Greg Keyes - Lord of Souls

They had maybe thirty paces to go when Goblin shrieked. Mazgar looked back and saw six wormies coming up fast.

She set Riff down and drew Sister.

“Get them through the line,” she howled at Brennus. Then she got her footing and charged.

Sister caught the first-a half-charred Dunmer man-right at the juncture of clavicle and neck, and the heavy blade clove halfway through his ribs and stuck there. Bellowing, she punched the next in the face as he lifted his heavy curving blade, and had the satisfaction of feeling the cartilage and bone crush under her knuckles. She used Sister to turn the corpse into the next two, temporarily deflecting them while she reached for another, this one unarmed, and she roared the battle cry her mother had in her last battle. Red sleeted before her eyes, and rage took everything.

The next thing she knew, Goblin was shouting at her. She looked dully down and saw the pile of bodies, Sister still stuck in one. Twenty yards away, about sixty wormies were charging toward her.

She put her boot on the dead thing and heaved out the sword, then turned and pounded toward the gate, where the others were waiting.

Falcus ordered them all to eat and rest, and no one argued. The wormies didn’t have siege engines, and Cheydinhal had its own soldiers, after all, and a mixed company of Imperial troops as well. Within an hour a camp had been set up near the castle that dominated the north end of town, and Mazgar had the first hot food and cool ale she’d had in a long time.

She didn’t remember falling asleep, and the next thing she knew was light coming softly through an open tent-flap.

She left her armor in the tent and went outside to stretch, wandering down to the river that flowed through the city. The sun wasn’t showing over the walls yet, but things were waking up. Wagons of bags and crates made their way across the bridges, pulled by thick, sturdy horses. Across the river, a Dunmer woman was casting a net, which came up wriggling. Mazgar could smell sausage frying somewhere.

But most of the people she saw were up on the walls.

She watched the river flow for a while.

She knew Brennus by the sound of his gait.

“Nice place,” he said. “Have you ever been here before?”

“No,” she said. “The houses look funny.” She nodded across the river. The timbers of most of the structures in town were exposed. In the lower floors they were covered with stone, but the upper ones had plaster between the beams and struts, which were often arranged in whimsical patterns. The roofs were concave peaks, and the shingles looked like scales.

“That’s called half-timbering,” Brennus said. “It’s Morrowind architecture, really-or was.”

She tossed a twig in the river and watched it float off.

“Have you heard anything?”

“No,” he replied, “but I need to have a look with my instruments.”

“Going up on the wall, then?”

“Higher,” he said, pointing to the structure of stone and stained glass that towered over everything else.

“I’ll go with you,” she said.

“I don’t think I need a guard at the moment,” he said.

“You never know,” she replied.

Inside, the chapel of Arkay was all hush and colored light. They found a priest who, after a bit of explanation, showed them the way up to the highest spire.

From there even the people on the walls looked small. She gazed first out over the forest, hills, and distant Valus Mountains. Only reluctantly did she focus nearer.

The wormies had taken up positions a few hundred yards from the gates.

“They’re out of range of ballista and catapults,” she said. “They’re not stupid.”

“No, they aren’t,” Brennus replied. “Necromancers have been known to make such creatures as these, but they are generally mindless. And slow. We’re dealing with something new here. Did you hear what happened last night?”

“What do you mean?”

“A man died of natural causes and rose up as one of these. The watch got him, and afterward they put out the alarm. There were three more cases.”

“Just like Jarrow, and the others we lost on the hill.”

“Right. Whatever spirits animate them clearly can travel more than a few paces.”

“Every time we kill one, we risk a corpse waking up in town.”

Brennus nodded.

“What do you reckon, then? They’ll try to starve us out?”

“No,” the mage replied. “I think they’re just waiting for reinforcements.” As he said it, he pointed.

She saw it then, pale as a cloud with distance, unmistakable.

Umbriel itself was coming for them.

Annaig picked at the flesh of the green nutlike thing and popped it into her mouth, chewing slowly. She felt a little heat like black pepper, followed by a rush in her nose like fiery mustard and green onions. The texture, though, was like a boiled cashew.

“That’s great,” she told Glim. “What is it?”

“Something new,” he said. “Maybe from Morrowind.”

“Maybe,” Annaig said dubiously.

“Wert says that sometimes the sump will go for years without producing a particular thing, then start again, while something else vanishes for a time.”

“How does it do it?” she wondered. “Does Umbriel store seeds and eggs someplace?”

“I don’t think so,” Glim told her. “I think it’s the trees.”

Glim had a sharp, excited scent about him, and he seemed to be barely holding something in.

“The trees?” she asked.

“The trees in the Fringe Gyre,” he said. “You saw them when we tried to escape.”

“Well, yes,” she said. “But it was dark, and I was distracted by-well, escaping.”

“I believe that they are cousins of the Hist.”

“That’s interesting. I can’t imagine what that means.”

“Well-think of water oaks and white oaks in Black Marsh. They’re both oaks because they have acorns; their leaves are arranged in a spiral. But other things about them are different. Like cousins.”

“Okay,” Annaig said. “I follow that, although I never thought of it that way. So are you saying that the trees in the Fringe Gyre are intelligent, like the Hist?”

“Yes and no. They communicate, as the Hist do, but in different tones. I didn’t really learn to hear them until Fhena showed me, and then-”

“Fhena?”

“Yes, one of the gardeners in the trees. She helped me find you. Surely I mentioned her.”

“No, you surely did not,” Annaig said.

“Well, she’s just someone I talk to,” Mere-Glim said. She thought he sounded defensive.

“A woman?”

“She is female, yes.”

“Uh-huh.”

He made a low growl in his throat, which she understood as embarrassment. “It’s not like that,” he said. “She’s not-I mean, she’s an Umbrielian. She looks like a Dunmer.”

“Fine. I’m just wondering, if you’re so friendly with her, why you haven’t mentioned her before.”

He blinked at her, and she realized she sounded stupid. Jealous. And what did she have to be jealous over?

But the fact that after all of these years as best friends, he hadn’t mentioned her…

She pushed it off.

“The trees,” she said.

“Yes,” he replied. “Some of my people believe that the Hist came to Tamriel from Oblivion. Umbriel is from Oblivion, too, so it doesn’t seem too far-fetched to me that they could be cousins.”

“Yes, but it would be a huge coincidence.”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I think the city tree somehow called Umbriel, or the Fringe Gyre trees may have called to the Hist-but I think there was some sort of collusion.”

“Are the trees here malevolent?”

“No, they are-vaguer than the Hist. Not as intelligent maybe, or maybe just in a different way. Simpler. But like the Hist, they can form their sap into different things, the way you do with your equipment. And they can shape life, change its form.”