Wit'ch Star (v5)

by James Clemens

  Hurried steps sounded behind him. He turned to find Py-ran rushing toward him, flanked by three other mer’ai. “We followed their trail,” Py-ran said. “They made for the docks.”

  “All of them?”

  “We’re fairly certain. We talked to some folk in the streets.” The mer’ai warrior’s voice lowered. “But there are more bodies at the dock. One of the Dre’rendi wave-chasers was commandeered.”

  Kast spat out a curse, pounding a fist on his sword hilt. “I want elv’in scoutships in the air and hunting for them immediately.”

  “I’ve already spoken to the commander of the elv’in. He’s arranging a squad of pursuers.”

  Kast nodded at the lieutenant’s efficiency. But he knew in his heart that there was little chance of finding Hunt and the others. The high keel’s son knew the maze of Archipelago’s islands better than anyone. They would lose themselves in the mist, and before the moon set, they would be in a new ship, taking one by force if necessary and scuttling the small wave-chaser. By tomorrow they would be gone.

  But Kast did not succumb to frustration. It was time to stretch the game to a broader scope. From Sy-wen, he knew the plot of the possessed: to gather more eggs and sow them among the war fleet.

  In such knowledge, there was power. Rather than whiling away energies in useless pursuit, it was time to lay a trap for the possessed, to meet them where they were going.

  Kast turned to Py-ran. “Send word again to the elv’in commander. I need a ship ready by dawn.”

  “To hunt the others?”

  “No, I’m turning the island and its defenses over to you. Word of this betrayal and the potential danger must reach the fleet. With Xin failing to reach Tyrus this night, our lines of communication are down. I can’t risk such important information to the vagaries of a crow’s flight. I mean to take a ship myself to the fleet and set up defenses against the possessed.”

  The shock of his words darkened the other’s face. “But A’loa Glen . . . ?”

  “I have full confidence in your abilities to hold the walls here, Lieutenant.”

  “But—?”

  Kast clapped the fellow on the shoulder, but he barely saw Py-ran standing before him any longer. His eyes were already staring through the walls and over the ramparts. In his heart, he knew the last assault had been waged in the dungeons here. The true battle had rolled over and past them, heading north, heading for Blackhall.

  “They attacked here because they fear Ragnar’k,” he mumbled, recalling the hate in Sy-wen’s mad eyes. “But I will teach them the true meaning of fear.”

  Py-ran backed a step with a half bow. “I will alert the commander immediately.”

  Kast slowly unclenched a fist. He glanced to the ruin in the hall, his eyes settling on the pale face of a boy. Blood pooled around Ty-lyn. He remembered the youngster’s laugh, his bright smile, his simple, proud love of his jade dragon. Somewhere, echoing out over the black seas, a lone dragon wailed a mournful piping. It sang to the sorrow and pain in his own chest.

  He turned away as his vision blurred; he wiped his eyes. There was only one answer for the bloodshed here: to make sure it never happened again.

  He strode down the hall.

  Dawn could not come soon enough.

  Tyrus stood among the ranks of stone d’warves. The stars in the eastern skies faded with the beginning of the new day’s light. In that strange twixt between night and morning, everything took on a silvery cast, as if this army of d’warves only waited for the morning light to wake them from this unnatural slumber.

  Tyrus moved slowly down the ranks. He felt the granite eyes of the soldiers on him. He remembered what it was like to have the world harden around you, holding you trapped. He stared out at the row upon row, rank upon rank: foot soldier, ax-lord, lieutenant, and captain.

  Somewhere in this vast army, Wennar, their commander, stood in this valley or upon the ridge. Tyrus sought to find him, to offer what consolations he could, to promise that this war upon the d’warves’ old slave-master would not end in this field of stone and granite.

  “I did not know,” a quiet voice said behind him.

  Tyrus closed his eyes. He had yet to find his way to forgiveness here.

  “When last I heard of the d’warves,” the Stone Magus said, “they were the underlings of the Dark Lord, his hands and legs upon our lands. I thought only to protect.”

  Tyrus turned to look upon the worn visage. “You were once a healer, if the stories I’ve heard are correct.” The prince waved his arm over the graveyard of living stone. “Do you see what your blind rage has wrought? It has taken life and twisted it most foully. How are your actions any more righteous than the Black Heart himself?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  Tyrus would not let this excuse stand. “Ignorance is the deadliest poison. The power you were granted was a responsibility placed in your hands. It was not for you to vent your own hurt upon this world. With power comes responsibility.”

  The figure bent under the weight of his words. “I didn’t ask for this power.” The Magus straightened, holding out his stone hands. “I can’t feel anything. Not the wind on my face, not the rain. Not the brush of a hand on a cheek, not the softness of a child’s skin. Anything I touch turns to stone.”

  Tyrus recognized a bottomless well of pain in the other’s eyes—and a madness that was barely kept in check.

  “Free me . . . ,” the man pleaded.

  As Tyrus stared at the Magus, understanding came to him. It was not rage at the Dark Lord that fueled his rage, but simple loneliness. The Magus had lived all his life in these northern woods, a hermit dwelling in a hillside. But as isolated as he was, he had never been fully alone; the world could still touch him in all its myriad and intimate ways.

  But with the transformation, that had all changed.

  The Magus was as much trapped in stone as any other here. Locked away from the world, he had lost contact with it. He had forgotten what it meant to live and breathe. Tyrus remembered Hurl’s warning: Remember and never forget, the Stone Magus’ heart has also gone to stone. Those words were more prophetic than any imagined.

  Tyrus might not be able to forgive, but he could pity. He stared at the statue with its arms raised in pleading. “We’ll find a way to free them,” he said, and motioned with his own granite arm. “The d’warves, my men, and the villagers.”

  “It can’t be done,” the Magus said, his limbs lowering in defeat.

  Tyrus stared out at the army as the eastern skies grew brighter. To the north, hills appeared from the darkness. Bare, skeletal trees covered their slopes. It was the edge of the Stone Forest, the onetime home of the sad figure standing beside him.

  “Tell me of the coming of Blackhall,” Tyrus said.

  The Magus covered his face. “It was too awful a time. I don’t want to touch those memories again.”

  “You must,” Tyrus said more harshly. He confronted the man, pulling one hand away from his face. “If there’s any hope to reverse your magick, I must know how your powers came to be.”

  The Magus shook his head. “It was too dark a time to look upon.”

  Tyrus shoved down his other arm. “Then look on this!” he shouted, and motioned to the stone army. “Thousands imprisoned by your hand, trapped in stone like you. Can you hear them crying for release? Can you feel their eyes begging?”

  “No . . . no . . .” The Magus fell to his knees. He rocked in place. “I didn’t know.”

  “Now you do! And you owe them more than a bonfire at night and weepy words of sorrow. If the cost is to face your past, then you must pay it.”

  The Magus continued to rock. His heavy knees furrowed the soil. Tyrus prayed he had not pushed the creature too far, driven him back into ravening madness.

  Then slowly words tumbled from his stone lips. “I was gathering herbs from a woodland glen, anise and hawksbreath.” He lifted his hands to his nose. “I can still smell them on my fingers.”

  Tyr
us moved a step closer, though he feared touching the man, lest he draw him from these ancient memories.

  “Then a great roar, like a thousand thunderstorms crashing together split the quiet. The ground shook, heaving up in great swells then falling again, as if the land itself had become a stormy sea. I was thrown down and clung to the soil with my fists, praying to the Mother above and the Land below. I thought my prayers answered when the quaking slowed and stopped. I rose and fled back to my hillside home. When I got there, I found all the windows shattered, my great oak door cracked in half. I went inside to see what was left of my home and belongings . . . Then . . .”

  The rocking of the Magus became more frantic; a wail rose from his throat, boiling out as if from the turmoil inside the stone man.

  “It is over,” Tyrus murmured. “You’re safe here.”

  The figure seemed deaf, but after a moment, words keened through the cries. “A wind . . . a hot, searing, foul wind came screaming from the sea. It blasted every leaf from every tree. Saplings were uprooted. Older trees cracked and tumbled end over end. I fled and cowered in the root cellar, and still I could not escape the burn of the winds. It was impossible to breathe.” The Magus clutched at his throat as he rocked, gasping, choking.

  “Calm yourself,” Tyrus urged. “The wind is gone, lost in the past.”

  The Magus shook his head. “It’s never gone. I can still hear its howl in my ears. It is the scream of the damned.” His voice rose and took on a fevered edge.

  Tyrus reached for the distressed man, but the Magus stopped rocking. His eyes were wide open, but Tyrus knew he was not seeing the world around him.

  “Day became night as the wind screamed away. I fled my home, but the world was gone. A smoke that glowed with sick energies covered the skies and lands. Ash fell like rain. And far to the east, the skies glowed an angry red—the face of all that was evil in the world. I could not meet that gaze, so I dove back into my home. But there was no escape.”

  Slowly the rocking started again. “The air sickened. The land shook. Wicked cries echoed down to me. I covered my head, but still they found me.” A new note entered his voice with these last words; it sounded like joy.

  “Who found you?”

  “My little ones . . . the fae-nee.”

  Tyrus remembered Hurl’s story of the tiny carvings brought to life by the healer. Was it true? Or was this madness?

  The Magus continued. “I had thought them surely destroyed, but they found me curled in my cellar. I went to greet them, but they were frightened. They fled . . . all but the first of the fae-nee that I created—Raal, a northern word for king.” The last was said with thick bitterness. “He forced me to look upon myself.”

  “Look upon yourself?”

  “He made me turn and see the form buried in ash at my feet.”

  Tyrus frowned in confusion.

  “Raal wiped away the ash and revealed the stone figure upon the floor of the root cellar. He made me stare at it.” As the Magus spoke, fingers rose and gently probed chin, cheekbones, and line of nose. “I hardly recognized my own face.”

  Tyrus’ eyes widened.

  “But there was no denying what lay on the cellar’s floor: my corpse. I was dead and hadn’t even known it. My spirit must have become lost in that volcanic fog, unable to escape to the Mother above. But Raal, curse him, made me face my own death.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “Raal called the other fae-nee to him. They circled both the body and my spirit and gave back what I had granted them.” A wail rose again. “I didn’t ask for it.”

  “What did they give you?”

  “Life,” the Stone Mage cried. “The life I had breathed into them, they returned to me a hundredfold.”

  Tyrus weighed this claim. He had heard of elementals that could animate nonliving objects, some for days. But if the madman here was to be believed, he had imbued these creations of his, these fae-nee, with independent life.

  “I was forced back into my body. And as such magick could enliven wood, so it did to stone. I rose from that cellar floor, alive again, but trapped in a shell of hard ash.”

  “And your ability to change others into stone?”

  The Magus shook his head. “I don’t know. It was wrong to cast a spell while there was so much corruption in the air. The fae-nee must have been affected by the black magick in that foul ash or the loathsome energies wafting through the blanket of glowing fog. But when I rose, I quickly discovered all I touched turned to stone. Over time, I learned it was a curse I could cast out from my body.” The Magus again covered his face. “But the cost . . . it was too high.”

  “What cost?”

  The Magus lowered his hands and glared at Tyrus. “Haven’t you been listening?” Madness laced his words. “The fae-nee gave me back what I gave them—their life! I woke to find nothing but whittled pieces of wood in the cellar. My children were gone!” The Magus clenched one fist. “Except for Raal. He still lived. He left me in the woods and said that when Blackhall sank again, I would be free to rest.”

  “And what became of this Raal?”

  The Magus gestured to the barren northern hills. “He’s in the Stone Forest, curse his eyes. Rebuilding his brethren.”

  “The fae-nee?”

  “The spell did not only affect me,” the Magus said. “The warping of that magick changed Raal, too. He can now chisel petrified wood from the Stone Forest and grant it life, adding to his brethren, becoming a true king as I named him. But his children are not sweet and innocent. I’ve seen them. Though their flesh is as pale as the wood from which they came, there is something dark about them. I can’t even stand to look—”

  Tyrus cut him off. “You said their flesh is pale?”

  The Magus turned from the hills to look at him. “You still aren’t listening! It was the warp of magick. I can change the living into stone. Raal can change stone into the living.”

  Tyrus sensed the balance of forces here, a warp and weave of fearsome energies. He studied the hills stubbled with skeletal trees. The first rays of the sun glinted off the crystalline branches of the petrified forest. Deeper in the woods, mists moved through the trees, swirling like disembodied spirits.

  Did an answer lay out there? Could Raal reverse what the Magus had wrought? And if he could, would he do so?

  He turned to the Magus. “I want to meet this Raal.”

  The stone figure glanced to him as if he were the mad one. “The fae-nee don’t tolerate strangers. As I said, they’ve grown dark of heart. I haven’t seen Raal in over two centuries.”

  “Then it’s high time for a family reunion,” Tyrus said. “Let’s go pay your kin a visit.”

  “No,” the Stone Magus said. “They’ll kill you.”

  Tyrus patted the granite that made up his chest. “I’d like to see them try.” He faced the Stone Forest. “Take me to this king of the fae-nee.”

  It was good to feel the rolling planks of a deck underfoot, even if the ship flew leagues above the true sea. Kast closed his eyes and felt the wind whipping through his hair, tugging at his cloak, shoving against his chest. Among the Dre’rendi, it was said the wind had teeth. This morning Kast could feel its bite.

  He kept one hand on the bow deck’s rail as the Ravenswing swept northward. They had favorable weather: a fierce southeaster blew out from the Blasted Shoals. Kast felt the energy in the air, a mix of lightning and sea salt. The elv’in captain, Lisla, was adding her own magick to fill the sails and steady the course. The plan was to reach the fleet in three days’ time, and it would take every bit of the captain’s talent to achieve this end.

  They had left at dawn: a crew of elv’in warriors, a squad of Bloodriders, and Master Edyll of the mer’ai. They also bore one prisoner, trussed and locked in a small stateroom: Sy-wen. Kast could not leave her behind. In the war to come, Ragnar’k could be important, and she was the only one who could unlock the dragon inside him.

  But there was another reason h
e hauled Sy-wen along on this journey: hope. Somewhere locked inside the evil was the one he loved. He gripped the rail, digging in his fingernails. He would find a way to free her or die trying.

  A hatch slammed open behind him, caught by the fierce winds and thrown wide as the small zo’ol tribesman climbed to the deck. Having lived among pirates, Xin was experienced with walking the deck of a storm-swept ship. He hurried toward Kast, not bothering with the safety ropes, bent against the wind. Shaven-headed, the tribesman’s single braid of hair was a flag behind him.

  “I’ve reached Lord Tyrus!” he said breathlessly as he took a place beside Kast. The pale scar of an eye on his forehead seemed to glow with joy. “He lives!”

  “What news does he bear? How fares the fleet?”

  Xin held up a hand. “I made only a flicker of contact. His sending is muffled, as if he speaks with his mouth covered. All I could understand was something about the d’warves. But he lives!”

  “Is he with the fleet?”

  The tribesman frowned. “No, I think he is alone.”

  “Alone?”

  Xin shrugged. “I will rest and try again later.”

  Kast nodded, relieved. “I’ll need you to pass word to Joach.”

  Xin fingered the shark tooth pendant around his neck. He used the talisman to communicate with Elena’s group. “I spoke with Joach before we departed. He knows we’re en route north.”

  “And their group?”

  “They expect to reach the og’re lands in another day or two. Travel is slowed by the waning elemental energies. Even my contact with the others weakens.”

  Kast sighed. It was hard coordinating so many fronts with just messenger crows and a single shaman with the ability to farspeak. Now even his skills faltered. How he wished Xin could communicate with more than just Joach and Tyrus.

  Xin spoke, sensing his frustration. “Such is the way of the wizen,” he explained, holding up his arms. “Two hands, right and left—those are the two ways a man may greet another. That is the limit of my magick.”

  Kast patted the tribesman on the shoulder. “I know, Xin. And if wishes were coppers, we’d all be rich men.”