The Wicked Day

by Christopher Bunn

  “Ehtan!” said Giverny.

  The wolf bounded forward to her side. The men near her drew back in alarm. Declan raised his sword. His heart faltered for his sister, but she threw her arms around the wolf’s neck. The wolf looked at Declan over her shoulder, his silver eyes bright. A voice flashed through his mind. A strange, rough sort of voice.

  Do not trouble thy heart.

  “Hawks and wolves,” said Owain. His face was white with strain, smeared with blood and dirt, but he bowed courteously to the wolf. The wolf inclined his head in return and then planted himself squarely in front of Giverny.

  Some distance away from them, closer to the tower of the Guard still standing amid the ruins of the city wall, the sunlight flashed on another small ring of steel drowning in the sea of dead soldiers. Owain could make out the tall figure of Rane Lannaslech, standing head and shoulders above his men. The gray hair of his father, the duke, was visible alongside him, as well as the duke of Dolan. Of Harth, he could see only dimly, far across the battlefield, a struggling knot of horsemen shrinking and shrinking within the heaving sea of the dead.

  I suppose it won’t be long now, Owain thought to himself. I would’ve liked to see Sibb and the children one more time.

  The dead threw themselves forward and he no longer had time to think, but could only parry and hack and kill until the day blurred into a continuous jarring agony of steel on steel. The men alongside him fought in grim determination. The wolf leapt and slashed with his teeth, quicker than thought. Behind them, the girl stood without moving. Even though she was a slender little thing in comparison to their iron and brawn, the men had the distinct impression that it was not a girl who stood there, but a sturdy oak tree standing with its roots deep in the earth.

  A sudden weight and claws dug into Owain’s shoulder. He swore, staggering back.

  “Listen, man,” said the hawk in his ear. “Hold here. Hold fast. Every minute that you give her, she grows stronger. Her roots are going deeper. Guard her and you guard Hearne. No, you guard Tormay itself.”

  “What of Jute?” said Owain. “Will he just wait and watch us die?”

  “Jute struggles with the darkness itself. Be assured that you would be safer battling this entire army of the dead by yourself than face what he does for one instant. Now, keep your heart strong. Hold fast!”

  The hawk leapt from his shoulder back into the air and was gone. The sky darkened, and the wind blew cold. There were voices muttering in the wind, whispering words in a dead tongue that spoke of doom and despair and death. The army of the enemy rose up and there was nothing that Owain Gawinn could do except fight. Behind him, the girl still stood silent, and he could no longer see the horsemen of Harth, nor the men of Harlech. Jute was nowhere to be seen.

  The thing of fire standing astride the ruined wall grew taller, flaring up into the sky. It roared forth its hate, its mouth a well of darkness, and such was the terror of that sound that men stood frozen in fear. Surely there was only darkness and it was the end of all people.

  “Jute!” howled the thing. The air shimmered, as if it were about to burst into flame. “Thief! Give me what is mine!”

  The wind keened in response, gathering itself and battering against the colossus of flame. The clouds tumbled by in the sky. The sun vanished, hidden in smoke or hurried to its safety beyond the sea’s edge or perhaps blown out like a candle. And then Jute was there. He hurtled through the sky, wreathed in the icy air. Flames reached for him. Fire leapt up to pull him down. The sky was on fire. Darkness trembled in the thoughts of every soldier there. And even from the unblinking eyes of the dead, despair stared.

  Jute darted through the fire, quicker than light. He struck with the weapons of the wind, with the force of the gale and the hammering blows of the hurricane. Ice shards flashed through the air behind him. They shattered into steam in the heart of the fire, and the fire shrieked aloud. It called out words. It called out words of unmaking, ancient words left unspoken since Nokhoron Nozhan first saw the making of the world. The words wrote themselves in the smoking darkness of that sky. And even though no living man knew that accursed language, every man felt the truth of it in his heart. Even the dead stopped in their tracks and stood in silence for the end. For there are things even deeper than death. Giverny Farrow herself, standing with the earth under her, wavered.

  But Jute only flew faster. He flew faster than thought, faster than the reaching grasp of the words of the enemy. He was untouchable. He was the wind. He was the storm and the fury and the heart of the sky. Up to the stars themselves, into the vast, unbroken stretches of silence between the stars, between the awful furnaces of space—all of this was his domain.

  The stars paused within their prescribed courses. Their light dimmed for a moment. The music of those spheres faltered as they stopped to gaze and wonder. No one heard the dismay in their voices in all of Tormay except, perhaps, for the hawk.

  Look!

  Do not look. . .

  Look away. . .

  Hide thine eyes. . .

  And Jute struck with all the dreadful, savage power of those endless heights, the cold and silence of the sky, colder than winter's frozen heart, and more silent than the grave of death itself. He struck with the fury of the tempest and the howl of the wind that rages between the stars. He struck straight through the heart of the fire. And the fire could not stand before him. It buckled and bent. It tattered and streamed and fluttered, helpless in the wind. The towering phantasm that it had been shrank away. The darkness faded in its eyes until it was only a shadow of things once hoped for. The thing cried out. The thing that had once been the anbeorun of fire. Aeled. It was soundless now. Its mouth shaped a single word from the oldest of all languages. The language it had first spoken, long centuries before it had chosen the darkness.

  Master.

  But the sound was silent. And then the fire guttered out. On the battlefield, the bodies of the dead collapsed to the ground in honest death. The defenders of the city stood in weariness, dazed with surprise and doubt. There was only Jute now, triumphant in the sky. He was full of fury and delight and the wonder of his own power. The rightness of it.

  Aye, said the voice in his mind. This is how things should be.

  “I am the wind!” Jute shouted out loud.

  The sound boomed through the sky like rolling thunder. It was thunder to the cowering men far below on the battlefield. It was no longer a voice. The wind howled around him in response. It blew every which way. It dashed up into the sky to shred the clouds into tatters. It careened to the east and the west, churning the sea into foam. Walls in the city collapsed. Stones flew and shattered. The bodies of the living and the dead were strewn about like a child’s playthings.

  Thou art the wind, said the voice. Thou art Jute. And all this power is thine. Thou wert born for this. Thou hast conquered. Thine is the power to unravel the sky. The power to destroy.

  The voice was right. The thought grew within Jute’s mind and the sky darkened. Far away, far in the eastern approaches beyond the first few stars, a window in the sky seemed to appear. It slowly opened. It was only a smudge of black in the twilight sky. A tiny smudge of black an impossible distance away. No one saw it. Not even Jute. Something lay beyond that window. Something waking. Something opening up its eyes.

  The power to destroy is thine.

  The wind howled in delight. It scoured the sky clean until nothing was left except Jute and the distant stars. However, there was one other. Low over the city, a single, solitary bird struggled through the power of the wind. The hawk. But even he could not last in that maelstrom. He folded his wings and dove down to the battlefield. The hawk landed in the dubious shelter of some rubble from the city wall. Even there, the wind battered everything in sight. Shards of stone hissed through the air. Something stirred on the ground next to the hawk.

  “Well met, little wing.”

  The voice was worn thin, but the hawk would have recognized it anywhere.

 
“My lord Aeled,” said the hawk sadly.

  “Nay, no longer fire. I am spent. I have fallen, old friend.” The face looked up at the bird from the ground. It seemed as if it was carved of stone, as if the flesh had been worn away by time until only bone remained. There was no sign of the duke of Mizra there, only something fading and impossibly ancient. “Perhaps I was falling all that time, when we first descended from the house of dreams. This world took hold of my heart and I wanted no other. But then, as the centuries passed, the desire grew in me to return. To go home. To return to the house of dreams. But I could not. All the knowledge of this world could not help me, thought I searched and searched. I have forgotten so many things.” His voice was just a whisper now. “I did not recognize the darkness until it was too late. He snared me in my dreams. Perhaps, even now, he is waking.”

  “He?” said the hawk, dreading the answer.

  “Save your boy before it’s too late. Before he takes the path I took.” Flame guttered on the stone face and there was pain in his eyes as he stared up at the hawk. “I must die, little wing, but I cannot. Will this fire never be quenched in me?”

  The hawk had no answer for him, only silence. But across the battlefield and through the wind someone came walking. She was only a wisp of rain, a few snowflakes that fell in the slow curve of her face, a drift of fog off the sea. She passed between the living defenders and the dead, and no one saw her. Her steps took her unerringly to the hawk’s side and it was then that he saw her.

  “Lady,” said the hawk.

  The stone face on the ground looked up at her. A sigh of flame and smoke issued forth from his mouth.

  “Sister.”

  The girl who had been Liss Galnes did not answer, but knelt over him. Her hand touched his face. Flames fluttered against her fingers. Tears from her eyes fell down upon his brow. They hissed into steam, and the flames guttered out and were gone. The face below her tried to smile, but it could not, and then it was only stone. Ruined stone that looked somewhat like the figure of a man asleep on the ground. She reached out her hand and caught the steam as it rose. Her fingers closed on it and there was suddenly only a single, shining jewel in her palm. Her fingers closed again and the jewel was gone. The hawk and the girl were still for a moment, staring down at the broken stone on the ground. High above them, far beyond the sky and the howling wind, the stars looked down as well.

  “Lady,” said the hawk again, his voice breaking.

  “Courage, little wing.” She smiled at him, and then she dissolved into mist.

  The hawk launched himself back into the air, his wings heavy with weariness. The wind was like stone against him. It no longer knew him. He clawed his way up into the sky. He was tired. He could not think clearly. Somewhere, high above him, Jute rode upon the wind. Somewhere, up in the darkness. He could not see him. Grimly, he set his beak and flew into the wind. Even though he could not see him, he knew Jute would be at the heart of the wind’s fury and dreadful joy.

  The power to destroy is thine.

  The hawk heard the voice and shuddered. Jute heard it too, and smiled. The power to destroy was his. The power to rend and shatter and unmake. The wind was his. He was the wind. It blew through him and it was him. He stretched out through the sky for countless miles. He could see across the breadth of the world. He blew the waves into disarray and uprooted oaks far across the eastern slopes of the Rennet Valley. He toppled walls in Hearne and he flung avalanches rumbling down the mountainsides on the reaches of Morn. He soared up to the stars and down among the habitations of men. He was everywhere, saw everything, could destroy or graciously allow life. It was all his. Everything was his.

  Jute.

  The voice was faint in his mind. Faint, but slowly drawing closer. He shook his head, frowning. His eyes were full of darkness, like the night sky.

  Jute.

  The hawk. He knew the voice now. Jute turned and saw the bird struggling through the sky toward him.

  Thou dost need him no longer, said the other voice in his mind. Thou art no longer the little wing. Thou art the wind.

  “What do you want?” Jute roared across the sky.

  “Call back the wind,” said the hawk. “Call back the wind. Remember who you are.”

  “I know who I am. I am the wind! I did not ask for this, but it is mine now. I’ve done everything you asked of me. I’ve fought your battles. I’ve spent my life for Tormay. I killed the lord of fire. I am the wind. I don’t need you now!”

  “That is not your voice that speaks,” said the hawk, his voice barely audible over the howl of the wind.

  “Not my voice?” shouted Jute. “Not my voice? Then whose is it?”

  “You know.”

  “If I know, then do I need you to tell me?” The boy’s voice broke into the different voices of the wind. Into the deep bass of the winter storm, into the keening shriek of the sea storm driving through a ship’s rigging, into the awful depths of the mountain blast. “Do I need you? No!”

  And with that final, dreadful no, the boy drove the hawk from him in a terrible blast of wind, blowing across the sky in a fury of power that shook the Mountains of Morn themselves down to the roots of their being. The hawk tumbled end over end, helpless before him. He was only a speck now. He fell through the sky.

  As you wish. The hawk’s voice was tired and failing in the boy’s mind. As you wish, little wing.

  The other voice chuckled in the boy’s mind. And Jute’s heart leapt in sudden pain at the sound. The sky seemed dreadfully empty now.

  “Hawk!” he screamed. “Come back!”

  Jute drew the wind to him, frantic and despairing. The wind came in all of its heedless power. For miles around, the wind rushed toward him, faster and faster. The hawk was borne along on it, faster than an arrow loosed from a bow. But the bird’s body was limp. His wings were broken. A feather fell free from one wing and the wind hurled it along. Jute stretched out his hands for the hawk, but the feather, with its quill as sharp and as hard as iron, pierced his side. Blood streamed away into the wind. Jute felt none of it. The hawk lay in his hands.

  “Remember from where you came,” said the hawk, his voice a whisper. “That is what he forgot. He forgot the house of dreams. Would you forget as well?”

  “No, I will not,” said Jute, his eyes full of tears.

  But the hawk did not answer, for his body was still.

  It was said that day, by those who were there, that the wind cried out in the darkening twilight sky. It cried out with such a voice that the stars turned away and hid their faces. The sea and the earth answered back in sorrow, but there was none living who understood the language of their voices. Owain Gawinn and those standing with him saw the girl, Giverny Farrow, crumple to the ground. They ran to aid her, but she would not be comforted, though the wolf and her brother crouched beside her.

  “Go find him,” she said. “Out in the fields past the bridge.”

  They saddled horses and rode out through the ruined gate. The ground there was a trampled morass of icy mud. Several of the soldiers carried lanterns, and the light fell on the bodies of the dead, on the weapons of war, on shattered armor, on arrows standing stiff in flesh and earth like lifeless branches, on dead horses stretched out in one last frozen gallop. As they picked their way through that awful landscape, one of the soldiers cried out in surprise. A figure stumbled toward them out of the shadows. Owain thought it Jute at first, but the man was taller, a sword in his hand. He seemed a ghost, but as he drew near, the lantern light fell on the weary face of the prince of Harth. His horse walked behind with trembling step and hanging head. The prince spoke, his voice clear and courteous as it always was.

  “My lords,” he said. “Who do you seek among the dead?”

  “Jute,” said Owain.

  The company clattered over the bridge with the river rushing below. That is where they found him. Jute lay on the icy ground, curled up around the wound in his side. His fingers were clenched tight on a single black fea
ther. They bore him up and brought him to the city. Through the ruins of the city gate they rode in care and solicitude, for his face was white with pain. The soldiers of every duchy stood there in silent honor. When they set Jute down in the court of the Guard, the chief physician came and tended him. The dukes came and knelt at his pallet.

  “You saved this land,” said Lord Lannaslech, his voice gentle. “You, the wind.”

  Jute said nothing, but only clutched the feather in his hands. He did not see them. They drew back at the approach of Giverny Farrow. She crouched at his side and touched his brow.

  “Jute,” she said. She said nothing more than that, but stayed by his side. The wolf sat there too, as unmoving as stone, but his eyes never left Jute’s face.

  The moon rose higher. The wind did not blow, but through the dark streets came the sound of the sea. The soldiers, wounded and whole, slept in their tents and houses and makeshift shelters all along the ruined wall of the city. Owain Gawinn could not sleep, but paced the night away, walking back and forth on the top of the Guard tower. He looked east, but there was nothing there except for the night. In a room in the tower, Jute slept, still clutching the feather. Giverny did not sleep, but sat by his bed, her eyes on his face, the wolf crouched beside her. In a chair in the corner, Declan sprawled, having said that he would watch with her, but he had long since fallen asleep. And so, save the captain, the girl, and the wolf, all the city slept.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  FAREWELLS

  The next morning dawned bright. The bonfire in the court of the Guard had burned to coals. Owain walked down the steps of the tower. He found the duke of Harlech and his son Rane in the stable, talking with the prince of Harth. The prince was saddling his horse.