Rythe Falls (4 page)

             
He damn near broke his fist on the thing's face.

             
Caeus,
he remembered...
his name is Caeus.

             
The most powerful being on Rythe.

             
I just punched him in the face.

             
Renir glanced to his axe, the opposite side of the bed. Figured it wasn't the greatest idea.

             
Caeus noted the glance, just as he'd noted the punch. Nothing more.

             
The wizard only grinned.

             
'Fight in you yet, young King! Good. Now, we eat.'

             
Eat? How could a man eat when the world was ending?

             
Renir's fury was passing quick as it came, though thoughts were still flooding through his mind. Perhaps words might have soothed him, settled him, but when Caeus waved his hand a little, the wizard's magic did more than any words could.

             
Between Renir and the wizard, a fine feast appeared. Instantly. No fanfare, or strange pops or bangs or pretty lights.

             
One moment, cold stone. The next?

             
Renir caught a line of drool that snaked its way through the beard on his chin, the drool, he guessed, his body's way of telling him it was hungry, despite his rage and confusion, the end of the world or the presence of such power.

             
Hot meats dripping dark fat, ale with a dark foam atop, water crisp and clear. Fruit on the vine, cheeses that smelled, frankly, hideous, but had the vague sense of steam arising from the mouldy veins within that made him wonder at the age of it, wonder if he might not be younger than the cheese, if he might not experience it...

             
Warm bread from which steam rose, real steam. White, thick butter.

             
The table they were set on looked like it might groan under the weight. Renir wondered if he might not join it. Together, him and table, labouring under the weight of food...delicious, pungent, warm...

             
Renir wiped his lips on his bare arm and tried to get a grip on himself.

             
'Magic food?' Renir shook his head.

             
Am I being stubborn or stupid or...

             
'No, Renir...not magic food. That would be most ridiculous. It is real food, brought here with magic.'

             
Renir eyed the food, suspecting nothing more than an illusion.

             
Does an illusion smell so good?

             
'Eat. We'll talk. We've much to talk about, you and I.'

             
Renir picked up a slice of dark, bloody meat, still suspicious, but he couldn't fight it. No more, his stomach said.

             
To deny his grumbling, starving guts would have been a torture most insanely stupid.

             
The meat stung his fingers with heat, but it smelled like perfection. Burned his lips, the roof of his mouth, but he groaned as he tasted it.

             
'Good,' said Renir, nodding, finally, gratefully.

             
Caeus, too, nodded. 'Take your time, young man. You have time, yet.'

             
Renir ate a little more, looking around at Caeus, at the room, the bed, the food. At first, he took a small bite of something - a slice of cheese (fantastic), atop the hot bread. A sip of water (so fine). More meat. More...more of everything.

             
In the end he looked at nothing but the mountain of food. He sliced and shovelled and stuffed food into his mouth, barely chewing sometimes, others, mouth almost slack with wonder at a surprising flavour.

             
Finally, he belched and, food finished, water gone, took the ale from the table and took a seat further up the bed.
If it was magic food,
he thought,
it was damn good magic
. His guts were happy. Looked like a mountain now, sitting proud. A belly pregnant with food.

             
'Talk?' he said. He felt he'd spent so long eating that speech would be impossible, forgotten. But his mouth still worked just fine, and Caeus nodded his assent.

             
'Where are we?' said Renir. The ale, too, was a thing of wonder, and when Caeus said, 'Your castle,' he felt a terrible remorse at the loss of so much of that fine beer spraying across the room.

*

Chapter Five

Reih woke with that stabbing pain bright and real in her missing eye, surprised to find she'd been sleeping. She thought she'd been there at the edge of the swamps' reach, under the stars and moons, merely remembering rather than dreaming it all over again. Memories and dreams were still vivid, it seemed. Still red.

             
She sighed in the dim night's light, her breath frosting in the air. Chill, no matter the day's heat down here in the south.

             
Perr was nothing more than a shapeless lump a few feet from her, soundly sleeping. She wondered if he ever had dreams, or if the lives he took were confined to waking. Try as she might, though, she could not imagine what a man like Perr would dream, if at all.

             
May as well wonder what makes the stars, or the moons.
Up there
, she thought, turning onto her back and staring into the night sky.
Do they, up above Rythe, worry about death, or life, or anything at all?

             
If a man died, the stars still shone, did they not? The moons still raced the suns round the world. Hren was hidden, and a mere sliver of Gern showed in the sky.

             
The suns and stars and moons and worlds...did they feel fear?

             
Did they know that up there, among the constellations and the sheet of black that covered the night sky, something came? The Protectorate knew it. Called them down, perhaps, or perhaps they were always coming. The Sun Destroyers.

             
Humans, even...they knew.

             
The stars and moons? Were they mere idiot, mute balls in the sky?

             
That damn itch right in the back of her empty socket sent her hand fluttering toward her face, but she forced herself to bear it. An itch, a dead eye, a thousand or a million dead, what did it matter?

             
Their struggles were futile.

             
Then why bother trying?

             
She still had no answer. Perhaps hope was their folly, or perhaps hope was what kept people alive. Hope, curiosity?

             
Truth was, once she'd been surrounded by wonder. Still was, maybe.

             
Only seeing half of it now, though,
she thought bitterly as she rolled tighter in her bedding and tried to close her eye, to stop her worry. But she could not.

             
The Sun Destroyers were coming to kill the world. Pretty good reason to worry, but...why?

             
Am I half-blind now, or half-seeing?

             
Did it make a difference? Either way...the picture was too broad. She didn't understand, couldn't feel the size or shape of it. Her, Perr...even the Builders who had sent her to find Sybremreyen and some scant hope of salvation...did anyone in the whole world hope to actually survive this coming battle?

             
Fool. The battle is already begun.

             
Gods, her eye-socket itched.

             
Perr grunted in his sleep, like he could hear her thoughts within his dreams. Something howled, out there in the dark night. She jumped at the sound, a little, and Perr's hand was on his sword, even in his sleep.

             
He's a good man. Only one I trust in the whole of Lianthre.

             
The thought made Reih sad and tired. She tried to quiet herself. No sense in waking him - at least he could sleep.

             
She turned her head away from Perr and toward the dark, strange land to find that a small child sat just behind her head, watching.

             
Reih screamed.

*

Chapter Six

In the space of her scream and her next drawn breath, Perr was before her with his sword in hand. The small child looked up without the slightest sense that she was startled, merely peering from Perr, to Reih, and back again with her sightless white eyes.

             
Even in the scant moonlight, Reih could see the child must be blind - she had no colour in her eyes but white, like pools of milk. And yet she got the sense that the child
was
seeing.

             
'Tell your man to put his sword up,'
said the child.

             
Reih shook her head, as though trying to shake loose a fly from her ear. The child...the child could speak like the Kuh'taenium? Into her...mind?

             
'I can. Only way I can. He,'
said the child,
'will not listen to me. You must.'

             
'Who...what...?'

             
The girl inclined her head a little, not giving much away as to what she felt. Just a child, a young one at that.

             
But there's power there
, thought Reih, carefully. Unsure if the child could see the thoughts in her mind just like she was talking without moving her lips. All the while those pure white eyes watched.

             
Reih thought that maybe the girl was just the opposite of blind. Not sighted, but a child who saw more than mere mortals might.

             
'My...allies are...impatient. Tell him quick before blood is shed. We need to speak. We are friends, Reih Refren A'e Eril, Imperator of the Kuh'taenium. Friends on the road, and we come to show the way.'

             
Reih thought for a mere second longer. 'Perr, sheath your sword. She is an ally.'

             
'I did not mean to startle you. I tried to be...considerate. I see much, but who can see which way a person will jump in the moment of violence? Gods, I think. Not I.'

             
'Well, it was a shock,' said Reih, obviously speaking for herself. Perr, it seemed, was unmoved.

             
'Please, I apologise. But will you listen?'

             
Reih nodded. There was no guile, no harm in the child. Any fool could see that.

             
'I am going to lift the veils from you. My...allies are many. My allies are yours, and we will speak, but first, you must see...you must...see as I do.'

             
'Perr, the child says...'

             
'I hear her well enough,' said Perr. 'She speaks in my head as yours.'

             
The child nodded.

             
'A friend of yours called me Sia. It will serve. I will show you what I see now, so that  you understand, and then we will travel, for there is not time for more questions. Do not fear,'
said the white-eyed girl child as the light flowed from her eyes and turned the night into day and they saw what she saw.

             
They understood what she understood, and that she did not lie. There was no more time.

*

At first, the light was pristine. A perfect white that shone into the night and took away all the darkness.

             
Reih gasped, like a child in awe at a sight of wonder.

             
Then, her flesh turned cold and the light began to change.

             
No...the light does not change.

             
The night and the land were not white, or black. No more. Everything was bathed in red.

             
She is showing me what truly is...

             
'Do you understand, Reih? Do you?'

             
'This...this blood-light...is this a sign?'

             
Sia shook her head. So sad...terribly sad, for just a child, gifted or not.

             
'This is not a vision, Reih. This is the truth, this is what is.'

             
'What is it?'

             
'This light? This bloody redness on the very air that none can see? It is no sign or portent. They are here. Already...they are here. They are in the light. The Sun Destroyers are not coming in a month, or a year...they are in the very air of this world already and all is as it should be, because this is now...this is the future even the great could not see. Red wizards and the wise men of the Order of the Sard, witches in their black castles and even the Protectorate. They think we can stop their return, but it is ordained. We cannot stop it. We cannot flee. They are nothing but light and for the last three nights now the light grows across the world.'

             
'Then...we lost? Rythe is dead?'

             
The seer shook her head.

             
'I say it is as it is meant to be...I do not lie. We cannot fight light, Reih. We cannot fight fate herself. We cannot shape this moment. Millennia have brought us here, to this time, the turning of the world around the suns, the moons around the world, the people and their petty squabbles...for this. Not to flee, or die. To fight. To fight a last battle with the Elethyn as they are named in the light of the sun, and to send them into darkness forever.'

             
'How? How!?'

             
Sia nodded, rose from her seat in the dirt. She blinked and closed her eyes and when she opened them again, spread her arms wide.

             
Now, in the light of the Sun Destroyers, in that awful bloody glow that made the eye ache, Reih and Perr could both see the Sia had not come alone.

             
Beside her, hidden by some sly illusion, two golden-haired warriors stood, arms crossed on their shining breastplates. One, helmed, only his long beard showing. The other nodded, politely enough.

             
Behind them? Thousands upon thousands of huge, haired beasts. Fierce eyed and gentle, large and small, claws, teeth bared, or grinning in what could pass for smiles. More than thousands. Across the swamp, huge beasts of every shape, spreading as far as the eye could see.

             
'Rythe is not just home to the races of man, or the Elethyn's children,'
said Sia.

             
'No, it is not,' said a grizzled rahken, stepping forward. Her voice was like the rumbling of rock-fall. 'The Rahken Nations will fight, too.'

*