The Revenants (51 page)

Authors: Sheri S. Tepper

BOOK: The Revenants

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Within five years after this defeat, the people who had lived in the eastern lands came pouring into the west. They came in terror, saying they could not breathe in the east, that shadows oppressed them, that an unknown and horrid world was closing upon them. The people continued to come westward until there were no human settlements remaining east of Tchent and eastern Lakland. A curtain of shadow seemed to fall over the eastern lands, and only a few hardy explorers attempted to travel there from time to time. Soon, even this exploration ceased, for the lands were known to have fallen under a Concealment. There were rumours at this time that the Thiene had returned or were about to return; in particular there were stories concerning visitations made by Taniel to the Choirs and to Orena. Certainly there was some understanding of the Concealment in Orena which was not current elsewhere.

The story of Sud-Akwith’s growing pride and intransigence is too well known to detail here. In 4200, Sud-Alcwith cast the miraculous Sword into the Abyss of Souls, at Seathe, dying almost immediately thereafter. Following his death, the kingdom should have descended to his only son, Widon the Golden. Widon, however, said that he would not pick up what his father had cast down unless it returned to him of its own will or the will of the Powers. Instead, he gathered a great host of his followers around him and went away into the north along the river which is still called Akwidon, or King’s Road. TTie fall of the realm of the Northlords, the dislocation caused by people fleeing from the Concealment, even the rumours that the Thiene had returned, all served to create a vast disorder. The world entered another period of unnumbered years, and fell into general barbarity. Warrior bands sprang up, conquered small territories, moved to and fro across the land. One such band became stronger than others, and the Third Cycle (TC) is said to have started with the time of the Axe King who numbered his reign from the birth of his grandfather, as Sud-Akwith had done.

The Axe King began his rule in 102 TC, in 135 attacking the archives at Tchent, long the only bastion of learning in the encircling dark. The archivists fled the complex of Tchent through ancient escape tunnels, taking most of the archives with them. It is generally supposed that they went to Orena, though some are known to have entered the Sisterhoods. Many of the treasures stored in Tchent were abandoned by the archivists and taken by the Axe King, including the legendary Girdle of Our Lady which had been brought there from the City of the Mists in the time of Sud-Akwith. The Girdle is mentioned as a feature of the ‘Search of Chu-Namu,’ an almost legendary quest said to have started in 140 TC and to have continued for five hundred years during which Chu-Namu did not age. Thus the Girdle was identified as the Girdle of Binding, one of thegifts of the Powers.

The reign of the Axe King ended with his death in 164 TC, and the warrior bands he had led split into factions led by one or another of his sons or nephews. At least one of his sons was known to have led a great band of the D’Zunalor into the northlands in emulation of Widon the Golden. The D’Zunalor had an exaggerated veneration for the legends of the Akwith Kings.

In 210 TC, He from Gahl [Obnor Gahl – Whip Valley] began his teachings in the town of Soolenter in the Savus Mountains. During the early centuries of Gahlism, cities and towns were slow to change, but the teaching began to have far reaching effects by the ninth century TC. In 990 a woman of Hanar, later identified as Geraldhis, a prophetess, brought a prophecy to the Sisterhood at Gerenhodh and to Orena later in that year.

In the year 116’ TC, the world was changed.

THE ROAD OF THE AXE KING

The ancient route taken by the Axe King in his conquests of the lands lying to the east of the Outer Sea was called the Road of the Axe King. The rule of die D’Zunalor began in Rochagam D’Zunabat, the Plain of the people of the Axe, the native land of several tribes of nomadic, warlike herdsmen. These tribes were united under Zunabat, the Axe King, in 102 TC. Taking advantage of the general disorder, Zunabat gathered the tribes into his own system, governing through local ‘Axemen’ sworn to his service, the Rochazuna.

The Road included the cities of Gombator (River City), Labat Ochor (King’s Tower), Tachob (Granary), a city in the valley of the Del which may have been called Hanar (Camp), Obnor Gahl (Whip Valley, named for the punishment of dissident troops which took place there), the Ochor D’Batum (Towers of Stone, i:e., the World Wall Mountains) and finally the city of Dochor (‘Of Towers’), now called M’Wandi. These cities, together with intermediate stations, made up the road of the Axe King, and it was said a message could be sent from Gombator to Dochor in twelve days through post riders.

There was no true city of die Axe King. He lived always as he had as a child, in the squat, hide tents of the nomad peoples of the High Plain, surrounded on three sides by the mountains of Tharsh, the Jaggers and Savus Ranges, and edged on the fourth side by the Rochagam, High River, which emptied into the lakelands of the south. Zunabat made forays into the far south – being soundly defeated at the delta of the Wal Thai, and into the far north – being as soundly victorious in the Fales.

It is thought that the people of the Fales are directly descended from the Axe King’s people, with some admixture of other peoples who invaded the Fales from islands in Wasnost, to the west. After the death of Zunabat, however, the tribes lost cohesive structure, the cities of the road became gradually autonomous, and the many of the D’Zunalor moved away to the northlands beyond Tranch. Gombator is now called Tanner.’ Tiles’ is the current name of Labat Ochor.

Sheri S. Tepper (1929 –)

Sheri Stewart Tepper was born in Colorado in 1929 and is the author of a larger number of novels in the areas of science fiction, fantasy, horror and mystery, and is particularly respected for her works of feminist science fiction. Her many acclaimed novels include
The Margarets and Gibbon’s Decline And Fall
, both shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award,
A Plague Of Angels, Sideshow
and
Beauty
, which was voted Best Fantasy Novel Of The Year by readers of Locus magazine. Her versatility is illustrated by the fact that she is one of very few writers to have titles in both the Gollancz SF and Fantasy Masterworks lists. Sheri S. Tepper lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

A Gollancz eBook

The right of Sheri S. Tepper to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the

This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House

5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

London, WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 11619 1

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real
persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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