Elasirr let out a heavy breath. “Ah, Elasand-re,” he sighed. “It is now my turn to be weak. If you only knew. What I had done.”
“You have done only what I would’ve done under the circumstances,” intruded the low voice of Ranhé.
They turned, and saw that she had sat up quietly from where she slept, her hair falling out of her braid, her face exhausted with little sleep.
“Lord Vaeste,” she said. “He did something quite insane last night. But somehow I understand his reasons for it.”
“Indeed.” Elasirr spoke almost casually, throwing her one sharp glance, then turning away. “When we were in the Outer Gardens with the Regentrix, we stopped at the Tomb of the King. Only for a moment, really. Just to allow her to rest. There, I broke the glass coffin of the Monteyn.”
“You what?”
“I was sure that—because of my will, my need, my very audacity—he’d come back to life,” whispered Elasirr. He was looking directly at Elasand, smiling, anger blazing within him, and with it, bitter soft laughter. “And so, Elas, I defiled his grave!”
For a moment, Elasand was stricken. “What happened?” was all he managed to say unbelievingly. “Did he—”
“Did he what? Nothing happened,” interrupted Ranhé softly. “He was cold as a rock, a true corpse. Nothing magic, nothing sacred. Only a poor dead man. I myself touched him.”
There was a sound of a bed creaking, and they turned to see Deileala moving, then sitting up also, pulling up the blanket to cover herself.
“Good morning, Your Grace,” said Vaeste calmly. “It’s a good thing indeed that you are with us here.”
“Really? Spare me the pretense,” said Deileala, blinking sleepily. “I know what all of you are thinking. You’d rather this were Hestiam or Lirr, or anyone other than useless me. Even now, they might be dead already. But I am glad to be here, truly, more than any one of you can imagine. For, now, I swear to you all, we will take Feale and his dark ones, and I myself will rip his heart out if he happens to have one! And I promise, you will not once regret having Deileala Grelias in your midst!”
Elasirr smiled bitterly. “Well said, Your Grace. Such fierce words, as always. Oh, I believe you.” And then he added, “By the way, welcome to the Inner City. I regret I have nothing better to offer Your Grace than this lodging, my own personal quarters.”
And only now did the Regentrix pause to think, and then she stared intently at him, saying, “Your own quarters? You? Could it be that you are the Guildmaster of this place and not Elasand-re Vaeste? But—I’d been so sure that he was the one—”
“My brother is the one who is lord here,” said Vaeste.
“Your brother? What in the world?” Deileala stared.
“It’s a long story and there’s not much time, Your Grace,” said Elasirr. “I leave it up to him to explain to you all the mysteries of the Light Guild. But now, there is work to do. And in many ways, we are already too late.”
From the outside, the weakling dawn intensified.
It is said that when a City fights to defend itself, it does so as one beast. All Cities have their own particular way that unifies those who live inside its mother walls.
Streets were empty in Tronaelend-Lis. But the houses, everywhere, had eyes.
And below the streets, where the sewers ran with rot, the corridors were busy as a hive. In the Southern Quarter, where there was only one universal law, that of Bilhaar—which was indeed, as one knows now, but illusion, a front for the Light Guild—the other Guilds sent messengers between them, and information was carried back and forth, regarding the Enemy.
However, it appeared that the Enemy knew this very well, and yet let it slide, as though such insurrection was insignificant enough not to warrant any repercussion.
Indeed, slowly, subtly, over the passage of days, Dirvan and its closest perimeter was now off limits for the underground—unpassable due to Qurthe infiltration.
There was something remarkable about this Enemy, the Qurthe. They were so insidious that some superstitious folk started referring to them as shadows.
There had also been a remarkably small number of deaths in the City, as a consequence. The token few—often simple homeless—were slaughtered and left on the streets, not so much for acts of resistance but for no specific reason at all. They functioned as reminders of the Qurthe presence. And most of those who lived here were untouched. Instead, a strange new apathy came to permeate the City, a slow deadening of sense, of all desire, together with a thick rolling fog of supernatural twilight.
The apathy bred confusion, an atmosphere of psychic fear, and ultimately inaction. Thus, they all sat in their own homes behind locked doors, shuttered windows, and drawn curtains, in the dark, afraid even to light conventional candles. All City commerce ceased, the Markets remained closed, and food distribution became inordinately difficult. Not all felt this shortage yet, since many—especially the older and the invalid—were too afraid to even venture outside in search of food.
Thus the City starved behind voluntarily locked doors, in the dark, for seven days.
Until the unnatural dawn of the eighth.
Rough hands shook Hestiam out of the cold deep abyss. He had been dreaming of something obscurely physical, body shapes and swaying limbs, and an overlaying monochrome pallor, depression.
He came awake gasping, confusion muddling his senses, and then saw the Qurthe, their dark impassive faces silhouetted against the dawn of the window, leaning over him.
Even after several days in their constant presence, he still cringed. Half-rising on his bed, he drew back, staring with dilated eyes at the opened door and past the guards at the opaque form that had entered.
The Twilight One was here, the edges of his outline blurring in the eternal dusk. Once again, it seemed to Hestiam, he was seeing a mirage, watching through a curtain of hot warping air, and the form on the other side was not quite there, never quite where he thought it to be.
“What do you want from me?” whispered the Regent in the unnatural silence, his voice cracking with sleep, fearing that silence of theirs more than anything else. “Where is my sister? And the others?”
The demonic form stood above him, leaning down, and from somewhere came an alien voice. “Are you ready to die, Hestiam Grelias?”
Panic rose in Hestiam, and at the same time a cold numbing of his extremities. It was cold here, so shuddering cold in this little dark room.
And then, in the twilight, he was hypnotized by two phosphorescent inhuman eyes.
Hestiam felt the cold reach out, deepen within him, and he could no longer feel his hands, could barely expand his diaphragm to breathe. Terror was rising all around him in tendrils of smoke. He was fainting.
“Please . . .” he whispered, not caring that it sounded weak and pathetic. “Please, I don’t want to die . . . I’ll do anything . . . Just don’t kill me.”
The eyes watched him.
“Where is Deileala?” mumbled Hestiam. “I want her, please, let me see my sister . . . Or at least, let me see Lirr! You’ve let me talk to him before. Even yesterday, you allowed me—”
“Your sister is no longer here.”
“What do you mean?”
But the soulless eyes continued looking through him.
A knot began to rise in Hestiam’s throat, as for the first time in a long time, he felt like a little boy, just wanting to burst out weeping, to bury his face in the pillow, and maybe feel Deileala’s soothing warm hand against his curling hair.
“Please don’t . . . Please, I don’t want to die . . .” was all he managed to mutter, over and over again.
Confusion rose in him, interspersed with fear, waves of dusk and nausea, and the form of Feale shimmered before his eyes.
“All will die today,” said the form in the twilight. “Even now, they gather in the secret places, gather their weak forces, thinking to fight me, to make a stand today. Yes, I know it all. But they don’t know I see every move they make, ev
ery finger that is lifted, every secret intimate doubting thought.”
“Who?” whispered Hestiam in a shaking voice. “Who are they that gather?”
“The Light Guild,” replied Feale, leaning even closer to look into the Regent’s dilated eyes. “The Light Guild prepares to ride against me even now.”
And then in the dusk, the Enemy smiled.
In the Outer Gardens of Dirvan, mists were dispersing, as the obscured weak sun slowly mounted the sky. A man in dull black armor stood on the marble steps of a small domed structure that had been his Tomb.
He was motionless, except for the wind touching his long pale tendrils of hair. He stared ahead of him, into the distance, past the sculpted trunks of ebony trees, past cultivated shrubbery of hueless grays, beyond the distant sparkling Arata that today reflected a weaker sun.
He stood, and as the diluted sun came down upon his form, if one were to look closely, there was a strange auric radiance, a corona around his outline. His silhouette seemed to waver, because the air around him held light, gathered it from the weak luminary in the sky, and intensified it, until strange eddies of color appeared to form from that light, and followed him.
The colors danced and, convoluting, replaced one another like snakes of aerial vapor, like oil spilled upon a body of water.
He stood, breathing soft and deep with ancient lungs, watching the panoramic monochrome sight before him with unblinking pale eyes, somewhat vacant—eyes of a newborn child, or an old man remembering.
Unnatural silence and dusk filled the Military Quarter. Two hours before noon, and yet the darkness rivaled the autumn early-evening twilight.
The Army Barracks, an old stone and wood structural complex, bisected in the center by the Fringes Thoroughfare, had stood empty for decades, and had been used as temporary shelter for the homeless and a playground by street urchins.
Today, something was different.
Since dawn, cloaked forms had been seen passing the streets and alleys on their way here.
From the nearby Guild House of the Warrior Guild, groups of five and ten, armed with swords, seemed to appear as though out of thin air, and walked carefully to the old Barracks. From the opposite sides, where stood the Guild House of the Military Guild, came another steady trickle of humanity.
Apparently there were no Qurthe patrols here, in the Quarter. An insult, for the Enemy did not think them a threat.
Interspersed with the common soldiers, there were frequent black-clad masked figures, carrying their signature two swords—the Bilhaar. What an uncommon sight! Bilhaar never mingled with others, were only rumored to be seen during actual assassination encounters. This was indeed a first.
The members of the Military and Warrior Guilds were wary of the assassins in their midst. All stood aside to let the black ones pass. However, as the crowds thickened, there was little room left to keep them apart, and so the varied multitude stood close together in the open Barracks parade ground. It was a crowd imbued with extraordinary silence.
Finally, a bearded man, dressed in the black uniform of Bilhaar, mounted a block to stand above the crowd, and took the mask off his face.
“I am Marihke Sar!” he cried, and waves of hushed utterances passed through the gathering at the sound of his name. “You know me, all of you, not by face, but by reputation. I am the right hand man of the one who leads the Assassin Guild. He asked me to speak for him now, for he is already on his way to where all of us will be going soon. The golden hell! Dirvan, where the Enemy sits!”
More hushed voices in the crowd, full of inquiry.
“Yes, don’t be surprised. The Assassin Guild stands with all of you against the invader!” he continued.
“How can we trust you, murderer?” a warrior cried from somewhere up in front. “Only days ago I had fought one of your assassination attempts upon a noble lord I serve! I still have unhealed wounds from your blades!”
Marihke looked disdainfully in his direction. “You are lucky then, man. Lucky that we let you live in that encounter. And if you’d been better trained, and conscripted with a real Army, then you might have fared even better against us. And had there been a real Army and a real government, the enemy of your lord would have had the services of a strong civil judiciary force instead of having to resort to our dubious clandestine services to destroy him. Which brings me to my point.”
And then he again addressed the general multitude. “We Bilhaar, your guilty conscience and enforcer, your sword arm, and your hired shield, your dark law and your executioner, are on the side of all of you today, ready to fight for this City, to take back Tronaelend-Lis from the Qurthe!”
“How can we fight something we cannot touch?” cried another man from the crowd. “Look around you. It’s dark during day, the Twilight One’s doing! What have we to fight that? What have you, with your double swords and your fancy tactics? Nothing!”
“Not true!” cried Marihke, his voice rising with force. “We have the Light Guild, and it is the only thing the Enemy fears!”
“Then show us the Guildmaster! Let him come forth at last!” they cried from the multitude. “Let him reveal his face to us, and lead us in battle! We follow the Light Guild, not Bilhaar!”
Voices swelled all around, furious, passionate, hopeless.
Marihke stood before them in silence, waiting for them to have their say. But seeing that no one was willing to stop their outcries, he raised his hands up in a calming gesture, palms outward before him.
And was again ignored. The crowd’s momentum had risen to exclude his moment of authority.
For that reason, Marihke resorted to something that Elasirr had warned him to try only if all else failed.
His hands still upraised, he brought the palms together, and willed the familiar energy to gather from the center just above his abdomen, and flow into his fingertips.
And then he released it.
The crowd gasped as one, as the sphere of red light exploded from his hands and rose three feet in the air above his head. It was at least five feet in diameter, and it blazed with steady incredible fury, a fallen sun.
And as universal silence came to them, Marihke began to speak, this time heeded by everyone, while the red fire blazed above him, and tinted his severe features with pasted-on color light: “It is time, O City, that you know the truth, for the end is nearly upon us! Know then, that the Bilhaar and the Light Guild are one and the same!”
And the multitude roared.
The Gates of the Inner City stood wide open, for the first time in eight days. The Guild had begun the attack by sheer force of surprise, and succeeded. Immediately upon the opening of the Gates from the inside, several of the Masters wrought spheres of orange and red, no more than half a dozen in number, and directed them to float through the thick dusky air at the guards. It was interesting to observe their reaction to the light—the first experiment of using color in battle against the Qurthe, thought Ranhé. The dark warriors stood back instantly, on reflex, shielding their eyes, and were thus distracted enough that the Guild soldiers could strike them with plain steel, and met hardly any resistance.
Elasirr rode in the forefront of the City forces, Lord Vaeste and Ranhé at his side. Their company included the Masters, select highest-ranking Bilhaar, and other non-assassin trained soldiers of the Guild—altogether only several hundred in number, all equipped with swords and small fist-sized glass orbs, as yet empty of light. On the way to Dirvan, they were to meet with the greater resistance reinforcements from the Military Quarter, composed of the Military and the rest of the City Guilds, that were supposed to have been organized and led by Marihke Sar. And they were to light and distribute the orbs to Marihke’s resistance army.
The gray sun had nearly risen to zenith in the murky sky, but its weak radiance barely warmed their skin.
They wore light cavalry armor consisting of metal link vests and strong leather bindings, light helmets of dull steel alloy, elbow gloves, and uniform trousers. Gilimas Prada
had given up a considerable sum of anonymous gray jewels to various Guilds, in order to equip them thus. The armor was rather antique, procured from some old stores from the Military Quarter, and unused for at least several decades. It was thus unreliable, and all had been warned not to depend upon it for superior protection from blows.
Their swords, however, were new, modern razor-sharp steel, especially those of the Bilhaar. Even now, the Sword Guild continued to produce weapons of premium quality, because the demand was always there—not for mass-scale warfare, but for personal conflicts and assassinations.
These swords had served them well already, at the Inner City Gates.
When the Qurthe were struck down, they bled ordinary human blood. Even in confusion, many had been difficult to fell, like huge tree trunks. Another difficulty had been the piercing of their dull black iron armor, almost invincible to ordinary blows.
Only, here Bilhaar came to the rescue. They struck fiercely, with lightning speed, and only they could pierce the armor upon the first sword-blow. Other soldiers used, on the average, three blows before reaching leather and skin and flesh.
Three of the Bilhaar, a tall lithe guildsman Jimor and the brothers Teryr and Ukrt, dispatched six of the Qurthe with quick merciless strokes of their long blades, moving them in tandem, while behind them followed wild-maned Pual, and he shaped a fine web of yellow light from his upturned palms and threw it like a net to Nottom, another guildsman, who in turn passed it to a guildswoman in light leather armor, Yog-Jade, and they made a triangle of radiance that stood overhead, with the dull sun-disk paling in the background. It completely immobilized the remaining Qurthe guards.
In a matter of minutes they had freed the entrance to the Quarter, and then continued onward, leaving behind them the dead bodies of a small division of Qurthe who had been guarding the Gates all these days.
Lords of Rainbow Page 42
