by Sean Rodden
“I don’t know why it feels so wrong,” grated Mundar, as a pair of Watchers darted warily into the cleft cut of the rock, “considering where it goes.”
“And where is that, Stone Lord?”
“Ora Undar,” he replied, deftly reversing the spin of his war-axes. “Axar, eventually. Abode of Rundul the Remarkable. But before that, the Brass River, Muggor Rutzar, glittering Ander-dun, other places you’ve never heard of nor would ever want to visit.”
Chelyse frowned, a trick of the pallid halflight causing her eyes to appear a bright and breathtaking blue. The wind tossed her tresses into a red whirl of wildfire.
“Who wards Axar?”
“First Axe Azugar. The Golden One, as you have correctly called him. And the entire Fifth Army.”
Chelyse stared at the opening. “Ably warded, then.”
“Very.”
The two warders of the Green Watch reemerged from the crevasse, shook their heads, one of them gesticulating briefly toward Chelyse.
“Ably indeed, Stone Lord. Apparently, nothing has come by that way for weeks. Only one set of tracks in the dust. Broad feet, short legs.”
“That was probably me.”
“Did you notice anything untoward on your journey?”
“Nothing worth mentioning.”
“And nothing has travelled that path since. So this feeling of wrongness is either a shared delusion, or…” Chelyse trailed off, her lips twisting a little as she realized, belatedly, where that particular train of logic was leading.
“Or I am the wrongness,” the Darad chuckled, his beard bouncing up and down. “How terribly sweet of you, Fiann.” His war-axes spun themselves back into their straps. “Don’t think I won’t remember that.”
And as he turned away, over a thousand feet above, the sun crept across the eastern rim of the fissure and seemed to pause directly overhead. Despite a burial shroud of cloud, light spilled into the canyon like chilled cream into a bowl, white and cold and viscous, illuminating every nook, every niche, every crook and cranny. The walls were pocked with hundreds of caves and cavities, in some places set so close upon one another as to seem like a tremendous honeycomb, and were sliced by dozens, scores of roughly vertical black strips where the great crevices cracked the cliffs. And everything and everyone became but another shade of shimmering pearl.
White Warren, indeed.
“Soon enough, Fiann?” Mundar of Dul-darad called over his shoulder as he pressed onward across the luminous limestone of the basin.
Chelyse of the Green Watch gawked in gape-mouthed awe at the ghostly glow of sun on stone all about her. She was immediately reminded of the massive passage cairn of Oldgrange, a prehistoric monument north of the Boinne in Rothanar, of the first light of the solstice passing through the door’s roofbox and filling the sun chamber with bright winter whiteness. She frowned then, her natural enthusiasm wilting, withering, as she remembered that ancient Oldgrange was, in fact, a tomb.
She sighed, white into white, and turned away from the rent in the rock.
“Soon enough, Friendly One.”
The Lady of the Fiannar landed at the base of the boulder and walked into the shadowed expanse of the White Warren. The steel-shod heel of her staff tapped the shade-greyed stone as she strode, keeping time with the slow aching throb in her temple. From the harness at her bosom the infant Aranion gurgled in his sleep, the contented half-smile of oneiric oblivion curving his little lips. The Lady whispered for her mirarran, and agilely swung astride the splendid creature’s back. The movement, however graceful, caused the swaddled Lordling to wake briefly and stare up at his mother with large limpid eyes. “Maamaaa,” he cooed softly yet distinctly, reaching for her with his small pudgy arms before sighing himself comfortably back to sleep once again.
Cerriste stopped and stared. The ache in her head fled. A rare expression of wonder widened her eyes and dropped her jaw. Even her steed tossed its mercurial mane.
“Sarra… did you hear… did he just…?”
“Yes, sister,” Sarrane said as she arrived at her Lady’s side. “I heard. And he certainly did. That was no mere baby babble, either. Your son knows you, C’ris. And he is aware of what you are to him, what you mean to him.”
“Are you certain, sister?”
“Are you not?”
And leaving the Lady to her maternal jubilations, the Seer of the Fiannar urged her mount onward at a quicker pace. There were hundreds of Deathward souls before her, hundreds more behind her, and several to either side, many of whom were dear to her – and still she felt so very alone. She had lost her ability to smile, to find and take pleasure in good things, to see beauty where it bloomed, to even think optimistically. A shadow had fallen across her heart, or had risen from within it, and there was a coldness in her, slick and damp, slithering over her soul.
Find them.
Sarrane’s visions were a curse. Never was one clear in its meaning, in its purpose. Ever obscure, ever vague and ambiguous, the messages delivered by her intuitions were incomplete, fragmented – worse, enigmatic. Her foresight lacked insight, required meticulous study and interpretation, demanded from her a perspicacity and sagacity that she simply did not possess. Precognition without recognition, foreknowledge bereft of knowing, of understanding.
A bow without arrows, a sword with no blade.
Find them.
The Seer’s peripheral vision detected movement to her right as several mounted Deathward turned their faces toward her. The expressions on those hard visages made it apparent that she had not only spoken aloud, but had more than likely also sworn. Not one given to cussing, nor to explaining herself on those rare occasions when she did, Sarrane turned away, looking to her left, her own countenance cast of iron, the irises of her eyes awhirl with iridescent ire.
Her gaze fell upon a scabrous penumbra on the stone, a ragged rent in the rock wall of the Warren. Instantly, pain exploded in her brain, piercing her awareness as though twin shards of steel had struck through her eyes. Her spear dropped away, clattering on the limestone as she clasped her hands to her head, pressing hard, pushing inward against the agony there, her nails digging into her scalp, threatening blood. A scream without sound stretched wide her mouth. Her eyes crushed closed as though the meagre flesh of their lids might shield her from the horrors she was obliged, compelled, forced to see.
A face appeared amid the excruciating chaos in her mind. A mask, rather. A Daradun battle-mask, wrought of garish gold, glistering, gleaming about two eyes of burning black rage. Madness flared there also, a seething insanity, perilous and psychotic. Madness, and a demand like an accusation, shouted with such force that the gaudy baubles bedecking the Darad’s beard clinked and clanked.
Find them!
But before she could shriek the frustration wracking her soul, a wave of laval power swept the image of First Axe Azugar away. Fiery magma splashed over her mind, drowning her in crimson fury, the entirety of her being awash and aflame with searing hot pain. Something moved within that ocean of agony, like a beast writhing beneath a blanket, and another face pushed past the surface. A face ferocious and foul and torn from the darkest tales of horror: Black-bearded, entirely bald, the bones of the brow bulbous and deformed; the slate-grey skin a hideous patchwork of boils and blisters and oozing sores, and cloven from cheek to chin by a grotesque scar; teeth like fangs bared in a grin of sadistic glee; a pair of fiery red eyes burning, burning.
Die, bitch.
Bright blood burst from the corners of the Seer’s clenched eyes, spurting forth and spilling down her cheeks like the molten guts of a raging earth, scorching red rivers of the most acute and overwhelming agony. Sarrane recoiled, fled. Flew away, back into herself, into the furthest, most remote recesses of her essence. Down, down, deep down. But there was no refuge, no sanctuary. Neither escape nor asylum, nor shelter nor shield. But only death.
For the chalice of Sarrane’s soul was the very vessel of her doom.
Astoundingly, she ma
naged to shriek aloud: “Sister! Save – ”
And then the inescapable tide of fire and pain crashed over her soul, and she slid limply from her steed, falling haplessly, her head striking with violence against the hard stone of the basin. Her skull shattered, split apart. Blood spewed. Pinkish-grey matter spattered the rock. Bits of brain burned into the limestone, molten morsels of mortality, flaring fiercely for a moment, then fading feebly as they failed.
And the Seer of the Fiannar saw no more.
Sister! Save –
In a darkened crevasse west of the White Warren, Caelle cried out. Her mirarran reared. The warders of the rearguard reacted instantly, forming a defensive circle about the distraught Shield Maiden, blades drawn, spears bristling belligerently in all directions. Cold grey eyes scanned the walls of the defile, searching the shadows, seeking the source of the peril. The site of the assault, however, was nowhere proximate to their position – and the threat was not without, but within.
Caelle thrust her sentience through the waning echoes of Sarrane’s warning, a wind of war rushing past flame and pain to the side of her friend’s sundered soul. There the Shield Maiden crouched, kneeling above that huddled, embattled essence, her small silver shield raised against the surging magma and madness.
Sarra! I am here! Sister!
But no answer came.
Caelle bound the silent shade behind her shield, then lashed out against the laval siege, slashing once, twice, thrice, again and again, slicing a great gash in the fury of the fire. And dashing through the gap, the Shield Maiden returned to herself, her eyes wild with wrath and fear, bright with several strains of pain – among them, glistening tears.
“Slain! Our Seer is slain!” she called through the tightness in her throat. “Ride! Warders of the Watch! Dhir dri! Ride!”
And weeping, they rode.
Arumarron could see no more. There was no more to see. Thrashing, roaring in his dream, he forced himself to waken.
Tielle stood over him, her head tilted slightly to one side, her face slack, eyes wide and damp. At the girl’s side and a step behind, her brother stared at the ground, his little hands clasped before him as though in prayer. Several yards away, the Harbinger sat astride his mor-marran, black and baleful, his head downcast, the sunless pall of midday hovering about him like a ghost at a grave marker, cold, clinging. And above them all, the Grey Ladies peered away in stark and stony silence.
Arumarron opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it once more.
“Is she…are you sure?”
The girl’s answering nod, though hesitant and only barely perceptible, struck like a battering ram at the Heir’s heart. He had known what her reply would be – of course he had known – nevertheless, he had stubbornly horded one last glimmer of hope, one final feeble flicker of faith, now dashed, now doused.
Mother.
Arumarron half-rose to a sitting position upon his bedroll. His gaze was glazed, the translucent film of slumber yet blurring his sight. He brought his balled fists to his eyes, rubbed, and the stars therein sparked, burning away all traces of torpor. His hands dropped away, still tightly clenched, glistening with sweat and skin grease – and with something else entirely.
“Aru…”
The Heir to the House of Eccuron towered to his feet. His countenance was cold, carved of ice, but there was fire there, also, white hot beneath that wintry rage. Wordlessly, he adjusted his cloak and rillagh. He took up his greatsword, loosed its long and lethal blade, disdainfully tossing the leather harness aside. He gestured for his mirarran, swung up into the saddle. Abandoning his bedroll and other scattered belongings, he turned the steed toward the First Cut, the animal’s hooves pummeling the stone like iron hammers on drums of war.
“Aru!”
Nothing.
Then, desperately, Tielle tried, “Master Harbinger! Stop him!”
But Arumarron of Arrenhoth had already stormed by the silk-swathed Swordlord and vanished into the dark rocky deeps of the Hard Hills.
Because the Fiannar do not mourn.
They avenge.
The defensive circle of Deathward women and children parted to permit the Shield Maiden past. She walked with a slow and deliberate gait, her face completely calm save for a barely detectable tick twitching in the flesh of one cheek. The wind of her ride through the twisting and heaving maze of the Hills had dried the tears from her skin, but a lingering legacy of pain remained in her eyes, like a memory of rain in the sun-washed wake of a wilding storm.
Caelle came upon a scene both poignant and surreal.
The Lady of the Fiannar sat at the centre of the circle of Fiannar, her staff on the stone to her left, the Seer’s spear abandoned on her right, baby Aranion sound asleep in his harness at her bosom – and Sarrane’s shattered head cradled lovingly in her lap. Dark blood drenched Cerriste’s leather leggings and sopped the surrounding stone. The air tasted of molten metal, coppery and caustic, and smelled sickeningly of scorched flesh.
The Shield Maiden picked her way carefully about bits of brain and bone, noting as she went the burn marks on the sodden rock. Something twisted in her stomach as she came to stand at the side of her Lady.
Cerriste did not look up.
“We have lost her, cousin,” the Lady said softly, too softly. “She is gone.”
Caelle looked down upon her dead friend. The Seer’s face was curiously intact and unsullied, and seemed strangely serene, though her eyes were wide and staring, gazing into nothing, the swirl of her irises stilled for all eternity.
“We should send word with the throkka to – ”
But the Lady shook her head.
“No. My husband cannot be distracted, cousin. And Master Tulnarron must retain a hold of his humours. Telling either one about… this… would only unsettle them, and serve no purpose but the Blood King’s.”
The Shield Maiden considered, then nodded. The logic in Cerriste’s decision was sound, the wisdom there without flaw.
“From where did the attack come, Lady?”
When Cerriste did not immediately respond, a nearby Fiann pointed.
“A defile in the cliff there, Shield Maiden. You cannot mistake the wrongness of the place. We have searched it thoroughly, and we search it still, but have yet to find anything amiss, save the spoor of corruption only.”
Caelle glanced briefly in the direction indicated, committing the crevice to memory.
“Recall your searchers, Watcher Hyrre,” she commanded, her voice quiet yet firm. “And swiftly. They will find nothing there but death.”
The warder’s eyes widened, and a coldness took her, shook her. And with no further word she quickly moved away.
The Shield Maiden looked back upon her Lady.
“C’ris, we must – ”
But the Lady of the Fiannar had already set aside Sarrane’s broken head, and was rising to her feet, her whitewood staff clasped in one hand, the Seer’s spear in the other. She stared away westward, her stance rigid, her face graven of granite, her lips a severe slit in the hewn stone of her aspect.
“Strip her body, Emanthe,” she commanded of a tall young Watchcaptain. “Preserve her rillagh for her son. We will commit our sister to the Fires of the Fallen, and do so here, now.” Her gaze then turned upon Caelle, and there was darkness in her eyes. Darkness, yes, but determination also. “We press on, Shield Maiden. We do not rest until we achieve Allaura. Take an Eye of the Watch. Remain with the rearguard. Let nothing past you.”
“My place is at your side, Lady,” Caelle protested. “I must – ”
But the Lady’s glare abided no objection, brokered no compromise.
“You are our strongest sword, cousin. And our sturdiest shield. Should this assailant better you, or evade you, it will not matter who stands at my side.”
Caelle stared, the sapphires in her eyes sparking and shining. She then nodded. Fisted the rillagh across her heart.
“What of Arumarron and the children of Teillerian? Should we
not send for them? Should they not at least be alerted?”
The Lady of the Fiannar looked to the north, seeing more than just the towering cliffs of the White Warren. She was silent for a moment, then resolutely shook her head.
They already know.
“They are with the Harbinger now, Caelle,” she replied, her words like wind across fields of snow. “And whether that be the safest place in the world or the most dangerous remains only the Teller’s tale to tell.”
The Shield Maiden lowered her head, looking with love upon her lost friend one last lingering time.
Emanthe rose, Sarrane’s shining sash in her hand.
And at the tender touch of the Lady’s staff, the Seer’s body began to burn.
The three steeds raced along the narrow gashes and gorges of the Hard Hills, descending deep defiles, scaling small mountains of tumbled talus. Swift and sure were the hooves of the mirarra as they leapt from shelf to ledge, from ledge to outcropping, striking a storm of sparks on the rock, bursting like bolts of dark lightning across basin floors and over long stretches of fairly flat ground. Ever about them reared the colossal cliffs of the Hills, leaning close and cold, seeming to push against them, striving to thwart their progress. But the steeds would not be stayed, neither by shadow nor stone, nor by any power native to that great labyrinth of the ages.
Because a woman had been slain. A mother; an idol; a friend.
Arumarron led, always at the fore, his tawny mane flying at his back, the naked blade of his greatsword positioned before him like the lance of a charging knight. Tielle followed, hands knotted in her mirarran’s mane, her eyes wide and wild; Chadh’s little arms were locked firmly around her waist, his cheek pressed against her back, his own eyes clamped tightly closed. Last came the Harbinger, a dancer in the dark, as silent as a shadow, blacker than any starless night, and to look upon him was to know fear and woe and the chill breath of death.
Three mounts. Four riders. One desperate, urgent duty:
Vengeance.
Revenge, reprisal, justice – whatever the Teller saw fit to name it – would have to wait. The Lady of the Fiannar had issued orders, specific and precise, and from these commands neither the Deathward who followed nor the Darad who led would deviate. Allaura, first, she had decreed. Then we shall see. That was all. No more was spoken of the matter. In fact, no more was spoken whatsoever.
