The Sound of Broken Absolutes by Peter Orullian (fun to read .txt) 📗

The Far Jarron took a quick breath.

Tahn nodded at the response. “First day I met Vendanj, I realized stories about the Sheason are true. I saw him render the Will. Move things . . . kill. With little more than a thought.”

“Vendanj is a friend of the king’s,” Daen said. “Not everyone distrusts him.”

Tahn gave a weak smile to that. “Well, he arrived just before the Quiet got to my town, too.”

He then looked away to the southwest, at Naltus, a magnificent city risen mostly of the black shale that dominated the long plains. In the predawn light, it was still an imposing thing to look at. It never gleamed. It didn’t light up with thousands of lights as Recityv or any other large city. It didn’t bustle with industry and trade. It didn’t build reputation with art and culture. But the city itself was a striking place, drawn with inflexible lines. It had a permanence and stoicism about it. The kind of place you wanted to be when a storm hit, where you wouldn’t fear wind and hard light. And where rain lifted the fresh scent of washed rock. Altogether different than the Hollows, with its hardwood forests and loam.

What Tahn wouldn’t have given for some hard apple cider and a round of lies in the form of Hollows gossip. “Vendanj convinced me to follow him to Tillinghast.”

This time it was Aelos who made a noise, something in his throat, like a warning. It reminded Tahn that even the Far people, with their gift for battle, and their stewardship over the Language of the Framers . . . even they didn’t go to Tillinghast.

“Did you make it to the far ledge?” Daen asked.

Tahn turned and looked in the direction of the Saeculorum Mountains, which rose in dark, jagged lines to the east. Impossibly high. Yes, he’d made it there. He and the few friends who’d come with him out of the Hollows. Though, only he had stood near that ledge at the far end of everything. A place where the earth renewed itself. Or used to.

He’d faced a Draethmorte there, one of the old servants of the dissenting god. More than that. He’d faced the awful embrace of the strange clouds that hung beyond the edge of Tillinghast. They’d somehow shown him all the choices of his life—those he’d made, and those he’d failed to make. It was a terrible thing to see the missed opportunity to help a friend. Or stranger. Wrapping around him, those clouds had also shown him the repercussions of those choices, possible futures. The heavy burden of that knowledge had nearly killed him.

It ached in him still.

But he’d survived the Draethmorte. And the clouds. And he’d done so by learning that he possessed an ability: to draw an empty bow, and fire a part of himself. He couldn’t explain it any better than that. It was like shooting a strange mix of thought and emotion. And it left him chilled to the marrow and feeling incomplete. Diminished. At least for a while. Maybe something had happened to him in the wilds of Stonemount. Maybe the ghostly barrow robber he’d encountered there had touched him. Touched his mind. Or soul. Maybe both. Whether the barrow robber or not, something had helped him fire himself at Tillinghast. Though he damn sure didn’t want to do it again, and had no real idea how to control it, anyhow.

“Yes, we made it to the far ledge,” he finally said.

He could tell Daen understood plenty about what lay on the other side of the Saeculorum. But the Far captain had the courtesy not to press.

Tahn, though, found relief in sharing some of what had happened. “Near the top, Vendanj restored my memory. He thought it would help me survive up there.”

Jarron glanced at the Saeculorum range. “Did it?”

Tahn didn’t have an answer to that, and shrugged.

Daen put a hand on Tahn’s shoulder. “The Sheason believed if you survived Tillinghast, you could help turn the Quiet back this time. Meet those who’ve given themselves to the dissenting god . . . in war.” He nodded in the direction of the army marching toward them.

Twice before—the wars of the First and Second Promise—the races of the Eastlands had pushed the Quiet back, avoided the dominion they seemed bent toward. Now, they came again.

“Mostly right,” said Tahn, “except all I’ve been fighting since Tillinghast is a head full of bad memories. For two damn days, I’ve done nothing but sit around in your king’s manor, remembering.” His grip tightened on his bow, and he spoke through clenched teeth. “Better to be moving. Better to hold someone . . . or something, accountable for that past.”

“Idleness makes memory bitter.” Daen spoke it like a rote phrase, like something a mother says to scold a laggard child.

Tahn forced a smile, but the feel of it was manic. “Vendanj was the one who took my memory in the first place. Thought it would protect me . . .”

“From the Quiet,” Daen finished. “So you’re here with a kind of blind vengeance. Angry at the world. Angry at what you believe are the bad choices of people who care for you.”

The wind died then, wrapping them in a sullen silence. A silence broken only by the low drone of thousands of heavy feet crossing the shale plain toward them. Into that silence Tahn said simply, “No.”

“No?” Daen cocked his head with skepticism.

“I’m not some angry youth.” Tahn’s smile softened, and he leveled an earnest look on the Far captain. “If I’m reckless, it’s because I’m scared. And angry. Do I want to drop a few Quiet with this?” He tapped his bow. “Silent hells, yes. But when I saw them from my window in your king’s manor this morning . . . I’ll be a dead god’s privy hole if I’m going to let the Far meet them without me.” He pointed to the Quiet army marching in from the northeast. “An army that’s probably here because of me.”

Daen studied Tahn