Beyond the Burning Lands

FOUR

RIDING NORTH

KERMIT SAID: “SHE DROWNED, SIRE. That is all.”

He was palace surgeon, and had held this office as far back as the reign of Prince Egbert, Stephen’s father. He was tall and thin with a face like an egg, having a fuzz of white whiskers at the bottom of the oval and a thinner matching fuzz at the top. He had two younger surgeons to assist him and treated them with contempt. His pronouncements were usually brief and always final.

My brother said: “But how drowned?”

“She was in her bath, and alone. She fainted, one must suppose, and slipped beneath the water.”

“She was young, healthy. Why should she faint? Can you be certain she was not poisoned with some drug?”

“She drowned,” Kermit repeated. “If she had felt illness, a pain, she had a maid within call, in the next room. She could have been at her side in a moment.”

Peter said bitterly: “She should have been with her, not in another room.”

“That is so,” Kermit said, “but it was not permitted. It is known your Lady had strange scruples.”

He was speaking of that extreme modesty of the body which all the Christians had. The women wore long enveloping gowns. Ann had refused to have maids attend her in her dressing even.

Peter groaned, his whole body shaking. “If I had known . . . !”

Kermit said: “You asked, why should she faint? When a woman is with child she may have spells of dizziness. If she lies long in hot water it may be more likely.”

Peter stared at him, hot eyed. “Why did you not prevent her, knowing that?”

“Prevent? I advised against too much bathing. You have heard me. She did not listen.”

“You did not tell me there was danger to her.”

Kermit shrugged. “There is always danger in ignoring a surgeon’s words. But no harm would have come had she kept her maid beside her.”

Peter was silent. He looked as though he fought against something in himself: an impulse, perhaps, to strike down this creaking old man who showed more pride than pity. Kermit asked at last:

“Is there anything further I can do, sire?”

“Can you bring her back to life?” Kermit looked at him but did not answer. “Then go!”

He went stiffly, his dignity ruffled by the brusqueness of the dismissal. Peter and I were left alone. He shook his head from side to side and his face was creased with naked pain. He said:

“Luke, how did it happen?”

“I do not like the man,” I said, “but it must have been as he says.”

“If someone came in . . . and found her there defenseless. An assassin could have held her head beneath the water—so easy a thing.”

“Came in from where?” I asked. “Beneath the window there is a drop of fifty feet, and a guard patrolling at the bottom. The maid was in the next room and beyond that there is the corridor and another guard. There is no way for a man to come in. And if he got in, how could he get out again?”

“The maid might have been bribed. I could have her put to torture.”

“You could,” I said. “But the maid was Gerda, who for years served your mother and tended you as a boy.”

And who came to me, I could have added, when that mother lay under sentence of death, begging me to visit her so that she in turn could plead with me to intercede for her son.

Peter banged a fist against his head. “I think I am going mad. . . . To talk of torture—what would she think of it? But I am tormented with miseries and hates. I almost hate her, whom I loved and love. That she should have been so careless of herself: she had no right!”

I had a feeling he would have liked me to go to him, to embrace him. I could not do it. The news had shocked me as much as it had him, but there were differences in our minds. There were things I could not help thinking of, however hard I tried to put them away.

“I made a jest of it. They were my last words to her.” He squeezed his eyes shut and tears ran from their corners. “If I could but call them back!”

• • •

She was buried with Christian rites. There were murmurings about this, though not in Peter’s presence. At her funeral there was no Seer, no Acolytes, no solemn procession to the Seance Hall with the casket in a carriage drawn by black horses, purple garlanded, and everyone, nobility and commoners, dwarfs and polymufs, following on foot to do her reverence. Instead her coffin was taken on a simple cart, drawn by one old piebald horse, to the North Gate, and so out to the patch of ground where the Christians buried their dead. The Christians went with her, and Peter and I, but he would have no others. The ground was hard with frost: they had been forced to use low braziers to thaw it, inch by inch, so that they could dig. We stood by the grave and the priest spoke the ceremonial. A sharp wind blew along the foot of the walls, lifting a fine powder of snow, and they listened with chattering teeth. Few of them, since they were all so poor, had cloaks that would keep out the cold. Standing there, chill myself in my Captain’s topcoat, I heard but did not heed. I was full of thoughts which turned round and round in my head, dizzy and frightening.

• • •

This was the second time within a few years that the Prince’s Lady had died in winter, and although this time there was no ugliness of murder the gloom that settled on the palace and city was scarcely less deep. Unlike my father my brother, at the outset, looked for my company. He would spend hours talking to me of Ann, repeating over and over small things, anecdotes from the life they had shared. But whereas it had hurt me that my father withdrew into a private sorrow, strangely I did not welcome this talk, and found myself slow and awkward in response.

Sometimes the Christian priest was with us. He was a weak-looking man, small in stature and with a stoop that at times gave him a look of one of those polymufs who carry a second back upon the first. As though in copy of the Seers his head was shaved, apart from a thin circle of hair round the base of his skull, and he wore black like the Seers also but in a garment more resembling a woman’s.

His voice, though, was strong if his body was weak. He talked in deep tones and was never lost for words. He was always on about this god of theirs, and there were some tales that even I found worth listening to. It seems that when soldiers were sent to arrest him, one of his men very rightly drew his sword and sliced an ear off one of the guards. But the man-god rebuked his follower, saying: “All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” What I could not understand was what was wrong with a sword death. Was it not a better end than dying starving in a ditch, as many of these Christians looked like doing? I thought of asking the priest that, but then thought it would only bring on another flood of words and did not.

He consoled Peter, as Ezzard had done my father, by declaring that he and Ann would meet in a better world than this. Ezzard had been able to further the deception with the machine through which my mother’s living voice had been captured on a moving tape, to be heard again in the darkness of the Seance Hall. The priest had no such aid, but he did well enough with words.

And I, for my part, sickened of them, and of the black atmosphere which I could do nothing to lift and which roused troubling feelings in me: even a sense, although I knew it was absurd, of guilt. I withdrew more and more from my brother’s presence and he, listening to the priest, seemed not to mind. The winter wore on, with blizzards and biting cold that froze the snow in the streets into ridges which the polymufs could not shift. It seemed that it would last forever, continuing day after bitter day.

Then in a night the weather changed. I awoke to rain drumming against my window. It fell all morning, carried on a wind from the west that seemed almost warm after the northeasterlies we had endured, and long after it had stopped water dripped from the eaves as the last of the icicles melted.

Within days the trees were budding. The small green spears had a look of impatience to them, of bursting out from restraint. I felt the same urge to be free of things that bound me. I found Peter alone, without the priest, and said:

“We must talk about the summer’s campaign.”

He shook his head. “There will be none.”

“Why?”

“She hated war, as you know.”

“She was a Christian. You are not.”

“But I will not lead out the army in the year in which she died. Next year, perhaps.”

I saw he would not budge. But it was unendurable to contemplate a summer penned in the city with this grieving man. I had hoped the fighting would work a change in both of us. If it was not to be I must find some other way. I said:

“The embassy still goes north, across the Burning Lands?”

He said indifferently: “I suppose so.”

“I asked you once before for permission to go with it. I make the same request now.”

“You are anxious to leave me, Luke.”

“I must do something!”

He did not respond immediately. I thought he was going to refuse and prepared to argue for it. But he said:

“If you are so eager for it, then go.”

“May Edmund go with me?”

I did not need to add, if he wishes. I knew what his feelings would be. My brother turned away to the window. It was raining once more, a gray rain thick with ash from the Burning Lands. He said:

“Take whom you like. See Greene about it.”

• • •

Dwarftown lay across the river, toward Eastgate. None of the houses there were tall but they were solidly built and brightly painted, and decorated with much gleaming brass. Nearly all had window boxes and when I arrived, on a Sunday morning, I found Rudi attending to his. He was putting out hyacinths which he had grown indoors during the winter. They were in full bloom—blue and pink and white.

He greeted me and took me indoors. The rooms were low of ceiling and I had to watch for my head. There were a number of cabinets and sideboards bedecked with china and brass ornaments, many warm-colored cushions lying about, and the walls themselves were painted in differing hues. In the room to which I was taken two of red faced two of yellow, and the ceiling beams were a deep blue.

Rudi showed me to a chair which I guessed was kept for human visitors: it stood higher from the ground than the rest and was generally bigger. Very much bigger—I felt lost in it. I told him I had come to see his son, Hans, and he sent a polymuf maid to call him. Although not high the houses were extensive and I knew Rudi’s rambled back over a considerable area. It was several minutes before the son came.

Like Rudi he was tall for a dwarf. Had he been born of human parents a tolerant Seer might have passed him at the Showing. He bowed gravely to me and stood watching in silence from just inside the door. I am dark of complexion and hair but he was far more so, a swarthy lad with a curly beard springing. His face was broad but the eyes did not have the relaxed, even sleepy look one expected of his kind; they were alert and watchful.

I said: “Hans, your father has told me that you would like to go on campaign with the army. As a servant, of course, with the baggage train.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“I promised I would arrange this.” The eyes watched me, showing nothing. “But there will be no campaign this summer because my brother mourns his Lady.”

The eyes shivered briefly with disappointment; then he was impassive. He said:

“I understand, Captain.”

His voice was low and harsh but sure. I liked it, and the look of him altogether. It was some time since I had seen him bringing his father’s dinner to the forge, the pot wrapped round with towels to keep in the heat. I had paid him no more attention than any other dwarf boy; but I remembered him now and felt he had improved greatly. I had come here with my mind undecided, chiefly inclined to give him this word and go. But I said:

“There will be no campaign. But I myself will ride north, with the troop that is to go across the Burning Lands to the city from which the peddler came. I am not in command but as a Captain I may take a groom with me. I make no promises—we may not get through the pass—but if you wish I will take you.”

He did not reply immediately and I thought: I have been mistaken, the notion scares him. Then he quickly crossed the room and dropped on one knee before me. Eyes staring up, he said:

“I thank you for this honor, Captain. I promise I will serve you faithfully in every way, for as long as I live and you have need of me.”

It was the ritual speech required from polymufs when they came into adult servitude but said, unlike theirs, with passion and also pride. I took his hand and raised him. Over his shoulder I said to Rudi:

“Does this content you?”

He smiled. “It contents me, Captain.”

I said: “He is to be my groom and we go into unknown lands with many hazards. It would be well for him to take a sword.”

Hans stared at me, his chin thrust forward, a small incredulous smile on his lips. Rudi said:

“I will make it for him.”

• • •

There had been no banquets since Ann’s death but the Captains were called to the palace the night before the embassy was to leave. There was meat in plenty and much ale was drunk but the jests were few and there would plainly be no singing. When my brother stood up, they watched in silence.

He gave a toast to the expedition’s success. Then he said, dry-voiced:

“I have another thing to say. I will not speak of my loss but you know that it was double. The last time you were assembled here you drank to my son, the Prince to be. There are Spirits, it is said, that watch for pride in men, to punish it, and maybe they sought me out.”

He stood wordless for so long that the Captains grew restless. I wondered if he had forgotten what he meant to say and if I should pluck his sleeve to remind him to sit down. But he spoke at last.

“I will take no other wife and therefore will have no son. So my brother is my heir. It is I this time who name him Prince in Waiting, not the Spirits. I bid you drink to that.”

• • •

When we were alone I said: “There was no need of it.”

“Need enough. It is wise to say these things plainly.”

“And too early to talk of having no second wife. Your mind is still unsettled by grief.”

“I think not. Luke, your time may come sooner than you guess.”

I looked at him. He was thinner but otherwise well enough. And I could not believe he would seek to take his life: the time when it might have happened was surely past. He said:

“If I should become a Christian I must give up the sword, and no Prince can rule without it.”

“You would not do that!”

“I do not know.” He shook his head. “Maybe it would please her spirit.”

• • •

Martin came to me in the palace that night. To bid good-by, I thought, but there was more to it: he brought a message from Ezzard. I listened and said:

“The answer is the same as before. I am determined to go.”

He said earnestly: “It is different now that you have been named Prince in Waiting again. And there are rumors. . . .”

“I can guess what they are. So people listen to the gossip of Christians now? But maybe the Christians boast too soon. Sorrow mends, and his mind will mend with it.”

“Ezzard knows more of these things. And you know what rests on your success.”

I had assumed he had been told enough to understand the true significance of the Seers and Sanctuary, but we had never discussed it. We had older bonds and I preferred them to this. I said:

“There are limits to Ezzard’s wisdom. Has he asked himself what the Captains would think of someone who proposed himself for such a thing, and then withdrew? I think they would sooner have a swordless Prince than a coward.”

“It need not seem like that. Illness could prevent your going.”

“And what name will Kermit give the illness: heartsickness?”

“It would be a true fever. Kermit and his assistants have been deceived before.”

That was so; it had been an appearance of illness, contrived by Ezzard in one of the four named as Young Captains, that had given me my chance in the Contest. From which so much had come. I said:

“I will have no more to do with Ezzard’s tricks than is necessary. And I will go with the others tomorrow. Tell Ezzard not to try to stop me.”

Martin shook his head. “He will not do that.” He paused. “I envy you and Edmund.”

I put my hand on his black-clothed arm and squeezed it. “I wish we could have you with us. But it would look strange, an Acolyte riding with a troop of horse. And Ezzard has need of you here, I imagine.”

“You are not the only one who tires of Ezzard’s needs.”

He had always been frail of body compared with me. He had grown taller and matched me in height but seemed to have put on scarcely any weight. His chest was narrow, his brown eyes very big in a face peaked and white and given to frowning. It was to be expected from sitting indoors all day, hunched over books. I said:

“You could come with us. If you put off that black dress and leave the Seers.”

“How is it possible? I am bound by vows.”

“From which Ezzard can dispense you.”

“But would not.”

“If I demand it, he must. I share the secrets of the craft, remember. He will release you to me.”

For a moment he looked half hopeful, then shook his head.

“It is not possible, Luke.”

I shrugged. “It is true there is little time before tomorrow. And tongues might wag. But we will talk of it again when I return.”

He said, speaking more to himself than to me: “It was knowledge I sought. Knowledge which is clean and pure, far above the cheating and deceiving in which most men spend their lives.”

“And do you not find it,” I asked, “this knowledge which you prize?”

“In part,” he said. “I find others things, too. Things I do not desire but must accept. There is still cheating and deceiving.”

I nodded. “And I am not surprised that you tire of it. I would not care to spend so much time playing tricks in the dark on sweating commoners. But you cannot be kept to it.”

“I am bound.”

The frown was more a look of pain. I pressed his arm again.

“Bonds can be loosened. When I come back.”

• • •

We rode north in good weather with fitful sunshine breaking through the clouds. We were twenty-three in number: Greene with his groom, a Sergeant called Bristow, sixteen troopers, Edmund, Hans and myself. And the peddler. He had exchanged his pack horse for one of my brother’s chargers. He called this a favor, praising the mount he had left behind, but I guessed he reckoned to do well out of the trade. I had looked at his old horse and not thought much of it; and he had already admitted that the land of the Wilsh could not match ours in beasts.

The thaw had continued. Snow still lay in a few sheltered patches but for the most part the grass was fast growing and hawthorn bushes beginning to be green. In places shepherds had brought out their flocks. A boy near the limit of Winchester territory left his sheep on the hillside and raced down to stand on a piece of broken stone wall and watch our passing. He stared after us for a long time; until the curve of the hill came between us. I guessed he would go back to his beasts with a heart heavy with longing, and my own felt lighter for the assurance that we were on our way—that strange and wonderful things lay ahead, and gloom and sorrow and misery fell farther behind with every step our horses trod.

It was some fifty miles from Winchester to the edge of the Burning Lands as a bird flies. But our way, of course, was less direct and Greene was in no hurry. He was a tall man, alert in bearing, given to noisy mirth in drink but with a cool mind in action. He put wax on his mustache and had a trick of rolling the ends into small tight spears. As he said, we should need their best from our horses later so there was no sense in flogging them at the start. And they had been in the city stables all winter and needed to get used to the fields.

We spent the first night in Andover lands, at a village where they looked at us with fear and suspicion until Greene produced silver for our lodging. After that they swarmed about us and poured ale. We took a pot each for politeness’ sake but though they pressed us would have no more. We were on service and under discipline, as Greene told them. Though even the heavy ale-drinkers among the men found this small hardship: the ale was thin, ill-tasting stuff. The food was not much better and the straw thick with fleas. We woke before first light, the men scratching and cursing.

From there we rode across the hills and came down in the afternoon to Marlborough, which lies as Salisbury does in a valley, but a deeper one. The town stood under Oxford sovereignty but was so far distant—more than thirty miles of hilly country—that it could almost be said to be independent. They acknowledged Oxford’s Prince but their own Captain General lived in princely style and they paid only a token tax.

They struck me as dour, unfriendly people. The commoners watched our passage through their streets in silence, whereas in Winchester the sight of any troop of horse would have raised a cheer. The soldiers were as sullen and Stokes, the Captain General, was a glowering, taciturn man. He listened with evident disapproval to Greene’s account of our mission. Even if the thing were possible, which he doubted, he saw no sense in it.

That night when they feasted us they unbent somewhat, but not much. Their eyes watched us and each other. I thought I understood them better then, because though the Great Hall was hung with lamps they were scarcely wanted: so bright was the glow that came in at the windows. The hills rose above the town and above the hills the sky was red, a heavy crimson from which now and then spouted gouts of orange flame. Seeing this I realized that darkness, which they never truly knew, could be a comforting and friendly thing. They lived their lives under this ominous light and it was small wonder they were soured by it. And there were ugly sounds as well—distant foreboding rumblings as the earth growled in pain.

• • •

North of Marlborough there were no roads and the going was hard. We were climbing, too, at times so steeply that we had to dismount and lead our horses. We reached a crest at last and saw what lay before us.

The volcanoes spanned the horizon in a jagged line from the northeast to the southwest. Some burned and some lay quiet. Before and between them was a landscape of desolation and horror, where rivers of smoking liquid rock crawled through a wilderness of black and gray in which was no living thing. Merely looking at it was enough to cast the spirit down.

The peddler reined his horse between Greene’s and mine. He pointed west of north.

“Those peaks are dead and have been for years. The pass lies between them.”

“How far?” Greene asked.

“Two miles, say, to the place where the pass begins.”

“And the pass itself—another three?”

“About that.”

“With a mile in which the ground is hot.”

The peddler shook his head. “It is hot all the way. Or warm at least. But for a mile it smokes and you cannot put your hand to it.”

Greene patted the water skin on his saddle bow.

“We must hope these things work. It will do us little good to get through with crippled horses. But delay serves no purpose.” He rose, turning in the saddle. “You have been sniveling for warmth all winter. Forward now, and get your bellies full!”

We kept well clear of the smoking rivers. The shoes of our horses struck sparks from hard black rock. They had been heavily shod before we left the city but would not want much traveling on a surface like this to have fresh need of a farrier. In places there were pools of water and these too steamed. One of them, away to our right, spouted high with a noise like a thousand kettles screaming together. Although up to now there had been talking and joking among the men, they rode here in silence.

The pass, rising between two black cones, looked an easy one, though as naked and dark and arid as everything else. We stopped and fitted the leather boots over the legs of the horses. This had been practiced and they endured it patiently. The boots had been cunningly made by the dwarfs, with grease inside to ease their friction, but they must hamper the animals. Small pipes led from the water-skins to the top of each boot, from where containing rings of perforated metal would allow the water to trickle down. All this had been carefully designed, but of course no one had used it yet to ride over smoldering earth.

We led the horses first, this being our best way of judging the heat. The surface was at times hard rock, at others loose and powdery. Reaching down one could feel the warmth. The dust was like sand but large-granuled and black.

Gradually we began to feel it with our feet as well; no more than a glow under the sole at first but the glow increased and became discomfort. I put my fingers to the heel of my boot and quickly drew them back. Greene said:

“I think this is where we make our dash. Mount and release the tap on the waterskin. Stay in single file and keep a distance to avoid fouling the man in front. Do not fall too far behind him, either! Delay adds delay, and Sergeant Bristow brings up the rear. He will not be pleased if he is kept waiting.”

Greene led, followed by his groom and the peddler. Edmund and I came next; then the men and last the Sergeant. Greene signaled an order to trot, then canter, finally gallop. Some of the horses whinnied—from nervousness, I hoped, rather than discomfort. My own, a bay called Garance, was quiet except for the snorting of her breath and the dull thudding of her hooves.

The ground was loose and became looser. It smoked only in patches but the patches were more and more frequent. Drops of water, flung from the horses’ legs, steamed as they touched the black sand. Above on either side loomed the harsh black peaks from which this stone vomit had poured—and might again, since volcanoes could wake suddenly after long years of sleeping.

I felt Garance stumble and recover. If a horse were to fall there would be a turmoil which might be disastrous for all behind, since the track here was too narrow for one to pass another. She had lost ground and I spurred her to make it up. Not that she required much spurring; I guessed she was feeling the heat by now.

It was a long mile. The pass was unvarying and seemed endless. The tiny trickles of water would surely do little against this vast oven we must gallop over. I tried to shut my mind to such thoughts, concentrating on my own mount and that one in front. I got too near and sand, thrown up by the horse’s legs, weirdly cased in leather, stung my face.

Then from ahead Greene’s voice called “Halt!” I pulled Garance in near him; the pass was wider and we could assemble. The ground no longer smoked; at least not here though higher up one saw white plumes lifting. Greene dismounted, knelt and pressed a hand into the dust. Straightening himself he said to the peddler:

“It does not get hot again, lower down?” The peddler shook his head. Greene spoke to us all: “Then get these things off before we cripple the beasts. We are through.”

Only then did I look ahead and see that the pass ran downhill to a desert plain like the one we had left behind. But beyond the plain there was a forest, the trees stark yet but with branches budding green.