The Book of Kane (15 page)

Haeen made a choking sound beneath Kane’s red beard, wrapped her arms about his barrel chest. “If only he could have withstood this last fever. We might have had so many more nights from which to steal an hour of ecstasy.”

Kane laughed urbanely. “Well, of course propriety will dictate a judicious interval of mourning, but after…”

She stopped his laugh with her kiss. “One last embrace, beloved! They will be coming for us in another moment.”

“What are you talking about?” Kane began, suddenly aware that her despair was all too real.

But already they had come for them.

Gaudy in their flame-hued cloaks, the priests of Inglarn filed into Kane’s private chambers. Their faces were pallid beneath sooty ritual designs of mourning; their expressions were unreadable as they regarded the pair.

“Come, O Beloved of the King,” intoned their leader. “Your master summons you to dwell with him now in the Palace of Inglarn in the Paradise of the Chosen.”

“I left orders that I was not to be disturbed,” Kane snarled, groping for understanding. His personal bodyguard—all handpicked men—should have thrown these fools from his threshold, given alarm had Kane’s secret designs miscarried. But a glance beyond the doorway showed Kane’s soldiers calmly withdrawing from their stations.

The contempt in his tone cut through the sonorous phrases of the high priest. “You are an outlander, Lord Kane. You hold high office such as no stranger before has been entrusted. Yet, outlander that you are, there remains the final and highest duty that you must perform to your master.”

Kane had newly come to this land, had only a sketchy impression of its innumerable laws and traditions. If they suspected poison, why had come priests instead of armed guards?

“What is this, Haeen?”

“Don’t you know?” Haeen told him dully. “It is the Law of Inglarn. When the king of Andalar is summoned into Paradise, his household and his chief counselors must accompany him. Thus they will continue to serve their master in the Palace of Inglarn, and the new king will begin his holy reign untainted by the ties that the departed king had established.”

“Of course,” Kane agreed blandly, while behind his impassive face his thoughts were chaotic. His knowledge of this tradition-bound land was incomplete. Inglarn was purely a local deity, and Kane had not troubled to learn the secrets of his cult. Luisteren VII had ascended the throne as a child, more than seventy years before. In his concern with court intrigue, Kane had not delved overmuch into events beyond the memory of almost everyone in the city.

“Come with us now to the temple of Inglarn,” the high priest invited. His two fellows produced the ritual fetters of gold. “This night you will pay a final earthly court to your master upon his pyre. On the morrow you will pass through the flame to join him in the Blessed Palace of Inglarn.”

“Of course,” Kane smiled. Save for the priests, the hallway beyond his quarters was for the moment deserted. One does not intrude upon a sacred ritual.

The high priest’s neck snapped with a sound no louder than his gasp of surprise. Kane flung his corpse aside as carelessly as a child discards a doll, and his open fist made lethal impact with the neck of the second priest, even as the man stood goggle-eyed in disbelief. The third priest spun for the open doorway, sucking breath to shout; Kane caught him with an easy bound, and steel-like fingers stifled outcry and life.

Haeen raised her voice in a shrill scream of horror.

It was not a time for reason. Kane’s blow rocked her head back with almost killing force. Pausing only to strap his word across his back, Kane bundled the unconscious girl I in his cloak and fled like a shadow from the palace.

Darkness, and the initial chaos as news of the king’s death stunned the city, made possible Kane’s escape. That, and the fact that Kane’s sacrilege was so unthinkable that the tradition-bound folk of Andalar at first could not react to so monstrous a crime.

Kane made the city gates before Haeen had fully recovered consciousness, and before knowledge of his outrage had alerted the confused guard at the wall. He would have ridden beyond Andalar’s bourne before pursuit could be organized, but forest trails are treacherous in the night, and while Kane might see in the darkness, his horse could not.

Kane swore and sent his crippled horse stumbling off into the darkness. The false trail might throw off pursuit for long enough to let him make good his escape. Haeen still seemed to be in shock—either from his fist or from his sacrilege—but she followed him silently as Kane struck out on foot.

They walked for a timeless interval through clutching darkness—Kane holding his pace to Haeen’s—until at last a taint of greyness began to erode the starless roof of trees.

There was muffled thunder of water somewhere ahead of them, and a breath of cold mist. In the greyness of false dawn, they crept toward the rim of a gorge. Kane slowed his pace, uncertain how to reach the river below. He had campaigned along the borders of the city-state’s holdings, and had a fair idea as to his bearings, although he did not recognize this vicinity of the forest.

Haeen huddled miserably on a boulder, watching as Kane prowled about along the mist-lapped escarpment.

“We’ll find a way down once it’s daylight,” he told her. “There’s rapids along here, but if we follow the river farther down, it flows smoothly enough to float a raft. We’ll lash some drift together and float beyond Andalar’s borders before the fools can guess where to search for us.”

“Kane, Kane,” Haeen moaned hopelessly. “You can’t escape. You don’t even know what sin you propose. Kane, this is
wrong!”

He gave her an impatient scowl that—in the half-light—she could only sense from his tone. “Haeen, I have not lived this long to end my life in some priestly ritual. Let the fools burn the living with the dead, as tradition demands. You and I will laugh together in lands where Andalar is a realm unknown.”

“Kane.” She shook her midnight mane. “You don’t understand. You’re an outsider. You
can’t
understand.”

“I understand that your customs and sacred laws are sham and empty mummery. And I understand that I love you. And you love me.”

“Oh, Kane.” Haeen’s face was tortured. “You scorn our laws. You scorn our gods. But this you
must
understand.”

“Haeen, if you really want to die for the greater glory of a husband whose senile touch you loathed…”

“Kane!”Her cry tore across his sneer. “This is evil!”

“So is adultery in some social structures,” Kane laughed, trying to break her mood.

“Will you listento me! What you mock is a part of me.”

“Of course.”

“Andalar is the oldest city in the world.”

“One of the wealthiest, I’ll grant you—but far from the oldest.”

“Kane! How can I make you understand, when Von only mock me!”

“I’m sorry. Please go on.” Kane thought he could see a path that might lead downward, but the mist was too thick to be sure.

“Andalar was built by Inglarn in the dawn of the world.” She seemed to recite a catechism.

“And Andalar worships Inglarn to this day,” Kane prompted her. It was not uncommon to find local deities worshipped as the supreme god in isolated regions such as this.

“When Inglarn departed in a Fountain of Flame to the Paradise Beyond the Sun,” Haeen recited, “he left a portion of his sacred fire in the flesh of the kings of Andalar.”

Kane had heard portions of the legend. But he had long since lost interest in the innumerable variations of the solar myth.

“Therefore,” Haeen continued, “the personal household of each king of Andalar is sacred unto the fire of Inglarn. And when the Fire Made Flesh of the king transcends the Flesh and must return to the Fire of Inglarn, then so must all of those who are a part of the king’s Radiance enter with their king into the Fire, to be reborn in the Paradise of the Chosen.”

“There must be a way down to the river not far from here,” Kane mused aloud. “It might be best if I seek it out by myself, then come back for you.”

“Kane, will you listen! This is the sin
you
have committed! You have defied the Sacred Law of Inglarn. You have sought to escape the fate that Inglarn has ordained for you. And the Law decrees that, should any of the king’s household so blaspheme Inglarn as to flee from their holy duty to their king and their god, then shall Inglarn come back from the fire—return to utterly destroy Andalar and all its people!”

Kane sensed her agony, listened to her anguished phrases, tried to make himself understand. But Kane was a man who defied all gods, who knew no reverence to any god or law. And he knew that they must make good their escape within the next few hours, or be encircled by their frantic pursuers.

“I have heard such legends in a hundred lands,” he told her carefully. But he now understood that the people of Andalar would spare no effort t to capture them for the pyre.

“But this is
my
land.”

“No longer. I’ll take you to a thousand more.”

“Only hold me for this moment.”

And Kane took Haeen then, on the moss-robed boulders of the gorge—while the river rumbled beneath them, arid the skies tattered with grey above them. And Haeen cried out her joy to the dying stars, and Kane for an instant forgot the loneliness of immortality.

And after, Kane unbound their spent bodies, and kissed her. “Wait here until I return. You’re safe—they’ll need full light to find our trail. Before then I’ll have found a path down to the river. We’ll see the last of Andalar’s borders and its mad customs before another dawn.”
And she kissed him, and murmured.

It was late morning before Kane finally discovered a path into the gorge that he was confident Haeen could traverse. They could follow the river for a space—throwing off pursuit—until he could fashion a raft to carry them beyond Andalar’s territories. While this avenue of escape was by no means as certain as Kane had given Haeen to believe, Kane knew their chances were better than even. Cautiously Kane retraced his steps to the boulders where he had hidden her.

At first Kane tried to tell himself that he had missed his landmarks, but then he found the message Haeen had scratched onto the boulder.

“I cannot let my city be destroyed through my sin. Go your own way, Kane. You are an outsider, and Inglarn will forgive.”

Kane uttered a wordless snarl of pain, and turned his baleful gaze toward Andalar.

Kane followed her trail, recklessly, hoping that some fool might challenge his course, praying for a mount. He found where Haeen had met their pursuers, and where their horses turned to gallop back to Andalar.

But by the time he limped to within sight of the walls of Andalar, the funeral pyre of King Luisteren VII and all his household had blackened the skies…

The skies were black with night and the lowering storm, as their leader concluded his tale. Rain sought them through the massed banyan limbs, hissed into the fire. They looked upon the ruins of Andalar the Accurst, and shivered from more than the rain.

“But the legend then was true?” one bandit asked their leader. “Did Inglarn destroy the city because of the sacrilege the outlander had committed?”

“No. Their
god
spared their city,” Kane told him bitterly. “But
I
returned with an army of a hundred thousand. And I spared not a soul, nor left one stone standing, in all of Andalar.”

“Reverence! Hold up a moment!” The burly priest drew rein in a swirl of autumn leaves. Calloused fingers touched the plain hilt of the sword strapped to his saddle as his cowled head bent in the direction of her call.

Raven-black hair twining in the autumn wind, the girl stepped out from the gnarled oaks that shouldered the mountain trail. Bright black eyes smiled up at him from her wide-browed, strong-boned face. Her mouth was wide as well, and smiled.

“You ride fast this evening reverence.”

“Because the shadows grow deeper, and I have a good way to ride to reach the inn ahead.” His voice was impatient.

“There’s an inn not more than a mile from here.” She swayed closer, and he saw how her full figure swelled against her long-skirted dress.

The priest followed her gesture. Just ahead the trail forked, the left winding alongside the mountain river the right cutting along the base of the ridge. While the river road bore signs of regular travel, the other trail showed an aspect of disuse. Toward this the girl was pointing.

“That trail leads toward Rader,” he told her, shifting in his saddle. “My business is in Carrasahl.

“Besides,” he added “I was told the inn near the fork of the road had long been abandoned. Few have cause to travel to Rader since the wool fair was shifted south to Enseljos.”

“The old inn has lately been reopened.”

“That may be. But my path lies to Carrasahl.”

She pouted. “I was hoping you might carry me with you to the inn yonder.”

“Climb up and I’ll take you to the inn on the Carrasahl road.”

“But my path lies to Rader.”

The priest shrugged thick shoulders beneath his cassock. “Then you’d best be going.”

“But reverence,” her voice pleaded. “It will be dark long before I reach the inn, and I’m afraid to walk this trail at night. Won’t you take me there on your horse? It won’t take you far from your way, and you can lodge the night there just as well.”

Shadows were lengthening, merging into dusk along the foot of the ridges. The declining sun shed only a dusty rubrous haze across the hilltops, highlighting tall hardwoods already fired by autumn’s touch. Streaked with mist, the valleys beyond were swallowed in twilight.

Night was fast overtaking him, the rider saw. He recalled the warnings of villagers miles behind, who for his blessing had given him food and sour wine. They had answered his questions concerning the road ahead, then warned him to keep to the trail if night caught him and on no account make camp by himself. The priest had not been certain whether they warned him of robbers or some darker threat.

His horse stamped impatiently.