He left his horse cropping long, seed-topped grass by the bent willow and advanced through the uneven ranks of tombs.
To his right the squat, low buildings of the old section marched in bare, orderly rows to the remote distance of the windy plateau. The cemetery’s more recent additions sprouted in terrain-less level; owing to outcrops and rises, the paths weren’t nearly as straight as those from ancient days. At least the modern builders had learned not to erect the tombs so close to the edge, where a few hallowed sanctuaries had tumbled to artful ruin at the foot of the eroded ridge.
By ancient tradition, dead heroes and rulers were placed here so their spirits might look down upon the great city they had served. And according to popular notion, they would rise to aid Darassus should calamity overtake her. The visitor had no faith in such tales. If the deceased had such power, N’lahr would long since have drifted from his tomb.
He stepped around some vines clawing at the side of a governor’s grave, ignoring finely wrought moments from the woman’s life half-obscured by leafy growth, and arrived finally at the front rank of buildings. Ten feet on lay the rocky edge and a hundred-foot drop to the plain. The visitor barely glanced at the domes of Darassus a few miles east, dulled beneath the gray skies.
He looked instead at the dead man’s face.
The life-sized relief in three-quarter profile showed N’lahr turning toward the world of the living or reluctantly entering the world of the dead—the visitor was never quite sure what the artist intended. Under heavy clouds with the moan of the wind foremost on the ear, it was easier to believe the latter.
“I’m late again,” he said. “And I drank my last bottle when I got held up by a storm in the shifts. Sorry about that.”
He considered his friend’s image, frowning. Not for the first time it seemed incongruous that there was no sword on N’lahr’s belt. Tradition dictated those carved upon the tombs were shown only at peace. While older tombs usually displayed those interred as if they slept, the contemporary fashion showed the departed in daily activities, and that might be problematic when it came to portraying any one of the famed Altenerai, protectors of the realm, but most especially their former commander and general. His life was the corps. His sword’s name was nearly as famous as his own, and before his death it had never left his side since the day of its forging. N’lahr looked somehow incomplete without it.
Otherwise he looked as he had most days. Long, angular face with high cheekbones, thin blade of a nose, deep-set eyes. His straight hair was parted on the left and hanging loose to his shoulders rather than tied off behind, as he usually wore it to facilitate donning a helmet. The tops of his leather cavalry boots were hidden by the edge of the long armored robe of office that clothed him from mid-calf to neck. Belted at the waist and loose about the legs for ease of movement, the khalat was fashioned with hooks along the right breast, so it could be closed all the way up to its high, stiff collar, but N’lahr’s was open, like most Altenerai at rest, and like his visitor’s.
“I can’t find her,” he said. He didn’t bother saying who; N’lahr would know. Nor did he elaborate how dangerous and time-consuming it had been traipsing through the wilds of five Allied Realms and the horrors that lay between. “I’ve searched everywhere, even the deep shifts. And this year I tried some kobalin lands. If one of the kobalin had killed Kalandra they’d be bragging about it. So would the Naor. But there’s nothing. I’m just about out of options.”
N’lahr, unsurprisingly, didn’t offer any.
“Damnit, N’lahr. You’re the one with all the ideas. You should have…” The visitor paused for a breath to head off a pointless rant, then proceeded resignedly. “I’m going to talk to Sharn again. Near as I can tell, he was the last person to see her apart from us. Maybe something new will shake out. And maybe I can get a look at Denaven’s records. He says he doesn’t know where Kalandra went, but the stupid hastig couldn’t empty his boot if the instructions were written on the heel, so who knows.…”
Denaven has his uses as well as his faults, he imagined N’lahr might say.
“You’re way too forgiving.” He sighed. “I don’t really want to head into that city. It’s a perversion of what it was, what it should be. But that’s where Sharn is … and I guess I’ll have to buy a few bottles there if we’re going to drink to your birthday.”
He figured N’lahr would comment on his terrible taste in wine.
“Maybe I have, but you won’t be drinking it, so why complain?”
He suspected N’lahr would find that a good point. “I bet this is great spot to view your parade. I’m so late this year I’m finally going to catch it. I hear it’s even longer than the ones for the spring games.” He shook his head in disgust. “Did you ever think the queen would hold an annual parade for you?”
It was easy to imagine N’lahr’s wry smile as his sole response. The queen had argued with almost every one of his choices during the Naor war, even when he had the clans on the run. She’d never trusted his judgment. And when the great victory N’lahr engineered against the invaders’ superior numbers had killed him, the queen immediately sued for peace rather than pressing on to secure their advantage as so many of her senior warriors advised.
The Naor warlord Mazakan had snatched the offer eagerly, and his embattled clans had slunk back to their desolate realms to nurse grudges and bide their time. The visitor knew the queen had sacrificed true victory for a lull that would allow the barbarians to prepare a greater assault, one the realms would be hard-pressed to endure without N’lahr
“The roads are thick with pilgrims coming for the celebration,” N’lahr’s visitor observed. “Everyone loves you now, so she has to pretend she did, too. I hear she’ll personally lay a wreath right here tomorrow morning.”
He couldn’t imagine what N’lahr would say to that, not really, so he turned fully to contemplate the city his friend’s image seemed wistfully to study.
Darassus. Even under the stormy skies, golden towers rose gleaming from the city’s center. Against his wishes, the visitor’s heart swelled at sight of the venerable capital. Tree-canopied avenues stretched long and level, and walkways and bridges arched over the sparkling, twisted ribbon of the river Idris and its tributaries, captured in walled embankments. There was the famous east gate, two stories high and gilt with polished copper on tiered eaves. Just beyond, along the grand boulevard that led to the city’s center, towered the immense statue of Darassa herself—only the top of her head was visible from here, but the visitor could well picture the Goddess, sword low, hand pressed to her huge bronze head as if in sorrow. Suburbs to the north crowded the immense, multiflag-crowned stadium, where each spring the greatest athletes of the Allied Realms competed for the right to join the storied ranks of the Altenerai squire corps. That was where he had first met N’lahr, on a searing, cloudless morning clearer in his memory than many more recent.
That day, too, he had first glimpsed Kalandra, little older than he or N’lahr but so talented she was already one of the vaunted officers of the corps. He had thought her stern and plain, for he’d not yet seen her smile nor heard her recite the poetry of Selana, whom he’d once been too ignorant to appreciate.
So much was different now.
He glanced down at the metal band adorning one of his dusky fingers, the large sapphire in the setting circled by the first lines of the sacred oath.
His hand tightened into a fist.
The power of the corps had faded. The old guard was halved, and those few who’d risen to replace them were pale shadows. The new commander had weakened the Altenerai by siphoning the best of their mages into a separate corps oathsworn only to the queen. And Queen Leonara herself was a recluse, lost in contemplation of the hearthstones that some whispered she worshiped rather than the true Gods.
Whatever the queen did, it had little to do with governance of Darassus or the realms. She was unaware or uncaring that the borders were being eaten by storms that grew in intensity and duration every year. Traveling the Shifting Lands between the realms had never been safe, but even short journeys had grown downright hazardous. Worse, the Naor were restive, numerous, and bolder; it could not be too long before Mazakan dared the realms again. The Naor hordes needed room they simply didn’t have. They had nowhere else to go.
“Kind of like me,” he said, to no one in particular now. He frowned to himself as he faced the tomb. “I guess I’d best be on my way. Maybe I’ll stop by and see your sword while I’m in town, make sure the squires are keeping the edge keen. I’ve a feeling we’ll need it soon.” He didn’t add that he wished N’lahr was around to tend it himself. He’d told him that too many times already.
Wind broke a gap in the cloud cover so that sunlight streamed down, and the illusion of his friend’s presence was broken—he was just a lonely man in a lonely place by an image in stone. The company he craved had died with N’lahr.
He told himself he should stop riding here to talk to the air even as he stepped away and cleared his throat. “I’ll come back with some bottles tomorrow,” he said. “Not that you give a damn.”
Unconsciously, his open hand went to his breast in salute. He caught himself before he hailed his friend and told him to fare well, then retraced the path to his dun mare, gathered his reins, and climbed into the saddle. Soon he was working his way along one of the cemetery lanes to the switchback that led down to the city.
The stone eyes of N’lahr’s carven doppelgänger were aligned perfectly to watch his visitor’s slow progress down the dusty road, the hood of his cloak pulled high lest fellow travelers glimpse him or his blue khalat.
The image had no remaining companions apart from the whispering trees and grasses, the monuments of brooding stone, and the mournful wind.