Rythe Falls (19 page)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

I'm dreaming
, thought Bourninund.
Got to a be a dream.
His back didn't ache. His back always ached, morning 'til the suns went down. It even ached in the pumping heat of battle, only then he tended to forget about it for a little while.

             
Doesn't ache right now, though.
So, he had to be dreaming, because his spine was an evil thing that ached even in his sleep, and here he was, snug and comfortable as he'd ever been in his life on an immense bed with acres of white, pure cotton sheets. The sheets didn't have blood on them, either, which didn't seem right. No dirt or soot, as though he'd had a bath before climbing in. A man could get tired just looking at a bed like this. He looked with one eye only. Kept the other eye shut. Maybe with only one eye to look, he could sneak up on the dream and make it real.

             
It wasn't real, though, because Wen was in bed with him and that didn't sit right with Bear. Nothing against a man's desires, but Wen was an ugly bastard, and he was also jabbing Bear with something beneath the sheets.

             
Bear closed both eyes, hoping whatever was jabbing him would wake him up pretty quickly, because the dream wasn't quite as enthralling with Wen there, sticking something in his ribs and saying

             
'Wake up, Bear. It's morning. Fighting to be done.'

             
Bourninund cracked one eye open, wondering if he'd see white sheets and Wen's ugly face grinning at him.

             
But just Wen Gossar, soot and blood painted like he'd been fighting all night while Bourninund slept off a hangover that had lasted all bloody day.

             
'My head hurts,' he said. 'Didn't drink last night, even. It's not right, headache for no reason.'

             
'Got a dent in your helm. Might be the reason. Not leaking brains, are you?'

             
'Can't say I'd miss 'em. Did we win?'

             
'Have a look. I think it might take a bit more winning yet. But we didn't lose, anyway. Not yet.'

             
Bourninund didn't like the sound of that. It did not, to his mind, sound nicely optimistic.

             
His head hurt like a bastard, and his ribs hurt a little - Wen's toe was sharp and the man had a knack for finding the spot right between the front and rear plates that protected his chest. Groaning, head pounding, he pushed himself up, only moderately relieved to discover that his back still hurt. That was his one constant, his touchstone. If his back still hurt, he must be alive.

             
'Need a hand?' said Wen. Bourninund slapped Wen's hand aside and heaved himself the rest of the way up until he stood. The ground seemed to sway for a while, but it settled well enough.

             
He and Wen took the wooden staircase leading up to the top of the wall. A short walkway ran around the inner wall, stairs here and there to help a man up. Too high to leap over, even on horseback, but it wouldn't take much to breach. It was more for show than function. Might once have held an invader or two at bay, but it was just a hurdle 'til the castle walls looming behind them.

             
As he climbed the stairs he realised he couldn't hear that dreadful wailing any longer, but he could hear the groans and cries of the wounded. Nothing for it but to have a look.

             
Holding the handrail so he didn't snap on the way up, his back creaked and his knees and hips and shoulders all felt full of splinters.

             
Young man's game, war, he thought. Old men should know better.

             
All around the base of the battlements, tired, dreary men rested, passed water, ate what food they'd been able to find. A few managed to sleep, propped against the stone, or using helms as rough pillows. Men bore wounds, puckered and torn at the edges. Some should be stitched, but with so many wounded, who could keep up? A few burns, too, on those unlucky enough to get caught in the destruction of the outer city.

             
And what destruction, Bourninund saw, peering over the battlements, just in case some plucky Drayman archer got bored.

             
Out beyond their bastion, the poorest hovels that a man with no talent or money could build burned or were simply kicked or hacked apart. Where once there had been a kind of rude shanty town with muddied streets and waste and yapping dogs...was nothing but a barren waste.

             
The remnants were the useless things - bodies, mostly, both Sturman and Drayman. Anything useful had been taken from the dead, like armour or clothing better suited to the Sturman weather. Heads or arms or legs were missing, but probably not salvaged, just lost in the carnage. Blood and guts and bone here and there, but mostly everything just looked the colour of mud. Any wood that was not blackened had been taken, too.

             
Smoke drifted and a light mist greyed out the skies, and at first Bourninund could not look away from the detritus of battle. But then the smoke drifted apart, and out on the plains he saw why the Draymen had taken the wood they could. They had campfires burning, roasting meat, probably. No doubt they'd brought little in the way of food or drink but what they could carry. The Drayman armies didn't travel with baggage, or supply wagons. He didn't think they even had wagons.

             
They always brought what they could carry, and took only what they could carry back...but then, usually, Draymen merely raided for what they wanted. They didn't often head to war. But when they did? Bourninund figured it would look much like this.

             
They covered the horizon. Wen was right. The Draymar tribes, savage, nomadic, people, had found a cause or a leader strong enough to bring them together as one.

             
Bourninund felt a little sick, looking at them. Too many to count. He figured he'd seen an army of ten thousand maybe twice in his life.

             
This was more. Perhaps, even, some vast figure that he did not even know.

             
'How...' Bourninund took a breath as his voice cracked. 'How many, Wen? You good at counting fires?'

             
'Can count the fires well enough...those that I can see. But there's more I can't, and I don't know how many to a fire.'

             
'What are they cooking?'

             
'Horse, I reckon. Maybe a dog or two, maybe they found a cow.'

             
'Hundred fires?'

             
Wen laughed. 'Thousand or more I counted before dawn. Easier to see them in the dark than this mist. But some were just dots in the night - might be there's more, further out, and I can't even see them. My eyes aren't as strong as they once were.'

             
'A thousand fires? Ten men to a fire, maybe?'

             
'Ten thousand? No. Didn't bring tents. More to a fire. Need the warmth, I figure. They're used to the heat of the plains over the mountains. Be cold for them, here. Draymen rarely raid in winter, do they?'

             
'Reckon they'll bugger off because it's raining?'

             
Wen smiled. Bourninund didn't. He wasn't joking, but even as he said it he knew how ridiculously hopeful it sounded. Especially as there was no hope.

             
More than ten thousand...maybe ten times more?

             
'How many dead? How many inside this wall?'

             
'Too many,' said Wen, honestly. Bourninund didn't begrudge him the harshness of the fact. With all the city folk who couldn't fight, all the wounded, and looking at an uncomfortable siege as their best hope, Bear understood Wen's meaning well enough.

             
Maybe twenty thousand soldiers might not have been too many, but even five thousand city folk was five thousand more mouths than they'd be able to feed after a month or two.

             
If they lasted that long.

             
'Why didn't they keep pushing? Could've had us back in the castle by now.'

             
Wen shrugged. 'Who knows? Maybe they're in no rush. Maybe they've got a couple of blisters, lancing 'em round the fire. Maybe they stole a woman or two to torture, or some men. Maybe they're bored of us...does it matter? Want a drink?'

             
'What? Water? Probably should.'

             
Wen produced a rare glass bottle of stum from a pack at his hip, like he just performed the greatest magic. 'Something to keep the spirits up...saved it. Hid it. Can't trust soldiers,' said Wen with a big dirty grin.

             
Bourninund's found his disposition improved at the sight of the rare brew.

             
'I knew I liked you,' he said with a grin just as grimy as Wen's.

*

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Renir stood in the dark wearing the simple golden crown and feeling like a complete fool. The fact that there were only two people to see him did not alleviate his embarrassment at all. He looked sheepishly at Tirielle with a wry twist of his mouth, then shrugged for Farinder's benefit.

             
'Roskel...I...it's a pretty piece of gold, but you may have overstated the...impact. It's just a crown. Nothing special.'

             
Roskel frowned. 'But it is. It's the Crown of Kings...the memories of the kings of this land reside in the gold...none other than those of the Kings' Line may bear it upon their head...it...it...'

             
The man seemed at a loss for words, genuinely upset, hurt, even, that the crown did nothing for Renir. Renir thought about pretending he felt something...anything...to lessen the blow to the bald thief, but then he didn't have to. Renir felt his vision dim and...

             
'Uh...uh...' he managed. He was, as his vision turned entirely to the past, aware of Roskel, fairly capering with delight.

             
I'm going...to fall...
he thought, and he was right. It was left to Tirielle to catch Renir as his legs gave way.

*

The King was heavier than he looked, and Tirielle's weakened knees buckled as she took his weight. His face cracked into the top of her head, stunning her, and then he was on the floor. A small line of blood ran from his nostril and down his cheek, but the crown stayed put.

             
Tirielle wondered if she shouldn't remove it...he looked...dead.

             
'Leave it, Lady Dralorn,' said the thief, but in a kindly manner. His voice held a tone she hadn't heard since she'd found her way to the dark beneath.

             
Small relief, though, for now she was alone in the darkness with the man who was consort to the Queen of Witches. This man's lover was a power in Sturma, still, and the man himself...he was dead, wasn't he?

             
Dead for sure, as is the Witch Queen.

             
Renir might not have noticed - the glamour worked with greater strength, it seemed, on him - but Tirielle did.

             
So she was somehow kin to Selana, that she could hear voices in her head and know the dead for what they were? That, too, was no comfort. There was only one kind of creature she knew that could talk and walk with no blood to fuel their bodies. Only one kind of being that could see in the dark, that had no need of food or drink.

             
But a dire need for blood...

             
Tirielle smiled at Roskel as she knelt there, and she might as well have been alone with him in the deep, deep dark.
Keep smiling
, she thought. But she was aware of the warmth of her body compared to the thief's. She imagined the veins in her hands and neck, bare, jumping under her skin. Imagine him listening to the beat of her heart.

             
Were these two allies? A power for good, like they said?

             
Or foes? Deadly. And dead...?

*

Renir was no longer within the black chamber, but upon a great ship of strange design. The largest ship he'd ever known belonged to the Seafarers...until now. The Feewar ship he'd taken passage on from Sturma to Terythyr had been held together by skill and magic.

             
But the ship he found himself upon now was no magical vessel. It was a ship built by masters, built with arts long forgotten by the people of Sturma. Maybe someone, somewhere on the entire world of Rythe could still make such things...but Sturmen were poor shipwrights. Poor builders, too. Many arts were long lost to them.

             
At the foredeck stood a proud, straight man, and on his brow he wore a simple circlet of gold.

             
The first king of these people, and they are...leaving one shore for another.

             
The suns' seemed more radiant, here, the air crisp and the spume bright and pure as the great ship cut the water.

             
I can smell the sea...what a wonderful...

             
At this realisation, Renir's sense that he was watching the past, seeing the first king's journey as a mere observer, fled.

             
...magic this is...
he thought. But then his sense of his own body was no more.

             
His vision raced, as though he ran at the king...and with a jarring, disorienting shudder, he was observer from outside no longer.

             
He was within the king.

*

He looked out through the king's eyes, aware of the man's frown simply through a narrowing of his field of vision.

             
He looked up and saw a wide, great expanse of trees, majestic and ancient. Grassland spread west and south, a wide, muddy river ran nearby toward the sea in the...east.

             
We stand in the past,
thought Renir, as he/the ancient king look down at a rough-hewn man who knelt before him.

             
'We found no way in, your grace. No egress at all. Everywhere is smooth, without join or marking. A place not even the Builders could create. It is a marvel. A mystery.'

             
The first king looked down to the ground itself, and with his simple boots stomped down on perfectly smooth black rock.

             
This is...this is the roof? The Witch Queen's domain is hidden under here...?Even in this time...whenever this is...a thousand years? Two, three, or more millennia past?

             
'Then this is where we will build. On this place of wonder, our first city.'

             
Neath
, thought Renir.
In some distant past, I see through the eyes of my ancestor who stood right above, perhaps, this very spot.

             
Renir's vision reeled and he bounced, tumbled, through the ages. Another time, another king.

             
He saw love, through a monarch's eyes, and betrayal. Murder and executions and style change through each and every king's eyes. Time, marching forward. Heavy iron to supple steel, leather and cotton of plain design and finer cloth, traded with the Draymen, once on friendlier terms, perhaps. He saw winters and storms and destruction, famine that wiped household and entire families from history. Siege engines before Naeth's great castle, once even more imposing. He saw through many kings' eyes other places, other times, other faces. Time and again a face would seem familiar to Renir and he would try to speak through the kings' voice, but he was merely an observer on this insane, crisp vision through the history of his country and the people.

             
Dogs at his feet, horse beneath him. Axes or swords or bows in hands that were soft or calloused, weak or strong. Mad eyes or drunk eyes, slurred words, roaring anger, death...he felt the death of kings keenly, many times.

             
How long, within the vision? How many eons passing with each real breath he took?

             
He had no way to know, but, at last Renir felt his eyes within a man of such great passion, such honour, that his own eyes wept. He felt the strangest sensation of being inside himself, down in the darkness. Beside him, he saw the Lady Tirielle. Across from him, the thief Roskel Farinder. He was himself, but he was also within the last king of Sturma, and he was watching his corpse rise from the cold black stone at the very same time as the corpse was watching him, the pretender, Renir Esyn.

*

This is...insanity.

             
Should I be afraid?

             
There is no malice, and yet...

             
'Roskel cannot see me,' said the corpse, his voice hollow within his fine armour. 'Renir Esyn...this is the vision of the Crown of Kings. The glory of it, the power...'

             
The corpse bowed its helmed head to Renir.

             
'Strangest sensation, I know. Once I wore the Crown of Kings and felt as you feel now. I am...I was...known as Tarn. King for but a short time, and now no more than a memory within a circle of gold upon your brow.'

             
Renir felt a sudden awkwardness. A king meets a king...what should you do?

             
Should I fall to my knee before him? Should he, before me?

             
But this man's memories, his hard life and his hard death, his love of his family and his wife, of his friends who had been dark-hearted outlaws and brave renegades at the same time...these things warmed Renir's heart, even though he seemed to be conversing with a corpse.

             
The warmth of the man's passions flooded Renir and he dropped to his knee, head bowed, before the other man would have to choose to do the same.

             
The sorrow of the last king's passing nearly buckled his knees, anyway. To kneel was a relief...and to Renir, it felt...
right.

             
'I am just a memory, Renir Esyn,' said the corpse with humour, though it had no life with which to feel mirth, nor the ability to smile. 'You do not need to bow to me. I am a long time through Madal's gates, but I stayed here to greet you...this...echo? This echo remembers a witch named Tulathia, and a god named Caeus...'

             
'Caeus?' blurted Renir and surprised himself that he was able to speak with his own voice inside this wondrous magic that ensnared him. 'I know him. He is here!'

             
The echo-king nodded, a simple gesture, but full of gravity. 'Wonders, it seems...are eternal. That my death served something...I would have been happy, perhaps, to know such as I died. But Caeus cannot win this...war? Caeus' kin...these Elethyn? He cannot defeat them, Renir. So much, all for this moment...'

             
The echo king's charred face seemed thoughtful but not sad. No. Not sad.

             
Something of the young man the king had been remained therein, and at the instant that Renir thought so, he thought he could see the ghost of the young man's face, laid over the blackened skin of death.

             
He was younger than me...thought Renir. He had the sense of a scar, running nearly the length of the man's cheek, barren in his beard. A rough looking man...but the ghost of a twinkle in his long-dead eyes.

             
With that ghost face, the king granted Renir a smile. Genuine, and one that gave him strength.

             
'Rythe, Renir...her two suns...but she has two moons, too. You ever think...maybe there were always two worlds beneath the gold and silver of those distant gods? One seen...one unseen?'

             
'My lord?'

             
The echo of the king, with enough of the man himself still there, shook his head with soft compassion. 'Renir, there is a world that exists within Rythe...a twin, to her, like Carious has Dow, and Gern had Hren...Rythe has a twin. The world of the dead. Caeus, I think...he cannot win alone, because he is of one world. His sister is of the other world. Together...'

             
Renir's thoughts were like fish, swimming crazily in circles. The fates and the powers and the possibilities...sharks, circling a shoal.

             
'Caeus has a sister?'

             
Tarn nodded. 'Rise, Renir. Be king. Take this knowledge with you. Selana is Caeus' sister. No secret, but few know the truth of histories that are so long. She is the undead half to Caeus' blistering bright life...the dead world holds power...King. Fear not the dead, nor death, your grace. It is just the other side, the beneath.' The echo of the last king was fading, his voice and the sight of him dimming, softening.

             
`'I...I need help...'

             
'You have it, Renir. Friends, those of power, those with true hearts. Friends, Renir. Look to those you love, draw your strength...'

             
The King, as his words, were fading away.

             
'...from them as they do from you.'

             
Until, at last, there was nothing but the King's last words, echoing in the dark hall.

             
'When Rythe falls, Renir...remember...the other world. The world beneath Rythe...'