EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (162 page)

Stars damn it.

Kaelyn looked north and south, wings beating, breath rattling in her lungs.

Damn it, what do I do? Do I chase my sister? Do I slay the fabled Shari Cadigus, the cruel commander who killed so many of my men, who tortured me so many times? Or do I fly south to save the boy before the might of the Regime falls upon his city?

Kaelyn roared fire in frustration.

After all these years, she lusted to finally slay her sister. But her own vengeance would have to wait.

“Saving the boy is what matters now,” she said into the darkness. “If the Regime approaches the city at night, or if they’re already there... they will take him. And all hope will fall.” Kaelyn growled at the north where she could still see her sister fleeing. “This is not over, Shari. I will face you again. And next time, my blade will pierce your heart.”

Kaelyn spun in the sky.

She flew south.

She flew to that distant port city. To the boy. To Rune Brewer and to hope.

RUNE

I
T
WAS
THE
LAST
NIGHT
Rune Brewer would see his best friend. He walked beside her along the beach, not sure how to say goodbye.

The moon glowed full overhead, haloed with winter mist. The light shone upon the sea, drawing a path into the black horizon. The waves whispered, their foam limned with moonlight. With every wave, strings of light glimmered, formed new shapes, and faded upon the sand.

“Do you know why I like the sea?” Tilla said softly, watching the waves.

Rune looked at her. The moonlight fell upon her pale face, illuminating high cheekbones, large dark eyes, and lips that rarely smiled. Her hair blew in the breeze, black and smooth and cut the length of her chin. She wore a white tunic, a silvery cloak, and a string of seashells around her neck. She was tall and thin—too thin, Rune thought. They were all too thin here.

“Because it’s always different,” Rune answered.

She turned to look at him. “Yes. Have I told you before?”

He smiled thinly. “Only a hundred times.”

“Oh.” She turned back toward the water. “Tonight the moonlight glows on the foam. Last night the sea was very dark; I couldn’t even see it. Sometimes in the mornings there are many seashells, and the waves are shallow and warm and golden in the dawn. Sometimes the water is deep and the sand clear, and the waves near me are gray, and those far away are green. Sometimes there are crabs on the sand and fish in the water; other times life is hidden. Tomorrow there will be a new sea here.”

Rune heard what she did not add.
But I will not see it. I will be far away.
He wanted to tell her that he would walk here tomorrow, that he would write to her about the water, that someday she might return and see the waves again. But the words would not come to his lips. Somehow speaking about tomorrow felt wrong, felt too sad, too dangerous.

So they only kept walking. Silent. The waves whispered. The remnants of old battles littered the beach: the rotted hull of a ship, wooden planks rising like whale ribs; a cracked cannon where crabs hid; an anchor overgrown with moss; and the shattered sabers of fallen sailors. Old wars. Old memories. Nothing but rot and rust in the sand.

Finally they saw the cliffs ahead, rising black in the night. As children, Rune and Tilla would often play under these cliffs, imagining the old battles fought here. They said that seven hundred years ago Elethor, the legendary king, had fought the tyrant Solina upon these cliffs. They said that the dead still whispered here, their bodies buried under the waves.

Rune and Tilla kept walking. Finally the cliffs loomed to their left. To their right, the waves whispered and raced across the sand. Here they stopped, turned toward the water, and stood still. A cold wind blew from the sea—it was the first moon of winter—and Rune hugged himself.

He smiled. “Tilla, do you remember how we used to play here as children? I always pretended to be King Elethor, and you were the wicked Queen Solina. Remember how we would fight with wooden swords?”

A thin smile touched her lips, but there was no joy to it. “Of course you always made me play the villain.”

He raised his hands in indignation. “You wanted me to play the queen?”

Her smile widened and finally some warmth filled it. “Yes. I did. I think you would have looked nice in a dress.”

He gave her a playful push. She fell back a step and sighed.

They sat in the sand. Rune opened his pack and pulled out a skin of ale—he had brewed it himself—and a wheel of cheese. Tilla’s eyes widened to see it.

“Rune,” she whispered. “Where did you get that?”

He shrugged and winked. “I have my ways.”

Cheese was a luxury these days. Years ago, when Rune had been a child, he remembered eating cheese every day. But since the war had begun and trade died, cheese was rare as gold.

But this night was rare.

This was Tilla’s last night home.

They shared the cheese silently, sitting side by side, watching the waves. They drank the ale. They had eaten here many times, the cliffs to their backs, the waves ahead. They could always talk here for hours, laugh, tell stories, play with the sand, and whisper of all their dreams.

Tonight they ate silently.

When their meal was done, they sat watching the water. Rune wanted to say so many things. He wanted to tell Tilla to be careful. He wanted to tell her that he’d see her again someday. He wanted to say
goodbye
. But his throat still felt so damn tight, and his lips so frozen, and his chest felt wrong, as if his ribs were suddenly too small.

Just say something,
he told himself, staring at the waves.
Just... just make this a good memory for her, tell her stories, or laugh with her, or... stars, don’t just be silent!

He turned toward her, prepared to tell some old joke to break their silence, when he saw a tear on her cheek.

She was not weeping. Her lips did not tremble. Her eyes did not flinch. She only sat there, staring ahead, still and silent like a statue. Only a single tear glimmered on her cheek, not even flowing, just frozen there like part of the sculpture.

“Tilla,” he said softly. “It... will be all right. It—“

She turned toward him, her face like marble in the moonlight.

“No, Rune,” she said. “None of this is all right. None of this has been all right for years.” She looked aside and her fists clenched in her lap. “This stupid, stupid war, and this stupid red spiral, and...” She looked back at him, reached out, and grasped his arm. “It wasn’t always like this, Rune. I know. My father told me. Before the Cadigus family took over, there was trade here. Ships sailed this sea—tall ships from distant lands, ships with huge sails like dragon wings, and they brought cheese to Cadport, and fruits, and silks, and jewels, and my father had work then. He sold so many ropes to those ships. He showed me paintings of them, secret ones he keeps in the cellar. Stars, Rune! Those ships had so many ropes on them. It wasn’t like today when we sell only a few ropes a year to farmers. And your father too, Rune—so many merchants visited his tavern, and they all wanted to taste his brew, and he was wealthy then. Both our families were wealthy; all of Cadport was. Only it wasn’t even called Cadport then. It was called Lynport, and—“

“Tilla!” he said. He placed a finger against her lips. “You know we can’t say that word. We—“

She pulled his finger away. Her eyes flashed. “And why not? Why can’t we speak the old name of our town? Why can’t we look at paintings of ships, but have to hide them? Why can’t we ever say, Rune, that things were better then, that maybe the Cadigus family didn’t help us, that—“

Rune leaped to his feet. “Tilla! Please.”

His heart pounded. Memories flashed through him. Somebody else in Cadport—and stars damn it, it was called Cadport now, like it or not—had once spoken like that. The fool had drunk a few too many ales at the Old Wheel Tavern, which Rune owned with his father. After his tenth drink, the red-faced loomer had begun to blabber about the old days, the one thing you were never to speak of.

“Back then, now, I could sell fabrics all over the world,” he had bragged, teetering as he waved about his mug of ale. “Ships came, picked ‘em up, and I got paid silver. That’s called trade, it is. And no bloody fortress rose on the hill.” He guffawed and spat. “No damn soldiers on every street in Lynport. Yeah, you heard me!” He waved his mug around, spraying ale. “Stand back, scoundrels, I won’t be silent!
Lynport
our town was called then, named after Queen Lyana Aeternum, not after that bloody bastard Cadigus or whatever the Abyss his name is.”

A crowd gathered around him. Wil Brewer, Rune’s father, tried to pull the drunkard back into his seat. Rune himself begged him to be silent. All around, the other townsfolk hissed at the man to sit down.

But the soldiers who drank here did not hiss. They did not beg. They only stared, then rose, then grabbed the drunkard.

Rune never forgot that evening. He never forgot how the drunk loomer had screamed in the city square. He never forgot the
cracks
as the hammers descended. When his bones were broken, the soldiers slung the loomer’s mangled limbs through the spokes of a wagon wheel. They hung that wheel from the courthouse and guarded it. The screams sounded all night, and all the next day, and it was night again before the loomer finally died.

That had been years ago, but tonight Rune still heard those screams. When he looked at Tilla, he could still hear those bones crack.

“Tilla, please,” he whispered. “Please.”

Her chest rose and fell. Her eyes still flashed. But when he held her hands, she let out a long sigh, and the flames in her eyes died, and she lowered her head.

“Rune,” she whispered.

Her hands were warm in his, calloused from the ropes she wove. She had long, pale fingers that Rune could not imagine gripping a sword. How could this young woman, a mere ropemaker, his best friend, pick up weapons and go to war? They had played with wooden swords here many times, but this was real, and this stung his eyes and squeezed his chest.

“Rune,” she whispered again. “Rune, I’m scared.”

Tilla had been his friend all his life, and Rune had spent countless hours playing, laughing, and talking with her, yet he had never—not once—embraced her. Today he pulled her into his arms, and he held her, and she was warm against him, and he stroked her hair and marveled at its softness.

“I know, Tilla,” he said. “I’m scared too. But it will be fine. I promise you, Tilla. Everything will be fine.”

He was lying. She knew he was lying; he was sure of that. But it was what she needed to hear now, and so Rune repeated it, again and again, holding her close as the waves whispered.

“It can’t happen twice to one family, right, Rune?” She looked at him with her large dark eyes, and suddenly she was no longer eighteen, a solemn young woman, but a child again. “It’s impossible, right?”

He squeezed her hands. “You’ll be safe, Tilla. The Resistance is small now; most of the resistors are dead. You won’t have to fight. You’ll train a lot, and you’ll learn how to use a sword, but it will just be training. The war is dying down.”

Rune still remembered the funeral. Five years ago, when the rebellion against the Cadigus family had flared, many of Cadport’s people had been pulled out of workshops and farms, thrust into the army, and sent off to fight. Tilla’s brother had been one of them. They had not heard from him for three years. Then one winter morning, soldiers from the north arrived in Cadport, carrying the young man in a coffin.

Hundreds had come to the funeral, Rune remembered. They had covered the cemetery, weeping and praying, and stars, how Tilla’s parents cried. Even Rune cried that day. Only Tilla did not shed tears. She stood silent and still that day, staring at the coffin as they lowered it underground. Since then, she had rarely smiled and perhaps never laughed.

But it won’t happen twice in one family,
Rune told himself.
Tilla is eighteen now, and she will be a soldier, and she will train in some distant cold fort, but she will live. And someday, even if it’s years from now, I will see her again.

“Rune,” she said, “do you think maybe... maybe in a few moons, when you’re eighteen too, you might end up in the same fort?” She gave him a crooked smile. “Wouldn’t that be something?”

He snorted a laugh. “There are only... what, about a hundred million forts in the empire?”

She shook her head and sighed. “Not that many, Rune. Not that many. Let’s pretend, okay? Let’s pretend. I would like that. I would like us to be in the same fort. Maybe if you ask them, Rune, maybe they’ll let you.” She grabbed his hands and squeezed them. “Will you promise me? Promise you’ll ask them. They keep records of these things, Rune. They know where every soldier is stationed. Tell them you want to serve with Tilla Roper of Cadport. Tell them. Promise me.”

Rune did not like thinking about his own enlistment. He was still a few moons shy of eighteen; tomorrow morning, when soldiers arrived from the capital to take Cadport’s newest adults, he would still be too young. But in the summer, when they came again, he would be old enough. And he too would be given a sword. And he too would be sent off to some distant fort to train and to fight the Resistance.