by Ben Peek
She flew down the staircase, a jumble of limbs, half blind, wiping tears from her face, until she came to the end.
‘Your objection is noted, Lady Wagan,’ Lian Alahn was saying, rising once again. Beside him, Sinae also stood. ‘But you do not speak for Neela. You do not have any authority in Yeflam. Our meeting today was to give you the chance to ease this transition, but since you will not do that, you will be taken into custody after this meeting. Faje, you can tell your god—’
‘Eilona?’ her mother said, concerned. ‘What is the matter?’
‘Father.’ She had never called him stepfather. She took a breath. ‘He said you have only this moment.’
Outside, the guard shouted and the door shuddered, but no one in the room turned towards the sound. Everyone’s attention was on Eilona, on her tear-streaked face, on her words.
‘Se’Saera can’t hear us,’ she said. ‘He said something has drawn her attention away.’
A hardness settled into her mother’s face. ‘Sinae,’ she said.
The knife appeared in Sinae Al’tor’s hand before Eilona could cry out, before the jumble of her emotions could arrange themselves, but she need not have said a word. With a sudden swiftness he grabbed Lian Alahn’s hair and wrenched his head backwards, exposing his throat. From the other side of the table, Alahn’s son, who until this moment had not said a word, shouted in protest, but his cry was not enough to stop Sinae’s dagger cutting deeply across Alahn’s throat. As he did, he released the man who had aspired to be the leader of Yeflam, who had ruled the Traders’ Union, and who now stumbled backwards, clutching his neck, desperately trying to speak, trying to accuse those around him of treachery as the door burst open and his soldiers spilled into the room.
7.
The guard who had let Eilona into the house lay crumpled on the floor. A dozen soldiers, their faces wrapped in dark cloth, pushed through the doorway over him.
She felt oddly calm, though she knew she should have turned and run back up the stairs, to whatever safety she could find. Instead, Eilona remained still. Whereas before she had been defined by the moment, by her emotional reaction to her stepfather’s words, to Sinae dragging his knife over Alahn’s throat, she now felt an odd detachment, as if the world had become unreal. The gaze of the first soldier fell on her, but it wavered, as if he was separated from her by a thick pane of glass. It added to the sense of dislocation from what was happening around her. As if she was floating above herself, she saw Caeli drive her elbow into the side of Captain Oake’s head, saw her sword spike down, saw Sinae’s guard step in front of her master as he took a step backwards, away from Olcea. She saw the witch, still sitting, and appearing to shimmer, and the Faithful rising at the sight of her. She saw Nymar shouting to his father, his father who was lost to her sight by Faje, who rose, throwing back his chair, crying out to his god.
As if in answer, a faint outline began to materialize in the centre of the room, but the sight of it did not cause rejoicing in the Faithful.
They shouted at each other – ‘The witch—’ ‘—first this, first—’ ‘—control!’ – but before any of them could do anything, the figure drove its hand into the back of the closest Faithful.
The figure’s hand grabbed the woman’s spine and hooked its other hand on her neck. As if her flesh and bone were nothing more than paper, it broke both, shattering the bone in her back, and snapping her neck.
The attack was so brutal that it caused the soldiers in the door to recoil, to stop their advance. The Faithful scattered towards them, but there was no passage out of the door.
Eilona turned towards Olcea. The witch had not moved from the table. Rather, she sat with a stillness that was unnerving, her unbound hands wet with her own blood. Eilona could see no knife, no way that she had cut into her skin, but she did not doubt that the wounds were self-inflicted. She had only to meet the hard, calm eyes of the witch to know that she was in control of the figure in the room, the figure Eilona realized that she knew. The figure who had piloted The Frozen Shackle from Zalhan. The figure who had sat inside Olcea’s bag from Pitak.
Hien.
The ghost became more and more visible to her as he mercilessly killed the Faithful in the room, his acts of violence so horrific they broke the courage of the soldiers who had come on Lian Alahn’s command, and who tried to flee themselves.
Eilona understood why. Hien was not just terrifying in his violence, but his appearance was pure dread. With each death, with each bit of blood that appeared to seep into his being, the ghost’s face revealed its decayed and bloated visage. His right eye was a milky white and rolled back, while his left was brown, but focused downwards. Yet, for all the horror of his face, she knew that he was a young man, that he had once been a soldier in the Marble Palaces of Tinalan, a well-to-do youth, to judge by the fine, intricate work on the armour he wore.
That style of armour was not worn much, now, she knew. Thirty years ago, it had been worn by the soldiers of Emperor J’kl, who had built horrific camps to purify the country. Eilona’s gaze drifted back to Olcea, imagining the woman thirty or so years ago with children around her, children who would have never grown old.
What kind of witch are you? Unbidden, Eilona recalled Tinh Tu’s words in Zalhan. She had said them casually, then, as if the answer did not truly matter, but Eilona saw now that there had been a respect in her tone. Very few people lie to me. Eilona knew that. Knew it intimately. But even though she had ridden beside Olcea on The Frozen Shackle, had watched her pilot the ship with no one but Hien, she had not understood the kind of power she had. She saw Olcea in the large, rundown house she had kept in Mireea, the house where she had taught orphan girls herbalism, healing and even witchcraft. She remembered her mother telling her stepfather that Olcea was a war witch. At the time, Eilona had been unable to connect the two, but now, she could. She could see how the violence and tragedy of Olcea’s youth bled together into her future self, how she became capable of such coldness that she could take the killer of her family and bond him to her, to be used as she saw fit. Saw how in doing so, Olcea isolated herself, drove away the people with whom she could have rebuilt her life, but remained, performing acts of charity for children who would leave her as they made their own lives. She saw how every act of violence, every death Olcea and Hien were part of, created a cycle of violence and repentance binding the two tighter and tighter, until they were the only family each other had.
‘Enough!’ Faje Metura grabbed Eilona, pressing a knife against her neck. ‘Stop this!’
At the door of the room, Hien paused. He was so defined now that the stitches in his armour could be seen. Behind him, the doorway was empty, and the last of the sun was like a thumbprint of dried blood.
Faje’s breath was hot on her ear. ‘Se’Saera,’ he whispered. ‘You promised that it would not be this way.’
‘You’re not important to her.’ Eilona still felt detached from what was happening to her. The sharp edge of the blade did not really feel as if it was against her skin. ‘You’re just another to be used.’
‘You don’t know!’ He tightened his grip. ‘You can’t know.’
‘She is right,’ her mother said, walking around the table, leaving Olcea, Caeli, Sinae and his guard. ‘Your Faithful are dead. Nymar hides beneath the table. Lian is dead. His soldiers are dead, or gone.’
‘It was supposed to be you,’ Faje hissed. ‘He was supposed to betray you.’ He pointed at Sinae with his knife. ‘Se’Saera said he would.’
Across the room, Sinae Al’tor looked confused.
‘You speak to her, every night. You ask her questions. She told me that!’
‘She doesn’t answer,’ he said. ‘I ask her how she can trap the dead, how she can demand so much from humanity yet give so little. I ask her about the War of the Gods. I ask her, just as many others ask her. But if she thought for a moment that I would betray Muriel Wagan, then she was not listening to me. Beatrice?’
Eilona did not even se
e the hand of Sinae’s guard move: she only heard the thin blade of the dagger pierce Faje’s left eye, heard it strike deep in his skull with an awful, intimate sound she did not believe she would ever forget.
Faje fell, and as he did, Eilona felt his dagger slice shallowly along her neck – felt herself take a breath as the reality of the room came rushing back to her and she found herself standing in the middle of such violence that the next breath she took was one that choked within her. Her hands began to shake, but as she went to clasp them together, her mother took them and took her. Her mother with her hard hands, with her hard life, her hard thoughts. Her mother, who had never once allowed a gilded cage into a child’s fantasy, drew Eilona into an embrace she had not felt in over a decade.
8.
As the afternoon’s light started to fade, fires began to burn in Ranan.
At the edge of the treeline, Ayae stood next to Jae’le and watched the lights reveal the city in long and short shadows, of buildings and people and weapons.
None of it surprised her: she had seen Ranan’s cathedral first as they left the dense trees and empty roads. It had appeared like a giant’s spear thrust into the ground. Around Ayae, soldiers murmured in awe and fear, but she thought only that it looked out of place. It belonged to a different world, an older world, one in ancient books, dusty and dry, with sketches half-blurred by the age of the ink. She could not shake the sensation that she was seeing something archaic as she rode closer and found that, when the long line of steps to the cathedral revealed themselves, a strange calmness had fallen over her. Beyond the flat-roofed houses and the bridges that linked parts of the city together was the Innocent, his soldiers, and Se’Saera, but Ayae could feel none of the emotions that the soldiers around her experienced. Even the siege weapons, barricaded streets and soldiers failed to cause her skin to prickle with warmth, or harden, as it did before danger. Above her, swamp crows drifted around the city, having found a new roost, and it was here that Ayae’s gaze was drawn. The birds looked as if they should have been part of a painting of a wicked castle, where the carcasses of heroes had been left to rot on gibbets, and only pain and suffering waited. But even that failed to break her calm.
‘The bridges are our only entry into Ranan,’ Eidan said, later. He stood in front of the force, his back to the city he spoke about. Tinh Tu stood next to him, her white raven settled on her staff, as if it were a light she carried. ‘The roads that lead into the crevasses will be nothing but traps.’
‘We have no siege weapons.’ It was Vune who spoke. He stood at the front of the force, a belt full of stone spikes around his waist, a long-handled sledge hammer leaning against his right leg. ‘You can see theirs. They point them out to us. Our bridges will never reach the other side.’
‘They will,’ the other man promised. ‘You and your men will just have to make sure that it is secured before any horse rides over it.’
‘It’s suicide,’ Vune said desperately. ‘You’re sending us to our deaths.’
‘You may well die,’ Tinh Tu said. ‘But should we all fail tonight, it will be better to be dead, than to be in the kingdom of the Faithful.’
Her words were not met with cheers.
Over the last few days, more details of Tinh Tu’s plan had been told to the soldiers. None of them had been happy. They argued, and Ayae believed that they would have deserted, if not for Tinh Tu’s tight control over them. Unable to flee, they petitioned her with different plans, different advice. Vyla Dvir finally succeeded in having Tinh Tu lift her command of silence from her husband, and Miat argued that they should take and hold the paths up to Ranan. Starve them out, his wife said, translating his whispers. Lay siege and wait until they begin to eat each other. The Lord of the Saan was startled when Tinh Tu replied to him in his own language. After, Vyla suggested a group of assassins during the night. One soldier from Yeflam suggested gliders in addition to this. Another said Tinh Tu could order the Leerans not to attack. Ayae heard a dozen more. She thought some of them had merit, but Tinh Tu, who listened to all of them, replied no to every single one. We will storm the city, she said. We will lay the bridges down. We will ride across. We will hold a section, and then another, until we close in on the cathedral. You must trust me on this, she told them, even though she knew that they did not.
‘The last sun is down,’ Tinh Tu said. ‘It is time, brother.’
Eidan nodded. He bent down to the ground and plunged his scarred hand deep into the soil and drew out a hammer made of stone. It was huge, easily the size of him, and though he carried it as if it weighed nothing, not one person believed that they could have held it. Without a word, he turned and began to walk towards Ranan.
With a loud curse, Vune and the Mireean soldiers lifted the bridges, sixteen soldiers to each of the flat, ugly creations, and rushed after him.
‘Last chance,’ Jae’le said, beside Ayae. ‘You need not come with me.’
She tightened her hand on her reins and shook her head. Despite everything, she still felt calm and balanced within herself. ‘What happened to your bird?’ she asked, instead.
‘He’s a smart bird,’ he said easily. ‘He knew better than to be part of this.’
‘Smart bird,’ Ayae agreed.
Behind her, one of the soldiers sobbed. She had seen a lot of the men and women cry since Gtara, and the sounds had etched themselves inside her. Despite her own calm, she had told herself again that this was what the gods had done to the soldiers, what Se’Saera would do to them. Ayae hated that she was part of it in the now, but it had only strengthened her resolve to ride into Ranan.
Beneath her, the ground began to shake.
At first, Ayae thought that it was an earthquake, that the damage in the Mountains of Ger had run much longer and much further through the ground than she had thought. The ground started to split open before her, and it was with a sudden concern that she realized that she could see it doing so exactly in the path of Eidan and the bridges.
From the cracked ground a hand emerged. It was a giant hand, easily the size of the horse she sat upon. It was joined by a second hand of equal size, though this hand was dark and muddy. A human-shaped head followed and, from the crevasse, as if in obscene birth, a long, slick, muddy giant drew itself from the ground. It heaved itself to a great, awful height and stood for a moment before Ranan, a huge, single creation. Then it began to move, each step causing the ground to shiver, but the shudders did not come from it alone. Turning to her right, Ayae saw another giant emerge, its back covered in the thick green canopy that ran through the centre of Leera. With the ground shaking beneath it, it began to move towards the first, a cousin, a brother, a sister – she did not know. All she did know was that it was not as tall as the first, but more solid, its form more defined, where the mud and water of the first left a centre that constantly moved. As it came to a halt beside the first giant, new tremors began to ran through the ground, and to her left, Ayae saw a third giant emerge, this one appearing to be made from a hard, rocky ground, both larger and much more angled than either of the other two.
‘It is awful, is it not?’ Jae’le said softly. ‘We make war full of terror and horror. Not even the survivors sleep kindly after.’
In her mind’s eye, Ayae saw Aelyn’s storm giant, the one that had risen above Yeflam in her rage. She saw it loom behind Eidan’s giants on a battlefield thousands of years ago, a battlefield lined with the dead and the living, a battlefield so horrific that surely no force would have stood against them.
‘Zaifyr told me that when I first met him.’
‘It is not the same as seeing it.’
‘No,’ she admitted.
The ground shuddered again and the giants began to attack Ranan.
9.
A few miles away, on an eastern road, on a rise that broke through the canopy of Leera, Refuge and the Brotherhood watched the giants stride towards Ranan.
Earlier, a bird from the Lord of Faaisha had arrived, the order to attack at d
usk written on its leg. Tuael’s seal had been put across the message, but still, Heast had thought it written by a different man. A frontal attack was not the kind of battle that the marshals of Faaisha would have suggested. They would have argued for a siege. They would have said that siege engines laid around the city would drive down the morale, would break them over time, and would do it without heavy losses. Heast had not yet decided how he would convince them that it would be a useless act, but the letter meant that he did not need to.
The ground shook as one of the giants, the one made from stone, slammed its fist down on the edge of Ranan.
‘They’re clearing the edge for bridges.’ Beside him, Essa lowered his spyglass. ‘There are Mireeans dragging them into position.’
‘Could you see the Saan?’ he asked.
‘Couldn’t be sure, but the man in front of them, the one with the beard, I know him. He is called Eidan. He was one of the cursed men in Yeflam. He was said to be Aelyn Meah’s lover.’
From deep in Ranan, catapults fired, flinging boulders at the giants. Two caught the one in the centre, only to pass through its body, and slam into the ground behind.
Heast nudged his horse around, to face Refuge and the Brotherhood. Both groups had made good time from Faaisha to Leera. Heast would have preferred a night to rest both the mounts and the soldiers, but he had little say in that now.
He met Lehana’s gaze at the front of the group, then Anemone and, lastly, Kye Taaira.
‘You can hear what has started down there.’ Heast projected his voice to the soldiers before him. No one, not even the swamp crows in the trees, moved. ‘We’re going to ride into that. We’re going to ride down this road and we are going to use the bridges the Mireeans are setting. Once we’re across, we will push towards the cathedral of Ranan. When we’re there there, Sergeant Bliq will establish a hold for the injured, and myself, Captain Essa and Lieutenant Lehana will begin issuing orders to take the cathedral. Aela Ren and his soldiers will be there. They are our priority. They are our targets.’
