The Sea of Time - eARC

by P. C. Hodgell

  They kept going, leaving the glow below behind. The lichen regained enough of its fluorescence to light their way dimly, and there was no sign of feral trocks. How far did each step take them? A mile? Ten? A hundred? Perhaps an hour passed until at last they came to the spiral stair that led up toward the top of the Escarpment.

  Light filtered down the steps. Was the lid off above? No. Here was a new hole in the wall at the level of the Undercliff. Jame peered out of it and gave a low whistle of surprise. An Overcliff tower had fallen through the roof into the Undercliff’s largest cave causing landslides, fallen stalactites, and damage to the walls due to the concussion.

  Obviously, things in Kothifir had gotten a lot worse.

  From somewhere came the shrill cries of children.

  Jame and Shade clambered down a rubble slide to the cave’s floor. The fallen tower’s debris reached nearly from wall to wall, on top of which perched its roofed upper story incongruously intact, like a hat. They edged around it.

  On the far side, water spilled across the floor, running from the back of the cavern, where some branch of the Amar had been breached, to the front, where it spilled out of the cave’s mouth. It seemed barely deep enough to wet boot leather, but Jame stopped Shade before she could step into it.

  “Look.”

  One couldn’t make out much due to the poor light, but in the middle of the flood a long, serrated line broke the surface, moving in a sinuous ripple that cut the flowing water. Something seemed to lurk beneath it, impossibly big for so shallow a depth.

  “I’ve seen such a thing before,” said Jame. “A leviathan in a puddle. Then, it was a dead god.”

  “That’s not all that’s dead.”

  Shade gestured downstream. Black-robed bodies sprawled in the shallow water, or at least parts of them did. Their blood darkened the flood.

  “I think this is an Old Pantheon water god,” Jame said, “probably the one that walks on baby feet. Listen.”

  They heard the children’s voices again, coming from the other side of the water, echoing flatly as if within some close-set place.

  “We’ve got to cross,” said Jame. “No, not you, Jorin. Stay. Shade, you’d better go first. This is likely to rile it.”

  Shade gave her a sharp, sidelong look, then took a deep breath and backed up. The stream was about twenty feet wide, split down the middle by that shifting spine. She took a running start and jumped. Her foot came down on the monster’s back between notches. She launched herself off of it and made the far shore.

  WHOMP.

  The creature’s head jerked up in a spray of water, toothy jaws agape, baby hands flailing. Jame leaped to its back. Slimy scales shifted under her feet, nearly throwing her off, but she managed to lurch to the far side where Shade caught her.

  THOMP.

  It settled back into the water grumbling, only its nostrils above the surface, its tail a-twitch.

  The voices echoed out of the entrance to a maze of side caves. More luck than skill led them down the right branch into a cavern shaped like an amphitheater. Fang’s urchins scuttled around its upper galleries, pelting a black-robed figure below with rocks. He in turn swung a long sword wildly, trying to bat the missiles away. Fang herself stood guard at the narrow mouth of a side cave. The man rushed at her. She ducked back as he swung his sword. It hit the stone lintel and almost jumped out of his hands with the shock. Before he could recover, Fang stepped in and knifed him under the ribs. He fell. The children cheered. Fang wiped her blade on his robe, then saw the newcomers.

  “About time you showed up,” she said to Jame. “This is the third we’ve killed in the Undercliff so far, not counting the ones that the Guardian of the Ford has claimed.”

  Jame prodded the fallen man, who was obviously a Karnid.

  “What are they after?”

  “Come and see.”

  She stepped back into the side cave. It was fairly comfortable as such things go, lit by glowing chunks of diamantine, its floor covered with rugs and furs. The former Lord Merchandy lay on a pallet by the far wall, unconscious, breathing with a harsh rattle. Dani, formerly Lady Professionate, sat beside him, holding his hand. She looked up, her eyes wide with fear.

  “Are we safe?”

  “For the moment,” said Fang, sheathing her knife. “It would be better if we shifted you farther back into the caves, though.”

  “He can’t be moved. I think he’s dying. Oh, why did Mother Vedia have to go Overcliff?”

  Then she saw Jame. “At last!”

  Jame wondered why everyone was so glad to see her. What did they expect her to do? For that matter, what was going on?

  “I told you,” said Shade, reading her expression. “The city is infested with Karnids and has been for months. Come the rising, which I guess is tonight, their mission is to kill every former guild lord and grandmaster who doesn’t support Prince Ton.”

  “Why would they do that for a Kothifiran?”

  “Ton is a Karnid sympathizer, or so he tells them. If the Karnids can make him king, their prophet hopes to gain indirect control of the Southern Host.”

  Jame stared at her. “Now you tell me?”

  Shade shrugged. “When has there been time?”

  “But surely this means that King Krothen is in danger too, more so than anyone else.”

  “We hear,” said Fang, “that Prince Ton is holding him prisoner at the top of his Rose Tower. All of his Kencyr guards are outside the city walls on the cliff-top plain. Gemma has finally sent an army against us.”

  Jame remembered how raiders from that rival city had plagued Kothifir even before the Change had weakened it. Just the same…

  “Why now?” she asked, helplessly.

  Fang shrugged. “The rumor in the city is that Ton has promised Gemma the treasure towers if it attacks at the same time as his palace coup. More likely, though, that’s a lie, and it’s his mother Princess Amantine who’s behind all this maneuvering.”

  Jame stood for a moment, fitting all of this together in her mind, deciding what to do next.

  “I have business Overcliff,” she said. “Will you be all right here?”

  Fang grinned, her filed teeth flashing. “We’ll manage.”

  Without the need for immediate action, Shade had sagged against a wall, hands over her face. Between her fingers, her features twitched and changed. “I’m no good to you like this,” she said in a distorted voice. “Go on without me.”

  “Walk wary,” Fang called after Jame. “All the Old Gods except for the Guardian went up into the city last night to protect it from the Karnids. You may meet some of them coming back.”

  II

  Jame found Jorin on the near side of the stream, anxiously waiting for her with pricked ears and wide, moon-opal eyes. He had apparently crossed by jumping from Karnid body to dismembered body, as she probably should have done herself rather than risk the Guardian’s maw. They returned by this route to the west bank and climbed up the regular stair that debouched on a back street, the same shaft down which Hangnail had pushed Jame so long ago. Luckily its lid was still off, maybe permanently so in order to accommodate those who depended on this route to the Undercliff.

  By the time they reached the Overcliff, the eastern sky was faintly aglow with the harbinger of dawn and the moon had set.

  To the right, Jame could see the gaping hole through which the tower had fallen, surrounded by leaning buildings. Some swayed, creaking, and dropped stones into the pit. Others settled, crunching, on their broken foundations. The sooner Kothifir got back its god-king, the better.

  They made their way toward the former site of the Kencyr temple. The towers Jame passed were dark and quiet, their windows shuttered. Threatened both by the army outside its gates and by the enemy within, the citizens were hiding. From somewhere in the distance, though, came shouts and an occasional crash. The Karnids wouldn’t be so noisy, nor probably the Old Pantheon gods. Who else was abroad tonight?

  Here was the place
where she had last met Dorin, son of Denek, son of Dinnit Dun-eyed, next to the broken foundation of the tower that had contained the Kencyr temple. Rubble still loomed dark in the predawn light. However long she had been gone, no one had yet done anything about it.

  Jorin pressed against her leg, growling. Three dark figures had emerged from the shadows and were silently approaching. Karnids, for certain. Jame might have run, but she had unfinished business here. She slid into fighting stance. Then someone stepped between her and the advancing men.

  “Don’t look,” said the Earth Wife’s red-haired Favorite to Jame over his shoulder. Then he spread wide his coat.

  A blinding flood of light emerged, fiercer than it had been for his predecessor when he had appeared as the sun at the summer solstice. It painted the inside of Jame’s eyelids crimson as she turned her face away and shielded it. She heard the Karnids cry out and smelled something burning. They stumbled away, their faces seared, their eyes, burst, streaming down into their beards.

  The Favorite closed his coat and buckled it, although light still shone through the seams. He turned back to Jame. “What are you doing here?”

  “I have something to return.”

  She drew the miniature temple out of her pocket, where its sharp edges had been bruising her hip all night, and carefully placed it on the road near the entrance to the step-forward tunnel. Tiny, outraged voices piped up inside it. It pulsed and grew, making Jame and the Favorite hastily retreat, but stopped when it was only three feet high. One side opened like a door and a crumpled figure forced its way out. The high priest straightened up and shook out his robes.

  “Well?” he demanded, blind eyes fiercely a-glare. “Are you quite done shaking us around like dice in a box? Answer me, whoever you are!”

  “Will the temple keep growing?”

  “In its own good time. I know your voice. You’re that wretched girl who calls herself the Talisman. Where is my grandson Dorin?”

  How best to answer that?

  “I’m afraid,” said Jame carefully, “that he died trying to save you from the Karnids.”

  “What, here? Oh, never mind. Somehow, you’re to blame. Ishtier warned us that you were trouble, and he was right.”

  He reached out to grab her, but she dodged away. His clawlike hands flexed, trying to pull in the power with which to strike her, but the temple was still too small.

  “Later,” he panted. “Now, go away!”

  “What an unpleasant old man,” remarked the Favorite as they left, not quite at a run.

  “You understood him?” The priest had been speaking in Kens.

  “No, but ill will translates itself.”

  “What’s going on in the city?”

  “We are hunting, as you see.”

  They paused to let a swarm of frogs hop past in formation: “GEEP, geep, geep…”

  “But there are fewer Karnids than we expected. Meanwhile, Master Needham and his followers are storming the treasure towers, but I think they will hold. Then there are Prince Ton’s bully boys, defending the Rose Tower against the Armorers’ Guild.”

  “King Krothen is still there?”

  “At the top, with Prince Ton and Princess Amantine. Ton wants his uncle to abdicate. He’s afraid, if he commits regicide, that the white won’t come to him. They’ve been at Krothen all night. The king must be tougher than he looks.”

  He paused and gave her a sidelong glance. “I’m right, aren’t I? You were once a Favorite.”

  “How d’you know that?”

  “Odd thoughts come to me, since I won the red. So tell me: how did you manage all of those women? They line up outside my door every night. I hardly get any sleep at all.”

  III

  Afterward, trotting through the streets with Jorin at her side, Jame decided that the Favorite hadn’t really believed her tale of the Four as worshipped by the Merikit. He seemed to think she had some as yet undisclosed secret that would make his own life more bearable. In that, she was sorry to disappoint him. It occurred to her that she had been lucky in her own experiences. That in turn made her wonder, yet again, how her growing family in the hills was doing.

  She also thought about what the Favorite had said regarding the Karnids in Kothifir, that there were fewer of them than he had expected. When she had left Urakarn—Trinity, had that only been a few hours ago?—it had seemed to be deserted. If its residents hadn’t used the step-forward tunnel to flood Kothifir, where were they?

  To the northeast, firelight bloomed out of the streets accompanied by distant shouts. Master Needham was trying to breach the treasure towers with flame. Jame had seen them. They had no lower windows, iron doors, and granite walls. All in all, they hardly required guards. Needham’s chances of sacking the treasuries without inside help didn’t look good.

  She stopped on the edge of the central plaza. There was the Rose Tower, twisting up into the sky like an inverted tornado. Its outer spiral stair swarmed. A handful of Prince Ton’s militia held the top of the steps. Jame recognized the bully whose head she had set on fire before Paper Crown’s tower. Half the Armorers’ Guild assaulted from below, led by Gaudaric and Ruso. The militia had made a barrier of furniture at the level of Krothen’s apartment that functioned like a cork. Despite superior arms, armor, and numbers, Krothen’s would-be rescuers were making little progress.

  Black-clad figures slipped out of the mouths of surrounding streets, intent on taking the attackers from behind. As Jame drew breath to shout a warning, however, a gray form materialized in front of the foremost Karnid. Smoke issued from its hooded cloak. It spread wide its arms and enveloped the oncoming man. The cloak momentarily bulged with its thrashing prey and then dissolved into a sooty cloud. A second later it rose again behind another Karnid who, in swerving to avoid the greasy spot on the paving where his mate had disappeared, ran full into its arms.

  Poof, poof, poof…

  Then it reared up before Jame.

  There was no face within the hood, only churning ash, and it stank of charred flesh.

  “Burnt Man…” she gasped.

  But guilt and grief choked her. Never mind that she seldom killed; how many had died because of her? Faces swirled in the ashen flakes: Dally, Theocandi, Vant, Bane…

  “Father!”

  Child of Darkness, where is my sword? Where are my…

  He had meant to say “my fingers,” for they had broken off when she had pried Kin-Slayer out of them, and she had carried away one of them with his signet ring still on it—all for Tori, who hadn’t known what to do with either.

  Accept my judgment. That was the voice of the blind Arrin-ken who called himself the Dark Judge, whose precinct was the Riverland. You know your guilt.

  …yes…

  “No.”

  A hand grabbed her by the collar and jerked her back. Jame landed on her butt, shocked to feel real pain.

  Brier Iron-thorn stood between her and the hooded figure who might or might not be the Burnt Man. It coughed in her face. The image swirled on its breath of a stern-faced woman who looked much like Brier herself.

  …my daughter…

  “No,” said Brier. “I was a child when you died, not to blame for your death, nor would you want me to feel that I was. Go away.”

  The gray form writhed within its cloak as if trying to strike out, but the Kendar faced it down, glowering. With a groan, it melted into the pavement.

  Brier turned to Jame.

  “I had a feeling that you were back,” she said gruffly. “D’you know that you’ve been gone twenty days?”

  Jame got gingerly to her feet. “I thought as much, if not worse. For me, it was yesterday.”

  “Huh.”

  “Anyway, why aren’t you with the Host outside the walls?”

  “No cadet is.” The Kendar glanced to the west. The growing glow of the eastern dawn tinged her red hair with smoldering accents. “Only so many could take the lifts Overcliff in time for the general engagement, which happened last
night. As far as I can make out, the Gemmans arrived at dusk yesterday and settled into camp for a dawn offensive. They didn’t reckon with our ability to see in the dark, which it wasn’t anyway with a nearly full moon. The rest of us stayed in camp to defend it, don’t ask me against what. The last I heard, the Host was still sweeping the last of the Gemmans back.”

  So much, then, for one foreign threat.

  Jame looked across the plaza to the struggling figures on the stair, who had so conveniently been left to strive on their own, without Kencyr intervention.

  “Krothen is in trouble,” she said. “We need to help him.”

  “How?”

  Jame paused to think. “Everyone is focused on the outer stair, but there must be a way up through the interior.”

  They circled the tower. At its foot stood a gleaming mechanical dog the size of a small pony. Ruso had been busy. Two apprentices were struggling to wind up the metallic beast with a thin iron rod thrust through the bow of a key set between its shoulder blades. With each jerk, its head rose a notch and flanges twitched lips back from iron teeth.

  Beyond that, they found a side portal that opened into the servant quarters. These were deserted, everyone either apparently having run away or been driven out. There was indeed an internal stair, spiraling up the center of the tower’s shaft. They climbed, all the time hearing the muffled shouts of battle outside the walls. Past guard rooms, kitchens, offices, the chambers of royal ladies.…

  Here was Krothen’s apartment, once so elegant, now ransacked to provide material for the barrier raised on the landing outside its door where Ton’s militia swarmed. The inner stair went no further.

  Someone was sobbing. Jame circled the ruins of a massive bed and found Lady Cella crouched on the floor in the crimson pool of her skirts, cradling the body of her handsome boy toy. His head lolled over her arm, a swathe of golden hair hanging over his eyes. Someone had broken his neck.

  “He tried to defend my cousin Krothen,” she wailed. Tears had soaked her veil so that it clung unflatteringly to her nearly chinless, middle-aged face. “Oh, I should have taken him away before Prince Ton’s bullies burst in! Ton never understood about us and, when he was dead, Princess Amantine only laughed. Gods damn her!”