Rise of the TaiGethen

Chapter 8

I once told Auum that we’d got it all wrong. There is so much in the rainforest to kill an ignorant human, I said, that we should welcome them in and just let the forest do its work. Let Beeth and Tual carry out sentence. He didn’t smile. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because for a heartbeat he actually took me seriously.

From A Charting of Decline, by Pelyn, Arch of the Al-Arynaar, Governor of Katura

Koel signalled the elf at the helm to move the barge into the deep water midstream. He breathed in the purity of the River Ix and the rainforest. He relished their fleeting freedom. To the north, the dark sky was further smudged by the smoke of Ysundeneth’s industry. In a day they would be behind the fences once more.

Koel had found himself praying for much of the time. His meeting with Auum had touched him deeply, bringing him comfort, strength and despair in equal measure. The temptation of freedom was so strong, but not one of them was prepared to desert their loved ones still trapped in the city. Though they aided the plans of man, Koel was intensely proud of his people. And pride, for an elf, was in short supply.

‘Koel.’

Koel tore his eyes from the smoke billowing up into the sky. Liun was standing forward towards the bow, and had been taking soundings. She was a strong stubborn Beethan — weren’t they all — but he had grown to respect her obduracy and he trusted her to be his second on the logging team more than he did one of his own Apposan thread.

‘Are we bottoming out?’

Liun shrugged. ‘The depth is fine. If I know this river at all there’s a fathom beneath the keel for the next twenty miles. I’d love that to be our biggest problem.’

Liun said no more, merely pointed to the starboard bank ahead of her. Koel could see nothing but the forest crowding the river’s edge. Branches leaned out from bowed trunks, leaves kissing the water. On closer inspection, though, Koel could see a bubbling and frothing, the water boiling beneath the broad leaves of an evergreen.

‘Piranha,’ he whispered and he hurried across to the rail. Before he got there, he saw the remnants of their feast. ‘Yniss preserve us.’

A disembodied head was bobbing on the surface. Much of the flesh was gone and when it rolled in the water under the weight of attack, it revealed a torn ear. It was a human head. Remnants of bloodied clothing were trapped within a net of small branches. A larger mass bobbing under an overhang of the bank revealed itself to be a limbless torso. Other scraps could be seen among the frenzy that would ultimately leave no trace at all.

Koel sucked at his bottom lip and looked into the forest beyond the water’s edge. Elves knelt there, praying. He counted seven and there would be more. He knew them. They were a search team, scouting for new logging sites and clearing any settlements they found. It was the harshest of the slave duties; no one wanted to come upon one of their own and end their freedom.

Koel rubbed his hands over his face.

‘Launch a boat!’ he called. ‘Pick them up, any who will come with us.’

He turned away, catching Liun’s eye.

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘We will just transport them more quickly to their own executions.’

Koel spread his hands and shook his head.

‘Because we have to stand as one. And die as one if we must.’

Auum’s mind was clouded. He ran knowing he risked injury to himself and those who followed him. He ran hard down stream beds, through the grabbing, clawing undergrowth and across abandoned hamlets and villages lost to the voracious growth of the rainforest.

The haunting cry of the ClawBound calling the TaiGethen to muster still echoed in his mind. It had split the forest, reaching into the highest boughs of the canopy and penetrating the deepest valleys and most distant caves. Auum had stopped running only when fatigue forced him to rest.

‘Tai, we pray,’ said Auum.

They knelt facing each other. Rain drummed on leaf and tree. Mud on the ground moved under the weight of water draining through it. The dark of the night was complete, cloud blotting out any hint of light from the heavens. Gyal was crying in the darkness, and the gods were listening.

‘Yniss hear me, your servant Auum. We seek your blessing for the task set before us. We seek your guidance. We are few and we are alone. Cover us with your embrace as we strive to free the enslaved and rid our country of the evil of man. Deliver our souls to Shorth should we fall. Secure us from harm, guide our blades and our limbs.

‘We do your work. Hear us.’

Auum kept his head bowed for a few moments, aware that Malaar and Elyss were staring at him. He did not look up when he spoke to them.

‘You want to question me. Disagree with me. Perhaps rebuke me. But you think you do not have the authority. Fear has no place within our calling. It does not matter who I am. What matters is that I am TaiGethen and if you believe I am in error, you must challenge my decisions. I already know that you think I am taking the wrong path. Speak. My respect for you can only grow as I hear your words.’

‘You are the Arch,’ began Malaar.

‘I am elven first, Ynissul second and TaiGethen third. None of us is infallible.’ Auum raised his head and found he could give an encouraging smile. ‘Go on, before I tell you what you are thinking.’

It was Elyss who spoke, her words gushing out like water bursting from a dam.

‘Your anger has stopped you thinking clearly. Your fury at the ClawBound and your guilt over Koel’s likely fate is leading you to sacrifice all of our lives. You have schooled us in the virtue of patience for so long and yet now it seems that is all gone, washed away in a desire to prove yourself to a Bound elf. Don’t let this setback take us from our plan. We have time. The humans do not.’

Auum raised his eyebrows. ‘It should have been obvious to us, for a long time, that this thinking is just plain wrong. Serrin has learned as much and so must we. Individual humans certainly have little time, but we aren’t fighting one generation. They are endless. And with every year we get weaker while they grow stronger.

‘They are not going to get bored and they are not going to become careless. Ystormun is as strong as he is untouchable. His revenge for the ClawBound action will be merciless. The only way to hurt him is to prove we can take our people back from under his nose.’

‘That was always our plan,’ said Malaar. ‘But we have no magic to aid us.’

Auum nodded. ‘But what choice do we have? You know how many humans the ClawBound plan to kill and what that means for the slaves of Ysundeneth, or perhaps those of Tolt Anoor or Deneth Barine. Knowing that can you, with Yniss as your witness, turn your back?

‘I cannot.’

Elyss and Malaar looked at each other. Their expressions were unsure and their camouflage, streaked by sweat and rain, gave their faces a mournful aspect. Auum understood their doubts. Throughout their run towards Aryndeneth he had asked himself the same questions.

Elyss was going to try just one more time. ‘We are not ready to mount such an offensive. We are not strong enough to attack them.’

‘If there is one thing the attack on Aryndeneth has taught us it is that the humans will never let us be ready. And our people will start dying again in mere days. You and I know that we have no choice.’

‘You and I know that most of us will not return, if we do this,’ said Elyss.

‘We should eat,’ said Auum. He sniffed the soaking air. ‘Guarana pods west, acai berries too. Malanga roots are all over the place here, boniata too. Gather what you can quickly. We can’t rest for long.’

The night darkened still further and the rain fell in an unrelenting surge that set the ground running with a thick and treacherous sludge. It was as if Gyal was already mourning what was to come and was pouring out her heart across the vastness of the forest.

Yet, even through the thunderous downpour, rain and echoes bouncing all around them, Auum fancied he could hear men’s screams. Fractured sounds, filtering through the deepest valleys and falling like dust from the steepest slopes. Screams of terror as unseen assailants delivered death before melting away, leaving their kills to be reclaimed by Tual’s denizens.

A new beast strode through the undergrowth. It moved with grace, it wore the forest like a mantle and it was utterly without mercy. The ClawBound had come of age.

Ystormun placed the plump cushion on the table in front of him and waited. His heart raced and he could feel the pulse in his neck thudding like a muscle tick. Although he knew it was time, he still wished that there was some warning before the actual connection, a build-up of pressure or a rising intensity of sound. Anything rather than-

Ystormun’s body jackknifed where he sat and his forehead slammed into the cushion placed on his desktop. He gasped for a breath and forced it into his lungs while the echoing clamour of voices in his head resolved into a coherent stream. He considered lifting his head and sitting upright but instead turned his head to the right so he could lie in a modicum of comfort and look through the panoramic windows.

The pressure in Ystormun’s head faded as did the pain from his impact with the cushion and the desk beneath it. He felt cold and began to shiver with the force of the wills joined with his own in the imagined halls of communion. The atmosphere reeked of disappointment and cynicism. This was not going to be an easy debate.

‘My lords,’ said Ystormun. ‘Your contact is welcome.’

The lords of Triverne were ancient and steeped in magic and its lore. Their power had gone unchallenged for decades, but now they were under increasing pressure to open their circle to change, and to include representatives from the other three schools of magic. They were a circle of six, including Ystormun, and their names ran like a threatening mantra for parents trying to scare disobedient children. If only they knew the half of it.

Pamun, Arumun, Belphamun, Weyamun, Giriamun, Ystormun.

‘We care little for your platitudes and much for news of progress.’ Pamun’s cold voice cut across Ystormun’s mind like the slap of thunder against bare rock. ‘Detail your achievements.’

‘Our experiments on tracking the use of elven magic are complete. And the destruction of much of their magical strength has taken place,’ said Ystormun.

‘ “Much”?’ asked the dry mind that was Weyamun. ‘Your reports are that inaccurate?’

‘We have had no reports at all,’ said Ystormun. ‘I tire of reminding you that this is not Balaia.’

‘Meaning?’ demanded Weyamun.

‘No members of our strike teams survived to give me accurate numbers.’

‘Yet you are certain of at least partial success,’ said Arumun, his tone dripping with contempt. ‘How so?’

‘My sources are none of your concern,’ said Ystormun sharply. ‘Trust that I am correct and that there is currently no magical strength to threaten us.’

There followed the silence he had grown to hate. When Ystormun had left Balaia he had been the strongest of them. Now he was looked upon as a mere digit on the hand of the greater body that was the other five. He had been gone for far too long.

‘We feel resistance,’ said Giriamun. ‘We sense the next logical step is not forthcoming. We have heard nothing to suggest that a change in the ultimate plan is necessary. What we glean from you is all obfuscation and delay. That cannot continue.’

‘Any of you is welcome to travel here to advise me in person.’

‘You are the appointed representative of the cadre on Calaius,’ said Pamun immediately.

Ystormun laughed and felt the righteous anger flowing across the Southern Ocean to drown his mirth. Despite the pain he felt, Ystormun spoke with as much force as he could muster, hoping to send some small part of that pain back.

‘I will continue here as long as I deem it necessary. I am here not because I am the junior partner but because I am the most capable among us. I will decide when and if the remainder are to be hunted down, and I will decide how it is to be done.’

‘Your isolation can be made permanent,’ snapped Belphamun.

‘Calm yourself,’ said Pamun. ‘Ystormun. We are a collective. None of us acts in isolation. You must hear us.’

‘I hear you far too often and with excessive volume. Before you think to instruct me, do any of you deny that this facility works? Deny that the products and resources I export to you have made you wealthy beyond your most fevered dreams and have allowed you to increase our standing army to an unheard-of level in peacetime Balaia. Do you deny that continuing our mission here will further increase our strength, wealth and influence?’

‘We deny none of these statements,’ said Belphamun. ‘Your problem, Ystormun, is your ignorance of the changing situation here. You are correct that our standing army is large, but you control more than a third of it at any one time. Those soldiers and mages are required here.’

‘The rotation must continue,’ replied Ystormun. ‘The security of this facility depends on it.’

‘Then amend the situation so your security can be maintained using hundreds, not thousands, of souls.’

‘It is not that simple.’

‘It is that simple!’ Pamun’s voice blared across the divide and every muscle in Ystormun’s body spasmed. ‘Seek them out and destroy them. They are so few and you are so many. Stop hiding inside your palace and do what you were sent to do.’

Ystormun was exhausted. The stamina required to maintain Communion over such a vast distance against minds as strong as the five lords’ was considerable. He fought to remain calm. He had to win this argument with reason.

‘One does not simply dispatch a force into the rainforest. It could swallow Balaia whole. I am already working to uncover their most secret hiding place, but to march before I have confirmed my information is foolhardy. Add to that the issue of the enemy. They are few but their skill is legendary and we have no idea how many of them now have the run of the rainforest.

‘I will not burn the forest indiscriminately to drive them out, because that robs us of resources. I will operate this task to a timescale dictated by the situation on the ground here. There is, my lords, no other way to proceed.’

‘You are afraid,’ said Giriamun.

‘I am cautious,’ said Ystormun. ‘And I am right to be. Our current understanding with the enemy means I can work against them without striking out at them, and in the meantime I can continue to harvest the forest unmolested.’

‘Your time is up,’ said Belphamun. ‘We are under threat. Our enemies know the size of our commitment in Calaius and will soon believe themselves strong enough to challenge us. You will receive no more military support and indeed you must prepare for the recall of the bulk of your army.’

‘You still don’t understand,’ said Ystormun. ‘If I embark on an undirected attack there might be no army to be recalled. Our enemies remain the masters of the forest, and there is a balance between us. Recruit more men for yourselves. Don’t threaten this facility with precipitate action.’

‘Your stubbornness will prove costly,’ said Pamun.

And abruptly the contact was broken. Ystormun waited, with his head still on the cushion, until the shivers had subsided and the ache in his head died away. When he finally lifted his head, its left-hand side and the cushion were soaked with sweat. An aide stood before the desk, his face to the floor.

‘This had better be good news.’

The aide shook his head. ‘There have been more attacks.’

Ystormun sighed. ‘Not now. Not now.’

Auum led Elyss and Malaar into Aryndeneth an hour after dawn. The temple doors stood open and the stone apron at the front was busy with workers and TaiGethen who had already responded to the ClawBound call.

‘Elyss, get me numbers and information on who else is coming. Malaar, brief them on what we’ve witnessed and what the ClawBound intend. Say nothing of my decision. I’m going to find Takaar.’

Auum trotted into the cool air beneath the dome. He knelt in prayer before the statue of Yniss before hurrying into the depths of the temple. The low hum of voices, one louder than the rest, travelled to him on the still air. They were coming from a chapel close to the block of individual prayer cells and visiting priests’ rooms.

Auum stood at the door for a moment, watching Onelle talking with a group he recognised as the orientation class; they had been lucky enough to be in the forest when the humans attacked. The voices hushed when he walked in, the adepts bunching reflexively and moving half a pace backwards. Onelle smiled at him. Auum embraced her, kissing her eyes and forehead.

‘I must look quite a sight,’ he said.

There was nervous laughter.

‘You need to reapply your camouflage,’ said Onelle, her expression sober. ‘You didn’t stop them, did you?’

Auum shook his head. ‘They are starting their own war and their actions force us to save those who cannot save themselves. I need Takaar. Where is he?’

Onelle hesitated and Auum felt his anger flare. ‘He’s… visiting. Or I assume he is. He’s been gone for two days.’

‘Damn his Ynissul heart!’ Auum clapped his hands to his face. The adepts flinched as one.

Onelle took his arm and walked him back into the passage and then through the rear doors to the village.

‘It doesn’t matter whose side you’re on, no one is very comfortable in front of an angry TaiGethen.’

‘They may need to get used to it,’ said Auum. ‘Why did he go now? Surely even he, or his other self, could see the risk the ClawBound posed. And his reaction is to run off to talk to a human? Perhaps he is not fit to school the Il-Aryn.’

Onelle had kept him walking and they had passed through the village and into the forest, heading towards a shrine to Tual that nestled near a Hallows of Reclamation.

‘Take a breath, Auum. What’s happening? We’re still in shock after the attack, and the rites of reclamation for the dead have only just been completed. I’ll have nightmares about those victims’ faces for ever, and worse about those whose deaths left no trace at all.

‘What am I trying to say? We heard the ClawBound call the muster. The TaiGethen are arriving here and people are scared. I’m scared. The forest feels strange and we can sense changes in the lines of power. You’ve decided to attack the humans, haven’t you? When I have no one to help you.’

Auum took Onelle’s shoulders and gave her what he hoped was a calming smile.

‘I’m sorry, Onelle. It’s all moving faster than a taipan strike, I know. Listen: the ClawBound aren’t just taking revenge, they’re starting a cleansing… which means hundreds of elves in the slave cities are going to die unless we can save them. Serrin will no longer hear reason and he as much as challenged my courage and authority.’ Auum sighed. ‘He’s forced our hand. We have to attack Ysundeneth, and to save as many as we can.’

Onelle’s glorious oval eyes widened in her age-worn face. She gestured about her. ‘But we… I mean, I can’t-’

‘I’m sorry, Onelle. We have to get into Ysundeneth before news of the attacks gets to Ystormun. We’re already too late to stop some of the deaths. And now it grows worse because, without Takaar, we have no one to guide us past the wards. No one but you.’

Auum could see her shrinking from the prospect. But it wasn’t fear of humans or conflict that drove her emotions when she shook her head.

‘I can’t go back there, Auum. Not after what happened. Not after what they did to us. Some of the elves who persecuted the Ynissul are still alive in there. Others are living in Katura. Why do you suppose I came here? It wasn’t just to learn magic.’

Auum looked at Onelle anew. She was shivering with the rawness of memories which were a hundred and fifty years old.

‘Then why do you teach, if not to arm us for the fight against mankind? I have learned to forgive those of other threads who attacked my Ynissul brothers and sisters. If we are to prosper under Yniss when the humans are gone, we must all forgive each other.’

‘It’s easy for you, Auum. No one kicked down your door and raped you while your husband was beaten and forced to watch. No one shouted in your face that the Ynissul would pay when they saw mixed-thread offspring drop from their wombs.

‘I teach magic so that humans like the ones who murdered my husband in the rainforest might die in flames as he did. But I cannot go back there. I’ll never go back.’

‘Onelle you must-’

‘There is nothing I must do. Not even for you, Arch of the TaiGethen. Give me another fifty years and I will school new Il-Aryn for you. But that is all I will do. If you want to get into Ysundeneth, you’ll have to find Takaar.’

Her eyes were brimful with bitterness. Auum held her gaze a moment longer before nodding curtly and walking away around the outside of the temple and back to the apron. He had to respect Onelle’s decision, but it was clear that her isolation here among the Ynissul had deprived her of the opportunity to heal her mental scars.

In front of the temple, Elyss and Malaar were addressing the assembled TaiGethen. Auum counted seven cells and did not hide his disappointment at the low numbers. He joined his Tai, nodding for Malaar to continue speaking.

‘… we are certain of little but that the ClawBound will continue cleansing the rainforest, and that means more and more innocent elves will die. Auum.’

Auum stepped forward. ‘How many other cells are on the way?’

‘Four from the south and eastern patrol zones. None as yet from further afield, like Tolt Anoor or Deneth Barine. That’s to be expected.’ Elyss shrugged her shoulders. ‘The call only went out at dusk yesterday.’

Auum nodded curtly. ‘Others will come, but for now we few will have to suffice. Leave word of our destination with Onelle. Tais, we must ask Yniss to preserve our souls and protect our bodies for the greater tasks to come. We need the silence of Tual and the cover of Beeth. We need the luck of Ix and the strength of Appos. We must liberate the slaves of Ysundeneth and we must find Takaar before we get there. Cover every northern approach to the temple on the way out.

‘That bastard is going to help us get into Ysundeneth, human-lover or not. Tais we move.’