Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars) (73 page)

I rode back to the head of the army, and once again the troops turned their strength to our rear. We began to march again. No more Verm came out of Shurhala.

3

Four days passed, and dawn came as a watering of darkness. We broke camp and marched forward in the haze. My head was dull from him, the harsh singing from Senecaur that had been building as we grew close. We marched along the narrow land with the waters of the Bay beside us, low waves crashing on the black sand, sometimes whipped up a bit by wind. The black mountains ahead of us fell sheer into the sea, mountains as high as the clouds, only the merest thread of road at their feet.

One more day of march to go. We made camp the night before, and though we had scarce wood we had fires that burned through the night, as many as were needed, and I walked from one to the other watching him, his voice in the sky, the stars framing him, him reaching, now, for something, I could almost see it. Making an ally, but who?

A change in the Tower. I was dreaming it. But when I woke I could feel it.

In the morning we were greeted by a Verm force on the road ahead of us, and that time I knew better than to stray far ahead of the army. We were within the range from which he could use Senecaur to make a killing wave himself, and I meant for us all to live safely for the return journey north, whenever that might be.

Shadow and mist, but for a moment the rain ended and mist lightened, and out of the soup rose the bulk of a fortress and the spire of a tower. The rain started to fall again, the veil descended, but I had seen the place with my two eyes. Something was wrong. I could no longer feel the Rock.

I had only a moment before the summit was hidden again. Imral was signaling me to come. My heart was pounding. We parleyed on the road, the twice-named and me. It had the feeling of a final meeting. We found an overhang among the rocks for shelter from the storm that continued to sheet us with its half frozen fury. One might have thought them a hopeless bunch, all wind-bedraggled and wet, until one saw their eyes, the ones who have lived so long, who have seen so much.

“We form up for battle from here,” Kirith Kirin spoke with calm but the wild wind whipped him, drowning his voice for a moment. “Ground strength toward Shurhala and the rear road. Jessex and more ground strength at the front, with archers in the center.”

Nothing else to say, really. Kirith Kirin took me aside. He was wearing the silver mail inlaid with some of the Karnost gems, and the gems had darkened. I had never seen the mail before and thought nothing, but Kirith Kirin was looking at the jewels, his face pale. Searching then for the Tower, to see it. “Something’s wrong,” he said. The light was better now, the mist cleared and this time one could see the parti-colored stone that had been used to face the shenesoeniis. “That’s Aerfax below, guarding the road. The ritual of the Change begins as soon as I get to that gate. But I should feel the Rock from here, and these gems should be bright.”

Forlorn, the huge mass of the fortress clung wetly to the rocks, lashed by the same fury that blasted us. One could glimpse the formidable height of her walls, towers clawing the rock, upper levels where palace rooms could be seen, where Athryn Ardfalla was waiting herself at the gate of Senecaur. The road clung precariously to the mountains between us and the shelter of the house. On the nearest sweep of curve massed the Verm force, only a thousand, this time.

Karsten had completed her re-ordering of the troops. She came back to us and we all stood together. Somber. I could feel the moment near, now, when I would know what Drudaen had planned for me. Listening, hearing nothing, feeling the strength of Senecaur focused through something that was not the Rock. Wind soaked us, rain fell, and now I could do nothing to stop the bad weather, so close to his place of strength; I needed all my energy for listening and for protection.

King Evynar said, after we had the signal that the re-disposition of our soldiers was complete, “Well, I would think it were the breaking of the worlds if I didn’t know better, wouldn’t you, Kirith Kirin?”

“It’s close enough,” Kirith Kirin said, looking round at us all.

“A find day for it, too,” Karsten murmured, looking first at the storm and then at Aerfax. By the gleam in her eye one might have thought her serious.

Silence, then. Kirith Kirin had not voiced his concern, and had drawn his cloak over the mail to conceal it. We watched the storm tossed coast of Kleeiom. Aerfax, a sullen pile of stone, awaited us around a curve of that shore.

What do the immortals say to each other at moments like those? Nothing at all. Which is not to deprecate them. Their wisdom is silence. We huddled in the rain like drenched rats, they took stock of the road ahead of us, we found our horses and returned to the army on the road. Sounding trumpets, sounding, “The King is Coming,” with the squadrons of infantry already deployed to guard from rear attack or mountain ambush, we marched forward.

Reaching for all the strength I had, I unfurled Fimbrel to her fullest and filled the sky with the sound of the Wyyvisar of Illyn Water,
the ladies of the lake are weaving now, see them, by the green shore
. Hailing Drudaen on all the levels of our combat, I rose out of myself and from me went out that eerie cry on Fourth Circle that begins Eater of Souls, and his Verm on the road ahead of us felt the cold brush of my hand.

What followed is generally called the Battle of Aerfax. This time armies fought, and women and men killed each other.

1

I had prepared as well as I could for the moment and the force of my presence appeared to surprise my enemy, the Tower recoiled and the airs around it were open to me. Suddenly the change in the Tower became clear. He had lowered the Rock out of its socket as one does to turn it or polish it. My heart pounded. I broke the storm and let some light fall through, eerie white lances falling out of an unnatural sky. Invoking the dual state, I left the confines of the body for the first time, moving over myself along the road, within and without the Cloak, holding the Bane Locket in the hand of my body and routing all that I did, my insinging, the voices of my magic on the hidden levels, all of it through the gem. Even at his most arrogant, whatever further surprise he had made for me here, he would not relish the thought I had it in my hand. But it gave me the feeling that Ellebren was close by, in a place of my mind that I could reach, and the Cloak was the same, as if a wind of Illyn were blowing around me. I made this to be true so all could feel it, even the Verm who were astonished to have a sudden breeze pour on them out of a spring when all the worlds were young.

My task was to carry us as far as the gates of Aerfax, where Kirith Kirin would be welcomed by the Rock; if I could do it, that would be the end of our journey, and we could end the war. But how could the Rock welcome him now? What was Drudaen using in its place to focus the kirilidur? Finding no opposition from the summit of Senecaur, I ruled the skies and tore open the clouds above us, I sent my voice through his Verm soldiers till their nerves shrieked with terror, and with terror alone I drove them back the way they had come, down the road to Aerfax, retreating. I burned like fire in all four circles of magic that I could fill, and in the visible world I was a maelstrom of darkness and fire, whorls of ebony and starlight. I gave myself to Fimbrel, my whole spirit, lost in magic as one can be, when one is lifted, as when music lifts a singer to sing beyond his ability.

The movement of so much force through the spirit carries with it an inherent exhilaration, and I could hardly contain a feeling of joy. I doubt I could have contained myself in that moment, and I imagine Drudaen had thought of that as well.

The Verm had their orders, they retreated. Kirith Kirin’s army, moving with expected discipline and in good order, rounded the shore under clear skies and lightened rain. The Verm withdrew, and withdrew, and finally held.

At the last moment Kirith Kirin sense a trap and adjusted more of the archers toward the rocks.

Without warning, Verm poured out of the mountain flanks, protected by a hail of arrows, trying to pin us to the road. Our own archers were ready for the charge and the infantry protecting them held against the first charge.

Far ahead, emerging from the gates of Aerfax, a white-clocked figure cantered toward the Verm, to protect them from me. Another of Drudaen’s apprentices? How many more could there be?

Above, suddenly, and not by my hand, the clouds ripped free of Senecaur’s summit and the fierce light of the High Place burned over the mountains and the sea.

He had taken the Rock out of conjunction with the Tower. The great Rock that had ruled the Change through all the thirty-four cycles since Senecaur was made. To do this was to shatter the Law, to defy God. Suddenly, with the complete clarity that could only come by his permission, I could see the figure on the High Place, standing in place of the Rock, a living focus for all the energy of the Tower, and could hear the Ildaruen song with which the height was ruled.

The voice reached through me, every fiber of me, and I made some incomprehensible sound. My mother stood where the Rock should have been, straddling the silver horns of the socket, wrapped in a white cloak like all the rest, like the woman who had killed her children. He had glutted her body with his song and her eyes shone like white ice. He had saved her for this, trained her, and Ildaruen flowed from her throat, from her insinging, in waves. He had removed the Eyestone and focused the Tower through her body. Any living thing is as good a focus as a muuren stone, or even a better one, for the magic, but the creature will die after a short while, whereas the stone will last.

Mother must have had a talent for the work, she held all the levels herself but the fourth, which is enough when one is proxy. He controlled her from the fourth circle, his mind divided. Her malice I could feel, as though she knew who I was and hated me all the more for it, and I felt the hurt race through me. Sybil my mother, alive after so many months of torment, all brought about because of me. She was the tool Drudaen would use to break me.

She was singing to confine me on the road, and I knew how to break the magic she was making but she was my mother, I could not lift my voice.

The white figure, still riding slowly along the Kleeiom road, was coming across the closer causeway.

That was him, Drudaen Keerfax. He had invented a way to be on the ground and in the air at the same time. Why?

He had disabled the part of the Tower that ruled the Change, he had been about this work for a long time and had hidden it completely, but it had only recently been accomplished and ripples of disturbance flowed outward, beyond the fourth circle; he had taken a great chance. There could only be one reason.

From the road behind raged the battle between our army and his, and in that battle we were holding our ground. But on the road and in the skies we were beaten. Turning Nixva, my mind racing, I calculated the time left me in which to act.

Behind me, distant on the road, the wizard my enemy guessed my thought and summoned speed.

He had come to the ground for one purpose, and his first reaching toward that goal followed, ripping aside my local defenses with help from the High Place, now awake in all its strength. He could not hide his thought from me, and I understood that with the Rock out of focus, the Karnost gems would not protect Kirith Kirin and Drudaen could kill him. Drudaen sought within the ranks of the soldiers and noblefolk for the one who was his true target, and I knew that in an instant he had come to do the unthinkable, the last crime left him. He wasted no time and reached, as I had guessed, for Kirith Kirin himself.

I rode through the ranks like a mad thing, searching for the Keikin. I deflected part of Drudaen’s thought but my mother in the tower focused the whirling of the kirilidur on me and I was inflamed with an agony that raced through my nerves, unable to channel it elsewhere, racked. But I saw Kirith Kirin now, near the head of the mounted soldiers. When I got close I could see he was feeling the change in himself, and seemed to expect me. He waved his hand to greet me and panic forewarned me; another blow fell then, a wave of that singing in my head, a tearing of nerves, and silence. Dazed, I hardly saw. Summoning other vision, I guided Nixva through the panicked crowd.

With half my mind bent on fending off any further blow from Drudaen, I leapt down from Nixva and shouted a warning they could have heard over a thunderclap. Everyone fell back but Imral, who continued to kneel over Kirith Kirin, a moment of calm in the fighting.

He lay unmoving on the ground. Imral knelt over him, touching his neck. I felt life in him; he was not dead, though a mortal man would have been. The Karnost gems were shadowed, useless, and he would scarcely survive another wave.