There wasn’t
much left in Melloreis now. The city had, against all odds, managed to become
even more ruined. The only Dwarven Magic
that remained was the door to the Quiena Vault. That alone would allow Kath to
write half-a-dozen scholarly papers, but she wasn’t in the mood for doing any
more tests on it, so that would have to wait, perhaps indefinitely.
The curse that had hung over the city was beginning to lift. It still
lingered on in dark crevices and near where the taints had been, but the place
was nothing like as unpleasant to move around in as it had been before.
They looked for any remains of poor Fred, but it seemed that Quiena’s
Bell Tower and everything in it had been effaced from the physical world by its
self-immolating explosion. Where it had sat was now just a huge crater. They
gathered round to say goodbye to Fred anyway. No-one knew what to say. Kath was
in tears and too upset to speak and most of the others hadn’t know him long
enough to feel that it was appropriate to step forward.
Potentilla volunteered awkwardly and turned to face the others. She
coughed.
‘Fred was very grumpy…’ she said, ‘…he never seemed to be keen on any
of my plans.’
Kath managed a half-smile. She still couldn’t believe he was dead, and
still couldn’t help blaming herself.
‘But he was very brave…’ Potentilla continued, vaguely ‘…and he gave me
good advice. And…’
Her voice trailed off.
Rem, seeing her discomfort, came forward to act in an ‘official’
capacity. He stood on slightly higher ground to address them.
‘I not know what Fred believed. He was a very quiet man. But we worked
together to resist the power of the white god and so we two are bound together,
as we all are. We sometimes resist by fighting, but Fred was not a fighter, but
he still resisted ’
They all murmured assent. Rem
continued.
‘My god is not fighting god, as you know. But I know that he blesses
our efforts and especially he blesses Fred, who gave his life for the group.
He, as much as anyone, saved us’
They stood in silence for a while, each immersed in their own thoughts.
Finally, Rem spoke again.
‘Let me sing the old song of my people for the dead. I am vowed never
to use my old tongue whenever I can avoid it, so I sing it in the common
language of humans, but for the first time…’
Rem sang his hymn of lamentation in rough Ethian. It was clumsy, but
the melody remained beautiful and the effect was intensely sad. After that he stood
in thought for a long while.
‘I do not know how best say thank you and goodbye to Fred, but I know
that humans do this’
He tentatively put his hands together and began to clap. The others
hesitated, but then they joined in. They clapped until their hands were sore.
They set a pile of stones at the side of the crater and John magically
fixed them into place, so that they could not be moved by the elements or any
new builders. After that they knew it was time to pack up and leave.
The group
decided to go together to Ortia, although Rem would only agree to go if John
would guarantee his safety. However, none of them knew whether Ortia had
survived, so that might turn out to be a moot point. John and Laurence would be incapable of
teleporting for several days and they would not have abandoned the group yet
anyway.
So they set off on the morning of the next day, having slept one more
night in Quiena’s Vault. Kath went out to look at the Autelephas a final time
and to make sure that it would never move again. She removed the scroll and
took off the tip of both tusks. Then she picked up all the dwarven papers, the
scroll and the tusks, and stuffed them into Laurence’s wonder bag.
When no-one was looking, and feeling slightly guilty, John took another
cutting from the poor Zymena tree, where it was lying on the ground.
Practicalities had begun to crowd back into his mind – he was sure he’d need
another guard tree very soon. The plant still had some green leaves attached to
a few of its scorched black branches and he wondered if it might regenerate
even here. He concluded that this was one of a number of things that he could
not afford to let become his problem.
Rem and Viola led them out of the city. They walked as fast as Viola’s
foot would allow them and they scarcely looked back.
In the days
that followed the water level within the city rose unaccountably and any visitor
would have been astonished to see the dark green puddles of standing water that
appeared in almost every crater and hole. From each puddle a slender willow
began to grow and after that alders and ash trees. Where the green seeped into
the soil the buddleias died and grass began to grow below the rubble. In the
months that followed the city willingly surrendered to the green world, and
within a human generation Melloreis was no more.
Visitors to the new forest were few, because it was said to be haunted;
haunted eternally by the spirit of a large gruff human and by a strange
tree-beast that floated in mid-air. Anyone who camped near the forest often
reported that they heard a bell. Its
sound was unsettling and unearthly, but some still remembered the legends and
knew that it was the human’s ghost who was said to toll the bell. Those wise elves also knew that is was Quiena’s
Bell and that it kept evil away, so they slept soundly and were comforted.
***
Marthian had
a double reason for wanting to find Aurelian, personal and practical. The
practical reason was simple – she’d run out of officers. She was down to about
three thousand non-wounded troops and she had no-one to command them. For the
time being she had to be Commander-in-Chief and Proconsul at the same time. She
appointed Gaius as her general factotum and coped as well as she could.
Her first job had been to try to set up some sort of guard posts beyond
the ruined city wall. This couldn’t be anything much more than symbolic, but it
did allow them to clear out any remaining pockets of the human followers of
Whitecloak. They really had no capacity to take prisoners so the humans were
encouraged to run away, often with ostentatious delays to any attacks on their
bolt holes and very unenthusiastic pursuits. There were only a few
confrontations. It was clear that all heart had left Whitecloak’s armies. They
could only hope that they could predict why.
Marthian tracked down Aurelian in a military hospital that had been set
up by the north wall guard post. She was immensely relieved; it had been hard
to function with such intimations of approaching grief. He had been unconscious
on the battlefield for several hours and then guarded by foot soldiers until
the end of the battle. Unfortunately his foot had been very badly mangled and
now he would always walk with a limp. The
first thing that she did was give him Perclivius’s staff.
Her general was dehydrated and confused, so it would be several days
before he would be able to engage with any military matters. Marthian brought her headquarters to the
hospital so that she could work by his bedside. There was nobody left who
bothered to complain about this unorthodoxy.
Surveyors and engineers were sent to examine the remains of the city
wall. The news was grim for the existing structures – they would all have to be
pulled down and they would have to start again, but the foundations were still
as Quiena’s dwarven engineers had constructed them. A weaker but still mighty
wall could be constructed on top of them, but there was no way that could be
found to recharge them with Quiena’s magic. .
By the time Marthian was able to send out any reconnaissance parties
further afield the kinaam had all but
gone. There were a few stragglers but they all acted differently. They were
totally passive and co-operative and they could be shooed out of the city
surroundings very easily. There was no real clue for a while as to exactly what
had happened, beyond what Marthian had already surmised.
Two days
later, Marthian received an unusual diplomatic mission. She had been sitting
feeding Aurelian his lunch - a totally unnecessary waste of precious
proconsular time, particularly as Aurelian was well and perfectly capable of
feeding himself – when Gaius informed her that she had official visitors. They appeared to be Tlaxacans and they came
in peace.
Marthian met them on the green sward in front of the field hospital.
They were five squat people dressed in green tunics. They all looked very like
Rem; they had the same probing, questioning, eyes, except that theirs were pale
green, rather than grey.
The shortest, most bent, apparently female, individual stepped forward.
She attempted a strange mix of bow and curtsy, which was somehow both ungainly
and intensely serious.
‘My name is Euphorbia, my lady’ she said, in perfect, musical,
Visneorian, ‘we are of the mountain people of the eastern remnant. We call
ourselves the Orbiverdi’
Marthian was taken aback, but she recognised them as the group that had
somehow led the bulk of the kinaam
army away.
‘You saved the city’ said Marthian, ‘how did you do that?’
Euphorbia shuffled her feet a little, clearly shy and embarrassed.
‘We removed the curse’ she stuttered, ‘the one that the White Devil had
cast upon us’
Marthian was confused.
‘You removed it from yourself?’
‘We outgrew it in the war before last’ Euphorbia explained, ’we grew
weary of it and cast it off. And then we learned to remove it from others.
Since then we have had two fervent desires’
Marthian smiled at them, trying to put them at their ease. Their discomfort
was distressing her.
‘What are your desires, brave people?’
Euphorbia gulped and struggled to continue.
‘Please tell me’ said Marthian softly, ‘you have nothing to fear’
Euphorbia stood up as straight as she could and her eyes widened in
concentration.
‘First, to remove the curse from all the poor slaves of the White
Devil’
She paused again, as if she were about to try to jump across a deep
ravine.
‘And?’ asked Marthian gently
‘To pledge allegiance to the Emperor in Visnea; to become citizens of
the Visneorian Empire’
Marthian was completely taken aback. She felt a lump rising in her
throat.
‘But, why?’ she said, involuntarily.
The little group of green-eyed mountain remnants grimaced and went into
a huddle. Euphorbia looked even more
flustered and was now apparently unable to speak.
‘I mean’ said Marthian, hurriedly, ‘it is a very worthy desire; just
wondered what had provoked it?’
One of the mountain people moved
forward and threw off his cloak. He was revealed as a very old elf in Orbiverdi
disguise.
‘Greetings, Proconsul’ he said, in a gravelly voice, ‘I am Bellis, the
last Proconsul of Monurbis. I was saved by these people and in return I have
taught them in the Elvish way. Now they have surely proven their worth and
would take their rightful place as citizens’
Marthian felt completely at a loss. But she was rapidly learning the
main thing was never to reveal the depth of one’s confusion.
‘Proconsul Bellis’ she proclaimed in her best Imperial voice, ‘you are
welcome as are your estimable companions.’
She paused and bowed.
‘Your request for citizenship is one that I support entirely’ she
continued, ‘but the final decision must lie with the Emperor’
The little mountain group looked downcast again, so Marthian pressed
on. She had a strong desire to make these gentle, brave people happy.
‘However, provisionally I will offer you all the freedom of the city,
and request that you establish a presence there, so that negotiations can
continue’
The mountain people nodded, and looked a little more pleased. Bellis
stared off across the city with longing eyes.
‘And’ said Marthian, ‘now, come into the city, all of you. I would really love to hear your whole
story…’
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