She saw at once a dawning recognition. She’d made connections to soldiers in the middle of a fight before, and she saw the same sense of disorientation, the same delay it took to see the vessel’s surroundings. A moment’s pause, but all the time she needed. Even without Body, her steel bore a razor’s edge, and she buried her saber in the man’s undefended chest, smashing ribs to pierce his heart.
Adrenaline pounded in her ears, and she found another target, a binder in green leading a squad of soldiers to pull themselves up the heights, around where her Shelter blocked the trail. But the wound in her chest was deep, the sort that would kill her if she left it unattended. She withdrew, backing her way up the trail as the fighting continued, holding to her Shelter as she found Body again, this time for tethers directed inward, probing to do as much as she could to steady her wounds.
For now their company held. The better part by far had gone with Marquand to scale the heights, but dead and dying bodies littered the trail, the smells of blood and burning flesh a testament to the strength of Sarresant bindings. Shouting came from the other side of her Shelter wall, and Death tethers to unmake it, drawing from a pool of inky black leaking from the dying into the leylines beneath the hill. But she was strong. Even wounded, her Shelter withstood the attacks, and could hold for precious minutes. Gods send it was long enough for Marquand to turn the guns.
Thunder sounded overhead, great roars as the field pieces answered her prayer. One cannon went off, then another, the tufts of white smoke pointed east, toward the Sardian lines.
Need beckoned, and part of her mind maintained the Shelter, weaving white pearls against her enemies’ Death. But she had to find strength enough for Need to see the order to attack delivered. Now. At the moment of maximum impact, when the Sardian soldiers felt the rain of their own shells over their heads.
She made the connection, and some part of her senses slid into place, only she was mounted atop a horse overlooking the battlefield, rather than situated in the tents of field command.
“Gods help us,” de Tourvalle said, lowering a brass spyglass atop his horse as he squinted toward the horizon.
“That’s the signal,” she said through her vessel. “Marquand has the guns turned on the enemy.”
“Your Majesty,” de Tourvalle said, drawing the attention of the rest of the aides and command staff gathered around them. “Thank the Exarch you’re here.”
“What are you waiting for?” she said. “Give the order to attack—now!”
“Your Majesty,” de Tourvalle said. “You must see for yourself.”
He gestured toward the horizon. Not the eastern ridges, as she’d expected. South.
She raised her vessel’s spyglass, and despair bit as deep as her enemy’s steel.
Thellan soldiers, and Gandsmen, in their yellow and red coats. Only a division’s worth, so far, visible pouring through the passes that would empty into the fields, giving them a flanking position to where her army would be charging the Sardians, if they followed her plan. Impossible. The Thellans should have been days to the south, well clear of any threatening deployment. For them to be here on this field would have required Paendurion to march them ragged, covering sixty leagues a day and driving them well into each night. They would be haggard, ill-supplied, wasted shells of men and women after such a march, spent and broken. And they would be situated to pincer her between the Sardian lines, tens of thousands of soldiers rallied by a chance to catch their enemy by surprise.
“Order the attack,” she said.
“Your Majesty?” de Tourvalle said.
“Order the attack,” she repeated. “Full assault. Leave nothing in reserve.”
“But Your Majesty, the Thellan forces will—”
“The Thellan forces will find us in command of this battlefield, their Sardian allies broken and scattered by our soldiers, and the force of their own artillery. This is our only chance, Field-Marshal. Rally our soldiers and commit them to the fight. We break the eastern lines, then turn to face the Thellan. The enemy thinks he has us cornered. Let us show him instead he’s jumped into the pit to face the lion.”
75
ARAK’JUR
Market Street
The City of Al Adiz, Thellan
A swarm of people filled the streets, shouting as they exchanged bolts of cloth, dried fruits, furs, and precious stones. He and Ka’Inari stepped through them, weaving around carts and mules, men and women, drawing fewer eyes for being foreigners than for their girth displacing traffic in the market. Creeping past the watchmen at the walls had been a trivial thing, and, once inside, they’d managed to approach the palace at the city’s heart without so much as a question to discern their place or purpose.
Ka’Inari followed as they turned away from another pair of gold-uniformed watchmen, cutting down another street, running parallel to the palace grounds. They were close, now. Days spent traveling into the heart of the country called Thellan, and they were close.
“Inside?” Ka’Inari said, making it a question as they stopped facing the colonnaded building and its courtyard, where gilded iron gates divided the grounds from the bustle of the rest of the city.
“Yes,” he said, feeling an echo of the spirits’ premonitions. Whispers of he is near and kill him had accompanied him from the battlefield to the city. “Inside. Down a long hallway, through a door painted red.”
Ka’Inari closed his eyes, nodding and listening with indrawn breath.
“Then this is where our journeys part,” Ka’Inari said. “The spirits have showed me a different path.”
“What? No.”
Ka’Inari clasped his shoulder.
“You must be strong, to face what awaits you inside,” Ka’Inari said. “Remember Corenna, and Kar’Doren. Remember why you fight.”
“I mislike your words,” he said. “What have the spirits shown you? What do you mean to do?”
Ka’Inari smiled, staring through him as he met his eyes. “This will be our last journey together, Arak’Jur. You were a fine teacher, and a good friend. Protect our people, protect your son.”
With that, his former apprentice turned toward the junction where their alley met the path leading toward the palace gate, a shimmering form of the Great Bear taking shape around him.
“No!” he said, rushing to catch Ka’Inari before he reached the corner. “What are you doing?”
“Arak’Jur,” Ka’Inari said. “I have seen a hundred possible futures. This is the one that gives you a chance at ascension. Let me walk my path. Follow the spirits, and walk yours.”
For a moment he held to Ka’Inari’s arm, though he knew that with una’re coursing through him, the shaman could have shrugged off his grip with a mere tightening of his muscle. Instead he let go on his own. Ka’Inari spared a last look, the youthful apprentice replaced by wizened elder, and then the shaman loped ahead, some vestige of the bear’s gait taking over Ka’Inari’s as he closed toward the gilded iron ringing the palace grounds.
A ringing crash sounded as the bear spirit gave Ka’Inari the strength to rip a section of the gate from the ground, hurling it with a roar onto the green.
Not a hundred paces back the way they’d come, a train of carts and messengers reacted with shouts of alarm, and the soldiers on duty there took up the same cries. Squads of men in gold came running, moving too fast, fast enough to be using fair-skin magic. Ka’Inari charged toward the palace, leading them away.
Arak’Jur stepped through the ruined section of the gate. Suddenly the main entrance was abandoned; Ka’Inari’s roars echoed across the green, smothering the cries and yelps of his pursuers. They stared, all those who had been waiting on the guards’ pleasure, and if any noticed as he slipped past them, no further cries were raised. He cut across the grass as he stared in wonderment, still swallowing the shock of Ka’Inari’s display.
The entrance loomed in front of him, a plain wood door where the rest was carved stone and marble. Columns decorated the exterior, with the p
alace’s size promising hundreds of halls and chambers within. Yet the first rooms he entered were plain, unadorned by color or elaborate décor. A simple room with benches and coats hung on pegs, and he passed through, feeling Mountain’s contented hum in his thoughts, until a man in brown clothes wearing a gold sash stepped into the hallway, directly in his path.
The gold-sashed man stared at a parchment in his hand, stepping around Arak’Jur for a moment until he took the time to look again. Then the man frowned, glancing at him up and down as he spoke.
“Qué estás haciendo aquí?” the man said. Almost the Sarresant tongue, but different enough for meaning to elude him. He had none of the Thellan tongue at all; instead he spoke Sinari, conveying his meaning with posture and tone.
“Go,” he said. “And say nothing of our meeting.”
The man wavered, his eyes wide as he shuffled back a step. Arak’Jur caught him by the arm, eliciting a yelp of surprise before he could pull the man close.
“Go,” he said again, this time jostling the man back toward the plain chambers. “And be silent.”
The last he said with a sharp shove, sending the man staggering down the hall. Arak’Jur turned and continued on; soon enough there would be alarms raised, but he had to hope it would be clear, and this man in gold would hold his tongue, else there would be violence long before he reached his goal.
He pressed on, and soon the plainness of the chambers near the entrance gave way to gilded panels of white wood, cushioned furniture, stone sculptures, painted vases, and woven carpets hanging from the walls and draped over the floors. He froze, hearing cries of alarm, but they came from deeper within the palace. If there had been sentries posted in these halls, they must have been drawn by those cries, and by the thunder that followed them: cracks in the distance, roaring bangs that seemed to shake the palace foundations when they struck. Ka’Inari’s work, and it tore at his core to leave the shaman to it, even knowing his path lay here, following these halls.
Footsteps from above confirmed he was far from alone within the palace, but he passed beneath, following a hunter’s instinct toward his prey. The man with a thousand threads of gold. He was here, and Arak’Jur was drawing closer with every step. Another few minutes would see him—
MY CHILDREN.
The voice stopped him midway through a hall. A spirit’s voice—but no. The spirits were familiar, companions he knew. This was different, a distant echo, as though he heard a fading glimmer of something that had once been deeper, stronger, more powerful.
THE MOMENT APPROACHES. READY YOURSELVES, TO BE WEIGHED AND JUDGED.
He staggered to a halt at the mouth of a hallway, leaning against the wood paneling for support. Was this part of Mountain’s charge? Nothing at Adan’Hai’Tyat had prepared him for it, and Ad-Shi had said nothing. Yet even diminished, the voice overpowered his senses, almost bringing him to his knees.
READY YOURSELVES, FOR ASCENSION.
As suddenly as it had come, the voice withdrew, leaving him standing on red carpet, facing a red door. Mountain’s urgings returned, strong enough to put the scent of fresh meat in his nose. Now, Mountain’s voice whispered in his ear. Go. Time is short. You must kill him. You must see it done. Heat swam in his vision, a sheen of red blotting out color in the hallway.
He opened the door and stepped inside, laying eyes on the man whose death would mark his journey’s end.
A giant, a full head taller than Arak’Jur himself, lying naked on his side atop a cushioned bed, with two women in white standing behind him, applying strips of cloth to his back. The smell of filth permeated the room, rotting meat mixed with feces, while the giant’s eyes were white, the pupils rolled up in his head as he muttered something unintelligible, his fingers twitching atop his blankets. Whispers sounded in Arak’Jur’s ears, and he almost saw the threads of gold emanating from this man. A name crystallized in the spirits’ urgings: Paendurion. Champion of Order. Leader of the Three.
One of the women noticed Arak’Jur, and she screamed.
He held his ground, letting the door fall closed behind him. The rest of the palace had been drawn by whatever commotion Ka’Inari was causing on the far side of the grounds. If any heard her screams, they would arrive too late to interfere.
The giant—Paendurion—stirred atop the bed, half turning toward the woman before his gaze settled on Arak’Jur, and he laughed.
“You come now,” Paendurion said, speaking the Sinari tongue, though he did it with a thick, foreign accent. “On the cusp of ascension. Ad-Shi’s apprentice.”
Both women stared between him and the giant, backing away from the bed. Strips of blood-and pus-soaked cloth lay discarded on a stand, while fresh strips had been cut and laid across the blankets.
Ad-Shi’s name gave him pause. “You knew her,” he said.
“I knew her,” Paendurion said. “I assume she’s dead? And by her own hand, else you’d have no need to come for me.”
The image of her form, falling into blackness as she plummeted from the clifftop, crystallized in his memory. “Yes,” he said.
Paendurion closed his eyes, coming to rest atop his bed. For a moment it looked as though he meant to sleep. In Mountain’s visions this man had been a great warrior, a conqueror and butcher of innocents beyond counting. This was a wretch, clinging to the barest sliver of life, with only a long steel sword beside his bed to mark him for a fighter. The two women cowering behind the bed glanced between him and the giant, their fear amplifying pity he hadn’t expected to feel at the end of this path.
“Ad-Shi told you,” Paendurion said abruptly. “She would have told you what is at stake. You must have heard the Master’s voice. You know how close we are to the reckoning for this cycle.”
He said nothing. Ad-Shi had told him nothing of any “Master,” but the stakes of their conflict were clear. The rest would be settled in blood.
“Very well, then,” Paendurion said, swinging his legs down, reaching to grab his blade from the floor. The exposed skin on his back and shoulders looked as though he’d been pocked with knives, sections pierced and cut away in ragged strips and crevasses. Still he rose, his head almost reaching the ceiling, steadier on his feet than he should have been, given the stench of rot seeping from his wounds.
“Kill me,” Paendurion said, “if you can.”
76
TIGAI
2nd Corps Command Tents
The Battle of Orstead
They strode through slush and mud, amid a buzzing throng of Sarresant troops, each seeming to go their own way, like a choreographed dance meant to mimic chaos while the troupe changed the scenery around them on the stage.
“Where is d’Arrent?” Sarine said, stopping a soldier with four stripes on his sleeves. “I need to find the High Commander at once.”
The soldier gave her a curious look and said something in the Sarresant tongue, gesturing toward a clustering of tents before he pulled away.
Tigai trailed behind Sarine as she carved a path through the swarm. Every soldier seemed to have a task, or perhaps four tasks, all competing for their attentions. Tents were being struck, horses led in teams, wagons loaded and hitched and rolled through the masses swirling around them.
“Can’t you do something to calm this?” he asked as he tried to match her pace.
The question served to slow her for a fraction. “I … could, I suppose,” Sarine said. “But this isn’t Yellow. They’re excited, nervous, full of pride and duty. If I used Green it might interfere with their work.”
It looked more like a retreat, so far as he could see. But whatever Sarine’s strange notions of colors and emotions, she’d resumed her pace, pulling him on toward the few remaining tents without soldiers pulling up their stakes and rope. She pushed through them as though she belonged in spite of her civilian’s clothes, until finally one of the soldiers noticed their approach, though the reaction was less the hostile order to halt and state their business he’d expected, and more a sort of reverent a
we.
“Sarine?” the woman who’d noticed them said. “Mes Dieux, ce ne peut être que vous.”
“General Vassail,” Sarine replied. “Thank the Gods. Where is High Commander d’Arrent? Tigai told me there were kaas-mages here, with the enemy. I came to help.”
The woman—General Vassail, apparently—responded in a flurry of the Sarresant tongue, ushering them both inside one of the larger tents, where half a dozen ornately insignia’d men and women stood around them, debating and pointing and leaving him not understanding a word of it. Instead he occupied himself looking down at their maps, and those he could read easily enough: blue bars, for where the Sarresant troops had to be, pushing eastward across an open field facing a double half circle of ridges where a single blue dot had been drawn, surrounded by green. More green bars had been placed on either side of the ridges, and the numbers might have looked favorable for the Sarresant troops, were it not for the equally sized force of red and yellow bars approaching from the south.
They were on the verge of a defeat.
Little doubt remained, after witnessing the frenetic pace of their camp. Their command tents had been placed too close to the front. A vindication of every caution he’d given Mei. They’d picked the wrong side, and whatever her assurances that havens could be found even in defeat, it reeked of a sour end, when the Yanjin family had endured enough already. His thoughts drifted to the starfield, to the old man limned by shadows. If they were doomed to be set in magi chains, better, perhaps, to know the nature of the bargain. Better to stop running, and accept that he was not some powerless waif. He could affect the world as he wanted to see it, if he had the courage to try.
“You’re here, thank the wind spirits.”
He turned and almost jumped back, as two newcomers to the tent had taken up a place beside him. One a man he didn’t recognize; the other, the Fox magi, Fei Zan, masked as Voren, whose knife he could still feel lodged in his heart, in phantom aches triggered by the sight of his face.
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