by Greg Keyes
“Arese?”
“Yes, Prince Attrebus?”
“You say you worked for my father.”
She glanced at her companion, but he didn’t give any sort of reaction. She pulled her shoulders back.
“I was at one time in his small circle, majesty.”
“You have the brand?”
She nodded and reached to show him, but he shook his head.
“That’s okay. I believe you.” He took a deep breath. “So you knew, then? About me?”
“I’m not quite sure what you mean, Prince—”
“I’m sure you know exactly what I mean,” he said.
She made a little grimace, and then acknowledged with a tilt of her head.
“Can you tell me why?” he asked.
“Your father—he’s a brilliant general, a cunning emperor. I’ve never known a man so strong. But when it came to you, he always had something of a weak spot.”
“Weak spot? My father doesn’t have a sentimental bone in his body.”
“I don’t mean that way,” she said. “I mean he had no idea what to do with you. When Hierem suggested you be groomed as a sort of boy hero, I think he was relieved to have some sort of direction. It was a way to keep an eye on you and keep you entertained at the same time.”
“Yes, when I was ten, I might see that,” Attrebus said. “But when I was fifteen? Nineteen?”
“Sometimes when something like that gets started, it takes on a life of its own. No one saw how far it was going to go, how locked into the role you would be. It’s been ten years since I could talk freely with the Emperor, but I’m sure he was hoping to draw you out of it gradually, marry you, settle you down, prepare you to rule.”
Attrebus absorbed that, remembering Gulan saying something about marriage not long before …
“I got them all killed,” he murmured. “And I should have known better. I should have seen it myself, but I didn’t want to. And for that, everyone who rode with me—”
“Hierem did that, not you,” Vineben cut in.
“He’s right,” Sul said tersely. “This is no time for this sort of thing.” His voice softened a little. “Maybe you should do what he suggests—go to your father. If I can’t kill Vuhon by myself …” He trailed off.
“Then me being there won’t help?” Attrebus finished. “What about all of that about needing Coo?”
“I’ll find him,” Sul replied.
“I’m not the warrior you are,” Attrebus admitted. “I’ve got no arcane arts. But if I hadn’t been with you in the cave, Elhul would have killed you.”
“Maybe,” Sul admitted.
“You need me.”
Sul was taking a breath to say something else when Attrebus heard a thud loud enough to leave his ears ringing and his stomach threatening to rush up and out of his mouth. He swayed, trying not to lose his footing. It was dark, and someone was standing right in front of him.
“Vuhon!” Sul snarled.
The Dunmer’s eyes arched in surprise and his mouth opened, but before he had a chance to say anything, Sul had already stabbed him with Umbra; the blade went in deep.
Vuhon vented an odd little gasp as Sul yanked the sword out and cut at his head, but the Dark Elf caught the blade with his hand, which burned with a steely blue light.
Attrebus swung Flashing at the joint of Vuhon’s leg; the blade struck, but it felt as if he’d hit iron. Vuhon ignored him in favor of striking Sul with his other hand, sending the sorcerer staggering back.
Attrebus was making another cut when Vuhon’s eye flicked to him, and suddenly he felt unbelievable cold spike through his body. He lost the timing of his attack, and Vuhon easily sidestepped the blow and caught him by the collar.
Then a bellowing Sul smashed into Vuhon, stabbing him again, and they all went out into space.
Animal terror passed through Attrebus as the world, the starry sky, and dark Umbriel spun nightmarishly around him. The fall seemed to go on much too long, but in reality he knew he’d only drawn one good breath for screaming before they struck a strangely yielding surface. Fire flashed and he was buffeted away as if by an enormous burning hand. He flailed to get up, but the surface he’d landed on shifted crazily.
Then he understood where he was—on top of the glass forest.
It was the best name he had for it; it was where Sul and he had arrived on their last visit here. Far below, a great web of flexible, glasslike cables anchored to various buildings along the rim formed a large web suspended over the valley and sump below. From the web, hundreds of smaller tubes grew skyward, branching, and those branches dividing until they at last became a virtual cloud of translucent twigs no bigger around than a little finger—and it was this upper layer they had fallen on.
He managed to get to his knees and heard Sul screaming. He’d heard Sul cry out in his sleep, but this was different; it was hysterical, insane in temper. It reminded him of Elhul.
Sul struck at Vuhon again, but glass coils sprouted up below the lord of Umbriel and raised him above the reach of the weapon. The crystalline forest suddenly pulsed with blue-white light, and Vuhon’s eyes shone with the same radiance. Attrebus felt tendrils grip at his feet, pulling him down, and Sul as well.
“You dare to bring that here? You think I’m afraid of that?” Vuhon roared so loudly that the sound shocked against Attrebus’s face.
Sul’s only answer was an incoherent screech and a slash at the tubules supporting Vuhon. They shattered, much to Attrebus’s surprise.
It appeared to surprise Vuhon, too, as those supporting him collapsed in shards. Attrebus felt a strange hum—it seemed, almost, to be in his teeth—and then most of the cables suddenly darkened. Only those that plucked Vuhon away from Sul’s next attack—and those that held Sul—still shone with unabated light.
Vuhon shouted something, and a darkness smote Sul, sending him tumbling back and Umbra flying from his hands. More of the tubules went dark or shone with a sickly violet color.
Attrebus, now completely free, struggled toward Vuhon, who seemed drained by his attack on Sul.
He got within five unsteady strides before Vuhon seemed to notice him. Attrebus swung hard at his neck, nothing fancy. The sword struck, and this time bit a little. Not much, but it cut the artery. Vuhon slapped his hand over the sudden spurt of blood.
Then a glowing cable caught Attrebus by the ankle and another wrapped around his neck. He slashed as best he could at it, but in an instant his sword arm was immobilized as well. The cables passed him away from Vuhon, then began drawing him slowly down into them.
Sul was back up. Attrebus saw him glance at Umbra, which lay between him and Vuhon, then back at him. Even from ten yards away, Attrebus could see his companion shaking as if with palsy.
“What have you done to me?” Vuhon exploded. “Tell me, or he dies immediately.”
Sul took another step toward the sword.
“I cut him, Sul,” Attrebus yelled. “He’s weaker. Something’s wrong with him—”
The cable tightened on his neck and he couldn’t breathe.
Sul took another step. More of the cables pulsed darkly, and Vuhon began backing away. Attrebus saw the fear on his face, because Vuhon knew what he himself knew—that nothing would stop Sul now.
Then the cables pulled him down and he couldn’t see anything. All he had to concentrate on was how much he wanted to breathe, and how he couldn’t, would never again. He strained every fiber of his being against the coils that held him, but they still glowed brightly. Above, broken into rainbows by hundreds of strange prisms, he saw what must be Vuhon’s radiant perch.
Kill him, Sul, he thought as his muscles began to finally loosen.
But then everything around him seemed to shatter and Sul was there. They were falling again.
This time they hit water, but if it had killed him, he would never have known it wasn’t stone.
When Mere-Glim reached the weak end of the bough, he stopped and stared down. He saw the moo
ns both above and below, and for a moment he didn’t care to wonder why or how—it just made sense. Then he reluctantly sorted out that they were over water, a vast body of water. The sea?
But no, ahead he saw a great tower in the moonlight, and the vast circle of a city, and he knew—from all of Annaïg’s ramblings—it could only be one place.
“What is it?” Fhena asked from behind him.
“The Imperial City,” he replied.
“It’s huge.”
“Yes,” he replied. But he was having a hard time concentrating on the city.
Because the trees were loud now—as strong in his mind as the Hist had ever been, except they weren’t telling him what to do; they were singing, a deep and melancholy song.
“Can you hear that?” he asked. “The trees?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Have they always sounded like this?”
“Yes and no. Their song changed a few days ago.”
“A few days ago? Before or after I died?”
“After, I think.”
“I dreamed this,” he said. “When I was—before waking, just now.”
“You weren’t waking,” she said. “You were being born.”
“Annaïg brought me back,” he murmured. “But the trees …” He examined his limbs again, which looked and did not look like those he remembered, and he realized his heart was beating more softly.
“She loves you,” Fhena said. “She thought she was doing what was best for you.”
Glim knelt and then lay against the bark, closing his eyes, feeling it all turning under him.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I didn’t realize before. I shouldn’t have been angry.”
Fhena sat down on her heels. “What is it, Glim?”
“They shaped me,” he murmured. “Like the Hist. They shaped me to do something.”
“What?”
He started to tell her, but then felt it, like a sickness in his bones.
“No,” he gasped. “Oh, Annaïg, no!”
“What is it?”
“I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’ve got to stop her.”
“I’m coming with you, then.”
“It’s dangerous,” he said. “It’s no place for you.”
“I know where my place is,” she said quietly. “And you need to realize it.”
Her gaze caught him and turned something inside of him.
“Okay,” he said. “Follow me.”
SEVEN
Hierem appeared and Colin struck from behind, cupping his left palm to the minister’s forehead and thrusting his knife toward the base of his skull.
“No!” Hierem shouted. He sounded exactly like the man on the bridge, before Colin had stabbed him.
Colin flinched. He dropped the knife and shifted his grip to a choke hold.
“What are you doing?” Letine yelled, lifting her own dagger.
“No, don’t kill him,” Colin said. “We still don’t know what he was up to. We need to—”
“You don’t understand,” Letine said, stepping up to deliver the blow.
It never landed. The blade hit something an inch from Hierem’s throat and exploded in a blinding flash of light. Letine shrieked and fell back. Colin tried to tighten his grip, but suddenly Hierem was as slippery as an oiled snake, slithering free of his grasp as if from a child.
“You really don’t understand,” Hierem said.
Colin dropped and got his knife, but as soon as he touched it, he again remembered the man he’d murdered, and all those corpses by the road, like broken dolls. He took a deep, shuddering breath, but he knew it was pointless. It didn’t matter what happened here today. It didn’t matter what happened anywhere, ever, because in the end there was nothing. He looked at the knife and felt a sob heave up from his chest. Then he slumped down to the floor.
“I can’t imagine what you think you’re up to, Arese,” Hierem said, stepping toward the woman. Her eyes looked blind, unfocused.
“Colin?” she shouted.
“He’s not much use to you, I’m afraid,” Hierem said. “He’s a bit glum right now.”
A sharp report rang from the walls in the room, and suddenly something appeared, something shaped a bit like a man but covered in black scales, with three scythelike fingers on each hand. It hopped, birdlike, toward Hierem, and Colin noticed it had sickles on its feet, too—one on each foot.
Hierem jabbed his fist at it, and although he didn’t hit it, the thing went flying back into the wall. It bounced up and came back at the mage.
“He’s done something to you, Colin,” Letine shouted. “Overcome it!”
That was probably true, Colin thought, but it didn’t matter. There was no redemption. His hands were never going to be clean.
The daedra attacked again, but this time Hierem failed to deflect it completely; it skittered by, and one of its foreclaws caught the minister across the chest. His robe ripped with an oddly metallic sound, and Colin saw he had on some sort of mail beneath. That had torn, as well, and the mage started to bleed.
Snarling, Hierem turned, struck the daedra with his hand, and it collapsed. It wasn’t dead, but didn’t seem to be able to move, as if it suddenly weighed a few extra tons.
“Colin!” Letine shouted as something like lightning jagged from her hand and struck Hierem. It shivered about the minister and then seemed to reverse itself, knocking Letine to the floor.
All Colin could hear now was Hierem’s harsh breathing. The minister examined his wound and shrugged.
“So much for assassins,” he muttered. “I should ask why and who sent you, but it doesn’t matter, or won’t soon enough. What concerns me more is where the prince and his companion have got off too.”
“Oblivion take you, and your plans,” Letine gasped, trying to rise.
“Ah!” he sighed. “Arese! I am so disappointed in you—or should I say proud of you? You found out what I was up to, didn’t you? I thought someone had been in my things.”
“It’s the tower,” she said, pushing herself away from him with her hands, trying to get her legs to work. “It’s the key. I didn’t get it until Colin remembered one of the symbols meant ‘echo.’ The White-Gold Tower is an echo of the ur-tower, the first object of our reality the gods created. It’s one of the axes of creation.”
Hierem smiled. “Umbriel thinks it can emancipate him from Clavicus Vile, make him free of the prince forever. Possibly it would if I gave him the chance. But I see you know I’ve found another use for it.”
He reached into a pocket and produced a cylinder about an inch in diameter and six inches long. He gave it a little shake and it telescoped out to about three feet. It seemed to be a dull reddish black with glowing, scarlet daedric script all over it.
Some things matter, Colin told himself. They matter.
Hierem pointed the tube at Letine. Colin felt the moment slow down, understanding that when it was over the woman he’d kissed, touched, made love to, was going to be dead.
He got the knife, raised it to throw.
Hierem must have seen, because he swung the weapon toward him. Colin’s knife went over the minister’s shoulder and spanged into the wall.
“You’ve got more spirit than I imagined,” Hierem said.
Colin tried to keep his face neutral, but he knew the sorcerer must have seen something in his eyes, because he started to turn as the daedra came on him from behind. Hierem screamed then, as the great curved claws butchered him, but he didn’t scream for long.
Feeling a little lighter, Colin slowly came to his feet as the daedra savaged the minister’s body and then vanished. He walked toward Letine, who was coming unsteadily to her feet. He caught her by the shoulder and helped her stand.
“Thanks,” she said. She was shaking.
“What was he talking about?” Colin asked. “I thought you didn’t find out anything about the—”
The knife slipping in under his ribs cut him off. Letine stepped back, leaving him to stare a
t the hilt protruding from his torso.
“What?” he asked, dropping to his knees.
Her eyes were wide, her mouth formed an O, and she looked stricken. She reached for the hilt of the knife, as if she thought she could somehow undo what she had done.
“Colin …” she said. Then her expression grew harder.
“I’m sorry, Colin,” she said. “Ten years. Ten years!” Fury strained her voice to the breaking point. “I’m owed something. Hierem owes me. And I’m going to collect.” She picked up the rod Hierem had dropped and went through his clothing. Colin didn’t see if she took anything. He kept looking at the knife in him.
She paused at the doorway—he couldn’t tell if she was trying to decide whether to finish him off or wanted to tell him something.
She did neither—she simply left.
He realized he was having a hard time breathing. She had probably hit his lung.
Annaïg watched as the poison began to flow from the tree-wine, knowing there was no going back at this point. Whether it worked or not, Umbriel was going to know, and probably sooner than later.
Which meant it was time to leave the kitchens. She picked up her bag and threw it across her shoulders, hoping she hadn’t left anything she needed, but not willing to stop and think about it. She wondered if Attrebus and Sul were on Umbriel yet, but that, too, would wait until she was someplace else.
She wished she knew where Glim had gone.
She was almost to the pantry when she heard the commotion, and when she entered the corridor, she saw Glim in the pantry shaking workers off and trying to reach the corridor, where Yeum and six cooks were lined up, fully armed.
“Xhuth,” she muttered. She fumbled in her bag until she found a glass vial and tossed it to shatter on the floor, just behind Yeum. The chef turned, but the yellow cloud had already engulfed her and the rest. As they collapsed, unconscious, Annaïg held her breath and jumped over them.
