by Tom Deitz
This was it, then: She was going to meet her doom. Avall had not come. She had been a fool to believe that he would, a fool to think that her dream had been any more than a dream. And even if it were not, even if that had been Avall who had spoken to her, there were a thousand thousand things that could have forestalled his errand.
It was just as well it was early and these men around her blocking the view of the seemingly endless corridor before and behind, and that her lack of sleep was catching up with her, making her dull-headed. She yawned absently and heard one of them chuckle and say, “So eager to sleep now, Lady? When soon you will sleep forever?”
She ignored him. And then, quite suddenly, they had reached the foot of the first of several flights of steps that should take her up, then up again, to spit her out at last in the place where all Eronese traitors since time immemorial had died: a specially built platform in the midst of the Court of Rites, with all of Eron’s nobility dressed in black, gathered around to watch and—more to the point—ratify.
But that was on Sundering Day at Sundeath, which was still several eights away. Not that those in power these days had any respect at all for ancient rites. Not anymore.
But surely they should be turning now! Surely there should be one more stair, and then she should step out into the watery light, and feel all those eyes upon her, and then mount those last few steps to where the swordsman stood, bare-chested, but with his face forever obscured beneath that terrible black hood.
Yet they did not turn, but continued on … and on … and on. Not so far as all that, in fact, yet it seemed an eternity. One thing was clear: they were not going to the Court of Rites—which meant that even if Avall did come, he would arrive at the wrong location.
So where were they going instead? And then they made one more turn and twisted up another stair and she knew.
Knew those eight facets and the tiers of seats within them and that famous blue faience dome overhead, with the windows beneath it still playing games with the morning light. Knew the dais and the Throne and the Stone. But did not know more than a score of the faces that stared at her as the guard marched her, yet again, to the Chair of the Accused.
The priest gate at the juncture of North Bridge and the Riverwalk, where the causeway to the Isle of The Eight joined the mainland, was a smoking ruin behind him, but Avall no longer cared, as he strode along at the head of his ragtag army, with Merryn at his side as grim-faced as he, and Lykkon on the other, trying to look grim as well, but glancing back more often than he gazed forward, and, like as not, grinning like a fool.
The gate had been a barrier, and those between had offered resistance, and he no longer had the patience—or the time—to suffer interference. He remembered shouting, “Leave now or die” at the guard on duty. He did not remember if the guard had in fact departed or had still been inside the gatehouse when Avall had answered the rising eager madness in his blood and called down the lightning on the structure. Merryn had glared at him and Lykkon had gasped, but the crowd behind him—armed with identical Swords of Law “borrowed” from Law’s Fane—had cheered, applauded, and surged forward with so much eager glee that Avall did not recall passing through the rubble.
Which had put him on the Riverwalk, with the sky to the east pinkening alarmingly—which meant that he would have to increase his pace. And so he did, running effortlessly over the well-set stones, with Merryn beside him and Lykkon a little farther back and panting. Avall felt as though he could run forever, and while his rational aspect informed him that all his new strength was borrowed—a little from everyone around him, who would all feel cold and attribute it to the nippy morning air—once again, he had no time to be concerned for such minutiae. After all, a King of necessity drew from all his people, and The Eight knew that Avall had already paid them back with interest for anything they now lent him in turn.
And so he jogged along ever faster, with his cloak billowing behind him like vast black wings until he discarded it and continued in just his surcoat, with the Lightning Sword now glittering in truth as it tasted the first raw rays of sunrise light.
Only a little farther; only another quarter shot, and he would reach the massive wall that fronted the Citadel and enclosed the Court of Rites. He wondered if they had word of his coming. He wondered if they would take his sudden approach as a signal to expedite Tyrill’s execution. Things could still go badly wrong. And if they did—if he failed to overthrow Priest-Clan and the Ninth Face now, this morning—he feared that the mob behind him—which was increasing even as it marched, as more early risers caught the word and the mood and joined—would turn on him and rend him and his sister and his cousin to bits. Or else he would have to use the sword on them, and that he would never do.
Or would he? The sword told him that yes indeed he might, and that knowledge filled him with fear. But he put that fear to use as fuel for his anger and let it propel him along even faster.
The walls were beside him now, and the towers that flanked the doors loomed ahead. Normally those doors would be open, but it was no surprise that they were closed and barred today.
Which presented the first dilemma. If he hesitated for even a moment, he could easily be too late. But if he blasted his way through, Priest-Clan could take that as license to act in its own haste and execute Tyrill early.
He didn’t really care. If they were going to kill her, why she was old enough to die anyway, and would probably welcome the relief. And if he found them there—Well, he could exact a great deal of revenge indeed before—cowards that they obviously were—the majority of Priest-Clan fled.
All of which was rank conjecture.
Or perhaps—the thought was barely a flicker—merely the sword’s opinion.
But only for an instant, as Avall halted a dozen spans before the massive doors that were the first bulwark of the Citadel’s defense, and raised the sword again.
“Brother, are you certain?” Merryn cried.
“Avall—do you think—?” From Lykkon.
He ignored them, though he heard Merryn murmur a fretful, “Lyk, I fear it’s got hold of him, and when that happens—if he can’t control it—the sword and he will both go mad.”
Mad? He heard the word and laughed. What a stupid little word for such a marvelous, powerful feeling—for knowing he could do anything in the world—call down any power.
And why were these gates closed before him, anyway, when he was King and this the heart of his Sovereignty?
A blink, a furrowing of his brow in concentration, a feeling of the powers flowing into him and out of him and around him and of them ripping a hole in the Overworld and dragging its substance down and flinging it forth again—at the doors.
If not lightning, it might as well have been, for it arced from the sword and smashed into all that fabulously wrought wood and gilded bronze and blew it all to flinders.
“Tyrill, I am come!” Avall shouted recklessly, as, with an equally wild-eyed army at his back, he dashed forward and passed through the gates of the Citadel and entered the Court of Rites.
—Entered a court of silence, rather, where ranks of empty stone benches looked down on naught save a widening pool of ruddy morning light.
A glance showed the sun appearing.
Which sobered Avall enough for him to make a number of well-chosen guesses. And then the madness took him again and once more thrust him onward.
Vorinn couldn’t breathe.
Water was all around him, water lapping at the gates of his nose and mouth, pressing relentlessly at his lungs, even as it reached out with a thousand tiny hands and found every fold and filament of his cloak and surcoat and began to drag him down.
Into what?
He had no way of knowing, for he had found himself in a place of endless dark. A dark without stars such as had shone overhead when he had begun this reckless, stupid venture that was now very like to kill him, Veen, and Tryffon, all three—and damn them for stupid, fools, too: to have put any trust in what
had been made as the enemy’s weapon. He could feel Zeff’s sword hard in his hand, with Veen’s hand and Tryffon’s hands still wrapped around it, though Veen’s was clearly slipping. And he could feel them crowding against him in a way he thought was odd, until a random kick connected with something so solid it could only be stone.
Which meant that he was in a real place again, and one that had real limitations, even if it was full of water.
And he did have a sword of power in his hands, and two good kinsmen trying to merge their strength of will with his.
But he could hold his breath no longer, and neither, surely, could they. His lungs were nigh on bursting and far, far too soon he would have no choice but to let water into his nose, and then his lungs would hurt for a little while, and then would come blissful nothing.
Except that he now knew that his soul would survive, and he could not stand to contemplate how that soul might feel: compelled to reproach its corporeal shell for one stupid failure—forever.
And that would be worse than dying absolute; he was as certain of that as he was certain of anything in all reality. He could not let it happen—not with two comrades likewise at risk. And if wishing with a magic sword in his hand got results, then he was more than willing to do some wishing.
He would try once more, and then—
Reflexes deeper than thought preempted him—enough that he began kicking his way upward with the sword above him, held now in both his hands. He could see nothing, but he felt the blade strike home against something solid. Something that rang like thick glass in whatever this place was.
And if there was something as hard as glass above him, perhaps there was air on the other side, and in any case, he could not hold his breath even one instant longer, and in that last moment of panic before he belched out his lone precious lungful of air, he stabbed upward and—somehow—called the lightning.
Light shattered the world above into a perfect circle, though a small one, and he felt himself driven down and down and down by the recoil. But there was light up there, and light meant air, and so, once again, he kicked upward. Veen had released her hold by then, but Veen was an ocean child and he knew her to be a strong swimmer. Tryffon—Tryffon was not young but Tryffon was strong and sturdy and had taught Vorinn himself to swim, and in any case, there was promise of air and for a very brief moment Vorinn didn’t care. And so he let himself sink down until a different kind of darkness began to enfold him. And there in that peculiar cold dark, he began to hear tiny voices singing to him, telling him without words that for now they would keep him alive, but only for a moment, that if he would live, he would have to save himself now or perish.
And so he did. Folding his legs in the cold wet that surrounded him, he kicked away from that unseen bottom and drove himself upward again, with the sword held straight above him, cleaving that unseen way.
He felt himself brush past Veen and Tryffon—
—And enter open air. And keep on rising—propelled by his own massive push, or drawn by the sword, he never knew which.
Only that water was suddenly sluicing away from his head and shoulders, and he had found himself peering over a curb of stone. What kind, he neither knew nor cared; all that mattered was that he could breathe again, and so he hurled himself across that barrier. Or tried to, for barely had he begun when hands seized him by the shoulders and hoisted him up farther and faster than he had anticipated, so that before he knew it he was on his feet, blinking at a large crowd of earnest, eager, and somewhat awestruck faces that had gathered around what he realized abruptly was the Well of Fate on the Isle of the Eight.
“My friends,” he tried to say—but only spat up water, so that it took two tries and far too much lung-splitting coughing to reach the words again. But they didn’t matter anyway, because whoever had helped him out was now helping Veen and Tryffon over the ledge.
“The lightning has freed them,” someone yelled. “And with them, the Lightning has freed the Well.”
“Who is it?” someone else demanded.
“Tryffon of War,” Vorinn heard Tryffon thunder behind him. “And Vorinn syn Ferr-een, and Veen san Ferr-lone.”
“Fate has spoken indeed,” someone else enthused. “First it gave us Avall, and now it has given us the bravest soldiers in his army.”
“Avall?” Vorinn cried, reaching for the man nearest him. “Avall was here? You have seen Avall?”
“A quarter hand ago,” someone else acknowledged. “A number of us were here and saw him appear much as you did, save that he did not come from out the Well, but appeared before it. Most of those who were here then went with him. Some of us remained to give thanks to The Eight. Some went to tell others of that first wonder.”
“And now a second! We are saved.”
Vorinn barely heard the short, round, serious-faced woman who had last addressed him. “I have come at Avall’s command,” Vorinn shouted. “Where has he gone?”
“To the Citadel,” that woman replied. “And there is a mighty madness upon him. If you would find him, young Lord, go there.”
Vorinn needed no further coaching, nor did Tryffon and Veen. Pausing only long enough to shed their sodden cloaks since they would obviously not be needing them now that stealth was no longer an option, they strode off in the wake of the mob that had preceded them.
But as they passed the smoking ruin of the priest gate, Vorinn found himself wondering if he was going to save Tyrill and Ilfon, or going to save Avall. He was halfway to the Citadel before he realized that every single person behind him was cheering and chanting his name. “Vorinn, Vorinn, Vorinn.”
And that more people were pouring into the Riverwalk from either side, chanting that same thing.
If Tyrill had accused her captors of cowardice during her mockery of a trial, she condemned them for it thrice over now. How much could have changed, she wondered, to make them replace the ancient tradition of public execution with what was clearly going to be a far more private affair, with only the Council of Chiefs to witness, and not one soul from among the ranks of the clanless?
She supposed it was to drive home the notion of obedience to potentially recalcitrant chiefs so as to quell them farther into submission. But at what risk? Were the Chiefs of Priest-Clan so fearful of the people as a whole that they dared not expose their more questionable acts to light of day? Were they indeed so fearful that they would risk defiling the sanctity of the Hall of Clans with High Clan blood? And while she acknowledged that her blood was not quite innocent—equally innocent people had died by her hand, after all—it had been over a century since blood had been shed in this place, and that a fistfight between two Chiefs that had ended with bloody noses.
But what form would her death take now? She saw no sign of the headsman’s block, never mind the headsman himself, though by the agitation evident in those still assembling on the floor, she suspected that this relocation had been a hasty decision.
A supposition confirmed a moment later when the door by which she had entered opened again, to admit four sturdy guardsmen bearing between them the traditional oak block on which one stretched one’s neck for execution. There was no straw to soak up the blood, however—but there was a many-folded thickness of cheap carpet in the arms of two more guardsmen. Tyrill watched with distant interest—or perhaps she was already easing into shock—as the rugs were placed in the open place before the dais from which she had herself, on countless occasions, addressed the Chiefs and the Priests and the King.
All that was needed was for the headsman himself to arrive—she hoped they were having trouble finding someone to agree to such a thing—and for the rising sun to send sign that the appointed time was upon them, and then …
And then …
Abruptly, Tyrill was crying. Not lavishly, but in spite of her iron desire never to show any sign of weakness in public, tears were leaking from her eyes.
She closed them. She had to. And she kept them closed as doors opened again, this time to admit—b
y the swish of their heavy robes—the Priests of … of The Nine, she supposed.
And then came another set of steps, heavier ones, as of a sturdily built man approaching. A very large man, indeed—to judge by the way his footsteps were echoing on all that inlaid marble.
Except … that wasn’t one set of footsteps at all, she realized with a start. Somewhere beyond the Hall of Clans’s sacred precincts, countless feet stomped and thudded, mingled increasingly with outraged shouts.
Tyrill opened her eyes at once, to see the Priests turn toward the Hall’s main doors. She turned as well—as much as her bonds permitted—and saw the entire assembly likewise stand and stare.
But she saw something else, too: a file of blue-clad archers springing into view in the visitors’ arcades—with every arrow fixed on a separate target among those Chiefs gathered on the floor.
Avall saw that there was a door ahead—knew that there was a door ahead—but that was all that mattered. The sword possessed him now, drawing him ever onward, and the only thing that restrained him at all was the fact that part of him still retained a real and tangible goal that was worth preserving. Otherwise—Well, he had a quarter’s worth of anger and frustration pent up in him, a quarter’s worth he had expected to discharge at Gem-Hold and been denied.
But discharge it he would—now, and diplomacy be damned. The gates to the Court of Rites were a ruin. The outer doors to the structure that housed the Hall of Clans at its core would be gone as well, had some of that multitude that flowed around him not dashed past him to wrench those doors wide open. He had been surprised that they had not been locked, but that surprise had lasted only for an instant; intent as he was on striding up the stairs, aiming at the darker chamber beyond, which led in turn to what had become the single, all-encompassing goal that consumed his life.
