The lake’s waters were clear enough, but along the vast shoreline the remains of hundreds, possibly thousands of people had been stacked in heaps and then burned. Ashes coated stacks of bones and partially ruined meat. Andover did not have to guess what had happened to the dead. The Sa’ba Taalor sacrificed the dead to the gods, preferably by tossing them into the heart of one of the forges. When that was not possible they were burned. On occasions when necessity demanded, he knew that the dead were eaten. The Daxar Taalor did not believe in waste.
Amid the rubble great storm crows hopped and lurked, mostly silent save for occasional caws, eyeing everything with cold contempt. He had never seen so many gathered in one spot before. It was a sight to behold.
Delil looked at the birds, too. They did not exist in Taalor. They were large and gray and gave off a certain air of menace.
“Where is Canhoon?” Andover spoke out loud, simply because he was surprised. There had been a vast wall around the city, at least according to the paintings he had seen. He had never once left Tyrne before he came to the Blasted Lands, and could only trust his memories of a life he had almost forgotten. There was evidence of the wall, broken stones and shattered gates, but mostly there was debris.
Ydramil’s voice filled his head. THE GODS OF FELLEIN HAVE MADE THEIR FIRST MOVE. THEY WOULD FIGHT US AND THWART US. THE CITY OF CANHOON RIDES THROUGH THE SKIES, MOVING TO ESCAPE THE SA’BA TAALOR.
Movement from the right made him look that way. Several people were gathered together near one of the portions of the wall that had not collapsed. They were ragged and scared. Their clothes did not match and if he had to guess, they were as confused by the lack of a city as he was.
He slid from Gorwich’s broad back and landed with ease. “Why are you here?” he called out in his native tongue and the group flinched.
They understood him. He had been like them once upon a time. Now he felt like he was staring at a different species entirely. They were so pale, so pink. It was not long ago that he was the same. It was an eternity ago.
“There is nowhere else to go.” It was a woman who spoke from beside him. She shivered as she looked up at him. Her hair was fair, her skin sunburned from seeing more of the daylight than she usually did, and her clothes were the sort of finery he remembered from Tyrne, only now they were badly weathered. There was a time she would have held his eye and he’d have thought her lovely. Now she was dirty, unkempt, and shivered with fright at the sight of him. She was weak, and that weakness made her ugly in his eyes.
“You come from Tyrne?”
“From where it was.” Dark blue eyes looked up at him with dread. She did not see a person from her home. She did not see a Fellein. She saw a Sa’ba Taalor, one of the people who had come into her world and started shattering it. Her eyelashes fluttered rapidly as she attempted to blink back tears. “Everything I had is gone. And now Canhoon has gone as well.”
“You have your life and your health. If I followed Durhallem, you would no longer have those.” He tried to keep the contempt from his voice. She was one of the wealthy, one who had likely never worked a day and could not understand a world that did not adore her for her looks.
“You… You won’t kill us?” There was something about her tone that set his nerves on edge and he moved his right hand, stretched the fingers as if to relax tension, and then did it three more times, quickly.
That was all the warning that Delil needed. She drew her sword and moved into a crouch.
Andover grabbed the woman by her arm and brought her in front of him, striding hard toward the small gathering of people and the wall where they waited. Iron hands crushed soft flesh with bruising force.
She wailed out her fears as he pushed her along in front of him, holding most of her weight with ease. Her feet scuffed and dragged and tried to hold the ground but he did not afford her that level of control.
“I will kill her! I will gut her and let her bleed in the dirt. Show yourselves!”
The three men who came from behind the wall were fighters. They were hurt and they were desperate, but they were armed and carried themselves like experienced soldiers.
Swords. Three swords. For a moment he’d been worried about arrows. That was still a possibility, but not as likely now.
“Don’t! Don’t do that!” The man who yelled at him was heavier than his fellow refugees. Likely he was well trained, but he was also in bad shape. Somewhere along the way he’d earned a deep cut along his left thigh and the wound was festering. His eyes were too shiny and he licked his chapped lips constantly. He was suffering from the Plague Winds.
“Drop your weapons or I’ll kill all of you.” Andover’s tone was conversational.
He looked them over. There were ten people all told, three armed, and only two of them seemed likely to last more than a few seconds in a fight. The man with plague shook his head and muttered to himself.
“I do not care if you live or die, but I also don’t trust you at my back,” Andover continued. “Leave here. Go west. Or I’ll kill you all.”
The plague man charged, moving surprisingly well on his festering leg.
Andover’s axe removed most of his head in the first swing. The return arc brought the obsidian axe into a guard position even as he tossed the girl away and prepared for a proper fight.
In an instant Delil was next to him, standing at his side and watching the gathered people.
The mounts looked on, aware, standing close, but not joining the fight yet. They had not been invited.
“Leave. Now.” Andover’s voice was not loud. It did not need to be.
“We have nowhere to go!” the woman screamed from where he’d thrown her. She did not attempt to rise. Instead she sobbed, her body shaking with her misery, and lowered her face toward the ground.
Andover felt no pity, only disgust.
Delil looked his way for only a moment. “Let the mounts feast. They are hungry.”
He nodded and Delil called to them to have their meals.
The two armed ones tried to defend themselves against the great beasts and failed. While they were dying Andover stared at the woman on the ground. She reminded him a little of Tega, but without the strength he had always sensed in his first love. Love? No. Infatuation. But it had felt like love, once upon a time.
“You are alive. That is my last mercy.” He spoke to the remaining seven who had not been slaughtered. He looked at the woman on the ground as he spoke. “Leave. They are still hungry. They’ll eat all of you if we let them.”
That did the trick. Even those who’d been staring on in horrified fascination as the mounts started their grisly feasts got the hint at that point and started moving. Supplies no longer mattered.
“Where will we go?” the woman tried one last time as she rose to her feet.
“I don’t care.”
Delil reached past him and slapped the woman hard enough to knock her back to the dirt. “Leave before I forget Andover’s mercy!”
She took two steps after the woman, who scrambled to her feet and staggered toward the west as quickly as she could, wiping the blood from her mouth as she ran.
As she started her third step, the arrow took her precisely at the base of her skull. Delil fell forward and landed hard on her face.
There was no thought in the action; that had been trained out of him. Andover spun, even as his hand grabbed at a short spear from the quiver at his hip and he spotted the archer and threw his weapon.
The archer tried to turn away and dodge. The spear’s tip punched deep into the muscle of the young man’s shoulder, until it broke skin on the other side. The man might have thought of running, but the pain was too large for him to ignore and he staggered, then screamed, eyes locked on the weapon in his bloodied joint.
Andover called out, “Kill them all!” and charged the young archer.
Young and desperate and hungry to survive, the archer swept his bow around despite the wound in his shoulder, and tried to draw a fresh ar
row. The notch did not match up with the bow’s line before Andover cut him down.
Another step and he was reaching for the closest of the natives and grabbing at her hair with his iron fingers. She slipped past and screamed and he cut her down just the same.
It was not a battle. It was a massacre. The mounts did their work and Andover did his and none of it changed the fact that Delil was down and dead. He had tried for mercy and been rewarded with the death of his closest friend.
Had there been any doubt in the desire to follow the Daxar Taalor, it was removed in that moment.
Four
Nachia seemed remarkably calm on her seat. She was not on the throne. Unlike her cousin and generations before him, she seemed perfectly content to hold off sitting in her seat of power until she absolutely had to.
Also, she knew about the enchantments layered into the very wood and stone of the vast structure. It offered protection and made sure that the person sitting there was never too comfortable. She would never say so to the old man but she agreed with Desh Krohan’s agenda when it came to the throne: no one should ever sit there long enough to be comfortable.
As she looked over the maps of the area around and below, she tapped a finger on the thick paper and shook her head. There was simply no way around it: the mountains were fast approaching and they would be a problem.
Merros Dulver entered her throne room and stopped long enough to bow formally. She had told him not to stand on ceremony when there was no one around, but he seemed incapable of obeying that simple request. He’d already told her once that she had bodyguards around at all times. He considered them people. She had flushed with embarrassment and he’d chuckled at her discomfort.
Sometimes, she wanted to gut punch him just for the look on his face. Sometimes, she wanted to aim lower. Her self-control was one of the things no one understood about her. They’d have given her a second empire if they did. She chuckled at the notion, as that would be a fitting punishment for any who truly believed themselves free of all sin. She knew better and her self-control, while impressive, had not stopped her throwing a few things and screaming more times than she cared to think about.
That was before the coronation. Now she waited until she was truly alone before she had her tantrums. One must keep up appearances.
Merros eyed her cautiously. “You’re studying the maps again?”
“Well, I suppose I could dress up in my finery and stalk the Mid Wall, but it seems someone else has already taken that task, and besides, I should hate to have people thinking I wanted to start a trend.”
“Better stalking walls than Pathra’s hideous curled hair.” Desh’s voice came from behind her and she resisted the urge to jump out of her seat and scream. She supposed she had that coming, as she liked using the same hidden passages.
“Honestly, Desh. That hair should have been a lesson.”
“That hair should have seen his hairdresser executed for starting one of the worst trends in the history of your family.”
“There’s always the chance she died with Tyrne.” She kept her voice low, as the sorcerer had before her. Only Merros heard both of them and he was properly appalled.
“If you’re both quite done mocking the dead–”
“Only their hair, dear boy.”
“–we should discuss the latest intelligence.” As Merros spoke he moved the ring she had been using to mark Canhoon on the map and replaced it with a crest of the Empire that was a bit larger and had more weight.
“So, tell us what has happened, General Dulver.” Nachia crossed her hands over her chest and stared archly at him. He did not wither. Had he been the sort to wither under that sort of expression he would have never been a successful general.
“The scryers have done their best and it’s quite astonishing what they can learn. The armies of the Tuskandru and Tarag Paedori are still behind us, but they’ve sent a few small bands to get ahead of us and to find out what lies ahead and on the ground below.”
“Really? Have we actually seen any of these scouts?” Nachia leaned back in her seat, the better to look at Merros’s face.
“We have. There are a few of them almost directly under us, moving in the shadow of our city.”
“And can we do anything about them?”
Merros smiled. “Possibly. We are working on ways to surprise them from above.”
Desh stared at the map and nodded his head. “I might be able to help with that. It’s something we can discuss.”
He leaned over the map, studied it carefully and then pushed the crest three inches further along the river’s line. “We continue to follow the river. I’ve checked and there are slight variations in our course to compensate. Also, we’re moving a little faster than we thought initially. I have made adjustments.”
“Still no luck in finding out what to do about the Silent Army?”
“There’s nothing we have found so far. They did not work this way before.” Desh crossed his arms. “We summoned them and they only did certain things, like defend the city. This is new. They could not speak before and they did not act on their own.”
Nachia sighed. “We might yet have to go to the churches and ask the leaders.”
Merros shook his head. “I already did. They seem as baffled as we are. I have witnessed several groups from different churches placing laurels and treasures at the feet of the statues. Tributes, I think, but I’ve seen no response.”
“No more from this Pilgrim of yours?”
Merros shook his head. “He’s not mine, I assure you.”
Desh nodded. “Yes, well, if he were, there’d be no real problems, now would there?”
Nachia barely moved, but her eyes flicked from one man to the other. “What of the other kings of the Sa’ba Taalor?”
“Sorry?” Merros seemed surprised by the question.
“There are seven kings. What of the other five? Where are they and their armies?”
“Well, quite honestly, Majesty, we’re not completely sure. One of them we believe is on the ocean. The black ships have moved to the south and have been engaging the Brellar.”
“How have our associates been doing?”
“It seems they’ve been having a few successes and a great number of losses.”
“How many losses?” Nachia asked and prepared to hide the wince that she knew would come when she heard the numbers.
“Well, the Brellar really do have a great number of ships. Somewhere over a thousand. Which, truly, is a staggering number, but they are spread all along the edge of Fellein. They’ve lost over fifty ships.”
“That’s not so horrid, really. I mean fifty out of a thousand?”
Merros nodded. “True enough, but they are not happy with our previous arrangement and would like to renegotiate.”
“How did you receive that information? I thought only a few of the Brellar spoke our tongue.”
“A good number understand the tongue well enough but few speak it, true.” Merros nodded again. “They have sent back a couple of messages on the bodies of their dead. It seems they really don’t have time to be more personal than that as they are retreating from the Sa’ba Taalor as quickly as they can.”
“So. No navy then?”
“Not as such.”
Nachia stared long and hard at Desh Krohan. Hard enough that he fidgeted. That was effectively a gigantic victory.
“Is there nothing that you or the sorcerers can do, Desh?”
“I’ll look into the matter, Majesty.” The chill from his voice nearly matched the weather outside. As the walls were beginning to get a layer of ice, that said a great deal.
“Desh, you know I would not ask…”
“Yes. I am aware of the dire situation, Nachia. You have seen one demonstration. I cannot promise that any actions taken wouldn’t destroy the sea life for a hundred miles in all directions.”
Nachia thought back to the vast swathe of lightning blasts Desh Krohan had cast from one hand in her presenc
e. She recalled very clearly the devastation he’d wreaked at her request.
“Please give careful consideration, Old Man. I need the help.” Desh did not look old. He was. He had been around since the first rise of the Silent Army over six hundred years earlier. He looked to be roughly forty and was handsome enough to distract her sometimes.
She pushed that thought aside. While she could use a distraction, she’d not try seducing him again. That hadn’t gone well the first time and wouldn’t go well now, she’d have wagered.
Nachia looked at the map though it offered no new information. “Are we safe from the Sa’ba Taalor if they should try to reach us from below?”
Merros gave her an arch look. “You mean if they should grow wings?”
The first Advisor said, “The entire city has been destroyed and rebuilt. I for one am not moving under the city to discover anything, but the Sisters have traveled around the underside of Canhoon and spoke of many openings in the belly of this floating nightmare.”
“Openings?”
Desh shrugged. “As I said, the city has been rebuilt many times. They could lead almost anywhere or nowhere.”
For twenty more minutes they discussed the minutiae of the war on as many fronts as they could be certain of. There were seven kings. They could account for five. The other two either were not involved or were better hidden than they wanted to think about. Likely it was the latter of the two.
In the far east, the armies of the Sa’ba Taalor were already making their mark. Elda was gone, destroyed and buried under a growing mountain of fire. From Elda the Sa’ba Taalor marched north, heading along the coastline and striking wherever they found people. The news was grim whenever they found a city or town. They did not leave survivors. Danaher was a vast city, but it was currently engaged by the Sa’ba Taalor and not doing well.
Morwhen was to the north and had already sent forces to stop the Sa’ba Taalor if possible. Theorio Krous himself was leading the charge. Having seen the man, there was the possibility that he could match the savagery of the Sa’ba Taalor.
Nachia thanked her general for the news and smiled warmly. He really was a wonder. Despite everything he maintained a level head and that helped her do the same.
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