The click and hum of a crossbow struck the air. Vendanj raised a barrier around himself and a moment later saw the bolt careen harmlessly off the unseen shield. Two of the leaguemen started up the stairs, swords held up defensively. Vendanj raised a hand toward them, then flipped it. The two swordsmen spun violently backward, their heads striking the stone staircase. They both fell immediately still.
He swept down the stairs. Another bolt whizzed past him, striking the stone wall with a metallic ting. When he reached the floor, he looked into the far corner, peering through the dark. There, at the back of the room, stood two more leaguemen, one with fearful curiosity in his eyes, the other loading another bolt. Vendanj concentrated on the high end of their spines. A moment later two muted pops could be heard from their corner, where the bones in their necks exploded from within. Their bodies slumped to the floor in a crunch of armor.
He then turned just in time to meet one of two leaguemen who’d been working at Rolen. The man swung a large warhammer at him. With no time to stop it, he braced for the blow, managing a thin protective cocoon around himself. The hammer struck the barrier, the force transferring across its surface and slamming Vendanj’s entire body like a heavy fist. It knocked him to the ground.
As he tumbled, he caught a flash of light on an upraised blade. The other is going to kill Rolen! Vendanj pushed an angry fist at the leagueman’s sword arm, and pulled the limb entirely free of the man’s body. The leagueman screamed as his appendage dropped to the floor, the sword clattering away into the corner. The iron smell of blood filled the air, as the man tried to stanch the flow and raced up the stairs to save himself.
Vendanj had lost track of the last remaining leagueman, whose hammer fell on him again. The protective shield kept the blow from crushing his chest, but the energy traveled across it and pressed in on him again, bruising much of his body. He looked up into the angry eyes of his assailant and spoke a few words. The man’s head snapped unnaturally to the side, and he fell motionless atop Vendanj—the barrier keeping the dead leagueman a finger’s breadth away. Vendanj pushed him off before letting go of the protective shell. He rolled to his feet and cast his gaze into the darkened corner at the crook of the wall and stairs.
“Come,” he said. “Let’s get you free of this place.”
A stirring in the corner brought the jingle of chains.
A weak, panting voice replied. “They wanted to know where to find you.” A wet cough. “They wouldn’t believe I didn’t know.”
Vendanj hated the thought that they’d worked at Rolen on his account. “Civil war is spreading in the city. The regent has been killed. And the League … slaughtered nearly every Sheason in Recityv.”
Rolen’s chains jangled as if agitated, and the emaciated, beaten renderer crawled into the light. “No.”
“Many were killed in their homes,” Vendanj said with more urgency. “Dozens more were herded onto the plaza and murdered in front of thousands.”
“Why?” Rolen asked plaintively.
“The Civilization Order was amended. All Sheason are to be executed, whether they use the Will or not.”
“The High Council wouldn’t ratify such an amendment,” Rolen argued, and began to cough again.
“The Council has changed,” Vendanj said impatiently. “Roth has manipulated the votes. It’s only a matter of time before Van Steward yields. He won’t continue to fight … to kill civilians who just don’t know any better. He’ll hate it, but he’ll yield. Then, any remaining Sheason will be sought out and put to death. Just as these men came here to kill you. If you don’t let me take you away from here, more will come. You’ll be the easiest to find.”
The withered Sheason stared back, seeming to try to make sense of what he’d just heard.
“Do you understand?” Vendanj said more gently. “Simply belonging to the order is now cause for execution. The world is upside down.”
Rolen got to his feet with great difficulty, and stood as though considering. But Vendanj didn’t wait for the other to speak. With a concentrated look, he snapped the shackles binding his old friend.
“Since I doubt you’ll join me to resist the League, you have very few choices. You can flee Recityv, and hope they don’t catch you. You might also, I suppose, forsake the order. But I doubt that’ll buy you clemency from the law. What will it be?”
His friend still didn’t move. Perhaps he was too weak from starvation and beatings. Perhaps such awful news had stolen any meaningful words he might have. Vendanj hoped when his old friend finally did speak, he’d hear defiance and anger. Maybe this would give Rolen some clarity of thought. Maybe he’d understand what Vendanj had been telling him. Maybe this awful day would move his Randeur to stronger action.
“Perhaps,” Rolen said, after several tense moments, “we must change, even as the times around us change.”
Vendanj stepped close to his friend. He could smell cycles of sweat and human waste on him. And Rolen’s unkempt beard had crawled over most of his face—he looked half mad. The Rolen he knew would never call the Will as Vendanj did. But to keep himself alive in this new world, his friend would have to embrace new ways. It was that simple. He could see his old friend struggling with the prospect of it.
Vendanj reached out and placed a hand on Rolen’s shoulder, imparting a warm transfer of his life’s Forda to heal what he could without overweakening himself.
Rolen stood a little taller, his eyes a little more focused. He raised a hand and weakly clutched Vendanj’s outstretched arm. “You mean to convert me,” he said, and smiled.
“Since when has that been a secret,” Vendanj replied, feeling slightly diminished. “Can you walk?”
Rolen took a few tentative steps, looked up in surprise that his legs were useful, and together they mounted the stone stairs. As they went, Vendanj found himself wondering if he’d saved his friend from certain execution only to someday have to stand against him.
“Let’s go,” he whispered.
Vendanj got them to the stables, heaved Rolen onto a stout destrier, and took a golden bay for himself. He grabbed the destrier’s reins, told Rolen to hold tight, and slipped through the large wooden gates of the stable yard into the city.
They passed several frays, but Vendanj kept them at a distance, turning down narrow alleys and only passing large streets when they needed to cross to some other smaller byway. They wove toward the seldom-used northwest gate.
“Raise the gate!” he yelled as they neared. “In the name of Van Steward!”
The surprised gate captain took a close look at Vendanj. Lines of allegiance had fast been drawn today, and the general’s men were still loyal to the regent’s friends. The gate began to rise.
Vendanj ducked through and led Rolen’s mount a thousand strides onto the rolling plain before stopping. He wheeled around and came abreast of his old friend, facing the opposite direction. He handed Rolen the reins. The other took them with feeble fingers.
“Find what help you can,” Vendanj said. “But be careful. Most larger towns have League garrisons, and they’ll hear about the amendment to the Civilization Order.”
Vendanj raised his own reins, readying to return to his companions. The danger was getting out of hand. There was yet another escape from the city to prepare.
“Wait,” Rolen said, his voice husky. The tortured Sheason tried to clear his throat, but the effort only brought another wracking cough. Some blood oozed up onto his lips as he finally spoke. “The League…” He gasped for breath. “The League is seeking Talendraal.”
Vendanj remembered Losol’s sword. Dismay and terror filled his chest. Talendraal were weapons that could turn aside a Sheason’s rendering. Most renderings, anyway.
Rolen wheezed as he struggled for breath. “More than once, Roth’s new Jurshah leader has come into my cell and commanded me to render against him.” He swallowed hard. “I’ll admit I didn’t put much of myself into it. Down there, I hadn’t much to spare. But what I did throw at him
, his blade seemed to divert or dissipate as easy as sun off a mirror. I don’t know any other way he could have done it, save Talendraal.”
“How do you know they’re seeking more?” Vendanj asked, anger replacing his initial dread of the League’s interest in the old weapons.
“I overheard them talking once,” Rolen answered. “The real question is whether or not the League has made an alliance with those beyond the Pall. Or do they simply seek the weapons forged there during the Craven Season.”
Vendanj shook his head, thinking, disgusted … worried. “Between laws that make it a crime for us to render, and steel that can turn aside the effects when we do, the League will fear no resistance from us. Gods!” Vendanj cursed. “But Talendraal will not be easily had.”
“No, they won’t,” Rolen agreed, “but a few may be all they need. They won’t use them to lead armies. They’ll put them in the hands of hunters. To track down Sheason. I wanted you to know. For Illenia’s sake.”
The use of her name left him without words. Vendanj didn’t speak of his dead wife. Nor of the unborn child they’d lost when she went prematurely to her earth. Few knew this part of his past. Fewer still knew Illenia’s name. But of course, her brother Rolen knew it, and had every right to use it.
Only now did Vendanj allow himself to fully acknowledge that this Sheason he’d rescued was family. It had been part of his need to save him. Illenia would have wanted it. But Vendanj had hid away connections to that part of his past, even from himself, and rarely gave them space in his own mind. They served no useful purpose. They were too painful.
But he understood Rolen’s warning, and guessed that Talendraal were responsible for the rising number of residents at Widows’ Village. That dreary place where the husbands and wives of fallen Sheason gathered together, lived, and remembered the ones they’d lost.
A bitter frown rose on his dry lips at the thought of Roth directing secret efforts to secure such weapons at the same time he was pushing for laws to execute Sheason. The Ascendant spoke of peace and civility, of putting away superstition, and simultaneously sought steel forged with superstitious intent.
He was a clever hypocrite. And dangerous.
After a long silence far from the city gate, his dead wife’s brother spoke again with his bloodied lips. “Tahn surviving Tillinghast may not mean what you want it to mean, Vendanj.” Rolen tried to straighten his back, but wound up more deeply hunched over his saddle horn—his wounds were having the better of him.
Vendanj didn’t bother to ask what Rolen meant.
“Will you take him to Estem Salo?”
“He travels there now,” Vendanj answered. “By way of Aubade Grove. With luck, the Randeur will be moved to support us.”
Rolen exhaled, a hint of forbearance in his face. “Because you loved my sister, let me caution you. The Randeur is every bit as headstrong as you are.” He offered a slight grin. A final joke between them.
Vendanj returned a thin smile of his own. But inside, a knot of dread tightened in his gut. The years. The leagues traveled. The lives lost. It all hung as though by a thread. He needed to unify the Sheason. The Randeur’s help was crucial.
But as his dread rose, so did his anger. He’d vowed long ago, in a room not far from where Illenia died, that no cost would be spared to change the way of things. And no one, no one, would stand in the way of that vow. Not the Ascendant. Not the Randeur. Vendanj acknowledged a touch of madness in him when it came to seeing this done, but accepted—even believed—that madness might be the only thing that got him through.
To oppose the Randeur …
It was madness. But the right kind, if he could be any judge of it.
Vendanj nodded thanks to Rolen and spurred his mount, rushing back to Recityv.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
The Bourne: Vespers
If we believe the creation stories, then in the same way the benevolent gods failed when they created Inveterae, isn’t it possible that Maldea likewise sometimes failed? And if so, what would those creations be like?
—Words spoken by a historian in the company of “low ones” at a Tenendra carnival
Kett fell naked and trembling on neatly laid black terrace stones that ended overlooking a great chasm. Where his body didn’t bleed openly, the blood welled beneath the skin from bruising that ached to the bone. He might have lost the use of one eye, and he could no longer feel the fingers of his left hand. Crashing down hard near the edge of the sheer drop, he thought the bones in his knees had cracked. He rolled onto his back and looked up into a cloud-darkened sky, and even then still hoped he would live to try to lead the Inveterae away from the Bourne. Save his little ones.
As if knowing his heart, the Jinaal Balroath made a sound of contempt and amusement deep in his throat. But Balroath said nothing. This wasn’t his interrogation; this moment belonged to Stulten, who Kett could hear slowly approaching from the rear of the manor somewhere behind them.
He had run more days than he could remember, scarcely eating or sleeping, tracking Lliothan. But he’d never caught him. When he’d arrived back at Kael Ronoch, his children were not in the quarters provided for them. Several Bar’dyn had been waiting. They’d brought him here to the far side of Kael Ronoch, to the last residence before the land fell sharply away—no less than five hundred arm-lengths to a black river.
The wind came up the face of the cliff, carrying the scent of wet rock and dead roots. He could also smell the blood of others, which stained the terrace stone around him. But he’d seen no bodies. It wasn’t hard to figure out the use the Jinaal had of the cliff so close behind him.
“You disappoint me,” Stulten said, coming near and looking down at Kett. “I would not say I am surprised, but I am disappointed. Did you forget you were given? Did you forget we will always know when you betray our heart? Did you forget we will redeem our right to the spirit inside you?”
He had forgotten.
“Of course, this time, we didn’t need to find you. We knew you would come.”
Marckol and Neliera.
“For a visionary, Kett Valan, you failed to see the real opportunity for your kind.” Stulten shook his head. “That homeland you desire? You’d find that sooner by following us than by separation. Do you see that now?”
“Killing my patrol was by design,” Kett lied. “I was trying to earn the villagers’ trust. Make them think I was still one of them, so I could learn their true plans.”
Stulten made an indiscriminate sound deep in his throat and moved past Kett to the edge of the stone-cobbled yard, where he looked out at the great expanse. “The truth is, my Inveterae friend, we no longer need your kind. And as most shelah, you underestimate your own acclaim.”
Kett sat partway up at the use of the old term: shelah, the old-tongue word … messiah. “You’re mistaken. I’m not shelah. And my people don’t see me as one.”
“You are naïve,” the Jinaal replied. “The murder of your friends was a test, Kett Valan. You knew this. We could certainly have killed these seditionists without your help.” Stulten turned and came to stand over him again. “I had to know if you were truly shelah.”
“I could have told you—”
“Yes, you could have. But it didn’t take much to convince you to kill your friends. Don’t you see, Kett Valan? As badly as I needed to know, you wanted to prove to yourself that you are shelah. Physical pain means nothing, proves nothing. Your willingness to claim the lives of friends … it’s magnificent, Kett Valan. A great marvel.”
Stulten looked away again into the wide open space beyond the cliff, lost in his own thoughts. Beneath him, Kett’s pain deepened, crawling down into his soul where Stulten’s words took hold, hinting at some truth.
He recalled countless stories offered by his own parents in the small hours before sleep, stories that as a child he’d hoped to see made real. They weren’t tales of heroes or redeemers, or war or bravery. No, they were simple stories of a brighter shade of grass, ground
-fruits that didn’t taste of mineral and ash, and of walking free beyond the grey skies of the Bourne.
“I’m not shelah,” he repeated.
Stulten ignored him. Then he squatted down, and spoke more softly. “After all our words and schemes, we want the same thing as Inveterae.” Stulten smiled. An ugly thing to see.
Kett shook his head. “We don’t want the same thing. We seek to live beside the races south of the Pall, not to dominate or destroy them.”
Stulten’s smile turned thin, angry. “You and your kind have cowered in the shadow of the Veil, feeling betrayed. The only difference between us … we don’t cower.”
Stulten grew quiet for a few moments, seeming to ponder. “Haven’t you truly considered yet, Kett Valan, that we may want nothing more than a homeland that can yield a proper crop?”
He listened, finding it hard to tell whether the Jinaal’s words were truth or lie. Perhaps the Quiet’s final desire was, indeed, the same as the Inveterae’s. Perhaps the way of things had been put out of balance precisely because of the Abandonment, and not because one zealous Maker had overreached himself.
“Do you see now?” Stulten asked. “I gave you a great chance to see beyond the divisions forced on us during the Placing. Your redemption might have been more than the Inveterae houses escaping the Bourne; it might have been seeing done what the gods themselves had abandoned.”
The thoughts swirled maddeningly. Had he been wrong from the very beginning? Had his instinct to be given to the Quiet really instead been a way to try to do what the Framers hadn’t been able to do? Perhaps he had been too narrow in his hopes, thinking only of his Inveterae family.
He rolled onto his side, testing his strength and the wounds in his body. Excruciating pain shot through his loins and across his skin, but brought with it clarity of mind. Even if all Stulten said was true, a Quiet intrusion into the world of men would be an apocalypse from which it would never recover. Even if the Quiet’s intention was to bring forward the finest virtues of the favored southern races, those imprisoned so long in the deeps of the Bourne would be unable to stem their bitterness. Countless men would die. He felt that truth as surely as he felt the fragments of bone shifting under his skin.
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