“I am already muddled.”
“Then I will make it simpler, Duke Isgrimnur. Just as there are Sithi who do not love mortals, there are a few Norns who do not entirely hate mortals. I grew up in Hikehikayo when those you call Norns and those you call Sithi, like me, still lived together in peace. And despite all the seasons that have swirled by since that time, I still know some among the Hikeda’ya, and know their hearts.”
“Are you saying you could convince them to surrender?”
She made a noise he couldn’t unpuzzle, a little burst of breath. “Me? No. As long as the queen lives, they will not surrender, especially the Order of Sacrifice. But that does not mean that the end of this struggle cannot be made less bloody, less vicious.”
Isgrimnur groaned. “For the love of the Lord God, no more clans, orders, or history, I beg you! Just tell me what you mean!”
“Only this. Speak to them, as you would any besieged mortal enemy. Give them your terms and let the less bloody-minded of Nakkiga hope for something other than complete destruction. It could be that the results will be better than you can now foresee.”
“How do you know? Perhaps like Brindur I have come to feel that only destroying every last one of those murdering creatures will satisfy me.”
“I know little of mortals, although I have long studied them, Isgrimnur—but I think I know something about you. I will say no more. I cannot say more. And this suggestion of mine may come to nothing, but I would not rest easily when my own song finally ends if I had not made the attempt.”
He did not like the implication that this strange, ageless female creature might know him better than he did himself. “A parley, then? All of this is to get me to parley with our enemies? The same white-skinned beasts who butchered my son Isorn and thousands upon thousands more?”
“To consider it, Duke, yes. To consider what such a parley might bring. To think about other ways of solving this problem. And it is a problem, Isgrimnur—mark me well. Even when you knock down the ancient gates, your work will only have begun. Do you think Akhenabi’s tricks were the worst thing you will ever see? I promise you, there are things waiting for you in the darkness of Ur-Nakkiga that will make you wish yourself deaf and blind from birth.” Her voice had risen a little, and although it was still not loud, it was all he could do not to step away from her. “Utuk’ku did not conquer an empty mountain. And the Norns have not stayed free for so long without learning something of their conquest and its secrets.”
“Is that a warning or a threat?”
“What warning does not contain some threat in it? But I promise I do not threaten you on the Hikeda’ya’s behalf. I say these things because, though I still find your people as dangerous as wild animals—but, sadly, without the innocence of beasts—I think there is more to you. The end of every battle is the beginning of something else, often something too large to understand at that moment, inside the Dance of Time.” Ayaminu now did something even more surprising than her smile: she bowed. “I must take my leave. I doubt we will see each other again, Isgrimnur, or that I will ever have the chance to explain more of what I have done here, and why. The world does not spin that way yet, and may never do so. But I wish you well.”
She slipped out of the tent while the duke was still trying to make sense of her last words, and by the time he pushed out through the door a few moments later he saw no sign of her, but only the frozen, muddy camp and the soldiers dragging bodies in the flurrying snow.
Part
Four
The Fatal Mountain
After long hours studying old charts and making his own painful and occasionally dangerous explorations, Viyeki had found a course for his men that would allow them to skirt the Forbidden Deeps in their continued excavation of a refuge. Still, solving that problem did not much improve his mood: even the most blinkered foreman in the order would have recognized the doom that hung over them, which might render even a completed refuge pointless. And that grim knowledge was not limited to the nobility. Every Hikeda’ya in Nakkiga knew what was coming, although some, by reason of their responsibilities or simple stubbornness, would not admit it.
Viyeki had long ago given up his family litter so that its parts could be used in repairs to the gate and other important things. Thus, on this day of the council meeting that might determine the fate of his entire race, the host foreman walked to the great Council Palace. His sacrifice was a minor one, he knew, compared to most—the sight of so many starving folk in the streets made that clear. Many of the slaves and lower-caste Hikeda’ya seemed to have simply run out of strength even to finish their errands or return home, and sat slumped in the streets wherever they had stopped. But although Viyeki’s household still had food enough to maintain life, they did not have enough to share, especially with so many sufferers. More than half of the houses in Nakkiga’s lowest tier were now shuttered and dark, some because the residents had not returned from the war in the south, or had died from illness or starvation, but in many others the occupants were alive but staying almost motionless, hour after hour, to preserve their dying strength.
In the low-caste district close to the foot of the thundering Tearfall something had corrupted a warehouse full of black rye, sickening many of the already hungry residents and driving them to acts of madness so disturbing that the Queen’s Teeth, Utuk’ku’s private guard, had been dispatched by the War Council to close off the entire neighborhood. The queen’s elite guard sealed many houses with the howling tenants still inside; even after the noises finally ceased, nobody went near them. Viyeki had passed through the district once after the madness struck. Now he went no small distance out of his way to avoid it.
But even on the second tier, site of Viyeki’s own house and the mansions of other noble families, the distress of his people had become all too evident. Even the privileged clerics and Celebrant officials employed in the queen’s palace were growing emaciated, the skin of their faces almost transparent over the bones. Fear was everywhere, hanging over the city like smoke. Akhenabi’s great casting and Suno’ku’s raid had failed. The Northmen had not fled, the queen slept on, and the Order of Sacrifice had dwindled to a few hundred. And hour after hour, the pounding of the great ram thundered through Nakkiga’s silent streets.
But for the Tearfall and the temple bells, the city has gone completely silent, Viyeki noted. But that is our nature. He felt both despair and a kind of helpless love for his people. When we are threatened, we turn inward. We close ourselves in, we sink into the dark. We survive. But when survival is the only goal, what do the survivors become?
This city of Nakkiga, he reflected, was like one of the cave-borers—blind, cattle-sized crustaceans that made their home in the deepest, dark parts of the mountain, seldom seeing any light. As with all their kind, the cave-borers carried their skeletons on the outsides of their bodies, and even when they were dying they gave no outward sign: the many-legged things would stagger onward, still acting out the patterns of life, until they simply stopped in place, like a wagon with a broken axle, and never moved again—apparently whole on the outside, but utterly dead within.
Is that to be the fate of our city, the lights going out one by one, never to be lit again? The fate of our entire people? To stumble blindly forward, dying with every step, until at last we simply cease to move?