Chapter Thirteen
Eventually, he thought it would be a kindness to the Kuh’taenium. Not long now and she would be weak enough to die. Perhaps she deserved it. She had served humankind for so long. Empathy was not one of Sventhan’s strong suites, but he could imagine just how tired he would be if he had been born to think, and to remember, and had done so for a thousand years or more.
He was tired enough now, and he had only been thinking for a day. But while he knew he might not be a great thinker, he did understand the meaning of duty as few others.
Sventhan followed the Omerteran. He followed it in his every action, his every word. But he knew also what it did not preclude, what it allowed, and how far he could traverse within its iron-bound code. The Omerteran was a way of life, handed down from generation to generation. Over the years it had been spread far and wide, the family growing, but still always able to trace their roots back to the beginning when they had been builders. The knowledge was part of the code — a way to make a building live. There was no magic. It was geometry, in the lines, and the stone. The stone was rare now. There were no more quarries. But far from becoming forgotten, the knowledge of how to build was entrenched in a widening family of builders. There was no call for it any more, but it was the rules. It was never written — and no body outside of the family knew what they knew. It had survived for a thousand years, survived the exile of some of their members across the western ocean, and but two examples of their works remained, the rest lay in ruins, and a few forgotten, or taken over by beasts, converted to a lair, granting those beasts a measure of intelligence. One of the remaining buildings was in Beheth, its name forgotten, because the people who used it were too busy reading books they forgot to use the writing on the walls. The other was the Kuh’taenium.
Sventhan and his family did not know, but there was an older example — Sybremreyen, the home of the Sard. But that predated the Kuh’taenium.
Sventhan took up his quill for the last time and dipped it in dark ink. A solitary drip hung from the tip while he paused for thought. The pause was, to an outside observer, overly long. But sometimes it takes a ponderous man to take the right action. Anyone can be rash, or intelligent. It takes a special kind of breed to be smart, whether they come to their conclusions swiftly, or with the patience and planning only a builder could bring to bear.
At last, the quill joined the paper. The Kuh’taenium was under attack…and it was time for the family to do their duty. The builders were going to war. Their name would be remembered again.
Sventhan wrote as he thought, with great care. It was this attention to care that ensured his family had survived through the ages — it pays to heed caution when creating tower structures from blocks of stone.
He could sense movement in the fabric of society. The Protectorate becoming overly bold, a sense of cowering among the people of the street, a darkening of the soul of the city. The buildings spoke to him, as they spoke to all his family — and they were afraid. The souls of people soaked into them, and the buildings felt their fear. He should have heeded the warnings long ago, but now there were no more excuses for inaction.
Gurt was family. While Reih did not know the builders, they knew her. She had asked Gurt for help, not knowing what she had set in motion, but now events were out of her hands. She must live. She was twinned with the building. There was no other way.
Duty was clear. Protect the Kuh’taenium, at whatever the cost.
The family might be simple builders who knew no other trade, but they could still wield the hammer, and the blade.
Chapter Fourteen
Jek Yrie sought allies in any place he could. He had travelled further than any of his peers (he thought he only had a few — those who were among the ascended, and even then only on the most tenuous of levels) seeing the distant lands that were to be of no consequence in the coming battle. There were thousands of small islands, archipelagos, peninsulas, mountain plains, cavernous lakes and natural tunnels underground, forests, deserts — anywhere people could live, there were humans. Some places he could not travel, no matter how powerful he had become since his eyes had turned to red; the blasted planes of the underground, where the Naum were rumoured to exist in their land of perpetual night, within mountain ranges where strange light skinned people lived under the stone, in the depths of the sea. If the Speculate could not see his destination, he could not travel there by magical means. But it did not matter. These hidden peoples, little more than barbaric tribes eking out a pathetic existence, were not players in the final game — the return.
He was not interested in them, but he was interested in an isolated city on the coast of a distant continent — the fourth continent. There lived a people not unlike his own, a diluted race of Hierarchs, touched by time and weakening blood, but the city he saw through his blooded eyes was remarkable in many ways. The Hierarchs there ruled with open cruelty, its humans little more than slaves.
The only problem was how to approach them. He would have to think on it. But he had time yet. If all of his resources could not stop the awakening of the wizard, then he would need all the allies with power he could muster. The future was far from certain. But foolish was the leader who did not plan for every eventuality. He was a proud being, but wise enough to know that even he did not have the foresight of the gods. He was, after all, still mortal.
Well, close enough.
Chapter Fifteen
Forces clashed across the world of Rythe, and pulled apart again, seeking weakness, openings, that elusive chink in an enemy’s armour.
On Lianthre, Roth’s race, the mighty rahkens, stood against the Protectorate. They did not seek to openly attack their might, but held their ground, holding the underground lairs of their kind, allowing magically gifted human dissidents sanctuary, actively seeking out those with vestiges of magical power and training them in the ways of the magi.
They would need allies in the final battle, and the humans were not yet aware of their own potential. The rahken nation let it be known that their homes were sanctuary for the hunted. The numbers of humans with fey eyes were growing.
They had promised Tirielle A’m Dralorn an army should she return. It was not an idle promise — the rahken nation saw far into the future, but more importantly, saw further into the past than even the scrolls of the Island Archive.
They could afford to be patient. They knew of the return, but they would fight for honour, and promises. Their time would come soon enough.
Other continents carried on their petty struggles, unaware of the scythe hanging over their heads. To them, each battle was life and death — the fate of the world bears little importance when you are fighting for your life. Rythe itself was born of strife. Wars were commonplace on each and every continent but Lianthre, and even now that was changing.
But some wars are fought because of pride, and some necessity.
Some, though, are fought because of fate.
Chapter Sixteen
On Sturma, unaware of the future, its people struggled to hold back the tide of invasion from neighbouring Draymar. On Sturma, too far within its borders, forces of a more material nature clashed. The remaining Thanes battled the Draymar to a standstill, but without a rallying figure the war would not last long. The Thanes were too fat, too full of self-importance, to rally anything but instead sat back and watched their men die from afar, defending only what was their own and not the whole of the country.
Slowly, the land was falling apart.
Without a figurehead to lead them, the Sturman would fall, and with it, a once proud country.
Should that happen, Renir would have no country to call his own.
Untouched by the war, Pulhuth sat abutting the ocean, its waves gently lapping the shores in the east while waves of a more immediate nature broke against the surviving Sturman forces holding the tide at bay in the west.
Within its walls, untroubled by rising war, Renir and his two friends waited, and prepared.
Chapter Seventeen
While the three men sat in the Upright Horseshoe, supping their evening ale, Tirielle swore soundly.
Her dress was torn, her once long and lustrous hair had become a chain. She had taken the fine blades gifted her by Fenore and the rahkens and cut it away. She didn’t think twice about it. No soul searching, no regret, she just cut her hair off and moved on.
Hair was hair. She needed to appear as someone she was not.
Ahead, the reason for Tirielle’s outburst rode closer still.
Further west and south of Roth’s home scrub and scree gave way to tree and bush. By the time Tirielle noticed the change in the landscape, the drier ground underfoot, the way Dow lingered longer overhead, she looked back and could no longer see where the trees had left…
Sweat dripped from Tirielle’s brow. It was not just the heat that was making her sweat. They were closer to civilisation now and the dangers they faced were different. A patrol of the Protectorate’s forces, quite common but still troubling, approached the armed convoy with their hands upon their weapons.
It was not surprising. She should have thought of it sooner. On the main thoroughfare to Beheth, nine armoured warriors and one rahken stood out somewhat.
Tirielle wiped the sweat clear and loosened her blades in their sheaths.
“Quintal! To me!” she called, sure that the approaching patrol could not here her yet.
The leader of the Sard rode to the caravan and pulled up alongside her.
“There is no need to worry, lady. We can deal with this.”
“And would you fight your way through the streets of Beheth, too?” asked Tirielle, her tone short. Even so, she did not reseat her knives against inside the sheaths hidden in the wide sleeves of her dress.
Quintal merely laughed. “No, Beheth is a human city, with fewer Protocrats. Once there we will use mortal means of disguise, for we cannot hold an illusion for long. But you will note the patrol is comprised of mere tenthers. There are no wizards. This, we can handle.”
“And how do you propose to do so?”
”Merely an illusion, lady. Trust me,” he said with a smile.
He rode out to meet the patrol.
The caravan pulled up while Quintal spoke with the Protocrat force — only one ten, which j’ark alone could probably have bested — and held his hand straight and flat in the sign for parley.
Tirielle could hear their words drifting to her on the dry air, although each soldier wore armour. With her protectors, and the tenthers, all armoured, the sight shimmered in the high suns’ glare. She did not need to see, though, just here.
She heard their words, but what came out of Quintal’s mouth in no way mirrored reality. He told the force they were headed west — when they were clearly on the road south. He told the force that they were travelling merchants, with clothes for sale in Rowan, a town of moderate size to the west, and the Protocrat replied that all was well.
It all seemed to be going well — some magic was at play, Tirielle knew, even though the Sard claimed they knew no magic — then suddenly the seer cried out from her bedroll in the back of the wagon.
Tirielle’s heart leapt into her mouth.
“It is nothing, sir,” said Quintal smoothly. “Merely my child. The heat makes her miserable and crotchety.”
“Ah,” said the Protocrat, “Babies.”
Even Protocrats had children, remembered Tirielle, and males were the same whatever the race — mewling babies were best ignored, and passed onto the nearest woman.
“I pity you,” said the Protocrat, and waved them on.
Tirielle’s heart resumed its normal patter.
Once clear, Quintal returned to her side.
“No magic, eh?” said Tirielle, one eyebrow raised quizzically.
Quintal smiled. “Just a trick, Tirielle. The eye sees what it wants to see, and sometimes the ear hears what it wants to hear. Here, out under the sun, we can give assumption a push. Nothing more.”
“And you are no more than a warrior, I suppose you would have me believe.”
“And your humble servant,” replied Quintal, with a quick grin.
Gods save me from humble men, thought Tirielle.
Chapter Eighteen
Pulhuth’s northern gates stood open, as they always had done. The city had never been assaulted from the north — nothing lay that way but Thaxamalan’s Saw, and whatever hid behind it. The peaks of that giant mountain range, reaching far into the cloudless summer sky, were perennially snow-capped. The guards at the gate thought nothing of their beauty, but were grateful to the mountains, largely because of the cool, blustery wind that whistled down from their heights chilling their skin on what was otherwise a blistering day.
In the wavering distance, across the plains on a little-used track that serviced the northern side of the city, two riders approached. The guard could make out the glint of weapons above their right shoulders, but little else at this distance.
Gradually, watched every second of the way (not because the guard was bound by duty to be observant, but because day in day out there was little else to look at on this side of the city) the riders drew closer, at a gallop.
Staring into the distance all day had given the guard fine eyesight. He gradually made out that the two men were warriors. They rode upright, bore weapons and had stout shoulders. The one on the left, who rode a white horse, was a thick set man with dark skin. His head was shaven. The one of the left, some glinting blade attached to his left arm, wore a full beard and long, unruly hair.
Weapons were of course permitted within the city walls, but these two men had the look of an invading army all by themselves. The guard thought about calling his superior down from his drink in the turret above the gatehouse, but he would no doubt berate the soldier for taking him from his rest.
He thought, ever so briefly, about challenging the two men as to their destination within the city, and even more briefly about asking them to relinquish their swords, which he could see were not for self-defence but for war.
But he was not a stupid man.
They drew level with him, and as they looked at him, he thought better of everything, and even of being a guard. They did not pay him enough.
Shorn and Wen passed unchallenged.
As he watched their receding swords, the guard decided he was long overdue a toilet break.
Chapter Nineteen
Sturmen think the wind is the spirits talking, those anguished souls that cannot pass Madal’s gates. Sometimes they scream. Today, the wind was picking up, howling through the city. A man could be forgiven for thinking the spirits were being tortured.
Shorn strode up to the doors of the barn, his legs now supporting him, but there was a pronounced limp, the legacy of a snowy night high in the Culthorn mountains, and the poison of a deep, muscle rending bite from unnatural hounds. He pushed the doors aside and saw the back of the man who had rescued him that night. He almost failed to recognise him.
Renir swung around as the wind howled through the open barn door, and saw his friend standing watching him at his exercises.
“Shorn!” he cried, all thoughts of form forgotten, and dropped his axe where he stood. He covered the distance to his friend and the two warriors clasped hands. The mercenary noted how Renir’s grip had strengthened while he had been away.
Renir pulled his friend into a hug. After a moment, the taciturn mercenary pulled away, a grin on his battered face.
“Renir, it is good to see you. I am glad that you have not squandered your time on ale and women.”
“I can’t lay claim to an ale free time. I might have supped a few in your absence,” he said with a glint in his eye. “I think you’ll find that it’s the Bear who’s been sampling the local ladies. I, alas, remain innocent.”
“The Bear?”
“Bourninund. It’s my pet name for him. He pretends he hates the name, but I think secretly h
e is pleased.”
“Well, I think we can dispense with the training for now. We should make a special night of it, for tomorrow we ride. I hope Bourninund has trained you well. Our journey only becomes more difficult with time.”
“We are to leave?”
“Aye, it is high time. I have already been gone too long, and the Seafarers won’t wait for long. They only come on sufferance. They know me well.”
“They don’t know me.”
“But they do know Wen.”
“He’s here?”
“He’s talking with Drun.”
“I take it you made up, then.”
“After a fashion. I suppose you could say so.”
“Can’t wait to meet him. No hard feelings, eh?”
Shorn shrugged and forced a smile. “There will always be hard feelings. You can strike a man and get over it, but to scar a man — that cuts all ties. But Wen knows the meaning of duty. He owes me, and I am no longer the man I was. I can understand the need for allies, and he is a powerful man.” Shorn clasped Renir’s shoulder, noting the firmness there where once there was only bone. “I believe you will find him…interesting. I’ve had the time to get to know him again, and we’ve both changed. He’s still formidable, but while his arms grow stronger with time, his mind…I think I’ll let you see for yourself. I have said enough.”
Shorn steered the fledgling warrior to the door, before Renir remembered his axe.
A few seconds later and they were on the way to the bar. Renir’s mind raced. He was apprehensive. He was about to meet the man who gave Shorn his scar. His mind was full of questions, but, he supposed, they would have to wait until later. For now, the chance to meet new friends, and greet the old.
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