Reap the East Wind (9 page)

Ragged cheering wakened her. She sprang up, rushed to where victorious soldiers were leaving the captured tower. She grabbed at every man she recognized. “Have you seen my son?” Some just looked at her with tired, blank eyes. Others shook their heads and trudged on.

Then Varthlokkur came out, looking more exhausted than any of the men. He was fussing over a man on a stretcher. “Bragi!” Nepanthe gasped. “Varth, what happened? Where’s Ethrian?”

In a voice barely above a whisper, without emotion, the wizard replied, “Gone. They escaped at the last second. Through a transfer portal. Just when we thought we had them. They took Ethrian with them.”

“But... couldn’t you stop them? Why didn’t you stop them?” She heard the hysteria creeping into her voice but couldn’t quell its growth.

“We did everything we could. Bragi may have lost his sight trying. We failed. That’s all there is to it.”

The hysteria receded as she looked at Bragi. Lost his sight? Trying to rescue Ethrian? She started crying.

Her world consisted solely of shades of grey. First Mocker had gone, then Ethrian. Her brothers had fallen long before. There was nothing left. No reason to go on. Why even live in a world so cruel?

Varthlokkur was doing his best to soften her despair, and paying gentle court, just as he had done for years. She wasn’t ready for that, but hadn’t the heart to push him away. And there was comfort in being able to reach out to that one touchstone he represented.

She wasn’t alone. Never alone. Varthlokkur wasn’t what she wanted, but so long as he lived there would be someone. There was that much security in her world.

Someone knocked. Her security stepped into her room. “We’re going to pull out today. Bragi is going to visit the Necremnen King, but that’s just smokescreen. We’ve made a deal with the Argonese.” He chuckled.

They were going to leave the Necremnens holding the bag? Good. Recent intelligence indicated that the Necremnens planned to loot Bragi’s men as soon as they’d finished their share of Argonese. By seizing the Fadem Bragi’s men had managed to appropriate Argon’s richest concentrations of wealth.

“How soon?” she asked.

“As soon as you’re ready. There’s a barge waiting down at the water gate. Do you need any help?”

“Help? With what? I don’t have much more than the clothes on my back.”

“Well, I’ll wait and walk you down. If you don’t mind.”

She didn’t mind. She didn’t mind much of anything these days.

The barge was a great fat thing manned by Necremnen rivermen. Michael Trebilcock and Aral Dantice were aboard, along with the majority of the Marshall’s henchmen. The two youths spent the morning trying to flirt her into a better mood. By the time the barge tied up near the Necremnen headquarters she was feeling a little gay.

She almost felt a traitor to Ethrian because she was enjoying herself.

She stayed aboard while Bragi and Varthlokkur visited the Necremnens. Michael and Aral tagged after him, two young men milking their moments near the center of power. Bragi’s brother Haaken joined her for a while, trying to express regrets on her behalf, but he wasn’t an articulate man. He was a soldier to the bone, a man who had been fighting almost constantly since his fifteenth year. He’d never learned to express his feelings. She touched his hand lightly and thanked him for his concern. She felt a great sorrow for him. He’d had less joy of life than she.

There was a sudden clash of weapons ashore. Men shouted. Haaken bolted toward the action. A fight was something he could handle. Nepanthe followed him.

She came upon the duel and nearly fainted. Michael had gotten into a fight-with her missing husband! “What happened?” she asked Aral.

“He was hiding in the bushes watching us. When we went over to him, he came out fighting.”

What was he doing here? Where had he come from? Why hadn’t he made his presence known? Surely he had been able to see her at the rail of the barge.

Ragnarson bulled through the onlookers. “Enough! Michael! Back off.”

Trebilcock stepped back, dropped his guard. His opponent spun around, face painted with the fear of the hopelessly trapped.

Nepanthe ran into him, closed him in her arms and buried her face in his throat. “Darling. What’re you doing? Where have you been?” And so on. She knew she was babbling, that he couldn’t answer if he wanted, but she couldn’t get her mouth to slow down.

“Back to the barge,” Bragi said. “Time to move out. Nepanthe, keep hold of him.”

She did. She didn’t let go even when it became obvious that her joy in their reunion far exceeded his.

There were long days together on the road home, catching up, remembering when, sharing chagrin at the way the Tervola called Chin had made fools of them both. Mocker didn’t speak much about what had happened to him during their separation. She deduced that it had been grim. He had new scars. And the old wild, unpredictable exuberance had abandoned him. It was impossible to get him to laugh.

For her part, she avoided the subject of Ethrian. He seemed content to ignore the matter.

She thought she was bringing him around, luring the old Mocker out, but then the army paused on the outskirts of Throyes while its quartermasters obtained provisions. Mocker went into town.

Haaken Blackfang brought him back on a stretcher. Haaken wouldn’t say much about the circumstances, but Nepanthe soon noticed a cooling toward Mocker by Blackfang, Bragi, and Varthlokkur. When she thought her husband had recovered sufficiently, she started asking questions.

He wouldn’t talk about it. She tried everything. He remained as obdurate as a stone. He even lost all interest in sex, a problem she’d never faced no matter how rough times had become.

The army was in the Mountains of M’Hand, traversing the Savernake Gap, nearing Fortress Maisak, Kavelin’s easternmost outpost. From its Marshall down to its footsoldiers the army was a-bubble with anticipation. Mocker was the exception. He became more morose with every step taken westward. Then he told her he wanted her to slip away and stay at Maisak.

“Why?” she demanded, almost as suspicious as Bragi and Varthlokkur seemed to be. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“No.”

“Then I’m not going.”

Anguish distorted his face. He relented a little. “Self, am in bind. Have decision to make. Job to do, maybe. All would be easier if wife was out of way, safe.”

“What kind of decision? Does it have anything to do with what happened in Throyes? Is that why you’ve been unfit to live with?”

“Since Throyes,” he admitted.

“What happened there?”

He tried to share his pain. “Agent of Pracchia contacted self. Said same have Ethrian. Must do something for them, else he dies.”

“The Pracchia? What’s that?”

“High Nine. Rulers of Hidden Kingdom, secret society trying to take over world. Has members everywhere. Fadema of Argon. Lord Chin of Shinsan. Others of equal power in Mercenaries Guild, in Itaskia, everywhere. Same have no mercy upon such as self.” He spoke as a man who had firsthand knowledge.

Fear caressed her. “What do they want you to do?”

He clammed up. He wouldn’t say another word no matter what she tried. Her fear grew by the minute. “Defy them,” she insisted. “You know they won’t go through with their part. Will they? Kidnappers never do.”

She might not have existed for all he reacted. His mind was made up. He was betting the long odds, hoping to save their son. She loved him for that.

On that ground alone she allowed him to talk her into staying behind at Maisak. She shut down her fears, tuned out her conscience, and prayed the deed wouldn’t be something so heinous the shame would dog them the rest of their days. She sat in the cell-like room the garrison commander had allowed her, numbly awaiting news.

A soldier came one afternoon. A sergeant. He closed and locked the door and went away. Now the room was a genuine cell. He did not tell her why. She knew nothing for days. No one would speak to her. The men who brought food and removed the honeybuckets looked at her in a way that terrified her. As if they were building her a custom-designed gibbet.

Then Varthlokkur came. His face was long and tired. He released her under Royal parole, and when they were out of the fortress, on the road down to Vorgreberg, he told her.

Mocker had tried to murder Bragi. Had tried and failed. He had died in the attempt.

Her world, briefly reborn, had come to an end.

5 Years 1014-1016afe

The Gathering Storm

ETHRIAN SLEPT AND DREAMED. He visited the greatness that had been Nawami before the split with Nahaman. It had been a large and industrious empire, quite unlike any of his own time.

Into his dreams crept whispering voices, arguing.

“It’s not worth the risk, Great One.”

“He has to be polarized. He has to finish what he started.”

“But the Power we’d use... We have so little. If we fail... “

“If we fail, we’re lost. And if we don’t try, nothing changes. We’re as good as lost.”

The stone beast and woman in white? Ethrian wondered. Had to be. But how was he tapping their exchange?

He slept, and yet had a feeling of wakefulness, of being outside himself. He could float and gaze down on the curled form of Ethrian, lying there between the stone beast’s paws. He could be amazed. That boy had changed. He had grown.

So had the pool. It was bigger, deeper, murkier, and muddier. A few droopy reeds now grew along one side. A frog peeped out from among them. Insects swarmed. A family of dull-colored mudhens patrolled the pond’s surface. Swallows had daubed a few mud nests into cracks in one of the stone beast’s forelegs. There was a twig nest in the scraggly old acacia that had been there when Ethrian had arrived.

A turtle dragged itself from the pond and paused to take the sun.

“We’re growing. He’s opened the door... “

“It’s a crack too narrow to slide a razor through. All this time. What’s been gained? A bigger pond? Ten thousand years of this won’t restore Nawami. The door has to open all the way. We need a flood of power. Take him there, Sahmanan. Show him.”

“The investment is too big. It would leave us blind. We couldn’t see to K’Mar Khevi-tan.”

“I know the risks. Nevertheless, you go. The Word has been spoken.”

“As you speak, so must it be, Great One.” There was more. Ethrian lost the thread. His new awareness slid down a wormhole into yesteryear, into a time when the stone beast was a thing freshly hewn from the heart of a mountain. Artisans clambered over it, polishing away the last marks of hammer and chisel. The thing loomed over the landscape like some timeless guardian, yet at that moment it was just shaped stone.

Nahaman and Sahmanan conducted fell rites between the monster’s forelegs. They and a thousand lesser priestesses dragged sacrifices to their altar, tore out hearts, and filled buckets with blood and the air with a stench of burning corpses. They bathed the stone with the blood. Their summons went out.

It was heard, and to them came a hatchling god, a bundle of dark energy so small the women gathered it into a basket. They hauled it up the stone beast’s back, and down a stairwell which plunged to the monster’s heart. There, with further ceremony, they bound their new national godling, and constrained him to their service.

The god in the stone beast grew. His power waxed. His cunning sharpened. He was subtle. Not till too late did the sisters realize there had been a reversal of the roles of servitor and served.

Sahmanan surrendered to her Great One. Nahaman rebelled and fled. She made herself mistress of another land. She returned with her fleets and dragons and dark dragon riders.

The wars were bitter and pointless. That which had been lost was gone forever. The stone beast was master now. He would not yield.

Who can slay a god?

“Deliverer. Arise.”

Groggily, Ethrian abandoned his slumber. Night masked the deserts of Nawami. Tenuous, the woman in white stood over him. Straining, he rose.

Something was wrong. The ground seemed too far away... He had grown. He had to be years older... How could that be? He glanced around. The pool was exactly as he had seen it in his dream.

“Yes. There have been changes. You opened the door a crack before you fled into sleep. You have to open it all the way.”

Ethrian did not reply. He reviewed the arguments he had thought out before. He added what he had learned by eavesdropping. And still he could not bring himself to decide. Something down deep told him this was not the time.

“You haven’t shown me what to do.” How long would they endure his temporizing?

“You know, Deliverer. The Power is in you. Give us Nawami. We’ll reward you with your enemies.”

My enemies are greater than you know, Ethrian thought. They could not imagine the might of Shinsan. He could not himself, and he had seen it. They believed their Nawami the epitome of imperial achievement.

He suspected the lords of the Dread Empire themselves could not encompass the size and strength of what they had wrought.

“Deliverer!”

He gave her his attention. She was exasperated with him. “Will you liberate us?”

He shrugged.

Angry, the woman faced the darkness between the stone beast’s legs. Her stance shriekedI told you so!

“Show him, Sahmanan.”

“Show me what?”

“Yesterday. A yesterday dear to you,” the woman replied. She cast a tremulous glance at the stone beast. “The day your father died.”

“Time it well, Sahmanan. Err, and you face my wrath. And my wrath can be eternal.”

She told Ethrian, “The Great One wants me to take you back to your father’s death, that you might know the revenges at your command.”

“Close your eyes. Concentrate on staying beside me.”

“I’d rather see my mother. Is she alive?”

The woman started singing. Something tugged at the folded-in corners of Ethrian’s soul, tenderly pulling him free. He was returning to his out-of-body state. He settled onto his pallet and let go.

But he made Sahmanan work. He had made one decision. No matter what they got, they would work for it. He would hold back. He would make them underestimate him.