Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars) (56 page)

So I went down to the pirunaen and on a breeze, floated down the kirilidur to the base of Ellebren. The voices of strange and wonderful women hung in the air around me.

5

When I emerged from the Tower, Imral Ynuuvil stepped from the shadow of the Arches and beckoned me. “I’ll lead you to Nixva,” he said, and again I enfolded him in my Cloak and we traveled hidden from eyes. This journey carried me to parts of the House that only the twice-named know; they have their own ways of moving in concealment within Inniscaudra. After a time we had no further need for my arts to mask our movement. We descended through hidden corridors and stairs to a gate in the rocks below Krafulgur, where Karsten awaited us with the horse.

Nixva greeted me with haughty impatience. Karsten embraced me and Imral spoke quickly. “We’ve packed cumbre and a little of my brandy in your saddlebags. Nixva himself would stand for no more than that, so we guessed it was all we should do.”

“I have whatever else I could think to bring,” I said. Hesitating then, I asked, “How is he?”

Karsten answered, “Not well. He doesn’t know we’re here; we didn’t dare tell him, otherwise he’d have come himself.”

Imral asked, “When will you get there, do you think?”

“Two days, maybe more. You’ll see signs of our journey at Ellebren.”

“Fireworks,” he whispered, smiling. He kissed my brow, as did Karsten.

I made Karsten swear to get Axfel as soon as the baggage wagons were unloaded and find a home for him here. Sorry I could not say good-bye myself, but she said she would. As my last gesture I gave into Imral’s keeping the Keys to Ellebren Tower. “You know what these are?” I asked, pressing the silver ring into his hand. “I can’t have them on me if I fall.”

“I’ll give them to Kirith Kirin,” he said.

I shook my head. “Keep them till you see me again. If you give them back to him, he might think I’ve despaired.” After a moment I added, “They’re mine to leave in this fashion if I choose. If I fail to take Laeredon, give them to him then.”

A moment, I lingered. Nothing was left to say, except one thing; and I had to have heart for that. I mounted to Nixva’s back, feeling the trembling of his impatience. “I’ll see you in Genfynnel.” Making mist and veil as they opened the gate, I started on my way.

6

Since I made that journey I’ve seen maps and know what route we took; at the time I had only Nixva to trust. I told him where we must go, and that we must travel hidden within the Woodland until the last possible moment; he snorted and answered that his part was easy, but could I carry off mine? He had no wish, he said, to return riderless into Arthen.

The horse headed through the Woodland following the roads south and I began to build the ithikan that would lend him the speed he needed. This was delicate business to do, since everything depended on my remaining hidden from Drudaen’s vigilance, but at the same time I had to make sure Nixva was safe at the highest speed we could reach. Vyddn is a long way from Genfynnel, the city over which Laeredon Tower broods. If I could reach the edge of Arthen without the Wizard’s guessing my purpose, I could beat him to the Tower.

Nixva understood what had to be done and gave his spirit to the task. Soon we traveled in one low wave along the Woodland roads. The joy of speed consumed him, but our passing hardly stirred the leaves on the trees.

I began my own preparations. I avoided trance and moved no further into the Circles than sixth level, since Drudaen might have detected that even beneath Arthen’s canopy. The gems I’d left on Ellebren would give the glimmering of my presence, for a while. I worked from another state, a kind of mid-mind in which I could thread song and thought but not yet move Power; in its way, this consciousness was akin to the means by which I had hidden my training at Illyn Water. No magician ever learned that art as well as I did; no one else ever had to.

Gathering all my knowledge of the Towers and their making, learnt at Commyna’s knee, I threaded thought on thought. Drudaen held all the southern High Places in one fashion or another, but his hold was not the same on each. Some Towers he had built himself and some his father Falamar had built, and over the Towers of their making Drudaen exercised unshakable authority. In these High Places, the ruling runes in the kirilidur were of Ildaruen, about which I knew nothing. But Edenna Morthul built Laeredon during the Long War with Falamar, and the runes in that place were Wyyvisar when the Tower was made. Furthermore, Edenna was the wizard who first invented the rune-threads, and the Laeredon kirilidur was the finest example of what the rune-threads could do until Ellebren was built.

Kentha held Laeredon after Lady Morthul crossed through the Gates, and its Keys are said to have vanished with her when she died. Drudaen took the High Place for his own use after that. Because he had no keys, he broke down the gates, then had them remade. One could be certain he had altered the Tower to his own use in the years since. But he had never taken the time to bring the Tower down or raise a High Place of his own, as he had done in Ivyssa and earlier in Montajhena. He had simply faced the kirilidur with an Ildaruen veneer. The Sisters guessed this was because he lacked the strength to undue Edenna’s work.

We flashed through the middle Woodland, Nixva a rush of black fire over the bridges crossing River. Leaning into his mane, I whispered my love to him and he answered me with more speed. Nearer came shadow with each step. The passing of time became meaningless, and I floated in images that were pieces of my thought: the presence of Ellebren behind me, the light over Montajhena, the heaviness of the Wizard on the Vyddn Plain. He stood in no High Place and could reach none unless he beat me to Laeredon. His purpose in Vyddn must be vital or he would not have lingered. His contempt for me and pride in his own strength must also be great, or else he would not have remained on the ground when I opened Ellebren against him. Now I had no sense of any change in him at all, and if he was striving with anything, it was with some ghost in Montajhena, as far as I could tell.

We rode all day and through the night. Near dawn we crossed River again, and the light wood of Maugritaxa surrounded us. Soon Nixva left the road for a path, since the place he wanted, where the Woodland reached down closest to Genfynnel, was tangled and wild and had no proper road. We slowed the ithikan some, in the undergrowth, though we still made good speed.

By then day had broken. By then, also, Drudaen’s first folly was closing its hand around him, because when we entered Maugritaxa we were already far closer to his Tower than he was.

When Woodland’s End loomed before us I sang Kimri under my breath, the part where YY answers,

I am lighting the lamp that lights the lamps

I am behind that light

On the last line we burst free of Arthen and were revealed to him. I entered fourth-level trance and began to sing.

7

Genfynnel lies south of Arthen, several days march, at the place where Isar and Osar diverge. Before the closing of Arthen it had the bulk of the River trade, but that business passed to Bruinysk in days after the Ban, since all northern caravans passed through Angoroe. Genfynnel is ancient, having been a Jisraegen settlement since the days of the Forty Thousand. I could feel its presence within shadow once I left the cover of the Woodland, and when I entered trance I could see it as well, with far-flung sight.

I could see the Wizard too, since in his carelessness he had left himself naked beneath shadow, thinking me far away. For a time his whole thought was known to me, and the poison of it filled me. He hung over the land like ice, a cold and brittle spirit, the beautiful shell of his face and body remaining from his youth but filled with the dread of years and the lives he ate to preserve his own. Like all who come from Arthen, he needed to return to the Woodland for wholeness. His exile had turned to torment. He was in Vyddn to listen for the echo of Jurel and his father in Montajhena. This I saw in those first instants, and the truth of that moment was to guide me through all that followed.

We moved forward like a fire rushing across the grassland, beneath the broiling of shadow, and our freshness came from the trees of Arthen, from the stones of Inniscaudra, from the Ellebren Height. He could feel these forces around Nixva and me, and he longed for them himself. That was his first thought, even before he guessed my purpose, understood his own nakedness, and cloaked himself in protection. In letting me see so much, he made a mistake for which I could make him pay. If I lived.

A moment later, when he began to move himself and I could feel the size of him, I felt my first wash of fear.

I hid the feeling and set part of myself to watch him while other parts busied with other tasks. Even from Vyddn he could use Laeredon against me, and he did so at once. But when he did, I could hear the sound he made on the kei planes, the thread of song by which he controlled Laeredon, and I isolated it from all else that I could hear. I reached forward too, and began my deep-singing.

Touching gems within the cloak, I rose up on Nixva’s back and gathered what sunlight I could find that trickled through the stuff overhead; I plaited Fire and Light and let the rings drift upward, I plaited Daylight Rune, Curved Swan, filling them with my fourth-circle voice, and the passage of these devices gashed shadow where they touched it. Blue sky opened overhead, and true sunlight reached me. The oppression and cold lessened, though these were only feelings of the body and could not be allowed to enter my thinking. The world of YY, above the clouds, caressed me and Nixva as we hurtled forward.

Then the hand of Laeredon closed around me and all was darkness.

I could not find his thought or hear his Words, nothing except the sound of his calling to Laeredon, so subtle was that first assault. Nixva cried in terror and might have stumbled except I soothed him. My breath became labored and my body’s pangs began to draw me back inside it, out of the kei-space, my eye no longer within and without; stones weighed on my limbs and my thought became confused. I had not understood, till I was out of Arthen, how much it had protected me, but now I did. But that thought brought another, a memory, Commyna’s voice in Jiiviisn Field.
The Cloak will serve you well, especially outside Arthen.

Gathering the folds around me, I raised the hood over my head and draped Nixva with it as well; we would ride by my eyes for a while, and I told him so. His panic eased and so did mine. The singing of Illyn surround us. Whatever he had sung from Laeredon could not touch me within the Cloak. Presently, when I restored my consciousness to kei, I launched myself anew on all levels.

I sang to the distant Tower, against the current of the Wizard’s voice which even then I could not hear, except the one sound I had kept in the kei space, his song to the Tower. I called to the stones using a far song, which was the same as Drudaen was doing; I could feel the change in the presence of Laeredon in the fourth circle, as the Wyyvisar runes of the kirilidur stirred. It had been a long time since anyone had called that magic out of the Tower. The Sisters had been right. He had never been able to remove the Wyyvisar, or had feared Edenna Morthul too much to try.

But his own power still moved in his rune-threads, and his Words were still hidden from me, except his calling-song to the Tower. Again came the crashing assault, as if he meant to smite me flat from the air, and without the sound of his Words I had no notion of what kind of attack he employed. The Cloak shielded me and I kept my seat on Nixva; but Drudaen’s strength seemed incomprehensible, to find me and reach into me so deeply. His hand on my heart, a tearing in my gut, sensations like fire and freezing cold. From all sides I could feel the kindling of him on the land, in every High Place south of Arthen, and overhead shadow began to close the tear I had made.

In the kei space, in the small space, I pictured Ellebren, at the same time that my long vision focused on what I could discern of Laeredon.

For a moment I was walking on Ellebren Height again, the wind in my hair…

At once I felt the uprising of light from that High Place, and I found a resonance that let me throw off his touch, steer my thought toward Laeredon again. This light was not simply in my mind or on the planes; the brightness swelled at my back over all the landscape, and shadow dissolved not only near me but beyond. A road to Genfynnel opened, sunlight fell on those lands, and a rush of light poured down, warm and golden.

I took heart and sang, threw off light and fire; with the hands of my body maneuvering gems, I pushed shadow farther and reached forward again toward Laeredon, focusing every thought on the Tower, on singing the ruling runes of the Tower awake. I spared not one moment or bit of consciousness on attacking Drudaen himself, as he had attacked me. It was the Tower I wanted, only that, and I raced toward it at a speed which soon led me round farm and forest to the place where two broad rivers rushed together.