Heaven's Needle

by Liane Merciel

  “And that’s why oxen will eat beggar’s hand?” Heradion asked skeptically.

  “That’s why Maolites do,” Falcien answered. “To them it is a sacred herb. They don’t notice the bitterness, or don’t care if they do. Most of the time, for most of us, the taste is unbearably foul, but when the Mad’s God power is strong enough, he can make even the first taste sweet enough to addict.”

  “Ah. So Cousin Torvud’s oxen ate beggar’s hand because the Mad God’s presence is so strong here that they didn’t realize it tastes like warmed-over death served in an old boot.”

  “That’s closer to what I meant,” Falcien allowed with a small smile. “If there’s something in the earth that turns harmless plants to his sacred herb, and something in the water that induces madness, it’s clear that we must be dealing with some manifestation of Maol. No other deity is so heedlessly destructive. The bloodrage could fit Baoz, but as a rule, his reavers don’t destroy themselves. Only the Mad God is that careless with the souls he’s corrupted.”

  “Why?” Evenna asked. Her blue eyes were troubled. “Why now?”

  “Something’s risen in Carden Vale,” Falcien suggested. “Blessed Austerlan wrote that Maol’s influence can rise in only two places: in great cities, where his servants can hide among the teeming crowds, and in isolated hamlets, where they can seize the entire populace and kill those who resist too strongly. It might have begun with only one corrupted soul, but by now there are surely more. No single Blessed could draw enough power to poison an entire mountain.”

  “You’re saying the entire town of Carden Vale has fallen under the Mad God’s sway?” Heradion spluttered. “Then why, in the names of all gods living and forgotten, did the High Solaros send you here to serve your annovair?”

  “He didn’t know,” Evenna said softly. “He couldn’t have known. If Bassinos dismissed the rumors as wild stories, and no one recognized it for Maol’s work until we came, how could the High Solaros have known what was needed? We’re here now, though. Celestia guided us to this place for a purpose.”

  “That purpose was seeing the danger and going back to Cailan to tell the High Solaros. We’ve done the first part. We ought to get started on the second.” Heradion crossed his arms. “I’m as brave as the next man, but I know my limits. I wouldn’t try matching swords with Nhrin Wraithborn, and you’ve got no business matching spells with whoever could turn water into … that. That sort of thing calls for a company of Sun Knights. Not you. Not us.”

  “No.” Falcien’s dark eyes rested on the ferret’s cage without seeming to see it. “I agree with Evenna. It’s no accident that we’re here. Our duty is to help the people of Carden Vale. If we leave and tell the High Solaros to send Knights of the Sun, how can we be sure that the madness won’t spread farther? Maybe I’m wrong about how far it’s gone; maybe it started here, and the Mad God hasn’t yet taken the town. Or maybe he has, and is only waiting for the river to thaw before laying siege to Balnamoine. It takes weeks to travel each way from Cailan. We can’t afford the time. We have to act now, while whatever is poisoning the mountain is not as strong as it might become, and whatever souls it hasn’t tainted might still be saved.”

  Heradion muttered something under his breath. He looked to Asharre for help. “How about you?”

  “I think,” Asharre said, “you should pray.”

  9

  The Blessed prayed for guidance as Asharre had suggested, but it did little good. Falcien saw nothing but a wall of impenetrable black fog; Evenna’s vision showed her a well of dark water in which human faces were upturned, fighting for air as the water rose higher. Both Illuminers’ spells were cut short by crippling headaches that left them lying in the wagon beds, incapacitated and in agony, for a full day.

  When they recovered, they agreed that it was Maol’s presence that hobbled their magic. Neither had heard of such a thing occurring outside the great blight of Pafund Mal, where the Mad God’s power was strongest in the world. And yet, even after that, neither of them wanted to turn back. The pull of history was too strong. They did not say it openly, but Asharre heard the awe of legends in their voices. Some of their determination to go forward was their training, and some was a true desire to help … but some of it, too, was that the Illuminers wanted to add their own names to the stories.

  That evening, the three Celestians argued all through dinner about whether they should continue to Carden Vale. Asharre listened but said little. Privately she agreed with Heradion and thought it was a mistake to venture onward instead of alerting the Knights of the Sun. If Oralia had been among them, she would have said so. But the three of them had made it clear that Asharre’s voice counted only for herself, and Evenna and Falcien were plainly determined to continue with or without her, so she said nothing.

  If they accepted her acquiescence and let her come along, she could guard against their worst mistakes. If she protested too strongly, however, they might sneak off without her and get themselves killed. Better to stay quiet and keep her eyes open.

  “I don’t understand how they can be so cavalier about this,” Heradion grumbled after the Blessed had retired to pray. “You saw that animal tear itself apart. That could have been any one of us. Am I wrong? Tell me I’m wrong. I would very much like to be wrong.”

  “You’re wrong.” Asharre returned his wounded expression with a wry look. “They’re young.”

  “I’m young. I still know better.”

  “They are Blessed. Oralia was the same. She thought that whatever happened was the goddess’ will, and that her faith could surmount any trial.” Remembering her sister’s absolute conviction made Asharre feel a little awed, but mostly tired. That faith had killed her in the end. “Of course they believe that whatever lies in Carden Vale is a test sent by their goddess. This is their annovair, their first task as full Blessed. For it to be something so profound is … an honor. In their heart of hearts, they will not believe failure is possible.”

  “Well, I do.” Heradion scowled at a snapped bootlace as if the frayed leather was to blame for everything that had gone wrong during their journey. He yanked it out and threaded a new one into its place, jerking it harder than necessary through each loop. “What do you think?”

  Asharre knotted her fingers together, feeling the calluses on both palms. “I think it is important to let them do this thing. Let us say that going to Carden Vale risks their lives. Maybe that is true, maybe not. But let us say it. So: if we stop them, we save their lives—and negate the purpose of those lives. They have trained for this. They are Blessed for this. If they cannot serve their goddess in the way they think necessary, what is the reason for their being?”

  “They’re my friends. You want to let them march into madness?”

  “Want to? No. But I think it is necessary. Oralia was my sister, and she made the same choice.” And I would have stopped her if I could. If she had let me. But Asharre had never had the chance, and in the long silence afterward she had come to understand, however much it hurt to admit, that Oralia had made … not the right choice, perhaps, but the only one that any of Celestia’s Blessed could have.

  “That was Sennos Mill, wasn’t it? What happened there?”

  Asharre glanced at him, saw nothing but honest curiosity on his face, and turned back to the fire. “She died.”

  “But you think she made the right choice in going?”

  “I don’t know. I know she had to try.” They’d been in western Calantyr, a week’s ride from Aluvair, when they’d received a desperate plea from Sennos Mill. A terrible sickness had taken the villagers there: a plague that dried their skin into brittle, scaly sheets that cracked apart and fell away, leaving their bodies raw and oozing. None of the infected survived longer than a few days, and the village herb woman was helpless to cure the disease. Their only hope was a Blessed.

  Asharre had argued long and hard with her sister about Sennos Mill. The village lay in the no-man’s-land between Calantyr and Ang’arta. It was no
t formally a part of either realm … but the soldiers of the Iron Fortress were known to ride through the region, and they did not take kindly to the presence of Celestia’s Blessed that close to their borders. If something went wrong in Sennos Mill, they’d have no help from Calantyr; King Uthandyr would not risk an open conflict with the ironlords over one Illuminer who’d overstepped her bounds.

  But Oralia refused to listen. She had to help the people of Sennos Mill, she said; there was only a chance of harm to herself, whereas the villagers were certain to die without her prayers. Even if she knew for a fact that the Baozites would be waiting to kill her, Oralia would have gone to pray for as many villagers as she could before that happened. That was what it meant to be Blessed; she could not refuse her healing.

  Asharre disagreed. Vehemently. They agreed to sleep on it, and make no decision until the morning—but Oralia drugged her into slumber, and when the sigrir woke, she found her sister gone.

  She rode after Oralia at once, but she pushed her horse too hard and it foundered, costing her three precious days. By the time she reached the village, it was too late.

  Baozites had come to Sennos Mill, and they’d brought a Thorn. Her sister was defenseless. They’d slaughtered her and ridden back to Ang’arta, leaving Asharre with no enemy to take vengeance upon and no body to burn. The villagers had done that before she came.

  The survivors told her that Oralia cured the plague before the Baozites fell on Sennos Mill. They wept, and thanked her, and said her sister had saved their lives. Perhaps that was true, and perhaps they only offered the words to salve her loss. Asharre would never know.

  What she did know—and what she desperately wished she’d realized earlier—was that Oralia could no more have ignored her holy oaths than Asharre could have washed the scars from her face. And if she had accepted that, instead of trying to stand between a Blessed and her goddess, Oralia might not have drugged her. She might have been able to accompany her sister to Sennos Mill, and the tragedy might have been changed.

  Maybe. Too late now; that song was sung. But in Evenna and Falcien she saw the same unswerving certainty, and this time she did not intend to repeat her mistake.

  Heradion was waiting for the rest of her answer. Asharre shrugged at him and poked at the sputtering coals with a roasting stick left over from the evening’s meal. The night was cold, and he did not need to hear her old griefs. “Their duty is to bring their Lady’s magic where it is needed. Yours, and mine, is to protect them while they do it.”

  “If your hope was to reassure me,” Heradion muttered, “you’ve failed miserably.”

  “Not reassure. Prepare.”

  “I’m not sure that does much good against Maolite madness, but I’ll try.” He tossed his own stick into the fire and left her.

  The embers were fading. Asharre pulled her sheepskin closer, took out an oilstone, and honed her sword until it was too dark to see.

  They got to Spearbridge at highsun the next day. Morning was colder than the night had been, and the wind’s bite sharpened as the day drew on. The sky was the color of dirty snow, streaked with torn gray clouds. The bullocks’ breath steamed and mist rolled from their shoulders as they hauled the wagons up the last turn in the road.

  Then they were at the Gate of the Chasm, and Spearbridge lay before them.

  The bridge measured twenty feet across and a thousand long. Stretched over a yawning rift in the mountains, it seemed thin as a wisp of spider’s silk, at once barbarous and impossibly fragile. At either end the bridge was anchored by a gatehouse of black stone and rusting iron; between, it simply hung in the air.

  Spearbridge was built all of twisted metal and sun-bleached skeletons, woven together like threads in an unholy tapestry. Bent swords and dented shields tangled around enough bones to fill a hundred ossuaries. Most of those bones were human, but a few were too large, too heavy, to have come even from Ingvall’s children. Some of the skulls had tusks and horns and curved red teeth as long as Asharre’s forearm. She saw a six-fingered claw thrust into a rib cage, its talons bigger than scimitars. Amulets and holy relics from more faiths than Asharre could name lay broken and defiled among them, all fused together as if by some great blast of fire.

  Gibbet cages creaked under the bridge. Several had snapped their chains and were lost to the chasm. Others held yellowed skulls worn smooth as beach pebbles by the tides of time. In one, Asharre saw the bristly bowl of an old bird’s nest. Black feathers fluttered, trapped, on its twigs.

  “Best if you get down from the wagon,” Colison advised. He had wrapped a scarf about his face and pulled his hat low so that little more than his eyes showed. “I’ll have Jassel or Gals drive it across. First-timers don’t usually fare so well.”

  “I wouldn’t like to fall off,” Heradion agreed, climbing down.

  “Not much chance of that. Truly. One foot in front of the other, that’s all there is to it. The danger isn’t in falling.” Colison’s eyes crinkled with a smile hidden by his scarf. “Reassuring, I know. But if I’ve survived it, so will you.”

  Slowly the wagons in front of them began to roll through the gatehouse and across the bridge. Their drivers hunched forward, jaws set and faces grim, as if they rode into battle. In a sense, Asharre supposed, they did.

  Gals trudged over to take the reins that Heradion had left on the driver’s bench. He was a small, sad-faced man with big ears and a lopsided gait from a broken leg that had healed badly. “Good luck,” he called, as the bullocks pulled him away.

  “Ready?” Heradion asked.

  “No,” Asharre answered, but she adjusted the caractan hanging across her back and followed him onto the bridge.

  Blink.

  She was running through the surf onto a rocky beach. Salty froth splashed around her sealskin boots. Her fellows charged up the beach around her, shouting challenges and war cries in the old tongue of Iskavir. A red bloom of fire crackled on the sea behind them: a dragonship burning. Their dragonship. Her bowsprit was a narwhal’s horn, hung with five red hoops of ochre-stained ivory to signify the prizes she had taken. A well-blooded ship. Asharre felt a pang of angry grief that she should burn.

  There was no time to mourn. Ahead were their enemies, half hidden by the smoke that blew from the burning ship. Ironlords. Twenty of them, gathered defensively with shieldmen guarding their archers. A woman, dressed in red and crowned in iron, stood chanting in the center of their knot. Asharre could see the glint of the soldiers’ swords through the smoke, smell the rage that came off them like sweat stink. There was no fear in these men, though they were outnumbered and they faced Ingvall’s children by the sea. No fear at all.

  There was no fear in her either, and the wildbloods could match anyone for fury. She bit her tongue savagely. Hot blood filled her mouth. A red haze descended upon her and she heard herself scream, her own blood spilling across her chin. She wanted to bite these men, tear out their throats, taste their blood mingled with hers. The caractan in her hands felt light as a feather, sweet as a lover, an extension of her lust for death.

  She barely felt the arrows when they came. She saw them, though. They filled her vision like black rain, and where they fell, men died. One slammed into her chest and another struck her thigh; she felt them dully, and would have kept running, but a third arrow plummeted from the sky and hit her in the face. It cracked through her nose and split her lip, pinning her tongue to her jaw. Blood gurgled out and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. More arrows fell and she fell with them.

  Her last thought, as she died, was regret that she had not been able to match swords with the soldiers, and wonder that ten archers could have filled the sky with so many shafts.

  Blink.

  Asharre touched her head groggily. It had seemed so vivid, so real … but no, she stood on Spearbridge, the wind snapping her cloak around her legs. Heradion stood frozen beside her. The young Celestian’s face was white and drops of sweat trickled down his brow. He was not the only one so affected. A
head of them, as many wagons were stopped as moving, and the people on foot between them were paralyzed between steps.

  The line moved forward, but at a snail’s crawl. Asharre did, too, dreading what she might see.

  Blink.

  Her name was Haruld, and she was fifteen. An important day: it marked the change from boy to man. At last she—he—would be allowed to join the raiders, to take a share of plunder and someday pay the bride-price for a wife. He wondered whether Kalle would wait until he could pay hers. Kalle was a pretty girl, her eyes blue as a morning sky; her bride-price would be high. But he was fifteen, and if he fought well, he might have it before he was twenty.

  He looked anxiously ahead. They were very far south, almost to Delverness Wood, and he did not like being so far from the clan’s lands. Ingris insisted that she could not find the herbs she needed anywhere else, though, and for all her youth she was the best healer in the hold, so he supposed it was worth the journey to get them.

  Still, it was not like her to take so long to gather plants. “Ingris?”

  There was no answer. He crept forward, quietly now, worried about what he might find. “Ingris?” He pushed past the trailing branches of a willow. The silver-green leaves parted with a shiver. What lay beyond them shattered him.

  His sister was sprawled in the dirt among five men. There was blood on her mouth and her thighs. Her dress had been torn to the waist. Three of the men wore leather armor, travel stained and dulled to blend into the forest. A red fist marked their shoulderplates; the device meant nothing to him. The other two were half dressed. They talked casually, passing around a small wineskin.