The Fall of Waterstone

Waterstone

The cunning word, the bright eye, the quick hand, all these areseidhr. But the word means much more, for it encompasses the weirding wonders performed by the Wise, the natural laws which seem miraculous to those unknowing, the powers of the gods themselves, and the secret spark in every living thing. There is still more contained within—loneliness lives there, and the will to surpass one’s own mortal self…

—The Saga of Icevein

Our other traveling companions had been freed as well, and there were two white Northern horses to bear Arn and me across the green fields and pastures. Though I was glad enough at the prospect—it was some distance to the shining city—I also could not suppress a flinch when the Elder-bred mount given to my use turned her head.

Her mild gaze reminded me of Farsight, the mare most likely lost in the wrack and ruin of Nithraen. If she had escaped the city’s collapse and eluded the orukhar—not to mention the great wyrm making its home in the now-darkened caves—she would still have to contend with winter’s bony, ravenous grasp, no longer held back from the hills over the Elder city.

Arn hardly noticed my hesitation, and fairly tossed me into the saddle. Perhaps she was simply delighted to be breathing free air again; she vaulted atop her own horse with enviable ease.

A bright nooning lay over the great green cup-valley holding Laeliquaende, called Waterstone in our southron tongue. Once it had been a mountain-girt lake, so deep the tallest spires might have only pricked its surface from underneath, but those days were long past. Now broad stone-paved roads, proud cousins to the ones running near the Eastronmost Steading of Lady Hajithe or from the great gate of Nithraen to Dorael, spread in lazy patterns from the shining city to outlying steadings and halls, running alongside several leftover brooks and streamlets. Copses clothed in dark evergreen or vivid autumnal leaf dotted the plain, and though the depths of new winter—the most grievous time of year, after the solstice heralding sunlight’s lengthening but before any melt is possible—held the land outside in its iron-iced palm, the Elder somehow kept such murderous weather at bay. While the trees might change color they did not shed their robes; a thin veining of green remained at the heart of each leaf, as in the center of every yellowed grassblade at Nithraen.

Only Arneior and I were granted mounts. The wolves of Naras made a cortege about us, the Elder who had accompanied Aeredh from the riven city both before and behind as well as a small contingent of the Hidden City’s green-and-gold-armored guards. All in all it was a grand sight, but I felt no wonder.

I was too busy clinging to a saddle of design far different than the southron kind or even the equipage of the Northerners visiting Dun Rithell. The cavalry of Taeron Goldspear was legendary, and their tack reflected all the art of the Elder. The seat was surprisingly comfortable, the mare’s gait so easy I hardly had to touch the reins—which were in scarred Efain’s hands anyway—but my head throbbed abominably and the steady motion threatened to make me ill.

Were I to retch the only thing produced would be Elder winterwine, and though that drink does not burn with bile during an upward journey it also does not taste half so good as upon its downward path. Besides, the Elder do not suffer such physical upsets, and my pride, though much smaller, would not permit it either.

Not if I could help it.

Each hoof-fall chimed upon pale stone, and to the others it must have seemed musical indeed. Arneior suffered Soren to take her own reins and glanced often in my direction as we rode, each time wearing a disbelieving smile. It was not quite the bemused grin she displayed after our ride upon antlered winter-deer, but I understood her joy.

After all, we had survived the ruin of an entire Elder city, endured the Wild, the Mistwood, and the Glass, not to mention the killing cold of the Marukhennor. Orukhar and liches and the many-legged weavers of the dark woods were left far behind; now we rode white horses under an achingly blue winter sky. There were Elder about, and most sang as they wandered or attended to vineyard and field. Some danced too, apparently from a manner of overwhelming joy, like my sister Astrid upon certain summer days.

Efain gave me many a curious glance; he hardly needed to guide my mount. He had his sword again, as did the other Northerners. Their black-clad forms were blots against white stone and rolling green; I made no effort to inquire after his health.

I was too busy keeping my stomach from wringing itself dry.

As we drew nearer Laeliquaende’s walls, the music intensified. No doubt my companions found it sweet, but discord lurked under the notes. I tried to discern whether it was simply the pain in my head, spilling down my neck and radiating outward from my stiffened spine, tainting the melody so. Yet each time I gained some equanimity the vision of my charred, broken home rose and every tradeweight of pleasure, no matter how small, vanished.

I shudder to remember that ride. Though it stood wide, the great southronmost gate of Waterstone—the color of horn and bound with mellow brassy metal—appeared to me merely a larger cell-door, and the streets beyond resounded with that jarring, discordant noise. Houses with steeply pitched or rounded but always brightly tiled roofs did not crowd each other too closely, gardens peeped through filigreed gates of powdery metal or stood open to the admiration of passersby, fountains played in every courtyard or square. Each building seemed not to have been built but grown, trimmed and shaped as it rose from the earth itself, and they were all different shades of paleness—nacre to riverfoam, summer cloud to the fleece of a spring lamb, horn to parchment, and all the different hues of bleached linen or wool.

Even the towers, rising to piercing spires or bulb-tipped, graciously melded with their surrounding buildings instead of looming over them. Elder crowded in many a doorway, their gazes lambent and their high-pointed ears poking through hair of every shade, a few even ruddy as my shieldmaid. They all bear a certain similarity, the Children of the Star, and to see it repeated in a crowd is to suddenly doubt one’s own mortal lineaments.

The Northerners smiled as they walked, even Efain’s mien far less forbidding than usual. Daerith the harpist was at the head of our group with Aeredh, conferring as they walked; each Elder was in the flowing, comfortable costume of the Hidden City.

It should have been glorious. In an Elder settlement, a traveler’s weariness falls away. There were even children about, though few compared to the number of adults and looking a little less… well, alien than their parents and teachers. Indeed, the very young among them may oft be mistaken for bright, laughing mortal younglings, like my own beloved Astrid when she was but four or five summers high.

The Elder are born knowing much, ’tis said, but also arrive from the womb amused at the world’s follies.

Occasionally pairs of littles darted toward our group to hand over flowers; Eol was granted a nosegay instead of a single bloom and thanked the black-haired child who handed it to him with a grave, smiling bow.

None approached me, though—or Arn. My shieldmaid viewed all with an interested air, and her spearblade shone bright as the armor of the guards. She seemed to be having a fine time, her hair alight in sunshine, and hers was the only face that did not seem sickly or vaguely malignant, hiding some secret purpose.

And I? Every hoof-fall was a torment, the endless singing scraped my already frayed nerves, and salt damp collected along my lower back, under my arms, in my palms. The red coral beads in my braids were chips of ice, as if fragments of winter still clung to me.

“My lady Solveig?” Efain had finally decided to address me. He dropped back slightly, the reins clasped in one half-gloved hand, and the mare did not find this at all amiss, plodding placidly along. “It has been some few days. Are you well?”

How could I be?Yet I essayed a smile, though it felt more like a rictus on a frozen corpse. “Well enough. Was your captivity endurable, my lord Northerner?”

“Well, Gelad would not stop pacing, and Soren fiddling with bits of leatherwork, and Karas fretting when there was fresh news of our captain, or no news at all.” Efain’s scars—one bisecting his eyebrow, the other along his jaw—were pale compared to a warrior’s weathering upon the rest of his face. “Even the Elder held with us seemed a trifle out of countenance. The folk are passing cautious here.”

“So it seems.” I could find nothing else to say.

After a short, excruciating pause, he cleared his throat. “I must offer you our thanks,” he said, quietly. “’Tis a wondrous deed, drawing forth a heartseeker. Eol owes you his life.”

Then he may take it, and use it elsewhere. I wish to go home.It was a child’s response, and childish anger fair threatened to choke me. The wolves of Naras had sharp ears; I wondered that they did not hear the jangling in the music. There were pipes nearby, and other instruments I might have enjoyed but for their sawing at every inch of skin.

“I am an ally to the house of Naras.” Even to myself I sounded stiff, though not nearly as brusque as Eril my father when beset by flowery words he suspected a snare within. “Such was my duty, and I sought merely to perform it. No thanks are necessary.”

“’Tis courteous to give, even when unnecessary.”Efain used the Old Tongue, that ancestor of the southron dialects. We had journeyed long before they had any intimation I understood their language, being tutored since childhood by both Idra and my mother; perhaps he thought me a liar or worse for refraining.

Arn and I were alone among these men, and every small advantage to be carefully hoarded. Now we were one less.

So I made no answer. My hands tightened, inked marks upon my wrists filling with sharp sweet almost-pain. The road was rising, and we approached the heart of Waterstone upon a wave of limping, agonized melody.

Efain did not speak again. I shut my eyes, and prayed the ride would end soon.