The Crow (57 page)

That night, he spoke to Ire. The crow had some observations of his own.

They fight everywhere,
he said.
I fly here and I fly there, and all I see is people fighting. Dogmen and others. Many like those you fought today. Others too: I have been listening to the Hull-talk. I think that the Light has a hand in this, as much as the other Dark Master.

Do you?
Hem couldn't keep the surprise out of his voice. Ire had changed much in his recent time on his own; he wouldn't have thought like this a few weeks ago.

Yes, yes. There are other things moving, but it is all very messy. I cannot tell what might happen. We should be well out of here.

Hem said nothing.

All these fights make it easier for us, I think. They will not be looking out for a missing boy; you will slip through the cracks. But it is getting worse. It is like the quake, you can feel that something is going to happen.

Hem knew that Ire was right, and his heart sank.
But I haven't found Zelika,
he said.

If you can't find her tomorrow,
said Ire,
you will have to leave her behind.

The next day Hem volunteered for any task going. Some snouts were sent up and down the lines all day, carrying notes from one Hull captain to another, and so were not corralled in their particular blocks. To his chagrin, Hem was considered too stupid to trust with messages. Slasher's simpleness had been a useful cover, but now he cursed his luck. But there were other, dirtier jobs that captains were happy to give him, which allowed him at least a little freedom of movement.

He had decided to risk feeling for Zelika as they marched; this way he might be able to identify at least which block she marched with. It was very difficult: he had to make a very strong shield, and Hulls walked close by, especially watchful now. And every day he was more tired. Doggedly and patiently he made as strong a shield as he was able, and after recovering from the fatigue this induced in him, began to feel delicately about him.

At first there was nothing: no trace at all of the Zelika-glow he had felt twice before. Could she have been killed in the past few days? But he had checked every corpse he could, to make sure it wasn't Zelika. With a clutch of panic, he ran over in his mind the pitiful bodies he had seen. Some had been so badly hurt it was very difficult to tell who they had been. Always some detail – a hand, the shape of a foot – had reassured him it wasn't his friend. Perhaps he had missed something: he hadn't been able to keep track of every death.

He tried again, and this time, with a wash of relief, caught a tiny flicker he recognized. It was, he thought with a stab of excitement, very close: much closer than he had sensed before. He peered cautiously through the identical heads that bobbed in front of him.

That morning there had been some confusion as they began their march, and the Sjug'hakar Im snouts weren't marching in their usual order. The Blood Block was behind the Tusks, snouts who scarred their forearms with a crude cross. The Tusks usually marched six blocks behind, and were one of the blocks that Hem had thought might contain Zelika. In front of the Tusks was the Knife Block, a group he had crossed off his list. Farther ahead were the snouts who had joined them on the road.

Hem contained his agitation, fearful of betraying himself. Then he tried again. This time he was able to focus his searching a little better, and the trace was stronger. He had finally found her. Zelika was one of the Tusks. He narrowed his searching still more, trying to locate exactly where she was, feeling among the other snouts. At last, with triumph, he managed it. She was three rows ahead, four from the left. So close.

Hem was trembling by now, and exhausted. He relaxed his magery, and looked dazedly about him, conscious of his surroundings for the first time in what seemed like hours. The hairs bristled on his neck: they were at last approaching the walls of Dagra.

They had stopped climbing and now marched along a broad road flagged with red stone that drove straight through a vast, rocky plateau. Hardly anything grew there but a few stunted trees and bushes, and the entire plateau was studded with encampments of soldiers. To his left was a wide lake of black water, fed by a sluggish river, and black reeds rattled in the cold winter winds.

The city walls loomed high in the dull sunlight, built of the hard, red stone of the mountains. Hem studied them uneasily as they drew closer: he could see only one gate, and that was well guarded. The walls themselves were impassable, dropping thirty spans sheer to the plains below. Even at this distance he could feel their power: the entire barrier was also a vigilance, each stone of it sensate and aware. As they drew closer, Hem saw Dagra clearly for the first time. He stared, his heart plummeting to his feet, and his courage shriveled.

The city was shrouded in fumes and ragged mists that twisted idly in the icy winds, obscuring its battlements. The vapors briefly tore open to reveal a snaggled roofline or a tower as sharp as a gimlet, before hiding them again in veils that distorted perception so they seemed even more ghastly – impossible pinnacles or bridges arcing over abysses of shadow. The stench of sorcery was thick and bitter, drying out Hem's mouth so that he could barely swallow.

He longed to turn away, to crawl into a hole and hide from the monstrous awareness that stood before him, but he couldn't tear his eyes from it. It drew his gaze as a snake did its prey, and he was helpless to resist. For the first time Hem fully realized the folly of his hopes: such might as he saw before him would suffer no defeat. The city saw everything, and knew everything, and brooked no rebellion. Not even a mouse could escape its thrall.

As he stared, the vapors swirled and revealed the spike of the Iron Tower thrusting arrogantly above the battlements of the citadel. He quailed at the sight of it, of this stronghold within a stronghold: it seemed to him like a cruel, massive blade whose very existence wounded the sky. The tower's lower levels were buttressed with massively ridged shoulders of iron that bled long trails of rust, and its innumerable wards and keeps and parapets and towers drew up above them, one inside the other, black rows of fanged rock.

Unwillingly, drawn by a fascinated loathing, Hem's gaze traveled up its jagged heights to the tower's bitter pinnacle, where a long white blade pierced the clouds. A stray sunbeam caught the steel and it flashed, stabbing Hem's eyes with a malignant brilliance. He blinked, breaking the bewitchment, and almost fell over. He was so stupefied he scarcely noticed the kick and curse his stumble earned him from the snout marching next to him.

Numbly he marched with the snouts toward the vast iron gate. As they reached it, it drew up with a dreadful groaning of metal, slowly opening like a huge maw. Some of the snouts began to cheer, but their voices fell raggedly on the heavy air and were quickly swallowed in silence. Hem shut his eyes as he passed under the keystone, feeling its shadow crush him like a blow. He was so dizzy he could barely see. With a dull, massive clang, the gate fell shut behind him.

XXIII

T
HE
I
RON
T
OWER

Hem stumbled along, trying to keep up with the snouts, his legs shaking. He looked dumbly from side to side, all thought of action quenched in horror. They marched along a broad avenue of somber grandeur. It was one of the major thoroughfares that radiated from the Iron Tower, and down its center and along each side ran rows of unadorned columns of polished stone or metal, so high their tops were lost in the noxious mists that choked the air of the citadel. The buildings on either side were tall and windowless, sheer faces of polished rock that stared blindly over them, with doors of bronze or copper or brass.

Before long they turned aside into much smaller and meaner streets, from which ran narrow, dark, evil-smelling alleyways and lanes. A metallic clamor rose to meet them and soon was so loud that Hem covered his ears, half-deafened. They were in the Street of the Weaponsmiths. Sulphurous blasts of fire seared his face as they passed huge forges, where hundreds of hammers clanged on hundreds of anvils, and huge bellows worked by teams of half-naked men blew the furnaces whitehot, sending spirals of sparks whirling up into the cavernous darkness. Tiny figures, shining with sweat in the heat, beat and tempered to bitter edges the weapons for the Dark's rapacious armories. Hem saw swords and shortswords, spears, halberds, pikes, and javelins, maces and warhammers and axes, hauberks and cuirasses, helms and greaves and vambraces, armors of chain mail and scale and plate, stacked in their hundreds against the walls.

This was the heart of the Nameless One's war machine. His slaves toiled in the mines far to the south, digging out bright ore from its secret places, and dragging it on heavy wagons to the metalsmiths of Dagra. Hem was momentarily staggered by the scale of the industry. He thought of the weapon forges he had seen in Turbansk: they too had been places of flame and iron, a labor bent on creating instruments of death. They had not filled him with horror. Why not? he thought now, staring appalled through the doors of Dagra's forges. Why not?

They left the foundries behind and wound through other districts: streets filled with leather makers and weavers and cobblers, bakeries and potteries, wagoneries and wheelwright shops, knife grinders and laundries, stables that housed oxen and horses and the metal-armored irzuk. For the Nameless One required all these things as well, and their preparation kept busy his thousands of slaves.

These streets were crowded with soldiers of all kinds, and men and women in rich clothes, flanked by slaves or carried in sedans, for whom everyone else had to stand aside. Hem also passed hawkers crying their wares and people haggling, hod carriers and soilmen, drunkards spilling out of mean, foulsmelling hostelries, barefoot slaves scurrying on errands, and ragged beggars. Many of these bore the marks of terrible injuries, and Hem guessed they had once been soldiers.

After an hour, Hem was totally lost: Dagra was as bewildering as Turbansk. But here no one stopped to gossip, no one fingered bright silks or lingered by the jasmine stalls of the flower sellers, or gathered to clap the antics of jugglers and street minstrels. He suddenly saw what Turbansk might become, now that Imank had taken it, and was swept by a terrible sadness.

The Hulls hurried the snouts along, keeping them under the leash of sorcery so they would not be scattered in the chaotic streets. Hem noticed that most people got quickly out of the way when they saw the snouts. He struggled to keep up; each step was a torment. The foul air was hard to breathe, and the sky was throbbing with strange currents and lights, as if a storm were about to burst over their heads. At last they reached a grim barracks, story upon story of windowless stone, where they were to be housed.

They were each given some hard biscuit and dried meat, and directed into low, dark dormitories lit by smoking oil lamps, the floors covered with filthy straw, on which were placed rows of bug-ridden pallets where they were to sleep. The snouts were released from the Hulls' control. Shaking their heads, too tired even to make their usual boasts and jokes or to inspect their new quarters, they sank down on their beds and stretched out their aching legs, grateful at last to stop and to have a place to lie down that was softer than the bare ground.