XVIII.
The Foundations
are Fractured

Atnan stood silently lost in thought as he watched the sky brighten.

Why had the beast not stirred? Was it not there? He believed it to be, as did Shemulak, and Glesimel, and most of all, Zakinder.

They might be fooling themselves.

None of them had been alive at the time. All they had was stories. The great sea turtles of Del at least left behind their gigantic shells. A turtle and a tortoise were not so different — and Shigshag’s shell was still attached, presumably, and thus unobservable. Mekvat might be right. It might only be a hillock with a suggestive outline.

Stories might have evolved over time, but the tapestry showing the submission of great beasts had not. It might be a fiction, of course. Scribes were often required to fill in gaps in a story with their own inventions.

No, no, the lost scrolls which Shemulak had translated gave not only the details of the event but the recipe for the sleeping smokes. As best they could reckon, the scrolls originated outside Kindhir’s influence — if anything, against it. If the court weavers had invented the story of the tapestry, how might the author of the scrolls have invented complementary details? An older, shared tradition? Or the simpler explanation: Shared knowledge of an actual event.

Round and round the circle went. The sound of urgent speech yanked him out of his meditation.

“Why isn’t it working?” Glesimel snapped at no one in particular.

“Who knows? How long is it supposed to take?” her husband asked.

“I would think by now,” Shemulak said. “It’s strong stuff. One whiff — ”

Atnan put his hands out abruptly, cupping the air, feeling for the strange breeze that whooshed in and out.

Catastrophe! We put the smoke at his back, not his nostrils.

Atnan pantomimed moving one of the bundles at Barlas. He wasn’t sure his message was getting through.

Zakinder asked, “What are you on about, friend?”

Atnan made his fingers waft like smoke, finally sniffing them deeply before tapping his nose.

Zakinder’s eyes widened. He recruited his wife with a tap on the shoulder. “Atnan says we need to move one of the bundles.”

Without a word, Glesimel started up the hill. The group followed her to a column of thick grey-blue smoke billowing from a crevice beneath a gnarl of roots. Barlas grabbed Zakinder’s ankles while he walked hand-over-hand into the opening.

“Almost … there!” Zakinder’s voice echoed from down the hole.

“Hold your breath, husband,” Glesimel said.

“Have you got it?” Shemulak asked.

No answer came except loud singing.

“Pull him up, pull him up!” Glesimel shouted.

Barlas pulled Zakinder out of the hole, the bundle of incense bathing them both in smoke.

“Husband! Are you alright?”

Staring, he whispered, “I can feel … everything!” He stared at both his hands, flipping them over in turns.

Shemulak took the bundle and wrapped it in a sack, smoke still pouring out of either end.

Atnan took off in search of the wind’s source. Every few steps he put out his hands, turning toward the side where the wind felt stronger — or so he hoped. He led them away from the hill toward a small mound nearby.

Ah! Elder beast or no, he still has a tortoise’s neck and head.

They found a crack behind some loose stones and Shemulak threw the bundle down. Atnan watched and waited. Everyone held their breath, except Zakinder, who was touching his face and singing softly to himself.

That’s all there is to do. If I’m wrong now, then I hope the Five will forgive me for failing to understand their signs.

“Riders, a dozen or more, headed our way,” Glesimel hissed. “They must have heard us thrashing around like cattle!” She grabbed Zakinder’s cloak with one hand and Atnan’s with the other, dragging them both toward the city.

The small group ran as fast as they could around the edge of the hill until Barlas stopped short. “Where’s Selolo?”

Selolo was neither dreaming nor awake. As the others retrieved the packet of incense, they melted into other shapes. Barlas became a bear; Atnan, a man-sized owl; the vegetable-sellers, a squirrel and a muskrat; and the lanky scribe, a mountain elk with huge branching horns.

Busy, busy! They must complete their work, and I will let them.

An urge to ascend the hill overtook her.

The landscape glittered, bathed in silvery light — impossible, since dawn had not yet broken, and the moon was new. As she walked, the light wavered, shining from beneath her skin, billowing off her like curls of glowing white fog.

She climbed to the pinnacle of the bowl-shaped hill and up into a tree. Below, soldiers rode toward them, a pack of black wolves, teeth bared, jaws slavering.

Oh, they’re starving, poor things.

Behind the riders, the towers and siege machines rose from the landscape, a forest of standing deadwood, charred, ashen. Around them, a carpet of soldiers swirled like fallen leaves disturbed by a sudden gust.

So pretty, all the leaves of autumn.

In their midst, Taláni stood, framed by the slender lines of an alder copse, paralleling his neck, torso, limbs.

He thinks he is standing straight, and yet, how crooked.

The ground beneath her shuddered, a faint tremor that might have gone unnoticed had she not been waiting for it.

Move the earth — but will he understand? With no one to interpret the signs, he is illiterate.

Her emotions gusted in all directions: terror, hatred, shame, pity, sadness. The last one surprised her the most. An old song swirled within her:

Sing the living things that breathe,

Sing the sky that brings the rain,

Sing the stars that float above,

Sing the sun and sing the moon  …

From the bones of the old song, a new melody arose in her belly, tingled her neck and ears, rumbled through her chest and throat, bursting, explosive, as though her voice would carry to the horizon. If she didn’t let it out, she might split open. She gathered the whole sky into her tiny lungs, and sang, in the language of her people, but with an unknown tune:

I am the Watcher-in-the-Moon!

I see and in my anger, judge.

What is sung can be un-sung.

Look! Today, I move the earth.

Tomorrow, I will blot out the sun.

What is sung can be un-sung.

The earth pitched and leaned over. She sensed herself being taken up and carried away. All the while she remained motionless, standing upright, as if the world revolved around her.

So pretty.

Taláni and his company were almost to the hill when a woman started shouting at them from a treetop.

I know that voice.

Uluri and several warriors dismounted and advanced, shield and javelins ready. As they closed in, the hill let out a long rattling groan, followed by stone shattering and grinding. The ground beneath them lurched and a deep crevice formed at the edge of the hill, dislodging boulders that buried Uluri and the soldiers with her below.

A woman tumbled down the hill, a cloud of white sleeves and skirts rolling head over feet. He yanked hard on the horns of his ibex, forcing the beast toward the rumbling, leaping it across the crevice to the hollow where the white-robed woman had come to rest. Leaning down from his mount, he scooped her up mid-gallop, then urged the beast back toward the camp, dodging trees and boulders on the way down.

To his horror, the hill behind sprouted legs and slowly stood up. Earth poured off the edges of a gigantic shell as an awkward neck thrust forward, brandishing a heavy beak and two beady black eyes.

The ground shuddered under each thunderous footfall. Now the beast was following him toward the encampment. It might be an elder beast, but it was still a stupid animal. If it meant to catch him, he could lead it away.

Wrenching the ibex’s horns, he managed to veer it off to the side. As he did, a columnar tortoise foot overshadowed him, swept by, and crashed down.

Jamming his heels into the ibex’s ribs, he dodged huge craterous footprints and walls of debris that slaked off the tortoise shell. The beast’s enormous limbs swung slowly, covering long stretches of ground in every pendulous step.

It was ahead of him now. Pursuit was futile. He let the ibex slow to a stop as the enormous tortoise lumbered through his carefully laid encampment.

Furious, he screamed.

The front lines of Taláni’s army scattered like mosquitoes rising from the grass. The beast lumbered through the heavy timbers of the corrals. Uluri’s twin horn-beasts rolled beneath the tortoise’s massive foot, squished like hunks of soft cheese.

In the commotion, the terror birds breached their enclosure. A dozen of the feathery killers bounced out, clacking their man-sized beaks and kicking spear-toed feet. Starved for the attack, they went into a frenzy, squawking and shredding, chomping and gulping down anything in reach.

Several bounded off toward the city.

Go, go! Eat them, chunk by bloody chunk.

All the while, the tortoise continued on its path, unconcerned with the havoc created by its every footfall. What it didn’t knock over or smash, it buried, flaking off whole landslides, dropping boulders all over the camp.

Taláni reached the front line, killed a terror bird with a javelin, then leaped into a torsion engine and gunned down several more.

Suddenly, it was over. The last of the terror birds was dead or gone. The tortoise continued, bellowing, turning over trees and houses as it headed toward the mountains.

The camp was in chaos. Taláni posted himself atop an upturned boulder and began barking orders, directing the line to form up again.

The woman in white was still slumped over the back of his ibex. He scooped her up, slung her over his shoulder, and retreated to his tent, which was still standing.

Along the way, he surveyed the damage. About a third of the towers and torsion engines were untouched, a third damaged, and a third beyond repair. The animal stocks were spent: birds dead or gone, horn-beasts ground to pulp. The human stock fared better: some dead, others half-buried, half-crushed, half-eaten, but many were still intact, rattled, but in good working order.

It could have been worse.

Flopping the woman onto a pile of skins, he tore some herbs into a small clay vessel. As he worked, he took the first opportunity to finally study her face.

It is you! My Selolo, my prophetess. Why have the spirits returned you to me? In the space of a single evening, such loss, and such gain.

Dropping an ember from the fire into the vessel, he waved the smoke of the scorched herbs beneath her chin.

Sputtering, she awoke.

Mekvat watched from his balcony midway up the tower. The city stretched out below, circle upon circle to the outer wall. The only sound was the whipping of a long banner in the pre-dawn breeze. He hadn’t slept well since the first bell, almost a month ago now.

He looked to the fields beyond the city. Torchlights wavered near the ground like fallen stars, some affixed to siege engines, more flitting around like fireflies.

Where did they get all the wood, I wonder?

The first light of dawn illuminated the encampment. They had made considerable progress since the parlay.

Silgath! Who would think it? The Dars, yes, that I could see. Hill-folk, perhaps. But the Shadow People are fragmented, unsophisticated, incapable. Yet here they are, united, strong. They will defeat us — if they can’t break the walls, they can starve us out. The Unification of the Seven Cities was supposed to prevent this!

He gave Limiya a passing thought.

Suddenly, Tortoise Hill erupted. Mekvat’s knees buckled and he almost fell off the balcony. The words he had shouted at Atnan and Shemulak the night before echoed in his memory:

Nonsense! Fevers! Suppose the legends are true and then suppose by some miracle you can wake him — you shouldn’t dare! An elder beast cannot be controlled. He will stomp any way he pleases. Why do you think they put him to sleep?

That was the end of it, or so he thought.

In his astonishment, he began to shout nonsense; he had to clap both hands over his mouth to stop himself. Eventually, he settled on repeating, “Shigshag!”

The watchmen on the wall made noise with horns, drums, or their own voices. People poured out of their houses, clamored onto rooftops, or shimmied up poles to get a better view. They began to chant along with him, “Shigshag! Shigshag!”

Focused on the slow-motion calamity, he nearly missed the small group sprinting away from the crater. The others he didn’t recognize, but the two blue-robed figures could only be Shemulak and Atnan.

Pursued by a pack of flightless birds, the party ran behind a hummock and he lost sight of them. He didn’t wish for anyone to be torn apart by wild beasts; nevertheless, if this was the price for their defiance, so be it. He had tried to warn them.

Meanwhile, the crowd streamed toward the tower, still chanting the great tortoise’s name, dancing, whirling, and waving their arms in time.

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