Trail of Pyres

by L. James Rice

  Ivin snagged the original scroll from the table and headed for the exit. “It’s a sign from the gods to quit drinking and do what needs done.”

  “Which gods would that be?”

  If Ivin had a sword in hand and the field of people were charging to kill him, he’d scarce be less comfortable than he was now. The view from atop the hill with thousands of eyes staring, waiting for him to speak deadened his tongue and seized his throat.

  It’s a scrap of scroll, nothing will happen. Hells, most of these people will never hear a word I say.

  He took a drink from his waterskin and breathed deep while opening the scroll. The glowing words stared back at him, bright even on a sunny afternoon. He didn’t so much know how to read them, as he had a speech memorized. His mouth dried and his tongue tingled, demanding a second drink. He poured water down his throat and glanced to Polus.

  The Broldun nodded. “Do this thing, whatever hells may come, mmm.”

  Ivin set eyes to the words and inhaled deep. “Vektum imar udeez.” In your dying eyes.

  The scroll flared in brilliant white with opalescent hues, blinding him to the world surrounding the vellum between his fingers. Nothing existed except for the diamond words.

  “Ta indun wain.” The words flowed from his mouth, but different than Meliu had taught him. He tried to stop but his lips wouldn’t quit moving. Power tingled through his fingers, stretching to his shoulders, wriggling energy snaking from the scroll. Warm and cool, painful and soothing, as the world returned to his view.

  His voice thundered the spoken words so the most distant could hear, and clarity struck him: He didn’t misspeak a word, he’d spoken every syllable as the scroll intended. He looked to the crowd huddled before him and knew the scroll was real.

  He felt Polus yanking on his shoulder and arm but his muscles were tempered steel forged into his likeness, a thousand stone statue bolted to granite.

  The people stood as wispy blurs, sucking close and surging distant, but some withered, grasping for a shoulder to lean on as they collapsed to the ground. Others stared, unfazed, but he could sense them weakening. The bass of his own voice resonated in his skull, overwhelming his mind. The scroll’s magic possessed him, fed him the strength to say the words.

  The world pulsed in blurs with every syllable uttered, his eyes swelling in their sockets until they felt so large he couldn’t blink. Whatever he’d started was unstoppable, the Mercies in their wicked wisdom made certain their scroll would never fail.

  But then it did.

  A blur of shimmering gold and ruby hues, and the diamond words exploded in his hands, a flurry of dust leaving his eyes stinging and blind. He gasped, inhaled. The cloud pumped into his throat and lungs like tiny razors; first he gagged dust dry, the next breath flooded with a thousand drips.

  Ivin collapsed to his knees, his vision clearing, and he reached out to Meliu. She struggled through the crowd, desperate eyes on him. She wouldn’t make it in time, he was dying.

  The chaos slowed as he fell backward, and a woman with long black hair caught his collar, stared into his eyes with a smile. High Priestess Sedut. Her every move was lightning quick while the rest of world struggled through honey, and her voice came so fast he struggled to understand her words.

  “No time to die today, Choerkin.”

  If he wasn’t drowning in his own blood he might’ve laughed, but with her touch a force entered his lungs, a painful, icy chill like a deep winter’s breath, expanding until his ribs popped. His mouth gaped and his muscles went rigid, and when she released him he spun, spattering blood on the ground with a dozen coughs.

  On his first clear breath his arms gave out, and he dropped face first into gore-slicked turf. Three shaky breaths later powerful arms snaked beneath him and wrenched him to his feet. His toes drug the ground and his lids were too heavy to open.

  A flicker later… or was it a day? Time had no meaning in the cloud of his thoughts, he heard Tekite shouts. Silone shouts.

  The ring of steel. The splash of blood.

  He hit the ground in a wild tumble, his hand slapping his face as he bounced.

  He forced himself to his elbows and spit dirt, blood, and grass. His eyes blinked open to combat; Polus, Roplin, and a dozen other men danced with smaller Teks. An arrow split a Hidreng head, and he followed the angle to see Little Sister on a nearby rise. He wanted to smile at her, but his jaw hung loose and wouldn’t close.

  Meliu stood on a distant hill; Ivin was a dot in her vision before prayer helped her see. She was confident in his inability to trigger the scroll’s magic, but the Church taught a simple lesson: Demonstrate humility even in your greatest confidence, and you will suffer less humiliation when wrong. She’d forgotten many sermons over the years, but the value of humility wasn’t one. Translating the words of the gods and their prophets had a way of making you look the fool. So she took Ivin’s advice, no matter how he’d irritated her, and stayed away.

  She knew she should’ve taken a horse and ridden for the horizon the flicker she heard his voice booming across the valley. His eyes went wide and his mouth moved, and he pronounced the next several words in the old tongue, not as she’d taught him. Her vision quivered as if reality were the thousand strings of a harp strummed at once.

  Meliu released her prayer for vision and dropped to her knees, praying to Erginle for Light. She felt the goddess’ answer, the surge of soothing power with a strength and vitality unequaled in the past, but the world’s strings plucked her tether to the deity. The scroll’s energies stretched and pulled at her connection to the gods, and for a moment she wondered if its power would rip her guts through her mouth in the effort to sever her ties.

  She prayed harder against the nausea and rising pain and Erginle’s Light settled within her. For a moment she felt as if she’d reached straight into the heart of the goddess, feeding off the pulse of Her being. If she could stretch her will that extra span, she might touch consciousness, speak, daughter to mother, servant to goddess, both understanding the other.

  This sensation of intimacy died in a flicker with a strum from the scroll, but Light depleted her fears and worries: No ancient magic would sunder her connection to the gods.

  She couldn’t say the same for those in the valley. Five thousand? Ten? How many souls would lose their faith today?

  She opened her eyes to a world of vibrating blur and silence except for Ivin’s driving voice. Browns and greens and flesh tones, a mish-mash, until a rainbow of energy exploded to the south. Entranced within perfect tranquility, Meliu’s head lolled to watch as a priestess stood with flowing black hair. She was a singularity of clarity in a hazed universe: High Priestess Sedut, and she bore the artifact which raised Ulrikt from the dead.

  The woman strode toward Ivin on the hill, her voice ringing across the valley: “Stop this abomination!”

  Meliu knew there was no stopping; the power forcing Ivin’s pronunciation had taken hold of him. Hidreng soldiers afoot circled the Choerkin and horsemen thundered toward the lone woman in great brown blurs. Her strides never slowed and when blurs met her clarity, the rainbow showered into sparkling reds and pinks. From the background of this new universe came screams that could as well be cheers or horror or the baying of dogs, she couldn’t be certain.

  It mattered not.

  The number of blurs who charged and sprayed into crimson were uncountable, even if Meliu cared to know the number. The priestess marched on without slowing, meeting footmen in another blur of scintillating, beautiful death, to shame the play of light with sun and rain. The men were blood-wheat harvested and thrashed by the power of Sol and his priestess, and nothing stood between her and Ivin.

  A piece of consciousness stirred: Meliu should stop this woman before she killed Ivin. But Erginle’s serenity swallowed her fears and anxieties even as the shower reached him.

  Shimmering white exploded in a dazzling display of sparkles before the world clarified into a mess of blood and battle, a single woman a
gainst an army of Hidreng. The scroll in Ivin’s hands shredded into a hundred fragments, and the Broldun drug him back from Sedut. Meliu giggled; try imagining that scene two months ago. In the distance came more horsemen to die.

  In the valley below, the Silone people screamed and ran, or screamed writhing on the ground, some were unconscious or dead. In the halo of Erginle’s peace none of these details mattered, but when she released her prayer and broke her peace with Erginle, a flood of horror swept over her. Is Ivin alive? How many of our people are dead?

  Sedut turned from the crown of the hill and marched south down the ridge, into the path of the galloping horsemen. Men and women followed behind her, plucking weapons from dead hands and bloodied grass to face the charging enemy.

  I should run north to the sea, but she didn’t. Meliu leaped to her feet and ran for Ivin, threading her way through sprawling and terrified masses. When she reached the base of the hill, she saw the Broldun struck by Hidreng warriors: A gash stretched across his chest and he cast his broken shield aside, taking his sword with both hands to hew a Tek warrior, but he collapsed beneath a blow from behind.

  Meliu screamed but couldn’t hear herself over the din; a fleeing man collided with her and she spun to the ground. She clambered to her feet with a prayer for Dark on her tongue, but the Hidreng had Ivin, dragging him behind the hill’s crown. Horses shrieked shrill, and she leaped atop a pushcart; Sedut stood amid men and beasts falling to die around her, limbs and heads severed. The high priestess disappeared in a brilliant flash of Light… reappeared in a dark spray of red in the middle of the cavalry charge. Horses wheeled and men fell; Meliu doubted the high priestess would leave a single one alive, but Hidreng guards came from all directions.

  Meliu made her way up the hill to the Broldun’s side. He stared at the sky, but blinking and alive. She laid her hands on his wounds and prayed, sending a wave of Life and Light into his failing body to heal and sedate. He jerked hard beneath her fingers and the bleeding slowed. A gasp, his eyes shocked wide open, he swallowed hard, maybe choking on blood, and she prayed for Life alone, hoping her devotion would suffice.

  The man spit blood as he spoke. “Ivin?”

  She felt his heart pounding and the strength of this warrior’s will to live. “They’ve taken him.”

  “The Hidreng? Save him. You must.”

  “I’ll save you first.”

  “To the Hells with me! I’ll be fine or I won’t.” He struggled to perch on his elbows as if to prove his strength.

  Meliu looked over the hill, Ivin wasn’t in sight, but there was plenty to see all around. Sedut left a wake of blood-splattered dirt and grass, but fighting had broken out all around her. Silone overwhelmed the Hidreng by sheer numbers, but a second wave of armored horse already thundered from the southwest.

  “I will save him. If I can.” She released a final prayer for Life into the man and felt his wounds stitch. The stubborn bastard might yet live, would live for certain if she were a better healer. But were her prayers enough to save Ivin?

  Hidreng footmen marched up the hill and Meliu thanked the gods she’d passed on wearing her holy robes. In a dress she skirted the Hidreng who focused on the throng of Silone roaring over the hill without them noting little old her.

  Istinjoln may have belittled the common man in sermons, but every Silone would fight and die for their kin. They proved that now, rushing into and over armed and armored men, pummeling the enemy with anything that fit in their fists.

  She turned from the battle and sprinted downhill, the slope so steep her legs outpaced her and she tumbled into a roll. Collided with a bush. She scrambled to her feet and pinned her eyes on a group of Hidreng who had Ivin thrown over a saddle-horn. They disappeared faster than her feet could follow and she pulled to a stop with hands to her knees, breaths huffing.

  One less Choerkin in the world, what the hells did it matter to her? It shouldn’t, but it did.

  Still, what mattered most, one man or thousands who stood to die? Sedut was a butcher unleashed in a herd of sheep, but if she fell the sheep would turn into lions.

  Her old thoughts came back to her: I’m a waif and a scholar, a speck, but her fists clenched. I am the Dark, and I’m behind my enemy.

  The Light in her prayer was no longer soft, it was hard and strong as if it knew what was to come. And Darkness followed. Hollow, cold, and horrible, it pounded in her heart and forced her lips into a smile, widened her eyes until she felt she saw a brand new world. She was no longer a girl, she was a fearful terror no one would recognize until too late.

  The arms and armor of the Hidreng clashed with the fury and numbers of the Silone, and then the demons came to play.

  Meliu raked her hands through the air with a tiger’s intensity, and tendrils of Dark snaked from her fingertips, silent whips passing through the bodies and souls of her enemy. Hardened soldiers froze or collapsed to their knees, bolted in silence or screamed as they dropped their arms to cover their faces. Death followed as Silone filled the gaps in the Hidreng ranks, merciless slaughter for the cowed.

  Her breaths came sharp and fast, the rush of powers tingling her soul, but she eased her prayers and strode uphill as this slice of battle ended. People stared at her, she noticed but didn’t care, until she realized they lined up behind her. She smiled and raised her arms as she crested the hill; Dark flourished from her fingertips and she sent it streaking above the heads of her people and into the armored horse of the Hidreng.

  Horses reared with hooves striking air, throwing riders from their saddles.

  A rush of roars, two human rivers passed to either side as men and women armed with scavenged Hidreng weapons charged into the battle from behind her. With Dark in the eyes of man and beast the tide of battle swung again, and Meliu glanced east.

  Sedut’s fury dominated the lines of battle, and it wouldn’t be long before victory. She smiled, and that’s when she felt the burn on the back of her neck, even through the glorious rush of prayer.

  She spun for battle.

  But only a boy faced her, with brilliant blue eyes. He smiled, cocked his head, then blew her a kiss with a wink.

  She turned her back on him. The fighting wasn’t over; she wouldn’t allow her people to lose.

  What had seemed an army undefeatable candles earlier lay in sanguine ruin on a field of turf torn by boots and hooves.

  Meliu sat in the back of a broken wagon propped by bundles of cloth folks had thrown together for her when she collapsed after the battle. Her right eye twitched now and again, and her tongue and fingers were numb, but her mind was keen despite exhaustion. Such power should bear a greater price, but somehow she defeated its nastiest repercussions. The gods favored her cause, it was the only explanation she had.

  The sun sat on the walls of Inster; night wasn’t far away. I must’ve dozed. Fortunate for her that people found a wagon outside of arrow range before leaving her be. Not a single Hidreng would set foot out of the city until the Silone fled the field; She figured watching your army decimated would put sensible caution into folks. But, she wouldn’t put it past some brazen archer to lob an arrow her way.

  She scooted off the back of the wagon and crumpled to her knees with her feet gone numb. Within a few flickers her toes tingled, giving her hope of returning to normal as she righted herself and stared northeast to the tail end of a wagon train disappearing.

  She walked the twilit perimeter of the camp outside Inster, finding only a handful of stragglers scrounging every scrap of value from the camp and the abandoned dead. She suspected a few were even Hidreng snuck from their city walls to plunder.

  Two Hidreng soldiers lay dead in front of her, picked clean of weapons and armor, anything worth a song, right down to their boots.

  The speed with which desperate people became vultures frightened her.

  But she couldn’t blame them.

  A war with Shadows still raged in their hearts, but a war with men raged before their eyes. A war for souls and li
ves. What hope is there, but steel and gold, when your gods have betrayed you? The armies of the Hidreng would return, bleeding her people into the dirt and grass, their stories forgotten.

  She forced her eyes from the battered bodies of the warriors, clubbed into the Fields of the Hokandit by fists, sticks, and stone. Would their gods welcome them, soldiers slain by common folk? She exhaled her musings and wrangled her thoughts into order. She couldn’t let guilt for her role in their deaths eat her soul.

  The Ravinrin had set sail before the fiasco on the hill, that left the Choerkin and the pig-headed Broldun as ranking clan heads. She’d left the Broldun alive, but he could be dead for all she knew. She should go after Ivin, but for all she knew he was free by now.

  One choice remained: follow the herd.

  20

  A Deal Touched

  Listing and fishing, the Drunken Sailor

  on a boat of iron with a net of gold.

  Gods and godlings she seeks,

  demons and devils, she finds.

  –Tomes of the Touched

  Solineus’s head lolled as he sat in a chair, a fitful doze as he waited for Lelishen’s return. He snort-snored himself awake and glanced around the room with blurry eyes. He was alone in his chambers with a bed and several chairs spread around an oval table.

  He’d beaten his brain over every offer he could conceive, but every damned one was a paper treasure that meant nothing. The more notions he discarded out of hand, the more he believed that damned Inslok wanted something in particular, and was waiting to see if Solineus had the smarts to figure it out. He stifled a yawn, and a thought squirmed into his brain. The Edan want the Twins.

  Lelishen said she’d mentioned the swords, it was possible, but the idea didn’t mingle well with his impression of the Edan. Worse came to worst, the offer was worth a try. Even if they didn’t want the swords, the offer might prove his sincerity.