When the Heavens Fall (43 page)

As Danel headed outside, Romany closed her eyes. How wonderful to have found a competent servant. Someone who was prepared to use her initiative and did not feel the need for unnecessary talk. If only Romany's servants—
acolytes,
she corrected herself—at the temple could be as capable. True, the girl was a little reserved, but that would surely change once she came to appreciate Romany's company.

The priestess's breathing slowed. A pity she had not brought some oils from Mercerie, but the Spider's undignified haste had left no time for … well, anything actually. A distant tremor shook her web, and the Widowmaker's image appeared in her mind's eye. Shroud's disciple was still more than twenty-five leagues from Estapharriol, giving Romany ample time in which to arrange an appropriate welcome. As to what form that welcome would take, though … There was no question of the priestess going toe-to-toe with the Widowmaker in a direct confrontation—not because she would lose the clash, of course, but because she could not afford to step into Shroud's line of sight. But then what did that leave? There was always the tiktar to fall back on, but Romany was loath to play her most powerful game piece so early in the conflict.

When she opened her eyes again, Danel was still crouching with her hands over the fire.

Romany frowned. “The water is getting cold, my dear.”

Danel straightened and walked toward her.

Only then did the priestess notice that the girl's hands were blistered and charred. The smell of cooked meat reached her, and her stomach flipped. “Spider's mercy,” she breathed. “Why did you not move your hands?”

“You didn't tell me to,” Danel said. There was no suggestion of pain in the girl's eyes. No suggestion of anything.

“The Book doesn't permit independent action?”

“Your last command was to warm my hands above the fire.”

Smoke curled from Danel's fingers, and Romany looked away. “Will it heal? The power of the Book…”

“No. Once resurrected, the subject's body does not regenerate.” Danel appeared to hesitate.

“But…” Romany prompted.

“I've seen the master repair broken flesh before—one of his favorites. He can be … rough.”

“Spare me the details. I will raise this with Mayot when we next meet. A crippled servant is of no use to me.” Romany settled back in the bath. “Talk to me, girl. Tell me, what was your calling?”

“I was a herbalist.”

“An earth-mage?”

“No. The Vamilians had no such affinity with the land. We were a people of the sea.”

Of course. Where else would a nation of seafarers dwell but a hundred leagues from the nearest water? “I have read much about your kinsmen,” Romany said, “though in truth few writings have survived from the Time of the Ancients. As you can imagine, speculation abounds as to what happened on the day your civilization perished.”

“What would you have me tell you? How I watched a Fangalar sword disembowel my child? How it felt when the same blade clove through my heart?”

Romany pursed her lips. The girl seemed determined to spoil her mood. “The scholar Isabeya claims your people knew the Fangalar were coming, yet chose not to flee. Is he correct?”

“Yes.”

“Truly? You did not believe, surely, that you could defeat the savages.”

Danel's hands dripped slime to the floor. “Our ancestors fled from the Fangalar once—boarded ships and scattered across the world. For a time we kept in touch with our kinsmen in other lands. Then one by one those kinsmen stopped replying to our messages.” The girl's voice was so dispassionate she might have been reading from one of Abologog's six Treatises on Reverence. “It took the Fangalar centuries to find us here, but find us they did. All that time we lived in the knowledge that one day we would be discovered. That was not a legacy we wanted to pass on to our children, or our children's children.”

“What was the cause of your people's enmity with the Fangalar? The texts suggest you discovered a truth about them. Something they would not tolerate your knowing.”

Danel nodded.

Romany sat up with a splash. “What was it?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?” the priestess repeated incredulously.

“A decision was reached, long before I was born, that those who knew the secret would take it with them to their graves. It was hoped the hatred of the Fangalar would die with them.”

“Were you not intrigued to find out?”

“Why would I be? No explanation could suffice for what the Fangalar did to us.”

Was that a hint of bitterness in Danel's voice? Romany had thought the girl incapable of emotion. “I am curious, my dear. When I first came to this forest, I witnessed a host of spirits near the White Road. Your kinsmen?”

“Yes.”

“And they have haunted the forest all this time? Why? Why did you not pass through Shroud's Gate?”

“It was closed to us.”

“Closed?”
What an intriguing image.

“At the time the Fangalar attacked, the gods were at war. Shroud had just taken his throne. The world of his predecessor was destroyed, a new one still being made.”

“Ah, you were trapped,” Romany said. A thought struck her. “And so in a bid to escape your suffering you tried to … usurp … the bodies of those who stumbled into your domain.”

“Others of my people did, yes. Not I.”

“You would prefer to remain a spirit?”

“I would prefer an end to it all. I have existed as a shade for millennia. Dead, but without release. A pity the Fangalar did not destroy my soul as well as my flesh. It would have been a mercy.”

Romany rolled her eyes.
Such joyous company.
Just looking into the girl's eyes was enough to send a shiver through her … Though now she thought of it, there
was
a breeze coming from the open doorway. Sinking deeper into the water she said, “I wish to be alone now. Sparkling though your conversation is, I feel the need for silence. You are dismissed.”

Danel paused, then said, “You're sending me back to the master?”

There was something different about the girl's voice, but the priestess was no longer paying attention. Far to the south and east she sensed ripples along the strands of her web. No, not so much ripples as … shudders. Romany's wondrous creation, she realized, was being ripped apart by the arrival of some new power in the game.

And what a power it was.

Not even the Widowmaker …

*   *   *

Ebon sat with his back to a tree, listening to the leaves rustle on the forest floor. Dappled moonlight played across the campsite. A few paces away lay Vale, his head pillowed on his rolled-up cloak, resting. Beyond him were the still forms of Mottle and Corporal Ellea. For the past half-bell Ebon had tried to join them in sleep, but he couldn't get comfortable on the hard ground. Yesterday Vale had removed the broken dagger point from his side and stitched the cut, but the wound still oozed watery blood, and a dark swelling was spreading across his ribs and chest, making it painful to raise his right arm.
My sword arm.
He rubbed his eyes. When the party next crossed blades with the Vamilians, he would be at best a passenger, at worst a liability.

It was two days since they'd entered the forest. Two days following the Amber River south and west with no idea where they were going, or what they would find when they got there. For while the air was saturated with death-magic, enough earth-magic remained to thwart Mottle's efforts to quest ahead. It would be days still, the mage said, before he could locate the consel, or scout the forest to find out what awaited them. As yet they had not encountered a single undead warrior, but their luck surely couldn't hold.

Ebon's sight clouded suddenly, and he closed his eyes. After the defeat of the Fangalar sorceress, the spirits had returned to swarm his mind. At first there had been a triumphant note to their babbling, but it hadn't taken long for that elation to give way to the familiar tormented murmur. Yesterday Ebon had succumbed to a fever, and that fever had fueled a flood of spirit-visions: a Vamilian hunting party battling some forest cat with a green striped coat and paws the size of plates; lines of white-robed figures on either bank of the river, keeping pace with a slow-moving funeral barge bearing a black-shrouded corpse; solemn-faced Vamilian children tying wind chimes to the branches of trees; and always in the distance the sounds of fighting, sorcerous explosions, screams. It was becoming harder for Ebon to distinguish what was real from what was imagined. Twice now he had raised an alarm over shadows seen flitting among the trees, only for Vale to give the all clear moments later.

And when the visions relented, his thoughts were haunted instead by Lamella's face. Ebon could not remember the last words he'd said to her, only that they had been spoken in anger. Had Rendale found her in time to lead her to safety? Had they reached the palace or the river before the undead swept over them?
Please, let it be the river.
For not only would that mean Lamella was beyond the reach of the Vamilians, it would also mean she was spared from the whispers and veiled looks she would doubtless endure at the palace. It was two years since he had brought her to Majack after her injury, yet still she remained a stranger to the court. And why?
Because I let her remain so. Because I did not have the courage to choose.
Most likely it was too late now to make amends—for Ebon, if not for her. He could only hope his failing strength held out until he reached wherever it was they were heading.

He shivered in spite of the heat.

Vale spoke. “Is your fever back?”

Ebon nodded.

The Endorian levered himself into a sitting position and began rooting through his pack. He took out two dried sissa leaves and passed them to Ebon.

The king put them in his mouth and started chewing.

Vale said, “Tomorrow I'll hunt out some more galtane or blackroot for the infection.”

He would not find any, Ebon suspected. The forest was dying, the color leaching from it as if it had been washed out in the last rain. The farther from Majack they traveled, the more the trees wilted, the deeper the silence about them became as the insects and birds melted away. Ebon studied Vale's face. The Endorian's sorcerous burns had improved markedly since the attack on the Fangalar witch. During the nights, Ebon knew, his friend was speeding his passage through time in order to accelerate the healing process. Still, though, Vale's transformation took him aback, not least the heavy stubble that sprouted each night across his chin and jaw.

Vale unsheathed the sword he had found in the consel's camp and drew a whetstone along its edge. “What happened back there outside the city? You still haven't told me. I saw the witch's sorcery hit you…”

Ebon looked at the sleeping figures of Mottle and Ellea before replying. “I'm not sure. I remember darkness and fire, yet I felt only cold. The Fangalar's defenses just crumbled before me.”

Vale waited for him to continue, then scowled. “And the rest of it?”

Ebon gave a half smile. The Endorian knew him well enough to sense when he was holding back. “You remember when we were waiting in the consel's camp? The sorceress's awareness sweeping over us? Well, her touch stirred something to life inside me. Something that until then had been only a fleeting presence.”

“And you reckon this … presence … stepped in against the witch?”

“I can think of no other explanation.”

“One of the spirits?”

“I do not know. I cannot remember sensing it before the spirits returned, yet my perception is of”—he struggled to find the words—“something outside looking in. It is difficult to explain.”

“Is it with you now?”

The king shook his head.

Vale grunted. “Well, whatever it is, at least it's on our side.”

“I am not so sure,” Ebon said. He spat the remains of the sissa leaves from his mouth. The herb had numbed his lips and tongue, making it difficult for him to form words. “There is some history, I think, between the Fangalar and this presence. It saw a chance to strike at the sorceress and took it. Will it be there the next time we run into trouble? Who knows. Is its power something I can use? Not a chance.”

Vale gestured to Ebon's wound. “I saw how you got stung in Majack. Protecting the consel's back.”

“You disapprove?”

The whetstone paused in the Endorian's hands. “It changes nothing. If the consel gets through this he'll still have his sights set on us. Maybe more so now we've taken a beating. You can't win him round.”

“He spoke to me of a blood debt. The man has some notion of honor, however twisted it may be.”

“Then use it against him while you still can. Strike before he does.”

Ebon took a sip of water from his flask. “You are suggesting he has some sort of accident when we catch up to him?”

“If the chance comes, aye. Stop the war before it starts.”

“And when word gets back to Sartor?”

Vale shrugged. “
If
it does, what have you lost? Most likely the consel's court will be too busy squabbling over the scraps of his kingdom to care. At worst, you'd buy us time to regroup.” He resumed sharpening his sword. “Think about it, at least.”

Ebon was too tired to argue. “As you say.”

At that moment Vale raised a finger to his lips. A figure had come into view, weaving between the trees to Ebon's left—Bettle, judging by his red cloak and crablike gait. The soldier scuttled forward to crouch between Ebon and Vale. “We got company,” he said, pointing behind him.

Ebon had already seen them: shadowy figures approaching from the south, avoiding the scattered patches of moonlight on the ground. The king heaved himself to his feet. More shadows, from farther west this time, flowing soundlessly between the trees. The newcomers must have seen Ebon's campsite then, for they took cover behind the trunks. Within a dozen heartbeats the forest became perfectly still. If Bettle hadn't warned him of the shadows' approach, Ebon might have wondered if they were just another of his spirit-visions.