Winter of Ice and Iron

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Winter of Ice and Iron Page 43

by Rachel Neumeier


  Nevertheless, that just in case scared Tiro badly, not just because he didn’t want anything to happen to his father, but because he was afraid of the tie. If the ruling tie came to him, he feared he would prove unable to help Raëhemaiëth against the cold, dragon-haunted Power of Irekay. He had failed Raëhemaiëth once before, at Leiör. He was terrified that if everything depended on him, he would fail again and this time lose everything. Worse, he had no heir. If he lost the tie to Raëhemaiëth, none of them knew where the tie might go or, in an uncertain, violent succession, what damage might be done to the bonds that held all the Harivin provinces together.

  And if the Fortunate bonds between the Harivin provinces broke, Tiro was certain the Mad King or Methmeir Irekaì of Pohorir—or both of them—would move quickly to seize everything they could. The very character of every Harivin province would change beyond recognition if the Pohorin king seized them and forced a ruling tie on them. None of them would have the age and depth and strength to resist the white Immanent of Irekay. Tiro had seen it firsthand, and he knew.

  Tiro didn’t want to think of what would happen to Raëh and all Harivir if Raëhemaiëth were destroyed or, maybe worse, forced into a subordinate tie to a vicious Immanent like the one in Irekay.

  So he asked his father to make sure Gereth Murrel of Eäneté came with them. Because if the worst did happen—which it wouldn’t, of course it wouldn’t, but if it did—he still had the little fragment of granite the Eänetén man had brought. He kept it with him all the time. But he knew he wanted Gereth with him too. Just in case. If the Immanent Power of Eäneté would help Raëhemaiëth . . . if the ruling tie came to Tiro, he was going to need whatever help he could get.

  So now on the twenty-second day of the Iron Hinge Month, only eight days before the uncounted days of the Iron Hinge, Tiro stood high up on top of a guard tower on one of Eilin’s walls, along with Gereth Murrel and Viy Laseïn, Lady of Eilin, and half a dozen soldiers for a personal guard. They all stood up on their toes to see over the balustrade and watched Torrolay Raëhema arrange his forces between Eilin and the mountains.

  “This does seem a good, defensible position,” Gereth commented to no one in particular.

  Lady Viy nodded. “We are small, but we have the mountains.” She was about Gereth’s own age, with considerable presence and a decided, forceful way about her. She went on. “And you see how well these hills lend themselves to a crossfire from archers, should any enemy come through the Anha Narrows. Which, in this season, should not be possible. But if they do.” She nodded again, as though to reassure herself. “We have many fine archers here in Eilin.”

  “I believe—” Gereth began, but just at that moment a brutal white strength blew a pathway through the mountains and came flooding out across the beaten snow of Eilin’s pastures, followed by a second, narrower flood of Pohorin soldiers, the bloody-jawed Winter Dragon of Irekay flying on a banner at the forefront, one head snapping forward and the other turned back over its shoulder as though the monster were driven by contrary winds.

  Tiro had closed his eyes involuntarily against the brutal intrusion of the Irekaïn Power, but Raëhemaiëth rose within and around him and he found himself able to open his eyes again, blink away the shattering brilliance, and lean forward to search the field for his father.

  He located his father almost at once and then couldn’t look away. Torrolay Raëhema rode out to meet Harivir’s enemies, slowly, alone, keeping his bright chestnut horse to a high-stepping walk. The Pohorin force he rode toward looked . . . unstoppable. Ribbons the color of clotted blood fluttered from the wrists and helms and boots of the advancing Pohorin soldiers and streamed from the ends of their long bows and the hilts of their swords. Ribbons white as death had been braided into the horses’ manes and tails, and the standard-bearer who carried the double-headed Winter Dragon rode a white horse whose mane and tail had been braided with ribbons of white and dark red.

  “That’s not your king? That’s not Methmeir Irekaì himself?” Tiro asked Gereth, appalled.

  “Not my king,” the Eänetén man corrected quietly. “Not any longer. I can’t tell from here whether it’s Irekaì himself. It might be a cousin, perhaps. It’s someone carrying a deep tie, obviously; someone who can serve to anchor the Irekaïn Power here in Eilin. I’d have thought Irekaì would reserve his main strength for battle farther south. But perhaps he counts your father as his greatest opponent—probably your father is his greatest opponent, even counting my duke.” He paused and then added, “That’s a small army he’s brought with him. But perhaps he’s got more than he’s yet shown. And, of course, where kings take the field, strength of arms isn’t likely to be decisive. Your Raëhemaiëth is very strong.”

  Torrolay Raëhema rode forward slowly and steadily to meet the Pohorin force. He looked every bit a king, and Tiro was proud of him, proud of all the men of Raëh and Eilin and all Harivir who rode with him.

  Tiro’s father had not yet drawn a weapon, but he carried his own banner, so that the Falcon of Raëh flew over his head, a bright, brave scarlet like holly berries. His cloak was violet, and someone had found the time to braid his chestnut horse’s flaxen mane and tail with ribbons of violet and gold. Raëhemaiëth was so strongly gathered around his father that Tiro saw all this only in dazzled glimpses, and for a long moment he thought that his father might simply break the Irekaïn Power and hurl it out of Eilin by main force.

  Then the blank white winter rose and struck through Raëhemaiëth’s rich warmth, and Tiro knew it would not be so easy, that nothing would be easy.

  His father knew it too, and reined his chestnut in. It reared, striking out with its front hooves, and Torrolay Raëhema dipped the Falcon and swung the banner forward, and his Harivin companies surged into motion.

  Even then, Tiro thought the battle might not be so difficult. Raëhemaiëth might not be able to throw the Irekaïn Power out of Harivir, but it could hold it away from Eilin and stop it from forcing a bond to the minor Immanent that had grown up from this land. And the Pohorin force was not so very large—perhaps a third the size of the force Torrolay Raëhema had brought with him.

  It was Lady Viy who realized first that the advantage was actually all on the other side.

  “The dragon,” she said, and Tiro thought she meant the banner, but she said it again, “The dragon. A dragon is coming through the Narrows.” The lady stood on her toes and leaned forward. Already pale, she looked suddenly deathly, and Tiro gripped the balustrade hard with both hands as knife-edged winds streaked with black whirled out of the Anha Narrows. The vast, unearthly form of a three-headed winter dragon rode the bitter, stinging winds down across the field of battle below. The man bearing the Irekaïn tie and the Winter Dragon standard spurred his horse, which leaped forward with a scream so shrill it carried right up to the tower where Tiro stood frozen with cold and horror.

  Still, the charge checked when Tiro’s father met it. The Red Falcon burned bright even through the whipping snow; it put heart into the defenders, and Torrolay Raëhema would not give way, and the field rapidly dissolved into bloody confusion.

  “He’ll hold it,” murmured Gereth, low and fervent, like a prayer, and Tiro was grateful to the Pohorin for saying so, because it felt like it might be true. He thought it ought to be true. Raëhemaiëth was matching the Power of Irekay, he could feel it was, and if the battle came down to force of arms, they had the numbers too. . . .

  Then Lady Viy exclaimed, sharp and horrified, “The dead! That horrible cold Immanent is taking up my dead!” Because this was her land and her town and her tie, and many of the men who had rode out to meet the small Pohorin army were her own, she knew at once when the Irekaïn Power began to take them away from her.

  It took Tiro some moments to understand what she meant, what she had seen. Gereth Murrel understood first—Tiro could tell from his sharp, indrawn breath—but Tiro mostly saw the Dragon banner, and the darkly translucent winter dragon floating above.

  Then a
t last he saw how the cold Irekaïn Power came down over the fallen, and filled them, and took them, and stood up in their bodies, and picked up their weapons, and turned on the living men of Harivir.

  “How can it do that?” cried Lady Viy. “Those are our people.”

  Tiro shook his head. He knew. He knew, but he didn’t want to say it out loud, as though refusing to put it into words would make it not be true.

  Which was a child’s terror. He made himself tell the lady, “There are stories . . .” He stopped, because he could see from her appalled look that the Lady of Eilin didn’t know those old tales. He didn’t want to have to tell her what it meant, that the Irekaïn Power could embody not only its own dead but also steal hers.

  But she said, “Tirovay?”

  So then he had to tell her, “Methmeir Irekaì can’t have mastery of the Irekaïn Power. Maybe he did once—I guess he must have, once. But he’s lost it now. It’s mastered him and now it’s using him. It’s become partly human. It has learned all the wrong things about ambition and lust for power, and now it’s using the man carrying that deep tie. It has mastered him, and it’s using him to anchor itself in foreign lands so it can break its bonds with the land that gave it birth. Oh. Oh, it makes sense now. Now everything makes sense. . . . No wonder I couldn’t hold Leiör. It wasn’t just that I was in Sariy. It must have had a man in Leiör. . . . No wonder it’s been devouring other Immanences and yet not taking their lands for itself. . . .”

  “Your Highness!” Gereth said sharply. “Will you explain?”

  Tiro closed his eyes. But though watching events play out below was bad, not seeing was worse, and he opened them again. He said tensely, “I don’t have to tell you. You already know what happens to a Great Power when it masters all its deep ties and breaks its bonds to its people and its land. It’s becoming a God.”

  And he had to watch while the realization of what that meant drained the color from his companions’ faces.

  “A God,” Lady Viy said. And grimly, “An Unfortunate God, of course; how else with such a violent apotheosis? It will rise to Godhead here in Eilin.” She drew a deep breath, leaning forward, staring down at the battle. “It won’t. It would destroy us all—it would destroy all of Eilin, the whole province, all my people. No. We’ll stop it. How can we stop it? Can your father stop it?”

  Tiro shook his head because he couldn’t imagine how anything could stop it. But he looked for his father, in case he was wrong. “Raëhemaiëth,” he muttered, not loudly, to himself, and looked again, and spotted first the depth and warmth of Raëhemaiëth and then his father at last, riding through the battle. Then he guessed that maybe they might hope after all to stop the Irekaïn Power’s apotheosis—at least to delay it. Because wherever Torrolay Raëhema rode his golden horse, he cut a wide swath through the Pohorins. When men fell to his sword, they did not rise again, and when he passed near any dead Harivin soldier, that man collapsed and did not rise again.

  “He’ll do it—he’ll beat them,” he said out loud. He wanted it to be true. He hoped it was true. “Look, it’s just like all the tales—” All the ones he wanted to remember, anyway. One bright tie, one Great Power that supported its king, and all their terrible enemies could be cast back into the dark. . . .

  But Gereth did not appear convinced. “The histories only get written if someone survives to write them, Your Highness. No one ever wrote down the story when the northern desert was made in Emmer, and to this day we have no idea what dreadful things are hidden behind the Wall of Storms. Except, of course, we know winter dragons are born from those terrible winds at midwinter, and we know the sign of Irekay is the Winter Dragon.”

  “Yes, but look!” said Tiro, leaning forward. “You can see how if the—the dead are killed enough, they don’t get up, our enemy can’t touch them.”

  “True. That’s true,” said Lady Viy. She nodded hopefully, peering down toward the battle. “The king is turning back even the winter dragon. Look, you can see it turn when he rides toward it.”

  “Yes, you see!” Tiro said warmly. “She’s right!” He thought she was—he hoped she was. Even now the battle might be all but won, because he could see men and a few women beginning to move among the fallen under the sign of the poppy-and-thorn, sorting dead from wounded and carrying the latter hastily into the city.

  The battle itself had moved farther from the city walls, and the Pohorin army was indeed clearly hard-pressed. And the harder Torrolay Raëhema pressed the Pohorins, the fewer dead men seemed able to climb to their feet. Tiro’s father moved through the chaotic battle as though a light was fixed upon him; he seemed to blaze with his own radiance, the pale-haired king on his golden horse, and no Pohorin could touch him. The black Pohorin arrows fell around him like rain, and he paid them as little heed.

  The Dragon standard wavered in the hand of its bearer, and faltered, and Torrolay Raëhema sent his horse flying that way. Light streamed golden down the length of his sword, and the standard-bearer fell. The double-headed Dragon toppled slowly, like a great tree coming down under the ax, and fell at last into the trampled mud, and high above the great triple-headed winter dragon cried out with a voice like midwinter frost and turned back toward the heights.

  Tiro didn’t see the banner hit the ground. He knew only that Raëhemaiëth suddenly rushed away south, leaving his father unprotected. He knew only of another arrow that flicked down out of the sky and did not miss, and he knew Raëhemaiëth rushed back, but too late. And then he was aware of nothing but a whirling storm of brilliance and cold and jagged flashes of fire and bitter crystalline wind. Somewhere past the storm, he knew his father was dead. Grief broke over him, and terror, and then the howling winter fell over him like an avalanche.

  Tiro was aware, dimly, that he had fallen to his knees, and that Gereth Murrel supported him from one side and Lady Viy from the other. He was not lost so deeply in the white cold this time as he had been before; this time Raëhemaiëth seemed better prepared to counter the Irekaïn Power, and the lesser Power of Eilin was doing what it could to support him, and Gereth was there with his thin tie that led right out of Harivir and rooted itself in distant Eäneté.

  Over his head, Tiro heard Lady Viy say huskily, “If Tirovay Raëhema can’t hold Raëhemaiëth—”

  He didn’t hear the rest of it, but he didn’t need to. He already knew what would happen if he couldn’t hold Raëhemaiëth. His father’s death would be only the beginning of this disaster. It would be everything he had feared. If Raëhemaiëth could not cast back the strength of the Irekaïn Power, that would surely be the end of them all; and if the Great Power of Raëh threw back the foreign Power but Tiro couldn’t master it, and it lost its hold on its place and its people, that might be almost as bad.

  His father was dead. Raëhemaiëth had let that happen; it should have protected his father and it hadn’t. Beyond his terror and grief, Tiro was furious. Yet he knew he had to forgive Raëhemaiëth, which surely had not deliberately sacrificed its king. But even if he didn’t understand what had happened, Tiro had to forgive Raëhemaiëth and accept the ruling tie.

  Eilin was helping them. That seemed impossible: a minor Immanent Power holding against Irekay to buy the Great Power of Raëh time to forge its new tie. But the Immanent of Eilin was determined; it drew on Lady Viy’s determination, and it was still holding. There was a lesson in that. Tiro could see how will and purpose fed back and forth between the little Immanent and Lady Viy, different for Power and woman, yet they were drawing one on the other so their strength held and held where it should have failed.

  Raëhemaiëth was so much stronger. If they broke, Tiro feared he would be the one at fault.

  Gereth Murrel wrapped one hand in Tiro’s shirt, hauled him as nearly upright as possible, and slapped him across the face, quite hard. That helped. Tiro gasped and blinked, clinging to the shock of the blow, using it to locate himself in the midst of the storm of power that surrounded him. He managed to meet the Pohorin man’s eyes.
He nodded, and Gereth slapped him again and said sharply, “Tiro! You must master your Power!”

  Tiro knew that perfectly well. He was trying. But though he could reach after Raëhemaiëth, whirling ice and black winds came between them.

  Lady Viy gripped his chin, turned his face toward hers, and said with quiet intensity, “Tirovay Raëhema! Your bones are the bones of the earth. Your body is the earth of the fields and the pastures and the woodlands. Though the year hesitates before the dark turn of the Iron Hinge, Raëh remembers a thousand summers. Eilin remembers. Follow Eilin.”

  “Follow Eäneté!” Gereth said urgently. He pressed the fragment of Eänetén granite and quartz into Tiro’s hand, folding his fingers around it. Tiro clung to the piece of stone. It helped. He could feel how the violent bond between the Immanent and the Duke of Eäneté was forced out of grim determination and yet a willingness to give.

  Tiro found himself able to straighten his back and take a deep breath and stare through the storm. And reach past it and through it. And down and back, from Eilin to Raëh, until the slow swelling warmth of Raëhemaiëth rose beneath him. This time, Tiro let it come. He made himself welcome it; he stepped sideways in himself to make a place for it, and though the storm screamed around him—around them all—it was no longer deafening.

  When Tiro moved to get to his feet, Gereth helped him stand and supported him to go to the balustrade. “You have the full tie, the ruling tie?” Gereth asked the prince, sounding worried. “You’re certain?”

  Tiro had no way to explain just how impossible it would be to mistake it. “Oh, yes,” he said at last. “Yes. I am Raëh. The tie is made now, beyond the reach of your terrible Irekaïn Power.”

  “Not mine,” Gereth protested.

  Tiro spared him a quick glance and a nod. He tried to smile, though he doubted he succeeded very well. “No, I know. The Eänetén Power was here, you know. You brought it to me again. A thin tie. But I think it saved me. Again.” He turned toward Lady Viy. “So did your Eilinìen. For which I thank you. But this can’t go on. That out there—” He pointed down toward the battle. “You know that can’t go on.”

 

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