Жаклин Кэри: Banewreaker

Roscus. Roscus Altorus.

Aracus Altorus .

Oh, love, love! Tanaros remembered, wondering. How could you do that to us?

Somewhere, an infant drew breath into its lungs and bawled.

So much time elapsed, and the wound still unhealed. His heart ached with it still, beat and ached beneath the silvery scar that seared it, that made the pain bearable. It had cracked at her betrayal; cracked, like the Souma itself. And in that darkness, Satoris had called to him, and he had answered, for it was the only voice to pierce his void.

Now … now.

Now it was different, and he was one of the Three. Tanaros, General Tanaros, Tanaros Blacksword, and this creature, Hyrgolf of the Fjeltroll, was his second-in-command, and a trusted companion. For all that he massed more than any two Men combined, for all that his eyetusks showed when he smiled, he was loyal, and true.

“You think of her, ” Hyrgolf said.

“Is it so obvious, my friend?”

“No.” Hyrgolf blew dust from the rhios and studied it again, turning it this way and that. “But I know you, General. And I know the stories. It is best not to think of it. The dead are the dead, and gone.”

Her neck beneath his hands, white and slender; her eyes, bulging, believing at the last. A crushing force. And somewhere, an infant crying, wisps of red-gold hair plastered on its soft skull. An infant he had allowed to live.

Tanaros remembered and flexed his hands, his capable hands, hunching his shoulders under the weight of memory. “I have lived too long to forget, my friend.”

“Here.” Broad hands covered his, pressing something into them. Dirt-blackened talons brushed his wrists. An object, egg-sized and warm. Tanaros cradled the rhios in his palms. A sprite, a river sprite. Her delicate face laughed at him from between his thumbs. A rounded shape, comforting, bearing streaks of salmon-pink. It made him think of backwater currents, gentle eddies, of spawning-pools rife with eggs.

“Hyrgolf …”

“Keep it, General.” The Fjeltroll gave him a gentle smile, a hideous sight. “We carry them to remember, we who were once Neheris’ Children. One day, if the Sundered World is made whole, perhaps we will be again.”

Neheris Fourth-Born, Neheris-of-the-Leaping-Waters, who had Shaped the high mountains of the north and the bright waters that tumbled down them, and Shaped the Fjeltroll also. Tanaros rubbed the rhios, the curving stone polished smooth as satin and warm from Hyrgolf’s touch. It felt good in his hand.

“That’s it.” His field marshal nodded. “Keep it in your pocket, General, and it will always be with you.”

He stowed the figurine. “Thank you, Hyrgolf.”

“Welcome you are, General.” Picking up a battle-axe, the Fjel rummaged for a whetstone and began honing the edge of his weapon with the same attentive patience. The whetstone made a rhythmic rasping sound in the snug cavern, familiar and soothing. “Regular weapons inspections from here out, you reckon?”

“Yes.” Tanaros rubbed his temples. “We’ll double up on drills as soon as the recalled units arrive. And I want scouting patrols in the tunnels, reporting daily. Establish a post at every egress between here and the Unknown, with runners between them. I want daily reports.”

“Aye, sir.” Hyrgolf tested the edge of the blade with a thick-calloused thumb and resumed his efforts. “Pity for the lads due leave.”

“I know.” Restless, Tanaros stood to stretch his legs, pacing around the confines of the field marshal’s chamber. Like all the barracks, this one was built into a stony ridge. The Fjeltroll had constructed Darkhaven to their own scale, but Lord Satoris was its genius and its architect, and the convoluted magnificence of it echoed its creator. For themselves, the Fjeltroll had eschewed walls and towers, delving into the bones of the earth and carving out the simple caverns they preferred, laid out to flank and protect the mighty edifice. Most dwelled in common chambers; Hyrgolf, due to his rank, had his own. It held a sleeping pallet covered in sheepskin, his weapons and gear, a few simple things from home. Tanaros stopped before a niche hollowed into the wall, containing the stump of a tallow candle and a crudely carved rhios .

“My boy’s first effort,” Hyrgolf said behind him. There was pride in his voice. “Not bad for a mere pup, eh General?”

Tanaros touched the cavern wall, bowing his head. “You were due leave.”

“In two months’ time.” The sound of the whetstone never slowed. “That’s the luck, isn’t it? We always knew this day might come.”

“Yes.” He looked back at the Fjeltroll. “How do your people tell it?”

“The Prophecy?” Hyrgolf shook his massive head. “We don’t, General.”

No, of course not. In the First Age of the Sundered World, when Satoris was sore wounded and at his weakest, when Haomane First-Born, the Lord-of-Thought, had called upon the Souma and brought the sun so near to earth it scorched the land and brought into being the Unknown Desert, the Fjeltroll had sheltered Satoris and pledged their loyalty to him. After his Counselors had been defeated, Haomane First-Born uttered his Prophecy into the ears of his allies. The Prophecy was not shared with the Fjel.

Instead, it doomed them.

“And yet you still honor Neheris,” Tanaros said, fingering the rhios in his pocket. “Who sided with Haomane, with the Six, against his Lordship. Why, Hyrgolf?”

“It’s Shapers’ business,” Hyrgolf said simply, setting down his axe. “I don’t pretend to understand it. We made a pact with his Lordship and he has honored it, generation after generation. He never asked us to stop loving Neheris who Shaped us.”

“No,” Tanaros said, remembering his Lord’s cry. Oh, Arahila! “He wouldn’t.”

And he fingered the rhios in his pocket again, and longed for the simplicity of a Fjeltroll’s faith. It was not granted to Men, who had been given too many gifts to bear with ease. Oh, Arahila! Second-Born among Shapers, Arahila the Fair, Born-of-the-Heart. Would that you had made us less.

“How do your people tell it?” Hyrgolf asked. “The Prophecy, that is.”

Tanaros relinquished the rhios, his hands fisted in his pockets as he turned to face his field marshal. “In Altoria,” he said, and his voice was harsh, “when I was a boy, it was told thus. ‘When the unknown is made known, when the lost weapon is found, when the marrow-fire is quenched and Godslayer is freed, when a daughter of Elterrion weds a son of Altorus, when the Spear of Light is brought forth and the Helm of Shadows is broken, the Fjeltroll shall fall, the Were shall be defeated ere they rise, and the Sunderer shall be no more, the Souma shall be restored and the Sundered World made whole and Haomane’s Children shall endure.’”

It grieved him to say it, as if the Fjeltroll might hold him in some way responsible. After all, if he had killed the babe … if he had killed the babe . The House of Altorus would have ended, then, and there would have been no Prophecy.

Blue eyes, milky and wondering. Red-gold hair plastered to a damp skull.

He hadn’t been able to do it. The babe, the child of his cuckolded marriage bed, had succeeded Roscus in the House of Altorus.

“Aye,” Hyrgolf said, nodding. “That’s as I heard it. The Sundered World made whole, but the cost of it our lives. Well, then, that’s only a piece of it, this wedding. There’s a good deal more needs happen before the Prophecy is fulfilled, and who knows what the half of it means?”

“His Lordship knows,” Tanaros said. “And Malthus.”

Their eyes met, then; Man and Fjel, hearing a common enemy named.