by Sonia Lyris
He thought of his brother. He knew what he would say now.
Don’t push until you must. Then go in with all you have.
All he had.
“Hurry,” he said to the Teva leading the way as he pressed his horse forward to Ote.
The sound of hoofbeats was wrong.
“Not ours,” the elder man said.
The woman in blue sighed, took the hands of the other two, squeezed them briefly. She drew her knife.
She had chosen the knife because it had belonged to her birth mother and hers before that. It was said to have touched the depths of the Rift. Maybe that was true, because all the Arunkin she had killed with it had seemed to have a moment of startlement as life left them, a deep darkness in their eyes. Or perhaps that was surprise at having been slain by a small, elderly woman. It was hard to tell.
In any case she would fight her last fight with it not because it was the most effective weapon she could take into this precious time but because it was the weapon that was closest to her spirit. A companion of many years. Almost as many as those who stood beside her.
To her right her wife in orange took a few steps back and drew her bow. To her left her husband stepped around the table and took up the curved sword of their people.
At the doorway stood three Teva, silhouetted against the morning light.
“Elders,” one said.
“Nahma?” It was his voice, but he had been captive in the Arunkin’s camp, so treachery was possible. She was ready.
Nahma stepped inside, followed by Makan and Rmala. “I have brought someone to you,” he said. “It may be a good thing. I do not know.”
A large figure followed them inside. He waved away a companion, who stepped back outside. Shuffling and swaying slightly, he took in the three armed elders.
Arunkin. Breathing heavily. Not looking at all healthy.
He nodded and spoke. “I am the Lord Commander of the Host of Arunkel. At least for the moment. You are the governing body of the Teva?”
“We are,” said her husband, his sword still out.
“What do you do here, Arunkin?” asked her wife, taking arrows in one hand and holding them ready, her bow in the other.
In the large man’s eyes she saw something she recognized: a willingness to die.
It gladdened her. She smiled at him.
He said: “I have been told that I should apologize for my army’s intrusion into your lands.” He paused to take another deep breath, as if recovering strength to continue. “If this is so, I must first understand why. Will you tell me?”
“The fighting begins, elders,” said Nahma from the door.
“All of you,” said the elder in orange, “Go to your shaota. Join your kin.”
Nahma paused a moment to look back.
“Make us proud,” said the woman in blue softly.
“I will, Mother,” Nahma said, leaving with the others. Now only the three Elders and the tall Arunkin remained.
It was clear to the woman in blue that, at least in this moment, despite that the Arunkin and their large and clumsy horses thundered closer to Ote, this man was not their enemy.
“Lord Commander of Arunkel,” she said, lowering her knife. “If your army breaks through to Ote, we expect to die defending this house. If you stay, we cannot offer you safety. Not from our people, not from yours.”
He nodded at this, waved it away. “Tell me about the gold,” he said, lowering himself gingerly to the bench. “Everything. As quickly as you can. Then, if we are all still alive, perhaps we can come to some accord.”
Maris continued to heal Innel even as Nalas lifted him onto the horse. Then the horse left and he was beyond her reach. She drew her attention back to Amarta, who took her hand and led her and the remaining two Teva out into the camp. As they passed the guards, they looked away, as if choosing not to see Amarta and a mage and their other two captives leaving the tent.
Prudent of them, Maris thought.
The camp was nearly deserted. Amarta led them out through the fenceline and toward the high rocks. One of the Teva turned to the other and spoke. Maris’s command of Tevan was minimal, but it seemed a simple order to return home. He left.
From there the three of them walked up into the rocky hills. In a small clearing surrounded by high rocks, Amarta stopped. “Here, I think,” she said.
“Here, what?” Maris asked, turning in place, feeling the character and quality of the land below her.
Then she felt him.
Gallelon stepped out from behind a rock, brushing strands of ginger hair behind his ear. His expression of surprise mirrored Maris’s own.
“This is unexpected,” Gallelon said. “Maris, why are you here?”
His warmth drew her like a hot wind. She took his etheric touch and fed it back down and into the earth, where it found him again through his feet, the circle completing between them like a kiss and embrace in one. His easy smile turned broad.
“An explanation,” she said to him in the ancient language of her kind, “would bring with it many complexities and an expense of time.”
“As always,” he muttered, and looked at the others. “Jolon of the Teva, I believe.”
Jolon dipped his head. “High One.”
“Arunkin,” he said of Amarta, tone slightly puzzled. Then to Maris: “This seems a bit more than coincidence. Were you looking for me?”
Amarta spoke. “My doing, ser. I don’t have time to explain, but I must convince you to come with us. Tell me what I must say, ser, to gain your help.”
“You’ll have to do better than that, Arunkin; my willingness to help for nothing in return has gone sour lately.”
“She is the seer, Gallelon. Of rumor and truth.”
“I don’t care if she’s the Rift worm. I’m not in a charitable mood.”
Amarta took a breath. “There is a foal in your future, ser. And the way she looks at you, and you at her . . .” Amarta’s eyes went bright. “I would give so much to be hers, the way you could be, if you help us.”
At this Gallelon’s mouth slowly fell open.
Amarta waited a moment more. Then: “Jolon, will you lead us to the mine?”
As Tayre watched, a long horn blast sounded, then another, and a third. Shields raised, the army advanced, flanks of cavalry riding forward around the sides, pulling the entire mass of thousands into a rough crescent shape.
The Teva, now perhaps four hundred strong, were still vastly outnumbered. As the advancing cavalry picked up speed, the Teva stopped their dancing, took bows in hand, and stood in their stirrups.
The forward ends of the lines of armored warhorses, the points of the stretched crescent shape, had nearly reached the town. Nimble and maneuverable as the shaota might be, Tayre was having a hard time seeing how these few defenders of Otevan were going to survive this.
Indeed, the Teva themselves looked uncertain, their horses backing toward the town into a loose line, as if they thought their single row could somehow defend their town against the rows-deep infantry and armored warhorses bearing down on them.
Then the Teva line broke apart, each side moving to meet the approaching warhorses. A bit out of range yet, Tayre would have wagered, but he would be wrong: Arunkel cavalry suddenly stumbled, soldiers clutching at sudden shafts between gaps in armor and helmets, doubling over, horses running forward without riders.
Tayre was, he knew, a fairly capable shot from horseback. The last time he had needed to call on this skill he had been riding hard along a rocky bank, aiming to miss three targets on a moving raft, and had placed the shaft right where he wanted it. But this—this was a level of capability he had never seen before. His uncle would have loved it.
Were the Teva actually laughing? He could not be quite sure from this distance, but it seemed to Tayre that they were. The riders, that was, not the so-called laughing horses. Though for all he knew, they were, too.
The Teva, it appeared, also loved this.
They were shoot
ing without pause now, letting fly arrows in fast succession. More Arunkel cavalry soldiers were hit, folding and dangling from stirrups, slipping off their horses and being trampled underfoot.
In moments the two lines of cavalry were ragged, the riderless horses overshooting the Teva line, seeming to have other goals amidst the buildings of Ote.
Odd, that; these were trained Arunkel warhorses, here to fight, eager to engage, wanting to do damage. What could have so distracted them?
Then Tayre saw that they were following riderless shaota, out of sight, beyond the farthest buildings of Ote.
What?
Ah. The shaota must be mares. In heat.
Very clever mares in heat.
One more expensive loss for Arunkel. Warhorses were pricey investments.
The army’s archers finally came in range and let fly a cloud of arrows. A few Teva doubled over on their horses, their shaota backstepping fast off the field, far better directed than their Arunkel counterparts had been.
But range went both ways. Now the Teva sent blindingly fast streams of arrows into the line of Arunkel archers, who did not get a second chance to shoot.
What cavalry remained atop horses was now closing on the Teva, swords drawn, charging the small horses and riders. The Teva waited, letting them come far closer than Tayre thought they should. When Arunkel horses started to stumble and drop, he understood why, but not how. It was such a fast move that it took some repetitions for him to work it out.
A Teva would flatten against the horse, while under them the shaota stretched its head forward, then gave a fast, round, sidekick to the nearby warhorse’s legs, hitting the larger animal hard in the knee or the belly. As the Arunkel horses stumbled or fell, they took their riders down with them, mangling them underfoot.
Men howled. Horses screamed.
Those Arunkel horses that managed to get back to their feet limped away, no longer interested in fighting, let alone in giving their riders the opportunity to remount.
By the time the infantry reached the town, the cavalry lines had gaps through which the Teva might have easily ridden, leaving Ote vulnerable to the thousands of Arunkel soldiers still running toward them. The Teva had done exceptionally well thus far, but unless they had some additional play to make, Tayre’s wager was on Arunkel.
Arunkel was still the larger force. Still about to overrun Ote.
He looked across the field as the time for a last-minute Teva asset ran out. Then he saw movement at the walls of Hanatha.
Streaming out of the broken gates of the town was a gathering line of hundreds, all holding pikes, billhooks, halberds, and running toward the backside of the advancing infantry. The way they held their weapons did not put Tayre in mind of determined townspeople desperate to defend their homes. No; these were soldiers who knew their trade. Who had fought before. Who were they? Where had they come from?
Arunkel army deserters, Tayre suddenly realized. Now a thousand or so strong, the mass of ex-Arunkel military were charging in credible formation toward an infantry that had just noticed this attack at their rear, some of them only now turning to meet it, while at their front the Teva were still making them into pincushions.
As the deserter army met the line of Arunkel infantry, the deserters swung billhooks and halberds, hooked aside shields, poked through defenses, tangled opponents’ feet. Arunkel soldiers went down, hard, fast, and in large numbers.
Gone was the Arunkel army’s careful geometries. The infantry retracted in some places, spread too wide in others, their greater numbers no longer a clear advantage. The field turned into a fog of chaos and cries and slaughter.
Tayre was no longer sure who he would bet on.
“Here it is,” Jolon said, gesturing to a large circular pit in the ground, a bowl of terraced earth. At the bottom an embedded arch of tunnel led into blackness. Distantly they could hear the sounds of battle, of horns and drums and the cacophony of thousands of men shouting and howling.
Maris felt her way down through her feet into the earth, finding the trails of gold that wound through the rock below, finding also the pile of bars and coins.
“We put it all inside,” Jolon said, “all that we cast and minted. To return it to its kin. We hoped to bury it, as we had first intended, before the Arunkin came.”
“Gold buried by Iliban does not typically stay buried,” Gallelon said, slowly walking around the circumference of the large pit.
Jolon nodded soberly. He looked at Amarta. “What now, Seer?”
“Move back,” she answered.
“What?” Gallelon asked, glancing at her as he continued his circuit.
“We stand farther back, ser.” Amarta said. “There, I think.” She pointed to a spot some ways behind them.
Gallelon looked a query at Maris, who gave him a look that said, yes, unlikely as it seemed, Amarta was probably right. He gave a her brief raise of his eyebrows and continued his slow walk.
She knew what Gallelon would be doing now, in addition to taking possession of the land over which he walked: he would be trying to make sense of Amarta, as Maris once had. He would delve into her with his etheric fingers, and find what Maris had: that Amarta was no mage. Barely a Sensitive.
Unique beyond reckoning.
“It will turn,” Amarta said gesturing at the mine. “Like a huge pot being stirred.”
“Will it, now,” Gallelon muttered, the blandness of his tone a contrast to what Maris felt him doing above and below.
The distant sounds of horses, shouts of battle, all gave the impression of quieting. A weight pressed in, like the air grown thick and heavy before a thunderstorm. With each step Gallelon took, Maris felt him change the etherics of the land beneath his feet, weaving his ownership through the tendrils Maris was sending deep into the ground.
Then he began to sing, very softly, a litany of ancient words. A mage-song she remembered from her youth. Beautiful and poetic, it was the sort of thing that gave Iliban the mistaken impression that mages used spells. Rather, it was a means to focus attention, to quiet and clear one’s mind, to bring one’s spirit into alignment with the etherics all around. Or to bring two mages into alignment with each other.
She began to sing with him, and together they took the mine, holding the land below and the air above. The ground and air rang with their tuning, a loud sound that an Iliban might mistake for silence.
Finishing his circuit, Gallelon came to stand next to her.
“You want the mine sunk?” he asked Amarta.
“Yes, but also—” She moved her hands up and out. “Over the battlefield.”
“Down,” he said. “And up. Yes. Are you ready, Marisel?”
Ready to move earth and sky, to sink metal deep and raise it high? She had never done anything like this. Keyretura. That’s who they needed.
With that thought she realized she had unintentionally strummed the cord that connected her to her aetur. She felt a distant, faint reply.
Go to the Rift in my stead, Maris.
She spread her fingers, let the gathering power she and Gallelon were creating stream in and out of her, through her feet, palms, fingertips. Up and down her spine. She breathed in and out with the heartbeat of the land.
Perhaps even drew on Keyretura. Just a bit. Just enough.
It did not take much of a touch to bring alive the link she and Gallelon had forged years ago in each other’s arms. She felt his etheric grip now: tight, secure, affectionate. An echo of their passion. She heard herself laugh a little in delight.
“Maris,” Amarta whispered from nearby. “This must happen soon.”
So much focus on the etherics she and Gallelon were making that Maris barely saw light and dark, sensing Amarta through the pressure of her spirit. She touched the young woman’s shoulder. “Will you trust me, Amarta?”
Under the ground where she and Gallelon worked, he now took hold of her but at the same time pushed her away, creating a taut line between them, a building tension.
&
nbsp; At the center of the pit, the ground began to pulse and tremble.
“I will,” Amarta answered.
Maris went deep underground, leveraging off the building pressure between her and Gallelon to impart motion and heat. Rocks that had moved slowly for eons began to grind and push, taking dirt and roots and bits of metal with them. Under the ground everything began to shift, to turn. Like a huge stewpot being stirred.
Heat and then more heat. Motion and more motion. Together she and Gallelon built force down and up, both, drawing the many veins of gold together, creating rivulets that began to find their heavy way deeper and deeper into the earth. The pile of bars and coins, now melting, Gallelon held near the surface.
One golden mass near the surface, the other sinking below. A stewpot, yes, but also a boiling kettle.
From deep below came a rumbling, and the ground shook. Maris took the wide stance she knew from years on the ocean.
A violent sundering broke the mine’s archway, and it collapsed. The ground rippled, rocked. The four of them backed away from the edge.
The earthen bowl was now churning, picking up speed, a swirling of black and brown shot through with trails of molten gold, all spinning around a central hole. The edges of the pit began to crumble, falling inward to join the fast-moving whirlpool of liquid earth and bright sparkling lines of gold.
While the swirling earth that had been the mine ate away at the land surrounding it, the whirlpool widening and deepening, the four of them backed farther and stood at the spot Amarta had indicated.
“Now,” Gallelon said.
Or maybe he didn’t say it, but Maris heard it clearly.
With all her focus Maris pushed down, while Gallelon pressed up. She sank the veins of gold deep into the dark earth while Gallelon took the molten mass that was once coins and bars and expelled it upward like a grain silo exploding.
With a sound like thunder, the gold of the whirlpool sank down into a small hole at the center and the swirling earth spat out a golden cloud into the blue sky overhead.