Part 48 (1/2)

'And more than this, I look into your faces, and I see Fly-kinden, Mantis, even Moth. And more, I see in my mind all the faces of those who cannot be with us, who have been cut down in this war, and they were many, and of all kinden, and this day is also theirs. We must never forget all those who gave everything for us. Where you stand now there shall be a memorial carved, and I wish every one of you to bring us the names of those you knew who fell, and each one shall have its place. The gate of the west wall, whose shutters, I am informed, can never rise again, shall never be reopened, and a new gate will be built where the Vekken made their breach. In this way, by including it into the very structure of our city, we shall never forget our friends, or our victory.'

Thadspar accepted a bowl of wine from a servant, drained it, and handed it back, pausing a moment before continuing.

'Many of you will have heard that in the east a new power is brewing,' he told the crowd. 'They are Wasp-kinden, and they call themselves an Empire. You may even have heard that they have taken the city of Tark for their personal possession, and we know this is true. Their forces even now threaten Sarn.

'We have never seen their like before. Some of you may know that War Master Stenwold Maker has been warning of their power for many years, and I say now, as Speaker for the a.s.sembly, that it is to our shame that we did not heed him sooner. The Wasps wish to see us destroyed, and why? Why us? Look upon these men and women ranged beside me, and that is your answer. All of us, standing here, we are the Lowlands entire, and to conquer the Lowlands, their Empire must first conquer us!

'We have won a battle,' Thadspar told them finally. 'We still must fight a war.'

Stenwold thought that he should feel triumphant, that his warnings had finally been heeded, that Collegium was at last committed openly to opposing the Empire. Instead he just felt tired, heading back with Balkus and Arianna to speak once again to Thalric to interpret the foreign script of his prisoner's face and try to master its grammar.

'Good speech,' Balkus rumbled beside him. 'Of course, I'm not really Sarnesh any more. I did wonder why they wanted me up there.'

Stenwold was about to reply when he saw a young Beetle waiting to see him as he approached Thalric's suite.

'Master Maker!' he got out. 'There's someone to see you. Says it's urgent!'

Then a Fly-kinden had bolted past him, virtually bouncing off from Stenwold before she had come to a halt.

'What's-' Stenwold started, but Balkus got out, 'Sperra!'

Stenwold stared at her, seeing a thin and grubby Fly woman who looked as though she had neither eaten nor slept for days.

'But you were in Sarn . . .' he said stupidly.

Balkus knelt quickly towards her, and Sperra leant against him gratefully. She looked half-dead with exhaustion.

'The Sarnesh have fought the Wasps . . . field battle,' she got out. 'They lost, pulled out . . . when the train got us back to Sarn we had news from here that the Vekken had been turned. I got on a train to get here right away didn't stop for anything. I brought the Moth-boy. He got himself hurt. They put him in a Wayhouse hospice nearby.'

Something in her manner, in the words left unsaid, had crept up on Stenwold, and now he said softly, 'Slow down now. What about Cheerwell?'

'Master Maker, I'm sorry,' she said. 'Che was supposed to be in the last automotive off the field, only . . . it never made it back to the city. I'm so sorry.'

Forty.

It was the greatest magic, from the very ebbing sh.o.r.es of the Days of Lore.

Here, within these close-knit tree trunks, treading ancient paths through the forest, they came on a moonless night. Tramping lines of grey-robed figures made their unfaltering way through the pitch-dark with their heads bowed. There was a sense of desperation about them, of tattered pride held up like a standard. How much had already been lost, to have brought them to this state?

Watch closely, little acolyte.

There were lamps ahead, though dim: wicker baskets crowded with fireflies lending an underwater radiance to the tree boles, and not even touching the shadows between them. Figures waited there, tall and stark. There was black metal there, scale armour, spearheads. This grove was sacred, and the idol to their Art that they kept here was a mere stump, the relic of a thousand years of rot and busy agents of decay. Around it the Mantis-kinden stood, like statues themselves, and with some were the great hunched forms of their insect siblings, their killing arms folded as if in silent contemplation.

Watch closely, little neophyte.

In solemn procession the robed men and women wound their way between the trunks to them. Night was all around them, yet a dawn had come to the world that no shadows could resist. This was the end of the Days of Lore, and across the Lowlands their dominion was shrinking by the day. Their ancient cities were overthrown: Pathis, Tir Amec, Shalarna and Amirra had fallen as the slaves rebelled, and not all their craft, not all the killing steel of their Mantis soldiers, could stem that tide. The slaves, the dull-witted and the ugly, the graceless and the leaden, had cast them off. They had made themselves armour and terrifying new weapons, and they had declared themselves free.

Pathis, Tir Amec, Shalarna, Amirra.

And Achaeos's mind called up the counterparts: Collegium, Tark, Sarn and Myna. And how many more had been the haunts of his own Moth people, that none now even remembered?

And when unity was most needed there had been schism. Centuries of strife had held the Moth-kinden together. They had raised armies against the Centipede-kinden who had erupted from the earth. They had staved off or defeated the machinations of all the other sorcerous powers: Spiders and Mosquitoes, the sly a.s.sa.s.sin Bugs and the ancient buried kingdoms of the Slugs. The revolt of the slaves had struck at their very being, and they had flown to pieces. Some counselled peace, some retreat and isolation. Factions and parties grew, and when blades were raised they fell brother on brother, and all the while the inexorable tide of history was sweeping them aside, leaving little sign that they had ever existed.

You have seen some of our stones in Collegium that still stand, and the sewers at Myna that the Mole Crickets built for us. What else remains?

And so this. At last, this. This last attempt to summon the guttering forces of the old magic that the Moths had once lived and breathed this most ambitious of all rituals. They were renegades, of course. Even those in Tharn or Dorax who advocated war and b.l.o.o.d.y retribution would have nothing to do with this. These outcasts had vowed to risk anything, to use up all the credit their kinden had ama.s.sed. They had come to the Mantis-kinden with stories of revenge, and the warrior-race had listened to them. Thus they had come here.

To Darakyon.

To the the Darakyon, Achaeos thought. The Darakyon is a forest. 'Darakyon' alone would be a Mantis hold, and there is no such hold there. Darakyon, Achaeos thought. The Darakyon is a forest. 'Darakyon' alone would be a Mantis hold, and there is no such hold there.

But there was.

Here was the hold of Darakyon, seen in brief glimpses in the darkness between the trees, and here was its heart, its idol, once as sacred as that of Parosyal, a place of pilgrimage, of reverence.

They were gathered about it now, those robed shadows, and the Mantis-kinden stood proud and strong, their beast-allies beside them, and waited for the might of the Days of Lore to smite the unbelievers, to fragment their minds and terrorize them.

It was the darkest and the greatest magic ever plotted, to put a shadow on the Lowlands that would last a hundred years, to shatter the spirits of the people of the daylight and drag them down into slavery. A spell to taint the whole world and wash away the revolution, even down to the ideas that had fermented it. A spell that would sicken the world to their children's children's children, or for ever.

It was the greatest magic, the darkest magic, and it went so terribly wrong.

I do not want to see this, Achaeos pressed, but the whispering chorus of voices was unmoved.

You could not understand, little seerling, so we must show you.

And he watched, without a head to turn aside, without eyes to close, as the ritual reached its b.l.o.o.d.y peak and the magic began to tear apart. He saw the deed that wiped the hold of Darakyon from all maps and made the forest of that name into the place of dread that even the lumberjacks of h.e.l.leron or the Empire would not approach, and he screamed, but chill hands held him and forced him to see it all, every moment of its demise.

And he saw what was done to the men and women of Darakyon, and how they were made to linger beyond time in that place, forever hating, forever vengeful and in pain.

But most of all he saw what they made of the rotten idol, and all the unfathomable power and evil that their ritual released. He saw it, small and deeply carved and potent beyond the dreams of Skryres, and knew that it was abroad in the world again, a tool for whatever evil hand should find it.

In the form of the Shadow Box. The soul of the Darakyon.

'So tell me,' Stenwold said, 'why I should take the appalling risk of keeping you close, or even keeping you alive.'

Thalric smiled, reclining easily behind the table as though he were back in his own study. 'You should start thinking like a man of your profession, Master Maker, and not just a Lowlander. I was a spymaster once. We both know the value of an enemy agent turned.'

'I couldn't trust you.'

'You have the craft to weigh what I tell you. I can be of more value to you than ever your Spider girl turncoat is.'

'No, you cannot,' Stenwold said flatly.

Thalric raised an eyebrow. 'Is it like that, then? Well then, do you want me to tell you about her? The truth? You must be still wondering whether the subtle Spider has spun a straight line?'

'Thalric,' Stenwold said warningly, and found his hand at his sword-hilt, and the Wasp's gaze followed it.