Breath of Heaven, page 22
Until Justinian raised one hand to his brow to rub at his temple. “What would my father do?”
Matthais seized the opportunity. “Your father would have protected his people at all costs. If the eastern Provinces have fallen, then Goran is their next target. Do you really wish to leave those people, those you’ve given an oath to protect, to their mercy?”
“Think carefully, my liege,” Roland added. “Splitting our forces could be a fatal mistake. You cannot protect the people if the Legion is destroyed.”
Justinian’s lips pursed in frustration, but Matthais kept himself from further prodding, choosing instead to scan the other papers that surrounded the map on the table. Lists of supplies, manifests, and scrawled notes and reports, most bearing the Legion’s seal, a few with the official wax stamp of the king, most likely taken from the archives by Tyrik. One, near to Matthais’ hand, appeared to contain a list of Legion forces—their locations, strengths, and current resources.
When Justinian finally turned to face Roland, Matthais shifted and set his fingers lightly against the sheet of paper.
“Can GreatLord Went defend himself against the army we think is heading northward?” Justinian asked.
“If the army contains five thousand men, then yes, he should be able to defeat them with the Legion in Rendell. But as I said earlier, there may be more than that.”
“I need to protect the people in Goran. They’re my vassals. They vowed allegiance to me at my coronation. I will not abandon them.” Justinian drew in a deep breath, held it, then let it out in a slow sigh. “Send half of the Legion here in Corsair to Goran. The other half will remain to defend Corsair. Warn GreatLord Went in Rendell of the threat of an army to his east.”
Roland appeared about to protest, but thought better of it. “As you command, my king.”
Justinian nodded, then slid from his seat. All three of his former regents bowed, Matthais taking the opportunity to slip the sheet containing the Legion’s whereabouts into his hand. As the king made his way toward the doors, Tyrik reached forward and gathered all of the papers together. Roland followed in Justinian’s footsteps, Matthais and Tyrik mere moments behind. In the corridor outside, Justinian headed down the northern wing toward his rooms, the Legionnaires who’d waited outside the door as his escort, while Roland moved toward the Legion barracks. Tyrik followed the Legion commander, leaving Matthais at the door.
He slipped the sheet of paper free from where he’d secreted it inside his sleeve, then began making his way back to the dovecote. He had messages to send.
* * *
Tyrik nearly stumbled in his haste to catch up to Roland. “You were right. Matthais is acting suspicious. And I saw him take one of the pages from the table at the end.”
“Which page?”
“The one with the Legion positions and strengths.”
Roland smiled, his attention shifting from Tyrik back toward the barracks and the orders Tyrik assumed he was headed there to issue.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Where do your loyalties lie, Tyrik? Are you loyal to Justinian? Or do you serve for your own purposes, like Matthais?”
“I serve King Justinian, of course. As his father, the man I served before him, asked me to do!”
“The safe answer. The expected answer. But I believe you.” He fell silent, long enough Tyrik thought perhaps he wasn’t going to continue. But then: “The list Matthais stole was false. Most of it is correct, but not all. I may have…exaggerated the placement of the Legion in certain areas, and left off some units altogether.”
Tyrik’s shock rooted him to the floor, his paralysis broken when Roland continued on without him. They passed through the main doors of the palace and out onto the sunlit steps and courtyard beyond. Roland angled left across the flagstones, toward the yards used for training and the main barracks. Birds wheeled overhead, spiraling around the thin spire of the Needle, their cries mingling with the shouts and clangs coming from the practice fields.
Except, as they drew nearer, Tyrik realized that the Legion weren’t practicing as he’d thought. They were already suited up in their armor, horses saddled and ready to depart.
“You’re already ready to depart. But the king hadn’t given his orders yet! And you lied to him about the Legion’s whereabouts? Why? What do you intend? Are you even going to follow Justinian’s orders, or was all of that talk of planning a ruse?”
Roland rounded on him sharply. “Of course I’ll follow his orders, even though I think splitting our forces a mistake. I don’t know what Matthais hoped to gain by suggesting it. But neither am I going to sit here and allow Corsair and the Provinces to fall due to his interference. Half of the Legion will go to Goran, as commanded, but the rest can do more than simply sit here in Corsair and train.”
He motioned one of the Legion commanders forward. “Uthur, gather ten men and prepare them to head north. I’ll have the message for GreatLord Went ready in half an hour. Tell Commander Terent he will oversee the forces to be sent south.”
“South, sir?”
“Yes, south, to Portstown, where they will join up with GreatLord Berand’s forces. I’ll have his orders ready shortly as well. After that, report to me.”
Uthur bowed, fist to chest, and stalked off to pass on the orders.
“What do you hope to do?” Tyrik asked.
“I intend to find out where this army to the north is and how many men—or whatever—it contains.”
* * *
An hour later, horns blared in a fanfare, echoing up from the wide courtyard before the palace. Matthais glanced up from his desk, then made his way to the windows overlooking the square. He watched as, below, banners flapping in the breeze from the inlet, the ordered ranks of half of Corsair’s Legion marched out of the gates of the palace and down toward the city along the water below.
* * *
Quotl woke with a start and immediately began coughing, the air choked with dust. He blinked repeatedly, but his vision didn’t clear, and when he tried to move he realized why.
The tunnel had collapsed. He couldn’t see because he was trapped in darkness, pinned down by the weight of a ton of stone. He couldn’t move at all, and when he tried, his body screamed with a thousand aches and pains, too many to locate individually. He could barely shift his head, stone scraping against his cheek. He tried to lift it, but hit another stone above him. His wriggled his fingers, his arms shifting slightly, but he couldn’t move his legs at all. He couldn’t even feel his legs.
He panicked. He thrashed around, even though pain shot up through his spine and spiked into his head, creating white-hot sparks in his vision. A bellow broke from his lungs, ragged and dry from breathing the dust of the collapse. A daggerlike pain dug into his right chest. His head bashed against the unseen rock above him and he choked on his own breath, the building scream dying. Something wet trickled down the side of his face and into his beard and mouth. Blood.
Panting heavily, he forced himself to calm. He was the Archon, one of the leaders of the dwarren. He had to stay focused and controlled. His body wasn’t quite horizontal, his torso leaning forward, one arm pinned beneath his chest, the other off to his right, pinched at an awkward angle. His head was twisted to the right as well. When he tried to adjust his hips, he found his left hip pressing into something soft—certainly not stone—and pain tingled down into his legs, angled beneath him. He heaved a sigh of relief at the sensation.
When his breathing had become regular and his blood no longer pounded in his ears, he licked his dry lips and croaked, “Is anyone there?”
Nothing but the steady rush of his heart, loud in the silence.
He sagged against the stone beneath him. The stones above shifted and pebbles and dirt cascaded down onto his face. He tensed and spluttered, blowing the dirt out from where it had caught in his beard. Then he stilled. If the rocks were loose enough to shift...
He thought about the battle at the Break, about finding the flaw in the cliff side and twisting it.
Sucking in another breath, he sank into the Land around him, into the stone and crevices. The earth was alive with tension, everything unsettled, poised to shift and slide. Stone encased him, pockets scattered through it here and there, but to his right he felt the emptiness of a hole. Part of the tunnel, he assumed, although it was closed off on both ends. But it was close.
Cautiously, he sank into the stress of the stone, felt his way along its edges. If he gave a gentle shove right…there.
The rock around him began to slip. Then the motion picked up speed and with a yelp of surprise he tumbled out of his pinned position into the gap he’d sensed, a minor rockfall coming with him. He let himself be carried with it, lay still until the last sounds of creaking stone and settling debris ended, then attempted to move.
A groan escaped him, even though he’d prepared himself for the pain. He forced himself to his knees, his legs tingling with what felt like the bites of a thousand fireants. His hands brushed against fur and he realized the softness that had pressed against his left hip had been the body of his gaezel, twisted and broken and tacky with blood. He patted the animal’s side in the darkness. “Ilacqua guide you.” The words sounded inordinately loud to him.
And then the magnitude of what had happened crushed him. The Sacred Waters, the Wraith army, Kimannen and his sacrifice. He didn’t know what Kimannen had done, but he’d sensed the power of whatever the gruen had carried, knew it had caused the explosion that had brought the Sacred Waters’ chamber down. How many of the dwarren had died? What of the Sacred Waters? Did they survive? Had they been protected?
In his mind’s eye, he saw the roof of the chamber caving in, saw the stone raining down, consuming the lake of water, extinguishing its light and entombing it. A wave of sadness rolled through him.
“We protected the Land as best we could. Ilacqua, forgive us.”
Grimacing, he stood, hands outstretched to either side, even though he could sense the surrounding stone through his connection to the Land. He edged around the gap, fingers brushing against the smooth wall of the tunnel to one side, meeting only fractured stone elsewhere. At one point, his hands found the protruding hand of another dwarren, cold in death. His lips pressed tightly together as he mentally whispered a prayer, then moved on. He found two more bodies buried in the rubble, a third actually free of the stone, lying on the floor. His questing fingers found where the dwarren’s head had been crushed by what he assumed was a falling rock. He did not recognize the pattern of beads and braiding woven into the dwarren’s beard.
He settled down at the base of the tunnel wall, patted his armor futilely for a moment. “No pipe, no scepter. This is a terrible way to die.” He snorted laughter.
He didn’t know how long he sat in the dark, staring into nothing, before the sound registered.
He tilted his head to listen. It sounded like…dripping water.
He stood, stepped toward the jumble of stone to his left, reached out tentatively—
His hands brushed stone. Damp stone.
He felt frantically to either side, up and down. Water was seeping between the rocks. When he knelt, the floor was already damp, a thin layer of water pooling to one side of the debris-strewn floor.
Quotl thought of all of the water that had fed the Sacred Waters and the four underground rivers of the plains. Its natural course had been disrupted. It would be seeking out new channels, new pathways.
He swore. Using the tunnel wall as a guide, he shifted to the far side of the gap in the collapse, began pulling stone down from above and tossing it behind him as he stretched out his senses ahead. He couldn’t see what he was doing, but he could feel the tensions in the stone and he used it, pushing and pulling with both hands and mind. Pulling one rock free loosened others. Another caused an avalanche as the heap before him shuddered and collapsed, but he didn’t stop, climbing up on the fallen stone. His hands began to ache and cramp, scraped raw and bloody, but he continued on doggedly.
An indeterminate time later, he tossed a stone backwards and heard it splash.
He paused, breath harsh in his ears, hands trembling.
Then he reached for another rock—
And heard the scrap of stone against stone from farther ahead. Faint, nearly lost beneath his own heartbeat, but there.
Reaching out through the Land, he sensed movement and another, much larger, gap ahead.
He cried out involuntarily, seized the nearest stone, and began beating it against the rock heap before him. “Here! Here! I’m alive!”
He didn’t know if they heard him or not, but it didn’t matter. He began digging in earnest, clawing his way forward, heedless of where he threw the stone.
When those from the other side broke through, a dwarren hand reaching into the narrow burrow Quotl had dug near the top of the tunnel, Quotl gripped it tight, his fingers refusing to let go. A moment later, enough stone was cleared that Quotl could see the outlines of the face of the dwarren he held onto, light pouring past him from the open tunnel beyond. The dwarren’s eyes opened wide in shock. “Archon.” Then he spun around, hand ripping from Quotl’s grasp, and shouted, “It’s the Archon! We’ve found the Archon!”
Ragged cheers erupted and Quotl’s brow creased in irritation.
When the dwarren looked back, he said, “Yes, you’ve found the Archon. Now get me out of here. There’s water seeping through the stones behind me.”
11
“We’re almost there.”
Tuvaellis gave a start, unconsciously reaching to seize time and halt it, her knife half drawn before she realized it was Orren. The priest had come up alongside her and she silently cursed this desert and its heat and sand and unending sameness. Her lips were cracked and dry, even though she drank regularly, if sparingly, from the caravan’s reserves, and the unmitigated sun had drained her of energy, making her lax. Orren should never have gotten so close to her unnoticed. She fought the urge to punish him. If she killed him, she’d have to kill the rest of the pilgrimage as well and she had suffered too much to destroy her chances of reaching the Rose at this point.
She glanced around at the rest, frozen in mid-trudge. Most hung their heads with weariness, if not despair. They had been traveling the desert for weeks. Five of their number had died—four of them succumbing to the illnesses that had set them on this Aielan-forsaken path, and one to the venom of one of the desert’s black snakes. Those remaining had settled into a silent, steady plod. The priests attempted to keep their spirits up, but no one responded to the promptings of the chants anymore, or the forced lightness of their conversation as they wove among the group during their breaks at oases or waystops along the occasionally glimpsed road. Even Orren showed lines of strain around the eyes and mouth.
Tuvaellis resheathed the blade and looked into Orren’s face, into the gray-green depths of his eyes. Even through the signs of weariness, his soul was alive and hopeful. He was sincere in his quest for the Rose, in his fervor to bring its healing powers back to the sick in need, in his belief in Diermani and the righteousness of his cause. His strength had not flagged at all, not even during the sandstorm three days before, when they’d huddled in the lee of scoured stone outcroppings.
He found her at nearly every break, spoke to her, or simply sat in silence sharing a waterskin, staring out over the beauty of the desert.
Tuvaellis snorted in contempt, but something deep inside her, locked away beneath the bitterness that had consumed her since her banishment from the Alvritshai, stirred. She turned away from Orren and stared out into the undulating sands of the wasteland around her.
Untold years ago—she had long lost count—she had been a lord’s daughter. Her House had been prosperous, her father a member of the Evant. The cold that would eventually consume the Alvritshai’s lands north of the mountains—her lands, her rightful heritage—had only just begun to blow southward. No one yet knew what those harsh gusts from the far icecaps would bring.
She had been happy then, raised to be a lord’s daughter, taken to the courts for the festivals, the rituals of Aielan, to the dances and the balls and the courtings. Her role was set, her life decided. She would bond to one of the lord’s sons, preferably a lord presumptive. She would preside over his House and his lands. And she had bonded, as intended, had caught the eye of a lord presumptive. Tallusaen had smiled at her at the midsummer rites, had danced with her, had trailed his fingers down the sides of her neck and kissed the nape of her hair scandalously in the dark seclusion of her father’s gardens. Her laughter had drifted through the trees, nervous and tight. Even at the bonding ceremony, the white fire of Aielan burning bright behind them, Tallusaen had smiled.
But the smiles had faded almost as soon as the ceremony ended. As soon as they were in the carriage that would take them to Tallusaen’s House lands, he had turned from her. She hadn’t understood why he pushed her away, the unfettered joy of the bonding catching in her chest, souring into tears of confusion as they rode to their manse on opposite corners of the carriage. She’d watched the countryside drift by in a daze, blurry and indistinct.
She’d hardened then, she realized, on that long carriage ride. In the months that followed, Tallusaen remained distant, looking at her in contempt when he glanced at her at all. He gave her nothing—no affection, no physical contact, no place in his home—left her to her rooms, her garden. The bitterness had blossomed then, and grew. The first time she confronted him, he struck her, so hard she crashed to the floor, her face bruised for a week. The second time, she’d been prepared, had caught his wrist, had glared at him over their straining arms and told him if he hit her again, she would kill him.
He’d beaten her, enraged, bellowing that she was nothing but a pawn in the games of the Evant, that her father had sold her to form an alliance, that she was nothing but a commodity to be traded and used. Then he had stormed away, leaving her bloody and broken on the marble floor of the foyer. Servants had found her, had taken her to her rooms and healed her. It had taken months.
Matthais seized the opportunity. “Your father would have protected his people at all costs. If the eastern Provinces have fallen, then Goran is their next target. Do you really wish to leave those people, those you’ve given an oath to protect, to their mercy?”
“Think carefully, my liege,” Roland added. “Splitting our forces could be a fatal mistake. You cannot protect the people if the Legion is destroyed.”
Justinian’s lips pursed in frustration, but Matthais kept himself from further prodding, choosing instead to scan the other papers that surrounded the map on the table. Lists of supplies, manifests, and scrawled notes and reports, most bearing the Legion’s seal, a few with the official wax stamp of the king, most likely taken from the archives by Tyrik. One, near to Matthais’ hand, appeared to contain a list of Legion forces—their locations, strengths, and current resources.
When Justinian finally turned to face Roland, Matthais shifted and set his fingers lightly against the sheet of paper.
“Can GreatLord Went defend himself against the army we think is heading northward?” Justinian asked.
“If the army contains five thousand men, then yes, he should be able to defeat them with the Legion in Rendell. But as I said earlier, there may be more than that.”
“I need to protect the people in Goran. They’re my vassals. They vowed allegiance to me at my coronation. I will not abandon them.” Justinian drew in a deep breath, held it, then let it out in a slow sigh. “Send half of the Legion here in Corsair to Goran. The other half will remain to defend Corsair. Warn GreatLord Went in Rendell of the threat of an army to his east.”
Roland appeared about to protest, but thought better of it. “As you command, my king.”
Justinian nodded, then slid from his seat. All three of his former regents bowed, Matthais taking the opportunity to slip the sheet containing the Legion’s whereabouts into his hand. As the king made his way toward the doors, Tyrik reached forward and gathered all of the papers together. Roland followed in Justinian’s footsteps, Matthais and Tyrik mere moments behind. In the corridor outside, Justinian headed down the northern wing toward his rooms, the Legionnaires who’d waited outside the door as his escort, while Roland moved toward the Legion barracks. Tyrik followed the Legion commander, leaving Matthais at the door.
He slipped the sheet of paper free from where he’d secreted it inside his sleeve, then began making his way back to the dovecote. He had messages to send.
* * *
Tyrik nearly stumbled in his haste to catch up to Roland. “You were right. Matthais is acting suspicious. And I saw him take one of the pages from the table at the end.”
“Which page?”
“The one with the Legion positions and strengths.”
Roland smiled, his attention shifting from Tyrik back toward the barracks and the orders Tyrik assumed he was headed there to issue.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Where do your loyalties lie, Tyrik? Are you loyal to Justinian? Or do you serve for your own purposes, like Matthais?”
“I serve King Justinian, of course. As his father, the man I served before him, asked me to do!”
“The safe answer. The expected answer. But I believe you.” He fell silent, long enough Tyrik thought perhaps he wasn’t going to continue. But then: “The list Matthais stole was false. Most of it is correct, but not all. I may have…exaggerated the placement of the Legion in certain areas, and left off some units altogether.”
Tyrik’s shock rooted him to the floor, his paralysis broken when Roland continued on without him. They passed through the main doors of the palace and out onto the sunlit steps and courtyard beyond. Roland angled left across the flagstones, toward the yards used for training and the main barracks. Birds wheeled overhead, spiraling around the thin spire of the Needle, their cries mingling with the shouts and clangs coming from the practice fields.
Except, as they drew nearer, Tyrik realized that the Legion weren’t practicing as he’d thought. They were already suited up in their armor, horses saddled and ready to depart.
“You’re already ready to depart. But the king hadn’t given his orders yet! And you lied to him about the Legion’s whereabouts? Why? What do you intend? Are you even going to follow Justinian’s orders, or was all of that talk of planning a ruse?”
Roland rounded on him sharply. “Of course I’ll follow his orders, even though I think splitting our forces a mistake. I don’t know what Matthais hoped to gain by suggesting it. But neither am I going to sit here and allow Corsair and the Provinces to fall due to his interference. Half of the Legion will go to Goran, as commanded, but the rest can do more than simply sit here in Corsair and train.”
He motioned one of the Legion commanders forward. “Uthur, gather ten men and prepare them to head north. I’ll have the message for GreatLord Went ready in half an hour. Tell Commander Terent he will oversee the forces to be sent south.”
“South, sir?”
“Yes, south, to Portstown, where they will join up with GreatLord Berand’s forces. I’ll have his orders ready shortly as well. After that, report to me.”
Uthur bowed, fist to chest, and stalked off to pass on the orders.
“What do you hope to do?” Tyrik asked.
“I intend to find out where this army to the north is and how many men—or whatever—it contains.”
* * *
An hour later, horns blared in a fanfare, echoing up from the wide courtyard before the palace. Matthais glanced up from his desk, then made his way to the windows overlooking the square. He watched as, below, banners flapping in the breeze from the inlet, the ordered ranks of half of Corsair’s Legion marched out of the gates of the palace and down toward the city along the water below.
* * *
Quotl woke with a start and immediately began coughing, the air choked with dust. He blinked repeatedly, but his vision didn’t clear, and when he tried to move he realized why.
The tunnel had collapsed. He couldn’t see because he was trapped in darkness, pinned down by the weight of a ton of stone. He couldn’t move at all, and when he tried, his body screamed with a thousand aches and pains, too many to locate individually. He could barely shift his head, stone scraping against his cheek. He tried to lift it, but hit another stone above him. His wriggled his fingers, his arms shifting slightly, but he couldn’t move his legs at all. He couldn’t even feel his legs.
He panicked. He thrashed around, even though pain shot up through his spine and spiked into his head, creating white-hot sparks in his vision. A bellow broke from his lungs, ragged and dry from breathing the dust of the collapse. A daggerlike pain dug into his right chest. His head bashed against the unseen rock above him and he choked on his own breath, the building scream dying. Something wet trickled down the side of his face and into his beard and mouth. Blood.
Panting heavily, he forced himself to calm. He was the Archon, one of the leaders of the dwarren. He had to stay focused and controlled. His body wasn’t quite horizontal, his torso leaning forward, one arm pinned beneath his chest, the other off to his right, pinched at an awkward angle. His head was twisted to the right as well. When he tried to adjust his hips, he found his left hip pressing into something soft—certainly not stone—and pain tingled down into his legs, angled beneath him. He heaved a sigh of relief at the sensation.
When his breathing had become regular and his blood no longer pounded in his ears, he licked his dry lips and croaked, “Is anyone there?”
Nothing but the steady rush of his heart, loud in the silence.
He sagged against the stone beneath him. The stones above shifted and pebbles and dirt cascaded down onto his face. He tensed and spluttered, blowing the dirt out from where it had caught in his beard. Then he stilled. If the rocks were loose enough to shift...
He thought about the battle at the Break, about finding the flaw in the cliff side and twisting it.
Sucking in another breath, he sank into the Land around him, into the stone and crevices. The earth was alive with tension, everything unsettled, poised to shift and slide. Stone encased him, pockets scattered through it here and there, but to his right he felt the emptiness of a hole. Part of the tunnel, he assumed, although it was closed off on both ends. But it was close.
Cautiously, he sank into the stress of the stone, felt his way along its edges. If he gave a gentle shove right…there.
The rock around him began to slip. Then the motion picked up speed and with a yelp of surprise he tumbled out of his pinned position into the gap he’d sensed, a minor rockfall coming with him. He let himself be carried with it, lay still until the last sounds of creaking stone and settling debris ended, then attempted to move.
A groan escaped him, even though he’d prepared himself for the pain. He forced himself to his knees, his legs tingling with what felt like the bites of a thousand fireants. His hands brushed against fur and he realized the softness that had pressed against his left hip had been the body of his gaezel, twisted and broken and tacky with blood. He patted the animal’s side in the darkness. “Ilacqua guide you.” The words sounded inordinately loud to him.
And then the magnitude of what had happened crushed him. The Sacred Waters, the Wraith army, Kimannen and his sacrifice. He didn’t know what Kimannen had done, but he’d sensed the power of whatever the gruen had carried, knew it had caused the explosion that had brought the Sacred Waters’ chamber down. How many of the dwarren had died? What of the Sacred Waters? Did they survive? Had they been protected?
In his mind’s eye, he saw the roof of the chamber caving in, saw the stone raining down, consuming the lake of water, extinguishing its light and entombing it. A wave of sadness rolled through him.
“We protected the Land as best we could. Ilacqua, forgive us.”
Grimacing, he stood, hands outstretched to either side, even though he could sense the surrounding stone through his connection to the Land. He edged around the gap, fingers brushing against the smooth wall of the tunnel to one side, meeting only fractured stone elsewhere. At one point, his hands found the protruding hand of another dwarren, cold in death. His lips pressed tightly together as he mentally whispered a prayer, then moved on. He found two more bodies buried in the rubble, a third actually free of the stone, lying on the floor. His questing fingers found where the dwarren’s head had been crushed by what he assumed was a falling rock. He did not recognize the pattern of beads and braiding woven into the dwarren’s beard.
He settled down at the base of the tunnel wall, patted his armor futilely for a moment. “No pipe, no scepter. This is a terrible way to die.” He snorted laughter.
He didn’t know how long he sat in the dark, staring into nothing, before the sound registered.
He tilted his head to listen. It sounded like…dripping water.
He stood, stepped toward the jumble of stone to his left, reached out tentatively—
His hands brushed stone. Damp stone.
He felt frantically to either side, up and down. Water was seeping between the rocks. When he knelt, the floor was already damp, a thin layer of water pooling to one side of the debris-strewn floor.
Quotl thought of all of the water that had fed the Sacred Waters and the four underground rivers of the plains. Its natural course had been disrupted. It would be seeking out new channels, new pathways.
He swore. Using the tunnel wall as a guide, he shifted to the far side of the gap in the collapse, began pulling stone down from above and tossing it behind him as he stretched out his senses ahead. He couldn’t see what he was doing, but he could feel the tensions in the stone and he used it, pushing and pulling with both hands and mind. Pulling one rock free loosened others. Another caused an avalanche as the heap before him shuddered and collapsed, but he didn’t stop, climbing up on the fallen stone. His hands began to ache and cramp, scraped raw and bloody, but he continued on doggedly.
An indeterminate time later, he tossed a stone backwards and heard it splash.
He paused, breath harsh in his ears, hands trembling.
Then he reached for another rock—
And heard the scrap of stone against stone from farther ahead. Faint, nearly lost beneath his own heartbeat, but there.
Reaching out through the Land, he sensed movement and another, much larger, gap ahead.
He cried out involuntarily, seized the nearest stone, and began beating it against the rock heap before him. “Here! Here! I’m alive!”
He didn’t know if they heard him or not, but it didn’t matter. He began digging in earnest, clawing his way forward, heedless of where he threw the stone.
When those from the other side broke through, a dwarren hand reaching into the narrow burrow Quotl had dug near the top of the tunnel, Quotl gripped it tight, his fingers refusing to let go. A moment later, enough stone was cleared that Quotl could see the outlines of the face of the dwarren he held onto, light pouring past him from the open tunnel beyond. The dwarren’s eyes opened wide in shock. “Archon.” Then he spun around, hand ripping from Quotl’s grasp, and shouted, “It’s the Archon! We’ve found the Archon!”
Ragged cheers erupted and Quotl’s brow creased in irritation.
When the dwarren looked back, he said, “Yes, you’ve found the Archon. Now get me out of here. There’s water seeping through the stones behind me.”
11
“We’re almost there.”
Tuvaellis gave a start, unconsciously reaching to seize time and halt it, her knife half drawn before she realized it was Orren. The priest had come up alongside her and she silently cursed this desert and its heat and sand and unending sameness. Her lips were cracked and dry, even though she drank regularly, if sparingly, from the caravan’s reserves, and the unmitigated sun had drained her of energy, making her lax. Orren should never have gotten so close to her unnoticed. She fought the urge to punish him. If she killed him, she’d have to kill the rest of the pilgrimage as well and she had suffered too much to destroy her chances of reaching the Rose at this point.
She glanced around at the rest, frozen in mid-trudge. Most hung their heads with weariness, if not despair. They had been traveling the desert for weeks. Five of their number had died—four of them succumbing to the illnesses that had set them on this Aielan-forsaken path, and one to the venom of one of the desert’s black snakes. Those remaining had settled into a silent, steady plod. The priests attempted to keep their spirits up, but no one responded to the promptings of the chants anymore, or the forced lightness of their conversation as they wove among the group during their breaks at oases or waystops along the occasionally glimpsed road. Even Orren showed lines of strain around the eyes and mouth.
Tuvaellis resheathed the blade and looked into Orren’s face, into the gray-green depths of his eyes. Even through the signs of weariness, his soul was alive and hopeful. He was sincere in his quest for the Rose, in his fervor to bring its healing powers back to the sick in need, in his belief in Diermani and the righteousness of his cause. His strength had not flagged at all, not even during the sandstorm three days before, when they’d huddled in the lee of scoured stone outcroppings.
He found her at nearly every break, spoke to her, or simply sat in silence sharing a waterskin, staring out over the beauty of the desert.
Tuvaellis snorted in contempt, but something deep inside her, locked away beneath the bitterness that had consumed her since her banishment from the Alvritshai, stirred. She turned away from Orren and stared out into the undulating sands of the wasteland around her.
Untold years ago—she had long lost count—she had been a lord’s daughter. Her House had been prosperous, her father a member of the Evant. The cold that would eventually consume the Alvritshai’s lands north of the mountains—her lands, her rightful heritage—had only just begun to blow southward. No one yet knew what those harsh gusts from the far icecaps would bring.
She had been happy then, raised to be a lord’s daughter, taken to the courts for the festivals, the rituals of Aielan, to the dances and the balls and the courtings. Her role was set, her life decided. She would bond to one of the lord’s sons, preferably a lord presumptive. She would preside over his House and his lands. And she had bonded, as intended, had caught the eye of a lord presumptive. Tallusaen had smiled at her at the midsummer rites, had danced with her, had trailed his fingers down the sides of her neck and kissed the nape of her hair scandalously in the dark seclusion of her father’s gardens. Her laughter had drifted through the trees, nervous and tight. Even at the bonding ceremony, the white fire of Aielan burning bright behind them, Tallusaen had smiled.
But the smiles had faded almost as soon as the ceremony ended. As soon as they were in the carriage that would take them to Tallusaen’s House lands, he had turned from her. She hadn’t understood why he pushed her away, the unfettered joy of the bonding catching in her chest, souring into tears of confusion as they rode to their manse on opposite corners of the carriage. She’d watched the countryside drift by in a daze, blurry and indistinct.
She’d hardened then, she realized, on that long carriage ride. In the months that followed, Tallusaen remained distant, looking at her in contempt when he glanced at her at all. He gave her nothing—no affection, no physical contact, no place in his home—left her to her rooms, her garden. The bitterness had blossomed then, and grew. The first time she confronted him, he struck her, so hard she crashed to the floor, her face bruised for a week. The second time, she’d been prepared, had caught his wrist, had glared at him over their straining arms and told him if he hit her again, she would kill him.
He’d beaten her, enraged, bellowing that she was nothing but a pawn in the games of the Evant, that her father had sold her to form an alliance, that she was nothing but a commodity to be traded and used. Then he had stormed away, leaving her bloody and broken on the marble floor of the foyer. Servants had found her, had taken her to her rooms and healed her. It had taken months.
