The Silver Mage. Katharine Kerr

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ beside them on the slow-flowing river. He circled them several times to study, then headed for the mountains to the west. At a mountain pass above Braemel lay another ancient site. On the off-chance that the Horsekin had decided to occupy it as well, Rori flew there, only to find it deserted.

      As he drifted on the wind high above it, Rori saw why the ancestors of the Westfolk had named it Garanbeltangim, the ‘Reaching Mountain’. Ancient layers and slabs of rock make up the Western Mountains, all twisted and folded, heaved out of the earth by some colossal cataclysm, perhaps, then washed bare by millennia of rain and snow. The old tales of giants may be true, that in their final war they threw huge rocks and slabs at one another and in the process built the peaks of the far west. Be that as it may, the highest peak of all is Garangvah, to give it its modern name. Like hands three huge slabs of sea-stone reach up to the sky and form a semi-circle around the high terraces that once held Ranadar’s fortress.

      The Hordes from the north never conquered Garangvah, though they did take over the lower slopes and the farms that had previously supported Ranadar and his men. For an entire year the fortress held out, living on its stores, until the last grain of wheat, the last fleck of cheese rind, and the last mouse and rat had been eaten. Just when starvation threatened the defeat that the Horsekin couldn’t deliver, the Horde broke the siege and fled. Their look-outs had spotted a relieving force headed their way.

      While the rescuers did bring food, they also brought the worst news of all, that Rinbaladelan had fallen, and the Vale of Roses lay destroyed, covered in ashes and cinders. Ranadar was king of precisely nothing worth ruling. Revenge alone remained to him. For its sake, he left the Reaching Mountain, and he never returned. The limestone slabs continued to cast their shadows over the palaces and walls, the storehouses and the towers, the outbuildings and alleyways. The roofs fell in with time and the snows. Mosses, the sparse mountain grass, and a scattering of twisted, stunted trees pried apart the fine paving stones of the courtyards.

      By the time that Rori flew over Garangvah, the palaces and outbuildings had worn down to mere stubs of walls and heaps of rubble. The wind had blown soil over them, and grass had sprouted. A few small trees stood upon them. Doubtless their roots would soon destroy whatever fragments of splendour still lay hidden.

      The stone outer walls, however, stood strong. Although they’d been built without mortar, the masons had shaped and fitted each stone to those below and beside it so carefully, so tightly, that the walls had survived for a thousand years and more. Rori circled overhead, looking for Horsekin, but saw no sign of occupation except for some ancient nests, probably built by eagles, in the towers. A few foxes darted across the ruined courtyard to their burrows in the palace mound to hide from the silver apparition in their sky.

      Since Rori had flown all day, he needed immediate rest. He found a place on the outer wall where the stonework looked as if it could support his weight. He landed cautiously, wings akimbo, ready to leap skyward should the wall crumble under him, then settled when it held. From his perch he could see down the slopes to the hazy landscape below, a thing of patchy grass and tumbled rock where once had lain fertile terraces.

      In his mind, however, his dragon mind with its long link into the past, he could see much further. He found himself remembering the long slope of another hill, covered with brush and boulders, choked with dust in the late summer heat. That hill was far to the north, he thought, farther even than I realized at the time, not that the distance mattered, in the end.

PART I

       The Northlands Autumn

      Five Years Before the Founding of the Holy City

      The Greggyn astrologers tell us that the end of a thing lies curled in its beginning like a tree inside an acorn.

       The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid

      ‘You should leave me,’ Gerontos said. ‘Just leave me here and save yourselves.’

      ‘Never!’ Rhodorix laid a blood-stained hand on his brother’s shoulder, then glanced at the druid, standing nearby. ‘Think your god will intervene and save us?’

      Galerinos merely shook his head, too exhausted to speak, and leaned, as bent as an old man, onto his heavy staff. Rhodorix considered his cousin’s wounds, slight if Galerinos had been a warrior, but grave enough for a softer man. The young priest’s arms, bare in his linen tunic, bled from a hundred scratches, the work of the thorny bushes and low-growing trees of this stretch of countryside. Blood stained the hem of his tunic as well from the cuts and scratches on his bare thighs.

      All that hot autumn day the three of them had been scrambling through the underbrush in the rocky hills, trying to find a hiding place, taking turns supporting Gerontos, whose broken leg could bear no weight.

      ‘No use in you dying with me, Rhoddo,’ Gerontos said. ‘Either of you.’

      Rhodorix helped his brother sit down among the boulders. Gerontos’s leg, snapped below the knee by a savage axe, had turned purplish-black; blood oozed from under the bandages Rhodorix had improvised from strips of their tunics. He helped Gerontos settle himself, then got up and looked down the long slope of the hill to the valley below. Somewhere among the tall grass and the patches of forest waited their clan and safety, somewhere too far to see. Unfortunately, he could all too clearly see a small mob of their enemies, still some distance below them, but coming inexorably up the hill.

      Just after dawn that morning, Rhodorix, eldest son of the Dragon clan, and his warband had been guarding Galerinos as he dowsed for water. Instead of a spring they’d discovered a trap set by the white savages. All fourteen of his men lay dead down in the valley; only he himself, his brother Gerontos, and the druid had survived the attack. Unhorsed, desperate, they had taken too many wrong paths during their attempt to escape.

      I made too many bad decisions, not anyone else but me, Rhodorix thought. ‘The shame’s mine,’ he said aloud. ‘Better I just die with you here. Even if we got back, what am I going to tell the vergobretes?’

      Neither Galerinos nor his brother could look him in the face. Neither said a word.

      ‘But Gallo, you can hide or suchlike,’ Rhoddo went on. ‘Get away after they kill us.’

      ‘If Great Bel wants me to die, then die I will,’ Galerinos said. ‘There’s no use in running.’

      ‘Well, how by the hells do you know what he wants? You keep praying, and we keep getting more and more lost.’

      ‘That’s why I think he wants us to die. If he’d only led us to water right away –’

      A cry drifted up on the hot and dusty air, a shriek of triumph, an answering howl from a band of men.

      ‘They’ve spotted us,’ Rhodorix said. ‘Naught else matters now.’

      ‘Help me up!’ Gerontos said. ‘Cursed if I’ll die sitting down.’

      Between them Rhodorix and Galerinos hauled him up and helped him prop himself against a boulder. Gerro’s face had gone pale under the smears of dust. Sweat plastered his dark hair to his forehead. Had his leg been sound, Rhodorix knew, the two of them could have scored some kills before the superior numbers against them brought them down. As it was, they could no longer fight back to back. Not long now, he thought. Soon we’ll all be drinking in СКАЧАТЬ