by Jeff Seymour
Another breath. A snarl. “No. I will not help you in this. I will not be remembered as a murderer.” Ense’s hands quivered on his reins.
Lord Pendilon’s voice sharpened. “This is not a game, Ense. And this is not a moment to act on some misguided principle. This man,” he gestured toward Molte Eldani, “has earned this. And if you defy me here and stand with him, you will die. Come. Now!”
Next to Aesith Pendilon, Aegelden Elpioni frowned.
Ense did not move.
The five lords in the square looked at one another. Taeryn’s face constricted into a scowl of hatred, and he shouted an incomprehensible oath. Molte turned calmly to face Aesith Pendilon and Aegelden Elpioni. He laid his hands on the black-wrapped grips of his blades and pulled them from their sheaths. Steelhill and Serethon drew their weapons as well. Ense Pendilon followed their lead.
“So be it,” said Aesith. “You have broken your mother’s heart.”
He inclined his head ever so slightly, and the dying began.
The guards turned on one another, black and white helms against the red, the silver, the green. The soldiers leaped into action. The Twelfthmen dug their heels in and urged their mounts into the square.
An invisible, irresistible force wrapped around Leramis’s throat. The flow of his blood was cut off.
Leramis grasped the River. It blazed white and turbulent, and he saw the glow of tightly woven strands around his neck. The tendrils led to the Twelfthman who’d been his tormentor all day long.
He’s trying to tear my head off.
He inhaled with all his might, tried to rip apart the weaving with the breath of his soul, but he could barely suck in enough of the River to keep the Twelfthman’s noose from contracting. His head grew taut and heavy. His balance faded. He was going to fall, going to lose, going to die—
Steel flashed in the firelight.
Leramis’s blood flowed again. His eyes watered. He coughed. The strands around his neck dissolved into a hazy stream of souls, and he spotted the Twelfthman’s head rolling on the stones near his horse’s feet.
Charles Steelhill sat astride his mount between Leramis and the Twelfthman’s falling body, a swath of blood splashed across his shining armor, fire in his eyes and a blade in his hand.
“Hentworth!” he shouted. Taeryn’s horse had been cut down. On the platform the soldiers’ arms were rising and falling, rising and falling, carrying crimson-stained steel. The ring of battling guardsmen was closing in. The River of Souls was cresting, manipulated by two dozen or more who were as strong as Leramis or better, ready to obliterate them.
“Hentworth!” Steelhill snarled again.
It was the end. There was no escape, no way out, nothing to do but accept that death was inevitable.
A hand grasped his shoulder, and he looked up into the dark, serious face of Molte II Eldani, a king atop a white horse in a city full of flames.
He saw there a crown, a calm man, and hope.
“Hentworth,” said the monarch, and Leramis listened. The guards were still protecting them. The Twelfthmen were too far away to strike. “Do your people keep a place to run to?”
Leramis nodded.
“Take us,” said the king.
And Leramis dug his heels into his gelding and rode as hard as he’d ever ridden in his life.
THIRTY-FOUR
During the sack of Death’s Head
Leramis led them through fire and death and twisted shadows. The stench of the dying city—burning timbers, thatch, garbage, gardens, flesh—choked his nostrils and his mind and his heart.
He rode, and he rode, and he rode.
Somehow they escaped the Centerspach. One moment there were armored men in front of him reaching for his legs, his reins, his horse. The next they were flying aside or being trampled. Steelhill cursed loudly. Ense Pendilon roared. The king was a constant presence behind him, his massive charger thundering over the cobblestones.
Leramis rode for the closest entrance to the Atar. Burned into his mind below the level of logic was the idea that the caves were safe. He needed safe. Needed it more desperately than he’d needed anything before.
“Serethon!” barked a voice behind him.
“Your Grace!”
“Where are your men?”
They crossed into the valley of The Dell. A thin river, dyed red in the firelight, barred their way. Boulevards of burning shops stood empty on its banks. Leramis veered along the river walk. A hulking, house-covered hill rose on the other side of the water.
Hidden on that hill were most of the city’s entrances to the Atar.
They passed by one bridge, two bridges, three.
“In the harbor, Your Grace, if they still li—”
A tendril of souls reached for them. Leramis felt it coming and bent it savagely, desperately. An explosion wracked a building behind and to his right, and he heard it crumble and fall. Leramis turned onto the fourth bridge, saw as he galloped over the churning river that to his left Twelfthmen on horses were crossing the other bridges, trying to cut them off, racing hard across the burning streets after them.
“Run,” he whispered. “Run.”
He dug his heels into his horse’s ribs. Its mouth frothed. Its eyes rolled.
But it ran as hard and as fast as it could.
There was an entrance to the Atar just ahead, but the Twelfthmen had a good angle on it. They were closing in, had cut them off, would reach them in a matter of seconds.
Leramis cursed and shot away from the river and into an alleyway, heading toward another entrance farther up the hill. He heard the horses behind him struggle to follow, the sound of heavy-shod hooves sliding over stone, the fearful squeal of a horse about to fall.
“Hentworth!” snapped Steelhill. “Slow down, damn you! Hentworth!”
But Leramis didn’t. He twisted and turned again, running parallel to the river once more, where the lightness of his horse and his knowledge of the back ways would serve him best. With every jag, he felt fewer Twelfthmen coming. They were falling behind, losing themselves in the labyrinth of a city they didn’t know.
Almost there…
A quick look back showed the lords still present. Molte was riding right off the hindquarters of Leramis’s horse. Steelhill was just behind, armor stained with blood, face red with effort. Farther back old Lord Serethon and Ense Pendilon puffed along heavily on their mounts.
Another entrance to the Atar was just ahead, hidden in the bottom of a building Leramis hoped was still standing. He angled his horse up the hill again. The light up high was dimmer; the fires hadn’t yet reached the black heights. The Citadel rose like a ghostly hand to the right. The moon shone wide and bright behind it, only half visible below the thick cloud of smoke above the city. The ocean glinted below.
Dark ships floated on the water, their white sails clear in the moonlight.
There.
An unassuming shop built of stone lay directly ahead of him, where a street crossed and dead-ended the one he was riding on. The door was dark and closed, the windows shuttered. He opened his eyes to the River, and a thousand white lights swirled in the chaos of the city’s demise. As his horse thundered forward, Leramis breathed in, layered a web of souls over the door, and energized the weaving.
The heavy wood shattered as if it had been struck by a ram.
The rush of soulweaving surged over and around him, singing through his body. He felt stronger than he had in months.
The building’s entrance wasn’t large enough for a horse. Leramis threw one leg over his mount’s back, nearly dragging it off its feet as he slid to the ground. It screamed, and he slapped its hindquarters hard. It tore off down the street.
Leramis squeezed through the splintered wooden door.
Inside, it was dark.
And empty, and eerily quiet. Leramis’s heart pounded. His lungs screamed. His legs felt raw and sore and cramped.
Heavy bodies crashed through the door behind him.
�
�Hentworth!”
“Shh!” he hissed, staring wide-eyed into the darkness, feeling for the Twelfthmen. They’d slowed, and they were approaching from every direction, not randomly but in a pattern. Searching. Combing the River. Looking for him.
“The horses run in three directions. Is this it?” Molte Eldani’s voice, near the door.
Leramis’s eyes grew accustomed to the blackness. He could just make out the far wall.
“Yes,” he whispered. He ran his hands along the stone. There was a catch—a tiny chip in the smooth surface that let you lever a low, counterweighted doorway open. He just had to find it. He just had to find—
His finger caught on something, and he pulled. The stone gave a little, just enough for him to get two fingers on it, then three. The edge of the door, only as high as his breastbone, came clear.
Leramis wrapped his hand over its corner, set his feet, and pulled. The door opened slowly. Charles Steelhill’s armored hands helped him tug it open.
Cool, damp air blew in from the passage beyond. Leramis wove a tiny ball of light and peered in. Cobwebs hung from a low ceiling. The tunnel was barely large enough for him to walk in, even if he doubled over. But it smelled clean, free of the smoke and the blood and the death of the city.
“Inside,” Leramis whispered. Steelhill bent down, tried to enter, and cursed.
“My armor,” he grunted. The steel ground against itself as he tried to bend. “It won’t—”
“Off with it then,” said the king. “Quickly.”
Leramis stood in the dark while the lords of Eldan unbuckled their shining suits of steel plate.
Hurry, he thought. The Twelfthmen were drawing closer.
You could leave them, whispered his mind.
But they’d saved his life. Surely he owed them something.
Steelhill struggled to unclasp his pauldrons. Ense Pendilon stepped forward to help him.
Hurry.
The Twelfthmen drew nearer. Leramis fought to hide his presence in the River. Ense cursed as Steelhill dropped a piece of his armor and it clanged on the stone.
Hurry!
The king was out of his armor and holding his sword belt. Steelhill and Pendilon as well. Serethon was still struggling with his breastplate.
“Your Grace,” whispered Pendilon. He knelt to help Molte into the Atar.
The River continued to rage outside. Leramis breathed softly, looked to the door—
And saw the shape of a man.
The others saw it too.
“Run!” shouted Serethon.
The River pulsed. A flash lit the dim room, and a spear of souls flew from the shadow through Serethon’s chest and into the wall behind him. The lord crumpled. Steelhill was shouting and shoving Molte into the Atar.
The Twelfthman wove again, but not so fast that Leramis couldn’t bend his weaving. Four spears shot forward. Leramis pushed one off target, caught the others and ripped the threads of them apart.
His body surged with energy. The Twelfthman turned to face him.
“Hentworth!” shouted Steelhill. “Quickly!”
The man in the doorway drew a sword and rushed in. Leramis ducked into the tunnel to the Atar and massed a cloud of souls before him. The Twelfthman’s sword flickered forward.
Leramis energized his cloud of souls. The room echoed with the loud pop of a discharging shockwave, and the Twelfthman grunted as the air was knocked out of him. His sword crashed into one of the shuttered windows. His body hit the floor with a hard slap.
The Twelfthman scrambled to his feet. His brethren began to converge on the shop. Leramis backed farther into the Atar, still facing the Twelfthman, and breathed into the River.
Hard.
The souls surged with his will, racing in long strands across the supports of the building, up its walls, over its roof.
Crush, he urged them.
The sound of stone cracking and shattering filled the air. The Twelfthman’s glowing eyes went wide, and then Leramis lost sight of them behind an avalanche of darkness. The open door before him disappeared. A hurricane of dust roared over his face. Chips of stone and wood struck his skin, his robe, his boots.
And then there was silence, and rest, and the sound of debris settling.
In the hazy light of the little ball he’d woven, Leramis saw the last foot or so of the tunnel, then a wall of broken stone where the door out of the Atar had been.
He laid his hands over his knees. He was alive. He was unharmed. He was cold. He was exhausted.
Something wet trickled over the rock beneath him.
“I am a fool,” mumbled Molte Eldani.
Leramis turned around.
A little farther into the Atar, the monarch was sitting in sweat-stained gray undergarments with his back against the wall. His lips were pale and taut. The crown was gone from his head.
Blood pulsed from his thigh in spurts, both front and back.
Charles Steelhill was tearing his shirt into strips. Ense was using them to bind his own shirt around the king’s leg, leaning on the wound with all his weight.
It didn’t seem to be working.
There were no weapons in sight. Leramis had all the power, and the lords who’d held him captive and slaughtered his order had none.
Steelhill’s eyes flashed toward him. There was pure, naked fear in them.
“Leramis…” his old classmate whispered.
And Leramis didn’t know what to do.
THIRTY-FIVE
Ten days before the destruction of Emeth’il
Tsu’min found it hard to breathe. White trees spread with blue and turquoise leaves sang around him in the breeze. To the north, the low, bright dwellings of the city of Emeth’il clustered peacefully along the green waters of the I’o’ai Nar’olua. He listened to gulls cry and stood behind a prickly bush full of small red berries.
In front of him was a short Sh’ma with turquoise eyes and long hair of navy blue.
She bent and inspected a patch of red-and-yellow flowers on the side of the hill. He had felt her coming, seen the flowers, put the two together. Young Sh’ma were often given gardens to tend in the forest. It was a part of their lessons that introduced them to both the practicalities of growing plants and the idea that the world around them was bursting with life and that they had a responsibility to maintain it.
Tsu’min’s heart filled with a thick, sickening mixture of joy and fear.
Mi’ame.
She lowered her head, sighed, lifted it again, and placed her hands on her hips. Her eyes shot defiantly to the bush.
“I feel you, stranger, whoever you are,” she said in Sh’ma.
Stranger. He’d expected the word, but it hurt nonetheless.
Tsu’min fingered the jade bead that hung from his wrist. He hadn’t been so afraid in centuries.
He stepped around the bush.
Mi’ame took a small step back. Tsu’min could see her more clearly without the bush between them. She had short legs, a long torso, wide ears, a small nose with one piercing. Her eyes stretched.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
Tsu’min’s heart pounded.
It was her.
The flesh had changed, become younger and shorter, broader in the shoulders, softer in the face. But it was so like her to see a half-breed—ostracized and shunned—step from the trees and wonder not why he was there but who he was. So like her to see everyone she met as a person.
His throat closed up and his face flushed.
He had expected this. He had rehearsed a dozen answers.
But still—hearing those words felt like having the rivets he’d so carefully driven his heart together with ripped out one by one.
“I have had many names,” he said. Eraic was long dead to him. Tsu’min he couldn’t bear to hear her say. “It would honor me if you gave me a new one.”
She paused. A flicker of mischief crossed her face.
“Then I will call you Oura,” she said. Her hands went bac
k to her hips, which she thrust to one side. The trees rustled. The gulls jeered.
She was young. Very young. Below her bravado, her breath was as rapid as his.
“Oura,” he said. Strange one. It was as good a name as any. “Guash’ta’tya.” The sea whispered below the hill. A nearby spring trickled over rocks and stones and moss. “And what shall I call you?”
She straightened. She was skinny, he noticed. Like a child who hadn’t yet fully grown into her frame. She couldn’t have been more than forty.
So young, he thought again. Why have you come back now?
“Tyash,” she replied.
Tsu’min’s heart leaped.
Tyash. Worthy. A nonsense name that no Sh’ma would give another, but a name that Mi’ame had used long ago. The name she’d given to the part of herself she felt was least worthy.
Tyash, where are you going? she would ask when she got them hopelessly lost. Tyash, you’re a terrible cook, when she let a pot boil over or a loaf of bread burn. Tyash, you’re too slow. Tyash, you talk too much. Tyash, Tyash, Tyash.
She was still there.
“Tyash,” he said. He sat on the leaves, leaving the bed of flowers she’d been tending between them. “Will you tell me your story?”
The girl who was his beloved reborn took a moment to think. She brushed her hair behind her ears. She looked at the garden she had come to tend, then down at the city.
The sunlight felt warm on Tsu’min’s neck. The breeze playing with Tyash’s hair smelled of salt and the freedom of the ocean. I shouldn’t be here, he thought. I should be helping the others save the world. He swallowed. I promised her.
But neither of them had known this was possible when that promise was made.
Tyash sat carefully on the other side of the garden. She drew her knees to her chin and wiggled her toes. The afternoon light dappled spots of brilliance and blue shadow over her face.
The birds quieted. She began to speak.
And Tsu’min stopped caring about the world and had ears only for her.
***
An hour later Tsu’min sat contentedly on the moss and watched the sun slip toward the horizon. Tyash had returned to Emeth’il, to what he was sure was a dormitory she shared with the kinship group she would live with for her first hundred years. If she was forty, her parents would be dead already, victims of the ’thmesh’sh’nar. The love-death. The wasting sickness that gripped all Sh’ma after the birth of full-blood children.