“I’m going to bed,” she told them. She perceived Brienne and Fastion explaining things that required explaining, but they did not leave her side. If people wanted explanations, they had to keep up. Her chamber was going to be crowded if they all stuck with her.
Even the king, surrounded by more Weapons, appeared in the corridor. Karigan briefly paused, and bowed. “My pardon, Your Majesty, but I must continue on.”
“She’s going to bed,” someone said. Captain Mapstone?
This time Fastion left her side to explain. One did not expect a king to follow.
Ordinarily Karigan would have desired a chance to spend a few minutes with the king, to talk with him, but not tonight. Or was it already morning?
When they reached the Rider wing, tears of exhaustion and relief ran down her face. She perceived curious Riders peering at her from behind cracked doors.
When she reached her own chamber, she pushed the door open, and disregarding the clumps of white cat fur on her blanket, she dropped into bed.
THE WALL SCREAMS
It was a wearisome journey through the white world, and they’d made all haste, Grandmother, Lala, and half a dozen others. She’d opened a portal and crossed a bridge onto the stark plains. She warned her people against straying or believing what they’d see there.
They’d been tantalized by groves of lemon trees, like those of Arcosia, only to have the fruits rot and fall to the ground and the trees shed their leaves and die before their eyes. There were other images that came and went, including one of the accursed horse of death the Sacoridians worshipped, standing off in the distance and watching them with a vulture’s gaze. Her people obeyed her, sticking close, and disregarding such illusions.
Grandmother navigated the white world with an enchanted ball of yarn she rolled across the plains. It unspooled enough yarn that it should have run out, but it stretched all the way to the last bridge, leading them true.
The white world was both unsettling and tantalizing, for it must have been centuries since any of her people crossed into it. The Kmaernians had built the bridges long ago, long before Sacoridia had been a mote in the emperor’s eye, but it had been Mornhavon the Great who learned the secret of the white world after his forces were ambushed one too many times by the enemy seemingly appearing out of nowhere when they were known to be much farther away. Once Mornhavon had acquired the secret, the empire had also been able to travel the ways and ambush the Sacoridians in like fashion. Soon battles raged not only across the landscape of Sacoridia, but in the white world as well, battles that had been mostly fought on a magical plane by great mages of both sides.
She nudged her horse off the final bridge with some regret into a forest full of natural light, color, and damp smells, smiling when she heard the exclamations of relief from her people as they followed her. When the last horse plodded off the bridge, the bridge vanished from existence. She supposed she could visit the white world again when she wished, but the chronicles warned against traversing it too much, with vague warnings of madness and death resulting, and something about lost souls.
In any case, she knew more intriguing places lay ahead, like the D’Yer Wall.
Before they reached the wall, Grandmother had made spells that rendered them invisible. Indeed, when they entered the encampment, the soldiers and laborers there went about their business unaware that eight members of Second Empire stood in their midst.
Grandmother guided her horse directly toward the breach, reining back when an oblivious soldier almost walked right into her, and she had to wend her way around a pair of laborers lugging water. Blackveil drew her. Its power wafted over the repairwork of the breach like a finger beckoning her on. She fairly quivered with energy.
She sensed also the weakness of the wall. Its cohesiveness was somehow undermined and she wished she had the book of Theanduris Silverwood at hand. She could bring the whole thing down now. But it would have to wait, for she’d been called to Blackveil. She had work to do there. Her destiny, and that of Second Empire, was about to be fulfilled. She would have the book later and the wall could come down then.
As she neared the wall, she felt the alarm of the guardians in response to her presence. She comes, she comes, she comes…, they shrieked. Yes, they recognized what she represented, but as disorganized as they were, they could do nothing to stop her.
She halted before the breach. “We must abandon the horses,” she said.
Lala was plainly unhappy, clutching the reins to her buckskin pony and frowning.
“My dear child,” Grandmother said, “we must leave the beasts behind. It would be cruel to take them with us. They’d be too terrified to bear us in the forest, and they’d prove a tasty meal for some predator.”
The little girl dismounted and wiped a tear from her cheek. Grandmother was touched by how much Lala had taken to the pony, for she rarely expressed much emotion. The others busied themselves removing baggage from the horses and strapping it to their own backs. Once the horses were released and wandered away from their masters, they would become visible to those in the encampment.
Grandmother surveyed the repairwork of the breach. The alarm of the guardians thrummed beneath her feet. “The stonework is well done,” she said, “but mundane for all that and no barrier. This shall take but a moment. Stand clear.”
Her people backed away, giving her space. Along their journey she had knotted and knotted a length of yarn knowing what she needed to do. She had used the indigo, and she now unraveled the knotted ball, speaking words of power, invoking the strength of water, freezing, thawing, wind, erosion, and time. The end of the yarn lifted itself from her palm snakelike, gravitating toward the stone. It glided along the joints between the facing, cracking mortar, weakening stone, and boring into it. Ice repeatedly etched across the stonework, and thawed so rapidly that in blinking one missed it. Tremors jostled the ground and Grandmother thought the guardians of the wall would bring about their own undoing.
The yarn, the knots, and the words of power did their work of weakening the stonework, aging and weathering it hundreds of years in moments. The repairwork of the breach buckled, crumbled, and thudded to the ground raising a veil of dust. The ground shook so violently that it almost knocked Grandmother off her feet.
“Come,” she said to her people even before the dust settled. “We must hurry across.”
Without a backward glance, she started picking her way across the rubble into the forest that beckoned.
The guardians sense the workings of the art. The stone in the breach does not live, but they nevertheless feel the reverberations of magic being used against it.
The art at first probes the stone, licks at it, soaks into the pores of granite. Spreads. There is a counter song, a song of aging and weathering, of weakness and erosion, freezing and thawing.
It reverberates into the weakened portions of the wall adjacent to the breach. The song of the guardians is in too much disarray to repel it. They try to rally, to find harmony and rhythm, but it is too long gone and they are in chaos, like an orchestra playing out of time, instruments out of tune, voices crying in agony rather than combining into melodious notes. The fear of the guardians is great, but they only mangle the song further. There is no single voice to bring them together, to help them.
Listen to me! Follow me!
But the voice of the one once known as Pendric is lost in the cacophony. He has spent so much time spreading distrust and hate that he cannot heal them.
The nonliving rock of the breach gives way as though it has undergone more than a millennium of weathering in but a few moments. Granite tumbles to the ground leaving a gaping hole in the wall.
At first there is nothing more, then the bedrock upon which the wall is built rumbles and the voices of the guardians near the breach rise up in a crescendo of pain. They begin to die. Mortar fails, cracks widen, ashlars edging the breach crumble and fall.
The cry of the guardians escalates into a scream.
MERDIGEN’S RETURN
Dale was pleased. The tower guardians, instead of playing games and partying, were having serious discussions about the wall and its workings. Not that she could understand it all, and not that they weren’t passing ale around now and then to, as Itharos put it, “assist in the thinking process.” They filled up scrolls with equations and drawings, made diagrams in the air with points of light, and argued theories and philosophy. At least they were doing something.
Alton had continued with his inspections and reported the wall, the section nearest the breach, was still oozing blood, sometimes more, sometimes less, and that he saw disquieting images in the cracks, usually the eyes watching him. At times it was only one pair, at others it was several. Today he’d hurried her into the wall, and he seemed more anxious than usual. She wondered what was wrong. Even her passage through the tower wall felt…tense? Stiff? Not the usual fluid sensation like passing through water but almost brittle. The wall had not trapped her this time, but she worried about her return. The mages assured her they would speak with the guardians to ensure her passage back was safe.
Dale shuddered and tried to focus on what the tower mages were talking about, but sometimes they fell into using Old Sacoridian or words from other languages she could only guess at. At times they were so incomprehensible in their discussions that she found herself dozing off. Suddenly a question rang through the tower that brought her fully awake.
“So who started the song?” Fresk demanded. “Who started the song they all sing?”
Everyone stared at him. Then a babble erupted and turned into an argument. Cleodheris was certain the Fioris had something to do with it, Winthorpe claimed it was Theanduris Silverwood, Itharos speculated it was the stonecutters themselves, and Boreemadhe was quite sure the Deyers originated the song.
“We were not there to know the origin,” a new voice said, “nor did we think to ask.”
Dale whirled in her chair and standing there in the middle of the chamber next to the tempes stone was Merdigen with his pack on his back and his staff at hand. Two others were with him, a long-bearded, solemn fellow and a wispy woman with leaves in her hair.
When the tower guardians saw them, they dropped what they were doing and exclaimed in delight. Even Cleodheris smiled and float-walked over in her ethereal way to greet the travelers.
Dale couldn’t believe it. After so long waiting for Merdigen to return, there he was standing among them. The two newcomers were introduced to Dale as Radiscar, from Tower of the Sea, the westernmost tower, and Mad Leaf of Tower of the Trees.
Mad Leaf? What sort of name was that?
The guardians showered the travelers with questions at once and Merdigen wearily gestured them to quiet.
“I need ale,” he said, “and I’m sure Radiscar and Mad Leaf would appreciate refreshment, too.”
This request was attended to, with the guardians conjuring a feast from the air, as well as mugs of ale, foam spilling over brims. Dale sat in the one solid chair at the table and waited for things to settle down.
Merdigen heaved off his pack, which dissolved to nothing before it hit the floor, and took in long gulps of ale Itharos handed him. “Ah, that is good,” he said. He inquired after his cat, and asked, in turn, how everyone was, including Dale.
“I see you’ve not abandoned us,” he said.
“I see you haven’t either,” she replied in a quiet voice.
Merdigen nodded. “Yes, I know I’ve been gone a good while, but the travel was not easy.”
“What of Haurris?” Itharos asked. “Why is he not with you?”
Haurris, Dale gathered, was the guardian of Tower of the Earth.
Merdigen’s features sagged at Itharos’ question. “We could not reach him, I’m afraid. Broken bridges everywhere. Messages sent from Mad Leaf’s tower went unanswered.”
The group grew somber.
“What could have happened to him?” Boreemadhe asked.
Merdigen shrugged. “Hard to say. Perhaps the breach in the wall has made him impossible to reach, but why him, and not me, when my tower is closest to the breach?” He shook his head. “Whatever the cause, we must assume the worst has happened and that whatever happened to Haurris could happen to any of us.”
The festive atmosphere at the arrival of Merdigen and his companions all but evaporated—except for Mad Leaf who grinned, well, madly, and played with a twig in her hair. It seemed one of Boreemadhe’s gray clouds settled over the table.
“We must not let this deter us,” Merdigen continued. “In fact it should spur us to find answers, and that’s why I have called you all together: to find answers, for the wall is constantly weakening. We cannot fix the breach, but there may be other things we can do. We were always more powerful as a collective than as individuals.”
“We have been looking at the problem of the wall,” Itharos said, with a wink at Dale. He conjured out of the air copious diagrams and equations scrawled across scrolls.
However, as if this was some sort of cue, the tower began to rumble, the floor shuddering beneath Dale’s chair. She stood in alarm and the guardians cried out in consternation. The shaking grew, encompassing the whole of the chamber, raising dust. Crockery fell out of cupboards and crashed to the floor. A crack jagged up one wall and the floor pitched so much, Dale staggered from side to side as though she were on a ship at sea.
Blocks of rock tumbled from the unseen ceiling above and smashed to the floor. Dale dove under the table, knowing it would not be enough to protect her if the whole tower decided to collapse.
She was aware of Merdigen shouting orders and the mages running to and fro in the dust haze until they disappeared beneath the arches on either side of the chamber.
Another block crashed to the floor just inches from Dale and she gritted her teeth, wondering if this was the end of all things.
Alton paced alongside the wall. His night’s sleep had been worse than usual, filled with murmurings in his head. Uneasy, ghostly murmurings full of fear and despair eating at his mind. He awoke full of trepidation.
And yet everything about the morning was as usual. The encampment went about its day-to-day business and the wall and tower remained, as far as he could tell, unchanged. He’d hurried Dale through breakfast wondering if the mages in the tower would note any difference and provide an answer to his disquiet. He hadn’t told Dale how he felt, but he had practically pushed her through the wall.
Now he apprehensively awaited her return. Waited, waited, and waited. He was sick of waiting when he should be able to get answers for himself.
On impulse, he halted in front of the tower and pressed his palm against the stone facade. Shining strokes of lettering hurled away from his hand. He had not seen this in so long. He knew it was the wall guardians sending out messages of alarm. What was going on?
He was joyous that the guardians allowed him this much communication, but he feared what it meant.
Just then the ground pitched beneath him and he almost lost his footing. He did not jump away from the wall or seek cover, but pressed both hands against it, leaned into it, and tried to remain standing as the ground rolled under his feet.
“Dale!” he screamed in anguish.
SEEKING HARMONY
As the lettering continued to scroll out from beneath Alton’s hands, he became aware of the encampment behind him breaking into chaos; heard the shouting and running feet, the screams of horses. He glanced up, and to his horror, saw Tower of the Heavens swaying back and forth, as if it were made of some more pliant material than granite.
He pressed his palms hard against stone and willed the guardians to allow him entry, but a jolt from within the wall, a surge of anger, threw his hands off it. He knew that anger, felt familiarity. Pendric.
Still he did not retreat, but planted his feet wide and offered a silent prayer to the gods, then plowed his will into the wall past Pendric, past all resistance. Suddenly, after the long silence, his mind filled with voices in ch
aotic song.
We are lost. We are broken. We are breached.
If the song fell apart, so would the wall. But how could he fix the song from here, and alone?
There was no way.
Then without warning, the stone yielded beneath his hands and he sank forward into the wall till it swallowed him entirely. The passage was not fluid. He was buffeted from side to side, thrown against hard angles, his flesh bruised and abraded by rough stone, and an underlying thread of song tried to repel him. Pendric again.
Alton pushed forward like a swimmer in battering seas and emerged in the tower chamber, but rock solidified around his ankle. He pulled his foot out of his boot just before the wall crushed it.
He was elated he’d made it through the wall after being denied passage for so long. Maybe the guardians were so weakened, so caught up in chaos, that their barrier against him failed. Or maybe they were ready to embrace him again and accept his help. He hoped it was the latter.
His elation turned to apprehension as he peered through the haze of dust. Rubble littered the floor, and another tremor nearly knocked him off his feet. The columns in the center of the chamber weaved precariously. He could not see Dale and he feared the worst.
Merdigen poked his head out from beneath the western arch. “This way, my boy!” He waved at Alton to join him.
Alton dashed for the arch, and across grasslands where he had a brief impression of a raging storm of snow and lightning exploding around him till he emerged past the columns into the ordinary tower chamber again. One of the columns crashed to the floor beside him, breaking into sections. He ran beneath the arch. Merdigen shone with a faint glow, revealing little in the darkness. Straight ahead the corridor dead-ended where it intersected with the wall.
“The others are merged with the wall,” Merdigen said. “We must restore order, and we need your voice. Will you help?”
The High King's Tomb Page 61