“The reports are not good.” Merros looked at the others around the table and shook his head. “The city has not been completely taken, but King Kordis is dead and a lot of the area is overrun with Sa’ba Taalor.”
Desh Krohan shook his head. “We have not heard from our messenger there, Theran. He has been the main source of communication with the royal house and as much as I dread the notion it’s very possible that he’s dead as we’ve heard nothing at all and cannot locate him.”
The sorcerer did not outright say that was why he wanted his people left out of the war but he cast a glance in Merros’s direction that made his feelings known.
There was nothing for that, Merros knew. They were beyond the point where anyone could choose not to be involved in what was happening. There were too many dead and dying and too many caught up in the growing maelstrom of conflicts.
“We are less than a day from landing, according to your calculations, Desh,” the Empress said. “I know that the air is warmer, and I can see that we’ve been descending for the last few hours.” Nachia stretched and rose from her seat, once again starting to prowl the throne room. “On the bright side at least it doesn’t look like we’ll just fall from the sky. That would put an end to the war, to be certain.”
The Sisters stood nearby, not speaking much, but listening. All three of them. Not that Merros wasn’t glad to see Goriah healthy, but there was that whole part about her being dead that made him feel less enthusiastic. Wasn’t it Desh that had told him there was always a price? If so, what had the price been? Who decided who could come back from the dead if not the gods?
When it came to that last, he preferred the gods stay silent, for that matter. Dead should be dead.
Goriah looked his way, but her face was half hidden under her hood and he could not read her eyes.
“Goltha is falling,” Merros said. “We have committed a great deal of our ground forces and they are not enough. We can’t call any more to the city because there’s no one else willing to offer their soldiers.”
Nachia waved a dismissive hand. “Can’t blame them. In the same position I’d act the same way.”
“The city is literally attacked from all directions, and we are very likely going to be neighbor to Goltha within a day. Even with the chaos that causes, we cannot escape the fact that the Sa’ba Taalor are coming for us and so far our best defense is a gathering of statues that listens to no one but themselves.”
“Well, Merros, I can think of worse defenses. They killed a few hundred of our enemies near as we can tell.” Nachia paused for a moment and frowned. “Did we find the rest of the bodies?”
“Yes, Majesty,” Desh answered. “They have since been pushed out of the city by the City Guard. We took the time to move them through the tunnels we think they used to enter. It made more sense than trying to throw them over the Mid Wall.”
“How many were there, exactly?”
Desh shook his head. “Hard to say. Most of them were in pieces.”
“So the Silent Army has kept us safe despite the best efforts of the Sa’ba Taalor. That’s something.”
Merros shook his head. “The lake is our best bet. That is easily the biggest body of water I have ever seen outside the ocean. Have you considered what happens when we land? The water is very deep there. We might well sink straight on down and drown.”
Desh shook his head and frowned. “I have to believe otherwise, Merros. The Silent Army has lifted us into the air and taken us a very, very long way. I can’t believe that it’s an accident.”
“You said this happened before, Desh?”
The First Advisor nodded. “I’ve forgotten the details. I don’t mean completely. I knew that the city had moved before, but only as a sort of vague notion. It was close to six hundred years ago and no matter how much I have increased my own lifespan over the years, memories don’t seem to hold as well.” He shrugged. “Maybe the mind simply can’t hold on to everything. I had to look through volumes of books to be certain that the city used to be in Gerhaim.” Desh tapped the map in front of him. There was the image of Gerhaim and the scattered towns and cities around it. “I found an old illustration, so old that it’s crumbling now, but it showed Canhoon here.” He tapped the center of the lake. “Right in this spot. There were bridges. Three of them, that connected the city to different parts of the land around it. I can’t remember them clearly. I know they were there and if I try hard enough I can almost see them the way a word sometimes slides around in your mind without letting you catch it.
“It’s the most amazing thing. I had convinced myself that the city had always been there, back in the east. I painted over the truth and never even noticed.”
Nachia shook her head. “I can barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday. I can’t imagine holding as many years as you have in your head, Desh.”
Merros nodded and tried to push the notion aside. “So we can assume the city will float, or find the right spot, or that the Silent Army will move it into the proper location. What we cannot assume is that the Sa’ba Taalor will just sit back and wait for us to settle in properly.”
He shook his head and looked over at the Sisters. The little blonde that had latched onto Desh, Cullen, was there as well, though she was staring off at the far corner of the room and talking to herself again. Desh said she was important but he could not or would not discuss why.
Nachia shook her head and reached for a cluster of grapes. She was one of the only people he’d ever seen that just took the seeds and chewed them up as well. He wondered if it was because spitting wasn’t the proper way for royalty to be perceived.
“The thing to remember is that the city itself is ready to fight. We’ve seen that already. We have hundreds of the Sa’ba Taalor that were killed by the Silent Army. They may not be able to reach beyond the city, but thank the gods, they are perfectly willing to handle what happens here.”
“And if we should, for some reason, need to ever leave the city? If we should have thousands of those bastards come here on their black boats?”
“There are no solid promises, Merros. We know that. But it’s something. They’re made of stone. They killed more of our enemy than anyone else seemed to have managed, no offense to anyone in this room.”
“The trouble, Majesty, is that they are not following your orders or the general’s or mine, for that matter,” Desh pointed out. “They are following, according to what they already said, the orders of the gods.”
“Yes, but those orders include protecting the city.”
“And you, Majesty.” Desh nodded his acknowledgment. “What they don’t guarantee is that the orders from the gods won’t suddenly change.”
“I have no guarantee that you won’t try to take over the seat of power, Desh Krohan.” She took the time to chew on a grape before continuing, her eyes never leaving the First Advisor. “You have never attempted it in the past, but that doesn’t mean you won’t in the future. There are no guarantees of anything in this world, Old Man.” She pointed to the Sisters. “Not even death, apparently.”
Desh looked down at the table. There were laws against necromancy and while Merros was not sure if what he was looking at qualified, he knew that if she wanted, Nachia could have done something about Goriah’s presence.
She was not foolish enough to attempt it. Having seen what Desh Krohan could do, no sane ruler would consider attacking his loved ones.
There had been a trust once, between First Advisor and Empress. Merros didn’t know if it was merely wounded or if it was shattered. Only time would tell.
“We must prepare for whatever comes. Desh, you and your sorcerers can no longer remain as isolated from this as we would all wish.”
Desh stared but did not respond.
Unlike most people, the Empress continued despite his silence. “It might be required that you and your brethren live up to the standards of the past. I am counting on the Silent Army to handle the worst of what comes our way. I have faith in General Dulver and his troops, but the numbers we have already seen are…” She shook her head.
“What must happen will happen, Nachia.” Desh stood up. “We have already discussed the matter. We will do what we must. We have already killed one of their kings.”
Merros looked toward Goriah as those words were spoken. The Sister’s mouth pulled down in a scowl, and her hands clenched.
She looked back at him and moved in his direction.
“Has the death of one of their kings altered anything?”
Nachia’s question was the very one on Merros’s mind.
“Not in the least.” Desh shook his head and pointed to the marks on the map where they had had their one victory against the enemy. “I can’t say it has made them any more or less violent. The Sooth say that we killed a king here. We know that another king is dead by sorcerous means. But we have no way of knowing if they choose new kings by election or–”
“Their gods decide,” Merros interrupted.
“What’s that?”
“Their gods decide. I traveled with these people. I heard their stories. According to what they told me, Tuskandru was made king because his god, Durhallem, picked him.”
Desh looked at the map again for lack of anything else to look at. “Then I hope their gods make miserable choices.”
Nachia sighed and shook her head. “So far they seem to be doing well enough.”
Merros nodded and so did Desh.
A few moments later the meeting ended.
Merros headed for his quarters and realized that Goriah was following him. “How may I help you, Goriah?”
“You are angry with me. With my presence.”
“No, milady, I am terrified by your presence.”
She nodded. “I understand.”
“I don’t think you do, respectfully. You work with sorcery. I have done my best never to know of its existence. I saw Desh Krohan destroy miles of terrain.” His voice shook and he did his best to control himself. “I saw him burn the night and the ground. Not ten minutes ago I listened to him talk about the fact that his mind can’t hold all of his memories because he’s hundreds of years old. He’s got so many memories that they no longer fit inside him.”
Merros looked at the striking beauty before him.
“He told me that all of the Sisters are unnaturally beautiful because it gives you an edge in listening to conversations and negotiation.” He shook his head. “I learned an entire language in seconds because Tataya and you felt I should.”
Merros was unaware of moving closer to her until he was looking into her eyes. “I’ve admired your beauty. I have been amazed by your grace. It hurt my guts to hear of your death, Goriah.”
His hand touched her arm. “You are alive and I am happy for that, but how are you alive? How are you back when I saw your body with my own eyes? How are you back, but others are not? Why is Wollis March still dead? Why is Emperor Pathra Krous still dead? Why did I not know that a gray-skinned bitch hid inside the body of Wollis’s widow? How could I fall for her? None of this makes sense to me, Goriah. None of it and I can’t sleep. I can’t make myself understand why nature itself bends to some people and not to others.
“I’m a soldier. It’s all I’ve ever been. What good is a sword against what you and yours can do?”
He was trembling. His voice shook.
Goriah nodded slowly and looked into his eyes. Her hand touched his, lightly, and he managed not to flinch.
She said, “I came back because Desh missed me too much. I came back so that he could not mourn me when he should be trying to save this city.” Her hand touched his face. “I am back because there was a rare opportunity. I killed one of their kings because he killed me and I wanted revenge. Without it I could not keep my mind whole. I wanted to burn that nightmare out of existence and so I did. I can do these things because while you mastered the sword I studied different weapons. I studied nature and the world so that I could learn how to bend them.”
A second later her lips were close enough to kiss and moving past until she was whispering in his ear. “I came back because there was a once in a thousand years’ opportunity, and Desh Krohan seized it. He considered necromancy. He thought hard of taking lives to bring me back, but in the end he could not even take the lives of our enemies.”
Her arms, long and elegant, hugged against him for a moment, the kind embrace of a friend, not the embrace of a lover.
“I came back so that Desh could sleep at night. I killed the king so I could sleep.” Goriah pulled back from him enough so that he could look into her eyes and she could return the favor. “What will it take to let you sleep again, Merros Dulver?”
He wished he had a good answer.
The city was descending from the sky. The sun had set behind them and the stars were out and clear, save where the city’s mass blocked them. The Great Star illuminated the edges and offered hints instead of details.
Drask looked at the city of Canhoon and nodded.
“What are you smiling about, Drask?” Andover’s question was innocent enough. The boy had not yet decided if he would try to kill Drask. Despite his many changes, Andover could still not easily hide his thoughts. His face was not yet a proper mask.
“This is coming to an end, whatever it is. We no longer chase the city. It lands as all birds must land.”
“Are there birds in the Blasted Lands? I don’t recall ever seeing one.”
“There are birds. They are very, very large and feed on, well, everything. You are fortunate not to have seen one.”
Andover thought about that for a while and nodded. Tega rode up ahead, and Nolan rode with her, occasionally murmuring to himself; sometimes he laughed and other times he cried. He made words now and then, but not often.
Drask rode forward, until he kept pace with Tega. She looked his way and offered a weak smile.
“You were gone for a long time, Tega.” It was not a question, merely an observation. Still, she flinched just a touch as if afraid he would strike her.
When she made no answer he continued on. “You have brought back one of your own.”
“She was close to me, and she was murdered without ever being a part of your war.”
“It is not my war, Tega. It belongs to the gods.”
“They brought back Swech.” Still she cringed. She tried to hide it but she was terrified.
He nodded his head. “What they did took power. What you did took power. You both had the ability and your own reasons.”
“I thought you would be angry, Drask.”
“I have no place in your actions. I am merely observing.”
“You are reflecting,” she corrected.
A smile played at his mouth and he nodded in the way of her people. “Yes. Reflecting is a good word. It is strong and accurate.”
“What do you reflect upon, Drask?”
“What we are becoming.” He raised his hand again, the most obvious change in any of the three of them. In the past it had been a miracle, yes, but stylized. There had been markings made by the gods on the metallic surface. Now it was clean of those marks.
“What are we, Drask?” Her voice shook. That was the thing about the Fellein: they seemed determined to torture themselves with doubts about the universe and their place in it.
“I am Drask Silver Hand. You are Tega, apprentice to Desh Krohan. Nolan is… Nolan. The only thing that has changed is that we have been touched by the gods in a way they did not intend. I do not have a name for what we are or what we are becoming beyond that. We are changing, but the changes are physical, Tega. You are still you. I am still me.”
He pointed to the City of Wonders. “In your life did you ever imagine that you would see such a thing? A city that floats in the air, and moves hundreds of miles.”
“Why did you… Why did you bring back the Blasted Lands?”
“That is easy. They have been there all my life and I find comfort in them. I spent my youth hunting in the winds and storms.”
“Do you think I could bring back Tyrne?”
Drask shook his head. “Durhallem rests there now. He is a god. We have power but his is greater. You could bring Tyrne back, but if you tried to place it over the mountain or to move the mountain, Durhallem would fight back.”
“Do you really think we could move a mountain?”
Drask looked at her for a moment, studied the minutiae of her face. She was easy to understand. Like Andover, she had not truly learned to hide herself behind a mask.
“I raised the Blasted Lands, Tega. You raised the dead.” He gestured to Nolan, who was currently drooling on his own hands and seemed fascinated by the puddle forming in his palms. “Nolan was dead. I killed him. I felt his neck break. Yet he moves, and he feels, and perhaps even thinks.”
“I used sorcery. I brought Goriah back with magic, not with–”
“You used what you know. What you are comfortable with.”
Tega shook her head.
“It is frightening to you. You have so much power in you and you are limited only by your own desires. That is why I reflect. I must understand what I am capable of. I must consider what is coming. There are gods at play here, Tega. Gods that move mountains and cities and have fought against each other for a very long time. So long I don’t even think they know why they fight any more.
“What will you do when the city lands, Drask?”
“I will go to it. I will see what happens when gods meet.” He looked at the city again. It was a magnificent sight. “What will you do, Tega?”
“I will go too. I will stand with my friends, even if that means that you and I must stand on separate sides.”
Drask nodded. “I do not yet know where I stand, Tega. We shall see.”
While he looked at the city above, a small shape dropped over the side. Whatever it was, it moved as it fell. A few seconds later another shape dropped. This one was definitely humanoid.
The world continued to be interesting. Drask said nothing, but reflected on that.
“What will you do when you get to Canhoon, Andover?”
Andover looked at Tega. During the few times they had spoken, he discovered that she still fascinated him. He had thought that was gone, but after speaking again, the old feelings were back. They had just changed. There was no burning desire to fuel his fascination. It was not lust. No. Not true. It was not lust alone. She was unique in the world as far as he knew.
Still, there was Delil to consider. He remained uncertain whether she would want to come back. And if she did, whether he would act on her behalf.
“I will decide when the time comes.” He did his best to smile, suddenly selfconscious of the changes in his face. “I know what the Daxar Taalor want. I am to be their champion if the Empress declares a single champion for combat.” He looked at his hands and then back at her. “I do not know why I was chosen. I only know that I was and that I am grateful to the gods for all they have given me.”
“I should have stopped them, Andover.” Her still, calm face broke and tears threatened to fall from her blue eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“Menock and Purb and the rest. I should have told them to leave you alone. I should have–”
“No.” He carefully put a hand on her shoulder. The metal was stronger than flesh and sometimes among the Sa’ba Taalor he’d forgotten that fact. He would not do so with Tega.
“You are not at fault, Tega. I am not at fault. They were predators and they wanted a meal they could play with. Nothing more.” He shrugged. “I had my revenge on them. I maimed them. I made them weak forever.”
“If you had never been broken by them…”
“I would have been in Tyrne when Durhallem made the city his own. I would be dead. Or I would be wandering in the city up there, hoping to find a home and food.”
Tega nodded and sniffed and tried to hide the misery she felt.
“Tega, what has happened is what has happened. The past is gone. I was not the same person then. I was much weaker. I lived and breathed and hid in fear. That time is gone. I fear nothing. I have faced my fears and learned from them. The gods gave me that.
“So many fear death. I still understand that. I fear for anyone I care for, I grieve for Delil. But I do not fear pain. I do not fear injury. Those are only parts of life we cannot always control. They have no power over me.”
He sighed and smiled, fully aware that his smile unsettled her. “That is a gift, Tega. I received that gift because I was wounded. I would have died from the poisons in my hands, but you changed that. Do you understand? If not for you, I would have died. If not for you, I would have never met with Desh Krohan and I would have never met the Sa’ba Taalor. Whatever else might happen in this world, Tega, I am here now because of you.”
His iron hand moved from her shoulder and very carefully raised her fingers until they were close to his face. He looked over her fingers to stare into her eyes.
“All that I am, everything that I do, is because you cared enough to stop for a boy who could not help looking at you.”
The look she threw his way was not one that he easily understood. She had never regarded him with that expression previously and he had no idea what to make of it.
“What will I do when I get to Canhoon, Tega? What I must. Whatever I do, know this: you helped me more than any person ever has and I am forever in your debt. Thank you.”
Tega nodded and rode forward.
Andover looked up to Canhoon, where another body fell from the sky.
The snow was melting but was not yet gone. That was good. It worked to their advantage.
Swech nodded her head and then raised one hand, speaking without words to the others.
The night air was still cold, the ground still frosty enough, and the Mid Wall was dark. The time had come to try their luck.
Evenly spaced along the Mid Wall, the stairs leading from the ground to the top of the wall were unguarded. What need of a guard when the unkillable Silent Army was already performing that duty?
The Sa’ba Taalor were vastly outnumbered. There were just over a hundred of them. There were at least ten times that number of the stone men with their swords.
They would work in teams of three.
The stone soldiers stood at their posts, some looking over the wall, others looking into the city. The stairs were easy enough. At Swech’s order the groups went up the access points to the top of the Mid Wall and did not wait to be engaged.
Three lengths of heavy rope and three metal weights. Swech threw her bola at the first of the Silent Army that she encountered. The soldier stood at attention. The bola wrapped around his legs at the knees and he turned toward her, his face expressionless.
He started moving his legs, trying to untangle himself, and Swech stepped closer. The mace was heavy and spiked and took a large chip out of the soldier’s face. As he turned toward her and reached, Jost came in low and jammed her staff between his legs, throwing her weight into the move. One foot was off the ground already as he tried to break away from the bola. His balance off, the soldier fell backward, arms flailing. Deras, the heaviest of them, smashed his weight into the soldier from the front and sent him careening over the wall. Momentum did the rest. Swech watched exactly long enough to see the soldier grab at the small lip of ground that still existed beyond the Mid Wall. He caught it and it crumbled, and ground and statue alike soared down toward the earth several thousand feet below.
The next one in line had turned toward her by the time she reached him. He swept his sword from the scabbard and Swech smashed her mace into his wrist, which promptly broke into two pieces. Hand and sword hit the ground. Swech brought her mace around in an upward trajectory and drove the soldier back as she shattered his chin.
As he stepped back Jost was there, once again using the staff to trip up the stone man’s feet. As he staggered, Deras used a heavy staff and shoved at the soldier’s chest. He stumbled further, off balance, and Deras hit him again. Jost was still there, her staff catching the guard at his knees and keeping him off balance.
The stone man fell over the wall and Swech watched history repeat itself.
Further along the wall she saw N’Heelis catch a soldier’s arm, shift his hips and throw one of the stone men over the wall.
Beyond him, a Sa’ba Taalor named Rander soared over the wall when he tried to use mass alone to fight the Silent Soldier. Like the stone men before him, he fell several thousand feet. Like his predecessors, he likely shattered on impact.
The Silent Army were bracing themselves now and that made life more difficult, but not impossible.
It merely meant they had to change tactics.
The next bola was thrown by Jost and wrapped itself around the face of a stone man. The soldier reached for the weapon around his neck and face and while he did, Deras took a turn entangling the soldier’s feet. The stone men weighed too much to wrestle down to the ground. Their flesh was stone. Their muscles were unmovable if they set their minds to not being moved. But creatures of all size must obey the rules of physics, which was where the training of N’Heelis and Wrommish came into play. They could not fight the Silent Army with conventional weapons and win, and so they tried a different method.
Ultimately there were too many of the soldiers and they knew it, but they did what they could.
The Soldiers were not foolish and learned a new trick. They kept their feet fused to the stone wall they’d grown from. They could not move as quickly but they could not be thrown.
That possibility had been discussed, and as soon as the Sa’ba Taalor saw that their enemy had grown wiser they dispersed, moving away from the area as quickly as they could and dodging the attempts to grab them.
Four of the Sa’ba Taalor died in the conflict. Over fifty of the Silent Army were thrown from the wall before all was said and done.
That was a victory in the eyes of the Daxar Taalor and that was enough for Swech.
They were clever moving through the city. No one gathered in groups and no one made their way back to their gathering place in the same directions.
The house of Dretta March was no longer available, but Swech had purchased several buildings and some of them were better suited than others. They gathered in a warehouse that stored raw goods and they were careful to leave a barrier between themselves and the rest of the place. The barrier was built of barrels and crates of supplies. It was heavy and solid.
They were also wise enough to have guards.
After the raid Swech took her time getting back. She moved through parts of the city that were desperately overcrowded, fully aware that Jost followed her.
As she went, Swech changed her appearance a bit, switching her scarves for lighter colors and drawing out a bright shawl to cover her shoulders and hair. She walked differently, too, moving like an elderly woman and doing her best to look like someone who was harmless, but not a victim.
That had been a problem earlier in the week when a group of men tried to separate her from her purse. Fortunately they’d been weak and easily dissuaded.
When she finally stopped, the younger woman caught up with her and they moved among the waking crowds. The sun was not risen yet but the sky was growing lighter. Many of the people in the area were already rising. They had no choice. The world they moved on was dropping slowly and whether they wanted it or not, people had to respond to the change. Mostly that meant they were gathering their supplies again and preparing to flee if everything went wrong. Town criers had been notifying people of the descent for the last two days, but the melting ice and the warming temperatures would have told anyone who wasn’t brave enough to look over the Mid Wall to see what was happening.
“What happens next, Swech?”
“We wait.”
“What are we waiting for?”
“The gods will tell us when they are ready, Jost. In the meantime we must wait. I know that is not what you want to hear, but we must be patient. The Silent Army is probably already looking for us.”
“I just. I feel incomplete not having a king.”
“You have a king. N’Heelis is with us and will guide us.”
“What of Glo’Hosht? What of the King in Mercury?”
A beggar looked their way and raised a hand in supplication. Offering coin was often an invitation to get more beggars active. Swech moved on without acknowledging the hand and the beggar went back into a knot of clothes in the alleyway.
“Glo’Hosht is dead. You saw what they did.”
“But who will be our new king? Why has Paedle not chosen?”
“Jost,” Swech kept her voice conversational though she was tempted to roar, “never question the Daxar Taalor. It is foolish and solves nothing.”
“But…”
“No. They are the parents. We are the children. They guide and love us and we accept their wisdom. If Paedle has not announced who will lead, that is Paedle’s decision. In time, when we must know, we will know. Paedle must judge all of her followers and decide who among then, if any, is worthy to stand in Glo’Hosht’s place.”
Jost sighed. “You are right. I know this. I followed Wheklam’s wishes to get here, and I had never spoken to Wheklam before.” She touched the new Great Scar on her face as she spoke, moving her fingers under the scarves that hid her face away.
“We must get back. The sun is rising soon and we tend to stand out here.”
Jost nodded and the two of them quickly climbed to the rooftops. Swech had learned her way around them well enough.
From one of the higher roofs the two of them could see the view beyond the western gate of the Mid Wall. They could see the vast lake that was Gerhaim in all its glory and they could see the sun reflecting off the calm surface.
“Gods.” Jost’s voice was very small.
“Aye. I thought we’d have hours but the city has moved faster than anticipated. We need to get to the others now.”
Below, the waters looked close enough to touch. The land and the river were still under them but only for the moment. The river was marrying the lake below them and even from here they could see the massive city on the not-so-distant far shore.
An hour at most before city and lake met.
It was time. The Great Tide surely would wait no longer. The time had come.
Both moved carefully. Both smiled as they did. Some prayers are answered sooner than later.
The warehouse was as she expected it to be: secured. Swech and Jost entered from the roof, sliding through the trap door that Swech herself had worked on when she was Dretta March.
She thought of him again. What was it about Merros that haunted her? She didn’t let herself worry. There were other considerations and there they came first. Still, she missed his touch. She missed his babbling conversations and the way he felt against her.
No.
No more of that. She had work to do.
Most of their people were already gathered. Some were missing, mostly those in the flesh of the Fellein. She understood how difficult it was to escape from the other life. There were people in and among the Fellein that insisted on being with the hidden Sa’ba Taalor.
“We are much closer to the water than we expected,” Swech said as she settled in. “I think we will land within hours.”
Her rump had barely met the floor when the air in the room shifted. Heat bathed her body and those around her. N’Heelis looked around but did not seem worried. That was enough to make her stay calm.
The voice of Paedle moved through her, and from the responses of others around her was carried to them as well.
RISE KING SWECH. RISE AND BE SEEN BY YOUR BRETHREN. There was no question of what had been said. There was no chance of misinterpretation. Still, it took a moment for her to obey.
She did not claim that she was unworthy. False modestly is foolish to begin with, but twice so when dealing with gods. Swech stood, and the Sa’ba Taalor with her stood as well. All but one offered the same obeisance as was given King Tarag Paedori. They lowered to one knee and held out their arms, a weapon placed in their hands with grip or hilt offered in her direction. Their lives for her to take or spare as she saw fit.
The only exception was N’Heelis. He did not bow, as kings do not make the same obeisances. Instead he smiled and moved toward her. When they embraced she held him tightly. He had always been one of her closest, dearest teachers.
“I am proud of you, Swech.” That was all he said.
Paedle did not speak again, not at that time. There was little they could do by way of celebration, but that was just as well. The King in Mercury had no need of celebrations.
Darsken Murdro stood at the top of the Inquisitors Tower, which was one of the largest constructs in all of Canhoon. The building was not decorative in the least and most who passed it had no idea what went on there. That was deliberate.
The Inquisitors did not want to be known. They wanted to be ignored until such time as they were needed.
Darsken did not much care at that moment what the Inquisitors wanted. He was worried about his little sister.
Somewhere out in the waters the fighting continued. The gate had been opened and the vessels of the Sa’ba Taalor moved into the waters, but they did so slowly. Most of their black ships had been wounded and a few of them were sinking. That was the result of interference that should not have happened.
When Captain Callan climbed from a watercraft that did not belong to him and told his sorrows to the Louron, one of the Inquisitors present was Daivem, Darsken’s younger sibling. She did exactly as he would have wanted and when Canhoon was mentioned, she contacted Darsken himself. The message was short and to the point and asked if he knew Callan.
When she reported more of what the captain had to say, Darsken thought about the laws of Fellein and the proper actions, and told her to do what she must.
And now his sister was down below, moving on a ship that was locked in the Shimmer.
The Shimmer, for better or worse, was the gift of the Louron.
Not long before, the black ships had tried to attack Louron and learned the hard way that the people were protected. They surrendered to the inevitable only after losing several of their people and the crew of one ship. Louron was not like other places. Louron was blessed.
On rare occasions, the Shimmer could be coaxed into fixing itself onto an object. Currently the ship of Captain Callan was one such item. The vessel was still intact. It should have been shattered by impact after impact with the black ships, but the Shimmer kept it safe.
The Shimmer was a mystery, even to the Louron. It existed. It was. It was not under their control, but they could interact with it, and sometimes it would listen to requests. Not for the first time Darsken wondered if the Shimmer was truly a god that rested or if it was something entirely different.
For those coming to Louron, it was often a threat. The Shimmer seemed to know what the intent of travelers was. Those who meant no harm seldom encountered the ripples in the air. Those who felt otherwise vanished from sight, never to return. They did not die. The Louron would have known. Instead they traveled the Shimmer and moved to other worlds, beyond the one known to the rest of Fellein.
The people riding on the small vessel and harassing the Sa’ba Taalor were safe enough. There was always the chance that they could be attacked. There was a possibility that they could be sunk, but neither was very likely. The Shimmer protected them.
The massive craft of the Sa’ba Taalor were a different thing. They were vast. Certainly the largest ships that Darsken had ever heard of, but though they were truly well constructed they were not unbreakable.
Still, there were many of them and even the ones that were damaged and foundering were not without dangers. The Sa’ba Taalor were relentless. The shore was half a mile away in several cases and still they swam across the frigid waters to reach the shoreline and continue on with their quest to conquer everything before them.
Darsken clenched his fists and did his best not to grind his teeth.
His sister was probably perfectly safe, but she was his sister and he worried.
The shadow of Canhoon appeared on the water, a hundred times larger than the black ships, as the sun began to rise. Darsken never noticed. He was too busy looking at one very small vessel to pay attention to shadows that drifted somewhere behind him. He faced the east and the brightening light of the new day’s sun. He did not care about the glare. He only cared about his sister.
The sun rose.
The City of Wonders fell.
The higher the sun climbed, the lower the city dropped. Well before the sun climbed to its zenith, however, the city had finished its descent.
Tuskandru, Tarag Paedori and Pre’ru stared at the falling wonder dubiously. It was really spectacularly large.
“Do you suppose the lake will flood the lower part of this city?” Pre’ru asked conversationally. Tarag studied her. When he had been a much younger man Pre’ru had been a soldier of great repute. Then he had been a mount to Lored, who was, if one was completely honest, a bit of an ass. Now he was a woman and a king. The Daxar Taalor followed their own agendas, to be sure. Pre’ru was only marginally smaller than before and just as muscular as ever. All of the scars he remembered on the great man were still there on the woman.
Tarag said, “Four rivers surround us. I expect there will be a lot of water, but it will mostly go up the rivers. The path of least resistance.”
Tusk frowned. “The rivers? That is a lot of water that the lake will push against. In my experience water can be a very hard force to argue with.” He paused and added, “I haven’t much experience with water though. I prefer flesh and steel.”
“We will know soon enough,” Tarag replied.
“Aye.” Pre’ru could not look away from the city falling slowly from above. Canhoon fell as a feather falls, that is to say slowly, but without the shaking and dancing. A pity that, as Tarag would have loved to see the chaos that sort of motion caused.
“Why do you suppose the Fellein brought their city here? Why not stay where they were and fight?” Pre’ru was full of questions.
“Perhaps they hope the water will stop us.” Tusk looked away from the descending land mass long enough to look at the black ships. They were hard to see past the early morning mists that rose from the massive lake. “I do not think they are right.”
Tarag looked at the ships, too, though they were little more than ghosts at the moment. “They’re sinking.”
“Yes, but that is only half the fleet and the others are on their way. Even without them, however, we can find boats as we did before.”
“The Silent Army might have ways of handling boats. Or the wizards.”
Tusk nodded. “Why has no one killed the wizards yet? Aside from you, I mean.”
“I do not think all of them kill easily. Remember the lightning.”
“I was there. I will never forget it.”
“Swech is a king now.” Tarag contemplated those words ever as he spoke them.
“She is a very skilled killer. I think the choice a good one.”
“Of course. The gods do not make errors.”
Pre’ru looked their way. “Who is Swech?”
Tusk smiled and answered. “Swech is very faithful. She has also killed more people than anyone I have ever met, and that says a great deal.”
Tarag Paedori nodded. “I am glad the Great Tide is upon us. I do not like to think about how things would end if Swech set out to kill us.” Before the Daxar Taalor declared the actions against the Fellein, the seven kingdoms of the Sa’ba Taalor had fought against each other, and the individuals of the Sa’ba Taalor warred among themselves besides.
Tusk frowned and nodded slowly. “Glo’Hosht was good enough not to assassinate kings. Swech has already assassinated an emperor.”
“Exactly so.”
The three kings grew silent as the city continued to descend. They were only moments away from the vast, inverted mountain of stone touching the nearly still waters. Even past the mists the reflection of the gigantic city was impossible to miss.
Tarag said, “Had I not seen the gods move mountains already, I would have thought this beyond any power.”
“Where will Truska-Pren move, Tarag?”
Tarag Paedori looked to his fellow king and said, “You will know in minutes.”
The water surged as the lowest tip of Canhoon touched the waters of the lake. There was a sound of distant thunder to the south and Tarag smiled. “There. Just there. The southern reaches of this land are changed now and forever.”
Tusk nodded and smiled and watched as the City of Wonders slowly sank into the lake, sending water in all directions, not as a wave so much as a surge. The water rose everywhere at once, and as it rose it slowly crested, moving across the lake in a circular ripple: a stone thrown in a pond.
Pre’ru said, “We will soon know if half this city is sunk in the waters.”
As they were currently occupying the king’s palace they were not particularly worried. They were several hundred feet above the current water level.
The waters rose and rippled outward, and as they watched, the docks and the buildings within an arrow’s flight of the docks were slammed with water that shattered wood and buried the lowest buildings.
Tusk looked at the devastation and grinned.
The water continued, lifting the docks and throwing them aside, shattering the structure and sending the boats that were tied along the structure sailing through the air. The vessels rained down destruction on still more buildings as the water rose and surged and ate everything it touched.
Tusk started to chuckle, and his hands reached up, and got a companionable grip on the shoulders of both kings standing with him as the waters surged higher and the city sank lower.
By the time Canhoon had settled in the exact center of the lake and the water had risen enough to wash away all evidence that a dock had ever existed, Tuskandru was howling with laughter.
Pre’ru looked at Tusk and shook her head, an amused expression on her scarred face. “What are you laughing about?”
Tusk grunted out the words as he continued to laugh. He gestured with the hand that had been on her shoulder toward the devastation. “You see? The Great Tide is upon us, indeed!”
Pre’ru laughed and shook her head at his antics. She had not known him in the Taalor Valley where among his many reputations he was known as a jester.
Tarag Paedori smiled too, as the waters started to recede.
“Oh,” he said. “I think we can do much better than that.”
Desh Krohan looked from the highest of the palace windows and next to him Merros Dulver gripped his sword hilt in fingers turned white by the pressure.
Nachia stood between them, and did her best not to scream with joy. They were settled. Until that last moment she’d continued to fear that they would sink to the bottom of Gerhaim and either learn to breathe water like the fish, or die.
“Well,” Merros said. “That could have gone much worse.”
“Still could,” Desh pointed to the black ships. They were, as one, turning toward Canhoon.
“I’ve enjoyed our chat, but I have to prepare for war.” The way he said it, Merros sounded like it was farewell.
“Don’t go.” Nachia’s voice was small.
“It’s not an option, Majesty. I am in charge of your armies and I intend to see that you have an empire to lead.”
Desh sighed. “There are more black ships coming this way. They are a day out yet, but they will get here soon enough.”
“Sink them!” Nachia turned her head so sharply to glare at him that muscles pulled and twitched like fire under her skin. “You, or your Sisters or any of the sorcerers here in Canhoon! Sink the damned ships!”
“Majesty, we don’t have the power–”
“If you found the power to raise the dead and lift a city, then find the power to sink those gods damned ships!”
“Nachia.” Merros’s voice was soft. “No. Don’t. We have the Silent Army. We have the Imperial Army. If you must use sorcery, wait until the last. Don’t lose that last defense.”
Without another word Merros left the room, shoulders squared and cape snapping with every stride.
Nachia shook her head.
Desh moved up behind her and placed a hand on both her shoulders, and she leaned back into him as she had on a hundred occasions through her life, already regretting snapping at him earlier.
He demanded no apologies, but instead simply held her.
“We’ll prevail, Nachia. I’ll make sure of that.”
“Don’t make false promises, Old Man. It belittles us both.”
Down below, horns sounded the assembly and from a dozen different quarters the soldiers came, moving from their barracks and assembling in the vast yard of the palace.
Somewhere in that crowd Merros Dulver would be speaking, talking to the forces left to him in Canhoon and preparing for the inevitable assault.
The Sa’ba Taalor were monsters. They could not be reasoned with. They wanted death and destruction. They wanted to crush the Fellein Empire and they were doing a fine job of it.
Somewhere below the very best of the Imperial Guard were gathered together to defend her. Nachia did not care. She preferred that none stay behind, none defend her. The Empire was more important than the Empress. It had to be. If not, why was she so worried?
Theran stood trembling on the shore.
His head ached. His body was cold and he could not stop his muscles from shaking even though he stood still. It was like a fever, but a thousand times worse.
He was recovering from what they had done, but it wasn’t easy. Someone had pulled the javelin from his neck. He’d heard bones crunch and felt his body go numb in the places where it did not scream.
The one with the skull helmet had spoken to him, his accent thick. “You have metal where you are from?” The man grunted and sat him up. “I mean the type touched by gods. It heals wounds.” Thick fingers probed the wound on his neck. “We heal you now, so you can talk to us.”
The pain had been enough to shatter him. He bucked, he kicked, he screamed and they held him still as white hot metal ran across his neck. Or at least it felt like it did until the pain vanished.
The man with the skull helmet moved his head for him and nodded. “Better.”
The giants around him were terrifying. There were easily a hundred, but he could see the leaders clearly enough.
That had been half an hour earlier. After he recovered enough to stand, they did worse to him. Now, they stood around him, the largest of the people, the ones he sensed were in charge.
“I do not think he likes us very much.” The one who spoke wore a vast helmet shaped like a monstrous skull, the mouth of the thing filled with teeth of varying sizes, all of them sharp and the smallest of them longer than his middle finger.
The woman next to him was large and scarred and had been the one to cause him the greatest agony in his entire life. A pain so large that five minutes later he was still trying to recover from the memory of it. He had screamed, begged and even tried to use his sorcery, all to no avail. He was too scared to concentrate on magic and his words apparently made no difference to the people around him. They were the Sa’ba Taalor, and he was ready to piss himself at the sight of them up close.
The coin she’d shown him was very large and made of gold. Her hands were smaller than the largest of the giants’ but not by that much. The golden disk filled her palm.
He’d looked at her and shaken his head at first, having no idea what was about to happen. The metal was pressed into his forehead. Her palm kept it there and her fingers moved into his hair as if she meant to caress and tease him.
Then the burning started. Theran felt the heat start and jerked, trying to get away, but her fingers pulled his hair tight and even as he tried to move his head one way and then another she did not let the pain escape. He wet himself. His arms and legs twitched and kicked and he beat at her as best he could with his hands tied behind his back and one of the bastards standing on his calves while he kneeled before the bitch who tortured him. If he could have, he’d have spat in her face, but he was too busy praying for death and his eyes were screwed shut as the metal melted across his forehead.
As intense as the pain was, it only lasted a few seconds and when he looked up she was still there, looking at the palm she’d pressed into his head.
There was metal left over, hot and steaming, and she had painted it across her cheeks in two nearly white-hot streaks that had cooled down and now looked almost like the golden trails of tears. Her flesh was not burned and he could not understand that. He did not want to know what his forehead looked like. The coin she used had been quite large.
The pain was gone. Theran was grateful for that much. It was all he had. They’d let him stand when they were done and he wanted to run, wanted to hide away, but he found he was too exhausted to do more than stand and shiver.
The last of them finally lifted the faceplate on his great helm and revealed a face that glowered just as well as the iron visage that hid him away.
They spoke among themselves and he listened. Currently he was not capable of much more. The pain was gone, but the memory of it lingered and now it seemed he had a fever.
The biggest of them, the one with the iron helmet, studied him carefully. Each of the man’s hands looked large enough to cover his face.
“I do not care if he likes us.”
Their words were not the common tongue of Fellein or any of the other languages he knew but he understood them well enough. They had their own sorcery then.
NO. NOT YOUR SORCERY. THAT IS WHY YOU ARE HERE. THAT IS WHAT WE WILL NOW UNDERSTAND.
The words smashed through his mind and Theran fell backward, his limbs moving and dancing, his teeth clenched in a sudden fit that threatened to break his teeth in his mouth. He could not breathe, could not control his movements.
The gray-skins around him watched on, not speaking, not moving, but staring as if he were a new form of bug they had never seen.
The thunderous voice was gone, but the presence that roared at him was not. He could feel it probing him, moving under his flesh, peeling his self away layer by layer as it examined him in great detail.
It was a violation that made control of his body impossible, and he continued to seize and kick for the eternity that the assault lasted.
When it was done Theran groaned. It was the only sound he was capable of.
When he finally had recovered enough he stared out at the waters, at Canhoon where it now rested, a city that had fallen from the sky.
He and the people around him stood on the edge of the waters amid the destruction caused by the city’s arrival. There was debris, of course. There were also corpses, though not as many as he might have expected. A great number of the citizens of Goltha also stood nearby, though they were not there by choice. They were injured or too scared to fight. In any event, they were there and they watched on as well.
The woman spoke to him.
“You are a sorcerer. You can make magic.”
It wasn’t truly a question, but he sensed that she wanted a response and so he nodded and said, “Yes.”
“You have spoken to a god. You have been judged by the Daxar Taalor. They wish for you to obey us.”
Theran sighed and nodded again. “Yes.” He liked to think himself a good man, but he was not strong. He never had been. One of the reasons he loved Goltha was that his vices had always been easy to accommodate. Women. Otha and other narcotics. Whatever helped him feel pleasure, he could access. A good man, but weak.
So very weak.
“We want to cross the waters. As they are, we would sink. You must freeze them.”
Her hand touched his hair again and he flinched. She lifted his sweaty bangs from his face and looked at the damage she had done to him with a coin and her hand. Her palm was unmarked. The gold on her face shone. Once again her fingers moved through his hair.
“You and I, we are linked. I have marked you and made you mine. The gods have willed this. You will obey me. You will do as I say. If you do not, there will be pain.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
Then he tried to reach out to Corin. He wanted only to warn them.
The pain was so much that he fell forward and vomited. His body felt broiled in heat, lit afire from the very inside of his bones outward. He could not move. He could not scream.
An eternity later the pain was gone. There was no lingering aftermath. It simply was not there.
“No.” The woman shook her head at him. “You will never speak to them again. If you try, you will hurt.”
Theran sobbed. “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.” He nodded his head so hard he feared he might break something.
“Freeze the lake.”
“I can’t.”
He screwed his eyes shut again, fearing the titanic wave of agony. It did not come.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why can’t you freeze the lake? Your people move cities through the air. Your kind brings lightning from the air. Why can you not do this?”
“Sorcery takes power. It has a cost. If I tried to freeze the whole lake, I would die. It would drain all of my life from me.”
She nodded her head and looked to her two companions. Though they spoke, he could not understand the language. The one with the skull helmet looked to him and then pointed to the people gathered together nearby.
“Then use them.”
“What?” He could not keep the shock from his voice.
“If you cannot do this thing alone. Use them. We will only kill them in any event.”
“I cannot do tha–” That was all he could mutter before the pain ruined his world again.
The woman said, “Use them.”
“Yes.” He cried as he spoke, but none of them cared.
She crouched down next to him as he once again became aware of the universe beyond his personal agonies. For the first time he looked into her eyes and realized that they shone with their own light. He might have been fascinated were he not so utterly terrified. “If you betray me, if you attack any of us, your pain will never end. Do you believe me?”
“Yes.” He nodded as hard as he could.
Her hand found his hair again and stroked through it. “Freeze the lake. Whatever it costs.”
“Yes.”
Theran didn’t trust his legs. He crawled through the muck and the debris, barely aware of what was beneath him even as he slithered over the corpse of a dead woman and her dead child.
When he reached the waters he reached forth with his hand and the gray-skinned monster that promised him pain crouched over him. Her hand moved over his chest and belly like a person petting a dog, or restraining it. His body moved over more corpses, dead and drowned, but he didn’t dare change his course.
“Not yet. Not yet, no.” She looked out at the waters, and the black ships that were crawling closer to the city.
One minute passed. Then three, five, ten and finally, “Now. Do it now.”
Theran did not dare disobey.
His hand touched the water and the water screamed.
Where his fingers touched, the ice started and grew quickly. The saturated mud under his body rose as ice formed, and the beach and shoreline all along the way did the same.
The surface of the water was not all that froze. He dared not take that chance. Instead he pushed with all that he had and the lake howled at the sudden change in climate.
A crust of ice ten feet deep formed in seconds and raced toward Canhoon.
Theran was aware of the screams behind him and felt his eyes sting once more with tears. They had to die. It was not a choice, still, he felt their deaths as they happened, felt the life ripped from body after body, torn from flesh that fell lifeless to the ground.
No matter their pain. He had already endured worse. He could not dare it again.
He was a good man, but he was weak. He kept telling himself that as the water froze and the air steamed with the change in temperatures.
The woman’s hand moved lower, until she touched his privates. “Good. That is good.” Had she been the most perfect female he had ever seen he could not have grown hard for her. She was a terror to him, a scarred, hideous beast that would haunt him for as long as he lived.
“Come now.” She stood up and looked out at Canhoon in the distance. “It is time for us to run.”
Around them, all along the shoreline, horns sounded a cry to war.
The Sa’ba Taalor moved, stepping onto the ice with ease, their great mounts moving with them.
Theran could not guess how many of the hellish folk there were. The fog from the frozen waters was too thick to give the faintest hint.
He could not see the corpses that he left behind, either. That was for the best. He had felt two of them freeze beneath him as he touched the water and he would never get past that sensation in a hundred lifetimes.