Opening rheumy eyes, he saw immediately the fires blazing down at the city wall, with the majority clustered near the Shield Gate. So Bardow had been right about Byrnak's love of night's drama and while he watched more fires began to bloom in the dimness some distance off to the south. As his eyes took in the darkness he began to espy large bands of riders moving through the even, snowy gloom beyond the walls. That meant that Byrnak and the other Shadowkings remained wary of committing the fullness of their strength. Of course, the dream he had just experience seemed to suggest their ultimate triumph...but the trouble with some dream visions was that their meanings were so obscure that only a genius or a madman could fathom them, and Atroc had only ever aspired to be half of either and neither at the same time.
He rose from his cramped position and blew out the rush lights one by one. Yasgur would undoubtedly be asking for him very soon….
There was a knock at the door.
“Master Atroc, I am sent by Lord Regent Yasgur to ask that you join him I the vantage chamber in the Keep of Night.”
He chuckled quietly to himself, then cleared his throat. “I hear and obey,” he said loudly. “Inform the Lord Regent that I shall do all of his bidding that my aged bones can manage.”
As the messenger's footsteps walked away, Atroc laughed darkly to himself while gathering up the herb bundles, now reduced to cold charred twigs, and flung them in the hearth. Perhaps it would be best to keep his dreams to himself, at least until he had a better idea of their meaning. For while Prince Yasgur certainly had motes of madness in his character, he seldom showed evidence of genius when it came to assaying enigmas.
* * *
In bewildering silence she drifted, with her memories and thoughts trailing, nagging, dragging, shaming. This was a place of timeless time, of no thought and no action and thus no pain, yet still she was followed by all the spectral rags of her life, persistent ghosts which steadfastly refused to dissolve into the flowing silence. And even though she had managed to banish their tormenting presences from her mind, they never gave up trying to return, coming forward to present themselves to her or arranging themselves into stories too frightening to contemplate.
When one of those old dogged memories, an image of herself, broke away from the rest and floated up and out of sight she felt a measure of satisfaction. Later, however, it reappeared, gliding up from below and bringing a long string of shadowy, ominous memories. The image of herself looked serene and slightly amused, and as it came towards her she tried to turn aside, avoid contact, but failed. That errant fragment of herself thrust the memory string at her and she plunged into a dark story.
In the beginning, the world moved in the darkness of the valleys of the Great Lake of Night. Then came the Fathertree and the Earthmother, although they had other names then, and brought daylight and seasons, sowings and harvests, that the beast herds would raise their faces to the light and become human. The humans divided themselves into the tribes of the People, learned well the lessons given by the Earthmother and the Fathertree, and worshipped as they prospered.
Then, from the well of the Void stepped the Prince of Dusk with nobility upon his brow, joy in his eyes, a smile on his lips and a gift in his hands for the Earthmother. This was the Motherseed, a wondrous object which was both key and door to a realm full of life and growth and all the green verdancy cherished so deeply by the Earthmother. The Prince of Dusk tried to persuade his fellow divinities to keep the human tribes low and untutored, saying that learning and knowledge would bring them only pain and suffering. The Earthmother listened and agreed, but the Fathertree refused and went to live among the tribes of the People.
While the Prince of Dusk and the Earthmother oversaw the building of great temples in their name and enjoyed the devotion of innumerable followers, the Fathertree found that pain and suffering could exist without knowledge and learning. So he created the Crystal Eye so that healers could heal, children would live and wisdom would spread. This angered the Prince of Dusk and the Earthmother who came to him with the intent of forcing him to unmake it, but he had already made a gift of it to the wisest man of the tribes. He in turn had used it to teach many willing pupils how to wield the Godriver, as the Lesser Power was then known.
This infuriated the Prince of Dusk who raised up an army from his followers, imprisoned the Fathertree, and pursued the wise man and his pupils into deep, elder forests. The Earthmother saw unarmed people dying on spears or by club blows and, now knowing that the Prince was wrong, went to the Fathertree and offered her help and her love. Together they confronted the Prince of Dusk and when the Earthmother openly denounced him and rejected his advances, his anger turned to hate. But she had the Motherseed and the wise men had the Crystal Eye so he was forced to release the Fathertree and retreat to his great temple.
There he brooded and nursed and fed his hate for many a year before coming to a fateful decision. There was no hesitation in him as he delved into the abysses of the world to see where the Great Lake of Night seeped through. In one vast underground cavern where darkness lapped at far-flung shores, he found a proud and savage race whom he raised from beasthood to become the Daemonkind, first and deadliest of his servants. Next, he cast his gaze over all his worshippers and selected a few of the most loyal for a similar elevation, and they were the First Woken. After that, it was easier to construct all the sinews of the war to come, the armies, the weapons, the duty, the training, the fortifications and bastions which were ultimately overshadowed by the immense citadel of Jagreag.
The war itself was a convulsion of blood that darkened every land and every life. Seas reared up to bury forests and mountains while new peaks and fields were wrenched up from the bed of the oceans. The vast struggle culminated in the year-long Battle of Kogil which ended with the fall of Jagreag, brought about by the Staff of the Void, made by the Earthmother's own hand.
The Prince of Dusk was banished to his newly-formed realm, where he gave himself a new name, the Lord of Twilight. His surviving servants were imprisoned, apart from the Daemonkind who had had sent away at the battle's end. Yet this marked merely the beginning of an ages-long struggle less cataclysmic than the first but pursued with the same relentless purpose….
The story tailed away with a few of the turning points of history, the rise and fall of empires both dark and light, the instigation of the Wellsource followed by the seeding and growth of the Rootpower. The founding of the Khatrimantine Empire and its defeat a thousand years later, along with the destruction of the Rootpower….
As the string of memories came to an end, she could not help noticing the thread of her own story weaving in amongst it all, brought to an abrupt end by that fall from the top of the High Basilica in Trevada. Then the memory string was gone, falling away, back into the depths, but the memory image of herself was smiling at her now. It glided towards her, garments slowly rippling, arms spread wide to gather her in despite her fear and panic, to wrap itself around her -
A long, long instant passed and all her perceptions changed. She was aware of her body and its weight as she lay on her back, and the uneven ground beneath, and the damp grass she could feel with her fingertips. She sat up dizzily, looked down at herself and saw that she was wearing the shawl and blue robe of the memory image. She felt ready to weep or scream yet could do neither…
Your road has been long and hard, Suviel, daughter of my daughters, yet your fight is not yet done, your song is not yet sung.
“I do not understand,” she said, covering her face with her hands. “Who am I?”
You will learn all that eventually, little by little. For now, I have a small task for you to perform. Look.
Opening her eyes she raised her hand in time to see a young, slender woman with long fair hair appear some distance away.
Go over to her. I will tell you what to do and say.
Suviel Hantika sighed and it was a sound as empty as her memory. Then she got to her feet and did the Earthmother's bidding.
Part Three
Chapter Seventeen
A word and a sign,
In the deep, desolate dark,
Where bones and broken banners,
Litter the ancient stones.
—Calabos, Beneath The Towers, Act 4, 15
Snow was falling steadily. Outside the city walls the air stank of burnt earth and badly charred flesh. The acidic smell raked at Nerek's nose and throat as she rode out of the Shield Gate with Yarram's one hundred knights. The first thing she saw was a wide section of wall along from the gate where blackened blocks of stones were still smoking despite the barrels of water poured down from the parapet. Nerek had been dozing in her room in the palace when the attacks began, but it took her only moments to get dressed, armed and armoured and hurrying from her chamber. Then she had paused, remembering the note sent last night by Bardow which almost ordered her to be at his chambers by dawn. But she reasoned that this attack would be over before then, and resumed her dash through the palace.
By the time she had reached the city walls, sheets of flame were leaping up as high as the battlements. Although everyone on the wall worked frantically to douse the sorcerous fires, at no time did they seem to be a genuine threat. But when the bands of enemy riders emerged from the chill gloom, and other fires started to break out all along the riverdocks and waterfronts, the intent became clear – terror. Up on the wall Nerek had heard first-hand accounts of how lone figures had come stumbling out of the wintry night then, by the light of battlement torches, ran screaming towards the wall where they burst apart in a hideous eruption of crawling flame. The thought that this had started happening within the city put looks of dread on the faces of the men and women guarding the wall.
When word went round that Yarram was soon to take a cavalry company out to harry the enemy, Nerek descended from the walls and hastened to the Imperial barracks. She had been accorded the status of a knight with the Protectorate Order, which was how she came to be riding forth now into the icy darkness. Yarram's knights were intended as a deterrent to the roving enemy bands reported in the vicinity. Less than a third of them were light cavalry, garbed in padded armour and carrying short bows. Five of them, Nerek noticed, were women who wore their hair short beneath soft grey cowls while the male bowmen wore the more usual leather caps or half-helms. They were all grown women and looked so sombre and unsmiling that Nerek felt an inexplicable kinship with them.
“Never seen them afore?”
A brown-robed rider had edged closer to her, a young fair-haired woman who seemed to be unarmed. She was also vaguely familiar.
“No,” Nerek admitted, then recognition came. “You're the mage who rode with Mazaret's patrols….”
A nod. “Terzis of Ornim,” the woman said.
“Nerek….just Nerek. So – who are they?”
Terzis leaned a little closer and lowered her voice.
“They're all women who have lost children or husbands to either the Mogaun or the Shadowkings' attacks. They're known as the Daughters of the Fathertree – some of them used to be with the Hunters Children until they fell out among themselves, others fought with the Valemen in the northern Rukangs…”
Nerek was about to ask why they were called the Daughters of the Fathertree when Yarram halted the column and split it in two, which left Terzis and herself separated and the Daughters divided. One group would ride up around the northern part of the wall while the other, Nerek's, would patrol the southern part then, assuming no serious encounters, head south down the Grainway in the hope of meeting reinforcements sent from Sejeend a day ago.
As they rode Nerek could see that the majority of the fire blackenings marked the west-facing stretch of the wall which made her wonder if the enemy had hoped to burn out the gates. But it was the strange absence of enemy raiding bands which pricked her unease – they came across recent hoof tracks through the snow and the mud, all churned well as if by the passage of a great many horses. Nerek and her fellow riders seemed to be the only living things moving through the freezing, shadowy dark.
Trying to keep the city walls always in view, the column of knights followed by the light of their torches a drover's track which led round to the east. At one point it climbed a long ridge between two copses and from the crest they could just see over Besh-Darok's wall to catch sight of the fires still burning over at the waterfront. Nerek saw the three bow-women in her column mutter among themselves, then pause when they noticed Nerek's regard. One of the Daughters, a tall, raven-haired woman with pale eyes, stared back with open dislike, spat to the side and rode on in silence with the others. Nerek shrugged and looked away.
The column reached the south-eastern end of the wall without incident. The massive fortification, some forty paces thick at this point, came to the brink of the headland and turned north along the cliffside, its foundations laid solidly in the ancient rock. Strong breezes were blowing from the north, hurling flurries of snow down on the riders so they scarcely paused before turning their mounts southward. Their commander was Yarram' deputy, Chaugor, a burly, bearded no-nonsense Dalbari who let them know that they would head for the shelter of Crownhawks Wood, in case the weather worsened.
Once they left the field and farm trails for the straight and well-made Grainway, their progress became swifter, but even with torch-bearers riding ahead this was seldom more than a canter in the enveloping night. Once or twice, Nerek glimpsed lights far away to the west but these soon disappeared, obscured by the heights and dips of the landscape. Occasionally, the passage of their horses would stir a bird from its perch in bush or tree, but other than that the land seemed cold and dead.
By the time they reached the edge of Crownhawks Wood, it was snowing more steadily. There was also a yellow light visible through the leafless tree and the blur of the snow. Nerek had heard that the Grainway curved through these woods before coming to a gorge beyond which lay the plains and low hills of Eastern Khatris. The light grew larger as they rode and Nerek knew it had to be a fire of some size, as did Chaugor for he slowed the column and ordered his light riders forward to scout. They numbered eleven, six armed with bows, four with spears and shields, and Nerek who readied her buckler but kept her sabre sheathed. As they rode on ahead, the main body of the column followed at a distance, torches doused.
Nerek could not help but feel alarmed at this tactic, which seemed to make the scouting party a tempting target. Then the fire came into view and caught all her attention. A pair of open wagons sat burning on the road with motionless bodies scattered all around them. Further along was a box wagon lying smashed on its side, smouldering and stinking of death. Then suddenly they heard it, the clash of weapons mingled with cries coming from further on, where the road entered the gorge. Their officer, a sergeant who was one of the spearmen, ordered one of the bowmen to ride back to Chaugor with the news while the rest waited by the blazing wagons. But even as the messenger was cantering away, the sergeant changed his mind.
“Let's find out what be happening up there,” he said, and they continued along the road at the trot.
They had gone little more than a score of yards when the sergeant's folly became apparent. The rapid thud of hooves came from their left and Nerek turned to see at least twenty masked riders, some with torches, charging out from a gap in the trees and straight towards them. Two men without masks led them and one of them she recognised immediately as Mazaret, and so pale and gaunt that it could only be one of the rivenshades. The sight of the other man was like a blow, wrenching at the pit of her stomach, almost causing her to drop her reins. It was Byrnak.
For an awful instant their gazes locked, then the dread peril they were in came upon her in a rush as the panicking sergeant roared to follow him. She dug in her heels and her horse leaped forward, along with five of the others. The rest were caught up in a brief, brutal fight which left two spearmen and bow-carriers cut down and slain. Nerek looked round to see that two Daughters of the Fathertree had reined in to a halt not far from the scene of
slaughter. Calmly they readied their bows as the enemy riders turned their attention to them.
The sound of fighting from further along the road was louder and Nerek turned her horse about, wary of being caught between two groups of enemies. Then the masked riders began cantering towards the Daughters, all of them shadowy figures limned with the glow of the fires. In the next moment, however, the mass thunder of hooves heralded the arrival of Chaugor and the rest of his knights, galloping hard, their furs and cloaks billowing behind them, their horses exhaling pale gouts of vapour.
Nerek saw all this despite the darkness, for a strange alteration was sweeping across her body, a tingle of power that raced through her from neck to loins, from fingertips to tongue and caressed her ears and eyes. Wellsource power, rich and alluring. She could see that Byrnak and the Mazaret rivenshade had slowed their riders, and that he was staring across the night-veiled distance at her, his lips smiling and moving…
Join us, Nerek...there is a special place for you at our master's side...can you feel the power of the Wellsource once more? - such is his regard for you that he has had certain barriers removed...Why not cast off those doomed ones and return to us...return to us…
The bond faded a little and as the knights came riding on with swords bared, the masked horsemen turned aside and dashed into the woods. A cautious Chaugor resisted the temptation to follow, instead gathering his men together with torchbearers outermost as he waited for the survivors of the scouts to rejoin them. Nerek urged her mount into a trot but her head was spinning with a confusion of thoughts as her very senses continued to quiver in the flow of that power.
It had not been Byrnak, after all, she realised but his pet warlord Azurech, the one that Mazaret had been hunting. Bardow and Atroc had mentioned him…
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