He looked at me with a pained expression. His last moments of humanity were dwindling. “You are wounded,” he said to me.
“I am old,” I said and searched for kind words—something to mark the end of his human life. I could find none in my cold and unmoving heart.
“I will heal you,” he said and reached across the gathering darkness before I could object. The Shadow was summoned, and He was very pleased.
‘Yes, my child, you come to me, at last,’ the terrible voice said to him. Geart seemed far away, and began to tremble as if stricken.
“Is he okay?” Barok asked. The Chaukai and the librarian moved closer.
“Leave him,” Soma said. “He is with the Spirits.”
It was difficult to hold still. The gathering darkness swirled with mirth and wrath. Tendrils of His power rose from the forest floor and wrap themselves around the Mother Yew’s tree and the powerless audience.
Geart came awake with a gasp and laughed.
I seized what I could of the darkness and prepared a song that would kill him.
“Didn’t like that, did you?” Geart said with boyish glee, but not to me.
The Shadow trembled, and so did I. Our Father spoke, His voice full of fear, ‘What did you do? What have you taken from me?’
The mischief upon Geart’s face was his only reply before he reached out with his awesome power and strangled the searching tendrils.
The Shadow flinched back and tried to flee from him. ‘No. I will not—’
Geart turned to me and began to sing stolen verbs. Warring gusts of arctic and scorched air shook the trees, and the Spirits screamed with rage and joy.
purify remake body soul man
My old bones cracked, and my flesh vibrated as the song remade me. Mercury bled from me like rain. My eyesight sharpened and hair sprouted everywhere upon me. My heart spasmed, fluttered, and began to beat warm blood through my dusty veins. Goose bumps piqued my flesh and a symphony of emotions woke me to the wonders of the living world and the bitter consequences of my crimes.
Still singing, Geart turned to the librarian and managed one verse for him as well. The young priest laughed as his song faded. Geart’s youthful smile filled me with joy, and I embraced him.
“Thank you, Geart. Thank you.”
His cold flesh was solid and impossibly heavy. 200 weights of mercury coursed through him and sucked in the darkness like a loadstone. But the Shadow’s power no longer moved on its own—as though Geart had knocked Him senseless and dragged His unconscious body along by a steely leash.
But I set these thoughts aside. Geart’s life was at an end. I waved over Barok and Soma.
“Farewell, young man,” I said to him.
Geart’s black eyes and gray lips lost their mirth. “Farewell, friends,” he said.
“You did well, Geart,” Barok said. “I am proud of you.”
“Aim me,” he said, and the man that was Geart Goib ceased to be. He came slowly to attention and stared straight ahead.
I suffered a terrible moment of worry. I was no longer Hessier. I’d been rendered a simple man, and Geart could shake my hold upon him with ease.
“It is finished?” Barok asked.
“Yes. He is perfect. We must be moving after our enemies.”
“My ship is ready to sail,” Soma said and waved Fana forward. “But we are not leaving until you speak with Fana. The College of Healers has questions.”
The prince huffed. His impatience matched my own. I reached out to compel her—but could not. I was just a man. I considered using the song that would force her to obey, but bit my tongue. I was a man now. There was only so much I could sing before the Shadow would have me once again.
I was just a man.
“How long will you be?” Barok asked Fana.
“As long as it takes,” she said. “You and Soma must also attend to the refugees before anyone goes anywhere.”
They all began to move as though Barok’s cooperation—and mine—was assumed.
Was it? Not in my own mind, clearly. The many hundreds of words I knew filtered quickly to songs that would kill them.
I fled the thought and stomped my aching feet.
What are you doing? Were you ever a servant of the Earth?
Oh, you fool. You empty, selfish fool. You started this.
Sorrow poured in. My daughter, my wife, the millions since—all had been slaughtered to feed my power. Geart had remade a man who had decided to wet the earth with unthinkable murder. I was the first the Shadow had taught, and I had been his willing puppet. And I could be his servant once again—I could lay down all the children of the Earth and rejoin—
No. Not while the Ashod have hold of a Vesteal.
“Are you coming?” Fana asked, and they turned. All eyes were upon me. Geart looked at me like I was a meal. It made my skin crawl. I considered what it meant to be with them—a true ally who would serve and protect them.
“Geart,” I said. “You will accompany Soma and defend her above all others. You will take orders from her and her alone.”
Geart struggled with this, and there was nothing I could do to move him.
Soma took hold of him with her own terrific power and said to him, “The Shadow watches you. Do not fail me.”
Clever girl.
Geart bowed to her, and she led him away. Barok followed.
I laughed under my breath. Soma had replaced me as the superior power in Zoviya. This was the first good day the Spirit of the Earth had had since I first set foot in Edonia.
“Follow me,” Fana said.
“What is your role here?” I asked her.
“Senior envoy and scribe. I am also Matron of the College of Healers, and today I am going to record all of the words you know. Call me Madam Furstundish.”
“Write them? That is not possible.”
“Not for you or for Geart,” she replied. “Are you coming?”
I’d not imagined in all my years being led about by a short pregnant woman who claimed to know more about the magic of the world than I did. But how could I not?
‘Hush,’ the Mother Yew said as we departed, and Fana looked back at me knowingly.
She had horses, and a guard of watchful Chaukai led us through the trees.
94
Arilas Barok Yentif
I smelled the ruins of Urnedi long before we rode in. I began to shiver.
The keep stood but was all wrong. Blackened windows opened onto emptiness, and lifeless chimneys pointed where cupola and bright pennants once rose.
The membership of the craftsmen’s consortium and the collection of arilas waited for me upon the practice field between the keep and the desolate town. I rode around to the keep’s entrance rather than suffer their pleading and did not give Soma or my envoys an opportunity to protest. I made my way up and crossed the planks of a makeshift drawbridge to get a look inside.
The flames had hollowed the keep—had hollowed Enhedu. All that remained was cooked stone and stubborn men. I looked up in search of the last place I had seen Clea, but all there was above me was the sky.
I couldn’t stop shaking. My hands quaked—rebelling against my failures.
Someone approached, and I turned to tell them to go rot.
A young man started across the drawbridge. He was the one who had faced trial for the attempt upon my life—the mayor’s boy. He stepped in beside me and looked down into the confusion of black debris.
“Anton, isn’t it?” I asked. “Did Soma send you up?”
“She and my father.” He continued to search the pit that had been the kitchens and storeroom. I did not need to ask what he looked for. Soma was clever.
“That day you snuck into the storeroom,” I said, “You were looking for a trace of your lost child, weren’t you?”
“Was I?” he asked and looked back down into the debris. “Suppose so.”
“What is Soma’s hope for us?” I asked. “That we will bond because of our shared experience
and heal?”
“Heal?” he said. “We might as well try to grow younger. They sent me up here to inspire you. The consortium is behind my plan. Father figures all I have to do to get you right in the head is show you my drawings.”
He held two sheets of vellum. A landscape I recognized was drawn upon the first. I asked him, “Is that what you have been doing with your time since you left the greencoats? You are an artist now?”
“No. I am what my father trained me to be,” he said and offered them to me. “Soldiering was my fool notion for how I could serve Enhedu.”
Neither of us commented on how that had worked out. I took the sheets. He may as well have hit me with a bludgeon.
“What is this?” I asked, though the title of the drawing made it plain.
“You dream small dreams,” he said. “Merit tried his best to build a town around you, but this is what Enhedu needs. A capital fit to rule the world.”
“You’ve drawn no buildings here, just walls and—what are these circles?”
“Reservoirs,” he said, and I lost what I was going to say to the grandness of his plan. He continued, “We will fill them with water brought down from the mountains. As for the buildings, I thought you might like to make the first attempt at drawing them. Perhaps after you convince those poor wretches camped out by the harbor to help us build it all?”
I nearly accused him of arrogance “But everything is gone. We have nothing left.”
“Gone?” He said as though it were an accusation. “You have not lost a single timber camp, quarry, fishery, farm, or stable. Enhedu’s villages, fleet, and shipyard are untouched. All they burned was the fancy factories of your master craftsmen and a few homes. Your ships sold all the goods out of their warehouses, and Fana warned the people of the town in time for most of them to flee. You have a confederation of the arilas waiting below to discuss plans for unseating your chief rival, and you have unleashed Geart on the fool who took your wife and child. Nothing’s gone. Least …”
His inspiration ran into his memories. He wilted, but I could not discount the man or the dream he’d committed to vellum. Urnedi was little more than a minor gatehouse on his drawing of Enhedu’s—of Edonia’s capital. At its center was a great fortress that would rise up where Ojesti had been, and I imagined one grand layout of streets after another.
The clop of iron shoes drew my gaze down. Thell and the Dame Vala were there, with fresh horses and a basket of food. I’d not seen either of them all year. My stomach sank. Pemini and Umera were dead. So was half the staff of the keep. They’d come to help.
I asked Anton, “The bunch of you already have a place setup upon the ridge for me, don’t you?”
“Right about there,” he said and pointed west to the spruce-covered ridge where his proposed fortress would rise. I glanced from the drawing to the promised meal, and started toward the horses.
“How are you doing, lad?” Thell asked. I shook his hand, kissed the Dame, and took the apple she offered. Apart from them stood Soma and Geart, like a falconer and her raptor. The greencoats had found him a suit of armor. The consortium and arilas looked on.
“Gentlemen,” I shouted to the crowd. “To horses, there is work to be done.”
They were startled, but Erom and Arilas Kiel seemed keen to be moving. Soma got moving as well, and the rest were drawn along. I slowed us for a time when we reached the west bridge. The customhouse, mills, and threshers were intact and active. Someone was building new barges along the southeast bank, and Thell’s horse farm and orchards looked undisturbed.
The village of Ojesti had not been so lucky. Aden’s flames had consumed every structure and a wide circle of the surrounding forest. Burned-out pyres lined the road.
“This way,” Anton said, and he and Gern led us south through the spruce.
The Chaukai camp hidden in the towering trees had grown into its own town. I’d known this, but had not considered what the silver they had taken from Bessradi would allow. It was as large as Urnedi, with a wide boulevard that ran along the top of the ridge and down into the tall stones that once served as hiding place for the Chaukai. The street frontage along the boulevard was wealthy, indeed. Each structure consisted of a compact two-story half-timber framed building with brick-infill panels facing the street that boasted at least four bays, some as many as six. Each had a horse gate giving access to a central courtyard, stables, and hayloft. The houses were stacked one to the next and each was filled with workers and children. I looked for their overseers and tutors but recognized, instead, a number of the Chaukai’s wives.
The Chaukai households were ruled by an army of matrons. Dia would be proud.
The thought stabbed me, and I hurried us the rest of the way down.
We reached the bottom of the boulevard, and I got a look southwest through the tall stones. The dry wash there was ringed with a low palisade. The space inside was crammed with starved and stinking men.
“Did you have to raise a palisade around them?” Soma asked.
“Up here,” Gern said and gestured to a stairway that wrapped up around the towering rocks. I led us up onto the wide flat top.
The palisade proved to be only the front end of a vast sea of refugees. Enhedu’s river hemmed them in to the east. To the south were the rough hills of our tall mountains. To the west was a ring of ordered Chaukai watch camps.
Gern said, “We’ve only locked away the ones who have caused trouble. It took us ten days to get them this settled in.”
“How did you manage it?”
“Fish, mostly. And spears.”
“Who speaks for them?” I asked.
“There was no layer of control beneath Aden, but a few men who were officers in the militia that joined Aden have stepped forward. They may be able to keep control of the militia, but they only account for about a fifth of the camp.”
“So many,” Soma said. Geart stood behind her like a statue of etched steel. My first armor-clad Hessier. Was this how my father and the Exaltier before him thought of them? Necessary tools?
The world had gone mad.
The arilas began to arrive behind us with their pennants and guards. It was a group made to impress, and I hoped they would have an effect upon the crowd.
The camp began to take notice. Voices called out, and the sudden noise of the protest surprised me.
“The flags of Havish and Aderan,” Soma said with alarm. “They think you’ve all come to take them back into slavery.”
The madman from Havish looked momentarily hopeful, but the sound of the camp’s despair was monstrous. It pricked my soul. Those were my people.
Geart’s metal rustled, and he swelled as if gratified.
His eyes brightened, and the air around him began to crackle. The cold touch of Hessier magic crept along my skin. Geart was feeding off their misery.
“Heal them all,” Soma ordered him sharply.
He considered her for a long and terrifying moment. The Chaukai bristled.
Why’d they put him in armor so soon?
White light blasted from him without warning, and my body was cooked straight through. It was the same healing magic he’d used after the Battle of Urnedi, but the blazing touch was as savage as it was serene. All my hurts and discomforts—my hunger and my weariness—gone.
For the masses below, it seemed nothing could have been better, until Soma reached out with her power as well. The Spirit Herself loomed as large as the mountain and She filled my heart. Joy took me as I was healed—body and soul.
The world faded back to mundane colors. The camp was wrapped in silence. Geart’s black eyes dulled to milky gray, and the air around him ceased to hum.
I would have wept from the divine touch, but the misery of men who thought themselves still to be slaves pulled down the happy pallor. Geart would begin to draw upon them again soon.
Soma had the same look of worry upon her face as the Chaukai.
I turned to Harod and the Ludoq madman. “Tell them that th
ey are free.”
Harod waved on the other slaver. The Ludoq man seemed rooted to the stone until Soma set her eyes upon him. He went, and they were met with a low hiss from the crowd. The Havishon slaver raised his hand to quiet them, and they granted him a grudging silence. His big voice carried like a trumpet. “You are not slaves anymore. Find something else to do.”
“Inspired,” Soma said, while the arilas joined in the low laugh from the crowd.
“Come,” I said to Gern and started down. “We must let them all know the details of my offer.”
He was distraught but hurried after me. “My lord, how will we hold it together? They will more than double the population of Enhedu.”
“A problem for tomorrow, my friend. Today is about welcoming them properly. They must sleep tonight knowing that they are free. I want your officers and their wives out in the crowd at once.”
He seemed resolved to it by the time we’d climbed down. I could only hope that a fraction of the crowd would accept this reality as quickly. I said to him, “Now, where are these militia officers of yours, General Furstundish?”
His brow furrowed in response to being promoted. He said, “I’ll have to find a set of those crazy stirrup rowels of yours.”
“Also a problem for tomorrow,” I said, and at that we laughed.
He departed to find the militiamen, and I found the arilas gathered nearby. All nine of those that had fled the Chancellery were there. I’d not been party to any of their dealings during the long voyage, but clearly much had been agreed upon. Aldus was chatting with the three arilas of the East as though the last 300 years of blood between their families was a story of kinship, and Harod and Lukan were shoulder to shoulder as if brothers.
This did not fit into my head. “Lukan, explain this to me. Harod cut your brother’s head off. How have you made peace so quickly?”
“It was you who ordered it of us,” Lukan said, and I struggled to recall the fight in the Council chamber. He continued, “We got to talking after we got out of Bessradi. It was my brother who started it. He couldn’t get to Harod, so he murdered his wife, Taima. We’ve set it aside—both of us.”
Tanayon Born Page 16
