Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar (32 page)

The second soldier charged full into the same sick smoke, then the priest whipped the thing on the end of his stave, carrying it through the other four. Each fell, screaming, flesh consumed by boils that burst into parasites that ate at their hosts. The men fell, screaming and writhing, still several feet short of the priest.

Tregaran looked around desperately, wishing he hadn’t left the archers on the hill. His men continued their assault through the open center, slaughtering mercenary, priest, and townsfolk alike. Windrows of dead piled up near the Fires, as the defense failed against his men. The soldiers had cut down most every living thing.

It wasn’t until he saw a tongue of flame bend, reach from the fire and engulf a fallen priest that he truly understood. Its movements were sentient, alive. The priests were
making
something.

He felt the touch of the firecat’s voice in his head.
“Aye. And when they are done, they will bring it through. He thinks he can control it, but it is a master . . . not a slave. He seeks to use it to make miracles, to succeed where Laskaris has failed. Instead, he will be its tool.”

“Do something!” Tregaran cried aloud, as another of his soldiers fell to the smoking stave. Flames now licked around the arch-priest, swirling like a cyclone up above him.

“Then how?” he screamed. He saw his soldiers slowing as the last of the minor priests fell, beginning to look around, and beginning to perceive the center of the holocaust they were now in. Most of the surrounding smoke now limned with flame, darting and dancing like things alive, as they licked and drew on the bodies of the fallen. A soldier dropped his sword in despair and fell to his knees. The weight of the voice, calling on them to despair, built now that blood cooled and panic built.

Tregaran looked around wildly, seeing the first of his troops fall as the Fires, strengthened by the bodies of the fallen, lashed out at the living. A soldier frantically defended himself, using his blade to block the fist-shaped tounge of flame that grew out of the bonfire, punched through his armor, and immolated him. He had bare seconds to scream before writhing on the scorched paving stones, his body alight in sickly red flames. Tregaran heard a second scream to his right a moment later, and saw a third soldier fall across the square.

Tregaran knew then what he had to do.

He threw his shield away and gripped his sword tightly in both hands. He shook off the last feelings of despair and gathered his will into a single dart of purpose.

He lifted the blade over his head and charged the swirling pillar of flame.

 

Cogern with the First Battle just crested the hill and started the running slide down into the fight when the detonation blew him backward onto the scree. The entire center of the village, totally shrouded by flames and rising smoke, blew outward, the pressure wave tossing the smoke aside as it would a curtain. The lurid red glow that marked the horizon faded then, to something more normal.

An under-officer, his armor scorched and one arm hanging free, staggered into him. “Warmaster! Thank V’kandis! The colonel’s down.”

Cogern followed at a run, the bulk of First Battle behind. They passed into the center square, where the bonfires had been snuffed by the blast. A distant part of Cogern’s mind registered there was no wood in those fires, only bones. Second Battle lay scattered around the square, some dead, more hurt, most stunned from the detonation.

In the center lay Tregaran, held by an openly weeping soldier. Nearby lay the blasted body of something with too many arms, and a broken stave lay nearby.

Cogern fell to his knees next to what was left of Tregaran. Shiny skull showed at Tregaran’s forehead and his fingers and armor appeared burned away. Strips of flesh hung from the colonel’s ruined body, and sightless eyes stared up. Cogern wept freely.

The chirurgeon appeared from behind the men, falling to his knees besides them. He took a silvered mirror and held it to where Tregaran’s lips had been.

“By all that’s Holy, he’s alive!”

Cogern looked up, tears pouring down his sooty face.

“Will he live?”

The chirurgeon looked down, then up. “No. He’s too badly hurt. There’s nothing we can do. He’s probably not even aware of us.”

 

The firecat, unnoticed, sat to one side. It had done what it could to take as much of the man’s pain as he could. He opened the door to the man’s mind and began to ease him away. Better to end this now.

Tregaran slipped into something like a dream. He walked on a wide plain, marked only by the dead Herald and the horse’s head on the pike.

“It’s not your fault, you know.”

She sat on a rock nearby, her squarish jaw not a feature he liked. She stood, her acolyte’s chiton flaring around her and settling back. Her long, lithe legs flashed as she jumped down from the rock and walked toward the Herald.

“You see this as what you fight for,” she said. It was not a question. “You march your regiment from border to border, defending those who pervert the Way.” She gently took his hand between hers. He could feel his scarred fingers rough against her smooth palm, feel the scribe’s callus on the index finger against the back of his hand. “You lead your regiment to battle after battle. You execute traitors condemned by Laskaris’ word, with not a peep in their defense. You start wars you know are wrong, execute orders you know are wrong, and sent many a brave soldier to their deaths for a Son of the Sun you don’t believe in.”

Each sentence, softly spoken, struck him like a physical blow. “Yes,” he could but nod. “Yes.”

Her cool hand brushed his face. “You saved those you could from the Fires, spared the wounded from pointless burning. You did as you were sworn to do, leading your regiment to battle to defend your country, and enforcing those laws placed in your hands to enforce. Your doubt of your orders came often afterward, in the full light of day, and in growing realization of error . . . when duty compelled and honor failed.”

She smiled at him. He inhaled her scent, of honeysuckle and jasmine. “You have guarded your country, obeyed those you swore to obey, and held to duty when faith swayed.” She leaned down to him and kissed his brow. “Your god is pleased with you, Tregaran.”

“I love you, Solaris,” he whispered.

And in Cogern’s arms, he died.

 

The firecat lay still as the noon sun streamed down overhead. Tregaran’s body had been removed in great honor. Cogern’s men had worked their revenge, rooting out Black-robe sanctuaries all over the outskirts of Sunhame. It would be a miracle if even a few survived who lived within a day’s ride of the capital.

The ’cat felt the surge and heave of the god’s presence, even this far from Sunhame, as He made His own appearance. By now, Laskaris would be dead, and Solaris, ascendant.

A small tendril of that power settled at the place where a man gave his life for a woman, for love.

A second firecat shimmered out of the void and stepped down. It didn’t seem to know exactly what to do with its tail.

“Was that me?” it said, looking at the place where the colonel had died.

“Yes,” said the firecat. “Your task now is to watch over her. She is handmaid to our Lord, and she must survive.”

“I will,” said the new ’cat.

“In the meantime,” said the old, “let me show you the joys of field mice. They go best with toast.”

 

The chirurgeon deserted the next morning. A month later, he knelt before his own bound liege.

“Arise, Healer, and report,” said Queen Selenay of Valdemar. “What of Karse?”

S
PRING had come late to the Ice Wall Mountains. Although the warm afternoon breezes had brought the first of the tiny purple-and-yellow flowers pushing up through the snow, the passes were still closed and the nights still frosty and cold well into the season. Two figures, each heavily bundled in hides and fleece and wearing thick caps made of the soft, luxurious brown fur that gave the Goshon clan its name, walked single file along a narrow, barely passable mountain path. Each carried a short hunting bow and several brown-fletched arrows in ornate quivers at their backs and long knives, waterskins, and a brace of rabbits at their belts. The older, just past twenty years in age, was tall and thin, with a short length of beard and long, dark hair, plaited in several thick braids and tied with bits of hide. The younger, closer to fourteen or fifteen, was clean-shaven, lighter in coloring and more compact in build, but still bore a striking resemblance to his companion. As the path widened to reveal a small, protected vale, they paused to study the tableau below them with an apprehensive air.

A stout hide tent stood in the lea of a copse of pine trees with four shaggy ponies cropping at the dry grass before a ringed fire pit. Two figures, one old, the other young, were the only people to be seen. For a moment, there was no sound except the piercing call of a hawk high above the trees, and then the sharp, painful birthing cries of their cousin Dierna that had driven the two men from the vale that morning began again. The younger backed up a step, but the older put his arm about his shoulders and drew him forward.

“There’s nothing for it, Kellisin,” he said, keeping his voice firm and even. “Take the hares and prepare them.”

“But Trey . . .”

“I know.” Treyill k’Goshon glanced over to where his brother Bayne stood guard before the tent’s entrance. The other man met his gaze, then shook his head, and Trey nodded in resignation. “Shersi’s doing all she can,” he continued, handing Kellisin his kill. “Maybe a thick rabbit stew will help her and Dierna both, yes?”

Kellisin swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“So go on, then, little cousin.”

As the younger man made for the fire pit, his face clouded with distress, Trey walked the short distance to where Vulshin, the family’s shaman, sat weaving his fingers through a thin trickle of water running down the rocks. As Trey touched him lightly on the shoulder, the old man raised his head, the expression in his rheumy gray eyes making words unnecessary.

Trey crouched beside him. “It’s as you dreamed then,” he said, studying the collection of stones and small bird bones lying on the ground before them.

Vulshin nodded, his seamed face gray and weary. “It’s as we
both
dreamed,” he corrected. “The baby’s breached; Shersi can’t make it turn, and Dierna’s lost a lot of strength and a lot of blood just getting this far. Now the baby’s in trouble. It can’t breathe and there’s nothing Shersi can do.” He sighed deeply. “It’s only a matter of time.”

Trey picked up the largest of the stones, squeezing it in his fist with a helpless gesture before dropping it once more. “How long?”

“Dusk. No later.”

Both men glanced up at the sun already well into its trek towards the horizon.

“Once there were so many of us,” Vulshin noted sadly. “The voices of our people sang in my dreams like a chorus of sparkling water flowing down the mountains sides. Not like this pitiful little trickle,” he sneered, waving a gnarled hand at the rivulet of water. “But like a torrent. Now sickness and clan-fighting have silenced their voices, one by one, until the Goshon are no more.”

“The people are scattered,” Trey allowed.

“The people are no more,” Vulshin repeated sharply. “Their voices have left my dreams, I tell you. We are the last, and when Dierna and her child pass from this world so will the Goshon pass.” Scooping the stones and bones into a small, hide bag, he fixed Trey with a stern expression. “When this is over, I want you to leave this place; you and Bayne and young Kellisin. There’s nothing left for you here.”

Trey gave the old man a worried glance. “There’s yourself and Shersi, Shaman,” he said.

Vulshin shook his head. “No. Shersi is old,” he said wearily. “Old and sick. The winter was very hard on her. Too hard. And with our grandson Aivar’s death coming before his child could even draw breath, the strength to carry on has left her.”

His expression drew inward. “She used to love the meadow flowers in springtime, you know,” he said, more to himself than to the younger man. “When we were children, so many years ago, we would go out seeking the earliest spring blossoms, even if we had to sweep the snow away to find them. Sometimes our fingers would be red and stiff from searching, but she would never return until she could bring a handful home to plait into our ponies’ manes. Now she couldn’t walk as far as the edge of the camp to find them, and my vision’s so poor I couldn’t see to fetch them for her even if I tried.” He blinked a sudden welling of tears from his eyes. “She only waited this long to help Dierna bring her child into the world, but now . . .” He paused, and the two men glanced unwillingly toward the tent where Dierna’s cries had become noticeably weaker. “Now, my Shersi won’t last the week.”

“Then we’ll wait a week, and afterward you’ll break camp with us.”

“No.”

“Shaman, you must. We need you.” Trey scowled at the desperate sound in his voice but kept his eyes on the older man’s face regardless.

Vulshin patted his arm with slightly more force than necessary. “No, you don’t,” he replied. “I’ve taught you all I can, Trey. Bayne will stand beside you as he always has, and Kellisin would follow you into a fire pit if you told him he could learn its nature. Rely on Bayne’s strength, Kellisin’s mind, and your own gifts, and you’ll be fine.”