Dark Crusade (20 page)

Perhaps Kane would let her go there. Why not? Erill had given up trying to guess Kane's motives.

She had awakened to find herself in his tent, her wounds salved and bandaged at Kane's direction. She had been unconscious for several days--lost in a sort of dream state born of delirium and the laudanum Kane got her to swallow.

They had ridden miles beyond Shapeli, Erill lying comatose in the baggage train. There had been hard fighting along the way, but Erill knew of that only afterward. The Sword of Sataki was broken by rebellion, as Kane gathered such of his regiments to him as remained loyal to Kane and not to a madman in Ceddi. For now, Kane held a broken sword by the hilt--as his mercenaries overpowered the factions recruited from the Prophet's faithful. By the time Erill had recovered sufficiently to be aware of her surroundings, Kane was temporarily camped at Intantemri, one of the southern kingdoms strongholds he had taken before his break with the Satakis.

She awakened to the awareness of Kane's eyes. He was seated beside her cot, so that when she opened her eyes, the two fixed flames of blue ice were no longer part of the drugged darkness, but stared at her from his coarse-hewn face. It was not a pleasant awakening. Erill closed her eyes, waited for this nightmare to pass as well.

"You are awake now," Kane said.

She was awake. There was a compelling force to Kane's will that lifted her from oblivion, as a powerful hand hauls a drowning child from an ebon pool.

She opened her eyes, took in her surroundings without comprehension, without connecting this world to the world of pain and mob terror. That awareness would come later, as her wounds heated, as she was borne along in the wake of Kane's rebellion.

"I want you to answer my questions," Kane said.

If he asked, she must answer. Her own will was still lost in the ebon pool.

"Once you were in a city called Gillera," Kane murmured.

Erill winced. There was another pain, another scar.

"It was night," Kane persisted. "The Satakis had surrounded the city."

Erill whimpered, tried to pull her eyes away from Kane's baleful stare, found she could not.

"I want you to tell me everything that happened to you that night."

"No," she moaned.

"Tell me what happened that night."

"No!"

"Erill, you will tell me."

Kane's eyes held her will, and though she had not screamed when the wooden mallet drove the iron nails into her flesh, Erill cried out then. But Kane's eyes commanded, and eventually she told him all he desired of her.

Even now that night of horror chilled her more than the memory of her crucifixion. Erill looked again at the sea. Untying her skirt and bandeau, she carefully laid the garments on the dry sand, then plunged into the warm surf.

The sea was clean. Its waves carried her effortlessly, its salty breath stung her kisses, its pulse was her heartbeat. Erill loved the sea.

Kane warned of sharks, of deadly riptides. Erill loved the sea, and didn't care.

He was a strange man. Erill knew little about him. Even in Ingoldi, little was spoken of Kane's past--unusual for so prominent a figure. To while away the boredom of her recovery, Erill had asked others about Kane. Some said one thing, some another; no one had much to answer. Kane was a good general; they followed him. It was all a soldier need know.

Kane was a mystery. The mystery intrigued Erill during the long months of battle and intrigue, attack and retreat. She suspected he might answer her if she questioned him about his past. For that reason Erill never asked.

"Why do you keep me with you?" she once asked Kane.

"I don't. Go where you wish."

"There's no place to go."

"Then stay."

It was not inertia that kept her with Kane. Erill sensed that she rode within the eye of the storm, that all about her the wars of the Dark Crusade, the horrors of the shadow world, laid waste to everything that stood.

"Where is there refuge, Kane?" she one night asked, inspired with the fumes of hashish.

"In this world there is no refuge," Kane told her.

"And in another world?"

"I cannot say. I know only this world. Yet I think in any world it must be the same."

She blew a wreath of smoke. "Then I'll seek refuge in dream."

"Seek no refuge in dream. A dream is unattainable."

"I know that a nightmare is attainable," she said bitterly. "Is there refuge in nightmare?"

"A nightmare can be conquered."

"If it doesn't conquer you."

Erill swam back to the beach, let the wind and the sun dry her thin body. The sea, she noted, left a taint of salt on her skin. She drew on her clothes, and went back to where Kane dug in the sand.

"Why did you seek me out, Kane?" she later had asked him.

"You are a fragment of the puzzle I sought to unravel."

"A fragment?" "You had knowledge of the Satakis' shadow-spell."

"I know nothing of their magic."

"But you told me much."

"Are there other such fragments?"

"There were. It is a difficult puzzle. My first conception was wrong. That error was costly. I had to obtain full understanding in order to regain control."

"Then have you now solved your puzzle?"

"I have."

"And have you regained control?"

"I will."

"Can you explain it?" Erill asked on another night, as the dry wind moaned across the savannah, and shook the tent.

"Perhaps," Kane considered. "You remember when you asked me about the Lair of Yslsl?"

"I thought you jested with me."

Kane laughed mordantly.

"You said that the world was a room in a huge castle and that Yslsl waited beyond a doorway that we could enter although Yslsl could not pass through."

"Well enough," Kane nodded. "The allegory is over simple, but it serves."

"But what has Yslsl to do with Orted Ak-Ceddi?"

"Remember that the castle is huge, limitless perhaps. There are many other rooms. Certain beings--call them demons or gods, for convenience--live in some of these other chambers. One such being is Yslsl. Another is Sataki."

Kane frowned, as if not wholly satisfied with his metaphor. He muttered something in a language Erill had never heard spoken--not surprisingly--then continued.

"There are many doorways such as the one in the Tower of Yslsl. The laws that govern the doorways vary, just as the beings who wait beyond differ in many ways. One of the keys to sorcery is the knowledge to open certain of these doorways, and to control and command the beings on the other side. That knowledge, carefully applied, can lead to great power; a false step means annihilation."

"Like demons and magic circles," Erill followed.

"Good," Kane approved. "Your concept of the wizard and his pentacle is valid here--although generally the wizard is evoking a being who has little interest in what takes place in this chamber we call the universe. Remember the castle is vast. Many of the dwellers beyond have no awareness of or interest in our small chamber. Others watch our universe hungrily, making the doorways to their realms as accessible as the laws of the cosmos make possible. The places of the earth where their doorways impinge soon become ill-omened and shunned by the wise."

"Like the Tower of Yslsl."

"And the Altar of Sataki beneath Ceddi--Ceddi is 'altar' in Old Tongue." Kane paused, shrugged. "In the cellars beneath Ceddi lies the Altar of Sataki. The Sigil of Sataki is a simulacrum of it. It's a doorway similar to the black sunburst atop the Tower of Yslsl. The priests of Sataki learned its secret many centuries ago, unearthed it, founded a degenerate cult about it."

"But who built the doorways?"

"The che'eyl'rhy--the beings did themselves," Kane explained. "At least that's my belief. They're structures like a spider's web, or an ant lion's burrow--only of a more complex order. Elaborately constructed snares for predators whose existence is to lure and entrap unwary prey.

"Not much knowledge of them survived. I think Yslsl and Sataki are similar entities--and that conditions in that region of Shapeli were suited for their doorways to open close together, just as certain regions are prone to volcanic eruptions while others are not. The chief distinction is that Yslsl attracted no cult of worshippers to keep his rituals alive. Sataki did, although his cult was never of any importance."

"Until Orted espoused it," Erill murmured.

"Until Orted," Kane nodded. "And there the puzzle begins."

He was silent for a moment, listening to the voice of the wind.

"That was where I miscalculated. I knew Orted's reputation, saw that the Dark Crusade was a powerful force for conquest--and assumed Orted was using the facade of a religious war to build for himself an empire.

"I was wrong. Orted Ak-Ceddi is exactly what his priests proclaim him to be. He is a man into whose flesh their god has entered--or if you prefer, he is a man possessed by a devil."

Erill remembered her shudder at Kane's words. She shivered now at the thought, although the wind was warm, and the sea was dry on her flesh. She climbed the dune and gazed down to where Kane and his men dug about the ruins of what had once been Ashertiri, destroyed in the ancient wars with the sorcerers of Carsultyal.

"The fragments of the puzzle are scattered, hard to find," Kane had told her that night. "Much of it I can only reconstruct through conjecture, but I think I have it all now.

"The cult of Sataki was dying out. It had never been powerful, but now only a handful of fanatics kept its rituals. The priests made sacrifice to Sataki--luring victims into Ceddi, stealing children, waylaying drunks and beggars--offering them on the Altar of Sataki, intoning the spells that opened the doorway for the doomed sacrifice.

"Somehow they captured Orted. He was wounded in a raid on the Guild Fair, or they couldn't have taken him. They placed him on their altar, chanted the ritual of sacrifice. The doorway opened. Only this time, Sataki came through.

"I don't know how it happened. Under certain conditions such reversals can occur. A rare juxtaposition of the stars, perhaps; a transient flaw in the fabric of the cosmos. My guess would be that Sataki was near extinction from lack of worshippers, lack of sacrifices--ravenous, a starving lion. Orted was no ordinary man; he was physically powerful, a dynamic personality, intelligent, a leader with enormous strength of will. Either Sataki took advantage of some freak of chance to reach through the doorway--or else Orted's soul was so powerful he drew the weakened god into himself.

"The reversal lasted only a short space in time. Then the doorway closed. Only a portion of Sataki's life-force was trapped on our side of the doorway--incarnated in Orted Ak-Ceddi."

Kane smiled at a bitter jest. "Sataki stole Orted's shadow, but he cloaked him with unearthly flesh no iron can penetrate. I wondered at the absence of the Prophet's shadow, but this is not an uncommon phenomenon of the supernatural. Vampires cast neither shadow nor reflection, a trait other supernatural creatures share--nor is the trick to eliminate a shadow any difficult spell. A tawdry trick to awe the masses, I dismissed it. Nor did the Prophet's heralded invulnerability impress me. If Orted could not be harmed by any weapons, why then did he not place his invulnerable body in the fore of his battles? Another shabby artifice, so I thought--an illusion he dared not test in battle."

"But can he be wounded, then?" Erill wondered.

"Not by iron or steel," Kane said. "But he feels the impact of a blow--I've seen that. I sent assassins to his chambers, and they were armed with silver blades, lances of fire-hardened wood, stone hammers. For Orted fears some manner of weapon, or he would surely now lead his army against me."

"He will send his army of slaying shadows instead," Erill warned him.

"Not unless I let him ensnare me," Kane said. "That was the whip he used to hold me in obedience--the threat of his shadow horde. And that was the essential fragment of the puzzle that you furnished me."

"I?"

"Certain laws and procedures must be obeyed before any act of sorcery can have power. A wizard cannot conjure forth a demon with a simple wave of his hand--no more than a warrior can stay his enemy by asking him to die. You were a pawn at Gillera, but your experience that night revealed a portion of the spell. Other pawns, other witnesses furnished more information, I knew the Satakis' shadow magic had to have restrictive limitations--else the Prophet would have needed no army to carry out his conquests."

Kane toyed with his swordhilt. "It is a variation on the rites of sacrifice, evoking minions that dwell on the threshold of Sataki's realm. It requires darkness, it requires a simulacrum of the Altar of Sataki, and it requires the evocative power of the ritual chants. At first the Satakis used it only on individuals marked for death. They hunted down a man in my employ who once had betrayed Orted; a priest followed him to Sandotneri and struck when the poor fool let darkness catch him.

"Later the cult drew power from new worshippers; they could invoke the spell upon a limited area, even smother torchlight with their power--but they sometimes had to use a pawn to place the simulacrum and to utter the final chant, when no priest or shadow-sending could get close enough to perform the task.

"Their power increased as their numbers increased. The culmination was when the Prophet himself led a horde of worshippers to destroy Sandotneri--as vengeance and as a warning. For all the horror of the unleashed shadow-army, the action was only a mass scale extension of the sacrificial rites that are chanted by a circle of priests about the Altar of Sataki."

Kane's voice was edged with triumph. "A deadly spell, but only if I were careless enough to allow the Satakis to invoke it. And I've taken careful measures to guard against that. Neither mundane assassin nor shadowy priest can approach me at night--and Orted knows my calvary would butcher any chanting horde he tried to send against me. Jarvo taught him that lesson in a manner the Satakis won't forget."

Erill's eyes clouded at Jarvo's name.

Kane marked this, but made no comment. He knew now that Erill had sheltered Jarvo in Ingoldi. Now rumors flew that Kane's old enemy had escaped during the chaos of revolt, had reached the as yet unconquered realms of the southern kingdoms, was seeking to raise a new army to lead against Kane and Orted Ak-Ceddi.