Читать книгу The Emperor of the Ancient Word and Other Fantastic Stories - Darrell Schweitzer - Страница 6

AT THE TOP OF THE BLACK STAIRS

It was a stirring of dust that roused King Vardabates back from the sleep of death. He was himself dust then, oblivious in the Land Beneath the World, but a voice seemed to blow upon the dust, like breath, and the voiced called out his name and bade him come forth, and he had neither strength nor will to resist. And so, as if a faint breeze had arisen on a hot, still summer’s day (although in the Land Below the World there are never any breezes), the dust arose into the air, less substantial than smoke, but assuming a shape of a sort.

And King Vardabates awoke from a featureless dream, into the dream of memory. He did not recall, at first, that he had ever worn a crown or commanded armies, or the splendor of his processions or the magnificence of his palace, which still stands in Bersion, beyond the Merimdean Sea.

No, his first memory was of a sunrise, glimpsed through the window when he was an infant, and then there was the feel of hot stones beneath his bare feet, when he ventured out into a courtyard in the hot sun, and was scolded by his nurse for being dirty.

Remembering that, he took a step forward, and felt nothing, and drifted life a cloud of dust on a wind that was impossible in the Land Below the World.

Still the voice called out to him, not in any language the king had spoken in life, but in the universal speech of the dead, “Arise, Vardabates, arise. I, Urcilak, summon thee.”

Now his passage over the flat, grey plains left a kind of track, not in the dust itself, but in the memories of ghosts, aroused by motion, the slow regathering of his mind, like a cloud that has been dispersed, coming together again. These others reached up, to touch him, insubstantial as he might be, that they might cling to something, and whisper their memories, that those memories might not be utterly forgotten: a song, a storm at sea, a night of love or rage, the terror of battle, the relief and joy of homecoming.

Now the eyes of Vardabates opened, and he gazed across the featureless, horizonless landscape, and up at the grey sky and the few pale stars, and he remembered another sky, far darker, where this was the color of thick smoke, and other stars, vivid and brilliant where these few were like failing embers.

By the time he reached the base of that vast, black tower, which reaches up out of the Land Beneath the World, into the World itself, he was able to touch the cold stone and feel it, to place his foot upon the first of the black stone steps within and rise to the second. Now all around him whispered a wind, descending the staircase from far above, the voices of the newly dead, pouring down out of the World, shouting out the last of their sorrows, their rage, the shock of departure from life, or even their grateful acceptance of same. In his ears, King Vardabates heard them, inasmuch as he had ears, and he heard among the babble of voices some speech he recognized, from his own country, which he had heard before.

And the voice called him again, saying, “Vardabates, King, come forth,” and he had the strength to push against the current of the wind within the tower, to rise up, up, and around, as the stairway spiraled. The name Urcilak remained with him, like a thorn in his flesh, tearing, but he could not place it, could not find its meaning or significance. The pain of it kept him going.

It was only as he reached the top of the black stairs, with the wind of descending spirits swirling around his ankles, that he knew who he was, that he remembered his crown, and there came to him another name, Andrathemne, whom he had loved.

Now he stood on the threshold before a low, vaulted room at the top of the tower, where two shrouded figures sat at table, playing a game on a board. He saw that both figures were hard and skeletal, that there was only dread in their features, and he knew that these two were Time and Death. Yet, because they were engrossed in their game, and had set aside the accoutrements of their offices—a scythe leaned against the wall, and an hourglass and a sack of seed rested on a window ledge—he did not know which figure was which.

Because he had been, because he was a king who had led armies, he boldly approached to observe their game.

On the board were figures carven of bone, like unto ships or castles or cities, or even in the shapes of individual men and women. One of the players held what might have been a king in his thin hand, in the midst of a long pause.

Now King Vardabates thought to simply slip past these two, occupied as they were, and escape out the door behind them as a truant child might; but he knew he was a king now, and kings have honor and should not be sneaks.

When he spoke up, groping for words in the tongue of living men, he felt as a child again, inarticulately explaining himself before two powerful masters who were not inclined to hear.

“I am...I have to get by. I’m summoned.... Someone knows my name.”

Now one of the figures turned toward him, its face pale and pitted, yet gleaming like a newly-risen moon. It leaned down and whispered into his ear.

“We know. Go, and take our message into the world of living men.” And the other whispered the message at some length, and now King Vardabates was much closer to being actually alive, for he was afraid.

Then he hurried from the room, out the door, and climbed up that long, dark slope down which the ghosts of the dead come streaming, before they reach the black tower. Indeed, now, it was as if he struggled against a torrent. Now the voices of the newly-dead shouted all around him, and their hands clutched at him, trying to drag him with him, outraged that he should be able to defy the order of things, and return where they could not.

As his feet found purchase in that hillside and he leaned into the wind, it seemed that he came together, bone unto his bone, and the dry earth became his flesh. Yet there was no breath in him, and he was not alive; yet animate, more substantial now, he made his way up, and clutched with his hands the edge of that stone wall which guards the borderlands of the afterworld.

At once an alarm was sounded, and borderers came racing to confront him, living men, weary priest-soldiers in tarnished armor, whose task it was to drive back such invaders as himself, that the dreams of men might be untroubled.

Yet when he had climbed over the wall, and spoken the message he had been given (by Time or Death, one or the other, he knew not which) the borderers fell in behind him and became his honor guard. Thus King Vardabates returned to the world of men, by moonlight, beneath a dark sky and brilliant stars. In the moonlight he was barely visible, like a gleam off polished metal glimpsed through the corner of the eye. His footsteps were silent, yet he stirred the dust of the roads along which he marched. There were still ghosts around him, like swirling sand stirred up by the tread of an army. In the night, in the moonlight, the ghosts spoke with voices like the distant tinkle and clanging of metal, before the wind which drove them toward the wall, the dark slope, and the open door of the black tower swept them away and on their way.

And the ghosts cried out to him, “Remember...remember me....”

From this apparition, as it passed, prophets prophesied doom or the return of glorious things, depending on their nature and wont; and the king remembered, not the names of the many ghosts, but some things, the name Andrathemne, whom he had loved, and Urcilak, whom he did not.

He felt the road beneath him now, and the night air, and when the procession reached the river Arrax, he heard the waters laughing. He heard too, the shouts and songs of the boatmen on the river, and he felt the dreams of men drifting there, like mist among the ghosts.

A ferryman, terrified, carried them all to the other side in a barge. They passed through villages and towns. People saw them and cried out, or turned away, or were troubled in their dreams if they were asleep. When the sun rose, and throughout the day, the shape of the king was no more than a wisp of dust hung in the air by a trick of the wind, but still it was there, like something glimpsed dimly out of the corner of the eye; and the borderers could not quite remember why they had deserted their posts or where they were bound, and they milled about in confusion. Then evening came, and the moon rose, and King Vardabates was among them, a mighty figure in gleaming armor and splendid raiment, grown stronger from the touch of the earth and the mist from the river and the passing dreams of living men (which he had troubled). Now the shore of the Merimdean Sea was before them, and the risen moon gleamed upon the waters, making a road of light. King Vardabates and his entourage (including many ghosts, and witches and wizards, who had joined him as their souls roamed abroad, like leaves drawn along by a strong current of wind) crossed the sea in a mighty war galley, ablaze with lights, and when they had come to Bersion, and to the immense palace of the great kings of Bersion (many towered it was, and gleaming, carven, so men said, all out of a single piece of white marble, around which the whole world was formed even as silt gathered around a boulder in a stream). Now the gate of that palace opened up, and the galley sailed into a harbor within. Above, higher and higher until they blended with the stars, the battlements and towers of Bersion and lighted windows gleamed in the night, until even King Vardabates and his entourage and the thousands of richly-robed and plumed courtiers who had come to greet him seemed as mites of some kind, insects crawling on the floor of a vast cavern.

Dragons, curled and resting in the battlements, gazed down on the scene with lazy indifference, though it was a splendid sight.

One last time the voice touched the king’s ear, saying, “Vardabates, I have summoned thee.”

The king answered, “I have come.”

Then he and the borderers and others of his entourage, and the thousand courtiers who had come to greet him, accompanied by drummers drumming and trumpeters blaring away, strode into the palace which has once been his. All of them flowed like a river, like a tide, the storm-wind which is the breath of Fate (or Time, or of the gods), and memories poured back into the king’s mind, and he knew all his past glories, all his conquests and triumphs, all the treasures he had amassed; and it seemed, as he ascended to his golden throne, and put on again his gorgeous robe of state, and sat upon his throne with scepter in one hand and the globe of kingship (which represents the world of men) in the other, that the golden age had again returned, that the mightiest king of all had returned to his glory, that Death itself had been defeated, and the trumpeters might blast the news of this to the stars, into the very ears of the gods.

The dragons, disturbed in their rest among the rooftops, fluttered off into the night.

* * * * * * *

But it was not to be. Vardabates, though he had been a harsh man when living, though he has spilled whole seas of blood in the course of his conquests and the amassing of his treasure, though he had been an awesome and terrible figure to his enemies, as dreadful as the lightning, did have a certain sense of honor, of duty, of the fulfillment of promises.

Therefore he delivered the message which had been given to him to deliver.

He opened his mouth, and there poured out something like impossibly ethereal black dust, which no man could touch or smell or wipe off the surface of a glass, but which dimmed the blazing lights and muted the trumpets.

He spoke in the language of the dead, addressing first his queen, who was not named Ardathemne and whom he did not love; for Queen Buran was cold-hearted women who loved only power and schemed against all. It was she who had conspired with Urcilak, the sorcerer, to poison the king by means of a tiny, silver serpent that wriggled into his ear as he slept and which troubled his dreams, speaking of his wife’s unfaithfulness as it gnawed away at his brain.

To the Queen, first, Vardabates spoke, and at once her beauty and majesty left her, and she went away to live for many years, alone in a cell of her own choosing, until she was but a withered husk, unable to recall her name or her crimes, yet finding no release.

As the king spoke, the dust which was his breath spread to blot out the brilliant stars and the moon.

Vardabates spoke to Urcilak, whose scheme had been first to murder the king, then call him back and capture his soul in a bottle that he might wield power over all the lands forever. But no, the King said, conveying the message of the one who has whispered to him (whether Time or Death), this was folly, and before Urcilak went completely mad, but long before his death, he should direct that his own soul be captured in a bottle, the bottle sealed, and hurled into the sea. Not that there was any release for him, either.

And the ghosts and witches and demons which had accompanied the king this far now scattered in fright.

Then the king spoke to his beloved Ardathemne, who was his daughter, whom Queen Buran had given to an evil courtier, who had raped and defiled her, murdered her children for sorcery and locked her up in a tomb. His words passed through the air like dust and found her in her tomb, and whispered, Comfort, child, for my master will find you soon, meaning either that Death would claim her, or that Time, sowing years upon her from out of his bag of seed, would soon take away her pain.

As the king spoke of the greatness of the realm, and the glory of conquest, of the riches he amassed, then the black dust which issued from his mouth (and covered the moon and shut out the stars) now settled upon the fields of the land, killing cattle and smothering the firstborn of every household. Still the message (from Death or Time, one or the other) was incomplete, and still the king spoke, until the rivers silted up with dust and even the Merimdean Sea withdrew far from Bersion; until each courtier saw that his own splendid robes were as moldy cerements, that all their ambitions would be worn away by Time as the wind polishes a carven stone face smooth again. To poets, he spoke of silence, to the prophets (according to their inclination and wont) either of the doom of all things or of the ending of days.

Still his message was not complete, as the darkness poured out of him and the souls of the dead streamed away from the king and his throne, pouring, swirling out of the palace, down steps and out of windows, from off the battlements; streaming across the empty lands to froth like a tide over the wall which guards the frontier of the world; thence down, down the black slope and through the door of the black tower, swirling again around the ankles of the two who sat at the table engrossed in their game before plunging, at last, screaming, howling, their voices fading to a susurrus of wind as they descended the black, twisting stairway up which none by King Vardabates had ever returned.

And the king spoke until the great palace in which he sat was wiped smooth, then made craggy again, like a mountain, and the Varadbates sat on his throne in the heart of that mountain, speaking still to trouble the dreams of men, forgotten alike by history, legend, myth, and the gods, who, all this while stared down vacuously from behind the screen of stars in the night sky and did and said nothing; for even they could not defy the one who had given Vardabates the message and even they dreaded to hear it.

They knew it would reach them eventually.

At the very last, Vardabates poured out all his own memories, all his loves and hates, all he had ever treasured or feared, even that moment on the hot stones before the nurse scolded him for being dirty.

A single tear formed and streamed slowly down the king’s cheek.

And in the black tower, at the top of the stairs, the player who had held his piece amid a pause for so long (whether Time or Death, none can say) made a sudden move and cried out, “Ha! The victory is mine!”