The Cold Commands

CHAPTER 45

In the temple at Afa’marag, Risgillen bent over the young boy and placed a calming hand on his brow. The panic in his eyes soaked away at her touch. She leaned close, whispered in his ear, the old, old forms.

She knew he wouldn’t understand, none of them did in this cursed modern age they were fighting to claw back. But it was the best she could do. Honor the rituals, honor the blood, honor the living past. She knew no other way to live. She hoped that at least something in the boy, some thin thread of heritage brought down the long years, would find its way to the old significances and understand the service he rendered, the honor she bestowed.

“Blood of my blood, ties of mine,” she murmured. “Know your worth, and give us the strength, of ancestors shared and stored away.”

She slid her sharpened thumb talon down the length of his arm, opened the artery from elbow crook to wrist. He made a soft, hopeless noise as the blood rushed out. She hushed him and moved to the other arm. Found the artery, saw it through the flesh and sliced it open.

“Blood of my blood, ties of mine. Know your worth, and open the way for us now.”

The second blood vessel gave up its contents. The boy moved a little on the altar, whimpering as he bled out, but she kept a firm hand pressed on his chest, lending him her calm. The blood pooled and snaked about on the worn stone where he lay. Risgillen watched the patterns it made with a critical eye, compared them with the old stains already marking the stone. She glanced down the hallway at the gathered glirsht statues, reached in among them, reached past them at angles the eye could not see. She frowned.

“Well?”

Atalmire, from up in the gallery, flanked by two of his honor guard and that idiot priest. Like most storm-callers, he was impatient at the best of times. She supposed it went with mastery of the Talons of the Sun, the glitter-swift elemental forces you had to command. Bound to make you twitchy, something like that.

She shook her head.

“Something’s not right,” she called up to them.

“Well—what?”

“If I knew that, it wouldn’t be a problem.” She gave her attention back to the dying boy, smiled absently at him. Stroked his face. “There’s something blocking the flow of force here. Sacrifice goes unrecognized.”

Atalmire kicked at the gallery rail in frustration. “Is this the fucking Ahn Foi backing up on us again?”

“That was many thousand years ago, Atalmire. I think it’s fair to say they learned their lesson back then. In any case, this is not them, it doesn’t taste of them. This is something—”

—else.

Like a whisper in the dusty gloom.

Her eyes flickered back to the glirsht statues and the space they stood around. She frowned. A small wind had sprung out of nowhere, lifting dust and detritus in a low spiral for a moment, then letting them fall. She stared at the dust, puzzled. It was not her doing, and she didn’t think any of the invoked powers were—

“Just a moment.”

Atalmire grunted and turned to speak to Menkarak, who was gibbering at him in Tethanne. Risgillen had no idea what they were talking about, and cared less. Bad enough she’d had to master the bastardized remnants of the Old Tongue they spoke in the north, she wasn’t going to learn this arid pigshit rattle as well. Let Atalmire govern the cat’s-paw down here, let Atalmire call down the Talons of the Sun on this sun-seared desert hell, take credit for it and rule what was left if he liked. Her place was in the north, preparing her brother’s dream of return.

She placed one hand in the puddling blood on the altar at the boy’s side, kept the other in place on his shivering chest. Felt for the shape of the blockage.

“Haste will not serve here,” she called up to Atalmire, breaking up his conversation with the priest. “This cousin’s blood points away from acting now, and so did the last three. Unless we discover why, we risk destroying everything you’ve worked for.”

Atalmire raised a hand to silence Menkarak and leaned down on the gallery rail. “If we wait much longer, my lady, we risk the palace coming down on Afa’marag, and we will lose our gateway.”

“They won’t do that until Ringil’s three days are up.” Risgillen grimaced, reaching again. She could pull no clarity from the mess of resonances the blood offering sent echoing out into the Gray Places. In the last several thousand years of scrying, she could not recall seeing anything like this. “And they may not even act then. The Emperor is cautious in his dealings with the Citadel, he has affairs of state to balance.”

“Our sources say he is convinced of what the Dragonbane has said.”

Risgillen shook her head in irritation. “Our sources say he will not risk all-out war with the Citadel until all other avenues have been explored. That gives us time. At worst, it gives us time to abandon Afa’marag, withdraw, and find another location.”

“That would be a disastrous setback.”

“Oh, don’t be so histrionic.” Risgillen lowered her head to the boy’s chest, listened to the sagging beat of his heart. She frowned again. “It may cost us a year or two. Your pet priest up there is not the only pry-point we have. The Citadel is replete with useful idiots like him. But I’ll tell you this much for certain, Atalmire—you bring the Talons of the Sun through here without the correct opening rituals, you risk the wrath of the Origin. And that may set us back another thousand years or more.”

“Some of us would take that risk,” Atalmire growled.

“Yes.” Her attention jerked back up to the balcony, she stared at the other dwenda with open disdain. “And that alone demonstrates how far we have fallen. Now shut up and let me—”

Smashed bright, lightning flash glimpse—it stormed her behind the eyes—a wind howls across the marsh plain, tearing out the roots of the exemplars, tossing them about, closing their sentinel eyes. Something gathers them in…

Something whose form she’s touched before.

She snatched her hand out of the blood, spun about. The small winding dust devil was back, turning in the space between the statues. Rising now, lifting dust and spider corpse husks, holding it all up, knee height, waist height, chest height and—

Atalmire, for all his impatience, was attuned as any Aldrain noble. His eyes snapped to the dust devil, then back to her. He gestured. “What the fuck is that supposed to be?”

“Something’s coming,” she whispered.

The boy thrashed suddenly under her hand. Her hold on him slipped—he tried to sit up. Eyes ripped wide with knowledge of what she’d done to him. Mouth writhing to form words, a protest, a plea, a curse.

Something howled. Something roared. Something tore the air apart. “Something’s coming!” She yelled it now, into the teeth of the gale pouring out of the rent the tornado had made. “Get your men down h—”

Her voice died.

At the heart of the rising coil of dust, a black-clad figure. Black Scourge steel in hand.

No, that’s not possible. It screamed in her head. It cannot be. He, the blade, we sank it, he is gone, he is not—

The figure lifted its head. Grinned at her. Raised the sword.

“Risgillen! Your brother calls for you!”

Chill shivered through her. Her own blade was on her back, bound in threads of blue light and her own will. She snatched it free and stormed down the hall toward him. Faintly, she was aware of Atalmire’s honor guard leaping down from the gallery, joining her on the temple floor. Only two, but it should be enough. A fierce rage pulsed in her chest, put talons on every finger and drew her fangs down into her swelling mouth.

If Ringil noticed any of it, he gave her no sign. He came to meet her, grinning, out of the gathered glirsht statues and the storm he’d somehow conjured at their center, measured pace and vacant eyes and the empty will to harm.

She snarled and hurled a melting across the space between them.

Something she could barely see, something that wrapped around him like a loose gray shawl reached out and slapped the melting away. She was not even sure if he was aware it happened. But she heard the low moaning it made.

The Cold Commands.

Her hate stumbled, stubbed senses on what she’d just seen. Shocked disbelief dizzied through her. No mortal since Ilwrack could…

She crushed out the tremor. No time for further attempts at sorcery, but Atalmire’s men were at her back, armored and grim. And she had her hatred, she hugged it close. Howled out Seethlaw’s name, once, for family and for honor.

Rushed in, swinging the blue-fire arc of her blade.

RINGIL MET HER IN A SPLINTERING CLASH OF STEEL AND BLUE SPARKS. The Ravensfriend turned the dwenda’s stroke, sent Risgillen staggering aside. He grunted with the effort it took. Risgillen spun back in, snake-swift, hissing. Kiriath steel blocked her again—it felt less like his handiwork than the sword’s. Risgillen snarled and fell back. Something tugged his attention around; he swung, met the helmeted dwenda warrior on his flank, and chopped down the attacking blade so it rang off the stone floor. The dwenda, committed, lurched forward and Ringil kicked it savagely in the knee. It tumbled, threw out a guarding arm…

The Ravensfriend glittered down.

The arm went, like wheat under the scythe, chopped through just behind the wrist. Dwenda blood splattered everywhere, spiced alien reek of it like a spike through the chilly temple air—

“No!”

Risgillen, screaming it. Ringil had no time to look at her, combat senses told him the third dwenda was closer, no time to finish the one he’d maimed. He whipped about, stumbled unaccountably, put up his blade and met his attacker head-on. Swipe and slam of blades, he got in close, swung a shoulder into his opponent and sent him staggering. Risgillen rushed him from the side, swung low and chopped at his legs. He went a foot into the air above the blade, came down behind the stroke and sliced at her unprotected back. The Ravensfriend chopped a gash into her shoulder. She shrieked and reeled away, fell over from the shock. He went after her, but the third dwenda leapt in and blocked him, jabbed out and tagged him across the ribs. He stumbled again, leaned back, got the dwenda’s blade out of the way.

The ground was—

The dwenda came in swinging. He met and parried, both blades locked up and straining against each other. Risgillen crawled to her feet, circled round to bracket him.

—shaking.

His eyes darted to the support pillars under the gallery. Something gray crawled there, something writhed and lashed and—

He shook off the dwenda, fell back, blocked Risgillen’s limping attack from the side. Energy coursed through him, it felt like an eighth of purest krinzanz chewed down, swallowed, residue rubbed into his gums. It numbed him and fired him in equal measure, it came screaming up from inside, this thing he’d dredged with him from the fields of the weeping sacrificed out on the cold marsh plain…

I see what the akyia saw, Gil. I see what you could become if you’d only let yourself.

Up on the altar, the boy had gotten himself to a sitting position, held out his blood-slick, slashed-open arms in mute entreaty. He met Ringil’s eyes for a split second. Then he collapsed sideways as another tremor shook the building. He rolled off the altar, he fell on his face in the dust.

Something jagged and black split Ringil’s skull apart from within.

Fuck, them, all.

He tipped back his head and howled.

He felt the cold legion sweep up and through him and out—it was like sinking at the heart of a roaring maelstrom. He reached out without knowing how, laid hands that were not his own on the temple around him. He cracked stone and mortar apart, splintered and levered, breathed in destruction like the fumes of fine wine. He tore out the pillars from under Atalmire and Menkarak’s feet on the gallery, dropped them yelling to the floor below. He catapulted the blood-drenched altar up and back with enough force to shatter it against the rear wall. He tore dressed-stone blocks from the ceiling like a dentist pulling rotten teeth—let them fall, shattering, to the temple floor. He—

The third dwenda swung at him again in the chaos.

He screamed in its face, tore its blade from its hand, hurled the weapon gleaming end over end across the hall. The Ravensfriend came up, leapt in from the side. Ringil hacked through the dwenda’s flailing, fending hand as if it were not there, took head from shoulders in a single bellowing stroke. Blood gouted from the severed neck—he raised his head in the brief fountain it made, he raised his arms, as the temple tore itself apart around him.

Blood rained down.

Blood splattered his face. Blood trickled in the gritted teeth of his grin. He howled at the shattering ceiling, worse than any sound Seethlaw had ever made.

He lowered his head and looked for Risgillen.

Found her struggling to stay on her feet, sword held sagging in both hands before her. There was blood on her bone-white Aldrain face, a jagged gash in her brow he didn’t remember putting there. Behind her, Atalmire crawled from where he’d fallen, dragging a leg snapped the wrong way at the knee. Menkarak lay beyond, half trapped under rubble. Ringil raised the Ravensfriend. He screamed at them, over the sound of cracking, crumbling stone.

The two dwenda stared at him from where they lay on the floor, like small children facing a drunken father’s fury.

“This city,” he raged, scarcely aware of what he was saying, “is mine. I stand watch here. I am the gate. To take this city you will have to come through me.”

“You cannot!” Risgillen screamed back at him. “This is not your right! You have not passed through the Dark Gate!”

“Have I not?” He tilted his head, felt something in his neck click. He leaned in and looked at her. Saw her shudder away. “Have I not, Risgillen?”

And suddenly he felt something slip away inside him. Suddenly he was emptied out.

The hands he had laid on the temple stones loosened their grip, folded away, began to fade. The cold legion collapsed inward again, wrapped around him like an icy wind, high whistling, weeping note of loss, and then even that was gone.

A single block of masonry dropped out of the ceiling and shattered apart on his left. Stone shards stung his cheek.

He lowered the Ravensfriend.

“Get out of here,” he said tiredly. “Go on, fuck off, both of you. Before the whole place comes down.”

Somewhere, masonry groaned and powder spilled down in the gloom. The dwenda gaped at him, unmoving. He felt his temper spark and sputter like a damp taper.

“I said go!” No triumph in his tone, only a dead and grinding rage. “Go back to the Gray Places and mourn your brother, Risgillen. I won’t tell you again. You are not wanted in this world. You are not missed. Spread the fucking word. The next time I see a dwenda, I rip its motherfucking heart out and eat it still beating.”

The echoes of his voice fell away. He walked past the dwenda to where Menkarak lay trapped. Risgillen made no move to stop him. Atalmire looked to be in shock from his shattered leg. The invigilator’s eyes widened as he saw Ringil’s figure loom over him. He shoved weakly at the block of stone across his chest, coughed up a lot of blood.

“Look at it this way,” Ringil told him in Tethanne. “You’re dying anyway. Might as well make yourself useful.”

He hacked off the invigilator’s head. It took a couple of strokes; the angle was awkward. When it was done, and the gush of blood spent in the dust, he knelt and gathered up the head by its greasy hair. Slung the Ravensfriend across his shoulder. Turned back to look at the dwenda.

“Need this,” he said vaguely, hefting the head by way of farewell.

He didn’t look back again, but he felt their empty black eyes watching him, all the way out of the hall.