Everran's Bane (17 page)

He did not bother with his own rooms, any more than he had with Inyx's tower. After one cursory glance at the Treasury, he turned to the Asterne steps.

There are a hundred and fifty, ascending the pinnacle that makes a stempost at the plateau's eastern end. Some royal builder had planed and smoothed it into a tower, with guard rooms delved just below the circular summit where the mirror signalers watch. Some king, perhaps the tower-maker, crowned it with a little rotunda, six marble columns under a circle of peaked roof to shelter Asterne's silver wind-bells, designed to make music from the play of Air.

The rotunda had been smashed to smithereens. The mirror-signal unit was in ruins. A couple of morvallin fled yarking as our heads appeared: I know now why soldiers loathe them with such deadly hate. As I eyed a long smear of blood over the southern parapet I heard Beryx grunt.

Inyx lay under the western wall. He must have been struck by the tail, then clawed. What was left lay on its face, a bloody sword by the limp right hand, the wide desert-fighter's shoulders still clad in a rag of mail. This time he would not trouble me with ghosts.

I grew aware that Beryx was speaking, in a remote, numbed voice.

“He was waiting for the message. From Aslash. He would have been sure I'd come—”

His voice broke. He looked down. Then he went on, in the same tone, but now on a note of valediction.

“At least he used the sword.”

We walked back to the stairs. The guard-room door was ajar. In passing he gave it a shove, glanced in, and spun in his stride.

Sellithar was under the table, against the rear wall: huddled like an embryo. The folds of blue silk had caught his eye. She yielded to our touch, as a wooden doll's limbs assume a position, and hold.

Beryx looked at her with those black eyes empty of all but perception. But then he touched her cheek and said gently, “Sellithar.”

She blinked. Slowly, her eyes came into focus. She saw me. The woodenness broke and with a great sob she hurled herself into my arms.

She cried dry-eyed, enormous racking sobs. I do not know what I did. I loved her, had thought her dead, and against all reason had her restored. What Beryx saw, or felt at her choice of comforter, hardly mattered at all.

Presently, between the sobs, came words.

“We saw it coming... He brought me up here. On the steps. He said, ‘When it sees us, we'll run. You run in there.'”

I could look at Beryx then. He was listening with that same intent detachment. Sounding quite calm, he said, “He knew it would follow him. He must have meant to get in one good cut... I wonder why he missed?”

“He didn't.” I recalled that red-crusted slash under the insect eye. When I told him, he nodded slowly, equably. “Good.” Then the pupils contracted and his eyes filled with a laughter green and cold and cruel as Hawge's own. “I'm glad,” he said, “he managed that.”

He turned away. “Bring her down, Harran. We've a lot to do.”

“Search for the maerian?” The mere thought appalled me.

“I never meant to search for it,” he answered calmly. “I wanted five days for evacuation. Four should be enough.”

Just before he left the door I regained my wits. “Wh-where are we going?” I managed. And he glanced back in surprise.

“Maer Selloth,” he said. “There's nowhere else.”

Saphar was less prostrate than it seemed. Kyvan emerged from the palace rubble with prayers on his lips and a fresh crimson cloak over his arm, there were five or six rational counselors. Inyx had sent the entire mirror-signal watch down from Asterne, and using his souvenir unit they restored the city's tongue that day. Best of all, Morran met us at the gate-arch, announcing composedly, “Five hundred of the Guard fit and reported for duty, sir. We've been fighting fires.”

A lord's wife with a whole house took charge of Sellithar. “I know what she needs, poor lamb.” Beryx set up his quarters on the market's intact side, and with a harper for aide plunged into the task of uprooting a court, relocating a government, and moving lock, stock, and barrel out of a ruined city with zombies for half its inhabitants.

The details were endless: the Holym cattle, the Quarred gold, the remnant of the oil, the coming vintage, refugees, the dragon, the treasury, the court, the Army, communications, word to Maer Selloth... He cut through it like a knife, cold and tireless. On the fourth morning we rode out behind Sellithar's horse litter, leaving a post of signalers and a gallant handful of council, lords, guildsmen, and soldiers behind. Ahead of us the rest of Saphar streamed on foot, horse, and carriage down the southern road.

* * * * *

Tirs had taken few Stiriand refugees and less damage from Hawge. Its long foothills are poor toward Bryve Elond, but eastward are fertile grain valleys, and Everran's orchards. Countless songs praise the Tirien apple-buds that blow in white and blush-pink clouds against the red Helkent rock and the blue spring sky. It was less pretty in autumn, with the poor land dull yellow and fawn and the rocks showing through while the storms swept north to soak us in steady succession, but the Azilien valley is charming, a tiny clear river that chuckles below green norgal and finlythe and the odd rivannon, while iron crags of rust and vermilion thrust steadily higher above.

Maer Selloth is a stronghold, set atop a mountain knee above Azilien's source, a red wall girdled about the hill summit with the keep lowering atop. At its back is Everran's only border post: Bryve Tirien, giving on the gorge where the Mellennor heads. Both Quarred and Estar have an interest in that pass, and have not been above using it. It was in my mind that Beryx might mean to use it too.

I knew he would feel Saphar's ruin as a failed trust, as piercing to the king as the manner of Inyx's death had been to the comrade and friend. He never spoke of that. Only, as we rode up to Maer Selloth, I saw him lift his eyes to the citadel, intact, undefeated, with a yearning that held pain and shame and grief. Then he said quietly, “Harran, when you have time... Inyx. Could you make—a song?”

I was grateful that there were several songs to make in Maer Selloth. The town is small and primitive, grossly overcrowded, there was friction with the people who feared, if they did not say it, that we would bring the dragon on them. Another hearthbard served there, and no Resh lord is happy when his king descends on him, even if that king is his son-in-law. Especially a lord like Tenevel, when he is less subject than ally, and the king is in exile, or what might be seen as outright flight.

Tenevel was courteous enough. He took in Saphar's folk readily if not warmly, he met Beryx on his threshold with a grave, reserved smile: a dark man—Sellithar favors her mother—with a Tiriann's whippy build and ruler's decision in an alert hunter's eye. But ruling had taught him ruthlessness as well.

Hawge returned to complete Saphar's ruin, expelling the garrison to Asleax on the Maer Selloth road, leveling the very walls, before it went to gorge on Holym cattle and gloat over Ragnor's gold. Nobody thought that would last. I consoled myself with Sellithar's regained color, thawed numbness, and a gaiety I rarely saw in Saphar, and if I was not making songs, escaped to the streets.

I had sought more than weapons in the Confederacy. Whenever I met the rare bard with more lore than I, I would toss Stavan's question into the talk. “What do you know of aedryx?” I would ask.

Estarians had never heard of them. A Holymlase bard said they were wizards, but all long dead. A Quarred steading harper told me flatly that “aedryx is an old word for towers—towers of guard—” and cited eight: Stiriand, Histhira, Tirien, Hazghend, Tyrwash, Berfylghja, Havos, and Heagian.

An Everran fort, a range, a direction, a country, and four phantoms were only riddles, cryptic, maddening. Another Quarred bard claimed Havos had been in Bryve Elond. “Its ruins are that hump just at the saddle-top.” The others he did not know. Ragnor's hearthbard said aedryx were “connected with Lossian,” but having only two couplets of the song, he had discarded it. He did know they were wizards, and he added an odd phrase. “Wizards,” he said, “of the mind.”

I had greater hopes of Tirs, if only from Sellithar's talisman. Many new riddles were itching in my own mind. Beyond Stavan's connection of aedryx and Lossian and “green eyes” and Beryx's own reaction to Thassal's gift, there was the way he had looked in the dragon's eyes unharmed. The way they seemed to read each other's thoughts. Moreover, if I understood aright, he had not only met Hawge's eyes but told it an outright lie. And been believed. Recalling how Hawge had seen through me on the battlefield, I grew itchier still.

Tenevel's bard laughed at the talisman, “an old upland tale.” He had heard of aedryx, but never bothered with the lore. “Dead wizards, surely, are hardly memorable?” He preferred sugary compliments on my battle-song and eager interest in what I was making next. I returned an Estarian no-reply, and went back to the streets.

Then, walking up a squalid hillside alley jammed with rickety shops and refugees, I heard a song.

When the bitter water

Catches ahltar's daughter

Who will save her eyes?

The voice was thin, unaccompanied, but true. The tune was strange to me. It had a fey, elusive quality alien to the songs of men.

When the Flametree's tower

Falls to apple-flower

Who can swear it lies?

I tracked it through the trash and piled goods and people's beds and howling urchins to an even smaller alley that was torch-lit before mid-afternoon.

When fengsoth and fenghend

Run with Ilien's finghend

Women will be wise—

In the gutter a man was sitting, face uplifted to the patchy yellow flare as he sang. The white eyes in the gaunt, nobly-boned old head told me he was blind, as so many great harpers are. He was also hairless, thin as a wraith, wrapped in the rags of what had been a hearthbard's robe. He sat in the gutter with an empty, dirty cap beside him and sang without so much as hope of an audience, because singing was all he had.

As wise as havos' brother

Who has the Air for mother—

Sees the light and dies.

 Feeling as if I had seen my own death, I waited till the end. Then I sat on my heels and asked, “Father, where did you learn that?”

He turned his vacant stare. I said, “I am Everran's hearthbard. And I never heard it before.”

His features showed a flash of eroded contempt, but he lacked the spirit even to scorn ignorant youth. He said in that husk of a superb voice, “I had it from my father. It is very old.”

“Who made it?” I asked. “And for whom?”

He was seeking some context to make it intelligible. My heart bled for a lifetime spent besieging apathy and ignorance. But he was a harper: if we have lore, we will try to pass it on.

“It was made by Delostar,” he said. “A wizard. He made it for his sister. She was kin to Lossian.”

He was too old to move to the keep: the honor he deserved would only have wearied or filled him with emptiness. I took him into his great-niece's shop behind us, got him a place by the kitchen fire, a bowl of bacon and beans—they were ready enough to serve the royal bard. When he had eaten, and might believe I was in earnest, I said, “What do you know about aedryx?” Already knowing that this time there would be a reply.

* * * * *

When I left it was far on in the autumn evening, and it astonished me to find Maer Selloth festooned in leaping yellow fire. Then I remembered it was Iahn's day, which Tirianns celebrate at home. Doubtless a risky proceeding, among the wooden houses of Maer Selloth, but one which has bestowed its name: with its constellation of yellow cockades perched there in the black of the hidden mountains, it did indeed resemble the Shadow of the Stars.

Bracing myself, I climbed toward the keep, trying to hurry lest Beryx should want to honor the day, with my new lore leaden on my feet. But just beyond the gatehouse I was startled to meet Morran, and Morran in a hurry. Startled, because he had the knack of making speed without haste, and more startled because he snatched my arm and whisked me straight out onto the battlements.

“Have you seen the king?” He was breathing hard. “I thought not. I looked for you everywhere, I was coming to find you—” A spurting bonfire caught his face: the cheekbones were bosses, the jaw clenched in a rigor of rage. “You don't know what's happened? Hawge has moved, crossed the road south of Veth Tirien, hit the Tirilien Vale. No, listen. It's worse than that. Tenevel came to the king. You know how they—Yes. And it's been getting worse. Beryx said, ‘Evacuate.' Tenevel looked at him. Then he said, ‘To Estar?' No, I didn't hit him. I'm a guard. The king—”

He swallowed. “Tenevel stuck his chin out and looked hard as rocks. Then he said, ‘Everran has fed the dragon. I will not gorge it in Tirs.' Beryx said, ‘How will you stop it?' Tenevel stuck. Then he said, ‘If there is no other way, I will remove the curse.'

“No, don't. Stand still. There's more. Beryx said nothing. That made Tenevel push it. He said, ‘I have never shamed my hearth. But now I must think of my Resh.' No! Be quiet. Beryx was... how he's been. That woke him up. ‘Explain yourself,' he said. ‘Tirs must have addled my wits.' That stirred Tenevel up too. ‘Very well,' he said. “Go out of my city, before you are its bane.' Beryx said, ‘This is still Everran.' Tenevel said, ‘Not any more. I am going to secede—' No, wait! Beryx said, ‘You will find Hawge harder to dethrone.' Tenevel said, ‘I think not. I know the lore. King-summoned, if not king-slain. Leave Tirs, and it will follow you.'”