This Forsaken Earth

by Paul Kearney

  “Very well; we will do without. As you say, the wall—”

  “Men can draw guns,” Rol said. Up and down the table, the assembled officers stared at him in astonishment. Because he had interrupted Rowen.

  The Queen’s eyes were cold as glass. “Explain.”

  “A dozen men can move a twelve-pounder as fast as any mule-team, if it’s over broken ground—and that ground beyond the walls is shot up all to hell. Charge them with canister, park them hub to hub, and you could stand off an army.”

  There was a somewhat chilly silence.

  “My men are not draft animals,” Mirkady said with a curl of his lip.

  “They are not,” Rowen said softly. “They are soldiers, and as such will obey orders. You will ready as many batteries as you see fit, Gideon, and assign men to move them as well as crew them.”

  Mirkady bowed his head in answer.

  “Your Majesty,” another man said, a broad, blue-jawed fellow with a broken nose and the look of one who would whip his dogs, “how many men does Lord Canker have with him?”

  “He has enough, Blayloc, and all of them veterans from the northern commands, hard fighters who have held the line of the Embrun these six months. What’s more, he will have surprise on his side, and a thousand cavalry to guard our flanks. Bar Asfal’s host in the Gallitran camps numbers some eighteen thousand. If we can break them before his forces in the Destrir and Palestrinon encampments can come up, then the battle will be already won. Gentlemen, these next few days will see the culmination of all our efforts. I mean to make this the end of it; Bionar has suffered enough.”

  A silence met this last remark. The assembled officers lowered their eyes, or in a few cases exchanged discreet glances with one another. Looking up and down the table, Rol realized that Rowen’s hold on these men was fraying. If this adventure failed, they would desert her, seek terms with the loyalists. If she did not die in battle, these men would be among her executioners.

  He caught her eye with this knowledge still in his own, and she nodded fractionally. She knew also.

  “What about timings?” Blayloc asked.

  It was Mirkady who spoke up. “We take out the army at dawn, two days from now. Blayloc, your regiments will be in the van. Cassidus, your brigade will follow. Remion, yours will bring up the rear. We sally forth from the Warder, at the double, and do not begin to deploy until halfway to the enemy lines.”

  “Their guns will tear up our columns before we’ve even shaken into line,” someone protested.

  “We need to cover that ground quickly, Remius; and more importantly, all regiments must clear the gate as swiftly as possible. We stay in column for the first quarter-mile.” Mirkady looked somewhat dogged as he said this. Rol guessed that he was of two minds about it himself.

  “If we do haul out artillery with us, it shall be at the rear.” Mirkady looked at Rowen, and she inclined her head.

  “Canker’s men had best be on time,” Blayloc said savagely. “Or we shall all die there, in column or line or whatever way their guns find us.”

  “Canker knows his duty,” Rowen said coldly. “As do we all. Gentlemen, this meeting is adjourned. Go to your commands. Quartermaster Affrick, you will fulfill any and all requests for supplies and equipment that are presented to you. No man shall leave Myconn’s gates who is not fully kitted out and carrying as much ammunition as he can bear. That is all, my lords.”

  The long lines of men stood up, Rol included. Two dozen formidable, ambitious, pride-filled lords of men, and every one there aware that the best of them was not a man at all. They bowed to her as one, then trooped out without speaking another word.

  Rowen shook her head at Rol, waved on Mirkady when he hesitated. The Queen and her brother sat on as the nobles and officers of her last army left the room, and the great doors banged hollow at their backs.

  “You have a wolf by the ears,” Rol told her, helping himself to brandy from a shining decanter.

  “And what would you know about it?” She stood up, energy crackling out of her. “Do not presume to interrupt me in front of my officers, Fisheye, ever again. We are not sat here playing at pirates. If you have some homespun wisdom to impart, make sure you do so with the proper deference.”

  Rol’s fingers creaked about his glass. “What will you do, Rowen, take me out and have me whipped?”

  “If necessary, yes.” That cold light in her eyes, akin to his own. He knew if he pressed her that they would be at each other’s throats, here, now, in the very Council Chamber of Myconn. The training clicked in, and he found himself automatically mapping the way she stood, how she stood poised there on the balls of her feet like a dancer. There were throwing stars holstered along her ribs; he saw the tiny lined bulge under the dress for the first time.

  Rowen’s white, taut face relaxed a little. Her hands sank to her sides.

  “Do not forget where you are,” she said in a low voice.

  “I came here because of you, and you alone.”

  “You came here because of a memory. Things cannot ever be the way they were, Rol. You are my brother.” Her voice cracked.

  “That does not matter to me.”

  “It matters to me.”

  There was a knock on the discreet side door. “Enter,” Rowen said without shifting her gaze from Rol’s face.

  In came a small, bent man with a wisp of beard and a silver basin. He bowed without meeting their eyes, and padding over to Rowen, he set down the basin and began unwrapping a silken bundle he held in the palm of his hand. “It is time, Majesty.”

  The tension left Rowen’s body. She sagged, looking instantly ten years older.

  “Already?”

  “Yes, Majesty. Forgive me. Your own orders…” The little man was plainly frightened.

  Rowen tugged her sleeve up over her forearm to the elbow. With a start, Rol saw that the inside of her arm was covered in tiny little crescent-shaped scabs and older scars, all following the line of the blue vein that coursed through her pale skin.

  “The usual amount?” the old, bent man asked. From his silken bundle he had taken a blade, a whetstone, and a needle threaded with white silk.

  “Yes, but be quick, Marmius. I have things to do.”

  Rol watched with a kind of grim fascination as Marmius deftly sliced open the vein, and as the scarlet ichor within began to pour out, he set Rowen’s arm over the basin and watched it fill with an unpleasant kind of satisfaction. Rowen pumped her fist open and closed to keep the blood trickling. All at once, Rol was back in Psellos’s Tower, and the blood was his, his monthly payment. He turned away, tossing back the brandy in his glass, feeling sick with ebbing adrenaline, and a kind of grief.

  It did not take long. When the process was over, Marmius left the way he had come, holding the silver basin as though it were made of eggshell. Rowen poured herself a tall glass of wine from a decanter and drank it off without a blink.

  “What was it Psellos used to call it?” she asked. “Room and board. Well, here it buys armies, or the men who lead them, at least.”

  “Is it worth it, Rowen?”

  “I intend that it shall be. One day, it shall be.” She drank more wine. Her face was white as paper. He knew now there was nothing he could say to help her, no words that would recall the woman he had once known. Her face was that of a stranger, not the dream he had carried in his heart all these years. And yet, and yet…

  “You have not seen the Turmian yet, have you, Rol?”

  He smiled vacantly. “I’ve not seen anything beyond the walls of this palace.”

  “We must fix that. We have time. There will be a ball the night before we take the troops out, but until then, the nobles will be busy with their regiments. We have some time. Would you care to ride out with the Queen?”

  A closed carriage took them through the gates of the Bar Madivar Palace. It was a beautifully sprung vehicle, and the road passed smoothly under them. Apart from a trio of armed footmen, they were unescorted, their vehicl
e unmarked by livery of any kind. They passed without comment, and Rol peered out at the world through a chink in the curtained window. It was dark again—it seemed always to be dark here—and now that they were beyond the mighty confines of the palace, he could hear the artillery rumbling down at the walls, over a mile and a half away.

  Myconn seemed crowded, and the streets were choked with traffic where they were not choked with rubble. Construction here had been going on in a grand scale for centuries, and on all sides monumental buildings reared up in waves of stone, though many had broken glass in their windows, and more lacked complete roofs.

  “This is where it began,” Rowen said. “In Myconn itself.” She pulled her heavy black cloak more tightly about herself, stifling a shiver. “Mirkady was the first to come over, and then Blayloc and Brage. Their troops garrisoned the city, and were happy enough to change allegiances, given the right incentives.”

  “Blood,” Rol said somberly. “Sex. Money. All three perhaps?”

  Rowen’s eyes sparkled with anger. “All three indeed. Canker and I approached from the north, even as Bar Asfal has done, while Mirkady and the others raised hell within the city itself. Bar Hethrun—my father—was a popular man, and legend had made him more so. Bar Asfal is a greedy, small-minded wretch, and people were quite willing for the Lost Heir to return, even if she was a woman. Once he heard the boom of our artillery, Bar Asfal fled. Some of his folk made a stand in and around the palace, but by and large, Myconn remained intact. Only now it has been battered relentlessly for some four months of siege, and the walls are crumbling, as is the resolve of its defenders. The thing is nearly finished.”

  “You may beat him in battle, but unless you kill Bar Asfal himself, the thing will never be finished,” Rol said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few weeks, it’s that these Bionari are stubborn bastards; give them a flag to follow and they’ll march behind it through blood and slaughter. As long as the loyalists have a figurehead, they’ll never give up.”

  “Quite true,” Rowen said quietly. “That is why we must be sure Bar Asfal does not live through the coming battle.” Her eyes were fixed on his. There was almost a kind of pleading in them, but she turned her head away without saying anything more.

  “You want me to kill him for you,” Rol said tautly. Rowen did not reply. “I don’t do knives in the dark anymore, Rowen; I leave that to you and Canker.”

  “Not in the dark,” she said. “It must be public, in battle, at the height of the fight.”

  Rol laughed. “Don’t you have an army at your back? What need have you of me to do your dirty work?”

  “I know you can do it, if anyone can.” A bleak smile. “I trust you to do it, if you say you will.”

  “I’ll fight for you, Rowen, but that’s all. Don’t count on any special favors.”

  They said nothing more. The little candle-lamp in the carriage threw Rowen’s face into cruel relief. It was thinner than Rol had ever seen it, and her eyes were sunken. She did not look as though she relished what lay ahead. More than anything, Rol wanted to take her in his arms and kiss shut those tired eyes, but he knew he could not.

  The carriage came to a halt and the driver opened a small hatch in the roof and spoke quietly. “The Turmian Library, my lady.”

  “Very good, Badir. Wait here. We go in alone, my brother and I.”

  Rol took her hand as she stepped down from the carriage, and she leaned her slim weight on it, swaying a little as her feet met the cobbles. “You’re draining yourself dry,” Rol said with a jet of concern he could not conceal.

  “I’ll be all right. Help me up these damn steps.”

  A towering portico loomed up in the wintry night, its pillars two fathoms wide at the base. They were in the higher streets to the south of the palace, and the sound of the guns was a dull flickering thunder off at the edge of the world. Myconn sprawled out below them, a sea of stone and slate teeming with half the refugees of a kingdom. Rol could pick out the outline of the palace over a mile away by the many lights in its windows. It seemed impossibly tall.

  Rowen produced a key and a small lantern from the folds of her cloak. The Turmian’s doors were three times the height of a man, bound with bronze that had greened with age, but near their base there was a postern. The key turned smoothly, and Rowen pushed in the little door, then gestured to Rol with a small, cold smile. “After you, brother.”

  There was a sense of echoing space, of moving air. It took a moment for Rol’s eyes to adjust to the utter, impenetrable blackness, and just when his unnatural sight was beginning to assert itself, Rowen struck a light and set it to the wick of her oil lantern, dropping the glass with a snap. At once, the half-guessed outlines of the building around them retreated into the golden confines of the lantern-light.

  “Can you still see in the dark?” Rowen asked innocently.

  “Now and then. This place is black as the inside of a tomb.”

  “It stays locked at night, for fear of looters. During the day, only a few select scholars are admitted. Once, it was open to any citizen who had a mind to open a book, but times change. People are not so interested in reading anymore; they’re more interested in finding something to fill their bellies.”

  “Who can blame them?” Rol asked.

  Their footsteps echoed and the lantern-light sent their shadows capering up the walls. They were in a kind of foyer whose walls reared up into black shadow. There were tableaux carved in bas-relief into the stone, soldiers and horses and kings with expressionless faces, a long strip of chiseled stories, and writing that Rol could not read. Rowen raised the lantern higher.

  “Old Bionese. Not many can read it now; they say it was related to Waric, the tongue of the Weres.” Her breath steamed out white as smoke.

  “Come, this way.”

  The foyer was long and empty, without furnishing. The only ornaments were on the walls. Below the line of bas-reliefs were a series of gilt-framed paintings, each taller than Rol. Within them, stern, pale faces gazed out from below a cracked glaze of varnish; men in archaic armor with crowns on their heads, dressed in regal robes and holding weapons too ornate to be of practical use.

  “Who are these fellows?” Rol asked, gazing up.

  “The Kings of Bionar—or the most recent ones, at any rate. In ancient times they lined this chamber as statues, but that stopped a century or so ago with the coming of the genius painter Ordivalle from Urbonetto. After that, the fashion was for portraiture, and the old statues were stripped out. They still dot the palace here and there.” Rowen stopped before one of the last paintings and held the lantern as high as she could. “See here; this is the man who began all the trouble. My father, Bar Hethrun.”

  “I’ll be damned.” She was in his face. Bar Hethrun had been a man of great beauty, with features both delicate and hard. There was perhaps a weakness about the chin which had no place on Rowen’s face, and the color of the eyes was entirely different, but the resemblance was striking all the same.

  “I am my father’s daughter, I’ve been told,” Rowen said. She moved on a few paces and raised the lantern again. “And here is the last of the line.”

  In this painting, the sitter was in half armor of marvelous workmanship, and he stared down at them with none of the regal detachment of Bar Hethrun. A stockier man, if the artist had caught him rightly, he looked like someone who continually found fault with the world. He had a small, black beard and his eyes were dark as Laugran olives. A hint of jowl; he would flesh out as he grew older, though in the painting he looked to be in his early thirties.

  “Bar Asfal,” Rowen said. “The man we fight.”

  “He would be older now.”

  “Yes, almost fifty. He has filled out and gone grayer since this was painted, but he is not so different.”

  “You know him personally?”

  “I was his courtesan for a year, back at the beginning. It’s as good a way into Court as any.” Rol stared at her.

  “
Come; we’d best move on. There’s still a ways to go.” She led Rol past Bar Asfal’s dark eyes, and the light went with her. For a long moment, Rol stood motionless in the dark as her footsteps went on ahead, then finally he followed.

  Another tall door, another postern opened with a turn of the same key. Beyond it, the sound fell softer on their ears, soaked up by something other than stone. Lines of massive pillars trooped off into the darkness, and in between them were enormous shelved bookcases, scores of them, all piled high with scrolls and books and loose-leaved manuscripts, ten thousand years of reading all in one room.

  “The main reading room,” Rowen said. “See? There are desks here for those who wish to browse. Only in Myconn could a man or woman sit down and read anything they had a mind to take off a shelf. It is part of this kingdom’s greatness. Psellos came here, many times. But this is only part of the whole. Under our feet, the hill has been tunneled out in centuries of labor, and there are whole libraries underground, more specialized knowledge, rarer books. Some are so fragile they can no longer be read. Some are written in languages no longer spoken. The Kings of Bionar were collectors of knowledge. Every time they fought a war, conquered a country, they brought that place’s heritage back here to line the walls of their library.”

  “The most harmful kind of plundering I can think of,” Rol said. “It wasn’t enough to defeat a nation, they would steal its identity and bring it back here to molder in the dark.”

  “They made a storehouse of knowledge that was open to all,” Rowen said crisply. “They preserved.”

  “They raped,” Rol said.

  “That is a matter of opinion.”

  They found a steep set of stairs, and at their base yet another locked door. It opened on a deeper chill, and the dust-smell of dry paper. Rol sneezed. He felt he was descending deeper into the maw of a grave. Rowen’s face was set in white resolve, though she staggered slightly when they reached the foot of the stairs. Rol put his arm about her waist, slipping it under the thick cloak. She seemed lean as whipcord, with no warmth to her flesh. One moment, she leaned into him, then she drew away.