Of Sand and Snow, page 22
part #5 of Wings of War Series
She’d had bleaker thoughts on her mind, then, while she’d allowed the child she most cherished to be taken away from her for the mere chance at a world in which her people did not cower to the whips of man.
At the memory, a little of Hana’s enthusiasm faded, bearing her thoughts back to earth. She found herself closer to the edge of the cliff than might have been prudent given the wind, and she retreated to a safe distance before turning around. The cave’s mouth gaped before her—cleverly disguised in the overhangs of stone shelvings that made it difficult to find unless one already knew exactly where to look—but what caught Hana’s attention were the paired males on either side of it, leaning against the stone of the wall behind them as they stared at her in equal surprise. She recognized them after a moment, taking note of their markings—white stripes along the arms of the one on the left, and a splash of scarlet across the chest of the right—remembering them to be among the group summoned to the caverns in times of danger. She didn’t recall there usually being guards posted at the entrance of the Under Caves, however, and she did her best to cover her astonishment at seeing new faces already by looking to Sassyl for an explanation once the old male stepped out into the day, blinking and shading his face against the light.
As always, the spymaster was prompt in his answer.
“Ma’zer and Zelys are here as a precaution, my Queen,” he said with an impatient sort of huff, gesturing to the left and right respectively. “With so many gathered nearby, it was a necessity. Had you waited for us, I would have made sure to warn you of their presence.”
The words “my Queen” seemed to shake the younger males from their shock, because each dropped to one knee, dipping their heads in her direction.
“Queen Shas-hana Rhan,” the one on the right—Zelys, Hana thought—managed to get out. “It is an honor and a… a surprise.” He lifted his head just long enough to glance at Sassyl, who only grumbled again. “We were not expecting your arrival so soon. Had we known, we would have made better preparations for—”
“No need,” Hana interrupted him, adopting the regal smile and royal tone her mother had instilled in her so long ago. She waved a hand, gesturing that they stand. “Rise, both of you. Do not blame Sassyl for a lack of warning. This was my doing. He has told me most of those who would answer my summons have already arrived. It is time I met their bravery with my own.”
She chose her words carefully, and to good effect. As the pair pressed themselves to their feet, she could see the approving gleam in their amber eyes.
“They will be grateful for your words, my Queen,” the other—Ma’zer—spoke up just as Uhsula and her helpers stepped out of the cave. Apparently Sassyl had chased her ahead of them. “Those who have been here longest are starting to grow restless, I believe.”
Hana inclined her head in understanding. She’d feared as much. It was half the reason she’d wanted to show herself now, rather than wait. Her existence was half-a-myth already to so many of her people. For them to rise to her call only to be met with nothing but assurances that her orders would come eventually did not sit well with her. She owed them proof, at the very least. Proof that she lived. Proof that she recognized their bravery.
Proof that she was seeking a freedom for them that their people had never before so much as reached for…
Again, the realization of what she was about to face made Hana’s stomach twist into a knot, but she kept her smile and poise as masterfully as a Queen ought to.
“Then we shan’t keep them waiting any longer, I think,” she said, looking to Sassyl now. “Lead the way, spymaster. Take me to my army.”
XVIII
In the twenty minutes it took to reach the encampment, Hana thought she managed a good job of steeling herself for the coming challenge. All around her the world insisted on trying to distract her. The wind buffeted them against the cliffs. The shrieking calls of birds of prey echoed down to her from the outcroppings overhead. The loose stone shifting and slipped beneath her clawed feet as they moved. Just the same, Hana did everything she could to keep her mind at ease. This would be the first time, after all, that she addressed more than a few dozen. At her coronation, after the Last-Queen’s passing nearly thirty years prior, there had been a crowd. The females of the old families, soldiers Sassyl trusted, runners who would carry news of her rise to the throne to every corner and crag of the mountains. Then, addressing them hadn’t been so hard. She’d prepared herself, had mastered the grief of her mother’s death and managed to stand before the packed cavern as a brave, young Queen bearing her line’s lasting ambition to bring her people out from under the boot of mankind. Hana drew, now, on that last and only experience, trying to recall how she’d felt, how she’d willed herself to be strong.
Then Zelys offered her an assisting hand, pulling her up to crest a boulder that had partially blocked their path, and Hana felt all her bravery plummet away in an instant.
Never before, not even in her greatest dreams of freedom, could she have imagined the sight of ten thousand atherian warriors gathered there before her, writhing like a single living thing against the cliff face. The number was too staggering to fathom, even as she witnessed it for herself, too stunning to comprehend. Everywhere she looked it seemed the lizard-kind were going about their business, the sprawl of bodies largely divided into the various tribes who’d sent their champions in response to her summons. Females made up the vast majority of their number, of course, but Hana still saw dozens of males in every section of the camp, standing taller and broader than their counterparts. Their minimal garbs ranged with every clan. Knit plates of the long grass that could be found in the very bottom reaches of the mountains. Patched swaths of woven rodent pelts. Larger hides of bigger animals, from desert cats to goats to what might even have been horses. One group, a smaller tribe lingering along the lowest edge of the army, appeared to have donned what looked like pieces of the carapace of the great scorpions that prowled the dunes of the true desert to the west.
“Breathe, child. They are but people. Your people.”
Hana started at Uhsula’s voice in her ear, turning to find that the old seer had been carefully hauled up after her and was now standing on her left, leaning into the arms of one of the acolytes. Despite her blindness her dull eyes were sweeping over the gathering before them, taking the vastness of their number in as though she could see the horde all too clearly.
Hana, too, looked back out over the tribes. As she did, she saw that their little group was being noticed. She clung to Uhsula’s words while those closest to them, some fifty feet down the mountain, started to look around and point, passing word back through to those further beyond them. Like a spreading spell the dull buzz of conversation and activity began to fade, silence sweeping across the army as though carried by the wind that still rushed all around them.
Within a minute the gathered atherian were so still and so quiet, they might have blended in as ten thousand stone statues among the cliffs.
“Now, my Queen,” Sassyl said gently. “Let them understand the great cause for which they have been gathered.”
Hana, in response, opened her mouth to speak.
Nothing came out.
She did not have to wonder what it was that had struck her dumb. She’d feared this moment, feared it from the instant she’d made the decision to show herself. Ten thousand of her people. Ten thousand. She knew her kingdom was vast, and she even understood to a degree that those gathered before her were nothing more than the smallest portion of the greater populace for which she was responsible.
All the same, the awesomeness of their presence weighed down on her, trapping her words within her chest.
Then, though, Hana met the eye of one figure, one female atherian who happened to be standing at the forefront of the army. She stood a little shorter than most of her brethren, in tattered hides that hung to her knees, a club of wood and stone limp in one hand. Meeting her gaze, what Hana saw there took her utterly aback. The female was not watching with confusion or suspicion, as Hana had feared. She wasn’t even staring in surprise, as might have been understandable.
Rather, there, glowing as bright in the atherian’s eyes as the First-Born hanging high above them in the empty sky, was nothing but innocent, absolute awe.
The sight made Hana’s heart swell with pride. In that moment, she understood that her struggles and sacrifices had not been without value. In that moment, she understood that even as half-a-myth she commanded the respect of some, if not all. She had power, she saw in that female’s face. She had the ability to lead these people.
She just had to take hold of it.
And with that thought, the words began to flow.
“Bravest children of the Daystar!” she called out, her voice rising above the gusting air and echoing back over the empty vastness of the cliffs. “I am Shas-hana Rhan, Queen of the Under Caves, daughter of Last-Queen Shas-ronah Rhan!” She spread her arms and raised her chin, taking a step forward as the light reflected off the obsidian crown atop her head, scattering reflections across the rocks before her. “Firstly, I owe you a great debt! Despite what I imagine to be hardy reservations, despite what could only have been a mere hope, you came! You answered my call, and have gathered together with nothing more than a promise of my presence! But I am here, now! I am present! For far, far too long my line has lain in hiding in the deepest shadows of the mountains! We ruled as mere ghosts of the leaders you deserved, all for fear of the wrath of man should he discover our existence!” She didn’t have to fake the anger that spasmed through her jaw. “No longer, though! NO LONGER!”
She had to pause then, as the response from the gathered army took her by surprise. As her last words rebounded over the mountain face, a building sound, like a flooding river, began to creep out of the silence. Before long, it had pitched into a deafening roar of approval, the shrill war cries of the females drowning out the deeper bellowings of the fewer males.
“Some of you suspect, perhaps, what you have been called for!” Hana continued, raising her voice again as the cheer finally began to ebb. “Some of you may already have heard whispers of the telling the great seer, Uhsula—” she gestured back at the ancient female behind her “—delivered to us at the behest of the Night-Eye, twenty summers past! For those of you who have not, though, it is high time you hear it for yourself!”
She took a moment, breathing deeply and settling herself.
Then she began to recite, announcing the prophetic lines she’d long since committed in iron memory:
“Of one kind, and yet of another,
wings and wind bear him forth.
From chains comes his second birth
and never shall he stand for them.
Child of the Daystar, he will speak the language,
and be the speaker of his people.
To leave and then return,
bearing a woman of ice and snow on his arm.”
When she was done, the quiet of the atherian held, and Hana took advantage of it to press on.
“A child—my child—was given over to the world of man in the days after this telling was delivered to us!” she said, allowing just the right amount of grief to leak out into her voice. “I feared for him—I still fear for him—but the gods have seen fit to grant us glimpses of his life among the humans many times over the years! He has grown strong! He has grown fierce! With time he has become a force both feared and respected among their realms!” She stopped for a moment, allowing her words to sink in before smiling victoriously over the crowd.
“And now, Uhsula of the Other Worlds has spoken once again! Even as I stand here before you, that child approaches, returned to us at the Daystar’s will, now forged into a champion who will lead us out of the shackles man has cast about our limbs!”
This time Hana was quite sure she would go deaf as the army erupted into a thundering cheer of exhilaration and anticipation. The sound washed over her and her little group like a wave, made solid in its volume. She had to keep herself from pressing her hands to her ears—as one of the acolytes did behind her—and high above them shale and pebbles shivered and slipped into several momentary streams when the clamor shook them loose of their precarious positions.
“Some of you may not believe me!” Hana called out as soon as she thought she might be heard again. “I do not blame you! I have been absent from your lives in a way that will pain me till the day I take my final breath! You have no reason to see the truth in my words! I have yet again only given you assurances and promises, with little to present to you as proof!” She bowed her head apologetically. “It shames me, in no small part, to address you empty-handed… However,” she looked up again, fiercely this time, “the proof is coming! To the south, the cities of man are falling! Cyro is no more!”
At her words, the wind itself seemed to die. Not a sound was raised from the onlookers, for which she couldn’t blame them. Cyro. The cursed place. The hunger that swallowed any who braved approach it.
She had been equally shocked when Uhsula had said those words.
“I speak the truth, but I have greater news still!” She raised her hands again, as though to embrace their number. “That child returns! He returns, felling the pillars of man as he claws his way back to us! But he does not come back alone! Thousands of our lost are with him, and joined by the children of those who were long taken from us!”
Again nothing broke the quiet at first. The astonishment at this announcement was palpable, visible in the eyes of every atherian Hana could see in the front line of the army. Then, from the masses, a single voice rose up, a keen, individual wale of grief mixed with relief. Hana found the female who’d cried out as she fell to her knees, most of those around her stepping away out of respect as she clung to herself. She was older, perhaps around Hana’s own age, and the way she wrapped her arms about her body spoke of emotions with which Hana was all too familiar. Soon, others began to cry and call out. Dozens, scores, then hundreds. Many yelled out questions while others fell like the first female, or merely stared at the ground in disbelief.
“It pains me greatly, but I have no further answers for you!” Hana spoke to them all with a sad shake of her head, her words calming the fervor of the crowd again. “I can only give you hope, as cruel as that may be, and offer a glimpse of the potential future of our people! Cyro falls, and our champion has only just begun his war! Uhsula has seen in her dreams that the time approaches when he will arrive at the foot of our mountains, a day for which we must be prepared! He will have need of our numbers! He will have need of our strength and our lives! That is why I have seen fit to summon you here! That is why you have suffered the heat of the days and the cold of the nights for me! I made a choice, twenty summers past, which was no more than a desperate swipe at the flame that might have been our freedom! As the years have slipped by, that flame has grown! Soon, it will be time to seize it, to wield it as a weapon for he who would see us be more than what we are, more than WHAT WE HAVE EVER BEEN!”
The cheers returned at that, trembling over the ranges. Hana could even feel the boulder beneath her clawed feet vibrating.
“DOES THAT MEAN YOU ARE WITH ME?!” she bellowed.
The answering roar was instantaneous.
“DOES THAT MEAN YOU WILL BEAR ARMS FOR YOU CHAMPION?”
Again, the response was like thunder in the clear day.
“Then you are truly the greatest and bravest warriors of our time!” Hana answered their approval more evenly. “See to it that you rest, these next days, and prepare! When the time comes, we will not hesitate! When the day arrives, we will march out into the world, and end the horrors that have been committed against our kind for too—!”
Abruptly, she stopped. A hand, trembling and weak, had clasped her about the arm, leaning heavily into her. With a mix of anger and confusion, Hana whirled on Uhsula, intending to demand what she was doing.
The look on the seer’s face, though, the rage and fear layered into the grey-white of her blind eyes, choked off her question.
“Soldiers,” Uhsula hissed, her thin fingers clenching tighter about Hana’s elbow as she turned her head southward, lifting as though attempting to peer over the edge of the peaks high above them. “Soldiers of man. In the mountains.”
XIX
“I consider arrogance simultaneously among mankind’s greatest follies and greatest strengths. That confidence—that unwavering certainty of one’s actions and decisions—is not something I think I have ever experienced in my long years. I do not know if it is a difference of race, of upbringing, of experience, but regardless of the mechanism, I do not think there has been a single significant action in my life I have not questioned. Even Syrah—who I count second only to Talo in terms of humility among the great many humans I have met in my long life—falls the occasional victim—or beneficiary—of that unfathomable self-confidence. It has lent itself to a great many of her successes, in the decades we have been together.
Then again, it has just as distinctly lent itself to the vast majority of her most significant sufferings…”
— The Dragon of the North
Yres Ma’het did not know if he had ever been in a blacker mood. He felt like he’d been climbing for years, even if in reality he and his forces had only been among the Crags for three days now. Looking up, he knew the peaks were close, and it likely wouldn’t even be night before they crested these infernal ranges and started the easier descent down to the northern slopes.
All the same, Yres cursed the Sun above for his torment, glancing back to see how his soldiers were fairing.
Five thousand men followed him, some no more than a few paces behind, some a half-hour further down the mountain face. They moved at a crawl, largely due to the packs and provisions each had had no choice but to carry on their persons, but Yres still managed a triumphant snort at the sight of them. Their number alone was an indication of his own small victory. When he, Thesus, and Malyn had reached the Crags with the nine thousand men-at-arms they’d brought with them from Cyro, the three šef had had a vicious disagreement over how best to manage the cliffs. Thesus and Mayn—cowards that they were—insisted on traveling east into the Cienbal, looping around the mountains. On the other hand, Yres—who hated the desert heat more than any other true-born Percian or Southerner he knew—had tried to convince them that struggling over the Crags was vastly in their best interests. Water would be easier to find once they were out of the foothills, and what little game they might come across to supplement their rations could only amount to more than what the sandcats and dune scorpions they were likely to encounter in the sands would provide. Thesus and Mayn, of course, countered that they would have great trouble bringing their carts and horses with them over the peaks, and that the atherian would undoubtedly descend on them if they led an army into lizard-kind territory.
