by Hal Emerson
Raven ran for his life.
The boulevard bucked again, this time rising up beneath them and throwing them forward as the impact of the mountain into the ground behind them sent shockwaves racing forward. Buildings toppled left and right, even crashing in their path. Tomaz grabbed a handful of Rogues and hurled them bodily over one of the fallen structures, and then threw himself over as well.
Raven pounded along behind them, but soon began to fall back. His head was swimming, and he realized his entire side was sticky with the blood that had fallen from the wound in his arm. Something was wrong – the wound hadn’t healed. Bright gray light was shining through the tear in his armor, but the wound wasn’t healing. His legs didn’t seem to be responding properly; he was losing control of his body.
“Tomaz!” he cried, but the big man was too far away to hear him.
He reached out to the Raven Talisman, unable to think of anything else that would help him, just as another building came crashing down from the sky not ten feet behind him. Rocks rained down like hail, breaking holes in the well-laid paving stones of the long boulevard, and Raven could do nothing but continue to run forward, praying, screaming, crying for his life to be spared.
He reached down deep, and felt again that strange shifting in the world that existed here, that pervaded the entire city, and he forced his will on reality.
A huge rock about to crash down onto his path changed direction in mid-air and flew the other way; the road suddenly bucked beneath him again, but in such a way that he was forced forward not back or to the side. He stumbled again, and somehow paving stones rose to meet him. The Raven Talisman burned so hot along his shoulders and back that he felt as though he would soon burst into fire, and the hilt of Aemon’s Blade shone like the sun.
And then he was through the crumbling gates, and sprawling along the side of the road where the others had gathered.
“Raven!”
“Grab him before he falls –”
“By the seven hells, that’s blood –“
“I’m fine,” he gasped. “I just need this shadow-cursed piece of wood out of my arm. Tomaz – pull it out.”
The giant lumbered forward and did as requested. The pain was excruciating, but it was over quickly, and the wound began to close almost immediately as the Wolf Talisman set to work and healed his body.
Crashing sounds came from behind them, and they turned as one to watch what was left of the cliffside detach itself from its precipitous perch and bury what was left of the city of Lerne.
“We need to be farther away,” Raven said, getting to his feet. Someone had gathered the horses – whoever’d had the presence of mind to do that was of stronger will than Raven could have thought possible – and it looked as though many of the Rogues had escaped unharmed, and all had escaped alive. Raven mounted Melyngale, watching the others follow his lead with strange, stilted movements that belied shock and pain. Lorna threw Autmaran over her lap, and tied his horse’s reins to her saddle horn. Two of the Rogues did the same with companions who’d been wounded, and when everyone was secure they left.
They rode their horses faster than at any other time during the march, and didn’t rein them in again until the town of Whitestone was in sight. None of them spoke during the whole journey back; none of them so much as looked at the others. Davydd and Lorna veered off at the last moment when they reached the town, heading toward where the Healers had been setting up when they’d left; Raven looked over to see Lorna clutching a bloodied hand to her chest, face an ashen gray, Autmaran still sprawled across her saddle. The rest of the Rogues split off as well, going either for the Healers or their tents. Leah and Tomaz followed him to the command tent, erected in the center of the town square between the tall inns and shops, and as one they dismounted.
“I’ll get the Generals,” Tomaz rumbled, and then was gone.
“I’ll find the Elders,” Leah said, leaving too.
And so Raven entered the tent alone.
His mind was reeling and he searched frantically around the room for something to hold onto. He grasped the edge of the heavy map table, trying to crush the wood between his hands, and then let go. He picked up a chair and swung it into the air, ready to throw it or hit something, then dropped it instead. He threw an elbow into the center tent pole and only succeeded in bruising his skin. He cursed, and then took a deep breath, trying to calm himself.
He hadn’t ever expected something like that to be possible. He knew his brothers and sisters were evil, knew too that his Mother had done terrible things all throughout the history of the Empire, but being presented with the evidence was something else entirely.
A lake of blood … all for what?
He remembered the empty space in the center of the pulpit, the space where a Soul Catcher would have been placed in a Bloodmage ceremony. The crystal itself would have to be enormous – to hold that much power, to harness that many souls, it would have to be nearly the size of a full grown man.
There was movement at the tent entrance, and Tym slipped in with a camp servant.
“My Prince,” the servant said, “is there anything I can get you?”
“Fetch runners,” Raven said. “Get the Rogues that just came in with me to the Healers, have every one of them checked, then tell them to rest. Wake Autmaran when you can and bring him here. I want everyone – the entire Council.”
The man bowed and departed, leaving only little Tym behind. The young boy shuffled away to the side, moving away from the center of the tent where Raven paced.
Shadows and light, thank the gods we didn’t take him with us.
“Tym, you shouldn’t be here, go –”
The tent flap moved again, and Leah entered with Ishmael, Spader close behind. As the flap fell down again, Raven realized the sun was setting.
How long were we down there? How did I not notice that on the way back?
“What is this all about?” Spader asked, looking at them all with alarm. He had his amber robes on backwards, and was trying to turn them round without having to pull them off again. “Did you just get back from Lerne? I thought we were going to debrief it all tonight after dinner?”
“Matters have become rather more pressing than originally thought,” Raven said dryly. “But we need to wait for the others before we start.”
“But what –?”
“We will wait,” Raven repeated, emphasizing his words, “for the others.
Spader swallowed and snapped his mouth closed. His eyes glinted with anger at being treated in such a way, and Raven was reminded that this man, for all his pomp and good-natured swagger, was one of his true believers and not someone to alienate.
“I apologize, Elder,” Raven said. “But we must wait. I thank you for your patience.”
Mollified, Spader walked over to stand by Ishmael, whose eyes glinted darkly out from his scarred and pockmarked face in the waning light of day. A lamp sputtered into life across the tent, and Raven realized Tym was still with them.
“Tym, I told you –”
The tent flap moved again, and Tomaz entered with Generals Dunhold and Gates. Both were wearing their armor and riding boots, and it was clear that they, unlike Spader, had been expecting a summons at any moment.
“Generals,” Raven said. Gates nodded and moved to the map table without another word; he knew by now that they would be called upon when needed and not before. Dunhold, however, stood near the entrance, looking confused.
“Where is Eshendai Davydd Goldwyn?” he asked. “And Ashandel Lamas? What about Commander Autmaran?”
Raven brushed past him and out of the tent once more. There were a number of soldiers gathered outside, all looking at the sudden flurry of motion with interest, but when Raven emerged they all found very pressing activities that needed their attention elsewhere.
“Sir?”
Raven turned just as a runner in green and silver broke through the closest group and saluted before him.
“Good timing �
�� I need you to find someone.”
“Who, sir?”
“Three people,” he said, speaking much more calmly than he felt, “get me Rangers Goldwyn and Lamas, and Commander Autmaran if he’s able to move.”
“I just saw them, sir –”
“Where?”
“They’re at the Healer’s tent –”
“Bring them here on stretchers if you have to.”
The runner saluted and moved off immediately, and while Raven turned away to head back inside, his mind clutched suddenly at the one part of the whole experience that made the least amount of sense.
We were trapped in that chamber, and then the doors were open … that boulder should have killed me, and then it missed … I changed the way the world worked. How?
The tent flap moved aside, and he was in once again, and found that everyone was talking at once.
“It was a trap,” Leah was saying, “it was a trap the whole time. They knew we wouldn’t just pass it by. Raven was right, we never should have gone.”
“Eshendai,” rumbled Tomaz, “you are speaking without thinking. Just because you can see that far in advance doesn’t mean everyone can.”
“What exactly happened?” Spader asked. “You say the entire city collapsed? Was that the roar we heard earlier today?”
“A plume of smoke rose up above the mountains,” Ishmael said in his rasping voice, “was that a part of what happened?”
“The entire city was covered – ”
“We only just managed to get out – ”
“Everyone be still,” Raven said, his voice low but intense, carrying with it the tone of command his brother Rikard had taught him to use. They all quieted immediately, though they still looked ready to break into dialogue at the slightest provocation.
“We need to wait for – ”
“Davydd and Lorna?” drawled a voice behind him. “Well, that’s a pleasant change. I was starting to think we’d been kicked out of Raven’s Happy Friends Group.”
Davydd and Lorna entered the tent with Commander Autmaran not far behind, Lorna with her hand and shoulder wrapped in thick layers of bandages and Davydd limping slightly. Autmaran looked sore and shaken, but otherwise uninjured.
“Shadows and fire,” Leah said, reaching for Davydd. “I thought the Fox Talisman was supposed to protect you from harm?”
“Aspect of Luck now, sis,” Davydd grimaced. “ And the Healers said an inch to the right and the splinter would’ve hit an artery, and an inch to the left and I’d’ve lost my balls. Splitting the difference, I’d call that luck.”
“Young Goldwyn’s balls aside,” Spader said dryly, “we need to talk about what happened.”
“Indeed,” Tomaz rumbled. “What did happen?”
“Yes,” Ishmael rasped, “my question too. Leah said – ”
“Symanta arranged for the entire population of the city to take their own lives beneath the city in the Seeker’s Cathedral,” Raven said quietly. “The city was a grave even before it was buried by the mountain.”
Leah and Tomaz exchanged a look, and Raven knew both were remembering the sight beneath the mountain, the pool of blood.
“What … what do you mean all of them? Surely there are refugees, this is not a thing that is so simple as rounding up all the citizens – ”
“There was a hole left in the center of the space,” Raven continued, as if no one else had spoken. “A space where a huge Soul Catcher, the biggest I’ve ever seen, could have been placed. Around that space was a pool of blood – a lake of it. I wouldn’t even have thought such a thing possible, but it is. It’s buried now, beneath the mountain, with whatever is left of the bodies, if they weren’t moved or liquefied.”
Spader, Ishmael, and the Generals were all staring at him in horror.
“That’s … that can’t be…” Dunhold looked around frantically, as if asking for someone to tell him this was a sick joke.
“The whole city,” Ishmael said, watching Raven with blank eyes. It wasn’t a question; he was simply speaking, trying to put into words a concept none of them seemed able to fully grasp. “The whole city.”
“But then, what did they do with the crystal?” Gates asked, as if that were the one question that would stump them and prove the whole thing a fable. “If they made a Soul Catcher of such immense power, where did they take it?”
“I don’t know,” Raven admitted. “But my guess would be north. To Rikard, or the Empress.”
Gates looked horrified by the idea, and Raven couldn’t blame him.
“If they gather enough power, no force we put in the field, no strategy we devise or clever tactic we stumble upon, will ever be enough to defeat them. The only thing we have on our side now is time. They will have to travel slowly with such a crystal, and once it is in place more rituals will need to be performed to link it to a user.”
“How much time?”
“If we continue at our given pace,” Raven said, “My guess is they could activate it hours after we arrive outside Lucien. And whoever links to it will have the kind of power that could level mountains.”
Silence rang through the tent at this pronouncement.
“This changes our plan,” Autmaran said, carefully eyeing Raven.
“This changes nothing,” Raven responded calmly, “the plan is sound, it doesn’t need to be changed, we can continue on just as before.”
“This changes everything,” Autmaran continued, his voice quiet, not raised the slightest bit, but full of intension and insistent pragmatism. “Our assumption was that we would bypass a city that was still intact. The implications in that are myriad –”
“We don’t need to change the plan, the implications do not matter,” Raven insisted, speaking just as quietly, with the same measured intensity. The conversation was becoming a battle of wills, and it made him feel oddly sick.
“First,” Autmaran said, ignoring him, “we now know for sure that Symanta is gone, but we are by no means certain of where. Second, if she had left straight for Rikard, she would have taken her armed force with her.”
“She most likely did,” Raven said. “She likely left the Bloodmages to do their work and ordered them to follow behind her after she’d left for the north. She might even have gone straight to Lucien.”
“You’re not listening to me,” the man continued, with the same merciless, even tone of voice, driving his words into Raven’s head. “I’m not concerned that she may have gone off to join Lucien and the Empress instead of Rikard. I’m concerned that she didn’t do either of those things – I’m concerned that she did what she did in that city, sent her troops north, and then stayed here.”
Silence greeted this proposal, and Raven’s mind started churning.
He doesn’t know her like I do – Symanta isn’t a brave others-before-herself kind of fighter. She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t wait around to strike at me, or the Kindred, if it meant risking her own life. There’s no benefit in it, no profit for her.
But fear began to gnaw at him.
“You don’t understand her like I do,” Raven said aloud, ignoring the emotions that roiled beneath the surface of his thoughts. “She doesn’t do things that don’t profit her. There’s no reason for her to stay behind and strike at us now – even if she were to do damage, if she were to kill an Elder or –”
“It’s not an Elder I’m worried about,” Autmaran said abruptly, cutting to the heart of the matter with one swift statement. “You’re a very rational person, and I think you’re a better leader for it. But you have a weakness, a blind spot. You don’t understand that other people do things for emotional reasons. Your sister is a spider, not just a snake, I agree. She’s the head of the Seekers of Truth, and she’s just as slippery as any of her spies and informants; we all know that she prefers to spin her webs out of sight, where nothing can harm her, and to watch her prey get trapped by its own stupidity.”
“Which is why,” Raven broke in, just managing to keep the sharp ed
ge of frustration out of his voice, “your fears are unfounded.”
Autmaran once again ignored him.
“But what if she has nothing left? What if Rikard gave her orders, or the Empress did, just like Geofred gave orders to Dysuna and Tiffenal. There are possibilities here you haven’t considered.”
“You don’t understand how the Children work,” Raven said, the words coming out with more intensity than he’d intended. He tried to pull himself back; he was getting carried away. “The Children can’t order each other around. They can make deals, exchanges of loyalty, but not one of them is above the others.”
“This isn’t getting us anywhere – let’s focus on what we do know, and what we can understand,” Tomaz rumbled reasonably.
Who can understand any of this? What rational person can understand what has happened here? Thousands … they sacrificed thousands!
“What cities are left?” asked Lorna. “Did Dysuna do this before she left Tibour?”
“No,” Leah said, “no, she couldn’t have. She had no time – she marched north as soon as word came that we had.”
“How do we know this hasn’t been planned for years?” Raven asked quietly. “How do we know she didn’t do it?”
“Would you follow the command of a woman who had massacred your entire city?” rumbled Tomaz. “Even if it was only the Commons, and the military and the High Blood were spared, would you feel safe, then? The High Blood weren’t a part of the military force Dysuna led, either – that means that, likely, they were left behind. They aren’t ones to get their hands dirty. They would have required slaves –”
“Unless the Most High were killed too,” Raven interjected, his voice barely more than a whisper, “and the soldiers taken out of the city before it was done.”
The group fell silent, and it was clear they were all thinking the same thing: if the Children and the Bloodmages could kill so many people so callously, why not twice as many? What number was too high to believe?
