The Realms of the Gods

by Tamora Pierce

  The archers on the walls shot as rapidly as they could, choosing ape, hurrok, and Stormwing targets with deadly accuracy as they fought Stormwing terror. The king, examining battles on the land and in the air before him, continued to talk calmly into his spelled mirror, relaying what he saw to the queen. In his left hand, the Dominion Jewel glowed, violet light streaming from its many facets.

  Jonathan quietly said, “Excuse me,” into his mirror, and put it on the stone. Raising the Jewel, he aimed it not at the oncoming Stormwings, but at three hurroks bearing riders to the lower wall and the archers there. The riders were human mages; they lashed the fighters on the curtain wall, burning two of them alive. White threads of fire drifted from the Jewel, falling gracefully onto the hurroks and their burdens.

  Kitten cried an alarm: A quartet of Stormwings—two males, two females—had come in low, where no one had seen them, skimming the ground until they reached the base of the curtain wall. Now they sped up its length, ducking the web of fire that was tangling the mages and their mounts, zipping past the archers on the lower levels. Clutching round clay pots in their talons, they were intent on the watchtower and its occupants. Daine recognized the bombs: A spell word from a Stormwing and the pots would explode, showering everyone with liquid fire.

  Inkblot jumped from the king’s belt purse onto the notch of the wall in front of Jonathan, who did not see his danger. The mages were fighting him and the Jewel with all they had. Jelly, clinging to Kitten’s back, leaped to join the king’s darking.

  Marielle and Tkaa ignored the blots as they leaned through the crenelated wall. The lady aimed; when her chosen target was only fifty feet away, she loosed. Her arrow took one in the eye; the immortal slammed into the stone with a dying shriek. Jelly and Inkblot dropped to cover the face of the leading Stormwing, blinding him. He thrashed, dropping his bombs in his frantic attempt to scrape the darkings off. They abandoned their victim only when three of the archers on the lower wall had riddled him with arrows.

  The two remaining Stormwings came on, deadly rage in their eyes. Tkaa opened his jaws. His throat gave out an ear-piercing song that was part shriek, with a counterpoint tune in it that sounded like an avalanche. The male Stormwing was half caught by the basilisk’s song. His left side turned to stone; his right wing and claw thrashed. He dropped as archers scattered from the wall below. Moments later the occupants of the tower heard rock shatter on rock. His companion, the female, had come in to his rear and side; she escaped Tkaa’s song. Before the half-stone male began to fall, Daine was arrowing down the side of the watchtower. Abruptly she changed shape to that of a larger, heavier golden eagle, and slammed into the female Stormwing’s face. Steel teeth snapped; the girl-eagle got her claws out of the way just in time. Twisting, she slashed the immortal’s throat, then jumped away. Cursing, the Stormwing hit the lower wall, silvery blood spraying everywhere, and from there tumbled end over end to the ground.

  Daine circled, hunting for the darkings. She was relieved to find them rolling up the watchtower’s side, clinging to it as easily as the sunlight did. For the moment the air around the watchtower was clear. Gliding in, Daine carefully picked the two inky creatures up in her claws and carried them back up to the king.

  “Good work,” Leaf said from its position on Tkaa’s shoulder. Jelly went to Kitten; Inkblot flowed out of Daine’s talons, pouring itself into Jonathan’s belt purse once more. The king grinned, and stroked the purse. Looking for the hurroks and their riders who had run afoul of Jonathan, Daine saw only a heap of white bones on the curtain wall below, and shuddered.

  A boom from the north shivered the tower stones. Mushrooming billows of arcane light climbed from behind enemy lines. One cloud was sparkling black, the other a deep ruby shade. Numair had found Inar Hadensra. Daine shifted from foot to foot, ruffling her feathers and praying as she watched tendrils of black fire wind through the red, and red through the black. Numair had tricked the Scanran into protecting their contest from the rest of the battle. Let Inar Hadensra think it was to keep someone from putting a spear through their backs; Daine knew it was to keep the magical battle from hurting anyone else.

  Jonathan continued to speak to his queen and generals, passing on the numbers of the enemy and the directions of their movements. His companions defended him from every attack, physical and magical—Kitten and Tkaa easily handled the latter. Now that Numair had engaged the enemy’s chief mage, and Thayet’s wizards fought most of the rest, few human mages had the attention or strength to strike at those Tortallans who had no Gift, and thus no defense.

  Fresh immortals raced onto the battle-torn ground between their camp in the northeast and Legann. Many bore torn nooses of vines and brambles: They had been forced to rip themselves free of clinging plants roused by the Dominion Jewel. On their heels came centaurs, ogres, and knights, all in Tortallan colors, fighting under Tortallan battle flags. When the enemy immortals turned south, to freedom, the ones who escaped the roots that snatched at them from the ground ran into companies of Tortallan soldiers, two Rider Groups, and a small detachment of centaurs who had settled east of Legann.

  Behind the Tortallans rose a wall of brambles ten feet high. Anyone who tried to escape the battlefields and camps around the city would run into it. The Dominion Jewel, it seemed, could deliver what King Jonathan had promised.

  Metallic shrieks drew the girl’s attention. High above the Stormwings, hurroks, and winged apes, Barzha was locked in deadly battle with another Stormwing—a queen. “Jachull,” Tkaa remarked, eyes fixed on the crowned immortals. “Queen of the Mortal Fear nation.” Daine nodded; so this was the dead-voiced female she’d heard in her dream, the one who had said it wasn’t important if some of her own kind died.

  Crimson fires edged with gold tangled around the pair like an ill-made knot. For the most part they clawed at each other. The strange queen was adept at quick swipes of her wing feathers; soon Barzha was laddered with shallow cuts and covered in blood. Her enemy bore wounds as well—belly cuts that bled heavily.

  Below the queens, Hebakh and Rikash fended off any Stormwings who tried to interfere. Seeing they were outnumbered, Daine called for the People. Sparrows darted into the fray, dashing around Stormwings, pecking and speeding away. Fighting them, or trying to, the immortals smashed into one another, slicing their own allies to pieces. They retreated from Barzha’s guards, while the rest of her allies came to help the two males.

  A net of scarlet fires wrapped itself around Jachull, its ends lodged under Barzha’s skin; Jachull would have to kill the Stone Tree queen to escape. With a snarl, Jachull turned and sped at Barzha, talons forward, set to impale. At the last second Rikash’s queen detached the webs of her magic and shot upward, Jachull passing under her by inches.

  Barzha fell as Jachull fought to halt and turn; when Jachull stabilized, Barzha was behind her, chopping down with the edges of her right wing. Jachull spun hard to meet an attack she expected from her rear or from above. Instead she jammed her throat and chest into the razor of Barzha’s wing. Barzha seized Jachull’s face in one talon, dug in her claws, then let her enemy fall. Jachull’s allies, who had watched the duel at a distance from Barzha’s defenders, wailed.

  “Daine?” Jonathan asked quietly. “Would you see how the Yamanis are faring?”

  She nodded and took off, changing her shape to that of a gull to fly more easily over the ocean. She kept a wary eye out for winged immortals who might try to kill her. As far as she could tell, they were busy enough, caught between city forces and Thayet’s army. Everywhere Daine saw the flash of magic: Stormwing crimson edged with gold; brown and gold from centaurs who were also mages; and varicolored fires that served human wizards. The winged apes laid down a blanket of thick and clinging fog, the only magic they possessed, but it did little to hide them. Too many winged creatures and too many other mages took part in the fight; the fog would billow, then shred and blow away.

  Soaring over the harbor, she saw that the enemy’s ships were in
poor condition. Many of the largest vessels had burned to the waterline, seared by dragonfire; nearly all of those left bore scorch marks. Five Yamani ships, half of the fleet that had brought Thayet to Legann, kept all but the smallest vessels from making a getaway. Like dogs herding sheep, they were driving those ships still able to maneuver toward the harbor, where they could surrender to Legann’s defenders or be crushed against the breakwater.

  Two miles past the blockade Daine found Diamondflame, Wingstar, and the other five Yamani warships. The ten-ship relief force from the Copper Isles, the one she had seen in a Divine Realms vision, was trapped in a circle formed by dragons and Yamanis. Two enemy ships were burning fast. Three more were disabled, their masts broken off. Skins of liquid fire flew through the air, hurled by catapults from vessels on both sides. Any that came too near the dragons swerved, burst, and showered their contents on the enemy’s ships. Daine was no admiral, but the outcome of this contest was easy to read.

  Circling, she returned to take on her own shape and report to the king. After hearing her description of the sea battle with satisfaction, Jonathan ordered her to rest. A runner gave her meat and cheese between slices of bread, and a cup of heavily sweetened herbal tea. Eating quickly, the girl felt her strength return with every bite and sip.

  The sun was almost directly overhead when thick, multicolored smoke rose in an unnaturally straight column from the enemy camp in the northeast. Daine viewed it uneasily: It looked far too much like the Chaos vents in the Divine Realms.

  “Sir Raoul, what is that?” Jonathan asked the mirror.

  “Booby trap,” Daine heard the knight reply. “A squad of men found a box in a tent. One was fool enough to open it before we had a mage check it. The gods-curst thing exploded. It killed everyone in the squad—and I don’t think it’s done making mischief.”

  The column bent and stretched, colors rippling, until it touched one end to the ground where the eastern road and the road that circled Legann met. Anchored there, it condensed until it was nearly thirty feet in height, and solidified until it formed a monstrous, three-headed serpent. Its scales changed constantly, from pale green to pink to yellow, never holding to one color or pattern. Only the eyes in the three heads remained the same, all blood red, with no pupils that Daine could see.

  The smoke-snake turned on the line of Tortallan allies and struck in three directions, each head stretching its long neck for prey, baring overlong, onyx fangs. When the creature straightened again, one head gripped a shrieking man-at-arms in its jaws, the second a green-skinned ogre, the third a female centaur who fought to stab her captor with a javelin that she carried. The serpent devoured them, and searched for its next victims.

  The Tortallan centaurs and ogres fled. One knight turned his warhorse to face the serpent. He was a huge man in brightly polished plate armor; his mount was armored as well, her size well-suited to her master’s weight. A tight band around Daine’s heart squeezed. Raoul of Goldenlake, the Knight Commander of the King’s Own, was not a close friend, but she knew and liked him. She was used to thinking of him as a giant, but the serpent rose at least ten feet over his head before the body split into three necks.

  Steel wings and claws flashed in the sun. Rikash—his blond hair with its bone decorations streaming behind him—plummeted, talons first, to slam into the monster’s central head. The snake roared, its voice tearing at the ears.

  Silvery fire bloomed on the snake’s left head: The badger materialized there, burying claws and fangs into the thing’s skull as a small, moving shadow dove into one of the creature’s nostrils. Daine gasped. That was Gold-streak!

  Starlings burst from the trees in a sizable, jeering crowd. Like a swarm of bees they swirled around the serpent’s right head, blinding it, digging sharp beaks into its flesh.

  Sir Raoul galloped in, massive, double-bladed ax in one hand, hacking at the serpent’s body as if he were felling a tree. He struck a vital organ; blood of no particular color gushed forth to splatter his armor, smoking where it struck. His mount screamed when the drops lashed her rump. Hurriedly the knight guided the mare back from the stream of blood. The snake convulsed.

  The starlings were not fools. They didn’t need a command from Daine to get clear. Pulling back, they left the eye sockets of the head that they had assaulted packed with dead birds. The head that the badger had torn into lolled uselessly on its neck; he had chewed through bone to its brain, without taking harm from the thing’s acid blood. Gold-streak looped itself around the badger’s forepaw as the god vanished.

  The middle head shrilled in rage and pain. It whipped frantically, tossing Rikash into the air. The blond Stormwing slammed into a boulder, and slid to the base of the stone.

  The plate and cup slipped from Daine’s numb fingers to shatter on the deck.

  “Rikash—no!” someone cried in a voice that cracked as it rose. “No! No! NOOOOO!” It was her voice. If she screamed loud enough, long enough, he would live. She hadn’t realized that he meant something to her. She hadn’t known he was her friend.

  It was the three-headed thing’s last defiance. It drooped, then dissolved into a liquid soup with colors that shifted over its surface as it soaked into the ground.

  Queen Barzha settled onto the rock that had broken Rikash, shrilling her grief. Hebakh landed beside her, keening, eyes ablaze. They had lost the follower who had brought them hope when Ozorne held them captive. They had lost the only Stormwing who had tried to set them free.

  Their voices fell into an odd silence, one of those which came in battles when most fighters stopped briefly to catch a breath. Their eerie wailing sent shivers through everyone who could hear.

  The battle resumed, but the tide had turned. Everywhere that Daine looked, she saw the enemy fighting to defend themselves, not to attack. Some humans began to lay down their arms. In the north, black fire flared around crimson still, but the lesser mage fires were dying.

  In the northeast, so far away that only an eagle —or a girl who had turned her own eyes into those of a raptor—might see, a lone Stormwing took to the air and flapped away. He was trying to escape, leaving the others of his kind who fought on.

  Daine had a idea who it was. “No you don’t,” she muttered, blackly furious. “Not this time, and never again! Sire, I request permission to go after that Stormwing!”

  “This is not a good idea,” Tkaa said, placing a gentle paw on her shoulder. “You risk capture or death from others of the enemy. He will be pursued, and caught.”

  She faced the basilisk, eyes ablaze. “That’s what I said last time, and look!” She swept an arm to include the battlefield before them.

  A hand rested on her other shoulder. “Then go,” the king said, blue eyes direct. “Go, and the gods look after you.”

  “If they are not busy themselves,” Tkaa pointed out. “Chaos must have plenty of strength to draw upon, with all this.”

  Daine shed the blanket that she had worn around her human form. Jumping into a wide notch in the stone wall, she leaped out, changing as she did, trading hair for feathers, arms for wings, and legs for talons. As a sparrow hawk, a small, fast bird of prey, she streaked after Ozorne.

  TEN

  JUDGMENTS

  Her flight carried her over the ruins of the wooden towers and the enemy’s dirt bulwarks. Fighting continued there, but even a quick glance told her that the enemy was losing heart. A growing number of men and immortals sat in clusters everywhere, guarded by wary knights and soldiers in Tortallan uniform.

  On she flew. Beneath her lay the enemy’s northern camp. The ground was littered with bodies, weapons, and the things men needed to live in hostile country; some wagons and tents were ablaze. Here mages battled, the fires of their Gifts waxing and waning. Some mages had surrendered; others lay dying, the loss of their power turning their bodies into skin-covered skeletons before they were dead.

  Beside the river, the fiery, black-and-ruby ball that was the interlocked Gifts of Numair and Inar Hadensra pulsed
with unchecked fury. Daine glanced at it, then fixed her eyes on her quarry. She couldn’t think about Numair, couldn’t stop to watch—she was gaining on Ozorne.

  Speeding over the river, she saw the queen enter the enemy camp. If she’d had a mouth, she would have grinned. She had been there when Thayet’s commanders told the queen that she would not be permitted to ride to battle herself, not when the king was trapped and vulnerable in Legann. They had made Thayet agree that Tortall could not afford to lose both monarchs, but not before she had expressed her feelings in words that Daine usually heard only in the Corus slums.

  Rising air bore her above the forest where the relief force had hidden. Her quarry was clearly in view—and much closer. Stormwings could fly, but not gracefully or speedily. Daine shrieked her elation. Ozorne looked back and saw her. He sped faster; Daine matched him. He searched the land below, trying to spot a place where he might escape her.

  It was harder to shape a human mouth and voice box in a bird than it was to give her two-legger self raptor’s eyes, or bat’s ears. She had no idea why that was true; it just was. After a few moments’ struggle, she had something that she could talk with.

  “Ozorne Muhassin Tasikhe!” she called. “I am fair vexated with you!”

  He turned, hanging in midair, smiling contemptuously. There were marks of soot, blood, and sweat on him; the scars of Stormwing battles decorated his chest. The black, glassy stone she had seen in visions of him still hung on a cord around his neck.

  “I quiver,” he said as she approached. “You have no notion of how terrified I am.” For a moment he sounded as he had when she first met him, cool, aloof, and grand, seated on an emperor’s throne. In those days he had been someone who placed himself far beyond the kind of life that she knew.

  His eyes flickered as he looked over her shoulder. Daine turned. Two Stormwings, and three winged apes, crested the trees between her and Legann. He must have ordered them to wait for just this, so that he could set the trap, and she could fly into it.