Ships from the West

Epilogue

The dreaming heights of the Jafrar Mountains were wrapped in everlasting snow, but down on their knees a summer evening was blue with the approaching dusk, and the first stars had begun to burn bright and clear in an empty sky.

About the campfire two old men sat warming their hands while behind them their mounts nosed at the fresh grass, one a common mule, the other a fine-limbed grey gelding such as the Merduks had bred upon the eastern steppes for genera shy;tions. The two men said nothing, but watched the approach of a third rider as he made his way up into the empty hills towards them. He was clad in a black cloak, and a circlet of silver was set on his head. He carried a sword of great lineage, and yet his face was ridged and scarred as by the claws of some beast. He halted at the limit of the firelight and dis shy;mounted, and as he walked towards them they saw that he was lame in one leg.

‘I saw your fire, and thought I might join you,' he said and, wrapping his cloak about himself, he sat close to the embers of the wind-flapping flames.

'You are weary,' one of the others told him, a kind-eyed man with a monk's tonsure and a grey beard.

‘I have come a long way.'

'Then you shall stay with us and have peace,' the second said, and he was a white-haired old man with the face of a Merduk.

'I would like that.'

The three sat companionably enough about the fire as the night swooped in around them and the mountains became vast black shadows against the stars. Finally the scarred man stirred, rubbing his leg.

‘I almost lost my way, back down there. I almost took the wrong path.'

'But you did not,' the tonsured one said, smiling, and there was a great compassion in his eyes. 'And now perhaps, all will be well at last. And you may rest.'

The scarred man sighed and nodded. But it seemed that some last thing troubled him. 'Who are you, lord?' he asked in a low voice.

'Men called me Ramusio, when I dwelled among them. And my friend here was named Shahr Baraz. If you wish, you shall stay with us.'

‘I would like that,' the man said, and he seemed to slump, as though a last burden had been taken from him.

'And what may we call you?' Shahr Baraz asked gently.

The man raised his head, and it seemed a much younger face now looked out at them, and the scars thereon had disappeared.

'My name is Corfe. I was once a king,' he said.

His two companions nodded as though it were something they already knew, and then the trio sat quiet in the night staring into the firelight whilst above them the great vault of the night sky glittered and under their feet the dark heart of the earth turned on in its endless gyre amid the stars.