Mostly, the reed beds were left to the current inhabitants, millions upon millions of pink-feathered juit birds.
They were ungainly creatures, plump of body with long, spindly necks and legs, and oversized beaks. They fed on the grasses and waterweed that tangled about the reeds and squabbled among themselves for entertainment.
These past months they had been unusually quiet.
One day the River Lhyl had died. Very suddenly, within the space of a single breath. The river entered at the lake’s northern border in a great marshy swathe ninety paces wide. Normally the river flowed into the lake strongly, rippling the reeds about its mouth and lifting juit birds’ nests up and down in a soothing rocking motion day and night.
On this day, however, everything had stopped. The river had turned in a moment to glass and a clearly defined edge was created: a small cliff of glass, standing half the height of a man, stretching ninety paces east to west. Occasionally, glass beads that once had been water droplets strained out of the glass, held back by a tiny sliver of hopelessness. A single moment more and they would have dropped to freedom and life within the lake, but they had been a splinter in time too late.
The water of the lake lapped disconsolately at this edge of glass, caressing it, murmuring to it, but there was no response. The river was dead.
The juit birds stayed well away from the glass river. Those who’d had their nests close to the mouth of the river moved them away, cradling either chicks or eggs in their oversized beaks as they stalked awkward-limbed through the shallows to safer abodes. No juit bird would come to within two hundred paces of the dead river and, in their daily meandering through the reed beds, constantly kept their backs to the north and the glass.
The juit birds knew what had caused this calamity and they cursed, not the One, but the Magi who had, so many thousands of years ago, raised the glass pyramid from the desert floor.
If it had not been for Threshold . . .
On this night the reed banks were quiet, as usual. There was occasional movement as birds resettled themselves in their roosts among the reed beds, or snapped sleepily at a neighbour, but mostly there was calm and stillness throughout the millions of juit birds who populated the lake.
Then, suddenly, every bird jerked its head upward, bright black eyes fully awake and aware.
Someone called.
“Ah!” Maximilian felt the breath pushed from his chest as he staggered against a stone wall, and he scraped several fingertips as his hand scrabbled for purchase.
He heard movement about him, felt other bodies stumble momentarily against his, heard others gasping for breath.
“We’re here,” Avaldamon said.
“Where?” Maximilian managed to get out, momentarily disorientated and forgetting what it was he did, stumbling about in the unknown.
“Aqhat, I hope,” Avaldamon said. “Are we all here? Ishbel? Serge? Doyle?”
Voices murmured assent, and Maximilian reached out for Ishbel’s hand. She gripped it tightly, moving against him for reassurance.
Maximilian looked around, his eyes becoming more used to the dark. “We’re in a courtyard.”
“In the great courtyard, to be precise,” said Ishbel. “There is a gate over there . . . see it? It leads down to the river. DarkGlass Mountain is in that direction,” she nodded to the west, “over the river. It cannot see us here if we stay close to the wall.”
Serge and Doyle had their swords drawn and had positioned themselves on the outside of the small group, looking for any danger.
“There is no one else,” Ishbel said. “Not even an owl. Nothing.”
“Everything would have been eaten by the Skraelings,” Doyle said. “At least there don’t seem to be any of the loathsome wraiths here.”
“They’re likely all headed for Elcho Falling,” Maximilian said dryly.
“We need to find some shelter,” said Avaldamon. “Then we need to talk while we wait for the dawn.”
The One lay flat on his back in the middle of the desert, halfway between Sakkuth and Aqhat. His limbs were spreadeagled, and his obsidian eyes were wide, staring unblinking at the starry night sky.
The starlight twinkled deep within his glass flesh.
The One was not happy. He could feel movement and power and understood that the Lord of Elcho Falling and his bride from hell had somehow transported themselves far south.
South to DarkGlass Mountain.
“No!” the One whispered.
He knew what they wanted.
They wanted to destroy the pyramid.
And him.
They had their pretty tricky magics at their fingertips and they were going to walk into the Infinity Chamber and —
Suddenly the One remembered what he’d left in the Infinity Chamber.
The Book of the Soulenai.
He hissed, and all the sand surrounding his body began to roll and jump, as if it were being heated on a giant griddle.
Leaving that book had been an enormous tactical error.
“But not one that can’t be fixed,” the One said, leaping to his feet. He stretched out his arms to either side, straining them until the tendons and muscles bulged.
Then, with a slightly worrying creak, the One began to grow.
On Lake Juit, the birds stared into the night.
Then, in the same instant, the entire population of juit birds lifted screaming into the air.
Chapter 14
The Outlands
Once river god and former Tyrant of Isembaard, Isaiah now led some one hundred thousand Isembaardian soldiers north from the Salamaan Pass, heading for Elcho Falling to aid its lord. Each night, with well-honed practice, the Isembaardians established a camp and settled down to sleep, either in tents or on bedrolls under the stars. This night, Isaiah moved restlessly about on a camp bed in his tent, the blanket twisting this way and that until it tangled uncomfortably around his legs. Finally he gave up. Pushing aside the blanket, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up.
He shivered a little in the cold air, then reached for his clothes.
There was no point in staying abed and, with any luck, one or two of the cooks would be up and have prodded a cooking fire into life somewhere among the myriad tents.
Isaiah looked to see if the manservant sleeping at the back of the tent had wakened — he hadn’t — then he pushed aside the tent flap and walked outside.
It was very quiet.
Armed sentries, scores of them, patrolled the outer rim of the sprawling encampment. They walked slowly, but they looked alert, and Isaiah breathed a sigh of relief. These past several days he had been filled with such a sense of dread . . . he’d never missed his power so much as he did at this point.
If only he could scry out with his senses and feel what had gone so wrong.
It could be anything — Armat, the One, Maximilian, the Lealfast . . .
What was happening? What was wrong?
Isaiah’s power was gone, consumed by the One. If Isaiah had still had his power, understanding what was happening would have been easy.
But now . . .
There was only one thing Isaiah thought he knew for sure, and that was that Lister was dead. He knew it instinctively, having shared companionship with Lister over so many tens of thousands of years. Now the companionship was gone. Lister was dead.
Isaiah wondered who had done the deed, and hoped it had been either Ishbel or Maximilian.
Gods alone knew, both had had reason enough.
Isaiah was not terribly upset by the loss of Lister; they had never been close emotionally, but he was wracked with concern about what else might be happening up north.
None of the Icarii had stayed with Isaiah and the hundred thousand men he commanded (the former renegade general, Lamiah, being pragmatic enough to return to the role of second-in-command fairly happily) and Isaiah regretted this. If the Icarii had stayed, then maybe he could have sent them scouting, or maybe, maybe, if one of them had bee
n an Enchanter, he could have communicated directly with Axis, or StarDrifter, and discovered intelligence.
But no, here he was, left with only mortal ability, and Isaiah resented it now more than ever before.
He looked toward the tent where slept Hereward, the former kitchen steward from Isaiah’s palace of Aqhat. He’d hardly had any discourse with her on this hard ride north toward Elcho Falling. Isaiah still harboured some bitterness toward her for the loss of his power, despite what he might say to her. If it hadn’t been for Hereward . . . if he hadn’t surrendered his powers in order to save her life . . . well, then both he and everyone else would have had a far better chance at life than they did now.
Was it better to save Hereward and lose a hundred thousand because of it?
“What is wrong?” Isaiah muttered, tearing himself away from thoughts of Hereward and staring into the dark sky for some inspiration. What is wrong?
They were so vulnerable here. There was no terrain they could hide in or exploit for defensive (or even offensive) purposes. There were no trees to hide behind.
There was scarcely even a shrub to piss behind.
Just gently undulating, grass covered plains.
They were north of Margalit now, and Isaiah and Lamiah had sat down last night to estimate how long it would be before they reached Elcho Falling. Without any distractions — attacks from forces far more powerful than they, which was, considering the circumstances, more than likely — they had perhaps two weeks of hard riding to get there.
Two weeks, and gods knew what might happen to them in that time.
Isaiah also wished he knew what had happened at Elcho Falling. Something had happened; he was sure he could sense some disturbance, but what?
“Damn it,” Isaiah said, and started to look for any campfires that burned brighter than usual, which would indicate — hopefully — the start of breakfast.
Before he could move to take a step in any direction, Isaiah found himself suddenly crouched in a defensive huddle on the ground. The air above him, and on all sides, suddenly seemed to be filled with noise and the warmth of thousands upon thousands of bodies . . . and feathers.
Feathers.
Everywhere.
Isaiah thought he would choke on them.
Lealfast! It was his first thought and automatically he reached for the dagger on his hip.
Something thudded into him and reflexively he grabbed at it, trying to wrestle it to the ground so he could stab it in the —
Something rather large, and very irritated, pecked him viciously in the upper arm.
“Ommph!” Isaiah said, spitting out feathers. He recognised the peculiar musty smell of the creature now stalking in a tight circle around him, looking for an opening to strike again, but his mind simply refused to accept it.
Isaiah could hear men stumbling from tents, crying out in surprise.
The bird pecked again at his arm, but with less intent this time.
Isaiah held out his hands in supplication. “I am Isaiah,” he said. “Isaiah!”
The juit bird fluffed out its feathers in affront and looked away.
“Shoo,” Isaiah said, rising carefully to his feet and flapping at the bird with his hands. “Shoo!”
The juit bird took several high-stepping paces away, looking at him carefully with its large red-rimmed eyes.
Men were rushing everywhere now, and Isaiah risked shouting to them (heavens forbid if he set the birds off!). “Shoo them to the perimeter of the camp! It is all right, they will not harm us —”
Much.
“— just shoo them to the perimeter of the camp! They are juit birds ... juit birds!”
Initial panic now gave way to muted laughter. Most of the Isembaardians had heard of the juit birds, if not seen them firsthand. Now they began carefully to herd the creatures toward the outer edges of the camp.
Lamiah had by now appeared at Isaiah’s side, still blinking sleep and confusion from his eyes.
“What the fuck .?” he said.
Isaiah raised his hands. “I have no idea, Lamiah. I am as stunned as you. But . . . it appears as if the entire population of Isembaard’s juit birds have just appeared in our camp.
“How?” Lamiah said.
“Magic . . . power . . . luck . . . a sudden southerly gust of wind . . . who knows? They are just now . . . here.”
“There must be . . . ” Lamiah stopped, peering through the slowly lightening sky.
“Millions of them,” Isaiah said, chuckling. “Look, the entire encampment is coated with pink feathers. They must have just fallen straight down from the sky.”
“But . . . but . . . ” Lamiah was still struggling to accept the fact that a few million juit birds had suddenly appeared in camp.
Isaiah laughed. “Shall we not be a sight, Lamiah, marching north in all our arrogant militancy, surrounded by squabbling pink birds.”
“They are not going to stay with us, surely?”
“I very much doubt they are going to leave, Lamiah. I think they are here for a reason.”
Lamiah grunted, watching in silence as soldiers everywhere tried to direct reluctant juit birds out of tents, beyond the range of cooking fires, away from the lines of half-panicked horses, and toward the perimeter of the camp.
“What reason?” Lamiah said finally.
“Gods alone know,” Isaiah said, “for I have no idea at all.”
Chapter 15
Elcho Falling
It was almost dawn, and Ravenna could pick her way through the deserted Isembaardian camp easily enough in the faint light. There was food aplenty here, and blankets and gear: enough to keep her fed and warm for months if not years.
She suffered terribly from Ishbel’s curses. Not only had Ishbel cut Ravenna’s unborn son from his rightful inheritance to Elcho Falling, and Ravenna from her powers as a marsh witch, Ishbel had cut Ravenna entirely from the aid and succour of any person left on this world.
No man, no people, and no country shall ever love or offer you safe harbour again, Ravenna, Ishbel had said. Go now from this tent and from this land. Go and bear your child in agony and sorrow, and weep that you have so thoughtlessly murdered those who loved you.
When Ishbel uttered that curse in Armat’s tent, Ravenna had struggled, but had been unable to resist the curse’s urging. She’d half stumbled, half crawled from the tent and into the night. For that night and much of the next day she had walked aimlessly, wandering hither and thither, one hand constantly moving protectively over her pregnant belly. The few people she’d come across — some Outlanders driving a flock of sheep south — had avoided her, even though she had called to them most piteously.
Ishbel’s curse: no one might aid her. She was an outcast, completely and forever.
Thus Ravenna had wandered, but, halfway through the day, she had become aware that all was not well at Elcho Falling. In fact, all was very bad at Elcho Falling. She was too far distant to understand precisely what was happening, but she could feel it. Her powers as marsh witch might be gone, but not those powers of common sense and intuition.
Something was happening at Elcho Falling.
Ravenna hoped Maximilian and Ishbel were being slowly stripped of all their flesh by crows of gigantic magnitude. Her hatred of the pair of them had festered over the past day into something so frightful that had Ravenna still enjoyed her powers, Ravenna was certain she would have cursed them both into the Land of Nightmares.
For several more hours Ravenna had wandered, her sense of something happening at Elcho Falling growing stronger and stronger, and finally she had started back toward the citadel, her feet dragging through mud and slush, the hem of her skirts stained and sodden, her flesh shivering in the chill, her hair hanging unkempt about her face.
Ishbel’s curse should rightfully have kept her away, but Ravenna gritted her teeth and ignored the nauseous feeling that grew stronger the closer she drew to Elcho Falling.
She would find out what was happening.
There might be an opportunity awaiting her.
So she slogged onward, one foot in front of the other, until she stopped in the late afternoon, gazing open-mouthed at the scene.
Isembaardian soldiers fleeing across the causeway into Elcho Falling, under attack from Lealfast fighters in the air.
Ravenna stood and watched for hours, arms hugged about herself, until that moment when Maximilian came out and worked his magic to ensure the last of the Isembaardians (and Ishbel, the bitch) managed to escape into Elcho Falling.
She watched as the Lealfast veered away in frustration, watched as the archway into Elcho Falling clanged closed, watched until late in the night when there was nothing left to watch any more, save the cold wind rippling over the waters surrounding Elcho Falling.
Then she moved into the deserted camp.
If there had been a soul left in it Ravenna did not think the curse would have allowed her to stay. She had pushed it too far already and was feeling a terrible urge to move away, move out of this land to wander, wander, wander. but for the time being she resisted as well as she could and scrabbled about the abandoned campsite for food and warmth. She even managed a few hours of fitful sleep, curled up in a ball under a pile of blankets in the corner of a tent.
The tent stank of men and armour, but she hadn’t cared. Ravenna was supremely grateful for just those few hours of snatched sleep — grateful because she shouldn’t have been able to settle, the curse should have driven her away. If she could resist the curse this much . . . then might she not eventually be able to break it completely?
Where there was even the smallest resistance, there was hope.
Hope for revenge.
At dawn Ravenna rose and started to scavenge anew, trying to find something she could use as a sled to drag behind her. Then she could haul away as much in the way of supplies as she could manage.
She was investigating a pile of abandoned horse gear, so engrossed in turning aside the heavy leather harness and horse collars that she failed to realise for a long moment the presence of someone standing behind her.
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