Hymn

by Ken Scholes

“You want me to provide you with an escort?”

  Winters nodded. “Yes. Me and my friends.”

  Something flashed across the woman’s face, and Winters wasn’t certain what it was. Still, Erys sat quietly, her mouth firm in thought, before she spoke. “Why would I do this?”

  “Because you remember the dream. It was like nothing you’ve ever experienced. The hope. The sense of history. The awe. I remember it, too, and I’m compelled by it to remind everyone that even if comprehending it fully lies beyond our current grasp, it still holds great meaning. And it is something we can all lay hold of—because it is something we have all shared.” Her words tumbled out faster than she’d thought they would, and as they did, she saw the light growing in her captor’s eyes. “The way to the moon is open. You’ve seen it your entire life, green with life in the sky above this dying place. The dream is the harbinger of Homecoming.”

  Yes, Daughter.

  Erys stood, suddenly agitated. “I will take your request into consideration,” she said in a terse voice. Her face showed frustration, but in her eyes, Winters saw more. She is also compelled but does not wish to be.

  “I am grateful for your consideration,” she said, inclining her head before standing herself.

  Her guard was waiting, silent and hollow-eyed, and Winters followed her back up the stairs to her room. When the door closed behind her, she listened for the key in the lock and heard nothing. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she found her mind once more wandering back to Rudolfo and what he’d done.

  More than that, she realized. What had been done to him. And to Lady Tam, of course.

  And the thought of her friend and mentor, the woman who’d taught her to dance with the knives, brought back the tears that were never far from Winters now.

  How was it possible that the little boy was gone? How could Jin’s own father have done this? Winters had never contemplated motherhood until she’d met little Lord Jakob. That, combined with the blossoming love she’d experienced with Neb, had brought about those first stirrings, though she knew that path was distant if ever she were to walk it. And she no longer imagined Neb being the one she shared that path with, as badly as she wanted to. Or at least she hadn’t when he was something alien to her, something different and frightening.

  But knowing now that she was every bit as different stirred something in her, and she knew that her fears of that boy were unfounded. He’d charged to her rescue without a thought, even though Winters was a girl who needed no rescuing, and he’d done it for love. He’d even risked his role in the dream to seek her out, somehow knowing she was beneath the regent’s careful blade.

  And he was out there somewhere, doing his part for her and her people. “I must do mine,” she said to the empty room. “And trust him to find me when it is time.”

  Outside, the rain was letting up and the first rays of sunshine burned their way through the low clouds, casting dirty light across her room.

  They’d all done their part and had all paid high prices. Some of that cost now brought her shoulders to gently shaking again.

  Do not despair, Daughter. All will be well.

  It was the voice again, ancient and quiet and sure. Winters took a deep breath and held it, willing the comfort of that voice to drive out the sorrow of loss that weighed her heart.

  When it couldn’t, she let the loss wash over her and through her, and watched the waves outside, waiting for her captor to set her free.

  Because despite everything that broke her heart and clouded her vision, Winteria bat Mardic knew that the shared dream would not only bring about her freedom but also the freedom of a scattered people she would soon be calling home.

  Lysias

  General Lysias of the Ninefold Forest Army lay on his belly in the dark, his head cocked and listening. Tybard lay beside him, their hands upon each other’s shoulder.

  He heard nothing, but that meant little down here. They’d lost men to cave-ins and sudden drops along with their casualties from the Y’Zirites they’d encountered along the way. It had been worse around the vicinity of Windwir, but once they’d had those initial contacts, their enemy had stepped up patrols.

  Lysias hesitated, then pressed his words into the man’s shoulder. Blakely says this is the path.

  The others were at least a league behind them now. The forward scouts had brought them here without light, moving as silently as they could.

  Lysias felt Tybard’s fingers moving. We are near the ruins of the palace.

  Lysias had visited the Papal Summer Palace a handful of times during his career, usually escorting Sethbert to visit his cousin there on matters of Order business. Now, it was a pile of snow-covered stones somewhere far above them, brought down by the Machtvolk Rebellion that tossed their young queen from her wicker throne and established her sister, Ria, instead. And deep below, he lay on his belly listening at the edge of a shaft, feeling the warm air from it as it tickled his hair and beard.

  He pressed more words into Tybard’s flesh. Bring a platoon up. Send the scouts down. Tell Blakely and Symeon to be ready.

  Lysias lay still as Tybard crept back and passed his orders along. They were nearly done now if all went well. But what after? Keep to the Beneath Places and make his way south? Or bring his force up and out of the hole, a small but sharp knife at Ria and her Machtvolk’s back. Most of her forces were near Windwir now, providing support to the Y’Zirites. If he and Orius had done their work well, the Y’Zirites had no way of knowing why Lysias and his men had ventured so far north. And ideally, splitting the army yet again had covered his tracks to this place.

  A new hand on his back and Lysias rolled to the side, letting the scout move past and onto the iron rungs set into the side of this shaft. They’d been warm to the touch, and it had chilled him. He put his own hand out to touch the scout’s magicked shoulder.

  Eyes and ears open.

  The scout didn’t reply. Lysias felt the slightest passing of five more and then waited. He wasn’t sure how long he waited; time passed differently in darkness. But before long, he heard the slightest shuffle of boots moving in the corridor behind him.

  Tybard’s hand on his arm made him jump even though he expected it. We’re here.

  How long had it been? An hour at least, he figured. If the first scout whistles clear, we descend quickly. Blakely and Symeon last. He paused, then said what he knew Tybard already understood. I go first.

  When the whistle came, it was soft and low, and Lysias was not sure if its softness was the distance it traveled or the scout’s intended volume. But at its sound, he pushed his pack to the side. They’d learned fast to lower the packs by rope after, rather than lose men to something as unnecessary as falling off a ladder. Lysias turned and twisted himself, dangling over the edge of the shaft. He felt Tybard’s strong hand on his arm, steadying him as his boots found the rung and he began his descent.

  The warm air was disorienting; it seemed out of place, but so did the warmth in the metal rungs. They’d seen strange things—rooms with quicksilver lakes and lichen to give light, strange stones set in dark and pitted metal. And some of the other places had felt warm to the touch, but most of it was cold.

  Cold and dark.

  He climbed past his first count of one hundred, his arms and legs feeling the strain as he moved. By two hundred, he knew there were others above him, but he couldn’t hear them. His own heart, beating in his temples, drowned out any noise they made. His breath was ragged and his arms cramping when his foot hit the ground. Five hundred and sixty-three.

  The scout met him and guided him to the side. Lysias leaned against the wall and caught his breath. Then he pulled his canteen and took a long drink. He ventured a whisper. “Have we found it?” It was sudden noise in hours of silence.

  “Aye, General. We think so.”

  “Strike a lamp, then,” he said.

  The three sparks it took to light it cast strange shadows into the space around them, and as the mining lantern glowe
d to life, Lysias saw a large round room with a tunnel exiting across from where he waited, sloping down and lost in darkness.

  When the others reached the bottom, he took the lamp and led them forward, leaving the scout behind to watch their flank. As they moved, he realized that the corridor wound its way downward in a spiral, the slope gradually increasing. Below, a dim light grew, and as it built, he shuttered the lantern and let it guide them.

  This room was long and wide, its walls covered in a wet moss that also provided light. Moving along the edges and ceiling of the room, he saw white tubes that he at first mistook for bones. They joined something like the rough trunk of a black tree that ran from the top of the room to its bottom. Blakely paused and drew a small but old book from his pocket. Symeon leaned over his shoulder. “This is it,” the Androfrancine said. The excitement in his voice seemed out of place, though Lysias himself understood a certain amount of awe. In their wanderings thus far, he’d not seen anything like it.

  He stretched out a hand to touch the surface of one of the white tubes. “What are they?”

  “Roots,” Brother Symeon said. “They feed into the water supply for the Named Lands.”

  As the platoon spread out into the room before them, the two Androfrancines moved quickly to the center. Lysias followed closely, watching as their hands moved over the system of roots, following them to the larger trunk. “What do they do?” he asked.

  “General Orius has not cleared you for that information. But suffice it to say, delivering the pathogen here will bring about our desired effect.”

  Blakely unslung his pack and began working the straps. Lysias watched him draw a large cloth-wrapped tube from it, then turned back to Symeon. “For how long?”

  Symeon’s eyebrows furrowed. “For how long?”

  “How long does it poison the water for them?”

  Blakely answered in Symeon’s hesitation. “Forever,” he said. “It isn’t poison. It is a living organism released into the water. It will reproduce and remain there.”

  Blakely had unwrapped a metal cylinder and crouched with it now. Lysias crouched with him. “Has the Order done anything like this before? Is that how you know about this place?”

  The man said nothing, glancing up to his partner. Symeon’s voice was flat. “Again, General Orius hasn’t authorized us to give you that information.”

  Lysias felt his anger spiking but set it aside as Blakey drew a leather satchel from his pack now and unrolled it. He lifted a wool bundle from it and unwrapped it, revealing a long, thick needle made of a bright silver Lysias instantly recognized.

  Firstfall steel. The same metal Isaak was made of. And the Marsh Queen’s axe. Rudolfo’s arch-engineer, Charles, had even managed to turn that highly reflective metal into a device that could detect magicked scouts.

  Symeon joined Blakely now, carefully holding the canister as Blakely fitted the needle to it. Then they stood, and together they put the needle against the largest of the white roots just above the place it joined the dark trunk. Nodding to each other, they pushed, putting the full weight of their bodies into it as the needle resisted, then penetrated the root.

  Once it was in all the way, Blakely twisted the bottom of the canister, and Lysias heard the softest hiss.

  Their silence told Lysias that he would need to have a conversation with Orius if and when they met again. The idea that the water supply of this entire corner of the continent was controlled through one point, deeply buried beneath the surface, raised his curiosity. And if the Androfrancines knew of it, they likely knew why as well.

  The hissing had stopped, and the men looked to Lysias now expectantly. He stared at the canister. “That’s all, then? We’re done here?”

  Blakey grinned. “Yes, General. The war will be over in a matter of days.”

  Could we really win it from here? He remembered the Blood Guard, kicking and choking her last from the water she’d sipped. Lysias and Orius had drank from the same canteen. The idea of what it might do to an army and leadership that relied heavily upon blood magicks made him want to smile as well. But he didn’t. Something dark in all of it pushed at him, but he did not fully understand why. “Let’s hope so,” he said. “This victory’s been a long time coming, paid for in blood.”

  They carefully removed the needle and its canister, wrapping it again carefully in the cloth. And when it was time to leave the room, Lysias sent the others ahead and followed after at a slower pace.

  Could it be so easy?

  Somewhere, above them and distant, a kin-wolf howled in the Beneath Places and assured Lysias that it could not.

  Chapter

  9

  Rudolfo

  The thick carpet beneath his bare feet was welcome after days in his boots, and Rudolfo stretched before the dressing room’s mirror. Several options had been laid out for him, clothing from the manor’s owner gladly offered up to the hero of the Named Lands.

  The wound upon his chest was angry and red but healing and itched more now than anything else. The hot water of the bath had soothed it, and now the cool air in the room brought the itching back.

  Rudolfo resisted the urge to scratch and opted against the fresh dressing for the mark. Instead, he chose a dark cotton shirt and pulled it on, followed by a pair of trousers the color of buckskin. He found soft slippers by the dressing room’s door and slid his feet into them, padding back into the bedchamber.

  They’d been in this new location for just a few days now—a hunting manor tucked into the forests between the eastern edge of the City-States and the western shores of Caldus Bay. He’d spent his time learning what he could from his host about the war and about developments among the Y’Zirites. There were rumors of dark tidings back in Ahm’s Glory, though there was limited intelligence available. Their host, Lord Carylin, had hoped Rudolfo would know more, having come fresh from the Y’Zirite command on the Divided Isle.

  Something is afoot there. Vlad Li Tam was at the center of it, and it strained Rudolfo’s judgment to give over those thoughts and turn instead to the image of his son in the shadow of that white tree.

  I’ve seen so little of him these two years. He felt a stab—pain as real as a knife—when he contemplated their separation. And that pain gave him resolve to end that separation by making a home that his boy could return to. One more war as a general and then half of a life to spend as a father.

  And librarian. Rudolfo chuckled at this.

  There was a knock at the door, and it swung open before Rudolfo spoke. He opened his mouth and closed it as Esarov and Renard slipped into the room.

  “We must be quick,” Renard said as he pulled an ornate wooden box from beneath his cloak.

  Esarov approached Rudolfo, wiping the rain from his spectacles. His long hair was tied back and damp from the rain. “Lord Rudolfo,” he said, extending both his hands.

  Rudolfo took the cold hands into his own and squeezed them. “Overseer Esarov.”

  It was obvious that the man didn’t like his new title, but it had fallen to him in the manner he’d supported from the start—his council of governors, each elected to rule their particular city-state—had named him so, and since then, he’d been spearheading talks with the Y’Zirites.

  The man’s smile widened. “I had no idea of your plan. Renard was quite quiet about it. It was…” He paused, looking for the right word. “It was poetic.”

  Rudolfo inclined his head. “It was necessary.”

  “And effective,” Renard added. “It’s destabilized their command structure quickly.”

  Rudolfo gestured to the sitting area just off the bedchamber. After they were seated, Renard placed the box upon the small table between them and worked at its Rufello lock.

  “General Orius cannot meet with you at this present time,” Renard said. “But he sent these and told me to assure you that he will arrange a meeting soon.”

  He lifted the lid of the box and tipped it toward Rudolfo. Laying in a velvet bed were two still, si
lver sparrows, their wings folded closed and their bodies stretched out from beak to tail. Renard lifted one of the birds, his fingers gently pushing at its neck as he raised to his lips. “Activate. Voice authorization Renard. New authorization follows.” He held it to Rudolfo as the tiny bird stirred to life. “Tell it your name.”

  Rudolfo leaned toward it, his mouth suddenly dry. “I am Rudolfo.”

  “Close authorization.” Renard handed the bird over, and Rudolfo took it carefully, unprepared for how heavy it sat in his hand for something so delicate and old.

  Renard did the same with the second moon sparrow, then showed Rudolfo the hidden switches beneath the silver feathers on its neck and beneath its wings. “It is oriented to place names and can be oriented to specific individuals by touch. If you send it to me, it will find me. And vice versa.”

  Rudolfo held the birds in one hand, amazed at how perfectly still they balanced there. He glanced up to Renard. “Thank you,” he said. He stared at them for a moment, then passed them over to the Waste guide.

  Renard deactivated the moon sparrows and tucked them back into the box. “Be careful with them,” he said. “Kin-raven have been known to hunt them.”

  Rudolfo nodded. He remembered well the moon sparrow sent to Isaak—the one Jin Li Tam had rescued from one of the larger Y’Zirite messenger birds. “I will be careful,” he said. Then he turned to Esarov. “How reliable are your lines of communication in the absence of the birds?”

  The overseer shrugged. “We have the usual—couriers and codes and drops. Since the Watcher has been taken out of the equation our codes have lasted longer.”

  Rudolfo turned to Renard. “I’m assuming that Orius is in communication with the other houses and is aware of what resources he has available to him when the time is right?”

  Renard nodded. “Aye. And he’s working with Lysias as well.”

  “I’ve sent Philemus to gather the Wandering Army and bring it south. I will need to coordinate with Orius.” He leaned forward. “Do you have any idea how long before this plan of his is executed?”