The Carnelian Throne (28 page)

Sereth tousled my drenched locks, and motioned me up, and we emptied our boots and took stock of our weapons, which had, by reason of sheath guards, not been lost in the river. Then, with a grin and a tucking in of his chin, he suggested we join Chayin and Mahrlys, somewhere downstream to our left amid the forest of stone.

We wandered between spires that were thick as Benegua’s memnis, and some taller, and came after a time upon Mahrlys and Chayin, who leaned back against the bone-white stone, eyes closed, in a pool of his drippings.

She had disrobed and spread her garment on the stone to dry. She watched us approach, with a widening smirk.

When we stood above her, she touched Chayin, rose, and said: “Welcome to the outer gardens of Othdaliee. Beyond this cavern”—and she gestured upstream—“ends Nothrace and begin the gardens proper. In them we shall find my triumph and your demise.”

Chayin grabbed her ankle, and she fell roughly. His face was so contorted that I stepped backward and Sereth drew a sibilant breath. But Mahrlys only laughed a laugh that ripped her belly. It multiplied in the cavern, coming back on us from all sides. She reached for her robe, slipped it about her.

I followed her gaze and hissed Sereth’s name, and he, too, turned to look at what Mahrlys-iis-Vahais had found so amusing.

Up from the depths of the river rose the majestic heads of two of the most gargantuan guerm I had ever seen. They looked about them, blinking coal-black eyes and tossing their creamy, streamered manes, and made directly for us.

“No!” wailed Mahrlys, as from Sereth’s stance and mine she divined our intent. “These are not such guerm as you slew at the bayside. They will bear us into Othdaliee! They are elder creatures, with great—”

“Fangs,” Sereth interrupted. “If you think I am going to get on the back of one those poisonous monsters, you have been taking too many of your own drugs.”

I was very glad he had said that. I hugged him and nuzzled his neck.

“Those streamers are not poisonous. These are the creatures from which the savage ocean guerm evolved. They are not ... ah, I care not. Walk!”

That seemed like a perfectly good idea to me. Another good idea seemed to me to be halting the sea beasts who slithered toward us through the white water. I was about this, only flesh-locking them that they would drown on their own, when Sereth bade me cease.

I looked at him, unbelieving. Chayin had whispered something in his ear while I had been busy ascertaining the mammalian nature of the guerm and exploring their nervous systems. I did not immediately release my hold on the guerm. Water flooded their lungs.

They stood closer together, Mahrlys hanging on Chayin’s arm, Sereth with my miniature sun bobbling behind his right shoulder, illuminating his displeasure.

I dropped the flesh-lock, and the water before me erupted in coughing, writhing paroxysms as the guerm sought to save themselves.

“You certainly are not going to change your mind,” I pleaded, backing away from them. “Sereth, I am not going to get on one of those things ....”

I knew better than that. One does not say “I will not” to Sereth.

Dismally, as the huge snakelike, finned monsters came abreast of the promonotory, I mounted. Awkwardly clasping my knees around its muscular barrel, I wondered if guerm held grudges. Sereth slipped on behind me, and the guerm with an undulating surge headed off upstream. I wound my hands in the streamers of my beast’s crest, and Sereth put his arms around my waist. And I reflected, as the beast moved easily beneath me and the waves lapped my hips and the stalagmites whipped by in a blur, that if we were not killed, this manner of conveyance had much to say for itself.

Deilcrit, in hopes of shaking the burning cold away with movement, crawled to the edge of the ledge and stared down the way he had come. He crouched there, slapping himself, his breath streaming white as the mantle that draped the Isanisa River far below.

Kirelli, stiff-legged on the cold, joined him. Together, to the rhythmic buzz of Quendros’ snoring, they stared down at the cloud mantle through which they fought their way the day before.

He could not see Dey-Ceilneeth, nestled in the shelter of Benegua’s northern gate. Nor the Wall of Mnemaat, occluded by the forest and the mists and the thick icy clouds that girdled Mt. Imnetosh’s hips.

Winter or no, it was too cold. The savage chill had ridden the white clouds down the mountain to plague them. It had frosted the rocks with ice and numbed their fingers and slowed their sword arms, as if in league with the wehrs who had harried them. From out of those clouds the wehr-rage had come, while they stumbled, climbing blindly upward. It had been Deilcrit’s bad footing that sent him skidding into the shallow cave. He had not seen it, only the ice mist swirling around.

And they had made a stand there, their backs against the lichen-covered mountainside. Long into the night they had hewn and cleaved and rived what came out of the mists at them. Even in the weak morning light the corpses were easily chronicled: at his feet lay two ossasim; a fhrefrasil, gutted, made a pillow for Quendros’ head; whelt feathers decorated the shallow ledge, glittering with frost; and below on the jagged slope sprawled a score of unmoving black shapes, casualties of the wehr-rage.

Squinting at the leaden sky which lowered ever blacker, he wondered if the wehrs would come again, out of the rain the sky promised.

He had never heard of a wehr-rage lasting so long.

His left arm ached, and he rubbed it, knowing he should wake the exhausted Quendros, but unwilling.

Kirelli butted his side, hopping about from foot to foot. The whelt was shivering. He squirmed back from the rocky shelf’s edge and offered the whelt his right arm. Gladly, with a little squawk, Kirelli took perch on his shoulder, and then moved higher, so that a clawed foot clung either side of his neck. The whelt’s breast pressed against the back of his head and its pulse and its tremors came clear to him. He reached up and stroked the half-raised crest, trying to share his warmth.

They had shared many things since leaving Quendros’ hut. They had shared even the wehr-rage. He muttered to himself, trying to push the memory away, but it displayed itself stubbornly to his mind’s eye.

They had been climbing the slope of Imnetosh where the trees begin to thin and the shale lies treacherous on the Nothrace ridge.

It was the rage itself that first came over him, so that his heart beat fast and his mouth turned dry, and he had been hard-put to conceal it from Quendros.

Then Kirelli took flight, screaming, from his shoulder, leaving him to wrestle with the whelt’s message and its implications.

“Eviduey’s flock and mine do battle, manling. Choose what side you may.”

And then there was no choice, nor need to conceal his lust for blood from Quendros, for the wehr-rage overtook them in a tidal wave.

First came the non-wehrs: animals of every species fleeing blindly, screeching and trampling one another in their fear. He saw a wild-eyed berceide swallow a quenel whole, and head straight for him.

In the loose shale they had no footing, could not have hoped to elude the oncoming stampede.

Quendros shouted a farewell, and wagered as to how many beasts he might take with him out of life, and then the great berceide, to avoid the feel of the shale or Kirelli’s screeching dive, veered eastward, dragging the non-wehrs in its wake. Straight for far Kanoss, rampaged the non-wehrs.

Quendros muttered a prayer and chuckled uncertainly, and the pointed, openmouthed, upward: the sky was black with whelts.

Kirelli, among his own, wheeled and dived and squawked.

And then he had no more attention for that. From out the forest crashed the first wave of wehrs.

Not until it was all around him and the cloud of whelts dived screeching into the fray did he make sense of what he saw: wehr fought wehr, ptaiss tore ptaiss, berceide enwrapped ossasim in its coils. Death rattles from every throat in Benegua’s nature filled the air. Creatures he had never even seen before churned around him.

And he found himself hewing about him with the green-metaled sword, knowing with certainty who was friend and who was foe as easily as did the battling wehrs themselves.

Ossasim shadows filled the sky. Manlike bodies dived, howling war cries, taloned feet extended. He thrust upward without thought. And freed his blade just soon enough to behead a campt who charged with lowered tusks, upon whose hide was a breast-wide slash that only a sword could have made.

So did he come to realize that Quendros fought beside him, striking dead all that entered the range of the white metal sword.

Kirelli’s soft voice rang in his inner ear, and he worked his way toward Quendros, who did not know enemy from ally, but hacked, grunting and heaving, at any creature that came near.

It was as he was attempting to close the distance between them, his feet sliding in the treacherous shale, that a whelt dived at him. He threw himself down to avoid it, and rolled to his back in time to see Eviduey’s black form hovering above the dust cloud in which the wehrs battled.

Then that one was gone, and he gained his knees and then Quendros’ side, and shouted to the man to have a care as to what he slew.

But Quendros only growled and lay more determinedly about him, lips drawn back from his teeth, eyes wild in a blood-splattered face.

So Deilcrit stayed with him, and fought there, until the wehrs that were Kirelli’s encircled them completely, a buffer through which the battle could not penetrate. Then, as Quendros sank to his knees in that bloodbath’s peaceful center, Deilcrit, with an animal noise he could not suppress, turned himself full over to his Wehrkin. He leaped, screaming wordlessly, to the battle’s outer edge, where combatants yet clawed and charged and gutted and gnawed one another, and there he stayed until nothing moved on the field but Kirelli’s wehrs; until he lay unable to raise his leaden sword arm one more time, sprawled across the long, warm corpse of a campt who in turn lay upon an ossasim’s crushed form.

Paralyzed with exhaustion, lungs burning, through sweat-stung eyes he watched Kirelli dance his dance upon the shale carpeted with Wehrdom’s dead. He knew that the triumph was his also, that all who licked wounds and limped slowly forestward were his.

And when Kirelli alighted beside him, a long chunk of some beast’s heart in its beak, he received the offering without qualm.

It was as he feasted there with Kirelli’s wehrs among the vanquished that Quendros limped over to him and sat heavily upon the campt’s carcass and buried his head in his hands.

“Deilcrit,” he said, “what in the name of Laore is going on here?”

Deilcrit licked his fingers and looked up at Quendros’ face, hidden behind his fists, and said: “I am a wehr. You know all about wehrs. And wehr-rages. What you do not know is that Kirelli’s wehrs and Eviduey’s wehrs have a bone to pick.”

“And what is that?” Slowly his eyes appeared over his hands.

“Me. I am Kirelli’s candidate for the carnelian throne. Eviduey’s wehrs will do all they can to stop us.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

“I did not know of this. I catch little wehrthought.”

“Well, all I can say is, when Mahrlys said ‘trial,’ she was not jesting.”

“Did you think then that I could pursue the carnelian throne without obstruction?”

“No, I suppose I did not think that. But I did not think that you were so much a wehr as to wade knee-deep in gore with them long after a man would have fallen dead from the effort.”

“You yourself said to me that wehrs were very successful individuals.” He grinned at Quendros. But Quendros did not grin back.

“Deilcrit, I’m getting worried. Before, I was just disquieted. You don’t have any idea what you’re doing. You don’t really know what the carnelian throne is, or what you might have to do to sit in it. All you know is what the whelt has been telling you. Whelts are not the most trustworthy of creatures. What if this Imca-Sorr-Aat does not want to be superseded?”

“Eviduey said to me, when I was awaiting Mahryls in her chamber the night before we left Benegua by the Northern Gate, that Imca-Sorr-Aat is the intermediary between mortals and the god. If the god still lives. And Kirelli said to me that Mnemaat is no more; that Imca-Sorr is an empty title, a vacant throne with no presence worthy of the name ‘Aat’ to guide it. Kirelli says that we can change all that, together. I am inclined to believe him. At the very least, I should find out if Mnemaat is truly alive or dead. And that is something I need to know.”

“Damn pious Beneguan, for one who just slew half an ecology.”

“Quendros, you have known since we spoke in your hut that I sought the carnelain throne.”

“But how do you know you’ll want it when you get It You don’t know what it means, what responsibilities are entailed.”

“What choice, have I?” demanded Deilcrit hotly, all facade falling away. “I am so much a wehr that I had no choice this day. I hardly remembered that you existed until Kirelli reminded me. Yes, I did this ....” And he waved a hand around the battlefield. “And I am eating of my kill and I like it. It feels good. I could no more turn from Kirelli than I could reenter Benegua without having been absolved by Imca-Sorr-Aat. The wehrs would certainly kill me.”

“We could try,” said Quendros, looking behind him for Kirelli. “Or not reenter—”

“I do not want to try. This is what I am supposed to do. I know it. Are you so afraid? We have the wehrs. Their strength is ours until we enter the gardens. And Kirelli—”

“I am not afraid!” bellowed Quendros.

“Well, then, let us fill our bellies, and seek a high spot for the night, and when all this is over and I have Mahrlys at my feet, I will share her with you.”

“I would rather beat the drum you plan to make of Eviduey’s hide,” Quendros quipped. Then he hawked and took his white-bladed sword and cut himself a thick strip of campt haunch.

“I will give the drum to you!” cried Deilcrit, glad that he had found something that might please Quendros.

“Let’s get it first, man-wehr,” said Quendros around a mouthful. “This thing looks to me to be one more easily said than done.”