They chased them to the steps of the Waset, where Kepi caught sight of the black shields of Harkana. Two armies had set themselves against the kingsguard, and either seemed large enough to defeat the Harkans.
“They don’t have a chance, do they?” she asked as she rode, her sword pointing at the black shields.
“Them?” asked Ferris as he turned his mount. “They’re dead men, but we’re doing splendidly. Keep that bird in the fight and we might have a chance at reaching Mered.”
“I don’t care about Mered, it’s the black shields I’m worried about. Those were my father’s men, the ones he handpicked from the army. He loved each one of them. I won’t watch them die.” She tugged at her horse’s reins.
“You can’t reach them,” said Ferris, who was still half engaged in the battle, shouting orders and conferring with Baen Muire. “We’ve got our hands full, if you haven’t noticed,” he said. “Fight this battle, then we’ll worry about the black shields.”
“They’ll all be dead by then,” said Kepi as she sheathed her blade.
“So be it. Your kinfolk can wait.” Ferris was trying to draw her back into the battle. He wanted her help, but Kepi would not lend it.
“They’re slaughtering them,” she said.
Ferris glanced at the black shields. “An army stands between us.”
She’d noticed. She just didn’t care. Ferris and Muire had the battle well in hand. It was her father’s men she cared about. They were his true friends, and hers too. She’d spent months with the guard, ranging about the western lands as Arko strove to hold back the outlander armies. She knew their names, had met their wives and played with their children. And Ren’s with them. They called him a bastard, but she didn’t care.
She recalled the last time she’d seen him. The memory came to her unbidden, so she guessed her mind was just playing tricks on her, but an image formed in her head: a boy crying, two soldiers, one of them holding the child, her father standing tall, expressionless; her mother quiet, indifferent as Kepi ran to one soldier and kicked him with all her might. Had he laughed at her? Yes, that was what she recalled. The day the imperial soldiers took her little brother from the Hornring.
Ren. She looked for him, for the boy who was stolen. She searched, but she did not use her eyes. The kite spied him, and a blurry picture formed in her thoughts. Ren kneeled amid a garden of statues, eyes closed, a white staff raised above his head. He spoke in a language she could not understand. He was alone and defenseless, and the red army had taken notice of him. A pack of soldiers had broken off from the rest and were rushing toward him.
Ren needs help.
The kite’s talons bit into Kepi’s armor as it lifted her from her horse, carrying her up into the sky. Like a leaf caught in a breeze she tumbled through the air, hands fumbling for her sword, trying to make certain it had not fallen from its scabbard. The kite listed, throwing her to one side as a second weight was added to the first.
“I couldn’t let you go alone.” Ferris had latched onto the kite’s other talon. Both hands gripped the scaly flesh, and he held on for dear life as the two of them swept over the battlefield, dashing through clouds of smoke and wind-blown sand.
Ferris howled and kicked, his eyes wild with excitement.
“I don’t care if I die today. I’ve flown upon the talons of the kite!” he cried, his voice crazed, astonished. The kite shook loose Ferris’s grip and released Kepi from its hold, sending both of them hurtling toward the battlefield.
She used the back of a red soldier to break her fall. She clobbered the man with all her weight then drove her blade into his chest while he was still trying to figure out what had happened to him. Ferris hit the ground and tumbled, knocking over a pair of soldiers. He was the first to his feet, the first to raise his blade.
Kepi ran to the place where her brother knelt, alone and unprotected.
I will be your sword, brother. She stood before Ren, and Ferris had his back. Her brother was safe. No spear threatened him.
He had time, and Kepi prayed he did something with it.
68
Ren needed a moment of quiet, a sword at his back, and somehow he’d found it. Protected, shielded from the oncoming soldiers, he tightened his grip on the staff. He sought out the voices of the twelve children of Pyras and found them. Their words filled his thoughts and an almost electric charge wriggled through his fingers. He called to the old foes of the Soleri and asked them to finish what they’d started in the Shambles. He offered them his strength so that they might walk again.
At this, the eld horn trembled in his grip and he nearly lost hold of it.
The world shifted and everything in it changed.
The air was still.
No one cried out.
There were no shouts, nor did he hear the clamor of battle.
The fight had stopped. In fact, the whole world seemed frozen in place.
Nothing moved except the twelve. The statues were alive, or maybe they had always been alive and they’d just been caught in some strange instant. The gods had no notion of time. He knew this; they told it to him. He knew that time had no importance here. He was one of them, a child of Mithra, and the world around him was nothing more than a frozen panorama, a tableau of blood and hatred.
In a flash, the twelve drew glistening blades and set themselves against his foes. Twelve lights flickered amid the gray, creating a surreal vision of men who were not men, of beings made of fire cutting their way through the haze.
It was a world turned upside down, an impossible dreamlike world, and Ren was in it.
He saw every cut and blow.
He beheld the grief on each soldier’s face.
The twelve who once stood in the garden had entered the fight, and the soldiers in red were simply dropping, one after another in an ever-widening ring.
The kingsguard stood at the heart of that circle, their faces looking dumbstruck as their foes collapsed to the sandy cobbles. They witnessed the blood, saw it pool amid the dust. To their eyes, the battle must have appeared as a kind of miracle. In a heartbeat, a thousand men had fallen to the earth. A moment later, a thousand more collided with the stones. For the Harkans, Ren guessed the fight looked like nothing more than a flash of light followed by what could only be described as a persistent rain of bodies, one toppling after another.
In a pair of strokes, every man who had set himself against the kingsguard, the two thousand Mered sent to put down the black shields, were vanquished, their bodies cut down, bled out or halfway there. Corpse lay upon corpse, swords poking at the sky, blades notched, armor broken.
Utterly dumbfounded, the kingsguard stood in their kohl-stained rags, wobbly-kneed, faces smeared with dirt, with blood. They were half-starved, half-mad, but alive. Some cried; grown men shed tears. Others fell to their knees. All of them must have thought they were dead. Two great armies had set themselves against the black shields. Surely, they thought they were done for. This must have seemed like the end, but everything had changed and it had happened in an instant. The kingsguard could barely believe their eyes. They had spent weeks in a lightless world. They’d seen friends and companions die. Nearly half their number was depleted, gone, hacked to bits in front of their very eyes. They’d survived, but the wounds remained, the faces of the fallen men filling up their thoughts. It was more than any man ought to bear, and these men had already borne their share of burdens. They had lived beneath the empire’s yoke, seen children taken as slaves and crops sent off to feed the wealthy of Solus. They’d lived a bitter life, but they were not bitter folk. Nevertheless, these men were accustomed to a dying world, as was everyone. The desert loomed over all who lived in it. The amaranth was gone. Hope was in short supply. They could hardly even conceive of the otherworldly. Surely this earth was bereft of anything close to what could be described as divinity. They gave tribute to the golden statues, to the temple, but expected nothing in return. As far as they knew, that was the way of the world. The god
s neither spoke nor acted. They were characters in a story, creatures of myth, but the twelve had left their pedestals. The gods had returned and they held the Harkans in their favor.
They’d dispatched the immediate threat, the thousands who were sent to vanquish the kingsguard, but the army of the Protector stood in the distance, and the house armies waited at the ready. The fight was not yet over, but the twelve halted their attack. They allowed their foes a bit of time to retreat, to find a place to regroup and address this new and unexpected threat.
The army of the Protector fled, and the Ferens did not pursue.
The Harkans stood idle.
No one understood what they saw, but they knew their part in this conflict was finished. Ren saw it in their faces. Some unearthly force had taken up the fight and there was no sense in getting in its way. The Harkans lowered their spears and the Ferens sheathed their blades. Ren stood alone, the eld horn raised to the sky. They watched him and knew somehow that he commanded this new army—this impossible force.
The soldiers of Mered hurried past the place where Ren’s father had once presided over the city. They stumbled about the Golden Hall, where the Soleri had reigned. They trampled through the necropolis. The Well of Horu was not far away. It sat open, mouth gaping like some beast awaiting its prey, and the twelve ushered their foes toward it.
Mered’s commanders issued orders, waved flags, and blew horns. They guessed the clearing beside the Mundus was a good enough place to regroup. They thought they’d picked the spot, but they were herded there, collected in this one place, and when they were all in it, the twelve made their push.
They drove at their foes, shepherding them into the well.
With nowhere else to go, the once-proud soldiers plunged into the infinite black, falling by the hundreds, by the thousands, possibly, tumbling one over the next, vanishing into the depthless pit.
Even their cries were lost in the void.
No foe remained, but the twelve were not yet finished.
In the gasping silence that followed, the twelve called to the desert and the winds answered. They came from every direction, rolling across the sands, circling, coming closer, rippling across the scarp wall and the outer districts, tearing through the white-walled towers and the temples of the Soleri. Ren and the kingsguard, the ransoms, and the armies of Harkana and Feren stood in the eye of what appeared to be a limitless maelstrom, watching as the sands devoured everything.
69
The nameless servant of the Kiltet set Merit on the granite floor of the Temple of Re.
They’d passed through the door, the one marked with the circle and stars. She knew this was the place, but she worried she’d arrived too late. The priests in the temple were all dead, cut down by the angry mob, or the sand-dwellers. Someone must have looted the temple. Statues sat with empty eye sockets, plinths lay bare where once some urn or other treasure had stood. In fact, the only thing that hadn’t been overturned was a ring of statues, but they’d been set aflame, or so she guessed. The statues had an odd appearance. On second glance, they weren’t burnt. They were black, but they glistened, winking like distant stars. A voice within her head told Merit that the twelve statues were the last of the Soleri.
A shuffling sound issued from the darkness. Footsteps. A voice. “You’ve come,” said a man she did not recognize. He wore the white robes of a priest.
“I am Nollin Odine. Call me Noll.” He flattened his lips. “I hid when the looters came. The priests gave their lives to protect me. They said someone had to remain behind in case one of you showed up.”
“Showed up?” she asked. Merit was so tired she could barely form words.
“Yes, one of the four—the children of Arko Hark-Wadi. They guessed any of you would do.”
“Do? Do for what?” she asked. “What’re you talking about?” Her voice was a whisper. Merit could not quite tell if she were asleep or awake, alive or dead. Her strength had long since fled, and she could barely hold herself upright. Sleep! a voice told her. Sleep and all your pains will be gone. She knew it was true. Death tugged at her consciousness, but her curiosity pushed back.
“Explain this to me. Why did my mother send me to this place?” she asked, and this time Nollin produced a glistening white staff. It was not quite straight. It had crooks and bends, as if it had been carved from something long and twisted.
“I’m told this belonged to one of the kings of Harkana.” Noll placed it in her hands, pressing the horn to her skin and wrapping her fingers around it. She did not have the strength to do it herself.
“What now?” she said, her voice growing faint. These were her last words. She would not speak again. Time to sleep. Time to bid farewell to this world.
No. She gripped the horn and Nollin lifted her chin.
“They are here,” he said. “These are the twelve, and they have waited two hundred years for this moment. They need only a bit of your strength to rise once more.”
Merit looked at him in bewilderment. Strength was the one thing she lacked.
“Fear not,” said Nollin. “They do not seek your body’s strength.” He told Merit what he’d told Ren, about her blood and the power it held. He said she could bring these statues to life.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because they made this empire. The Soleri made you and they can make you again.”
Perhaps, thought Merit.
It was her last thought.
She held the horn and locked eyes with the twelve statues.
Then she was done with this world.
Her head hit the floor. The lights dimmed.
She guessed she saw movement, something shifting in the darkness.
She dreamed the twelve had come alive, but the vision faded as quickly as it had appeared.
Her thoughts dimmed too.
Her heart no longer beat, and her lungs drew no air.
70
When the storm had come and gone and the winds ceased to blow, the sand settled to the earth and the sky cleared.
At the outermost edge of what had been the city of the gods, the scarp wall was gone. The mud-brick rampart was nothing but dust, and the great circle of stone that once protected Solus was ground down to the earth. Only pieces of it remained. Here and there a ragged stone poked from the dunes. Where the great pylons had once flanked the city gates, there was nothing left but the foundations. At the periphery, where the buildings were old and not so tall and their walls were made of sunbaked mud, the destruction was complete. Only pale mounds of sand remained, lighter spots among the darker gray of the desert. However, these accumulations, these hills of dust, were made of more than mud. Every piece of every dwelling and everything in them was ground into that dust. The livestock, the hay, and the feed were made into powder. Each pile contained a thousand memories: a home, a family, and the objects they left behind.
The markets were no different.
They twinkled with a soot made from every conceivable substance: fine muslin, rare spice, ivory and silk. The most colorful mounds appeared in the place where the great bazaar once stood. Bright spots flickered among the great waves of sand, the last traces of the brilliant hues that once marked the many stalls and tents.
The devastation was near total and it was not limited to the outer districts. Deeper into the city, where the buildings were made of stone, the dunes grew taller. At the White-Wall district, there was a distinctly lighter shade of sand, and it sparkled with flecks of gold and copper. Beads of electrum danced in the air, the great ornaments of the houses reduced to mere motes, tossed about by the slightest breeze.
Onward, past the steps of the Waset, in the place where the great temples of the Soleri once stood, the winds and sand had worked with unparalleled effort. The Cenotaph was simply gone, as was the Repository at Solus, the Circus of Re, the House of Viziers, and the Hall of Ministers. The Golden Hall was perhaps the richest of the ruins, a great dune blanketed in a dust made of gold. The Temple of Mithra-Sol was int
act, but that was the only building to survive the day.
In spots, the sand and wind had worn away at the earth itself, cutting through the streets, delving down into the Hollows beneath the city and exposing the place that had once been the empire of the Pyras. Structures that had not seen the light of Mithra-Sol in three thousand years were left open to the sky. The pyramid in the Night Market stood as it had in the time of Pyras, and the Well of Horu was once more a tower.
The winds settled and a quiet came over the city, but it was not the quiet of the desert. It was another sort of silence, the kind that belonged to the whole of the known world. It was the silence of a great empire and the destruction the sands had wrought upon it. It was a quiet that would live on in the hearts of those who’d witnessed the desolation.
Where towers had once stabbed at the heavens there was nothing but dust. Mounds of sand replaced walls, and hills of gold lay where temples had once stood proud upon the earth.
The desert stretched to infinity, dotted here and there by the invading armies, the scattered survivors.
Everything else was just sand.
71
Kepi stood with Ferris, back to back, breathing heavily, still trying to comprehend the destruction that surrounded them. In an instant, in that moment when she’d cleared a circle around Ren, the whole world had shifted. Everything around her had turned to light and the statues had moved. She swore it. She’d witnessed a dream, a blurry, light-filled illusion. That was the only way she could describe it. Gold turned to flesh and fire, the twelve walked the earth, and it had all happened in a single protracted instant. In a flash, their enemy was struck down or driven into the Mundus, but that had only been the start of it. The storm followed and the city itself was reduced to sand, a heap of dust and ash punctuated by shattered buildings, dotted here and there with soldiers from the surviving armies. The Ferens were among them, standing in the distance, on the far side of a vast field of corpses. Ferris motioned to his sworn men.
Silence of the Soleri Page 42
