Opus Four
Chunks of turf the size of dinner plates tore free as Sil's warhorse fought to stop itself on the dew-slicked grass. It regained its balance and stomped its hooves angrily on the defiant ground below it. By the time it had taken suitable revenge, its rider had already dismounted.
"This is definitely the best spot, Cap. We ain't got time ta find another," Sil called, moving to meet his commander. "Got a ridge on one side an' a millstream on the other, level ground between."
"Right. Archers on the ridge, then. Billmen in front of them, cavalry behind. We'll block the low spot with the legion itself. Either way, they hit infantry while the archers soften them up. I'll hold the cavalry back for the final punch. We'll use the mill as an infirmary and a rally point. Tez, get the archers in place. Sil, form the legion in ranks. I'm on cavalry." Marak gestured as he ordered. "How long we got?"
"Not much, Cap. They're movin' fast an' light. Looks like som'in's lit a fire under 'em."
"Great," Tez growled and rolled his eyes. "That means we'll probably have the Sinari main on our backs too."
"Enough!" Marak grabbed the reigns of his own mount and swung into the saddle. "Let's move!"
But why here?" F'Cresa asked, gesturing at the rubble which surrounded them. Broken flagstone and shattered columns peaked through a heavy covering of undergrowth. The jungle had reclaimed its own long ago.
"Remains of a temple," Rahi commented offhandedly. "It's all about the symbolism. Everything has to happen somewhere, why not a somewhere that has meaning?"
"Then how do we know they will not go somewhere else that means something?"
"This is the only temple that has ruins surviving on the island. " He gestured toward two men making their way through the brush. "I wonder if they'll be surprised to see us?"
"How is this to work?" Rahi shouted at the pair. "You were just going to strangle each other until one of you declared himself god?"
"Something like that. You shouldn't be here," answered Tributary, making his way into the ruins.
Sin-Alb followed close behind. "Leave," he commanded. "Flee now and don't look back."
Valor folded his arms across his chest and spoke, his tone patient, almost patronizing. "No, I think we'll stay for the end."
"It ends here!" Ria shouted, thrusting her fist high into the air. Even with the power of her coterie amplifying her voice, she knew most of the men she addressed could not hear her clearly. She exaggerated her pauses, waiting as unit commanders shouted her words through the assembled ranks.
The truth, Reese had advised her but, staring into row upon row of expectant faces, she found herself remarkably short on inspiration. "My men! My family!" These men who would march and die on her commands because they believed in her.
She filled her lungs with air and yelled again. "My men! Never have such a valiant people been brought together. Never has such a mighty army stood united against a common foe. And never has the cause been so just!"
She waited as her words were relayed and then, to her surprise, as the cheering subsided. "They came to us. To Myr Kun. To Unnirand. To Pran. To here. They have come. They have brought war to us. They have brought fear into our homes. They have made dread our bedfellow. No longer! We will be afraid no more!" She pulled back on the bridle, rearing her horse for emphasis. "Today! We! End! This!"
A wordless roar of emotion preceded the rhythmic crash of sword on shield and Ria was forced to wait again. "We are the last line. Only we stand between chaos and hope. Today, each man is great. Each man stands as a defender of his people. His home. His family." She stood in her stirrups and almost screamed the final sentence. "This day, every man is a king!"
She spurred her horse, running the length of the assembled front and back again at breakneck speed before turning her steed back through a gap in the lines to join the Army of Observation. Across the battlefield, the Sinari roared their own chants and the two armies hurled insults and screams of defiance at each other.
"Dammit," cursed Marak as the Sinari closed in on their position. Their commander had not taken the bait; instead of trying to push through the footmen in the valley, he was forcing his men up the slope of the ridge into the teeth of the archers.
The billmen fought with the Sinari infantry screen while their horsemen struggled up the incline. A wave of black shafts leapt from Tez' bowmen, felling some of the riders but missing even more, the terrain making their shots difficult.
Marak waved an arm at Sil, motioning forward. "Advance and engage!" he shouted pointlessly, his voice drowned out by the clash of arms and armor. It did not matter; Sil had already ordered the heavy footmen ahead to reinforce the failing billmen. Bowstrings thrummed again and this time more riders fell, still not enough. The protective line of billmen began to give ground as the Sinari cavalry crested the rise and charged toward them.
The heavy footmen faced a difficult choice: advance straight forward into the disorganized cavalry still climbing the ridge or climb the hillock themselves and reinforce the billmen directly. Sil chose the latter, shouting his men forward, his voice a lash across their backs.
Marak lifted his arm, preparing to order his own cavalry around the side opposite the heavy infantry to hit the Sinari on both sides, then hesitated. Motion in the distance caught his eye and held it. Racing, parallel to the millstream, toward the footman's exposed climb, came chariots. Turning his mount, he led his riders across Sil's rearward, a long race to confront the chariots before they could reach the footmen.
Sinari infantry burst from their lines, running in loose order toward the defenders of Talishara. Ria watched in silence as the Sinari brought their weight to bear at a single point in her defensive lines, east of center toward the city itself. The sky darkened as the Sinari came in range and a rain of arrows cut into them like a great scythe. The rush faltered and died, destroyed as a second hail of shafts fell on the survivors.
A second wave met a similar fate but the Sinari had a surplus of men and a third surge reached the earthworks. Just before they reached their foes, the Sinari runners hurled short javelins into the ranks of the defenders. At short range the effect was devastating and the center began to buckle.
Caladyn ordered his men toward the center, their ranks swinging closed on the Sinari eastern side like the closing of a fence, even as the Sinari poured more and more men into the widening gap in the city's defenses. The pitched brawl of footmen seemed to teeter on the edge of a knife for too long before the desert warriors began to give ground. As they did, the Sinari commander released the catayarsh riders, tawny bolts of death streaking across the battlefield, aimed at Caladyn's strained men.
"Shadis! Niotrosa!" Ria broke her silence with a bellow. "The Army of Observation will advance to intercept. Second coterie, you will assist." Neither of the nearby commanders hesitated and the last of the United cavalry was committed.
"Not going to make it," Marak hissed between clenched teeth as his unit rounded to meet the Sinari chariots. Before he could stop them, six horse teams pulled the heavily armored and bladed dual-wheeled carts through Sil's flank. Each chariot carried six men, two drivers and four spearmen. Even the heavy armor of the legionnaires was no match for such concentrated force and the entire rearward dissolved into a confused melee of individual fights, and flights, for survival.
On the ridge, the Sinari infantry screen was all but a memory, but the billmen were hard pressed to withstand the repeated charges of Sinari cavalry. Tez' archers took increasingly large bites out of the mounted force but their own protection was evaporating like morning mist on a hot desert day.
F'Cresa felt the hot flush of emotion which warned her as the goddess Miracradasa took control of her body. "In the name of the young gods and all which is now holy, I command you to stop," she shouted, surprising the people around her.
"Silly little girl," snarled Sin-Alb, moving to stare her full in the face, nose to nose, his eyes streaming with scorn. "You forget your place. Here, even gods can die." He buried an obsidian knife hilt deep in her stomach before anyone else had even realized he had drawn it. With a sneer and a snarl, he jerked it upward, into her heart, then stepped back to watch her fall.
Sil roared in pain as he cut the barbed spearhead free from the muscles of his leg. Another man quickly tied a scrap of cloth around it as Sil shook his head to clear it. "Up. The. Damn. Hill. Now!" His words were bawled so loud that they were almost unintelligible but the intent was clear. Fighting a desperate rearguard action against the slaughter of the chariots, the legion pressed past the retreating billmen and into the teeth of the Sinari cavalry. With death breathing on their necks, Tez' archers continued to rake the enemy.
The catayarsh struck into Caladyn's men only seconds before Shadis' cavalry hammered home, breaking their attack even as it began. Securing the rear, Niotrosa hurled death into the Sinari as though he were another army rather than a single man.
Valor caught the haft of Rahi's spear a split second before it would have impaled Sin-Alb. "Not our-" He never finished his statement. Tributary threw himself bodily onto his opposite, screaming in rage punctuated with sobs of grief.
"My friend!" He broke Sin-Alb's wrist with inhuman strength. The knife spun away, across broken flagstone, lost in the overgrowth. "My friend!" Twice, his fist hammered into Sin-Alb's surprised face, bloodied both times.
Tributary jerked backward, cast aside like a rag-doll but landing on his feet, and Sin-Alb stood. "So you fight after all, brother. And I thought you a coward." Like frenzied animals, the two ran to each other, closing in a passionate and violent embrace.
His arm hooked around his mount's neck, Marak rode the massive warhorse into the chariot's side, crying as he did so. The horse, loyal ever to the end, did not die immediately. Impaled by the razor-sharp scythes welded to the chariot's wheels, it screamed and thrashed, its huge weight wrenching the wheel, snapping the axel. Marak held onto his mount as long as he could then thrust himself away, trying to jump clear of the horse's death throes. Tears flowing freely down his face, he attacked the Sinari abandoning their doomed vehicle.
The earthworks in front of the Oracle dissolved like a candle in a furnace and men, previously unchallenged in the fight, were thrown about like splinters from a lightning-struck tree. Even as their eastern front was collapsing, they had somehow managed to strike on the west. Another explosion of earth, wood, and men ripped across her front lines, and an awful truth dawned on Ria.
"They have a coterie. Dioya! Reese! The Sinari have a coterie!" She was away before either could respond. In a second, she could hear the pounding hooves of Reese's warhorse behind her and feel Dioya feeding her power at an alarmingly increasing rate. "I can't let them get to the Oracle," she said barely above a whisper but knowing both would hear her. "No telling how much power they could siphon off of it." She remembered her own brief encounter with Annaeyana at Unnirand.
"This looks way too familiar," shouted Tez as his aide signaled retreat for his remaining archers. The last ranks of billmen had disintegrated and the archers were broken. A Sinari rider charged at them. Tez ducked his sword swipe and unseated him with a hard shove on the man's stirrup as he tried to turn his horse. "Good thing these guys are lousy riders," he grunted and dodged back from the horse. As its rider tumbled suddenly off of its back, the horse reared, frightened, and smashed its iron-shod hooves into anything beneath it, including its previous rider.
Tez scrambled after his retreating men, stumbled in the rough, muddy soil and fell. "Oh, Lucia, I eat too much." Something stepped on his leg-man or beast he could not tell, but it was heavy and he felt the bone give way. "Sweet Lucia, honey, if you ever loved your fat little priest."
In reply, a mountain of a man rose up before him, long spear in hand.
Rahi jerked her spear back from Valor's hand. "I'll kill them both!" she barked. In reply, he tripped her when she started forward and knelt, knee in her back.
Tributary looped an arm around Sin-Alb's neck. "I don't want this!" Their legs tangled and both Albous fell heavily onto the flagstones.
"There is always a better way," Valor said calmly.
"Then find it!"
Valor stood and pulled Rahi to her feet. "I'm sorry, truly. It's time for you to go, beloved." He made a shoving motion with his hands and she felt herself lifted up and carried backward. He spread his arms and cried into the empty sky, "Dexter Talus!"
Eubratosa heard Hope whisper something to herself beside him in the relative quiet of the Fist. "What was that?" he asked, focusing most of his concentration on feeding power to Michelle and his son.
"Dexter Talus," Hope repeated, barely louder than the first time. "He's coming."
The Sinari eastern front was completely broken now, the combined forces of the United east were advancing steadily down the battle line, devouring the remaining Sinari which stood against them. It was too late, the damage was done. The Sinari's massive feint brought their true force to the foot of the Oracle and the desert warriors flowed through the United defenses like water through a sieve.
Moisture dripped from the stalactites of the limestone cavern as he stretched. Small creatures scurried away at his movement, the tiny symbiotes and parasites that fed on his dead flesh and lived on the detris from between his scales. To the humans, these tiny vermin were dragons. To him, they were beneath notice-ants, sand, and dust-particles underfoot.
It hurt to move, to stretch, to remember. But agreements had been made. Favors to repay and bargains to keep one last time before a final rest. Talons tore free of the stone that had sheathed them for centuries. Joints long unused cracked and snapped as the rock that had hardened about them broke, freeing ancient limbs. The world shook as he twisted the toughened vertebrae of his serpentine neck.
Wings extended, sheering through solid stone as though through an evening fog and he bunched the heavy muscles around his neck. They coiled like great springs, hiding beneath the wrinkled folds of heavy skin. He sprang upward, a small leap, and the earth erupted. With a single snap of his wings, he thrust himself upward into the air, shouting in a voice so low it was unheard.
The entire south-western coast line of Qaiyore dissolved in his wake, the chalk and limestone cliffs of the Dexter Talus crumbling to dust at the sound of his voice. He leapt again, straining higher into the air, neck straight, dorsal spines erect. The Hammer of God flew.
Forgotten below him, the handful of miniscule lice which survived his passage flew north, in search of others of their kind.
Ria fought in the crease, one of the last defenders before the Oracle. Reese fought at her side, wielding a claymore sword in either hand. When the rules had changed to let the Eerith fight on the battlefield, she neither knew nor cared.
"Down!" Reese shouted and emphasized his point by tackling Ria into the dirt. Fire erupted above them, melting United and Sinari alike, then a dark shadow passed above them with a snapping like the tips of a dozen whips.
"What in the world?"
"Dragon."
Ria struggled free of his grip and stood. "I thought you couldn't see them."
"Can't. But I can see fire."
The world was burning, Caladyn could see that, but he refused to go quietly. "Shields to the fore. Interlocking. Archers ready."
Niotrosa saw the dive, leather wings larger than mainsails folding into falling darts, jaws like cemetery gates swung wide.
With a scream of fear and desperation, he fell backward, the world exploding into searing blue-white light, exploding out from him as he instinctively released the full energies of his coterie full into the face of death. The earth shook, pitching him violently aside as the creature's now-headless body struck the ground like a massive plow.
Still dazed and half-blind, he struggled to stand. "They can die!"
Marak hammered a fallen Sinari with his sword, a sword too dull and notched to cut, little more than an inefficient club. He swiveled his head to either side, looking for more opponents. A painful swelling across his back kept him from standing fully upright. Seeing no enemy in sight, he looked for a living horse and found none of those either. Snarling at the pain in his spine, he began to hobble slowly across the blood slick, muddy field, toward the millstream.
High in the currents of air only his kind could feel, the ancient flyer passed over the pupil of the great eye. Something hinted in his memory about the place, threatening to distract him, but he disregarded it. He had promised the invisible Speaker; he would not turn aside now. For eons he had slept, growing large and strong on the power that flowed into his resting place. Now, he had a use for all of it.
"Nothing changes!" shouted Sin-Alb, shaking loose of Tributary's grip. "Even if the power is all gone, it will come again with time. That is the nature of this place."
"Then we must change nature," noted Valor. As Sin-Alb glanced at him in surprise, Tributary tackled him again from behind.
Ria never saw her Sinari opposite. The enemy coterie died burning down one wyrm while another returned the favor upon them. Across the field, the Sinari had been shattered when another of the beasts, misgauging its dive, had clipped the ground. It had pin-wheeled through their ranks. Its fall crushed hundreds and it rose to kill hundreds more with claw and fang in a final frenzy of fighting as the Sinari attacked it. She saw another of the creatures bank slowly to its left and begin a power dive.
"Dioya! Give it to me now!" With a jolt that felt as though something within her physically tore, she released the coterie's power, blazing a stripe of her own fire across the dragon's shoulder, severing the wing tendon. It crashed with an impact that sprayed clumps of mud and sand into the streets of Talishara itself and rose, screaming angrily. Men of both armies converged upon it and a thousand lives were traded for one.
She leaned on Reese, momentarily blind. "Di, I need a count. How many?"
"Give me a second."
"Don't have it. Come on."
"Four down. No, five. Caladyn just pulled one down. Where did he get a harpoon? Gods, that man is good. Sorry. Three in the air. This isn't good, Ria. We haven't got the men left."
Ria blinked her eyes clear and nodded a thanks at Reese. "What? Dee, what?" Then she saw it for herself-great plumes of water crossing the sea behind Talishara-four more approaching low from the south.
One last slow, gentle arc to line up the land beneath, then he would be done. Then he could rest. Then all of his people could rest.
The new arrivals ignored the tiny men beneath. Ria watched in cautious hope as the dragons streaked above her so low she could make out the banded scales of their bellies, headed straight for their own kind.
"They on our side?" asked Dioya.
"Don't bet on it." The Warlord bent and spat a mixture of blood and dirt from her mouth. Even as they fought amongst themselves, Ria saw the tell-tale tilt of broad wings folding for a dive. "Incoming!"
She did not have time to brace, much less to aim. Ria spewed power clumsily, reflexively, knocked to the ground by the backlash. She felt dirt spray across her body as it sheered through the air only feet above her. Pushing herself to her knees, she watched in horror as it curled in the air, turning out of control, one wing dragging at an awkward angle-a slow arc that sent it crashing through the base of the Fist. The stones of the tower pounded down atop it.
"Now!" shouted Valor into the newly darkened sky. The great wyrm breathed-neither fire nor light but power, raw and crude, the pure energy of creation and death. The island and all upon it dissolved in an instant and still the Hammer of God rained his fury upon the land, burning the very stones to ash, boiling the sea about. It struck again, drinking in the dormant power hidden here, burning through the land, the sea, through the fabric of the land. The edges of the world curled away like singed parchment from a match and still he shrieked. Through the world, through the ether, through creation itself and beyond-a hole punched through the world and, if the invisible Speaker had been right, into the Vision. Content at last, the greatest of wyrms folded his wings and fell through the hole that knitted slowly closed behind him.
Two dragons, locked together biting and clawing, fell to earth and Shadis' men fell on them immediately, killing both before they could pull apart. Even so, hundreds of men were broken beneath their struggling bodies.
"I can't reach anyone in the towers!" shouted Dioya.
"What about the other coterie?" Ria shouted back.
Reese answered. "Niotrosa is in shock. Michelle and Night are trying to get him under some cover."
Dioya nodded to himself. "Eubratosa was in the tower and in his coterie. Let's hope it's only shock. Ria, we're all there is."
"Not quite," she replied grimly and pointed. Caladyn's men, a fraction of their former strength, pulled another wyrm from the sky and Shadis' cavalry charged it. Another locked pair of the beasts fell onto the remaining Sinari. Most fled but enough remained to take revenge for their fallen comrades.
"Incoming," said Dioya, exhaustion making him sound calm.
"Not enough power to burn it," she grumbled. "Reese! Get Dioya down a hole!"
On the northern coast of Qaiyore, the old and young alike ran. The young to the beach, watching the sea run away from them, draining back like an ebbing tide. The old screamed at them and ran inland. The wall of sea which struck the shore outran them all.
Ria sidestepped the gout of flame the beast spat at her then dropped and rolled back across the smoking ground. Ignoring the cinders burning into her back, she struck upward, lancing her own power and that of Dioya into the soft membrane stretched between scapula and forearm. The leather tore away as though cut with a knife, the force of the air below it ripping the wing upward and away.
It did not crash. The beast landed heavily, absorbing the impact in its heavy shoulders and neck. It swung its tail, missing the prone Ria by inches, and turned with surprising speed.
She closed on it as it moved, afraid to let it set itself for another breath. She was exhausted almost beyond consciousness and Dioya's presence was like a flickering faint candle in the back of her mind. She stepped forward and then quickly to the side as a claw big enough to crush a horse stamped a hole into the ground next to her. She looked up at it as it half-reared for another attack. She was almost underneath it.
"Tall," she noted then added breathlessly.
As it stamped again, she drew in all the strength she had and stabbed into the joint between leg and chest. It shrieked, almost deafening her, and pulled away. She thrust her blade into the joint on the other side. She released the hilt and ran without plan-just away.
The wyrm did not die but lay crippled, trapped under its own weight until Shadis' cavalry could bring their lances to bear.
The door to the mill slammed open, startling Marak back to awareness. Other men around him jumped as well and then settled back. Sil entered and lowered the wounded Tez to a chair.
"Well, Padre, ah reckon she still loves ya."
Leaning on each other, but mostly on Reese, Ria and Dioya made their way to the foot of the collapsed tower. Shadis and Caladyn had the United survivors organized and the Sinari had quit the field, well and truly broken. Squads of men already worked, moving the heavy stones of the Fist, searching for survivors.
"We win?" asked Dioya, sitting clumsily on a broken part of the wall.
Ria shook her head, not in denial, just because it felt good to still move, even if it did hurt. "Close enough, old man."
"Good." He pulled a silvered flask from his pocket and drank deeply. After a sudden coughing fit, he replaced the flask within his robes. "Eck, that stuff really is goat piss." He slumped forward.
Ria assumed he had fallen asleep until she noticed the look on Reese's face. "His heart," the Eerith said wearily. "Gave us all he had."
She wanted to cry but found she had no tears left. "Is it over?" she asked, almost plaintively.
Reese looked into the eastern sky, not answering, then came to sit alongside her. "It's over."
Canto of Hope: An Epilogue
As if in defiance of the terrible carnage on the plains around Talishara, casualties among Ria's command staff were surprisingly low. Shadis had shown his usual knack for emerging from the battlefield covered in blood, none of it his own. The Duke Caladyn lost a finger to a loop of rope, not a bad trade for a man who fought dragons with little more than grit and temper. Marak was taken to Sarah and her medic in a travois and spent over a week flat on his back, rising occasionally to urinate blood. It would be months before he could sit a horse again, but the renegade seeresses insisted he would make a full recovery. Eavesdropping on a conversation between Reese and Night, Ria learned that an Eerith had died during the fight with the wyrms. She considered the mystery of the Sinari coterie solved and asked no further questions.
In the ruins of the fallen Fist, broken limbs, cuts and bruises were plentiful; but, amazingly, all of those within had survived. The Archmage Eubratosa recounted that, moments before the falling wyrm had leveled the tower, Hope had spoken to the stones themselves, asking them to fall in just a certain manner. They seemed to have listened. The Archmage would remember the event for many years and wonder.
The work of rebuilding Cedonia would take years. Niotrosa had stepped forward to shoulder the burden alongside Caladyn. Marak was offered a place in the work but declined, citing the demands of his own duties to the rebuilding the Order of Lucia. The majority of the Mirrish troops remained in Talishara under Shadis' command. It would take months, perhaps years, to hunt down and destroy the pockets of scavengers and banditry which inevitably follow a war, and their aid would be sorely needed.
Eubratosa had wanted a hero's funeral for Dioya but Ria and Reese had argued him out of it. Dioya would not have wished any great accolades, simply privacy and peace-leave the glory to the men who had earned it on the field of battle. The Archmage had relented and Dioya's body was moved quietly back to Mirabalpur and laid to rest in the royal crypts without ceremony.
Ria and Reese accompanied the body. When they set sail from Talishara, the government of Milkanuri was loudly demanding reparations for their 'stolen' army. By the time they landed in Mirabalpur, the protests had fallen silent. Ria later learned the reason. Agrigax had publicly declared that, if Milkanuri was so poorly defended that it must make demands upon the survivors of one of the bloodiest wars in history, then, for the common defense and the good of the people, he must consider invading Milkanuri and ruling it himself. The statement had the desired effect.
After several months of welcome rest, Ria traveled at the head of a new, smaller army back to the Wyr basin to assist the Dun-Ri in rooting out the last pockets of Sinari renegades in his kingdom. As she had predicted, there were always wars to fight.
***
In the hillsides overlooking the city of Mirabalpur, a young boy played, chasing insects across the grassy slopes, occasionally catching and tasting them, to his mother's horror. He was old enough to run with astounding speed but not so old that he had learned caution. He was his mother's joy and private nightmare in a single skin and she would not have traded him for the world, although she sometimes threatened to trade him for a goat.
He was running from his mother, paying more attention to his pursuer than his path, when he ran into the legs of, what was to his eyes, a giant woman. She was as tall as a tree and her skin brown like bark. Black veins of sap and ivy wrapped around her exposed arms and face. She was red too, like a sunburn, and her hair bleached white by the summer sun. Her walking staff was broken on one end but was still taller than she was. The giant tree-woman smiled at him and then waited, standing very still like trees do, while his mother rushed to catch up with him.
"He's a handful," she told his mother, as though this was new information. His mother laughed.
"More than you know. I'm so sorry if he bothered you."
"Not at all. I was told that the creature Tarfn might have passed this way some time ago. I was seeking him."
"Terrible man, just horrible. He did come through here, but it was about a month ago. I've no idea where he went form there. Far away, I hope."
The boy decided to help. "Kernin says he went north, across the sea."
His mother shrugged at the tree-woman. "His invisible friend," she explained.
"You are Asuda's widow?"
"You knew him?"
"I knew of him, during the war." The tall woman looked down at the boy who met her gaze with a ferocious grin. "When he is older, tell him of his father. He was a great man, a hero. Men like him should never be forgotten."
The boy's mother nodded soberly. "Thank you. I will."
The tree-woman gave his mother a half-bow and walked away across the waving grass of the field.
***
It was late in the night when the royal crypts of Mir were invaded. Technically, a man and an exceptionally ugly dog did not constitute an invasion but, what they lacked in manpower, they made up for in noise. Strangely, the crypts were unguarded this night, which was fortunate. It took Alfos over an hour to pry open the mausoleum and almost as long to open the casket he sought. In the end, the stone and mortar gave way more to the acrid force of his curses than his strength.
"Ewww, dead guy," he said and lifted Dioya's body from its rest. He pulled a flask from the saddlebags on the dog and poured its contents down the body's stiff throat.
The mage revived with a cough and a gag. "I said I wanted to fake my own death, not taste it, you fool!"
"Hey, Fakir knows what he does. You are grumpy for a dead man, maybe I bury you back."
"Maybe I'd be better off, with a partner like you."
Alfos placed the back of his wrist against his forehead dramatically. "Ah, friend infidel, you wound me. Besides, Dog is my partner. You are more like-oh-a burden."
Dioya stood and began to work the stiffness from his limbs. "So Dog is more useful than I am, huh?"
"He can carry more loot."
"Like there's any risk of you ever stealing more than you can carry."
"Infidel! I am a master thief.with bad help."
"Whatever you say. Let's get out of here." Dioya led the trio out of the crypts, toward the city's edge. "You do have a ship waiting for us, don't you?"
"Of course. I even paid in advance."
"Brilliant. And what makes you think your hired pirate captain will wait for us if he already has your money?"
"I told him if he left, Dog would track him and eat him."
Dioya conceded the point with a chuckle. "Where are we going, partner?"
Alfos sucked his teeth as he thought. "Hmmm. You are dead, so nowhere people might recognize you."
"That rules out a few countries."
"And probably we should not go to places where I am wanted."
"That rules out this continent."
"Oh, very funny. Actually, I am a master of dee-skise so we'll be safe."
"Right. From greasy thief to dirty thief to smelly thief to the ultimate performance of greasy, dirty, smelly thief."
"I should have left you dead. Maybe you are still dead-your sense of humor sure is."
"Bah, you complain too much."
The two men went on like this for a very, very long time.
***
"Alms, lady," croaked the beggar. "Alms?"
A handful of copper coins fell onto the dust before him and he scooped them into the folds of his rags. He looked upward to thank his benefactor and let out a strangled squeal of fear, pushing himself backward, scrambling to escape. He tried to rise and a stab of pain doubled him over and left him whimpering on his side in the dirt.
"Now, Tarfn," purred Rahi, crouching next to him, "is that any way to greet an old acquaintance?"
"To look upon the face of a Seeress is death," he gibbered, sobbing in fear and pain.
"I'm flattered." She rapped his head with the broken end of her spear. "Get up before you soil yourself."
He stood, tentatively, eyes growing wide in amazement. Tarfn stared at his hands then began to pat his stomach and chest. "I'm.it doesn't burn. It's gone."
"They believe in redemption, or, at least, the opportunity for it."
"But the spells?"
"You don't think what an Eerith helps cast, they can undo? Why do you think they even participated in that mockery Mir called a trial?"
"Then I'm free." His eyes narrowed as he began to consider the consequences of this new twist of circumstance.
Rahi knocked his feet out from under him and he landed heavily, cracking his elbow on a stone. "No. I said redemption, not stupidity. The Burning isn't gone, just blocked. You lift a hand against another person, you cast another spell, you even think about bringing harm to someone and it will all be back in an instant. You have a chance, not a pass."
Tarfn stared at Rahi with displeasure.
She kicked him in the ribs, doubling him up. "They believe in redemption. I'm still undecided; don't push it. Become a farmer-fewer people around to tempt you." She walked away and did not look back.
***
"I fear, dearest Hope, that this may be my last message for some time. The Onagir are migrating further south soon and it may be years before they return this far north. I have to remain with them; twins have been born this spring. I will have the opportunity to watch the rearing of the next King and Speaker of these enigmatic people. Still, I will endeavor to answer the question you have posed to me.
"The Onagir originally learned of the obeah because, as my friend the Speaker put it, 'children have a poor sense of direction'. Being a nomadic people in a heavily forested area, it was not uncommon for Onagir children to become lost during their migrations. Despite their best efforts, inevitably some of these children were never found. Rarely, a child would be rediscovered years later, living alone or more commonly in the company of animals. These feral children survived in a unique harmony with the natural world around them but, when returned to human company, did not fare well. Their life span was markedly decreased, perhaps as a result of their childhood traumas. Traditional human mannerisms seemed completely beyond their scope and through their entire lives, they lived lives similar to captive animals: alternatively, extremely aggressive or passive.
"Most notably, these children never developed the faculty of language. A few, usually those who had already developed some degree of speech before their separation from humanity, would learn simple nouns and verbs but even this vocabulary was limited to items and actions directly related to subsistence, hardly more than the commands taught to trained dogs. And yet, these children were not savages. Different, certainly, and suffering the physiological effects of isolation but despite the surface similarities, they had not progressed back to the level of animals. The Speaker tells me that their body language was incredibly expressive and they were sensitive to the people around them to an almost empathetic degree.
"Almost no children are now lost since the Onagir use the obeah to locate them, but it does still occur on occasion. It is interesting, and to my mind quite telling, that the Onagir treatment of these children is no longer to attempt to capture them and return them to 'proper' humanity. They instead treat them kindly, even going so far as leaving food and checking on them at intervals to ensure they are not injured, but they allow them to live in their natural element, deeming this a more humane treatment for these feral children.
"That is how the discovery of the obeah and the unique understanding of the Onagir began. In times past, Onagir shamen decided it would be better for them to learn of these children than to force these children to reenter society. It was through these lifelong attempts to understand the land and the beasts upon it and, in the attempt, to better administer to their own lost children, that the Onagir came to learn of the spirits of the land and the Great Song of obeah.
"This search also lead them to examine the very roots of speech and language, things which we take for granted. I have previously written on these issues and I will try not to be redundant here.
"It is language which both binds men together and holds them distinct. By sharing a common tongue, and thereby exchanging ideas from one separate mind to another, men are drawn into a better understanding of the overarching conditions which are common to all of us. At the same time, language and the individual's use of it serves as a separation, a self-erected fence, between what is uniquely 'me' and what is the stuff of all mankind. Without words-symbolic categories within our minds-it would be impossible to hold conflicting ideas within one's mind to examine them. Likewise, if we were unable to differentiate between our own ideas and experiences and those related to us by others, who would be awash in a sea and lose sight of our singular identity. In the case of the Eerith, who were telepathic and conditioned to accept a group mindset by their nature, without language, they could never hope to achieve individuality and independence.
"It does not end at individual words, of course, and it is not sufficient to have a language. It must be personalized. I will use myself as an example. When I was a young man, I learned most of what I knew from my father. My teachers provided me with facts and figures, but it was my father who taught me how to view the world, presenting me with a framework to place things in and by which to interpret what I learned. This is common for all humanity. Perhaps not from their fathers, but every child learns first to see, and think, through a framework learned from their elders.
"As I grew, I questioned and I rebelled. I sought to establish myself, in my own mind, as my own man and not simply a copy of my father. I learned to believe what I believed because of my own choices and knowledge, not because it was simply what my father had told me. Not surprisingly, I have come to hold beliefs and values very similar to those of my father but that is coincidental to my point. They may have began as his words but, when I consciously decided to accept them as part of myself rather than as part of my upbringing, they became mine-my words, my views, the lexicon of my language.
"Words themselves do not a language make. Language embraces the culture and history of a people, either real or perceived. That is why it is not sufficient to simply have a language. Again, it must be personalized. I speak seven different languages-Onagir, my most recent acquisition-but only one of them, the language of my birth and homeland, is truly sufficient for me to fully express myself. Many languages do not even have words for certain concepts. Sometimes this results from physical circumstance; many of the desert tribes have no word for snow. Sometimes this results from a peculiar cultural dynamic. The Onagir have a word which I believe originally meant alone but has now fallen so far into disuse that I cannot even be certain of this. Whatever the reason, a people and their language are inextricably bound. Language is context. It is based and steeped in a people's myth-their culture and history, real or perceived.
"In order to have a language of their own, the Eerith also needed a myth. I believe, in the symbolic actions of Valor, through the virtues he not only enumerated but also embodied, they have it. The Vision of Albous is an ideal. Valor was an embodiment of that ideal, the reality to the myth, the hero to his people. By living as he believed, he has made real and complete a fragmented people.
"I hope this is enough. When the Onagir pass this way again, should I live so long, I shall make my way north to join you. Perhaps I will finally get to see the lost libraries of Annanaeya. Until then, young friend, keep the faith. Keep his faith."
-Granth.-
***
"It's beautiful up here," Rahi whispered, almost in Hope's ear, surprising her.
The younger woman shouted in delight and hugged the gaunt wanderer tightly. "I have missed you so much. I feared you dead."
Rahi disentangled herself and shrugged. "I might be. How do you like your new home?" She gestured across the broken towers of Annanaeya.
"The rebuilding is progressing slowly, and the Eerith seem to lack a clear sense of aesthetics, but I like it. It has a rugged beauty, like a mountain. I'm not even sure I want all the ruins cleared. There is a power and majesty to them. Oh, and the view." Hope turned, directing Rahi's attention to the rolling vista of the plains of Cedonia which stretched for miles below the floating city.
"Close enough to see the land; far enough not to make out the people. Very nice."
Hope laughed and pulled the older woman to sit beside her on a fallen column, looking out on the expanse of blues and greens. "He sent you back?"
"Pushed me away at the last minute. Shoved me all the way back to the continent. I'm still not sure if I've forgiven him for it."
"If you had died, who would bear witness that he actually did what he said he would do? And who else could he trust with such a vital task, neh?"
"Neh?! Don't tell me you've picked up that awful accent too!" Rahi shook her head and then sighed. "You may be right, but I still feel cheated."
Hope nodded and they watched a wedge of cranes fly below them. "May I ask a question?"
"Always."
"F'Cresa, was she really Miracradasa's avatar?"
"Maybe. Maybe she was just a poor deluded girl born to two cultures and at home in none. Either way, she did what was needful and what Miracradasa would probably have had her do."
"I suppose so. And you, what will you do now?"
"Walk."
Hope took the other woman's hand and placed it against her face, palm on cheek. Rahi's hand was rough, criss-crossed with cracks and scars, heavy with calluses. "You could stay." They looked at one another without speaking, Rahi's thumb rhythmically caressing Hope's cheekbone.
"You should be careful in this city. It is full of bones."
"I am in no danger from that."
Rahi shook her head. "Not physically. Listen, child, this city is part of the past, part of what was, not what is. You must keep them separate in your mind and guard the others against the same mistake. The Eerith are like children now. Your children, Hope, and you must look out for them."
Hope turned her face further into Rahi's hand. "I don't understand."
"During the war, the troops carried their food with them-sacks and pockets filled with grain foraged from the fields they crossed. On the land below, where the two great armies fought, barley grows, rising from those seeds which fell from the bodies of the dead. It is, literally, a new life growing from the bones of the past. Those bones are not the grasses that grow from them and the grasses are not men. They share a beginning but they are different." Rahi pulled her hand away slowly and stood. Leaning forward, she kissed Hope softly on the forehead then stood erect. "Daughter, do not follow me," she said softly and turned, walking slowly through the ruins of the floating city.
***
"These scattered texts and tellings of witnesses gathered here do constitute a full record of those verifiable reports of the second advent of Valor, the first Speaker, and the pertinent events of the Sinari war. On much, we are left with only speculation, of what was and what will be. We have been witness to a mystery and each of us must now speak for himself as well as for all. Each of us must now act for himself as well as for all. I commend the faithful to lead, for ours is the duty and the legacy. Let us live with no regrets.
"So long as I speak, I shall not accept that which is not best. Always, there is a better way. It is our responsibility to search and to find it, whatever may oppose us. It has been said. It has been done."
-Given this day as Holy Writ by Her Holiness, the Reverend Mother Hope, Common Era 1433-
Selah.
M. Keaton
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