The Sealed Citadel

by Edward W. Robertson

  THE SEALED CITADEL

  ALSO BY EDWARD W. ROBERTSON

  THE CYCLE OF ARAWN

  The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Trilogy

  THE CYCLE OF GALAND

  The Red Sea

  The Silver Thief

  The Wound of the World

  The Light of Life

  The Spear of Stars

  THE BREAKERS SERIES

  Breakers

  Melt Down

  Knifepoint

  Reapers

  Cut Off

  Captives

  Relapse

  Blackout

  Cover illustration by Miguel Coimbra. Additional cover work by Stephanie Mooney.

  Map by Jared Blando.

  

  Mallon, Gask, and other lands.

  1

  Cally came of age in the strangest age of them all: a time when sorcerers had forgotten how to kill.

  Master Tarriman walked beside him over the decaying cobbles. A patient awaited them, ill and in pain. Despite knowing this, Tarriman seemed perfectly unhurried, his stout body carrying along like a barge on the current. The citizens he passed bobbed or bowed their heads, some uttering quick prayers. Tarriman met each of these gestures with a modest nod, smile, or quick word.

  Cally pretended to take a sudden interest in the spire of a temple of Carvahal on the corner of the street. "Is it contagious?"

  Tarriman's posture fell. Subtle, but Cally could sense his disappointment. "You know I can't tell you that."

  "It would make sense if it was, wouldn't it? For we'd do more good for the people by eliminating things that can spread than things that can't. But it's probably not contagious and dangerous. That would be…well… dangerous."

  "Whatever the patient's affliction, you seem to be inflicted with an incurable case of verbal dysentery."

  "I'm sorry, Master." Cally made himself wait for twenty paces before speaking again. "Have you ever found something that you couldn't cure?"

  "Temporarily, yes. But we believe that every illness can be corrected. What is an illness but a corruption of the body? And all corruption can be undone when faced with an abundance of hard work and right spirit."

  "Master—"

  "Enough." Tarriman's voice was unusually harsh and he smiled quickly as if to atone for this. "My goodness, if everyone from Arrolore has this many questions, it's a wonder they haven't all throttled each other."

  This time, Cally said nothing. He didn't often think about the fact he wasn't a native to the city of Narashtovik. Rather, he'd been born in the hills of Arrolore, far to the south. In those years, the lands had been a Mallish territory, but they had switched possession between Mallon and Gask so many times that there was serious question whether either of them really wanted it at all.

  He could only remember snatches of it. Helping his father stack kindling for the long winter. Chasing rabbits through the brush (they always got away). The smell of the snow as the sled skimmed through it. His parents were poor and he had elder siblings ahead of him. Knowing they would have little if anything to bequeath their youngest son, they'd gifted him what they had thought was a noble northern name: Callimandicus.

  Six years after his birth, they'd discovered that they had also given him a far more dangerous gift: the talent of the nether. Quick as they could, they'd bundled him off to Narashtovik, before the Mallish could learn his secret and kill him for it. On arriving at the city and joining the academy of the Order, the others there, including the very servants, had teased him relentlessly. At last, one of the monks had finally, mercifully, told him that Callimandicus wasn't a noble Gaskan name at all—but rather a poor family from Arrolore's idea of nobility.

  The monk had suggested he go by Cally instead. Nine years later, Cally was still employing the monk's solution.

  Sunlight spilled over his head as they crossed the little plaza at Garden Street. To his left, he had a clear view of the brooding towers of the Sealed Citadel. These days, the name had an ironic tinge: for its walls and fortifications, once engineered to keep enemies from getting in, were now used to stop the city's enemies from getting out.

  For some reason, Cally stopped, transfixed by the empty walls and spires. Tarriman glanced back at him, then did a double take and swung about with the grace of a donkey cart reversing direction in the middle of a busy street.

  "Did you see something?"

  "No," Cally said. "At least I don't think so."

  Tarriman considered the distant wall, then Cally, scowling faintly. "I see nothing. Which coincides with the fact that nothing is all that anyone's seen in over a year."

  "I didn't say I'd seen anything."

  "You're acting like you have. Are you afraid of telling me what it was?" Tarriman sighed testily, then waved his hand. "Your glimpse of it may have been so quick you convinced yourself you never saw it. But it will be swift enough for me to investigate."

  Tarriman turned toward the silent Citadel and closed his eyes, taking control of the insect scouts that several of the Masters had around and above the Citadel. Tarriman stood motionless. He was a large figure and the black and silver robes of his station made him doubly conspicuous, drawing glances from the pedestrians crossing the plaza. Noting that he was facing the Citadel, they suddenly grew nervous.

  After a full minute, Tarriman opened his eyes and shook his head. "No birds. No mice. No nothing at all." His voice, practically fluttering with relief, became jolly. "And it's a damned good thing. Otherwise we might as well recall our envoy from Tantonnen right now!"

  He made his way onward through the cool autumn sun. Despite Tarriman's reassurance, the city abruptly looked wrong: so many of the houses crumbling, or the stonework disappearing beneath a patina of moss; the yards untended, overgrown with weeds; and even on Garden Street, there were just too few people, much fewer than the city had been built to contain. They'd all gotten used to it. But the signs of decay were all around them. And they seemed to get a little worse each year. Then again, Cally supposed that that was what decay did.

  "It's all right to have the jitters," Tarriman said unprompted. "Really, I'd be concerned if you didn't."

  Cally, who'd been just about to deny feeling anxious until that last bit, changed tack. "The jitters?"

  "It's natural to be nervous. Even scared. But it's unnatural to keep those feelings bottled inside. If you do, they'll just come out in other ways." The Master turned his head, lifting a black brow.

  "Maybe a little."

  "A little?"

  "I'm looking forward to it being over," Cally said, which was true.

  Tarriman nodded. "If you are fearful, be afraid. But have faith in Arawn. Know that there is no failure—only a next time. Come now: tell me the First Rule of the Order."

  The words came automatically. "You shall not use the nether to shed blood. For the nether flows from the day that the order of the heavens broke apart. There is no higher crime than wielding the product of that fall to slay your fellow man."

  Repeating this did calm him down a bit. They crossed through the Ingate, where the sentries looked inward, toward the Citadel. The city's inner ring had once been its wealthiest and proudest but that had been a long time ago. What little noise there'd been in the streets before was replaced by the peep of robins and the yak of crows. An old woman stopped sweeping her steps to watch them go by.

  "Now," Tarriman said, "tell me the Second Rule of the Order."

  "You shall not shed your own blood to feed the nether," Cally answered. "Wounding oneself in the quest for power lies at the heart of all corruption: and what worse corruption can there be than spilling your blood to fatten the shadows?"

  Again, Tarriman nodded.

  The temple of Lia was one of
the few structures not grimed with neglect. The faith didn't normally guard its houses of worship, but this particular temple was stuffed with sick people, some of whom were emitting various gases and humors that could well make many others sick. The guards bowed their heads to Tarriman, moving to open the high door.

  The air this unleashed made Cally wish the guards had turned him away. It was dense with the scent of sage, rosifur, and incense, but these couldn't wholly mask the reek of the people inside. Cally's guts rose, then sank.

  Before he could step through the door, Tarriman grabbed him by the shoulder. "Last, tell me Merriwen's Third Rule."

  Cally's mind went black. He bulged his eyes, panicked that he'd fail his test before it even began—but then the first words of the litany came to him, and he spat them out before he could forget them again.

  "You will use the nether to soothe and serve the people. For that is the way to heal them of all wrongness—and to heal the corruption within the nether itself."

  "You may now enter."

  Tarriman stepped through the doorway. Cally followed. The smell was so bad that as Tarriman led him down the stone hallway, he had to apply a stroke of nether to his stomach to prevent it from introducing itself all over the floor.

  There were moans, too, but after a minute of walking, both these and the stench got better. Tarriman entered a small chamber and spoke to a monk within. She pointed them to a door to the left.

  As they approached, a man rose from a chair beside the door. It was autumn, and most people bore a tan from harvesting the fields or cutting firewood from the forest, but this man looked as pale as a court scribe.

  "Master Tarriman. Thank you for coming." He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small pouch. It clinked with the sound of silver. "It isn't much, but—"

  Tarriman took the man's hand in his, closing it and pushing it back toward the fellow's solar plexus. "This isn't why we're here, Yarrow. You know that."

  "But I want to help, Master."

  "Ever since the breaking of Arawn's Mill, the world has been darkened. We do what we do to undo the corruption of that day. If we sought money for our service, the stain of the Mill would only grow." Tarriman smiled. "Now, shall we lift her from her sickness?"

  The man's arm twitched, as if he were about to try to force the pouch back onto Tarriman. Then his eyes brightened and he nodded and stepped aside. Tarriman motioned to Cally and opened the door.

  The room was dim and smelled fine. A woman lay in bed. She wasn't particularly old, but the pain on her face made her look moreso. She smiled at Tarriman and he smiled back. They spoke softly for a moment, then he lifted his hand to her brow. Ether stirred. Light glowed from his fingers. The woman's eyes closed and she went still except for the steadiness of her breathing.

  Tarriman watched her, then took a step back. "We begin."

  Cally hadn't been particularly nervous before, but now that the moment was upon him, prickly lightness rushed up his body and swept over his head. "Should I…examine the patient?"

  "Yes, but I can make it simpler. She suffers from headaches."

  "Yes. I see. Headaches?"

  "Does that strike you as too minor to bother with? She can barely leave her bed to see her own children. One of the first things you must learn in this service is that a person doesn't have to be oozing blood from their pores to be in great pain."

  This was true, but it was also true that there were other people in the temple who were oozing blood from their pores, and they might, reasonably speaking, deserve to be tended to first. But he supposed it was also true that the blood-oozers were being seen to by proper monks, while he was still a boy who hadn't proven he could treat a simple cut unsupervised.

  He closed his eyes, took a breath, and reached out to the nether.

  Shadows stirred from the corners of the room. They came to him from under the bed and from the chinks in the ceiling where the light of the lamp couldn't reach. They flowed to him like living water, pooling in his hands.

  The touch was like plunging his hands into an alpine lake. The nether always made him feel strong enough to punch through tree trunks, but the Order commanded meekness—for without the goal of service, and the spirit of humility, the power of sorcery had always led to atrocities. The First and Second Scours. The Cavana Massacre. The Burning of the Bewitched Wood. There was no end to them, and each one was a horror to man and gods alike.

  Cally said the Prayer of Smallness and sent the shadows to the woman's head.

  The nether sank into her skin like rain falling on hard dirt. Cally spread it across the infinite tangles of her brain, seeking any signs of damage or abnormality.

  "Do I get questions?" he said.

  "That is allowed," Tarriman said.

  "How long has this afflicted her?"

  "The pain began early last year. But it's only in the last few months that it's become so bad as to cripple her."

  Cally sank the shadows into the base of her brain. "Was she injured at some point? Struck on the head?"

  "She wasn't."

  He advanced section by section, looking closely for swelling or tears. "Does she ever faint? Forget things? Act loopy?"

  "Loopy? No. No more than can be described by the fatigue brought on by her pain."

  Cally walked back his second sight to take in the brain as a whole. Nothing obvious. Nothing subtle, either, or at least none of the subtleties he know to look for, which did not rule out the existence of sub-subtleties. Was Tarriman playing some kind of trick on him?

  "Why do we put them to sleep?" he said.

  Tarriman furrowed his brow. "Because the treatment can hurt them."

  "But is that so bad? The gods put pain in us for a reason, didn't they? So we can tell where it hurts, and let us discover why."

  "But you already know where it hurts, Cally. Our job—your job—is to see the wound more clearly than the wounded can, and correct it for them."

  This sounded very good, but Cally couldn't see anything wrong at all. In fact, he had the feeling he could stare at the woman's brain for the entire day without noticing whatever he was supposed to notice.

  But it was a test, right? One that had been vetted by Tarriman himself. That meant it had an answer.

  He drew back further yet, trying to remember all the other brains he'd examined before. Then he grinned, drew forth a second strand of nether, and sent it inside his own mind.

  "That vessel there." Cally pointed toward her head. "The one next to the bit that looks like a gray pickle. It's too narrow."

  Tarriman didn't let his expression budge. "Do you think so?"

  "Yes, because it is."

  "In that case, proceed. But be very, very careful. As careful as you'd want your fellow apprentice to be if she was poking around in your head."

  Cally's heart began to beat as if he were being chased down an unfamiliar street. He withdrew the strand of nether from his head and sent it into the woman's. As gently as if he were picking up an injured chick fallen from the nest, he sent the shadows to the pinched portion of the blood vessel.

  It was at that moment he realized he didn't actually know what to do next. Yet as soon as the shadows touched the vessel, it relaxed, widening just enough for him to notice. A certain tautness seemed to ease from the surrounding tissue.

  "I did it," Cally said. "I think?"

  Tarriman seemed to be suppressing a smile. Hopefully it was a proud one. "Let's wake her and find out."

  He extended his right hand. The pure white light of ether glinted from his fingertips and passed into her brow. Her eyelids fluttered. She awoke with a soft gasp.

  "Marry," the Master said. "Tell me, how do you feel?"

  She looked around, confused, then sat up, touching the left side of her head where Cally had done his work.

  She looked up in surprise. "Have you given me something for the pain?"

  "No," Tarriman said. "We have removed its source."

  She gazed at him in wonder.

&n
bsp; "Thank the boy, not me." The priest smiled at last. "Cally, stay with her for a minute. I need to speak with Yarrow."

  He left the room, leaving Cally alone with a woman in bed. Despite there being nothing otherwise untoward about it, he began to blush, and was glad the room was dim.

  "You healed me?" Marry was looking at him, fingers pressed lightly against the side of her head.

  "Yes," Cally said. "Although it wasn't that hard. At least not once I saw what was wrong. Although I suppose on the other hand that it would be very hard for someone who wasn't a nethermancer to fix it up—but I further suppose I didn't do anything to earn that talent, other than being born, which as far as I can recall I had no say in…"

  He trailed off, blushing more; he had a tendency to examine things from too many angles at once. As if he was a half-mad sorcerer dissecting a table full of lizards and mice in search of the secrets of existence.

  "I have my life back, don't I?" the woman said. "My children. Thank you."

  Her eyes welled with tears. She cocked back her head, eyelids spasming. Cally thought she was overwhelmed with emotion until the moment she fell back into the pillows, going as limp as when Tarriman had rendered her unconscious.

  "Marry?" Cally rushed to the bed. He reached for her arm, then yanked back his hand and reached for the nether instead.

  He slipped the shadows through her skull and sent them toward the mended vessel. Her brain was awash in blood.

  The vein had popped.

  Cally's eyes flew wide. The room seemed to be roaring around him. Even so, the center of his being had gone very still. Shakily, he moved the nether into the broken vessel. Its edges gleamed silver and purple. He brought them together, sealing the breakage without a seam.

  "Master Tarriman!" he yelled. "Come quick!"

  The door flew open. Tarriman rushed inside, robes rustling around his broad body. Nether shot from his hands toward Marry. "What have you done?"

  "Me? Nothing! Well that isn't true, she collapsed and I—" Cally stopped himself short, suddenly aware of what he was saying.