A lot happens in The Walled City (Book 5 of the Triempery Revelations series) to a lot of characters. Dorilian is finally doing what way too many people were afraid he might do. People are starting to not underestimate Hans. Nammuor is stepping up his game in Essera and it looks like he and Dorilian are going to meet up in person.
In this excerpt, however, Hans and some companions--who are also in Essera shaking things up--meet with the Dog Men, a breed readers first met in Sordaneon and again in The Kheld King. Mysterious and feared, the Dog Men guard one of the Triempery's great secrets: the true nature of the Rill.
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“There were noble Khelds when Marc Frederick ruled,” Baran continued. “But many who came after were intent on plunder, and your brother I count with them. Men can’t keep promises if they refuse to remember who made them or if they think history is written by tongues, not events. No man’s boasts outlive his deeds.”
Arne’s frown had deepened the whole time Baran had been speaking. “Well, there aren’t no more Highborn, Godborn, or whatever you want to call them to be had, you know, and we can’t do nothing about that.” No doubt that for him everything said was beyond fantastic, referring to curses and ancient evils long passed into legend. “They’re all gone but for the Sordaneons now, more’s the pity. The Hierarch says he’s got no mind for Essera except getting Nammuor out, and just as well, because we don’t want either of them! None of us do. And our Hans will do things a sight better than Stefan. Maybe we don’t need no Highborn Princes in Essera no more—especially that one!”
The other Dog Men in the room, merely attentive until then and intent on their food while their leader spoke for them, grew even more still. The wind had picked up outside and pushed at the house, but the dwelling was sturdily built and those within heard only the sound of rain pelting the windows.
“Think you not, Kheld man? Think you not?” Baran chewed pensively on his stick, then tossed it into the flames, where it caught fire and glowed for a moment before sinking in the ashes. He fixed Arne with his gaze, at once feral and deeply human, then turned his massive head to Hans. “Let me tell you this tale, Stauberg-Randolph, and you decide if you need him. I met the young Sordaneon when he was at Gustan that one season years ago. Not much older than a boy then and sullen too. Disliked Khelds with a passion, as I recall, and they liked him even less. But he gave us our due and never treated me or mine less than as we are. He sees clear to the bone. The Old King had a plan for him and nourished him with a steel hand and tolerance. He knew what he had. See that, young Prince?” Baran jabbed his finger at the hulk of the Maw outside the window. There was still light, but barely, coming from the west. Through the grainy, rough glass they could just make out the mounding hilltop falling into shadow above the wind-whipped trees. “That’s a Rill mount.”
They all looked hard at the hill but saw none of the now-familiar signs of Rill presence. No ghostly limbs stretched high above the hilltop. No pale building crowned the Maw. Raphelon’s gaze upon it sharpened as he tried to envision such.
Hans looked back to Baran, who nodded, his mouth sliding into a bitter smile that bared yellowed teeth. “I was with the Old King and the Sordaneon Prince too the day the diggers struck the thing. It’s all cinder, that hilltop. Skellai. They dug out a part of it, white as bones. I heard for myself when the Sordaneon said it was Rill stuff they’d found. He would know. But there’s no Rill can run to it. They found the approaches broken or toppled, all but a handful of them, going east, going west. So it’s just there. Unusable.”
The room had gone silent. The Dog Men watched the guests with whom they’d shared their secret, seeking reaction. Hans and his companions looked at each other, then back out the window at a hill that now was more than a hill. Somewhere in the brooding night, looked down upon by that hulking landmark, Hans’s army was on the move, shadows through a shadow land.
“They buried it again, didn’t they?” Hans grasped what had happened.
Baran nodded. “They returned it to underground and never called it forth from its slumber. Derlon is deadly to our kind.” The chieftain pondered the thing visible beyond the window. There was something haunted about the Maw now that they knew. Something ancient and waiting. “Now hear me out. There is a fungus in our forest that grows over a great area. It covers entire valley floors. Sometimes, at far intervals, it will send up its fluorescence, black caps and red gills. But they do not hint at the extent of the thing—the rest of it grows underground, out of sight. You walk among the trees, and grass and fern, and never know it is there. But if you dig into the earth, you will turn over black filaments of the thing, oozing red like blood. We call it bloodthreads.” He pointed at the window. “I don’t know what the Old King was trying to do, but I can guess. The memories of my people are thick; we remember the Godborn race of old. We remember the gods. Derlon Sordaneon’s body is in that thing that runs between Permephedon and Sordan. If you could cut it, such parts of it as can still bleed would bleed Godborn blood. Whatever properties Godborn flesh has, it shares. It grows. It heals itself. And it knows its own. It took Derlon’s cells many years to do, many centuries, but he has grown throughout the entire system. The crowns you see, the stations being used because they served the early needs of Staubaun-kind, are nothing. They are just hairs on the surface of the Rill beast. The rest is underground.”
Hans recalled the schematic he had seen at Sordan, the red lines, the blue ones, green and gold. Spokes and hubs of ancient purpose. “You mean the Rill—”
“Is everywhere. It underlies all the lands—and maybe more. The Aryati knew this. They feared what Derlon could become. What he would become. They had a plan to poison him, early, when it could still be done, but their effort failed. Now the Rill is truly Immortal and a god. But it is still Godborn—Highborn, yes, and still Sordaneon.” Baran leaned forward and drew a line in the air, then indicated the space below it. “Beneath the land, under the hills, the Rill stuff slumbers. What do you think would make it erupt to the surface, send forth new growth, new empires?”
A chill seized Hans. What Baran was talking about—he had never heard was possible. That the Rill lived, yes. That it was a being, even that it was a god. Yet it had always run along a course determined by pre-existing arches and mounts. Or had it? What if the Rill could re-grow parts of itself? Dorilian had. He’d re-grown two fingers. Appendages of human flesh. What if he could persuade the Rill….
Abruptly, Hans understood.
“Dorilian is not the Rill.” Only when he’d said it did Hans realize he’d used the same words the Seven Houses had said. Had sought to deny. Who is to say he is not? Sinon Kouranos had answered. The fears and ambitions of the Seven Houses, the Cibulitans, the Epoptes, took shape in Hans’s mind. To command the power of that god….
What if he can?
All around Baran, faces human and only barely that, regarded him with glowing eyes, as if their thoughts burned even as his did. “I wonder,” Baran said. “The day we covered the Rill rock again, I got him to talk to me. Rill Lord. Even then, they thought he might be that. There’s Rill stuff in his blood, but he did not want to wake it. Said he might be able to wake the thing at the heart of the Maw, but that he could not create structures out of earth or air. I thought he was more afraid of succeeding than failing. Said that if he stood too long in the Rill’s song, or it got into him, he would become part of it, or some such thing. Some Godborn thing.” The Hen Kyon leader paused and poured more drink for his guests, signaling his daughter to bring more bread. “So what do I hear now but that the Rill stopped running—and when it starts again, it runs to Amallar. Men say that the Sordaneon awakened a dead Rill crown there. On the wind I hear Staubauns whisper that the Sordan Lord has found the power that ever lurked in his kind, the power they worship and fear, the same power we—who know the Godborn better—worship and honor. The power he told me of that day twelve years ago.”
“Are you trying to tell us the cursed Sordaneon could bring the Rill to this place?” Nalf Rhys demanded. Beside him, Aubrey sat silent and watchful, her face carefully clear of anything she might be thinking. And Kerr and Raphelon looked at each other, glances thick with hidden, Staubaun thoughts.
Baran nodded, slowly, his face wondering at the Kheld’s simplicity. “To bring the Rill any place. Any place it once ran. Possibly places it never did. Maybe he’s not the one who can do it. But what—just imagine—what if he is? You may not want him, Kheldman, but ponder this: the next face of the World will not look like this one. It may well look like what’s in the Sordaneon’s dreams.” He pointed to Hans, and all of them, and said, “Already, I think, it does. So know this, also: I would be damned, and my people with me, if we’d side with those who would move against him.”
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This excerpt is unedited and may change slightly in the published book.
Dorilian's encounter with Baran and the Hen Kyon is found in Sordaneon (Book 1).
Stefan's much less friendly encounter can be found in The Kheld King (Book 2).
The Walled City is scheduled for publication in Spring 2025.
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