CHAPTER THREE

Salamaan Pass, Northern Kingdoms

I saiah dismounted at the very top of the pass, giving his horse a chance to recover from the steep, difficult climb. He let the reins trail loose, and the stallion wandered off, nosing among the stones for any stray blade of grass.

Behind him the five other riders did the same, not speaking, Maximilian and Ishbel carefully keeping to opposite sides of the group as they had done on the ride up the mountain.

Isaiah walked to a point where he could stand on a large, flat-topped rock and stare south. He could see the smudge of Hairekeep in the distance, and beyond that farther still Isaiah fancied he could just make out a black haziness that might be Sakkuth.

Aqhat he could not see at all, but he could feel it.

The Skraelings were changing into the likeness of their master. Isaiah shuddered. Since Lister had told him about the Skraelings, Isaiah’s dreams had been disturbed by nightmarish visions of what lay ahead.

Skraelings, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of them, under the control of Kanubai.

Or of DarkGlass Mountain, and Isaiah did not know which was worse.

Where are you, Lister? he asked. What are you doing?

I am south of Hosea, my friend, traveling with a horde of creatures that I no longer feel comfortable calling Skraelings. They no longer tolerate me so well, and I stay out of their way.

A pause, then Lister continued. Pray to the heavens, my friend, that they pass you by on their way south.

Isaiah shivered, breaking off the connection, and turned around.

Axis had come up close, and was looking down into the pass at the slowly winding column as it moved north.

“Why do I get the feeling,” Axis said softly, not looking at Isaiah, “that what you are about to say will shatter worlds?”

“Worlds are already shattering, my friend,” said Isaiah. “Perhaps what I say now will help rebuild them.”

He walked closer to the grouping of Maximilian, StarDrifter, Salome, and Ishbel.

“My lord,” Isaiah said to Maximilian, “do I have permission to speak?”

Everyone, save Axis, looked between Maximilian and Isaiah in surprise at both Isaiah’s words and tone.

“Better you than me,” said Maximilian.

Isaiah nodded. “Very well.” He turned to the others. “I need to tell you a tale. I will be as brief as I can.

Some of you”—he glanced at Ishbel—“will have heard parts of it before.

“This is a tale of my land, now called Isembaard,” Isaiah continued, “and of the Northern Kingdoms from Escator to the Outlands, and including Viland, Gershadi, and Berfardi. All of these lands are wedded together more strongly than you can imagine. It is the legend of Kanubai, the chaos of that time before life, and it is the tale of the Lord of Elcho Falling.”

Isaiah paused, walking slowly about the top of the mountain, his boots scrunching in the loose gravel, every eye save Maximilian’s fixed on him.

Maximilian had turned very slightly, and was now looking into the distance over the western FarReach Mountains.

“In the beginning,” Isaiah said, “and for an infinity of time there was nothing but the darkness of Chaos, who called himself Kanubai. Kanubai grew tired of his lonely existence, and so he invited Light and Water to be his companions. Chaos and Light and Water coexisted harmoniously, but then one day Light and Water merged, just for an instant of time, but in that instant they conceived a child—Life.

“Kanubai was jealous of Life, for it was the child of the union of Light and Water and he had been excluded from that union. He set out to murder Life, to consume it with darkness and subject it to Chaos, but Light and Water united against him in order to protect their child. Aided by a great mage, Light and Water defeated Kanubai in battle, and they interred his remains in an abyss. They stoppered this abyss with a sparkling, life-giving river, which combined the best of Light and of Water, and they hoped that Chaos was trapped for all time.”

Isaiah gave a small smile, looking at each of his audience in turn. “The mage who aided Light and Water was a man they knew only as the Lord of Elcho Falling. It was he who defeated Kanubai in a major battle that raged for months through day and night over this entire land, and he defeated him only with the aid of Light and Water, who were his weapons.”

Again he paused. “And who are his servants.”

“You are Water incarnate, are you not, Isaiah?” Axis said. “And Lister…Light?”

“Yes,” Isaiah said.

Axis took a deep, deep breath, glancing once more at Maximilian, who still regarded the far distance as if it were fascinating. “Go on,” Axis said to Isaiah.

“We must shift forward in time, many millennia,” Isaiah said. “To a time some two thousand years ago.”

Very briefly, Isaiah told the group the tale he’d told Ishbel. How the Magi had built their glass pyramid, through which they meant to touch Infinity, over the precise point where Water and Light had placed the stopper to Kanubai’s abyss. Boaz had opened the pyramid into Infinity, and in the doing cracked the stopper. Kanubai had been crawling his way free ever since.

“This is where the legend of Kanubai and that of the Lord of Elcho Falling begin to merge once again,”

Isaiah said. “Boaz was a magus of the land, and one so powerful he headed the entire Threshold project, but he was the son of a northerner, a man called Avaldamon, a mage the likes of which few of us have ever met.”

“Ah!” Maximilian said. “We had never known what happened to Avaldamon! How ironic, Isaiah, that his issue caused the stopper holding Kanubai to crack.”

“Aye, ironic indeed,” Isaiah said.

“I didn’t know,” said Maximilian. “No one knew where he’d got to. We thought him lost. Is that where…” He glanced at Ishbel.

“Yes,” said Isaiah, “Ishbel is a direct descendant of Avaldamon’s line through his son, Boaz.”

“So that is where the connection happened,” Maximilian said. “I could not work it out.”

“Will one or both of you start to speak sense?” Ishbel said. “What are you trying to say?”

Isaiah looked pointedly at Maximilian, and he sighed, and stepped close to the group so that he became fully a part of it.

“Avaldamon’s elder brother, named Fledge, was the Lord of Elcho Falling at that time,” Maximilian said.

“Yes,” Ishbel said, “I know this. I just don’t understand what this has to do with you, Maximilian.”

“Ishbel,” Maximilian said, “the name of the House of Elcho Falling is Persimius. I am the current Lord of Elcho Falling. You are also of the family of Persimius. I knew it the first time I touched you. I am descended from Fledge, you from Avaldamon.”

Ishbel stared at him. Her face was white, her eyes huge, and she trembled very slightly where she stood.

Salome came to her, and put a hand about her waist, but Ishbel scarcely felt it.

Maxel was the Lord of Elcho Falling? Maxel?

“Kanubai is risen,” said Isaiah. “Water and Light are once more incarnate. The Lord of Elcho Falling needs to assume the throne of his mountain fortress at the edge of the world.”

“Really?” said Salome. “Where is that, then? I’ve never heard of it.”

“The fortress of Elcho Falling,” said Maximilian, “fell into disuse perhaps two thousand years ago, fairly soon after Avaldamon went south. It was abandoned by the Lords of Elcho Falling, who took up residence in their summer palace, now the king’s palace in Escator.” He took a deep breath. “Elcho Falling is Serpent’s Nest.”

“And Ishbel,” said Isaiah, “through the knowledge gained in her training as archpriestess of the Coil, is the one who shall need to unwind it for Maximilian—to present to him his throne. She is far less an archpriestess of the Coil than she is of Elcho Falling, which is her inheritance, too.”

Ishbel finally found her voice. “You’ve been manipulating everyone’s lives for all of our lives, haven’t you, Isaiah? My parents, my entire family…were they murdered so that I would be raised within Serpent’s Nest? What of Maximilian? Were his seventeen years of hell necessary to hone him for the crown he needed to assume? Did you allow a child to endure a nightmare, and a youth to lose half his life, just so that you could mold us into what you wanted?”

“Lister and I did what was necessary,” Isaiah said, “to save us all from Kanubai. The future rests in your hands, Maximilian and Ishbel.”

“Well,” muttered Axis, “thank the stars it’s not up to me this time.”