by Tim Stead
He could see over the walls to the north, out over the River Gayle, across the heather to distant hills.
There was no snow. It was all grey and brown.
He turned again and looked at the footprint. It was already fading at the edges, and in a minute it would be gone.
Someone had been in the room with him. Just seconds before he woke there had been a person standing at the foot of his bed, staring down at him. He shivered. Whoever had been there had not come through the door, nor left that way, and the shutters could only be closed from the inside.
Magic, then. Duranders.
The Western Chain had been built to defend against Duranders, but it was no defence at all, Skal realised. Whoever had stood within this room could have slipped a knife between his ribs in a moment. Not that he would have died. Never the less, he was glad that he was not Telan, that the Avilian standard flew above the fort.
He wondered if Hestia was safe.
Probably. The Duranders knew that the chain now stood between them and Seth Yarra, and they would have no cause to help the invader. Of all the peoples of Terras the Duranders would be the most reviled in Seth Yarra doctrine, would have the most to lose. From his limited understanding Skal believed that magic was feared and hated by Seth Yarra even more than it was by Telans. He supposed that this might have made common cause between them at the start of the war – it might even be the reason Telas had allied with Seth Yarra in the first place.
There was a reason for this approach. It was one of three things, to help, to hinder, or to gather intelligence. He rather hoped it would be the first of the three.
Now quite awake, and with his mind humming with possibilities, he went down to the mess hall to do his duty.
Thirteen – Dun Vilant
Narak was feeling the cold now. He was feeling it badly, and it hurt, but strangely it seemed to do him no harm. He knew what the cold did to you. He remembered. He’d got lost, separated from his father on one of those distant hunting trips, and he’d suffered then, too. His hands had grown numb, his fingers reluctant to open and close. He’d had to watch his hand to make sure it gripped things. He’d nearly lost his fingers.
This was different. The pain was the same, but the numbness never came, and he still had full use of his fingers. The pain just went on and on. It made him irritable.
Avatar refused to light a fire. Narak knew that it could do so. He’d sensed the fire that had been lit to distract the snow wraiths, felt its warmth, seen the melted snow and blackened rock. But Avatar would not do it again. Nor would it explain.
So Narak was ignoring it by the time they came to Dun Vilant.
It was a surprise to Narak. His dreams had not shown him the city, but when they crested a low rise between two white teeth of rock he saw it laid out below him. He stopped and stared.
“What in Pelion’s name is that?” he asked.
It was a city. He could see that. What he wanted to know was what business a city had sitting in a flat bottomed valley thirty days’ walk beyond the limits of human habitation. He could see the wall that surrounded it, and the towers that raised their broken heads above the snow and ice. Even in decay it was impressive.
“Dun Vilant,” Avatar said.
It wasn’t an adequate answer, and the name meant nothing to him. Dun Vilant was about half the size of Bas Erinor, yet it was grander, the buildings thrusting up through the snow proclaimed its importance. They were huge, and even the remnants of the arches, the delicate pinnacles, shattered though they were, spoke of a higher achievement than any city he had ever seen.
“And what is Dun Vilant?” he asked. “Who lived here?”
“It is not as dead as it seems,” Avatar said. “There is still life in the city, and great danger.”
Life? Narak studied the magnificent ruin. The snow was ten feet deep in the streets. There was no trace of smoke, no hint of occupation.
“I think it’s worth a look,” he said.
“I advise against it,” Avatar said.
“Surely you can protect me?” Narak asked. He was half teasing his travelling companion, half mocking. “The great Avatar who runs from Snow Wraiths.”
Avatar did not show any emotion. “I am bound by oath not to enter the city,” it said.
“An oath sworn to whom?”
Avatar did not reply, but stood quite still, its blue fire eyes fixed on the city. It seemed quite serious, but how could it be? This place was unknown in Terras. Narak had read everything he could find about past ages, ancient times, mages and empires, and he had never seen mention of this city. Dun Vilant.
“Whose city is this? Whose was it?”
He thought the creature was going to stay silent again, but it answered without taking its eyes off the broken towers.
“Seti,” it said. “The mage Seti built this place.”
“Seti?” It took a moment for Narak to translate the name, to bring it back to the name he knew. “Seth?”
“That name is used by some.”
Narak decided right at the moment that he must investigate the city. If he had not been driven by his curiosity regarding all things ancient, he would certainly have seen the advantage in any relics from Seth’s city, and even more exciting was the chance to meet and converse with something that had been around since that time. Here was a chance to know the truth, to seize the heart of the matter directly.
“You will wait for me?”
Avatar regarded him for a moment, struggling, it seemed to Narak, to grasp his reason. “I will wait. If you emerge, I will know. If you die, I will know. I urge you not to die.”
Narak hesitated. Avatar seemed genuinely concerned. After all, the creature had come to him, sought to protect him in its own stand-offish way. He assumed it was there for a reason.
“I will be careful,” he said. “Do you have any words of advice?”
“Yes, do not go,” Avatar’s fluttering blue eyes stared at him. “But failing that, if you meet anything, do not assume that you can vanquish it.”
Narak nodded, and set off down the slope. He had already made out the gate by which he would enter Dun Vilant.
It was further than he thought to the city, and the walls were higher, much higher than he had believed. If anything he was more daunted by Dun Vilant when he stood before the gate than he had been at the top of the pass. The gate he had walked to was three quarters filled with snow, but he was still able to pass beneath the arch without stooping. Inside the city the devastation was less than he had expected. Further south such ruins would have been subject to the ravages of frost, but here, where everything was frozen all the time, the stone was mostly unbroken.
He examined the first wall he came to. The blocks appeared mortared together by ice, but rubbing with a hand revealed the grey mortar that had originally bound the stones still there and still doing its job.
Narak walked down the street that led beyond the gate. The snow was not a uniform depth through the city, but had been swept by the wind into drifts and hollows, so that his progress was a series of climbs and controlled skids. He paused every few dozen paces where he could and examined the buildings around him, trying to imagine what their purpose might be.
Here there was a windowless cliff of a wall with dozens of doorways set into the base. He couldn’t see all the doors, but their lintels were clearly visible in the snow troughs, though not enough that he could pass beneath them.
On the other side of the street there was something that might have been a theatre, its grand entrance decorated with ornate marble statues depicting warriors and lords. The door here was high, and Narak slipped through to find himself in a great, poorly lit space. A large portion of the roof was missing, but he could see that there had once been benches surrounding a flat, central arena. There was nothing here now, no hint of what it had once been, just echoes and icicles.
Back on the street again he went on, and found another building he could enter, and this one proved to be a labyrin
th of corridors and rooms, corner and stairs. Some sort of workplace, perhaps, or a place where men slept, though he found no doors.
How old must this place be?
It this was a city from the time of mages it was the same antiquity as Hellaree, the crumbled towers on the Dragon’s Back, and that was, oh, more than two thousand years old.
And something still lived here?
That’s what Avatar had said, and he was sworn not to enter the city. So did they know one another, Avatar and this ancient thing? And was Avatar then as old as this place?
He walked on. The road led towards the centre of the city, and Narak could see that he was walking towards the greatest of the broken towers. He could see now that it was not age or ice that had broken them, but something else. It was as though the great tower had been struck a massive blow from the side, and in places the rock was melted…
He knew. He knew what had done this. He had seen it in his dreams. He stopped and stared at the tower. It was huge. How large must a dragon be to fly through such a structure, to shatter and burn it with its body and wings.
Gods, I had no idea they were so big.
The dragon he’d seen in his dream had seemed modest, compared to what had done this. The creature responsible must have been nearly two hundred feet long, and at least as wide. A phrase he had read somewhere came back to him. Dragons were made to destroy the world.
The book, Lady Sara’s book, had suggested that dragons were made as weapons to defeat the enemies of the mage emperor. But to make something this powerful smacked of insanity. It reeked of hubris.
Yet it was the destroyed tower to which the grand street led, and he walked it faithfully as he was sure its designers had intended, passing by a host of lesser structures as he drew close.
The entrance was large enough that he could pass through it still. Two thousand years of snow had not stopped it up. He paused at the door and looked up at the lintel. He could see words carved there, but he could not read them. He stepped through.
He was standing in an outer circle. To his right there was a place where the stonework had collapsed and he could not pass, but the left side was clear, and he walked that way. He could not but admire the stonework. In the city it had been very fine, but within this inner sanctum it was finer still. He could see no mortar between the stones, and the lines that joined them were the thickness of a man’s hair. It was exquisite work. Here, too, the snow had been denied, and he walked on frosted paving slabs. For the first time he could see that they were red marble, the sheen of the ice over the red and white veins reminded him of frozen meat.
He stopped.
There was a motion up ahead, a movement in the light. A door in the wall that gave inwards cast a faint rectangle of light onto the outer wall, and the light danced. It looked for all the world like firelight.
Narak moved closer. He trod carefully now. Avatar had warned him that what dwelt in this city might be dangerous, even lethal. He stopped at the door and peered around it.
What lay within was an audience chamber. A thousand men might have stood below the dais there in its heyday, but now two thirds of the floor was covered by broken stone and snow. A throne dominated the dais. It was a high backed, granite block of a seat, cruel and straight edged. It spoke of a harsh lord.
Narak stood quite still and watched. There was indeed a fire. It burned in a small alcove off to the right, flanked by statues of warriors seated each in his own, similar alcove. The other wall was obscured by fallen stone, but he assumed that it had been the same. Symmetry was a theme here. Such buildings where the martial virtues were openly praised tended to be paeans to order, to the inarticulate perpendicular lives of the military.
Nothing moved, though. There was only the fire, which looked warm. Narak’s body was still wracked by the cold, and its flames were irresistible. He stepped out into the audience chamber and made his way carefully down towards the dais, around a mound of shattered blocks and eventually stood before the fire.
It fulfilled its promise, and at once he felt the pain of the cold recede. His limbs warmed before it and felt silent and whole again, no longer crying out for warmth. He sat on the stone before the fire. He could not see what it burned, but guessed at some kind of magic. There were certainly no coals or wood involved.
He closed his eyes. His body was relaxing for the first time since he had left the snow wraiths behind. He felt sleepy, but he would not permit himself to sleep here. It was not safe.
He opened them again and looked to either side. The statues sat in their seats and stared out into the hall. Each was different, and Narak guessed that they were the likeness of real men who had once walked these streets, warriors of the mage Seti. Farheim.
A small sound brought his head round, a tinkling like glass breaking.
One of the statues was looking at him. It blinked, and very slowly rose from its seat, scattering fragments of ice as it moved.
Narak leaped to his feet, his blades in his hands in a moment, and stood ready. Ready for what he could not say. The man who rose from the seat was a giant, a least seven feet tall. He wore armour, and on his back two crossed swords in the style of the Ohas.
“Who are you that dares to warm himself at the sacred fire of Seti?” the giant asked. The voice was deep, but hoarse, dragged out of retirement to serve once more. He spoke an old form of Avilian, so old that Narak had the reach back into his childhood to find the words to reply.
“I am Narak,” he said. “Also called the Wolf. I mean no offence.”
“Are you prepared to die, Narak the wolf?”
The giant still did not reach for its blades, but stood and glared at him. This must be one of the legendary Farheim, and a mighty specimen indeed if it still had the power to live after so long a time.
“Mighty Farheim of the mage Seti,” he addressed it. “Might I know your name?”
“I am Leras, the Hand of Death, Captain of the Farheim of Seti, Lord of Dun Vilant.” Leras studied Narak, seemingly with greater interest. “Who made you?” he asked.
“I am a natural born man,” Narak replied.
Leras shook his great head. “So were we all, once. Who made you Farheim?”
Narak opened his mouth to protest, to say that he was not Farheim, but closed it again. Such a thing might be a bond between this monster and himself.
“Pelion gave me what powers I have,” he said.
Leras seemed to relax. “Pelion was an ally until the last,” he said. “You are welcome here. How is it that you have lived so long past your time, Narak the wolf, and what do you seek here?”
“I am not as old as you, Leras,” Narak said. Now that the connection to Pelion was established he guessed that the truth would be acceptable. “Pelion created me God of Wolves fifteen hundred winters past, and all that time I have lived in the world, or close by it.”
“God of Wolves?” Leras raised an eyebrow.
Narak explained about the Beast Realms, the air, the sea, the plains and the forest, and about the twenty gods of the Benetheon, their role in protecting the forest and the plains from the depredations of men.
“Pelion was always full of schemes,” Leras said. “Lucky for us. If not for him the world would have fallen.”
“It may yet fall,” Narak said. “You know the Bren?”
“I know of them. They do not trespass in Dun Vilant while Seti’s flame burns.”
Narak looked at the flame. Seti’s flame. “Seti lives, then?”
“After a fashion, I believe.” Leras sat in his chair again. “It has been so long since the war. What of the Bren?”
“I believe that they have grown tired of sharing the world with men.”
“A war, then.”
“There is already a war between men. The Bren are too numerous. There can be no war against them if men are to survive. I must find the thing that Pelion used to stop the dragons.”
“That thing,” Leras spat the words. “It will destroy you.”
/> “Sometimes there is a price that must be paid.”
“Hah. Pelion made you wrong if you’ll pay that price,” Leras said. “That pink stone of his makes you weak. It cuts your balls off. Even the dragons fell before it.”
“Fell?”
“They became weak. I fought Hesterion here at Dun Vilant for a week, hundreds of my Farheim fell, and yet we could not kill him. After he looked on Pelion’s stone he wanted to talk to us. He fled from the battle.”
“I should think it saved you,” Narak said.