Rythe Awakes (The Rythe Trilogy)

by Craig Saunders

She tied Wey to a branch jutting out at a painful angle from the gnarled old tree. She guessed from its girth it might have been here since before the Mission. The tree groaned in the night (she wondered if Roth really could steal sound itself, now it was not here and she became aware of the night).

  She held her sleeve against her face and went in.

  She vaulted the stairs two at a time when she heard the clatter of Gurt’s sword falling to the wooden floor somewhere in the dark. She ran, already breathing hard, terror clamping her lungs and fear burning in her muscles. A knife slid from its sheath as she ran along the corridor, past the apartments. Past the kitchens, seeing the hallway up ahead. She saw the two shapes outlined ahead of her in a doorway. The light squeezed past Roth’s shoulders.

  She saw the glint of the night sky on Gurt’s polished steel armour. She saw the way the night shifted to accept Roth, its shape perfection in the dark.

  Through the gaps she could make out the deformed outlines. Abused corpses hung at odd angles from the rafters. The drips slowed and thickened. Then she was upon them.

  She slid, trying to stop. Gurt’s sword lay on the floorboards before her, forgotten. Her feet hit the hilt.

  She flailed her arms as she tried to stop, careening between the two warriors. Neither noticed her. Time slowed…stopping…until it was something outside of her. She could not stop.

  She slipped and fell. Her hands in touched body parts as she tried to right herself. Whitened faces above were mocking her. Underneath, clammy surfaces where blood was drying held her.

  She managed to turn onto her hands and knees. It would have gone easier for her had she remained looking at the corpses.

  On the floor, by her hands, smooth pale eels wriggled and slithered, writhing in muck. Some were brown, some a wet grey. Her bare ankles felt warm; a deeper pool of blood.

  Slow now…she raised a hand to her face…no…no…no…

  She was sick. Her hair trailed blood.

  It was but a moment.

  Roth reached out to her, lifting her out with one giant arm. It took her in its arms and rocked her as she cried like a baby.

  The Sisters of Illi’uit’s eviscerated bodies swung from the rafters as the night closed in.

  *

  Chapter Fourteen

  The legends are sometimes different. Sometimes legends shape the future, too.

  The sky darkened. Carious squinted through the two moons at Rythe. Hren and Gern, the eternal twins, ran across the greying sky to protect it. Dow hid behind the earth to watch his brother die.

  The seas boiled underneath a shaft of light the size of a continent. Seabirds screeched a warning to all the sea, crying out to the fish and the leviathan beasts where they ranted in the trenches, beating the very core of the world with their massive appendages. The sea turned brown on the surface.

  The air grew dark as evaporating seas grew into clouds. Statues of black ice loomed over the waiting lands below.

  The land groaned. The beasts on the land hid in burrows and howled and spat and gnashed. They bit themselves in anticipation.

  In every legend, Rythe awakes.

  *

  Chapter Fifteen

  Drun awoke to a moonless night from what should have been a gentle sleep; his boat cradled in the mighty arms of the sea and the stars to sing a lullaby. Instead, visions plagued him. Visions terrible in intensity. They had torn him from his body, pulling him through time itself to some future near or far. He rubbed his eyes and tried to wash away the terror with salty water. His eyes still burned.

  Something terrible was coming.

  The boat dipped and bobbed on gentle waves. Drun reached out, turning to ease the sores on his back and knees. He would have to raise the strength to concentrate, at the very least. He could not afford to drift anymore. The visions were a warning. Shorn, his charge, was in grave danger. Tirielle stood at the edge of the abyss.

  There was no doubt. The Protectorate knew them for what they were. Two of three. Drun alone was hidden from them, but to aid them he could no longer hide out in safety. Soon he too would be in peril. He would welcome the end to his long vigil.

  Vigilance allows no room for dreaming.

  The Protectorate, enemies through the ages, had found the Saviour. They knew he was the Second, though Drun didn’t know how. Their powers were so different to his he might never begin to understand a part of it. What seemed like common sense to the Sard, their lore and history etched in Sybremreyen’s eternal stone, would be suicide for the rulers of this planet. The Sard had nothing in common with them. The Protectorate could scry, and tell the future and burn a house with words. They seemed to use words to control emotion, while Drun drew his power directly from the sun. At night he felt diminished, on a moonless night, blind and useless. The Protectorate were a powerful enemy. He could see why. None had the power to challenge them, and they could see into the tiniest corners. They could even see the places it was safe to step out of, travel at whim by magic alone. All with words…

  And here I am, thought Drun, stuck on a boat.

  Morning came and the man chosen by the Sard, chosen by the Sun, knelt and ran his hands in a circle around him. The sores on his knees had already stained the wood. He held a breath. He pushed the images of doom from his mind. He had to protect the three, himself included. Slowly, the sun on Drun’s face calming him, he felt the urge to breathe build, his body beginning to beg for air. He held, until he felt the purge as consciousness faded. His body fell back before him and breathed for him as he twisted in the air above and looked down.

  He flew.

  He was roughly a week away by boat, and because he hadn’t spoken to the fish he ran through the water more slowly. The seas would still carry him while he travelled elsewhere, though.

  In his trance he left his body and sent his essence across the seas. He could travel faster than most things this way, but it still took time. He still had many constraints – like the need for the water, which seemed to amplify his talents, and sunlight. He would never be able to travel in the dark.

  Drun flew out through the morning sunshine on the wave of light as the sun cleared the horizon and pushed the night back. Below him the southern tip of Sturma, the Spar, then, the Culthorn mountains…

  There, on the snow covered ground, bleeding out, was Shorn.

  Renir had wrapped his blanket around Shorn, who lay where Renir had dragged him, in the shelter of a massive tree with a hollow knot at the base. Drun’s presence sank down to the ground, just as Carious’ first light hit the night’s snowfall. He could see one set of prints, spaced widely apart – running – and assumed Renir had left the injured Shorn to find shelter from the snow. The blood trail leading to the shelter was far more than a trickle.

  He could see Shorn wasn’t dead yet; his breath blew ragged against the cold.

  Renir had lit a small fire just outside their haven. He had wrapped Shorn’s wounds with clothes from his own body (using both his shirtsleeves), but Drun could see blood still seeped through. His astral self settled unseen on the ground before Renir. Drun couldn’t hear anything in this form, but a cursory look at Shorn told him he could bleed to death or die from the cold here. He also saw that despite the evident tiredness Renir was showing, there was determination on his face. The stranger had stayed to help Shorn after giving him the message, and stayed to tend him until it would be safe to travel to a town and get help. The passes were treacherous at the best of times, without snow and a dying man to carry.

  It seemed fate had delivered him a kindly man.

  The projection summoned up every ounce of being and tried to turn the wind around him to sound, but it didn’t work. It tried calling out to the animals, but found it had no voice. All the time Shorn kept bleeding.

  His impotent shadow floated on sunlight, invisible to all but the most perceptive of beasts (and perhaps the gifted). He thought and thought and couldn’t think of a way to reach Renir.

  Idiot. He said to himself. Try
Shorn.

  The strands of Shorn’s soul drifted on the freezing air. Drun felt a sense of elation, but pushed it down. Amazing. There were so many strands, ravelled crazily together; a riot of colour in the air.

  It should have been a beautiful sight, a soul swaying between the snowflakes, but Drun felt his heart ache as he watched them tangle, then jump, like the merest contact with each other was pure agony. Some of the filaments floated calmly where they were swaying alone, but the majority were a seething knot, fast becoming a roiling mass.

  From this side of existence, Drun had needed to practise soul hunting as from scratch. It was one of the healer’s arts, but with Shorn it had taken hours. Drun first had to overcome his own ingrained habits, then his stupidity…he had seen other souls displaced over time, but it was such a rarity. He hadn’t thought to look outside Shorn.

  Find Shorn indeed; he was everywhere.

  The strands circled each other and Drun’s soul joined their form – they twirled together now. He looked out from inside Shorn’s own personal plane and saw the man standing proud in the middle of a vast sea of enemies, crashing against his sword and falling back, bloodied or dead. He was fighting for his life.

  Sword in hand, on an endless plain, battling a legion of evil beast that pulled at him with slimy hands, with grey, long tongues and with tails that whipped and pulled. Each time the mercenary killed one, more climbed over the fallen body. As Shorn fought he rose higher on the mound of the slain below. They would climb higher yet. Drun thought the mercenary might even be able to win this battle, as he had all his others, on his own.

  A little help, though, wouldn’t go amiss.

  Drun joined Shorn at the foot of what was now a hillock and made his form. He gave himself a sword and clad himself in armour. As an afterthought, he concentrated until Shorn, too, was similarly clad. He climbed the mound of koboldian dead ignored by all until he reached the zenith. There he stood resplendent, back-to-back with the Saviour.

  Drun drew his shining sword and prepared to save him.

  The tide of bodies below was falling back. New monstrosities were having to run up a hill to replace their fallen. Shorn’s soul fought fiercely, splashing dark black-purple blood with each stroke of his shining blade. Together they fought. Together they slashed and hacked. Their foes spat venomous jibes and cried alien deaths unheeded.

  Finally, the two men stood atop the hill and looked at the disjointed congeries of their foes upon which they now stood. Shorn looked around in surprise to find the man standing next to him, as if seeing him for the first time.

  “Who are you?”

  “A friend. Do you know who you are?”

  “I am Shorn.”

  “Well, that is a start. I am Drun.”

  “They will come again.”

  Drun looked at Shorn’s scared face. Even here he carried the scar. Both men appeared in soul as they did in life, with all their wounds on show.

  “Of that, I have no doubt, for these are your demons. They will keep coming.” Drun risked a hand on Shorn’s shoulder. “But for now we must leave.”

  “No, friend. I have the feeling I’ve been here before. I remember…I remember that each time I leave, I have to start again. I remember that.”

  “Not this time, Shorn. Follow me down. There are other battles that need to be fought, but to reach them you must get down from here. Come with me, I will show you the way.”

  Shorn’s soul studied the greying warrior, gaunt, unkempt, yet wearing a glorious suit of armour made from some shifting, glowing material that pulled the eye away. “But I have this battle.”

  Drun said gently, “There are others.”

  “But this is my battle.”

  “Then we can take your battle with us. You must come with me now.”

  “I cannot leave the battle.”

  My, he’s like a child in here. So ridiculously persistent. To the extent he didn’t even know when he had won, but just saw victory as a break until the next fight came along. Drun sighed loudly. Then he rapped Shorn smartly on the elbow with the flat of his sword.

  Shorn’s sword fell from his fist. “If you cannot even hold your sword how do you expect to fight!” Drun’s soul screamed at Shorn. “You are not ready for this battle!”

  Shorn turned sullen, hulking in his armour. “I have fought and won many times! Who are you to taunt me?”

  Drun smiled and flipped Shorn’s sword to him, using the tip of his own sword. “I am the binding. That is who and what I am. That is who I am to taunt you. I am the watcher. That is who I am that I know you. I am the teacher. That is who and what I am that I can train you. You would be better.” He looked at the determined lines of Shorn’s jaw. “You could be perfect.”

  Shorn considered this for a while. “Then teach.” He thrust the sword into one of the dead where it quivered then folded his arms across his chest, his gauntlets clanking as they hit it.

  “Very well. Then follow me.”

  “No! Here!” Shorn shouted at Drun’s receding back.

  Shorn kicked the ground and followed down the mound before Drun could disappear from sight.

  Adrift at sea, the tiny boat carried Drun’s body a little closer to the distant shore.

  *

  Chapter Sixteen

  Tirielle mounted Wey. Roth held the reins while she spoke with Captain Gurt. They stood by the copse. Roth had broken from the horror for long enough to carry Tirielle out. She had yet to wash herself off.

  Roth said he could see trailers, an afterburn of evil magic. He said the bodies had been stripped, their pain a feast.

  Tirielle turned, her eyes blank and cold. The change was instant, grief was put on hold like so many other emotions. It saddened Gurt to see it.

  “Go to your farmhouse, Gurt, and pack your things. I left something for you there, enough money to hide. Enough so that you won’t have to work for anyone else again. You can live out the rest of your days in peace.”

  “Lady,” Gurt looked hurt, “I understand you are in danger, but I will serve to the death. I am sorry for their loss, but now is no time to push your remaining friends away.”

  “I’ve lost many friends tonight, Gurt, and I can only suspect this has something to do with me. I am in no mood to argue with anyone. I have to flee the city, and I will need at least one friend should I be able to return. I cannot tell you more, so do not ask. You would be questioned and even though out of necessity I have told you little, there is much that a skilled interrogator can learn even from the most unwilling of victims.”

  “You know I would never talk, Lady…Tirielle!”

  “No, I know you would. Everyone would talk eventually…” She gave him a kind look. “Please, for me. If you return to wait for me, they will see me in your eyes. You must go to your home. Mine will no longer be safe. I will not take no for an answer.”

  “They? Who? If you will not say, I will go with you on your journeys. It is my duty, and you can ask no less of me.”

  “No. There is worse to come than that we have seen tonight. Look – I still have blood on me from that room. I can taste their blood in my mouth. They will do this and more to anyone they find at my estate, if they sense they are holding back knowledge. I need you at least safe from them.”

  Gurt looked indignant and shocked. “You speak of the Protectorate? And you would ask me to leave servants to that? Have you lost…”

  Tirielle shushed him. “No! Listen to me. It will be the Hierarchy, not the Protectorate, because of my political status. The servants will not be harmed, for I am too public. But the Protectorate thrives, Gurt. The Protectorate are still hierarchs. They are intertwined like the incestuous vines trees of the groves. They are the same race, Gurt! And they will know a lie. Then they will take that liar and gain knowledge from him. I would not have you suffer that for your aid tonight. You must be safe. For me.” She said this softly.

  “Then, Lady. For you.” Gurt bowed low to both. “Roth. I beg you take care of her.
”

  “I will. You be careful yourself and go immediately. Be mindful and stay away from the road, Captain. The Protectorate are a vigilant foe.”

  Gurt nodded and slapped Wey on the flank. He watched them go, heading south along the tracks, still fresh. He thought of the decay and wondered how so many flies had already found the flesh despite the cool evening air.

  Gurt then turned and set out for his farm to the north. A three-day walk on foot, his armour on and shield strapped to his back.

  “Well, at least I’m not conspicuous,” he grumbled to himself as he set out, settling into a steady trot.

  *

  Chapter Seventeen

  Shorn was still out cold. He looked stronger, but not strong enough. He was dying in the snow.

  Renir carefully unwrapped the soiled shirtsleeves from Shorn’s leg and arm. He tore the sleeves from his coat and placed the old wrappings, soaked through with blood, to one side. Then he lifted the arm and leg in turn to place the new wrapping under the wound. The wounds were angry and he could see infection beginning to spread up Shorn’s leg, purple cavities seething under the skin. Some type of poison, Renir decided. He needed to get help – this was far beyond anything he had ever experienced.

  Like his grandmother had told him, he breathed, and took the first step. One thing at a time. If this strange man didn’t stop bleeding everywhere he would die.

  Renir took a brand.

  He felt a touch queasy as he gingerly prodded at the pulsing flesh. It sizzled. He was fairly sure that was supposed to happen, but he’d only heard a tale from an old soldier about a missing hand and what he did to stop the bleeding. Who knew about tales you heard in taverns and drinking halls? Renir had already decided it wouldn’t really matter if he had been taken in. The man would probably die whatever he did. He put the brand back further into the fire – it was nowhere near big enough or hot enough to burn the whole wound shut. Thinking to pick it up again, he changed his mind and took three of the largest branches from the fire. He held them together with both hands. The birds were starting to sing in the trees and bushes, as the second sun broke the peak, light bouncing off the renewed snow and lighting up the pass. The birds sang and Renir whistled tunelessly back at them, looking at the wound in Shorn’s forearm.