CHAPTER XXIII

From the Chronicle of Nikeh Gen’Emras

Within days of the death of the goddess Kinsai, the warband of the Westgrasslander chieftain Reyka had crossed the river of the goddess Bakan, abandoning their own land. Far to the south, the Lower Castle of the ferry-folk by the Fifth Cataract had burned and stood an empty shell, its folk travelling east on the caravan road while a second caravan followed them, with all the books of the Upper Castle’s library in its care. It passed the ruin of the Lower Castle while the All-Holy’s army of the South was still building its camp on the western bank of the river there.

Above the hundred miles of white water, the army of the North began to cross, a flotilla of small boats, and then there, too, the work of quarrying the hills of the eastern bank and bridging the never-tamed Kinsai began, and many men and women, eager Westrons and captive Westgrasslanders, died in the quarrying and in the building, as if there lingered still some hostility towards them in Kinsai’s waters and the valley that had once been hers.

Travellers on the caravan road had this news at Serakallash, and found themselves marooned, as it were, in that Red Desert town, their road to the north grown too perilous. Some sold at a loss; some turned back for Marakand. Others went on, thinking that the traditional neutrality of the caravan road would be their shield, or that they might find some route farther east of the river valley in the bare hills. In this they were mistaken, and few came through with their goods to At-Landi, or at all.

The All-Holy crossed the river with the seventh- and sixth-circle priests of his mystery, his highest officers and his seers, and determined to make his winter residence in the Upper Castle of the ferrymen, in which, his scouts and spies had reported, a few of the elderly and ill of Kinsai’s folk had remained, abandoned by their kin.

A thin skin of snow lay over the hilltops and in the dawn the river smoked. Ice fringed the rocky shore. Cat-ice, the children called it, though it would need to be a venturesome and lightweight cat that would risk it. The river never froze over, not this far south. This was only a warning of winter. The Kinsai’av stormed down the falls of the First Cataract in braids, chains of white, all foam and fury. A mile above the castle, on this eastern shore, men broke stone, gnawing a quarry into the hills. Women loaded stone. Carts hauled stone. A great company of labourers had crossed in boats. Footings were rising above the water. The piers of a bridge began to take shape.

The river’s shores were black with boats, east and west. They crossed and recrossed.

The Upper Castle was built within Kinsai’s embrace, its foundations in the water, a moat crooked around its landward side like an arm encircling. Their bridge was gone, the gates closed. They were watched, of course. The watchers might see, sometimes, candlelight, behind narrow high windows. Let them. No wizard-lights burned.

Westron labourers and Westgrasslander conscripts hauled stone to the moat, and a causeway advanced. The warden watched, every day, from the roof of the north tower. Deysanal didn’t like him climbing up there, but he wanted sun, wind, and sky while they were still his to claim. To lurk furtive at a window—no. No one shot at him. He had laid a small pattern over the tower roof, nothing of great power, though he suspected such a working was beyond the capabilities of the Westron priests without their false god lending them a thread of his powers. Few wizards among that folk; even their seers were weak. They did not notice him watching. He was shade and cloud-shadow, only that.

Footsteps on the stairs. Deysanal. She came to his side, leaned there. Confident in his spell’s obscurement for herself, for all that she would rather he were below.

“They’re nearly over.”

“Yes.”

“Papa…” Long since she had called him that. She said nothing further. He put an arm around her.

Below, a man among those wrestling an unhitched cart into place slipped, but others were already heaving. Stone fell. The man screamed. Two women rushed with spade and pick to try to lever up the boulder crushing him, but there were shouts, orders—the cart was pushed away, another already backing into place. A man in a red tabard went down to him. He shrieked and was silent. Silenced. The work went on. Smaller rubble filled the gaps, making a surface.

Others kept watch on the river. The warden and Deysanal left the roof, took a meal in the kitchen. They were mostly living in the kitchen these days, and the great dining hall next to it. Eating together, sleeping there, the one fire kept burning. It was too grim, elsewhere: the library where generations had gathered the fragmented thought and dreams of the world, the study where he himself had worked, meticulously documenting the fish of the river in coloured inks and piecing together scraps of memory teased from songs and broken histories, the tales of the coming of the Westgrasslanders out of the east. What point, that work? Who could say? Gone with the caravan, racing to be ahead of the Army of the South’s crossing at the Lower Castle. The shelves and pigeon-holes and cupboards were bare. All gone, or buried in the hills, sealed in lead and wax.

Someday…

“Warden? The devil’s crossing.”

They went, nearly all, to what windows faced upriver. He to the tower roof again. Yes, the devil himself, no feigned double. Priest-knights at the oars, and banners flying, mottoes to be read, for those who knew the Tiypurian characters. He had hoped Jochiz might wait for the completion of his bridge, which would surely not be till the spring.

Threefold blessings of the Old Great Gods.

The All-Holy, Beloved of the Heavens.

He is the Bridge where there is no Road.

Strange, how human he seemed. A man, nothing more. But Vartu had seemed so too, against all his expectation. A woman, ageing, tired, fighting her grief to keep a strong face to her beloved, to hold him to some road back into the light. Not at all what he had thought a devil might be, for all of the stories he had heard of her, servant to the Old Great Gods though she might be. Expected something more angry. More arrogant. More careless of all about.

There was a horse brought over for Jochiz. He rode, for his dignity. Robed in white, his hair and beard long and curled in ringlets. They had carved faces and little grave-gift figurines of such men, princes and magistrates, in odd corners about the castle. Folk brought them sometimes out of the west, knowing how the children of Kinsai were pleased by such oddities of the world.

Jochiz rode to the causeway, and an array of clean-shaven priests walked at his back. Many were of the sixth circle, wizards. They wore pleated red robes, white copes, caps of crimson and white, some even ornamented with golden thread. Trout judged most to be mere diviners, not true visionaries to whom dreams might come unsought. Weak in power, worse educated.

Jochiz left his horse and crossed the causeway afoot.

So.

It came.

One always thought one had tomorrow.

Jochiz had no rams, no engines of war at all. Armoured priest-knights likewise afoot waited, in orderly ranks, behind the vanguard of seer-priests. Their attention was fixed only on their All-Holy, the very spear’s point of their assault. If the folk of the castle had had any defence to make, would the Westrons even have raised their shields, down there, the warden wondered? Or would they have stood, reverential, and died, as arrows fell?

It didn’t matter. Perhaps none of this mattered, perhaps they should have fled with the caravan. Perhaps he should have stayed alone. It had been he who wanted this. Break all threads. Hide all trails. Make an end, that no faint spoor of what might come to be remain, to come to a devil’s notice.

Too late to change course. The river flowed.

Jochiz raised his arms and began to sing. Trout felt the force of the spell. For a moment, he could almost see the shape of it. Taste of salt, and burning sun, white sand and palm-green hills. Gulls crying. Song, wizardry, of a distant land.

“Time to go down,” he said, and Deysanal took his arm.

He could feel it when the ancient timbers of the gate, oak gone iron-hard, flared and crumbled. There was no resistance, no wizardry in them. Just good stout planks, swiftly consumed in the wizardry. Did it disconcert their enemy, that lack of resistance?

They would have a choice of ways within. Trout pictured them, advancing through the ashes, the high officers, the devils’ commanders, those who followed and who led, the seers who aided him in his song-weaving death, consuming the souls of children to devour those of the gods. Those who glorified him, and basked in his glory. Ash, dust from the ruin of the gates, might rise to smudge their robes. Seers, minor wizards, spreading out through the castle to recite small bindings against the rejected, the elderly, those left behind. Perhaps to seek out whatever of value or historical interest may have been overlooked. The priest-knights following, to do the butchery, or to take prisoners for later execution. Edifying, no doubt, for the Westron devout. Jochiz himself—what would he be seeking?

Any lingering echo of Kinsai.

And thus—

This.

Trout and Deysanal waited in his study, the top chamber of the north tower. The physician, who had once had another name but had been Rose since he drifted up at the castle, a stray of the caravan road, joined them there. No words needed. Rose and Deysanal interlaced their fingers, briefly, but then Deysanal moved away to look a last time out the window, stepping carefully over what was prepared. They could hear sounds from elsewhere. Cries. Small battles. Priests dying, and knights. And sometimes wizards of Kinsai. They were few, those who remained. Enough, though. Perhaps too many. But it mattered that nothing linger, no faint memory of the goddess, that might otherwise…draw attention.

They had all agreed. Best to be thorough.

The door, latched but not locked, smashed open, kicked. A dramatic gesture, not needed.

Jochiz strode in, alone. Smiled.

The floor was a maze drawn in chalk, in charcoal and river-silt, laced and knotted around vessels of water: beaten copper, cast bronze, plain earthenware, fine coloured glass. Silver. Gold. Carven wood. A pattern, for those who knew the reading of it. Unlikely the sea-island devil did. Small stones, river stones, rounded and flattened, were scattered throughout the room.

Not random.

Jochiz frowned, hesitated to step.

Too late.

The warden had been leaning on his staff. He straightened up. To his left, the physician drew a deep breath, tucked his bony, nervous hands into his sleeves. To his right, Deysanal smiled at Rose, at him. At Sien-Shava Jochiz.

She held a cup, red-glazed, chipped on the rim. There was nothing in it but water. River-water. Kinsai’s water.

His daughter’s eyes fixed on his again. Trout nodded. In the distance, there was another cry, another death. Deysanal parted her hands, let fall the cup. It smashed, spilling water into the pattern, and the warden swept his staff in a low arc, like a man scything hay. He struck nothing, but the fire Rose had kindled on the hearth roared out into the room as if a Northron firedrake had plunged down the chimney. Every vessel in the room cracked or shattered.

And the walls. And the roof. And the floor.

The castle fell.

The river came rushing, churning, roaring eager, to hurl itself through the ruins, sweeping all away.

Water, sky, stone. Trout had always known the manner of his death.

Sien-Shava Jochiz stood on the hill of the quarry, breathless. Angry. Not afraid. Had they thought he could drown?

His robes were wet to the waist. Clio, a handful of others of his close court, were on their knees, sodden and gabbling prayers.

Fools.

On the road south, Iarka wept.