by Kim Wedlock
And the Crown had ordered them away. Did they want Kalokh to strike? It would force the military away from locking in Doana to deal with an actively hostile force - Doana would secure their foothold. They would have all the time they needed to turn Kora upside down.
None of those umber-skinned wretches had been seen in the city, but they knew they would stand out. They doubtlessly had less conspicuous people working for them. People of his own colour, his own nation...
The thought struck him as absurd, and yet it seemed to fall so perfectly into place.
Perhaps King Thunan himself had people working for them. Malson seemed almost pleased that Moore hadn't reacted to Doana's movements or his own efforts, as if he wanted this stand-off prolonged - as if he didn't want either side to attack at all. But why would he or the king want Kora to find evidence that would compromise the throne?
Unless he had no intention of giving it up, and was preparing instead to negotiate. But...for what? And what was he willing to give up to succeed?
History told him it was most likely that he sought to marry the eastern queen, to maintain his seat and take Doana and its military for his own by marriage, strengthening his forces, gaining new farmland and eradicating a threat in one bejewelled and celebrated move.
But there was one problem. The queen was a child - malleable and callow - but her advisors were not. They would not allow it. No respectable governor would. They would be giving up their cultural identity, and no leader - no honourable leader - could do such a thing.
And so Thunan, naive in his victory over a child, would inevitably be manipulated once the negotiations of word or marriage were complete, perhaps even killed...
And then they would all bow to the child queen of Doana.
Liogan had said he wouldn't like what he found in the lockbox.
But...why would the king think to concoct this?! To oppose Skilan? It was as certain as the moon in the sky that they would bring war down upon them again, and they were still too powerful for even Salus to do anything final about - but that alliance alone would provoke them into war, if not King Jalund to try the same thing. And then where would they be?
King Thunan had always thought himself clever. Malson did, too. It was a failing that seemed to come from a close proximity to the courts. And his advisors were all yes-men, sold on that very illusion. Salus was glad that he was so rarely summoned. His intelligence was still intact.
But if this was the king's plan, what could he possibly do about it? And so late?
He quickly stamped that hasty thought out. He needed proof first, above all else. And with eyes in the palace, it would be no long job. There may have already been signs. Why else would he have come to this conclusion so neatly if not because the information had already been laid out in the tiniest of pieces, cut and sanded for assembly?
A sudden shift in the wind drew him out of his thoughts, and he loosened the cloak from about his throat, sweating in his anger and humiliation.
Liogan, he discovered, had gone. But he had no questions. There was only betrayal.
But, up here in the mountains, there was nothing he could do. The nearest translocator was a day behind him and he would never make it back without rest, no matter his determination. That was why he'd brought a pack with him. But he knew he would get no sleep even in this affected and empyrean peace with his blood surging so.
His eyes drifted slowly back down the mountain.
Two birds, one stone.
There were tribes that needed wiping out.
Chapter 48
Three days did little to smooth his temper. Despite returning victorious from the mountains, Salus had immediately shut himself away in his office with troubles he had no desire to discuss, yet could clearly be heard both muttering and raging over long into the night. He let few in, took reports curtly, barely ate - he'd only visited his private chambers once during Taliel's absence, and that was solely because he'd gotten sick to the point of madness of the sight of his office walls.
In the end it took nothing less than another mountain to free his chest of the constraints of duty and breathe again freely, and the chill to invigorate and chase away his mental fatigue enough to grasp a clear thought. But even as he planned and pondered in the seclusion of those frozen heights, a new concern was gnawing.
Salus regarded the ancient barrows carefully. Koraaz had meddled here. He could feel the disturbance if just because nothing at all appeared out of place. And yet, even while nothing looked, sounded or smelled unusual, there remained a distinct and striking abnormality to the air. A silence. Another deliberate silence - deliberate, but not conscious.
He wandered slowly about the menhirs, pausing beside the altar whenever he crossed it, and considered the magic warily before he dared upon a conclusion. But the moment the thought shaped gingerly in his mind, his certainty hardened. The magic was still there. He was sure of it. As sure as had it been bound, gagged and hidden behind one of the standing stones. There was nothing wrong with it but inactivity.
A malicious smile tugged at his perpetually grim-set lips as he felt at least one of his woes evaporate. Koraaz had failed. Despite reports, the magic was still here. Whatever the accursed rogue had thought he'd done, he'd only made it safer for him.
He straightened beneath his cloak and breathed deep the frozen air. What a fine gift for Midsummer's Day.
With a smug bounce in his step, he passed on through the ruins and continued his climb until he reached at last the gaping chasm. But when he extended himself down into its blackness, his confidence slipped. The magic, when provoked, was sluggish to respond, and when it finally did it seemed confused, twirling aimlessly like fallen leaves in a gasp of breeze.
He frowned, though he knew who to blame and an inkling of what to do. If the magic was going to be lazy, he would need to be firmer. It could be that Koraaz had found a way to 'dampen' it, to get in his way and slow him down. But surely that could be overcome. If a child stuck its fingers in its ears, one had only to shout louder or slap its hands away.
Salus redoubled his efforts, bullying it into motion, goading it to wake up, to liven, to rejuvenate, to recover its previous vigour until, finally, its stupor buckled. With a momentary flush of victory, he felt the magic shift and contort beneath his pressure, mustering slowly, moving at last in line with his efforts. He quickly adjusted his spell, paving its way southwards with a sigh of relief. For a moment, he'd thought--
Something was wrong.
Like a fallen tree damming a river, the flow suddenly clogged. It swelled and spilled out over the trail behind it, escaping his lane of control for no reason his frantic search could find. Like wasps, it swarmed recklessly out over the precarious ledge, inciting yet more clusters of magic as it expanded, reaching back as far as the barrows until a storm of ephemeral frost suddenly raged around him.
His blood turned cold.
Koraaz had trapped it after all.
Teeth clamped tight, Salus steeled and fought back for control. But the magic was vigorous now. Wild. Clots of power ruptured at random all around him, faster and more violently the harder he fought, and with each burst, the air about it changed. Something took shape from within the magic - or revealed itself from its hiding place - potent, raving, and unstable. He noticed only at the very last moment that another was forming beside him.
Instinct tore his eyes open and threw him back towards the safety of the trees, but in doing so, the last vestige of his control collapsed. He was spared not even a moment to reel in panic before something struck him on the back of the head.
Salus whirled furiously, a sign already shaping in his fingers, but he did not find the wretch he'd expected.
A dog-faced creature leapt with a scream from the tree's shadows, paws open and grasping for his face. It took only a confused backhand to knock it out of the air. Another large nut immediately struck him from his left, clipping his eyebrow, but as he turned and snarled towards this second beast, a third leapt at
him from behind.
One by one, five of the lanky creatures descended upon him from their place in the firs, attacking from all sides with whooping and barking, spinning him around as he tried to hit one away while throwing another off. But they were relentless. Urgency boiled in his blood. The magic was rushing away from him.
He gave up trying to deflect them. With a short string of gestures, the creatures screamed and their thick, furry coats erupted into flame. Their holds failed immediately and they dropped writhing to the snow. He wasted no time watching their futile rolling.
Salus took off, thudding through the snow in the wake of the snaking, splintering chasm as it pushed off towards Doana, vaulting over tremoring rock and miraculously keeping his feet even as his mind surged ahead, groping haphazardly after it. A minute took a lifetime, but finally he drew level, and exceeded. His feet slowed while his hastily revived spell tightened and hemmed it in, and he steered it with all his might, pulling it back together, beating it into submission until it was at last heading southwards again.
His breath shook with relief and exhaustion, his feet finally stilled, and he swallowed his heart back down into his chest. Control was his again. The magic was still riled, and the exploding pockets were still discernible though mellowed and diluted among the rest, but it obeyed. He kept a tight hold despite his flagging strength until the flow's impetus was enough to carry it to the next rend, then, finally, with another ragged breath, he withdrew.
A moment too soon.
The chasm had extended for miles, and just at the edge of his reach, something else had gone wrong. Like spooked horses the magic suddenly jumped and scattered again, and this time he knew there was no hope of saving it. It splintered once more, and veered westwards.
He stared after it in terror. Sweat beaded, dread roiled in his gut and panic spiked through his limbs, trying ardently to paralyse his thoughts against his fevered search for a solution. But the truth spiralled relentlessly in his head: there was nothing he could do. It was too far, too fast, and his disordered mind was already weighted by fatigue.
He cursed himself desperately. 'No! No! I don't believe that. I can't believe that.' There had to be something he could do. He'd set this in motion, and it was his loss of control, his failing, that had let it loose to obliterate Turunda. But if he was powerful enough to start it, he was powerful enough to reclaim it. He just had to reach it. He had to get ahead of it.
And so he ran without a thought of futility, shrouded in his determination, blood surging in his ears as the snow melted beneath his feet. He ran, he reached, and he willed.
The mountains shifted, the land levelled, and his feet pounded over frost, following the tremors, following the scar, racing beside it as it carved out its destruction. Until something terrible compelled him to look backwards.
Shock held him for a single step. His eyes fell not upon mountains, but upon Toakh. The old, eastern border town. And it had been ripped in two.
And Tamley lay directly ahead.
He was almost out of time.
Fire burned in Salus's eyes as they returned to the front, and his fatigue had long since evaporated. He slammed himself to a stop, gathered his focus, and fired his magic straight into the rampage.
It caught violently. His strength jolted under its powerful momentum - too powerful to break, but not to be diverted. He rooted himself, physically and mentally, gritted his teeth against the strain, and swept his spell around, dragging the magic with it like a leash. But it took more than he had to return it to the mountains. He thought rapidly, puffing under the exertion. He knew he couldn't join it to the next rift he'd planned to - something deep and primeval told him not to even try - but if he could bow this one far enough, he could connect it to the second later and keep damage to a minimum.
Judgement was critical.
He held his breath and released the spell.
The world blurred. The ground struck his knees. His mind swirled and muscles numbed, but, distantly, he felt the tremor swing. The magic hurtled south. And the trailing cloud that had hung just beneath sight and sense burst and gasped out across the land.
Green meadows and pastures were bleached grey under the creeping sheets, and the lazy breeze drifting over them chilled. Cattle stamped uneasily on the crunching silver frost, rabbits scurried deeper into freezing warrens, and rushkins dove to undisturbed depths. Lake surfaces cracked, streams flowed beneath glass, and Bowden's water carriers swore and read omens, while rain froze mid-fall, pummelling Rul's wooden roofs and Bridgend's rickety stables.
Kvistdjur abandoned their tendings and rose in twists of leaves to sing their mournful lullaby as the woods emptied of birdsong, and a huldra staggered back in shock, her heart breaking and stitching back together in fury as a thin sheet of ice glazed each and every leaf. Ditchlings shivered in Ziili, harpies fluffed up in Korovor, and vittra roaming outside cities muttered anxiously over the chaos that ensued within.
Beggars huddled, elderly stumbled, children ran and whooped in fear and wonder. A scholarly mage looked out from a tower over a glistening city, thoughts already bent towards a logical cause while another, far older, leaned towards the consequences. Soldiers east of Kora sheltered from hail and remapped against frozen water sources while their umber-skinned counterparts listened to alarmed mages just north in Greentop.
And a sylvan sorceress soothed an agitated goat, watching with a beautiful knot of worry in her brow as moss and lichen shrank and shrivelled under the touch of the unnatural freeze, and a grievous song rose from the depths of the scowles behind her.
Salus lay beside the gaping black scar, staring listlessly up into the madly swirling clouds. He didn't feel the cold through his clothes, sweating and steaming in his exhaustion. He wasn't sure yet if he'd actually noticed it, if he'd seen what he thought he had or if he'd imagined it even as he'd watched the frost spread. He'd been in the Olusan Mountains just minutes ago, and now lay half way between Toakh and Tamley. But even as his dulled and muffled thoughts tried to make some sense of it, the only thing he could concentrate on was that the dog-faced creatures had lost him his pack in their skirmish, and that he needed a blanket.
'I have noticed the cold, then,' he thought disjointedly, but the fact that it shouldn't have been was still slow to arrive.
He was so tired. Everything ached, ached as though he'd climbed mountains. And he was hungry. And drained.
But he was victorious.
His eyes closed and a smile eased across his weary face. Victorious. And now, he wished for home. For warmth, for food, for rest. Not to have his name spoken with such alarm, nor be shaken so roughly by the shoulder for not answering quickly enough.
"Leave me be, Teagan," he managed, moving only to bat his hand away. "Or get me a blanket. I want to sleep." He soon felt a sheet laid over him, which he pulled about himself gratefully as the smell of drying ink wafted towards him. It was a strange thing to smell in the meadows, and he was surprised that Teagan had found him so soon, and that he'd brought both a blanket and a teacup with him, for the clink was unmistakable. But it had been a strange afternoon. A little too strange.
He mustered the strength in his curiosity to open his eyes, and found not the bright and blinding sky he'd expected and failed to prepare for, but a dark and vaulted ceiling that triggered a lurid conflict of dread and relief in his heart.
And yet, he couldn't help but smile sardonically to himself. He had wished himself home. He just hadn't expected that 'home' would be his desk rather than his bed.
"Where is Liogan?" Teagan asked in tight and unsettled tone, but Salus sat up slowly in his chair, shaking his head before he could find his tongue.
"It wasn't her."
"It wasn't her?"
"No. Somehow..." he smiled as the obscure and fatigued understanding finished falling into place, and he eased back into his blanket. "It was me. Desperation, I think. Like the blue fire."
"What happened?"
He missed the continued ti
ghtness of the portian's tone and told him of Koraaz's sabotage and all that had ensued since. He was too tired and distracted to notice the shadow of concern that had already been in Teagan's eyes, growing as he spoke, nor that they seemed to linger through the window.
They drifted back onto him when Salus mentioned far too casually the jump he'd made from mountain to meadow, and Teagan found a weary and satisfied smile upon his face. 'He teleported. Twice.' The thought sent chills clawing up his spine and a steel rod through his shoulders. He kept it all from his face.
"What's happened while I've been gone?"
"You're tired," the portian reminded him, stepping forwards to tidy the papers he'd left across his desk, arranging them according to his progress. "You should rest, first." He stopped when a hand slipped in and pressed the remainder to the surface. He looked back to Salus. His eyes were pink, but serious. Teagan stepped back in obedience. "As you wish. Kalokh has attacked."
Salus blinked. "They've...attacked? But we sent people after them to deal with it. How could they have attacked?"
"They were few enough to lose their tails. And a few were dealt with--"
"Too few if those remaining can still 'attack'! Where are they? What have they done?" His good and placid mood was as good as dead.
"They bypassed Rega entirely, it seems," Teagan reported dutifully, "but they struck Eddon and Whiteheath simultaneously after burning Kruuz and what remained of Redgrove. They're hitting hard. They want our attention."
"Tell me Moore didn't stoop."
"I'm afraid I can't. And Doana were quick to take advantage of it. They looted the afflicted areas and when Moore sent two regiments to deal with Kalokh, Doana took the opportunity to obliterate them from the rear. Over four hundred dead, and Kalokh slipped away. They've vanished into Korovor."
"Korovor?" He paled. 'Taliel...' "Where was the Order when all of this was happening?!"
"None were stationed at Greentop, and in many cases, they're not trusted to act. A few commanders are holding them back."