The Hammer of the Sun (25 page)

So it is that the Tarnhelm fades from the Chronicles. Yet though it has left this tale, it has not left all tales, nor the legends that grow out of them. In the end, after many years, perhaps many lifetimes, it seems that the duergar learned to unleash at least some of its powers, and though many claimed it as the wisest of their work, its true maker was never wholly forgotten. For it was to become a great treasure among the fading Elder Folk of the north, and at last pass on to those fated few who inherited their hoard and the shadowy name they earned, and were to bring its tragic history at last to an end.

Of the three great works of Elof s corrupted youth, a second had now vanished from the world. Fit prentice-pieces as they were to herald the mightiest of magesmiths, yet each in its own way could not escape the taint that was then upon him, and each in that way worked great evils. Even as the greatest of them, the sword of the mind, drove whole hosts of men to needless suffering and death untimely, so the helm, worker of secret change, became an instrument of treason and deceit, and the arm-ring, binder of love and tainted the least, came nonetheless to bind love in coils that stifled and tangles that cut. Broken as it was, the tale of its ill-doings is not yet done.

No account remains of the passage of Elof and Roc southward through the hills and the forests. It must have taken some few days at least, since so many heights and valleys lay in their way, but it seems to have been uneventful; the land was empty, is all that is said, and game was scarce. What this meant to them can be guessed, for they had only the little food the duergar gave them, and no easy means of hunting save Roc's bow and few remaining arrows; and the effort of healing was draining Elof's body. On the other hand, they walked free and alive when all too often they had stood in deadly peril, and they had both strong spirits to sustain their flagging frames. It must have been warm summer in those forests, the air tangy with resin, and flowers glowing among the pine-needles on their floor. They were still afoot and in no bad heart when they reached the wood's edge, and came out among a few scattered trees onto a bare and stony upland slope, leading to what seemed a hill-crest. It was a warm midday, and beyond the crest only clouds glided by; there were no more treetops, and as they looked to either side it seemed that there also the wood was thinning and diminishing. With growing excitement to steady their shaky limbs, they clambered up the slope. "Let's… hope the downslope's… easier," wheezed Roc, face purple and glistening as a berry. But as they drew nearer the top, they realised that there was no downslope; they were at the top of a cliff. And it was no mere hillside crag, such as they had come upon out of the Meneth Aithen, but part of a long irregular wall of golden stone; as far as they could see from east to west the forest grew down almost to its edge. Then they came cautiously to the cliff-edge, keeping low lest some unfriendly eye catch them against the skyline. But when they reached it and looked out, they forgot all that in wonder at what they saw. For to their right, westward, they first made out another such line of cliffs, and thought themselves overlooking some deep valley. But as they rose higher, and looked out east, they saw that line of cliffs turn away from them and plunge deep into cloud-shadowed distance, till they became no more than a dark streak upon the horizon and merged with it. And below them all the broad lands between lay spread out clear, as on some vast map, some boundless living tapestry. For if this was indeed a vale, then it was the greatest in the world.

About the feet of the distant cliffs were green woods, glowing with the lighter hues of seasonal trees, but these soon gave way to low hills, plains and grasslands wider than any Elof had seen since he crossed the desolate country off ancient Morvan. Through them a river flowed out of what seemed to be a chain of small lakes, widening swiftly as tributaries, like branching veins, led into it from the cliffs; as the cliffs turned away into the distance, so it snaked after them, growing ever wider and wider till it seemed to become a great lake again. And if distance did not deceive him it broadened still further, became like a sea lapping at the horizon's lip as if eager to spill out across the sky itself; many long islands were set in it. Yet it was not this sight alone that set Elof s pulses racing, but what he saw thus far off on the edge of sight, extending between grassland and river, a rolling country mottled with a regular mosaic of many shades, chiefly green and brown. Upon this side of the river the same pattern repeated itself in the lands eastward, woodland, grassland, mosaic, till they blurred together; so fine was that mosaic and so great the area
it
covered, he still found it hard to accept it could all be fields. Around great cities he had seen such chequered patterns of fields; but from here they seemed like flecks as fine and as numerous as the lichen upon the rocks beneath his clutching hand. So small they looked that he might almost reach out and scrape them away as easily; yet he looked upon the works of men.

"It's a rich land," said Roc, his voice unwontedly soft. "Rich and spacious. Makes home look pretty damned small, doesn't it?"

"So it should!" Elof retorted, equally softly. "And so it should, Roc. Or have you not guessed where we are? To what place we have come and by what paths? I know it, Roc - I
know
this place! I know the stone of those cliffs, layered and tortuous like that; I know the colours of those fields, the span of the river beyond them, the contours of that hilly island there; even how the winds play about the cliffs as they converge… see, you can see it in the swirling of the clouds there!"

Roc stared at him, astonished. "When you've lived all your life half a world away? Or," very darkly, "is it that you can look back along the River to some life you have lived before? How in Hel's name else could you have set eyes on anything here?"

"Through page and paper, scroll and book, words enscribed! They showed me this whole scene, little by little, a word here, two words there; but I never realised it, I saw only the parts, never the whole picture. But now, here, I see it! It springs out at me from every corner of my reading, so strongly it shaped the minds of those who wrote. I pieced it together from a hundred casual examples, a thousand chance comparisons. The cliffs, the coloured fields, they came from manuals of mining I pored over as prentice. That island there from some old treatise on mapping; the river and its currents from clauses in some leaden-heavy charter of commerce. The winds blew about the pages of ancient almanacs. Roc, from a fraudster's scrawls on divination I could tell you the very stars that will rise!" He gazed out solemnly over the expanse before him. "This is a cradle, Roc; a mighty cradle, for it bore within it high beginnings. It is our cradle, Roc; the birth and nursing of all that makes us what we are, our folk, our histories, our wisdoms, our follies. All that has driven us since our first youth began here; all that we achieve now is measured against the best of this place. This below us is the Vale of Kerys, greatest of all vales; and greatest of all rivers is this which flows through it, the Saltflood, Yskianas, the River at the World's Heart. In this vale, by this vast stream, for centuries beyond count was encompassed the high and ancient realm of Kerys, the City of the Lowlands, the very heart of the world itself."

Roc paled as he contemplated that awesome prospect, and his voice grew choked. "Is that so? Then I'm given a gift I've longed for since I first heard those names, in old tales my poor mother told me. To see them as you name 'em, that shakes me to my core. How my lord Kermorvan'd envy us! Worn and wan as we are, he'd change his chair of state to be with us! But then… what lies there now?"

Elof shook his head, and his voice sank to a whisper. "Ah, there the words have no answer. Five thousand years have passed since the fleets left this land to found our own! Yet longer than that it had endured already; more than twice as long, some say, more than ten thousand years. Therefore it may endure still; yet if so…"

"What is it?" demanded Roc. "Your face just went like a wet midsummer, clouded over…"

"If so…" Elof swallowed. "If so, then the Ice comes hard upon it, to be so close. And its strength must have waned terribly. Do you not know now that fortress to which they took me? Yet you've sworn by it often enough! That was, that must have been the High Gate of Kerys, legendary strength of strengths, built to deny any enemy access to the valley mouth.
And who holds it now
?"

Roc's hands clenched on the stone as if to clasp it to him, to deny it furiously to others. Elof saw the horrified anger seething in him, and understood it well. To the sothrans, far more than to the northerners among whom he had grown up, the ancestral land and all things about it were sacred, imbued with reverence,
enshrined in memory. They had made it the measure of
all their aspirations and the warranty of their oaths, the more so as they thought it lost to them among the impenetrable shadows of time. And no part of Kerys was more sacred to them than the High Gate. "That's the bloody worst of all! In her damned cold clutches'. And if that's fallen, what else stands? Will we just find a nest of her thralls here too?" He stopped, and blew out his cheeks with sudden relief. "No, surely not! Or else this land'd be lousy with them, too. No, it's got to be as you reasoned it; there's men in the Old Country still, true man and enemies of the Ice. Might be glad to know they've kin fighting the same fight, eh?"

"It's possible," agreed Elof, straining his eyes for any trace of life across all that wide vista. "We should seek a way down these cliffs, I think, in any event Where else is there to go?"

Roc shrugged. "Where indeed? Short of trying conclusions at the High Gate." He peered over the brink, and shuddered. "Damned if I'm beetling down that! But it's lower to the east here, more of a slope than a cliff. And the sooner we get you some food and rest, the better. Feel up to another stroll?"

They grew weary indeed as the day wore on, and they clambered and scrambled along the overgrown margins of the cliffs; hunger shook their limbs, and though root and berry grew more plentifully than above, still there was little to lessen it. It remained a wild land, with no sign of man's hand upon it. But Roc in particular refused to be downcast, and kept searching the landscape all around with squinting intensity that earned him many a stumble over obstacles nearer to hand, and once or twice great danger at the cliff-edge. His persistence, though, was rewarded while the sun was still well up the sky, for as they came down a steep bushy slope towards a deep gully in the golden cliffs he let out an abrupt whoop of triumph, and pointed to tiny flickers of light in the distance.

"That's mail, or I'm an ape of Hella!" he swore. "Yes, see there; soldiers, and clad in no Ekwesh fashion either!"

Elof shaded his eyes, and let them focus. "Yes… they are pale-skinned…"

"I'll take your word for it!" said Roc good-humouredly. He stepped forward, waved his hand and let out a hail that went echoing away down the gully's water-eaten walls. Elof s keen eyes saw pale specks of faces look up, hands point, and a great scurry break out; one went running back down the steep slope - a messenger, perhaps.

"Ah, Roc," he said, shaking his head, "I wonder, was that wise? You're not normally so trusting. I would sooner have watched them a while from hiding first, weighed them up…"

Roc shrugged, a little shame-facedly. "Well… maybe you're right; though I'm sure they'll be no friends to the Ekwesh, at least. Do you go hide, then, and watch over me…"

"Too late, I fear; they've seen two, and finding only one would breed suspicion in the mildest breast. I'll come down with you. No don't bother yourself, the slope looks easy enough and I'm feeling much better…" He knew well that it was as much concern for him as eagerness to gaze upon Kerys that had made Roc impetuous. But he had spoken only the truth; the sun was shining, the air was mild and filled with strange fragrances from the sun-warmed bushes, bay and thyme and myrtle, and whatever his doubts, whatever the weakness of his limbs, it was no effort to relax. As they reached the gully's head Elof heard a distant jingle of metal rise on the light breeze, the crazy carillon of mail and harness, and the rolling clatter of hooves among the loose stones. A cloud of dust rolled up over the edge of the slope, and out of it, with a roar like a breaking flood, a squadron of horsemen in light mail came charging up the gully, long rows of pennons fluttering from the lances upright in saddle racks behind each rider. Behind them on foot ran a file of mailed soldiers with halberds levelled. Across the gully the horse spread out, lances poised to sweep its length, while their leader, with the foremost of the footmen at his stirrup, came trotting forward to loom over Roc and Elof.

"Well, what marvels have we here?" He did not deign to lift his visor, but it was a young man's voice, clipped and scornful. He eyed their tattered and bloodstained garb. "Whose men are these, that he lets them stray about the borderland? Or could it be that they're masterless men, good-for-naught outlaw vermin? Out for pickings?" That was evidently what he believed. "Those men there! Let them declare themselves, person and purpose!
In the name of the King!"

Curt and ominous as the words were, the travellers exchanged wild glances, .hearts pounding. For though the speaker's accents fell strangely on their ears, they had understood his words, and all that they implied. Peculiar though it had become, it was recognis-ably some form of the Sothran tongue he spoke.

"With no hesitation, friend!" exclaimed Elof, and saw the men start, listen and then understand. "We sought you with that in mind, for we are charged with an errand to him. But we are fleeing the Ekwesh -"