Raz nodded, choosing to allow the man his silence for the time being. He was sure they would all have a great many things to share, once they arrived at the Citadel.
Raz kept his retelling of the last month as short as possible, briefly explaining how Talo and Carro had rescued him from a group who had been trying to collect a bounty on his head, then how he had agreed—seeing few other purposes to give himself at the time—to accompany them back to their mysterious “Cyurgi’ Di.” He told Cullen Brern nothing of Azbar, or of the Chairman and the Koyts, keeping to “relevant” information only. He spoke only of his rescue, then of their trip northward, out of Ystréd, across the Dehn Plains, and through the Arocklen. When he got once more to events of the previous night, succinctly detailing Talo’s death and the breaking of Carro’s arm under the ursalus’ assault, the Priest once more demonstrated a strength of will and character as he set his jaw in anger and sadness, but did not interrupt. Only when Raz told him of the camp of five hundred or so mountain men they had discovered along the base of the path, in fact, did he speak up.
“Only five hundred?” he asked, suddenly tense. “You’re sure?”
“‘At least,’” Raz repeated pointedly. “Though there can’t be more than a thousand, with no horses, and seemingly few archers.”
“Yes,” Cullen nodded, looking thoughtfully down at the ground. “I admit, I found it odd that you had a mount with you. I’d never heard of tribesmen being riders. Regardless… even a thousand… That could be a manageable number…”
He continued to stare at the stone for several seconds, and Raz could see the wheels turning in the Priest’s head. He’d already guessed that Cullen Brern was a member with status in the Citadel, based on something he had said earlier about “the rest of the council,” but he was rapidly starting to believe that Cullen had a much more distinct role.
And one of military significance.
“You would be hard-pressed to get past the path,” Raz warned after a while. “It’s a choke-point, and one I don’t think you can avoid.”
The Priest grimaced. “Unfortunately, it certainly seems that way. It’s why we haven’t made any attempt to escape already. The reality is we would need the assistance of the town to manage a force of that size, if we are limited to descending the path. On an even battlefield it would be an altogether different scenario, but as is…”
“Even without killing?”
“Aye,” Brern said with a snort. “There are a myriad other ways to render a man unable to fight, Master Arro, and we know them all. Our vows hold even in war, despite all evidence to the contrary tonight…” He looked suddenly uncomfortable. “I hope you’ll forgive Reyn and Lyra for that. They’re among the greener of our company. Promising fighters when safe behind thick walls…”
“But it’s a different world when the walls fall away,” Raz said with a nod. “Don’t strain yourself over it. I hold enough grudges as is, and I don’t need more. Not to mention that’s not the closest I’ve come to death, if you can believe it.”
“Oh, I believe it.” Brern eyed Ahna, all seven feet of her standing upright against the wall to his right, foreboding even with her blades covered in the leather sack. “And I get the feeling it won’t be the last.”
“Likely not,” Raz grumbled, finally pushing Gale’s head away gently. “But as you were saying: your vows only add complexity to your predicament, Priest. With Talo gone, I don’t see many ways out of this situation that don’t result in bloodshed.”
Brern said nothing for a time, not looking away from Ahna, his face tense. He was still thinking, Raz could tell, his mind trying to fit all the information he’d just received into the game of war they were locked in, trying to place the pieces on the board as best he could.
“It certainly looks that way,” he said after a while, and left it at that.
Raz gave him a few seconds to elaborate, but the Priest looked to have nothing else to say.
“What do we do now, then?” Raz asked. “You have the story, as best as I can give it in a short period. What’s our next move?”
Finally Brern looked away from the dviassegai and turned his head toward the entrance of the alcove. The silhouettes of a number of younger Priests and Priestesses stood there expectantly, outlines cut against the black of the night by the blaze of magical flames Carro seemed to have kept alive.
Then Brern looked upward, peering through the storm and snow, following the trailing stairway as it snuck its way up, back and forth, until it disappeared into the night.
“Now,” Brern said, “we get you both up this damn mountain.”
XXVIII
“The ferocity of our rage is a gift, my son. Use it to your advantage. Play upon it wisely. Patience and a steady hand have their place in the crafting of the world, but in the end it is not patience that topples the greatest of trees, nor a steady hand which fells mountains. In the end, the strength of the Stone Gods is what will elevate our people back to the place of power they once held over all the North, and it is through our rage that you will see Them of Stone have lent us their vigor.”
—TARRUK BAOILL TO HIS SON, GÛLRAHT
“AAAAAAAAARRRGGGHH!”
Vores Göl howled in anguish as the point of Kareth Grahst’s knife slit another diagonal cut slowly across the Kregoan’s chest. He was on his knees, naked, strung between two poles that had been pounded into the ground before the great fire outside of Kareth’s tent, arms outstretched and a wrist lashed to either side. All about him, standing as silent onlookers, a hundred men of the camp bore witness to the man’s final punishment. Göl had suffered a long time now, the skin beneath his neck and collarbones a slashing mesh of bloody, pulpous lines. Red ran in a single broken sheet down his abdomen, around his genitals, and along his thighs.
If he were fortunate, the Stone Gods would weigh his strength and will to live over the disgrace of his flight from his command over the sentries along the mouth of the pass.
There were no more questions to be asked, Kareth knew. The Kregoan had answered every one a dozen times, holding to his recounting of the events even as the steel cut cruelly through his flesh, attempting to draw veracity when every word the man spoke seemed to be a lie. In the end, though, his story had been corroborated by the rest of the survivors—as well as the paired lookouts who had stumbled into camp in their underclothes—echoing the truth through the screams of their own interrogations. To a one they had babbled on about “dahgün” and “demons,” each of them swearing on Them of Stone that a beast of legend had come from the Arocklen itself to feast on the lives of a half-dozen before the rest could even think to flee. A massive creature of wings and teeth, capable of breathing fire and possessing the strength and speed of an avalanche.
Kareth still wasn’t sure what to make of the story, but he was convinced the remaining men would say nothing else, no matter how long they were questioned. They were set firm, held strong by their “truth” in a way that falsified stories would never have stood. Eventually deceit could be wrought out at the end of a blade, wicked lies drawn forth with spilled blood. On the three occasions that men had broken tonight, though, attempting to tell their interrogators whatever it was they wanted to hear, all three recountings had been completely different. One man had said the Priests had descended from their mountain fortress, while another had sworn it was a full contingent of valley town soldiers bearing the marks of Drangstek and Stullens. The third, meanwhile, had claimed it was half-a-hundred Sigûrth warriors, under direct orders of the Kayle.
The last man Kareth had killed himself, silencing his treacherous tongue with his fists, beating him to within an inch of death before cutting his throat open and leaving the body for the wolves, off among the trees.
The truth, it seemed—as puzzling as it was—was to be found in the first story. Kareth had heard it, repeated over and over again by the man now hanging limp and moaning before him between the poles. A dahgün, a dragon of the North, seemed to have materialized in
aid of the Priests, appearing in time to assist a stranger on horseback pass the sentries. It had fought with the ferocity of its kind, tearing into bodies, breaking bones, and even shearing off limbs, all evidenced in the violent remnants of the fight that had been brought to Kareth’s tent in a cart a few hours before.
A dragon had come, ripped into his men like paper, and scattered the pieces to the wind.
For a long time Kareth had pondered the conundrum of the reality, struggling to find an explanation for what the men unanimously swore they had seen. Kareth was no fool, of course. He didn’t believe for a second that what had attacked the sentries along the bottom steps of the mountain stairs had been a true dahgün. For one thing, the dahgün were said to be gargantuan creatures, capable of draining a lake in one drink and curling themselves around a mountain to sleep. For another, the dahgün had long ago been razed from the world by the Gods themselves. The stories taught that the dragons had been the first of the Stone Gods’ children, crafted in an image of strength and savagery, created as wild animals to entertain Them of Stone through eternity with endless war and battle. The tale went, though, that as time went on the dahgün grew tranquil, ending their wars in favor of peace. The dragons, forged of fire to rage forever across the face of time, became docile as they tired of fighting, tired of killing.
And so the Gods had wiped them from the earth and created new children in their own image, seeding them with the ferocity needed to please Them for as long as the world turned.
The dahgün were gone, their flame snuffed by the hammers of the Gods. Kareth was left, therefore, with few possible explanations, each even less likely than the prior. At one point he had considered sending for the Witch, intending to offer her a brief reprieve from her own torment if she could offer him clarity into what had happened. He’d thought better of it in the end, though. If the woman had any knowledge of the events, then revealing to her that someone had gotten past Kareth’s guard would only feed the infuriating fire within her that seemed unwilling to be extinguished completely. With the Kayle expected to arrive within the next several days—Elrös of the Grasses had returned not three nights prior with the news—Kareth wanted to be ready to present his cousin with the Witch upon his arrival.
When he did, though, he intended her to be beaten and broken, not resistant and willful and spurned to new defiance by the news that the mountain men had lost this small battle.
It was as he had decided not to summon the woman, though, that the realization had finally come to Kareth. It struck him while he thought of the Witch, considering the atrocities of her faith and the feeble deity that was their false-god. He was wondering, perhaps, if the creature that had killed his men was some wicked creation of their “Laor,” some golem summoned to wage war against the children for the true Gods. Then he realized, with sudden clarity, that no such creation needed to exist. Them of the corrupted faith had already been granted blasphemous gifts, meant to set man on a path of reliance and complacency, allowing him to use his powers as a crutch and to let weakness seep into his body and mind.
Magic.
Kareth had made the connection in a state of half-scorn, half-anger. The rider, he had realized, the one who had appeared with the creature out of the Woods, had been a wielder of the dark powers granted to him by his false-god. He must have been in disguise, indistinct without the customary robes of his faith. It would have made him unremarkable, unworthy of attention compared to the beast that had fallen among the men with ferocious, rabid brutality.
And it would have made it easy for him to maintain the spell that had conjured the beast in the first place.
It had been then, as he saw the truth behind the deception, that Kareth resumed Vores Göl’s punishment, seething at the commander’s inability to see beyond the simple trick.
“Fool,” Kareth spat, wiping the bloody blade on the Kregoan’s quivering shoulder as the man fought to stay awake, his head hanging while tears of pain slipped unbidden down his ritually scarred cheeks. “Fleeing in the face of a false-prophet. You allowed yourself—your MEN—to be deceived by common trickery.”
“G-Grahst,” Göl pleaded in a hard, tired whisper, “on the Gods, I s-swear it. The beast was of flesh and bone. I-I swear!”
“If he was of flesh and bone then it is only because you allowed him to be.” Kareth bent down, bringing his blade up and under the man’s chin, forcing his head up. “You struck at shadows when you should have been trying to snuff out the light. Had you done so, had you been clever enough to see through the enchantment, you would have spared yourself this. You would have spared you and your men your honor, and your lives. Them of Stone have no use for the weak, Göl. They’ve no love for the craven, for those who allow themselves to be swallowed by fear and flee the field of battle. You are a coward, my friend.” He dug the blade in, piercing the skin beneath the Kregoan’s cheek so that blood ran anew. “Shall I grant you a coward’s death?”
At that, the pain and fear reflected in Göl’s eyes transformed into an altogether different kind of terror. Tension returned to his slackened body, knees slipping on the bloody dirt beneath them as he spasmed involuntarily at Kareth’s words.
“No!” he shouted hoarsely. “No! Please! PLEASE! Allow me to redeem myself! Allow me to show the Gods I am no coward!”
Göl was struggling mightily now to hold himself up, his tired, broken body betraying him as he was unable to keep his head upright without shaking. Kareth, though, smiled cruelly at him, pleased with the man’s resolve.
“You wish for second chance?” he purred, drawing the knife slowly down Göl’s neck, across his shoulder, up his arm, and finally resting its point in the hollow of his palm, as though about to nail it to the wooden post. “Is that your desire?”
Göl’s eyes widened in fear as they looked at the knife, hovering over his hand. He understood the implication. A coward’s death was meant to force a warrior to suffer every scar, every wound they might have incurred in the fled battle. It started with the removal of a finger, then two, and continued thus inwardly along the arms and legs with careful, deliberate precision. It happened over days, sometimes weeks or months, allowing the condemned to recover from shock and lost blood as needed before continuing. Those with hearts too strong to give in were reduced to nothing but torsos and heads, and it was only if they managed this extraordinary feat of will that they were given the mercy of the ax.
It was a horrible, drawn out death.
“Please,” Göl was still begging. “Allow me to prove myself before the Gods…”
Kareth Grahst gazed into the man’s watery eyes for a few seconds more, judging the will there.
Then, satisfied with what he saw, he moved his knife from the palm of the Kregoan’s hand to the bindings around his wrist.
With quick cuts he set the man’s right arm free, then his left. He stood and moved out of the way as Göl collapsed onto the ground, unable to hold himself upright, his lacerated chest and bloody thighs sticking to the earth and thin snow.
“You are granted your chance at redemption, coward,” Kareth said imperiously, playing with the knife in his hands as he stared down at Göl’s tortured form. “Use it well, or I’ll see to it that your death takes you until the end of the freeze.”
Göl said nothing in response. Instead, like a newborn deer, he pushed himself painfully onto all fours, limbs shaking under the weight of his naked body. Dirt lifted with him, clinging to his skin and the cuts that crossed in a dozen directions across his chest. He groaned in pain as he slowly, agonizingly, turned himself around, lifting his head in search of the warmth and glow that was his goal. After a brief pause the man began to crawl, pulling himself forward inch by inch, through the silent witnesses on either side of him, towards the great fire in the center of the ring.
Vores Göl was no coward in death, holding his silence even as he burned.
XXIX
“It can take days to climb the mountain path, depending on the time of year, the
weather, and the state of the individual attempting to manage the steps. For the Priests and Priestesses of Laor, it is a small thing to invigorate ourselves and our companions with simple spells along the way, alleviating fatigue and combating the toll the climb can take on the body. It is a difficult journey, but most do not realize the final test that awaits them upon reaching the apex of the stairs. There, standing on the flattened stone of the outer courtyard, one must take hold of their emotion, gathering up whatever fear or awe or shock they experience, and compose themselves as they take in the great wonder that is the High Citadel.”
—“STUDYING THE LIFEGIVER” BY CARRO AL’DOR
THEY CLIMBED in silence under the hesitant glow of an early Sun, heads bowed to watch the ground and hoods pulled over their heads to bar the buffets of a heavy wind that had picked up in the last hour. Raz knew, as they took each step one after the other, that they had to be getting close. He could feel a tension in the air, a pleasant, tempered excitement that manifested itself in a quickened pace and the occasional dull buzz of conversation among the eleven Priests that led the way. Carro followed behind them, pausing every twenty minutes or so to rid himself and Raz of cramping legs and the lightheadedness that came with the altitude. He had changed back into his Priest’s robes shortly before they’d departed the alcove that morning, the white cloth making him at times hard to distinguish from the backs of the other faithful. Raz took up the rear, leading Gale carefully and ignoring the annoyed looks occasionally shot his way by a few at the front of the line, displeased with the plodding pace.
He was in too good a mood to care about the grumblings of men and women who had almost killed him not half-a-day prior.
He felt somewhat guilty for his high spirits when his eyes fell on the back of Carro’s bowed head, but he couldn’t help it. The painted picture his mind had crafted of famed Cyurgi’ Di seemed to shimmer before him whenever he looked around, playing like some mirage out of the snow. He started thinking about all the wonders he had wheedled out of Carro, and Talo before him. He held in his mind’s eye a great castle of ivory and gold towers, rising into the heavens as though in salutation to the gods. A hundred needles piercing the sky, encasing a world of warmth and light and magic, where night never fell and the cold never penetrated. Among the halls he imaged a thousand white-clad men and women, moving in devout perfection, going about the holy businesses they were charged with.
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