by Lucy Hounsom
‘The rules don’t apply to me,’ she said and snapped the chains.
For a startled moment, Magnus just stared at her. Then, as she raised a hand wreathed in Solar flame, his face drained of colour. ‘Impossible.’
With a twitch of her fingers, Brégenne thrust him aside. Magnus skidded, collided with the wall. ‘I did warn you,’ she said. She began to walk, the crowd bending before her like meadow grass before the wind.
Behind her, Magnus growled, but she’d been waiting for it. A golden chain flew from her hand, wrapped around his wrist and returned to her. She heard his strangled curse as he tried to grasp the Solar and failed. It was the same trick she’d used on Alandred. A glance at him showed he knew it too; he was faintly smiling. Instead of leaving Magnus, Brégenne strengthened the chain and started walking again, forcing the Wielder to stumble along in her wake. The muttering became exclamations as she dragged the newest member of the Council into the bright atrium.
It didn’t take them long to arrive. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ Veeta cried as she strode across the space, her red-slashed robes swirling in her wake. For a moment, Brégenne thought of her predecessor, Helira, of her chill eyes, her cheeks like plains of ice. But Veeta’s were flushed, her anger hotter, less contained. It was difficult, sometimes, to remember that they used to be friends.
She dumped Magnus at the other woman’s feet. He tried to claw at the Solar, but her block held. ‘You can’t do this,’ he snarled, stumbling as far away as her tether allowed. ‘I am a member of the Council.’
‘So was I,’ Brégenne said, ‘so you see how little your title impresses me.’
‘Brégenne.’ Gend had arrived soundlessly. She’d forgotten how huge and still he was, rather like the mountain that enclosed them. ‘So you’ve returned.’
‘Skip the lecture,’ she snapped, nettled now. ‘My news can’t wait.’
Veeta opened her mouth, furious, but then she seemed to register Brégenne’s Solar glow and her words died.
‘She’s cutting me off,’ Magnus snarled. ‘It has to be a trick.’
‘Trust you to touch on the issue of least importance,’ Brégenne said. ‘Yes, I wield the Solar too. Yes, I’ve brought you fifty untrained Wielders. But it’s imperative I address everyone right now.’
She watched Veeta’s eyes move beyond her to Nediah and Reuven, who stood guard over their ragged charges.
‘I bring news of war,’ Brégenne said. ‘A Sartyan general has marched her army into Mariar – into Rairam. By all reports, she is making for the capital.’
‘We know,’ Veeta said crisply. ‘A Murtan trader brought the tidings several days ago.’
Brégenne blinked at her. ‘You know? Then why are you still trying to arrest me?’
‘If you thought your news would somehow excuse your past actions, you are quite mistaken.’
Brégenne shook her head, stunned. She’d known it would be hard, but this …
‘Look at you.’
Heads turned at the new voice, roughened by years in chains. It was a voice, Brégenne thought, which had seen and suffered and endured. Reuven scanned the atrium, his gaze taking in novice and master, lingering on sumptuous robes, the healthy glow in faces. ‘Look at you,’ he repeated disdainfully. ‘None of you have felt even a splinter of the torment these people have borne.’ He lifted a hand to the former inmates of Parakat. Haunted eyes looked back at him. ‘As I approached this place, surrounded by an abyss, I thought for a brief moment that I would find the same. Instead, I see you well fed, content, safe. The abilities that doomed us to a life of imprisonment are here nurtured and rewarded.’ He slowly shook his head. ‘You have no inkling, no clue, how fortunate you are, how kind life has been to you.
‘But we have come here to tell you, at Brégenne’s behest, that if you disregard the Sartyan threat, our fate will be yours. We have come to show you our faces and the marks scored in our skin. Look your fill. This is the only warning you will get. It is more than we received.’
In another person, Brégenne would have called it a good speech, but that would have belittled the truth. Reuven was the centre of a vast silence that rippled out into the hall. Before she could break it, Alandred said, ‘Tell us what you know, Brégenne.’
She gave him a grateful nod. ‘The Sartyan emperor is dead, killed by insurrection. Now the bulk of the army is led by a woman called Iresonté, who intends to capture Rairam, finishing what the first emperor, Davaratch, began. There is a resistance movement in Acre called the Republic, which Nediah and I have been helping, but alone it isn’t strong enough to defeat the Fist. They are at the very least thirty thousand strong. And they have ambertrix, a force that can counter a Wielder’s power.’
Murmurs of disbelief. ‘It’s true,’ Nediah said, coming to stand at Brégenne’s side. ‘Brégenne has experienced it herself. One shot or strike with an ambertrix weapon can shatter a shield.’
‘They can only be destroyed through conventional means,’ Brégenne added, ‘or by manipulation of conventional means.’
‘How are we to fight them, then?’
Brégenne’s sharp ears plucked the anonymous question out of the air. ‘By marching out to meet them, by refusing to let history repeat itself. We will not suffer the siege that doomed Solinaris. We can sit out this battle, let Iresonté take the capital. But make no mistake: she will come for us. And when she does, Naris will fall.’
Mutters greeted her this time. She saw the beginnings of fear on some faces. Others, mostly masters, looked dubious, but none scoffed openly. Perhaps they felt the threat of Parakat which Reuven had conjured in the hall.
‘What of the Starborn?’ Alandred asked finally. ‘What of Kyndra?’
Others picked up his words. ‘Where is she? Will she fight?’
‘Kyndra fights her own battle,’ Brégenne said. ‘There are people in Acre who have the power to alter the past. If they succeed, nothing we do here will have any meaning.’
As she knew it would, the declaration raised more questions than it answered. Brégenne used the Solar to magnify her voice and the shouts died, perhaps at her obvious exercise of a power she should not have been able to wield.
‘I will be happy to share everything I know about Sartya and Acre. I will pledge to lead those who choose to defend Naris –’ she glanced at the members of the Council – ‘but I cannot do so from behind bars. Everything I have done has been in service to this citadel and to Rairam. If I took matters into my own hands, it was because no one else recognized the danger.’ She paused to look into all the faces turned to her. ‘The danger is real. And it’s here.’
34
Char
The Khronostian children were fascinated by the Lleu-yelin, as well as scared. Char could feel them staring at his scales, at his folded wings that elicited gasps whenever he extended them. They wouldn’t leave Ma’s side, but clung to her legs, watching everything through huge haunted eyes. ‘What are we going to do with them?’ he asked.
Ma glanced down at her passengers. ‘I don’t know. They cannot stay here.’ She had her back turned to the eerie silence of Khronosta, as if unwilling even to look at the temple she’d once called home. Char felt sick at the thought of what she’d found inside. How much had these children seen before they were locked away? It was plain the eldest never intended for them to be rescued, but to burn along with the temple in dragons’ fire. ‘And they cannot come with us,’ Ma added. ‘We’ve wasted enough time. The eldest and his du-alakat will be halfway to Naris by now.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Kyndra said. She didn’t look well, Char thought. The skin on her left side had a greyish tinge; he could see the marks of the eldest’s curse as mottled fingers creeping towards her neck. ‘Why would he go to Naris, to the Wielders’ stronghold? When he travelled back before, he didn’t have to be geographically near New Sartya.’
Ma pressed her lips together in thought. ‘You say you stopped the eldest by separating him from Medavle?’
/> ‘He’s trying to prevent me from doing it again?’
‘It is the only reason I can think of to explain his going to Naris.’ Ma studied her. ‘The Yadin was involved in Kierik’s downfall. He is intimately connected to the time and place it happened. On the ground from which Solinaris once rose, his link with the eldest will be stronger – strong enough, I fear, that merely separating them a mandala’s length apart will not …’ She trailed off, worry in the whites of her eyes. It made Char want to go to her, but what comfort could he offer?
‘Ma?’ Kyndra said.
One of Ma’s hands rested on the tallest girl’s shoulder. ‘We must follow him and quickly. We’ve lost time coming out here. Can you warn the Wielders?’ she added to Kyndra.
The Starborn nodded. ‘I will send a message to Brégenne. She and Nediah should be in Naris by now.’ Kyndra swept a hand through the air and a formless shadow appeared beneath her fingers, two shining points of light that Char couldn’t help but imagine as eyes. Kyndra concentrated for a few moments before banishing the thing with another wave. The gesture was casual, but Char, watching closely, saw a spasm pass across her face.
‘You’re in pain,’ he rumbled softly.
She looked at him, vulnerable for a moment. ‘It’s more a feeling of weakness. But I’m all right. Whatever Ma did is holding it off.’
‘Not for long, girl.’ Ma studied her, eyes lingering on Kyndra’s greying neck. As if embarrassed by the gaze, Kyndra pulled her collar closed with a grimace, hiding the wasted flesh.
‘And what do you intend for us, Starborn?’
Sesh had listened impassively to their conversation, but now she came to stand before Kyndra, golden eyes narrowed on her face. ‘Do not seek to trick us. If we fly to this Naris in pursuit of vengeance, we will conveniently be in position to fight the Sartyan army which marches on your home. Isn’t that what you intend to ask of us?’
Though Sesh towered over her, Kyndra had her own height, Char thought, in the tilt of her chin, in her stance that proclaimed she could burn the world if she so chose. A memory came, of standing shoulder to shoulder with her in Rogan’s parlour, gazing at the beauty of the Lleu-yelin caught in the threads of a tapestry. So much had happened since that evening. Char flexed his taloned feet, felt the weight of the horns that curled from his head, the delicate membranes of his folded wings. Only the ambertrix remained the same – that roiling turmoil deep in his chest.
‘I don’t intend to ask anything of you,’ Kyndra said, unflinching. ‘Your help would be appreciated, but you are a free people.’
Sesh chuckled darkly. ‘A free people except for our amberstrazatrix. If Sartya is defeated and everything you work for comes to pass, nothing will change. Men still crave power.’
‘That is in your hands.’ Kyndra’s expression hardened. ‘But remember the lesson of Sartya. An empire was founded on the power you traded away. That decision led to five hundred years of conquest and, ultimately, your imprisonment. The consequences cannot always be foreseen.’
‘If I desired a lecture, I would ask for one,’ Sesh retorted. She folded her arms, rattling the mesh armour against her scales. ‘But very well, Starborn. We will see this through. As soon as it’s done, we return to Magtharda. A new Chimer must be chosen.’
‘I’m grateful for your help.’ Kyndra turned to the others. ‘We need to go.’ Her eyes flickered to the children. ‘Could we perhaps leave them with Rogan in Cymenza?’
Ma bent down. None of the children had spoken a word since being rescued. ‘I must go away for a time,’ she told them. ‘And it is too dangerous to take you with me.’ She cupped one girl’s chin, her hand dark against the child’s paler skin. ‘But I will come back. I will come back as I came back before. And this time, I will not leave you.’
‘Another cold ride,’ Realdon Shune grumbled, eyeing the dragons and their rough hides. ‘But,’ he stroked his chin, ‘I have to say, I’m curious to see Solinaris again.’
‘It’s not Solinaris any more,’ Kyndra said. ‘You won’t recognize it.’
‘My bones will.’ In the lined face, Char thought he detected a pain as ancient as Shune himself. ‘No matter how many years pass, or how many stones come loose from its walls, no man forgets his home.’
35
Gareth
For all their boasting, the northerners had no stomach for death. It disgusted them – the stench, the bodies, the flies that even the cold didn’t dissuade. Death turned the forest into a brutal place, where the clash of steel frightened off the beasts Ümvast’s people relied on for food, fouled the river where they filled their skins. Death was an invasion more terrible than the Sartyan horde.
The plan had worked too well. One failure of discipline in unknown territory had led to a sordid week-long pursuit through thick snows and biting chill. The Sartyans had scattered into the forest where they were easier to pick off. Still, they’d put up a fight and the northerners had lost their fair share of warriors too. They’d have lost more if not for him.
Gareth sat with his head in his hands. It was better to stare at the dark between his fingers than at the chill faces of his own people. They knew what he was – they’d known it even before he had. Kingswold hadn’t spoken to him again. He didn’t need to; Gareth could feel him there now like his own shadow. A shadow that grew stronger every time he called on the power of the gauntlets.
Now he cursed himself for his foolishness. Even the smallest use strengthened Kingswold. For the moment, Gareth was in control. But for how long? What would happen when Kingswold finally became strong enough? Would Gareth be reduced to a voice in his head? The northerners relied on him to lead them. They relied, however unwillingly, on the power of the gauntlets.
Would he save his people only to lose himself?
They’d taken about five hundred prisoners. Where pride had once injected defiance, the cold and the terror of the dead had drained the Sartyans of everything except defeat. Weaponless, they huddled under the lifeless gaze of their own commander. Gareth had installed him there as warden; a constant reminder of the fate that awaited any rebellion. When he walked among them, none would meet his eyes.
Neither would Ümvast’s men.
Ümvast herself pretended composure whenever they spoke. But Gareth knew the truth: even his mother feared him. And now he knew she was right to do so.
I think my son never left those tombs. I think he died there in the darkness and the dust.
He did die there, Gareth thought at her. He just didn’t realize it.
‘What are we going to do with the prisoners? Force them to fight for us?’
Gareth raised his head to find Kul’Das standing beside him. She shivered and shrugged deeper into her fur cloak. Here on the plains, they did not have even the luxury of leafless trees to stem the wind.
‘They can fight for us or die,’ Ümvast said. She came to stand on his other side, keeping her distance.
‘They may pledge to fight now, but what happens when they meet their comrades on the field?’ Kul’Das’s face was bleak. ‘There is nothing to stop them switching allegiance.’
‘Nothing except Kul’Gareth.’
His mother had always been a hard woman to read; looking at her now, Gareth could not guess her thoughts. She’d stopped referring to him as her son.
‘You think their fear of him will stand even then? Would they really fight for their murderers?’
‘You ascribe your own principles to them,’ Gareth said suddenly. He rose to his feet. ‘Sartyans are not like you. If they are defeated, they are defeated.’
Kul’Das frowned. ‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning they have a certain honour. We won. They might not like it, but they’ll accept it. They wouldn’t be allowed to return to the Fist anyway, after such a defeat.’
Both women were silent and the authority with which he’d been speaking abruptly deserted him. Another vestige of Kingswold? Gareth shuddered. Were signs like these his only clues? That gradually
, inexorably, Gareth would fade and Kingswold would take his place? A Kingswold that wore Gareth’s face.
‘Iresonté is burning villages along the coast,’ Kul’Das said. ‘Brégenne sent an envoi. They can see the smoke from Naris.’ She gazed at their own army, a fiery blot on the plains. ‘We need to pick up the pace.’
‘I will take my ship and scout ahead,’ Argat said, striding up to them. The captain wore a borrowed fur mantle about his shoulders and a hood hid his thinning hair. ‘Yara is checking her over as we speak. I’ll be ready to fly as soon as the sky lightens.’
‘It’s a good idea,’ Gareth said before Ümvast could voice an objection. ‘Argat has already had dealings with the Trade Assembly. By now they’ll have seen the threat for themselves.’ He glanced at the Sartyan captives. ‘They didn’t believe it the last time we were there.’
‘More fool them,’ Argat spat on the frozen ground. ‘They’ll believe it when they’re knee-deep in the rubble of their hall.’
‘Hagdon will have enough problems reaching the capital before Iresonté,’ Gareth continued, ‘let alone having to deal with the Assembly. Do whatever you can to help, Argat.’
‘I don’t need telling,’ the captain snapped. ‘How long will it take you to reach Market Primus?’
‘Two weeks, if we march until after sundown each day,’ Ümvast said. ‘We leave at dawn.’
Argat gave a curt nod. It was the closest he ever came to a respectful gesture. ‘Two weeks, then.’ He turned and made his way through their forces. Beyond the torches that marked the boundary of their camp, the airship loomed as a blacker shadow against the dark.
‘We ought to retire,’ Kul’Das said. ‘It will be a hard march.’
That same night, someone tried to kill him.
Hond’Myrkr warned him of the danger. He’d been dreaming of a tangled forest and a nameless pursuit. Whether he was hunter or hunted, he didn’t know, but the liquid eyes of deer observed him from under leafy boughs and it was their silent scrutiny that he ran from. Without warning, Hond’Myrkr began to smoke, a choking stench that caught in his throat and eyes, blinding him so that he blinked and coughed himself awake.