Warautumn (38 page)

Where, to Avall’s amazement, Zeff revived. One moment he was lying flaccid in the water, the next, he was trying to stand on the uncertain, unseen footing, then turning to face Avall, a thoroughly shaken and frightened man.

“I have seen my death, Avall syn Argen-a. And that is not a thing a man should ever see more than once.”

“Then see your death in truth,” Avall spat. And without further thought, raised the Lightning Sword—which was merely a well-made blade again—and swung it in a clean arc toward Zeff’s neck.

Flesh and bone barely slowed that blade at the worst of times, and this blow was more than sufficient. Zeff’s body pitched forward, bubbling red into the crystal water. Avall snared his head before it touched the surface and grasped it by the hair, raising it on high. “So end all traitors. If any here deny my right to execute this man, let him appear before my throne at Sundeath.”

No one spoke, though a circle of comrades regarded Avall solemnly, some from the shore, some from the shallows.

“Long live the King,” Vorinn panted. “Long live King Avall.”

For his part, Avall stared at the head in his hand. “I have just killed a man,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to, either. It was that Eight-damned sword.”

“That sword saved your life,” Rann reminded him, easing up beside him and expertly prying the bloody hilt from Avall’s nerveless fingers. He wiped the blade on the hem of his tunic and passed it to Riff, who took it dutifully, then waded out to where Strynn was leading Boot back to shore.

“King of the Wild and now King of the Water,” Strynn murmured. Then, to Vorinn: “Do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

Vorinn blinked, as much from shock as anything. Nor did Avall blame him, based on the assessment of the preposterous experience
that the river—apparently—had given him, which was itself raising new questions even as they awaited Vorinn’s reply.

“I … hardly know,” Vorinn managed eventually, through bouts of coughing. “But if someone will give me food and fire—lots of fire, because I’m as cold as I’ve ever been in my life—I’ll try to do as best I can. But first”—he gazed back at his sister—“do
you
mind telling me where on Angen I am?”

“West of the Spine and south of Gem-Hold, as best we can determine,” Avall inserted curtly. “Bingg—or someone, please see to that fire.”

“What about the sword?” Myx called.

“Which sword?”

“Zeff’s sword. The other … Lightning Sword.”

Avall froze in place. “I’d as soon leave it here forever, but I suppose we ought to retrieve it, since it’s obviously something else we’re going to have to study. If someone’s brave, can stand the cold, and feels like swimming, I’d be grateful if he—or she—would retrieve it. The water is clear out there.”

“I’ll go,” Bingg volunteered, already tugging at his tunic. “Seeing how I’m soaked to the skin already. But only if someone will tell me everything I miss when I return.”

“Promise,” Avall assured him absently. Something banged against his leg, prompting him to look down. It was Zeff’s head. He had forgotten that he still held it.

“Proof,” he announced, to nobody. “They’ll want proof that Zeff is dead.”

“They?” From Rann.

“Nothing’s changed, Rann,” Avall sighed. “We still need to get back to Gem absolutely as fast as we can. In fact, we can’t really spare the time to hear Vorinn’s story, except that we have to hear it—the rest of you do, anyway—in order to figure out what to do now.”

A fraction of a hand later, Div had a fire going, Kylin was playing the woods-harp he had finished two days earlier—
playing, he said, to help calm everyone down—and Vorinn was changing into Lykkon’s second-best garb while his own steamed by the fire. Strynn was passing around the last bottle but one of Lykkon’s finest wine.

“I hardly know where to begin,” Vorinn breathed wearily. “This doesn’t seem to be a subject that can easily be hurried.”

“Hurry anyway,” Avall told him tersely. “Time hasn’t stopped in Megon Vale.”

“Except for Zeff,” Vorinn spat. “Poor foolish, vain, misguided man.”

“So he could have said of me,” Avall shot back. “Now tell your tale.”

Vorinn took a deep breath. “Well, as soon as Avall … vanished …”

Avall didn’t stay for the recounting. Nor did he have to, for he had discovered a dozen words into Vorinn’s story that he indeed knew everything Vorinn was relating. It had come from the water, he knew—but that knowledge was almost more than his poor mind could accommodate. The gems were enough, dammit; he didn’t need one more part of the world becoming something to distrust. Water was too important to him—for bathing, for swimming, for making things new again. But instead of making him new, it was—he didn’t know what it was doing.
Remaking
him, perhaps.

Or perhaps what had happened there at the riverside had merely been an aberration—a function of the same circumstances that had brought Zeff and Vorinn here to start with: a desire to be with him for whatever reason.

He hunkered down again in precisely the same place at which all this craziness had begun, staring out at what was once more the pristine Wild, save where Bingg was wading ashore farther down with Zeff’s sword in his hand. He would need to inspect it, he knew—and dreaded it. Inspection would mean more bonding, and he had bonded with too many gems already.
Would this one also contain a death?
Maybe not; not this time. After all, Zeff hadn’t been holding the sword when he had died.

But the river had held both of them, and the river—or the water it contained—seemed to be the connection.

So intent was he on his musings that he did not hear Merryn and Rann amble up behind him—not until Rann reached down and gently touched his shoulder. Avall started, then laughed nervously and sat back, arms draped across his knees, not looking at either of them. “What is it?” Rann murmured. “Don’t lie and say it’s nothing. I heard what you said: that you didn’t need to know what happened but the rest of us did. And I choose to read that as more than a simple statement of your having made a decision. Your mind is my mind, sometimes, don’t forget. At least when you’re thinking hard.”

Avall glanced sideways at him, resisting the urge to scowl. “I know
some
of what he has to say. I know because the water—It’s like it washed into me, and when it was gone, there were all these images of what had just happened in Gem. As if Vorinn’s and Zeff’s memories had washed out of them and flooded into me.”

“Water,” Merryn murmured. “Water there. Water here. Water that brought them here. Maybe the same water, for all we know. The Ri-Megon splits south of Gem-Hold. The right branch goes underground. After that, no one knows where it goes.”

Avall regarded her askance. “So you think the water—”

“Water saved you when you fell in the Ri-Eron, Avall. The gem saved you, too, of course, and there
was
will involved. But maybe water is—or can be—a factor in jumping.”

Rann nodded. “Lyk and I have talked about this a little. We’ve all but agreed that when we bond with the gems something flows from them into our blood, while our blood at the same time provides something—maybe something as basic as food—to them. Certainly, in most bonding, the connection is still liquid. And what is blood but a kind of water? And what are rivers and streams but the bloodstream of the land?”

Avall gnawed his lip. What they proposed made sense.
But why did they have to bring it up now?
Surely they could see that
this was no time for theory, what with the siege still hanging at a crucial juncture.

Yet the images remained: the images his mind had sieved from the water. Like pools among stones, they were: each reflecting the sky—except that these pools reflected events. Nor could he resist gazing among them. One of them had caught his attention even now: the hold flooded, and the water rising from where the river flowed beneath it, then finding the hidden entrances to the mines that no men knew, and rushing into them, where they found, at last, the deep-hidden seams and veins where the few remaining power gems remained. And when the water touched those gems, it somehow touched
all
gems that touched the same water. And touched blood in that water as well, and anything in that blood that had met with the gems before.

For the briefest instant, Avall saw all the water in Eron, like a golden network spread across the land. And saw also certain places where parts of that network were brightest.

Places that already had names.

“Wells.”

Avall whispered the word aloud.

“What did you say?” Merryn demanded.

He looked up at her. “Wells. You know that I’ve always said that some of the gem effects feel like what happens when I drink from Wells? I think I know why now—except that I’m not certain I can explain it, except to say that as best I can tell, whatever’s in the gems … may be everywhere. But it’s only in the gems that it’s concentrated enough to have much effect. And only through our blood—and maybe our thought and will—that any of that effect can be manifested.”

He broke off, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, folks; I can’t manage this right now. The war’s come back to haunt me, and we haven’t even finished testing the powers and limits of the gems we’ve got already—and now we find that Zeff has more of the wretched things, and that there are even more beneath Gem-Hold, and that the gems themselves may be influencing
events more than we thought. All of which means—I don’t know what it means. One thing it means is that I don’t even know how much of me
is
me, anymore.”

“The part we love,” Rann said simply. “And what you’ve just said—though I don’t understand half of it with my surface mind—well, it still resonates in my gut. And it confirms what Merry and I came here to urge you to do.”

“And what’s that?”

“You have to go back. More to the point, you have to go back now—as fast as you can. You have to take the sword, the shield, and the helmet and return to the war. It’s hanging on Fate’s thread, Avall. There’s bound to be confusion there—you could probably
tell
what’s going on there if you dared touch your blood to the water—that’s my guess. But the fact remains. You have to go. At once.”

“The others—”

“If you tell them, we’ll have to discuss everything and argue everything and explain everything,” Merryn said. “Obviously gem power can bring a person—or more—here. Therefore, it can take as many people back.”

“Let me stress that,” Rann added. “You’re going nowhere without me, no arguing, and you need Merryn.”

“Strynn—”

“Is as strong as steel, and she’ll still have all she needs in the way of allies. We’ll come back for them if we can. And if we can’t, they’ll understand. But this can’t wait, Avall. The Ninth Face has literally lost its head, and while I’m certain that there’s a chain of command, that chain is probably kinked up in confusion right now, what with Zeff having vanished. Besides, do you think Tryffon would sit still through all this? This is his chance to push that siege he’s been wanting for eights. Fifteen spans of water half a span deep to an undefendable door. He won’t be able to resist.”

“No,” Avall sighed. “He won’t.”

He rose at that and gazed back toward the impromptu camp a quarter shot up the shore. An eruption of bushes
screened part of the group, and none of the rest were watching, intent as they were on Vorinn’s narrative. “I’ll go get Boot,” Merryn volunteered. “I’ll pretend I’m bringing her down to drink. That’s when you can get the regalia.”

Avall rolled his eyes. “You’re asking a lot.”

“No more than I think you can accomplish.”

“Not of me,” Avall flared. “Of the regalia. Of the gems in it. We’ve never used them all at once to jump; we don’t know if they even can, since they all seem to behave differently, and who knows what the combination might do—or not. And even if they can get someone back to Gem, we don’t know if they can take all three of us.”

“And a horse,” Merryn added—“if possible. You’ll need it to make a proper entrance—and maybe to make a proper escape, if it comes to that.”

Avall rolled his eyes again. But by that time, Merryn was already jogging toward the pickets.

Avall gave up thinking. Better not to, for the nonce. There were too many ways to think at once. Better he let instinct take control. Rann seemed to sense his trepidation and laid an arm across his shoulders. “A hand from now, it will all be better.”

“A hand from now everyone I know could be dead,” Avall shot back. “I’m willing to do this because I truly have no choice, given the time frame—but have any of you thought about this in the larger sense? The gems are giving us something for free. Over and over they do that. That can’t be right. There’ll have to be an accounting. One day … who knows? Maybe someone will jump and not come out of the Overworld. Maybe we’ll bond and never be able to separate. Maybe the gems will overwhelm us utterly.”

“Later,” Rann said sadly. “Here comes Merry.”

Merryn was indeed returning, with faithful Boot in tow. And now that she was screened from the rest of the camp, she was wasting no time divesting the mare of the regalia. Rann collected it as she passed it to him. Shield first, then sword,
then helmet. “Up you go,” she told Avall, nodding toward the horse.

Avall said nothing at all, simply stuck his foot in the stirrup and vaulted atop Boot’s broad back. Sturdy though she might be, Boot was not a warhorse. He hoped the poor beast was up to this—whatever “this” turned out to be.

Still not speaking, Rann passed Avall the helm, then held the reins while he donned it. Merryn gave him the sword, then Rann the shield. He fumbled for a moment, not having bestrode a horse in full caparison in a while. Nor did the fact that he was trying not to awaken any of the gems make his efforts easier.

But then—far too soon—he was ready.

“One more thing,” Merryn said at last. And with that she passed up Zeff’s severed head. “He’ll have to ride in your lap,” she continued. “Probably not pleasant for you, but you’ll need proof.”

Avall nodded—and tried not to flinch as he nestled Zeff’s head between his crotch and the pommel. It was only so much meat, he told himself. The soul was fled. And thanks to the gems, he knew that the soul—at least in part—outlived the body.