Song Of Unmaking

He straightened somewhat as Euan came through the door. The gladness in his eyes was quickly hooded.

That might have been simply because other guests had arrived before Euan. Two priests of the One stood in front of the king. Gothard perched on a stool, more or less between them.

Euan tried to breathe shallowly. No matter their age or rank, priests always stank of clotted blood and old graves. These were an old one and a young one, as far as he could tell. They stripped themselves of every scrap of hair, even to the eyelashes—or their rites did it for them—and they were as gaunt as the king and far less clean. Bathing for them was a sin.

The one who might have been older also might have been of high rank. He wore a necklace of infants’ skulls, and armlets pieced together of tiny finger bones. The other’s face and body were ridged with scars, so many and so close together that there was no telling what he had looked like before. Only his hands and feet were untouched, and those were smooth and seemed young. He was very holy, to have offered himself up for so much pain.

Euan’s mother was not in evidence, but there was a curtain behind his father, with a whisper of movement in it. She was there, watching and listening.

He breathed out slowly. Gothard grinned. He had been washed and shaved and made presentable, just as Euan had. Oddly, in breeks and plaid and with his chin shaven but his mustaches left to grow, he looked more like an imperial rather than less. In that country he was taller and fairer and blunter-featured than the rest of his kin. Here, he was a smallish dark man with a sharp, long-nosed face, playing at being one of the Calletani.

He seemed to be enjoying the game. “Don’t worry, cousin,” he said. “I’ve told them all about it. You don’t have to say a thing.”

“Really?” said Euan. “About what?”

“Why,” said Gothard, opening his hand to reveal the starstone, “this.” He flipped it into the air, then caught it, laughing as the priests flinched. “I know you thought we should bring it on gradually, but I think it’s better to have it out in the open. All the better—and sooner—to get where we want to go.”

“And where is that?” Euan inquired.

Gothard’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re going to play stupid? I told them who found it, too. You’re a great giver of gifts, cousin. The stone to me, and me—with the stone—to your father. Your people will love you for it.”

“They’ll love me more when I help them conquer Aurelia,” Euan said. “You are going to do that, yes? You won’t renege?”

“I’ll keep my word,” said Gothard, “as long as you keep yours.”

“We are all men of our word,” the king said. “Tell us again, nephew, what a starstone can do for us besides be an omen for the war.”

“It’s a very good omen,” Gothard said. “So is the fact that it came into the hands of a stone mage. The One is looking after you, uncle. This is going to win your war for you.”

“I hope we can believe that,” said Niall.

“Look,” said Gothard. He held the stone in his cupped hands. It never seemed heavy when he held it, but it was getting darker—Euan did not think he was imagining it. It looked like a piece of sky behind the stars, or a lump of nothingness.

Things were moving in it. They were not shapes—if anything they were shapeless—but they had volition. There was intelligence in them. They groped toward anything that had light or form, and devoured it.

The priests had gone perfectly still. Euan had seen fear before. He was a fighting man. He had caused it more times than he could count. But to see fear in the eyes of priests, who by their nature feared nothing, even death itself—that gave him pause.

Gothard smiled. The movements of the dark things were reflected in his face. His eyelids were lowered. His eyes were almost sleepy. He had an oddly sated look. “Yes,” he said softly. “Oh, yes.”

The stone stirred in his hands. Euan’s eye was not quite fast enough to follow what it did. It did not move, exactly. It reached.

The younger priest had no time to recoil. Formlessness coiled around him. When he opened his mouth to scream, it poured down his throat.

It ate him from the inside out. There was pain—Euan could have no doubt of that. The eyes were the last to go, and the horror in them would haunt him until he died.

When the last of the priest was gone, the thing that had consumed him flowed back into the stone. Gothard’s hands that held it were unharmed. His smile was as bright as ever. “Well?” he said. “Do you like it? We can do it to a whole army if we like, or the whole world. Or just the generals. You only have to choose.”

“The greatest gift of the One is oblivion,” Niall said. “Would you give such a gift to our enemies?”

“Would you give such a gift to your people?”

“It’s a strong thing,” the king said, “and it’s victory. It’s also magic. We don’t traffic with magic here.”

“Even if it will win the war?”

“Some victories are not worth winning.” Niall bent his head slightly. The remaining priest stiffened, but he laid a hand on Gothard’s shoulder.

Euan watched Gothard consider blasting them both. Then evidently he decided to humor them. He let the priest raise him to his feet and lead him away.

For a long while after he was gone, Euan had nothing to say. Niall seemed even more stooped and haggard than he had when Euan came in.

At last the king said, “That’s a troublesome gift you’ve given me.”

“You’re refusing it?”

Niall drew a deep breath. It rasped in ways that Euan did not like. “I’d be a fool to do that. But I don’t have to let it turn on me, either.”

“You know we’re going to have to use him,” Euan said. “Every time the Aurelians have raised armies against us, we’ve won a few skirmishes, even taken out a legion or two—then they’ve won the war. We can out-fight and out-maneuver them, but when they bring in their mages, we have no defense.”

“We have the One,” Niall said. “He exacts a price, but he protects us.”

“The price is damnably high,” said Euan.

“He takes blood and pain and leaves our souls to find their own oblivion. This thing will take them all—down to the last glimmer of existence.”

“Isn’t that what we want?” Euan demanded. “Isn’t the Unmaking our dearest prayer?”

“Not if magic brings it,” his father said. “I thank you for the gift of our kinsman. As a hostage he has considerable worth. For the rest…the One will decide. It’s beyond the likes of me.”

“You are the king of the people,” Euan said. “Nothing should be beyond you.”

“You think so?” said Niall. He seemed amused rather than angry. “You’re young. You have strong dreams. When I’m gone, you’ll take the people where they need to go. Until then, this is my place and this is my decision—however cowardly it may seem to you.”

“Never cowardly,” Euan said. “Whatever else you are, you could never be that.”

Niall shrugged. “I’m what I am. Go now, amuse yourself. It’s a long time until spring.”

Not so long, Euan thought, to get ready for a war that had been brewing since long before either them was born—the war that would bring Aurelia down. But he kept his thoughts to himself. The winter was long enough and he had a great deal of strength to recover. He could forget his worries for a while, and simply let himself be.

But first he had a thing he must do. The women’s rooms were away behind the men’s, well apart from the hall. They were much smaller and darker and more crowded, and they opened on either the kitchens or the long room where the looms stood, threaded with the plaids and war cloaks of the clan.

His mother’s room lay on the other side of the weavers’ hall. He had to walk through the rows of weavers at their looms, aware of their stares and whispers. He was a man in women’s country. He had to pay the toll accordingly.

She was not in the room, but he had not expected her to be. The bed was narrow and a little short, but it was warm and soft. He lay on it and drew up his knees. The smell of her wrapped around him, the clean scent of herbs with an undertone of musk and smoke.

He did not exactly fall asleep. He was aware of the room around him and the voices of women outside, rising over the clacking of the looms.

Still, he was not exactly awake, either. The bed had grown much wider. Someone else was lying with her back to him. Her breathing was deep and regular as if she slept, but her shoulders were tight.