In the Ruins Read online

  “Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari walked the spheres,” said White Feather. “She risked her life so that she could learn what was necessary to cross over the aether and back onto Earth. We should not dismiss her words so lightly, just because she does not agree with her father.”

  Eldest Uncle chuckled.

  Green Skirt had an older woman’s distaste for nonsense. She lifted her chin sharply to show she disagreed. “That she refuses to listen to her elders is precisely what makes her opinion suspect. She is rash.”

  Skull Earrings crossed his arms. He had once been a bold, impetuous, impatient warrior like Cat Mask, but age, hunger, and despair had worn him down. He was like ancient gold, burnished to a soft gleam. “First, let us survive what is coming. We do not know what to expect, except what the Bright One told us. That our old enemies the Horse people and their human allies still live, and seek to exile us forevermore. If we survive, then we can send scouts to survey the lay of the land. If we do not survive, if we are cast adrift a second time, then we will certainly die. What can we do?”

  “We can do nothing,” said Eldest Uncle, “except take shelter and hope for the storm’s winds to spare us.”

  “There must be something we can do!” cried White Feather. “Are we goats, to be herded at the shepherds’s whim and slaughtered when it is time for meat?”

  “Now—right now—we are helpless,” said Eldest Uncle. “There is no shame in accepting this as truth, since it is so. I agree with my nephew.” He gestured toward Skull Earrings.

  The other man laughed. “After so many years, it is good we agree at last, Uncle!”

  The old man smiled, but Feather Cloak saw that the gesture came only from the head, not his heart. “I will wait beside the clearing where the burning stone appears,” he said.

  “That is on the edge of the land,” protested Feather Cloak. “The tides may wash over you. You will be at risk.”

  “As you are here, Feather Cloak.”

  “I cannot leave the Eagle Seat. I like you close at hand. It makes me feel more at peace.”

  He shrugged, knowing she was right, knowing that as leader she had no peace. The weight of the Eagle Seat was as heavy a burden as pregnancy. “Nevertheless, I must wait there, in case—”

  White Feather snorted. “In case the Bright One reappears? Perhaps your daughter speaks the truth, Uncle. You have a young man’s mind in an old man’s body.”

  “That never changes!” he retorted, but he was not offended by her statement. The others laughed. “I am eldest. I will do as I wish in this. I will see what I will see. If the tides overwhelm me, so be it.”

  A contraction gripped Feather Cloak’s womb. As if in echo, the earth trembled and shook on and on until she found herself breathing hard, hands clutching the eagle’s wings.

  White Feather knelt beside her. “You are close.” She beckoned to Green Skirt, who nodded and hurried to the door to give a stream of directions to one of the warriors waiting there, a young woman wearing a fox mask tipped back onto her hair. The girl ran out to fetch water while White Feather emptied coals out of a hollow stick and coaxed a fire into flame. Skull Earrings fetched the birthing stool.

  All this industry, and the intense grip of further contractions, distracted Feather Cloak. She had the merest impression of Eldest Uncle’s brief farewell and the pair of young warriors who followed him. When she next looked around the chamber, all three were gone.

  As the contractions came hard and with increasing frequency, she began no longer to be able to distinguish the forces shaking her body and those shaking the land. So many burdens; so much exhaustion; so great a trial to be faced. She had to let it go. It was beyond her control. All she could do was endure it. All she could do, between stabs of red-hot pain, was pray to Sharatanga, She-Who-Will-Not-Have-A-Husband.

  “Guide us through this birth and this death. Give us your blessing.”

  Was that her voice or White Feather’s? Was it Green Skirt speaking, as the green beads and little white skull masks clicked together each time the old woman moved? Did she herself mumble words, or only grunt and groan and curse as the pains of opening came and went?

  She was vaguely sensible beyond her skin of the greater skin of the cosmos, that which wrapped Earth, opening as a flower opens to receive that which now returned to it: the exiled land. Vast forces moved within the deeps. The sea waters raged on the surface and winds howled, while in the caverns far beneath, rivers of fire shifted to create a new maze of pathways.

  Earth is welcoming us home.

  “Hush,” said White Feather. “Hold your breath so you can push.”

  “Listen to what Feather Cloak says!” objected Green Skirt. “She can see where we cannot.”

  The pain of opening transformed her awareness as the child within pressed forward, ready to be born. It was not pain but inevitability that dragged her. Now the exiled land was drawn back to the place it had come from, where it had always belonged. Now the child would be born, because children must be born once they have begun that journey.

  Four attended her: White Feather, Skull Earrings, Green Skirt, and the fox-masked young warrior, a serious girl who glared at everyone as she ran to and fro on whatever errands they gave her.

  She knew this not because she paid attention to them, but because she knew all things. The vital soul that resides in the cosmos and imbues it and all things with life, even those that may seem dead, became visible to her. She saw the vibration of all things down to their smallest particle. She saw the reach of the heavens as they expanded in an infinite curve whose unknowable horizon confounded her. The exiled land was almost drained of this soul. Ruptured from its nurturing womb, it had waned as the tide of the sacred presence had ebbed. Now the vibrant net that entangled Earth swallowed them, and as the child in her belly was thrust out from its shelter, they were dragged in to the ancient nest in whose architecture still resided a memory of their place within it.

  The slippery mass of a child dropped into White Feather’s waiting hands.

  She groaned, or perhaps it was the earth grinding at a register almost too low to be perceived.

  “Another one!” cried Green Skirt in shock.

  “Twice blessed! Twice cursed!” sang out White Feather, shoving the first infant into the waiting hands of Skull Earrings so she could catch the impatient second, now crowning.

  Feather Cloak pushed as the world was born again, as the White Road flared into existence, a ribbon so bright that it shone, as Earth exploded beyond the borders of the Ashioi land. Firestorms raged and gales seared the land. Yet all this transpired at such a remote distance from the heart of the maelstrom that her awareness of the cosmos, too, faded, and she was after all weary. So weary.

  “Two girls!” said Skull Earrings, cradling the first tenderly in his arms. “The gods have favored us!”

  She slid down the long road of exhaustion and fell into sleep.

  North of the land lies devastation so complete that the land steams. Has their return created such a wasteland that smoke and ruin are all she sees?

  No. Beyond the scar lies land touched by fire, by wind, by raging seas, by great shifts in the earth itself, by tumult, but it is not dead.

  She sees now what caused the land just beyond the White Road to be engulfed by molten rock. The Bright One walks in the wasteland. She created it with the power that resides within her, the curse she received from her mother’s kin. She is naked and carries nothing except a bow layered with the magical essence of griffin bone. So bright it shines….

  She moaned and came awake, squinting against a light she did not recognize.

  “Ah!” She shielded her eyes. “What is it?”

  “He-Who-Burns!” cried Green Skirt. “That is the sun. See how his light shines!” She pointed at the roof of the cavern, where a yellow glare illuminated the spray of plant roots dangling from crumbling ridges of soil.

  Skull Earrings stepped forward with White Feather beside him. “Here are your daughter
s,” he said, displaying the dark babies.

  White Feather nodded. “So small. So perfect!”

  Weeping, she kissed them. “They will never know exile. We have come home.”

  PART ONE

  THE TIDES OF DESTRUCTION

  I

  A VISION OF THE END

  1

  WHEN the earth began to shake, his jailers abandoned him within the ruins of the old monastery, beside the roofless church and its stone tower. From his prison, in his cage in the back of the cart, he watched in a confused stupor as both horses and oxen bolted, spooked by the unnatural weather.

  Along the shoreline of Osna Sound, the water receded far out past the line of the ebb tide, exposing seabed and a line of sharp rocks below the curve of the Dragonback Ridge. Above, the sky was a sheet of lightning that veiled the stars, but that light in the heavens was an uncanny thing because no thunder answered it. A stillness, more like an indrawn breath, settled over the country, and it hung there, waiting.

  Soon.

  The silence was broken with a roar as the ground jolted. The cart pitched over. The post to which Alain was chained snapped as it struck the ground. With a groan, the stone tower collapsed into a cloud of dust and grit that choked him as he sprawled, like the fish flopping in the exposed seabed, gasping for breath. Scattered by a rising wind, the storm of dirt quickly dissipated, but the ground had not finished shifting.

  The Dragonback Ridge splintered with a deafening crack. Sheets of rock cascaded into the sound. Beneath the booming clatter of rock, the earth moved as the dragon woke. Its tail, lashing as it was freed from the soil, snapped trees. As its flank heaved up where once lay the high ridge, dirt avalanched seaward, obliterating the old shoreline. The creature lifted a claw and set it down, and the ground trembled beneath that tread. It raised its huge head to examine the heavens, then slewed around. Chained and caught, Alain could only stare as the head lowered down and down and paused at length before the cage to stare at him.

  With one bite it could devour cart and man both. He struggled to his knees to face it, although it took all his strength to rise.

  Its scales shone like gold. Its eyes had the luster of pearls. It was not untarnished from its waking: there was a cut in its belly, and from this a tear of bright, hot blood hissed, splashing over him. Its touch burned him to the heart, not with heat but with truth.

  My heart is the Rose. Any heart is the Rose of Healing that knows compassion and lets it bloom.

  It blinked, huffed a cloud of steam, reared its head up, and opened its vast wings. Their span shadowed the monastery grounds. It bunched its haunches, waited a breath, ten breaths, a hundred breaths, as if listening, as if it, too, were waiting.

  A wind howled up out of the southwest, shattering trees as it came, and when it hit, the dragon launched itself. Alain fell, never sure if the gale or the weight of its draft had battered him down. Its shadow passed away. Beyond, the sea raged against the rocks. Above, the stars had gone out. All he could see of the sky was a swirling haze mixed of dust and ash and wind and bits of foliage, and the trailing sparks of a vast spell.

  He heard still a roar of sound, building in volume, and before he understood what it was, a wave out of the sea swept over him. His chains held him under the water as he tumbled in its surf, fighting for the surface. And as he drowned, he saw in a vision the land unfolding before him. He saw as the spell tangled and collapsed in on itself. He saw the land of the Ashioi materialize out of the aether, back to the place it had come from long ago.

  He saw what happened in the wake of that spell:

  All down the western shoreline of the boot of Aosta, a ridge of volcanoes shakes into life. Lava streams out of the earth. Fields crack open, as the pit yawns beneath. An unstoppable tide of mud and ash slurry buries villages and the folk who live in them. There is no warning, no time to flee.

  The waters of the Middle Sea that are displaced by the returning land speed outward in vast concentric rings. These waves deluge distant coastlines, drowning the shore.

  All along the northern sea rivers run backward and ports are left dry as the land groans and shifts, rising no more than a finger’s span as the weight settling in the south tilts the entire continent.

  Temblors shake the land. The gale that blasted across the earth dissipates in wilderness among the dumb beasts. Deep in the earth, goblins race through ancient labyrinths, seeking their lost halls. Under the sea, the merfolk dive deep to escape the maelstrom. Out in the distant grasslands, the Horse people shelter in hollows in the land. The magic of the Holy One shields them from the worst even as it drains the life out of her.

  All this he sees as he struggles in the waters. He sees, and he understands:

  Those who were most harmed in ancient days ride out the storm with the least damage. It is humankind who suffer most. Perhaps Li’at’dano hoped or planned that in the end the weaving would harm those who were the greatest threat to her people: both the Cursed Ones, and her own human allies.

  Perhaps the WiseMothers suspected that humankind would take the brunt of the backlash. Perhaps they had no choice except to do what they did, knowing that the belt was already twisted and the path already laid clear before their feet. They speak to him through rock and through water, although the salt sea almost drowns their voice.

  It. Is. Done. You. Have. Saved. Us.

  He gasps for breath but swallows water. The link between them is broken so sharply that it is as if it had never existed.

  Caught in the riptide, he came clear of the water suddenly and flailed and gasped and choked and coughed as the tide hauled him toward the sea. The chain jerked him back to the ground. The cart, trapped in the fallen stones, had saved him, which had all this time imprisoned him. He lay there, too dazed to move.

  At length daylight filtered into the haze of ash and dust that clouded the heavens. After a long time he realized that he was alive and that, impossibly, the world had survived. The great weaving that Adica had made so long ago with her compatriots was at long last finished. The spell had come all the way around and returned to where it began. The Lost Ones had returned from their exile.

  He had seen both beginning and end, only of course the end was now a beginning.

  After all, he was not alone in the ruins, as he had thought. The hounds came and with them his foster father, Henri.

  “Where are we going?” Alain asked him.

  “Home, Son. We’re going home.”

  2

  BECAUSE the ridge had been obliterated by the dragon’s waking, their way proved rough and strenuous as they walked toward home through a jumble of boulders, fallen trees, and tide-wracked debris. In the end Alain’s legs failed him and his strength gave out. He could scarcely breathe. Once they reached a real path, Henri had to carry him, stopping at intervals to rest.

  “You’re nothing but bones and skin,” Henri said one of those times. He sat, sweating, on a smooth beech tree, uprooted in last night’s storm. Alain wheezed, curled up on the ground because he hadn’t the strength to sit upright. The hounds nosed him fretfully. “You weigh no more than a child. I’ll never forgive Lord Geoffrey for doing this to you. It’s a sin to treat another human being so cruelly.”

  He was too weak to answer. The world seemed dim, but perhaps that was only because of clouds covering the sky.

  Henri sighed. “You do stink, though, Son. Whew!” The affection in his voice made Alain’s lips tremble, but he could not manage a smile. For so long he had endured. Now, safe, he thought he might at last die because he had been worn too thin. He wanted to go on, but he had nothing left.

  “Here, now, you beasts, move aside.”

  Henri hoisted him effortlessly, shifted him onto his own back so Alain’s head rested on Henri’s shoulder, and kept walking. It seemed likely that they should have passed through Osna village, but apparently Henri kept to those woodland paths that took them around the village and onto the broad southern road. Many trees were fallen. Branches littered t
he path. It was silent, not even bird call to serenade them, and not a soul out on the roads the morning after. Where the road forked, Henri veered to the right along a narrower side path that wound through oak and silvery birch, maple and beech. Long ago he had ridden down this path with Count Lavastine. The memory seemed as a dream to him now, no more real than his life with Adica. All gone, torn away by death.

  Yet there was life here still. Some manner of person had husbanded these woods, cutting down trees for firewood and boatbuilding in many spots but fostering quick-growing ash and sparing half the slow-growing oaks in others. Coppice-cut willow, hazel, and hawthorn flourished in various states of regrowth, some freshly cut and others ready for felling again. Sorrow barked. Pigs squealed away into the undergrowth.

  “Who’s there?” came a cry from ahead.

  “I’ve found him!” cried Henri.

  Alain hadn’t the strength to raise his head, so, sidewise, he watched the estate emerge as the path opened onto neatly mown hayfields and a tidy garden, recently harvested. Two corrals ringed sheep and a pair of cows. Geese honked, and chickens scattered. There was even a horse and a pony, riches for a free-holding family without noble forebears. Folk had come out of the workshop and the house to stand and stare, but it was the ones he knew best who ran up the path to meet them. Julien was scarred and lean. Stancy was pregnant; she ran forward with a child grasping her hand. Was that third adult little Agnes, grown so comely and tall?

  “That can’t be Alain,” said Julien. “That creature’s nothing more than skin pulled over bones.”

  “It’s him,” said Stancy. “Poor boy.” She wiped away tears.

  “Stink! Stink!” wailed the child, tugging to break free and run. “He scares me.”

  “Hush!” Aunt Bel strode up to them, looked at him hard, and frowned. “Stancy, kill a chicken and get a broth cooking. He’ll not be strong enough to eat solid food. Agnes, I’ll want the big basin tub for bathing him. Outside, though. Julien, haul water and tell Bruno to heat it on the workshop fire. We’ll need plenty. He can’t be chilled.”