Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars) (72 page)

At the north end of Kleeiom is a small town, Teryaehn-in-Don, Don being the name given to the country thereabout. A lot of fishing boats put in there and a good market kept the city in the fish business year in and year out, with the bonus that a lot of shipping concerns were there, too, to tend the fleet of boats. Teryaehn was a royal town, under the rule of the crown through an appointed viceroy, and a lot of supplies for Aerfax come in through the docks. Drudaen knew we would bring the army there, garrison the town, but take our main force south toward Aerfax. He would besiege the garrison with his army and send a force down the road after us.

We moved into the town on a day in the month of Yama, the dead of winter. Kirith Kirin had requisitioned the viceroy’s round-house for himself and the viceroy had moved into the inn for the night. We were two days ahead of our army, maybe six days or eight days ahead of the new Verm force following us. Kirith Kirin had sent word for our troops to move double time down the road, he had done that without my asking, and that was all that was necessary.

We quartered in the viceroy’s big stone house together, in a nice feather bed, with windows opening onto the sea. Many people up north have the myth that all the rooms in a round-house are round, but I am here to tell you that is not the case. That first morning we stretched out on the sheets, me prepared for another night of lying beside him awake, listening for any sign of change on the planes, and him restive, his hair all in tangles, worrying. He threw open the windows and let the cold Yama wind pour through us, ran under the covers and pulled me close, and we sat there with the wind rattling the lamps and shaking the tapestries. A smell of salt in the air. A good smell, Kirith Kirin said.

“How long has it been since you slept through the night?” he asked.

“Since Charnos, I guess.”

He pulled my head on his shoulder. “Sleep today. We’ll be all right here.”

“I’m fine, I need to stay awake –“

“In case he does something. But if he does you’ll wake up anyway. All right? So sleep, please. For me. Because I want you to.”

So I said I would, and he sat there waiting. He could tell when I was kei and when I wasn’t, so I let go of all those other places of myself, those spinning parts of me in the ether, what Commyna called the place that is not a place. I came back to the only place where I could sleep, and, in spite of the fact that I could have done without it, I was glad to close my eyes with him sitting there, the wind blowing through the room.

Dreamless. Not even the ghost of my mother visited me. We slept through the night together. Kirith Kirin got out of bed at morning but I stayed sleeping. He sat with me most of the day, let no one in the house but Imral and Evynar.

I awoke in the afternoon hearing a voice, someone I ought to know, I thought, a moment that felt more like a vision than a dream, because as it faded I saw the afternoon light through the open windows, felt the cold wind, curled under the down comforter in the rose duvet. Not my mother’s voice, I had been expecting another nightmare about her; but someone else. Commyna? No, but someone like that. Kentha, maybe. I had echoes of her in the necklace, which was never far from me.

Kirith Kirin had wrapped himself in Fimbrel, which was full of afternoon light, and he was sitting by the window on a wooden chair. I pulled the duvet around my shoulders and crossed the room to sit with him, room for us both in the chair, the wind in my face. He touched me tenderly. “You look better.”

I put my face close to his and rested there for a while. “You’re wearing my cloak.”

“Yes. I’m listening to it.”

“You like it?”

He smiled. “I can see what you mean. There’s a feeling of the High Place.”

“Voices,” I said. “The High Place is full of voices, too.”

“Do you hear anything?” he asked.

Closing my eyes, lifting my head, there, yes, I could hear again, as easily as that, and I pulled the Cloak around my shoulders too. “Nothing different,” I said. I could feel Drudaen moving on Senecaur, watching me, preparing, I supposed. “We’re close now. It’ll be hard from here. He can try any number of tricks.”

“Like an army in the mountains,” Kirith Kirin said. “From the deep places under the Spur. That’s what Karsten expects. And she’s probably right. They’ll hit us when we’re close.”

“But all we have to do is get as far as the gate.”

“When we get there, Athryn can climb to the High Place and sing to the Rock to begin the Change. At that point, Senecaur will be of no use to Drudaen. But I have to get to the gate before Athryn can climb to the Rock.”

He had said as much before but it reassured me to hear him say it again.

Kirith Kirin was looking south, into the cloudy skies that, near the horizon, became fringes of Drudaen’s shadow. “I’m not afraid of his army. We’re not likely to be very surprised by any kind of attack, given who we are and where we’re going. No matter where they come from. He has something else in mind, he must. He has some other plan.”

We sent for food and ate. Imral came later and we talked again. Peaceful. Around sundown the army showed up, first runners, then the forward riders, then lead troops, second line troops, archers, wagons, baggage, the merchant train and the supplies. Teryaehn rarely played host to so many people, an army camped on her grounds, spilling onto the road and along the dry land toward the mountains. The fish market stayed open till there was nothing left to sell and the smell of cooking fish floated over the countryside. Karsten shared our catch at our table, and we sat up late, hearing stories about the march.

About midnight I got to work, sending for my steward who kept my chests under lock and key, waking the poor woman to bring them. I got out the gems and metals I would need, true silver and smith’s gold, stones as well, more than I had used so far. I took these with me in a leather pack and had one of Gaelex’s people send for Nixva. I told Kirith Kirin what I was planning. He sent for the viceroy to make some dispositions concerning the countryside, that was the phrase he used.

I had Imral show me the best map we had of the Don, to get an idea where to ride. I had begun insinging and was kei; to memorize the map was not much work, and I carried it in my head with me. The north of Kleeiom is the widest part of the whole country, but that’s hardly worth bragging about; a rider can make the trip in half a day from Teryaeh-in-Don to the mountains. But a stade north and the whole Karns fen opens up a hundred stades wide.

One does not lightly begin those Words, which are hard to unsay and which stain the soul forever. Nixva came up prancing with the groom trying to keep him under control. While he was coming up, I closed my eyes and gathered the cloak close about me. For what I am about to do, forgive me. I will not eat the souls that die here but will let them cross through to Zaeyn.

We were riding and I began to sing Eater of Souls, Lifebreaker, guiding Nixva toward the mountains for our first pass; we rode ithikan now, and so his speed was multiplied and we saw the land with the change on it that comes in that state. I lay a lattice of enchantment from the mountains to the sea, across the whole sweep of country, over bog and fen. I made a network of gems and metals to make a killing field, singing Great Devourer, singing We Who Depart, singing Dead Hand Moving, singing all the killing magics into these gems, setting them down in a curve leading across the road to the sea, making bans and wards along this route, a process that took a long time, back and forth, and because I was taught to be thorough, what I made there that would last ten thousand years, unless someone of my skill should come to remove it. There are still stories that my gems and metals are in the bogs of the Don.

Kirith Kirin, in the town, was speaking to the viceroy, telling him to close the road north, because nothing living would pass that way until I returned. He had sent riders north to the villages along the Karns shore to tell them the same thing. News would reach the Verm that way, and our riders would find safety in Charnos while we continued south.

We would come back this way, and I would open this deadly wall that I had built. That was my intention. I daresay Drudaen wondered what I was doing with all that commotion; I was the first to make this kind of magic, and I invented it out of necessity. We could not let the Verm take the north end of the road and keep us penned in Kleeiom. If things went badly, we had to come back this way ourselves. As long as we could get as far as Teryaehn, we would have a chance.

A chance for what? It only seemed prudent to leave ourselves a way out, and nothing else I could think of would work against thousands of Verm soldiers. I did not want them waiting for us when we returned. Why did I never stop to think I might not be making that journey back to open the gate?

2

At dawn the next day the army marched south along the narrow Kleeiom road. Many chroniclers place this day as the forty-fifth day of Yama, close to Chanii, the heart of winter. I do not believe it was so late but I have sometimes been confused about events in those days along the Kleeiom strand.

The order of a march like that one has taken a particular shape over the ages of Aryaen history, when one magician or another has accompanied the Successor, be it Prince or Princess, to the Rock of Change to receive the crown. These times of transition have not always been pleasant, even when the King and Queen were at peace. I rode ahead of the columns, not quite out of sight of them, inland, in order to scour the mountains and to buffer the soldiers from any surprise coming from that direction. Now that we were close to Drudaen, my visible presence became a comfort to the soldiers on the ground.

All day we marched under shadow. I could feel him all the time, reaching toward me with this touch or that, testing; at such a pitch we were working now, I left my body to tend itself for hours, so that no matter what the army thought it saw, I myself was distant. Thousands of us were marching and thousands more waiting at the end of the road and yet in the only place that mattered there stood only he and I.

He was unnerved that I could move so easily so close to him, that I was protected as if I were still on Laeredon, and I did my best to let him think it was the pendant I was using, Kentha’s gift; I channeled everything through it to color the magic with her voice, and that kept him at bay.

From the second day, storms swept over us from the sea, pelting cold rain and driving wind. Flurries of snow along the road, in the cold coming down from Shurhala, the face of the mountains. I blunted his storms but the force that underlay them, the great movement of air at his command, I could not stop. We were an eerie sight as we moved beneath shadow, snow falling and wind blowing, rings of fire drifting up from my hand toward the clouds, multiplied as many as I was able, rings of fire drifting up into darkness, a way to mute the storm, and something like a light to guide us.

Three days into our march, Verm descended the mountains behind us to cut off our retreat. Kirith Kirin had expected this and had posted scouts to watch certain places on Shurhala. The army halted on his command, our strongest forces now moved southward, and I wheeled back to meet the Verm.

Awesome, those mountains of glossy black, rising jagged along the seacoast as far as the eye can see. A force of two thousand Verm coming around the turn. Why had he sent them, knowing what I would do? Why send so many creatures to die? To make my spirit tired, I suppose. He knew I was young.

Again I took the luxury, offered by that certain state of kei, to forget my human self altogether. To do so is a scarring thing. I had killed, but I had not yet slaughtered, and that would be my job here; to do it quickly so no more Verm would come no matter what his orders were.

The song is always the same song, always changing, a permutation possible in Wyyvisar, without the essence of the meaning ever varying; it is the part of the great irony of magic that among the easiest of all acts is the taking of life, while the hardest is the making of it. The life of a person passes like a flicker, one touches the tiiryander and the soul flies. This is how the magician dies, too, at the weakest place. I sang Soul Devourer, I rode Nixva toward them at a canter, and in a moment or so they knew they would not be protected by their master, they began to die, a simple death passing through them like a wave, and I was as cold as ice while I was riding there, until the ones at the rear broke and began to flee. Even in that state of dreadful coldness I refused to pursue them.

Verm had a reputation for fierceness and courage, strength and size. They had never faced an enemy like me before. They reacted like any mortal who sees his companions dying by the score, by the hundred, the wave of the fallen approaching. This was the end of the legend of the Verm as invincible and monstrous soldiers.

I believe I killed some twelve hundred of them before the rear ranks broke. Though I say it with no pride, I let them all pass to Tornimul, I refused to take into myself the strength of any of them. A heaviness over my heart as I rode through them, the dead Verm, the pack animals, the pets, any vermin on them, all the life blotted away.