Still their guide led them on, though no trail or path was visible through the underbrush.
No one has come this way in some time. Yet we are heading east, and the Pass of Seven Peaks is supposed to be an easy descent. Perhaps we are coming up behind the fortress.
Yet something troubled him and he pushed ahead, his guards keeping pace, to reach their guide. The young man bowed his head — slightly. ‘It must be difficult bringing up supplies …’ Pon-lor offered as they walked along.
Jak glanced back the way they had come. ‘There are other paths,’ he answered off-handedly. ‘M’lord.’
‘And are we close?’
The lad frowned, thinking. ‘We won’t make it before nightfall.’
‘No?’ Pon-lor felt a touch of irritation. ‘Then we should camp for the night. We’ve just come off a hard climb.’ It seemed to him that the raider youth actually sneered before quickly turning away.
‘That?’ He waved aside the suggestion. ‘That was nothing — I used to run up and down that path all day as a child.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Pon-lor answered, icily. ‘Find us a suitable site.’
Jak stopped and bowed. ‘Pardon … m’lord. But the rains are gathering. Wouldn’t you rather sleep in warm quarters tonight?’
The suggestion did have its attractions. Yet what of this fellow’s insolence? He seemed to suggest that Pon-lor was not up to such exertion. Obviously he knew nothing of Thaumaturg training and arts and what they could extract from the human body … He pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing. Whatever should he care regarding the opinions of such a wretched specimen? He waved the ever-hovering overseer closer. ‘A break in the march, Tun. For a rest and a short meal.’
‘Very good, Magister.’
The guide merely bowed as well.
Pon-lor sat at the base of a huge bo tree. Its limbs arched all around, creating something of a natural temple. He allowed himself a pinch of rice, water and fresh fruit gathered during the day. The men took turns resting, eating and standing guard. Tun called an end to the break, and the men were forming up when a second scream — this one of agony — froze them all.
The men’s wide eyes scanned the bobbing leaves and shadowed aisles between the trees. Then Tun grunted an order and they jumped to encircle Pon-lor while two went with the overseer to investigate. As an afterthought, Tun waved Jak to accompany them.
Waiting, Pon-lor also eyed the impenetrable tangle of vines and draping leaves. Another fall? Surely not. What, then? Had a servant of the Demon-Queen found them already? He wished it would show itself. Thaumaturg training did not lend itself to such real-time scrying, sensing or detection. The leaves shook and Overseer Tun emerged. He walked straight up to Pon-lor and bowed to one knee.
‘We have lost another, m’lord.’
‘What was it?’
‘There was no sign of the man. But there was plenty of blood. And a trail. We did not follow.’
‘No? Why not?’
‘The guide says it was a hunting cat. One of the great fanged ones.’
Pon-lor could not suppress a shiver of atavistic fear. A fanged cat! Nearly a horse’s weight of muscle, tooth and claw. As tall as nine hands at the shoulder, some claimed. Long eradicated from Thaumaturg lands. No wonder they did not pursue.
Their guide was the last to emerge, and he came walking backwards, his gaze fixed on the undergrowth. ‘Jak,’ Pon-lor called. ‘You will take us to the fortress — now.’
The young man bowed. ‘Of course … m’lord.’
Tun clapped his wrapped hands and the column formed immediately and they set out at once.
The evening’s rain began soon after. A guard offered Pon-lor his parasol but he waved it off; the undergrowth was too pressing. Often he had to duck under thick creepers, or swing a leg over the fat roots that writhed all over the hard stony ground. With the rains arrived the evening: a darkness even greater than a densely overcast night as they struggled beneath an impenetrable canopy. He could make out shafts from the Visitor lancing down here and there through breaks in the tangled branches. A strong wind tossed those branches, making the green radiance dance and flicker. Ahead, the men of the column would appear and disappear in the wavering light as if shifting from one Realm to another.
After a long sodden march the column halted and Tun emerged from the drifting mist of rain to invite Pon-lor forward. He was led to where their guide waited and when he arrived Jak gestured in the dark.
‘Fortress Chanar.’
Pon-lor squinted into the gloom. Eventually a much denser black emerged from the murk to resolve into a rearing heap of stone. A golden glow shone here and there from what he presumed to be windows. At ground level a whipping flame revealed where a torch might be set at a doorway.
‘Very good, Jak.’ He urged the guide onward.
Overgrown stone heaps lay to either side. They appeared to be walking an ancient road, or ceremonial way. The heaps proved to be squat plinths supporting equally squat monolithic heads as big as huts. Roots gripped these enormous heads and most sported tall trees like fanciful hats, but all were identical. Portraits, they were, of a man in an armoured helm. Savage hard staring eyes, a long straight nose, and a slit mouth that looked as if not one word of mercy had ever passed its lips.
And Pon-lor knew that face, that man. And his breath left him in one gust. A cold slither of something gouged a nail up his spine.
That face. Always the same face. He’d seen it before on the coins and funerary statues that littered the tables in Master Varman’s study — his hobby of collecting pre-catastrophe artefacts — where, spurred by curiosity, half knowing the answer already, he’d asked: this ancient likeness, is it a man or a god?
And Master Varman had studied him for some time in silence, his head lowered, eyeing him from under his thick brows, until finally he cleared his throat to say, ‘Strange that you should put it that way, Pon-lor. As you no doubt suspect, that is the face of the greatest evil of his day, the self-proclaimed God-King, the High King. These days the ignorant name him the Fallen One or the Demon-King, the infernal Kell-Vor. But that in truth is not his real name — that I shall never speak aloud. For it carries with it a curse. A terrible ageless curse.’
Pon-lor blinked now in the rain, suddenly more chilled than he had been in days. Was Chanar merely built on these ancient pre-Fall ruins? Or was this building one of the few surviving structures from that age? In any case, the scholar within Pon-lor was roused. What an unlooked-for opportunity! Here in the wilds of the border region. Yet, where else? Was he not approaching the lands of the Ancient Queen? And were there not legends that claimed King and Queen ruled together and that the catastrophe of the long ago Fall slew the King while the Queen survived? A twisted shadow-play of the truth, no doubt. But still, both figures could be traced back to those hoary dawn ages of humanity.
‘Magister …?’ a voice called from the dark. Their guide.
He’d been standing in the rain for some time, his guards encircling him. He nodded. ‘Yes, coming.’
A single guard in plain leathers awaited them at the gate. A young man of his age, spear in hand, a bow at his side. ‘Welcome,’ this one murmured. ‘The lord will see you in the Great Hall.’
Jak invited Pon-lor forward. ‘I know the way.’
Overseer Tun blocked the narrow stone entranceway. ‘I will walk with you, little guide.’ He waved for two guards to remain at the gaping stone portal, then signed for the rest to attend on Pon-lor.