Tides of Rythe (The Rythe Trilogy) Read online

  “How will I raise an army? I can contact the rahkens, but mankind has no warriors. They would be crushed before they could think…and what of magic? Even could I begin to raise an army to oppose them, their mages would roast them alive on any battlefield.”

  Sventhan nodded sagely. “At last, you are thinking. There are two nexus points on this land, that wait for this age. One is Sybremreyen, and ancient temple far to the south. The other, as you well know, is your twin, the Kuh’taenium. Together, they can hold back the tide of the Protectorate’s magic…whether they can stand against the darkness of the Hierarchy I could not say. But they hold more power than you could imagine. Send your forces south to Sybremreyen. They will be safe there, until the time comes…”

  Sventhan spoke for a while longer, and Reih listened. She knew the time had come. She could no longer return to her old life. She would become a prisoner within the Kuh’taenium, separated from whatever force she could find – builders, thieves, caravan guards…any man or woman who could wield a blade. She would direct, and they would follow. Her life, and theirs, were solely her responsibility. If only someone else could take this mantle…but the Kuh’taenium had chosen her to be its avatar in these final days. The return was near, so Sventhan said. While he did not paint a vivid picture, it was somehow more frightening because of the simplicity of his words, the gruffness of his voice.

  Hers would be a secret war, he would be her general, and she was more afraid now than she had ever been before.

  Reih left the drink unfinished. Sventhan spoke before she could rise.

  “In a month’s time, we wake her powers. I will be ready by then. You must live. Do nothing foolish.”

  She nodded, and rose to leave. Perr turned first and followed his mistress back to the Kuh’taenium and the sunny side of the city.

  Reih walked on, Perr behind her. She walked straight, deep in thought. The steel clad warrior walking two paces behind her was enough to leave her unmolested as she walked through the east gates and passed the guard into the town where it was once deemed safe.

  Safety was something she would have to hold in her heart from now on, for she was under no illusions. War was coming to Lianthre, for the first time in a thousand years.

  *

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  “Just like old times,” joked Roth from behind Tirielle, bringing up the rear. It was a tight fit for the beast, but it never complained.

  She supposed it had endured worse.

  For long minutes they had crawled on their hands and knees through thick slime and, almost definitely, ordure. Tirielle tried not to think about it, but try as she might the thought snuck up on her, emboldened by the stench.

  “It reminds me of old times, too, Roth, but I wish it didn’t. I’m trying my hardest to think of the good times, back when I was merely a dissident, a captive on my way to certain death. Thinking about it now, at least we had no choice then. It seems worse than folly to endure this because we want to.”

  “Would you up and go home then?”

  Tirielle thought about it, but it was difficult to think of anything with the reek making her head swim.

  “No, I decided long ago to make my own fate, and I choose this path as much as it chooses me.” She shivered in the cold gloom. “But I wish, if I still have the luxury of wishes, that at the end of this tunnel waits a hot bath and a cool drink.”

  Roth grunted its agreement, and fell silent. Tirielle concentrated on crawling, telling herself that it was no different to playing mudsnakes when she had been a child. Her nose, however, was firmly rooted in reality.

  She crawled for what seemed like an age, knees and elbows growing sorer with each passing yard. The gloom gradually gave way to darkness, then a blackness as pitch as the cities of the Naum. Tirielle felt the primal fear that lurks at the back of every mind, the fear of the unknown, sneaking in the night, stalking the black places of the world waiting to plunge a thief’s dagger deep into a kidney, a timber wolf snarling as the campfire’s embers glow their last, a slithering across a bare foot in a desert cave.

  She gave a little scream as something scampered across her hand. It squeaked angrily, scuttering down the tunnel to the exit.

  She envied the rat. It chose the dark. No matter what she said, this path was not her idea. She would have rather risked walking into Arram in the open.

  Time seemed drawn and tortured. Her mind conjured things crawling, hanging above her head, slimy creatures beneath her knees, no cloth to bar their poisonous blood to seep into her skin.

  Perhaps sensing her fear, Roth began to speak again, and she was grateful for its voice.

  “It cannot be much longer now,” it said, echoing her thoughts.

  “Another minute would be too long. Can you see?”

  “No, I cannot. Even smell is useless here. Any overpowering odour blinds my senses. I am just hopeful.”

  She could hear Roth scraping along behind her. She imagined the rahkens massive shoulders bunched in the tight tunnel, and felt sorry for her friend. To be so cramped for a creature used to freedom, to have its senses blinded in the dark when even in pitch black it could all but see with its nose…she was lucky.

  She uttered a low laugh.

  “I wish I could find something to laugh about in here.”

  “I’m just thankful I’m not you,” she laughed again. “I’m sorry, Roth, but it must be terrible for you.”

  “I have no complaints. At the end of this tunnel waits enough Protocrats for me to take out my displeasure at the indignities of crawling through their soil.”

  Typraille, crawling in front of her, whispered over their conversation.

  “We’re at the end. Still yourself to silence.”

  “Yes, master,” giggled Tirielle.

  “Silence!” Typraille tried to whisper, but his voice came out harshly.

  Tirielle moved her hand to stifle another laugh, and the thought of what she had nearly done repressed any nervous laughter she had been holding inside. Roth laid a calming hand on her calf, startling her for a moment, nearly into a scream, but she realised what it was before she could lose control.

  “Easy, lady,” said the beast quietly. “We are at the end. I see the light.”

  “Not nearly soon enough.”

  Then she could see the light, too. She was coming out into a torch lit chamber, roughly fifteen feet in diameter. Even though it was a dim glow, she still had to close her eyes against the sudden light. When she opened them she was amazed to see that the Sard’s cloaks remained unsullied. She looked down at herself, and then around at Roth. They were both covered in grime and waste.

  She wiped her hands as best she could on her ruined dress. Seeing moss growing on the walls, she decided to try and wipe her hands further on their spongy tendrils, but stopped herself with a gulp. It was eerily iridescent, a strange blue light running through its body along the walls and on the stone floor. She tried to ease her weight, so that she would not be standing on it, in case it should grow over her, eating her whole…she knew the thought was fanciful, but she could not shake it.

  “I feel the darkness of their magic all around me. It is worse than the tunnel,” said Quintal with a grimace. “The sooner we are out of this place, the better. No matter where it leads.”

  “Come, brother,” said Cenphalph, taking their leader’s shoulder. “Let’s do what we came for. Every moment wasted is a chance of discovery.”

  They set off up the stairs and into the long corridor with heavy hearts, heavy for those left behind, the journey yet to come, and the overwhelming power of the Protectorate’s evil magic weighing down their shoulders.

  Their footfalls were soft, and they met not a soul.

  If the Protocrats had a soul to boast between them.

  *

  Chapter Eighty

  Klan chaffed to be gone. The machinations of the Speculate held little allure for him on this day. He longed to be on the hunt. Shorn would soon be at the fire mountain.
He had proven resourceful beyond all reckoning. Klan could not count on the warrior killing himself, and could not find the red wizard.

  He would have to take care of the problem in front of him. It would not matter if he never found the one, if only he could kill the other.

  “The rahkens rise in the south. Our forces are hard pressed, Speculate. I humbles request a greater force to aid in suppressing the uprising.”

  Jek growled at Hare Osina’tha, the leader of the Tenthers, and Klan smirked privately. His Anamnesors would be able to cut the heart out of the rahken nation and reduce them to wandering leaderless in the darkness of their underground caverns. But that, he thought with another quiet smile, was not in his remit.

  “You will have it,” Jek told Hare in a cold voice. “There is too much at stake to show weakness now. The ascension comes faster than we had anticipated. Already I feel the return. The old ones are coming. It is foretold in the stars. There can be no mistakes, no rising, no dissention. Put them down, Hare. You have as many warriors as you can handle. Waste no more time. Move on them. The treaty has long been broken. Find out what they are planning. Capture one if you can. Torture it. It will speak.”

  “It is not as easy as it should be. Their magic is powerful, and their warriors are a match for two of ours,” complained Hare.

  “But their numbers are fewer. If we have to spare a greater force, then so be it….”

  The voices droned, fading into the background. Klan sensed something at the edges of his perception. He found his concentration wavering. His eyes leaked subtle power, carefully, so as not to awaken the wards in the Speculatum.

  Something was wrong. Klan did not have the power of Prognostication, but he felt something approaching, sneaking up on them. A creature of power…he allowed his senses to roam Arram.

  The training halls – all was well. The gates, then the walls, the fences. Nothing amiss. And yet that sense that something was wrong.

  He felt it below him. Directly below.

  He longed to go and see what it was. He could not penetrate the magic below, where the portals were kept. The expenditure of power to allow a portal to remain open permanently was immense. It would be impossible to travel there directly.

  Suddenly it dawned on him, and it was like eyes opening to the slow light of sunrise. They were here! Their magic didn’t work in the bowels of Arram. It was them he could sense!

  “Brother! They are here! It is the Sard, in the portal rooms.”

  Jek face betrayed no shock, but he wasted no time. He blinked out of existence. Klan followed him, much to the consternation of the other members of the Speculate. Together, they called the guard, and sent them racing to intercept the intruders.

  Neither Klan nor Jek would be of any use. In the heart of Arram they would be powerless, and neither was a warrior. To them, it might as well have been a barren place, one where magic would not work, like the Kuh’taenium, or the blasted plains of the Naum, even the great city of Beheth, which had already seen them foiled.

  Jek spat orders while Klan watched. The tenthers raced from their posts as though their backs were on fire. Klan caught Jek’s eye. Together, they paced the flagstones and clenched their fists, impotent to help despite their formidable power.

  There was only one place the Sard could go. Could they know which portal to take? If they had come this far, they could only assume so.

  “Brother, I believe they head to the wastes. Should they win through, I will meet them there.”

  Jek nodded. “Go. Do not fail the Protectorate, Klan.”

  “They will not escape me this time,” said Klan, his face grim, his anger held firmly in check.

  With a perfunctory bow to Jek, his master and brother ascendant, he tore a hole in the fabric of reality, and stepped once more into the void.

  *

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Events spun through the universe, twisting galaxies, burning solar systems in a final flare of terrifying light as the Sun Destroyers travelled from one star to the next, endless destruction wrought, the wages of frenzied feeding on finite light.

  One world barren and bare, its vampiric denizens left for good. Flown on light, from one star to the next, souls trapped in waves, waiting for their revenge.

  Events had been set in motion since the banishment. Since their defeat more than two millennia in the past for those on Rythe, a mere moment or an age past for those along the way.

  A sun screamed in death, its last agony told to its cousins, its brothers, its birth brood. The message sped from star to star, heralding the arrival of their blight, their bane.

  The Sun Destroyers come.

  Their last hope, a wizard entombed, three mortals whose only crime was to be born in a time of legend. For two thousand years, the twin suns of Rythe had waited for the return. Now the moment had come. The wizard still slumbered, but the revenant was awake. He ranted beneath the earth, stone and ice.

  Three would come together. The swords had spoken, the three still lived.

  In the skies above, the suns watched. They shed tears, and flames roiled across their burning surface. Suns die, too. To rest would mean the death of their children. They spawned their children. Now, it was down to them to be their saviours.

  Three come as one. Priests to save them, surround them with light. The suns’ emissaries on Rythe. Could they hold back the dark?

  Some say legends come again, live through the ages. Some say legends live again, as long as a sun. Some say it is mere serendipity, wishful thinking on the part of mortals who write history and myth for their progeny.

  There is serendipity in all things, but on Rythe the simplest coincidence is presaged by black toothed grins and blood.

  *

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Quintal held up a hand, and they halted at a turn in the corridor.

  “Quiet, now. They know we are here. There is no need for them to find us yet.”

  Roth growled deep in its throat, anxious to be about the battle. “I smell them. Wait, and I will clear a path.”

  “Time enough for fighting later, Roth,” Quintal told the rahken. “For now, we need to find the chamber. This blasted warren has me all turned around, but we cannot fight our way out. Hold your fury in check, until we have need of it.”

  Roth rumbled, but complained no more.

  From above, at the head of unseen stairs, the sound of iron shod boots clattering on the stone steps came, harsh and ominous. In the echoing hallway the noise was amplified until it sounded like a marching army.

  “Where is it?” whispered Tirielle. “All their symbols look the same – a peak within a white circle should not be too hard to find!” She spoke too fast, exasperation and desperation in her quavering voice.

  “Be calm, lady,” said Cenphalph, more quietly than Tirielle had spoken. “We will find it.”

  “I don’t know how,” muttered Typraille under his breath, but at a stern glance from their leader said nothing further.

  “This way,” said Quintal. He sounded unsure, and somewhat embarrassed by the realisation himself.

  They followed him at a run, down a turn in the corridor and away from the approaching soldiers. They turned several times, checking the symbols outside each chamber as they ran. Nothing. No peaks, no circles. A half moon, a flowing river, a tower nestled in a crescent…some were painted, some were not. Some symbols were so strange that they sent shivers down Tirielle’s spine. She dreaded to think what planes of existence they led to, whether the Seer’s mind had traversed those other worlds, their plateaus and plains, their peaks and canyons.

  If only the Seer were here to guide them now. She had said nothing of where to find the chamber. She had not warned them of the immensity of Arram’s underground caverns, or the confusing nature of the warren.

  To what worlds and places must the Protectorate be able to travel? It was huge beyond imagining. She despaired of ever finding the true path. It was a maze, full of twisting corridors, misleading
turns and cross ways, with no guiding marks but those on the great doors that lead to portals behind them, the portals in turn leading to places from which there might be no return. Death awaited behind some of those doors, Tirielle was certain of it. To flee through the wrong one would be fatal. If they could not find the right path, none of them would leave Arram’s bowels alive.

  They came at a run to a dead end.

  The soldiers were in the corridors now. Their booted feet clattered on the flagstones. The soldiers would know their way among the corridors. They would understand the symbols, and the trick of sound within the corridor would not confuse them. They would be upon them sooner than Tirielle would have liked.

  She fingered her fine blades through the soiled material of her dress. She would die before she let them capture her. She could not face torture. Not at the hands of the Protectorate. She knew that they embraced pain, and fed on suffering. She would not be food for them.

  Roth saw her quivering and lay a massive hand on her shoulder. As always, Tirielle took strength from the beast’s touch. She was ever thankful to have Roth in her life. She placed her own hand on top of the furred paw and patted it, steeling herself for the battle to come.

  They followed Quintal back to the branch in the corridor, and looked each way. Quintal drew his sword, and his brethren followed suit, the thin twang of steel loud in the hallway. There was no sign of the Protectorate.

  “You can’t fight the whole of the Protectorate! We must run,” she said with heartfelt urgency. She was shaking now, feeling death approach. They were close now, and there was no way out in sight.

  “To where?” said Typraille, his voice firm and sure. She imagined he was looking forward to the battle, and hated him a little for his calm and his eager tone.