In Siege of Daylight

Bloodhawk made a perfunctory bow and left the flame-lit circle in the company of Jylkir and Du’uwneyyl. The dour captain left them at the door of his accommodations, heading back toward the council, and Jylkir led him into the upper reaches of the hollow ilyela tree. At sixty feet in height and twenty in width, it was roughly the same dimensions as a small round tower. Not a large specimen by the standards of aulden treesingers, but Bloodhawk recognized it as sufficient for its purpose.

  Jylkir’s eyes did not meet his as she shut the door of the tower room, leaving him alone in its stark, windowless confines. She sang a sad note, and there was a sucking sound as the door melded seamlessly into the wood surrounding it. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and then the sound of her footsteps receded down the long stair.

  Bloodhawk stood for a moment and stared into the darkness, then lay down for a nap. He had eaten nothing of real substance save the jujoehbe fruit of the night before, and he needed rest. He could hope they would be sensible and that sane voices would prevail. If not, he would need most of his strength and all of his wits to escape.

  Especially if he had to fight past the likes of Du’uwneyyl.

  Jylkir Leafingblade stood in the shadows outside the Great Tree where the nyrul cayl had retired to consider the half-blood’s testimony. The guards hadn’t yet noticed her huddling against the yielding bark of the ancient ilyela, listening with growing apprehension to the arguments within. The great fire was now only a collection of smoking embers, the common folk having left the opening caucus after their lyaeyni and her six caylaeni had retreated within for their private consultations. The Ceearmyltu slept as their fate was decided by the angry voices inside.

  Lyaeyni Meimniyl, as always, led the majority, which was undecided but not disposed to kindness on the cause of humankind. She wanted nothing to do with the human world, and favored keeping to their quiet isolation. If the humans weakened themselves in the process of their foolish war, she argued, all the better for the Seven Tribes. This point of view was very popular with the three caylaeni of Meimniyl’s own older generation.

  Ililysiun, who despite her youth was considered a wise and prudent councilor, argued alone for lending aid to the human realms. Though her reasons were sound, her soft-spoken manner began to falter against the glare of hatred from those who would crush the humans in their time of weakness. Soon she was merely struggling on the defensive, attempting to stave off their persuasive and impassioned oratory and preserve at the very least a neutral aspect.

  But Ryaleyr and Hlemyrae, the proponents for war and possibly even a brief alliance with Malakuur, were carefully playing upon the existing hatred and resentment of the older caylaeni and fanning the flames of their latent rage into open aggression. Jylkir could hear them turn one by one as the tempting fruits of victory were laid out on the table.

  “… there’s Dwynleigsh. How long have we suffered its occupation?” Jylkir recognized the voice as Feylobhar’s, elder even than Meimniyl. “Perhaps we should march again.”

  “Yes!” The venom in that voice definitely marked it as Ryaleyr’s. “Every year the thinwood grows thinner under the human axe, and we hide deeper and deeper to avoid their notice. These Priest Kings are no better and no worse than the rest of their ilk. We can deal with them after this war.”

  “Do you hear yourself, Ryaleyr?” pleaded the desperate voice of Ililysiun. “The Aelfeniir fight off the Malakuuri from their borders even now. Do we ally against our own to mete out your vengeance? Do we fight side by side with the Old Foe? And what of the iiyir well?”

  “Do be still, Ililysiun!” snapped Hlemyrae’s high, harsh, voice. “You are making much of nothing. Of course we will not fight our own. We will choose our battles, and they will be against the humans and the humans only. The iiyir well explains this abhorrent, unnatural winter, but the humans don’t begin to understand its power and its uses. It will devour them before they are any threat to us.

  “As for the andu’ai, pfagh!” Her tone had disintegrated into complete disgust. “That half-man lies to gain our alliance. Who here thinks the Old Foe would ever do the bidding of humans, by the First Tree.”

  That last statement seemed to garner Hlemyrae and Ryaleyr even more support. Eleulii even broke her silence to agree. Jylkir had to admit that it sounded very far-fetched that those of such powerful and arcane heritage would do the biddings of mortal humans. But Bloodhawk had not asked for aid, for himself or any other, he had only warned them of their peril. And she had seen in his eyes honesty, and gravity, and purpose. No, he did not lie. But the nyrul cayl did not share her opinion.

  “Silence,” hushed the lyaeyni. “I have heard all your council I can hear, and the final decision is mine.” She paused, and Jylkir held her breath. “First, I thank Ililysiun for her kind advice. But, though she intends well, this is not the time to show kindness. We have skulked about in the shadows while humans glory in the suns-light for too many long years. Now is the time to take back our birthright, and though I will not be one to ally with one enemy to defeat another, neither will we hinder the course of their plans. That is my judgment. How finds the nyrul cayl?”

  Jylkir did not wait to hear their verdict. It was mere formality. The lyaeyni rarely judged against the nyrul cayl’s popular support, and they in return rarely challenged her ruling. It would be near unanimous, this time, with perhaps an abstention from neutral Niealihu and Ililysiun’s objection. She ran at frantic pace toward the tower tree where the halfblood was imprisoned. They would do one of two things with him now, and she considered neither fair nor honorable. Death or imprisonment were their only options, for he would surely warn the human realms if he were allowed safe passage from the Caerwood.

  Jylkir ascended the steep slope in a succession of short leaps, putting every fraction of her energy into the final sprint to the tree’s solitary door. It could take them another span or more to decide his fate, but she intended to take no chances. She reached the door and sang the opening chime. A thin black line materialized from the smooth bark, and the door rocked open on its hinges with a sighing hiss of air. As she started up the tight spiral of the staircase, she heard the sound of soft footfalls behind her and turned just in time to see a gauntlet shoot out like silver-green lightning and grab her collar.

  Jylkir tried to twist out of the grip and slip up the stairs, but with a powerful tug she was off balance and out of control. She fell against the edge of the stair and scarcely held in her cry of pain. Her back throbbed, and her head swam as she looked up into the dark eyes of her captor and cursed.

  “Leave me be,” she hissed with unbridled vehemence. “Let me up!”

  But the grip was unrelenting.

  “You’re lucky it was I who spotted you eavesdropping and not Caethys or Duybhir.” Du’uwneyyl shot back, dragging Jylkir to her feet but retaining her merciless hold. “Are you mad? You didn’t really intend to release him, did you?”

  “What if I did?”

  “Treason,” spat the High Blade. “Treason and stupidity. I’ll not let you kill yourself over some childish infatuation.”

  Jylkir’s jaw dropped. “Is that what you think?” She struggled anew, but still was helpless in the stronger woman’s grip. “Do you take me for a suckling infant? Or some dreamy-eyed human girl?”

  “What, then?”

  Jylkir enunciated her words slowly and carefully for emphasis. “He has done us no wrong!” She was close to tears in her desperation. “If you truly love me, you must let me free him before it’s too late. You must!”

  “No,” Du’uwneyyl forcibly removed her from the interior of the tower tree and released her with a gentle shove away from the door. “I would kill him before I let you ruin yourself on his account.”

  Jylkir channeled her rage and frustration into words. Loud, hateful, words that she no longer cared who overheard. “Die a thousand bloody deaths, Du’uwneyyl. I curse the day Mother bore you!”

  Jylkir fled without a glance back in her hated sister’s direction. She
didn’t see the cold, passionless stare that followed her, or the clenched jaw or narrowed slits of her black eyes. Nor did she see the momentary tightness that clenched at her sibling’s throat at her last furious execration.

  Without remark, Du’uwneyyl stepped within the windowless tower tree and sealed the door on the feeble rays of dawn.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  OSZMAGOTH

  OSRITH had spent so much time worrying over what they might discover in the ruins of the Sunken City that he nearly forgot what little regard he held for boats. The river craft supplied by Vaujn’s people was long and slim, with a shallow keel and prominent steel-shod prow. It was styled in the shape of a duaurnhuun head, which a surface dweller might easily mistake for that of a wolfhound, its level snout pointing the way before them. There were several dents on the metal plating of both the prow and the gunwales, not unusual for a boat that plied the meandering rocky channels of these underground rivers. But it was not this boat that worried him; the kin were talented and reliable shipwrights.

  No, it was not this boat; it was any boat, the principle of boats in general, which disturbed him. Rivers were for fishing and fording, maybe washing, when the need arose, but why anyone wanted to sit in a hollowed-out log to shoot down these twisting waterways was beyond him.

  But for the kin, it was more than a simple matter of wants. They relied extensively on both the natural rivers and their own kin-made canals for trade, transport and communication. Before his own journeys in the Deeps, he had assumed they were a landlocked people, but this was another example of common myth not stacking up well against actual fact. The kin were, for all intents, masters of the underground lakes and rivers of their realms. He had even heard rumor of an air-filled hollow ball some kin inventor had used to plumb the depths of the Great Deeping Sea. Duragun had seemed to believe it, but Osrith refused to accept the possibility. Traveling on top of the water was bad enough; he couldn’t imagine anyone going under it on purpose.

  Two-Moons and Symmlrey shared none of his concerns and, in fact, agreed to the idea of taking to the Dolset at once. In an otherwise alien environment, this was relatively comfortable and familiar for them. Osrith gathered they were of the type that liked boats. He had no qualms letting them take charge of the journey at this point. He was content to sit in the middle of the craft, leaning against the stowed gear and complaining about Two-Moons’ reckless steering. Symmlrey kept watch in the prow, her superior vision picking out the jutting rocks and shallows, which appeared with alarming rapidity at their breakneck speed, dipping in her paddle when necessary.

  Kassakan had no need of the boat at all. She was at home in the water, and scouted ahead for potential threats that might escape even Symmlrey’s keen sight. Though she insisted on calling this work, Osrith knew it was more like pure frolic as he watched her glistening scales slice through the water with casual flicks of her muscular tail. In the dim purplish light of the nightmoss planted on either side of the river passage, she was a fluid shadow dancing in and out of darkness.

  He still remembered, and with great enjoyment, the surprised looks that had flashed across the faces of those riverwardens in Hzieak Hzed not that long ago. A smooth bit of work that was, he thought. They had slipped in and lightened the city coffers, then slipped out again before anyone was the wiser. Except those poor wide-eyed riverwardens, left to splash in the waters of the Miielor as Kassakan made good her escape.

  Osrith chuckled. Then, with a grunt, brow furrowed and grin buried, he realized it had not been such a short time ago, at all. Almost fifteen years. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand as if to dispel the now irksome memory. It bothered him to consider too much that his past might now be longer than his future.

  With a creak of steel scraping against rock and then the louder, jarring thunder of full impact, the ship halted against a large boulder on the south bank. The stern began to drift back toward the middle of the Dolset under the sway of the river’s pull, and Two-Moons barked something in what Osrith guessed was his native tongue. Symmlrey yelled back something equally incomprehensible. The waters rushed against the sides of the boat, pressing hard in an all-out effort to capsize the floundering vessel. But the two wilhorwhyr maneuvered the boat in a dizzying circle, using the current to their advantage until at last they were pointing straight down the Dolset’s underground gullet once more.

  “Gods Between!” Osrith rumbled, twisting in his crouch to face Two-Moons. The lantern at the steersman’s feet lit his face from below like a carved gourd on Undernday. “It’s a boat, not a battering-ram, old man.”

  Two-Moons only laughed. Odd enough in itself – but with his face aglow in the orange flicker of lamplight, he looked for all the world like a maddened river-spirit guiding them all gaily along to the greylands. Not far enough from the truth, as far as Osrith was concerned.

  The rest of their first day on the river was uneventful. The river was fast, but not unmanageable, and the passage was wide and well maintained. Aside from the occasional bat, or a school of white, sightless fish that slid through the dark water beneath them, they were alone. They made camp at an old kin post that Vaujn had marked on their map, the last such the kin even pretended to maintain in the hinterlands of their empire. The roar of the water here was louder and angrier as it began its steeper descent to the lower river.

  The others unpacked their gear and dragged the boat fully ashore, and Osrith, with his kin spectacles balanced delicately on the bridge of his oftbroken nose, set off to examine what was left of the stores at their campsite. Not a half score yards from the bank he found the door. It opened with a reluctant creak under Osrith’s determined pull, revealing a chamber that could house ten fully equipped kin in reasonable comfort. The fondness of the kin for vaulted ceilings made maneuvering only slightly unpleasant for a person of Osrith’s girth and height, though he imagined Kassakan would be less at ease.

  There was no food in the pantry, save for three jugs of beer, temptingly chilled by a small stream of water channeled from the river outside to cascade in a miniature waterfall down the back wall. It ran into the wide basin holding the jugs with a muted trickle and splash, and then drained back to its source through the same invisible handiwork that had brought it here.

  Trust the kin not to spare expenses just to keep their beer cold, he thought. It would make a handy wash sink as well, he supposed, but that was probably an architectural afterthought. The kin weren’t nearly as fond of bathing as they were of drinking. There was still a good supply of dry wood and sticks stacked neatly against one wall, supplemented by a larger pile of sooty coal, and Osrith busied himself preparing the small hearth for a fire.

  His joints were stiff after the long ride in the kin’s oversized canoe. Mumbling profanities that could wilt the hairs in the most grizzled sailor’s ears, he sat heavily on the floor and massaged his right knee gingerly. This, unfortunately, only served to further aggravate his already aching back. Groaning, Osrith twisted around until he heard a muffled pop, then rested his sweaty forehead against the cool stone of the wall.

  “Two-Moons has herbs that can soothe your joints,” said Symmlrey from over his shoulder.

  Osrith started at the sound and twisted his neck around to put a face to the disembodied voice. She stood behind him, a large pack slung over her shoulder, her eyes almost luminescent through the amethyst lenses of his spectacles. “Damn it, girl, don’t sneak around like that. Like as not you’ll find an axe in your head before I know who you are.”

  “I wasn’t sneaking –”

  “And I don’t need any of the old man’s weeds and berries, either,” he grumbled, fishing in his own gear. “Just a cramp, is all.”

  Symmlrey stared at him a moment, shrugged, and walked to the other side of the room to stow her burden. Osrith rummaged for another moment and then produced the object of his search with the glimmer of a grin. It was a rounded piece of flint, attached in the center to a steel arm about three inches long and half an inch
in width, with a clip-like handle. Upon squeezing the clip, the tiny mechanism dragged a sharpened edge of steel against the flint wheel, immediately issuing a spark into the prepared kindling. Osrith nursed the barest hint of a fire into a comfortable blaze. He sat back, secured his glasses in their padded leather case, and let the warmth seep into his bones and while away the stubborn aches that still nestled there.

  The door opened again, and Two-Moons entered with Kassakan a step behind. As Two-Moons and Symmlrey spread out their bedrolls next to Osrith’s place of silent repose, Kassakan brought out the rations hastily provided by Vaujn’s portly quartermaster, Ouwd, and distributed the hunks of bread and cheese to her companions. With a look of disdain, she handed a slab of some salted meat to Osrith and then washed her hands thoroughly in the basin before touching her own food.

  Osrith’s beard crinkled in a smile as he watched Kassakan nibble at her bread as daintily as a court dandy at King’s Keep. Her rounded teeth were not those of a hunter, and she had never been able to tolerate meat of any sort. He had never figured out how she got so big eating plants, fruits and breads. He’d heard more lectures on the subject than he cared to in his lifetime. As if it wasn’t bad enough she’d convinced herself not to eat meat, she often felt it her task to convince him of the same.

  Osrith ripped off a large section of what his nose told him was dried beef, from the squat underkingdom equivalent of a steer, and offered the remaining slab to Two-Moons. He was met with a disdainful frown and a shake of the head. Before he could repeat the gesture for Symmlrey, the aulden had turned to face the fire with a more severe expression of her own.

  “What?” muttered the mercenary in mid-mouthful. “Are your palettes too delicate for dried beef? Or is it my company?”

  Two-Moons’ reply was cut off by Symmlrey’s quicker tongue. “Wilhorwhyr don’t eat of animal flesh. You’re worldly enough to have heard this.”