A Time of Ghosts Read online

  “Then we are to be allowed to use it?” said Karmana. Karagan looked at her, let his gaze drift up and down her body, deliberately, almost insultingly, but with obvious pleasure.

  “Of course,” he said, “was there ever any doubt?” He reached up and ran forefinger and thumb down the stiffened strands of his moustache. He grinned at Moonshadow, then frowned. “Many come to Uthaan, and those who survive my aggressive son usually consult with the oracle. I have seen travelers from all around the great Ocean, but I recognise not this white-skinned, lean-featured dog bone of a man. From where do you hail, traveler? From Quwhon, perhaps?”

  Moonshadow shook his head slowly. “Not from Quwhon,” he said. Raven found herself fascinated by her companion, staring at the calm features of the man.

  “Then were?” persisted Karagan. He peered more closely at Moonshadow’s face. “From some island in the Worldheart sea? From Kharwhan, the Ghost Isle itself?”

  “From neither place,” said Moonshadow quietly.

  “From where, then?” insisted Karagan, growing angry.

  Moonshadow hesitated for just a moment. “From…nowhere,” he said.

  There was a terrible silence, but suddenly Karagan laughed. “By the Flame Sword,” he cried, “what matters it where a man is from?” He walked back to his high throne and sat down. “Bring food and wine for our guests, and couches too.” He looked at Raven and smiled. “I have agreed that you shall use the oracle. It is not my concern to know why you so wish to use it, nor shall I ask you. Nor, for that matter, shall Duprai. At dawn tomorrow he will guide you to the crystal, and then you are free to return to your own countries. Or,” he glanced at Moonshadow, “to nowhere, as you see fit.”

  They seated themselves comfortably, and ate and drank of the rich and splendidly prepared meats, sweet-stuffs and wines that were laid before them. Karagan settled back in his chair, hands folded across his belly. He seemed pleased that his guests were so content. After a while his gaze fixed on Raven, an openly lustful gaze which, being openly so, was less offensive to her than many gazes she had wilted beneath.

  Besides, this warlord, though of mature years, was by no means an unattractive man. Raven found her senses inspired by his looks and smell, a manly smell, powerful and heavy.

  When they had eaten, Karmana said, “Why did you banish your son? Why is he not allowed in the fortress?”

  Karagan half closed his eyes and shrugged. “That is how it has always been. Uthaan was once a great kingdom, with a hundred spired cities to match the beauty of Lyand, and a thousand more that made Lyand seem as a mud hut. The great war with the vanished people of the Southern Wastes left this part of the world in ruins, and the Sons of Uthaan came of age, to hold the people together, to keep the spirit of our past alive. But the curse that was put upon us was to be scattered, separated, driven apart. I am a Son of Uthaan, and so is the son of my body, Dion. We are not allowed to live in the same city. Soon he will take his warriors and ride elsewhere, to settle on his own. When I die he will return, and if he is dead, then my younger son will return to take possession of our city. It is the way.”

  “Then the Sons of Uthaan are everywhere,” said Raven. She had wondered at the familiarity of the name, and remembered that she had once met a slave from the north west who had claimed such kinship.

  “Scattered about the world, yes. Tribes and cities, hidden peoples and vanished communities. The Sons of Uthaan are destined never again to be a single people.”

  There was no sadness in his voice. Raven imagined he was recounting an old story, and one that was now part of the folklore of this warrior society.

  As if nothing could have been further from his interest, Moonshadow abruptly rose. “With thanks for your foot, and for your hospitality, I shall take my leave until morning.”

  It was said quickly, no hint of request about it. Moonshadow bowed and turned on his heel, walked from the room, his blue robes billowing about his slender frame.

  “Is he as mysterious to you as he is to me?” asked the warlord. Raven nodded.

  “I rescued him from a Lyand slave train. That he is called Moonshadow, and that he comes from nowhere, is all I know about him.”

  Karagan leaned forward suddenly. “And you, Raven. What of you?”

  Raven placed her wine cup on the table and smiled. “A simple girl, I. A slave, abused by a Weaponmaster, and finally freed from slavery by a great warlock, a great friend. I am from Ishkar, originally, from the open city of Tul. No slaver would dare attack Tul, nor any open city. But my parents, my mother carried me in the womb at the time, were journeying south, to Sen, to the games there, and the Lyand slave ship took them when they rested overnight in a small town on the way. I was born in the slave-pens. My earliest memory is of my father screaming as he was branded and chased into the desert for the fun of pursuing and hunting and killing a slave. My mother, Cara, was raped and killed when I was just an infant. I was fortunate, then, to be taken into service, but my master fell foul of a Weaponmaster, and I Was given to the warrior as a sort of compensation, then immediately put back into the slave-pens.” She sighed, memory stinging, for these latter events were still bright in her mind. “I was helped to escape, was recaptured, then escaped again. Since then I have ridden wild, with a small band of warriors, fighting as mercenaries.”

  Karagan, sensing that she was filled with pain, turned to Karmana and smiled. Raven looked up, saw in the warlord a gentle man, a strong man, and a man full of a lust for life and the pleasures of life, but a man, yet, who would no more torture and abuse innocent then he would cut off his own arm. He would kill, he would steal, but a sense of honour was in him, a sense that had lacked from Karl Donwayne, and others like him, all of that elite breed of vile warriors, the Weaponmasters.

  “What of you, Karmana?” asked Karagan. “Is your story as grim?”

  Karmana shrugged. “I am from the far north west, near the river known as Northwater. My tribe are warriors, my training is a warrior’s, my life devoted to the cause of war. The tribes skirmish constantly, and will take supplies and women without compunction. It makes sense, for those who live near Northwater, to be skilled in weaponry. I was taken slave after my tribe had raided a settlement near the coast in order to fetch back a hundred head of cattle. My horse had gone lame and I wandered into a small community that had long since sent its men to a war somewhere, and lost them all. There was a merchant there who agreed to sell me a horse for no more than the gold that adorned my belt. I agreed. I followed him to his ship, beached some four kli distant, and found more gold about my body than I welcomed: chains, slave chains. I languished in Lyand, much as Raven must have done, but was taken to the Hall of the Weaponmasters there for their pleasure. I remained there many days, the object of their abuse, but one man in particular used me foully. It seems that that man was Donwayne.” She glanced at Raven, who was pale and drawn with memories of her own.

  Karagan shifted uneasily in his high-backed chair. He looked thoughtfully at each of the girls in turn. “Clearly you have suffered,” he said, straightening. “As for myself, I don’t believe in rape. But passion, now, even if it be bought,” he grinned, “is a different matter.”

  He seemed troubled, though, and became thoughtful and quiet. Raven poured herself wine and watched the man as he stroked the ends of his mustache, and stared across the hall, to the guards by the door.

  “Abuse does not of necessity destroy the ability to know passion,” said Raven, eventually. “A broken city does not imply a broken people.”

  Karagam turned to regard her, nodding slowly. “Well said,” he whispered. “You will know, of course, that I had proposed to demand love as payment for the oracle. I confess, however, that I am now disturbed.”

  “Then cease to be,” said Raven, much excited by this man whose sensitive concern for his guess belied his physical appearance of animal strength and power. “I speak only for myself, but this Weaponmaster is a painful memory and a memory that I have avenged…or s
o I believe. No other man, no other love, need suffer because of what he did. As for Karmana, the events are too close to her past, perhaps.”

  Karmana said nothing. She stared fixedly at the handsome War Chief, her face draw, her lips full but dry, as if she remembered some awful event and could not stop the memory from playing out to its full length.

  After a while Karagan rose and placed his wine glass down, unbuckled his belt and slung it across his shoulder. He walked to Raven and touched her face, gently, then ran his fingers through the extravagant curls of her golden hair, watching her eyes all the time. “Come,” he said. “I shall drive even the ghost of this Weaponmaster from your mind, or failing that, bow my head in disgrace.”

  Raven rose and took his hand, walked with him from the hall, and from Karmana, who watched them go with dark eyes and a confused look about her.

  The warlord’s quarters were next to the hall. The room was small, and a single torch burned low in one corner, throwing soft light across the soft furs and warm tapestries.

  Karagan turned to Raven and took her in his broad arms, hugging her to his body so he might feel her in a standing embrace. He pressed his lips to hers. She was cool, for a moment, watching him through half-opened eyes, and then the bear hug relaxed and she felt his fingers press against her back and start to explore her flesh. She relaxed too, closed her eyes and joined the kiss with passion.

  As his hands rested and pressed against the full swellings of her buttocks so she reached for the lower buttons of his open shirt, slipped them from their bindings and slid her hands across the thick hair of his chest and shoulders. She pushed the shirt back and it slipped from him. She kissed his shoulders and the taut curve of his neck, then bent her head to nibble the orange spread of his nipples. Then kissing his lips again. The stiffness of his moustache was a strange sensation, and for a moment she drew back, leaning against his strong hands behind her, and let her fingers play with the long strands. She smiled, then, and cupped his jaw in her hands, pulled his lips back to hers as his hands came up to unfasten the tags across the shoulders of her tunic.

  The cloth fell away from her body, caught on the upthrust of her breasts. He tugged the tunic away, let his hands cup her breasts and press the stiffening tips of them. He moaned quietly as the kiss lingered on, and she felt his left hand almost nervously slide across her stomach and bury its fingers in the rich mat of hair there. His touch, gentle and sure, was exciting to her and she invited his deeper exploration as she tugged open his leggings and slide them to the floor. She reached for his member and explored the gnarled and thick-tipped shaft of it.

  “You were warned that it was a stiff payment for consulting the oracle,” he said, and Raven exploded with laughter against him, and laughing fell with him on to the furs.

  Her lips covered him, smothering him with kisses that lingered and darted and explored his every part; she tantalised and nipped the dark-skinned shaft that quivered in her gentle grip until he reached out and grasped her hair, thrusting her down upon him in driving motions until she shook off his grip, drew back and clambered over his threshing body.

  He turned her over on to her back and kissed her by return, and when his tongue probed and darted the darkness of her she wanted the moment to last forever.

  When he entered her she wrapped her arms and legs about him, and just held him, almost motionless, until some lustful animal in them both began to kick and grind and bring them to an explosive conclusion that left them drained and drenched, and laughing at something that neither of them understood, but which neither cared to understand.

  Later, half asleep and lying on their backs together, Raven felt a gentle touch on her thigh and looking up saw Karmana creeping on to the pallet beside her. Karagan stirred in his sleep, and woke, glanced over at the other girl and sighed lengthily.

  Raven slept. In her dreams she felt the world heave, some cruel sea tossing her about the ocean until she felt she must fall off the edge of the world.

  And in the morning she found Karagan’s arms around Karmana, and a smile on the girl’s face for the first time since the two of them had met.

  Dawn found Raven slipping from the warlord’s quarters and out into the courtyard. Long legs bare, and clad only in a short cotton tunic and her belt of throwing stars, she approached a guard and asked where she might find the Nightwatcher, Duprai.

  “At the crystal of Uthaan, my lady, with the man who came with you.”

  Moonshadow, there already? She hastened after him, earnest to try and find out why he had come to consult the oracle. The guard had directed her well, and after running through the tightly packed dwellings inside the fortress wall, she found the gash in the ground, protected by tall, ornately carved grey boulders.

  Steps led inwards and she walked down them warily; the air was cool, cooler than the dawn air, and there was a musty smell of rock and damp about the place. It was dark too, and she leaned fingers against the dank walls as he trod ever deeper into the earth.

  At length she found herself in a slanted passageway that led along level ground, and was lit by a single torch. The walls were covered with drawings, of figures and strange devices and buildings, and a thousand inscriptions in a writing form she could not comprehend. The great cracks in these walls and the mould and slime that covered the artwork, told of a place long since neglected, and of little interest to the contemporary dwellers of Uthaan.

  But at the end of the passage she found herself staring out across a lake of green marble!

  It was a great hall, high-ceilinged and richly decorated. Pillars reached from floor to roof, a few of them crumbled and broken, but many of them intact and carved in the shapes of regal princes and princesses. Carvings of Flame Swords littered the floors and walls. The floor sloped down, a solid sheet of green marble that on closer inspection she saw to be small blocks of marble so precisely fitted together that it was almost impossible not to think of the floor as a single sheet. Water lapped at the far end, the underground limit of the lake, perhaps. In the darkness of the farther reaches of the hall, shapes flew and darted and splashed on occasion, reminding Raven of the horn-backed beasts that inhabited the rivers in this area.

  But for the moment her attention was taken by the tall, lean shape of Moonshadow, standing across the hall and staring down at a dark patch on the floor.

  Unseen, Raven advanced towards him, darting from pillar to pillar through the cold place, half aware of Moonshadow, half concentrating on the slick marble flooring which threatened to upset her.

  It was chill in the hall, not warm and sensuous as had been the hall at Quell where the strange, floating stone had spoken to her with Spellbinder’s voice. Quell had been a pulsing, living thing, a warm entrance into living time; the oracle at Uthaan was a decaying, cold place, the last vestige of a spirit that had once, perhaps, been every bit as alive as Quell.

  As she drew near to the motionless shape of Moonshadow, so she grew aware of the guardian, Duprai, staring quietly nearby, himself half concealed by a richly carved pillar. Duprai’s head turned, his eyes flickered over Raven’s suddenly motionless shape. She felt a moment’s panic, wondering if he would drive her from the place and draw Moonshadow’s attention to her. But Duprai merely raised a finger to his lips, without any expression moulding the solemn features of his face, and turned back to the strange man before them.

  Raven could hear Moonshadow murmuring. As she watched him so he stepped on to the dark crystal and cried out, as if in surprise.

  Five

  “When a tool is simple it remembers its job easily. A complex tool needs to be constantly tuned.”

  The Books of Kharwhan

  At the sound of Moonshadow’s cry Raven let her hand drop to one of the stars on her belt, moved out from behind the pillar, ready for trouble. But Duprai was holding out his hand and waving her still. Staring back at her friend, Raven saw the man was in some state of ecstasy; he revolved about his own axis, without moving a muscle of his own. He seemed s
uspended on the crystal, turned by forces from below the marble floor; his eyes were open and staring, but he saw nothing of the ruined hall; what he saw was beyond Raven’s understanding and she waited, quiescently.

  At length Moonshadow stared straight ahead, towards the dark part of the oracle hall, where water lapped quietly at the crumbling marble.

  “To what world have I come?” he said. The words were loud, but somehow muffled, not echoing about this cold place as Raven would have expected them to. Then she thought of what Moonshadow had said and her head spun. To what world had he come? Duprai was staring at her peculiarly, but there was about him the look of a man who has had his suspicions confirmed. To what world! A strange question. It meant, certainly, that Moonshadow was not from this place at all, that Ishkar and Lyand and all the lands around the great Ocean were strange to him. Perhaps he was from further away than even mysterious Quwhon, brought here by supernatural means.

  Raven, her ears keen for any answer, heard none from the oracle, but Moonshadow had obviously been told where he was and listened carefully for a while.

  Then he spoke again, and the question made Raven’s heart beat fast. “Of what use is this Raven to me?”

  Moonshadow nodded slightly, and then was thoughtfully pleased, as if the answer was favourable to him.

  Then he asked, “Where is Crugoan? Where is the Dark Sorcerer? Show me, so I may know him instantly.”

  He stared head of him intensely, studying something that only he could see. “I shall find you,” he murmured, and the words, even in the absolute silence of the place, barely carried to Raven’s ears. “This time I shall find you and destroy you. This time.”

  Raven darted back into concealment as Moonshadow, pale face intense and angry, turned towards her and stepped away from the dark crystal. He walked fast across the slippery marble floor, and saw neither the girl nor the Guardian.