City of Wonders

by James A. Moore

  They were like ants, methodically swarming their way up the surfaces available to them and moving along similar lines. One or two found the pathways to climb and others followed after.

  Far below, the battering ram knocked again and again, and a gathering of soldiers prepared for in case they got through. Most of the windows in the tower were small, and set high in the walls. They were more for ventilation than for looking out at the trees beyond. Most of the exceptions were high enough up that few would consider using them and those that did would not be able to see the attackers until it was far too late. The angle of Orrander’s Tower followed the curvature of the Mother-Vine and did not allow for an easy examination of the ground below.

  Pella rose from the bed and moved toward the door, fully aware that she was far too late to call the alarm. The invasion had already begun.

  The door to her chamber was unlocked. She would have been surprised to find otherwise.

  To her left a hallway turned slowly toward the center of the tower, moving along a natural progression and deeper into the Mother-Vine. To her right a stairway angled up and down.

  She took the stairs and moved upward, closer to the domain of Queen Parlu, hoping she could reach the woman in time to be of assistance.

  Even as she moved she once more carefully spread her senses, seeking information that could help her and others deal with the attack of the Sa’ba Taalor. The people from the Seven Forges were above her and below her as well. As she climbed she saw the slender body of a young man sliding through one of the narrower windows just ahead of her.

  She blew him back through the window with a thought. A portion of the wall crumbled away as well, but his screaming body sailed a great deal further from the tower. With luck his death screams would warn others of their plight before it was too late.

  Pella called out to Desh and to Tataya alike, praying for assistance. A brief flash of sorrow cored her soul as she instinctively started to call for Goriah as well before memory returned. How long had passed? How long had her Sister been dead? Where was the murderous bastard that had driven a blade through her skull? She would find him if she could. She would destroy him.

  The stairs continued in their long spiral and she moved as quickly as she could, alert for any sounds around her.

  There was nothing, no one that she could see, at least.

  By the time she reached the queen’s chambers her heart thudded at double the normal rate and her lungs burned with a demand for more air. None of that mattered as much as reaching Parlu before the Sa’ba Taalor.

  The chambers were much as she remembered from previous visits. Parlu was a solitary woman at the best of times and she preferred to see visitors in private when she could. There had been several visits both formal and informal over the years. Once, long before she was apprenticed to Desh Krohan, she had come from the area and she had known Parlu better than most. She remembered the vast bed to the side of the chamber. She remembered the balcony that let Parlu see most of her kingdom with ease.

  Frah Molen’s corpse lay on the floor near that balcony. He had been cut in half by one savage stroke of a blade. His death had likely been very fast. A small blessing, to be sure, but a blessing just the same.

  The heavy door that led to the only part of the tower Pella had never seen before lay open. The wood was wrecked, shattered by several powerful blows. An axe lay broken at the side of the door, bespeaking the force needed to hack through to the area where Parlu communicated with her god.

  Just inside that doorway, the corpse of Lemilla, Parlu’s only daughter, lay broken and bloody. Like Frah Molen, she had died quickly.

  The stairway was narrow and barely allowed for one person to slide through easily. The wood of the Mother-Vine was exposed here, directly fused with the stone of the tower, and had swollen outward as if to seal the passage.

  Bloodied footprints showed that whoever had passed had managed to get through easily enough, and that somebody was a very large figure.

  Pella stared at the entranceway for a moment, uncertain if she should follow.

  The laws of the people, of Trecharch, stated that none could enter the chamber save the queen. If she followed she was not certain if she would help or hinder the situation.

  That hesitation very likely saved her life.

  * * *

  Viewed from outside, in the daylight, Orrander’s Tower was an amazing sight. It climbed so very high into the air, mating with the Mother-Vine in the process.

  On previous occasions, Cullen had stared at the structure with awe, oftentimes spending several minutes examining the minutiae of the fusion of manmade tower and nature at its very finest. The Mother-Vine enveloped the tower, sheltering the structure within her embrace.

  According to legend. Orrander, the first modern queen of Trecharch, had offered herself as a sacrifice to the Mother-Vine to save them all from the Wellish Overlords. She had cut herself and offered her blood to the roots of the Mother-Vine, and in response the great vine had moved around her, embraced her, and healed her wounds before moving to force the Overlords from the area.

  The Overlords were nightmares of the distant past. The Mother-Vine was still here, still real, still pervasive in the lives of everyone in Trecharch.

  And the Mother-Vine was dying. Madness lay where that thought wanted her to go.

  Cullen stared at the massive trees around her, saw that they were still strong, and that the Mother-Vine was weakened and changing color as surely as autumn changed the trees. The leaves of the Mother-Vine were enormous here at her base. The shade from them was enough to cover wagons or, according to a few jests she’d heard in the past, large enough to work as the sails of ships in a crisis.

  They were browning quickly, withering even as she watched. They were dying and the same death seemed to be creeping along the great vine itself, moving toward the heart of the Mother from several different strands that were all heading for the central core of the great plant.

  The Mother-Vine was dying.

  Cullen barely noticed on a conscious level any longer. She had run along the ground seeking to reach Orrander’s Tower. She had fought her way past the devastation in Norhaun, all in the hopes of reaching the tower in time to offer some form of assistance.

  Too late.

  Cullen stared in horror, her heart frozen deep in her chest, and looked at the invaders as they climbed over the tower and the Mother-Vine alike. In the distance a gathering of the enemy battered at the Great Gate. They would fail, of course. That was inevitable. It also did not matter. The door held, but the enemy still found a way. As she watched a portion of the wall high up along the tower crumbled outward and spilled a body into the Field of Remembrance and crashed into the likeness of King Corranst, the last of the kings to ever rule the area. The body and the statue both shattered on impact.

  In her soul she hoped it was one of the enemy that died that horribly. From her distance Cullen could not say with any certainty.

  A handful of the enemies climbed into the tower. Most focused on the Mother-Vine, cutting and hacking with their weapons. Alone none of those wounds would have affected the great vine, but who could say what so many small wounds would do? Her father had told her stories of the Overlords and their countless tortures. Some had been long ways to kill a soul that would take days or even months. A few had involved cutting tiny pieces away.

  From one location a horn sounded and then from others. Two of the horns came from the Mother.

  Moments later the cutting stopped and the vermin who wounded the Mother-Vine descended from her sides. Cullen would have wept in relief at the notion if their sudden mercy didn’t scare her so much. From what she had seen the grayskins did not believe in any form of kindness.

  The notes from the horns had only started to fade away when the enemy stopped assaulting the Great Gate. Was it possible that all of them had decided to retreat? Had Queen Parlu managed to negotiate a peace with the enemy?

  Cullen didn’t know, bu
t she moved back and into the woods without waiting for an answer.

  The ground trembled. Or perhaps that was her legs. She could not say for certain.

  * * *

  Since she was twelve and took the crown, Parlu had climbed the stairs to the room where she now stood at least once every season to make her offering to the Mother-Vine. It was symbolic, of course, a mere drop of blood placed against the thick hide of the great, eternal protector. A remembrance of promises made and kept.

  The sliver of a blade made the cut on her left palm as it had every season for decades, and she placed her bloodied hand against the Mother-Vine. Instantly she felt the connection that had revitalized her countless times before.

  Life flowed into her. Not merely the life of the Mother-Vine but the life of everything connected to the Mother.

  She felt the trees, the forest, and the animals. She touched the energies of the soil, the insects crawling on the trees and in the dirt. Every person in the whole of Trecharch was there for her to sense.

  And, like a cancer, she felt the Sa’ba Taalor.

  Her mother had once told her that everything in the universe was connected. She had felt that for herself the very first time she had shared herself with the Mother-Vine. That connection fed the Mother-Vine, fed Parlu, and colored every decision she had ever made. There had been peace in the area for a very long time because of that awareness of the lives around her and connected to her through the Mother.

  The Sa’ba Taalor were not connected. There was no peace within them. They did not accept the world around them. Instead they were connected to something else. Something dark and powerful, and as alien to her as the notion of being left without the Mother’s touch.

  She could sense them, true enough, but they were a blight, a disease that moved among the strands of the Great Mother and killed her connection to everything else. Where the Sa’ba Taalor touched, there was a growing darkness that burned into her very soul.

  She almost pulled her hand away from the Mother-Vine in an effort to escape the horrible chill left behind after each burning step the invaders took, but knew that to do so would be to abandon all she loved and cared for.

  The Mother was injured and she had to guide the great plant in order to save them all.

  Some of the horrid creatures must have sensed her, for they called to their brethren with horns and as a unit the vile presences started away, scurrying down from the Mother in an effort to escape the wrath she would cast upon them all.

  The fingers of her left hand sank deep into the Mother-Vine as if into water, and she felt the potent energies of the Mother respond, filling her, offering her control of the Mother.

  Parlu flexed her fingers and the world outside the tower moved, responded. The Mother-Vine shifted, but it moved slowly, without the usual liquid responses. For an instant she wondered if she had lost her connection to the Mother, but she knew better. It was the invaders. They had wounded the Mother and in so doing had weakened her as well.

  Still, she would end them and the disease they brought with them.

  * * *

  Cullen felt the ground move again, and saw the great extensions of the Mother-Vine shift and break free of the earth. The ground shook, the dirt exploded, the vines seethed and whipped through the air, countless tendrils extending as they prepared to cut the enemies of Trecharch apart.

  Cullen’s heart soared. She had heard of the Mother-Vine moving, of course. She understood that the Walking Trees did not walk without her; still, this was a different thing, a far greater challenge.

  Several of the grayskins jumped and ran as thick vines thrashed and whipped toward them. As she watched one of the bastards cleaved a tendril away as if cutting a snake in half. Another was not as lucky and grunted as the vine captured him and squeezed. Bones broke, flesh soon followed and the attacker died without uttering another noise.

  The Mother-Vine moved again, and more of the earth broke as the roots slipped from where they had rested comfortably for centuries, spraying dirt and rocks and anything else in their way through the air.

  Cullen allowed herself a moment to smile.

  The Mother-Vine provides, indeed.

  * * *

  The rain of arrows that came down initially was impressive. Tusk felt them thud against his shield and bounce off his helmet in a clatter that nearly deafened him. Beneath him Brodem roared and growled and ran harder, faster, covering territory in leaps almost strong enough to unseat him.

  Brodem was wise. He ran hard and soon they were away from the worst of the volleys of arrows. Tusk’s arm was pierced in two separate spots where the shield was not enough. His helmet, made of bone and good steel, held up better.

  Behind him his people returned fire, sending their own hail of arrows toward their enemies. That was what he commanded and that was what they did.

  And through it all, his heart soared.

  The Daxar Taalor had given him a command and he would obey or die trying. Durhallem said to kill a god and so he would go and kill a god. It was not for him to question how the deed would be done. He would take care of that when the time came.

  He could see the god. The great “Mother-Vine” of the local people. He could also see that the vine was already dying. Glo’Hosht was a gifted murderer. The King in Mercury was moved on already, going toward the next stage of the Great Wave, leaving Mother-Vine to Tusk. Tusk was not a merciful man any more than Durhallem was a merciful god.

  When he approached the vast tower he saw the gates had been sealed. He did not have time to batter down the gates himself, and he did not much care for the odds. The trees here were on a scale he had never seen before and the wood was likely as hard as iron.

  That left him only one option. He muttered a command in Brodem’s ear and the great mount turned, charging toward the Mother-Vine and climbing quickly. Perhaps for the locals the notion of scaling a nearly sheer surface was something unheard of. Surely he saw no trails along the side of the mountainous column of green, but both Tuskandru and Brodem had scaled the side of Durhallem a thousand times, and while the texture was different, the climb itself was not so far from what they were used to. Brodem extended his claws and dug deep into the hard vine. Tusk clung to Brodem and called encouragement as the mount rose higher and higher into the heavy green foliage.

  Further up he could see where the poisons were having their impact on the great vine. Here it still seemed healthy enough.

  He would do what he could to handle that matter, though if he were completely honest Tusk had troubles deciding which of his weapons would serve him best.

  Brodem let out a grunt and slid back a few paces. Tusk saw the arrow in his mount’s shoulder and sneered. A cowardly attack. His eyes surveyed the area and he saw the archer easily enough. He was suspended on one of the branches above them, and had already drawn another arrow.

  Tusk rolled from Brodem’s back and caught himself on the angle of the vast plant’s surface. “Go, Brodem! Kill him!”

  Brodem did not hesitate, but instead charged, moving faster than before now that he was unencumbered. The arrow the archer fired would have hit if Tusk had stayed with his friend, but unburdened, the mount was fast enough to dodge the bolt and, more importantly, clear the distance before the archer could draw again.

  While the fool screamed and Brodem killed, Tusk looked at the stone wall not far away.

  The Mother-Vine and the tower were mated. That was not an accident. He understood that instantly. In each of the Seven Forges the Daxar Taalor offered a place where their followers could join with them to communicate freely and feel the pure presence of the deities. That, too, was not an accident.

  Tusk assessed the tower and the vine and moved, sliding sideways at first and then reaching the great tower itself. Where vine and stone met there were many footholds. He took advantage of them and began climbing in earnest.

  Far below archers and warriors fought and died. Not far away Brodem killed and then ate and would have come to h
im if he’d called, but when a god makes demands it is often a personal challenge and best faced alone.

  The climb was hard, but there were no challengers.

  Below him his people climbed the tower and the vine alike and followed the orders they had been given. They cut the vine and made it bleed its clear sap. Then they descended again. He did not see Brodem. He did not look. The mount would do his part.

  When Tusk climbed to the highest of the few balconies, he felt in his heart that this was the way, the right choice. It was not instinct alone that drove him, but the sure knowledge that Durhallem guided his actions. He was the King in Obsidian, Chosen of Durhallem. He was the divine sword of his god until such time as his god chose another.

  He did not believe today would be the day his replacement was found.

  The stone balcony held his weight with ease and he stepped inside a chamber filled with lovely decorations and exactly two people. There was an old man, who was currently aiming a spear at him, and a young girl who looked at him with terror in her eyes.

  The situation was simple: the old man would die for the girl. He would fight and he would die in an effort to see her safe and protected.

  Tusk moved quickly, drawing his heaviest axe in one swift motion and dancing past the spear thrust the man aimed toward him. It was a good attempt, but the man was old and unpracticed. He was soft in a way that Sa’ba Taalor had never been allowed to be soft and it cost him dearly.

  The axe came down on the side of the man’s face and through him as if he were a log to split. The spear fell from a lifeless hand and clattered across the ground.

  The girl opened her mouth to scream and ran for an open doorway.

  Tusk followed her and struck the back of her skull with his axe. The blow was not perfect, but it was enough She fell atop the stairs with a hole in the back of her head. Just to be certain, he drove one of his daggers through her neck.