Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars) (78 page)

They were stunned, beyond belief, overjoyed again. She told them what had happened when the army left me there to hold the road, that I had done so, and that I had been beaten down again and again as they watched, she and Athryn, from the highest balcony of the royal rooms. She told them that every time I fell, the ground would shake for a while and I would get up again, and that I was driving Drudaen back toward the gates. By then Athryn had already sent out her fleet to rescue Kirith Kirin from the Kleeiom road. She been standing at the base of Senecaur when Drudaen rode out, she had felt the blow dealt to Kirith Kirin, it had pierced her as well. She knew something dreadful would follow. Aerfax is a holy place, and what had happened, that a magician should remove the Rock in order to attack the Successor, was a matter of blasphemy beyond recount. She could feel the anger in the Rock, in the house. So when she got my warning that I was going to break Senecaur, telling her to evacuate the royal apartments and head for the rooms in the older part of Aerfax, she ordered the apartments cleared at once. She and Sylvis headed down to the Tervan part of Aerfax with the rest, and as she did she felt the ground shaking, and she and Sylvis looked at one another and wondered if the world was really breaking, if all the signs had been fulfilled to bring that moment about. Was Cunavastar waking, so far below the mountains where he has slept since he was put there, to dream the rest of time?

She saw the light, not directly but reflected in a silver bowl. A white light like the sun at noon, she said. People who looked at the light directly were blind, some for days, some forever. Sylvis was one of them but she got her vision back after a few days. A blast wave shook the ground and when Athryn looked again pieces of Senecaur were exploding into the sea and out in all directions in the air, a huge cloud rising, and the upper part of the Spur cracked and slid into the ocean as she watched. Seconds later when the explosion touched the water, huge waves churned up and would have flooded the lower part of the house except that the sea gates were closed. The Tervan house survived, as if the Smiths had known they would have to build a house to withstand this blast. The people who reached that part of house lived, though some of them were scarred by the heat and died later. The world did seem to be coming to pieces.

But something had protected the people in the house from dying outright. Athryn looked outside and saw that the Verm had all died along the road, and farther up the road, using the same spyglasses she had carried with her from the upper balcony, she saw me on the road where I had fallen the last time, not moving, lying near the gate. She saw that Drudaen had fallen too, she could see a white light on him, and him motionless on the ground, all the soldiers around him dead.

She thought I might be dead. But she thought I might as easily be alive, since something had managed to shield her people from the explosion, at least to a degree. So she rushed to the gate and, old as she was, mustered a party of two dozen out the gate to fetch me inside. She led them out herself, and they walked among the blasted land with the Verm dead or dying on the ground, some of them still struggling to stand, most beyond care. They found me, hurt, but alive, protected from the destruction I had unleashed, as they had been. She had to fight to convince the soldiers to touch me, she helped lift me herself, and they carried me into Aerfax and only barely got inside before Drudaen managed to drag himself upright again.

She looked back at him as the gates were closing. She wanted to stand where he could see.

She waited for him to follow. But it appeared he could not. She lay my body on a bier in one of the receiving halls. I was breathing very deeply, very slowly.

The rest of the day, with that storm of his slowly subsiding, from inside Aerfax she watched Drudaen, waiting. Twice he tried to come through the gate and turned aside as if racked with pain. After a while he gave up, and since none of his Verm had lived to help him, he limped away south till he found some who had survived, or at least that was what she and Sylvis supposed.

Athryn spent the next few days frantically active, sending her few remaining ships to Ivyssa and Kmur, sending letters to supporters across southern Aeryn, sending a letter that she vainly hoped would reach Kirith Kirin in Arthen. She had a certain amount of time in which she was free to act, while Drudaen was weak. She expected a Verm army to march straight down Kleeiom; only later from one of her naval commanders did she learn that the Don was blocked by my killing field, that no army would come that way. Even Drudaen had taken a ship when he went north.

She gathered enough supplies for a long wait. She would have to stay where she was for a long time, because of me. While I was alive, I must be tended by somebody. While I was alive, there was still hope. One day I might wake up. He could besiege her and blockade her but he would never be able to force his way into the Tervan house, except by magic, and she had a feeling I was fighting that. She meant to sit in Aerfax to keep me safe.

She saw it, Sylvis said, as the reason her role of folly had been assigned her, in the end. The world rested on two places. Inniscaudra, where Kirith Kirin waited. And Aerfax, where we were.

Drudaen moved quickly when he moved, flattening Teryaehn, moving an army by ship to guard the wreck of Aerfax across the broken causeway, and building a fleet of ships to patrol the peninsula by the sea.

Six hundred people were left to Athryn after the explosion that ended the real Battle of Aerfax. Two hundred had died since, some of them of sickness related to the blast, Sylvis thought, the rest in defense of the place. But no one had ever deserted. Their initial supplies held out for a long time, and while Novris and Charnos were still free, Athryn could buy food from those ports, as long as she was careful. But when those cities fell to Drudaen, she struggled to keep her people safe and fed. At present Sylvis was attending to that, but she wanted to get back to Aerfax as soon as she could. She was worried about Athryn’s health. Athryn had been out of Arthen for longer than any of the Jhinuuserret. How much longer could she delay her return?

The three of them talked deep into the night, knowing they would not have another chance for a long time. Could Athryn find a way to Arthen for herself and all her people? Yes, maybe, if she sailed east to Novris and traveled through the Onge. Could she find a way to Arthen for herself, all her people, and me? My sleeping form? Would I be able to protect them on the journey as I apparently did in the fortress? They could not be certain.

These were questions they could hardly decide by themselves, and they parted saying that to one another. They would return, Sylvis to Queen Athryn and Imral and Karsten to Kirith Kirin, they would share their news. But they already knew as they parted that years would pass before they would see each other again.

“Imral and Karsten came home and told me you were alive,” Kirith Kirin said, “but I already believed you were. Because the light never died on Ellebren.”

There was so much more, I sat there stunned. No rescue was thought possible under shadow, while I was still alive, because there was no certainty I could keep us safe from Drudaen after I moved out of Aerfax. The safest bet was to leave me where I was, and pray that Athryn could hold on until I awoke, or until some other sign should come.

Then all parties lost touch again when Drudaen brought the war north to the Fenax. After Charnos fell to him, after a few years of quiet, he turned his attention there. At first he sent Verm armies, and quickly learned that the northerners would resist. Next he went himself. He rode up Angoroe at the head of an army, and when he did, the Ellebren lights grew fierce and bright, and so he became afraid and went back to Bruinysk. He tried again later that year, before winter, and the same thing happened.

That time he returned south, but he had thousands of Verm by then, he could send armies one at a time for as long as he liked. But finally he came himself, and Ellebren was not so bright or did not frighten him so much. He brought shadow to the Fenax, though he had a harder time holding it, since some of the old shrines had survived there, and each of those resisted his touch to a degree. He razed Cordyssa and burnt the place, killing Ren Vael and Pel Pelathayn. After that, with the Fenax under his hand, he returned south, and a long time of turmoil began. He had left Drii in peace, had not invaded the Svyssn or Tervan territories. But he had drawn those peoples into alliance with Kirith Kirin against him. Time and again the Fenax overthrew his control and he had to come back to defend his armies; each time our forces withdrew into the territories he could not reach.

“I think I can say the end. Or most of it.”

“Go ahead,” Kirith Kirin told me.

“As the years passed, the numbers of people in Aerfax dwindled. Drudaen never stopped watching the place, but was never able to come there himself to end the siege, something prevented him. Athryn and Sylvis refused to leave me till there were fewer than a dozen people left. I remember the last time Athryn visited my room. She had moved me to one of the deep rooms under Aerfax, where the sea would keep me moist, she said. A room in which I might stay safe from him. Or at least in which he might be afraid to find me.

“She and the last few people remaining with her fled across the bay to Ivyssa and rode north, somehow, into Arthen. The Queen was in failing health and barely made it to the Woodland in time. But she and Sylvis did make it that far.” I looked at them, when I said that, and at last had a question for which I wanted an answer. “That is the way it happened, isn’t it?”

Karsten seemed troubled. “Yes. They both made it. They told us you were still alive when they left. It took them two years to make the journey to Arthen. Athryn became very ill. But they did make it to safety, both of them alive. Five years ago.”

“The Sisters came to Jiiviisn Field and we met them there,” Kirith Kirin said. I could tell he had taken over here because this was the end of the story, for him. “They told us you had appeared to them on Vithilonyi. They told us to come and find you, and to ask you to come back. They told us you could wake up again, if you wanted to.”

“But you already knew I wanted to,” I said. “Because one day you called me at Ellebren and I heard you and came there.”

Shimmering in his eyes. “Yes. I thought you were in the Tower, the light changed.”

“I was there,” I said, “and I did come back, didn’t I? When you asked.”

2

That was as much as I could hear in one night, and as much as any of them wanted to relive. I had never asked the final question, I never asked while the three of us were sitting there, how long?

It was already an eternity since I woke up. We had pallets for sleeping, and I lay next to Kirith Kirin as naturally as if we had only parted yesterday. We were facing each other, and we looked at each other for a long time, eye to eye.

“Has anything changed?” he asked.

“Many things have. But this hasn’t.” I lay my hand on his chest, kissed him. It was warm and peaceful and I wanted nothing more. “Where are we headed?”

“Along the sea road to Novris. Then north.”

“Novris?”

“We have some friends there.”

I asked for no further details. Imral and Karsten had gone off to another corner to lie together. Karsten had gathered some rushes and used them to sweep a patch of floor, a place to spread the bedding, I guessed. The sound of the rushes soothed me some. Kirith Kirin lay his hand across my forehead. “No more fever. I was worried.”

My body had healed fast enough, once it got unufru, that I knew magic must be in it somewhere, but I had said no Word, done nothing, felt no power move. “I’m fine.

He laughed softly in my ear. I felt more present, then. “After such a long nap.”

I felt a catch in my throat. His breath on my ear made a shiver along my spine. More life came back to me, more feeling rose in me, because of him, but it was like a sob to feel it all, and I asked, “How long a nap was it?”

“Nearly a hundred years.” He spoke in a simple way, as if it were nothing. His arm tightened around me and he buried his nose in my hair. He held me and helped me absorb the words. I sat there speechless as Imral spread bedding on the place where Karsten had swept. I watched their shadows. Kirith Kirin presently drew me down to sleep with him, and I did as he led me to do. He kissed me on the lips and said good-night. The echo carried me into darkness.

3

We passed east along the roads through Durme, four ragged figures astride horses that were mostly bone. I had never seen a more desolate landscape, scores of wrecked houses where not a soul stirred, the earth itself gone dull and brown, a hint of growth here and again. As we drew away from Ivyssa, hardly a tree still grew along the road. From above, through ragged clouds that extended from horizon to horizon, a thin light filtered, and one knew there was a sun somewhere, but one could see nothing of it.