He took a step forward. The muscles in his shoulder jumped as he began to reach for her.
“Vedas,” she said. “I’m worried. I’m worried, and I’m angry.” She held up a hand to stop him from speaking. “We’ll start with the worry.”
He nodded, feeling like a child.
“What you just did with Shavrim …” She jerked her chin in the direction of the fire. “I’ve trained with you for months now, and you’ve never shown me anything like that. Either you’ve been lying to me about your skill, which I think is unlikely, or there’s something happening here we need to acknowledge and try to understand.”
He opened his mouth to deny it, and thought otherwise. “Are you sure?”
“You’re not?” she said, squinting at him as though trying to determine if he were serious. Her features softened. “Vedas, I know you. Even at your peak level, you couldn’t have deflected that first strike, dodged the second, or much less finished with your own. The first technique is simply too precise a technique for you, and the rest, well …” She shook her head. “He moved faster than I’ve ever seen you move, which means you moved faster than you should be able to move. In your condition, this is obviously—”
“Understood,” he said, fighting the nonsensical urge to defend himself. He tipped his head back to look at the chaotic sky, fixing his gaze on the closest madly-spinning sphere. “You do realize, of course, this is one among many strange occurrences, Churls? I gave a speech, and on that very night the world proceeded to fly apart. The world blames me, and then Shavrim tells me it’s not my fault—and furthermore, that something can be done about it. By us. And now look where we are.”
He leveled his gaze at her. “Oh, and then the other interesting bit. I’ve recently learned something new about you, haven’t I? A daughter—and not any ordinary daughter. In light of all this, it hardly seems the time to start questioning something as benign as my sword-arm suddenly becoming quicker.”
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Vedas stared at her freckled face, thinner than he had ever seen it. Not beautiful, no: she would not be described as beautiful by most. She had told him that, as a child, she had often been mistaken for a boy.
He took her hand. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Without opening her eyes, she smiled, lips parted slightly to reveal the gap in her two front teeth. “It wasn’t right of me, but I didn’t know how, Vedas. I was never … good … at being a mother. I don’t know how to talk about Fyra, or to Fyra, much less deal with the questions I have about her existence. She wants to help us, she and other dead who feel as she does. And now …” She opened her eyes. “As you said, look where we are. What are we doing?”
He squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back, lightly at first, and then harder, until they were both gripping with fierce intensity. He eased up, and eventually she followed.
“Will you sleep next to me tonight?” she said. “Or do you want to be alone for whatever’s coming our way? I don’t want to be alone.”
“I will. I don’t want to be alone, either.”
She kissed him, lightly. She smelled strongly of the road, of dust and sweat. Like him. He dropped his head so that it rested against her sandpaper scalp.
“And the risk? The reason you’ve been keeping me at arm’s length, Vedas?” She shook her head slightly, scratching against his forehead. “Don’t deny it. I know there’s more to your avoidance than just being upset at me for keeping secrets. You think I’ll convince you what we’re doing is right. You don’t see that I have every bit as much doubt as you.”
“Then why? Why are we here? I want an answer for this.”
She slid her hands under his arms and embraced him. He returned it, no longer reluctant.
He felt, rather than heard, her chuckle.
“Haven’t you learned yet?” she said. “Living life with the expectation that you’ll always have an answer when you want it—that is the surest recipe for unhappiness. Answers come only in time. And right now, with the world on the verge of death, time is the one thing we don’t have.”
“So, it really is just that, following a madman or nothing?”
“I think so, Vedas. We’ve reached the end of the road. That, and that alone, is why we’re here.”
‡
He went to bed with her beside him and did not dream. He slept as if dead, like he had under the mage’s spell. He woke and, though not whole, felt a great deal better.
The same could not be said of her, he saw immediately. Her eyes were red-rimmed and watery, and she flinched at his first touch. They worked in silence with the others, taking down the camp.
“Dreams kept you awake?’ he finally said, as casually as he could.
Her fingers worked at a knot in the tent lines, and then stilled. She did not answer, pretending, perhaps, that she had not heard. Slight thought the movement was, he caught the small, quick turn of her head in Laures’ direction.
‡
Three thousand years previously, the Summer Wars had cut a vicious swath through eastern Knos Min, resulting in the destruction of seven cities. Marept, the most northerly and least populous, was burnt nearly to cinders by the invading Tomen—a bedraggled contingent of several hundred men and women, all of whom had smelled defeat on the wind and chose to imbibe the fire spells their leaders created for just such an occasion, creating a miniature organic sun in the city center.
Alone of the seven cities, Marept had never been rebuilt. The wind would not even deign to bury it, and so its bones were left to bleach. Of course, legend told that it had begun to die well before the Summer Wars, that the River Sullen had spurned the city for dumping tannery toxins in its once-clean waters. Certainly, some event had caused the waterway to change course, for it ran now nearly two miles west of the city it had once run through.
The people of northern Knosi felt deeply about their rivers, having so few of them. They attributed personalities to each, talking as though about distant relatives. A river like Sullen, though rarely navigated, was known to every schoolchild. Even Vedas, who had spent the vast majority of his life away from the country of his birth, who had avoided his people whenever he could—even he remembered his mother’s tale of Sullen’s anger toward the people of Marept.
Staring at the river’s surface now, he felt his mother had spoken truer than she could have known. Surely, she had never stood where he stood, thirty miles south of the only bridge to even bother crossing the river, nearly a stone’s throw from a once-great city the world had been content to let slowly crumble into the desert.
“Sullen,” Churls said at his left. “That’s a good name for it. I hardly even want to fill our bags with it.”
He grunted, tipping his head back to stare into the chalky, overcast sky. He reached and let his fingers graze hers. She took his hand, and all at once he wanted to be far away, ignorant of the world. In a place where no one dreamt of dead gods.
No, he did not want to ask her what had kept her awake.
Laures walked to the water’s edge and spit. “My mother said any river east of Danoor was haunted.”
“That would make nearly every river on the continent haunted,” Churls said.
Laures turned to her with a smile. “My mother was a fool.”
Berun shrugged with a shrill sound and waded into the river, trawling two huge water bags in his left fist, holding their comestible supplies high in the other. Most of his body disappeared, invisible below the surface, until only the top of his head showed at the halfway mark. Here he stopped, lifted the hand bearing the water bags and crooked a finger, urging them forward.
Shavrim followed first, chuckling. Vedas and Churls entered the piss-warm, sluggish current together.
Just before his feet left the sandy bottom and he began his first stroke, Vedas looked back to see Laures still standing on the bank, head turned as though she were listening for something. She bit her lip—an expression of anxiety on her face so out of character that he stopped for
a moment to stare.
He nearly called to her.
And then a dark line bisected her forehead, accompanied by the sound of a honeydew being rapped sharply with a knuckle. A smattering of dark spots bloomed in a circle at the center of her face.
Vedas tipped his head to the side for perspective, and felt his testicles rise.
An arrow bolt protruded between her eyes.
Laures took one unsteady step toward the river and collapsed into it.
A cloud of dust rose in the distance beyond where she had stood.
‡
Shoulder to shoulder, they raced toward the dead city. The earth shuddered under their feet, out of time with their steps: Berun kept close at their heels, arms wide as he ran, offering as much cover as his massive body could provide. Now and then, an arrow clattered against his brass spheres or hit the ground to either side, yet the bowmen were clearly only harrying their quarry, conserving their missiles until a clearer shot presented itself.
Vedas sprinted ahead of the others and reached the first fallen column of Marept, taking a defensive position and surveying their pursuers. An arrow shattered on the stone before him, but he paid it no mind. It would hurt to be struck, undoubtedly, and might even break bone, but his suit had tightened around him. It would minimize any impact while preventing the point from entering his flesh.
He counted. Twelve … No … Fourteen.
All mounted on horseback. Stiff red-haired, clearly Tomen.
Six of the men held staffs that glowed with greenish magefire at their tips. Vedas had been surrounded by such mages on one or two occasions when Fesuy woke him enough to fully comprehend his surroundings. They were immensely dangerous—he had sensed this before, and knew it in his gut now. Even under the watch of Shavrim’s wyrm, they had found a way out of the city.
“Fesuy’s men,” Vedas said when Churls and Shavrim were safely beside him, blocked once again by Berun, who stood, facing the approaching men, undoubtedly aware of the threat they posed even to one such as he.
“How do you know?” Churls said, squinting around the constructed man. “And besides, how could they have left Dan—”
“He’s right,” Shavrim interrupted. “And how it was done hardly matters. Sapes can only do so much to suppress magic, and her eyes can be blinded by someone with enough skill and alchemicals.” Frowning, he looked from side to side. “We can do nothing from this position except die. We should get deeper into the city.”
They moved rapidly, Berun clearing a path before them, lifting and heaving huge blocks of masonry out of the fractured roadway and throwing them behind his companions to block their pursuers. Though Vedas had seen Berun perform extraordinary acts of strength before, the display of force shocked him. Several days of receiving direct sunlight had clearly invigorated the constructed man, but the wage for doing so would be monstrous.
Once they reached a defensible position, Vedas predicted, there would only be three to stand against the coming storm.
No conversation would be heard over the sound of crashing masonry and Berun’s thunderous steps, yet a quick glance confirmed to Vedas that both of his companions had come to similar conclusions. He met Churls’s grim expression, and wondered how much of his own concern could be read under the mask of his suit.
“There!” he only just heard Shavrim shout.
A stone building lay directly ahead, alone amid the rubble. Standing, more or less, open to the sky but with all four walls intact. Vedas scanned it and thanked fate that Shavrim was no fool. It would be fairly defensible. Having stood for ages, it likely would not collapse upon them.
Berun lifted a massive fallen pillar that blocked the entrance, and roared as it slipped from his hands to fracture at his feet. He backed up and then took two steps toward the wide doorway, dropping his shoulders and ramming a broken section of the pillar, skidding with it into the interior of the building. His foot hit the left side of the doorframe, causing fragment of stone to rain down.
Vedas winced, but the walls failed to even shudder with the impact.
Berun remained inert as Shavrim leapt over him. Vedas pushed Churls forward, and then offered cover as best he could as she knelt to check on the constructed man.
“—am … fine,” Berun said, his voice a faint brass rumble. “Defend … selves.”
Churls nodded, tight-lipped, and moved into the shadowed security of the walls.
Outside, it was utterly silent. Undoubtedly, Fesuy’s men had ditched their mounts to navigate the rubble Berun had left in their path, and were now advancing on silent feet toward their holed-in targets. They would be unafraid, utterly sure of themselves. They had little reason not to be. Perhaps, this would play to Vedas and his companion’s benefit.
Vedas immediately quashed this brief optimism. Any advantage would be fleeting, ultimately meaningless. He smiled cheerlessly at Churls.
She read the expression, even under the elder-cloth, and rolled her eyes. “The fun never ends, does it? It won’t be long now.”
He nodded. “No, it won’t.”
Turning full circle, he examined the large, open space of the ancient building, knowing without a doubt that they stood within one of the more important buildings of Marept. A temple, perhaps, or a civic structure. The walls extended nearly thirty feet overhead: they were thick, ably hewn without mortar, simple stones cut and fit precisely into place. It was no surprise that it still stood. For a moment, he wondered about the people who had labored to build it, and felt keenly the injustice of it all.
To have built such a place, so cunningly, and have it abandoned to this appallingly slow decay. It must aggravate the dead, he reasoned.
“Better it were destroyed,” he muttered.
“What?” Churls said.
He rubbed at his eyes. “Nothing.” He peered over his shoulder at Shavrim, who stood stock-still at the door, surveying the scene outside. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “This will go very badly, likely very quickly. What of Fyra? She could help us.”
Churls crossed her arms, features carefully composed. “She’d be here, Vedas, if she could. I don’t want her badly hurt—if she can be badly hurt, that is—but I’m no idiot. I realize the straits we’re in. I’ve been calling to her as best I can since we left the river.”
“What could be keeping her away? Has something taxed her unduly?”
“Does it matter? She’s not here.”
The muscles of his jaw jumped. He considered challenging her, demanding an answer to the question she had clearly avoided. Instead, he turned away to join Shavrim across the body-length span of the doorway. Rubble crunched softly under Churls’s feet as she came up behind Vedas and crouched. She placed her hand on his back, and it surprised him, how welcome she felt touching him, and what effect it had. His annoyance was not so much forgotten as immediately put into context.
She had secrets, and they hardly mattered now.
Outside, all was still. And then a crow cawed just to the left of the entranceway.
Vedas caught Shavrim’s wry glance, and raised an eyebrow in return. It had been an extremely clumsy signal from the Tomen’s point man.
Six lights briefly flared, several hundred feet directly before them. The two men turned away from each other, ducking inside the shelter of the doorframe.
Vedas wrapped his arms around Churls just before a beam of sizzling radiance shot through the entrance, punching a hole through the building’s rear wall. Even with his eyes tightly closed, the magefire’s brilliance shone through bone to light up the interior of his skull. He felt the heat of it even through his suit, bathing his back in flames. His pain increased, doubling and then tripling. Rather than fighting it, he focused upon it until it suffused him, smoldering everywhere within him without ever igniting.
Churls, however, had not even the protection of a suit. She screamed, and it was the sound of an animal being torn limb from limb. As though in response to her agony, the elder-cloth tightened and jerked spasmodically
upon Vedas’s frame, threatening to tear his arms free from her, yet he only tightened his hold, shielding her as best he could.
She continued screaming, one long, raw, sustained note of torture. It went on and on, until it was a finely focused lance of pain in the center of his being.
‡
Once again, something within him stirred. It more than stirred. It opened its mouth within him and roared to match her pain.
The roar became a word. A name. Its utterance was a declaration of outrage and conquest. Vedas was overwhelmed in an instant, shoved to the side of his own consciousness, a mere watcher. A tamed beast, ridden.
‡
He stood up and walked into the magefire coursing through the door.
He walked into brilliance, glancing down only briefly at the prone silver figure of his lover.
His lover and sister … but these two words were insufficient.
He smiled. Words used to describe what they were had only ever been the tools of men. Like men, words soon faded into nothing.
But a name? Her name?
Ustert.
This name would not fade.
This name meant more than all the souls of mankind combined.
‡
Evurt walked out of the temple and extended his right arm. The fallen column of flame his enemies had summoned flowed around his taut bronze form, quickly thinning behind him into a river, a stream, before withering altogether. His palm now pressed against a solid wall of shifting light, he began walking forward, pushing the magefire back toward its source—back toward the men who had the gall to attack him and Ustert.
A man came at him from the left, leaping over a low wall. Evurt turned his head only slightly, taking in the form of his attacker calculatingly: tall, ruddy, robed, a stiff crown of hair wound around his scalp. A curved sword held in both hands, close to his ribs.
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