The Hammer of the Sun (29 page)

But for that first moment Elof felt a keen pang of disappointment. It was a vast expanse he saw stretch out before him through the narrow aperture of the gate; large enough, he guessed, to swallow the two greatest living cities of his land. But it seemed to have not a half of their grandeur. The sun was not yet over the curve of the world, and the distance was no more than a shadowy frieze against the luminous sky, broken only by the looming silhouette of a jagged hill; over the nearer part of the city the morning mists rolled like slow waves down towards the Great River, for the land was well-nigh flat. He could see that it had a network of ancient walls, many times greater than those of which Kerbryhaine was so proud, but the level ground made them so much less impressive than Kerbryhaine, rising on a steep and ancient volcanic rock, or Morvanhal on its high promontory above the sea. The stolid bulk of the distant hill served only to diminish them further. Nor could he see any likeness of the noble masonry which made Morvanhal so fair, towering on its rust-red terraces above steep streets; if there was any, it was lost among the welter of lesser roofs. Worse, he could make out no axis, no heart to the city, no equal to the citadel of Kerbryhaine, ivory-hued under towers roofed in bronze and gold, nor the darkly graceful palace of Morvanhal, its carved columns and galleries weathered to the shade of long-shed blood, with its lesser palaces on the terraces below. "This has overgrown itself," he thought contemptuously, "become bloated with its own vigour, and now simply shapeless, a mere tangle of walls and streets."

But then the sun arose, and laid its first honours of scarlet and gold across the true regality of Kerys. What till now had been lost in black silhouette blazed into life, and left Elof staring, unable to believe what he was seeing; he turned to Roc and found him wild-eyed, agape, one hand clutching at his fiery tangle of hair. The sheer expanse of Kerys the City was greater than they had guessed, but that alone could not have daunted them so. It was the sun's slow progress across the jagged slopes above that held their gaze as by rivets; for hill there was none.

Over wall upon wall of sand-hued stone that rich light played, through high arch and carven buttress, over terrace, court and gallery and colonnade, behind turrets of every size and shape, and across the two high towers joined by a wall that were its crown, towers curved and shaped into a stylised shape that suggested the horns of some vast bull. The height alone of that vast edifice was astonishing; it reared above the mists like some lonely island in the ocean, and looked as ancient, as immovable. And all of this the sunlight turned to gold.

That first sight of it sent a cool shiver of awe through mind and body. Higher rose the red rim, hanging behind those crags of masonry like a mantle of fires, and higher yet, till to the astonished eyes of the watchers it seemed to settle between those graceful twin towers, rest upon that wall like a brilliant gem set in the crown of the world itself. For so it had been contrived with vast care by those who built the castle and the shore walls long ago, that around dawn each day the sun should be seen so from the first gate to open, appearing to hang there for a time, and from the last gate to close at evening; as the sun's road shifted with the seasons, so also the choice of gates, for there were many. Not the sight alone held Elof rapt, but the concept behind it and the cunning. It was contrived, that effect, with an equal insight into the paths of the heavens and the ways of the minds of men. Those who lacked wisdom would be astounded; and those who had it would still be daunted, by appreciation of the skill involved.

Yet about that majestic citadel itself there was nothing monstrous, as there might have been; some stark tower or castle of that scale might have spoken more of folly than of grandeur, of brutal domination rather than airy strength. It might have loomed like a threat above that great sprawl of humanity beneath; instead it seemed to grow out of it. This was no single heap of stone, no one palace or fortress. This was a palace manyfold, a city in itself of a hundred levels, as if an astonishing host of halls and towers, tall and fair, had somehow been caught up in a web of woven stone, or in the tangles of some petrified tree. It was as if the city itself reached upward towards the sun and offered it a throne, as if its moving spirit sought to embrace the radiant source of life itself.

That noble vision held the travellers hard in thrall as the cog glided smoothly towards the gate. Then, all too abruptly and with no more than a shout of warning, the spell was shattered; the cog heeled violently as the helm was thrust hard down, lurching dangerously for such a top-heavy craft. Roc and Elof clung frantically to the mast as it swung, their feet scrabbling uselessly against the sudden steepness of the floor planks; a soldier on the deck below was less lucky, and slid down it to crash painfully against the starboard rail. The cog swung upright with a force that threatened to hurl the watchers from the masthead, and he lay groaning in the scuppers.

Across the river from the southward, on a huge squaresail even less wieldly than the cog's, came the largest ship Elof had ever seen, a monstrous broad-beamed barge half as large again as the longest dromund of his homeland; low in the water with a heavy load, it wallowed sullenly even in the calm waters of Yskianas, and the two galleys escorting it seemed torn between keeping close to lend support and darting away lest it might roll over on them. Lesser traffic scattered before it, and Trygkar and his sailors let out a fearful volley of oaths as the vast thing cut unheeding across the cog's bow.

"Grain from the south!" he spat, as if it were a foulness in itself. "Takes precedence over ail else afloat, by my lord king's edict, does that bloated bastard breeder, and acts as if there's naught else on the bloody River!" The great craft glided on regardless, and he swung the helm around again, scarcely more gently, to fall in behind it.

"And yet," said Elof breathlessly, still clinging to the masthead, "I can see why, after a fashion. That monster was so overloaded that any sudden check in its course would risk swamping it completely!"

"Then why in Hel's name must they load it so?" Roc snarled, as the cog glided into the archway, and the boom of the water echoed deeply about them.

"Because they need so much, I guess. Look at the size of this place! And with craft as crude as that they must need to wait for the fairest winds… Roc, I don't think these folk are very good sailors. Their ships are of kinds we've long since laid by."

"Hardly surprisingly, with naught but an overgrown river to play on. By this lass Verya they all swear by, our ancestors were braver than we thought, if they made that crossing in tubs like these! Or just plain daft!"

"Well then! We may have some things of value to teach them." The cog cleared the archway, and came out into a wide basin lined with stone quays; all were worn with age, and one or two were crumbling, collapsing into the waters of the dock. But whatever their view of repairs, evidently those in charge here believed in wasting no time on vital cargoes. The huge grain barge was already moored, and a chain of hunched figures were filing down onto its deck; the first were scrambling back up to the quay, bowed double under huge sacks. Nothing visible drove them, perhaps they were only eager for some extra payment for speed, yet he had seldom sensed so tangible an air of frantic haste and unhappiness; he could not hear one of them shout or laugh, let alone sing as did the dock workers of his own land. Free men or serfs, they were driven indeed. That sight, and the image of the fallen stone, brought back what that glorious vista had driven from their minds.

They were silent for a moment, for it seemed almost impossible to reconcile the two visions. But Roc echoed Elof's own though when he added "Maybe! If we can trust them!
If
!"

ChapterSix
- King and Mastersmith

The cog showed no sign of heading towards any of the berths, but rather moved out into the centre of the channel where the wind was clearest. Looking ahead, Elof was surprised to see that the channel led on into the bounds of the city, between hard walls of grey stone, faceless and windowless, much like the dockside storehouses of their own cities. He was even more surprised that it was only one of many such that wound about between the buildings, till distance dwindled them to threads glistening in the shadow of the citadel. Here and there he could even make out a mast against the rooftops. "Yet the ground does rise, however slightly… can it be they've some kind of lock system here, as the duergar do?"

This proved to be so, for when the cog rounded a bend in the channel it slackened sail, and two heavy water-gates closed behind it. Roc, who had never seen the duergar's dark rivers under stone, was fascinated as the waters came churning through the sluices; he had a great love for all cunning devices that needed no smithcraft in their operation. The cog rose swiftly, and as the further gates swung open it went gliding off down the new channel. This brought a further surprise. After the blank dockside buildings they were now passing between unmistakeable rows of houses, though there was little life about them as yet; only a chimney smoked here and there, and a baby cried in the distance. The streets were empty and the water of the channel glass-calm, mirroring buildings and blue skies; the cog glided cloud-like over the reflected rooftops, and strewed flecks of golden light in its wake. The houses themselves, built against one another in blocks large and small, were pleasing in proportion, many-storied and high-gabled; some had lime-washed walls, others were even plastered smooth and painted in pastel colours, pink and apple-green and soft blue. But most looked old and faded, and in some the plaster had faded to a flecked brown and begun to crack and peel away. A few had bands of decoration across the frontage between floors, so tangled and florid that even Eloi; used to archaic scripts, was slow to recognise them as old saws and mottoes, fragments of simple verse and the like. The town was beginning to come to life; a pump creaked noisily in a courtyard, chimneys smoked, one or two figures could be seen going about the narrow lanes. A breeze wafted them the odour of baking, and though different from die cornbread they knew it was no less irresistible; when the odour of frying meat drifted up to them from the deck braziers not even the excitements of the view could match it, and they went sliding like madmen down the shrouds.

At first Roc bolted his breakfast, afraid they might arrive at the citadel soon, till Elof pointed out that its towers, still visible over the rooftops even from the deck, looked only a little nearer; at this gentle pace they had a good half day's sailing ahead, at the least. This turned out to be too slight a guess; for to the scale of that great sprawling burg their minds were not yet attuned. Now and then, too, the cog must slow its pace, as the wind grew less or some other ship slid by it, fresh sails glistening in the bright sun, barring the breeze from the cog's stained square of strengthened linen; then Elof almost had to restrain Roc from springing ashore, so eager was he to tread these ancestral streets. By this one and that the channels led them, from lock to lock, ever rising. Quarter after quarter rolled smoothly by them, like illuminations on some vast unending scroll, divided by the channels and the grim encircling walls, now breached in many places and even plundered for house stone. As they went deeper the fine dwellings grew gradually more dilapidated, and gave away to older streets of sullen tenements, upper stories overhanging their muddy alleys till at the top they all but met; often crude gangways, rattling like dry bones in the breeze, ran between them in rough parody of the flying buttresses in the citadel above. But this poor quarter, large as it was, ended sharply at a broad channel; on the far side were blank walls of brick, more faceless storehouses. Here and there among them narrow sluices spilled fast streams into the channels and when Elof climbed to the masthead again he saw huge water-wheels turning under artificial falls; behind them a few tall chimneys smoked, spewing smuts and cinders at him along the breeze. Here evidently was a gathering of manufactories, with kilns for pottery or baked brick. Huddled in their smoky lee was a patch of decent houses and a bustling little market, and beyond them more of the faceless storehouses, ending in another canal. Past these were more houses, more canals, and then a long and august rooftree of some five stories that was unmistakably a guildhall, built much as they were in Morvanhal. Other guildhalls followed, and beyond them the tall narrow counting-houses of a merchant's quarter, very like that of Kerbryhaine; it set them thinking of their old friend Kathel the merchant, and how he was faring far off in the embattled west. But it was another quarter that brought home most sharply the kinship of this land with theirs.

They came first upon a wall of dense woodland, a slice of hunting park isolated like a veritable island between two curving channels that might once have been natural streams. Into the furthest of these the cog turned, and they saw that beyond it reared a row of walls so blind and windowless, so weatherstained and streaked to such a dismal shade of grey, that they might have been more storehouses, save only that they were too tall and too noble in proportion. And as the cog sailed gracefully by, with two white swans as heralds, Elof could make out that their wide roofs were not solid, but hollow at the centre, and also that the few outer windows they displayed, all in the uppermost stories, were many of them glazed with jewelled colours, and flanked by richly carven shutters.

"Remind you of anywhere?" Roc inquired.

Elof gestured at one doorway, surmounted by a carven shield whose blazon was blurred and unreadable with weathering, a mere mass of hollows and pits upon the stone. "Need you ask? Kermorvan's ancestral house, any other noble house in Kerbryhaine. Courts, four walls of rooms, almost all the windows facing inwards; well hidden from the world outside, from their noble rivals and the assessors of levies."