The Legend of Broken

slits on either side of her black gown.

“I am sad to see your tastes for intrigue and plots grown so strong and ugly,” Caliphestros replied. “Unlike the rest of you.”

“Ah, scorn once more,” Alandra said, shaking her head. “I can remember a time when my intrigues did not trouble you so. When I stole away from my rooms, that we might lie together in your high chambers in the palace.”

And again, Keera thought, she could see an expression of deep injury hidden beneath the old man’s stern efforts to affect disdain. “Was it all deception even then, Alandra? Did you deceive me with talk and acts of love?”

“Mmm,” Alandra noised, with the first hint of something other than maliciousness beneath her outward manner. “Perhaps not. But that time was so long ago — who can honestly remember?” Seeming to rouse herself from some not unpleasant memory, Alandra continued: “And what does it matter, any longer? You are the enemy of our kingdom, and of my brother — a shadow, as I say, of what you once were. And so, with that, I will leave you to your new mate …” She turned to depart, but her every movement was suddenly arrested by a stern note of authority in Caliphestros’s voice:

“Alandra!” The First Wife paused, almost against her own will, but did not turn fully back about. “It is not I who consort or mate with the beasts of the Wood, my girl — although I understand that you cannot make the same assertion. And the heavens only know what your brother amuses himself with, these days. But let that be. Take only this message to Saylal—”

“Do you mean,” the First Wife asked, feigning indignation, “to the God-King of our realm, brother to Kafra, the Supreme Deity?”

Caliphestros shrugged, seeming to have suddenly gained the upper hand in the exchange, and to have realized as much. “Call him what you like. To me he is simply Saylal — the frightened, malicious little boy who was taught by priests to lust after his own sister. But whatever the name: tell him that his armies enter Davon Wood at their certain peril, and probable doom. A doom that will be demonstrated tonight …” And, as if he had foreseen the moment, Caliphestros looked to the north, as did Alandra, when the sound of a Broken battle horn was heard sounding an alarm. “And tell him,” Caliphestros said, smiling now, “that I alone have solved the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone.”

The First Wife of Kafra turned to the old man suddenly, fury now plain in her face. “That riddle is a myth.”

“Oh, it is no myth,” Caliphestros said, still smiling, his injury and tentativeness now seemingly erased, and his mastery over the conversation unquestionable. “And its solution will mean the shattering of Broken’s impregnability. And so, go, now, by whatever route it is you use to return to the city — for your return will not be possible very much longer. Therefore get back to your life of cruelty, bestiality, and incest, and continue to believe that it is a faith. And remember only this—” The old man raised an accusatory finger. “My age and my decrepitude were inevitable—as are your own. A fact that you shall discover, soon enough. Indeed, now that the Moon rises higher, I perceive that you may have begun to discover it already.” Alandra’s hands suddenly reached for her face, as her eyes searched the skin of her arms and the exposed parts of her legs. “Go, Alandra. In the name of what we once shared, I shall not hand you to the Bane Outragers, despite the advantage their tribe should gain from your capture — although I doubt that you would show me the same courtesy, were our positions reversed. Go on, then!”

And, with no more cleverness or cruelty to offer, with nothing at all remaining, save a look of simple fear, the First Wife of Kafra turned and moved swiftly out of the small clearing toward the south, glancing back only once, with what seemed to Keera, now, an expression of not only resentment, but, perhaps, regret, as well.

As soon as she had disappeared, the three foragers quickly leapt down from their high perches to tree limb after tree limb, until they were upon the woodland floor once again. Each was plainly full of questions; although Keera and Veloc could see that the encounter had drained Caliphestros — despite his final posture of defiance and anger — of too much energy to allow any possibility of immediate reply, and so brother and sister were silent. Heldo-Bah, of course, exhibited no such delicacy, and no such manners:

“You, old man,” he said, stepping closer, “have a great deal of explaining to do …”

“I suppose I do, Heldo-Bah,” Caliphestros replied, his great store of exhaustion finally making itself audible in his voice. Keera and Veloc both rushed to each of his arms, fearing that he would fall from the panther’s shoulders; but he indicated that he was able to travel unaided atop Stasi with a quick lift of his hand. “For now, however — let us get to our destination, before the fighting begins …”

“Demons take the fighting!” Heldo-Bah replied. “I have seen much fighting, in my time — but never have I seen so strange an encounter as that one. No — I will remain with the rest of you, to learn what lies behind all this.”

Caliphestros nodded, urging Stasi forward once more. “And learn it you shall — but I am not yet ready to speak of it.”

It was not long before the group approached the high rocks that offered a broad view of the trees and ground on the southern side of the Fallen Bridge; and, in the distance, the flickering lights of the torches being carried by Lord Baster-kin’s Guard could just begin to be seen. Before long, their laughing, triumphant voices, aided by wine, mead, and beer, began to become audible: a clear demonstration that they believed the complete lack of resistance they had thus far encountered was an indication, not of any trap or stratagem on the part of the Bane, but of the terror with which they had filled their enemies’ hearts.

3:{vii:}

As the battle between Ashkatar’s men and Lord Baster-kin’s Guard rages

about them, the foragers learn the deeper truth of what they are

witnessing …

Through their own and Stasi’s ability to move with unmatched swiftness, Keera, Veloc, and Heldo-Bah managed to compensate for the time lost during the strange but enlightening encounter that had left Lord Caliphestros racked by turmoil and a weariness of the spirit, and to reach the high rock formation that had been their original destination before hostilities erupted. Here they positioned themselves behind stony barriers in time to observe the lesson that would soon be taught to the soldiers of Broken (even if only to the Merchant Lord’s Guard) about war: not war as it was taught to or practiced by the officers and men of that kingdom, but war as it was best understood and fought by the Bane.

“But I do not understand the distinction of which you have often spoken, my lord,” Keera said softly, looking out amid the ground lying to the south and east of the misty crags overhanging Hafften Falls and the Fallen Bridge, across which the forward units of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard had already made their way, and were now trying, with almost uniform failure, to drag their ballistae, nearly all of which slipped from the surface of that giant tree, only to crash into pieces in the rocky waters below. “A hammer or a blade is not different when used by different peoples,” Keera continued. “Is not war the same? Why should there be one variety of war for the Tall, and another for the Bane?”

“Because war is not a thing separate from the mind, like the hammer or the blade,” Caliphestros replied quietly, his head ever turning to make out the forms of Bane swordsmen, spear carriers, and archers who had already taken up positions amid the northernmost part of Davon Wood, while more of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard continued a march that they presumed would take them closer to the enemy. “It is an expression of the mind,” the old scholar continued, “one used to achieve a certain object, yes, but one that bespeaks the nature of the collective mind of that people.”

“Yes, yes, all very interesting, I’m sure,” Heldo-Bah interrupted. “But now, Lord Caliphestros, if we may return to the small matter of what we saw take place between yourself and the First Wife of Kafra—”

But Heldo-Bah was silenced by a quick warning blow to the ribs issued by Veloc.