by Steven Poore
Easy to say. Not so easy to do.
“So many, yet far from enough,” she said, half to herself.
The head priest had disappeared in the chaos. He could use his authority against a young girl, but not against the stone soldiers she had summoned.
“And you intend to recruit more of the damned things? From where?”
“There are other shrines,” Cassia told him. “On the western road. And on the Emperor’s March.”
“Ah.” Rais nodded slowly. “Of course. The road to the North.”
She turned to look back at the square. Arca hunched upon his mule, staring intently at the beast’s neck as though simply ignoring the shieldmen that surrounded him would make them go away. Beyond that small semi-circle a space had opened up as the crowd of Helleans, intimidated by the ranks of shieldmen confronting them, retreated backwards. Their initial panic had subsided as it became clear the stone figures would not descend to tear them limb from limb.
“Will they allow us to leave?” Rais voiced her own thought.
Cassia stared down at the populace and saw a great range of emotions reflected back at her. Everything from anger and fear to disbelief and a strange sort of astounded joy. Some wept, while their neighbours argued amongst themselves. Some had turned their backs, pushing through the crowds, streaming away into the streets and alleyways – to defend their homes, or their families, or to hide, or perhaps fetch weapons of their own. Cassia could not know. A few had pressed to the very front – though not quite daring to climb onto the temple’s steps – and shouted up to catch her attention.
“Would you try to stop me, if it were you down there?”
Rais smiled. “Hardly. Credit me with some common sense, Cassia.”
She nodded. “Then we should go before they change their minds.”
It was a shame, Cassia thought, that she would not be amongst the first storytellers to recite this piece of history. That others would go before her, constructing the verses and rhythms to suit the manner of her exit from Hellea. They would pick the phrases and set the descriptions that their apprentices would learn and then spread through every village and town between here and Berdella. The great libraries here and at Kalakhadze would use those versions of the tales as their basis when the scholars there came to set down the accounts of these days.
That was, if anybody remained to write them down. If the evil she had unleashed had not scoured the land clear of life before then. If Cassia herself could take a small army of shieldmen – soulless creatures that had stood unmoving and silent for centuries, made for just such a purpose as this – and beat back the tide of Jedrell’s vengeance.
If.
The sheer scale of the task she had set herself overwhelmed her if she let her mind dwell upon it. So she did not. Instead she distracted herself by watching her companions as they rode at the head of the column of shieldmen.
It had been Ultess’s task to secure horses for the small human element of this sorcerous army, and the former quartermaster of Guhl’s Company had found mounts for them all, along with spares and a couple of hardier fieldhorses to carry their paltry amount of equipment. The question of whether the shieldmen themselves should – or indeed could, Cassia realised now – ride mounted had never even been mooted. The stone soldiers marched tireless and effortless behind her and she suspected they would continue without complaint until they reached the far side of the Northern mountains themselves.
Ultess looked uncomfortable on his mount, but Arca was worse. The veteran appeared close to collapse, too exhausted even to complain. Ultess had slung a full bladder of watered wine around his neck, but so far Arca had not even removed the stopper. Both men were as silent as the shieldmen behind them. They had to be wondering how much more Baum had left out from his tales, and which other legends would come true before their eyes. Praying to Ceresel, perhaps, that some at least were only legends. She remembered making the same prayers herself, though it seemed they had done her little good.
Rais, meanwhile, was more than comfortable in the saddle. On horseback, he was a Galliarcan prince once more. His spine was straight, his shoulders thrown back in an air of defiant authority, ignoring everything around him. Of all of them, he was the only one who appeared to be enjoying himself. Cassia was still not certain how much she wanted his help, or, indeed, his presence. But now was not the time to tackle the subject.
The column made good speed along the main streets to the Winter Gate, one of the four great gates of the city. These streets were wide enough for the shieldmen to march four abreast and still leave enough room for the curious and awestruck crowds gathered along the route. Though they had passed at least one watch-house, nobody attempted to halt the column or prevent their departure from the city. Whether that accorded with Rais’s definition of common sense, or whether the Emperor and his generals were too panicked to have agreed any kind of strategy yet, Cassia could not decide.
Ultess nudged his horse, a surly, grey beast that matched his temperament, to draw closer to her. Cassia’s own mount was a docile sorrel that was only mildly spooked by the ranks of living stone that followed it.
“The gate’s still open.”
“Is that good or bad?”
Ultess shrugged.
She could hardly pause now. Her march – this whole campaign she had begun – had taken on too much impetus. Like a single stone that tumbled out of place and triggered an avalanche in the mountains, she could not hope to stop it.
A crowd had gathered on either side of the Winter Gate, their faces lit by torches held high by the watchmen on the city walls. Cassia gazed around at them. Stories, again. What would they say about her? How would they view her departure?
At least here she had a chance to make a small difference. She turned to the first rank, where the shieldmen she had taken from Lianna’s house marched. Or at least, she believed they did. The ranks looked so disconcertingly similar she could not be certain.
“Follow this road,” she told them.
There was no reply of course; not even a sign that they had heard her. But the shieldmen had formed ranks to her orders, and they had obeyed the command to march. They would follow this order too, she hoped.
Cassia pulled the sorrel to a halt before the gates. It stamped nervously, clearly unhappy to be parted from the other horses. She watched as Rais, Arca and Ultess, and then the first ranks of shieldmen all passed through the Winter Gate, and then she raised her head to stare at the crowd again.
“They said the North would rise again,” she said, and the sorcerous drums lent her voice enough power to echo across the empty space of the gate’s small market, to rise above the steady thump of the marching shieldmen. “They were right. It has. Caenthell stands, and war is coming.”
And it is all my fault.
She wondered again what they saw. A girl in a patched cloak, dressed as though she was pitching a story to a fresh and sceptical audience. A girl who kept company with rakish Galliarcan princes and decrepit, wine-soaked old soldiers alike, yet had been abandoned by every friend she’d ever had. A girl with the voice of the North, a wall of stone soldiers at her back, prophesying doom and war. The Heir to the North.
And they would never see her again, she knew.
She drew in one last breath and stared across the walls again. Then she coaxed the sorrel into motion once more and followed the last rank of shieldmen through Hellea’s gate. Out of the light, and into the cold, unwelcoming evening.
She did not look back.
9
Dark visions.
Clouds boiled, oppressively close to the ground, swallowing the tops of the tallest trees. Half-glimpsed shapes stirred the uppermost branches and cracked the limbs.
And the ground below was torn, rent as though clawed by some massive beast. The stone beneath the earth pulsed and glowed heart-red, the jagged rhythm of a wounded animal. There was debris everywhere: splintered wood, bricks, shards of stone. And fragments of bone – ejected from
the ground to lie bare and weathered, many of the pieces scored with teeth marks.
Yet all around was silence. Not just the quiet of a place abandoned to nature, but true silence. The howling of the wind was unheard, as was the tremendous grinding of stone upon stone that could be felt through the earth. If any creature still lived in this appalling place then it cried for help in vain.
There was light, neither sunlight nor moonlight, but a greyish glow that suffused the air between the clouds and the broken land. It bruised everything it touched.
The land waited. Caenthell: it waited for her.
Cassia could not feel the ground beneath her feet. A hard breeze spun dust and grime to prickle her skin, coating her with the same sickly sheen that everything else possessed. She was glad she had tucked her hair up into her storyteller’s cap, else it would now hang matted and lifeless over her shoulders. Despite the wind, the heavy smell of corruption and decay – of market gutters left to fester through the summer – stuck at the back of her throat. Every breath made her want to gag.
Her companions, if any of them still lived, were nowhere in sight.
Just me. Alone. As I always have been.
She could not remember her journey up through the hills, following the Emperor’s March. It had been long and arduous, and her aching limbs bore testimony to that, but the details seemed unimportant. Unnecessary. Rais must have lost interest early on. And Arca? He must have exhausted himself during the first day. He was too old, too frail, to join such a quest.
Cassia moved across the scarred land. Or the land moved past her. If there was a distinction she could not perceive it.
Caenthell. It looked nothing like the land she remembered from that one brief visit to the border fort at Karakhel. This was a place of suffering; of war, pestilence and death. Misery. Mutilation. Tortured wraiths haunted the edges of her vision, pleading silently for relief. When she turned to confront them they dissipated, or withdrew into the mists once more.
I’m here. But what am I supposed to do? Why have I come here?
The sword was a weight at her hip. Not the slender blade that had once belonged to Pelicos, but Meredith’s heavy weapon. A thing of the mountains, just as Meredith himself had been. The weapon seemed to pull at her: uphill, past trees blackened and splintered by fire, and alongside craters gouged from the earth by sorcery. The wraiths that haunted this place moved with her, following her path and edging in on her flanks. They envied her, maybe. Or they hated her. They urged her onwards and at the same time they willed her to fail.
The gradient fell away suddenly and Cassia halted. The mists reached out to caress her flesh, leaving her nerves numbed.
It was here, she knew. Here. This spot. This was where the castle had once stood. The very heart of Caenthell.
Now what?
She felt the faintest breeze touch her cheek. The mists eddied, clearing for one brief moment so she could see how the land below her had been despoiled. Huge blocks of stone lay in precarious heaps, as though tumbled by a hammer of the gods. And not only stone – even here human remains poked out grotesquely, unclaimed, unburied and unquiet.
The breeze pushed something past her, behind her. Cassia stepped back from the lip of the downslope, pulling at the hilt of her sword. It refused to budge.
“Who’s there?” she called out. Caenthell flattened her voice, stifling the words as soon as they had been spoken. “Show yourself, damn you. I’m in no mood for games.”
There was no reply. The mists coiled about her ankles and she stepped away again before they could catch hold of her. “I said show yourself! I am the Heir to the North!”
Was that laughter she heard on the wind? She walked along the ridge, still struggling with the sword – the scabbard gripped it tighter than a fist. Dark shadows flitted within the mists.
She shouted out again. Caenthell swallowed her words, mocking her.
There was a shape, barely visible in the greyed-out world. It seemed to be beckoning to her. Cassia chose her route with trepidation, aware that one false step might send her tumbling into the pit that had once been the castle’s foundations. As her viewpoint changed she caught sight of different parts of the cellars, cracked open to the skies. Pools of stagnant water lay amongst the stones, lapping at the slighted remnants of arches and pillars that would once have supported a main floor. The earth pulsed beneath the flagstones, the same blood-red colouring she had seen earlier. Almost the only colour she had seen in Caenthell, up until now.
Except for the shape ahead. The unnatural breeze played with the figure’s cloak, lifting it at the corners so the coloured patches caught her eye. A storyteller’s cloak.
Her father’s cloak.
The wind switched about, battled against itself, and the cloak was torn away from the branches it had snagged upon. For a moment it billowed as though worn by some demonic wraith, and then it was lost to view, submerged in the mists.
Cassia was too stunned to speak. Her father was here, in Caenthell? Was this a scheme to unnerve her? To undermine her confidence before the battle had even begun? He could not be here. This was not real. The High King was playing with her.
She took a hesitant step backwards, wishing the sword would move from its scabbard. “These are games!” she shouted. “Nothing more! Are you scared of me, Jedrell? Are you afraid to show yourself? Because I do not see you! There is nothing here!”
Even as she called out she felt the growing weight of a presence behind her. She spun as quickly as the ground would allow, the sword useless at her side. Nothing there. Only the cellars, open to the skies like the splintered ribs of a corpse. Yet the presence was still behind her. The air was thick with danger, and it was hard to breathe. Cassia’s limbs would not respond as she wished them to.
Fear me.
The words resounded with the force of thunder, drowning out even the drumbeat of the North. Each syllable seared her vision with a blinding flash of colour. Cassia staggered, her balance lost, and collapsed onto her knees in the dirt. Tendrils of mist licked at the backs of her hands.
Fear me, the voice said again. It dwarfed Craw’s inhumanity.
Cassia crawled backwards, her vision whirling and blurred with tears. At any moment she might be lifted up and thrown through the sky by the sheer weight of this presence.
Reaching out, her hand met thin air. She toppled and rolled down the slope, away from the lip of the crater. The hilt of Meredith’s sword jabbed into her ribs and forced the breath from her lungs. And below her, glimpsed in that hellish moment before the fall twisted her body around again – below her a monstrous eyeball, blood-red, the pupil slitted and undeniably malicious, stared up at her from beneath the ground . . .
Cassia awoke with a start. Even exhausted, her muscles sore and aching from a long evening in the saddle, she responded instinctively and rolled aside, coming up with her staff in one hand and a clawed fistful of dirt in the other.
She checked herself a bare heartbeat from casting the soil at her attacker’s eyes and slung it back onto the ground instead. Cold and damp, it clung to her fingers and embedded itself under her nails.
“That was impressive,” Rais said. He held his own staff loose by one end. The other had plainly been used to prod at Cassia’s ribs.
“What was?” She shuddered against the penetrating cold of the morning, fighting lethargy and her own deadened body.
“Your reaction. I believe I came close to losing that bout before it had even begun.”
Cassia shook her head. Rais was exaggerating, she knew. Trying to butter her up. It wouldn’t work.
She shifted back onto her bedroll, the cold ground leeching any remaining warmth from her body. For a long, disconcerting moment she could not recognise her surroundings, and she had no memory of how she had got here. The stables of the Old Soak? No.
She blinked and a vision flashed through her mind. The awful spirit of Caenthell, buried beneath the castle. It was a dream – a nightmare. Nothing more. Her de
nial sounded less than convincing, even to her.
Her bedroll was on the southern side of a gently sloping orchard, shaded by lines of pear trees. The branches were bare, the last harvests long past, but they still afforded a little protection. Cassia realised she had become used to sleeping with a roof over her head. The fire-pit she had dug smouldered with the remains of last night’s cookfire, and on the far side of that, a discreet distance from her, the others had set their own rolls. A huddled form showed that Arca was still abed.
“Did you sleep well?” Rais asked. He extended a hand to help her to her feet; Cassia ignored it and pulled herself unsteadily up.
“No,” she said bluntly. One thing she did not want to face this morning was the prince’s over-solicitous questioning. He always sounded as though he was mocking her.
But Rais continued to talk as she rolled her shoulders and found her bearings. The night’s march was a blur. She remembered the unlit Winter Road, snaking through the cultivated land that surrounded Hellea’s walls, and she remembered reaching the edges of the Grayling Woods. There Ultess and Rais convinced her that they should stop for the remainder of the night, else they risked laming the horses in unseen ditches. And, Rais had pointed out none too subtly, Cassia was swaying in her saddle. It would hardly help her cause if she fell and split her head open, as some rash generals had done while forcing a march.
Cassia had protested, not least because she feared Hellea’s Emperor would be quick to pursue her to demand the return of his shieldmen, but she was too exhausted to string together a coherent argument. Instead they left the road, navigating a short farmers’ track into this orchard.
Now she stared suspiciously at the eastern horizon. Dawn must have been at least two hours gone. “You let me sleep this long?”
Rais shrugged off the accusation. “You needed it, I think. Besides, the innkeeper watches the road.” The corners of his mouth flicked up in a brief smile. “Give me some credit, girl. I checked he was still there before I woke you.”