Ken Scholes - Canticle (The Psalms of Isaak)

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C ANTICLE

TOR BOOKS BY KEN SCHOLES

Lamentation

Canticle

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CANTICLE

KEN SCHOLES

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

CANTICLE

Copyright 2009 by Kenneth G. Scholes

All rights reserved.

Map by David Cain

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

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Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Scholes, Ken.

Canticle / Ken Scholes.1st ed.

p. cm.

A Tom Doherty Associates book.

ISBN: 978-0-7653-2128-2

I. Title.

PS3619.C45353C36 2009

813.6dc22

2009016764

First Edition: October 2009

Printed in the United States of America

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Robert,

who introduced me to Elric, Solomon Kane, the Gray Mouser,

and many other old friends along the way.

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C ANTICLE

Sunrise on the Churning Wastes was a terrifying glory. Each morning the Gypsy Scouts watched it from their station on the Keepers Gate.

First, the cold air took on the warm scent of salt and sand. Then the sky was washed in deep purple, shot file:///Users/mariann/Downloads/Scholes,%20Ken/Scholes,%20Ken/KenPsalms%20of%20Isaak%2002%5D%20-%20Canticle%20(html)/Canticle.html Page 4 of 224

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through with veins of red, twisting and spreading out on a flat horizon that stretched forever past the low hills that marked the Whymer Way leading into the Desolation of the Old World. And in that moment before the sun rose red and angry as a fist, the world went silent and still.

Today, in the heart of that moment, a brown bird dropped into the Watch Captains net.

He unrolled the tiny scroll it carried and squinted at it in the crimson light from the east. Then he whistled his men to Third Alarm and watched the front guard magick themselves to slip into the morning shadows.

He hastily coded a note to Aedric, the First Captain of Rudolfos Gypsy Scouts, and passed it to his birder. See this to Seventh Forest Manor, he said.

Then he climbed down the stairs to the base of the massive, closed gate and stood to the side with his arms crossed.

A metal man in robes approaches from the west. This was most irregular. General Rudolfos metal men worked at the library. And their leader, Isaak, was the only one of their lot who wore robes. The Watch Captain scanned the road that led down from the jagged stone hills to the west. That winding road came from only one city.

Windwir. Now a Desolation because the Androfrancines couldnt leave well enough alone. Theyd brought back Xhum YZirs Seven Cacophonic Deaths, and the spell had been their undoing. An entire city and its Order snuffed out, ending their long guardianship of the light, the knowledge of the Old World that had fallen to the same spell two thousand years before.

And now, it seemed, the metal man who had cast the spell and doomed the Androfrancines approached his post unannounced. Most irregular, he said out loud.

He watched the road, picking his men out easily despite the magicks that concealed them. Each was a quiet, individual wind that gently moved the blades of grass and the pine boughs as the invisible scouts slipped into position. During the war last year, hed been a lieutenant and hed run with his men. Now, the double-edged blade of promotion set him apart from them. And with the promotion came a new assignment here in the mountains that divided the old world from the new.

Birds flitted across the massive stones of the Whymer Way and the wind shifted, carrying the sound of metal footsteps.

A robed figure limped into sight, wheezing and bubbling. One of its jeweled eyes hung by a strand of gold wires and the other rolled listlessly, its shutter bent open. The Watch Captain stepped forward, ready to bark orders. Rudolfo would have the head of any man who failed to help his friend, and the metal man, Isaak, was more kin than friend to the Gypsy King. But he hesitated.

Brother Isaak?

The metal man looked up. Its voice burbled as its bellows wheezed. My name is Charles, the metal man said in a watery voice. I am the Arch-Engineer of Mechanical Science for the Androfrancine Order in Windwir. I bear an urgent message for the Hidden Pope, Petronus. The Library is fallen by treachery.

Sanctorum Lux must be protected. With a click and a clack, the mechanical collapsed into a pile of steaming metal, bits of it sparking and popping.

The Watch Captain shouted for another bird and whistled his men in from the forest.

High above, a kin-raven circled.

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R udolfo

Late-afternoon sun washed the expansive forest in red, and Rudolfo watched it from the highest point of Library Hill. It had been a long day of paperwork amid the pandemonium that gripped his Seventh Forest Manors staff, and finally Rudolfo had fled under the pretext of an unscheduled inspection of the library construction. He had quietly strolled the basements and subbasements, grateful for the break in routine.

Of course, he couldnt blame the staff for the chaos. It was, after all, his Firstborn Feast they were preparing. In mere weeks, Rudolfo would see his first child into the world, and it was the custom of the Forest Gypsies to celebrate that event with great vigor. That it was Rudolfos firstborn and an heir transformed the event into a minor affair of state, with dignitaries expected from a dozen or morehouses.

Even the Marsh King was attending. Rudolfo smiled at this, knowing that the large hairy man who posed as the Marsh King did so at the command of a fifteen-year-old girl who was the true heir to that Wicker Throne. But tonight, Hanric would play the part of king alongside Rudolfo and the other lords in attendance.

Those aspects of tonights festivities bored Rudolfo. Instead, he thought about the men who were the true hosts of tonights eventthe men who rose to their captains challenge to honor their Gypsy King and the Gypsy King to Come.