Fall of Angels (74 page)

  
"Do you believe him?"

  
Nesslek whimpers again, and Zeldyan brings him up to her shoulder, patting him once more.

  
"I've never seen him look that shaken."

  
"How many of Hissl's armsmen survived?"

  
"A handful, if that. They were led by a big man who was one of the best I've seen. He had a big blade, as big as my father's, and he used it like a toothpick. It wasn't enough."

  
"What about the angels?"

  
Sillek turns from the sunlight and the window. "They lost some. How many I couldn't say, but there seem to be as many as before. Their leader was wounded, but she was still giving orders. I don't know about their mage. They were carrying him off the field, but the glass didn't show any blood. Terek thinks he was only stunned, says that he tied Hissl's magic in knots at the end."

  
"You're very worried."

  
"You know why," Sillek answers. "They'll get more women after this. They know how to train them. They have blades that turn wizards' fire and cut through plate armor. They have bows that send arrows through anything. I have Ildyrom stirring up* rumors that I'm a coward, and that I intend to turn Lornth over to the women. I have my own holders who will demand that I destroy this abomination, and what will I get out of it?" Sillek snorts. "If I'm unlucky, I'm dead. If I'm lucky, I'll win a victory that will destroy me. To win, I'll need to raise an army-not a force, but an army as big as the one that took Rulyarth-and I can't pull your father out of Rulyarth, or the forces that support him. So I need more mercenaries and levies, and both are expensive. That means a tax on the holders. Who else has got coins? That will make them mad, and they won't remember that it's their bitching that created the mess."

  
"It is that bad, isn't it?"

  
Nesslek burps again before his father can respond.

  
"It's worse. I hate those women. Just by existing, they're going to destroy me, one way or another."

  
"No they won't. Life is never easy, but you can defeat them. I know you don't want to, and I don't, either, but we don't want a holder revolt, either." Zeldyan smiles. "When you come back, then you certainly won't have any trouble with Ildyrom."

  
"No. That's true. One way or another I won't have to worry about Ildyrom." He walks over to the chair. "Let me take Nesslek. You haven't had a bite to eat, and all I've done is talk."

  
"Careful," says Zeldyan with a laugh. "You shouldn't let anyone see you acting like a nursemaid."

  
"Bother that," mutters Sillek, lifting Nesslek up to his shoulder. "I'm a nursemaid to all those holders who are afraid that, if those women survive up on that mountain, they won't be able to keep beating their own up."

  
"I never would have thought you'd say that."

  
"I've learned a lot from you." Sillek pats his son on the back and smiles at Zeldyan.

CXII

WHEN NYLAN WOKE, he was lying on his lander cot bed. The light from the windows, while dim, burned through his eyes. He turned his head slightly, eyes slit, and a sledge smashed across his temples. Whiteness and blackness washed over him for a time, and he lay motionless, eyes closed, until the hammering and the knives that slashed at his eyes subsided.

  
Slowly, without moving his head, he eased his eyes open.

  
The gentle creaking of the cradle seemed more like the rumbling of a mill beside his head, and Dyliess's breathing like a high wind that whipped through the tower.

  
Ryba sat in the rocking chair, one arm bound tightly in a sling, the other rocking the cradle. The left side of her face was scraped and blackish blue, with thin red lines running across her cheek.

  
"You .. ." rasped Nylan. His eyes still burned.

  
"I know," she said. "You look almost as bad. They had to pry your fingers out of your poor mount's mane."

  
Nylan tried to move his fingers. They were stiff, sore. His head throbbed even with the attempted movement.

  
"You don't look that wonderful," he said after a time.

  
"It's not too bad. It was only dislocated, but badly. Istril has some of the healing talent. It must go with the silver hair. It's a good thing, too, because whatever you did to that wizard backfired all over both you and Ayrlyn. Last time I looked she was flattened like you."

  
"No..." Nylan tried to moisten his lips. "I got... through the wizard. It was the killing. Killing's hard on me, hard on healers."

  
"The killing was the easy part," said Ryba, as though she had not even heard Nylan's last words. "Getting guards trained is the hard thing, and making sure they do what they're supposed to. These women, half are scared to lift a blade against a man. Got to change that." She coughed, wincing.

  
"Sore ribs, too?"

  
"I don't notice you doing much moving."

  
"If I did, my head would fall off," Nylan admitted.

  
"Denize, she froze, just sat there on her mount," Ryba continued, again almost as though she had not heard Nylan. "They hacked her apart, and I couldn't reach her in time. De-sain, Miergin, and poor Nistayna, they did their best and it wasn't enough. The wizard got Jaseen and Berlis, too." Ryba shivered, then stopped rocking the cradle. "Killing's easy. Too easy for men."

  
Nylan closed his eyes. He didn't feel like arguing. Maybe killing was easy, but feeling the deaths of those you killed wasn't. Yet what else could they have done? He could feel himself drifting back into darkness, and he let it happen.

CXIII

THE WARM WIND coming through the open windows raised dust off the floor of the great room, dust that appeared no matter how often the stones were swept or washed.

  
Nylan rested his elbows on the table and closed his eyes. Finally, he opened them and took a sip of the cold water. His body still felt as if it had been pummeled in a landslide of building stones and sharp-edged bricks.

  
He couldn't rest, even though Ryba and Dyliess were, and Ayrlyn was. So were most of the children. He took another sip of the water and glanced through the nearest narrow window slot at the green-blue sky and the scattered clouds of late summer. Then he held his aching head in his hands.

  
Relyn eased into the room. The former noble wore a hand-dyed black cloak over equally black trousers and shirt.

  
"Relyn?"

  
"I came to thank you."

  
"Thank me?" Nylan wanted to laugh. "For what?"

  
"For making things clear, ser." Relyn eased onto the bench across the table from Nylan.

  
Nylan studied the man in black. "My head still hurts, and I guess I'm not thinking too well. Just how did I make things clear?"

  
Relyn scratched his head, then rubbed his nose. "First, I thought you had magic that you brought from Heaven. When the magic from Heaven died, I thought you had tools from Heaven. Then I watched as you kept building things, and I thought that the greatest magic is in a man's mind."

  
"It helps to have knowledge," Nylan said wryly. "Sometimes, the biggest hurdle is just knowing that something can be done. Or that it can't."

  
Relyn smiled apologetically, but did not speak.

  
Nylan took another sip of water. "Now what are you going to do?" he asked after he set down the mug.

  
"For a time, I will try to learn more of the way of the Leg-end, and the way of order, so long as you and the singer will teach me. In time, I will leave and teach others."

  
"Teach them what?"

  
"What I have learned. That what a man does must be in harmony with what he thinks. That order is the greatest force of all." Relyn shrugged. "You know."

  
Nylan wasn't sure what he knew. "That may not make you all that popular, Relyn."

  
"I have already decided that. I will have to go east, or circle Lornth and go far to the west. I would not be well received in Lornth, especially after Lornth is vanquished."

  
"From what the healer has discovered from the traders, Lord Sillek has hired mercenaries, and has more resources than ever before. Yet you think he will be vanquished." Nylan's arm swept across the great room. "We have perhaps a score and a half, twoscore at the most, and how many will he bring? Fivescore? Six? Twentyscore? Fortyscore?"

  
"They will not be enough." Relyn smiled. "Three more women arrived at Tower Black today. There was one yesterday, and two the day before. They brought blades, and some brought coins. One rode up bringing her own packhorse loaded with goods. She was willing to give them to the angel even if she could not stay."

  
Nylan took a deep breath. "The women of this world are fed up."

  
"If I understand you, that is true." Relyn's smile vanished. "The longer Lord Sillek waits, the more guards and goods Westwind will have. Two of those who rode up today already had their own blades and could use them."

  
"I'm afraid that is why your Lord Sillek will not wait."

  
"He is not my Lord Sillek. A disowned man has no lord. That is one of the few benefits." Relyn laughed. "And few would attack a one-armed man, for there is no honor in that. So, when the time comes, I will depart."

  
"Why don't you leave now?"

  
"I would see the destruction of Lornth. Then I can tell the world of the power of the Legend."

  
"You have a great deal of faith." Far more than I do, thought Nylan. Far more.

  
"No. This is something I know." Relyn slipped off the bench. "You are tired, and I would not weary you more."

  
For a time, Nylan sat, eyes closed, but his head ached, and he did not feel sleepy. Relyn was talking as though Ayrlyn and Nylan were the prophets of some new faith, and that bothered the smith, as if his head didn't hurt enough already.

  
Finally, he stood and walked to the open south door and crossed the causeway. The large cairn was now twice its former length, and Nylan could no longer distinguish the separate smaller cairns that dotted the southeast section of the meadow, almost opposite the mouth of the second canyon from which Gerlich's men had poured.

  
A crew of new guards, led by Saryn, had already blocked the narrow passage at the upper end of the canyon and erected a small and hidden watchtower that overlooked the trail leading there.

  
How much did you let happen, Ryba, wondered Nylan, because you dared not risk going against your visions? Maybe ... maybe there are worse things than feeling deaths. Is feeling the deaths of those I killed so difficult compared to your causing deaths that may have been unnecessary-and knowing that those deaths may have been unnecessary . . . and living with those deaths forever?

  
A small figure sat on the end of the causeway wall, looking toward the cairns. Suddenly, she turned and asked, "Why didn't you save Mother?"

  
Nylan tried not to recoil from the directness of the question.

  
After a moment, he said slowly, "I tried to save as many as I could." By killing as many of the invaders as I could, he added to himself.

  
"They weren't Mother." Niera's dark eyes bored into Nylan. "They weren't Mother. The angel let the other mothers stay in the tower."

  
"Did your mother wish to stay in the tower?"

  
"No. You and the angel should have made her stay!"

  
Nylan had no ready answer for that, not a totally honest one, but he continued to meet the girl's eyes. Then he said, "Perhaps we should have, but I cannot change what should have been."

  
At that, Niera turned and looked at the cairns, and her thin frame shook. Nylan stepped up beside her, and lightly touched her shoulder. Without looking, she pushed his hand away. So he just stood there while she silently sobbed.

CXIV

A STIFF AND cool breeze, foreshadowing fall, swept from the sunlit meadows and fields through the open and newly hung doors of the smithy. With the air came the scent of cut grass, of dust raised by the passing horses, and of recently sawn fir timbers. Inside, the air smelled of hot metal, forge coals, and sweat-of burned impurities, scalded quench steam, and oil.

  
Nylan brought the hammer down on the faintly red alloy, scattering sparklets of oxides. The anvil-a real anvil, heavy as ice two on a gas giant, if battered around the edges-and the hammer rang. Nylan couldn't help smiling.

  
"Is it good?" asked Ayrlyn. "I've been looking for one all summer. I got this from a widow not far from Gnotos."

  
"It's good. Very good. It feels good."

  
"You look happy when you work here, when you build or make things, and I can almost feel the order you put in them."

  
"You two," said Huldran, easing more charcoal into the forge. "You talk about feeling. It's as though you feel what you do more than you see it."

  
"He does," said Ayrlyn. "He can sense the grain of the metal."

  
Nylan grinned at the healer. "She can sense sickness in the body."

  
Huldran shook her head, and the short blond hair flared away from her face. "I've always thought that. I don't think I really wanted to know. With the laser, I figured that was because it was like the engineer's powernet ... Is all the magic in this place like that, something that has to be felt, that can't really be seen?"