by Greg Keyes
But it wasn’t Coals and Merthun who sent up the alarm—it came from the north, their left flank, from Na-Nasha and Glavius.
The two men arrived a few moments behind their signal.
“They’ll cut us off from Cheydinhal if we don’t hurry,” Na-Nasha said, wriggling his reptilian fingers oddly, as he often did when agitated.
“That’s it for the wagons,” Falcus said. He turned to the refugees. “We’re going to make it, but we’re going to have to run. Leave everything, you hear? Cheydinhal is just down this hill, not even half a mile.”
Mazgar dumped her backpack and reached for Goblin, but the girl shook her head. “I told you, I can run. Carry Riff Belancour, there—he’s got a funny foot.”
Mazgar nodded and took up the boy, who was probably about six and weighed half as much as her pack. The horses were cut loose and the most elderly put up on them in tandem. Mothers clutched their infants.
Falcus set the pace, a slow trot, and the boy on Mazgar’s shoulders giggled, obviously thinking it was all a game of some kind. True to her boast, Goblin kept up, running alongside her.
Falcus picked up the tempo a little as they burst into a field; the walls of Cheydinhal were visible through the next line of trees.
But the wormies were coming fast, toward their left flank, ranged in a rough phalanx, and Mazgar could easily make the calculation that they weren’t going to make it. A few of the townsfolk screamed or began to cry, but most broke into full-on, terrified flight.
Falcus began shouting orders, but Mazgar couldn’t make them out. A moment later, though, Na-Nasha, Coals, Casion, and Sugar-Lick broke off and formed a semicircle with Kuur behind them.
“Captain!” she shouted. “Permission to join—”
“Denied,” Falcus shouted back. “Keep with your charge. Make it count. Go!”
She exchanged a glance with Brennus.
“I’m with you,” he said. “Whatever you want to do.”
Mazgar glanced down at Goblin, felt the weight on her back.
“I don’t make the orders,” she snarled.
So they ran.
She looked back once before they reached the trees, because she felt the heat on her back and heard the dull thud of an explosion. She couldn’t see anything but black, greasy smoke and billowing flame.
They came through the trees into the clearing around the walls. The gate was off to the right. It was open, and a picket of about a fifty soldiers was formed up there.
They had maybe thirty paces to go when Goblin shrieked. Mazgar looked back and saw six wormies coming up fast.
She set Riff down and drew Sister.
“Get them through the line,” she howled at Brennus. Then she got her footing and charged.
Sister caught the first—a half-charred Dunmer man—right at the juncture of clavicle and neck, and the heavy blade clove halfway through his ribs and stuck there. Bellowing, she punched the next in the face as he lifted his heavy curving blade, and had the satisfaction of feeling the cartilage and bone crush under her knuckles. She used Sister to turn the corpse into the next two, temporarily deflecting them while she reached for another, this one unarmed, and she roared the battle cry her mother had in her last battle. Red sleeted before her eyes, and rage took everything.
The next thing she knew, Goblin was shouting at her. She looked dully down and saw the pile of bodies, Sister still stuck in one. Twenty yards away, about sixty wormies were charging toward her.
She put her boot on the dead thing and heaved out the sword, then turned and pounded toward the gate, where the others were waiting.
Falcus ordered them all to eat and rest, and no one argued. The wormies didn’t have siege engines, and Cheydinhal had its own soldiers, after all, and a mixed company of Imperial troops as well. Within an hour a camp had been set up near the castle that dominated the north end of town, and Mazgar had the first hot food and cool ale she’d had in a long time.
She didn’t remember falling asleep, and the next thing she knew was light coming softly through an open tent-flap.
She left her armor in the tent and went outside to stretch, wandering down to the river that flowed through the city. The sun wasn’t showing over the walls yet, but things were waking up. Wagons of bags and crates made their way across the bridges, pulled by thick, sturdy horses. Across the river, a Dunmer woman was casting a net, which came up wriggling. Mazgar could smell sausage frying somewhere.
But most of the people she saw were up on the walls.
She watched the river flow for a while.
She knew Brennus by the sound of his gait.
“Nice place,” he said. “Have you ever been here before?”
“No,” she said. “The houses look funny.” She nodded across the river. The timbers of most of the structures in town were exposed. In the lower floors they were covered with stone, but the upper ones had plaster between the beams and struts, which were often arranged in whimsical patterns. The roofs were concave peaks, and the shingles looked like scales.
“That’s called half-timbering,” Brennus said. “It’s Morrowind architecture, really—or was.”
She tossed a twig in the river and watched it float off.
“Have you heard anything?”
“No,” he replied, “but I need to have a look with my instruments.”
“Going up on the wall, then?”
“Higher,” he said, pointing to the structure of stone and stained glass that towered over everything else.
“I’ll go with you,” she said.
“I don’t think I need a guard at the moment,” he said.
“You never know,” she replied.
Inside, the chapel of Arkay was all hush and colored light. They found a priest who, after a bit of explanation, showed them the way up to the highest spire.
From there even the people on the walls looked small. She gazed first out over the forest, hills, and distant Valus Mountains. Only reluctantly did she focus nearer.
The wormies had taken up positions a few hundred yards from the gates.
“They’re out of range of ballista and catapults,” she said. “They’re not stupid.”
“No, they aren’t,” Brennus replied. “Necromancers have been known to make such creatures as these, but they are generally mindless. And slow. We’re dealing with something new here. Did you hear what happened last night?”
“What do you mean?”
“A man died of natural causes and rose up as one of these. The watch got him, and afterward they put out the alarm. There were three more cases.”
“Just like Jarrow, and the others we lost on the hill.”
“Right. Whatever spirits animate them clearly can travel more than a few paces.”
“Every time we kill one, we risk a corpse waking up in town.”
Brennus nodded.
“What do you reckon, then? They’ll try to starve us out?”
“No,” the mage replied. “I think they’re just waiting for reinforcements.” As he said it, he pointed.
She saw it then, pale as a cloud with distance, unmistakable.
Umbriel itself was coming for them.
SEVEN
Annaïg picked at the flesh of the green nutlike thing and popped it into her mouth, chewing slowly. She felt a little heat like black pepper, followed by a rush in her nose like fiery mustard and green onions. The texture, though, was like a boiled cashew.
“That’s great,” she told Glim. “What is it?”
“Something new,” he said. “Maybe from Morrowind.”
“Maybe,” Annaïg said dubiously.
“Wert says that sometimes the sump will go for years without producing a particular thing, then start again, while something else vanishes for a time.”
“How does it do it?” she wondered. “Does Umbriel store seeds and eggs someplace?”
“I don’t think so,” Glim told her. “I think it’s the trees.”
Glim had a sharp, excited scent about
him, and he seemed to be barely holding something in.
“The trees?” she asked.
“The trees in the Fringe Gyre,” he said. “You saw them when we tried to escape.”
“Well, yes,” she said. “But it was dark, and I was distracted by—well, escaping.”
“I believe that they are cousins of the Hist.”
“That’s interesting. I can’t imagine what that means.”
“Well—think of water oaks and white oaks in Black Marsh. They’re both oaks because they have acorns; their leaves are arranged in a spiral. But other things about them are different. Like cousins.”
“Okay,” Annaïg said. “I follow that, although I never thought of it that way. So are you saying that the trees in the Fringe Gyre are intelligent, like the Hist?”
“Yes and no. They communicate, as the Hist do, but in different tones. I didn’t really learn to hear them until Fhena showed me, and then—”
“Fhena?”
“Yes, one of the gardeners in the trees. She helped me find you. Surely I mentioned her.”
“No, you surely did not,” Annaïg said.
“Well, she’s just someone I talk to,” Mere-Glim said. She thought he sounded defensive.
“A woman?”
“She is female, yes.”
“Uh-huh.”
He made a low growl in his throat, which she understood as embarrassment. “It’s not like that,” he said. “She’s not—I mean, she’s an Umbrielian. She looks like a Dunmer.”
“Fine. I’m just wondering, if you’re so friendly with her, why you haven’t mentioned her before.”
He blinked at her, and she realized she sounded stupid. Jealous. And what did she have to be jealous over?
But the fact that after all of these years as best friends, he hadn’t mentioned her …
She pushed it off.
“The trees,” she said.
“Yes,” he replied. “Some of my people believe that the Hist came to Tamriel from Oblivion. Umbriel is from Oblivion, too, so it doesn’t seem too far-fetched to me that they could be cousins.”
“Yes, but it would be a huge coincidence.”
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I think the city tree somehow called Umbriel, or the Fringe Gyre trees may have called to the Hist—but I think there was some sort of collusion.”
“Are the trees here malevolent?”
“No, they are—vaguer than the Hist. Not as intelligent maybe, or maybe just in a different way. Simpler. But like the Hist, they can form their sap into different things, the way you do with your equipment. And they can shape life, change its form.”
She thought about that for a moment.
“That—makes sense. One of my tasks is to take raw ingredients from the sump and transform them into nutrients for the trees, but part of that process involves getting the roots themselves to release substances. I haven’t worked in the large fermentation vats, but I have noticed there are always roots involved.”
“I think it’s the trees who remember all the forms of life on Umbriel,” Glim said. “I think they produce the proforms—the little worms Umbrielians start as. Then the ingenium gives them a soul, and they grow according to some sort of plan the trees remember.”
“Well, that’s really interesting,” Annaïg said. “If we could poison the trees, destroy them, that would in essence destroy Umbriel.”
Glim’s eyes went wide. “But you can’t—” he began, then stopped. “It would take a long time,” he said. “And it might not be possible.”
“If they are all connected at the root, like the Hist—sure, they all draw nourishment from the sump.”
An expression flickered across his features that she had never actually seen before, but it reminded her of anger.
“Look,” she said, “you’re saying these trees are responsible for the murder of almost everyone we know.”
“I’m not,” he said. “I’m saying they were used. Someone used them.”
“Glim, you can’t—I know how you feel about some of these people, but—”
“I don’t think you do,” he said. “You hate everyone you know here.”
“Glim, the one person I showed friendship to tried to kill me.”
“I know,” he said. “But the skraws are different. And Fhena.”
She sighed. “Look, let’s take one thing at a time. What about Phmer’s kitchen? Can I get in?”
“You can’t get in far,” he said. “Any more than I could get into your kitchen.”
“But here we are.”
“No, no. I can get to your pantry, and so could someone from another kitchen, in the proper disguise. But to go any farther would raise all sorts of alarms and protections. Some are in the walls, living things that see and smell the uninvited. Others, as I understand it, are sorcerous in nature. All I know is, they say at least twenty people from other kitchens have tried to invade past Phmer’s pantry; all were caught or killed. Almost as many have tried to get into Toel’s kitchen since you came to work there.”
“I haven’t heard anything about that.”
“That’s because they all went into the sump,” he said.
“Huh. But you think I can get into the pantry.”
“At night, if you’re very careful.”
“Suppose I was invisible, had no scent, made no sound?” she asked.
“You might make it another fifteen paces, as some of the others did.”
“Well, then,” she said. “Thanks, Glim, that’s very helpful.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he said. “You remember the last time you tried to make someone invisible? For a week all my organs were on display for everyone to see.”
“I’ve learned a lot since then,” she assured him.
“I hope so. When are you going?”
“Tonight.”
Annaïg was wakened by a gentle pressure on her arm. She opened her eyes and found Dulg standing there, his little froglike form perched on the stool by her bed.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Chef Toel requires your presence,” he said.
She stirred, rubbing her eyes. “What’s going on?”
“That’s not for you to ask,” Dulg replied.
She looked around. “Where is Slyr?” she asked.
“Summoned earlier,” Dulg supplied.
“Did she wear my gold-and-black gown?”
Dulg looked a bit puzzled. “You said I could offer it to her.”
“Right. I did, didn’t I? Well, just fetch me the black one.”
Dulg nodded and bounded off.
An hour later, properly dressed and coiffed, she met Toel on his balcony. He wasn’t alone this time. His underchefs Intovar and Yeum stood on either side of him. Intovar was a spindly fellow with dirty yellow hair and an air of the rodent about him. Yeum was a thick woman with an appealing, heart-shaped face and dusky skin. Neither had ever spoken to her except to give her orders.
Slyr was also there, of course.
On the other side of the balcony—as if relegated there by an invisible line—stood another party. The obvious leader was an impressively tall, narrow woman with close-cropped hair and large emerald eyes. She was accompanied by two men, one brick red with horns and the other a merish-looking person who looked perpetually surprised.
“Chef Toel,” Annaïg said, bowing her head slightly.
He smiled oddly and gestured at the green-eyed woman. “I should like to present you to Chef Phmer, and also her assistants Jolha and Egren.”
“An honor, Chefs,” Annaïg replied.
Phmer smiled, but it reminded Annaïg of the toothy grin of the piranhas that lived in the dunkwaters.
“I’m told you are to thank—or blame—for many of the fads passing through some kitchens,” she said. Her voice was silk, coiled thick and made into a noose.
“I suppose I might be,” Annaïg replied.
“And yet your inventiveness would appear to have its limi
ts.”
“Everything has limits,” Annaïg said cautiously.
“And yet fetching up against these limits has tempted you to do something rather costly,” Phmer went on.
Annaïg looked at Toel, whose expression was blank.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
Phmer’s expression changed, going from one of apparent good humor to barely checked rage.
“Do you deny you broke into my kitchen last night in an attempt to steal the secret of the ninth savor?”
“Chef,” Annaïg said, “I do. I certainly do.”
“And yet we have testimony that you did. And other evidence.”
“Testimony?”
But she couldn’t miss the suppressed look of triumph on Slyr’s face.
“If you did this thing,” Toel said, “you know I must give you over to her. It is the law.”
“It’s permissible to invade another kitchen wholesale and slaughter everyone there, but not to sneak into one to steal?”
“I obtained permission for my raid on Qijne’s kitchen,” he replied. “Nor is that here nor there. You are not the head of a kitchen. Did you do this? Did you try to steal from Phmer?”
“I’ve already said I didn’t,” Annaïg pointed out.
“Well, we shall see about that,” Phmer said. She gestured at a box on the floor, and her red-skinned underchef bent to it. He unlatched one side of the thing, and something crawled out.
She thought at first it was a spider, but its legs weren’t rigid; nor were they as supple as those of a squid, but something in between. And—she realized as it unfolded them—it had wings, rather like those of a mosquito, and in fact now it somewhat resembled one, albeit one that could fit into the palm of her hand.
The wings blurred into motion, and the little creature lifted into the air; three stalks or antennae began probing about as it approached her. She remained still, wondering if it had some sort of sting, and if she had made a mistake. She tried to slow her heart with simple willpower, but it thudded on irrespective.