Rythe Falls

by Craig R. Saunders

  With a snarl of rage, Klan Mard set the Seer to burn. And there, upon the altar to the sun, the flames of his fury engulfed her.

  And with the explosion from the death of such a power as the Seer, here in the heart of the temple of the Sard, the way was opened.

  *

  Chapter Fourteen

  A powerful mage, a wizard, known only as Caeus, once curse an entire people to live and love and die without ever knowing the succour of land. These people passed into myth, as people often do. Rumour of the Naum, the underground people, of the massacred Island Archivists, and of the Feewar...these rumours became myth and fable, and then little more than tales for children.

  But some knew the truth. Truth was often not lost so much as buried...or submerged, perhaps.

  The two men walking across the Seafarer's newly-formed island, Garner and Turpy, knew the stories had been real, because for the past three weeks they had travelled on foot across the island's length. An island that had not been there a year before.

  Garner and Turpy, their brethren behind them, travelled not as an army might, for they were not soldiers. Now, they wore robes of many hues...and those robes were the same colours as the men's eyes. The colours of magic.

  They were not soldiers, no...but nor were they mere men. Once, perhaps, but no longer. The brothers were forged together in magic. A brotherhood of wizards...the first in many, many ages.

  Trained deep underground by the rahken, their skills, their magic, once forbidden by the Protectorate, now blossomed.

  And now they came as one to meet the Seafarers, as the few who knew called the Feewar people. They came by ship to the far coast, and walked across the new land, still roiling beneath their feet, to this - the western coast.

  Across this sea lay their goal.

  Sturma.

  *

  And there, on their strange boats that were more tree than simple wood, they were. The boat they were supposed to take, as arranged.

  Garner spoke for his brothers.

  'Greetings from our tutors, the rahken of old, who still flourish and remember your name,' he called. 'Feewar-kin. My brothers and I harken from the land of Lianthre. Long lost to the land-folk, the Seafarers are legend. We come to renew ancient ties. To call upon your aid...we are told you can take us to the exiles' land. To Sturma...to battle.'

  With his words spoke, Garner and his brothers bowed their head in greeting and respect.

  Garner himself no longer feared battles or death or pain. He was filled with confidence. He wasn't a fool, no, but he did have power.

  Such power could wash a man away, like the tide. It could erode the greatest of men, or other creatures, like the sea eating the land...or it could be a force for righteousness.

  The rahken had only killed two of Garner's brotherhood during their training, and but a handful had died from the magic itself.

  Among all of humankind, this handful of brothers were those with the stoutest of hearts and the strongest of minds...and they were ready.

  The captain of the boat called down from the deck to the shore.

  'You'd be the mage Garner? And your brothers with you? Rahken taught?'

  'I am, and we are.'

  'Days of legend, indeed. Return of magic to Sturma? Human-kin with powers anew, like the olden times?'

  'So it seems,' called Garner. 'May we...board? Time is short and we are told your boats are fleet indeed.'

  'Oh, true,' said the man on the deck. The man had a fat face, but narrow chest, which was covered with a long, dark beard. But his eyes were striking, and Garner could feel the magic within the man. His eyes, deepest blue, spoke of the power of the seas themselves.

  The man nodded, then bade them to come aboard.

  'Time to sail,' he told his crew.

  Before the brotherhood of mages could begin to climb the strange, living hull of the Feewar boat, a rippling, bucking shock that came from underfoot nearly sent Garner and his brothers to their knees on the rocky shore.

  'Happens, still,' said the captain, calmly enough. 'The island's settling, I guess. Perhaps all the fresh air's disagreeing with it.' A burly Seafarer near the captain grunted, like these were the wisest words he'd heard.

  A larger shock, this time, and Garner bumped into a brother named Sol, his forehead crunching the man's nose flat, better than he could have if he'd tried.

  Sol stumbled to the rock, his blood running freely. Garner turned his head around to look at something that perhaps he might not have even understood.

  Power like...

  The end of days. He shook his head, unsure for a moment what he was seeing. The sky was no longer blue, and the clouds no longer white.

  'Get your kin aboard, mageling!' yelled the captain of the boat, now rocking in choppy seas that had been becalmed a mere second before.

  Garner needed no more urging.

  He and his brothers clambered aboard, the Seafarers reaching down with rough hands and hauling the mages aboard, helping where they could. Men and women aboard the boat shouted orders incomprehensible to Garner, and he did not care.

  I want to live. I must.

  Thirty, forty feet of rock suddenly slipped from the island into the water. Just gone.

  Men cried out, pulled under by current and tide, stuck with the shattered rock that had been shore mere seconds before. Blood joined the spume where shattered rock had crushed or cut a man. Garner watched, utterly helpless, as a man pitched from the boat itself back into the water. The boat no longer swayed, but bucked up and down violently enough that even the Seafarers were thrown to and fro across the decks.

  Then, suddenly as the upheaval began, it ceased and Garner cracked on his arse against the side of the boat. A Feewar woman stood at the prow and by some magic unknown to him the boat began to sail forward faster than he could have imagined.

  'My men!' he roared, betrayed.

  Behind them, men cried out in the rough waters, or simple sank and drowned, unable to fight the awful, sudden squall that hit the new shore.

  'They're drowning! Go back, damn you bastards...' he readied himself to unleash his own power...but he felt a gentle hand on his sleeve. He looked and saw that it belonged to the Seafarer captain himself.

  'No, I will not. I go back, we all die. Look,' said the captain, and Garner looked back though his heart told him not to. At their back, the sky, the land, the sea, even...everything was turning red.

  'What does it mean?' he asked, but he was not a fool. Schooled by Rahken, once a prisoner of the very bastards that wanted this.

  I will not die, he thought again. And he would not, because those he fought were his mortal enemies, and the enemy of every being able to live a life with love.

  The return. The return had begun.

  'Mourn your dead brothers,' said the captain, not unkindly. 'Mourn them and prepare. Celebrate the life left to you, and those who remain. For I fear your brotherhood and my kin head straight from sea to war.'

  Turpy lay on the deck, hands bloodied from Garner knew not what. The man Sol, too, his face washed by the seas and his nose still dribbling blood. Now a handful of them remained.

  So many of us gone. He counted the remains of his brotherhood. Merely fifteen of his brothers remained, included him.

  Ten men, ten powers...dead in the sea before their battle had even begun.

  Garner pushed himself to his feet and strode to the head, the prow, of the ship. He would mourn his brothers in battle and not shed a tear here.

  Was it all futile?

  He wondered. But he did not despair. Instead, he closed his eyes and let the wind and the spume and the beauty of the widest ocean race through his soul.

  With his eyes closed, he remembered his brothers, their deaths, and prepared for his own to come.

  *

  Chapter Fifteen

  'Why do you not scream? What trick...what...'

  'I am flesh, but more. If my flesh burns, I die. But I came willing. Why cry? Why fight? What must be is al
l there is. You and I know this.'

  Klan's awful face, his blooded eyes, spewed forth more and more fire, a baleful, spiteful thing. The Seer's chained body burned and blackened, her unique power pouring forth into the temple as her body simple ceased to be. The flesh charred, the muscles contracting, her eyes no longer seeing, and yet...and yet...

  Klan's rage was towering. He wanted her pain...needed it...and yet there she was, speaking in his head calmly as though she was nothing more than an observer to her own demise.

  'Bitch child, scream, scream!'

  'My death fuels the future, creature, not your petty pleasures.'

  Klan roared, but he was powerless to stop her voice in his head.

  'You had my body. I am dead. Happy?'

  'No. I will find you and...'

  'Oh, shut up, vile thing. You are nothing. For Reih, for Yuthran and Briskle and Sventhan and all those you murdered? I am sorry. For all those deaths that must come, I grieve. For you, wicked creature...I feel nothing at all.'

  Klan roared in rage and poured all his fury and power into the flames at the heart of Sybremreyen until the Seer was nothing more than dust and the entire building hummed and sang and screamed with energy pouring into the blood red skies above.

  *

  Perr felt his mistress' death the moment it happened. He sensed the violence inside the temple, the sheer immensity of it. He was a man, as Reih knew, attuned to the vibrations of pain and agony. He felt it, and so did Gurt. The two warriors looked at each other and understanding passed.

  The Rahken sensed a shift, too. As one, almost, the multitude of beasts, their warriors and mageborn both, their women and men, old and young, began to back away from the building.

  Perr saw the stone, once a simple black thing, begin to glow.

  How bright would it become?

  He pulled his gauntlet from his hand and laid a palm on the stone. No longer black, but turning red...like iron might, within a blacksmith's fire. And as he suspected, the touch scorched his palm.

  'They're all dead,' he said. He watched the old warrior - Gurt - as he spoke. The old man was no fool, and neither was Perr. People might think him simple, but when it came to the language of death, he was a savant.

  Gurt took a second to look at the stone. Becoming brighter - dark red turning lighter.

  'Let's go,' he said.

  Perr nodded, and followed the old man. 'You have a horse?'

  'Aye,' said Gurt.

  'Meet me at the gates in the wall. We ride.'

  'The Rahken?'

  'Think they can help now?'

  Gurt didn't, anymore than Perr did. The warrior turned and began to walk toward his horse. 'I'll meet you there,' he told Perr, speaking over his shoulder.

  A Rahken named Fenore, old and wise, came to walk beside Gurt as he strode toward his horse. She looked behind at the now glowing building.

  'Where are you going?' said the growling rahken.

  'They killed everything. Maybe they always meant to. See the light in the sky?'

  Fenore nodded. 'I do.'

  The light, the fire-light now, from Sybremreyen was pouring into the sky. The fire-light hit the red skies and the skies seem to swirl, like it was stirring.

  And it was stirring.

  Gurt and Perr had seen skies like this before. Most people had, on this continent. If you lived a while, you did. Didn't matter that the skies were red, now. What mattered was that they were stirring, and when skies looked like that, that angry, meant only one thing. A storm, looking for someplace to settle down.

  Gurt knew where, too. Follow the storm and he knew he'd find the end of it right atop a place called Arram.

  He was willing to bet those bastards had called it right down.

  'You think they're travelling on this...storm? This red air's like some great cloud, looking for a place to rain?' Fenore asked, and Gurt noted that the old rahken's eyes were deep, and kind, but full of some kind of sorrow, too.

  'Close enough, eh?' said Gurt. 'Thanks, Fenore. Thank your kin, too. Goodbye.'

  'Can't fight them on your own, Gurt,' said the old rahken.

  'I know,' said Gurt, mounting his horse. A horse an old friend had once called Wey.

  'They'll kill you where you stand.'

  Gurt shook his head. 'I won't fight them,' said Gurt. 'But the Protectorate? Those bastards running back to Arram's teat? They killed the world, Fenore. Killed friends, killed Perr's friend, too. Personal, impersonal, I don't suppose it matters much anymore. I know me and him, we can't fight them, maybe. But the least we can do is watch the bastards die.'

  Before Gurt could get Wey moving, Fenore held the mare's reins and put something in Gurt's palm. A rough piece of crystal, murky and milky with a weak blue hue someplace within.

  'Look through this. Take the pathways. Can't go with you, not now. But the pathways will see you faster on the road.'

  'Thank you,' he said, then turned Wey toward the north gates without a further glance back.

  *

  Across Rythe, the ancient places, those with power and with souls built into their hearts, burned with energy.

  Sybremreyen and the Kuh'taenium were blindingly bright. Far to the south of Lianthre, on the continent of Ascalain, on the Feewar's new land, and at an ancient building on the Drayman plains, the old temples spewed fire and power into the skies and fuelled the red light that suffused the very air of Rythe, until the red light glowed brighter still.

  *

  Chapter Sixteen

  While those old, mortal-hewn temples burned and spent their power for the return, other, far more ancient temples were silent, and dark. The oldest places of all, those of black stone, whether on plains, or high in mountain air and buried beneath the snow, or those that were long hidden deep underground. Silent, dark places, that may have been splinters of nothingness, or the void itself.

  But for one.

  There was one of those black-stone edifices that was buried so deep in the bowels of the world, so long forgotten, that even rumour of it had died.

  A black stone haven upon which humans had built a castle long ago.

  The castle and the town both were named Naeth, but the hallways below had been there long, long before.

  That one was not silent. Far from it.

  'Wake, love. Time for sleeping is done, my time is here,' said the voice from below. The voice that was in Tirielle A'm Dralorn's head.

  *

  'The time has come, Tirielle,' said the Seer. 'I am dead, now. Burned up. But it is all as it should be, all is as it must be. Fate moves on, Tirielle. Men like Caeus, they don't understand. Can't fight some things, can you, my friend?'

  In her head. The child she'd saved, in her head. Like a sweet nightmare.

  'I'm all used up, Tirielle, but it's not over. Fight's only just begun.'

  The voices in her head had nearly driven Tirielle insane. Perhaps they had succeeded after all, and she was just slow to realise it, but she was becoming accustomed to these strange intrusions into her thoughts. She cried, for a time, when Sia's voice came no more, but she still wasn't lonely, there in her room.

  Because of the other voice, the one from below. It was almost constant now.

  'Ah!' said the woman, and Tirielle could almost feel the woman's smile, even though she was nothing more than a voice, just madness, even, perhaps.

  'You're awake.'

  Tirielle smiled along at the woman's evident joy. The Waker, finally winning her battle against slumber.

  As she smiled, Tirielle took the knife from the bedspread, from her makeshift war map, and with the sharp edge she sliced a little way into her finger. She watched the blood well up on the tip, then, carefully looking down at the salt pot that was Naeth in her imagination, she allowed a single drop of blood to fall.

  Blood on the pot. For the lady with the voice in her head. The one she thought of as The Waker...but now that was done, who was she? What was she? And why the blood?

  She didn't know why
. All she knew was that it felt right.

  *

  II.

  The Lake of Glass

  Chapter Seventeen

  Renir Esyn dreamed the blood-black dreams of battle.

  Outside the castle where he slept a fitful, broken kind of sleep, a heavy rain pounded the stonework. Shadows of ill-aspect played across the walls of his borrowed room, and sweat beaded his brow despite the cooling autumn wind from the open window. Turning and thrashing, legs and arms trapped within the thick blankets, Renir muttered and groaned in his sleep. He was no stranger to harsh dreams. Renir was a man haunted in his sleep by dreams of his dead wife, or sometimes of foes slain and bloody who would sit at the foot of his bed, atop his blankets.

  Many times now, Renir cried out while the memories of wounds played out from within his wicked sleep. His worst, a sword thrust clean through his thigh, should have laid him up for months, or even killed him.

  But his dream-guardian, the woman who would be his conscience, saw to it that he did not die. That woman, the keeper of his dreams, was his dead wife, Hertha, and she had work for him still.

  Always, she had work for him, dead or alive.

  Renir ran and sweated in his bed. He woke from these dream-nights with little or no recollection of his travails, but was always tired when he had those dreams. So tired.

  Hertha scolded and scorned her husband even though he slept and she was dead. She might have married a shirker, she told him, but she knew he would be king and she would see him wear the crown yet, whether he wanted it or not.

  *

  'Renir!'

  'Leave me sleep, woman,' Renir mumbled, turning his head against his hard cold bed. Damn woman would be after him going out, buying pots, traipsing round Turnmarket. Or worse, getting his fishing boat out on the sea. Sea would be freezing, he'd be cold. Middle of winter, on Sturma's far south? On the Spar?