Kingdomturn

by Matthew Williams

  One of the other two women removed her helmet, then bowed her head respectfully. “The people of Cynmere—all people of this world—owe you a great deal.”

  The third woman moved close to Keltin’s face before removing her helmet. She stared at him intently, her deep green eyes unwavering. “As it is woven, I am called Synri,” she said, presenting her sima to him. “Find me when this fight is done. I want to hear of your other battles and celebrate victory over the Cultivators with you.” The other two women quickly pulled Synri back amid laughter and taunts that Keltin didn’t understand—something about “behaving like a Dawnsister,” but that meant nothing to him.

  Keltin stood in silence as the three women replaced their helmets and rejoined the line of fighters moving west through the canyon. To say that he was dumbfounded would serve the same level of description as stating that the Plateau Desert was “large.” He had expected that word of what transpired in Dism Slyde would spread, but he never thought people would know him on sight or actively seek him out to express their thanks. A feeling of startled pride brought an astonished smile to his face.

  “Fine morning, hero,” a distorted yet sarcastic voice said from behind him. Keltin spun and found yet another group of women clad in Sreathan plate—these three he recognized instantly, however, as Eyrie, Cailla, and Ryna. Ryna lifted away her helmet and went on. “I find it interesting how people seem to think you did all the work in Dism Slyde simply because you bear the most visible wounds.” Her gaze and tone were cold when she addressed Keltin, but a fire of some deeper emotion flared when she turned her attention in the direction of Synri and her companions.

  “I thought it was your task to heal those,” Keltin responded with a suppressed yet playful smile. Even as he spoke the words, Keltin winced internally and prayed that Ryna would see the humor of his reply.

  Ryna looked up at him angrily for a few tense seconds before a telltale curve appeared at the corner of her mouth. “I may choose to add to them today,” she muttered, then she sighed and tossed a small pouch to him. “Here.”

  “What’s this?” Keltin asked as he opened the bag.

  “It’s breakfast. We went to one of the food carts and I made the effort to bring you something. Consider it just another part of my task.” Ryna stalked away after she spoke, leaving Keltin with the twin sisters. Neither woman said a word, but Keltin knew that beneath those Watch helmets lurked a pair of identical and disapproving stares. Eyrie and Cailla shook their heads briefly, then turned to follow Ryna.

  Keltin’s thoughts raced. “Ryna, wait!” he called, and she paused to glance back at him. Keltin could feel her dangerous stare even ten strides away and softened his tone accordingly. “Please,” he added as he walked over to her. Eyrie and Cailla maintained their silent judgement, waiting to see what Keltin would do next. “Thank you for looking after me. I wouldn’t be alive without all the work you’ve done.”

  To his surprise, it seemed to be working. Ryna’s expression diminished into one of mild irritation and she visibly relaxed. “I was also coming to check your bandages until I noticed how busy you were already with the new arrivals.”

  The earlier notes of anger were starting to return to Ryna’s voice, so Keltin quickly guided her focus away from the incendiary group of Cynmeren women. He pulled one of the bandages away from his neck and touched the smooth skin that lay beneath. His fingers came away dry for the first time in days. “The bleeding stopped overnight,” he exclaimed.

  Ryna gave a satisfied nod but then tilted her head to the side in thought. “You sound as though you doubted my methods of treatment,” she said incredulously, but Keltin could hear the threat hiding within her words.

  “What? No!” he stammered. “I don’t doubt you or your methods, I just—” Keltin’s attempt to explain himself was lost beneath a sudden crash of unnatural thunder from the west. As he shifted his gaze to Aldhagen, two streaks of deep green light flashed from the top of the Hall of the Venerates and disappeared behind the stone walls that obscured the rest of the plateau from sight.

  The camp was still, the air thick with silence as everyone turned to see what was happening. “Not yet,” Eyrie pleaded quietly as she removed her Watch helmet and looked to Aldhagen. “Please, not yet.” Four more streaks of light erupted from the Hall, then a barrage of dozens more followed with a deafening roar. All at once, the canyon was alive with motion as people scurried between tents, scrid, and nysk carts to retrieve supplies and weapons.

  “What’s happening?” Cailla demanded in the confusion. Another series of explosions from Aldhagen ripped through the air, but this time no one paused to watch the terrifying display continue.

  “They’ve begun the slaughter,” Eyrie replied with a look of pain and intense focus. No sooner had she spoken than a pair of scrid appeared—one clinging to either wall of the canyon, both sideways. The scrid riders were shouting as the creatures scuttled east above the camp, but their words were overcome at first by yet more bursts of thunder. During a moment of relative silence, Keltin and the others heard the riders’ chilling message.

  “Forward to the Lake of Skulls!” they cried, and “For the fallen!” Everyone knew advancing to Drugoth was the next step towards reaching Aldhagen, but no one was prepared for the order to be given so soon after arriving in the Deadlands.

  “This way!” Eyrie pulled Cailla towards one of the nearby tents with Ryna and Keltin following close behind. Eyrie lifted the entrance flap, peered inside, then dropped the flap a moment later and raced to the next tent. “Oars, bows, it doesn’t matter—we need weapons now.” She found a spiked oar beside one of the bed rolls and passed it to Cailla. “Do you remember how to use one of these?”

  “Absolutely,” Cailla said with a confident nod.

  Ryna lifted the isen from her waist. “I have what I need.” Eyrie only grunted in reply as she continued rummaging through the tent.

  “As do I,” Keltin added as he pulled the scrid knife from its sheath.

  Eyrie shook her head as the search went on. “Where we are going, you will want your weapons to have range. Things like isen and knives will be useful eventually, but not until we get past the Lake of Skulls. Come on!” She darted out into the canyon once more and the others followed. Before reaching the next tent, Eyrie changed course suddenly and sprinted towards a man standing beside one of the scrid cages. As they drew closer, Keltin saw why she had abandoned the search of the tents. This man—a Stonebrother, if Keltin understood the significance of his green sash correctly—had a stockpile of spiked oars in the scrid cage and was dispensing them as fast as he could. Without question, the man shoved an oar into Keltin’s hands after arming Ryna and Eyrie.

  “Sleeper!” Tir’s unmistakable voice called. The Vessel Guard-turned-Bloodbrother deftly guided a nysk cart through the dense crowd towards Keltin’s group and brought it to a stop less than five strides away. “It’s time for me to return you to the place I found you, it seems. Bring your friends, unless all of you prefer to walk instead.” Keltin, Eyrie, and Ryna leapt aboard without hesitation, but Cailla froze in place. She recognized Tir from Dism Slyde and she knew what these carts had been used for until very recently. Despite encouragement from Eyrie and an impatient snort from Tir, Cailla remained reluctant. Her worried expression only brightened when Aemetta suddenly appeared from the darkness inside the cart.

  “Compared to what you’ve already endured, this will be easy,” Aemetta said with an understanding smile. Cailla nodded to herself thoughtfully upon hearing Aemetta’s reassurances and at last climbed into the cart. Inside the crowded lower level, the dim light of more than a dozen Watch helmets cast an eerie glow onto the walls. Keltin showed the four women to the narrow ladder that led to the upper level and they began the ascent. By the time they reached the open air once more, the cart was already gliding through the camp towards the western end of the canyon.

  Keltin watched the dark cliffs rush past with Ryna standing at the railing beside him. “I
wish you’d stayed behind,” she said quietly, causing Keltin to turn to her with a confused frown. “The thought of you going into battle while you’re still recovering terrifies me. It also feels like I’ve failed at my task of ensuring you are safe. Still, this is your fight as much as it is mine, so I understand why you’re here.”

  Keltin reached over and put his hand onto Ryna’s as it lay on the railing; this time, she didn’t recoil. “We’ll get through this, just like we have with everything else,” he promised. They stayed silent as the cart turned into another ravine and began a descent that they both knew ended at the river valley. A gust of cold wind blew rain across Keltin’s face, and he saw then that the overcast layer of clouds had shifted into a considerable storm. The sounds of destruction to the west now mingled with thunder from the black sky to the north.

  Several scrid raced past on the cliffs above as they made their return journey to shuttle more supplies and fighters from the camp. After another bend in the narrow canyon, the river came into view and Keltin saw that it was teeming with more haugaeldr than he could’ve ever imagined. Though they were still hundreds of strides away across a wide sand flat, the number of them that were visible was staggering. He was thankful to have been unconscious for this portion of his departure journey from Aldhagen, yet also horrified to think that so many of these creatures had been near him the entire time he was asleep.

  The cart slowed until it came to a stop, leaving everyone onboard confused and anxious. Keltin knew they shared the same questions that now entered his nervous mind. Why did we stop here? Should we leave the cart? Are we to go on foot from this point? He looked over the front railing and found one of the Cynmeren atop a scrid barring the way forward.

  “Is this cart full?” the man shouted.

  “It is,” Tir replied, somewhat irritated by the obstruction of progress.

  The scrid hurried onto the wall of the narrow ravine as the thunder of the attack in Aldhagen rumbled through the air once more. “Press on to the Lake of Skulls and establish a foothold there with the rest of the nysk carts,” the Cynmeren ordered. “We will protect you along the way. Return for reinforcements once your current group is in position.” Tir wasted no time on discussion, instead slamming the guiding posts forward so that the cart slid across the sand at full speed.

  As the path opened into the wider valley, Keltin spotted a line of fighters forming to act as a safety barrier between the advancing force and the river beyond. These people had been the quickest to respond to the Voice of War’s command, and already they were engaging the haugaeldr at several points along their defensive line. After seeing the daunting threat posed by the multitude of creatures, Keltin had a sudden realization. “Tir, don’t we need to light the thuribles?” he asked. “You told me once that the smoke drives the haugaeldr away.”

  “That it does,” Tir answered from his position at the guiding posts. “I should say ‘that it did,’ though. There are no embers left now. We used all that Dism Slyde had to offer just to keep the wall of smoke in place across the desert while we fought the Cynmeren.”

  “How do we make more embers then?”

  Tir looked at him strangely—Keltin was startled to see the former Vessel Guard look away from the path forward, even for an instant. “We can’t,” he said sadly. “The embers were lost to us in exchange for knowledge and freedom.”

  “I don’t understand,” Keltin replied after a moment of thought.

  “The cofa,” Tir sighed. “It was the ingredient that produced the purifying smoke of the embers. That’s also what kept the haugaeldr away. Without it, it’s just smoke like any other.”

  Keltin nodded in understanding but felt the hollowness of guilt quickly overtake his core. People are going to die without the smoke to mask them, he realized, and there was nothing he could do to change that. He wondered if a direct attack on Dism Slyde would’ve brought less death overall than the destruction of the cofa was certain to bring now through the haugaeldr. Rain fell steadily onto the fabric overhead as Keltin’s thoughts consumed him; he imagined each drop was stained red as it flowed past to combine with others in a widening pool at his feet.

  Five nysk carts filled with a mixture of fighters from Cynmere and Dism Slyde sped across the sand in front of Tir’s cart; when Keltin looked back, he found dozens more following them. The carts clung to the northern wall of the river valley in an effort to stay as far from the water and the haugaeldr as possible, while the scrid with their cages raced along the ridgeline above. The line of defenders on Keltin’s left grew steadily to keep pace with the nysk carts, and whenever a gap appeared, one of the scrid would scuttle down the face of the cliff with another fighter to bolster the defenders’ ranks. After hearing Wyand’s description of what happened if a scrid became infested with haugaeldr, it was easy for Keltin to understand why the creatures only touched the sand of the river valley long enough to unload their cages before darting back up to the safety of the heights.

  The clicks and hoots that had so recently inspired feelings of terror now brought reassurance to Keltin as he watched scrid pouring over the edge of the cliff. Scores of Cynmeren emerged with oars and bows at the ready, but the haugaeldr had taken notice of the great commotion along the northern bank of the river and were mounting their own offensive. Arrows soared across the river in an effort to lure the creatures back to the south, and though they were slowed by the consumption of their own dead, the haugaeldr still pressed north with terrifying speed.

  Around winding curves the nysk carts traveled, and with each twist in the valley the sound of the explosions grew more distinct. At last, the river widened and the valley flared open to surround an enormous lake—a lake fed by falling waters that Keltin knew came from Wracandyr itself. The unmistakable outline of the Hall of the Venerates stood out from the dark sky, and from its heights yet more bursts of deadly green light hurtled towards Aldhagen and Locboran. Tir urged the nysks forward with whatever speed they had left to offer as a feeling of grim determination spread throughout the group. Thousands of strides still lay between the carts and the base of the plateau, though, so all Keltin could do was pray for the people trapped high above who had no defense against the Cultivators’ rage.

  52

  As Edan’s thoughts began to clear, his sole focus became finding a better refuge from the deadly bursts of light. His heart raced as more of the buzzing, crackling orbs of green struck an area of the living quarters only a few dozen strides from where he sat. The ground shook with each impact and the explosions added to clouds of dust that draped across the ruins of Aldhagen. From the state of the buildings he could see, Edan knew that staying in place wasn’t an option; a single blast from the Venerates’ relentless assault could rip through the wall behind him at any moment. The task now was to find safety; then it would be time for devising a plan to escape the Venerates permanently.

  Though its entrance was many hundreds of strides away, the mine was the most secure place Edan could imagine. Surely not even the Venerates’ weapons could pierce the deeper tunnels that were shrouded beneath countless layers of solid rock. A closer location was the forest; though its trees offered little protection compared even to the wall against which he currently sat, the dense wood line would quickly obscure him from view. Summoning all of his courage, Edan crouched low and crept to the edge of the building to assess the two options.

  He was careful to keep the Hall out of sight—he knew that even an instant of exposure would be enough for the Venerates to spot him and strike him down. Upon reaching the end of the row of living quarters, Edan had a clear view of the path leading to the mines in the distance, but the scene awaiting him forced him to look away a moment later. Bodies of the fallen were strewn across the trampled dirt, some with smoke still curling into the air above them. There were dozens, but the sight of so many dead was nothing compared to the horror of the fate that befell the few remaining living who dared to enter that path. Edan watched as a pair of men darted out from be
hind one of the farthest buildings and dashed away as fast as their legs would carry them. Within ten steps, two of the Venerates’ deadly orbs burned through the air and struck both men down.

  Seeing that it would be impossible to reach the mines, Edan crept back to the other side of the building to investigate the forest. His hopes were once again crushed within seconds, this time because of a growing wall of flames that engulfed the nearest rows of trees. Even with the steady rain, the barrage from the Hall had missed at least a few of the workers and instead found easy kindling in the flammable bark of the spineleaf. Helpless and out of ideas, Edan gripped the sides of his bald head and watched the fire as it added its dark smoke to the already blackened sky above Aldhagen.

  During a momentary lull in the Venerate attack, Edan’s terrified ears searched the stillness of the surrounding ruins. Splintered beams as well as other less pleasant fuel sources crackled in every direction, while bits of stone and mortar clattered against one another as they toppled to the ground. But one sound stood out from the others, and it immediately captured Edan’s attention. Somewhere to his right, feet scuffled in the dirt—it wasn’t the sound of running, it was that of someone struggling to move a burden that had proven too much to handle.

  Uncertain what else to do, Edan returned to the northern end of the wall to see if he could locate the sound. Clouds of dust and smoke swirled past as he squinted towards the pathway once more, but nothing immediately revealed itself. He risked crawling closer to the edge while keeping an eye in the direction of the Hall, and that’s when he spotted the source of the noise. Behind another crumbling wall across the path from Edan, Scur clung to Adlig’s shirt and was trying to pull his fellow Tailing backwards with all his might. Edan understood the boy’s urgency at once as he realized that Adlig was less than a stride from stepping out into the open space between buildings. Scur was losing ground quickly, and his frantic whispers were quickly building into shouts.