Here Syrah paused, allowing herself a moment to keep her arms from shaking as she waited for the inevitable question.
It was old Priest Jerrom Eyr, the last living member of Eret Ta’hir’s generation, who spoke, in a wheezing whisper.
“And the children?”
Syrah turned to look at him. It had been surprising how hard a time she’d had meeting Jerrom’s eye when she’d first returned to the Citadel. His aged face was lined and marked by passing years, his beard thinning to catch up with the ring of white hair that sat, wispy and weak, around his head. In his eyes, though, there was still that depth, the endless vat of experience, hardship, and happiness, that one could often find in those of great age who had managed to hold on to their minds.
Looking him in the eye always stabbed at her, because they were the same eyes Eret had had. The same eyes she had never had a chance to bid farewell to.
And they were looking at her with the same resigned strength Eret would have had, if he’d been the one to have to ask her the question.
“The children met the scouts at the top of the wall,” she answered reluctantly. “Hundreds of them lined up like sentries along the battlements. Baoill’s men had driven spears and lengths of wood through them so they would stay propped up. Some had been dead when they’d been impaled.” Syrah blinked away a sudden fury that threatened to bring tears to her eyes. “Others had not.”
There was a long pause after Syrah’s elaboration as she looked about at them. Even Petrük seemed to be at a loss for words, and old Priest Elber at the far end of the table could be heard whispering “Lifegiver have mercy” under his breath.
Finally, Jofrey broke the shock.
“By your silence it seems we are all in agreement that whatever the Sigûrth’s new Kayle has been about these last months, it was not done with Laor’s blessing. This is a man who must be stopped, before his warpath razes the North.”
“Then we need to know what he’s after,” Petrük offered, sounding abruptly as though she’d had every intention of facing off with the man the entire time. “What is his end game? If Baoill was aiming to claim the North for the mountain clans, he would have done better to move south, making for Stullens and Drangstek. Instead, you tell us he kept east, into the Arocklen.”
“Both valley towns are generally well defended, given their own trouble with the tribes in the Fissür Ranges,” Cullen Brern, the Citadel’s master-at-arms, spoke up from Jofrey’s right. “Maybe Baoill thinks he would do better to seek out easier pillaging? Make for Ystréd instead? It’s a smaller town, its walls not nearly as defensible.”
“They’re usually prepared, but Stullens and Drangstek both sent most of their forces north in an attempt to assist Harond.” Syrah shook her head, thinking out loud now. “If Baoill had been fast, he could have gotten his armies east around Cayleb’s Wash, making south again, and very likely slipped past the southern towns’ support without anyone being the wiser. Why, then, did he march for the Woods?”
“To wait out the freeze?” Aster Re’het, the young Priestess in charge of educating the Citadel’s acolytes, offered tentatively.
“For game?” Kallet Brern, Master Brern’s younger brother and master of the furnace and forges, said. “Perhaps the army is running low on food.”
“The element of surprise?” Jofrey himself offered up. “By making for the Woods, then cutting south through them and across the Dehn Plains, Baoill makes it much harder for Ystréd to know when the attack will come.”
“He could even be coming here,” Petrük practically squealed, not wanting to be left out of the conversation.
“Or Azbar?” Elber offered. “Given the city is practically the only trading hub the North has with the fringe cities in the South, perhaps Baoill is attempting to weaken our economies, making all the other valley towns easier targets in the long run?”
Syrah felt a twinge of fear as she thought of Azbar, with Talo and Carro believing themselves safe behind the high walls of the woodland city, dealing with their own troubles.
“Do we think he’s that patient?” she asked, looking around. “A blow to Azbar could spell trouble across the board.”
“Baoill waited a long time to make his moves,” Jofrey said thoughtfully. “Metcaf and Harond weren’t even aware that the old Kayle had been dethroned when the Sigûrth attacked… If you ask me, assuming Gûlraht Baoill does not have the patience for such an attack would be foolish. Still, if Azbar is his goal there are other paths to take that would make easier marching than through the Arocklen. Stullen’s and Drangstek’s armies made due north, going as the crow flies in the hopes of arriving in time to assist Harond. If Baoill had gone east around Cayleb’s Wash, like you suggested, the lake would have provided more than enough buffer between them. From there, carrying east is the Dehn, which might be hilly, but it would be a hell of a lot easier than getting an entire army through the Woods, especially now that the freeze is truly upon us.”
Jofrey paused, staring at his hands as he thought. Then he looked up and around at Syrah.
“Is he still moving?” he asked. “What did Baoill do once he made it to the Woods?”
“As of now he’s believed to have halted his march. The scouts Stullens sent after the army claim it’s the snows. Apparently they lost a few men to the storms themselves.”
“Unsurprising,” Jofrey muttered. “If this freeze is anything like the last few years, anyone caught in the blizzards will be in trouble.” He looked around to Aster Re’het. “There’s a good chance Aster is correct, all things considered. There isn’t much shelter this far north that could harbor an army of twenty-five thousand. Perhaps Baoill sees the Arocklen as the best option for weathering out the winter.”
“Which means we are free of him.” Petrük sounded relieved as she spoke. “If the savage is holing up for the freeze, we have nothing to be concerned for.”
Syrah blinked, then turned slowly on the woman. Her anger, temporarily redirected, returned in force. She opened her mouth, set on to word her scathing derision, when Jofrey’s hand touched her arm.
“If Baoill has paused in his march, it is a temporary thing,” he said, eyes on Petrük. Syrah could hear the irritation in his voice, but he did a better job of holding his composure than she would have. “They are mountain men all, which means they will move again as soon as the freeze begins to wane. That gives us six months, seven if we’re lucky. Before you decide Gûlraht Baoill isn’t worth another thought, why don’t you tell us how you plan to prepare in that time, hmm? What are you going to do to assist the remaining towns and cities to stop the Kayle? Because we are all eagerly awaiting your suggestions.”
Again Petrük looked as though she had been hit, and again she seemed to have no answer. The old Priestess was a master of the silver tongue, but Jofrey’s carefully crafted words had robbed her of any opportunity to be coy, to feign diplomatically away. Instead she sat silent, seething and trading her glare between Jofrey and Syrah, who ignored her.
“Syrah’s experience with these tribes is by far the most extensive,” Jofrey continued as though Petrük weren’t there, looking about at the other Priests and Priestesses around the table. “Talo granted me authority in his absence as High Priest, and it is my recommendation that we follow her lead on this.”
He turned to look at Syrah.
“So… what should we do?”
Syrah didn’t respond at once, eyes on the table as she thought. No one pressed her now that Petrük had been shamed into silence.
Waiting out the winter? Is he, though? Baoill has momentum now…
That was the truth. By now word must be reaching the eastern towns about Metcaf and Harond. Baoill had the advantage of fear, of panic. Doubt and fright in the hearts of the men tasked with defending Ystréd and Azbar were bad enough, but when it was caught by the masses the results could be disastrous. It was what had happened in Harond, in fact. What few survivors had been found all said the same thing: it hadn’t been the city
guard or the defenders along the wall who had opened the gates for the Kayle and his army. It had been the people, an angry mob of panicked citizens who’d overrun the men and women tasked in protecting them, bent on deliverance from their poisoned city, of pleading with Gûlraht Baoill for their freedom.
Fear and panic alone had won the Sigûrth the city.
So what would it take for Baoill to give it up?
That answer was simple. The one thing the Kayle could not do without on his bloody campaign.
His army.
Even for men of the mountain, winter was a brutal foe. They were built for it, worshiped it even in the form of their Stone Gods. They believed the freeze was responsible for crafting boys into men and weeding out the weak from the strong. And yet, despite this, they often fell victim to it, defeated by the brutality of the forces they believed to be the judgment of harsh deities.
Baoill’s uncle, Emhret, had insulted the old ways by asking the valley towns for help, and Baoill had killed him for it. But did that mean the new Kayle was fool enough to spit in winter’s face?
No, Syrah realized suddenly. To show weakness in the face of the storms was bad enough, but to claim one was better than them… That would be claiming one was better than the Gods. That would be true blasphemy.
Even as she thought this, Syrah heard once again the rattling of the glass above their heads, buffeted by the anger of the storm.
Winter could claim Baoill’s forces and he knows it.
“Baoill won’t march through the freeze,” Syrah said finally, and a few of the congregation who had been having whispered discussions in private jumped and turned to look at her. “Not in truth, at least. On clear days he may press forward little by little, but he won’t push his luck. We already know he’s not a fool. He will force himself to wait, lose what momentum he’s gained, if it means allowing his army to survive the winter.”
“And then?” Priest Jerrom asked, watching Syrah intently, as was the rest of the table.
“And then he will strike hard and fast, as he did in Metcaf. As he did in Harond. If we can’t find a way to halt the Kayle before the winter’s wane, then Baoill will stop at nothing to claim the North for himself and his tribe.”
As they left the dining hall, Syrah walked with Jofrey. She could feel his eyes on her, but ignored him for a while, involved in her own thoughts. When it became clear he wasn’t about to leave her alone, though, she sighed in exasperation.
“This is why I thought Talo was a fool to leave,” she finally said out loud. “If he’d been here, we’d have had less of a time convincing them we need to act.”
“You suspected a madman would descend from the mountains, wreaking havoc on the North and its valley towns, pillaging and burning everything in his path?” Jofrey asked her in a half-amused, half-weary tone.
Syrah snorted, turning a corner to ascend a long ramp that led higher into the mountain.
“Well obviously not exactly this situation, but it could have been anything. A High Priest’s place is in the Citadel, with his people.”
“A High Priest’s place is with the people,” Jofrey corrected her gently, keeping with her as they climbed. “A High Priest’s place is where he is needed most to guard the lives of those he is charged with protecting. If you think Eret did his greatest work from behind a desk, I would be happy to correct you. Eret only ended his excursions into the world after Talo started to make a name for himself, doing much of the work his Priest Mentor couldn’t shoulder anymore.”
“Then Talo needed to take a knee himself, if you catch my drift,” Syrah muttered, aggravated, as they reach the ramp’s landing and turned right, their steps echoing along the curved walls of the spacious tunnels. “That leg of his will be his end, if he’s not careful. And if he wanted to secure the fate of the world, he should have stayed to help with this mess.”
“If trouble plagued the world one problem at a time, my dear, then there would be little need for those of our faith,” Jofrey chuckled. “Does the sacking of the western towns outweigh the troubles in Azbar? Certainly. There’s no argument there. But the Sigûrth hadn’t made themselves known when Talo left, and he took advantage of the simplest answer to a significant problem in and of itself. You did not know Talo before he took the cloth, Syrah. In truth neither did I, but I met him shortly enough after to have a good sense of what his life was like before finding the Lifegiver. When a man takes part in such things, he becomes intimate with the atrocity of it. He shoulders blame not often due onto him, no matter what anyone else says.”
Jofrey looked around as they walked. Lanterns hung every ten feet or so above their heads, casting bright patches of light to melt with the glow of the blue and white candles burning silently in their little alcoves, scattered along the wall at all different heights.
“The resurrection of the Arena is, to Talo, a failure he is driven to correct, just as their banning the first time around was the result of a different failure he was driven to correct. Not his alone, certainly, but his to bear. It is a trouble that weighs more heavily on him than it could any of us.”
“I know that,” Syrah said quietly. “I understand that. But the Sigûrth—”
“Will be dealt with,” Jofrey finished for her with a nod. “And I very much doubt Talo will stay away long once he hears of this, if he hasn’t already. For the moment, though, understand that there are parts of every man’s past that we feel we must one day face head-on.”
“Have you faced yours?” Syrah asked, half joking as they came to a stop before a massive timber door. Crafted from layered woods of many tints and textures, it depicted an artistic collage of geometries, shapes and lines that crossed pleasantly one over the other all the way to its utmost lip three feet above their heads.
Jofrey smiled. “A long time ago, before I ever joined the faith,” he answered. “Laor found me in the midst of my own troubled past, child. That story, though, is for another day. Now”—he turned to face the door—“tell me what is it we’re doing here.”
“We aren’t doing anything,” Syrah said, sticking her tongue out at the man as she reached for the simple iron handle that had long ago replaced whatever ornate monstrosity must have preceded it. Despite its size, the door opened easily and without a sound. “You followed me here, remember?”
“Ah yes, my mistake,” Jofrey replied with a smile, dropping his voice automatically as they stepped into the chamber. “How silly of me to think you might like some assistance in whatever it is you’re scheming.”
The great library of Cyurgi’ Di was as grand as its door suggested. A massive circular room, its domed ceiling was held up by numerous twisting columns of carved wood, each unique in their meticulous detail. Between these, curved rows of high shelves extended outward from the center of the room, so tall that rolling ladders were attached to most of them, sliding this way and that as a hundred or so of the Citadel’s faithful moved about the library, searching for new texts and tomes to peruse. In the very middle of the room, a knee-high wall of stone covered with soft cushions—upon which a dozen Priests, Priestesses, and acolytes were lounging, lost in their readings—encircled a round iron grate fifteen feet across. Beneath the grate, a shaft extended straight down, like a well. If one was willing to tolerate the heat for a moment, it was possible to peer through the intricate patterns cut into the iron and glimpse the orange and red of the furnace room far, far below, from which warm dry air rose in steady waves. The largest chamber in all of Cyurgi’ Di—aside from the dining hall itself—it was common suspicion that the library had once comprised the private rooms of whatever lord had ruled the Saragrias Ranges from the comfort of the Citadel, long before the faithful had claimed its warm halls for their own.
Syrah cut across the smooth slate of the floor without looking left or right, leaving the others to their books. Jofrey followed behind, silent now. They had both passed beneath the ribbed curves of the ceiling two stories above them too many times in their years to be mesmerized
by the artistry of its craft, but even so it was impossible not to feel a moment of bewitchment whenever one walked between the shelves. Large rectangular wedges of thick glass, resistant to the weight of built-up snow and hammering hail, had been patterned into the roof of the library, and had they looked up, Syrah and Jofrey might have taken pause to watch the storm rage thirty feet above their heads, silenced and kept at bay by the skill of long-dead laborers. They might even have stopped to examine once more—as all of the faithful within Cyurgi’ Di did at some point or another—the blanketing murals, painted with careful hands, that colored every inch of the ceiling’s smoothed stone. These, it was known, had been added in the years after the Laorin had taken up residence within the High Citadel. Each depicted some prominent Priest or Priestess going about the acts for which they were remembered. Painted light shown from the apex of the vaulting, reaching outward to bathe each of the Laorin, silhouetting them against their background.
The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1 Page 58