The Seven Forges Novels

by James A. Moore

  Teagus saw other faces that were familiar as they joined in the migration. They came from different places, walking at a calm but brisk pace to keep up with the man who led them all. Many walked with calm acceptance. Some wept, for their lot was not going to be an easy one and they knew it.

  Teagus might have run. Once upon a time he surely would have attempted to barter for his safety, but he knew better now. He had acted poorly in his time. He had used his authority for his own carnal satisfactions and he had lived comfortably while many suffered. That was not what Etrilla asked of his followers. There was a time for rest and a time for work. There was a time to reap the rewards of labor and a time to offer sacrifices in the names of the gods.

  He had never sacrificed before.

  He had blamed Merros Dulver for the fall of Tyrne, but he was the chosen of the City God and he was the one who failed to protect that city.

  He would redeem himself now.

  It was time.

  He was given a second chance and he was so very grateful.

  There were many stairs along the second wall. The inside wall had to be guarded and though there were a few soldiers currently in position there were not enough to even consider stopping them.

  They climbed the stairs as they moved along the wall, maneuvering past buildings in some cases and in others walking past recently cleared fields where the newly formed towns of the refugees had been raised and then razed in preparation for the coming assault.

  The guards along the wall stood in place and watched them, often with open mouths and a deep, abiding sense of shock. There were a hundred guards spread over the whole of a wall that could hold ten times that many soldiers. There were over two thousand of the Pilgrim’s followers. The math was very easy. Best to let them alone as they seemed intent on doing no harm.

  In all it took over an hour for the followers of the Pilgrim to take their positions along the wall.

  It took Merros Dulver fifteen minutes to find the Pilgrim.

  “You!” he called from below and pointed directly at the Pilgrim.

  The Pilgrim nodded his head and stared back, his face set and grim.

  “Why are you here?”

  The Pilgrim looked at him for a moment and breathed out. “We are here to protect the city of Canhoon. To protect the Empress of Fellein and to raise the Silent Army.”

  “The Silent Army?” Merros shook his head. “What is a Silent Army?”

  “Long ago Desh Krohan and the sorcerers of Canhoon summoned the Silent Army to defend against the enemies of the Empire. They were summoned and they served and when they had finished serving, they lay themselves down to rest until they were needed again.”

  General Dulver looked at the Pilgrim and then looked toward Teagus. “And aren’t you supposed to be locked away?”

  “Etrilla has forgiven my transgressions and yours as well, General Dulver. We are here to help you in your hour of need.”

  “You might consider buckets of water near the Western Gate. We’re likely going to need them to put out the fire.”

  He had no idea what the man was prattling on about. Teagus would help to save the Empire but forgiven or not, he doubted that he would ever care for the general’s company.

  “We are here to save the city, Merros Dulver. That is enough. That is all you need to know.”

  Dulver listened to the Pilgrim’s words and shook his head. “Just don’t leave a mess along my wall. I’ll be sending soldiers here soon and they’ll need you out of the way.”

  “Merros?” For a second he almost failed to ask, but he had to, he needed to make amends. “I’d ask you to beg Empress Nachia’s forgiveness on my behalf. I was not as good a man as I should have been in my younger years.”

  “Mention her name again and I’ll come up there and kill you where you stand.”

  Teagus nodded. That was fair enough under the circumstances.

  “It is time.” The words were spoken softly enough, but around the entire wall the followers of the Pilgrim stood straighter.

  To Merros Dulver the Pilgrim said, “The Silent Army comes. Do not stand in their way.”

  The Mid Wall around the heart of Canhoon stood over fifty feet in height and was surrounded by cobblestones in all directions. A drop from the top would likely kill, but there was always that chance of failing.

  “I have no blade,” said Teagus, and the Pilgrim nodded and obligingly slit his throat for him. The sword’s tip was sharp and cut through meat and tendons with ease. The pain was brief, but not unbearable.

  Teagus gurgled a bit as he stepped forward from the edge of the wall and plummeted straight toward the cobblestones below.

  “By the gods!” Merros stepped back quickly and avoided the blood splatter that followed. The next body fell a moment later and then the next and the next. Most of them had blades. Those that did not either asked help from a neighbor or, if they were desperate enough and short on time, bit through the meat of their own wrists.

  Merros Dulver looked on, horrified as one after the next the followers of the Pilgrim bled themselves and then fell to their certain dooms. Their blood ran thick and hot between the stones and their bodies shuddered and twitched.

  Teagus, the child-loving priest, looked his way as he died, a beautiful smile on his fat face.

  “Why? What have you done?” He looked up to the Pilgrim who remained standing above him on the second wall.

  “Have you forgotten along with the rest, Merros Dulver? The gods always demand a sacrifice.”

  The Pilgrim did not cut himself, nor did he plummet to his death. Instead he spread his arms far and wide, a sword held in one hand, and he called out in the old tongue, reciting the names of the gods, one after the other.

  With each name he was transformed.

  Merros looked at the dead bodies around him and shook his head.

  “Madness.” The closest guard was standing still, staring at the bodies and blood. “You!”

  The man flinched.

  “Get to the barracks. Find anyone off duty and get them to help you with this.” He waved an arm to indicate the bodies. “Go. Now.”

  The need to get back to the palace grew in him. It was a sense of dread that he refused to ignore.

  “What if there’s no one in the barracks?”

  “Grab people off the street. I don’t care how you do it, just get it done!”

  Far above him on the second great wall, the Pilgrim stood still, looking down upon his dead followers.

  It was time.

  Maybe the sun was merely in the wrong spot. Perhaps the sight of two thousand or more people throwing themselves to their deaths had, understandably, rattled Merros Dulver more than he wanted to admit.

  Whatever the reason, he took no notice of the Pilgrim where he still stood on the wall. He paid no heed as the color of the man began to change.

  When he had awoken he was transformed, altered by the needs of the gods. He was made flesh and blood and lived after a long, deathless time at the bottom of a slow moving river.

  Now he was transformed again. The needs of the gods were different and so he responded to them.

  The gods demanded sacrifice and so he had gathered the faithful to him and asked that they offer themselves to the gods they served. A few had crept away in the night. A few others died before they could reach Canhoon as the trek across the land was not a gentle one and he had kept a hard, steady pace.

  Below him the bodies of the faithful shifted and the one guard who was supposed to find enough assistance to move their bodies looked on and then ran, biting his lower lip in an effort not to scream. He broke flesh and bled a crimson beard down to his neck as he ran for the barracks. He did not look back, he did not dare.

  There were no witnesses to see the transformation. The Pilgrim’s skin hardened and darkened. His clothes changed too, taking on the form that he had worn for hundreds of years.

  When he had first been created he and his brethren rose from the soil of Canhoon
to defend the city against the enemies sent to destroy or control the fledgling empire. They were born for war, to defend, to protect and to kill as needed. In time they served their purpose and all of them faded, falling back into the stone and earth from which they rose.

  The people of Canhoon had called them the Silent Army, for they were born without tongues and had no need of speech. They could move together, they could fight together with the skills bred into them.

  There were secrets then. Great sorceries were used to forge their bodies, blood was shed and the bodies of those crushed within the earth of Canhoon as the city fell into ruin and shook itself apart were mixed with those sorceries. The Silent Army was born of pain and sacrifice and raised to serve.

  The Silent Army was born again in much the same way.

  The Pilgrim lowered his head and looked down at the stone wall beneath his feet. He had stood here once before when he was raised the first time. His feet had been where they were now.

  Below him, along the entire range of the second great wall, the bodies of the faithful melted. They flowed into the spaces between the cobblestones, following the very path their blood had already taken.

  The Pilgrim spoke the words that had summoned him the first time and added to those words of power the names of the gods who had resurrected him for this very purpose. He made his prayers, he commanded the power that the gods of Fellein afforded him, the gods remembered and forgotten alike.

  The hardbaked clay of the second wall moved and danced, rising in columns all along its length.

  The pillars of clay shifted more, and took form, mirroring the very shape of the Pilgrim where he stood, looking down upon the edge of the city he had sworn to protect from the moment of his creation.

  Beyond the barrier where he stood was the area called New Canhoon, the places that had risen over the course of centuries. He contemplated those changes as his flesh continued its transformation from soft skin to living stone.

  Seconds, minutes, hours. None of them mattered. To the naked eye the Silent Army seemed to rise in a heartbeat. To the Pilgrim the process seemed slow, and nearly as painful as a real childbirth. He ached with each transformation and felt the pain of his brethren as they were reborn from the bodies of the sacrificed.

  Etrilla had kept sentinels in the City of Wonders, though few had ever considered them and none in many a decade. When the Silent Army had served its purpose many fell into ruin and were absorbed back into the city that birthed them but others climbed the towers and rooftops of the city and stayed where they chose to rest, frozen in position as they watched over Canhoon. They did not live, and they felt no need to move, but they had been there for as long as anyone, even the oldest of the sorcerers, could remember. Canhoon had its statues, true enough, but remarkably few of them had ever been sculpted by human hands, at least among those that stood above the city.

  Those long silent sentinels moved at last, breaking free of the places where dust and time had long coated their bodies. Across the city the birds that had roosted along the statues broke into panicked flight while the oldest of the Silent Army moved to join their newly reborn brethren.

  The Silent Army rose again. The Silent Army lived again.

  Canhoon would be saved if they had any say in the matter and for a collection of beings that did not speak, they had a great deal to say.

  How does one face a god?

  Andover Lashk was learning quickly. He had stood before six gods and now he walked the final steps to face a seventh. So far the experience had never managed to become more comfortable.

  Ydramil was the easiest mountain to climb, and oddly that only added to his discomfort. No, not discomfort. Fear.

  He had scaled mountains, faced floods, fought literal armies to be where he was and the thought that he merely had to walk through an opening in a gentle slope rather terrified him.

  There was a growing dread in his stomach that the final god he faced would be the worst.

  In appearance he was no longer the same man he had been once upon a time. He knew that the moment he entered Ydramil’s domain. The walls around him were silver, smooth and polished to an incredible sheen. He could see himself for the first time in a while, truly see himself and all of the changes that had taken place in his body.

  He was taller, he was broader, he was… well, he was older. How much older? He could not say, but at a guess it had to be at least a decade’s worth of transformation in his shape. He had been redefined by the gods. He had been, was being, reshaped.

  Forged.

  His hands were larger. That made no sense to him but they, too, had grown. Hard, living iron, forged by Truska-Pren. He had never considered that it could truly be alive and yet, the evidence was in front of him. A part of him. His body had changed because it had to. Hard work made muscle and he had been working very hard indeed.

  The very things he had grown to admire in the Sa’ba Taalor now stood out on his flesh. A series of gray scars on gray skin told the tales of the combats he’d experienced. Not all of them. The battles he’d had in Wheklam’s heart had not left physical marks. They had instead marked his mind. He had fought so many foes that it seemed to him the fear had been pounded from his body. The idea of facing ten men did nothing to make him nervous, merely wary.

  The images in the silver walls around him moved of their own volition. They were images of him, to be sure, but he was standing still and they were not. The eyes that looked at him burned with an inner light he was very familiar with. The mouths on his reflected face moved and whispered, but there were no sounds. They were images, not solid beings.

  The presence of Ydramil was with him.

  One by one the multiple reflections of his body shifted. They took their time and settled in the gray dust that covered the floors of the vast cavern. It only took a moment for Andover to follow their example.

  “I offer myself to you, Ydramil, as I have offered myself to all of the Daxar Taalor.”

  All of his reflections spoke and this time the words were clear. “You are welcome here, Andover Iron Hands. You and I have much to discuss.”

  When the god reached for him Andover fell back and closed his eyes. The impact was greater than he imagined possible.

  The Blasted Lands were calm. The storms no longer raged and the ground was hidden beneath waters that slowly thawed after centuries of constant freezing.

  The Mounds were no longer as they had been. Many had fallen completely and collapsed into the crust of the earth though a few still stood in the placid waters.

  Three shapes crawled from the tunnel they had all used to gain entrance to the depths of hidden power locked away in the Mounds.

  What had been Drask Silver Hand looked toward the Seven Forges for only a moment before turning and heading for the Temmis Pass. The others followed in silence.

  Where they walked, the waters boiled.

  For seven hours the Sa’ba Taalor gathered. At each of the sealed gates the armies grew until Canhoon was surrounded by an army as large as any seen in a dozen lifetimes.

  At the end of that time the King in Iron made a gesture and the ranks closest to him called out with their horns – long, ululating notes that echoed from the distant foothills and bounced back to crash along the solemn stone barrier that held the armies at bay.

  From all sides the other gathered armies made their calls, until the sound was very nearly as loud as thunder pealing across the whole of the city.

  And then the noise stopped.

  Desh Krohan watched and felt a shiver run through him.

  There were so many of the enemy and he could not do what he had done before from this range. It was likely that if he tried he could eliminate most of the army, but not without a cost that he was not willing to pay.

  He had eventually made his way back to Nachia’s side as she stood in her tower and looked out on the vast armies gathered at the edge of the city, unwilling to rest for now. Instead she paced slowly around the cylindrical room an
d absorbed the sheer volume of enemies ranked together and held back by little more than a series of walls she knew would fall before their collected might.

  Desh knew she considered asking him to strike against the enemy again. She considered it, but did not ask.

  He was grateful for that small blessing. His answer would have been the same and that might well have ended the friendship and trust he had spent years cultivating with the new Empress.

  Merros Dulver wrote messages and handed them to runners. The runners returned with other messages. Some reports were inconsequential. No one had attacked yet, but they would.

  “Should we destroy the bridges between the first and second walls?” Merros sounded so very tired. Desh understood all too well.

  Nachia shook her head. “No. There are too many of my people who need those bridges. Have soldiers ready to defend them. Have archers waiting.”

  Desh looked up. “I have seven sorcerers ready to destroy the bridges if the command is given, Majesty. They await only your command and nothing less.”

  She nodded her head. Stone walls and brick roads could be destroyed with far more ease than a troop of soldiers that moved. He had explained the reasons to her before. Preparation made a difference. The bridges could be marked, and had been. Each sorcerer would only attack a single bridge if it came to that. Each bridge would be shattered and anything standing on it or near it would be destroyed as well.

  “Desh, what do you know of a Silent Army?”

  He looked to the general with a surprised expression. “The Silent Army? They were raised once upon a time to stop the enemies of Fellein. It took more power than you could understand, Merros. More than the remaining sorcerers could muster, I think. And it required sacrifices.”