Ravencry

by Ed McDonald

  I looked down at the clouded blue permafrost. The ice plain was featureless, but there was something down there. A long way down, deep beneath the hardpack glacial ice. Shadows of something that has been buried for all the slow years in which the frozen river had claimed it, inch by grinding inch. Nothing lived down there. But there was a presence all the same.

  ‘Galharrow.’ Crowfoot’s voice was slow and low, as if the words were crushed between thoughts of immense significance. ‘You are failing me, Galharrow.’

  I could have answered, but there was nothing I could say to appease him.

  ‘Where is Shavada’s Eye?’ he grated. He wanted to display more fury, more of his rage at my failure, but to do so would have cost him. I was the barest speck of acknowledgment on the edge of his conscience.

  ‘The Eye is in Valengrad,’ I told him. ‘Saravor has it. I will find it, Lord.’

  ‘The children’s keeper seeks to become Nameless,’ Crowfoot said. ‘The Earth Serpents feel it in their turning, in the very magic that drives the world. If the keeper unmakes the Eye while we are locked against the Deep Kings, we will not have the strength to oppose him. He will master us all.’

  ‘How do I stop him, Lord?’ I asked. The depth of Crowfoot’s will surrounded me, crushing down like the fathoms of ice below, but even as I was crushed I felt it fading, returning to another purpose.

  ‘GALHARROW,’ the whispered roar struck at me, ‘DO NOT FALL TO THE SPIRIT IN THE LIGHT. IT WILL SEEK TO UNMAKE YOU. DO NOT FUCK THIS UP.’

  I became conscious as the first wave of nausea rolled through me. I rolled onto my side and threw up everything that Valiya had made for me, and the brandy besides. I was cold, terribly cold, my fingers turned white. I crawled over to Maldon’s little forge where the heat sent a knifing pain through my cold flesh. The hooded raven peered down from the workbench, head cocked to one side.

  ‘Where is Crowfoot?’ I said.

  ‘There’s no word for it in your language. Your people have never been there,’ the raven said.

  ‘Why is he there when we need him here?’

  ‘This is a war on many fronts, you self-obsessed nit. The Deep Kings have struck back. They’re attempting to sink your whole country beneath the ocean.’

  The bird said it simply and plainly, as though it was nothing more serious than poor weather.

  ‘They what?’

  ‘It’s an ancient working. The kind that bound the Deep Kings beneath the ocean in the first place. There’s something that sleeps in the depths of the eastern ocean, far beyond the Dhojaran Empire. Something vaster and more powerful than Kings or the Nameless, a creature that grew old before there were words to describe it. The Nameless call it The Sleeper. The Deep Kings seek to awaken it.’

  That sounded like the kind of bad that went beyond the daily howling of the sky.

  ‘Can they do it?’ I said. The bird bobbed up and down, spread its wings wide.

  ‘The ritual that the Deep Kings are attempting requires great power. They will sacrifice a million of their followers to generate enough soul magic to contact The Sleeper and drive it to summon waves that will swamp the land. The Sleeper’s influence would tear away the Lady of Waves’ control of the ocean, allowing the drudge to build ships, move freely across the sea. The Nameless cannot allow this. It is a battle of wills. You will have felt the earth shaking beneath you; when The Sleeper stirs. Such is its vastness, you feel it here.’

  ‘They’re causing the earth tremors?’

  ‘Essentially.’

  ‘And all those people that the Deep Kings are going to sacrifice. They’re all going to die?’

  ‘They’re drudge,’ the raven said. ‘A million fewer enemies to deal with is an excellent prospect. Although it won’t be their fighting drudge they eviscerate. But, it’s all part of their war machine. Soul magic has always been part of the Deep Kings’ arsenal, but they have seldom attempted anything on this scale. Shavada’s destruction has left them angry, oh, so angry! They must be spitting blood.’ The bird seemed to find this a positive thing and made laughing sounds. Whatever snip of power Crowfoot had created it from, it seemed his sense of humour had been absorbed with it.

  ‘Crowfoot wants me to stop Saravor unmaking the eye, but didn’t tell me how it can be done, or how I can stop him. What does he want me to do?’ Crowfoot’s messages were seldom hot on detail. I looked at my frozen fingers and remembered his words. The spirit in the light would unmake me, if I let it. I had no idea what that meant. Something to keep to myself, maybe.

  ‘Sort this fucking shit out,’ the bird snarled, and in that I heard Crowfoot’s tone: anger at my incompetence. ‘Crowfoot, Shallowgrave and Nall are freezing their arses to the rock to keep you safe and whilst they’re gone you’ve managed to lose Shavada’s Eye. Get it the fuck back.’

  The raven cocked its head a little, then flapped into the air, up to the window.

  It was clearly too much to expect that Crowfoot’s little helper would have some information that was actually useful to the task at hand, rather than just an admonishment for not having done what he wanted yet, but at least the raven wasn’t as unpleasant as my master’s usual messengers. It made a change not to be covered in my own blood.

  ‘I’ll be watching you,’ the raven said. ‘And if you can’t do what he wants, I’ll find someone else who can. I’m going to go see if I can locate the Eye where you’ve failed.’ With that, it nudged its way outside and flew away.

  ‘Crowfoot is a fucking arsehole,’ Maldon said, peeking in through the door.

  ‘You won’t hear any arguments from me there,’ I said. ‘What do you make of all that?’

  ‘It sounds very fucking bad,’ Maldon said. ‘But then, you have to wonder just how much of this has been going on for the last thousand years, don’t you? How often does one side or the other come up with something like the Heart of the Void?’

  ‘Once was too often,’ I said. ‘The sky should never have been sundered.’ I wondered how many of our people Crowfoot had destroyed when he unleashed his weapon and burned the Misery into being. Too many. Sometimes I wondered if he’d known how badly he would tear reality when he unleashed that power, but I always came to the same conclusion. It was better not to know.

  ‘That came from far, far away,’ Maldon said. He had shrunk back against the wall. Almost as though he were afraid. ‘For a moment, when it flew into you, I felt Crowfoot’s presence. It was so similar to Shavada’s. The power. It’s colossal.’

  ‘Best not to be on the wrong side of it.’

  ‘One of these days you’ll have to tell me how you got that tattoo, and what you owe him,’ Maldon said.

  ‘One day, maybe,’ I said. I didn’t mean it. Some things should not be shared.

  21

  I wrote a letter to Grand Prince Vercanti, giving my recommendations for the new marshal. He was away on the west coast, raising mercenaries to take back holdings we’d lost in Angol, and it would take time to reach him. The Range was going to have to endure for a while. Davandein was his blood kin, and her defeat was going to cost Vercanti face. He probably wouldn’t give my suggestion much time, but I put my weight behind Marshal Ngoya anyway. Colonel Koska had done a good enough job getting the city in order, but he was no great tactician and certainly not the man to lead the Range. Especially not when he was taking his direction from a spirit in the light. One that Crowfoot had warned me against.

  I didn’t know what to think about that.

  ‘Leave the politicking to the cream,’ the raven cawed at me. It had shown up at the office and was currently nesting atop a pile of old warrants.

  ‘We need leads to follow,’ I snapped. ‘Can’t just search the whole city house by house. I’m working on it.’ The raven flared its feathers out, a hostile reaction, but despite spending several days flying around the city it hadn’t turned up anything, so it had no
argument to make.

  I was sealing the letter with wax when Amaira came in.

  ‘I love it,’ Amaira proclaimed upon seeing the bird.

  ‘Keep away from it,’ I said. ‘It might have diseases.’

  Amaira evidently didn’t believe me and went as far as to disobey me, stroking the crow’s feathers. I was lacing up my boots, in a rush.

  ‘Why don’t you put it outside?’ she asked.

  ‘Just leave it alone,’ I snapped, and Amaira recoiled a little.

  ‘Now, now,’ the raven said in a voice altogether too friendly for Crowfoot. ‘No need to snap!’

  ‘It talks!’ Amaira declared with delight. You’d think that she might have been more unnerved by a talking bird, but Nenn had been passing her Misery shit for over a year now, and when you grow up alongside a cracked and screaming sky, it takes a lot to faze you.

  ‘What use is a bird that can’t talk? Clever things, birds,’ the raven said pleasantly. I immensely disliked its talking to her.

  ‘Message from Tnota, Captain-Sir!’ she said, and snapped me a salute.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ I said as I took the scrap of paper from her. She looked like she’d not been getting much sleep lately. I knew the cellar was cold and uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t allow her to be anywhere else when the barrage came in.

  ‘Why not, Captain-Sir?’ she said.

  ‘Because you’re not a soldier. You’re a servant. Servants don’t salute.’

  ‘I will be a Blackwing one day,’ Amaira said.

  I paused with the envelope in my hands. I set it down.

  ‘No. You won’t.’

  Amaira stared at me as though I’d just said I was marrying a Bride.

  ‘Why not? I’m smart enough,’ she said. ‘And I can fight. You can teach me.’

  I was in no mood to have this conversation now.

  ‘When you’re older I’m going to get you a job as a servant for some nice lady who lives a long, long way from the Range. And then you’ll go and live in her palace and do for her what you do for me. Maybe one day you’ll run her household, if you stick at it long enough. Safe, and calm, and away from this damned broken sky.’

  Amaira’s brows drew in with challenge, her lip caught between her teeth. Anger didn’t suit her, but I gestured for her to speak her mind. Better to have things out in the open.

  ‘I don’t want to go away. I want to stay here. It’s my home. Everything I got is here.’

  ‘Just because you’ve picked up a turd, doesn’t mean you have to treasure it,’ I said. ‘You’ll see that I’m right, in time. There’re better ways to spend a life than running down scumbags on the Range. People don’t like us, Amaira. They fear us. I don’t want to hear of this again.’

  She pouted, hesitated for a moment and then snapped me a salute and stalked away. I heard her banging her fist in anger against the wall panels as she went down the corridor. I grumbled in the back of my throat. Every child wants to be a soldier when they grow up, but only because they’ve never understood that when the game ends, everything’s over permanently. Amaira was too young to understand she was dreaming of a short life of blood and danger.

  ‘Can’t turn everyone away,’ the raven cawed from the corner of the room. ‘Crowfoot will have to take a new captain sometime. You won’t live forever, and it would make sense to choose someone who knows the ropes.’

  ‘You’ll take my people over my dead body,’ I said. The bird seemed to find that amusing, stepping from foot to foot as it nodded in agreement.

  I opened the note. Hastily written. I read it through once and was out the door.

  I raced across to the citadel. Many of the soldiers were wearing yellow hoods over their uniforms, showing their support, or thanks for the shield that protected them, and the red-neon message across the citadel read BRIGHT LADY WATCH OVER YOU. I scowled, and turned my collar up against the blustering wind.

  I flashed my black iron seal and it cleared me a path to the muster yard. A whole lot of men were getting prepped, burnished-steel cuirasses, boots polished black. When Tnota saw me he began waving and yammering as a couple of men with yellow hoods held him back. Anger cleared men from my path.

  ‘If you want to keep your hands, you’ll get them off my man right now,’ I said. The soldiers let him go.

  ‘He’s not to be allowed to go running off,’ one of them said uncertainly.

  ‘The bastards are trying to send me into the Misery!’ Tnota said. He was heavy with sweat, stank of it. He’d not been back into the Misery since we’d fetched Dantry Tanza from Cold’s Crater.

  ‘You don’t have to go into the Misery,’ I said, scowling. ‘What the fuck is going on here?’

  I took a good look at the soldiers around me as they strapped packs of dry rations and ammunition onto horses. None of them looked like slouches.

  ‘It’ll just be like old times,’ Nenn said, joining us and throwing an arm around each of our necks. ‘You along too, Ryhalt?’

  ‘They want to send me in up to my pits,’ Tnota said. There was real fear in his voice at the prospect. He’d always had the healthy respect for the Misery that a navigator ought, but he’d taken missions without complaint. Losing a limb had changed him, as if the surgeon’s knife had taken more than just his arm. I flexed my fingers; I could appreciate that.

  I noticed a familiar face among the mustering soldiers. Captain Gurling Stracht had been a soldier on the Range before I began serving there. Pushing through his fifties like a log washing down a river, he’d ignored his baldness and wore what was left of his white hair long, in a tail. His face was pitted and dried, lined with cracks that mirrored those in the sky. He’d spent more time out in the Misery than anyone else living, and the bad magic had bled into him over the years, turned his skin a sallow yellow. Could spot him a mile away.

  ‘Good to see you, Gurling,’ I said.

  Stracht looked at me, grunted and chewed his liquorice root. There was something deeply alien about him now. He should have retired years ago, the moment he saw that the Misery was taking a toll on him, but he was, without doubt, our best scout. It wasn’t possible to really know the Misery, given the constant shifting, but he knew the place better than anyone else.

  ‘Galharrow,’ he said. ‘Should have known you’d still be alive.’

  ‘I usually am,’ I said.

  Stracht grunted something that could have been laughter, but it was a feeble, dusty thing, as if his lungs had given up on him. He was worn ragged, cheeks sunk, nails black with dirt. The cup of wine in his hand didn’t look to have been the first.

  ‘What’s the chew?’

  ‘Found them, didn’t I? The bastards throwing the sky-fires.’

  A surge of something hot and angry rushed through me.

  ‘Where?’ I could practically feel the swing of the steel, the thunder of the guns. Nenn was right. There was vengeance to be dealt.

  ‘Crystal forest,’ Stracht said. ‘Nine days east. Or that’s where it was, last. You know it?’

  I punched the air. I’d told Davandein to send Stracht there. The crystal forest wasn’t really a forest, but a broad, flat depression where thick spears of rock crystal, or clouded glass, rose from the red sand. There were thousands of them in disordered ranks, covering a few square miles. When the wind blew between them they resonated, creating an unpleasant moaning. It was an unsettling, fixed point in the Misery, like Cold’s Crater.

  ‘By day, the drudge are smashing the pillars and making piles of crystal,’ Stracht said. ‘We snuck in by night. Killed some sentries. They have a choir of what I guess are sorcerers, eight of them. Didn’t look like any drudge I seen before. Huge, they are, size of a bear. Maybe fatter. Lungs bigger than a horse’s arse. It’s their singing that does it. They make one hell of a racket, and then the forest all starts to glow. Then one of those piles of crystal
they been smashing in the day will shoot off into the sky like a firework.’

  It was a long way to throw something.

  ‘So it’s simple enough,’ Nenn said. ‘We’re heading out there to shut the singers up.’

  ‘Something tells me it won’t be that simple,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing ever is,’ Stracht said. He finished his wine, looked around for more. An obliging serving girl handed it to him whilst trying to avoid touching his hand. She probably thought that the poison that had coloured him copper could be caught. Maybe she was right.

  ‘Steel is simple,’ Nenn said. ‘Bring it and swing it. Nothing I haven’t done before.’

  ‘Getting to them is the hard part. They have soldiers. I reckoned three thousand.’

  ‘That’s a lot of drudge,’ I said. ‘And a lot of our soldiers followed Davandein when she ran. Valengrad doesn’t have the manpower to match them, not nine days deep in the Misery.’

  Stracht nodded.

  ‘You’re not wrong. But all the soldiers leave at night. Don’t want them to interfere with the sound, I think. There’s a window where the singers are vulnerable.’

  ‘So why didn’t you grack them already?’

  ‘They got two Darlings standing watch over them, and one of them was something special. Maybe something new. Looked like a Darling, ’cept his face was all fished-up, like a drudge and it had a tail. I weren’t going to go suicide against them.’