Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars) (55 page)

No chair was close enough; I sat at his knees. He rested his hand in my hair. If this was not seemly, I hardly cared. Finally he said, “So she’s sending me a Summons to come south and take my crown.” His laughter, bitter, washed quietly over all of us. “She wants to make me King of Shadow-land.”

“You yourself said this might happen,” Imral said. “What better strategy now than to draw you out of your place of strength?”

Kirith Kirin kept touching his finger to the stone. Despair washed over him. “How weak and small she is.” Turning to me, his eyes flooded with tears. “You shouldn’t have had to bring me the news. When the Queen stands in Aerfax Tower and sets the Change in motion, her voice should reach me on its own.”

“Maybe there’s some disturbance through shadow,” Karsten offered.

He shook his head emphatically. “No. I wish that were true. But this is Athryn herself, this is what she’s come to.” Grief took his voice for a moment. “No shadow could have stopped her voice before. No shadow ever did.” Turning to me again, he said, “She’s my sister. Did you know that?”

I nodded, I had heard it said by someone. His voice, when he spoke, was quieter. “So. This is sooner than we thought, but no real surprise.”

Mordwen spoke in his firm voice, looking at me gently. “The difference is Jessex. That’s why she calls you so quickly.”

With an edge of anger Kirith Kirin said, “You can’t blame him for this —”

I saw Mordwen’s thought at once, however. “He wants me out of Ellebren.”

“Of course,” Imral said, as Mordwen nodded.

This sobered Kirith Kirin, being new. He gazed at me with eyes more like those I remembered from the morning. “He wants to deal with you on the ground and out of Arthen. He knows I have to bring you with me.” He took a deep, ragged breath. “He knows I can’t refuse the Summons either.”

A long silence grew . His fingers traced a curl idly, the touch sweet to me, troubled as I was. From above the strange song had strengthened some, and Kirith Kirin seemed to know the difference as well. “Now she’s beginning to find her voice.”

“I wonder what messenger she’ll choose to send,” Pelathayn said.

“It hardly matters,” Kirith Kirin said. “The Summons is the Summons. If we were ready, we could ride south tomorrow.”

With a glimmer of idea, Imral said, “Maybe that’s what we should do.”

“Tomorrow?” Pelathayn asked, nearly sputtering.

“Speed is everything now,” Imral said, quietly, his thought settling in. Kirith Kirin had begun to listen. “If we can move quickly we may have the advantage.”

“With the force we have here?” Pelathayn asked. “Tomorrow!”

“Hush,” Karsten said, and one understood from the sharpness of her gaze why she had command over Imral and Pelathayn both, where the army was concerned. “Name the advantages, Imral. I follow you partly.”

“So do I,” Kirith Kirin said, but he was looking at me.

Imral moved along the windows as he spoke. “We’ve surprised our enemy. The defeat of Nemort was unlooked for. The death of Julassa was unthinkable. Now we’ve occupied Inniscaudra and we have a magician on the Ellebren Height. None of this was expected. Drudaen has thrown shadow, but I’ll wager you Drii silver he did it before he was ready. Jessex, help me. Am I right or wrong?”

A thrill ran through me, that he spoke to me as an equal. “You’re right, I think. There are signs.”

“Name them,” Kirith Kirin said.

“One I saw today. Shadow is thin over Montajhena, and there’s light he can’t alter or take into himself.”

“Yrunvurst,” Mordwen whispered.

“Yes,” I said. “From the base of the broken towers, but particularly from that one. His shadow can’t engulf it. And it seems clear from other signs, from the little we’ve contested with each other so far, that he wasn’t ready for so much at once. He’s stretched.”

“So if we move now, or at least as quickly as we can, we may gain some advantage,” Imral said.

“While he’s encamped in Vyddn,” Kirith Kirin murmured, “before he can send an army north.”

Karsten said, “I like the plan. Can we do it?”

“My father can have troops in Maugritaxa in ten days. So can we, if we push. The Cordyssans and the new troops will be slower but that can’t be helped.”

“They won’t do us any good without training,” Karsten said. “Better to leave them and take what we have.”

“We would be no more than ten thousand,” Kirith Kirin said, “against twice the number Drudaen can put into the field.”

“Only if we give him time to assemble a whole force,” Imral said. “His armies are split now.”

Karsten and Pelathayn nodded at this logic. But it was left to Pelathayn to state the obvious. Looking at me, he said, “Ten thousand or forty thousand, what difference does that make? The armies won’t fight the battle that matters.”

They had been skirting this topic. The thought brought gloom to Kirith Kirin. He asked me, nearly a whisper, “So, little magician. What do you say about that?”

I said Words into the kei and let time play itself out. I saw myself at Illyn Water, that last morning, and Vella’s voice returned, so clear it hung in the air,
Aren’t you afraid of him?
And my answer,
Yes. But what choice do I have?
What choice indeed, when from the High Place I could hear, even now, the murmuring of his voice? I could see what had to be done, as if it were a page I was reading. I returned to the room in the Winter House, to the moment of my friends; and he knew where I had gone.

“I can’t wait ten days. I’ll need to ride south sooner than that. I’ll have to take Laeredon Tower from him. And you can’t leave here till I do.”

The others were stunned and rendered silent. Kirith Kirin leaned over me as if I were a child. “No,” he said, “not so soon.”

“Yes, Kirith Kirin.” It became my decision with those words. “If he senses we’re marching from Inniscaudra he’ll leave Vyddn country himself and take the Tower against me. I can’t face him from the ground. If I can break his hold on Laeredon, I can hold that whole country against him, and I’ll have two Towers then. He’ll have to go south himself to find a place to stand against me, and his army will be split.”

The logic of it struck them dumb, as it had me when the thought finally formed. Kirith Kirin sagged against his seat. “Can you do it?” Imral asked.

“I don’t know. But I can try.” I was suddenly full of dread. “I know one thing. If I don’t break him there, you can’t come south. There’ll be no more hope.”

Kirith Kirin knew this already. He sat motionless. Karsten reached for his hand. Mordwen said, at last, “The Summons is the Summons and the Law is the Law. We’ll have to ride south regardless.”

I looked him in the eye and spoke from the center of my being. “No, Mordwen. Better to ride straight to Tornimul. Kirith Kirin is the Law now. And if I can’t make a way south for us, then he must stay here, where the Wizard can’t reach him. This is the will of the Mother, and you know I’m right. Without Kirith Kirin we’re lost.”

Their silence told me I was speaking the truth. After a long time, Kirith Kirin asked, “When?”

“Now.” Into his eyes. “When I have Laeredon you’ll see the signs. Promise me you won’t come out of Arthen otherwise.” He looked away from me so I took his face between my hands. “Promise me.”

After a while he nodded. A breath like a wind passed through all of us.

When I stood, it was the beginning of a journey. They knew it, each of them, and said good-bye. Kirith Kirin held me so close I thought he would break my ribs. I touched the chain around his neck and murmured Words. I kissed him good-bye in front of his friends, and left him blank and speechless in the chair. I left Halobar on the same mist that brought me there. They don’t call it the Hall of Many Partings for nothing, I guess.

4

I enfolded myself in the Fimbrel Cloak, flowed through the House unseen and entered Ellebren, where this time I rose on the runes through the kirilidur straight to the pirunaen. I called the names of the runes as I rose, and they burned from their stone setting. Whirling and rising, I wrote the strange words into my memory. I looked for the other threads as well, the runes that I could not read. The writing of the Praeven, the thought came easily. Like the writing on the locket.

Reaching into Ellebren’s depths, to the place where Edenna Morthul laid the first stones within Thrath Rock, I called
Hear me, I am the one who climbed your summit; release your deepest secrets to me for I must take a journey; I have no time for riddles or devices; whatever is hidden must be opened; I am he who sang inImith Imril when no one had sung there since Falamar died; I am Yron who crossed the mountains; I am riding and my need is great; if there is a spirit left here who can answer such a summons, help me now; release your secrets, Ellebren, and come to me when I call from far away.

While I moved through the pirunaen like smoke, I continued this undertone of song. When I first opened Ellebren I felt the Tower receive me as if it had been waiting all this time. In my mind, too, were Kirith Kirin’s words when he told me that no one ever walked on the Ellebren Height before me.
That was the day she told me she had prepared the place, and one would come to stand in it.
She was Kentha, who completed the building of Ellebren after Edenna Morthul abandoned it. She was my great-great-grandmother.

On impulse, in the midst of my preparations, I lifted the Bane Necklace from its hidden place within the Cloak. Holding it aloft, I let my thought go into it and heard, as if sighing coursed through the whole Tower, a release of wind. Along with the echo of Kentha in the stones, a trace of her resonance that would last as long as the Tower. I could feel the Praeven runes in the kirilidur, throbbing. “When I’m riding, remember me.”

I gathered gems from their caskets, rings and brooches that could be fixed to my clothing; these I could prepare along the ride. For the Bane Necklace itself I selected a new chain, from a casket marked with Edenna’s rune-sign; the thought seemed important, to place the necklace fashioned by Kentha on the chain forged by Edenna. They had built the Tower.

When I placed the Necklace around my neck, peaceful voices soothed me. I added a white-stoned earring from the casket as well, speaking a Word to fit the ensorcelled metal to my ear. The Bane Gem weighed on my breast, heavy and dense.

At once the Room-Under-Tower seemed less a stranger to me.

I found a casket where dried cakes lay in heavy enchantment; I filled a pack with these, lining it with soft viis from nearby. In another casket, marked with the signs of Kentha’s House, I found a dagger, simple and silver, set with a single ruby gem in the hilt, the Eye of God. Its belt was of wrought silver and I fastened it round my waist. When I touched it I knew Kentha had put it here for me. It had waited all this time. A gift.

Other secrets, other gifts, on every side, if I ever returned. Ellebren opened itself to me in a flood of radiance. I could see the Library in its hidden vault, other chambers of special use, other treasures that might, someday, serve me well. The joy of it swept me round the room dancing, as if my grandmother had suddenly returned to sing me one of her favorite songs.

In fact it was my great-great-grandmother, I think.

But one treasure drew me at that moment. I felt the harmony of the object, a kind of calling, and opened a casket, rooted through it to find a carved stone box. Inside, a ring with a white stone that Edenna had fashioned, and I read the rune for Laeredon on the ring. She had made a ring to rule Laeredon Tower from a distance. Common enough to do so. Kentha might have done the same for Inniscaudra, though I’d found nothing here. Drudaen would have altered Laeredon to make it useful to him, but the ring would still prove helpful.

Last of all, I walked the Height for a moment, gem-bedecked and glittering, speaking softly to the veil over Inniscaudra, to the Horns and their vaults of light, rounding the colonnade with the Cloak flowing like smoke behind me, and finally kneeling at the Eyestone. I made no magic there but set a gem on each of the altars, a way to make him feel me present on the Tower. I prayed my trick to work.

My last moment before descending, I remembered sitting here with Kirith Kirin, only a night ago. Already nearly lost in the flood of events, a moment of that peace returned to me. That was my gift to this place, I thought. I brought him here. The stones will remember me for that.