Song Of Unmaking

He flexed his stiffened fingers and rose to a crouch. He had to stop then until the world stopped spinning. He drew deep breaths, though the air burned his lungs with cold.

When he was as steady as he was going to get, he crept forward through the sedge. The moonlight was very bright and its color was strange—as if the moon had turned to fire.

The hairs of his nape stood on end. He flung himself flat, just as the fire came down.

It struck with a roar that consumed everything there was. The earth heaved under him. A blast of heat shocked him, then a squall of scalding rain. He gagged on the reek of hot metal.

He lay blinded, deafened, and soaked through all his layers of rags and leather and furs. His skin stung with burns. For a long while he simply lay, clinging to the earth that had gone mercifully still again.

He suspected that he might be dead. Every account of the One God’s hell told of fire and darkness, heat and cold together, and the screams of the damned rising to such a pitch that the ears were pummeled into silence.

If he was dead, then the dead could feel bodily pain. Shakily he lifted himself to his elbows.

The sky was still raining stars. The river’s gleam was dulled—spattered with earth and mud and fragments that must be ash. The camp was a smoldering ruin.

All the horses were dead or dying, and the men were down in the ashes of their tents, writhing in agony or else terribly still. Even Euan’s dulled ears could hear the screams of the wounded—and from the sound, those wounds were mortal. The tents were shredded or, on the upriver side, completely gone. The earth gaped where they had been.

Euan’s clothes had been a mass of tatters even before the fire came down. What was fabric was scorched and what was fur was singed, but most of it was intact. Snow and sedge between them had protected him.

He bowed to the strength of the One God who had hurled a star out of the sky to defend His worshipper. He only had to hope that there was enough of him left to make it across the river—and enough provisions left in the camp to feed him before he went.

If nothing else, he could feast on horse meat. There would be a certain pleasure in that, considering how the imperials worshipped the beasts. He staggered erect and made his wobbling way down the hill to the remains of the camp.

None of the legionaries had escaped. Those few who had not died outright, Euan put out of their misery.

The stink of roasted meat made his stomach churn. When he sliced off a bit from a horse’s haunch, he found he could not eat it. He put it away thriftily in his traveling bag, then tried to forget he had it.

There was bread in the ashes of one of the fires on the camp’s edge. It was well baked and savory—a miracle of sorts. He disciplined himself to eat it in small bites, well spaced apart to spare his too long deprived stomach, as he prowled the ruins.

The blasted pit was still smoldering. Every grain of sense shouted at him to stay far away, but he could not make himself listen. It was as if a spell drew him to the place where the star had fallen.

Amid the embers and ash in the heart of the pit, something gleamed. It was absolute stupidity, but he found a way down the crumbling sides into the new-made and intoxicatingly warm bowl.

The star lay in the center in a bed of ash. In spite of the light he had seen, it was dark, lumpen and unlovely, an irregular black stone half the size of his clenched fist.

The heat of its fall was still in it. He had a firepot, stolen from a trader outside a town whose name he had never troubled to learn, and it was just large enough to hold the starstone.

The thing was shockingly heavy. He almost dropped the pot, but he caught it just in time. The weight of the heavens was in it.

It was much harder to climb out of the pit than it had been to go down into it. The sides were steep and slippery with mud and melting ice. Euan came dangerously close to surrendering—to sliding back to the bottom and lying there until death or daylight took him.

In the end it was not courage that got him out. It was pride. However he wanted to be remembered, it was not as the prince of the Calletani who gave up and died in a hole.

He lay on the edge, plastered with mud and gasping for breath. He had no memory of the climb, but his arms and legs were aching and his fingers stung.

Gingerly he rolled onto his back. The stars had stopped falling.

The one in his bag weighed him down as he rose. Wisdom might have persuaded him to drop it, but he had paid too dearly for it already. He stood as straight as he could under it.

There was still food to find and a river to cross. He scavenged a bag of flour that had been shielded by a legionary’s body, a wheel of cheese that was only half melted, two more loaves of bread that had been baking under stones and so were preserved from destruction, and a jar of thick, sweet imperial wine. There was more, but all the horses were dead and that was as much as he could carry.

He stopped to eat a little bread and nibble a bit of cheese. Near where he was sitting, the captain’s tent still stood, scorched but upright. The captain had come out when the fire fell—his body lay sprawled in front of the flap, crisped and charred, with the marks of rank still gleaming on his coat.

Inside the tent, something moved.

Euan sat perfectly still. It was only the wind. But if that was so, then the wind blew nowhere else. The night was calm. Even the moon seemed to be holding its breath.

A shape rose up out of the ashes. It was clothed in a glimmering garment, like something spun out of moonlight. When it stood upright, it stretched long arms and groaned, shaking off a scattering of ash and cooling embers.

The shimmer tore and slid away like the caul from a newborn calf. A man stood in the ashes, whole and unharmed, fixing glittering eyes on Euan. “You’re late,” he said.

Two

Euan was not often speechless. He did not often find himself face to face with a man he had never expected to meet in this of all places, either—still less a man who should have been dead a dozen times over.

“Gothard,” he said. His tone was as cold as the air. “There was a meeting? I must have missed the messenger.”

His sometime ally and cordial enemy looked him up and down with that particular flavor of arrogance which marked an imperial noble. By blood and looks he was only half of one, but his spirit did nothing by halves. “One of the patrols should have captured you days ago. How did you manage to escape?”

“Apologies,” said Euan, dry as dust. “Clearly I failed to do my duty—whatever that was.”

Gothard was barely listening, which did not surprise Euan in the least. “Every stone I scried showed the same thing—you in the legions’ hands, ready to be taken back to Aurelia for trial and inevitable execution. And yet you eluded them all. That’s interesting. Very.”

“I’m sure,” said Euan. He rose carefully, and not only because he was still weak. He did not trust this man at all. “I take it you weren’t a captive, either? Don’t tell me you’ve got the legions in your pay. That’s a fair trick, considering what you tried to do to their emperor.”

Who, he did not add, happened to be Gothard’s father. That particular family quarrel served Euan well. He was not about to take issue with it.

Gothard’s lip twisted. “Clearly you don’t understand how easy it is to get possession of legionaries’ gear if you happen to have allies in the ranks. Those were my men. I don’t suppose you’ve found any of them alive?”

“None who would want to stay that way,” Euan said. “Was that your star? Did you call it down?”

“Would I had such power,” Gothard said with an edge of honest envy. “This is a stroke of the gods. It cost me twenty men—but it gained me you. Maybe you’ll prove to be worth the exchange.”

Euan’s lips drew back from his teeth. “What makes you think I want anything to do with you?”

Gothard’s grin was just as feral and just as empty of humor. “Of course you do. I’m your kinsman—and I know the empire well. You can use me, just as I can use you.”

“I’m not taking you across the river,” Euan said. “You’re a traitor to your kin already. I doubt you’ll be any different on the other side of the border.”

“You know what I want,” Gothard said.

“You wanted to be emperor,” said Euan. “Now that’s failed. What’s next? A plot against the high king?”

“I don’t want to be king of the tribes,” Gothard said. “I’ll leave that for you. I want the throne of Aurelia, just as I always have. We haven’t failed, cousin. We’ve merely suffered a setback.”

Euan threw back his head and laughed until he choked. “A setback? All our men dead, the emperor not only alive but well, and the two of us hunted with every resource the empire can command—I call that a crashing defeat.”

“Do you?” said Gothard. “The emperor’s alive but not entirely well, the hunt has not succeeded in finding, let alone capturing either of us, and the empire’s magic is wounded to the heart. Do you know what it means that half a dozen horse mages are dead? They still have their Master, but only one other of the highest rank still lives, and I broke him before the Dance began.”