Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars)

by Jim Grimsley

  With half my mind bent on fending off any further blow from Drudaen, I leapt down from Nixva and shouted a warning they could have heard over a thunderclap. Everyone fell back but Imral, who continued to kneel over Kirith Kirin, a moment of calm in the fighting.

  He lay unmoving on the ground. Imral knelt over him, touching his neck. I felt life in him; he was not dead, though a mortal man would have been. The Karnost gems were shadowed, useless, and he would scarcely survive another wave.

  The dismay that he had fallen passed through our ranks up and down the line faster than you would believe. Resistance to the Verm wavered, then stiffened with the thought that Kirith Kirin was down. Karsten came up and caught my eye and I signaled he was not dead. Imral only looked up at me when my shadow fell across him. Tears gleamed on his cheeks.

  Kirith Kirin lay unmoving. His eyes were open and he was staring blankly ahead. When I touched him I could feel the enchantment at work, the Words that were fighting at this moment with his soul, seeking to tear it loose from this flesh that I loved. But he was fighting too, and would not yield. I knelt and spoke Words in his ear, as rapidly as I could make them, all my power in that, so that when my mother struck me from above again the agony penetrated every nerve, but I would not be stopped, and when Drudaen struck me with his own hand I kept speaking, singing Wyyvisar to join Kirith Kirin's soul tight to the body. I broke the killing chain but he was still away, would not open his eyes.

  Karsten was with us. Only moments had passed since I dismounted. They lifted him to his feet and I stood.

  For a moment, again, all was agony in my body. Already understanding what was to come, I unclasped the Fimbrel Cloak from my shoulders and, speaking to it, making it into armor to protect him, I wrapped it round his shoulders, a hood to cover his head.

  Karsten gazed at me in surprise. I silenced her with a gesture. “Listen to me,” I said, “we have seconds. Drudaen is on the ground, riding here to finish what he started. He’s disabled the Rock on the High Place. There won’t be any Change no matter whether we get to the gate or not.”

  They gaped at me, dazed. Even their world was changing, even they were astonished. I said, “You have to leave this place now. Go back down Kleeiom, get Kirith Kirin into Arthen as soon as you can. Keep him wrapped in the cloak till he’s there.” They understood me but were slow to comprehend we would not be going forward, even then.

  Karsten grasped me and shook me. “Jessex, how is this happening? If he’s on the ground, who’s on the High Place?”

  “My mother.” I was already worlds away, looking into her eyes. “He kept her alive for this.” I looked at Imral behind her. “Do what I tell you, we don’t have any choice. I can hold Drudaen here for a while. But he’s disabled the Rock, there’s nothing I can do about that.” Taking a ragged breath, feeling the collapse of everything. “Get him back to Arthen. Keep him alive.”

  Silence. In no more time than that the decision was taken. At the last second before I left them, though, I looked them in the eyes one by one. “Don’t leave anyone with me, Karsten, Imral, Evynar, Pelathayn, do you hear? Not a soul. Because as soon as you start to retreat, everything I can reach hereabouts is going to die.”

  They blanched and nodded, grim as me. “God help you,” Karsten said, and kissed my brow. “God keep you safe.”

  Imral was lifting Kirith Kirin to the Keikin’s back.

  By the time they turned again I had vanished. He had touched the thing I loved to try to kill it, the one thing in the world that might have cleared my mind at that moment. I had my wits about me now and I meant to make him pay. The last sound I remember that was familiar was Nixva’s high-pitched, confused call. No, I thought, you can’t help me now.

  Ahead of me, along the road, the Verm were parting to let the shadow of their master pass, summoning ithikan to give him speed. I could feel him reaching for Kirith Kirin again, frustrated by the Cloak, through which he could not move his Words.

  I turned to face the Verm ranks. Bare-armed on that winter day, I saw the shadow of his body and horse appear, visible only to me, a moving wind.

  I held the Bane Gem in my hand. I knew he would stop for that. So I opened my mind to him, for a moment, fully and completely. Taking a breath, I swallowed the locket whole.

  2

  I broke ithikan around him and killed the horse beneath him, one of the Keikin’s sons, and such was Drudaen’s speed that the fall he took knocked him back into his body and hurt him. Now he would pay for the advantage he had gained: he was on the ground, and the altered High Place answered to him through an intermediary.

  But for the moment he was binding his body together, trying to heal some of the hurts of the fall, so I could range freely. Slaughter and havoc followed me wherever I went, and I drove deep into the mountains where the Verm assault turned to putty in so many moments. Since I meant to lose my life, to burn it up in magic here and now, I gave everything I had to the work of mayhem. Verm collapsed in ruptured heaps and their horses fell on top of them. Drudaen himself, open to me, felt the wracking of my caress.

  The gem I had swallowed settled warm into my belly, and I began to digest it. A warm feeling spread through me.

  From the Tower came my mother’s voice again, unnerving, raking along my bones. In my mind’s eye I could see her above the clouds, the eerie sound of Ildaruen in my ears.

  Down the road, in another part of my divided vision, my enemy Drudaen struggled to his knees.

  The fall had hurt him badly in his physical body. He was moving slowly. I struck at his bodyguard, struck through his defenses at him, laying my hand inside him for a moment, singing the first moments of Soul Eater, the song ringing plainly in his ear. He had not been so close to the killing spell in centuries. Those nearest him fell dead, but he was too strong for that. He hardly cared who lived or died around him. He protected himself.

  What he did care about was the jewel I had swallowed, the enchantment presently being worked within my body, to disperse the gem throughout my tissue, to make it so much part of me he would never have it without taking my body apart cell by cell.

  As for me, I had neither care nor sorrow, only purpose. Calling fire out of the ground and air, seating myself before the wheel of fire, I entered full trance and prepared to spend the tatters of my life defending the road.

  From the summit of his High Place, the monster he had made of my mother struck at me again. I raised neither thought nor song against her, drinking the blow into my body but continuing my work. The warm fire of Kentha’s locket spread though my flesh like a drug, the runes and Words I had never known before, now part of me. For a moment I felt grimly lifted in spirit. With the audacity of the dying, I began to say Bans and set wards between me and him.

  He rose up in his fourth level presence, the hurts of his body forgotten, and we struggled on the ground. I could see him now and then, moving behind a veil of mist, contesting my hold on the road, trying to reach for his High Place and finding it more difficult than it would have been, the link with my mother uneasy. My Bans held against him longer than I had dreamed they would, and it became clear he had not intended to be on the ground for very long. Now he could not return to the High Place himself for fear I would escape.

  My mother moved power against me again, her voice filling me with loathing, the image of her face like a pallid flame. I felt her hand each time it passed through me but I would not defend myself against her. This cost me strength, in the end. Feeling what she had become, what had happened to her, I knew that in fact she had died a long time ago, that this was a shell, nothing more. He was reaching through her, he had found his way again, and his voice filled her, a malice that was nothing like her. She struck me this time with his force, and I fell, hurt, deeply, but at the same time in that instant of light I saw a thing I had never seen. Or rather, had glimpsed before, when I shook Yruminast.

  A place between all the other places, a moment in which even the fourth circle fell away and I could see bey
ond.

  Without warning, at the height of the storm, a horn sounded from the high walls of Aerfax. With a booming of drums and more soundings from the horn, the sea gates opened and blue bannered ships emerged.

  The sight of them gladdened me, I don’t know why. Even if I had not felt that instinct, Drudaen’s reaction to the sudden appearance of the flotilla let me know that it must be some kind of good fortune for Kirith Kirin. Drudaen reached for lightning, for storm, for wind and water to tear the ships apart. I countered him. He reached again with no more success; without his High Place he was just another magician on the ground, and my mother was lost in the Tower magic. I saw all this clearly, as if his mind were open to me in some way it had never been before. He felt me there and panicked.

  She struck me again and when she exerted herself he found her and added his strength to hers. I was down again, shaken, out of my body, and they struck me further, reaching for the place to begin to feed on me, to eat me out of myself, and in that moment I saw a place to go, between all the rest, that he could not reach.

  Heaviness filled me and I knew the end of all my struggles. I saw the place and knew, now, what to do, but I had to wait for the ships to clear. I had to close the sea gates of Aerfax with a swirling wind that stirred the bay, had to shake the ground, to send a messenger to let the ones in the upper part of the house know to move down, to warn them what was coming. I sent my eidolon to Sylvis the lover of Athryn; I spoke to her across all that space, my ghost in her ear. “Get down to the bottom of the house, I’m going to destroy the Tower.”

  My enemy struck me again, the voice of my mother filled with his voice, and I hurt everywhere, I fell so far. All the way to the road that time, all the way to my hands and knees, in my body again. But I waited till I knew the ones in Aerfax had gotten my warning, till I saw in my eye above that the royal rooms were being emptied in a rush. The Tower struck me again and I felt my soul loosed a bit, unstrung, and could wait no longer.

  Forgive me, I said. For now I had no need to be struck with pain to see into the deepest place as if with the eyes of my body: in that tiniest space of the mind I pictured the Rock of Senecaur as if it were where it should be, and I reached inside it with the hand of my body and I felt its anger, saw that inmost and smallest place inside it, and reached there and caused something to slip. Made a fire in the deepest place. I only saw it for a moment. Then I went into that place myself, to rest.

  The last thing I remember, after I made the place in the rock slip, was that a white light burst out and Senecaur blew apart, and at that moment the warmth of Kentha’s gem spread all through my body, my enchantment complete. I protected my body from the blast by singing a shell around the Tower in that smallest space of the mind, to contain the worst of the blast in the real world; and I knew for an instant that this was not like any magic I had ever made before. I sank into sleep, more deep and peaceful than any I had known.

  In the real world, in a blast that broke the spur of the mountain, Senecaur flashed a pure white fire at the top. The tower cracked and the rock spur on which it had stood broke apart and fell into the sea, and fire rained for hours from the sky.

  Chapter 23: SENECAUR

  1

  I could hear the sea. Wind blew across me, and my nose was cold.

  I was holding someone at arm’s length, keeping him away. I had been doing that through my sleep.

  I was in a room. A lot of disorder, then peace. People were fighting over me, as if I were on the ground, and then I was here.

  A woman was with me. Sometimes she smoothed my brow, lay a cool cloth on me. A gentle touch. Sometimes the fingertips smoothed water over me, or sometimes clear cumbre, massaging my skin.

  At other times I stood on Ellebren, or Laeredon. I felt as if I were a ghost in those places, hardly visible, but I was there. I dreamed too that I waited on Sister Mountain and two moons were full. Blood red and gleaming ivory globes hung at angles in the sky.

  Memories returned to me, a fight, a shuddering of the ground. I batted them away, I preferred to listen. I could hear the sea, and I lay on stone. I slept for a long time. Intermittently I endured the touch of hands. This was my life. How long that period went on, I do not know.

  One day I opened my eyes. I saw, after a long time, the stones of the ceiling.

  My stone bed lay under the shallower part of a vault. I had been moved, maybe that was why I opened my eyes. Air circulated, but not from any windows. The sound of the sea came from above my head.

  Even with my eyes open, sometimes I saw and sometimes I did not. Real time eluded me, a river rushing by too fast, I was afraid to step in. Sometimes a woman came into the vault where I was. Sometimes another woman came. I knew them both but I had never met them. Each woman would strip back the blankets that covered my nakedness, touch the bracelet at my wrist, pour water on her fingertips and massage it into my skin. The smallest amount of moisture conceivable. Now and then, cumbre. This is what one does to maintain the body of one who lies in ensorcelled sleep.

  Sometimes the women spoke to me. They were never present at the same time, but their voices became the same sound. “I don’t know if you can hear me,” they would say, “but I’ll tell you anyway. Our ships reached the army and ferried them from Kleeiom to Charnos. Kirith Kirin was on the first ship.”

  Dream time wove in and out. Sometimes I thought she was with me but she was not speaking. This was always one of the women but not the other. The one who would watch me sadly, as if she had seen my face before.

  “I tried to care for your mother,” she said, “I tried to save her but I was very weak.”

  This made me uneasy in the rest I had sought and so I would turn away from the voice, but still it would go on, as though she meant to draw me back. But I would not come back.

  “Now there are only five hundred of us left. We’re sealing up the rest of the house. He knows where I’ve brought you now, little magician. But there’s nothing he can do about it, apparently. You won’t let him come close. And yet you’re fast asleep.”

  I knew she meant Drudaen Keerfax and I understood, even in my sleep, that he was searching for me everywhere, on all the levels of magic. Somewhere far away, as if in the memory of some country I had once visited, I could hear his voice. I understood also that some part of me was protecting the people near me, in rooms of stone. But none of this understanding meant much. I was asleep, far away, nearly dreaming.

  They came to visit me again and again, and in that way I understood much time was passing. Now the one who came and sometimes said nothing wore a veil over her face, as if she were ashamed. But she was more apt to speak by the end, in a dry, despairing tone, as if certain I heard nothing.

  I’ll never know if you’ve heard me, if you know anything of what’s happened. You broke Senecaur and nearly killed him and we brought you into what was left of Aerfax, and you have kept us safe from him all these years. But all the rest of the world is his now. Except Arthen.

  Fragments, pieces from different times. There are four hundred of us left. His army is still camped outside. It does some good having you here, I guess, since he wants you so badly… There are three hundred left now. He’s spread shadow as far north as Vyddn. He’s burned Genfynnel to the ground and torn the walls to shreds, but he can’t get close to your Tower. I see Edenna’s ring glimmering on your finger in the darkness. You’re fighting somehow, aren’t you? We don’t know how… There are only two hundred now. He’s bringing another army here across the bay. He’s never been able to break through the end of Kleeiom, he can only come here by ship… We’re sealing up the house now, we’re lighting the lamps.

  I remember little of it, when all’s said and done. But I could feel the change in the world, like the touch of storm in the distance. Shadow was everywhere. We had lost.

  The women came in together, that was how I knew it was the last visit. The oldest of them, and she was very old, told me, “There are a dozen of us left. A long time has passed. Shadow
has taken hold everywhere, our people are changing, our enemy has won, if he calls a dead world a victory. I’ve stayed as long as I can but now I have to get back to Arthen.” She spoke to me as if she had no faith that I could hear. “It will take a long time for him to find you here, even when we’ve gone. Stay alive and we’ll come back for you.”

  “It’s time to go, my dear,” the other woman said.

  “I know.” She bent over me, speaking into my open eyes. “I know you’re there somewhere, my silent one. You’ll only have to protect yourself, now. Find your way back to us if you can. I’ll tell Kirith Kirin you were alive when I left you. That’s all I can do.”

  Then, emptiness, the ringing of the chamber, the closing of some heavy door, and the echo of waves crashing against the rock of Durudronaen.

  2

  Silence. I lay in darkness, far from the room and from my body, in a place where no one came. Now and then water dripped on me from the rock.