"Wildulf's left the palace, your highness!" Lord Rosen said as Garric followed Liane out of Dipsas' dark cubby and into the windowed portion of the Countess' suite. "I think he's gone to his army west of the city!"
"I knew we couldn't trust him!" said Attaper, behind Garric and thus forming the rear guard. "The attack this morning was probably his doing!"
"We don't know that," said Garric in exasperation. "Anyway, it doesn't matter now. We've got to get out of this palace and set up a cordon around it, which'll take all the troops we can gather. If Wildulf brings his own forces in, so much the better!"
Garric didn't imagine Wildulfdid have anything to do with the mob's attack. The frozen, frightened Earl they'd found in the Audience Hall wasn't a man who'd been weaving cunning plots-and Wildulf's hatred of Dipsas, who certainlywas involved in the plot, hadn't been feigned.
Attaper assumed the worst about the people around him. Garric supposed that was part of commanding the royal bodyguard, but it still made the man difficult to be around at times.
They reached the hallway. Servants stood against the walls, whispering in shock and horror to their fellows.
"Go on, get out!" Garric shouted to them. "The building isn't safe!"
When he'd come up from the tunnels he'd had a momentary urge to rip the screens of patterned fabric off the windows and let the sunlight blaze in, but it was more important to simply get out while they could. The ground beneath was a warren, and the things squirming through its passages were far worse than rats. There was no safety within walls that might at any instant spew murderous creatures as white as fungus sprouting from a corpse.
"Your highness, I suggest we tell the City Prefect to get all civilians out of the city as quickly as possible," said Liane. She held up a wax tablet with a few lines of writing and the impression of Prince Garric's seal-which she carried.
She must've composed the document in the moments since they'd reached the surface. That was amazing enough; it was beyond imagination that even Liane should've written the order while they were scrambling through the dark.
"Why in the Lady's name would we do that?" Attaper said, speaking more harshly than he normally would've. "Once we're out in the open, those slugs on legs won't have a chance!"
Attaper liked and respected Liane, which was enough to bridle his tongue in any circumstances short of the present chaos. In addition to his ordinary courtesy-well, Attaper wasn't a toady, but an ordinary sense of self-preservation should've kept him from snarling at someone so dear to Garric; especially when Garric was stressed also.
But the kingdom came first. That was true not only for Garric, but also for the ancient king watching through Garric's eyes. Carus was remembering for both of them the many times in his own reign he'dfailed to put the kingdom first.
"Send the order," Garric said. Liane was already giving the tablet to a waiting courier. "Lord Attaper, when these creatures appeared before, they took Erdin and held it for a year till a wizard drove them underground. I'm hoping we can do better than that, but wedon't need civilians getting in our way. Besides, we owe it to give them a warning about what may happen."
"Which most of them will ignore," noted Carus. "But that's on their own heads, not ours."
"Lord Lerdain?" Garric said, suddenly aware of his young aide. He'd refused to take Lerdain into the tunnels, so the boy'd been waiting with a pained, put-upon, expression when Garric returned to the surface. "Get to the harbor and cross to Volita. Order Admiral Zettin in my name to bring the whole army across as fast as he can. I want each ship to come as soon as it's loaded. He's not to wait till the whole force is ready."
"Yes, Prince Garric!" Lerdain said, heading for the palace entrance before he had the words out. He hadn't even taken time to reform his expression from his present sour pout.
Lerdain had been sulking to indicate his hurt at being denied a chance to do something dangerous under circumstances where his presence wouldn't benefit anybody. Honor might be an empty word, but it drove some men as surely as a love of money drove others.
"Aye, and honor drives the best men," Carus agreed with a smile. "For all that I'll agree that personal honor shouldn't be the first thing on a king's mind, as it was on mine."
Garric and the Blood Eagles had just reached the other side of the courtyard. They were entering the passage to the front entrance of the palace when the sky darkened. Scores of terrified people screamed from the rooms around the courtyard, servants and courtiers who hadn't heard the order to evacuate or had chosen to disregard it.
The cloud frightened them, Garric thought.
In the artificial shadow, monstrous white creatures with stone and bronze weapons poured out of the Audience Hall and the front of the palace. Their gabbling was as meaningless as the croaking of frogs.
"Get out of the palace!" Garric shouted as his escort locked shields. "Don't fight them here! We'll cut our way clear!"
The sword he'd sheathed when he left the tunnels was in his hand again. Carus' instant reflex had drawn it before Garric's conscious mind was aware of the need.
There isn't time to think about your actions in the middle of a battle. You act reflexively, doing what you're trained to do with no more consciousness than a heliotrope facing toward the sun.
Carus/Garric's trained reflex was to hit harder and faster than anybody believed could happen. He didn't have a shield, so he drew his long dagger in his left hand. The monsters in the entrance passage were the business of the forty-odd Blood Eagles ahead; he strode into those swarming from the Audience Hall.
An arm and the curved axe it held sailing off to the side, Garric's blade continuing through the creature's throat. Monster blood was as red and spouted as high as that from a human. Dagger catching a club, sword thrusting quick as an eyeblink; more blood, much more blood. Pivoting, striking right, backhand left, striking right; twisting the dagger and jerking it free of the single eyesocket in the center of dwarf's sloping forehead.
And back, because the Blood Eagles had cleared a way through the entrance passage and the creatures which'd attacked from the side weren't a threat any more, were a wrack of distorted body parts; and blood, so much blood, sloshed over the stones.
But they weren't human, weren't human, weren't men.
And if theyhad been men, it would've had to be the same for the kingdom's sake…
"Your highness, in the Lady's name!" Lord Attaper shouted, putting himself between Garric and more corpse-skinned creatures surging from the side of the courtyard. "Out of the palace! Out of the palace!"
Garric ran into the passage; Attaper and the rearmost squad of bodyguards fell in behind him. A Blood Eagle'd fallen; over his corpse lay the six monsters who'd halted to hack at the victim while other humans slaughtered them in turn. Garric leaped the pile of corpses. Liane waited at the arched doorway, safe for the moment but unwilling to go farther without him.
"Abandon the palace!" somebody shouted from outside through what must be a speaking trumpet. "Abandon the palace!"
But when Garric ran out of passage and under the soot-black sky, he could hear human screams coming from the building behind him. Many, many human screams.
The gate wasn't like the other parts of Ronn that Cashel had seen, even down in the fungus-blighted lower levels. It was tall and broad enough for six people to walk through together, but it had no decoration unless you wanted to say the heads of the rivets holding the iron cross-braces onto the iron leaves. The metal showed a dusting of rust, and it didn't look like anybody'd been here in a long time.
At the hair-fine join of the gate leaves stood the woman who'd spoken for the Council of the Wise since the older man collapsed. She looked hopeless but resigned to it, like a ewe who knows she's going to be slaughtered and doesn't have the spirit to fight.
That happened a lot of the time-with sheep. Cashel knew it happened with people too, but not with people he thought there was any profit in knowing.
"Nobody's walked through this gate in a hundred and fifty years," Mab said, glancing at Cashel without expression. "In the days just after Valeri's last great victory, citizens came down the stairs outside the walls and played in the gardens for the day; but not for many years, and even then they didn't go out through the gate. It reminded them of things they thought were better forgotten."
Cashel didn't much like the look of the gate or the bare, sheer-walled passage that led to it. Unlike most of Ronn except the roof terraces, this was open to the sky. The walls were living rock for half the way up and above that crystal as gray as the winter sea. You could tell where the one stopped and the other began by the sheen of their surface, but the color was all the same.
Virdin was leading the citizens massed behind this central gate; he glanced at Mab. "They'd have done better to have remembered and to have finished the job," he said, speaking with no more emotion than a shopkeeper counting out change. "Of course that was true in my day too. I led the people out three times; but never all the way to the end, as if nine steps were enough when safety was ten steps away."
Behind Cashel, Mab, and Virdin waited as many men as you could fit into the passage without squeezing to the point they couldn't breathe. They weren't talking in real conversations, but the mutters and prayers and the clink of armor touching armor were as loud as the rattle of leaves when a storm sweeps through woodland.
"You were at fault," Mab said calmly. "And those who followed you were at fault as well; and most of all, the Queen was at fault. The fault will end this day; in victory I hope, but end regardless."
Women and children looked down from the parapet. Those on the highest terrace were so far away that Cashel couldn't see figures, just the shimmer of movement as hands waved scarves. They were trying to be encouraging, he knew, supporting the grown males of the city who had the muscles to swing the swords and bear the armor; but it was also desperate prayer.
Virdin laughed, deep in his throat. He looked at Cashel. "What do you figure to do, kid?" he said.
"I'll stay with Mab," Cashel said. "I'll keep her clear of trouble the best I can."
He'd heard the challenge in the Hero's tone, but he didn't let it bother him. Virdin was pushing a little because pretty quick other things were going to push a lot harder. You needed to know how the people beside you would behave before the trouble started, not after.
"I guess you will at that," Virdin said. He quirked a smile at Cashel. Maybe he'd have clasped arms if it weren't for the weapons. Virdin held his shield and bare sword, and Cashel had the quarterstaff in both hands. To Mab he added, "Are the others ready?"
"Your fellows are," Mab said, smiling in much the same way as the Heroes smiled at one another. "Whether anybody else is besides them and ourselves, that I won't swear to."
"We'll learn soon enough," Virdin said. Then in a loud voice he called, "Open the gates!"
A trumpeter in the crowd, the mob-not the army, nothing like what Cashel knew an army looked like-blew two notes, descending and rising. A trumpet answered from the distant roof of Ronn; then, very faintly, came the notes of another, a second, and finally a handful of trumpets.
The Councillor raised her wand and mumbled words of power. Her tongue caught in the middle of the incantation, bringing her to a stumbling halt. Mab frowned, her eyes glinting like the sun on frozen lakes, but the Councillor recovered enough to finish with forceful strokes of her wand.
Ruby light crackled up the joint in the middle of the door; the valves creaked inward. For an instant the Councillor stood in the opening, still beating the wand though her tongue was silent. Beyond her, covering the plain like white scale on a leper's hands, were the Made Men. In their midst, on a litter of human bones, hunched the King himself.
The Councillor squealed and pressed herself against the side of the passage where the folded-back door leaves provided a little concealment. The King swung his bone athame forward, and the creatures he commanded began to advance as a mass of purulent flesh.
"We mustn't be late to the party," muttered Virdin. He lifted his sword at a slant and shouted, "Charge!" as he strode through the gateway.
Cashel glanced over his shoulder as he and Mab followed. The mass of citizens in the passage behind were lurching forward too. The ones in the lead looked frightened, and the words they were shouting weren't always the sorts of things Cashel liked to hear from the folks fighting on the same side as him-"Mama!" was one of them, and some of the crowd kept saying, "God help us! God save us!" Still, they were coming, and that was more of a relief than Cashel'd have figured before the feeling rushed over him.
Mab looked calm and businesslike. As she walked, her fingernails traced brilliant patterns in the air. Cashel didn't know what she was doing until a dazzling blue thunderbolt shot toward them from the King's athame. It vanished with an earthquakecrack! midway between the armies.
Mab rocked back like she'd walked into a tree while she was thinking about other things. Cashel put out a hand to steady her, but she'd already got her balance and was walking on.
The King flopped onto his back in the litter, flailing the air with his athame. He looked like an overturned beetle kicking. Cashel grinned. He was just here to help, but it felt good to be proud of the lady he was helping.
Men with swords and shiny armor were coming out of Ronn's other gates to left and right. Cashel could only see the ones closest to where he was, but he guessed each of the Heroes was leading the men of a district just like they'd planned.
Cashel had seen flocks of sheep keep better step and look more soldierly, but the citizens of Ronn were trying. From the roof and the terraces lower down, silks and shining metal gauze were waving, and the men were down here on the plain-scared half to death and like enough to die in all truth. They were doing all they could; and Cashel was proud to stand with them, too.
The Made Men called out in a burbling gabble as they shambled along. The sound less resembled words than they did gulps of liquid leaking from a week-dead corpse.
Cashel stepped to the side for a little room and spun his quarterstaff overhead. Duzi, those white monsters weren't in any better formation than the citizens were, and besides that they didn't have shields or armor. If the people of Ronn kept their faces to the enemy, this might turn out all right after all!
The ground stepped downward from the city in a series of wide terraces. They'd been decorated with hedges and terra cotta tubs, though by now everything was pretty well overgrown. Farther to the north the land started rising again into the black hills and gorges from which still more Made Men poured.
Virdin strode down the slope to the second terrace, carrying the boldest of the citizens with him. Mab halted well short of the break and drew in the air with her hands. Cashel took one pace forward and crossed his staff before him, putting himself a little to Mab's left. He wanted to keep her in the corner of his eye. With two mobs like these mixing, there was no telling what direction trouble'd come in.
A Made Man, slight-bodied but with spider-thin limbs so long that he was much taller than Cashel, charged Virdin gobbling. The creature swung a curved bronze sword far out to the side, then brought it around to strike the back of the Hero's skull.
Virdin lopped the Made Man's arm off at the elbow. The forearm and blade together spun away like an elm seed. The Hero punched the boss of his shield into the creature's chest, crushing ribs and flinging the body back into the faces of other oncoming creatures.
The straggling front of armored citizens hit the straggling front of Made Men, both sides hacking furiously. Cashel waited, his legs spread into a good stance. His instinct when he saw a fight was to get into it. Not that he liked to fight, exactly, but the emotions that seeing a fight roused in him made him want to dosomething instead of just stand there.
But standing here was the right thing just now, so Cashel did it. He was used to doing hard things, even when that meant doing nothing till the right time came.
The lines of men and Made Men fighting didn't move much after the first contact midway down the second terrace. Neither side was any good at what it was doing. If the citizens'd been chopping trees, they'd have turned them all to wood chips instead of timber. For their part, the Made Men moved in great leaps and slashes like they were dancing for an audience instead of closing with enemies.
The difference was in the shields and armor the humans wore. The Made Men didn't have the skill to pick apart armored men the way Cashel'd seen Garric and Chalcus do when they faced better-equipped enemies. The citizens couldn't have landed two blows on the same spot if their lives'd depended on it-but one blow was enough every time, shearing through white skin and pale flesh. The sprays of blood were as red as what ran in the veins of real men.
Rows of Made Men went down. More citizens joined the line, taking the place of men whose arms were already weary with unfamiliar exercise, or whose stomachs were churning to see how the inside of a body looks when the heart's still beating and the guts spill out in writhing coils.
Ronn was a city. City folk don't know the things that every peasant child sees in the Fall when the flock's thinned so that there's fodder enough to take the survivors through to new growth in Spring.
But the citizens went on and fought-or anyway hacked at their enemies. Some of the strokes were so wild that Cashel suspected the fellows were swinging their swords with their eyes shut, but they weren't running away.
They weren't advancing much either. By now enough of them had come out of the gates, this one and the ones to either side, that there was a solid line of citizens chopping at the King's cavorting monsters. More humans came from the city, but many more Made Men swarmed out of the distant hills. Cashel thought of soldiers facing the sea with their swords-and the tide sweeping on regardless, as the tide always will…
Three lances of red wizardlight stabbed from the King toward Mab, as quickly as heartbeats. Two exploded midway, a blast and a blast, pushing the fighters away from each other for a moment. Cashel rode the shocks the way he'd have ridden gusts of wind at the start of a storm.
Instead of exploding, the third bolt vanished a hand's breadth from Mab's forehead, then lashed back at the King. A fireball lit the walls of Ronn and the slopes of the barren hills. The bone litter flew apart. The creatures carrying it flattened, and the King dropped out of sight behind the wall of his minions.
For a moment Cashel thought Mab had killed her city's enemy, but nearby Made Men threw down their weapons and lifted the King again on their bare shoulders. He'd been scotched but not finished. Well, that'd been a lot to hope; and anyway, the sky seemed brighter than it'd been before the exchange of bolts.
Because Cashel stood two double-paces above the battle, he had a good view. The whole width of Ronn was lined with men in polished armor, with the Heroes each advanced slightly beyond the ordinary citizens.
Virdin had laid an arc of bodies before him and was building it into a wall with every further stroke or jab with his shield. Cashel was impressed by his skill, all the more remarkable for the clumsy butchery going on to his right and left. Virdin worked like an expert shearer stripping the wool from a sheep without wasting a motion.
Mab's face was raised. Her hands wove patterns and her lips moved, but Cashel couldn't hear what she was saying. The shouts and crash of battle were deafeningly loud, but Cashel had the feeling that she wasn't really talking with her mouth.
The sky grew steadily brighter. The Made Men were giving way, not quickly but being pushed back nonetheless. Men were down-many men were down, when you looked both ways along the line of battle-but the King's creatures had fallen the way wheat does before the scythe.
Darkness swelled together in the sky like fog beading on cold glass, then dived at Mab on black wings. Cashel moved without thinking, bringing his quarterstaff up and around. His ferrule smashed into the attacker where its neck met the wings.
The blue flash more than the impact flung the creature up and back; it vanished as suddenly as it'd appeared. It'd been a crow the size of an ox, literally a thing of night whose destruction made the sky lighter.
Another image formed and sprang, a cat this time with its claws spread and its fanged mouth open wide enough to swallow Mab's head and shoulders. Cashel shifted, stepping across Mab's front to meet the attack with the other butt of his staff. Iron crunched beneath the cat's eyesocket. Blue wizardlight flashed across the whole huge form, lighting the sky and devouring the cat as though it'd never existed.
Cashel's hands were numb. He flexed them on his staff, knowing he might need them again shortly.
The sky continued to brighten. A spot appeared in the high sky, a white blur like the sun showing through overcast. Darkness ripped back like fabric tearing, turning the whole sky bright. It wasn't daytime any more than the shadow the King cast was true night; this was the opposite of black.
The Made Men seemed to shrivel individually as they broke and tried to run. They'd come in like the tide and now like the tide they were washing back. They left behind only blood-soaked ground and a wrack of bodies.
The citizens of Ronn surged after them. The men who'd fought in the front line stumbled, too exhausted to follow their routed enemies for more than a few steps. Other men poured through their lines, though-and women as well, come down from the parapet and balconies, wielding kitchen implements and hurling stones wrenched from the ornamental walkways meandering across the terraces.
The King squatted in a dome of ruby light, hunched like the pale, wizened pupa of a grasshopper which the plowshare turns up into daylight. He was mouthing words of power as he beat the air with his athame. His minions had fled or died, but the citizens of Ronn avoided him they way they'd have gone around a glowing oven.
Cashel glanced at Mab, expecting to see her looking triumphant. Mab's hands were the only part of her moving. Her body was as rigid as a statue's, and her face was twisted into a grimace of agony.
This is the real fight. Not the bumbling slaughter of men and not-men now finishing in an equally bumbling race.
Cashel shrugged to loosen his tunic again, then strode down the slope onto the second terrace. There'd been a fountain here; fed by pipes coming out of Ronn, he supposed, but that must've ended when the King's influence oozed back into the rock-cut levels of the city. Now it was a coping whose tiled roof had filled the basin when the four stone maidens supporting it fell.
Cashel felt a twinge of sadness for the statues. They'd never been alive, of course, but it still bothered him that pretty things meant to make people happy lay broken and covered by corpses. Well, maybe they'd be raised and repaired rather than replaced. It wasn't their fault what'd happened to them, after all.
At the place where the two lines had stood and fought the longest, there were enough bodies to make Cashel choose his footing with care. The Made Men's corpses squished underfoot and turned like bladders full of wet mud. Cashel tried not to step on real men, but sometimes he had to. He figured they didn't care any more, or anyway that they understood that there's things that happen even when you'd rather they didn't.
Cashel approached from the side of the King in his shimmering dome. He didn't know what'd happen if he put himself between Mab and the King, but the best result of that was nothing. The worst… well, Cashel had seen enough of wizards that being blasted to bits wasn't at the bottom of what he thoughtmight happen.
The King watched with tiny eyes as Cashel approached, but his athame kept stroking the air toward Mab on the higher terrace. Cashel thought he felt hatred through the protective red glow, but he guessed the King was one of those people who hated whatever it was they saw. It didn't make Cashel special, and itsure wasn't just wizards who acted that way.
Citizens were watching Cashel too. An overweight fellow who must be sixty knelt on the ground in front of his helmet. Sweat gleamed on his bald scalp. He looked so tired that he couldn't move, even to sit down properly, but there was blood on the blade of the sword he still held. His eyes tracked Cashel.
So did those of the woman cross-legged on the ground not far away. She was probably as old as the exhausted man, but she was tall and slender and looked every inch a queen. Her robes were white, but whites of several different shades that swirled together into a pattern that Cashel knew would've impressed his sister.
Blood stained the garments and continued to drip from the open mouth of the young man whose head she cradled in her lap. Cashel guessed the fellow must've bitten his tongue in half when a Made Man thrust his barbed bronze sword through the human's visor. The wound itself wasn't bleeding. The woman looked like she'd cry when she'd had time for what'd happened to sink in. Mothers did that, even mothers who looked like queens.
There were more dead and many more wounded. There'd been too many of both, today and in the years before. It was time to end the business.
Cashel stepped toward the King, keeping the length of his staff from the dome of wizardlight. The hairs on Cashel's arms and the back of his neck prickled the way they always did when he was around wizardry. He began to spin his quarterstaff sunwise in front of him, building speed.
The King glared at Cashel. He was a tiny little thing, shrunk with age till he was barely a child in size. Cashel didn't recall ever seeing hate quite that bright in anybody's eyes before.
The quarterstaff was spinning faster; the ferrules trailed sparks of blue fire. Cashel could feel power shivering through his limbs. It wasn't something in him or of him, it was a thing that wore his flesh the way he wore a tunic. It was almost time The King pointed his athame toward Cashel's face. His mouth was open to shout words of power.
The dome protecting the King collapsed inward, leaving nothing but a blue spark where he'd squatted. There was a thunderclap and a jet of azure light spiking through the pale heavens.
The shockwave threw Cashel onto his back, stunned and deafened. Above him shone the stars of a normal night, as brilliant as powdered jewels.
Valgard and the wizard Hani walked through the whirling ring together. Sharina hesitated.
"Go on, milady," Bolor said, gesturing her toward the portal. In the temple cellar, Tenoctris reacted to the men's arrival with no more than a smile of greeting. Valgard put one heavy hand on her shoulder. Sharina stepped through the ring, wincing as her left foot came down on the cellar's stone flooring.
Bolor and his two henchmen arrived a moment later. From this side Sharina saw only empty air until the men appeared. It was as if they'd walked from shadow into bright light. Their striding legs, their arms swinging forward-and then they were as solid as they'd been on the island a moment before.
"Let her go!" Sharina snapped at Valgard. "She's an old woman. She can't do you any harm!"
Valgard glanced at her without emotion. He continued to hold Tenoctris by the shoulder till Hani said, "Yes, you can let her go. I thought she was a threat because she was a wizard-but she's not much of a wizard, that's clear to me now."
"I'm not very powerful, if that's what you mean," Tenoctris said easily. "I sometimes see things that others have missed, but I'm afraid I'm rarely strong enough to act on what I see."
She smiled warmly at Sharina. "Hello, dear," she said. "I was worried about you. I should never have asked you to look at the ring until I'd examined it more closely myself. I didn't realize it was self-actuating."
"You didn't know what a great wizard I am, eh?" Hani said with a cackle of delight. "So great that my tools give ordinary dogs the power to work wizardry!"
Wilfus and Mogon entered the cellar. The room was beginning to fill up, since so much space was taken up by the stone table. The pair of thugs sidled to the left, putting that table between them and the three Ornifal nobles.
The People resumed their march out of the air in double columns and continued up the stairs to the sanctum of the temple. By now they must be spilling onto the street.
"Hani?" said Bolor. He'd been frowning more sternly with each passing moment. "I ought to be with the army now. Uncle Waldron isn't the sort of man to dither about. He might decide to attack at once if I'm not there to suggest a parley."
Hani grunted in irritation. "You think what I do is easy?" he said. "That wizardry is all waving a wand around with no labor?"
"I think if I'm not with the army shortly," Bolor snapped, "I might better never have been born! If this conspiracy turns to disaster for my family and friends because you weren't able to do what you claimed, then be assured, Master Hani, that I'll take your head off before I fall on my sword."
Calran and Lattus faced the lines of marching People with their hands on their swordhilts, their backs to Bolor and the wizard. They couldn't stand for more than a moment if the People turned against them, but a moment was as long as it'd take Bolor to accomplish his threat.
"Don't be a fool," Hani muttered. "You'll be there in plenty of time. All we need to do is chip the plaster off the wall. Come, we'll go upstairs now."
People stopped appearing for a moment, opening a gap in the line. Hani and Valgard started up the steps. Tenoctris started forward also, gladly taking the arm Sharina offered for support.
Hani looked over his shoulder. "I'll show you something you didn't know about this temple, hedge wizard!" he said to Tenoctris.
Tenoctris smiled. "I don't have much experience with hedges," she said, "but I take your point. And I'm always pleased to learn new things."
Hani didn't realize Tenoctris was mocking him, but Sharina did. That and the old woman's general composure proved that the situation was going as planned-as Tenoctris had planned, that is. Sharina couldn't imagine what that plan was, but she didn't have to know or else Tenoctris would've found a way to tell her.
"I created the island from a chip I took from the wall of this temple," Hani said. Valgard steadied him as they climbed the stairs together. "Grew the island and grew men on it. Has there ever been so great a wizard as I?"
"As if that was something a decent man'd brag about!" growled Bolor, following the women along with his cousins.
"And where'd you be without him?" Mogon said in a shrill voice. "Lord Hani's the one who found and freed our gracious Prince Valgard from the dungeon where his brother Valence imprisoned him!"
Sharina glanced over her shoulder at Bolor. "Is that the story, Lord Bolor?" she said. "Do you really believe that?"
"Valence isn't right in the head," Bolor said, but he didn't meet her eyes. "It's proper-necessary, in fact-that his brother succeed him."
Valgard laughed like an iron bell tolling. "Don't you believe I'm Stronghand's son, lady?" he said in his heavy voice. "Who else could I be with this face and form, eh?"
They entered the sanctum. The doors were open; scores of People who'd gone up the stairs ahead of them were forming in plain sight in the street below the temple. Hani-or more likely Bolor-was showing his forces in order to sow panic in the city garrison.
The cult statue had been removed from its base and leaned against the sanctum's front wall, under a tarpaulin for protection. The plaster had been chipped off the back wall, leaving the underlying stone clear. Set into the wall of rough-cut limestone was a six-foot-square panel of polished granite ashlars, like a painting in its frame.
The broken plaster had been swept to the sides. On the floor someone-Tenoctris, almost certainly-had drawn a star with four points; words of power were written in a circle around the figure.
Tenoctris' satchel lay open nearby. Three scrolls, a codex, and a stoppered bottle of wine sat to the right of the figure, while on the left was a bundle of the disposable bamboo splits that Tenoctris used in place of an athame.
Hani took two steps into the sanctum and turned with a look of mingled fury and amazement. "What?" he shouted at Tenoctris. "You knew about the Mirror?"
Sharina moved to put the older woman slightly behind her, in case Hani lashed out. He was certainly that angry.
"I told you that I see things," Tenoctris said calmly. "I saw how power was focused here, so I asked Captain Rowning's soldiers to clear the wall before they left the city. But-"
She gestured to her scattered paraphernalia.
"-as you see, I haven't the strength to open the portal even though I could identify it. No doubt youare strong enough, Master Hani."
"No doubt I am!" Hani snarled. "As you'll see soon enough. Mogon and Wilfus, hold them-both the women. I can't risk them interrupting me during the incantation."
Wilfus stepped toward Sharina; she held out her right hand for him to take. He reached for her waist instead. She slapped him hard.
"You-" Wilfus said, cocking his fist to repay the blow. Lord Lattus shoved him away with his swordhand.
"Get back, scum!" Lattus said. "That's not needed."
"No, let him hold my wrist," Sharina said. "But just that. I won't pretend to approve of this horror, milord, so I can't accept your parole."
Lattus glared at her, then shrugged and turned. "All right, hold her," he muttered. Then he added, "There's more than you as don't approve of this, milady. But we don't have any choice."
All the true humans who'd come with Hani were in the sanctum now. The lines of People in polished armor resumed their march up the stairs and into the street. Sharina had an image of liquid bronze leaking into Valles, eventually to fill the city.
Hani seated himself on the floor, a simple mosaic of white and greenish tesserae in waving lines. He started to wipe away the figure Tenoctris had drawn in red lead, then paused instead to check the words written around the circle.
"Come on!" Calran muttered, showing his nervousness by letting his anger out. "You can stare at the dirt any time!"
Hani looked up at Tenoctris in puzzled irritation. "This is all correct," he said. "Youdid know about the Mirror."
"Yes," said Tenoctris equably. She didn't seem aware of Mogon's grip on her right arm. Even the thug seemed a little embarrassed. "I didn't have the power to open it, though. Besides, it wouldn't have done me much good, since only the members of your party have amulets made of the same stone to link with the Mirror here, not so?"
"You think you're smart!" Hani said, a growl but with a hint of underlying fear. What Hani meant was thathe'd begun to realize how smart Tenoctris was.
He bent over the figure, tapped his athame, and began chanting, "Ereschigal aktiophi…"
Calran muttered, "By the Sister!" He raised his sword as if to hack at the wall. Lattus touched his arm; Calran shivered and lowered the sword. The cousins stood close together with their backs to the wizardry, pretending to look at the army of People forming below the temple.. Lord Bolor forced himself to watch Hani, but the fury and loathing in his expression were unmistakable.
"Berbiti baui io," said Hani. The four-pointed figure quivered. Sharina thought it was beginning to rotate, but it could be the red wizardlight was blurring the lines Tenoctris had drawn in cinnabar. "Ereschigal aktiophi…"
Sharina hadn't understood what the two wizards meant by "the Mirror," but as the incantation continued she saw the granite blocks shimmer brighter than their polish and the chips of mica in their fabric explained. She stared, trying to make out the figures hinted within the stone.
"Berbiti baui…"
"Sister take me if I like this!" Wilfus muttered. His grip tightened on Sharina's wrist, but that was a sign of the man's fear rather than bullying.
"It's like it was back when we worked for the Queen," said Mogon. "We had any woman we wanted, anything we wanted to eat and drink. Those were good days…"
Wilfus cursed under his breath. Tenoctris moved slightly, brushing the wine bottle with the hem of her green silk robe. The contact wasn't quite enough to knock the bottle over, but it rocked on its base with a clicking sound.
"Io!" Hani shouted. He'd have fallen back onto the floor if Valgard hadn't caught him by the shoulders.
The star and writing were smeared into a blush of red lead over the cool curves of the mosaic. In place of the inset granite was a window onto a hillside filled with armed men and their horses. Goldenrod bloomed among the grasses, and on the upper slopes of the hill sweetgums and cedars were beginning to replace the lesser growth.
The sound of the bottle caught Wilfus' attention. "What's that?" he demanded. "Is it wine?"
A soldier on the hillside stared pop-eyed at Bolor and the others with him. He tugged furiously on the sleeve of the officer in gold-chased armor who was bending over marks he'd cut in the sod with his dagger. The officer gestured to half a dozen other men who had their own opinions on the subject under discussion.
"The keeper of Stronghand's vineyard gave it to us," Tenoctris said, giving Wilfus a cheerful smile. "I had it in my bag-"
She nodded to the satchel in which she carried the books and instruments of her art.
"-and took it out a moment ago."
The officer on the hillside looked up with an angry expression, then saw why he'd been interrupted; his curly beard was jet black except where it'd grown in white over the scar that continued up his left cheek. He clutched the amulet dangling in front of his breastplate. Jumping to his feet, he cried, "Bolor! Itis you. We were afraid…"
"I'm here, Luxtus," Bolor said. "And the army Master Hani promised, that's here too. My uncle will know better than to fight."
Bolor hadn't spoken as if he believed what he'd said-and from what Sharina knew of Lord Waldron, Bolor would've been a fool if hehad believed it. Still, though Waldron would fight despite being trapped between a force of his friends and relatives on one side and a huge army of People on the other, Sharina didn't see how he could win.
"Look, you're done with your chanting, aren't you, Hani?" Wilfus said peevishly. "There's not going to be more of that?"
The wizard grimaced at him but didn't speak; couldn't speak, very likely. He was regaining his color, but the effort of the spell he'd just completed was obviously at the edge of his ability.
Wilfus picked up the wine bottle. He kept hold of Sharina's wrist until he'd straightened again, but he had to let her go to twist off the wax-sealed ceramic stopper. "Hey, give me some!" said Mogon, still holding Tenoctris by the arm.
"You wanted to join your army," Hani said. "Go on through, then. All you need to do is step through the mirror."
The granite had vanished, but a quiver of crimson wizardlight framed the square where it'd been. Bolor and the cousins eyed the portal dubiously. The soldiers on the hillside backed slightly, all but the bearded man who'd spoken. Word had spread through the army, and faces were turning toward the tableau for as far as Sharina could see through the opening in space.
"Just jump!" Hani snapped. He'd recovered enough to sound waspish. He put a hand on the floor to push himself up, smudging the film of cinnabar; Valgard silently lifted the wizard fully onto his feet. "You wanted to join your fellows-join them!"
Bolor ducked, then stepped over what amounted to a sill of limestone with a sizzling, shimmering rim. The men waiting on the hillside gave a shout of wonder as Bolor crossed to their side of the square opening.
"Come on," he muttered, gesturing to the cousins still in the temple.
"What about Princess Sharina?" Lattus said, looking from Bolor to Hani as he spoke. "She can come-"
"She stays with me," Hani said. He giggled. "I have use for her bones. Perhaps I have use for the rest of her first."
The stopper popped as Wilfus finally pulled it from the neck. "Bloody well time!" he said. Then as purple fluid began to bubble from the wine bottle, "Hey!"
It wasn't fluid: it was oily smoke, thick and opaque. It wasn't purple either, or rather it wasalso purple, the way mother-of-pearl has no single hue depending on the direction from which you see it.
"What's this?" Wilfus shouted. "What'sthis?"
Calran cried out in horror. He raised his sword, apparently planning to slash at the smoke, then shouted again and leaped head first through the opening. He hit the ground beside Bolor and rolled, still shouting. His cousin hesitated a moment, then jumped after him.
Valgard stood unmoving, his face as calm as a death mask. Hani wrenched free of his grip. He pointed the athame, started to speak, and choked on his terror.
The cloud had boiled to the trusses of the sanctum's high roof. "The Sister and all Her demons!" Wilfus said. He flung the bottle against the floor, shattering it. He took a step backward.
Sharina snatched Wilfus' dagger out of its belt sheath. Wilfus turned, reaching for her throat with both hands. He shouted, "I'll kill you, you-"
Sharina stabbed the thug at the base of the neck. He fell backward with blood spraying from his mouth and nostrils.
"Sharina, get through the Mirror!" Tenoctris called. Mogon struck the old woman in the face with his clenched fist. Sharina drove the bloody dagger under Mogon's raised arm and across the width of his chest. He spasmed backward, pulling the dagger out of her hand.
Sharina caught Tenoctris as the older woman crumpled, then carried her through the portal. Sharina's leap was as graceful as a deer's, but she overbalanced on the other side and sprawled full length. By landing on her elbows she kept from battering Tenoctris again. The sod felt cool and soft.
The men around Sharina were shouting, but none of them paid any attention to her. She looked back the interior of the temple through the square-edged window in the air. The roiling smoke sucked down with a rush, forming a shape that could've been Valgard modeled from purple shadow.
The dark image reached out and gripped both Hani and Valgard by the throat. Valgard stood quiescent for a moment. There was an audible snap and his head lolled on its neck. Pink, wholesome flesh slumped off the way sand washes from a clamshell. What remained were the bones and rotting muscles of a long-dead corpse. Its features were still recognizably those of the bor-Torials.
"I have use for her bones…," Hani had said about Sharina. He'd already used the bones of Valence Stronghand to form a counterfeit heir for the dead king.
The wraith of Stronghand smiled as it continued to squeeze the throat of the wizard who'd stolen its body. Hani's tongue stuck out; his face flushed almost as dark as the thing of smoke that was strangling him. His right eye popped out to hang from the nerve; then the spine cracked. The portal in the air broke into shards like those of the shattered bottle, then vanished.
Sharina lay on a hillside, cradling Tenoctris in her arms. Across a valley to the south she saw Lord Waldron's army flying the standards of Ornifal and the bor-Warrimans. In the distance beyond them were the walls of Valles, and from the nearest gate the People were advancing in close order.
"Go up, " Davus said as he bent over the fireset he'd laid just in front of the passage upward into the Citadel. "Your friend Merota's there, Ilna, if she's anywhere; and there's no one better than you to find her."
He struck a chip of quartz against the golden pyrites crystal in his other hand, showering sparks into the tinder. When he blew softly, flames licked up to wrap the kindling he'd bruised into loose fibers between a pair of large stones.
"Why do you need a fire, Master Davus?" Ilna said. Chalcus was already within the tunnel, just in sight as he waited for her. She thought/felt that she should understand what their guide and companion was doing, though, before they left him behind.
Davus smiled gently as he rose, holding the branches that he'd feed in when the fire had grown to the point it could sustain more fuel. "The passage draws serpents, mistress," he said. "Now that Arrea isn't here to bar them, many will come. Trying to replace her, you see."
"I hate snakes," Chalcus said softly. "I hate them all."
"They're like people, Chalcus," Davus said. He squatted and held the ragged end of a branch into the flames though without yet letting it sit on the kindling. "Some good, some bad but-"
He smiled at Ilna. He seemed a different man since he'd lured the echidna to destruction.
"-some would be very bad to have crawling up behind Mistress Ilna while she's otherwise busy. And I thought I should be the one to bar them here before they enter the passage. Not that I think you're afraid of them."
"Iam afraid," Chalcus said. "It wouldn't keep me from acting, but… you're a clever fellow to have noticed that, Davus; and a friend."
A snake came out of the underbrush. It was black with a faint chain pattern on its scales; heavy bodied for being no longer than Ilna's arm. It was quite harmless, the sort of lodger a housewife likes to have in her thatch to keep the mice down.
But some people fear snakes as others fear spiders. Far better that Davus spread hot coals across the tunnel entrance than that Chalcus have to deal with things he feared and hated-though Ilna had no doubt that he could do that, just as he said.
Ilna feared and hated stone.
She walked around Davus and entered the stone tunnel that should take her to a creature whose glance would turnher to stone. "Very well," she said. "Master Chalcus, will you lead or shall I?"
"And am I not leading already, dear heart?" the sailor said as he started up the passage. He'd drawn his sword and dagger. He held the shorter blade forward like the cane a blind man uses to tap his way through darkness, but the long curved sword was back to thrust at the first hint of danger.
The tunnel was a rising coil, moderately steep but not dangerously so. Ilna'd expected the interior to be pitch black, but the entrance behind her lighted the lower portion. As they climbed higher the air remained faintly gray-not bright, but at least bright enough to distinguish space from stone.
But stone-dense, black basalt-was on all sides. This is very unpleasant, Ilna thought; and grinned. If she'd spoken those words to strangers they'd have been taken as a mild complaint, no more than another person saying, "I've drunk better ale than this."
In fact, the comment was as damning as Ilna could make. She didn't choose to raise her voice when she was complaining, that was all. And of course shehadn't spoken the words aloud.
Chalcus didn't speak either as they went up. That was natural caution since they were entering the lair of a creature which would kill them or worse if it caught them, but it wasn't just the stone that made Ilna draw into herself as she did in times of stress.
Davus had said that the tunnel was a natural formation which'd been improved over the years. Now that she was in it, she wondered whether the improvements had anything to do with human beings. The coil was perfectly regular, the sort of pattern a worm might've made gnawing through the rock.
A worm, or something less familiar than a worm. Perhaps the sort of thing that grew in the living corpse of an echidna after eating its host's brain.
Ilna smiled. Arrea'd gotten what she'd demanded, and the world was better for that happening. Ilna was getting what she'd demanded also, passage into the Citadel of a monster greater by far than the echidna. If things went badly, there'd be no lack of people who'd say that too made the world a better place.
The not-darkness ahead of them was becoming actual light. There were even hints of color, the trembling hues of a rainbow. Chalcus hesitated for a few heartbeats as a silent warning to Ilna, then continued.
She followed, still smiling faintly. Generally when Ilna went into a dangerous situation her hands would knot patterns in twine, less for use than to settle her mind. Now Chalcus' hands were full, so if anybody was to snatch Merota and run off it had to be Ilna herself. It wasn't likely she'd get the opportunity, but that slight chance was the only reason she and Chalcus had come here.
Ilna was becoming more sure with every step up the curving slope that Davus had different reasons for guiding them, though. She was beginning to understand the pattern of events, though it wouldn't make any difference in how she acted.
Chalcus stopped. Beyond his poised figure was brilliant light, colors split and rejoined by the facets of the Citadel's crystal crown. The only sounds were the deep whisper of air breathing up the tunnel behind them and the rapid beat of Ilna's heart. Chalcus stepped into the structure, and she followed.
She halted to take in her surroundings. The crown was beautiful, a word she'd never thought she'd use to describe stone. She didn'tlike it, but Ilna gave everything its due; anything less would be a lie.
Chalcus frowned, disoriented by the highlights and distortions of the crystal walls. The crown was a series of coiled tubes, laid within and above one another. There were openings within the walls from tube to tube, but the whole was knotted in a system as complex as Ilna's finest work. She followed the pattern in her mind, untroubled by the confusion that the scattering light made for her eyes.
Chalcus started forward, feeling his way with the toes of his boots. Ilna could've taken the lead, but she didn't see any reason to. They didn't have a destination, just a purpose, and the sailor's cautious progress was as likely to bring them to that purpose as Ilna could by striding quickly through these crystal tunnels.
Shehated stone. The beauty of the structure around her didn't make her like it any better.
"There's a new sound, dear one," Chalcus said, his voice barely a whisper. He waited, standing on the balls of his feet with his blades out to either side. His head darted quickly from side to side, covering all directions but unable to really see in any of them.
Ilna listened also. Because of Chalcus' warning, she noticed the sound-a rapid ticking like pebbles washing down a stone millrace. She couldn't judge distance or even direction with certainty, though it seemed "I think it's above us," she whispered. Could the King hear the way humans did? "This crystal is many tunnels, all connected."
Chalcus flashed her a smile. It was false, and the beads of sweat on his forehead were real. He resumed his tense, shuffling advance.
The ticking diminished and perhaps vanished, though Ilna's mind continued to tell her that it remained just beneath the threshold of hearing. Had the creature passed through the tunnel above and continued on in a sloping path that would bring it face to face with them? The material from which the tunnels were made was as clear as sunlit air, but its angles and surfaces sliced images into so many pieces that not even Ilna's mind could recreate them from a passing glance.
Well, they'd learn soon enough.
There was something ahead, a darkness that the scattering light distorted but couldn't hide. Chalcus stepped more quickly, almost running. Ilna followed, her mind as blank and clear as a sheet of ice.
Chalcus reached it, the statue of a girl in black basalt. The stone was too coarse to have recognizable features in this rainbow light, but there was no doubt in Ilna's mind that they'd found Merota: found her the way they'd known from the first they'd find her, a victim of the New King like so many others in this land.
Chalcus sheathed his dagger. He ran his fingertips over the girl's stone cheek and gave a terrible cry.
The ticking was growing louder, very rapidly. Ilna let the structure's pattern fill her mind. There was an opening, a doorway, between the tube they were in and the next one to the left. The crystal's shimmers and reflections concealed it from sight, but Ilna stretched out her hand and confirmed its presence.
"Chalcus!" she said. "Follow me! We have to get out of this tunnel quickly!"
"Fight aman for a change, monster!" Chalcus shouted. He leaped forward, sword and dagger gleaming with the all-colored light of the crystal. For an instant he was around the curve of the tunnel from Ilna.
A flash filled the crown and Ilna's world. Where Chalcus had stood was a smear of blackness in the mirrored perfection.
Ilna stepped into the adjacent passage and moved quickly along it. She knew why Davus had brought her to this place now. She would accomplish the task that he and the universe had set her.
And for all the rest of her life, however long that was, she'd wish that she'd never been born.