When the Heavens Fall (31 page)

“Consel,” the king said, slamming his saber into its scabbard. “It is time.”

Garat did not answer. He glared at the enemy with an expression of such venom that Ebon thought he intended to charge them. His eyes were darting all the time, first along the line of approaching swordsmen, then to the darkness beyond them, then to the city gates, and finally back to the enemy.

Fifty paces.

Still, he made no move to retreat.

Forty paces.

“Consel,” Ebon snapped. “We are within spear range.”

Only then did Garat yank on his horse's reins and steer the animal through the gates. Ebon followed him inside.

The wooden gates creaked as they shut behind him.

The marketplace was lit by dozens of torches, and the streets leading off it had been sealed off by cordons of Pantheon Guardsmen. The air was filled with the cries of the wounded, the bawling of officers, the stamping of horses. A short distance away the soldiers of Grimes's troop were dismounting, calling out responses to their sergeant's bellowed questions. Among the Guardsmen a destrier was down on its knees, coughing blood to the cobbles. One of the soldiers drew his sword and knelt beside it.

Ebon looked away.

The surviving Sartorians had gathered to his left, and a blue-robed Royal Physician was moving among them. The consel's first adviser, Pellar Hargin, sat with his back to a wall, his eyes glazed, flinching as the enemy began pounding on the city gates. The consel's four armored warriors were there too, along with Garat's sorceress. She must have sensed Ebon's attention because she turned to stare at him. He inclined his head in greeting, but she did not return the gesture.

Swinging down from his saddle, he passed the destrier's reins to a waiting Guardsman.

“Here,” a voice called.

The king turned to see Vale leaning against the guardhouse wall, honing the edge of his longsword with a whetstone. He sheathed his blade as Ebon approached. “You left it late,” the Endorian said.

“I lost you out there.”

“I didn't lose you.”

The king watched as six men struggled to lower a crossbeam into position across the gates. “Casualties?”

“Four we know about. Few more unaccounted for.”

“And the Sartorians?”

Vale snorted. “It's a miracle any of them survived. Half the consel's company are servants and diplomats. Why in Shroud's name did he keep them out there so long?”

“Have you forgotten what he said in the throne room? ‘I think we can take care of ourselves,' wasn't it?”

The Endorian's expression had a haunted cast to it. “Aye, but against an enemy like that…”

He did not need to finish the thought. In Ebon's mind's eye he saw again the faces of the foes he had struck down. So like the Vamilians in his dream, both in dress and countenance. Impossible, of course … yet it would explain why the spirits had reacted as they had when he attacked the strangers.
Like they were protecting their own.
If Mottle was to be believed, though, the Vamilians had died out millennia ago. Something these assailants had shown no sign of doing.

Vale caught Ebon's eye and nodded at something over his shoulder. The king followed his gaze to see Garat prowling among his kinsmen shouting questions. Questions that seemed to be going unanswered. With a command for Ambolina to accompany him, he strode toward the guardroom.

“I want to see this,” Ebon said. With Vale a step behind, he followed the Sartorians inside and up the stairwell.

By the time he reached the battlements, Garat was already squinting over the parapet. A great host of the enemy had gathered at the base of the wall. A score of them were beating at the gates with their fists, while yet more attackers were scrambling at the wall in a futile effort to climb. At any other time Ebon might have found the sight amusing.

Reynes stood where the king had left him. Mottle was with the general, together with Sergeant Ketes and another officer Ebon did not recognize. There was a stunned note to the silence of the assembled Pantheon Guardsmen. Like the silence that followed a defeat in battle, yet the sortie had gone as well as Ebon could have hoped. The archers had stopped firing and were now staring down at the enemy, their faces pale in the light from the flaming beacon.

“Reynes,” Ebon said, joining the general. “What news from the other walls?”

Reynes spat over the battlements. “Same story to the north and south, your Majesty, though it seems there's more of the bastards here than at the other gates. They've started circling east. Another quarter-bell and we'll be surrounded.”

“You have sent out messengers, I trust?”

“Aye, to Culin and Kolamin. The garrison at Jagel should also see our beacons.”

Unless the village has already fallen.
“Mottle, what can you sense on the Currents? Is ours the only city under attack?”

The mage gave no indication he had heard. He was gazing out over the hordes with a look of childlike wonder.

“Mottle!”

“Majestic, is it not!” the old man breathed. “Such power, my boy! A shroud of sorcery envelops this dread host.”

“What kind of sorcery?”

“Why, death-magic, of course. An army of the undead, yes?” The old man drew himself up. “It is as Mottle predicted. A storm, he said. A convergence of fell powers. This land is stained in the blood of countless generations. Ancient peoples, civilizations long fallen and now risen again.”

“Ancient civilizations,” Reynes said, “would be naught but bones by now.”

“Reanimated, the Vamilians have been. Clothed in flesh, if not in life—”

Reynes's snort cut him off. “Save your stories for the campfire, old man.”

Mottle cocked his head. “Does the general mistrust the evidence of his own eyes? Perhaps he has another explanation for what besets us.”

Vale spoke. “I speared one of them, Reynes.” He tapped his chest over the heart. “Left a hole in him as big as my fist. The bastard just got up again.”

Mottle nodded. “What is dead already cannot die.”

The general made to speak, but Ebon raised a hand to silence him. He looked down on the undead army. The glow from the tower's beacon extended a stone's throw from the guardhouse. Within the light were scores of Vamilians along with two dozen Sartorians and even three red-cloaked Pantheon Guardsmen—members of Grimes's troop, no doubt, who had fallen in the ride to the camp. In the darkness beyond, however, Ebon could make out only shadows. “Mottle,” he said. “How many are we dealing with here?”

“A good question, my boy. Alas, Mottle's arts cannot—”

“You are an air-mage, are you not? Part these clouds and let us see what the moon shows us.”

The old man blinked. “Mottle was just about to suggest—”

He was interrupted by a shout from the consel. “Sorceress!” Garat called to Ambolina. “I see him! There, among the rabble.” He was pointing into the ranks of the enemy.

When the dark woman replied, her voice was as deep as Garat's. “He was struck down, Consel. I saw his head caved in.”

“Then where is the wound? I see none upon him.”

“He is dead. Most likely he has been raised by the same power that animates these others. Why else do the undead not attack him?”

“Maybe I should send you down there to ask them.”

Mottle cleared his throat. “Perhaps Mottle may assist in resolving this unsightly altercation. If the consel would indicate the man in question…”

Garat stared at him for a few heartbeats before turning back to the plains. “There,” he said, pointing. “The boy in Sartorian colors.”

Boy?
Ebon could see him now—a spotty youth with brown hair, several ranks back from the walls.
Ah yes, Falin, the consel's brother. I had forgotten.

“Simply done,” Mottle said. He gestured with one hand, and the boy was plucked from the ground and lifted to the battlements. Ebon retreated to make space.

Falin's skin was a ghastly gray hue but for patches of dried blood across his forehead and cheeks. As soon as his feet touched down on the fortifications he sprang at the nearest figure—the consel—his fingers curled into claws. Garat's backhand blow caught him on the chin and sent him sprawling. Falin was back on his feet in an instant. Ambolina stepped in and seized his wrists. The boy thrashed in her grip, but the sorceress simply lifted him into the air and held him a handspan above the ground. Ebon wondered at her strength to keep him dangling there.

“Rope, damn you!” Reynes said to the soldiers round him. His cinderhound barked excitedly.

An archer came forward with an arrow string that he used to tie the boy's wrists together. Ambolina then lowered him to the battlements again. Falin struggled against his bindings, the cord quickly cutting through his flesh to the bone. The youth's arrival was drawing a crowd of Pantheon Guardsmen, but Reynes's order sent them scurrying back to their stations.

“Falin,” Garat said. “Can you hear me?” There was no grief in his tone, only anger. When Falin did not respond, the consel struck him across the face. “Answer me!”

“I hear you,” the youth replied, his voice barely a whisper.

“Why, Falin? Why would you attack me? Why would you join our enemies?”

“I'm sorry, I can't … I tried to resist…”

“Resist? Resist what? What are you talking about?”

It was Ambolina who answered. “All life has left him, Consel, yet his soul remains chained to his flesh by a power the like of which I have never seen before.”

Mottle clapped his hands together. “A thread of death-magic, yes? Connecting the boy to whatever power has resurrected—”

“Someone is controlling him?” Garat cut in.

“Like a puppet's strings, yes?”

The consel swung back to the boy. “Who? Who is behind this?”

“I—I do not know.”

“Lies!” Garat struck him again.

“Please—”

“Silence!”

Ebon stepped forward. He had been intending to offer the consel his condolences, but it seemed that was not necessary. “What happened to you, Falin? At the camp.”

The boy fixed him with his corpse-empty gaze. “I remember a spear…,” he said, raising his bound hands to his forehead. There was no mark on his skin where he indicated. “I felt blood in my eyes. Falling … There were shadows round me. A gateway of bones. Then something seized me like when I was lifted onto this wall.”

A heavy silence followed his words. Ebon caught Mottle's eye. “Snatched from the threshold to Shroud's realm? What power could do this, mage?”

The old man's eyes glittered. “To keep from death's Lord what is rightfully his? Only a power to rival the gods.”

“But the force that holds him—a thread, you called it…”

“Precisely. A most remarkable construction. Magical energies are by their nature resistant to the imposition of order, yet the sorcery that holds the boy is breathtaking in its mastery, brilliant in its—”

“Where does it lead?” Ebon said.

“Why, to the forest, of course.”

“Can it be broken?”

Ambolina spoke. “That would serve only to release his soul.” She turned to Garat. “Shroud would then claim him. The boy cannot be brought back.”

“Do it,” Garat responded without hesitation.

“As you wish.”

“Not here.” The consel was already spinning away. “Bring him.”

Ebon held up a hand. “Wait. Mottle, go with them.”

Garat said, “That will not be necessary.”

“Nevertheless, we should work together in this…”

The consel paid him no mind. Guardsmen sprang from his path as he strode to the steps to the guardroom. Behind him, Ambolina hoisted the boy over her shoulder and made to follow. As she entered the stairwell, Falin's head struck the stone lintel.

Ebon stared after them. He had known better than to expect thanks from the consel for his rescue at the camp, but still he'd hoped having a shared enemy might have given them common cause on which a partnership could be founded. Not so, it seemed.

To the east a beacon was being lit in one of the towers on the opposite side of the city. The wind tugged so hard at the flames Ebon thought for a moment they would be extinguished. Then the fire took hold and the beacon blazed into life. In the distance a handful of tents in the consel's camp continued to burn.

Reynes spoke suddenly, his voice urgent. “Your Majesty. Seems to me whoever brought the boy back could do the same to ours. We'd best keep an eye on our wounded.”

 

C
HAPTER
10

S
OMEWHERE THE
Spider would be laughing.

On arriving in the Forest of Sighs, Romany soon found that the goddess had deposited her even farther from Estapharriol than last time, and as a result she'd spent half a day wading through muck and leaves piled ankle-high on the forest floor. It seemed as if winter had come to the forest while she had been away, for the branches of the trees were bare. The threads of death-magic were everywhere, drawing the life force from every trunk, every knot of nettleclaw, every blade of grass. Did Mayot even know the effect the Book of Lost Souls was having on the forest?
Such indiscipline!
Power unleashed without thought as to the consequences, but what else had she expected from the old man?

Ahead a bough of one of the ketar trees fell, sending leaves swirling into the air. It was only as the echoes of that noise faded that the priestess became aware of the eerie silence hanging over the forest. She paused to listen.
Nothing.
No birdsong, no chittering from those loathsome ruskits, not even the whine of a needlefly—Romany had never imagined she would come to miss
that
sound. And the air! It made her eyes water and left a bitter taste at the back of her throat as if she were inhaling the foul haze of the leper pits in Mercerie. Worse still, it had spoiled her wine! Having waited a full sixth of a bell to quench her thirst, she had removed the cork to discover the acrid tang of vinegar. Such a deplorable waste! It took her most of the evening to walk off her outrage.