The Flight from Kar (The Emperor's Library Read online

  The Emperor’s Library

  Book One

  The Flight from Kar

  Frederick Kirchhoff

  Dron Press

  Third Edition

  Copyright Frederick Kirchhoff, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2017

  Cover Art and Maps Copyright Frederick Kirchhoff, 2011

  All Rights Reserved

  Author’s Note

  The Flight from Kar is the first of the six books in The Emperor’s Library; its sequel, The Tritargon, continues where The Flight from Kar leaves off. Book Three, The Game, takes place twenty years later. A fourth volume, The Clavis, moves forward one hundred years, while the final two books, The Chronophage and The Guardians, describe events fifty years after Book Four.

  Chapter One

  He shouldn’t have left without telling Alf, Jon told himself, but he’d wanted to make the ascent alone and he intended to reach the base of the White Wall while there was still plenty of daylight. Already he’d climbed further than any time before—well into the maze of boulders that had fallen from the summit. Reaching an open space and pausing to look around, the sight filled him with elation. It was as if he’d liberated himself from the valley. Above, a black-tail circled in great loops, while, lower down on the slope, some younger boys were playing fleers-and-catchers. He’d played that game himself—quick on his feet, he’d often won—but now nothing below meant anything.

  Yet, as he watched, two boys who’d been crouched behind a rock leapt up and ran over to their companions, who first scanned the mountain in his direction, then made a beeline for the village. Had they seen a spotted cat? Not likely. Cats were a threat the women used to keep them from wandering, so he doubted their existence. Certainly no one he knew had ever sighted one. Still, there was always the possibility, so he ought to look around and do it fast. If the boys reported a cat, the women would come swarming, and he’d already wasted valuable time, for the alarm bell was sure to begin ringing soon, which meant everyone was supposed to gather in the village.

  “Are you looking for me?”

  The question came from above—like the voice of a god. Raising his eyes, Jon saw a man standing on a boulder—the first adult male who’d spoken to him in his life. He held a short bow with an arrow pointed in his direction, but the string wasn’t taut and the stranger’s smile meant he had no intention of shooting him.

  Yet how had the intruder come here? He may have spoken like a god, but Jon knew he hadn’t descended through a hole in the sky. Even so, this was a momentous occasion, and there was no telling where it might lead, so the last thing Jon wanted was to appear stupid. He told himself he’d have to act as if the encounter was perfectly natural, and, at the same time, warn the man about the danger he was in.

  “I was trying to find out what scared the boys,” Jon said.

  The stranger lowered his bow and crouched on the edge of the rock.

  “I’d say it was me, although I didn’t mean to scare anyone. Do I look frightening?”

  Jon shook his head no. Then he took a breath.

  “Who are you?” he asked the man.

  “Who am I? A friend—you can see that, since you’d have been an easy target and I’m an excellent shot—although today you’ll have to take my word for it.”

  It seemed another question was necessary.

  “Do you often shoot people?”

  The stranger laughed, and Jon found himself laughing, too. His question had been absurd. The man was no murderer. Any fool could see that.

  “Not once, I confess. But I could if I had to. I know where to strike the heart.” He narrowed his eyes and touched his chest. “And the force to use. It’s hard to penetrate the big bone in the middle of the ribs—you have to hit the right spot just off to one side—but we’re taught the skill. Of course you can always penetrate the belly. It’s an easier target, but a painful way to go, so we aim for the heart—as a matter of respect.”

  “Was that why you were aiming at my heart?” Jon asked. “As a matter of respect?”

  “I wanted to see how you’d react. I bet it was the first time anyone had threatened you that way.”

  “Did I pass the test?”

  “You didn’t flinch, if that’s what you’re asking. But you must have seen I wasn’t serious. If you’re out to kill a man, you don’t reveal yourself beforehand. Wasn’t that why you decided not to run?”

  “No, it was because you didn’t look like a murderer. They don’t smile the way you did.”

  “Are you sure?” the man asked. “I doubt either of us have had much experience with men of that sort.”

  “You still haven’t said who you are,” Jon pointed out.

  The stranger raised his right hand.

  “In civilized regions, the newcomer volunteers that information. After all, a person may have reason to reserve his identity.”

  Just what did he mean by “civilized regions,” Jon wondered. Was he saying the Valley of Women was uncivilized? He hated the place, but he didn’t like hearing it belittled.

  “Only a bad reason, I’d think,” he replied, feeling slightly pompous as he spoke the words.

  “Then you’d think wrong, my handsome young friend. We are friends, aren’t we? As I’ve already pointed out, I didn’t shoot you when I had the chance, and I’ve also taken note of the fact that you haven’t run off to give me away. Yes, I know that, being a man, I’m not supposed to be here and your lady friends would make a great fuss if they found me. So I’d call both our actions the signs of friendship. As for handsome, well, there’s never harm in an honest compliment.”

  Jon couldn’t help grinning. The thought of being this man’s friend filled him with pleasure and no one had ever called him handsome before.

  “Still,” the stranger continued, “there’s much you have to learn. Should I be your teacher? I’ve never taught anyone except my younger sister, but I’m always game for new experiences.”

  Jon backed away a few steps to get a better view. If anyone was handsome, he was. Blue eyes and dark brown hair, short-cropped, not long and stringy like the boys in the valley. He couldn’t have been one of the Bearded Men. He was clean-shaven, and they wore black, while his clothes were drab green—the hue of dry grass. And you could see the strength of his thighs—nothing, Jon thought, like his own bony legs. He was glad his clothes hid so much.

  “Yes, that’s the way,” the stranger told him. “You learn more from a man’s appearance than from the name he offers. Trust your eyes, not your ears. But, speaking of ears, why are they ringing that bell below? Is something on fire?”

  “It’s no fire—it’s you. The boys must have told the women they’d seen a man up here, and now they’re gathering to come after you. You said you knew that no man is allowed in this valley? If they get their hands on you, some of them will consider it their duty to kill you.”

  “What about you?” the stranger asked. “Aren’t you a man?”

  “By their reckoning, I’m a juvenile—until next summer, when the Bearded Men come to take us away.”

  “But no men are allowed.”

  “The Bearded Men don’t come here. They meet us in the next valley, where the river from the lake below us ends up—Bent Lake, they call it.”

  “It doesn’t end there—but you couldn’t be expected to know that. You’ve never left this valley, have you?”

  “I’ve been to Bent Lake—I told you that,” Jon blurted out. “And I know our water doesn’t end there. It cuts through the Boundary Mountain and flows north, past Kar, where the Emperor lives, and empties into the sea at Tarnak. I’ve known that for as long as I can remember.”

  The stran
ger raised his hand once more. Jon saw he was trying not to smile.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said. “I should have realized that the women teach you geography. But it’s one of my own interests, so I forget that other people know more than I do. I’ve heard of Kar and Tarnak, of course, but I’ve never set eyes on either. I bet you could teach me a lot I don’t know.”

  Jon felt like an idiot. Why had he been so defensive?

  “I don’t know anything really,” he admitted. “Only the basics—like where the river goes. Kar and Tarnak are somewhere in the North, but how far north I couldn’t tell you. Boys have a school, but it’s a joke. They don’t expect us to attend, and the only books we read were written for children—like one about how a girl named Marva saved the Emperor when he got swept away by the water. The women say it teaches a lesson, but only a fool would take that seriously. An emperor wouldn’t go swimming alone in a dangerous river. He’d have hundreds of men with him. But that story was where I learned about Kar and the Great River. I’ve always wanted to travel, but the farthest I’ve been is the near end of Bent Lake. I’ve never even seen the village that’s further east. Is that where you’re from?”

  Jon feared he’d said too much and expected the stranger to laugh at him again, but instead he gazed at Jon in a way Jon couldn’t explain.

  “No. I’ve never been to Bent Lake and I know little about the village,” he said slowly. “We can’t see it from our territory the way we can see this valley. Is that where the Bearded Men come from?”

  “No,” Jon replied. “They’re from somewhere else, but I don’t know where. I’ve seen them, although I’ve never spoken to one of them. It’s not allowed. But I know they’re differed from the men and women who live in the village. The women call the Bent-Lakers riff-raff, and say they settled there because no other place would have them. You see, the women were granted their valley by the Emperor himself, so they resent the people who’ve taken the land around Bent Lake without permission—especially since it’s such good land. At least that’s what the women say.”

  “So why didn’t the women take it for themselves?”

  “They’d never leave this valley.”

  “I suspect you’re right. But what do you know about the Bearded Men? Lots of men have beards.”

  “When they arrive they’re dirty. The first thing they do is bathe in the lake. Not in front of us, of course. They wash behind a grove of trees, for no one is supposed to see them naked. The women are very strict about things like that. But it’s not hard to see them if you try.”

  “And you tried?”

  “Naturally we’re curious about the men we’ll be living with someday.”

  “What do they look like.”

  “Most of them are pretty ugly, and few are as tall as you. Their clothes are black and they wear silver—silver bracelets and silver earrings and silver collars—silver everywhere. And they have pictures on their arms and legs. I can’t say why, but some boys say they want to have pictures on them, too. They think it’s manly.”

  The stranger knotted his brow.

  “Your Bearded Men are the Brotherhood. And you’re the boys they take into slavery. The women used to send their male children to the Emperor. But at some point things changed. Maybe the Emperors no longer needed young men. Who can say?”

  “The women never told us we used to be sent to the Emperor. They say the way things are now is the way they’ve always been.”

  “There’s probably a lot they don’t tell you. But what they’re doing to their sons is unforgivable. It makes sense they couldn’t keep you—that would defeat the purpose of the Valley of Women. We assumed they sent you to the next valley. But there must have been too many of you for the Bent-Lakers to handle. Or perhaps the women had another motive. It’s hard to say.

  “We take a look here occasionally—it’s our duty—but that’s about all. Otherwise, the Valley of Women is forgotten. Not even the Prefect asks us about it anymore.”

  So what the women called apprenticeship was really slavery, Jon thought.

  “The summer after we come of age the women hand us over to the men you call the Brotherhood,” he said.

  “Do you know what happens to the boys they take?”

  “The women say they teach us work, but they never tell us what the work is,” Jon said.

  “And, from what I’ve heard about the Brotherhood, you don’t want to know. But I’ll say this: if you can escape them, do it—even if it means risking your life. But I hear voices from below. You mustn’t be found with me. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “What about you?” Jon asked. “You’re the one in danger.”

  “They have no dogs to track by scent, have they?”

  “No. Dogs are forbidden here, but I know what a dog is—the girl Marva had a dog.”

  “Then I’ll be safe. You can’t see it, but there’s a depression in the middle of this chunk of rock. If I lie low, I’ll be invisible unless they climb the ridge behind us.”

  “No one can climb that ridge.”

  The stranger laughed again, but quietly this time.

  “How do you think I got here?”

  “You climbed the White Wall?”

  “I climbed down it. And if I climbed down it, I can climb up it as well. It’s always easier to go up than to come down—safer to test with your hands than with your feet. But what’s your name? You forgot to tell me.”

  “Jon.”

  “John! That’s my name, too. John and John—we make a pair.”

  “How do you spell it?” Jon asked.

  “Spell it?” He thought for an instant. “Oh, my name, you mean. J-O-H-N. How else would you spell it?”

  “Then it’s not the same. My name is spelled J-O-N.”

  “It’s the same word—you simply write it differently. And I bet you heard people call you Jon before you knew how to read and write.”

  “I can read and write, but not very well. Boys aren’t expected to read; they say it’s wasted. Even that book about Marva was hard going.”

  “But you want to read, don’t you?”

  How did the stranger know so much about him?

  “Yes. I want to learn about the world.”

  John laughed again. He seemed enormously pleased by everything—and oblivious to his personal safety.

  “My brother Karl would tell you that reading’s the opposite of learning about the world. He says my hours in the library are wasted time. Poking your nose into books, he calls it.”

  “You have a library?” Jon asked. “You said something about a book but not about a library.”

  “It’s not here—in the next valley, I mean. We have only one book there, a history of our family, and it’s not a book so much as a record we add to when something of note happens. But our winter home has a roomful of books—anything you’d want to read. But it’s time for me to hide and for you to put your pals off my trail. I can count on you for that, can’t I?”

  “Yes, you can count on me.”

  “Here,” John said, slipping a leather cord from his neck and dropping it to Jon. “Keep this to remember our meeting.”

  The cord held a piece of greenish stone like an arrowhead with a broken tip. A ridge ran down the center of one side, from the top to the broken place, and left of the ridge the stone had been carved to create a raised swirl, while the other side held what appeared to be symbols.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Something I found and kept for luck. But you need luck more than I do—and it will be a way to keep me in mind. And there’s something else about it, too—feelings I get when I wear it. Unexpected sensations. You’ll see what I mean.”

  Jon turned the arrowhead over in his hand.

  “It’s not a real arrowhead,” John said. “One side is heavier than the other—no good for target practice. But what it was made for I don’t know. I found it on a rainy trail in the mountains. The green color caught my eye, so I picked it up, b
ut who carved the stone and how it got there’s a mystery.”

  Jon reexamined the stone. Except for the broken tip, it was smooth to the touch, and the green color had a translucence that drew you into its depths. He slipped the cord over his neck, tucking the arrowhead beneath his shirt.

  “The women tell us that dangerous creatures live in the forest beyond the Boundary Mountain.”

  “You don’t think I’m a dangerous creature, do you?” John asked.

  “No.”

  “That’s a relief. As for the forest itself, there’s much I could tell you. Unfortunately, we don’t have the time—but I’ll say one more thing: nothing beyond the Boundary Mountain is more dangerous than life with the Brotherhood.”

  “Will I see you again?” Jon asked.

  “I hope so—but that’s up to you.”

  “If I decide to cross the mountain, how will I find you?”

  “There’s only one way to the summit and only one path goes down the other side. In winter, the upper stretches can be icy—but once the spring flowers bloom the way is safe. Now go. You can’t be found with me.”

  He dropped his head and disappeared.

  “Have a safe journey,” Jon said quietly, speaking more to himself than to the stranger, and ran back among the boulders, taking care to avoid being seen from below as he distanced himself from John’s rock; then he stepped casually into the open and ambled downhill, stopping to examine the flowers that blossomed among the rubble. A line of women armed with crossbows and spears was climbing toward him. At first, he pretended not to notice them, intent on his botanical pursuits; then, looking up, he made a show of surprise and ran down to ask the nearest one what she was searching for.

  “A man,” she growled. “The boys said they saw a man on the mountain.”

  Two other women bustled over.

  “What were you doing up there?” one asked.

  Jon was all innocence.

  “I was looking at the flowers.”

  The answer took her off guard, but that only heightened her suspicion.