Ghost of the Wall

by Jeff Mariotte

  And then, as he watched, a Pict who seemed somehow taller and stronger than the rest approached the gigantic creature. This Pict stood straight and tall, and Mang had a sense that incredible power emanated from him. As it approached, the Ice Bear seemed to shudder with surprise at this tiny being who didn’t run from it.

  Instead, the Pict spoke words Mang couldn’t hear, and waved sticks that he couldn’t quite make out but must have been magic items of great import. The Ice Bear’s huge maw snapped closed, and its eyes grew wide with fear. It tried to turn and run, but the man—no bigger than a flea, in comparison with a regular bear—held his ground and continued to work his magic.

  And the impossible happened. Under the brave Pict’s spell, the Ice Bear slumped helplessly to the ground, filling in most of a wide valley with his bulk. The bear’s eyes closed, its head turned, its tongue lolled out of its open mouth.

  Incredibly, the Pict threw down his magic sticks, stepped inside that mouth, and began to wrench the teeth loose with his hands. As he pried each one loose he threw it outside the mouth. When he was done, he climbed back out and picked them up. Only as soon as the teeth had hit the ground, they had shrunk. From this vantage point, Mang could barely see them, could only tell that the man had a handful of them.

  Time started to move at a faster pace then. The body of the Ice Bear stayed where it was. Somehow, Mang knew that it was not dead, but only slumbering, as deeply asleep as if mesmerized. Dirt blew up against the body and covered it, then trees grew on the dirt, and grass, and people came and built huts and villages there, and Mang knew that the Ice Bear had become another range of hills on which Picts could live.

  He saw the Pict again, working the teeth he had yanked and some bones into the crown he knew as the Teeth of the Ice Bear. When it was finished, the Pict put it on his own head. He walked into a cave, and Mang understood that this was the first Guardian, taking the Teeth into the cave where it would be safe. At the same time, though he could not have said how, Mang knew that removing the Teeth from the cave—and the care of a Guardian—would be disastrous. The Ice Bear would wake, would roam the world once again. His sheer size, combined with the frost and the rimy winds that accompanied him, would spread new havoc upon the earth.

  With this realization, Mang felt his stomach lurch as if he were falling back to the ground from some impossible height. He was back in the circle of standing black stones, back where he had been before everything had changed. The sun was warm on his skin, but lower in the sky. He couldn’t tell for sure how much time had passed, but a couple of hours, at least.

  He waited in the circle a few more minutes, to see if anything else would happen. When it didn’t, he rose and left it, donning his clothing again and picking up his weapons.

  He knew enough now, he was convinced.

  Enough to know that if the Teeth wasn’t restored to the Ice Bear’s cave, disaster would ensue.

  He didn’t want that responsibility on his head. And he definitely did not want to live through the second coming of the Ice Bear.

  He started down the hill again, anxious to tell Klea what he had learned.

  21

  KRAL COULD HARDLY believe his eyes.

  Alanya had spent the last several days, as they traveled, telling him stories of Tarantia. Donial, too; as they neared the city of his birth, he became more vocal, more enthusiastic about their return. He seemed to forget his grudge against Kral long enough to share that enthusiasm.

  But the stories only spun webs of words, forming pictures in his mind that did not come near the reality that his astonished eyes beheld when Tarantia finally came into view.

  Even before the city was in sight, there were miles of cultivated farmland, then small towns—“small” according to Alanya and Donial, but still larger than any Kral had ever imagined. Buildings of stone and timber, windows of glass, roofs of thatch. They continued on their way, with some of the people they passed staring at him, a Pict in the company of two Aquilonians, as if he were some kind of captive animal on display.

  And then they topped a low rise, on the other side of which Tarantia lay in a broad valley, gleaming like the most precious jewel in all creation. Its walls were as tall as the hill on which the Bear Clan’s village had stood, the hill that they had thought so high that it could never be overrun. And even taller than the walls, shining towers caught the setting sun, spires sparkled as if ablaze.

  The architecture was phenomenal enough, but perhaps more staggering was the sheer amount and variety of humanity Kral observed passing through the city’s gates. He, Alanya, and Donial joined a veritable river of people—a double river, in fact, for just as many issued forth from the gates as headed into them. There were dark-skinned Kushites, and dusky Stygians, blond Brythunians and Gundermen, ruddy-faced, red-haired Vanirmen. And, of course, Aquilonians by the hundreds, wearing more different types of clothing than Kral had ever thought possible. Bright reds and yellows and blues. Soft purple robes, pantaloons of silk as white as snow, jerkins of tanned leather dyed colors never seen on a beast of field or forest.

  Kral saw an old man in bright blue furs, and a young woman in a clingy yellow gauze that barely concealed her lush figure, walking side by side. He saw a merchant leading a team of mules who drew a wagon laden with fruits the likes of which Kral had never known could be harvested or even grown. He saw a trio of women playing musical instruments as they walked, which Alanya identified as a flute and a lyre and a small, dainty brass horn.

  The procession of humanity in both directions raised a cloud of dust. Even though the roadway was paved, there were more people than the paving stones could accommodate, and many had to walk on the dirt at the sides of the road. Kral didn’t mind, though he inhaled dust, because it was just another part of the spectacle.

  “You never told me—” he began.

  “I did,” Alanya interrupted, laughing. “We did. You should see your face!”

  “It’s so much,” Kral said. “There are more people on this bit of road than I’ve seen in my whole life.”

  “Because you spent all your time in that forsaken wilderness instead of getting out to see the world,” Donial opined. Kral whirled to see if the youngster was mocking him, but Donial had a smile on his face. He looked like he was just in high spirits and not intentionally making fun. In good spirits himself, Kral decided to let it go.

  Talking and laughing, they came nearer and nearer to the gates of the city. Kral’s neck began to ache from craning his head to look at the heights of the walls and the towers beyond. At the gates, armed guards studied them, and Kral’s hand dropped unconsciously to the knife at his hip. But he had donned clothing loaned him by Donial, and the guards made no move to stop or challenge them. And Alanya and Donial seemed to accept their perusal without comment. Kral followed suit.

  Then they were inside the walls, and his amazement just grew more pronounced. Buildings were jammed together with a kind of manic energy. Lanes between them were narrow and packed with people, drayage carts, animals, and more. Merchants seemed to sell everything under the sun, and then some. It was growing dark, but lamps burning oil cast illumination onto the streets. Passersby jostled Kral when he slowed in the road, slack-jawed at the bustle and noise. “Is everyone in the world within these city walls?” he asked quietly.

  “Not everyone,” Alanya answered. “But the best people are.”

  “Some of the best,” Kral countered. “Your uncle is here, too, we think.” His trail had led them here, at any rate—up to the point that they lost it, on the road into Tarantia, where the sheer volume of traffic erased any track instantly.

  “The best, and some of the worst,” Alanya agreed.

  “I never dreamed it was like this,” Kral said. “How will we ever find him, in all this? How does one even find his own home?”

  “You get used to it,” Donial replied. “You learn the streets in your neighborhood, and some of the bigger ones throughout the city. Some you never learn the names of,
others you never see.”

  “And some you hope to avoid,” Alanya added. “Especially at night.”

  “Why?” Kral wondered. “Is that where the beasts hunt?”

  “The only beasts in Tarantia are work animals,” Donial said. “Alanya refers to beasts of the human kind: robbers, murderers, scoundrels of every type.”

  “There are districts where they gamble and drink and carouse,” Alanya explained. “Or so I’ve been told. I have never actually seen those parts of the city for myself.”

  “I have,” Donial admitted. “On certain occasions when my friends and I went to explore that which we were warned against.”

  Alanya’s face crimsoned, and Kral burst into laughter. “Donial!” she said.

  “Easy, Alanya,” Kral said. “Boys will find trouble wherever they live.”

  Alanya’s laughter joined his, and she shook her head. “So will girls,” she said after a moment. “I am just pleased that he never saw my friends and me there when he was doing his exploring.”

  Eventually, it occurred to Kral that Alanya and Donial really did know their way around, and were leading him in a particular direction. “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Home,” Alanya answered.

  “Home?” He thought of their home as being in Koronaka, even though they had lived here. He knew they had no living relatives here anymore.

  “Our father has a house here,” Donial said, his voice catching at the mention of his late parent. “Since he’s . . . since he’s gone, it’s ours now.”

  “In my village, if the owners of a hut were killed or gone for as long as you have been away from here, others would have moved in. There are always people marrying, after all, and needing new homes to live in.”

  “Look around you, Kral,” Alanya said. “Does it look like there’s a shortage of places for people to live? No, our father’s house will be waiting for us. His household staff should be in it, keeping it for us against our return.”

  “Is it large enough for the three of us?” Kral asked.

  “And thirty more,” Alanya said. “Worry not, you’ll share a bed with no one.”

  A bed. Kral had seen beds, since sneaking into Koronaka. But he had never slept in one, and wasn’t sure he’d be able to. They seemed absurdly soft, not firm and unyielding like the ground he was used to.

  Embarrassed, he glanced away from Alanya. If he were to share a bed with anyone, he knew, he would want it to be that golden-tressed lovely who he was so fortunate enough to ride beside.

  But that was never going to happen. It might have, once, he thought. Before her people had attacked his clan, before her father had been killed, and his family and friends. The blood spilled that day was like a vast river between them, one that couldn’t be bridged or swum. One could not reverse the course of a river; one could not turn back the tide of time, to make something not happen once it had.

  So if he had to sleep in a bed, it would be alone.

  Anyway, if no one was watching him, he could just as easily shove the bed aside and use the floor.

  A short while later, in a quieter, less populous and boisterous section of the city, Alanya and Donial reined their horses up short. Kral glanced at them and saw that both their faces were clouded over, frown lines wrinkling their foreheads so identically that it was clear at that moment that they were brother and sister, despite the physical differences between them. He brought his own mount to a halt. “What is it?”

  “Father’s house,” Alanya said. She nodded toward a structure on the other side of a wide square, and Kral looked to see what had bothered them both.

  The house was larger than the one in which Lupinius had lived, back in Koronaka. White columns fronted it, and behind those, a wide gallery ran its length. Even before that, a fence, taller than the tallest man, encircled the entire building, so that Kral couldn’t see much below the tops of the columns and gallery, could not see the doors at all. There were a few windows, curtained or shuttered against the night, and behind these, lights burned against the darkness.

  “Huge,” Kral noted.

  “Not that,” Alanya said. “Those guards.”

  Kral looked again. He had barely paid them any mind, so impressed was he with the size of the place. In front of the gate, illuminated by guttering torches, stood three guards wearing plate armor and black cloaks. Long swords dangled at their hips. Their faces were lean and fierce, with scars that told tales of battles fought and experience hard-won. A fourth man had no cloak, and his armor was close-meshed mail, his sword barely half the length of the others. But he looked every bit as much the warrior as the first three.

  “Do you know them?” Kral asked.

  “I know one,” Donial said. “The one on the left, there. That’s Rufio, one of Uncle’s Rangers. The others I have never seen. They look like mercenaries to me.”

  “Is it not possible that your father’s staff hired some mercenaries in your absence, to help guard his house?”

  “It is possible,” Alanya admitted. “But not likely. And anyway, since Rufio is with them, that must mean that Uncle Lupinius is inside. First he took our father’s life and everything of value we own, and now he has taken father’s house as well.”

  Kral drew his knife from its scabbard. “Then we shall get it back,” he said. “And the Teeth with it.”

  Alanya reached over unsteadily from her mount and restrained him. “The three of us, exhausted from the road, against those four? We wouldn’t have a chance.”

  “There is always a chance, as long as blood runs in the veins of a warrior,” Kral said.

  “You are a warrior,” Alanya pointed out. “But Donial is barely more than a boy—”

  “I can fight!” Donial interjected.

  “—and I have never lifted a weapon in battle,” she continued. “Even if you could slay three of them, the fourth would surely kill you, Kral. And then where would we be?”

  “But, if we know that he dwells therein—”

  “If we know he’s inside,” Alanya interrupted, “then we can assume he’s here for a while. We can study the situation, come up with a better plan than just blindly attacking a well-guarded gate.”

  The truth of her words gnawed at Kral. He knew she was right; he had utilized the same strategy when harassing the settlers’ wall, back home. He hadn’t been foolish enough just to charge them at their most fortified point. He had watched, learned their weak points, formulated an attack based on the information he acquired. He was not stronger than the entire army at Koronaka, so he had to be smarter. The same applied here.

  At any rate, he could afford to wait a day or two. If he couldn’t find a way in during that time, then he could go back to the idea of simply approaching the guards and killing as many as he could.

  “What now?” Donial asked. “We cannot go in. If Lupinius knew we had followed him here from Koronaka, he would probably have us killed, or at least thrown into a dungeon somewhere.”

  “Father’s home has no dungeons,” Alanya reminded him. “I agree, we dare not go inside.” She backed her horse away from the square, and Donial and Kral followed suit, lest the guards see them and recognize the siblings. She pondered for a few moments, then Kral saw her light up. “I know. Cheveray!”

  “Yes!” Donial said, evidently with enthusiastic agreement.

  “Who?” Kral asked.

  “Cheveray,” Alanya said again. “Father’s best friend, solicitor, business partner. He’s practically an uncle to us—more so than Lupinius ever was, for that matter. He was supposed to take care of Father’s affairs here while Father was on his mission for the king. If Lupinius has moved into the house, he will know about it—and he will know how to get him out.”

  They turned their mounts and started off at a steady walk for the home of this Cheveray. Kral was suddenly uneasy. He had imagined coming into the city and staying in a house with Alanya and Donial—a house that was otherwise unoccupied. He had not really given much thought to the fact
that he might have to interact with other Aquilonians, beyond agreeing to wear Donial’s clothes, to help hide the fact of his race. He knew all too well that Picts and Aquilonians were natural enemies. Would this Cheveray accept him as a friend of his friend’s children? Or would he summon the Aquilonian armies and have Kral killed or imprisoned? His gut tensed, and he realized he was riding more stiffly, less comfortably, than he had before.

  He would not want to have come this far only to be betrayed by the person Alanya and Donial trusted most in all of Tarantia.

  22

  LUPINIUS ENJOYED THE luxury of his brother’s home. The bedding was of silks and satins, the pillows plush and soft, the tapestries on the walls heavy and rich, the marble floors smooth. Invictus’s cook, an elderly woman named Arigan, had fed him a delectable lamb stew with fresh vegetables she had bought in Tarantia’s markets that very day. His brother had a fine collection of wines and ales, which Lupinius was not shy about sampling.

  All in all, he felt, he had made the right choice in coming here. He could happily live in this house for the rest of his life, enjoying the fruits of his brother’s labors.

  But he knew that he couldn’t coast forever on the goodwill people felt for Invictus. There would come a time when even Arigan would want some gold to cross her palm. The mercenaries he had hired in the square that day, to replace the Rangers killed by the brigands’ ambush, would want to be paid sooner than that.

  Lupinius had a nice place to live, but little enough left with which to support that life. He needed to do something soon. If he was not to sell the household furnishings, he would have to go back to his original plan. He had carried that ugly crown all this way, even when his own skin was at risk. His first step would be to find out what it really was. Powerful magics brought high prices. Selling that, and maybe his niece’s bejeweled mirror, should hold him for a while.

  Lupinius had had occasion, in the past, to make the acquaintance of a magician named Kanilla Rey. This mage had never become too ambitious for his own good, never allowed his thirst for knowledge and power to lead him down those dark and often deadly paths that some took. He seemed content to sell his services from time to time, and to study his books, practice his spells, and live a life of relative peace and comfort here in Tarantia.