Godless World 3 - Fall of Thanes

by Brian Ruckley

  He had been leaning forward in his chair, tightened by an urgency, a fierce desire to convey what he saw and felt. Now he slumped back.

  "It may be that when we seized K'rina, we broke a thread in a pattern that was being woven. It may have been a mistake. I need to see if it can be undone. Anyway, Torcaill, I'll only ask you to come as far as Ive Bridge. Once we're sure the way to Highfast is clear, there's something else I'll want of you."

  "You need ask nothing of me, sire," the warrior said sharply. "Only command. Your will governs us in all of this."

  He clearly meant what he said, despite his earlier truculence. Orisian only nodded, and Taim thought he saw a hint of sadness in the set of the Thane's mouth. There were burdens there still, in the making of choices on behalf of others and the exercise of authority. However hard he tries, Taim thought, whatever cruelty he might permit in his name, this one will never have quite the cold instinct for it. He will never sit easy on a throne. But then perhaps Orisian did not, after all, truly believe there was any throne left for him to sit upon.

  They each went their own way from that table: Orisian to speak with Ess'yr and Varryn, Taim to see what supplies he might buy or otherwise acquire without arousing alarm or suspicion amongst their Kilkry hosts, Torcaill to ready the warriors. Taim got no further than the outer yard of the barracks before he became aware of soft footsteps trailing him. He turned to find Yvane drawing near, stern-faced.

  "Your Thane folds in on himself," she said. "Withdraws. He feels himself alone and adrift, and in response makes himself so. There are shadows, calling him into themselves."

  "He has been roughly treated by the world of late."

  "For many years, I think. I don't condemn him. All I say is, these are dangerous times for those with flaws in their armour. The houses with cracked foundations are the first to fall in a storm."

  "I didn't know you were a master builder," Taim muttered. "Or an armourer, for that matter." The na'kyrim's manner irritated him, though he recognised her intent. She did, he believed, feel a certain sincere concern for Orisian. As far as Taim could tell, the young Thane was uniquely honoured in that regard, since no one else save other na'kyrim seemed to merit it.

  "He needs friends," said Yvane, "and may need them still more before long. Your hothead of a swordsman was part right: we are stepping from storm into fire, but this storm isn't one we can leave behind. It goes with us. Inside us."

  "Have you advised Orisian against it, then? If you think this leads us into..."

  "Ha. You can be certain there's none less eager than me to revisit whatever's left of Highfast. But Orisian follows his instincts. And he may be right. Perhaps the only way to calm this storm, quench this fire, is from the inside."

  "Well, then. I'll walk at his side, wherever he goes."

  "I know. You seem to have the calmest head around here, the least open to the poison that's leaking into so many others. That's good. I don't know what it is that anchors you, but whatever it is, I hope it's stubborn enough to last. Stay close by Orisian, if you care for him, and watch him. If his sight becomes clouded, he'll need those whose eyes remain clear."

  "There's nothing wrong with his sight," Taim said, bristling at the implied lack of faith in Orisian's resilience, or his judgement. "Anyway, you've never seemed shy of making your opinion known. Don't you plan on being there, to polish his eyes for him?"

  And the sudden sadness in her pale face--harbinger, it seemed to him, of a desolate despair that the na'kyrim barely held at bay--startled him into shame at his bitter tone.

  "As I said," Yvane sighed, "these are dangerous times for those with flaws in their armour. But we na'kyrim, we have no armour at all against this. We're all flaw, our heads wide open to it. Believe me, I fear for your beloved Thane, but I like my own chances a good deal less than his. There may come a time when the very last people he should be listening to will be those who've woken to the Shared."

  She hung her head, as if momentarily defeated by the darkness of possible futures. Taim had never seen her give such an unguarded impression of vulnerability. He felt an urge to reach out and put a comforting hand on her arm, but he did not. He suspected there was enough prickly pride left in there to make any such gesture inadvisable.

  "Just watch him," she murmured. "Help him if he needs it, and if you can. That's all I'm saying."

  "It doesn't need saying," Taim said gently. "I'd never do otherwise."

  Yvane nodded once and turned away, disappearing into the barracks. Taim looked after her, filled for a moment or two with an impotent sense of foreboding, not just for Yvane or Orisian, but all of them. Everyone caught in this churning maelstrom.

  VI

  Anyara woke in a sweat, with a soft cry and a racing heart. In her dreams she had been pursued by a twisted, bestial form of herself, driven wild by fear and anger and grief. The roiling darkness that had been all about her had thickened and churned to prevent her escape, holding her for her own clawed fingers to rend.

  She wiped her brow, pulled her cloyingly damp nightgown away from her skin. These cruel dreams had ebbed a little in the first few days of her enforced sojourn in Vaymouth. Now they had returned with renewed and hungry vigour. Each night she spent in the Palace of Red Stone, they came more fiercely than the last. A few tears ran down her face, the echo of the unconstrained, fevered emotions of her sleep. She brushed them away and rose, feeling heavy, from the bed.

  In the night, the palace was perfectly silent. Faint moonlight fell through the windows. The air was cool and still. Anyara settled a heavy robe about her shoulders and pulled its fur collar tight about her throat. She slipped her feet into soft hide sandals and went out into the passageway.

  "All you all right?"

  The voice startled her. Coinach stepped forward into the soft pool of silver shed by a little skylight.

  "I forgot you were here." Anyara smiled.

  "Always. I thought I heard you but was not sure. I should have come in to check."

  "No, no." Anyara waved her shieldman's self-doubt away. "I'm fine. Can't sleep, that's all."

  She glanced at the simple wooden chair let into an alcove where Coinach spent each night.

  "You can't get much sleep either, I imagine," she said.

  "I am not here to sleep, my lady. But I've had much worse beds in my time, in any case." They both spoke in whispers. The heavy silence of the palace felt insistent, as if it would resent any attempt to disturb it.

  "Will you walk with me a little?" Anyara asked. "My head needs clearing."

  They went together along the corridor, the sound of their careful footsteps sighing along the stone walls ahead of them. From each narrow window high in those walls a diffuse beam of moonlight descended to illuminate them as they passed beneath it. There was the faintest lingering scent on the air, like a memory of warmer days.

  "What is that smell?" Anyara murmured. "It never seems to quite go away."

  "The Shadowhand's wife roasts spices on her braziers," Coinach whispered.

  "Oh. I never thought to ask her."

  Anyara led the way into a long, thin room that ran along the side of the palace. Facing them were tall, barred doors inlaid with patterns of pearl and dark wood. Anyara went to one and lifted the thin beam that held it closed.

  "I'd like to see the moon," she said.

  But Coinach gently interposed himself.

  "They sometimes have guards out on the terraces. Best to let me go first."

  He pulled open the great shutter, and the cold night air swept in. Anyara closed her eyes for a moment, savouring its cleansing flow over her face, through her hair.

  "Come," Coinach said. "There's no one here."

  They stepped out onto the narrow terrace. Before them Vaymouth was a dark ocean, speckled with just a few faint points of light, bounded by the smooth, dark curve of its walls as they swept away into the distance. The Moon Palace rose, a lambent mass, above the city's heart, as if some wan, sickly giant had hunched his shou
lders up out of dark earth. Anyara turned about, searching instead for the true moon. It stood just above the city wall, bright and large. She gazed up at it, letting its light fill her eyes and her mind for a moment. Then she dropped her head, and looked back to the sleeping city.

  "Vaymouth's bigger than I ever imagined," she said. "I knew but didn't know. That sounds stupid, doesn't it?"

  "No, my lady."

  "I'm afraid," Anyara said abruptly, surprising herself. She had not meant to say that, yet the sound of the words seemed right. Fitting. "I thought I could bear everything, anything, if I had to. I thought I'd mastered it, but now it's growing heavy again, all the fear and the sorrow. I don't want to be frightened. I hate it."

  Coinach was looking at her, but his face was in shadow and she could not be sure what expression he wore. She did not know quite what she wanted from him. Still, she felt an unexpected easing within her, now that she had permitted this small fraction of her fragility to show itself.

  Out in Vaymouth's great darkness: a blooming orange glow, much stronger and larger than any of the other tiny lights shining there. Anyara frowned at it, puzzled. Coinach followed her gaze. The glow spread, and splayed itself outwards and upwards, a fiery fist swelling and then unfurling thick fingers of flame that reached for the star-strewn sky.

  "That'll be an unpleasant waking for someone," Coinach said softly.

  There was another, further off, in an entirely different quarter of the city: another seed of fire that flickered into being and then built and built. The nocturnal silence that had seemed so natural before now felt out of place. The flames clambered ferociously higher and higher, their hearts turning white, but no sound reached the Palace of Red Stone. There was scent, though, the first bitter trace of smoke in the air.

  "Look, there's a third," Coinach said, pointing out into the night.

  "And there," said Anyara.

  It seemed that every part of Vaymouth had its own eruption of consuming flame. The Moon Palace was growing dimmer, obscured by drifting smoke, its reflected moonlight outshone by a wilder, more sinister light. And the first sounds reached Anyara's ears: a murmur of calamity, anguished cries blunted and flattened by distance, the roaring of delirious firestorms made into a whisper.

  "What's happening?" she wondered.

  "I don't know."

  Anyara shifted uneasily. There was too much of the quality of her dreams about this. Too much of the madness she felt running beneath the skin of the world, like a black river under a carapace of ice.

  "We should never have come," she said, staring out at the beacons of destruction that marked out the whole territory of the city. "I thought we could serve best by letting Aewult have his way. I thought there might be opportunity... but none of it's turning out as I hoped. We should have fought our way out of Aewult's camp rather than let him make us prisoners."

  "I would gladly have made the attempt, my lady, had you asked it of me. He had some ten thousand warriors, so I fear it might have proved difficult. Still, I would have made the attempt."

  *

  "I will see it!" Gryvan oc Haig snapped at Kale.

  That flare of anger was enough to make the shieldman nod curtly and avert his eyes.

  "As you wish, sire," the lean warrior said, nudging his horse on ahead.

  "I will see what's done to my city!" Gryvan shouted after his guardian. "It is my right, my duty!"

  His own vehemence shocked him, and made him a little ashamed. He glanced uncomfortably around. Many in the mass of riders were looking at him. All, at least, had the grace to turn away when his own gaze fell upon them. It was unwise, Gryvan knew, to flaunt his anger--his confusion, if he was honest--so brazenly, before so many eyes, but his grip on his emotions grew daily less sure. They tore their way up through him, every setback bringing them closer to boiling over. He imagined them as some pack of beasts clawing at his innards, consuming him from within.

  A hundred of his warriors, led by Kale and the rest of his Shield, surrounded him. He was within the walls of his own impregnable, wondrous city. Yet despite all of this, Gryvan felt exposed. Assailed. The faces of his people, who thronged the streets this morning and watched his passing from every window and doorway, seemed inimical to him. But he could no longer tell whether that was their true character, or whether he only painted them with his own bitter bewilderment at the course of events.

  "The Captain of your Shield is quite right, sire," Mordyn Jerain said, settling his own horse into step with Gryvan's. "The city's mood is fragile. Caution would be wise."

  "They set a dozen fires," Gryvan hissed, wrestling his voice into submission. "Ten people dead, I hear. Someone thinks they can torch my city with impunity. Well, I'll see their handiwork. And then I'll see them, whoever they are, broken on wheels, and spitted on stakes and have their heads rolled in the dirt at my feet."

  "Quite so. I wish we could have spoken before riding out, though. There is much I wanted to discuss with you today. Had you not been already mounted when I reached the palace..."

  "Now, suddenly, you want to talk? Well, it can wait an hour or two yet. Gods, does this not sicken you with fury? How can you be so unmoved? We made this city what it is together, you and I. It's your child as much as mine."

  "Children heal quickly, sire."

  Gryvan heard--or imagined, he could not be sure which--dismissive insolence in that reply and twisted in his saddle to snarl at his Chancellor. But Mordyn was looking away, angling his head up towards the rooftops.

  "What's that?" Mordyn muttered.

  Gryvan's anger faltered. He crushed the reins in his frustrated hands. But there was a sound, clattering in over the tiled roofs. Gryvan listened for a moment or two, teasing it out from amongst the rattle of hoofs on cobbles. He did not know what to make of it at first. Its nature was elusive, as if it both belonged and did not belong in the city. Then he had it. Riot. Mob.

  "Swords," he cried at once. He bared his own blade.

  Kale was riding towards him, shouting at the lines of warriors as he came.

  "You should turn back, sire," the shieldman said to his Thane, quite calm. "There is disorder up ahead."

  "No," said Gryvan flatly. In this, suddenly, he found an answer to all the tumultuous ire that had been building in him for so long. His body knew what kind of release it required, and already his heart was pounding in anticipation. He dug his heels into his horse's flanks and the great beast sprang forward.

  A crowd was surging through a little marketplace. It tore at shuttered windows, rendered barrels, stalls, even an old abandoned wagon, down to fragments of wood, and then sent that debris flying up in a cloud of useless missiles. It surged around the well at the centre of the square, and crushed its human bodies against the stone parapet. It overturned a massive watering trough and broke in the door of a long-empty hovel.

  Down upon this ravening beast, the High Thane's hundred warriors fell like thunder. Gryvan himself was in the midst of the storm, seized by a bloodthirsty rage. He and his father, and his grandfather before that, had made this city and its people all that they now were. That there should be arson, that mobs should rampage through the streets--these things were an affront to the Haig line. They wounded him as surely as any blow to his own flesh. He would wet the streets of his wondrous city with the blood of those who offered such grievous offence.

  Gryvan's sword rose and fell. He felt the shiver of its impact upon bone tingling up his arm. He felt the breaking of bodies that went down beneath his huge horse. A thousand voices, crying out in anguish, or anger, or pain, or terror, washed over him and he revelled in the fierce noise. He cut and slashed and barged his way to the heart of the square. A youth was standing on the rim of the well, lashing out with a length of wood. Gryvan cut his legs from under him, sent him tumbling back and down into the dark, stone-clad gullet.

  The crowd fell away beneath the onslaught. What the city's Guard had been unable to quell, the hundred trained warriors on their warhorses snuffe
d out quickly and brutally. The passions that had burned in the breasts of the rioters twisted into terror. They scattered, and the riders went after them and cut them down in side streets and doorways. Gryvan sat astride his mount, sword still naked in his hand, surrounded by gore and corpses.

  Kale dismounted and tore something from the neck of one of the bodies. He held it up to the High Thane.

  "Most of them are Craftsmen, sire. Apprentices, at least."

  He dropped the clasp into Gryvan's outstretched palm. It bore the impressed image of a tiny hammer and scales.

  "Goldsmith," Gryvan murmured. He was weary now. Drained.

  "Yes." Kale nodded. "Many bear the same badge, or that of other Crafts. A number of their buildings were amongst those burned last night. They seek those responsible, perhaps."

  "And they think that gives them leave to run rampant through my city?" Gryvan growled.

  "There are too many who think they need no longer ask our leave to do anything," Mordyn Jerain said, coming--now that the slaughter was done--to his master's side. "The world ever seeks to test the will of great men. Now is the time of your testing."

  "And you've a thought on how I should meet it. Is that it?"

  Mordyn Jerain dipped his head in knowing assent.

  "Very well," Gryvan said, casting a last, simmering eye over the bodies littering the market square. "All of this must be answered. I'll hear you."

  "No." Gryvan shook his head. It was part denial, part disbelief, part astonishment at the thought that what his Shadowhand was saying might be true.

  "Yes," insisted Mordyn quietly. "Have I ever failed you, sire?"

  "Not in anything of consequence," Gryvan muttered.

  "Indeed. Then trust me in this: a corruption has entered the heart of your domains. That which threatens to consume us comes not from without, but within."