Wings of Wrath

  He drew in a deep breath, trying to steady his voice. “I saw a Spear broken beyond repair. I saw the Wrath weakening. I learned that the Souleater I had killed was not the only one to enter the human lands. Probably only the first of many.” He rubbed his forehead stiffly, as if that could banish the memories. “That is enough to break any man’s spirit, I think.”

  And I learned that the ancient gods do not exist . . . or at least do not care if we live or die. That our sacred mission is rooted in a human atrocity so terrible that the merest echoes of it produced the world’s greatest curse. I learned that legends lie.

  Perhaps she might have said something to him then that would have broken him down, so that he was forced to tell her the truth. Gods knew that he wanted to share it with someone, to force out all the darkness that was inside him until the pressure in his chest was gone. Until he could breathe again. If anyone would be willing to share his burden with him, it was Gwynofar.

  But before his resolve could weaken someone knocked on the door, shattering the moment’s intimacy. Rhys drew in a deep breath as Gwynofar stepped forward to open it, revealing one of the Lord Protector’s servants.

  “It is time,” the man announced, with a bow. “Their Lordships bid you attend them in the map room.”

  “We shall come,” Rhys told him; he bowed and withdrew, no doubt to alert another attendee.

  Gwynofar raised an eyebrow.

  “The master archivist has been working on translating some figures that were inscribed inside the broken Spear,” Rhys told her. “We’ve been waiting for his report.”

  She nodded and held out one delicate hand toward him. He hesitated, then offered her his arm to lead her to the meeting. He tried not to shiver as her slender fingers pressed the fabric of his sleeve against the scars that lay hidden underneath, conjuring memories of a desolate plain, a pile of shattered brick, and a mummified body screaming out its terror. . . .

  He wanted to cut the wounds open again. He wanted to feel the hot blood flowing out of them, purifying his flesh. Did chirurgeons not teach that all bodily ills could be traced to an imbalance of vital fluids? Maybe if he did that the darkness inside his soul would bleed out as well so that he could feel clean again.

  Dark thoughts swirling about his head like a colony of rabid bats, he led his royal half sister to the Lord Protector’s map chamber.

  They had invited Kamala to their meeting.

  Maybe they would not have, if Rhys hadn’t insisted. Maybe their natural distrust of outsiders would have won out over curiosity and the door would have been shut in her face. Certainly the lord constable had been suspicious of her and might have interrogated her for hours had not Rhys intervened. (Why were you in Alkali? What do you know about the situation there? How is it you appeared at Rhys’ side at the exact moment he needed to be rescued?) She had smoothed over the roughest edges of his nerves with sorcery, but only sparingly; too much mental alteration might have been noticed by those who knew him best.

  But when all was said and done, Rhys’ argument to the Lord and Lady Protector won out. Kamala had seen the Spear. She had felt its power, tasted its madness, and might remember things about it that he did not. If they meant to discuss what to do about the Wrath failing, then they needed her input.

  And so here she was, surrounded by nobles and sorcerers and the commanders of Kierdwyn’s armies. And Rhys, of course. How out of place he looked here! When he had left Kierdwyn these people had been like family to him: trusted friends and allies, colleagues at arms, commanders. Now, standing in the midst of that family, he seemed utterly alone. The secret knowledge that he had brought back from Alkali was a prison that he could not breach without revealing the truth. Only Kamala, who knew his secret, could cross that threshold and stand beside him in spirit as well as body. Only she could give his soul comfort.

  It was a strange—and uncomfortable—responsibility.

  She had asked him, Shouldn’t you tell them the truth? Don’t they have the right to know?

  He had answered, They have a war to fight. Should I destroy the very source of their courage when they need it most?

  But he didn’t sound confident and he hadn’t been sleeping well and she didn’t know how much longer he could go on like this without breaking.

  Now his sister was here, and she seemed to bring him some comfort. She was a pale and slender thing, with a delicacy of presence that invited one to forget just how powerful she was. Gwynofar Kierdwyn, Queen Mother to Salvator Aurelius . . . and to Prince Andovan. Poor, doomed Andovan, whom Kamala had killed, sucking him dry of life to fuel her sorcery. How like him his mother looked, despite the disparity in gender! It was like having the ghost of Andovan at the table. Unnerving.

  But the woman brought some measure of calm to Rhys’ spirit and that was a good thing, wasn’t it?

  By Gwynofar’s side sat the Magister who had brought her to Kierdwyn, an older man with snow-white hair and a long beard. That would be Ramirus. Kamala bound a whisper of power to remember what Ethanus had once said about him.

  He is ancient and powerful and dangerously insightful, and fond of pursuing odd experiments with morati princes as his pawns. Some of his games take centuries to play out and no one but him really understands their purpose. He is prouder than most of our kind and enjoys the trappings of morati power; that is his greatest weakness. But he is also a renowned scholar in arcane matters and his word carries great weight among our brotherhood. And then he had added a sober warning: Be doubly careful if you lie to this one; he does not require sorcery to sniff out an untruth.

  With a start Kamala realized that he was the Magister who had watched her fight the Souleater outside Danton’s palace. Her heart began to pound fiercely and she had to remind herself that he had never seen her face and so could not possibly recognize her now. Of all the Magisters, only Colivar knew what she looked like.

  There was one other Magister present, a brooding sorcerer whom the Lord Protector introduced as Lazaroth, Magister Royal to Kierdwyn’s court. He was a pale man with short-cropped black hair who did not seem at all pleased to be present. His almond-shaped eyes and full lips were strangely compelling, almost sensual in aspect, but also disturbing in a way that Kamala could not put a name to; a shiver ran down her spine whenever he looked at her. Ethanus had not mentioned this one’s name at all but that did not mean that he was not a sorcerer to be reckoned with; some Magisters changed names as casually as they changed the flesh they wore.

  Also present were the Master Guardian Favias and his chief archivist, both of whom had been summoned to the palace as soon as Rhys and Kamala had arrived. Beside them sat Kierdwyn’s lord constable, and then, at the head of the table, Lord and Lady Kierdwyn themselves. The two monarchs appeared more like brother and sister to Kamala’s eyes than man and wife. That was the result of a thousand years of inbreeding among the lyr bloodlines, Rhys had explained. Supposedly the northern gods had dictated such practices after the Great War and provided special magics to protect the children of lyr unions from the normal consequences of incestuous couplings. Thus could the magical bloodlines be preserved and strengthened to weather the ages.

  It all seemed unwholesome to Kamala.

  The Lord Protector waited until all eyes were upon him before speaking. “I thank you all for coming here on such short notice. Most of you have heard the gist of current events, including the reports of a Souleater appearing in Corialanus and another in Danton’s capital city. I regret to say that I have now confirmed both reports. And of course we have witnesses to the second event sitting among us tonight.” He nodded toward Ramirus and then toward where Kamala was sitting; startled, it took her a moment to realize that he was referring to Rhys. “Let no one mistake what these signs mean. Our ancient enemy has returned.

  “Guardian Rhys was able to dispatch one of creatures. But our agents have been unable to locate the other one, and now there are rumors of nests being found in several remote locations. So it seems that the war w
e have feared for so long is finally upon us. It will not be fought along the northern border, as we anticipated, but in the very heart of human territory.”

  He drew in a deep breath; his expression was grim. “Thanks to the courage of Rhys and his companion Kamala, we now know that a Spear in Alkali has been damaged, weakening the Wrath enough to allow the Souleaters to cross. The ancient curse is still active, but it is not as strong or as finely focused as it used to be. The entire area now suffers from its baleful influence and arcane powers are severely compromised. Meanwhile it appears that the Master Guardian of Alkali serves some new agenda that has turned him against his own kind. None of his people have been seen in the other Protectorates for some months now. Is that correct, Master Favias?”

  Favias nodded grimly. “Aye, Sire.”

  “Master Anukyat’s ultimate intentions are unknown—as are his motives—but it is clear that he and his followers do not want anyone to know about the damaged Spear. He is likely to stand in the way of any attempt to approach it and study it, much less repair it.” His eyes narrowed. “In this he has made himself the enemy of Kierdwyn . . . and of the gods that guide us all.”

  Rhys’ jaw twitched at the mention of gods and he looked away.

  “What most of you here do not know is that Guardian Rhys was able to inspect the interior of the broken Spear. I will leave it to him to describe it to you.”

  For a moment it seemed as if Rhys had not heard him. Only Kamala was close enough to see his hands clench into fists beneath the table’s edge as he struggled to tame his emotions. Then—in a voice so low that the men on the far side of the table had to lean forward to hear him—he said, “Its core was a hollow cylinder of brick with a domed top. The inside had been smoothed over with mortar, and the outside thickly reinforced with the same. It was our repairs being layered over it, year after year, century after century, that gave it another shape.” A muscle tensed along the line of his jaw. “There was no tool of the gods at the center of it. Nothing. Just bricks, of the same type used in ordinary structures. Common mortar. And of course rubble, where the thing had been broken open.”

  He paused, then, and Kamala wondered if he was going to tell them the rest of the story. But the moment passed in silence and he only shook his head, a haunting sadness in his eyes. “Nothing sacred,” he muttered. “Nothing that we might use as a weapon.”

  “Tell us of the symbols you saw there.”

  Rhys rubbed at the place on his arm where the cuts were hidden by his sleeve. “They were inscribed in continuous bands around the inside of the cylinder, with no visible beginning or end, or anything I recognized as punctuation. Perhaps there was something in the broken section to explain that. Kamala said—” He looked at her, as if seeking permission to continue. She nodded. “She thought it might be a spell of some kind.” He hesitated, and Kamala could see the torment of indecision in his eyes. What would these men do if he went on with his story, he wondered; what if he told them the whole truth? Would their faith be shattered, as his had been? Could they do what needed to be done to save the human kingdoms from ruin without the illusion of divine favor to bolster their courage?

  Finally he lowered his head and said simply, “I copied them.”

  The Lord Protector nodded. “Archivist Rommel. You have made some progress interpreting these figures, I understand?”

  The archivist cleared his throat noisily as he reached for the pile of vellum sheets; he spread them out across the table so that all might see the strange shapes scribed upon them. “The figures appear to be in Karsi, a pictographic system that was created for merchants to use back in the First Age of Kings. Every domain had its own language in those days, you see, so communication could be slow and unwieldy. A caravan that traveled great distances might require a whole staff of translators to facilitate its business. So the merchants of the time created this script. Rather ingenious, really. You see, these letters are not sounds—not even really letters as such—but rather pictures, highly stylized. Each one represents an item or a concept. If you know what the pictures stand for you can make out what the writing says, regardless of what language you speak. A truly universal system. Quite amazing. We have read about it for years, and collected examples of individuals signs, but no sample this extensive has been seen for centuries.” He ran his hand over the lines of writing as reverently as a sempstress might caress a bolt of the finest velvet. “Many of the ancient signs have been forgotten. Others—preserved as part of a family crest, perhaps, or used by witches as a sign of power—have been corrupted over time and their original meanings lost. Thus I regret that we cannot interpret this text as precisely as I would like.”

  “Tell us what you have managed,” the Lord Protector said.

  Rommel drew in a deep breath; clearly he was not used to such command performances. “The text appears to be divided into three sections. The first is clearly an invocation of some sort.” Rommel pointed to individual figures as he described them. “This one refers to seers, and this one to diviners, and this one to healers.” Kamala found herself leaning forward as he spoke. “There are several more in that vein, all referring to witches of some type.” He moved his finger down to the second line of figures. “These appear to describe the forces of nature: wind, air, earth, fire . . . stars are referenced here, and sun, and a symbol that means one or both moons . . . and then here is another set of figures I could not identify. Presumably another natural force.”

  All the power that is in the world, Kamala thought suddenly, remembering her dream. Suddenly the two Magisters had turned to look at her, and her heart skipped a beat. What had she done to draw their attention? Were they somehow listening to her thoughts? Or were their sorcerous senses simply attuned to any insight? Trembling inwardly, she bolstered the arcane defenses that she had prepared for this meeting so that even their most piercing inquiries could not break through. Carefully. Carefully. If they tasted sorcery in her aura they might assume that some past patron had gifted her with a protective spell, but if they caught her actually working a spell herself, right in front of them, there would be no mistaking its nature. Or hers.

  Lazaroth turned away after a moment, focusing upon Rommel’s scribblings, but Ramirus’ eyes remained fixed upon her. She thought she could feel the ice-cold touch of a sorcerous query slithering across her skin. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself not to flinch or let him see in any other way that she was aware of its presence. After a few seconds it seemed to withdraw from her, unsatisfied. Her defenses were holding strong.

  “. . . We believe that the purpose of this list was to invoke all the forms of power known to the witches of that time to aid in some sort of grand spell,” Rommel was saying. “For obvious reasons, sorcerers were not included.”

  “Are there any gods mentioned?” Rhys asked abruptly.

  “Not among the figures we were able to interpret.” Rommel’s brow furrowed. “That does seem rather odd, doesn’t it? Perhaps that was in the portion of text that was damaged. You say that part of the Spear had crumbled, yes? Or perhaps the writer only meant to invoke those powers that mankind could comprehend. Gods are a different sort of creature altogether. Yes?”

  Rhys’ expression darkened, but he said nothing.

  “This next portion speaks of sacrifice. I believe that it chronicles the passage of the witches into the northlands and the fate they expected to suffer there while hunting down the last of the Souleaters. A very gloomy picture, to be sure. These figures here indicate hunger, death, and fear . . . there are many more along that line. A detailed list of human misery. As for the third and final section. . . .” Rommel scowled at the final pages of his work. “I regret that we could not make much sense of it. This string of symbols here refers to three ladies, this one to truth, then down here a twilight chair, and later a throne of tears, possibly references to the same thing, then there are a few references to blood, each with a different qualifier, and the number seven appears several times.” He sighed. “
We are still researching this section, but its form suggests that it may be some sort of warning, or even a prophecy. If so, it is unlikely its meaning can be unraveled without a precise translation of all the figures. Something we do not yet have the resources to provide.”

  The Lord Protector turned to his Magister Royal. “Lazaroth?”

  “I will check once more to see if there are additional resources to be found,” the Magister Royal responded coolly. “However, in my experience the archivists are quite thorough. It is doubtful any reference exists that they do not already know about.”

  “The Spear itself is beyond your reach?” he asked.

  “Regretfully so, my liege. The Wrath will befoul any sorcery that touches it, regardless of where the source of that sorcery lies. We might manage to establish a connection if we tried hard enough, but there is no saying whether the information thus gathered would be accurate or not. A wasted effort at best and a misleading one at worst.”

  “Then we shall do our best with more mundane efforts,” The Lord Protector said. He looked back to the archivist. “Anything more, Master Rommel?”

  “That is all for now, Sire.” Rommel gathered the papers together again, handling them as reverently as if they were made of beaten gold. “We continue to work on it.”

  Stevan nodded and turned to Master Guardian. “Master Favias. Your thoughts, please.”

  Favias’ eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Tradition says that the gods thrust their weapons into the ground and then caused the earth to rise up and cover them, in order to preserve them for the day we might need them again. Now we discover that the only thing inside one such monument is a handful of symbols.” He paused, stroking his short beard as he considered the puzzle before him. “Perhaps the words themselves are the weapon we seek. A grand spell that the gods provided for our use, in case their curse should ever falter.”