Soul of the World

by David Mealing

  Tears stung her eyes as she walked past the bodies of the fallen, the shock of it coming home to rest. Gods be good, perhaps the price of Black was worth paying, if it meant she could stand against this sort of slaughter. And no telling where the city’s inhabitants had gone, fleeing before the advancing armies on both sides. How many innocents would die today? How many more in the weeks to come? Carrying the body of one wounded man in a vain attempt to reunite him with his fellows only underscored the futility of her efforts. What was one life worth? What was she doing?

  We do what we must, with the burdens we are allotted to carry.

  Zi’s voice echoed softly in her mind. It sounded like something her uncle might say, though she knew it was no scripture of any of the Gods.

  She said nothing in reply, only held tight to the captain’s body as she walked.

  After an eternity a line of soldiers came into view, holed up behind a makeshift barricade. Blue coats. Thank the Gods.

  “It’s Foot-Captain Marquand,” one of the soldiers whispered in an awed voice when she reached the line, making her way through their roadblock as the others pitched in to shift the debris. “Get the brigade-colonel,” another shouted.

  A half-dozen voices weighed in with varying degrees of alarm before one of the soldiers, a young woman with a stripe on her collar, bothered to help her lower the captain to the ground.

  “Thank the Gods,” the woman said. “We had reports the companies sent north had been routed. Are there enemy soldiers behind you?”

  “No,” she said. “None that I saw. It was a mareh—” She stopped herself. “A giant cat.”

  When the other woman’s eyes widened with a knowing nod, she continued.

  “The captain and I managed to drive it off,” she said. “I may have wounded it.”

  The soldier’s eyes flicked toward her hands, which she had left bare despite the cold, and registered with a nod the inks etched into her broken skin. “You’re a Body binder?” the soldier asked. “Noble-born?”

  “Yes. A Body binder, I mean. My marques were a gift.” She stopped herself as the soldier gave her a questioning look. A story for another time; irrelevant now. “I tethered what I could into the captain. I couldn’t leave him. I figured if I could bring him to soldiers, he would be safe.”

  The soldier pulled off her gloves, laying hands on the captain’s chest. Scarred hands, though without any inks to speak of. “You’re in luck. We have a good number of the army’s remaining fullbinders here, for as long as we can hold this position.”

  She exhaled, letting out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been keeping in.

  “My name is Acherre,” the woman said. “Lance-Lieutenant Acherre, assigned to the Eleventh Light Cavalry.”

  “Sarine,” she offered in reply. It felt odd to give her name, but concern over her identity seemed trivial compared against the horrors around them. Men and women were dying here, and hundreds more lay dead on streets nearby, the cost of a failed ambush or some other maneuver down the boundary between the Gardens and the Riverways. Lying about her name felt frivolous, a concern for a different time and circumstance.

  “What’s this I hear about Marquand managing to drag himself back here?” a sharp voice called out from behind. She turned to see another woman, flanked by a pair of men who rushed to Marquand’s side as Acherre stood, facing the newcomer with a military salute.

  “Sir,” Acherre said, “this woman rescued Foot-Captain Marquand from the horse-cat, Brigade-Colonel Vassail, sir.”

  The brigade-colonel eyed Marquand with careful concern, for all her demeanor belied her expression. “Serves him bloody well right for disobeying orders,” the colonel said. “Do you have a name?” she asked, turning toward Sarine, adding a belated “my lady” after catching sight of the marques on the backs of her hands.

  “Sarine,” she offered, finding it an easier fit the second time around.

  “She’s a Body binder, sir,” Acherre said.

  “Is that right?” Vassail said. “Have you ever considered military service? I assure you, the pay is top-notch.” The brigade-colonel laughed bitterly, turning toward an aide approaching at her side. “Gods know we can use all the binders we can get today.”

  At once the colonel’s demeanor changed from relaxed confidence to a crisp salute. It took a second look at the aide to hazard a guess at why: Instead of pupil-and-iris, the aide’s eyes shone with a pure, golden light. The sight of it struck her in the gut, a hammer blow, though she couldn’t have explained why.

  Acherre laid a hand on her arm in a calming gesture as the brigade-colonel spoke: “High Commander, sir, what orders?”

  “Redeployment, Colonel,” the aide said. “The west flank is collapsed, or will be soon enough. I need the Eleventh to execute a forced march into the Gardens.”

  “Sir, scouts’ reports say—”

  “I know bloody well what the reports say. I need you to get in place on the double, and hold the line.”

  “I’m at less than a third strength,” Vassail said, wearing a grim expression. “We’ve been driven back. I’ve lost half my binders already. I can’t—”

  “Gods damn it, Vassail, I need you,” the aide said in a harsh voice. “Tell me you can do it.”

  Vassail drew a deep breath. “Yes, sir,” she said. “We move at once.”

  The golden light faded as quickly as it had come. Breath came hard, and Sarine shifted her vision in time to see the last vestiges of the light pull away into the distance. It was like no binding she had seen before. High Commander, the brigade-colonel had said. Somehow that tether had connected the colonel’s aide to Donatien’s old commander.

  “Going to need you, Acherre,” the brigade-colonel said. “Gods damn it, we could have used Marquand, too.” With that she strode away in a flurry, shouting orders as the soldiers around them began to swarm like hornets.

  Acherre turned toward her, a sympathetic look mixed with determination on her face. “We really could use you, even if only for Body to help the wounded until the Life binders can get to them.”

  “What was that?” she asked. “The golden light?”

  “Our latest weapon, my lady. High Commander d’Arrent directs the battle, and we follow her commands.”

  She nodded absently, looking up and down the line as the blue coats formed up facing west. Something in that light had called to her, an echo of a long-forgotten memory. Gone now, though the sight of it lingered in her eyes.

  She cast a long glance toward the soldiers, feeling strangeness settle on her skin. What was she doing? She was no soldier. Reyne d’Agarre was out there, and the other kaas-mages. Axerian was counting on her, and he’d insisted the stakes were far greater than the lives of one company of soldiers, greater even than the city itself. And if she let herself go too far, if Black took hold of her mind …

  No. None of that mattered. She couldn’t let these men and women die.

  “I can fight,” she said. “Just show me where to stand.”

  59

  ARAK’JUR

  Street of the Cobblers

  Gardens District, New Sarresant

  Elle est à proximité,” the strange woman said, the one who’d first called herself Erys—or something akin to it—and then Marie. “Le feu est trois rues au sud.”

  The fair-skins’ tongue seemed to flow together, a flow of words and nasal sounds he’d never been able to master. But he understood enough. The woman was near, and the fire. An echo of the vision he’d been granted at Ka’Ana’Tyat, as sure as their strange fair-skinned guide had been. He walked through their city in the haze of a dream, as though he had passed through the fire and chaos already, and so he had. Every line, every path of stone and smoke cloud rising into the sky; he’d seen it before, by the grace of the spirits. And it led to Llanara.

  Corenna kept pace at his side, a distant look in her eyes. She’d seen the vision, too. He knew without asking. How they would enter the fair-skins’ city, and be greeted by a wom
an with eyes of gold, who knew the way into madness. As it was when he followed the shamans’ visions, so it was here in the city: Every step was a confirmation they followed the will of the spirits, though the sights around them wrenched his gut, more akin to terrors than a dream.

  Dead men and boys, and women, too. Cold bodies broken on paths of stone, tribesfolk mixed with fair-skins. Olessi, Vhurasi, Ganherat, Sinari. Thunder sounded in the distance, and the lesser booms of musket shot, but the way was quiet, peopled only by the dead.

  “Par ici,” the woman, Marie, said. This way.

  He and Corenna followed, turning a corner around a building of wood and stone. He’d heard stories of the fair-skins’ city, passed down by traders who had glimpsed the sights beyond their barrier, but he had scarce believed the truth could match the tales. Foolishness, as he saw it. So many people in one place, trusting to a single barrier to protect them from the wild. If a tribe multiplied as the fair-skins had done, they would attract doom from a dozen great beasts, come to feast on their flesh as much as their pride. And when their blood ran hot, and one tribe’s disagreement with another spilled over into fighting, the deaths would number into the thousands, to say nothing of the costs of outright war. He saw the truth of it littering the streets as they walked, bodies echoing the stain of Llanara’s madness.

  A scream was his only warning before a young man charged their guide.

  A Ganherat warrior, from the feathers braided into his hair, leaping out from one of the buildings, with three more behind him. They poured into the street in a rush, ululating war cries as if they attacked a pack of enemies, instead of an unarmed woman in the company of a guardian and a woman of the tribes.

  Arak’Jur sprang forward, putting a forearm in the way of the first warrior’s attack, sweeping a kick to tangle his legs, putting him into the snow. Two of his fellows rushed to take the first one’s place, snarling as though they were beasts, and not men.

  Unarmed strikes rained as they lunged for Marie, leaping toward her, ignoring Arak’Jur and Corenna both. He grabbed hold of one of the men by the torso, hurling him into his fellows and pressing all four when they lost their footing.

  “Enough!” he shouted. “What madness is this?”

  They ignored him, scrambling to their hands and knees.

  “Arak’Jur!” Corenna shouted from behind. He glanced to see her restraining Marie, who in the span of a heartbeat had gone from determined resolve to panicked flight.

  Then, as quick as it had come, their madness passed.

  The warriors stared up at him, stunned, and Marie relaxed in Corenna’s grip.

  “The Sinari guardian,” one of the tribesmen said. “How—?”

  “She foretold it,” another warrior said, in hushed tones of awe. “His return, at the moment of our triumph.”

  “What goes on here?” Arak’Jur demanded, standing over the men as they slowly rose to their feet.

  “La folie,” Marie said, her voice hoarse. “Dans des vagues de peur et de panique.”

  He met her eyes, and she gestured on the way they’d been going. “La femme, et Reyne d’Agarre.”

  He hadn’t understood the first part of her words, but he grasped the second. The woman, and the name: Reyne d’Agarre. Her teacher. The first source of Llanara’s madness.

  “You must go to her,” a Ganherat warrior said, a look of reverence on his face, as if he hadn’t been screaming for blood moments before.

  He met Corenna’s eyes, and they shared a nod. The vision confirmed it, though neither had remembered the crazed warriors until the path became clear.

  The four young men led the way, with Marie and Corenna at his side. Unease settled in his gut as they walked. Was this the form Llanara’s magic took? The terror that had driven his people to murder the Ranasi, and who could say how many more in the days since. The Ganherat warriors seemed at ease, keeping a steady pace as they tracked down the fair-skins’ paths of stone. More warriors stood idle on the streets, first offering greetings when their company approached, then falling into step behind when they laid eyes on him, with murmured whispers of his title, that the Sinari guardian had returned. If the madness came again, he might well have to strike them down. He felt the surety of Corenna at his side, and the spirits’ gifts, calling to him at the edge of his vision. Blood soaked the snow, and the hides and wraps of the tribesmen, but they pressed on, with no sign of whatever had stirred them to frenzy.

  Smoke in the distance grew as they approached, more and more warriors falling into step, or parting to clear the way. A greatfire burned at the center of a square, where a web of paths converged, leading all directions into the city. Steps rose toward where the fire had been built, and a figure in white stood atop them, revealed as the crowd stepped aside, leaving the way clear to approach the rise.

  Llanara.

  Her face beamed, radiant even from afar, in a twisted imitation of the fond looks they had once shared. The crowd mirrored her warmth, buzzing appreciation for every step their procession took toward the center.

  When they’d covered half the distance, Llanara raised a hand, invoking silence across the square.

  “The spirits have heard us, honored brothers and sisters,” she said, her voice ringing clear. “Our warleader has returned.”

  The warriors erupted with cheers. She met his eyes amid the roar of the crowd, giving him the subtle smile she used when an opponent hadn’t yet realized she’d won an argument.

  “Warriors,” she cried over the din, “I tell you now—he is warleader, but he will not take the mantle of Vas’Khan.”

  That grabbed hold of their attention, and their cheers died down as Llanara continued to speak.

  “No, he will not be Vas’Khan’Jur. The spirits demand more for him, for our guardian and first among the men of our people.”

  She took long, strutting steps around the center of the clearing, seeming to relish the anticipation as the crowd hung on her every word. He only stared, an empty hate chilling him to the core.

  “If Vas’Khan is the warleader of a tribe, then it is fitting that Arak’Jur take a new name, one that has never before been spoken among our people. A name whispered to me by the spirits. He will be Arak’Khan’Jur. Chosen by the spirits, a warleader for all tribes.”

  The name passed through the throng in whispers, met with nods of approval. They cried it out, tested it on their tongues. Arak’Khan’Jur.

  “Come forward, Arak’Khan’Jur. Take your place at the head of your warriors.”

  She smiled again as the crowd broke into a roar, giving him a sweet look full of warmth. As if she expected humility or thanks; as if she had never considered he might react with anything other than acceptance.

  She beamed amid the thunder of the crowd, fixed on him as he approached. As he drew near he saw the familiar lines of her face, the passion in her eyes. He could see the memory of the woman she had been, the relief she had offered to salve the loss of his wife and son.

  “Welcome home, my guardian,” she said.

  He called upon the valak’ar and struck, surrounded by a deadly nimbus of the wraith-snake.

  A flare of white surrounded her before he connected, repelling him with enough force to throw him to the ground.

  Shock showed on Llanara’s face, and it rippled outward through the crowd, the cheers near the center replaced by gasps of disbelief.

  “No,” Llanara said, looking down on him with pain in her eyes. “No, Arak’Jur. Why?”

  He felt the shock of it hit him. The vision had ended here.

  His mouth went dry, and he saw her tilt her head as if listening to an unspoken voice.

  A dark look crept into her eyes.

  60

  ERRIS

  High Command

  Southgate District, New Sarresant

  The lines hadn’t moved. All her preparation, shifting reserves into place to be able to threaten an eastward assault, when it came. Superior numbers meant the enemy had the initiative, but i
nstead of attacking, he probed, testing her without committing to an engagement.

  She’d been near certain the Gandsmen would drive east toward the river, securing the crossings to threaten the harbor. If they took and held the docks, they could bring up ships to bombard attempts to attack their position, striking at the rest of the city at their leisure. Yet the enemy seemed content to wait, deploying to force her to extend from the Riverways to Southgate. She’d tried a series of ambushes designed to goad him into an attack, and been rebuffed, with no counter.

  It made no sense. Which meant it had to be a trap.

  “Sir, do you have any vessels near the Basilica?” one of her captains asked. “Our scouts haven’t reported in. If the enemy attacks down Rouard Street we’ll be caught blind.”

  She shook her head, wincing as an aide removed one of the blue figures from the map. Sauvignon Street, where she’d tried another ambush. The bulk of those men were dead now. The enemy had responded instantly, as if he had known it was coming.

  Their commander was too bloody good. Maybe that was his plan: bleed her dry, staring across the dying ground between their lines, waiting for her to be the first to commit, when every ounce of her experience said he should have the choosing of the ground.

  She flicked her eyes closed, finding Need.

  “Pull back to the heights at Courtesan’s Hill,” she barked, not waiting for her vision to clear. “Withdraw, and tighten the line.”

  The roar of musket fire was the only response, and she felt a stabbing pain take her in the stomach, knocking her to the ground.

  “Sir!” another voice called out as she fell. “What were your orders, sir?” A foot-captain loomed over her as her vision clouded red, two bars on his collar. Where was the brigade-colonel?