When the Heavens Fall

by Marc Turner

  Ebon silenced him with a look, then swung his gaze back to the prone figure of Grimes.

  The right half of the soldier’s face had been burned away, and where the eye on that side had been was now only bone protruding from weeping flesh. Curls of energy flickered round his wounds. He should have been dead, yet somehow he managed to push his hands beneath him and made to rise.

  Ebon knelt and placed a hand on his chest. “Rest easy.”

  “Help me up, damn you!” Grimes said. “My horse…”

  “Where would you go, Sergeant?”

  “The river. Got to get away … I’ll not become one of them…”

  Ebon rubbed a hand across his eyes, lost for anything to say. There would be no recovering from the sergeant’s wounds, and the king would not dishonor him by pretending otherwise. Mottle had moved to stand over them and—as the mage explained—began weaving currents of air across the soldier’s blistered skin to ease the discomfort of his burns. When Grimes coughed, blood frothed to his lips.

  Vale broke the silence. “You’ll have to ride round the city, Grimes. The river on this side will carry you into the Water Gate.”

  “Then Watcher’s tears, help me up, man!” Grimes said, his voice cracking. “I can’t hold…” His words degenerated into a fit of coughing.

  Numbed, Ebon helped Vale haul the soldier to his feet. Grimes cried out as he staggered upright, his head lolling forward. His dead horse lay steaming a handful of paces away, so Ebon led his own destrier to Grimes and boosted him into the saddle.

  “Sergeant,” he said.

  “No time, your Majesty,” Grimes replied. Clutching the reins in one hand, he forced a grin. “Damned if I’m going to … hang round for one of your … pretty speeches anyhow.”

  A tightness gripped Ebon’s chest, and he could only watch in silence as the soldier dug his heels into the destrier’s flanks and set off east. As the animal reached a canter Grimes started to sway. For a moment Ebon thought he would fall. Then the sergeant’s back straightened. Would his gambit work? If he could get to the river, alive or dead it would carry him away and spare him from having to join the attack on the city. Perhaps that was enough. A muscle flickered in Ebon’s cheek. A bitter day indeed, when the best a dying man could hope for was to stay dead.

  Slowly, Grimes and his horse dissolved into the heat haze that shrouded the plains until all that remained was a smudge of brown within the murk. Then that too faded.

  Long after the soldier had vanished, Ebon continued to stare after him.

  Finally he turned to look at Majack. The pain in his side had settled to a dull throb. General Reynes must have been using fire to combat the undead, for tendrils of smoke rose from the southern districts of the city, and a pall of gray hung over the rooftops. Farther north, the sky remained clear. Meaning Reynes still holds the river?

  Maybe.

  The Vamilians that had been guarding the north and south walls were now circling round to join their kinsmen at the ruins of the West Gate. If the enemy had left the other gates undermanned, Reynes might attempt to sally forth, but what would be the point? How far could the townsfolk flee on foot with a tireless undead host in pursuit? Where would they go that might offer better protection than the palace? Ebon ran a hand over his shaved head. Ultimately the defeat of the Fangalar sorceress might count for nothing. All he had done was buy the city some time.

  Now he had to figure out what to do with it.

  He was brought round by the sound of fighting from the opposite end of the camp. “Mottle,” he said. “The Guardsmen I sent to watch your back … See what you can do to help them.” Gesturing at Ellea and Bettle, he added, “You two, go with him.”

  Vale waited until they were alone before speaking. “What happened? When you attacked the sorceress, I saw you ride through—”

  “Later,” Ebon cut in. “When we are out of this.” He pointed to the struggling Fangalar. “You will leave your sword?”

  “Aye, let it hold her here. You want me to take her legs as well? In case she works herself free?”

  Ebon hesitated. A memory came to him of the consel’s brother on the battlements, pleading for help even as he thrashed against his bonds. Perhaps the sorceress could feel no physical pain, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t suffering. “No,” he said at last. “Anyone who freed her could just carry her, anyway. Round up the remaining horses, then search the camp for provisions. Let’s see what the Sartorians left us.”

  The Endorian’s eyes narrowed. “We ain’t going back to the city?”

  Ebon shook his head. “There’s no way we’d fight our way inside.”

  “Maybe one of the other gates. Or we wait till nightfall.”

  “And then what? Even if we could somehow get past the outer wall, what chance would we have of reaching the palace?”

  Vale held his gaze for a heartbeat before turning to the Forest of Sighs. “You’re going after the consel.”

  “Yes.”

  “You trust him?”

  “I have no choice. We need him.”

  “And if he decides he doesn’t need us?”

  “It’s a risk we have to take. The palace will fall in time, Vale, whether we are here to see it or not. Defeating the sorceress has gained us, what, a few days?”

  “Assuming they don’t have another mage.”

  Ebon scowled. “What would you have me do?”

  “Make for Culin. Gather a force together.”

  “And in the meantime? Majack would fall.”

  The Endorian looked at the forest. “Then send me in there. Whoever’s behind this, I’ll hunt them down quicker on my own.”

  “While I go and hide behind a wall somewhere? No, Vale…”

  Ebon’s voice trailed off at the sound of hoofbeats approaching through the camp. Corporal Ellea rode up in a lather. “More of the stiffs, your Majesty,” she said, reining in. “From the trees, heading this way.”

  “Did you reach the others in time, Corporal?”

  “No, sir,” she replied stiffly.

  And so we are five. Ebon looked over at Vale, who nodded and said, “I’ll see to the horses.”

  The king stole a last glance at the city. Reynes’s columns of smoke seemed to have advanced farther north in the last few moments, away from the river. But then perhaps it was just the breeze, for the clouds of dust from the guardhouse were also drifting in that direction. Overhead in the ash-filled sky, redbeaks were gathering.

  Grimacing, Ebon looked away.

  With the dead on the march, the birds would find no carrion here.

  PART III

  BREATH OF THE DEAD

  CHAPTER 13

  ROMANY RUBBED her hands together. After so many days of waiting the game was finally under way! The past few bells had seen a host of strangers entering the forest, and they were now sending ripples along her sorcerous web as they blundered through its strands. Most of the intruders were not Shroud’s disciples, and these she would leave to Mayot’s unsophisticated charms. That left eight unwitting players to take part in her game. Eight versus Romany’s one. Hardly the most sporting of odds, but the priestess was here to win, not play fair.

  As yet there had been no sign of any collaboration between Shroud’s servants, but then somehow Romany doubted the god’s minions were team players. There were always petty rivalries between an immortal’s followers—for proof of that she had only to think back on her own dealings with the Spider’s high priestesses from other cities. Here, those rivalries would have been fueled by the prestige that was certain to accrue to whichever of Shroud’s vermin wrested the Book from Mayot’s hands. Perhaps Shroud had even offered a reward to the successful disciple. Fool. By encouraging his servants to act alone he would only make it easier for Romany to pick them off one at a time.

  And the minion she was now tracking through the southern reaches of the forest was sure to be one of the prize scalps. Wearing a hooded black robe and carrying an ebony staff, the stranger walked with a
sway that was unmistakably female. The hands protruding from her sleeves were covered in black scales, and each of her fingers ended in a long, curved talon. Where she trod, her footsteps left black impressions on the grass, and the trees in her wake shed leaves in a gentle shower. That set off a steepleful of bells in Romany’s head. As an initiate in the Spider’s temple, she had heard whispers of a creature whose mere presence could cause decay like this. The Widowmaker. One of Shroud’s most trusted followers, as well as his sometime mistress. A guardian of death’s gate who had stood at the god’s right hand since his ascension in the Second Age. An abomination whose touch was death.

  Pure poppycock, Romany had assumed. Now she was not so sure.

  Whoever the woman was, the enormity of her power was unquestionable. If I could knock her out of the game …

  The priestess had warned Mayot of the Widowmaker’s approach, and he had responded with the exact degree of subtlety she’d come to expect of him. A horde of Vamilians had been dispatched to throw themselves at Shroud’s disciple. She had destroyed them without having to so much as lift a finger. For as the undead drew near they simply fell lifeless around her, the threads of death-magic holding them—the threads Romany had believed unbreakable—shriveling like the grasses beneath her feet. And the Widowmaker would only get stronger as she feasted on the energies released by the Book. By the time she reached Estapharriol she would be unstoppable.

  Romany, though, had no intention of letting her get that far. Over the course of the morning she had been following Shroud’s disciple in spirit-form through the forest. It was not easy leading someone’s footsteps astray without them detecting the hidden hand, but the priestess was a master of the art. A nudge here. A false shadow there. The Widowmaker had entered the forest from the southwest, near the foothills of the White Mountains, and set a northerly course for Mayot’s dome. Only for Romany to guide her in a gentle arc east to the edge of the plains north and west of Arandas.

  The Widowmaker had arrived at the tree line a quarter of a bell ago, and still she stood there, staring across the Gollothir Plains in what Romany could only assume was disbelief. A shame the woman’s hood was raised, because the priestess would have enjoyed seeing her stunned expression. Alas, the deception was unlikely to succeed a second time, for the Widowmaker would be suspicious now. In any event, Romany’s efforts to this point had been time-consuming, and it was hardly fair that she lavish all her attention on just one of Shroud’s disciples. She needed a way to remove the woman from the game permanently.

  Just then the Widowmaker spun round to face the forest. She raised her ebony staff, and a wave of sorcery erupted from the wood. The trees in front of her were incinerated and fell to earth as clouds of powdery ash. When she finally lowered her staff, a wide straight path several hundred paces long had been cut into the forest. To either side of that path, trees burned fiercely.

  Romany sniffed. It seemed the opportunities for further misdirection had just lessened somewhat, but so far as this particular contest of wills was concerned she was just getting warmed up.

  She flashed back to her body along the strands of her web and opened her eyes to find her undead servant, Danel, staring back at her across her humble abode. She sat up. A look round revealed the girl had not even started sweeping the floor or clearing away the rubble. What in the Spider’s name had she been doing all this time?

  Then Romany saw the bath against the far wall. Steam rose from a tub made of mottled gray metal—tarnica, she presumed, for what else could have survived the millennia? Clambering upright, she crossed for a closer inspection. The rim of the bath was engraved with an interwoven pattern of leaves, and the insides were discolored from what the priestess suspected had once been silver plating. She dipped a finger into the water. Not bad. A bit tepid perhaps, but she was feeling in a gracious mood today.

  “This water,” she said to Danel. “You did not take it from the poisoned river, I trust.”

  “No, from a well.”

  “Good. Excellent, in fact.” Through the front doorway, Romany could make out a fire with a battered pan suspended above it. “You even put the fire downwind, my dear. I commend your resourcefulness.” She gestured to the pan. “Is that ready?”

  Danel approached the fire and lifted the pot before returning to add the boiling water to the bath.

  Romany stripped off her clothes and stepped into the tub. That last pan had brought the temperature up to something nearing respectability, and she lay back with a contented sigh. The tub was a tight fit, alas. Obviously made for a child. As was often the case after Romany spirit-traveled, the muscles of her neck and shoulders were tight. “I shall require you to massage my shoulders,” she told Danel. Then her gaze settled on the ice-white skin of the girl’s fingers. “First, though, be so good as to warm your hands over the fire.”

  As Danel headed outside, Romany closed her eyes. How wonderful to have found a competent servant. Someone who was prepared to use her initiative and did not feel the need for unnecessary talk. If only Romany’s servants—acolytes, she corrected herself—at the temple could be as capable. True, the girl was a little reserved, but that would surely change once she came to appreciate Romany’s company.

  The priestess’s breathing slowed. A pity she had not brought some oils from Mercerie, but the Spider’s undignified haste had left no time for … well, anything actually. A distant tremor shook her web, and the Widowmaker’s image appeared in her mind’s eye. Shroud’s disciple was still more than twenty-five leagues from Estapharriol, giving Romany ample time in which to arrange an appropriate welcome. As to what form that welcome would take, though … There was no question of the priestess going toe-to-toe with the Widowmaker in a direct confrontation—not because she would lose the clash, of course, but because she could not afford to step into Shroud’s line of sight. But then what did that leave? There was always the tiktar to fall back on, but Romany was loath to play her most powerful game piece so early in the conflict.

  When she opened her eyes again, Danel was still crouching with her hands over the fire.

  Romany frowned. “The water is getting cold, my dear.”

  Danel straightened and walked toward her.

  Only then did the priestess notice that the girl’s hands were blistered and charred. The smell of cooked meat reached her, and her stomach flipped. “Spider’s mercy,” she breathed. “Why did you not move your hands?”

  “You didn’t tell me to,” Danel said. There was no suggestion of pain in the girl’s eyes. No suggestion of anything.

  “The Book doesn’t permit independent action?”

  “Your last command was to warm my hands above the fire.”

  Smoke curled from Danel’s fingers, and Romany looked away. “Will it heal? The power of the Book…”

  “No. Once resurrected, the subject’s body does not regenerate.” Danel appeared to hesitate.

  “But…” Romany prompted.

  “I’ve seen the master repair broken flesh before—one of his favorites. He can be … rough.”

  “Spare me the details. I will raise this with Mayot when we next meet. A crippled servant is of no use to me.” Romany settled back in the bath. “Talk to me, girl. Tell me, what was your calling?”

  “I was a herbalist.”

  “An earth-mage?”

  “No. The Vamilians had no such affinity with the land. We were a people of the sea.”

  Of course. Where else would a nation of seafarers dwell but a hundred leagues from the nearest water? “I have read much about your kinsmen,” Romany said, “though in truth few writings have survived from the Time of the Ancients. As you can imagine, speculation abounds as to what happened on the day your civilization perished.”

  “What would you have me tell you? How I watched a Fangalar sword disembowel my child? How it felt when the same blade clove through my heart?”

  Romany pursed her lips. The girl seemed determined to spoil her mood. “The scholar Isabeya claims your
people knew the Fangalar were coming, yet chose not to flee. Is he correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Truly? You did not believe, surely, that you could defeat the savages.”

  Danel’s hands dripped slime to the floor. “Our ancestors fled from the Fangalar once—boarded ships and scattered across the world. For a time we kept in touch with our kinsmen in other lands. Then one by one those kinsmen stopped replying to our messages.” The girl’s voice was so dispassionate she might have been reading from one of Abologog’s six Treatises on Reverence. “It took the Fangalar centuries to find us here, but find us they did. All that time we lived in the knowledge that one day we would be discovered. That was not a legacy we wanted to pass on to our children, or our children’s children.”

  “What was the cause of your people’s enmity with the Fangalar? The texts suggest you discovered a truth about them. Something they would not tolerate your knowing.”

  Danel nodded.

  Romany sat up with a splash. “What was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” the priestess repeated incredulously.

  “A decision was reached, long before I was born, that those who knew the secret would take it with them to their graves. It was hoped the hatred of the Fangalar would die with them.”

  “Were you not intrigued to find out?”

  “Why would I be? No explanation could suffice for what the Fangalar did to us.”

  Was that a hint of bitterness in Danel’s voice? Romany had thought the girl incapable of emotion. “I am curious, my dear. When I first came to this forest, I witnessed a host of spirits near the White Road. Your kinsmen?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they have haunted the forest all this time? Why? Why did you not pass through Shroud’s Gate?”

  “It was closed to us.”

  “Closed?” What an intriguing image.

  “At the time the Fangalar attacked, the gods were at war. Shroud had just taken his throne. The world of his predecessor was destroyed, a new one still being made.”