The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5)

The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5) Page 327

The magnificent cities of the goblinkin vanish in cave-ins so massive that the land above is irrevocably altered. Rivers of molten fire pour in to burn away what survives.

Adica had seen the skrolin cities. She had known they existed. Perhaps she and the others had not comprehended the scope of the destruction they would unleash. Yet if they had known, would they have gone ahead anyway? He could not bear to think that she might have, so it was a mercy that pain blinded him, hammered him, until he could not think.

But he could still see.

Rivers run deep beneath the Earth, flooded with fire. This is the blood of the Earth. These are the ancient pathways that mold land and sea and weave the fabric of the world. Far away down the threads woven through the depths of the Earth by the fire rivers lie intelligences of an order both keener and slower than his own, sensing the measure of time in whose passing a human life spans nothing more than the blink of an eye.

Their minds touch his down the pathways of fire. Their thoughts burn into him.

You. Are. The. One. We. Seek.

The toll of their words rings in his head like the clamor of bells oh so slow, slower than the respiration of the skrolin.

Tell. Us. What. You. Know.

They peel away his memories, which are opaque to him but somehow clearly seen by these ancient minds for whom the unfolding of a tree from sapling to a great decayed trunk fallen in the forest flies as swiftly as a swallow through a lady’s hall at wintertide. He catches glimpses of their sight as they pillage his memories: the glittering archway that Adica wove; brave Laoina with her staff; wise Falling-down; crippled Tanioinin; the veiled one and the fearsome lion women; doomed Hehoyanah and Hani’s mocking smile; dying Horn; the camaraderie of Shevros and Maklos who took him across the white path which marks the border of Ashioi lands.

He weeps, because he knows all that he loved is lost to him not just because it is fled across the span of years but because the old ones are tearing those memories away as they search. They are not done with him yet.

Will. The. Weaving. Save. Us. Or. Doom. Us.

They meant well, he says, but they killed more than they saved. They caused immeasurable devastation.

Ah!

They speak. They confer for hours, for days, for weeks, for months, for years, or for an instant only. He can’t measure them.

This. Is. What. We. Needed. To. Know. Now. We. Can. Act.

They withdraw. On the wind of their leaving he sees beyond the borders of the Earth where the cosmos yawns, immense and terrifying. He cries out in fear and wonder because this abyss is both beginning and end, a circle that turns back in on itself. He hears its voice, not male or female and as vast as eternity: I am what I was and what I am now and what I will be.

And woke with jumbled, painful memories that faded into a merciful haze. All was gone, veiled and shrouded.

He was still lying on the floor of the pit, and he was so tremendously thirsty. The skrolin waited beside him as if no time had passed and yet by the measure of his thirst he thought that hours had passed or a day, but it was impossible to know. He found the bowl of water and gulped it down, and that gave him the strength to eat half the remaining clavas with the manners of a man, not a beast.

At length, he croaked out a word, and the skrolin tapped and rubbed the ground and each other in response.

“Where do you go?” asked Gold-skin, who now spoke for the others. “What do you see?”

Only broken images remained in his head, which was beginning to hurt again. “A terrible fire destroyed your city. What happened after that I do not know.”

“We know. We know. The tale passes from one to the next down the long watches. First the survivors fight for many watches, each with the others, one guild against the next. After long and long the fighting exhausts the few who are left and it is agreed that some will tunnel turnward and some will tunnel antiturnward. Long and long we seek in the depths, but the shining city is gone and so some speak of it as only a story. Across many watches an archive is collected, things found among ruins, in hidden corners, but the archive remains closed to us, as if it never existed. So the quarrels begin again. The shining city is a story only. It is the truth. No one can agree. Now we are scattered. The talismans are dead. The archives are lost to us without the key. This is how you find us, with your story of the shining city. We wish to believe. We fear to believe. Is it true?”

“It is true.”

All around they stamped their feet and tapped and clicked until Gold-skin lifted the dull armband it had once worn and everyone hushed.

“Proof,” it said. “Bring one from the archives. Bring one. Bring two. Bring three. That will be proof.”