A Place Among the Fallen [Book One of The Omaran Saga]

by Adrian Cole

  'But you are ready to defend us?’ said Wargallow.

  Korbillian nodded. ‘One thing is evident. The east is expecting us.’

  There was little further discussion, and the group quickly broke up. Korbillian walked along the rim, and Ratillic appeared at his elbow. ‘Do you expect any of these people to survive?’ he said quietly.

  Korbillian did not look at him, but watched the dust clouds sweeping across the desert far below. ‘It is their choice to come. I need them.’

  'As a shield?’

  'You know what awaits us, Ratillic. We have to attempt its destruction. It will be over, then. All that has gone before will be wiped away.’

  'Blood to the earth return,’ murmured the tall figure. ‘And the Hierarchs?’

  'They will sleep more easily in their graves.’

  Ratillic glanced at the sheathed hands and said no more.

  Brannog sat with his daughter, aware of the effect the land was having on her, and he tried to cheer her. Guile joined them, also attempting to amuse the girl and her father.

  'It's no place for a girl,’ he told them. ‘Look, many of the horses will have to be sent back. Only the hardiest can try and cross these wastes. Let me arrange for Sisipher to have an escort back to my camp near the Camonile. I would travel more happily knowing she was safe.’

  'My thanks,’ said Sisipher before her father could reply. ‘But no, I have already seen myself on the other side of the Silences.’

  'What else have you seen?’ said Guile.

  She shook her head. ‘If I told you, no one would go there.’ She closed her eyes and Brannog put his arms about her. Guile moved away, and as he did so, Wolgren watched him closely. He had noted the way this man who would be Emperor looked at Sisipher, and the anger flared in him. Would Sisipher not favour a man who would rule all of the Chain? She might, if Guile survived this trek.

  During the night many of the company were woken by strange sounds, a dirge almost, that led them at first to believe strange forces were amongst them, preparing to attack, but by the light of their torches and a waxing, bloated moon, they discovered the Earthwrought locked in a ritual chant. It was for the good of the company, but those who heard it were not easily charmed back to sleep. Morning came as a relief, and no one complained at the immediate start.

  Ratillic guided them to the most passable slope downward and the long descent began. Already the air was still, and the silence from the desert far below closed in, suffocating them. The dry heat came in waves, and for each yard they slid down those crumbling slopes it became worse, so that it was an effort not to drink constantly. Elberon and Wargallow were strict with their men, and Ilassa pointed to Elberon's soldiers as an example to his own men. Only by constantly railing at them had he managed to keep Strangarth's warriors from abandoning the journey. None of the horses found it easy, not being used to this terrain. Only the Earthwrought seemed agile and capable, though their fears for what might be around them were visible.

  As they wound downwards through great gashes in the collapsing cliffs, they sent small rockfalls ahead of them, raising a dust cloud that curled high over the Silences like a beacon. In the vault of the sky, which seemed to be white in the dazzling sunlight, the faint dots that were Kirrikree's people could occasionally be seen. Nothing else flew there, and there were no sinister carrion-eaters circling in hope of food.

  By late afternoon they were on the dead sea bottom, though there was nothing in evidence now to suggest that water had ever been here. The air was a wall of heat, even in shadow, and the sand was white and fine, almost a powder. Korbillian began singling out horses that he thought could be risked on the crossing. The remainder were to be taken back to the higher lands by a handful of men. Once this had been done, the army travelled out into the sands, still dropping downward, for the world tilted away, the horizon submerged under thick clouds of dust. Masks had to be worn, for the particles of sand began to find their irritating way into every pore.

  'Better to rest by day,’ Ygromm told Brannog. ‘Travel at night. Easier to breathe.’

  Brannog passed this on to Korbillian, who saw the good sense in the suggestion. No one argued, but Elberon spoke roughly to Guile. ‘We cannot survive many days of this. If we do, we'll not be fit for war. This is ill planned. Korbillian and the bird-man have their own powers. We have not. Even the little folk are gifted. What are we, fodder for the enemy? Necessary but expendable?’

  Guile was already exhausted, and not fit to argue. ‘Can't stop now, Morric.’

  They journeyed far into the night, the air much colder, but they could take that, and although the going seemed easier, nothing changed around them. The sand was flat and featureless, like a pond on an airless afternoon. When they made camp, all parties gathered together, and with the desert as a shared foe, there was no complaint about who stood by who. It was here, in this arid wilderness with its absolute scorn for anything living, that the disjointed army at last became a unit. The common bond of suffering fused it, and Korbillian sensed it, just as his commanders did. Barely shielded from the rising sun, they closed ranks in silence, and though they spoke to each other, every sound seemed to be sucked into the void, as if the silence imposed itself, intolerant of the slightest whisper.

  Some of the remaining horses succumbed and were buried, though Ygromm feared any disturbing of the sands. By night they moved on, and after three days came to another long escarpment, far less steep than the first, that dropped them a few hundred feet to another level. The moon turned the sand into a white carpet, and the men longed for a rock or a dune to break the crushing monotony. When dawn came, and they closed together again to camp, Kirrikree swooped down and told Sisipher that they had made good time and were half way across.

  'Ask him what news of beyond,’ Korbillian told Sisipher.

  'The owls won't go close enough to the land there to see,’ she answered. ‘But there's a jungle.’

  'Beside the desert?’ he said, surprised.

  'Such is the power under the earth,’ was all she would add.

  During the day, when most of the men were asleep (it came far more easily to them now) the Earthwrought began to feel restless, and anyone watching them would have noticed that none of them slept. They watched the sand suspiciously. Ygromm came to Korbillian, his face even more fierce than usual.

  'Bad things,’ he said.

  Korbillian looked uneasily at Brannog. ‘What is it?’

  'This is the deepest part of the Silences. Under us, the sand is shallower than elsewhere and leads to firm rock. But the Earthwrought can feel movement. It is rhythmic.’

  Ygromm hissed, pointing into the shimmering distance. ‘See!’

  Korbillian shielded his eyes and studied the northern horizon. There seemed to be dunes there, the only feature visible for scores of miles.

  'They were not there an hour ago,’ said Ygromm.

  Other Earthwrought guards paced the perimeter of the camp, and no one now questioned their doing it. Even the silent Deliverers noted them with relief, knowing that their alertness was something unique and not to be decried. One of the Earthwrought came before Ygromm, and the two of them rushed off to study the southern horizon. Before long Ygromm reported dunes on every horizon. There was a stirring in the camp, and already there were very few left asleep.

  'Closing in,’ said Brannog. By now the word had spread and the army roused itself, looking anxiously to its leaders for instruction.

  'What can it be?’ said Guile.

  'The enemy,’ said Korbillian. He watched each horizon, but any movement was too subtle to see, though there was no denying it. ‘Very well,’ he muttered. At once he issued commands.

  Ratillic stared at him fearfully. ‘What do you intend?’

  'Whatever this is, it will not be easily defied. And not with steel. It will take a storm.’

  'Here!’ gasped Ratillic. ‘Where is the army to shelter?’

  'I will protect it. See to the animals.’


  'This is suicide,’ Ratillic snapped, but he could do no more than protest. Korbillian made his way to the centre of the army and had it arrange itself in concentric rings around him.

  'Face away from me, out into the desert,’ he told them. There was very little dissent. The Earthwrought formed the inner ring, the warriors and soldiers the outer, with the horses between the two rings. Ratillic took charge of them, keeping his wolves close at heel, and the Earthwrought helped to get the horses to the ground, talking to them and soothing them. Even Wargallow's men accepted Korbillian's promise that there was to be a storm.

  Korbillian now stood alone, raising his arms to the sun. The world seemed frozen. Out in the desert the dunes seemed to be motionless, but there were spiraling dust clouds drifting about them. These rose up, thickening, so that it seemed as if clouds had come gently streaming across the sky, darkening it. Already the sun had lost its glare, its fierce rays barely filtering through this curtain. Half an hour passed and now the daylight had altogether faded, as if Korbillian had brought down a false evening on the world. He had not moved. Those who dared to look at him saw him still with arms raised high, his eyes closed, his lips moving.

  Through swirls of dust, which now eddied up along the desert floor, the watchers could see the movement of the dunes much more clearly. Still they advanced, and now it was apparent that they were huge. The force that moved them must be abnormally powerful, and great ripples of fear ran through the army. Panic strained at its leash. Overhead there was a crackle of lightning and the dust clouds had merged with other clouds, the air swollen with the threat of rain.

  More lightning threaded the sky and it seemed to rise up from Korbillian and not strike him from above. Guile watched him, and saw the black gloves glow as if they were molten. Had the storm come from within them? How else could Korbillian have dragged the elements into a storm? Now the winds came, a fierce breeze at first, quickly building into a slicing gale. They spread outwards from the heart of the circles, and every man dropped to the sand, hiding his eyes, watching the sand in front of him gust away, whipped up and driven outwards like huge ripples away from a stone tossed into a lake.

  The dunes towered now, threatening to engulf everything like great waves. From their highest ridges the sand streamed in plumes like surf scattering. A great bolt of lightning tore down into one front and seemed to explode, sand gushing upwards in a fountain, dispersed in seconds by the howling wind. Its force increased, and no longer was the desert silent. It screamed as the fury of the wind tore at it like a maddened beast. While the men crouched down, almost blinded by the tremendous sandblasts, the dunes writhed, the sand stripped from them.

  Ygromm and his Earthwrought would not look at the dunes, but closed their eyes and minds to whatever it was that surged within them. Sisipher and her father and Wolgren gripped each other, and the youth knew that whatever horrors were out there were partially known to the girl and her father. They shared power with the Earthwrought and there were times when it brought more suffering than joy. As the wind contrived to rise and the noise became atrocious, the army dug itself in, curling up like a single beast, trying to shut out the madness surrounding it. No one could see Korbillian now, enshrouded as he was within a blanket of screaming power.

  Wargallow's mind roared, almost bursting with the sheer amazement of recognising that Korbillian had done this, had launched this storm out of nothing. It shattered the ears with its lightning, and Wargallow bent still further into the sand. One of the towering dunes collapsed in on itself as if it were hollow, and it rolled backwards as if it had met a wall of rock and, like the sea, been rebuffed. The sands rushed back. As the wind tore from its central point, each line of dunes burst or collapsed and was driven back by power too immense to resist. If anything lived within the dunes, it was not seen, and it either slid deeper into the sand or fled quickly away.

  Although the thunder ceased, the roaring of the wind went on until no one could even guess how long they had been there. Sand raced away from them, the very ground beneath them draining like water through a sieve. Men clung together, and the Earthwrought had difficulty in keeping the horses from tearing loose and being smashed away by the colossal forces at work. Slowly the roar died down and the wind eased, becoming no more than a strong breeze again. Those who had the strength looked up to see a changed landscape. Great swathes had been cut out of the sand, and so deep were some of these that bare rock showed through like the bones of an immense corpse.

  Wargallow made himself peer at Korbillian, around whom the dust had settled. He stood on a great slab of stone that had been exposed by the storm, his arms lowered. Still he watched the desert as the wind died and a deep silence came again. The sand was heaped and hummocked on all sides, churned up like a miniature range of hills, peppered with rocks. The entire sea bottom had been reformed.

  'Now can you doubt his power?’ Guile whispered to Elberon, who merely shook his head in stupefaction. If anyone here had needed a demonstration, no longer could they doubt. As if in answer to Elberon's thoughts, an abrupt cheer went up, and scores of swords were raised in a tribute to Korbillian. It was echoed by others, until the entire army shouted its approval. Its belief in Korbillian was complete. Now, he thought, they could go on with better heart.

  Brannog saw that Ygromm was very still, staring down a canyon of stone that had been sculpted out of the sand by the wind. It led to a deeper level of desert, a level that had been buried for centuries. Ygromm's wonder was so real it could be touched.

  'What do you see?’ Brannog asked him. ‘There is evil there?’

  'I think not. But there are secret things waiting.’ His people seemed wholly aware of the narrow canyon now, and held back from it.

  Korbillian was pointing to it. His voice came very clearly across the stilled air. ‘The way to the east lies through that pathway. Let us go at once.’

  Brannog studied the rocks, and it was then that he saw the floor of the exposed canyon, noticing for the first time the stairs that had been carved there.

  19

  THE WHISPERING CITY

  As the army filed through the narrow canyon that sloped yet further downwards, there was now very little sand beneath its feet; this floor was bare rock. Almost at once the men found themselves on the first of the stairs that had been chopped into this rock countless millennia before, and as the Earthwrought stood upon the naked stone, they gasped, their eyes closing as if they had been touched deep within themselves by something invisible, something distant in time. Sisipher and Brannog also felt an inner stirring, a dim awareness of the incredible vista of time that spread backwards to infinity, filled with shadows and shapes, like a darkened landscape that cried out for light. The further the army moved down the stairway, the wider it became, and for another mile it went down into a great basin in the rock strata, a hollow where, to everyone's bewilderment, a city had once stood. Sand had buried it, but the storm had raked it over with gigantic claws, heaping the sand up and shoveling it aside to reveal rectilinear streets, uncovering buildings that were yet clogged. Broken statues gaped up blindly at the sky and fallen archways and columns littered the roads. Over all the wilderness of ruins presided the silence, made more terrible by the ruins themselves, as if it were alien to this place, which should be alive, thriving.

  Korbillian led the descent, but found that it was Ygromm who now stood at his side, the little man watching the dead city as if he were wide awake in one of his own dreams, or racial memories. Korbillian was aware of the murmuring of the Earthwrought, as though they were offering up prayers to some spectral guardian of this place, or performing a protective working to shelter themselves from it. Yet there was no hint of evil here. Whatever had lurked in the moving dunes had departed, and Korbillian sensed that it could not touch this city. Only time could do that, but slowly.

  'You know this place?’ he asked Ygromm.

  'The legends of the Earthwrought speak of a time when we lived in cities above the ground. Thi
s is one of those ancient cities. The memories sleep, deeper than the sand that buried it. I would that our lore masters, the Earthwise, were with us. I would that all the tribes could see this place.’

  'We will rest here for the remainder of the day and travel on by night.’

  Ygromm nodded. ‘There will be water here, perhaps deep below, but my people will find it.’

  As they descended, they began to appreciate the true proportions of the city. What had seemed large ruins from the top of the long stairway were now seen to be immense, their spires and domes reaching high up from the valley floor. Many of the towers had fallen, or were in a dangerous state of decay, and most of the domes were cracked like eggshells, with gaping holes spoiling their symmetry. Some of the statues were vast, and by the strangeness of the figures they represented, they suggested some long lost pantheon of gods. The glaring sun reached down to the streets, but many were in shadow, like miniature gorges from which the sand had been blasted away. It had not failed to impress the company just how powerful a storm Korbillian had released, and every man of the company looked upon him now with a new respect. Sisipher alone did not fear him.

  Wargallow sensed the anxiety in his men, and some of them asked him discreetly if this were the place where the evil powers were to be confronted, but he told them it was not, in so doing acting by instinct. He felt drawn to the place, sensing that something was indeed buried here, and that part of him that had closed itself to all belief in power and which had been eroding for years, awoke properly. He burned, and he hungered. He had travelled Omara with his eyes and mind closed, shuttered by Grenndak's laws. Here was truth, worth crossing a dozen Silences to find. And share.

  Just as Wargallow pondered the secrets of this place, so did Guile. My instinct, he told himself, was right! Korbillian does not hold all power. Omara holds power deep within her own bosom, like a mother protecting her infants from wolves. What fountain is this city? Who lived here and what did they achieve? Where did they go? His mind cried out for answers, and beside him Elberon sensed his excitement. He was more guarded. This place seemed long dead, but even so, his sword was ready, and he quietly readied his warriors for sudden action. If there were anything here worth finding, it would likely be protected.