Chronicles of the Last Days Chapter 6

Chapter 5

E

ppie could have stayed in that mountain valley forever, even though its beds were rocky, the fare was rough, and its high cliffs cut out the soft slanting sunlight at the ends of the day. In that valley, surrounded by friends, she’d slept more deeply than she ever had before. She’d dreamed dreams that were not nightmares. There was no place in the world that felt more like home, even though she’d only been there a few days and knew that she would have to leave again soon. The village she’d been born in was so far away that it hardly mattered. Anamat felt more like her native place than the village did, but it was never entirely safe, always ready to cast an errant scrappling out.

She’d only just begun to feel at home in the Defenders’ hidden hall when she’d been sent off to find Thorat in Tiadun, then back in the city, she still had to dodge the watch. The harbor was changing, becoming less welcoming, as new fleets of foreign ships came in and their dark warehouses multiplied. In the mountains, there were no foreigners or city watch, and there never would be. Some of the bandits were mad, true, but their madness came from the dragons, and she felt sure that none of them would harm her, especially not with Sovara at her back.

“You two go first,” Sovara said the night after Darna had left. Eppie was sitting beside Thorat and the Enatel was looking right at them as she spoke. Sparks flew up from their campfire into the clear, still night air. They were running out of provisions, and more importantly, Midsummer was coming.

Eppie wanted to beg to stay until the end but she knew that they needed to leave in small groups. If they all went at once, it might draw attention to the place, and besides, the elders might want to council together without the younger Defenders. Eppie was little more than an apprentice, even though she’d been to the dragons’ gates twice.

The bandits in their various groups and the Defenders had made the gathering something like the princes’ Midsummer council. Together, they’d conferred about ways to keep foreigners and most lowlanders out of the hills. They’d also shared stories and fighting techniques. With the help of the dragons and a little luck, they hoped to help make Darna the de facto ruler of Tiadun, shaking the Cereans loose from their foothold in that one small, dragon-forsaken corner of Theranis.

Tiada wouldn’t rise from below the deepest stream for a very long time, not until Anamat was long lost under the sea, its temples worn away to sand, Eppie realized.

“Eppie?” Garren said.

“Sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

“Sovara wants us to leave at first light,” Thorat said. “She wants to make sure that I can find myself some position at the palace before this tribunal so we have ears there, even if mine aren’t as good as some.” He sighed. He didn’t want to leave the valley any more than she did.

She looked around the circle. “I don’t suppose I could –” Eppie began, but she stopped herself from wishing aloud. “All right, we’ll go.” They’d told her about the flooding in Anamat. She needed to see it for herself.

#

The next morning, Eppie found herself looking out at her once-familiar city and the changed face of the Anamat valley.

“We could have died in Slaradun,” Thorat said.

“Or in Tiadun.”

“Maybe that would have been better,” he sighed.

She did wonder if it would have been better to die before seeing those changes. There was a ship on the horizon, heavy laden, bound away for some foreign port. She felt a weight in her heart like the weight of that ship’s cargo as it dragged the city away in pieces. She swallowed and shook herself. “Does it make any difference what we do?” she wondered aloud.

Thorat shrugged. “I half-wish that we could just join the bandits, but I’m not ready to abandon Anamat to the Cereans just yet.” Thorat’s eyes rested on one spot, one particular golden roof. He was probably pining for the ambassadress again.

“We’d better go, then, if you’re going to see the ambassadress before she flies again,” Eppie said, and so they set off, taking it all in in silence.

As they walked down into the valley, two more ships appeared on the horizon, wending their way to Anamat harbor or, rather, the bay that had once contained the harbor. A long troop of soldiers was crossing the pass from Galamun, some of them bearing the orange-and-blue banners of Tiadun, others clad in drab Cerean gray cloth.

“That’ll be Calar,” Thorat said. “We’d better get to the city before he does.”

They walked until after dark and slept in an orchard, then breakfasted at Raina’s house. They set out again into the thick of the morning market crowds.

“I’d better go right up to the palace or I’ll find some reason not to,” Thorat said as they approached the gates. “I’ll meet you at Myril’s place later.”

Eppie thought about going back to the hall, where there might be a bit of peace, but Myril would have news of Darna’s arrival in the city, and she always had food, too. Eppie’s stomach grumbled despite the bread she’d had at Raina’s house.

A dense crowd stood in front of Garren’s shop, waiting to get their sweets. Eppie checked her pocket. She had a few beads, so she joined the throng. At the counter, Garren’s wife was looking harried but doing a brisk business.

“That’ll be two small ones,” she told the man in front of Eppie as she handed over a wrapped bundle.

She looked quickly at Eppie. “He’s not here,” she said.

“I know,” Eppie replied. “He’ll probably be back the day after tomorrow.”

“Not soon enough. Here.” Garren’s wife handed her a nut pie. Eppie offered her a bead but Garren’s wife waved it away. “Get going; I’ve got work to do. And keep away from the new dock. There’s been trouble around there, slavers,” she warned.

Eppie nodded, but of course, the first thing she did was to go down to the harbor. The route past Merchants’ Wharf was the quickest, and right there at the shore, they were building a new dock haphazardly tacked on to the old one. There wasn’t a Theranian in sight. Enomaean laborers worked on the dock while a Ganatean crew fitted out its vessel with ropes, which a Cerean appeared to be selling to them. A guardsman came along, swinging his staff, the only Theranian in sight, and not a friendly one. Eppie backed into an alley just in time to get out of the path of a noisy cart rattling down the road.

The alley led her to a spot just downhill from the Pentangle, so she tucked her nut pie into her pouch and crossed over to Myril’s stair but found the door bolted shut, so she thought she’d go see how far Calar and his army had marched that morning. It was nearly midday, so she walked back up the street, through the Pentangle, and down to the West Canal to one of the old secret passageways. The way was damper than it had been before – she had to wade at one point and she stubbed her toe on a sharp rock – but it was still passable.

She emerged into the hard light of the afternoon sun, on a dusty embankment shaded only by a few thin bushes. Horses’ hooves beat like threshers on the ground, driving up the dust.

“To the palace gate!” Calar’s order was relayed back along the line.

“We’ll camp there and pasture our horses,” someone said.

“I was hoping for better than a horse pasture,” one of the Cereans complained. “Anamat. After all these years, and I can’t even get in to have a look at a priestess.”

“Shut it. We’ll get in. Just have to have a word with the governor.”

Most of the grumbling voices made their complaints in foreign languages. Dust dimmed the air, but the army was splendid in its own way. The horses’ flanks shone softly while spears and spade weapons caught the light of the sun. They looked ready to fight, or to despoil a dragon at the slightest provocation, now that she knew that the spades they carried were for fighting, more than for digging.

Eppie, darting from bush to bush, made for the head of the army. There, Calar rode with his remaining son behind him, their expressions blank and bored. They did look something like Darna in the hair and the shape of the nose, Eppie thought, but they had a different air about them, complacent where Darna always seemed fretful.

She stayed where she was as the rest of the army rode past. She counted fifty horsemen in all, most of them Cereans, and about a hundred foot soldiers and servants. Men whispered behind Calar’s back, sending their own messages down the line and to their countrymen on the harbor. She watched until they reached the palace gates, then hurried back to safety.

#

Meanwhile, Myril listened. She’d heard Eppie come to the door but had been half-asleep, so she didn’t recognize her until she was already most of the way back up the hill. She heard Calar’s approach, too, the voices talking in strange languages, the clomp of horses’ hooves, the cursing and muttering and an arrogant boast from Calar that no woman would unseat him, not even a whole pack of them, followed by muttered assurances from a soft-voiced Cerean, his voice dripping with cunning.

Myril blocked out the menace of Calar and his allies to turn her attention back to what was nearer at hand. On the street below, one of the women who told fortunes was attempting to have a conversation with a Ganatean man. They communicated mostly in hand gestures and anxious smiles. A young sailor came upon them and offered to translate, at which point the Ganatean gave him a small coin and the conversation moved forward.

“He wants to know when he will die,” the young sailor translated.

The scryer hesitated. “Come inside,” she said. Myril’s sense was that neither man would threaten her neighbor, but she kept listening just in case. She could picture the scene by the sounds that came up through the floor. She’d been in that room many times; it was a familiar scene apart from the addition of the translator.

The Ganatean sat on a low cushion while the scryer prepared her bowl, swirling the water around it for a ritual cleansing. He said something and the translator interpreted it. “He says that he saw half of his shipmates drowned; he saw the dragon of Slaradun and thought that it would kill him.”

“He saw the dragon?” The scryer startled, almost dropping her bowl. Water sloshed over its edge and a drop fell onto the carpet. She set the bowl down before her client with shaking hands. “He is very fortunate,” she said to the translator. “Not all are so honored.”

She lit the incense, and after several rounds of talk between the young sailor and the Ganatean, the sailor spoke in Theranian again.

“Can you tell him when he will die, he wants to know? Or if he can stop the dragon from killing him?”

“That dragon won’t kill him, because she can’t reach here; this isn’t her realm,” the scryer said, confident in that bit of traditional knowledge. “However, he should go to the temple or even to a street-corner shrine and make a free offering to Anara, not one just to seek a priestess’s company. Then…” She trailed off. The water in her bowl had stilled. The scryer murmured a prayer over it. When she spoke again, it was in a faraway voice, as if she were in trance, though if it were at all genuine, it was a very light trance. Myril knew that the scryer was in full possession of herself, still cautious of the two men in her room. “Tell him that he should go home to his own country as soon as he can,” she said. “The dragons cannot reach him there, and he is right to fear them, but the dragons of the sea will not trouble him.”

The young sailor translated this, and the Ganatean grunted with satisfaction, even though she had not told him the time of his death as he’d asked. In all likelihood, he didn’t really want to know. He opened his purse to the scryer and gave her the usual fee, a middling bead. She thanked him and he made his way out onto the street, but the translator stopped in the door before he left.

“Is that what you tell all of them?” he demanded. “To go home, to leave you alone? They won’t do it, you know, not until they’ve got what they came for. They’re a trading nation, haven’t got much on their shores; they just get rich from bleeding other lands dry.”

“And they would bleed us,” the scryer said.

The translator shrugged. “Most of them aren’t bad; it’s just their rulers.”

“He saw the dragon,” the scryer mused. “Have you seen a dragon? Of course you haven’t. It’s not right that they should see them when we can’t. I was born here in Anamat, and I’ve still only ever seen Anara at festivals, on crossing days.”

“And you call yourself a scryer,” the young sailor said. He spat on the ground, but he did not claim to have seen Anara himself. He trundled down toward what was left of the ropers’ market, where his bead would buy him more weak ale than it would elsewhere.

A small band of drummers – farmers from just outside the city, about a dozen men and women – made their noisy way down the street, weaving from one doorway to the next, drunkenly urging the women of the street to join the song and dance. Myril retreated into her own thoughts as well as she was able.

She knew only pieces, secondhand tales of what had happened in the past year and a bit, but they were beginning to fit together into a tapestry of sorts. Two dragons had fallen after invaders came to their shores, but they’d fallen in very different ways, ways which made little sense in light of what she’d been taught as a young priestess. Which of the two places – Tiadun or Slaradun – was more like Anamat? How would Anamat fall, if it did? When it did.

Tiadun was a distant province, not well known for its piety or its wealth. It was a middling sort of a place, where harvests were generally good enough but not much happened. The priestesses who served there didn’t complain of their lot, but they reported that the numbers and ardor of their petitioners had dwindled in the past generation, more so than elsewhere. The rulers there had turned their backs on the dragons. Darna’s father, who had been the rightful prince, had worshiped Farseer, the Enomaeans’ eagle-headed god, and stopped visiting the dragons’ temples. His brother and murderer, Calar, continued to visit the temples, but Myril guessed that he and his sons treated the priestesses with contempt. She’d heard that they’d been seen in some of Anamat’s lesser temples the past Midsummer.

All of it suggested that Tiada, once a mighty dragon, had dwindled and grown weary of humankind. When the miners came to rob her lifeblood from the land, their wayward arrows found their mark. She died, the soul of the land died, but the rock and soil of it went on, desolate.

Slaradun had been different. There, too, the dragon had been neglected and disappeared. The prince and his father had torn down their temples and driven out all but a few priestesses, most of whom had come to Anamat soon after Ivanat had taken charge of Slaradun keep. There hadn’t been many, even then. From what Myril could piece together, Salara had gone into the dragons’ realm for a long time, and when he emerged, he was changed and stronger, perhaps ready to make war on humankind. He had drowned them, losing all of his land but the mountains.

And what did that mean for Anara? Anara had not faded, nor had she gone under the hills. Her temples were weakened, but they were still far stronger than Tiada’s or Salara’s had ever been, and yet the city played hostess to the men of Cerea, Ganat, Enomae, and other lands, all making war on the dragon by asking her priestesses to be other than they were, by presuming that Theranis’s dragons were not real, while slavering after the stones, which anyone could touch, and believing in their magic despite their scorn of its source.

Myril’s head ached. She closed her eyes as if that would shut out the too-high-pitched laughter of her fellow healers and scryers as they contended with the steady flow of people at their doorsteps who understood nothing. Now and again, she heard the familiar accents of valley farmers, the people who might have come to her if she’d only left her sign out, but she would not put it out again, at least not before Midsummer.

#

Despite the noise from below, Myril fell into an uneasy sleep. She woke when Eppie returned to try her door again, and they supped together. Eppie fell asleep in the late afternoon, and Thorat arrived around midnight, rapping loudly on the door frame. Myril got drowsily to her feet to let him in.

“Your sign is down,” he said as she opened the door. “Is Eppie here?”

Myril put two fingers over her mouth to signal him to quiet. “She’s sleeping. Come over by the window.”

They sat down and looked out at the street. He didn’t ask for tea and Myril was glad; she didn’t feel like lighting a fire. He looked thin and a little paler than usual, but he didn’t seem overly tired or feverish. Whatever wounds he’d taken were healing well.

“Things are dangerous these days, and I have other work to do,” she said after a while. “Darna told me that you were wounded at the gate.”

Thorat nodded. “Eppie tended me and took me to the bandit camp. It’s mostly better now.” He pulled his tunic back from the shoulder to show her. The wound was long and still red, but it was beginning to pucker together and someone had stitched it tolerably well. Though it wasn’t festering, he did wince a bit when he flexed it, so as he talked, Myril prepared a poultice. Thorat spoke some about the fall of Salara’s gate, then skipped over most of a moon-round to his return to Anamat.

“Eppie and I got back to the city this morning,” he said. “The others will be back soon too. I went to the palace, just hoping to get some news, but they wanted to hire me on right away.” He sighed. “I don’t like Parnet, and surely one of these Midsummers, he’s going to see that, but for now, I couldn’t refuse. Someone has to be there to have ears on them all before the tribunal.”

Myril nodded. “Darna was here yesterday. What happened to her in Slaradun?”

“At the gate?” Thorat said. “It’s not mine to speak of.”

“And no one understands it,” Myril said. She wanted to know more, though, practical things if not the inner changes the dragon had wrought in Darna. “How many survivors do you think there were?”

“In Slaradun? I don’t know,” Thorat said. “Not many from the keep or the village around it, but I guess about half of the men who were at the camp lived – those were the ones who were going to mine Salara’s stones. There were Ganateans and some Slaradun men, too. I’m not sure about the Cerean who came with them.” He shook his head. “If I could have chosen who would survive…”

“You can’t; none of us can.” Myril didn’t want to give him room to lapse into regret. Dark smudges under his eyes showed that the journey had tired him.

“Some survived, though. I saw a boy up at the palace who was a page for the prince of Slaradun. He was planning to take work in the palace scriptorium if they’d have him.”

“He’d do better to apprentice to the Chroniclers’ guild,” Myril said.

“In any case, I was about to come back here when I crossed the path of our lord governor.”

“And?” Myril prompted.

“He wanted me to join his personal guard again; Calar was marching up to the gate just then and he sent me to be outfitted right away, to shore up his showing of armsmen. I don’t know that one more man in the guards makes much difference against so many, but there I was, back at his beck and call after all these years,” Thorat said. “They don’t seem to worry so much about the other Cereans, the ones that were already in Anamat and their own palace.”

“Not as much as they should,” Myril said. “So, what happened when Calar arrived?”

#

The governor, Parnet, went out to meet the arriving army, flanked by his mistress Tiagasa and his new advisor, Girizit, slave and emissary of the king of Cerea.

“You could have left them in your own province,” Parnet said to Calar as soon as the formal greetings had been exchanged.

There were more Cerean soldiers and Theranian armsmen outside the palace gate than there were inside, certainly more than the palace could comfortably accommodate as guests. Thorat turned half away, not wanting to meet the gaze of any of the guardsmen he might have worked alongside in Tiadun. They would be sure to recognize him and might remember that he’d left shortly before the “hunting accident” that had taken the late prince’s life. He kept his gaze on the governor, counting the arriving soldiers in his peripheral vision – two dozen, three dozen, maybe five dozen, though there were some around the bend in the wall, too.

“I wouldn’t have them take advantage of my lands in my absence,” Calar said. He neglected to mention that they were not yet confirmed as his own lands, and Parnet did not remind him of the fact just then.

“I’m sure you’re happier that they run amok in neighboring provinces,” Parnet said as they started toward the palace itself. He and Tiagasa flanked their visitor. “Galamun and Getedun are not happy. They might support your challenger at this tribunal.”

Calar blanched for a moment. “I do not expect to see any challenger,” he said.

“Word has come to us that she expects to see you, however.”

“I see. Will Gallia come alone?”

“The Aralel says otherwise,” Tiagasa put in. “I had a message from her this morning that Darnasa is in Anamat.”

“I trust that the trading season is going well?” Calar said, as if he were ignoring Tiagasa.

Parnet gave a nod to Girizit, whose brocade waist wrap puffed ostentatiously. “It is going more than tolerably well, but we cannot accommodate your armsmen. You and your son will stay within the palace walls, of course. Will your other son be joining us, or is he remaining at your keep?”

“May my advisors enter?” Calar asked.

Girizit nodded to the governor, who frowned.

“They should make camp with their countrymen, but they may join us at the feast tonight. I’ll ensure that they have tents suitable to their station.”

Calar had no consort at his side, and one of his sons was also absent. Thorat wondered if Calar knew that he was probably dead in Slaradun. For all of the army at his back, Calar lacked the company of those who should have been his closest allies. Tiagasa patted Parnet’s arm and made as if to say something, but Parnet waved her away. She cast her gaze downward. Girizit was observing her closely.

“Let us all go in now to the midday meal, my lords,” she said sweetly as the inner gates shut behind them. Calar’s son looked uneasily over his shoulder, though Calar himself did not turn around, affecting nonchalance.

Thorat ducked behind a pock-nosed guardsman as Tiagasa led her new guests to a moderately sized chamber where a generous meal was spread. The room faced one of the walled gardens, and though the food was plentiful and smelled delicious, the serving dishes were not quite as good as the ones that the governor would ordinarily have used when entertaining a prince. The governor would be an unlikely ally to Darna’s case against her uncle. Then again, perhaps he only wanted to remind Calar that his position as ruler was not yet recognized in Anamat.

“You there,” Parnet called to Thorat. “Check the wine.”

Thorat took the glass, feeling every eye on him as he drank. “It is good.”

Parnet watched him a moment longer, as did Calar. Calar’s son looked too. A flicker of recognition crossed his face – they’d sparred often enough in training that of course he surely recognized Thorat, but still, all the Tiadun men really knew of him was that he’d been their champion at the Midwinter games. To them, he was only an ordinary guardsman, and it was not at all remarkable that he might have taken employment in the city at Midsummer. Few of them had been at Tiada’s gate, where the Cereans had taken the lead. Thorat would try to avoid Calar’s Cereans.

Tiagasa and Girizit were absent, as if they’d gone off to some private conference of their own.

A serving maid set platters in front of each guest, heaped with meat, greens, breads, and fruit, then filled their glasses with the excellent wine Thorat had just tasted.

“You have far too many Cereans in your company,” Parnet said. “Our customs are clear. All trade is to be conducted through Anamat.”

“Customs change, but that is not my purpose in bringing them here. The men who rode with me from Tiadun are not mere traders. They are my allies and advisors.”

“They looked a great deal like common sailors to me, Lord Prince,” Girizit said as he returned. He took a seat opposite Calar. He, at least, seemed eager to treat Calar as the legitimate ruler of Tiadun.

Parnet motioned for the serving maid, and a moment later, Girizit had a platter and a full cup of wine in front of him. Girizit looked curiously at Calar and his son.

“Girizit is the emissary of the king of Cerea. He is our honored guest,” Parnet said by way of introduction.

Girizit bowed his head only slightly. He gave Calar a thin smile and turned his attention to his bread, which he tore into crumbs before eating it in tiny morsels, like a bird.

“I am sorry that we were not permitted to bring our own advisor here to dine with you,” Calar said, frowning at the governor. “He is the steward of the Duke of the Southern Reaches of Cerea.”

“I am aware of that,” Girizit said. “Did you know that the duke was exiled?” He paused to watch Calar’s face for a moment. “I see that you did not. Be advised.”

“I have heard no such thing, and I do not believe it.”

“I only heard the news this morning, when a new ship of ours arrived,” Girizit said. “Word may not have reached you yet, but my sources are unimpeachable.”

Tiagasa, too, had returned to the room. “What is this nonsense about the Cerean king exiling dukes? It’s no concern of ours. Prince Calar, you are late to the councils. You may even be too late to take your turn with the ambassadress.”

Calar was about to say something, but Parnet cut him off. “We will be able to arrange something, I’m sure. You will go to see the Most Blessed One as soon as this tribunal has confirmed your right as ruler.”

If it does,

Thorat thought. He made himself think of other things.

“As you wish, Your Excellency,” Calar said. He turned to Girizit, who was leaning back as he picked at crumbs, squinting at Calar’s son. “The duke of the Southern Reaches cannot possibly be in rebellion against his king,” Calar said.

“It is more than possible,” Girizit said as he dusted his crumbs onto the floor. “But I would not like to bore our lady with, as she says, affairs which are no concern of hers.”

Calar seemed to take the hint. Talk turned to the condition of the roads across the Anamat valley, which Calar reported were good, and to the hunting in the hills, the only topic Calar’s son seemed inclined to comment on. No one mentioned the ravaging of Getedun’s temples again, not even obliquely. Tiagasa sat between Parnet and Girizit, keeping her eyes downcast. Girizit occasionally looked at Calar’s son with a pensive expression, but then he would turn back to the mutilation of his meal, which he must have judged unsatisfactory, for he left most of it there, albeit in smaller pieces.

#

Later that afternoon, a box from the Chroniclers was delivered to the governor or, rather, to the Cerean emissary. Girizit opened it without ceremony and began scanning the scrolls and flinging them aside until he found one that was a little different from the others. He picked it up, inspected the writing along the edge, and sliced the wide ribbon that bound it together, then unfurled it on the table. He made to weigh down the ends, but being so lately bound, it lay flat of its own accord. Giri read it anyway, then he rolled it up again and slapped the table with it, as if he were swatting at a fly.

“The ink is scarcely dry,” Girizit accused the governor. “This is a forgery. You are keeping the secrets of the dragons’ magic from me.”

“I am doing no such thing,” Parnet protested. “I don’t have the secrets you seek, and I’m not sure that the guild has them either, though if any of the guilds does, it would be the Chroniclers.”

“The relevant texts must exist,” Girizit hissed. He turned to Parnet. “These are your people. Are they not properly subjugated?”

“You know yourself that a governor, or even a king, must rule in concert with the merchant class,” Parnet said. “You are a merchant, too; surely you must respect that.”

Girizit threw the scrolls back into their box, called for his own servants, and left without ceremony.

“Will we see you for the feast tonight?” Parnet called after him.

“You may rely on it,” Girizit said. “And make sure that Calar brings his Cerean friend, too. He and I have matters to discuss.”

#