by James Erich
Sael began walking toward the stone steps that would take him down to the street, where his carriage was waiting. Geilin fell into step beside him and the two guards followed a few paces behind. “All the farms and mills have been abandoned now,” he told the old man. “The forest has grown up around them, and the families who owned them feared being cut off from the city. I can’t say I blame them. But without those farms in operation, the entire city is dependent upon the stores we brought into the keep just before the battle. Those can’t last more than a few months.”
“I gather there has been no word from Koreh?” Sael frowned. His irritation at Koreh’s absence was overshadowed only by his longing for the young man. They’d barely had time to realize how they felt about one another before the Taaweh had demanded Koreh go off with them. Where the ancient godlike beings had taken him, Sael had no idea. He glanced briefly at the illuminated towers of Gyishya on the western horizon, wondering for the thousandth time if Koreh was there.
Does he miss me? Sael thought. Is he looking out of one of those windows right now, wondering what I’m doing? I should be furious with him for bringing all this down upon us, but all I want to do is see him again and hold him.
But he had no time for fantasies, Sael knew. General Meik’s scout had returned from the west and told him of a new military camp there, on the far side of the spired city. The emperor had sent reinforcements for the soldiers and mages who had never returned from the battle, and the numbers appeared to be vast.
KOREH was still adjusting to life in Gyishya. The lack of staircases within the enormous stone spires was one of the first things that had disconcerted him. The lack of doors to some rooms was another. Since the Taaweh were able to travel from one shadow to another, or simply drop into the ground and reappear elsewhere, moving from room to room or even floor to floor was as simple as breathing to them. For that matter, Koreh wasn’t even certain that they needed to breathe, though they seemed to when they spoke. They had taught Koreh this skill long ago, but being in a room with no doors and only one window that opened out upon a sheer drop hundreds of feet above the forest floor was still disturbing to him.
The spires themselves seemed an oddity, considering the fact that the Taaweh drew their power from the earth, and being separated from the ground weakened them. Yet something in the strange gray-green stone of the spires connected the Taaweh to the ground. Koreh could feel it himself when he concentrated, as if the stone floor he was standing upon was alive with magical energy. Like the circles that had once dotted the landscape thousands of years ago, these spires were stone, yet somehow alive at the same time. It seemed an odd contradiction that the Taaweh would even build structures this high when they were most comfortable on the ground—or in it. From what Koreh had seen, most of Gyishya was in fact underground, in vast stone-walled warrens that extended down for hundreds of levels. But Koreh thought he understood. He might not be comfortable standing in an open window this high above the forest floor, but that didn’t make it any less thrilling and beautiful. And the Taaweh understood beauty.
From here, Koreh could look out at Harleh Keep, as he did every evening upon waking, and wonder how Sael was doing with the duties thrust upon him by his older brother’s death. At least Geilin had remained with him. That had to be some comfort. But Sael had been forced to transform from the pampered second son of the vek into a responsible leader in a matter of days. He’d risen to the challenge, but it had to be hard on him. And Koreh longed for the nights they’d spent together in the days before the battle, wrapped in each other’s arms.
“ Iinyeh Koreh?” a voice asked behind him, and he whirled to face the man who’d appeared in the room. No one could hear the Taaweh approach, because they didn’t approach—they simply appeared. But Koreh had still not gotten used to his senses failing him. He’d depended upon them too much when he lived in the wilderness.
The man was nearly naked but for a knee-length blue skirt, held in place by a black belt made, perhaps, of leather. Outside the city, the Taaweh usually wore strange dark cloaks that allowed them to better blend into the shadows, but Koreh had quickly learned there was no standard dress within the boundaries of Gyishya. He’d seen men, women, and children wearing trousers, skirts, long robes, short tunics, or even nothing at all. It didn’t seem to matter.
He himself was still wearing the plain linen tunic and breeches he’d been given in Harleh—he woke to find them freshly laundered every evening—or the shadow robe he’d received from the Taaweh. The latter was seldom necessary, but Koreh enjoyed wearing it. It made him feel as if he belonged here.
“ Tyeh shyochya, iinyeh,” Koreh greeted the man, bowing slightly. He used the word for “friend,” because he was uncertain whether he’d ever met this Taaweh before. They never used names, as far as Koreh could determine, and in fact he’d never heard one of them use the pronoun “I” when speaking, either in his language or their own. Koreh wasn’t even certain the Taaweh language had a word for it. Whenever they addressed him in his own language, they spoke in a convoluted fashion that danced around ever saying “I” or “me.”
“Tyeh shyochya,” the man replied, returning the bow. “Are you ready?” “Ready for what?” He’d been forced to adopt a nocturnal schedule since arriving at the city, and every night one of the Taaweh had appeared to teach him more of their ways. Some nights, Koreh found himself learning Taaweh magic; other nights, he learned of their philosophy; and still other nights, he was simply asked to meditate with them. He was absorbing everything they taught him, but Koreh remained frustrated by the gaps in the knowledge he was receiving. He still had little understanding of who the Taaweh were and where they’d come from.
The man held out his hand patiently, and Koreh finally gave up waiting for an answer and reached out to take it. He wasn’t surprised when they fell through the floor, though the sensation of plummeting down hundreds of feet was stomach churning. He wondered briefly if it was possible to vomit while traveling like this, but fortunately he didn’t find out. The other thing that seemed odd was that they didn’t pass through other rooms on their way down the spire. Koreh saw no flashes of light, as if they were dropping through open spaces. It was all dark.
When they finally emerged, jerking upward in a dizzying motion that caused them to literally pop out of the earth, they were at ground level in a misty clearing, surrounded by tall pine trees. Koreh’s bare feet landed upon soft, dead pine needles.
He immediately glanced upward, fearing the Eye might see them. But the mist was heavy and the sky was not visible through the gently swaying branches.
“Come,” Koreh’s companion said. He began walking without looking back to see if Koreh was following. He had to scramble to catch up.
By now, Koreh had learned it was seldom useful to ask questions. The Taaweh had never been short-tempered or impatient with him, but they spoke only when they felt it necessary… which wasn’t very often. When Koreh asked questions, his hosts would occasionally answer, but more often not. They didn’t equate silence with rudeness, as most humans would do. So Koreh had begun to grow out of the habit of speaking. He simply followed his companion through the pine forest, waiting for their destination to be revealed to him.
After a short time, Koreh heard a voice speaking. Not his companion’s, but the voice of a woman, coming from somewhere off to his left. The Taaweh stopped walking and turned to Koreh, touching his finger to his lips to command silence. The sound drew nearer, though it was difficult to see who was talking. The mist was very thick here.
“Is it much farther?” It was the voice of an elderly woman. “Me family’ll be sick with worry if I’m no’ there for supper.”
A young woman replied, soothingly, “You’ll see your family soon.”
“I don’t e’en know how I ended up here. Last I knew, I was in bed, too weak to do anythin’.”
“Don’t worry, grandmother. You’re safe and we’re almost there.” Koreh could see them now as they approach
ed out of the mist, the old woman stooped and clinging to her companion’s arm. The young woman was beautiful and elegantly attired in a dress of fine blue-green silk. Her auburn hair was held in place with a ribbon of the same hue. The old woman was dressed in filthy rags, but her companion smiled kindly at her and patted her gnarled hands as they walked by Koreh in the mist.
The old woman didn’t appear to see him standing there beside the Taaweh while she continued to fret about her son and her grandchildren, but the young woman glanced up at him briefly and smiled, meeting his startled gaze. However, when she addressed the old woman again, she said nothing of the two men watching from just a few feet away.
Koreh waited until they’d disappeared into the mist before he asked, “Is she Taaweh? The young one?”
His companion seemed amused. “The stooped woman who was wearing rags?”
“No, the younger one.” “She was the younger one,” the man replied, and Koreh had his answer. The Taaweh lived far longer than humans did, though Koreh had no idea just how long that was.
“What is this place?” he asked. “It is Tyeh Areh.” Koreh had heard of the “Great Mist.” The leader of the Taaweh, the Iinu Shaa, had shown Koreh something of their history, and there had been something he hadn’t understood at the time—one of many things—something about the Taaweh guiding humans into the Great Mist when their life left them. “Is that old woman dead, then?”
“Your people would say that.” Koreh shuddered and looked in the direction the two women had gone. He could see no trace of them now, and the forest around him was completely silent. “What’s in there?” he asked, referring to the thick, impenetrable fog that lay in that direction.
“All humans find out eventually,” the Taaweh mused, “but tonight you will go no farther, iinyeh. Another task awaits you.”
Chapter 2
DONEGH was loath to trust the old ömem, even after Nedegh did an expert job of cleaning and bandaging his arm. He’d been told there had been no contact between the Sisterhood and the ömem in Harleh since the valley had gone dark, but that was merely what the Sisterhood claimed. A lifetime of having the ömem’s voices in his head hadn’t made him trust them. If anything, it had made him wary of their deceptions. He knew, as all samöt did, that the ömem made and broke alliances as it suited them, and were beyond even the emperor’s reach if one of their betrayals angered someone.
Or nearly. The emperor had shocked everyone when he put out Marik’s eyes as punishment for her part in an assassination attempt almost a decade ago. The fact that he’d executed the assassin had meant little—all samöt knew a failed assassination could mean death. But to harm anömem was almost unheard of. It had taken considerable negotiations and the transfer of an enormous amount of gold into the coffers of the Sisterhood to finally call off the death mark on the emperor’s head. Even now, it was said the Sisterhood had only granted him a temporary reprieve and would one day send the samöt for him.
Marik, herself once a woman of great beauty, had retreated from the court, unable to bear the pity of the men who had once admired her. But rather than spend her days hiding from the world, the woman had put her Sight to use aiding cutthroats in the ruins of Old Mat’zovya. Perhaps, Donegh thought, she dreamt of revenge. But only her sisters truly knew what she might be plotting, and they remained silent on the matter.
Donegh had no love for the emperor—few did—but he had been contracted by the emperor to assassinate Vek Worlen and his son, Sael, who by now must have ascended to Dekan of Harleh. Donegh was in the eastern half of the kingdom now, which was ruled over by the vek as the emperor’s regent. The people here were loyal to the vek and his family, and the ömem held the vek in high esteem. Donegh preferred not to rely on the nebulous code of honor between the ömem and the samöt for his safety. He was nothing more than a weapon in a deadly power struggle between the two most powerful men in the kingdom, and the odds of his survival were small. But if he was going to die, then he would do so honorably… after he had succeeded in his task. He had no intention of allowing someone to slit his throat before he even reached Harleh valley.
“Don’t be a fool,” Nedegh chided him as he thanked her and made ready to venture out into the night again. “You’re safer here than in some squalid tavern.”
“I wasn’t planning on staying in Mat’zovya. I want to get across the lake and camp in the forest.”
Nedegh snorted at this idea. “You have to go through leagues of swamp before you reach the forest. And no fishing boat is going to take you out on the lake at this time of night.”
Donegh bit back a sharp retort. He knew about the swamp and found it insulting that she didn’t give him that much credit. But admittedly, passage across the lake was the bigger problem. It would be foolish and risky to haunt the docks for several hours at a time when there were few townsfolk about and his presence would raise suspicion.
“When can I book passage?” he asked. The old woman shrugged and waved a hand dismissively. “Some of the fishing boats go out before daylight. But you have several hours until then. You might as well sleep, rather than push yourself to stay awake all night.”
Donegh was exhausted, and he couldn’t deny that sleeping now would help keep him more alert for the lake crossing and travel through the treacherous swamp to the east. He finally acquiesced to Nedegh’s offer of a room and allowed the ömem to lead him upstairs to a small guest room. Nevertheless, he threw the bolt on the door. It was a flimsy contraption made of sliding pieces of worn wood that would splinter the moment anyone threw the least bit of weight against the door, but it would hopefully provide Donegh with enough warning if anyone tried it. Not that he could seriously picture Nedegh breaking the door down.
He checked the latch on the window, finding it not much more secure but at least made of brass. Then he closed his eyes and mentally prepared himself to wake before dawn before he lay down on the surprisingly comfortable mattress and finally gave in to sleep.
“WE COUNTat least ten thousand men,”
General Meik told Sael, “with more on their way, you can be certain.” “The emperor won’t leave himself unprotected in the capital,” Sael pointed out. “Just how many soldiers do you think he’s likely to spare?”
“The army has been conscripting men from Mat’zovya and other towns. They aren’t well-trained, but they’ll easily outnumber us.”
“Except that they can’t enter the valley,” Geilin commented. They were in Sael’s private drawing room in the master suite once occupied by his brother Seffni. Considering the hour and the fact that only the three of them were present, he’d chosen this room over the much larger— and much less comfortable—council chamber. They sat in overstuffed chairs before a large fireplace with a moderate fire built in it, sipping glasses of fortified wine, as much to combat the gloom of the omnipresent blue light that bathed the keep as to keep out the slight chill.
That the emperor’s men were unable to enter the valley was news to Sael. He drained what was left in his glass and asked, “What’s this?”
Meik leaned forward and picked up the bottle of wine from the table. “It appears to be true. They’re camped in the forest just at the edge of the valley, but whenever one of them steps foot within the boundaries of Harleh Valley, he collapses to the ground. Our scouts have witnessed this with their own eyes.”
“They don’t actually die, do they?” Sael asked. He recalled the thousands of soldiers lying in neat rows on the battlefield after the rise of Gyishya had brought the emperor’s siege to a halt. The Taaweh hadn’t killed them, thank the gods—merely put them into some kind of supernatural sleep.
His suspicion was confirmed by Geilin. “They fall into a deep sleep, from which nothing will wake them, as long as they remain within the boundary.”
“The first time it happened,” Meik added, “several soldiers ran to the aid of their comrades and every last one of them succumbed to the… spell, if that’s what it is. After that, the soldiers were mo
re cautious. One of their mages was summoned to lift the fallen men back to their side, but his spells had no effect. It was only when one of our scouts revealed himself and offered to haul the unconscious soldiers across the boundary that they were able to retrieve them.”
Sael raised his eyebrows and held out his glass for Meik to refill it. “And they let the scout return to the valley unharmed?”
“Of course!” The general looked vaguely insulted, as if Sael had been impugning his own honor. “There are codes of conduct on the battlefield, even for the emperor’s men.”
Sael wasn’t certain if that was as true as the general liked to think it was, but he lacked experience in the matter, so he chose not to argue. When Meik filled his glass, Sael sat back in his chair and asked, “And their men?”
“They were all fine,” Meik replied with a casual shrug. “They woke as soon as they were across the boundary.”
“Yet our men were unaffected, regardless of which side of the boundary they were on,” Geilin observed. “Just as all of us have been since the valley was shrouded in darkness.”
Another example of Taaweh magic that was nothing like the magic Sael had learned as apprentice to Master Geilin. All three of them had witnessed the power of the Taaweh, and they knew it was formidable. Nevertheless, Sael was nervous relying on something so nebulous with the emperor’s army camping in the forest just ten leagues away. He asked the general, “Just how many men do we have stationed along the boundary?”
“None, Your Lordship.”
“None? None at all?”
Meik shook his head. “You asked us to send volunteers, but there were none. Nobody wants to venture out into that forest. I was able to persuade two of my scouts. That was it.”