1.

 

He entered the ruins of Ranan, the capital of Leera, as the afternoon’s sun sank over the horizon.

Bueralan had ridden hard. He had pushed both horses to the limits of their endurance, just as he had done to himself. As a consequence all three entered the city exhausted. It was a mistake, he knew, for he would be unable to help Dark if they required it. But a certain fatalism had overcome him in the final days of his journey, one of which he was desperate to rid himself.

In the week since he’d left the Spine, Bueralan had not seen a single person alive. The humid, sweating towns he passed through were all the same: populated by swamp crows, stripped of material for siege engines and war and surrounded by empty fields. Outside the towns, marsh and bogs and unplowed acres of shallow, mean farmland lay like old wounds. The dotted remains of scarecrows and field hand equipment, both in equal states of decay and rust, were his companions until he discovered the cattle. The bulls had gone wild and now made their homes in gullies and ravines, watching him intently as he rode past, drawing ever closer to the city.

He had been to Ranan a decade ago and was surprised, not just by the emptiness of the roads and silence of the buildings, but by the disrepair that he found it in now. Then, the city had been defined by its use of wood for building, by the natural look that allowed a visitor to believe that it had been part of the land for thousands of years, that its vintage appeal came from generations of vines that wrapped around the structures. That sensibility had never extended to any of the towns around Ranan, but it did not change the fact that the first experience a person had when he or she stepped into the city was to gaze upon a green-tinged, sprawling city; one that felt as if it had been drawn from the swamps so prevalent in Leera, a lost artifact restored.

His return to Ranan, however, saw him to return to ruins. Beyond the stone archway, none of the wooden houses remained whole: there were but the markers for blocks, the opening of cellars and the litter of furniture and clothing. He was tempted to correct himself: in the first few blocks it was not ruins that he saw, but rather emptiness; Ranan had been stripped to its base by the Faithful as they prepared for war, leaving nothing behind. But slowly, as he and his tired horses made their way along the dirt road, half-formed buildings did emerge. Broken wooden frames stood open to the sky, while shattered window frames lay between choking vines and moss and trees that had been felled. Clothing and toys and cutlery lay scattered around, a story between each.

Soon after, he discovered stone blocks in orderly lines across the road, as if they had been dragged from a quarry and set, ready to be used in building. It was impossible, of course: there was no quarry in sight, and the blocks were as tall as he was. They easily weighed such an amount that they could not be settled upon each other without teams of animals and people, all of which were clearly not in sight.

Then he saw the man.

He was a stout figure, naked from the waist up. His pale skin was deeply tanned and his hair, short and brown, was as unremarkable as the rest of his face. But the man had strapped ropes across his thick chest, ropes that connected to the huge stone block that he pulled across the ground. The effort strained him, but not unduly. He himself was clearly not unremarkable.

When his saw Bueralan, he let the ropes fall and approached him. “Another for the cathedral?” he said.

“Yes.”

“You will find it soon enough on this road. You are expected, I believe.”

“The others that came, do you remember them?”

He shrugged. “Men, women. I have my task, they have theirs.”

“And yours?”

“To rebuild the city.”

“Did you…” Bueralan hesitated. “Did you speak with the people who came before me?”

“They did not want to be spoken with.” He returned to the huge block. “But they were expected, just as you are.”

The earlier fatalism returned to him strongly. They were … No, he refused to say it. There was still time. He was not too late. He was not.

Following the road, Bueralan picked his way through the ruins of Ranan, to the cathedral, the only complete building in the entire city.