Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars) (68 page)
Across north Karns were moving trains of wagons, huge many-wheeled things, dragged by enormous trains of oxen, accompanied by Verm soldiers on foot and horseback, and all moving in the same direction, toward the south, where our armies were headed. North as far as I could see the wagons were moving, and to the south, when I looked there, I guessed an army must be waiting already.
I had my instructions and followed them. We were here to confuse the movements of these same soldiers, to create confusion in this country. Kirith Kirin had given me license to do this much, but wished me to stop short of killing, if I could. We had seen that the Verm could be turned from Drudaen. So as we were riding, even as early as the first moment I understood the Verm were moving, I began my work.
As slowly as I had assembled the long-seeing trance, I extended my reach farther, into the deep mountains to trouble the winds, beginning the gathering of a storm there, moving quietly through that long day, alive on the four circles, while in my body I was riding Nixva in a party of soldiers through high country. One can make a small storm quickly but a big one takes time, takes a skill in gathering light, trapping heat, causing air to rise and mix, a feat I had learned so many ways I could picture it in my sleep, a feat I could perform at a long distance, even in a place I could see only with my mind’s eye. The slow engine of my nascent storm grew and I drew it down out of the mountains, clouds thick with moisture from the southern ocean, chilled by the arctic airs from the mountains and from the north, a long interface of energies that I had built, an almost perfect creation, fueling itself on natural and unnatural energies. A snow storm blew down, and yet it was dark as if the heaviest thunderdome were passing overhead, a vast thing, sung out of the ground, forked with lightning even as snow was falling, a breath of warm hot wind mixed with cold winds that cut like knives, a mist over everything and a lace of air. Hours and hours I spent at this, awake through the night with Fimbrel wrapped around me, sitting at a fire at the outermost edge of our camp, despite the fact that I made Kirith Kirin anxious in one way and the rest of the war party anxious in another.
When the storm commenced, the one long wagon train shuddered and the Verm soldiers wondered what was happening. At first they struggled to keep moving but soon the storm fell fully on them and they scurried to dig themselves into some kind of shelter, even unloading and overturning the wagons in some places. They were destined to suffer for as long as I wished, since I could draw power down from the two towers that answered to me as long as I liked while Drudaen refused to contest my work.
Even though I had sent the main force of the storm to the north of us, across all of Antelek and Karns, snow and wind passed over the skies where we were, and our party stayed battened in good Jisraegen tents through the whirlwinds and crashes of lightning that passed overhead that second day. We were in no danger as long as I remained in kei and held the storm in my hand, but that took all my concentration, and we could not travel in such weather without my aid. As for the Verm, their wagons were wrecked and their supplies scattered over the road or swallowed in the snows. Cold wind followed the storm, as cold as that country had seen in many years; not so much for a northerner like me, but to the Verm it was fearsome.
After a while the storm went along without me, counted as a blizzard as far east as Teliar, where Evynar’s army took shelter. Evynar had anticipated its coming to the day. Long life will give you an instinct for things.
I eased out of deep trance to find Kirith Kirin waiting near where I was sitting encased in the fire’s protection while he had only his cloak against the weather. This was near evening the second day. When I was in my body again he knew, and came close and helped me stand. I took off some of my rings and pocketed them. The fire had died to ordinary size, and unless I gave it protection it would soon vanish in the cold snow that was falling. “Ready to stop for a while?”
“Yes.” Leaning on him, feeling the real weight, the real texture of him. Taking a long breath of clean, cold air.
“We pitched tents. You gave me enough warning for that. Did you know you did? Do you know what your body does when you’re out of it?”
“Not always. I could remember it in a certain way, if I needed to.”
He laughed. Took my head in his hand. So deceptive, the clean, young feeling of him. “I’ve always wondered what that kind of magic would be like.”
We were trudging through snow that reached to mid-boot, deeper in places, toward the Jisraegen camp, nearly invisible in the snow. The sentries met us, shadows suddenly appearing. Our tent was heaped with snow all around, and inside a brazier was burning, the tiny space snug and warm. Around us a cluster of little warm spaces, not a single big fire, nothing wasteful. We ate waycake and some cheese Kirith Kirin got from somebody. A strong cheese, too; afterward his mouth tasted of it for a while.
3
We rested the horses another day, the snow melting so they could graze on the grass. Kirith Kirin sent riders to find Karsten and the eastern army, to report on what we had seen and what had happened. I have seen that letter, which reads in part, “We are perched in snow like we used to be in Cundruen crossing north to Drii, or like used to fall in the high streets of Montajhena. The Verm haven’t seen a snow like this in a hundred years. We’ll make good time along Itheil’s road.” This was the name of the road we were on, made by Itheil Coorbahl, lover of Falamar.
Next morning, with the wind still scouring the high plain between the Narvos Hills and the Barrier Mountains, we broke camp, making a cook fire and drinking morning jaka with the sun rising and someone singing Velunen. In the night we had talked, Imral, Kirith Kirin and I, and Kirith Kirin told me what to do next. So the riding party mounted horses and headed south along Itheil’s road, and I descended the hills to ride on Nixva through the snowy country where the Verm lay scattered in the aftermath of the storm. That day I made more havoc, but still stopped short of killing Verm. I maddened the horses they were riding and the oxen pulling their wagons, sweeping along all the countryside I could reach, and when I was done most of the horses had bolted toward whatever direction seemed nearest home, and most of the oxen were fighting one another, snorting and stamping, or else rolling on their backs in the snow and gazing vacantly at the sky. Many of the animals died, I am sorry to say, but I did what was necessary.
I rode as far north as needed to sweep that whole country with magic. By then I was no longer troubling to hide myself on any of the circles, and my song filled those places, noise and commotion. He would have seen what I was doing. But he let me wreck his northern army of Verm without lifting his hand to defend them, and when I finally rode south again, after a whole day and night of travel, I was all that was moving on that landscape.
This was orchestrated by Kirith Kirin, who had used magic to make policy before. Some of the Verm who joined Evynar’s army rode into the north Karns country with a written message from Kirith Kirin, that the Verm troops need only return to their homes to have their lives spared. “I have sent my wizard to ride along your lines,” he wrote, “and he has driven away all your beasts. Next time he rides, any of you who are not heading north will die. Those of you who return to your homes, you will earn mercy when I am King.”
He had already said those words to me, and there would come the day when I killed because he told me to. But that was not the day, because the Verm took his warning seriously and withdrew from north Karns.
I had a good look at them as they were trudging home in the snow, bony, massive creatures, skin the color of ash, the men so like the women it was hard to tell them apart. They made no distinction among the sexes, any more than the Jisraegen did, in dress or weaponry. They were Jisraegen, after all; were what we become under shadow; this was what happened to the people in Turis when Drudaen brought shadow there, after Kentha defeated him, after he killed her in such a faithless way. The Verm are larger than us, deep folds over the eyes, large pupils, amber irises, or sometimes irises the color of white ice or red blood, sometimes black so that the eye seems one enormous pupil; the changes in the eyes fascinated me as I studied them. They live short lives, no more than fifty of our years, and I have heard physicians say this is because they are so large the organs of the body cannot support the bulk of it. So they are stronger than we but prone to sickness and with joints easily dislocated and bones broken, because they are larger than they were designed to be. I could not tell all that by looking at them, of course, and am mixing in much that I learned later. But as I watched them marching northward, making the prudent choice to go home, tugging at their hair-braids under their helmets, or picking at their noses or sneaking a drink of wine, they became less frightening to me. A people like any other. Unfortunate enough to be ruled by Drudaen, and shaped by him, since it was his shadow that had caused their forebears to change.
In camp at last, after two days riding, Nixva let me know he was glad the travel was over for at least a night; I stood with him till Duvettre came for him, to have him brushed and dried and kept warm with the rest of the horses. Kirith Kirin had told her to expect me at about this hour, and in fact he was showing such a knack for predicting my arrival that I wondered if he had some way of following my movements. There is a magic in Aeryn that belongs to the King and the Queen, that comes from YY herself. But I could feel not a trace of it at all.
I found him waiting in an open glade where a fire was burning.
I told him all I had done and seen and he took it in without surprise. I asked him why he was taking such pains to be merciful to the Verm, and he answered, “They’re Jisraegen, too. Whatever shadow may have made of the Verm, they’re still a part of us. I told them so in Genfynnel, after you gave them permission to stay in the city till they were ready to travel.”
“It would be nice to reason with all the Verm like this.”
“The ones who’re ensorcelled in Drudaen’s service won’t be persuaded,” he said, and looked me in the eye. “You’ll have to deal with those, or the soldiers will."
A breath of sharpness in the wind that followed. “I’ll do it. Whatever has to be done.”
4
When we reached the Hills of Slaughter, riders from Arsk found us camped on the Osar on the Kellyxa side. They were bringing word from Karsten that her army had control of Arsk and had accepted the surrender of Fort Pemuntnir and all the eastern garrisons from Kursk to Novris. I presume we had crossed to the Kellyxa side of the river for that reason, because Kirith Kirin had known the riders were on the way, or should be, provided all had gone well.
We had left the protection of the Jisraegen road and I had to spend more energy and time on watching the sky. I had displayed my whereabouts to Drudaen openly when I was making the storm but now that I was traveling with Kirith Kirin I preferred we should be hidden, and this required some effort. But for the most part, for the few days that followed, I remained quiescent and rode with the others, with Kirith Kirin, in the body, feeling every ache and grind of the ride.
The letter from Karsten read as follows; it lies among the papers I have kept from that time, in my library. “We have come as far as Arsk and the trip has been all we hoped. Nemort is helpful, courteous, and very cunning when it comes to dealing with Athryn’s troops. The commander of Fort Pemuntnir met us when Arsk opened the gates for us; she had ridden all day and all night to reach the city in time, and after an hour of talk she was ready to commit her troops to us. She’d already heard from the Queen, she said, and had orders to cooperate with Kirith Kirin in every possible way. So now we know you’re right, my dear, and Athryn is on our side. You can imagine the taste that leaves in my mouth, but if we all get through this, I’ll have a long time to think about forgiving her. I’ve sent out riders to all the eastern garrisons, and in effect I’ve taken command of the armies in the Kellyxa. We’ll have another three thousand blue troops when we reach Charnos, and good garrisons to hold the roads all the way back to Genfynnel if we need to retreat.
“The people here are already telling stories about your witch. His name is said to be Thron and he’s also called the Thief of Karns, because he killed the Witch of Karns. I thought Jessex would like to know he’s getting some attention. People say Drudaen is afraid of him because he comes from the mountains and the Prophet told stories about him; even here they call Curaeth Curaesyn the Prophet, and there are some temples where he’s studied, according to Nemort. The Anynae are a mystical lot. I can never get used to these round houses, but on the whole the people are pleasant and glad to have us with them. Drudaen is feared by everybody, and shadow is remembered as a deeply uncomfortable state.”
There are some logistical paragraphs that I have omitted, but even when she is writing about the merest trifle, her wry voice sounds through. I read the letter for the first time standing by the fire in our camp, the dark Osar flowing past. Kirith Kirin stood near me, close enough to give shelter from the wind coming down the flanks of Narvosdilimur. “I like Thief of Karns,” I said. “It has a good feeling.”
