“General Suno’ku is correct,” he said. “We need only the orders who are already present to discuss the things that must occupy us today. And of course, that which concerns us most are the mortals who even now gather outside our door.”
“And thus we strike the most important vein,” said Zuniyabe. “Magister Yaarike, what news do you have on your order’s preparations?”
Yaarike took a moment to consider the string of tally-beads before him. “Forgive me. In my age, I do not remember every detail as I should. That is why I have brought Host Foreman Viyeki. You all know him, I think.”
The others nodded. The Singer Jikkyo turned a bland smile in Viyeki’s direction. “We have not met, but I have heard his name. You are welcome to our deliberations, Host Foreman.” Viyeki made a ritual gesture of gratitude, but he felt as though he had been greeted by a serpent who had not yet warmed enough to bite, but might soon feel up to it.
Formalities finished, Magister Yaarike went on to detail the various works in which the Order of Builders was occupied—shoring up defenses around and above the gate, clearing old tunnels which had fallen out of use but might be important in the days to come, and a dozen other such unsurprising tasks. Viyeki prompted him once or twice, but he doubted that his master had truly forgotten anything: it was Yaarike’s way to seem more distracted and forgetful than he truly was, at least in public meetings.
“And our brave Sacrifices?” Zuniyabe asked when Yaarike had finished. “How do your preparations go, Marshal?”
Muyare made a sign of acceptance, acknowledging the question. High Celebrant Zuniyabe held no more power than the leader of any other order, and certainly was not as feared as Akhenabi, but as keepers of tradition the Celebrants gave shape to gatherings like these.
“As well as can be expected.” Muyare glanced briefly at the scroll he had unrolled on the tabletop. “We suffered terrible losses in the south, as all know. Barely half a thousand trained Sacrifices remain here in Nakkiga, and even if others are still trying to return, they will not be able to pass the ring of mortals and their siege. We are desperately outnumbered.”
The moment of silence that followed this did not last long. “Our danger is great, but we cannot only dwell on this present struggle,” said General Suno’ku. “We need to think also of the future.” Even though she did not speak loudly, the strong, clear tones of her voice drew their attention away from the marshal as if he had suddenly disappeared.
“And what does that mean, General?” asked Jikkyo. The blind Singer’s hands were folded before him, his face toward the table as though in deep meditation, but it was impossible to ignore the sharpness in his voice. “If we do not succeed in the present, there is no future—or am I being unduly pessimistic?”
“I wish you were, Lord Jikkyo,” said Suno’ku. “But the problems of tomorrow must not be ignored even in the midst of today’s terrors.”
“Enlighten us, then, please,” said Yaarike, and anyone who did not know the man would have thought him brusque, but Viyeki recognized a hidden edge of mischief in his master’s words. Surrounded by such venerable and powerful nobles, there were currents too deep for Viyeki to understand; he could not help admiring the way Suno’ku waded without hesitation into the dangerous waters.
“Yes, I will speak,” she said, “but first my master Muyare would finish telling you of the preparations the Order of Sacrifice has made.” She turned to him. “High Marshal?”
Suno’ku, despite her youth and rank, was all but giving orders to her superior, her own clansman. But instead of the cold indignation Viyeki expected, the marshal only nodded and then calmly outlined the various efforts his order was making to spread their thin troops over as many potential danger spots as possible. He answered the questions from the other councillors with a sort of numb honesty, as if he could not be bothered at this late date to pretend that their position was anything but hopeless.
“And the gate itself, Lord Jikkyo, Lord Yaarike?” Muyare asked when he had finished his recitation. “How long can it hold?”
Jikkyo unfolded his fingers and made a complicated sign that Viyeki did not understand, part of the Singers’ own private language, never shared with other orders. “The gate, as well as many of our other most important measures of defense, has always been guarded by the queen’s will. As she grew stronger, she was determined to keep her people safe. Health and long life to the Mother of All!”
The rest dutifully repeated it.
“But that is our greatest problem,” Jikkyo continued in his soft voice. He seemed so much the gentle old man that it was hard to reconcile his appearance and manner with the dark tales Viyeki had heard about him, of disturbing exhibitions behind the closed doors of his ancient mansion and the terrifying fates of several of his rivals. But Viyeki did not doubt those rumors: only a creature of unbreakable will and great power could ever rise so high in the Order of Song.
“As you know,” said Jikkyo, “after the disaster at Asu’a, the queen sleeps so deeply that it may be a long time until she awakens. We at this table are not children or slaves to be fed reassuring tales, so let us not chop our words too fine—our defeat in the south was terrible, and the queen suffered greatly from it. My master Akhenabi says that she will return to us, but even he in his awesome wisdom cannot say when, and we all doubt it will be soon. So the gate is weak. Yes, it is still a thing of stout witchwood wound with the powerful songs of its making, but without the will of the waking queen behind it, it is but a thing. A mighty thing, but a thing nonetheless, and things can be broken.”
Finished, he folded his fingers again and turned his sightless eyes toward the ceiling, as if in contemplation of something above and beyond the mountain itself.
“I can only echo what Lord Jikkyo has told us,” Yaarike said. “My Builders will give their all to strengthen the mountain’s defenses, including the gates, but our resources and time are limited.”
A melancholy silence fell over the Council Hall.
“And the thing you wished to discuss, General Suno’ku?” asked Zuniyabe. “It seems it is now time to hear your idea. May the Garden grant it brings us some hope.”
“I cannot speak to hope, which is an elusive and often false friend,” she said. “What I suggest is simply this. If the gate is breached, then every dweller in our city must be armed, high caste or low, because there are not enough Sacrifices left to defend Nakkiga should the mortals enter.”
Several voices spoke at once, but the High Celebrant gestured for silence. “Arm our slaves?” Zuniyabe asked, his legendary calm clearly taxed to its limit. “Are you truly suggesting we arm the lower castes and the slaves, General? To what point? If the Sacrifices fall and the high houses and orders are undefended, then even if the mortals were driven out again what would be left? A disorderly, armed rabble finally able to give vent to their mindless rage?”
“Better the chance of reestablishing order, I would think,” said Suno’ku, “than the mortals left to murder, rape, and enslave as they wish.”
All the nobles present had questions, although some of the remarks were closer to denunciations, and the argument quickly grew heated. It soon became clear that Marshal Muyare was not entirely in favor of such a scheme himself but seemed resigned to his younger relative having her way. “If we arm them, then they will be fighting the mortals alongside the Order of Sacrifice,” Muyare said. “They will be commanded by trained warriors of our order. It will be up to us to maintain discipline. And as General Suno’ku says, we do not have the numbers otherwise to resist an invasion if the gates fail.”
Zuniyabe spread his hands in a gesture of frustration. “I do not understand this. Like Lord Jikkyo, I see only evil coming from such a wild, unprecedented action.”
“These are wild, unprecedented times,” Suno’ku responded. “And before you finish expressing your disgust with my plan, there is more—as I said, we must think not j
ust for today but for the future.”
Yaarike, silent through most of the argument, now smiled. “It seems it is our day to entertain interesting ideas, General. Please do not stop now.”
She looked at him hard for a moment, as though trying to decide where the Magister of Builders stood in the pantheon of allies and enemies gathered around the great witchwood table. “Very well. I suggest something that was mooted in the past, in the season when our queen sent the great nobles Sutekhi and Ommu and the others to the aid of Ineluki, the king in Asu’a, several Great Years ago. We must breed with the mortals.”
Her words fell into utter silence. Even Muyare looked ashamed, though he did not gainsay her, and Viyeki could not help wondering what strange negotiations between the marshal and his younger relative had preceded the council.
“I cannot believe that I heard you correctly, General,” said Zuniyabe. “Mortals? Breed with mortals? What blasphemy . . . ?”
“Please, High Celebrant, do not confuse exigency with blasphemy.” Suno’ku had clearly come to the part of the gathering she had been anticipating since the start, and Viyeki watched as she began to assert control both over herself and the gathering by sheer force of will. Again, he was astonished that such a prodigy should have appeared at such a time, as if war and chaos were indeed the foundry of change. “As I said, this was spoken of before, in the days of High Celebrant Hikhi, good Zuniyabe’s predecessor.”
“And roundly rejected!” said Zuniyabe. “The queen herself said it would not be—could not be.”
“Of course our queen is always correct,” said Suno’ku. “But I think that if she were awake now, she would see that what was bad then has become worse. Think, fellow nobles, think! Our numbers were already dwindling. Long ago we began using mortal slaves to oversee other mortal slaves, and low-caste Hikeda’ya to keep peace among their fellows, because we nobles were too few and our children born too infrequently. But the mortals, both inside and outside our mountain, breed swiftly. If we do not change we will perish, if not by mortals storming our gates then by rebellion here in Nakkiga. All of us—your spouses and children and clansfolk, too—will die in our beds, or be paraded like the scorned losers of the mortals’ wars before being torn to pieces by a baying mob.” She leaned forward, and her voice became lower, less demanding. “Think on what I say. Only five hundred blooded, death-sung Sacrifices remain! And after the siege, even if we survive it, how many will still live then? Half that number? Fewer? My lords, we feed more than ten thousand peasants and mortal slaves here in Nakkiga. We of the ruling orders are already so few that, after two costly, failed wars, if our underlings did not fear the mortals beyond our mountain more than their own rulers, we nobles would all be in terrible danger.”
Again, silence fell, although Viyeki thought it felt like the agitated air just before a storm. But before Zuniyabe could walk out of the council, or someone else say something that would turn the talk from argument into deadly insult, Yaarike let out a strange sound—a whistle, a snatch of melody that Viyeki recognized as an old song from Tumet’ai called “The Musician and the Soldier.” The others in the room turned to him, as surprised as Viyeki.
Instead of explaining, Yaarike continued the tune until he had finished the refrain, then said, “I am curious, General Suno’ku, how such matings would be regulated. Would all the noble houses descend to the streets and rut with the lower creatures, or would there be fairs or games of honor so that we could choose the least disgusting?”
Suno’ku did a poor job of hiding her irritation. “Please, High Magister, give me some credit for sense. You know as well as I that many of our high nobility, male and female, already take mortals for lovers, and that sometimes children are born of these unions, however distasteful you find that fact.”
Yaarike smiled again. “I find nothing distasteful but death, General, and even that has begun to look more friendly in recent days. But the children of slaves have always been slaves. You would change that?”
Suno’ku shook her head. “Unusual and unprecedented as it may seem, I suggest that noble parents must adopt those children, despite their mongrel blood. They will grow more swiftly than our own children—much more swiftly, as we know from watching the mortals increase through all the lands we once ruled. If these halfblood children are raised by the noble caste and schooled in the orders, who is to say that they will not be just as loyal subjects of the queen as any others?”
“You claimed that I confused blasphemy with exigency,” said High Celebrant Zuniyabe, sounding more astonished now than angry. “But I think it is you who are confused, General. How can halfbloods feel what true Hikeda’ya feel?”
She shrugged, a very broad gesture for one of her caste and rank. “Test them. Like all entrants into the orders, they will enter into Yedade’s Box. Nothing says we must take them all. In fact, the harder they must work to achieve what the true-born receive as their due, I think the more they will value it. And we will birth thousands of Sacrifices for the Queen.”
“Tell me what you think of this madness, Jikkyo?” Zuniyabe demanded. “I am astonished beyond reply. What will Lord Akhenabi make of it?”
Jikkyo took a long time to speak. “I do not know. My master is subtle, and there may be branches and twigs to this plan that I cannot see, although I am much of your mind, Zuniyabe. I could not make such a decision on my own. I will let you know his thought.”
Across the table, Suno’ku made a gesture of “patience agreed.” It was as clear to Viyeki as it was to the rest that even if the Order of Sacrifice and all the others present supported it, no such policy was possible without the agreement of the Lord of Song.
“One last question,” said Yaarike. “Marshal Muyare, even if we all agree to consider such an unprecedented and perilous change of policy, many questions remain. What would we do with so many new Hikeda’ya? If we breed halfbloods anywhere near as fast as mortals breed more mortals, surely the time will come when our sacred mountain is too small to shelter us all.”
Muyare spread his hands; he still seemed reluctant to argue on his relative’s behalf. “Perhaps. But it would be good to have our order at strength again.”
“Esteemed Magister Yaarike, you forget something,” said Suno’ku. “With the ranks of Sacrifices replenished and our other orders strengthened, we could again turn our hearts to what we all desire—taking back the lands the mortals have stolen from us. Then we would have as much room as we need.”
“Another war?” asked Yaarike, but mildly.
“Our enemies’ final destruction,” said Suno’ku, and for a moment Viyeki saw the hard stone of which she was made, the unbending determination of her blood and upbringing. “We cannot share this land with them—surely we all agree on that. Eventually, one of our races must perish. On my oath as a Queen’s Sacrifice, I will make sure it is the mortals.”
Porto’s father, dead these nine years, had been a carpenter. Porto spent much of his childhood in the Rocks, scrambling up and down ladders, fetching tools, and holding boards in place, so he volunteered to shore up the ranks of army carpenters in cutting and preparing a new pole to hold up the head of the great Bear.
The ram’s iron head was immense, but Isgrimnur’s men had found an ancient grove of trees at one end of the abandoned city before the mountain, and some of the older trunks there were almost unbelievably large. The leader of the duke’s carpenters, a quiet but short-tempered man named Brenyar, chose a peppered birch over sixty cubits tall, a fit size to use for the battering ram’s shaft. The wood was very hard, but Porto and a dozen others ax-wielders brought it down in less than a day and began to trim away the largest branches while other workers chopped down smaller trees to make rollers, which would let the great ram smash against the gates at greater speed.
Porto liked the work, but he had asked to join the carpenters in large part because he so badly needed to get away from Endri, at least for a short
time. Since arriving at the mountain he had spent much of every day taking care of the younger man, cleaning his wound, giving him water, and trying to keep him warm and fed. He also had listened, and listened, and listened, because despite his weakness, Endri almost never stopped talking. Half the time he was inaudible, his speech little more than murmured sighs, but other times he wept with pain and begged his mother to come and take him home. After days of this, Porto was beginning to feel as though it might turn him mad.
Before leaving to help the woodcutters and carpenters with the day’s work, he had managed to get Endri to take a little broth from their thin morning stew, made from a few tiny potatoes and an even smaller handful of soft-footed mushrooms he had gathered. The boy had not only eaten some but also managed to keep it down as well. That had heartened Porto, and as he wrapped Endri up in his own cloak, thinking that the active work in the ancient grove would be enough to keep himself warm, Porto promised the youth he would find something better for their pot that evening. But as it turned out, by the time his work was finished he had little strength left to hunt rabbits or squirrels, so he traded a tiny handful of potatoes to one of the other woodcutters for a bit of salt beef. It would take a while for the dried meat to soften and flavor the stew, Porto knew, but what else did he have here at the cold, gray end of the earth but time?
Endri was asleep when Porto got back to the camp. He made no attempt to wake him but added wood to the fire and put the dented pot on it to boil, which took much longer here than at home. He had chosen a spot separate from the rest of Duke Isgrimnur’s troops so that Endri’s moaning and mumbling would not keep the other soldiers awake, and now he scoured his tiny fiefdom in search of herbs for the pot. He found something that looked like white onion grass, and when he cautiously nibbled it he found to his delight that it tasted like the stuff as well. He pulled up a large handful and returned. The pot was just beginning to bubble.