Tyrne was gone. He needed only look toward the south and east to know that.
The winds from the Blasted Lands grew stronger and brought with them the taste of ancient ruination. Ash and grit from the great crater rose past the Edge and spilled toward the gathered forces.
For some insane reason Merros had believed, however briefly, that the men with him would be enough to protect the Empress. All that had saved her in the end was that the King in Iron turned and walked away.
Somewhere below in the Blasted Lands an army waded through the raging storm. His men would have been broken by the force of that fury. The Sa’ba Taalor were not broken. Instead they were honed by the savage winds and the endless dust storm.
One of the priests was coming toward him. Merros saw the man and read the expression on his face with ease. He was enraged and shocked and hurt by the death of Tyrne.
They all were.
Desh Krohan was speaking, trying to calm the Empress. Nachia Krous was angry. She had been challenged when they had come to parley for peace. The first of seven kings of the Sa’ba Taalor had scoffed at her, looked down upon her and then had driven his sword into the ground and murdered an entire city.
She was not merely angry. She was tortured by guilt for every life ripped away by the roaring fire that had swallowed the Summer City.
Teagus came toward him. His demeanor was not what it had been before. He did not duck or bow or cringe. Instead he walked with purpose, his eyes locked on Merros and his wide face set in an expression of righteous rage.
“This will go poorly.” Merros mumbled the words, but Desh Krohan heard them and looked his way and then toward the Elder of Etrilla.
“Do you want–” Merros cut off the wizard’s words with one sharp wave of his hand.
This would be his battle alone. He had to make clear to the priests that they served the Empire, not the other way around.
Still. He did not have to enjoy the task.
“They are all dead!” Teagus’s voice cracked as he came closer. His eyes were wide and teary, but his expression was not one of sorrow. It was rage and hatred that made his face an ugly mask.
One nearly delicate hand pointed a long finger toward Merros. “They are all dead! You forced me from Tyrne and Etrilla has punished us all for your arrogance!”
His teeth ground together as he listened to the accusation. “Don’t start your ramblings, priest. I have enough weight to carry.”
“You have the blood of thousands to wallow through, you swine!”
Merros looked at the man for a dozen heartbeats and Teagus matched his stare. A day earlier and the soldier would have thought the priest incapable of anything that didn’t involve cringing.
“You are grieving.” Merros took one step toward the priest. “For that reason I will forgive your insult. Go back to the other priests and leave me to my duties.”
Teagus spat at him. A wad of phlegm soared toward his face and Merros avoided it with ease, even as he drew back his hand and stepped toward the smaller man. Teagus was short. He was not in good shape. He was older and heavier than he should have been and if the rumors were true his only real exercise came from chasing girls who were not yet women.
Merros’s gloved fist slammed into the older man’s face and sent him staggering backward. “We are done now.”
Desh Krohan looked his way, past the shoulder of the Empress.
Merros pointed to one of his soldiers. At that precise moment he could not have guessed a name. “Lock him in chains. Let him walk behind the wagons and consider his actions.”
There were some that might have considered the punishment harsh. Merros considered it a kindness as he had not drawn his sword and killed the man on the spot.
The soldier came forward and hauled the old priest to his feet. Teagus’s lip was split and bled freely. The anger had faded and grief took its place. The man cried silently.
Merros understood exactly how he felt. Just the same, the man was locked in chains and made to follow the rest.
Some decisions haunt a person.
The winds below hissed and scathed the walls of the deep valley. Jost paid them no mind. They were not important. Above her the land was smooth and free of the worst of the toxic storm that forever marred the Blasted Lands. Her gods demanded that she leave her home behind and that she lead a small army, the likes of which had never been seen before.
Some armies are easy to command and some are not. Hers was not.
The beasts were not soldiers. They lived solely to kill and to eat. The Pra-Moresh were great, hulking things, larger than most predators that walked the skin of the world, and they were always desperately hungry, just as the Daxar Taalor had designed them to be.
Everything in the Taalor Valley and the surrounding lands served a purpose. Nothing was wasted, not ever.
The gods of the Seven Forges had saved her people after the Cataclysm, helping the wretched and burned, the starving and diseased to live and to thrive, and in exchange, they demanded fealty. The Sa’ba Taalor, the people of the valley, were glad to serve, grateful for the chance to prove themselves.
Three weeks earlier, as Jost was sharpening her weapons and contemplating the possible war against the people of Fellein, Wheklam spoke to her.
Wheklam was not one of her chosen gods. She followed Paedle and she followed Wrommish. They taught her well and she served them well.
There are simple rules in this world: when a god calls you to a task, only a fool questions that god’s orders.
Wheklam was the God of the Sea, of Lead and of group conflicts. Not the god of armies, but the god of combat that embraced numerous opponents.
When Wheklam spoke into Jost’s mind, the sound was like the crash of angry waves upon a rocky shore. Jost listened to the voice and obeyed, for that was her sacred promise to the Daxar Taalor.
As they spoke, a searing agony cut into the right side of Jost’s face, from her high cheek down to her jaw, and she carefully set her sword aside and waited for the words and the pain to end.
She had been given a gift that came with a price: She had been marked as favored by the god. In exchange, Jost had but to finish one task.
When that was finished, she followed Wheklam’s commands, adjusting to the Great Scar on her face and moving into the woods in the shadow of Wheklam’s great mountain. For two days she walked without sleeping and carefully stalked one of the great rams that frequented the mountain.
The rams were aggressive and powerful, many of them standing nearly as tall as Jost and weighing several hundred pounds more. They were fat beasts, well fed and capable of killing a fighter without much effort.
Her fight with the ram left her bruised across her ribs, both legs and her right arm, and aching from her thigh to her neck on the left side of her body. Four deep gashes ran across her stomach, so she took the gold from her gear and asked favors of Wrommish, who let the gold sear into her flesh and stopped her death. The gods were kind that day.
When she had recovered enough, she cut the great horns from the ram and then cleaned the carcass. There was no food in the area and no heat. She ate the meat raw but set aside the entrails, as Wheklam had instructed. When her belly was full the rest of the carcass was set with the entrails.
The right horn of the ram was ideal and she set to carving it, carefully listening to the details offered by Wheklam and cutting the holes where the god demanded as she hollowed out the horn and cut away the raw flesh still attached.
When she was done and the god was pleased, Jost collected the meat of the ram, tied the horn to her belt with a slice of hide stretched and braided into a proper band, and then headed away from the valley.
She walked, as she had not yet earned a chance to hunt and capture a mount.
The storms outside the valley were as powerful as ever and the winds scoured her and carried the scent of the carcass she hauled behind her.
The meat did not rot. The Daxar Taalor did not want it to rot. She ate what
she had to in order to survive. The rest she pulled along in her wake as a ship might haul along a fishing net.
Jost had never been on a boat. She had never spoken to Wheklam before the god spoke to her. It was not a matter of disrespect; so much as the situation had never arisen before. Many of the people she’d met when she was in Fellein would have been surprised by the notion of a god speaking to a person, but Jost and her people knew better.
The gods spoke. The Sa’ba Taalor listened and learned and obeyed.
At the end of her long journey Jost reached the great wall of the divide between the Blasted Lands and the Fellein Empire.
By the time she reached her destination, the vast armies of the Sa’ba Taalor were on the move, following the commands of Tarag Paedori, Chosen of Truska-Pren and the King in Iron. All of the kings ruled their kingdoms, but at this time, in this place, they also obeyed Tarag Paedori, as the Daxar Taalor willed it.
She did not know where the armies of the Sa’ba Taalor were moving. That was not her place. She had been told by a god to kill a ram, carve one of the horns in just the right way and drag the great carcass behind her to the area called the Edge by the people of Fellein.
Jost listened to Wheklam and was told to bathe herself in the remains of the ram and scale the great wall of stone. She cut the hide from the carcass and wrapped it around her body, soaking in the viscera. She was not shamed or repulsed by the feeling. Jost was Sa’ba Taalor, and it was not the first time she had bathed herself in the blood of her victims, intentionally or no.
There were no paths. The stone had been scoured by endless winds and storms for a thousand years and the surface was often as smooth as the ice that coated it. That was not important. The gods made demands and she obeyed. That was the way of the world.
So she scaled the Edge and she did not fall to her death though there were a few close calls.
Far below her the carcass she had carried still waited, the offal from the great thing covering her body. She slipped free of her cloak of bloodied hide and dropped it on the ground. The skin was still covered in the blood and remains that she had smeared it with. Perhaps the winds should have washed the scent away, but the gods have their ways.
When Jost was done stripping off the hide of the ram she untied the horn that she had carried throughout her journey. Wheklam told her what to do and she obeyed, blowing through the great horn, though she heard no noise come from it. She heard no noise, but she felt the vibrations of the sound that escaped. The note was too high for her to hear, and so powerful that most of her body shivered with the ringing that touched her flesh.
Far below, deep in the Blasted Lands, that single note carried, traveling farther than should have been possible over the roaring winds and endless ice storm that covered the land.
Thus was her army summoned.
Jost did not wait around for them to come, but instead rose from her seat on the rough, flat lands of the Wellish Steppes – where once, long ago, her people had fought the Overlords and weakened their enemies greatly before being driven away – and headed for the distant shadows on the horizon. She was not done traveling. She had a trail to mark and she intended to do just that.
The ram’s hide still bled heavily, far more than should have been possible. She knew that, but did not question it. The Daxar Taalor performed miracles every day. This was merely one more among the many she had witnessed in her life.
The trail she left behind was bloody and refused to dry.
Jost walked many miles before she reached the forest and the great trees that marked it as unique. Massive oak trees and great willows, hardwoods that she had never seen in her life, as she had never seen so very many trees in one place. Once in the forest she found a vine, green and fat and hard as stone, which rose from the ground into the trees themselves, and she carefully placed her feet and started walking the path the vine offered to her. The ram’s skin bled freely behind her and painted the vine as red as a setting sun.
Wheklam told her that she had done well and commanded her to follow a path he offered to her deeper into the woods.
Being a faithful servant, she obeyed without question.
One
Trecharch lived. That was more than could be said for most kingdoms.
The walls in Trecharch were made of wood that was thick, very solid and very much alive. The trees of the region were walls, homes and barriers against enemies. No one had ever successfully invaded Trecharch in the time of the Fellein Empire, though, in the past, a few had foolishly tried.
The trees at the center of the Great Green – as the area was often called by the poets and scribes – were monumental. They towered higher than should have seemed possible. Most of them were well over a thousand years of age, and joined to the outer levels of the forest by the Mother-Vine that connected all of the Sentinels, the hardest and heartiest of the monolithic hardwoods.
If the people of Trecharch could be said to worship any deities, they would be the Mother-Vine and the Walking Trees.
The Walking Trees were all of the vast Sentinels in the area. Though they did not move far, they did move, and their motion was part of the reason that the people were safe. On several occasions through their long history, the Sentinels had moved themselves across the ground and blocked passages that might have let attackers past their natural barriers.
The Mother-Vine was a tapestry woven across the area: a vine as thick as a fat man’s waist that wrapped around tree trunks, spiraling out between the Sentinels, sometimes at the level of the ground and sometimes hundreds of feet above. In the latter case the people of Trecharch often built guide lines and rope railings, making bridges to move from one tree to the next, allowing them to look at all of their land from above and from the level of the ground.
Not surprisingly, the guards from Trecharch were adept archers.
“It should be warmer by now.” Deltrea’s voice was edging toward petulant. The woman hated working the higher levels, where she could not so easily find a man to flirt with.
Cullen, already in a mood because of the endless, pissing drizzle, pressed her lips together rather than start another argument with the other sentry. They were friends and they worked together well, but the miserable weather and the stench coming from the Blasted Lands had put them both in foul moods. Best to keep a silent tongue when dread whispered in the mind that something was wrong.
In her guts, Cullen knew that something dark was going to happen. She tried to deny it with her head, but her innards knew better.
Only days earlier Tyrne had died in flames. The city was gone and it hadn’t taken long to know it. The birds all left the forest at the same time, rising above the woods and heading east. One bird makes a whisper. A thousand make a sigh. All the birds at once make for screaming nerves.
Within a day the feathered denizens had returned as if nothing had happened, but the omen had been noticed by one and all.
Scarcely half an hour earlier, the birds rose up again, a cloud of different colors against a backdrop of dark storm front. They had not returned. Cullen’s guts said it was trouble. She tended to listen when her body told her things. She knew people who had not and they had paid the ultimate price for their arrogance.
“Winter is stubborn this year, that’s all.” Cullen made dismissive noises that even she did not believe. She stood at her post, looking out toward the distant Blasted Lands and admiring the amazing view offered by their position on the far edge of the Trecharch Forest, near the top of Old Root, the last of the Sentinels before the trees rose only a hundred feet at the highest levels.
The filthy air from the Blasted Lands had been creeping into the area since Tyrne had become a burning mountain, and the Edge no longer seemed capable of holding back the dark winds that had always been locked away in the past.
“I think it’s more than that.” Deltrea shook her head. “Lurne says…” Just that quickly Cullen tuned the other woman out. Once she spoke of Lurne, her sometimes lover, the talk in
evitably went to how much he wanted to rut with her. Lurne was a pig. Rutting was his constant desire.
Sometimes she envied Deltrea her freedom when it came to mating. Sometimes she did not. There had been men in the past. A few of them had been demanding. Two of their bodies were lost in the woods and would never be found. She pushed that thought away.
She wasn't quite sure what at first, but something caught her attention. A motion, perhaps, or a sound. Maybe, she hoped, it was the damned birds coming back, signaling that all was well.
Before the eruption in Tyrne no one had truly considered the possibility of a disaster reaching into Trecharch. Since then, however, the guards were stationed in twice as many places and they were doubled.
Deltrea was still going on about her man, which sometimes seemed the only thing the woman ever wanted to talk about. “Lurne can’t help himself. As soon as we’re together and the curtains are closed, he’s ready to couple.”
Cullen, who had seen Lurne and knew the man was hardly a stallion, was about to make a rude comment when the sounds came to her.
Distant, soft, echoing up from far below, the sounds of laughter and weeping came together. Children mumbled, adults cried: a constant gathering of noises that should not have been together in a cold and lonely forest.
She held up one hand and Deltrea stopped talking immediately. Gossip was a fine thing, but work came before pleasure when one was guarding the area.
“What is it?” Deltrea leaned closer, and craned her head in an effort to hear better.
“Noises. Too many noises.”
To prove her point the sounds grew louder, a cacophony of moans and sighs and broken sobs, now mingling with insane cackles.
Deltrea looked her way. “Is that a Pra-Moresh?” Her voice rose to a higher pitch, evidence of her shock at the notion.
Cullen frowned. “More than one, I’d think.” The great beasts didn’t usually come this far north, but it had happened on a few occasions. When she was a child she’d seen the carcass of one hauled out for everyone to see. The thick teeth, the long claws, and the sheer size of the brute had focused her nightmares for a few weeks afterward.
The Seven Forges Novels Page 64
