Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars)

by Jim Grimsley

  “Hush,” Karsten said, and one understood from the sharpness of her gaze why she had command over Imral and Pelathayn both, where the army was concerned. “Name the advantages, Imral. I follow you partly.”

  “So do I,” Kirith Kirin said, but he was looking at me.

  Imral moved along the windows as he spoke. “We’ve surprised our enemy. The defeat of Nemort was unlooked for. The death of Julassa was unthinkable. Now we’ve occupied Inniscaudra and we have a magician on the Ellebren Height. None of this was expected. Drudaen has thrown shadow, but I’ll wager you Drii silver he did it before he was ready. Jessex, help me. Am I right or wrong?”

  A thrill ran through me, that he spoke to me as an equal. “You’re right, I think. There are signs.”

  “Name them,” Kirith Kirin said.

  “One I saw today. Shadow is thin over Montajhena, and there’s light he can’t alter or take into himself.”

  “Yrunvurst,” Mordwen whispered.

  “Yes,” I said. “From the base of the broken towers, but particularly from that one. His shadow can’t engulf it. And it seems clear from other signs, from the little we’ve contested with each other so far, that he wasn’t ready for so much at once. He’s stretched.”

  “So if we move now, or at least as quickly as we can, we may gain some advantage,” Imral said.

  “While he’s encamped in Vyddn,” Kirith Kirin murmured, “before he can send an army north.”

  Karsten said, “I like the plan. Can we do it?”

  “My father can have troops in Maugritaxa in ten days. So can we, if we push. The Cordyssans and the new troops will be slower but that can’t be helped.”

  “They won’t do us any good without training,” Karsten said. “Better to leave them and take what we have.”

  “We would be no more than ten thousand,” Kirith Kirin said, “against twice the number Drudaen can put into the field.”

  “Only if we give him time to assemble a whole force,” Imral said. “His armies are split now.”

  Karsten and Pelathayn nodded at this logic. But it was left to Pelathayn to state the obvious. Looking at me, he said, “Ten thousand or forty thousand, what difference does that make? The armies won’t fight the battle that matters.”

  They had been skirting this topic. The thought brought gloom to Kirith Kirin. He asked me, nearly a whisper, “So, little magician. What do you say about that?”

  I said Words into the kei and let time play itself out. I saw myself at Illyn Water, that last morning, and Vella’s voice returned, so clear it hung in the air, Aren’t you afraid of him? And my answer, Yes. But what choice do I have? What choice indeed, when from the High Place I could hear, even now, the murmuring of his voice? I could see what had to be done, as if it were a page I was reading. I returned to the room in the Winter House, to the moment of my friends; and he knew where I had gone.

  “I can’t wait ten days. I’ll need to ride south sooner than that. I’ll have to take Laeredon Tower from him. And you can’t leave here till I do.”

  The others were stunned and rendered silent. Kirith Kirin leaned over me as if I were a child. “No,” he said, “not so soon.”

  “Yes, Kirith Kirin.” It became my decision with those words. “If he senses we’re marching from Inniscaudra he’ll leave Vyddn country himself and take the Tower against me. I can’t face him from the ground. If I can break his hold on Laeredon, I can hold that whole country against him, and I’ll have two Towers then. He’ll have to go south himself to find a place to stand against me, and his army will be split.”

  The logic of it struck them dumb, as it had me when the thought finally formed. Kirith Kirin sagged against his seat. “Can you do it?” Imral asked.

  “I don’t know. But I can try.” I was suddenly full of dread. “I know one thing. If I don’t break him there, you can’t come south. There’ll be no more hope.”

  Kirith Kirin knew this already. He sat motionless. Karsten reached for his hand. Mordwen said, at last, “The Summons is the Summons and the Law is the Law. We’ll have to ride south regardless.”

  I looked him in the eye and spoke from the center of my being. “No, Mordwen. Better to ride straight to Tornimul. Kirith Kirin is the Law now. And if I can’t make a way south for us, then he must stay here, where the Wizard can’t reach him. This is the will of the Mother, and you know I’m right. Without Kirith Kirin we’re lost.”

  Their silence told me I was speaking the truth. After a long time, Kirith Kirin asked, “When?”

  “Now.” Into his eyes. “When I have Laeredon you’ll see the signs. Promise me you won’t come out of Arthen otherwise.” He looked away from me so I took his face between my hands. “Promise me.”

  After a while he nodded. A breath like a wind passed through all of us.

  When I stood, it was the beginning of a journey. They knew it, each of them, and said good-bye. Kirith Kirin held me so close I thought he would break my ribs. I touched the chain around his neck and murmured Words. I kissed him good-bye in front of his friends, and left him blank and speechless in the chair. I left Halobar on the same mist that brought me there. They don’t call it the Hall of Many Partings for nothing, I guess.

  4

  I enfolded myself in the Fimbrel Cloak, flowed through the House unseen and entered Ellebren, where this time I rose on the runes through the kirilidur straight to the pirunaen. I called the names of the runes as I rose, and they burned from their stone setting. Whirling and rising, I wrote the strange words into my memory. I looked for the other threads as well, the runes that I could not read. The writing of the Praeven, the thought came easily. Like the writing on the locket.

  Reaching into Ellebren’s depths, to the place where Edenna Morthul laid the first stones within Thrath Rock, I called Hear me, I am the one who climbed your summit; release your deepest secrets to me for I must take a journey; I have no time for riddles or devices; whatever is hidden must be opened; I am he who sang inImith Imril when no one had sung there since Falamar died; I am Yron who crossed the mountains; I am riding and my need is great; if there is a spirit left here who can answer such a summons, help me now; release your secrets, Ellebren, and come to me when I call from far away.

  While I moved through the pirunaen like smoke, I continued this undertone of song. When I first opened Ellebren I felt the Tower receive me as if it had been waiting all this time. In my mind, too, were Kirith Kirin’s words when he told me that no one ever walked on the Ellebren Height before me. That was the day she told me she had prepared the place, and one would come to stand in it. She was Kentha, who completed the building of Ellebren after Edenna Morthul abandoned it. She was my great-great-grandmother.

  On impulse, in the midst of my preparations, I lifted the Bane Necklace from its hidden place within the Cloak. Holding it aloft, I let my thought go into it and heard, as if sighing coursed through the whole Tower, a release of wind. Along with the echo of Kentha in the stones, a trace of her resonance that would last as long as the Tower. I could feel the Praeven runes in the kirilidur, throbbing. “When I’m riding, remember me.”

  I gathered gems from their caskets, rings and brooches that could be fixed to my clothing; these I could prepare along the ride. For the Bane Necklace itself I selected a new chain, from a casket marked with Edenna’s rune-sign; the thought seemed important, to place the necklace fashioned by Kentha on the chain forged by Edenna. They had built the Tower.

  When I placed the Necklace around my neck, peaceful voices soothed me. I added a white-stoned earring from the casket as well, speaking a Word to fit the ensorcelled metal to my ear. The Bane Gem weighed on my breast, heavy and dense.

  At once the Room-Under-Tower seemed less a stranger to me.

  I found a casket where dried cakes lay in heavy enchantment; I filled a pack with these, lining it with soft viis from nearby. In another casket, marked with the signs of Kentha’s House, I found a dagger, simple and silver, set with a single ruby gem in the hilt, the Eye
of God. Its belt was of wrought silver and I fastened it round my waist. When I touched it I knew Kentha had put it here for me. It had waited all this time. A gift.

  Other secrets, other gifts, on every side, if I ever returned. Ellebren opened itself to me in a flood of radiance. I could see the Library in its hidden vault, other chambers of special use, other treasures that might, someday, serve me well. The joy of it swept me round the room dancing, as if my grandmother had suddenly returned to sing me one of her favorite songs.

  In fact it was my great-great-grandmother, I think.

  But one treasure drew me at that moment. I felt the harmony of the object, a kind of calling, and opened a casket, rooted through it to find a carved stone box. Inside, a ring with a white stone that Edenna had fashioned, and I read the rune for Laeredon on the ring. She had made a ring to rule Laeredon Tower from a distance. Common enough to do so. Kentha might have done the same for Inniscaudra, though I’d found nothing here. Drudaen would have altered Laeredon to make it useful to him, but the ring would still prove helpful.

  Last of all, I walked the Height for a moment, gem-bedecked and glittering, speaking softly to the veil over Inniscaudra, to the Horns and their vaults of light, rounding the colonnade with the Cloak flowing like smoke behind me, and finally kneeling at the Eyestone. I made no magic there but set a gem on each of the altars, a way to make him feel me present on the Tower. I prayed my trick to work.

  My last moment before descending, I remembered sitting here with Kirith Kirin, only a night ago. Already nearly lost in the flood of events, a moment of that peace returned to me. That was my gift to this place, I thought. I brought him here. The stones will remember me for that.

  So I went down to the pirunaen and on a breeze, floated down the kirilidur to the base of Ellebren. The voices of strange and wonderful women hung in the air around me.

  5

  When I emerged from the Tower, Imral Ynuuvil stepped from the shadow of the Arches and beckoned me. “I’ll lead you to Nixva,” he said, and again I enfolded him in my Cloak and we traveled hidden from eyes. This journey carried me to parts of the House that only the twice-named know; they have their own ways of moving in concealment within Inniscaudra. After a time we had no further need for my arts to mask our movement. We descended through hidden corridors and stairs to a gate in the rocks below Krafulgur, where Karsten awaited us with the horse.

  Nixva greeted me with haughty impatience. Karsten embraced me and Imral spoke quickly. “We’ve packed cumbre and a little of my brandy in your saddlebags. Nixva himself would stand for no more than that, so we guessed it was all we should do.”

  “I have whatever else I could think to bring,” I said. Hesitating then, I asked, “How is he?”

  Karsten answered, “Not well. He doesn’t know we’re here; we didn’t dare tell him, otherwise he’d have come himself.”

  Imral asked, “When will you get there, do you think?”

  “Two days, maybe more. You’ll see signs of our journey at Ellebren.”

  “Fireworks,” he whispered, smiling. He kissed my brow, as did Karsten.

  I made Karsten swear to get Axfel as soon as the baggage wagons were unloaded and find a home for him here. Sorry I could not say good-bye myself, but she said she would. As my last gesture I gave into Imral’s keeping the Keys to Ellebren Tower. “You know what these are?” I asked, pressing the silver ring into his hand. “I can’t have them on me if I fall.”

  “I’ll give them to Kirith Kirin,” he said.

  I shook my head. “Keep them till you see me again. If you give them back to him, he might think I’ve despaired.” After a moment I added, “They’re mine to leave in this fashion if I choose. If I fail to take Laeredon, give them to him then.”

  A moment, I lingered. Nothing was left to say, except one thing; and I had to have heart for that. I mounted to Nixva’s back, feeling the trembling of his impatience. “I’ll see you in Genfynnel.” Making mist and veil as they opened the gate, I started on my way.

  6

  Since I made that journey I’ve seen maps and know what route we took; at the time I had only Nixva to trust. I told him where we must go, and that we must travel hidden within the Woodland until the last possible moment; he snorted and answered that his part was easy, but could I carry off mine? He had no wish, he said, to return riderless into Arthen.

  The horse headed through the Woodland following the roads south and I began to build the ithikan that would lend him the speed he needed. This was delicate business to do, since everything depended on my remaining hidden from Drudaen’s vigilance, but at the same time I had to make sure Nixva was safe at the highest speed we could reach. Vyddn is a long way from Genfynnel, the city over which Laeredon Tower broods. If I could reach the edge of Arthen without the Wizard’s guessing my purpose, I could beat him to the Tower.

  Nixva understood what had to be done and gave his spirit to the task. Soon we traveled in one low wave along the Woodland roads. The joy of speed consumed him, but our passing hardly stirred the leaves on the trees.

  I began my own preparations. I avoided trance and moved no further into the Circles than sixth level, since Drudaen might have detected that even beneath Arthen’s canopy. The gems I’d left on Ellebren would give the glimmering of my presence, for a while. I worked from another state, a kind of mid-mind in which I could thread song and thought but not yet move Power; in its way, this consciousness was akin to the means by which I had hidden my training at Illyn Water. No magician ever learned that art as well as I did; no one else ever had to.

  Gathering all my knowledge of the Towers and their making, learnt at Commyna’s knee, I threaded thought on thought. Drudaen held all the southern High Places in one fashion or another, but his hold was not the same on each. Some Towers he had built himself and some his father Falamar had built, and over the Towers of their making Drudaen exercised unshakable authority. In these High Places, the ruling runes in the kirilidur were of Ildaruen, about which I knew nothing. But Edenna Morthul built Laeredon during the Long War with Falamar, and the runes in that place were Wyyvisar when the Tower was made. Furthermore, Edenna was the wizard who first invented the rune-threads, and the Laeredon kirilidur was the finest example of what the rune-threads could do until Ellebren was built.

  Kentha held Laeredon after Lady Morthul crossed through the Gates, and its Keys are said to have vanished with her when she died. Drudaen took the High Place for his own use after that. Because he had no keys, he broke down the gates, then had them remade. One could be certain he had altered the Tower to his own use in the years since. But he had never taken the time to bring the Tower down or raise a High Place of his own, as he had done in Ivyssa and earlier in Montajhena. He had simply faced the kirilidur with an Ildaruen veneer. The Sisters guessed this was because he lacked the strength to undue Edenna’s work.

  We flashed through the middle Woodland, Nixva a rush of black fire over the bridges crossing River. Leaning into his mane, I whispered my love to him and he answered me with more speed. Nearer came shadow with each step. The passing of time became meaningless, and I floated in images that were pieces of my thought: the presence of Ellebren behind me, the light over Montajhena, the heaviness of the Wizard on the Vyddn Plain. He stood in no High Place and could reach none unless he beat me to Laeredon. His purpose in Vyddn must be vital or he would not have lingered. His contempt for me and pride in his own strength must also be great, or else he would not have remained on the ground when I opened Ellebren against him. Now I had no sense of any change in him at all, and if he was striving with anything, it was with some ghost in Montajhena, as far as I could tell.

  We rode all day and through the night. Near dawn we crossed River again, and the light wood of Maugritaxa surrounded us. Soon Nixva left the road for a path, since the place he wanted, where the Woodland reached down closest to Genfynnel, was tangled and wild and had no proper road. We slowed the ithikan some, in the undergrowth, though we still made good spee
d.

  By then day had broken. By then, also, Drudaen’s first folly was closing its hand around him, because when we entered Maugritaxa we were already far closer to his Tower than he was.

  When Woodland’s End loomed before us I sang Kimri under my breath, the part where YY answers,

  I am lighting the lamp that lights the lamps

  I am behind that light

  On the last line we burst free of Arthen and were revealed to him. I entered fourth-level trance and began to sing.

  7

  Genfynnel lies south of Arthen, several days march, at the place where Isar and Osar diverge. Before the closing of Arthen it had the bulk of the River trade, but that business passed to Bruinysk in days after the Ban, since all northern caravans passed through Angoroe. Genfynnel is ancient, having been a Jisraegen settlement since the days of the Forty Thousand. I could feel its presence within shadow once I left the cover of the Woodland, and when I entered trance I could see it as well, with far-flung sight.

  I could see the Wizard too, since in his carelessness he had left himself naked beneath shadow, thinking me far away. For a time his whole thought was known to me, and the poison of it filled me. He hung over the land like ice, a cold and brittle spirit, the beautiful shell of his face and body remaining from his youth but filled with the dread of years and the lives he ate to preserve his own. Like all who come from Arthen, he needed to return to the Woodland for wholeness. His exile had turned to torment. He was in Vyddn to listen for the echo of Jurel and his father in Montajhena. This I saw in those first instants, and the truth of that moment was to guide me through all that followed.