Gates of Stone Page 3

  They drew blood. The pikemen stabbed into the mass of intruders, and Jun could see men falling, screaming, and the pike points come back bloody. A few of the intruders got past the pike heads and crashed into the wall of guardsmen. And the War-Master in the center of the front rank met them, doing terrible execution with his overlong kris. The line held, the spears punching forward, skewering the foe, other guardsmen, face-to-face with their enemies, stabbing close quarter with their long knives. Hardan hacked the sword arm off one yelling fiend. But muskets barked from the crowd of enemy on the walkway, arrows flew and men of the royal guard stumbled and fell, leaving dangerous gaps in the line.

  Then attackers gathered their courage, and suddenly surged forward. They brushed aside the inexpertly held pikes, leaped into their thin ranks and rolled over the lot of them in one swift, howling charge. The pitiful handful of royal guardsmen was entirely devoured. Dull blades made more terrible by the flashing firelight chopped down and came up bloody, hacked bodies spilled sideways, splashing into the black water. Shrieks of pain and shouts of crazed laughter filled the air.

  Jun knew that he must not stand idle but he could not move his legs. They seemed glued to the stones of the ground. His mouth was wide open. His eyes wider. It did not seem real—perhaps this was all just some terrible but very lifelike obat dream.

  He saw Hardan erupt out of the huddle of writhing bodies at the end of the central walkway by the Royal Pavilion, his long kris swinging. He took the head clean off a bald fellow with a long pigtail. He severed the shoulder and arm from another heavily tattooed man—then a long spear stabbed him hard in the side, the steel point crunching through the yellow-bamboo armor. Hardan’s body jerked with the impact. He roared, fell to his knees; the spear was retracted. But the War-Master lurched up again and turned to face his foe, the kris lifted high. Hardan stepped forward. At the same moment, a long-handled ax looped out of the mass of foemen and hacked into the side of his face and Hardan fell back to one knee, the blood black on his cheek. The axman pulled his blade free, swung again, and the top half of Hardan’s skull wheeled away and splashed into the Moon Pool.

  The War-Master’s death spurred Jun into movement: he darted back into the pavilion, rushed through the first room and into the second. In the darkness he scrabbled with the lock of the chest that held his most precious possessions. He got the big lid open and rummaged inside to find bow and quiver. Then he hurtled back to the entrance to his apartments and looked out in absolute horror.

  The Watergarden was already burning. The enemy were all over the paths, in and out of the pavilions—hundreds of unfamiliar faces, savage in the leaping flames, gleeful—some already splashing playfully in the pools, a knot of men by the Pavilion of War crouched over a screaming girl. He saw his father by the steps of the Royal Pavilion, a lone pikeman at his back, two servants with long knives on either side.

  His father, naked but for his sleeping sarong, had the Khodam in his right hand, its pitted steel glittering in the light from the fat moon. As Jun watched, the Son of Heaven lightly touched the palm of his left hand to the wavy blade, pulled it down, the metal slicing through the skin, and immediately a pulse of color seemed to leap from the touch of his blood and expand through the blade, surging up its entire length, changing its ancient silver to a deep and fiery red.

  Jun could hardly believe his eyes.

  The Khodam was now a tongue of flame in his father’s hand. A pair of shaven-headed men, their faces painted with horizontal yellow stripes, rushed at the king, curved swords slashing down at his bare head. He ducked and swept the Khodam across his front and the two men parted at the middle, four sections tumbling, blood jetting high, as if they were made of no more than bean curd. Then a mass of men, a dozen at least, followed them in, hurling themselves at the slender old man with the blood-red flaming sword. His father whirled the blade in a complicated pattern, carving into the crowd, arms, legs spinning away, bodies falling, piling on the flagstones, slipping into the nearest pools. An arrow lanced out from the mass, missed his father and took the servant behind him in the throat. His father advanced, the sizzling Khodam held high and to the right. He slashed diagonally through an iron-armored fellow, slicing him through from shoulder to hip. A spearman ran in, jabbed at the half-naked figure, his long, probing shaft immediately hacked away; then his father leaped quickly in and separated the man from his head. A space opened up between the Son of Heaven with the terrible red blade and his horde of enemies.

  Jun stood and stared, his bow and arrows forgotten in his hands. Forty paces away, the Son of Heaven was standing alone, the Khodam brandished high, the mob of a hundred jostling men on the walkway between two pools held at bay by its glowing, ruddy power. A spear arced out, and his father jumped nimbly out of its path.

  A tall, slim figure in a long, gauzy gray cloak stepped forward out of the mass of enemies. He held out his arms wide, as if holding back the tide of men. His only weapon was a long black staff. At the head of the staff was a large green jewel, the size of a hen’s egg, which was protected by a thin curve of sharp, shiny steel, like a miniature scimitar blade, which rose out of the wood of the staff to curl over the top of the jewel and end in a needle-point. The man’s headdress was an elegant fan of starched, pure white peaks of decreasing size. Through the thin cloak, Jun could make out a black-and-white-checkered sarong and green silk jacket. His narrow, dark-skinned face was lit from beneath by a dropped and guttering torch on the causeway, and Jun could see it perfectly clearly: a broad, flattened nose, high cheekbones, a slash for a mouth and two large, dark, hooded eyes.

  The tall man said something quietly to his father, and Jun heard his father laugh bitterly, and lift the Khodam higher. The Son of Heaven boldly stepped toward the gray-clad stranger, who grasped the bladed head of his staff and gripped. Jun could see the blood ooze from between the stranger’s fingers as the flesh of his palm was forced onto the sharp steel and the green jewel suddenly seemed to throb with life. The man gave a high, harsh cry, like a word of command; then there was a sound like an axman splitting the trunk of a palm tree, a creak that grew into a deafening crack. The gauzy cloak fluttered down, a buzzing filled the air and a black amorphous mass boiled out of its folds.

  A swarm.

  There was no sign at all of the tall stranger. He had utterly vanished. Jun’s father shouted in fear and stepped back, but the swarm, now spreading out and distinguishable as a mass of black flies glinting with flecks of iridescent green, the whole teardrop-shaped and the size of a house, rose in the air high above his head, hovered above the raised Khodam and descended. It swooped down onto the Son of Heaven, smothering him. The night was vibrating with the deafening saw of insects. Jun saw the flaming blade of the ancient kris sweep through the mass of flies, a few insects exploding, popping with flashes of brilliant green, their husks falling like thin rain wherever the sword touched, but thousands upon thousands of flies were all over his father, a shiny, heaving mass, tiny bodies crawling into every orifice, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, pulsing like a living black carpet over his entire body.

  The hum took on a deeper, more urgent note. The Khodam swept once, twice through the empty air, and then dropped from fingers now dripping with black. The shapeless, writhing lump that had once been his father crumpled to its knees, and toppled over onto one side.

  The thump as the body of his father hit the ground broke Jun out of his trance. The horde of men on the causeway gave a roar of approval and, as if released from some barrier, immediately rushed forward. A colossal wave of terror crashed down on Jun. He dropped bow and quiver, turned on his heel and, a world of nameless horror clamoring inside his head, he ran full pelt back into the darkness of his pavilion.

  CHAPTER 3

  Extract from Ethnographic Travels by Professor Tolmund K. Parehki of the University of Dhilika

  The sprawling city of Singarasam is the chief marketplace of the Laut Besar. More accurate
ly, it is a bubbling stew of filth and iniquity, greed and vice where tens of thousands of people of all colors and creeds come together from across the world to trade “obat”—a powerful narcotic, which is cultivated on several islands in the Laut Besar but nowhere else on this Earth. Other rare and valuable cargoes—including spices, timber, slaves and gold—are exchanged here, too, but obat is the most lucrative and important commodity by far, and the city began life some hundreds of years ago as a place for the early Han merchants to safely store their harvests of the precious leaves and resin.

  Today, when not engaged in trade, the teeming hordes of Singarasam enjoy nothing better than murdering their enemies in the dank back alleys of the city, except perhaps for lying to, scheming against and stealing from their dearest friends—but they are rather less enthusiastic about paying their annual tribute in silver to the Lord of the Islands. This is the traditional title of most powerful of the local sea raiders, the pirate chief who occupies the First House, as his gaudy palace is known, and who calls himself King of Singarasam . . .

  They made him wait. To show their contempt for him personally and for his equally insignificant trading house, they made him wait for more than an hour. Nearly two. It was not the first time he had been made to kick his heels by a foreign ruler. But this was different. This was quite deliberate. This was humiliation Singarasam style.

  Farhan Madani had heard the bells on the Exchange toll the twelfth hour, the last hour of business when the counters were slammed shut, and the clerks began to gather up their precious sheaves of palm leaf before tallying up their day’s trade. He had heard a mad preacher howling endlessly on a street corner at passersby, begging them to give up their sinful love of money and follow the true way of the Holy Martyr. Now, outside the First House, in the narrow, crowded streets of Singarasam, the skinny, half-naked Dewa vendors would be pumping the oil stoves to start the seething fires, chopping vegetables, garlic, ginger, chilies and small, nameless chunks of offal and bone that would make the base of the delicious fiery soups they sold by the bowlful all through the long, warm night.

  Farhan was hungry. He had not eaten since dawn. And at his age—nearly forty years—he liked to be fed regularly, and to savor his food in quiet comfort. After he had seen the Lord of the Islands—if he ever was granted an audience after this endless wait—he would order a bowl of the rich, fragrant soup from the Dewa street cooks to either celebrate his triumph or drown his sorrows. Celebrate! He would certainly be celebrating after this meeting! How could he not? How could the Lord of the Islands—the great Ongkara himself, fail to be delighted by his proposal. For Ongkara, there was no risk, no possibility of loss. He was being offered pure profit for something that would not cost him a copper kupang. Farhan would be celebrating after this audience. He knew it. The delay was merely a piece of the famous Singarasam shadow-puppet theater designed to make the Big Man feel even more powerful and remind the supplicant of his lowly place. It meant absolutely nothing.

  Would they have made him wait this long for an audience with an important official at home in Dhilika? Probably not. The elite state functionaries in the capital of the Indujah Federation, a powerful trading conglomeration that occupied a vast peninsula two thousand leagues to the west of the Laut Besar, were of a brisker stamp. He would have been seen promptly at the given time or not at all. But he was not at home now. This was Singarasam, the greatest, indeed only proper city in the Laut Besar and, while it had been the base for his one-man trading company for the past year and more, he had never felt comfortable here.

  The weight of the leather bag on his lap, however, was quietly reassuring. It was a fine-looking gift—and he was sure it would ease the way for him. The Lord of the Islands would be pleased, he would be sweetened, he would be made generous and malleable.

  The alternative—that Ongkara might refuse him—was unthinkable. There were people, very serious people, who would be extremely angry if Farhan were to fail. And there were also his debts to consider, too. Farhan did not know the precise value of his debts, the exact number in silver-ringgu coin—how could he, when the interest was calculated on a daily basis?—but he knew it was a mountainous sum and that his chief creditor, Xi Gung, was growing impatient. When the head of the mighty House of Xi became impatient with one of his clients, terrible things happened. Xi Gung preferred to take his payment in cold, hard silver—but he would take it in dripping flesh, too, if necessary. Farhan shuddered, pushed the evil thought aside. Ongkara would see sense. The Lord of the Islands would provide. All would be well.

  “Lord Madani?”

  Farhan had been so enfolded in his thoughts that he had failed to notice the servant standing before him. If he truly was a servant—the quantity of bullion sewn into his jacket and sarong would have paid the interest on Farhan’s loans for a week. And his manner was hardly subservient—by his expression he seemed to be smelling something foul, an odor that apparently only he was refined enough to detect.

  “Yes, that’s me, Farhan Madani,” he said, standing up stiffly from the bamboo armchair, and brushing at the deep crease marks in his best blue-linen jacket.

  “His Royal Highness has a few moments at his disposal and has graciously agreed to grant you a brief audience.”

  The servant turned and began to glide toward a vast pair of doors.

  “About bloody time,” muttered Farhan, hefting the leather bag in his arms.

  The servant stopped, turned smoothly on the heel of his golden slipper, and said, “Did you say something, Lord Madani?”

  “Nothing important,” said Farhan, hoisting up a weak smile for the man.

  “I thought I heard you say something about time. I thought that perhaps I heard you say that you did not have the time to see His Royal Highness at present—and if that were the case, then I would gladly show you back down to the street. There is a discreet tradesman’s entrance not far from here that could also perfectly well be used as an exit.”

  “No, no, I’d be delighted to pay my respects to His Royal Highness right now. The sooner the better, in fact.”

  “Very good,” said the servant, and he continued leading the way to the tall doors. Farhan followed after the man, head drooping, knowing himself bested.

  * * *

  • • •

  The Audience Hall was a shock to Farhan’s sensibilities. It was big, to be sure—three times the height of a man and a bowshot in length and width—but that was to be expected. What made his jaw drop was the extraordinary ugliness of the place. It was decorated in the high Han style—naturally, for the First House was the original trading warehouse of the Han adventurers who had founded the island haven of Singarasam all those centuries ago—but since then each occupant of the palace had added his or her own sense of pomp.

  A double line of blood-red pillars, circled by golden dragons with yellow beards, purple spine crests and splayed green feet, made a kind of tunnel through the center of the hall leading to the Obat Bale where the Lord of the Islands was seated in his splendor. There were more golden dragons, silver eagles, jade fish and blue-lacquer bulls on the ceiling. The floor was speckled gray marble with purple-and-green lotus-flower mosaics. And the whole huge place was lit with a thousand candles hanging from half a hundred gold-chased crystal chandeliers. It was as bright as noon in there—brighter, as the golden scales of the many, many decorative dragons seemed to multiply the reflected light. Farhan blinked—he had a strong urge to cover his eyes. A vast gong beat three times. He stumbled slightly at the onslaught of clashing colors and sounds, recovered, raised his chin and strode manfully down the center of the hall toward the distant Obat Bale as the golden-clad servant sonorously intoned the names and titles of the Lord of the Islands—King of Singarasam, Lion of the Southern Lands, Dragon of the High Seas, Scourge of the Lawless, Shield of the Righteous, Font of All Harmony—Ongkara the Fearless.

  Farhan reached the dais on which the Obat Bal
e was placed and fell to his knees on the white rice-straw mat, arms extended, prostrating himself in awe before the majesty of the Lord of the Islands in the time-honored fashion. The servant announced him inaccurately as Lord Farhan of the House of Madani—Farhan was no lord, and the House of Madani had but a single occupant, himself. Yet he was not going to complain at being made to sound grander than he was. He gently knocked his forehead on the mat, three times, then three times, and three more times, then held his position, waiting patiently for the Lord of the Islands to take notice of him.

  He had been prepared for another long, undignified wait with his face pressed to the ground and his arse in the air and was surprised to hear Ongkara saying crossly, “Get up, man. Get up and say your piece—I haven’t got all night.”

  Farhan cautiously raised his head and looked directly at the Lord of the Islands for the first time. The Lion of the Southern Lands was seated in a wooden throne, which was placed on a vast, square, white-canvas bag stuffed tight with dried obat leaves—the Obat Bale, which signified the first trade that had enriched the rulers of Singarasam. He was flanked on either side by two stern-faced Jath guards, dark, bearded men with black turbans, loose black robes and huge drawn scimitars. To Farhan’s surprise he saw that Ongkara was a little frog of a man, short and thick in the body but with long, skinny brown limbs and an outsized head under a tall and heavy-looking jewel-encrusted golden crown. His eyes were small, black and angry; his small nose was flattened to his face; his mouth was as wide as the length of Farhan’s hand. He was every bit as ugly as his Audience Hall, Farhan decided, before hurriedly thrusting that undiplomatic thought away lest it show on his face.