Fall of Angels

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “After that, we’ll probably be on our own, I guess,” said Ryba. “The snow line is creeping down the peaks around us.” She turned to Murkassa and switched to Anglorat. “How… did you… come to Westwind?”

  “I was sold to be the consort of Jilkar. He is a hauler in Gnotos, and a strong man. He beat his first consort to death because she angered him. She gave him only daughters, and then she ran away with a trooper from Fenard. Jilkar found them and let the man go.” Murkassa shrugged. “He would have beaten me. He beats everyone. I heard of the tower of women, and I ran. If I did not find you, I would die in the Westhorns. But I did find you.” A fleeting smile crossed her face.

  “You are welcome to stay as long as you wish.”

  “Can I stay forever?”

  “If you follow our way,” Ryba answered. “No one said anything to Jilkar?” Ayrlyn’s tone suggested she knew the answer.

  “No. He is the hauler. He takes the wool to Fenard. He is stronger than any two men, and he has a house on the hill with guards.”

  As the others drew out the sordid social structure of Gnotos, all too familiar a pattern, from what Nylan could tell, he sipped the tea and ate.

  After the midday meal, Nylan returned to the north tower yard, and the cold wind out of the northwest. Huldran, Cessya, and Denalle worked on the roof, with Cessya lugging up the stones, Denalle placing them, and Huldran spiking them in place.

  Nylan studied the stone that he was supposed to turn into a conduit. There had to be a faster way to cut the stone, didn’t there? For a long time, he let his senses range over the oblong of black rock before him. He’d already discovered that he felt uneasy, so much that his head ached and his stomach twisted, if he even came close to mimicking the white lines of fire that the local mages effected.

  After concentrating on the stone for a time, he finally placed the chisel and lifted the hammer. The reverberations seemed to be less when he didn’t worry so much about precise chisel placement, but the order of the stone.

  His progress was better with the new technique, not anything to boast about compared to the laser, but by the time the triangle clanged again, he had five more lengths of conduit bottom.

  After he stacked the conduit in the corner of the bathhouse, on the eastern side under the completed roof, he flexed his sore and increasingly callused fingers-only small blisters.

  “You really got that in place,” he told Huldran, looking up at the expanse of completed roof tiling.

  “Thank darkness that the healer came up with another keg of spikes.” The marine reached out and knocked on the side of the crude ladder-pole she had just climbed down. “I never thought so, but you might get your bathhouse and laundry, ser.”

  “I thought you wanted the showers,” Nylan joked.

  “Choosing between stinking and bathing in ice water isn’t a choice I’d want to make.” Huldran lowered the ladder-pole, and she and Denalle laid it down under the completed roof, then gathered the spikes they had dropped.

  Every single spike was valuable, Nylan realized, especially in a low-tech culture where each had to be fashioned by hand. He walked around the tower to the stream, hoping it wouldn’t be too long before he could use the bathhouse. After washing his hands and face, he walked back around the tower and, as he neared the almost-completed archway from the bathhouse to the tower, he whistled a few notes. What were the words?

  “… an engineer’s work is never done, / not even after the long day’s run…”

  He smiled to himself as he opened the door, which no longer scraped the stones-although it had taken Saryn and Selitra most of a morning to plane and carve it back into shape.

  “You seem cheerful, Engineer,” said Gerlich. Narliat just bowed.

  “The stone-shaping’s coming better, and Huldran’s got the roof in place.”

  “Good.” Gerlich offered a quick smile, and he and Narliat turned, leaving Nylan as he closed the north door.

  The engineer wondered why neither had looked pleased. Did they want to stink or bathe in freezing water? Or was it because each of Nylan’s accomplishments boosted Ryba’s authority and the satisfaction of the guards with her rule? And it was rule, Nylan knew full well, and there wasn’t that much doubt in Nylan’s mind that Gerlich would rather be the one doing the ruling-or that having Gerlich in charge would be a disaster. Ryba did what had to be done, but Nylan knew it wasn’t always easy for her. Gerlich would end up like every other male tyrant on the planet.

  He pulled at his chin, wondering why so many men had to dominate. Then maybe women would be just the same, given the chance. With a shrug, he walked toward the hearth of the great room and the aroma of fresh-baked bread and cooked onions.

  XLXIV

  HISSL PACES ACROSS the small room, then peers out the window toward the river and the stubbled fields that lie beyond. Although the sun glints off the puddles in the fields, the sky is turning the bluer green-blue that presages winter. The wizard looks away from the distant points of glare and paces back toward the table.

  “Nothing! We sit here and wait. And Terek meets with Lord Sillek while I rot here.”

  He paces back across the small room, passing the table and the screeing glass again, then back to the window. The distant puddles still throw glare at him.

  Finally, he seats himself at the table that holds the flat mirrorlike glass. He concentrates. The white mists swirl. He concentrates until the sweat beads on his forehead, although the room is pleasantly cool, filled with the scents from the bakery up the street, and the hum of conversations.

  At last, the image appears-that of a black tower, with a second, and lower, building rising beside it, already roofed with the same black slate tiles that cover the taller tower. A short, stone-walled causeway leads to the tower and to a heavy door banded together with strips of metal-not iron, but some metal Hissl does not recognize, though it feels like iron through the glass.

  Farther uphill, the angels, some in black and others in leathers, are digging a long ditch in a line that leads toward the tower. On the uphill portion of the ditch, the black mage and an angel are placing lengths of stone in the trench. There is a trough filled with what might be mortar beside the stones.

  Hissl squints and tries to focus the image, but the best he can do is catch a glimpse of a section of rock that appears to have a deep trench gouged in it. He slumps back into the chair.

  “Black angels and a black mage.” He shivers for a moment. No lord he knows could have built a tower like that, and not in a mere two seasons. Yet the black mage who lives with the angels has done so, and the mage has done other things, as well, things that Hissl does not understand.

  “Still, they have not felt the winter, and the number of cairns grows. By spring…” He raises his eyebrows and smiles.

  In the spring and early summer, Ildyrom and his people will be busy planting. Hissl nods to himself.

  XLV

  A LOW FIRE burned in the bathhouse stove, but the building- still open inside except for the three jakes stalls at the north end-remained chill.

  Nylan washed and shaved his several days’ worth of beard in one of the laundry tubs. He looked wistfully to his right, at the unfinished showers, and at the piles of slate stone and powdered mortar heaped in the middle of the room. While there was water to the ceramic nozzles, he and Huldran still had to finish the stone floors, or all they would have would be frozen clay. He took a deep breath and splashed away skin, whiskers, and blood.

  After washing, he rinsed his waste water down the floor drain, with a breath of relief as the water gurgled out of sight. He hoped the combination of deeply buried drain lines and the outfall covering-and oversizing-would be enough to get them through the winter.

  Wearing just a tattered pair of trousers-spoils, again- he walked the length of the bathhouse, along the already packed clay of the east side, and through the archway into the tower and up the stairs, all four flights to the top level.

  Ryba had already dressed, and was
pulling on her boots as Nylan stripped off the leather trousers and donned his working shipsuit. She stood and straightened the blanket as he struggled into the leather boots.

  “It looks like a storm is coming in hard,” she said. “Can you finish the bathhouse?”

  “The inside will take a day or two more. We’ve got the jakes and the laundry area finished.” Nylan walked over to the sole armaglass window and looked up at the dark clouds boiling out of the northwest, cloaking Freyja in blackness, with snow thickening and dropping to shroud the lower parts of the western peaks and the heights behind the tower.

  A thin layer of ice covered the window ledge outside the casement, and the engineer watched as one flake, then another, dropped onto the ice, melding with it and turning transparent, the black-gray stone showing through.

  The flakes thickened, and even the lower sections of Freyja disappeared in the snow that seemed so white near the tower and so dark in the distance. The ground remained brown, with a few white patches.

  Nylan closed the armaglass window, and the shutters. When he looked down, he realized that he had stood before the open window long enough for a small pile of flakes to accumulate, but as he watched, the whiteness faded into a damp splotch on the roughly smoothed plank floor.

  “Why did you close the shutters?” asked Ryba, fully dressed in her shipsuit, and even wearing a black ship jacket. “It looks like midnight in here that way. I can’t see in pitch-blackness, the way you can.”

  “We’re going down to the main level, and no one’s going to be here.” He walked around the couches toward where the marshal of Westwind stood.

  “That makes sense, but it still bothers me when it’s so dark.”

  “It’s going to be a long and dark winter.”

  “You are so cheerful this morning.”

  “I try,” he answered.

  They walked down the long stone steps, the sounds of their boots echoing away from the stairwell and into the open levels they passed. Several marines were still dressing on the third level, but none looked toward Nylan and Ryba.

  The tables were largely full, and even Murkassa sat at the end, on Istril’s right, while Hryessa sat on the slim trooper’s left. Istril looked at the bread on her trencher, but had not lifted it.

  Did she look pale? Nylan smiled, getting a quick and faint smile in return as he followed Ryba toward the head of the table and the hearth.

  After he slid onto the bench, Nylan poured the bark-and-root tea into the dark brown mug. The tea’s taste was still bitter, but warming. He reached for the dark bread.

  “A storm like this won’t last,” predicted Relyn, sitting at the last seat on the window side of the first table. “The snowflakes are too large.”

  “The snow will bring a long rest,” pronounced Narliat. His cloak was wrapped tightly around him, and he glanced toward the cold hearth.

  “I’m glad for the rest,” announced Huldran.

  “You don’t get one. Not yet,” said Nylan. “We’ve still got the shower floors and partitions to install.”

  “Cessya can help.”

  Cessya looked at Huldran, her eyes dark.

  “It’s easier than clearing and packing snow,” intervened Nylan.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Gerlich.

  “We still have to keep the area around the doors, the outfalls, and the trails to the stables and down to the forest open.” Nylan pulled at his chin, then looked toward Ayrlyn, then Ryba. Both nodded.

  “We’ll need to have ways the horses can travel. They’ll need some exercise,” pointed out Ayrlyn. “We’ll need them to bring up more wood.” She cleared her throat “Hryessa, Siret, and Murkassa need to gather more cones.”

  “Cones?” asked Nylan.

  “They have seeds, and they’ll help feed the chickens,” Ayrlyn said.

  “Your chickens, they will taste like the pine trees.”

  “I’d rather have live pine-tasting chickens than dead tasty ones halfway through the winter. We don’t have near enough food for the livestock, and that will help,” answered Ayrlyn. “If the traders come back, they’re supposed to have some more dried corn. If they come back…”

  “We can’t have people sitting around all winter,” added ‘ Saryn. “They’d be at each others’ throats.”

  “They can’t sit around anyway,” said Ryba. “We’ll need some additional food, something from hunting, and probably more firewood.”

  “A lot more firewood,” predicted Nylan. “We probably ought to require dragging as much up here as we burn.”

  “How?”

  “If we keep doing it, we should be able to keep a path clear to the forest at the base of the ridge. Ayrlyn-you said we could drag trunks with the horses, and cut them outside the causeway.”

  “The guards can only stay out so long, and we don’t have enough cold-weather clothing for everyone,” pointed out Saryn.

  “We have wool and thread and needles,” said Ayrlyn.

  Nylan cleared his throat. “We could dry some of the wood near the furnace, and we need a lot of furnishings-tables, even dressers.”

  “We don’t have that many nails,” said Ryba.

  “They used to put things together with pegs. We can do that,” Ayrlyn pointed out. “It takes more time, but we’re going to have a lot of time.”

  “You can make glue,” added Relyn. “The crafters dry and grind hooves, I think, and some parts of the hides and boil them.”

  “Arms practice. For everyone. I don’t want a tower full of crafters come spring,” added Ryba. “They’ll have to be better than any of the locals when the battles resume.”

  “I think archery is out,” said Nylan.

  “Because of the weather? No. There will be enough clear days…”

  “The clear days are cold enough to a freeze a man’s lungs,” said Relyn.

  “Woolen scarves would help,” Ayrlyn said, “but you’d have to hold down heavy exertion and mouth breathing.”

  “We’ll take it as it comes.” Ryba broke off a chunk of bread. “There’s a lot we can do to get ready for next spring and summer.”

  “How are we going to get around in this stuff?” asked Huldran, with a gesture toward the window. “We don’t have skis or sleds or sled dogs.”

  “Slowly,” says Hryessa. “In the lower Westhorns, the snow gets deeper than a horse’s head.”

  “Snowshoes,” Ryba said, “and old-fashioned wooden skis with leather thongs, just like Gerlich and Saryn have been making.”

  Nylan frowned. Would he have to learn to ski? He didn’t look forward to that at all, not at all.

  “Have you ever skied?” Ayrlyn asked him.

  “No. I never saw the joy of slogging through powdered ice for fun.”

  “I can learn it, and I’m not even Sybran,” insisted Ayrlyn. “I’m mostly Svennish. You’re at least half Sybran, aren’t you?”

  “About half and half. It gets complicated. But my grandfather Weryl was a Svenn. He came to Heaven as a boy. Does that make me more Sybran than if he’d come as an adult?” Nylan laughed. “He didn’t ski, either.”

  “Was he a blond, too, ser?” asked Istril. “Like you used to be?”

  “I think so. He died when I was little.”

  “Just because he didn’t ski doesn’t mean you can’t,” pointed out Ayrlyn.

  “Especially since you’ll have to if you want to go anywhere in the wintertime,” added Ryba.

  “You make it sound so attractive. I’ll have to.” Nylan frowned. “Either freeze or be stranded in the tower.”

  “It’s not that bad,” said Saryn.

  As Nylan thought about a response, he saw Istril hurry from the table, toward the north door, and disappear. Her bread was untouched.

  “You’ll like it,” added Ryba.

  Ayrlyn gave a quick grin.

  Nylan took a sip of tea, warm tea, and wondered just how badly he would freeze learning to get around on wooden slats.

  XLVI

>   IN HER GREEN tunic and trousers, her hair bound back in a green and black enameled hairband, Zeldyan steps into the tower room. After closing the door, she bows deeply to the lady Ellindyja. “Honor and greetings to you, lady.”

  “You are now the Lady of Lornth, and I am honored,” answers Ellindyja. She does not rise from the cushioned bench in the alcove, but lowers the embroidery hoop to her lap. “Your grace in coming to visit so soon shows great respect for your lord, and I am pleased to see that.”

  “I respect Sillek, more than most would ever know. You are my consort’s mother, and, out of my deep respect for him, always to be honored and respected,” says Zeldyan, inclining her head to Ellindyja again.

  “I am so pleased to be included in your respects, dear, especially since your mother has always been one of my dearest friends.” Ellindyja knots the yellow-green thread with deft motions, and takes up the needle.

  “She would count you among her dearest and most trusted friends,” answers Zeldyan, stepping toward the alcove where Sillek’s mother begins an embroidered leaf on the white linen. “And a wise woman.”

  “Wise? I would think not,” says Ellindyja as the needle completes another loop of green comprising the leaf. “For my son has less of his heritage than his father.”

  “I am confident that situation will change, my lady, and that the greatness of Lornth will increase.”

  “With enemies on three sides, Lady Zeldyan?”

  “While I would certainly defer to those who understand arms and other weapons far better than I do, I have great faith in my lord Sillek.” Zeldyan pauses. “And great faith that you will offer counsel to him.”

  “I have always attempted to be of service to the Lords of Lornth, to his father, and to Sillek.” Ellindyja completes the small leaf, knots the thread, and rethreads the needle with crimson.