Rythe Falls (7 page)

             
'If he's to be king, then let him be a man, too,' grumble Drun to himself in the darkness.

             
He really didn't want to speak to the Red Wizard. He knew that on this subject, more than any other, Caeus would be...difficult. But Drun had never shirked a duty in his life, and he wasn't about to start. With a grunt, Drun pushed himself from his seat upon the cold stone floor and stood. Even such little effort now made his lungs burn. For a second, he stood, swaying, desperate to cough but forcing his body to remain calm and still. It would not do to go before Caeus with blood on his robe.

             
Finally, after some minutes, Drun felt up to walking. Didn't want to, his lungs hurt him. His back, right round his ribs, felt like they were being crushed, or squeezed damned hard at the very least.

             
But he'd never shirked anything. The priest set off slowly toward Caeus' quarters with a long face about him.

*

The walk, through the dark corridors of Naeth Castle, up only a single flight of narrow, curving stairs set within one rounded tower, nearly laid Drun on the cold stone floor more than once. Those times he felt like he was spinning, ready to fall. When he did, he put a hand on a wall, rested a while. He was desperate to cough, to breathe deeply, but he knew to take a full breath would set him coughing. If he started, this time, he might not stop.

             
He composed himself in the corridor, beside a slot in the wall, taking the chill air and letting the air flood his burning lungs, breathing shallow and careful. He could feel something bubbling deep in his chest, and thought it probably wasn't phlegm. But he resist the urge to try to cough out the sickness, until the fit until it passed.

             
Time for coughing later. He knew he needed to save what little breath he could to talk with Caeus. He'd been putting it off, maybe.

             
No maybe about it.

             
He'd known Renir was unhappy. Knew they were all unhappy. Warriors all, caged? It was never going to end well. You could no more cage a warrior than a Jemandril. Try it, and first chance the caged beast got, you'd lose a hand. Even Shorn, Bourninund and Wen, down in town in their inn, in their cups? They wouldn't be held back much longer.

             
Drun understood. If battle didn't come to them, they'd seek it out. A fighting man, a man with war in his blood? He couldn't sit idle that long. The fight within such men needed to come out somehow, lest it destroy them.

             
Somewhere along the road, the need to fight had gotten into Renir. That demon that some men held at bay was growing in him. Renir was sold to war, now. No turning that around.

             
Just got to let him run.

             
Come on, old man. Knock. Get this done.

             
With a shallow breath, Drun stilled his heart and calmed his soul until he felt peace wash through him. Then, and only then, did Drun reach out and knock on the thick wood to Caeus' room. When the red wizard beckoned, he steeled himself a second time and pushed the door open.

*

Chapter
Twelve

Drun Sard closed the door behind him perhaps ten minutes later. The wizard had not appeared angry, but Drun knew that the wizard had been holding his thoughts and feelings - if he had such - deep inside. Both men still of body and expression, talking...but perhaps only one had been listening.

             
'That went well,' he muttered to himself, but it appeared that those few words atop the talk with Caeus were more than he could handle. He began to cough, tried to stop and found that he could not. His lungs burned. With each hacking, rasping cough more blood flowed down the priest's mostly-white beard, and then dripped onto his robe. Eventually, pale, clasping his sides, the fit passed and he stared down at the amount of blood on his person.

             
Even in the darkness of the hallway, it was dark. Life blood.

             
Won't be long
, he thought. He could have quite happily died right there in the cool hall (felt like his lungs were burning, maybe, but at least the chill Sturman air was refreshing). But it wasn't time to die. Too much to do.
So
much to do.

             
The priest left the blood where it was and forced his shaking legs to carry him back to his rooms. Night here, day in Lianthre, and it was high time he found out how his other brothers and their charge, the girl child who saw all, were fairing.

             
Maybe he could die later.

             
Drun's pains were beginning to get so death itself wasn't such a terrible prospect at all.

*

Caeus did not hear Drun's pains, nor his wracking cough, because when Drun closed the door to Caeus' room, Caeus wasn't there anymore.

             
He was at the foot of Renir's bed, once again. Watching the man who would be king sleep. The man groaned and muttered while he slept, obviously dreaming, though Caeus would not intrude in the man's dreams...such a thing would be...impolite.

             
Red light brightened the room for a moment. While Drun's golden eyes brought forth warmth and peace, the red light that bled from Caeus' awful eyes was both cold and full of wrath.

             
But with a blink, it was gone, and a soft smile sat on the red wizard's narrow lips.

             
'Renir, wake,' he said.

             
Renir didn't jump, or reach for his axe. He was rested and slept lightly, most nights. He was also accustomed to the occasional midnight visit from Caeus. Wasn't much you could  do about it if the most powerful creature on the face of Rythe wished to wake you in the middle of the night.

             
Renir was a pragmatist, really.

             
'Evening, Caeus,' he said and pushed himself up against his pillows as though greeting such a creature was merely an everyday (and night) occurrence for him.

             
Caeus made the room a few shades lighter with a simple trick of his immensely powerful will, so that Renir could see just as well as the wizard himself.

             
'Spoke with your friend Drun Sard a moment ago,' opened the wizard.

             
'Is he well?' said Renir, who barely had a chance to speak to any of his friends outside of his new duties - learning to fight like a King, learning to read like a King, learning to use the garderobe like a...

             
'Frankly, I think not. But that's not why I come. Do you think of yourself as a prisoner?'

             
'Eh?'

             
'Simple question,' said Caeus lightly, but Renir got the sense that though the creature's tone was light, his meaning was not.

             
Tread carefully
, he thought.

             
'I would perhaps appreciate a little more...freedom...to come and go...'

             
'Would you?' Again, simple words, simple terms...but...

             
But Renir wouldn't wheedle or beg. The wizard was powerful...but he was to be a king, was he not?

             
Show some balls, man.

             
'I feel like a prisoner, yes.'

             
Caeus nodded. 'Seems I've misunderstood the situation. My apologies.'

             
Renir breathed a sigh of relief.

             
'I thought you, the priest...the Sard...I assumed you understood.'

             
'Understood what?'

             
'You
are
a prisoner. I've let you have more freedom that I should. I won't risk my kindness being the undoing of everything I've worked for. Not again.'

             
Renir's breath was suddenly tight in his chest again, his skin tickling from the sense the wizard held his remarkable power...and some anger...in check.

             
'I...'

             
'Oh, I understand you and your kin, your human friends. No need to explain, Renir. But let me make myself clear.

             
'I exiled my entire people, over two thousand years ago. I scattered the remnants of the Elethyn wide and far among the stars. I lost my people in one great victory, and then I lost my freedom for the crime for a thousand years. All those years, I was held captive by the power of a Soulsword, a creature known as the Lu that guard all the realms and worlds in the entirety of this universe, and perhaps others besides. I was in a gaol far stranger and far more terrible than your feeble imaginings, and only once a year was I allowed the solace of waking, when the Soulsword released me from my bonds by drawing the sword of soul from my heart.

             
'I lived a thousand more years in the guts of the revenant while it tried to absorb me for food, the thing's acid burning my skin from my flesh constantly. A thousand years as food, a thousand years with a sword crammed through my chest. I lost my people and my freedom and I did it for
you
.

             
'And you feel I treat you harshly, in order to protect you from yourself and a myriad threats I see in every thread of fate?

             
'Man and beast that wish to taste of your blood, that which I hid from the Hierarchy. Your ancestors who I set the witch-kind to watch through the ages. The buildings I caused to be built and populated that have waited for these end-days. I made a whole continent sink into the sea and cursed the Seafarers to roam the waters and never know the touch of dirt until these days. I alone did these things and more, throughout the millennia, to bring this moment before you, Renir Esyn. I lived through these things without food or warmth or comfort. I made such long plans and such towering sacrifices throughout the lonely years, the mad years, yes, to bring you to this moment in time. You feel like a prisoner?'

             
'I...' was all Renir could manage before Caeus began to speak again, cutting him off.

             
'You feel like a prisoner because you are, but in a gilded cage, and I have been too soft. You think being in the belly of the revenant made me insane, or the power, or travelling through the black voids of space, or killing my own kin and banishing the rest...you think these things make me insane?'

             
Yes,
Renir itched to say, but he settled for a shrug...and a frightened one at that.

             
Caeus leaned down, toward Renir. Renir was already pushed up against the bed. He couldn't get away. Blood-red light came from the wizard's eyes.

             
'The thing is, Renir...these things didn't make me insane.
I always was
.'

             
Blinding light for a split second and Caeus' words echoing on the air, but the creature was gone.

             
His last words echoed on the air, like words turned to writing.

             
'Tell the Sard I go to see my God,
' the mad wizard said.
'Tell them I go to find the Crown of Kings for you...for you.
'

             
His words still hung there, in the burning air that wavered before Renir's eyes...until the air calmed and there was nothing left but a stench of fire and storm.

             
Renir finally managed to pushed himself from his bed and run to the door, to call the Sard, to call Drun, anyone, but the instant his hand touched the handle of the door he flew backward across the room and hit the wall opposite with a crack.

*

Chapter Thirteen

Reih had felt danger in her life many times before. Perhaps she was not as attuned to the currents of violence as men like Perr were, but she knew the feel of peril - a tingling in her scalp, an irritability in her mind, dread fingers on her spine.

             
The interior of the great temple was dark. Not pitch, like a deep cave might be, but dark enough that she had to fumble her way along the corridor she found herself in. The walls were lit by some minor luminescence, ineffectual in showing her the way ahead. She could see the entrance behind her, still large and wide and far more inviting than the dark, brooding gloom ahead. When the entrance closed behind her, wide doors swinging closed, cutting the light from a bar to a sliver to no more than a razor's breadth, she felt a scream of panic build in her gut, ready to burst in her throat...yet as the door closed that dim light began to grow brighter...swiftly.

             
In two or three seconds, her mood shifted from panic to wonder. The walls lit her way, not with fire but some property of the stone itself. Where the stone had seemed black, it now burst forth with light. Not blinding, but all encompassing. No longer walking along a plain black corridor, but one that shone like sun-blessed gold.

             
And on the walls, the roof, the floor (curved walls, she noted, not straight, like a human hand would build) were numerous symbols, pictograms, hieroglyphs, petroglyphs, even, at their simplest - as though people had come here to learn how to write their thoughts and dreams in this place since man first roamed the world of Rythe.

             
The images were indecipherable, to Reih. Perhaps they could be understood by the Sard alone. After all, it was their home. Their temple to their sun-God Carious, was it not?

             
At no point did Reih sense that she travelled up, or down...merely forward, deeper into the heart of this odd building. A sense of solidity, almost as though there were no rooms, just a gargantuan lump of solid rock, impossible, yet...

             
The corridor became a small hall, though, so someone, somehow, had managed to cut into this rock...Sventhan told her his ancestors built this place...but how? By what means? What did his people know of architecture so long ago to even conceive of such a thing? How did they move the rock, or cut it, or lay it? Where did such rock even exist? Almost black in the light, but turning golden with the absence of light...as though the rock on the outside were no more than a simple window, remembering the shape and feel of the suns and funnelling it, impossibly, through to its deepest reaches.

             
A wonder indeed, thought Reih, still moving forward, into the temple's heart. Forward to further secrets, to the answers to their prayers, some tool or weapon or knowledge with which to save Rythe, to save humankind.

             
Hall gave way to more corridors, her path straight, still. She wondered for a moment how it was that the Seer and her paladins had got so far ahead. Corridor turned to hall again, but then, something larger...the feel of a bright cavern, so simple its construction. Glowing rock carved with images, still, but now so high that she had little sense of how far the roof of this place reached. So bright she could barely see anything. Like the heart of a sun, perhaps, and perhaps that was what this place was meant to be.

             
She walked, closing her eyelids to no more than a slit in an attempt to see anything at all - the brightness now as much a hindrance to her as the earlier darkness had been.

             
So squinting, she walked across the great hall seeing little, until she was right upon what could only be the very centre of the entire building. An altar, perhaps where the Sard had once prayed or trained or slept. A simple thing, created from the same stone, pulsing with that immense light. So bright she could barely see a thing. She reached out and touched the idol atop only to realise it was no statute, but the Seer.

             
'Sia?' she said, unsure, suddenly, what was expected of her. She'd thought to meet the paladins and the builder. 'Where is everyone? What should I do?'

             
No reply came. The girl stayed, motionless in the glow.

             
Reih frowned, confused. The girl could speak, in her mind, if she wanted. But the child said nothing.

             
Footsteps sounded somewhere ahead of her...or behind? Hard to tell in the golden light of the echoing hall...she was next to completely blind, and what sound there was seemed to bounce around the walls.

             
'Who is it? Yuthran? Briskle?'

             
'No, lady...Sventhan.'

             
'Sventhan? What is going on? Can you...make it less bright? I can't see.'

             
'Everything is just as it should be, Reih Refren A'e Eril. Everyone is precisely where they are supposed to be.'

             
'Where are you?'

             
'I'm right here,' said the voice. She squinted. It seemed like the builder was directly in front of her. There, a shape in the blinding light. A face she didn't recognise.

             
For a moment only, she wondered if she was mistaken. She'd only meet the builder for a few moments, perhaps she'd forgotten what he looked like...

             
It's not him
, she thought, and in the same instant thrust her arms up to protect herself, maybe her remaining eye, like a person might. Their weakest place, natural to want to save it from further harm.

             
She couldn't see at all, now, in that second, other than to get a sense of something tearing inside her.

             
She'd gone high. He'd gone low.

             
Reih looked down and saw a long, curved blade inside her. The temple was going dark...or her sight was. As she slid back from the blade, the blade coming free, her blood hitting the golden stone, she saw the man's face.

             
Sventhan
, he said, and she'd thought it true, for just a moment...but it was not.

             
The creature's face was long. The hair atop that narrow head was lank and the pale skin taut on sharp bones. And the thing's eyes were blood red.

*

'Everything is as it should be, is it not?' said the creature, drawing the curving blade from Reih's chest. Blood pumped from the wound no more. One instant she'd been a living being, capable of love and hate, good, evil, indifference, even. Now, she was no more than a shell, her life's blood spread out across the stone floor and the altar, too.

             
The red-eyed creature did not smile at her death, nor at the Seer, sitting within the heart of some force atop the stone altar.

             
Smiles were denied the thing. Not because of the blight - it had that affliction, without a doubt. But because the creature that stood, head cocked to one side, had little more than a ruin for a face. Scorched, bones broken, pustules in the deeper scar tissue that wept and would never heal. Humour denied it, perhaps, but it was no discontent.

             
A protocrat was, after all, bred to pain. The blight heightened this, to the degree that pain itself was just another facet of pleasure.

             
He peered at the Seer, sitting serenely enough at the very heart of Sybremreyen. The Seer's bright white eyes stared back at the protocrat, unflinching at the sight his awful face. Blind she might be, but she saw on different levels to the rest of humankind. She saw through all spectrums...not just those of mortals.

             
'Everything is as it should be, yes,'
she agreed, speaking within the monstrous thing's mind.
'It was always to be this way. I was to come, to open the heart of Sybremreyen. The blood link for those of the Kuh'taenium spilled across this very altar. The red light, the Return...it was always to be this way. Ordained for millennia...But then you know this as well as I. You have become something akin to me...you are the Crossroads...the Crossroad of Knowledge...the universe knows you, sees you...and so do I.'

             
The Seer, who Tirielle had named Sia, and in doing so given a little girl hope, did not look afraid as the Protocrat with the hideous face placed his nub of a nose close to hers and stared into her depths, as though with such proximity he could steal her power.

             
'I die. I am not afraid. No longer.'

             
Sia even managed to smile, and the Protocrat stepped back, as though afraid that mirth and pleasure might be catching, too.

             
'You die, girl. You die. In screaming agony.'

             
'Quick, slow, matters not. All is as it should be, and soon, you too will simply...cease to be. Things happen and mortals cannot change them...though sometimes immortals set their own traps and pits, do they not?'

             
'Whatever. You are a power...of course...but you are still but a little thing. You will not be here to see my demise.'

             
'Fool,'
said Sia with her last smile.
'I am the only thing, contained in this small body...I am the universe. I am the avatar of all, Klan Mard...and I have seen your demise long ago. It was I who wrote it upon the stars a billion, billion years ago.'

             
With a snarl of rage, Klan Mard set the Seer to burn. And there, upon the altar to the sun, the flames of his fury engulfed her.

             
And with the explosion from the death of such a power as the Seer, here in the heart of the temple of the Sard, the way was opened.

*