From the first crystal morn,
To the final luckless night,
He trod a hundred islands,
And slept in a hundred caves,
With Time at his back,
Like a vast, lost country.
—The Last Shieldring by Ralgar Morth
Crossing and recrossing the threshold of awareness, Corlek Ondene was harried and hedged in by pain, which slowly faded into the memory of pain. It seemed that he was being taken from place to place in a cart of some kind, then later physically carried. Snatches of conversation slipped through the fitful fog in his mind to disrupt those other recollections that were stubbornly marching to and fro. How his attackers rushed him from all sides before dragging him into the wooded park, how they tied him to a tree and began beating him, and how one said ‘You should never have come back…’
Then he was aware of lying on something soft and warm amid the dimness of a room bathed in the amber of fire and lamplight. There were another two people there sitting either side of the bed, and sensations cold as coils of ice creeping through his body, coalescing around his aches and hurts….
And then there was only one person there, her cool and gentle hand stroking his brow, brushing back his hair. In the buttery yellow firelight her features took on the semblance of his mother, her aristocratic sternness softened by a careworn sadness. ‘My son,’ he seemed to hear, ‘My poor, ill-treated son….’ Then the firelight wavered and her features became that of Lyndil, the emperor’s daughter who just smiled at him for a long, sweet moment before the flame-shadows danced across her face, changing it to that of a young woman he did not know…
But the ebb and flow of wakefulness took her away and after another spell of oblivion he became aware of another presence, a taller, darker figure who stood by the bed, whose irresistable scrutiny he felt as a great pressure upon every fibre of his being. Only when that strange burden eased did he realise that the knots of terrible pain were gone.
The dark figure’s face was hidden in the dimness of a capacious cowl while, in contrast, firelight glinted brightly on the brass-ornamented sheath of a straight, longsword hanging on the wall behind him. Some old aphorism about becoming the sword’s edge whispered through his mind like a vagrant memory before sleep surged over him, its heavy waves rolling in from a deep ocean of weariness.
* * *
Healing the boy Corlek’s wounds in tandem with Tashil had been a satisfying task but by the end of it she was fighting to stay awake. Calabos, while feeling the strain of the work, had deeper reserves of strength to draw on and eventually had to insist that since they had done all that they could she should retire and rest. Yawning, she had finally agreed, bid him goodnight and trudged away to the nearby chamber he’d had set aside for her.
Leaving Calabos to contemplate Corlek Ondene, last scion of a disgraced and annulled house. As he stood there in darkness by the bed, a brief but perfect recollection came to him, that of a sunny day at the Ondene estate in the company of the Baron and his hawks. A day when a far younger Corlek had come running from the manor, bursting with exultation and eager to show to his father the parchment with seals and ribbons, confirming his new cadetship in the Imperial cavalry.
“Do you ever recall what I said to you that day?” Calabos murmured to the insensible Corlek. “‘Train hard and you’ll become the edge of the emperor’s sword; survive and learn and you will become the edge of your own sword.’ What have ten years of exile taught you, I wonder?”
Then, unexpectedly, the man’s eyes fluttered open and looked straight up at him.Yet they held little focus and alertness as their gaze drifted here and there, half-closing, showing the whites as the eyelids trembled for a moment or two before opening again. This time Corlek’s eyes wandered for only a moment before fixing on the longsword hanging on the wall behind Calabos, who frowned, alert to any change in it. But there was nothing, no disturbance in the weapon’s tranquility. Corlek muttered something unintelligible, turned onto his side and fell asleep.
Sensing that this was a healing slumber, Calabos left the darkened room and climbed the main stairs to the second floor and entered his own chambers. Before long he had disrobed and was pulling heavy, woollen blankets over his head. Clearing his mind, he slowed his breathing then embraced sleep like a swimmer striking out from the shore.
But his hold on the recesses of his mind was less than perfect this night and cryptic intrusions came in fleeting encounters amid a gloomy, thready fog. Shades of black, silver and grey predominated. Moans of despair, sighs, muted shouts and cries of pain came from all around. Part of Calabos wanted to wake from this unfamiliar dreamstate but curiosity kept him there, observing a succession of grotesque visions — a man with a cat’s head; a number of opaque, wraithlike children floating in midair, swapping their heads and limbs as they danced in a figure-of-eight; a golden-haired woman carrying a torch and pursued by a one-eyed barbarian who caught and killed her, then stripped away her flesh to reveal not bones but knives, swords, arrows, axes, all clotted with gore; a great black bull, its eyes and mouth filled with golden fire which left trails of burning letters in the air as it galloped. The letters were ancient Othazi script, and they spelled out a variety of curses and imprecations.
Then the slow-swirling tendrils of ashen fog convulsed as if something huge had passed nearby and gaps opened up, revealing faces amid the leaden veil, men and women who stared at Calabos as if in recognition, although he knew none of them. There were expressions of anger and cold contempt and as they all glared at him they began silently mouthing one word, a name, over and over and over….
Quickly, Calabos broke free of the dream and woke to a cold room made grey by the faint traces of dawn slipping past the edges of the window drapes. He sat up and swung his legs out to rest bare feet on the polished wooden floor, while his thoughts remained filled with the images from his dream.
Not a good sign, he thought. Not good at all.
It had been a long, long time since he had experienced a dream so freighted with such disturbing imagery. Clearly he had to discover the meaning of those symbols and there was only one man he could trust with such truths but to visit him would entail a two-hour journey on horseback north to a town amid the Rukang foothills. Shrugging, he rose and dressed in dark, heavy garments suited to travel then left his room and descended to the lodge’s lamplit main hall where two night guards were on duty. He beckoned over one of them, a Kejaner called Gillat, and told him to woke Osig the stable boy and have him saddle the mare for a morning ride. As Gillat hurried off, Calabos donned boots from the hall cupboard then took a patterned riding cloak from several hanging on the wall and flung it about his neck. Fastening it to one side, he paused before a large oval mirror near one of the lamps and studied his reflection for signs of the truth.
Before him stood a tall, grey-haired man noticeably past his middle years, yet retaining a certain vigour. While the dark-brown doublet and trews were sombre and formal, the calf-length cloak gave him an imposing, dramatic air. But he could not escape the sight of those disembodied heads soundlessly chanting in unison one word, a name that he knew so very well.
Calabos felt an old dread in the pit of his stomach. In the past, only a few images had slipped by the disciplined barriers he laid across the deep wells of memory, glimpses of snowcovered battlefields, the massed ranks of dark armies, and horrifying carnage. Paradoxically, however, such disturbing dreams could be the first shreds of proof that the influence of the Lord of Twilight had returned to haunt Sejeend.
There had been other places, other times, other circumstances under which he had come face to face with individuals not corrupted enough to be regarded as an incarnation of that vanquished godhead, yet driven sufficiently mad by its vestigial influence to be considered dangerous. Calabos only needed to look into the eyes to know if a shred of that immeasurably ancient evil had wrapped itself around that person’s spirit.
300 years of living, he thought. Nearly a dozen lives lived, five score of friends and lovers gathered and discarded, ships sailed along every coast and every city seen and delved, and still I can feel your mark upon my very spirit, a scar so permanent and profound that it can instantly recognise in others the least remnant of you….
Again, the faces from his dream filled his mind’s eye, pitilessly staring, all mouthing that name again and again….
Byrnak, Byrnak, Byrnak, Byrnak….
Calabos closed his eyes as if in pain, gritting his teeth.
No, that name belonged to another, one who was part puppet and part mask, one who did not survive the death of his god….
He opened his eyes and stared into their reflection in the mirror and saw a stark and grim resolve.
Who can tell from where I received the touch of undying? he thought. Perhaps it was the consequence of being a god’s garb or my immersion in the Wellsource, or both. But I’ve had 300 years of living, and worn a dozen faces and a dozen names, and any one of them gave me more self-knowledge and inner strength than that other…no, Byrnak is dead — Calabos lives!
A side entrance in the lobby opened, letting in morning light, cold air and Osig the stableboy. “Master, your horse awaits you.”
Calabos nodded, gave Gillat a short message to pass on to Tashil, then followed Osig out to the stable courtyard. The air was cold and a fitful gust shook blossom from the old apple tree in the corner of the yard as Calabos swung up into the saddle of his horse, uttering a grunt of exertion for Osig’s benefit as the stableboy opened the heavy yard gate.
Moments later, with the gate closed and bolted behind him, he spurred his mount into a trot along a narrow street that led between townhouses and loomshops, heading east before curving north. A while later he came to a pair of immense iron gates bolted into equally-imposing sections of city wall, a crossing point that marked the city of Sejeend’s notional boundary. There were several other gateways around the city, some guarded, others — like this — unguarded and lying open.
Beyond the road continued with houses and buildings still spreading outwards. As he rode through, Calabos smiled, recalling a time when these gates really had been a barrier to the outside. Sejeend had been so much smaller back then, when Tauric III abandoned the melancholic, half-deserted isle of Besh-Darok and moved the Khatrisian capital here. He frowned, trying to recall the name he had been using at that time...Malban, that was it, who had been a cultivated and laconic swordmaster, tutor to the sons of the nobility and rich merchants alike.
He remembered the sight of Tauric III’s court flotilla sailing into Sejeend’s wide outer harbour. It had been late in the afternoon on a clear summer’s day, with heat coming off the stones of the city and the setting sun filling half the sky with a spreading display of roseate clouds shot through with fiery orange. Flying hundreds of flags and driven by banks of oars, the massive Imperial barge had led the stately procession of noble ships and wallowing cargo galleys over-laden with all the treasure and chattels of the palace at Besh-Darok. He had observed it all from the protruding balcony of a cliff-edge tavern called the Brinksman which had once afforded a magnificent view of the estuary and the surrounding lands. From that vantage, the court flotilla with its warship escorts on either flank had resembled a huge jewelled regalia converging on Sejeend.
Calabos laughed quietly as he rode — the Brinksman had not lasted long after that, demolished to make way for the gardens and walkways of the grounds of the new palace, which was only half-complete at that time.
I almost wish I’d bought the place, he thought. Then dismantled it and put it back together further along the cliff. Perhaps I will rebuild it, when the years have wound well past this year….
The town was called Hekanseh and it nestled among the verdant, wooded foothills south of the Rukang mountains. Like many other towns north of Sejeend or west along the banks of Gronanvel, Hekanseh was a former village which had expanded in the prosperous stability of the last 100 years or so. Unlike them, however, it was host to a House of Seclusion, one of several scattered around the empire. Houses of Seclusion were founded and administered by the Healer subchapter of the Earthmother order as refuges for the care and study of the sick in mind. It was Hekanseh’s own House of Seclusion which was his destination, and one of its residents his intended advisor.
Calabos avoided the town’s main road and square, choosing instead a narrow track which skirted the western edge of Hekanseh. Passing several small orchards and a watermill, he came to a gravelled road which sloped up a hillside, and turned along a bushy gulley between tall trees. Before long the road levelled off as he emerged from the trees to see a small, weatherbeaten mansion from whose squat belltower the Healer’s banner hung. Wallthorn and dogivy had grown wild across the frontage, partially obscuring some of the tall, decorative windows and providing a fringe of foliage for the wide archway through which he steered his mount.
Coming to a halt in a small enclosed courtyard, he dismounted just as a young Healer novitiate in the green livery of the chapter came forward to take charge of his horse. Behind him approached one of the senior brothers who carried a long plain walking staff, swinging forward in time with his gait.
“Welcome, ser Calabos,” the Healer monk said impassively. “We were not expecting you for another week or more.”
Calabos maintained an amiable demeanour despite the man’s coldness. This was Niloc, the most important monk at the House, after Bishop Daguval.
“Well, good brother Niloc,” he said airily. “Having gone for a ride beyond my usual daily round in a wander which brought me close to splendid Hekanseh, I thought to derive some virtue from the day by visiting my pour cousin. How is he, pray tell?”
For all Niloc’s skill at concealing his disdain, it was clearly visible to Calabos’ eyes. It was a guilty pleasure this, prodding the man’s prejudice by playing the city-bred fool yet it was also a necessary one.
“He has apparently displayed considerable lucidity these past few days,” Niloc said. “But you will have to ask the Bishop — ”
“Could it be the diet you’re feeding him?” Calabos said. “Or perhaps it’s the water, eh?”
Calabos could almost sense the acid remark rising to Brother Niloc’s lips but it was forestalled by the appearance of the Bishop at an open door in the corner of the small courtyard. Bishop Daguval was a short, balding man with a large presence, and a strength of character that showed in his features. The slight dishevellment of his green robes seemed to emphasise his personality.
“Ah, good Calabos!” he cried. “An unexpected pleasure is it to welcome you to the House this day … thank you, Brother Niloc, for greeting our friend. I think that I should take charge of this fellow now.”
Niloc gave a small bow of the head. “As you wish, your worship.” Then with a cool nod to Calabos he stepped through the door and was gone.
The Bishop shook his head and with a forefinger tapped Calabos lightly on the chest. “One of these days you’ll overplay that buffoonery and Niloc will become less than courteous…”
Calabos gave a wry laugh as they entered the building. “I doubt that he gives me any serious consideration,” he said. “But I take your meaning.”
Inside, a long, tall corridor led in either direction, dimly lit by small, round windows set high on the walls. Calabos paused to look directly at the bishop.
“How is he?”
A sombreness came over Daguval like a garment he was well used to wearing. Calabos had a high regard for the man’s intellect and compassion and knew that there would be no evasions and no soothing nonsense.
“For the last week and a half he has been surprisingly lucid,” the bishop said. “Possibly his longest period of unbroken sanity since you brought him to us….until last night.”
Calabos’ heart sank and recollections of his dream flickered in his minds eye for a moment. “He took leave of his sense once more?”
Bishop Daguval nodded sadly and led Calabos to a nearby archway beyond which rough stone steps wound upwards.
“But there is an odd libration to his inconstancy of mind, as if his sanity is a pendulum that swings to and fro between the light and the dark but according to unknown principles,” the bishop said as he ascended the stairs ahead of Calabos. “I’m afraid he’s gone back to carving.”
“I see,” Calabos said as he climbed with heavy footsteps. “Have any of his….talents manifested themselves?”
“Hmm — not as yet.”
Daguval was fit for his age and showing no strain when he reached the head of the spiral stairs. Calabos, as a matter of habit, deepened his breathing and leaned slightly on the wall as he mounted the last step. They had arrived at a narrow landing with two doors.
“You know,” Daguval said, “last week he and I had the most fascinating discussion about Cabringan poetry from the reign of Droshan the First. Was he ever an archivist, I wonder…if such a query is permissable?”
“I would not be violating my trust to say that certain archives were in his charge...prior to his tragic misfortune.”
Bishop Daguval nodded gravely, then turned to one of the two doors and gingerly pressed his ear against the dark-grained wood.
“All seems to be calm,” he said. “You may enter, as you wish. I shall await you in the vigil cell.” He indicated the other exit.
Calabos faced the door, thoughts aswirl with apprehension. Then he steeled himself, opened the door and stepped in side.
The room was low-ceilinged and oblong in shape, with a bed recess in the same wall as the entrance. The grey, rough-mortared walls were bare except for a framed piece of embroidery depicting trees and indistinct lines of verse. Embers were slowly dying in a small hearth in one corner where there was also a half-empty basket of kindling, a solid wooden chair and a low, three-legged stool. A burnished brass oil lamp hung from a shoulder-high iron bracket, adding amber radiance to the weak light that filtered through the single, curtained window. In the middle of the room was a square, heavily-built wooden table littered with carpenter’s offcuts, odd lengths of branch stripped of bark, and a few piece of planking. Some of them bore evidence at woodcarving, rough semi-reliefs of horses’ heads, ships and fish. The corner of the table closest to the door had also been engraved, a fantastic tangle of leaves, berries and vines with the snouts of tiny foxes peering out here and there.
An offshoot of tendrils and foliage wound along the table edge to where the figure of a man clad in a grubby yellow smock sat bent over a flat section of golden torwood. As he worked on the piece with a small implement held tightly in hand, his hunched posture managed to convey a kind of furious intensity. Calabos smiled to himself as he regarded his old companion, his self-chosen charge, but before he could speak -
“He is here!” said the man as he put down the implement and turned.
Three hundred years or more had not blunted the piercing severity that shone from Coireg Mazaret’s eyes during these periods of derangement.
Calabos met the unbalanced gaze as understanding settled into his thoughts. The Lord of Twilight is here….
“You’re certain? How can you know?”
Mazaret uttered a dry, contemptuous laugh and rummaged through the heap of woodpieces before him. “How else would I know? — by my sensing of the Wellsource, naturally. It still lives in the deepest deeps of the Void yet I can feel every quiver and ripple in its constricted flux. Some of it, however, is bleeding across the realms and now His hungering spirit is abroad once more.”
He paused as he found what he sought among the now-scattered sections of branch and beam, a dark piece which he clutched to his chest as he went on. Calabos attended closely while a sense of inner dread crept over him.
“His hungering spirit,” Mazaret repeated, a feverish light in his eyes. “He never died at the crux of that final battle, you know, not wholly, not truly — I’ve read your dramatised account and you were wise to not to fabricate some improbably scene with the boy-Emperor overmastering the Prince of Dusk….”
“So where is he?” Calabos said.
“He reigns in blackness,” said Coireg, a slow, malign smile coming to his lips. “In glittering, soaring, magnificent blackness….” He half turned in his seat while considering Calabos with a sly, sidelong glance. “Tell me — do you ever think of the dead, poet, your dead?”
Calabos gritted his teeth. For three centuries, he thought, the same cursed question…
“Not my dead,” he said.
“The great plains of Khatris laid to waste, its towns and villages ransacked, their inhabitants slain or enslaved — ”
“Not my dead,” he repeated sharply.
Coireg stood to face him. “Was it not your hand that plundered the lands of Yularia and Anghatan of their menfolk? Many tens of thousands they were and every one was emptied out by your Acolyte servants then made into fit vessels for more ancient, loyal spirits…”
“Not by my hand,” Calabos said grimly.
“...then there’s the dead Mogaun, the dead of Besh-Darok, and those of your masked slave army who died twice.” Mazaret had moved towards him and was almost an arm’s length way. “A vast, smothering host of the dead, an abyss of agony, an ocean of blood.” His grin was savage. “Your dead. Your hand.”
Gaze met gaze, will locked with will. Calabos had to consciously resist the pressure of this unhinged, malefic presence before him while keeping in mind that it was only a fragment of Coireg Mazaret, twisted and deformed by the inhuman tortures of the spirit that he underwent three centuries ago.
“The I that I am,” Calabos said in a low voice, “scarcely existed when Byrnak was stumbling along the path laid down for him by other. When He…..was freed by the melded sword, Byrnak ceased to exist, leaving behind a walking shell and a few instincts and habits, enough to rattle around inside and create the semblance of being…”
Before him, Mazaret laughed darkly. “But you remember, don’t you?”
It was true. His mind, even after all these years, remained the voluminous storehouse of another’s memories but it went beyond that. His hands were the hands which had held the axe which had lopped off Kiso’s hands and feet on the fateful night of Tauric’s capture. It had been his powers which had subdued Ystregul, the Black Priest, and imprisoned him in that spell-laden casket after the first abortive assault on Besh-Darok; his chest which had been pierced by the melded sword in the hands of Nerek….
Calabos breathed in deeply and slowly exhaled, feeling the tension ebb. The longevity laid upon him by his god-host role had also provided or cursed him with persistent, undimmed memories of those experiences (unlike his experiences since which were prone to fading or misremembrance). Many times he had tried to expunge them from his mind with drink, drugs, hypnosis or sorcery or some combination thereof. But nothing, he found, could wipe them away so over time he alternated between avoiding conscious recollection of Byrnak’s part in it all, or striving to come to terms with it — his penning of ‘The Great Shadowking War’ was an attempt of the latter kind.
Then there were the recurring encounters with Coireg Mazaret’s madness, likewise a consquence of an immersion in horror and the full force of the Wellsource.
“My memories are my own,” he said. “To embrace or reject or treat as I see fit.” He leaned forward a little and met Mazaret’s unfriendly gaze. “That aside, it would be of great use to us if you were to tell me where He is….”
Mazaret’s smile grew sly. “In the Nightrealm, the domain of the Eternal.”
“Which is where?”
But Mazaret was not listening, his febrile stare wandering around the room. “Do you remember what I said to atop the great keep of Rauthaz?”
Calabos’ recollection of that moment was effortless and all that was said paraded through his mind even as Mazaret gave his own recitation.
“Ghosts in the sky and sea and the black chasm of the night...armies and nations of ghosts….”
Mazaret held out his hand, at last offering the piece of black ironwood to Calabos who warily accepted it as the words continued;
“...a world full of ghosts, full to overspilling, hungry enough to eat the flesh of the sky and bones of the land, leaving nothing, only shadows….” Then he stepped back, his face gone pale with fear and his eyes seemingly fixed on something unseen. “The world is a ghost, a flimsy parchment skin stretched across a blackened skull…!”
Then the eyes rolled up, showing the whites, and he keeled over, knocking a chair aside as he fell to the floor. Calabos leaped forward, levered Coireg’s head and shoulders up off the woodshaving-strewn floor, then hauled him over to the boxbed in its corner alcove. As he laid him out o the plain grey pallet, there were signs of returning awareness, a groan then a weak coughing as the eyes fluttered open. Calabos poured a beaker of water from a jug on the floor and offered it. Gratefully, Coireg nodded and drank.
“You are a good friend,” he said at last. “I wish that I were less of a burden to you and more of a help.”
“You’ve been more help than you know,” Calabos said. “From the very outset of our journeying.”
“If only I could be now…” Coireg Mazaret shook his head gingerly. “Everything my shadow half rants about these days is overlaid with a symbolic esoterism that I cannot penetrate.”
“He was quite unambiguous about our old adversary,” Calabos pointed out. “He is here…”
“And he mentioned a place….” Mazaret paused to yawn widely, “somewhere called ‘the Nightrealm, domain of the eternal’. It seems familiar.”
Calabos frowned. “I’ve heard it too, but it must have been since the war — I cannot recall where or when…” Certainty evaded him, but as he thought on it some possibilities suggested themselves. “It sounds like part of a ritual prayer, or perhaps an invocation…”
He stopped, realising that Coireg Mazaret was fast asleep.
Truly, Calabos thought, you are a sailor upon your own restless seas, trawling strange catches from the deep.
Carefully, he placed the jug and beaker on the floor but within easy reach of the boxbed then rose and quietly left the room. Out in the narrow hall, he took the ironwood carving from his pocket and examined it. The detail was very fine which made the subect matter all the more disturbing — it depicted a flat surface from which the forms of people protruded, faces, head and shoulders, hands and arms. All seemed to be struggling, as if drowning…
Then the other door opened and the elderly Bishop Daguval emerged, and Calabos unhurriedly slipped the carving away out of sight.
“Did you find him in a tractable mood?” said the bishop.
“Intractable,” Calabos said with a wry smile. “Yet oddly informative.”
“And now?”
“Sleeping soundly,” Calabos said. “The madness lifted from him but left him exhausted…”
Daguval nodded sagely. “Yes, my friend, that is a familiar consequence but I shall prepare some broth in case he wake later.”
“Thank you for all you have done,” Calabos said, moving towards the downleading stairs. “Unfortunately, I must return to Sejeend to meet with several close colleagues. When he next regains his senses, tell him that I shall return in a few days.”
“I shall,” the bishop said. “May you have a safe journey.”
Calabos smiled then descended the stairs, thinking about Mazaret’s words and the carving and, for once, quite forgetting to walk like an old man.