The Dark Defiles (61 page)

I
N FACT, THERE WERE
Y
HELTETH WHORES TO BE HAD AT THE
F
EATHERED
Nest, but not many of them, and they cost a lot more than most Majak herdsmen were willing or able to pay. The majority of the Nest’s customers settled quite happily for local girls made up to look the part. Most of them wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference anyway.

Marnak could tell the difference.

He sat sprawled among the silk drapes of a top-floor room, trying to separate his nostalgia from his lust. They’d plied him with wine downstairs while he waited—he was still working his way through a colossal goblet of the stuff now—and he hadn’t eaten much since breakfast, so he was pretty giddy. He set down the drink with exaggerated care on a stool beside the bed. Loosened his belt a bit, felt a soggy grin creep into his mouth.

“What’s keeping you, girl?” he called out in Tethanne. “Not shy, are you?”

“Not really, no.”

Tall, shadowy frame in the doorway, a stiffly braided mane of hair that made her taller still, and she wasn’t dressed much differently from him. Boots and leather breeches, a jerkin buckled about with gear. The voice was chocolate dark and deep, court-bred tones with a command rasp beneath. Marnak came up off the bed like a scalded cat.

“Who the fuck are you? What—”

His voice dried up as she stepped into the light. Jet-black features, eyes that threw back the candle glow in a contemptuous swirl like bandlight hitting well water a long way down. Knives sheathed in some weird upside-down fashion, but the hilts were … 

“I … know you,” he whispered.

She stepped further into the room, put her hands on her belt. “Probably, you do. There were never very many like me.”

“You’re, uh,” his mouth was dry from the wine, “Flaradnam’s daughter, aren’t you? I saw you at the memorial gathering in Yhelteth. I, uhm, I marched with your father. On the northern expeditionary. I saw him die.”

“And you were at Gallows Gap after.” She nodded. “Where you collected the long scar above your eye. Awarded the white silk three times in as many years, promoted to line commander in fifty-four, offered another sizable promotion after the war, resigned your commission and came back here instead. Trusted lieutenant to the rightful Skaranak clanmaster until he disappeared in sixty-one; getting along fine with his not-so-rightful successor today. You see, I know all about you, Marnak Ironbrow. The only thing I don’t know is whether or not you had a hand in kicking the Dragonbane out.”

“Fuck you.” Up from his belly, without thought.

A thin white smile split her ebony face. “I’ll take that as a no.”

He held down the impulse to cross the space between them and backhand her to the floor. Stayed where he was. Partly, that was his mercenary training, corroded now by the years but still in place.
Manage your emotions, soldier; use them, don’t let them use you.

But also, he wasn’t going to kid himself, it was those curiously empty churned-light eyes, it was the way she stood. He recalled how Flaradnam had fought in the Wastes, the cold methodical strength and fury that drove him, and he thought he saw an echo of it in the woman before him.

“What do you want with me, Kiriath?” he growled.

“That’s better,” she said.

T
HEY SAT ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE BED, EACH WITH A LEG DRAWN UP SO
they could face—and watch—each other. Heavy boots and buckles pressing down into the brightly colored silk sheets, leaving grit and mud traces. Not quite the congress the Skaranak veteran must have been anticipating when he came in here, and the tension in his face suggested he was still adjusting. Neither of them had relinquished their knives at any point and there was a telltale immobility to their hands as they talked. If there was trust in the room, it was smoke-thin and floating as yet.

“Dead?” Marnak asked grimly.

Archeth nodded. “Killing a dragon in the Wastes. He saved my life doing it. Which is why I’m here. He left me a blood debt to honor.”

She watched for signs of emotion, knew she’d probably not see much. For a people famed as berserkers in battle, the Majak came off oddly impassive when they dealt with loss. If Marnak planned to weep for the Dragonbane, he wouldn’t do it here.

The Skaranak grunted. “Could not have asked for a better death, then.”

You didn’t see what was left of him,
she wanted to say, but kept it stowed. And anyway, maybe he was right. Marnak probably knew more about the way the Dragonbane had felt than she ever would.

“He was coming here, Ironbrow,” she said. “Coming to kill the shaman Poltar and his usurper brother Ershal, the same way he dealt with the others when they jumped him with hired help at his father’s grave.”

Marnak’s face might have been stone. “Is that right?”

Near enough, it is.
That revenge on the shaman and his brother were always incidental to their homeward trek wasn’t something the Ironbrow needed to know.
Let’s keep it simple, Archidi. Blood simple.

She smiled across the bed at the Majak graybeard. “That’s right. And now it falls to me to accomplish vengeance on the Dragonbane’s behalf. And I would like your help.”

Long quiet amid the silks, while Marnak looked broodingly at her. Out in the street beyond the drapes at the window, she heard horses clop and jingle past. Footfalls on the stair. Uncontrolled laughter came up through the floor from some room where people were apparently having a lot more fun than in here.

“You are an outlander,” he said finally. “You’re not even human.”

“On my mother’s side, I am actually. But I take your point. Here I am, asking you to side with a complete stranger against your clan, and on no better evidence than said stranger’s word. That’s a big ask. But tell me this, Ironbrow—what do I stand to gain from lying to you?”

He glowered. “Yhelteth manipulates all it comes into contact with, and the Kiriath in turn dangle and dance the Empire like a child’s puppet. This is what I saw throughout my time in the south. How should I guess what benefit the Black Folk might see in stirring up the Skaranak? Perhaps your aim is to weaken us, to feed us in pieces to your citified Ishlinak lapdogs as incentive for some political favor or other.”

“The Black Folk are all gone,” she told him quietly, and for the very first time, the pain as she said it was muted and remote. “They took ship at An-Monal, the year after the war ended. I am the last of my kind.

It seemed to mean something to him—he sketched a gesture at her she didn’t recognize. Fumbled a bit with his Tethanne phrasing.

“
Honored word to those in Sky Home that,
uhm, well, the gods, uh,
your
god …” He shook his head, took up his goblet, and raised it. “Look, whatever.
I honor your clan’s passing.
We had heard it before now, from Skaranak warriors coming home. The Black Folk gone away, sunk in the fiery crater. I, uh,
I mourn with you those who have passed from this world.
”

She cleared her throat. “Thank you. In fact, I don’t think they’re dead. Just somewhere else. Just … gone.”

He shrugged. “The dead also are
just somewhere else.
The Dragonbane is in Sky Home, your father is wherever the honorable slain of your people go. We mourn only because we may no longer reach them.”

“So you believe me?”

“About the Dragonbane’s passing?” Marnak frowned into his wine. “Seems that I do, yeah. But that doesn’t mean anything else you’re saying here is true.”

“In all the time that you served with him, did my father ever lie to you? Did any Kiriath you served with?”

“That I know of, no. But how
would
I know for sure?” She saw him hesitate, saw in his eyes the moment he started to believe. “You’re saying the Dragonbane’s brothers came to their father’s tomb with mercenaries in tow, aiming to murder him? That’s what he told you?”

“Yes. All but the one called Gant, apparently. Egar said he never showed. They told him Gant would approve the outcome but would not involve himself. That sound about right?”

She watched him nod, slow and bleak.

“The Dragonbane told me you rode out to his father’s tomb with him that night, but he sent you back to the encampment before sunset. Is that true?”

Another reluctant nod.

“He told me Ershal murdered his warhorse with arrows. Put out its eye with one of them. Is
that
true?”

“Yeah.” Very quietly, not looking at her. “Looked like it from what I saw at the scene the next day.”

“Right. Well, the way Egar told it to me, Ershal was all set to follow that up by putting a shaft through his eye as well. Only then Takavach showed up.” She held down a brief shiver, legacy of the meeting on the steppe. “You know, the Salt Lord?”

The Majak made a ward, absently. “We don’t call him that out here. That’s League stuff. Dark Court worship. But yes, I know who you mean.”

“Yes, well this Takavach apparently saved his life. Took Ershal’s next arrow out of the air in midflight, summoned up some kind of killer spirits from the grass to take down the brothers—”

“From the grass?” She saw how still he’d grown.

“Yeah. Grass demons. Or something. The grass came to life, he said. Clawed down his brothers, choked them to death. Ershal only just made it out.”

Marnak Ironbrow, staring at her, rather the way he had when she first walked in. She saw the growing acceptance in his eyes.

“Describe the fight,” he snapped. “How many did the Dragonbane account for?”

“Of his brothers, none at all.” She sifted back through the memories, the endless times they’d sat and Egar had told her the tale, sometimes in his cups, sometimes hungover, sometimes simply sober, over and over again, as if seeking from her some obscure absolution. “The grass took them. But he took down three out of the four freebooters they brought with them. The fourth fled, I believe …”

Let her voice fade out on the last word, as Marnak threw himself to his feet and stalked to the window. He stood with his back to her, facing the draped silk as if he could see through it to the night outside.

“We looked for him,” he said tightly. “Tracked his mount back to Ishlin-ichan, but we were a day too late. Fucking half-Ishlinak southern jackal, out of Dhashara they said, but none knew his name or would give it to us easily, anyway. By the time we learned more, he was long gone, probably back home or into the Empire lands beyond.”

“That’s convenient.”

A low growl. “Ershal swore the sellswords were at the Dragonbane’s command, hired out of the south to kill his brothers. That the Dragonbane sent for them to meet him at their father’s tomb, and sprang an ambush when they arrived. I—”

He shook his head.

“You didn’t believe that shit for a minute,” she suggested.

“I rode with him to the grave.” He turned to face her now, and the struggle was gone from his eyes. “I saw nothing to indicate he planned a brother slaying. I saw no sellswords, or their horses. I saw nothing in his face. I knew, I fucking
knew
it was a lie. But the Dragonbane was gone. Vanished.”

“Yeah. Taken under Takavach’s wing. Someday, when we’ve got time, I’ll tell you what for. It’s a fine tale.”

He nodded.

“Two years,” he said quietly. “You know, Poltar’s a twisted piece of shit, more than ever since he got his hands on some real power. No one’d weep if he dropped dead tomorrow. But Ershal—whatever he did against Eg—in the two years since that time, I’ve never seen him put a foot wrong. I hate to say it out loud, but he’s a better clan master than the Dragonbane ever was.”

“That so?” Archeth got up off the bed. Straightened her jerkin and the harness that held her knives. She faced the burly Skaranak warrior, impassive. “See, that’s a pity. Because I’m going to slit his fucking throat.”

ingil peered into the opened casket. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this.

The Illwrack heirloom blade—what he could make out of it—seemed unremarkable. It had the same basic form as the long swords the dwenda carried, though perhaps a bit broader and heavier looking. But at the handling end, it stopped looking anything like a useful weapon at all. The crosspiece of the guard sloped sharply downward at either side, leaving a grip space only the narrowest of hands could have settled comfortably into. And in defiance of any useful purpose Gil could imagine, the underside was lined with small barbed spikes that would gouge chunks out of the flesh of anyone attempting to actually hold and wield the sword. As if that were not enough, below the guard, instead of grip or pommel, there was only what looked like the naked tang of the blade above, but twisted and sharpened into a lengthy, coiled, and inward-pointing spike.

Despite himself, Ringil felt a faint shudder walk up his spine.

If the construction of the sword was less than sane, then what had been done with the weapon seemed wholly appropriate. It was strapped up in the casket like some lunatic in an asylum chair—stained leather bandaging wrapped tightly around the blade over and over, crisscrossing itself up and down like an incessantly made argument, shrouding the steel almost entirely from guard to tip except where the bluish edge had frayed through and showed like a glimpse of living bone in a wound. And all along the inner surfaces of the casket, Gil saw runes scratched roughly into the wood. He couldn’t read them, but what faint whispering traces of the
ikinri ‘ska
were still open to him hissed in disapproval as he stared.

“Four and a half thousand years it has lain hidden,” Risgillen said quietly. “But for your blundering expedition to the Hironish isles, the news of your confused and tangled goals, it might lie hidden still. We might never have remembered what was lost, nor understood the chance we now had. But we snatched it away in time, and brought it home. And then we sent for you as well, and you came. Welcome to your end, Ringil Eskiath. Welcome to your doom.”

She nodded at Atalmire again.

The storm-caller uttered a series of sibilant phrases and Ringil felt the hairs on the back of his neck waft slowly erect. Inside the casket, the bandaging around the blade began to twist and rub against the blade edge, slicing itself apart, writhing like a nest of worms. It made a soft, insistent sound like a barber’s razor on the strop. And down at the pommel end, the sword’s coiled and sharpened tang moved, bent as supple as a silk cord, lifted its sharpened end like a snake, swaying and seeking. He thought he heard a faint, rising whine in the air.

Risgillen smiled and gestured. “There. It has your scent.”

Desperately, he reached for the power he’d owned. Felt it ooze fractionally forth, felt Atalmire’s glamour wipe it away again like a tavern boy’s cloth. Risgillen took his right arm and he could do nothing to prevent her.

“Come,” she said warmly. “It’s time. Give me your hand.”

In the casket, the sword was almost free of its bindings. The last few scraps of bandaging fell away, the blade itself was twisting slightly back and forth now, as if itching to be free. Atalmire reached in carefully and took it in reverent hands, lifted it out. He angled the pommel end upward, toward Ringil’s face, and for a moment the flexing, coiling sharpened tang looked as if it might dart in and stab at eye or mouth. Ringil flinched—he couldn’t help it. His head barely moved on his neck, the rest of his body was a locked catalogue of straining muscles. He thrashed for a grip on the
ikinri ‘ska,
found nothing he could use. Risgillen smiled again, but absently now, gone into some transport of ecstasy at what she was about to do.

She raised his hand slowly to meet the questing tang.

“What
exactly
is going on here?”

Like some violent and irritable schoolmaster, stumbling on mischief cooked up by his errant pupils—the Helmsman Anasharal, back in his ear as if it had never been away. Ringil made a tight, convulsive sound, somewhere between laughter and tears.

“You’re … a little late, Helmsman.”

But he saw an alarmed look pass between Atalmire and Risgillen. Thought the dwenda’s grip on his arm slackened just a fraction … 

“Oh, indeed,” said Anasharal combatively, and it dawned on Ringil that the Helmsman was not speaking for him alone. Its voice echoed through the whole chamber now, sent dwenda heads craning and peering for its source. A deep, new timbre to the avuncular edge-of-asylum-madness tones, as they tolled in the heights of Findrich’s vaulted, stained glass roof. “Clan Illwrack, is it? Well, you lot haven’t changed much in five thousand years, have you?”

Snapped exchange between Risgillen and the storm-caller—he understood none of it. But he saw something new in their faces, and it looked a lot like fear.

“Still trying to get humans to do your dirty work for you, eh? Still not up to the task of learning the way of mortal muck yourselves?”

He saw Atalmire let go of the sword, drop it back into its casket. Raise crook-fingered hands to carve some sequence of glyphs in the air, understood that whatever fragile balance had existed in this space was now at risk—

Fragile.

Like a lightning bolt into his face, splitting his skull above one eye.

“Call yourselves an Elder Race?” The Helmsman, still declaiming somewhere over his head, fading out as he grabbed after this other thing, whatever it was. “
Geriatric
race is more like it. I have to wonder. Or, no, maybe you’re just not very
clever,
especially when it comes to …”

Despite the merroigai’s good opinion, I find you fragile, hero. Very fragile.

And abruptly, memory comes roaring in at him. Will not be fended off. Tears aside the curtain he’s placed so carefully in its way. High st—

No! Fragile!

He’s stumbling, through confining gloom toward a blur of gray light, bracing himself on the sides of the defile to stay upright. Horror behind him, horror coursing through his veins.
The glyphs are in him.
He’s been somewhere, done something, had
something done to him,
something so intimate and dark that trying to think about it puts cold sweat on his skin and in his hair … 

High stone al—

Easy there, hero, let’s leave that alone, shall we?

The gray light is stronger now, he sees defined edges and a narrow gap. He ups his pace, falling forward against the bracing of his hands, have to get out, get out, get back to H—

High stone altar, somewhere—

Hjel,
back to Hjel. The sides of the cleft run out on either side of him and he’s back in the open air, he all but falls from the abrupt lack of support. Only Hjel’s sudden, wiry grip on his arm keeps him from crumpling to the ground.

Gil!
The dispossessed prince is shouting at him, seemingly across vast distance.
Gil! What happened, did you—

I’m fine, I’m fine,
he keeps babbling it, trying to make it true.
I’m fine.

But he’s not, he’s not fine, because—

No!

Because—

Fragile.
He’s weeping it now, because—

On a high stone altar, somewhere out on an endless empty plain, where he lies stripped back to a nakedness he hadn’t known was possible, where a nameless blurred and writhing shape leans over him, reaches in, changes him with clawed limbs and cold, unmerciful tools, while beyond, in every direction, the plain is filled with a horde of the same writhing, claw-limbed shapes, clambering over each other to get closer and see what’s being done, and the sky above is filled with a vast shrieking, like the torture of an entire living, feeling universe torn apart
… 

The dark defiles.

They lead here, all of them. This is where they empty out, and he chose to follow them to their end. He was not brought here, he asked to come.

The
ikinri ‘ska.

Stitched into him as he’s remade, as the whole world was once remade by those same incessant, obsessive claw-limbed seamstresses, for no better reason than because they happened by and it needed to be done … 

He turns and runs, flees from the memory, but it sits there on his shoulder, murmuring in his ear as he—

—slammed back to the chamber in Etterkal, the dwenda in dismay and disarray before Anasharal’s hectoring tones, the glamour loosened, slipped by vital inches—

He reaches now for the
ikinri ‘ska
, into the place it really lives, drags it down into the real world and the pit of his stomach and—

Vomited it up.

Atalmire spun on him, somehow alerted, binding up the glamour, grip tightening all over again, defending himself and his troops. Gil ignores the defence, grinning, doesn’t bother fighting, reaches down instead … 

Smashed the stone honeycomb floor apart under his feet, under theirs. Shattered its delicate latticework integrity, dropped them all through it and into the space beneath.

The floor below was storage, a long hall stacked high with crates for some trade less obnoxious than Etterkal’s human staple. At some level, he or maybe the
ikinri ‘ska
must have known. The shattered chunks of flooring crashed down on top of it all, smashed the top layer of crates open, let loose big, choking clouds of dust and—by the taste of it—spices. Gil felt the dwenda glamour evaporate as Atalmire lost his grip entirely. He stumbled to his feet on an uneven, shifting surface, broad fragments of flooring sunk at crazy angles into the wreckage of shattered crates. He found the Ravensfriend, unaccountably in his hand.

“Imperials!” He bawled it, coughing amid the spice. “Imperials! Rally to me!”

A figure stumbled into him from behind and he spun. Atalmire, off-balance and choking. He grunted, snagged a hand in the dwenda’s hair, yanked it hard toward him.

“C’mere, you fuck.”

He swung the Ravensfriend in a clumsy hacking blow. The Kiriath steel went deep into the storm-caller’s side, and he screamed, tried to flail free of Ringil’s grip on his hair. Gil tore the sword loose and hacked again, another brutal gash—he felt it snap through ribs this time, get into the chest cavity beyond. Flaring alien reek of the dwenda’s blood, mingling with the spice. Atalmire’s scream scaled to a wild shriek. He beat at Ringil with his fists, trying to get loose. Gil let go his grip on the dwenda’s hair, shoved the Atalmire away from him and off the blade. The storm-caller collapsed on the rubble. Ringil took a moment to settle his footing.

“Guess we won’t be fixing that leg of yours after all.”

Atalmire tried to get up, gagging hoarsely. He made it to his knees. Ringil swung again, better targeting this time. The storm-caller got one desperate fending hand up and the Ravensfriend sliced right through it, took fingers off like severed twigs, chopped deep into the face behind. Atalmire made a trapped, glutinous noise, lips bisected at an angle by the Kiriath blade. Blood foamed out of his mouth, around the intruding steel. He shuddered like a man taken by a fit.

Ringil lifted a boot, balancing with care, put it against Atalmire’s chest, trod down, and pulled the Ravensfriend free. The storm-caller hit the rubble like a felled tree, pitch eyes staring at nothing at all. Gil felt little scribbles of the glamour’s power shriveling away in the space around the dwenda’s body as he died. He felt the
ikinri ‘ska
rush greedily in to fill the gap it left—endless, shapeless force, like the sea running and breaking, slopping and lapping on the rocks at the Dark Queen’s feet. He gathered it to him like armor, cast about in the chaos, eyes starting to smart from whatever was in the spices. He raised the Kiriath blade high.

“Risgillen!”
He bawled it at the shattered roof, deep, grinding rage unleashed. “Don’t get killed on me now, bitch! I want your fucking
heart!
”

Around him on the uncertain footing, imperials and dwenda grappled in the slowly settling clouds of spice, like figures in some murky seabed dream. He tipped back his head, summoned the
ikinri ‘ska,
opened himself to it like a canal sluice, lashed out with its trailing, lightning-strike spikes. He sent it slithering and hissing into every dwenda head it could find. Instinctive grasp of what would work, coming to hand as unerringly as the grip of the Ravensfriend.

The Black Folk are here! They have loosed the dark souls of apes and turned them against you! You have heard the Warhelm’s voice! Your doom is Kiriath steel!

He felt the strike go home—convulsive shock as it hit the reeling Aldrain minds around him. He unsheathed a grin and strode in among them, seeking, grabbing, chopping hamstring strokes, spine-severing slices into unguarded backs—

“Risgillen? Where are you, Risgillen?”

—trying with every savage blow to drive out the memory of that high stone altar and what had happened there. He peeled the dwenda off his men, he maimed and crippled them and left them lying in agony for the imperials to finish. He peered through tearing eyes into every dwenda face as they fell, but none were Risgillen. He—