by Jeff Grubb
Drafna turned frosty. “I find it hard to believe that music truly calms the savage breast, that’s all.”
“I find it hard to believe in men flying in Thran artifacts,” snapped Feldon. “Or in mechanical dragons, for that matter. But we live in a world where they exist, and I, for one, want to be prepared for them.”
Now, at Feldon’s door, that conversation came back to Loran. Feldon and Drafna had become opposite poles in their discussions. Was that why Feldon had asked her to come to his personal study, as opposed to bringing something before the entire group?
She knocked, and a heavy voice bade her enter.
Feldon’s study was spartan—a low table piled with books in an orderly fashion; a few chairs around a low table; and a small slate board along the wall. The room was lit by a single window. The heavy bear of a man was seated before the table, which was clear but for one item.
“Did you hear the news?” Loran asked as she entered.
Feldon glanced up with a haggard look. “About Yotia? Drafna told me about it at breakfast. It’s ancient history already.”
Loran nodded. Even rumors took their time traversing the length of the Fallaji empire. But some refugees from Zegon had arrived in the city the previous evening with important news: Urza had made his move across the Korlis-Yotian border and was liberating cities from the overmatched Fallaji.
“Ancient history,” said Feldon. “By the time the news reaches us, Whatsisname could be in Tomakul.”
“Or have been stopped by a counteroffensive,” noted Loran. “But you did not ask me up here to discuss the news from the battlefronts. What’s wrong?”
“What do you make of this?” the lame man asked, motioning Loran forward. “Yumok fishermen brought it up with their nets; the same group that delivered that coral helmet a year ago.”
It was a cross between a bowl mounted on a thick pedestal and a squat, wide-rimmed goblet. The bowl was about a foot across, with a pair of heavy handles mounted on each side. The bowl appeared copperish, but it was unlike any copper Loran had seen before. The device reminded Loran of a sacrificial bowl used by the old religions of Argive.
“It’s called a sylex,” said Feldon, his eyes not leaving the bowl. “At least that’s what it calls itself. And it’s from Golgoth, which I’ve never heard of either.”
“You know what it is?” asked Loran.
Feldon tipped the bowl toward Loran. The interior of the bowl, which would normally be smooth, was covered with small incised figures that seemed to spiral before her eyes from the rim into the base.
“Its purpose is written on it,” said Feldon.
Loran narrowed her eyes. “These are Thran glyphs,” she said at last.
Feldon nodded. “I can’t read those characters,” he said, then pointed to another curving line of characters. “But these are Fallaji characters, written in an arcane style that I can read. These resemble the song markings of the Sumifans, and these match the incisions on my cane. These”—he pointed to a few other lines—“are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Do you know what they mean?”
“A way of reading Thran,” said Loran. “A master cipher to a host of old languages.”
Feldon smiled. “Indeed. If only the message it bore was not so grim.”
Loran raised an eyebrow. “And it is?”
Feldon leaned forward over the bowl. “I don’t have all of it, but I think I have most of it. It’s called a sylex, and it’s from Golgoth, as I said. Whether Golgoth is a land, a king, or its maker, I have no idea. It is supposed to herald the end of the world.”
Loran looked at Feldon and said nothing.
Feldon shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking. Mummery and claptrap. That’s one reason I didn’t bring it forward to the others. Drafna thinks I’m going to start hanging strands of burning incense and spinning prayer wheels any day now. But listen to the translation of the archaic Fallaji: ‘Wipe the land clear. Bring the ending. Topple the empires to bring a fresh start.’ And this: ‘Call the end, fill with memories of the land.’ Sounds pretty dense.”
“Fill with memories,” said Loran. “Sounds like something out of a charlatan’s patter. Old magics that require the whisper of a dying sun and the smile of a cat. And wasn’t there an old Fallaji legend of a city in a bottle, which survived when the rest of the world was to be destroyed?”
Feldon looked up. “You don’t believe it then?”
Loran shook her head. “I think this is a wondrous find, which will unlock many other mysteries for us. Perhaps it carries some warning of an ancient time. But no, I don’t believe it.”
“Touch it,” said Feldon, leaning away from the bowl. “Go ahead, touch it.”
Loran reached out and grasped the side of the bowl. There was an instant feeling of disquiet, as if the sun had suddenly passed behind a cloud, leaving her in shadow. She looked up, and the entire room seemed to have dimmed. Out of that dimness, she thought she heard a cry, the plaintive lament of a young child, though so faint that it was almost below her ability to discern.
She released the bowl’s edge, and the world returned to normal. The sun passed from behind the cloud, and the child’s cry was gone entirely.
“You felt it too,” said Feldon.
Loran nodded and sat down opposite Feldon, the sylex between them. “There is something here.”
“Something we don’t understand yet,” said Feldon. “Is it a warning? Or a weapon?”
“But what does it mean?” asked Loran. “Fill with memories?”
“Has Hurkyl taught you any of her meditative techniques?” inquired Feldon.
“She’s taught the archimandrite, who’s passed a bit on to me,” said Loran. “But there are a number of meditative techniques used by scholars to focus attention and concentration, ranging from the songsmiths of Sumifa to—”
Feldon interrupted her with a hasty wave of the hand. “But Hurkyl, our silent compatriot, what of her meditations?”
“The archimandrite said ‘she sits in the morning and thinks of her home in Lat-Nam, of the azure-colored waves, white with froth, suspended over the shore before crashing down.’ I think it calms her to think of home,” said Loran. “While it is fresh in her mind, it keeps her from needing to return to her island.”
“Anything else?” asked Feldon.
Loran shrugged. “There have been some interesting incidents,” she said. “The archimandrite mentions that after her meditating sessions, Hurkyl’s quarters become neater. The books are shelved in their proper order, and her styli are back in their case. No one remembers putting them away, of course.”
“You believe that?” said the bear of a man gruffly.
“I think we need to research the matter further,” returned Loran. “If it were anyone else but Hurkyl, Drafna would be shouting from the parapets that it was all bunk and hokum.”
“Yes,” agreed Feldon. “But have you tried the techniques? Have you thought about your homeland?”
Loran shrugged again. “I don’t really want to think about Argive at the moment or what is happening there.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said the bearish scholar. “I’m going to have to learn that technique, I suppose. Sounds like it might be akin to filling something with memories of the land.”
Loran did not answer but looked at the bowl. She reached out for a moment but did not touch it again.
Feldon said, “If it is a weapon, is it one the brothers could use?”
Loran shook her head. “I don’t think so. There is no mechanism here, no set of weights and cables, no obvious source of its power. All there is is a warning and the bad feeling that surrounds it.”
Feldon nodded. “I agree. And yet why do I feel so loath to tell the others about it?”
Loran concurred with the feeling. “Tell the archimandrite at least,” she said. “And make a parchment rubbing of the interior. The translations within will prove invaluable to our work. Then put it in a safe place, secure from any would-be thieve
s. Just in case it is what it says it is.”
Feldon nodded again, but his eyes were on the sylex. “It’s a little tempting, though, isn’t it? Wiping everything clear and starting again?”
Loran rose and paused at the door. “Yes,” she said, “but your glaciers would probably melt. And then what would you study?”
Feldon allowed himself a weak smile. “You speak the voice of reason. No matter how bad things are now between Mishra and Whatsisname, it hasn’t gotten all that bad yet.”
Loran smiled as well and left Feldon to his studies. Outside the room, in the curved hallway, she touched the hand that had held the bowl. It was numb, and feeling was only now starting to return to it. She flexed her fingers and tried to will the nerves to respond.
Loran shook her head. It hadn’t gotten all that bad.
Yet.
Tawnos was in chains. A set of manacles bound his wrists no more than a foot apart, and a second set similarly constrained his ankles. The chains of the manacles were gathered together at his midsection where another, longer chain secured the entire collection to a large iron ring in the floor. He could not stand up fully, much less move comfortably.
Not that there was much room to move in or places to go if he could. The room was without furniture save for a single stool. A grate above allowed in some diffuse light on an irregular schedule, and another grate in the floor carried away waste. A single iron door with a shutter was set along one wall. A human skull leered in the corner, the remains of a previous occupant. Other than that, nothing. Nothing but him and his chains
A pity, really, thought Tawnos, because the war had been going so well up to that point.
Mishra had spread himself too thin, and the combined kingdoms of Argive and Korlis took advantage of the weakness. Mishra managed to hold the northern passes well enough, but the defenses into Yotia were threadbare at best. Raiding from the combined kingdoms intensified, until finally a group of Korlisian volunteers were trapped in Yotia and massacred.
The Martyrs of Korlis were noteworthy for both their youth and the fact that they were not in the pay of anyone else. Instead they were true patriots of their nation, the sons and daughters of merchant lords. Their slaughter electrified the southern of the two united countries, and demands rang out to the combined king to take action immediately.
It had happened as Tawnos had predicted, before Urza was ready, but later than Tawnos himself had anticipated. The Lord Protector had sufficient manpower to throw his machinery south without seriously depleting the northern passes. With most of Mishra’s forces heading west to Sarinth, no one expected a strike against Argive.
There were strikes, of course, but they were badly planned and hastily launched and dealt with by the forces at hand. Instead, a full army of Argivians and newly patriotic Korlisians headed south and west, backed by ornithopters, Yotian soldiers, a variety of avengers, including the new sentinel model, triskelions, and a four-part flying creature called a tetravus. The legions spilled over the borders and into occupied Yotia.
The Fallaji garrisons were not enough to hold the borders but sufficient to offer more than token resistance and prevent a quick campaign. The Fallaji began a regular retreat over the next year, withdrawing from one province to strike in another. They burned the territories to which they never intended to return.
By the fall of the first year the areas south of the wreckage of Kroog were freed from Fallaji rulership, if not their raids. This included Jorilin and the other coastal cities. By the end of next year, the Fallaji had been driven from most of Yotia with the exception of the trans-Mardun provinces and the Sword Marches. Seven enemy dragon engines had been destroyed in the process in pitched battles that tested Urza’s machines to the utmost.
The land was wrecked by the despoiling Fallaji and the wars of liberation, but it was retaken at last. Tawnos rode to cheers at the head of the army through the streets of recovered towns. To hard eyes as well, from those who had suffered under the Fallaji and wondered what their former queen was doing, safe and secure in Penregon.
They got their answer soon enough. Yotia was incorporated into the combined kingdoms of Korlis and Argive, without so much as asking the newly freed people. The queen would not return, and Yotia would be a vassal state for the unified kingdoms. After more than ten years of war, Yotia had traded one master for another.
Tawnos understood this at the time. He knew it was the only way to convince the Argivian nobles and Korlisian merchant lords to help mend the shattered landscape and feed a population whose fields had been burned by the retreating Fallaji. But the part of him that was Yotian did not like it, and it was clear others felt the same way.
There was a similar reaction to the Lord Protector’s next decision. The people assumed that Urza would clear out the rest of the provinces, restoring a complete Yotia. Instead he eschewed retaking the Sword Marches of his father-in-law. The army massed for an assault across the Mardun, making for Tomakul itself.
The Yotians muttered and talked about the Korlis merchants, and how the Korlisians lusted to regain their protected trade routes to beyond Tomakul. Tawnos knew better—Mishra had apparently made Tomakul his base of operations, and Urza was coming for his brother.
The procedure was slow, methodical, and utterly relentless. The advance was held to thirty miles a day, though some of the automatons could travel farther than that. At every night’s stop one of Urza’s towers was erected, fitted with great mirrors and signal fires to communicate with its neighbors. A permanent garrison of men and machines was stationed, and the remainder pressed on.
As they pressed westward the resistance stiffened, and more manpower was called for. From his headquarters in Penregon, Urza was finally forced to weaken the passes in order to supply the main assault. In addition the Lord Protector hired mercenary units, promising plunder when Tomakul fell. The Korlisians were nervous about the decision to offer Tomakul to the sword, but since most of the mercenaries were theirs, they abided by it.
By this time Tawnos was leading the army westward, though officially in a capacity advisory to General Sharaman. Tawnos knew the strengths and weakness of his machines, and the general trusted Tawnos’s judgment sufficiently to translate the Master Scholar’s advice into orders. They were within sight of the great golden domes of Tomakul when everything fell apart.
Fallaji cavalry had struck along the length of the supply line throughout the march and on several occasions had taken a tower, forcing part of the army to double back to re-establish their lines of communications. At first the attacks had been sporadic, but now they were almost continual. Indeed Tawnos blamed their defeat in part on the regular nature of those attacks. The Argivians had been immured to the continual raiding, and as a result they didn’t realize the nature of the assaults had changed.
Tawnos also blamed the defeat on lack of adequate information. Sarinth’s capital had fallen as they pressed west, after years of siege, and no one told the Argivian force. Most of the Sarinthian countryside was still in revolt, but the nation’s great walled city had finally fallen and troops previously tied down in siege were now flooding south, bearing down on Tawnos’s column.
Urza had taken too long to arrive at Tomakul, and Mishra now had the opportunity to respond in force.
First were the dragon engines. Mishra had lashed together at least a dozen, most of those clanking imitations, plus two of the ones that had leveled Kroog. These moved like panthers and struck without mercy. There was also a new type, one that could fly, and it scattered the ornithopters like sparrows before a hawk.
Then there were the transmogrants: zombielike beings that had once been men but now were shambling engines of destruction. These bunched up against their assailants, and Tawnos’s clay statues were slaughtered in droves. The transmogrants had been taught to pull the clay from the statues’ forms, like ants cleaning a carcass. The amorphous clay had not the chance to regather itself.
Neither did the Argivian army. From its position
farthest forward, it was driven back to post after post: retreating, fighting, then retreating again. Word arrived that new Korlisian mercenaries were coming up the line, bringing with them the mechanical garrisons from the previous towers.
The reinforcements never materialized. Instead the retreating Argivian forces found one of the towers in the hands of Mishra’s cavalry, who had flanked the line of march and now bore down on the remains of Sharaman’s force with Urza’s own automatons.
The field was covered in blood and resounded with the screams of the valiant and the dying. Tawnos held his own for a short while, surrounded by a pair of his clay statues. He formed one island of an archipelago of Argivian defenders, ringed by Fallaji swordsmen and unliving opponents. The sky belonged to flying engines of destruction.
Then there was an explosion and darkness.
He woke in the dark of the pit. He had been bruised badly, particularly around the face, but was otherwise unharmed. He had now been conscious several days, by his own count, and except for an unspeaking guard who slapped a bowl of gruel-thin porridge before him, there had been no visitors.
There was a soft clicking noise as the shutter to the iron door slid open. A flash of dark eyes sparkled on the other side, and it slid back.
Then the door was open, Tawnos winced at the brightness. Several figures stood in the doorway, silhouettes against the light beyond them.
The foremost strode into the cell and removed her gloves. She wore spiked armor.
“Hello, Duck,” said Ashnod. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your quarters. It’s not much, but it’s better than you deserve.”
* * *
—
“It’s called an oubliette,” she said as two guards brought in furniture. “It’s apparently an old Fallaji tradition from back when they took prisoners on a regular basis. A dimly lit cell, perfect for making personal enemies disappear. Tomakul is tunneled with them. We had to clear some of the bones out of this one so we could put you here. The skull was left as a reminder. Its owner starved here, ignored by the guards and abandoned by her captors.”
