Age of Swords (The Legends of the First Empire #2)

“That’s it,” she heard Arion say. “Work it out just like the game. Form a pattern to draw the ground apart.”

Suri struggled. She didn’t know which strings did what, and the more she concentrated the more strings she found. She became overwhelmed. This was a game with an infinite number of strands.

“There’s too many. I don’t know which—”

“You’re standing on it,” Arion replied.

Suri grinned again. This time a bit more stupidly because the answer was so obvious.

She found the chord, big and deep, heavier than most of the others. This was less a string and more a rope. Without thinking, she dropped her humming to a lower tone and let her fingers play out before her. She heard a sound through her ears, a faint rustling as she bent the chord slightly.

“That’s it,” Arion said. “You’ve got it. Just hook and draw apart.”

Suri slipped her fingers underneath, as she would have if she were playing the game, and pulled her hands apart. As she did, just as in the game, the chord slid around her fingers and tightened.

“Suri, no!” Arion shouted. “Stop! Stop!”

Stopping wasn’t easy. Just as with the game, after looping a finger she had a natural desire to pull the strings out to their full extent. Suri craved to feel the pattern complete, to feel the loops tug near her knuckles, and it was all happening so fast.

The rustling became cracking as if trees were being broken.

“Suri!”

Arion grabbed her hands, and Suri opened her eyes.

The expression on Arion’s face was one of horror, and Suri turned her head to search for signs of what had caused it. Suri was terrified that she may have inadvertently harmed more trees, but they looked exactly as they had before. This left her puzzled as she had heard the cracking of trunks.

“What’s wrong?” Suri asked.

Arion said nothing and just closed her eyes while putting a quivering hand to her mouth.

Suri looked over at Nyphron who remained sitting on the fallen birch, a smile on his lips. “Nothing at all,” he told her. “You did wonderfully.”

Only then did Suri notice Rapnagar.

The giant’s head had slipped farther, only the crown exposed above the surface, and it was crushed like an egg. Suri hadn’t opened the ground. She had closed it.





CHAPTER FIVE


Small Solutions




Roan was, without overstatement, the most intelligent person I have ever met. To our great misfortune, we did not realize this fact for far too long; to our great luck, we discovered it in the nick of time.

—THE BOOK OF BRIN





Persephone had grossly underestimated the time it would take to get her people moving. Even if Dahl Rhen hadn’t been destroyed, it would have taken weeks to evacuate. The people just didn’t know how to move a village of that size. Hundreds of years had passed since Clan Rhen was migratory, and the techniques of their nomadic ancestors were lost. She considered asking Brin to provide some insight. As the Keeper of Ways, Brin was the repository of their people’s history, but the girl was in no condition to think. Even if Persephone had been able to quiz her, the forebears had lived in a world much different from the current one. Their existence had been lean. They wouldn’t have been able to imagine the wealth amassed by future generations, and therefore they couldn’t help make decisions about what to bring and the things to leave behind.

Adding to the task was the overwhelming grief. Most days Persephone spent time prodding people who’d become stagnant while sifting through debris. Just this morning, she had come across Eli the Miller as he struggled to pull a shoulder basket out of the remains of his home. When he spotted his daughter’s hair-tie in the wreckage, he stooped, picked it up, and then crumpled to the ground. Persephone gave him the next hour to cry, but then had to assign him a task or he would have been there all day.

“How’s it going?” Moya asked, trotting over and catching Persephone near the well.

“Slow…real slow.” She stopped and fixed the young woman with a harsh look. “Are you packed?”

Moya’s face assumed one of her indignant expressions, consisting mostly of sour lips. “Let’s see…” She glanced down at herself. “I’m wearing my dress and have both my arms and legs, so yes, I’m packed.”

“Good, then you can help carry food. Do you think you and someone else could carry one of the pots of wheat?”

“Oh, sure. No problem. While we’re at it, would you like me to carry the miller’s stone too? Seph, that pot must weigh three hundred pounds.”

She was right, of course, and Persephone nodded, adding another task to her already long list. “We’ll need bags, and lots of them. We’ll divide each urn among ten or fifteen people.” She sighed. “Even if every man, woman, and child carried a thirty-pound bag of wheat or barley, we still wouldn’t be able to take half of what’s in the storage pit, and it’s nearly empty. And what about the elderly? I can’t ask someone like Padera to haul a heavy load.”

“I wouldn’t worry about her. She’s tougher than all of us. That old woman will likely carry a goat under each arm.”

“We need to find a way to bring it all. What if Tirre refuses us? If they keep their doors barred, we’ll have to camp outside for who knows how long, surviving on only what we bring. They don’t have a forest to hunt in. And what happens in autumn when there’s no harvest for the coming winter?” Persephone turned, caught sight of the well, and sighed again. “And then there’s water. I know where there are a few small streams on the way, but in the middle of summer, they might be dry. We’ll need a lot of water.”

Moya nodded and pointed in the direction of Dahl Rhen’s patron god. “And what about Mari? She’s none too light.”

“Oh, for the love of Elan, I almost forgot.” Persephone looked over at the stone statue. “I don’t think abandoning our god is a wise idea right now.”

“Exactly.” Moya nodded toward the Galantians, who were clustered around more than a dozen jugs of Bergin’s beer. More than half of the containers were empty, lying on their sides. They hadn’t stopped celebrating their victory since the battle with the giants. “Maybe Grygor could carry her.”

The two walked over to the group.

“And then Sebek, he runs right for the biggest one,” Vorath was saying. The stocky Fhrey with the fledgling beard stood before the others, gesturing broadly with a cup that sloshed over the brim.

“Just trying to get ahead of my javelins,” Eres said.

“We could use some help packing up,” Persephone told them, and folded her arms in what she hoped was a commanding manner. She looked around their circle for Nyphron but failed to spot him, which did nothing for her confidence.

They all looked at Persephone for a moment. Then Sebek, with as charming a smile as she’d ever seen, said, “We are helping. We’re working hard to lighten the weight of beer that needs transporting.”

They all laughed.

Persephone waited for it to calm, then asked, “Where is Nyphron?”

“Went off with the Miralyith and that mystic this morning.”

“Great,” she muttered.