Chapter Book 7 43: Serolen

“Trouble has come to Serolen,” Ivah of the Losara said.

“Has it ever not?” I replied.

We travelled quicker now than we had before. Ivah had bargained for the Secret of the Half Road, and though it might not be as instantaneous as the Shadow Stride the Longstride Cabal had once boasted of it still lengthened our steps. We had to ride in a narrow line, over a stripe of Night barely larger than the horses, but so long as we rode there we were possessed of a great celerity. It did not prevent the horses from getting tired, but they covered easily thrice as much ground before needing a rest. One the second of those interludes, as the rest of our company had their mounts drink in a shallow pond, I sat with Ivah to speak of what awaited us to the north.

“This is true,” Ivah acknowledged. “But there have never been troubles such as this. It is… unsettling.”

My brow rose. Not a word it would use lightly. Ivah had once been a rylleh in a sigil in good standing, about as high as it was possible to rise without holding the sigil yourself, and in the nights since fought under me through campaigns above and below. The drow was not a sort to unsettle easily.

“Have the lines collapsed?” I bluntly asked.

“We have lost the southern woods,” the purple-painted drow said. “The Gloom was pierced through with great roads of steel that were kept alight with strange lanterns.”

I grimaced.

“And they didn’t pull back the Gloom forty miles to start over?”

Ivah hesitated. It had no reason to watch its words around me. As its sigil-holder, I was the only person it could be said to answer to and I’d never been one to mind blunt honesty. Only there was someone even above me, wasn’t there? Sve Noc.

“Shit,” I quietly said. “It’s not that they didn’t want to, they couldn’t.”

It must have been deeply distressing, I thought, for Ivah to admit that the goddesses it had worshipped all its life had limitations. That they were not all-powerful or beyond failing.

“It broke into shards when an attempt was made,” Ivah said. “A third was recovered, but Sve Noc says cannot be forged anew into a lesser Gloom. They have been used as weapons to win battles since.”

My eye narrowed.

“You’re keeping something back,” I stated.

“Mighty Kurosiv has stolen two of the shards,” it admitted. “They have claimed it is proof of their divinity and taken the name of Loc Ynan.”

Fate-giver, it meant. But it was the formal version of giver – maybe closer to ‘gifter’ – and the implication there was that the gift was given to an inferior. Kurosiv was effectively claiming to be the entity that would ‘give’ all of the Firstborn their fates. A naked challenge to Sve Noc’s authority.

Even this far away from Serolen, I could catch the scent of civil war in the air.

“Last I heard Kurosiv was playing god-king in the northeast, with an eye to returning to the mountains above the Everdark,” I said. “What changed?”

“They tell a tale of having wagered the fate of the Firstborn in a verse-game with the Dead King,” Ivah scorned. “That they triumphed over it and won from Death a reprieve for nine years. They now come to gift us a new fate, leading us east and across the water to a land of endless riches.”

Oh did I not like the sound of that.

“I’m assuming by water they don’t mean the Chalice,” I said.

The painted drow shook its head.

“The salt-water,” Ivah said. “We are to sail on great ships that will bring us to a glorious kingdom without light.”

My fingers clenched.

“They made a deal with the Dead King,” I bluntly said. “Pull out of the war and the Firstborn get nine years to get the Hells off Calernia while Neshamah thoroughly wipes out the rest of us.”

“That is also the belief of Sve Noc,” Ivah agreed.

Would the Dead King keep to that deal? I wasn’t sure, but in all honesty it shouldn’t matter. He’d finish killing us off long before nine years had passed and I had my doubts about the success of a Firstborn exodus across the Tyrian Sea anyway. They’d lived underground as long as they’d been a civilization, they were neither shipwrights nor sailors. Although with Kurosiv holding the reins, they might just hit one of our port cities and devour enough they can raise a decent fleet. More worrying was a question I did not have the answer to: was this Kurosiv’s plan or was Neshamah now using diplomacy to finish collapsing us?

Because if it was the latter, we were in deep shit. There weren’t really any human nations that’d cut a deal with him, at least not unless we suffered a catastrophic defeat in Keter first, but the same was not true of others. The Golden Bloom was unlikely to actively help him, but the elves might take a deal so they could cut and run unhindered. The Gigantes had sit out the war since their sacrifice in keeping the Hellgates closed, so they might be tempted for the right prize, and worse of all was the Kingdom Under. We still hadn’t signed a new treaty with the dwarves, so if the Dead King came in with a better offer? Fuck, that could get bad.

There was no way we would take Keter without the Kingdom Under supplying the besieging armies. If they pulled out of the war, we were done.

“How bad has it gotten?” I asked, tone gone grim.

It did not play coy, which I appreciated.

“Most of the remaining Ten Generals still follow Sve Noc,” Ivah said, “but two have gone over and brought their sigils with them. We still have the greater part of the strength, but that strength is bound holding the lines to the south: Kurosiv and their traitors now hold much of Serolen.”

It grimaced.

“The strife has grown along lines it never had before,” Ivah said. “The tenets that you taught us in Iserre have divided the Firstborn.”

Fuck, I thought. I’d never seriously considered that might be a possibility, back when I had spoken out. I was the mouthpiece of living goddesses who held in their grip the source of power of all Firstborn, it wasn’t exactly a kind of position that got you questioned. But the Sisters weren’t the only source of power now, were they? They’d admitted to me months ago that they couldn’t even try to kill Kurosiv anymore without pretty much destroying an already-ruined Night and it sounded like the usurper had only grown in strength since.

“How?” I got out.

“Many sigils despise them,” Ivah frankly said. “That Mighty can no longer take and kill freely is loathed and the authority of the Losara over the new oaths even more so. Sigil-holders remember times when they were not bound by promises and their authority could not be challenged by vote.”

I studied its face.

“It’s the protection oath that fucks them, isn’t it,” I stated.

It was the foundation of the reform I’d laid at the heart of the Firstborn: violence could not be used to keep a drow in a sigil or punish them for leaving it. It was what gave the votes power, why the new ways had teeth. Sigil-holders who continued to treat their followers like cattle would find that their sigils shrunk while those who treated their followers well would find their ranks swelling. A straightforward incentive for sigil-holders to begin treating the powerless decently.

“Nisi and dzulu have been leaving harsh sigils in droves,” Ivah agreed. “That this could not be curtailed by spear or Night has left Mighty furious. It goes, they say, against the true Tenets of Night.”

“And let me guess,” I coldly smiled. “Kurosiv welcomes the malcontents with open arms. They offer the old ways again, maybe even worse.”

“It is said that the nisi are sorely used in the territory of the traitors,” Ivah hesitantly said. “The tenets of Iserre are not observed among the sigils following the usurper.”

And how genuinely awful did treatment have to get, before even the Firstborn thought it was too much? And bad as that was, it wasn’t even what worried me the most from the situation.

“You told me we have the most sigils,” I said, “but Kurosiv poached a large chunk of the Mighty, didn’t they?”

Reluctantly, Ivah nodded. I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Of course they had. The tenets I’d introduced gave power to the powerless over the few individuals that’d ruled over more than nine tenths of the Firstborn as uncontested tyrants for more than a millennium. Some of the Mighty would take it in stride, but some of them would simply look at the fact that now nisi – a word that literally meant cattle! – had some power over them and be offended to their very core. Lesser Mighty wouldn’t mind so much, I decided, because they didn’t actually lose a lot in practice and they might even gain in the exchange. But those few whose strength had allowed every right, rylleh and sigil-holders? They would be furious at the reforms.

And now another god had come, one that promised them a return to the old ways. All the most poisonous of the Mighty, those who knew they couldn’t cut under the reforms, would hear it a siren song. If we were dealing with humans I’d call it good riddance, but these were drow: being a murderous cancer likely meant they’d been among the strongest of their sigils.

“Fuck,” I feelingly said.

That civil war was still looming just beyond the horizon, but worse than that was the realization that my side might actually lose it.

It took us another week and a half to get to Serolen, a short span that felt like forever. Every day we spent here could not be spent with the armies that must already be marching on Keter. How much more of the Principate had been destroyed, while we rode down a shadowed road? How many more thousands had died to blades and devils? There’s been a restful tinge to the travels at first, since so little was demanded of me save that I ride north, but that had faded. Urgency whipped at my back, reproaching every breath not spent making haste to Duskwood.

The others felt it too. Cordelia grew more somber as the days passed, still cordial but ever more distant, and Masego even began setting aside his book to ride in earnest. Akua, as though the talk by the shore had never taken place, stuck to me as a second shadow. She spoke more to Ivah than myself, asking it about old acquaintances and the state of affairs in the Empire Ever Dark. But her presence was not unpleasant. I tended to withdraw less into myself when there was a conversation going, and it was less demanding to listen than to have to keep it going myself.

It sometimes frightened me how well she had come to know me, perhaps better than anyone alive save Hakram.

We could tell the moment was passed the remnants of the Gloom, even in the Ways. The shadows got deeper, the stars more distant, and Ivahs’ road grew noticeably more effective. From there, our last few days were consumed with haste. There was a calamity in the making, I knew it deep in my bone.

“Is it your Name?” Akua asked me quietly, one night by the fire.

“Maybe,” I murmured. “More senses than aspect, yeah? It’s like I can feel a current with my fingers.”

“Fate,” the golden-eyed sorceress said. “A convergence of events.”

I nodded.

“Something big is coming,” I said. “A great pivot.”

For my patron goddesses, or for all the Firstborn? It was too early to tell. All I knew was that coming too late would bring down a disaster on all our heads. So we picked up the pace, running each other ragged as we rode through a dry and sandy riverbed until I could sense the end of our path ahead. Our mounts milled about the sand as I reined in Zombie and the horses followed, Ivah coming to stand at my side without so much as a whisper of warning. Not without reason had I once named it my Lord of Silent Steps.

“We’re here,” I called out. “Get ready for the crossing.”

I got a tired, cranky grunt out of Masego and more vocal acknowledgement from the other two. I barely paid attention, though, catching Ivah’s stare from the corner of my eye.

“You told me parts of Serolen are in Kurosiv’s hands,” I said. “What are the odds that there are enemies waiting on the other side?”

“We will emerge within the Shrine of Tears, Losara Queen,” it said. “It is a stronghold of those loyal to Sve Noc.”

“So not very,” I summed up.

“It is so,” Ivah agreed.

I sighed, then glanced back.

“Arm up,” I ordered. “We’re going into trouble.”

Ivah sent me a wounded look, but it ought to know better by now. Even if there hadn’t been a bevy of gods at work in Serolen, convergences of fate made the unlikely common. I would have bet on a fight even if there wasn’t a good change of enemy action. I took the lead, Ivah at my left and Masego behind me. Akua stayed in the back with Cordelia, as much to shield the calm-faced princess as because she tended to benefit from having longer to cast. She wasn’t the war mage that Masego had been before he lost his magic, or truthfully even now. I unsheathed my sword, Zombie keening eagerly at the sound, and breathed out.

My staff came down, opening a gate out of the Twilight Ways, and I rode through.

The air was warm and humid, that was my first thought. I blinked it away, but my eye went wide as I took in the sight around me. The Shrine of Tears was massive, larger than any Proceran palace I had ever seen and taller than even the Alban Cathedral in Laure. It was disorienting to stand inside, because the shrine pretended it was otherwise: though there was a tall ceiling of curved stone high above, it was hidden by thick fog all the way to the corners of the roof – which came down in walls that were long curtains of rain.

Through the uneven curtains I glimpsed at the lake the shrine had been raised on, but it was not what drew the eye as I rode further onto a causeway of wet stones. Under the roof the great Shrine a hundred smaller shrines had been built, made of painted tiles in vivid colours: red and yellow and blue. Few were larger than a house and everywhere tall painted poles stood, bound to each other and the sharp roofs of the shrines by thick woven ropes from which hung strands of coloured cloth and shining trinkets.

Across it all rain fell in gentle drops, sliding down the vivid tiles and down deep furrows in the ground that led to shallow canals. It was as if under the great roof a hundred beautiful islands had been laid to rest among rivers of stone, each laden with prayers and offerings. It was, I thought even as I pulled up my hood, a place of startling beauty. Behind me I heard Cordelia gasp and smiled. She’d never known the Firstborn as anything but violent killers and skulking spies, but this should begin to teach her differently. They were the ruin of a people, but even now there was more to them than Night.

We emerged on the island at the heart of it all, on the causeway leading to the ornate shrine behind us while knotted ropes crisscrossed above our heads. And as the gate out of Twilight died with a gentle breath, I saw movement ahead. Silhouettes moving through the faint mist of islands.

“There should be a sigil awaiting us,” Ivah said.

Its eyes had followed my own, picking out the number. Seven, eight, nine – no, eight, they were using raider’s walk to make their warband look larger than it was.

“Looks like there’s one,” I coldly smiled.

I shrugged.

“At least it’s not one of the Ten Generals,” I said.

I would have felt one of them coming. This was, by their strength in the Night – oddly muted to my senses, enough that I couldn’t just pick out their numbers through it as I once would have – a sigil-holder and a cadre of rylleh come to kill us.

“What insolence, to dare come to this holy place as servants of a false god,” Ivah said.

Its shoulder had tightened, its muscles coiled. All in anticipation of the violence to come.

“Zeze,” I called out, “sow confusion.”

He cleared his throat.

“Can I have the bodies afterwards?” he politely asked.

I turned to fix him with a steady look.

“I have been very interested in how a race not born to the use of Night could grow so innately adept at wielding it,” he defended.

“Fine,” I sighed. “Just don’t get, you know…”

I gestured vaguely.

“I do not,” he admitted.

“Don’t get all Warlock about it,” I elaborated.

I ignored Akua’s choked laugh and Cordelia’s murmur of ‘should I even ask?’.

“I will not be the Warlock,” Masego assured me.

“Not what I asked,” I sighed, “but I guess it’ll have to do.”

I patted Zombie’s neck, stroking her feathers and nodded at Ivah. It did not need instructions, not after the months we’d spent fighting together in the Everdark. It knew exactly what I wanted of it. I rolled my shoulder to limber it, then cracked my neck to the side.

“Well,” I cheerfully said. “Let’s solve us a religious dispute. Chno Sve Noc!”

I spurred Zombie to a gallop, and moments later we were aflight.

They shot first.

It was the first time I’d fought Firstborn since the Night was ruined, and the difference was plain to see: the three streaks of darkness that howled towards me took a moment to form and they… weak. The Secret could no longer be used the way it once had been. I didn’t even bother to weave a defensive working, my knees guiding Zombie into a short dive that saw all three projectiles go wide. Three of the rylleh ran at me down the causeway on the other side of the river, power blooming around them as they aimed to leap at me when the dive went lowest, but I grinned and pulled deep.

Gods, the Night came easy here. It was so much stronger than in the south.

The air exploded, paving stones flying everywhere as the rylleh scattered into thin lines of Night along the ground, and my staff touched one of those strands of shadow before Zombie banked upwards. That was all it took. I disrupted the Night before it could form into flesh and the rylleh lost control, reappearing like a burst balloon filled with black blood. It never even got off a scream and I pressed low against Zombie’s neck as another volley of Night streaks howled just past my air. Amateurs. If they’d gone for centre of mass instead of my head, they would have at least forced me to defend.

Still, they were not unskilled. While three ran across the causeway and another three continued to fire from the back, the last rylleh had been pulling on a larger working. The kind that took time and shouldn’t be interrupted. Coming out of its body in strands of Night, a hulking shape with a massive maw – it was little more than teeth set in a round and eyeless head – formed and shot out towards me. It didn’t make it far. Two heartbeats and the world rippled, the rylleh’s face turning to utter surprise as the Night beast turned around and bit its head off before blowing up in streaks of black flame.

Hierophant could do all manners of nasty things, using Wrest.

The flames scattered the rylleh shooting projectiles, as they’d been standing too close for comfort, and that was my opening. I slapped aside the spear one of the runners from earlier tried to toss at my back, then sent out my will and picked up the black flames that were guttering out. I fed them life and they roared out in a blaze, spreading in thick tendrils that swallowed up two of the rylleh in the blink of an eye. One of them walked out of his own flesh with a wet squelch as it began to burn, but Hierophant broke the working halfway through and instead of being skin deep half the meat stayed on the bones. Gods but that was an ugly way to die.

Four out of eight dead, all rylleh. Where was the sigil holder, it hadn’t made a move yet? Ah, out back. Atop one of the shrines, gathering Night to itself to form some sort of carapace armour. I’d seen Mighty Jindrich do something similar once, but the shape stayed humanoid here. I suspected I’d not enjoy it should the armour be finished. A whisper against the back of my mind and I turned without batting an eye, following the instinct. My staff slapped down a spear, then twirled to parry the spear of Night that had been hidden in its shadow. I’d not moved in moments, and in a fight that was too long.

“Go,” I whispered at Zombie, and guided her with my knees.

We fell into a curved glide, circling around the island-shrine where I had caught up to the warband. Two of the surviving rylleh fell back to their sigil holder, but one slipped behind me and leapt across the canal – to be caught in the throat by a bolt of sickly green light. The drow went straight through the spell, looking triumphant, but that passed. The moment its feet touched the stone on the other side, they began to turn to dust. Someone was getting fancy. Akua always did like her curses. I had more pressing matters, though.

I flicked an orb of black flame at the sigil holder gathering his carapace, but the two rylleh besides it formed a spinning wheel of Night and scattered it. Yeah, they were going to keep covering their captain until it got that done. Unfortunately for them, I had a way around that.

“The carapace, Zeze,” I shouted.

The world rippled again, and in the heartbeat that followed it all went wrong. I could feel Masego’s will wresting away the Night, began to rip out the carapace, but then another will fought him. Not the drow’s, it had tried and failed already. Something bigger. Hierophant let out a hoarse shout of pain and I clenched my jaw in anger, lashing out with howling flame. Again the rylleh summoned their wheel, but the Night was all askew around them and as my working impacted theirs the fabric of Creation rippled out angrily. I pushed my will, fed my working, and there was loud crack before the shrine burst into a rain of melted, broken tiles.

A plume of smoke hid the results from my sight, but I could still feel Night in there. At least one was still alive. I risked a glanced back, finding Masego was leaning on Akua and bleeding from his empty eye socket. Golden eyes met mine from a distance and she shook her head. In no danger of death, then. Good, I could put my full attention on this. Kurosiv had taken offence to someone wresting Night from their faithful, but it was not the last injury it would suffer today.

When the smoke scattered I found the sigil holder still standing, garbed in black carapace from head to toe. It was segmented, like armour, and it had taken up a long spear of obsidian covered in glyphs. I saw the mark of its sigil written on the side of its carapace helm, a pale wriggling snake pierced by an arrow. Eterin, it meant, and so it was Mighty Eterin I now faced. The armour drow leapt up, landing with unearthly grace atop one of the wooden poles. Eterin flourished its spear at me almost mockingly, and my eye narrowed. I guided Zombie’s glide to the side, watching the timing and throwing myself off.

I landed atop a pole of my own, leg throbbing with pain, and return the flourish with my sword.

“In the name of Loc Ynan, I order your submission,” Mighty Eterin called out.

Its voice was reedy, but its eyes were sharp.

“As First Under the Night, I offer you a chance to return to convert back before your summary execution,” I mildly said. “Which I feel is rather generous, consisdering.”

It laughed.

“Va Ynan Yn,” Mighty Eterin replied, and broke out in a run.

The gift is given, it meant. Eh, ours sounded better. With unnatural grace it ran atop the rope tying our poles together, but I did not move to meet it. I called Night to me instead, weaving it into spinning blades above its head. My eye narrowed as the air current failed to suck Eterin upwards, snapping the working into an explosion instead. That got it to react, but not as I wished: it swayed on the rope for a moment, but the armour was not so much as dented.

“Tricky, tricky,” I muttered. “You don’t get the mobility, but this is stronger than Jindrich’s Secret.”

And Jindrich had been the second strongest sigil holder in Great Strycht. It wasn’t the expendables I was getting sent at me. I began gathering Night again as Mighty Eterin crossed the last of the distance separating us, laughing as it raised its spear, and grinned back toothily. Tendrils of shadows rose from the bottom of the pole, twining around my limbs, and I focused my Name: with he strength of both behind me I met Eterin’s blow, my staff catching the side of the spear.

It should have been blow straight off or lost the spear but instead spun, impossibly still on the rope, and when I tried to slide my sword into its belly the steel slid harmless against the carapace. I hastily put my guard as Eterin finished its spin, turning it into a blow from the back of the spear towards my ribs, and though the angle was wrong for both it was worse for me. My blade went down, the obsidian shaft struck my rib hard and I swallowed a groan. But I was close, and with a free hand. I laid my fingers against its chest and my will pulled.

It was easy as ripping a page out of a book. For the first heartbeat, as least, and then I felt it too. The thing that called itself Loc Ynan, Mighty Kurosiv. The great leech that had survived even the wrath of the Crows. It was like the whole sea coming down at me through a narrow channel and I rocked back, shaken, but I saw something beyond my vicious blooming headache. This was a power, but it was not beyond me. Kurosiv was not a god, for all that they put on airs. And I had ended stronger storms than this, crushed them in the palm of my hand.

“I am the Warden, you upstart thing,” I hissed, “and if you dare raise your voice against me, I will Silence it.”

The Night in Mighty Eterin died. It was snuffed out like a candle between fingers, Kurosiv’s will cut just before I felt from it a towering rage. The sigil-holder moaned out in pain, his carapace crumbling into nothing, and my hand rose to catch its throat.

“You should have picked a better god,” I told it, and squeezed.

My Name flared, the Beast laughing in my ear, and Mighty Eterin died as I pulped flesh and shattered bone. Urgh, now it was all over my hand. I leapt down, using the tendrils to easy my descent, and dismissed them as my boots touched stone. I tossed the corpse away and wiped my hand on my breastplate, limping away to pick up my sword and sheath it. And as the last of the bodies began to cool, a hush fell upon the Shrine of Tears. A dimness blanketed the world, the sound of my own breath distant to my ears and the soft patter of the rain gone silent. I did not need to look to know they had come, sensing their looming shapes in the Night like leviathans swimming through the water.

They perched behind me atop the tallest shrines, the silhouettes of great crows large as houses casting long shadows past me. Sve Noc had come to the victorious field.

“Now you show up,” I drawled, glancing back at my patronesses. “A little late to the evening, are we?”

They were hard to look at with the naked eye, even for me. Their very feathers seemed woven out of inky blackness, and here in this place of power I could dimly sense the endless void that lay beyond the surface. Like the emptiness behind stars, the absence of anything at all. Someone might go mad, looking too deep and too long at that. Ivah was already kneeling, but neither Akua nor Masego – recovered but his face still touched with blood – seemed impressed. They looked at the goddesses with the unruffled assurance of people who had been raised to see gods as meat on the block, not anything worthy of awe.

But that was only to be expected, while Cordelia staying astride her horse had me nodding in approval. It was her first time standing before the likes of Sve Noc, as far as I knew, and though her hands were bone-white around the reins she sat straight-backed in the saddle. There was steel in that spine. The Sisters did not answer me – indeed they rarely spoke outside mind or shared dreams – but there was no need for them to. They had brought a herald with them, an old acquaintance.

The Tomb-maker was still the oldest drow I had ever seen. Its back bent, its skin creased and its thick black veins visible through it. Its tunic of obsidian rings was belted tight at the waist and it wore no arms, never having done so as long as we’d known each other. Silver-blue eyes were set in a face bearing in paint a blooming ochre sunflower in ochre and its long white hair went down its crooked back. Mighty Rumena had not aged a day since I last stood in its presence.

“Losara Queen,” the old drow greeted me. “You have already shed blood on the grounds of Serolen.”

“A good omen,” I agreed.

“There are few better,” Rumena chuckled.

It cast a look around, lingering on distant gates that stood across the shrines.

“My sigil will hold the Shrine of Tears until the Kasedan arrive,” the Tomb-maker told me. “Let us leave for the temple-fortress. We stand too close to the skirmish lines for council to go unheard.”

“Doing a lot of walking, are you?” I smiled. “I suppose I’ve already handled the fighting for you.”

It smiled at me, glancing at the dead bodies.

“Indeed,” Rumena said. “You may now boast strength equal to a rat trap, First Under the Night.”

Fuck, no comeback came to mind. Not again, goddamnit. Komena cawed in amusement. She always played favourites, the bitch. The Secret of Scathing Retorts remained enthroned.

“Ugh, just take us to the whatever temple,” I sneered.

It took to victory with a mocking grin. Masego cleared his throat.

“And send the corpses after us,” I added. “The Hierophant has laid claim to them.”

If there was one upside to dealing with the Firstborn, it was that no one so much as batted an eye when Zeze asked for a pile of corpses.

Silver linings, eh?

Serolen was a city that had been built out of a hundred cities, and there was no other like it on Calernia. The finest monuments and architectural wonders of a nation millennia old had been stolen and regurgitated wherever it pleased Sve Noc, a haphazard nightmare of great beauty. Towers carved out of stalagmites jutted out of the forest floor along with elaborate painted pyramids and what looked like an entire city district on a mile-wide plate of stone. Small houses of stone and wood had risen up between the great works, streets being burned into the ground with Night along the sprawling canals that Andronike had insisted on.

The temple-fortress was not one of the ornate and beautiful places, but instead exactly what it had been named as: a square of heavy obsidian walls surrounding a squat fortress of stone and bone topped by an airy temple without doors where Sve Noc liked to nest. Our rooms were at the heart of the fortress, deep in the belly behind half a dozen heavily armed sigils. I sent Zombie up to the temple, knowing she’d enjoy the place and the Sisters wouldn’t mind, and dropped my affairs in the luxurious rooms that’d been designated as mine before immediately heading for the war council, where Rumena and Mighty Ysengral would be waiting. Ivah had left to attend to the Losara and prepare them for my return, while Akua and Cordelia both indicated interest in attending the council. Masego, not so much.

“I want to dissect the bodies while they’re still fresh,” Zeze informed me. “My interest lies in the intersection between Night and the physical body, which requires that there still be wisps of it yet to fade.”

Well, it wasn’t like he was actually going to pay attention if I forced him to come.

“Don’t get too deep in a new study,” I warned. “We might need to go on war footing soon.”

He scowled at me but did not argue. Good enough. I picked up Cordelia and Akua, both of which were drawing stares wherever we went. All three of us were human, but unlike them I could be felt to have power in the Night – with my hood down and no skin showing, I might be taken for a short Firstborn if not for the depths of my strength revealing me as Sve Noc’s chosen herald. In a nostalgic turn, the war council room that I found was much like the one I had seen in Great Lotow long ago: thrones set against the walls and an empty stone floor at the heart. Neither Rumena nor Mighty Ysengral were seated when I entered, an implicit mark of respect.

I’d seen Ysengral in dreams before. It was the best defensive commander of the Firstborn in my opinion, only the eighth of the Ten Generals but having proved utterly lethal to Keter’s forces by relying heavily on traps and artillery. It had earned the sobriquet ‘Cradle of Steel’ the hard way. It was no more impressive in person than it had been through the visions, a skinny drow with short white hair and a slight overbite revealing half-broken teeth. It wore black half-plate made of an alloy forged through Night over steel ringmail, and a single-edged sword was sheathed at its hip.

Both it and Rumena offered me a respectful nod as I swept in, Akua and Cordelia behind me.

“Mighty Ysengral,” I smiled. “Our meeting is a long-awaited pleasure.”

“Shared, Losara Queen,” the drow replied. “I ate memories of the campaigns in Hainaut with great pleasure.”

A toss-up whether the poor bastard whose memories had been eaten still lived. Just because Ysengral was competent didn’t mean it was any less vicious than the rest of the Firstborn when it wanted something.

“I bring with me Prince Cordelia Hasenbach, of the Lycaonese,” I told it, “and the one who was once a shade in the Night, Akua Sahelian.”

Ysengral flicked a silvery glance at Akua.

“I have heard of your works, Mighty Shade,” it nodded.

Cordelia did not rank the same courtesy. If she was offended, she did not show it. It wouldn’t be the last insult she swallowed today anyway, as I’d told her. For one neither she nor Akua would get to sit here, as it would imply they were equals to the two Mighty – something neither of them was likely to tolerate even if I interceded. It was easy enough to find which was my throne: one of them was twice as large as the others, about the right height for me and positively dripping with sculpted crows. I sat down with relief and they followed suit. Cordelia came to stand by my right, Akua following suit to my left with an amused quirk of the lips.

“Mighty Ivah told me of the state of Serolen, but the talk seems to have been out of date,” I said. “Where do we stand?”

It was Ysengral that fielded the question, flicking a wrist as it called on Night. An illusion that resembled Serolen as seen from above spread across the stone floor. Nails of pale light began to coalesce over much of the eastern half of the city and a chunk of the centre where the canals converged

“The traitor sigils have seized nearly half the city,” Ysengral said. “The traitor Ishabog’s attempt to seize the heart of the canals was ended by Mighty Rumena, but the traitor Moren has broken the back of two of our own offensives.”

Ishabog the Adversary, the Fourth General. One whose sigil was small and made of only the strongest Mighty, numbering not a single nisi and dzulu. Its defection to Kurosiv was not unexpected. Moren Bleakwomb was an even harsher loss, having been the Third General. It knew Secrets that granted it power over ice and snow, an arsenal that had only grown more deadly after Sve Noc devoured Winter. In a straight fight it was probably weaker than Rumena, but it didn’t give straight fights and anybody trying to kill it was going to die in a permanent blizzard long before catching sight of it.

One of its favourite tactics was to use its dzulu and lesser Mighty to bait an enemy sigil onto grounds it could encase in ice, killing both in a stroke, so I could see why Kurosiv’s ways would be of greater appeal to it than the reforms.

“And what have they been doing since Ishabog got whipped?” I asked.

“Skirmishes across all boundaries,” Rumena said. “They push strongest for the temples in the city heart, but there have been attacks everywhere.”

“Moren placed sigils at the border and gave them lead to raid as they wish,” Ysengral told me. “Ishabog and its riders join the raids as they pleased, abducting duzu and slaughtering all others.”

I frowned.

“So they’ve stopped with major pushes?” I asked.

“I believe Ishabog is joining raids to find a weakness in our defences,” Ysengral said. “It looks for a killing stroke.”

I looked at Rumena.

“They are provoking us to attack,” Rumena disagreed. “Only I could match Ishabog on the field and it follows no strategy, so they hoped to bait us into another offensive so that we might try to force its presence.”

The old drow grimaced.

“It is a trap,” the Tomb-maker said, “we have seen that Kurosiv’s traitors are raising towers of obsidian in many places across the city.”

I did not like the sound of that at all.

“Do we know why?” I asked.

“They might be meant to empower Moren’s winter,” Ysengral suggested. “We have dammed it on their side of the canals with Secrets, but if forced through our defences it could overturn the preparations of my sigil.”

“I do not believe it Moren’s work,” Rumena disagreed. “It has always preferred raw strength to ritual, and Ishabog even more so. There is only one other mind that can have conceived of such a thing.”

Kurosiv themselves. Yeah, the more I heard about that the less I liked it.

“Then we need to have a look at one of those towers,” I said. “We need to know what they’re for. What kind of defences are we looking at?”

“Significant,” Mighty Ysengral replied. “Sigils defend them and sometimes more than one. No less than an offensive will let us reach even the closest.”

I clenched my fingers and unclenched them.

“Then that’s what-”

I felt Andronike brush against my mind, the refusal deep. They did not want us to go on the attack. Why? I had fallen silent, turning to look at the temple above us through the ceiling, but no one asked why. The answer my patronesses conveyed was complicated enough it took me some time to decipher. They were afraid the deaths would feed the towers, I got, only the fear was not just in abstract. You don’t believe those towers are about the fighting on the ground, do you? You think they’re a weapon forged to kill you. I mulled over that, biting my lip. I could see where the suspicions came from.

Rumena was convinced they were baiting an attack from us and Ysengral had noted that Ishabog was abducting dzulu when it raided. Were those meant as workers to raise the tower, or sacrifices to feed them? Maybe both. Either way, it hinted that the towers needed people to be on the other side of the canal for them to be of us. An offensive was playing right into that. But doing nothing was not an answer either, we all knew that. The longer we waited the longer the enemy had to advance their plans.

“That’s a problem,” I admitted. “How would either of you rank the chances of a small cabal making it to one of the towers hidden?”

Neither of the Might looked convinced.

“Moren knows all that tread its winter,” Ysengral said.

“There are ways around every power,” I said.

“They’ll have seer Secrets everywhere around the towers,” Rumena replied more bluntly. “Without the cover of an offensive and the chaos of war, there will be no success.”

“The deaths of an offensive across the canals might be turned against us,” I said. “We will not make such an attempt.

The once-First Prince of Procer stirred at my right. I turned to look at her.

“Cordelia?” I asked. “Speak.”

“Am I to understand, Losara Queen, that it is the deaths of our soldiers that are the reason such an attempt cannot be made?”

Eh, maybe not in an absolute sense but in practice yes. Kurosiv might be able to sacrifice its own sigils to try to kill Sve Noc, but it would be a bloody gamble – and if it lost, it would have nothing left. Much better to spread out the deaths between two sides, even them out by making it a war.

“More or less,” I agreed.

“Then I may have a way,” Cordelia Hasenbach said.

The drow seemed skeptical, but I knew better.

“What do you need?”

“One day,” she replied, “and every Firstborn chronicler you can spare.”

Well now, I thought, that ought to get interesting.