The Sealed Citadel

by Edward W. Robertson

  Rowe shook his head. "He kept his command for the time being. Maybe they knew they needed him for the fighting, or maybe the decision only came later. The war went on. Larrimore did well, and so did Merriwen. You know most of what happened next. We won the war, but lost the Citadel. Lost Merriwen, too. That ripped the heart out of us. Like your wife giving you a son but dying in the birth.

  "After that, the other priests needed an excuse. Something to excuse their failure. They claimed Larrimore's savagery pushed the Varrovar into savagery of their own."

  "And what, that's what caused them to unleash the wights? They said Larrimore provoked that? Do you believe it?"

  "Merriwen had already beaten the Varrovar once. They knew they'd have to bring something more to the second battle. You don't create a pack of demons and bring them with you to the field unless you intend to use them."

  Cally lowered his head, thinking this through. "Why didn't Larrimore take the sneaks prisoner, though? Even if he knew they were lying about being lost, they'd surrendered. Turned over their arms. Isn't it dishonorable to just kill them? Er…no offense?"

  "If this is what the youth are being taught, it's no wonder it's all falling apart."

  "I take it that I'm wrong. Then why don't you tell me why Larrimore was right?"

  "The armistice the two sides agreed to wasn't just a simple armistice. It was a holy pact, designed to let common soldiers honor their shared god. When you betray that pact—when you betray goodwill toward the gods and use it to try to destroy your enemy—you forfeit the protection of honor. The only way to bring traitors like that back to a place of honor is to show them that betraying your bond will be answered with slaughter."

  "But if they're such honorless dog-people, won't that just make them retaliate all the worse?"

  "Probably. That's what people do. But there's no honor in letting your enemy play by rules that will mean the death of everything you're fighting for."

  Cally kicked a rock along the path the norren ahead of them had trampled flat. "If the Order betrayed your grandfather like that, then why are you serving them now?"

  Rowe looked as though he'd stop talking once more, then gave a sharp shake of his head. "Killed a man. Arrested for it. One of the priests recognized my name and gave me a choice: hang, or serve. So I serve."

  "It's an easy thing to overlook, given the recent murder of all the people you serve, but all the people you serve were recently murdered. Why haven't you walked away?"

  "I made an oath."

  "That's all?"

  "This is exactly what Larrimore taught me. Break your oaths, and what do you have left?"

  They walked on for a minute. An uncertain breeze crept among the leaves and grass and it smelled as if it might rain later.

  "I want to tell you something," Cally confessed at last. "When we were trying to fetch Merriwen's book, I know why the Lannovians knew we were coming."

  Rowe swung his head around. "How?"

  "When Lady Minabar walked away to talk to her advisor Vassimore, and she left the book behind, I followed them with one of my spies."

  "That was the only way to know she wouldn't come back for the book before I had it. So what?"

  "I could tell they were talking about something important. Or else she wouldn't have left the book in the first place. And my spies, I can hear with them. I sent one closer. Close enough to listen to them. But Minabar noticed it somehow. She felt it. That's when she raised the alarm."

  Rowe's voice was as flat as a windless pond. "Why did you do that?"

  "To find out what they were doing. That's how I learned that they're trying to recreate the wights. If I hadn't chanced it, we wouldn't have any idea what their plans were."

  "Would they have been able to pursue those plans if we'd taken the book back? If you hadn't given us away?"

  Cally had the distinct feeling that things were about to go horribly wrong. "I didn't know they'd be able to sense me through the damselfly. I thought it would help us understand why they killed the Masters and my friends."

  "You idiot. We could have ended this then and there!"

  "That's not fair at all. I was trying to help us."

  "And I was risking my life by going into the camp. You had a duty to me."

  "I had a duty to our mission!" Cally roared.

  Rowe fell back a step, chin lifted in appraisal. He tossed back what was left in his flask and stalked up the line of norren. Cally trudged along, mortified by his inability to do anything right. Not only had he nearly gotten the both of them killed, but he'd let the Lannovians hang onto the key to their whole plan. Somehow the full impact of this hadn't really occurred to him until his little confession, which was yet another mistake. Should have never said a word.

  After some time, though, the sense of unfairness crept back over him. He hadn't asked for any of this: he was just an apprentice, not even a soldier used to creeping around in the dark stealing from enemies and slitting throats. He'd done his best, hadn't he? He'd even saved them after the whole thing had gone to hell. In light of that, Rowe could go to hell.

  He didn't try to speak to Rowe the rest of the day. They quit the march mid-afternoon, setting up their lightest tents, for they intended to continue the trek the following day. Cally spent the rest of the daylight fiddling around with the ether, then went to bed.

  Dawn came. The norren slept a little longer and Cally saw no need to do different. When he got up, he didn't see Rowe. Or Rowe's horse. With a sinking feeling, he made his way to the fire, which the same norren who normally tended it had just gotten started, and asked if they'd seen Rowe.

  "Rowe?" The man scowled in thought. "Do you mean the other human?"

  "Right," Cally said. "Unless you kidnapped some more of us during the night."

  "He left. First thing this morning. Are you going to ask where he went?"

  "Do you know?"

  "No. I don't. Now are you going to stand there, or are you going to go get us more wood?"

  Numbly, Cally wandered off in search of good fallen branches. Maybe Rowe had just left in a fit of temporary pique. But if that was it, then Cally suspected that he would have left the day before, when his anger was strongest. If he was gone for good, then he'd left Cally alone with a band of strangers: and no idea where to go or what to do next.

  14

  "I have decided," Cally said carefully, "to bring my training to an end."

  "Why?" Yobb said.

  "Well, it's a bit blasphemous. More than a bit. It's extremely blasphemous, to be quite honest with you. Now that I think about it, it's so blasphemous that if my Masters ever learned of it, they'd have me whipped, stripped of my robe, and thrown into the street like a bad cabbage."

  "All right. Then your training is over."

  "You're going to just let me quit?"

  "Examining my memories of ten seconds ago, that is what you have asked me to do."

  "Can you even do that, though? Don't you owe Rowe a boon?"

  "Yes, and you have just rejected it. Very rude of you. At least I'll have more time to go fishing now."

  Cally had steeled himself for a whole lot of arguing and browbeating. Now that none of it was materializing he felt completely thrown from his feet. "But I made a vow, of sorts. To be your student."

  "And why would I want a student who prefers to be weak and incapable? If the Wise Trout walked away from Josun Joh, he wouldn't come running after us to plead with us to keep following him. He would laugh, because he'd be happy, because he'd shed himself of worthless people."

  Cally pressed his lips together. "This isn't about being weak. You're asking me to give up my faith."

  "Then your faith is weak."

  "No it isn't. Its strong. Incredibly strong. We have to be to undo the corruption of the world."

  "The corruption that came with the nether."

  "That's right."

  "Which arrived with the cracking of Arawn's Mill."

  "Yes. That's when the world fell from a
state of grace to what it is now."

  Yobb gave him a look of such skepticism it was nearly contemptuous. "It says in the Cycle of Arawn that the Mill fell because the gods made the world so that nothing could die. They thought this was a kind and noble thing to do for their creations, except their creations kept creating more of themselves, and soon the world filled up from corner to corner, and became so swollen and heavy with life that it cracked and fell, knocking Arawn's Mill down with it.

  "That is when the Mill cracked, and when Arawn set it back in the sky, it then ground nether instead of ether, and people and creatures were no longer immortal, like the gods, but grew old and died. Now think on this, little apprentice. Your Order thinks this is a bad thing that death was introduced to the world. But how often has the world fallen and broken since that day? The answer is never. For the new system is stable, and things are born and live and die and give way to new things, and so the world regenerates itself naturally. The nether didn't corrupt anything. It created balance."

  "That may be what you believe," Cally said.

  "That's what everyone thinks, although our story of this cycle involves our own people and not Arawn. People have had this all figured out for hundreds upon hundreds of years, and your Order comes along and decides it knows better!" The old woman cackled, grinning at her audience of birds among the trees; the clan was on the move again, still wending its way north.

  "Still, this is what I believe. I don't know how I can continue to learn things that will damn me."

  "That's the quandary faced by just about anyone who is interesting of mind. Still, if you want to leave, we will help you get home safely, or at least more safely than if you were to go by yourself. That can be how we repay Larrimore's Boon."

  He left to think on it, but his mind seemed doomed to roll in circles, incapable of making any forward progress. He prayed then, not to any one god but to the combined wisdom of the Celeset, for that was what the Order believed in doing, but no answers were returned to him. He wondered if he'd acted too hastily, and if he'd decided to stop not because he believed in the things he'd said to Yobb, but to spite Rowe. Then again, what was the point in staying here? Wouldn't it be better to go home and let others with more wisdom and power deal with whatever was unfolding out here in the wilds?

  A rain storm blew in, but the norren didn't seem to be bothered by it any more than the hills were. Cally hadn't used up any of his nether on the day and it seemed like a waste to not spend it on practice. It was technically blasphemy, but he supposed that he was still in purgatory for the moment, and so he summoned the defenses Yobb had taught him, forging the shadows into the shapes that might one day save his life.

  They camped and slept. It was still raining and the fire-tending norren man whose name was Ivon invited him to sleep in their group tent. Cally dreamed that he was in a wondrous city; it was night and torches sizzled in the rain. The city was under siege by a great host and he was tasked with holding a triangle-shaped fortification. Hundreds of men depended on him directly—and so did the thousands of others in the army, and the tens of thousands of people in the city.

  Ahead, a column of enemy soldiers marched forward. Cally looked about, waiting for the alarms and trumpets to go up from his spotters and scouts, but he seemed to be the only one who could see them. He stood tall, preparing to sound the alarm himself—but he couldn't speak. As though his throat was frozen. Suddenly he couldn't lift his arms, either, or move his legs. Everything depended on him speaking, on moving, but he didn't have the strength, or the will, or the something. All he could do was watch.

  Unseen by the others, the enemy soldiers poured through the defenses and threw the gates open to the rest of their army. The city fell.

  And Cally fled.

  He woke up and he sighed.

  ~

  "Should I bother to ask why you changed your mind? Or is your mind one of those where things merely happen, as if on their own, and there is no explaining why?"

  "The Lannovians are about to do something awful. Nobody's going to know what it is or how to stop it. We can send for my people, but if they can't get here in time—assuming they'll even come, after all that they've lost—then I have to learn how to stop the Lannovians here and now."

  "Even if that makes your Order think of you as a bug? And not a nice bug, such as a ladybug, but a bug that must be crushed, such as a boot-dwelling centipede?"

  "Even if that makes the Order think of me as a boot-dwelling centipede."

  Yobb smiled and pressed her hands together. "Then starting right now, we will make you the best that we can at stopping the Lannovians. This means the next thing you will learn is the power of blood."

  "The power of blood? You don't mean…"

  "Just as wind grows the fire, blood grows the nether." She knit her brows. "What's wrong with your face?"

  Cally touched his cheek. "Am I dirty?"

  "Not any more than usual. The problem with your face is that it just became very disgruntled."

  Cally scowled at the ground, although the ground didn't particularly deserve it. He repeated the Second Rule: "You shall not shed your own blood to feed the nether. 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?' You see? It's right there in Merriwen's teachings."

  "Then it's too bad for you that you already used your blood in such fashion the other day when you learned to defend yourself. Don't you remember? The way the nether surged to you?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "But nothing. If using your blood in this fashion damns you, then you're already damned. You might as well make the most of it."

  Cally stood there, ears buzzing. "This isn't fair. If I'm going to be damned, it should really be for something more exciting, like too much wine and too few clothes. Let's get on with it."

  "For now, you watch." Yobb lifted her hand. The nether flew to her like a flock of formless birds, ringing her wrist and rotating slowly.

  She drew a tool from inside her jacket. It was among the strangest knives Cally had ever seen: a squarish piece of fireglass chipped to a deadly edge and somehow welded seamlessly to a handle of blue stone. She held out her left hand as if inspecting her nails and moved the tip of the knife to the back of her knuckle. All she did was touch blade to skin and a hair-fine red line appeared there.

  A bead of blood welled from the wound and slid down the back of her finger. As soon as it was exposed to the air, the rope of nether that had been coiled around her wrist burst upward and outward, just like oil dashed onto a black fire.

  "Do you see how it reacts?" Yobb said. "And if you can't say as much, please don't lie about that, because it means there is a serious problem with your eyes that will need healing."

  "Did you do something that I couldn't see? Or is bleeding a bit really all that you have to do to enhance it like that?"

  "How did you miss me performing the demonic ritual? The infant was squalling so loudly I thought I'd go deaf."

  "Very funny. Even if you think the Order's a bunch of superstitious fools, you have to admit there's something a bit foul about this. About feeding your blood to the shadows."

  "Our blood is a river within us set to flow by the divine. Why would they put this power inside us if to use it is 'foul'?"

  "Maybe for the same reason a hunter baits a snare."

  "Good hunters don't bait snares."

  "They certainly bait traps!"

  "Speaking false words makes you think false thoughts. Use the word that means what you mean to say." Yobb flexed her finger, squeezing out another drop of blood. The nether pulsed in response. Hungrily. "It seems to me that your people's need to assign such strange motives to the gods says nothing about the gods and much about yourselves."

  Cally stepped closer, watching the swirling nether with both the sight of his eyes and the second sight of sorcerers. "Does the blood actually feed it? Like the way wood feeds a fire?
"

  "It doesn't, so if you want to best understand it, it's again best to use the right words to describe it, although that's true of all things, and not just the one in front of us at this moment. If you find that comparisons help, then this is the comparison I would make: blood is to nether as a road is to a horse. A horse can ride without a road, but it will ride much faster and easily with good paving stones beneath it."

  He took her meaning at once. And then jerked up his head. "That's what you were trying to get me to understand before, isn't it? The nether's sort of like a lot of things, but at the end of it, the only thing it's really like is itself."

  She nodded. "If you wish to understand the nature of rocks, and you spend all your time thinking about what other different things rocks are like, it's only a matter of time before you stop thinking of them as rocks at all. But first and last, a rock is a rock."

  Cally rubbed his jaw, then motioned to her hands. "So when you want to give the nether a road to travel on, you just…cut yourself?"

  "That's the typical way to acquire blood."

  "Just seems a bit crude."

  "If you wanted, you could use the nether to jab yourself instead of using a knife."

  "And that seems a bit circular. I suppose it's a good thing Rowe's been on me about keeping my knife sharp."

  He drew his blade. It was quite small, but that was because he'd been carrying it ever since he'd been sent away to Narashtovik, his father's final gift to him, meant to help him on the long journey and everything that came after. The handle was carved with the ducks that lived in the ponds of Arrolore. They were beautifully done and Cally had always assumed it was the work of some long-ago craftsman, but in that moment, he was abruptly certain it was the art of one of his own ancestors.

  He held his left hand palm-down in front of him and brought the knife to the same knuckle Yobb had pricked. He didn't yet press the point against his skin.

  "Go on," she said. "It barely stings."

  But that wasn't it: knowing he could heal himself, it wasn't the pain or the injury that made him hesitate. It was the idea that he was about to step through a door that would then shut behind him.