A rumbling crack filled the night. Katyett swung round. The front of the temple of Yniss collapsed inwards on a carpet of sparks and threw up clawed hands of fire chasing a wreath of smoke. The symbol of the harmony in Ysundeneth, destroyed by malign hand.
This time when Katyett returned her gaze to the mob, seeing it confused, not knowing what to do next, she felt it. The emotion she reserved for heretics. For thieves and, of course, for murderers. Hate.
And the TaiGethen existed to cleanse Yniss’s land of such vermin.
‘Tais,’ she said. ‘We strike.’
Chapter 12
A leader must at all times know the state of the body on which his subordinates gaze when receiving orders to risk their lives. Takaar recoiled from the guarana as if it was burning hot. He blew on his fingertips before he could stop himself, realising a fraction too late what a ridiculous reaction it was. But he was hot. Burning up like in the worst clutches of a missiata-inspired fever. Sweat had burst out all over his body.
He sat back on the roughly made wooden chair in his bivouac, shivering and breathing hard. Unbidden, an intense sadness swept through him so hard it made him gasp. Like the anguished cry of a god, it reverberated in his mind and body. A shrieking disbelief. A horror from the darkness.
Takaar held his head in his hands, his tears falling onto the ground between his feet. He sobbed and wailed, the emotion uncontrollable, surging within him like flood water over rocks. It flung him back to the days of realisation following his fleeing of the Tul-Kenerit. And further back to the morning he had found his father murdered in his sleep by Tuali rebels.
That day, through the grief, he had sworn to unite the threads so that no other elf should suffer as he suffered. Today, he had no such direction but the pain was of equal intensity. More so because he was lost.
‘What do you want of me?’
His cry set birds to flight and silenced for a moment the hoots of monkeys and the rattling of lizards and frogs.
No one wants anything of you barring your death. Why do you ask the gods? They have long since turned from you.
‘Then why do I feel this way?’
It is merely your guilt come to remind you of your crimes. Accept it. The leap to your salvation is near.
Takaar shook his head.
‘No. Not me. Messages. Messages through the ground and through the air. Calling to me.’
Listen to yourself. Messages coming to you through the ground? Absolutely. And monkeys dress you every morning.
‘Get away from me, get away from me!’
Takaar got up and ran. Branches, leaves and thorns caught at his face and arms. He ducked his head and put his arms ahead of him, crashing through the undergrowth. The heat within him was unbearable. The sick pain and intense grief and fury overwhelming. His heart was thrashing. He couldn’t drag in a breath deep enough to satisfy him.
He burst through the last of the brush and slid to a desperate stop on the edge of the cliffs down to the roaring River Shorth. He was gasping, shaking and crying, unable to control his emotion. Such a crime, but he didn’t know what or where it had happened. His senses were completely deluged, drowning his directional ability.
‘What are they doing, what are they doing?’
Takaar clutched at his knees and rocked back and forth, pleading for the heat and sorrow to ease.
A familiar pose. Roll a bit further forward, why don’t you? It’s merely the entire elven race reminding you of the scale of your betrayal. They will rip themselves apart. Destroy each other. Leave nothing to remember them by. All because of you. All because you ran. All because you are a coward.
Takaar sobbed hard, taking in shuddering breaths and dripping snot from his nose. He knew it was true. And he knew he was helpless to do anything about it.
Run. Run. It is all you have left.
Takaar stared into the forest, tempted to do exactly what his tormentor suggested.
‘Shouldn’t I just kill myself, as you desire?’
No point now. Too late.
Takaar caught his reflection in a pool of water sitting in a shallow dip in a rock. He laughed and recalled the reflection in his beloved mirror. How could an elf become two such different people? A beard crudely hacked but still long and black, full of lice and insects, dead leaves and pieces of food. Hair he dealt with similarly but that defied his attempts to tame it. It sprang from his head so fast he felt the gods pulling it themselves, just to taunt him. A mass of tangled knots, thick and hot around his skull.
Takaar frowned. He had never thought to try and shave it. He looked at his hands. They shook like they always had on and off since he had arrived here ten years ago. Ah, yes.
‘Is that me?’
Yes. Shameful, isn’t it?
And it was. Takaar tore his eyes away from his reflection. Still the pain was in his heart but the heat had lessened, giving him some small relief. He stood up and stared away along the glory of the Verendii Tual, where the delta flowed into the ocean.
He had knives that needed sharpening. Aryndeneth was quiet but for the uncomfortable sounds of men readying for departure. Their smiles of relief did not disguise the ugly promises of violence they uttered. Sildaan had closed the temple doors on the blood that still stained the stone before the statue and pool and on the memory of the expression on Auum’s face.
Sildaan walked around to the rear of the temple, ignoring the men stowing the last of their gear into backpacks, sharpening swords and inevitably scratching at their heads and bodies. None of them looked healthy despite the poultices, infusions and balms she had given them.
She carried on into the forest and knelt to pray to Yniss at the Hallows of Reclamation, blessed ground where the dead were laid out to be retaken by the forest. In front of her, already partially hidden by the voracious vegetation and feasted on by Tual’s denizens, were her faithful priests and her dear friend Leeth. Nearby lay nine TaiGethen. Flesh blackened by the sick force of human magic and lying on a carpet of bones picked clean and washed white.
‘Yniss, hear me. Shorth, hear me. Protect the souls of these recent dead and use them to further your work, your glory. Make them see as I pray you make the living see. Your armies must stand with me. Elves cannot live as one. The threads cannot be compromised, cannot be muddied or mixed. Order must be restored. Order under your glory.
‘The lineage of the gods must be reflected in your people. We Ynissul, merciful and kind, will rule the elves again. Peace will be ours. Forgive my actions. I live only to do your work and to see your people flourish in your land. The blood that is spilled will feed the prosperity of the future.
‘Your temple will be cleansed. All trace of man will be expunged. All that I do, every choice that I make, I make for you. Bless my hands, bless my eyes and guide me. My soul is yours to take. Hear me.’
Sildaan stayed kneeling for a while, one hand in the earth, the other upturned to the sky. The buzzing of flies around the bodies and the crawling of the undergrowth comforted her. Renewal, revitalisation, reclamation. She bowed her head to the Ynissul dead and rose smoothly to her feet.
Garan was waiting for her and she fell into step beside him as he walked back into the temple village.
‘I need to tell you something about your erstwhile TaiGethen friend and his priest. They are travelling in separate and interesting directions.’
Sildaan raised her eyebrows. ‘We don’t need them muddying our plans any more than they have already. Track them. Kill them if you can. Your men up to that task?’
‘I have men particularly expert in that field.’
‘Good.’ Sildaan cast an eye over her shoulder, back to the recent dead at the Hallows. ‘Good.’
‘Guilt getting the better of you, is it?’ he asked.
‘I have no guilt. Only regret that these fine elves could not open their eyes and see the truth.’
‘And you call men brutal.’ Garan paused in the centre of the clearing. To the right, near the temple’s rear doors, stood the group of twenty-five warriors and mages. Garan gestured left. ‘And what about these? Wouldn’t death be kinder for them?’