Song of Unmaking

by Caitlin Brennan

  It was easier at least to go back. He had only to follow the path he had taken, slipping through the opening he had made in the wards. He was stumbling by the time he reached the last door. He nearly fell, which would have rent the wards and set off the alarms—but he caught himself. He came safe through the door.

  He did fall then, dropping to his knees. His sight came and went. His ears were ringing.

  The wards were secure behind him. Little by little his strength trickled back. The stone, even heavily shielded, was feeding it.

  That he had not expected. He was not a stone mage. He should have been able to use the stone as a guide or a window on the future, as any mage could, but this went considerably further—as if, in rebuilding the ruins of his magic, he had changed the nature of it.

  It was baffling and it might be dangerous, but for the moment it saved him. After a while he could stand, then he could walk. By the time he reached the passage to the riders’ house, he was almost himself again.

  He had not meant to finish what he began, not that night. But the stone had a mind of its own. That mind was to make him strong and then find the one who had made it.

  He wanted both things, even without the stone to encourage him. He knew it was dangerous, but he could not manage to care. His practical self would have slept out the rest of the night, endured the day, then the following night, done what it must. With the stone close to his skin, singing its endless song, he gathered what he needed.

  Most of it was ready. The rest he found quickly, filling his saddlebags.

  Petra was waiting for him. Again he exercised patience, grooming and saddling the stallion without endangering either of them with haste.

  It was still some hours until dawn. A mist lay low over the land and obscured the sea, but the sky was clear, shimmering with stars. The sigh of waves followed him through the sleeping city.

  The east gate was shut until sunrise, but Kerrec knew a postern. The guard just happened to be on the other end of the wall when he slipped out onto the eastward road.

  Twenty-Eight

  Just before the raid went bad, Euan Rohe was thinking that this would be an easy one. The legions could not protect every cot and hamlet.

  This one was more or less accidental. Euan’s pack of Calletani had sacked and looted a town farther west and eliminated its garrison. On their way back to the river, they caught sight of a farmstead tucked away under a hill.

  The farmer must be trusting to the lie of the land to conceal his pastures full of fat sheep. From the road they were invisible, but coming overland, the raiders had a clear view.

  The town had had a good store of grain and wine and oil, but not many cattle. These sheep could feed the whole tribe for a week.

  No one seemed to be guarding them. There was no sign of life around the farmstead—no dogs barking or cattle lowing. The scouts running ahead flung gates open on emptiness. The farm was deserted.

  That was not uncommon, though the farmers usually took their livestock with them. This one must have left in haste.

  “Stay on guard,” Euan ordered his men. “Clean out the place as fast as you can.”

  They were already in motion, swarming over stone walls and wooden fences. Euan and his warband brought up the rear.

  Suspicion stabbed first as Euan saw that the sheep seemed to be ignoring the army descending on them. Then he took in the beasts themselves. Not that Euan was likely to know one sheep from another, but there were half a dozen in front of him, and each had the same cluster of burrs in the same spot on the left shoulder. Every one of them looked exactly alike—as if the fields were full of images of a single sheep.

  He opened his mouth to order his men back—just as the mage’s trick fell apart. Instead of a field of sheep, the raiders found themselves face to face with an imperial cohort.

  The legionaries were fresh and rested. Euan’s men had been marching all night and fighting half the day. But the way home was through this cohort.

  They pulled together into battle formation, shields locked and spears bristling. They left behind the wagons loaded with loot. Either they would win the fight and come back for what was theirs, or the cohort would win it.

  The cohort had committed a small but significant error. In pretending to be sheep, its soldiers had scattered over the hillsides. Instead of the impregnable wall of shields that they called the tortoise, they were a scatter of armored men, running hard to form up before the wave of Calletani hit.

  They were just a little too late. The attack fell on them while they were still in motion.

  Euan, in the middle of the line, had to trust to ears and gut to know what was going on beyond the thick of it. He had made a mistake, too. He had not found and marked the mage before he launched his men.

  He had to hope the illusion had fallen early because the mage lost control. A mage that weak was probably a trooper with a talent rather than a master of one of the orders. Because if he was not…

  A pike thrust at Euan’s face. He beat it aside with the haft of his war-axe and hacked the head off the trooper behind it. The body dropped, still gripping the pikestaff.

  Euan kicked it aside and kept going—much like the maundering that had damned near got him killed. Fight first, brood later. That was the only sensible rule in a battle.

  The cohort was fighting bitterly to form ranks. Euan roared at his Calletani, driving them in between groups and clusters of legionaries. Like ants on the march, no matter how often Euan’s men scattered them, they kept coming back.

  Even the dead did not stop them. They closed up what ranks they had, that was all, and kept on coming.

  By the One, Euan thought. Were they a mage’s trick, too?

  The eyes he met under the bronze helmets seemed human enough. They bled like men and died like them. None of the dead seemed inclined to rise again.

  They were gaining ground by sheer weight of their armor and heft of their shields. The Calletani, naked or dressed in breeks, could not take the blows that legionaries took and still keep fighting. They darted in, struck hard, darted out. Or a mob of them swarmed over one or two legionaries and brought them down like hounds on a boar.

  Euan cut down the cohort commander, the centurion in his cocked helmet. The man fell in midbellow, still roaring out orders—and another beyond him took up the cry.

  Chain of command, they called that. Euan lunged at the cohort-second, axe swinging up.

  Every hair on his body stood on end. It was not the second bellowing orders—it was—

  “Down!” he howled. “Down, damn you!”

  Most of the men nearest him dropped. Those farther away were still fighting, caught up in it. Euan roared at them, but they seemed to have gone deaf.

  At the last possible instant, he flung himself flat.

  It was not the same as when the star fell. This was like a blast of wind, but no leaves stirred and no legionary swayed, let alone toppled. Only Calletani felt it.

  Euan clung for his life to the stony ground. He heard a sound that he would remember in nightmares, the sound of bodies torn apart from inside. A hot rain fell on him—blood and entrails and fragments better left unnamed.

  The man next to him was mewling like a whipped dog. It was one of the young warriors, a lanky child named Fergus. Euan pulled him up.

  He did not want to look too closely at the field. Others of his men were alive. Legionaries were moving in, short swords out, to dispose of them.

  Euan loosed a long, low howl, the hunting cry of a wolf in winter. As he howled, he ran, with Fergus half dragging, half running beside him.

  The legionaries paused—not long, but long enough for Euan’s men to find their wits and their feet. More of them than Euan had expected came staggering up, got their balance and bolted.

  The cohort started in pursuit, but its mage stopped them. “Let them go,” he said. “We want the rest of the tribes to hear their story.”

  He should have waited until Euan was well past before he sai
d that. He would also have done well to say it from behind a wall of shields. Euan left Fergus to wobble on his own feet, darted in past the pair of legionaries who guarded the mage, and gutted the man with one swift, ripping stroke.

  He darted back, ducking the wild swing of a sword, flung Fergus over his shoulder, and ran.

  Euan had not lost as many men as he feared. When they were safe across the river, more than half were still alive and walking. Strahan was gone, and Donal. Cyllan had collapsed as soon as they stopped in a clearing above the ford.

  He was tossing like a man in a fever. When Euan laid a hand on his forehead, it was burning hot.

  Some of the others were in hardly better condition. Euan eyed the sun, which was still surprisingly high, and tried to focus on where to go next. They were four days’ run from the high king’s war camp, and half a day from their own hunting camp.

  Conory came over to where Euan was sitting. He looked as shattered as Euan felt. “I don’t think we should camp here,” he said.

  Euan nodded. “I doubt they’ll come after us, but we don’t need to tempt fate, either. Are there enough of us to carry the ones who can’t walk any farther?”

  “If we rest and eat a bit, there should be,” Conory said.

  “An hour, then,” said Euan.

  Conory nodded and went to tell the others. Euan leaned back against a tree trunk and closed his eyes.

  He was not thinking yet, past what he had to do to get his men home and safe. Thinking was for later. So was remembering. For now, he let it settle down deep.

  Sunset found them making their way slowly, carrying the injured. Conory and Cyllan were forging ahead. Euan, as usual, brought up the rear.

  He was sure there was no pursuit. A wolf tracked them for a while, drawn by the scent of weakness, but found the tracks of a herd of deer instead.

  The advance stumbled to a halt. Voices rose ahead. Euan did not recognize most of them.

  They had imperial accents. He darted through the line. It straggled around a jut of rock and a thicket of fallen trees.

  There was a camp on the other side of the thicket. A dozen blankets were spread under the low branches of trees. Their owners lay flat in the middle of the circle.

  They were all wearing the garb of the tribes, but ten of the twelve were brown-skinned, black-haired imperials. The other two were bigger and fairer, but their accents were as Aurelian as the rest.

  The bigger and fairer of the latter two had Conory’s foot on his neck and a spearpoint in the small of his back. “We’ve caught a nest of spies,” Conory said. “Shall I give you the pleasure?”

  “We’re not spies!” shrilled one of the dark ones. He was only a boy, smooth-skinned and beardless. His voice was barely broken.

  Euan strode past Conory and his captive, seized the child by the scruff of the neck and heaved him to his feet. His face had the greenish cast that passed for pallor in these olive-brown people, but his eyes were bold as they rose up and up to Euan’s face.

  “Prince,” the boy said, “we came to fight for you.”

  Euan blinked. That, he had not expected. “What possessed you to do that?”

  “We see the truth,” the boy said. “The One—what is beyond the One. We want to make it happen.”

  “You’re traitors to your kind,” Euan said.

  “We’re true to the Truth,” said the boy.

  Euan drew his long knife. The boy tilted his chin, baring his throat.

  He was like a bull calf in the sacrifice, drugged and compliant. Euan spat in disgust. He opened his mouth to order his men to kill them all, but the boy’s eyes stopped him.

  The boy wanted it too much. Euan heard himself say, “Bind their hands and make them walk. I know exactly where to take them.”

  Conory’s brows lifted. He and Cyllan hauled the captives up two by two and bound them in a double line. They were all as lost in a dream as the first one—except those who were worse.

  The biggest of them, who was fair enough to be a tribesman, had the feel—if not the reek—of a priest. Him, Euan determined to watch. The rest were silly children, but this one was something more.

  He might be the ringleader. He might not. But whatever he was, he was neither safe nor sane.

  Maybe Euan should kill them after all. At least the big one—he should go to the One before he did any more harm than he already had.

  The fair man’s head drooped. The moment passed. The train of captives went on in the deepening dusk, with Euan’s own men stumbling behind.

  Twenty-Nine

  The raiders came back to the hunting camp of the Calletani well after dark. Fires were lit, shielded from easy view, and the carcasses of three fine stags hung from the trees. A fourth turned on a spit over the largest fire.

  That could be taken as an omen. The hunt in imperial lands had failed miserably, but Euan’s own country was generous with its gifts.

  That only meant that come the next raid, they would all be forewarned. The enemy was desperate enough to resort to battle magic. But how many battle mages could he spare? How many raids could he destroy, without the advantage of surprise?

  Meanwhile Euan had a gift to bestow. He saw his men settled, the wounded in the care of the healers and the rest in their beds. Then he released Cyllan and Conory from guard duty and took the captives’ leading strings in his own hand.

  Neither of his shieldbrothers would let Euan dismiss him. They followed him to the camp’s edge, where the priests always were—and Gothard in his tent alone.

  There was no fire here, and no priests sitting out in the open, reveling in the dark. Euan stopped in front of Gothard’s tent and scratched at the flap.

  For a long while there was no response, but Euan could hear Gothard’s breathing, caught up sharp as he flung back the flap. He squinted at Euan, disheveled as if he had been asleep.

  “I believe these are yours,” Euan said, stepping aside so that Gothard could see the double line of captives.

  Gothard’s squint turned to a scowl. Then it went blank. Euan would wager he had recognized at least one of the boys. Probably he knew them all.

  “We found them on this side of the river,” Euan said. “Do with them as you like. Then come to me in the morning. I have a question for you.”

  Gothard shrugged. “As you will.”

  Euan tossed the rope to him. He caught it, staring at it as if he did not know what it was.

  Euan left him to it. He did not honestly care if the young idiots were all dead by morning. In fact he rather wished they would be.

  Euan wanted nothing more desperately than to fall onto his heap of blankets and sleep until the sun woke him. He got as far as to strip off his clothes and crawl into his tent, but sleep was not there waiting for him.

  The thing he had left behind—deliberately, foolishly—was calling. He was too weak and weary to resist. He pulled it from its hiding place.

  He could have sworn the seeing-stone reproached him. Of all times for him to decide he had had enough of magic, it would be this one. Magic had ambushed him, and half his raiding party was destroyed.

  He held it in his hand. It was cool, but somehow there was a hint that, if he let it, it could burn.

  He did not ask it to show him anything. There was nothing he wanted to see—not tonight.

  It was dark and quiet, gleaming faintly like the polished stone it was. His eyelids drooped. His sight blurred.

  The stone was inside him. He was seeing it as if it were his eyes. It was a dream, almost, but he was still awake.

  It was magic. He had let it in, and now there was no getting rid of it. For all he knew, the stone had connived with the cohort’s mage to teach him a bitter lesson. It seemed preposterous—but that was the nature of magic.

  And now he was seeing in the stone instead of through it. What he saw, he would remember. That was magic, too, that preternatural clarity of mind.

  Euan woke ravenous. His small wounds, cuts and bruises, were healing. He felt fres
h and strong, in spite of the night he had had—or perhaps because of it.

  There was venison on the spit and bread baking in the fire—made with the last of the flour. There would be no more unless the next raid had better luck than the last one.

  Euan sat to eat. It was still barely sunup. Most of the men were either asleep or out hunting.

  The priests’ tents were as quiet as they had been last night. He saw no sign of the captives.

  He did not want to think of them this early. He concentrated on filling his belly and getting his thoughts in order. There was a great deal to think about, and not much time to do it.

  Gothard sat beside him and reached for the other half of the loaf. He had not come from his tent, which Euan had been watching.

  Euan acknowledged him with a glance. He lifted a brow in return. “You don’t know what a gift you gave me,” he said.

  “You’ve eaten them all already?”

  Gothard curled his lip. “They’re all mages. None ever went into an order, but they all have power. Some even have some faint knowledge of how to use it.”

  “So they are spies,” Euan said.

  “No,” said Gothard. “They really are what they say they are—young idiots who have fallen in love with oblivion. Noblemen’s sons are prone to that. It goes with the boredom and the arrogance.”

  “I never will understand how a man can take pride in being completely useless.”

  “Ah,” said Gothard, “but these are the most useful gifts you could possibly have brought me. I’m almost ready now.”

  “Ready to do what?”

  “How soon you forget,” Gothard said. “Ready to wield the starstone. I know what the mage was looking for, who came under an envoy’s banner. He was looking for me. He found weakness and rancor and petty conniving—exactly what I wanted him to see. Now he’s told his fellow mages I’m no threat—and I’m ready. The emperor is finally moving. So is the high king. And the One has given us these children, these mages without order, who think they worship the Unmaking. They’re the key, cousin. They’re my way in to the starstone.”