock of the witchery of Joram basin, Phemanderac reasoned. The dreadful loss of Leith - a grief he had not yet examined - losing the Jugom Ark, failing in their purpose ... everything contributed to their flight like heralds of defeat. Yet hadn't the Arkhos been defeated also? Was he pursuing them, or was he running too?

'No!' Hal cried, his dark eyes pleading with them. 'There has been enough death! On our quest we have defended ourselves, killing others only when necessary. Never have we struck the first blow. If we attack now, we make ourselves over in the image of our enemies. If they catch us, then we fight. Until then, let us continue to flee them. Please! No more killing.'

'I've lost my father,' Belladonna said simply. 'You people are all I have left. I don't want to lose you.'

Te Tuahangata sighed. 'Then let's get on. Every moment we stand here brings this Arkhos closer. If you don't want to fight him, then we'd better keep ahead of him.'

The cleft in the plateau did indeed lead to the escarpment. By some artifice of nature the smooth-sided gut sliced down the cliff at an angle, providing a steep but navigable path for their aching feet. After a moment's hesitation, Kurr led them down into the gully, half walking, half sliding towards the setting sun.

'This would be no place to be caught in a storm,' said the longhaired Prince Wiusago grimly.

'I imagine water pours off the plateau down this canyon.'

'But where does the rest of the water go?' Kurr asked. 'We're still not far from the Almucantaran Mountains. Their eastern slopes must drain down into this plateau, and we've all seen how much water those mountains soak from the sky. But we saw nothing more than the occasional brook. Where are the mighty rivers?'

'This whole land unnerves me,' said Illyon the Escaignian. The others turned in surprise: like Hal, she had said little on this journey, as though she mistrusted her voice out here beyond the safe walls of her former home. As if to confirm this, she added: 'I could not have imagined the violence in the outside world.'

Phemanderac thought about the Escaignian for a moment. What was her purpose here? Why had she been called? For it was becoming clearer to him that, just as he himself had been lured across the world bv an ancient rhyme, behind which he clearly saw the hand of the Most High, so others had been summoned. The Five of the Hand called from Loulea. Then the Storrsen brothers, Perdu of Myrvidda, and the Hermit of Bandits' Cave had joined the Company. Mahnum and Indrett had been reunited with their family. And others joined the quest for the Jugom Ark: Wiusago, Te Tuahangata, Illyon the Escaignian, and Belladonna.

Bella.

Bella, with her truthsense, her magic, her eyes . . . She reminded him of the women of Dona Mihst. But she was not as mean-spirited, as ingrown as they. Though born and raised in an isolated valley, far from civilisation, she had a heart that encompassed the world.

Compassion enough for every need. Love enough .. .

How do I know that?

Something more, some important truth lurked just below the surface of his imagination. It had to do with being called, with their quest, with a continuing purpose. The quest for the ]ugom Ark is dead. There is no purpose. But even as he said it in his mind, he realised the untruth of it. Something remained. It nagged him, taunted him, but he couldn't fish it out. Be patient, he told himself. It'll come to you if you wait.

Before they were halfway down the fissure, a shout from above told them they had been seen.

At the very top of the cleft stood the Arkhos of Nemohaim and the remnants of his soldiers, murky in the gloaming. Behind them the sun set in red flame, bringing down darkness like a curtain.

'They won't risk such a descent in darkness,' said Prince Wiusago confidently. 'We can make camp at the base of the cliff.' Relieved sighs came from among the travellers.

'That's if we ourselves can make it down before fullnight,' Bella said urgently.

With an assortment of bruises the Arkhimm arrived at the bottom of the cleft and found level ground. Caution drove them a little further, until the last light of the sun was erased by black night and their weariness could no longer be denied. There, on a piece of exposed rock a few hundred yards from the cliff, they ate the last of their provisions and took a swallow each of water from the last stream they had crossed, small and brackish, a day before.

That night they dreamed of water. It trickled, spumed and gushed through their dreams.

They were up before dawn. Nothing to eat and nothing to drink made for a quick start. But as the light grew, they discovered the reason for their dreams.

To their left, the great cliff spouted water.

In places it leached from the sheer wall, dribbling down the sandstone, drying up before it reached the bottom. Elsewhere it emerged with greater force, spurting from the cliff like it was poured from some great bucket. In a couple of places it cascaded down with the full force of a river, giant waterfalls pouring the blood of the mountains down into the arid plains ahead.

'Thousand Springs,' muttered Prince Wiusago. 'Now 1 understand.'

'Understand what?' inquired Te Tuahangata.

'The old stories. Do you tell it in the Mist? The one about the Water-carrier?'