The Sea of Time - eARC

by P. C. Hodgell

  Brier and Damson walked behind her. The former had insisted on coming, she said, to make sure that her lord’s heir came to no harm. The latter had simply followed, discovered too late to turn her back. Jame wished that both of them had stayed behind. This was a mission where the Talisman’s skills might serve her best. Brier didn’t know about that aspect of her life and was unlikely to approve of it. Damson, on the other hand, might see entirely too much, if she was still set on imitating Jame.

  Most of the city was dark, its daytime residents gone to bed, but there were occasional clusters of lights. Jame headed toward the brightest of these constellations.

  The night market swarmed with life, as active as any of its peers in Tai-tastigon, if cleaner. Stallkeepers hawked wears from finger food to erotic spices, from tin trinkets to heavy goldware. Bolts of silk dominated many a stall. Jame wondered what defect the dark was supposed to cover, unless Langadine was so rich that even these night offerings were of prime quality as their merchants proclaimed.

  “Talisman!”

  Jame started as big hands grabbed and spun her around. A young man with curly chestnut hair stared down at her with disbelief and dawning delight.

  “It is you, isn’t it?” He shook her until her teeth rattled. “I always knew that you would come!”

  “Byrne?” She waved back Brier who had stepped forward and loomed over them both as if set to protect her. “It’s really you?”

  He was at least her age now and much taller, but he still had that small boy’s mischievous grin.

  “I’ll take you to my father. After all these years, he won’t believe this!”

  Ean’s quarters were a block from the market in a shabby, second-story apartment, half workshop, half sparse but well-kept living space. He started up in alarm from his bed as they entered. “Has something happened in the market? Who is tending the stall? Byrne! Night rent may cost less than day, but it’s all we can afford.” Then he noticed his visitors and his agitation grew. “Who are these people?”

  Jame observed that his hair was now streaked with white, his face creased with wrinkles, and he was missing several teeth. The intervening years had not been kind to him.

  “Ean,” she said, “we came as quickly as we could, starting out the day after you left the oasis. Nonetheless, I’m sorry we arrived so late.”

  Like his son, Ean grabbed her; unlike Byrne, he burst into tears.

  “I’d given up hope. Evensong, Gaudaric, are they well?”

  “As much so as when you left, if a few days older. Why didn’t you return? What kept you here all this time?”

  He backed away, wiping his face, then turned as if without thinking to scrounge for the makings of tea. “I tried,” he said, over his shoulder. “The Kothifiran seeker, Lady Kalan, survived the storm, but in all these years the king hasn’t let me see her.”

  “It sounds,” said Jame, “as if I should pay her a visit.”

  Ean turned around, an empty teapot forgotten in his hand. “You can try, but she lives in the new palace tower, well guarded.”

  “I can show you the way,” Byrne said eagerly.

  “No!” Ean dropped the pot, which shattered unnoticed at his feet. “It’s too dangerous! Remember how they beat me, the last time I tried?”

  “How close can you safely get us?” Jame asked Byrne.

  The boy pouted. “To the palace gate, anyway. Anyone could do that.”

  “Ean?”

  “That far and no farther.”

  “Accepted. Then you both need to get to the harbor and take ship there. When we left, Gorbel was negotiating for a boat. The whole city may be destroyed before dawn.”

  “You would do that?” Ean looked aghast. “These are good people, for the most part. They don’t deserve such a fate!”

  “Why does everyone always blame me? Now go, and you, Byrne, lead on.”

  The boy escorted them up the hill past more terraced dwellings toward the palace. True enough, guards paced back and forth before its western gate, more than Jame had expected.

  “That’s the new tower just within the walls, the tallest in the city,” Byrne said, whispering conspiratorially although no enemy was close enough to hear. “King Lainoscopes is afraid that the desert tribesmen will storm it to regain their precious black rock.”

  “Led by their prophet?”

  “Oh, he died a long time ago. They’ve waited for his return ever since.”

  Jame considered the situation. There were too many guards to fight without raising the alarm. Somehow, the Talisman would have found a way in. Was the Knorth Lordan so much less talented?

  The nearest guard stopped, yawned hugely with cracking jaws, and leaned on his spear. The next moment, he had toppled over, sound asleep. Others started toward him, stumbled, and also fell until all were down, snoring.

  Damson shrugged. “Would you rather that I gave them terminal diarrhea?”

  Brier looked down at her, frowning. “If you ever try that with me, brat, I’ll kill you.”

  They entered the gate. The new tower rose out of a small courtyard, marble-faced, three stories high. There seemed to be no way into the first level, but an external stair led them up to the second.

  Jame cautiously opened the door into what appeared to be a wide, square, low-ceilinged hall. Thick columns around the edges supported the floor above. Once away from the circling walk of white marble, nothing else broke that sable expanse except for rectangles of moonlight streaming in through open windows.

  Could this be the top of the black rock? If so, it was embedded in the tower as well as buried under it, neither of which seemed particularly safe. Against her better judgment, Jame stepped out onto it. She had never encountered an inactive temple before. It was like setting foot on the back of an inert monster disguised as a black dance floor.

  “Even now,” Timmon had said, “Jamethiel Dream-weaver may be dancing out the souls of the Kencyr Host.”

  She remembered that dark pavement shot with veins of luminous green in the great hall of the Master’s House. A delicate, bare foot touched it, and the veins began to throb. Glide, dip, turn, star-spangled gown a-swirl and power swirled with it. She danced to her own hummed tune, smiling, and the watchers swayed forward entranced, seduced. Such beauty, such power, such innocence servant to such evil…

  Strong arms grabbed Jame and flung her off the black rock into the wall. Marble shuddered against her back as the tower swayed, grinding against the temple’s sullen, immobile flanks.

  “The Fall is happening, even now,” she said, blinked, and focused on Brier’s face above her. “Sorry.”

  The Kendar let her go. “Sometimes,” she said, “you frighten me.”

  “Do as I say,” Jame snapped at Damson, who was watching her with raised eyebrows. “Not as I do.”

  “No chance of that, Ten,” said the cadet. “You teach me my limits.”

  Some of the columns had cracked and fallen. Most, however, still stood, supporting the upper floor.

  But the rock didn’t move, thought Jame.

  It was like a square peg rammed into this world’s living flesh. It also felt solid, unlike other temples she had encountered. How would the priests control it when they arrived if they couldn’t enter it? Were they even meant to? Nascent power was already stirring in it, and Langadine writhed. Were all temples like this, capable of shaking their hosts to pieces? Did the Builders, those small, gray, innocent folk, know what destruction their work could produce? Rather, she blamed the Kencyrath’s Three-Faced God, who used the materials at hand so ruthlessly in its seemingly endless battle against Perimal Darkling.

  The three Kencyr retreated to the outside stair and mounted it gingerly. Everything tilted, as if only the black rock below prevented the entire structure from falling over. There was no outer guardrail. One felt as if at any minute one might tip off into space.

  Guards sprawled at the third-story entrance, asleep. One of them might have been dead. Damson shrugged. Accidents happe
n.

  Jame knocked on the door. It opened a crack, then slammed shut, but the lock failed to catch. They entered.

  “Hello?”

  No one answered.

  Within, the floor was strewn with damask pillows and shards of porcelain vases jolted off high shelves. Murals covered the freshly cracked lower walls, depicting meadowlands and forests in jewel colors. Silken veils separated interior spaces. Some were ripped. All wavering in an errant breeze. Everything spoke of a comfortable, sheltered life, rudely disrupted. A woman crouched in the far corner, clutching a bright-eyed, five-year-old child.

  “Crash!” he said, with evident glee, reminding Jame of the younger Byrne. “Do it again!”

  “Lady Kalan?” Jame advanced slowly so as not to frighten the woman more. Glass crunched under her boots. The marbles of some board game rolled.

  The seeker looked much as she remembered if older, her blond hair tarnished to silver gray, and thinner, with flesh beginning to sag on the bone. She blinked at Jame in surprised recognition.

  “Lordan? What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you. Why didn’t you come back?”

  “Back?” Kalan rose, still shaken. For her, after all, it had happened more than a decade ago. She spread her hands.

  “Behold my cage, the latest of many. Before, I lived in the palace, first with Laurintine to nurse after that terrible storm. Then, when she died, the old king demanded that I stay, marry one of his cousins, and start a new line of Langadine seekers.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You needn’t be. I loved my husband, but I bore him only sons, five in all. This is Lanek, the youngest, a late blessing.”

  “Hello!” The boy waved.

  “Hello,” Jame replied gravely.

  She remembered how desperately Kalan had wanted a family. After losing her first in Kothifir, here, it seemed, she had found another. “Where is your husband?”

  “Dead these eight months, killed on the same fatal hunt that claimed the old king’s life. Now Lainoscopes has built me this new prison. He wants me to remarry and try again for a daughter, but I am too old. Besides, two husbands are enough.”

  “You already have an infant girl, left behind in Kothifir.”

  Kalan wrung her hands. “I have thought about her every day, these past fifteen years. She was so ill when I left, and my first husband so recently dead. I always hoped that I would go back to her in the end, please the gods, to find her alive, still a baby, still waiting for me.”

  “You can do that now, and rescue your Kencyr escort on the way.”

  The seeker looked bewildered. “What, they didn’t return to Kothifir? I thought they would, after they had waited long enough. Surely their scouts could have led them there from the oasis.”

  “From the oasis in the future, yes, but something did go wrong, as you and Laurintine foresaw. After the caravan left, the wind swept the rest of us back into the past too, although we arrived long after you did.”

  “This is making my head ache,” Damson said to Brier. “Besides, aren’t we in a hurry?”

  “Quiet.”

  “Mother?” called a voice from outside. “What’s happened to your guards? Mother!”

  A well-dressed boy rushed into the apartment. He had Kalan’s blond hair and a rangy build that probably reflected that of his late father. Jame guessed that he was in his early teens.

  “My second oldest, Lathen,” said Kalan, confirming her suspicion.

  “Who are these people?” the boy demanded. “Does Cousin Lainoscopes know that you have visitors?”

  Kalan drew herself up with an effort. She looked terrified. “Dear, this is an old friend. She’s come to take me home.”

  The boy paled. “What do you mean? This is your home!”

  “You know that I came here from over the sea, from a future when Langadine no longer exists. A daughter waits for me there. Don’t you remember? I used to sing to you about her, your little half-sister. She’s still only a baby and she needs me. Now I am going back to her.”

  The boy shook his head, distraught. “No, no, no. Those were only foolish stories, and you’re deluding yourself now. I told my brothers that the king was pushing you too hard, but no one listens to me, not the way they did to Father. You can’t leave! What about us?”

  “Lanek will go with me. You and the rest are old enough to look after yourselves, unlike your sister. Please, dear…”

  “The king won’t allow it. You’ll see.” His voice broke. “Let go of me!”

  Brier had taken his arm. He twisted futilely in her iron grip, simultaneously terrified and outraged that she could overpower him so easily.

  “You can come with us,” said Jame.

  “Where? Into some fantasy of future days? This is my time. I belong here.”

  “Yes. I suppose you do.”

  At a nod from her, Brier released the boy and he darted out the door, bound, no doubt, to inform the king of their imminent escape.

  “I don’t understand,” said Damson in Kens as they descended the outside stair, Jame supporting the seeker, Brier carrying a delighted Lanek. “If he finds any guards still awake—and he probably will: I couldn’t put them all to sleep—they’ll be after us. So why let him go?”

  Jame sighed. “He was right: this is his time, even if it kills him. Brier could have knocked him unconscious, I suppose. That would have been more sensible. But it just didn’t seem fair. He’s terrified of losing his mother. Why take away his self-respect on top of everything else?”

  “Why? To get us safely out of here. Ten, sometimes you think too much.”

  They had reached the courtyard. A cluster of men advanced on them—guards, Jame thought; Damson was right—but then she saw that they were all clad in yellow and that they escorted an old man who held back, talking fast:

  “…you see, it wasn’t as if I actually flew. Think more metaphysically. You know that my intellect far exceeds your own…”

  “Yes, Master, of course, Master,” they soothed him.

  The Tishooo spotted Jame. “You were there! You said that I fell!”

  “So I did. So you will. But it won’t hurt you.”

  He looked up at the tower, his head tipping further and further back. For only three stories, it was remarkably high, “the tallest in the city,” Byrne had proudly claimed.

  “Don’t tell me what will or won’t hurt!”

  “Just keep talking!” she called after him as he was hustled past. “Stall!”

  They went as quickly as they could down through a city shaken awake by the latest tremor. Some dwellings had collapsed while others were on fire. Many had left their inhabitants huddled outside in the street in their nightgowns while their neighbors tried to comfort them, meanwhile keeping a wary eye on their own shaken houses. The night market was a kicked ant’s nest full of merchants scrambling to save their wares. Jame hoped that Ean had taken her seriously concerning the need for haste.

  At the waterfront she found not only Ean and Byrne but her own command, moas and all, piled into a sturdy fishing boat.

  “Get aboard!” Gorbel shouted from the prow.

  There was no wind to speak of, so the oars were out and manned by the cadets. The former owner stood on the marble wharf, his pockets bulging with golden coins, some of which he fingered, as if unable to believe either his luck or the foolish extravagance of some people.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to hire a crew?” he called to the newcomers as they rushed past him. “Then at least remember to cast off!”

  Gorbel threw off the front hawser, Brier the stern. The boat rocked away from its mooring and began to drift sideways. The moas swayed, squawking.

  “Pull, damn you!” roared the Caineron Lordan.

  Some oars crashed in midair like inept duelists while others splashed into the water. The cadets hadn’t had any practice rowing since their flight from Restormir in Caldane’s barge more than a year ago. The Silver didn’t promote such sport.r />
  “All right, all right, calm down and start over. Up, down…pull!”

  The boat backed away from the wharf, stern first. How did one turn the thing around? No matter, as long as they were making progress.

  Jame stood on the prow, watching Langadine recede ever so slowly. From here, she could see several broken terraces with shattered houses spilling down through the gaps, also flames reflected on whitewashed walls. People shouted. Dog barked. Perhaps nothing else would happen, tonight at least. Oh, to get away while that doomed, many-tiered city still stood…

  Whoomp!

  The palace folded in on itself in a billow of dust, then the hill on which it stood. Not so the black temple. As the built-up ground fell away, more and more of it was revealed, still square and immobile but looming higher and higher. At first it wore the tilted remains of the tower like a hat, until Kalan’s former quarters fell apart and away, with the hint of a figure in gold flung from its ramparts even as it crumpled.

  “Fly,” Jame whispered. “Fly!” But she knew that even now the Old Man had begun his endless fall.

  The collapse spread, terrace by terrace, flattening the city as if a great weight had been laid on it. More dust rose, obscuring details, muffling screams cut short.

  “What’s happening?” asked Timmon, wide-eyed, standing beside her.

  “The temple has come to life and our people are about to arrive on Rathillien,” said Jame. The weight of history bore down on her and the ancient words rose in her throat as harsh as vomit:

  “‘Two-thirds of the People fell that night, Highborn and Kendar. “Rise up, Highlord of the Kencyrath,” said the Arrin-ken to Glendar. “Your brother has forfeited all. Flee, man, flee, and we will follow.” And so he fled, Cloak, Knife and Book abandoning, into the new world. Barriers he raised, and his people consecrated them. “A watch we will keep,” they said, “and our honor someday avenge. Alas for the greed of a man and the deceit of a woman, that we should come to this!”

  “Don’t you see? It’s all happening now. We are fallen, and in flight.”

  Oh Dream-weaver, oh Mother. Do you see, will you ever see, what you have done?

  “Fallen or not, we aren’t fleeing fast enough,” said Gorbel, coming up to stand between them. “Are we going to be squashed flat, too?”