Dream Finder Read online

  ‘Desire!’ Ivaroth snarled, suddenly angered by the young man’s grief and the seeming absence of any wish for vengeance. ‘My intentions for the south aren’t some idle whim. They’re the destiny of our people. The southlands were ours before the sea people drove our ancestors out and forced us to retreat to this . . .’ He waved his arm across the plains about them. ‘. . . this bleak wasteland.’

  Wrenyk followed the sweeping arm and his eyes became sad. ‘You’re as blind as you’re demented, Ivaroth,’ he said. ‘You see only a wilderness while I, even in my youth, see true riches. And you speak of old camp fire tales and fables about the south as though they were as true and real as a quarrel about last season’s hunting.’ Contempt began to mingle with his sorrow. ‘But, setting that aside, great leader of men,’ he went on. ‘Haven’t your kin in the border tribes told you about the mountains with their great crags and narrow pathways where a missed footing can hurl man and horse into depths unimaginable?’ The contempt became withering. ‘We’re a plains’ people, Ivaroth, not mountain-dwellers. And horses are plains’ animals. And has no one told you about the stone-faced Bethlarii who guard the passes and relish nothing more than cruel fighting in that terrain?’

  He pointed to the south. ‘Blood, pain and death are all that await you and all that follow you there, Ivaroth, believer of children’s fireside tales and murderer of women and children.’

  Ivaroth, stunned by Wrenyk’s tirade, sat motionless for a moment. Then he started forward, his face livid, as if to strike him. But Wrenyk did not flinch. Instead he suddenly stared into his eyes intently. Ivaroth hesitated. Wrenyk’s eyes were like his own. The irises were black, like deep pits.

  ‘Ah,’ Wrenyk said softly, his voice breathless with both fear and realization. ‘I see you truly now. You have the sight as I do. You walk the dreams of others. It’s you who’s brought the demon to our nights. You who’s been possessed by it. And it’s you it uses for its own ends! How could I not have seen.’ His voice rose to a shout. ‘Abomination! I . . .’

  Before he could finish however, Ivaroth had deftly pivoted his spear in its saddle sheath and with a powerful thrust, run him clean through.

  Wrenyk cried out in pain and shock, but then he wrapped his hands around the shaft to prevent Ivaroth withdrawing it. Leaning forward on to it, he whimpered, childlike. Then, his face close to Ivaroth’s, he opened his mouth and breathed in his face. Ivaroth flinched away but, held by his own grip to his spear, he could not withdraw. With unexpected vigour, Wrenyk suddenly spat at him and, releasing the spear, wiped one hand down Ivaroth’s cheek. It left a smear of dust and black ash.

  ‘By air, water, earth and fire, I curse you, Ivaroth,’ Wrenyk gasped, scarcely able to speak. ‘Would I had the flame here that would sere your accursed black soul, but . . .’ His voice faded and he began to grope for a dagger in his belt. As he did so, Ivaroth wrenched his spear free. Wrenyk cried out again, and with one hand clutched at his bleeding wound while with the other he gripped his saddle in an instinctive attempt to avoid the rider’s indignity of tumbling from his horse.

  ‘There are others, abomination,’ he whispered painfully. ‘Others who walk the dreams and who will oppose . . .’

  Ivaroth swung the spear round and struck him viciously on the temple with its weighted butt. The impact tore Wrenyk out of his saddle, but he uttered no sound other than a harsh gasp as he crashed on to the hard earth.

  Deliberately, Ivaroth jerked his horse round to trample on the still form, kicking it into brief, grotesque life. Then he raised his spear high, a great cry forming in his throat.

  It faltered before it left him, however, as he looked again at the ridge of the hill. It was empty. The Ensceini had gone. Drifted softly away like the morning mist while all eyes had been on the two leaders.

  For a moment the sudden shock turned his stomach into ice and the trembling that had possessed Wrenyk’s hands threatened to take over his own.

  Feverishly he fought for control of his wilful body, keeping his face away from his men. For a moment he felt the great momentum of his destiny waver. Then, as the abyss opened before him, he was himself again.

  His face furious, he rounded on his waiting riders.

  ‘Donkeys!’ he thundered. ‘Blind, brainless donkeys. Isn’t there one pair of eyes among you?’ The entire mass of riders moved back as one under the weight of his anger. Then, as he paused, sensing the declaration of a dire punishment for their neglect, they forestalled it with the same spontaneous unanimity by simultaneously moving forward with a great cry before he could pronounce it.

  Rapidly gathering speed, they poured up the hillside like a great, breaking wave.

  Ivaroth, standing in their path, found, as leaders have before, that he had little alternative but to lead the charge.

  Wrenyk’s body was crushed beyond recognition by the same hooves that had destroyed his tribe.

  But the furious charge was to little avail. When the leading riders reached the top of the hill, only a few of the Ensceini were to be seen, and they were travelling at great speed in different directions. The rest were gone; vanished like campfire smoke into the vast, deceptive terrain that they knew so well.

  Ivaroth reined his horse to a halt and wiped Wrenyk’s spittle from his face. He watched the distant, fleeing figures fade into the landscape and cursed silently to himself. That had been an ill finish to what should have been the final act of his conquest of the many tribes of the plains.

  The Ensceini were to have been publicly and conspicuously crushed not only for their continued opposition to his will but also to stiffen the resolve of some of his less enthusiastic allies. Now, scattered and leaderless, they could offer him no opposition, but their strange departure might ensure that part of them would linger in the minds of his superstitious followers. That, at least, he could crush.

  ‘We’ve no time to chase wisps of dead grass over the plains.’ His powerful personality washed over his now silent followers. ‘The Ensceini are no more. They’ve paid the price of their defiance. Now, united, we shall prepare for our greater destiny.’ And with a mighty cry, he turned his horse about and galloped back down towards the camp.

  As the riders turned in response, the cry, ‘Ivaroth, Mareth Hai! Ivaroth, Mareth Hai!’ began to be heard, and as they reached the camp, it was ringing out in a great, echoing roar.

  Mareth Hai. First and greatest. Great leader. King emperor. The words held many meanings with the many tribes, but above all they meant that his power was now absolute and beyond question.

  The acclamation swept away the lingering remnants of dismay at the escape of the Ensceini and of Wrenyk’s black-eyed sight into his soul. Ivaroth rode the sound as he might ride a string of chained horses in the Mirifest, the great annual celebration of riding skills that, hitherto, had been the only uniting element in the lives of the plains’ tribes.

  Faintly, like a slave whispering in his ear as he rode in triumph, however, Wrenyk’s last words returned to him. ‘There are others who walk the dreams . . .’

  They were as nothing, however, amid the jubilation and exhilaration and it took little effort on his part to dismiss them. Many strange, terrifying things happened in his night wanderings, but with the blind man as his guide and guardian he was protected from all ills when asleep just as he was protected in his waking hours.

  ‘Ivaroth, Mareth Hai!’

  The cry seemed to hover in the air about him, all through the breaking of the camp and the return south to the huge, almost permanent, camp at Carthak that had become the base for his conquest of the tribes.

  It grieved some of his closest personal allies that he seemed to be abandoning their traditional wandering ways, and there were, indisputably, many serious problems associated with living in a large fixed camp.

  The concerns he eased with a mixture of blandishment and encouragement. ‘It’ll not be for long . . . The harder we strive, the sooner we can go our ways again . . . Are we incapable of doing what the en
feebled city dwellers of the south do?’

  The problems he solved by brutal delegation. ‘Deal with it,’ he would say, usually to the bringer of the problem. And it soon became apparent that that was to be the totality of his involvement. After some spectacular demonstrations, few returned to their leader with excuses, however valid, about why they had not been able to achieve this or that object.

  Those problems that he could not solve were those he suffered from himself. Those that were written into the very nature of the people. For the plains’ people were wanderers, and the children of wanderers for unknown numbers of generations. To remain still was to be imprisoned.

  Yet they remained in one place, held there ostensibly by Ivaroth’s will and the needs of his wars of conquest, but in reality held by the strange needs of the blind man.

  ‘This land is rich in the ancient powers,’ was all that he would offer Ivaroth on the rare occasions when he was at once coherent and in a mood to explain.

  Ivaroth, however, was able to use the subtle anguish produced by this defiance of the tribespeople’s basic natures to weld together the savage and angry heart of his huge army.

  ‘When we are done, we shall have the entire world to roam in and none shall gainsay us.’

  It was the elder Wrenyk’s querying, and subsequent rejection of this promise that had led ultimately to his death and his tribe’s downfall.

  As the caravan neared Carthak, Ivaroth looked at the sprawling, ragged jumble of tents appearing on the horizon, their curved, peaked roofs seeming to mimic the mountains behind them to the south.

  Carthak was built on the site that his tribe had been camping on when he had been expelled, and he could never approach it now without recalling his return from that brief exile, riding Ketsath’s horse through the low morning mist and carrying a strange, hooded figure behind him.

  A child gathering water from a stream had been the first to see him. She had looked up, wide-eyed and alarmed, as his horse had clattered on the stones fringing the curve of the opposite shore. There had been a brief pause and then recognition had dawned and she had turned and fled, calling out to her father. The pitcher she had been using rocked for a moment then tumbled over slowly to return most of its contents to the stream.

  Ivaroth splashed his horse through the shallow stream and, bending low from his saddle, swept up the pitcher. With a grim smile he drained the small amount of water that remained in it, then threw it on to the rocks nearby where it smashed. He did not offer any to the figure behind him.

  The child’s shrill cries roused the camp more effectively than any amount of clamouring bells, and Ivaroth soon found himself walking his horse along an alleyway of hostile, shouting people. Whether intimidated by his arrogant manner or just curious to see his fate at the hands of others, however, none tried to lay hands on him.

  When he reached the heart of the camp, the elders of the tribe were already gathering to meet him.

  He did not wait to be addressed, however. ‘I come as your chieftain to take your obeisance, and to lead you and all my people to our greater destiny,’ he said before any of them could speak. Then, swinging his leg over his horse’s neck so as not to disturb his companion, he dropped down on to the ground solidly and stared about him.

  After a momentary, shocked silence, shouts of abuse and scornful denial began to rise from the crowd.

  ‘Be silent,’ Ivaroth shouted immediately. His voice was unexpectedly powerful and seemed to echo across the whole camp. The cries faded as rapidly as they had arisen.

  The elders were less intimidated. ‘Your right to be chieftain in your brother’s stead is forfeit, as is your life, Ivaroth Ungwyl,’ one of them said, stepping forward. ‘Not only for defying the sentence of exile given to you for the slaying of your brother, but for the murder of Ketsath.’

  ‘That’s not for the likes of you to determine,’ Ivaroth said, unabashed by this opposition. ‘Ketsath was sent to provide me mount and sustenance, for that alone his name will be honoured by future generations.’ He glanced round the crowd until he saw some of Ketsath’s kin. ‘And he died well,’ he said to them. ‘A true man. No yielder. He should have been buried thus.’

  This comment and the dignified manner of its delivery caused a faint murmur of approval from parts of the crowd.

  ‘No!’ shouted the elder, his voice shocked. ‘You add a blasphemy to your crimes, Ivaroth. You speak as though Ketsath were a sacrifice from the gods. He was a green youth that chance brought across your path in your moment of need. And he was no match for your cruel skills . . .’

  Ivaroth pointed at him. ‘Do not purport to tell me the ways of the gods, old man,’ he said. ‘They guide my steps while they toss you hither and thither like seeds in the wind.’

  The elder stepped forward furiously, but stopped abruptly as he met Ivaroth’s gaze.

  ‘I didn’t return to bandy words with old men,’ Ivaroth said, waving his hand dismissively. ‘I returned to fulfil my destiny.’ Then, without losing any of his commanding presence, he became conciliatory. ‘But I shall not disregard the ways of my people,’ he shouted. ‘Set out the gauntlet. And make haste. I weary of this needless chatter.’

  The remark was greeted first with silence and then uproar. His brief sojourn in the wilds had softened his brain and a death madness was now upon him, was the immediate opinion of most.

  No one could survive the gauntlet! Most accused men willingly accepted banishment or slavery rather than run it.

  Within minutes, the two lines of men had formed, facing one another and swinging their weighted staves. Ivaroth watched with a look of amusement on his face. Then, as the crowd fell silent, he turned to the hooded figure still waiting quietly on the horse, and held out his hand to him.

  The figure moved its head in an unsettling, unnatural manner, then its hand came out, its fingers curling and uncurling expectantly. At once hesitantly and deliberately they wrapped themselves around Ivaroth’s extended hand.

  Then, abruptly, they released him, and waved him sharply towards the waiting lines as if they too were weary of waiting.

  Ivaroth approached the two lines. Twenty men in each. By tradition they were the forty fighting men nearest to the challenger at the moment of his challenge, but he noticed that they were without exception drawn from his fiercest opponents.

  A figure stepped out of the crowd. ‘This is unjust,’ he cried out to the elders. ‘These are all his enemies, to a man. Men who would benefit from his death. Why am I not there with him, I was within ten paces of him when . . .’

  ‘Be silent,’ the chief elder said, rounding on him. ‘Ivaroth has no entitlement to trial by gauntlet at this stage. His life is already forfeit. This is merely to be his execution.’

  The man’s face twisted in rage, but to have opposed the elder’s word further would have brought Ivaroth’s fate down upon himself as well. Nevertheless, he snatched a staff roughly from a man nearby and threw it to Ivaroth.

  Catching it, Ivaroth looked at it, and then at his would-be ally. ‘I’m indebted to you, Endryn,’ he said. ‘You shall ride by my side when this is over.’

  ‘In the same burial cart,’ someone shouted, transforming the crowd’s tension into jeering laughter.

  Ivaroth, however, kept his eyes on Endryn. Then he threw the staff back to him and, with a last look at his hooded companion, walked towards the waiting lines.

  ‘Remember this day,’ he said as he strode forward purposefully. ‘I shall not be so merciful to my enemies in the future.’

  The hooded figure swayed from side to side as if moving to some rhythm that only it could hear, and as it did so, Ivaroth’s voice rose above the din of the crowd like a great rolling thunderclap.

  Then that was all that was left. Ivaroth the storm. His roaring voice like thunder, his movements as swift as the wind, and his terrible power, that of the lightning itself. Men, bigger and stronger than he by far, seemed paralyzed by his scything progress as with fists, feet, and murderous
hurling grip, he dodged and smashed his way through the mass of flailing staves and jostling bodies with the unstoppable ease of a mountain boulder crashing through a forest.

  And throughout, the hooded figure swayed steadily, revelling in its own, obscene, music.

  Abruptly, it was over. The lines had broken and fled before this whirling, elemental force could complete its work, and Ivaroth stood triumphant amid the groaning, dying wreckage of his short journey.

  The sound of the conflict seemed to roll away into the distance, like messengers carrying the news across the plains, then there was silence.

  Ivaroth turned and looked at the watching elders. ‘Thus I abide by the ways of our people,’ he said. ‘And thus shall I lead them ever. This is my vow. No longer will we quarrel among ourselves like bickering children. All the tribes shall become as one under my hand.’

  ‘To what end, Ivaroth Ungwyl?’ one of the elders managed to say, his voice faint with shock at the sight of what had just passed, but still defiant.

  Ivaroth looked at him and then round at the stunned crowd. ‘To vengeance and our destiny,’ he said, his voice rising. ‘We go to the land where there are fields and pastures and slaves for all. Where the wind doesn’t strip faces and hands raw. Where the snow doesn’t cover the earth for half the year and the sun doesn’t hang low in the sky like a weeping maid’s face . . .’ The elder stepped forward as if to oppose him, but Ivaroth’s words were bludgeoning their way into the hearts of the crowd. ‘. . . We go to the rich land beyond the mountains that the sea people so foully tore from our forefathers in times long forgotten.’

  He crouched low and picked up a fallen staff, then stood up suddenly, holding it high. ‘Now!’ he demanded. ‘Who rides with me? Your chieftain by blood and by ordeal? Who rides with Ivaroth Ungwyl?’

  As the crowd’s roar of acclamation rose up into the cold morning air, the hooded figure’s swaying became faster and faster, until it was almost an ecstatic trembling.

  ‘Ivaroth Ungwyl!’ the crowd roared. ‘Ivaroth Ungwyl!’