When the Heavens Fall (49 page)

“Are you offering?”

“Aye. Though it'll have to wait till we get back to the horses—my kit's in the saddlebag. Should be cleaned, though.”

Jenna nodded her assent, and Luker struggled to his feet. He collected the discarded flask of ganja fire, then returned to where the assassin sat. Kneeling before her, he brushed a strand of hair from her face. “This is going to sting like Shroud's own breath.”

“Get on with it!”

“Just saying.” The Guardian pulled a rag from one of the folds in his cloak and poured the remaining spirits onto it. Jenna flinched at the touch of the makeshift swab.

“What about you?” Luker asked. “Where are you heading now?”

The assassin gave a tight smile. “Trying to get rid of me?”

He blinked. “Back in Arkarbour, I thought you said—”

“What's the nearest city to here?”

“Bethin. Maybe a day and a half to the north and east. But I'd look elsewhere if I was you. The place is a pit.”

“Then I should fit right in,” Jenna snapped.

Luker stared at her. At times the woman's mood swings made his head spin. “What about Mercerie? That business with Peledin Kan should've blown over by now.”

“There's nothing there for me to go back to.”

The Guardian waited a heartbeat for her to continue. When she did not, he poured some water onto the cloth and cleaned the dried blood from her forehead. “You don't talk much of your past.”

“No, I don't. Remind you of anyone?” When Jenna spoke again, her voice had softened. “How do you know about Bethin?”

“I was born a few leagues to the south and east—a village on the edge of the Waste, or it was a score of years back. Probably under sand by now.”

“Probably?”

“Aye.”

“You haven't been back?”

Luker shook his head. He'd considered it ten years ago after the siege of Cenan, but sense had won through in the end. With both his parents dead, there was less even for him there than there had been at the Sacrosanct.

“Why not?”

“No point raking up cold ashes. Because that's what they are: cold.” He finished cleaning Jenna's wound, then washed the blood from the cloth and stuffed it into a pocket before settling back against the mud-brick wall. The silence drew out. And it wasn't the sort he could have stretched out and got all comfortable on, either. The redbeak had returned, alighting next to the corpse farthest from Luker and Jenna. This time Jenna's stone missed its mark, and the bird settled down to feed. When Luker looked again at the assassin she was staring across the marketplace, her expression sober.

“Seems to me,” the Guardian said, “you need more time to decide on your next move. Maybe you should hang around a while longer.”

Jenna looked at him. “Maybe you're right.” Then, “We worked well together today.”

“Aye,” Luker replied, surprised at himself. “We did.”

*   *   *

Parolla opened her eyes, then closed them again as a wave of nausea swept over her. Turning on her side, she spat bile to the dust. The sun was strong on her face, and for a while she lay still, listening to a door squeak back and forth in the breeze. The inside of her skull felt as if a blacksmith were pounding on it with his hammer. Mayot had been right: she'd overextended herself in journeying to the dead city. It was difficult to gauge distances when spirit-traveling, but Parolla judged the dome to be more than fifty leagues to the south and east. Stretched thin as she was, it had been a simple task for the old man to drive her away.

When the sickness passed Parolla opened her eyes to find Tumbal staring down at her. The Gorlem's voice sounded in her mind.

“Welcome back. For a time I thought thou wast lost.”

“For a time, I was.”

“Where hast thou been?”

“Finding answers,” Parolla said. She told him of her encounter with Mayot, watched the fires of curiosity burn in his eyes.

Tumbal sighed as she finished. “Answers, thou say'st? Each one raises only more mysteries to afflict me. Who created this book that thou saw'st? What other secrets does it hold? To what end does Lord Mayot use it now? Where hast—”

“Do you ever run out of questions,
sirrah
?”

The Gorlem's face twisted. “Unfair, my Lady.”

“Unfair?”

“To compound my misery by asking of me another question.”

Parolla smiled faintly, then levered herself into a sitting position. The light was bright in her eyes. She must have spent over a bell traveling the tendrils of death-magic, for the sun had reached its apex in the sky. The journey back from the dead city had taken longer than the journey out because she'd had to struggle against the flow of sorcery along the threads. “At least we now have an explanation for the abandonment of this village and the plight of the forest.”

Tumbal bobbed his head. “I think I would like to meet this Lord Mayot.”

“To ask him your questions? What makes you so sure he will answer them?”

“Any man who would pit himself against Shroud—who would unleash power of such magnitude and believe he can control it—must be a man of great arrogance.” The Gorlem spread both pairs of hands. “And in my experience, arrogant men enjoy talking as much as I delight in listening.”

“Have you forgotten the undead? They must once have been spirits like yourself, now resurrected and bound to the
magus
's will. You'll be taking a risk if you enter the forest.”

“Think'st thou so? Is it not true that the act of resurrection requires some part of the subject's body to summon back the soul? Dost thou not recall the Jekdal? The finger bone he carried?”

“We don't know the limits of the book's power, the laws that govern it.”

“Another riddle that surely deserves an answer.”

“Even if it means enslavement?”

“I am, alas, already a slave to my curiosity; its power over me cannot be denied.” Tumbal's eyes glittered. “But what of thee? Thou faces the same risks as I. Wilt thou continue on?”

Parolla was silent for a long time. She started tracing patterns in the dust with a finger. Her hand brushed a piece of pottery. She picked it up and turned it over. On one side was a picture of the hindquarters of an alamandra. The potsherd smelled of malirange oil. “There is a debt I must repay,” she said at last. “A death that must be avenged.”

“And Lord Mayot is the killer?”

“No. Shroud.”

Tumbal's gaze held hers for a few heartbeats. Then a look of comprehension crossed his face. “I begin to understand. The death thou spoke'st of … Thy mother? And Shroud … Thy father?”

Parolla closed her eyes. “My mother didn't know how Shroud's eye came to fall on her,” she said, “for she'd never met him before, nor did she ever see him again after. I asked her about the … circumstances … in which I was conceived, but she refused to answer my questions. The god's touch is fatal,
sirrah
. It took many years for my mother to die. Her last years were filled with pain.”

“I am saddened by thy—”

“I don't need your pity,” Parolla cut in.
Hells, I have enough of my own.

“Is it wrong to feel sorrow at another's loss?”

She snorted. “I too felt sorrow for a time. Then I decided to do something about it. Shroud
knew
the effect his touch would have on her. He
knew
how she would suffer.”

The Gorlem's voice was flat. “And so thou hast chosen to seek vengeance.”

Parolla's eyes snapped open. “Do you know what it is like to watch someone close to you die? You try to live each day with them as if it were your last, and yet when the end comes it is still too soon. You try to shield them from your grief, when inside you know a piece of you is dying with them. The selfish part of you wants them to live on, whatever the pain they feel, while the other part wants only an end to their suffering.” She bowed her head, her anger spent. “I miss her.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Why?”

“Because I wish to know.”

Parolla shook her head. “She is gone,
sirrah
.”

Tumbal opened his mouth to speak, then seemed to change his mind. “How old wast thou when thy mother died?”

“Fifteen.”

“And did she feel the same way toward Shroud? Did she share thine anger?”

Parolla looked away. “No. She told me she would not have changed the years we had together.”

Tumbal reached for her shoulder, but his spectral hand passed through it. “Then I believe she would have wished thee to find happiness rather than pursue this vendetta.”

Parolla tossed the piece of pottery aside. “Perhaps you are right. But then I never had my mother's strength. I am my father's daughter, I think. And blood calls.”

The Gorlem had gone still. When Parolla glanced across she saw his gaze dart along the street to her right. He spoke in a whisper, his image already fading. “I thought I heard something. From the east.”

Parolla looked in the direction he had indicated. The alley was empty except for pieces of broken furniture, scraps of leather and hide, potsherds and animal bones—all testimony to the settlement's hasty evacuation. Beyond, Parolla could see nothing but huts, and over them the treetops of the Forest of Sighs. Then voices reached her.

Cursing, she pushed herself to her feet. After her clash with Mayot she was in no condition for a fight. Whoever these strangers were, they were coming from the forest. Could they be the old man's servants? Had he ordered his undead from the trees to hunt her? No, she would have sensed the threads of death-magic holding them. But then who? The thought of the tribesmen who'd once lived here coming to reclaim the village was no less improbable.

A hundred heartbeats passed before Tumbal rematerialized.

“Kinevar, my Lady,” he said. “They are moving north, skirting the forest. They should not trouble thee.”

Parolla released her breath. Either the creatures hadn't heard her speaking to Tumbal or they'd already had lunch—it hardly mattered so long as they kept their distance. She edged back into shadow. From what little she knew of them they did not normally leave the woods, but these were not normal times. Doubtless they had been forced to flee by Mayot's undead army.

The Gorlem must have been thinking the same, for he shook his head and said, “For the Kinevar to have been driven from their sacred glades … My Lady, the woods must truly have become a place of horrors.”

Parolla shrugged. “We will see for ourselves soon enough.”

 

C
HAPTER
15

H
IS SENSES
dulled by sissa leaf, Ebon rode through a dreamscape of shadows and tortured visions. His fever was driving him ever deeper into spirit-dreams. Earlier this morning his party had passed through a Vamilian settlement, and overlying ruined buildings and dying trees he had seen images of wonder: structures of stone and wood fashioned to resemble multidecked ships, with trees emerging from their roofs like masts; swaths of rippling cloth suspended from the branches like mock sails; wood-slat walkways spanning the ships, or curling round the trunks of the trees. And all about, the air was filled with the sound of crashing water, as if Ebon were riding along the shore of a storm-tossed sea.

Then the horror would begin: waves of sorcery that set the very air alight; Vamilians collapsing by the score into piles of ash; stone buildings burning as if they had been doused in oil. Into the devastation rode horsemen wearing bright robes and mounted on destriers the color of ice.
Fangalar.
Wielding long, curved swords, they dealt death to any Vamilian untouched by the sorceries, while through it all the spirits in Ebon's mind keened in misery until the lurch of his horse or the voice of one of his companions wrenched him back to reality.

A reality no less bleak than his dreams. His chest and right side throbbed with pain, and his right arm hung like dead meat from his shoulder. He was vaguely aware of someone—Vale?—riding alongside him.
To catch me when I fall.
Stubbornness alone was keeping him in the saddle. He had been a fool to think he might reach his destination before his wound took him, but it was too late now to turn back. Soon he would have to send the others on without him, for he would not inflict on them the burden of putting him down once he joined the ranks of the undead.

To his left, there was movement in the shadows, but it was only another vision—a spectral Vamilian girl peering out from behind a tree as a Fangalar horseman bore down on her. The forest round Ebon was starting to blend into his nightmares. Everything was dead. The branches of the trees were bare. A layer of crumbled leaf fragments blanketed the ground, and the hooves of the horses threw up thick powdery clouds that fell about like rotting snow. Ahead Mottle was wrestling with his mount's reins. The mage's indignant voice rang out, scolding his destrier for some unknown misdemeanor. Like Ebon, the old man had retreated into his own world since they entered the forest six days ago. Eyes glazed, he would stare vacantly into the distance for bells at a time, or mutter to himself before tilting his head as if to listen to some unseen speaker.
Perhaps he hears the same voices I do.

Ebon ran a hand across his stubbled chin. His clothes were soaked in sweat, and the sour taste of the sissa leaf lingered at the back of his mouth. He took out his water bottle from one of his saddlebags, frowning at how light it felt. Removing the cork, he took a swig. From ahead came the murmur of the river. If Mottle was correct the consel's party had halted in the derelict town they now approached, but Ebon suspected he would find more there than just the Sartorians when he arrived. For the last half day he had felt something drawing him to the settlement—an insistent tug, as if he were a silverfin on a fisherman's line. Trying to focus on the sensation, though, was like trying to block out his spirit-dreams, and Ebon put it from his mind. He had no more strength left for curiosity than he had to fight the tug.