Rythe Falls (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Selana sat
once more upon her bed and it sighed. She watched them, watching her.

             
The woman didn't trust her, that much was obvious. The king-in-waiting...he was like a dog after a bitch.
Man gets any hotter, his tongue is liable to loll out.

             
'Stay a while. Sit. I've a tale to tell and so few visitors.'

             
Roskel Farinder silently entered the room and just as quietly placed a chair behind each. As he passed, he gentle closed Renir's mouth and whispered something in his ear. She heard, of course she did. Selana's hearing, like so much else, was astounding.

             
Renir looked around, surprised, like a man waking. Well, he was...waking from a spell.

             
Selana made an effort to seem more...normal. Poor man. She knew her limits, just as she knew most mens'. Sometimes they surprised her.

             
Roskel winked at her, sliding himself against a wall to listen.

             
Yes, sometimes a man came along who could handle her, she thought.
Maybe two in all her years in her life. One kin, and oddly, one mortal. Roskel was rare indeed. Rare enough she'd kept him around a thousand years.

             
While she thought and observed, Renir shook his head, trying to clear it of the fugue within which she had momentarily placed him.

             
'Don't think too hard, my King. Just listen a while...you, too, Tirielle A'm Dralorn. You came down here, heard my voice. Few could ever do as such, and now? Maybe only one or two across this wide world. Listen, learn. There is time, perhaps...but not much, I fear. Men think they hold the world in their palm, but they do not. There is much they do not see. Caeus, too.'

             
'You know...'

             
'Shush, man, and listen.' Roskel didn't move. He didn't need to. Renir closed his mouth, once again.

             
'He's powerful, alright, but in the way of men. He's all fire and showing off. Women...we're different. You, Tirielle...I...the girl child you knew as Sia, gone now...we see things to which Caeus is blind. They are here, you know...the Elethyn. He thought to stop them coming here, but he could not. He never could.

             
'It was always going to be this way. Men think with their strength. They try to make the world like...a battlefield. Something to whack into shape with brawn and steel. Never thinking that perhaps some things cannot be changed. The turning of the world, the cycles of a woman, the ebb and flow of the sea. Men fight what we accept. They strike, we flow. The Elethyn are here. Caeus will not defeat them. Nor will you, Renir Esyn, no matter what Caeus believes. A king to unite the people, yes...but to win out against the Sun Destroyers?'

             
Selana shook her head. 'Folly. Always was. Now? Even more so. As we speak, the Elethyn rampage across your land, Tirielle A'm Dralorn. They are invincible. They wear armour that belongs to history, armour no harm can pass. They travelled upon waves of light, in ways you could not imagine, and that light sank into those they left behind for the very purpose of holding their souls. The Hierarchy, once stronger than your hated Protectorate are now no more than vessels for the Elethyn. The Hierarchy and the Protectorate both are no more...vanquished in less than a day, though ordained for millennia...'

             
'No more?' said Tirielle, her voice soft and...awestruck? Sorrowful? For a moment, even Selana found herself unable to read Tirielle.

             
But no matter...the woman grieves, no doubt, for the loss of her revenge.

             
Selana nodded again, watching the woman's face, looking for triumph and seeing none.

             
Good.
The woman understands that it is no victory, merely that a terrible foe has been replaced with something infinitely worse.

             
'Caeus is and ever was a fool. A sweet fool, and one who I once held dear. But once a fool, always, no?'

             
Roskel grunted. Selana shot him a look and he merely winked back again, and twiddled his long moustaches at her. She shot him a look, but he simply shrugged.

             
Once more, she turned her attention to Tirielle and Renir.

             
'This is no war to be won with some heroic battle. It is an endless war. All war is endless, a cycle, no different to any other. The victors rule until they, too, are ploughed under the weight of history. Another takes their place...they strive for greatness, or power, or to be remembered. But nations and kings are all just waves, breaking on the shore.

             
'The Elethyn are the shore, Renir Esyn. You, the Order of the Sard, Caeus, even...you are but waves.'

             
'Then it is hopeless?' asked Renir.

             
Selana smiled. To the King-to-be's credit, his voice did not waver.

             
'Sometimes,' she said, 'Waves can breach the shore, yes? Once, you were a fisherman, Renir. You understand the tides and the power of the sea.'

             
'I'm confused,' Renir said, and Selana held in her laugh, because she did not want to taunt the man. He was earnest, and honest, and bold and brave. Simple, perhaps. Everything her consort was not, and somehow all the more human for it. If there was one thing her and Caeus had in common, it was a soft place in their terrible hearts for human kind.

             
'I should imagine you are. But does the wave concern itself about the weight of the entire ocean? No. It is a wave, and it can be a beautiful and powerful thing. Renir Esyn, soon you will be king. You will be that wave. A rather large one.'

             
'A wave?'

             
Selana made a simple gesture, her hand, up and down.

             
'Nevermind, Renir. Take each day, each battle, as they come. You are a good, honest, man. Maybe you'll be able to do what other, wiser, dishonest men failed at so well and often. Rule this land. Hold this land. Fight. You must, above all, fight.'

             
'If we can't win?'

             
'Haven't you been listening?!'

             
Renir shrugged. 'I have. I confess, too many similes for my taste.'

             
Roskel barked a laugh from where he rested, one shoulder against the wall, arms crossed. Even Selana smiled.

             
'We fight because we must. This is what we do. You are no longer a fisherman, Renir. You are a warrior. You are a king.'

             
'No crown, though.'

             
'I can remedy that,' said the thief with a sly, yet sad, grin.

             
'You have a crown?' said Tirielle.

             
Farinder shook his head. 'Not a crown, young lady. I have
the
Crown. The Crown of Kings, the only symbol of power that ever mattered to this land, the only one that ever ruled this land. Since the days of the first people, when humankind came across the sea and settled Sturman shores. The crown worn by the first king...and the last. Until now, maybe.'

             
'Where is it?'

             
'On the last king's head still, I should think. Died a thousand years ago.'

             
'You know where?'

             
'I should,' said Roskel with a grin that did not, for once, touch his eyes. 'It was I who laid him to rest.'

*

Chapter
Twenty-Seven

Gurt wondered if he was dead. If he was, it was strange and somehow soothing. Rain fell onto his face. He found he could not open his eyes - his eyelids were burned, crusted with sand and blood and smoke. Stinging, yes, but the pain was lost in a sea of pain, like his body was an ocean full of agony. The loss of sight was nothing compared to it.

             
Must have been damn hot. His armour still sizzled, cooling in the blessed rain. Something, either his back or his ribs, grated. He tried to move his fingers, or his toes, starting out with something small, but could not even decided if he had managed that small feat.

             
That sizzling sound was loud, though...his ears were working...were they?

             
Or, is the sound stuck in my ears forever?

             
No...it was a loud sound. Something big, cooling.

             
Humid, too...like the swamp had been.

             
But I'm in the desert, still, right?

             
His skin burned and itched and felt cold, almost freezing, where his armour touched it. Burned badly, he figured, and so thinking remembered Perr.

             
Perr...my gods...man was covered head to toe in steel...

             
Poor bastard.

             
Got to be dead...but if he's not...he's hurting. Hurting hell of lot worse than me...

             
Gurt tried again to move, even if only a little, but found he was either paralysed or his old body was just so damn hurt it refused to listen to the fool who'd messed it up any longer.

             
He tried to call out to Perr, but his voice wouldn't work. Dry. Teeth broken and his mouth full of blood. He worked his jaw around, something grinding in there, too, and managed to turn his head slightly to the side to spit out tooth and blood.

             
A little better.

             
'Perr...?'

             
His voice was lost in that strange hissing sound. Like water, hitting something hot?

             
'Perr?' This time he managed to speak louder, and was rewarded by a groan. Only then did Gurt recall where they were...

             
We're in the middle of a battle. Hurt, both of us...and I'm helpless...              I really hope that is Perr...

             
Those warriors, in the armour...might be that they were waiting right beside them, waiting to cut them up and down.

             
No.

             
Of course they weren't. That blast? Nothing could have survived that.

             
You did.

             
Did I?
Gurt wondered. He wasn't entirely sold on the idea that he was still the right side of the gates.

             
'Perr, is that you?'

             
'Hurt,' said the man, and his characteristic understatement almost made Gurt smile, but was hurt too badly himself to try.

             
'Can you move? See?'

             
Perr was silent for a time, like he was weighing up whether the effort was worth the pain. Then he grunted, and Gurt heard him shifting, metal grinding. His armour, either bent or burned out of shape.

             
'You burned?'

             
'Holy...' said Perr, and suddenly Gurt was curious enough to try moving again, and maybe even try opening his eyes. Instinctively, he tried to sit. Something gave out in his back and he shouted in pain, but then he was half up, on an elbow, and his left eye at least was half open. Muddy sight, maybe ruined, maybe just sandy. Sharp pain made the eye water, but if he was going to see, the watering would help, right?

             
He could see Perr, just a hazy, silvery shape, to his right. And ahead, where the battle had been, where the red light in the sky had...come down?

             
A vast sea, far as he could tell, sitting where once there was sand. Jutting from it, near to them, pieces of a torn animal that Gurt knew was his or Perr's horse. He hoped Wey hadn't died slow...old horse had served well.

             
Rain splashed from its still surface and filled the air with a haze was both cool and welcome. Further in the distance, on the surface of the sea, were legions of dead Protocrats. In some places, a single hand reached out, in others, mounds of broken bodies, white bone or black, severed or burned.

             
'Is that a sea?'

             
Perr shook his head, his fingers fumbling at the catches on his dented helm. 'Glass,' said the man.

             
Gurt saw that he spoke true. Miles of desert battlefield had turned forever to a sea of glass. The entirety of the Protectorate army, swallowed within, while those warriors with the awful armour were simply gone.