by Tim Stead
“I have seen it myself,” Kalik agreed.
“He was rusty when he fought you, Kalik,” she said. “He had not swung a blade since the last war. Now he is more formidable.”
Kalik tried to imagine that, but he could not. The men who had faced Narak had been the best, twelve of the finest swords in the army, and he had beaten them without so much as a scratch upon him. More formidable how?
“It is beside the point,” Kalik said. “Even if he was not Seth Yarra he acted in accordance with the book. He led us here to further our creed.”
“Your book advocates war?”
Again she asked a question that dismantled his argument. The book described how war should be conducted, but nowhere did it say what might be deemed a cause. The book spoke more of defence.
“It does not,” he admitted. “But you speak as though you had read the words.”
“I sought a copy, though I never found one. However, I did speak with one who knew your gods.”
“We have only one god,” Kalik reminded her.
She looked at him in a way that made him uneasy. It was the same look his teachers had given him when deciding how far he had progressed – a look of assessment. Kalik had the feeling that he was missing something again, but after a moment she spoke again.
“Do you know of the Bren? I asked you that before, did I not?”
“You did. The name means nothing to me.”
“Then that is something that we must put to rights.” She tuned to one of the other women, the one cloaked in a single garment of dirt brown, a hood thrown up to hide half her face. “Morianna, you know the Bren as well as any. Will you educate Kalik and his friends?”
The cloaked woman drew back her hood. She was older than Kalik had thought, with a broad, foreign face, but she smiled.
“I would be glad to, Eran,” she said. Her voice was pleasing to the ear, and she quickly set about her task in earnest, delineating the origin, variety and ways of the Bren in such a way that Kalik felt that he was back in school again. The woman was a gifted speaker, and he found that his attention did not waver, despite the dry nature of some of the knowledge she imparted.
It seemed only a short while before the red haired woman interrupted.
“Enough, I think,” she said. Morianna dipped her head in a slight bow and ceased speaking. Kalik looked about him as if waking from a dream, and saw that the sun was now high overhead. He had no idea how so much time had passed. It had seemed only minutes, but now his head was filled with the history of the Bren. He knew them as though he had known them all his life.
“Magic,” he said.
“Aye, it was,” Pascha confirmed. “But now you know.”
“If what was said was true, and half the day is gone.”
“More,” she confirmed. “But it was necessary that we spend some time here, because there must be no fighting before dusk.”
“Why?”
“Because that is when the Bren will come.”
Kalik felt a chill deep down. Morianna’s portrait of the Bren had been disturbing. The images she had left in his mind were of armoured, insectile hoards, bristling with spikes and edges and strangers to fear.
“They come to fight on your side,” he said, but Pascha shook her head.
“The Bren fight only for the Bren,” she said.
“Then why?”
“You,” she said. “Your creed of intolerance. The Bren have lived in peace for centuries because their law allows them to defend themselves – nothing more. You have given them an excuse to see men as a threat. They mean to eliminate that threat. Their nature is variable, but now it is set for war and slaughter.”
Kalik glanced back over his shoulder at the Seth Yarra army. “They must be warned,” he said.
“To what end? They cannot run. They cannot hide. As far as I can see they are ready for war, and anyway, as long as we are still talking I will protect them.”
“You can do that?” Kalik almost dared to believe it.
But Pascha did not answer. She put her hands over her face. He heard a sharp intake of breath.
“He is coming,” she said. She stood up and looked across the open ground. “You want some demonstration of power, Lassin. Here is one that you can feel.” She reached out her hands, and at first nothing happened, but then the ground began to shake. Kalik stood unsteadily and turned. What he saw astonished him.
The ground between him and the army was breaking apart, earth and stone spurting into the air in jets, and the air became thick with dust. A mound began to form, then two, then five, and yet more. The mounds broke, one by one, and naked rock rose out of the ground, thrusting up into the sky.
The shaking diminished. As the dust began to clear Kalik could see that nine stumps of rock had emerged from the soil. They were about twenty feet across, and rose to about twice that height. They were evenly spaced in a semi circle about the table and thirty or forty paces distant.
He was impressed. In truth he was beyond impressed. He was afraid. If this woman could summon rocks to do her bidding then what chance did even sixty thousand men have?
Yet it was not the rocks themselves that held the attention of the others at the table. He heard gasps, even cries from both armies and he followed their eyes up into the pale blue spring sky.
There was something up there, something very big. It was a winged shadow against the sun, and as it moved away from the light he could see vast scalloped wings stretched out. The wings did not beat, but gripped the cold air as the creature wheeled above them.
It was not possible, Kalik thought. The woman had mentioned dragons, and now such a beast, a terror out of myth and legend, repudiated the words of his faith. Seth Yarra had destroyed the dragons. It did not say so in the books themselves, but he had been taught it as a child, and now the lie flew above him in the sky.
It was descending.
Kalik saw a finger pointing elsewhere and he looked. There was another shape in the sky. No, three shapes. They were spiralling down out of the air like so many leaves, spinning slowly. Was this truly the autumn of the world?
Nine. There were nine stone pillars that Pascha had made, and Kalik suddenly grasped the significance of the number. There would be nine dragons.
The first of them was getting low now, and it looked even bigger. It was black, the sort of black that swallowed light, a drifting silhouette cut into the sky that allowed him to see the darkness beyond. It flew across the killing grounds that lay between the wall and the Seth Yarra army, covering the table for a moment with its darkness, then it tilted, lifted slightly in the air, and settled gently onto the furthest pillar in a movement that reminded Kalik of the herons that fished the beach in his home town. It settled its huge wings along its sides and turned yellow eyes upon the men and women at the table. Kalik felt the heat of those eyes, a warmth like the sun, bathing him. His skin prickled with sweat.
He could hear sounds from the two armies now. The horses were not happy, it seemed. He heard them screaming, heard men’s voices raised in prayer, and other sounds of fear and despair. A glance back at his own people showed a certain amount of disorder, but at least some had made the futile gesture of raising shields and spears.
The second and third dragons came in together, angling across each other and landing with skilled delicacy on their chosen rocky perches. Kalik had never imagined that dragons would look like this. They were elegant, powerful, and came is such a variety of colours and forms that it was hard to believe that they were all captured by the same name.
He looked across at Pascha and saw that she was sitting rigidly in her seat, watching each and every dragon as it spiralled down and settled on the seats she had provided. Even she did not look entirely comfortable. The others looked as frightened as he felt, and that told him that these proceedings were not entirely under the red woman’s control. The thought did not comfort him in the least.
Of all the locals sitting opposite him the foreign faced woman who
had spoken of the Bren seemed worst affected. Her eyes were unfocussed, her breath coming in short gasps and her hands clenched in white fists on the white cloth that covered the table. She was on the edge of panic and fighting it.
On impulse he reached across and covered one of her hands with his own.
“It is not so bad,” he said. “If they had wanted to kill us we would already be dead, and anyway, death is only death.”
The woman, Morianna – he remembered the name – put her other hand over his and closed her eyes. Her grip was vice-like, and he was considering pulling his hand away when her eyes opened again and her grip slackened. She looked him in the eye, and he could see that the panic was gone.
“Thank you for that gift of strength,” she said.
Kalik nodded. He saw that Pascha was staring at him, but as soon as he saw, she looked away again.
In the killing ground behind him eight of the dragons had landed. The last wheeled high above, and if anything it seemed even larger than the others.
Sixty Five – Tyrak
He liked to walk by the sea in the evenings. From the rocky shore he had an unparalleled view of the low hills to the west and the sun setting among them. It was one of his greatest pleasures, especially on a fine day like this when the sun plunged almost vertically out of a clear sky.
The ruddy sky was fleeting. It lasted only a few minutes, but it was often worth the wait. Some nights the hills seemed to burn in those brief moments after the sun vanished.
Tyrak was a shoe maker. It was not a difficult job, and in a small town like Gelland it provided a good living. He had a house, a wife, two children, an ox and cart to take his wares to market, a small vegetable garden. He had everything a man could want.
He was not devout, but he believed in the book. He went to the temple three times a week and listened to the readings, and he tried to live his life as he understood it was meant to be lived. He made his shoes according to the patterns laid down.
He had every expectation of happiness, but somehow it always eluded him, apart from these few moments that he stole for himself every day. Tyrak liked being alone. He liked the colours of the setting sun and the darkening sky, the deep, perfect blue that drained away to reveal the stars.
Gelland was special. It was the first town in all the homelands to see the stars, the first to farewell the sun and the first to greet it in the morning. It pleased him that of all the god’s loyal servants he was the first, the very first to see the sun rise and set. Out here on the rocks was the furthest eastward point, and here he stood, alone in that distinction, longing for it to last forever.
He watched the sun sink. He had done this a thousand times before and every time was different. That was what he loved. His life was always the same, the days blending into each other until he could no longer remember them as individuals. They were nothing more than a crowd of memories, the shoes he made, the people he met, the food he ate. It was all the same. Every day was no more than an assemblage of the parts of others.
The sun, on the other hand, was marching north again, sliding down the slope of Kalyras towards night, making that particular hill its home for the last day. Tomorrow it would be free to settle in the valley. Every night was different, part of a progression that was both predictable and satisfying.
Yet there were surprises, too. Sometimes it rained. Sometimes clouds hid the sun for days at a time when easterly winds piled darkening mist against the hills, and sometimes a scattering of clouds would make the sky a patchwork of red and blue, orange and white.
The sun reached the bottom of the hill and began to diminish. It became a dome, and then quite rapidly a short line, a point, and then was gone. All that remained was a brightness in the sky all along the west. The stars appeared in the east.
Tyrak sighed. It was time to be gone. His wife would be cooking dinner – a stew of chicken and vegetables with which he was overly familiar. He looked out to sea for a moment. There were boats out there even now, catching fish by lamp light, and he could see their little stars and the tracks of light they made across the waves. He breathed in the salt air, licked his lips to see if he could taste it, and then turned and picked his way across the rough shore to the esplanade.
He walked steadily until he reached his street, then turned inland, passing rows of similar houses with similar lamps hung on each porch. They were all lit, and the road itself was broad and clean in their glow. All his neighbours would be in their homes. He was the eccentric, the odd man, but they tolerated him. He was allowed this small deviance because his shoes were well made and he was otherwise a likeable fellow.
He paused outside his house and listened. He heard a clank of pans from inside, the high voices of his children. The windows glowed with lamplight.
He was distracted by a whispering of wind, a rush of it. He looked towards the hills again, raised his head. He could feel no wind, and the almond tree in the front garden was still.
Perhaps it had been the sea, but he had just been on the shore, and the sea was calm, waves lapping gently on the rocks. He could barely hear it from the esplanade.
He heard the sound again, clearly from the direction of the hills, but he could see nothing of the trees beyond the lights of their small town. He tried to picture the scene by daylight, but could not remember a grove of trees on that side of town.
There was flicker of movement in the dark, and a drumming sound, almost like men running, or cattle, perhaps. He stepped away from his door and peered down the street.
Something stepped into the light. For a moment Tyrak thought it was a man, dressed in black like a cleanser, but it didn’t walk like a man, and the light glinted off it. Whatever it was turned and ran back into the dark. He felt a chill down his spine and a tightening in his gut. It had been something different. No man could have turned like that, or run with that peculiar gait, but it was man sized, and… dangerous.
He heard the sound of breaking glass from somewhere down the street, and a scream that was choked off.
He ran to his own front door, a feeling of dread giving him speed and an unaccustomed decisiveness. It opened easily – the doors in Gelland were never locked – and he rushed into the living room.
“We have to go to the temple,” he said. “Now.”
They stopped what they were doing and stared at him. Dilila, his slightly plump wife was holding a spoon in one hand and a pot in the other. She was scooping food into the plates that Nilas and Kerrin were holding out. The children were wide eyed.
“It is time to eat,” Dilila admonished. “Not time for temple worship.”
“We are attacked,” he told them. “We must go to the temple for protection.”
“Attacked?” Dilila put the pan down and the spoon in it. “What do you mean? Who attacks us?” She thought he was joking, he realised, or drunk. He stepped forward and picked up his daughter, Kerrin. She was only five and could not keep up. He seized Nilas’ hand.
“We go,” he said. “Now.”
Something in his tone must have convinced Dilila. She picked up a coat and followed him out into the street.
In the few moments he had been inside things had grown considerably worse. He could see fire now. A house, possible two, burned on the edge of town, flames leaping up into the dark. There were shouts and screams coming from that direction.
“Come,” he said.
They ran through the streets with Tyrak clutching Kerrin to his chest. She didn’t struggle, but she began to cry. He could feel her hand clutching at his shirt, the wetness of her face against him. It only made him run faster.
The temple was two streets seawards and three across. It was not far. He knew they had to reach the temple because it was the only building with stone walls. It had a heavy door, too, and it could be barred.
They saw other people, and Tyrak shouted to them to run to the temple. Some did, and some shook their heads. Not everyone trusted an eccentric.
They were close when he saw one of t
he black things again. It was closer this time, no more than twenty paces away. It was about the size of a man, as he had guessed, but there the similarity ended. It was plated with black armour that seemed to grow out if it, its eyes had no whites – just black balls set on either side of its head, and it was a mass of edges and spikes.
He thought it was going to come for them, he was sure it was looking their way, but instead it ran down another street. As it ran away Tyrak saw a body on the street. It had once been a woman, but now it was little more than meat and bone, wrapped in blood soaked cloth. He turned away from it and ran again.
At the temple he found the door closed. He kicked at it with his foot. He shouted for the priest. Others arrived, those few that had followed him, and they started banging on the door with their fists.