Solineus

by L. James Rice

  Cry why fly sky deny sigh vie why Cry?

  Nigh, Naive.

  Tears fall because there’s only one direction to go.

  — Tomes of the Touched

  They stared at the cliffs for three and a half days before the horses arrived, and when they swung into the saddle and heeled toward Shînvedorn they were as ignorant of why Seblêsu stopped at the cliffs as they were the flicker they read him the history.

  Solineus stretched his legs, rising in the stirrups. “Maybe they knew they were being followed and stopped here just to twist our heads around.”

  The Kingdomers laughed but to a one they knew there was something there. Something in those words hidden. But finding it left them grasping for codes or cryptic imagery, Black Finger and Crooked Shadow.

  They pushed the horse hard that first day as they were well-rested, but eased off as their journey wound into a high pass between Mount Gerfôld and Mount Hermin, two lopsided peaks which seemed to lean away from each other, as two friends parting, or two foes turning their backs to the other.

  The air grew chill the day they crossed these heights and the wind howled, but they descended into a green valley after. They made camp around village wells and in the mouths of mines as they could, but they no longer traveled mountains held by the Helmveline. They sheltered with the people of Kingdom Tûrûrôt and spoke not a whisper of their mission, nor asked after the party of black robes they tracked.

  Still they caught word; a band of holy folks a hundred strong brought a waggle to tongues in the same way their passing would be spoken of once they were gone. The words of both Tanzarêu and the townsfolk put Seblêsu’s lead at two days by the time they reached the village of Ekwumor. It’d been three weeks of winding travel to gain two days, which meant Seblêsu and her people might be riding through the gates of Shînvedorn even as they spread their bedrolls for the night.

  Tanzarêu held the coin facing west that evening, and again in the morning. There was no surprise in her tone. “The Waystone hasn’t moved since yesterday afternoon.”

  The next night they camped inside the dark maw of a natural cavern high enough to bring a deep chill to his bones. When gaps formed in the clouds Morik pointed to a walled city sitting in a distant valley, a score of round towers rising from low walls: Shînvedorn.

  Tanzarêu spoke with a smile this time. “The Waystone hasn’t moved.”

  They celebrated their arrival in Shînvedorn with a hot dinner at an inn with a giant tavern in its belly. Their meal was four courses of meats, each spicier than the last, and topped by heavy, dark ale. Morik paid for all their rooms before the three of them stepped from the tavern and into the street.

  Solineus gawked; he couldn’t help himself. Tanzarêu wore a dress, simple but clean, and had somehow managed a comb through the knots on her head. She wouldn’t pass for a noble, but for a time she didn’t pass for a tree.

  She caught his lingering gaze. “What do you think you’re staring at?”

  “Funniest looking tree I ever did see.”

  Her cackle was the same as ever. “Come, let’s see what we can find.” She patted the pouch holding the coin around her neck. Or rather, the Stone of Emf-hul, if the lady were right.

  Solineus rested his hands on the hilts of the Twins to the murmur of whispers; along with burying their griffon-cloaks in the bottom of their packs, Morik had made him wrap the hilts of the Twins in leather to make their value less obvious, less gossip worthy, but the Twins didn’t seem to mind if ever they noticed.

  Shînvedorn wasn’t a gargantuan city, but neither was it short of people and winding streets. The wealth arose from being the hub of a mining wheel, with spokes coming from a dozen or more mines in the region. Gold, silver, precious gems, and some infused-ores like Ikoruv, though veins of these precious commodities were scattered and scarce. Tanzarêu led them down Smelter’s Way then crossed onto Hammer Street, where bellows pumped and hammers rang.

  Morik bore a shit-eating grin. “You could find yourself a fine shield here.”

  Solineus grinned back. “You paying for it?”

  “Pain in the coin purse friend, thinking that’s worse than a pain in the ass.”

  “You boys hush, I’m trying to focus.”

  Solineus gave her a stare. “You can shake the dust from the bush, but you can’t take its thorns.”

  “I’ll show you thorns in a flicker, barbarian. Now hush.” But the woman smiled as she sauntered to a pole hung with horseshoes and other iron goods. Her hands on the pouch meant she wasn’t shopping. She nodded south and led them onward.

  “How far is it? A guess?”

  “Can’t say. Cities like this are spotted with Waystones, it complicates things. In the wilderness it’s a beacon, here it’s merely the brightest star in a crowded sky.”

  But it hadn’t moved in days, leastwise not enough the Huntress noticed. She wandered from Hammer Street into Armorers Row, then took a turn down an alley while holding the pouch. When next they came to a street, it was broad, crowded, and running across the front of the gates leading to the cities great keep.

  “What is it you barbarian squatters say? Shits?”

  Morik sighed. “She’s in the Keep of Shînvedorn?”

  “The stone is, and I doubt she’s far away. Which all means she’s friends we’d prefer not anger.”

  Solineus leaned against an empty wagon and stared. The gate was wide open but guarded by four men with halberds. “We go in, or wait for the coin to come out?”

  The woman cackled. “Your barbarian is bold. We wait. These bones got no desire to find themselves flayed for breaking into some lord’s tower.”

  Solineus snorted. “Time to rest won’t hurt none of us… This city have pigeons?”

  Morik said, “Indeed. We should get word back to the Ironwing… and your daughter.”

  Tanzarêu let the pouch fall against her breast as she turned and led them east. “I know the pigeon-master her, a fine old gal, we can send your messages before settling in for the night.”

  The next morning Solineus found Tanzarêu in the tavern at the break of dawn, and as he sat, she whispered with a wink and nod. “The stone hasn’t moved.”

  He smiled at this excellent news. For a week straight he smiled at these words every morning and night. After ten days, his smile waned, and after a month she didn’t bother to update him every day. Worse, Morik grew cranky as his pouch emptied feeding and housing so many men.

  On the bright side they’d spent enough time in one place to receive word from Kinesee:

  To my Father,

  Alu married! And she has yet to slay her groom, that’s the biggest news so far as I am concerned. I think I almost died when teasing her about having babies. A subject I don’t recommend the unarmed broaching for some time.

  The foundation to the new wall and its towers are in the ground. Helmveline workers arrived not long after my last letter, claiming they owed you a debt, and went to work with an uncanny speed with stone-saws and chisels, logs for rolling and clever contraptions for raising blocks high. I never understood the sweat nor know how needed to build such things, and I spend much time watching them work.

  Of late I spend hours with the pigeon-master who arrived from Molikîn and already she has eggs resting in a nest in the cliffs by where Castle Choerkin will stand. She is young and tolerates me as I hide from my learning.

  Today I write in my own hand, but the odious Ravinrin boy persists in correcting my spelling. If I have erred in any words, please punch him in the nose on your return.

  Kinesee

  Most of the pigeons sent were for more serious matters, including the Ironwing sending Morik a voucher for gold. Solineus wasn’t certain how such a thing worked, but the Kingdomer was able to exchange the note for three bricks of bullion, which the local repository changed out for coins struck by a Tûrûrôt mint. With this, food and shelter were no longer a worry, growing complacent and fat were.

  Solineus strolled the street
s of Shînvedorn every day, passing the gates to the keeps several times morning, noon, and sundown hoping to get lucky, to see Seblêsu leaving the gates. He determined that he’d used up his luck by staying alive.

  Sixty-three days after arriving, Solineus sat in front of a crackling fire, legs stretched, chin tucked, and damned close to a happy snore when Tanzarêu shook his chair so hard he clutched its sides to keep from sprawling to the floor.

  She spoke under her breath, but her tone was fury. “The stone. It’s gone.”

  “What the shits are you talking about? Where to?”

  “Gone, not moved. If they’ve taken it, I have no idea where to.”

  Solineus’ heart raced, but what she said wasn’t true. “The Sundial.”

  Within a candle the twenty-five rode from Shînvedorn to follow a winding easterly trail, until it hooked south the second day. On the third morning they reached the edge of the Foundations, or at least he witnessed his first view not encompassed by mountains since following Morik to Shuntiskâ.

  The mountains fell steep into a thick woodland, and from these heights he could make out sweeping plains further to the south. From his vantage, the lands seemed so flat it didn’t belong to his world, with its river sweeping back and forth across the land like some giant snake. All he’d known in his remembered days were mountains and rolling hills.

  Tanzarêu turned them west from here and his view returned to peaks as they descended into a deep valley by way of a steep, rocky trail where flat patches were covered with pinecones and fist-sized nuts. She clucked and they all dismounted, walking their horses and clearing the trail.

  Solineus kicked a large nut; it hurt his toe, convincing him they might crack a skull when falling from the trees. “If they took this route, it seems odd they didn’t clear the way.”

  Tanzarêu snorted. “Thought the same myself. They aren’t here. We were wrong. Which saves us needing sneak.”

  Solineus’ lips pinched. “You best be shittin’ me.”

  “No, we’re here. They aren’t.”

  In thirty strides they reached bottom, and a short walk later the trees cleared. A stretch of the mountain’s mockingbird-gray slate lay bare to winds and water, a hundred strides long and just as wide in places. A carved divot, a perfect circle with straight edges, stood in the middle of the clearing, and in its center stood what he might’ve called a stalagmite if he were in a cave. Black and polished to a shine, hints of purple glow suggested it was translucent enough for some light to pass through. It cast a long shadow across the ground, landing on a symbol he didn’t understand.

  There was nothing crooked about the shadow, and the woman had been correct: No one was here.

  He strode to the center of the dial, stepping down two steps and stared as Kingdomers fanned across the clearing. “Obsidian, similar to Hîmr’s Shrine atop the mountain. We’ve got a big black finger and nothing else.”

  Morik said, “Maybe we’ve the wrong place?”

  Tanzarêu grunted. “Maybe we been thinking wrong all along.”

  Solineus glanced to the sky. “The cliffs mentioned the high sun; we aren’t there yet.”

  Morik stepped in the shadow the stone cast. “This thing casts a shadow straight as an arrow. What’d make the shadow crooked?”

  “A heat mirage?”

  “Mayhap, mayhap.” Tanzarêu wandered the circle’s symbols. “The carves name the phases of the day; dawn, mid-morn… Nothing unusual.”

  Solineus leaned against the obsidian, wondering if the Touched hadn’t a hand in writing the words on the cliffs. Reckon they weren’t cryptic enough. And he almost laughed aloud, but the humor stuck in his throat. “We’re standing in a dry pool. Way this slopes, a rain would fill… The reflection, the rippled shadow, could that be called crooked?”

  A flitter of leaves and he froze, uncertain; then Tanzarêu screamed.

  Solineus’ head whipped to see the woman spin, feathered fletching sprouting from her right shoulder as she collapsed in a heap. The Twins flashed in his hands as he guessed the trajectory; the brother hissed, and he flicked his wrist at the glint of a quarrel heading for his neck. Slap-tink and clatter the bolt hit the ground. This time Helmveline eyes plied the woods, and the twangs a dozen crossbows sent razor-heads whistling into the trees. A man fled, scrambling up the hill.

  He turned to Tanzarêu, profuse blood as her head rested in Morik’s hands, and the Kingdomer bellowed in Silone: “Kill that son of a whore!”

  He stared at Tanzareu’s eyes a flicker; the wound wasn’t a kill shot, least not a quick one, but the force of the head if it caught her bone… He spun with a roar, feet sliding as he pushed into a dead sprint, passing the Helmveliners in their heavier gear. He leaped sideways between two trees where he thought he’d seen one man, the Twins high; two bolts stuck from this assassin’s chest, his breaths ragged and life fleeting. He cocked an ear, blinking fast as he heard feet scrambling up leaves and rocks. He turned and loped east, eyes scanning every tree and gulley and rock in case there was a third waiting for him. A hundred strides later he spotted the killer; a man in twig covered gear scaled a sheer cliff, snagging vines, branches, and cracks to make his escape.

  Solineus sheathed the Twins and grabbed a crevice to climb, but after three steps of height pushed back from the wall, dropping to his knee as he lit and picking up a large nut. He tested its heft with a toss in the air and slung it at the man’s head. It hit the man’s thigh, making him grunt, and slowing him.

  This made him smile.

  He picked up two more nuts, clacking them together. “This is going to hurt like a kick to a hungover gut, my friend.” He wound up and heaved this time, hard enough to threaten a pain in his own shoulder, but it was nothing compared to what the bastard must’ve felt. It struck the assassin center of mass between his shoulder blades, eliciting a grunt, and the man dangled by a single hand before regaining a grip.

  Three Helmveliner crossbowmen pulled up by his side, cranking their windlasses.

  “Seems I got one more chance before they put holes in your hide.” He tested the weight and hurled the nut; the hollow crack was one of the most satisfying sounds of Solineus’ remembered life as blood spattered on impact with the man’s skull. He thudded to the cliff floor about the same time as the nut and rolled to the base of a tree, out cold or dead. “If he lives, bring him back to the clearing.”

  Solineus jogged back down the hill, zigging through trees and hopping branches until he came to Morik’s side as he plied pressure, doing his damnedest to staunch the flow. He kneeled with eyes locked on Tanzarêu. Blood covered the stone, and her body shook.

  “Her shoulder’s shattered. A healer might save her…”

  “Do what you can.” But he’d seen wounds enough to know it wouldn’t be enough. He glanced back to the trees as Helmveliners strode into the clearing without the assassin. It would’ve been damned handy to have a living soul to question, but at the same time he was happy the bastard died, and he’d been the one to take his life. He turned his eyes to Tanzarêu, bowed his head and waited for her ragged breaths to slow and fade, to slip into peace. He hadn’t known her long, but he liked her more than most.

  A good woman.

  A good soul.

  But a voice in the back of his head voiced reality: She wouldn’t be the last he cared for to pass from his life. And he struggled to bury this voice before forced to bury his friend.

  They built a cairn of rocks in the trees, a natural place for the Huntress to spend her eternity, but they left the killers to rot or feed whatever wild animals found them. After, they retired to the clearing, Helmveliners standing guard as Solineus carved Tanzareu’s name into a stone as broad as Morik’s chest. He felt it the least he could do.

  Morik paced. “No way we find them bastards now… we should’ve had the old man read the Freedom Carves.”

  Solineus shook his head as the Twin screeched, its tip biting rock. “I reckon she was right, the carves meant shit. We’ve got a
problem to solve, and we need another Wayfinder to solve it.”

  “We’re in Tûrûrôt, and it damned well looks like the whore has friends at the keep. We’d be two-times lucky to find a Wayfinder who wouldn’t sell us out. They made sure to kill her, not one of us, for a reason.”

  Solineus grimaced as the Sister made a painful noise. “Then we godsdamned figure it out ourselves. This site means something.”

  “It means shit, they set us up.”

  “Nope! I ain’t buyin’ it. This place means something. That long dead warlord who sought the stone came here in the first place… why?”

  Morik spat and sat. “No one’s gonna be able to read her name in Silone, not even me.”

  Solineus grimaced. “Then you’ll just have to show me how to write it right. Why’d the warlord come here?”

  “Because the sundial pointed the bastard’s way.”

  “But how’d they know that? We agree all this points to Hîmr’s prison—”

  “Tomb.”

  “Hîmr’s tomb.” Solineus glanced at the black finger of the sundial.

  “But there isn’t no crooked shadow, lest you want us all to piss and fill the pool, see what happens—”

  “Hush a godsdamned flicker.” Solineus stopped the Sister in mid-screech. “Hîmr… what gods did Hîmr find to fight by his side as he fled?”

  “What the hells that got to do with shit?”

  “Your swearing is getting good, my learning you Silone is paying off. But humor me.”

  Morik chortled. “Godsdamned whoreson… You’re right, I’m getting the knack for your tongue! Them gods were Korhânun and Sanzumôk. Both died with him.”

  “Or maybe imprisoned. All your gods have nicknames… Stabber, stabbed, impaler?”

  Morik laughed. “Korhânun the Impaled Pool.”

  “Thrown down a spear of stone jutting from a pool of water.” Solineus pointed the Sister’s blade at the sundial, his heart beating fast.

  Morik grunted and turned, but whatever he was about to say stayed silent in his drooping mouth. He smacked his lips. “Unholy shits. You’re saying—”