Rythe Falls

by Craig R. Saunders

  Perhaps it would dry the ink better than sand, he thought. But then, did it matter if it smudged, or if his hand wavered as he wrote? He thought not.

  A sense, above, of some vast mass moving, again.

  Nearly done, now, he thought, but this was tinged with a kind of sadness that few Protocrats would understand. What did the majority of them care for emotions but those born of fear? The dark emotions that fuelled their terrible powers...

  Fernip felt such deep sadness because he alone understood that there would never be a reader for the work before him. He wrote it for his own...amusement? Did he feel humour?

  He didn't. No. But he could understand it. On an intellectual level. As though the sense of the ridiculous was nothing more than an academic exercise.

  To whom could he tell this joke? This immense joke? A joke as big as the galaxy, as big as the Protectorate themselves?

  None would listen. Not because they would not care. No.

  Not one of them would listen because they were all utterly mad and there was nothing left, no magic, no secret, no unveiling, that could save his kind. The blight had destroyed their minds, just as it was always supposed to.

  It is, he thought, quite the funny yarn.

  He tried to laugh, but all that escaped was a dry, rasping hack from lungs full of dust.

  *

  His whole world might as well have been full of dust.

  The only one of their kind who might have had some kind of power, some sway, was gone and dead. For that, Fernip was happy indeed, because Klan Mard was a dark-hearted, evil bastard, even for a Protocrat.

  He would have spat on the memory of the name, but his mouth was dusty, too. Parched.

  Fernip Unger shrugged and dipped his quill tip into a small, dwindling, bottle of ink.

  Perhaps he would run out of ink before he finished telling his grand joke.

  Now, he thought, that really would be funny.

  Scratching on the rough dry paper in the meagre light of a single candle, Fernip wrote once more.

  ...Rythe hangs in the balance, and like two weights on opposing sides of a scale, the continent of Lianthre faces the country of Sturma from across the long and wide ocean.

  Sturma is naught but a small nation. A nation (to the minds of the Lianthrians that even know it exists) of barbarians. Once, that nation was strong and proud. Ruled by Thanes, and ultimately a line of kings, for a time it knew stability, civilisation, and the trappings thereof - art, commerce, architecture, religion...these things flourished. For a time.

  Under the kings, and during the time of kings, yes...they flourished. Remnants remain, still.

  Some of those kings were great men, some mediocre, some bad, ineffectual, even evil.

  Kings are mortal men, after all.

  For a moment, Fernip paused. He didn't tire, true, but sometimes he wished for a diversion.

  For many hours now the cacophony in the halls, and on the land above, had slowed.

  He realised he had no sense of noise, movement, other than his own.

  Were they, at last, all gone?

  He shrugged. It mattered not. But in a way...it was a kind of solace to know that Arram, the entire place, was his. His alone. Maybe this beautiful loneliness would only last for a short while...but he suspected...not.

  ...Long, long before men dotted the earth with their short-lived deeds, before man even learned to write or speak, before they thought or had the ability to record their trials and victories, a different kind held sway upon that planet.

  The Elethyn...

  Fernip dipped the quill once more, nearly at the end of the bottle.

  Once, the Elethyn ruled with hate. And their bastard children rule it with the same tools now, he thought. But not for long.

  ...They were defeated by treachery, by one of their own kind. A creature known only as 'Caeus'.

  When they left is not know, but their mark did remain in a weaker, diluted race. Those known as the Hierarchy, and, hidden too long in their towers and minarets, the Hierarchy dwindled to nothing more than myth.

  They left the land to my kind. I, Fernip Unger, am one.

  We, together, are the Protectorate.

  And we are nothing more than an entire race of fools.

  Fernip, tireless, wrote long after the silence had enveloped even the most distant reaches of Arram.

  ...The places of power are merely...beacons. Arram, Sybremreyen, the Kuh'taenium.

  The humans, the rahken, we Protocrat, even the Hierarchs, are all, ultimately, nothing more than...animals. Here to be farmed, or culled, or butchered, when the Elethyn come home.

  We build our halls and towers high. We build our society large and far and wide.

  And in the end it crumbles to nothing but dust.

  My domain is dust.

  As is Rythe.

  He knew the outcome was in no doubt - the blight had taken hold. Now there would be nothing but madness and despair.

  ...We brought on the blight with our hate. We let it grow. We embraced it. But it is not strength. It is not a disease, or a sign that we have become better than ourselves.

  Why does the blight affect only our kin?

  If we'd spent more time reading, as I have, than killing...we would have known. We might have saved ourselves.

  But we did not and no one knows but me and I will not tell because...

  Fernip tried, desperately, to summon a tear for the world of Rythe, but he was dry.

  ...Because of my towering hate for myself and my kind...and because it is too late.

  The blight is no disease. It is a pathway for those souls that travel, even now, as nothing more than a blood-red light. It is the path for the Elethyn to follow home.

  'I'd kill myself, if I could,' said Fernip to the dust and the dark and only remaining candle. But of course he could not kill himself. He was already a long time dead.

  Klan Mard had seen to that.

  *

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  When an army of men marches to war, there is disarray. No matter the discipline, the harshness of the commanders, there must be disarray, because the world is not created for petty displays of might. Roads curve, meander, head up and down inclines. Rivers cut swathes across the landscape between battles, mountains spread armies and supply lines thin. Geography is untidy and men cannot make it into something that it is not. Armies may be pieces in a larger game, but the world is not so simple as a board upon which those pieces move.

  But upon a plain, like that which surrounds the immense, sprawling complex known only as Arram?

  There, an army can shine.

  *

  The Speculate, the leaders of the Protectorate, looked out of place. Rain made the ground soft, but it was largely sand and thirsty ground. But they were accustomed to shade and shelter, not the road, nor the weather.

  'This is what we have to contend with?' said Jek Yrie, the most powerful of them.

  Paenth Dorn D’tha, one of the most talented, and the leader of the Prognostication Division, looked like a rat. Her hair, straight like all Protocrats, fell to her waist and down most of her forehead. Rain dripped from each of them.

  Haran Irulius actually shook himself, just like a dog might. Jek shook his head.

  He knew it was madness. But he, too, was not immune.

  To empty the whole of their home, Arram?

  Madness.

  To stand in the rain, like common soldiers? For this? For this?

  The blight was in nearly every one of their kind. Blood-red eyes and more. The eyes were a sign of ascension. They all, even the lowliest warrior of the Tenthers, were more powerful than ever. But judgement, control...Jek could feel it slipping from himself. It, too, was gone from many of his kind already.

  But still some core remained within Jek that let him understand that, yes, the power was burgeoning, and that the return was nearing (how long now? Weeks? Months? No longer than that, surely...) but that they were losing something of themselves,
too. Jek could feel it slipping away. Centuries of planning, countless hours of manoeuvring councillors, persuading in the darkness with words or steel. For nothing? For this?

  The might of Arram, the entirety of the Protectorate, had been drawn back to this barren, sand-blasted plain, for this...two men, in simple steel armour, on horseback.

  Jek felt himself blood-eyed and drowning in the fury of the blight.

  Behind him, an army, arrayed as it should be. Upon the plains of Lianthre, in the centre of the greatest continent of Rythe. The largest, best trained, most powerful army the world had ever seen. Miles of steel worn by fast, terrible soldiers who spent their lives training with the sword. Bayers, awful hounds, held on leashes, ready, eager to go to war. Mages with the power of destruction a few simple words or even a thought away. Fire and talent, fury and rage...

  And yes, insanity, but what army was not full of it?

  The rain fell on the mightiest army in history, glistening on robes and cloaks, on warhound's dark flanks, running to drip from scabbards and sheaths and gauntlets and helms. Plumes still bristled upon the Pernant's helms at the head of their Tenther units. Not a single protocrat moved, nor grumbled, despite the insanity of the blight that boiled throughout the entire ranks.

  Not one soldier, not one mage, no one. Nothing but the rain and Jek's words made a sound.

  And the two men? Armoured and armed, yes...but two men?

  Suddenly, Jek had not the slightest idea why he had order his people, his army, into this wet, miserable, sandy expanse.

  To make war on these men...one of them old, at that? The Speculate could make out the man's grey, whiskery face even at this distance, even with his bloody eyes.

  The blight was making a fool of him.

  No. All of us. The blight is making fools of all of us.

  Are we undone already? Is this what the blight leads to? Idiocy?

  'Idiots!' he bellowed, turning from the men. Where they even there? Did he now have to doubt his own eyes?

  'Get back in! It is not time...this was...'

  Oril Poulgian blinked, as though waking from a daydream.

  'A drill...'

  Jek was thankful, but said nothing to Poulgian. They would have words, and soon. Presume to treat me, the Speculate, like a mewling babe on a mother's tit?

  More than words.

  'A drill!' his voice, his words, gained strength with the power of his magic and his blight-fuelled rage.

  Why had they come? Why? Yes, they could go back, back to Arram...but what had spurred them to come and stand like pretty statues in the rain?

  He turned and looked and there, still, those two taunting bastards. Mere mortals. Not even gifted. Nothing special about them at all.

  Am I truly, truly insane?

  He did not wonder for long. The men spurred their horses, and came toward the Protectorate's entire army.

  *

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Gurt sighed and shook his head. He turned his face toward the sky, one last time. About their heads, a swirling storm of red light, all coalescing about the massed army just a short ride away.

  'They don't see it, do they? How can they not see it?'

  Perr made some kind of movement with his shoulders that might have been a shrug. The man was perhaps the least expressive human Gurt had ever known. He didn't know why, but for some reason he liked the man. No give in him, not an inch.

  'I admit, I'm about to piss myself. Don't know why. It's not like we're going to battle. You ever get that?'

  Perr grunted. Gurt had no idea whether in agreement or if the man just had a little wind.

  That eerie red light felt like a rain storm. Heavy, as though it was getting ready to lash down. But it was just light, right? Light didn't have weight. Wasn't like rain, or blood, or steel.

  Yet there was that sense in the air, like a good storm charging up. Two of them sitting proud in nice shiny steel, too.

  It's not a storm, Gurt reminded himself. And we're dead anyway, right? What does it matter? Maybe there's some kind of red lightning up there, maybe red rain. Maybe invisible creatures, large or small, once called the Elethyn. Maybe those Sun Destroyers really have the whole world tied up in a bag.

  'Doesn't matter, right?' said Gurt, not realising he spoke aloud. Perr was so quiet Gurt often found himself answering for the man.

  'Nothing ever did,' said Perr.

  Gurt nearly pissed himself right then at the man's voice. But he held it in and grinned instead.

  'No, I don't suppose it did,' said Gurt. 'Shall we yank the Yemandril's tail?'

  Perr smiled and nodded, just a tiny inclination of his head. He put his visor down. Gurt didn't have a visor, just a simple helm.

  But then, it didn't matter, did it?

  If these bastards wanted them dead, all they had to do was fry them up in their armour.

  *

  Jek raised his hands to send fire tumbling from the sky into the two men who were galloping toward their ranks like lunatics, now.

  His hands dropped.

  I'm seeing...things...

  'Speculate!' came the first cry, then another, until the outer edges of the great army was in sudden disarray. He turned his head to look behind, to the left, the right. Then back again.

  What trickery...?

  The two men in steel were riding hard, like demons, and all around the ranks of his proud army, a great wall of fire shot outward toward something unseen, and then back into his warriors. Bayers and Tenthers were blasted into the air, hundreds of fighters, mages, warhounds, all smoking or on fire, falling in agony or flying, broken and smoking, into the wet air. Sudden, intense panic poured from the outer formations toward the centre in mere moments. Jek himself forgot the riders, turning around wildly, trying desperately to understand why his army was...what?

  They were simply doing what mad things do...going with the fury.

  Of course they're mad... we all are.

  A mage blasted fire from his eyes at some enemy that Jek could not see, but the fire hit...nothing.

  No...it hit the air?

  Then the fire returned ten-fold.

  The mage was a smoking ruin. His charred corpse twirled, sank to the ground, curled in on itself like a baby and continued to burn.

  We're in a battle with...ourselves? Our madness manifest?

  But then Jek looked again at the patch of air and saw it...shimmer.

  It is like looking through impure glass. As though there is a disturbance there, or...something hiding...

  Jek was insane, yes, but wily. He always had been, and perhaps in he alone that core remained. Even a madman could not have held the position of Speculate for long without some inner strength.

  He searched through the growing, rolling clouds of smoke, through the stench, and saw more of those telling, shimmering spots, bold against the landscape now that he knew to look. There were places where the smoke parted, or a sense of blurring at the edge of vision.

  Magic won't work against them, he thought. Perhaps these strange, invisible attackers were under some kind of shield? Magic, for sure. He understood, now - the magic amplified their own attacks and were sending back fire and lightning with terrible effect on the Protectorate army.

  Jek wore only a simple black robe, but wore a short sword at his hip, which he drew now. He broke into a run toward the nearest anomaly, surprisingly fast for a man who rarely exerted himself. He had no sense that the thing even registered his approach.

  With a slashing strike, his blade hit...something.

  But Jek was mad and angry and confused and forgot that such things as this creature, this armour, existed.

  History is often forgotten, even by those who study in.

  As the blade struck the ethereal figure in the smoke, the fury and rage of the strike simply rebounded onto the attacker. Jek fell to the floor, dumbly staring at his own dark blood pouring into the sand at his knees.

  When did I end up on my knees?

  Th
e figure became solid when struck, though. A terrifying figure - taller than Jek (himself large for a Protocrate), thinner, encased entirely in some bright metal that shifted and flowed around the creature. Within the armour, Jek saw the faces of slain, bound warriors screaming and snarling inside the metal itself.

  Such things are...legend...

  Only the Hierarchs ever had sentinel armour. But the Hierarchy was no more. They were dead...asleep...nothing.

  'You were supposed to be dead!' Jek shouted. 'You're not real! Nothing!'

  He felt like he shouted. In his head, his voice sounded angry and he roared. But he did not. Air burbled through his ravaged throat and his head hit the sand with a thud. The Hierarch stamped on Jek Yrie's prone skull, just to make sure, and strode into the fray with its sentinel armour already craving more blood.

  *

  Gurt and Perr suddenly found themselves riding hard toward a battle they didn't understand and sure death at the hands of the shifting, awful warriors laying waste in moments to most of the greatest army either of the seasoned warrior had ever seen.

  Unspoken agreement, even, was not needed. Their futile charge ended with both men hauling hard on their reins. Dusty sand clouded the air around them, their horses hot and ready to work.

  'Maybe not today,' said Perr, voicing what Gurt was thinking.

  One thing to go down hard, riding to your death at the end of a blade. But this...was...

  Pointless.

  These new warriors, these things in their mystic armour? They were beyond Gurt's limited understand...beyond anyone's, maybe.

  The rain was abating and the ground already dry. Screams and smoke and fire, lightning, the clash of sword and blood. Dust around their horses was already settling back to the ground. The smoke of burning bodies was drifting, obscuring the battlefield. Again and again there were flashes of lightning, gouts of fire. Pain and screeching, high and inhuman, from within the smog.