Mab stood facing Cashel in the center of Ronn's great rooftop plaza. Around them, none quite close enough for Cashel to touch with his staff, stood the assembled citizens. They filled the open area, all but the immediate circle.
Mab spread her hands, palms down. All sounds stilled, not naturally but with the suddenness of a vault door closing between Cashel and the crowd. For a moment Mab's fingernails blazed, spots of color brighter than the noon sun; then they went black and the wizard's body became a figure of wizardlight, flaring red and blue alternately in a rapidly increasing cycle.
She raised her hands, her mouth working. Cashel couldn't hear the syllables Mab spoke, but the scene beyond the two of them pulsed in his vision as she spoke.
The world flip-flopped. Cashel still faced Mab, but instead of being on the sun-drenched roof of Ronn they were in a city amid the ruins of buildings thrown down by earth-shocks. The sky above was black and the air choking with sulfur. A few double-paces away hunched men in armor, facing the distorted monsters who climbed and crawled from an acres-broad crater.
A wind, cold as the Ice Capes, howled across the land. Humans were screaming also.
Mab turned to face the crater and the thin line of soldiers standing against the creatures it spawned, then stepped into what'd been an arched entranceway. To either side was a square column base; the rest of the building had collapsed. Fluted columns lay on top of roof tiles, marble sheathing, and the brick core of the walls. Dust still rose from the wreckage.
"Very well," she said crisply. "Cashel, protect me as you did before. It may be harder this time."
"All right," said Cashel. He moved in front of Mab, planted his feet, and began to spin the quarterstaff sunwise.
Cashel didn't mind things being hard. This was one of those times when a man needed to stand up for what was right, no matter what it cost.
Mab raised her hands, gesturing in a pattern that thrilled Cashel when he glanced over his shoulder. He didn't understand what the wizard was doing, but he could see and feel the art of it. It was so pretty to watch that he had to remind himself that his business was looking out for Mab, not gawping like he had the first time he saw a city.
He guessed this was Erdin; he'd been here a year ago. Duzi! but it was in a bad way, though.
A whole herd of creatures bubbled from the crater and came on down the street toward the waiting soldiers. They were white like the Made Men and their weapons were pretty much the ones the Made Men carried, but none ofthese things could pass for human. Some were even legless, with flipper hands sticking out below their snarling faces. They used the whole length of their slimy bodies to swing their weapons.
Bolts of red and blue ripped from between Mab's weaving hands to strike the overcast. They slashed it like swords through dirty burlap.
Thunder slammed twice. Bright, clean sunlight flooded from the uncovered sky. Where it fell across the white creatures, they writhed like slugs on a griddle.
The monsters must be making the high keening Cashel heard. The human defenders who'd been falling back now steadied and hacked their squirming opponents to death.
The black sky closed again over the sunlight. More of the white monsters lifted from the crater, moving toward the line of soldiers. Two humans had gone down in the attack just finished. Soldiers lay on the pavement in ones and twos, all the way back to the edge of the pit.
The barrier was growing thinner. Cashel could see companies of monsters setting off in all directions, not just toward the men directly in front of him. A few human reinforcements were moving up the road from the harbor, but only a very few.
The man on the far end of the line knelt, bowing his head. The smaller figure beside him, a slim spearman who wasn't wearing armor, lifted the first man's helmet to let the cold breeze cool his scalp.
Mab's hands moved together with the whirling precision of hawks mating in mid air. Wizardlight blasted from between them, throwing back the darkness to either side the way skin gapes away from a deep cut. The sun blazed down. Creatures of the false darkness shrivelled.
The spearman was Liane. She lowered the helmet back onto Garric's head. He rose and braced himself for the new assault, because despite the sunlight the monsters still came on with the fury of the damned.
Blackness burped from the crater. Instead of streaking upward to heal the wound in the overcast, it coalesced into the shape of a two-legged reptilian nightmare. The thing strode heavily down the cracked pavement toward Mab.
This wasn't an illusion. The corpses of white monsters burst like foul grapes as the three-clawed feet crushed down on them. The lifting foot kicked a dead soldier; he hurtled several double-paces through the air before falling again to the bloody pavement.
Cashel had his staff spinning at a moderate rate, alternating sunwise circles and widdershins to loosen all his muscles against the time he needed their full strength. He guessed that time was now.
The thing of darkness marched on. The only light on the sooty form was the eyes, searing orange-red blotches on either side of the narrow skull. The creature bore down on Mab-and standing in front of Mab, Cashel.
"Get out of the way!" Cashel shouted as he spun the staff faster-sunwise now, certain of every next move; certain of everything but the outcome. His voice was thick with rage. "Garric, get your men out of the way! This one's mine!"
Cashel couldn't tell if the soldiers heard him or not. The two in the center of the line edged a little toward either side. They raised their shields and cocked their swords back to strike if the lizard-thing bit down at them, but they didn't run.
The creature strode through the living ranks of white not-men, crushing and slashing them aside with the same disregard it'd displayed for the windrows of their corpses. Dying things, already stunned by the torrent of sunlight, mewled in horror; the stench of their gutted bodies was worse than a tanyard in hot summer.
"Move aside!" Cashel said.
The lizard reached the line of soldiers, breaking paving stones every time its feet smashed down. The two nearest men weren't cowards, couldn't be cowards to stand where they were; but they didn't throw themselves in the path of something they knew they could no more stop than they could stop an avalanche walking on two legs. The lizard-thing passed between the soldiers, heading for Mab with the unswerving assurance of an arrow. Cashel stepped forward to meet it.
His staff was spinning, scattering coils of blue wizardlight. He could see every bit of the pattern-the way the creature would move, the way he'd move; the perfect arc of his quarterstaff and the point his leading buttcap would meet the creature's long jaw.
Cashel could see everything but what happenedthen: whether the creature went down or it snapped him up on its way to Mab. That depended on how strong he was and how strong the creature was. There was no way of telling that except by trying, just like in any other fight.
That didn't bother Cashel. He didn't start fights himself, but his size drew fellows who needed to prove they were better than him. Thus far they'd all been wrong; and if this lizard was right, well, Cashel had won too often to complain about losing once.
The creature seemed to slow down, but that was what always happened at times like this. Cashel was seeing everything with the eyes of experience, all the little pieces that were really happening at the same time.
The lizard was the same dull color all over, no shades or highlights. It was like a shadow wrapped around something that could've been a crocodile on two legs. The bright sunlight didn't make any difference. Cashel saw the teeth only when the open jaws were canted to silhouette them against something on the other side. The maw, the throat, the pits of the nostrils-all were the same black that was really no color.
The lizard's left foreleg reached for Cashel, but he stepped inside it as he brought the staff around. It was all the way he'd seen it in his mind, the movements working together just the way the gears of his grandfather's mill in Barca's Hamlet turned and made the grindstones spin. Everything was perfect.
His sunwise-spinning buttcap struck midway on the creature's long jaw.
Cashel expected a shock and a blue flash. Instead, time stopped. Cashel's heart didn't beat, and the stench of death and sulfur was only a memory in his nostrils. He saw Garric and Liane from beyond the creature's out-thrust leg. Garric's mouth was open to shout, but Cashel heard nothing in this slice of forever.
Crackling blue wizardlight licked across the monster the way a downpour covers a statue. The living darkness flew apart as suddenly as chaff lifts in a windstorm.
Cashel fell backward, deafened and numb. The shattered dust of the lizard swept across him, bearing him down and smothering him. As he toppled, he felt the ground lift with a shock far greater than any that had struck the city before.
Sharina stepped from the sanctum of the temple, brightly lit through the open doors, onto the foreshore of Volita. The sky was covered by a black cloud almost as opaque as the block of stone on which she stood. She stumbled, more from surprise than because she'd just passed from one place to a distant other place in a single step.
"Ah!" said Tenoctris. "Set me-"
Sharina was already bending to put the Tenoctris' feet on the ground. She lifted the wizard upright, then cautiously released her. Tenoctris' spirit was indomitable, but her friends had learned techniques to cope with the weakness of an elderly body. For Sharina and Cashel in particular, these were by now second nature.
The water was only twenty feet away. Sharina stepped off the stone. It was a thin, square slab with sides an arm's length across. It didn't seem to have come from the ruined mansions just above the tide line.
"Bolor's courier must've placed it here," Tenoctris said, glancing at the slab approvingly. "It's sheltered by these pilings, so when someone appears here, he looks like he's just stepped into view normally."
A trireme stood fifty feet out in the strait, broadside to the shore. Only the uppermost bank of oars was manned. Fully-equipped soldiers were boarding by a pair of rope ladders. The warship rocked violently on its narrow keel, but the fact it didn't capsize indicated that its officers had men standing on the opposite outrigger to balance the weight of those climbing.
A few other vessels were beached nearby, but most of the royal fleet had crossed to the mainland. The trireme's sailing master stood in the stern, bellowing through a speaking trumpet, "Two more only! Any more and we'll bloody sink in the chop!"
Soldiers, many of them with signs of injury, stood on the sand in two and threes to watch the loading. Civilians, apparently refugees from Erdin, formed in larger groups apart from the troops.
Sharina stepped out of cover. "Where's Prince Garric?" she demanded loudly. "Is he still here on Volita?"
Some people turned to look at her, though others continued staring in numb amazement at the devastation across the strait. No one spoke.
"Where's Prince Garric?" Sharina shouted, pointing her finger at a soldier He wore his cuirass but no helmet because of the bandage on his head.
Instead of the soldier, a barefoot woman in expensive robes answered, "He's at the palace, fighting the demons from below. He's there if he's still alive."
"Hurry!" Tenoctris said. "We've got to get aboard the ship."
There was no help for it, then. Sharina was tired, physically as well as mentally, but without hesitation she picked the wizard up again. She ran into the water shouting, "I'm Princess Sharina! Help me! I've got to reach my brother in Erdin!"
Those aboard the trireme probably couldn't hear her, but the soldiers waist-deep in the strait waiting their turn to climb the ladders did. Three of them bellowed in unison, "Hold up for the Princess coming aboard!"
The warship rode as close inshore as it could without grounding, but the sea would still be up to Sharina's chest. The troops at the back of the line saw the women's problem. One grabbed Sharina's arm and handed her forward. The next man did the same, not carrying her and Tenoctris but shoving from one man to the next so that Sharina didn't have the problem of trying to walk in deep water.
"You've got no business there, your highness!" the sailing master replied through his trumpet. If the captain-a nobleman who wouldn't be expected to know about ships-had an opinion, he kept it to himself. The sailing master turned and ordered, "Crew, prepare to set off!"
Soldiers continued to pull and push the women toward the vessel. Aboard the trireme, a soldier handed his javelin to the soldier beside him, then drew his sword. He laid the point of it against the sailing master's throat. The sailor flung his speaking trumpet into the air in shock. He probably would've jumped himself if the soldier hadn't been gripping his shoulder.
"Come on, your princessship!" shouted the soldier holding the javelins. His unaided lungs gave up nothing to the sailor's orders through the speaking trumpet. "We'll wait for you!"
Sharina finished the journey to the ship with her face in the water half the time. She hoped Tenoctris was all right; the wizard's occasional sneezes were reassuring. When they reached the tarred black hull, a pair of men lifted them out of the water together and two more-the soldiers who'd convinced the sailing master of his duty-jerked them over the railing with about as much consideration as you'd give sacks of grain.
They'd gotten the job done. Delicate men wouldn't have. Sharina felt a rush of gratitude to them.
"Now you can get moving, sailor boy," said the first soldier as he retrieved his javelin from his buddy. "And don't waste a lot of time, hear?"
If the sailing master had an opinion, he swallowed it and merely shouted orders to the crew. The flutist seated under the sternpost began blowing time, and the oars took up their beat. The trireme groaned forward and swung slowly toward the mainland.
"Don't guess you'd remember me and Pont, your princessship," said the soldier who'd been speaking. "We met back in the ice a time ago, but there was a lot going on then."
Sharina looked at the men. They were non-commissioned officers in a line regiment, and at least the age of her father. There were several hundred men like them in the royal army. But "I do recognize you!" she said. "File-closers Pont and Prester! You saved my brother's life and he gave you estates! What are you doing here?"
The trireme laboriously gained speed. It rode deep in the water, just as the sailing master had warned. Sharina hoped the lowest range of oar ports had been blocked when the warship was converted into a transport, but worse come to worst she could swim to the far shore even if she had to pull Tenoctris along with her.
"Oh, ma'am, what do we know about farming?" Prester said. "Anyway, your brother saved my ass and Pont's both a time or two, as I remember it. With a little seasoning he'd make a real soldier, he would."
"But it's good of her to remember us, Prester," said his partner. "A lady like that, aprincess, and she remembers us."
"Pont and me signed back on," Prester said. "Camp marshals, that makes us warrant officers. That's why we were still on Volita. Somebody had to chivy stragglers over."
"Are we going to be in trouble because we didn't, you know, wait for the last ship out, Prester?" Pont said. "Looks like there's another coming after all."
He pointed. A stubby patrol vessel, packed with troops and only one of its two oar-banks manned, was wallowing away from Volita in the trireme's wake.
"No," Sharina said with a decisive nod. "You're not going to be in trouble."
"Anyway, we may've screwed the pooch this time anyhow," said Prester, in a surprisingly cheerful tone given what he was saying. "Nothing like fighting in a city to get yourself killed."
"But there's loot, Prester," said his partner. "Remember those temple dishes we got in Durance?"
"I remember the hangover they bought me," Prester said. "ThatI'm never going to forget."
Wizardlight slashed out of the city, ripping a long gash in the overcast. The sun poured down, more than doubling the light that'd been seeping in around the perimeter of the artificial shadow.
Prester looked at the flashes and the sky of roiling blackness, then looked out to sea past Sharina. "Well, we seen wizards before," he muttered. "It's no big thing that we're seeing 'em again, I guess."
"Anyhow," said Pont cheerfully, "it's nice to have sunlight."
He looked at Sharina in sudden concern. "But it's all right if we don't, your princessship," he added. "I mean, whatever you want, ma'am. You can count in me 'n Prester to cope."
"Thank you, Marshal Pont," Sharina said formally. Did they really think she controlled the wizards battling in Erdin? "I have no doubt at all that you will cope, as you've done before. As we've all done before."
The trireme's mast was stepped, though the spar and sail had been left on shore. The lookout at the masthead shouted down, "Master Darrin! All the slips are full and there's ships tied to the ones already moored. We'll have to go upriver!"
The sailing master stepped onto the pivot of the steering oar, gripping the railing with his left hand. "Hanging on like that looks very dangerous," Tenoctris said in a tone of mild disapproval. "Though I suppose he knows what he's doing."
Sharina opened her mouth to reply. The ridiculousness of the statement-here, from Tenoctris to her-struck her. She giggled. Tenoctris looked at her in surprise, then started to chuckle also.
Sharina's giggle became laughter that was barely on the right side of hysteria. She leaned over the railing to take the pressure off her chest.
"No, we'll berth alongside theSword of Ornifal here in the harbor," the sailing master decided aloud. He didn't seem to be speaking to anybody in particular, but he spoke loudly enough that everybody on deck from the mast sternward could hear. "The passengers can cross the other ships to the quay. If we go up the river, the Shepherd knows what we'll find."
Turning to the helmsman he added, "Two points to starboard, Henga. Master Estin, prepare to back water."
Pont cocked an eye at the sailing master. "That all right with you and your friend, Princess?" he asked.
"I won't be able to carry Tenoctris from ship to ship by myself," Sharina said. "But he's probably right-the river will be choked. Warships are too long to turn in the channel, and…"
"Oh, that's no problem, Princess," Prester said. He turned to survey the soldiers nearest to him on deck. "Mallus and Jodea, you're carrying the old lady here, got it? Unter and Borcas, you two take their spears and be ready to grab if something goes wrong. You got that?"
A soldier blinked. His fluffy blond moustache flared into sideburns and disappeared under his helmet. "How far do we carry her, Marshal?" he asked doubtfully.
"Until I bloody tell you to bloody put her down, you bloody fool!" Prester replied like a thunderclap.
"Back 'em, back 'em!" the sailing master shouted, still clinging to the oar block. "Four, three, two, one-ship oars! Ship oars, or you'll pay for the broken shafts, I swear it!"
The trireme wobbled as it slowed, pummeled by the wake of its forward passage and the stroke of its reversed oars rebounding from the vessel it slid toward. That one, the outermost of three triremes already moored, held several score civilians but none of the regular crew. A few refugees seemed to be trying to get the vessel under way, but the others were simply huddling on deck. This was as far as they'd been able to run from the destruction occurring in their city.
The ships scrunched together, rocking violently. The passengers hindered the deck crew, but there were hawsers across to the inner vessel before they drifted apart again. Soldiers had started leaping over before the ships were lashed together firmly.
"Make way for the Princess and the old lady!" Prester bellowed. He glared at the men he'd detailed to carry Tenoctris and added in a scarcely quieter voice, "Mallus and Jodea, hop to it!"
The troops crashed and slid their way across the ships till they'd reached the stone quay. A couple of them managed to fall into the water, but they were able to rescue themselves because cut rigging already hung from the vessels' sides. Troops must've fallen previously, and soldiers had no compunction about destroying a ship-or most anything else-to save a buddy's life.
The men holding Tenoctris negotiated the route without difficulty; they must've been either sailors or mountaineers at an earlier point in their lives. It struck Sharina that Prester and Pont might be simple men in many respects, but their knowledge of troops and the things required to keep troops alive was of a very sophisticated order.
The trireme had carried at least two hundred soldiers besides the oarsmen. No wonder it'd ridden low in the water! The men first across to the quay were starting up the boulevard which led to the harbor.
"Halt and form ranks of twelve, you miserable disgraces!" Pont cried, moving in a rolling trot to the front of his men. "Are you the Prince's Royal Army, or are you a herd of bloodycats, eh?"
Men crunched and clattered into place. Though they must be a mixture of several or many different units, they fell into formation as easily as grain fills a sack. The only problem seemed to be the length of the front rank, and Pont quickly trimmed that back to the twelve he'd demanded.
"Do we fall in, Marshal?" one of the soldiers carrying Tenoctris asked plaintively.
"You bloody well donot," Prester snarled, his eye restraining as well the pair of soldiers holding the bearers' javelins. "You stay back with me and the Princess, you got it?"
All four men nodded. Prester's tone was so commanding that Sharina, half-numbed by all that had happened, almost nodded also.
"Forward…," Pont called from the left front of the formation. "March! Hup! Hup! Hup!"
Hobnails on stone, the studded aprons of the soldiers, and pieces of their equipment jouncing together, combined deafeningly. It sounded like wagons full of scrap metal driving over the edge of a quarry.
"Double…," Pont called. "Time!"
Prester glanced at Sharina as they kept pace with the rear of the formation-him trotting, her in what was more a leggy walk than running. "This all right with you, Princess?" he asked.
"Yes, of course," said Sharina. "But can troopers Mallus and Jodea keep up?"
"They can if they know what's good for them," Prester said with baleful significance. "We don't have packs, you see. And it's just up to the palace the messenger said where we meet his princeship."
The air was chilly. Fires were burning at half a dozen places in the city, adding their smoke to the unnatural overcast, but in addition the atmosphere had the cutting, choking stench of sulfur.
The ground continued to jump the way a dead frog does, a spastic trembling unlike the two real earthquakes Sharina had experienced. Many buildings had collapsed. Sometimes the lower stories of brick and stone remained, but the lath and plaster construction above them had shaken into the street. A few corpses lay on the pavement, but the people who could flee were already gone.
Wizardlight continued to tear the overcast. The bolts were searingly bright, but they didn't leave afterimages on Sharina's eyeballs the way direct sunlight would've done.
The boulevard bent to the right between a pair of government office buildings, still standing while lesser structures had fallen. Men were fighting monsters at the head of the street, but the Earl's palace had vanished into a cauldron of black vapors and grubs trying to be men.
Garric and Liane were at the left end of the line where a street leading toward the river joined. Fallen buildings half-choked the cross-street, but troops were using the rubble as artificial hills to defend against the creatures attacking.
The battle was ending as Sharina and the reinforcements double-timed up. The monsters didn't retreat: they died, throwing themselves forward like rabid dogs and sometimes drawing blood before they were butchered.
"Detachment…," Pont said as his troops neared the present defenders. He paused for three more crashing double-paces, then cried, "Halt!"
"Bring Tenoctris!" Sharina said as she ran to her brother.
Garric turned slowly but didn't seem to recognize her. He was breathing through his mouth, and his eyes were focused in another time. His sword was so bloody that only in streaks and patches could Sharina see that the blade was patterned in gray waves.
Liane began moving down the line of soldiers, offering them drinks from a helmet filled with water. She lifted the improvised bucket to each man's lips; for the most part they were too exhausted to raise it themselves.
"Garric, you're in danger!" Sharina said. His arms hung at his sides, weighed down by his equipment. His shield'd been hacked to half its original dimensions. What was left of its leather facing held together the wooden core.
"I'd noticed," Garric said. He started to laugh, but the flash of humor turned into a cough. He went down on one knee.
"A wizard on Ornifal planned something against you," Sharina said. Mallus and Jodea set Tenoctris beside her, then stood beaming as they waited for further orders. The stench of inhuman corpses was nauseating, even beyond the other reeks.
Tenoctris seated herself in the littered roadway and opened the satchel she'd carried in her lap from Valles. "Now that I'm here, I hope I can learn just what the danger is. I'm afraid I couldn't tell when I was in Valles,"she said. She started drawing a figure by pouring powdered sulfur from a flask.
"Whatever it is," Garric said wearily, "it'll have to wait its turn."
He looked at the reinforcements and suddenly smiled. He lurched upright again. "Pont, you're a warrant officer, now?" he said.
"Yes, Prince," Prester said. "Me and Pont are camp marshals. Ah-this is pretty much the tailings from Volita, I'm afraid. Where do you want us?"
Garric looked over his shoulder. A mass of white creatures with weapons as distorted as their bodies rose from the cauldron. Garric's face lost the moment's happiness Sharina had seen there.
"It's like the surf hitting a cliff," Garric whispered. "Not all at once, but again and again. Until it stops or the cliff goes down, and I don't guess this surf is going to stop."
"There's troops coming up from the river too, your princeship," Pont said. "Dunno how many, but some."
As Pont spoke, he nodded toward the handful of soldiers coming up the street from the left. All were line infantry. Lord Attaper was on the other side of this boulevard and a few more guards remained in the line, but the pavement back to the cauldron had many more bodies in black armor.
"Marshal Pont," Garric said, drawing himself straight. "Leave ten men here with me. Take the rest widdershins around the perimeter, leaving detachments where in your judgment they're most needed."
He drew a shuddering breath, no longer Sharina's brother but a tortured soul whose determination burned through the wasted flesh. "Which is everywhere, as I well know, but do your best. Do your best, all of you."
"Aye aye, sir," Pont said, clashing down his right foot and turning on his heel. He tapped the man who'd been next to him with his spear-butt and said, "Rastin, you're sticking with me. Rest of you beggars in the front rank, you stay here with the Prince."
Prester eyed the men falling out of the detachment. He said, "Anddon't let me hear you embarrassed me or I'll come back and piss on your worthless corpses, you hear?"
"From the left by ranks…," said Pont, who'd looked at the debris-choked street they'd be following as they went off to the right. "Form column of fours! Detachment, march!"
Liane jogged toward the courtyard of a mews just down the street, carrying the helmet which was now empty. She wasn't fleeing: Sharina could see a well-curb in the court yard of the mews.
The creatures from the cauldron were within twenty double-paces of the human line. They didn't approach any faster than a man could walk, but they gave the impression of disgusting unity. They resembled less a formation of soldiers than the blotches on a slug's slimy body.
"You want these boys, Princess?" Prester asked in a low tone as the detachment marched off under Pont. He nodded to the four men who'd accompanied Tenoctris, still standing close by. "They're not half bad, if I do say myself who trained 'em."
Sharina shivered. Garric was spreading the reinforcements along the thin existing line. Yes, she did want Mallus and the others by her very much, but it wasn't her decision to make.
"No," she said. "Thank you for your help, Marshal Prester, but you have your duties to carry out. And may the Lady guard you!"
Prester and the four troopers followed their fellows at a thudding run. Sharina grimaced, then glanced down at Tenoctris. The wizard was chanting words of power softly over the six-pointed star she'd drawn in yellow sulfur. She's too close to the fighting here!
Sharina drew the Pewle knife which Lires had handed her on Ornifal. They could use Lires and his fellow guards here. They could use all Waldron's five regiments, as a matter of fact, though it probably wouldn't make any difference in the long run…
The battle of wizards, bolts of light against jets of blackness, continued. The sky was becoming more open, but though sunlight seemed to hurt the white creatures it didn't keep them from coming on.
There was a windrow of bodies where the most recent fighting had occurred, most of them monsters but with a leavening of men. Garric had pulled his remaining troops slightly back to keep his enemies from leaping straight down on them from the pile. This next wave crawled up the corpses of their fellows, then slithered toward the humans with the mindless determination of leeches scenting blood.
A blue thread lifted from the center of Tenoctris' pattern. She continued to chant. The line of light rose arm's length from the ground, then twisted to the left and continued to grow longer.
The creatures met the line of soldiers. Garric stabbed, then struck overhand. His blows were quick as a snake's tongue; it was hard to believe that moments ago he'd seemed so weary.
A thing with a bronze mace swung at Garric from the side. He caught the blow on his shield but went down on one knee. A soldier coming from the river threw his javelin, skewering the fat, multi-legged body of the creature with the mace. It curled in on itself like a broiled spider; Garric regained his feet.
Most of the reinforcements from the river joined the fighting as the monsters forced the line of defenders back. One of them strode stolidly toward Garric. He didn't have a javelin, but he'd drawn his sword. The thread of wizardlight from Tenoctris' hexagram extended till it touched the center of the soldier's breastplate and followed his progress.
Sharina looked sharply. The man was Memet, who'd brought her news of Cashel's disappearance. Or at least he wore Memet's face, as the creature forming in Hani's tank on the island had done.
"Garric!" she shouted. "Watch-"
A pair of monsters with three legs and three heads between them closed with Garric. He knocked one back with his shield as his blade blocked the other's axe. Memet raised his sword.
Sharina grabbed Memet's wrist with her left hand and stabbed the Pewle knife into the pit of the man's stomach. The keen steel point belled on the bronze cuirass, punching through to the depth of hand's-breadth.
Memet struck. Sharina's weight on his sword wrist couldn't prevent the blow but she slowed it. Garric was dodging back after slashing through one throat of the creature attacking from his right. Memet's swordhilt rang on his helmet instead of the blade cutting his spine as it was intended to do.
The false soldier shook Sharina loose and raised his sword for another stroke. She fell back, dragging her knife from the wound. A gout of black decay squirted through the cuirass as the blade came free. The semblance of life washed from Memet's face, leaving behind a skull half-covered with rotten flesh. Memet had said his father'd died on Ornifal a few years previous…
Sharina got back to her feet. The latest attack was over, though new regiments of monsters were rising from the cauldron.
She looked around. Tenoctris swayed, apparently bewildered by the fact her spell had ended unexpectedly.
Sharina squatted and hugged the old woman, careful not to touch her with the Pewle knife. "It's all right, Tenoctris," she said. "You've ended the danger."
The ground shook violently. Sharina looked seaward. Something terrible was happening across the strait on Volita.
Davus stood on a wisp of crystal which stuck out from the Citadel's crown. His right foot was in front of his left because the slender beam wasn't wide enough for them side by side. The wind's whimsy snapped his tunic to and fro.
Ilna, on the crown also but well back from the edge, watched without emotion. Davus had known what he was doing throughout their past acquaintance, so she supposed he still did now that he was King again. And if Davus fell, well, he was an adult. She had enough difficulty living her own life to want to get into the business of deciding what other people should so.
"Ilna, what if he falls?" Merota said. She didn't whine, but she was holding Ilna's right hand and Chalcus' left tight as oysters grip the rocks.
Chalcus chuckled with his usual cheerful ease. "Well, then, my dear girl," he said, "the three of us will have to find our own way back to our friends. Which no doubt we'll do, though I'll admit at the moment I haven't decided how."
He glanced at Ilna over the child's head. "Eh, love of my life?" he added.
Ilna sniffed. "I doubt most things, as you well know," she said. She felt her tight, disapproving lips loosen into a smile. "But I don't doubt that the three of us wouldtry to find passage home, until we succeeded or we… couldn't try any more."
Davus turned with a laugh of pure joy. He walked toward the three outlanders, as sprightly as a dancer at the Harvest Fest. "Oh, my friends," he said, "I can't tell you how good it feels to be back in my land at last."
"You've been back, I'd have judged," Chalcus said, "for the week and more that it's taken us to walk from there-"
He pointed to the south, where the cliffs of their arrival were a purple-brown line on the horizon.
"-to here." His foot tapped the crystal, a sheet as smooth and broad as an iced-over pond. "Not so?"
"Indeed, not so," said Davus. His smile was good-natured but as hard and certain as Ilna's own when she told people truths that didn't fit their understandings. "I was in this land, but it wasn't mine until Mistress Ilna made it mine. A deed I couldn't have accomplished myself, and one which puts me in her debt for so long as I live. A good long while, I would expect that to be."
He threw his head back and laughed again, a man satisfied with the world and his place in it. The jewel hovered just above his scalp, softly scintillant despite the rainbow blaze from the mass of crystal on which he stood.
"Sir?" said Merota. "I'd really like to go home now."
"Yes," said Ilna, more tersely than she'd really intended. She understood Davus being pleased to recover the throne he'd been ousted from a thousand years before, but they too had been gone from their world longer than she cared to be. "I don't consider you to be in my debt, Master Davus; but as a matter of courtesy, I'd appreciate you sending us home as you said you would."
"Aye," said Davus. "You'll be in time, I promise you. But we can go now, if you like."
"In time for what, my friend?" said Chalcus, his fingers playing almost forgetfully with the hilt of his sword.
"In time to watch, is all, my friend," Davus said. "But I'll try to give you a proper show. It's my second trip to your world, you'll recall, and the first was memorable right up to the end."
Instead of continuing, Davus paused to rub his bare feet on the ground in obvious pleasure. Ilna turned her head, looking out over the land she hoped she was about to leave. It was much the same in all directions; some portions greener than others, some hilly. She could see the far shore of the body of water lapping the east of the Citadel, but it continued northward out of sight even from this high vantage.
There was nothing improper in what Davus was doing, but Ilna wasn't comfortable watching somebody else so wrapped in emotion. Ilna smiled faintly. She supposed being uncomfortable with emotion was a flaw in her, but she had enough other flaws that she didn't expect to have time to fix that one no matter how long a life remained to her.
"I'd never have built this myself," Davus mused, his mind returning to the same world as his three companions. "The crown, I mean. It's a marvelous thing, a lens to focus the powers that the jewel controls over a much wider range. Perhaps if it were finished, it'd control the whole cosmos. Well, we'll never know that for sure."
Chalcus detached his hand from Merota's, patted her on the head, and absently reached for the dagger in his sash. He was probably going to juggle it to settle him the way the cords Ilna plaited did her; but his conscious mind caught him.
He opened his hands, grinning wryly. "What did your pet do with his pretty palace, then?" he asked. "Not simply turn young ladies into statues, I suppose?"
"Not even that," said Davus. "The jewel alone suffices for such matters. From what the stone's memory tells me-"
He grinned, pausing a moment to allow his audience to protest at the notion stone could remember. Ilna grinned back, her finger stroking the hem of her tunic. She returned in that touch to the meadow south of Barca's Hamlet where the sheep had been pastured.
"-the poor beast did nothing whatever with his creation, just prowled about it and built it higher. The creature had purpose, you see; but not a mind as we humans talk of minds."
"It has less than that now," said Chalcus, "for which I'm thankful. I'm not a vindictive man-"
He too paused, smiling. All of them, even Merota, understood that in the sailor's mind the righting of wrongs wasn't vengeance but rather a necessity of life; and they all agreed with him.
"-but if I were to stay here longer, I'd take a maul to what our Ilna turned the thing into. I wouldn't risk that on some black day it returned to life, the way I did and Lady Merota."
"But Idon't want to stay," Merota said, hugging herself with one arm and holding Ilna even tighter with the other. "Please."
Davus sobered. "Yes, milady," he said. "You've been ill-treated because of my errors. I'll do my best to make that up to you-"
Ilna listened with her face stiff. There was no mockery in the King's tone; which was a good thing for all concerned.
"-and to your world. Chalcus, Ilna-friends. Join hands in a circle with me and Lady Merota, if you will."
Davus extended his arms, palms up. Ilna's left hand was free. She took his right without hesitation. Chalcus took his left so quickly and smoothly that only someone who knew him as well as Ilna did would've recognized that hedid hesitate. He grinned in wry apology to her over Merota's head.
Davus had the grip of a plowman-firm, with enormously strong muscles beneath the callused skin. "I'd expected this would require a degree more of ceremony," he said calmly, "but thanks to the lens my predecessor built it'll be very simple. I hope you're properly thankful to him, as I'm sure I am."
Chalcus laughed and said, "So long as I don't have to-"
They were standing on a high rock, not the Citadel's crystal crown, though they were about as high as they'd been before. There'd been no feeling of change: they justwere.
Far below the sea washed the shores of an island. A city was burning on the mainland across a narrow strait; the sky was a pattern of soot and streaks of bright sunlight like claw-tears in a dirty blanket.
"We're on the Demon!" Merota said. " We're back on Volita! Oh, thank you, Master Davus!"
Ilna quirked a smile. She didn't have much interest in geography-she divided the world into places she could weave and places she couldn't-but even granting Ilna's own inadequacies, it was obvious that Merota had a very good eye for her surroundings. She didn't doubt that Garric would find a use for the child's talents once she was a little older. He and the kingdom through him used weavers and reformed pirates, after all…
"I need to be down there," Chalcus said. His voice was controlled but very tense. "There's people fighting. I don't know who they are, but what they're fightingisn't people as best I can tell."
"You'd be only in the way," said Davus calmly. "They call this the Demon, you say, milady? In that they're wrong, for it's no demon. It's the-"
He bent and laid his hand flat on the weathered stone surface.
"-troll that I brought here when Dromillac summoned me."
Pure crimson light danced, cascading down through the rock in brilliant majesty. Ilna's hair stood on end. Merota cried out, but only once; standing then as a lady should. Chalcus said nothing. His sword and dagger were out and his eyes were trying to look in every direction at once.
As the wizardlight descended, brush and coarse grasses sloughed off the granite. With a crackling roar, the hunching troll began to straighten. Waves danced away from Volita's shores in expanding ripples as though the island itself had just dropped into the sea.
Davus squatted, keeping his spread hand against the stone. Though he continued to smile, Ilna saw a hint of tight concentration in the lines of his face. The jewel hovering over him pulsed brighter, dimmed, and grew brighter still.
The troll stepped forward, crushing the ruins of shore-side buildings thrown down by time or whatever it was that'd happened a thousand years ago. The movement was jerky but slow. Ilna's first instinct was to fall flat on what she supposed was the troll's scalp, but dignity made her stand since shecould stand. She held out her hand to Merota, who gratefully took it.
The odd thing was that the troll remained stone, a granite outcrop with only the roughest suggestion of a creature that walked on two legs. Yet itdid walk, swinging its arms alternately. Their motion balanced the movements of the legs; never far from the torso but shifting in a different rhythm from the larger mass.
The troll didn't speak but the rock of its body squealed so loudly that the splash as it stepped into the sea was lost in the greater sound. Spray shot as high as the creature's armpits, spattering a few salt droplets onto Ilna. Chalcus wiped his sword quickly dry on his sleeve.
The troll took another step, throwing the sea into fiercer motion. At rest the water would came only to where the troll's knees should've been, though its legs bent in arcs rather than angles.
Paired, dazzlingly intense bolts of wizardlight ripped the black sky: crimson followed in a heartbeat by azure. More daylight flooded down, lighting the crater in the heart of the city. Foul white parodies of men crawled from the basin, spilling to every side like froth from an overheated kettle. A ring of human soldiers stood against them, but already some of the creatures were penetrating into the wider city through gaps worn in the defenders' line.
Ilna leaned slightly as the troll took its third step. They'd reached the midpoint of the channel, now, and still the water didn't come to the troll's waist. Davus murmured gentle encouragement in the tone Cashel used when his oxen were starting a heavy haul.
Davus' real communication with the troll was through the touch of his hand. His fingers shifted with greater or lesser pressure, much as a lute-player's did on the neck of his instrument.
A wizened figure in black stood on a platform in the middle of the crater. Ilna might not have noticed him except for the haze of wizardlight about him like a ball of red gauze. He pointed his athame. Black smoke/soot/vapor shot from it and filled a rip in the overcast. An instant later another pair of bolts tore the blackness even wider open to the light.
The troll stepped forward again. It moved with jerky deliberation: every stride was a separate thing instead of all being part of the motion of walking. The harborfront was crowded with ships. Some had already been swamped by waves the troll threw up, but people-from the look of them, civilians rather than proper sailors-were trying to launch one of those remaining. They suddenly broke and fled like lice from a corpse in either direction down Harbor Street.
The female wizard stood between a pair of fallen pillars as she tore the black sky open; her back was to the sea. She was younger than Tenoctris, but that was as much as Ilna could see from behind.
The broad, solid man who stood between the wizard and the pit could be no one but Cashel. His quarterstaff moved in circles as lazy and powerful as those of a whale herding fish before gulping them.
The wizard in the crater began to move, but not under his own power. His creatures raised him on an open litter and carried him toward the back edge, away from the river and the oncoming troll.
Soldiers in the boulevard from the harbor turned from the next wave of pallid monsters. Their heads rose as they stared at the troll. One man started to run, then caught himself or was caught by the unheard command of an officer. They faced the crater again, waiting to meet the onrush of creatures they might stop and ignoring the thing they could not.
Ilna didn't like soldiers or what soldiers did: a life spent killing other people wasn't a fit life for a human being, in her view. But she'd always done her duty, and she respected people who did theirs. Not even Ilna os-Kenset had anything to teachthese men about duty.
"Get out of the way, Prince Garric!" Davus shouted.
"Get out of the way, Prince Garric-c-c!" the troll said, his voice the thunder of an avalanche shouting.
"Let me by to end this for good and all/Let me by to end this for good and all-l-l!" Davus and his minion shouted.
The female wizard lowered her arms and touched Cashel's right shoulder. He slowed the quarterstaff and brought it upright on his left side, glancing back at the woman and then letting his gaze rise to the oncoming troll.
The boulevard was wide enough that even something the size of the troll could pass down it without hitting buildings. Cashel didn't run; he shifted slightly to put himself between the woman and the mountain walking toward them.
Ilna looked at him and smiled, then glanced at Davus with her face growing still again. "Easy," he murmured as his fingers caressed the stone. "Easy, easy… Now!"
The troll's leg came up with a sucking sound and a bloom of silt lifted from the bottom. The strait's current drew the mud westward, away from the creature's step. The troll didn't have feet; the ends of its legs spread slightly when its weight eased onto them. Its hands were fingerless paddles with outcrops to the side which worked as thumbs.
The troll lowered its right leg toward the mainland of Sandrakkan, shaking the ground. The tremor lifted an expanding ring of dust from the city. His foot touched a pair of warships; they flew to splinters, though Ilna on the troll's head hadn't noticed the contact.
"Gently," Davus said to his charge. "Gently, give them a little time. Time doesn't matter to us…"
The soldiers defending the broad street were moving aside: grudgingly, haltingly; several of them helped by their comrades. They'd been standing in the path of the monsters from the pit; but barely standing, too battered and exhausted to have run even if their courage had finally failed them.
The white creatures stumbled/crawled/slithered toward the gap. Sunlight scoured them unmercifully. Ilna heard a moan of inhuman agony even over the crackling thunder of the troll's body, but still they came on.
The creatures had carried their leader, the wizard on the litter, over the rim of the crater. He'd continued to work spells, but his gouts of darkness could no longer blot out the sun even though his female rival watched arms akimbo instead of clawing further rents in the overcast.
"Now, my mighty one," Davus said, his voice rising. He was fixed to the troll like a hummingbird on a high twig. "Now, my bold fellow, three strides and we'll have them!"
The troll stepped forward, its left leg coming out of the sea. The limb heaved through the air with the inevitability of a swelling thundercloud drizzling seawater and lowered to the street.
The contact seemed delicate, but a shockwave rippled through the city and the pavement buckled. A row of four-story tenements several furlongs away swayed and fell into a geyser of smoke and shattered plaster.
The troll's right leg lifted. The soldiers were battling the edges of the column of monsters which filled the entire street and spilled beyond it, scrabbling over the ruins of fallen buildings. The troll's leg came down, crushing masses of the white creatures with a squelching sound. Black blood sprayed to every side. It was like seeing a horse step on a gorged tick, only on a much, much greater scale.
The street was of flagstones over concrete set on a gravel base thicker than Ilna was tall. It shattered. Men and monsters fell, then rose to continue their battle.
Davus crooned to the troll, then glanced aside to his human companions. He blinked as though surprised to see them, then smiled and said a little awkwardly, "I get so caught up I could forget to breathe. It's time that we part, my friends. Ilna and Chalcus, it's been an honor and a pleasure. Lady Merota-"
The troll halted in the wreckage between the edge of the pit and the humans who stood as a barrier against the creatures swarming from that pit. Below, the battle continued. Farther into the city, the streets were choked with civilians fleeing earthshocks and rumors of a disaster whose reality they couldn't have imagined in their worst nightmares.
"-again, I regret that you were caught in trouble from which your innocence should've protected you. You comported yourself with the grace I would expect from one who associates with Ilna and Chalcus."
As Davus spoke, the troll's left arm rose in a series of tiny increments like sand sliding down a slope. The paddle-like palm spread. A seam of mica in the granite caught the sunlight and shimmered.
Chalcus sheathed his dagger and bent forward on one knee. Davus touched/gripped the troll with his right palm, so Chalcus extended his left arm for the King to clasp.
"I've had a few good comrades over the years," Chalcus said. "I've never had a better one."
Davus laughed. "Aye," he said. "Hard times, but they had to do. Now, join your friends while I pay my debt to Mistress Ilna for freeing me and mine."
The troll's palm, a granite shelf with dips and hillocks, touched the gray stone scalp beside them. It was flat only in the sense that Ilna could hold her own hand flat.
Ilna laughed also. "It was a pleasure," she said, marvelling at life and at herself. "As much pleasure as I find in life."
She stepped onto the stone hand. Merota darted across beside her and Chalcus followed an instant later.
What Ilna'd said was true: striking down the New King had given her a rush of fierce joy. Ilna hadn't believed that the past could be retrieved, but the thoughtNever again! had warmed the soul which her loss of her friends had turned to ice.
The troll bent at the waist, lowering them toward the ground. Ilna examined the stone creature as she dropped past it. It didn't look human or even alive. Its head was a lump on its cliff-like torso; its right arm hung at its side and seemed a part of the greater mass. Eyes, nose and mouth were smudges in the rock, no more facial features than the whimsies a child invents while watching summer clouds.
But the troll lived and moved. There was no doubt about that.
Davus waved his free hand to them. The way the troll was bending put him head-down, but he showed no sign of strain or discomfort. He seemed a part of the stone, a flesh-colored statue carved from the underlying granite.
The troll's hand stopped. The silence as the stone arm halted its grinding progress was more noticeable than the fact they'd stopped moving down. They were in what had been a courtyard before the surrounding building had collapsed.
Sulfur and wind-blown grit made Ilna sneeze; her eyes filled with tears. The troll's hand was so thick that she'd expected to climb down rather than jump and risk a broken leg, but the rubble to every side was much the same height as the stone palm. The gap was arm's length or less, no more of a strain than hopping a mud-puddle.
"Quickly!" Ilna said, because Davus had sent them away for a purpose. Merota stayed with her; Chalcus already stood on the piled masonry, watching out for his female companions and checking for their closest enemies.
The troll straightened again in the same non-living motion. Ilna withdrew the hank of cords from her sleeve, but a swatch of wizard-made cloud plunged her into shadow for the length of a long, slow breath. She put the cords away and uncoiled the silken rope from her waist. Her art wouldn't work on anyone who couldn't see her patterns clearly, but a noose around an enemy's neck was almost invariably useful.
"Ilna," Merota said, trying very hard to be a stern-faced lady and not a frightened child. "What shall we-"
A pair of creatures with human heads and torsos climbed the rubble pile. One had two legs and the other six. Chalcus' incurved blade made a single diagonal stroke, through the neck of the first and the ribcage of the second.
He danced aside. The six-legged thing turned and sprang like a grasshopper back in the direction it'd come, but the almost manlike monster strode forward despite its head hanging from a tag of skin. It turned toward Ilna, holding a broad-bladed axe overhead in both hands. Before she could toss her noose, Chalcus cut the creature's spine from behind. Its collapsed in its tracks, its head toppling forward. Chalcus had slashed the tendons as well as the nerves.
Ilna saw soldiers fighting in the ruins closer to the crater, but the solid wall of defenders had been breached even before Garric withdrew his troops to give the troll passage. The creatures boiling from the pit would spread throughout the city and the Isles unless something stopped them-as men could not.
The troll bent toward the crater. White creatures continued to spill out, unaffected or even unaware of the mass of granite lowering over them. Their wizard stood beyond the lip of the pit, his arm pointing. Crimson bolts-bright, brighter, and finally hotter than the sun-spat from his athame. They vanished into the troll's broad chest.
Davus laughed through the stone lips, a sound as joyfully terrible as the howl of a tornado. The troll thrust its hands into the ground to either side of the crater. Its thumbs gripped the inner edge of the cavity, crushing some of the white creatures. Others continued to crawl away, squirming into the city over whatever obstacle stood in their way.
For a moment, nothing moved except that the earth trembled. The troll gave a deep, booming roar. It raised its right leg with the slow inevitability of a glacier, then slammed it down at the edge of the crater like a man kicking the jamb of a sticking door.
Buildings danced on the horizon. Ilna fell to her knees, holding Merota, and even Chalcus danced for a moment as he might've done on a storm-tossed spar.
Dust lifted in an expanding cloud, chokingly thick. Ilna slitted her eyes, then covered her nose and the child's with a fold of her sleeve.
The troll straightened; slowly, as it did all things. Dirt and rock cascaded from its hands. Only when it started to turn and the fall of debris slowed did Ilna realize that the troll hadn't gouged out handfuls of earth: it'd wrenched the crater's lining out of the ground.
The pit that remained was simply a hole filled with flying grit. Its walls fell inward, covering the bottom with lifeless rubble.
The troll raised the lining, a cauldron of shimmering purple light a furlong across, to the height of its towering shoulders. The wizard's pale monsters still climbed over the rim, but they burst bloodily like falling spleens when they hit the ground.
Davus and the troll he was part of laughed in one thunderous voice. The troll flung the cauldron seaward, spinning the great purple bowl through the air. The whole business seemed slow, but Ilna realized that the troll's size made its movements deceptive to eyes used to judging things on human scale.
Monsters continued to spill out, flailing until they hit. On land, they splashed; over the sea, it was water that splashed. The white bodies sank out of sight in the churning froth.
The cauldron landed in open water beyond Volita and exploded like all a storm's thunderbolts released together. Steam rose higher than the eye could follow.
Ilna, knowing what was coming, clapped her hands over Merota's ears and opened her own mouth. She couldn't cover her ears and the child's as well, so the choice was clear.
The blast lifted them and everyone in the city into the air like children tossed in blankets. They dropped back where they'd been in stunned amazement.
The sea drew out, baring the bottom of the strait: for a moment Ilna on her rubble heap saw fish flopping in the mud. When the water rushed back, it curled up the shore and deep into the ruins of Erdin. Spouting and foaming from cellars, it undercut the remaining walls as it withdrew.
The troll's laughter was so loud that Ilna felt it through her flesh though her ears were utterly deaf. The troll turned and leaned forward. Davus, a tiny figure on the granite head, waved.
The troll dived into the cavity it'd torn the cauldron from, striking with another cataclysmic shock. There was a white flash. When Ilna opened her eyes again, she saw that what'd been a hole in the middle of Erdin was now a mass of lifeless granite.
Garric got to his feet cautiously. He wasn't sure whether the ground was still trembling or if the shudders he felt were just his body reacting to all that'd gone before.
He squinted against the dust. Liane handed him a swatch of cloth she'd ripped from her tunic and dampened from the helmet she was using as a water bucket. Garric let his shield hang from the strap buckled behind his right shoulder and gratefully covered his nose and mouth to breathe.
Many creatures had gotten out of the cauldron before the troll tore it from the earth. Instead of attacking as their fellows had done earlier, they ran for hiding places like startled rats. The troops who'd been fighting all day let the pallid survivors slip through gaps in the line.
The battle was over. The men who'd fought it had their bellies full of slaughter; and besides, the rats still had their weapons. Let them crawl into cellars, if that was all they wanted to do…
Garric started forward. He swayed for the first few steps, but he was all right when he got moving properly. Erdin had been nearly flat. Now a mass of granite like the citadel of Carcosa rose in the middle of the city. He wouldn't climb it-he didn't think he could in his present condition, living on his nerves with no margin of physical or mental strength-but he could go around.
Hehad to go around. The wizard responsible for this had escaped northward just before the troll hurled the caudron into the sea. The soldiers there would see no more reason to stop their fleeing enemies than the men nearby did.
The wizard had survived a millennium underground to rebuild his inhuman army. He'd do so again if he got the chance. Garric wasn't going to give him that chance.
He jogged near three pale monsters. They were hunching toward an alley half-closed by the jumbled barrels of a fallen column. The nearest of the trio turned and faced Garric, moaning softly and raising the axes in two of its hands. When Garric went by, it dropped forward to lope after its fellows, bracchiating on its lower pair of arms. It'd behaved like a frightened dog, willing to bite if necessary but desperate to get away.
The wizard's foul overcast had dissipated, allowing sunlight to bathe the granite plug. The stone was gray with streaks of white and pink, seemingly normal in every way save the manner it'd come here.
It was warm, though. Garric felt the heat pulsing as he passed close to the rock on his way around.
The breeze teased a valley in the swirling dust. Garric saw a clump of white creatures-perhaps four of them, perhaps many-carrying something toward the Temple of the Shepherd Who Overwhelms. The massive temple would have deep foundations.
Garric didn't try to run faster. He knew that if he lost his pace he'd almost certainly stumble. He'd reach them in time. The mismatched creatures moved like a broken-backed centipede, each interfering with the others.
The groundhad stopped shaking, so the dust was settling gradually. The layer at Garric's mid-chest was thick, almost opaque, but above that only motes danced. They twinkled like droplets of spray over a breeze-whipped ocean. Four thick-bodied, thick-legged monsters carried a litter that'd been pegged together from human bones. On it rode the wizard Garric had briefly glimpsed in the underworld, a hump under a black robe.
The wizard turned. Its face was that of a corpse which'd half decayed before being mummified. It pointed its athame.
"Die!" Garric cried, his sword lifting as he strode the last two paces to his enemy.
There was a red flash. Garric's muscles froze. His skin prickled and the sword flew out of his hand. He skidded forward on his chest.
A javelin arced out of the sky, skewering both the creatures supporting the back of the litter. They bawled and collapsed, spilling the wizard to the pavement. The athame's point caught in a crack between two cobblestones; the tourmaline blade splintered.
Garric could move again. He squirmed forward and grasped the wizard's throat. He neither knew nor cared what the other two litter-bearers were doing. He squeezed, feeling bones and muscles as dry as dead bone crunching. Then there was nothing in his hands, and nothing but stinking dust spilling from the black robe.
Garric looked around. Prester and Pont trotted toward him, wearing satisfied expressions and drawing their swords. Behind the two marshals came a squad of soldiers who appeared worn beyond human endurance.
Lord Attaper had finished three of the bearers whom the javelins had put down. He stared in a mixture of amazement and disgust at the fourth creature, a pin-headed monster whose forearms were the size of a strong man's thighs.
Liane knelt on the back of the fourth bearer. She'd cut its throat but seemed determined to continue thrusting her little dagger between its ribs as long as it was still twitching in death.