Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars)

by Jim Grimsley

  Consternation in the skies, too, and somewhere in my enemy’s mind a troubled thought was forming.

  For the first time he showed himself, over Aerfax as I had expected, standing on Senecaur, and he reached to strike me with the strength of the tower, cold and sharp all through me, and I sent myself out of body in an instant, slipping rings on the fingers of my body and calming Nixva. He was on the Tower when we saw one another, him shining, white, and pure, not the image I imagined, not the monster I sometimes wished. He struck all the wards I had set from Laeredon, all the country I had learned to hold through the use of the Fimbrel cloak. In answer, the music swelled within Fimbrel, swelled and I could bend it, I could shape it, as one does with the eyestone on the High Place, so that when I defended myself he could not break me anywhere, and when I struck at him he was staggered, as though we were fighting on two towers side by side.

  From the city, from Chunombrae, they saw a pillar of darkness rise from the Osar bridge, and day darkened as I drank the light in the vicinity of Charnos. This was not the pale light of shadow but the black of midnight. Kirith Kirin knew it was me, but even he had never seen anything like it. I had awakened Fimbrel and now I knew the scope of it.

  Quickly Drudaen hid from me and went back to his defenses, but he was shaken, because it should have been easy for him to break me in some manner, with me on the ground and him in the air. I had no idea what he would see of the Cloak from Senecaur, what he would learn about it, so when he hid himself again I came back into the body and tamed Fimbrel onto my back. Nixva was skittish, some, and I wondered why, till I turned and saw a party of riders headed toward us from across Osar, red and blue cloaks mingled. I knew Karsten by her horse and headed toward her.

  3

  She thought I was riding back to Charnos, where she and her riders were headed, but I signaled her to stop the riders and drew her aside. We dismounted and she greeted me with the kind of warmth she had always shown, as though I were still that troublesome boy who tended the lamps. I told her to explain to Kirith Kirin that I needed to stay outside the walls. She asked no questions about that.

  Nixva carried me below the city where the Verm army had regrouped. We scattered them farther south, this time without any more killing. I did some fireworks to keep them mindful of my presence, darkening the sky with clouds and flashing some lightning here and there, ordinary stuff. At the end of the day I held the road south and the Verm were scattered across the fens of Karns. This skirmish has been styled the Battle of Ajnur Gap by people who have the burden of naming such events. It is often cited to demonstrate the pointlessness of sending an army against a good magician.

  I had enough to think about that I felt safer avoiding thought altogether, so I rode here and there on Nixva’s back, then found shelter for the evening near the river bridge. I got wood and built a fire, and Nixva cropped up mouthfuls of brown grass. Before he had eaten his fill, I could detect riders coming toward us from the city. People I knew, Kirith Kirin among them.

  They rode straight for my fire and before long were settling around me, starting other fires from mine, unrolling bedrolls, a few tents. Kirith Kirin dismounted and found me almost shyly, and we sat together by my fire. A night of uncertain stars unfurled. The white moon crescent hung above the bay. With him beside me I felt safer to return warmth to my heart, to restore some feeling to myself, and I let down my guard and sat with him. In the air was the scent of the dead, the Verm I had sent to Zaeyn.

  While we slept I could feel my enemy brooding to the south, uncertain what to do next, his army like so many rags trying to become cloth. But one thought he hid from me, something I would want to know, closely guarded, even in his moments of doubt.

  4

  He woke me before dawn and took my hand and we crept away from the tent. He signaled back the bodyguard and we walked to a grove of low, twisted oaks, the park fronting someone’s estate. Peaceful to stand there among those old trees, so different from anything in Arthen. To smell the sour sweat under his arm. “We have a long ride now.”

  “Drudaen was on Senecaur. I finally saw him.”

  He was searching for something, a sign. As if my face could reveal something to him. I went on, “I’m learning to fight him. I think I can get us to Aerfax. But it’ll get harder from here.”

  “I know.”

  I drew his face to mine and kissed him. We walked farther, along a stone path toward a group of graves. I had never seen graves before, marked with stone slabs, some elaborate, some simple and plain. Many of the Anyn bury their dead. We walked around the edge of these, out of respect.

  We said tender things that do not need to be repeated here. I have tried to write them down but it is better to keep them for myself. He had felt the strain on me in Charnos, he said, and wanted a bit of quiet. So now we would be in the country for a few days while the armies provisioned themselves. We looked at the countryside, the twisted clusters of trees along the Osar, giving way to scrub brush, low pines and swaths of marsh grass as we looked south. We stood on a rise of land, the last undulation of the Narvos ridge.

  At one point he looked at me and asked, “What are you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “The pillar of shadow at the bridge. The day darkening so suddenly. You always forget how much of this I’ve seen. What kind of strength do you have?”

  “Whatever I am,” I said, after a while, “I do love you.”

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  It would have been impossible to answer. We stood there, turned toward Charnos now, the high walls catching the eastern light. Good to stand there, good to feel the peace. But something had changed in his hopes.

  He must have felt the change in me, because he made me look at him. “I love you, too, you know. It isn’t a small thing to do that, at my age.”

  “I don’t know what it means, that you’ve all changed toward me again,” I said, “like the moment on Sister Mountain, do you remember?” My heart was pounding and I let it go on, without any magic to still it. “What does Curaeth Curaesyn say about what happens after a magician comes to Charnos?”

  “Hush. Don’t ask me that.” Such a look of sorrow, such a perfect ice at the center of his eyes. “There’s nothing to do, my dear. We are who we are. We’re marching to Aerfax.”

  “I can get us there,” I said.

  “I know you can. He knows it, too. So now the question is, to what lengths will he go if he’s pressed?”

  How far? A cold question, no answer.

  We looked south. We stayed there and watched the changes of daylight. On the horizon hung rags of gray, the edges of shadow. Long after Vithilunen we were still standing there, as though a sign were coming. But a sign had come, already, and once again it was me.

  Chapter 21: KLEEIOM

  1

  Whatever difference that prophecy made, whoever knew kept the secret, and no one spoke about it after we left Charnos. The army marched. I lived in Fimbrel, on Nixva’s back, riding ahead of the main body, in a company of mounted troops and the twice-named. A few of the Nivri rode along with us, the ones who had been in Arthen with us, though of the Finru houses there was only Brun. She had asked to join the advance troops, figuring, she said, that we would get all the fireworks. She told me this by way of a joke, though it turned out true enough.

  A good horse could make the trip down the coast of Karns to Kleeiom in four days, stopping at any number of inns in the fishing villages that rose up periodically along the road, paved though not magical. The waters of the bay came lapping onto the sand, low waves, nothing like Ocean, I’m told. Now and then Ocean would rise and inundate the road, washing away parts of it, and some merchant from Charnos would send a crew south to repair it. There is no reason to keep the road open, no destination south of Charnos worth discussing. Except Aerfax.

  We in the advance party could ride at a pace that was fairly leisurely, and we camped early in the afternoon, avoiding the villages oursel
ves. No one has ever told me this was due to my presence in the war party, but I expect Kirith Kirin was reluctant to have me face the Karnslanders. Often we pitched our tents in the shadow of the dunes, adapting the linings to keep out the sand. Could I call that a peaceful time? Ten days march to take the infantry from Charnos to Kleeiom, and I never slept. At night I walked the beaches in Fimbrel watching the light show in the south, below the horizon, the fireworks over Senecaur where Drudaen was spending all his time, trying to understand what device I possessed that made me into, in his vision, a walking shenesoeniis. We were, both of us, except for our vigilance, mostly quiescent in that period, though he was moving his hand toward us in other ways than magic.

  Kirith Kirin got news that an army was moving down from Antelek along the western road, clearing the wreckage from the first disaster and picking up some stragglers as they went. The army had marched straight out of Cunevadrim and would not be turning back. I was with him when he was talking the news over among the Nivri, when he sent for Karsten, who was with the army, to give her fresh orders in light of the new need to protect our flank. The Verm were only a few days away by now, traveling nearly as fast as the messengers who brought us the news. “He’ll send them down Kleeiom behind us,” Kirith Kirin said. “Bottle us up.”

  The news made him nervous. I took note of the change.

  At the north end of Kleeiom is a small town, Teryaehn-in-Don, Don being the name given to the country thereabout. A lot of fishing boats put in there and a good market kept the city in the fish business year in and year out, with the bonus that a lot of shipping concerns were there, too, to tend the fleet of boats. Teryaehn was a royal town, under the rule of the crown through an appointed viceroy, and a lot of supplies for Aerfax come in through the docks. Drudaen knew we would bring the army there, garrison the town, but take our main force south toward Aerfax. He would besiege the garrison with his army and send a force down the road after us.

  We moved into the town on a day in the month of Yama, the dead of winter. Kirith Kirin had requisitioned the viceroy’s round-house for himself and the viceroy had moved into the inn for the night. We were two days ahead of our army, maybe six days or eight days ahead of the new Verm force following us. Kirith Kirin had sent word for our troops to move double time down the road, he had done that without my asking, and that was all that was necessary.

  We quartered in the viceroy’s big stone house together, in a nice feather bed, with windows opening onto the sea. Many people up north have the myth that all the rooms in a round-house are round, but I am here to tell you that is not the case. That first morning we stretched out on the sheets, me prepared for another night of lying beside him awake, listening for any sign of change on the planes, and him restive, his hair all in tangles, worrying. He threw open the windows and let the cold Yama wind pour through us, ran under the covers and pulled me close, and we sat there with the wind rattling the lamps and shaking the tapestries. A smell of salt in the air. A good smell, Kirith Kirin said.

  “How long has it been since you slept through the night?” he asked.

  “Since Charnos, I guess.”

  He pulled my head on his shoulder. “Sleep today. We’ll be all right here.”

  “I’m fine, I need to stay awake –“

  “In case he does something. But if he does you’ll wake up anyway. All right? So sleep, please. For me. Because I want you to.”

  So I said I would, and he sat there waiting. He could tell when I was kei and when I wasn’t, so I let go of all those other places of myself, those spinning parts of me in the ether, what Commyna called the place that is not a place. I came back to the only place where I could sleep, and, in spite of the fact that I could have done without it, I was glad to close my eyes with him sitting there, the wind blowing through the room.

  Dreamless. Not even the ghost of my mother visited me. We slept through the night together. Kirith Kirin got out of bed at morning but I stayed sleeping. He sat with me most of the day, let no one in the house but Imral and Evynar.

  I awoke in the afternoon hearing a voice, someone I ought to know, I thought, a moment that felt more like a vision than a dream, because as it faded I saw the afternoon light through the open windows, felt the cold wind, curled under the down comforter in the rose duvet. Not my mother’s voice, I had been expecting another nightmare about her; but someone else. Commyna? No, but someone like that. Kentha, maybe. I had echoes of her in the necklace, which was never far from me.

  Kirith Kirin had wrapped himself in Fimbrel, which was full of afternoon light, and he was sitting by the window on a wooden chair. I pulled the duvet around my shoulders and crossed the room to sit with him, room for us both in the chair, the wind in my face. He touched me tenderly. “You look better.”

  I put my face close to his and rested there for a while. “You’re wearing my cloak.”

  “Yes. I’m listening to it.”

  “You like it?”

  He smiled. “I can see what you mean. There’s a feeling of the High Place.”

  “Voices,” I said. “The High Place is full of voices, too.”

  “Do you hear anything?” he asked.

  Closing my eyes, lifting my head, there, yes, I could hear again, as easily as that, and I pulled the Cloak around my shoulders too. “Nothing different,” I said. I could feel Drudaen moving on Senecaur, watching me, preparing, I supposed. “We’re close now. It’ll be hard from here. He can try any number of tricks.”

  “Like an army in the mountains,” Kirith Kirin said. “From the deep places under the Spur. That’s what Karsten expects. And she’s probably right. They’ll hit us when we’re close.”

  “But all we have to do is get as far as the gate.”

  “When we get there, Athryn can climb to the High Place and sing to the Rock to begin the Change. At that point, Senecaur will be of no use to Drudaen. But I have to get to the gate before Athryn can climb to the Rock.”

  He had said as much before but it reassured me to hear him say it again.

  Kirith Kirin was looking south, into the cloudy skies that, near the horizon, became fringes of Drudaen’s shadow. “I’m not afraid of his army. We’re not likely to be very surprised by any kind of attack, given who we are and where we’re going. No matter where they come from. He has something else in mind, he must. He has some other plan.”

  We sent for food and ate. Imral came later and we talked again. Peaceful. Around sundown the army showed up, first runners, then the forward riders, then lead troops, second line troops, archers, wagons, baggage, the merchant train and the supplies. Teryaehn rarely played host to so many people, an army camped on her grounds, spilling onto the road and along the dry land toward the mountains. The fish market stayed open till there was nothing left to sell and the smell of cooking fish floated over the countryside. Karsten shared our catch at our table, and we sat up late, hearing stories about the march.

  About midnight I got to work, sending for my steward who kept my chests under lock and key, waking the poor woman to bring them. I got out the gems and metals I would need, true silver and smith’s gold, stones as well, more than I had used so far. I took these with me in a leather pack and had one of Gaelex’s people send for Nixva. I told Kirith Kirin what I was planning. He sent for the viceroy to make some dispositions concerning the countryside, that was the phrase he used.

  I had Imral show me the best map we had of the Don, to get an idea where to ride. I had begun insinging and was kei; to memorize the map was not much work, and I carried it in my head with me. The north of Kleeiom is the widest part of the whole country, but that’s hardly worth bragging about; a rider can make the trip in half a day from Teryaeh-in-Don to the mountains. But a stade north and the whole Karns fen opens up a hundred stades wide.

  One does not lightly begin those Words, which are hard to unsay and which stain the soul forever. Nixva came up prancing with the groom trying to keep him under control. While he was coming up, I closed my eyes and gath
ered the cloak close about me. For what I am about to do, forgive me. I will not eat the souls that die here but will let them cross through to Zaeyn.

  We were riding and I began to sing Eater of Souls, Lifebreaker, guiding Nixva toward the mountains for our first pass; we rode ithikan now, and so his speed was multiplied and we saw the land with the change on it that comes in that state. I lay a lattice of enchantment from the mountains to the sea, across the whole sweep of country, over bog and fen. I made a network of gems and metals to make a killing field, singing Great Devourer, singing We Who Depart, singing Dead Hand Moving, singing all the killing magics into these gems, setting them down in a curve leading across the road to the sea, making bans and wards along this route, a process that took a long time, back and forth, and because I was taught to be thorough, what I made there that would last ten thousand years, unless someone of my skill should come to remove it. There are still stories that my gems and metals are in the bogs of the Don.