The Fifth Vertex (The Sigilord Chronicles) (19 page)

"Why?"

"So they can escape," Murin said without further explanation.

Corliss looked up and wiped the sweat from his brow, the only time Urus had seen him sweat, despite the oppressive heat in the city.

"We're almost there," he said.

They trudged on in silence until finally they reached a metal hatch. It took both Murin and Corliss to push it open.
 

They filed out onto a small plateau of rough white stone just below the mountain's summit. Urus stood up, stretched, and sucked in the cool air. At this altitude, the cool, dry air was much easier to breathe and certainly smelled a lot better than it did in the city.
 

Strong winds buffeted them from all sides, the churning currents swirling constantly around the summit.
 

"What do you expect to see from up here?" Urus asked.

"Nothing," Corliss said with a grin. "This is where we will jump."

Urus swallowed hard. "Jump?"

Corliss pointed at a pair of wooden trunks behind the hatch they had come through. "Each of you put on a windrunner cloak. Make sure you fasten the cords tightly around your wrists and ankles. If one of those slips off while you're gliding, you'll make for one hell of a stain on the forest floor."

Urus put his on first, a little disappointed that the smallest cloak was the one that fit the best. The cloak felt clumsy, and he was sure he appeared ridiculous in his Kestian leathers with a black cloak that looked like cloth stretched over a spiderweb.

"I think it works like a bat's wing," Cailix said, fastening the straps of her cloak.

"From a really big, ugly bat," Goodwyn joked. No one else laughed.

"Remember when I told you we teach our cadets to glide by pushing them off the perch? I wasn't joking," Corliss said, flapping his arms to demonstrate how to make the cloak billow out in the wind behind him.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Urus asked.

Corliss turned around, showing off the back of his cloak. It shone bright yellow, glittering in the darkness like a lamp.

"Sunstone!" Urus and Goodwyn exclaimed.

Corliss nodded. "It costs us a fortune to import from Ehmshahr. They mine it in Tanis and ship it out of Blackport to us in bricks. We crush it into a powder and use it in the dye for the outside of the cloak. You'll be able to follow me as I descend, while I will still appear as nothing more than a shadow to those on the ground."
 

"That's brilliant," said Urus, marveling at the workmanship and thought that had gone into the cloak. "In Kest, the central buildings and walkways are made of sunstone so they light up at night without torches."

"You have entire
buildings
made of sunstone? Now
that
is truly amazing," said Corliss. "When we're done with this terrible business, I would give everything I have to see a sight like that."

"Speaking of this terrible business," Murin interjected, "I assume you have some sort of plan?"

"Almost at the bottom of the mountain, a short distance from the road, there is a flat mound of earth that juts up from the forest floor. The forest is covered with them, but this one will give us the perfect vantage point to get a closer look at our enemies."

"You really expect us to be able to fly from this perch down to a hill without killing ourselves?" Goodwyn asked.

"Yes." Corliss said, "It's easier than it looks. If you spread your arms and legs wide, you will glide slowly down. Lean or roll in the direction you want to go, hug yourself with your arms to drop like a stone."

"Why would you want to do that?" Cailix asked.

"When there are invaders on the road, that's how we attack them."

Urus and Goodwyn gave each other a look. Their first encounter with the Waldron cadets had been less than impressive, and they had mistakenly assumed that everyone in Waldron was as bad at combat as those boys. Imagining Corliss and his men diving a few thousand feet and attacking at that speed gave Urus a newfound admiration for them. They might have a different way of fighting than the Kestians, but it could be just as effective.

"We should be looking for the vertex, not wasting our time with a scouting mission," Murin said.

"Your concern may be with some magical trinket, but mine is with the safety of my people. I need to find out what we're up against so I know how to prepare. If you really feel like your time would be better spent elsewhere, then you are welcome to go back down the stairs."

Murin frowned but didn't move.

"As soon as I jump, each of you will also jump," Corliss instructed. "The safest thing for you to do is mimic my every move; roll and tilt the way I roll and tilt. Don't think about the height or your speed, just focus on the back of my cloak."

Everyone nodded, though Urus was already focusing on the height. He knew how fast one could fall from the top of even a small building like a palace, but falling from the summit of a mountain, that was just madness. Calix, to his annoyance, seemed eager and excited.

"Everyone step up to the edge here," Corliss said.

Urus moved to the edge and peered down into a deep abyss of dark blue and black shadows barely illuminated by the full moon. The last time he stood at a precipice like this, he'd been ready to end it all and hoped he would not survive. Now he looked down and feared death. He wanted to live; he wanted to live to see his uncle again, to help prevent Waldron from suffering the same fate as Kest, to find out more about his power and if it could be used without hurting people.

"Just one question," he said to Corliss. "Once we get down there and we've gotten a look at the enemy, how are we going to get back up here?"

"Trust me, I know the way back up. As I said, we do this all the time," Corliss replied. "Ready?" He waited for a few nods, then spun and leapt from the edge of the cliff.

Urus watched as the Knight Marshall spread his arms and legs wide, the sunstone-imbued cloak blooming into a wide yellow circle that shrank rapidly until moments later he was little more than a yellow dot like a firefly flitting about.
 

Murin jumped next, then Goodwyn. He looked over at Cailix, unsure if he should go first, but she made the decision for him and jumped first. He stared at the descending fireflies, petrified with fear.
 

He took a deep breath, bent his knees, then pushed off, leaping into the air thousands of feet above the ground, certain that he was doing the single most foolish thing he had done in his life.

As he fell he wanted to flail, to swing and flap his arms about as panic set in. Finally he gritted his teeth, locked his knees and elbows and spread them as wide as he could. The cloak billowed and jerked against his limbs as it caught the wind.
 

He could barely see Cailix below him, but he could make out enough to tell when she tilted or spun to one side or the other. Heeding Corliss's advice, he ignored the wind blasting into his face, the feeling of his last meal struggling to work its way back up out of his stomach, and focused only on the yellow light of Cailix's cloak.

He fell for so long that he worried they must have missed the ground somehow and were falling into hell itself. For a few blissful seconds, he felt he was flying like a bird. It was exhilarating, while it lasted.

Just as he felt his resolve waver and the urge to flap his arms and panic returned, several yellow lights appeared out of the darkness below.
 

The lights formed a circle, and as Cailix landed below him in the center of the circle, her light moved to the outside as well. They were guiding him in to land on the mound, illuminating a landing circle with their cloaks.

He twisted and angled his way into the circle, still unable to see anything but the lights. He saw the grass with just enough warning to get his hands and knees out in front of him, ploughing into the dirt.

Hands grabbed his shoulders and legs as he rolled, picking him up and keeping him from dropping off the edge of the mound. He looked around, seeing the same look of elation on their faces that he felt within. Once he'd gotten over the fear from the fall and relaxed, he really had felt like a bird.

"That was amazing," Goodwyn signed, dropping to his knees. He motioned for Urus to do the same. Everyone crouched except Corliss who lay on his stomach facing the campfires, fires that erupted from everywhere in the dark forest below. There were hundreds of them, huge bonfires fueled by freshly felled trees from the smell of them.

"Except for the part where we almost died, yes, it was amazing," Urus signed back.

"You seem to be quite the natural flyer," said Murin.

Urus could see that Corliss had started talking, but the Knight Marshal faced the campfires and his mouth was obscured. Urus crawled up next to him, tapped him on the shoulder, and pointed at his ear.

"Oh, sorry," Corliss told him. "I was saying, I've never seen anything like this before. If each of those fires is at the middle of a battalion with the companies circled around, like we would do, then there are easily fifty thousand soldiers in that forest."

"That's not just a single army, that is the entire host of the briene," Murin said. "Every last man, woman, and child would have to be there to mount a force of that size."

"Why would they all come?" Corliss asked.

"The women and children maintain and prep the machines."

"What kind of machines?"

"Look there." Murin pointed past a particularly large fire. Glowing molten red in the moonlight lay a giant sphere with thick steel spokes jutting out of it and all sorts of strange platforms and railings bolted on. "That is just one of their siege engines, powered by steam. The briene likely brought a dozen or more with them."

"There are other kinds of machines, too," said Cailix. "They have winged machines they call buzzwings, chariots that pull themselves with steam-driven wheels, and even more strange weapons for the soldiers. There's also a big golden ball that Anderis had them make just for him."

"What does it do?" Corliss asked.

Cailix shrugged.

"Nothing good," Murin added.

"There's something else," Cailix said. "Try not to kill the briene. Anderis and the blood mages fed them lies to drive them here."

"Lies are their trade, Cailix," Murin said. "War is upon us, there is nothing we can do about it now."

As Urus's eyes adjusted to peering through the moonlight between the fires below, he noticed more details, and worse, more terrible machines and structures.

He focused on giant tubes he saw arrayed on the ground. Little shadowy silhouettes hovered around them like bees tending to a hive.
 
The tubes ran like tentacles from machines of all shapes and sizes, connecting up to huge iron towers.

"What are those towers, the ones with the tubes?" he asked, sitting back on his heels as the others also sat up to face each other.

Murin followed Urus's finger down to the forest floor and stared silently for a moment before answering. "Those towers are supplying fuel to the other war machines. That kind of technology should be beyond the briene. It should be beyond anyone from this world for the next two centuries."

Urus had no idea how to respond to that. Murin seemed more strange every time he spoke. All this talk about three-thousand-year old wars and technology people shouldn't know about was as frightening as it was confusing.

Urus had liked it better when things were simple and clear, when he was just a culled and life was bleak, but predictable. He scanned the towers up and down, following the tubes like the bronze ones that fed the gas lamps in Kest. They ran up the side of the towers and connected to metal casks surrounded by more gears, pulleys, and cables than he could count.

That was when he decided to do something truly foolish.

"I can destroy the fuel towers," he said.

"The hells you can, boy," Corliss replied with a mix of shock and amusement on his face. "Did you not notice the entire nation of enemy soldiers surrounding them?"
 

"I know I can do it," Urus said. "I can get up inside the tower and ruin it. Without the fuel, the machines stop working. It'll be just like clogging the gas lines for the lamps in the palace in Kest."

Corliss stood up, hands on his hips. "It may be possible to bring down one of those towers, but you'll have to get to it without dying first."

Urus wasn't going to back down. "You may think I'm just a kid, but I know I can do this. I know I have a better shot at this than I do fighting on an open battlefield."

Goodwyn stood up next. "Count me in," he signed, then spoke aloud. "If Urus says it can be done, it can. He may not be fast with a sword, but figuring out how things work, that's what he does."

"This is a fool's errand," Corliss said. "You'll never survive and I won't be responsible for your deaths."

"With all due respect, Knight Marshall, you're not responsible for us at all," Urus answered. "If we choose to go on this fool's errand, that's our choice and our right." He forced his gaze high, standing his ground even though part of him wanted to agree with Corliss and go run and hide.

Murin and Cailix rose, Murin with a wide grin on his face, the widest Urus had ever seen on him.

"The boys may have something here," the old man said. "Taking out those fuel towers could cripple their army, and a few quiet warriors in the dead of night stand a better chance than a thousand under the midday sun."

"I'm going too," Cailix said.

Goodwyn held up his palms. "Now hold on just a second; Urus and I can handle this."

"Wyn, she kept me from making a terrible mistake back at the hostel. If she wants to help then I owe her that much," Urus signed.

"I'm not going to get you to change your minds, am I?" asked Corliss.

Urus, Goodwyn, and Cailix all shook their heads.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but you only get one chance to surprise them, so you'll need to take out both fuel towers at once."

Urus looked at Goodwyn, wondering if this was one of those times when he knew what to do ahead of time.