The Warslayer

by Edghill, Rosemary

  Ivradan gulped, staring at the red glyph set into the floor. If the Allimir'd had the gesture, Glory bet he would have crossed himself. As it was, one hand groped toward something hanging around his neck beneath his clothes.

  "There?"

  "That's right."

  "Ah . . ." he said, sighing resignedly. "Thus it must be, if Erchane wills."

  "I reckon you're right there. Just get me close enough that I can find my way. I'll do the rest."

  And who in God's name was writing her dialogue this morning? Glory wondered. It was bad enough to say things like this after a pint or two of overproof Allimir ale, but on tea and oatmeal it was nothing short of criminal.

  Must be the water.

  After giving him enough time to gawk, she led the way back down to the Oracle spring. After so many trips this way, it had begun to seem like her morning commute. She carried the blasphemous trinket by its cord—she'd be glad enough to get rid of it, and surely Belegir knew the proper means of disposal if anyone did, but it still seemed a touch impertinent to go tossing it into a sacred well as if it were a rubbish tip. Still, she'd rather think about that than the fact that the Warmother (whether she existed or not) had apparently gotten up the brains to rope in a cadre of extra-dimensional bad guys to help her out. Apparently She hadn't had any trouble getting people to show up when she wanted them.

  It wasn't fair, that was what it wasn't.

  "You can wait out here," Glory said when they reached the door to the spring. "Unless you want to come inside?"

  "No," Ivradan said, taking a step back. "No. Thank you, Slayer. I will remain here."

  "Suit yourself." She lifted the bar, opened the door, and stepped inside, wondering—and not for the first time—just what it was these people were worried would get out. You didn't bar doors that weren't going to open, after all, did you?

  A fine time to think of that!

  She leaned over the pool, trying to see down inside, but as always, the surface of the spring was nothing more than a smooth black mirror. She leaned out over it, and dropped the pendant in as close to the center as she could manage.

  She'd thought it would float, or at least sink slowly. It sank as if it were made of lead, disappearing instantly.

  She'd expected more drama, somehow, but except for the floating sword, Allimir magic didn't seem to be the flashy sort, really. More results oriented. Just as well for her fragile nerves, Glory told herself wisely.

  She went back outside, dropped the bar into place again, collected Ivradan, and walked back to the Pilgrim's Fountain.

  "Let's go outside," she said, when they got there. Tavara was sitting beside her patient, and the young chap—Ivradan said his name was Cambros—was off grooming the horses. Obediently, Ivradan followed her.

  By now, the sand paintings were muddled past all recognition. Glory thought about the hordes of Temple acolytes who must have spent hours every day putting them together, just to see them trampled by pilgrims the moment their backs were turned. Once upon a time, Belegir had been one of those acolytes, and Helevrin, and even Englor. She supposed that outside of those three, there wasn't anyone alive who knew how to do these paintings any more. She sighed. Deep thoughts for a half-talented actress and former Phys Ed teacher whose biggest qualification for either post was being able to turn three backflips in rapid succession.

  "Where are we going?" Ivradan asked diffidently.

  "I want to get a look at the outdoors. And I want you to get a look at that monster that came after Belegir yesterday. Maybe you'll see something I missed."

  "I don't think so," Ivradan said cautiously.

  It was late morning when they got to the cave opening, and Glory took a deep appreciative breath of really fresh air. She hadn't minded being inside the temple cave while she was in there, but now that she was back in the free air, she couldn't imagine how she'd stood it. She slid her eyes sideways, looking over her shoulder at Cinnas' sword, and wondered uneasily how she could have accepted the whole setup—magic and monsters and ancient temples—so effortlessly. There was something unnatural about it, as if it hadn't occurred to her until this very moment how bizarre it all was. As if magic had picked her up and moved her about like a chess-piece, for its own needs, suppressing her own sense of self-preservation, and only now, when its necessities had been fulfilled, did it release her to feel the proper fear and unease she should have felt all along.

  It was creepy. She'd always thought you'd notice magic when it showed up, that it would appear in a sudden grand display that would stop everything for miles around dead in its tracks like a New Years' fireworks display, that it wouldn't be a case of looking back and realizing you'd been bathing in the stuff as obliviously as a trout in milk. It was like all those Greek myths where you couldn't see a thing unless you looked in a mirror. If you looked at it straight on, you couldn't see it at all.

  She sighed. No wonder Vixen was grumpy all the time, if she had to put up with magic morning, noon, and night. Glory concentrated on her blessedly magic-free (or so she hoped) surroundings. It was a nice day. You could tell that fall was coming, though there was a long stretch of warm yet to get through; there was just something about the air, the same promise of cold to come—without anything really palpable about it—that in spring was turned to the affirmation of coming summer heat. Now, the air seemed to say, was the time to be getting the harvest in, fattening everything up for winter.

  Only nobody was much getting the chance to do that, this year, were they?

  She stopped and sniffed, suspiciously.

  "Smell anything?" she asked Ivradan.

  Ivradan obligingly sniffed. "No."

  "You should, I reckon. Okay, so it's pretty cool under the trees, but I whacked that critter about a day ago, and the weather's been warmish. He should've gone off at least a little, and I didn't drag him all that far. Let's go see."

  For that matter, she'd left most of Kurfan a good sight nearer to the trail, and she didn't see those remains either. Their absence could be chalked up to scavengers easily enough, but it would have to be a pretty big and a pretty determined scavenger to take on the task of moving the amount of meat the dead monster represented.

  She led Ivradan down the trail and off into the wood. Her drag-marks from the previous day were still there—hard to cover your trail in a pine forest—but when she got to the spot where she'd left the body, she found that what she'd been afraid of had happened.

  The monster was gone.

  Kurfan's head was still there, wrapped in the leather vest, wedged between the roots of a tree, as though it had been carelessly rolled away when whatever had come for the monster's body had shifted it.

  And there were no drag marks. No drag marks at all.

  "This," said Glory, "is not good." She looked at Ivradan. "Something came and took the body." I hope. I hope it didn't just get up and walk away. She looked around. "I don't see any tracks. Do you?"

  Ivradan considered the question carefully, looking around the clearing. "None. Not even deer have been here."

  For one fey wild moment Glory thought about going back to the monster's campsite and seeing if it or something like it was there, and firmly quashed the notion. She'd gotten far too much luck yesterday to squander it today on an idiot gesture designed to impress someone who was already terrified of her anyway.

  "Let's go back and spread the good news. Belegir isn't going to like this. And . . . when do you want to leave, and how long will it take us to get there?" And do you reckon there's any possibility—any at all—that we'll arrive alive, with things like that bear-wolf out there in the dark looking for us?

  "We could leave tomorrow at first light, if that suits you, Slayer. From the Oracle to Great Drathil is not far—half a day, if that, and a good road to follow. From there . . ." his voice dropped, "I do not know the length of the path that leads to the Forbidden Peak."

  "Well, maybe Bel will know. He knows a lot of things," Glory said philosophically.


  CHAPTER FIVE:

  Smoke and Mirrors

  According to Belegir and Ivradan, Great Drathil had once been a sizeable stone-and-timber city in the foothills of the High Hilvorns, surrounded by sprawling fields and orchards.

  That was then.

  Great Drathil was now a sizable charcoal-and-large-rocks wasteland surrounded by scorched earth and tree stumps, with only a few bits of wall to get in the way.

  She and Ivradan sat a-pony on a rise at the edge of the forest, overlooking what used to be the city. They'd left Cambros, Tavara, and Belegir behind them at the Oracle early this morning, and on Felba and Fimlas (it was Marchiel who'd been the blue-plate special after all, so said Ivradan, not that Glory could tell any of the ponies apart), and leading another pack-pony, she and Ivradan had taken the supply road that had once connected Great Drathil with the Oracle of Erchane.

  And now they were here, at what had once been the Allimir's largest city.

  Once.

  It was an area at least as big as downtown Melbourne, and it wasn't there any more, just charcoal and grey mud and pieces of buildings, but not quite enough of them to let her guess what the living city had looked like. There wasn't even green on the mountainside beyond the city—just bare rock and more bare rock and a few hundred million kilos of lab-sterile potting soil, all in shades of grey. The surrounding hills were nothing but bare mud, deep-cut with the erosion-furrows of five years of rain.

  What the hell had happened? The city looked as if it had been firebombed. Supposedly it had been the first place in the Land of Erchanen to feel the Warmother's wrath, and that was five years ago. Surely there ought to be weeds and vines by now. Something to soften the look of utter destruction.

  There was nothing. It looked like somebody had drowned the place in weed-killer and kerosene and then set it alight. Grey, and grey, and more grey, as bleak and sterile as something Glory couldn't think up a good comparison for. Not the mountains of the Moon, not even the death-camps of the last big war: the Moon was empty and neutral as a glass dish, and the death-camps had been the ultimate expression of human monstrousness. This was different than either one, disturbing where it ought to be terrifying, as though it were something so far beyond merely human comprehension that the human mind couldn't get a good hold on it.

  But she'd better. Because this was where the danger was, and if she couldn't recognize the danger when it came, she was going to be buying a quick ticket to the boneyard, with the Allimir to follow her in pretty quick order.

  And you might even be able to take a step back out of your own skin and look at that from a philosophical point of view, were you so inclined (it was amazing, as a noted Outback philosopher had once said, how much mature wisdom resembled being too tired), except that Glory had the sneaking suspicion that the nastiness wouldn't stop here. She already had ample evidence that the Warmother's magic didn't confine her to this world alone. Why should She stop here, once she'd turned the whole place into a bigger version of Great Drathil?

  She wouldn't, would she? Glory bet that all those heroes who'd been "too busy" to come to the Allimir's aid would find time to pitch in against the Warmother once she wandered off her own patch, right enough. And Glory also suspected it would be too late.

  So screw the consolations of philosophy.

  She adjusted the sweatshirt she'd tied around her shoulders (and around her sword), shivering in spite of it. The day had dawned overcast, and even now was still grey—just as well, all things considered. Glory didn't think she could face the looks of this place in full daylight.

  "Well, this is cheery, I must say," Glory muttered under her breath, getting ready for what came next.

  It wasn't so much that she had an actual plan, as that she knew what she had to do. Whether that conviction stemmed from heroism or lunacy, she didn't know, and she certainly didn't think that the Oracle had provided the inspiration. All she knew was that she was entirely fed up with this Warmother, and she was going to go and tell her so.

  "Which bit's . . . it?" Glory asked Ivradan.

  Ivradan pointed at the tallest of the peaks. She had to crane her neck to look at it. The top, fittingly enough, was shrouded in clouds. Great Drathil had been built directly into the base of Elboroth-Haden, the mountain on which the Warmother had once been imprisoned—not where she would have put her largest city, if she'd had a seriously taboo mountain to contend with, but what the hey?

  "And the path?"

  Ivradan pointed again, lower. Blinking and peering through the ruins of the city, Glory could make out a smooth stone path leading toward the mountain. At one time, it looked as if there'd probably been a set of rather nice iron gates barring the way—at least until they'd been mashed, crumpled, and generally wadded up like a couple of balls of waste paper in a rather petty-minded fashion by something large enough to do the job.

  Not good.

  "There's something moving down there," Ivradan said in a tight voice. The Allimir horse-master wasn't a happy camper, but Glory gave him points where points were due: he neither grizzled nor whinged, and he'd come along without complaining. He did his job, and if he wasn't happy about it, who was she to blame him? She wasn't happy herself.

  "Where?"

  Then she saw it. Someone moving around down in the ruins, just stepping out of the shell of one of the buildings. Not a monster. A man.

  There was something familiar about him . . .

  "Hup-hup-hup!" A better horsewoman than she'd been this time last week, Glory chivvied Fimlas down the road into the city, leaving Ivradan behind.

  The little beast was a showoff at heart, happy to leap the fallen timbers that stood in its way. Its unshod hooves clattered over the paving stones of the city proper as it moved into a gallop, and Glory found herself giving tongue to Vixen's trademark battle yell: "Hi-yi-yi-yi! Come, camrado! Evil wakes!"

  She didn't even feel silly about it.

  By the time she reached the place where she'd seen him, the man had disappeared. The building must have been dead impressive once, whatever it had been: the ground floor was made of large blocks of the local granite, which was why most of it was still here now. The side and back wall were almost intact, though blackened and fire-glazed, and enough of the second floor was still in place to form a roof of sorts, making the structure dark and shadowy inside. A nice place for spiders and snakes, not that she'd seen many of either since she'd got here.

  Not that she'd put it past the Warmother to import either by the boxload, just for grins.

  She swung down from the horse and pulled her sweatshirt off her shoulders, dropping it to the ground and drawing her sword. The blade flashed, an absurd spot of cheery color in the grey desolation.

  "Come on out, you! Better now than later!" she shouted.

  There was a scuffling sound from inside the ruins, and a figure emerged.

  "Dylan?" Glory stared in slack-jawed disbelief. Dylan MacNee, a cutting-edge vision in black from his Versace loafers to his collarless Prada linen duster, stepped gingerly over the broken rubble and gawped at her in turn. Defrocked priest, hedge-Satanist and black magician (at least he played one on TV), she could have kissed him on the spot.

  His resume claimed he was five ten, but Glory towered over him even in flats, and thought five eight was being charitable. Like most actors, he lied about all his vitals. He was slender and pale, with black hair and (thanks to colored contacts) startlingly green eyes, his narrow beard carefully trimmed and waxed into a properly Satanic point for his role as Fra Diavolo, minion of Lilith Kane, the Duchess of Darkness. He had the usual resume: East End, a little Shakespeare, a few episodes of Dr. Who, some commercials. One of that legion of eternal journeymen, their lives unchanged from the Bard's day, whose entire epitaph might well consist of the single line: "He always worked." Like the rest of the TITAoVtS cast, Dylan had been shipped to America on the promo tour, but his part in things had ended earlier than hers had, and Glory hadn't seen much of him after New York.

&n
bsp; "Glory?" When he wasn't putting on side as the cultured Castilian, Dylan's vowels were pure working-class Britain. "What the hell are . . . ? That's not your sword!"

  She'd used to think the stereotypes about actors never carried over into real life until she met Dylan.

  "I reckon it is now," she said with magnificent simplicity. "Dylan, what are you doing here?"

  "I was in the men's room at the Waldorf Astoria," he said with an expression of hurt dignity. "Then I came out again and they'd bombed the place or something. I'll sue, I swear I will. But what's going on? I thought you were out in the land of sun and hardbodies, doing vapid telly for luscious bronzed young persons. My God, you are a mess, aren't you? Ooh, Tricia is just going to kill you when she sees what you've done to your leather! And where's your sword? Your proper sword? Our Brucie won't be best pleased if you've gone and lost it somewhere, now, will he?"

  "Dylan, did three short people in strange costumes show up and ask you to come and save the world?" Glory demanded in exasperation, cutting short what promised to be a lengthy catalogue of her lapses. Dylan's ability to ignore everything that didn't revolve directly around Dylan was legendary on the set, but this was excessive, even for him.

  He fluttered his lashes at her sweetly. "Well, I am staying with some dear friends down in the Village, but . . . no. Now what the hell is going on?"

  Glory sighed. "It is a very long and very complicated story. I'll tell you everything I know—"

  "That shouldn't take long."

  "—but first I want you to wait right here while I go take a look at something."

  "Suppose I don't feel like it?" Dylan said sulkily.

  "Do you see any taxis around here?" Glory said. "Or Craft Services, for that matter? Stand about. There's things that come out at night here that make the jackbooted Family Values crowd look like something you'd want to meet. Hold this," she added, thrusting Fimlas's lead-rein at him.