Age of War: Book Three of The Legends of the First Empire

by Michael J. Sullivan

  Whether the archers had heard her or not, they ran for the stairs. Then the tower collapsed. It didn’t implode; it toppled. Listing to one side, the stone staggered, then keeled over and fell across the upper courtyard, crushing the barracks and the kitchens, narrowly missing the smithy.

  Moya was shoved from behind. She bounced off Filson’s back and lost her footing on the steps. She would have fallen if there had been room. Too many bodies prevented her from going all the way down. A hand caught her by the wrist and drew her out of the crush. She pressed against the outer wall, letting the others run by, which they did without a glance. The stone she leaned on was shivering.

  Stone shouldn’t shiver.

  The hand that had caught Moya belonged to Tesh. He waited beside her for the mob to rampage past while the wall they stood on quaked and quivered.

  We’re above the main gate. This is their target!

  The idea was slow in coming but finally arrived. The Fhrey were trying to bring down the front wall, to lay the fortress bare. Moya heard the crack and snap of stone and the screams of more than a dozen men as the stairs disintegrated.

  We’re next.

  Moya braced for the fall. She grabbed the ancient parapet, despite knowing that it, too, would fall. The stairs and the primary supports for the massive wall were gone. The whole thing was going down. It had to, but it didn’t. The wall continued to shake and jerk back and forth. Tesh and Moya wrapped their arms around the merlons, clinging to the bucking wall. Still, it didn’t fall.

  Across the chasm, Moya spotted the Fhrey troops lined up at the foot of the bridge. They were waiting for the front of the fortress to come down. But the front wall of Alon Rhist refused to fall. Bewilderment filled every face as the great stones danced like a stack of juggled plates. Looking inside the courtyard, Moya saw why.

  Standing amidst the rubble of the toppled tower, just outside the smithy, Moya saw the small figure of Suri flanked by Roan, her dwarfs, Malcolm, and Padera. She stood with arms outstretched, hands moving, head thrown back as if singing to the sky.

  Not knowing if Suri was winning or losing, or just buying time, Moya didn’t want to wait to find out. The stairs to the south were gone. The only way off was the steps on the far side.

  “Up for a crazy run?” Moya asked Tesh and nodded toward the long expanse of crenelated parapet that wiggled like a snake.

  “Always.” Tesh turned his body and knelt like a sprinter. “Ready.”

  “You first. Go!” she shouted.

  The kid took off and got several strides across before being buffeted between the battlements. He staggered and fell, got up, and ran again. Once he was three merlons down, she started her run. She could have been sprinting across a bobbing log in a rushing river for all the stability the wall was providing. A jerk nearly sent her out a crenel.

  Not a log at all—I’m running along a rope used in a tug-of-war!

  While remaining vertical, the wall was faring poorly from the struggle. Stone blocks were jiggled free and fell. Whole merlons were missing, and the parapet was no longer anywhere close to straight. While it changed from moment to moment, the wall had warped into an S shape. About the time Moya was in the very center, she heard a terrible clang. Fearing she was about to fall, she sucked in a breath, but the wall stayed up.

  The doors! The great bronze gates are right beneath me. They must have been shaken off their hinges.

  Ahead of her, Tesh reached the stairs, and once more he stopped. Turning back, he waved frantically for her and waited.

  Kid has more balls than brains.

  The wall jerked again, and she was slapped from one merlon to the other. She slammed one shoulder hard enough to make her cry out, then the other side of the walkway hit her in the chest, knocking the air out of her.

  Tetlin’s tit!

  She forced her legs to keep moving. Moya wasn’t sure where the strength came from—maybe Suri had buoyed her up, or Mari was lending support, or just plain old-fashioned fear fed her efforts—but she finished the crossing, and she and Tesh raced down the steps to the courtyard.

  They were fifty feet away when at last the wall came down.

  * * *

  —

  Suri used to try to catch fish with her bare hands. She’d seen the bears do it, so she thought it was worth a try. Tura had explained that her lack of claws was an insurmountable obstacle. Suri tried anyway. She had stood knee-deep in the stream where the fish swam in the shallows—the same place where the bears hunted—and she scooped up a nice river salmon. The scales were slick as oil, and the creature wiggled, fighting hard. She could feel the muscles thrashing back and forth as the fish struggled. She pulled it to her chest, but the thing was just too slippery, too heavy, too strong. After a titanic battle, it flew from her hands and back into the river, leaving her disappointed and realizing that she couldn’t do everything. Suri felt the same way when the wall was finally torn from her grasp and shattered into a heap of broken stone.

  You just don’t have the claws.

  The land continued to shake. There were no runes on the ground to stop it. The Orinfar protected the primary walls, which was part of the problem in holding them up. She couldn’t grab them with the Art. Instead, she was forced to use the air around them and anything else that wasn’t rune-marked. No sooner did she stop one tower from falling, then another began to wobble. She tried to calm the ground but couldn’t.

  Where is all that power coming from?

  All Suri was doing was holding things together, and she felt exhausted. The struggle over the front wall had drained her, the runes on it acting against her efforts, and the continued fight to withstand the impacts that shuddered the rest of the fortress was a marathon she couldn’t finish.

  Maybe it’s because there are more of them. But Suri could only sense the one, a young Fhrey. She could almost see him, and there was something familiar in that connection. She knew this person. He’d been in Dahl Rhen. He was the one—

  “The bridge,” a voice said in her ear. “Forget the walls. Destroy the Grandford Bridge.”

  If the words had been screamed, she might not have listened, but the calm confidence was something one looked for in emergencies.

  The bridge.

  She felt them coming across—hundreds. They were in a hurry, afraid she would notice and terrified she wouldn’t be distracted enough. Worried she might—

  Suri let go—let the tower fall. Then, with all her remaining strength she reached out toward that delicate span, that thin vulnerable sliver of stone that crossed a very deep chasm. The bridge was just as protected with runes as the walls, but she didn’t need to touch it any more than the elves needed to touch the walls of Alon Rhist to topple them. Destroying was so much easier than preserving. All Suri needed was to shift the cliffs.

  Suri moved the east cliff just a bit to the south, and the west cliff a bit to the north. Like unraveling a string weave, or opening a knot, the bridge disconnected from both sides and came free. The span fell. She couldn’t see it with her eyes, but she sensed it, felt the weight give way and heard the screams as hundreds of Fhrey plummeted to their deaths.

  Suri whirled and reached out, looking for the next calamity. There wasn’t one. The ground stopped shaking. She sensed nothing. The world returned to stillness.

  Suri opened her eyes and saw the devastated remains of the fortress. The entire front of Alon Rhist was a ruin of crumbled stone and shattered wood. Malcolm laid his hands on Suri’s shoulders and gave a gentle, reassuring squeeze. Roan was there, too, and the old woman Padera, and Tressa, and Moya, and Tesh, and Raithe. They were all with her, including dozens of men and Fhrey she didn’t know, everyone looking relieved.

  Everyone was there…everyone except Arion.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The Butterfly and

  the Promise

 
; Voices of the dead have a way of compelling us that the voices of the living can never match—there is simply no way to argue.

  —THE BOOK OF BRIN

  The look on Lothian’s face was terrifying. Not fear, not hatred, not disappointment, not even frustration, but a horrible mix of each—and a heavy dose of rage. His cheeks and ears had turned red, his eyes bulged, and the vein in his neck and forehead stood out.

  “Those Fhrey…” The fane lost the ability to speak and opted to just point toward where the bridge had been. “All those brave Fhrey…” He gritted his teeth and forced a swallow. “They’re all dead.”

  Mawyndulë didn’t say anything. He knew from experience that nothing he said when his father was upset ever helped, and he’d never seen his father this agitated.

  “How did you let that happen?”

  We didn’t exactly let it happen, Jerydd said from the safety of his head.

  “It was an accident,” Mawyndulë said.

  “An accident!” his father shouted at him. “They’re all dead!”

  That’s war for you. Aren’t you glad you declared it? Did you think it would be all sunshine and rainbows? Besides, we killed three times that many when the wall crushed the people in the courtyard. Wait! Don’t say that—he’ll still see it as a loss. Your father doesn’t think one Rhune equals a Fhrey, and rightly so.

  Mawyndulë couldn’t believe that Jerydd thought he’d relay any of that, but then again, the kel was safe, miles away from the fane’s anger.

  “She’s incredibly strong.”

  “You had the power of Avempartha! Or so you said.”

  We do.

  “I do.”

  But that Rhune bitch sucks power like a whirlpool in a hurricane, and she’s as flexible as a ten-year-old. Plus, she’s fast, really fast—Synne fast. And we couldn’t get at her.

  “There were runes on that wall between her and us, so we couldn’t attack her directly. Still, we eventually won, and the wall came down.”

  “And so did the bridge with hundreds of my soldiers,” the fane said through clenched teeth.

  “Well, yeah, but that wasn’t our fault. Everything was happening so fast. I’m shocked she was able to think about that given everything we were throwing at her.”

  The fane continued to fume, taking rapid deep breaths while glaring at his son. Then he turned to Taraneh and Haderas. “We still have five Miralyith, right?”

  “Four, my fane,” Taraneh replied. “Lym died last night from wounds to—”

  “Okay, four. That’s seven including Synne, Mawyndulë, and me. We’ll take care of it ourselves. I should have known better than to rely on Jerydd. That’s the second time he’s failed me. He underestimates everyone. But no Artist can stand against seven. Forget all this marshalling of power. We’ll each work independently. During the night, the seven of us will each form a bridge—and hold it. Then the Shahdi will cross. The outer wall has fallen, the gates gone. Their orders will be to slaughter everyone on that side of the river.”

  “All the Rhunes, you mean.”

  “I mean everyone.”

  “But, my fane,” Taraneh said, shocked, “there are hundreds of Fhrey in Alon Rhist. Not all of them are soldiers, and those who are haven’t participated in the fight. Well, not as far as we can tell.”

  “All of them!” Lothian ordered. “Everyone who wanted to go, left. No one over there is being held against their will. They chose that side of the river. They chose to defy me. Kill them all, Taraneh. Every last one.”

  Taraneh stared in disbelief for only a second, then bowed. “As you wish.”

  Your father sounds upset.

  * * *

  —

  Raithe stood in the middle of what used to be the lower courtyard. What had once been a grand fortress of soaring walls and majestic towers was little more than a hillside again—a barren crag littered with piles of broken stone and broken bodies. Hundreds had been crushed by the collapse. Some were trapped when buildings came down, others were below walls that toppled. When it became apparent that the Fhrey had given up their assault for that day, the remaining inhabitants of Alon Rhist began the sad and exhausting process of digging out the dead. With only one good arm, Raithe was useless. He stood in the center of the rubble and simply watched as people he knew were pulled back into the sun.

  A face here or a name there from Dahl Rhen, Tirre, Melen, Warric, and Menahan, folks he’d known for only a year. Thinking about it, he really didn’t know any of them. Raithe had kept to himself, stayed apart, avoided friendships and connections. Better that way, he’d felt. No sense in establishing ties that might be hard to break. But looking at their bloodied faces, he discovered something terrible. He hadn’t managed to remain as distant as he thought.

  Tope Highland was laid beside his last two sons, Colin and Kris, both great dancers and singers, who’d displayed their talents on many a night after the late meal. Their mother was arranging marriages for the two lads with girls from Menahan, and neither was anxious to see whom their mother had picked. Tope’s other son, Kurt, who was the same age as Tesh, had died the day before. Filson the Lamp was stretched out on a small bit of still-visible grass across from Tope’s family. He’d been a quiet man, once the only full-time lamp maker in Dahl Rhen, but few knew him as “the Lamp” anymore. He was a soldier, one of Moya’s archers. Filson had befriended a stray dog that wandered the Rhist. He fed the bony animal leftovers from his meals, causing the mongrel to follow him everywhere. Raithe caught him giving the dog as much as half his food. The fool was going hungry to feed a mangy mutt. Next to him were Gilroy and his wife, Arlina. Her head had been caved in. Raithe identified Arlina by the dress. She only had the one.

  Before he knew it, Raithe found himself weeping. I only stayed in Dahl Rhen for Persephone. She was all I wanted, all I cared about. None of these others mattered. So why in Tetlin’s name do I feel so awful?

  “Raithe?”

  He turned and saw Malcolm near Roan’s smithy, one of the few structures still intact. The thin man was out of his armor, back to wearing the old wool clothes Brin’s mother, Sarah, had made him. What a year ago had been clean and neat was as stained and tattered as Malcolm’s old robe had been. The man was hard on clothes. He waved Raithe over, then went into the workshop.

  Moving slowly, Raithe crossed the courtyard and followed him. Inside, the place was a cave, dark except for the eerie orange light thrown by the forge and the patch of sunlight entering the doorway. The dwarfs and Roan were there, which was to be expected, but Tressa also stood in the shadows. Suri knelt on the floor beside Arion, who lay on Roan’s cot. A blanket was pulled to the dead Fhrey’s neck as if she were sleeping. Raithe paused to stare at her a moment. The others probably thought he was paying respect or was overcome by grief. Neither was in his mind. A dead Fhrey was still such a strange thing. Arion was pale, but she always had been. Yet on that cot, catching most of the doorway light, she appeared ghost-like. So fragile was she that he found it difficult to accept that she had ever been alive. As he stared, Raithe realized with a good deal of reluctance that he had liked Arion. He had liked her a lot, though he couldn’t remember a single conversation they had shared.

  Suri’s eyes were puffy and red, her cheeks streaked with tear tracks. Raithe knew how close the two had been. Suri had often spoken of Arion as if she were an older sister or even her mother. A strange way for a human to feel about a Fhrey, but Suri was anything but usual. That was what he liked the most about her. She could find the person inside the drapery, see the truth behind lies, and she cared for those uncared for by others. That he was Dureyan never mattered to her, and even if he knew nothing about the one called Cenzlyor, Raithe would have felt her loss because Suri loved her. He wished he could help, but knew from experience there were some things no one could fix.

  Frost, Flood, and Rain busied themselves by ad
ding wood to the furnace and jabbing pokers into the coals. Occasionally, they stole looks over their shoulders. Roan sat on her stool at the worktable, watching. She wore a leather apron looped around her neck and extending below her knees. Her dark hair was tied up out of the way, a lone lock dangling over her forehead.

  Malcolm waited. He stood very nearly in the middle of the smithy between the assembly table and a stack of wooden buckets. Once Raithe moved away from Arion, Malcolm folded his hands before him in a deliberate manner that announced sincerity. “What I have to say to you now is incredibly important. More important than anything I’ve told anyone in a very long time. I might stumble here and there because it’s not an easy thing to talk about, so please, bear with me.”

  Raithe had never heard him speak so gravely before, and for a moment he didn’t sound like Malcolm. Not the man he met on a fork between two rivers, the one who had followed him blindly for a year, the one who didn’t know which animals could be petted and which would attack. This was someone else.

  “Want us to leave?” Roan asked. She was so convinced of the expected answer that she got to her feet.

  “No,” Malcolm replied. “What I have to say is for everyone here.”

  Roan stopped here, confusion swimming in her eyes. She eased back onto her stool. At the same time, the dwarfs put down the pokers and paused to listen.

  “We have a problem,” Malcolm began. “A very serious one. The Fhrey outnumber us three to one. Our rune-etched walls are broken, the only things protecting us are gone, and most of our best soldiers are dead.” He gestured at Raithe. “Or wounded.”

  “What do we need walls for?” Raithe said. “The bridge is gone.”

  Malcolm shook his head. “Lack of a bridge won’t stop them. They still have Miralyith. They will use the Art to extend the stone of the cliff walls. I told Suri to destroy the bridge only to give us this time to prepare.”