by Tad Williams
Isgrimnur spurred his mount between the furious Rimmersman and Ayaminu. An argument with their one source of knowledge was a bad idea, and the Sitha-woman had seldom offered this much help before. “Please, explain,” Isgrimnur said to her. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. You have force. You have implements of war and siegecraft like your great battering ram. The wall is weak there, and the rituals that would have made it all but impervious have not been performed. The tower itself was damaged by the shaking earth and the wall was badly weakened.” She looked up the pass to the spiky shape of Three Ravens Tower. “You will lose men. The Hikeda’ya will fight fiercely. But if you wish to pass the walls of their lands, this is the place it can be done.”
“And why should we trust you?” Brindur snarled. “You have not seen fit to offer such useful advice before. Why now? And why could you not have told us that another Norn army was coming down upon us at the ruins?”
Ayaminu only looked at him blandly. “I knew nothing of that army. The Hikeda’ya are aware of my presence, I promise you, Northman. They take pains to keep their plans hidden.”
Isgrimnur was not to be distracted from the matter at hand. “But are you certain now? Could they be keeping something else from you?”
“Of course. But what I tell you is true—you could ride along this wall until the season changed and not find a more vulnerable spot.”
“You see my dilemma, don’t you?” Isgrimnur frowned. “I have the safety of several thousand men in my hands. Can you promise me success?”
Now the Sitha showed emotion for the first time, a faint twisting of the lips. “I can promise you nothing, Duke Isgrimnur. Many men will die. So will many Hikeda’ya. Any one of us may suffer that fate at any time, and a battle between desperate enemies will not make the chances less. But if you wish to pass the wall and enter the lands around Nakkiga—if you truly mean to take the city itself—then you can find no better spot. That is all I have to say. The decision is yours.”
“Look, we have reached the camp. Endri, did you hear me? We are here.” The younger soldier had not been badly hurt during the Norns’ escape, but like Porto himself he had been overwhelmed with a terrible, pressing weariness afterward and had spent most of his time on the back of Porto’s horse sliding in and out of troubled sleep. “Endri?”
“Can we stop now?”
“Yes, that’s what I said. See, the fires are lit—in fact, I smell food cooking.” The sun, unnaturally late in the sky this far north, had only just disappeared, although midnight was surely not far away. The camps, set up well out of range of even the strongest bowshot from the looming walls, nestled in the shelter of the thick, snow-mantled pines on either side of the steep canyon. As Porto reined up he took a brief look at the beaked tower, which squatted against the purple-blue sky like some horrid heathen idol from the primeval days before the Ransomer was sent to Mankind. “Come on, lad,” he told his companion, deliberately turning his back on the tower. “We don’t want to miss whatever supper is left—I am famished.” For the last stretch of the climb Porto had been forced to watch the tower loom larger with each moment, and despite his words to Endri, he found that the thing he wanted just now more than food or even drink was to find a spot where he could not see the tower at all until night finally hid it from view completely. It seemed to be watching them. He could almost imagine that their puniness, their mortal insignificance, actually amused it.
When they had found a fire, and were scooping the last congealing bits of stew out of the cooking pot, Endri suddenly looked up. “Porto?”
“What, lad?”
“I can’t remember the way home.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t remember the roads we took, or how we got here. I couldn’t find my way back again. Don’t leave me.”
Porto looked at the other men around the fire, mercenaries from Nabban and Perdruin and a scrawny, hard-muscled veteran of Josua’s Erkynlandish army, wondering what they would make of the young man’s neediness. Not one of them even looked up from their bowls. “What do you mean?” Porto asked him quietly. “I’m not going to leave you, lad. I promise.”
“I can’t even remember the road to my own house. You remember it, don’t you? You’ve been to Harborside. I know you have.”
Porto shook his head. “Been there? I’ve been trying to rid myself of that memory for years,” he said, hoping to jolly the younger man out of his mood. “You should thank the saints to have lost it. Dreadful place. Not a patch on the Rocks.”
“No jokes, Porto.” Endri was staring intently at him now, his eyes showing a touch of panicked white around the edges, made all the more eerie by the flickering firelight. “I don’t want jokes. Promise me that when it’s over you will show me the way home.”
“We will go together.” Porto did his best to keep his voice light, though he was almost as beaten down by these dark, frightening lands as Endri. He sometimes thought that if he did not have the boy to watch over he might already have deserted to head back south, risking wolves and wild giants and all the other dangers. “We’ll all go home then—you, me, these fellows here, and old Duke Isgrimnur leading the way. People will line up along the roads to cheer us—‘The men who finally defeated the Norns!’ they’ll shout. And you won’t need anyone to show you the way because your people, my people—my wife and son—they’ll all be waiting to welcome us home.”
Endri stared at him for a long moment without saying anything, his face still wild. Around his neck was his red and white Harborside scarf, grimy now with mud and matted with pine needles. The young soldier reached up and touched it and his expression softened, his eyes blinked. “Of course,” he said. “Of course. Thank you. You are a good friend.”
“If I am a good friend, then why are you letting the wineskin sit by your knee while I die of thirst? Pass it here.”
Endri handed it over, and Porto took a long draught. It was sour and tasted strongly of oak, from one of the last and smallest of the barrels the army had carted north from the Yistrian Brothers’ vineyards, but at the moment it was all he wanted. It tasted like salvation. It tasted like home.
A feeling of something close to security had stolen over Viyeki since he and the rest of the Hikeda’ya had reached Three Ravens Tower. He knew it was foolish—in truth, the danger grew greater by the moment, not just to themselves but to their entire race. If some miracle beyond foresight did not occur, the mortal army outside would follow them to Nakkiga if it could, take their race’s last city, and destroy Viyeki’s people, murdering every last man, woman, and child as though they were vermin. But even with the knowledge of the horrors that were surely to come, he felt better than he had since the terrible moment when the Storm King had been defeated and the great tower had fallen in Erkynland, crashing down in smoke and dust and the last flickers of magical flames, taking with it all the People’s hope of making the land theirs once again.
In fact, at this instant Viyeki felt almost ordinary, as though the last horrible months had not happened. It was largely the sturdy stone of Three Ravens Tower that reassured him, the way it wrapped around them like the protective mantle of the mountain Ur-Nakkiga itself. The ruins of Tangleroot had never felt like more than a broken place, suitable only for a desperate, doomed resistance to the inevitable. Resistance here was no less doomed, Viyeki knew, but unlike Tangleroot Castle, this tower still had a roof. Just sheltering in the starless dark beneath it reminded him of his mountain home. It had been a long time since the Hikeda’ya had felt safe beneath open sky.
But there was another factor of reassurance, one that he was only beginning to understand, and she stood before him now, conversing with his master Yaarike. General Suno’ku still wore her battle-stained armor, but despite the fierce fighting she had sustained only a small cut on her neck; the line of dried blood made a wandering stripe down her throat and disappeared into he
r breastplate like a road on an antique map. Her pale eyes showed no trace of the exhausting week passed, the numerous skirmishes fought with Northmen scouts as she led the survivors to Three Ravens Tower. Viyeki had a beautiful, clever wife back in Nakkiga, but he had never felt anything quite like the fascination that Suno’ku evoked in him. Just listening to her firm, quiet voice he felt as though half their problems were already solved. Viyeki’s master, however, seemed less convinced.
“But we still have most of my Builders,” Yaarike told the general. “It is true we cannot perform the spells of Binding—not with the strongest of our Singers in such condition.” He gestured to Host-Singer Tzayin-Kha, who lay senseless on a makeshift pallet a short distance away, tended by two of her acolytes. Her pale skin had darkened into bruised shadows around her eyes, temples, and throat, and her every ragged breath sounded like it came with terrible effort. “But what Tzayin-Kha and her order cannot do by songs of Binding, mine can do by skill and application.”
“No. It is pointless trying to defend this place for long,” said Suno’ku. “We must return to Nakkiga as quickly as we can.”
“Nakkiga?” Yaarike allowed himself a tone of measured irritation. “You said there were no Sacrifices or other fighters left in Nakkiga, General. That means our only choice is to hold this part of the wall until the mortals give up and go home. A few months at most. The winter will drive them out, even with the Storm King banished to the lands beyond the veil of death.”
Viyeki wondered how they would feed themselves. The fields between the Wall and the mountain were empty, burned by years of frost and neglect. Some of their people had not eaten in weeks. But he said nothing aloud.
“The problem remains,” Yaarike continued. “You command the last of our warriors, General. There is no defense for the innocents in Nakkiga if we fail or falter.”
“I said there were no fighters in Nakkiga when I left, High Magister,” Suno’ku said. “But they were trickling back. The survivors were scattered widely after the Storm King failed and are returning by many routes, some very long and arduous. I myself took three hundred Sacrifices and members of other orders out of Erkynland and back through the coastal hills of Hernystir, fighting angry mortals all the way. Others are doing the same.” She smiled, but it was no more than a slash in her pale skin, a bloodless wound. “No, we must return to Nakkiga. Word of our defeat in the south has given the human creatures courage. These Rimmersmen may be the first to come against us, but they will not be the last.” She made a gesture of negation. “Now, attend me closely. If we try to hold this wall, we will fail. But at the same time, we must hold it, at least for a little while.”
Viyeki did not understand her. Neither did his master, it seemed; the magister narrowed his eyes but spread his fingers in the sign that meant, “I am listening.”
“We must hold this wall long enough for most of those with us now to return to Nakkiga,” she said. “Nakkiga is where we must make our stand, with whatever forces and weapons we can assemble. Even though the queen slumbers in the grip of the keta-yi’indra and cannot defend us, you know as well as I that we have not entirely exhausted our resources. There are things in the lower levels—dreadful things . . .”
Yaarike cut her short with another gesture. “How can we accomplish it, General Suno’ku? I admire your Order of Sacrifice, but this tower is meant to be held by a garrison of a hundred, at least. In time of desperation we might halve that—it is said that the great Ruzayo held Midwinter Sun Tower and the wall against an army of giants with but two dozen Sacrifices—but with all due respect, none of us here are Ruzayo Falcon’s-Eye, nor even the mettle of his Twenty-Four.”
“I will task each Sacrifice I leave behind with remaining alive until they have taken the lives of at least ten mortals,” the general said. “With the help of a dozen or more of your Builders, I think this tower can be held until the rest—”
A strange, croaking sound interrupted her. Suno’ku turned, as did Viyeki and his master Yaarike. Tzayin-Kha, the Host-Singer who had given her all to make the fires speak at Tangleroot Castle, was now struggling to sit up.
“Mistress, no!” cried one of the Singers who had been tending her. He bent to help Tzayin-Kha lie back again, but the Host Singer grasped his arm and flung him away with such astounding force that he spun halfway across the tower chamber, hit the wall with a terrible, muffled crack, then lay still.
Tzayin-Kha slowly rose, clumsy, tottering, her limbs as stiff as alder branches, but it was her face that drew Viyeki’s startled attention: her eyes had rolled up until only a crescent moon of white showed in each, and her jaw was working up and down soundlessly, chewing at the empty air.
“I will bring help!” shouted the other Singer. “She is having a fit.”
“You . . . will . . . do . . . nothing,” were the words that came from Tzayin-Kha’s gnashing mouth, each syllable thick and misshapen. Viyeki recognized that grating, deep voice. It did not belong to the dying Host Singer at all, but to someone far more frightening.
Suno’ku drew her great sword, Cold Root, and leveled it at the thing’s breast. The blind, upturned eyes could not possibly see the gray blade, but Tzayin-Kha’s slack lips suddenly curled in a smile that made Viyeki feel ill.
“My, but we have grown important and impressive,” said the scraping voice. “I always knew you had the seed of greatness in you, Suno’ku seyt-Iyora.”
“Speak your piece, thing of the outer darkness.” The general raised her witchwood blade as if to keep the stumbling, loose-limbed Singer at bay. “Then be gone. You sully the body of one who gave her all for her people.”
Viyeki was astonished. Despite his master’s favor, Viyeki was still an outsider compared to a high noble like Suno’ku, but even he knew the voice of Akhenabi, Lord of Song when he heard it—Akhenabi, second in power only to Queen Utuk’ku herself. How could the general not recognize it?
“Upstart! I speak for the queen!” rasped the voice out of Tzayin-Kha’s slack mouth. “You and the others are to hold your position! Under no circumstance are you to return to Nakkiga! You will defend Three Ravens Tower to your last breath!”
Suno’ku lifted Cold Root high, took a sudden step forward, and crashed the pommel of her famous sword against Tzayin-Kha’s forehead. The Singer’s knees buckled, then she dropped like a sack of winter meal.
In the shocked silence that followed the acolyte who had been tending Tzayin-Kha scuttled forward with a look of helplessness on his face, as if all his training had been burned away in an instant. He turned the Host Singer over, but whatever had animated her had now fled. The center of her forehead was pushed in like a broken eggshell.
“You . . . you have killed my mistress!” he said in wonder and horror. “Tzayin-Kha is dead!”
“A regrettable result.” General Suno’ku sheathed her sword and bent to examine the body. “I used more force than I intended. But perhaps it is a blessing. The thing that possessed her could not have been driven from her dying body any other way.”
“What thing?” The acolyte Singer had lost more than his discipline, Viyeki decided—he had all but lost his mind if he thought he could defy an armed superior. “Did you not hear the voice of our master? Of Lord Akhenabi himself?”
Suno’ku gave a pitying shake of her head. “You were fooled by a dark spirit, Singer. Look at your comrade.” She gestured to the Singer Tzayin-Kha had flung away, still lying in an awkward, broken-necked sprawl at the base of the chamber’s stone wall. “Do you mean to tell me that Lord Akhenabi murdered one of his own Singers for no reason?”
The acolyte’s mouth worked, but for a moment nothing came out. Viyeki was fearful that this one too would begin speaking with that terrible, scraping voice, but at last he managed to mutter, “I do not know what to say, General Suno’ku.”
She turned to Yaarike and Viyeki. “Do you think it a coincidence that moments after I revealed my st
rategy, something slipped into the body of Tzayin-Kha to demand we not return? High Magister Yaarike, am I wrong?”
Yaarike again wore a strange expression—Viyeki could almost imagine his master was hiding amusement—but all the magister said was, “I can see no fault in your reasoning, General.”
Commander Hayyano and several of his Sacrifices now hurried into the room. All but Hayyano stopped short, staring at the body of Tzayin-Kha. “What has happened here, General?” he asked.
“A deadly trick,” she announced. “Perhaps the work of the Zida’ya traitor who travels with the mortal army. But it has failed. Assemble all of your men except the sentries and those on active patrol. With High Magister’s Yaarike’s permission, I will speak to them.”
Hayyano looked to Yaarike. He was better at masking his confusion and doubt than the acolyte Singer had been, but his hesitation was clear to all.
“You heard your general,” said Yaarike at last, all surface now, his private thoughts once more hidden behind a wall that needed no sentries to keep it inviolate. “Of course you must follow your orders.”
More than two hundred Sacrifices from almost a dozen different troops had crowded into the great, high-raftered hall of Three Ravens Tower. They stood straight, ignoring their many wounds, faces set in masks of resolve. Two torches at either end of Marshal Ekisuno’s makeshift bier cast the only light except for the summer star Reniku, burning in the center of the hall’s high window like a diamond shining from the ashes of a fire.
“My foreparent Ekisuno lies before you,” Suno’ku began, pointing to the marshal’s shrouded, unmoving form. Though the general’s voice seemed soft, it carried to all parts of the chamber. “He was of the blood of great Ekimeniso himself, our queen’s consort, and like his ancestor, Ekisuno was a mighty warrior. He spent his long life fighting the queen’s enemies before he died at the fall of the tower of Asu’a, as did so many others. You know what happened. All of you were there.”
