The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

  The keening around him is growing louder now, or maybe just imprinting itself more clearly on his scrambled senses. Ringil casts a glance around him, knowing already what he’ll see, still hoping somehow that he won’t.

  Klithren twitches on the table and mumbles something. Gil turns back and leans over him, glad of the focus. He’s not sure how conscious the other man is. Coming through has left him feeling like a morning after too much cheap rum and krin, and he’s more or less used to the transition. No telling how the passage must have felt to the mercenary.

  Nonetheless …

  He digs out his dragon-tooth dagger, cuts the blue-gray hide bindings. It’s harder work than you’d expect from the frayed and faded look of them. He hooks Klithren under the shoulder with one arm, heaves and drags him up off the table, dumps him onto the marshy ground beside it. Stares down at him for a moment.

  Black mage lizardshit, is it? He kicks the mercenary solidly in the ribs. Stands over him, breathing harder than his exertions merit. Why don’t you take a look around, Klithren of Hinerion? See what you think.

  Another kick. Klithren rouses with a groan. He rolls over on the waterlogged, spongy turf, comes up with a bump against what looks at a glance like some ancient, rotted mooring post, driven here untold centuries ago to mark the edge of a river long since dried up or diverted. The mercenary blinks, rubs the back of his hand across his eyes, and then reaches up to steady himself on the protrusion. He props himself blurrily to his knees, glances at the post—

  Screams—recoils—falls back over on his arse again.

  No, but, no, no, that’s, no, no … dribbles from his lips as he stares at the thing he’s just rested his hand on.

  It’s a human head. And it’s alive.

  They took them, Miri, they shone like stars, I tried, I tried, but they took them, please believe me, I couldn’t stop them, please forgive me, they shone like stars, they took them …

  It’s the head of an old man, sparsely bearded with white whiskers and mostly bald, mumbling and weeping, endless tears that ribbon down through the grime on his cheeks and into the deep-cut lines that mark his sunken face. His neck has been severed a handbreadth below his chin and then somehow cemented to a tree stump that matches its circumference perfectly. If his faded blue staring eyes see them at all, he shows no sign.

  —took them, please, I couldn’t, they shone, shone like stars—

  Klithren has seen enough—he’s scrabbling backward on the heels of his hands, still staring, as far away as he can get. Until he bumps solidly into something behind him, jerks his head around to look at what he’s hit, and screams again—

  It’s a young woman this time, disheveled long hair half obscuring her face, trailing down to brush at the humped and twisted roots of the stump she’s mounted on. Her voice whispers out, as if jolted into speech by Klithren’s clumsy shoulder.

  —left me, he said he’d come, trust him he said, he’d come for me, it aches, it hurts, please don’t, I’m tired, he’d come he said, he swore, I trusted, I’m tired, where is he, oh, it hurts, it hurts, he left me, he …

  Klithren staggers to his feet. Backs away, tearing his gaze from the babbling woman’s face, looking for escape.

  He’s wasting his time.

  The severed heads stretch away in all directions, studding the marsh in endless random succession as far as the eye can distinguish them from the tufted marsh grass. They number in the thousands, maybe the tens of thousands, and all of them are weeping, some low, some high, some screaming their pain, some mumbling, but not a single one at any kind of lasting rest …

  Ringil can almost see the moment that Klithren makes the connection, understands the low susurrus of moaning on the wind for what it really is.

  No, that can’t be, that, no … he’s shaking his head, muttering to himself with a kind of hollow confidence. No, that, no, no …

  Oh, yes, yes, fucking yes. Ringil stands at his shoulder, feeling an unwelcome stab of empathy for the other man. Grinding it back down into anger. And no, in case you wondered, you are not fucking dreaming. Each one of these is a living soul, kept alive as long as the tree roots draw water from the soil. Look out there and try to count. Some of them will be children.

  The mercenary hangs there for a moment, and then a deep shudder runs through him. He swings on Ringil, sharp enough that Gil’s reflexes put up a blocking arm between them, a hand pressed to the other man’s shoulder ready to trip him back onto the marshy ground. They’re close enough that he can smell Klithren’s soured breath. Their eyes lock.

  What … ? The mercenary shakes his head numbly. What is this?

  This? Ringil presses firmly back a couple of inches to make the point, then drops his arm. He looks around at the harvest of human misery they stand amid. This is what’s coming—if I can’t stop it in time.

  Klithren makes a noise, not even a word. Ringil steps away from him and gestures with the dragon-tooth dagger.

  You wanted to see some black mage lizardshit? You’re looking at it. This is what happens when the original black mages cut loose. This what the dwenda leave in their wake.

  Fucking dwenda? Klithren’s still numb by the sound of it, still dislocated and stumbling. You … talking about the Aldrain?

  More steps away—then Gil turns to face the other man. Call them what you like. They’re the power behind Findrich and the rest, just like the cabal is the power behind the Chancellery. You do a deal with Findrich and the cabal, you’re doing a deal with the creatures that did this—that do this habitually when they’re pissed off.

  So like I asked you once before, Klithren of Hinerion—proud of your employers, are you?

  Klithren shakes himself like a wet dog. Breathes in hard. Gil watches. Knows what the other man’s doing because—there’s that fucking empathy again, Gil, going to get you killed one of these days—he’s done it himself enough times. Close down focus, shut out what you can’t stand or can’t do anything about, stare down the blade of what needs to be done.

  And then do it.

  How do you know all this? Klithren asks him.

  Ringil smiles bleakly. The dwenda and I are old friends.

  That’s not an answer.

  It’s the only one you’re getting on that subject. Ask me something else.

  Why did you bring me here? Klithren talking deliberately louder now, to drown out the keening around them. But there’s a wavering crack in his voice. Why are you showing me this?

  I told you—because I need your help. Ringil looks away to the horizon. One part of him registers with a tiny shock how used he’s grown to this horror, how little it touches him anymore. See, I think I can probably take back Ornley without you. I’ve got your crew terrified into submission, I’ve got the ship, and for a little bonus I’ve got a handful of my own men to season the mix. I could torture some details out of you—

  You could fucking try!

  I could fucking succeed. He says it matter-of-factly, doesn’t even look around. You’re from the borders, you know about imperial marines. Well, there are marines back on that ship trained specifically in inquisition, and they’re leaping at the leash for a shot at you. I let them loose, you’d spill, you know you would. You’d give up everything I need to know before you died. And the noises you make doing it are just going to hammer home my grip on your crew.

  Silence at his back that he takes for assent. Ringil waits regardless. The lost-soul moaning rises to fill the gap. He lets it chew at Klithren for a while before he goes on.

  So like I said, I could get the detail. Find out where the prisoners are being held, what defensive setup you’ve left in place. Now he turns back to the other man. Sees that Klithren has started, faintly but perceptibly, to tremble. But here’s the thing—it’s still going to cost too much. It’s another fucking sneak attack, another battle uphill, and I’m going to lose men I can’t afford. Some bright spark on shore is likely going to run off to wherever they’ve stashed the prisoners and start cutting
throats—it’s what I’d do, anyway. And there’ll be reprisals when we’re done. We’ll probably end up burning the town.

  He sees it in his mind’s eye.

  In other words, it’ll be a bloody fucking mess for all concerned. And when that’s done, I’ve still got to sail to Trelayne, get my friends back somehow, slaughter Findrich and his pals, and find some way to stop the dwenda.

  That’s a lot of work with no intelligence to go on.

  Whereas—you give me your allegiance here and now, I can go back to Ornley without drawing a blade. I collect my men in good order, imprison yours. Get my ships back, provision them, set sail. Nobody gets hurt. Then you tell me what I need to know about the cabal. You come back to Trelayne with me, and help me gain entry. Then, when we’re done, I’ll give you what you want.

  Klithren makes an effort to master his trembling. Which is what?

  Your much-vaunted revenge. The chance to kill me blade to blade, and no need to hand me over to anyone else. Gil considers for a moment. And no lizardshit black mage protection for either one of us. You can find out for real what the gods want done about this.

  The mercenary stares at him. You’ll do that?

  Gil sighs. Yeah, I’ll do that. Like I already told you, I didn’t kill your friend. But the truth is, I would have cut him apart given half a chance; it would have made my day. And the thing that did cut him apart—well, that was a power sent to protect me, so … A careless shrug. You want payback? You want a piece of me? I’ll give you your shot.

  What p-power? There’s no masking the tremors now—Klithren is breaking down. The desolate unhuman chill of the Grey Places is eating into him like fever. But he clings to the last vestiges of his hate. The thing that … what, what are you talking about? What thing?

  Do you really want to know? Ringil crushes out another inconvenient flicker of sympathy for the mercenary. Opens a palm to the marsh plain around them and what it contains. Have you really not seen enough?

  It feels almost cheap this time, the little it takes to break down the other man’s gaze and have him look away. Klithren shudders.

  And—what, what if I—refuse this? Turn you down?

  Oh, that’s easy, Ringil tells him. I’ll just leave you here.

  CHAPTER 23

  ou didn’t see the Dragonbane at a loss very often.

  Archeth was one of the few who had, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen that expression on his face. She’d forgotten how suddenly young it could make him look. For just those few moments, she was watching the features of a Majak buffalo herdsman not yet out of his teens.

  “But—forty-seven … million?” he murmured. “You could really have killed forty-seven million people?”

  “Oh, yes. Sadly no longer, though. Her father saw to that.”

  “But.” Egar shook his head. “Why did you let him? You said you wouldn’t obey his orders, why’d you sit still for him to … to mutilate you?”

  “I was summoned from the void to protect the People, at any and all cost to anything else including myself. That was the pact, those were the terms of my containment. I could not act directly against kir-Flaradnam Indamaninarmal, or against any Kiriath, even in self-defense. It was not in my intrinsic nature. I could no more do it than you, Dragonbane, could breathe beneath the waves. And since I could not act against kir-Flaradnam, he was free to commit such surgery on me as he chose.” A longish pause, an unmistakable note of sour satisfaction creeping into Tharalanangharst’s voice. “I only hope his daughter does not live to regret the fact too much, now that our concerns about humanity have proven accurate.”

  “The Kiriath mission,” snapped Archeth, “is to nurture humanity, to bring the human race eventually to the same levels of civilization as the Kiriath themselves enjoy.”

  “Yes, it is now. Didn’t use to be. Good luck with that, by the way, when the Aldrain finally wake up to the benefits of volcanic eruption at Hanliagh and give it a little helping hand with their weapon of last resort.”

  “You’re talking about the Talons of the Sun?”

  “Well, well, you are better read than I expected. Yes, kir-Archeth, I am referring to the Aldrain’s chief engine of destruction. Which can in all likelihood pour enough destructive force into the volcanic vents at Hanliagh to burst the caldera like a rotten egg.”

  “In all likelihood?” She let scorn edge her tone. “You don’t know?”

  “No.” If the Warhelm noticed or cared about her affected lack of esteem, it didn’t show. It lectured methodically on, as if to a none-too-bright student. “The rather melodramatically named Talons of the Sun remain, I’m afraid, a largely unknown quantity. The Aldrain used them several times against us during the war, to obliterate cities and armies or to create obstacles in the landscape. Once they evaporated the ocean at Inatharam harbor and so created an incoming wave of colossal force. But for all this, the weapon itself never manifested in the real world. It was deployed from, and seems resident in, an undefined plane to which we did not have access.”

  “And now? Do you have access now?”

  “I have access to very little these days, daughter of kir-Flaradnam. I thought I’d made that clear.” The Warhelm paused again, presumably to let the poetic justice sink in. “So, no, in answer to your rather obtuse question, I am no more able to locate and quantify the Talons of the Sun now than I ever was.”

  Archeth went, as if called by something, to stare out of the run of broad windows in the chamber’s south-facing wall. There was an ornamental rail below the glass expanse and she placed her hands on it with a conscious effort at calm. The krinzanz crash itched through her grip, made her fingers twitch. She watched evening crowd the thin sunlight westward and out to sea.

  “If the dwenda use the Talons of the Sun to force an eruption at Hanliagh,” she said evenly, “then it’s going to affect the whole fault system. Will An-Monal erupt as well?”

  “It did not happen the last time the caldera blew. The pressure walls at An-Monal are among the most powerful defensive engineering ever conceived by Kiriath science. The heat exchangers and diversion channeling were all built with exactly such a contingency in mind. And the Helmsman Manathan was called from the void primarily to hold the volcanic forces there in safe equilibrium.”

  “But last time was not a dwenda incursion.”

  “No.”

  Her hands tightened on the rail. “Then it could happen. Manathan could be overwhelmed.”

  “Possibly, yes. But I think you have missed the rather more important consequence of an eruption at Hanliagh, both for Manathan and for everybody else.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Which is that the ash cloud thrown up when the caldera detonates will darken the skies over Yhelteth for days, veil the sun’s force for even longer, and so render the region positively hospitable for any invading Aldrain force. After that, whether Manathan is overwhelmed by lava at An-Monal or by Aldrain sorcery is really academic. The Kiriath mission, such as it is, will have failed.”

  Archeth leaned in hard against her own grip. Stared out at the darkening ocean and coast, as if she could somehow will herself southward and back to Yhelteth along the line of her own gaze. She was in the wrong place, she was in the wrong fucking place. She felt the bitter flood of vindication—could briefly appreciate how Tharalanangharst must feel—and the impotent rage that it brought. She’d known. From the moment their disappointments began at Ornley, she’d fucking known.

  Hold it down, Archidi. Someone’s got to deal with this, and it looks like it’s you.

  Again.

  My father would not have left the job of liberating this world half done. She would have laughed if she hadn’t felt so near to weeping. They’d left everything half done or worse, Grashgal and her father; it was practically their defining characteristic. The Empire—the brutal and bloodthirsty men they’d somehow let hold sway over it, let warp its envisaged purposes into the same dreary mash of conquest and slaughter, tribu
te and oppression, as ever was. The plan to reclaim the Wastes, the plan to cross the western ocean—both abandoned on the drawing board. The search for the Estranged Clans—wherever they’d wandered off to over the slow millennia—abandoned. Redecorating An-Monal. Her own fucking education. All left half done or badly handled. About the only thing her father had followed through on in the end was getting himself killed. And then Grashgal and the rest had left her, one badly trained half-breed caretaker novice, fumbling to hold up the towering, badly stacked, awkward-to-balance weight of their ridiculous fucking mission to civilize—

  All right, Archidi. Old wounds, leave them alone.

  “You are powerless to prevent any of this?” she asked tonelessly.

  “In direct terms, yes.”

  “Are there other Warhelms still in existence?”

  “Oh, yes. The Aldrain were only able to bring down three of us in the end. Valdanakrakharn in the east—”

  “I don’t need the names of the dead. Who’s left?”

  “In the far south, Anakhanaladras. Up in endless circuit between the world and the band, Ingharnanasharal. And on the shores across the western ocean Gohlahaidranagawr. But I’m afraid they are each as crippled and reduced as I am. They had all reached the same conclusions as I, you see. And your father was most thorough in his determination not to allow the housecleaning we wished to embark on.”

  “Housecleaning,” she said grimly. “Right. Did you at least—any of you—manage to gather any useful intelligence about the Talons of the Sun?”

  “Useful? No.”

  “Well, I don’t see how that can be.” She worked at keeping the tinge of desperation out of her voice. “Even ordinary fucking Helmsmen can make assumptions, projections based on evidence. And you were summoned specifically to fight the dwenda. It was your whole purpose.”