I clicked my tongue, thinking of a good answer. Exasperated, I finally said, “I don’t know.”
Given the predictability of my commander when her moral code is under assault, I anticipated her telling me we needed to find a new solution, that we couldn’t do this to Rovid.
Instead, she agreed. “Our options are limited,” she said. “If we must choose between saving a man’s life and saving his world, I believe our decision has already been made. We will bring the bodies to Scholl at midnight. Rovid and his family will be asleep, and—” Vayle paused. Her hand went to her hilt.
“I heard it too,” I said, unsheathing ebon. “Over there.” I aimed the summit of my sword toward a patch of blackness. Toward a rustling.
Had the moon not been strangled by the everlasting clouds, its milky light would have shone across a wide expanse of ash, revealing all. But only geysers of lava illuminated Fragment Eight when darkness fell, and the rumblings beneath the ground were calm for now.
“If anyone’s having a listen out there,” I said, “know you’ve two ebon blades pointed in your general direction, by two assassins who wield them well.”
A lone figure stumbled forward, cordially waving one hand.
“Um, hi,” she said.
“For fuck’s sake,” I said, stuffing my blade back inside its sheath. “Lysa, would it kill you to follow directions for once?”
Lysa Rabthorn ambled toward the small chunk of risen earth Vayle and I were standing upon. She climbed up, pulling a coat she procured from who knew where tight around her body.
“I don’t like being left out,” she said meagerly. “When I saw Vayle leave, I figured she was going out to meet you somewhere. So… I followed her.”
Vayle was trying to suppress a smile. “You’re quite the sneak, Miss Rabthorn. I did not notice you.”
“I stayed far behind,” she said. “It wasn’t very hard when it started getting dark.”
I sighed. “All right, fess up. What did you hear?”
“Everything. I think. At least the stuff about Rovid.”
“Listen,” I said, attempting to assuage the worries I knew were populating her mind, “like Vayle said, we have limited options. Forcing Rovid to break… it’s best for—”
“I know,” Lysa said. “I think I can help. When Ash and Seymour come into their new bodies, I can put them to sleep. So, you know, they won’t cause any trouble.”
“Since when are you a hypnotist?”
Lysa tried rubbing some warmth back into her hands. It’d gotten chilly since the sun had gone down. “It’s not hypnotism, it’s—”
“Conjuring, I know. Just didn’t know forced sleep was a thing.”
“I told you it could be done to subdue the conjurers, if they were hostile. Remember? Anyhow, it’s easy if the mind is stressed. I mean, theoretically. I’ve never actually tried it. But I have read about it.”
I traded glances with Vayle, who swallowed a smirk, then puked it back out again.
“Fine,” I said, “have at it. Better than stuffing rags in their mouths and tying them up. You came here on a boar, I assume?”
Lysa nodded.
“Then go back on that boar. You too, Vayle. I’ll meet you both outside the gates in two hours or so. If Rovid’s awake, persuade him to sleep, hmm? I don’t want to field questions about why I’m dragging two corpses inside the city.”
Vayle slid a thumb inside the waistband of her pants, loosening its bite against her flesh. “You will need to find a way to distract Rovid.”
“I got one in mind.”
The black sky rained ash outside the walls. A geyser had erupted close by, retching soot and spewing lava high into the air. I opened the door to the tiny cottage, gave myself a silent one-two-three count, then hollered, “Rovid!”
The reaper sat up alert in his bed of straw, hands waving around.
“Wha… what’s — Astul?” His breath came hard and heavy.
“We’ve got a problem,” I said. “Get out here now. You two” — I pointed at his wife and son, who shared what little space remained on the bed — “stay here.”
Rovid emerged from the cottage less than a minute later, dressed in some baggy trousers and an oversized shirt he’d apparently been given by the city folk.
“What’s happening? An attack?”
“Small one,” I said. “Think they’re trying to take the city with stealth. Caught an assassin by the cave. Ellie… well, she did some bad shit to him. We can’t let any scouts get back to Arken. If he knows the city’s under evacuation, he’ll chase the evacuees down.”
Rovid wiped his arm across his mouth. “Right, right. Okay. Got it. You, uh — you need me to do something?”
“Take this,” I said, giving him an ebon sword. “Post yourself up over there, near the edge of the palisade. See where it connects to the cliff?”
“By the cave?”
“Yes. Tuck yourself against the wood. Kill anyone who jumps over. That’s how the first one got in.”
The black blade in Rovid’s hand quivered. “My family, though, they—”
“I’m taking position in the center, here. No one will get your family. You’ve my word. Go!”
Rovid took a hard look at his sword, his lip curled under his teeth. Then he affirmed his loyalty with a brief nod. And he ran to his post, a sworn protector… he thought.
When he was about forty feet away, I gestured toward the shadows and opened the cottage door again.
Ash and Seymour were sitting up, their faces darkened by the night.
Vayle and Lysa filed in behind me, hauling a Preen inside. They set it on the floor, then brought in the second.
“What’s happening?” Ash asked.
I braced a hand against the bed, leaning toward them. “Injured. We’re bringing them in here. Don’t panic. It’ll be all right.”
Dry leather fit snug in my right hand: old, loose wrappings from the hilt of my dagger.
When the door to the cottage closed, my chest tightened. And I must’ve made a face, a discernible tell, because Ash peeled away. With the protective instincts of a mother, she grabbed her son by the shoulders.
Before she had the chance to scream, I slit her throat. She bled out as I pushed a hand against Seymour’s mouth, stifling his cries. A quick flick of my wrist, and the twin veins in his throat were severed too.
Ash lay limp against the wall, her head flung back on her shoulders. A red glaze still poured from her throat. Her son was slumped over, head almost in his knees.
“Astul,” Vayle called from behind. She shuffled out of the way of the Preen as one the corpses convulsed. Its fleshy hand jerked, and its fingers moved in different directions, like an alien soul trying to accommodate itself to its new host.
The other began moving as well, as the first opened its mouth and sucked in a powerful breath. Air rushed into its lungs, filling out its body. Its eyes opened, and they searched, swiveled… then targeted yours truly.
It lifted its head up, and a sour frown on its lips turned to scorn. Then its head fell again, clonking off the wooden floor.
“She’s sleeping,” Lysa said, holding her stomach. A few moments later, Seymour, who now inhabited a Preen with broad shoulders and a chiseled jaw, fell into a stupor as well.
“Get on the phoenix,” I told Lysa. Then to Vayle, “Help me with these.”
Vayle and I hauled Ash and Seymour’s new bodies to an adjacent cottage.
“That ended well,” Vayle said. “All things considered.”
“The ending hasn’t come just yet,” I warned her. “All right, I’m outta here. Make me proud, Momma.”
“Do not call me Momma.”
I shrugged. “I heard someone say that once. I liked it… Momma.” I gave her a wink, then a gentle slap on the chest. “See you on the other side, Commander. Or in about twenty minutes, hopefully.”
Ducking out of the cottage, I ran to the palisade gate, threw it open and jumped on the phoenix. Lysa was already
aboard.
We took to the air with a whoosh of flaming wings. A shriek, loud as any I’d ever heard from the mouth of my commander, chased us.
“Astul! Astul!”
Hearing that baying, although entirely expected, made my teeth chatter and stabbed itself into my spine in the form of a bitterly cold chill.
I looked back, Scholl two hundred feet away, and could make out a man in hot pursuit of the cry. As he vanished, presumably inside the cottage, I aimed the phoenix behind the cliff, eventually landing her at the mouth of a cavern.
Lysa and I dismounted.
“I hope this works,” she said.
“If it doesn’t… well, then this is the end, Lysa.” I snorted. “Doesn’t get grimmer than that, yeah?”
Her face fell into a dour depression. “Like I said. I hope this works.” She lifted her chin at the cavern. “Why’d you land here?”
“Checking up on an old friend,” I said. I began toward the cavern mouth.
“Who? Astul!” she said, at my heels. “Who?”
“What are you, an owl? I’m surprised you’ve never asked where Ripheneal was enjoying his stay, exactly.”
She scooted past me. “Here?”
“That’s the same reaction Vayle had. And Ellie. That tells me this is the perfect place, if lacking hospitality.”
I waded inside the oppressive darkness as if it were muddy water.
“How you holdin’ up?” I said, in the general direction of sour red eyes.
“Alive,” Ripheneal croaked.
“Good. We’ve got about eight or nine days of waiting ahead of us.”
A frail hand cut through the blackness. “And… th — the… tear?”
I sat next to the decrepit god on a lump of rock. “I’m working on it. Everything should be going according to plan. I was hoping you might have more information for me.”
There was a dry cough. Then, “No.”
Lysa had a seat beside me, legs folded under her. She lifted her brows upon seeing the annoyance on my face.
“Look,” I said. Ripheneal quickly interrupted me.
“Do… you… trust me?”
I jumped up, anger trotting me across the room. “Fuck’s sake. We’ve already been over this.”
“Then… why are… you” — he coughed — “asking me… again?”
I pressed two fingers into my eyes and had a calming internal discussion with myself. Then I crouched before Ripheneal.
“Tell me what happens if you die. If this goes to shit. If Arken somehow gets ahold of you in the living realm. I need to know.”
His eyes rolled back. Or at least they seemed to, as a muddy cloud drifted over his lenses. Then a spark of fire returned, dulling to the color of dying embers.
“You,” he said, “wish… to kill me.”
A quick run-through of my available responses gave me nothing much to play with, especially when I heard the tapping of his nail against the leather binding of a book.
“The book,” he said, “reveals… all.”
“Except what happens when its creator dies.”
There, a smile. Faint as a setting sun in a storm, fleeting as a fox, but it was there, on those cracked lips of his.
“I don’t bloody know, for the second time,” I snapped.
“I’m not asking you!” Lysa said. “I was asking myself. Goodness.”
The question had no answer, unless you’re apt at solving godly riddles. But I couldn’t fault Lysa for asking it. It’d been on my mind since I’d stormed out of the cave, too. What did Ripheneal’s smile mean?
A short while later, a snorting boar trotted toward us. It sneezed, then grumbled as my commander pulled back its reins, idling it before Lysa and me.
“Rovid broke,” Vayle said simply. She scratched her cheek, then added, “I do not wish to see a reaper break again.”
“Do we have ourselves a tear?” I asked.
“Yes. We also have ourselves a problem.”
Lysa and I exchanged glances.
“I informed Ellie that the remaining inhabitants were to leave immediately,” Vayle said.
That didn’t sound like a problem to me. Sounded par for the course. Ellie had initiated the evacuation of her city based on the likeliness of its populace to leave without argument. Those who were more passive and accepting of her decision were to be among the first wave of evacuees. The second half consisted of the more stubborn types, the ones who’d rather keep their homes and their pride… till war came knocking on their doors. With the chaos born from our plan to make Rovid break, the remaining inhabitants would be convinced it was time to leave.
Ah, now I saw the problem. “Let me guess,” I said. “A few folks refused to haul ass outta there, yeah?”
“No,” Vayle said. “Ellie asked me if we had resolved the goddess-of-war problem.”
“I assume you told her yes?”
Vayle blinked hard, her eyelids closed for several moments. “We made a grave mistake, Astul.”
Chapter 30
Success depends so often on a catalyst. One spark that ignites the flame. Once you have it, then your worries are supposed to float away like pollen on the cusp of summer. Patrick Verdan and his mighty North was the catalyst to decimating the conjurers. Lysa’s research into turning the reaped back into sentient beings was the catalyst to ending Occrum’s bid for godship.
Breaking Rovid and having a tear in my possession was the catalyst to defeating Arken.
Nothing can stop you once you have the catalyst. That’s the idea, anyhow. But it seemed I had overlooked the power of a certain goddess.
Vayle left the explanation to Ellie, who met us at the palisade gates when we returned to Scholl. She hurried us through the crowd of boys and girls and men and women, the ones who were awaiting the return of the Warden to escort them to safety.
We went deep into the dwelling of her cave, where she spun around and slammed a finger into my chest.
“You told me you had dealt with Lyria!”
“And I have,” I said. “She’s marching headlong into a trap. She might command the forces of the East, but she’s got the North, West and South allied against her, in secrecy. She has no chance of victory.”
Ellie put a hand to her mouth. “You don’t understand,” she said, her voice muffled.
“Then help me understand, will you?”
“The goddess of war is not a mere general. You… oh, gods.” She shook her head, muttered a few silent words. “The rebellion kept a keen eye on her doings in Amortis. Our intention was to track her movements, predict her next destination, then isolate her and surround her with a sizable force. We could not march on Fragment Zero with her in existence. If she commands an army… Astul, she is the goddess of war for a reason.”
I make it a point to limit my emotions until I’ve ascertained every morsel of information possible. That probably explains my impatience when people like Ellie give me small pieces of the puzzle at a time.
“Then tell me the reason,” I said.
Ellie’s head swung frantically from one side to the other. She seemed to be searching the room. She scuttled over to the wall, got on her hands and knees, then came up with two brittle rocks, one in each hand.
“This is Lyria,” she said, holding one rock up. “And this,” she added, breaking a piece off the rock and holding it against the other, “is what she does to her soldiers.”
In a room that had some of the greatest minds I’d ever had the pleasure of probing — mine included — no one knew what the bloody fuck Ellie was talking about.
I hazarded a guess that Lyria attached sheets of rock to their armor.
“No!” Ellie said. “She infuses herself in each of her soldiers. Imagine a rock” — she lifted the aforementioned object high into the air — “breaking off a piece of itself to fortify another rock.”
God-awful analogies aside, I understood. I finally had the answer to my question from many moons ago: why had the Red Sentinels at Lyria’s
side been so bloody hard to kill? It was as if each man had the strength of three.
“You have poor timing, Ellie,” I said. “It’d have been nice to know this a while ago.”
“I assumed you knew. You had knowledge of gods I’d never heard of.”
Lysa stepped forward. “Okay, so this isn’t all bad. I don’t think. She has to lose part of herself doing this, right? She has to weaken.”
“Greatly,” Ellie said.
“There’s the first piece of optimistic news,” Lysa said. “And she can’t affect that many soldiers, can she? I mean, there’s only so much of her to go around.”
I did not enjoy the ensuing silence that lingered for longer than silence ever should in moments like these.
Ellie ran a hand through her bobbed hair. “There was a rebellion once. Not associated with the great rebellion, or this one. It was isolated in Fragment Two. It was our first introduction to Lyria. She marched there with thousands. Reports say one of her men could take twelve arrows. One man could put down six rebels at a time.
“But there were a few brave souls who sneaked behind the front lines. They put themselves face-to-face with Lyria. She was on the ground, balled up. Barely alive. They could have ended her right there. But wouldn’t you know it… Arken stood at her side.”
“An impressive strength,” Vayle said.
“With an equally glaring weakness,” I added.
Ellie stuck her hands on her hips. “It’s only a weakness if you know about it.”
“Which explains why she’s never waged war on your little city here. Arken wouldn’t want his precious goddess to be referred to in the past tense because the Mother of Conjurers obliterated her. Would he?”
The cocking of Lysa’s head flashed in the corner of my eye. I hadn’t told her about Mommy Conjurer.
“Your world is unaware of her power,” Ellie said. “If she surprises them…”
“They’re dead,” I said, finishing her glum thought.
A couple clearings of throats followed. Then some shuffling feet. Plenty of hands stroking chins. Quite a few tongues clicking.
I decided to say what everyone else was thinking. “Fuck.” And then, “I have to leave. If Jesson Tath and Patrick Verdan are close to Vereumene — and they’d better be — they need to launch an attack on the rear forces Lyria will be bringing up. We need to surprise her, or this whole plan is fucked.”
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