Swordmistress of Chaos (7 page)

‘Can we not follow him?’ She turned to Spellbinder as Mistress Clara left them, her eyes fervent within the cowl. ‘He can not be far ahead.’

‘Wait,’ murmured Spellbinder. ‘There are greater games afoot than your vengeance. In time, perhaps, we shall catch him; until then, be patient.’

That night, for the first time in many days, Raven did not go to the warrior’s bed. When he sought to enter hers, she pushed him roughly away, mumbling curses as tears of frustrated rage coursed over her cheeks.

Spellbinder accepted the rebuke, returning to his own pallet with a silent smile upon his lips. Calm, he settled himself for sleep, freeing his mind to wander through the possibilities and the plans of the greater design that stood around him. And around Raven. After a while, the images and the voices that wafted through his mind went away and he slept as sound as a child contented with its day’s work.

The next morning they toured Lyand; wandering those parts Raven, as a slavegirl, had never seen. By day’s light the hall of the Weaponmaster appeared a grim, forbidding hulk of mingled wood and stone, decorated with the shields of past masters. Here and there, gaps showed in the lines of shields, and Spellbinder pointed to where Argor’s buckler had once hung, and Raven, unaided, found the empty spot that should have carried Donwayne’s roundel.

Outside the slavepens and the wharves, she realised, Lyand was a beautiful city; as an orchid, effete and dependant on support, is beautiful. Its streets wound in concentric circles from the great outer walls to the sea, wide-paved chariotways alternating with smaller avenues designed for pedestrians, the latter lined by small taverns and eating houses, the stalls of street vendors-and the dwellings of the citizens. Between the encircling streets, like the spokes of a wheel, ran tiny alleyways, from which emanated dark openings, miniscule windows, still smaller shops, and the rich smells and tiny noises of a bustling city. Food smells mingled with the sweat-stink of horses and Xands, the odour of tanning leather and fresh-butchered meat; wine hung in the air around the many taverns, and closer to the seafront there was the sharp, exhilarating tang of ozone and cured fish.

Over all the city of Lyand, there appeared a golden glow. It came from the cupolas surmounting the houses and the towers, beating down from the metal plates that spanned each rich dome, reflecting the desert sun onto the teaming multitudes scurrying the streets like ants in a hive.

When they toured the outer walls the smell changed. There it became a rank odour of sweat and pain and blood, heavy with the growling of dogs. They stayed only a short time there, for they were too close to the slavepens, and Raven was full of too many memories.

They left the city before sun’s set, Raven anxious to pursue Karl ir Donwayne, and Spellbinder bent upon some other purpose he would not reveal to her. Their going was as inauspicious as their entry, and they reached the desert country beyond the walls without suspicion or pursuit. Beyond the view of the city’s watchmen, they shed their pilgrim robes in favour of armour: even around Lyand’s walls there was danger from the great beasts that stalked the outland wastes. Twice in the night they heard the snuffling of some great monster such as stalked the southern sand, and came to their feet with sword or bow set ready for use. But none came close enough to present any real danger, and in the morning they started out again, heading northwards to Quell.

‘Why Quell?’ Raven asked. ‘Speaking of the Stone, you dismissed it as a foolish illusion. Why do we not ride straight for Karhsaam?’

‘I said,’ Spellbinder muttered from under the folds of his cloak, ‘that foolish people worship the stone as a god. It is no more than a chunk of star-spawned rock, but it does hold certain properties that may be used by those who understand.’

‘Such as sorcerer-priests?’ Raven demanded. ‘Followers of Kharwhan?’

Spellbinder huddled into his cloak. The wind was blowing stronger now, gusting sand like tiny pellets against their exposed skin, the desert heat sucking their breath from their lungs as though it was drawn away by some torturer mounting heated bellows to their lips.

‘Perhaps,’ was all Raven heard. And:, ‘wait.’

They rode out the dust storm and, four days later, came upon the outer defences of Quell. Closer to Ghorm than to Lyand was the City of the Stone, a palisaded fortress of wood and rock that appeared to cling to the sand like a lamprey to a shark. Where Lyand flowed and swelled from its surroundings, Quell hulked, stark and defensive. Its outlines were harsh, angular; buttresses and watchtowers took the place of domes and cupolas, and where bright metal and glistening paint had decorated Lyand, there Quell boasted black and heavy wood, ebon slate and grey-faced granite. The guard towers of the outer wall were of night-black stone, linked by the sharp-tipped timbers of the encircling wall. Before that wall stood a ring of metal-jutting spikes, high as a tall man might reach with his fingertips, and beyond, those a ditch. Gently-sided around its outer perimeter, it scarped steeply upwards on the wall side, as though designed to lure the unwary downwards, under the fire of the city’s defenders.

It was, Raven thought, a place of defence, forcing itself upon the land rather than living with the country. She liked the look of Quell, if anything, less than Lyand.

To her surprise, Spellbinder skirted the walls, following the perimeter of the ditch for half its circumference. She rode conscious of the men watching from the towers, nervously waiting for the hiss of crossbow bolts or the heavier whistling of a catapult. Yet no sound came except the susurration of the wind, and they moved out of range with no shot fired. Spellbinder appeared sunk in some sombre reverie, riding with shoulders slumped, his body drawn in upon itself and his head hung down. It was as though he let his mount pick its own way, careless of the direction, though she sensed he knew exactly where they were bound, and followed silently, blindly, willing to let the man choose the path.

Soon enough they breasted a ridge of hard-packed dunes and began to descend into the wind-sheltered lee. Spellbinder turned his horse at the foot of the slope, steering it negligently to the east. They rounded the flank of a great sand hill and Raven saw, for the first time, the Temple of the Stone.

Though she had never heard of the place other than in the mutterings of Spellbinder and Mistress Clara, she knew it immediately for what it was. It could, simply, be nothing else.

To the north and the south, the sand ridge disappeared into the shimmering light. To the east and west, a curtain of dancing heat haze spun and flickered from horizon to horizon, spreading a shifting golden glow across the desert. Riding into that aurora, Raven felt abruptly isolated from the world, as though she had crossed some unseen barrier, a mystic curtain that blanked off the rest of the world. Before her rose a squat shape that at first she thought to be a great slab of wind eroded rock, pitched up from the desert floor. On closer examination it proved to be faceted with doorways and windows, its surface iridescent with flickering, changing tones of light. The substance reminded her of the fragment of stone hung in Mistress Clara’s tavern, and she recognised the massive shape for some gigantic natural enclave tunnelled out by men.

It was, somehow, difficult to focus her vision, as though heat and light distorted the contours of the place, and she turned her head from side to side, seeking to distil clarity from the confusion. Dimly, she sensed rather than saw, man-like shapes moving around the entrances, felt something take her bridle, tugging the horse onwards.

Spellbinder’s voice came through the confusion, reassuring her, and she let her mount be led onwards, towards the squat, shimmering-slab of insensate rock.

She felt the light fade behind her, and for a moment was in total blackness, so thick as to press in upon her, goading panic into her mind. Then the darkness was replaced by a blaze of light so strong her eyes winked shut in instinctive defence. When she opened them again she found herself in a great cavern lit by reed torches that gave off more light than was natural. There was no stink of burning oil, no smoke curling across the dim, high-standing ceiling; only a clean, cold glare filling every recess of the place with stark, undeniable light, and the faintly-damp smell of natural stone. She dismounted and followed Spellbinder through an archway that opened into a smooth-walled tunnel. Again light plunged into blackness, and she wondered if this was not some deliberate effect planned to disrupt the senses of anyone entering the temple. Reflexively, her hand touched the dagger belted to her waist, though her feet continued to follow the pad of Spellbinder’s footsteps as he strode down the lightless passage.

Darkness erupted again into light, though now it was more mellow and she could see clearly the tall figure facing them.

It was impossible, clearly, to discern the sex, for flowing robes of pure white shrouded the figure, and the voice that welcomed them was mellifluous as a maiden’s, yet commanding as a man’s.

‘Welcome,’ intoned the figure, ‘to the Temple of the Stone. Come you to worship or to question?’

‘There are matters,’ Spellbinder chose his words with care, ‘that I would put to the Stone. Be it your will, High-One, I would commune with the Star-gift.’

The Stone priest paused for a moment, as though sensing some element of danger inherent in his visitors. Then he raised his arms, lifting the wide sleeves of his robe as a great white bird might lift its wings in preparation for flight. He brought his hands together, and Raven’s ears were shocked by the deafening thunder of his handclap. It was as if a storm broke within the confines of the rocky cell, bellows of thunder echoing from the walls to hammer against her senses. She almost staggered beneath the aural assault, her eyes watering as her head shook in an attempt to settle the ringing that filled her skull with painful sound. When the noise died away to silence again, she saw that two brown-robed priests stood before her. Of the white-robed one, there was no sign.

Spellbinder tugged a leather purse from his swordbelt, the coins within chinking as he tossed it to the nearest priest. The robed man caught the bag neat as any street thief and turned towards an opening Raven had not, previously, noticed.

Close on her companion’s heels, she followed the priests into the doorway. Again darkness, so black as to be almost tangible, and again that sudden chill of panic, yet the priests moved on resolutely enough, and Spellbinder seemed to suffer no disruption from the abrupt changes. Raven stared into the velvet nothingness and followed the sound of the others’ footsteps, ignoring the light her mind produced in compensation for the utter negation of light.

This latest passage appeared longer than the others, though it was difficult to tell in the blackness, and she felt that they moved downwards, as though the tunnel probed the bowels of the desert.

Then, suddenly as before, black became brilliance, one kind of sightlessness replaced by another. Raven stumbled, felt firm hands support her, and closed her eyes tight, letting the brightness filter in through the protective membrane of her lids. Gradually, far slower than she wished, the mind-swamping light faded to crimson, then to a dull red glow, and then to spangled black. When she opened her lids, the two priests were gone, leaving her alone with Spellbinder.

With Spellbinder and the Stone.

They were inside an egg of rock. Floors and walls and ceiling welded into one continuous surface, curving around and up, and down to meet in unseeable planes that defied sensible apportionment, so that it was impossible to say surely which was which, almost impossible to stand upright, so confused as the eye. The surfaces were black amber and iridescent silver at the same time. There were no torches to illuminate the chamber, yet it was bright as white-hot iron. Her mind told her that it must be warm, yet she shivered, for there was both intense heat and utter cold within the chamber. And all seemed to emanate from the stone in the centre.

Then, with a shock, of surprise, she realised that it was truly, at the centre: it floated, mid-way between curved base and curved roof, its position exactly equidistant from every surface. And it pulsed as a living embryo beats within the womb sac.

‘Now,’ Spellbinder said softly, turning towards her, ‘let us ask the Stone about the future.’

‘The hand that guides the implement must equally control it, else tool guide the master. Against that, beware.’

The Books of Kharwhan

The radiance within the chamber seemed to grow as Spellbinder approached the stone. The pulsing of the thing mounted so that Raven began to doubt her first assessment: that it was a cleverly hung puppet, controlled by the Stone-priests. When it shifted, spinning upon its own axis, then darting from side to side of the cell, she doubted no longer. And, as though happy with her belief, the thing ceased its movements, settling back to its original hovering position.

It appeared to be stone yet not stone. In outline, it was like a piece of smoothed flint, blue-veined and smoothly shining, as though washed in the stream of time itself. But the veins shifted, moving as do a man’s beneath his skin, its outer covering wavering as flesh above a fast-running pulse. When Spellbinder touched it, setting both his hands flat upon its surface, it calmed as a nervous horse quiets beneath the comforting grip of a confident rider. And a subtle transformation filled the silent chamber.

Within the body of the stone, one light pulsed brighter than the others, and the radiance illuminating the cell died down. That single pulsation seemed to focus on Raven, a flinty eye probing deep into the hidden recesses of her soul. Gradually, almost reluctantly, she felt a mighty lassitude creep through her; it was both comforting and reassuring, though she knew she should not fall into sleep at such a time. But sleep she did—or that was what it felt like, for she knew her eyes grew heavy, her limbs torpid, and soon she saw nothing but the blue glinting of that stone stare.

Slowly, pervasively, images crept like slow tendrils of ivy through her blanked mind.