Tom let himself breathe a sigh of relief. He lowered Caledyr too. But blades still glittered in the starlight, so he didn’t sheathe the sword.
“You can trust us,” Six said. He had an arm stretched back and across Katharine’s torso. It was the sort of defensive gesture Tom should have been offering her.
“Can we, brother?” Athra overemphasised the last word.
If Six heard the sneer, he ignored it. “Yes. We just want your help.”
“Is there a reason in Tir I should help you?”
“We’re on the same side.”
“Are we?” Athra pointed away to the unconscious elfs lying near Six and Katharine’s feet. “Is that why you carry two of my brothers like slaughtered pigs?”
Six was making this worse. So Tom said, “Did you hear about the toppled obelisk in Heulomar? Or what happened to the Secretary of the Peace?” He didn’t wait for a response in case Six interrupted. “We did that. To weaken Idris.”
“That was you?”
“It was.”
“You don’t look like a believer.”
“I’m not,” Tom replied and Athra blinked in surprise. “But I fight the same cause.”
“So you say.”
“I cannot lie.”
“So you say,” Athra repeated.
“If I could lie, wouldn’t I have told you I was a believer?”
“Perhaps.” Athra’s expression twisted, like he had a lemon in his mouth. “Unless you were trying to convince me you couldn’t lie.”
Always the same arguments. Always the same counter-arguments. “Perhaps.” He hefted Caledyr so that it caught the starlight. “Our goals differ, but our interests align; you can help us into Cairnagwyn, where we can help you weaken the throne. Trust us and help us, or let us go; we make for the capital either way.” He tipped the point of the sword towards Athra, aiming it at his neck. “But I promise you I would rather slaughter you all than let you bring injury to my friends. And even if you don’t believe I cannot lie, I’m sure you can believe that.”
Athra stared at the point of the sword, then squinted back at Tom’s face. He jerked his head at Six. “That one is your friend?”
Six’s face was shrouded in shadow, but the grimace was clear.
“For my part,” Tom said. He was surprised he could say it. Pleased too.
“Suggests you’ve got poor judgement,” Athra said.
Tom gave a small shrug. “He might not disagree.”
“His judgement is worse.”
“That he would disagree with.”
“Yes, he would,” Athra said, as slow as the spread of the smirk across his face. He nodded at the sword. “You can put that away, brother.”
“Not until your people put away theirs.” There was too much starlight glinting from metal.
Athra’s smirk soured for a heartbeat. “Brothers,” he said. “If you please.”
Tom waited until all swords were sheathed before he slipped Caledyr into its own. Athra took a careful step closer. A test. Tom didn’t move and Athra nodded.
“Good.” He waved a hand and the Goraven began to pick up their fallen. “Now tell me, Brother Rymour: what is it you plan to do in Cairnagwyn?”
Tom had expected Athra’s lair to be an abandoned villa or something equally grand. But instead the elf led them to a small cave in a hillside. Too small for the horses, so they had been forced to abandon them and slip into the cave with saddlebags over their shoulders. The Westerners bore small torches. Dank’s sprite hovered near the ceiling. There still wasn’t enough light.
Tom had been taken to the head of the column to walk with Athra whilst the others had been escorted by the remaining Westerners. Neirin walked like they were an honour guard. Brega walked like they were jailors. Six walked like they were an ambush waiting to happen. But the elfs themselves walked like a roving band of surly youths. They seemed to care more about their appearance than their captives, swaggering and strutting and puffing their chests.
Unlike Athra. His swagger seemed more a confidence in his mission than in himself. “It’s a good plan, Brother Rymour,” he said as they slipped into the cave. Here there was room for two to walk abreast, the floor scattered with moss and bones and the smell of rank urine. Did something live in here? But Athra pressed deeper. “Breaking those monoliths will give us chaos. The dragons free. The armies alone in the world. The states cut off.”
“Cut off?” The cave twisted and narrowed. The walls felt unnatural. Someone had hacked this tunnel out of the ground.
“Well, not cut off.” Like he was conceding something, an argument lost. “But distanced, perhaps. Idris will have to rely on messengers. The delay will give the states independence. Like the old times.”
“He uses the monoliths to communicate?”
“Of course.” Athra turned, his face nothing but shadow, his torch casting a flickering corona around him. “You didn’t know that?”
Tom just shook his head. Watched Athra’s invisible expression until the elf turned and continued.
“Without the dragons, Idris will have two choices: continue the war and give families corpses in place of their loved ones; or bring his armies home in retreat and disgrace. Either way, he’s weak.” He spoke as if it had already happened. “And the duchies and the provinces, they’ll take advantage. Take land or power or both. And then what? Coups, revolutions, secessions? Ruin the Kingdom and Tir will be fragmented. Weak. Burning.”
Shuffling dwarfish steps stood out amongst the echoes. He’d just refused to help Storrstenn with his campaign of destruction and suffering. Why was he here, with people who wanted that for the whole of Tir? His stomach clenched. Caledyr stirred. Tir would be embroiled in hate and fighting and suffering, and the sword sent him one single, violent thought.
But they needed Athra’s help. They had no other way of getting into the capital.
“While you break the monoliths, we can assure your safety,” the elf was saying. “We’ll disrupt the city. Distract the watch. Maybe even the royal guard. Keep them looking the other way until you get back to us.”
“Back to you?”
“Don’t worry,” he replied. “We’ll keep you safe. The whole Kingdom will be after you. The duchies too. Maybe even the Provinces. There’ll be a hundred little lords looking for you to help them pull scraps from Idris’ table.”
He thought of Regent. “Or put us in a cell.”
“Don’t worry,” Athra repeated. “We won’t let that happen.”
The tunnel grew smaller. Tom had to duck his head and turn his shoulders. He had the nasty feeling he was being led into a cage.
He could hear running water ahead. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“To the future.”
Tom let himself roll his eyes in the dark. Athra made Neirin’s dramatics seem amateurish. “The future sounds wet.” He had to push aside memories of the rat pit.
Athra gave no indication he’d heard Tom’s remark. “That’s the river Oliaeth. Oliaeth was the name of one of the old giants of the world. She washed Tir of its filth, and we will use her to bring that filth back to Cairnagwyn and build a world fit for Oen’s return.”
It felt like everything Athra said came through a twisted fog, so that the words became warped echoes of the truth.
At last the tunnel ended, expanding into a natural cave, filled with flickering lamplight. A slick path crawled over uneven rock to a plateau where those lamps rested alongside three boats. Below them was Oliaeth, broad and fat, wending its way through the cave and into another, greater, darker tunnel.
The plateau was huge, and it was clear it had been used as a campsite for a long time. The bedding, all pushed to edges and nooks, stank of use, and Tom spotted bones and morsels from meals clearly eaten many days ago. There were no signs of comfort or leisure, though. Just the boats. At first Tom had assumed they’d been carried here but they were surrounded by tools and shavings, signs of woodwork. A single elf, no more than a child, was painti
ng the wood with a thick, dark substance. She gave them a cursory, distrustful glance as they approached but didn’t stop her work.
Athra said something to her in elfish and her reply was surly. But Athra just laughed and tousled her short hair. She snarled.
“Your daughter?” Tom asked.
“I don’t think so.” Athra offered him a roguish smile too like Six’s. “Her parents died of a sickness and we took her in.”
“A sickness?” Six watched the child as if her presence repulsed him. “Was it a natural sickness, Athra? Or did you cause it?”
“All sickness is unnatural,” Athra replied. “Have you ever seen a plague? Or the growths that infect body and mind and turn a sweet grandmother into a cursing harpy? The moulds that make limbs shrivel and fall from the body, or the fungi that grant three days of delirium and mania before stilling the breath?” Athra wasn’t talking to Six anymore. He’d stepped onto a rock and turned his speech into a sermon. “These are not the natural condition. The body is a hearty, hale place for the soul.” He thumped his chest. “If we live without sin, we will not die. But we are all tainted by the sins of our fathers. Only Oen can cleanse the land and cleanse our souls. When he returns, he will return us to the natural condition. And we will not know pain, or sickness, or strife, or death. Only his glory, everlasting.”
The Goraven murmured something together and Athra smiled a beatific smile, closed his eyes. “In Oen we trust.”
There was a moment of silence. Some of the Goraven muttered to themselves. Athra was a statue, basking in the moment of hushed reverence he’d created. But all Tom felt was pity. These elfs would find Emyr a bitter disappointment. If he could cure sickness, would he have spent a thousand years of undying death in Faerie?
Six broke the hush with a slow, carefully enunciated question. “Did you cause the sickness?”
Athra’s smile faltered. “It was Oen’s work.”
“So you killed this girl’s parents and abducted her.”
“You would have me abandon her, brother?” Athra gave Six a hard glare. “Look only to my own needs, leave her to suffer the hunger and slavers and villains of this world? Did Oen not teach us to treat each elf as our brother?” His lips twisted into a smirking sneer. “Though that’s a lesson would be lost on you.”
“This isn’t about us.”
“Yet here you are.”
Six said something in elfish but Athra shook his head. “In their tongue, brother. Or do you fear the judgement of your new friends?”
“I said I sold myself into work, you ungrateful little snake,” he spat, stabbing an accusatory finger up at Athra. “I sent you every penny. I had nothing.”
“Six,” Katharine murmured. And, just as Siomi had always calmed Neirin, so her voice seemed to calm Six. He took a breath, lowered his hand. But, unlike Neirin, Six couldn’t smother his anger.
And Athra wore a smug smile. He spread his arms like some sort of messiah. “Oen taught us to love, brother.” His voice was too calm, dripping with too much supposed wisdom and devotion. “I forgive your sins. You must forgive yourself.”
Six took a sharp breath, but a touch from Katharine and he swallowed his retort. She tugged him back and he let her lead him away. Athra wore the face of a boy who had won the argument.
“Forgive me.” Neirin stepped forward, wrist extended but head unbowed. “But I must insist we discuss our route to Cairnagwyn.”
With a wave Athra dismissed his impromptu congregation and stepped off his rock. “There is your route, Lord Neirin.” He pointed at Oliaeth, gurgling its way below them. Tom instead looked up at the odd reflections it cast on the ceiling. “That river runs all the way to the city, into its very belly.”
“And these our transport?” Neirin gestured to the boats, to which Athra nodded. “When do we leave?”
“There is still some work to be done.” Athra nodded to the girl. “But our labours will soon be finished.” He made it sound like the final end, as if they would lie down and die once the boats were done.
“Can they be finished sooner?”
Athra grinned. He was too like Six. “I understand your impatience, Lord Neirin, I truly do. But we have waited for Oen for a thousand years. Let us not risk all for the sake of a day.”
“I cannot wait.”
The grin faded. But it was replaced, not with the anger or irritation Tom had expected, but with surprise. The elf took a breath and said, “Truly our brothers in the East are devout.”
“You and I, we yearn for the same peace.”
Athra clasped his hands together and lowered his voice. “I have heard your people pray to the One King,” he said. “Would you teach us?”
Neirin bowed his head in assent. “But we must finish those boats,” he added. “Prayer is vital. But our faith must be tempered with action. We must show the One King we are his willing servants.”
“It will be done.” And Athra rushed off to his followers, giving frantic, fervent orders.
“That was impressive,” Tom said as the Westerners descended on the boats like birds to a freshly sown field.
“Something I learned from my father,” Neirin replied. His lips quirked in the smallest of smiles and he gazed at something only he could see. “Something I didn’t understand until now.”
“It was well done,” Brega said. “The sooner we can leave, the better.”
“I agree,” Tom said. But Brega didn’t meet his eye. “These elfs are worse than Storrstenn.”
“I can see why Six called them fanatics,” Neirin mused. Tom could see him weighing up the elfs, balancing them. Perhaps wondering if they could be allies.
“They’re dangerous,” Tom said to whatever he was planning. “And they’ll turn on us if it suits their mission.”
“He’s right.” Brega gave him a grudging nod. “They are like us; the end pardons the journey.”
“Like us,” Neirin murmured, and Tom feared he’d heard the wrong part of their warning. But then he said, “And not like us. We keep the faith. The faith does not keep us.” He gave them both a solemn look. “We will watch them. And turn on them before they turn on us.”
Chapter 18
The work continued throughout the night, Athra’s followers taking shifts so someone was always sanding or tarring or sawing. It would have made it impossible to sleep save for the insistence of the sword.
Rest, it said. Recover.
And it was right. He was tired from the fight. Aching. Covered with blood and bruises. And the sword insisted, pushing the thought amidst Tom’s own until it was like crashing waves, a roaring wind, a constant, empty noise that drowned all else and sent Tom into a dreamless sleep.
He woke rested and alert. His limbs still ached. His scabs tugged. But his pains and discomforts were reminders that he still lived. He rose and stretched carefully.
“You slept like the dead.” Gravinn was nearby, peering into a boat, a brush in her hand.
“Not quite,” Tom replied. “Have they put you to work?” he asked and regretted it. Would she misinterpret him, think he was alluding to her slavery?
But she nodded. A cautious nod. And she kept herself distant from the elfs, as if they might be waiting to pounce with shackles and chains. But there was a smile on her lips nonetheless. “We visited Erhenned once. A year or so ago. I learnt a few things about boats.”
“Anything I can do?”
She shrugged. “We’re almost finished. Waiting for the tar to dry.” One of the Westerners came near, inspecting the boats, and she hunched her shoulders and withdrew.
Tom waited for the elf to walk away before he murmured, “You’re free now. They won’t make you a slave again.”
But the elf called back. “Dwarf. Shouldn’t there be more tar here?” He waved a hand. “Here. Now.”
She flinched, as if to scurry over, but Tom put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Her name is Gravinn. She is not yours to command.”
“I do Oen’s work.” Said as if that was
enough to demonstrate his authority to command them both.
Tom felt the old anger stir. “I carry his blade.”
The elf sneered. He was tall, slender, but kept his chest permanently puffed. “That makes you a squire.” He stepped forward, all swagger. “Not a soldier.”
“I carry it when I need to and wield it when I must,” Tom said.
The elf sniffed. “I know an infidel when I see one. You do not believe in the coming of the One King.”
“If you had seen the wound he bears, you would doubt it too.”
A snort. “Wounds are nothing to him. He bears the injuries of us all.”
“He’s not a god. He’s just a man.” Somehow it felt like a betrayal to say so.
“A man.” The elf laughed. “Only a man could think the One King so wretched. He is more than any of us.”
“I’m sure he would disagree.”
The piety turned to anger and the elf hissed, “You think to speak for him?” He bared his teeth. “Sacrilege.”
Tom looked about, half-expecting the other elfs to have downed tools and encircled him. But no-one was listening. Yet. “You believe what you would about Emyr,” he said. “Let me believe what I would.”
The elf shook his head. “Those who lack the faith feel the sword.” He took another step forward. Too close. Tom wanted to step back. But Caledyr told him not to. “That was Oen’s terrible message: believe or fall.”
Caledyr slipped free with a sigh and shone in the torchlight. The elf was transfixed, awe and devotion and fear in one. “I carry the sword,” Tom repeated. “I will decide who feels it and who doesn’t.”
“You are not worthy.” It was like a sigh.
“Perhaps not.” Tom gestured with the blade and the elf stepped back. “Go do Oen’s work, if you will. But do not trouble her.”
The elf gazed a moment longer at Caledyr, with greed and lust and devotion. Then his expression darkened and he glared at Tom, huffing and throwing a crude gesture before skulking away. Tom watched him affect a swagger, shout an instruction to a youngster. Try to maintain his ego.
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