Paul Kearney - The Mark of Ran

Rol eyed his companion with some wonder. “You seem tolerably well-informed for a pirate.”

Gallico grinned. “I like to read.”

They walked on in silence after that, their pace steady but slow. Gallico told them to breathe with their mouths closed to keep their tongues from drying out and when they drank he made sure it was a few gulps at a time, no more.

The land fell and then rose again, a long, hard slog in the rippling heat. At the height of the slope Rol looked down on the blinding glare of the Gorthor Flats and thought he saw black figures moving in the heat-shimmer. He pointed them out to Gallico, who nodded.

“Ur-men. They prowl the Flats in packs.”

The name brought forth a prickle of memory in Rol’s mind and no more. “What are they?”

“Creatures of the wastes, manlike in some respects, but not remotely human. Experiments gone awry, some contend. They are dangerous to one alone, or a small party unarmed, but so long as we keep a good watch out we should hold them at bay.”

The Flats began like a white sea lapping round the shores of the rockier hills. They glittered with salt in wide pans, and reflected the heat and light of the sun with pitiless ferocity.

“Rub the hollows of your eyes with dirt. It’ll help with the light,” Gallico told them, and they used some of their precious water to create a muddy paste which all save the halftroll smeared over their faces.

“There are ruins a few leagues out on the Flats,” he went on. “We will march to them and then lie up until dark. Only the Ur-men walk far upon the Flats in daylight; any man who tries will go blind in a few days.”

“Is there no way to go round them?” Creed asked.

“We could, but it would take us up into the foothills, fifty or sixty leagues out of our way. I’m hoping we can reach the firth in two marches. The land is kinder after that; we’ll have left the Goliad behind us, and there are woods and rivers; we may even be able to take down some game.”

The heat slammed into them like a wave as they ventured down onto the Flats. They screwed up their eyes against the harsh light and the mud in their faces cracked and flaked despite the sweat that was soaking into it. When Rol’s palm brushed against the lock of his pistol it burned like the handle of a skillet left over the flame.

The earth was fractured in a million angular cracks, as if the Flats were a shattered, burnt-out mirror the ages had covered in dust. “This was a lake, once,” Rol said, “or a lake-bed rather.”

“If it was, it was in a time before men were here to see it,” Gallico said. He was moving somewhat stiffly, and Rol could see the shine of new blood oozing out of his dressings. He wondered at the endurance of the halftroll.

“Are there many like you walking about in the world?” he asked.

“Not many. Small communities here and there who share similar deformities. I am not part of a different species-I am a man, but one whose frame has been skewed by the potency of the Blood. My parents were not like me, though they would not have been considered human either.” He glanced at Rol and seeing his eyes said: “I come from a village in the Myconians, on the Perilar side.”

“Hence your knowledge of the Goliad’s history.”

“It is said that one day the Goliad will be a garden again, and when that happens the Creator will come back to the forsaken earth and give every man a life beyond death. A pretty story, but stories are cheap. I like to find out the truth of things. I have spent days in the Turmian Library in Myconn itself, back in the days when my kind was welcome there. But they say that all the learning in the world is as nothing compared to the archives of Kull, the isle of the Mage-King.”

“Who is the Mage-King?”

“You might as well ask the Name of God, or how He made the world. For myself, I think he is a Were, the last of the Ancients. The last angel on earth, you might say.”

“Is he evil?”

“I don’t know, Rol-no one knows what it is he wants from the world. His agents come and go unseen amongst us. He has no armies, he fights no wars, and yet nations tremble at the mention of his name. I have heard an old man in the Myconians insist that he is merely waiting for some change to come upon the world, after which he will leave his island and walk amongst men again, but the old man was half crazed and half drunk. As I said, stories are cheap.”

“Why did you leave your village in the Myconians?”

“The Bionari burned it in one of their habitual forays into Perilar, slew everyone in it. They paid a dear price for their temerity, though; we Folk of the Blood know how to go down fighting, if nothing else. I think the Perilari were glad to see the back of us. As our numbers grow fewer, so men grow more afraid of us.” Gallico paused and looked over his shoulder at the remainder of the party. The low hum of aimless talk had ceased, and the Cormorants were eavesdropping without shame.

“The Bionari take a lot upon themselves,” Rol said darkly, oblivious.

“They have always been a quarrelsome lot, it’s true. But they’re in a fix of their own making now.”

“How so?”

“This civil war they’ve started. Arbion and Phidon have declared for the rebel queen, and huge battles are being waged across the Vale of Myconn itself. Last I heard, Bar Asfal had fled the capital to raise more troops in the north.”

Rol walked along mutely, his mind jarred into startled silence.

“She has a chamberlain who is also one of her generals, and he speaks Bionese with the accent of Gascar. He calls himself Canker, and they say he is an assassin. At any rate, several of Bar Asfal’s most talented commanders have been killed in odd circumstances.”

“What do you know of this rebel queen?”

“Rowen Bar Hethrun she is called, a great beauty, but cold as frost, and a wicked hand with a blade. She’s won over many of the nobles through a combination of fear and lust-rumor has it half of Bionar’s aristocracy has sampled her charms at one time or another in the past five years. It’s how she built up her support to begin with: in the bedchamber. But the strangest thing is that she has the Blood in her, or so it is rumored. Imagine-Bionar ruled by a monarch with Weren blood. God knows, it might be an improvement.”

“It might. It might not.” Rol felt sick at heart.

“There’s something ahead,” Creed said, the dust clicking in his throat. “Something out on the Flats.”

Gallico shaded his eyes and nodded. “The ruins, and not before time.”

Rearing up out of the haze were the crumbling remains of a large building. As they drew closer they could see that it had once been a high tower of some sort. Closer still, and Rol realized with a shock that it was familiar-the shape, or what remained of it, was a direct duplicate of Psellos’s Tower in Ascari. Here it had been built upon a plain, not set into the flank of a hill, and he could see the huge unmortared joints of the perfectly sculpted stone at its base. They seemed inviolate, unworn, but as the eye traveled upward their massive courses were disrupted and broken so that the tower looked as if it had been broken off halfway up by the hand of a giant, and all about it the tumbled blocks lay scattered and piled in mounds half buried in blowing dust and sand.

“This was a Weren place,” he said.

“Yes,” Gallico agreed. “ Turrin Ra, I have heard it named, which is merely an old way of saying the High Tower.”

They drew closer step by weary step, the men eyeing the ruins with a mixture of curiosity and distrust. The sweat had dried into white salted rings upon their clothing, and the light boots and shoes they wore were already flapping upon their feet; they had been made for the timber of a ship’s deck, not the raw grind of a trek across a desert.