Crimson Valley

by Hausladen, Blake;

  I hefted my mother up, told her I was alright, and turned. Soma and her daughter were upright too and blazing blue, but like the smoke, it was already fading.

  “Stay here, mother,” I said and stepped back toward Soma. “I will not have that happen again. Come here so that I can take hold of this god who means to rule me.”

  “Is that wise, Emi?” Soma asked.

  “I will be no one’s slave. Come here.”

  She smiled at that and marched toward me while straightening her uniform and winding her fallen lengths of gray hair back beneath her hat with the sure stab of a forked hairpin.

  We got within twenty paces and the air began again to warm and crackle.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “They love our tension. I think we should be friends. What’s your daughter’s name?” I asked.

  “Relaxing will be hard.”

  “Try.”

  “Damn it, girl,” she said, swore, and worked to unbutton her uniform. “Hold on. Pikailia, come unlace me.”

  The girl came fast and undid lacing across Soma’s back until with a great happy exclamation, Soma wrapped off her corset and flung it on the pier. “Emi, Pia. Pia, this is Emi. Be friendly.”

  “Do you always have to wear those?” I asked. “They look terrible.”

  “Not all bad,” she said, while she scratched Soma’s back and side until her both began to swat her hands away. “Tough when you’re tired. I hear you have a sister now is that right? Eris, was it?”

  “Aris. She is a darling.” I turned to Liv, who stood flatfooted but seem to understand what was going on. “Mother, can you bring her, please?”

  The crackling continued but did not grow. Liv considered it for a long moment before moving as I asked.

  “I have my father’s eyes and chin,” Pikailia said, and I had to giggle. She did not look much like Soma at all.

  I took a step forward and called Franni forward, too, while Soma called in an officer named Tayler and a healer named Earinne. Introductions were made as the group gathered around us. Little Aris was passed around for everyone to coo at. The crackling faded as they got to know each other, and I was three paces away from Soma when a pain began to creep across my eyes.

  “It is starting to hurt,” Soma said.

  “For me, too,” I said. “That might be as close as we can get. They might be getting wise to us.”

  “What do we do when they learn that we are rebelling?”

  “I’ll kill yours and you can kill mine.”

  “Agreed. Let’s get to the harbor. The refugees will spill all over the city and countryside if we don’t keep them on the boats.”

  “It was nice to meet you, Soma. All of you.”

  The group gave us a last great hug before we got to work.

  69

  Minister Sikhek Vesteal

  The next aftershock went unnoticed by those around me.

  Maison had received report that the last of Soma’s lumbering flow of bodies and ships had crossed into Thanin and would reach the safety of the river. An engineer would have told a story of ropes, skids, and the blocks they used to carry their ship through the valley. A politician would have told the story of the people of Dahar that became the glue between the Yud and the Aneathean. A scholar of my former church would have lamented Soma’s blasphemous magic and its affect upon the multitude.

  The story of me for that same set of days includes all the mechanisms of a crossbow and my efforts to perfect their design. I flipped the polished steel serving in my hand over and over before fitting it into the stock. The rest of the pieces came together in a flurry, and I lifted my head with a smile. It was a masterpiece.

  Wait.

  What did the perfection of a crossbow serving have to do with anything? I shook my head and an old notion tapped at my consciousness.

  Was I the writer of my story, or did someone else hold the brush and vellum? Someone too clever by half, regardless of the author, it seemed. I despised to have my story come to an end, but those the read the full account of me would understand that I was the hero.

  The ground trembled again, and a wisp of dust dropped from the roof of the wide hall filled with industrious Savdi-Nuar and the hardwood and components of their weapons.

  “The last of our retreating pikemen are moving up through the terraces now,” a man said to Maison. Mika thanked the man.

  The messenger was not wearing a face-wrap and coughed against the heavy stench of the cinnabar smelter.

  I’d forgotten all about the massive batch they were making and asked, “Where can I find the finished mercury? It is time for me to prepare.”

  “Come,” Maison said, “We’ve a last change to the design based on your input.”

  “Forget about the crossbows. Your priests will not be enough to keep away Geart’s touch. When he arrives, I am the only one that can hold him off. Take me to the mercury now so I can prepare.”

  Mika took hold of my arm. “Come, Sikhek, I’ve something you must see.”

  “Enough of this. You think you know me so well?”

  “Minister, we have more stories of you than all the archives in Zoviya combined. We have a college dedicated to the study of your life. Would you like to see it?”

  “No. How dreadful.”

  “That is true. It does not read well.”

  “Poorly written?”

  Her expression changed, and Maison began to interject, but she put her hand upon his arm.

  She said to me, “No Sikhek. It is a poor subject. What drives you has changed too many times. Metallurgist. Murderer. Man of magic. Father of the Empire. Vandal. Thief. Recruiter. Mason. Road builder. Exorcist. General.”

  “Are those chapter headers?”

  “Titles of the collected volumes. You have started and restarted several careers over the centuries, forgetting your past works as often as you mistakenly tear them down or take credit for the work of others. Your personality and drives blow sharply.”

  The gathered men and woman stared at me, studying.

  “These are theories regarding my nature, I must conclude.”

  “Several, but most give you credit where none is due.”

  “Oh? Which theory of me do you ascribe to from this college of yours?”

  “This is the point we disagreed with our last Sten about, and the reason he was removed.”

  “Mika,” her father said. “You overstep.”

  “And you acquiesce, father. Today is the day it happens. It has been agreed. Stand fast or find a mule and ride away.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “What do you mean, ‘your Sten?’ Disand was mine.”

  “No. Ours. Our Hessier. Our Sten. Our Minister.”

  My loyal Savdi-Nuar were rebelling. I searched the faces of those around me for those who remained true. I needed time and tried to keep her talking. “And what is this theory you hold to?”

  “It is no longer theory. You are a compulsive and wretched child. Your whims are driven by what’s in front of you, and only your all-consuming ego keeps you focused long enough to claim a rudimentary mastery of any one skill. You are average. An author that takes three years to complete a tale a master could deliver in a season, and a sculptor that spends a lifetime on one minor work. The only original thing you have ever done is convince your family to murder itself for your fantasy of power. Ever since that day, you have been a meandering fool who tears the world apart.”

  “And here you all sat, studying this fool.”

  “We study you so we can control you. We have done so for a millennium. We are the ones who put shiny objects before you and guide you as we wish.”

  I glanced at the crossbows.

  “You control me? Why not kill me and rule this world if you are such gods amongst men?”

  “Many have tried. Two full volumes worth of poorly conceived and well-reasoned attempts. Aden got closer than any before him, yet your torso was fished out of the Bessradi.”

  “Who are you? You
are supposed to be my Savdi-Nuar!”

  “We are the ones that will succeed. You, the Vesteal, and all the rest. Today will be your last day.”

  “Never,” I said and swung a song around upon them.

  flesh burn

  The verse tore at Mika for a moment but then crumbled. She’d knocked it aside as easily as I had ever done to Hessier that rebelled against me.

  “Take him,” she said.

  They swarmed me, bound my hands and feet, and stuffed me into a thick leather bag lined with silver. A thick silver bar gag was jammed into my mouth and the bag was secured to a heavy steel rod. Two men hefted me up and carried me out onto the wide clear slope above the highest terrace. A fixture in the ground waited there and they stood the bar up into a slot. I was left hanging there like bait.

  A second leather bag was hung next to me. I could not see its contents, but it smelled of wounds and old rags. A collection, perhaps, of the pieces of cloth that had been stained with my blood.

  They stepped from view, and I could do nothing but look down the valley.

  The sky grew dark and the air stopped moving. Shapes began to circle in the sky overhead. Through the still air the shrieks of hawks and buzzards echoed off the valley’s red walls.

  The birds came fast and dived in at me. Hundreds of misshapen things, all claws, and ichor-stained feathers. My face and body were gouged. Screams of the dead birds echoed through my bloody body, the sound was worse than the pain. Talons took hold of me and tore away a hunk of my flesh. Part of my jaw came away and the gag was torn free.

  And then all went still. I blinked. One of my eyes had been plucked out. With the one that remained, I became aware of the carpeting of dead birds that littered the ground around me.

  I’d forgotten it. Mika and the rest were as Soma, and their touch could sever the Shadow from any Hessier or Ashmari.

  I was hauled up and moved a short distance back to another fixture in the ground while the pile of dead birds was burned. The black smoke washed over me. I choked and was made mindless. When next I could think and see, the sky was dark, and the watch fires far below were beginning to go out.

  Orders sounded down the terraces, and the slopes began to glow orange as the Nuar coaxed the ghosts that filled the many trenches. The heat hollowed out the fog along the center of the valley. In a place or two, something caught fire. Shadows danced upon the forward faces of each trench and the back of each man and battlement.

  “There,” a man called and I found a shape below. It was too large to be a man—a black silhouette standing in the center of the fog-shrouded froth of red clay. He stopped there and the valley trembled.

  A hand of darkness slammed down, and the Savdi-Nuar seemed not to resist. A perfect darkness, thick and full of love spilled out of the nothingness.

  The Shadow’s love.

  ‘You must die,’ the spirit said, and I felt his claws rising up around me.

  “Never,” I said, and flung it all up and away. The claws withered and the light of the fire danced against the opened the terraces.

  A crossbowman somewhere far forward let fly. The shaft swirled the fog and struck Geart’s thigh.

  He fell to one knee and his icy touch abated. I wondered at his frailty. He’d made countless Hessier. What toll had that taken? I’d made over two-thousand Hessier in my fourteen centuries, and I’d felt my blood weaken with each making.

  “Hit him again,” I shouted down, and regretted at once revealing that my gag had been torn free.

  Neither Maison nor Mika responded. Geart had hold of them all. The Savdi-Nuar

  Flames shrouded Geart’s body and I exalted to see it. The silver in his body burned free and he withdrew into the fog as more bolts were fired.

  A low rumble began to grow, and a savage stampede came into view. It spilled up out of the mists and the caribou came up the valley like the wash of a flood.

  Bolts began to stab at them.

  “Hold fire,” came the call and the Savdi-Nuar settled back, watching.

  The terraces had been built to defend against a much different foe, but ended up being perfect for the one they faced. The Hessier caribou jammed themselves against the first high wall of earth and trampled their forward edge, climbing over each other. Some bashed at the gates before being jammed against it by the press. The first false gate gave way and caribou poured into the pit behind it until they jammed it with their carcasses. The true gate gave way next, but it almost did not matter as the tide of frenzied beasts crested the terrace. They trampled across the wide field and pitched headlong into the first terrace.

  “Burn,” the Savdi-Nuar upon the wall above called down, and the ghosts that filled it blazed red and mean. Their shrieks rose above the rumble and baying of the dead beast. Flames leapt high above the trench and it seemed Geart’s beasts would get no farther until the spill of them began to extinguish the bright flame and bury the ghosts. One after another, was extinguished and the Caribou began to crash against the embankment and gates of the second terrace.

  Great cats and wolves began to appear in the mix, and they leapt above the caribou and over the trenches. Bolts stabbed at them, and each hit slowed them until a careful shot struck them through the skull.

  On it went, the second and third terraces being overwhelmed, their trenches of angry ghosts extinguished.

  The order was given and flight after flight of bolts reached down the slope to decimate the heard coming up. Their numbers thinned, and the ghosts in the fourth trench burned hot. Beast after beast went in and its mass was flung up in a wash of smoke and ash.

  A crackling caught my ear, and a flash of light far down the slope cut through the gloom. It sped across the carpet of death, a kin to the magic I’d aimed at Mika.

  All the flesh of the many dead beasts erupted in flame and the blast of heat sent a tidal wave of burning meat rushing up the valley and across terraces. It slammed each, all the way up to where I was tied and slapped me with flaming bits of pelts.

  The blast spent itself and everything below became still. Choking smoke blanketed the valley. A few Savdi-Nuar stumbled behind their walls, but not many.

  And then below, a fresh rumbling began. Hooves and growls of things big and angry.

  He could not have much more.

  “Fight them,” I called down. “Defend the last trench!”

  The blue of healing magic glowed through the smoke and voices began to move upon the terraces.

  Mika appeared on my left with a loaded crossbow and took aim at my head for a long moment, but turned instead and shot it deep into the shoulder of a moose that had raced ahead of the rest. The bone shattered and it toppled across the torn carpeting of meat and plunged into the next trench.

  Behind it, the mass moving up the at us trembled the flames, and the cold breeze pushed away the smoke to reveal a ramps of meat that extended all the way up to the fifth terrace.

  “Loose the ghosts,” Mika called, and the Savdi-Nuar urged them on. Flaming swirls of ash rose from the trench before the sixth terrace and hurdled down at the advancing beasts. They wraiths tore at them and new carcasses began to litter the torn fields by the score. Bolts stabbed down into the mix and the herd began to thin.

  Lynx, foxes, and klipspringer began to race up through the chaos. The rush took the Savdi-Nuar by surprise and they began to fall.

  “Use the touch,” Mika called, and the bit of Soma’s magic began to snap at my soul and sever the Shadow’s magic from the beasts upon them.

  More came. Healing magic began to fade and their savage touch weakened. The clank of crossbow winches slowed.

  “Let me loose. This is folly. I can defeat him.”

  “Where is that damned gag,” Mika shouted, came up to find it, and belted it back in place.

  They faded away to might right and left them, and I saw how they meant to use me. I thrashed and screamed against the gag.

  The last trench filled and the last of the ghosts was overcome. Careful shots knoc
ked back those that made it over the last wall.

  A second crackling tingle began below.

  “Withdraw,” Mika called, too calm for the moment. I was hauled up and back toward the palace as the roar of flame blasted up the valley. The palaces thick columns shuddered as the wave struck and I fell hard as the men lost their grip on my bag.

  More voices and hands. Back through the halls we moved and upon a long stairway the struggled repeated itself. Dead beasts packed the hall and stairs and a fresh blast tore through the palace.

  Back they fled into the cavern beneath the palaces and the places of their most secret work.

  In ones and twos, the beasts came down until there was no more.

  In that long pause, I was taken deeper while others went up—more snipers with bolts made to kill Geart.

  A roar and a quaking of the earth signaled he’d been struck, but the report came down that he was still up.

  Geart pressed the Shadow down at us after that and the Savdi-Nuar struggled to keep it away.

  A small vial of mercury was brought up and they fed it to me one drop at a time. I almost let Geart take them, but as his touch pressed down upon me I knocked it away as I had the biting worms. On this went, longer than I could keep track.

  A heat began to rise somewhere from the back of the cavern, and a growing with a mechanical sound that accompanied it. A second silver-lined bag was brought and laid out next to mine.

  They had a molten forge or something similar waiting for both of us. They meant to exhaust Geart and bind him as they had done to me. We would both be fed into it forge.

  Snakes and rats came next, in a gray spill. Several of the Savdi-Nuar drank vials of the mercury and their songs tore up the caves leaving nothing but bits of scales and rat hair.

  Another roar and quake inspired chuckles from some.

  One of the crossbow men descended, telling a tale of a lurching form upon the terraces they were using for target practice.

  “Let’s put Sikhek in now,” Mika said. “We don’t need him anymore.”