“You will, I promise. Just rest. Here, drink a little of this.” He lifted the cup of melted snow to Endri’s lips and steadied it while the young man sipped. “You will be well again. We will go back to Perdruin together in triumph.” He looked at Endri’s dull, listless face and added, “And who knows what booty we will bring? Gold from out of Stormspike itself, maybe, or jewels from some fairy princess’s wardrobe. Even a Norn sword or battle helm will bring a pretty price in Ansis Pelippé, you can be sure of that. We will be rich men. Famous, too—the heroes who fought the Norns.”
Endri shook his head, eyes closed again, but this time he smiled. “That is why you are my friend, Porto. You tell such pretty lies. And the Geysers and the Dogfish will celebrate together too, and no one will fight.”
“Quiet now. Sleep is the best cure.”
Endri’s smile shrank but did not entirely disappear. When he spoke again, he seemed to be a long distance away. “Don’t worry about me, my friend. I will have plenty of time to sleep soon.”
Porto pulled the youth’s cloak up beneath his chin to keep out the chill. Now that they were on the far side of the pass, there was nothing to block the icy wind that knifed down from the heights. Finished, he turned away from Endri and pretended to stoke the fire, because it was becoming obvious that the freezing drops that stung Porto’s cheeks were nothing to do with the fluttering snow.
Part
Three
The Nakkiga Gate
It was hard to see anything except the great cone of Nakkiga; it dominated the center of the uneven plateau like a brooding, robed figure.
To Viyeki, their sacred peak had always meant many things—a refuge, a parent, a stern and disappointed teacher. Now, as it grew larger before them, hour by hour, he felt his sense of shame grow as well, knowing that he and the other children of the Garden were returning to the mountain in such disarray, not as saviors and barely as survivors; drowning men washed up on a beach only after they had given up hope.
General Suno’ku led the procession, riding ahead of the catafalque bearing the makeshift wooden coffin of her foreparent, Ekisuno the Great, hero of a dozen battles but now only one more corpse, another victim of the mortals’ hatred. Viyeki could not help thinking of The Heart of What Was Lost, the ancient jewel that hung around his master Yaarike’s neck, hidden inside the magister’s garments.
Is that all our people have to show in the end? Viyeki wondered. More losses? Is this tattered army we bring back, a few hundred out of all the thousands who went south, just another display of our ultimate fate, as pointless as a gem commemorating the vanished Garden? Is all we have—all we are—only a memorial of what we failed to save?
Viyeki could see nothing else ahead for his people, even if they survived this terrible failure. We retreat. We hide. We diminish. Eventually we will disappear except in old stories. And they will not be our stories. Alone among her peers, only General Suno’ku seemed to believe differently. Only Suno’ku had given him anything like hope. But now they were home again, and the only real truths were failure, regret, and loss.
He looked to his master, wondering if Yaarike was thinking similar thoughts, but as usual the magister’s face was as enigmatic as a stone weathered smooth by centuries of wind and rain. Viyeki could only wonder how he could hope, one day, to replace a leader of such depth and subtlety.
I am not enough, my great queen, he thought. You need heroes not mere Builders. I am not enough.
The small procession wound through the ruins of the abandoned city of Nakkiga-That-Was, picking its way across the pocked and uneven surfaces of a road that had once been the Royal Way. Only a few stones remained from a thoroughfare so wide that a dozen riders could make their way along it side by side without touching. The rest of the paving had been plundered long ago for the city inside the mountain when the Hikeda’ya had turned inward, withdrawing from the hostile world the mortals had created.
But the old city still remained in the tumbled ruins and rings of stones that showed where the great buildings had once stood. The high Gyrfalcon Castles that had once clung to the side of the mountain itself were gone, but their telltales remained, at least to Viyeki’s practiced eye. The Sky Palace was only a field of rubble and dead frozen grass, but once, its open dome had framed the night sky in glory for the observers below. Here the Moon Festival Canal and its tributaries had wound through the city like rivers of quicksilver. Delicate boats had carried soldiers, courtiers, spies, and lovers to their various destinies.
For a moment it seemed as though Viyeki could see these pathetic remnants and also the glorious city that had rivaled Asu’a itself—both the arches of the solemn Queen’s Gallery as it once stood and the long-collapsed pillars of today; the graceful curves of the Bridge of Exodus and the trample of icy mud that marked all that was left. Where the delicate, high houses of lords and ladies had stood, poems in stone and sky, only a few protruding rocks still remained, broken teeth in a skeletal jaw, the mansions’ owners long gone into the Elder Halls in the Silent Palace beneath Nakkiga. The only thing that remained of all that glory was the mountain itself, and the tall gates that offered darkness and safety to those they welcomed.
We come out into the sun only to fight now, Viyeki suddenly realized. It was an idea that, once it entered his mind, would not go away. We call darkness our friend, but when the elders tell us stories of the Garden, they talk of the holy, unending light that was there. How did shadows become our only dwelling?
As they crossed the rocky, frozen mire at the mountain’s foot that had once been the Field of Banners, the great marshaling ground of the Sacrifice order, Viyeki saw that Nakkiga’s tall gates stood open. For an instant, all his thoughts fled away in fear that they had come home too late—that the mortals had somehow beat them here, that nothing would be left to greet them but blood and death. Then he saw the thin line of armored Sacrifices drawn up on either side of the massive witchwood doors and his heart slowed. The mortals had not yet come. The people of Nakkiga were waiting to welcome them home.
As they rode up the slope between the waiting Sacrifices, Viyeki could not help noticing that most of these warriors were too young or too old for proper service. Mortals might not be able to tell the difference between one Hikeda’ya and another, but Viyeki saw the tight-stretched skin of the old and weary and the over-straight backs and gleaming eyes of the young, who did not understand yet how many defeated armies had returned through these gates over the years, each time in smaller and smaller numbers.
As General Suno’ku steered her mount between the honor guard, a crowd of Singers stepped out of the great gate, led by a rider on a great black horse. The rider raised his palm in salute, and even from a distance Viyeki could see that his face was covered with a mask of translucent dried flesh.
Viyeki felt his heart grow cold. It was Akhenabi, the Lord of Song. He had returned from the south before them. Viyeki knew he should have been overjoyed that such a powerful figure still lived, but instead he remembered the possession of Tzayin-Kha at Three Ravens Tower and felt instead a choking fear. General Suno’ku had ignored Akhenabi’s orders and then killed the Lord of Song’s minion, Tzayin-Kha. What would come from that—and would it come only to Suno’ku, or were the rest of them tainted by her disobedience, too? Viyeki had heard enough stories of the Cold, Slow Halls to know that he would rather face the executioner’s cord and rod a hundred times than be handed over to the pain-masters of Akhenabi’s order.