“They are too many.”
“They will keep bombarding us if we do not engage them.”
Stype and Iliff stared intently on the other for another moment, then Stype drew his sword and disappeared from the doorway. The guards who had been helping with the walls now ran past the fallen stones to join their captain. Iliff looked after them. The remaining members of the wall crew lingered around him, peeking up at the trusses that creaked beneath the vast, drunken weight of the ceiling.
“You heard him,” Iliff said. “To the lower levels. All of you.”
“What about you?” one of them asked.
“I’ll come later.”
“Master—”
“Go!” he shouted.
As the men hurried from the Hall, Iliff caught Newt peering back, his young eyes beseeching him to follow. Iliff turned from them and looked over his walls. His failed walls. Though several of the lantern stands were fallen, and the tools scattered, the mortar box remained standing. Iliff loaded one of the dropped boards. He picked up a trowel, approached the wall, and pushed a blade full of mortar into one of its fissures. His wrist cocked and turned, as though of its own memory, until the rupture was filled and smoothed over. He moved to the fissure beside it and began again. It was like so many dreams he’d had while in the swamp. Dreams where he was sealing the stone, gap by gap, until the prison was solid again and unending.
At length, Iliff stepped back and looked over his work. The cleft continued to loom over him as did the fractured wall’s great height and breadth. His eyes fell to his small trowel. Skye was right, and Adramina before her. It was a tool that no longer served him.
He cast the trowel away and limped to the center of the Hall. The Keep boomed again. A truss at the far end of the Hall splintered and fell. Stones cascaded after it, smashing to the floor, tumbling past him.
Iliff knelt and closed his eyes.
“Adramina,” he said.
He waited, half-expecting her to answer this time, but she did not.
“I called to you once when I was cold and starving,” he said, “and awoke to find food and fire. I called to you again when I was lost in a swamp and awoke to be shown the way from that place, the way back to life. Though I did not understand it at the time, I believe both to have been your doing. But upon being delivered here, instead of embracing life, I set about partitioning it, walling it off from itself. And the result has been death and ruin.”
The Keep staggered around him. He thought of Stype outside, commanding the hopeless defense against the Garott. He thought of Newt and Skye and all of the others huddled together in the lowest levels of the Keep. He thought of the young Garott soldier dead inside the weaving workshop.
He leaned forward until his forehead rested against the floor.
“I appeal to you again,” he said, “but not for myself this time. No, my third and final appeal is for these people. Both Fythe and Garott. I ask that you deliver them as you once delivered me, Adramina. Cast my walls, cast me, where you may, even if it is to our doom. But please… please help these people.”
He stayed there with his head pressed to the floor. More stones crashed around him.
“Are you there?” he cried. “Do you hear me?”
“I am here,” came her gentle voice.
Chapter 28
When Iliff raised his head, he found himself kneeling on a woven mat. Adramina sat before him in her elegant chair of spun roots. Her soft light illuminated the earthen room that was quiet, save for where water trickled into an invisible pool. Iliff breathed fragrant, familiar air.
“Have I died?” he asked her.
“Not yet.”
“Then I am dreaming?”
“Yes,” she said. “So let us talk while we may.”
He looked on her iridescent green eyes, on the tresses of hair that framed her smooth, placid face, on the gown that flowed to her bare feet.
“But you are so vivid,” he said.
“It is often in dreams that we see clearest of all. It is why I called you here.”
“Why haven’t you appeared before?” he asked. “Why did you let me suffer?”
“This journey you have chosen. I told you I could not make it for you.” Her voice softened. “But do not judge suffering so harshly, Iliff. For indeed, it has proven itself a faithful guide. Think of all the times it has led to your release.”
Like visions, Iliff watched his escapes—from the prison, the mines, the swamp. She was right. It had been his misery, his feeling that there must be something more, that had spurred him from those hopeless places. He thought now of the battle being waged for the Keep, where his prostrate body slept and dreamt.
“Yes, but will my suffering deliver these people?” he asked.
“That depends on you, Iliff.”
He shook his head. “I’ve failed at everything,” he said. “I lost the path at the outset. I failed to govern Troll. I brought ruin to the forest. I gave up the quest for the Sun. And now I’ve brought ruin to these people.” He looked up at her. “You know this. You’ve seen it.”
“Let us start at the beginning,” she said. “All Seekers lose their path and often at the outset. They stumble into pits of craving and forgetting. What is important is that they come to understand the futility of such places, that they emerge again. Many do not, Iliff. You did.”
“But do they emerge with trolls?” he muttered.
“Only if the troll and Seeker are extraordinary.”
“Extraordinary?”
“Trolls dwell in darkness. They cling to it. So the troll must be extraordinary to have even the least desire to leave, and the Seeker extraordinary to be able to extract it and carry it into the light of the world.”
“But I could not govern him.”
“It is not your duty to govern such beings. Indeed, attempting to do so will make them defiant. It is only your duty to see that they not govern you. Neither in desire nor in fear. Otherwise, they will become truly awful.”
Iliff thought about his trials with Troll.
“You cannot change what is done,” she said. “But what you do now may redeem you both, as well as the people on whose behalf you now appeal. When last you called to me, you asked to be shown life. And that is what I have given you, Iliff. Life. With all of its lights and shadows. Tell me now, what have you seen?”
Iliff closed his eyes and frowned. “I have seen great joys, but also great sorrows. I have seen fondness and hatred, peace and war, fairest beauty and foulest horror. I have seen my walls smother that which they would protect, and embolden that which they would keep out.”
As he spoke, another vision appeared to him. It was the tree Skye had shown him in the woods, the one circled with vines. As Iliff named each pair of opposites, he saw the pair of struggling vines, then the root from which they emerged.
“I have seen the man I hoped to be,” Iliff said, recalling his early days among the Fythe when he was their newly appointed Master of Walls, “and the return of the creature I fear I am.”
Again, the vines and the common root.
Iliff started from the vision, eyes wide.
“Now you see,” Adramina said.
He did see. It was all very clear suddenly, and yet he could not believe what he was about to say. “Troll is… he and I are…” He took a moment to compose his thoughts. “We are kindred?”
Adramina smiled. “It is why you were drawn to him and he to you.”
Iliff remembered his first encounter with Troll. He remembered the sound that had lured him inside the black tunnel. Crack. Crack. Crack. The sound of Troll’s axe against a stone wall.
“But we are nothing alike.”
“Your nature tends toward creation,” she said, “his toward destruction. And yet such natures depend on and influence one another. As do all of the qualities you have here named.”
“But how—?”
She raised her finger to her lips. “There is little time. You will awaken soon.” Her gaze narrowed
and then expanded, and for a brief moment Iliff glimpsed the many colored doors of her dwelling. It seemed that more of them were open now. “I believe you know what to do,” she said.
Iliff calmed himself. In his mind, he called to Troll. The name echoed throughout their space as though he had spoken it. When he called a second time, an answering rumble, deep and distinct, made him open his eyes.
But there was only Adramina before him. She smiled and nodded.
“You have used your final appeal,” she said. “But though you may not call to me again on your journey, a part of me shall remain with you. Do you still carry the tinder pouch?”
“Yes, but…” He stopped and looked up.
“It only worked one time? Remember what I told you,” she said. “The conditions must be so, but upon giving spark, it can illuminate even the darkest places. Indeed, it already has.”
There were so many questions Iliff wanted to ask her, but she quickly spoke again.
“Go now,” she said, “you are beginning to awaken.” As Iliff looked on her, he saw that the lines of her were fading, the shadows of the room edging over her light. He felt the ground hardening beneath his folded knees.
“Wait!” he called.
“Yes?” she said, still receding.
“We’ve talked nothing of the Sun.”
“We’ve talked only of the Sun,” she said, and was gone.
* * *
Cold stone pressed into Iliff, and he groaned. When he tried to move, his joints and muscles burned with the slow return of blood. How long had he been out? He rested for a moment, his forearms against the floor, eyes closed, listening. The Great Hall was still, but beyond it, but still rather close, he could hear the clamor and cries of battle.
His mind clenched in anger.
Hadn’t Adramina just granted his final appeal? Hadn’t he asked that these people be spared?
Iliff pressed himself until he was sitting, then gained his feet. Bits of stone spilled from his clothes and clattered around him. The Great Hall was nearly black, the lanterns all gone out. With his arms outstretched, Iliff stumbled over rubble, and soon encountered a large stone, one that must have fallen from the wall. He felt his way around it and moved forward only to encounter another stone, and then another. Where was the main door?
When Iliff stopped to orient himself, he could feel it. Cool air dipping down and swirling around him. He craned his head and beheld the broken sphere of gray night. The Hall had fallen in while he slept.
He looked about, adrenaline enhancing his vision. The stones stood in dark, mountainous piles on all sides. He saw that he had been spared by the grace of two trusses that had become lodged above him into a cross, deflecting the falling stones from his dormant body.
Iliff tested the nearest stone, then climbed onto it. He made his way up the steep collapse. Stones shifted and settled beneath his weight, but did not fall. The farther he climbed, the clearer became the voices and sounds of movement. By the time he reached the top, the sky had begun to pale. Iliff hesitated, dreading to peer over and out onto the bluff. But he had to see what had become of Stype and the guards. He had to see that Skye and the others had made it out.
He climbed the final stone and stood atop it. Bracing against a smoke-colored wind, he looked about. The destruction over the bluff was complete. The outer wall lay in ruins, its towers severed and toppled. The inner wall had fared little better. And the bluff was overrun. Iliff squinted down to where the Garott stood over surrendered Fythe, the latter kneeling in broken rows with their hands atop their heads. The Fythe would go into exile, he thought, someplace far away. Skye would go too.
But he could not go with them.
With tears climbing his throat, Iliff began his descent down the ruins of the Keep. He would help the Fythe; he would see to it that they were afforded safe passage. Then he would bid them farewell.
He had not gotten far when someone shouted: “Hullo there!”
Iliff turned his head and looked down. One of the Garott was waving his arm in hail. But the voice was not sharp like the Garotts’, and his armor was different. Blue points flashed from inside his helmet. Was this his predecessor? Was this Depar?
“Hullo!” the person called again. “Is that Iliff?”
No, he knew this voice.
But it did not make any sense. Iliff looked over the bluff again. When he did, something magical seemed to happen. The conquering Garott lightened and became Fythe, and the kneeling Fythe darkened into Garott. But it was no magic, Iliff quickly realized. Moments before, in the dim of early dawn, he had seen what he had expected to see. Now the reality was coalescing before his eyes and mind. The Fythe were safe. The Fythe were victorious.
“Stype!” he cried and hurried the rest of the way down the collapse.
Chapter 29
Iliff leapt the final few feet and ran to where Stype stood. Stype had removed his helmet, and his fair hair shone to his shoulders. He stepped from the company of guards who stood over the surrendered Garott.
“Stype,” Iliff panted, seizing his hand. “You are all right!”
Stype smiled wearily and received Iliff’s embrace. “Miraculously, we lost no one,” he said. “My sister led the people out the Keep’s postern door, and some guards have gone down to help them. They will join us shortly.”
Iliff looked along the lines of Garott. “What’s this? What has happened?”
Stype lifted his shoulders. “I still don’t know exactly,” he said. “The Garott had demolished the walls and were scaling the bluff. Their numbers were so great, we could hardly hold our position. But suddenly there came a terrible commotion from the town. The sound of stones smashing and wood breaking, and horrid cries. The Garott turned from us and hurried back down the bluff. We thought perhaps that a struggle for leadership had broken out, that they were battling amongst themselves. But when we approached the verge of the bluff, we saw that this was not so. What they battled was a giant creature.”
“A creature?” Iliff said.
“I could not see it well in the dark, but it was black and as large as a tower. Neither arrow nor blade seemed to harm it. It kicked through wooden screens and smashed down catapults. It batted away Garott or seized them up and hurled them off. Many Garott fled the town. Others ran up the ramp, pledging their surrender in exchange for our protection. We granted it and formed a line along the front of the bluff. All that moved in the town now was the creature. It stood in the market, eyeing us. Its harsh breathing frightened us all. At length, it leaned its head back and sniffed the air. We braced ourselves for its charge, but it turned and ran from us, its footfalls shaking the earth for what seemed miles.”
“Where? Where did it go to?”
Stype pointed south, beyond the fallen wall to where the land sloped into deep woodland.
Iliff took a decisive breath. “I must go there,” he said, stepping from Stype.
Stype seized his arm, his face tight with concern. “What’s this?” he said.
Iliff met his blue gaze and, for the first time, opened his thoughts to Stype. He allowed him to feel into his past, into places he had long kept hidden. He projected them, even. Slowly, Stype’s brow smoothed.
“You know this creature.”
“Yes,” Iliff said.
Stype nodded his head. “The Garotts’ steeds are fast,” he said. “Take one and you may catch him.”
* * *
Iliff descended the ramp atop a black mount. In the growing light, he saw that everything the Garott had gotten up the day before was askew or in piles. The wooden screens. The catapults. Before him, flames licked through the rooftops of workshops and cottages. Iliff guided the horse the length of the town, skirting the debris and broken bodies that littered the lanes.
They soon arrived at the fallen section of south wall. Iliff looked up and down its length. The towers to either side of the collapse leaned and turned inward. What had taken more than a year to build had probably come down in seconds.
Iliff steered the horse through a gap in the stones and encountered two of the siege towers in ruins, smashed together. A line of deep depressions tore the ground beyond them. Heart pounding, Iliff raised his head. The depressions led south and a bit west. He drew a resolute breath and spurred the horse forward.
The horse was swift. Within moments they were flying through the Garotts’ encampment. Nothing moved now among the hollow, flapping tents. Glancing around, Iliff took in the things the timber wall had concealed: mountains of earth, many buckets, long lengths of rope, the black openings of underground shafts.
The horse leapt into the verge of what had once been the King’s Preserve, reduced now to an expanse of severed stumps and discarded limbs. There were no more depressions here. Iliff looked to where the line of them had entered from the field. He turned and tried to gauge their course. At the far end of the Preserve stood a thick wood. Iliff trotted the horse along the tree line until they came to an opening. To either side, splintered trees leaned and fell away.
The swath led them down the slope of the hill and into a subtle valley. Here the broken trees and branches turned and ran with the valley floor. The deep depressions reappeared in the black loam. Iliff stopped now and again to listen ahead, but heard nothing. After a time the ground leveled, and the earth began sucking at the horse’s hooves. Iliff drew the reins. He recognized the limp, dark growth and dank smells from years before. They had come farther than he thought. They were on the verge of the swamp.
Iliff dismounted and tethered the horse to a tree. He looked around. The swath had ended, and the ground beneath him was too spongy to hold tracks. He cupped his hands to either side of his mouth.
“Troll!” he called.
The last time he had called aloud to his companion was on the morning of the fire. That seemed like a lifetime ago. Iliff waited now. The horse huffed at his back. Iliff walked toward where the growth was thickest. When he did, the foliage ahead of him began to rustle. Iliff froze and tried to peer inside.
“Troll?”
He took a tentative step forward.
Lights and Shadows (The Prisoner and the Sun #2) Page 18