Symphony of Ages - Threshold Part 5

"Why do you think so?"

"They had the smell of death about them." The Kith woman grasped the ma.s.sive bra.s.s handle. "They still do, but it be different now."

The dark, cavernous room revealed the throne from which the unmarried last king had held court, a wide marble chair with blue and gold giltwork channels running up the arms to the back. Hector walked the long carpet to the foot of the dais, mounted the steps quickly, and sat down unabashedly in the king's seat. He took a moment to look up at Vandemere's motto, inscribed for the ages on the wall directly before his eyes, where each subsequent king was bound to see it at every moment while enthroned: HE WHOM ALL MEN SERVE BEARS THE GREATEST DUTY TO SERVE ALL MEN.

Then he stretched his hand out over the right arm of the throne.

"Traan der, singa ever monokran fri," he commanded softly, speaking in the tongue of the Ancient Seren, the mystical race of Firstborn beings born of the element of Ether, the first people of the Island. Come forth, in the name of the king.

The marble arm of the chair cracked open along a hidden fault, and split away. From beneath the dais a mechanical arm rose to an even height with the chair, the royal scepter of Serendair in its metallic grasp.

The symbol of state was simple in its design, a curved piece of dark wood the length of a man's thigh, gilt and inscribed with intricate runes. Beneath the golden overlay the thin striations of purple and green, gold and vermilion could still be vaguely made out, the colors of the stone trees in Earthwood, from which it had probably been harvested. Atop its splayed pinnacle a diamond the size of a child's fist was set; it gleamed dully in the darkness of the hall.

Hector stared at the scepter for a moment, encased within the mechanism of the king's design. Then he seized it, plucking it from the metal arm, pulling it free.Cantha's dark eyes were watching with a gleam he had not seen before. He looked at her questioningly, inviting her to speak, and was surprised when she did. Cantha guarded her thoughts jealously.

"Had the crown pa.s.sed to the first of Vandemere's children, rather than the last, this might have been a sight seen long ago; thee, Hector, on the throne as king."

Hector rose from the throne and started back out of the palace.

"I suppose that means I am foreordained to meet my end in this way, then," he said as they retraced their steps. "For if I had been king, I would not have left. You, however, Cantha, you and Jarmon, Anais, and Sevirym, would have been sent off with the others, to guard them in the new world, and live on. For that reason, and only that one, I am sorry that the line of succession did not fall to me."

The Kith woman said nothing.

They hurried from the palace in silence. At the brink of the battlements, Hector touched her arm.

"Tell me one thing, Cantha, now that the time for niceties is past, and there is nothing left to be gained in politeness," he said. "When you announced that the king of the Kith had decided you would stay behind as a representative of your race, I believe it was because you had volunteered to do so. You are my father's dearest friend. It was for him that you stayed with me, wasn't it?"

The Kith woman's eyes narrowed in displeasure. "MacQuieth would never have asked such a thing of me. Of anyone."

Hector smiled. "I know. But he didn't have to ask."

Cantha exhaled, frowning at him. Finally she a.s.sented.

"Nay," she said. "He did not have to ask. Aye, 'twas for him that I stayed, to stand with his son when he could not." She looked over the gra.s.sy fields, falling into shadows of gold as the sun began to set. "

'Twas as good a choice of end as any."

"Thank you," Hector said. "For staying, and for telling me."

The Kith woman merely nodded.

"I have one more boon to ask of you," Hector said as they descended the stone steps. "We will part company now. To take the woman and child north with us would only slow us down, and end any chance they have to survive. Elysian is the highest point on the southern half of the Island. If any ground is to be spared by the sea, it would be here. Stay with them, Cantha, in these last days; keep them safe, especially the boy. We will leave you supplies, and you can scavenge the orchards for fruit. If we succeed in containing the sea, and you run short of stores, you can go back to the inn." Cantha nodded, and Hector took her elbow, drawing her to a halt for a moment. "If the wave comes, though, get to the highest ground you can. I'd advise you stay near the vizier's tower." He nodded behind them to the tallest of the palace's spires, where Graal, the king's adviser and seer, had once dwelt. Cantha nodded again.

Jarmon had prepared the horses to leave as soon as Hector returned. As the men mounted, Hector heard a screech from below him.

"No," the child was screaming, struggling in Cantha's firm grasp. "No!" He turned to Hector, his eyes pleading. "No! Stay w'chyou! Stay w'chyou!"The words echoed in Hector's mind; they were the same as the ones uttered by Aidan on the docks the day he bound his family over to his father for sailing.

Stay w'chyou! Da! Stay w'chyou!

His throat tightened, remembering Talthea, so strong and brave, dissolving into tears at the pain in their son's voice. He reached down and gently caressed the head of the writhing child, then nodded to Cantha. His last sight of the boy was seeing him struggling violently in her arms as she restrained him. He continued to kick and fight with a willfulness that finally collapsed into a visibly broken spirit once the horses were out of sight.

Just as Aidan had.

They rode north along the river now, following the mule road where barges had long traveled, laden with goods from the northern isles and distant ports that were traded at every crossing and village until the flat-bottomed boats finally reached Southport, the enormous city at the river's delta.

The rocks at the mule road's edge trembled as they pa.s.sed; tremors in the north had intensified in strength and frequency, and viewing the sky above was now almost impossible through the mist. Patches of blue became fewer and farther between.

The men rode in silence. Each day that pa.s.sed brought the mist down even more heavily, making first joking, then speaking, too weighty to bother with.

Finally they arrived in Hope's Landing, the largest mill town on the Great River, where the eastwest thoroughfare had crossed. In its time Hope's Landing had been the heart of the river, a bustling city where the westlands met the east, with wagons lining up as far as the eye could see to unload grain for the mills, foodstuffs bound for markets in the south, and then were reloaded again with every kind of good imaginable from the barges. Now the city stood empty, the wheels of the great mills lodged in the mud or jammed by rocks where the water had once flowed freely.

Pratt's Mill had been the largest of all, spanning the river at its deepest and swiftest place. Bridges at one time had connected the east and west banks, with the mill between, an esplanade over which travelers could pa.s.s, observing the river's currents beneath them. The western span was gone, but the eastern bridge was still there, they noted, then rode past as the heat of the sun beat down from overhead, the only sign that it was now midday.

Just past the silent mill, where the roadway led off to the east, Hector signaled to the party to stop and let the horses graze. He scooped up a handful of smooth river stones, then beckoned to Anais, and together they walked to the banks of the Great River, dry now except for a thin stream that pooled and trickled in the wide riverbed.

"Remember when this river seemed a mile wide?" he mused, watching the water wend its way around the rocks and broken barrels that now lined its bed.

"Aye," Anais agreed. " 'Twas death to fall in up here. That millstone ground day and night; if you took a tumble north of it, you'd be bread the next day."

"And now we could cross easily, with feet barely wet. It's as if the river never divided the Island at all."

Hector examined the stones in his hand. "My father once said something to me that is finally taking hold in my mind." He fell silent for a moment, trying to remember the words correctly. "He was a Kinsman, oneof a brotherhood of soldiers whose patron was the wind, and thus had learned to pa.s.s through doors in the wind that would take him great distances in a short time. When I asked him by what magic this could happen, he said that it was not magic, but merely understanding that distance was an illusion.

"There are ties between us, Anais, all of us, friend and foe, that transcend what is normally seen as the s.p.a.ce in the world. That distance, that s.p.a.ce, is merely the threshold between one realm and another, one soul and another; a doorway, a bridge if you will. The stronger the connection between the two places, the smaller the threshold; the more easily crossed, anyway. The physical distance between the two becomes secondary. It was in making use of this that MacQuieth was able to win his greatest battle, his destruction of the fire demon, the F'dor Tsoltan. His hatred of that demon, and that primordial race, was a tie that could not be outrun. There was not enough s.p.a.ce in the world to keep them apart." He sighed deeply. "I believe it is also the reason that my family is only as far away as my next breath, that I can see them in my dreams, see them as they are now, not as a memory. Why you dream of the World Tree, and the place where you were born."

Anais nodded, and they stood in companionable silence for a while, watching the trickling stream.

"How does the weather appear to be taking shape for the next few days?" Hector asked finally, tossing a stone into what was left of the water.

"Aside from the likelihood of catastrophic destruction, it looks to be a fine week," Anais answered jokingly. "Why do you ask?"

Hector lobbed another pebble into the stream. "I just wanted to know how you would fare on your journey, if you would be dry or sodden with rain."

Anais's face lost its smile. "Journey?"

Hector exhaled and nodded. "I'm sending you home now, Anais. There is no need for you to go on with us from here. Either we will prevail in this undertaking or we will fail, but your being with us will not make that difference. The dreams you are having of Yliessan is Sagia calling to you to come home. If the World Tree is beckoning to you, it would be wrong to keep you from her."

His friend's silver eyes reflected sadness and understanding in the same gleam.

"I have come to accept many things I could not have fathomed would be possible a year ago, Hector, many tragic and horrific things, but until this moment, it had never occurred to me that I might not meet my end at your side."

Hector tossed the rest of the stones into the riverbed and wiped the grit from his hand on his s.h.i.+rt.

"We have lived in each other's company all our lives, Anais, and lived well," he said, his voice steady.

"There is no need to die in each other's company, as long as we die well."

Anais turned away.

"Perhaps if Sevirym was right, or you prevail, we will not die at all," he said.

"Perhaps," Hector said. "But go home anyway."

Beneath their feet the ground rumbled, stronger than before, as if in confirmation.

On the way back to camp, Hector stopped his friend one last time."Know that wherever we are when the end comes, you will be with me, Anais," he said simply.

The Liringlas knight smiled. "Beyond the end, Hector. Not even death can separate you from me." He clapped his friend's shoulder. "You still owe me a night of very expensive drinking."

Once Anais had gone, the days and nights ran together.

In the distance, the sky had begun to glow yellow through the mist above the northern isles. The rumblings had increased in sound and frequency, making the men nervous and edgy without respite.

Sleep seemed a luxury that they could ill afford, and yet exhaustion threatened to drive them off course, bleary-eyed in the dense fog.

When at last the sea could be heard in the distance and splas.h.i.+ng fire could be seen far away above the horizon, they determined they were near enough to Dry Cove and made camp for what they decided was the last time. Hector stirred the remains of their stores in a pot above their fire while the old fisherman and Jarmon tended to the horses before sitting down to a last meal at rest.

"Brann," Hector said, trying to break the awkward silence with conversation, "have you lived in Dry Cove all your life?"

The old man shook his head. "No. I was born there, but I had not been back until recently."

"Oh?" Jarmon asked, setting down his tankard. "That's odd for a fis.h.i.+ng village, isn't it? It seems that most families in such places remain there for generations."

Brann nodded. "True. But long ago, I had the chance to leave, and I took it. I traveled the wide world, doing a variety of things, but my birthplace has never been far from my mind. When it became apparent that the Child was awakening, I wanted nothing more than to return home, to help in any way that I could."

"You do know the chances that we can do anything at all, let alone save your village, are very small?"

Jarmon said seriously. "This is a fool's errand."

"No, it's not," Hector said quickly, seeing the light in the fisherman's eyes dim slightly. "It is a slim chance. But it is a chance, nonetheless. Trying is never foolish."

"That is all I ask, so that my people might live." Brann mumbled, drawing his rough burlap blanket over his shoulders and settling down to sleep.

When the old man's breathing signaled he had fallen into the deepest part of slumber, Jarmon took a well-used wallet of smoking blend from his pack and tamped nearly the last of it into his pipe.

Beneath them the earth trembled. It seemed to Hector that the quakes were lasting longer, and it was undeniable that they were coming more frequently. Anais had observed, just before he rode east, that even Sevirym would have been hard pressed to ignore it.

Hector looked up into the dark sky, missing the stars. "You and me, Jarmon; we are the last ones left,"

he mused, watching the clouds of thickening haze race along in the dark sky on the twisting wind.

"And Brann," the guard said, blowing out a great ring of smoke that blended with the mist around them.

"And Brann. Perhaps you should be kinder to him-he is obviously terrified of you."The old guard smiled. "Good." He leaned forward over the fire coals. "I trust no one any more, Hector, especially those too stupid or selfish to have taken the chance they were given and now want to be saved in the last hour. Better that they fear me. They have reason to."

Hector turned the scepter of the king in his hands. "You needn't be on guard against him, Brann. The king's scepter is formed of an ancient element of power; it rings true in the hand of the one who holds it. I would be able to discern if the old fisherman was lying, and thus far he has told us nothing but the truth."

Jarmon shrugged. "What does it matter anyway?" he said nonchalantly. "You and he are the only ones who remain with something to lose." Hector signaled for him to explain, but the old guard just shrugged again.

"You say you believe that the glory is in the trying," Jarmon said, puffing contentedly on his pipe. "But in truth, you fear failure. You have all along-as if there was anything you could do to ward it off. This situation was doomed to failure from the beginning, Hector, but only you struggled with that. The rest of us are followers, not leaders. We know that even in inevitable failure, there is glory. In the end, to a soldier it matters not what the outcome of the battle is. What matters is how he fought, whether he stood his ground n.o.bly, or whether, in the face of death, he faltered. A soldier does not decide who to fight, or when, or where. Deciding to remain behind with you was the only real choice I have ever made. It's a choice I do not regret.

"You have struggled in silence with the king's decision to leave you behind, and with our decisions to remain with you. You could cease that and live out your days in some semblance of peace if you were not born to lead. Unlike you, I know my opinion of His Majesty's decision doesn't matter. How I live between now and the end-that is what matters."

Hector stared out into the darkness. "I stand in the shadow of the king. I am of his line; I am his regent, named so that his power over the land would hold sway. His responsibilities are mine now. If I let go of them, then I have failed."

"Don't deceive yourself, lad," Jarmon said seriously, automatically stowing the wallet where it had come from. "The king's power that mattered left when he left-the Sleeping Child began its rise as his s.h.i.+p crested the horizon and sailed out of sight of Serendair. While I don't deny that his claim to the throne is in place because you are here, in the end it will mean nothing. The power that once reigned this land undisputed is broken. The protection it proffered is all but gone. There are holes in it, Hector, gaping holes that were once solid in the king's time, and that of all the rulers before him; an iron-strong dominion that is now rusted and pitted. You cannot plug those holes, no matter how much you struggle to. It's already been decided. You try to protect the Island in its last days by virtue of your vow, but your authority does not mean anything."

He took the pipe from his mouth and looked directly at the younger man. "But that doesn't mean your sacrifice was not worthy. You may never achieve greatness in itself, but when one has been groomed for greatness, to surrender the chance to prove it, now there's a sacrifice. On the word of your king to yield, give way in a battle you felt you could win, that's the most terrible sacrifice. It dwarfs all others." Jarmon settled down into a pile of leaves by the fire. "Except perhaps for having to serve sandbag duty."

On that last night Hector dreamed, as he always did, of Talthea and the children. The rocky ground beneath his ear burned with the rising heat from the north, making his night visions dark and misty where once they had been clear.

In his dreams he was holding his daughter, playing with his son, basking in quiet contentment with his wifewhen he felt a shadow beckon to him. When he looked up, the shade that was summoning him took form. It was the specter of a long-dead king, a forebear he had never known. The headless statue, broken in pieces in Kingston Square, whole once more. His grandfather.

Vandemere.

Wordlessly the king beckoned to him again. Hector looked down to find his arms empty, his wife and son gone.

He followed the shade of the king through a green glade of primeval beauty, back through Time itself. In this dream he trod the path of history, unspooling it in reverse as he walked deep into the silent forest through a veil of sweet mist.

All around him the world turned, undoing what had gone before as it did. The present, the third age in which history was now marked, unwound before his eyes. He could see the fleets returning to the docks from which they had been launched in antic.i.p.ation of the second cataclysm, watched the disa.s.sembly of the new empire into the broken one that was the result of the Seren War, and the war itself. He saw b.l.o.o.d.y fields strewn with broken bodies turn green again, saw the ages slipping by, unhurried, remaking history as Time pa.s.sed in reverse.

Hector looked ahead; the shade of the king was farther away now, disappearing into the mist.

He started to run, and as he did, the unspooling history sped back faster and faster. From the Seren War back to the racial wars that preceded it, the coming of the races of man to Serendair in the Second Age, Time hurried crazily backward. He called to the king, or tried, but no sound came out in this drowsy place, the misty vale of cool, rich green.

Racing now, compelled to find out the purpose of this visitation or command, he barely noticed when the Second Age slipped back to the First, the Day of the G.o.ds, when the Elder races walked the earth.

From the corner of his eye Hector saw the first cataclysm reverse itself, saw the waters that had covered much of the island recede, the star rise back into the sky, saw the Vault of the Underworld where the F'dor had once been imprisoned sealed shut again, containing once more the formless spirits that, upon its rupturing, had escaped and taken human hosts, like Tsoltan, the one his father had vanquished.

With each undone event, the world through which he ran grew greener, newer, more peaceful, more alive. It was in watching the turning back of Time that Hector began to realize how much of the magic had been gone from the world he had known, how much it had been present at one time, long before, when the world was new.

As the First Age melted away into the Before-Time, the prehistory, he saw the birth of the primordial races that sprang from the five elements themselves-the dragons, great wyrms born of living earth; the Kith, Cantha's race, children of the wind; the Mythlin, water-beings who were the forebears of humans, building the beautiful undersea city of Tartechor; the Seren, the first of the races born, descended of the stars; and the F'dor, formless demons sprung from ancient fire, destructive and chaotic, sealed by the four other races into the Vault to spare the earth from obliteration at their hands.

He saw the primeval world, glorious and unspoiled, and quiet. And even that slipped from his view as he watched; the land disappeared into the sea as the wind died away, leaving the surface of the world burning with fire, until it was nothing more than a piece of a glowing star that had broken off and streaked across the heavens on its own. That glowing ball sped backward, joining the burning body from which it had come.

Leaving nothing around him but starry darkness and the shade of the long-dead king.Finally the shadow of Vandemere turned around and stared at him sadly.

What, Grandfather?Hector asked, no sound coming from his lips, but echoing nonetheless in the dark void around them.What is it you are trying to show me?

Eternity,the king said. His voice did not sound, but Hector heard the word anyway.

What of eternity?Hector asked, struggling to breathe in the heavy mist of the dark void.