Rythe Falls (9 page)

Chapter Sixteen

While those old, mortal-hewn temples burned and spent their power for the return, other, far more ancient temples were silent, and dark. The oldest places of all, those of black stone, whether on plains, or high in mountain air and buried beneath the snow, or those that were long hidden deep underground. Silent, dark places, that may have been splinters of nothingness, or the void itself.

             
But for one.

             
There was one of those black-stone edifices that was buried so deep in the bowels of the world, so long forgotten, that even rumour of it had died.

             
A black stone haven upon which humans had built a castle long ago.

             
The castle and the town both were named Naeth, but the hallways below had been there long, long before.

             
That one was not silent. Far from it.

             
'Wake, love. Time for sleeping is done, my time is here,'
said the voice from below. The voice that was in Tirielle A'm Dralorn's head.

*

'The time has come, Tirielle,'
said the Seer.
'I am dead, now. Burned up. But it is all as it should be, all is as it must be. Fate moves on, Tirielle. Men like Caeus, they don't understand. Can't fight some things, can you, my friend?'

             
In her head. The child she'd saved, in her head. Like a sweet nightmare.

             
'I'm all used up, Tirielle, but it's not over. Fight's only just begun.'

             
The voices in her head had nearly driven Tirielle insane. Perhaps they had succeeded after all, and she was just slow to realise it, but she was becoming accustomed to these strange intrusions into her thoughts. She cried, for a time, when Sia's voice came no more, but she still wasn't lonely, there in her room.

             
Because of the other voice, the one from below. It was almost constant now.

             
'Ah!'
said the woman, and Tirielle could almost feel the woman's smile, even though she was nothing more than a voice, just madness, even, perhaps.

             
'You're awake.'

             
Tirielle smiled along at the woman's evident joy. The Waker, finally winning her battle against slumber.

             
As she smiled, Tirielle took the knife from the bedspread, from her makeshift war map, and with the sharp edge she sliced a little way into her finger. She watched the blood well up on the tip, then, carefully looking down at the salt pot that was Naeth in her imagination, she allowed a single drop of blood to fall.

             
Blood on the pot. For the lady with the voice in her head. The one she thought of as The Waker...but now that was done, who was she? What was she? And why the blood?

             
She didn't know why. All she knew was that it felt
right
.

*

II.

The Lake of Glass

Chapt
er Seventeen

Renir Esyn dreamed the blood-black dreams of battle.

             
Outside the castle where he slept a fitful, broken kind of sleep, a heavy rain pounded the stonework. Shadows of ill-aspect played across the walls of his borrowed room, and sweat beaded his brow despite the cooling autumn wind from the open window. Turning and thrashing, legs and arms trapped within the thick blankets, Renir muttered and groaned in his sleep. He was no stranger to harsh dreams. Renir was a man haunted in his sleep by dreams of his dead wife, or sometimes of foes slain and bloody who would sit at the foot of his bed, atop his blankets.

             
Many times now, Renir cried out while the memories of wounds played out from within his wicked sleep. His worst, a sword thrust clean through his thigh, should have laid  him up for months, or even killed him.

             
But his dream-guardian, the woman who would be his conscience, saw to it that he did not die. That woman, the keeper of his dreams, was his dead wife, Hertha, and she had work for him still.

             
Always, she had work for him, dead or alive.

             
Renir ran and sweated in his bed. He woke from these dream-nights with little or no recollection of his travails, but was always tired when he had those dreams. So tired.

             
Hertha scolded and scorned her husband even though he slept and she was dead. She might have married a shirker, she told him, but she knew he would be king and she would see him wear the crown yet, whether he wanted it or not.

*

'Renir!'

              'Leave me sleep, woman,' Renir mumbled, turning his head against his hard cold bed. Damn woman would be after him going out, buying pots, traipsing round Turnmarket. Or worse, getting his fishing boat out on the sea. Sea would be freezing, he'd be cold. Middle of winter, on Sturma's far south? On the Spar?

             
No.

             
'Leave me sleep,' he whispered into his bedding. 'Please...please...'

             
'Renir...'

             
Softer, this time. His wife had never been soft.

             
What's she playing at?

             
'Renir...'

             
'No, Hertha. I'm tired...so tired...please...no more...'

             
'Renir, you always were lazy. No more. You think a king rests easy? You think a king sleeps sound at night? No. A king hears screams in his sleep. He worries, he frets. And he should. A country's life and the lives of the people are held in that king's hand...tenderly or with an iron grip, it matters not. A king's burden is a heavy one. Sleep? Pfft.'

             
Renir opened one eye, looked at his wife.

             
She sat at the end of the bed. She bore the scars of death even here, in his dream. In his dream he slept (or tried to) in their marital bed. The home they had shared for such a short while had been little more than a shack. Freezing in winter, unbearably hot in summer. Heavy drapes at the mean, narrow windows, hangings on the walls to keep the drafts from sneaking between the timbers.

             
How the hell can I be so cold, in bed...in a dream?

             
Hertha smiled as sweetly as the memory of a corpse could.

             
It's cold because she wants it cold.

             
He groaned. He wasn't even the master of his own dreams any more.

             
Never, never, marry a witch.

             
Wish I'd known that before I married her,
he thought, in the deep places within the mind where a man is still free to think his own thoughts, even within a dream. Even while haunted (
no, harried
) by the memory of a dead wife...or her ghost. For without a doubt, the haunting in his mind was no mere ghost, no simple memory. Hertha had been a witch in life.

             
In death? Here, in his mind? She had power, still.  And a damn sight more than he.

             
'Hertha...I need rest. I'm not a king. I'm a man, and a simple one at that. A tired man. Each night you come to harangue me and lash me with your tongue. I'm tired, though. Please let me sleep, if only for one night.'

             
'Pfft,' said Hertha's ghost once more, impatient, even though this was just a dream within a dream. 'Lazy.'

             
'Goodnight.'

             
'Ungrateful, too.'

             
Renir nodded, and snuggled back into his blankets. Then a suspicious look crossed his dream-face.

             
'Ungrateful?'

             
'Yes, Renir Esyn. Ungrateful. I came to warn you, and you scold me for doing you such a service.'

             
Renir sat, even within the dream, and stared at his dead wife.

             
'What warning?'

             
'A man comes. It is your time.'

             
'What do you mean?'

             
'Time to stop being a baby at your friend Shorn's tit, a cowardly lad under the whip of Caeus and those shiny paladins of the Sard and all the people telling you what to do, telling you who to be.'

             
'You tell me what to do all the time!'

             
'That's different. I'm your wife.'

             
'What? You're...'

             
Dead,
he was going to say...but he didn't, even here, in the dream.

             
'Shush, man. Don't tell me what's what, just get up. It's time to be a king.
The
king. The last king of Sturma...or the first.'

             
'What man? Hertha...damn it...what man?'

             
'Wake up and see. He's right here.'

*

Wake up...

             
Renir sat briskly up in his bed. Moonlight, a solitary candle struggling in the autumn wind beside his bed. Scars on his torso seemed even darker in the wan light.

             
But there was no man.

             
No sound, no breathing. No sense that he was anything other than alone.

             
The rain pounded against the heavy stone of the castle, dripped down and pooled below the open window. The air, already, was chill. Goosebumps stood out on his arms and chest.

             
'Nothing. Crazy witch. Nothing.'

             
Beside him, as always, his axe rested. Haertjuge, the heavy butterfly blade on the flagstones, the handle within easy reach.

             
'Nothing.'

             
His hand grazed the handle, his own heart still ill at ease following his dream.

             
But it was cold, and he was tired, and it was just a dream.

             
Renir lay his head back down and closed his eyes with a sigh.

             
'I bring greetings, King-to-be,' said a voice with a smirk somewhere in it, from the shadow.

             
Renir sprang from the bed, the blade already in his hand.

             
But the voice moved again.

             
'Greetings from the Queen.'

             
Behind him, now...against the wall.

             
Renir spun and slashed and hit...nothing.

             
'The Queen wishes you nothing but well...peace, Renir Esyn. If you wish to live...to gain the Crown that Caeus hunts...be at peace. I am no enemy.'

             
There...there in a corner.

             
'There is no Queen,' said Renir, and swiped at the voice in the dark once again.

             
Not in the corner, then.

             
Then, from the shadows, a man stepped into the light.

             
'Not your Queen, Renir Esyn...but mine. The Queen of Thieves sends her regards to the man who would be king to this nation.'

             
For a moment, Renir was given to pause by the man's appearance alone. He was utterly bald, but with long moustaches. He had parchment thin skin, but Renir could feel vitality radiating from the man. Not old, nor frail...but sun-starved, perhaps, pale and almost luminous even in the dim light.

             
Renir did not let his guard down, but held his axe, ready to strike, should the man move at all.

             
If I could...
thought Renir, grimly.
He is fast...

             
'How the hell did you get in here? I can't get out, and you...just...stroll in? How?'

             
'Man of dubious talents, your Grace...'

             
'And you who boasts such talents? You are?'

             
'Me? I'm but a humble fool, a thief, a rascal, a rogue...'

             
'Wordy...'

             
'Wordy, yes. A friend of mine called me such...long ago.' A look of such deep sadness crossed the bald man's face that for an instance, a mere second, Renir was disarmed.

             
Wary, now...might be I've been fooled before...

             
'Please, Renir Esyn...forgive my lapse...it has been some time since I have bandied words with a...man. I am the Queen's...consort?'

             
'And does the consort have a name?'

             
'Once...maybe. Roskel Farinder, the last time I was known by that name...' said the man. He inclined his head slightly, like a bow, but without taking his eyes from Renir's the whole time. He did not finish his sentence, but moved on. 'Anyway...let us agree that it has been a time. And then, perhaps some more...'

             
Renir's axe remained ready.

             
Don't let your guard down, he thought, and the voice sounded almost like Shorn's...the wisdom of warriors.

             
'Well, Roskel Farinder...you have a strange way of greeting a man. In his bed, in the middle of the night. I wonder, now, whether the guard know you are here...and if maybe they would like to. Kindly leave me to my sleep, and perhaps we will talk more in the morning.'

             
Farinder inclined his head slightly, once again, but that look of sadness that made him seem warm, like a man who might be worth a little salt, slipped by so fast that Renir wasn't sure he ever saw it there.

             
'You misunderstand...' said the bald man, but did not finish his sentence, because as he spoke he moved. The next thing Renir knew, he was in the dark again.

             
This time, not the soft dark of a city night, with moonlight and candles and the distant glow of streetlamps and torches in a castle's halls.

             
Pure dark. The kind you get below the ground where there is no memory, even, of light. Uncomfortable dark, like when a man is forced to wear a sack over his head while being carried over a man's shoulder like a lamb, and jouncing steadily and ever downward.

*