THE THIEF OF KALIMAR (Graham Diamond's Arabian Nights Adventures) (33 page)

Blue Fire!

Cold fire. Burning fire. Vengeful fire.

And here it was, before them tonight—not a magician’s trick, for such majesty could never be recreated; nor was it the passing illusion of Druid magic, that malevolent force that kept Aran at bay and powerless to stand against it.

Never could this be duplicated—though for countless years the black-souled Druids had tried. Oh, how they had tried. They had blended every alloy known to man to recreate it; forged each element time and again in futile effort to possess it. Even as alchemists seek to blend gold from dross, so had the conquerors of Speca sought to regain the lost power of the glittering scimitar.

Blue Fire!

Never had Aran dreamed that it might come again.

In due course the mysterious dagger began to lose its glow; gradually the face of the mountain and the sky returned to normal, silver stars glimmering brightly above as before. The men of Aran, the
Sklar,
stood dumbfounded, panting to catch lost breath and beginning to gaze at one another in wonder and amazement.

The Prince’s shoulders sagged, heavy with the weight of his burden. At length he managed to look once again to the row of Sages and the wizened leader who stood in stunned silence.

The aged lord drew a deep breath and nodded his head. “You are indeed your father’s son,” he rasped, clearing his throat. Then he turned from the Prince and peered at his companions, slowly lifting his arms toward the sky. “A Friend has indeed come,” he proclaimed for one and all to hear, and, glancing back to the stranger, he added, “Aran indeed welcomes you, and the return of the Blade of the Throne.”

Again the Prince bowed before them, this time with a small smile of satisfaction apparent on his face.

“Speak, Friend,” called the Sage. “Tell us why you have come to us, and how we may be of aid to you.”

Mariana was certain there was a twinkle in the Prince’s eyes as shook off his exhaustion and with a look of determination replied, “I, and my companions, have traveled half a world and more to reach the
Sklar
and the allies of Aran. We have faced peril and danger time and time again in our quest to reach Speca’s shores. Now,” here he sighed, “we must face perhaps the greatest danger of all—the regaining of my throne.”

Gasps rippled across the cold stone benches in the hollow of the mountain. The old Sage, wisest of the wise, looked at the yellow-haired Prince aghast. “No man—no mortal man—can enter the Eternal Darkness and live,” he stated flatly. “You journey to your deaths.” He glanced briefly at Mariana and Ramagar, then looked sternly at the Prince. “You have all come on a fool’s errand.”

The Prince shook his head. “No, my lord. Not a fool’s errand. I have come to regain what is rightly mine; to free my people and my land, to find a way to rid the world of Druid power for once and for all.”

“Noble thoughts,” came a deep voice from the back, and a tall muscular man, a fearsome fighter by his looks, stood from his place and glared down the sloping amphitheater at the Prince. “Many men would rid the North of this scourge, even give their own lives gladly. But we of Aran live beneath the shadow of the Darkness, and we alone know what awesome perils must be faced. How can you and your handful of friends possibly hope to succeed when even Aran’s fleet cannot?”

“Have you an army of magicians to send against the Druids?” came another deriding voice. “Or a thousand long ships indestructible against the Night-Watchers who prowl the black waters?”

“I know not of these ‘Night-Watchers,'” admitted the Prince.

The fierce lord looked at him with unmasked scorn. “Know you of the Dragon Ships whose armor cannot be pierced even by swords of steel? Or the Black Mists that descend on all ships that dare to pass below the clouds? Know you of the hideous tortures of their Dwarfking and the wizard who rules in his stead?”

The Prince shook his head, forced to admit that he had heard of none of it.

“Then you must be told. No ship, no man, has ever returned from the Eternal Dark. Aran knows, for once we tried. But no longer. Your throne can never be recovered. Sail your ship back to the land you came from. Speca has met her doom, now Aran must wait for her own. Nothing can save either one.”

Startled, the Prince stared inquisitively at the Sage. The old man sighed and bent his head, “‘Tis true, I fear,” he said in a low voice. “Slowly the Darkness spreads, encroaches upon us like a silent, evil bird in flight. Year by year the sky turns blacker before our eyes. I am old and will not live to see the day that it reaches our shores. So for myself I do not weep. But for the young of Aran, for the children and their children after them, I grieve every moment of my existence. Druid magic is upon us, upon all the lands of the North. And one by one we must succumb, until there is nothing left, nothing at all.”

Ramagar listened incredulously. “If this is true,” he called, stepping forward from his place and drawing closer to the Sage, “then why don’t you fight? Why don’t you gather your ships and meet this enemy head-on?”

The Sage smiled thinly, sadly amused by the young foreigner’s belief that no power is too great to match.

“You are the companion of a Friend,” he told the thief with understanding, “and therefore Aran shall consider you a Friend as well. But you speak of matters which you know so little of. Neither you nor your companions have seen what we have seen.” He shook his head slowly. “Ten thousand ships of Aran would be useless. Don’t you see? Druid magic comes not from the strength of their armies, nor even their grisly apparitions which prowl like beasts upon the black waters. No, we would face all this and more. But first the key to their power must be broken. Until then, we can do nothing.”

“But what is the key to this terrible Druid power?” questioned the thief. “Is it the spells themselves that these wizards cast?”

The Sage could not hide his sneer. “Aran does not hide from the conjuring of magicians,” he answered contemptuously. “What we fear is the hopelessness that the Druid coming has brought.” He drew a long breath of the chilled air and tightened his hold on his walking stick. “What we fear,” he repeated, “is that which has taken men’s very souls and condemned them forever, crushed them of will, stolen from them all that a man cherishes and left only despair in its place. What civilization would not cringe at the knowledge that to live is to be sapped of strength, rendered helpless, forlorn, and devoid of belief. Alas,” he sighed, “under such conditions we can only accept…”

“Accept?” chimed Ramagar. “Accept what?”

“Our fate,” replied the Sage sadly.

The thief of Kalimar was clearly confused by the strange and fatalistic soliloquy he had just heard. “Exactly what is this evil you speak of that so misshapes men? Above all else, what magic weighs so heavily that you fear it worse than death?”

There was a pause, and Mariana shuddered; she alone among her companions had understood the Sage’s words; she alone had realized the terrible threat looming against Aran and the North.

“It is the night,” she whispered, the words almost too painful to speak aloud.

The Sage looked up suddenly and cast his glance toward the young girl before him. With widened eyes he studied her briefly and then beckoned for her to come closer.

Mariana let go of the haj’s strong hand and softly stepped toward the speaker’s place where both the Prince and Ramagar stood silently. Silver beams of moonlight caressing her dark, flowing hair, she lifted her chin and gazed evenly at the Sage.

“Repeat your thoughts, child,” he told her gently, and Mariana swallowed as she nodded.

“The blackness, my lord,” she said meekly. “It can only be the Eternal Dark itself that causes Speca to lie in her dormant and enslaved state. A malevolent cloak across the sky enshrouding one land and slowly descending upon Aran …”

The wise man continued to study her; he noted her youth, her beauty, her dark eyes and golden skin so very different from that of the women of the North.

“You have spoken wisely and correctly, child,” he said at last. “It is only the Darkness that we fear, for we know the madness it can bring. It creeps inside a man’s soul like a fog, cold and damp, severe and relentless. It brings a world without stars, a world without moonlight, a world without the warmth of the sun. And it is this knowledge above all else that we cannot defeat. Only the blackness defeated Speca so long ago; Aran, try though she may, cannot hope to best it. And now it spreads insidiously eastward to subjugate us. This then is the true strength of Druid power. This and only this. Without the Eternal Night against us Aran would surely fight, even as the slaves of Speca themselves would lift off their yokes and rise to rid themselves of their conquerors.”

Ramagar looked away painfully as the Sage ended his words. The thief quickly recalled his own brief encounter with the Eternal Dark, that fleeting glimpse he had had from the
Vulture’s
deck when the ship had first approached Aran. The fearful blackness had spread across the entire western horizon, and even at his safe distance the mere sight of it had sent chills up and down Ramagar’s spine. He had seen the sun itself, a blazing ball of crimson in the evening sky, descend into nothingness before his startled eyes as it dipped lower and lower, unable to penetrate the dim pall lowly settling beneath the clouds. So frightening had this first view been that he had been forced to look away and try to block the thought of it from his mind. No wonder it drove men to madness!

“But surely there must be some way to dispel the Dark,” protested Mariana.

The old Sage smiled a thin kind smile at her, one that was most warm and generous considering the poor circumstances of the discussion. “Ah, so many times we have tried to find such a way,” he lamented bitterly. “And each time we have failed completely. The best of Aran’s efforts have been futile; the terror we face cannot be dispelled, nor even pushed back from our shores. We know what we can expect, and that is no less than the worst.” He glanced back to the Prince and the two men locked stares. “Aran is doomed,” he continued, “although outside of the
Sklar
our peoples do not yet know it. Each day brings the Eternal Dark that much closer; already our fighting ships have sighted the grim vessels of the Night-Watchers sailing closer to our harbors. I fear that the North is lost forever, and nothing can be done to alter this distressing destiny.”

For a long while there was no further talk, as all reflected on what had been said. The wind began to pick up again, making eerie noises as it gusted down over the quiet amphitheater, whipping and whistling between the cracks and crevices along the mountain’s jagged ridges.

It was Mariana’s voice that finally broke the silence. “Then our true enemy is but the Darkness,” she observed. “And if that much could be conquered then we might stand a chance …”

The Sage laughed a short hollow laugh, the bitterness of his mirth apparent to all. “Yes, child. As simple a matter as that. For then we would know that Druid magic has been defeated.” He hung his shoulders dejectedly and pinched the bridge of his nose. “But such a welcome happening can never be. No man, no woman, on the face of the world possesses such a power.”

“Perhaps you are wrong,” said the Prince with an air of mystery. “Perhaps a way can yet be found to dispel the Darkness, to scatter the blackness across a thousand winds and render it harmless.”

Steely eyes tightened and glowered questioningly at the Friend of Aran, son of kings long since vanquished from their home. “Do you truly believe what you say?” said the Sage. “After all you have been told here tonight? After all you have learned? The greatest minds of Speca herself could not regain the sky, nor even the bold fighting ships of Aran.”

The Prince nodded glumly. All this was true; indeed the picture the Sage had painted was even bleaker than the one he had expected to find. Yet now he was all the more determined to go forward in his task, to defeat the Druids before their power encompassed the world.

“But you have forgotten one thing, my lord,” he said to the Sage, folding his arms and smiling slyly. “My fathers have entrusted me with a tool—a single tool to be sure—but with its aid, and perhaps your own as well, I shall defeat our enemies.”

“The scimitar!” cried Mariana, having momentarily forgotten all about it.

The Prince nodded gravely. “Blue Fire. The one weapon we possess that the Druids with all their magic cannot duplicate.”

“The Blade of the Throne is a mighty power,” conceded the Sage. “Yet how can it possibly defeat all that we face?”

The Prince shook his head slowly. “For now your question cannot be answered. But this much I do know—a way must be found for my companions and myself to slip past these Night-Watchers you have spoken of and reach Speca’s darkened shores. Unless we can penetrate within the world of blackness ourselves, live with it and breathe of it, Blue Fire will be of no value to either Speca or Aran.”

“The Night-Watchers cannot be passed, Friend,” called the burly warlord darkly, again rising from his place at the
Sklar
and addressing all the visitors. “Your ship knows not these waters. You will be caught—and punished for it. Tortured in ways that no man dares to speak of.”

“Argyle speaks the truth,” added the Sage glumly. “His own ships have tried …”

The Prince shot the awesome warrior a long, hard glance. “Then you have seen Speca?” he asked.

Argyle’s cold eyes showed no fear with the memory of his experiences, only the grim sailor’s knowledge and respect for an adversary that had been responsible for the deaths of his brothers and his crew; he had escaped with his own life only by the thinnest thread of fortune.

“I have seen the Dark Lands,” he said at last, scratching at his red flowing beard and feeling the scars of battle etched into his face. “But no man can reach her shores. At least not without Druid chains. Only a fool would even try.”

“Yet you tried,” pressed Ramagar, the thief’s keen eyes quickly appraising the warrior and realizing him to be as brave as he was brawny.

Argyle pursed his lips in a grim smile. “When I was young, I too was a fool.”