Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars)

by Jim Grimsley

  The Room-Under-Tower had filled with smoke, wind whirling up from the kirilidur, weyr light pulsing on every side. I glided across the pavement and circled the room in each direction, singing. The Eyestone was in place in the metal lattice. I could try to use the machinery to take it out of the socket, but that would be dangerous, too; the machinery is used to lower the stone periodically, so that it may be turned and polished with oil. Within the Room and throughout the Tower I could hear the dissonance of the Wyyvisar interfering with the Ildaruen which Drudaen moved through. If anything would bring the Tower to ruin under me, this would. To die in the collapse of Laeredon would be the same as dying at Drudaen's hand. As he closed in on the city, this dissonance would worsen. If I meant to take the High Place, I had to do it now.

  Finding the stair, I stretched time and gathered myself into readiness. Moving in and out of my body, entering the dual trance again, I climbed. I stood on the lip of the stair, looking out across the High Place; at the same time, rising into shadow, I searched for my enemy and found him.

  He had ridden faster than me, and already neared the Bridges which led across Isar, entering the city from the east. Furthermore, he had thrown off dismay and the urgency of the struggle had drawn him out in all his strength. Even in his furious riding he saw me on the High Place, and when I heard his voice, he spoke to me in words I could hear and understand.

  “Boy,” he said, “you have come as far as you can come. Know me now.”

  He set his hand inside me again, and the agony of his touch ripped me so that I sagged onto his rune pavement, I fell on my arm and it twisted backward with a wrench of pain. He bound me there with Words like fire and ice along my skin. Lightning crashed into me from every side, and the focus of the Eyestone moved against me. His hatred filled me and I lay numb and motionless while he poured his Power through me, clawing at the tiiryander, the place where my spirit was tied to my body.

  I watched from high above myself, pitying the agony of my flesh. But I refused to waver. Hard as it was, heavy as my hand had grown, I called upon my pitiful body to move, to use the arm left me, to wrap the Bane Necklace in my palm. Below, through the city, his white horse thundered in the cobbled streets, and everyone he passed, friend or foe, swooned and died and he ate them and grew stronger. Slowly my hand neared the necklace while roch fire rose up round my body and shadow thickened in my nostrils. He had my corpse in his thought and bent his strength to wreck it, but my hand moved a centimeasure at a time and finally, painfully, wrapped the Bane within flesh already cooling into death.

  I could feel the bite of the runes against my palm.

  The part of my mind that had been meditating on them all this time became clear to me. I remembered Kirith Kirin’s words. By the time she placed the Eyestone her time had already passed, as she said. She was pregnant with the child… If she was pregnant with my great-grandfather, then she had already made the Necklace too. No doubt she fashioned it in the Work Room at Ellebren. Nowhere else could she have hidden the work from Drudaen.

  Kentha made the locket to rule the Tower.

  Even more important, she had the hidden lines of these same runes in Ellebren, the Words of the Praeven, to keep the link strong; I could hear the runes now, in the part of myself that remained at Ellebren.

  Piercing agony filled me suddenly, as Drudaen found the tiiryander and closed his hand there like a talon.

  With ebbing strength I sang to those rune threads that I did not know, and the Necklace burned my palm. I could feel the burning as far away as my spirit soared. The Wizard had reached the Base Rock beneath Laeredon and swooped down from his mount with the thunder of song, able now, he believed, to crush me with the strength of the Eyestone since my body had fallen onto his runes. But now I let him hear my voice, for the first time. “Here I am, Great-Great-Grandfather,” I said, “flesh of your flesh and blood of your blood. Feel this.”

  I struck him with Words refracted through the Bane Gem, and the feeling of his pain was sweet. He had reached the causeway leading to Laeredon but staggered. His hand loosened within my body and my spirit-link strengthened. I moved power through the Gem again and his cry reached me all the way at the summit. The touch of the Bane Gem he recognized from the first moment, and his fear was palpable. “Oh yes,” I said, “I have it. You feel it.”

  The Gem was strong but much of its use was hidden from me; it could not lead me to the place where his spirit tied itself to his body, and so I could not kill him, though I tried. For a moment my hand was on his heart. I stopped it beating as he had stopped mine; he could feel my touch, and while I was inside him he could feel the Gem. His terror swelled, and I helped it to seize him. Since I could not kill him, I needed to make him wary enough that he would give up any notion of breaking the Tower beneath me. I spoke through the Gem again and then, stronger, made my body stand. He could not pin me to the runes and protect himself at the same time. I was able to move my arms and legs again. I could see the High Place with the eyes of my body. The Eyestone shimmered and swirled, and while he was weak I reached into it. “I will give you your dance,” I said, “as the Lady designed it, and you will belong to me.”

  So I moved. From the first step, pain shot through me, and with pain came the certainty that I had thrown the dice, that now I would win or lose. Even without opposition, there are only two ways to end the Dance of Encirclement on a High Place: one finishes the Dance or one dies. I bent my whole thought to that, keeping the Necklace where I could find it. On this razor’s edge my spirit spun, in parallel with my nearly broken body below, tracing its steps on the Rune Path that Drudaen had concealed beneath his own.

  I fell out of time. We struggled through the day as I completed the Long Dance. He was at the Gate but could not come in unless he meant to try to take the Tower again, and that would likely bring it down and kill us both. Holding the image of him at the gate in the kei space, I felt moments of his confusion. But I had other business. Blind, deaf, I returned to that place again where the Wizard had first found me, when the Sisters lost my spirit in the mountains. He was there too. We were clouds orbiting each other, and lightning poured from him to me. Coldness crept through me and I knew myself to be close to him, closer than I had ever dreamed of being. I could smell his breath. He laid his hands along my body. Confusion overcame me and I could no longer be certain I was dancing; I was lost in the fourth circle, and the terror of that nearly swept me into him forever. I could feel the dimming of light in Ellebren, the collapse of my presence there. I could feel the sighing of the Sisters along Illyn Water, their sadness when they heard the news that I had failed. I could feel the darkness enter Kirith Kirin finally: him on the battlements of the high walls watching the Tower-light dim and fade. His beauty turned to stone before my eyes. Despair would have taken me along with him, except that I could still feel his bracelet on my wrist, the burning Necklace in my palm, and I could still feel my heart beating. Somewhere, I told myself, I am alive and I am dancing, and I have the Bane Gem and Ellebren is mine, and if he wants to keep Laeredon he had better come and take it, or else I will kill him now where he stands, because this High Place belongs to me.

  All worlds collapsed into one. I was in my body and the dance had carried me to the Horns of Laeredon. I hung in perfect balance over the edge of the summit, and my hand, stretched out, held the locket cupped. My other arm, broken by that first fall, hung useless at my side.

  Dawn was breaking over the eastern hills. A day and night had passed as we fought. Below, watching me with physical sight, Lord Drudaen Keerfax.

  He wore rich white garments, leggings and a cloak trimmed with glittering gems. His face, lifted toward me, had beauty beyond any earthly look of man. I could see why Kentha had loved him. Even from that distance I could see he would like to smite me too, that way, if he could, since all his other weapons had proven useless on this day. He opened his mouth to speak but without a sound I choked him silent with the strength of Laeredon, which was now mine, and
he staggered. The glimmer of beauty fled him and something grim replaced it. With the arm left me, I held the Bane Necklace for him to see, dangling from the silver chain. “Here it is,” I said. “Come and get it.”

  “Not today,” he was getting his breath. “Some other time.”

  “We’ll see when that day comes, if it ever does. Remember that I have it.”

  “Using it’s the trick,” he countered. “You’d have killed me already if you knew how. But you don’t.” To show his force, he struck at me again with all the vast strength left him, all the southern Heights, all the lives he had eaten, all the Words he knew. All the years he had lived. I staggered then, and nearly tumbled from the edge of the Tower I had won.

  Contemptuous, he turned his back and found his horse again. The Necklace went cold in my hand; I could not longer muster the strength to reach through it. “Keep the Tower while you can,” he said. “I’ll get it back, after I’m done with you.”

  He would have ridden away then, and won a sort of victory, except I remembered myself, who I was and who had taught me. Crying out my last shreds of strength, I struck him once, twice, again and again, not through the Necklace but with the whole breadth of Laeredon. I saw him fall from his mount and stagger and still I struck him, and because I could not kill him outright I was free to cause him torment like no one had shown him in whole lifetimes. He felt every scrap of pain a body can feel while I raged. When I was done, he was limp as a rag on the ground, hardly better than I. I said to him, “You’re right old man, I can’t kill you yet. But you’ll feel worse than that from me before I finish. You’re not alone in your power any more. Now get out of my sight before I kill your horse and make you crawl to Cunevadrim.”

  Whether I could have made good on this last threat or not I don’t know. He struggled onto the horse’s back and hid himself from all eyes other than mine. I watched him depart the city, howling in his fury. He attempted some very foul enchantments to make the city desolate but I countered him, and so he passed out the gates. He declined to return to Vyddn country from which he had come, but instead turned his riding southwest, the road to Cunevadrim.

  I crawled to the stone and kissed it, favoring my arm. Huddled against it, I felt myself near loss of consciousness. But while I still had awareness, I broke shadow again, over Genfynnel and points north. I called below to Nixva to let him know his master lived. I sang to Ellebren and lit that summit with rainbows and wheels of fire. At Inniscaudra they would know I had won my fight. Laeredon answered to me. The Wizard had fled south. We would live to fight another day.

  Chapter 16: LAEREDON

  1

  Soft warm rain woke me, sweeping across the High Place.

  Midmorning over Genfynnel brought clouds full of moisture from the sunlit east. The warmth surprised me. I had never been so far south this time of year and had no notion the breezes could be so balmy with winter closing in.

  My sense of time returned to the normal flow. Drudaen had fled the Tower scant hours before. My body, full of hurts, objected when I stood, but there were things I had to do. He would be riding to Cunevadrim and when he reached his home Tower I could expect further opposition. In the hours intervening I needed to heal my own hurts as much as I was able.

  I limped to the stairs leading to the pirunaen, which had cleared of smoke. Wind had swept the worktables clean of anything moveable, but the casks and workboxes had weathered the assault. At the edge of the open shaft, over which the fire pot sits on its metal spider web, I listened. Murmuring and singing, the Wyyvisar reawakened. But I thought it unwise to try a descent that way till I had cleansed the place of the Wizard’s changes. I headed into the High Chambers and whirled down the stairs.

  Pain shook me, but I had long ago learned what to do with that when it became troublesome. As I descended I sounded the Tower, found it solid and whole. Now that it was mine I could begin to admire the handiwork that had made it, the care of its building. I had the sense that the stones themselves welcomed me, being glad to serve the Other no longer. Everywhere I found signs of the crumbling of his Ildaruen shell and the reassertion of the older magic beneath.

  In the base room Nixva greeted me with unusual affection. We ate cake from the saddlebags, our first food since leaving Arthen, and we drank cumbre together. I had some of Imral’s brandy as well. I led across the causeway to a grassy lawn.

  We were safe enough. A pile of dead Verm marked the boundaries of my ward barrier, which still held. Beyond the Verm, a few faces moved. Here were some people come to steal gold from the dead creatures and to wander in the Palace where common folk rarely come. I stumbled toward one of them and called a Word to let my wards down. A boy approached, younger than me. He thought me lost, I guess. In my bedraggled tunic, with the Cloak all drab and dull, I hardly looked like the magician who had wrenched the Tower free of Drudaen’s hold. The child gaped at me curiously. “Boy, if you can find a doctor who’ll come here I’ll give you a hill of gold.”

  He gaped at me like I had gone lunatic. I flung an amethyst at him, though, and he knew it was worth something. Taking a fresh look at me, he hurried off.

  The food and drink restored me some. Most of my hurts would heal themselves, more quickly as I regained strength; but I wanted help to set my arm. It dangled useless at my side, shooting pain like fire into the place where I was putting pain just then. I waited at the causeway to the Tower while Nixva grazed and kept his eye on me. The balmy rain had passed and sunshine stirred the city to new motion. Signs of my passage and that of Drudaen were easy to find. The walls lay crumbled for a hundred cubits and the gates sent up trails of smoke. The front of the Palace portico had cracked, and some of the halls were smoldering even after the light rain. The street was lined with the dead and their pickpockets. It pained me to see the damage I had helped to do to such an ancient place. But I walked to the walls anyway, and those who were roaming thereabouts paid no notice. Except for my broken arm I looked like the rest, scavengers in a nearly-empty city. From the acropolis on which Telkyii Tars stood, I could see the nearest streets, the edge of a distant market. Once I saw a company of blue-clad soldiers moving; another time a train of wagons rattled beneath the road, carrying someone’s possessions out of the city.

  I could see, also, the gap in the city walls where the western gate had stood, until the Verm closed it against me.

  The force of magic can stun even the maker of it. Incomprehensible to me, that so much destruction had visited this place so quickly. A city emptied of women and men, walls torn to shreds, an ancient house cracked, and carrion crawling over the dead. From Words I had said. The Verm love their lives too. I had killed today.

  The soldier will tell you no battle without blood, the magician will tell you no different. The boy would have told you, that day, he had never killed before, except the Witch who murdered his family, and he scarcely knew what to make of it. Here I stood, looking for someone to help me set my broken arm, and around me spread the city on which I had feasted in my rage.

  Is it any wonder people fear us? I remembered Pelathayn’s words in the council room at Inniscaudra, Ten thousand or forty thousand, what does it matter? No army of the world would ride here without my leave.

  Yet I was a boy who once herded sheep on the Fenax hills, who had spilt his milk in his lap and gotten spankings for chasing the geese. My sister once gave me a licking for breaking her best arrows. My mother frightened me with stories of boogar bears in the night.

  When the bedraggled boy found me I was teary, kneeling in the grass near the rent wall. He had brought a doctor all right, and she hurried behind him with her bag. She guessed I was crying from the pain but I tried to tell her I could hardly feel any of that. The pain I felt came from deeper, and I did not try to explain it.

  She led me to the portico and the urchin followed, waiting for the hill of gold. The doctor told me her name, Evlaen daughter of Mrothe. I told her mine. She touched gentle fingers to the flesh where the break made itself ev
ident. “It’s broken,” I said stupidly.

  “I see.” She gave me a sidewise look. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I was up there.” I pointed to the Tower and she looked twice in that direction.

  “Up where?” she asked.

  I pointed again, this time making the gesture unmistakable. She faced the High Place and then faced me.

  Evlaen, skeptical, asked, “How did you get up there?”

  “I broke down the gate and went up. Lord Keerfax broke my arm while we were fighting.”