by Jeff Grubb
A flying dragon engine made an attempt to burn the city to the ground, but as it flew overhead it disintegrated from the firepower and shot brought to bear against it. There was no second attempt by Mishra’s forces to fly over Terisia City.
Through it all there had been no clue as to the reason for the attack. The city had attempted to parley with the invaders, but any attempt to reason with them was met with arrowshot and swords.
The intervening winter bought the city time, and the leaders used that time to fill the city granaries, remove its innocents, and strengthen its defenses. The Union used the interval to press forward with its studies.
It had been enough, for the siege stretched into months without a sign of either side breaking. The scholars in their ivory towers had kept one of the two most powerful armies on the continent at bay while they continued their own work, as they attempted to discover all the secrets of the third path, the path that was neither Mishra nor Urza.
That path was charted by Hurkyl’s meditative techniques, as Feldon had predicted. The key lay in concentrating on the memories of one’s homeland and pulling forth the unknown energies from those memories and that land. Hurkyl discovered the energy, but the archimandrite named it, calling it mana. Loran thought at the time the name was misleading, smacking as it did of old Fallaji tales of wizards and not of science. But despite the name, the archimandrite had succeeding in researching and refining this mana, had distilled it down to its base elements. And she turned those base elements into a weapon against the desert warriors.
But now Hurkyl was dead, the archimandrite was missing, and the city of the towers had been betrayed and occupied by the Fallaji. The ivory towers were isolated, surrounded within and without, and one by one they began to fall under Mishra’s concentrated assault.
The Archimandrite’s Tower, one of the few that survived intact, was in disarray. In the center of the Archimandrite’s Hall, Drafna bellowed at the Sumifan guards, shouting final orders for a sortie. His balding pate was barely visible over the shoulders of the gathered guards, but Loran knew the scholar’s shout anywhere.
Drafna stood up on a chair to be better heard, and Loran saw the wildness in his eyes, the manic intensity that seemed to grip the scholar like a fever since Hurkyl had perished. The passage of time had not weakened that fire. He had been there when his wife had died at the gates of the city, when the Gixians had betrayed them.
They had all seen the dangers without but had ignored the rot within. The other scholars had paid scant heed to the machine-worshiping priests as they moved among them, saying little but listening a great deal. The Gixians had learned much in Terisia City, and the scholars often treated them as a harmless, if backward people. When the priests of the brotherhood felt they finally knew enough, they betrayed the scholars and opened the city gates to the enemy.
Hurkyl, ever attentive, figured out what was happening and convinced Drafna to rally those guardsmen who remained loyal. Drafna’s forces tried to press back the Fallaji assault and close the gates before the enemy could enter the city proper. But Mishra’s troops were ready for the assault and had a trio of dragon engines ready to capitalize on the treachery.
Drafna’s forces were scattered at the gates, and the dragon engines began to roll forward. That was when Hurkyl revealed to the enemy the greater power the Union had gained through her studies.
Loran had watched from the closest of the towers during the assault, trying to bring the catapults to bear against the advancing dragon engines without harming the loyal garrisons. Hurkyl stood at the city gate, and for a brief moment she was alone before the three dragon engines. She looked like a frail doll, dressed in azure, her thick black hair flying like a pennant behind her. She closed her eyes and silently raised her arms, and around her the world began to change.
A glow enveloped her, a sapphire hue as blue as the seas around the island of Lat-Nam. It radiated outward, casting a new set of shadows against the ground. The human troops wavered under the light, and the dragon engines…
…disappeared. They were not destroyed, nor did they simply fail or retreat. Instead they slowly faded from view. The surroundings became clearer and clearer until the engines seemed to be no more than colored fog.
Then they were gone, gone through the actions of one woman.
Hurkyl staggered from the force of her mystic work, and Mishra’s human forces took advantage of her weakness to press forward. Her sapphire-blue glow was dimmed, then extinguished entirely beneath a wave of spearmen. Hurkyl had defeated the artifacts but not the warriors who accompanied them.
Loran saw Drafna trying to lead a charge to where his wife had disappeared beneath the spearmen, trying to hack his way through the enemy to reach her, but it was too late. The bald-headed scholar was driven back to another tower, and the city itself fell to Mishra’s forces.
The city was sacked and burned, its surviving populace butchered, and its glass roofs smashed so that not a single pane remained whole. The scholars in the towers collapsed their tunnels back into the city itself, sealed their windows against the smoke and the cries of the martyred, and prepared for the worst. First one, then a second, then a third of the ivory towers fell to the invaders, who moved in a circle around the city itself like an apocalyptic clock.
There would be no salvation from the Fallaji, no last-minute rescue. Loran had received correspondence from a friend still in Argive, months out of date but speaking of a rebellion among the dwarves of the Sardia Mountains. Urza would have his own hands full, Loran realized, and there was no one else to oppose Mishra in the west.
Nature brought a brief respite. A sandstorm blew up out of the desert to the east, carrying a heavy, thick load of dust that reduced visibility and halted Mishra’s army entirely. Many of the scholars used the storm as cover to escape from the city itself, taking with them what they had learned about the new teachings. Some said the archimandrite had fled, though others said she had been captured by Mishra, and still others said the sandstorm was her doing, as the banishing of the dragon engines had been Hurkyl’s.
Yet the storm would not last forever, and with its passing the ivory towers would again begin to fall, one after another. Those scholars who had survived were preparing to abandon the city entirely now. The land beneath the towers was honeycombed with tunnels, and enough survived to allow a safe escape to the hinterlands.
Drafna bellowed another set of orders at the Sumifan guards and servants, who moved with the calm, relaxed demeanor with which Sumifans did all things. Loran looked around but did not see Feldon. She had been sure he would make it to this tower, if he could.
She found him in his study, staring at the Golgothian Sylex. He looked up briefly from the copperish bowl and sighed as she entered. “Fill it full of memories, and start over again,” he said. “Scrape it all clean, like a glacier.”
“If what it says is true,” said Loran. “However, I think it would be as dangerous to the user as to its target.”
Feldon grunted and rose. “I agree. Drafna ordered me to fetch every bit of artifice in the tower. He intends to lead a sortie with the surviving guards, to fight his way all the way back to Lat-Nam if he has to. He’s in a fey mood, that one. I think he’d be more happy if he died than if he made it out. Anyway I sent everything else down but this….” His voice died as he stroked the side of the sylex.
“Do you think it will work?” asked Loran. “That it will end everything, as it claims?”
Feldon looked at her. “Do you want to find out?” he asked.
Loran looked at the bowl for a long moment, her thoughts racing. Then she shook her head. “There’s too much we don’t know about this.” Feldon nodded. “Agreed. But if we do not use something like this, what should we do with it?”
“We should destroy it,” said Loran.
“I don’t know if we can,” said Feldon. “It’s been beneath the sea for who knows how long, and it has resisted every attempt to take a sliver of metal from its side.
Perhaps Hurkyl could have done something to it with her mana….” Again he let his voice die. He looked at the bowl for a long time. “I don’t want to give it to Drafna,” he said.
“Are you afraid he’d lose it?” asked Loran.
“I’m afraid he’ll use it,” corrected Feldon. “Since Hurkyl died, he’s been, well, strange. I don’t think he really cares if the rest of the world survives or not.”
“His world died with his wife,” Loran said, and Feldon nodded in agreement. “So take it with you yourself. We have to leave soon.”
“With my game leg I won’t get far,” said Feldon. He tapped his cane against his twisted limb for effect. “I’m going to try to get out, but I think I’d better be traveling light.”
There was a pause, and Loran said, “You want me to take it. That’s where this is going.”
Feldon gave a bearlike shrug. “You’re leaving as well, either by the tunnels or with Drafna’s charge.”
“By the tunnels,” said Loran. “And you’re coming with me.”
“Too old, too lame,” he said. “You’d make better time without me. And there’s better chance of the knowledge surviving if we split up. There’s a small town at the foot of the Ronom Glacier, called Ketha. I’ll meet you there within the year if I survive. But, yes, you should take it.”
Loran pursed her lips. “Why me?”
“Have you been able to use the meditative techniques?” asked Feldon. “Have you been able to pull the mana from the land?”
Loran held up her hands. “I don’t believe that this is magic of any type. It’s merely science that we have yet to understand.”
Feldon leaned against his chair. “The answer would then be, no you have not.”
Loran looked at Feldon, then at the bowl. He was right. She had not been able to master the techniques, either because her own memories of home were too faded or her home was too remote. Or the land was no longer as she remembered it. She considered that option as well and wondered if that was part of the “science” of this new and untried field. At last she shook her head.
“That’s why you should take it,” said Feldon. “I’ve had small success myself, though I think of the mountains and ice when I do it. Everyone seems to be different and can manifest slightly different effects. Yet you have not, and that is why you should take it.”
“Because if something bad happens, I will not be able to use it in a moment of weakness,” said Loran flatly.
Feldon looked at the woman and let out a deep, heavy sigh.
Loran took the bowl. The feeling of shadow descended upon her as she grasped it, and she almost let it go. Instead she hefted it, looked at Feldon, and said, “Do you have a bag for this?”
Feldon produced a battered backpack, one of his own from his glacier-exploring days, and Loran slid the bowl into it. It was heavy, but its weight was minor compared to the aura of dread that surrounded it.
Loran and Feldon made their good-byes, and she hugged him. When they parted there were tears in her eyes. “Come with me,” she urged.
“We’ll scatter like geese,” said Feldon. “They can shoot only so many of us.”
“Small comfort if you’re one of the geese that’s shot,” said Loran. “Look after yourself.”
“You as well,” said Feldon. Then she was gone.
Feldon packed the last of his own belongings in a second backpack, pausing as he heard Drafna bellowing orders, readying the surviving troops for their assault. By now Loran would be in the tunnels, hopefully still free of Mishra’s forces and the hated Gixians.
Feldon hoisted his pack and shook it, trying to move the heavier items to the bottom. Below he heard the great doors of the tower swing open and the cries of the men and women who were going to fight their way past Mishra’s army. At least, he thought wryly, that’s what they hoped.
Feldon counted to a hundred just to assure himself they would be gone, then counted to a hundred a second time. Then, gripping his walking cane securely in one hand, he began to hobble his way down to the tunnels. As he limped along, he mumbled prayers: for himself, for the rest of the surviving scholars, for Drafna, for the archimandrite, and for Loran. Particularly for Loran.
* * *
—
A month later, Loran lay dying, her right side smashed and twisted by the rockfall. A few feet away from her, the sylex had spilled out of its backpack and lay glimmering among the rubble.
She had made it to the foothills of the Colekgan Mountains before disaster struck. The surviving populace had flowed through Mishra’s lines like water through a steel sieve, spilling in all directions, seeking escape to every cardinal point save east. Loran had joined a group of Yumok nationals who wanted no more than to quit these supposedly civilized lands and return to their upland homes.
They were moving through the first passes when the avalanche hit. It struck without warning. One moment a caravan of refugees wound its way among the cliffs, the next there was thunder from a clear blue sky and a rain of stone and soil as the path disappeared. Loran heard screams and shouts around her, but they were soon lost in a torrent of rock.
Not after all this, she remembered thinking. She made a silent, impassioned plea to gods long ignored. She remembered thinking as well this was no accident.
She had been right. Now that the dust had settled, figures moved among the debris.
At first she thought they were other refugees who had survived the rockslide and were searching for survivors. She tried to raise an arm to call them and realized she could not move her right arm. Her entire side was a thick smear of blood along her travel cape, and it hurt to move her head to look at it.
Suddenly she realized the figures were not Yumoks. They were dressed entirely in spiked armor with heavy, flowing capes. They moved among the debris, poking at bodies nonchalantly with their swords.
They were looters. They had set the avalanche, she realized. They had brought the mountain down on the caravan to scavenge the bodies.
She must had shuddered or spasmed in pain at the thought, for a voice over her right shoulder called, “We’ve got a survivor!” The voice was muffled behind steel but fairly close.
“Good,” responded another voice, this one female and unmuffled. “I was afraid that you did your job too effectively, Captain.”
Loran tried to turn herself about to see who was talking, but she could only twitch. Heavy, gauntleted hands lay on her shoulder, and she felt pain radiate from her wounds. A face hove into view, hidden behind a thick metal visor. It looked like one of Urza’s automatons, save for the fact that there were human eyes behind the eyeholes. They were not particularly warm or comforting, but they were human.
“Alive or dead?” asked the female voice.
“Alive, but not by much,” said the man behind the visor. His breathing was as sharp as her own, and Loran realized what was in those eyes. Pain. There was pain in the soldier’s eyes.
“We don’t need by much,” said the woman. The armored figure stepped aside for a moment, and Loran saw the woman. She was dressed in similar, spiked armor, but lacked a helmet. Loran could see thick red curls spilling onto her shoulder plates. “We just need a little information,” the woman continued coldly, “and then she can die like the others.” There was no pain in this red-haired woman’s eyes. Only power.
“Milady, look at this,” said the soldier, coming back into view. He was carrying the bowl-shaped sylex.
Loran must have tried to move, twisted in place, tried to say something. All she knew was that a moment later she was in intense pain, pain that seared through her like a blade. When her senses cleared again, she saw the red-haired leader turning the sylex over in her hands.
Ashnod, she realized, and wondered if her lips formed the words as she said them. But word was that Ashnod had been cast out from Mishra’s camp. What was she doing here, with her own soldiers, then?
“Interesting,” said Ashnod, running her slender fingers along the inside of the bowl, tracing
the script within as it spiraled to the base. “Most interesting. And I think our little friend knows about it. You’re no Yumok, nor a Fallaji. Some scholar from the east, perhaps?”
Loran said nothing and wondered if she would be able to die before anything else horrible happened to her. The stories of Ashnod’s cruelty were legendary.
The red-haired woman seemed to read her mind, for she said, “We’re going to have to nurse this one back to health, Captain. And then she has much that she’s going to tell us. I’m sure of that.”
Loran willed herself to die, but her only reward was Ashnod’s laughter.
Gwenna watched her invader from her perch on the interwoven upper branches of the trees. She spotted this one first, and therefore it was her claim, her invader. The others were going back to the hamlet to send messages farther south to Citanul and Titania’s Court, to ask for judgment on this development. Until then it was her duty to watch him and judge the invader.
She had never seen an invader before, though there were enough stories about invaders over the years for her to know they came in all shapes and sizes. They were similar in that they were not from Argoth, usually driven to shore by the storms that protected the island. All invaders were similar because they had no contact with the land at all and did not understand it.
This invader was mannish, like the druids of Citanul, Argoth’s only true city. The invader was taller than these druids and had sandy blond hair gathered in a horse’s tail behind its head. It was dressed in blue pants and white shirt, with a blue jacket that now hung from the side of its craft. The invader said something in a language Gwenna did not know and kicked the machine. Gwenna assumed it was a mannish curse, invoking mannish gods who never listened anyway.
