In the Earth Abides the Flame (30 page)

The path led down into a depression, almost under the foundations of the wall, and Leith guessed they were close to the Water Chamber. His heart began to race as though something exciting rather than horrible was about to happen, and he turned his focus once again to his surroundings. A narrow, ill-formed path; walls of stone, brick, iron and thatch; the pungent smells of raw earth and waterlogged mud; the muffled sounds of the Docks at work, the more immediate sound of boots on stone, his reluctant feet drawing him ever forward.

Ahead and to their right rose a low thatch wall, the rear of someone's warehouse. Beyond, Leith could see the river. The journey was almost at an end. They passed the thatch wall.

With surprisingly little noise the narrow walled path filled with people. Suddenly everything was ruled by confusion. Figures . shouted and pushed each other, and some exchanged blows.

Leith found he was shouting too, trying to get somebody to explain to him what was happening. He took an elbow in the face from one of the Escaignian guards and fell stunned to the ground; above and around him the tussle continued. It took a moment for him to regain his senses. Behind him Kurr was dragged through the thatch wall, while to his right at least six figures bent over the Haufuth. Leith forced himself upright. He dived at the nearest figure and pulled him to the ground, then pummelled at the back of his bald head . . .

He sprang back and turned the man over, and found himself staring into the bruised face of their Escaignian guide. He groaned and put his hand to his head.

'I - I'm sorry,' Leith stammered. 'But what is happening?'

'Just follow me,' the man said, picking himself up. 'Quickly.' He parted the thatch, pulled himself through gingerly and beckoned for Leith to come with him.

The warehouse was nearly empty. Ahead of them Leith could see the Haufuth and the old farmer being escorted by a large group of people. He could not make out who they were. He could not think. It was as though his mind had slowed to a halt, overwhelmed by the combination of events around him. Faltha and Bhrudwo, Instruere and Escaigne, The Pinion and the dream of fire, Stella and the Water Chamber; the pressure had been relentless, and Leith simply wanted to lie down and close his eyes.

Through the warehouse they fled, out into the sheeting rain and along a wide muddy lane. A man with a wheelbarrow wandered along the other side of the road, seemingly ignorant of the weather around him and the small, lightly clad group scuttling past him. Somewhere off to the right people were buying and selling. The aroma of freshly caught fish came to them on the same salt-laden air that brought the urgent sound of the auctioneer and the murmur of bargain-hunters. Soon they passed out of hearing, taking a circuitous route through open spaces, narrow lanes and between large buildings.

At some stage during the journey Leith came back to himself.

Again he asked the bald man what had happened, and this time he received an answer.

'The Elders made an unjust ruling, taking the easy way out instead of doing the right thing.'

He laughed shortly, and apologised to Leith. 'I'm sorry if I sound like Foilzie; I've been listening to her since this time yesterday. She is certainly a forceful woman.

'You've seen how it is with Escaigne. We allowed our Presiding Elder too much power, and now Escaigne suffers the consequences. As an Elder I could do no more to stop his flight into folly, so I betrayed the Eldership and condemned myself by rescuing you. I am now an enemy of Escaigne.'

'But where are the others?' Leith could see Kurr and the Haufuth, and caught a glimpse of others some distance ahead of them.

'I could save only three of you,' said the bald man.

A feeling of doom settled on Leith's shoulders. 'And the others?' His voice was harsher than he had intended

The man shook his head in resignation. 'Nothing I could do. The others have been taken to the Water Chamber. They are now beyond my help.'

'Please,' said an anguished Leith. 'Please send someone back for them. Or let us go and find them.'

'I cannot take the risk,' said the bald man, his face drawn into a scowl. 'You should be grateful for your own rescue.'

'How can I be grateful when my parents are about to die?' And not just my parents. There is another ...

The man grabbed Leith's arm and spun him around. The others gathered as Leith and the bald guide argued.

'Many families will suffer loss in the next few hours,' the man said angrily. I've paid the price for trying to help you. I have left my own sons in Escaigne. Do you think I will ever see them again?'

But Leith was beyond this kind of reasoning, and tried to pull away from his grip. 'Let me go and find them!' he cried.

'We can't have this,' said one of the renegade Escaignians sourly. 'Fighting in the streets! As good a way of attracting attention as any I can think of.' He looked with burning eyes into the face of his leader. 'I know the place you intend to take these ones. If you will wait for us, I will take this one back to the Water Chamber with me.'

The bald man considered for a moment. 'Very well,' he ground out. 'But I will not wait long.

Our unwillingness to kill their guards has made it dangerous for any of us to remain within reach of Escaigne. You have one hour.'

The young man with fiery eyes took Leith by the hand. 'Come quickly! It is at least twenty minutes back to the Water Chamber from here. We must hurry.'

Alone in his quarters for the first time since returning from The Pinion, Saraskar, the Arkhos of Sarista, pursed his lips in thought. Whatever action he took had to be taken soon: he was already being guarded by one of Nemohaim's men, and by evening the streets would be filled with the city's guards and associates. Instruere was about to become a closed city. The reality?

He was trapped, completely at the mercy of that fat animal. Nevertheless, his duty demanded he warn Sarista.

Saraskar grimaced with the difficulty of his decision. He would have to send one of his few trustworthy kinsmen, yet the likelihood of any messenger getting past the guards and across the bridge was slim indeed. And even if the miracle did happen and he managed to get a message through, he had been away from Sarista too long and could no longer vouch for the loyalty of his own king. If indeed his king still ruled. Perhaps this might all be for nothing.

There was no more time. He was delaying because the only decision he could make was distasteful, and would probably condemn the messenger he chose to torture and death in The Pinion. He took a piece of fine Vertensian paper from his drawer, dipped his quill in Favonian ink, wrote the message and sealed it with the Council seal. As he rose from his seat and called for his servant, Saraskar had no illusions about the level of protection this would afford his message.

Later that morning, after a short struggle, a dark-skinned foreigner claiming to carry a message sealed by the Council of Faltha was arrested as he tried to cross Southbridge. He was taken to The Pinion, where he refused under extreme provocation to further implicate his master. The message he carried, however, was more than enough to condemn the Arkhos of Sarista, already under observation for suspected treason against the Council of Faltha. Just after midday a detachment of the Instruian Guard marched quietly into the Saristrian quarters, and met no resistance as they rounded up the Arkhos, his family and his servants. Bitter tears were shed as his children were separated from their parents; but in truth their goodbyes had already been said. The outcome, Saraskar and his advisers now knew, had been inevitable since the loyalists on the Council had decided to wait rather than act, thereby lending strength to their opponents. These good men underestimated the degree to which their colleagues on the Council had become corrupted. Now they would pay for that mistake with everything they had.

Indrett tried to sit up, but she was bound too tightly and could get no leverage. She did not have to sit up, however, in order to understand their position. As if preoccupied with more pressing things, their captors had hurriedly tied them hand and foot, and simply left them on the muddy floor of the chamber. A third of the way up the wall was a grey mark left by the previous night's effluent. In front of them the chamber opened out to the river, which lapped at the entrance. They could hear the chitinous clicking of river crabs in the distance. And, infusing everything like a foul poison, a dreadful charnel-smell reeking of the city. The few facts remaining in their lives were stark and inescapable.

'I need help over here,' came Mahnum's voice from somewhere behind her. 'My bonds are tight, but I may be able to slip them. Perhaps together we may be able to work them loose.'

He hasn't given up! she thought. He never has, and he never will. He wasn't the cleverest man in Rammr, she reminded herself, he couldn't match wits with the court, but he was the bravest, the most passionate man she'd ever met. The realisation that there were many things she needed to say to him flooded over her. How much time do we have left? She felt a wetness under her, the wetness of water spreading rapidly across the floor. Sobbing with the effort, Indrett tried to lever herself across the chamber towards the rich, deep voice she knew so well.

Ahead of her, on the edge of her vision, a bright light danced. Then another drifted on the margin of her focus. Forward she forced herself as the ropes cut into her wrists and calves. A cry of frustration escaped her lips as she realised she would not make it in time.

Around her the chamber was rimmed with white light, dappling on the water quickly filling the confined space. Into the light burst a tall silhouette, followed a moment later by another figure, the gods come to collect them, the Northern Lights come to sit with her one last time.

Indrett turned and saw one of the figures draw a knife from his belt and raise it. Blinding light stabbed from the blade, forcing her eyes closed, but not before she heard a familiar voice call her name. Leith! Leith was here too. They would all go to meet the bright light together.

FAR TO THE EAST OF INSTRUERE, on the southern margins of Sna Vaztha and within a day's march of the Gap, the one pass from Faltha to Bhrudwo, a great waterfall hung suspended in midair. A bitter winter had rendered the Thunderfalls silent, had captured and squeezed the great water into submission by the cunning and patience of ice, humiliating the majestic waterfall as had not been done for a hundred years or more. There it hung at the eastern end of Sivera Alenskja, the hundred-league gorge of the Aleinus River, a towering sculpture in blue and white, mute testimony to Qali, the real ruler of the interior.

In the steep-sided gorge of Sivera Alenskja winter only now gave way to spring. The cruel cold heart of eastern Faltha froze the blood during the long slow winter, yet boiled it during the short hot summer. This year the winter was the deepest in memory, and the spring thaw that followed came on Sivera Alenskja with a pent-up violence unequalled in the Sixteen Kingdoms. Though little snow fell here, the ground froze and refroze until the very stones heaved to the surface of the soil in crazy patterns, and subsurface water turned to vast ice lenses, expanding and forcing the ground itself to bulge into the frigid air like the misshapen limbs of the tortured. Sna Vazthans were trapped in their homes by the brutal weather, and outside in the trackless frozen wastes many wild animals perished miserably for lack of food.

Therefore no eyes, human or animal, beheld the awesome spectacle to surpass all others, the day the Thunderfalls loosed the bonds of winter.

A gentle breeze from the southeast, having travelled across the comparatively warm region of Birinjh in western Bhrudwo, made its way over the Armatura, the lofty mountain range dividing Faltha from her enemy. As it funnelled down the brown, treeless slopes it warmed still further, then settled on the upper Aleinus valley and brooded there a while. Under the influence of this breeze the long ice-spikes started to drip, and the snow began to aerate and melt. The Aleinus awoke from her slumber, and applied enormous pressure to the ice at the head of the Thunderfalls. After resisting for six days the ice gave way. Abruptly the whole sculpture detached from the rock and plummeted into the gorge. The resultant clamour was possibly the loudest noise ever made in Faltha, but no one heard it.

The vast lake that ponded in the upper Aleinus valley was now released. An incalculable volume of water cascaded over the waterfall into the deep slot that was Sivera Alenskja.

Here ice and water combined to scrape the valley sides bare of the trees sheltering in her generous microclimate; topsoil was stripped away in many places, and in a few instances the great deluge tore bedrock from the sides of the canyon. The gorge reverberated with the sound of water and ice, soil, rock and the trunks of once-proud pines clashing, shredding and breaking apart.

Less than twelve hours after the fall of Thunderfalls, Sivera Alenskja disgorged wave after wave of soil-rich, debris-laden, frothy brown water. Now humans and animals alike heard and soon saw this great natural event, and the sight and the sound struck fear into man and beast.

The inhabitants of Adolina, a southern Sna Vazthan town at the entrance to the mighty gorge, built on two terraces, had little warning of the furious waters. What cryptic warning they did have came first from the dogs, all of whom bolted for the upper terrace. Many of the inhabitants of lower Adolina experienced an inexplicable unease, a deep, unsettling vibration that led them to abandon their homes for safety. Those who did not were caught in the swift brown flood.

On roared the river, cutting a swathe through the riverlands of Piskasia. Saumon and Tructa were devastated in their turn, but most people escaped unharmed. The flood bore on into Redana'a. Kaskyne, the capital, sited on a hill above the river valley, avoided the roiling calamity, but riverside hamlets were not so lucky. It was night now, and those asleep were taken by the river.

Through Vulture's Craw roared the mighty flood, its force redoubled, pinched between the Taproot Hills to the south and the taller Wodranian Mountains to the north. And early on the third morning after the melting of Thunderfalls a brown wall of water a hundred feet high surged irresistibly through the Gates of Aleinus and out into the everwide Central Plains, rich bottom lands divided between Favony, Asgowan, Deuverre and Straux. The Warden of the fortress on the northern flank of the Gates ordered the warning beacons to be lit, the first time in living memory; and from town to town, faster even than the flood, the dire message spread.