Chartomancy

Chapter Fifty-five

3rd day, Month of the Hawk, Year of the Rat

Last Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th year since the Cataclysm

Tsatol Pelyn, Deseirion

Keles joined Rekarafi at the easternmost point of the moat. The excavation had sunk it to all of five feet, but the canal had not been completed and, as the sun set, the chances of water ever filling the moat again were nonexistent. Keles handed the Viruk a waterskin, then looked further east. There, a half mile off, the Eyeless Ones had drawn up in companies nine wide and deep. He’d counted eighty-one companies, meaning the enemy numbered almost three times the refugees.

And most of us are old or young, and all of us are exhausted.

The Eyeless Ones were not the only troops the invaders arrayed against them. The monkeys skittered around the ranks and another company of large creatures lurked in the center. Hulking beasts with four arms, they reminded Keles of the Viruk, save that they were much bigger and had an extra pair of taloned hands.

He glanced at Rekarafi. “What are they waiting for?”

Water gushed down over his chin and chest as the Viruk lowered the waterskin. “Night. They’re blind. We will be at a disadvantage.”

Keles shook his head. Though everyone had worked slavishly rebuilding the fortress, they’d barely been able to raise a five-foot wall on the old foundation. The fact that he saw no siege machinery amid the enemy ranks meant the wall would hold for a bit.

“I don’t think they need any more of an advantage.”

“But they will likely have one.” The Viruk pointed east toward a dark line of thunderheads moving toward them. “By midnight the rain will be here. We won’t see them until they are two hundred yards off.”

“We don’t stand a chance, do we?”

The Viruk’s lips peeled back in a terrible smile, revealing needle-sharp teeth. “I have seen such situations before.”

“And you survived? Then there is hope for us yet.”

Rekarafi shook his head and pointed east. “I was in their position.”

“Oh.” Keles’ shoulders slumped, aching with the exertion of the day. “You’ve never been a defender?”

“I have. I was in the company of heroes.” He looked back toward the peasants swarming over the walls. “They have been heroic, but they are not heroes.”

“Yeah.” Keles shook his head as the Viruk drank again. “I’m sorry I got you into all this.”

“Ha!” The Viruk crouched until he was eye to eye with Keles. “I am the one who brought myself here. My impetuous action left me in your debt. And know this, I shall be dead ere they harm a hair on your head.”

“I don’t know if you meant that to be comforting or not, but I don’t take it that way.” Keles dug inside his robe and pulled out a small leather pouch. He weighed it in his hand, then extended it toward the Viruk. “I remember what you said when we were out west.”

Rekarafi gave him the waterskin, then accepted the pouch. He opened it and poured a dozen white stones into his palm. He studied them for a moment, then poured them back into the pouch and flipped it back to Keles.

“I do not accept them.”

Keles caught the pouch against his chest. “But you said that when a Viruk dies, if there are more white stones in his grave than black, he’ll be allowed into paradise.”

“The white stones are earned, Anturasi, not just collected.”

“And I could tell you a good deed you’ve done for each one. A good deed for me, a good deed for these people. If I told them what the stones were for, you’d have one from each of them, and then some.” Keles pointed at the Eyeless Ones. “Just venturing back behind their lines to delay them a day should earn you a mountain of white stones.”

“That matters not.” The Viruk poked him in the chest with a finger. “I do not accept them because it would mean I agree with you that we are lost. I do not.”

“But you said…”

“No, you read into my words.” Rekarafi’s dark eyes became slits. “You gather stones to ease your mind of a burden. You have responsibility for all the lives here. The threat they are under is because of you. If I accept those stones, I am agreeing you have done all you can to save them.”

“I have!”

“Have you?” The Viruk cocked his head. “Here is the question for you, Keles Anturasi: have you done all you can to show these people how to live, or have you just shown them how to delay death a little longer? How you embrace death means nothing. How you live your life is everything.”

Keles tossed the waterskin aside, peeled his robe down, and knotted the sleeves around his waist. “You think that’s it? You think I’m ready to die?”

“Talk, talk, talk. An epitaph echoing.”

“Fine, let’s go.” Keles bent over and dug at a stone. “You want stones, you want to earn stones, let’s go. I’ll match you stone for stone.”

The Viruk laughed. “This is not a fight you can win.”

“But it’s the best fight I have, until they come.”

Fury and shame raced through Keles, coloring his cheeks. He ripped stones from the earth and staggered to the walls with them. He shrugged off attempts to help him carry them. He placed a stone and twisted it, fitting it to those below tightly, then returned for another, again and again.

Rekarafi matched him, stone for stone, curse for curse, harsh laugh for harsh laugh. They laughed at how silly they looked, caked with dust and streaked with sweat. They laughed at the Eyeless Ones who couldn’t see how hard they labored at a futile task. They laughed at their own mortality.

And yet somewhere within the futility and defiance, a thought took root in Keles’ heart. One more stone. One more stone. Somewhere there was a stone, the stone, the stone that would make the defense work. The stone that would hold the enemy back, the stone that would turn a sword or crush a head and break the back of the enemy advance. There would be a stone worth nine men or nine times nine.

All around him the others began to work anew, as if his energy rejuvenated them. Though they had already worked themselves to the point of death, they rallied and worked harder. Those who fell were pulled aside, given water and revived, while others stepped up and accepted their burdens. A few did die, and a few others were too exhausted to continue working, but most returned to the construction with a few minutes’ rest.

Someone began to sing. It was a simple song, an old song normally sung by farmers as they plowed their fields and cast aside rocks. The song spoke of their battles against weather and insects. The irony of it all prompted laughter, which people spun into singing even louder. As long as the song kept going, so would they.

After nightfall, as the clouds rolled in to hide the stars and moons, Keles himself collapsed. He wasn’t aware of when he’d gone down or how long he had been unconscious. He realized he was dreaming when he heard thunder crack and echo through his skull. He opened his eyes and found himself in the bottom of a pit.

It’s a grave.

People passed by him on both sides. Lightning flashes revealed their faces. Some people he recognized from among the refugees even though their skulls had been crushed or faces slashed open. The children were the worst, for the wounds left by spears and sword were so much bigger. As each of them passed by they opened a hand above him and released a stone.

A black stone.

Ghoal nuan. Damnation stones!

He struggled to escape the grave, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. Lightning flashed again and Rekarafi dropped a huge black stone in that smashed his legs. Majiata tossed another black stone. His brother and sister, his mother, uncle, and grandfather also pelted him. Even his father, shrouded in silhouette, gave him a black stone.

Then Tyressa came, and with her Jasai. Worse than the stones they cast were the looks of pity. They mourned not only the loss of their lives and his, but the loss of what their lives could have produced together.

Thunder exploded again and rain began to pelt down. He raised a hand to wipe his face and opened his eyes again. Cold rain hit him. Fat, heavy drops exploded on stones. In the backlight of lightning he saw everyone surrounding him still working, though the song had died and the rain was beginning to erode their strength.

Not yet half-awake, Keles rolled onto his stomach and began to claw at the midden that had once been the fortress’ central tower. “One more stone, one more stone, one more stone…” He tore at the dirt with his fingers, cast aside rocks and handfuls of mud. The rain splashed a ragged edge clean and he dug his fingers in.

He tore at the rock and his hands slipped. Flesh ripped. “One more stone, one more stone.” This was it. It was the stone. He was sure of it. Once he had it, they would all be saved.

But it would not come up. More rain revealed that the crack ran several feet, then turned across a clean edge. The stone he was trying to pull free would have filled the grave he awoke in. He could no more have moved it than he could have felled a moon by throwing a rock.

“But it is the stone!”

He pounded his fists against it as he screamed into the storm. Blood and tears and rain stained it, then flowed into the crack. He screwed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth, screaming louder to defy the storm. He hammered the stone harder than the rain and felt the distant pain of bones breaking.

It wasn’t right.

It was the stone!

In his mind’s eye he could see where the stone belonged, where all the stones belonged. Tsatol Pelyn lived, incarnated again in all its glory. Towers tall, pennants snapping, its promise undiminished as the Empress and her heroes rode past toward Ixyll. The garrison stood tall on stout walls, sunlight reflected from the moat. It would take hours for her army to pass, but no man or woman would waver or turn away. Always alert, always ready, those defending Tsatol Pelyn would never be defeated.

Yes, this is how it must be. If Tsatol Pelyn were once again what it had been in its youth, we would not die!

Thunder crashed again and again, but the quality of it changed, muting and echoing. Wind whistled and shrieked, then something snapped above him. Keles looked up through rain-blinded eyes, then wiped them and stared again.

Pennants snapped on the tower above him. He knelt on a walled parapet. He pressed his hands flat to the stone, ignoring the pain of fractured bones sliding against each other. It seemed solid enough, and the pain meant he wasn’t dreaming. He scrambled to his feet and rushed to the parapet’s edge, to look out.

Tsatol Pelyn had been born anew. The moat had been hollowed and the rain struggled to fill it. The walls, which had just been rubble middens, again stood tall and strong. Towers had risen at the eastern corners and the west, and he stood in the tallest of them all. The handful of ministry warriors ran up to the top of the eastern wall, and Rekarafi laughed defiantly from atop the northeast tower.

And beyond, the Eyeless Ones came. The uniform tramp of their feet rivaled the thunder. Lightning flashes moved them forward in jerks, closer, ever closer, with their hindmost ranks still hidden by distance.

Keles clutched the stone. This is not enough! The fortress is worthless without its garrison. We must have the garrison.

A sheet of rain whipped across his face, driving him back and blinding him. He shook his head to clear his vision, then stepped up to the parapet’s edge again. He narrowed his eyes against the rain, and though it washed away his vision more often than not, he clearly saw what was happening below.

The adults stood, some frightened, some resigned, staring up at him. As lightning strobed they changed. They shed years as a snake sheds skin. Twenty, thirty, forty, and even fifty years sloughed off, returning them to their prime, when they were hale and hearty, brimming with courage, determination, and confident in their immortality. Hair darkened, bodies thickened and shrank, straightened, and gap-toothed smiles became whole again.

As they held their arms out, mail sheathed them. Gauntlets materialized, and breastplates and helmets. Fierce battle masks covered their faces, armor covered their legs. Spears and swords filled hands. Bows appeared, as did quivers of arrows.

And then the children rose. They pulled on the years their elders had discarded. As if wearing adult raiment, they looked odd for a moment, then they began to grow into those years. They sprouted up and muscles thickened. Childish softness hardened into angular adulthood. Armor wrapped them and implements of war came to hand.

They followed their elders to the walls, and awaited the Eyeless Ones.

The invaders came undaunted. Perhaps they imagined they were a wave that would wash over a lowly sand castle. No dismay registered as they began their descent into the moat or had to scramble up the other side. Mindless as well as blind, they crawled over each other, rising higher and higher to find the top of the wall.

Arrows slashed down at them, twisting them around with the force of impact. Following commands that Jasai shouted above the wind, the archers drew as one and shot. Whole ranks of dead and dying Eyeless Ones wilted and thrashed.

Still their companions tromped over them, climbing ever higher, only to be met with spear thrusts that toppled them down into the pit.

Yet other Eyeless Ones pressed on and their line wrapped the fortress’ perimeter. They came at it from all sides, and here and there they reached the top of the wall. A sword cut would spin a warrior away, making room for another blind and another.

Tyressa whirled into the battle, a blur of black and silver. She spun her spear over her head, slashing down through one blind, then shattering another’s skull with the weapon’s butt end. That blind arced back over the wall into the darkness. She swept two others from the edge, then stood there defiantly, challenging blinds to attack.

Rekarafi proved no less magnificent. He leaped from his tower and scattered five blinds that had gained the wall below him. His claws flashed, shredding their flesh. Keles winced as sympathetic pain rippled up the scars on his back. Rekarafi grabbed one of the blinds at hip and throat and raised it above his head. He bowed the creature’s spine, then touched its shoulders to hips with a sharp crack.

Still, it is not enough. Keles spat down into the courtyard. Tsatol Pelyn is not yet complete.

Yet uncertain as to what was happening, Keles stalked around to the western side of the tower and gazed at the dug-out canal. It had once been eighteen feet across and half that deep, but the digging had only produced a shallow, three-foot-wide track. He’d seen deeper wheel ruts on a road.

He closed his eyes, picturing the canal as it must have been. He saw it on the day the workers cleared the last bit of dirt. Water from the river pushed at the thin wall. The earth darkened, then crumbled, dissolving into a thick mud that the rush of water carried into the moat. He watched the water pour into the moat in a torrent, a fast-moving torrent that filled it quickly, washing away the Eyeless Ones, collapsing their pyramids of bodies.

He pictured it in his mind and merged that image with reality. His body tingled as he forced reality to surrender to the image. As the fortress had been made whole, as the people had become the garrison, so the ditch would become the canal and it would be enough.

And so it was.

The water roared, leaping and foaming. It pushed a wall of mud with it that swept through the moat. Tumbling rocks shattered legs. Eyeless Ones pitched from the walls and disappeared in the roiling black water. Almost as if they had been made of mud themselves, the Eyeless Ones melted as they bobbed to the surface.

Yet even this did not wholly stop them. One of the four-armed creatures leaped the moat and scrambled to the top of the wall. He scattered warriors with flicks of his hands, then rushed at Rekarafi. He roared furiously, and the Viruk matched his battle cry. People between them leaped to the courtyard below.

As strong as the invader was, he lacked the Viruk’s speed. The two upper arms slashed harmlessly above Rekarafi’s head. The Viruk caught the creature’s lower arms by the wrists, then yanked. Ligaments popped as the arms tore free. The creature, stricken, looked down, then the Viruk battered it to death with its own arms.

The battle for Tsatol Pelyn raged long into the night, and only broke when the storm slackened. The moat had become a swamp of dead blinds. Some human corpses bobbed there, but remarkably few given the ferocity of the fighting. As the clouds parted and the first faint dawn glow painted the eastern horizon gold, the blinds had withdrawn toward Felarati and every defender of Tsatol Pelyn knew they would not return.