"Sorry I can't do better," Ben went on. "It's this curséd snow." A pause. "It won't let up, and all the food stores are running low."
"You said that," Helix would say. No. Said. "You already said that."
"Eat," Ben encouraged him. "Hold it carefully, now. It's hot."
He felt for the spoon as he woke in a strange room on the far side of the kingdom. He dug it into the stew as he fell in love with the woman screaming his name—unrequited, secret love. He lifted the spoon to his mouth as he woke in the dark to a silent assassin, as he heard the news about his father, as he fell ill with a cold.
The food hit his mouth like a scourge of light, banishing the shadows. Delicious. A thick, heady broth, chewy meat, savory potato. "Good," he said, and took another bite. Visions had no flavor. Smells, sometimes. Sights and sounds—almost always. But no flavor. "You're right," he breathed. "It helps."
"It has before. You just don't remember." A friend, Ben would say.
"Who are you?"
"A friend. You'll remember me one of these times."
Eventually he learned to control it, Lorna would say as the taste of the first bite faded. Or, at least, how to focus on only the parts that helped him. He could ignore the churn—most of the time.
"Lorna," Helix said. She knew what was happening to him. She could help him.
Helix concentrated, reaching past the murk of the visions and into his own memory, where he saw Matthew murmur, I'm sorry.
Where he heard him say, Yours now.
He gave it to you, Lorna would say.
And then, in the same city on a different morning, a sword would run him through.
iii. Melakai
An instant of heart-stopping freefall. A flashing lifetime of regrets and pain. His fist clutching Lar'atul's sword as if it were too panicked to release it.
And then he lurched to a halt, still screaming, midair above the swirling snow. Somewhere, hundreds of feet below, his death waited—but it was no longer coming for him. What in Hel?
He swallowed and looked up. A hawk dove for the far ledge and became Iggy, who hit the ground running. He ducked behind an outcropping as the golems turned on him.
"GO BACK," one thundered, seconds before the other smashed his weapon into Iggy's cover. The outcropping exploded.
"Iggy!" Lyseira shouted. Her brother had just set her on the far side of the shattered bridge. He must have gotten her over there somehow, but Kai had no idea how. Jumped? he wondered deliriously. Flew? He glanced down again, and a tsunami of vertigo washed the questions away.
Lyseira lashed the enemy with fire. Seth darted in front of her, dropping his spear into a tense defensive stance. Iggy became a grizzly bear and hurled himself at his attacker, trying to press the stone monster toward the edge.
Kai hung in midair, slack-jawed and powerless, and watched. Then he realized his fall hadn't just been suspended—now, it was actually reversing.
He rose upward, slowly, until he once again came level with the distant ledge.
Syntal, he finally realized. She saved my life. The girl had used the same chant she'd used countless times during their ascent up Thakhan Dar, a spell she called Hover. Without it, the climb would probably have been impossible. But she'd never used it to catch him mid-fall like that before—only to lift him from one ledge to another. I should have recognized it, he thought, feeling an instant of embarrassment at his wild screaming before a lifetime of experience caught up with him.
Recognized it? I'm floating over empty air! Spell or no spell, a little panic seemed warranted.
Behind him, Syntal chanted. His stomach clenched, heart racing—he had no idea what spell she was speaking or how it would affect him. I'm completely at her mercy, he realized. She could kill me as easily as move me to the ledge.
She didn't kill him. Instead, a line of lightning shot from one of the animated statues into the other, blasting a chunk out of each that showered the ledge with debris. A crack of thunder pealed away through the crags, leaving his ears ringing as the guardian that had been fighting with Iggy spun in a quarter-circle and pitched to the ground.
One golem still stood. In the instant of confusion, Seth darted forward to harry it with his spear. The statue whirled on him, but the attack had been a ruse; Seth had already fallen back, out of the thing's considerable reach. The feint had cost him, though. He stumbled on the uneven rock, off balance and reeling toward the edge.
The golem saw its chance and lumbered into a charge, its stone claymore raised. As it closed on him, Seth recovered his balance and dove effortlessly out of the way. A trick, Kai realized. He never tripped at all, he was just trying to lure—
The grizzly bear—Iggy—launched into the golem's rear, hurling all his weight into its back. Already front-heavy from its charge, the thing lurched forward, arms wide as it tried and failed to catch its balance.
Then it pitched off the edge and shattered on the slopes of Thakhan Dar below.
"Seth!" Lyseira shouted. The first golem had regained its feet and dropped into a dead charge toward her. "Seth!"
A second blast of lightning—this one straight down from nothing—ripped into the thing, blasting half its head into an explosion of rubble. It staggered, throwing a hand wide to catch itself on a boulder. "GO―" it said. "BACK. GO—GO―"
A third bolt shot from the outcropping and straight into the golem's arm, shattering it. Its body—what was left of it—collapsed.
"We need a rope," Syn called without missing a beat, but Seth had already jogged to the nearest ledge and pulled a rope from his travel bag.
"Here," he shouted to Kai. "Catch this, then throw it on to Syn, behind you. We'll pull you both in."
Kai numbly did as he was told, acting without really thinking. As Seth and Iggy—human once again—hauled him and Syntal over to safety, his mind blazed with questions. What were those things? How are we still alive? Would we have been stuck floating there if you hadn't had a rope?
He'd been traveling with them for more than a month, first on the Talon over the open sea, then up the mountainside. He'd shared jokes with them, watched Iggy and Lyseira train with Seth to learn staff fighting, even picked up a bit of First Tongue from Iggy's evening learning sessions with Syntal and Lyseira. But he had never seen anything like the events of the past few minutes.
Who are you people?
Finally, as he gained the ledge, the welcome sensation of hard stone beneath his feet broke one of the thoughts loose. "You don't even look winded," he managed.
Iggy shrugged at him. "We've fought worse."
"Yeah—that bothers me, actually," Syn said as she lit on the stone behind him. Kai felt the lightness in his bones vanish as she dropped the Hover spell. "I was able to kill those things with a spell from the third wardbook. That means they weren't even part of the trial—the trial should require fourth-Seal spells."
"What do you think they were here for?" Seth asked.
"I don't know—maybe just as mundane guardians to ward off travelers during the Sealing?"
Mundane? Kai marveled. Did she just say—
"But that wouldn't even work, would it?" Iggy said. "Those things were made by chanter magic—I could tell. Before the first Storm they would've just been . . . statues."
"Maybe," Syn conceded, and winced. "Sorry, I—need a moment." She limped to a nearby boulder and eased herself to the ground.
"I'll scout ahead," Seth said, and left them.
"The Fatherlord's curse?" Iggy asked.
Syn nodded. "It always gets worse after chanting. I think it might weaken the water from the Ordlan spring. But it's only temporary."
Iggy nodded at this, suddenly serious. Condemnation flickered in his eyes.
None of it meant anything to Kai. He stepped forward, offering Lar'atul's sword back to Syntal. "Sorry it didn't work," he said.
The girl refused the gesture. "You might as well keep it for now," she returned. "It doesn't glow for me."
It was a nice weapon.
Truth be, it was probably the nicest weapon he'd ever held. He never craved combat—he was too smart for that—but something about Lar'atul's sword made him long to try it out. He gave it a few practice swings, and each strike came smooth and clean. "It's a beautiful piece of work," he conceded.
Syn breathed a wry chuckle. "You'd never be able to tell from how my cousin used it. He was always dropping the thing, losing it―"
"I'm not sure I've ever actually seen him swing it," Lyseira said.
"Hopefully you'll never see me swing it, either," Kai put in. The girl gave him a quizzical look. All that power, he thought, and none of them have the sense God gave a bird. "I just mean combat's not something to wish for," he clarified.
"Oh," Lyseira said. "I don't. Somehow it always seems to find me anyway."
Kai sheathed the weapon. So young, he marveled again. Barely more than children, the lot of them. He'd always thought of Cort as young, but his lieutenant Crownwarden had at least twenty-two summers behind him. This girl was—what? Seventeen? Eighteen, at most? So young, and already everyone looks up to her. She had given a speech last summer, five months ago now, which had triggered the uprising that had forced the Church out of Keswick and saved the Prince's life. Within weeks, she had become the most important person in Darnoth, with the power to name kings. Already some called her "Mother Lyseira"—a laughable title given her age, usually used by those who had never met her. But the hope she'd brought to Keswick made people silly in the head.
Hope that Akir actually cared about ordinary people; that the Church's corruption—its campaigns of torture and murder—were not actually sanctioned by God despite its ability to work miracles. In Lyseira and her followers the people saw a kind and loving God, an entirely new face of Akir. It was no wonder so many had come to her, wanting to join her new church—the Kespran Church. It was no wonder they adored her.
Really, all of it only made him wonder one thing:
If she has a whole new church to run, what in Hel is she doing here?
iv. Angbar
"I understand that, but there has to be something," Elthur pled.
An older, pale man with a fading ring of hair around his temples, Elthur had been a bishop until five months ago, when he had professed loyalty to Lyseira's new Kespran Church. His early involvement had been crucial to the church's success. Angbar trusted him.
But he had seen fifty winters (or "summers," as they seemed to mark years here in Keswick), and once Lyseira had left, many of his old habits had started to glimmer just beneath the surface. "Requiring a donation is a proven way to manage a limited resource. We can't feed everyone who comes to the door," he went on. "There just aren't enough of us."
"There are enough of us to help some of them," Takra returned. Severe and rail-thin, with no chest to speak of and straight blond hair brittle as straw, the girl was Elthur's precise opposite: a mere initiate in the old Church who had, rather than surrender to Lyseira's mob, actually joined them. In fact, she had killed the Keeper of Basica Majesta herself—the scar he'd given her, running from high on her right cheekbone nearly down to her jawline, served as a permanent reminder of that. "It's what Lyseira would want."
They had gathered in the office of that old Keeper, a man named Shephatiah. Angbar had never met the man, but if the room were any indication, his tastes had run to the ostentatious. Broad, frothing rugs, ornate tapestries, a massive desk; the only interruption to the room's ridiculous opulence was the stained glass window lining the rear wall, one panel of which had been broken and boarded up with pine for the winter. That was where Takra had done it, if the stories were to be believed: stabbed the former Keeper in his backside as he had hung halfway through the broken window.
Once the chamber from which some of the most powerful edicts in the kingdom had been issued, it now served as a general-purpose meeting room—just one more space among many. If anything, the incessant draft from the broken window made it one of the least desirable spaces now. Angbar particularly detested the obscenely large desk. He had tried sitting behind it once and felt such a fool that next time he had sat on it, instead. That had made him feel even dumber. Now he leaned awkwardly against it, wishing he could be doing nearly anything other than standing in this room with these two people.
"Of course it is," Elthur agreed. "I know that. I'm just trying to do what's right, here, but we have to face the reality of the situation. And I would appreciate a little respect from―"
An initiate. Angbar winced. Elthur cut the words off before they reached his lips, but Takra seized on them anyway.
"Our old ranks mean nothing now, Brother." She needled him with the word; she was more than thirty winters his junior. "You need to let them go. You need to let everything you learned go."
"If I had done that, there would still be fighting in the streets. Half Lyseira's converts came from clerics I convinced to see the light."
"And the other half came from people who killed the rest of those clerics," Takra threw back.
"All right," Angbar finally said. "All right. It doesn't matter where we came from. We're all together now." One big, happy family. He sighed. Elthur was a good man. He was trying his best. But he just didn't understand how much anger there was toward the old Church, or why—and this wasn't the time to sit him down and explain. "Can we please get back to the matter at hand? We have hungry people, and not enough food."
"Maybe we ask those we feed to help provide labor for the temple," Takra said. "That would be just like what the Grey Girl did in Tal'aden." She glanced at Angbar for affirmation, who gave her a half-shrug, half-nod: Sort of. She waved it off. "Ask them for something we know they can provide, rather than something we know they don't have."
"But they can all provide that!" Elthur insisted. "It's still the same problem. We simply can't feed them all manna—we can't make enough! We have to find a way to decide―"
"Who gets to eat and who starves?" Takra demanded.
Elthur winced, then rallied. "Yes," he said flatly. "Exactly." His eyes softened. "I don't like it, Takra. But we have to face reality. Winter began before summer ended, last year—three months early. A third of the summer crops died. The autumn crops were never even planted. Our food stores are nearly gone. We don't. Have. Enough. We have to make hard choices."
But Takra didn't flinch. "I would rather burn our manna than sell it to the rich while the poor starve."
"Well, that―!" Elthur threw his hands up, sputtering.
"M'sai!" Angbar finally raised his voice. "All this arguing isn't solving anything!" They both looked at him. He exhaled, trying to keep his cool. When Lyseira got angry, it enhanced her: she became eloquent and commanding. When I get mad, Angbar thought, I sound like a whining dog. "Look. How much do we have?"
"Manna?" Elthur asked.
Takra jumped in. "We fed a little over 1,000 people yesterday."
The number staggered him. 1,000? It made his and Lyseira's efforts in Tal'aden last year, feeding the poor while teaching them to read, feel like raindrops on a lake. 1,000 fed, he marveled. Lyseira will be thrilled to hear it. "Well that . . . that's great!"
"There are 300,000 people in Keswick," Elthur said.
"Many without enough to eat," Takra appended.
Well, Angbar thought as he deflated, I found one way to get the two of them working together.
"Yesterday 3,000 people came to us, across every temple in the city," Elthur went on. "We had to turn most of them away. They weren't happy."
"Is there any way we can produce more manna? Who's creating it now? Can they do more?"
Elthur shook his head. "The gift is rare. A few of the new Kesprey can do it, despite their lack of training. Maybe a fifth of the defectors from the Fatherlord's Church." He spared a significant look at Takra; despite her sudden reputation and position at Lyseira's ear, the girl's miracle-working was sadly lacking. She could produce light—and nothing else.
"Can we . . . teach it? Is there some way―?"
"We've
tried, Master Shed'dei," Elthur said, "and keep trying daily, but most miracles are a matter of talent. A gift. A given cleric either has the gift, or he doesn't."
"Most of the problem," Takra insisted, "is logistics. We're not getting the manna where it needs to go, and we're giving too much to each family. There are people out there hoarding it, even selling it—I've seen it myself. If we stretch what we have, spread it more efficiently, we could drastically improve that number."
"By how much?" Angbar asked. He was no math genius, but by his count they were short by 299,000 people.
Takra met his eyes. "I'll bet we could feed ten times as many if we just cleaned up our distribution."
10,000, he thought in awe, and at the same time: Still not nearly enough.
Elthur read his eyes and offered a shred of hope. "That would more than feed those who were seeking help yesterday," he pointed out, which made Angbar feel better—for a moment. "But keep in mind the city's food stores run lower every day. The numbers of hungry will only increase."
"Angbar." A thin Bahiri man appeared at the door—Shaviid, one of Keswick's peasants who had joined Lyseira's church after healing Seth during the riots. "You told me to tell you if we saw more blood fever." He had a lilting northlander's accent, subtle, dancing just behind the words. "There are five."
Angbar felt the heat drain from his face. Five? A horrific illness, the blood fever caused its victims to wake with blood leaking from their eyes or mouths, always with a headache, fever, or even hallucinations. The sick had started coming to the temples for healing just after Lyseira had coronated King Isaic, early in the fall, and she had tried to help them—but no miracle could. The only saving grace had been the small numbers of the afflicted.
About a month ago, just after Lyseira had left with Syntal and the others to seek the fifth wardbook, the number of blood fever victims had started increasing. One a day, then two a day. Yesterday and the day before had seen a respite—there had been no victims of the disease reported either day, and Angbar had dared to hope that perhaps the worst had passed.
Of Dark Things Waking (The Redemption Chronicle Book 3) Page 3