by Ryk E. Spoor
But now it was still! It moved no longer!
Wait…it did, now, but slowly, so much more slowly, as though wounded. She shook a head that was not there, biting back another cry of fear and loss. The darkness was fading. Trailing strands of dark shadow rose, lightened, faded like steam, like ice melting and sending evanescent vapor into the air, to disappear forever. No. No.
But it shrank more, still moving towards her, but fading, like a cloud promising rain but passing over the desert, shrinking to nothingness. Now it had faded to a single point of darkness, so close, yet as small as it had been when first she had known Hope, and she would have closed her eyes in fear and denial, but there were no eyes to close as even that tiny point of blessed blackness began to disappear.
She knew then that Hope was gone, and madness was the best she might hope for; that perhaps she could reach out to that taunting insect and escape knowledge of torment. Yet she was not quite ready.
And then the Darkness flared up, a point, a dot, a spot growing, rising, towering, shoving aside blazing fire-white, consuming the all-consuming radiance, becoming a figure, a man’s figure, standing against the light as though he stood before her, not fifty yards distant, and she laughed, with delight that denied the possibility of madness, for the screaming of her soul faded even as the darkness grew and filled her with comfort; she could hear the voices around her now, slow, voices of dreamlike distance, but voices that were alive. A young woman murmuring of the distant Nome Kingdom, a clever old man whispering spells he wished he had completed; inanimate straw thinking of ways out of deadlock, a mighty cat holding to courage in his heart…
Her friends were not dead, and a True Mortal had set foot on the land of Oz itself, and now it was not the light, but Hope, that was the brightest flame of all.
Chapter 42.
“They are coming, Princess.”
She turned, heart beating faster. “You’re sure, Nimbus?”
Nimbus nodded. “The birds of Oz have, for the most part, been unaffected by the Usurpers’ actions, but still they have been aware of the change. Many of them now serve us as scouts, and they have sighted the Army of the Usurpers on the other side of this part of the Twilight Forest.”
She said nothing as she tested the buckles and straps of her armor, then took up her sword-belt and put it on. “How many?”
“The Doves will have that information for us soon. From the first report, I would guess no more than thirty thousand. They are holding back much of their force; this is a test. They do not intend to stop us here, I think, unless we turn out to be much weaker than they expect. Their commander wishes to see what forces we have at our command, observe our strategies, decide on what tactics will be most effective in the final battle.”
She frowned, trying to look as serious and confident as her father would. I can’t help but feel this is all just some terrible stage-play. If only someone would bring down a curtain. “Should we hold back our own most important resources, then? Hide our advantages?”
“It’s a difficult question indeed, Princess,” Ruggedo said. “Nimbus and I have been considering that very issue for the past two days.”
“On the one hand,” Nimbus said with a nod, “holding some of our most unusual and significant powers in reserve means that we leave unknowns in our adversaries’ ability to guess what we can do, and how we might do it. This is not an insignificant advantage.”
“On the other,” Ruggedo took up the discussion, “there is a great deal to be said for a direct and full confrontation, especially against a smaller force. A swift and final victory against their forces would very much reduce our casualties, in all likelihood, and has very significant benefits in terms of morale.”
Polychrome nodded slowly. What a tragic joke. They are looking at me, waiting for the Princess of the Rainbow to make the decision.
“The three of us — and Lord Erik, of course — know what the real purpose of this invasion is, gentlemen.” She felt cold and distant, speaking that way, but it was the only way she dared speak about the subject. “The fact is that it is on his shoulders — and his alone — that final victory rests. We must of course be prepared to fight as well as may be if, by terrible chance, he fails, but the real focus of our attack is to present a credible threat and to place ourselves, and Erik Medon, in a position where he can be captured in some manner, while not looking as though this is an outcome we expected or desired.”
The two nodded. “Clearly stated, and understood, Princess. How do you see this applying to the decision?”
She tried to smile lightly, as though pointing out something of entertaining consequences. “Well, they can hardly scheme to capture and use our True Mortal in their nefarious plans if they don’t know what he is, can they?”
Ruggedo gave a snort of surprise. “Boulders and brace-beams! I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re entirely right, my dear. He has to be seen now. They need time to see his actions, realize what they mean, and then formulate some plan to take him from us, or force us to give him up.”
Nimbus looked at her with respect. “Well thought, Princess. And that does make the decision obvious.”
“We can’t unleash him without throwing all of our major forces at them as well,” concurred Ruggedo. “Doing so would indicate there was some reason we wanted that weapon — one which, one would expect, would be most effective if kept secret up until confrontation with Ugu and Amanita directly — called to their attention.”
“But if we simply do an all-out assault, the assumption will be that we are doing it to maximize the speed of our victory, minimize the cost, and hopefully break the morale of the opposition, as well as allow us to make it to the Grey City as quickly as possible,” Polychrome finished. It was a hard decision to make, but this one made sense; it felt right, even though the reasons behind it made a part of her feel like it was dying. “So we will hold no reserves; we will do our best to crush this first force utterly.” She wondered that yet another part of her seemed almost…eager.
“Agreed.” Nimbus and Ruggedo looked at her again. Finally, the old Nome said, “Your father…chose well, Princess.” He tilted his head, as though listening. “They are nearly ready, I think. Come.” He led the way out of her command tent and to the crest of the ridge.
Erik and Zenga were already there, the two close but like companions and friends, no more; Polychrome still didn’t know what to make of the fact that this thought somehow cheered her. It wasn’t at all fair to either of them, and why they weren’t close she didn’t understand; something must have happened when she hadn’t been watching, but she was afraid to ask what. She knew Erik was easily embarrassed, and from occasional glances she didn’t think that Zenga had changed her mind.
Polychrome looked down from the hill of broken stone; on the purple-tinged plain, stretching out before her like a field of bladed wheat, the Armies of Faerie were assembled. At the front-and-center, the sparkling forces of the Rainbow Kingdom, armor of diamond and pearl and sapphire, swords and spears like bitter icy blades, siege engines sculpted from mist and crystal and crackling with the power of the storm and light.
Surrounding them, backing and reinforcing them, the immense army of the Nomes, stony grey and obsidian-black and earthy brown, with startling blazes of gems here and there amidst the rank-and-file, with the officers’ corps arrayed in gold and silver, with swords of cold iron. Here and there, immense engines of steam-power and gears moved with earthshaking deliberation, unstoppable-seeming weapons of war that had the shapes of men or monsters.
The latter had caused Erik to give vent to another of his incomprehensible exclamations of joy: “Sugoi! Steampunk mecha! I wonder if they have Sparks among the Nomes?”
She found herself looking at him again with relief swelling in her heart. We did not dare use more magic to heal him; for a few hours, we thought it might already have been too much, but his Mortal nature strengthened. And he had recovered with impressive speed; in the two days they had been here, h
e seemed to have come fully back to himself.
Erik turned from his appreciation of the view and caught her looking, and she saw his face…change, somehow, soften, yet seem for a moment more intense than ever, an intensity that made her shiver even though the sun was warm. But before she could think of what that meant, or what she ought to say, he spoke.
“You did this.”
“What?” She laughed uncomfortably. How can he say that? I just…did what Father asked. “Father gave me the forces of the Rainbow. You were the one who brought the Nomes. I’m…” She trailed off as he shook his head, smiling.
“You are the one they will follow, Poly. Nimbus told me how a few simple words from you brought his soldiers — men he’d trained and led all his life — to their feet with a cheer that shook the very castle, that brought them down to join with the Nomes as though they had been brothers all along; how that unstinting openness warmed the Nomes’ own hearts and caused them to take up the same cry — a battle cry you invented, a cry that sends chills down my spine from its pure rightness. And you did this.”
He swept his arm out across the field, where the last groups of their forces were falling into formation — a small contingent of the Sea Fairies, a band of the Noble Pirates of the Nonestic, the Royal Guard of Ev, not many, not many at all…
Erik seemed to hear her thoughts, for he answered her as though he did: “…no, not many, but enough, enough for those watching to know that not one of the lands of Faerie will stand idly by, that all of them know the Usurpers are their enemies and no longer will they pretend to be friends or allies or even neutral.”
She saw his eyes shining as he looked out over the sea of warriors, seventy-five thousand strong and more, and suddenly he raised his voice, a baritone that somehow echoed out across the plain. “No, Polychrome; you let it be known, even as I set out across the desert, that the Rainbow Lord and the Nome Kingdom were making their stand, and that you, Polychrome Glory, called upon them to show where they stood…and they came, Polychrome, they came because you called, because through all of Faerie there is no one else left that is so known or so loved as the First Daughter of the Rainbow.”
Her eyes stung and she dared not blink or look away — or look too closely at him, and looked out at the arrayed armies, who were looking up, listening, and she realized that Nimbus and Ruggedo stood near them, and Ruggedo had raised the Scepter of Command that Kaliko had given him; that was receiving Erik’s words, casting them outward across the entirety of the Armies of Faerie.
The Mortal turned and suddenly shouted out, his voice thundering across the Gillikin Plain below. “What say you, warriors of Faerie? Will you follow Polychrome Glory against the armies of the Usurpers? Will you risk the pain of war and the oblivion of death for the sake of Oz and all your lands? Will you risk it for her?”
And seventy-five thousand voices answered with a roar that shook sand from the hill and swayed the trees in the great forest beyond, “WE WILL!”
The tears did come, then. I don’t deserve this! The carefree Faerie girl who never stayed, never listened, never hurt as they, how could they follow me?
But in that moment, Erik spoke, this time in a voice only those on the hilltop could hear, low and earnest. “I will.”
Ruggedo’s craggy face glanced at the mortal man and at her, and she saw a smile send a ray of whiter white past the snowy beard and mustache. “As will I.”
Zenga studied her for a moment, and she, too, seemed to see something that made her smile, though hers looked almost like a challenge. “And I.”
“All of us will, Princess,” Nimbus said.
She took the Scepter then and spoke. “Armies of Faerie…” Her voice almost broke — did break, a little — and she swallowed.
Chuckles rippled out across the assembled armies, and she suddenly smiled, tears still in her eyes, and let those tears be heard in the tone of her voice. Why shouldn’t they know the truth? “Armies of Faerie…I am as frightened as many of you, as appalled as all of you that we have come to this. But what you have heard is true. There is a Prophecy.”
The Armies came to complete and still attention, listening. “There is a Prophecy, one that tells us that we have a chance of victory, no matter what the power of the Usurpers, no matter what their strategies or all the forces they can muster. And we have fulfilled a part of that prophecy even now, just by coming here, through the Great Barrier, where none of Faerie have passed without their will in three centuries and more. We face the Usurpers on their own stolen ground, and with a force such as Faerie has never seen.”
A Dove fluttered down and landed on her shoulder, and spoke in her ear. She listened, blinked away the tears, and then let the rising silver song of the Spheres that answered the fear and anticipation in her heart bring a brilliant smile to her lips. “And now they come, their army is sighted — and we outnumber them better than three to one!”
There were some cheers, but murmurs as well. I have to keep their belief, even if I don’t trust myself as well. Father has faith in me. Nimbus does. I have to have faith that I will not fail them. “What’s that? You say that this is but a tithe of their strength? That they hold back their might to test us? That they have fell warriors of the Usurpers’ magic, their engines of dark power, their Tempests and Infernos, their Temblors and Torrents?” She heard, in her own voice, an echo of the power and certainty of her Father, of Iris Mirabilis’ absolute conviction. “True enough; yet what of it? We have our weapons as well, Armies of Faerie. We have the Thunder of Dawn and Sunset, the Nomes’ Engines of Destruction. We have Princess Zenga of Pingaree. We have Lord Erik Medon, who — alone, unaided — crossed the Deadly Desert, who comes to us — like the Princess Dorothy, like the mighty Wizard — from the Outside World, the Mortal World, in our moment of need, as they always have — as they always will, for the sake of the touch of Faerie in their hearts that endures even in the mortal world.
“But we have more than that!” she shouted, and now they were all watching her again. “We have ourselves, our companions, and the Above. We have unity. We are not here to grasp power for ourselves, but freedom. We fight for our homes, our friends…our souls, in truth.
“And we will show them that truth.” She looked at the mass before her, the Nomes, the Sky Faeries, the small but precious additions. “And I will lead you, though I feel smaller than the task demands.” Now she drew her sword, feeling a chill run down her own spine at the thought of what that meant.
She turned and pointed to the forest before them. “Beyond that our enemies lie in wait. They have enslaved our brothers and sisters, and those we will have to face before we reach their masters. But they will not stop us. They cannot stop us. What is your cry?”
“Earth and Sky shall move as one!”
“Yes!” she shouted, “that and more, I say, for more have come. Earth and Sky and Sea shall move as one!”
“Earth and Sky and Sea!” they answered, and took a step forward, and the earth shook. “Earth and Sky and Sea!” Another step, and birds fled from the trees before them. “Earth and Sky and Sea!” And the thunder of their march rolled out like a storm on a promontory.
She turned and leapt down the hillside, lightly in her armor, coming to the head of the great formation, and the others came with her. Her smile stayed, brilliant and almost savage, but inside she felt terror and elation in a nauseating, incomprehensible mixture. I’m leading so many of them to die…and we may all be just a distraction. We are just a distraction, a ploy, to get Erik to where he has to go.
The thought made the smile falter, because she knew where the mortal man needed to go, and what awaited him at the Grey Castle, and something in her seemed to go cold. But she forced her thoughts away from that.
“Well done indeed, Princess,” Nimbus said, as they marched through the forest, trees moving aside, making room for the columns to pass. “But you left out one of our greatest weapons of all.”
She blinked. “I did?”
“Yourself, Princess.”
She wanted to laugh. “Compared to the others? I have some skill—”
“We can afford no false modesty — nor honest underestimation, either,” the Commander of the Storm Guards said bluntly. “You are your father’s daughter. You are his chosen successor. Within you runs the strength of the Above, if only you have the will to use it. We have a mighty army — and as you say, not just from your actions, but because our Hero has proven to be equal, thus far, to every task set before him. But it will not be our army that will break that of the Usurpers. If — and I admit, I say only if — that can be done, it will be because of the four great forces we command: the presence of a True Mortal, the Strength of the Princess of the Sea, the Will of the Penitent, and,” he touched her arm, “the Power of the Rainbow’s Daughter.”
Chapter 43.
I stood at the forefront of the Armies of Faerie and stared at our opposition. Less than a mile distant, thousands of forms — some mere dots, others visible as twisted shapes that hinted at their immense size and power, others clearly engines of destruction such as those of the Nomes and the Rainbow Kingdom — sat motionless, awaiting some signal to move forward. They sat directly in front of a narrow valley, the only pass through the low range of mountains that lay across our path; if we had to go around that, we’d add nearly two hundred miles to our march and lose days of time, so getting through that pass was a major objective.
My heart hammered and my hands, when I reached back and grabbed my sword hilt for its faint reassurance, were clammy, slick with sweat. It was one thing to confront individual monsters, however terrifying. This, though…this was war, and before us were almost uncountable numbers of monsters, any of which were willing and perhaps able to kill me…or my allies.
I glanced to Polychrome, something I was doing far too often to be safe. But she was beautiful — even more beautiful than I remembered, which seemed impossible. But in that silvery armor, sword at her side, she looked less Daughter of the Rainbow and more a slender goddess of war, a Valkyrie whose courage was the equal of her beauty.
