Knights of Dark Renown

Once the legendary knights of the Gabala defended the nine duchies. Their hearts were beautiful; their armor was beyond compare. They were greater than princes, more than men.
But they were gone, disappeared through a demon-haunted gateway between worlds. Only one held back -- Manannan, whose every instinct told him to stay. Now he was the coward knight, and in torment.
Murder and black magic beset the land. Rumors circulated that the king was enchanted, changed, that his soul was dead . . . and that a reign of terror was about to begin.
Now Manannan realized he would have to face his darkest fears: he had no choice but to ride through that dreaded gate and seek out his vanished companions.
And the secret he would learn there would tear his soul apart . . . .
"A sharp, distinctive medieval fantasy. Dramatic, colorful, taut." -- Locus

1
 
THE RIDER PAUSED at the crest of the pass, the wind swirling about him and screeching through the mountaintops. Far below him the lands of the Gabala stretched green and verdant, ribbon streams and shimmering rivers, hills and vales, forests and woods—all as he remembered, echoing his dreams, calling for his return.
 
‘Home, Kuan,’ he whispered, but his words were whipped away by the wind, and the tall gray stallion did not hear him. Touching his heels to the horse’s side, the rider leaned back in the saddle as his mount began the long descent. The wind dropped as they neared the deserted border fort, its gates of oak and bronze hanging on broken hinges. The Gabala eagle had been hacked from them—only the edge of a wingtip was left on the rotting wood, and this was covered by a brown and green patina that all but merged it with the timber.
 
The rider dismounted here. He was a tall man wearing a long hooded cloak, a heavy scarf wound about his face and holding the hood in place. He led the stallion into the derelict fort and halted before the statue of Manannan. The left arm was broken and lying on the cobbles. Someone had taken an ax or a hammer to the face, and the chin was smashed, the nose split.
 
‘How soon they forget,’ said the newcomer. Hearing his voice, the stallion moved forward, nuzzling at his back. He turned, removed his thick woolen gloves, and stroked the beast’s neck. It was warmer here, and he unwound the scarf, draping it over the pommel of his saddle. As he pushed back the hood, sunlight flashed from the silver helm he wore.
 
“Let us find you a drink, Kuan,’ he said, moving to the walled well at the center of the courtyard. The bucket was warped by the sun, gaping cracks showing beneath the iron rings. The rope was tinder-dry but still usable if handled with care. He searched the deserted outbuildings and returned with a clay jug and a deep plate, then stood the jug in the bucket before lowering both into the well. When he carefully drew the bucket up, water was gushing from the cracks, but the jug was full and he lifted it clear and drank deeply. Placing the plate on the cobbles, he filled it. The stallion dropped its head and drank. The rider loosened the saddle girth and poured more water into the plate, then climbed the rampart steps and sat in the sunshine.
 
This was the end of empire, he knew. Not the blood-drenched battlegrounds, the screaming hordes, the discordant clash of steel on steel. Just the dust blowing across the cobbles, limbless statues, warped buckets, and the silence of the grave.
 
‘You would have hated this, Samildanach,’ he said. ‘This would have broken your heart.’
 
He searched inside himself for any grief over the fall of the Gabala. But there was no room … all his grief was for himself as he gazed down at his statue.
 
Manannan, knight of the Gabala. One of the nine. Greater than princes, more than men. He delved into his hip pouch, pulling clear a silvered mirror, which he held up before his face.
 
The Once-Knight looked into his own deep blue eyes, then at the square face and the silver steel that surrounded it. The plume was gone from the helm, hacked away in some skirmish to the north; the visor, raised now, dented by an ax blade in the Fomorian War. The runic number that named him had been torn from the brow in a battle to the east. He could not remember the blow; it was one of so many he had endured during the six lonely years since the gate had closed. His gaze shifted to the plate rings that circled his throat and pictured the beard growing beneath them, slowly—oh, so slowly—preparing to choke him to death.
 
What a death for a Gabala knight, imprisoned within his helm, strangled by his own beard. Such was the price of betrayal, Manannan told himself. Such was the penalty for cowardice.
 
Cowardice? He rolled the word in his mind. During the last lonely, aimless years of wandering he had proved his physical courage time and time again in swordplay, in the charge, in the long wait before the onslaught. But it was not his body that had let him down on that dark night six years before, when the black gate yawned and the stars died. It was altogether a different cowardice that had robbed him of the power to move.
 
Not so the others. But then, Samildanach would have braved the fires of hell with a handful of snow. As would the others: Pateus, Edrin … all of them.
 
‘Damn you, Ollathair,’ hissed the Once-Knight. ‘Damn your arrogance!’
 
Manannan returned his mirror to its pouch.
 
He rested for another hour and then stepped into the saddle. The citadel was three days ride west. He avoided towns and settlements, buying his food at isolated farms and sleeping in meadows. On the morning of the fourth day he approached the citadel.
 
Manannan steered his stallion through the trees and into what had once been the rose garden. It was overgrown now, but here and there a bloom still flourished, stretching above the choking weeds. The paved path was mostly covered by grass and small blue flowers. It was only natural, thought the Once-Knight—six years of windblown soil settling over the carefully laid stones. The side gate was open, and he rode into the courtyard. Here and there grass seeds had settled in the cracks of the pavement, fed by the fountain pool that overflowed its marble parapet.
 
He dismounted, his silver armor creaking and his movements slow. The stallion stood motionless.
 
‘Not as you remember it, Kuan,’ whispered the knight, removing his gauntlet and stroking the beast’s neck. ‘They have all gone.’ He led the horse to the pool and waited as it drank. A wooden shutter nearby was caught by the wind, which cracked it against the window frame. The horse’s head came up, ears laid flat against its skull.
 
‘It’s all right, boy,’ Manannan soothed. ‘There is no danger here.”
 
As the stallion drank, he loosened the saddle girth and lifted the pack from its back. Hoisting this to his shoulder, he walked up the steps to the double doors and entered the welcome hall. Dust had gathered here, and the long carpet smelled of mildew and corruption. The statues stood staring at him with sightless eyes.
 
He felt the burden of his guilt grow even stronger and pushed on past the figures to the chapel at the rear of the building. The hinges groaned as he forced open the leaf-shaped door. No dust disturbed this place, with its low altar, but the golden candlesticks were gone, as were the silver chalice and the silken hangings. Yet still the chapel emanated peace. He lowered his pack and unfastened the leather binding thongs. Then he moved to the altar, removed his baldric and scabbard, and unbuckled his breastplate, slipping it under the protruding shoulder plates. Carefully he placed the armor on the altar. Shoulder plates and habergeon followed. He would miss the sleeveless coat of mail; it had saved his life more than once. Hip shields, thigh guards, and greaves he laid upon the stone, placing his black and silver gauntlets atop the breastplate.
 
“Let it be over,’ he said, reaching up to release the helm, but his fingers froze as fear flowed in him. The spell had been cast by Ollathair in this room six years before—but without the wizard, was the peace of the chapel enough to remove it? Manannan calmed himself. His finger touched the spring lock, but the bar did not move. He pressed harder, then dropped his hand. Fear fled from the onset of his anger: ‘What more do you want of me?’ he screamed. Sinking to his knees, he prayed for deliverance, but although his thoughts streamed out, there was no sense of their reaching a destination. Exhausted, he rose, a knight without armor. Moving to his pack, he dressed swiftly in well-fitting woolen trews and leather tunic, then looped his baldric over his shoulder with the sword and scabbard nestling at his right side. Finally he pulled on a pair of soft doeskin riding boots and gathered his blanket. The pack he left where it lay.
 
Outside, the stallion was cropping grass at the far wall. The man who had been a knight walked past the beast and on to the smithy. It, too, was dust-covered, the tools rusted and useless, the great bellows torn and tattered, the forge open—a nesting place for rats.
 
Manannan picked up a rusted saw blade. Even had it been gleaming and new, it would have been useless to him. The silver steel of the helm was strong enough in its own right, but with the added power of Ollathair’s enchantment it was impervious to everything but heat. He had once endured two hours of agony as a smith had sought to burn the bar loose. At last, defeated, the Craftsman had knelt before him.
 
“I could do it, sir, but there would be no point. The heat needed would turn your flesh to liquid, your brain to steam. You need a sorcerer, not a smith.’
 
And he had found sorcerers and would-be wizards, seers and Wyccha women. But none could counter the spell of the Armorer.
 
‘I need you, Ollathair,’ said the Once-Knight. ‘I need your wizardry and your skills. But where did you go?’
 
Ollathair had been above all a patriot. He would not have left the realm unless forced. And who could force the Armorer of the Gabala knights? Manannan sat silently among the rusted remains of Ollathair’s equipment and fought to remember conversations of long ago.
Considering the size of the empire it had once ruled, the lands of the Gabala were not large. From the borders of Fomoria in the south to the coastal routes to Cithaeron was a journey of less than a thousand miles. East to west, from the Nomad steppes to the western sea and Asripur, was a mere four hundred. One fact was sure: Ollathair would avoid cities; he had always hated the marble monstrosity of Furbolg.
 
Where, then? And under what guise?