The Swords of Night and Day Read online

  Landis led the man along a narrow corridor and down a set of stairs. The lower levels were cold, despite the lanterns hanging on cast-iron brackets. Landis shivered, but the man beside him seemed untroubled.

  At last they came to a set of double doors. Beyond them was a long room, with five soft chairs and three couches, festooned with embroidered cushions. A tall arched window showed a view of the distant mountains. The curtains billowed with the afternoon breeze. To the left was a second arch, leading through to a library, the scores of shelves bent under the weight of the books upon them.

  Landis walked on to another door at the rear of the room. This he opened with a key taken from his pouch.

  Inside, it was windowless and dark. Landis lit a lantern, hanging it from a bracket. Golden light flickered in the room, shadows dancing upon the plain walls. “What has been removed?” asked the man.

  Landis smiled, noticing the rectangular dust patterns that showed where objects had been taken down from the walls. “Just some paintings,” he answered, swiftly. “You are very observant.” Moving to a desk, Landis reached down and lifted what at first appeared to be a short, curved ornamental staff. At each end were sections of beautifully carved white ivory, though the center was smooth, polished ebony. Turning, he offered the object to his guest.

  The man’s face darkened, and he stepped back. “I do not want to touch them,” he said.

  “Them?”

  “There is evil in them.”

  “But they are yours. They were buried with you in the tomb. They were laid upon your chest, your hands clasped over them.”

  “Even so, I do not want them.”

  Landis took a deep breath. “But you know what they are?”

  “Yes, I know,” answered the man, a wealth of sadness in his voice. “They are the Swords of Night and Day. And I am Skilgannon the Damned.”

  Landis curled his hand around one of the hilts. “Do not draw that blade,” said Skilgannon. “I have no wish to see it.” With that he swung on his heel and walked back through the library. Landis placed the Swords of Night and Day on the desktop and ran after the warrior.

  “Wait!” he called. “Please wait.”

  Skilgannon paused, sighed, then turned. “Why did you bring me back, Landis?”

  “You will understand why when you see the world outside my domain. There is great evil here, Skilgannon. We need you.”

  Skilgannon shook his head. “I do not remember much as yet, Landis, but I know I never was a god. In every generation there are war leaders, heroes, men of valor. I may—just may—have been special in my day. But you must have men of equal skill in this time.”

  “Would that we had enough of them,” said Landis Khan, with feeling. “There is a great war being fought but not—in the main—by men. We have a few doughty fighters, but we have survived this long here for two reasons. Firstly, my domain is largely inaccessible and offers no mineral wealth. Secondly, the passes are guarded by our own Jiamads.” Landis hesitated, seeing the look of noncomprehension on Skilgannon’s face. “Ah, but I see that I am getting ahead of the tale. You have no knowledge of the Jiamads. In some ancient lands they were known as werebeasts, I believe, though in your time the word was Joinings. Men and beasts melded together.”

  Skilgannon’s face hardened, his eyes glittering in the lantern light.

  “You remember them?” asked Landis.

  “A glimpse only. But yes, I fought them.”

  “And you won!”

  “There is nothing that bleeds that I cannot kill, Landis.”

  “Exactly my point! You will not find more than a handful of men in this land who would dream of saying that about Jiamads. We are on the verge of becoming a defeated species, Skilgannon.”

  “And you think I can change this unhappy situation? Where is my army?”

  “There is no army, but I still believe you are the one man who can save us.”

  “Why?”

  Landis shrugged and spread his hands. “There was a prophecy concerning you, Skilgannon. It was originally inscribed on tablets of gold. And signed by the Blessed Priestess herself. But these were lost. Copies were made from memory, but many of these contained contradictions. However, there was a map that showed the place where the Priestess hid your body. It was a cunning map. Delightfully conceived. And all who followed it found only an empty sarcophagus in a cave. Beside it was a shattered lid. So they went away, disconsolate.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “Oh, yes I did. Many times. I wish I could say that I deciphered the riddle of the map through the enormous power of my intellect alone. But I did not. I had a vision—a dream, perhaps. I had been searching the cave again—my fifteenth journey there, I believe. I was tired and I fell asleep. I dreamed of the Blessed Priestess. She took me by the hand and led me from the cave, and down onto the arid wasteland at the foot of the mountains to a dry riverbed. Then she spoke. ‘The answer is here, if you have the eye to see it.’ This was similar to what was written at the base of the map: The hero lies here, if you have the eye to see it.

  “I awoke with the dawn and walked out to the cave entrance, staring out over the land below. There was the dry riverbed. Once the water had flowed, and the river had been bisected by an island. Now there were only two dry channels etching the ground on both sides of a high, circular mound of rocky earth. From the high point of the cave it looked as if someone had carved a giant eye in the land. I cannot tell you how excited I was as I led the digging party across to the mound. At the center of it we dug. Some seven feet down we struck the stone lid of your coffin.”

  “I can appreciate your delight,” said Skilgannon, “but I am finding this talk of my coffin unsettling. Move on to the prophecy.”

  “Of course, of course! Forgive me. The prophecy promised that you would be the man to . . . to restore our freedoms.”

  “You hesitated.”

  Landis gave a nervous smile. “You are very sharp, my friend. I was trying to avoid unnecessary explanation. It actually says that you are the man who will steal the power of the silver eagle and restore peace and harmony to the world.”

  “So you have based all your hopes on an old prophecy?”

  “Yes, I have. But I am heartened by the fact that the Resurrectionists also believe it. Both sides have been searching for your remains for hundreds of years. There was—still is—a huge reward for whoever finds your tomb. They fear you, Skilgannon. It is my earnest hope that they are right to do so.”

  Skilgannon said nothing for a moment. “Who was this Blessed Priestess?” he asked, at last.

  “Some believe her to have been a goddess, who surrendered immortality for her love of humanity. Others say she was the human child of the Wolf God, Phaarl. For myself, I believe her to have been a brilliant arcanist and philosopher and prophet. A gifted woman, and holy, who was allowed to see the future, and to have a part in saving humanity from the Dawn of the Beasts.”

  “Did she have a name, this paragon?”

  “Of course. She was Ustarte. It was said that you knew her.”

  All color drained from Skilgannon’s face. “I knew her. She came to me in the last days.”

  H e stood on the hillside outside his home and watched as the rider galloped back toward the city. A great heaviness settled on his heart. Slowly he strolled up the hillside, moving out onto the cliff path above the bay. Skilgannon had grown to love this place during the last eight years. A stone seat had been set on a jutting ledge of rock. He did not know who had set it here, but something in his heart had warmed to the man who had. The ledge was perilously overbalanced and looked as if it might drop at any moment, falling the hundreds of feet to the rocky beach below. Yet someone had decided to set a seat here, as if to hurl a challenge at the gods. Kill me if you will, but I will choose to sit here, in this place, and defy your power.

  Skilgannon walked out onto the ledge and stretched himself out on the seat. The air was warm, the sunshine bright. Far out on the Jian Sea
he saw the fishing boats, and the gulls swooping and soaring around them. Pain flared in his neck, and he winced. The fingertips of his right hand grew numb. He stretched his neck, then looked down at his hand. The fingers were trembling. Making a fist, he tried to quell the tremor. Slowly the pain in his neck dulled, merging with the other aches in his tired body. His lower back troubled him at night; the old scar on his hip would grind if he rode a horse for more than an hour. His left knee had never recovered from the arrow wound. Angry now, he pulled the parchment from his belt and opened it once more. Bakila has refused our offer, he read, though he has accepted the gifts and tributes.

  Gifts and tributes.

  For years Skilgannon had tried to tell them that Bakila could not be bought off forever. The Zharn king had a hunger that would not be satisfied by tributes. He also had an army that needed to be fed with plunder. The young Angostin king had not understood this. He did now.

  Now that it was too late.

  “Ho, General!” came the call. Skilgannon swung on his seat. The pain flared in his neck once more. The young captain, Vakasul, came striding up the cliff path. He halted just before the ledge and stood there, grinning and shaking his head. “That will fall, you know,” he said.

  Skilgannon smiled affectionately at the dark-eyed young warrior. “Come sit with me—and dare it to fall,” he answered.

  “I think not.”

  “You know the Zharn are coming?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you will ride with me to fight them?”

  “You know that I will. We will scatter them, General.”

  Skilgannon rose and walked back to where the officer waited. Vakasul was in battle dress, black breastplate and helm of hardened leather, thigh-length riding boots, reinforced at the knee with bronze. His long dark hair had been braided in the Angostin fashion, lengths of silver wire placed within the braids to offer added protection to the head. “You will fight a massive enemy army,” said Skilgannon, “and yet you will not walk onto a stone ledge.”

  “The ledge is not under my control,” said Vakasul. “On the battlefield my sword and my bow will protect me.”

  Skilgannon looked into the young man’s eyes. Both men knew that nothing could possibly protect them in the coming battle. Bakila would have twenty thousand foot soldiers and eight thousand horsemen. The Angostin force would number around four thousand trained infantry and two thousand cavalry. Eight years before, Skilgannon had led a coalition army against Bakila and turned back his horde on the southern border of Angostin. Forces from Kydor and Chiatze, and the Varnii nomads, had fought a ferocious battle. More than thirty thousand Zharn had perished, and some twelve thousand of the allies. Bakila had managed to withdraw his surviving forces during the night. Skilgannon had urged the Angostin king to allow him to pursue Bakila. The request had been denied. The king had been horrified by the losses and believed that Bakila would have learned a harsh lesson.

  Indeed he had. The following year he had taken a new army south- west and crushed the Varnii. The next summer he had swept into Kydor, sacking the cities and pillaging the capital. Two years later he had made an alliance with the Sechuin people on the eastern coast and attacked Chiatze, smashing their armies in two great battles. The Chiatze had surrendered and offered Bakila a huge yearly tribute. To prevent a new invasion the Angostin king sued for peace, and also offered to send a yearly tribute to Bakila. Seven hundred pounds of gold was the agreed sum in the first year. Then it rose to a thousand. Then two thousand. Now the Angostin treasury was virtually bankrupt.

  And the Zharn were coming.

  “How long do we have, General?” asked Vakasul.

  “Perhaps ten days.”

  “And you will contrive a splendid battle plan to destroy them. I look forward to hearing it.”

  “There is only one hope of success, Vaki. You know it as well as I.”

  “It will be a miracle if we get to within two hundred feet of him.”

  “Then we’ll have to make a miracle.”

  Vakasul swore softly, then edged past Skilgannon and onto the ledge. He sat down and stared out to sea. “By the way, General,” he said, “there are some odd-looking people waiting at your house.”

  “Odd? What do you mean?”

  Vakasul grinned. “There is a bald woman in a gown of satin. Quite attractive, if you like bald women. The two men with her are astonishingly grotesque. As my father used to say: ‘They look as if they fell out of the ugly tree and landed on their faces.’ ”

  The memory faded.

  Back in his apartments Skilgannon began to exercise his body, moving through a series of dancelike steps, leaping and twirling. Several times he stumbled upon landing, and once he fell heavily. His brain knew how to execute the moves, but his body seemed sluggish. Keeping the moves simple, he continued the exercise, seeking to free his thoughts. The images in his mind were sharp, and yet fractured. There was no real flow to his memories. Scenes appeared, and then were cut off or overlaid by some other image. Names flashed into his consciousness: Dayan, Jianna, Druss, Vakasul, Bakila, Greavas . . . Occasionally a face would merge with the name, and then disappear.

  He exercised for an hour and then sat on a rug, a blanket around his shoulders. Bowing his head, he sought inner calm, focusing only on one word.

  Ustarte.

  The stars were bright, and the rain clouds had moved away toward the west. This was a blessing. The ground tomorrow would be dry and hard, the speed of the charge increased. With luck it would carry them deep into the Zharn ranks. How deep? he wondered. And would Bakila position himself on the left, as he had five years before? Skilgannon strode to the top of the rise and gazed down at the battlefield. It was wide and flat. A stand of trees covered the hillsides to the west. To the east was the river. He pictured the likely formation the Zharn would adopt. The Angostin infantry had no choice but to stake out a position on the high ground north of the valley. The slopes were steep. The enemy charge would be slowed. More heavily armored and wielding short, stabbing swords, the Angostins would be able to hold for some time. Skilgannon scanned the valley. The eight thousand Zharn horsemen would sweep out to the east and west in an encircling move. The two thousand Angostin cavalry would be expected to split into two groups and seek to hold them on the wings. It was not possible. The cavalry would be either broken and scattered, or pushed back against the flanks of their own infantry.

  It was galling in the extreme. The Zharn, for all their savagery, were well-disciplined fighters who did not fear death. No sudden charge would break their spirit. No clever strategy would see them thwarted. There was only one hope for the Angostins. Bakila was the head and heart of the Zharn. Strike him down and the enemy would break.

  Skilgannon walked back to his horse and stepped into the saddle. Then he rode across the moonlit valley, heading up into the stand of trees. From the high ground he could see the distant campfires of the Zharn some five miles to the southwest. Dismounting, he trailed the reins of the chestnut and walked up to the tree line. The air was fresh and cool. Tomorrow he would hide three hundred of the finest of his Silver Hawk cavalry here. As the battle lines drew together he would lead them in a suicidal charge down the hillside.

  His shoulder and neck ached, and he could feel the weight of his fifty-four years. Sitting down with his back to a tree, he closed his eyes, remembering the days of his youth. He had such dreams then, such vaunting ambitions. He wanted to be like his father, a great warrior and hero, adored by women and admired by men. He smiled. Such were the dreams of the young. Jianna’s face appeared in his mind—not as the dread and beautiful Witch Queen of Naashan, but as the young princess he had first known. Those had been the great days of his life. The days of first love. He had believed then that his future would be with Jianna. What force on heaven or earth could prevent it? In that moment Skilgannon heard a soft rustling. He pushed himself to his feet and turned to see Ustarte moving toward him, her long satin gown shimmering in the moonlight. �
�It saddens me to feel your sorrow,” she said.

  “Sorrow is the constant companion of the old,” he told her, forcing a smile. “When you came to my house you said you would be asking a favor of me. Ask it—and if it is in my power I will grant it.”

  Ustarte sighed and looked away. “What I am to ask might cost you dear.”

  Skilgannon laughed then. “Did you not tell me that I would die tomorrow? How much more dear can it be?”

  Ustarte ignored the question. “Tell the Angostin king that if you fall tomorrow your body and your weapons are to be given over to me for burial.”

  “That is all you require?”

  “No, Olek. To win you will need to wield the swords once more.”

  “I can win without them! I do not want their evil in my hands.”

  “You will not reach Bakila without them, and the Zharn will plunder and burn and slaughter their way across Angostin—and beyond. These are the two favors I would ask of you. Carry the swords into battle, and allow me to conduct your burial.”

  “And you can tell me no more?”

  She shook her head, and he saw a tear fall. “No more,” she said.

  O n the fifth day of the resurrection Landis Khan climbed the winding staircase and entered the high turret room in the east wing of the palace. The old blind man, Gamal, was sitting on the balcony, a warm blanket around his thin shoulders. Landis shivered as he gazed upon Gamal. He was very frail now, his skin so thin as to be almost translucent.

  Gamal laughed, the sound rich and musical. “Ah, Landis, my friend, your thoughts fly around like startled pigeons.”

  “There was a time when you had the good manners not to read the thoughts of friends,” Landis pointed out, stepping forward and kissing the old man’s cheek.

  “Sadly, that is not true,” said Gamal. “What I had was the ability to pretend not to read them.”

  Landis feigned surprise. “You lied to us all these years?”

  “Of course I lied. Would you have wanted to spend time in the company of someone you believed knew all your thoughts?”