The Rose Sea

by S. M. Stirling

  "It should be the other way round, but every time we Tykissians have pushed south in last few centuries, we've become more like what we conquered. Look at Derkin compared to the central provinces, or the central provinces compared to Old Tykis. In Beltra the Great's time every free commoner could speak to their chief, or carve out a freehold by putting the plow to vacant land. Now a tenant who owes their landlord money can't even move."

  Bren was silent, frowning, for a few minutes. "I'll have to think about it," he said slowly. "I don't agree with everything you've said, and I certainly couldn't put it all into practice at once even if I did. Hmmm. It's certainly a bad thing to have too many thralls around; they take away a free man's pride in the work of his hands. At Timlake, we Morkaarins always held a chief is a chief for the folk's sake…"

  He glanced back over his shoulder. "You realize you've talked yourself into a job, law-speaker? Not as an infantry corporal, either."

  "Job?" The moons' light glinted off Amourgin's glasses, but he looked startled as an owl nonetheless.

  "Certainly… Imperial Councillor." Bren chuckled again. "I tend to get too focused on the job at hand—need someone to remind me what it's for. Although all this is pretty damned academic, right now—my empire is a dozen canoes in the middle of a swamp in a country right off our maps."

  Karah yawned and stretched. "I'm glad you're not just pretty," she said, sitting up. "Hate to think I'd have to do all the skull work when I'm Consort."

  Bren grinned and kissed her. "I'll have you running the cavalry," he said.

  "What's that sound?" Eowlie asked softly.

  The river had risen out of the swamps in the last day or so, which was a relief; unfortunately, the wind had also died down, and they were paddling. That was difficult enough, and the canoes were overcrowded, too. The scent of flatface sweat was rank on the air.

  "I - don't - hear - anything," Amourgin said, pacing his words to the stroke of the paddle.

  "I - do," she replied. "From… up ahead."

  "Halt" Bren called "Everybody listen."

  The words echoed back from the high, rocky hills on either side. The hills were sparsely covered with reddish grass and stunted thorn trees; nothing moved there but a troop of ground apes, baboonlike creatures the size of small humans. They barked alarm and scampered off in a clatter of pebbles and dust. Karah strained her ears to hear something besides the sough of the wind and the low murmur of the river.

  "I do hear something," she said. "It's loud, but it's a long way away. Maybe some more rapids?"

  "We'll find out," Bren said "Let's get moving."

  The Tyklssians pressed on, sailing when the wind favored them, rowing more often as the river narrowed and wound deeper into the hills. The rock rose on either side; glimpses ahead showed range upon range climbing towards the southern horizon. Clouds floated above it—either clouds or snowpeaks. The river stayed fairly level, with no more than the occasional stretch of rough water.

  Amourgin looked in fascination at the banded stone of the cliff. "That's volcanic rock," he said "Layer upon layer of it, and the rivers worn it away. Must have taken a long time; this basalt is hard."

  The river wound through it in sharp S-curves, where the rushing water had found softer veins in the lava. All wind died in the straight confines of the canyon, and sweat ran from the paddlers in steady trickles as they dug their paddles into the swift current It surged beneath their keels in long smooth swells, like the muscles of a dancer, and they could feel it quivering with life through the wood in their hands. The stone walls rose about them, glossy black streaked with red and umber and green; they plunged into the deep river as vertical as masonry laid with a plumb bob. Tall pinnacles split the water here and there, flat-topped columns soaring overhead and giving welcome shade. The faint noise grew until it echoed back and forth from the half-mile cliffs, grew into an endless roar like continual summer thunder.

  "Look!" Bren shouted over the noise, pointing.

  A huge space a hundred yards square had been smoothed on the cliff to their right, outlined like a human hand with the flat patch forming the palm. On it, faint with the erosion, was carved in bas-relief the figure of a raven-headed man in a robe, four wings springing from his back. His arms were bare, showing stylized corded muscle, holding up a sword and cup. Across the carven figure were scored deep marks, jagged angular glyphs. They too were worn at the edges, though far less so than the man-god.

  "The glyphs are Old Empire," Father Solmin shouted back. "Archaic form. Here Ruktha-yentror set the boundaries of his realm. From the… I can't make it out."

  Amourgin took it up, with a half-smile: "From the Smoke-that-Thunders to the shores of the Middle Sea…" He hesitated, then went on: "No, that's in truth, to islands in the vastness of it, oilmen and… ah, beast-men and spirits of the earth obey him."

  Appalled, the priest and the scholar looked at each other, rivalries forgotten.

  "Holy Three," Solmin said, signing himself on brows and cheeks. "That's… the Old Empire ruled both shores of the sea almost from its founding, for nine thousand years. Ruktha—he's mythical. He's the one who drove the ancestors of our people north over the Shield Range into Old Tykis."

  "Not mythical any more," Bren said dryly. He shuddered slightly, looking up at the image. It must have been ancient when Ruktha set his masons to overwriting it How long was it here before Buktha-yentror came? he wondered. The other canoes had stopped and gathered around his.

  "Nobody told you to stop working. Bend your backs, soldiers!"

  The current grew still swifter, water piling up in a narrow chokepoint only two hundred yards across. The paddles flashed, leaving strings of spray glittering in the bright sunlight like momentary necklaces of diamond The crew of the lead boat took up a grunting song and then a sea chanty they'd picked up on the old Sea Mare; the others took it up, until it crashed through the roar of the waters:

  "Rantin Ranzo, Rantin' Ranzo—

  Gave him lashes thirty

  Because he was so dirty

  Rantin' Ranzo, Rantin' Ranzo—"

  For a moment the big canoe hung stationary, shuddering with the force of the water streaming past the hull despite all the paddles could do. Then it slid past the narrows and the sculpted watcher, gliding as if downhill into the broad waters of a lake nearly a mile square, an almost perfect circle in the earth.

  "Smoke-that-Thunders," Bren whispered—to none but himself, for if the noise had been loud outside the cleft, here it was an endless bass rumble that thundered through gut and bones, a white roar of sound that filled their skulls and echoed there as it did from the cliffs.

  Haifa mile away to the south, the whole flood of the Tiram—the Mother-River, three thousand yards across—shot over the edge of the precipice in a single smooth sheet of green. Long it fell, until much of even that flood dissolved in a boiling cloud of mist, and that mist hid the earthquake impact of a million tons of water striking the surface. For long moments Bren and all the others sat and stared, wide-eyed. They could feel that shattering strike through their bones, through the water and the thin wood of the canoe, jarring their very teeth together.

  At last Bren waved his hand forward; there was nothing else to do. Only at the sides of the waterfall were the cliffs broken, but the slope was very steep, over huge slab-sided boulders, and overgrown with a dense scrub of thorny trees and vines fed by the eternal mists. A few jungled islands broke the surface of the lake, but none of them were more than a few hundred square feet. The little fleet made a circuit of the lake, seeing nothing but a few monkeys on the cliffs and a promising number of giant catfish in the deep waters. At last they beached on the largest of the islands, the leaders gathering to talk while the troops cut firewood and attended to the endless work of keeping the gear and boats in condition.

  "I hate to lose a day," Bren said, leaning back against a tree trunk.

  Eowlie looked up thoughtfully and took off her boots—the toes had worn through some time ago and
were held with patches of rawhide and thongs. She crouched, spread her fingers, and leaped. The thick trunk took her weight without a tremor, and she scampered up it squirrel-swift. There was a thrashing in the branches, a high squeal of animal terror, and bits of fur started dropping down to the sandy ground.

  "We might run into Willek," Captain Tagog nodded, "or worse yet, Darkist—but there's no way up those walls that wouldn't take longer. Back a day, and up into the hills, around these falls, then on foot… Sir, you don't know how much farther south this is going to be, do you?"

  Embarrassed, Bren shook his head. "I think… I think not much farther. The stars at night are starting to look like… well, like the dreams."

  Amourgin and Karah nodded Father Solmin did too: "Trust the vision," he added.

  A soldier came up and handed around palm-leaf platters loaded with grilled catfish and small wild avocados. Karah drew her belt knife and tucked in. The avocados were juicy and messy, but more flavorful than the larger cultivated variety she'd tasted in Derkin. The fish was good, but—she shook the last crumbs of grey salt out of her pouch—a bit bland.

  Another squeal came from the branches above, and a satisfied exclamation from Eowlie. On the other hand, Karah thought, it could be worse. Could be eating lizards by the sea again.

  "Godsall, but I miss beef," she said "And bread. And vegetables. And wine."

  "Stop it, you're breaking my heart," Bren grinned. "Some people would complain if they were hung with a golden rope. Here you are, getting to travel, see far-off exotic places…"

  "… feed their leeches and mosquitoes," Amourgin put in helpfully.

  "… meet strange people…"

  "… and kill them," Karah finished.

  Twigs and leaves showered down from above. They all covered their food with their hands or hats and shouted complaints up at Eowlie; the fanged woman dropped down more swiftly than she'd climbed The smiles died at the expression on her face. She pointed a clawed finger northward.

  "They're coming."

  "Darkist?" Bren asked sharply, standing and belting on his sword "Willek?"

  "Both."

  "This is like the story of the wolf, the cabbage and the sheep," Bren said disgustedly, watching the three miniature fleets maneuver. "Or paper-rock-scissors."

  Up in the bows of the canoe, a musketeer completed the contortions needed to reload her weapon in the strait confines of the canoe and knelt. The boat rocked; she waited until it steadied, blowing on the glowing end of slowmatch in the serpentine, and fired. Haifa dozen others followed suit.

  An armored figure toppled off the battlebarge three hundred yards away—fine shooting at that range, from this platform. Almost immediately one of the light deck-guns replied with a flat thump and jet of powdersmoke. The two-pound iron ball came skipping over the flat surface of the lake. Everyone yelled and dropped flat as it went by a few feet overhead, still sizzling with the heat of firing.

  The man at the steering oar at the rear of the canoe leaned on the wooden crosspiece. The narrow sail of the outrigger canoe caught, and the light craft went skipping away toward the rest of Bren's vessels.

  They were gathered in a clump to the west of the lake's outflow; the three remaining Tseldene battlebarges held the center, keeping in position with long slow strokes of their oars. One more barge drifted half-afloat and still burning, heading slowly back towards its compatriots. The wreckage of several of Willek's canoes littered the water near it; freshwater sharks and crocodiles cruised about among the dead and wounded. Bren watched one Tykissian kicking desperately as he clung to a piece of wreckage; then four-foot jaws clamped over his legs and pulled him under with a last scream and swirl of red-tinted water. Battle smoke was drifting in patches across the northern quarter of the lake, smelling of sulphur and death.

  "Gods damn Willek," he whispered, suppressing an impulse to shake his fist towards her canoe.

  She had the infernal insolence to be flying the Imperial standard, too—and the callous cruelty to have brought the Emperor along on this wild expedition. At least the canoe with Shemro aboard was keeping well back from the action.

  "Why like papers and scissors?" Karah finally asked.

  Bren pounded his fist on the mast. "The barges can fight but they can't move as fast as we do—if any of them gets separated, either Willek or I could swarm it with boarders. But neither of us can attack the Tseldenes all-out, because then the other would attack their rear. The Tseldenes can't catch either of us and, if they try, the other could attack their rear—or get out of the lake."

  "It's a Three-Body Problem, all right," Amourgin said. The others looked at him blankly, save for Father Solmin. "Mathematics… Well, something's got to break the stalemate."

  Father Solmin gasped. "Something has," he said. The tiny portable brazier before him hissed as he threw pieces of incense on it "A sending."

  He pointed to the largest battlebarge. On its quarterdeck, behind a screen of spearmen and arquebusiers, figures moved. Crystal blazed, a flood of white light that threw shadows stark and blank even in bright afternoon sunlight. A high eerie wailing followed, interspersed with screams of pain that sounded almost like joy.

  The world seemed to twist around them, though nothing changed Then the surface of the water began to vibrate, like coffee in a clay cup dragged over a sanded table. Bren could feel his teeth begin to hurt and clamped them together; there was a pressure in his head, behind his eyes.

  "Help me," Father Solmin gasped.

  Black flames darted over the brazier. Across from him Amourgin knelt, chanting, cursing and fumbling in his belt pouch at the same time. The flames changed color and seemed to flare outward in a film of light.

  "Oh, Three," Amourgin stuttered "Willek's doing a wreaking as well—oh, Three, that's foul."

  The air above the barges and canoes twisted like heat shimmer in the desert. The firing died down, as warriors waited for what might happen. Bren felt the pressure behind his eyes lessen and sighed with relief; but from above there was a sensation as if the sky were twisting and receding, leaving a blankness like a giant blind spot. Behind that non-space, he somehow knew, were eyes.

  "Something… something…" Solmin said, "Is awake." They'd all had enough time for the roar of the falls to become background noise. It still drowned out most distant sounds. The rending, snapping surf of rockfall from downstream was loud even by comparison, and it went on for minutes, as if cliffs were falling. The cry that followed was even louder. It might have been a bird, if the fabled mammoth-hunting khorg of the Southern Sea were present hereabouts. "What is that?" Bren asked. His voice sounded tinny in his own ears, stunned by the cry.

  The long shriek came again, louder, punctuated by a pounding sound like some giant drum. And around the bend of the river, out into the lake, walked the four-winged, raven-headed image from the cliff. It had been a bas-relief; now it was fully three-dimensional. It was still black-grey stone, only the stone had turned flexible as living flesh. The Old Empire glyphs carved across its torso bled, bled lava that hissed and sputtered and sent up puffs of steam as it fell into the lake. Bren felt his mind stutter in disbelief as he watched it. He'd grown up with magic, it was part of the web and woof of ordinary life—but this was like something out of an ancient song, something from before the fall of the Old Empire.

  No, from before the rise of the Old Empire, he gibbered mentally. Then: Why isn't it sinking?

  The thing of living rock wasn't wading through the deep water; even at a hundred and fifty feet tall, it would still have been submerged to the neck. Instead it walked across the surface of the lake. At each slow ponderous stride a huge patch of lake dimpled, as if it were some tough elastic fabric compressed under great weight His eyes hurt when he looked at it, as if not water but the structure of existence itself was being distorted.

  "I don't fucking believe this," he said quietly—and he was not a swearing man, as a general rule. More loudly: "Who raised it?"

  "None of us," Amour
gin said, sinking back with sweat covering his exposed face and arms in a shining layer. "Even if we knew how, none of us would have the power—the power to transform and move so many tons of rock, maybe not even a god would have that much power. Where's it coming from?"

  The thing raised its wings and opened its beak, screaming again. With the sound came a blast of air, furnace-hot and dry, smelling of rock dust.

  "Put down that bloody musket," Bren said, turning and making a chopping gesture with his hand. The soldier lowered his weapon, white-faced under his tan and shaking. "Hold your fire, everyone."

  Somebody on one of the Tseldene barges was less disciplined, or perhaps more hopeful of actually doing something to the thing. They fired a swivel gun, and the half-pound ball knocked a chip loose from one ankle. The creature screamed again as lava leaked out and dribbled down its foot It turned and strode towards the Tseldene craft, lifting the enormous sword that seemed to be part of its right hand The strides were slow, but each covered thirty yards of distance. Real matter tolled like a bronze bell under those unnatural feet The battlebarge spun in barely its own length and began to speed away as fast as the vermilion oars could take it The rowing slaves could see the… thing… through the deck grills, and their screams had nothing to do with the overseers' lash.

  "I think," Eowlie said, her voice a little shrill, "I think I knowing where is f'ower coming from." Her grasp of Tykissian had slipped a little.

  Everyone in Bren's cluster of boats followed her pointing arm. The clouds of mist around the base of the waterfall had lessened. They shrank as the northerners watched, because the water was falling more slowly. Bren fixed his eyes on a spot near the top and followed it down. He knew exactly how quickly the torrent should be falling things always fell at the same speed, and he'd been watching the great waterfall off and on for hours. It pounded down from the heights. Now the weight of water was falling with a dreamlike lack of haste, as if tired, as if…