Phoenix in Obsidian

  “Oh, ravagers of some description. Their motives are obscure.”

  “Where do they come from?”

  “They come from Moon, I think.”

  “From the sky? Where is Moon?”

  “On the other side of the world, they say. The few references I have seen do mention that it was once in the sky, but no longer.”

  “These Silver Warriors—are they human?”

  “Not according to the accounts I received.”

  “And do they offer you harm, Lord Shanosfane? Will they try to invade Rowernarc?”

  “Perhaps. I think they want the planet for themselves.”

  I looked at him feeling somewhat shocked by his lack of interest.

  “You do not care if they destroy you?”

  “Let them have the planet. What use is it to us? Our race will soon be overwhelmed by the ice that creeps a little closer each year as the sun fades. These people seem better adapted to live in the world than we are.”

  Though I could understand his argument, I had never encountered such complete disinterest before. I admired it, but I felt little true sympathy with it. It was my destiny to struggle—though for what cause I had no clear idea—and even while I hated the fact that I must do battle through eternity (or so it seemed) my instincts were still those of a warrior.

  While I tried to think of an answer, the black Lord Temporal rose. “Well, we will talk again. You may live in Rowernarc until you desire to leave.”

  And with that he left the room.

  As he left, the servant entered with the tray of rice and water. He turned and, holding the tray, followed behind his master.

  Now that I had met both the Lord Spiritual and the Lord Temporal of Rowernarc I was even more confused than when I had first arrived here. Why had Belphig not told me of the alien Silver Warriors? Was I destined to fight them or—another thought came—were the folk of Rowernarc the enemy I had been called to war against?

  5

  THE BLACK SWORD

  AND SO, UNHAPPY, torn by my longing for Ermizhad, by my great sense of loss, I settled in the Obsidian City of Rowernarc, there to brood, to pore over ancient books in strange scripts, to seek some solution to my tragic dilemma and yet feel my despair increasing with every day that passed.

  To be accurate, there were no days and nights in the Obsidian City. People slept, awakened and ate when they felt like it and their other appetites were followed in the same spirit, for all that those appetites were jaded and novelty did not exist.

  I had been given my own apartments on the level below Haradeik, Bishop Belphig’s province. Though they were not quite as baroque as the bishop’s apartments, I would have preferred the simplicity which Shanosfane’s had. I learned, however, that Shanosfane himself had ordered most decoration removed from Dhötgard when he had assumed his position on the death of his father. The apartments were more than comfortable—the most committed sybarite would have found them luxurious—but for the first weeks of my stay I was plagued with visitors.

  It was a seducer’s dream, but for me, with my love for Ermizhad unwaning, it was a nightmare.

  Woman after woman would present herself in my bedchamber, offering me more exotic delights than even Faust had known. As politely as I could—and much to their astonishment—I refused them all. Men, too, came with similar promises and, because the customs of Rowernarc were such that these advances were not considered shameful, I refused them with equal politeness.

  And then Bishop Belphig would arrive with presents—young slaves as covered in cosmetics as he was—rich foodstuffs for which I had no appetite—books of erotic verse which did not interest me—suggestions of acts which might be committed upon my person which disgusted me. Since I owed my roof and the possibility of research to Belphig, I retained my patience with him and judged that he only meant well, though I found both his tastes and his appearance sinister.

  On my visits to the various libraries situated on different levels of the Obsidian City I witnessed sights which I would not have believed existed outside the pages of Dante’s Inferno. Orgies were unceasing. I would stumble upon them wherever I went. In some of the libraries I visited I found them. And they were never orgies of plain fornication.

  Torture was common and witnessed by whoever chose to be a spectator. That the victims were willing did not make the sights any easier for me to bear. Even murder itself was not outlawed, for the murdered man or woman desired death as much as the murderer desired to kill.

  These pale people with no future, no hope, nothing to prepare for save death, spent their days in experimenting with pain quite as much as they experimented with pleasure.

  Rowernarc was a city gone mad. A dreadful neurosis had settled upon it and it seemed pitiful to me that these people, so sophisticated and talented, should waste their final years in such ultimately self-destructive pursuits.

  The grotesque galleries and halls and passages would ring to the sound of screams—high-pitched screams of laughter, ululating screams of terror—with moans, with grunts and bellowings.

  Through all this I would stride, sometimes tripping over a prone, drugged body in the gloom, sometimes having to disentangle myself from the arms of a naked girl barely out of puberty.

  Even the books I found were frustrating. Lord Shanosfane had warned me in his own way. Most of the books were examples of completely decadent prose, so convoluted as to be nearly meaningless. Not only works of fiction, but all the works of fact, were written in this manner. My brain would spin as I attempted to make sense of it all—and failed.

  At other times, when I had given up trying to interpret these decadent texts, I would pass through a gallery and see Lord Shanosfane wandering across a hall, his ascetic face frozen in abstracted thought, while all around him his subjects sported, sometimes leering and gesturing at him obscenely. Occasionally he would look up, put his head to one side, regard them with a slight frown and then walk on.

  The first few times I saw him I hailed him, but he ignored me as he would have ignored anyone else. I wondered what ideas were forming and re-forming in that strange, cool brain. I felt sure that if he would grant me another audience I would learn much more from him than I had managed to learn from the texts I studied, but since the first day I had arrived at Rowernarc he had not agreed to see me.

  My sojourn in Rowernarc was so much like a dream itself that perhaps that was the reason why my slumber was dreamless for the first fifty nights of my stay there. But on what I reckon to be the fifty-first night, those familiar visions returned.

  They had terrified me as I lay in Ermizhad’s arms. Now I almost welcomed them…

  * * *

  I stood on a hill and spoke with a faceless knight in black-and-yellow armour. A pale flag without insignia fluttered on a staff erected between us.

  Below us, in the valley, towns and cities were burning. Red fires sprouted everywhere. Black smoke cruised above the scenes of carnage from time to time revealed.

  It seemed to me that the whole human race fought in that valley—every human being who had ever drawn breath was there, save me.

  I saw great armies marching back and forth. I saw ravens and vultures feasting on battlefields. I heard the distant sounds of drums and guns and trumpets.

  “You are Count Urlik Skarsol of the Frozen Keep,” said the faceless knight.

  “I am Erekosë, adopted Prince of the Eldren,” I replied firmly.

  The faceless knight laughed. “No longer, warrior. No longer.”

  “Why am I made to suffer so, Sir Knight in Black and Yellow?”

  “You need not suffer—not if you accept your fate. After all, you cannot die. True you may seem to perish, but your incarnations are infinite.”

  “That knowledge is what causes the suffering! If I could not remember previous incarnations, then I would believe each life to be my only one.”

  “Some people would give much for such knowledge.”

  “The knowledge is only partial. I know
my fate, but I do not know how I earned it. I do not understand the structure of the universe through which I am flung, seemingly at random.”

  “It is a random universe. It has no permanent structure.”

  “At least you have told me that.”

  “I will answer any question you put to me. Why should I lie?”

  “Then that is my first question: why should you lie?”

  “You are over-cunning, Sir Champion. I should lie if I wished to deceive you.”

  “Do you lie?”

  “The answer is…”

  The Knight in Black and Yellow faded. The armies were marching around and around the hills, up and down them, in all directions across the valley. They were singing many different songs, but one song reached my ears.

  “All Empires fall,

  All ages die,

  All strife shall be in vain.

  All kings go down,

  All hope must fail,

  But Tanelorn remains—

  Our Tanelorn remains…”

  A simple soldier’s chant, but it meant something to me—something important. Had I once belonged to this place Tanelorn? Or had I sought to find it?

  I could not distinguish which of the armies was singing the song. But it was already fading away.

  “All words must die,

  Fade into night,

  But Tanelorn remains—

  Our Tanelorn remains…”

  Tanelorn.

  The sense of loss I had felt when parted from Ermizhad came to me then—and I associated it with Tanelorn.

  It seemed to me that if I could find Tanelorn, I would find the key to my destiny, find a means of ending my misery and my doom…

  Now another figure stood on the other side of the plain flag and still the armies marched below us, still the towns and cities burned.

  I looked at the figure.

  “Ermizhad!”

  Ermizhad smiled sadly. “I am not Ermizhad! Just as you have one spirit and many forms, so has Ermizhad one form but many spirits!”

  “There is only one Ermizhad!”

  “Aye—but many who resemble her.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am myself.”

  I turned away. I knew that she spoke truth and was not Ermizhad, but I could not bear to look on Ermizhad’s face; I was tired of riddles.

  Then I said to her: “Do you know of Tanelorn?”

  “Many know of Tanelorn. Many have sought her. She is an old city. She has lasted through eternity.”

  “How may I reach Tanelorn?”

  “Only you may answer that question, Champion.”

  “Where lies Tanelorn? On Urlik’s world?”

  “Tanelorn exists in many Realms, on many Planes, in many Worlds, for Tanelorn is eternal. Sometimes hidden, sometimes there for all to visit—though most do not realise the nature of the city—Tanelorn shelters many Heroes.”

  “Will I find Ermizhad if I find Tanelorn?”

  “You will find what you truly desire to find. But first you must take up the Black Sword again.”

  “Again? Have I borne a black sword before?”

  “Many times.”

  “And where shall I find the sword?”

  “You will know it. You will always know the Black Sword for to bear it is your destiny and your tragedy.”

  And then she, too, was gone.

  But the armies continued to march and the valley continued to burn and over my head the standard without insignia still flew.

  Then, where she had been, something inhuman materialised, turned into a smoky substance, formed itself in to a different shape.

  And I did recognise that shape. It was the Black Sword. A huge, black broadsword carved with runes of terrifying import.

  I backed away.

  “NO! I WILL NEVER AGAIN WIELD THE BLACK SWORD!”

  And a sardonic voice, full of evil and wisdom, seemed to issue from the blade itself.

  “THEN YE SHALL NEVER KNOW PEACE!”

  “BEGONE!”

  “I AM THINE—ONLY THINE. THOU ART THE ONLY MORTAL WHO CAN BEAR ME!”

  “I REFUSE YOU!”

  “THEN CONTINUE TO SUFFER!”

  * * *

  I awoke shouting. I was sweating. My throat and mouth were parched.

  The Black Sword. I knew the name now. I knew that it was somehow tied up with my destiny.

  But the rest—had it been merely a nightmare? Or had it offered me information in a symbolic form? I had no means of telling.

  In the darkness I flung out an arm and touched warm flesh.

  I was back with Ermizhad again!

  I took that naked body to me. I bent to kiss the lips.

  Lips raised themselves to mine. Lascivious lips that were hot and coarse. The body writhed against me. A woman began to whisper obscenities into my ear.

  I leapt back with an oath. Rage and disappointment consumed me. It was not Ermizhad. It was one of the women of Rowernarc who had slipped into my bed while I lay experiencing my dreadful dreams.

  Despair swept through me, wave upon wave. I sobbed. The woman laughed.

  And then something filled me—some emotion that seemed alien to me and yet which possessed me.

  Fiercely I flung myself on the girl.

  “Very well,” I promised, “if you will have such pleasures—then have them all!”

  And in the morning I lay in my disordered bed exhausted while the woman clambered from it and staggered away, a strange expression upon her features. I do not think pleasures were what she had experienced. I know that I had not. I felt only disgusted with myself for what I had done.

  All the while one image remained in my brain. It was to rid myself of that image, I think, that I had taken the girl as I had. Perhaps the image had driven me to do what I had done. I do not know. I did know, however, that I would do it again if it would burn the image of the Black Sword from my mind for only a few moments.

  * * *

  There were no dreams the next night, but the old fear had returned. And when the girl I had ravaged the night before came to my room simpering I almost dismissed her before I learned that she came with a message from Bishop Belphig whose slave she apparently was.

  “My master says that a change of scenery might improve your temper. Tomorrow he embarks on a great Sea Hunt and asks if you would care to join him.”

  I flung down the book I was trying to interpret. “Aye,” I said. “I’ll come. It sounds a healthier way of wasting time than puzzling over these damned books.”

  “Will you take me with you, Lord Urlik?”

  The heated expression on her face, the moist lips, the way she held herself, all made me shudder.

  But I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Why not?”

  She chuckled. “And shall I bring a tasty friend?”

  “Do what you wish.”

  But when she had gone I flung myself down to my knees on that hard, obsidian floor and I buried my head in my arms and I wept.

  “Ermizhad! Oh, Ermizhad!”

  6

  THE GREAT SALT SEA

  I JOINED BISHOP Belphig on the outer causeway the next morning. Even in the light of that perpetual dusk I could see better the face the cosmetics sought to hide. There were the jowls, the pouched eyes, the downcurved, self-indulgent mouth, the lines of depravity, all smeared about with colours and creams, serving only to make his appearance that much more hideous.

  The Lord Spiritual’s entourage was with him—painted boys and girls giggling and simpering, carrying pieces of luggage, shivering in the dull coolness of the outer air.

  The bishop put a fat arm through one of mine and led me ahead of the crowd, down towards the bay where the strange ship waited.

  I suffered this gesture and looked back to see if my weapons were being brought. They were. Slaves staggered along with my long, silver-shod spear and battle-axe. Why I had decided to bring these weapons I do not know, but the bishop plainly did not think my decision inco
ngruous though I was not at all sure he was pleased about it, either.

  For all its decadence and despair, I did not find Rowernarc itself menacing. The people offered me no harm and, once aware that I did not wish to join in their sports, tended for the most part to leave me to my own devices. They were neutral. Lord Shanosfane, too, had an air of neutrality. But I did not get this impression of Bishop Belphig. There was, indeed, something sinister about him and I was beginning to feel that he was perhaps the sole member of that peculiar community who possessed some sort of motive, however perverse; some ambition beyond the need to find new ways of whiling away the days.

  Yet for all appearances Bishop Belphig was the most dedicated of all sybarites and it was my possibly puritanical eye that saw menace in him. I reminded myself that he was the sole inhabitant of Rowernarc who had displayed any sort of deviousness.

  “Well, my dear Lord Urlik, what do you think of our craft?” Belphig gestured towards the ship with a fat, beringed finger. He was dressed in the bulbous armour I had originally seen worn by the riders on the beach, but his helm was being carried by a slave. A brocade cloak flowed from his shoulders.

  “I have never seen an odder craft,” I replied frankly.

  We were approaching the shore and I could see the craft quite clearly. She was quite close to the beach on which stood a number of figures whom I guessed were part of her crew. She was about forty feet in length and very high. As ornately decorated as anything else of Rowernarc, plated with reliefs of silver, bronze and gold, she had a kind of pyramidal superstructure on which were situated various terraces—a succession of narrow decks. At the top was a square deck from which several banners flew. The hull was raised above the level of the ocean on struts connected to a broad, flat, slightly curved sheet of highly polished material resembling something very like fibreglass and resting on the water. She had no masts but on each side were arranged wheels of broad-bladed paddles. Unlike the blades of a paddle-steamer, these were not contained within an outer wheel but were naked. But even the large paddles did not seem strong enough to push the craft through the water.

  “You must have very powerful engines,” I commented.

  “Engines?” Belphig chuckled. “She has no engines.”