There was a lull in the battle beneath the cloud's false twilight. Garric drew a deep breath and went down on one knee. A Blood Eagle lay beside him, dead from a blow to the face by the spike of a bronze axe. Garric gripped the sleeve of the man's tunic and jerked it off at the seam.
The dead man was named Soutilas, a common trooper. He'd saved Garric's life twice before losing his own; if he'd survived he'd have been promoted to file closer.
But Soutilas didn't survive, and Garric needed to get the blood and bone chips off his blade. He wiped the cloth along the patterned steel, careful not to slice the web of his hand as he did so. It was easy to make a mistake when you were tired, and making a mistake with weapons was a very good way to get hurt.
Attaper stood with his hand braced on a trooper's shoulder while Liane bandaged the cut in his forearm. The wound wasn't deep, but it was bleeding badly enough to be dangerous in the longer run if it weren't closed. They had to plan for the longer run, because Garric couldn't see any quick way to end this eruption of Hell-creatures into the waking world.
In all truth, Garric couldn't see any way at all to end it unless the Underworld ran out of monsters before he and those standing with him all died. Eventually he'd learn which was the case… but if the wizard behind this attack had been building his forces for a thousand years, the odds weren't on the side of humanity.
Several hundred infantrymen were double-timing up the street from the docks. Garric saw three separate standards, but there were probably more units than those represented.
Admiral Zettin was carrying out his orders to get troops across as quickly as possible. That meant they were appearing in half-organized or disorganized lumps, but they wouldn't need to make complicated maneuvers today. All the soldiers had to do-all they could do-was to form a cordon around the Earl's palace and slaughter monsters till they themselves were slaughtered in turn.
"The Sister and Her demons, here they come again," a soldier said. He didn't sound angry and he certainly wasn't frightened, just resigned.
Over a hundred slug-white monsters ran and hopped and slithered from the palace entrance. In the course of the afternoon they'd come in seemingly random sequence from every door and window of the building, never less than a score at a time. Once nearly a thousand had spilled from the east wing. Garric had seen the attack, but it was beyond the ability of the troops around him to support those on whom it fell.
Besides, he didn't dare strip any point in the cordon to reinforce another. A further onslaught might spurt toward the newly-emptied portion at any instant.
Garric straightened, lifting the shield he'd taken from a man who no longer needed it. In his mind his ancient ancestor waited, judging the situation with the eyes of long experience. This attack wouldn't break through, though no individual in the line could be surehe would survive.
Attaper flexed his arm to make sure the bandage held, then drew his sword again. A soldier threw his javelin. It wobbled because the tip had twisted when he pulled the missile from its previous target, but the creatures were tightly grouped. The cast may have missed its intended victim, but it thudded into the chest of a monster with three heads and a cleaver in either hand, knocking it backward. Then the monsters squelched into the thin line of humans.
A creature with a spear charged Garric. The weapon was all bronze, head and shaft cast together. Garric caught the point on his shield boss and thrust into the monster's single eye. He put his boot on the chest of the thrashing creature and kicked as he jerked hard on his sword hilt, withdrawing the blade from the bone gripping both edges. He slashed right, then left, more by instinct than plan. Two more creatures dropped, one twitching till Attaper broke its neck with his shield
The attack was over. Garric gulped air, tired and nauseous. The creatures' blood was red like that of humans, but its sulfurous undertone made the stench of this slaughter even worse than that of a normal battlefield. The long rows of monsters smelled like mules dead three days in the hot sun.
Another soldier was down and a second was swaying. He'd have fallen if he hadn't thrust his sword into the ground like a cane.
The fresh troops arrived. Three captains, none of them men Garric recognized, pushed to the front. "Your highness-" they shouted, more or less in chorus.
"Around the palace to the left," Garric said, aware as he spoke of how weak his voice was. He could only hope they understood him over the noise of fighting in the near distance and the sounds wounded men made. "Report to Lord Rosen and go where he puts you."
The Shepherd knew the line here in front had been thin to begin with and was half that strength now. If the creatures' attempts to break through were equal on all sides as they seemed to be, the cordon must be weaker still in the rear. The front of the palace was closest to the harbor, so reinforcements arrived here first.
For as long as there were reinforcements available. Perhaps that would be long enough.
"Your highness!" Liane said loudly. "Earl Wildulf's returning at the head of his army!"
She pointed to the left, reaching past Garric's face to make sure he noticed. Horsemen in four and five ranks abreast, as many as the pavement and the riders' skill would allow, were riding up the street from the west gate. That was where the Sandrakkan feudal levies had camped. Wildulf and several courtiers were in the lead.
"Bloody Hell!" Lord Attaper muttered. "Your highness, you shouldn't be here. Look, head back for the docks and stay there till-"
"Enough, milord!" Garric snapped. "This is exactly where I belong."
The sound of weapons and screaming rose into a dull crescendo from the east or northeast of the rambling building. A fire had broken out in that direction: smoke rose in swelling, rapid puffs. Garric couldn't tell whether the flames came from the palace or if the latest assault by the monsters of the pit had broken the cordon and the city proper was beginning to burn.
Lord Renold rode around the southeast corner. He'd lost his helmet and there were collops cut from the rim of his slung shield. "Your highness!" he shouted. "We need support! You've ignored my couriers so I've come myself! The hellspawn's going to break through if you don't send reinforcements!"
"Renold, I'll send you the next troops that arrive from the docks!" Garric said. "I haven't sent you any sooner because I don't have any to send."
He looked over his shoulder, hoping to see another battalion clashing its way up the brick street. There weren't any soldiers in sight, but plumes of smoke showed there were fires that way too. Was it accident, or had the creatures managed to circumvent the cordon through tunnels that reached beyond the palace?
Earl Wildulf and his cavalry arrived in a clash and rattle of horseshoes on brick pavers. Garric couldn't speak through the noise; he could barely think over it.
The Earl himself and Lord Renold's professional cavalry were experienced in riding on pavement, but most of these horsemen were rural nobles with their retainers. As the squadron drew up, several horses slipped and hurled their armored riders to the bricks, adding to the cacophony. Wildulf bellowed a curse over his shoulder, then bent to glare at Garric.
"Your lordship!" Garric said, getting the first word in. "You're just in time to hold these monsters back before the rest of my troops from Volita arrive. If you'll take your force to where Lord Renold directs you, we can prevent a breakout. The ground under the palace is a nest of them for the Shepherd knows how far down!"
"Right, there's no time to lose!" said Renold. He tried to pull his horse around; it obeyed the reins sluggishly. "It may be too late already!"
"Hold them back be damned!" Wildulf said. "You, boy -where's my wife? Where is she?"
"Your lordship…," said Garric. He'd regained his voice but he was too tired to react, even mentally, to the Earl's discourtesy. "I'm sorry but the creatures her wizard called up-"
Dipsas certainlyhadn't called up the monsters and their ancient creator, but this wasn't the time to split hairs.
"-killed the Countess in the tunnels before we could rescue her. The patrol I sent down Again shading the truth, but Wildulf hadn't been rational about his wife even before the present cataclysm. Garric wasn't about to admit that he'd watched Balila die.
"-was barely able to get up alive to bring a warning."
"Wildulf, by the Lady, don't dally!" Marshal Renold said. He was the Earl's retainer but a noble in his own right, and he had a very good grasp of how desperate the situation was. "They were coming out of the servants' quarters when I left!"
"Cowards!" Wildulf shouted. "You're all cowards!"
He drew his sword. Attaper tried to step between Garric and the horsemen; Garric shouldered him back. The greater danger was that Wildulf would cut at Lord Renold-and the greatest danger of all would be for Garric to be seen to back down before a raving lunatic.
A fresh wave of white monsters spilled from the palace entrance like corpse-fat bubbling from a cook pot. They mouthed syllables even more inhuman than they themselves were.
Earl Wildulf wheeled his horse toward them. "Sandrakkan with me!" he shouted. "The Countess is in danger!"
He and first the leaders, then the whole of his troop, crashed into the pallid swarm. This was a major outbreak, hundreds at least of the creatures, but the weight of the horses and armored riders rode them down with relative ease. For a moment the battle continued at the gate and gutted windows to either side; then Wildulf dismounted and with his men hacked their way into the palace itself. His voice drifted back, calling, "Sandrakkan with me! For the Countess!"
Marshal Renold watched the troops pouring into the building with a look of amazement and horror. He hadn't seen Balila being clubbed to death, but he knew that the tunnels under the palace were a certain trap for anyone fool enough to enter them.
"Attaper, give the Marshal ten men," Garric said tiredly. He wanted to vomit at what was about to happen, but Prince Garric had the survival of every human in the kingdom to ensure right now. The Earl and his followers were throwing themselves away, but Garric could give their deathssome purpose. "Those poor devils will take the pressure off here for a time. Renold, hold till I can get you reinforcements. There's some coming now."
Wildulf had left the Sandrakkan infantry behind when he hurried to the palace with the horsemen. Best send a courier to make sure they were actually on their way…
The last of the Sandrakkan troop had entered the building. They hadn't left horseholders; their mounts milled and stamped in the forecourt, excited and frightened by the stench of blood and eviscerated monsters.
The ground quivered. "Bloody Hell, what's this-" Attaper said.
The palace and nearby structures shook like a dog come in out of the wet. Garric and everybody in sight lost their footing. A long crack ripped down the middle of the street, lifting bricks to either side; then the three-story buildings to the east of the palace crashed down in spurts of pale dust which hung against the black sky like giant puffballs.
The palace shivered inward a moment before the ground beneath it collapsed, swallowing the site whole. The ruin shuddered and fell a second stage, taking with it the surrounding plaza the way an undercut riverbank slips into the current.
"Get back!" Garric shouted, scrambling on all fours until he could get to his feet again. He'd lost his shield but still gripped his sword. "Back! on your lives!"
The ground continued to quake. Duzi, how long would the shocks continue? Would the whole city fall into the bowels of the earth?
Liane was safe, most of Garric's troops were safe. The crater'd gulped down the corpses, those of men as well as the windrows of monsters they'd slain. At least one wounded soldier had dropped into the pit with a despairing cry.
That man was dead now and others were dead now and maybe they'dall be dead soon, but for the moment Garric was alive. He'd fight for the Isles and his friends as long as he could.
Gouts of night like black fire spewed from the pit, darkening the sky still further. In the cauldron beneath Garric saw the ancient, shrivelled wizard gesturing with his tourmaline athame.
Around him, crawling toward the surface with their weapons and hatred of humanity, were thousands of white monsters. More of the same sort pushed upward behind them.
Garric gripped his sword, leaning forward a little to make it easier to breathe. He waited, to fight and very likely to die.
But until he died, to fight.
Ilna heard the New King pass on in the adjacent corridor, clicking and sizzling like a rain-soaked tree a moment after lightning struck it. The creature didn't cross from the outer track to the inner one where Ilna waited. Its motion shifted the light in the crystal fabric, turning a shimmer of green-blue-indigo momentarily into yellow-orange-red, but Ilna couldn't guess as to its shape or even size through the wall separating them.
She had her cords out now; her fingers were plaiting a calm pattern. The creature's movements were as easy to predict as the next swing of a pendulum.
This New King did certain complex things, but it did them by rote and therefore predictably. It had power through the jewel and it had enough cunning to supplant its human predecessor, but it was no more intelligent than the great black-and-yellow spiders whose dew-drenched webs dazzle those who see them on Autumn mornings.
The New King had passed. It would return, but not until a fixed future time; a time far enough in the future for Ilna to complete her preparations.
She stepped into the other corridor and looked at the two basalt statues. She touched the back of Merota's hard stone hand, then walked a few paces on and ran her fingertips down the curve of Chalcus' throat. He'd had a lovely voice. It was the first thing she'd noticed about Chalcus, back in that bygone time when there'd seemed a reason for living.
No matter. Ilna strode through the corridors of the Citadel, letting the cords in her hands direct her to a place she'd never been. She had a purpose, had work to attend to.
To Ilna's surprise, there were other stone victims within the crystal halls. Three were men, but one was a child not much older than Merota had been. There was a dog as well, a mongrel with a sharp nose and a spine as sharp as a saw-horse. How had they come to be in this place where living things found only death?
The dog was just down the corridor from what Ilna was looking for, the spine of a sunburst which ended in a point sticking out of the crystal crown. She went as far into the tapering spike as she could go without hunching, then sat and began to work.
Ilna'd been picking yarn from the skirt of her tunic even as she walked. She'd clipped the hem with her bone-cased paring knife, but after that start she'd worked the threads loose by hand with the same quick skill as she'd used to weave the fabric. The lengths of yarn she carried in her sleeve for normal situations weren't adequate for this.
She wouldn't be certain that anything was adequate until afterward, of course. She was tempted to say that it wouldn't matter if she failed, but that wasn't true. To Ilna os-Kenset, failure was never an acceptable choice.
She sniffed. The world would be a better place if more people lived by the same standards as she did, but that wasn't going to happen in her lifetime. And besides, what other people did was none of her business.
When Ilna had enough yarn, she began knotting it into the new pattern. She could've worked with greater subtlety if she'd had something to hold the knot-work, but there was nothing to make a frame; the Citadel's inner surfaces were as slick as ice on a roof slate. She'd have to stretch the pattern between her raised hands. The result would be crude, but there was no one to critique the work except the New King and Ilna herself.
She heard the clicking/ticking again. Perhaps it'd been getting louder for some time but she'd ignored it, lost in her work and the pattern she was creating.
The pattern was rather interesting after all, she found. It shrank into itself, level repeating level repeating level, each multiplying the pattern's effect…
Yes, the soundwas coming closer, and rapidly. Ilna tied a final knot and stood, holding the edges of the pattern together for the moment. The close, glittering walls pressed in on her unpleasantly, but she wouldn't have been able to do what was necessary in any other setting. She was used to discomfort; a little more wouldn't matter.
The structure trembled at the creature's approach. Patches of color wriggled and shivered as the crystal flexed, twisting the light that passed through it. Ilna hadn't noticed such vibration the first time the New King passed close to her. It must be that now she was standing in a narrow passage with only a thin, taut layer between her bare feet and the ground furlongs below.
She spread her arms, looking out through the pattern she held. It was a skeleton of fine wool, no denser than the interplay of elm twigs against a winter moon. A spider uses only a tracery to catch its prey. Ilna didn't even need to catch something, only The New King rolled into sight, moving like a drunk who staggers but never loses his balance. The creature was of sparkling black glass, all points and angles; more like a sea urchin than like anything else of flesh and blood, but not especially like an urchin either.
It moved by toppling forward, putting down points and shifting the rest of its edges and spikes over the new supports. The creature's total size with all the limbs and nodes added together might have been as much as a bellwether or even a young bull; Ilna couldn't be sure. It was like trying to guess how small a space would hold a dandelion's fluff if it was squeezed together.
On top of the black spears and sheets, advancing but never dipping or rising from the perfect level it maintained, was a diamond-bright jewel like the egg Ilna had snatched from the cocoon under the sea. The Citadel's walls threw light of every color across it, but the jewel gleamed clear as a dew drop.
The creature halted. It saw or sensed Ilna's presence, though it had no eyes on its shimmering black surface. Ilna's belly tightened, but she smiled at the thing that had killed the two people closest to her. She would join them now, or she would avenge them.
The creature extended a limb toward Ilna in a series of jagged motions. It paused; then three bolts of wizardlight-blue, scarlet, and blue again-ripped from the point like lightning slashing off a high crag into the clouds.
Ilna's filigree of yarn absorbed the blasts and flung them back reversed, red and blue and red. The shock stunned her. For a moment she swayed, blinded by the flaring light. Her skin prickled as if she'd been boiled in sea water, and her pulse was thunder in her ears.
Her vision cleared. She was trembling, so she lowered her arms slowly. The yarn pattern remained rigid: the wool had been changed to basalt.
Ilna shouted in disgust and flicked the pattern into the crystal wall, breaking it into a shower of pebbles. She regretted doing that almost immediately: because she'd lost control, but also because she'd smashed the fabric that'd saved her life. It deserved better of her, but what's done is done.
The New King had been a smooth, shimmering thing of liquid obsidian, vibrant even when it was at rest. The corpse was still black, but it had become the dull black of basalt; silent and dead and opaque. The spell flung at Ilna had rebounded, killing the creature who'd killed so many in the past.
Ilna sank to her knees. She wanted to cry but she couldn't, and tears wouldn't have brought Chalcus and Merota back anyway.
The jewel on top of the stone corpse winked. Her eyes blurred, and she found that she could cry after all.
She heard whistling, the clear notes of the ballad she'd heard in Barca's Hamlet asThe House Carpenter but which Chalcus sang under a different name: Well met, well met, my own true love…
Ilna wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then dried them properly with the shoulder of her tunic. Rising, she stepped around the frozen creature and looked down the corridor. Davus was sauntering toward her, his lips pursed as he whistledThe Demon Lover. When he saw Ilna, he smiled.
"Well met indeed, Mistress Ilna," he said. "And a deservedly ill meeting for the creature that thought to rule men, I'm glad to see."
Ilna's face contorted. "Aren't you afraid that snakes will make this place their home, Master Davus?" she said, her voice echoing the sneer on her lips. "Now that you've left your post?"
Davus chuckled. "There'll be no danger from snakes, Ilna," he said as he stepped past her. He lifted the gleaming jewel from the head of its last victim, careful not to prick himself on the hedge of black stone points. "The King is back, you see."
Smiling, Davus placed the jewel on his head. It hovered, denting his brown hair without quite touching his scalp.
"A wizard named Dromillac drew me to the world where you found me," he said calmly. "He forced me to set a troll on the enemies besetting that place."
He laughed again. "Those enemies were no friends of mine nor of any man," he continued, "so I wasn't sorry to scotch them. Only when I'd done that and before Dromillac loosed the geas by which he'd bound me to his will, the creature whose egg I'd stolen for my tool-"
Davus touched the jewel with the tips of his right fore and middle fingers, still smiling.
"-caught me unaware and snatched my talisman. With which it turned me to stone and took my place."
Ilna nodded coldly. "I thought as much," she said. "After I began to understand the situation, of course."
She thought for a moment, then continued, "Master Davus, you said that you'd allowed that creature-"
She nodded toward the angled basalt corpse, unwilling to touch the thing even now that it was dead.
"-to live because you'd taken its offspring and were unwilling to wrong it further. That's what you meant. at any rate. Is it not?"
"Yes," said Davus, setting his feet slightly apart. "That's what I did. I suppose you're going to tell me I'd best change if I'm to resume the rule of the land, not so?"
"Not so," Ilna said, as cold and formal as Davus-as the King-had become when he thought she was challenging his judgment. "Don'tchange. The land, as you call it, survived a thousand years of rule by a creature that didn't care about humans. I don't believe it would've survived a ruler like you if he didn't sometimes let mercy soften what reason told him was the sensible course. A ruler like you, or like me."
Davus didn't speak or move for a moment, though fire pulsed in the heart of the great jewel above him. He chuckled again and said, "Well, no matter, girl. I'll go on the way I've been going because I'm too old to change."
He bent over the statue of the mongrel dog. "What were you doing here, I wonder?" he said, stroking it behind the basalt ears.
Light flooded the corridor, burning bone-deep through Davus and Ilna both. The dog gave a startled yelp. It turned, snapped at Davus' fingers-he jerked his hand back in time-and went running up the corridor trailing a terrifiedyi-yi-yi! behind it.
Davus straightened and grinned at Ilna. "Shall we find Merota and our friend Chalcus, now, Ilna?" he said. "I've a thousand years of misrule to correct, but first things first."
Ilna swayed, more stunned than she had been by the bolts the creature had flung at her. Then, blind with tears of joy, she began stumbling toward the statues of her family.
Tenoctris lifted herself from Sharina's lap. Mogon's blow hadn't hurt the old woman seriously, though the balas-ruby he wore in a gaudy ring had left a welt along her cheek.
"Graveyards focus even more power than temples do," she said with a smile of gentle pride. "Hani knew that, of course, but I don't think he understood that when he raised Stronghand's body he was also calling back Stronghand's spirit. When wine bottled from grapes grown on Stronghand's tomb was uncorked at a portal that Hani'd used his great power to open… well, I'd hoped something helpful would occur, but the result was beyond my expectations."
Horns called among Lord Waldron's regiments. Here in the rebel army there were shouts but no proper signals because the commanders were arguing. Bolor and the cousins who'd been with him on the island were talking with Lord Luxtus and his officers. Sharina noticed the courier who'd brought warning of the rebellion to Lord Waldron on Volita.
Sharina touched her scalp. Her hair had begun to grow back, but it'd be years before the present soft fuzz became the blond banner she'd had a few weeks ago. The courier's vessel had made a good passage to return to Ornifal so quickly without the aid of nymphs…
"Here, help me up," Tenoctris said, but she'd rolled onto all fours before Sharina could react. They rose together, the old woman smiling brightly-and Sharina smiling also, a little to her surprise.
This was a bad situation and might well become a fatal one, but Sharina was back among human beings. Bolor and his confederates were rebels and her enemies, but compared to a monster like Valgard-well, there were worse things than death.
Three horsemen under a white flag rode out from the royal lines. Sharina's lips pursed when she realized that Waldron himself was one of the envoys. They'd presumably intended to meet a party from the rebels midway between the armies, but Bolor's return-and what had come with it-had thrown the parley awry.
A lance with a white napkin tied to it for a flag was butted into the ground near the rebel nobles, but they were too lost in their own discussion to take notice. Calran seemed to have forgotten he still held his sword in his right hand; his excited gestures would've looked like threats to anyone at a distance.
The rebels had forgotten other things as well. It was time for Princess Sharina to remind them. A mace dangled from the pommel of the nearest of the drop-reined horses. Sharina lifted the loop of the weapon free, then rapped the butt against the boss of a shield leaning against a lance. The din cut through the argument and jerked around the heads of all the rebel commanders.
"Well, milords," she said, holding the mace head and patting the butt into her left palm. "Are you going to fight for mankind against monsters today, or do you intend to leave all that for Lord Waldron? I'd say-"
She pointed the reversed mace toward the lines of People marching from the city gate in perfect order. Their bronze armor was unadorned, but every piece shone like a curved mirror. In the sunlight their ranks were a brilliant golden dazzle.
"-that there're enough wizard-made monsters to giveevery human somebody to fight, but if you lot prefer to watch instead of playing the man, I'm sure Lord Waldron will take care of the matter himself. Or die trying, of course. He's a credit to the bor-Warrimans!"
Bolor scowled in red-faced embarrassment. "Milady, we don't recognize your brother as the rightful King of the Isles!" he said. "He's, well-"
"Who do you recognize, then?" Sharina said, speaking loudly but pitching her voice deeper than normal so that she didn't sound shrill. The men around her would take that as a sign of fright, which neither she nor the kingdom could afford. "A moment ago you bowed to the glamour a wizard hung on a corpse! Now the wizard's dead and the corpse is dead again-and there's an army of monsters preparing to swarm over Ornifal and the Isles beyond. Which side are you on, man or monsters?"
Lord Waldron with an official from the City Provost's office whom Sharina didn't know by name and another officer carrying the truce flag had waited between the armies for several minutes. Now they rode slowly toward the rebel army.
"Look, your highness…," Lord Lattus said awkwardly. "We've taken arms against Prince…, well, against your brother. And marched on Valles. We don't have any choice now but to go through with it. Or hang, that's all."
"What do you mean, 'No choice'?" Sharina said, sweeping her gaze around the circle of eyes watching her all up and down the hillside. Most of the army couldn't hear the discussion, but they could see her imperious posture and the deference the rebel nobles gave her. "You have the choice of following Princess Sharina of Haft against monsters like those your grandfathers routed forty-nine years ago. There's that choice, or there's sitting on your hands while real men save the Isles! Which will it be for you?"
"Sister take it!" said Lord Luxtus. "We came here to fight. And I for one won't be sorry if I'm not fighting my own sister's son, as I see carrying Waldron's banner!"
Bolor nodded and muttered, "Yes, all right." He turned to face the commander of the royal army, now close enough to touch with a lance.
"Uncle Waldron!" he said in a deep, carrying voice. "Princess Sharina summoned us to come to your support. May I request that you place me on the right flank against the People?"
Lord Waldron, as lean and hard-featured as a hawk, glared down from his saddle at Bolor. Just as Sharina opened her mouth to speak, Waldron said, "You can request anything you please, nephew, but I'll not be giving up the place of honor in an army I command, to you or to anybody else. Apart from that, though, I'm glad of your loyal support. The kingdom-"
His eyes flicked to Sharina; he nodded, as close as he could come to making a full bow from horseback.
"-has always been able to depend on the bor-Warrimans."
A trumpet signalled from the royal army. The ranks of People had begun to advance like a long bronze wave.
"And now is the time we prove it," said Bolor. "Gentlemen, tell your regimental guides that we'll be marching obliquely to the left, putting our right on the left of my uncle's forces-which I trust will shortly be facing around."
Sharina dropped the mace and took the reins of the horse. A former rebel opened his mouth to object, then subsided without speaking.
"Tenoctris," Sharina said, "I'm going to mount and then pull you up behind me. We'll be rejoining Lord Waldron for the battle."
And not coincidentally rejoining Under-Captain Ascor and his squad of Blood Eagles. They were the only troops in this army who considered it of the first importance to keep Tenoctris alive. The past few hours had convinced Sharina once again that if anything happened to the old wizard, the kingdom wouldn't long survive her.
Trumpets had started sounding from the battlements as soon as the citizens of Ronn had returned from a field piled with the bodies of the Made Men. Their brassy tunes skirled over city and plain alike, joyously triumphant. Cashel could hear them faintly even here in the stone-cut cellars of the city.
The sun had been rising over the eastern mountains when Cashel, Mab, and the Heroes entered the shaft that dropped them to the city's lowest level. Mab said that this time they didn't need to walk the last half of the way down. All danger to Ronn ended when the King let down his defenses to deal with Cashel, allowing Mab to blast him as though he never was.
Mostly Cashel liked to hear music, but right now he'd sooner that the trumpeters would just stop. It wasn't right to be happy when so many fellows were freshly dead or were missing limbs. Sure, it was good that Ronn was safe and the King wouldn't trouble its citizens any more-but that didn't bring the dead back to life.
Light wicking from the city's roof and walls brightened these depths also, now that black algae no longer curtained the crystal windows in the ceilings. The slimy growths covering everything when Cashel first came here had dried to fine powder that swirled away through the ventilation system. When Cashel stirred up a pinch of dust that'd hidden in some cranny, it had a pleasant sharpness that made him sneeze the way he did when Ilna grated ginger into a stew.
"In a few days the streams here will be running clear again," Mab said. "The plantings will take longer to regrow, but not much longer. And very shortly people will return to these levels."
She grinned at Cashel. Since the battle Mab had gone back to looking like she had when Cashel first met her on the hillside where he followed the ewe: a woman in her thirties, good-looking but too queenly to be called pretty. She added, "Not everybody likes to have only clear crystal between them and the outside, you know."
Cashel shrugged though he didn't speak. He knew what Mab said was true, but he didn't understand how it could be. He'd sooner sleep on an open hillside than in a thatched hut, and these rock caverns made him uncomfortable just to visit-let alone live here. But there was no accounting for taste, in sheep or people, either one.
The Heroes hadn't spoken since they entered the shaft with Mab and Cashel. Now the surviving twin, holding the left arm of his dead brother over his shoulders, said, "I thought the first time I made this trip would be my last."
"It would've been," said Dasborn, supporting the corpse's right arm, "if you'd finished the job you started. And if you'd done that, I wouldn't have failed in turn and raised Valeri to fail."
He laughed. It was hard to tell with Dasborn if he really thought all the things he laughed at were funny, but Cashel guessed he probably did. That was true of a lot of soldiers, it seemed. Garric had gotten that way since he left Barca's Hamlet and started wearing a sword.
The doors of the temple were open. It looked different by daylight than it had when Cashel was here first, fighting his way through a fog of evil that was cruel and determined and angry at its own existence. Now the doors' surfaces were bright. Their carvings showed all manner of people living happily, city folk on the right valve and on the left countrymen. One big fellow watching sheep on a hillside could've been meant for Cashel himself.
"Well, we're done with it now," Valeri said harshly. "And not before time!"
He and Virdin carried Hrandis' body on a stretcher made from two spears and a blanket. A sword-stroke had torn off Valeri's helmet; blood soaked the left side of the bandage around his head. Virdin limped from the wound in his right thigh, and the blow that'd dented his breastplate must've bruised ribs if it hadn't broken then.
Cashel had offered to replace either of them on the stretcher-or carry the corpse alone; Hrandis was a heavy weight, but the task wasn't beyond Cashel's strength. "You're a stout lad," Valeri had replied, his tone just short of sneering. "But this isn't for you."
Mab stopped at the temple entrance. Cashel placed himself at her side, holding the staff upright and close in to his body. He figured his job now was to keep out of the way. He'd figured that when he offered to carry the dead Hero, too, but he'd offered help anyway because courtesy required him to. It wasn't the first time he'd gotten snapped at for being polite.
Virdin paused before entering. He said in a soft voice, "I wonder what it's going to be like to rest? Others have done it, so I suppose I can learn; but…"
"You've earned it, Virdin!" Mab said harshly. "Never has anyone earned his rest more than you have!"
Virdin looked at her. He had the features of a young man, though Mab said he'd been old when he came down to the temple the first time. The look in his eyes now was older even than that: it was older than the rock of this mountain.
"It hasn't anything to do with what's earned or not earned, mistress," he said, his tone that of a mother to her sleeping infant. "It's granted or it isn't granted. And if there's any justice in the decision, then it isn't justice as men see it. As you know well."
"Yes," said Mab. She smiled, an expression that took Cashel's breath away for its mixture of love and sadness and cold, bright certainty. "But sometimes there's man's justice also, if only by chance. You have your rest now, Heroes; and the thanks of one who used you hard in the past."
"Come on, Menon," Dasborn said to the living twin paired with him. "The lady has much to do; and unlike us, she'll have no more rest than she's had the past thousand years. Not so, milady?"
Mab's smile became a mere twitch at the corners of her mouth. "Not for a time," she agreed. "Ronn uses her servants hard. But perhaps even for me, one day."
The Heroes walked into the temple, three and then three. The living men set their dead comrades against the side wall, then began stripping off their own equipment. Dasborn's right arm dangled from a broken collar-bone. Cashel hadn't noticed the injury while the sardonic Hero wore his armor.
"Well, Cashel," Mab said as they waited. "You've done as much to save Ronn as anyone has, myself included. What would you like as your reward?"
"Reward?" Cashel said, genuinely surprised. The word took his mind out of here-and-now immediacy to a world where people made plans and agreements. "Oh, ma'am, I have everything I need and more. Just take me back to my friends and, and Sharina."
Mab gave him a funny expression. It was a smile, he supposed, but there was more to it than that.
"Ah, ma'am?" he added. "You said when you brought me here that my mother needed help. Was that really true, or were you just saying to get me to come along? I guess that wouldn't be a lie the way most people look at lies."
"Wouldn't it be?" Mab said tartly. "I'dcall it a lie."
She smiled and in a gentler voice went on, "Your mother was in the worst sort of danger, but when you saved Ronn you saved her as well."
She looked like she might say something else, but in the end she didn't. Cashel waited a moment longer, then said, "Ma'am, it'd have been all right. I guess Ronn has better folks and worse ones, same as any place does; but the things the King made weren't… ma'am, they shouldn't'vebeen. The King had the power to make them and he made them, but they hadn't any more reason than that. I'm sorry so many folks got hurt wiping the earth of them-"
He glanced at the Heroes returning their gear to the racks it'd come from. The temple's interior had a soft glow of its own, not sunlight brought down to the cellars through crystals.
"-but it had to be done; and I'm glad for anything I did to help."
Mab nodded, but she was frowning at thoughts a long distance from the present. She looked sharply at Cashel and said, "Cashel, how well did you know your father Kenset?"
He shrugged, frowning in turn. "Ma'am, not real well," he said. He let his eyes drift off because this talk embarrassed him, but he went on, "He was around, but he didn't have much to do with me and Ilna. Sometimes he got a little money ahead and gave something to our grandmother, but more likely he came by to cadge the price of ale from her-and got sent away with a flea in his ear."
Cashel cleared his throat. "We weren't ashamed of him," he went on. "Only he made it clear he didn't want to be around us, and we didn't have any call to be around him."
Mab didn't speak for a moment. Her face had the stillness of a statue's, a poised but emotionless expression. "Yes," she said. "I can see that. Though it was his own choice!"
Suddenly fiery, she looked at Cashel. "What did Kenset say about where he'd been?" she said. "Where he'd been, and who your mother was!"
"Nothing, ma'am," Cashel said. "Not to grandmama, not to me and my sister. Not to anybody."
"What's happened to us?" said Herron-not Virdin but Herron, who'd just set Virdin's sword on the rack from which he'd taken it a day or a lifetime before.
He and his friends walked out of the temple uncertainly. "What's-Orly, the Queen's back!"
"Yes," said Mab. "You brought me back. You and your fellows-"
She turned her head back toward Cashel.
"-and Cashel here. Now it's time to return to the Assembly Hall, fellow citizens, and give thanks for the city's survival."
"But…," Herron said, his face white. He was limping worse than Virdin had when the Hero wore Herron's flesh, and he leaned sideways to favor the bruises on his chest.
"Manza's dead," said Enfero, looking back at his friend's corpse, laid out in front of the twin Minon's gaudy armor and equipment. "Manza'sdead. And Stasslin!"
"Yes," said Mab, "and many others as well. But Ronn and her people are safe, today and in the future, because of their sacrifice and of yours."
"It's not worth it!" Orly said. He was clutching his right arm to his chest with his left to keep it from swinging and making the pain of his broken collar-bone worse. "I thought it was when we were playing at heroes, but it isn't!"
Mab shrugged. "I don't know whether it's worth it or not," she said. "It's done, for now and forever."
She nodded to the bodies on the temple floor. "It's fitting for them to remain in the shrine," she said. "They earned the right."
She made a glittering azure gesture with her right hand; the temple doors swung closed with the smooth assurance of a wave climbing the shore.
"If I'd known…," Orly said, his body turning but his face cast down to the pavement of living rock.
"It was worth it for men," said Cashel. He stepped over to Herron and offered the wounded man his arm. "It was worth it for you and your friends. You proved you were men when you came down here. Your city 's lucky to have you in it."
"Thanks, but I can make it," said Herron, forcing himself to straighten. He touched Cashel's shoulder but then released it to shuffle along on his own.
They walked toward the shaft that would carry them to the surface again. The stone plaza had an inviting bright emptiness as sure as it'd threatened before. The Sons stood taller than they had when they came through the darkness; they were no longer boys.
"In addition to sending you back, Cashel," Mab said, "I'll come along for a time. Though you may not need anything yourself, I believe you'll find that your friends do."
She laughed, a sound more cheerful than any that can have echoed in this place for long ages since. "And your world is lucky to have you as well," she added with the same merry lilt.
"Glad to see you again, your highness," said Under-Captain Ascor, holding the horse's reins while two of his men lifted Tenoctris down from the pillion. "I wasn't sure how I was going to explain to Commander Attaper how it was I'd managed to lose you."
Ascor sounded aggrieved. Bodyguards felt the folk they guarded shouldn't just disappear on them. Sharina more or less agreed, but she had more important things on her mind than trying to explain to the soldier a situation that she didn't fully understand herself.
She swung herself out of the saddle once Tenoctris was clear. "Lord Bolor's troops are reinforcing the royal forces," she said, remembering that none of the troops gathered under Waldron's banners realized that the rebels of a few moments before were now valued allies. "It's very important that Tenoctris reaches the temple where all this started. Lord Waldron's sending me a company of the troops he brought from Volita with him, butI'll be in command. My orders to you-"
She nodded to Ascor but then swept her gaze around his six troopers.
"-are to keep Lady Tenoctris from being injured. If anything happens to her, I fear that the kingdom is doomed."
"You heard the princess," Ascor said. "She and Lady Tenoctris both get through this or we don't. Not-"
He glanced sideways at Sharina and gave her a hard grin.
"-that I think you boys needed to be told that."
Sharina smiled back. It was a rebuke of sorts, but she wasn't going to apologize for making the situation explicit. With Hani dead, nobody but Tenoctriscould end the flow of People into Valles until the supply ran out, and the cellars in the wizard's lair had gone very far down.
The People were arrayed eight deep. They had no flags or standards, though ordinary men rode behind the lines and shouted orders. The humans were easy to spot simply because their equipment wasn't identical the way that of the People was. They were probably thugs like the late Mogon and Wilfus: survivors of the Queen's servants, criminals to begin with or corrupted by the service of evil.
The royal army was in eight ranks also, though Waldron had faced half his men around when the People began to stream out of the Northeast Gate behind him. This region outside Valles was a mixture of truck farms and small villas, more open than the city proper but not terrain that lent itself to cavalry sweeps and iron control by individual generals.
Ascor, thinking along the same lines, said, "Looks like a soldier's battle this time, lads. And I don't see any soldiers on the other side-just rows of dummies in armor."
"Princess, ma'am?" Trooper Lires said, bringing out a silk-wrapped bundle that he'd been carrying in the hollow of his shield. "You didn't have this with you when you went away, but I kinda thought you might like it now."
He handed her the bundle: her Pewle knife, with its belt and sealskin sheath. The single-edged blade was heavy and the length of her forearm. It was the tool a Pewle Island seal hunter used for all his tasks, from chopping driftwood for a fire to letting out a man's life. The knife and her memories were Sharina's legacy from the friend who'd died to save her.
"Thank you, trooper," Sharina said, feeling a sudden rush of warmth and peace. She fastened the belt around her. The buckle, carved from a pair of whale teeth, was shaped like dragons coupling. "Thank you more than I can say."
She wasn't likely to need a weapon: she had the Blood Eagles themselves, after all. But the Pewle knife was much more than a weapon to her.
A troop of a hundred or so horsemen approached. Captain Rowning was in charge, the man who'd commanded the escort when Sharina and Tenoctris visited Stronghand's tomb. Based on the way and his men had reacted that day, Sharina was glad to have them with her again.
"Captain Rowning?" she said, shouting to be heard over the thuds and ringing as the troop reined up. "We'll be entering Valles by the Jezreal gate to the east of here. From there we'l make our way to the temple where we had the trouble the other day. That's where the People are coming from."
"You want my troop to attack the enemy from the rear, your highness?" Rowning said. There was nothing beyond quiet curiosity in his tone, but his eyes flashed instinctively toward the lines of bronze-clad People advancing on the royal forces. The contrast between those thousands of armored figures-at least ten thousand by now-and his hundred-odd was too marked for even a brave man to accept without qualms.
"No, we're just going to capture the temple so that Lady Tenoctris can cut off their reinforcements," Sharina said. "And I'm not sending you, Tenoctris and I are going along. There'll be fighting but not-well, suicide."
"Right, your highness!" Rowning said, noticeably brighter. "Though you understand, we're willing to do whatever the kingdom requires."
"Of course," Sharina said. She gripped the pommel of the horse she'd appropriated and swung back into the saddle. She reached down to help Tenoctris mount, but Lires was already lifting the older woman by the waist to where she could get her legs onto the pillion. "Ascor, you'll stick close to us."
She knew that Rowning wasn't speaking empty words when he said his men would've attacked a hundred times their number if she'd ordered them to. It didn't make any sense in a logical fashion, but it was true for the sort of people a kingdom needs to survive. Pray to the Shepherd that the Isles had enough of them, soldiers and old women like Tenoctris… and girls like Sharina os-Reise.
The Blood Eagles had mounted also. Rowning's men were horsemen from childhood. Some of the Blood Eagles came from cavalry regiments, but for the most part they were former infantry and often no more comfortable on a horse than Sharina herself. They'd learned to ride, but they were soldiers on horseback rather than cavalry.
Rowning led his troop in a wide circuit to the left around the back of the royal forces. Either he or one of the men with him in the lead knew the area, because when they cut across a field there was always a gate or a style on the other side.
The rear ranks of the royal forces were generally in sight; when Sharina's troop neared the left flank, Bolor's men were still falling in. The battle must've already opened on the right: the clash of weapons was unmistakable and the shouts were shriller and more urgent than those of men trying to find their proper places in the line.
Soldiers turned to watch with doubtful expressions as Sharina and her escort rode past. "Hope they don't think we're running away," one of the Blood Eagles muttered.
"Don't matter what they think, Onder," Lires said. "We're guarding the Princess. That's all we got to worry about."
That wasn't true, of course. These guards-these men-would've accompanied her even if she'd really been running away from the battle, but they wouldn't have been happy about it. The sort of men who joined the Blood Eagles-who wereallowed to join the Blood Eagles-were those to whom it was important not only to be brave but to be seen to be brave.
The Jezreal road got traffic only from the large villas and the market towns in the hills east of Valles. It was graveled, not paved with flagstones, and only indifferently leveled at that. Sharina's group struck it less than a furlong from the city walls, though, so the ruts didn't matter.
Normally there'd have been a squad of soldiers on duty at the narrow gate, but Waldron had withdrawn them. A pair of City Watchmen with knobbed batons stood there now, along with scores of civilians made nervous by trouble whose cause was a complete mystery to them.
Rowning rode through, barely slackening enough to let the frightened townsfolk get out of the way. One cried, "What's happening? Are the rebels attacking?"
The soldiers didn't reply. Sharina called, "There's no rebels. We're going to arrest a wizard, that's all!"
It was something the civilians could understand in a few words. The whole truth would've taken much longer to tell, without being in any real sense more informative.
Tenoctris leaned back and gripped the cantle of the saddle instead of clinging to Sharina's waist as Sharina would've done had their places been reversed. Tenoctris was a noblewoman who'd been taught the skills of her station from earliest youth. Age was the only reason she needed to ride pillion.
Smiling at the incongruity, Sharina wondered if the old wizard could sing courtly romances, accompanying herself on a lyre. Very possibly she could.
"Tenoctris?" she said. "Who's leading the People now that Hani's dead? He is dead, isn't he?"
They crossed the boulevard running inside the walls. Though choked with barrows of merchandize and poultry, it'd have been the simplest route toward the temple. Rowning's guide was taking them by back streets so they'd approach their goal from the rear instead of charging straight into the line of creatures marching to join the battle.
"Certainly dead," Tenoctris said, bending forward to put her lips close to Sharina's right ear. "When we have leisure, I intend to dispose of his body beyond risk of anyone raising him again, but I don't think there's much risk of that happening regardless. As for their leader-"
They rode down a narrow alley, scattering children and driving adults back from their stoops. Washing hung on poles from second-story windows on both sides of the street. The spears of the leading horsemen hooked the clothing, setting off shouts and curses from both the owners and the tangled soldiers. The troop rode on. There'd be time to pay for damages later, if there was time for anything at all.
"-I don't believe they have a leader, dear," Tenoctris continued, bending to pluck a child's tunic from the right stirrup and toss it back toward where it'd been hanging. "They have a purpose, is all. They intend to capture Valles, then conquer Ornifal and finally all the Isles. Not for any reason, but because that was what they were directed to do. In that sense they're rather like a flung stone, but far, far more dangerous."
The troop rode into a plaza with four unequal sides and a well-curb in the center. Civilians, mostly women, shouted frightened questions from doorways. The standard-bearer at Rowning's side held his pole crosswise over his head.
"Hold up!" Ascor translated in a shout. More quietly he explained, "They didn't use the horn like usual because we're trying to surprise them. Your highness."
The Blood Eagles led Sharina to Captain Rowning's side. The plaza was too small to hold the whole troop on horseback, but it provided enough space for the leading section to form without being trampled by the men behind them.
"We'll round that corner…," Rowning said, pointing down one of the five streets joined in the plaza, "and be right on top of them. I want you to keep well back, your highness, until we've got the temple cleared."
"No," said Sharina before Tenoctris could speak. "The temple can't be cleared until Lady Tenoctris is there to block the portal. She and I will go in immediately with our escort-"
She nodded to Ascor.
"-and set to work. You and your men will keep the creatures who've already reached Valles from attacking from outside."
Rowning and Ascor looked at one another. Both grimaced.
"No help for it, then," Rowning muttered. To his cornicene he said, "Sound Charge, Sessir. They'll know we're coming in a heartbeat no matter what."
The cornicene's horn was curled around his body. He put his lips to the bone mouthpiece and blew a quick tune. The trained horses lurched into motion at the first touch of their riders' heels-Sharina's included, and much more suddenly that she was expecting. The signaller repeated his call as the troop charged down the cobblestone street and around the elbow that put the east side of the temple directly ahead of them.
A line of People marched two abreast from the entrance of the small temple toward where the Northeast Road left Valles. The column was several blocks long, moving at a measured pace. Neither the sounds of battle beyond the city wall nor the residents openly gaping from roofs, windows, and even the street itself seemed to affect them. The invaders' first priority was to destroy organized military resistance; that they were about to do.
Captain Rowning and half a dozen of his troopers were ahead of Sharina; the Blood Eagles hedged her to either side. They burst out of the narrow street and into the broader one which the temple faced. For a moment the People ignored them: then all the smooth bronze helmets turned at once. Their shields came up and their right hands drew the swords that they hadn't bothered to unsheathe before.
The mounted troopers rode through the straggling line, knocking down the invaders before they could form a shield wall. Horses won't charge home against a hedge of points, but trained cavalry mounts had no hesitation in using their weight and shoulders against individual men the way they'd have ridden through brush. Rowning reined his horse around to return to the temple, but many of his troopers continued their charge up the twisting street and out of sight.
The Blood Eagles dismounted at the temple steps and ran upward, hacking to death pairs of People as they met them. Sharina was a hair slower because she needed to hand Tenoctris to the ground. When she jumped down herself, the older woman was already climbing the steps, avoiding the sprawled, man-like bodies pouring their blood onto the worn marble.
Sharina curved her left arm around Tenoctris but didn't actually touch her. The support was there if the older woman stumbled, but at the moment Tenoctris appeared to be as vibrantly alert as Sharina herself. The Blood Eagles bunched briefly at the entrance, four of them trading strokes shield-to-shield with an equal number of People.
A Blood Eagle dropped dazed to his knees, his helmet falling to the temple porch, but then the People were thrashing in their death throes and the Blood Eagles were through into the sanctum. Sharina and Tenoctris followed. Behind them the sixth guard was wobbling forward again also though he'd forgotten to retrieve his helmet.
The interior was just as Sharina'd left it when she'd leaped to safety with Bolor and his fellow rebels. Stronghand's body, half-preserved by decades in a sealed coffin, sprawled hideously in Valgard's armor; Hani had decayed to a scattering of dust in his tunic and sandals. How old had the wizard really been before he roused the ghost of a vengeful warrior against him? she wondered.
Wilfus and Mogon lay on their backs, their eyes open and their faces distorted; both dead by Sharina's hand. The world was better off without them… but she'd pray to the Lady on their behalf if she survived this day, as she prayed for others already.
Two more People strode through the portal, swinging their swords at the Blood Eagles waiting for them. Both went down, but one had split Lires' shield from the rim to the boss. Lires stepped back, giving his place to a fellow, and traded his broken shield for the bronze buckler of a dead invader.
More movement through the portal. Swords and armor clashed, People went down. Eventually, though, the humans' blunted swords and tired arms would take their toll.
Tenoctris sat crosslegged and scooped the fallen ring from the dust of Hani's finger. She held it bezel-upward between her left thumb and forefinger while she rummaged in her satchel, still open beside the figure she'd drawn before Hani returned Sharina from the island.
Sharina drew the Pewle knife, as much for comfort as because she might need to use it. She glanced out into the street. Rowning's men had dismounted and formed an arc in front of the temple. They stood shield-to-shield, their horsehair-crested helmets a gay contrast to the People's smooth bronze.
A few humans were down, but for now the troop didn't seem seriously pressed by the People who'd turned to recapture the temple. The fact that the cavalry mounts were wandering loose, excited by the blood and clangor, showed how bad the situation really was, though: Rowning didn't think he could spare every fourth man as a horseholder.
Tenoctris began chanting. The figure she'd drawn in cinnabar on the floor had spun into a red smear when Hani opened the portal. Now it was spinning again, but this time sunwise. Wizardlight made spiteful blue crackles around the edges of the opening, but People continued to stride through and slash at the Blood Eagles before being cut down. The pile of leaking corpses grew, driving Sharina's guards back as invaders climbed over the tops of their dead fellows.
Ascor's foot slipped. He shouted a curse and went down. One of the People vaulted from the bulwark of corpses and stabbed him through the lower body. Lires hacked the invader from behind, knocking his helmet off but not felling him.
Two more People appeared at the top of the pile. The wounded one raised his sword to cut at Tenoctris, seated at his feet.
Sharina swung, judging the stroke as she'd have split kindling. The Pewle knife sheared through the invader's wrist. Hand and sword flew sideways. Lires finished the job by decapitating the creature with an angry curse.
Tenoctris hadn't flinched as the sword rose to strike her; Sharina wasn't sure she'd even noticed. She continued chanting, her eyes on the vellum codex on the floor beside her. A strip of lead held the pages open. The ring in Tenoctris' left hand snapped sparks of wizardlight toward the portal as she gestured with the split of bamboo.
Two People started through the portal. Ascor and two of his men were down, and another of the Blood Eagles wavered. He hadn't dropped his sword, but it hung at arm's length, pointing to the floor.
The portal flashed vividly azure like a sun-struck tile. The invaders in it vanished, flung backward by the same forces that'd been bringing them from Hani's island to Valles.
The portal were still shimmering wizardlight instead of the wall of polished granite it'd been before Hani started his incantation. The light sizzled, and the ring continued to spit blue sparks toward it.
"Sharina," Tenoctris said. Her voice was hoarse but there was an unfamiliar febrile brightness in her eyes. Normally a major spell left the old wizard drained almost to the point of being comatose.
"Yes, Tenoctris?" Sharina said, squatting to put their heads on a level. She hoped she was hiding the concern she felt.
Lires turned and looked at them. Toward them, rather, because his eyes were staring a thousand miles away. His helmet had taken several hard blows, and the shield he'd snatched to replace his own was hacked and battered into scrap.
"I said Hani's portal wouldn't take me anyplace I wanted to go, dear," Tenoctris said, forcing the human syllables through lips that'd twisted around words of power. "I was wrong. It'll send a person to Volita. I don't know why Hani created that passage, but I doubt it was something we'd approve of. I think your brother's in danger."
"What can we do?" Sharina said. "What?"
"I think the portal still focuses enough power to take us through," Tenoctris said, nodding toward but not looking at the quivering blue field. "If you'll carry me, I'll try-"
"Yes," said Sharina, wiping the Pewle knife clean on the tunic of the invader she'd dismembered with it. She sheathed the blade, then put her arms around the wizard's back and thighs. It was like lifting a bird, frail and much lighter than she unconsciously expected.
"Lires!" she said, speaking loudly to cut through the soldier's black reverie. "Pull some of these bodies out of our way!"
Lires dropped the ruined shield but he didn't let go of his sword. He gripped the topmost invader by an ankle and jerked him off the pile. He did the same with two more People, using a wrist and a throat for handles.
The other Blood Eagles were either wounded or helping their wounded fellows. They looked at what was happening, but they didn't have energy enough to speak.
Sharina mounted the bottom layer of twitching corpses. Behind her she heard human cheers and the brassy triumph of a dozen horns and trumpets: Lord Waldron's forces had broken the line of People and fought their way into the city, coming to the rescue of the survivors of Captain Rowning's troop.
"Ereschigal aktiophi berbiti…," Tenoctris said in a husky whisper. A fat spark spat from Hani's ring..The wall of blue fire went blank.
Sharina had no thought but that she would do what she could, for Garric and for the Isles. She stepped into the emptiness as Tenoctris in her arms spoke the remaining syllables of the spell.