The Quiet surged again, fighting their collective strength, as Maldaea sought to impose his own will, to steal all hope and possibility from this young world. Abruptly, the One’s efforts collapsed. The sound of words, many of them rising in musical phrases, rose above the din of wind and shearing stone, and pallor came again to Maldaea’s—Quietus’s—skin. Vapor shot from his pores, soon caught in the maelstrom and whipped away. He shuddered, howling imprecations at his brethren, reviling them all. Until finally there remained nothing of color in him save his eyes. He collapsed hard to his knees.
Dossolum spoke again, his voice like the rushing of water. “The vile creations wrought by your hand will be herded like beasts and driven into the deeps of the Bourne west and north: Bardyn, Fe’Rhal, Velle, all those given to you in their allegiance and lineage.”
Quietus, his voice and body wracked, shot hoarse recriminations at Dossolum. “And what of your own creations? If you abandon this world, what care you for them?”
Dossolum’s face showed a hint of sorrow as he looked skyward. “Some of these will go into the far reaches with your Quietgiven races.”
“I see,” Quietus managed, dark humor in his voice. “Handiwork whose promise you do not esteem, put away with those I brought forth. You are contemptible!” He again swept an outstretched arm in a violent arc to indicate the entire council. “What if any of these refuse to be compelled by you?”
Dossolum lowered his gaze to Quietus’s own. “Then they will be destroyed. We will raise a veil to seal the rest inside the Bourne. And give those who remain in the eastlands at least the semblance of peace and hope.”
“And what of me?” Quietus stood, his skin burning with the effort.
“You shall be bound and placed within the veil alongside the foulness you’ve created, there to spend time without end.”
As he listened to the pronouncement, his terrible countenance shone with darkening hatred toward the council, the worse for the lingering color in his eyes—like a vestige of the Noble One he had once been.
“I am eternal, just as you are eternal. You can brand me, tear from me the glory of future worlds to frame. But you cannot take the authority or dominion that is mine.” He showed an awful smile. “Be warned.”
Straining against the whiting, he managed a final word before his irises and pupils turned forever white, a word, a name, both his sentence and ultimately his triumph: “Quietus.”
For there are two eternal truths that may not be put asunder: that Forza and Forda, or matter and energy, or body and spirit, can be neither created nor destroyed, only rendered, changed, made new—yea, and all power within them lies, yea, even the First Ones were bound by these very laws in framing this world as in all the worlds that came before and all those that will come after; and next that these eternal elements may choose for themselves.
—Drawn from the apocryphal writings of author Shenflear, during the Age of Discord
A grave I traveled past, and stopped to look upon the stone.
I read the tribute words aloud.
My voice seemed an intrusion in the silence
For a brave man gone to his earth fighting the Quiet.
And I despised myself for feeling reverent.
What then was his death about?
So I recalled a jest and spoke it to the stone
And laughed out loud, yawped a bit, and honored him with noise.
The grave’s only power is this: that therein dies the laughter.
For this is life, and life is loud, or else the Quiet’s you.
—“Reflections from an Ossuary,” attributed to the poet Hargrove, during the Age of Hope
CHAPTER ONE
The Right Draw
The taste of rain upon his lips and the quiet of the forest vales and hummocks usually eased whatever worries Tahn Junell brought with him on a hunt. But today the woods and skies held none of their customary peace. Storms had driven the animals from the hills. And it had been more than three weeks since he’d even fired his bow at game. The murk that descended closed him in, sealing the skies of the Great Fathers and leaving an unnatural stillness upon the land. Even the rain, which usually brought renewal, now felt like a weight being yoked to his shoulders, as though he ought to do something about the changes in the sky but was left only soaked and muddied by the downpour.
As the rain began to fall in earnest, Tahn sought the mouth of a natural draw deep within a stand of towering hemlocks. He’d had good success here in the past. He cut several low-hanging boughs and fashioned a lean-to on a thick bed of needles with a clear view of the ravine. Tucking himself up under his makeshift shelter, he took a drop of pinesap from a nearby bough and placed it on his tongue to cover the scent of his breath from his quarry. Then began his vigil.
The wind died as the storm came on full. Heavy sheets of rain deluged the land and diffused the grey, watery light, obscuring his vision. Tahn concentrated on seeing any movement up the draw.
Moments passed, and he lost himself some to the soothing sound of rain striking the ground and trees. Wet and cold, Tahn nevertheless took some small comfort in being still.
He had hunted every day for weeks now, but had been unable to produce any fare for the Fieldstone Inn. Hambley Opawn, the proprietor, was impatient for meat to replenish his storehouse, especially with an inn full of travelers awaiting the overdue arrival of the reader for the Northsun Festival.
It was odd that Northsun had come and gone without an appearance by Ogea the reader. In years past, his father, Balatin, and mother, Voncencia, (before they’d gone to their earth) had taken Tahn with his sister, Wendra, to watch the reader come into town. It was always the same. On a small mule, the reader rode stoically through every street in the Hollows. He never spoke to anyone, letting his slow progress announce his arrival. People would begin to follow several strides behind. Tahn had always noted the strange hush that fell over the crowd: Conversation fell off, carts and horses were stilled, even footsteps sounded as though lightly taken. Ogea wound through the roads, allowing everyone time to hear of his coming, before heading for the Fieldstone, where Hambley would have put out a ladder against the face of the inn. The reader always dismounted, and, carrying a large leather book, climbed to the balcony on the east side of the Fieldstone. There he spent several moments looking over the men and women of the Hollows before beginning to tell the old stories again.
Every year Northsun brought people from distant parts to the Fieldstone, and for Tahn, providing Hambley with meat for his tables, it had always meant some extra coin.
But since the last full harvest, game had become scarce in the Hollows. Even a quarter-kill would fetch a hefty price from Hambley’s purse. Tahn would offer a second quarter to his friend Sutter Te Polis’s mother, for aid to his sister during childbirth; Wendra had expected her baby before the dark moon, which had come a day since.
And it would be Sutter’s mother to help, because Wendra’s circle of friends had diminished since the rape that caused her to become with child.
Rage burned in Tahn at the thought of it. He’d not been able to find the man responsible. Wendra’s memory of her rapist had blurred to little more than sadness. The carrying of her first child should have been a happy time for her, but now served mostly as a reminder of its awful inception. It had darkened his sister’s bright disposition by more than a shade. Tahn did his best to keep things normal in their home, but with Balatin gone, silences in the house brought morose thoughts more keenly. And not just thoughts of the rape itself. When he could admit it to himself, Wendra’s pregnancy served as a reminder to him that his own childhood had somehow become lost to him. Anything before his tenth year had simply disappeared. It gave him the vague sense of being an adopted orphan. At times, it left him feeling like dried bread that might crumble at the touch.
The mournful and troubled thoughts of his and Wendra’s home, Tahn now realized, were at least equally his own, especially with these incessant storms that darkened the sk
ies and had apparently driven game from the Hollows.
A flash of light and savage thunder boomed all around, startling him. But it also focused him on his task.
When the last echoes of it had faded, Tahn breathed deeply and relaxed his grip upon his bow. Taking a leather strap from his belt, he tied back his long, dark hair. He then wiped his face with the lining of his cloak, pulled his hood forward, and settled in again. Moments later, from a copse of cedars at the bottom of the draw, a small herd of elk cleared the tree line. Their breath clouded the air as they snorted and chuffed. Cautiously, they regarded the ravine before starting to climb. Tahn slowly rose to his feet and nocked an arrow. Purposefully feeling every bit of tension in his bowstring, he made his pull and breathed easy as he aimed on the lead bull.
In a whisper, he said, “I draw with the strength of my arms, but release as the Will allows.” He paused, seeking, as he always did, the inward confirmation of the rightness of his draw. In the same moment, he glanced at the scar on the back of his hand. Neither the old phrase or the hammer-shaped scar he bore ever betrayed their origins to him; those remained lost in that same childhood he could not remember. Yet somehow they also assured him that this bull was not the right kill. He shifted his aim, pulling down on a smaller male farther back in the herd.
As Tahn set to release, the rain erupted in a new explosion of light and sound. It whipped and leapt, and coalesced into a whirling spout. A shrill whistling filled the ravine, attended by the deep-toned creak of hemlocks swaying in the sudden wind. The spout rose up, seeming to rear a sentient head, gathering momentum and mass before driving its fury toward the lead bull. All the sky funneled down in watery aggression upon the animal. Tahn watched helplessly, his draw relaxing. The herd scattered into the trees. Darkness spun in the air above, gathering in the rain that hammered the elk. The creature struggled briefly against the onslaught, legs kicking, horns tearing at grass and throwing chunks of mud. Mewling desperately, it managed to stand. But the funnel of water seized it and thrust it earthward again.
Then it was still.
Almost immediately, the rain returned to a normal downfall, leaving only swirling dervishes of mist and a trail of blackness in the air.
It was the wrong kill.
Angered, Tahn traced the trail of darkness up the other side of the ravine to a figure standing in a small clearing between two large hemlocks. Its hands remained extended, filled with the same darkness. A cowl was drawn forward, leaving its features in shadow. But the being seemed to stare at Tahn, unmoving, sharing something silent between them. Then the figure knelt, never turning its head away from Tahn, and thrust its fists into the ground. A flash of brilliant darkness burst from the soil, causing steam to rise from the earth. Tahn thought he could see the shape of a smile in the depths of the cowl, a smile that spoke wordlessly.
It wanted me to see it kill the wrong bull, that it would take life that should be preserved.… It knows me!
Then the stranger stood again, his mantle shimmering with the faintest touches of crimson in an otherwise perfect blackness.
And pointed a pallid finger at Tahn.
Tahn’s breath stopped in his chest. The ache of it threatened to drop him to the ground, his legs already shaking uncontrollably. What he’d just seen … the elements themselves controlled and brought down to kill … the wrong kill. He’d never seen a renderer, let alone …
Velle!
For all my Skies!
It was the only explanation he could find. Quietgiven from the Bourne, out of myth and story and secret lands so distant that they existed only in his imagination. Velle, the dark renderers of the Will, here in the Hollows! It was unheard of.
The reader!
Could this malefic creature have brought its dark craft to bear on the old man? It would explain his absence at Northsun. The thought brought fresh panic and the anticipation of deeper sadness.
Tahn remembered to breathe, and drew a cold stab of air that burned his throat and billowed out into the frigid air. He tried to breathe again, to calm himself. The figure across the draw only stared from the shadow of its cowl.
The motionless Velle and its dark intent were maddening, and Tahn felt again the pure, irrational dread a child feels when trapped in the dark.
He could think of only one thing to do.
His bow forgotten in his hand, Tahn ran.
He dashed into the cover of the trees, glancing back once to see the cloaked figure skirting the mouth of the draw, giving chase.
Tahn drove his trembling legs faster, and soon came to the forest path. He stopped, panting hard, his breath pushing short stabs of warm air into the cold. Just like the elk. He had to think quickly. The dark figure would track him easily and quickly down the path to the south road. Quelling the urge to hasten toward the Hollows, he ducked left into a dense stand of ash. Choosing mossy ground to quiet his steps, he doubled back toward the draw; the creature wouldn’t expect him to come back toward it. Tahn knew these woods as well as his own home; he hoped his pursuer did not.
A moment later he heard a thrashing in brush to his left. The other had found the path. Tahn pulled his cloak over his face to mask his labored breathing, hunkered low, and listened.
A few wet steps on the path. Then a howl that shrieked into the treetops.
And silence.
Something about the quiet unnerved Tahn. Did the other know he’d doubled back? He didn’t wait to find out. Staying low, he rushed back toward the draw where he’d seen the creature. He recalled its bony, pallid finger pointing toward him. But why destroy the elk? It was the wrong kill. And again Tahn thought that this creature had wanted him to realize that it knew the bull should not die … but that it did not care.
He flew into the draw, barely keeping his balance as he pounded down one muddy slope and up the other side. He finally shouldered his bow, using his hands to claw to the top.
Another howl. Closer.
The creature had found him out.
Tahn scrambled up, and stopped dead at the lip on the far side of the draw. He stood now where the figure had been. Underfoot lay a patch of ground as dry and untouched by rain as the Sotol Wastes. Rain beaded and ran across the spot as though it had been coated with wax. In the ground were two holes where the being’s hands had thrust into the earth. Scorch marks flared from the holes. He knelt to touch the dry, black surface. Not wax. Glass. The soil had burned into a thin crust of dark glass.
“Great Fathers,” he whispered. He’d never seen the work of a renderer. But here it was.
He knew little of such things, just what he’d learned from listening to Ogea’s stories. Only the Velle and members of the Order of Sheason possessed the power to render. And rendering came at a price. The difference was that only the Sheason bore that price themselves, drawing on their own life-energy. Velle transferred the cost to something (or someone) else.
He ran his finger around the glass-encrusted holes.
But these were matters of myth, weren’t they? No one Tahn knew had ever seen a Sheason, let alone a Velle. Velle were a Quietgiven race said to live only inside the Bourne. And the Sheason, though they lived in the nations of men, were spoken of almost as a cautionary tale, at best a secret. Somehow death seemed an equal threat from both.
A chill ran across Tahn’s arms and down his back. Velle! Here in the Hollows!
He whirled, checking his back, just as the creature glided from the trees to stand across from him on the other side of the draw. It lifted its hands. Stepping over the scorched soil, Tahn plunged into the deep wood. The air behind him crackled and spat as if lightning sizzled after him. Trees splintered and cracked at his heels. He dove behind a great rock, just as a wave of heat pushed past where he’d been running.
Another howl rose into the murk.
Tahn got moving again, racing with a sure foot over terrain he knew well. Somewhere behind him, the Velle again gave chase.
He ran for an hour, never stopping to rest. Over chasms a
nd through rivers and streams he fled in a wide turn until he’d doubled back again, angling for the south road. The woods had grown quiet, leaving him with no sense of how close the creature might be. He didn’t wait. He lurched several hundred strides up the road to a stand of cedar where he’d tethered his horse, Jole.
His legs almost useless, it took him three attempts to mount. Finally, muscling his way into the saddle, he said simply, “Go.” Jole flew toward the Hollows.
* * *
Rushing up the road, Tahn checked behind him often, trusting Jole to his course. His mind raced, wondering at what he’d seen. It seemed so deliberate, as though Tahn specifically had been tracked into the woods. The figure must surely have been following him to know where he would be hunting, because even Tahn had not known where he would end up. The images of the rain driving savagely upon the elk and the scorched earth belied the calming smells of loam and wet bark around him.
A Velle in the Hollows—something that had never happened, as far as he knew, in all its history. And it had tried to kill him.
He rode hard into the middle of town. A hundred strides to his left, great billowing plumes of smoke rose to mingle with the clouds above Master Rew Geddy’s smithy. The smith kept a hot fire burning every hour of the day. The smell of his forge filled the air, even through the rain.
Looking ahead, Tahn spied the towering chimneys of the Fieldstone Inn through of the gloom. Reassured by the sight, he slowed Jole to a walk, then dismounted. He’d find his friend Hambley there. Hambley had a level head on his shoulders. After what Tahn had just seen, he needed the man’s patient logic.
Vault Of Heaven 01 - The Unremembered Page 2