Meek

"What are marks?" Lara asked, as Fishhook vanished into the mist.

"Scratches, lines, scrapes," Riadn told her. "Random-looking symbols the Order uses to communicate."

"Ah. And what's the plan?"

"Follow the marks," Payde said, around a mouthful of herbs. "Find the witch."

"Take her head," Riadn said.

"And sing a happy song," Payde finished.

Lara frowned. "Save the children."

"We won't forget them," Riadn promised.

When Payde recovered enough to raise a shield-bridge, Eli was the first across. It wasn't much like strolling across a bridge, though. More like jumping onto a long rock in the center of a river.

Still, he took a breath and jumped. The shield supported his weight, which meant that the women wouldn't have a problem. Payde weighed more in his armor, but apparently he'd reflexively strengthen the shield beneath himself if he sensed it failing. Eli took two steps on the shield then jumped again, landing on the wall that connected with the melted ocean of rooftops.

He caught the others as they crossed, keeping his sparks at the ready to provide just a little more lift if necessary.

"Eyes open for marks," Riadn told Payde, after he joined them.

"I'm fine," Payde said.

She glanced at him.

"I'm fine."

She grunted and started away.

As they crossed the misty, undulating rooftops of the inner city--leaving the Eld shrine behind--the echo of the Reach's power in Eli's chest turned to a booming. Like the pulse of the ancient, fallen city was thumping in his heart.

He glanced at Payde. "The Reach isn't bothering you?"

"Not so much anymore," Payde said.

Which was odd. Earlier, Payde had felt the sensation more keenly--at least more painfully--than Eli. But now he seemed unbothered. Eli didn't understand why. Of course, he didn't know if any of this was reducible to understanding. He was crossing a city that had been melted by the touch of the Angel and the raising of the Ward, or by the revenge of Celestials and the birth of angelbrood--or by both. Perhaps he'd stepped onto a path that was simply beyond human comprehension.

They stuck to the troughs of the stone 'waves,' though Riadn crept higher to scout, and occasionally vanished for a few minutes at a time--and Eli's sparks drifted higher still. He didn't know what the 'marks' looked like, but the Shepherds stopped at a few scuffs in the stone that looked like ... well, like scuffs in the stone.

Apparently they contained messages from Fishhook. Or directions, because Riadn and Payde followed them through the maze of stone.

When they stepped from a deep trench, the Reach loomed above them. From this angle, with the bottom blocked by another wave, Eli couldn't see the scaffolding wrapping the base of the spire. He couldn't see the top either: lost in the clouds or the mist. He felt the whole length of it, though, like a crash of thunder shaking his bones, and once again he took a moment to imagine his core, safe in the depths of the troll mountain.

"There," Riadn said, looking to her right at ... more rooftop.

"What is it?" Lara asked.

"Broken scaffolding, leading down to the street level."

"There's street level?" Payde said.

"A few deep chasms," Riadn told him. "Leading down to the ancient roads. The scaffolding is how the bear climbed to the rooftops, like an impromptu seige ladder."

"But it's broken now?" Lara asked.

"Fishhook's mercs broke it." Payde tapped a scrape-mark in the stone. "No more pets."

"He's probably stationed people at every point of entry," Payde said. "That's why we're not seeing risen."

"Either that," Lara said, "or they're busy elsewere."

Ahead of them, Eli's spark caught sight of an octagonal turret rising from the waves of stone. Strangely unmelted, the only intact structure on the rooftops other than the jagged stalagmite-looking peaks and steeples breaking the surface of the 'sea.' The turret seemed untouched; a rose-tinted blushstone construction standing a sheer fifteen feet above the waves.

A moment later, Riadn spotted it. "That's where we're meeting Fishhook."

"What is it?" Lara asked.

"Looks like the top of a bailey tower," Payde said.

"Blushstone is expensive," Riadn said. "More likely a palace tower."

Eli's spark showed him that they were both wrong; the octagonal shape was the flaring end of a wall that cut straight across the rooftops and vanished into the mist.

"Ha," Payde said, when he saw the 'tower' was a wall. "It's like that old saying. 'Don't mistake the spearhead for the spear.'"

"That's not an old saying," Riadn said.

"Sounds like an old saying to me," Lara said.

"In dryn," Eli told the Shepherds, "we say 'you can't see the bird for the beak.'"

"How do--" Riadn started, and a shadow moved across stone.

She nocked an arrow in an eyeblink, and took aim overhead.

"Whoa, whoa!" a voice called from the top of the wall. "Fishhook sent me!"

A spark rose higher to reveal the fat spearman who'd fought the bear cub. From this close, Eli saw that he was a young guy with a lot of eyebrow and a snub nose. His spear was strapped diagonally across his back and he was carrying a cumbersome length of wood.

When he poked his head over the side of the wall, Riadn lowered her bow and Payde said, "What're you doing up there?"

"Inviting you to join me," the man said, and lowered the wood over the side. Looked like another section of the Bloodwitch's scaffolding. "Climb up."

Riadn nodded to Eli, telling him to go first.

"I'm starting to dislike her," Lara said, in dryn. Something like that, at least.

"Me go high," he said.

She made a face at him and he climbed the scaffolding.

When he reached the top, he found himself on a narrower wall-walk than he'd expected, little over two yards wide. The wall itself stretched in a straight line in the direction of the Reach, only branching once. Save for a handful of spires--and the great one, of course--nothing in the ruined city stood taller than Eli atop the wall.

To his surprise, that fact made him feel diminished instead of enlarged. Like an ant on a mountainside.

Also, the Reach throbbed in his blood and his bones. Burning so brightly with magic that his magic dimmed to, well, flickering sparks. So he took a moment to envision his core cupped safely in the protection of a mountain cave like a flame cupped in his hands against the wind.

With the rooftops of the inner city looking like choppy ocean waves, frozen in stone, the wall felt like a too-long wharf. Maybe a breakwater. While the others climbed up after, Eli gazed along the length of the wall toward the Reach. Though the mist, his sparks made out a cluster of people at the end of the branch to his right.

More than a few of them, engaged in some kind of activity.

"What're they doing?" he asked.

"That's the only section of the palace wall that the risen can climb," the spearman told him. "We've got troops there, keeping them off."

"Hard duty," Eli said.

"Nah, the walls are sheer. They try climbing on each other, but without orders they don't think much. So we just knock them off. It's not hard it's just ... long."

"That's where the witch is?" Payde asked.

"No, she's straight ahead." The man pointed toward the Reach. "Come, I'll show you."

He hefted the broken length of scaffolding onto the wall, so nothing could follow them, then started off. Payde and Riadn exchanged a glance and followed. Lara wrinkled her nose at Eli then fell in behind Riadn, and he took the rear in case anything climbed up behind them.

"The light-haired one with the cold eyes is Riadn," Payde told the man. "That's Lara and Meek. I'm Payde."

"Dorgo," the man said. "You're all Order?"

"Meek and Lara are deputies."

Dorgo glanced over his shoulder in surprise. "What? Why?"

"Because Lara's our tracker, and Meek has a beautiful singing voice."

Eli resisted the urge to smack him with a spark. He kept walking, his hand on the hilt of his falcona, with one spark two yards to his right and one two yards to his left. Watching the blind spots at the base of the wall ... but also keenly, almost painfully, aware of the Reach directly in front of him rising impossibly high to pierce the clouds.

Through the patchy mist, he caught glimpses of the great spire's walls. The melted stone looked sinuous or ... or serpentine, like a snake uncoiling upward. The proportions confused his senses. Any single stretch of the Reach struck him as unbreakably mighty, yet taken as a whole the spire loomed so high that he felt its brittleness or frailty. It struck him as too terribly thin to stand for long.

For a few paces, he found himself unable to look away. At least not until he refocused on the image of a mountain cave surrounding his core. He imagined the silent, uncaring, weight all around himself and managed to lower his gaze and continue forward.

"What company are you with?" Riadn asked Dorgo.

"The Cygnets."

"Muntz's crew."

Dorgo looked surprised again. "You've heard of us?"

"Part of the job."

"Which you'd know if you'd heard of us," Payde said.

Dorgo's surprise turned to humor. "Well, I ain't heard hiss nor whisper of any Order, not til Fishhook told me you're his old unit. And it's not Muntz's anymore. The old man quit. His daughter's the commander now. Swan."

"Which came first?" Payde asked. "The Cygnet or the Swan?"

"Uh, what?" Dorgo asked.

"It's an old saying."

Riadn sighed. "Ignore him, Dorgo. Brief us."

"Uh, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to."

"Please?" Lara said, slipping forward and showing Dorgo one of her sweeter smiles.

"Well, uh..."

She tilted her head. "Just the basics?"

"I mean, if you're friends of the lieutenant's, I guess it's okay. So yeah, we got hired for a job by a lady bureaucrat. Brazinka, she's out of, um, I can't remember the name of the office. Leotide City, in any case. She supposed to reclaim any crown money that's owed in the province. But some went missing, here to Ehrat. Nobody in Leotide would lend her a fighting force, so she hired her own. She's a bit ..."

"A bit what?" Lara asked, putting her hand on his elbow.

The manipulative little tree-shrew. Eli might've smiled to himself, but he was too focused on keeping steady despite the waves of force emanating from the Reach.

"Uh, stubborn?" Dorgo said. "What's a word that means stubborn but ain't impolite?"

"Confident?" Lara suggested.

"No, not that--but it'll do. So she hired her own men. She hired us. Once we get here, though, we found some kind of blessdamned magery going on. So we got the rest of the lads and lasses and ... " He shook his head as he marked along the top fo the wall. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"I believe everything," Lara said, too breathily.

"Well, you saw the dead things walking here in the Weep. It's not the Weep doing it, though. There's a witch who raises them--animals, people. Into her servants. She's, uh, trying to climb the Reach. She spent a full day ranting at the lady. Claims she's been years trying to make her ... her things build scaffolding around the outside, but they ain't much for building. So she stole some living people, travelers and such. Carpenters. Made them build for her."

"We saw the scaffolding," Lara said.

"Well, you didn't see her send her creature climbing up. They dissolve into a rain of ..." He shuddered. "She wants to reach the top. She's not ... she ain't human anymore, I'll tell you that. She's brood from the darkest pit of heavens and my belief is that the Celestials are calling her home."

"Is that what you think?" Riadn asked.

"That or she's trying to kill whatever's locked away at the top of the tower. Something's lashing her onward, that's all I know for certain and for sure. Whipping her to climb the Reach. She will not be stopped."

"And the lady saw all this ...?" Lara asked.

"Aye. And she reckoned she couldn't let it stand. Like I said, she's, um--"

"Tenacious?" Payde asked. "Relentless? Persistent?"

Dorgo nodded. "All that and stubborn to boot. So we marched on the Weep. And now she won't bloody leave."

"You're keeping the lines of retreat open," Riadn said.

"Course we are. And keeping the risen off her back until she decides to turn tail. This ain't a fight we can win, not with two out of three of us bloodied, and too many others in graves." He considered. "Even at full strength, you can't fight these things."

"You killed that bear," Lara told him.

"Cub," Payde murmured.

"We've learned what works," Dorgo said "Which took too blessdamned long. If we face them one or two at a time, we can beat them. But more'n that, things turn bleak."

"What's she waiting for?" Riadn asked.

"Before retreating?"

"That's right."

"Ask her yourself," he said, and pointed ahead.