The Gathering Storm (92 page)

Its slit nose opens and closes as if sniffing. It speaks in a voice almost too low to hear, and the words sound oddly formed, too round and too flat, because its mouth and throat are not meant to voice human sounds. Yet they are able to speak the language of RockChildren.

“We have come in answer to your summons.”

“So you have, and I thank you.”

“What do you want, Stronghand? We give to you aid. Food, you give to us. What do you want from us now?”

“I have heard a rumor that your people can swim upriver into fresh water. That you are not confined to the sea.”

It made no reply.

“If I had known that, I could have asked your people to be scouts. If I had a more efficient way to summon you, we could work together in this.”

“What more can you give us?” it asks.

“What do you want?”

Their reply comes in a hum so low that at first no words can be distinguished, but the pebbles all along the shoreline vibrate and actually begin to roll, grinding one against the other, slipping and shifting. Rocks tumble down from the high rock columns all around them and crash into the waters. Wind screams through the rocky inlet as the storm shoulders in. Rain falls in sheets, so cold and sharp that it opens a tiny cut on Erling’s cheek as he hunkers down, drawing his cloak over his face for shelter.

“Revenge.”

“He’s blind and mute, Captain.”

“Is he deaf, too?” Laughter followed. Men might laugh at drowning animals in such a way, not caring for their suffering but amused by their struggles.

He became aware of smells and noises and a cold draft rising up from below, the breath of the pit.

Where was he? How had he come here?

Distantly a hound barked, but the laughing man’s voice drowned it out.

“All the better, Foucher. We’ll put him on the deepest wheel where it will make no difference if he can see or no. No need for chains. Rope will do for him. How’s he to escape if he’s blind?”

“Are you sure he can work? He looks soft in the head.”

“He looks strong enough to me.”

“If he’s too stupid to know what to do?”

The laughter sounded again, this time mixed with the smell
of onions that flavored the man’s breath. “Prod him like a beast. He’ll figure it out. Walk and he’s let be. Stop and he’s whipped.”

“I hate you.”

The comment caused a stir. He heard men whisper all around him. They were too many to keep voices straight, but their fear had a prickling scent that needled his skin.

“God Above, we’ll need chains for that one,” said the one called Captain. “They call him Robert. He’s got an ugly look in his eye. We’ll put him down with the blind mute. What the one can’t see and hear, the other can’t make trouble with.”

“You think the blind lad will last a week with that madman, Captain? He’ll get shoved off the treadmill. He’ll get et alive.”

“They’re all dead men anyway, Foucher. What are you worrying for?”

“The duke is displeased we didn’t meet our quota last year.”

“Due to the flooding. These wheels should fix that.”

“With all the troubles in the border country and the civil war in Salia, the duke wants more this year. More iron. More weapons.”

“Then get them down there and to work! What else did you bring me?”

“Criminals. The usual ruffians and wandering good-for-nothings. Thieves, mostly. I’ve sent them to the quarry master.”

“We may need more in the shafts to clear out those two rockfalls.”

“Better them than us. I fear that whispering, I don’t mind telling you, Captain.”

“I won’t send you down into the deep shafts, Foucher. You’ve served me well. Your bones won’t be gnawed by the goblins!” He laughed again, so hearty a sound that were it not for the comment that had preceded it one might be tempted to join in.

Such cues gave him, the one called Silent, little enough to go on. The haft of a spear or staff prodded him in the buttocks, and he stumbled forward as the men around him roared to see his confusion. He was pushed to the brink of an open hole out
of which air poured with a sharp, dry scent that he had smelled before.

What memory teased him?

Creatures scuffling in the dark.

He brushed his fingers over the bronze armband, his only possession, and images flared like lamplight illuminating a black cavern:

He drags Kel and Beor back from the brink of a gaping fissure while a searing wind rushing up from the abyss stings his eyes. His beloved Adica lives, and they have rescued her from the Ashioi, who stand cursing them on the other side of the fissure. In the shadows beyond the shifting light, skrolin chatter in whispering voices as they vanish into the rock. The bronze armband throbs against the skin of his upper arm; when darkness falls, it lights with the uncanny gleam of magic.

“Get on!”

A hand cuffed him on the ear—out of nowhere—right where it was swollen. The pain shattered inside his skull and broke his memory into a thousand shards.

“Go on! Set your foot on the rung. There. There! What a fool!”

“Go easy on the man, Foucher. He can’t help he’s blind.”

“Maybe so. Maybe not.”

“What’s that armband he’s wearing? It looks valuable.”

“Master Richard warned me of that. He said it burns any man who touches it.”

“Does it?”

“If you’d seen the look on his greedy face, you’d have believed him, too. I say we can wait and take it off him when he dies.”

“I wonder …” mused the Captain, but their voices faded as he descended into a clamor of rumbling and cracking and echoes.

A wooden rung slipped under his questing foot. He found purchase and climbed down, because he had no other place to go. Others led him, passing him from one hand to another down a shaft and down a second until it seemed the rock itself pressed around him, whispering of its age and of this violation of its secret parts. Now again he smelled burning oil
and a gasp of smoke. Once he slipped into a ditch full of streaming water.

At length they chained him to stand on a curved wood walkway that was a huge wheel. They prodded him until he realized that they wanted him to walk and, by walking, turn the wheel beneath him. Water gurgled and sloshed, riding up from the depths and spilling away in a rush above him. The steady groan and rumble of other wheels turned above him under the tread of other feet.

He walked, chains rattling, and after a time got the hang of it, more sure of his footing, not fearing that he would stumble and fall and plunge endlessly into the darkness that lay everywhere around him. The wood slats of the wheel slid smoothly beneath his feet, worn down by the countless measured steps of the hapless slaves who had gone before him.

Had they died here, too?

Yet he found it so hard to think because his head hurt. It never stopped hurting.

It was easier just to walk.

After a very long time, they unchained him and led him to a hollow in whose confines he smelled the sweet gangrene scent of mad Robert. Curses echoed through the darkness as the madman was chained into the place he had just left. Here on this hard rock he was allowed to sleep, although Robert’s ravings chased him through troubled dreams.

They woke him, fed him gruel, prodded him up, and chained him once more to the wheel where he walked again, forever, silent and in darkness.

“THERE,” said Marcus. “That is what we seek.”

The ruins of Kartiako boggled Zacharias. Never had he seen such magnificence so spoiled. They walked half the morning away from the garden city of Qahirah into lands that ceased bearing life across a line so stark that on one side irrigated
fields grew green and on the other, beyond the last ditch, lay bare ground. On three hills rising on the promontory that overlooked the sea rose the remains of a great city, now vandalized and tumbled into a shambles that nevertheless left those who approached it gaping in wonder at the columns and archways, the broken aqueducts and fallen walls, the intricate layout of a grand city that had once ruled the Middle Sea

“You’re looking the wrong way,” said Marcus to Zacharias as their party turned aside from the dusty path that led across the barren flats toward the hills and the city. Grit kicked up by the mules clouded the air. The locals hired by Sister Meriam pulled the ends of their turbans across their faces to protect themselves from the stinging dust. “That way. Do you see?”

That way lay a low hill outside the crumbled wall that had once ringed Kartiako and, beyond it, the crumpled ridgelines of rugged country, rock and sand and not a trace of living things. On that hill bones stuck up from the hillside, but as they came closer, he recognized that these were rude columns set in an elongated circle. The flatland disguised the distance; they walked with salty grit in their teeth for the rest of the morning and did not come to the base of the hill until after midday. A narrow trail snaked up to the crest, and Zacharias blinked twice before he realized that the dark creature scuttling down the track was no insect but a man dressed in black desert robes and grasping a staff.

“Not one stone has fallen,” said Meriam.

The innkeeper had hired out his eldest son to guide them to the ruins, and this young man gestured for silence. He knelt, and the other locals knelt, heads bowed, as the old man of the hill halted before them. The robes he wore covered all but his eyes and hands.

He spoke in a surprisingly deep bass voice for one so small of stature. Meriam translated.

“Who are these honored ones? What do they wish, to come to this holy spot? I am guardian here. I can answer their questions.”

“I admit I am curious why the stone circle lies in good repair,” said Marcus. “All of the others we have found needed at least one stone raised to complete the circle.”

By no means could Zacharias interpret any emotion in the
old man’s stance or face, because both were hidden. His eyes gave away nothing, narrowing now and again as Meriam put Marcus’ questions to him and added, no doubt, a few explanations of her own.

When she finished, they waited in silence as the caretaker considered. Far away, beyond the dusty flats, green fields shimmered like a mirage.

“Come.”

“What did you tell him?” Marcus asked as they climbed the hill with their retinue walking behind them. Meriam rode one of the mules, led by a manservant.

“That we have come to see the crowns. He is an educated man. In this region, most of the people speak the local language and few have been educated in the priests’ tongue. That he can speak it as well as he does means he knows more than we might otherwise imagine. He is no ordinary caretaker, sweeping and fussing. Be cautious. Be respectful.”

Marcus snorted.

“If you are not minded to respect him because he is an infidel, Brother, then I pray you be polite for my sake.”

“Very well, Sister. For your sake. I have no trust in the education of infidels.”

“You must bide among them many months more, Marcus. Beware that your arrogance does not provoke them to turn on you.”

He chuckled. “I will be discreet, and silent where I see fault.”

As they reached the crest of the hill, the wind off the barrens began blowing in earnest, and Zacharias was pleased to imitate the Jinna hirelings by covering his mouth and nose with cloth to keep out the dust. He had never tasted anything so salty, mixed with grit that ground between his teeth. Up on the hilltop they could see through the haze as far west as Qahirah and northwest to the bones of Kartiako.

The old man strode into the center of the circle, opening his arms and turning slowly to encompass the entire scene. As he spoke, Meriam translated.

“You wonder why this holy place lies not in ruins. That is because the Jinna magi have kept it in repair. It is a holy spot.
An ancient battle was fought here, a great battle against the invaders, the Cursed Ones.”

“Can it be that the story has lived so long among the infidels?” Marcus asked.

“Hush,” said Meriam. “I wish to hear what he has to say.”

The old man walked to the eastern slope of the hill where it tumbled away sharply into a hollow that then folded up into the barren rock ridges that ran all the way to the eastern horizon. The nearest ridge side was pockmarked with holes.

“Down beneath the hills lie caves. The old ones lived there in the ancient days for a time, but now it is all ruins. Cursed. They worshiped idols and sacrificed children.”

The old man looked each one of them in the eye, as if delving for evil. Zacharias started back when that gaze met his; all his sins seemed to swarm up out of him, naked in the light. But without flinching the old man looked away to examine Marcus, and then Elene, and finally Meriam.

He nodded. “All of these abominations Astareos enjoins us from committing according to the laws of heaven. Do you respect the laws of heaven?”

“Ai, God, Meriam, does he expect us to swear some heathen oath? We worship God in the proper manner. I will not suffer his maundering further, if you please. If the stone crown needs no repair, then there is no reason we cannot make our final calculations tonight and send you and Elene on your way tomorrow evening. The heavens will not slow their workings to accommodate our human frailties. There is much to do—and less time than we need, less than eighteen months until the day we have so long prepared for.”

“Do not be hasty, Marcus. What he knows may be of value to us when we least expect it.”

But although she spoke to the old man for another hour at least, in the end she admitted to Marcus that she had learned nothing beyond local legends of monsters, sandstorms, and lost caverns filled with eyeless snakes. The servants set up tents to shelter them from the winds, and as dusk came, the air quieted, the haze settled, and the stars shone with such brilliance that they looked close enough to reach up and steal.

Marcus took his stylus and wax tablet and sat cross-legged upon the ground, on a blanket, with a lamp burning at his right
hand. He scrawled hasty calculations across the surface of the tablet before wiping it clean, muttering all the while.