Summerblood (25 page)

Zeff flung down the pickax he'd been wielding, with a dozen others of the Brotherhood, and wiped his hands on his robe with more than a little irritation. It wasn't the labor that irked him, however—labor was good for a man of any station—it was the futility. They'd been digging for days now, but every stairway down to the mines ended the same: in seemingly endless mounds of rubble. Well, except one, which ended in water, courtesy of a cistern the explosion had breached. That might be their best choice, too—if they could ever figure out how to drain the wretched thing.

He wondered why he bothered. Everything he'd learned— which wasn't much—suggested that the gems were not common, that Avall and his cadre had found the only ones to be found, and that Clan Argen's vein was the only one that held them. Even worse, Argen's vein was, inconveniently, farthest from the entrance, so that even if they won through to the actual mines, there was no guarantee they'd reach the presumed source of the gems anytime soon.

Of course Avall didn't know that, as he didn't know many things. But this difficulty, while not unexpected, was proving
far more troublesome than anyone had predicted. Worse, the Face's ancient legacy of egalitarianism demanded that Zeff toil with the rest of his brothers and sisters toward that common goal.

At times like this, he wished their charter allowed slave labor. Murder was fine, if effected to the Face's greater good. But murder merely put the victim back in the Cycle, to be reborn better than before, as recompense for having his choices removed. So said the charter. So, also, said both The Eight and The Nine.

Zeff wondered if Lord Death would be amenable to a wrestling match right now, the better to renegotiate the terms of their devotion. But Death was not the Face they worshiped, any more than Life was. Their god—their Face—was that most shadowy one that transcended—yet united—all the others.

Time.
Of which everything else, both tangible and ephemeral, was a part. Including patience, which aspect Zeff sometimes had trouble accommodating.

In any case, there was nothing more to be gained here now. Not for Zeff, First Subchief of the Ninth Face.

Yet still he lingered, as though patience alone would prompt some breakthrough. But what he saw was the same: a dozen of his knights stripped to their breeches, with their hair bound back, and their shoulders showing scars where clan tattoos had been effaced when they'd sworn higher allegiance; a dozen of his knights crowded halfway down one of the wider stairs, working steadily at a wall of rubble with pickaxes, while others carried away their leavings. Stone mostly, but three times, so he'd heard, the shattered remains of bodies. He'd given those to their clansmen, with all the solemnity he could muster. And sent their finders back to digging.

“Eesh,” he called, snapping his fingers toward the youngest among them: a skinny, clanless lad they'd rescued from a foolish hunting party, and who was now this stairwell's waterbearer.

Eesh approached silently, eyes downcast, as he presented
the dark-glazed jug. Moisture dewed it, which was good, for the shafts were proving hotter than expected. Zeff refused the proffered cup, however, and drank straight from the jug as a sign he did not set himself above those he commanded.

Water gushed out faster than expected and drenched his face. Impulsively, he splashed his chest, then each hand in turn, thereby depleting the jug. “Sorry,” he told Eesh. “You'll have to get more.”

“It's the dust,” Eesh replied solemnly. “It gets in everything.”

“Wash yourself,” Zeff told him. “When you finish. I only regret the explosion blocked access to the main baths. They're supposed to be magnificent.”

“What I have suffices,” Eesh murmured. “—Lord,” he finished with a bow, and pounded up the stairs in search of the nearest cistern.

Zeff followed him more slowly, though still at a vigorous pace. He'd stayed too long, he feared, hoping to have some real answer to relay to those who waited to hear. Hoping the orders he was soon to give would not be given too precipitously.

Being a commander was more trouble than anyone suspected. But sometimes one had to endure trouble in exchange for power.

Up and up and up.

He found the level that the Ninth Face had appropriated, and was pleased to see it thoroughly and competently guarded by grim-eyed men and women in long, blue, hooded surcoats, worn above the best mail anyone outside Smithcraft could fashion. Their mouth-masks were raised, too, obscuring their identity—not so much from their fellows, as from any kinsmen, renounced though they might be, that they might chance upon in the hold.

A moment later, he was striding into his quarters. Ahfinn rose when he entered the common hall, blinking as though his eyes were tired. He also looked irritable, which was not to be
encouraged, and certainly not in an underling, however accomplished at organization, record-keeping, and the drafting of ultimatums he might be. Ahfinn's gaze swept toward the time candle in the corner, then back again, before he looked down. Zeff caught the gesture anyway.

“I know I'm late,” Zeff snapped. “I'll tend to my business before I bathe rather than after. What I need from you is to know whether you've found anything.”

Ahfinn exhaled anxiously and shook his head, indicating the open volume on the desk behind which he stood. “This looks promising, but it's a duplicate—a rough draft, actually, and mostly scrawled. What we really need are the Mine-Master's records, and they're—”

“I know. Sealed somewhere beneath us.”

Ahfinn nodded sagely. “And I think it's safe to say that when he says he knows nothing he hasn't told us already, he's not lying.”

“The imphor worked, then?” Zeff inquired, offhand.

“So it seems, but you know how long it takes to break someone when they've been conditioned.”

Zeff spun around in place. “Conditioned? He was
conditioned
?”

Ahfinn regarded him steadily. “He started out at War-Hold, then came here with his wife, liked what he saw, discovered he had a knack for it, and told Preedor—who was some kind of subchief then—that if they wanted him back, they could come here and dig him out. That was around the time of the plague, and Preedor had other things to do—like policing the cities— and the Master managed to get himself forgotten.”

“Very interesting,” Zeff mused, helping himself to a goblet of wine. “But not really useful.” He started for the door of his private chamber. “I am not to be disturbed for the next hand, is that clear?”

Ahfinn nodded and started to sit back down, then seemed to think better of it and remained where he was until Zeff departed.
Zeff noted his relieved expression in a well-placed mirror. And shrugged. No matter—not now. Not when he had things to do and was late beginning them.

With that in mind, he wasted no time stripping off his filthy robe and the hose, shirt, and boots beneath it; then, as an afterthought, let his drawers follow. Naked, he snared a towel, wet it at a bowl of water, and managed to clean his hands and scour the worst of the sweat off his body before knotting the towel around his waist and sinking down in his Chieftain's Chair.

A pause to compose himself, and he reached to the panel between his ankles and pressed a hidden stud. A tray slid noiselessly forward, bearing a number of small phials, bowls, and jars. He selected one, peered at it intently, squinting a little to make sure it did indeed bear the sigil of Weather. That confirmed, he set it aside while he located the other two he needed, which bore the sign for Man and Time. These, too, he set aside in order to withdraw the smallest of the bowls. It was a tiny, delicate thing, yet potentially very powerful—and very dangerous. What he was about to assay was not to be ventured lightly, and he was already uneasy about his lack of preparation. Well, the Ninth would either forgive him or not, and if he did nothing, that would require even more forgiveness.

Another deep breath, a brief invocation to Lord Time, and he unstoppered the phials. A dozen drops from each went into the bowl and mixed and mingled there. Maybe the air in the room stirred. Maybe he was sweating more. It didn't matter. What mattered was completing the rite correctly.

He wondered what Avall would think if he saw Zeff now. Avall was newly come to Kingship, and thereby required by rite to drink of the Wells at certain times and seasons. He would know how that felt.

But no one save the Ninth Face itself, and then only its chiefs and wardens, knew what happened when one mixed water from the Wells of The Eight with that from the Well of the Ninth. One of the phials Zeff had just opened contained
water from Weather's Well, one from Man's, one from Time's. Even now they were mingling, and with it, mingling their powers.

He let the bowl sit for a moment, observing the way the waters merged with each other, delicate arabesques of texture forming ever more complex designs atop the surface, as only he and two others had training enough to see.

It was time.

Closing his eyes, he sank back in his chair, then found the bowl by touch alone and raised it to his lips and drank.

It had almost no taste, and what it did have was rather sweet than bitter, but the fumes filled his brain like fire flung upon a sheet soaked in naphtha.

He saw light, then darkness, and then saw all of Eron as though from a very great height. He was, he knew, on the threshold of the realm of The so-called Eight, about to call upon the power of the Ninth.

To contact another nine.

The conjuring of their faces in his mind's eye was simple enough, but only because he'd done it many times. The difficulty lay in maintaining contact with all of them while still treating each one separately. It was like thinking nine things at once. Difficult, but not impossible.

He had their faces etched in his mind now: nine men and women of Eron, some of whom would've been easily recognized, some of whom were obscure. Not one was High Clan, however, and only two were Common.

He knew them all, but he called their names anyway, and one by one they looked up from where they were dispersed across the Kingdom and stared into space, no matter what they were about—though they were supposed to be alone this time of day, primed for exactly this kind of contact.

Blessedly all of them answered. Zeff waited a moment to confirm the surety of those nine bonds, then passed on the message he'd hinted for days might be delivered that very night,
for which purpose these people had been set in place for three seasons—ever since Gynn had uttered the prophecy predicting a winter—and summer—of blood.

“We will do it,” he told those people, letting the wind carry his voice to all those other minds. “We will do it when and how we planned. I hope your blades are sharp, your arrows keen, your hands strong, and your poisons virulent. If you fail me, you fail the Ninth Face, and if you fail the Ninth Face, you have failed the God who unites your Gods.”

“Aye,” came that silent unison. “That which you have commanded will be done.”

“I still say Avall won't like this,” Veen muttered, as she followed Vorinn toward the rough stone trilithon that comprised the gate to Priest-Clan's compound. It was broad daylight, if early. Reason enough to support the fiction that they acted officially, though they didn't.

In the afterglow of his frustration at finding Strynn gone, Avall had told Vorinn what Esshill had told him—in part to explain where he'd been at so odd a time, and why. Vorinn had nodded sagely, and, when opportunity presented itself, passed that information on to Veen, with whom he'd concocted the plan they were presently enacting. They were functioning as private citizens, however—if citizens who also happened to be the brother's-son of Warcraft's Chief on the one hand, and Chief of the Royal Guard on the other could be said to have private lives.