She had one fleeting glimpse of a figure draped in white, hair like alabaster, kindly face. Belamae. The music teacher, Maesteri at Descant Cathedral. Belamae trained Leiholan like her in the use of their song, and how to control it. He’d asked her not to leave Descant before she could be properly educated. He’d wanted her to stay behind, not come to Naltus, as if he’d known what would happen.
What did happen? she thought.
With some returned strength, she got to her knees, and looked around. Dear dying gods! So many dead. Thousands. Maybe more. And many who had died … because of her …
I killed Far with my song. Innocent people.
She blamed the Quiet.
A new kind of anger filled her and she began climbing to her feet, surging with renewed energy. She’d almost gotten up, when a body fell on her. Then another. And another. In the tumble of limbs, her head struck—or was struck by—something, and she fell into the dark of unconsciousness.
CHAPTER FIVE
A Different Aim
Everyone and everything has substance of a kind. What a Sheason must learn is how to manipulate his own. Once he can, permanence means nothing. And everything.
—“On the Nature of Influence,” a fifth year discourse in Estem Salo
Something is wrong.
The battle raged all around Vendanj. On his right, Braethen fought hard, keeping the Bar’dyn at bay long enough for Vendanj to draw the Will. On his left, Elan marshaled the Far, putting distance between Naltus and the Quiet.
But something was wrong.
The Quiet fought to kill, and yet they hadn’t tried to work a flank. They weren’t even trying to push through the Far lines.
Why?
Tahn!
He rushed to the dolmen where Grant and Mira were fighting back Bar’dyn who had broken away to try and take them down. He didn’t immediately see Tahn. On instinct, he ducked inside the dolmen. Chill air rested heavy over everything, including Tahn, who lay unconscious and bloody.
He quickly sought a tuft of dry grass and pulled it out of the soil. Dividing it into roughly equal parts, he twisted the two clumps together into the vague semblance of a man. He then bent to Tahn and rubbed the grass figure in the boy’s blood.
Tahn stirred.
“Lie still. But get your wits about you. You’ll need them soon.”
Vendanj extended a hand and caused a new kind of stillness in the dolmen air. A complete stillness. To hide Tahn from probing minds.
Then he ducked back into the morning light, searching for a horse. With so many Far already fallen, he quickly spotted a riderless mount and raced southward to catch it. After a gentle whisper on the wind, he quieted the riled beast and soon had hold of its reins.
He closed his eyes and focused his Will on the grass idol. He recalled the many things he’d seen Tahn do, his words, his mannerisms, his anger and laughter. He captured a mental picture of the Hollows boy, forming it in his mind until it seemed to have a separate—if simple—mind of its own. Last, he added fear—not the strongest emotion, but the easiest to track. He imbued as much raw terror and desperation as he could into the grass doll. When he’d transferred the whole of what he’d envisioned to the effigy, he opened his eyes and looked down. The straw had twisted more fitly together, braiding itself, crimping, looping in places, to roughly resemble the persona that gave it a strange bastard intelligence. It twitched in the Vendanj’s hand with the distress he’d imparted to it.
Using the reins, he tied the bloodied straw figure to the saddle horn, and slapped the mount on the ass. The horse leapt and ran west, a wild look in its eyes.
The thunder of the mare’s hooves clapped over the shale plain, receding fast, as the mount bore away Tahn’s effigy.
Vendanj turned his concentration back toward the battle raging to the north. He looked with his eyes, but also extended his connection to the shale and sage and wind. He waited, patient, for the faintest of stirrings.
He didn’t wait long.
Moments later, two forms at the far edge of his senses moved subtly, looking west and judging. He could feel them assessing the escaping rider, considering their response. The movements and assessments touched Vendanj the way a ripple at one end of a pond will reach the far shore.
Then stillness again. Vendanj had his answer.
He ran back far enough that his companions could hear him. “With me!”
Then he spun, and bolted toward the city wall. He glimpsed Mira and Grant and Tahn as they began to follow. Over the scree and shale he raced, dread filling him with each running stride. How could I have been so blind!
He waved a hand twenty strides from the ramparts, signaling the guard to open a way for them. They passed through on a dead run. The clap of their boots on cobbled stone echoed through the vacant streets. Far children had been hidden. Far warriors were embroiled in battle. But a Far contingent would be standing guard at the vault library. Grant a fool a prayer.
Vendanj mounted the steps to the Naltus Forum, and crashed through the main doors into the forum proper. Oil lamps burned about the room, but there was no sign of Quietgiven. The chairs still stood upright, undisturbed, and the air remained settled, unmoved by the eddies of recent motion. But his skin prickled with anticipation. Something was close.
He dashed through the center of the room toward the stone stairway, which descended into blackness. Lying on the top few steps, their blood pooling beneath them, were two Far and two Bar’dyn. They’re here. He grabbed a nearby lamp and started down, Braethen and the others close behind. At the base of the first set of stairs they came to a massive stone portal where a door should have stood. The short landing lay strewn with the rubble of what had been the door. And more bodies—four Far, two more Bar’dyn.
These doors were ward-locked. No battering ram would have crumbled them.… Velle.
He stepped over the dead, through the piles of broken stone, and down a second set of stairs. Through two more ruined doorways they went, the dead count rising—a handful of Bar’dyn, a Velle … over twenty Far. But he heard no moan or clatter from the dark corridors ahead. There was only the labored breathing of the sodalist behind him, and their own hurried movements. They descended deeper beneath Naltus, navigating the labyrinth that protected the Language of the Covenant.
The Covenant Tongue was the language of the Framers—those gods who’d formed the world of Aeshau Vaal before abandoning it. The smallest parts of its speech could be perfectly understood and used and combined. One could speak something into existence. Or unmake it. With this language, the Quiet could end the Veil that held them, walk into the Eastlands. What had been harbored as an instrument against the possibility of such an invasion would become the tool of its success.
Vendanj shivered. This was why the Quiet hadn’t tried to flank the First Legion, or press on the city as a whole. The war on the shale was a diversion, while a small band stole its way into the heart of Naltus to seize the Covenant Tongue.
If that happened, everything he’d done and sacrificed would be for nothing. He thought of his wife and unborn child; both had died years ago in the aftermath of a Quiet attack. Though blame for that belonged to the League of Civility, too. On the authority of a law known as the Civilization Order, the League had prevented Vendanj from helping his injured wife.
The Quiet and the League. Two godsdamned sides of the same coin.
Down several sets of stairs they passed, weaving inward and earthward. He could only hope that the protections of darkness, silence, and the labyrinth itself would safeguard what lay below until they could get there.
They passed another doorway. More dead Far.
Soon, he glimpsed a flicker of light ahead. A few moments later they stepped out onto a landing overlooking a great hollow in the earth. A vaulted ceiling arced two hundred strides above; a floor lost in shadow below. The cavernous grotto measured easily three hundred strides across. And at its center, rising up like an island, stood the Naltus library.
Countless sconces on the grotto walls offered light to the great hollow. More burned along the perimeter of the library, brightly lighting an encircling catwalk. Three narrow bridges spanned the emptiness between the outer wall and the library. Across those bridges moved no less than twenty Bar’dyn in charcoal-hued vestments. They didn’t rush, their attention fixed on several Far standing ready to meet them on the other side.
But it wasn’t the Bar’dyn Vendanj searched for. He scanned the hollow again, peering through the dim light until he caught sight of movement on the flat library roof.
No. Not today.
He set down his lamp and stepped to the lip of the landing. Uttering a single word, “Suuthor,” he raised both his palms, summoning a wind. From the grotto depths, the air began to stir and whip. Soon it rushed like a sea storm. Vendanj threw his hands to the left. The storm whirled around the chamber, creating a crosswind over the several bridgeways.
Caught off guard, a few Bar’dyn tumbled from the bridges into darkness. A few Bar’dyn crouched low, and pushed forward. Those closest to the other side leapt for the library catwalk, flattening themselves against walls to avoid the churning winds.
Vendanj raised his arms again, higher this time, conducting the wind to furious speeds. It whistled over the walks and howled against the walls of the grotto. The last few Quiet still crossing to the library were pulled from the bridge and sent tumbling into the air. This time, the rushing wind muted the sound of them hitting the stone floor far below.
“Now!” Vendanj yelled, and lowered his hands to still the wind.
Bar’dyn already on the other side engaged the Far, as Grant and Mira raced across the middle bridge. Tahn began firing at Quiet. The sodalist leapt forward, crossing the nearest footpath on a dead run. Vendanj followed close, and had nearly reached the far side when two things happened: Mira went down, and he caught sight again of the dark shape on the roof of the library.
“Braethen, get to Mira!” Vendanj called. Then, at full stride, he placed a foot on the downed body of a Bar’dyn and launched himself toward the top of the library wall. He crashed hard against it, slamming his forehead and tearing a gash that began to bleed.
He ignored it—the blood thankfully not running into his eyes—and pulled himself up to the roof. Ahead twenty paces stood a Velle with its back to him. It concentrated on the shale roof underfoot as it gestured with its left hand. It’s rendering. But shale held little Forda—little energy—of its own. And this Velle has no vessel … is it willing …
“Hold!” Vendanj cried.
The Velle turned, looking like an average physic blackcoat—someone a parent takes a sick child to see. It wore a wool coat over a threadbare vest. Familiarity flared for Vendanj, then was gone.
The Velle strode casually to one side of the roof and looked down on the battle encircling the library. “You’re too late.” Its melodious voice carried above the din of swords and scuffling feet. “But the wind was clever.” Then it fixed him with a gaze. “You’re Vendanj. The skeptic … the heretic. Not exactly the kind of Sheason that commends your order to others, are you?”
Vendanj ignored the rhetoric.
The other smiled, and sauntered back to the center of the library roof. Vendanj caught a closer look at the face, pale and seamed. Do I know him? The Velle turned a circle, surveying the great hollow deep beneath Naltus. Smug satisfaction rose on its countenance as it slowly nodded to itself.
“Now we come to it. The voice of the gods lay beneath my feet, and with it, the injustice of the Abandonment will be made right.” It stopped again, facing Vendanj. “This should have been the work of the Sheason. It’s what Palamon would have wanted.”
Vendanj shook his head. “Palamon helped send your kind away.”
“You’re misguided.” The Velle pointed at Vendanj. “Of all the Sheason, you should understand. Rejected races, creations of the Framers … dissenters”—the Velle gave a cruel smile—“all imprisoned in a fallow land. The Bourne, you call it. How do you know the ages haven’t refined us there? Cultivated in us the humanity that men hope to achieve?”
There was only one honest question in the Velle’s words, and it made Vendanj think before answering. Yes, he was a dissenter. But was he like the Quiet?
When the council of gods had framed the world, one among them had gone loose. Mad, some stories said. Maldea was his name. He’d been tasked with forming those things, those creatures, that would test men. Refine them. But he’d gone too far, and had been brought before the council and Whited—stripped of his place among them—given the name Quietus, and banished with all that had proceeded from his overeager hands.
Vendanj might hold a separate view from most other Sheason, but “dissent” wasn’t the core of being Quiet. Something had long ago gone wrong with those who lived inside the Bourne. Their intention no longer had anything to do with refining men.
“When the Quiet pierce the Veil, they don’t come with entreaties,” Vendanj said, speaking sharply. “They come with the stripping of earth.” He took a defiant step closer, galled at the suggestion of Quiet empathy. “And you. You stand there, ready to steal or destroy one of the few defenses given to us.” He shook his head again. “You don’t seek to test us. You want dominion.”
“You’re misguided,” the Velle repeated. It lowered its chin, setting itself for conflict.
“I am not the misguided one.” Vendanj started toward the Velle, his patience gone, Will bristling in his arms and fingers.
The Velle’s hands shot toward him, thrusting an unseen force that knocked Vendanj off his feet and hard on his back. His head slammed against the shale roof, opening another gash. He rose quickly to his feet, his vision swimming with black spots. Before he could summon a defense, another burst of energy encircled his head and began to press inward. The pressure mounted fast. Stabs of pain shot behind his eyes, until something burst far down the canal of his ear. He began to sway. Unable to keep his balance, he dropped to his knees.
He took his head in his hands and invoked his Will to try to curb the immense pressure. But he couldn’t concentrate behind the pain.
Distantly he heard Tahn cry out for Grant—something about Mira. The clangor of weapons and the grunts of those wielding them faded as though Vendanj were sinking into the darkness of a cold sea. He pitched forward, his face striking the stone. This time his chin took the brunt of it.
The Language of the Covenant rested below him, on the other side of this shale roof. But he was weakening by the moment. It was all he could do to fight the pressure that threatened to shatter his skull and send bone fragments into his brain.
Boots swam into his vision, the dark renderer coming close. It hunkered down, looming over Vendanj, its boot leather creaking, its coat gamy with rotting mud and sour sweat and old straw.
Through his pain, Vendanj rasped a single curse: “Velle,” a covenant word meaning “mine.”
“Brother,” the other gently corrected. “Join me. There is beauty to be shared in reunification. It’s not so difficult to see, is it? The lives you would keep hidden and captive inside the Bourne … they are the ones who are truly abandoned.”
Vendanj could feel his skull beginning to give, the bone yielding. Divert its attention.“Brother…”
Addressed with the honor of fraternity, the Velle lost a small measure of concentration. Only for a moment. But in that moment, Vendanj saw regret, like humanity lit briefly on the Velle’s face. He saw it just before he shot a burst of Will, driving the creature off its feet and down hard on the roof.
The pressure on his head immediately lifted.
When he heard scraping across the stone, he turned and saw the other trace a circle around itself. The next moment, the Velle dropped through the shale roof as readily as a ghost.
The Language of the Covenant was moments from being taken or destroyed. He summoned all he had left inside him and did as his enemy had done, falling through the roof like a stone passing through the surface of
a lake.
CHAPTER SIX
Hope Burns
If it’s true that the world was made with words, then it must also be true that it can be remade. Or unmade.
—First lines written by Denolan SeFeery in his heretical new Charter
“Mira’s down!”
Grant put his sword through the wrist of the Bar’dyn in front of him, and used it like a handle to spin the beast off the catwalk. He turned to see Tahn rushing toward Mira, who lay on her back, parrying blows from another Bar’dyn. She held just one sword, and was slowly being driven backward toward the lip of the walkway.
Scanning the dead Far around him, he spied what he needed. In a single motion, he picked up a blade and hurled it, end over end, at the back of the Bar’dyn beating down on Mira. The weapon bounded off the beast’s thick, rough hide, but caused it to turn toward him. That gave Tahn enough time to set his feet and fire an arrow into one of the creature’s eyes, dropping it almost on top of Mira.
Momentarily distracted, Grant nearly took a hammer in the side of the head. But Braethen was there, deflecting the blow and countering. He and the sodalist doubled up on the Quiet, driving it back until Grant leapt and kicked it over the edge.
From above, he heard voices, one of them belonging to Vendanj. But he didn’t have time to help the renderer, as two more Bar’dyn rushed him and Braethen. Arrows whistled through the air, striking these Quiet from behind. Their faces showed no signs of pain as arrows lodged in their skin. And they did not slow.
Grant grabbed Braethen and shoved him back around the corner of the library. He then dove at the charging Bar’dyn’s knees. Extending his arms, he tripped them both and sent them sprawling.
One went over the lip of the landing, falling into darkness. The other rolled and came up with its hammer in hand. As it reared, an arrow took it square in the throat. When the Bar’dyn fell, a sudden silence fell with it.
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