Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars) (48 page)

3

Gaelex, on the march toward Illaeryn, saw the Tower radiance as a blue corona beyond Shag Arth, beneath which the soldiers marching from Nevyssan were encamped. The light was bright enough she could review her map by it, pacing back and forth in her tent, rubbing the bump in her hooked nose. I heard this story from her later, when we were riding south; I added the part about her nose, but she was always doing it. She sent word to the sentries to keep a sharp eye but not to worry about the light. The heavens opened up and the rain fell in torrents, swelling the streams that poured down Shag Arth. Gaelex had the trumpeter sound quarters and gave orders for camp to be moved to higher ground.

The sun rose in the morning but its watery light fell through haze. The soldiers struck camp having slept little more than half the night. As the march was beginning Gaelex got word that Amri, the Venladrii girl, the new kyyvi, had wandered off during the rain and spent the night among moonflower. The child was feverish, talking in her sleep. Gaelex gave the order for the march to begin and rode back along the column till she found the physician’s wagon in which the child was riding. The whole violet day the soldiers marched through dregs of storm and tatters of shadow, Amri feverish, talking to herself, Gaelex riding beside her. They encamped that night at Karmunir Gate, the light of Ellesotur silhouetting the somber stone guardians of the High Country.

4

Sivisal lay folded in sleep in Fort Gnemorra’s barracks when the sentries first sounded quarters. He hurriedly drew on tunics and light armor, moving instinctively in the darkness. Outside soldiers were forming up in ranks, everyone gazing at the southern sky.

At first Sivisal thought it was a storm, but he had never seen its like either for lightning or lack of thunder. Cartwheels of radiance danced and glittered, first white as stars and then ruby red, emerald green, turquoise, golden, burning like fire; yet not a sound could be heard. Then, beyond the light, as if a gulf were opening, the stars began to go away.

The stars of our sky are changeable but they do not vanish. He felt cold in his stomach and numb all over, and a picture flashed in his mind, the shadow surrounding him as darkening mist and dissolving him as if he were starlight. Grown soldiers were calling out in fear, nobles and commoners, women and men, and Sivisal could hear the horses crying on the line.

A voice called out from the darkness, harsh and deep. “Curse you all for fools,” the voice said, “don’t you know what that light is? Did your mothers and fathers never tell you stories? That isn’t an enemy, that’s a friend. That’s your nephew, Sivisal. That’s the weyr light from the Tower over YYmoc, and it means the Witch Boy who killed the Karns has taken his place against the other one.”

The words sent a shiver over Sivisal, and he turned to see Cuthru son of None gazing at him in amusement from across a watch fire.

He wrote me this in a letter. Not long afterward his detachment of cavalry, commanded by Theduril son of Vinisoth, was ordered back to Arthen. But Sivisal knew of no such orders that night, and wrote me by the first fractured daylight, recalling how he had carried me into Arthen from his sister’s farmhouse; and now I was walking in the clouds.

5

Queen Athryn Ardfalla saw no light but heard my voice issuing from Karomast; all Ivyssa heard that sound, when I said I would defend Arthen against him. She saw the shadow also. I have read a letter she wrote to her companion, Sylvis Mnemorel, Lady of Durme and Amre: “I’ve heard the new one speak and now Drudaen is answering. Even as I sit here the blackness has swept across Anyn and Kmur. I can’t see the stars. You’ll be wondering, in Novris, whether I’ve at last lost my mind entirely, to allow such a blast across my own country. You will have seen the Diamysaar, as I did. The day has come at last. I can feel the cold in the pit of my belly. Now I have to live with what I’ve done. Don’t come to Ivyssa for a while, my dearest. I’ll be returning to Kmur in the morning, if there is a morning. We’re not very much loved here.”

6

Kirith Kirin studied the lights over Ellebren from his own apartments in Evaedren, the Tower of the Twelve. He and the other twice-named crept there after the mortal lords fell asleep, dead-tired after the long day’s ride. Riding in ithikan is a drain on anyone’s strength; the mortals slept through all that followed, deep into the hollow morning.

The twice-named watched from a balcony as the windows of Ellebren ignited one by one, the burning of roch fire spiraling toward the silver-crowned summit. Kirith Kirin was too impatient to sit and paced the corridors, finally taking his leave of the rest, despite their protests. He found his way down Falkrigul to the Estobren Arches, where he sat down to wait. I found him sleeping on the dry stone hours later when I descended.

I was glittering from my walk on the High Place, charged with vision and smelling of strong storm winds. I knelt by him, wrapped my hand round his shoulder, touched his face with my fingertips. When he was awake and knew it was me, he sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes like a child.

The storm was breaking up, white light beyond rolling dun-colored clouds. While rain could not reach us, a light rain peppered the rest of the world, sheeting round the arches in a curtain, the last collapse of the storm’s heart. We watched the rain fall and the clouds roll. This was late afternoon, the finish of an ashen day in the fringe of shadow.

My mind was in many places: on the Height, in the Eyestone, within the Tower and the House, in the air over Arthen and watching the darkening south. But one has a lot of mind one does not use. It was easy to be mostly there, with Kirith Kirin, gently pleased by his warmth. Finally he said, “So, do you think we’ve started something?”

“Oh yes. We’re all going to have a pretty bad time of it, I expect.”

He laughed softly. “Yes, I know. Why does that strike me as funny at this particular moment?”

“You like storms.”

He sighed, a deep sound like the release of a weight. “At least it’s started, there’s no more waiting. At least we’re here. For once without any prying eyes.”

“In this particular spot,” I said, listening to the Arches, “no prying eyes will ever see you and me if that will make you happy, Kirith Kirin.”

“It makes me happy now.”

The clouds broke up, a cold, dry wind sweeping down from the mountains to force the shadow south, lifting the amber clouds in tatters as the rain thinned. By sundown the clear sky shone through. The sunset was colored in violent reds and burning golds. We sat into the deep twilight, the shadows of watchfires flickering across our faces. I lay down with him as I had done in his tent the night I thought I was leaving Arthen forever. The warmth of his body was sweet. We held each other quietly in the wind. On high, the summit of Ellebren shimmered like a ghost hand in the clouds.

7

I must have fallen asleep for a while. When I woke he was watching me, stones framing his face. When he saw I was awake he laughed softly. “This is my court magician, this sleepy child.”

I yawned. I had not known I was so tired, though it had been almost two days since I slept. Nestling close to him, I listened not only to his strong heartbeat but also to the wind on the High Place, the smell of shadow keen in my nostrils. Kirith Kirin let me lie against him. He asked, “What are you thinking?”

“I’m listening.”

“What happened on the High Place? Drudaen was aware of you?”

“Yes. Very much.”

“We saw the stars going out,” Kirith Kirin said. “We saw the shadow come up and retreat.”

“The Tower’s a strong place to stand. He chose not to fight.”

He watched tonight’s stars beyond the tatters of cloud. “In the Book of Curaeth the prophet says, ‘A night will come when a hand will be extended and withdrawn, when a shadow will fall on Laeredon but not on Immorthraegul. One standing in a strong place will have a voice for many. But still the shadow will fall on Laeredon.’ I’ve read the book so often I have most of it by heart. Tonight the shadow is on Laeredon and all lands south.”

He wrapped his cloak around my back till I was buried inside against him. Beneath the thin riding tunic I could feel his breath coming faster. His heart was pounding. He said, “We should go back soon and find the others, they’ll want news. But I don’t want to go anywhere. Do you have a magic for that?”

“I can make the moment linger for myself. Only the Sisters can bend time for others.”

“I’ve known wizards enough to understand that for myself. But still one wishes.”

Stretching his strong arms along the smooth stone, he let somberness cover him like a cloak. My hand rested on the sheet of tensed muscle at his midsection, quivering with blood and breath, the leather belt warm as his skin. I leaned over him and felt as if I were staring into a seething cauldron, fires licking the rim of his face. Breathless, I kissed the maelstrom. His mouth was tender and trembled. “I can make the evening live in memory,” I said. “I can do that without any magic. The shadow may have fallen but it doesn’t cover everything, Kirith Kirin. Tonight it won’t cover you.”

From a place deep within, next to the bone, some long-held tension released. The return of his spirit into his whole flesh was palpable to my hands. He watched me instead of the sky. “Imral won’t like that, will he?”

My jaw set. “I’m your Thaanarc, and the cloak I’m wearing now has no sleeves. I’ve walked on Ellebren where few others have ever walked. Nobody can tell me where to sleep any more.”

“Not even me?”

“Except you,” I said, tracing the line of his jaw.

“You have one thing wrong, though.” He gazed thoughtfully upward at the Tower summit. His fingers moved on my shoulder. “No one has ever stood on Ellebren. Kentha only completed the Tower, no one ever used it. The Sisters didn’t tell you that?”

“The Sisters claimed they didn’t know much about Tower magic.”

He laughed, raucously. “The Sisters know whatever they want to know. They chose not to tell you maybe. They are crafty.”

I watched him with what felt like a stupid look on a my face. “No one? No one at all?”

He shook his head. Some sadness returned to his face, though no distance intervened between us. “Kentha was able to use the lower rooms for the casting of the Eyestone lattice and other purposes when they were complete, but by the time she placed the Eyestone on the Height her time had already passed, as she said. She was pregnant with the child and returned the Tower keys to me after she and the Tervan specialists raised the stone.” He paused, still touching my shoulder. “That was the day she told me she had prepared the place, and one would come to stand in it. She meant you.”

He named the various parts of the Tower with ease. I remarked on it and asked if he had ever been taken inside. His face became firm, almost imperceptibly shifting to sternness. “Ellebren is within my realm, in my house. I have been as high as the Room-Under-Tower. There is no part of Inniscaudra where I can’t go.”

“Yes, my lord,” I said, and the sternness dissolved. He did not object to the ‘my lord’ in this case. That made me smile.

“It’s a lot of stairs to climb, you understand. I don’t use it as a picnic spot.” He glanced at me from the corner of his eye but did not allow even the glimmer of a smile.

We returned down Falkrigul afterward. The whole walk I was listening to the Height, shifting more of myself into kei. In some manner Kirith Kirin understood this and asked, “Do you hear anything? Is Drudaen changing?”

“Shadow’s stable and growing, that’s the main difference. He’ll be stronger. I’m afraid of what’s happening beneath.”

“He’ll be making fear,” Kirith Kirin said. “He eats it like food.”

“How could Queen Athryn let this happen?”

Mist droplets had settled like a jeweled veil over his black curls. “I don’t know. It may be that she has no choice.”

We passed beneath the bulk of Evaedren, its marble face shuddering with the shadows of watchfires on the high wall. The wind moaned, both here and where it was shredding clouds. He sighed and pulled me against him. In every move, sadness and happiness were mixed but not blended. One could read moments of both on his face, one could feel each coursing through his body. His mind was in the clouds, too, hovering over the south. “I know from reports what Drudaen did in Turis when he put the shadow there, when he rode through the country on storms and fires. I’ve never seen it for myself. Now, the whole south…”

A fire was burning on the terraces below Thenduril. Shadow figures moved on the perimeter of the blaze. The Finra Brun and the Nivra Kaleric stood with wine cups held loosely. Hearing our footsteps, they turned. Brun called, “Good evening, gentlemen,” in her throaty voice, and Kaleric bowed politely to Kirith Kirin.