by Lucy Hounsom
Ma didn’t hesitate. She clambered over the remains of the gate and Kyndra followed her, looking about with interest – she’d never actually been inside Khronosta. An orange-stoned courtyard greeted her, sprinkled here and there with grains of white sand. Columns marched around it, encasing a corridor. Directly ahead of them rose the inner sanctum. Its doors stood open.
‘This is not right,’ Ma muttered. ‘They haven’t even activated the basic wards.’
Inside the sanctum, the sense of emptiness was worse. Kyndra’s boots disturbed sand already disturbed – it looked as if it had once been raked into lines, which branched off into chambers flanking the main passage. The concern on Ma’s face deepened with every step they took. ‘Something terrible has happened here,’ she whispered.
The corridor turned and they found the first body.
‘No.’ Ma bent down, running her fingers over the woman’s twisted skin. She looked like the du-alakat, Kyndra saw, but this was clearly no warrior. She wore white robes and her feet were bare, one a tiny baby’s, the other large and veined.
‘What’s happened here?’
‘The mandala,’ Ma said, straightening. She quickened her pace; they left the dead woman behind. ‘These are the untrained, the uninitiated. The eldest must have fed them to the mandala, stripped them of life energy.’ Her voice shook. ‘I can’t believe he would do such a thing.’
They found more bodies. Some were those of young people, barely out of childhood. Ma’s expression grew harder with every one they passed. The corpses all had two things in common, Kyndra saw – they wore the white robes of the uninitiated and carried the characteristic disfigurements of the du-alakat.
They emerged into a large chamber where the sand formed a chaos of whorls and spirals. It was littered with dead – at least thirty, Kyndra counted. ‘Riel,’ Ma said, a sob in her throat. ‘And Keelu.’ She knelt beside two corpses, their hands joined. Two young men, though it was hard to be sure; one had an old man’s body, the other an old man’s face. ‘I looked after them,’ Ma said, dashing her tears away. ‘They were only six when I left.’ She stood up very quickly, fire in her wet eyes. ‘The eldest will pay for this.’
The Lleu-yelin need not worry about their blood debt, Kyndra thought. The eldest had claimed it for them.
A small sound. They both looked up. Kyndra took hold of Tyr and Ma drew her kali sticks. Her face said it all – she yearned for someone to punish. They advanced across the chamber, taking care not to disturb the dead. A small scraping came from behind a closed, locked door.
Ma placed her hand upon the door; the lock rusted to nothing. She exchanged a charged glance with Kyndra, who nodded, ready to reach for Sigel.
Ma pulled the door open.
Five children gazed up at her, their eyes wide and terrified. The room they’d been locked in was small – a storeroom perhaps, unlit. Even Kyndra grimaced at that. How long had they been shut in the darkness listening to the sounds of death beyond the door?
‘Gods,’ Ma breathed. ‘He left them here. He left them to die in their own home.’
The children said nothing. All had shaven heads, Kyndra saw, and wore white robes like the other Khronostians. She wondered whether their parents were among the dead.
Once Ma had coaxed them out with soft words, they clung to her. She carried the two smallest, while the others held on to her cloak. ‘Don’t look,’ she said as she led them through the ravaged temple. But the children looked anyway, silent gazes passing across people who were, almost certainly, their families.
No one spoke. But when they reached the courtyard and the watching Lleu-yelin, the older children gave little gasps of fright and hid behind Ma. She held out the two she carried towards Sesh. ‘Do you still wish to claim your debt, dragon?’
Sesh studied Ma’s tear-streaked face. ‘What happened?’
‘Khronosta is finished,’ Ma said harshly. ‘My people are dead.’ She raised her chin. ‘Do you understand now? Do you understand why this is greater than your vengeance? If the eldest is prepared to destroy his own people to achieve his ends, what do you think he will do to the world? Those he killed were not even du-alakat.’
Sesh blinked. ‘Not du-alakat? Then where are they? And the eldest himself?’
Kyndra looked at Ma, saw her own realization dawning in the other woman’s eyes. ‘The signs,’ Ma said, looking back at the temple. ‘A ravaged citadel. A murdered people.’ She glanced down at the children. ‘The survivors as powerless as children.’
The words seemed to carry the eerie rhythm of rote. Kyndra felt them resonate somewhere deep inside her and at the same time outside her, in the white heart of the star, Era. ‘Solinaris, the high Wielders, the novices,’ she heard herself say. ‘A pattern, an echo of the past.’ She turned to gaze into the distant east. ‘The eldest has gone to Naris.’
PART THREE
30
Gareth
He stalked through a frozen world.
Ice encased the evergreens in a crystalline skin, bent their branches earthward. Leafless trees were stalagmites rising from the forest floor. His breath steamed in the chill; each footfall broke a glittering crust. Gareth erased his passage with the Solar, taking care not to melt the snow beneath.
Such a useful power, came a thought. His thought, he supposed; who else’s could it be? A strange thought for someone who had wielded the Solar most of his life, but Gareth shrugged it off. He couldn’t afford to be distracted – he needed to keep his mind on his task.
The Solar was a useful power, but his plan depended on the gauntlets.
Between Argat’s and Freya’s reports, they had a fairly good idea of Sartyan numbers. It was a huge force, mostly infantry, and such a force moved slowly, its supply train stretching back into the north-eastern reaches of Acre. Guarded, the scouts informed Ümvast, but not as well as it should be. Either the Sartyans were lazy – unlikely, he thought – or they believed that danger lay ahead, not behind.
Gareth smiled grimly. For trespassers in Ümvast’s land, danger lay everywhere.
His mother led a comparatively small force, giving the bulk of the Sartyan army a wide berth. Paths through the forest were rare and narrow, restricting the Sartyans to the one major road. It would take them far too long to cut an alternative trail through the icy branches. Now they were far to the south of him, unaware of the danger closing in on their distant supply train.
A golden glitter struggled to reach him through the trees. He’d tried to teach Kul’Das how to send envois, but the delicate task was too difficult for someone without any knowledge or training. She had, however, managed to create the skeleton of one and they’d agreed it could serve as a signal.
The formless glow told him that Ümvast’s force was in place.
Gareth breathed out slowly, readying himself. Once the attack began on the supply train, the path where he waited would be flooded with soldiers. He only hoped he’d be strong enough.
All was silent. He strained his ears for any sound, heart speeding with nerves. Inside the gauntlets, his palms sweated. It was his first test. What if the power didn’t work as it should? What if there were too many of them? He was just one man …
Shouts muffled by snow and distance. He caught a blur of red through the white forest – a scout rushing to alert the men in the rearguard. Gareth let him pass unmolested; that, too, was part of the plan.
He tasted smoke on the wind, caught a glimpse of a sooty streak winding up into the sky. His mother should be getting out of there now, her task accomplished. His was just beginning. When, finally, he heard the multiple pounding of boots on frozen earth, Gareth braced himself and stepped out into the open.
His sudden appearance brought them up short; he wondered what they saw when they looked at him. A broad-shouldered man, cloaked, armoured in dark steel, hair forever streaked with the frosty touch of Hond’Myrkr. And on his hands two gauntlets, one that magnified the dim afternoon light, one that absorbed it.
The Sa
rtyans did not hesitate long. Two dozen confronted him; he could see more coming up behind. ‘Who are you?’ the foremost said.
Gareth didn’t reply. Instead he crouched and pushed his right hand into solid ground. It was nearly over before it began – an arrow flew at him and he lunged for the Solar, bending the energy into a golden shield around him. But the effort forced a growl from his lips. He couldn’t hold both powers in his head at once, not for long. He refocused on Hond’Myrkr and a black, writhing mass boiled out of the earth around the gauntlet, dark tendrils flowing away from him towards the Sartyans.
More arrows came, and though the golden shield repelled them, each impact sapped his strength, his concentration. He had to hold Hond’Lif back until the right time; the white gauntlet deafened him with its plea for release. He gritted his teeth, felt the first tendril touch the soldier who’d spoken.
Immediately the man began to scream. Black crawled up his boots, seeping between the gaps in his armour. When it reached his neck, the skin mottled, lips curling back from the teeth. The soldier’s flesh sagged, caved in, bone started to show. And all the while he screamed, watching as his own red gauntlet slipped from a fleshless hand.
Enough. Gareth pulled Hond’Myrkr back, let the man, silent now, topple to earth. As he sent the black tendrils after other soldiers, he let go of Hond’Lif, feeling its energy flow into the corpse, light flaring in the shrivelled eye sockets. Instantly he was aware of the man – his name, his age, his last terrified thoughts. It was almost too much, too soon. Gareth let go of the Solar, rose to his feet, forcing the twin powers to continue their assault. Such a pleasure to watch them.
The Sartyans held their ground until the moment their weapons corroded in their hands. Then, discipline abandoned, they finally succumbed to terror. Thrusting comrades aside, they fled into the icy forest.
Gareth felt sweat on his brow, his breath came in gasps. He held two dozen Sartyans in his head; their thoughts tangling around his. This was nothing like the time he’d raised the dead of Ben’haugr, who had lain in sleep for centuries, whose minds had grown still and silent. These men and women had lived only moments ago, and their clamour and confusion filled his head. They fought him, but Hond’Lif was too strong, its mad song coursing white-blue through their veins. Faces turned to him, all in various stages of rot. Some were little more than skeletons – on these Hond’Myrkr had done its work too well. He’d have to be more careful in future. For his plan to work, they needed to look like soldiers rather than corpses.
He felt the thread linking them to him as a tugging behind his eyes, a feeling both familiar and strange. A few living Sartyans remained trapped among their erstwhile comrades, horror rooting them to the spot. ‘Faren?’ one man asked of a woman with a face almost intact. He stretched out his hand to her.
They’d been lovers in life, Gareth knew. He clenched Hond’Lif.
The woman smiled, a stiffening rictus. Then she drew her sword and ran the soldier through. Blue-white curled from her eyes and nostrils as she watched him slip off her blade.
In a frenzy of fear, the others shouldered aside the dead and ran. Gareth cursed. They mustn’t be allowed to report back. He gave his servants a silent command and they spread out, thrusting their way through the frozen foliage, uncaring of the branches that tore the skin on their faces.
They were effective hunters, implacable, untiring. He did not recall them until every last Sartyan had fallen. Then, exhausted, he leaned against a tree and waited for the dead to return. They came out of the forest, creatures of horror and sinew, their walk already stiffening into a stumbling lurch. Satisfied no more Sartyans were coming, he withdrew Hond’Lif’s power and the corpses were again corpses. They slumped to earth in a twisted pile of limbs and there they would stay until he called for them to rise.
Gareth closed his eyes. When he opened them, a dreadful sight greeted him. He stood in a ring of corpses – his corpses. His heart began to thump. Beneath his armour, a cold sweat covered him. Gareth turned and vomited, gripping a frozen tree against the sudden wave of weakness. He could smell them; their sweet rot filled his head. There was nothing left in his stomach, but still he heaved.
Gasping, the only living thing in a circle of dead, Gareth stumbled back, away from the corpses. What had he done? He remembered plunging his hand into the earth, the black tendrils of Hond’Myrkr spreading death. He remembered releasing Hond’Lif, taking pleasure in the way the gauntlet gave each soldier the semblance of life. He remembered coming up with the plan.
But now, confronted with its success, all Gareth could think about was the people he’d killed. They’re Sartyans, he thought, wiping the freezing sweat from his forehead. They’d have killed you.
It didn’t make it better. What’s happening to me?
Weak, Hrafnasueltir.
No, he wouldn’t think of that word. The time of darkness was past. Only the future mattered now, the upcoming battle, defending his homeland against those who wished to take it away. Gareth forced himself to look at the corpses of the soldiers he’d killed. With his help, they would win.
But what will you do then? he asked silently. When the war is won, when battle is done, when there is no more need to fight? What will you do then?
Gareth found, to his disquiet, that he did not know.
It took the head of the Sartyan army two days to realize that something was very wrong.
Standing under the shadowy moon, on the fringes of Ümvast’s camp, Gareth pictured himself in the Sartyan leader’s shoes. First, no new supplies had arrived from the distant train. Second, a whole unit had disappeared. There’d been a disturbance, they knew. But they’d seen no definitive sign of resistance from the natives.
And you won’t, he thought to himself, until it’s too late.
After all, what kind of resistance could stand against the Sartyan elite? Still, they’d sent out riders and then – when they did not return – another unit. When that unit failed to report in, the march finally halted. Now the army was camped on the southern fringes of the forest, admittedly a little too close to Ümvast’s own camp for comfort.
Gareth found his mother in her tent, fists planted on a large table where a crude map lay unfurled. ‘I am no general,’ she said when he entered, pushing herself away with a huff of disgust. ‘All this planning and posturing ill suits me.’ She tapped the haft of her axe. ‘This is the only thing I know, the only thing I can be sure of.’
‘You can be sure of me,’ he said.
She returned his gaze coolly. For the moment they were alone. ‘I do not think so.’
‘You doubt me?’
‘No.’ Ümvast jerked her head at the gauntlets. ‘But I do not know you. So I cannot trust you.’
Her answer hurt, but it didn’t surprise him. Seconds passed. ‘Who are you?’ his mother asked finally. ‘What happened to my son?’
Gareth felt cold. ‘I’m here, Mother.’
She shook her head, a slow, deliberate movement from right to left and back again. ‘I think my son never left those tombs.’ Her voice was nearly a whisper. ‘I think he died there in the darkness and the dust.’
Her eyes were quite dry.
Gareth shivered; he couldn’t help it, reminded so suddenly of the place he’d almost forgotten. Images flashed through his head, stabbed it with the pain of memory. Unrelieved stone, silent feasts, the dead trailing their tattered shrouds.
Corpses on muddied snow.
With difficulty, he pulled himself together, thrust the memories aside. ‘You’re free to believe what you want,’ he said, more harshly than he intended. ‘But I am here to help. If you believe nothing else, believe that.’
Her gaze slid from him to the map. ‘I do.’
‘Well.’ Gareth crossed to it, tapped a scrawl on the ragged paper. ‘Here is roughly where they’re camped. We’ll need to drive them away from the plains and up into the forest. If we allow them space to manoeuvre, we won’t stand a chance.’
‘And y
ou think your … unit can manage this?’
Her hesitation hung in the air between them. ‘I am hopeful,’ Gareth said.
‘Hopeful does not fill me with confidence.’
‘Just do your part,’ he answered tersely, knowing he hid a well of doubts. ‘The Sartyans are hungry, cold and tired from a long march. Morale will be low – they’re in unfamiliar territory and two hundred of their comrades are missing. I will drive them into the forest. It’s your job to pick them off. They must be divided.’
‘What of their commander?’ she asked, planting hands on her hips. ‘That’s who we need to find.’
‘Leave it to me. One of their officers will know.’
‘And I suppose they’ll just tell you.’
Gareth smiled. ‘That’s right. They will.’
‘I want you to stay out of the battle,’ Gareth said later to Argat and Yara as the winter afternoon drew to a close. ‘Your skills are too valuable to lose.’
He half expected them to argue, but the two sailors just looked at each other. ‘Fine by me,’ Yara said with a shrug. Although she wore her usual serrated sword, she instead patted a spanner stuck through her belt. ‘I’m more engineer than warrior anyway.’
‘You too, Argat,’ Gareth said.
‘I don’t need convincing.’ Argat darted a look behind them, to where a heap of tumbled boulders lay on the plain. All three knew what they concealed. ‘Though I suspect such a battle will become the stuff of stories, I’m happy to hear of it second hand.’
The wind had begun to turn, bringing with it a reek that wrinkled Yara’s nose. As he’d walked through the assembled warriors, Gareth heard their muttered oaths of protection, their swiftly silenced talk. He felt their combined gaze on his back, fearful, unfriendly. You are not one of us, that gaze seemed to say. You carry evil into our midst.