Tak

Khalkedon - Part 4

     They passed small farming cottages occupied by people who made their living much the same way Tak's family had, except that, whereas Tak's nearest neighbours had been a day's travel away, here people could walk down a short muddy track to visit their neighbours and be home again the same morning. In many cases, they could actually see their neighbour's house from their own, if there were no trees in the way. And the further they went the closer together they were until they were clustered together in little hamlets, allowing several families to share a single haybarn or well. Things that each homestead in the Borderlands had to go to the expense of providing individually. By the time the evening was growing old and the yellow sun was hanging low in the sky Tak was reaching the point of thinking that nothing new could possibly surprise him, but that was before he caught his first glimpse of the city of Domandropolis. The stronghold of Khalkedon and the centre of his power.

     They topped a hill and there it was. So vast that, even from their elevated vantage point they could only see the near side of it, covering a low, broad hill like the mould on a fallen apple. As they approached, Tak was unsure exactly what he was looking at. There was a sandy coloured wall stretching to left and right, running almost straight as if it cut the whole world in half. At first Tak thought it was about the height of a man, but then he saw the gates and towers that punctuated it at intervals, with tiny, human figures that gave it a sense of scale. The wall had to be thirty feet high!

     Behind the wall could be seen the upper storeys of blocky brick buildings, some with walled roof gardens in which trees and carefully shaped shrubs grew. They stood some way back from the wall and were separated from each other by equally great distances, but Tak's intuition, together with what he could see through the open gates, told him that the spaces between them were filled with lower buildings, too low to be seen above the wall. Only further back, up the slope of the hill, could all the buildings be seen, shrinking with distance until they vanished down the far slope of the hill. If he'd been on foot he would have frozen in place, paralysed with wonder, but the horse he rode was used to it all and trotted along quite unmoved, perhaps a little amused at the provincial ignorance of its rider.

     "How... How big is it?" Tak managed to gasp at last.

     "It's home to two hundred thousand people," said Gal-Gowan, watching him carefully, "and in times of siege it can accommodate three times that number. If enemies come, everyone in all the towns and villages we've passed today would flee to the safety of its walls."

     "Two hundred thousand," gasped Tak in disbelief. He understood hundreds and he understood thousands, but this was the first time he'd ever heard the two spoken together as part of the same number. A hundred times a thousand! He remembered the market town of Jalla, where they'd taken the surplus from their farm to be sold, and he remembered his father telling him that five hundred people lived there. At the time he'd been astonished by the idea. He'd had no idea there were that many people in the whole world, but now he was looking at a city four hundred times larger! Four hundred times larger! He rolled the words around in his head, trying to get some sense of what they meant, but it was too big to grasp, and as they followed the road down the slope to the nearest of the city's gates he could only sit in his saddle and gape in wonder.

     The wall loomed over them as they approached. When they reached the gate, standing open to allow a steady stream of horse and foot traffic to pass through, he saw that it was twenty feet thick at the base. The road had to pass through a tunnel to get through it!

     On the other side, though, he was hit by a sudden sense of comforting familiarity as the smells of the city hit him. The same smells of sewage and rotting fruit he remembered from his visit to the market town of Jalla as a small child. The road from the gate to the centre of the city was wide and the crowds were kept back by two lines of soldiers, clearing a path for the red wizard and his entourage to pass. On either side, though, Tak could see narrower streets leading away into a maze of alleyways in which the buildings pressed in close to create canyons of darkness through which people hurried as if afraid.

     The wide road Tak and Gal Gowan were following ran straight as an arrow towards the centre of the city, on the crown of the hill. On their way they passed through two more circular walls which separated the city's upper classes from the lower, and then they were in the inner city, where the largest and most splendid buildings were gathered. The most magnificent building of all, gleaming gold in the sunlight, was perched right on top of the hill, like the cherry on a naming day cake. He didn't need to be told that that was the place they were going to, the palace of Khalkedon, the ruler of the city, and he trembled with fear and excitement as more fearful crowds, these ones dressed expensively in velvet and silk, made way for them.

     Tak had never seen a King before, but he knew from fireside stories told by his father that they were cruel and terrible and he mentally prepared himself for the encounter. He would have to be polite and courteous. He would have to show the proper respect and pray that he occupied his interest as little as possible. Maybe the King would have more important things to attend to and so dismiss him quickly, but Tak was a wizard, like the King, and would one day replace Molos Gomm as a valuable war ally. That made him important, and the King would want to make a proper assessment of him.

     He felt a tingle of pride, an unfamiliar emotion and one he wasn't immediately able to identify. They were two of a kind, he realised. Two of the elite, endowed with powers and abilities that set them apart from the common herd. He saw some of this in the way the crowd were behaving. They were dancing in the streets, crying out Gal-Gowan's name in a display of jubilation that struck the young wizard as rather false. They were only pretending to be delighted, he saw. They were really terrified, and desperate to give a display of loyalty in case terrible punishment fell on anyone insufficiently enthusiastic in their greeting.

     Gal-Gowan had to be aware of that. If it was that obvious to Tak, a newcomer to the city, there was no way the red wizard could be unaware of it, but, looking at him, he didn't seen the slightest bit displeased. Rather, he seemed satisfied and content, his chest puffed out with pride as he basked in their counterfeit adulation. It wasn't their love he wanted, Tak realised. It was their fear. That was how the wizards ruled. Not with their power but with fear. They only used their power to make themselves seem more powerful than they really were. To create fear.

     It was just the same as back in Castle Nagra. The townspeople could overrun the castle any time they wanted, if they only knew it, but their fear of Molos Gomm's power held them back. They didn't know that a wizard could only cast so many spells a day, after which he was almost helpless until he'd rested and soaked up some more magic force from the air around him. If they were determined enough, and willing to suffer the casualties, they could wear him down, force him to cast one spell after another until he had none left, whereupon he would be at the mercy of the survivors.

     It would be the same here, Tak knew. Khalkedon remained in power only so long as the people remained in ignorance of the true situation, so long as they never found out the secret of the wizards' vulnerability. Tak knew, however, and as he gazed out over the hysterically cheering crowds he had a tremendous sense of power. A sense of his importance as a holder of that secret. He would never reveal it, of course, because he himself was a wizard and he'd be cutting his own throat, but he knew nevertheless, and that gave him a sense of kinship with these mighty beings.

     It was all part of his indoctrination, of course, as he realised later. What he thought was giving him power was actually binding him tighter to his masters. He saw Gal-Gowan, studying him carefully, and only in later years would he understand the smile of satisfaction that sat on the older wizard's face.